According to most experts, both the Hebrew and the Greek alphabets (from which the Latin alphabet was derived) were based on that used by the ancient Phoenicians, who lived in what is now Lebanon. While fragmentary inscriptions in Phoenician have been discovered throughout the Mediterranean, only recently have archaeologists found a substantial trove of complete texts in the Cypriot city of Idalion. Josephine Quinn comments on what’s in them, and what isn’t:

The new documents were found in a fortified palace complex on Idalion’s western acropolis, and they all date to the 4th and 5th centuries [BCE], a period in which Idalion was under the power of the Phoenician-speaking kingdom of Kition to its south. . . . [T]he material preserved at Idalion is almost all administrative—sets of accounts relating to palace bureaucracy and the organization of agriculture. . . . There are also intriguing glimpses of personal life: a fragment of a letter, and some texts about religious and social rituals. . . .

One thing missing at Idalion is literary texts. This may seem surprising, given the rich trove of mythical texts found at Ugarit [a Syrian city whose residents had developed a writing system a few centuries before the Phoenicians], as well as the contemporary example of the Hebrew Bible and the development in Greece in the same period of the great Homeric epics. . . .

One striking characteristic of the literature produced by Israelites and Greeks is that it often celebrates their identity as a group larger than a city-state, participating in joint expeditions and events over long distances—from the Israelite exodus from Egypt, to the Greek army attacking Troy, to the verses that celebrate victories at pan-Hellenic competitions. The Phoenicians, living in separate city-states with no common political or cultural identity, may simply have had no need for such tales.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.