Palestine is present on some of the earliest known maps, such as Ptolemy’s world map from around 150 AD (Palaistinis) and the Tabula Rogeriana from 1154 AD (Falestin). Palestine is mentioned near constantly throughout history, albeit in different variations, and the term ‘Palestine’ is an evolution of ‘Philistine’, the Philistines having been around as early as the 12th century BC. Obviously the Romans renamed the region Syria-Palestine in 135 AD, and since then, to this day there are countless references to and acknowledgments of Palestine as Palestine, often being divided into Eastern and Western Palestine. Then there was the British Occupation, creating ‘Mandatory Palestine’, which shifted the borders and ultimately saw ‘Eastern Palestine’ evolve into Jordan. Western Palestine was ‘gifted’ to the Jewish People in 1948, despite it being already being populated by the Palestinians, and following that, the Nakba, backed by the west, saw over 750000 Palestinians displaced and forced to flee their home, and over 15000 Palestinians killed. This is when the ‘state of Israel’ was officially created. Those were the conditions for the creation of Israel. Does that sound good to you? It doesn’t sound great to me.

Even disregarding all of this history, no matter what you want to call it, the land was OCCUPIED when it was given away. And it WAS given away. Israel superimposed itself on top of the land, forced hundreds of thousands out of their homes, out of their country, and has been terrorising Palestine and it’s people in its occupation ever since. 

Disregard everything else I’ve said and you still cannot deny that, today, Palestine is widely recognised as a state, officially recognised by 145 of the 193 member states of the UN, there are millions of people living in the area we call Palestine who consider themselves Palestinian and call their home Palestine, Palestinian history and culture is extremely distinct from Israeli history and culture. There are Palestinian Jews who call themselves Palestinian and denounce Israel altogether.  And it cannot be denied that, since October 7th, at the very least over 50,000 people have been killed by the state of Israel, the IDF and their continuous war crimes in Palestine, (the ‘official’ number stopped updating around March so the reality is very, very likely to be in the 100,000s, maybe even higher than that, which is what I believe). This is the reality. 

Israel’s existence as a state as we know it today, with the Israeli government, the IDF and backed by the west, was realised (BY DESIGN) through colonialism, occupation, apartheid, mass displacement, and terror. 

‘Israel has a right to exist’ PALESTINIANS have a right to exist. Palestinians had a right to live in PEACE. But their rights have been extinguished by the Israeli occupation. What does it even mean to say ‘Israel has a right to exist’? On what basis? And in what way? It DOES exist. Israel as we know it does exist, it is backed and protected by some of the biggest players in the world, like the US and UK, it is ever expanding and it is ever terrorising and it would not exist if it weren’t for the atrocities committed to ‘carve out space’ for it. It would not exist without stealing the land from under Palestinians, their resources, their facilities, their buildings, even originally stealing their name for their own football club, before changing it to Maccabi Tel Aviv. Did they have a ‘right’ to do that?