Picking olives in Israel and Palestine, Part 1

Steve Einstein, our Faces of West County columnist, just got back from Israel. Here's his two-part report

This is Part 1 of a 2-part article on Steve Einstein’s most recent visit to Israel.

A note from Steve: Sorry, but there’s nothing about Sebastopol or the West County here. If the situation in Israel/Palestine doesn’t interest you, you should probably go ahead and do something else.

Okay. I will now cautiously open the Pandora’s Box that is any discussion of Israel/Palestine. I do it with great trepidation and even fear. Israel/Palestine is an enormously complex, personal and remarkably charged subject. I am bound to offend some, anger others, maybe enlighten a couple, and possibly reassure a few.

Laura Hagar Rush, our editor-in-chief, got wind of my most recent visit to Israel and asked me to write up a report of what I saw and thought. Though I quickly agreed, I’m now feeling the huge weight of the challenge that that presents. Here goes.

It’s Monday, November 17, and it’s been an especially bad day in the West Bank. Jewish settlers there continue to ransack Palestinian towns, not in response to Palestinian stoning of cars, but in response to a rare instance of the IDF (Israel Defense Force) demolishing an unauthorized settlement. They set fire to a building and vehicles in Umm al-Butm and assaulted Palestinian women in their homes. In Jab’a, they set fire to more homes and vehicles. Soldiers and police reportedly looked on.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations, there was a unanimous vote by the Security Council in favor of an American proposal authorizing an international force to secure Gaza and disarm Hamas, and that envisions a path to an independent Palestinian state. That’s huge.

Maybe that’s what the settlers were rioting about?

A little introduction and some context

I came back from yet another short visit to Israel about a week ago. The purpose of the trip, beyond hanging out with old friends, drinking coffee and having cake on their couches, was to help with the olive harvest on the kibbutz I used to live on, Kibbutz Gezer. My friend Dani manages the 1,400 olive trees there, all planted in the past 50 years and not taken from the old Palestinian village that once stood nearby. (More on that later.) There was family to visit with, friends in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to check in with, a dear and remarkable Bedouin friend to visit with, two family weddings to hit, and an opportunity to go into the West Bank to help with the Palestinian olive harvest that was underway there. (More on that, too.)

The place has deep meaning for me. My mother and grandfather are buried there. I spent 10 years there, mostly on Gezer, and I am a dual citizen. I return every year for short visits to reconnect with old friends and sometimes to vote in always consequential elections. For all the grief and angst the place causes me, I love it there.

There is an intensity about the country, region and people that I’m sure is part of the attraction. That intensity is also what drives people away—that, and a rather pessimistic view of the future there.

I was also in Israel just this past June. I arrived on a Thursday, and within 24 hours, with the air raid sirens blasting at 3 am. I was there for the brief Iran missile war. That required multiple trips to various bomb shelters each day, resulting in plenty of time for nervous chit chat and varying degrees of anxiety. Hundreds of missiles came in from Iran and some from the Houthis in Yemen. Israeli anti-missile systems added to the chaos in the skies, destroying most incoming missiles before arrival. Too many got through. It left us feeling like this was truly an existential war of survival. And of course, at the same time, the war in Gaza raged on, there was periodic action in Southern Lebanon with Hezbollah fighters there, and West Bank violence never took a day off. Israel was stretched thin.

The visit this time began soon after the most recent ceasefire in Gaza was declared (brokered by our President, who really has no clue) and the joyous return of the live Israeli hostages. All but three of the dead Israeli bodies held by Hamas have now been returned. (Israel has returned 15 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli it gets back. Likewise, more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners were exchanged for the living Israelis. Numerous foreign nationals from Thailand and Nepal, among other nations, were also captured and held after the Hamas attack of October 7th, 2023.) As there was in Israel, no doubt there were similar joyous celebrations throughout Gaza and the West Bank when their prisoners were freed, as there must have been in Thailand and Nepal. The Thais and Nepalese were in Israel at the time of the Oct. 7th attack as guest workers, having replaced Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank. Israel had barred Arabs from the occupied territories from crossing the border out of security concerns. But then, everything in Israel is done out of a security concern.

I stay with my friends Dani and Patches

Dani, originally from Philly, became a lawyer a number of years ago after overseeing the kibbutz poultry operation. He spent years working on environmental law issues. Patches, at 76, originally from New York, still gets on her riding mower each day for three or four hours of cutting the lawns all over the kibbutz. She’s getting over a partial knee replacement right now but can’t wait to get back to work on her mower. They have two daughters, both born in Israel, and they’re up to four grandkids. They’re vegetarians, as are many people in Israel. One daughter is married to a guy with Iraqi roots on one side and German on the other. The other is married to a Russian-speaking nurse who was born in the Ural Mountains. I only mention this to give you an idea of what sort of ingathering of Jews from all over the world Israel actually is.

