Thank you for such a useful summary. Whilst the historical facts point to the fake notion of a separate Arab palestinian identity, it doesn’t help solve the current state of play. We all know that Jordan is the ‘second state’ of the so called ‘two state solution’, and we all know that the dysfunctional Arab world has enough land for itself.
Western society is so ‘hung up’ about Israel, it is failing to deal with the ‘elephant in the room’. That ‘elephant in the room’ is the biggest colonial endeavour the world has seen .. the creeping insidious islamisation of western societies. Muslims not happy in the countries from which they come, are now inhabiting western nations which they in turn, despise.
Remember that it was Yasir "that's my baby" Arafat who concocted the entire Palestinian identity for the residents of Gaza. I also remember that no Arab country wants the so-called "Palestinians" whatever and King Hussein drove the PLO out of Jordan in 1970 because, if memory serves, they wanted to take over Jordan and the King and his army fought them and sent them packing with considerable losses to the Arafat forces. Today with Hamas running the Strip Israel has yet another dagger attempting to destroy Éretz Yisra'él.
Unfortunately the "pro-Palestinian" mob either knows nothing about this or actively chooses to ignore the truth. My late husband, Avi, was a real Palestinian. He was born in Haifa in 1937 and has a Palestinian birth certificate!!
The common story, which you cite, traces the name Palaistina to Peleshet. But there are some problems with that idea. The name Palaistina first appears in Herodotus’s “History,” written about six centuries before the Romans applied it to Judea. The derivation requires a few steps, and assumes that Herodotus would have named the region for a people which had vanished a couple of centuries earlier, conquered by the Assyrians. It also ignores the existing name for the region Philistia, which the Greeks would have known.
Further, it turns out that there is a Greek word, Palaistas, which matches the first seven letters of Palaistina letter for letter. It seems much more reasonable to have based the name on that. And what does that word mean? Wrestler. That is, he called it “the land of the wrestlers.”
This makes sense to me, because the word Israel translates to “to wrestle with God”. The name, Islam translates to “to be a slave to God”. I’d rather be a wrestler than a slave.
Sorry, no sale. At least for now. I had seen James Cooper's TOI blog post three years ago (which you cite above). It was a not-uninteresting read then, and now --- though, it answered very few questions.
Here's one of those that remain to this day:
If "Palaistina" was the name used for the land by everybody EXCEPT the Jews from the 5th century BCE onward. . . .
. . . . then why are not these commemorative coins, which were minted for some 25-50 years by the Flavian emperors (Vespasian, Titus, Domition), and first struck in AD 71 --- in celebration of their victory over the Jews in the First Judean-Roman War AD 66-71 --- inscribed with the words:
"That's why I only say that it was found in Herodotus."
Yes, or so goes the tale. And so also (as we're told), in Aristotle.
If in fact that is the case.
Though I've never seen a copy of Herodotus OR Aristotle in the original Greek. Have you?
I'd be curious to know precisely what word those two venerated authors use for "Jews" or "Judeans" or Hebrews" or "Israelites" in a Greek or Koine' printing of their works.
If they do NOT use the word, ioudaios (or perhaps ioudaioi), then what DO they use in such printings of their own language?
Meanwhile, this link, below, will take you to a piece that was printed some 20 years ago, and which comes somewhat closer to what is --- arguably --- the crux of the matter. . . .
This history is more complicated than the essay allows. The Roman dispersal of Jews was never total; substantial Jewish populations remained in the region, and over centuries many local inhabitants converted to Christianity and later Islam, while also becoming linguistically Arabized. That means some Palestinians today likely descend, at least in part, from ancient Jewish, Samaritan, Christian, and other Levantine populations who never left the land.
At the same time, diaspora Jewish communities preserved significant Levantine ancestry while also mixing with populations elsewhere. So the historical reality is not that one entirely foreign people replaced another. Jews and Palestinians are modern peoples whose ancestries overlap deeply, shaped differently by migration, conversion, empire, language, and religion.
The fact that Jews living under the British Mandate were once called Palestinians is true, but it does not prove that modern Palestinian identity is artificial or illegitimate. National identities evolve. The more honest conclusion is that both peoples have real historical connections to the land, and neither can erase the other through an exclusive ancestry claim.
Your “honest” lens is clouded by your politics. Eretz Yisrael is the cradle of Jewish civilization. It’s the original and constant home of the Jew people for over 3,000 years and, after expulsion 2000 years ago, the place and spiritual focus of Judaism. This is not the case for the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. They want the land because they know it’s ours. One look at the Temple Mount tells the story of the Muslim conquest. Today’s Palestinianism is a continuation of that conquest. This is why they go to such extreme lengths to not only destroy and warp our history, but to misrepresent and demonize our present reality. Their interest is built on lies, hatred, and destruction of us, and the ‘leadership’ understands Jew hatred very well—tell a lie big enough, repeat it, glamorize it, and people will believe it, especially about the Jews. We Jews are accustomed to be being hated because we have stayed true to our roots, and we do not seek to convert or to conquest. We want to live and peacefully coexist. Others cannot tolerate that.
