Palestinians What do you think of people who say Palestinians dont exist or Palestinians are just Arabs ?
Attempts to erase the indigenous population is a staple of virtually all settler colonial contexts. This erasure can be physical such as through genocide or ethnic cleansing, or through ethnocide which aims to destroy their culture and remove them from public memory. This erasure aims to justify the colonization of land, and delegitimize any claims by the indigenous population who might object to it. Palestine is no exception to this.
The claim that there is no such thing as a Palestinian identity, or that it was invented in 1967 -solely as a means to destroy Israel- is quite popular among Israelis and Zionists. What strikes me as humorous is not that these claims are made, on the contrary, every settler population tries to erase indigenous ties to the land. What I find funny is that in typical colonist fashion they cannot conceive of an indigenous history that does not in some way center them, it is as if all Palestinian history is just a reaction to Zionist aspirations.
This talking point becomes even more egregious when you consider how hard Israel has worked to co-opt and appropriate Palestinian identity and cultural markers, such as the Kuffiyeh, Dabkeh and even Palestinian cuisine. It simultaneously seeks to sever the ties of the indigenous people to the land while stealing indigenous identity markers in an attempt to self-indigenize its settler population. Ultimately, all these claims aim to whitewash the crimes committed against Palestinians by implying that they shouldn’t have been there in the first place, that they do not belong, and that the settlers are more worthy of the land.
We Palestinians will never give up on our human rights. We are here to stay. From Palestine with ❤️.