Sun rays / the truth

Mazin Qumsiyeh

The truth, like Sun rays, can be blocked briefly but always remains and is
essential to continuance of life.

+ New videos have been posted by the Palestinian Summer Celebration
participants at:
http://www.sirajcenter.org and http://www.sirajcenter.org /videos.htm
New Blogs for the Palestinian Summer Celebration participants at:
http://www.sirajcenter.org/s-blogs.htm

+ Régis Debray: Deliberate Blindness in Palestine.  Le Monde Diplomatique
Last year President Jacques Chirac asked Régis Debray to study the situation
in the Middle East. On 15 January 2007 Debray sent the French authorities
the following document on Palestine. It is an important key to understanding
a long policy drift whose  results are now obvious.
http://www.palestinechronicle .com/story-08100783659.htm

- Why they hate us: several pages of pictures of the devastation in Lebanon
carried out by Israel, financed and equipped by the US
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14069.htm

+ More videos of the colonization and resistance in Bilin
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=emadbornat

+ (A remarkable piece considering its source was head of the American Jewish
Congress and fellow at the neocon dominated CFR) The Great Middle East Peace
Process Scam, by Henry Siegman, London Review of Books
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16 /sieg01_.html

+ NEW BOOK: John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt " The Israel Lobby and US
Foreign Policy" is a must read for all activists concerned about the US
policy in Western Asia.  Shatters lots of myths that are prevalent among
both left and right that the Lobby serves US interests.  You can order in advance
from Amazon (due out Sept. 4).

The first Mearsheimer and Walt article in the London Review of Books has
been read widely and is posted here:
An unedited version of that article with lengthy footnotes/documents is
available at    or click here


+ NEW BOOK: "A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and
Nonviolent
Resistance." Mary Elizabeth King. Nation Books, $16.95 paper (480p). "A
scholar of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience, King contends that
the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993) was explicitly peaceful from its
inception. Stating that "[h]istory is often the narrative of wars, and
military historians enjoy prestige, whereas the chronicling of how societies
have achieved major accomplishments through nonviolent resistance is scant
by comparison,"  she draws on a wealth of documentary and statistical
evidence to demonstrate that the Palestinians exercised remarkable restraint
during the first years of the intifada. Tying together the threads of civil
society, political mobilization and social change, she delivers a
fascinating account of a nation in transition. In the occupied
"territories," she argues, the Israeli military brutally repressed the
"wedging open of nongovernmental political space and development of
institutions not under official purview" and deepened the Palestinians'
desire for change. The closure of the educational institutions in the West
Bank in 1988, for example, caused teachers and professors to return to their
home villages, where they were quickly able to politicize uneducated people.
. . . [H]er book is essential reading for anyone interested in Mideastern
peace."Publishers Weekly, 4 June 2007.
"We can discern from these pages that it is not too late to strengthen the
nonviolent peacemakers who are working to find solutions for all contenders,
without the burdens of bankrupt violence." From the Introduction by
President Jimmy Carter
"Mary King, the legendary activist scholar, has written a profound, easily
accessible, carefully documented book about the first Intifada. She has gone
beyond the headlines to the history, people, struggles, agony and
possibilities that make the Palestinian-Israeli conflict the centerpiece of
our human tragedy. This is a must read." Professor Marcus Raskin, George
Washington University, Washington, DC
* Mary Elizabeth King worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. (no relation)
as a student. Now professor of peace and conflict studies at the
UN-affiliated University for Peace, and distinguished scholar of the
American University Center for Global Peace in Washington, D.C., King is
author of Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement,
which won her a 1988 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award, and Mahatma
Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr: The Power of Nonviolent Action. She lives
in Washington, D.C., and Oxford, UK.

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
http://justicewheels.org
http://qumsiyeh.org