…Could there be two neighboring peoples on earth so unlike one another as Jews and Arabs, descended from half-brothers, Isaac and Ishmael, same father different mother?

One mother was of the line of Shem like her husband/cousin/uncle relative; the other was the granddaughter of Ham. The former gave birth to Jacob who became Israel; the latter gave birth to Ishmael, expelled from his father’s house because he was such a wild ass of a person and even a potential murderer of his half-brother in his mother Sarah’s eyes — I think.

But the character of Ishmael goes even deeper into human history. He seems to carry the spiritual genes of Cain, the first murderer in history whose crime was fratricide, murdering one’s brother…