I don't question that there's a huge gaping hole. I'm wondering why the size of that hole is so out of proportion? And why the rest of the world is supposed to care as much as we are? I can think of a whole bag of conflicts since 1948 that that are as serious and complex as the Israel-Palestine conflict. Yet, we don't give many fucks. We just keep coming back to this run-of-the-mill festering mess. I'm just asking why? Israel is a tiny speck of a nation. It's roughly the size of Sweden. Who cares this fucking much? Yes, it's a mess. But I care less about this conflict than the conflict in Sudan, Rwanda, ex-Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Uigur conflict in China, Hong Kong's democracy issues, Internet censorship, Arab Spring's aftermath, South Africa's continual slide into dysfunction, Zimbabwe, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda vs the world, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the endless Somalia bullshit, Al-Shabaab, Greece's economic woes, the rise of nationalism in Europe and the topic of this thread. And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure I've forgotten hundreds, if not thousands, of contenders as a bigger bag of mess than this conflict.
And here's the clincher, there's been nothing new to Israel/Palestine conflict in the last 50 years. It's the same bullshit as in 1948. There's two highly nationalistic and chauvinistic groups squabbling over the same plot of land and they are seemingly unable to respect each other. Which needs to happen before any negotiation is meaningful. As long as this situation remains the same, I don't know what there is to discuss? To quote my Hungarian-Israeli (and Jewish) ex-wife when I asked her what she thinks of the conflict. Her answer was "the Palestinians and Israelis deserve each other".
Why do you care so fucking much?
Nobody wants to answer your question, and have conciously or subconciously changed the subject to South Africa.
I'll give it a shot.
We Europeans and North Americans still feel guilty about the way the Jews were treated in the past, even if we don't admit it and were not alive at the time this happened. The way they were treated was enough for some of them to become Zionists and seek refuge and peace in Palestine, at that time a possession of the Ottoman Empire. Later this continued under British rule, with rising Arab opposition to it.
After centuries of discrimination and sporadic murder of Jews by Europe's Christians all over Europe at some time or another, came the Shoah or Holocaust, and after that, the mass immigration to and creation and defence of Israel.
This involved mass killing and expulsion of Arabs and subsequent "firm" rule of Arabs by Israelis, including the theft of land and property in the Occupied Territories.
All this backed by the USA and its powerful Jewish lobby, and to a lesser or greater extent by Europe, by supply of arms and finances.
Israel's "Realpolitik" (the only possible way it can exist without using its nuclear arsenal) continues to oppress the Arabs and its theft of land continues un abated, and now the US and Europe feel (slightly) guilty about conspiring to aid and abet that in practice, with the occasional anti-Israeli vote in the UN to salve their consciences, always vetoed by the US. And US aid to Israel continues and France and Russia and others want to make deals with Iran now the sanctions are lifted, all sides making sanctimonious noises.
In the meantime the Arab and Islamist-Iranian threat to Israel continues and all Israelis and all Arabs are aware of this.
And of course religions, and their "holy places", make everything worse and both sides are becoming more and more hawkish. (The unusual sight of theocrat Iranian ruler and of alleged secularist Netanyahu acting in a statesmanlike fashion may surprise some, but both of these individuals know that they are doing just that,
acting, whilst gathering power and allies.)
So your wife is right, they deserve one another, but she might as well say that we all, the humans, the technologically and philosophically "advanced" apes who, for all our posturing, remain tribalist aggressive animals, we too, deserve one another.
