Ask any pro-‘Palestinian’ protestor what they’re marching for (or against) and most of them wouldn’t have a clue other than that they want all Jews eliminated. But amongst the few that actually have a broader opinion they’ll tell you that they want the Palestinian homeland returned to its rightful owners (‘from the river to the sea’) based on a belief that the original Arab inhabitants come from a land that was displaced by Britain and then stolen by Israel.
That belief is powerful. But is it true?
Let’s review the origin of the ‘Palestinians; to see if we can shed light on this misunderstood term:
1. Where does the term ‘Palestinian’ come from?
The term “Palestine’ is not Arabic in origin. Its roots go back to the ancient Philistines – an Aegean (mostly Greek) seafaring people who settled along the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean around 3,200 years ago, in roughly the area later associated with Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod. The Philistines were not Arabs and they disappeared from history at the time of the Babylonian conquest in the 6th Century BC.
2. So the ancient Philistines were the ancestors of today’s Palestinians?
No. Their name survived as a geographic label – but by the time the Romans took control of Judea, the Philistines had been gone for 600 years.
3. So the Romans invented the name Palestine?
No – but they made it politically significant in a new way. After the Bar Kokhba (Jewish) revolt in the second century AD, the Romans renamed the province of Judaea, ‘Syria Palaestina’ in an attempt to weaken, obscure and insult the Jewish connection to their own land.
4. So what happened to the name between Rome and the modern period?
After Roman rule, and for the next almost 2,000 years, the land passed through different empires and administrative systems. Under the Byzantines, forms of the name Palaestina were used for provinces. After the Arab Muslim conquests, the land became part of wider Islamic empires. Later it was ruled by the Ottomans (from what is now known as Turkey) for centuries – but through all that time, “Palestine” never existed as an independent nation-state. Ever. Check your history – you will find no Palestine kings, queens, or Caliphs anywhere – because they have never existed. It was a regional or geographical term used as a place-name by outsiders, administrators, scholars, travellers, empires and later European powers. That doesn’t mean that no Arabs lived there – of course they did – but the claim that Israel displaced a pre-existing sovereign Arab state called Palestine is historically false.
5. So what did the term “Palestinian” mean in the early 20th century?
It meant someone connected with the territory called Palestine – regardless of race or ethnicity. The term applied to Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims and others who lived in, came from, or were citizens of the territory known as Palestine under the British Mandate. In that sense, it worked like words such as “American,” “Canadian,” or “New Zealander.” An American can be white, black, Hispanic, Jewish, Asian, Arab, Christian, Muslim, atheist, immigrant, native-born, or anything else because “American” is a national or territorial label, not a single ethnicity. In the early 20th Century the word ‘Palestinian’ was the same – it identified a person’s connection to the territory – not their bloodline.
6. So Jews were once called Palestinians?
Absolutely, yes. Under the British Mandate, the geographical term ‘Palestinian’ was still in use to describe inhabitants of that land – so yes, Jews living in the territory were described as Palestinians. The Mandate itself even referred to Palestinian citizenship and included provisions to allow Jews who took up permanent residence there to acquire it. This is why the old Jewish newspaper was called The Palestine Post before it became The Jerusalem Post and why the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, founded in Tel Aviv in 1936, was a Jewish institution. Its musicians were overwhelmingly Jewish refugees and émigrés from Europe, recruited by Bronisław Huberman before the Holocaust. After Israel’s re-establishment, it became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. A Jew living in British Mandate Palestine could be a Palestinian in the territorial sense, just as a Jew living in New Zealand can be a New Zealander.
7. When did “Palestinian” become mostly associated with Arabs?
The term ‘Palestinian’ didn’t really become exclusively associated with Arabs until after 1948 and 1967 when Jews begun to identify themselves as Israeli – leaving the term to increasingly describe the displaced Arab population. Then, after the 1967 war, the Palestine Liberation Organization (which had been founded three years earlier) began to use the term as a description of Arab nationalism. That was the big shift. An old territorial label became a modern national identity.
8. What about the claim that Yasser Arafat invented the Palestinians?
It’s a great story but it’s not true. Arab life and the term Palestinian both existed before him – but what he did was help turn the word into the central political identity of a national movement. The PLO’s own charter defined Palestinians as Arab nationals who had normally lived in Palestine until 1947, whether they remained or were expelled, along with their descendants. That definition is revealing. It does not define Palestinians as descendants of the ancient Philistines, nor does it define them as citizens of a previous sovereign state of Palestine. Instead, it defines them as Arabs connected to the territory of British Mandate Palestine before Israel’s creation. That is a modern political definition not an ancient connection.
