The Palestine FAQ

Not at all. The beginning of the question of Palestine is rooted in the Zionist movement, and its goal of colonizing Palestine to establish a Zionist settler state there. The first Zionist conference took place at the very end of the 19th century (1897).

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When traced back to its roots, the Palestinian question is a remarkably simple story of settler-colonialism and resistance to it. Naturally, it is just as complex and worthy of study as any other anti-colonial struggle, however, the claims of exceptional complexity are often employed in an effort to obfuscate the reality on the ground and limit discussion. The question of Palestine is not exceptional in its complexity, we can trace its origins, chronicle its events and trajectories and analyze its politics all quite well. There are decades of scholarship on the matter for reference. The appeals to complexity often arise when attempting to justify actions or policies that would be deemed unjustifiable in another context, for example, arguing against the right of refugees to return home.

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Certainly not. This is a case of a native population resisting settler colonialism. Throughout history peoples all over the world rose up to fight colonialism regardless of the religion of their colonizer. For example, it would be ridiculous to suggest that Vietnamese rebellion against the French was out of religious motivation. However, as with any struggle, religion can be cynically instrumentalized to legitimize and mask political goals.

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The term “conflict” is inadequate to describe the Palestinian question. It holds within it connotations of symmetry, of two conflicting and equal parties, rather than a case of an indigenous population resisting colonial dispossession and ethnocide. It obfuscates that this is not some local squabble between two already existing populations, but a case of foreign settlers seizing land to construct an exclusivist ethnocracy at the expense of the natives. Settler colonialism, by its very definition, is unequal.

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This is a popular misconception. The United Nations suggested a non-binding partition plan that was never implemented. Furthermore, the United Nations, both its General Assembly as well as its Security Council do not have the jurisdiction to impose political solutions, especially without the consent of those it affects.

Israel was established not through the UN, but through warfare and the creation of facts on the ground. Facts it created through the destruction and ethnic cleansing of hundreds of Palestinian villages and communities.

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The Nakba is Arabic for “catastrophe” or “calamity”, and it refers to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine at the hand of Zionist militias between 1947-1948 and the subsequent establishment of the state of Israel. This campaign of ethnic cleansing took place before, during and after the war of 1948, and saw approximately 800,000 Palestinians expelled from their homes, and over 530 Palestinian communities demolished. Today, Israel can only maintain itself as an ethnocracy by perpetuating the displacement of these refugees and their descendants.

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The mainstream usage of the term occupation refers to the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. These areas remain occupied to this day and are ruled de facto by Israel, who controls most aspects of Palestinian life, down to determining who a Palestinian citizen is. It should be noted that we do not differentiate morally between the take-over of parts of Palestine in 1948 or 1967, as all of it is stolen, colonized land.

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Gaza is still in fact militarily occupied. For an area to be considered occupied the occupying state must exercise “effective control” over it. Unlike in the past, the Israeli siege, surveillance and monitoring technology allow for effective control of Gaza through controlling select key positions without the necessity of a full occupation force inside the area.

This position is echoed by the United Nations, Amnesty International, the International Red Cross and countless other international organizations specialized in human rights and international humanitarian law.

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According to international law, it is legitimate for an occupied people to resist occupation by any means available to them. United Nations resolution 37/43 “Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.

It further specifically mentions the Palestinian people as possessing this right:

“Reaffirms the inalienable right of the Namibian people, the Palestinian people and all peoples under foreign and colonial domination to self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without outside interference”.

But even if such a right was not enshrined in international law, it is natural for humans to want to rid themselves from the domination of others.

An Intifada is an uprising or rebellion against oppression and tyranny. Coming from the Arabic root word nafada, its literal meaning is “shaking off”. The word has come to be strongly associated with the Palestinian cause and resistance to tyranny, especially after the wide-scale protests, civil disobedience, boycotts and other forms of resistance against Israel during the Intifada of 1987 and Aqsa Intifada of 2000.

While the word is heavily associated with Palestine, its usage predates the Palestinian Intifadas. For example, the Bread Intifada of 1977 in Egypt.

