Israel vs. Palestine: Why Should We Care About Religious Zealots Killing Each Other?

President Obama announced in his State Department speech a week or two ago that he would like Israel to return to its 1967 borders in order to help alleviate problems between Israel and Palestine. According to experts, these borders are nearly indefensible and a withdrawal to the former divide would prove advantageous to Palestine. You could say that Obama's proposal reveals an underlying sympathy towards the Islamic state, although he claims allegiance to Israel, our long-standing ally. As I alluded to in my poem from last week, we have provided Israel with vast sums of foreign aid since its inception in 1948, around $110 billion. We have given Palestine around $5 billion. Since 1987, an estimated 8,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict compared to about 1,500 Israelis. Obviously, we are looking at a very lopsided war. So why does the U.S. and the U.N. consistently support Israel in this affair? And why should anyone not directly involved in the conflict care about religious zealots killing each other over 'holy land' they claim rightly belongs to them? Well, I guess most American politicians support Israel because it is the only bastion of democracy in the Middle East and they sympathize with the Zionist cause. Most historians and "experts" on this conflict demonize Muslims extremists for pushing their jihadist agenda against the Jews in their schools, mosques, and media outlets. Really? If Muslim states and terrorist groups are so vehement in their pursuit of destroying Israel and shedding Jewish blood then why are Palestinians dying at a rate of nearly 6:1? It seems to me any expert would portray the Israelis as the terrorists in this affair. I don't support either side of this fight, but I do believe policy makers and historians need to look at it more objectively and realize the Palestinians deserve more sympathy. It seems the general concensus, and I'm sure this sentiment has increased substantially since 9/11, is that Muslim extremism is the true threat to instability in the Middle East when the Israelis are equally guilty. The bottom line is, anyone who takes sides on a holy war has no place in politics. This conflict has been going on for too long and will probably never end and the U.S. needs to stop providing aid to both sides and let them figure it out on their own. I view the area surrounding Jerusalem as being analagous to the Bible Belt in the U.S. and most rational people stopped paying attention to their backwards thinking after the Civil Rights Movement, so why should we care about Israel and Palestine fighting over the semantics of 2000 year old texts? And I don't condemn religion, I just condemn those who use it as a justification for murder.