Milking Olives from the Tree

Backpack slung over my right shoulder and cup of coffee in my left hand, I hurriedly walked east on Arlozorov Boulevard in Tel Aviv, toward the North Tel Aviv bus station. In my backpack I carried a water bottle, my cell phone, money and a pumpkin biscuit I baked last night. If I were in another city, say San Francisco, and was seen hurrying in the quiet of the weekend morning, one could assume I was en route to a yoga class.

But here, in Tel Aviv, I was rushing to meet a group of people from Combatants for Peace, a group started by former Israeli soldiers and former Palestinian militants. At the bus station, I was to look for the bus that would take me and other participants into the West Bank to pick olives with Palestinian farmers.

I arrived at the station searching for my party. Although public buses do not run in Tel Aviv on Shabbat, from the small crowds of people clumped in various parts of the parking lot, it was obvious that on Saturdays the bus station is used as a meeting point for tourist groups. Buses with signs in the windshield saying, "Day-Trip to Nazareth" and "Jerusalem Tours" were parked in the lot, khaki clad tourists with hats, cameras and day packs were milling about.


Crossing another parking lot, I saw a different crowd of people, younger, sleepy-eyed people. It was the guy wearing the Che Guevara t-shirt, however, that indicated to me this was the group I came to meet. Sure enough, I asked a woman, "what group is this?" To which she replied, "the olive picking group."

Ten minutes later two buses arrived for two bus loads of Israelis, a few Americans and Australians headed for the West Bank.

We stopped in Jerusalem on the way for a bathroom break and to meet the other bus departing from Jerusalem. Shortly after that, we were on our way East through Jerusalem and South toward Hebron. Easily, we passed through a check point, driving alongside the separation wall, everyone in the bus looked out the window, some seeing the gray mass for the first time, others scanning the view for changes and additions to the gradual separation of Israel from the West Bank.

We drove South, past Hebron for maybe fifteen minutes when we pulled over to the side of the road near a place called Soussiya. Soussiya is a small village made up of a few rows of long tents, a small windmill that generates two hours of electricity per day, and a grove of olive trees. The residents of Soussiya live between a settlement and an Israeli military base.

Soussiya was not always located where it is today. The people of Soussiya were not originally from the West Bank. In 1948 they were expelled from their homes in Arad, south of Soussiya. They were relocated to Old Soussiya, up the road. After the 67' War, Old Soussiya was destroyed and replaced with a Jewish settlement. The Soussiya of today is the land, which the family we helped harvest olives has managed to hang onto despite ever-encroaching settlements and settler farming projects. The inhabitants of Soussiya are members of the same extended family. The rest of the family lives in a nearby city called Atta. Family from Atta come to Soussiya to help pick the olives from trees they've plucked green and black varieties since the 1800s.

It is not that the family of Soussiya and Atta have so many olive trees that they cannot manage the harvest on their own. This is not why we joined them under the hot sun and the cool breeze blowing in the Southwestern part of the West Bank today. Rather, we helped them because last year they were unable to harvest their trees.

The edge of the Soussiya olive grove rests at the foothills of a rocky-earth incline at the outskirts of a Jewish settlement. In years past, the settlers, who refuse to recognize that these people, the Palestinian residents of Soussiya own this land and therefore have the right to reap the harvest of their property, have attacked the children and mothers and fathers of Soussiya. They throw rocks, they threaten with weapons and the soldiers who are stationed in the area are obligated to protect the settlers-- the instigators, not the Palestinians. In the event that there are clashes between the two peoples, the soldiers arrest Palestinians if they react. Last year the people of Soussiya let the olives from their trees drop to the ground to bake in the bright sun. Between the settlers, the soldiers and the potential for violence, it was determined that the olives would not be harvested.

Combatants for Peace, Ta'ayush and Peace Now-- two Israeli-Palestinian peace groups and one Israeli, were informed of this village and others in a similar situation and organized a remedy the problem. Prearranged with the army, the soldiers are informed when groups are traveling to the West Bank to work with the Palestinians, this way they are present if and when settlers appear to meddle and intimidate the Palestinians.

