> After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.
I think there is a common belief that Israel was "given" the land beyond the Jordan because they were God's chosen people based on their merits.
Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
The entire bible is a story of the Jewish people losing their land due to moral failings. Repeatedly. From Judges through 2 Kings, Israel repeatedly loses divine protection precisely because of its own wickedness. Being “chosen” meant bearing covenantal responsibility, not enjoying a blank moral check.
Deuteronomy 20:15-18 is more appropriate to the current conflict, as it relates to how the Jews should fight wars in the land of Israel. It commands the utter destruction of the inhabitants of the land, not sparing any that breathe (not just those who “pisseth-on-the-wall”)
Discussions about modern Israel/Palestine are full of shibboleths that reveal where people are drawing their information:
In the Hebrew the word in 20:16 for inheritance is “Nachala”. Worth Googling: Nachala is also the name of a present‑day Israeli settler movement led by Daniella Weiss, whose own literature says it’s “continuing the biblical mandate to settle the land.”
In other words, the same term that the Torah uses for a gift that can be forfeited is now used as branding for a modern political project—illustrating how ancient vocabulary still shapes today’s arguments about the land.
For an example from the Palestinian side: you do not have a full understanding of Hamas if you do not know about the Hadith about the Gharqad tree. Hamas charter writers alluded to this story; many Palestinians learn it young, while most Israelis have never heard of it.
Recognizing these code‑words doesn’t require agreeing with the theology behind them. It simply keeps us from talking past each other—and, one hopes, from letting someone else’s apocalyptic script dictate who lives and dies. I think we all agree that the other-sides’ eschatology is a dumb reason to die.
> “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
When you separate yourself by [insert tribalist rhetoric], it breeds violence
This may sound superficially true, but it is confusing cause and effect. It's more likely to be the other way around: people seeking violence need to separate themselves from their target. That does not automatically mean that every self-classification carries an implication of violence.
For those that don't know the Old Testament/Torah it might be worthwhile to point out that what you refer to as "moral failings" is not the same as what modern people think are "moral failings". Uncleanliness (gay sex, touching menstruating women, eating pork, yadda, yadda) and worshiping other Gods are "moral failings", raping, pillaging, and exterminating enemies most definitely are not.
Yes. The moral failing of Saul (1 Samuel 15) is precisely not following the command to exterminate Amalek, but rather sparing Agag, and taking spoils when he was commanded to kill everything that breathes.
> The entire bible is a story of the Jewish people losing their land due to moral failings.
Plus the general idea that humans in general are morally flawed, sinful, etc. But, "Good news!" If you follow the one true god, that'll all be sorted out. Following the classic marketing strategy of creating a need, and then filling it.
People are being murdered thousands of years later because of the ancient Judea equivalent of 'Harry Potter', and the batshit insane people who still believe it in earnest.
Being dismissive of the Bible is not as cool as you think it is: those who do not study the Bible are doomed to repeat it.
I understand the instinct to treat Bronze‑Age literature like fanciful fiction: engineers are wired to put "myth" in one bucket and "hard data" in another. But for better or worse, the Bible isn't just an ancient novel. It's the source code for a huge fraction of the world's legal systems, ethics, holidays, and political claims, including the one we are discussing. Dismissing it as "Harry Potter" misses the point:
If we're serious about reducing violence, we need to debug the real code people are running in their heads, not the straw‑man version.
Software engineers are notorious for bikeshedding and pointlessly subjective "holy wars." Any belief in higher capacity for reason than their fellow man is sheer hubris.
No, they're being murdered thousands of years later because of the long history of bad blood between the two groups. The religious documents are just a pretext.
> Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
As written by a member of "the least bad people". If you're going to have a historical look at events then, you need to take sources with a grain of salt.
Not much different than 19th century America slavery and Trail of Tears or 16th century Spanish conquistadors. It's ethno-nationalist supremacy by a powerful group believing they are superior to others who are seen as "animals".
> It's ethno-nationalist supremacy by a powerful group believing they are superior to others who are seen as "animals".
And this largely encapsulates the original definition of racism/racialism; it was far more extreme than hating some other race (which has become the modern dictionary definition). Hating Mexicans who (you incorrectly believe) are taking jobs that Americans would have filled is a very different mental state to believing that a group of humans is no better than animals (thereby "justifying" horrific acts like slavery and concentration camps).
> ...is a very different mental state to believing that a group of humans is no better than animals
Is it really? At the very least, the borders between those mental states seem quite blurry.
As soon as one group targets another for hatred, they're essentially saying that the target group is lesser in some way. It's like the first step off the cliff edge - you might still be near the top of the cliff, but now it's just a matter of time.
That point has been proved by the current US president, who has literally said things like, "they're not humans, they're animals," about migrants - that's just one example of a direct quote.
> the current US president, who has literally said things like, "they're not humans, they're animals,"
Oh... wow. I didn't realize it had gone that far. A very poor example in that case. Here's a more crisp example:
The "white man" was, by original (and modern) definition, racist in regards to Africa, we categorically believed that "whites" were better than "blacks" - and that's not only the export of slaves to America. Things were pretty dire even within current human memory, and pockets of racists continue to thrive today (it seemed largely based on age in my experience, all of my friends weren't but many 50+ were).
Contrast that with Malema's "kill the boer" song that I'm sure many international folks have heard[1]. The underlying cause for this is hatred stems from the aforementioned historical and current racism - there is no belief that "we are better" (there is certainly a belief that "we are more deserving of our ancestral land"). Malema couldn't be a racist using the original definition of racism, but definitely is using the modern definition.
Zionism was founded as a secular ethno-nationalist movement and to this day your entitlement to Israeli citizenship depends on your ethnicity, not your religion.
An atheist Jew is just as entitled to live in Israel as an ultra-orthodox one.
One should point out that Palestinian terrorism was originally largely secular too, with the secular Marxist group PFLP ranking up the highest body count.
The point being, this conflict does not need religion. Even if everyone involved became secular tomorrow, Palestinian nationalists and Zionists would still kill each other without needing any god to justify it.
This is somewhat confusing. If there were no religious component, why not declare all Palestinians “Jewish” and resolve the issues immediately?
My understanding is that ethnically Jewish individuals (ie who can trace their matrilineal genealogy to synagogue records in accepted orgs) who have converted to other religions are not entitled to the right of return?
There is no "Biblical narrative." The Bible consists of numerous books written over a vast span of time, evolving cultural and religious contexts, and reflect the often conflicting points of view of their authors, and whatever agenda under which the whole was being edited at the time. There isn't even a single canonical "Christian" Bible - Catholics have one version, Orthodox have another, Protestants have another.
What you're describing is a Christian reinterpretation of the Old Testament employed to justify the argument that Jesus was the Jewish messiah, which is a Biblical narrative, but only one of many, and not one that Jews particularly care about, or that Muslims entirely agree with for that matter.
> After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.
I think there is a common belief that Israel was "given" the land beyond the Jordan because they were God's chosen people based on their merits.
Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
Israel seems wicked to me now.