Jews Versus Palestinians: WHY?

[AN IMPORTANT HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE CONTENTIONS]

Noah W. Hutchings

N EITHER U.S. PRESIDENTS, Secretaries of States, political heads of Nations, nor 99.9% of the citizenry of the United States (including the media) really understand why Muslim Palestinians blow themselves up in order to kill a few Jews, mostly women and children... In order to fully arrive at the truth behind the [mutual] semi-Palestinian/Jewish genocide, we must go back four thousand years in history.

There once was a man, according to the biblical account, whose name was Abraham. Abraham’s wife was named Sarah. Abraham is also referenced to in many extra-biblical traditions. Sarah bore Abraham a son in old age. The couple named this miracle baby Isaac. Isaac in due course married a girl named Rebekah. Rebekah bore Isaac twin sons. The twins were named Esau and Jacob. Esau was born first, meaning that as the oldest, even only by a few minutes, he would be entitled to two-thirds of his father’s estate and the primary blessing.

It is recorded in two books of the Bible, Malachi and Romans, that even from the mother’s womb, God loved Jacob and hated Esau. The scriptures infer that it was not the innocent state of the unborn that God hated, but what each individual would become, and what their descendants would become. There is no mystery why God would hate Esau, because Esau was a “profane” person. He was a scoundrel. While Esau was busy in his lustful pursuits, Jacob stole both his birthright and blessing.

Esau took one-third of his father’s estate and went to Mt. Seir. In the Mt. Seir mountain complex was Mt. Hor where the Horites (cave dwellers) lived. Esau chased the Horites out of this thirty-two square mile cave city and took over. Mt. Seir (later called Petra by the Greeks), became the capital of Esau’s empire, Edom (Gen. 25:30).

Esau’s twin brother Jacob went northward to Haran where he prospered. When Jacob was spiritually matured to where he could fulfill his father’s blessing, God renamed him Israel (Gen. 32:28). Therefore, the descendants of Esau were the Edomites, and the descendants of Jacob were the Israelites. The Edomites lived in the barren land of rocks and caves. As the owners of the primary blessing, the Israelites lived in the land flowing with milk and honey.

Before the descendants of Jacob came to the Promised Land, they were in bondage in Egypt. When God sent Moses to deliver the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage, they needed to travel through Edom to get to this land that was outlined in the legacy of Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. However, the descendants of Esau, the Edomites, not only refused passage to the Israelites, but came out of Petra with the intention of killing every descendant of Jacob. Where did such hatred come from? Doubtless from traditions handed down from one generation to the next about how Jacob and his descendants, the Israelites, had stolen their rightful birthright and blessing.

GENESIS 25:29-33, NKJV

Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary.

And Esau said to Jacob, "Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary." Therefore his name was called Edom.

But Jacob said, "Sell me your birthright as of this day."

 And Esau said, "Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?"

Then Jacob said, "Swear to me as of this day." So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob.

To the South of Edom was Arabia, where the descendants of Ishmael and his sons had settled and produced a kingdom. After the Nabateans, descendants of Ishmael’s grandson, Naboth, migrated into Edom in the fifth century B.C., Edom was considered North Arabia. To the north of Edom was Moab and Ammon, descendants of Lot through an incestuous relationship with his daughters. To the west of Edom, after Israel settled the land of Canaan, lay isolated Israeli villages from Beersheba to Eilat.

The biblical record depicts the Edomites as a warlike, angry, quarrelsome, deceitful, and treacherous race. The Edomites would sell Israelite and Moabite captives into slavery, and raiding parties from Petra would slip across the Aravah and pillage Israelite villages and kill the inhabitants. King David finally became tired of trying to protect citizens in the south from Edomite raids, so he waged war against Edom and placed garrisons in Edom to keep the peace (1 Chron. 18:13).

Solomon, against God’s warning, married Edomite wives and the garrisons were removed. [But eventually,] Raids by the Edomites into Israel resumed...

In 800 B.C., King Amaziah killed ten thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt (Aravah), at the south end of the Dead Sea, and then took ten thousand captive Edomites back into Petra and threw them off the high cliffs (2 Kings 14:7).

The wars between Edom and Israel continued. In the days of Jehoshaphat the Edomites made an alliance with Moab and Ammon to destroy Jerusalem. The combined forces were marshaled in the Kidron Valley. Seemingly, the chances of Judah’s survival were slim. But the Edomites could not even fight alongside their allies, and the three armies got into a fight and annihilated each other. Jerusalem escaped.

