Though the conflict between the state of Israel and the displaced Palestinian people is often characterized as a religious one, I found that religion was only one aspect of an incredibly complex and multifaceted issue. The basic premise of Israel — that the Jewish people need a state of their own in order to protect themselves from the possibility of another Holocaust — was first linked to religion when early Zionists (pre-WWII) chose this region to “settle” based on religious text and geographical references in the Old Testament.