Recently on the The Deep Map podcast, Robert Nicholson, founder of the Philos Project, a Christian Middle East advocacy group, said that he finds it “amazing” that “the people who claim to love Palestinians don’t know anything about them, and they’re not even trying to learn.”  

In the interview, Nicholson emphasized findings of The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. For example, over two-thirds of Palestinians reject a two-state solution. Ninety-three percent of Palestinians reject Israel’s claim to the land, while 58% support armed confrontation. Even more shocking is that two-thirds (67%) of the residents of the Gaza strip support armed attacks on Israeli civilians.  

Along with the capacity of fallen humans to do evil, there is also the power of cultural ideology. Radical Islamic ideology, such as is held by Hamas, has shaped that region for a long time. Westerners shaped by secularism tend to think of religion as personal and private, which makes the terror carried out in Israel even harder to understand.