After the Romans redesignated Judea as “Syria Palaestina” in 135 AD, “Palestine” remained a geographic designation used by various empires and mapmakers for the next 1,700 years. The dramaturgist associated with the first Indiana Jones film rightly identifies Palestine on the map antisemites like to share in memes. But it doesn’t mean what they think or say it means.
The fact is that there has never been a sovereign and independent state called “Palestine.” The name designates a territory. Before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jews living there were known as “Palestinians.” The Jerusalem Post, a prominent Israeli newspaper, was founded by Jews as The Palestine Post. It was never an Arab newspaper.
There are many examples like this. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, a Jewish orchestra, was founded as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. Jewish athletes competed internationally as Palestinians. There are manhole covers that carry the name “Palestine” (antisemites like to share memes of those, too).
The old maps designate a location on the globe where Jews have continually existed for several thousand years. If you have a map that calls this territory “Palestine,” then your map is out of date. The old map only proves that Jews were once known as Palestinians.
When the State of Israel came into existence in 1948, it included among its citizens Jews, Arabs, Christians, Druze, and other ethnicities and religious groups. Israel is a religiously pluralistic multiethnic state—like the United States. Members of those groups became Israeli citizens. An Arab Muslim or a Jew living in Israel who would have been known as a Palestinian before 1948 is today known as an Israeli.
Arab Muslims opposed to the state of Israel came to be associated with the name “Palestinian,” especially after the Arab-Israeli War (which the Arabs initiated and suffered a humiliating defeat for their aggression) and the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), as a political strategy. They retain the name to clothe themselves in false legitimacy. But they are no more Palestinian than Jews are.
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Rarely is it emphasized that the establishment of the State of Israel occurred amid nation-state formation across the region. Many Middle Eastern states became independent nation-states in the period after World War I, and several others gained full sovereignty or took their modern form after World War II.
We’re led to assume that Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and others have been sovereign nation-states for centuries. But Iraq, for example, only became an independent nation-state in 1932. That same year, Saudi Arabia was founded. Other Arab states were established later. Lebanon became a state in 1943. Syria became a state in 1946. Jordan was established in 1946 as Transjordan. It changed its name to Jordan in 1949.
Many others fit the pattern. Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and other Gulf states—they all became modern sovereign states in the twentieth century. In other words, the formation of Israel in 1948 was part of a trend of national independence in the region. Independent of ideology, there is nothing unique about the Israeli case.
So why the furor over Israel? Is it not obvious? All of those other states are majority Arab and Muslim states. Israel is the only Jewish-majority state in the region. Nobody questions the sovereignty of the Arab states. They rarely criticize the fact that some of them are monarchies and Islamic. They only question the legitimacy of Israel. Arab nationalism is accepted, while Jewish nationalism, i.e., Zionism, is condemned. The difference is the fact that the majority of Israelis are Jews and that Israel is a Jewish nation. It follows that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
The Jews were Palestinians—just as they were Judeans before Rome renamed Judea “Palestine.” Jewish Palestinians changed the name of their homeland to Israel with the establishment of the modern nation-state. They could have named their state “Palestine,” but instead chose “Israel.” They won the right to name their state anything they wished by successfully asserting their rights to self-determination and defensive war.
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If it were true that Israel is carrying out a genocide or engaged in ethnic cleansing, then there would be few or no Arabs in Israel. Yet over 20 percent of Israelis are Arab. They are citizens or permanent residents with full access to the same rights as other Israelis.
Before October 2023 (when Gazans invaded Israel and massacred Jewish civilians), approximately 150,000 Arabs from Gaza and the West Bank held official permits or crossed to work in Israel daily, primarily employed in construction, agriculture, and manufacturing. Israel was only recently forced to impose restrictions for security reasons.
There is no genocide in Israel, which, until 1948 with the founding of Israel, was called Palestine (for 1700 years). As I show in today’s article, Jews were known as Palestinians until the State of Israel was established. The genocide rhetoric is absurd on its face.
Why does this rhetoric persist? The genocide rhetoric is part of a propaganda project to delegitimize the existence of the State of Israel. Why would anybody want to do that? Antisemitism. Antisemites seek the elimination of Jews from the territory. That is what is meant by the slogan “From the River to the Sea.” There’s a word for that. Want to hazard a guess as to what that word is?
freedom and reason 