Reading Response #2

I suppose it's kind of cheating since I couldn't do this until after class today, but I found it very interesting to hear about the different backgrounds of the authors of the articles and then to read and try to see the subtle ways in which the authors inserted their own bias into their articles. I also was under the mistaken impression that the major conflict between Israel/Palestine began with the creation of the Israeli State, and that the idea of an Israeli state was a result of the horrors of the Holocaust, however apparently, this idea had been in the works for quite some time before that. I was also very surprised to learn that Palestine itself had never been a fully independent state, but had been the territory of several different empires over the years. On a separate note, while I will not claim one side of the argument or another, why do you think it is that America, specifically the government, has chosen to side with the Israeli's?