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Like any other society, Palestinians are not a monolith. The Palestinian intellectual and political tradition has had a long history of dissent and debate. However, Palestinians in general hold a negative view of the Palestinian Authority and the Oslo accords. Many have come to view the Palestinian Authority as subcontractors for Israeli control of Palestine, especially through its security coordination.

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Yes, the Palestinian people still suffer under Israeli colonialism in every part of Palestine. The liberation of all oppressed peoples should always be “relevant” to people of conscience. Despite the dubious claims that the Palestinian question is irrelevant today, it is still a cause that can marshal support and solidarity all across the globe, and has become a symbol for resistance against oppression and imperialism.

If the Palestinian question was truly something in the past, there would not be so much effort on part of Israel to censor and penalize solidarity actions, such as the BDS campaign all over the world.

If internationalist solidarity between oppressed peoples is not a compelling enough reason, it’s important to understand that the same imperialism oppressing Palestinians in Palestine is also oppressing you at home. The same forces of colonialism, supremacy, patriarchy and capitalistic exploitation that committed genocide against the natives, and repressed social justice and liberation movements all over the world are still alive and well, and are always looking for ways to maintain the status quo.

Israel is an outpost of world imperialism in the Middle East, it is not supported by the West out of any altruistic intention to “make up” for its genocidal past, it is supported because it aligns with and furthers its interests.

For instance, Israel and the United States share violent policing tactics with each other to help suppress any kind of resistance. The same teargas grenades used on protestors in Ferguson are used on protestors in Palestine. The same surveillance and spying technologies tested on Palestinians find their way into the arsenal of other repressive regimes the world over.

Historically speaking, there have been strong ties between the Palestinian revolution and movements for liberation all over the world. Leaders such as Thomas Sankara and Kwame Ture supported the Palestinian struggle against Israeli colonialism. Huey Newton visited Palestinian refugee camps in an act of solidarity. George Jackson was heavily influenced by Palestinian poetry and thinkers while in jail. The Black Panther party, as well as the Young Lords Party all took firm pro-Palestinian and anti-imperialist stances.

Today, these expressions of solidarity can be seen between Palestinian activists and the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the Movement for Black Lives, the NODAPL protests, and other resistance movements all over the world. For example, the Deadly Exchange campaign aims to end collaboration and training between Israeli and American police departments, where both learn violent tactics from each other to suppress marginalized people and crush dissent.

While South Africa was a prominent example of an Apartheid state, it is not the only form it can take. According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the crime of Apartheid is defined as “inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;”

There are many inhumane acts listed under paragraph 1, but the most relevant to the Palestinian context are:

Murder, deportation or forcible transfer of population, imprisonment and severe deprivation of liberty, torture, Persecution based on ethnic, religious or national origins, other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

It is indisputable that Israel practices these acts against Palestinians, inside and outside of the green line. It is also indisputable that as a state built on a colonial ideology that privileges one ethnic group over the rest, its actions are ultimately committed to maintain this system of supremacy. B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights organization, has officially designated Israel as an Apartheid state.

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Apartheid has a specific definition, and nowhere does it state that it must be a carbon copy of the South African model. There is a precedent of an Apartheid state having parliament members of the oppressed indigenous group, that being Southern Rhodesia. Despite allowing a certain number of black parliamentarians, it was still a racist entity ruled by a white government, with the very honest declared goal of maintaining itself as a white state. Israel, being an ethnocracy, has the similar goal of maintaining itself as a self-professed “Jewish state” at the expense of everybody else in Palestine, necessitating the oppression of millions of Palestinians and the perpetual banishment of their refugees.

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The Palestinians did not “leave” their villages as much as they were forced out of them through various means. According to Salman Abu Sitta, and based on a wide array of sources, the majority of Palestinian villages (54%) were abandoned due to military assaults by Zionist militias. The second largest reason was direct expulsion by Zionist forces (24%). Panic caused by the atrocities committed in other fallen villages inspired mass panic that resulted in the abandonment of (10%) of the villages. Fear of Zionist attack resulted in a further (7%) of the villages being abandoned, while (2%) were abandoned due to psychological terror campaigns, dubbed “whispering” campaigns.

