Israel/Palestine

In this case, it's just two groups fighting against each other, coupled with a similarly antagonistic mindset.

Secularly, it's "we need a place to live, have a right to a place, and somebody's trying to take it away from us." Imagine if all the Germans ousted from Koenigsberg and from what's now western Poland demanded to be allowed to return to their land, if the Germans elsewhere had insisted they be put in camps and not given citizenship or allowed to integrate. It wouldn't be pretty.

Religiously, it's "we're promised this land and you're interlopers." Perfectly aligned with secular reasons we have religious reasons. Palestine is waqf, given to Muslims by Allah. But there's a strong undercurrent that the children of Israel was promised that land, and that Judaism is right in God's sight. Even the synagogue I visit from time to time is ardently pro-Israel as the ingathering of the Jews spoken of in the Tanakh but backs off finally saying that it's the fulfillment of prophecy--it's a messianic synagogue and the idea of non-messianic Jews being that final restoration of a righteous Israel is a high hurdle. For them, the Jews are blessed of God--just don't say "Shoah" in their presence or point out that if you want to be religiously oriented then you say God chucked them out once to Babylon for being wayward, and another time under the Romans ... for the righteousness that they say they should be observing. I have yet to explore Jewish views of theodicy at a national level, and it's not real high on my bucket list.

A lot of "racism" is what you see among all-white kids in high school or in mixed-race schools. One group acts differently and thinks itself superior to others. One group insists on its standards for behavior and thinks it's hateful to be asked to compromise, and even delights in both being different and making others see how superior they are. The result of enforced non-mingling and non-accommodation is not a good one, often leading to "so, you think you're better than us?" And it's worse when the group involved responds, "Yup, we are better than you." Doesn't matter if it's whites and blacks, Christians and Muslims, Jews and Russians or Arabs, or the dullard football jocks versus the wimpy kids in AP English.

In a value-system in which honor is valued above truth--at least public honor above public truth--the UNESCO resolution is what you get. It's important to claim the land and win the argument, esp. when satisfying your honor also gets you stuff; if you have to betray the truth, as long as nobody that you value says you've betrayed the truth the truth is just what people agree on. Destroy the facts, and they never existed if you don't say they did. In a society in which there's a fair amount of poverty and in which being impoverished is a dishonor, esp. when it's your lessers that are wealthier, jealousy plays as big a role as simple greed--you can be greedy and want stuff, you can be covetous and what what they have, or you can be jealous and be almost as happy with another's ruin as you'd be with your own success.

I put the three kinds of hatred into different buckets. The first is national and the conflicts are often very hard to resolve; frequently it requires one group give up its aspirations. Germans removed from Poland may sometimes harbor dreams of reclaiming their patrimony but they've assimilated and moved on for the most part.

The second is religious and cannot be resolved. Secular Zionists may have thought an alternative homeland would have suited Jews, and they'd have been right; "next year in Jerusalem" was okay for many hundreds of years ... But that train has left the station, and "next year in Namibia" would produce a lot of grief. Having given Jews a homeland in Palestine, to remove them would be nearly impossible. Redefining waqf is what's needed at this point, and finding an accommodation for a largish Muslim minority, as well as finding some way of disposing of the territories of Ephraim and Manesseh (and was it Reuben?) from Jewish national aspirations. Then, perhaps, the religious claims could be resolved.

The third problem, viewing those who view you as inferior as inferior, won't go away. Separation and rituals to govern interactions is the usual way history has of dealing with this, when the more common kludges of ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation weren't employed. Given today's Zeitgeist, I don't see "rituals" happening except in some formal, treaty-level way that rules government-to-government to interactions.