Anti-Palestinian racism includes "erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians"; defending acts of violence against Palestinians; and refusing "to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity".[12] Pakistani author and professor Sunaina Maira,[13] citing American professor of Islamic studiesShahzad Bashir in the context of labelling, states: "...an important aspect of anti-Palestinianism, that is, themoral panic whipped up about the 'radicalization' ofMuslim andArab American youth is often accompanied by the charge that they are automaticallyanti-Semites if they are critical of the Israeli state's policies."[14] According toMoustafa Bayoumi, anti-Palestinianism preceded the modern wave ofIslamophobia and influenced the rise of the latter.[15]
In 2018, author and political activistYves Engler criticized theNew Democratic Party (NDP) for its conduct in respect of thePalestine Resolution that called for support of efforts to ban "settlement products from Canadian markets, and using other forms of diplomatic and economic pressure to end the [Israeli] occupation."[22] Engler said it "demonstrated the need to directly confront anti-Palestinianism within the party."[23][b]
In 2020, theUniversity of Toronto allegedly blocked the hiring of Valentina Azarova as director of the International Human Rights Program (IHRP) due to her pro-Palestinian activism. Dania Majid, president of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA), described this as an example that "anti-Palestinian racism is alive and well" in Canada.[26]
In 2023, the principal ofPark West School inHalifax, Nova Scotia, apologized afterPalestinian students were told they couldn't wear thekeffiyeh during the school's culture day. Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists protested the banning of the keffiyeh as an act of anti-Palestinian racism in front of the Department of Education building in Halifax.[27][28]
France
In May 2021, the French interior ministerGérald Darmanin requested that the police ban a pro-Palestinian protest in Paris. The Parisian journalist Sihame Assbague described the decision as an expression of "French colonial solidarity with the Israeli occupation forces."[29]
Palestinians in Germany have described a "crackdown and criminalisation" of Palestinians which has included police violence at protests, racial profiling, censorship, and violations of their human rights.[30][10] Majed Abusalama, co-founder of Palestine Speaks in Germany, suggests German anti-Palestinianism is increasing.[31]
In 2019, theBundestag declared theBDS movement to be a form ofantisemitism. In response, the BDS movement condemned the motion as anti-Palestinian. The Palestinian B.D.S. National Committee issued a statement declaring the motion an "anti-Palestinian...McCarthyite and unconstitutional resolution passed by the German Parliament."[32][33] British musicianBrian Eno has argued that pro-Palestinian artists are subjected to "censorship and inquisitorialMcCarthyism" due to the actions of the German government and anti-Palestinian groups.[34]
Germany's relationship with Palestine has been described as "complex". At present, Germany's political class exhibits a "zealous identification with Israel" that is "often explained in terms of the country's past". Alternative readings, however, view this trend as a "qualitatively new phenomenon in Germany largely unrelated to moral considerations pertaining to the Nazi era".[38] Hannah C. Tzuberi argues that German manifestations of "anti-antisemitism" (which has been described as "a defining marker of post-war German identity")[39] can go beyond the identification of Germans with Jews, sometimes leading to the identification of Germangentiles as Jews, and the identification of Germany as Israel.[40]
A 2024 study examined the influence of the 2009 proclamation of a German "reason of state" (Staatsräson) regarding Israel, on the perception of Palestinians. The authors documented a removal of Palestine-related content from educational curricula, a narrowing of the range of opinions, and the criminalization of Palestinian voices.[41]
In 2020, scholars and artists began accusing Germany of a "witch hunt" against those who express pro-Palestinian solidarity.[42] The European Legal Support Center (ELSC) has also accused Germany of human rights violations for laws which it says amount to suppression of pro-Palestinian activism, which it says particularly affects Jews and Palestinians.[43] Artists for Palestine says Germany has censured a number of artists for expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment, includeKamila Shamsie,[44]Kae Tempest,Young Fathers,Talib Kwelli,Walid Raad and Nirit Sommerfeld.[34][45][42]
Palestinians are the target of violence byIsraeli settlers and their supporters, predominantly in theWest Bank. In November 2021, Israeli Defense MinisterBenny Gantz discussed the steep rise in the number of incidents between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, many of which result from attacks by residents of illegal settler outposts on Palestinians from neighboring villages.[46] Settler violence also includes acts known asprice tag attacks that are in response to actions by the Israeli government, usually against Palestinian targets and occasionally against Israeli security forces in the West Bank.[47]
