FIFA knows the history of Palestine better than Palestinian Arabs

Every once in a while some genius decides that showing a photo of an old coin or stamp or poster that says "Palestine" on it is proof that there was an Arab state called Palestine in the first half of the 20th century.

One example is on the official page of the Palestine Football Association.

Arabs are excited that the "Palestine" team is playing in the Asia Cup so there are lots of articles about that team. But the "History" page of the PFA says that "Palestine" participated in the World Cup tournament in 1934 and 1938!

This claim has been going on for a while, and for last year's World Cup in Brazil, FIFA put out a statement within its statistical guide.

Under "Palestine" it says:

* The modern Palestine, an Arab state, has no connection with the Palestine (then a British mandate) delegations that played in the qualifying games for 1934 & 1938 under the name of Hitachduth Eretz Yisraelit Lakadur Regel.

Under Israel it says:

* A Jewish delegation from Palestine (then a British mandate) played at the qualifying games for 1934 & 1938. It was the first Jewish national team, and as such the forerunner of Israel. Was relocated from Asia’s to Europe’s group in 1954.

It also has some other interesting trivia:

In their first ever preliminary tournament back in 1962, Ethiopia decided to play both of their home and away matches in Israel for security reasons. The African team lost both qualifiers by one goal (1-0 and 3-2) 

There were some other interesting facts about the history of the Israeli team and the teams that refused to play them - before 1967 - but I'll leave that for another time.