C-SPAN has the video Peace Be upon You.

Zachary Karabell talked about his book Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence, published by Knopf. Mr. Karabell traces the historical instances of peaceful coexistence between Muslim, Christian, and Jewish people. The author contended that throughout the past fourteen centuries the different faiths have found common ground; from peaceful debate amongst scholars in the courts of the caliphs in Baghdad to medieval Spain where Jewish sages, Muslim philosophers, and Christian monks translated the meaning of God together. The author argued that the current state of religious tensions are solvable if one studies the past. Mr. Karabell responded to questions from the audience.

I just posted about this video in the previous post Why Some ‘Fauxgressives’ Are Against the Palestinian BDS Movement, but this book and this C-SPAN video are so important that I felt this deserved a separate post. It will be easier for me to find this in the future if I have a post with the full title of the book.

YouTube has the video Why Some ‘Fauxgressives’ Are Against the Palestinian BDS Movement with Kim Iverson.

Watch the video before you read my comments. Form your own opinion.

She discusses various arguments that one might use to counter the point of view she is presenting in this video. When she makes the comparison to South Africa, I think I finally see what is driving her opinion.

Kim’s argument boils down to Palestinians are Muslims. Because of that, they don’t have democratic rights that Jews and Christians have. She doesn’t really have a grasp of history before 1948 either. A lot of her assumptions about Muslims are just wrong.

Some of my opinions have been enlightened by reading the book “Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence” The link takes you to a C-Span video with the author of the book. I had not watched the video yet when I wrote this sentence, but I had read the book.

Zachary Karabell talked about his book Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence, published by Knopf. Mr. Karabell traces the historical instances of peaceful coexistence between Muslim, Christian, and Jewish people. The author contended that throughout the past fourteen centuries the different faiths have found common ground; from peaceful debate amongst scholars in the courts of the caliphs in Baghdad to medieval Spain where Jewish sages, Muslim philosophers, and Christian monks translated the meaning of God together. The author argued that the current state of religious tensions are solvable if one studies the past. Mr. Karabell responded to questions from the audience.

I just finished watching the video related to the book. It would be wonderful if people like Kim Iverson could contemplate what was discussed. The author, Zachary Karabell, is not talking about utopia. He is just talking about what can happen in propitious moments in history, and perhaps how we can lessen the deviations from those propitious moments. He is not talking about changing the under lying basis of human nature. He is talking about promoting the the basis of human nature where people just want to go about their daily lives in relative peace and calm.

When people do not feel threatened, they find it easier to peacefully co-exist. This is exactly why Donald Trump’s use of threats, coercion, and sanctions is just so antithetical to achieving a modicum of peace in the world.

The ultimate question for people who want to opine on the BDS movement, the idea of BDS as a tactic, or Congressional resolutions on the topic, ask your self if what you have to say will enhance the possibilities of peaceful co-existence or not.

Mint Press News has a several part piece by Whitney Webb on some sordid history that I did not know about. The first part, which I have only partially read so far is Hidden in Plain Sight: The Shocking Origins of the Jeffrey Epstein Case.

Epstein is only the latest incarnation of a much older, more extensive and sophisticated operation that offers a frightening window into how deeply tied the U.S. government is to the modern-day equivalents of organized crime.

The second part, which is where I started, is Government by Blackmail: Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s Mentor and the Dark Secrets of the Reagan Era.

Appalling for both the villainous abuse of children itself and the chilling implications of government by blackmail, this tangled web of unsavory alliances casts a lurid light on the political history of the U.S. from the Prohibition Era right up through the Age of Trump.

My initial reaction on reading this second part was “If 1% of this is true, one might wonder why bother anymore?”

I have mixed reaction to the prominent place that the Bronfman family plays in this story. Once, when I was growing up I remember my father mentioning some family. He claimed that our family name might originally have been something garbled which I remember as the sound “brnfmn” I never made much out of that until somehow it came up in conversation many decades later with a cousin of mine. He mentioned that what I was remembering was actually Bronfman. My grandmother had reportedly been the source of the story that there might be a family connection. My father and grandmother had long since passed away before I had this conversation, so I couldn’t check the original sources.

All I knew about the Bronfman’s was their tie to the brand name Seagrams. I used to laughingly talk about this connection after I learned about it. Now I am not so sure I should ever mention it again.

CounterPunch has the article 71 Years Later, Zionist Terrorism Is Alive and Well.

Seventy-one years to the day Jewish terrorists in Palestine committed a heinous crime for which they continue to go unpunished.

The April 9, 1948 massacre of 107 Palestinians in the Christian Village of Deir Yassin (monastery of Yassin) has been whitewashed by Israel, the U.N., the media, and the so-called law-abiding civilized Western World – a world that lectures us on morality, the rule of law, and democracy – and a Western World that has sown the pestilence of wars, misery, and chaos – from as far as Libya to the west, and as far as Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Bangladesh to the east.

That is a part of the history that I only vaguely knew. The part that I vaguely knew was from “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel” by Ari Shavit . Shavit is a grandson of one of the founders of Zionism. He describes some of what is in the CounterPunch article, but not all of it.

Here is another part of the CounterPunch article that hit home.

To cover their dastardly deeds, Israeli leaders, with the help of Jews in diaspora, planted pine forests in each of the 530+ locations of what used to be Palestinian villages.

As a child growing up in the 1950s USA, I contributed coins to help plant a tree in Israel to reforest “the desert”. I had visions of going to Israel one day to visit the tree that would have my name on it. I had no inkling of the history behind why trees needed to be planted. I doubt my parents knew either. As I grew into teen age years, I remember somebody saying “Do you really believe that there is a tree with your name on it?” I thought that was destroying my innocence. Imagine that here I am at 75 years old getting the rest of my innocence destroyed.

I am sure that there is a counter-narrative to the story the CounterPunch article told. I haven’t seen it, nor have I looked for it. As a result of this post, it will probably float to the surface.