His professors in the ‘70s were not wrong. It was about land so much more than religion. The PLO was never an Islamist movement - it was a nationalist movement. Israel helped create Hamas in the 1980s, ostensibly as a religious counterbalance to the secular Palestinian movement. Certain folks drastically underestimated the toxic nature of violent movements based entirely on religious extremism.

The Islamist nature of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas are relatively recent developments in the long conflict. Iran since the ‘80s, and its proxies and affiliates gathering momentum beginning in the ‘90s. With Israeli support in some cases - one of many shades of grey Prager needs to ignore to push his black and white thesis.