Tag: Mazin Qumsiyeh

Famed Professor to Speak on Biodiversity and Sustainability in War-Wracked Palestine

by Yann van Heurck, First Unitarian Universalist Society

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh will speak via Zoom at First Unitarian Universalist Society of New Haven during the 10:30 a.m. church service on Sunday, Oct. 19.

Dr. Qumsiyeh, former professor of biology and genetics at Yale and author of many academic papers and books, including Sharing the Land of Canaan, is currently director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, and of the Palestine Museum of Natural History, at Bethlehem University in Occupied Palestine. A Christian Palestinian, Dr. Qumsiyeh will share the groundbreaking work of the Institute to preserve the flora, fauna and human populations of the region amid devastating attacks on the environment.

Unitarian Universalism is a multiethnic, multireligious faith that encourages social activism in a context of spiritual awareness. Everyone is welcome to join our service at the meeting house (608 Whitney Ave., New Haven) or by Zoom link. Email Yann for the link at janinawoelfin@gmail.com. We urge all friends of nature and justice to join us!

Internationally Known Palestinian Speaker in CT Dec. 9

by LouAnn Villani, Middle East Crisis Committee

Mazin Qumsiyeh, who has spoken all over the world about Palestinian rights and also on science issues, will talk in Connecticut on Monday, Dec. 9, in three different
places.

First he’ll be in New Haven at the central New Haven (Ives) Library, 133 Elm St., across from the Green at noon. The Middle East Crisis Committee is sponsoring the event along with the Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council. Qumsiyeh lived in Connecticut at the start of the 2000s as he headed the Cytogenetic Department at Yale Medical School. His books include Sharing the Land of Canaan and Popular Resistance in Palestine. Back in occupied Palestine in the West Bank he founded the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability. He has written Mammals of the Holy Land, The Bats of Egypt, and scores of scientific papers.

He has spoken in most U.S. states and in dozens of countries around the world. He helped found the Right to Return online movement and was an early proponent of the “one-state solution.” See qumsiyeh.org and palestinenature.org. His emails that go out weekly to thousands are known for their humanity and optimism mixed with mention of the terrible oppression and murder inside Palestine. He signs off with the slogan, “Stay Human.”

Later on Dec. 9 he’ll speak at Wesleyan University and Trinity College. See TheStruggle.org for details in early December.

News from Palestine from Dr. Qumsiyeh

by Stanley Heller, Director, Middle East Crisis Committee

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, Director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, spoke twice in Connecticut in August, once at the Palestine Museum US in Woodbridge and the next day in Hartford at the Unitarian Society. He brought us up to date on the impressive activities of his institute and the Palestine Museum of Natural History, which is one of its projects.

Qumsiyeh lived in Connecticut at the start of the 2000s as he headed the Cytogenetics Department at the Yale Medical School. He was very active in Palestinian human rights work and co-founded the Palestine Right to Return Campaign. He returned to Palestine a decade ago. In his talks, he maintained that despite what is usually said, Palestine was a peaceful area for most of its thousands of years history. He dated recent problems to the Zionist movement and its settler colonial project.

As a bit of activism at the events we passed out copies of a picture of a two-year-old boy named Mohammed Tamimi, who was shot to death by an Israeli sniper on June 1. The ultra-right Israeli government almost immediately excused the sniper from all responsibility and expressed “regret.” We briefly chanted “Justice for Mohammed Tamimi.”

The one bit of good news discussed was the open letter called the “Elephant in the Room,” which was signed at the time of the meetings by over 700 academics and public figures decrying Israeli apartheid and telling Jewish leaders in the U.S. that democracy in Israel could only be maintained if it included equal treatment for Palestinians. The number of signers, overwhelmingly Jewish, has since swelled to more than 1,800. The wall of Jewish support for the Israeli government has a deep fissure.