Palestine is a place. Palestinians are a people.
The key: the symbol of tragedy for displaced Palestinians who lost their homes in the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe“) of 1948. More than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 war.
The key is the symbol of hope that one day they will exercise the internationally recognized “right of return” to their homeland and to use those keys to once again enter their homes and live there in peace. It is the right to the property they themselves or their ancestors left behind or were forced to leave in what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories.
by Kathryn Shihadah, January 9, 2022
Israel’s supporters are well trained to throw down statements designed to end discussions – and to speak so authoritatively that no one would dare disagree. Well, almost no one.
Zionism is a nationalist, political ideology that supports the existence of a Jewish state in the land of historic Palestine. Zionist arguments are notoriously Israel-centric. Their wording does not take into account the humanity of Palestinians.
A few examples:
“The concept of “Palestine” is a Nazi/Arab Nationalist Construct designed to take over the Nation State of Israel and destroy that Nation State.” (In other words, Palestinians didn’t exist until Jews showed up and needed to be disposed of.)
“The Soviets created the artificial Palestinian national identity to counter the claim that Jews had a right to the land.” (That is, Palestinians were invented to push back against Jews and the Jewish State.)
“BDS - the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement - is a global campaign to delegitimize Israel.” (Meaning, people support this movement because they want to destroy Israel, not to support Palestinian rights.)
“Anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism.” (i.e. criticism of Israel is racist and not to be tolerated.)
Notice how these statements don’t allow Palestinians to have an identity? Palestinians are nothing but a construct of Nazis or Soviets, or part of a plot to cheat Jews out of their land or destroy them.
These declarations assume that Palestinians have no legitimate grievances. They don’t exist. They were invented as a tool in the hands of evil empires to cheat Jews out of what is rightly theirs.
The right to exist
Israel’s supporters invariably ask the question, “do you think Israel has a right to exist?” If a state’s existence is predicated on stripping human rights from a people group, that state has no right to exist. Nazi Germany had no right to exist as a state that killed Jews and other minority groups. The United States had no right to exist as a nation dependent on the forced labor of enslaved people. Israel has no right to exist if its existence requires the oppression of Palestinians.
Many also argue that states don’t have rights – people have rights.
Palestinians do not take the concept of existence for granted – which, if you think about it, is bizarre. Israel and its zealots have been working overtime to erase the entire people group from the global memory.
The above examples, dismissing “Palestinian” as a made-up category for a made-up purpose, are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s easy to find examples of the erasure of Palestinian culture and history (this fascinating article is a good place to start). In this article (from Fox), Israel supporters accuse Palestinians of erasing so-called Judeo-Christian history.
The Israel faction is constantly at work tarnishing the reputation of those Palestinians who still manage to be present, using labels like “terrorist” to validate their slaughter individually or en masse.
The need to resist
That’s why many Palestinians live by the slogan, “to exist is to resist.” They recognize that if they don’t fight back against their erasure and ethnic cleansing, they as a people won’t be around much longer.
“Resistance” usually looks like peaceful refusal to accept the status quo of occupation. Every Friday, dozens of Palestinian towns organize protests; every day women argue with Israeli soldiers, children throw stones (Palestinian men, like black men in America, generally refrain from challenging authority figures).
These nonviolent forms of resistance are regularly met with violent responses.
Keep in mind that long-term occupation is a violation of international law, while resistance against such occupation (even armed resistance) is protected by international law. In fact, Israel defies multiple international laws every single day (here’s a sampling).
What are Palestinians fighting for?
Just by being alive, each of us should be able to expect certain rights. Yet every Palestinian who is under the age of 54 has literally known nothing but occupation and oppression.
Palestinians want freedom – to travel, to speak their minds, to worship, to prosper.
Palestinians want equality – an end to a regime of apartheid.
Palestinians want a homeland. They know their roots in their land. They have documents that prove their existence in their land for hundreds of years, and they know their presence goes back farther than that. Regardless of religious affiliation, the simple fact of their long-term residence on the land makes this their homeland.
They know this deeply. Israel and its acolytes reject it, and this is a rejection of Palestinian-ness, a rejection of existence. Is there any greater insult?
Nationalism
Before Britain took over, Palestinians had been thriving and modern under the Ottoman Empire (they were not backward and ignorant, as Israel supporters would have us believe), participating in international commerce.
Palestinian nationalism was not much of an issue (from my understanding of history) until large numbers of Jewish immigrants came on the scene. Their Jewishness was not a threat. The problem was the rumblings of Jewish nationalism – a Jewish state on Palestinian land – with support from Britain.
It was only natural at that point for Palestinians to say No to a state ruled by recent immigrants, and Yes to a state ruled by the indigenous people.
The exact moment when “Palestinian” became the designated name for the indigenous Arabs doesn’t matter as much as the fact that they were indigenous on the land called Palestine.
Logic and power
If anybody ought to have a state in Palestine, it ought to be the people who’d lived there for centuries – not a crowd who just arrived up and claimed their ancestors had lived here thousands of years ago, or claimed that the god of their religion said they could live there (especially since most of the immigrants were not religious).
But the immigrants were the ones with weapons and powerful allies, so they got a state. It’s not that Palestinians didn’t have a right to the state, or the land. It’s that they didn’t win. But that doesn’t mean they’ve given up. They still have a lot of fight in them, and a lot of patience.
Palestinians are still indigenous to the land, and still insist that they exist. 138 of the 193 UN member countries recognize their existence as a state (164 recognize Israel) – but Israel does not, and the US does not.
The land does not belong to the US (or the UN) – it’s not up to us to decide by proclamation to whom it belongs, nor is it our right to tell Palestinians they have no right to their struggle.
We need to get on the right side of this issue: acknowledge the existence of the Palestinian people as a group historically tied to the land and deserving of all the rights that every other human being deserves.
For those who doubt the existence of “Palestine” before the 1960s, or whatever rubbish hasbara they’ve come up with to deny the existence of Palestinian people, here are a few historic photos for your amusement:
