Genesis 25:18b “Ishmael’s descendants settled over against all his kinsmen.”

Last week, we studied the 9 failed attempts over 75 years to establish a peaceful “Two-State Solution,” where Jews and Palestinians would live peaceably next to each other. This week, we answer Why.

Arab Sheikh Muhammad Al-Muraikhi gave us the answer in his January 2009 speech on Qatar TV: “We do not treat the Jews as our enemies just because they occupied Palestine, or because they occupied a precious part of our Arab and Islamic world. We will treat the Jews as our enemies even if they return Palestine to us, because they are infidels. They reject Allah and His messengers.”

Robert Spencer summarizes this in ‘The Palestinian Delusion’: “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is what no policymaker, no negotiator, no one who has ever been involved with the Middle East ‘peace process’ has ever admitted it to be. It is a religious war.” The foundation of radical Islam – the Quran – makes this clear.

Quran 5:82 instructs Muslims that the Jews are against them: “You will surely find the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers to be the Jews.” Quran 5:51 adds Christians with Jews as never to be taken as friends: “Oh you who have believed, do not take the Jews and Christians as friends. They are friends of one another. Whoever is a friend of them among you, indeed, he is of them.” The radical Islamic world, based on their religious beliefs, is in a religious war against Judaism and Christianity.

But this does not explain the demand for the genocide of Israel (“from the river to the sea”) we are seeing from radical Islam and even in our American universities. How do we understand a call for genocide?

For this, we return to the Quran – the holy book of Islam – and the Hadith – the Islamic records of what Muhammad said and did. We start with Robert Spencer’s explanation of a passage in the Hadith, which Hamas adopted as their charter: “The most notorious anti-Semitic passage in all of the Hadith is the one where Muhammad prophesies that Muslimas will bring about the End Times by killing the Jews wholesale:

‘The last hour will not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.’ Muslims are taught in their holiest books not just to despise and mistrust Jews, but that Muslims are doing a good and virtuous deed if they kill them, a deed that will bring about the consummation of all things and the dawning of eternal justice for mankind.”

Robert Spencer then explains the passage in the Quran that ties with this passage in the Hadith, calling for genocide of Israel: “The principle stumbling block to peace is Quran 2:191: ‘Drive them out from where they drove you out.’ In light of this, destroying Israel is a religious imperative, even an act of worship.”

Understanding radical Islam’s marching orders from their holy books to destroy Isarel, does the Christian’s holy book – the Bible – shed light on how this all started? It certainly does. It starts with Ishmael and Isaac.

Genesis 16:1–16 explains the beginning of the animosity between Jews and Muslims – it goes back to Abraham. The Jews descend from Abraham’s son Isaac. The Arabs descend from Abraham’s son Ishmael. Genesis 21:1–3 says Isaac, not Ishmael, is God’s promised son to inherit Abraham’s blessings.

When Ishmael mocked Isaac (Genesis 21:9), Sarah told Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away into the wilderness to die (Genesis 21:11-21). God, in His grace, saved them. He then says Ishmael will be the father of a great nation (Genesis 21:18) but would be “a wild donkey of a man; his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (Genesis 16:12).

Genesis 25:12-18 details the greatness of Ishmael’s descendants, as his 12 sons become the Arab nation. And then, this week’s verse 18 ties with Genesis 16:12. There will be great animosity between Ishmael’s descendants (Islam) and Isaac’s descendants (Judaism): “He settled over against all his kinsmen.”

Islam says their holy book, the Quran, explains that their Prophet Muhammad descended from Adam through Abraham and then through Ishmael. Christianity and Judaism say their holy books explain the Messiah descended from Adam through Abraham through Issac (Hebrew Old Testament) through King David and from Mary and Joseph (Christian New Testament). This is a spiritual war unfolding before us.
“The Evidence of Faith’s Substance” _ Article #592