[Georgelemental]

Hamas supporters would say the same thing about Israel, that they could never "make a peaceful treaty" with the state that expelled their grandmother from her home at gunpoint, that launched the bomb that killed their sister, that supported the illegal settlers that shot their cousins in the West Bank…

The 1% most extreme on both sides want to drag you down to their level, don't let them.

[ac130kz]

It was newly formed Arab countries' unjustified joint decision to destroy Israel in the middle of the 20th century, which led to this point, people somehow forget who started it all.

[Georgelemental]

That's a grossly inaccurate depiction of the events of 1948, but in any case Israel's founding was 75 years ago and the actors involved are all long dead. What matters is doing right by people alive today.

[catlover76]

I don't like grinding the historical axe--I think it's a dumb thing people do in this conflict. And I favor the right of your country to exist, largely on the basis that no country has any "right" to exist and so the country's continued existence in itself establishes any such alleged right. That being said, it is not like Israel was sitting there minding its own business, and its not like its own establishment was bloodless, and its not like its creation was a peaceful event for many of the Arabs it displaced.

Again, none of that, to me, vitiates the right of an Israeli person to live peacefully in Israel, but I don't take kindly to anyone's nationalist fantasy, and I find it absurd that people continue to trade in the kind of simplistic tribal patriotism that just regurgitates their ethnic narrative.