On college campuses across the United States, the chant “Free Palestine” has become a rallying cry. Many students, faculty members, and activists insist that Israel is a settler-colonial state and that the land known as Palestine has been unjustly taken from its indigenous Arab inhabitants. The left accuses Jews of colonizing a land that never belonged to them and portrays Palestinians as victims of imperialism and apartheid. These slogans have emotional appeal, but they are not grounded in historical truth.
To understand what is really at stake, it is necessary to examine the historical, genealogical, and political record.
The modern Palestinian national identity is not an ancient one. Rather, it is a twentieth-century invention, shaped by political necessity and Soviet disinformation campaigns. The use of the term “Palestine” and the portrayal of Arabs in that region as a unique indigenous people are relatively recent developments that lack deep historical roots.
The word “Palestine” is not an Arabic term either.
Its origin lies in the Roman Empire. After crushing the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE—a major Jewish uprising against Roman rule—Emperor Hadrian deliberately renamed the province of Judea to “Syria Palaestina.” This was not an innocent act of cartography. It was a calculated effort to erase Jewish identity from the land. By naming the area after the Philistines, ancient enemies of the Israelites, Hadrian sought to sever the connection between Jews and their ancestral homeland. It was an act of cultural violence designed to obliterate Jewish heritage and memory.
The name persisted through various empires, but it was never associated with a distinct Arab or Islamic nation.
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During the four centuries of Ottoman rule, from 1517 to 1918, there was no political or administrative unit called Palestine. In Arabic, the area was referred to as al-Ard al-Muqadassa, meaning “the Holy Land,” or as “Southern Syria.” The term Palestine only gained administrative currency during the British Mandate following World War I, and even then, Arabs living in the area did not commonly identify themselves as Palestinians. It was Jews who adopted the term; Jewish institutions used it to describe themselves. The Palestine Post newspaper, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, and the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra were all Jewish-led entities.
The claim that today’s Palestinians are descended from the ancient Canaanites is a modern political fabrication.
Palestinian leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas and Saeb Erekat have repeated this claim to suggest that Palestinians have a deeper and more legitimate claim to the land than the Jews. Erekat even declared publicly that he is a “son of Jericho” whose Canaanite roots stretch back 10,000 years. However, this assertion does not hold up to scrutiny. Genealogical records and family histories reveal that most Palestinian families trace their lineage to Arab tribes from the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Syria, or Iraq. The Erekat family, for instance, originates from the Huweitat tribe, a prominent Bedouin group with roots in Arabia. Even Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hammad admitted in a 2012 speech that many Palestinians are Egyptian or Saudi in origin. Interestingly, although some Palestinians continue to claim descent from the Canaanites, genetic evidence has shown that the Lebanese and not the Palestinians are their true descendants.
The identity of Palestinians as a separate people began to emerge after World War I, but it did not solidify until after the collapse of Arab nationalism and the humiliating defeat of Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War. Before that, many of the region’s Arabs identified themselves as Syrians, Jordanians, or simply as Arabs. It was only after their military and political aspirations to absorb or destroy Israel failed that Palestinian nationalism began to take shape as a distinct cause.
This process was not organic. It was manipulated and accelerated by one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in modern history: the Soviet Union’s Operation SIG.
Launched after the Arab defeat in 1967, Operation SIG was a KGB initiative designed to discredit Israel and the United States, sow discord in the Middle East, and build alliances with Arab dictatorships. It was the Soviet Union that supported the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), drafted its founding documents, and handpicked its initial leadership. Yasser Arafat, the PLO’s most famous leader, was trained by the KGB in Moscow. According to defectors and intelligence archives, the PLO was never an expression of grassroots Palestinian identity. It was a geopolitical instrument, designed to delegitimize Israel by casting it as a colonial, racist, and oppressive regime.
The effectiveness of Operation SIG cannot be overstated. It introduced terms like “imperialist Zionism” and spread forged documents, such as Arabic translations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It framed the Jews as collaborators with the Nazis and recast the Holocaust not as a genocide against Jews, but as a political tool of manipulation. Soviet agents planted stories, trained Arab propagandists, and cultivated Western sympathizers. The result was a global shift in perception, especially on the political left. Anti-Zionism, once a fringe idea, became a mainstay of radical activism.
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Yet perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Palestinian cause is not its fictional historical claims but the corruption and authoritarianism of its own political leadership. The Palestinian territories have been ruled for decades by regimes that have squandered international aid, stifled civil liberties, and undermined the very aspirations they claim to represent.
Under Yasser Arafat, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority diverted billions of dollars into secret bank accounts. Arafat’s personal wealth at the time of his death was estimated to be in the billions, much of it siphoned from international aid intended to improve Palestinian lives. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, has ruled the West Bank for over 15 years despite being elected to a four-year term. Elections have not been held since 2006. According to polls, over 87 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza believe that the Palestinian Authority is corrupt, and this belief is justified. Public funds are routinely misused, dissent is punished, and democratic institutions are nonfunctional.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas has created a theocratic dictatorship that devotes more energy to building terror tunnels and stockpiling rockets than to healthcare, education, or employment. Residents of Gaza live under a regime that tolerates no opposition and treats women, minorities, and political dissidents with brutality. While Hamas and the Palestinian Authority blame Israel for all economic woes, the truth is that internal mismanagement, nepotism, and tyranny are the primary obstacles to Palestinian development.
In this context, the chants of “Free Palestine” ring hollow. Free Palestine from what? From Jewish presence, or from the brutal regimes that govern it? If the goal is truly freedom for Palestinians, then activists must confront the truth about how their leaders have betrayed them. If the goal is justice, then historical myths must be replaced with facts. The land known today as Israel is not a colonial outpost. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, whose continuous presence in the region stretches back over 3,000 years. Modern Palestinians are not a displaced indigenous nation but a diverse population whose identity was forged in the crucible of political conflict and Soviet disinformation
People are free to sympathize with the Palestinians if they choose. Compassion for human suffering is a natural and commendable response. But sympathy should not come at the expense of truth. History must be approached with honesty and intellectual integrity. It cannot be rewritten to suit political agendas or emotional narratives. We should not build our understanding, our advocacy, or our moral positions on distortions or deliberate falsehoods.
A just and meaningful discourse depends on a foundation of truth, however difficult or complex that truth may be.
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Image: “Berkeley Free Palestine Camp” by Mx. Granger on Wikimedia Commons
