If Israel disappeared tomorrow, 'Palestine' still wouldn’t exist.

Let’s be real: This was never about “saving Palestine” or the like. “Palestine” is a costume. A personality cult. A fetish.

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This is a guest essay written by Lucy Tabrizi, who writes about politics, philosophy, religion, ethics, and history.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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I try to be patient with the “pro-Palestine” crowd.

Really, I do.

I tell myself most of them mean well. Probably. But some mornings, my tolerance for their endlessly recycled propaganda — the kind they don’t even realise is propaganda — runs out before I’ve had breakfast.

It’s wild how many people appoint themselves as instant experts on a conflict they barely knew existed 17 months ago. Like broken record players stuck on repeat, they’ve spent every waking moment regurgitating the same stale slogans and buzzwords until they’ve lost all meaning — yet somehow, they soldier on, convinced their unoriginal hot takes are reshaping history.

These “activists” — whose biggest contribution to “Palestine” is testing the patience of everyone around them — truly believe a sovereign country called “Palestine” once thrived, until villainous European Jews stormed in, expelled the “indigenous Palestinians,” and have been brutally “occupying” them ever since, purely out of malice.

Oh, and apparently, this is what creates jihadists like Hamas — as if terrorism is just an inevitable side effect of territorial disputes.

None of this is remotely true, but why let facts ruin a good outrage spiral?

And while we’re at it, let’s all agree to ignore jihadist groups rampaging across the Middle East and North Africa — unless, of course, there’s a way to blame Zionists or the U.S. for that too. That narrative practically writes itself for Iranian state TV and Ivy League campuses — though, at this point, it’s hard to tell who’s taking notes from whom.

Now, let’s take a look at the brief (but endlessly reinvented) history of the fictional nation of “Palestine.”

Most historians trace the term Palestine back to the Hebrew and Ancient Egyptian peleshet, meaning “invader” or “migratory” — which, given history, is almost too on-the-nose.

Peleshet referred to the Philistines, a seafaring people of Greek origin who settled along the Mediterranean coast near Egypt, but died out in 604 BC. Their connection to modern Palestinians — an Arab ethnonational group — is about as solid as the Vikings’ connection to IKEA. Then again, historical accuracy has never been this movement’s strong suit.

The name Palestine, derived from Philistine, first appeared as a geographic term 700 years after Israel, but unlike Israel, it was never a political or national entity. In the second century AD, the Romans — in a stunning display of imperial pettiness — renamed Judea “Syria Palaestina,” a move widely believed to have been an attempt to erase Jewish ties to the land. This occurred 600 years before the Arab Conquest reached the region.

Prior to the British reviving the name in 1920, “Palestine” was little more than a vague geographic term — forgotten for over a millennium, then loosely used under the Ottoman Empire, but never as an official designation.

For Jews, “Palestinian” was never an indigenous identity of their own making but a label imposed by colonial powers — one that, for centuries, was almost exclusively associated with them. This wasn’t lost on the local Arabs or Europeans, who commonly used “Palestinian” to describe Jews living in the region. The latter made it especially clear when they graffitied “Go back to Palestine” on Jewish buildings whenever they wanted them gone from Europe.

“Palestine calls for all Jews. We don’t stand them anymore in Norway.” — Oslo, 1941

Many of the earliest institutions bearing the name “Palestine” were founded by Jews. The Palestine Post — established by Zionists — later became The Jerusalem Post. The Palestine Symphony Orchestra was created by Jewish musicians, and the Palestine Football Team of the 1930s was almost entirely made up of Jewish players.

The people shouting “Free Palestine!” today might be surprised to learn that, for most of history, calling an Arab Palestinian wouldn’t have sparked national pride; it would’ve just earned you a dirty look.

Most local Arabs identified as Syrians or Southern Syrians, while some referred to themselves as Arab Palestinian — a regional label, not a national identity. In fact, Palestinian wasn’t widely adopted to describe the local Arab population until the 1960s.

But why let historical irony get in the way of a good slogan?

