The Olive Tree

GUEST POST by TOM SANTULLI

The olive tree outside my door and I met in a nursery  eleven years ago.  She was seven inches tall, in a one-gallon pot. Since then, she’s outgrown pots, and lived in a garden plot for a few years. Now, four feet tall – a proud juvenile in her twenty-five-gallon pot, appreciated in that casual way into which I can mindlessly slide.

The author’s olive tree

I passed her on my way to a screening of “Where Olive Trees Weep.”

One hundred or so of us briefly bore witness as we watched quietly. Afterwards , a few comments, brief conversations… we left saddened, aware, unsure.

Driving home, I wondered, why make this movie?  Why make, “No Other Land,” “Gaza Through a Child’s Eyes,” “Starving Gaza?”

The Old Testament suggests a generation is forty years, after that forgetting begins unless history is actively passed down. Israel, anachronistic settler colonial power, has sought to brutally erase Palestinians for nearly eighty years, believing their heritage will drown in the torments of an endless night of terror, of torture and imprisonment.

The Israeli army has declared several olive orchards, like this one, as “closed military zones,” permitting no harvesting. In this photo, the army received a message that someone had been picking olives, threatening to arrest anyone who harvested olives.  (The Guardian)

Israel believes that Palestinian memory, and the world’s, have limits, that we’ll forget.

And in trying to answer my own question I stepped out of the documentary, left the Old Testament, and into my life as parent, grandparent, pediatrician, pediatric cardiologist.

Children must have roots, a history, compassion, a ‘safe place,’ a time to grieve when needed, all to nurture their inborn hopefulness.  This, and much more, has been taken away from them, and from their parents and families.

Traumatized children in Gaza as bombs fall

As caregivers in the US, we rarely lack anything needed to treat children and their families. It’s all so easy. Among the dedicated many whom I know is a South African born cardiac surgeon – and an Orthodox Jew – with exemplary gifts, skills, stamina.  Asked once what gave him the courage to persist when a situation seemed hopeless, he quoted the Talmud: “Whoever saves a life saves the whole world.” [editor’s note:  Talmudic scholars and historians have debated this passage; it is consensus that it refers to all people, not only those in the Judaic tradition.]

The world has reached the point where current descriptions, statements, promises have no meaning:

“ethnic cleansing”

“unspeakable acts of violence”

A young mother in Rafah holding the corpse of her martyred child

“unfettered aid to Gaza and the West Bank”

”a truce, a ceasefire”

“genocide.”

I no longer have subconscious recesses in my mind in which to bury news of incessant siege, of trauma, displacement, fear, abandonment… no more dark crypts in my heart in which to hide tears, grief, words of consolation.

All that remain are images,

of ‘strangers in their own land’ wandering,

Children and their families in Gaza endure ongoing displacements (Electronic Intifada)

of death everywhere,

of mangled bodies, rotting corpses under collapsed homes,

of malnutrition, starvation, famine; disease,

A starving child in Gaza begging for food

of children without families, families without children, entire families now extinct; despondence.

of healthcare workers murdered, hospitals destroyed, sanctuaries violated.

and,

of the Jewish people and its army willfully inflicting pain and misery to destroy generations and their memory of a proud, indigenous, resilient, faithful people whose simple commitment to ancestral lands and heritage and peace is a crime.

Home, I stopped to touch the leaves of the little olive tree by my door.

If you would like to donate towards an olive tree in Palestine, The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights is soliciting donations.

Tom Santulli finds strength in the sea, solitude, Rievaulx Abbey, in growing humility regained as a physician…embraces Frost’s directness, black and white photography’s elegance, Hawksmoor’s audacity, Turner’s mystery, Merwin’s soul, the natural world and Berry’s grace… is thankful for curiosity, Buddhist wisdom, the generosity of others, and especially for children everywhere.