By SETH BERKOWITZ
In his “History and beliefs distorted” piece in last week’s paper, Anthony Issa does a very good job of laying out the history and etymology of the word “Palestine,” including the new-to-me Egyptian reference of “Peleset.” I had been taught that the word Palestine was probably derived from the Greek colonizers called Philistines. Then I found the Encyclopedia Britannica says that “Peleset [is] generally believed to refer to the Philistines . . . .”
What Mr. Issa fails to mention is that when the Greek writer Herodotus, and the ancient Romans, used the term Palestine they were referring to a larger area or province that includes at different times the Jewish kingdoms of Israel, Judah and Samarah, and not a nation called Palestine. When the Egyptians used the term Peleset, Jews had been living in Israel for 500 years. When the myth of Zeus was being written by Herodotus, Jews had been living in their own kingdoms in Israel for 1,000 years. In the several decades before the re-establishment of Israel in 1948, Jews living there often used the term Palestine for their businesses and societies, much as we use the term Salish Sea or Cascadia.
Mr. Issa does not mention that there has never been a sovereign nation of Palestine. For the past 2,000 years, since the last Jewish kingdom of about 70 CE, the land has been under the imperial rule of one empire or another, until the re-establishment of Israel by the United Nations in 1948.
It is easy to throw around the term “colonizer.” It pushes the emotional buttons, as it is intended to do. If you don’t know the history then it is difficult to argue with. But let me ask Mr. Issa regarding his use of the term “colonial Israel”: How long does a people have to be in a place to be considered indigenous? Does 3,500 years of Jews living in Israel still make them “colonizing?”
It is easy to throw around the term “apartheid,” as it too elicits an emotional response. In reality, Israel is a multicultural nation that protects the rights of its minorities as citizens. Multicultural Israel also includes Arabs, Christians, Druze, Bedouin and many others as full citizens. Arabic is an official language, a Supreme Court seat is reserved for an Arabic judge, and at times the largest opposition party in the parliament is the Arab List coalition of parties. Hospitals, universities, cities, businesses and more are all managed by all the different peoples — including Arabs — who make up Israel. One difference between Arabs inside Israel and those in the West Bank and Gaza is now largely due to the leadership that was foisted upon those Arabs in the territories. The world has a lot to atone for in this regard.
There are two indigenous peoples there, each of whom need to accept each other and to learn to live together. Until the world stops delegitimizing one of those nations — as Mr. Issa does — the cycle of violence will continue. By condoning the delegitimizing of Israel’s right to exist, the world at large accepts and encourages the horrific violence that most recently started on Oct. 7, 2023, the largest killing spree of Jews since they were being marched off to the gas chambers during World War II.