How Palestinian Muslim and Jewish Israelis Differ?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

   We are people of Shem, one of the 3 sons of Noah.  Ham and Japheth were the other 2 sons.  We are a Semitic people speaking tongues akin to Hebrew.  Egyptians came from Ham.  

Abraham  father of Isaac by Sarah (older lady above) and  Ishmael by Hagar, the younger handmaid of Sarah.  One can see the jealousy looming right away between the sons and the wives.  It's an old story today and it was 4,000 years ago, too.  Abraham and Sarah had left Ur of the Chaldees and migrated to Canaan and pitched their tent among the Canaanite and the Philistine people of Canaan or Eretz Yisrael.  It would not be called "Palestine" until after 135 CE by the Roman conquerors.      

                                                      

                                  Jacob and fraternal twin, Esau

We started off with the same father and mother as the children of Abraham.of Ur of the Chaldees and Sarah, Abraham's niece..  The genealogy shows that Isaac, son of Abraham, had fraternal twins,, Jacob and Esau.  The break came here between these two very different brothers.  Jacob was his mother's favorite while Isaac seemed to favor Esau, the hunter. Jacob plays the main character in the Jewish history, buying his brother Esau's birthright from him for a mess of pottage, getting his father's blessing that really was intended for Esau, 1st born son, , becoming father of 12 sons who were progenitors of the 12 tribes of Israel as Jacob had wrestled a heavenly emissary and had overtaken him, then receiving the special name of Israel.  Supposedly the emissary Jacob had overcome was Esau's  guardian angel.  

Jacob had to flee to Haran and remain there for 20 years before he and Esau got together again as Esau had wanted to kill Jacob. 

 Then later, we see Abraham taking the handmaid of Sarah, who was Hagar, an Egyptian.   who had Ishmael, who became father of the Arab nation.  "The object of the biblical story is to stress the relationship between the Israelites and Ishmaelites and to account for the nomadic nature of the latter."  We see Hagar with son Ishmael antagonizing Sarah within the tent, and Abraham says, "Don't walk by here."

Esau had left the family group and so did Ishmael.  The story of Esau symbolized the relationship between the two nations, developing to the point of hostility.  In the Talmud, Esau was synonymous with villainy and violence.  Esau in late Hebrew literature implies a coarse materialist.  Esau and Jacob bore very close DNA having the same parents, Isaac and Rebecca.  

Ishmael shared his father, Abraham with Jacob who had Abraham as his grandfather.  Isaac and Ishmael were half-brothers.  Ishmael's mother, was the Egyptian, Hagar.  He lived at Paran but joined Isaac in burying Abraham after being separated from him.  Ishmael's daughter married Esau.  Ishmael's descendants were called the Ishmaelites.  They were also divided into 12 tribes (AGen.25:12) who lived in North Arabia between Egypt and the Assyrian border.  The Torah  refers several times to their trade with Egypt. Traditionally, they are the Arab descendants of Ishmael and modern Arabs still claim this descent.   

Circumstances caused the rift between Jacob and Esau and the birthright that went to the oldest son by their tradition.  Right off, Jacob connived and received his father's birthright by duping his brother. That set in motion the rest of their days of non-trust by Esau.  Then, Ishmael, who would be the father of the Arab nation,  only shared half his Y DNA with Jacob having a different mitochondrial (mt)  haplotype of his mother's side, being Hagar.  

What else besides DNA could make them a little different?  

     Jacob's 12 sons that started the 12 Tribes of Jacob-Israel 

One difference was that Jacob's family experienced a dry spell, a drought,  a famine that caused them to migrate to Egypt from Canaan, where they became slaves for 400 years, That does something to the minds of men.  They were freed by Moses, a Prince of Egypt but one of their own as he found his birth parents were slaves.                                  

     Picking the manna from heaven that only lasted so long.  

