“City of Oranges: An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa”, by Adam LeBor

464 pages, W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN-13: 978-0393329841

City of Oranges: An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa by Adam LeBor is constructed from the lives of six ordinary families that were forever disrupted by the painful birth of modern Israel: two Christian, two Muslim and two Jewish, all of whom were rooted in the ancient port city of Jaffa, which is now nothing more than a suburb of Tel Aviv (indeed, the modern-day urban conclave is called Tel Aviv-Yafo to reflect this). LeBor mounts no passionate polemical on the single most acrimonious, accusative question about foreign policy that Americans and Europeans face today; instead, he tells a story in the fullest, most empathic and balanced way that makes a complex argument mostly by relating the facts of human lives (perhaps the best compliment I can pay to LeBor is that, except for a few barbs thrown at Sharōn and Netanyahu, I could not discern his political leanings). From extensive personal interviews, memoirs and private archives, LeBor has created vivid portraits of these six families to illustrate the narrative of 20^th Century Arab-Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli relations. It is an argument about two peoples, Jews and Palestinians, in the same historical dilemma: exiles, refugees, despised and degraded for political motives, victims of catastrophe but now pitted against one another in the same slice of the Middle East in a way that leaves them scant sympathy for one another, though their plights are so similar.

Although LeBor’s cast of characters may seem daunting, he knows the players intimately, allowing the reader to be drawn into the complex and often turbulent lives of each generation as they endure political and social upheaval, urban decay and development, the violence of war, and the chaos of its aftermath. In such a situation, merely to tell the true story of the historical accident of the clash of these two peoples, and to tell it by relating the lives of real individuals, real families, caught in the history of one legendary, ancient, seductive city on the Mediterranean is to offer an answer. LeBor dispels common myths and media representations about both sides as he articulates, through the family members, the issues, little and big, of daily life in modern Israel. The answer is that politics are indeed important, but, in the end, politics are about the lives of individuals and families. With striking conviction and eloquence, the six families share with LeBor their extraordinary, centuries-old histories and diasporas as they found themselves on different sides of violently divisive issues and events while living within this small, seaside city. Whatever the aching summons of race, religion, and ethnicity, they are less important than the question: what, now, at this time in history, will open the lives, and hopes, of the individuals and families whose future is at stake?