Palestinians want to throw Jews into the sea.

Palestinians, like all colonized peoples, want liberation and justice from Zionist colonial subjugation. Had any other group imposed the same system of oppression, Palestinians would resist it in the same way.

This myth deliberately conflates Judaism with Israel and Zionism, implying that resisting a colonial state and struggling for liberation is equivalent to wanting Jews exterminated. Palestinians are not resisting Zionists because they are Jewish; they are resisting Zionism because it is a settler-colonial project that has subjected them to ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Israel cannot have it both ways: it defines itself as a Jewish state, maintains an apartheid system privileging Jews, and then claims that those resisting this system are fighting Jews rather than colonial domination.

This claim is a classic propaganda myth rooted in colonial and orientalist portrayals of Palestinians as inherently violent and genocidal. It erases the anti-colonial nature of their struggle, while diverting attention from the material realities of occupation, apartheid, and genocide.

For centuries, Jewish communities lived across Palestine and the broader region as integral parts of their societies, sharing common languages, cultures, and histories. It was Zionism that recast Jewish identity as a homogenized national identity, weaponized that identity for colonial ends, and projected the hostility generated by colonization onto the colonized.

What Palestinians hypothetically "want" is constantly scrutinized while living through real extermination. What matters, and what should be stopped, is material colonial violence. Only Israel's genocidal intent has been extensively documented by international courts, UN experts, and human rights organizations.

Eliminationist attitudes toward Palestinians extend well beyond the state level. A 2025 survey found that 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, while nearly half supported killing all Palestinians in areas captured by the Israeli army. These findings illustrate how eliminationist violence against Palestinians is deeply embedded within Israeli society.

Every Zionist accusation is a confession. While Palestinians are portrayed as "wanting" Jewish extermination, it is Zionism that ethnically cleansed 800,000 Palestinians during the Nakba, and literally forced them as refugees into the sea. The Nakba has never ended, as Israel continues to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, culminating in the ongoing genocide. As Mohammed El-Kurd writes, the irony of such colonial projection is stark. "Not only because it is the Israelis who are in fact committing a televised genocide but also because, out of the countless genocidal remarks made by Israeli officials, plenty have invoked the sea." Netanyahu proposed using the U.S-built pier on the shore of Gaza to forcibly transfer Palestinians, while an Israeli minister declared that Palestinians in Gaza could "just swim in the sea," adding: "I want to see dead bodies of terrorists around Gaza."