If any people group has earned its right to be its own country it is the Kurds. After WW I when the Allied Forces divided up the Ottoman Empire the Kurds were divided into what became Iraq, Iran, Turkey, & Syria. They have been oppressed, persecuted, and brutally killed in those countries. Being divided into the four different countries makes them a minority in each of them. They are among the largest people groups in the world without a country. Some estimate their population at about 30 million, in spite being killed in mass by the some of the nations with which they live. Yet there is relatively little international push for them to have their own nation, especially compared to the calls for a nation called Palestine for the Arabs living in Israel.
In contrast, the Kurds are about 30 million, compared to the Arabs in Israel who are about 8 million(1). The Kurds are ethnically unique, dating back to at least the 7th century CE, and have their own language, compared to the Arabs in Israel who are ethnically the same as the surrounding Arab nations, have the same language as the surrounding Arab nations, have the same majority religion as the surrounding Arab nations, and have no unique history before the 1960’s, and the only history since then is attacking Israel and Jews.
The Arabs in Israel were migrants “mostly from all over the Middle East—Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, etc.” (2)
All of the Arab nations referred to the Arabs living in what is now Israel as Arabs “until 1959, in an Arab League meeting in Cairo, did Gamal Abdel Nasser, the reigning Egyptian “pharaoh” and head of the Arab League of States, propose rebranding the generic “Arab refugees” into “Palestinian refugees.”” (3) In the 1960’s Arafat (an Egyptian) developed the terrorist organization, the PLO, against Israel. The UN never used the term Palestinian until Dec 1969 (4).
“Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community.” (5)
There was no nation of Palestine or a specific people group of Palestinians in 1948 when Israel became a nation. The Jews reestablished their country in their ancient homeland. They did not take it from any existing nation or people group.
When religious authors or speakers refer to ancient Israel as Palestine it is either because they are misusing a term because society around them misuses this term, or out of ignorance of history, or because they dislike Jews.
It would be as ridiculous as saying that Kurdistan destroyed Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem in 587 BCE and that Daniel and Ezekiel were taken captive to Kurdistan.
1. https://aspeniaonline.it/israel-a-demographic-ticking-bomb-in-todays-one-state-reality/
2. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/israel_must_end_the_palestinian_charade.html
3. Ibid
4. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/the_leftist_history_behind_the_creation_of_arab_palestinians.html
5. https://archive.nytimes.com/thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/gingrich-calls-palestinians-an-invented-people/
