Imagine being so evil you make Elon Musk look like a decent human being

I was asked why there's a zionist claim that the Palestininian identity is not legitimate. And I think it's important to understand why Palestinians as a whole are seen as a threat by Israel. To understand why it's not about Hamas.

The claim is that the Palestininian identity was made up in order to push us out. Palestinian existence is a threat to the legitimacy of Israel as a country.

I was taught in school that Palestine was empty when we got here. They used a Mark Twain quote. It was a barren land full of swamps and some nomadic people (Beduins) but as soon as we wanted to come here, the awful antisemitic Arabs sent people to settle here before we could to take up the space. I was in school in the settlements though. I was taught the most extreme version of this.

Another version of this is that Palestine was never its own thing, they're just Arabs the same as all Arabs from the surrounding countries. So they could just... scooch over and give us the space, please and thank you. In Israel no one uses the term Palestinian. If I do, people roll their eyes and dismissively go "Arab." An Arab is an Arab. It's a way to strip away their unique identity and blend them in with the rest to say they could always move to Jordan, or Syria, or Lebanon, and it's all the same to them.

It's a way to make Palestinian existence by itself into a malicious plot to deny us a homeland.

Because if Palestinians exist as a distinct group of people, we aren't the only ones with a connection to this land. And you don't create an ethnostate by sharing.

You still hear echoes of this mentality. Why won't all these Muslim countries take the people of Gaza as refugees? That's asking why they won't let Israel make its ethnic cleansing more neat and convenient. Yes, refugees should be taken in and given shelter. But this question shifts responsibility away from Israel. Palestinians shouldn't be forced suffer either ethnic cleansing that leaves them as refugees, or a genocide.

Massive fuck you to everyone who is talking about Palestinians as if we’re already all dead and sharing more solidarity with our corpses than us living. “We will never forget the beautiful Palestinian people-“ how about you stop “making peace” with Palestinian extermination. My people are not going to be forgotten because we are going to live. Palestinians have already survived one genocide and have been surviving one ever since.

Do not ever let the idea that all Palestinians are going to die exist in your mind. Mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living.

Palestinian journalist plays with a little baby boy who survived an lsraeli airstrike, Gaza.

“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.”

- Bobby Sands MP

(they removed the video so here it is again)

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"Attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes," pointed out Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. "Cutting off men, women, children [from] water, electricity and heating with winter coming," she continued— "these are acts of pure terror." Von der Leyen is right, of course, but in this instance she was referring to Russia's attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure. As for Israel's attacks on Gazas infrastructure, Von der Leyen says that Israel has the right to defend itself.

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"Four Colors," 2023, acrylic paint. These are heavily inspired by "Forbidden Colors," by Felix Gonzalez-Torres (read more here). From 1980-1993, the state of Israel banned artwork displaying these four colors together in occupied Palestine.

For the Zionist movement going as far back as the early 20th century, the construction of a food culture mirrored that of a nation. It was meant to breathe into the Zionist identity in Palestine a sense of historical connection to the land.

In an effort to establish themselves as the "natives", European Jewish settlers adopted the cultural characteristics and customs of Palestine’s local population.

[...] [B]eginning in the 1920s, Jewish settlers embraced the culinary symbols and practices of the native Palestinians. The list was extensive, from Sabra (from the Arabic sabr, prickly pear, appropriated to mean the "new Jew" in Palestine) to Jaffa oranges, all the way to falafel, tahini and hummus. All are representative of the Palestinian production cycle, life and culture. 

Unlike European Zionists, Palestinians could anchor their national identity in an existing society that, among other things, had its own cuisine and was deeply entwined with the region’s culture and history. 

That provided Zionism with a set of native recipes - literally - to facilitate the construction of an "indigenous identity" for European Jews with varied cultural backgrounds, none of which organically linked to the region. 

A settler-colonial endeavour, the Zionist notion of "nativisation" inevitably changed from adopting the local culture, including the food, to claiming it as its own. 

In the first Zionist cookbooks from the 1930s onwards, Palestinian dishes were referred to as "Israeli". When the evidence was lacking, as always is, they were attributed to Mizrahi Jews who arrived in the Zionist state from Arab countries.   

To establish historical legitimacy, some of the culinary appropriation was justified as another "return". The return this time is not only to the so-called ancestral land of Eretz Yisrael after two millennia of exile, but to the ancient Jewish/Biblical customs that Palestinian Arabs have preserved since the 6th century. 

For instance, hummus, goes the claim, was an ancient Biblical dish and has roots in the Biblical words hamits and himtsa (chickpeas). The words, however, are likely a reference to a blend of fermented chickpeas used as animal fodder in ancient Canaan.    

Moving from adopting the local culture to appropriating it could not have been done without the denial of the culture’s originators.

Native Palestinians were erased both physically and symbolically from the Jewish state’s collective memory and public spaces.

Those who resisted the erasure and remained in their land now face dispersion and control. 

As such, the acknowledgement of a rooted Palestinian culture, let alone admitting that Zionism needed that culture to build a separate political entity and identity in Palestine, is threatening to Israel’s assumed historical entitlement and claims of indigeneity.

That dynamic has also created a painful paradox where the Zionist superior and racist attitude towards Palestinians had to go hand in hand with the adoption of their "inferior" culture, including their local cuisine.  

— Emad Moussa, "The politics of hummus: Israel's search for cultural identity," 2023.

Hundreds of thousands of people came out today in London to March for a Free Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of people disagreeing with the current government stance on the war. Don’t let the media fool you, people in the UK stand with Palestine.

Mummyduck is gonna getcha!

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"Four Colors," 2023, acrylic paint. These are heavily inspired by "Forbidden Colors," by Felix Gonzalez-Torres (read more here). From 1980-1993, the state of Israel banned artwork displaying these four colors together in occupied Palestine.