The Story Of Olive And Palm Trees Across The Fence

By Mahesan Niranjan -

Prof Mahesan Niranjan

In 1984, in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven, my drinking partner, the Sri Lankan Tamil fellow Sivapuranam Thevaram, met a Palestinian guy — the very first Palestinian Thevaram has ever met.  Their host in The Netherlands was the electronics company Phillips,

 well known for having invented the digital compact disc. The two men were at a welcome reception by a director of the company. Phillips, he claimed, was the largest manufacturer of light bulbs in the world. “Next to the sun, Phillips provides the most light,” he boasted. Abdul (not his real name) the Palestinian and Thevaram the Sri Lankan, sitting next to each other, laughed jointly and introduced themselves to each other.

Prior to arriving in Eindhoven, Thevaram, having been a student at HillTop University in Sri Lanka, had decent enough knowledge about the intricate politics of the world. He had read about the Second World War, the persecution of the Jews, the creation of a Jewish State in their “Promised Land,” the connivance of the super-powers in setting up an ever-lasting problem to guarantee a flow of oil wealth from East to West. Years later, when the USA invaded Iraq to teach them democracy, and a comment in the UK Guardian newspaper paraphrased the Bard to have said “Oils well that ends well,” Thevaram understood precisely what all that was about – proof that the 25 year old young man in 1984 had a pretty good idea about the Jews and the Palestinians.

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