Anti-Palestinian racism or anti-Palestinianism is prejudice, collective hatred, erasure, or discrimination directed at the Palestinian people. Since the mid-20th century, the phenomenon has largely overlapped with anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia because the vast majority of Palestinians are Arabs and Muslims (with a small but significant minority of Christians). Historically, anti-Palestinianism was more closely identified with European antisemitism, as far-right Europeans detested the Jewish people as undesirable foreigners from Palestine.Kant, Immanuel (1974): Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, cited in Chad Alan Goldberg, Politicide Revisited. University of Wisconsin-Madison Modern anti-Palestinianism—that is, xenophobia or racism towards Palestinians—is most common in Israel,Riemer, Nick. Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022. p. 76. the United States, Lebanon, and Germany, among other countries.
Anti-Palestinian racism includes "erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians"; defending acts of violence against Palestinians; and refusing "to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity". Pakistani author and professor Sunaina Maira, citing American professor of Islamic studies Shahzad Bashir in the context of labelling, states: "...an important aspect of anti-Palestinianism, that is, the moral panic whipped up about the 'radicalization' of Muslim and Arab American youth is often accompanied by the charge that they are automatically anti-Semites if they are critical of the Israeli state's policies." According to Moustafa Bayoumi, anti-Palestinianism preceded the modern wave of Islamophobia and influenced the rise of the latter.Moustafa Bayoumi, Decades of spying and repression: the anti-Palestinian origins of American Islamophobia The Guardian 23 May 2024
According to a United Nations special committee, Amnesty International, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and other experts and human rights organisations, Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian people during its ongoing invasion and bombing of the Gaza Strip.
Anti-Palestinian racism may have played a role in this genocide.
Prevalence by country Canada In 2018, author and political activist Yves Engler criticized the New Democratic Party (NDP) for its conduct in respect of the Palestine Resolution that called for support of efforts to ban "settlement products from Canadian markets, and using other forms of diplomatic and economic pressure to end the [Israeli] occupation." Engler said it "demonstrated the need to directly confront anti-Palestinianism within the party."
In 2020, the University of Toronto allegedly blocked the hiring of Valentina Azarova as director of the International Human Rights Program (IHRP) due to her pro-Palestinian activism. Dania Majid, president of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA), described this as an example that "anti-Palestinian racism is alive and well" in Canada.
In 2023, the principal of Park West School in Halifax, Nova Scotia, apologized after Palestinian students were told they could not wear the keffiyeh during the school's culture day. Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists protested the banning of the keffiyeh as an act of anti-Palestinian racism in front of the Department of Education building in Halifax.
In November 2024, HonestReporting Canada's assistant director, Robert Walker, was criminally charged with 17 counts of mischief for allegedly vandalizing several properties in a Toronto neighborhood by spray painting anti-Palestinian graffiti. The charges were withdrawn on March 5, 2025, in recognition of a $1,000 charitable donation by Walker to the Sick Kids Foundation.
France In May 2021, the French interior minister Gérald Darmanin requested that the police ban a pro-Palestinian protest in Paris. The Parisian journalist Sihame Assbague described the decision as an expression of "French colonial solidarity with the Israeli occupation forces."
Germany
Palestinians in Germany have described a "crackdown and criminalisation" of Palestinians which has included police violence at protests, racial profiling, censorship, and violations of their human rights. Majed Abusalama, co-founder of Palestine Speaks in Germany, suggests German anti-Palestinianism is increasing.
In 2019, the Bundestag declared the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to be a form of antisemitism. In response, the BDS movement condemned the motion as anti-Palestinian. The Palestinian B.D.S. National Committee issued a statement declaring the motion an "anti-Palestinian...McCarthyite and unconstitutional resolution passed by the German Parliament." British musician Brian Eno has argued that pro-Palestinian artists are subjected to "censorship and inquisitorial McCarthyism" due to the actions of the German government and anti-Palestinian groups.
On 27 April 2023, ahead of the 75th anniversary of Israel's independence, or for Palestinians the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, prominent German politician and president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen referred to Israel as a "vibrant democracy" in the Middle East that "made the desert bloom" in remarks criticized by the foreign ministry of the Palestinian Authority as a "propagandist discourse" propagating an "anti-Palestinian racist trope" and a "whitewashing" of Israeli occupation.
