Search results for ""just world books""

An arrestingly drawn debut graphic novel, Baddawi is the story of a young boy named Ahmad struggling to find his place in the world. It explores the childhood of the author's father from a determinedly boy's-eye view. Ahmed was raised in the refugee camp of Baddawi in northern Lebanon, one of many thousands of children born to Palestinians who fled (or were expelled from) their homeland during the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. Ahmad's dogged pursuit of education and opportunity echoes the journey of the Palestinian people, as they make the best of their existing circumstances while remaining determined to one day return to their homeland.

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In A Responsible End? the highly regarded expert on Iraq Reidar Visser tells the story of both the internal politics of Iraq and the United States' role and involvement in it. Many Americans had hoped that the 2005 elections would usher in an era of democracy in Iraq. But the aftermath of the elections was devastating for many Iraqis, as sectarian violence engulfed Baghdad and other key areas of the country in 2006-2007.Visser provides a clear analysis of the complex path Iraq's internal politics took during those seminal years and charts how, very often, Washington's policies ended up seriously weakening the very country that President Geroge W. Bush claimed he had come to "save.

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Gaza Writes Back is a compelling anthology of short stories from fifteen young writers in Gaza, members of a generation that has suffered immensely under Israel’s siege and blockade. Their experiences, especially during and following Israel’s 2008-2009 offensive known as “Operation Cast Lead”, have fundamentally impacted their lives and their writing. Their words take us into the homes and hearts of moms, dads, students, children, and elders striving to live lives of dignity, compassion, and meaning in one of the world’s most embattled communities. Readers will be moved by the struggles big and small that emerge from the well-crafted writing by these young people, and by the hope and courage that radiate from the authors’ biographies.

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A powerful account, by Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, of his transformation from a young man who'd grown up in the heart of Israel's elite and served proudly in its military into a fearless advocate of nonviolent struggle and equal rights for all Palestinians and Israelis. His journey is mirrored in many ways the transformation his father, a much-decorated Israeli general, had undergone three decades earlier. Alice Walker contributed a foreword to the first edition in which she wrote, "There are few books on the Israel/Palestine issue that seem as hopeful to me as this one." In the new Epilogue he takes readers to South Africa, East Asia, several European countries, and the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel itself.

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In July 2004, federal agents raided the homes of five Palestinian-American families, arresting the five dads. The first trial of the “Holy Land Foundation Five” ended in a hung jury. The second, marked by highly questionable procedures, resulted in very lengthy sentences—for “supporting terrorism” by donating to charities that the U.S. government itself and other respected international agencies had long worked with. In 2013, human rights activist and author Miko Peled started investigating this case. He discussed the miscarriages of justice with the men's lawyers and heard from the men's families about the devastating effects the case had on their lives. He also traveled to the remote federal prison complexes where the men were held to conduct deep interviews. Injustice traces the labyrinthine course of this case, presenting a terrifying picture of governmental over-reach in post-9/11 America.

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A powerful account, by Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, of his transformation from a young man who'd grown up in the heart of Israel's elite and served proudly in its military into a fearless advocate of nonviolent struggle and equal rights for all Palestinians and Israelis. His journey is mirrored in many ways the transformation his father, a much-decorated Israeli general, had undergone three decades earlier. Alice Walker contributed a foreword to the first edition in which she wrote, "There are few books on the Israel/Palestine issue that seem as hopeful to me as this one." In an Epilogue Peled takes readers to South Africa, East Asia, many European countries, and the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel itself. And in the new Preface to the 10th Anniversary Edition, he reflects on the growth of the Palestinian-rights movement since he published the first edition of this work, in 2012.

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While many books have examined the broader topic of military conflict, most neglect to focus on damage military violence inflicts on regional—and global—ecosystems. The War and Environment Reader provides a critical analysis of the devastating consequences of "war on the environment" with perspectives drawn from a wide array of diverse voices and global perspectives. The contributors include scores of writers and activists, many with first-hand field experience of war's impacts on nature. Authors include: Medea Benjamin, Helen Caldicott, Marjoie Cohn, Daniel Ellsberg, Robert Fisk, Ann Jones, Michael Klare, Winona LaDuke, Jerry Mander, Margaret Mead, Vandana Shiva, David Swanson, Jody Williams and S. Brian Willson.

