Hussein Ibish traces Israeli and Palestinian national identities:
In the decades immediately preceding 1948, the word “Israeli” was totally unknown and meant nothing, and the word "Palestinian” meant many things, but certainly not what it means today. Both of these national identities—the Jewish Israeli and the Arab Palestinian—are contemporary constructs born of recent history. They are largely grounded in their encounter with each other. They also embody deep cultural memories, traditions, myths, legends and tendentious narratives that at least to some extent retrofit the past to privilege their own national projects.
But all of this is entirely beside the point. Neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli national identity is more or less "authentic" or “legitimate” than the other because both are self-defined nationalisms adhered to by millions of people. The extent to which they are based on imaginary constructs—as all modern national ideologies ultimately prove largely to be—is meaningless in practice. Objecting to these mythologies is the political equivalent of complaining about the rain.
(Photo: Border policemen stand guard as a Palestinian youth talks on public phone during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan on August 8, 2011, at the old city of Jerusalem, Israel. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
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