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The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East | 
 enlarge | Author: Sandy Tolan
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 5249
Media: Paperback
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 1596913436
Dewey Decimal Number: 956
EAN: 9781596913431
ASIN: 1596913436
Publication Date: April 17, 2007
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Product Description
In 1967, Bashir Al-Khayri, a Palestinian twenty-five-year-old, journeyed to Israel, with the goal of seeing the beloved old stone house, with the lemon tree behind it, that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously resonant documentary that aired on NPR’s Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 56 more reviews...
 Compassion, History, Documentation, Hope May 3, 2006
Victoria Lindsay
83 out of 97 found this review helpful
Who has a heart large enough to contain compassion both for the longing for Zion, for sanctuary, for homeland, of the Jewish survivors who emigrated to the nascent Israel after WWII, and at the same time the longing for return, for justice, for homeland, of the Palestinians who were expelled from the homes they had occupied for generations to make room for what was to become Israel?
Sandy Tolan, author of The Lemon Tree, has, and when you read this remarkable book your heart, too, will stretch until it is large enough to encompass the whole.
If you don't know the history of Palestine and Israel, read this book. It is a true story, but it reads like a novel. It's a page-turner that tells "Everything you ever wanted to know about the history of Israel and Palestine, but were afraid to ask."
If you know the history, but you find the subject difficult to discuss with others, read this book for back-up. Every event is documented in the extensive source notes. Arab accounts of what occurred around 1948 have long been available. Israeli Army reports of the same events were declassified only 50 years after the fact. Only since then have the disparate narratives begun to intertwine into one coherent story of what happened in 1948 and after. All of the historic phenomena are documented here from both Israeli and Palestinian sources.
If you follow the news of the region, and therefore you despair, read this book. You'll discover that hope prevails -- in the care of those who sneak across borders to knock on doors, and those who, having considered and rejected more conventional responses to presumed enemies, instead answer, "Yes. Please come in."
The Lemon Tree May 9, 2006
M. Socci
72 out of 82 found this review helpful
In my 56 years, I've read several books that have changed my life--brought me greater understandings, taught me things I didn't know, mesmerized me so much that I took the books with me everywhere I went--even reading at stop lights! The Lemon Tree is right up there with The Haj, Hawaii, and Night. This history fills in all the gaps of my previous knowledge. So many people have questions about the Middle Eastern conflicts and all of those questions are answered in this book. My friends and I agree that we all SHOULD know more about the Middle East situation, but rarely do we want to sit down and study a history book. This book is full of facts, but it's a page turner!I could hardly put it down. My life was on hold. One day I was reading The Lemon Tree and I actually started crying. There were heart-stopping moments, too. Very exciting! A thriller! I want to meet the real people in the book so much. They are so brave, both Arabs and Israelis, Muslims and Jews. I love how Sandy Tolan showed Israel through different view points, e.g. al-Ramla through Arabic eyes and Ramla through Israeli eyes. It helped shift my thinking as I was reading. Everyone simply has to read this book, both sides, all sides!
 It's a lemon - Bite into it at Your Own Risk May 25, 2006
Hillel Stavis
43 out of 112 found this review helpful
Recipe for "Progressive" Israel-Bashing:
Ingredients:
1 tbsp left wing Israeli Jew (preferably female and a child of Holocaust survivors) who does nothing but "question" Israeli conduct and history
1 tbsp far right Palestinian Arab (preferably male with Jewish blood on his hands) who does nothing but "question" Israeli conduct and history
1 tbsp of "Progressive" Journalist (preferably with a Nieman Fellowship, a DuPont Silver Baton award, radio documentaries on various third world oppressed peoples and a teaching position at Berkeley)
1 Lemon Tree
Bake in a 1000 degree oven for 350 pages, find an eager publisher (no difficult task there) and receive lots of free plugs on NPR.
What then pops out is a pastry with a sweet, tasty outer crust of "competing narratives", images of "The Other" (but it's always the Jew who must assume ultimate guilt) and Jewish - (of the self-alienated variety, of course) Arab hugging. But wait until you bite into it! The confection has a red hot center made up of classical Israel bashing.
Serves millions. Enjoy!
