The 1937 Peel Commission framed the Palestinian conflict in explicit racial terms

Evidence

Palestinians are treated not as if a racial group, not simply in the manner of a racial group, but as a despised and demonic racial group. … Struggling to maintain the semblance of a fair, judicious, and impartial governing overseer, Britain’s Peel Commission, reporting to the League of Nations in 1937 on the Arab “disorders and disruptions” in Palestine of 1936, refers repeatedly to the “racial antagonism” between Jews and Arabs (Palestinians). The Commission characterizes Jews as “a highly intelligent and enterprising race backed by large financial resources” in contrast to Palestinians as “a comparatively poor, indigenous community, on a different cultural level” (my emphases). — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 690

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and the long history of Western colonial racial framing of Arabs, and to why the chapter title says racial Palestinianization.
• SHARE: A historian friend working on Mandate Palestine would want this specific Commission quote (Jews as ‘enterprising race’ vs Palestinians as ‘poor indigenous community’).