They were Palestinian citizens when they became Israelis. Actually "Israeli" is not a national identity.How does calling them Arabs relate to trying to erase Palestinian history ?Israel always called the Palestinians "Israeli Arabs" in their attempt to erase Palestinians from history.
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But what's at stake here is not merely rhetoric but a form of historical distortion that makes it all but impossible for readers to fully grasp the nature of the conflict.
Palestinian artists and intellectuals as well as the most important institutions of Palestinian civil society inside Israel, including the human rights organization Adalah and the Mada al-Carmel research center, use the term "Palestinians" to identify and affiliate themselves and to assert their indissoluble connection to the rest of the Palestinian people.
They apos re Palestinians not apos Israeli Arabs apos - LA Times
If they are citizens of Israel, then calling them Israeli Palestinians would sound odd, as both are nationalities. Israeli Arab, Israeli, Jew, Israeli Christian. Doesn't really matter, they are Israeli
In fact, to use the ethnic term "Arab" to describe the Palestinians inside Israel is to strip them of any national identity — not only the national identity that they themselves assert, but quite literally any national identity whatsoever, given that, according to a 2013 ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court, "Israeli" is not a national identity.
Would an American from Haiti be an "African American?"
What were native Americans called before it was America?
Just as Palestinians existed as a people before the dismemberment of their homeland, they continue to exist as a people afterward. To refer to some Palestinians as Palestinian and others merely as deracinated "Arabs" is to doubt or negate their claim to a national existence as a people both historically and in the present.
GOBBLEDEGOOK