Comment by cies
2 years ago
I've long time stopped believing its about religion. Yes, religion is used as greese to get groups of people to "side". But the underlying reasons are --as always-- material.
You think the "red scare" was actually about the commies attacking? No, it was about limiting an alternative economic system == resource control.
The actual conflict on the ground is about territory and resources. But lots of other people are interested because they were raised to believe that events happening in 'the holy land' thousands of years ago have deep, ongoing, and eternal significance for them as individuals. That's why a great many people care about this that would not care about similarly bloody conflicts in other countries, even nearby ones (eg Kurdistan or the Syrian civil war).
I don't adhere to an Abrahamic religion and frankly dislike monotheism on general principle. But while I don't believe in any of this, it's a fact that huge numbers of people do for different reasons. For example US Evangelicals are obsessed with events in Israel because many of them consider conflict there to be the harbinger of the Apocalypse prophesied in the Book of Revelation. The principal military and political actors in this conflict may be privately secularist or only nominally religious, but they're quite willing to leverage religion for financial and political capital.