Art Gish offers an inside view of the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams in the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani. Through vivid stories told in journal fashion, Gish offers a candid but sympathetic portrait of traditional Palestinians in the shadow of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. In this sequel to his well-received 2001 Hebron Journal, Gish graphically documents the everyday struggles of Palestinians living in the midst of conflict with Israel. With a sense of hope, he also considers the possibilities for reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis.

"As the crucifixes drenched with Jewish blood drop from our hands, we stand impotent and wordless before this tragedy of Israel and Palestine...In the name of the crucified Messiah, we must struggle against the conditions which make history a trail of crucifixions. Only then, in solidarity with Jews and Palestinians, can we dream of Messianic times, of a shalom without victims." With these words, theologian Rosemary Radford Reuther laid out the pitfalls for Christians entering the arena of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Nevertheless, in 1995, a small cohort of pacifist Christians decided to paddle against the currents of history, against the crusades, pogroms, and colonial enterprises of their co-religionists, toward that goal of "a shalom without victims." Setting up a project in the West Bank city of Hebron, over the next ten years Christian Peacemaker Teams forged relationships with Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals who were resisting the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. As "resident aliens" (See Exodus 23:9) they have sojourned in the Holy Land to support Palestinians and Israelis who reject violence as a means of solving the conflict, who think that one nation has no right to subjugate and exploit another, and who believe all the residents of the region are entitled to the same, exactly the same, human rights. This book charts the growth of CPT in Palestine, how it adapted to changing political conditions, spread to locations outside of Hebron, and developed networks with activists throughout Palestine and Israel.

The author draws the reader through the drama and mediocrity of his personal experience. The hard work of peacemaking is clearly strengthened through team efforts. Space is provided for the reader to step into the shallows of peacemaking and then on into the depths. This book is intended to be acted into being!

"A major challenge for people of faith is to resist the growing demonization of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism . . . I want to do something to build bridges between the three religions. I feel called to embody in my own life the healing, the reconciliation, the unity I long for between people of different religions." Art Gish became involved in the life and worship of all three religions; he considered himself a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew, and worked at integrating those three perspectives into his life. Acknowledging that Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are all threatened by narrow-minded, violent extremists who put the particular interests of their own people above our common interests, he tells inspiring stories of open-minded Muslims, Jews, and Christians who struggle together for reconciliation and who confront injustices that spawn hostility. Gish looks not only at the disagreements but also at the unity of the three Abrahamic faiths. He writes, "When people cross boundaries, exciting things happen. Each time in Israel/Palestine that I experience Jews, Muslims, and Christians eating, working, laughing, and crying together, I sense a foretaste of the coming kingdom of God, a demonstration of how things could be, and one day will be."

This book focuses on American political discourse connected to war, dissent, and empathy. Through interdisciplinary methods of history, politics and media studies, the book examines ways in which American self-identity alters as a consequence of media portrayal of human suffering and of its existential others. It compares representations of the Iraq wars to earlier precedents and looks at the work of American activists, assessing how narratives and images of human suffering in new media iconography generate empathic attitudes towards others. This comparative, multimodal study helps to explain shifting self-identities within the U.S, and relationally through the representation of the Arab other presenting an original and historicised contribution to the media-war field of academic and public debate. The book underscores empathy as a vibrant category of analysis that expands how we think about West-Arab relations, revealing how understanding the cultural aspects of this conflictual interrelationship needs to be broadened.

Art Gish records a moving story of the turmoil and suffering of the Palestinian people, the agony experienced by Israelis, and a vision of hope and new possibilities of reconciliation between Jews, Muslims, and Christians. From 1995 to 2001, Art Gish experiences living with Muslim families, engaging in nonviolent actions with Israelis and Palestinians, and struggling to find creative responses to injustice. Selected excerpts from his journal tell of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) work and give us a vision of how small peacemaking groups can make a difference in violent conflicts.