Here’s more of the diversity

There is a moshav—another sort of agricultural collective—to the west of Gezer that was founded by Moroccan Jews. To the north, there is another moshav founded by Romanians. I spent my first full year in Israel on a kibbutz way up north on the Lebanese border that was founded by South Africans. Beside it was a moshav that was entirely populated by Indian Jews, saris and all.

Gezer was originally founded in 1945 by European refugees who had escaped the holocaust. The Arab Legion killed 29 in a battle for Gezer in 1948. They’re buried in a long mass grave, just a few meters from where my mother is buried. Gezer fell apart in the early ’60s and was re-founded by North Americans in ’74. For a period of time, there was a large number of Brazilians also living there. By now, it’s mostly native-born Israelis there, though mysteriously, the kids on the kibbutz love to play baseball. They compete against teams of Mexican and Venezuelan Jews who have also moved to Israel.

Gezer is halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem—about 35 minutes to either city and sits beneath the ruins of the ancient city of Gezer that goes back to Canaanite days. It’s frequently mentioned in the Bible, sometimes as part of King Solomon’s dowry.

More diversity in Ramle

The nearest town to Gezer is the gritty city of Ramle, which has a large and growing number of Arabs (Christian and Muslim) living alongside Jews. It was founded in the early 8th century and became the commercial center of Palestine. Many buildings there still feel like they were built a thousand years ago. The vegetable market seems like it must have been hundreds of years ago. Jews and Arabs mix easily. Crusaders came through Ramle and later Napoleon himself. It’s a very colorful place.

Ramle had an Arab majority before 1948 and the Israeli War of Independence, at which time many of the Arabs were expelled. Many of the descendants of those expelled are still in the West Bank or Gaza, refugees dreaming of a return.

Today, Ramle is full of new Israelis from Russia, India, Ethiopia, and plenty of Moroccans who came earlier, in addition to a growing number of Arabs. The Arab birthrate in Israel far exceeds the Jewish birthrate (except for the religious Jews). On top of that, there has been a migration of Arabs from the ancient port city of Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv. As Jews from Tel Aviv are gentrifying Jaffa, they are squeezing out the Arab population who have lived there for generations. As a result, many have left Jaffa for the next large Arab community to the east, which is in Ramle.

For years, I had a father figure in Ramle, a short, rotund man named Samir, who had a small humus and kabab joint. He was the warmest, most authentic man I’ve ever known. Samir and his family were Greek Orthodox. They weren’t especially religious but strongly identified with the church. Samir’s brother, Essa, was active in the communist party, as were many other Arabs. The party was a mix of Arabs and Jews and still is.

Samir died a few years ago. Thousands of people, Jew and Arab alike, filled the streets of Ramle for his funeral procession. I went to visit Jallil, Samir’s son, who now runs the restaurant with my friend Ruth. Ruth was born in London but married a man from Norway, where they live now. Ruth and I both lived in Gezer in the ’80s and loved hanging out with Samir at his restaurant. Jalill was alone in the restaurant doing some bookkeeping. He welcomed us in like family, just like his father would. We asked Jallil where Samir was buried, as we wanted to pay our respects. He pointed us to the Christian cemetery, which is part Catholic, part Protestant, and part Armenian or Greek Orthodox. It’s just more of the rich tapestry of the place.

Throughout town you see so many different stages of the history of the region. The city hall is a grand home from the Ottoman Era. The main mosque goes back to when it was originally a crusader church. The police station is in an old English army base.

Ramle inspires me. It feels like it’s a model of what co-existence could really be like when it finally arrives.

I’m telling you, the diversity and complexity of this place is endless.

Picking olives

It’s been a bad year for olives. The yield is down to about 40% of an average year. Apparently, olives can be that way, but a drought like that of last winter didn’t help.

Every year, Dani recruits a few international volunteers to help with the harvest. We start at 6:30 am, pick for three hours, and then stop for a breakfast of pitas, cucumbers, tomatoes, zaatar, olive oil, and of course, hummus. Thermoses of hot tea and coffee go around the circle. Then it’s just three more hours of picking, and we can call it a day.

We use small rakes to strip the olives off the branches with the olives dropping down onto tarps placed beneath the trees.

I love it.

Steve Einstein, center in white t-shirt, helping with the olive harvest.

Damien from Switzerland

A new volunteer showed up one morning. He was from Switzerland and a devout Christian. His name was Damien, and he said he was in Israel for three months to help out as someone who, as a Christian, simply loved the Jewish people. (That alone made me cringe.)

Damien said he had recently volunteered on a moshav in the south that had fields that went right up to the border fence with Gaza. He planted lychee trees there, and he said that was most gratifying. I asked him, how did he think the crowded Palestinians on the other side of the fence felt, seeing land they thought of as theirs being planted like that?

