So, do you think you know EVERYTHING?

I do not know everything. I know you are surprised, you come here to learn from me, don’t you?

I’m reading a new book. The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan. I picked it up yesterday. Being an American I believe that the text book writers and government decided what we should learn and when we should learn it, besides that it is up to our parents. Thank goodness we live in a time where we can form our own opinions from information found on the inter net and in books.

I’ve only just begun to dig into the story of Palestine, Israel and the ongoing battle that takes place in this land. For YEARS you hear about “unrest in the Gaza strip” and I’ll be honest with you, my thoughts were “WTF? and Why”

I also thought, “why can’t they all just live in one place as neighbors”. I thought we live with immigrants in our country, they have to abide by the laws of the United States but they can’t just start their own governments. They can run for office, but the US offices.

So far I’ve learned that the British were VERY involved in what was going on. After the fall of the Ottoman empire they were the ruling hand and decided to allow a Jewish Zion state to help the Jew’s flee the Holocaust. The Arabs were the ones that at a time lived in harmony..but not for long.

Someone great said (or maybe I made it up) that we don’t stop learning until we’re dead. This is something I would love to understand, that way when they talk about the Gaza Strip, Jews killing Arabs and Arabs killing Jews I will understand more.

I’ll never forget a few years ago I tried to understand and I asked a person from Israel about what was going on and they told me (and I paraphrase) that “….there is not now, and never has been a Palestine”

I’m going to get to the bottom of this, hopefully this book will help me understand. So far I’m finding it difficult to take a break. But I will, cause I have to watch the season finale of Medium. (so sue me)