That's because there was never ANY general Roman dispersion of the Jews; merely a few localized deportations.
The notion of a general Roman dispersion was an Augustinian myth --- propounded by the post-Judaic church fathers to promote their supersessionist, Replacement Theology, based on the notion of a Creator apparently too infantile to be capable of keeping His word, and notwithstanding His Commandment forbidding among His (purported) devotees the very covetousness that is essential to the now-discredited Replacement Theology.
The ACTUAL removal of the Jews from their land was NOT, in fact, to decisively occur till half-a-millennium later: after the 7th century Islamic Conquest, when the militarily colonizing Arab armies, assisted by the Pact of Omar (an early version of Sharia Law), effectively forced the Jews off of the Land of Israel, and ultimately into the Diaspora.
"The fact that Jews living under the British Mandate were once called Palestinians is true, but it does not prove that modern Palestinian identity is artificial or illegitimate."
Oh, please. The truth of the matter (just in case a paltry thing like the truth actually DOES matter) is that for the entire, three-decade, Mandate era preceding Israeli independence, the ONLY persons broadly & consistently calling themselves "Palestinians" had been the Palestinian JEWS.
In fact, throughout that whole period, and ALSO for the next 20 years after the Jews CEASED using the term for themselves in May 1948 (in favor of "Israelis"), the local ethnic Arabs still wouldn't go near the word "Palestinian" for themselves --- and precisely BECAUSE it had always been universally associated solely with the 'detestable' al-Yahud.
The glaring reality is that until the late 1960's --- when Israel came into possession of the Gaza Strip, as well as the heartland ('West Bank') provinces of Judea & Samaria (and with those lands a large number of local ethnic Arabs) as a result of a war that was forced on her. . . .
. . . . that right up until that time, the late 1960's, if you'd had the beastly fortune to have inadvertently committed the inexcusable faux pas of addressing directly (OR of speaking in the third person of) a local Arab as a "Palestinian," he would've regarded you with the same quiet contempt that he reserved for someone who'd just passed gas in an elevator.
Thank you for such a useful summary. Whilst the historical facts point to the fake notion of a separate Arab palestinian identity, it doesn’t help solve the current state of play. We all know that Jordan is the ‘second state’ of the so called ‘two state solution’, and we all know that the dysfunctional Arab world has enough land for itself.
Western society is so ‘hung up’ about Israel, it is failing to deal with the ‘elephant in the room’. That ‘elephant in the room’ is the biggest colonial endeavour the world has seen .. the creeping insidious islamisation of western societies. Muslims not happy in the countries from which they come, are now inhabiting western nations which they in turn, despise.
Remember that it was Yasir "that's my baby" Arafat who concocted the entire Palestinian identity for the residents of Gaza. I also remember that no Arab country wants the so-called "Palestinians" whatever and King Hussein drove the PLO out of Jordan in 1970 because, if memory serves, they wanted to take over Jordan and the King and his army fought them and sent them packing with considerable losses to the Arafat forces. Today with Hamas running the Strip Israel has yet another dagger attempting to destroy Éretz Yisra'él.
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Unfortunately the "pro-Palestinian" mob either knows nothing about this or actively chooses to ignore the truth. My late husband, Avi, was a real Palestinian. He was born in Haifa in 1937 and has a Palestinian birth certificate!!
Reading the Palestine Post has a common thread, the UN fails consistently and still does today.
The common story, which you cite, traces the name Palaistina to Peleshet. But there are some problems with that idea. The name Palaistina first appears in Herodotus’s “History,” written about six centuries before the Romans applied it to Judea. The derivation requires a few steps, and assumes that Herodotus would have named the region for a people which had vanished a couple of centuries earlier, conquered by the Assyrians. It also ignores the existing name for the region Philistia, which the Greeks would have known.
Further, it turns out that there is a Greek word, Palaistas, which matches the first seven letters of Palaistina letter for letter. It seems much more reasonable to have based the name on that. And what does that word mean? Wrestler. That is, he called it “the land of the wrestlers.”
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/is-palestine-the-ancient-greek-name-for-the-children-of-israel/
This makes sense to me, because the word Israel translates to “to wrestle with God”. The name, Islam translates to “to be a slave to God”. I’d rather be a wrestler than a slave.
Sorry, no sale. At least for now. I had seen James Cooper's TOI blog post three years ago (which you cite above). It was a not-uninteresting read then, and now --- though, it answered very few questions.
Here's one of those that remain to this day:
If "Palaistina" was the name used for the land by everybody EXCEPT the Jews from the 5th century BCE onward. . . .
. . . . then why are not these commemorative coins, which were minted for some 25-50 years by the Flavian emperors (Vespasian, Titus, Domition), and first struck in AD 71 --- in celebration of their victory over the Jews in the First Judean-Roman War AD 66-71 --- inscribed with the words:
"IUDEA CAPTA"?
https://www.salom.com.tr/uploads/images/23620207C6dTuN5uq3nO0hp.png
https://www.salom.com.tr/uploads/images/2362020RJQyTBrBGKMjvpla.png
Why do they not, instead, read:
'PALAISTINA CAPTA'?
