During my relatively long life I've witnessed journalism morph from giving information to forming opinion. Sometimes they do it openly, sometimes they try to pass it as the context you mention.

I believe context is necessary now because of how fragmented people's attention is. We used to have 5 tv channels and two main newspapers and that was it. It was easier to keep the focus and remember the context back then.

Or, rather, we were all inside the same information bubble. Now everyone is in their own bubble, and there's no more common understanding of reality.

This conflict makes it super clear, because of its complexity and long history, that people don't have the time or bandwidth to understand the whole thing and end up repeating what they hear inside their bubble.

For example: your opinion is largely influenced by your location and your own history, much more than by the facts of the conflict. I come from Argentina, where most people support Israel, and I live in Ireland, where most people support the Palestinians. There's understandable reasons for that. Argentina suffered two Islamic terrorist attacks against local Jewish institutions, while Irish people identify with Palestinians because of the British oppression.

I personally live in my own bubble of course, we all do. I know my opinion is heavily influenced by my own history.

As a consequence I end up getting involved in online discussions where I argue for nuance and against simplification, but that just puts me on the "wrong side" of both "sides". So for my own mental health I've been trying to stop participating. I only wanted to chime in here because your comment seemed to capture some of what I think.

I’m here for comments like yours. Thanks.

I would argue education is important, because this isn't actually really a religious conflict, and perpetuating that belief causes harm - namely that this is some intractable millennia old conflict rooted in fundamental beliefs and not one only a hundred years old largely just about lines on a map.

2,000 years ago the region was largely inhabited by Jews, under the Roman Empire, and known as Judaea. With the split of the Roman Empire by around 300AD, the region became known as Palaestine under the Byzantine Empire, and obviously started seeing a lot of Christian activity. By the 800s, the region was conquered by Islamic caliphates, and by the 1500s was part of the Ottoman Empire. For nearly 400 years Jews, Muslims, and Christians all got along perfectly fine in Palestine under the Ottomans.

But with WW1, Britain was fighting the Ottomans. Britain promised the region to the people who by that point came to see themselves as "Palestinians" (largely Muslim but with a sizable Christian minority), as well as to Jewish diaspora if they'd help fight the Ottomans. They did, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and Britain created the state of Mandatory Palestine, but decided to just keep it and rule it themselves. This was an unpopular move, but to make sure they didn't have to fight everyone, manufactured Jewish vs Palestinian antagonism so they'd just fight each other instead of British colonial rule. This unfortunately worked.

After WW2, Britain decided it didn't want all its colonies anymore, especially the mess it created in Palestine, so just left and told the brand new UN to fix it. The UN drew some borders, which the newly created modern nation of Israel was fine with. The people who would inhabit the newly created modern nation of Palestine were not fine with it, nor were the other neighboring nations, so there was a war in '48 and it's basically gone down hill from there.

I'm not a historian and that's a very, very, very superficial explanation of one of the longest inhabited regions in the planet, but it's just worth noting this conflict is not really religious in nature. It's two peoples, of various religions (or no religion at all, since there are secular Jews), who are fighting over land and recognition as a sovereign state due to a manufactured nationalism and border dispute barely more than 100 years old.

Or did your education stop at middle school?