"It might seem like madness to claim that a land must be conquered because of a non-existent ethnos misread from a faltering story in an ancient Tale in which cities are taken by babies, wars are decided by wrestling matches and a ruler dies because of a horse prophecy."

People may think religious myths are absurd, secular geopolitics says hold my beer, see Timothy Snyder in Financial Times on foundational myths of state: how Hamlet and his maternal grandfather Rørek are tendered, straightfaced/deadpan, as Putin's justification for bombing Ukraine. Can't make this stuff up, but some medieval monks did apparently.
https://archive.ph/vBxJJ

I know, I know... now do Israel/Palestine.