Palestinians were racialized like Native Americans as heathens on discovered land

Evidence

As Steven Salaita’s work shows, the racialization of Palestinians mirrored that of Native Americans, portrayed as heathens with no right to a land “discovered” by White people. Coupled with theological justifications, as Thomas Kidd’s work demonstrates, Protestant leaders during the twentieth century believed American imperialism in the Middle East was ordained by God, which entailed support of Israel. American Evangelicals, dispensationalists in particular, propagated the clash of civilizations narrative to their followers, both in pursuit of large-scale Muslim conversions and because of a religious belief that Jews must return to Palestine in order for the Messiah to arrive. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 633

Categorization

• XREF: Direct parallel to settler-colonial historiography on US westward expansion, and to the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article’s infrastructure/worldbuilding lens on land dispossession. — connects to: Tools of racecraft honed on Blacks and Native Americans get retargeted at Muslims — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 41; Zionism’s settlement of Palestine structurally required demographic and cultural replacement of natives. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 466