So whose land is it? The Israelis' or Palestinians'?

There’s a lot more involved than land. Another historic attempt to exterminate Jews is more important than land.

Jewish tradition asserts that “God gave” the land to the Israelis. Palestinians claim they’re the land’s true heirs. Today’s war is the latest battle over the land that has been disputed for as many as four centuries.

Some history. The land was among the first to see human habitation. As civilization progressed, it became a crossroads for traders from three continents.

Mind bending are the number of the land’s claimants, conquerers and nomads: Canaanites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Israelis and Romans. Christians dominated the Holy Land until Muslims showed up with the Rashiduns, Umayyads, Abbasids, Tulunids, Ikhshidids, Fatimids, Seljuks. Also the Ayyubid Sultanate, Mongol Empire, Mamluks, Ottoman Empire and British. It’s overwhelming.

The history of the world is the history of conquest and subjugation, assimilation and migration. In America, before Europeans shoved Indians off their lands, the Indians themselves, like the Algonquins and Iroquois, violently battled over contested territory.

Whether it were the Huns invading Europe, or the Argentinians and British shooting one another over the Falkland Island, it’s been the same all over the world. Jews themselves carved up an Arab nation for their own.

It wasn’t pretty. For example, read “The Bombing of the King David Hotel” and “the role of terrorism in the establishment of Israel.” Arabs, who were in the majority, abandoned or were forced out of their homes and property. They fled to the West Bank, in what is now the Occupied Territory. It’s called that because Israel captured it after Arab armed forces tried to eliminate Israel.

Both sides have plenty to crab about. Israel continues to build permanent towns in territory that is supposed to come under Palestinian control in the “two state solution.” Palestinians repeatedly charge that Israel violates their rights.

But control of land is only part of the story. A smaller part, indeed. Here we go again. Again and again, Jews around the world have faced genocide. They’ve been driven off their land, settling elsewhere, only to be driven off again. Has anyone been as persecuted and expelled from this or that country as the Jews? Don’T Jews have a right to have a “safe place,” no matter where it is? There homeland

Check out how well Jews fared in Spain.

Jews long have felt it a right or an obligation to return to their ancestral lands. After some 6 million were exterminated by Nazi Germany the need for a refuge became urgent. As it is again.

It shouldn’t have to be said: Hamas started the current horrors. To suggest a symmetry between whatever Palestinians have suffered and the jihad that Hamas has unleashed against Israel is preposterous.

But there they go again. From campuses and street demonstrations, the cry goes up that Jews are responsible for this week’s slaughter. I have in mind the University of Virginia where “Students for Justice in Palestine” proclaims that the bloodshed is worth it: “We stand in solidarity with Palestinian resistance fighters and all oppressed people around the world seeking freedom and a better world.” And the 30 Harvard students groups said Israel was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

Is there a course at Harvard called Ignorance and Stupidity101?

Can they really watch videos of children being taken hostages and feel little or nothing? Are they ignorant of reports of beheaded infants? Of men, women and children shot to death in their homes and beds? Do they believe that the end justifies the means—a radically, autocratic, anti-democratic concept?

Here I’m trying to say that black and white don’t adequately explain the deep-seated and centuries-long exercise of hatred and suffering. Can I say it without bringing down the Furies?