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We each can play a role in achieving the goal of Peace in the Middle East first by educating ourselves about the conflict and making informed decisions.

The mainstream media (including NPR) doesn't usually give a fair and accurate reporting of such important and complex issues. Therefore, the situation requires that we take the time and make the effort to understand what is really happening.

Here are a few resources for you to use as tools in helping you understand better, what is happening both in the Middle East and here at home.

Independent News

www.indymedia.org - Independent Media Center is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.

www.guardian.co.uk - The Guardian is a widely read and independent news source from the United Kingdom.

www.oneworld.net - An online news source, OneWorld is edicated to harnessing the democratic potential of the internet to promote human rights and sustainable development.

www.kpfa.org - KPFA, founded in 1949, is the first community supported radio station in the U.S. Flashpoints (5-6pm daily) is an investigative news magazine dealing with current international and domestic events.

Human Rights

www.un.org - The United Nations purpose is to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations among nations; to cooperate in solving international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems and in promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in attaining these ends.

www.hrw.org - Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world.

palestinechronicle.com - The Palestine Chronicle is an independent internet magazine, dedicated to addressing issues and offering perspectives rarely seen in mainstream western media. These issues include the plight and welfare of Palestinian refugees, as well as other displaced and oppressed people around the world.

First-Hand Accounts

OPME Solidarity News - This page is where we the Olympians for Peace in the Middle East (OPME) will post news and information from the Freedom Summer participants as they correspond with us about what is happening in the struggle for peace.

electronicintifada.net - The Electronic Intifada is independent of any political, factional, ethnic, or religious affiliation, and bases its view of the conflict on the foundations of universal human rights and international law.

www.jerusalem.indymedia.org - The Jerusalem Independent Media Center was founded to record and explore the current practices of the Israeli occupation and the real background to the conflict.

www.palsolidarity.org - The International Solidarity Movement is a Palestinian-led movement of Palestinian and International activists working to raise awareness of the struggle for Palestinian freedom and an end to Israeli occupation. They use nonviolent, direct-action methods of resistance to confront and challenge illegal Israeli occupation forces and policies.

Policy Watch

www.fpif.org - Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) seeks to make the U.S. a more responsible global leader and global partner. It is a "think tank without walls" that functions as an international network of more than 650 policy analysts and advocates. Unlike traditional think tanks, FPIF is committed to advancing a citizen-based foreign policy agenda--one that is fundamentally rooted in citizen initiatives and movements.

www.zmag.org/ForeignPol/blumtop.htm - Znet is an independent political magazine of critical thinking on political, cultural, social, and economic life in the United States. It sees the racial, sexual, political, and class dimensions of personal life as fundamental to understanding and improving contemporary circumstances and it aims to assist activist efforts to attain a better future.

Worth the Read

One Land, Two Peoples, Deborah J. Gerner

The author discusses the progress in the peace negotiations, beginning with their breakdown and subsequent stalemate following the Gulf War and the ensuing renaissance stimulated by the Oslo Accords. One Land, Two Peoples describes the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic as a conflict "rooted in its own reality''-a struggle that, despite its international dimensions, must be resolved by the principals themselves. Throughout, Deborah Gerner shows how what is happening today is steeped in the history of the region and illustrates ways that theories of international relations can help address questions about the politics of national identity and the roles of economics, culture, religion, and outside actors in fueling or quelling the conflict.

Fateful Triangle, The United States, Israel & the Palestinians, Noam Chomsky

A comprehensive indictment of what Noam Chomsky calls the "disgraceful and extremely dangerous" policy the U. S. has enacted towards Israel, particularly with regard to Israel's actions concerning the Palestinians. Supporters of Israel must willfully overlook or deny that nation's long history of human rights violations and military aggression, Chomsky writes, and they will continue to do so as long as Israel is strategically useful towards "the U.S. aim of eliminating possible threats, largely indigenous, to American domination of the Middle East region." In the course of elaborating his argument, Chomsky cuts through the myths and distortions that appear in mainstream media accounts; the damning facts that he so systematically assembles portray a government more brutally and overtly racist, perhaps, than even apartheid-era South Africa.

