An Interview of
Jewish American author Michelle Cohen Corasanti about her book The Almond Tree (The Edited Version of this Interview had appeared in The HINDU LITERARY REVIEW)
Michelle Cohen Corasanti is
author of The Almond Tree. A Jewish
American Michelle had studied at Hebrew University, Jerusalem and Harvard
University, USA. She uses the Israel-Palestine conflict as the backdrop of her
novel. While growing up in a pro-Israel Jewish family,
she learned that after the Holocaust, the Jews found ‘a land without a people
for a people without a land’ and made the desert bloom. Later, after spending
seven years in Israel, she could know about the Middle Eastern history and was
moved by the pathetic conditions of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. And
in order to tell the story of Palestinian people to the world, she decided to
write a novel.
Hailed as another The Kite Runner by both critics and
readers, Cohen Corasanti’s novel tells an inspiring story of a poor Palestinian
boy called Ichmad who despite living
under the ruthless Israeli military rule, achieves great success in his life. On
Amazon.com, the book is among the bestselling
debut books. It is a must read for anybody interested in understanding the
different aspects of the Israel-Palestine problem.
In the
author’s words: The Almond Tree humanises
a culture and brings characters from a distant land to life, with a family
united by love but divided by their personal beliefs. From Ichmad’s staunchly
traditional and at times overbearing mother, to his father who believes in the
power of education, the crux of the family’s story lies in the growing dispute
between two brothers, Ichmad and Abbas, who choose very different paths in
order to create a new future.
In an interview with Abdullah Khan, the author Michelle
Cohen Corasanti talks about herself, her book and the Israel-Palestine
conflict. Here are the excerpts…
1. What made you write The Almond Tree?
I decided to
write The Almond Tree when I realised that a writer can reach into readers’
hearts and change them forever.
As a Jewish
American, I was taught that after the Holocaust the Jews found ‘a land without
a people for a people without a land’ and that Jews went to “the land of
Israel” (i.e. Palestine) and made the desert bloom. In high school, I went
to Israel to study Hebrew and Judaism. I soon learned that Palestine had
neither been a land without a people nor all desert. Palestine had been the
home of a multi-religious society that had a high standard of living and a rich
culture and heritage.
I lived in
Israel for seven years and witnessed the kind of miserable life the Palestinians
lead there. Returning to the US to join Harvard University as a student of
Middle Eastern studies, I wanted to devote my life to bringing about peace,
equality, freedom and justice between the Palestinians and Israelis. That was
in 1989, the world wasn't ready to hear my message. I went on to law school to
specialize in international and human rights law and was also doing my PhD at
Harvard in Middle Eastern studies, but I felt impotent. Feeling
helpless, I buried my desires for over a decade until I read Khaled Hosseini’s The
Kite Runner. In it he wrote that religion, history and politics can’t
really be overcome. That’s when I got the idea for my book because I had seen
those very obstacles overcome between an Israeli and a Palestinian, two
scientists --one Israeli Jew and the
other a Palestinian Muslim --who worked together, at Harvard. I decided I would
use that seed to write a story about how strong the Palestinians and Israelis
could be if they worked together to advance humanity. I believe no one is free
until we all are free. There is no peace without justice and a man’s worth
should not be measured by his religion. I believe in a world in which we work
together to push each other up. Through my novel, The Almond Tree,
I wanted to shine a light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and show that
there was a better way.
2. What made you choose a
Palestinian boy as the protagonist of your debut novel? Being a Jewish
American, wasn’t it difficult for you to write in the voice of a Palestinian?
I got the idea for my story from a
Palestinian man I met at Harvard. I had met his family, had seen where he came
from and felt I knew who he was at the core. So, the voice of a Palestinian boy
to tell my story was a natural choice. I
had many Palestinian friends in Jerusalem. I heard their stories. I bore
witness to their lives – where they came from, how they were treated, what
their dreams were. I could see the world
through their eyes and so it was not difficult for me to become the Palestinian
boy.
3. Novelist Robin
Yassin-Kassab in his review of Susan Abulhawa’s book Mornings in Jenin in the
Sunday Times, London says. “The Zionist story has Palestine before the state of
Israel as “a land without a people awaiting a people without a land.” Writers
from Mark Twain to Leon Uris, as well as Hollywood studios and certain church
pulpits, retell the tale. But Palestinians, in the West at least, lack a
popular counter narrative. Palestinians are reported on, met only in the news.
