This actually for me gets to the crux of why this is such a difficult subject to talk about.
Israel has valid claims to the region.
Palestine has valid claims to the region.
Israel has been attacked, unjustly, by its enemies many times.
Israel has taken and held land, that while illegal, is not inconsistent with how many other “great powers” have taken and won land in 20th century wars, and Israel faces special opprobrium for its actions.
There is an element of Palestinian society that is radicalized and extremist. This means they literally believe all Jews should be killed. Hamas is a radical, violent extremist group. They have a history of deliberately targeting civilians. They have a history of manipulating the media. They have a history of putting civilians in harm’s way specifically to turn the media against Israel.
The Arab world in general has a horrible track record in its treatment of ethnic and religious minorities from the period of the late 19th century to the present day–a consequence of the waves of nationalism that shook the Western and near Eastern world during that time. This includes multiple genocides and mass expulsions of people from ancestral lands. There are at least ten major expulsions, some of which included genocides, that are arguably linked with Arab nationalism. Israel is in some sense properly understood to be an island in a world in which that is the context. The initial attempts by the Arab coalition to invade Israel very much had this mindset in place, it was a war whose end goal was genocide against Jews.
However, a great many Palestinians are young people who have never done anything wrong to anyone, and who do not hate Jews or have special hatred for anyone. These Palestinians are caught in a terrible cycle of poverty and violence from which they cannot escape.
The Palestinian people have a right to statehood and self-determination, and Israel’s ever-expanding settlements, its evictions from East Jerusalem, its harassments and radicalization (leading to mobs of Jews and Arabs fighting in streets of Israeli cities), directly add fuel to the fire that makes people sign up to join Hamas, that helps open people’s minds to the poisonous thoughts of ethnic nationalism and religious radicalism
Israel also has an obligation as a democratic country and the far more powerful country in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the at least try to fix the broader situation. Partially because as the more powerful party, it actually has more options to try and fix it than do the Palestinians.
It should be recognized that Israel has shifting political moods and political parties which control it, and that at times even in Israel’s recent history, there have been good faith attempts at peace offered from the Israeli side–and those have always been rejected. However it should also be noted it would be difficult for any Palestinian negotiator to accept an offer, because Palestine is so dysfunctional no one can really speak for it or negotiate on its behalf.
This is a tragic situation, and I think emotions easily get wrapped up in it. I think we should not stray into holding Israel to an unfair standard compared to its democratic peer countries simply because we want to have a more balanced understanding of the conflict than what is sometimes presented in the U.S. (which mostly has a pro-Israel stance that is rarely closely examined.)
In terms of being unfair, I will say unequivocally, if America had faced a similar amount of rocket attacks from a much weaker neighbor populated with many Muslim extremists over multiple incidents over long stretches of years, we would not be talking about that issue today. We’d be talking about the nature preserve on that land, for they would all but certainly have been wiped off the face of the earth. We killed 7500 Iraqi civilians in the very first month of the 2003 invasion, we need to temper some of our criticism with Israel with a little bit of humility (I also know not everyone here is America, but as a board rooted historically to a Chicago newspaper article, it is predominantly American.)
yeah, I’m sure Israel is blowing up Palestinian civilians for shits and giggles