Tags
humor and soul, integrity in scholarship, middle east conflict, Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, political dialogue, political participation, private library
Recommended to this editor: David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace (Anniversary Edition, 2009).
Now wish-listed in my Amazon account, it would be a good book to own; however, the bookcases have been filled, and there’s even now a box full of books with bookmarks in them, the desktop having become more my platform than the sofa.
Darn.
The forum for the comment was one of Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi‘s pages on Facebook.ย Daoudi, who once took a class of Palestinian students to Auschwitz and had his car torched for the effort, has been a strong advocate for a moderate Islam (Wasatia Movement (Facebook page]) and Israeli-Palestinian co-existence.ย As suggested by the lost getabout, such efforts would seem tempered by the politics of the East Jerusalem space from which he prefers to work.
Fromkin’s book would be a good thing to own and read.ย However —
I’m overstocked here with books, but if I had house and space, I’d go ahead and expand my library to 4,000 volumes, maybe more.
One thing about the truth in history: when something is true, all the small parts really do fit together.
In that fitting together, however, one may wish to have two essential elements for company: 1) a great sense of humor and 2) a lot of soul.
Previously recommended by yours truly to forum readers: Efraim Karsh’s 2011 volume, Palestine Betrayed.
Purpose: replace strident untrue (Soviet Era malarkey) narratives ๐ with a broad, common, empathetic, high-integrity telling of history — because history may not be “written by the victors” but in the greater course of time by the decent and earnest among the world’s scholars — that might then provide a firm base of knowledge for all.
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