When will Israel free the Palestinians it is holding hostage?

If you want to understand the complicated situation in the Middle East, you need to start with two basic sets of facts, which are the foundation for everything else.

The first is that Israelis are civilized people, just like westerners. You should believe whatever the Israeli government says, because they are obviously not going to lie. If an Israeli soldier or settler commits a terrible act, they’re not considered a reflection on the state as a whole; they’re a bad apple who will be held accountable. Even if the data shows they are rarely held accountable. The bottom line: Israelis are good people who want peace; any violence they commit is justified because they have an absolute right to self-defense.

Palestinians, meanwhile, and Arabs more generally, are seen as barbarians. Barely human. Not even mammals: more like wasps, caterpillars and spiders – to borrow an analogy from the celebrated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. You can’t trust a word they say. If a Palestinian does something terrible they are not a “bad apple”, they’re an example of how all Palestinians are rotten to the core. One shouldn’t think of any Palestinian as an innocent civilian – they are all terrorists, even the children. The bottom line: Palestinians are bad people who want war; nothing they do can be justified because they have no right to self-defense.