“Do you agree with this statement? If yes, why is it so?
I definitely agree with this statement.
After the Holocaust, many western countries felt guilty when the
magnitude of the atrocities committed against the Jews was revealed, but at the
same time, they didn’t really want to take in so many Jewish refugees. So the
west was quite happy to give the Jews Palestine and to buy the fallacy that
Palestine was a land waiting for a people.
Mark Twain did not make it as a news reporter because he loved to make
up stories to make his material more interesting. When you want people to
believe a lie, you look for justifications anywhere you can. The west found
them with Mark Twain and the novelist Leon Uris.
As Jewish Americans, we would give money to plant trees in Israel every
year to show how we were making a barren land bloom. The west didn’t want to
hear the Palestinian narrative because they preferred the Jews to be in
Palestine. Furthermore, the first Zionists were from the west. Initially the
Zionists only wanted western Jews in Israel, not the Jews from the east. After
the Holocaust, many Jews preferred to go to the UK, the US or even stay in
other places in Europe. When the western Zionists realized after 1948 that they
needed more Jews, they decided to recruit them from the east and de-Arabize
them.
The Western Jews spoke western languages, were well organized, had money
and made the story they wished to tell the world whereas the Palestinians mostly
spoke Arabic and didn't have anyone to tell their story to the western audience.
As time went on, the Zionist narrative was the only one heard. In order to
further justify the Jewish state, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims were
portrayed as anti-Semites, radical Muslims, Jew-haters; anti-western jihadists
much like the Nazis dehumanized the Jews.
Zionism is a concept of Jewish nationalism and Judaism is a religion with
completely different principles and values. Zionists bound Judaism with Zionism
so as to gain support from world Jewry as well as to label anyone who criticized
Israel as anti-Semitic with all the implications to the Holocaust. Many were afraid to say anything that went
against the Zionist narrative.
When I read westerners’ reviews of my novel The Almond Tree, many
start with, remember the author is Jewish to justify believing what I say. Now there a many Jewish people like Professor
Ilan Pappe, Professor Noam Chomsky, Dr. Norman Finkelstein, Miko Peled, Amira
Haas and others who are saying what the
Palestinians have been saying all along – that Palestine was not a land without
a people and the truth is finally being believed.
4. How well has The
Almond Tree been received in the US and elsewhere? What kind of feedback
have you gotten from your readers, especially the Jewish ones?
I’ve been shocked to see that The Almond Tree is being embraced by
all sides of the conflict as well as those with no involvement whatsoever. My
story is about a boy, who grows up in a brutal environment and despite it all,
goes on to achieve what others have only dreamed. The Almond Tree is
about forgiveness and letting go of hatred. I show how strong we are when we
celebrate our differences and work together to advance humanity instead of
focusing on our differences and destroying it. I don’t try to show who is right
and who is wrong and who did what to whom. I just tell a gripping story about
how powerful we can be when we work together. I think it’s hard to find fault
with such themes. When I wrote The Almond Tree, I wanted to cast as wide
a net as possible so I hit on as many themes as possible. As a result, everyone
finds something in The Almond Tree.
My father-in-law who was born during the depression, his father was a
new immigrant, they lost their home, but he went on to achieve great success in
business, saw himself as my Palestinian protagonist.
I was expecting a backlash from Jewish readers, but I have found the
opposite. I have gotten emails from Jewish readers telling me how courageous I
am, that they are reading my book in their Temple book clubs, that The
Almond Tree was brilliant because it took that personal of a story to show
them what Zionism did to the Palestinians and that they are embarrassed as
Jewish Americans not to have ever thought about the Palestinian because our
entitlement to Israel as a result of the Holocaust is drilled into our heads
our entire lives.
5. As a writer, what do you
wish to achieve through your writings? How is your book going to help the cause
of peace in the Middle East?
As a writer, I hope my writings can shine a light on the Israeli-Palestinian
situation. I would like to debunk fallacies. I want to help the Palestinian
narrative to be heard because I don’t believe one can solve a conflict if they
only hear one side. I hope I can help expose the truth because there can be no
peace without justice which is based on the truth.
