For starters, the title doesn’t say Understanding the Israeli-Hamas War because the entire issue goes way beyond this one episode of what is essentially a long-term religious war over a tiny sliver of land. This is part 1 of a two part article to hopefully explain what’s really going on there.
From Abraham to Exodus
To really understand what’s going on, you need to start somewhere around 3,500 years ago when, according to Jewish lore, Abraham became the first monotheist by making a covenant with God. As part of making that covenant, God promised that a great nation would arise from Abraham’s descendants. What’s significant, however, is that Abraham had two children, Isaac and Ishmael, which ended up having unexpected consequences.
The story continues from the Jewish side with eleven of Abraham’s great grandsons selling their brother, Joseph, into slavery to a caravan of traders. Joseph was then taken to Egypt where he was thrown into jail, but then rose from there to great prominence by interpreting Pharoah’s dreams that a great famine was coming and developing a plan to save Egypt by stockpiling grain. Ironically, that famine caused his brothers to migrate down to Egypt where they were reunited with Joseph, who forgave them and treated them kindly. This became the start of a Jewish enclave in Egypt that grew very strong in the Goshen area and caused a serious threat to Egypt’s leaders, who enslaved the Jewish population.
The story continues with God hearing their prayers and sending a liberator, Moses, to let God’s people go. We all know the rest, which is told in the Exodus chapter of the Old Testament. Moses led them out of Egypt after a series of plagues ending with the killing of the first born sons of all Egyptians and, finally, the slaughter of Egypt’s army in the waters of the Sea of Reeds, aka the Red Sea. After escaping from Egypt, the Jews were organized into 12 separate tribes, and ended up wandering in the desert for 40 years until finally, they crossed the Jordan river into the land of Milk and Honey promised to them by God. Moses appointed Joshua to lead them into the promised land.
This led to the establishment of two separate areas within the land: Judah and Israel. Judah incorporated primarily the area surrounding Jerusalem and was inhabited by the tribe of Judah, while 10 other tribes inhabited the rest of Israel. The final tribe, the Levites, were the priests, who lived in both areas. The Levite group living in Israel descended from Moses , while the Levites living in Judah descended from Moses’s brother Aaron. The tribes were united by Israel’s first king, Saul, which led to the establishment of a series of Kings, including the famous King David. These kings ruled Israel and Judah for close to 500 years.
Establishing Fact From Fiction
To understand what’s going on today, it’s Important to separate fact from fiction, or at least non-established fact. The entire story from Abraham through Joshua conquering the land promised by God is essentially oral history that has some archaeological evidence, but nothing conclusive. However, the era of Kings is reasonably well-established with considerable evidence. In short, today’s Jews have substantial history backing up their claim to historically living in Israel.
But here’s where the facts get in the way. The Jewish nation failed to keep control of the land. In 721 BC the Assyrians conquered Israel followed by the Babylonians conquering Judah inn 587 BC, destroying the Temple that was the center of Jewish life, and taking thousands of Jews to Babylon as slaves. In 538 BC, however, the Persians under Cyrus conquered the Babylonians, and a contingent of Jews were allowed to return to Israel to reestablish rulership of the land as a vassal state. When the Jews returned, they rebuilt the Temple.
The Greeks in 449 BC, after almost 50 years of war, conquered the Persian empire, and Israel became a vassal state under Greek control, which included a translation of what had emerged as today’s written version the Old Testament. After close to 400 years of ruling the Holy Land, the Greeks were defeated in 63 BC by he Romans, who allowed the Jews to exert religious control over the land, but had a difficult time controlling its vassal state. After a Jewish revolt over Roman taxes in 70 AD, the Romans overcame the revolt and destroyed the Temple again. The Jews were then expelled from Israel, although enclaves managed to remain in areas that were hard for the Romans to control. Nevertheless, the Jews lost control of the Holy Land until 1948 when the United Nations partitioned the land into Israel and Palestine.
The bottom line to all this is that the Jews have a verified and strong claim to have lived in Israel for more than 1,000 years before the birth of Christianity. But then they lost their land and were essentially scattered to the winds with populations evolving throughout Europe and Russia as well as in parts of Africa.
Ishmael’s Story
Ishmael’s story isn’t quite as dramatic, but it’s nevertheless important. According to Muslim lore, Ismael’s mother, Hagar, migrated to what is Saudi Arabia today to the then outpost of Mecca, which was a small trading community. With her son Ishmael, they created the Kabah, which is today the most sacred shrine in Islam. According to that lore, Abraham even visited them in Mecca and participated in creating the Kabah. In short, Islamic lore credits Abraham and Ishmael with being the start of its great world, while Judaism credits Abraham and Isaac with the same.
