Whatever Hamas believes, Muslim-Jewish conflict is neither timeless nor inevitable. One piece of evidence of vibrant cultural and intellectual interactions between devotees of these two faiths is an 11th-century astrolabe—a gizmo used for making complex geographic and astronomic calculations that was popular with medieval scientists. Examining this particular astrolabe at a museum in Verona, Italy, the historian Frederica Gigante recently detected Arabic and Hebrew inscriptions. Cambridge University reports:

“This isn’t just an incredibly rare object. It’s a powerful record of scientific exchange between Arabs, Jews, and Christians over hundreds of years,” said Dr. Gigante. “The Verona astrolabe underwent many modifications, additions, and adaptations as it changed hands. At least three separate users felt the need to add translations and corrections to this object, two using Hebrew and one using a Western language.”

The [Arabic] signature inscribed on the astrolabe reads, “for Isḥāq [. . .]/ the work of Yūnus.” This was engraved sometime after the astrolabe was made, probably for a later owner. The two names, Isḥāq and Yūnus (Isaac and Jonah in English), could be Jewish names written in the Arabic script, a detail that suggests that the object was at a certain point circulating within a Jewish community in Spain, where Arabic was the spoken language.

Hebrew inscriptions were added to the astrolabe by more than one hand. . . . Gigante said, “These Hebrew additions and translations suggest that at a certain point, the object left Spain or North Africa and circulated among the Jewish diaspora community in Italy, where Arabic was not understood, and Hebrew was used instead.”

Gigante points out that these translations reflect the recommendations prescribed by the Spanish Jewish polymath Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1167) in the earliest surviving treatise on the astrolabe in the Hebrew language written in 1146 in Verona, exactly where the astrolabe is found today.

While President Trump has begun his term with a flurry of executive orders, their implementation is another matter. David Wurmser surveys the bureaucratic hurdles facing new presidents, and sets forth what he thinks should be the most important concerns for the White House regarding the Middle East:

The cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas may be necessary in order to retrieve whatever live hostages Israel is able to repatriate. Retrieving those hostages has been an Israeli war aim from day one.

But it is a vital American interest . . . to allow Israel to restart the war in Gaza and complete the destruction of Hamas, and also to allow Israel to enforce unilaterally UN Security Council Resolutions 1701 and 1559, which are embedded in the Lebanon cease-fire. If Hamas emerges with a story of victory in any form, not only will Israel face another October 7 soon, and not only will anti-Semitism explode exponentially globally, but cities and towns all over the West will suffer from a newly energized and encouraged global jihadist effort.

After the last hostage Israel can hope to still retrieve has been liberated, Israel will have to finish the war in a way that results in an unambiguous, incontrovertible, complete victory.