DEUT361 Israel's hold on the land, however, was, from the very first promise to Abram, dependent on obeying God's will. Thus, as the Bible and Rabbis present it, it was Israel’s failure to obey God that prompted God to allow other nations (Assyria, Babylonia, Rome) to conquer Israel and drive them from the land. Part of the promise of the Land of Israel, then, is a war to reclaim the land from Israel’s oppressors. Although the universalists among us--and even those who believe in Jewish nationhood, but currently live in harmony and even friendship with non-Jewish neighbors--may flinch at the triumphalism of the biblical and rabbinic passages that promise such victory, the twentieth-century experience of Jews with the Soviets and the Nazis may make these sources more understandable and even palatable. The strife is sometimes symbolized by the term “the wars of Gog and Magog,” a theme taken from chapter 38 in the Book of Ezekiel but reinterpreted to mean the wars against the enemies of Israel and/or the wars of the enemies of Israel against each other.