<deep sigh>

I've read like eight books(edit: I wrote this, then wrote what follows - the actual number is over 20). Israel is kind of the distillation of conflict and hegemony going back to the Crusades. As such, you kind of need to form your own opinion. I can give you my mileposts; you may or may not come to the same conclusions.

1) The Jews are kicked out of Palestine by the Babylonians in the Diaspora (A)

2) A return to Israel becomes ingrained in the basic prayers of the Jews (A)(B)

3) Landless, the Jews wander afield. Many end up in Europe, where they are treated like outcasts and forbidden from working the land, thereby shoving them into occupations like tailoring and moneylending (A)(C)

4) The Crusades expose Europeans to the current occupants and conflicts of Palestine, restructuring religious and cultural comprehension of Europeans as "our Jews" and the Moors as "their Jews" (A)

5) Persecution of Jews continues in Continental Europe with the expulsion of the Moors and persecution of the Sephards in Spain, driving more Jews to England (A)

6) England, eager to legitimize Anglicanism, embraces the Old Testament and all things Jewish (except Jews, who still can't own land) as a refutation of all things Catholic, leading to the Puritan tradition of naming white kids after biblical Jews (A).

7) The Enlightenment and Renaissance re-align Europe along the concept of boundaries and nationalism rather than city-states and tribalism, further alienating and disenfranchising the Jews (D)

8) English purges drive the Puritans to the United States, where "jewishness" as a biblical conceit remains worshipped but actual Jews remain reviled (A)

9) As colonization and empire flourish, so does materialism and territorialism thereby raising the hate levels against Jews, culminating in the Dreyfus Affair, in which a French army captain is tried for treason essentially for being Jewish (A)(B)(C)(D)

10) The Dreyfus Affair prompts another diaspora of European Jews to England, where Theodore Herzl and others come up Zionism not as an approach to trample the rights of Palestinians, but as a way to keep from going extinct in the face of 2000 years of persecution and extermination (A)(B)(D)

11) The outbreak of WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire ("The sick man of Europe") leads to a global reapportionment of territory in which the Middle East is carved up willy-nilly for Western empires, particularly France and England (D)(E)

12) Sensing an in, Theodore Hertzl petitions Lord Balfour for a chunk of land to move all the Jews to so they don't get exterminated by French, Russian, German, Spanish and English pogroms. Balfour offers Uganda. Hertzl says "yay" everyone else says "Uganda?" (A)(D)(E)

13) Baron Rothschild (AKA the richest, Jewishest rich Jew in the history of rich Jews) appeals to Balfour for Palestine, rather than Uganda, and the British Empire essentially signs a letter of intent saying "We don't have a particular problem with that, but we're not going to support it, really, you're on your own, fuckers." Europe and the European Middle East collectively LOSE THEIR SHIT (A)(B)(C)(D)(E)(F)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration#mediaviewer/File:Balfour_portrait_and_declaration.JPG

14) With a little bit of money and not a lot of support, a hard-core Zionists buy up a couple hundred acres in Jaffa that will become Tel Aviv. The Arabs, who never got the "territory not tribe" memo (D) say "fuck this noise" and begin terrorism and warfare with material support from the French (E)(F)

(non-sequitor about Jewish persecution in Tsarist Russia goes here - this is how my great grandfather Mordechai went from being a jeweler in Moscow to being a greengrocer in Manhattan)

15) The world spirals into a nasty depression wherein everyone loses all their money. The Germans, loath to blame their misfortunes on their war of aggression against Belgium and France, blame it on war reparations they never actually paid and on those filthy Jews, who have always been handy, and who are hated by the Spanish, French, Italians and the entirety of the former Hapsburg Empire (your 6th grade history teacher)

16) BAD THINGS HAPPEN brought to you by The History channel

17) The United States, noticing that Europe has twice driven the world to war over old grudges and recognizing that oil is the future, proceeds to ass England out of Saudi Arabia for ever in exchange for all the oil they can drink, all the guns they can sell, and a "don't ask, don't tell" policy towards those filthy Jews across the peninsula (C)(F)(G)(H)

17) Hitler's Bunker etc V-E Day and kissing in the streets. Meanwhile, France is in ruins, Belgium is in ruins, Germany is in ruins, Poland is in ruins, Italy is in ruins, England is broke as fuck and the United States is ascendant. All of the countries listed aside from the United States enact policies and procedures that essentially say "we don't care that this was your house, we don't care that this was your job, we don't care that your family was gassed at Dachau this is ours now and you should fuck off, you filthy Jew" (C - Seriously - the entire last chapter of C is a solid, documented, footnoted argument that while the Germans were the ones that actually carried out the Holocaust most every country in Europe was thinking about it, was aligned with its principles, and was pretty damn happy to have those filthy Jews gone).