Palestinian police are forbidden from reacting to acts of violence by Israeli settlers, a fact which diminishes their credibility among Palestinians.[48] Between January and November 2008, 515 criminal suits were opened by Israel against settlers for violence against Arabs or Israeli security forces; 502 of these involved "right wing radicals" while 13 involved "left wing anarchists".[49][50] In 2008, the senior Israeli commander in the West Bank said that a hard core of a few hundred activists were involved in violence against the Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.[51] Some prominent Jewish religious figures living in the occupied territories, as well as Israeli government officials, have condemned and expressed outrage over such behavior,[52] while religious justifications for settler killings have also been given.[53] Israeli media said the defense establishment began taking a harder line against unruly settlers starting in 2008.[54] In 2011 the BBC reported that "vast majority of settlers are non-violent but some within the Israeli government acknowledge a growing problem with extremists."[47] UN figures from 2011 showed that 90% of complaints filed against settlers by Palestinians with the Israeli police never led to indictment.[47]
In the 21st century, there has been a steady increase in violence and terror perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.[54] In 2012, an EU heads of mission report found that settler violence had more than tripled in the three years up to 2011.[55]United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) figures state that the annual rate of settler attacks (2,100 attacks in 8 years) has almost quadrupled between 2006 and 2014.[56] In 2021, there was yet another wave of settler violence which erupted after a 16-year-old settler died in a car chase withIsraeli police after having hurled rocks at Palestinians. So far it has resulted in 44 incidents in the span of a few weeks, injuring two Palestinian children.[57] In the latter parts of 2021, there has been a marked increase in settler violence toward Palestinians, condemned at the United Nations Security Council.
This violence increased further following the election of a far-right government in 2022 which proposed to expand Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories, as well as theHamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
In 1994, a Jewish settler in theWest Bank and follower of theKach party,Baruch Goldstein,massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers at theCave of the Patriarchs inHebron.[58][59] During his funeral, a rabbi declared that even one million Arabs are "not worth a Jewish fingernail".[60][61][62] Goldstein was denounced by most religious streams including the mainstream Orthodox",[63] and many in Israel classified Goldstein as insane.[64] The Israeli government condemned the massacre and made Kach illegal.[65] The Israeli army killed a further nine Palestinians during riots following the massacre,[66] and the Israeli government severely restrictedPalestinian freedom of movement in Hebron,[67] while letting settlers roam free.[68] Although Israel also forbade a very small number (18) of Israeli settlers from entering Palestinian towns and demanded that those settlers turn in their army-issued rifles, it denied the PLO's request that all settlers be disarmed and that an international force be established to protect Palestinians from Israeli aggressors.[69] Goldstein's grave has become a pilgrimage site for Jewish extremists.[70] Current IsraeliMinister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir is known to have had a portrait of Goldstein hanging in his living room as homage.[71]
In general, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is hardly mentioned by Israeli textbooks or by high schoolmatriculation examinations, according to a study by ProfessorAvner Ben-Amos of Tel Aviv University. The lives and perspectives of Palestinians are rarely mentioned, an approach he terms “interpretive denial.” In most Israeli textbooks, “the Jewish control and the Palestinians’ inferior status appear as a natural, self-evident situation that one doesn’t have to think about."[72]
According to the Ben-Amos study, one of the main civics textbooks used in Israeli high schools fails to address at all the limited rights of the millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation. The more general issue of the occupation was addressed in a previous edition of this textbook but the Israeli debate regarding the occupation was shrunk to a few sentences in the most recent edition under right-wing education ministers. Another Israeli civics textbook completely omits discussion of the dispute over the occupied territories. In civics high school matriculation tests over the past 20 years, no question appeared on the limiting of the Palestinians’ rights. The geography matriculation exams ignore the Green Line and the Palestinians.[73]
