Navigating the Complexity of the Middle East Mess. Part 1.

This site is called Complexity Navigator, and with this series of posts, I want to navigate the complexity of what is happening now in the Middle East. Some frame it as an Arab-Israeli or Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but both formulations are too simplistic and incorrect. I call it the Middle East Mess because it is a very accurate depiction of what is happening there. You may be surprised to read in the next posts that Jews and Arabs are on the same side of the conflict along some modalities of the mess. I will explain it step by step.

All political conflicts revolve around identities. Identities make people differentiate between us and them, where we are good, they are bad, so let’s fight them. Hence, I will start by clarifying the identities we often use interchangeably — and sometimes even wrongly. It is important to use them correctly so that we can protect ourselves from blatant propaganda (my favorite is the Palestinian Jesus) and fake information, and establish a constructive geopolitical discourse.

In this post, I want to explain the difference between Semites, Hebrews, Israelites, Jews, Zionists, and Israelis. So, let’s begin.

Noah's sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth by James Tissot c. 1900. Shem is on the far right with stereotypically Asian features. Source: Wikipedia.

The first concept is Semites. Semites are basically descendants of the Biblical Shem — the son of Noah. Hebrews, Assyrians, Babylonians, and later Arabs belong to this group. While anti-Semitism is usually associated with Jew-hatred, technically, it is not correct. An anti-Semitic Arab would be self-hating. Btw, Semites are different from Canaanites, who are descendants of Noah’s grandson Canaan, the son of Ham. So, the most indigenous population of the land of Israel (or "Canaan," as it was called 4000 years ago), according to the biblical record, are not Jews or Arabs, but the Canaanites.

Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, Bible illustration from 1897. Source: Wikipedia.

The next concept is Hebrews. Hebrews come from the ancient word ʿIvri (עִבְרִי) in Hebrew, meaning "to cross over"or "to pass through." This refers to the Biblical patriarch Abraham, who "crossed over" the Euphrates River from Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq) into Canaan (today’s Land of Israel). And no, he didn’t come to colonize and oppress indigenous Palestinians — because Columbia students who came to this brilliant idea will be born 4000 years later. With Hebrews being descendants of Abraham, they are a broader identity that includes not only Israelites (see the next paragraph), but also other tribes and nations that populated Canaan 2000–4000 years ago, such as the Ishmaelites and Edomites. Ishmaelites are descendants of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, by Hagar, who was an Egyptian maidservant of Abraham’s wife Sarah. Please, don’t be jealous about Abraham — back then, the old guy could afford an extended family. Ishmael had 12 sons who migrated to the Arabian Peninsula, becoming ancestors of today’s Arabs. Oh no! Arabs are not indigenous people of the Arabian Peninsula! Where are the protests? Columbia University, wake up! And there are the Edomites — descendants of Esau, Jacob’s (Israel’s) brother, who migrated to the areas of today’s Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Please, read this sentence aloud: Israelites and Arabs are both Hebrews and share the same ancestry. Have you seen that coming?

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Eugène Delacroix

Israelites are descendants of Abraham’s grandson Jacob. After Jacob fought some divine creature — presumably an angel — he got himself named Israel (Yisra’el — "He who struggles with God"). Jacob (Israel), with his 12 sons (why did everyone have 12 sons in the Middle East?), formed a large tribe — the Israelites — in Canaan. They were just one of dozens of tribes living there, and they migrated to Egypt around 1800–1700 BCE during a famine in Canaan, and because one of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, was the second most powerful person after Pharaoh in Egypt back then. Another of Jacob’s sons — Juda(h) — is the name-giver of Judea, the region around Jerusalem, and of Judaism and Jews. But this will happen later.

