Interpreting China's Military Power Book

I have never shared as many quotes from a book with friends as I did with this one. I feel like nearly all the news I had heard on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict focused on the suicide bombings and how Israel had to do something to protect itself from terror. I had never heard a first hand account of what the Palestinians were suffering under the occupation. Raja Shehadeh is a human rights activist and a lawyer. His first hand account is even-handed, insightful and eloquent and as this comes from his diaries, the stories are quite short, but incredibly illuminating. Even though he never condones the suicide bombings and points out how they have really made things much worse for Palestinians, his descriptions of how horribly the Israeli soldiers were treating his friends and family and the strangling policies of settlement expansion made me feel something I never thought I would: understanding how someone could come to the point under such conditions that they feel they have no hope left but to strike back in a violent act of utter desperation at their oppressors. I came by this book from a friend of a friend and will be buying and passing along copies to others. Anyone who cares about injustice should read this.