9. Is it still accurate to describe ‘Palestine’ as an Arab homeland prior to Israel?
It depends on what you mean by “homeland.” There were certainly Arabs living in the land and in many areas they were the majority. But we need to pick our definitions carefully. Arabs absolutely lived there and had deep attachments to the land – but neither they, nor their ancestors, ever lived in a sovereign Arab state called Palestine. And they weren’t ‘invaded’ by the Jews – the Jews already lived there too – in fact the Jewish connection to the land is much much older than the Arab connection. That’s the part the slogans usually leave out.
10. Why does this all matter?
Because words shape the argument. If people are told that Israel stole an ancient sovereign Arab nation called Palestine from its native people, they will see Israel as a colonial thief. But when they learn that “Palestine” was historically a geographical term, that “Palestinian” once applied to Jews as well as Arabs, that no sovereign state of Palestine has ever existed, and that modern Palestinian identity developed largely in the mid-20th century, the moral picture changes.
The Jewish people – the majority of the inhabitants of modern Israel – have, by far, the oldest surviving national claim to the land.
That does not mean Arabs didn’t live there. They did. It doesn’t mean they had no attachment to the land. Many clearly did.
But it does mean the story now being shouted in Western streets is not history. There was no ancient sovereign state of Palestine. There was no displaced Palestinian kingdom. There was no Arab nation called Palestine stolen by Jews who had no connection to the place.
There was an ancient Jewish homeland, later ruled by empire after empire, given a Roman name, administered as a British territory, and eventually reborn as Israel.
So the word “Palestinian” is real.
The activist myth attached to it is not….
Ashley Church is former CEO of the Property Institute of New Zealand and is an active social commentator. This article was sourced HERE
1. Where does the term ‘Palestinian’ come from?
The term “Palestine’ is not Arabic in origin. Its roots go back to the ancient Philistines – an Aegean (mostly Greek) seafaring people who settled along the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean around 3,200 years ago, in roughly the area later associated with Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod. The Philistines were not Arabs and they disappeared from history at the time of the Babylonian conquest in the 6th Century BC.
2. So the ancient Philistines were the ancestors of today’s Palestinians?
No. Their name survived as a geographic label – but by the time the Romans took control of Judea, the Philistines had been gone for 600 years.
3. So the Romans invented the name Palestine?
No – but they made it politically significant in a new way. After the Bar Kokhba (Jewish) revolt in the second century AD, the Romans renamed the province of Judaea, ‘Syria Palaestina’ in an attempt to weaken, obscure and insult the Jewish connection to their own land.
4. So what happened to the name between Rome and the modern period?
After Roman rule, and for the next almost 2,000 years, the land passed through different empires and administrative systems. Under the Byzantines, forms of the name Palaestina were used for provinces. After the Arab Muslim conquests, the land became part of wider Islamic empires. Later it was ruled by the Ottomans (from what is now known as Turkey) for centuries – but through all that time, “Palestine” never existed as an independent nation-state. Ever. Check your history – you will find no Palestine kings, queens, or Caliphs anywhere – because they have never existed. It was a regional or geographical term used as a place-name by outsiders, administrators, scholars, travellers, empires and later European powers. That doesn’t mean that no Arabs lived there – of course they did – but the claim that Israel displaced a pre-existing sovereign Arab state called Palestine is historically false.
5. So what did the term “Palestinian” mean in the early 20th century?
It meant someone connected with the territory called Palestine – regardless of race or ethnicity. The term applied to Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims and others who lived in, came from, or were citizens of the territory known as Palestine under the British Mandate. In that sense, it worked like words such as “American,” “Canadian,” or “New Zealander.” An American can be white, black, Hispanic, Jewish, Asian, Arab, Christian, Muslim, atheist, immigrant, native-born, or anything else because “American” is a national or territorial label, not a single ethnicity. In the early 20th Century the word ‘Palestinian’ was the same – it identified a person’s connection to the territory – not their bloodline.
6. So Jews were once called Palestinians?
Absolutely, yes. Under the British Mandate, the geographical term ‘Palestinian’ was still in use to describe inhabitants of that land – so yes, Jews living in the territory were described as Palestinians. The Mandate itself even referred to Palestinian citizenship and included provisions to allow Jews who took up permanent residence there to acquire it. This is why the old Jewish newspaper was called The Palestine Post before it became The Jerusalem Post and why the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, founded in Tel Aviv in 1936, was a Jewish institution. Its musicians were overwhelmingly Jewish refugees and émigrés from Europe, recruited by Bronisław Huberman before the Holocaust. After Israel’s re-establishment, it became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. A Jew living in British Mandate Palestine could be a Palestinian in the territorial sense, just as a Jew living in New Zealand can be a New Zealander.