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If you think this is just “Zionist propaganda” — which, let’s face it, now just means “inconvenient facts” — then let’s hear it straight from Arab leaders and historians. Because long before social media “experts” discovered “Palestine,” Arab officials openly admitted it wasn’t a thing:

1919: Arab Delegation from Palestine petitioned the Versailles Peace Conference to merge Palestine into Syria, stating, “We consider ‘Palestine’ as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time.”

1937: Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi told the Peel Commission, “There is no such country as Palestine! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented!”

1946: Princeton University historian Philip Hitti testified before the Anglo-American Committee, “There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not.”

1947: The Arab Higher Committee told the UN General Assembly, “Palestine was part of the province of Syria. … Politically, the Arabs of Israel were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity.”

1956: Ahmed Shukairy, first chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told the UN Security Council, “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria.”

Bottom line? There was never a Palestinian country, kingdom, or empire. No rulers, no national currency, no official land deeds. Not a single coin or postage stamp bore the word Palestine — unless, of course, it appeared alongside Eretz Israel (“the Land of Israel” in Hebrew).

So where did all this “Free Palestine” business come from?

Ironically, Zionists used it first — to free the land from British rule and establish Israel. Today’s activists have repurposed it to push for Israel’s destruction. In a plot twist worthy of a bad heist movie, Arab nationalists swiped the slogan — along with a freshly minted identity — once they realised calling themselves Syrians didn’t drum up enough global sympathy.

But co-opting narratives and appropriating culture is only problematic when White people do it, right?

Still willing to stake your moral identity on Palestinian nationalism? In 1977, senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Zuheir Mohsen veered off-script in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:

“The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel. … In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”

Translation? The Palestinian national movement was manufactured in the 1960s as a reaction to Zionism. Without Israel, it has no purpose. Its entire existence hinges on Israel’s destruction — which is why every “Palestinian Studies” course is basically just an extended hate-watch of the Jewish state.

When war failed to wipe Israel off the map, its enemies changed tactics. Military defeat was a dead end, so they doubled down on propaganda — because if you can’t destroy a country, you can always try erasing it from history.

And judging by the army of Western “useful idiots” plastering “Palestine” over Israel on maps, and world leaders falling over themselves to recognise a Palestinian state, the strategy is working. Who needs rockets when a well-placed narrative bomb is far more effective?

That narrative bomb had powerful architects. In the 1960s, Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat — backed by Soviet intelligence — teamed up with the Palestine Liberation Organization to rebrand Palestinians as a uniquely oppressed nation.

Fresh off the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets needed a new front in the Cold War and saw the Palestinian cause as the perfect weapon against U.S. influence in the Middle East. So they didn’t just fund and train it; they built it from the ground up.

Arafat himself made the goal clear: “The Palestinians have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them an identity through conflict with Israel.”

Draped in the keffiyeh — now a symbol of “Palestinian resistance” — Arafat turned it into an emblem of militant struggle. Never mind that it predates the modern concept of “Palestine” by thousands of years, originating in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and worn by various Arab communities long before it became a political statement.

As for the black-and-white keffiyeh — now a staple of “Palestinian nationalism” — it wasn’t some ancient national symbol. It gained prominence in the 20th century when British officer John Bagot Glubb, leader of the Arab Legion, introduced it to distinguish “Palestinian” recruits from their Transjordanian counterparts, who wore the red-and-white version.

Arafat refashioned it into the uniform of “resistance,” which makes it all the more ironic that anti-colonial activists parading around in keffiyehs are flaunting a symbol elevated by British colonial rule.

But Arafat didn’t stop at symbols; he went for the flag too. And here’s the kicker: The Palestinian flag was designed in England. During the Arab Revolt from 1916 to 1918, British diplomat Mark Sykes — of Sykes-Picot fame — helped create it as a nod to Britain’s support for Arab unity against the Ottomans. Later, Transjordan (now Jordan) adopted a version with a white star.

Then, in the 1960s, Arafat pulled his signature move: He swiped the Jordanian flag, erased the star, and rebranded it as Palestinian. And just like that, centuries of “Palestinian history” materialised out of thin air.

