You have to laugh to keep from crying sometimes. Two years into Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza — bloody slaughter and mass starvation live streamed on TV screens — the old blues lyric rings true.

For tears of joy, not rage, friends of Palestine should consider visiting Bethlehem.

Clinging to the walls of a fertile valley beneath the loveliest of holy towns, hemmed in by concrete walls, watchtowers, checkpoints, and a string of mega-Jewish settler-colonies, a biologist named Mazin Qumsiyeh, his partner Jessie and friends are planting native Palestinian seeds, raising chickens, rabbits and fish, and offering up habitat for insects, birds, bats, and other small mammals.

Rescuing their beloved landscape from Euro-North American land thieves and eco-vandals.

The Palestine Institute for Biodiversity & Sustainability, their oasis is called. Perched above the Palestine Institute’s splendid gardens, a 1200-square meter museum is now nearing completion.

For an update on the Palestine Institute’s new museum, and gardens beneath, we reached out to Mazin Qumsiyeh.

Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian scientist, scholar, author, and environmental justice advocate. Together with his partner Jessie Chang, Mazin founded the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, and the Palestine Museum of Natural History. Mazin has published over 150 scientific papers and books on topics ranging from cultural heritage to biodiversity.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

Learn how to volunteer here.

Watch a complete conversation of ours here, recorded in the Palestine Institute garden back in April 2024

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza drags on, with no end in sight.

Mainstream commentators with some degree of sympathy for the Palestinian people argue that Israel needs to be ‘pressured’ to end the war.

Others say Israel will have to be forced to withdraw from Gaza. Indeed, to terminate its unlawful occupation of all Palestinian territories.

Unlawful is how the International Court of Justice described Israel’s 58-year-old occupation, in a UN-solicited Advisory Opinion issued over a year ago. In the wake of the ICJ’s ruling, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Israel to end its occupation within a year. That would be this coming September.

Israel will certainly not do so. The US won’t pressure it, let alone force it. The US and Israel are blood-brothers; conjoined twins.

So, hope turns to European capitals. Last week, French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron announced that France would formally recognize the State of Palestine.

The UK may follow, but British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is much more weak-kneed that Macron, and anxious to please Donald Trump, who thinks Gaza should be completely bulldozed, then turned into a real estate paradise for people like himself and his wealthy friends.

Last May, speaking to a People’s Tribunal on the Gaza genocide in Sarajevo, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé offered his own thoughts on the troubling situation.

Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter’s College of Social Sciences and International Studies, where he directs the European Centre for Palestine Studies.

He’s also the author of various foundational works on Palestine. Among these, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and Ten Myths About Israel. His most recent work — Lobbying For Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic — was released last year.