The crusades were an imperialistic conquest, in that sense we agree there are similarities, but it’s not really related to the origins of Zionism. The current conflict. Zionism is a unique form of Settler Colonialism which drew from the more recent European Colonialism and was backed by the Imperial forces of the time (British, then American).

For most of the thousands of years of history in the region of Palestine, there has been peace and coexistance between them and their different faiths.

But the current conflict is not fundamentally about religion. Zionism is not Judaism. It is a fight between the Colonialist power, Israel, who is ethnically cleansing the native population of Palestinian people, and the people of Palestine, who are fighting against that ethnic cleansing by any means possible.

The book Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha goes into the detailed history of the region prior to the beginnings of Zionism

Colonial narratives, Masalha states, have conflated Palestine’s history with biblical myths which eliminate historical knowledge of Palestine and its status as a distinct geopolitical entity since the Bronze Age. A reading of Palestine from an indigenous perspective shows an uninterrupted sequence in which the land was enriched by different cultures and no attempt to annihilate the original inhabitants and their spaces. Linguistically and territorially, there was continuity. The cultural heritage and Palestinian historical consciousness were also paramount in shaping its national consciousness.