By sending Israelis and internationals into the West Bank to pick olives with the Palestinians, the soldiers are obligated to protect the visiting Israelis, tourists and observers. Without us, they may not show up at all, leaving the Palestinians at the mercy of the settlers and each side's emotional and physical response to the other.

We started picking from the trees close to the highway. We were instructed to run our hands down the olive-laden branches, milking olives from the tree. The green, black and purplish orbs fell from the trees onto plastic tarps below and into plastic bags we attached to the belt loops of our pants. To get the olives at the top someone climbed into the center of the tree, coaxing the fruit from the wood. The steady pit-pat of olives falling to the ground became fainter and fainter as we successfully completed harvesting olives from one tree after another.

We moved to the center of the grove, buckets, tarps and USAID sacks following us. Smiles and basic questions like, "where are you from? how old are you? what do you study? are you Israeli?" helped us to establish a friendship with our hosts. It was strange to explain that I am American and Jewish.

"You are American and you are Jewish?" asked Amran, the spokesperson of the family.

"Yes," I replied, "I am American and I am Jewish."

Amran turned to his cousins and said, "yahoud, yahoud, fil America."

"Jew, Jew, from America."

Eventually, we reached the trees closest to th settlement and we continued to pick the olives. We started giggling at the abrasive braying of the village's donkeys on the hillside to our right.

On the hillside above us, fifty yards from where we were, a group of men and boys dressed in white appeared,tzitzit waving on the wind.

Settlers wearing white for Shabbat.

After the settlers, two border policemen, Magav, appeared with them. They wore helmets and batons stuck out from their hips. They positioned themselves between the settlers and us. We continued to drop olives into buckets, onto tarps, into bags.

The settlers stood there and watched.

After awhile they disappeared back up the hillside, the soldiers following behind them. We finished harvesting from the trees.

Heading toward the village, we came to the final group of trees, thicker trees, older trees whose olives were more obscure amongst the thick branches with abundant leaves. The family offered us sage tea sweetened with sugar. We sat together, the men smoking argileh, all of us drinking the sweet, sweet refreshing beverage. After that we continued the harvest until lunch arrived on the terraced land above us.

Together we sat on black tarps spread on the rocky soil with sharp, dried nettle branches shooting from the earth, surrounded by five olive trees and the speckled shade they offered. We at roasted chicken, rice, lentils, pita and hummus. The family joined us, small children sitting amongst our group enjoying the attention of strangers and the food.

An elder man of the family stood before us and thanked us for helping. This is when he told us the history of his family, how they live in nearby Atta and Soussiya. How unless they live on their land where the olive trees grow, they'll lose their livelihood to settler vineyards and greenhouses.

Shortly after lunch it was time to head back to Tel Aviv. We said farewell to our hosts, each side thanking the other. The Palestinians for our support and us for their giving us a way, or at least a feeling that we can and are doing something to help.

Waving to Amran and his cousin Yusuf from behind the tinted window of the bus, I felt acutely aware that I was about to move back from one reality to another. Inside, I also felt contentment, and a subtle calming peace settle over me. Perhaps from spending a day outside, amidst the branches and leaves of olive trees, perhaps from connecting in a small way with the people of Palestine who haunt my thoughts when I sit at Tel Aviv cafes and stroll through malls and boutiques, and jog along the nearby shores of the Mediterranean Sea. I am utterly baffledy by the urban, modern life I live in Tel Aviv, and the life that the farmers and shepherds of Palestine live not so far away.

Generally, Israelis are a boisterous people and culture. It is part of what is endearing and delightful about being here. Today though, in the olive grove of Soussiya, a solemnity pervaded the hours of the harvest. I can't imagine what it felt like for my Israeli friends to be there. What were their thoughts and feelings? What fears did they have to overcome to get on a bus to the West Bank? What hopes do they have? What do they see as their role in healing the wounds of so many decades? What can come of milking olives from the trees?

And our Palestinian friends. Does it help that they experience Israelis other than settlers and soldiers? Does it give them hope? Does it lessen the pain and hopelessness? I believe it does perhaps in small part.

