In Neighboring Faiths, a recently published collection of essays, the historian David Nirenberg explores the relationship among the three religions during the Middle Ages. Alex Novikoff writes in his review:

Medieval Iberia has often been held up as a mirror to our own society, and for quite understandable reasons. For some, this bygone era represents a beacon of interfaith tolerance and cultural exchange of the sort we might learn from today. Convivencia (“living together”) has long been the descriptive term of choice, a word that over the years has achieved a sort of sublime meaninglessness. . . .

For others, medieval Iberia is best seen as a harsh and unrelenting mill that, through the grating and grinding of competing cultures and hostile takeovers, churned out some of the worst templates of religious intolerance: jihad and crusade, forced conversions, torture and inquisition, racial exclusion, wholesale expulsions, and more. . . . Yet other scholars . . . favor a more nuanced middle ground of [simultaneous] conflict and coexistence. . . . In this stimulating and deeply learned collection of essays . . . David Nirenberg reaffirms his mastery as an original and challenging expositor in this third category of historical interpreters.

Many who pick up this book will want to know whether Nirenberg has a special message to a modern audience bathed both in the gruesome stories of religiously inspired violence that flood our daily news feeds and in the seemingly endless discussions of the allegedly “medieval” behavior of modern fundamentalist groups. . . . By the close of the book I could not quite tell whether Nirenberg is pessimistic or optimistic about the future of our neighborly relations. . . . . He gently entreats his readers to draw their own conclusions from the terrain that has been mapped and the issues that have been raised. My own conclusion is one that [the poet] Robert Frost, I suspect, must have known all along: good fences don’t make good neighbors; good neighbors make good neighbors. The fences we build play a more ambiguous role.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.