A groundbreaking collection of essays by celebrated international writers bears witness to the human cost of fifty years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In Kingdom of Olives and Ash, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, two of today's most renowned novelists and essayists, have teamed up with the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence -- an organization comprised of former Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied territories and saw firsthand...

"In 1967, Bashir Khairi, a twenty-five-year-old Palestinian, journeyed to Israel with the goal of seeing the beloved stone house with the lemon tree behind it that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family left fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and...

"Gaza is among the most densely populated places in the world. Two-thirds of its inhabitants are refugees, and more than half the population is under eighteen years of age. Since Israel occupied Gaza in 1967, it has systematically de-developed the economy. After Hamas won democratic elections in 2006, Israel intensified its blockade of Gaza, and after Hamas consolidated its control of the territory in 2007, Israel tightened its illegal siege another...

Israeli counter-terrorism agent Sam Deker is abducted by radical adversaries and finds himself seemingly transported through time to the eve of a historical battle in ancient Israel, an event he fears may be tied to torture-induced psychosis.

"A probing look at one of the most incendiary subjects of our time -- the relationship between the United States and Israel. There has been more than half a century of raging conflict between Jews and Arabs -- a violent, costly struggle that has had catastrophic repercussions in a critical region of the world. In Genesis, John B. Judis argues that, while Israelis and Palestinians must shoulder much of the blame, the United States has been the principal...

Reveals how the everyday activities of Palestinians have become encumbered by the permits, curfews, and other bureaucratic hurdles associated with the region's institutionalized peace-keeping methods, in a report that offers insight into the tragic ways in which communities are becoming increasingly isolated from their lands and livelihoods.

Armed with a guitar and a video camera, musician Michael Franti journeyed through war and occupation in Iraq, Israel, and Palestine to talk with the everyday people about their lives and the overlooked human costs of war.