So next time you see an activist wrapped in a keffiyeh and waving a Palestinian flag, just remember: They’re proudly flaunting designs courtesy of the British Empire.

photo: Ahmed Abu Hameeda/Unsplash

The real trick wasn’t just rewriting symbols and flags, though. It was rewriting history itself. Take the claim that Israel has occupied “Palestine” for 80 years. Not quite. Had the Arab armies won in 1948, there wouldn’t be a Palestinian state today — because the goal was never to create one, only to destroy Israel.

But they didn’t win, and from then until 1967, Egypt controlled Gaza, and Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria, quickly rebranding it as the “West Bank” to sever its Jewish ties. Yet neither lifted a finger to give Palestinians a state. Somehow, the world didn’t seem to mind their occupation, no matter how brutal. Funny how the outrage switch only flips when Israel is involved.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s 1964 charter even openly stated that Gaza and the West Bank weren’t Palestinian — so what, exactly, was this Palestine Liberation Organization trying to “liberate”?

Hint: Israel.

That’s why the “useful idiots” in the West, chanting about “liberation” and “resistance,” keep getting accused of calling for Israel’s destruction — because, whether they realise it or not, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Oh, they’re just demanding an end to Israel’s occupation?

Strange, because Israel left Gaza in 2005 — and judging by the results, that might have been the biggest favour they ever did Hamas. Israel paid dearly for it on October 7th, after Hamas turned Gaza into a terror launchpad instead of the thriving state that activists insist they want.

But if we’re talking about erased homelands, let’s take a look at one no one seems to mention. Nearly 80 percent of the British Mandate of Palestine was carved off early to create Transjordan (now Jordan) long before Israel existed.

What about the local Arabs there? They were never consulted. As a thanks for your service after World War I, the British handed it to the Hashemites — outsiders from the Arabian Peninsula, who still rule today. Every Jew was expelled in 1948, just as hundreds of thousands more were driven out of Arab lands, yet somehow no one calls that colonisation or ethnic cleansing.

Border and population shifts weren’t unique to the Middle East; they were standard practice in this era. For example, in 1923, Turkey and Greece swapped 1.2 million Greeks for 600,000 Turks. Following World War II, up to 14.5 million Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe, with 2 million perishing.

But in “Palestine,” the usual rules didn’t apply. While other displaced groups rebuilt their lives and got on with it, Palestinian leaders ensured that statelessness became a permanent condition — fuelling the refugee crisis for political leverage.

The most maddening part? The Arabs could’ve had all the remaining land — if the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, had simply accepted nearly half a million Jews as equal citizens.

He refused, again and again. They were offered 80 percent of the land under the 1937 Peel Commission and nearly half under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. But time and again, they chose war over statehood. And yet, somehow, Israel is the problem.

The rejection spree didn’t end there. After Israel’s independence was achieved in 1948, Palestinians refused several more offers for statehood — including Arafat’s infamous Camp David walkout in 2000, where he turned down over 90 percent of the West Bank and a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. After walking away from this, Arafat launched the Second Intifada, unleashing a wave of suicide bombings and terror across Israel.

Has any other group in history been handed this many chances for statehood — only to throw them all away? I’ll wait. They gambled, they lost and, in any other conflict, wars have consequences. Yet the “Palestinian cause” remains the grift that never ends. Their leaders keep the cycle going because, let’s be honest, victimhood pays:

• No other group claims “occupation” while repeatedly turning down independence.

• No other refugees inherit statelessness like a family heirloom.

• No other conflict has its own dedicated UN agency (UNRWA) designed not to resolve the crisis, but to perpetuate it.

• No other people have received more foreign aid per capita — only to squander it, fail to build a state, and still rely on their so-called oppressor for basic necessities.

photo: Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona/Unsplash

At this point, it’s less of a liberation movement and more of a billion-dollar racket.

And if it’s still not obvious, let me spell it out: They don’t want a country. They want a cause — an endless cycle of grievance that keeps the cash flowing, the UN resolutions coming, and Israel in the crosshairs.

