One more time: There is no such thing as "pro-Palestine." It is, by definition, anti-Israel. ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, May 21, 2026

One more time: There is no such thing as "pro-Palestine." It is, by definition, anti-Israel.

An article in The New Arab unwittingly shows, yet again, that Palestinian nationalism has always been, by definition, nothing more than hate for Jewish self-determination in our homeland.

The article by Walaa Saeed Al-Samarrai celebrated the withdrawal of a French bill that "sought to criminalise 'indirect incitement to destroy Israel or deny its existence'" and also " included imposing penalties for the 'offence of downplaying attacks' against Israel.

Samarrai said the bill would "expand the criminalisation of solidarity with the Palestinian people" and it "would have completely sidelined Palestinians, international law, and resolutions recognising Palestinian rights."

This is an accidental confession about what "pro-Palestinian" actually means.

The bill's "destroy Israel" provision would only threaten pro-Palestinian expression if advocacy for Israel's destruction is considered core to pro-Palestinian solidarity — and the author treats it as exactly that, without embarrassment. This isn't a fringe position within the movement; it's the definition. "Pro-Palestinian," as the term functions politically, is anti-Zionism: opposition to Israel's existence as a Jewish state. Supporting Palestinian rights and denying Israeli legitimacy aren't two separate things that happen to overlap. They're the same thing, by construction.

I've noted before that timelines of Palestinian history consistently begins with - Zionism, whether it is in the late 19th century or early 20th. Without Zionism, there would be no Palestinian nationalism. And everyone knows it - even the UN.

The "downplaying attacks" provision makes this concrete. Minimizing terror attacks against Israeli civilians is treated as solidarity with the Palestinian people - meaning that terrorism is itself part of their definition of Palestinian solidarity.

The logic has one more step that the movement follows consistently even if it rarely states it this clearly: if pro-Palestinian means anti-Zionist, then Zionism — the belief that Jews have the right to a state in their ancestral homeland — is by definition "anti-Palestinian racism." This is the framework behind the "anti-Palestinian racism" (APR) construct that has been systematically deployed in Western institutions. Supporting Israel's very existence is reclassified as a form of "racism." Coming from the crowd that has been saying Zionism is racism for over 50 years, this is not surprising - although it is not quite as blatant.

Once this framework is accepted, protecting Zionists from discrimination becomes protecting racists. Opposing antisemitism, to the extent it shields Zionist Jews, becomes complicity in racism. France's bill, on this logic, wasn't protecting Jewish civilians from incitement and their attackers from glorification — it was laundering racism into law.

This is how a legal protection for the physical safety of Jewish people gets reframed as an assault on civil liberties.

There is one further implication. If pro-Palestinian solidarity requires anti-Zionism, then a two-state solution is anti-Palestinian. The two-state framework presupposes permanent Israeli sovereignty. Accepting it is, on these premises, ideological surrender — which explains what otherwise looks like Palestinian tactical irrationality. Repeated rejection of offers that delivered most of their formal demands makes perfect sense once you understand that recognizing Israel as a legitimate state was never on the table, because eliminating it was always the point.

Western progressives who genuinely support two states while adopting this "pro-Palestinian" framework are endorsing premises that foreclose the outcome they claim to want.

This is not mere Palestinian rejectionism, which implies that they can choose not to reject Israel. This is the very definition of what it means to "support Palestine."

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