Palestinianism is a kind of Islamism

The modern Palestinian political identity is not a nationalist one, but an Islamist one. It is time to end the denialism about this.

Islamism is the real cause of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, not the Jewish state’s recreation in 1948. Grasping that Palestinianism is a particular strain of Islamism is crucial to understanding why the conflict is so intractable.

Read news reports on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and you would think that there are two groups of people - Jews and Palestinians - fighting over the same land.

You might further think that Palestinian politics is divided between Islamist extremists, such as Hamas, and more moderate groups such as Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority (PA).

In this presentation, there is a clear distinction between being Palestinian and being Islamist. Yet, Islamism is core to the Palestinian identity.

Many in the West who say that they are “pro-Palestinian” but against Hamas do not seem to know this, or understand that the Palestinian “cause” is an Islamist cause created to destroy Israel and Jews.

Jews are the indigenous people of Israel having lived there for almost four millennia, mostly without sovereignty. Empire after empire colonized the land and subjugated the Jews (and others).

Jews were constantly revolting against various imperial masters and in 66-73 CE they revolted against Roman rule. The Romans crushed the Jewish rebellion, destroyed the Second Temple, and renamed the area Syria Palestina to erase the land’s Jewish history.

This is how the area got the name Palestine, but it remained the Jewish homeland. Being a Palestinian meant being a Jew.

It is why the Palestine Post newspaper, the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra, and other similar institutions with Palestine in their name were Jewish institutions before there was the modern state of Israel. It is why former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once held a Palestinian passport.

If you will excuse the jumping timeline, it was in the 7th century that the Arabian Islamic empire invaded and became the latest conqueror. That is why there are still Arabs there today.

The Arabian Islamic conquest turned large swathes of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe into Islamic lands. Indeed, Islam’s rapid expansion and its succession of military victories, especially in Muhammad’s warlord years, became a proof point of Islam and expansionism an essential part of the Islamic story.

This is why modern Israel’s creation, and Israel’s defeat of Arab armies in the wars of 1948, 1956, and 1967, bothered not just Arabs, but the whole Muslim world so greatly.

If winning wars is an Islamic proof point, what does the consistent Muslim inability to defeat Israel and the Jews mean? Does it show Islam to be false? Does it show Hashem fulfilling his promise to return the Jews to Israel? Whatever they think it means, it definitely undermines what they consider an Islamic proof pillar.

Israel’s recreation also unwound the Islamic conquest. Once Islam has conquered an area, it must always be Muslim land, as expansionism is a central part of the Islamic story. Israel, tiny though it is, has put the Islamic expansionist story into reverse.

Simply put, many Muslims see destroying Israel as validating Islam, which is why even faraway Muslim countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, with no contested real estate, are so anti-Israel.

Unable to defeat Israel militarily, the Arabs adopted a new strategy of trying to destroy Israel by creating an Arab nationalist movement. Palestinianism - being Palestinian in the sense that the word used today - was developed specifically for this purpose.

For centuries, the Arabs in Palestine considered themselves Arabs - not Palestinians - and did so only in the 1960s when they sought to reframe the conflict as one in which Palestinians were the indigenous people of Palestine and Jews were the colonialist invaders.

This kind of narrative was popular at the time when new states were emerging globally as Europe’s empires fell and nationalist movements were springing up.

The idea that Palestinians are from Palestine, while untrue, is highly intuitive, making for effective propaganda. It is such high-quality propaganda because the Soviet Union - history’s unchallenged propaganda masters - was behind it.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) charter was written in Moscow in 1964 when the Soviet Union sought influence in the Middle East.

The so-called Palestinian narrative is a complete inversion of facts, truth, and history, yet this is what many people today believe. It is the most successful gaslighting since the first gas lamps were placed in the Place du Carrousel in Paris in 1829.

So, the Palestinian identity was created to validate Islam, reconquer Israel as a Muslim land, and to wipe out the Jews. These are Islamist goals and so make Palestinianism a variety of Islamism.