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With these short stories, Hatim Kanaaneh explores the changing, precarious, and ever-shrinking world of Palestinians living in Israel. As his village’s first Western-trained physician, Kanaaneh had intimate access to his neighbor’s lives, and he chronicles them here in a fictionalized collection of vignettes. His cunningly crafted stories reveal the struggles, triumphs, memories, and hopes of the indigenous Palestinian community living in a state that neither acknowledges their past nor supports their future. Following a diagnostic scheme used by physicians worldwide, each story is titled with the “chief complaint” of its protagonist. Taken together, the stories poignantly convey the indigenous Palestinian community’s foundational chief complaint: its conflicted relationship with the state of Israel.

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During Israel’s lengthy 2014 assault on Gaza, voices worldwide rose in stunned protest. Using numerous creative means, Palestinians and their allies bore witness to the Israeli attacks—and to the siege that has strangled Gaza ever since. Gaza Unsilenced foregrounds the words and images with which Gaza Palestinians recorded the pain, losses, and dislocations of the attacks, the continuing punishment of the siege, and their community’s resilience and dignity. The book includes original contributions from the editors themselves along with essays, reportage, images, and poetry from Gaza and elsewhere. Contributors include: Ali Abunimah, Ramzi Baroud, Diana Buttu, Belal Dabour, Chris Hedges, Rashid Khalidi, and Eman Mohammed.

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Laila El-Haddad takes us into the intense life and world of a busy Palestinian journalist who is both covering the story of Gaza and living it, with her young son. She was in Gaza City in 2005, watching hopefully as the Israelis prepared their withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. She covered the January 2006 Palestinian elections—judged ‘free and fair’ by international monitors. But then, she watched aghast as the Israeli government, backed by the Bush administration, moved in to punish Gaza’s 1.5 million people for the way they had voted by throwing a tough siege around the Strip. The Abridged Edition of this earlier work focuses on El-Haddad's writings from within Gaza and on the angst she felt in late 2008, when she worried deeply about the fate of her parents and other relatives trapped inside Gaza during a fierce Israeli attack.

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Laila El-Haddad takes us into the intense life and world of a busy Palestinian journalist who is both covering the story of Gaza and living it, with her young son. El-Haddad was in Gaza City in 2005, watching hopefully as the Israelis prepared a troop withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. She covered the January 2006 Palestinian elections—judged ‘free and fair’ by international monitors. But then, she watched aghast as the Israeli government, backed by the Bush administration, moved in to punish Gaza’s 1.5 million people for the way they voted by throwing a tough siege around the Strip.Gaza Mom>/i> provides a wealth of detail (and some charming photographs) that inform readers about the daily lives of Gaza's Palestinians, along with El-Haddad's reporting and political analysis.

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Yemen is an intriguing, strategically located country that is the perennial “poor relation” of the wealthy oil monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula and has been plagued by deadly conflict since early 2015. In 2011, it saw a broad eruption of the mass protests associated with the “Arab Spring”. But four years later, that popular movement was largely over-run by a series of deadly conflicts, stoked from outside by a lengthy, lethal military intervention led by neighboring Saudi Arabia. Arabia Incognita helps readers understand Yemen’s unfolding crisis by tracing the country’s modern history from the strong anti-imperial movement of the 1960s through the present complex of conflicts. The "dispatches" in this anthology, originally published in Middle East Report, were chosen by renowned Yemen expert Dr. Sheila Carapico. Arabia Incognita is published in collaboration with the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), which has published Middle East Report since 1971.

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In 1969, South Africa’s apartheid government arrested anti-apartheid leaders and activists nationwide for a key planned show trial. Among them were seven women, three of whom (including Winnie Madikizela-Mandela) have since died. This book by South African journalist Shanthini Naidoo uses rich interview material to share the previously unknown stories of the four imprisoned women who are still living: Joyce Sikhakhane-Rankin, Rita Ndzanga, Shanthie Naidoo, and Nondwe Mankahla. These four freedom fighters were held in solitary confinement for more than a year and subjected to brutal torture in a bid to force them to testify against their comrades. But they refused to do so, which forced the whole trial effort to collapse. Women Surviving Apartheid’s Prisons explores how women from different oppressed communities in South Africa defied traditional gender expectations and played a key role in the overthrow of Apartheid.

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Thousands of remarkable monuments and relics fill the land of Syria from the coast of the Mediterranean to its desert borders, dating back to the dawn of human history. The sites include: Bronze Age ruins, Roman temples and necropolises, churches and monasteries from the early Christian and Byzantine eras, Muslim forts and mosques, Crusader castles, and many more. When conflict broke out in 2011, these treasures were put at great risk and in subsequent years, many were destroyed in battles—some were even the intentional targets of extremists. From 2006–2009, American photographer Daniel Demeter traveled broadly throughout Syria, documenting the country’s warm and kindhearted people, vibrant markets, exciting landscapes, archaeological sites, historic monuments, and religious architecture. In seven chapters organized by region, Lens on Syria offers a unique visual experience of pre-war Syria and serves as an invaluable record of the country’s long history, rich heritage, and diverse culture.

