Nuseir Yassin, known online as “Nas Daily,” is a popular travel blogger and social media personality with tens of millions of followers (65 million by last count).
He’s also an Israeli Arab, though he, like most Israeli Arabs, calls himself “Palestinian.” And while has never harbored any animosity for Israel, until this past weekend, he referred to himself as “Palestinian-Israeli – first Palestinian, then Israeli.”
That all changed on Saturday morning when the horrors of the Hamas invasion of southern Israel started coming to light.
Personal Thoughts:
(not for everyone, feel free to skip)For the longest time, I struggled with my identity.
A Palestinian kid born inside Israel. Like…wtf.
Many of my friends refuse to this day to say the word “Israel” and call themselves “Palestinian” only.
But since I…
— Nuseir Yassin (@nasdaily) October 8, 2023
Now, none of this is going to be particularly moving to our readership. The reason it’s significant is as a counter to anti-Israel arguments you are going to hear, as well as efforts to draw moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas, even after what we witnessed over the past few days.
Yassin is a local. He knows the score. He knows the situation in Israel, in the local Arab community and among the Palestinians. He doesn’t just speak the language, he’s one of them.
You can’t call him uninformed.
And what he’s saying is that while he hopes that one day there will be a Palestinian state, he won’t live in it. After all he’s seen, and with all he knows, he’d prefer to remain Israeli.
And so from today (or yesterday) forward, he’s going by “Israeli-Palestinian.”
The Palestinian cause is the same today as it was when the Romans created it. It’s the dissolution of Zionism, Judaism and Jewish identity. All modern expressions of Palestinianism own this cause.
Any owning the Palestinian cause should be removed from Israel to lands that uphold Palestinianism, be they Arab, Christian or secular. Only Palestinian Jews should be tolerated. Arabs, Christians and the secular who do not own Palestinianism are acceptable.
Palestinianism dovetails into other antizionist and antisemitic ideologies, so separating it will help clarify matters and improve the Israeli situation.
Israel and the church should unite to revoke every endorsement of Palestinianism in the world today. Representations should be made to the UN that the best way to free Palestine would be to make it an enclave of an Arab state. UN and world relief agencies would still be able to operate there.
Where could a suitable enclave be created? Iran are good friends to the Palestinians, and Palestinians supported Saddam when he was in power, so perhaps somewhere on the Iran/Iraq border. The Taliban hold a similar jihadist outlook to Fatah and Hamas, so perhaps somewhere on the Iran/Afghanistan border would be a possibility. However, the nature of Palestinianism means that they will always want to be at odds with Israel, so perhaps the Iraq/Jordanian border would be best. They can still assault Israel from there, and Israel can still strike back at them.