6. What do you mean by ‘dehumanising
the Palestinians’? Please elaborate.
It is easier to justify oppressing a people, if you dehumanise them. The
Nazis did that to the Jews. For example, the Jews were put into ghettos and
denied basic necessities. When you can’t feed your children that brings out the
worst in humanity. Forced to live that way, one begins to look less like human
which makes it easier for the oppressor to kill or persecute you. Another way of
dehumanizing is to attribute negative characteristics to a people. The Nazis
claimed the Jews were evil. They forced Jews to live in horrible conditions and
then said they live like animals.
Palestinians have been dehumanised. For example, in Gaza, Israel has them
locked in an open-air imprisoned, denied basic necessities and is one of the
most densely populated places on the planet and when some of them fire crude
rockets at their oppressors, they are considered to be terrorists. I would have
said uneducated Americans think that the Palestinians are culturally inferior
because of the way they are forced to live under Israeli military occupation,
but Americans like our Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, could not
understand that their conditions are due to circumstances and not culture. Had
he seen how the Jews lived in the concentration camps, I don’t think he would
have thought our culture was the same as so advanced.
A great example is Gilad Shalit. He was a soldier in a tank unit in the
Israeli military in occupied Palestine and was captured while actively on duty
as an occupying solider. We knew everything about him. His mother, his father. His life. Hundreds of Palestinian children are
held prisoners in Israel, yet no one knows anything about them. In an extremely
rare occurrence, a news reporter was able to film a twelve year old boy that
Israel held in an adult Israeli prison with Israeli criminals for two years
before the boy was even charged with a crime. During that period, he tried to
commit suicide twice. He was finally sentenced to six months. When he was
released, he provoked his own death. The root of the problem is that in the
west Palestinian lives are viewed to matter less than Israeli ones. I tried to
show that these Palestinians were not nameless, faceless people, but mothers,
fathers, sisters, brothers. That we all tuck our kids in at night and that
every life is precious.
7. As you have already
mentioned in some of your interviews that the aggressive policy pursued by
Israel against the Palestinians is against the basic tenets of Judaism and that
Zionism is actually harming Jews (Judaism). Please explain the difference
between Judaism and Zionism to our readers. And, how does the concept of
Zionism mould Israeli policy against Palestinians?
Judaism is a religion. We believe in one God. We follow the Ten
Commandments such as thou shall not kill; thou shall not steal and the Torah.
Rabbi Hillel (an ancient Jewish saint) summed up the Torah when he said, “That
which is hateful to you, do not unto another. That is the whole Torah, the rest
is just commentary.”
Zionism is a concept of nationalism
like Nazism. Zionism arose as a result of a few factors. Among them were:
gentile attraction, gentile repulsion, the rise of nationalism and
anti-Semitism at the time. Zionists
decided that the Jewish people needed their own country and set their sights on
Palestine. In order to create a Jewish state in the heart of Arab lands at the
end of the 19th C when the Jews in Palestine were about 4% of the
population, the Zionists knew they would have to expel the native Palestinians
and take their place.
In order to do so, the Zionists had
to kill and steal from the natives and commit many other despicable acts that
are documented by Israeli historians from the left (Ilan Pappe) to the right
(Benny Morris). A few of these polices include: land theft, home demolitions,
mass imprisonments, administrative detentions, making life as miserable as
possible for the natives so that anyone who wants any kind of life for their
children will leave. As you can see, Zionism could not be further from Judaism.
8. What according to you is
the solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict?
I believe there can be no peace without justice which is based on the
truth. The Palestinians need to be compensated for all that they have suffered
like the Jews were after the Holocaust. I believe in a secular democratic
country on all of historic Palestine where everyone lives with equality and
freedom. I believe the Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return. The
Afrikaners didn’t want to let go of control and neither will the Israelis. That
shouldn’t matter. We need to do what is right for all. The majority of Israelis today in Israel came
from the Arab world. They have very similar cultures; similar educations and
more in common than many other people that live in the same country. This
doesn’t have to be a difficult transition. This way, not only will the
Palestinians be free, but also the Israelis will be free. One can’t be free
when they are oppressing another people.
9. What is your next project
as an author?
I hope to write another book that shows the benefits of peace between
Palestinians and Israelis.
