I’ve heard people from Obama’s state department talk about how (paraphrasing) Bibi is a child and has to be managed. They learned that anything you say in public that he does not want to hear results him reacting emotionally and shutting down making him inaccessible. That led to a strategy of saying exactly what he needs to hear us say in public which then creates the room to light him up in private. These are people with still tight connections to the Biden team so the assumption is their philosophy in dealing with him is the same. Albeit he is no longer the same and has got meaningfully worse in the period since any of these Obama admin people would have had to deal with him.
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fukin 'ell … him and Trump really were two sides of the same coin.
I will limit this to one post, so as to not derail the thread, but this can’t go unchallenged.
People do bad things, whether religious or not. It is part of the human condition. There are often numerous factors as to why. It is way too simplistic to reduce things to a false construct that says:
Presence of religion = bad; absence of religion = good.
The absence of religion does not necessarily lead to peace and prosperity. If it did, why does officially atheist China have 1.3 Million Muslim Uighurs in internment camps? They are routinely committing torture, murder, oppression, brainwashing, ‘re-education’, taking away people’s freedom, right to self determination, and to even exist, and on and on it goes.
Just a quick example to illustrate the obvious point that people have it in them to do bad things, whether religious or not. There are often numerous factors as to why, whether the scale we are looking at is an individual person, or a nation state.
The factors involved in Israel are myriad: geopolitical, with regional and global players behind the scenes. Yes, religious factors too, but it is much bigger, including issues of self-determination, survival, oppression, greed, guilt, history, identity, and a genuine dispute, going back many hundreds of years on both sides, as to who has the right to be there.
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I totally agree. While progressive Israelis are increasingly marginal, I haven’t done justice to them either. Perhaps I should have said the political, social, military elites instead of Israelis.
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Then I will reply with one post. Ask yourself this. Is the basis of this whole conflict religion? Any answer other than yes is wrong. Whataboutism related to China cuts no mustard here.
You can make the geopolitical argument about the importance of Israel to US interests in the region, but there are strong personal incentives to toe this line as well. You see a good comparison for Latin America policy and the Florida vote. There is a critical constituency, not just in terms of voting, but their power to organize, that demands the US remains hostile and punitive to the Cuban government, even if it hurts the people left there. That means rapprochement with Cuba is not seen as a foreign policy issue, or even a human rights issue, but one of “can I get elected if I support a change in the status quo?”
Israel is the same, but on a much larger scale. And the people for whom a pro-Isreal stance is a non-negotiable, there tends to be a considerable lack of nuance to the position, which in turn then requires a position that almost fails to even recognize the existence of a Palestinian people. It’s important to understand that at least for for the last 20 years or so this has been driven more by Evangelical Christians than it has been by US Jews.
When you factor in that American politics is not very dynamic, you end up with people involved in it inheriting 60 years old perspectives they dont even question and so issues like Cuba and Israel end up becoming a Shibboleth in our politics
EDIT: I’ll also note that the personal incentive isnt limited to seeking elected office, but working in any higher level of government. All it takes is one hardliner on a Senate Committee responsible or the advancement of nominations to high level government positions to be upset about a project you worked on that was considered too favourable to Iran, or Cuba, or Venezuala, and you will never get another promotion for the rest of your career. I have heard of several people who worked on the JCPOA (the iran nuclear deal) who essentially left government afterwards because they knew they would never get through the senate hearings for any future position they might be put forward for.
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The hatred and killing has been reciprocal for 1400 years, I don’t think the selection of a site of festival really adds to that unless you want to twist a narrative, which you do.
I also infer, and from many on here, the thoroughly disgraceful implication that Hamas’ actions are somehow justified because of the Israelis being sick of being attacked for 1400 years. Exactly.
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I think the phrase that you were looking for was “two cheeks of the same arse”.
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Thanks. It’s so depressing and disturbing. The insanity of a few causing sufferings to millions, for decades. 
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It’s more of an ethnonationalist conflict. Not all Israeli Jews are religious. There is a significant non-Jewish minority. The majority of Palestinians are nominally Muslims but there are significant populations of Christians, Druze and Samaritans. Palestine does have freedom of religion.
That’s not to say that there are religious shit-stirrers but religion is not fundamentally at the route of it.
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It’s like the communists; wither away the religion for the emancipation of the masses. 
Most countries have religion and most of them don’t have such conflict and atrocities.
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Which is true but on what grounds was the divide made originally?
The land, Israel is the most fertile in the Levant and the first Persian war, I think, predates Islam.
Your point does explains the crusades etc. and a lot of foundational pain to this. But if all of Israel converted to Islam today and vice versa for Palestine, they would still hate each other to the bowels of hell. So I guess the religious influence is diluting.
That said, likely this is today more religious for the Islamists
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Religion was always an excuse to grab land / resources etc.
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Us vs Them is an inherent human conflict. Religion just provides an easy mechanism to divide the lines. If religion didnt exist the lines would be drawn over something else, and there is a pretty good argument made that the need to be able to draw these lines for a species undergoing civilization and coming into contact with greater numbers of unknown people was the primary driving factor behind the spread of religion.
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There is a big Christian community in the West Bank, especially Bethlehem, literally the birth place of Christianity. There are no issues at all with their Muslim neighbours. The persecution comes from the other side of the wall
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That makes no sense and any implication is all on you.
Also, the state of Israel has only existed since 1948.
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I’d like to share your optimism, but I’m not sure to be honest. The people in Israel are currently in a state of shock, and that’s exactly what a figure like Netanyahou needs and is looking for in order to pass through his antidemocratic reforms.
If Israel is now drawn into total war against the Palestinians, with multiple deaths on both sides, there will simply be no room anymore for contestation or for a demand of change. They’ll need a figure to lead them into battle, and unfortunately, it will be Netanyahou because he’s in place already. In that context, the political contestation against him might be very soon blown away like dry leaves in the wind.
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The answer is no. This is one of the greatest misconceptions of the conflict. From its outset this has been a conflict about land not religion.
The recent ascent of Hamas and the growing influence of political Islam amongst factions in the West Bank , coinciding as it did with the rise of Al-Qaida and then Daesh , was very convenient for Israel to try and paint all Palestinians as religious fanatics and terrorists and to corral world opinion against them. Like so much of what they say , it’s simply not true.
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This is exactly what is going to happen, but it regrettably does, pollutes sensible discussion. There are so many of these complexities in this nexus. Its so complicated that its all too easy to see that all roads lead to a gladiatorial death of the last man. And even this doesnt work!!!