Only if the UN are involved. Only people on planet earth who get a 75 year intergenerational “refugee” status. Can the 850,000 Jews of the Middle East, citizens of centuries, have their right to return? Or the Hindus of Pakistan. 14 million. The 20th century had the biggest movement of people, why cherry pick the data over Israel…. Oh that’s right, we know why 😘
Your grandfather isnt originally fr0m a small shtetl in Russia who went to Palestine with his mother and some siblings and only came to the US because the father (the great grandfather who had been in the US for 10 years) got a job at the last minute or they all would have stayed in Palestine?
My grandmother was also a Palestinian when she immigrated to the USA from Israel as a child. She was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem. It’s really not that complicated. It’s simply the truth. Thanks for sharing.
This is a great article! Thank you for writing it in such a way that makes it accessible and easy to understand.
I must admit that I have used the terms "Palestine" and "Palestinians" incorrectly in the past, and I apologize for that. I will be more careful with my language moving forward and will do my best to help others understand as well.
For many of us in the West, this is all new. Only in recent years has this topic become widely known and often miscommunicated. Please continue to publish articles and keep us informed!
This is what I've been saying for decades - I'm sure that your grandmother's passport read "Palestine," but it was British Mandate Palestine, the colonized Jewish homeland. Thank you for writing this, for sharing your family's story....
I always thought this all would be well-known, and indeed it IS to many, but they chose to "forget", 'cause if they wouldn´t it would prevent them from being anti-semitic and from joining in to the currently 'popular' sermon chants of so-called/self-named 'Palestinians".
In fact, there are no jews anywhere who ever have (let them be) name/d (themselves) "Palestinians".
Especially but not only because "P." is (not only, but a.o.) a "pan-arabic" word for COLONISATION, with Damascus as the capital of a 100% "Arabian" Land "between Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea".
Especially but not only the Jews should have to be "proselytized" to the "One and Only Right Belief" of the "TOLERANT" Islam.
My (German) grandparents and grandgrandparents as long as they lived always talked not about "the Jews", but "from their memory" about "the Palestinians" and reported several encounters and conversations from before the Shoah in which Jews were told to "Get out of here, get back to Palestine, where you belong ..!" (!)
NOW they ARE "in Palestine" - and ...? ... get told to "get out". By people who "aren´t antisemitic" of course, and only by chance they talk to/about "the Jews" exactly like Nazis did and do.
Alone from that of course they always rejected that term.
But Arabians themselves before 1948 did not make much use of it, at best they were mostly indifferent about it.
Only when it became clear that the region's sleepy languishing after having been abandoned and given up by the Ottomans, and the lackluster execution of the "Mandate" by the British and French, had been abandoned by "the World Community" "because" they "felt guilty" after the Shoah, and the Jews were finally granted their own state – something the Arabs had hardly ever wanted to believe possible, since, due to widespread anti-Semitism, the Arabs in the region had always been favoured and privileged in order "not to provoke any dispute" with them –, did the Arabs suddenly wake up, having been led (or led themselves) to believe that the land they had in most cases simply "taken" – and often from Jews – without it truly "belonging" to them (although they constantly try to claim that it did), would "be theirs" forever.
And there were immediately enough "outraged" and "supporters" who installed the term "P." -which until then had been widely rejected or at most used as a kind of substitute- as a "Combat Term" and from then on wanted to pretend in all seriousness that there had ever been anything even remotely resembling an (Arab) "nation" called "P."
And since the number of uneducated and idiotic people far outweighs within the "Crown of Creation," they always found and continue to find enough idiots who, "outraged," bark at anyone not "P.-friendly" like rampaging, dangerous curs that everyone would otherwise shoot.
And when the Jews wake up and Israel conquers Gaza and throws out the demented misnamed self-described Palestinians who live in Gaza - the rafts to Turkey are waiting for them in Ankara - not to mention the Sinai Desert and the wastelands of Jordan - Jews en masse can return to Zion and turn the country into even more of a powerhouse and cultural treasure.
"What Does “Palestine” Really Mean: Philistia or Israel?
What is confirmed, however, is that the term Palaestina was already in Greek usage long before the Roman renaming. Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, referred to “Palaistinē” as a region encompassing the Land of Israel, including the coastal area once known as Philistia.
This supports a more compelling theory that traces the name Palestine to the ancient Greek Παλαιστῑ́νη (Palaistīnē), derived from παλαιστής (palaistês), meaning “wrestler,” “rival,” or “adversary”—a direct translation of the Hebrew name Yisra’el (יִשְׂרָאֵל), which means “one who wrestles with God” (Bereishit/Genesis 32:28).
In other words, Palestine is not an erasure of Israel, but a Greek rendering of it. The Greeks used the term as a neutral geographic descriptor, without political or anti-Jewish intent.
This kind of linguistic translation is not unusual. Just as the original French name Côte d’Ivoire became Ivory Coast in English and Берег Слоновой Кости (Bereg Slonovoy Kosti) in Russian, so too did Yisra’el—“one who wrestles with God”—become Palaistīnē, “land of one who wrestles,” in Greek."
My grandfather came to the US as a child with a visa from Palestine in the 1920s. Does that make me a Palestinian refugee? 😜
Only if the UN are involved. Only people on planet earth who get a 75 year intergenerational “refugee” status. Can the 850,000 Jews of the Middle East, citizens of centuries, have their right to return? Or the Hindus of Pakistan. 14 million. The 20th century had the biggest movement of people, why cherry pick the data over Israel…. Oh that’s right, we know why 😘
I was being tongue in cheek. I wasn’t serious. 😊
My apologies! Must have ptsd from all the trolls
i am not surprised. I think we all have ptsd in some form right now
Same!
