Ancient texts attest that the enmity between the offspring of the two sons of Abraham will always exist. The Pentateuch (Torah) in Genesis 16:12 predicts that Ishmael will always be at odds with the descendants of Abraham’s legitimate son Isaac:

“He (Ishmael) shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”

A number of religious groups take these writings literally even today! To this day, Middle East groups continue to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For some reason last night, I decided to re-watch a very romanticized 1960 film based on the Leon Uris book Exodus. It isn’t historically accurate in many ways, but it was filmed in the Palestine of that era, and, tragically, in 1960, this film was the first time I ever heard about the holocaust or how modern Israel was carved out of Palestine.

When I was a little girl, the wall map in Sunday school was of Palestine. Jesus was from Palestine, not Israel.  Moses led the Hebrew Children to Palestine, not Israelis to Israel

And when I was a little girl, I loved dressing up and going to Sunday school and church every week. I didn’t give much thought to what I was learning there. It was many years later that I realized most of the stories and lessons and parables, were myths and legends.  Some were oral traditions told over generations to help ancient people understand how the world came into being.

And whatever you may or may not believe about Jesus, you can probably believe that he was a very good teacher, one who made up parables to make a point.

It was many more years after that that I realized that there is much truth in myths and legends. 

There’s a story in Genesis 17:8 that God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees to go into the Canaan Valley and claim it for his own. Never mind that it was already inhabited.

A millennium later, when the Hebrew children had been exiled in Egypt for 430 years. God told Moses to lead them “home.”  Never mind that none of those people had ever been to Palestine and they spent 40 years wandering around trying to get there.

According to Exodus 23:20 and following, we read that God promises he will drive out all the people who already live there. 

Is it any wonder that the two peoples who descend from Abraham are at enmity to this day?

I need to be clear here:  Not being a Zionist does not make one anti-Semetic.

A really interesting group of Zionists are American fundamentalist Christians, who seem to have interpreted some verses in Revelation to mean that Jews must return to Israel in order to jump-start the second coming. When I studied Revelation, I learned it was a dream or vision of John the Divine, not to be taken literally, and subject to much varied interpretation.

I find it very hard to understand why, those who believe that the fulfillment of God’s plan is dependent upon the location of a certain group of people.

Nevertheless, this godless enmity in present day Palestine/Israel continues to exist, as it has, since Abram came out of Ur, and became the father of both Isaac and Ishmael.

Abram in Ur: Genesis 17:8