Olives: Past, present and future

Three years on, humour has been one of my family’s unexpected comforts. So let me begin with a confession my mother would have laughed at: she was a terrible cook.

We are preparing a memorial ceremony in Israel, and my nieces and nephews have been sharing old family videos. In one, filmed years ago, they act out a scene at my parents’ house. “Grandma, we’re hungry,” they say. My niece, playing my mother, stirs a pot. They peer inside and announce: “We’re not hungry anymore.” She laughed along, of course.

I would rather not write about what happened the day they were murdered. Instead, I want to say three things about olives.

The past

We moved to Moshav Netiv Haasara when I was six. I can’t remember which came first, the house or the olive trees – about 10 of them. Olive trees are generous one year and stingy the next, but we harvested every year.

I have lived in London for 12 years. During Covid, with two young children and a two-bedroom flat with no outside space, my wife and I gambled. For a couple of weeks both Heathrow and Ben Gurion were open, so we flew over for the Christmas break, betting that schools would close. They did, and we stayed with my parents for four months.

It was harvest season. For our first ten days we were in quarantine, so my parents moved in with friends and left us the house. “Maybe you can pick the olives,” my father suggested. “No one else is coming.” So we did, filling several buckets a day. My father, unable to see us, would collect them from the doorstep and cure them, some in brine, some in salt.

In ordinary years, a farmer he worked with would send workers to harvest, and the olives became the oil that supplied the whole family for a year. That year, the harvest was ours. My children will not pick olives with their grandfather again. It is one of my strongest memories.

The present

The olive harvest is about to begin in Israel and Palestine. For Palestinian farmers it will be very hard. In Gaza it will probably not happen at all, and in the West Bank many will struggle to reach their own trees. My sisters will join other volunteers offering a protective presence to farmers during the harvest. But this cannot be left to volunteers. Far more powerful actors, governments and international bodies, must get involved.

We tend to speak about human rights in very big words. But being able to safely harvest the olives you own is a basic human right, one that Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve. When we prevent it, stay silent, or fail to act so that it can happen, we commit a grave wrong, quite apart from everything else that is happening. Today, though, I want to stay with the olives.

The future

At the start of this school year, my children’s primary school in Camden held an international day. My wife, who is very involved in the school community, asked me to cook something. Because my mother couldn’t, I learned, and even worked as a cook for a while.

I made something Israelis would recognise: zayit babayit, “an olive in its house” – an olive wrapped in dough and baked. Simple finger food. I was late getting them out of the oven.

When I arrived, there were around 15 tables, one for each country the children’s families come from. The Israeli table stood right next to the Palestinian one. In our community, it had taken three years to get there. My daughter and her Palestinian friend stood side by side, each waving her flag. Her friend’s mother and I ended up comparing hummus recipes. Hers was less sour than I like mine, which is fine; we can have different versions.

I sent a photo to my family straight away. It was the most hopeful thing I had seen in a long time.

That, I believe, is the future. Neighbours who share a land, or a school playground, need not agree on everything. They need to be able to stand next to each other, pick their olives and argue about hummus. It really shouldn’t be that difficult.

Magen Inon is a London-based Israeli educator and father of three, with a PhD in philosophy of education. Since his parents, Bilha and Yakov, were murdered in the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, he has become a leading voice for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. This piece is adapted from his address at the Movement for Progressive Judaism’s service, Remembering 7 October: For All We Lost.