Stuff that Mish thinks about when he's bored

Thanks to Instagram and Twitter, when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict starts making headlines, everyone seems to have such strong loyalties for one side or the other. It's difficult to find any other conflict which generates such divisive emotional reactions from people who don't even have any stake in the outcome of the conflict. Unfortunately, I have noticed that for the vast majority of people on both sides, there's a fundamental lack of understanding about the historical context behind the conflict even though both sides use history to justify their positions. Instead of throwing just another emotionally charged opinion into the void, I figured I'd write this post as an easy read for anyone who's been seeing Israel-Palestine all over their feed but struggles to sift through all the conflicting information about how or why this conflict began. I'm not going to pretend that I'm a completely neutral arbiter in this situation; I have my own opinions on this...