Anti-Palestinianism

Anti-Palestinianism or anti-Palestinian racism refers to prejudice, collective hatred, and discrimination directed at the Palestinian people for any variety of reasons. Since the mid-20th century, the phenomenon has largely overlapped with anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia because the overwhelming majority of Palestinians today are Arabs and Muslims. Historically, anti-Palestinianism was more closely identified with European antisemitism, as far-right Europeans detested the Jewish people as undesirable foreigners from Palestine. Modern anti-Palestinianism—that is, xenophobia or racism towards Palestinians—is most common in Israel, the United States, Lebanon, and Germany, among other countries.

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". Pakistani author and professor Sunaina Maira, citing American professor of Islamic studies Shahzad Bashir in the context of labelling, states: "...an important aspect of anti-Palestinianism, that is, the moral panic whipped up about the 'radicalization' of Muslim and Arab American youth is often accompanied by the charge that they are automatically anti-Semites if they are critical of the Israeli state's policies." According to Moustafa Bayoumi, anti-Palestinianism preceded the modern wave of Islamophobia and influenced the rise of the latter.