Quote Originally Posted by WBA123 View Post
It has a lot to do with their location and their close links to the USA.

Unfortunately they're a bit hot headed. I don't really understand their strategy in Gaza, all they are doing by bombing the hell out of them is creating hatred and resentment from the next generation of Palestinians. It doesn't make much long term sense to me.
My understanding is that the US has close ties with Israel mostly due to historical links begun during the Cold War era when having a Westernized democracy as an ally in the region was a key part of their geo-political policies. Racist trope or not, it is also likely true that some very powerful Jewish American businessmen have not inconsiderable influence on US policy towards Israel.

As for the UK, again, there are strong historical links with Israel. The British were a dominant force in the region following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in WW1 and set up the British Mandate for Palestine in 1920 whilst at the same time encouraging Jewish emigration to the area as part of their support of the Zionist movement. This movement was born in the 19th Century out of continued persecution, particularly in Russia and Eastern Europe, and aimed at establishing a Jewish homeland in the region. It is a more unsavoury truth that the reasons for British support (and that from other Western European nations for that matter) for Zionism was driven less by concern for their plight but more by racism as they did not want to home large populations of Jews themselves.

Conflict between the ever increasing number of Jewish settlers and the Arab population then only grew and this only got worse after WW2 when thousands of displaced Jewish refugees, unable or unwilling to return to their homes in Europe, sought refuge in Palestine. When the British Mandate ended and the State of Israel was created in 1948 the first Arab-Israeli war began. Continued Western support for Israel is also doubtless rooted in a kind of collective guilt over whether the Allies could have done more to help during the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis (not that Stalin was any friend to them).

As for your last point, totally agree with you as Netanyahu's policy in Gaza is both unlikely to kill off Hamas as well as only inciting yet more hatred of Israel by new generations.