Arab Identity Laundering

Why the Word “Arab” Became a Curse in Ziophobic Rhetoric

There was a time when Ziophobes freely spoke of the Arabs of Palestine. Not anymore. The word Arab has suddenly become a curse. Instead, we now hear about “Canaanites,” “Israelites who converted to Christianity and Islam,” “Philistines,” “Phoenicians,” and, ultimately — “Palestinians.”

That last label, “Palestinians,” is perhaps the most fluid identity on Earth. Sometimes it includes only those “Canaanites” (formerly known as Arabs), sometimes Samaritans, sometimes Druze, sometimes whoever happens to be useful at the moment. It’s identity by buffet—pick whatever sounds most ancient and hope no one notices the missing Arabs.

Why the dodge? Because the word Arab is historically inconvenient. Arabs arrived in Palestina Eretz Yisrael as colonizers with the Islamic conquests in the 7th century CE. A fact too stubborn to erase—so better to rename. Thus began the laundering of Arab identity into something older, nobler, and above all, non-Arab.

This shift became visible in 2018, when Mahmoud Abbas began pivoting his rhetoric. Most likely, he received a new playbook from his handlers in the FSB (Federal Security Service), the direct successor to the Soviet-era KGB—a masterclass in Cold War-style narrative engineering.

The Palestinians are the original Canaanites. They built Jerusalem long before the Jews arrived.

— Abbas, January 17, 2018, Jerusalem (link)

We are the descendants of the Canaanites that lived in the land 5,000 years ago and continued to live there to this day.

— Abbas, February 20, 2018, UN Security Council (link)

We Canaanites, the owners of this land, were born in it, will live on it, and will be buried under its holy ground.

— Abbas, October 28, 2018, PA Radio Voice of Palestine (link)

This land belongs to its people, its residents … It belongs to the Canaanites who were here 5,000 years ago. We are the Canaanites!

— Abbas, August 10, 2019, Jalazone Refugee Camp (link)

In addition, as I demonstrated in my article “From Neutrality to Bias: Wikipedia’s Quiet War on Israel”, today every Arab in the region—regardless of the era—is renamed “Palestinian” by Wikipedia editors.

Take the assassination of King Abdullah of Jordan in 1951. At the time, newspapers described the assassin simply as “an Arab.” As The Guardian reported:

King Abdullah of Jordan was assassinated by an Arab yesterday at the entrance to the El Aqsa Mosque, in the Old City of Jerusalem.

— The Guardian, July 21, 1951 (link)

Yet Wikipedia, in its current version, labels the assassin “Palestinian.”

Even more absurd is the sudden rebranding of other groups. Samaritans—who have proudly called themselves Samaritans for millennia—are now magically recast as “Palestinians.” The Druze, with their entirely distinct faith and identity, are also pressed into service whenever it’s rhetorically convenient. This isn’t identity; it’s theft masquerading as heritage.

Israel, meanwhile, is lagging behind these shifting tides. It still calls Israeli Arabs “Arabs,” Druze “Druze,” Samaritans “Samaritans.” As Israel looks the other way, external forces are busy renaming Israeli Arabs and other minorities as “Palestinians,” and even Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews as “Arab Jews”—who, if the pattern holds, may soon be relabeled “Palestinians” too, just to pit them against Ashkenazi Jews. (See my other piece, Divide and Demonize.)

And here’s the irony: while actual Arabs are being renamed “Israelites,” the Jews are being renamed “Arabs.”

They can call Arabs whatever they like—Canaanites, Phoenicians, even Amalekites. Invent as many ancient labels as they wish. But there is one sacred name they cannot touch, one name they cannot hijack: Palestinians. Because Palestine is Israel, and Palestinians are Israelis. Any attempt to hijack that identity is nothing more than a rhetorical sleight of hand, a claim without historical or legal foundation. The rules are spelled out clearly in the Palestinian Identity Manifesto: the land, its name, and its people cannot be stolen through mere words. Labels may change, narratives may shift, but reality remains unchanged.

And let’s be clear: this isn’t abstract theory. Even UNRWA—yes, UNRWA—was and still is officially called the “Agency for Palestine Refugees,” not “for Palestinian refugees.” Anyone calling Arabs “Palestinian refugees” is deliberately misleading the public. Why? Because Palestinians were Jews. Giving UNRWA a name that suggested otherwise would have been absurd—especially at the height of the Nakba, when over 850,000 Jewish refugees were expelled from Arab lands. (See my article “Nakba: You Keep Using That Word…”)

And then comes the DNA fetish. Every conversation now drips with archeo-genetic jargon, as if chanting “Canaanite genome” long enough could turn an Arab villager into a Bronze Age priest. But notice the trick: DNA evidence is invoked only when it can be twisted into “Palestinians are the true Israelites.” When it demonstrates Jewish continuity, suddenly genetics is dismissed as irrelevant or “colonial pseudoscience.” This is not science—it’s propaganda with pipettes.

This is what I call identity laundering. Strip away the inconvenient word Arab, dress the same population in borrowed costumes—Canaanite, Israelite, whatever—and present them as the timeless, indigenous owners of the land. It’s a narrative built on rhetorical trickery, not historical reality.

The truth is simpler. Samaritans are Samaritans. Druze are Druze. Jews are Jews. And the Arabs of Palestine are—brace yourself—Arabs. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make it so. It only exposes the desperation of a cause that cannot stand without stolen names.

What we are witnessing is not history but cosplay. A make-believe pageant where yesterday’s Arabs become today’s Canaanites, tomorrow’s Israelites, and then, perhaps, the Judeans, the “real Jews”? The word Arab is treated like a curse because to utter it would shatter the entire illusion. And that’s why they now avoid it—because once the illusion collapses, all that remains is the truth.

And here’s the ultimate irony: those same Arabs—now erasing their Arab identity in favor of Canaanite, Israelite, or any non-Arab label—still wave around UN Resolution 181, adopted on November 29, 1947, which proposed partitioning British-Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Yes—an Arab state. Not “Canaanite,” not “Israelite,” not “Palestinian,” and certainly not “State of Palestine.” By their own rhetoric, Resolution 181 is void—because there are no Arabs left to assign an Arab state.

In fact, the only “Arabs” left in the region—by their own terminology—are Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, whom they call “Arab Jews.” From that angle, Resolution 181 is already fulfilled: we already have both states. The Jewish state, and the Arab state—one and the same—Israel, also known by its ancient Greek name: Palestina. Or, as it was written in the days of the Mandate: Palestina Eretz Yisrael — Palestine, the Land of Israel.

And that is the truth they cannot erase.

See Also

The Battle for “Palestine”