The UN- on behalf of the free world- put Israel in place to try and solve the enormous problems that the whole Jewish thing had been causing throughout history- and regardless of the issues now, at least it meant that there was now actually a Jewish country, which gave them a voice in the world they had lacked before.
Regardless of whether you think that was a good idea or not... it's a decision we are stuck with. The UN was acting pretty much on behalf of nearly everyone who posts here, and did it in a "We'll set this up, you go there, we say it is ok and it will be fine." fashion That done, it is therefore the UN's responsibility to live up to that... more or less forever. To do otherwise, to abandon them in any way, would be a terrible crime, the worst of all possible options. Yes, it sucks for someone no matter how we do it, but there is nothing- literally nothing at all- that can be done to prevent that. So the only practical option is to back Israel. The UN gave them the rights to the land, that is more or less it.
Yes, religion is damn annoying, and it is annoying when anyone claims hegemony over somewhere on religious grounds- but that's entirely irrelevant., They didn't take it on religious grounds, they were GIVEN it on political/historical ones as part of the world order after WWII. And, again, no matter what you think, the UN is the only body that actually had the power and the right to do that.
Which is not to say that Israel should be infinitely tolerated or all it does should be approved of, but in the end, they are the ones to back in the matter of whose land it is, I find it very hard indeed to deny them the right to defend themselves in the face of such massive provocation and heads of state- from countries with FAR worse records than Israel- tsaying that Israel should no longer exist. And the sad fact is that defending yourself in such circumstances requires aggression, and aggresison requires death. It's a shitty situation but there is no other way.
In the end, the majority of those that want Israel destroyed want it on grounds of hate. Religiously inpsired hate in most cases, grudges they cannot drop in others, but hate nonetheless and it would be a disaster for the remainder of history if that hate was allowed to destroy Israel, especially after the promises made to them that it would be their safe haven.
And yes, the safe haven happens to be in the area that they have historical ties to, hence this resulting conspiracy nonsense that this was some sort of Zionist plot- it's not, it's just a common sense coming together of history and politics. Talk of Zionist conspiracy is precisely what the Nazis used in their justifications; disturbing to hear it still spoken of.
Btw, I seem to remember it being earlier stated that other people had older ties to the region. Aside from me really not caring about who was there first- as I say, this is political in nature- that's... just not true.
So. In this situation- sorry. A ceasefire was agreed long ago, and Hamas, which is a hideous facade of democracy actually just perpetuating... evil, basically, has been sanctioning the firing of rockets into Israel all the way through it. My patience would have been exhausted with that long before now. I cannot find any reason to decry Israel's actions here specifically, and for the reasons I give above I cannot condemn them in the wider historical context either.
There, thats my perspective.