How Israel became the bad guy

Younger Granddaughter is a senior at Yale, and one of her best friends is Jewish, so I can understand why they might shrug their shoulders at the keffiyef-masked thugs now holding their campus hostage. For four years, they've been told that the world is a place where we Americans, Brits, and other westerners oppress the weak, at home and in the outside world, wherever we can get away with it. It doesn't matter that Hamas came across the border to rape, tortur, murder, and kidnap two thousand or so Israelis in order to provoke a war in which Gazan civilians would suffer. Israel is western! It's a prosperous, tolerant, liberal democracy and the homeland of a faith that emerged in the Levant 2,500 years ago -- a thousand years before Gabriel visited Muhammad in his Saudi cave.

No matter! Israelis are seen as colonizers, and Palestinians as colonized, whether in Gaza, on the West Bank, or in Israel itself. Anna believes that, and probably her pal Hannah does as well. What else would they believe, given what they've they heard from the their professors since their first Zoom class in September 2020?