Historians look at the period from the birth of Jesus Christ known as the Common Era (C. E) or “In the Year of Our Lord” (Anno Domini — A.

D) to the Muslim conquest and consolidation of the Levant as the most tumultuous for the Hebrew peoples (Jews and Samaritans) of the Holy Land during the last two millennium until their plight was rivalled by the pogroms and Holocaust of the last century. How did the introduction of multiple monotheistic religions into the quagmire that was the multi-ethnic southern Levant shatter the idyllic illusions that the Roman Empire and later the Byzantine Empire had of making this region a regular part of the empire?The author’s masterfully-presented account throws light on why harmony was elusive in the Holy Land in the first millennium AD, and why dissonance prevails there today.

And it inadvertently provides insight into often overlooked components of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict that need to be taken into account for the realization of peace in the Near East, the Muslim World, and the world at large. In “UNBROKEN III: THE HOLY LAND — The Roman and Byzantine Empires, Revolts, and the Ethnic Cleansing of the Jews and the Samaritans”, the author shows how the zero-sum thinking of past hegemons ruined the chance for peace and sowed eternal discord in the Holy Land, and how the mindset has given rise to policies and ideologies that only promise to doom all the sides that see it as the template to use in their conflicts.

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