The Narrative War of Attrition

When Words Become Weapons: Fighting the Attrition of Narrative

Israel faces a War of Attrition on its borders — and also a War of Attrition of Narratives.

Just as Arafat famously launched a war of attrition against Israel—seeking to weaken its society and morale over time—anti-Zionist rhetoric wages a war of narratives. The weapons have changed: not tanks, but terms; not rockets, but rhetoric. Yet the strategy is identical — to wear down, confuse, and exhaust the target until it begins to question its own legitimacy.

In Arab Identity Laundering, I examined how anti-Zionist rhetoric manipulates history to obscure origins and erase Jewish claims to the land. The phenomenon doesn’t stop there—it evolves. Identities are endlessly reshuffled in what we can call the Identity Carousel, a strategy eerily reminiscent of military war of attrition: relentless, exhausting, and designed to wear down truth itself.

The Identity Carousel: How Ziophobic Rhetoric Spins History into Confusion

The evolution of the term “Palestinian” tells the whole story. Originally, “Palestinian” meant Jew — the Jews of Palestine, the writers of the Palestine Post, the players of the Palestine Philharmonic. Only after the rebirth of the State of Israel did the label begin its political migration. In the 1960s, it was hijacked to describe non-Israeli Muslim Arabs in disputed territories, later expanding to include Christian Arabs, and then Israeli Arabs themselves.

Today, in Ziophobic rhetoric, “Palestinian” means anyone who is not Jewish. Jews alone are “Israelis” — labeled “colonizers” — while everyone else is portrayed as a nobler, “indigenous” population.

If the trend continues, the term could soon be extended to Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews — already rebranded as “Arab Jews” or “Jewish Arabs” — and therefore, by the same warped logic, “Palestinians.” Only the so-called “European Zionist colonizers” would remain “Israelis.” It’s a linguistic trap designed not to unify Arabs but to isolate Jews — to recast them as permanent outsiders even in their ancestral home.

Once upon a time, Ziophobes freely spoke of “the Arabs of Palestine.” Not anymore. The word Arab has become a curse. Instead, they resurrect a rotating cast of ancient peoples: “Canaanites,” “Philistines,” “Phoenicians,” “Israelites who converted to Christianity or Islam.” The ultimate label, “Palestinians,” has become the most elastic identity on Earth — sometimes Canaanites, sometimes Samaritans, sometimes Druze, sometimes whoever fits the narrative of the day. Identity à la carte: pick whatever sounds most ancient and hope no one notices the missing Arabs. (See Arab Identity Laundering.)

Interestingly, it was only in 2018 that Abbas began preaching the “we’re Canaanites” narrative — a half-century after Arafat and the KGB launched the “we’re Palestinians” one. Myths, like people, do age and sometimes need rebranding.

Everyone Is Everyone: The DNA Grab Bag

A new rhetorical sleight of hand claims that because populations mixed over millennia, anyone can be anyone.

Arabs claim genetic traces of Philistines, Canaanites, Israelites, and Assyrians — therefore, they are the “true” heirs of all. By that same reasoning, Jews could claim descent from every ancient group in the world.

Yet in Ziophobic logic, Arabs are now the “real Israelites,” and therefore the real Jews — while Jews are either Arabs or Europeans.

Of course, in reality, we cannot know whose DNA these ancient traces even belonged to — it’s impossible to verify. But even if we could, the argument would remain absurd.

Taken to its extreme, everyone can be a Canaanite, a Jew, or even a Philistine — because every living human carries traces of ancient migrations, conquests, wars, intermarriage, and even Neanderthals.

If identity is reduced to genetic probability, it becomes meaningless. History turns into a genetic lottery, where conquerors declare themselves natives, and the natives become intruders. It’s not science — it’s a cynical erasure of continuity.

We’re All Semites Now

We’ve seen this trick before — the great “Semite for everyone” act. Once, Ziophobes insisted that the term “anti-Semite” referred to all descendants of Shem — conveniently erasing the fact that it was coined as a more “polite” synonym for Jew-hater. Their argument went: “We can’t be antisemitic — we’re Semites too.”

