When it comes to the long-standing conflict between Israel and Palestine, most people on the right are either more sympathetic to the Israelis or proudly indifferent to the plight of foreigners in general. There are, of course, understandable reasons why right-wingers back Israel: the country is seen not merely as a Western ally, but as a plucky outpost of Western civilisation. (There are also reasons I consider less compelling, such as biblical prophecy, dislike of Muslims or the fact that leftists support Palestine.)
With that said, some groups on the right do deviate from the general pattern. Libertarians, including Jewish libertarians like Murray Rothbard, have long couched their sympathy for the Palestinians in the language of non-aggression and property rights. In Britain, there was until recently a notable strain of Tory Arabism, rooted in historical affinity and reverence for Arab culture. Almost everywhere, you can find right-wingers whose opinions are based on hostility to Jews.
Here I make no attempt to adjudicate the Israel/Palestine conflict. What I want to do instead is convey surprise that more conservatives aren’t sympathetic to the Palestinians. Why surprise? The conflict originates in what seems like a textbook case of demographic replacement through immigration — something conservatives claim to be gravely concerned about in their own countries.
To be clear, I am not saying that Israel has no right to exist or that Jews have no claim to the land. (My own view is that Israel has the right to remain a Jewish state, though it ought to compromise with Palestinians and should certainly stop the present onslaught.) I am merely saying that, from the Palestinian perspective, they were demographically replaced by immigrants.
Indeed, I am by no means the first to draw an analogy between the situation of Arabs under the Mandate and the one facing Europeans today. For example, the pseudonymous writer Mithras did so in a trenchant piece back in 2023. As he noted, the conflict can be traced to waves of mass migration that the majority strongly opposed.
According to the estimates of Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola, Jews made up 2.5 per cent of the population of Palestine in 1800 — a percentage that had barely shifted in 300 years. With the advent of Zionism in the late 19th century, they began immigrating there in large numbers. By 1931 Jews were 17 per cent of the population, and by 1947 they represented one third.
In fact, the Arab population share fell by about 4.2 percentage points a decade between 1890 and 1947, which is comparable to the rate of change in contemporary Europe. For example, the White British share of the UK population fell by about 5.6 percentage points a decade between 1991 and 2021.
Unsurprisingly, the Arab majority resisted the demographic change they saw around them, correctly fearing that it would spell their dispossession. By 1936, they were in full-blown revolt against the British authorities, whom they held responsible for the unfolding disaster. Their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, and in the civil war that erupted in 1947, more than 700,000 were expelled or fled.
Zionist leaders were keenly aware of the resistance to their project, sometimes expressing themselves with remarkable bluntness. In his famous essay “The Iron Wall”, Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote, “The Zionists want only one thing, Jewish immigration; and this Jewish immigration is what the Arabs do not want.” Later, David Ben-Gurion stated, “There is a fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: we both want Palestine.”
From the Jewish perspective, immigration into Palestine was quite understandable: there had been Jewish communities there for millennia, and the people who came were often fleeing persecution in their countries of origin. The point is that this inflow was not in the majority’s interests.
It could be argued that the situation of Arabs under the Mandate is fundamentally different from the one facing Europeans today, since there had never been an Arab state in Palestine. However, the mere fact that such a state had never been established (owing in part to accidents of history and geography) does not negate the Palestinians’ attachment to the land.
Various foundational texts, including the UN charter, affirm that all “peoples” have a right to self-determination. And Palestinian national identity had already begun to emerge by the early 1920s — at which time Jews were still only 11 per cent of the population. Regarding the Peel Commission’s recommendation of partition, Ben-Gurion himself admitted that “if I were an Arab I would have been very indignant”.
If Europeans deserve a place they can reasonably call home, then so do the Palestinians
In fact, the absence of an Arab state during the relevant period highlights another respect in which the Arabs’ situation resembles the one facing Europeans today: the authorities made immigration policy against the wishes of most people. In Palestine, this was because those authorities were colonial powers. In Europe, it’s because they subscribe to a radical pro-migration ideology and/or face pressures from business and NGO lobbies. But the disregard for mass opinion is the same.
Leftists who fret over threats to non-Western cultures and national communities often characterise any attempt to preserve Western cultures as illegitimate — or even “racist”. Conservatives should be more consistent. If Europeans deserve a place they can reasonably call home, then so do the Palestinians.
Now, this obviously doesn’t mean reversing 77 years of history: Israel is here to stay and is not about to give up its Jewish majority. It simply means recognising the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians to have a state in their historic homeland.
