I know nothing about the Israeli mentality, but very many young people "from North America or western Europe" ARE appalingly clueless of how the real world works. They may know the facts about a particilar situation (often not), but they do not have the background with which to interpert them. It has nothing to do with the Israeli-Arab conflict. It's just the blinkered attitude from people who do not understand the basic realities of life. Life is bloody unfair. That's how life is. People who grow up in war zones/totalitarian dictatorships/name your non-liberal-democracy political system KNOW that life is unfair and try to deal with it the best they can. People who grow up in New Zealand confront unfairness and think that, if only they could find the bad guy in the black hat, and convince him to join a group hug, all the unfairness would cease. For the rest of us, is it very hard not to dismiss this out of hand. We know that no one wears a colour-coded hat in real life, and that group hugs have never accomplished anything.