Palestinianism as Moral Cargo Cult Part 1
Arab Nationalist Imperial Movement Masquerading As Ethnic Liberation
Palestinianism as Moral Cargo Cult
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
I. Introduction: Palestinianism as Arab Political Nationalism
Palestinianism presents itself to the world as a movement for national liberation, human rights, and decolonization. It adopts the emotional resonance of victimhood and the moral authority of anti-colonial resistance. But a closer analysis reveals that Palestinianism is not an authentic national identity or moral cause — it is a strategically constructed Arab ideological movement, rooted in a rejection of Jewish sovereignty and designed to undermine both Western liberal ethics and Jewish legitimacy.
The structure and rhetorical function of Palestinianism mirrors the ideological architecture of Nazism, which emerged from the ethnonational trauma and grievance of post–World War I Germany. Just as Nazism was a German movement, using racial mythology, victim narratives, and legal mimicry to justify unlimited violence against Jews, Palestinianism is an Arab movement, built around the delegitimization of Jews as a people, a nation, and a state.
The comparison is not rhetorical — it is structural.
1.1 Palestinianism as Arab Reaction, Not Organic National Identity
Prior to the 20th century, the Arab inhabitants of the region now known as Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza did not self-identify as “Palestinian” in any modern ethnic or national sense. As historian Rashid Khalidi (himself a proponent of Palestinian nationalism) admits:
“Before World War I, Palestinian identity was only weakly developed. The loyalties of most of the population were primarily local or religious.”
— Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (Columbia University Press, 1997)
https://archive.org/details/palestinianident00khal/mode/2up
The name “Palestine” itself was imposed by the Romans after the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 CE) to erase Judea — the indigenous name of the Jewish homeland — and was used inconsistently through history. Under Ottoman rule (1516–1917), there was no political or administrative unit known as “Palestine.” Instead, the territory was part of the Vilayet of Beirut and the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, neither of which corresponded to a national identity.
The modern concept of a distinct "Palestinian people" only coalesced in the 1960s, decades after the formation of pan-Arab nationalism, and only after Jewish sovereignty was re-established in Israel. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was created in 1964 — before the 1967 war, before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and with the explicit goal of eliminating Israel, not creating a state alongside it.
The original PLO Charter (1964) openly denies the legitimacy of any Jewish historical connection to the land:
“Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history.”
— Article 20, PLO Charter, 1964
https://www.palquest.org/en/historictext/9704/basic-law-plo
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-original-palestine-national-charter-1964
“Palestinian nationalism is therefore a historical fabrication born out of a communist thirst for expansion and an Arab resentment of the existence of Israel.”
-Christopher Fish
https://stanfordreview.org/deception-palestinian-nationalism/
Hafez Assad also has stated there was no "Palestinian People"; that prior to 1964 the Arabs in Palestine called themselves citizens of Greater Syria.
“You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people. [Addressing the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat]”
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14978549.Hafez_al_Assad
During WWI the British offered the local Arabs self determination if they helped in the war against the Ottoman Empire but the local Arabs fought on the side of the Ottomans to the eternal gratitude of the Turks.
This is from Pacepa's article “Russian Footprints” in National Review Online:
"In 1972, the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB chairman Yury Andropov told me [Pacepa], a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2006/08/russian-footprints-ion-mihai-pacepa/
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2387087
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Mihai_Pacepa
This position was not about borders or shared governance — it was about the erasure of Jewish peoplehood altogether.
1.2 Palestinianism as Arab Nationalism
Palestinianism must be understood as a subset of broader Arab nationalism, which emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in response to the decline of the Ottoman Empire and Western colonialism. The creation of Israel in 1948 was seen by the Arab world not as a dispute over territory, but as a humiliation — the presence of a sovereign Jewish state on what was imagined as purely Arab land.
“Palestine is not only a Palestinian cause, but an Arab cause with the highest priority.”
— Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt, 1965
https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/nasser-and-the-palestinians
This framing reveals that Palestinian identity was never simply a local movement for statehood. It was — and remains — a pan-Arab cause built on the rejection of Jewish independence. As Middle East scholar Efraim Karsh notes:
“The Palestinian national identity has been primarily a negative identity, defined by the rejection of Zionism rather than by any coherent, historically rooted national narrative.”
— Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (Yale University Press, 2010)
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300172348/palestine-betrayed/
1.3 Parallels to Nazism: The Political Instrumentalization of Identity
Just as Nazism weaponized German grievance after World War I to forge a myth of racial supremacy and a mandate for vengeance, Palestinianism harnesses Arab shame over defeat by the Jews to forge a myth of indigenous displacement and a mandate for “resistance” — which includes the open endorsement of terrorism and martyrdom.
Nazism: Defined by antisemitism, historical revisionism, and sacred violence as redemption.
Palestinianism: Defined by anti-Zionism (functionally Antisemitic), historical denial (e.g., denial of Jewish temples), and violence sacralized as “resistance.”
Both ideologies:
Invert historical causality
Construct mythic origin stories
Create legally mimetic but morally bankrupt state structures
Use youth indoctrination to preserve narrative supremacy
Treat Jews as the cause of all suffering and the obstacle to national redemption
In this sense, Palestinianism is not a liberation movement. It is an Arab nationalist ideology with the same structural tools and totalizing logic as Nazism — aimed not at coexistence, but at the erasure of Jewish sovereignty.
II. Constructed Identity vs. Indigenous Continuity: A False Mirror
One of the most persistent rhetorical strategies of Palestinianism is to mirror Jewish peoplehood — to claim an equally ancient, organic, and continuous identity that competes with, and ultimately invalidates, the Jewish historical narrative. This is not an innocent attempt at nation-building. It is a strategic mimicry, aimed at erasing the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty in Israel by appropriating the very moral arguments used to justify it.
But the comparison between Jewish and Palestinian identity is structurally false. Jewish identity is rooted in verifiable continuity — historical, religious, linguistic, and genetic. Palestinian identity, by contrast, is a recent political construction, retrofitted in the 20th century to function as a tool of pan-Arab resistance to Zionism.
2.1 Jewish Peoplehood: An Indigenous, Multidimensional Identity
The Jewish people are not simply a religion, but a civilizational identity:
Ethnically linked through genetic studies showing Middle Eastern ancestry across Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jews.
Linguistically tied to Hebrew, the only ancient language successfully revived as a spoken vernacular.
Culturally and legally bound by halakhic (Jewish legal) continuity.
Historically documented in archaeological records and external sources (Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, etc.).
Indigenously rooted in Judea and the broader Land of Israel, with continuous presence for over 3,000 years, even through multiple exiles.
https://www.amazon.com/Beginnings-Jewishness-Boundaries-Uncertainties-Hellenistic/dp/0520226933
https://archive.org/details/borderlinesparti0000boya
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44657170_The_genome-wide_structure_of_the_Jewish_people
2.2 Palestinianism: Reactive Construction, Not Historical Continuity
By contrast, the claim of a coherent “Palestinian people” with a distinct ethnonational identity predating Zionism is not supported by history:
The term “Palestinian” was not widely used by local Arabs until after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Before the 20th century, “Palestinian” referred primarily to Jews, as in the “Palestine Post” (now Jerusalem Post) or “Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra” (now Israel Philharmonic).
Arab inhabitants of the land saw themselves as part of Greater Syria or the Arab ummah, not a separate national people.
The Ottoman Empire (1516–1917) organized the area under the Vilayet of Beirut and the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem — with no mention of a “Palestinian” political entity.
No distinct Palestinian dialect, religion, literature, or legal tradition separated local Arabs from their neighboring populations in Jordan, Syria, or Egypt.
“There is no such thing as the Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”
— Zahir Muhsein, PLO Executive Committee Member, 1977 (interview with Dutch newspaper Trouw)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuheir_Mohsen#Political_views
“Historically, there never was a Palestinian Arab nation.”
— Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (Yale University Press, 2010)
https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/116/2/545/34631?login=false
The modern articulation of Palestinian identity only took shape as a political counter-move to Jewish self-determination, rather than as an expression of pre-existing nationhood.
2.3 Strategic Parallels to Nazi Identity Construction
The strategic construction of Palestinianism to negate Jewish indigeneity rather than assert a unique identity mirrors the racial myth-making of Nazism, which constructed a pan-Germanic “Aryan” identity:
Nazism fabricated historical myths of German racial purity to dehumanize Jews and justify expansionism.
Palestinianism constructs historical myths of Canaanite or Philistine descent to supersede Jewish roots in the land.