It should be stressed, however, that the technicalities or reasons why the refugees left are irrelevant, as they have a right to return to their homes regardless.

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Despite the popularity -and convenience- of this claim there is no evidence to corroborate the existence of any blanket calls for mass Palestinian evacuation. As a matter of fact, there were calls to the opposite, and borders were often closed to Palestinian refugees, especially men of fighting age. The only villages that were partially evacuated by the Arab armies for various reasons amount to less than 1% of the ethnically cleansed communities. In any case, even if there had been such a blanket order, the refugees still have a right to return irrespective of such details.

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As of 2021, it is estimated that there are over 7 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, most of which are registered through UNRWA.

Most Palestinian refugees live in refugee camps in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The rest are scattered all across the globe.

Israel prevents Palestinian refugees from returning because it claims they are a security threat. However, seeing as Israel is a settler colony built on stolen land, it did not have the population numbers to sustain itself. It could only be established by creating new demographic realities on the ground, these new realities necessitated that approximately 80% of the Palestinians in what is today considered Israel be ethnically cleansed to maintain a demographically stable Zionist ethnocracy. In short, Israel can only exist because millions of Palestinians are scattered refugees all over the world, simply because they are not Jewish.

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Yes, as with any other refugee population they are entitled to return to their homes. There are also United Nations resolutions specifically affirming the Palestinian right of return. Israel, however, contends that no such right exists.

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Palestinian refugees are special in the sense that they are overseen by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) rather than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is because (UNHCR) did not exist as an organization when the ethnic cleansing of Palestine occurred. This, however, confers no special privileges to Palestinians, and can in fact be detrimental to Palestinian refugees compared to refugees from other contexts.

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Absolutely not. According to the official United Nations website:

“Under international law and the principle of family unity, the children of refugees and their descendants are also considered refugees until a durable solution is found.  Both UNRWA and UNHCR recognize descendants as refugees on this basis, a practice that has been widely accepted by the international community, including both donors and refugee hosting countries. Palestine refugees are not distinct from other protracted refugee situations such as those from Afghanistan or Somalia, where there are multiple generations of refugees, considered by UNHCR as refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situations are the result of the failure to find political solutions to their underlying political crises.“

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The expulsion of the Palestinians forms a cornerstone of the question of Palestine and the Palestinian revolution. The refugees expelled by Israel still languish in refugee camps simply for not being Jewish. For any lasting solution to materialize justice must be taken into account. There can be no justice without the right of return.

Why should they? According to international law, refugees have a right to return to their homes and they should not be used as sacrificial lambs so that Israel can pursue its racist, artificial demographic aims.

For various reasons, such as a commander’s decision during war, or the location of a village, or just by pure chance, some Palestinians were not ethnically cleansed during and after the establishment of Israel. It is estimated that around 20% of the original Palestinian population remained while the rest were forcefully expelled through various means.

This does not mean that the spared population had sided with the Zionist forces. For example, the city of Nazareth was spared because the Zionist commander thought that ethnically cleansing such a large amount of Palestinian Christians at the same time would look bad for Israel. However, ethnically cleansing smaller Christian and mixed villages around Nazareth and elsewhere was fine.

It should be noted that the destruction of Palestinian villages had nothing to do with whether they participated in the war of 1948 or not. Neutral villages with non-aggression pacts with the Yishuv were also ethnically cleansed.

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Greenwashing refers to the Israeli projection of an environmentally friendly and responsible image to divert attention away from its dismal record on human rights, international law and various well-documented war crimes against the Palestinians. It also covers for environmental racism, whereas Zionists pay lip service to ecological preservation and ahistorically depict Israel as “making the desert bloom”. All the while, Israel continues polluting Palestinian land, planting invasive species, building “ecological preserves” to cover  up ethnically cleansed villages, and presenting its theft of Palestinian water as a miraculous answer to the water scarcity.

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The term “bluewashing” is a portmanteau of the words “blue” and “whitewash,” which is generally a metaphor for the cover up of crimes committed; the color blue is used because of its association with the United Nation and has thus become associated with humanitarianism and human rights. Bluewashing was first used to criticize the corporate partnerships formed under the United Nations Global Compact initiative following credible accusations that this association with the United Nations was undeservedly improving the corporations’ reputations. In short, these partnerships were being used as a fig leaf rather than an honest commitment to any kind of ideal. 

