As I explained in a previous essay (History Matters, and On Matters of History, Israel Wins the Debate), the Roman Empire, which emerged between the penultimate and final centuries BC, punished the Jews, whom the Romans had subjugated during expansion, by renaming Jewish land “Syria Palestina.” Those the Romans punished were identified as Jews after Judea, the kingdom that survived the Babylonian exile circa the sixth century BC. Before they were known as Jews, they were Israelites.
The Romans derived “Palestina” from the Greek name for the Philistines (Παλαιστίνη, transliterated as Palaistī́nē), a seafaring people who colonized a strip of the Levantine coast during the Late Bronze Age around the twelfth century BC. The likely origin of the Philistines was the Aegean world, possibly including Crete and other regions of the eastern Mediterranean. They settled along the southern coastal plain of Canaan and established a confederation of five city-states: Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza.
This occurred during the period when the Israelites were consolidating their hegemony over Canaan. The story of Israel’s emergence in Canaan can be understood as a long process of migration, settlement, population growth, conflict, and state formation. This history intersects with the arrival and subsequent conflicts between Jews and Philistines and other tribes that existed in the territory.
Before the reader assumes that the Philistines have any relation to the Arabs who today assert that this territory is their own, calling themselves “Palestinians” after the Roman renaming of this land, and thus that the present-day conflict between Arabs and Jews is rooted in ancient history, the Philistines had disappeared as a people long before Arabization. The conflict between Jews and Philistines is unrelated to the conflict between Jews and so-called Palestinians that obsesses today’s antisemite.
In fact, Arabs did not exist during this time. The Arab culture and language would not exist for many centuries. To be sure, there are genetic traces of the ancient peoples of Canaan in modern-day Arabs living in the region, but this is typical of the colonial dynamic, which typically involves admixture. Genetic traces do not obviate the fact that Arab culture and language are not indigenous to Canaan any more than genetic traces of the Amerindians who preceded them make the white descendants of white Europeans indigenous to North America. Arabs are indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula, which lies Southeast of Canaan. This is a crucial fact to keep in mind. The land colonized by Arabs was the homeland of those we today call the Jews and had been for millennia.
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According to biblical tradition, Abram, who became Abraham, was a Semitic migrant from the region of Ur in Mesopotamia who responded to a divine call to leave his homeland and travel to Canaan. There, God established a covenant with him, promising that his descendants would become a great nation and inherit the land stretching “from the river of Egypt [the Nile] to the great river, the Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18, the promise repeated later in that book, as well as in Deuteronomy and Joshua).
Abraham’s family line continued through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob, who was later renamed Israel. Living among the Canaanite city-states of the Middle Bronze Age—a period marked by trade and urban development in the Levant—Jacob’s descendants formed the twelve tribes of Israel. This was a long time ago. The best estimates are that Abraham lived somewhere between 2200 and 1800 BC. Biblical accounts describe the eventual oppression of Jews by Egypt, followed by the Exodus under Moses and entry into Canaan under Joshua in the late thirteenth or early twelfth century BC. The people who would become Philistines began arriving shortly thereafter.
It is not the purpose of this essay to provide a detailed history of the Jewish people, only to establish major facts to make the argument. The Biblical account simplifies things, but the history is corroborated by other sources. Archaeological evidence suggests a complex process, but it does not undermine the legitimacy of the Jews’ claim to this land. Indeed, it confirms it. Thus, we need not dwell on this, as the history is well-established. But some facts need to be stated.
The earliest known reference to a people called “Israel” appears on the Merneptah Stele, dated to approximately 1207 BC, indicating that an identifiable Israelite population was already present in Canaan by the end of the Late Bronze Age. The Bible is, to be sure, part mythology. However, for the most part, it is historically accurate. Rather than resulting from a single military conquest, Israel’s emergence involved a combination of incoming groups, alongside gradual settlement in the central highlands and interaction with local Canaanite populations. These populations were the indigenous peoples of this land. They were assimilated and became Israelites.
