Thanks for engaging so thoughtfully — especially as a self-described staunch Zionist. Let me clarify what I am and am not arguing.
My article does not deny that there are Arabic-speaking people who today sincerely understand themselves as “Palestinians,” nor does it deny that Arabs have lived in this land for many centuries. What I challenge is the retroactive claim that there has always been a distinct, ancient nation-state called “Palestine” belonging to an age-old “Palestinian” people, analogous to the continuous peoplehood and indigeneity of the Jewish nation.
On the newspaper you mention: I assume you mean Filastin / Falastin, the Arabic newspaper founded in Jaffa in 1911 by Issa and Yousef al-Issa. It’s an important source — and it actually supports my point. A newspaper founded in 1911 that begins addressing its audience as “Palestinians” is evidence of a modern, early-20th-century political identity taking shape under late Ottoman and Mandate conditions, not evidence of an ancient national continuity stretching back millennia.
Notice as well that, only a couple of decades later, Zionist Jews founded The Palestine Post in Jerusalem (1932) as an explicitly Jewish, pro-Zionist paper. So simply pointing to the word “Palestine” (or “Filastin”) in a newspaper title does not settle the question of which community it belongs to, or what kind of national identity existed centuries before.
The core of my argument is:
“Palestinian” identity, as a distinct national project, is historically recent and politically constructed, like many other national identities that crystallized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The terminology built around it — especially phrases like “Occupied ‘Palestinian’ Territories” — has been deliberately weaponized in international forums to recast Jews as late-arriving colonial intruders and to erase Jewish indigeneity, rather than simply to describe a neutral geography.
Using quotation marks around “Palestinian” is my way of signaling that this is a contested, historically contingent label, not a timeless fact of nature — not a way of denying anyone’s humanity or lived experience today.
You say you don’t feel the need to “diminish the history or legitimacy of Arab Palestine” in order to affirm Jewish rights. I agree that we don’t need to erase Arab presence or suffering to affirm the Jewish people’s right to a homeland in Israel. But we also shouldn’t accept a revisionist narrative in which an eternal “Arab Palestine” is imagined into antiquity and Israel is portrayed as a recent, illegitimate colonial imposition. That inversion of chronology is exactly what my piece is pushing back against.
So I’m not trying to make Arabs here into non-people. I’m insisting that we be honest about when “Palestinian” identity emerged, how the term has been used politically, and how language has been weaponized to delegitimize the one people whose connection to this land really is ancient and continuous: the Jewish people.
Isn't Palestine derived from Hebrew Phisitina ! Doesn't it mean invaders ? I gather every surrounding culture had a similar name which meant something else. But modern "Palestine" seems derived from the Hebrew word for invaders. Ironic 😏
I’ve been putting everything “ Palestine” related in quotes since they got on my nerves. And adding that Palestine ceased to exist in 1947. Since then, there is Israel and Arab states, to whom the lion’s share of what was Palestine - a fake term since the Romans invented it -was allocated. Recently, “ Palestinianism” has been added to the fraudulent repertoire. I think it is the greatest hoax in many centuries. Can’t even think of a similar monstrous fake entity created for a nefarious purpose, deranging the world and causing so much turmoil and world savage Jew-hatred, dormant only for a few decades.
He had a lot of inspiration and help from the Soviets, who in 1964, by the KGB, created the PLO, basically. It was knowingly a strategy to penetrate the Middle East and weaken the West by targeting Israel. All malicious, cynical, opportunistic, rabble rousing fraud spearheaded by the Soviets, organized by the KGB, and nourished from the age long genocidal hatred for the Jews .
Finished reading. Wow! Makes me remember how right Orwell was in basing 1984 as an allegory to Soviet and Nazi propaganda and disinformation , and how entire vocabularies and the daily rewriting of History were created.
And then, the blunt double standards. When Jordan and Egypt held the territories, they were not spoken about, neither as “ Palestinian” nor as “ occupied”, until the Soviets stepped in.
Finally, what we see today are the draconian vestiges of that Soviet planted mendacious construct, just as deadly as it was then, all invented terms preserved, and then some. The Soviets were defeated, but Orwell’s 1984 continues.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful reaction. Orwell is exactly the right reference point — what we are living through is a textbook case of how vocabularies are engineered and history is rewritten in real time.
You’re also absolutely right about the Soviet/KGB role: that’s the core of my follow-on piece about “Occupied ‘Palestinian’ Territories” and the way that phrase was consciously manufactured. I’m grateful you took the time to read it so carefully.
I really appreciate that, Wendy. It’s encouraging to hear from people who’ve instinctively been using quotation marks and now have more of the historical background to back up what they already sensed. Thank you for reading and for saying so.
I heard he consulted with an Austrian chancellor who literally told him to portray the victimhood of Arab Palestinians in order to grow his cause. This began the great Palestinian sympathy campaign...and the great Arab exploitation of these displaced peoples.