For the first time in the eight months I have spent in Israel and the West Bank, I think I glimpsed what peace could be like here. It will come from a shared respect for each other. It will come from Israelis helping Palestinians pick olives, perhaps to ease the inherited guilt and confusion of those who are willing and able to accept it. It will come from Israelis and Palestinians experiencing each other as human beings who both bleed from scratches from the olive tree branches, and reddened cheeks from too much exposure to the sun.

Getting Over the Chosen Thing

Jews returned to Eretz Israel beginning in the mid-19th century when a group of rabbis in Russia began espousing the Jewish right to return to the land of the ancestors, promised to the Nation of Israel by God. Centuries of living as a diaspora would come to an end if the Jews returned in great enough numbers. And the Jews had to, they had to escape inquisition, pogroms, prejudice, inequality and segregation from each of the societies to which they dispersed since 132 A.C.E. when the Romans defeated the Jewish uprising and destroyed the Second Temple.


Sixty years ago, the high rises, cafes, boulevards, fashion, billboards, buses and convenient stores I see today in Israel were not here. Sixty years ago the Jews who moved here in the wake of the Holocaust were working the land on kibbutzim, creating the miracle of Ben Gurion's vision of blooming deserts, a thriving state and safe haven for Jews whose self-sustainability as a self-determined nation with territory was confirmed to be the only defense against the world's cruelty to the Jews. In the face of challenge to this realized dream, Jewish text and history has reminded the world that God designated the Jews as the Chosen People,a light among nations.

What a complex this has created.

Sizable migrations of Jews came in the late nineteenth century and the early 20th century. Finally, the largest numbers arrived on the shores of soon-to-be Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Starvation, humiliation, destitution, grief and loss united the Jews from all over Europe as they arrived to create a new nation, built on the desert sands and swamps.

Hebrew was reinstated as the common language of the Jews, a project that began with Herzl's Zionism in the late 19th century, and cultural Zionist Ah'ad Ha'am. A new Jewish culture was born in a land both familiar and foreign. Characteristics of the nascent Israeli identity were forming-- the sabra, the soldier, the innovative desert farmer. These pioneers, these Halutzim, mostly hailing from Eastern Europe, with a smattering of emboldened American Jews populated the land in the late 1940s. Iraqi, Moroccan, Algerian, Iranian, Yemeni Jews joined their Jewish brothers and sisters in the 1950s. The Ethiopians came later. The Jewish Nation had a firm grasp to the land, the State of Israel.

Facing a conflicted world on the legitimacy of the Jewish State, a hostile and shamed Arab world, and the long tradition of anti-Semitism, the first Israelis were united in the face of their adversaries, with firm conviction of their right to be here as God's Chosen People, apart from all the rest. Or were they united?

Survivors of the Holocaust arrived on the shores of Israel when it was the British Mandate of Palestine to discover disgusted Israeli counterparts. The survivors stories served as a reminder of Jewish feebleness and the children of modern-Israel had established a society exactly opposite to that of the victimized Jews of Europe. Another example, the regularly kassam-bombarded city of Tsderot near Gaza was created by Iraqi and Moroccan immigrants starting in 1952. They left their homes behind at the invitation of Israel, to come as Jews to live in the Jewish State. They did not find a welcoming population. The communities who had already set up thriving kibbutzim refused to assist the newcomers and so they had to build from sand, wind and nothing, a viable habitat. And so they did, without the help of their Jewish neighbors.


True, nowhere in the world and certainly not the Middle Eastern world does one find a society so open, dynamic, controversial, challenging and constantly stirring with new ways to survive extistentially and basically across socioeconomic lines. Nowhere in the world do you have to guard your spot in line to get on the bus by spreading your legs and arms as wide as possible in order to block the door from the 15 people behind you who think they should get on before you, and end up befriending the very person who you battled, ten minutes later, when they sit beside you. But also, nowhere in the world do you find fours cars pulled over on the side of the road trying to help a stranger haul his SUV out of the foothill of a sand dune. And of course, amongst four Israeli vehicles, there is enough rope and other gadgets necessary to accomplish such a feat.