Short recap: At this point in history, 1700 BCE, there is no Jewish identity, no Arab identity, no Israel, no Palestine. There is no Judaism, no Christianity, no Islam. There is just a territory called Canaan, and multiple tribes live there — one of them being the Israelites, who left for Egypt, whose pyramids were already almost a thousand years old. Romans do not exist yet either, and there is no shared Greek identity. A more or less proper civilization exists only in Egypt, Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), and small parts of today's China. Everywhere else, there are primarily tribes of nomadic hunters and gatherers with distinct tribal identities, languages, and religions. And somehow, Stonehenge has already been there — for more than a thousand years.

Someone built this long before Abraham traveled to Canaan

Now, exciting things start to happen. Moses leads the Israelites back to Canaan around 1200–1500 BCE (we don’t have exact data). On their way back, they make a covenant with God. God promises the Israelites the land of Canaan and divine support to re-conquer it. Yes, re-conquer — because by this stage, they had left, and other tribes were living there. Canaanites are cursed anyway by Noah, because Ham, the father of Canaan, saw Noah drunk and naked and didn’t cover him with a blanket a thousand years ago. So, there is a totally legitimate casus belli to expel all ancestry of Canaan from their land. In return for God’s support, the Israelites commit to following the 613 commandments of the Torah (the part of the Bible that was written by God). Ten of them are very famous, but they are rather management’s summary.

The only sure thing is that Roman numerals were not used in the Covenant between God and the Israelites because Romans didn't exist yet.

I believe the covenant was a political trick played by Moses to unite 12 tribes into one nation and convince this nation to go somewhere and fight someone. God forgive me for my words. Anyway, the Israelites got united, they went somewhere, and they fought someone.

The Israelites conquer Canaan with some ups and downs and emerge as a nation — around their established religion, their Hebrew language, and their ethnicity as descendants of Jacob (Israel). Now, it is not Canaan anymore, but the Land of Israel (not the Kingdom or State of Israel yet), split into 12 parts for the descendants of the 12 sons of Jacob (Israel). However, they don’t identify as Jews yet, and they don’t call their religion Judaism yet.

Around 1000 BCE, a Kingdom of Israel emerged that united all 12 tribes into one state, led by ancient superstars King David and his son King Solomon. This is a remarkable historical fact: Israel is the only country in the world that has the same name, the same religion, and the same language as it did 3000 years ago.

David successfully fought the Hellenic (Greek) sea people called the Philistines. The Philistines raided Israelite villages, looted them, and killed people. Even though they lived around Gaza (which is 5000 years old and is older than Jerusalem, the Israelites, and the Philistines), they had nothing to do with modern-day Palestinians — except similarly sounding names. They had a different ethnic origin, a different language, and a different religion.

Later on, the Kingdom of Israel was split due to civil war into the southern kingdom — Judea (Jew-dea), mainly populated by the tribe of Judah — and the northern kingdom that was still called Israel (and sometimes "Samaria").

Judah/Judea and Israel 830 BCE. See also Edom - Edomites are Hebrews but not Israelites. Source: Wikipedia

Around 720 BCE, the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians — not to be confused with modern-day Syrians. 10 out of 12 tribes of Israel were displaced or forcibly assimilated into the Assyrian empire. Part of the Israelites moved to Judea, now being the only Kingdom hosting people who identified themselves as Israelites. This was the moment when Israelites gradually started to identify themselves as Judeans (or, shortly, Jews) and when their religion began to be called Judaism. They surely didn’t call their religion “Judaism” themselves — because, first of all, they didn’t recognize other gods, meaning other peoples simply didn’t have any religion at all. On the other side, Judaism was much more than a religion — it was also law, culture, and even a nutrition and disease-prevention protocol.

Short recap: Where are the Palestinians? Please, keep waiting — we’ll get there in a couple thousand years.