That's what's on the menu designed by Sandy Tolan, erstwhile NPR documentarist, co-founder of Homeland Productions (not to be confused with Homeland Security), winner of numerous MSM awards, currently a Teaching Fellow at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and author of a new book, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and The Heart of the Middle East.
Do you remember the last scene from the film, Rosemary's Baby? Here's a short recap: Satan's offspring via Mia Farrow (Rosemary), is cooing softly in his cradle above which dangles an inverted crucifix. Mia learns to love and nurture him. Soon, Satan's acolytes arrive and fill the room in homage to the newborn, world-destroying child. But Roman Polanski, humorist to the core, casts them as kitschy tourists, snapping photos and engaging in mindless small talk.
Whenever I attend an anti-Israel hate-fest, I am reminded of that scene. Except there are some notable differences. Instead of devil worshipers arriving from Dubrovnik or Rumania, these characters have come straight from The American Friends Service Committee, a Presbyterian prayer retreat, the nearest Unitarian Church and, naturally, from the local university's Middle East Studies Department. And, of course, a significant portion of the audience is made up of people who loudly identify themselves as "secular" Jews who seem to live for nothing other than making common cause with Jew-haters and who are even plagued in their sleep by shame over Israel and hatred for people who love that small, unique and besieged country.
Preaching to that cadaverous crew in Cambridge recently, Mr. Tolan, a self-styled "storyteller" and a polished and experienced performance artist, relates the story of Dalia and Bashir, she, a child of Bulgarian Holocaust survivors, secular; he, a terrorist convicted of taking part in a supermarket bombing, for which he received 15 years in prison. Not to worry - the Jew, ever mindful of her obligation to act out her assigned role as guilt-ridden conciliator and Bashir, consistent with the role assigned to him as the avenger of Jewish usurpation, resolve the Israeli-Arab "conflict" in microcosm by acknowledging Jewish perfidy and guilt and Arab virtue and "understandable" vengeance. For all his props of moral equivalency, Mr. Tolan at no point in his story leaves any doubt as to the guilty party.
The trope has to do with a lonely lemon tree in the backyard of the house, naturally planted by Bashir's grandfather, usurped by the Jewish interlopers. Predictably, the delicate tree withers and dies: the tear duct-emptying metaphor for the apparent irresolvibility of the larger Middle East conflict.
Sandy's delivery is pure Stanislavski. Pausing pregnantly on phrases like, "My Father's house" (Bashir) and "Their exile I can understand through my own exile" (Dalia), he weaves a thoroughly tendentious history of the founding of the Jewish state.
Did you know that 7 Arab armies did not invade the reborn Jewish state, but, rather "War began in 1948"? I didn't. Did you know that The Grand Mufti, Hitler and Himmler's house guest and founder of a Waffen SS division that slaughtered thousands of Jews, Gypsies and others was simply trying to enlist Axis support for the Arab cause? I didn't. And did you know that Hamas only switched to targeting Jewish civilians after the Baruch Goldstein massacre at Hebron in 1994? I didn't. And on and on.
The red-hot center of Sandy's pastry got even hotter. Bashir, convicted of helping to murder Jews and Dalia's charming house guest, so impresses her that she decides to donate the house to create an Arab philanthropic foundation in its place (cue audience sighs). While not satisfying the exterminationist goals of Hamas, and, it would appear, Bashir, it's a modest beginning in redressing the guilt so easily acknowledged by Sandy's Jewish protagonist.
And so, replete with the necessary Deir Yassin narratives (mostly refuted even by Arab witnesses today, but not mentioned by Mr. Tolan), apologies for Nasser and avoiding any mention of the forgotten expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab lands, the audience got what it expected and wanted: a belly full of subtle and not-so-subtle calumnies heaped on the Jews.
Sandy Tolan has borrowed from a familiar traveling show:
* Establish a false symmetry of suffering and empathy in the beginning of the performance.
* Use The Holocaust as your inoculation against Jewish criticism and questions.
* Weave an agenda-laden and false history lesson into the story.
* Avoid any reference to Jews expelled from Arab lands.
* Rarely, if ever, mention Hamas and terror.
* And, above all, justify and support any and all Arab claims against Jews.
And all of that guarantees it will be a bestseller from university to university.