Fortunately, I haven't been in Israel during a time of war. However, I imagine that in times of crisis, the country and its Jewish-Israeli citizens stand as one united nation in protection of what the Jewish people dreamed of for centuries. I have heard stories from the first Gulf War when young children would gather at each other's homes for school lessons because the schools were closed for fear of bombings. These are the times when hearts of mothers and fathers of each and every Israeli family with a son or daughter in the army beat a little faster, breathing more shallow in usual, for fear of the safety of their children's lives. In these times the playing field is leveled and there simply exists Israeli, Israel versus the world.

But on a normal day, in normal times, it is clear that Israel and the people in it are just as good, bad and indifferent as the rest of the world. The society is astonishingly divided. It is divided by color, by Ashkenazim versus Sephardim, between Jew and Arab, rich and poor, North and Center, religious and secular. There's this one population of the country with the stigma of being arsim (for the boys) and frehot (for the girls). Think Greasers, mafia-types who are made fun of for their dress and language style and considered socially at odds with the rest of society.

And why is this so vexing? Why is this division within diversity something that bothers me? It's not as if the rest of the world's countries' societies aren't also broken up, segregated, at odds with each other and varied.

On other days I see it as something miraculous. Jews from France, Ethiopia, Cyprus, Greece, the States, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina, Canada...a United Nations of Jewry gathered together in this land because it is the Jewish State.

(And these are the days where I'm not contemplating the other elephant in the living room, the occupation.)

It's not like Israel is the only country whose education system is becoming more and more shoddy, with teachers who are severely underpaid. It's not as though more people in other countries have more interest in the outcome of politics than they do here. Certainly, Israel isn't the only country who values plastic surgery, stilettos and flat screen televisions more than picking up trash, saving electricity and organic produce. So why am I so judgmental and angry on some days? Why am I so disappointed in this place on such a regular basis?

I think I suffer from "The Chosen Complex".

Jewish history teaches that God promised unto Abraham a nation of people as numerous as there are stars in the heavens. These people who proclaimed faith to one and only one God were proclaimed the Chosen People, chosen to receive the Torah, to receive the "Promised Land", and to serve and be a light among nations.

Are we really the Chosen? Walk the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa. Try to buy a falafel, wait your turn in line for security, or deal with customer service. Good luck ordering in a timely fashion, good luck not getting pushed three people behind and fending for your life from flinging bags and other personal paraphernalia, and good luck trying to hang onto your cordiality with strangers and eventually accept that you too will speak to someone as though they are a complete idiot and the only way to get through to them is in fact to use a firm voice most people would consider harsh, rude and out of line.

And please, don't believe that those who are studying Torah every day, so intimate with the teachings of God and the Sages, are any more considerate in their daily interactions in the public space. I didn't know I missed chivalry until I came to this country and found men with Orthodox-indicating accoutrements so afraid of coming into physical proximity with women that doors have shut in my face when I'm carrying three too many bags from one bus stop or train station to the next and simply keeping one's hand on the glass for an extra 2 seconds could've really helped out a girl-in-need. Are we not all made in God's image? Am I so evil for having breasts and a vagina and/or he so helpless in the face of his animalistic carnal character that such a courtesy as holding the door open cannot be offered? Are the Chosen so powerless to their own human flaws that they cannot be trusted to work on those things? Sharpen the awareness and practice of limits?

There's so much expectation when one is Chosen to be a light among nations. I get this idea that these people shouldn't litter and shouldn't have an army that is aggressive and uses torture, creates nuclear weapons and lies about them, or have politicians involved in sex scandals. Excuse me for expecting the Chosen to live up to their own standard and fundamental principles of Oneness as expressed in the Shema, and instead focusing on itself.

I expect the Chosen to figure what the nation-state of the Chosen stands for-- exactly. Is it: "fuck the world and its anti-Semitism at all costs we'll defend and survive?" Or, is it about creating a place in the world with a vision for what the world could be if we all moved from the heart instead of the unchecked and unhealed ego and voracious and insatiable genitals? I wish it were the latter.

What happens when the Chosen behave as all the rest and still claim to be the Chosen? Israel 2007, that's what happens. Big balagan.