Israel isn’t a lily white country and I know even many Israelis have deep regrets about some of the actions their governments have taken toward Palestinians over the years. I think what lots of people, especially in the “intellectual West” struggle with commonly is this idea of equivalency. Israel has done bad stuff, so they are no better than and maybe even worse than their neighbors and the Palestinians, for example. But the reality is a rational analysis of the region would show Israel is a much more positive entity than any of its neighbors and generally behaves much closer to how we want a friend and ally to behave than any of its neighbors.
The international community recognized the right for a Jewish state to exist and Britain drew up the borders, several times since then Israel’s neighbors have attempted to invade Israel to occupy and destroy it, this is fact. Israel has dramatically won every single one of these wars, and has occupied some land that it seized in these wars for years at a time (sometimes in violation of international resolutions), it still occupies some of that land. The reality is most other countries in the world that won a defensive war so overwhelmingly would almost certainly keep land taken from their enemies. If for no other reason it makes them “pay the price” for their aggression. Israel is expected to never do this. When we defeated the Germans in WW2 we cut away a good of their territory, Koenigsberg (now Kaliningrad) had been German for something like 300-400 years but it was decided no more. We also took a lot of German land after WWI. That’s the price of being a belligerent and starting wars–Japan also ceded significant territory it had held for a long time. Places like Korea we didn’t want Japan holding anyway but Japan also lost island to the Russians, again, that’s the price of belligerence.
Israel also conducts its internal affairs much like we do in the West. They have civil rights in Israel, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, a legal system that is not based on religious fundamentalist law. You can’t say that about all of Israels neighbors, some of whom still behead people for witchcraft. Israel is a Jewish state, yes–but there is political freedom for non-Jews. Muslim Arabs who are Israeli citizens have significant rights, are members of the Israeli Knesset and generally are treated in a way fundamentally better than how Jews are treated as a minority in any country in the Middle East.
Israel isn’t perfect and its treatment of Palestinians (distinct from Arab Israelis) is bad, and the Palestinians as mostly stateless, unorganized poor people are far more pawns or casualties of clashes between Israel and its neighbors deserve some degree of sympathy. But they also are simply too violent for Israel to just hug and treat like benevolent friends that should be allowed to organize with even more military capability around Israel’s borders.
