The Hour of Sunlight

Starred review from December 20, 2010
In this remarkable story of life under Israeli occupation, coauthors al Jundi, cofounder of the Seeds of Peace Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem, and Marlowe (Darfur Diaries) intertwine the personal and the political as they trace al Jundi's evolution from Palestinian militant to peacemaker. As teenagers, al Jundi and two friends joined the PLO, but when a bomb exploded as they were building it, one boy was killed, and the other two badly injured—and on the receiving end of Israeli interrogations and torture. Sentenced to a decade in prison, al Jundi dedicates himself to an extensive education program maintained by the prisoners themselves, ultimately committing himself to nonviolence and to bridging the Israeli-Palestinian divide. The authors successfully convey al Jundi's joys and sorrows, the triumph of his endurance, the complexity of the conflict, and the necessity of dialogue.

December 15, 2010

One Palestinian's tale, from Fatah fighter to prisoner to peace activist.

His mother was a victim of the Nakba, the "Catastrophe," as Palestinians refer to the 1948 creation of the Israeli state and their consequent dispossession. After the 1967 Six-Day War, five-year-old Jundi and his parents were forced to move again to another part of Jerusalem. As a youth, he threw stones, shouted slogans and protested the Israeli occupation outside Al-Aqsa mosque or the Damascus Gate. He tried to join the 1976 war in Lebanon and later dropped out of school to work in a Jewish-owned factory that fired him for sabotaging the work. Brutally interrogated by Israeli police for his part in a failed bomb plot, he served ten years. In prison he became an organizer, a leader and a teacher, educating himself by reading widely. He studied Gandhi and began to contemplate nonviolence as a tool to effect political change. After his release, after forming some tentative friendships with Jews and after harsh treatment at the hands of the Palestinian Authority, the author drifted into the Palestinian Center for Non-Violence and later helped found the Seeds of Peace Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem, a youth program dedicated to fostering dialogue between Jews and Muslims. With his former Center colleague Marlowe (Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival, 2006), Jundi describes his transformation—without ever abandoning his "stance against occupation, settlements, and land and water expropriation," he learned to separate political issues from human beings and to fight against bigotry and hate. The authors devote a third of the book to their indefatigable, inspiring efforts on behalf of the Seeds program, even in amid of the Second Intifada, maintaining ties among the children of the warring sides. They also describe their dismay at the political infighting and bureaucratic bungling that led the organization astray. After recounting years of various horrors and indignities, the author's comment on his firing is the narrative's most heartbreaking: "Ten years of prison had not damaged me as deeply as Seeds of Peace had."

Memorably captures in one man's story the hard work of peacemaking in the Middle East.

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January 1, 2011
A Palestinian kid seething under the occupation, Al Jundi was sentenced at age 18 to 10 years in jail after the bomb he was making went off in his bedroom, killing one friend and injuring another. In prison, he was thrilled to be around other activists; he read the classics, from Dostoevsky to Gandhi and King, the New Testament, the Torah, and the Koran; he became close with a few Jewish Israeli political prisoners and peaceniks; and, eventually, he changed his politics. Then, on his release, in 1999, he established the Seeds of Peace Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem, aimed at bringing Israeli and Palestinian teens together with respect, tolerance, and dialogue. Stark and immediate, with no glib messages, Al Jundis memoir, written with journalist Marlowe, brings todays headlines very close; he is hopeful about friends, candid about enemies, betrayal, and corruption on all sides. Rooted in the experience of one fighter-peacemaker, this is sure to spark intense debate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)