“Well, it’s important that the Gazans on the other side of the fence can see that the Jews are here to stay and not going anywhere” he answered.

“Well, where should the Palestinians plant their trees?”, I asked.

Damien’s answer made me both angry and sad.

“There was never a Palestinian people! They came from Syria and Lebanon. Don’t you see, the Palestinian thing is a fabrication! They need to give up on their dream of a Palestinian state. This is Jewish land and always will be!”

I tried to contain myself.

Damien couldn’t see all the Palestinian villages in the area that were either now occupied by Jews, or actually bulldozed away off the face of the earth, soon after the War of ’48. It’s part of why they refer to that time as the Nakba, or their catastrophe. There was a Palestinian village just up the hill, Abu Shusha, on the side of ancient Tel Gezer, about a mile away. It’s gone now. There are hundreds of other villages that disappeared like that all over the country. Of course, Damien couldn’t see that.

I didn’t want to get into it with him. But maybe worse, there are plenty of Israeli kids growing up with the same misconception.

This was one of too many other interactions this trip that made this visit sadder than others.

Settlers in the West Bank harassing Palestinians

This being olive harvest time, it’s also open season on Palestinian farmers in the West Bank who are just trying to harvest their olives, like we were doing back on Gezer. Religious nationalists who have populated hilltops, legally and illegally, throughout the West Bank (or Judea and Samaria, as they prefer to call it), have been threatening, intimidating, harassing, and outright attacking Palestinians who have forever lived in the areas they now claim for their own. The violence has been escalating for months, in part as an effort to instigate an Arab revolt that would further justify an outright annexation of the West Bank. (Our president over here in Mar-a-Lago, swears that he would never allow that, knowing how it would anger his friends in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.)

It’s not just the racist settlers who are behind the intimidation/harassment. The army is supposed to be there to protect everyone and keep the settlers and local people apart and safe. In fact, they are entirely complicit in letting it happen. The police are no better. When an assault happens, there is a 1 in 4 chance that it will even be reported and recorded by the army or police. Then there is a smaller chance that it will be investigated. And finally, there is a tiny chance that the perpetrators will be arrested, let alone prosecuted.

Various groups of people, some Jewish, some international activists who want to help advocate on behalf of the Palestinians, have been going out into the olive groves to help pick alongside the Palestinians, and maybe more importantly, to act as witnesses and possibly as a buffer, when Jewish settlers, usually teenagers, come to do their harassment/incitement.

I joined one of those groups one day. It was organized by Rabbis for Human Rights, and our group was made up of eight women rabbis, mostly from Philly; a number of older Israeli activists; and a number of younger, international peace activists.

We left in a small bus from a park in Jerusalem and headed south towards Bethlehem in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank. It’s not far—maybe five miles. The terrain changes quickly, from crowded, narrow streets lined with cafes and upscale markets to the mostly barren hills of the West Bank, with its many small townships tucked into the sides of the hills. We went to the village of Battir, just west of Bethlehem, and very close to the Green Line, the old border that separated pre-1967 Israel from the now-occupied West Bank. It was a gorgeous wadi, or valley, that we climbed down into, heading for about 30 olive trees that needed to be picked. On the way to the trees, we passed the new hilltop settlement of Bar Kochba from where settlers had been coming down to do their harassing.

The pickings were slim, and there was no settler or army interference this particular day. A few local women prepared a lovely traditional meal for us, and we ate in the shade of the trees. We then carried five or six sacks of olives back up to the small bus that had dropped us off and drove back to Jerusalem. It was an uneventful outing, which I suppose is the good news.

I elected not to pick with them the next day as I had planned, and, wouldn’t you know it, the group was actually set upon. It wasn’t settlers who came to harass either. The army was flying a drone over the group, and apparently, it ran out of fuel and dropped to the ground, striking and injuring one of the women in the group. There was a conflict with the army when they came to get their drone. The injured woman got stitched up at a hospital, and the event was over.

And finally, after years of settler violence, the Prime Minister has finally promised a crackdown. Yeah right. I wonder if it was Vance or Rubio who pressured him to say that.

To me, the sabotage that the settlers have intended all along is working perfectly. No government will remove them from the land, and no peace will be possible while they remain and grow.

And wouldn’t ya know it, now there’s reports of the IDF going into an illegal settlement (one that wasn’t sanctioned by the government) and demolishing it. In response, besides attacking the troops (something a Palestinian would get shot dead on the spot for), some of the now-displaced settlers went into a nearby Palestinian village and torched some cars.

This is not going to end well.

Yesterday, on Nov. 16, members of a Rabbis for Human Rights group were arrested on their way to a demonstration in the West Bank where they were going to stand in support of Palestinian farmers.

We will publish Part 2 of this report tomorrow morning.

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