Muslim Arab armies conquered the region in the 7th century A.D. and treated the existing population relatively well, compared with other conquered populations anyway.
From the transcript:
> The animosity that characterizes the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict has roots in the late 19th and 20th centuries and shouldn't be projected onto earlier epochs. The current conflict is influenced by nationalist movements, territorial disputes, and political developments of the last two centuries, rather than solely religious differences.
The current conflict arises directly from the Muslim Arab armies conquering what was the Jewish homeland. Because that’s what made it impossible for the Jews to have a country of their own—something that most people want, and most Arabs have—without coming into conflict with the descendants of those Arab conquerors.
Imagine if the Cherokee fought the US government and somehow captured part of Tennessee. That would surely create hostilities between the Cherokee and displaced Tennesseans. But would you say those hostilities arose from what the Cherokee did, or the original conquest of the land by Americans?
The Muslim Arab armies did not conquer a Jewish homeland, they conquered Eastern Roman (Byzantine territory). The Jews, as a population, i.e., the diaspora had been expelled hundreds of years earlier during the big three revolts against the Roman Empire.
Jews were banned from even entering Jerusalem (except for the day of Tisha B'Av) until the Arab armies marched in and took it from the Christians.
It doesn’t matter if the Muslim Arab armies conquered it directly, or after others had already done so. They’re the ones who are there now, not the Romans or Babylonians.
To be fair the Jewish people had been largely spread into the diaspora or killed by that point thanks to the Romans siege of Jerusalem in 70AD and the fallowing supression of rebellion revolts and sieges of other Jewish cities and settlements. Over a million Jews are said by concurrent historians to have been killed many of the remaining enslaved. Most of those remaining left spreading into the empire as they weren't even allowed into their capital city after the Romans rebuilt. The Romans then removed Judaea from the map and established the new governing districts of Syria and Palestine in its place.
> To be fair the Jewish people had been largely spread into the diaspora or killed by that point thanks to the Romans siege of Jerusalem in 70AD and the fallowing supression of rebellion revolts and sieges of other Jewish cities and settlements. Over a million Jews are said by concurrent historians to have been killed many of the remaining enslaved.
That same Wikipedia article says: "Josephus' death toll figures have been rejected as impossible by Seth Schwartz, who estimates that about a million people lived in all of Palestine at the time, about half of them Jews, and that sizable Jewish populations remained in the area after the war was over, even in the hard-hit region of Judea. Schwartz, however, believes that the captive number of 97,000 is more reliable"
The Judaean Jewish community was nowhere near wiped out by the 66–73 CE war, given the fact they were able to launch another sizeable rebellion against Roman rule (the Bar Kokhba revolt) in 132–136 CE.
And even after the Bar Kokhba revolt, significant Jewish communities survived in what is now Israel/Palestine – of particular note is Judah ha-Nasi, the redactor of the Mishnah, who was born during the Bar Kokhba war. The office of Nasi (leader of the Jewish community in Israel/Palestine) continued until the death of Gamaliel VI in c. 425. The Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius II refused to permit the appointment of a successor, which was arguably the decisive step in transferring the seat of leadership of the Jewish community from Galilee to Babylonia.
While it is clear that many Jews were driven into exile, killed or enslaved, it is also likely that a significant number succumbed to the temptation/pressure to convert to Christianity (and later Islam). How many is difficult to say; I wonder how many Palestinian Arabs have Jewish ancestors, it is possibly a quite substantial number.
From the transcript:
> The animosity that characterizes the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict has roots in the late 19th and 20th centuries and shouldn't be projected onto earlier epochs. The current conflict is influenced by nationalist movements, territorial disputes, and political developments of the last two centuries, rather than solely religious differences.