This is the real reason the “Palestinian cause” has global traction: It was never about independence, self-determination, or human rights. That’s just the sales pitch. And if you bought it, congrats — you got played. At its core, this movement runs on the one thing that has united the world for centuries: hating Jews.

Sure, plenty of activists will swear up and down they don’t hate Jews. But if they’re marching under banners calling for the destruction of the only Jewish state, chanting Hamas slogans, and dressing up old-school antisemitism as “anti-Zionism” — they’re not exactly walking a fine line. They’ve bulldozed right through it.

The obsession with “saving Palestine” has little to do with “Palestine” itself. For many Western — but staunchly anti-Western — activists, it’s just a convenient weapon, wielded not only against Israel, but against capitalism and the very societies that grant them the freedom to protest.

For the privileged activists screaming the loudest, “Palestine” isn’t a humanitarian crisis; it’s a fashion statement. A trendy cause with merch, social clout, and a built-in sense of purpose for people who’ve never faced real hardship. With no real stakes of their own, they latch onto a conflict they barely understand — not to solve it, but to flaunt their moral superiority. It’s not activism; it’s a glorified hobby, one they’ve mistaken for an identity.

Beneath the hashtag sloganeering and performative outrage lies something far worse: a cause that’s given Islamist operatives a backdoor into Western academia and other institutions, hijacking them to serve some of the world’s most repressive regimes. So no, progressives, Iran’s theocracy (which would jail or execute you for your views on women’s rights) is not your ally.

For those actually paying attention — or living it firsthand — this isn’t a slogan on a tote bag. It’s reality. Most reasonable people agree that Arab Palestinians, like everyone else (well, except maybe Jews), have a right to self-determination.

But that starts with ditching their leadership — preferably yesterday — and abandoning the obsession with Israel’s destruction. Only then can they build a culture defined by possibility, not perpetual grievance.

That means breaking free from indoctrination, one that starts in childhood, replaces hope with hatred, and builds terror tunnels instead of schools. But that won’t happen while Hamas (a literal death cult) keeps them trapped under its grip, ruling through fear and propaganda.

Norway, Spain, and Ireland — seriously? Recognising a Palestinian state post-October 7th doesn’t promote peace; it rewards terrorism. Their leaders aren’t building a state; they’re dismantling Israel, using “statehood” as a smokescreen while sacrificing their own people. And you endorsed it.

But sure, let’s keep pretending this is about “liberation.” Next time a flag-waving activist yells “Free Palestine,” ask them: from what, exactly? Because it sure as hell isn’t Israel keeping them stateless. It’s their own leaders.

And spare us the upside-down narrative of Jews as colonisers. Arab expansion through Islamic conquest reshaped vast swaths of the world, including the Jewish homeland. Meanwhile, the Jewish People are left with exactly one tiny state.

I know many activists genuinely believe they’re fighting for the “oppressed.” But blind empathy and good intentions won’t cut it. In the immortal words of the “Woke” brigade: Educate yourself and do better. If they actually cared about Palestinian lives, they wouldn’t be parroting Hamas’ propaganda. They’d be holding them responsible.

And, yes, that can be done without endorsing every Israeli policy — or short-circuiting into a rage spiral while shrieking “genocide, apartheid, colonisation” like a malfunctioning chatbot. No amount of hashtags or endlessly recycled activist Mad Libs will build a school, pave a road, or free a single Palestinian from their corrupt rulers.

At some point, the moral grandstanding has to give way to reality. This isn’t just about historical truth or Israel’s survival — or even my rapidly diminishing patience. It’s about the Palestinians themselves, who deserve better than to be used as cannon fodder in a never-ending war.

Let’s be real: This was never about “saving Palestine.” If it were, these activists would be demanding better leadership, not foaming at the mouth over Israel.

But they won’t — because, to them, “Palestine” is a costume. A personality cult. A fetish. And like every performative trend before it, they’ll abandon it the moment it’s no longer in fashion.

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