In the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, once again there are voices suggesting that the Jews have no business to be in Palestine, a land that they stole from the Palestinians.
The history of the word Palestine, the identity of the Arabs who only began to call themselves Palestinians in the past century or so, has been discussed elsewhere. And the Jews have been around in places like Yerushaláyim thousands of years ago. But what about the more recent past? Did the Jews just return to their once sacred land en masse in the wake of the Holocaust, stealing land rightfully owned by a peaceful Arab populace?
Not exactly.
Here is an image from Tel Aviv, taken in 1939, when WW2 in Europe began in earnest (and incidentally, the year when my Mom was born):
Hmmm… looks decidedly Jewish to me.
Or how about a rare color (!) photo from Jerusalem, showing the sign of an orphanage… 
A Palestine orphanage, to be precise, yet the lettering is Latin and Hebrew, because back then, Palestine was mostly used as the name of the land (the British mandate of Palestine), not yet a national identity.
Now I am not suggesting that a Palestinian identity has no legitimacy. I understand how this identity emerged, and how it was, at least in part, a reaction, or response, to Zionism, an attempt to (re-)create a Jewish nation in what was historically Judaea, later to be made part of the new Roman province of Syria-Palaestina. Having a right-wing government in Israel that no longer shows any interest in a resolution that might grant Palestinian Arabs statehood is not helpful, to put it mildly. But even as I recognize the hatred and distrust that exists on both sides, I would purposefully refrain from “bothsidesism”: All I have to do is to look at Palestinian grade school textbooks (there are plenty of infuriating examples on the Interwebs) to know which side advocates actual genocide (a word used far too frequently in recent months), which side characterizes the other (in textbooks!) with hateful caricatures even as it claims a right to own all land from the river to the sea.