All righty, so today we're going to talk about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict. In order to discuss that history, we have to go back in time. I don't mean back to like 1948, I don't mean back to the 19th century, I mean like way back in time. The Jewish homeland has always been the dream in Israel. If you were to zoom out and take a look at the Arab world, what you would see is this enormous swath of the globe.

And then you would see like this tiny pinprick about half the size of New Jersey.

And that constitutes modern day Israel.

It's a very, very small plot of land.

So to begin this story, you have to understand that the Jewish history with regard to the land of Israel begins approximately 1,300 B.C.

before the birth of Christ. Okay, and that starts with Joshua

entering the land, right? This is all in the Bible. Moses leaves Egypt somewhere around 1,300 B.C.E.

There are various sort of attempts to date this. And then a little bit later in the century,

Joshua enters the land. He crosses the Jordan River, right? So the Jewish people go through the Red Sea, they end up wandering around in the desert, and then they enter the land of a Canaan via the Jordan River. And then, by about 1,000 BCE, the Kingdom of David is established. King David is established. Jerusalem is the capital, right? This is the first that Jerusalem matters sort of in world history. In fact, to that point, there are actually kind of two cities, Yiru and Shalem, and they kind of became one. That was Jerusalem, that was the capital of Israel, established about 1,000 BCE. You can actually see ruins from this era in the city of David. It's called Iir David. You can see it in Jerusalem right now. They've uncovered a lot of this stuff. It's really pretty cool.

By 957 BCE, remember, still a thousand years before Christ. By 957 BCE, the first temple of Solomon is built. It is built in Jerusalem. Now remember, this is still a good 1,600 years before the rise

of Islam, right? It's going to take a while for us to get to the point where Islam even factors

into the historical picture here. Okay, so the first temple of Solomon is established in 957 BCE.

There's a lot of infighting among the Jews. There's a separation between the kingdom of Judah and the

kingdom of Israel. Those are two separate kingdoms. And you end up with the kingdom of Israel,

which was 10 of the tribes. And then you have the kingdom of Judah, which is the one that was governed by the Davidic line. They're surrounded by a variety of other kingdoms. You have Moab. You have Amon. You have the kingdom of Edom. You have the Philistines. Okay, the Philistines have nothing to do with the Palestinians. The Palestinians, they're a group of Arabs, completely different ethnicity, completely different history. The Philistines were actually a Phoenician seafaring people.

Completely different thing, historic enemy of the Jews. This will come into our story only a little

bit later. Okay, so the first exile that happens to the Jews happens in 722 BCE when the Assyrians

rush in from the north and there's an exile that takes place. Then there's another exile that takes place in 586 BCE. This is the Babylonian exile. The Babylonians come in. They conquer the land, and they destroy the first temple. So understand, when I'm talking about the temples, I'm talking about the temple mount. Okay, so for all of the talk about how this is a very holy site in Islam, this is a holy site in Judaism, a solid 1600 years before Islam even existed.

So the first temple was built on the site of the temple, on the temple mount, which you can walk

around on today. That was built some 1,600 years before the rise of Islam and approximately

by this point 3,000 years before the modern era.

Okay, so the first temple is destroyed 586 BCE. The Jews are exiled. Many of them end up in Babylonia.

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