I would agree that the idea that everyone but the Jews used the name Palaistina is problematic. That's why I only say that it was found in Herodotus.
Thank you for posting this outstanding piece.
"That's why I only say that it was found in Herodotus."
Yes, or so goes the tale. And so also (as we're told), in Aristotle.
If in fact that is the case.
Though I've never seen a copy of Herodotus OR Aristotle in the original Greek. Have you?
I'd be curious to know precisely what word those two venerated authors use for "Jews" or "Judeans" or Hebrews" or "Israelites" in a Greek or Koine' printing of their works.
If they do NOT use the word, ioudaios (or perhaps ioudaioi), then what DO they use in such printings of their own language?
Meanwhile, this link, below, will take you to a piece that was printed some 20 years ago, and which comes somewhat closer to what is --- arguably --- the crux of the matter. . . .
http://www.think-israel.org/zebulon.palestinemandate.html
This history is more complicated than the essay allows. The Roman dispersal of Jews was never total; substantial Jewish populations remained in the region, and over centuries many local inhabitants converted to Christianity and later Islam, while also becoming linguistically Arabized. That means some Palestinians today likely descend, at least in part, from ancient Jewish, Samaritan, Christian, and other Levantine populations who never left the land.
At the same time, diaspora Jewish communities preserved significant Levantine ancestry while also mixing with populations elsewhere. So the historical reality is not that one entirely foreign people replaced another. Jews and Palestinians are modern peoples whose ancestries overlap deeply, shaped differently by migration, conversion, empire, language, and religion.
The fact that Jews living under the British Mandate were once called Palestinians is true, but it does not prove that modern Palestinian identity is artificial or illegitimate. National identities evolve. The more honest conclusion is that both peoples have real historical connections to the land, and neither can erase the other through an exclusive ancestry claim.
Your “honest” lens is clouded by your politics. Eretz Yisrael is the cradle of Jewish civilization. It’s the original and constant home of the Jew people for over 3,000 years and, after expulsion 2000 years ago, the place and spiritual focus of Judaism. This is not the case for the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. They want the land because they know it’s ours. One look at the Temple Mount tells the story of the Muslim conquest. Today’s Palestinianism is a continuation of that conquest. This is why they go to such extreme lengths to not only destroy and warp our history, but to misrepresent and demonize our present reality. Their interest is built on lies, hatred, and destruction of us, and the ‘leadership’ understands Jew hatred very well—tell a lie big enough, repeat it, glamorize it, and people will believe it, especially about the Jews. We Jews are accustomed to be being hated because we have stayed true to our roots, and we do not seek to convert or to conquest. We want to live and peacefully coexist. Others cannot tolerate that.
Us, them, us, them, us, them, us, them… the refrain never ends.
"The Roman dispersal of Jews was never total..."
That's because there was never ANY general Roman dispersion of the Jews; merely a few localized deportations.
The notion of a general Roman dispersion was an Augustinian myth --- propounded by the post-Judaic church fathers to promote their supersessionist, Replacement Theology, based on the notion of a Creator apparently too infantile to be capable of keeping His word, and notwithstanding His Commandment forbidding among His (purported) devotees the very covetousness that is essential to the now-discredited Replacement Theology.
The ACTUAL removal of the Jews from their land was NOT, in fact, to decisively occur till half-a-millennium later: after the 7th century Islamic Conquest, when the militarily colonizing Arab armies, assisted by the Pact of Omar (an early version of Sharia Law), effectively forced the Jews off of the Land of Israel, and ultimately into the Diaspora.
"The fact that Jews living under the British Mandate were once called Palestinians is true, but it does not prove that modern Palestinian identity is artificial or illegitimate."
Oh, please. The truth of the matter (just in case a paltry thing like the truth actually DOES matter) is that for the entire, three-decade, Mandate era preceding Israeli independence, the ONLY persons broadly & consistently calling themselves "Palestinians" had been the Palestinian JEWS.
In fact, throughout that whole period, and ALSO for the next 20 years after the Jews CEASED using the term for themselves in May 1948 (in favor of "Israelis"), the local ethnic Arabs still wouldn't go near the word "Palestinian" for themselves --- and precisely BECAUSE it had always been universally associated solely with the 'detestable' al-Yahud.
The glaring reality is that until the late 1960's --- when Israel came into possession of the Gaza Strip, as well as the heartland ('West Bank') provinces of Judea & Samaria (and with those lands a large number of local ethnic Arabs) as a result of a war that was forced on her. . . .
. . . . that right up until that time, the late 1960's, if you'd had the beastly fortune to have inadvertently committed the inexcusable faux pas of addressing directly (OR of speaking in the third person of) a local Arab as a "Palestinian," he would've regarded you with the same quiet contempt that he reserved for someone who'd just passed gas in an elevator.