I appreciate this historical analysis. Much of it has been familiar to me for some time but it only helps to enlighten those who are curious and open-minded. But as the author himself admits the present use of the term is political and for the most part one can only fight politics with politics, facts and logic being largely irrelevant to the game. Natasha Hausdorff the eminent international lawyer has noted that one cannot recognize a Palestinian state because nothing now exists that fulfills the legal requirements for statehood such as recognized legal boundaries. This sort of thing will be helpful in the long run but not too much just yet. Politics is about power. Period. So what is most important are facts on the ground. If and when Israel annexes part of Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria and America recognizes that then that will redefine Israel and strengthen her defensible area. That’s the game that we must play in the long run and it will take time and patience and timing. I only wish that Trump would stop sucking up to Qatar who is bound and determined to mess up the whole thing in favour of the most radical Islamists.
Max, I really appreciate this thoughtful and sober comment. You’re right: facts and logic alone rarely move entrenched politics, and questions of statehood, borders, and annexation ultimately come down to power and timing.
My aim here is narrower but (I hope) still important: to strip away some of the mythology around “Palestinian” as an eternal, primordial identity and to show how the terminology has been used as a weapon. That doesn’t replace hard power or strategic decisions, but it does matter which story the world thinks it is watching when those decisions are made.
It's an Islamic tool for expansionism and hegemony. Mamdani is positioning himself for president of a recognized Palestine State. He will relocate mark my words. He is just using
New York as a launch pad and the hyperactive voters won't even remember how he lied to them, conned them for the Islamic cause.
Mamdani is talking to Middle Eastern Jihadists not to Americans.
Wow, thank you for clearly rendering all that historical context, and for your further clarification regarding "revisionist narrative in which an eternal 'Arab Palestine' is imagined into antiquity and Israel is portrayed as a recent, illegitimate colonial imposition. That inversion of chronology...."
So well put, much appreciated. Your highlighting of how the "Palestinian" narrative inverts the true chronology is yet another example of how the constructed "Palestinian" identity consists so extensively of cultural appropriation and inversion of true historical Jewish identity (e.g., "Nakhba" as Shoah/Holocaust "envy"/inversion; false accusations of genocide or ethnic cleansing; colonialism; etc.)
Brad, thank you — that’s an exceptionally generous reading. You’ve captured exactly what I was trying to get at with the “inversion of chronology”: a constructed “Palestinian” identity built in large part by appropriating, inverting, or negating core elements of Jewish history (Shoah, indigeneity, accusations of genocide, etc.).
I’m planning to explore that cultural-appropriation dimension more explicitly in a future piece. Your comment gives me even more reason to do so.
I have been using quotation marks for these “entities” for ages, for the same reasons. Your post has added to my knowledge about the background, though.
This is a world wide Muslim religious war. The UK France Spain Belgium Canada Sweden Norway Finland Australia Portugal Ireland have already been invaded and are Muslim countries.
That’s a crisp way to put it — a demonym, not an ethnonym. Exactly. Part of the problem is that this shift from a geographic label to an ethnic/national one happened quietly over time, and most people never noticed when the category changed.
The point is that a demonym can be simply adopted as Arafat did in 1968, while ethnicity is inherited. There’s no DNA marker/identifier for any ethnic group called ‘Palestinians’.
I thank you for a more detailed understanding than I knew but have been aware of the history of the region enough to know the false construct. I therefore have been using the same quotation marks to acknowledge that these people wish their own “place” as they are now seemingly unwanted by the rest of the Arab world. I stopped using the term “Arab” to describe the people of Gaza and the area west of the Jordan because it seems to be confrontational to my former liberal friends who I now call Palestino-liberals.
Thank you, John — I’m glad the piece helped fill in some of the historical scaffolding behind what you were already intuiting. Your term “Palestino-liberals” is a sharp description of that mindset: people who adopt the branding without ever checking its origins.
Another clumsy attempt to deny Palestinians their identity. Why don't you mention the Filistin Post which was and Arabic newspaper founded in Jaffa in 1911? I am a staunch Zionist, and I don't feel the need to diminish the history or legitimacy of Arab Palestine in order to strengthen my firm belief in the right of the Jewish people to a homeland in Israel.
Thanks for engaging so thoughtfully — especially as a self-described staunch Zionist. Let me clarify what I am and am not arguing.
My article does not deny that there are Arabic-speaking people who today sincerely understand themselves as “Palestinians,” nor does it deny that Arabs have lived in this land for many centuries. What I challenge is the retroactive claim that there has always been a distinct, ancient nation-state called “Palestine” belonging to an age-old “Palestinian” people, analogous to the continuous peoplehood and indigeneity of the Jewish nation.