Germany's relationship with Palestine has been described as "complex". At present, Germany's political class exhibits a "zealous identification with Israel" that is "often explained in terms of the country's past". Alternative readings, however, view this trend as a "qualitatively new phenomenon in Germany largely unrelated to moral considerations pertaining to the Nazi era". Hannah C. Tzuberi argues that German manifestations of "anti-antisemitism" (which has been described as "a defining marker of post-war German identity") can go beyond the identification of Germans with Jews, sometimes leading to the identification of German gentiles as Jews, and the identification of Germany as Israel.
A 2024 study examined the influence of the 2009 proclamation of a German "reason of state" () regarding Israel, on the perception of Palestinians. The authors documented a removal of Palestine-related content from educational curricula, a narrowing of the range of opinions, and the criminalization of Palestinian voices.
In 2020, scholars and artists began accusing Germany of a "witch hunt" against those who express pro-Palestinian solidarity. The European Legal Support Center (ELSC) has also accused Germany of human rights violations for laws which it says amount to suppression of pro-Palestinian activism, which it says particularly affects Jews and Palestinians. Artists for Palestine says Germany has censured a number of artists for expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment, include Kamila Shamsie, Kae Tempest, Young Fathers, Talib Kwelli, Walid Raad and Nirit Sommerfeld.
Israel
Palestinians have been targets of Zionist political violence since before the establishment of the State of Israel during the 1948 Palestine war, remembered as the Nakba by Palestinians.
Palestinians are the target of violence by Israeli settlers and their supporters, predominantly in the West Bank. In November 2021, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz discussed the steep rise in the number of incidents between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, many of which result from attacks by residents of illegal settler outposts on Palestinians from neighboring villages. Settler violence also includes acts known as price tag attacks that are in response to actions by the Israeli government, usually against Palestinian targets and occasionally against Israeli security forces in the West Bank.
Palestinian police are forbidden from reacting to acts of violence by Israeli settlers, a fact which diminishes their credibility among Palestinians.Daniel Byman, A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism, Oxford University Press/Saban Center, Brookings Institution, 2011 p. 292: 'Palestinian police are barred from responding to settler violence. This policy reduces friction between settlers and Palestinian authorities, but it decreases the overall credibility of the PA, which cannot defend its people from settler harassment and violence.' Between January and November 2008, 515 criminal suits were opened by Israel against settlers for violence against Arabs or Israeli security forces; 502 of these involved "right wing radicals" while 13 involved "left wing anarchists".Constance B. Hilliard, Does Israel have a future?: the case for a post-Zionist state, Potomac Books, Inc., 2009 p. 59. In 2008, the senior Israeli commander in the West Bank said that a hard core of a few hundred activists were involved in violence against the Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. Some prominent Jewish religious figures living in the occupied territories, as well as Israeli government officials, have condemned and expressed outrage over such behavior, while religious justifications for settler killings have also been given.Amitai Etzioni, Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy, Yale University Press, 2008 p. 119.:'Others have justified violence against Arabs by citing the rule from the Talmud: "If a man comes to kill you, rise early, and kill him first." Israeli media said the defense establishment began taking a harder line against unruly settlers starting in 2008. In 2011 the BBC reported that "vast majority of settlers are non-violent but some within the Israeli government acknowledge a growing problem with extremists." UN figures from 2011 showed that 90% of complaints filed against settlers by Palestinians with the Israeli police never led to indictment.
In the 21st century, there has been a steady increase in violence and terror perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.Anshel Pfeffer,Top IDF officer warns: Settlers' radical fringe growing, Haaretz 20 October 2009. In 2012, an EU heads of mission report found that settler violence had more than tripled in the three years up to 2011. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) figures state that the annual rate of settler attacks (2,100 attacks in 8 years) has almost quadrupled between 2006 and 2014.Chaim Levinson, Gili Cohen and Jack Khoury, 'Palestinian mosque set on fire in suspected hate crime,' at Haaretz, 15 January 2014. 'The annual totals are up from 115 in 2006 to 399 in 2013..' In 2021, there was yet another wave of settler violence which erupted after a 16-year-old settler died in a car chase with Israeli police after having hurled rocks at Palestinians. So far it has resulted in 44 incidents in the span of a few weeks, injuring two Palestinian children.Times of Israel Staff. "5-Year-Old Palestinian Boy Hurt by Rock Thrown at Car in Reported Settler Attack." The Times of Israel, January 22, 2021. Times of Israel In the latter parts of 2021, there has been a marked increase in settler violence toward Palestinians, condemned at the United Nations Security Council.
This violence increased further following the election of a far-right government in 2022 which proposed to expand Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories, as well as the October 7 attacks in 2023.
Lebanon