Reflection #1

Sometime during this class someone briefly mentioned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although it was not discussed further I remembered hearing about this before and felt as though I was not well informed so I went on to research this on my own. What I learned so far is that Jewish people wanted to establish a place just for Jewish people (Zionists) but that in this process they were removing Palestinians from what had been their home for years. I didn't know much about this before and obviously I have to do a lot of research before I can form a solid opinion on this but it seems as though the Palestinian people have been treated extremely poorly in the Israeli quest of expansion. The fact that land bought by the Jewish National Fund could never be sold or leased back to Arabs, and still can not be, is problematic because people are being pushed out of their homes. It also does not make sense to me that the Jewish people want to "reclaim their ancestral homeland" when other people were already living there and the "Jewish kingdom" was only one of the many periods in ancient Palestine. Hearing about this conflict made me realize that there are probably a lot of things going on now that I am unaware of and that I should do some research and find out so I can help. I will continue to research this topic and hopefully find enough information to see where my opinion stands.