The world isn't as black-and-white as you think it is. You seem to value my mother's testimony - she agrees on this point and thinks it's a tragedy.
All: this whole discussion started to make me feel a bit sick. The sheer amount of suffering, of wasted life, of hatred, coming from this endless tribalistic crap. This unholy mess of anti-Semitism, hardline Zionism (not Zionism per se), Islamism, nationalism on both sides, wilful ignorance of government failings on both sides, the Hamas bull****, the terrorism and stabbings. Different parts of this coming together to cause pogroms against the Jews, to cause the segregation of the Palestinians into camps, the stabbings of innocent Israelis, and all in an endless storm of one-sided rhetoric for one or the other. And what the hell can you do? The Palestinian government is blocking any help, the Israeli one is quietly pushing the Palestinians closer to the edge. Anti-Semitism across the Arab world doesn't seem to be going anywhere. All you can do is try and see past the identities and the religions and the hatred and try and look at things with honesty and compassion. No more of the blame game. There's not a lot of compassion going around in all this, and honestly I think without some cultivation of that by everyone involved, or as many as possible, any hypothetical peace process is going nowhere.