What a discontented lot were the Israelites! If it is not the priestly hierarchy that stirs up protests, it is the physical deprivation of which Dathan and Abiram complained in an earlier chapter.

Numbers Chapter 20

Once again Moses and Aaron resorted to magic to overcome the crisis. Moses struck a rock with his staff and water gushed forth. That was insufficient. In the next chapter, once again the Israelites griped about the suffering they underwent during their forced marches.

Once again the protest was overcome with magic and the creation of a copper snake on a stick to cure the people of the poison when they were bitten by venemous real ones. But there is a third, and this time very real rather than abstract fear: the strength of the enemies that ten of the twelve scouts warned about.

The Israelites were not permitted to pass through the land of the Edomites; they retreated to go around them. It was during this time that Aaron expired on Mount Hor to be replaced by his son Eleazar; Miriam had died just before the encounter with the Edomites. Is there any connection between the Israelites avoiding battle when Miriam and Aaron were alive, but engaged in battle after their deaths? The Israelites took on the people of Arad in the Negev, the Amorites and those in Bashan and emerged victorious in all three wars. They destroyed their enemies and two-and-a-half tribes of Israelites occupied the land east of the Jordan River in the western part of what is now Jordan.

The wars are typical in part. They begin with diplomacy and the request to pass through the land with the promise that if the Israelites and their cattle use any water, they will pay for it. Just as the Edomites did, all three kings refused, but the rising tension and confrontation in the cases of Arad, the Amorites and Basham escalated into all-out war. Then the atypical part. Since these peoples were entirely destroyed by the Israelites, there was no need for peacemaking, cease-fire, peace enforcement, peacekeeping and post-conflict reconciliation. The Israelites simply replaced them on their land and in their cities.

In this section, we are dealing with real history. The geographical detail is precise and the historical record is backed up by artifacts, archeological reconstructions of the military forts and the Mesha Stele royal inscription by the King of Moab who described how he recaptured the land. I do not recall the order of the battles – I am sure they can be found in Finkelstein’s book, The Forgotten Kingdom, ​​The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement.

Professor Israel Finkelstein gave me the following map when I interviewed him years ago for Israel Today.

https://thetorah.com/north-israelite-memories-of-the-transjordan-and-the-mesha-inscription/

What is clear is that the Israelite record of its history, though overlapping with the Moabite one, was different. In the Torah, the Moabites were confined to the area south of the Arnon Stream. In the Moabite account, their territory originally stretched up to Nebo and Heshbon giving them a right of first possession after they reconquered the territory from the Israelites.

Much of the battle between modern Israel and the Palestinians is over first possession. But both claims may be true if you trace history back before the Muslim conquest to the 9^th century BCE. Rabbi Dov Stein in the Israeli documentary produced by Nissim Mossek claimed, “that a significant part of the Arabs in the land of Israel are actually descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Islam over the centuries.” As Ariella Oppenheimer wrote in her PhD thesis, both Palestinians and Ashkenazi Jews can trace their origins to the Kurds of Babylon from the territory where Abraham set out on his trek. After all, many Palestinians possess the Cohen chromosome.

Dr. Harry Ostrer, when he was Director of the Human Genetics Program at New York University School of Medicine, authored a study (Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, 9 May 2000) of an international team of researchers that he led and claimed that, “Jews and Arabs are all really children of Abraham…And all have preserved their Middle Eastern genetic roots over 4,000 years.”

If these historical, archeological and genetic claims are valid, then the Israeli-Palestinian war is more of a civil war than a war between states. Before I knew any of this, I recall my own experience years ago when I was invited to be part of a panel at Tulkarem in the West Bank near Nablus. On the panel were two others, the town’s eminent physician, a communist, and the more moderate mayor. The mayor spoke first, the doctor second and I was scheduled to speak third.

I was unable to speak. For the first time in my life, I was totally tongue-tied. The mayor of the town was the spitting image of my late father. Unless you were up close, you would not have been able to tell them apart. Eventually, I did apologize for and explain my inability to speak. I cannot recall their reaction. Perhaps I was too confused at the time.

Does any of this make a difference? It does suggest that the argument over prior possession may be a red herring. It may also suggest a reason why the conflict “between blood brothers” goes so deep and is seemingly so intractable. However, if Israelites and Palestinians can see each other as long- lost cousins now practicing a different religion than either practiced in the 9^th century BCE, does this offer a lever to foster peace while also explaining the deep determination of the Palestinians in the conflict and their deep love for the land?

With the help of Alex Zisman