Now, let’s skip a short trip of Jews to Babylon and back in the 6th century BCE, and fast-forward to 135 CE. Rabbi Yehoshua (also known as Jesus) has been dead for about one hundred years. Judea is occupied and is a province of the Roman Empire — bad times. Jews tried a revolt, and they hit the Romans hard, but they failed. As retaliation, the Romans massacred 500,000 Jews and banned them from living in Jerusalem. The Roman emperor Hadrian decides to erase any association between Judeans (Jews) and their land, so he renames Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina and Judea to... Syria Palestina, randomly borrowing the name from another non-existing empire (Assyria) and Aegean(Hellenic) pirates (Philistines) who lived a thousand years earlier somewhere along the coast 80 km away from Jerusalem. Just imagine how ridiculous it would be if, two thousand years later, someone reused this random Hellenic name that Roman colonizers gave to Judea — for an ethnicity linked to Egypt, speaking a language from the Arabian Peninsula, and having an Islamic religion. Oh no, what if someone in the West believed that this makes sense and started chanting “Free Palestine!”?

The second Judean temple in Jerusalem destroyed by the Romans.

Long story short, after the Roman renaming and expulsion, thousands of Jews left Judea for other countries. Still, many stayed and lived under the rule of foreign invaders — Romans, Byzantines, and many others — for almost two thousand years.

Now, fast forward to the 19th century and Zionism. Don’t worry — I didn’t skip the Islamization and Arabization of the Middle East. I’ll come to it in the next post. In the 19th century, thousands — millions — of Jews were scattered across the globe. Everywhere, they were persecuted and marginalized. From time to time, there were pogroms and ethnic cleansing of Jews. The unspoken law of human history is: in any uncertain situation, persecute Jews. So, Jews came to an obvious idea — that it would be good to have their own country. Germans can live in Germany, French in France, so it made total sense to them that Jews could live in Jew-dea (Judea), where they could avoid pogroms and persecution and would be able to defend themselves. So, Zionists are not white oppressors and colonizers pursuing ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians, but simply people who believe in the idea that Jews deserve to have their own state, preferably located in the historical Land of Israel.

First Zionist Congress in Basel, 1897. Source: Wikipedia.

Now, we come to our last identity of this post — Israelis. Israelis, unlike Israelites, are simply citizens of the state of Israel. Some of them are Jews, some are Arabs, Druze, Greeks, Armenians, Samaritans, and hundreds of other ethnicities. They speak dozens of languages and are free to follow their religions. Roads and many other signs in Israel are written in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The Israeli Parliament includes 10 Arab members (how many Jews does the Palestinian Legislative Council include?). So, the Israeli identity is not only bound to Jews.

Nevertheless, Jews are the ethnic majority of Israel and are the major contributors to Israeli policy and culture. The current Israeli government is very far right-leaning, which endangers the cosmopolitan coexistence of many ethnicities under the umbrella of the State of Israel. For me, this is a very worrisome trend.

Now, let's conclude. According to the biblical record, Arabs and Jews are both Hebrews with a common ancestor, Abraham, originating from modern-day Iraq. Hebrews are not the oldest known inhabitants of the land of Israel. Canaanite do. However, Canaan's father didn’t cover his drunken father with a blanket, which eventually led to the expulsion of the Canaanites a couple of thousand years later. Arab emergence on the Arabian peninsula also has a migratory origin from Canaan. Palestine is a Roman name given to Judea, based on the Sea People of Aegean origin who lived a thousand years before the Romans and never lived in Judea. No wonder there is a mess today.

There is no nation and no identity that has proven to be morally absolutely pure throughout its history. There is no nation and no identity that has belonged to a specific region of the world since the beginning of time and has a divine right to kill everyone else in what they consider to be their historic homeland. All identities are virtual, as they don't exist in the physical world. However, while some identities are intrinsically forged through thousands of years of history, others are extrinsically created through propaganda within a decade to mobilize innocent people for war and to generate profit from their victimhood. That's why it is essential to clarify the history of identities to navigate the complexity of modern geopolitical messes.

I hope this post helps you understand the difference between Semites, Hebrews, Israelites, Jews, Zionists, and Israelis. In the next post, I will go from the emergence of Arab identity starting in the 7th century to the establishment of the PLO in the 1960s. Stay tuned...