A lot of it, of course, is a question of media business.  People are eating it up, and when they cease to eat it up, the media will find another intern to talk about.

Israel and Palestine have been so much in the news, though, because the recent violence comes after some important changes in Israeli-Palestinian relations.  Yitzhak Rabin brought about reforms that conceded greater autonomy to the Palestinian people and recognition of the Palestinian government.  After Rabin's assassination, later Israeli governments began to alter and even reneg on some of these reforms, and these began our current cycle of violence.  This led to all these suicide bombings and air strikes, both of which have penetrated farther into enemy territory than before.  And though conflicts between the Jewish people and other Semitic peoples have been going on for thousands of years, conflicts between Jews and Muslims began probably in the 6th century (when Islam was founded).  This particular conflict, between Israel and Palestine (or more accurately, Israel and Islamic Middle Eastern nations) began on May 14, 1948, in accordance with the UN partition plan of 1947.  It perhaps began properly in 1967, with the Six Day War.  The United States played a role in those events as the major proponent of the formation of the state of Israel, and thus it should be constantly in our news.  The major incentive for Israeli independence, of course, was the Holocaust, and so much of the mentality of the Nazi regime comes out of the anti-semitism of the Middle Ages.  This anti-semitism goes all the way back to the Crucifixion, perhaps, and the formation of Christianity may have been a socio-political response to a corrupt and fragmented Roman empire.  This goes further and further back into inseparable threads of history.  The point is, I guess you're right -- this has been going on a long time.

This is what I was talking about in my weblog.  The influence of religion can cause bad things to happen.  And when you do it to a kid who doesn't know any better it gets even worse.  This is why there is a war over there.  I'm not trying to knock down religion, I'm just trying to enlighten people to the simple facts.