Take a look at photos from Middle Eastern countries from 1910 or so to the 1960s and ask yourself what changed and why. These were not religiously conservative, backwards societies. I would argue that they conservatism and sometimes extremism arose from violent confrontations with Western powers, its people and its impositions. Israel is the eastern front of Western imperialism and hardline Zionism, fantasies of a utopian past as well as religious fundamentalism is what drives that endeavor.