Olive these things

So I must give credit where credit is due, my sister, Kim, thought of the title. It fits though. Recently we were witnesses to one of the oldest cycles of life here in the Middle East: Olive Harvesting. I've spoken of it already in a few other posts because it really does consume a lot of people's time over here for quite a while. We've seen people picking Olives continually around here for the past 3-4 weeks. We were not exempt. We got a chance to try our hand at the Olive Harvest as well. We went up with Miss Grace's family to help pick their family's olives for a morning. It's tough work. There's no machine that harvests them for you. It's all done by hand. The men on the ladders with tarps under the trees and the women on the ground cleaning the olives. Even the kids have a job to do. They pick up whatever falls off the tarp and gets left behind. We've got a great round of pictures that is still waiting to be sent out. There's a picture of me up in an olive tree, a picture of Mandy on the ground cleaning and gathering olives. It was a lot fun for us to be a part of this. It's not that the work it a whole lot of fun, it's quite tedious actually, but what really is enjoyable is to watch the family all interact. For them it's like a picnic. A week long picnic. Sure they complain about the work and they say it's boring but meanwhile they're all laughing and joking around having a good time. They eat their meals right outside on the ground, they make their coffee over an olive wood fire with the branches they've pruned from the trees. It's like a family reunion in a way.

We even got to go to the Olive Press this past week. The whole community has an Olive Press Co-of. They all own it a way. They all bring their olives down to the press and they line up. Literally, they have a warehouse full of olives sacks. Then over the course of the next couple weeks the press (which is an Italian import, because as Miss Grace confirmed for us, the best stuff comes from Italy) runs continually day and night. In fact this part is quite competitive. The line forms on first-come-first-serve basis. If some family isn't there at say, 2 a.m. when they're press time is called, they lose their spot in line. Miss Grace says fights break out every year at the press when some family who misses their turn in line comes back and tries to jump in line. It's like a Soap Opera. I'd call it "Olive My Children." That one I just came up with myself, what do you think Kim? The cool thing was if you think back to our pictures that we sent out from the Galilee you probably passed quickly over a few pictures that were of ancient olive presses. We saw one at Capernaum and one at Corazin. This isn't a new process at all. Sure the Italians have maybe perfected it a bit as with most things like cars, soccer, and dinner but this part of the world has been doing this for thousands of years. We got to be a part of it and that was amazing.

It got thinking about other cycles that have been going on here for ever and ever. This week the Israelis were pounding Gaza. Of course they missed a few targets and as usual the civilian death toll is sickening. It hurts more now. We watch the news and it's no longer strange looking faces in weird place names. Beit Hanoun where this happened this past week doesn't sound too different from Beit Jala. Those faces don't look too different from our students. It makes us physically ill. It has to stop. Here's my theory, which I know will never happen, but I still think it will work. The Israelis always do this over respond thing like they've been doing in Gaza this week. They go in kill a bunch of civilians then the Palestinians spout the "we will avenge" rhetoric and there's a couple bombings etc. and the cycle repeats. What the Palestinians need to do is stand up next time and say "we will not respond to this atrocity, it's so grievous, so awful, that we want the world to see what an unequal response the Israelis have made and we will not respond in kind." The best case scenario is that the Israelis would be forced to stop the attacks because the violent response has ceased. Who are they going to attack if no one fights back? The worst case scenario is that the Israelis go on attacking a people who refuse to respond in kind. The world community wouldn't let this happen. The reason the world community lets the Israelis get a way with this now is because they see the Palestinians respond with terrorism. If you take that away, what are you left with? A big bully beating up on a little guy that won't defend himself.

The catch is, it's not in the Arab mind set to think like that. They consider it a great dishonor not to respond. It would be better to die as the last man fighting, revenging your family than to do nothing. That's why the cycle keeps repeating itself. Friends, please don't stop praying. We love you all.