We Will Not Be Silenced - Robinson & Griffin

Subtitled:  The Academic Repression of Israel's Critics

While I did not read this whole book, I took in parts of it.  It examines the stories of academics who have been blacklisted or had problems because of their academic work which was critical of Israel.  Each victim has submitted an essay on their experience, which can be interesting reading.  What I found more interesting though, were the brief accounts at the beginning of each case, that gives the basic outline of the offending work, and the methods of repression and exclusion used by the concerned organizations and institutions.
Interestingly, most, if not all, of the cases take place in the U.S.

Les femmes et la guerre - Madeleine Gagnon

L'auteur visite plusieurs pays de conflit ou de sociétés oppressives (Macédoine, Bosnie, Israel-Palestine, Pakistan, etc) et fait des entrevues avec surtout des femmes qui racontent leurs vies et leurs difficultés quotidiennes.  Gagnon ajoute aussi ses aperçus, ses commentaires et ses observations.  Sujet intéressant où elle explore des idées difficile telles le rôle des femmes dans ces conflits ethniques, le rôle du silence et de l'interdiction sociale de discussions ouvertes dans toutes formes de violence, soit domestique soit inter-ethnique.  En Bosnie, elles parlent de la violence inhérente dans la structure d'une société, et comment cela peut déborder dans un conflit tel qu'ils ont connu en Bosnie.

Malheureusement, encore une fois, son style pose des difficultés pour moi.  C'est un peu trop flou, trop monologue intérieur, poétique ou il faut clarté et lumière nette.

Ten Myths about Israel - Ilan Pappé

Another brilliant book by this critic of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.

The book is divided into three sections:  myths about the past and the genesis of the state; myths about current situations and myths about the two state solution.

In the first section, there are some rather shocking bits of information that I was unaware of:
- Zionism began essentially as a European Christian powers projects and initially received little support from Jewish leaders - it was seen as a back door colonialist policy for dealing with the Middle East (which it in fact is)
- in the 30s, the Zionists tried to form an alliance with the Nazis to help them fight the British in the Mandate territories!

In the second section, he clearly outlines how and why the Israeli state is a colonial power and essentially a project of ethnic cleansing, by looking at patterns of land confiscation, abrogation of basic rights, persistent harassment and use of military and extrajudicial punishments.

In the section on Gaza, he also outlines his reasons for seeing the Israeli actions as a form of genocide, based mostly on the number of deaths and the overwhelmingly civilian nature of those deaths.

Throughout the book, Pappé also underlines how elimination of the Palestinian population has always been the goal, and how Israeli governments have never entered into peace negotiations in good faith.

A well-written book - direct and to the point.

Children of the Stone - Sandy Tolan

This is the story of Ramzi Aburedwan, a Palestinian born in Ramallah during the occupation.  The book chronicles his development from a stone-throwing child to the director of a number of music schools in Ramallah and various refugee camps in Lebanon.  It is a story of how an encounter with music can transform someone, give hope and a life beyond the anger and frustration that people live with in situations of occupation and repression.  A complicated man.
The book inevitably touches on many issues related to the plight of Palestinians under occupation.  You get a picture of some of the elements of day-to-day life for Palestinians living in Israel.  As background, the book also touches on the various steps and failings of the peace process, the two Intifada's, and the current divestment campaign.
Worth the read in that it humanizes certain aspects of this troubling situation that seems to never get closer to being resolved.

1177 The Year Civilization Collapsed - Eric H. Cline

An attempt to get to the bottom of what happened in the early 12th c BC, which saw the collapse of every current major civilization in the eastern Mediterranean.  Cline begins with a thorough overview of the world of the late Bronze Age.  It is a fascinating picture, with every civilization built around a ruling political/religious elite that governed from a central palace temple complex.  Most of these political religious elites also ran the economy, both internally and external trade.   At least at the elite level, this was a very international, interconnected period, with lots of movement of both luxury goods and goods essential to the elites - such things as tin for weapon making, gold, as well as emergency food supplies to hand out to the populace in years of failed crops.  I picture the sailors of these ships from Crete, from Egypt, from Ugarit, from Greece sitting down for a few drinks in bars in the  big port towns of the time - that would have been really travelling!