American public opinion has tended in favor of Israel and against Palestinians for a number of years, although pro-Palestinian sentiment has increased in the United States during the 21st century.[75]
In 2021, according toGallup, only 25% of Americans sympathized more with Palestinians than with Israelis, with 58% sympathizing with Israel, and only 34% of Americans believed that the United States should place more pressure on Israel in regards to the Israel-Palestine conflict. However, 52% of Americans supported an independent Palestinian state. Democrats were more likely than Republicans to have pro-Palestinian sentiments.[75]
In her 1990 essay "Israel: Whose Country Is It Anyway?", theJewish-American writerAndrea Dworkin wrote that American Jews are raised with anti-Palestinian sentiment, which she describes as "a deep and real prejudice against Palestinians that amounts to race-hate."[76]
In May 2021, the Tayba Islamic Center in theSheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn was vandalized with anti-Palestinian graffiti reading "Death 2 Palestine". The incident was investigated by the NYPD as a hate crime.[77] Student leaders at theUniversity of Michigan issued a statement denouncing the anti-Palestinian sentiment they alleged had been allowed to "run rampant" on campus, stating that Palestinian students had been "profoundly marginalized through censorship and threats."[78]
In November 2021,Palestine Legal filed a complaint with Washington, D.C.'s Office for Human Rights againstGeorge Washington University, alleging that the university had discriminated against Palestinians in its offering of trauma services.[79][80]
On 9 November 2023, a former leader of theUniversity of Connecticut's pro-Palestine campus group, who had graduated in 2022, spoke out about threateningvoicemails she had received, as her number was still publicly listed on the group's website. One particular voicemail she received was from a number inOklahoma and containedracial slurs, called her a terrorist, and said "I can't wait to see you dead". The school'sMuslim Student Association received an email mocking dead Palestinians, and the messages were reported to theFBI, campus and state police.[81]
Opponents of anti-Palestinianism sometimes allege that it is as serious a moral failing as antisemitism, but believe that anti-Palestinianism goes unrecognized or underrecognized within Western societies.[83]
After fashion retailerZara condemned anti-Palestinian comments made by one of its senior designers in June 2021, theEast Jerusalem born and raised modelQaher Harhash said the fashion industry should stand up against anti-Palestinian sentiment:[84]
We usually see brands standing against anti-Semitism, but it's also time we see brands standing against anti-Palestinianism.[85]
In 2015, Spanish BDS activists accused the Jewish-American rapperMatisyahu of being anti-Palestinian and temporarily succeeded in having his appearance at theRototom Sunsplash festival cancelled.[86][87]
Digital anti-Palestinianism
The censorship of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices on the internet, particularly on social media, has been referred to as "digital apartheid"[88][89] or "digital occupation".[90]
In October 2023, during the first month of theGaza Genocide, online commenters reacted to an anti-Palestinian racist andIslamophobic compilation video[94] of Israeli influencers' contributions to a newTikTok trend, noting thatPalestinians had been irrationally singled out using thePallywood trope, an example of the ethnicity-basedIslamophobia, and that it had a "revolting" nature, possibly due to "[the filmers'] kids [...] learning how to be racist from a very young age".[95] Makeup was used both to perform thePallywood trope and to exaggerate inherited attributes, purported and otherwise, as the ready-made explanation for the behavioral trait supposedly identified. The "users [were] applying black makeup to thicken their eyebrows and blacken their teeth".[96]
Following theOctober 7 attacks, and the outbreak of theGaza war, there has been a surge ofanti-Palestinianism,anti-Arab racism, andIslamophobia. Palestinians have expressed concerns over increased anti-Palestinianism in mass media and anti-Palestinian hate crimes.[115][116] Human rights groups have noted an increase in anti-Palestinianhate speech and incitement to violence against Palestinians.[117]
^"For much of the 20th century, mainstream American and Israeli public discourse did not even tolerate the word 'Palestinian.' In The Question of Palestine, published in 1979,Edward Said observed that, 'merely to mention the Palestinians orPalestine in Israel, or to a convincedZionist, is to name the unnameable.'" (Beinart 2021)
^The 2021 NDP convention passed a resolution which made it official NDP policy to require "An end to Canada's support for illegal settlements" and "Suspending the flow of weapons to and from Israel until Palestinians are free"[24][25]
^Kant, Immanuel (1974):Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, cited in Chad Alan Goldberg,Politicide Revisited. University of Wisconsin-Madison
^Gelbin, Cathy S.; Gilman, Sander L. (2017).Cosmopolitanisms and the Jews. University of Michigan Press: University of Michigan Press.ISBN978-0-4721-3041-2.