On the newspaper you mention: I assume you mean Filastin / Falastin, the Arabic newspaper founded in Jaffa in 1911 by Issa and Yousef al-Issa. It’s an important source — and it actually supports my point. A newspaper founded in 1911 that begins addressing its audience as “Palestinians” is evidence of a modern, early-20th-century political identity taking shape under late Ottoman and Mandate conditions, not evidence of an ancient national continuity stretching back millennia.
Notice as well that, only a couple of decades later, Zionist Jews founded The Palestine Post in Jerusalem (1932) as an explicitly Jewish, pro-Zionist paper. So simply pointing to the word “Palestine” (or “Filastin”) in a newspaper title does not settle the question of which community it belongs to, or what kind of national identity existed centuries before.
The core of my argument is:
“Palestinian” identity, as a distinct national project, is historically recent and politically constructed, like many other national identities that crystallized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The terminology built around it — especially phrases like “Occupied ‘Palestinian’ Territories” — has been deliberately weaponized in international forums to recast Jews as late-arriving colonial intruders and to erase Jewish indigeneity, rather than simply to describe a neutral geography.
Using quotation marks around “Palestinian” is my way of signaling that this is a contested, historically contingent label, not a timeless fact of nature — not a way of denying anyone’s humanity or lived experience today.
You say you don’t feel the need to “diminish the history or legitimacy of Arab Palestine” in order to affirm Jewish rights. I agree that we don’t need to erase Arab presence or suffering to affirm the Jewish people’s right to a homeland in Israel. But we also shouldn’t accept a revisionist narrative in which an eternal “Arab Palestine” is imagined into antiquity and Israel is portrayed as a recent, illegitimate colonial imposition. That inversion of chronology is exactly what my piece is pushing back against.
So I’m not trying to make Arabs here into non-people. I’m insisting that we be honest about when “Palestinian” identity emerged, how the term has been used politically, and how language has been weaponized to delegitimize the one people whose connection to this land really is ancient and continuous: the Jewish people.
Isn't Palestine derived from Hebrew Phisitina ! Doesn't it mean invaders ? I gather every surrounding culture had a similar name which meant something else. But modern "Palestine" seems derived from the Hebrew word for invaders. Ironic 😏
Here is the answer to your question: The origin and appropriation of the word ‘Palestine’ may surprise you https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/398384
Philistia..I meant to write
Well said but whether we use quotes or not, it is important to understand why the word Palestine was appropriated in 1964 to represent Arab refugees.
Historically, Palestine = the Holy Land = Israel, Jerusalem & the Temple mount.
Please read:
"This Liberation Movement’s Only Tactic is to Destroy." edited for space: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-733351 | complete article: https://thetruthfulproject.blogspot.com/2023/03/appeared-in-jerusalem-post-edited-for.html
"The origin and appropriation of the word ‘Palestine’ may surprise you." https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/398384
I’ve been putting everything “ Palestine” related in quotes since they got on my nerves. And adding that Palestine ceased to exist in 1947. Since then, there is Israel and Arab states, to whom the lion’s share of what was Palestine - a fake term since the Romans invented it -was allocated. Recently, “ Palestinianism” has been added to the fraudulent repertoire. I think it is the greatest hoax in many centuries. Can’t even think of a similar monstrous fake entity created for a nefarious purpose, deranging the world and causing so much turmoil and world savage Jew-hatred, dormant only for a few decades.
Arafat’s idea to use the term “Palestinian” for this group of Arabs was a brilliant move, one of the biggest and most successful PR campaigns ever.
He had a lot of inspiration and help from the Soviets, who in 1964, by the KGB, created the PLO, basically. It was knowingly a strategy to penetrate the Middle East and weaken the West by targeting Israel. All malicious, cynical, opportunistic, rabble rousing fraud spearheaded by the Soviets, organized by the KGB, and nourished from the age long genocidal hatred for the Jews .
Spot on. That is the precise subject of the follow-on piece I wrote: https://open.substack.com/pub/davidfiresterphd/p/how-opt-occupied-palestinian-territories
Finished reading. Wow! Makes me remember how right Orwell was in basing 1984 as an allegory to Soviet and Nazi propaganda and disinformation , and how entire vocabularies and the daily rewriting of History were created.
And then, the blunt double standards. When Jordan and Egypt held the territories, they were not spoken about, neither as “ Palestinian” nor as “ occupied”, until the Soviets stepped in.
Finally, what we see today are the draconian vestiges of that Soviet planted mendacious construct, just as deadly as it was then, all invented terms preserved, and then some. The Soviets were defeated, but Orwell’s 1984 continues.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful reaction. Orwell is exactly the right reference point — what we are living through is a textbook case of how vocabularies are engineered and history is rewritten in real time.
You’re also absolutely right about the Soviet/KGB role: that’s the core of my follow-on piece about “Occupied ‘Palestinian’ Territories” and the way that phrase was consciously manufactured. I’m grateful you took the time to read it so carefully.