Islam also has a second connection with the Holy Land. Its prophet Muhammad reportedly descended to heaven at the very spot where Abraham was said to have been asked by God to sacrifice his son. in Judaism, that son was Isaac, while Islam has conflicting traditions. In one tradition, it was Isaac, while in another the son was Ishmael.
Again the Facts Get in the Way
The simple truth is that there’s no actual evidence that the sacrifice story even happened other than oral traditions, but there are considerable facts about control of the Holy Land. The Jews had absolute control for about 500 years, and then had control as a vassal state of larger nations for another 500 years or so. Islamic nations had control of the Holy Land for a bit longer from maybe 700 AD or so until the mid-1900s, with a short interlude of Christian control during the Crusades. In short, both Islam and Judaism have arguments that they’re entitled to the Holy Land by historic traditions, which is critical to understanding what’s happening in Israel today.
Might Makes Right
There’s one other factor that is critical to understanding Israel today. Both sides’ arguments about having a historical connection to the land of Israel are absolutely irrelevant. Let that sink in. Humankind has its own traditions dating back countless thousands of years to well before written history. In fact, we don’t even know how far back those traditions go. They may be older than a million years in our evolutionary history. Those traditions are that 1) nobody owns the land and 2) might makes right.
In short, the wandering tribes of hunter-gatherers weren’t stationary. They wandered to areas where it was nice to live, but they had to be strong enough to defend the places that they found. There were no courts of law or the concept of ownership with proper claims. These traditions have been ingrained in our psyches, which led to the development of great nations that embarked on efforts to keep on capturing land and the wealth that comes with it.
We can see this in the Holy Land as control morphed from the Canaanites to the Jews to the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Greeks to the Romans to the various Islamic nations and, finally, to the British Empire who passed control to the United Nations that essentially split the baby in half, giving one-half to the Jews and the other to the Arabs.
The Arabs, of course, never accepted that the United Nations had such authority, and they immediately declared war on Israel and the Jews. We know, of course, that the Jews won and over the last 76 years have created what amounts to a modern miracle, including one of the world’s strongest and toughest armies.
Several Arab Countries Still Don’t Respect the UN’s Authority
To understand Israel, it’s still important to understand that Islamic sources in several Arab countries fighting against Israel still do not respect the UN’s authority, but they do understand that they have numerical and financial superiority versus Israel, so they use that to their political advantage. To put it another way, while Israel has the far stronger army, the Islamic forces have the far more adept political clout. This is especially true today because of the emergence of Islamic immigration to both Europe and the United States.
Hamas basically takes billions from Iran along with big chunks of the humanitarian aid from the U.N., and builds miles of underground tunnels to serve its war efforts. When the Israelis come after them, Hamas hides behind supposed civilians, may of whom support Hamas and its actions, although an increasing number are angry at Hamas because of the harm they have caused with their slaughter of Israelis on October 7. Regardless of whether Gazans support Hamas or not, the Islamic sources fighting Israel then cry about protecting the civilians in order to get the U.N. and the United States to pressure Israel for a cease fire that leaves Hamas in control, so they can rebuild and do it again.
The Trump Peace Plan Enters the Equation
Hamas’ October 7 massacre and hostage taking, it turns out, altered the equation by so enraging Israel while damaging Hamas’ credibility that the U.N. couldn’t put enough pressure on Israel to stop its efforts to eradicate Hamas. In fact, Israel’s IDF was on the verge of finishing off Hamas, except its supporter Qatar stepped in and brokered a peace deal based on Trump’s 20-point peace plan. The key was that Hamas would agree to return all the hostages, give up power and disarm, while its tunnel network would be destroyed.
Of course, Trump was being snookered from the very beginning. You don’t have to be much of a genius to figure out that Qatar’s plan was never to have Hamas eliminated from the equation. It was just the opposite. Qatar’s plan was for Hamas to consolidate its power and remain behind the scenes in Gaza while an international organization had political control, and would serve as a buffer between Hamas and Israel. In that way, Hamas could quietly rebuilt its military arm and at some point in the future attack Israel again.
This time, however, the international organization would be between the IDF and Hamas, which would make it extremely difficult for Israel to launch a full scale attack. This would be especially true if U.S. and international investors had also sunk billions into creating a tourist mecca on a big slice of Gaza’s seashore. In short, Trump’s peace plan has replaced the hostages as a buffer between Israel launching a direct attack on Hamas.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line to understanding Israel is to forget the international legalities. The Islamic countries opposed to Israel’s existence certainly don’t respect them, and only use the U.N. to pressure Israel. This is a religious war being fought on multiple fronts, although both sides understand that the only real issue in the end is who can win the physical war. In part 2, we’ll explore what is likely to come next, especially because since the repercussions of Israel’s stunning military victory over Hamas and Hezbollah, along with the attack with the U.S. on Iran’s nuclear weapons development capabilities have led to perilous times in the entire effort to destroy Israel.