7. When did “Palestinian” become mostly associated with Arabs?
The term ‘Palestinian’ didn’t really become exclusively associated with Arabs until after 1948 and 1967 when Jews begun to identify themselves as Israeli – leaving the term to increasingly describe the displaced Arab population. Then, after the 1967 war, the Palestine Liberation Organization (which had been founded three years earlier) began to use the term as a description of Arab nationalism. That was the big shift. An old territorial label became a modern national identity.
8. What about the claim that Yasser Arafat invented the Palestinians?
It’s a great story but it’s not true. Arab life and the term Palestinian both existed before him – but what he did was help turn the word into the central political identity of a national movement. The PLO’s own charter defined Palestinians as Arab nationals who had normally lived in Palestine until 1947, whether they remained or were expelled, along with their descendants. That definition is revealing. It does not define Palestinians as descendants of the ancient Philistines, nor does it define them as citizens of a previous sovereign state of Palestine. Instead, it defines them as Arabs connected to the territory of British Mandate Palestine before Israel’s creation. That is a modern political definition not an ancient connection.
9. Is it still accurate to describe ‘Palestine’ as an Arab homeland prior to Israel?
It depends on what you mean by “homeland.” There were certainly Arabs living in the land and in many areas they were the majority. But we need to pick our definitions carefully. Arabs absolutely lived there and had deep attachments to the land – but neither they, nor their ancestors, ever lived in a sovereign Arab state called Palestine. And they weren’t ‘invaded’ by the Jews – the Jews already lived there too – in fact the Jewish connection to the land is much much older than the Arab connection. That’s the part the slogans usually leave out.
10. Why does this all matter?
Because words shape the argument. If people are told that Israel stole an ancient sovereign Arab nation called Palestine from its native people, they will see Israel as a colonial thief. But when they learn that “Palestine” was historically a geographical term, that “Palestinian” once applied to Jews as well as Arabs, that no sovereign state of Palestine has ever existed, and that modern Palestinian identity developed largely in the mid-20th century, the moral picture changes.
The Jewish people – the majority of the inhabitants of modern Israel – have, by far, the oldest surviving national claim to the land.
That does not mean Arabs didn’t live there. They did. It doesn’t mean they had no attachment to the land. Many clearly did.
But it does mean the story now being shouted in Western streets is not history. There was no ancient sovereign state of Palestine. There was no displaced Palestinian kingdom. There was no Arab nation called Palestine stolen by Jews who had no connection to the place.
There was an ancient Jewish homeland, later ruled by empire after empire, given a Roman name, administered as a British territory, and eventually reborn as Israel.
So the word “Palestinian” is real.
The activist myth attached to it is not….
Ashley Church is former CEO of the Property Institute of New Zealand and is an active social commentator. This article was sourced HERE
11 comments:
What free palestine actually means is free the world of western democracies. it is always the same crowd. I watched a recent yoiutube video of panelists on zoom. who were explaining how free palestine and free aotearoa were similar. They said the capitalist system is to blame and that capitalism is a white system that doesn't work . Of course this panel had the token mddle aged white woman speaking in te reo, apologising for the "harm." She introduced herself in te reo and then said that she was a lesbian white woman. These marxists must put everyone into a group. I would love to see them set up their marxist paradise, and have them come back to the panel two or three years later to explain how it's all going.
>"The Jewish people – the majority of the inhabitants of modern Israel – have, by far, the oldest surviving national claim to the land."
Debatable! The oldest civilisation in Palestine was the Canaanite civilisation going back to the Bronze Age when they built walled cities including Jericho (which, embellished pseudohistory aside, was already in ruins when Joshua and his merry men came onto the scene). The Canaanites are described by Google AI as "the indigenous, Semitic-speaking inhabitants of the Levant (the region covering modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan)" - note the word 'indigenous'. There was no sovereign statehood in those early days but there were city-states from which empires grew - pretty close. The Hebrews were an internal development within the Canaanite realm - they emerged as a distinct culture somewhere around 1200BCE. That doesn't make Palestine the sovereign territory of the Jews.