The Arabs have been rejecting a two-state solution for 80 years because it would not destroy Israel, and so would not achieve what the entire Palestinian identity was invented to bring about.

Movements such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are prominent in Palestinian politics because they do not even pretend to hide their intentions.

They are clear they want to kill the Jews and destroy Israel for religious reasons and they get support from countries such as Iran and Qatar on that basis. Palestinians lap up this Islamist rhetoric because it is core to their identity.

The Palestinian identity’s Islamist nature means that even the corrupt PA, successor to the vile PLO and the body that the so-called international community wants to govern a Palestinian state, are Islamists.

The PA might not talk about caliphates the way Hamas does, but funding for its sick pay-for-slay policy, under which it pays people to murder Jews, comes out of what it calls its Martyrs’ Fund. In their own words, fighting and dying killing Jews does not make them freedom fighters, but religious martyrs.

As I have written before, the PA are Jihadists in business suits. The idea that the PA is some kind of moderate alternative to Hamas is a fantasy that exists only in confused Western heads.

Palestinianism being Islamism is why if a two-state agreement were reached tomorrow - as most of the international community cluelessly supports - it would not bring peace. It would just create an Islamist terror state called Palestine that would want to destroy Israel.

For the Palestinians, it would just be a stepping stone. As the Arab proverb states, “After Saturday comes Sunday.”

Gaza was a perfect case study of how a Palestinian state would play out. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, including forcibly removing 9000 Jews from 25 settlements.

Gaza’s Palestinians could have done whatever they wanted with their statelet. They could have turned it into a tourist trap like nearby Sharm El-Sheik in Egypt, or into a Luxembourg-like financial center, or even into giant go-kart track with overpriced drinks, if they so desired.

Of course, they did not.

Instead, Gazans elected Hamas into government, and spent 20 years building a vast and grotesque terror state from which to attack Israel. It was wholly predictable. What else would Jihadists do?

Why anyone would expect a Palestinian state under a two-state agreement to be any different from Gaza is an unfathomably deep mystery.

Yet, the West persists with its two-state delusion. This is partly because of an ignorance of history, a lack of imagination about other potential solutions, and increasingly, a craven surrender to Muslim and Woke constituents in Western countries.

Most of all, it is because few in the West understand Islamism and cannot grasp that Islamists are exactly who they claim to be. They want to build a Caliphate, convert or kill non-believers, destroy Israel, and bring down the West.

They want to impose the most oppressive forms of Shariah law wherever they govern. They see Afghanistan under the odious Taliban as an exemplar state.

This is so alien that most Westerners assume it is not true, or even that it cannot be true. Fears of being called racist or “Islamophobic” also push Western leftists to give these Islamists the benefit of the doubt and assume they must have some real-world grievance.

They do not.

Their only grievance is that the world is not under Islamist rule.

Post-modernism also plays a role in the West’s difficulties in understanding Islamism. The idea that there is no objective truth, and that all narratives and cultures are equally correct, valuable, and worthy, is as pernicious as it is ridiculous.

Once the idea of historical truth is abandoned, and the idea that all narratives are equally valuable is embraced, truth becomes no better than lies, right no better than wrong, and good no better than evil.

This is the doorway through which many progressives have walked to conclude the Palestinian narrative is worth taking seriously, even though it is all lies and a cover for Islamism.

Add in the idea that no one culture is better than any other, and even the framework to say that Islamism is bad disappears into the post-modern sinkhole.

There are many varieties of Islamism, including Sunni and Shia ones that are often in opposition to each other. If you can distinguish between the insane theologies of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, Jemaah Islamiyah, Ansar al-Sharia, Abu Sayyaf, Al-Qaida and its various branches, and dozens of others, then you are a better person than me.

Rarely, is it appreciated that Palestinianism is also a form of Islamism, and one that exists for the express purpose of destroying Israel.

Deradicalizing the Palestinian population is essential for any kind of long-term peace and, of course, not all Palestinians are Islamists. But what would be left of the modern Palestinian identity without this purpose?

As long as the answer is “not much”, there will be almost no chance for peace.

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