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  Beyond Proportionality -...

  Thane Rosenbaum

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  Imagine a war without battlefields. There are no uniforms. Civilians and combatants are indistinguishable. Homes, schools, hospitals, and religious buildings are used as command and communication centers, and for the warehousing of weapons. Apartment rooftops are launching pads; the civilians who live inside . . . human shields. There are over 300 miles of reinforced tunnels, all outfitted with weapons and passageways for terrorists to take hostages and travel freely. 
   
   
   
  Beyond Proportionality examines Israel's battles against Hamas and Hezbollah under the laws of war and concludes that its wartime conduct was based on military necessity and fought justly. The targets are terrorists, weapons, and tunnels—not civilians. Israel relies upon verifiable intelligence, deploys precise weapons, and endangers its own soldiers in order to minimize civilian death. 
   
   
   
  The bombings over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden, and the urban warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, produced large numbers of civilian dead that were not considered acts of genocide; the war in Gaza was no different.

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  The Faded Map - Lost Kingdoms of...

  Alistair Moffat

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  Dive into Northern Britain's Dark Ages in "a book which gives a satisfying and convincing account of this little-known part of Scotland's history" (Undiscovered Scotland). 
   
   
    
  Modern communications have driven motorways and pylons through the countryside, dwarfed us with TV and telephone masts, and drastically altered the way in which we move around, see, and understand Scotland. Recent politics and logistics have established borders and jurisdictions which now seem permanent and impervious. The Faded Map looks beyond these to remember a land that was once quiet and green. Alistair Moffat's "tireless research . . . and commanding knowledge" bring to vivid life the half-forgotten kings and kingdoms of two thousand years ago, from the time of the Romans into the early medieval period (Scottish Field). 
   
   
    
  In this "fascinating" account, Moffat describes the landscape these men and women moved through and writes of a Celtic society which spoke to itself in Old Welsh, where the Sons of Prophesy ruled, and the time when the English kings of Bernicia held sway over vast swathes of what is now Scotland (Alexander McCall Smith, author of Dream Angus). Heroes rode out of the mists to challenge them and then join with them, and the faint echo of the din of ancient battles can be heard as he takes the listener on a journey around a lost Scotland.

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  Fearless Faith - Learning to...

  Jonathan Stephen

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  When fear takes hold, we can feel powerless and insipid. Life’s spiritual battles become too much, and the devil seems to be winning. It does not have to be like this, though! We can, and do, have victory in Christ. Faith in the all-powerful one means that we are strong in him, even when we feel weak.  Jonathan Stephen writes with clarity and compassion to help us understand how the battle against the enemy can truly be won. He uses one of the best known and most dramatic incidents in the Gospels, the stilling of the storm. As he draws our attention to what Jesus is teaching through this ‘faith-training exercise’, we join the disciples in discovering that when we are buffeted and frightened by the storms of life we can not only endure but overcome.

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  Persecution of Jews in Medieval...

  Editors Charles River

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  The term “Reconquista” is a Spanish word transferred to the English language to represent the nearly 800 years in which the Moors and Christians struggled against one another for control of the Iberian Peninsula. Although the phrase typically refers to the time when the numerous Christian kingdoms mobilized to overthrow the Islamic Caliphates set up in the peninsula, the term can additionally be used to refer to the entire situation starting in the 8th century, when Islamic civilization slowly moved out of North Africa, across the Mediterranean Sea, and into southern Iberia.  
  	Not surprisingly, three religions attempting to coexist during medieval times resulted in nearly incessant conflicts, marked by high taxation, disparate societies, rigid cultural controls, and systemic violence. Despite the odds, these three religions managed to live in a state of quasi-acceptance and peace in most of the major cities like Cordoba and Toledo, with sporadic warfare occurring on the borders between Al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms near the Pyrenees Mountains. Muslims, Christians, and Jews would attempt to reorganize their societies several times over the centuries through warfare, always with Jews on the lower rungs and Christians and Muslims fighting it out above them.   
  	By the end of the 14th century, the distrust and prejudice against Jewish communities quickly spread to Spain. In 1391, James II of Aragon boarded the bandwagon; backed into a corner by the Roman Catholic Church, he established a law that banned Jews from Spain altogether. Jews were shunned in droves, and the remaining were given an ultimatum to either convert/revert to Catholicism or face immediate death. Yet another wave of gory pogroms ensued across the country, especially in Barcelona.

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  Show Me The Place - Essays

  Hedley Twidle

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  Apocalyptic futures surround us. In films, books and in news feeds, we are subjected to a barrage of end-time possibilities. Award-winning writer Hedley Twidle, in quixotic mood, sets out to snatch utopia from the jaws of dystopia.
  
  Whether embarking on a bizarre quest to find Cecil Rhodes's missing nose (sliced off the bust of the Rhodes Memorial) or cycling the Scottish islands with a couple of squabbling anarchists; whether learning to surf (much too late) in the wild, freezing waters off the Cape Peninsula or navigating the fraught polities of a Buddhist retreat centre, the author explores forgotten utopias, intentional communities and islands of imagination with curiosity, hope and humour.
  
  Ranging from the science fiction of Ursula Le Guin to the 'living laboratory' of Auroville in south India, Show Me the Place investigates the deep human desire to imagine alternatives to what we take as normal or inevitable.

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  The Housemaid’s Revolt

  Marcus Reed

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  The Housemaid’s Revolt reimagines the domestic thriller as a political act. Beneath the surface of servitude and civility, it uncovers a world built on invisible labor, quiet endurance, and the myth of gratitude. The housemaid is no longer a background figure — she becomes a philosopher of survival, observing the architecture of power from inside its walls. Her revolt is not an explosion but an awakening: the decision to stop cleaning up the messes of others, to stop mistaking obedience for goodness. A modern parable of class, gender, and rebellion, this book transforms the symbol of the servant into a mirror of the modern condition — where exploitation wears a smile, and rebellion begins with a refusal to disappear.

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