It’s instructive to remember that who we now call Palestinians are the people once known as Philistines. Today’s Jews, formerly Hebrews, formerly Hebrons, were a nomadic people who first went into what’s now generally Israel as marauders looting Philistine villages, usually in the night. I’m nowhere near being an anti-Semite. My mother is Jewish and her paternal grandparents were Russian Jews who emigrated to the US in the late 19th century. The history of the Early Bronze Age is not really disputed by any non-partisan historian. And the fact that the two peoples consider the same region ancestral homeland, and the same sites holy, isn’t disputed, either. It’s a feud that’s been going on for thousands of years and both sides are strongly committed to it.

As for what’s going on over yonder today: Though we in North America aren’t supposed to know about it, Israel has not been an innocent party by any stretch of the imagination. And the part we are supposed to hear about is that Palestinians haven’t always behaved in ways likely to bring sympathy to their plight. A good set of search terms for your favorite search engine would be something like “Jimmy Carter Gaza”. Us older folks might remember that Carter was the guy behind the Camp David Accords, the second phase of which was successful — a followup to a preceding (failed) effort to address the Palestinian regions (West Bank and Gaza Strip). Jimmy Carter isn’t an anti-Semite, either, and I think most would consider him a reliable, unbiased source. He’s got a darn good handle on what’s what and has written quite a lot about it.

The situation is intractable because Israel is the US’s nuclear tarbaby (in the original meaning of the word, “a difficult problem which is only aggravated by attempts to solve it”). One of the few truths that Mittwit spoke during his campaign is the truth that every US president since Carter has had to contend with: We have to keep kicking that can down the road because the US, by supporting Israel, tacitly supports Israel’s abhorrent treatment of the Palestinians and raises the ire of much of the world — but ending that support is beginning World War Three. Israel is tanked up on weapons, including not just nukes but also chemical and biological, some originating in the US and the rest being products of their home grown defense industry. They’d be attacked, they’d use those weapons, and things would quickly escalate. No other nation or group of nations dares to intervene while Israel commands US support and there is  real risk of igniting World War Three that way.

Israel is caught in the middle, too. If they were to call a truce and say that yes, indeed, the Palestinians have a right to be here, hundreds of thousands or millions of Palestinians living as (now) permanent refugees in surrounding countries would seek repatriation — and not a one bringing a job with him. The Israelis who’ve been conditioned since birth to hate Palestinians would resent hell out of that, and civil war would be inevitable. The “Jewish State” would cease to exist.

Petropolitics at its finest, eh? The US and UK needed a cornerstone in the oil rich Middle East, they created it, and here we very predictably are chained to it. It might sink us yet.