Introduced by Noam Chomsky, an outstanding set of essays about the horrific, dystopian tragedy that the Israel-Palestine conflict remains
Roane Carey is the Managing Editor of the Nation, editor of The New Intifada and co-editor of The Other Israel. Azmi Bishara is a Palestinian public intellectual and theorist who was a member of the Knesset for 10 years, before being forced into exile by the Israeli state. He is a prolific writer, and has authored over twenty-five books on political theory, philosophy, Arab politics and the Palestinian cause. His book Sectarianism without Sects is forthcoming with Hurst Publishers. Dr Bishara is the director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. Edward W. Said (1935-2003) was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Literature and of Kings College Cambridge, his celebrated works include Orientalism, The End of the Peace Process, Power, Politics and Culture, and the memoir Out of Place. He is also the editor, with Christopher Hitchens, of Blaming the Victims, published by Verso. New Left Review published an obituary in Nov-Dec 2003: http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2481 Omar Barghouti is a human rights activist, founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the BDS movement, and author of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights. Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona. Author of American Power and the New Mandarins and Manufacturing Consent (with Ed Herman), among many other books, he is a linguist, historian, philosopher, and cognitive scientist who has risen to prominence in the American consciousness as a political activist and the nation's foremost public intellectual.
The first time Beit Jala was shelled, people were surprised and
wondered what had happened ... now Israel is threatening to
blockade the Palestinian areas and prevent us from getting water,
electricity, or fuel ... Children are the first victims of all
this. No wonder they don't laugh from their hearts anymore. They've
lost their childhoods, and their crime is that they are
Palestinian.
*Patricia Al-Teet, school student, Beit Jala, the West Bank*
The first time Beit Jala was shelled, people were surprised and wondered what had happened ... now Israel is threatening to blockade the Palestinian areas and prevent us from getting water, electricity, or fuel ... Children are the first victims of all this. No wonder they don't laugh from their hearts anymore. They've lost their childhoods, and their crime is that they are Palestinian. -- Patricia Al-Teet, school student, Beit Jala, the West Bank
Even as the latest unrest in the Middle East passes its one-year anniversary, the war of words continues as well. As the South African comparison in the subtitle makes clear, the essays in this book (edited by the Nation's copy chief Carey), written mainly by journalists and activists, mostly but not all Palestinian, take an unabashedly pro-Palestinian (and largely anti-Israeli and anti-U.S.) perspective. Articles address the outbreak of the violence last fall, the history of the now-moribund Oslo peace accords and the "U.S. media bias" against the Palestinians, among other topics. Palestinian terrorism is explained as the only resort of a powerless population, while in one instance former U.S. officials are referred to as "Israel lobbyists." While the articles are expressly written to increase sympathy for the Palestinians, the careful reader can discover some nuances: in some essays, the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Yassir Arafat, are defended as having done all they could for peace; while in other pieces, the P.A. is charged with corruption and authoritarianism. Taken together, the essays boil down to one argument: the U.S. and Israel have been the main obstacles to a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. As well-known intellectual and activist Chomsky writes in his introduction: "the United States and Israel have labored for thirty years to construct a system of permanent neo-colonial dependency." If this one-sided collection is any indication, there appears to be little hope of jump-starting the Middle East peace process any time soon. Photos and maps. (Oct.) Forecast: The tragedy at the World Trade Center will make most readers shudder at any attempt to justify terrorism which may cut into the book's already limited audience of confirmed leftists and perhaps the curious looking for an alternative view of the Middle East. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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