Arab countries poured billions into American universities to set up centres of ‘Middle Eastern Studies’ to get a professorship in one of these one needed to be anti-Israel - said professors then taught this to students who, having nothing much else to protest about, decided to take up ‘Free Palestine’ as their hobby horse. What starts in the USA is then taken up by the world following their lead. Just like hot-dogs, rock and roll and Taylor Swift, ‘From the River to the Sea’ is a fad, wait a while and it will pass. (Gaza already seems to be fading from our consciousness, I notice it’s Hezbollah getting all the press coverage now)
Not that it matters much but Palestine is not mentioned in the bible while Israel is mentioned plenty of times.
The Romans introduced the term 'Syria Palaestina' for what we now call the Palestinian region in 135CE, long after most biblical scripts were written. In OT times the terms Canaan, Israel, Judah and Samaria were used for parts of that region.
Interestingly, the term 'Palestine' does not occur in the Qu'ran either. The writer there used more nebulous terms such as 'The Holy Land' and 'The Blessed Land'.
All of the above just goes to show that it is important to not take things at face value and that digging into history nearly always throws up alternatives to a current point of view. Long live the assiduous researcher.
According to AI, Abraham (Who was the father for both Jews and Muslims.) was Hebrew and came from Ur of the Chaldeans in Mesopotamia and settled in the land of Canaan. Hebrew means basically one who crosses the rivers (Euphrates and Jordan ).. Abraham, according to the bible, was directed not to marry his son into the Canaanites- a group of people with some Greek roots and who have now disappeared.
That the Hebrews were an internal development within Canaan, is therefore a complex question and highly contested . As is , whether, the Jews have a sovereign territorial right to Palestine, looking at ancient ties, archaeological evidence , and historical kingdoms.There are starkly different perspectives on this, rooted in history, international law and political class.
AI also says that "Most historians and biblical scholars consider Abraham to be a legendary or composite figure rather than a verifiable historical person. There is no contemporary archaeological evidence, external documentation, or independent records to prove he actually lived..."
Don't mix up what AI tells you some people take as doctrine on the basis of faith and what appears to actually be the case. Every religion is replete with legendary figures who generally turn out to be more mythical than anything else when prodded.
AI certainly mentions Abraham is thought of as mythical by historians , since there are no independent records. Tribal memories in the ancient were world mixed with legend and myth.
The events narrated were narrated centuries later. However AI , also introduces some nuances, by talking about the concept of historical plausibility, mentioning that the major places associated with Abraham have been located and confirmed by archaeology. also Abraham's defects are mentioned as well as highly specific knowledge of archaic dynamics points to genuine historical memory.
The concept of indigenousness can be a slippery one. Take England. Who are the indigenous people?
The Anglo-Saxons, the speakers of the first form of the English language? But they displaced the Celtic peoples who lived there before the Roman conquest. The Celts themselves were descendants of peoples of Steppe origin who during the Bronze Age had replaced the first Neolithic farmers in Britain, a people of Anatolian ancestry, who themselves had replaced the first people to repopulate the land after the last ice age, bands of Mesolithic hunter gatherers. Or perhaps we should go back before the last glacial maximum when for hundreds of thousands of years Neanderthals were the only humans occupying the land that is now England. Do people with the highest percentage of Neanderthal in their genome now have the best claim to be the indigenous English?
The concept is not entirely without meaning however. What counts the most is continuous occupation of the land, into whose soil generations of your ancestors have poured their labour and buried their dead. By this crireria the people with the best claim to be indigenous to the land called Palestine are Arabs who since the seventh century until recently have been the overwhelming majority who lived and farmed there.
The historic ties of the Jewish people to the region are not without significance, but cannot be the basis for claiming the legitimacy of the modern state of Israel. This state as a refuge for Jews became inevitable after World War Two when there was literally nowhere else to go for the millions of displaced Jews who had survived the Holocaust. If the Arabs of the region at the time had had a progressive democratically-minded leadership instead of a Nazi-loving, Jew-hating one headed by the likes of Amin al-Husseini, they might have been able to recognise that a State of Israel was historically necessary, and the two peoples been able to reach some sort of accommodation.
Ashley Church is right to say that historically there was no Palestinian nation. A distinct Palestinian nationality only emerged from the early part of the twentieth century. In fact, you could say the same thing about other parts of the Arabic- speaking world, from Morocco in the West to Iraq in the East. But the chief grievance of the Palestinian Arabs is not that a non- existent Palestinian state was destroyed, but that they were dispossessed of their land, in many cases unjustly. As many Israeli Jews acknowledge, this is something that will have in some way have to be addressed as part of any lasting settlement.
Thanks for the history Ashley.
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