Love it
I really appreciate that, Wendy. It’s encouraging to hear from people who’ve instinctively been using quotation marks and now have more of the historical background to back up what they already sensed. Thank you for reading and for saying so.
I heard he consulted with an Austrian chancellor who literally told him to portray the victimhood of Arab Palestinians in order to grow his cause. This began the great Palestinian sympathy campaign...and the great Arab exploitation of these displaced peoples.
Me too. And I didn't start off that way.
I appreciate this historical analysis. Much of it has been familiar to me for some time but it only helps to enlighten those who are curious and open-minded. But as the author himself admits the present use of the term is political and for the most part one can only fight politics with politics, facts and logic being largely irrelevant to the game. Natasha Hausdorff the eminent international lawyer has noted that one cannot recognize a Palestinian state because nothing now exists that fulfills the legal requirements for statehood such as recognized legal boundaries. This sort of thing will be helpful in the long run but not too much just yet. Politics is about power. Period. So what is most important are facts on the ground. If and when Israel annexes part of Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria and America recognizes that then that will redefine Israel and strengthen her defensible area. That’s the game that we must play in the long run and it will take time and patience and timing. I only wish that Trump would stop sucking up to Qatar who is bound and determined to mess up the whole thing in favour of the most radical Islamists.
Max, I really appreciate this thoughtful and sober comment. You’re right: facts and logic alone rarely move entrenched politics, and questions of statehood, borders, and annexation ultimately come down to power and timing.
My aim here is narrower but (I hope) still important: to strip away some of the mythology around “Palestinian” as an eternal, primordial identity and to show how the terminology has been used as a weapon. That doesn’t replace hard power or strategic decisions, but it does matter which story the world thinks it is watching when those decisions are made.
It's an Islamic tool for expansionism and hegemony. Mamdani is positioning himself for president of a recognized Palestine State. He will relocate mark my words. He is just using
New York as a launch pad and the hyperactive voters won't even remember how he lied to them, conned them for the Islamic cause.
Mamdani is talking to Middle Eastern Jihadists not to Americans.
Wow, thank you for clearly rendering all that historical context, and for your further clarification regarding "revisionist narrative in which an eternal 'Arab Palestine' is imagined into antiquity and Israel is portrayed as a recent, illegitimate colonial imposition. That inversion of chronology...."
So well put, much appreciated. Your highlighting of how the "Palestinian" narrative inverts the true chronology is yet another example of how the constructed "Palestinian" identity consists so extensively of cultural appropriation and inversion of true historical Jewish identity (e.g., "Nakhba" as Shoah/Holocaust "envy"/inversion; false accusations of genocide or ethnic cleansing; colonialism; etc.)
Brad, thank you — that’s an exceptionally generous reading. You’ve captured exactly what I was trying to get at with the “inversion of chronology”: a constructed “Palestinian” identity built in large part by appropriating, inverting, or negating core elements of Jewish history (Shoah, indigeneity, accusations of genocide, etc.).
I’m planning to explore that cultural-appropriation dimension more explicitly in a future piece. Your comment gives me even more reason to do so.
I have been using quotation marks for these “entities” for ages, for the same reasons. Your post has added to my knowledge about the background, though.
This is a world wide Muslim religious war. The UK France Spain Belgium Canada Sweden Norway Finland Australia Portugal Ireland have already been invaded and are Muslim countries.
To put it simply, ‘Palestinian’ is a demonym not an ethnonym.
That’s a crisp way to put it — a demonym, not an ethnonym. Exactly. Part of the problem is that this shift from a geographic label to an ethnic/national one happened quietly over time, and most people never noticed when the category changed.
The point is that a demonym can be simply adopted as Arafat did in 1968, while ethnicity is inherited. There’s no DNA marker/identifier for any ethnic group called ‘Palestinians’.
I thank you for a more detailed understanding than I knew but have been aware of the history of the region enough to know the false construct. I therefore have been using the same quotation marks to acknowledge that these people wish their own “place” as they are now seemingly unwanted by the rest of the Arab world. I stopped using the term “Arab” to describe the people of Gaza and the area west of the Jordan because it seems to be confrontational to my former liberal friends who I now call Palestino-liberals.
Thank you, John — I’m glad the piece helped fill in some of the historical scaffolding behind what you were already intuiting. Your term “Palestino-liberals” is a sharp description of that mindset: people who adopt the branding without ever checking its origins.
Another clumsy attempt to deny Palestinians their identity. Why don't you mention the Filistin Post which was and Arabic newspaper founded in Jaffa in 1911? I am a staunch Zionist, and I don't feel the need to diminish the history or legitimacy of Arab Palestine in order to strengthen my firm belief in the right of the Jewish people to a homeland in Israel.
Https://www.NewZionist.org