 A Must Read but deeply flawed December 27, 2006
M. Reid (Cambridge, MA United States)
37 out of 52 found this review helpful
This book is both a "must read" and at the same time it is deeply flawed. If you are seeking an emotional and decidedly gripping account of the Middle-east conflict this is an excellent choice. It will also serve admirably to put a face on both sides of the conflict. It should challenge the everyone who already associates themselves with a position on the matter to question their beliefs and to seriously consider the point of view of the other side in a meaningful way.
That said, where this book falls down is in the objectivity department. Put simply the author clearly attempted mightily to be unbiased and balanced but still allowed personal bias and spin to infiltrate the book. In its weakest form, the author's bias makes him much more likely to credit accounts favorable to the Palestinian Arabs and hostile to the Palestinian Jews* (Hereafter "Israelis"). He often sites sources and historians with a known and recognizable agenda, as well as "fringe" sources. However, this is largely forgivable because he sometimes also provides a balancing point of view to compensate or at least admits when facts are in significant dispute.
However, a worse failing is the tendency to systematically "spin" information to the determent of Israel. For example, in a later chapter on the 2nd Indefada (the riots, or uprisings, or terrorist acts, or insurgency -depending on who you ask- of 2000 and following years) he mentions the Israeli accusation that Palestinian gunmen operated from behind a screen of civilians, usually children. He goes on to say that a UN investigation revealed that this was "the exception rather than the rule." This is a case of "spin" when one considers that the UN actually confirmed that the Israeli accusation was founded in fact. To call it the "exception" is casting the evidence in light as favorable to one side as possible. In other cases, he presents facts that are generally very well established and corroborated by neutral sources or even the Arabs as "Israeli assertions." For example, he mentions villages that the Israelis cleared after capturing them in the 6Day War because "Israelis claimed" they had participated in attacks on Jewish forces during the 1948 War. He does not mention that the NY Times and the Jordanian Army also confirmed that fact. To add the phrase "Israel claims" etc. indicates that the following may not be true; it can and should be used when there is real doubt but not when all reputable (Arab, Jew, and Other) sources agree on a fact. Nor does he mention that these villagers were compensated at the time. I am not saying that there was justification for that act, which is certainly debatable, but it is revealing that it was not mentioned. It robs several of the hard questions of balance
Other times, he ignores inconvenient evidence from highly reputable or significant sources. This is a pity because often I would have liked to see his assessment of the ignored evidence. One such piece of evidence that would go to the actual heart of his book was Israeli claims that they expelled the Arab inhabitants of Lyda or Lod (a town next to the one in central to his narrative and one he discusses on multiple occasions) only after they turned on the Israelis after having surrendered to them.
After that catalogue of problems, perhaps it is surprising that I honestly recommend this book as one of two that a person MUST read in order to understand the historical context of the conflict. The other, FYI, is O'Jerusalem which, I admit, leans a bit towards the Jewish side. I also do praise the author for attempting balance even if he does not always succeed. Ideally the two books should be read one after the other as they will give the reader a very balanced view of the problem with one leaning a little towards the Arabs while the other leans a little towards the Jews.
The Lemon Tree is a griping, if flawed, personal account of the struggle that continues to have terrible ramifications 60 years after the UN voted to create a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine.
*The Jewish population of the region were commonly referred to as "Palestinians" or "Palestinian Jews" until the creation of the Jewish State in 1948, at which point they began to be referred to as Israelis. Sorry about the nitpick, but terminology is important.
Wonderful Writing and Impressive Research June 8, 2006
Maria Blanco
28 out of 34 found this review helpful
I rarely read a non-fiction book that is a page-turner. This is the rare one. The Lemon Tree had me wanting to come home after work and pick up my reading where I had left off. This book manages to present the extremely complicated events of the last 60 years of the Palestenian/Israeli conflict in a narrative that informs while also being extremely moving. The Lemon Tree contains detailed information based on first hand research about Israeli policies towards Palestinians that are often glossed over for fear of offending. I hope that Sandy Tolan's impressive research insulates this important historical book from being viewed as a anti-Israeli work. By telling the history of the region through the eyes of 2 real individuals, one an Israeli survivor of the Holocaust and the other a Palestinian who lost his home and town to Israel, Tolan humanizes history in a way that gives one a sense of hope.
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