He took them on a 40 year migration where they were blessed to be supplied, or found in the fields through that period, manna, a special type of toadstool, or plant of sorts, supplied through their prayers.  It had all the super ingredients of space food now supplied to our astronauts on their journeys through space; everything a human would need, protein, all the vitamins, etc.  This kept the Israelites going, though they missed dearly all the great food they had in Egypt. At least the Egyptians had kept their slaves eating well.  No one but the Israelites has ever eaten Manna, manna from heaven.  Is this what makes us Jews having fairly high IQ's? The Exodus group numbered 601,730 at the end of their journey in Canaan being they had 1,820 less than they started with 40 years prior.  They had to fight the Amaleks, people who would not wish them safety on their way or food for the journey as many others had done.  They had killed their old, their young and frail who may have been at the end of the line.                              

One thing that differs is that ever since their creation as Israelites believing in the Mosaic Law, believing in One Unseen G-d that needed no idol, no icon, no statue;  they have been judged as being different from others.  ALL other people on earth were polytheistic, believing in many gods for the many things that frightened or awed them.  Israelites, who would later be called Jews for the one remaining state left, Judah, believed in ONE UNSEEN G-d. Moses (1391-1271 BCE to 632 CE is about 4,000 years ago of believing in ONE G-d.   

Arabs would not join them in this belief until sometime in Mohammad's day, born in (570-632 CE).  Mohammad, born in Mecca, Arabia, was able to hear the Jewish histories from oral readings in Medina that he heard and liked.  He incorporated his Koran from the People of the Book.  He liked the idea of also being a people of a book. His followers would then be called Muslims and his religion, Islam.                 

Today the Palestinians are warring against the Jewish Israelis.  Yet, The closest genetic neighbors to most Jewish groups were the Palestinians, Israeli Bedouins, and Druze in addition to the Southern Europeans, including Cypriots. The genetic clusters formed by each of these non-Jewish Middle Eastern groups reflect their own histories of endogamy.  

I've always read that our closest were the Kurds of Kurdistan, a mountainous region now divided among Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  The 1st Jews went to Kurdistan as early as in the time of Ezra of 5th century BCE. Ezra was a priest (Cohen) of the family of Zadok and was a scribe.   who returned to Jerusalem in 458 BCE from Babylon with returnees.  

Scientists show that Kurdish and Sephardi Jews have indistinguishable paternal genetic heritage, with both being similar to but differing slightly from Ashkenazi Jews (possibly due to low-level European admixture and/or genetic drift during isolation among Ashkenazim).

The Y or male line (haplogroup of our Cohens (descendants of Aaron, brother of Moses of the tribe of Levi) is J1.  That's the most frequent haplogroup found among the Jewish people.  Most also know that they are 1st to read in the synagogue-that they are Cohens, information handed down from father to son.

It's also a very prominent haplogroup among the Arabs as well.  My first Arab friend on facebook, Asher, had a Syrian father but a Pashtun mother (Pashtuns now found to be of our lost 10 tribes of Jacob to the Assyrians in 721 BCE).  He shared his DNA report with me.  

One type of test shows a more detailed pattern by both binary and microsatelite markers,  of Arabs and Jews were similar but not identical, and another type showed a common pool for a large portion of Y chromosomes, suggesting a relatively recent common ancestry.  The 2 most frequent haplotype of Jews (J1)  and the Arabs were closely related.  However, the Arab clade that includes the 2 Arab modal haplotypes and makes up 32% of Arab chromosomes is found at only very low frequency among Jews, showing divergence and/or admixture from other populations.  

It seemed to me that a people from the same genetic makeup, same place on earth, who both profess to believe in One g-d only, should be united, but even in this, they remain different in their expectations and ways, though this is a part of the agreeing.  They have differred so much since their own childhood, their own origin, though the same, too.  Experiences have been so different.  The best step they have taken to unite is the Abrahamic Accords, making peace and working together on projects that will help their people.  May this continue.  

    

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish encyclopedia

http://bioanthropology.huji.ac.il/pdf/Nebel2000.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3543766/#:~:text=The%20closest%20genetic%20neighbors%20to,their%20own%20histories%20of%20endogamy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews#:~:text=the%20authors%20show%20that%20Kurdish,drift%20during%20isolation%20among%20Ashkenazim).

The name given, in Psalms 105:23,17; 106:22 (compare 78:51), to Egypt as a descendant of Ham, son of Noah.