Spectral

This is incorrect. Olive trees pretty clearly don’t speak Arabic. Some of the oldest ones, such as those in the Garden of Gethsemane, are believed by scientists to have already been centuries old when Arabic arrived here. They may have met Jesus. Literally. So obviously the olive trees speak Aramaic, though the oldest of the old may yet remember a Hebrew they learned from their parents. But you can have my favorite tree, dear Palestinian nationalists, the terebinths, elah in Hebrew. They have shorter memories, as trees go. They surely speak Arabic. The Judas trees, of course, speak Byzantine Greek, like the church that loves them; the Aleppo pines speak Assyrian; the acacias of the south surely remember old Coptic. And the Judean date palms? Unquestionably modern Hebrew, like their Israeli parents who brought them back from extinction using 2,000-year-old seeds. I know what you’re thinking, dear reader: What about the sycamore figs? Tell us about the sycamore figs, Haviv! No. We don’t talk about the sycamore figs. Not since they decided to go off and learn English so they could chat up those sexy young American calimyrnas. Figs got no respect for tradition. Or in other words, grow up, dear Palestinian nationalists. Stop futzing around with two-bit poetry. This veneer of cheap romance doesn’t make your dream of erasing my people less evil. My kids know every stone and every valley in their country. They’ve run barefoot through its riverbeds and climbed its mountains. We have no other land, which is the main reason your aspiration to forcibly remove, through expulsion or death, all the millions of us hasn’t worked yet. And “renamed the cities?” Come on. You know the Arabs renamed the cities, right? You are aware that Lod was Lod before it was Lydda, no? Look it up. And Bet Shean was Bet Shean before it was Beisan. Tzfat before it was Safad. Nablus, taken from the Roman-renamed Neapolis, was Shchem first. And Al-Khalil, “the companion,” a Muslim honorific for Abraham, was called Hevron by Abraham himself. Yaffa was Yafo first and Akka was originally Akko. You get the idea. That doesn’t prove we’re right and you’re wrong. I have no proof or argument or desire to claim that you shouldn’t exist. I wish that was true in reverse. Arab culture prides itself on its poetic tradition. When Arab ideologues want to claim greater authenticity or morality than their enemies, they often turn to this tradition to do so. So when the supporters of Palestinians reach out to the world and ask the world to erase the Jewish polity, they do it through this kind of poetry. “The olive trees still speak Arabic,” and such. But beautiful words do not make ugly things prettier. No lipstick ever put on any pig has been more “lipstick on a pig” than this Arab discourse. It’s not that complicated. The Palestinians aren’t leaving, but neither are the Jews. And the Jews have a story as poetic as any other, and as old as Western civilization itself. The Jews even have a few assholes who try to cover for their bad desires by spreading thick layers of old poetry on top of them, just like you guys! If that’s not a mark of authenticity, I don’t know what is. Grow up. Trees don’t talk, not even metaphorically. And if they did, it wouldn’t be in the service of your hateful fantasies.