The Question of Palestine, Edward W. Said

Still a basic and indespensible account of the Palestinian question, updated to include the most recent developments in the Middle East- from the intifada to the Gulf war to the historic peace conference in Madrid. Traces the fatal collision between two peoples in the Middle East and its repercussions in the lives of both the occupier and the occupied - as well as in the conscience of the West.

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Norman G. Finkelstein

Finkelstein opens with a theoretical discussion of Zionism, locating it as a Romantic form of nationalism that assumed the bankruptcy of liberal democracy. He goes on to look at the demographic origins of the Palestinians, with particular reference to the work of Joan Peters, and develops critiques of the influential studies of both Benny Morris and Anita Shapira. Reviewing the diplomatic history with Aban Eban's massive oeuvre as his foil, Finkelstein closes by demonstrating that the casting of Israel as the innocent victim of Arab aggression in the June 1967 and October 1973 wars is not supported by the documentary record.


This Side of Peace, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi

Well known in this country as the eloquent Palestinian spokesperson on the nightly news, Ashrawi has written a compelling autobiography that fuses the political and the personal "to reveal in human terms our side of the truth." Raised in a middle-class home, she sees herself as a humanist, a radical, a peace activist, and a Western-educated academic; she also speaks as mother, daughter, wife, and personal friend of Jews as well as Palestinian leaders. Anyone wanting an informed, reasonable view of what's happening in the Middle East will welcome this account.

Other Authors and Scholars

Robert Fisk - Middle East correspondent for Independent Newspaper UK

Stephen Zunes - Associate Professor, Department of Politics, University of San Francisco

Edward Said - University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University

Videos and Films

Promises - www.promisesproject.org, dir. B.Z. Goldberg, Justine Shapiro, 2002

Promises follows the journey of filmmaker B.Z. Goldberg, an American who grew up in Jerusalem and was a journalist during the intifada, (Palestinian uprising.) Over the course of 4 years, B.Z. and Justine Shapiro, the filmmakers, were welcomed into the daily lives of seven Palestinian and Israeli children and their families. Each child offers a dramatic, emotional and sometimes hilarious insight into what it’s like to grow up in the charged and complex city of Jerusalem.

Tragedy in the Holy Land, The Second Uprising, dir. Dennis Mueller,

This film addresses the core issues of land and identify. It probes the evolution of the seemingly incurable conflict in Palestine from a historical perspective that is typically unknown to American audiences. Accounts of the Israeli/Palestinian struggle. It gives the veiwer access to the voices and background of one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted conflicts of the last century. 71 min.

Gaza Strip, dir. James Longley, 2002

Gaza Strip follows a range of people and events following the election of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, including the first major armed incursion into "Area A" by IDF forces during this intifada. The film is filmed almost entirely in a verite style, presented without narration and with little explanation, focusing on ordinary Palestinians rather than politicians and pundits. More observation than political argument, Gaza Strip offers a rare look inside the stark realities of Palestinian life and death under Israeli military occupation. 74 min.

Checkpoint: The Palestinians after Oslo, dir. Tom Wright, 1997

This engaging documentary explores recent events - the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, the Palestinian takeover of West Bank towns, the first Palestinian elections, suicide bus bombings, Arafat's abuse of poewer, and the growing frustration among Palestinians - events that seem to herald a collapse of the historic agreement reached at Oslo. Palestinians and Israelis speak of the contest over Jeruslem, Israeli settlement expansion, the forgotton refugees, tand their visions of a just peace. 58 min.


Frontiers of Dreams and Fears, dir. Mai Masri, 2001

Award-winning Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri's most recent work traces the delicate friendship that evolves between two Palestinian girls: Mona, a resident of the economically marginalized Beirut refugee camp and Manar, an occupant of Bethlehem's Al-Dheisha camp under Israeli control. The two girls begin and continue their relationship through letters until they are finally given the opportunity to meet at the border during the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon. When the intifada suddenly erupts around them, both girls face heart-breaking changes in their lives. 56 min.