18) Tel Aviv is now one hope in a blasted hellscape of holocaust survivalism and a Europe that just doesn't give a fuck about the Jews. Everybody bolts for "Israel." The British hate this because, completely assed out of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Palestine are all they have for oil that they desperately need. (B)(C)(D)(F)

19) Now at odds over how to run the world, England sidles up to Iran, France sidles up to Egypt and the United States sidles up to Saudi Arabia. Not surprisingly, half of the intelligence apparatus of Europe ends up in Israel. (C)(H)(I)

20) Irate over the rapacious contracts enjoyed by the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AOIC, aka BP), Mohammed Mossadegh is swept to power. England, thoroughly assed out of oil, attempts to overthrow Mossadegh and enlists US help. The US somehow manages to fuck up in such a way that the English coup attempt fails but another all-American attempt a week later succeeds, thereby installing Mohammed Zair Shah, an American puppet, in the Peacock throne. US interests now control Saudi Arabian and Iranian crude 100%, thereby converting England to a vassal state of the United States (C)(G)(H)(I)(J)

21) Gamal Abdel Nasser decides to dam the Aswan in Egypt. England and the US offer to help. Nasser decides Non-Alignment is the way to go and gets Soviet aid as well. England and the US withdraw in a huff. Nasser nationalizes the dam, thereby evaporating large swaths of European investment. England and France enlist Israeli intelligence to help them invade Egypt. The United States, not consulted on the adventure and knee-deep in a proxy war with the Soviet Union in Korea, pins all three country's ears back but especially Israel. Israel gains material support from the United States and intelligence exchanges. (C)(I)

22) (SPECULATION AHEAD) The United States, just to put Israel in its place, mentions nothing about the massed troops plainly visible via satellite reconaissance that led to the Yom Kippur War. Israel faces an existential crisis and gains land; the Arab world is humiliated, and the only remaining power in the Middle East that isn't on the US payroll is pushed back. (B)

23) Israel becomes even more of a rallying point/thorn in the side of Middle East countries. Nasser is assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the great-grandfather of Al Qaeda, the PLO, Hamas and every other faction in the Middle East. Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian, re-invents himself as "Palestinian" to put a human face on the Arab-Israeli conflict. (B)(D)

24) Stansfield Turner, DCI, responds to Watergate revelations by conducting the Halloween Massacre at the CIA, whereby the agency essentially purged its abilties of HUMINT (HUMan INTelligence) in favor of ELINT (ELectronic INTelligence) and IMINT (IMaging INTelligence). As part of this process, the United States loses the ability to predict the fall of the Shah and rise of the Ayatollah, thereby turning over the 2nd-largest military and arsenal over to Islamic extremists with a real axe to grind against the US. (G)(H)(I)(K)(L)(M)(N)(O)

25) Iran, fully recognizing that the CIA is effectively its only oppositional power in the Middle East, begins a Soviet-style proxy battle against the CIA and, therefore Israel, its paid-in-full puppet and the most obvious thorn in the side of Islam via Hamas and Hezbollah. IT'S SUPER-EFFECTIVE. Their greatest success, aside from the Marine barracks bombings and utter chaos enjoyed by the Middle East at large, is kidnapping and murdering William Francis Buckley, the legit CIA station chief for, like, The Middle East. (I)(L)(M)(N)(O)

26) The CIA begins a perpetual hard-on for anything related to annihilation of the regime in Iran. This includes arming and encouraging Iraq in a bloody and pointless war that kills millions. France, never one to miss a beat, sells Iraq mustard gas. Meanwhile half the oil in the Middle East is no longer American so the United States doubles down in Saudi Arabia where, by the way, Wahabism is sweeping the ruling class. IMPORTANT TO NOTE: Saudi Arabia is run basically by the Kardashians. It’s not really a country. It’s about 80 dudes directly related to Ibn Saud that do what they want. (F)(G)(H)(I)(K)(L)(M)(N)(O)

27) So here we are: Saudi Arabia wants Israel annihilated because Jews. Iran wants to fuck with Israel because CIA. Iraq fired Scuds at Israel because CIA. The CIA relies entirely on Israel because William Buckley. And when Europe and Russia completely assed the Jews out of their homes, the United States has been providing Israel with material aid since WWII. And, by the way, a lot of them emigrated to the United States. (A-O)

TL:DR: Israel is where Europe finally got to cast all its jews. Israel is the most democratic and American-friendly state left in the Middle East, so we rely on them for intelligence and ground support in proxy warfare. Israel, in turn, takes the brunt of Islamic aggression against the West because not only are they an obvious example of Americanism, but they are literally the boots on the ground for a clash of ideas going back to the Enlightenment and a clash of colonization going back to the Crusades.

In my opinion? The Palestinians will be wiped out. It’s just a matter of time. They’re Native Arabians on the Reservation and eventually the plague blankets will catch up with them. But it isn’t the “Israelis” that started this.

It’s us.

And that’s why there are no simple answers.

(PS I could throw more books at this)

________________________________________________________________________________

(A) Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour by Barbara Tuchman

(B) The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, The West, and the Future of the Holy City by Dore Gold

(C) Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945

(D) How To Win A Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religions by Reza Aslan

(E) Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World by Margaret McMillan

(F) Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism by Dore Gold

(G) Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold our Soul for Saudi Crude by Robert Baer

(H) Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer

(I) Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Wiener

(J) All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer

(K) RESET: Iran, Turkey and America's Future by Stephen Kinzer

(L) Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA in Afghanistan from the Soviet Invasion to September 10 2001 by Steve Coll

(M) Charlie Wilson's War:blah blah blah super long subtitle by George Crile

(N) Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent by Fred Burton

(O) See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism by Robert Baer

Israel is far too complex and far too storied a subject for anyone to have a simple opinion about. Most of the sloganeering comes from a willful unwillingness to wrap one's head around it.

Multiply x10 for teenagers.