> I mean, Israel does a lot of bad things Definitely. It has settled 1/10th of its civilian population in an occupied territory, something that is for obvious

> I mean, Israel does a lot of bad things Definitely. It has settled 1/10th of its civilian population in an occupied territory, something that is for obvious reasons forbidden by the Geneva Convention. It declared undivided sovereignty on Jerusalem, has annexed the Golan Heights. It has closed almost 2 million people in a total embargo- nothing goes through the land and sea borders or the airspace of Gaza without the approval of Israel, be it people or goods- this means that the entire region is close to the collapse. In the recent border protest (which took place inside Gaza's border) Israel has fired live ammo on protesters day after day, killing 168, wounding 17 thousand! The UN General Assembly passed a condemnation resolution that was voted against only by Israel, the US, Australia, and a few tiny atolls of the Pacific. Every other nation in the world condemned Israel or (cowardly) abstained. Among those who voted to condemn Israel are Switzerland, Ireland, Japan, France, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. > as do many countries No other country that we consider civilised, no. > this is literally what every country does though - US citizens have rights in the US, and everyone else doesn't. Here I'm not sure whether you don't understand or just pretend not to. It's not that non-citizens don't have political rights inside Israel. It's that Israel is applying its law and jurisdiction outside its borders- so on Israeli and Palestinians alike- but only the former have political and civil rights. It's almost a clever technicality: Israel is not an apartheid state, it's just that, in the Occupied Territories, the State is wherever the Israelis are. The others, even if they happen to live only a few hundred metres away, have no rights. > Hell, I'd rather live in a world in which the fact that I am Jewish doesn't mean that I have to protect myself from other people The precondition to not have to protect yourself from other people is to be in peace with your neighbours. Tit-for-tats, or imposing your dominance, don't work (unless you want to just exterminate your enemy- which today is not an option). Israel was born with the original sin of seizing half of the country from their original inhabitants. We can't and don't want to go back on this, but Israel has to find a firm moral rule, define its own borders once and for all in agreement with what was established (at least the 1967 borders) and start building a cooperation with Palestinians. The issue with Israel is that it lives in a conflict of interest: on one hand, it wants not to be attacked; on the other hand, it's more than happy of acquiring new territory, which is only possible if the borders are ill-defined and through the cycles of provocation, violence and retaliation.