Abraham's Tears

¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ - Abraham’s Tears -¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ is the story about a Palestinian/Muslim family living near Detroit, an Israeli/Jewish family living near LA, an Australian/Christian and German/Atheist-Bahai families who, without knowing each other, independently arrive in the same place in Jerusalem, at the same time and experience the same horrific event. The survivors follow Mohandas Gandhi advice, An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind and seek to work to live together in peace rather than seek retaliation or retribution. Jamil Mansour and Jacob Goodman each learn something about their heritage which causes them to reassess exactly what religion is to them. Because of a biology/genetics college course Jamil who grew up believing he was a Shiite learns he was actually born a Sunni which he hated and repeatedly badmouthed. Jacob, who had been Bar Mitzvah and was now serving in the IDF, needed to have his blood tested to see if was a suitable bone marrow donor because his sister had aplastic anemia and learns he was “adopted.” He had been born to an Arab Muslim family! While the conventional wisdom that the Middle East conflict is either due to the ethnicity differences between Israelis and Palestinians or religious differences between Jews and Muslims, or both, a reasoned argument is set forth that Middle East conflict is neither an issue of ethnicity nor of religion but rather a matter that one party has something that they both want.