Turns out the Sea People are a difficult group to pin down.  Their presence outside of the documented attacks on Egypt and probably Ugarit, is pretty difficult to determine.  Much of the destructions blamed on them seems to have been the result of earthquakes and local rebellions rather than warfare. It seems this area may have collapsed due to a series of natural disasters - earthquakes, prolonged droughts, climate shift - coupled with some external raiding, some migration pressures (perhaps caused by the natural disasters), some political upheaval, and a breakdown of a complex system of economic exchange.  The large political units  have evolved a complex system of interdependence and when that began to fray, it dragged most of the involved players down.  It may have been that the elites lost the wealth needed to maintain their position and either buy or enforce compliance from their subjects.

Like with the fall of the Roman Empire, the area seems to have slipped into a "Dark Age" - smaller, more local political units, loss of culture, building techniques and established art styles (and writing in the case of Mycenean Greece), falling off of trade and long-distance exchange, idealization of the preceding Golden Age.

It is so long ago, it may never be possible to determine the exact causes and sequence of events at that time.

The Trouble with Islam Today - Irshad Manji

A powerful book.  I'm surprised she hasn't been assassinated yet.  A well-reasoned and well-sourced critic of mainstream, and fundamentalist, Islam's controversial positions on human rights, women, other religions, and the role of reason.  It brings up issues of contradictions in the Koran, of historical and social influence on the text, of literalism vs. interpretations.  She also looks at the idea of who controls the interpreting and how that will influence the message.
A good read for anyone who would like to engage in discussion of these issues, whatever religion's position you may want to look at.  Manji pillories the west's tolerance of repressive religious practices on the basis of multiculturalism or cultural sensitivity.
She also discusses the arab warrior tribal culture element in Islam and how it has impoverished several ancient cultural and pluralistic muslim civilizations, from Iran to Baghdad to Spain to Indonesia.
There is also an interesting section on her visit to Israel where she points out that the Israeli/Palestinian relations are not quite as black and white as you could sometimes think.  This in the context of countering the demonization of Israel and Jews in mainstream Islam.  She also makes the point that the leading middle eastern countries have exported their view of the Palestinian issue as part of the religion/culture context  ex. to Indonesia, where they have other social and cultural issues much closer to home.  It would be interesting to look at her position in detail.

Much of her critique of Islam is equally applicable to any other doctrinaire or fundamentalist ideology, whether religious, political, social or economic.


Some quotes:

discussing V. S. Naipaul - (he) "was soon to discover that no colonization has been so thorough as the colonization that had come with the Arab faith..."

"Why, over the past one thousand years, has the entire Arab world translated only as many books as Spain translates every year?  Is it be because the more people know about foreign notions, the more likely they'll be to examine their own?"

- from  Amin Malouf "Traditions deserve to be respected only in so far as they are respectable - that is, exactly in so far as they themselves respect the fundamental rights of men and women."

Waiting for the Barbarians - J. M. Coetzee

This book is an absolute must read.  Coetzee is a very interesting and subtle thinker and writer.  It is easy to see his writing in the context of his roots as a white man growing up in South Africa through the apartheid era.  But there is a lot more to him than that.  The apartheid experience may have been the catalyst to his thinking and world view but his reach extends far beyond that specific situation.  Coetzee is fundamentally a deep moral thinker, and a writer who explores the deep social structures, power relations and driving forces in modern western civilization.  
You can read him as an exploration of good and evil in the modern world.  You can read him as an exploration of empire, corporate culture and bureaucratic power structures and their effect of human relations and society' moral sense.  You can read him as an explorations of the clash or conflict between the modern western society's world view/values and other older cultures built on entirely different premises.  You can read him as an exploration of western social power structures and relations.  You can read him as an exploration of the dynamics of Empire  (and thus a history of the modern Western world).