Israel too is quite flagrantly attempting to improve its ugly reputation through a cover of humanitarianism regarding the Palestinians it has been massacring, ethnically cleansing, bombing, imprisoning, and keeping under occupation for over 70 years. Such “humanitarian” work is also intended to ideologically align Israel with the West despite its physical location in the East.

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While many Palestinian activists and allies have used redwashing to refer to Israel’s cynical weaponization of indigeneity discourse, and its attempted recruitment of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island to cover up its settler-colonial nature, we have chosen here instead to use redwashing to refer to depictions of early Zionist institutions in Palestine as socialist, as well as current claims of Zionism being compatible with leftism or even progressivism.

Still, the separate phenomenon of Israel’s audacious indigeneity claims is a significant one also worth critiquing, and so an article addressing this is forthcoming under the title of “Brownwashing”.

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Purplewashing refers to when organizations or states project a feminist or gender inclusive facade on their politics, in order to make them seem more palatable and promote the image of social responsibility. This is part of an ideological framework referred to by scholars as colonial feminism, whereby women’s rights are appropriated in the service of empire; in the context of Palestine, this rhetoric is also known as gendered Orientalism. The Palestinian Arab/Muslim is framed as an “other”, who is culturally or even genetically predisposed to misogyny. Naturally, this is juxtaposed with the framing of a liberal, enlightened, Israeli Westerner. Ultimately to Israel, this facade of feminism is a way to improve its image, and incorporate women into its violent, colonial, racist systems and institutions, as well as a way to paint Palestinians as unworthy of statehood or even humanity.  The fact that these systems subjugate other -usually Palestinian- women is hardly mentioned.

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Faithwashing refers to the efforts to frame the question of Palestine as a religious conflict, rather than a case of settler colonialism. This framing suggests that the solution lies through interfaith dialogue, completely sidelining the colonized native population in favor of coopted religious leaders with no connection to Palestine to normalize Israeli settler colonialism.

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Has it never once sounded suspicious to you how Israelis focus on the “peace offers” that were refused by the Palestinians, but never once discussed the actual parameters or substance in detail?

Because when these parameters are discussed, it becomes clear that these are terms nobody could accept. For example, even when Palestinians accepted the 1967 borders, a very limited return of refugees, and other compromises, this was still not good enough for Israel, which sought to shrink the Palestinian Bantustan even further and deny any real sovereignty to the supposed Palestinian state. These arrangements seek to formalize the status quo with cosmetic changes. Netanyahu promised that no Palestinian state will emerge, and in the case of any limited self-rule arrangement for the Palestinians, he spoke about a permanent IDF presence in the West Bank, as well as Israeli control of the borders and airspace. These are the amazing “opportunities” that Palestinians have been declining, and as a result are being painted as warmongering rejectionists for doing so. As it stands, Palestinian aspirations cannot exceed the ceiling of Israeli table scraps. Furthermore, this talking point purposefully ignores Palestinian counter-offers and proposals that Israel has rejected over the years, solely to paint Palestinians in a bad light.

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Not at all. The idea that Barak offered Arafat “everything” which he rejected is a media spin to blame the Palestinians for the failure of the negotiations. Once actually inspected, you will come to see that Barak’s “generous offer” lacked many aspects that would enable the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state:

The claim that Palestinians were offered 96% of land in the West Bank sounds “generous”, only then to find out that this 96% excluded areas already under Israeli control, such as the Dead Sea, the Jordan Valley, and East Jerusalem, effectively shrinking down the West Bank to around 80% at the most generous of estimates. In return, Israel was prepared to give an equivalent of 1% of land in the Naqab desert to the Palestinian state.

The West Bank would be crisscrossed by a network of settlements and Israeli areas, neatly dividing it into cantons with very little contiguity or connections. Even the noble sanctuary and the Aqsa mosque, as well as around a third of East Jerusalem would remain under permanent Israeli sovereignty in the supposed Palestinian capital. This is not even to mention that the Palestinian right of return was completely brushed under the carpet, with the Israelis not even allowing some refugees to return to the future Palestinian state.

None of this was conducive for the establishment of a real, sovereign and viable Palestinian state. Shlomo Ben Ami, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, and one of the main negotiators at Camp David, candidly admitted later that “Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.”

Viable for whom and for what?

The two-state solution is inadequate to right historical wrongs, as it focuses on the pre-1967 borders as a starting point, which are in themselves a product of the colonization of Palestine, and not the root cause of it. It is thus preoccupied with finding solutions to symptoms, rather than dare address the root cause, which is Zionist settler colonialism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

This automatically means that Palestinians must relinquish any rights or hopes for their millions of refugees, and it also means that Palestinians must relinquish their rights to live in over 80% of the land they were ethnically cleansed from. Consequently, resource distribution, from water to fertile land, will be heavily stacked in Israel’s favor.

Shortly put, the two-state solution is more interested in maintaining Israel’s colonial gains and artificial demographic aspirations, and lending them legitimacy, rather than seeking justice for the Palestinians in any form.

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Support for the two-state solution has been steadily dwindling over the years, today most Palestinians do not support it. It should be noted that even among those who support it, a considerable number of Palestinians support it due to a lack of perceived alternatives, or as a stepping stone towards a more just solution.

For example, the vast majority of Palestinian university students do not see that the two-state solution is capable of answering the Palestinian question.

The one-state solution calls for the establishment of a decolonized, unitary, secular, democratic state for all of those between the river and the sea. It does not merely advocate for greater Palestinian civil rights within the framework of the Israeli state.  However, this would necessitate that Israel relinquish its state ideology of ethnic supremacy. The idea of a unitary state where everyone is equal is hardly new, and was proposed back before the original partition plans. Of course, the Zionist movement being hell-bent on the exclusive domination of the land, rejected this.

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Not at all, and none of the literature discussing this come close to suggesting that. In its most simple form, the one state solution calls for dismantling the Zionist colonial state and replacing it with an egalitarian democratic state which would not grant rights based on ethnicity, where every citizen is equal. It says nothing of displacement.

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Support for the one-state solution fluctuates between 25-33% in both societies. This is a remarkably high number considering such a solution is often used by Palestinian and Israeli leaderships as an example of a nightmare scenario to be avoided at all costs. Furthermore, it is worth situating these numbers within their proper historical context. In mid-1988 for example, support for the two-state solution among Palestinians was barely 17%. At the end of the same year, the PLO adopted it as their basis for resolution and its support rate rose greatly, reaching a record high of 81% support for the peace process by 1996. It is not farfetched to imagine a similar transformation once the idea of two-states is buried for good.

Officially, the first Zionist congress was in 1897, however, there were some precursor events and earlier settlers in Palestine tracing back to the mid-19th century.

The claim that Zionism is just Jewish self-determination has become popular as of late, but it is rife with critical omissions. It is akin to describing manifest destiny as “pilgrims seeking a better life for themselves”.  While this definition is convenient to its proponents, it leaves out the horrific acts of barbarity committed towards those ends. Israel as a colonial project was not created in a vacuum, its establishment necessitated the active  oppression and dispossession of the Palestinians.

Palestine has always been home to countless refugee populations, the idea that the Jewish people fleeing persecution could find a safe home in Palestine was never the issue. The issue is that these sentiments were never reciprocated by the Zionist movement, who showed disdain towards Palestinians from the very beginning and sought to take over the land with the aim of establishing an exclusive ethnic state.

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No, since their arrival the Zionist settlers exploited Palestinian hospitality and worked towards the aim of establishing an ethnocratic settler state at their expense. They banned Arab workers, established a Jewish only trade union, and censured those buying Arab produce or cooperating in any manner. As Menachem Usishkin, chairman of the Jewish National Fund said, they wanted to be the “landlords of this land”. Even before any physical Zionist settlement, Herzl wrote about ways to get rid of the population already living there.

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While publicly the Zionist Yishuv accepted the partition plan, it did so as a temporary tactic only. In private, they rejected any idea of partition and quite candidly admitted that partition would be a means to establish a strong army to take over the rest of Palestine.

While addressing the Zionist Executive, Ben Gurion emphasized that any acceptance of partition would be tactical and temporary:

“After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”

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No, criticism of Israel and its founding ideology cannot be conflated with the hatred of the Jewish people. When Palestinians resist Israeli colonialism, it is not due to the religion or ethnicity of Israelis. Resistance to foreign domination has been a staple of oppressed and colonized people all across the globe. From the very beginning, the Zionist movement had the goal of establishing an exclusivist ethnic state at the expense of the natives already living there, Palestinians objecting to and resisting this endeavor cannot be compared to the odious, murderous antisemitism that plagued Europe throughout history.

This is not even to mention that most Zionists today aren’t even Jewish, and many anti-Zionists are.

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Israel is a settler colony. Settler colonialism differs from classic colonialism, in that settler colonialism only initially and temporarily relies on an empire for their existence. In many situations, the colonists aren’t even from the empire supporting them, and end up fighting the very sponsor that ensured their survival in the first place. Another difference is that settlers are not merely interested in the resources of these new lands, but also in the lands themselves, and to carve out a new homeland for themselves in the area.

The obvious issue here is that these lands were already inhabited by other people before their arrival.

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To begin with, Palestine is situated in the fertile crescent, and is one of the birth places of agriculture. It was never as much a desert as the Zionist narrative claims. The vast majority of cultivated agricultural land in Israel today was already being cultivated by Palestinians before their ethnic cleansing. Schechtman estimates that on the eve of the 1948 war, around 2,990,000 dunams of land (or 739,750 acres) were being cultivated by Palestinians. These cultivated lands were so vast, that they were “greater than the physical area which was under cultivation in Israel almost thirty years later.” It took Israel 30 years to even equal the amount of land being cultivated before its establishment. Alan George continues: “The impressive expansion of Israel’s cultivated area since 1948 has been more apparent than real since it involved mainly the ‘reclamation’ of farmland belonging to the refugees.”

Another aspect we should be wary of is reading desert as to mean uncultivated. Palestinian Bedouins have long cultivated lands in the Naqab desert using traditional farming and water preserving techniques. Records show that despite the loud proclamations of Zionists making the desert bloom, in 1944 land cultivated by Palestinians in the Naqab desert alone was three times of that cultivated by the entire Zionist settler presence in Palestine. As a matter of fact, the amount of cultivated land in the Naqab desert has dropped significantly since the Nakba in 1947-48. This is yet another case of a popular Zionist slogan being the complete opposite of reality.

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No, Israel is an ethnocracy, which is a political system dominated by a specific ethnic group, and its policies revolve around furthering the interests of said group to the detriment of the rest. Usually ethnocracies have a thin democratic facade, but while it has the nominative and formal criteria of democracy, the way it functions is counter to the core spirit and ideas of democracy, such as equality among the populace.

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Israel distinguishes between citizenship and nationality. For example, you can be a citizen of Israel but be a Druze national, or a Jewish national. Your nationality is determined by your ethnicity and it cannot be changed or challenged. Many of the rights you are accorded in Israel stem from your nationality not your citizenship. Meaning an “Arab” Israeli citizen and a Jewish Israeli citizen, while both citizens, enjoy different rights and privileges determined by their “nationality”. Seeing how Israel is an ethnocracy it is not a mystery who this system privileges and who it discriminates against. This discrimination is enshrined both in law and in practice.

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People have a right to self-determination, but no state in the world has a right to exist. This ‘right’ simply has no foundation, and Israel is not special in this regard.

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Hasbara, meaning “explaining” is Israeli public diplomacy, especially that aimed at international audiences. It seeks to spread a positive image of Israel and legitimize its actions, often through outright false talking points and demonization of Palestinians. It is a state-backed endeavor, with fellowships, organizations and other funded activities to spread it. In short, Israeli propaganda.

The BDS movement has three goals:

1. Ending Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall.
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Simply put, the consistent application of international law.

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Yes, support for BDS is ubiquitous in Palestinian civil society as well as among the general Palestinian populace. However, we must keep in mind that Palestinians under occupation often have no choice but to purchase Israeli products. For example, if you wish to have water, electricity or fuel, you’re forced to deal with Israel either directly or indirectly.

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BDS, being a call from Palestinian civil society includes Palestinian workers and major trade unions. Any short-term harm is far outweighed by the benefits of a successful BDS campaign, considering that UNCTAD estimates that the Israeli occupation and de-development of the Palestinian economy has cost Palestinians over two million jobs since 2000. It is incredibly condescending to tell Palestinian workers what their own interests are. This criticism is seldom made in good faith, however, if the goal is truly to support Palestinian workers, then helping stop the methodical Israeli destruction of the Palestinian economy would be a much more effective method.

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No, it does not. It does, however, call for the return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with international law, which would endanger Israel’s ruling ideology of reactionary ethnic-nationalism and artificial demographic aspirations.

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The BDS movement is not some universal scale of justice meting out punishment to all those who deserve. It’s specifically a call to action from Palestinians about the Palestinian context, nothing more.

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BDS does not target individual Israelis, but institutions complicit in the oppression of Palestinians.

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This criticism could be justified if both the Palestinians and Israelis were symmetrical in capabilities and context. In reality, it is the Israelis who are occupying the Palestinians, and it is the Israelis who are colonizing Palestine. Israelis hold the power and Palestinians have no real means of imposing their wishes. This is not a case of two neighboring countries having a dispute, but a context of settler colonialism, which is unequal by definition.

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Israeli universities are not neutral bystanders in the oppression of Palestinians, but play a key role in upholding this oppression. Either through developing discriminatory policies for the government or designing more efficient weapons of war, Israeli academia is complicit.

Furthermore, the claim of the sanctity of academic freedom only seems to arise when we mention boycotting Israeli academic institutions. Palestinian universities have been bombed, and their students arrested without a single complaint from those posing as champions of academic freedom.

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BDS does not target individual Israeli artists, but institutions or those complicit in the oppression of Palestinians and the whitewashing of Israeli crimes.

Israel has always been very public about using cultural means to improve its image abroad, and divert attention away from its oppression of the Palestinians. A recent example is Israel hosting Eurovision in Tel Aviv in an attempt to put a pluralistic and “pretty face” on the state, and whitewash its human rights violations. It should be noted that Israel is not unique in this regard, as Apartheid South Africa also hosted music festivals and cultural events in an effort to change perceptions of the racist state.

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Objective, yes. Neutral, not at all.

There is a common misconception, that in order to be objective you need to be neutral. These concepts can be connected but they do not necessarily follow from each other. Having two points of view does not automatically mean that both points of view are equally legitimate or based in reality, or that the truth has to be located somewhere in the middle. For example, you can of course bring two opposing sides to discuss if climate change is real or not, but treating them both as equally valid and of equal worth when one is backed by scientific consensus and the other isn’t is not a fair and balanced representation of reality. It is a false equation of two sides simply for being two different sides. This actually gives legitimacy to reactionary and anti-scientific positions.

Similarly, Israeli colonialism and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is an objective fact. Maintaining a neutral position on this war crime is not only immoral, but enables Israel to commit further heinous acts in the future. Therefore, we take a very clear position: For the liberation of Palestine. However, all of our information and sources are objective and based on rigorous academic scholarship and testimonies.

This website is run by two Palestinians living in Ramallah. We are not affiliated with any organization, party or government. This is a strictly personal and independent endeavor.

The creation of the website was completely self-funded by two Palestinians living in Ramallah. The maintenance and further expansion of the website is made possible by our generous patrons and backers.

You can contact us by writing to [email protected].

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3) If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same two conditions.

If you feel like you have learned something new and useful, you could always spread the word around about the website.

You could also become a Patron through Patreon to help support the continuing growth of the website, as well as the further education of its authors. [Click link here to go to Patreon]

Our beautiful art is the result of the fantastic artistic talents of three Palestinian artists, comissioned specifically for the site.

They are, in no particular order:

imaginary0friend

paliart.by.hiba

msh.fannana