The Lemon Tree Quotes

“understanding can only come from a recognition of each other's history.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“The act of planting was thus an act of faith and patience.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“They are building the wall," said Nidal, "so they don't have to look into our eyes.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“they cried out desperately for help, for pity, for water, for air, for a scrap of humanity.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Dalia had long believed in Einstein's words—that "no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“We can continue to fight. We can continue to kill—and continue to be killed. But we can also try to put a stop to this never-ending cycle of blood. We can also give peace a chance.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Other Zionists, like Albert Einstein and Martin Buber, advocated coexistence with the Arab population and opposed any transfer plans.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Out of the pain, something new is growing.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Generally, it can be said that any Arab house that survived the impact of the war . . . now shelters a Jewish family.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“If national interest comes before our common humanity," Dalia said, "then there is no hope for redemption, there is no hope for healing, there is no hope for transformation, there is no hope for anything!" One”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“She appreciated that the entire Bulgarian Jewish choir had come on a boat together and that Bulgarians were playing in the new Israeli philharmonic. She loved to read Tolstoy and Chekhov, Victor Hugo, Thomas Mann, and Jack London. Most of all, she adored Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, her beloved, kindred soul whose work she considered profoundly sensitive and who, during the war, had lost faith in humanity and cut open his veins.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“in late 1936. By then, their homeland was in the midst of a full-scale rebellion. The Great Arab Rebellion had erupted the previous fall, when an Arab nationalist named Sheikh Izzadin al-Qassam took to the hills near Jenin in northern Palestine with a small band of rebels. Arab nationalists had long suspected the British of favoring the Jews over the Arabs in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration had helped put in motion the machinery for building a Jewish state, including a trade union, a”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Gradually, as land sales increased and Jewish leaders pressed their call for a state of their own, many Arabs began to fear Jewish domination. Already more than 30,000 Arab peasant families, or nearly a quarter of the rural population, had been dispossessed through the sale of land to Jews, many by absentee Arab landowners. The”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Between 1922 and 1936, the Jewish population of Palestine quadrupled—from 84,000 to 352,000. During the same time, the Arab population had increased by about 36 percent, to 900,000.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Suleiman made al-Ramla the political capital of Palestine, and for a time it became more important than Jerusalem. The town lay halfway between Damascus and Cairo, and soon it was a stopover for camel caravans hauling leather, swords, buckets, walnuts,”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“These were new luxuries for the town founded twelve centuries earlier, in 715 A.D., by the Muslim caliph Suleiman Ibn Abdel-Malek. Suleiman, it was”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“The Ottomans, based in Istanbul, would rule Palestine for four hundred years. At its height, the empire stretched from the outskirts of Vienna through the Balkans, Central Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. From Istanbul, the Ottoman sultan bequeathed to Khair al-Din the productive waqflands that would sustain the family for centuries. By 1936, Palestine was under the rule of a new overseer, the British, who had arrived at the end of World War I as the Ottoman Empire collapsed. By”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“national interest comes before our common humanity," Dalia said, "then there is no hope for redemption, there is no hope for healing, there is no hope for transformation, there is no hope for anything!”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“When someone sees his or her own history represented fairly, it opens up the mind and”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Small countries have to come to terms with great ones. Hitler had the power; thus some of his demands had to be accepted.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Any mistakes that may remain are, of course, my responsibility.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“I am indebted to the archivists”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Dalia was the only one in Israel who understood,” Bashir insisted.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“The pain of our history.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“I made the decision to do everything in my power to prevent the execution of a plan that was going to compromise Bulgaria in the eyes of the world and brand it with a mark of shame that it did not deserve.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“1935 Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor,”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“The British had arrived in 1917, the same year of the historic Balfour Declaration, in which England pledged to help establish a "national homeland for the Jewish people" in Palestine.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“This was partly why she believed what she had been told:”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“to never again be led like sheep to the slaughter.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

“Our enemy is the only partner we have.”
― Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East