Your grandfather isnt originally fr0m a small shtetl in Russia who went to Palestine with his mother and some siblings and only came to the US because the father (the great grandfather who had been in the US for 10 years) got a job at the last minute or they all would have stayed in Palestine?
My grandmother was also a Palestinian when she immigrated to the USA from Israel as a child. She was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem. It’s really not that complicated. It’s simply the truth. Thanks for sharing.
Wonderful story! A must read. Please have it published as widely as possible!
Great story! The only goal of the so called Palestinians is the rendering the Land and State of Israel Judenrein
I understand Golda Meir’s passport had her being from Palestine
This is a great article! Thank you for writing it in such a way that makes it accessible and easy to understand.
I must admit that I have used the terms "Palestine" and "Palestinians" incorrectly in the past, and I apologize for that. I will be more careful with my language moving forward and will do my best to help others understand as well.
For many of us in the West, this is all new. Only in recent years has this topic become widely known and often miscommunicated. Please continue to publish articles and keep us informed!
I try to use the moniker “Arabs of Palestine” which is more accurate.
You’re 100 %correct.
This is what I've been saying for decades - I'm sure that your grandmother's passport read "Palestine," but it was British Mandate Palestine, the colonized Jewish homeland. Thank you for writing this, for sharing your family's story....
Thx for sharing your family history. There are many others like you. I read that Gal Gadot is 6th generation Palestinian/Israeli.
I always thought this all would be well-known, and indeed it IS to many, but they chose to "forget", 'cause if they wouldn´t it would prevent them from being anti-semitic and from joining in to the currently 'popular' sermon chants of so-called/self-named 'Palestinians".
In fact, there are no jews anywhere who ever have (let them be) name/d (themselves) "Palestinians".
Especially but not only because "P." is (not only, but a.o.) a "pan-arabic" word for COLONISATION, with Damascus as the capital of a 100% "Arabian" Land "between Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea".
Especially but not only the Jews should have to be "proselytized" to the "One and Only Right Belief" of the "TOLERANT" Islam.
My (German) grandparents and grandgrandparents as long as they lived always talked not about "the Jews", but "from their memory" about "the Palestinians" and reported several encounters and conversations from before the Shoah in which Jews were told to "Get out of here, get back to Palestine, where you belong ..!" (!)
NOW they ARE "in Palestine" - and ...? ... get told to "get out". By people who "aren´t antisemitic" of course, and only by chance they talk to/about "the Jews" exactly like Nazis did and do.
Alone from that of course they always rejected that term.
But Arabians themselves before 1948 did not make much use of it, at best they were mostly indifferent about it.
Only when it became clear that the region's sleepy languishing after having been abandoned and given up by the Ottomans, and the lackluster execution of the "Mandate" by the British and French, had been abandoned by "the World Community" "because" they "felt guilty" after the Shoah, and the Jews were finally granted their own state – something the Arabs had hardly ever wanted to believe possible, since, due to widespread anti-Semitism, the Arabs in the region had always been favoured and privileged in order "not to provoke any dispute" with them –, did the Arabs suddenly wake up, having been led (or led themselves) to believe that the land they had in most cases simply "taken" – and often from Jews – without it truly "belonging" to them (although they constantly try to claim that it did), would "be theirs" forever.
And there were immediately enough "outraged" and "supporters" who installed the term "P." -which until then had been widely rejected or at most used as a kind of substitute- as a "Combat Term" and from then on wanted to pretend in all seriousness that there had ever been anything even remotely resembling an (Arab) "nation" called "P."
And since the number of uneducated and idiotic people far outweighs within the "Crown of Creation," they always found and continue to find enough idiots who, "outraged," bark at anyone not "P.-friendly" like rampaging, dangerous curs that everyone would otherwise shoot.
In the early 1930s in Lwów (Lviv), one of the slur's my grandfather would hear was, Jews go back to Palestine.
And when the Jews wake up and Israel conquers Gaza and throws out the demented misnamed self-described Palestinians who live in Gaza - the rafts to Turkey are waiting for them in Ankara - not to mention the Sinai Desert and the wastelands of Jordan - Jews en masse can return to Zion and turn the country into even more of a powerhouse and cultural treasure.
I remember my Jewish relatives being Palestinian too…. In the 1950’s!
Thanks to the author for sharing her fascinating family story.
Outstanding essay, Forest Rain!
From https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-battle-for-palestine/
"What Does “Palestine” Really Mean: Philistia or Israel?
What is confirmed, however, is that the term Palaestina was already in Greek usage long before the Roman renaming. Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, referred to “Palaistinē” as a region encompassing the Land of Israel, including the coastal area once known as Philistia.
This supports a more compelling theory that traces the name Palestine to the ancient Greek Παλαιστῑ́νη (Palaistīnē), derived from παλαιστής (palaistês), meaning “wrestler,” “rival,” or “adversary”—a direct translation of the Hebrew name Yisra’el (יִשְׂרָאֵל), which means “one who wrestles with God” (Bereishit/Genesis 32:28).
In other words, Palestine is not an erasure of Israel, but a Greek rendering of it. The Greeks used the term as a neutral geographic descriptor, without political or anti-Jewish intent.
This kind of linguistic translation is not unusual. Just as the original French name Côte d’Ivoire became Ivory Coast in English and Берег Слоновой Кости (Bereg Slonovoy Kosti) in Russian, so too did Yisra’el—“one who wrestles with God”—become Palaistīnē, “land of one who wrestles,” in Greek."