There’s no such thing as a Palestinian,” said Mark Levin on Monday, while broadcasting from Israel. “They’re Arabs. I’m sorry, they can call themselves Palestinians, or Palestinian Arabs – I don’t even know what that means.”
Levin rejected the narrative in which “Palestinians” are framed as a distinct group of people constituting a nation; a narrative upon which the “Palestinian” claim to self-determination and independence via statehood is predicated.
Levin noted that contemporary Arab states are not grounded in preexisting national identities, but on borders drawn by the victorious European powers following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War.
European states, conversely, typically enclose territories populated by groups that compose unique nations. European nations have histories, languages, cultures, religious traditions, and other features of nationhood that are distinguishable between themselves, unlike contemporary Arab states.
The meaningful social fault lines of the Middle East and North Africa are typically not congruent with the region’s states, with few exceptions such as Iran. Various minority nations across the region do not have independence via statehood, such as Kurds, Copts, Bahais, or Assyrians. CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post do not agitate for the independent statehood of any of the aforementioned groups.
Newt Gingrich expressed a similar statement in 2011 in an interview with The Jewish Channel, describing the “Palestinians” as “an invented people.”
Left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media outlets regularly frame “Palestinians” as a distinct group of people composing a nation, entitled to self-determination and independence via statehood on territory in and/or around Israel. Jews in Israel, conversely, are framed as foreign occupiers whose state displaces the ostensibly indigenous “Palestinians.”
Regional Arabs in and around Israel adopted the national namesake “Palestinian” in the aftermath of the Six Day War, composing a national narrative with guidance from the Soviet Union in order to afford political advantage with Western leftists. The “Palestinian” national identity is a reaction to Zionism. Without Zionism, there are no “Palestinians.”
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