The narrator's failed quest to truly understand the difference of the Other in the people that surround him is intriguing, and also quite possibly a critical look at the liberal left of Europe and North America.  There is a wonderful passage to the effect that he, the narrator, represents the face of Empire when times are good; the sadistic army officer, the face of Empire when times are bad.  Two faces, but the same Empire, the same dynamic, the same power structure.

A complex book worth rereading several times.

From the Holy Mountain - William Dalrymple

An interesting look at an aspect of Middle Eastern history that is not discussed much - the history and state of Christianity in the Middle East.  The book is loosely structured as a travelogue built around an account of a journey by two monks it the 6th century.  Dalrymple sets out to follow their root and compare the churches, monasteries and Christian communities John Moschos and his companion visited 1400 years ago.
Dalrymple's travels and comments bring up a number of interesting points or threads.
1)  You get a strong sense of Christianity as essentially a middle eastern religion with historically a very strong presence in the region.  This is something ignored by European and American christian churches, as if they wanted to forget its essentially Arabic origins.  This also explains the indifference of western churches to the plight of Christian communities in Israel and Egypt (amongst other countries) where governments are working to eliminate Christianity from the country and its history.  You can include Turkey in this mix, but there the process of elimination is almost complete (and is strongly tied to ethnic issues also).  This indifference also I think points to the narrowness of the various Christian sects and their lack of acceptance of other branches of the faith; perhaps also to the strong historical link between nation states and organized religion.
2)  The strong link between Islam and Christianity - there are early orthodox sects that pray in the same way Muslims do, except they also cross themselves while genuflecting.
3)  Links between early church liturgy and Arabic/middle eastern culture.  The music of some of the Syrian orthodox sects sounds so much like Arabic vocal music - there's lots on Youtube.
4)  The fact that Syria has historically been a haven for middle-eastern Christians pushed out of other countries.  Unfortunately, due to their strong ties to the Assad family, with the Syrian revolution this may no longer be the case -we could be looking basically the end of Christian communities in the middle east.  Especially when you add in the current situation with the Copts in Egypt.
5)  Just the simple fact that large parts of the middle east were essentially Christian at one point in time.
6)  His travels and encounters in Israel and Jerusalem dovetail perfectly with Ilan Pappé's account of Israel's policies and actions in relation to Palestinians regardless of whether Christian or Muslim.  (You can also add Armenians to the list when considering Jerusalem.)  Dalrymple in fact reaches many of the same conclusions about the nature of Zionism.
7)  The Jews only controlled the area of Israel for about 600 years, which certainly doesn't grant much of a title to the land. (this fact to be verified)
8)  Archaeologically, the Muslim take over of Byzantine middle eastern lands does not seem to have created much of an archaeological, cultural or economic break in the historical record.  Any cultural and  population shifts  were very gradual - this was no barbarian horde wreaking havoc as they moved through.
9)  The strong relation between Syrian monks/monasteries and the church in England - one of the first Archbishops in Canterbury was Syrian.  There also seems to be a link between the illustrated manuscripts produced in Syrian monasteries and the early illumination work of Irish monks (now that's travelling...)
10)  There are some interesting bits about Urfa and Diyarbakır which would be worth noting if travelling in that area again.
11)  Lots of travel information for Syria, but I'm not sure at this point how much of it will remain after the current conflict is over.

