Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the four-day pause in the Gaza War,

after which the killing and destruction could go on for months,

with over 2 million trapped in an increasingly smaller space,

as a war rages around them.

Joining us to assess whether the term genocide applies to the fate of Palestinians trapped in Gaza is Raz Siegel, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, and endowed professor in the study of modern genocide at Stockton University in New Jersey.

We'll discuss his article at the Los Angeles Times. Here's what the mass violence in

Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide. Then following Speaker Mike Johnson's pilgrimage to

Mar-a-Lago, where he kissed the ring of the former president, he wholeheartedly supports,

who he says had, quote, a phenomenal first term.

We will speak with Christian Kobes-Demay, a professor of history at Calvin University,

and the author of a New Gospel for Women.

She is written for the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century,

and Religion and Politics, among other publications.

And the latest book is Jesus and John Wayne,

How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.

Then, as consumers gear up to storm the stores on the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday,

we will speak with an activist who preaches against consumerism and shopping,

William Tallinn, who is known in the earth justice community as the Reverend Billy,

the pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping, a group of activists based in New York City,

whose main tactic is singing while trespassing.

...