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Notes -
You can understand the conflict in the proper context instead of falling for a false sense of balance ("historical bad blood"). Do American Indians have "historical bad blood" with white settlers? In a disingenuous sense, yes. But it's more correct to say that the Indians are aggrieved at the conquest and loss of their lands than to imply it's some sort of "Hatfield and McCoy" situation where they've just "always been killing each other."
It would've been bad for the Jews had more of them been within Hitler's grasp, yes. But why should the Palestinians pay the price? Would you give up half of your country to the Tutsi to save them from the Hutus? Why not?
In the world we live in, the Soviets decided to take over Eastern Europe, create a bunch of puppet states, and bus in a bunch of Russians. It still seems bad to me that local languages are spoken and that Russians face discrimination. Knowing that Soviet tanks rolled through the streets in the 1940s doesn't change my opinion much.
You can't just arbitrarily draw a line and ignore all history before that point and expect to understand anything. I'm not on favor of affirmative action or reparations, for example, but I would never deny that to understand black Americans you'd need to know about slavery, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights era, effects of Great Society, crack epidemic, etc. It would be foolish to simply say "blacks and whites have always hated each other, blacks are rioting in the streets and whites aren't, ergo blacks bad." It's more complex than that and context matters.
My point is that the historical context helps with understanding, but that it doesn't really help me much on what action to take or what policy to pursue.
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