I will start with a preface that I know that I haven't gotten everything right about the conflict in the Middle East, and that I don't know everything.
That out of the way, if you can't see how religion is a major factor, if not the predominant factor in this conflict, I do believe that you're talking out of your own ass.
Why did the Jews even pick that patch of land out after surviving the most notorious genocide in human history? Of course, a part of it was that the Jews had been there for thousands of years. But, it's the Holy Land for all the Abrahamic religions.
There was a minority among zionists who argued to carve out a Jewish state elsewhere. Still, they chose a spot of land the size of New Jersey that, aside not having much natural access to drinkable water, is the one spot in the region that doesn't have any freaking oil.
Why are the Muslims so pissed off that Israel has a small spot of land? Why isn't there openness to a partition among the Arabs Muslims? Why has there never been?
It's not because of The Nakba. That's just an excuse. Relocations like that are the rule, not the exception. If it were people trying to move back into their grandfather's house, we'd have the same conflicts all around the world.
It's not like Israel's existence robbed any Muslim nation of important resources.
Again, it's land that's viewed as Holy to the Muslims.
Why is it that the Jews were open to just about every partition plan since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the neighboring Muslims weren't? Well, a large component of that is clearly that the religious texts of Judaism predated the founding of Islam by up to thousands of years, and there's no religious reason for the Jews to have a general issue with Muslims. Islam is a much younger religion. The religious text of Islam has a lot to say about the Jews, and not much of it is kind.
It shouldn't be hard for us to see that it's not just Hamas and Hezobollah and the groups that allegedly had their land "stolen" by Israel still quote Islamic texts that look forward to the day when the earth itself will call for Jewish blood to understand that there's a religious problem here.
Why is Iran funding these people? Has Saudi Arabia been barring Jews from their land in solidarity with their Palestinian brothers? Of course not. These are theocracies.
The fact that we in the West claim to not understand the religious nature of this conflict isn't all that baffling.
Really, the radical left in the West has come to a point that they are morally relativistic about every non-western culture while believing that western culture can't do anything right. They associate Christianity with the West (mostly rightly so); so, it doesn't baffle the radical left that there's a religious history of hatred of Jews among Christians.
There's no problem with making fun of Mel Gibson or his dad over antisemitic language. We don't have any problems with saying that the pogroms of the past were religiously motivated (though, most radical leftists don't know what the word "pogrom" means). There's a reason why South Park spent so much time with Cartman ridiculing the Jews for killing Jesus -- a lot of Christians believed, and still believe, that the blood of Jesus is still on the hands of the Jews.
It seems like most western Christians have grown up. It's still something that we can talk about when another antisemitic pastor pops up.
The radical left views Muslims as a protected group. So, if a catholic priest is caught giving a sermon saying that the Jews killed Jesus, they're gonna hop on him (while going on to spouting Nazi rhetoric in Union Square). If and when an Imam quotes the Hadith about the stones and trees calling for Muslims to kill Jews, they're going to write it off as attributable to anything but the religion or the culture.
They refuse to grasp that the leadership of many of these countries are basically the Westboro Baptist church times ten, on cocain, and with billions of dollars in oil wealth and several armies.
Ironically, if Israel weren't so secular of a state, I think that this would be easier for people to see. If Israel were stoning women for alleged adultery, or throwing gays off rooftops, it might be easier for the left to see. If Israel were another nation sitting on billions of dollars of natural resources while most of her people still lived in squalor, it might be easier for radical leftists to see.
Alas, Israel is none of those things. So, most of us are going to keep pretending that religion isn't a real factor in this conflict.