Because people treat it like a football match. When I was in high school, I was classmates with many immigrant kids. Muslim boys and girls from poor families, for the most part. They all identified strongly with Palestine — poor, oppressed, just as they themselves felt. Plus Palestinians are, largely, Muslim as well. On the other hand, you have entire generations of Western people who grew up watching films like Schindler’s List. Who read Anne Frank’s diary. Who, in history class, had a considerable amount of time dedicated to the Holocaust.
As a result of this, in much of Europe and America, there are people who greatly pity Jewish people for what happened in WWII and who feel some sort of sympathy for them as a whole that extends to Israeli’s today. Add to this the religious element of some Christians considering Jews “the Chosen People”, it becomes even more important for them to root on these folks who were the “good guys” throughout the Bible. There’s also the underdog element — Israel is a tiny nation. It is surrounded by enemies that are larger, infinitely more populous. They Arabs have tried to wipe the Jewish state off the map a few times before. The late Nasrallah frequently called upon his followers to “drive the Jews into the sea” and Hamas chants similar things…
So people who sympathize with Israel will root for Israel because it is perceived as “the underdog” — Jews are, historically speaking, an underdog. Those who sympathize with the Palestinians, likewise, feel they’re rooting for the underdog — they’ll argue that Israel, backed by the US military industrial complex, is infinitely more powerful than Palestine could ever hope to be, hence they support Palestine. Both sides mix religious reasons, emotional appeals and, at times, cheap sentimentality to justify their stance. Neither side particularly compassionate towards the other.
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