As Moustafa Bayoumi writes, "It is often assumed that Islamophobia is the driving force behind US anti-Palestinian bigotry. In fact, it's the other way around." He explains that Zionist-produced anti-Palestinian racism fueled anti-Arab racism, which later morphed into the Islamophobia of today. … But, as Bayoumi asserts, it is easier to address Islamophobia than anti-Palestinian racism because, "by thinking of Islamophobia primarily as a problem of religious acceptance, we shift the focus to religious tolerance, rather than reckoning with what the US might owe Palestine" as the primary enabler of Israel's atrocities.

XREF: Connects to scholarship on how racism morphs across targets; parallels histories of anti-Irish and anti-Asian sentiment in the US. Builds on: "Islamophobia is the default US framework for anti-Palestinian violence"

Evelyn Alsultany, Antisemitism and Islamophob…, loc. 21