Israel is surrounded by a vast ocean of people who wish nothing more than to see them destroyed. The Arabs have waged several aggressive wars of extermination against the small Jewish state over the past few decades, only to be driven back each time. Israel took that small portion of land as compensation for being savagely attacked and threatened with annihilation.

Germany lost land to Poland after WWII, and the Serbs were forced out of Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s for doing the same thing. The taking of land for security is a well established tradition by nations that have been on the receiving end of aggressive neighbors. The Palestinian Arabs have now elected a government led by an organization who has vowed Israel's destruction. This gives the Israelis all the moral justification needed to take decisive actions to secure their own future.

Islam is what's intolerant here. The very notion of a tiny non Islamic outpost in the Mid-East is intolerable to the vast majority of them. Wherever Islam spreads, Muslims seek to make that place as uniform as the city they pray to five times a day. One need look no further than the city of Mecca, and its ban on non Muslims, to see what their ultimate goal is for the rest of the world. Israel is hated as much as it is because it defies that vision.