^Riemer, Nick.Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022. p. 76.
Dumper, Michael; Badran, Amneh (2024). "Introduction". In Dumper, Michael; Badran, Amneh (eds.).Routledge Handbook on Palestine (1st ed.). Routledge. p. 2.doi:10.4324/9781003031994.ISBN9781003031994.In this context we should not overlook the latest turning point in the history of Palestine – the attack by Hamas on 7th October 2023 on Israeli settlements adjacent to Gaza and the subsequent genocidal war that the state of Israel has carried out in the Gaza strip
Amnesty International (2024).'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel's Genocide Against Palestinians In Gaza(PDF) (Report). p. 13.Archived(PDF) from the original on 5 December 2024.This report focuses on the Israeli authorities' policies and actions in Gaza as part of the military offensive they launched in the wake of the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023 while situating them within the broader context of Israel's unlawful occupation, and system of apartheid against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. It assesses allegations of violations and crimes under international law by Israel in Gaza within the framework of genocide under international law, concluding that there is sufficient evidence to believe that Israel's conduct in Gaza following 7 October 2023 amounts to genocide.
Traverso, Enzo (2024).Gaza Faces History. Other Press. p. 8.ISBN978-1-63542-555-0.The only normative definition we have, codified at the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, accurately describes the current situation in Palestine ... describes exactly what is happening in Gaza today
B'Tselem (July 2025).Our Genocide(PDF) (Report). p. 86.The review presented in this report leaves no room for doubt: since October 2023, the Israeli regime has been responsible for carrying out genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Killing tens of thousands of people; causing bodily or mental harm to hundreds of thousands more; destroying homes and civilian infrastructure on a massive scale; starvation, displacement, and denying humanitarian aid — all this is being perpetrated systematically, as part of a coordinated attack aimed at annihilating all facets of life in the Gaza Strip.
^Bakan, Abigail B.; Abu-Laban, Yasmeen (2024). "Anti-Palestinian racism, antisemitism, and solidarity: Considerations towards an analytic of praxis".Studies in Political Economy.105:107–122.doi:10.1080/07078552.2024.2325300.These examples indicate how the dehumanizing logic of anti-Palestinian racism—replete with denial of atrocity, masking of inequities, and victim blaming—has intensified in the context of Israel's war on Gaza. Indeed, in Israel/Palestine, racism has contributed to genocide.
^Daniel Byman,A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism, Oxford University Press/Saban Center, Brookings Institution, 2011 p. 292: 'Palestinian police are barred from responding to settler violence. This policy reduces friction between settlers and Palestinian authorities, but it decreases the overall credibility of the PA, which cannot defend its people from settler harassment and violence.'
^Amitai Etzioni,Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy, Yale University Press, 2008 p. 119.:'Others have justified violence against Arabs by citing the rule from the Talmud: "If a man comes to kill you, rise early, and kill him first."
^Times of Israel Staff. "5-Year-Old Palestinian Boy Hurt by Rock Thrown at Car in Reported Settler Attack." The Times of Israel, January 22, 2021.Times of Israel
^Aditi, Bhaduri (21 May 2006)."Fabled town, divided and bruised".The Hindu. Archived fromthe original on 29 October 2007. Retrieved19 October 2009.Still fresh in the memory of almost all the inhabitants was the Goldstein case of 1994, when a two-week curfew was imposed on the 1,20,000 [sic] Palestinian residents of the city, but not on the 400 Jewish settlers of H2.
^Haberman, Clyde (3 March 1994)."West Bank Massacre; Israel Eases Curfew in Territories; Ensuing Riots Deepen Pessimism".The New York Times. p. A1. Retrieved23 November 2015.Faced with rage in the territories and its own revulsion over the Hebron massacre, the P.L.O. has dug in on its demands that all settlers be disarmed and that an international force be created to protect Palestinians. Mr. Rabin has said no to both demands. But he [Rabin] has imposed tougher measures against a relatively small number of the most militant settlers, which, while far from what the Palestinians want, represents a significant shift for the Government. Several days after ordering the arrest of five people faithful to the anti-Arab preaching of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, the army began today to carry out other measures, telling 18 settlers to stay out of Arab towns and to turn in their army-issued rifles.
