Bezza wrote: "It was the Romans, perhaps Augustus that first called them Palistini."

Not just Augustus. It was the common Roman description of the region at the time. Almost certainly the term derived from Philistine who were the ancient inhabitants of the region (remember David and Goliath? ... Goliath was a Philistine). But they weren't calling 'them', the people, Palestini, they were calling the region Palestine and at the time it was largely occupied by Jews and Samaritans ( a Jewish offshoot).

There are plenty of histories to prove the invention of the Palestinian race. Here's Zuheir Mohsen (one of the original leaders of the so-called Palestinian struggle)...

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism."

JD wrote: "That is literally how nations form."

But we weren't talking about nations. We were talking about races. Standard JD efforts to realign the discussion to something he thinks better suits his prejudices. Call Palestine a nation if you will. But that doesn't make the Arabs there a distinct race.

Your slide over to "race" is a red herring, mhaze.

The original claim was that Palestinians are fictitious. That claim only makes sense if you're denying the existence of a people, not quibbling over whether they constitute a biological race. No serious historian or political theorist argues that modern peoples are races in the 19th-century biological sense.

And neither do I.

Palestinians are an ethnonational group, not a race. That's the same category Israelis, Australians, Indonesians, Italians and Germans fall into. Nations and peoples form through shared history, culture, language, territory and political experience, not through racial distinctness.

Quoting Zuheir Mohsen doesn't change that. Political leaders routinely frame identity instrumentally, especially in anti-colonial or nationalist movements. That doesn't make the population fictitious any more than early Zionist debates about Jewish nationhood made Jews fictitious.

You're also wrong to imply this is some kind of semantic sleight of hand. Modern political rights, self-determination and international law are grounded in peoples and nations, not races. If your argument only works by insisting on an obsolete racial definition that nobody else is using, that's not clarification, it's evasion.

So no, this isn't about "invented races". It's about whether a continuous population that developed a shared identity under Ottoman, British and Israeli rule exists as a people. They plainly do.

If you want to discuss ancient ethnography, fine. But that doesn't negate the existence of a modern people any more than Roman provincial names negate the existence of modern Israelis.

"Standard JD efforts to realign the discussion to something he thinks better suits his prejudices." - mhaze

"That claim only makes sense if you're denying the existence of a people, not quibbling over whether they constitute a biological race."

Bezza's original thread was talking about their DNA and the fact that they were Semites. I was following that rather than chasing you down whatever rabbit hole you try to construct.

The people exist but they are Arabs, not a distinct people. They are no different to Jordanians, Syrians etc. Perhaps I should post the quotes from their leaders saying that, were they given a state on the West Bank, they'd reunite with Jordan.

Rather telling that you think Zuheir Mohsen (and there are many similar quotes available) was just spinning a yarn. You'd almost call it racist.... if they were a race.

I knew you'd retreat to the talk of DNA, mhaze.

You've now shifted from "Palestinians are fictitious" to "Palestinians exist but aren't distinct". That's a different claim, and a much weaker one.

Yes, Bezza invoked DNA. And DNA shows what population genetics has shown for years: Levantine populations share deep continuity and overlap. That cuts against your argument, not for it. DNA does not divide Palestinians cleanly from Jews, Syrians or Jordanians, and no serious scholar thinks it should be used to determine political legitimacy.

Overlapping ancestry does not negate peoplehood. By your logic:

- Austrians aren't distinct from Germans
- Ukrainians aren't distinct from Russians
- Irish aren't distinct from Britons
- Israelis aren't distinct from other Jews

Shared ethnicity has never prevented the emergence of distinct peoples. History is full of peoples who are ethnically similar but politically, culturally and historically distinct.

Quoting Arab leaders expressing pan-Arab aspirations doesn't change that. Leaders routinely talk instrumentally about identity. Early Zionists disagreed sharply about whether Jews were a religion, a nation, or a diaspora. That didn't make Jews "not a people".

So no, this isn't about "rabbit holes". It's about consistency. You can't deny a people's existence, retreat to denying their distinctness, and then pretend that was the argument all along.

Palestinians are an ethnonational group that developed under specific historical conditions, have continuous residence, a shared identity, and are treated as a distinct population in law and conflict. That's the same standard applied everywhere else.

If you reject that standard here, you need to explain why it shouldn't apply universally.

John has gone off on a path of personal selection.
That is fair enough but where the Palistini population is concerned they
have been plagued by wars for generations, but my proposal offers them
an end to all that. Many still have some Jewish traditions as family
folk law apparently and some still celebrate Christmas within their families.
Their families were forced into Islam originally, and that is still
going on.

While I have a captive audience did you notice the distruption during
the riots in Sydney where a small number of moslems got on their knees
to pray defying police orders to move on ?
Then the Immans making a fuss about the Police intergering with a
prayer session. Hint of things to come.
In Europe that is a common tactic except with such numbers they block
off whole major streets stopping traffic and pedestrians.
I bet we see that sometime soon in the protest season.

"John has gone off on a path of personal selection."

He always does. Tries to highjack a discussion and twist it to suit his prejudices and then demands everyone else adhere to that. Not playing.

Of course Palestinians are a political entity. So are Queenslanders but that doesn't make them a people. The Palestinians are Arabs and Semites. They were that long before they started calling themselves Palestinians. They were that when anyone who lived in the Ottoman province of Palestine were called Palestinians. They were that when the British issued travel papers to the inhabitants of Palestine including the Arab inhabitants, the Jewish inhabitants, the Christian inhabitants.

there's a difference between a political entity and a race. Although it seems difficult for some to fathom.

"I knew you'd retreat to the talk of DNA,"

You knew I stick to the subject (?) and yet you tried to drag me down a different rabbit-hole.