“It’s just a case of land grabbing.” These words from my classmate grossly oversimplified the Middle East issue. The following is not as simplified and will surely muddle up the issue. But the world is never a simple place.
Jews, along with other people, have been in the Middle East area since the dawn of civilization. After all, the area is the cradle of civilization. And where there is civilization, there have always been war (so much for being civil). During these times, kingdoms (including Jewish kingdoms) rose and fell, people migrated and immigrated. So much so that you scarcely can tell which is which and who is who.
But it was the conquest by Roman Empire that really ended the Jewish kingdoms and led to the Jewish diaspora, the scattering of the Jewish people all over the world. There they became merchants, bankers, doctors, etc. and became well-off. For this people resented them and they were oppressed: forced to live in ghettos and suffering through organized massacres. They even had a word for it: pogrom. The funny thing here is that, though they were still oppressed, the Jews were actually generally treated better in Muslim areas than in Christian areas.
At some point in time, some Jewish thinkers decided that the only way the oppression will stop is through the [re]creation of a Jewish homeland. This is the basic tenet of the movement which became known as Zionism. The Zionists worked towards this end culminating in migrations by Jews [back] to the Middle East, the pressuring on the British for the allocation of land, and the formation of Israel.
This formation came about in the midst of an attack by Arab countries (which included Lebanon) opposed to it. Israel fought off the attack and several other attacks through the years. In this forge of war, Israel became a strong country. You can’t easily oppress a strong country but the hate goes on. People do not hate Israel for what it does. People have always hated Israel. Israel does what it does because people hate them.