As noted above, the Philistines arrived as part of the broader movements associated with the “Sea Peoples” (Phoenicia is another instance of a seafaring people who colonized the Levantine coast, north of the Philistine confederation). Compared with the largely village-based highland Israelites, the Philistines were more militarized and urbanized and appear to have possessed certain technological advantages, including early expertise in ironworking. Even with these advanced technologies, they could not in the end subdue the Israelites.
Biblical traditions portray repeated conflicts between the Philistines and the Israelite tribes during the period of the Judges. Philistine pressure on the highland tribes is often viewed as one of the major factors contributing to the eventual formation of an Israelite monarchy. Control of key trade routes and fertile lowland regions gave the Philistines considerable influence and made them a persistent challenge to Israelite autonomy. Under Saul, traditionally regarded as Israel’s first king, the tribes began to unite in response to external threats. His successor, David, is credited with achieving major victories over the Philistines, expanding Israelite influence, and establishing Jerusalem as the kingdom’s capital. Solomon further consolidated the state, constructing the Temple and presiding over a period of prosperity and stability.
Following Solomon’s death, the united monarchy divided into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah. These kingdoms, rooted in traditions tracing their ancestry to Abraham, developed distinct political histories while maintaining a shared cultural and religious identity. Over time, the Philistines declined as an independent power, eventually disappearing as a distinct people through assimilation, conquest, and the successive dominance of larger empires. Long before the Islamic conquest of Canaan, the Philistines had ceased to exist as a people, and Israel had become an established civilization.
The development of Arab identity belongs to a much later historical period. Arab peoples emerged in the Arabian Peninsula among both nomadic and settled Semitic-speaking tribes. References to “Arabs” appear in Assyrian and other Near Eastern records as early as the ninth and eighth centuries BC, typically describing tribal groups inhabiting desert regions. They are an ancient people. But they are not as ancient as the people we today know as the Jews.
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In studying history, one must be mindful of the timeline. The identification of a people called Arabs occurred centuries after Israel and Judea had been established as kingdoms of the Jewish people. Moreover, the broader and more cohesive Arab ethnic and cultural identity we know today only occurred with the rise of Islam in the seventh century AD under Muhammad. It was during the early Islamic centuries that Arab identity became closely associated with the Arabic language, Islamic civilization, and the ruling elites of the rapidly expanding Muslim states. As Islamic rule spread across the Middle East and North Africa, many local populations adopted Arabic culture and language. These populations thus underwent varying degrees of Arabization, transforming Arab identity from a primarily tribal and regional designation into a much broader cultural and linguistic community.
To summarize the timeline, the Philistines had disappeared as a people a millennium before the Muslim conquest of Canaan. Muslims would colonize that territory 1,500 years after Israel’s emergence. This reconstruction combines biblical tradition—accepting Abraham’s historicity for the narrative’s purpose—with archaeological and historical evidence. It presents Israel as a society that emerged largely within Canaan through a combination of local development and external influences, while highlighting the significant role played by groups such as the Aegean-derived Philistines to clarify who those people were. It clarifies that the formation of Arab identity represents a later phase in the long and complex history of the Near East.
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It might be said that Palestinians are those people residing in Palestine, the name given to Judea by the Romans, as shown above. However, if one agrees to this convention, then that means that the Jews are the true Palestinians, since they subdued these lands long before the Arabs were even a people. The Arabs claiming to be Palestinians trace their origins to Semitic peoples living southeast of Israel, ending up in Canaan because of the history of Islamic conquest. One might object that, following from my argument that ghosts have no claim to land (The Ghosts of Conquest), having conquered that land, it belongs to the Arabs. But by the same token, having been reconquered by the Jews, the indigenous peoples of that territory, that land now belongs to the Jews. Therefore, the history I am telling—supported by archeology and historiography—must be relevant to those who appeal to it, and the truth of history falsifies their claim to the land.
