The Golda Meir Test
Why Arafat’s Cairo Birth Doesn’t Prove What People Think It Does
I hope you will never use the “Arafat-was-born-in-Cairo-so-there-is-no-such-thing-as-Palestinians” argument ever again.
Very recently, I came across this Substack Note in my feed:
Ten years ago I had a run-in on Facebook with a popular pro-Israel activist who made that same claim. I responded with what seemed to me an obvious question: if birthplace determines national authenticity, what do we do with Golda Meir? His response was to insult me and block me.
My response was to write an article about it. You can read it here and I still stand by it. Today, I want to take that one step further.
Let’s look closely at what the claim in the Substack Note actually says:
Yasser Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1929. True
He was an Egyptian engineer, educated in Cairo. True
He became the chairman of the PLO, an organisation whose founding charter was drafted in Moscow in 1964... The amount of Soviet influence is debated
The implicit conclusion is: Arafat was not Palestinian. And, if he was not Palestinian, then Palestinian nationalism as represented by the PLO is artificial and Palestinian political claims are invalid.
It is important to debunk the common misconception that the PLO was founded by the Soviets in 1964. In 1964, the PLO was founded by the Arab League and its first chairman was Aḥmad Shuqayrī. After the Arab defeat against Israel in 1967, the militant Yasser Arafat rose into the position of PLO chairman and the Soviets, as part of Cold War geopolitics, became actively involved in influencing its actions as it evolved.
Regarding the legitimacy or lack of legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism, the argument that Arafat was not Palestinian is the weakest and least justified. Questions of Palestinian identity and political claims have to be analysed separately from whether or not Arafat, himself, was Palestinian. I have done this in other articles such as this one.
The Salience of Arafat’s Place of Birth
Any argument that disqualifies Arafat because he was born in Cairo must explain why Golda Meir’s birth in Kyiv does not disqualify her as a legitimate leader of the Jewish state during its formative stage.
Note that we cannot call Golda “Israeli” at birth, because Israel did not yet exist. She belonged to the Jewish People before the modern Jewish state existed. The test, then, is not where she was born relative to a country. It is whether birthplace determined her membership in a people. It did not. So why should it determine Arafat’s?
Historically, the Jewish People predate the Palestinians by centuries. However, since nations and peoples arise, evolve, and sometimes disappear across the millennia, this is irrelevant to my argument. Regardless of whether the peoplehood in question is ancient or modern, birthplace does not do the work it is meant to do. One must explain why birthplace outside the homeland would not disqualify other leaders of national independence movements who were born outside their national homelands.
The table below shows how birthplace, and sometimes even childhood residence, do not determine national identity.
Arafat was not the child of Egyptian parents. His father came from an established Gazan family and his mother from an established Jerusalem family. He was born in Cairo because his parents were living there when he was born, not because the family originated there.
The more one looks at the actual family history, the less the Cairo birth appears unusual and the more it appears typical of a mobile eastern Mediterranean family of that period.
There is also a distinction worth making explicit. Was Arafat connected to Palestine? The answer is an undeniable “yes.” Is that the same as settling every question about Palestinian national identity -- when it emerged, how it developed, what political conclusions follow from it? It is not.
The Substack Note collapses both issues into one. Pointing to his birthplace does not answer the larger debate. It does not even address it. And almost no one stops at “he was born in Cairo.” They immediately reach for something else: his Egyptian education, the PLO’s supposedly Moscow-drafted charter, Soviet KGB influence. As if these are mutually reinforcing arguments.
It’s worth noting that even well‑informed people can repeat this claim without realising they are wrong because popular narratives can take on a life of their own, especially when they seem to support a broader political point.
Arafat’s Cairo birth may be historically interesting. Where he studied at university may be historically interesting. But it does not tell us whether or not he was Palestinian.
If birthplace were the decisive criterion, Golda Meir would fail the test as well.
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Perhaps the reason why the argument has gained traction is because the Soviets falsified Arafat's birthplace. But it's still a weak argument.
Also, that the Soviets didn't create the PLO doesn't automatically grant it legitimacy, even as some kind of representative of Palestinians. Per Hussain Abdul-Hussain, Nasser was the driving force behind its creation; and his motives were more about Egypt dominating the Arab world by creating an additional member for the UAR, than about the Palestinians. https://hussainabdulhussain.substack.com/p/the-palestinians-must-apologize-to
I have been trying to stop reading everything I come across, so your articles are more important than ever, you do the work, honestly,(imagine that!) Thank you.