In both cases, the goal is not identity construction, but identity substitution and erasure.
Nazism/Palestinianism Analogues:
1: Identity Engine
Nazism: German racial grievance
Palestinianism: Arab defeat and anti-Zionism
2: Mythic Roots
Nazism: Aryans, Teutonic myth
Palestinianism: Canaanites, Philistines (despite contrary evidence)
3: Political Purpose
Nazism: Elimination of Jews from Germany
Palestinianism: Elimination of Jews from Israel
4: Resulting Action
Nazism: Nuremberg Laws, Holocaust
Palestinianism: Intifadas, terrorism, delegitimization
2.4 Consequences of the False Mirror
This deliberate ethno-historical mimicry is not a neutral rhetorical strategy — it has dangerous consequences:
It reverses historical causality: Jews are cast as colonial invaders, and Arab populations as timeless indigenous victims.
It erases Jewish trauma by reframing Zionism as imperialism, not survival.
It blocks reconciliation, because it offers no space for Jewish legitimacy — only for Jewish disappearance.
Thus, Palestinianism is not an ethnic expression but a political method: the methodical repurposing of Arab nationalist sentiment into a weaponized identity that masquerades as ancient and authentic, while strategically engineered to nullify the Jewish return.
III. The Inversion of Causality and Collapse of Moral Reasoning
At the heart of Palestinianism lies a deliberate inversion of causality: a systematic reframing of conflict in which the aggressor is cast as the victim, and acts of self-defense are redefined as crimes against humanity. This ideological maneuver is not just a rhetorical flaw; it is a central mechanism by which Palestinianism destroys the foundation of moral judgment itself.
This inversion parallels the propaganda logic of Nazism, in which Jews were blamed for Germany’s economic collapse, cultural decline, and military defeat — even while being systemically persecuted and ultimately exterminated. Palestinianism similarly projects Arab-initiated violence onto Jews, then moralizes the violence committed in response, creating a closed system of grievance with no exit point.
3.1 A Case Study in Inversion: October 7, 2023
The October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks offer a recent and vivid illustration of this moral reversal:
Hamas militants crossed into southern Israel, brutally murdering over 1,200 civilians, including infants, women, and the elderly.
More than 250 hostages were taken, including children.
The attack was unprovoked, targeting civilians deep inside Israel’s internationally recognized borders.
And yet, within 48 hours, international media headlines and activist protests around the world focused on Israel’s military response as a form of “genocide.” The original act of mass violence was erased, and the moral narrative reset at the moment of Jewish self-defense.
“Israel’s bombing of Gaza is a disproportionate response.”
— Common media framing, days after the massacre
This framing is not accidental — it’s ideological. Palestinianism treats Jewish sovereignty as inherently illegitimate, and thus, any defense of it is criminal by default.
3.2 Tactical Elimination of Moral Sequence
Palestinianism achieves this moral confusion by decoupling action from consequence. It treats events not as chains of cause and effect, but as discrete emotional moments selected to serve narrative goals. The logic operates as follows:
1: A terror attack occurs. This is called “resistance.”
2: Israel responds militarily. This is labeled “genocide.”
3: Civilian deaths in Gaza. These are weaponized as “evidence of oppression.”
But step one is never examined. It is either denied, minimized, or rationalized under a moral exception for “oppressed peoples.”
“Resistance is justified, by any means necessary.”
— Common slogan in Western protests, Nov–Dec 2023
This slogan echoes Nazi propaganda, which also claimed that “defensive violence” was necessary to cleanse Germany of its “internal enemy.” In both ideologies, violence is not regretted — it is sacralized as justice.
3.3 Emotional Absolutism: Morality by Optics, Not Facts
The collapse of causality is reinforced by the weaponization of imagery. Photographs of bloodied Palestinian children, crumbled buildings, or screaming mothers flood social media after every Israeli airstrike. Yet:
The initial provocation — a rocket launched from a school, a terror tunnel under a hospital — is excluded.
Civilian deaths are curated, not to mourn loss, but to assign blame to Jewish survival.
This is the classic hallmark of a moral cargo cult: symbols without substance, emotion without context, rage without responsibility.
Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism, notes how totalitarian movements create artificial realities immune to contradiction.
https://archive.org/details/hannah-arendt-the-origins-of-totalitarianism
George Orwell’s concept of doublethink (1984) — the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs — is core to Palestinianism’s narrative logic.
3.4 Refusal of Reciprocity and the End of Ethics
Ethics require reciprocity: if one group claims moral protections, it must extend those protections to others. Palestinianism rejects this principle entirely:
Palestinian civilians are sacred, but Israeli civilians are not.
Palestinian resistance is legitimate, but Israeli self-defense is not.
Palestinian suffering is absolute, but Jewish history — including the Holocaust — is dismissed, minimized, or appropriated.
“Zionists are the new Nazis.”
— Common chant among anti-Israel demonstrators
This is not hyperbole — it is ideological erasure. It replaces causality with accusation, history with myth, and ethics with exceptionalism. The result is a system in which morality itself is destroyed, and only power and grievance remain.
3.5 The Nazi Parallel: Moral Inversion as Ideological Weapon
Nazism used Jews as the central scapegoat: blaming them for economic failure, cultural decay, and military defeat. It then portrayed genocidal violence as self-defense — a necessary purification of the Volk.
Palestinianism functions the same way:
It blames Jews for Arab political failures, state corruption, and regional instability.
It justifies terrorism as resistance, even when it targets civilians.
It delegitimizes Jewish suffering, just as Nazis mocked and trivialized Jewish loss.
In both cases, moral reasoning is not simply ignored — it is reversed. This is the signature mechanism of totalitarian political theology.
3.6 Final Insight: Moral Gravity Reversed
Palestinianism does not just challenge Israeli policy or borders. It reverses the gravitational pull of morality itself:
Defense becomes aggression.
Truth becomes propaganda.
Facts become obstacles to emotional persuasion.
This is why dialogue fails, why peace talks collapse, and why antisemitism flourishes under the mask of moral concern.
A system that refuses to recognize cause and effect cannot be reasoned with.
It can only be exposed.
IV. Palestinianism as a Cargo Cult of Western Morality
Palestinianism survives — and thrives — not by appealing to historical truth or legal consistency, but by mimicking the external language of Western morality. It borrows symbols, slogans, and legal references from liberal democracies, but divorces them from their original context, standards, and obligations. Like a cargo cult — which imitates the rituals of advanced societies in hopes of conjuring their benefits — Palestinianism imitates the aesthetics of human rights discourse to manufacture moral legitimacy.
This mimicry is not a flaw. It is a central feature of Palestinianism as a political project. The substitution of forms for substance allows it to demand legal and moral protections that it never reciprocates — to speak the language of justice while practicing the politics of grievance and destruction.
4.1 The Cargo Cult Analogy: A Framework of Deception
A cargo cult arises when a society observes the rituals of a more advanced civilization (like radio towers or airstrips) and copies the outer form, believing that the results (like cargo planes landing) will follow — without understanding the underlying systems (science, infrastructure, intent).
Palestinianism performs the rituals of justice:
It holds up the Geneva Conventions, though it violates them constantly.
It speaks of “decolonization”, though it is an Arab-majority movement against the only indigenous Jewish state.
It cites UN resolutions, while refusing to sign or honor the treaties those resolutions are based on.
It is not engaged in law or morality — it is engaged in performative mimicry, aimed at extracting international sympathy and shielding itself from scrutiny.
“Resistance, liberation, and anti-colonialism” become ritual incantations, not principles governed by evidence or ethics.
Eric Hobsbawm, Invented Traditions — how political ideologies manufacture symbolic legitimacy by simulating tradition and law.
https://www.scribd.com/document/358359848/Eric-Hobsbawm-Invented-Tradition-PDF
4.2 Legal One-Way Street: Rights Without Duties
Palestinianism leverages the moral and legal architecture of the West but claims immunity from its responsibilities:
Israel is held to the Geneva Conventions. Hamas and the PA are not signatories and claim no obligations.
Palestinians cite the International Criminal Court (ICC), yet the Palestinian Authority has:
Not ratified Rome Statute standards
Violated Oslo Accords, the very framework for diplomacy
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas use hospitals, mosques, and schools for military operations, in direct violation of the Laws of Armed Conflict — yet they invoke those same laws to condemn Israel.
The result is a moral asymmetry: Palestinians operate with unbounded license, while demanding boundless restraint from their opponents.
