Recognizing Palestine: Europe is committing suicide and wants to take the US down with it - opinion

Indeed, there is a concurrent de facto de-Palestinization in the Middle East, alongside mass Palestinization  in the West. This as the term “Palestine” has traveled a few times.

Until 100 years ago, Palestine was a Jewish nationalist term. Then, for the past 60 years, it switched to denote Arab nationalism. In recent years, it has been turning into an abstract term for a basket of Western causes.

At the same time, Europe’s zealous opposition to the Jewish state, which is also a proxy for its opposition to America, led to cultivation of various neo-Palestinian ideologies.

But if one gives any legitimacy to the idea of Spain and the reconquista, one must give legitimacy to Israel and Zionism – which are based on a much more historically sound story of a nation coming back home (there is not much resemblance between the people living in pre-Muslim Iberia and those completing the reconquista some 800 years later).

Therefore, some pro-Palestinians want to do away with the term “reconquista” – and, in doing so, negate the raison d’etre of Spain. In other words, Spain is an ancillary victim of Europe’s assault on Judaism.

We see this even more clearly in the startling similarities between the early days of Europe’s Muslim nationalist movement and those of the Palestinian national movement in the Middle East.

Both groups of Muslims emigrated from various places. Historians agree that the majority of the ancestors of today’s Palestinians were not in Palestine in the early 19th century (historians disagree about what percent of them were, and when they came). Similarly, there is no doubt that the majority of Muslims in Europe came during the last century.

Both groups did not have a collective identity prior to arriving in Palestine/Europe – and in both cases, this identity was formed in contrast to the other population. For Palestinians, the “occupation” became the uniting ethos – so much so that some believe that the end of the conflict would mean the end of Palestinianism. For European Muslims, the “discrimination” and European Islamophobia became the uniting ethos, bunching together Muslims from various parts of the world into one.

In both cases, only a handful of Muslims had any sort of Muslim nationalism sentiment at the onset. Moreover, most Muslims, back then in Palestine and today in Europe, vehemently reject the idea of having their own state. In both cases, those who did have national sentiment expressed it at the onset through another vehicle.

Arabs in Palestine in the early 20th century expressed it at first as calling themselves “Syrians.” In Europe, many names were given to the nascent movement, such as EuroStan.

However, both were forced into a new identity by Europeans themselves, and in both cases it had the same name: Palestinians.

In the Middle Eastern case, this happened when France invaded Syria, claiming it for itself, and deposed its Hashemite king.

The British, who were about to be given a mandate to usher in a Jewish homeland in Palestine, spanning both banks of the Jordan River, decided to carve out the east bank for the deposed Hashemite family. The British then forced those Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea into a new identity: Palestinians.

No Muslim in Palestine would view himself as “Palestinian” in the early 20th century, even more so because this term was used in reference to Jews. But within 50 years, many of them did.

Similarly, no Muslim in Europe today views himself as “Palestinian” – even more so, since this term is used today in reference to Arabs in the Middle East. But in the summer of 2025, Macron started a process that could lead to Muslims in Europe viewing themselves as “Palestinians” within a few short decades or less.

When Europeans started the “Palestinians process” in the Middle East 100 years ago, they had no intention that it would ever lead to a Palestinian state – this would have been ridiculed then. The same is true today: Macron and Starmer clearly did not intend to plant the seeds for a Palestinian state in Europe.

But processes take their own course.

All of a sudden, not only does the nascent European Muslim national movement have a name – Palestine – but it has momentum. Indeed, in those riots in Paris, it is the Palestinian flag that is waved, and some of the rioters burning cars and smashing windows do so wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh.

After all, the objective to “Globalize the intifada” was never kept a secret. From the outset, Western pro-Palestinians made clear that this is not just about the Middle East. One can do the simple math: “From the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea” can easily become “From the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea.”

Moreover, Western pro-Palestinians made clear that their cause is one of justice.

Indeed, when Huckabee and others suggested that France should carve out a section in the French Riviera for the creation of the State of Palestine, one could imagine the cries of “Injustice!” The French Riviera is less than 1% of France’s territory, and Muslims are soon to be 20% of France. This is not “justice for Palestine.”

No isolation strategy can prevent an ideology from percolating into the United States, and indeed it has.

For example, the BBC already reported research claiming that a diary entry by Christopher Columbus “was proof that Muslims had reached the Americas first” and that “the religion of Islam was widespread” in America.

It may be no coincidence that Europe chose the United States as the venue for its declaration of an imaginary Palestinian state.

Europe does not want to commit suicide alone.

The United States must treat the threat from Europe seriously.  ■