The ethnic and religious conflicts that are taking place across the Middle East prompted me to think about my own family’s ethnic history. The Simpsons are primarily Scottish with a bit of English and Irish tossed in just to make things interesting. The family name is actually derived from the name Fraser whose origins lie in the north of France and apparently meant “strawberry”.

A little bit of Scottish history— The Fraser name came from a 12th century Norman warlord called Simon Fraser who moved into the northeastern part of the country sometime after the Norman invasion of Britain.

As was the custom of the time, many of the local people took on the name of their warlord. The family name of Simpson is an English translation of the Gaelic MacShimi or Son of Simon. The Simpsons were a sub-clan of the Frasers.

Many people are vaguely familiar with Scottish plaid and bagpipes. Pipers in plaid are a common sight in large urban parades and evoke little more than a sense of color and pageantry today. But not long ago, plaids and pipes were associated with terrifying violence and savagery. Shakespeare’s MacBeth was based on a actual battle of succession to the Scottish throne.

For centuries, Scotland was torn apart by bloody tribal conflict, vicious religious persecution and repeated English invasions. The Campbells were the main tribe who allied with the English and their name was cursed for generations. Protestants and Catholic happily massacred each other and both killed people who followed the Neolithic traditions that have come down to us as “witchcraft”. The French allied with various Scottish clans against their ancestral enemies the English.

Then in the 17th century, thousands of Presbyterian Scots were encouraged to settle in Ulster to help pacify the Catholic “Wild Irish” leading to about 400 years worth of ethnic violence and appalling brutality that still lingers. As the British Empire grew, Scottish soldiers marched into places like India and Africa spreading terror wherever they went— all to the skirl of the pipes, originally seen as an instrument of war. There is more than one modern Third World army who marches to the sound of the Scottish pipes, a legacy of the imperial past.

Nowadays, Scotland, while still plagued with a certain level of urban crime, is a mostly peaceful modern European nation where European-style social democracy is accepted and expected by the majority of its inhabitants. Glasgow is not a nice place to visit when the Rangers play the Celtics in football, but on most days it’s just another large city with a moderate violence problem (by American standards).

Perhaps someday, Jerusalem will be the scene of annual football brawls when the Jihadis and the Likudis play, but on other days, just another world-class city with an occasional mugging or domestic dispute.

One hopes that it won’t take several hundred years for that to happen. Perhaps with some intelligent and compassionate help from the rest of the world, the process won’t take quite as long.