Western ‘Palestinianism’ colonises everything – and hurts Palestinians

One of the keys to understanding Western attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to distinguish between Palestinians and Palestinianism. 

Palestinians are a real people with legitimate rights and aspirations, both individual and collective. There is debate over when Palestinian peoplehood emerged – until well into the 20th century, “Palestinian” functioned primarily as a geographic rather than a national designation – but that historical debate does nothing to diminish the legitimacy or urgency of Palestinian claims today. Like every other people, Palestinians deserve dignity, security, political representation, and ultimately a future they can shape for themselves. 

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at its core, is therefore a geopolitical dispute: two national movements laying claim to the same land, burdened by history, trauma, and hard-to-reconcile narratives. 

Palestinianism, however, is something else entirely. It is not a movement for Palestinian rights. It is a Western ideological framework that transforms Palestine from a particular political conflict into the central moral lens through which every other issue is interpreted. 

The extent to which Palestinianism has colonised public life is difficult to exaggerate. 

Climate movements suspend campaigns against global warming to organise demonstrations for Gaza. Pride marches become platforms for “Palestinian liberation”. Labour unions issue declarations about Israel. Literary festivals, immigration protests, museum openings, academic conferences, municipal elections, even mining festivals in Scotland suddenly discover that their central concern is Palestine. At the 2025 Durham Miners’ Gala – a celebration of Britain’s mining heritage – speakers insisted that defending British workers required “freeing Palestine.”