Sources:
UN Charter and Geneva Convention signatory lists
https://treaties.un.org/pages/showdetails.aspx?objid=0800000280158b1a
Oslo Accords text (1993 & 1995)
https://israeled.org/resources/documents/oslo-accords/
4.3 Decolonization as a Weaponized Fiction
Palestinianism repurposes the powerful moral weight of “decolonization” — a genuine Western moral achievement — and turns it against the only non-colonial democracy in the Middle East.
Jews did not arrive in Israel as imperial settlers — they returned as an indigenous, diasporic people with uninterrupted presence.
The land was not “Arab” or “Palestinian” under sovereignty; it was controlled by Ottomans, then British, with no Arab state ever established.
Arab opposition to Israel’s founding in 1948 came not from dispossession, but from the refusal to share the land with Jews.
Yet the claim of “decolonization” is repeated with such frequency that it has become dogma, not argument. And it is used to invert moral clarity:
Colonizers become victims.
Indigenous Jews become invaders.
Terror becomes resistance.
Parallel to Nazism:
Nazism also borrowed legal and moral forms (e.g. law, courts, “scientific racism”) to justify racial supremacy, while violating every principle of law and science they referenced.
4.4 Emotional Symbols Without Ethical Substance
Palestinianism relies heavily on spectacle over structure:
Images of rubble and bloodshed.
Slogans like “from the river to the sea.”
Street protests, campus occupations, social media storms.
These generate a perception of legitimacy, but are not accompanied by policy, compromise, or principles. The goal is not to build — it is to accuse.
Philosophical parallels:
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation — where representation replaces reality, and signs refer only to themselves.
https://archive.org/details/simulacrasimulat00baud
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism — where ideologies use moral vocabulary to obscure evil, not prevent it.
https://archive.org/details/hannah-arendt-the-origins-of-totalitarianism
4.5 Summary: Form Without Meaning, Rights Without Ethics
To summarize, the cargo cult nature of Palestinianism includes:
1:
Western Moral Tool: Geneva Conventions
Palestinian Usage: Demanded of Israel
Underlying Contradiction: Not signed or honored
2:
Western Moral Tool: Human Rights
Palestinian Usage: Claimed unilaterally
Underlying Contradiction: Denied to Jews and minorities
3:
Western Moral Tool: Anti-Colonialism
Palestinian Usage: Cited as ideology
Underlying Contradiction: Jews are indigenous; no colonial past; Arabs are colonial and imperialist
4:
Western Moral Tool: UN Resolutions
Palestinian Usage: Quoted selectively
Underlying Contradiction: Ignored when unfavorable
5:
Western Moral Tool: Free Speech & Protest
Palestinian Usage: Used as shield
Underlying Contradiction: Dissent suppressed in PA/Gaza
6:
Western Moral Tool: Refugee Rights
Palestinian Usage: Claimed perpetually
Underlying Contradiction: Refugee status never renounced
This is the moral cargo cult in action: a movement that copies the outer shell of justice but abandons its inner logic. It performs the rituals of victimhood without accepting the burden of truth.
Palestinianism demands the protections of civilization while undermining its foundations.
V. Sacralized Violence and the Cult of Martyrdom
One of the defining features of Palestinianism as a political ideology is its transformation of violence into virtue. Like Nazism, which turned racial extermination into a redemptive national act, Palestinianism elevates the murder of Jews to a sacred duty, glorifies martyrdom, and rewrites terrorism as resistance. This is not a fringe element — it is central to the ideology’s moral grammar.
In Palestinianism, violence is not regretted but ritualized. Death is not a tragedy to be avoided; it is a currency of legitimacy. Each dead child, each civilian casualty, each suicide bomber becomes a sacred signifier in a narrative that sanctifies suffering only when it can be blamed on Jews.
5.1 Martyrdom as National and Religious Ideal
Across Palestinian institutions — from Hamas in Gaza to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — martyrdom (shahada) is celebrated as the highest form of personal and political achievement:
Children’s TV programs, school textbooks, and public ceremonies lionize “martyrs” who kill Jews.
Schools and streets are named after terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi (who led a bus hijacking that killed 38 civilians).
Posthumous payments (known as “pay-for-slay”) are awarded by the PA to families of terrorists.
“Blessings to the martyrs… We will continue on their path.”
— Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, 2016
Sources:
Palestinian Media Watch: https://palwatch.org/
IMPACT-se curriculum analysis: https://www.impact-se.org/
U.S. State Department reports on PA stipend programs
https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-fiscal-transparency-report/palestinian-authority
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_Fund
5.2 October 7 and the Glorification of Atrocity
The attacks on October 7, 2023, in which Hamas militants murdered over 1,200 Israelis — including children, elderly civilians, and entire families — were not met with mourning among Palestinian communities. They were celebrated as a divine victory:
Public displays in Gaza included fireworks, honking, and sweets distributed in the streets.
Hamas media called the pogrom “the Al-Aqsa Flood”, a sanctified event.
Palestinian social media and diaspora activism romanticized the attack as liberation, even when videos showed unarmed civilians being butchered.
“Our mujahideen made the Zionist enemy tremble… This is the beginning of the end for Israel.”
— Hamas official statement, Oct 8, 2023
This glorification of indiscriminate violence is not a perversion of Palestinianism — it is the natural expression of a system that teaches killing Jews is holy.
First-hand coverage of Oct. 7 celebrations https://www.memri.org/tv/palestinians-gaza-west-bank-celebrate-october-seven-massacre-hand-out-sweets-fire-guns
5.3 The Religious Infusion: Jihad as Unbounded License
Classical Islamic jurisprudence treats jihad as a morally complex concept:
It can refer to internal spiritual struggle.
When external, it is bound by rules of proportionality, protection of civilians, and purpose.
But in Palestinianism, jihad is stripped of those ethical limitations and becomes synonymous with total war against Jews. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and even the PA in its rhetoric:
Invoke Quranic verses selectively, detaching them from context.
Use mosques, sermons, and religious symbolism to bless suicide operations.
Sacralize violence in a way that makes negotiation heresy.
“The Prophet promised us victory over the Jews. We are his soldiers.”
— Sheikh Yunis Al-Astal, Hamas cleric, Al-Aqsa TV
Sources:
Hamas Charter (1988; reaffirmed in 2017)
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-182893/
https://yivo.org/cimages/jeffrey_herf_yivo_institute_presentation_2_26_2024.pdf
https://www.adl.org/resources/article/hamas-its-own-words
5.4 The Moral Economy of Death: Weaponizing Casualties
Palestinianism has developed a moral economy in which the death of its own civilians is valuable currency — not to prevent, but to exploit:
Human shields are used deliberately (schools, hospitals, homes).
Rocket launchers placed in civilian areas provoke retaliation, which is then used to accuse Israel of genocide.
Children are sent into protest zones with the expectation of injury or death, which are then broadcast for international outrage.
“We desire death like our enemies desire life.”
— Popular Hamas slogan, also used in PA speeches
This ideology weaponizes its own population, and recycles their deaths into propaganda, denying their humanity in life and using their memory only to fuel more violence.
5.5 Nazi Parallel: The Ritualization of Racial Violence
Nazism similarly elevated racial murder into national sanctity:
Jews were demonized as enemies of the Volk.
Their extermination was not regretted — it was praised as cleansing.
The SS swore oaths not to the law, but to Hitler, making violence sacred.
In Palestinianism:
Jews are cast as cosmic enemies of Arab dignity and Islam.
Killing Jews is not merely allowed — it is blessed.
Institutions of education, religion, and government collaborate in a system of death worship that replaces politics with sacrifice.
Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World
https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Propaganda-Arab-World-Preface/dp/0300168055
https://archive.org/details/linktv_foratv2010051815
5.6 Summary: Sacrifice Without Ethics, Death Without Mourning
Palestinianism’s cult of martyrdom:
Prevents peace, because peace would delegitimize the martyrs.
Prevents accountability, because every action is divine.
Prevents healing, because grief is only weaponized, never processed.
In Palestinianism, death is not a tragedy to be grieved — it is a tool to be sharpened.
This is not resistance. This is not nationalism. This is not liberation.
This is political theology masquerading as moral struggle, and violence made holy through repetition and inversion.
VI. Narrative Shifting and Immunity from Accountability
A core mechanism that sustains Palestinianism is its chameleon-like ability to shift narratives in response to criticism or exposure. When one moral posture is discredited, another is adopted — not in response to truth or consistency, but to preserve the movement’s immunity from accountability. This tactic, a form of ideological evasion, ensures that Palestinianism remains a perpetual grievance machine: always a victim, never responsible.
This practice does not aim at resolution. It aims at perpetuating conflict through moral ambiguity, ensuring that Palestinianism cannot be falsified or morally pinned down. The result is an ideology that, like totalitarian systems before it, becomes impervious to correction and hostile to truth.
6.1 Narrative Substitution: A Moving Target
Palestinianism frequently substitutes one narrative for another depending on which rhetorical ground is most advantageous:
When terrorism is exposed… The narrative shifts to “occupation.”
When occupation is disproven (e.g., Gaza)… The narrative becomes “apartheid.”
When apartheid is shown to be inapplicable… The argument becomes “settler-colonialism.”
When colonization is refuted by Jewish indigeneity… The rhetoric switches to “genocide.”
When genocide claims collapse under demographic facts… The fallback is “freedom of speech” or “censorship.”
This shapeshifting structure ensures that Palestinianism always maintains victim status, regardless of its actions or history. It is not interested in coherence, only in staying morally upstream.
“If one slogan fails, another takes its place. The only constant is that Jews are the obstacle.”
— Middle East scholar Einat Wilf
6.2 Moral Equivalence and Obfuscation
Another key feature of narrative shifting is the manufacture of false moral equivalence:
When Palestinian terrorism is documented, the response is: “But Israel kills more.”
When Hamas fires from hospitals, the reply is: “Israel bombs hospitals.”
When children are used as shields, the argument becomes: “Children are dying — someone must pay.”
This rhetorical strategy collapses distinctions between aggressor and defender, between terrorism and counterterrorism. It is a form of ideological laundering, wherein all facts are pre-processed to produce only one outcome: Jewish guilt.
6.3 Weaponizing Emotional Certainty
Palestinianism thrives not on evidence, but on emotional certitude. Facts are made subordinate to images, slogans, and slogans of moral panic:
“From the river to the sea” is recast as a call for justice, not ethnic cleansing.
“Intifada” is presented as “uprising,” not terrorism.
“Resistance” becomes a blanket license for any act, however barbaric.
In this context, truth is not what happened, but what feels right — especially if it confirms the dominant narrative of Jewish power and Palestinian innocence.
“To them, feelings are facts. Pain becomes proof. Identity trumps evidence.”
— Seth Mandel, Commentary Magazine
This mirrors the propaganda systems of fascist regimes, which used repeated emotional appeals to solidify myths over realities.
6.4 The Inversion of Law and Justice
Palestinianism not only shifts narratives — it reverses the purpose of law. Institutions like the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and human rights NGOs are selectively cited — but only when their rulings support Palestinian claims.
Israel is accused of war crimes for defending itself.
Hamas, which openly commits war crimes, is rarely sanctioned.
Treaties are cited by Palestinians despite not being signatories to the legal frameworks they invoke.
“Palestinianism uses the law like a costume — not a covenant.”
— Professor Eugene Kontorovich, Northwestern University
This is not a legal strategy; it is a strategy of legal mimicry, designed to grant moral cover for actions that would otherwise be condemned.
6.5 Nazi Parallel: Narrative Control as Ideological Survival
Nazism also engaged in relentless narrative control to preserve moral immunity:
Economic collapse? Blame the Jews.
War loss? Internal sabotage.
Mass murder? National purification.
Facts were constantly adjusted to fit a single story: Germany as eternal victim, Jews as eternal threat. Palestinianism deploys this same ideological mechanism, with the only difference being the register of moral language used (postcolonialism instead of racial science).
“Palestinianism, like Nazism, cannot survive without the idea of the Jew as moral pollutant.”
— Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World
6.6 Summary: Immunity, Not Innocence
The goal of narrative shifting in Palestinianism is not innocence, but immunity — the capacity to:
Commit acts of terror without being labeled terrorists.
Reject peace without being blamed for war.
Kill civilians while remaining the aggrieved party.
This is not politics. This is not liberation. This is not grievance based on justice.
This is a closed ideological system, engineered to escape all responsibility and invert all moral logic.
In the end, Palestinianism demands not that it be judged fairly — but that it be judged differently, and never condemned.
Part 2:
