Quote Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr View Post
Their democratic election isn't relevant here, not so long as they officially state that they want to wipe a country of the face of the earth, then bitch when that same country refuses to let supplies get to them!

As for the bigger picture, it is complicated, far from black and white. As I said earlier, Palestine was a backwater long before either the Zionists or the 'Palestinians' as we call the various Arab economic migrants today arrived. These people in Gaza aren't the original Palestinian people you know, they weren't kicked off their land during the initial creation of the Israeli state. As I said earlier, Palestine was a backwater before the Jews and the Arabs which we call 'Palestianians' today arrived, and both the native Jews/Muslims actually identified as Palestianian.

The idea of Zionists v the purely Muslim Palestinians is a quite modern concept, a hostility which exploded over time and had not been there initially. In many ways it is similar to the situation with Scots settlers in Ireland, people forget how much they integrated with the native population for several decades, and then suddenly ethnic violence came out of nowhere.
Having spent the greater part of the year in reasearching for my thesis, upon the history of Palestine in the modern era, I can say that you are talking complete bollocks. A backwater... right, so try and explain away the ardent romantic nationalism of what may be termed the elite of Palestinian society in the early 20th century and why the felaheen were such ardent supporters of their rights as the inhabiatants of Palestine. Religion, it may surprise you was not such a divisive factor in these early years of what one may term Palestinian identity, many of the leading figures of the movement were not Muslim, or even religious.