Includes a decent bibliography

TO FIND:
John Moschos, The Spiritual Meadow
A History of the Arab Peoples, Albert Hourani
The Slaughterhouse Province, Leslie A. Davis (turkey?)
The Cradle of Mankind:  Life in Eastern Kurdistan,  W. A. Wigram (1914)

The Forgotten Palestinians - Ilan Pappé

Subtitle:  A History of the Palestinians in Israel

A meticulous account of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the years immediately following the establishment of Israel in 1948.  Pappé is a meticulous historian who made use of recently released archival material (such as notes and journals of some of the main actors and leaders of the time) to determine the exact nature of the policy towards Palestinians and Palestinian villages post 1948, and also to catalogue forced removals, destruction of villages, massacres and rapes as noted in these sources.  It turns out these archival sources corroborate many of the actions and events Palestinians have claimed for decades.
His style is not hysterical or hostile; he maintains a historian's tone for most of the book.  There are occasional glimpses of he feeling and reactions as he discovers the truth behind the propaganda and myths he has been fed growing up in Israel and passing through the education system.
There are interesting quotes at the beginning of chapters mostly taken from statements, descriptions and international reactions to what went on in Bosnia - these stand in stark contrast to the west's and UN's statements and reactions to the events that occured in Palestine.  They also serve to back up his conclusion that the Palestinians were subjected to ethnic cleansing, given the similarities between the two conflicts.
A very important book because of who he is and his profession as a historian.  A difficult read, but not brutal - there are very few graphic details.  It's just the endless repetitive nature of the actions against the Palestinian villages over a period of years.

Geopolitics of Emotion - Dominique Moisi

Kind of in the same category as "Revenge of Geography".  Too many gross generalizations, stereotypes and platitudes at the base of his discussions.  Once you wince at these, the whole development of ideas seems to go nowhere.  He may think he is writing from a fairly objective point of view but his western biases in relation to progress, the desirable future, the point of society etc. are very apparent as the assumed givens at the base of his points.
I read the beginning and the chapter on Islam and Arabs.  He is right about humiliation and its role in this situation, but he could have said what he has to say is far fewer pages - it would have been clearer and more to the point.

Some references though:

Edward Said

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid (novel - Pakistan)

Samir Kassir - Being Arab (assassinated lebanese newspaper columnist)

Left in Dark Times - Bernard-Henry Levy 2008

I got a few leads on classic 20th c authors and texts to follow up on, but otherwise this book rambles a bit too much.  It is a bit inbred, I think, in that he assumes an interest in, and a familiarity with, the history of the ideas of the left in the course of the 20th century (especially in France).
He does bring up the point  of the death of big ideologies as a result of the horrendous revolutions we've seen through the 20th c. - particularly the discrediting of the very concept of revolution and designed human society.  I'm not so sure though that the right has moved away from big ideologies - and he doesn't seem to address this.  How can the left stand as an alternative to the right if they don't have a vision, a narrative, a story that can stand up to the ideologies of the right?  (Thinking of american politics here...)
Levy does raise some interesting points regarding human rights, cosmopolitanism, and tolerance vs respect (tolerance accepts from a distance without wanting to engage; respect implies willingness to engage, incorporate a presence into your society.  Levy also addresses the issue of cultural relativity vs. human rights, coming down strongly on the human rights side.  (If tradition and culture are worth more than human rights, it is a double standard in relation to our own western society, where rights over tradition has come to be the norm - and lead to positive social change.)
Levy also looks at the Israel/Palestine conflict, but from a very shallow, historically narrow point of view.  He raises some interesting points about links to Nazism and fascism in arab political organizations, but this could be seen as similar to the Finnish link with Germany as an ally against Russia in WWII.  (Part of his overall assumption in the book that ideas lead society - whereas my view is that ideas are often made to fit one's own personal advantage - like his interpretation of Israel/Palestinian history.)

To find:
The Gulag Archipelago
- Cambodian revolution
Arthur Koestler - Darkness At Noon
Panait Istrati - The Confessions of a Loser/The Other Flame
Karl Popper
Star of Redemption - Rosenzweig
Philippe Sollers
Marcel Pleynet (Tel Quel magazine)
Origins of Totalitarianism - Hannah Arendt
Are We Rome? Cullen Murphy
Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon