The present violence goes back to 1882 at the earliest. Only in a very indirect way does it relate to many previous empires’ attempts to conquer your homeland, which is not necessarily what ordinary people have in mind when they crudely summarise this situation as ‘ancient’.

What nobody ever seems to take away from the summary, though, is that your people have survived imperial domination every time: whether it was from the Babylonian Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the Ptolemaic Empire, the Seleucid Empire, the Roman Empire, the Crusaders, and so on and so forth: you always came out better in the end. That is why I have faith that your people shall persevere again: you inherited your ancestors’ Maccabean spirit well, whereas the settlers on your land are trying to act like the Crusaders instead.

I realise that none of this is likely to be news to you, but my intent is to show you that I actually understand some of your history and therefore why you’ll succeed again.