About 600 B.C., the Babylonian Empire expanded east and west. Judah was threatened, and in desperation made a mutual assistance treaty with their hated enemies the Edomites. Instead of coming to Judah’s assistance, the Edomites joined the Babylonians and helped to destroy Jerusalem and the Temple. This act again demonstrated the deceitful and treacherous nature of the Edomites.

 “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the LORD’S song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. REMEMBER, O LORD, THE CHILDREN OF EDOM IN THE DAY OF JERUSALEM; WHO SAID, RASE IT, RASE IT, EVEN TO THE FOUNDATION THEREOF” (Psalm 137:1-7).

It was common practice in those days to racially mix a conquered nation to destroy identity and the will to resist occupation. The well-educated Jews and the best physical specimens were taken to Babylon in captivity. Then the Edomites were moved out of Petra into Judah. The Nabateans, descendants of Ishmael’s grandson Naboth, moved up from the south in Arabia and took over Edom. This was prophesied in Obadiah 19: “And they of the south shall possess the mount of Esau; and they of the plain the Philistines: and they shall possess the fields of Ephraim...”

The Philistines possessed the land of Ephraim in the Assyrian captivity, and the Nabateans from Arabia during the Babylonian captivity possessed Edom, including Petra. The Edomites landed in Judah. After seventy years of Babylonian captivity, a remnant of the Jews were allowed to return to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. The Jewish builders had to work with their armaments by their side to fight the Edomites who were trying to prevent the rebuilding project.

The return of the Jews from Babylonian captivity to rebuild Israel was a long and difficult process. National revival was also complicated by the continual march of armies through the land from Egypt and Syria. Although under the Maccabees, Israel regained some of its former glory, the Romans came into the Middle East and the nation was again under the authority of a foreign government. Josephus recorded the activities of the Edomites (called Idumeans by the Romans) during this period.

The Romans could not place Jews in governmental positions, so they appointed Edomite ...[yes-men] to supervise needed police and civil functions. The Herods were Edomites. When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in A.D. 70, the majority of the Jews were either killed, sold into slavery, or fled to other countries. The Edomites, having nothing to fear from the Romans stayed in the land and became the ancestors of present-day Palestinians.

Josephus recorded in many places, in both of his books, the evil deeds of the Edomites in Israel. In “Wars of the Jews,” Book 4, chapter 5, is just one incident of Edomite madness and cruelty:

“...nor did the Idumeans spare anybody; for as they are naturally a most barbarous and bloody nation... and acted in the same manner as to those that supplicated for their lives as those that fought them, insomuch that they ran through those with their swords who desired them to remember the relation there was between them, and begged of them to have regard to their common temple...the outer temple was overflowed with blood; and that day, as it came on, saw eight thousand five hundred dead bodies there. But the rage of Idumeans was not satisfied by these slaughters; but they now betook themselves to the city (Jerusalem), and plundered every house, and slew everyone they met.”

Josephus said that the Edomites were an exceedingly mad, cruel people with an intense hatred for the Jews. The historian concluded that this hatred, when unleashed, knew no reason or bounds.

It may seem incomparable to the civilized mind that the EDOMITE KING, HEROD, would order all Jewish babies under two years old in Bethlehem and the surrounding area to be killed (Matt. 2:16).

But going back in the history of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO-Jewish confrontations since 1920), we find case after case and incident after incident where Palestinian terrorists have killed Jewish school children purposely [etc., etc.]. It is [even] the contention of the Palestinian Authority, and so taught in Palestinian and Muslim’s schools, that there never was a Jewish Temple on Mt. Moriah!

[It is important to realize that much tension is present with Jews and the Palestinians/Muslims because of their disputatious background. The explanation of this intense hatred is indeed important information. However, one must also realize that Biblically, when the Jews “remembered the Lord their God,” that they were blessed above all of their adversaries; but when they forsook the Lord, they were cursed and in continual turmoil and fighting. Such cursing was manifested after their crucifixion of Jesus when the Romans overthrew Israel as a nation in 70 AD.

Both the Jews and Muslims bring destruction upon themselves because of their unwillingness to submit to Jesus as their Messiah. Israel/the Jews are not blessed above ANY people today, nor will they be, because they rejected their chance to receive their Messiah, as a nation, when Jesus was on earth. However, individually, they may still receive Jesus Christ as their Savior and be blessed. MTW]