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As young adults in the 1960s and 1970s, the nine people featured in this book—including co-editor Frank Joyce, Rennie Davis, Judy Gumbo, Alex Hing, and others—worked to end the U.S. war in Vietnam. Independently of each other, while the United States was still at war, nearly all of them travelled to North Vietnam, risking physical harm and charges of treason back home. In 2013, they all revisited Vietnam in a trip organized by the editors of this book. The People Make the Peace presents their reflections on those experiences, providing thoughtful and well informed reflections on a war and an era that deeply affected the United States and the world.

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No Country for Jewish Liberals is Larry Derfner’s personal and political story of life in contemporary Israel, describing how an American Jewish emigrant and his adopted country grew apart. Taking readers from his boyhood in Los Angeles as the son of Holocaust escapees, through his coming of age amidst the upheavals of 1960s America, to his move to Israel and controversial career in journalism, Derfner explores Israel’s moral decline through the lens of his own experiences. This provocative book blends memoir, reportage, and commentary in a riveting narrative of a society whose mentality of fear and aggression has made it increasingly alien to Jewish liberals.

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“I wrote poetry before I wrote anything else,” says Susan Abulhawa, esteemed Palestinian-American author and social activist, in the introduction to her first book of poems, My Voice Sought the Wind. This new work followed her highly acclaimed novel, Mornings in Jenin, which has been translated into 32 languages since it was published in 2010.My Voice Sought the Wind represents five years of Abulhawa's best poems on the timeless themes of love, loss, identity, and family, brought to life through her vivid observations and intimate personal reflections. She writes from her own experience, with a style that is romantic, but tinged with disillusionment, often a bit sad and always introspective.

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Drawing on personal experience with the UN, this combination of informative text and whimsical cartoons describes how the organization is supposed to work, how it actually behaves, and why there is a difference. UNtold lets readers in on the quirks and mysteries of international diplomacy and global decision-making. Delightfully irreverent, the message is that this vital body really can represent “We the peoples of the world.” The book has something to offer everyone, from high school and college students involved in model UNs to secretaries of state and senior diplomats.

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Wrestling in the Daylight is an insightful conversation on Zionism initiated by Rabbi Brant Rosen, a prominent Jewish activist from Chicago, on his social-justice blog Shalom Rav. After Israel’s brutal military attack on Gaza in 2008-2009, Rosen began to question his lifelong Zionist beliefs. Unlike the biblical Jacob, who wrestled with his conscience in the dark of night, Rosen chose to "wrestle in the daylight" with this issue through many thoughtful essays on his blog. In this selection of content from Shalom Rav, Rosen includes both his own posts and those of his online commenters, granting readers unique insight into the largest controversy facing the American Jewish community today. In the new introduction he has written for this second edition, Rosen updates the story of the “wrestling” that both he and the American Jewish community have undertaken in recent years.

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Palestinian political cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh has gained renown worldwide for his stark black-and-white drawings that express the numerous abuses and losses that his countrymen suffer under Israel's occupation and celebrate their popular resistance. This collection includes 180 of Sabaaneh's best cartoons, including some depicting the privations he and other Palestinian political prisoners have suffered in Israel's many prisons. This book offers profound insights into the political and social struggles facing the Palestinian people and a pointed critique of the inaction or complicity of the 'international community.' Veteran graphic artist Seth Tobocman contributes a foreword.

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This new edition of an award-winning cookbook shares with readers the little-known but distinctive cuisine of the Gaza region of Palestine, presenting 130 recipes collected by the authors from Gaza. Cooks will find great, kitchen-tested recipes for spicy stews, piquant dips, fragrantly flavored fish dishes, and honey-drenched desserts. They will also be entranced by the hundreds of beautiful photos of Gazan cooks, farmers, and fresh-produce merchants at work, and by the numerous in-kitchen interviews in which these women and men tell the stories of their food, their heritage, and their families. Anthony Bourdain, Claudia Roden, and Yotam Ottolenghi are among the many culinary figures who have embraced The Gaza Kitchen. This third edition features tantalizing new stories and recipes, a fresh new design in a beautiful paperback volume, new photos, and an updated index.

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