Never mind that Canaan had no claim on Shem, descending from a different line altogether—an absurdity that caused the argument to quietly disappear. Why? Because they no longer want to be Arabs at all. Now they’re “Canaanites,” “Philistines,” “Israelites,” or other “indigenous Palestinians.” The rhetoric evolves — the goal remains.

Arab conquests in other regions left Arabs proudly Arab. No one in Syria feels compelled to claim they are the “true Assyrians,” nor do Egyptians insist they are the “real Pharaohs.” In Lebanon, most still identify as Arabs without scrambling for Phoenician ancestry to justify their presence. Only in Palestina—Eretz Yisrael does the “Arab” identity suddenly become inconvenient.

Though, to be fair, they can still claim to be Semites — courtesy of their newfound “Israelite ancestry.”

Narrative Attrition: The War of Words

The goal is not truth or persuasion. It is exhaustion through confusion. The public is bombarded with ever-shifting identities until coherence collapses. The historical record becomes a battlefield, and history is steadily worn down, one narrative at a time.

When the “Arabs are Palestinians” story wears thin, out comes “Palestinians are Canaanites,” and when that falters, “They’re the real Israelites” takes the stage. Meanwhile, “Zionists are White Supremacist European colonizers” is added to the mix. The carousel spins endlessly, not to convince, but to confuse.

This mirrors the military strategy Israel faces on its borders: endless attacks designed to drain morale and resources. Only now, the battlefield has expanded — it is also informational. Every claim, every borrowed identity, every invented genealogy is a volley in a war meant not to defeat armies, but to exhaust history itself.

While Israel’s defenders are busy debunking one myth — “genocide,” “apartheid,” “hunger,” “ethnic cleansing,” “Ashkenazi Jews have no connection to the Land of Israel,” “European invaders,” “Arab Jews,” “Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews are Arabs,” “Sephardic Jews are actually European colonizers because ‘Sepharad’ means Spain in Hebrew” — new ones sprout like mushrooms after rain.

Old narratives quietly retire, new ones launch, and sometimes both coexist, contradicting each other but sustaining confusion. It’s not a debate; it’s an industrial production of distortion.

This tactic isn’t new. It’s the same psychological warfare long practiced by the KGB and now refined by its Russian successors — an endless flood of contradictory narratives meant to paralyze truth itself. We see it today not only against Israel, but against Ukraine, the U.S., and the West at large. Confusion is the goal. Fatigue is the weapon.

Dragged Into the War of Narratives

When I wrote the Palestinian Identity Manifesto and the petition “Reclaim the True Palestinian Identity — End the Great Identity Theft!” I thought that would be enough. A statement, not a crusade.

But I soon found myself responding to hundreds of comments and writing dozens of articles — pulled deeper into the Narrative War of Attrition by commenters who hurled ever more absurd claims that demanded a response.

The deeper I went, the clearer the pattern became: Ziophobes don’t argue to reach truth; they argue to drain those who defend it.

And I am far from alone. Many pro-Israel bloggers and activists live in this loop — tirelessly debunking narratives that have already been twisted or abandoned, only for them to resurface under new names. Sometimes multiple, mutually contradictory versions circulate at once, each tailored to a different audience. Confusion replaces coherence; chaos replaces conviction.

Recognizing the Tactic

The first step in countering this war is to recognize it as a war. It’s not about correcting errors — it’s about resisting a strategy of exhaustion. The point is not to refute every lie, but to expose the mechanism that produces them. Each narrative, however absurd, serves one goal: to erode Israel’s legitimacy by attrition.

What Can Be Done

Instead of playing whack-a-myth or chasing every new distortion, we can step back and frame the entire phenomenon as what it is — a deliberate, coordinated narrative offensive. We can teach people to recognize patterns of manipulation, not just individual claims.

Truth needs no infinite variations. Lies do. That’s why they must multiply.

And that’s why, in this war of words, endurance alone is not victory. Clarity is.

See Also

Divide and Demonize