EI in the Press

Book Review: "One Country"



Ali Abunimah, the increasingly prominent 34-year old Palestinian-American activist and writer, never shies away from confronting those who support Israel at the expense of Palestinians. Abunimah’s intellectual insurgency continues in his first book, the recently published One Country, a provocative and well-written account attacking the same failure of imagination that delivered to the world the present Arab-Israeli calamity. Originally the basis for an academic presentation he delivered at St. Anthony’s College at Oxford in 2004, One Country powerfully advocates the creation of a “united, democratic state in Palestine-Israel.” 

EI's Ali Abunimah discusses "One Country" on C-SPAN2's "Book TV"



On 17 December 2006, EI co-founder and One Country author Ali Abunimah appeared on C-Span2’s Book TV. In his book, One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli - Palestinian Impasse, author Ali Abunimah puts forth a proposal to end conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. He believes that the only hope for peace is to move from calls for partitioning toward a one-state solution. Mr. Abunimah discusses the book with Ron Kampeas, Washington bureau chief for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

Gaza journalist Mohammed Omer: His life and words



Award-winning journalist and photographer Mohammed Omer, on a speaking tour of the United States, spoke before a large audience at the Center Congregational Church in Brattleboro on Nov. 29. Omer shared his experiences in Gaza and why journalism was his calling. At 18, he began writing regularly for the international media and Omer’s works can now be found in dozens of newspapers and magazines worldwide such as the Vermont Guardian, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, ArtVoice Weekly, the online magazine Electronic Intifada, and Norwegian and Swedish dailies. He was honored by New American Media as the “Best Youth Voice” for 2006. 

Ali Abunimah speaks about 'One Country' on CounterSpin



This week on CounterSpin: Politicians and pundits tend to agree that solving the Israel-Palestine conflict would go a long way towards achieving peace in the broader Middle East. But that’s more or less where the agreement ends. A new book by activist and frequent CounterSpin guest Ali Abunimah suggests a new path, one that is almost never discussed in the mainstream media. He will join us to talk about his new book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. 

The Palestinians: Who's their Mandela?



An escape from these prisons, to something other than semi-free statelets, is suggested by Ali Abunimah. But it is an escape to Utopia: a single state of Israel/Palestine where lion and lamb nuzzle down together. Impossible, probably. On the other hand, argues Mr Abunimah, if South Africa could break out of seemingly impossible conflict to find peace and reconciliation, why not Israel? Some 5m Jews and some 5m Arabs, including Israel’s sizeable Arab minority, confront each other in land that is controlled, directly or indirectly, by Israel. Splitting the land between them (albeit on a 78% to 22% ratio) seemed a good idea at the time, but its time may have run out. 

One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse



Peace does not require that both sides share an “agreed narrative” of what happened in 1948, as some commentators have suggested. But, Abunimah urges, “It is unacceptable for a Palestinian to draw on his history of oppression and suffering to justify harming innocent Israeli civilians,” just as it is for an Israeli to use the idea of a covenant between God and Abraham to force Palestinians out of their ancestral home. Indeed, he adds, the success of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and of Belgian federalism has not hinged on agreed narrative; “changing society,” he writes, “does not require us to forget or revise the past.” 

Ali Abunimah on One State in Israel/Palestine



I caught Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian/American activist and author of a new book calling for a single Arab and Jewish state in Palestine, at Columbia the other night. Myself, I’m sympathetic to Abunimah’s vision, but I don’t know enough to be sure. One thing I am sure about is his presence: he’s idealistic. He may be a naive and deluded dreamer, fine, but his vibe is, he’s a dreamer, and visionary. Embracing Zionism these days isn’t any fun. Of course it’s true that Zionism was a place of dreams in decades past, but it seems like a lot of the dream has collapsed into a colonialist blind alley. 

A project of dispossession can never be a noble cause



Perhaps because the stakes are now so high, people are once again speaking of the visionary solution: the secular democratic state, a homeland for both Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinian social scientist Ali Abunimah and the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé’s recent books are the latest to make the case for this. They find hope, as Pappé puts it, in “those sections of Jewish society in Israel that have chosen to let themselves be shaped by human considerations rather than Zionist social engineering.” 

South Africa seen as model for Palestine



As I watched the images last week of destruction from the Gaza Strip, where an Israeli shelling attack had killed an entire family, as a Palestinian I could understand the feelings of one survivor who said, “I cannot see a day when we will live in peace with them.” But I also know there is no other choice. or decades, the conventional wisdom has been that this conflict can only be resolved by partitioning the country into two states. Yet despite enormous efforts to achieve this, the two peoples remain thoroughly if unhappily intertwined. Israel’s project of establishing settler-colonies inside the territories where Palestinians wanted to create a state has rendered separation impossible. 

Israel's New Arsenal



What bizarre science-fiction horrors have to occur before the American media wakes up to the strange war that Israel is prosecuting against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, asks Ethan Heitner of Tompaine.com? People are still being maimed or killed every day in Lebanon thanks to unexploded cluster ordinance dropped massively by Israel in the 48 hours after a cease-fire had been negotiated but before it went into effect. Over 30 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in October alone. As usual, however, Lebanon and Palestine have vanished from the newscycle (where Israel is currently represented by a president who refuses to step down despite an all-but-indictment for multiple rape charges and an openly fascist party joining the government ). 

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