For its part, Israel is inclusive of Arabs living in its nation—but only if Arabs follow the laws of Israel. This is true of any nation that prioritizes survival. Many Arabs have signed on to the social contract and live and prosper in Israel. Those Arabs seeking the overthrow of Israel do not follow the law, obviously, and this makes them a threat to Israel’s existence. The Arabs have no organic justification for defying the law; they are not an indigenous population struggling against foreign colonizers. The pro-Palestinian frame inverts the logic of resistance. The Jews are not colonizers. They are native to this land. Obscurantists who say there are Jews descended from European populations—the Ashkenazi, Sephardic, etc.—know that those returning to their homeland in the Middle East carry the genetic heritage of Israel in their blood. Genetic studies find that Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and many other Jewish groups share substantial ancestry tracing back to ancient populations of the Levant. History records that Muslims once controlled the territory. This is not disputed. That same history records that Muslims lost the territory on the field of battle after having initiated a series of wars against the Jews in the twentieth century.
Considering this history, the two-state solution begins to appear nonsensical. Indeed, the scheme should be abandoned, and Israelis should consolidate the land now occupied by Muslims. Those who wish to become part of Israel can stay. But they must agree to follow Israel’s laws. Those who do not agree to the social contract have dozens of Muslim-majority Arab states in which they can dwell. Yes, I know that many of those states resist welcoming so-called Palestinians into their midst. One might ask why this is so.
Arab governments have been reluctant to permanently resettle large numbers of Palestinians for a combination of reasons—demographic, economic, historical, and political, as well as a matter of national security. There are economic concerns—employment and the costs of education, healthcare, and housing. The common experience of Islamic terrorism is another. Chief among these, however, is that permanent resettlement could weaken claims that this is an Arab homeland and reduce pressure for a political resolution of the conflict. Many Arab governments maintain that the long-term solution should involve a political settlement that addresses Palestinian national aspirations. Thus, opposition to a greater Israel is about weakening Israel as a nation.
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I titled this essay “The Myth of the Palestinian People.” This title needs clarification, so I am glad the reader made it this far. If by Palestinians, one means the Arabs who arrived in that territory long after the Romans renamed it Palestine, then the claim that the Palestinian people are the indigenous people of that land is a myth. Indeed, once one knows the true history of the territory, it is the Jews who are the native people of Palestine, since Palestine is simply the name the Romans gave the Jews to punish them for resisting Roman imperialism.
It follows that it is the Jews who are today resisting imperialism. No longer is the imperial force the Romans, who collapsed under the weight of empire. It is the Muslims, whose ambition to establish Islamic hegemony over the whole of the region—a new and terrible empire—targets the Jews for elimination one way or another (see The Danger of Missing the Point: Historical Analogies and the Israel-Gaza Conflict; Why the Israel-Gaza War Is Not Seen Like World War II—and What That Reveals About the Present Situation). Given this, the decent and good among Christians and Jews must join the resistance to thwart Islamic ambition.
The antisemitic left and right in the West are on the wrong side of history (see The Enemies of Freedom; The Woke Reich and the Enemy Within; The Left-Far Right Convergence and Notes on the Fourth Political Theory). They have made their choice of comrades those who seek an end to both Christianity and Judaism, namely, the Muslims. They made that choice because of the ancient hatred of antisemitism—a hatred so powerful that it dispossesses its possessor of the capacity of reason and even self-reservation (see Jew-Hatred in the Arab-Muslim World: An Ancient and Persistent Hatred). So powerful is that ancient hatred that Christians have allied with the greatest threat to their religion, the very threat their forebearers took up swords to drive from the Holy Lands, the birthplace of both Christianity and Judaism (see A Cross of Suicidal Empathy: The Woke Emasculation of Christianity and the Road Back to Integrity; The Red-Green Ruse: Clerical Fascism in Post-Colonial Garb).
If I were a Christian, there is only one term that would make intelligible the character of this development: Satanic. Yet it is the Jews whom antisemites perceive as Satanic. For the haters, the so-called “Epstein class” is a vast network of Jews and those they have corrupted who prey on children, even eat them (see The Dark Heart of Antisemitism: Separating the Haters from the Critics). This invention is but one facet of a grand cabal by Jews to run the world. How they do not see this as the work of the Great Deceiver, in which many of them believe with all their heart, testifies to the depths of their depravity. They have allowed their own construction of evil to devour them.
freedom and reason 