A short history of Ancient Israel
We often hear claims about the Palestinians being 5,000 years ancient and indigenous people, including the claim that Jesus was a Palestinian. In a highly politicized public opinion war, it’s worth asking: what’s fact and what’s fiction?
Israel is an ancient nation whose people were exiled, known as diaspora or the dispersion of the Jews beyond ancient Israel. The Israel we know today is but a portion of their original land known as the United Kingdom of Israel.
The United Kingdom of Israel
Israel is the name of Jacob, the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. When they settled in the land called Israel (or the United Kingdom of King David and Solomon), the nation was divided into two areas, the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, after King Solomon died because of rebellion within the tribes.
The Kingdom of Judah
Judea is a Greek and Roman adaptation of the name “Judah,” which originally encompassed the territory of the Israelite tribe of that name and later of the ancient Kingdom of Judah.
→ The Ark of the Covenant.
Where did the name Palestine come from?
Emperor Hadrian changed the name Jerusalem to Aelia Capitalina
In 129 CE, roughly 70 years after the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Roman Emperor Hadrian established a new (pagan) city, Aelia Capitalina, on the ruins of Jerusalem. It led to the last Jewish revolt led by Simon Bar Kohba.
To punish the Jews, Hadrian issued a decree that banished the Jewish race and forbade the Torah’s reading. He sold Jewish prisoners into slavery, and the Jews were never to return or look at Jerusalem from a distance. [Harris] [Britanica]
Emperor Hadrian changed the name of Judaea to Palestina
Emperor Hadrian renamed Judaea or Judea (Land of Israel) into Syria Palestina in 134 A.D. to wipe out the remaining Jewish identity in the Roman province. He chose Palestina to spite the Jews because the Philistines were the hereditary enemy of the Israelites.
“This was an unprecedented act in Roman history. They never changed the names of the provinces they ruled in that way. They called the Land of Israel (Judea) by the hereditary and historic enemy of the children of Israel as recounted in the Bible, the Philistines,” said Dr. Robert Wistrich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The ancient Philistines are not the Palestinians of today
Like many others, the Philistines were ancient (Hittites, Canaanites, Amorites, Nubians, Jebusites). They were the perpetual enemy of the Israelites, even before the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Neo-Babylonian Empire.
They were absorbed into the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Achaemenid Empire and disappeared as a distinct ethnic group by the late 5th century B.C. [Meyers]
Under the Ottoman Empire (1517-1917), the term “Palestine” was used as a general term to describe the land south of Syria; it was not an official designation.
During the Persian period, the area that is now Israel and Syria was referred to as Coele-Syria. A derivative of the name Palestine first appeared in Greek literature in the 5th century BCE when the historian Herodotus used the word “Palaistine” to refer to the coastal strip inhabited by the Philistines. [JVL]
Hadrian renamed Judea into Syria Palestina in 134 A.D.
Where is the Ark of Covenant today?
The Jewish people remain rooted in their land
Even if Hadrian exiled the Jews, they maintained a continuous presence in the land of Israel. Through the centuries, Jews who settled in Europe visited Jerusalem. They have kept the Jewish culture intact, hoping to return and reclaim their land, as God promised.
They built communities in Jerusalem, Safed (Galilee), Hebron (Judean hills), and Tiberias even after the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem in 1516.
The archaeological record indicates that the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged in the Early Iron Age (Iron Age I, 1200–1000 BCE) from the Canaanite city.
A short history of Israel history.
The British Mandate for Palestine
“Mandatory Palestine” was a geopolitical entity under the British administration—carved out of Ottoman Southern Syria after World War I. Syria-Palestina (formerly the Land of Judaea) fell into the hand of the British Empire in 1917.
- The British referred to Syria-Palestina as Palestine. The eponymous term of “State of Palestine” was first used in 2013.
- Two groups of people lived under the British Mandate of Palestine: the Arabs and the Jews.
- The U.K. promised to establish a national home for the Jewish people through the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred to the creation of modern Israel as a “Restoration to its ancestral home.”
- In 1947, the mandate expired, and the U.N. decided to split the land into independent Arab and Jewish states.
- The Jews accepted the U.N. resolution, but the Arabs (Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia) rejected the two-state resolution. They immediately attacked the newly formed independent Israel, just as it was when Muslims took Jerusalem in 638 CE.
- “The Jewish people who have through centuries of dispersion and persecution patiently awaited the hour of its restoration to its ancestral home.”
Antisemitism
The word antisemite surfaced in Germany in 1879. It was a better word than Judenhass, which means “Jew-hatred.” Judenhass extends today through the Arab-Israeli conflict, where the Arabs have openly promoted the destruction of the Jews.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization
In 1964 A.D., the Arab league founded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); this was the first time this Arab group, which had previously defined themselves Aas Assyrians and Egyptians, started naming themselves the Palestinian people. The PLO demanded the entire area of the mandate. However, it called for the destruction of Israel but did not challenge Jordanian and Egyptian rule.
Arab aspiration focused solely on eliminating the state of Israel and killing all Jews who lived there, instigating another war in 1967, in which Israel gained control over the former mandate territory in the West Bank and Gaza.
Reclaiming its territories
Even without an army or an air force, the newly established state of Israel defeated its invaders. As spoils of war, Israel had an opportunity to regain some of its land areas.
Palestinian propagandist: Mainstream media and Democrats
The State of Israel today is being shown as the oppressor of Palestine when, in fact, it is the opposite. The Palestinians (Arabs) want Israel obliterated, and in defense, the Israel State can counter-strike military threats with its state-of-the-art weapon.
Arab propaganda is supported by left-liberal Democrat politicians in the United States and mainstream media.
Misleading map perpetuated by media
In 2015, MSNBC showed a map of Israel that appears to be the oppressor of the Palestinians. During a live on-air discussion between news anchor Kate Snow and a correspondent, a series of maps were displayed entitled “Palestinian loss of land 1946 – present.”
The first map of 1946 labeled the entire territory as Palestine, with the vast majority colored green, denoting Palestinian control—which was utterly wrong. Snow apologized for the incorrect information and said, “Not factually accurate, and we regret using them; clearly, that set of maps was wrong.“
Maps like these perpetuate the impression that a state of Palestine had existed in 1946 when the area was under British Mandatory rule until May 14, 1948. MSNBC later apologized for their inaccuracy.
Before the war in June 1967, control of this land was divided between three states, and none of them is Palestinian.
Palestinian-Arab political control began in 1994
Before the War in June 1967 (6 days after the Third Arab–Israeli War), control of this land was divided between three states, and none of them was Palestinian. The 2005 map would be accurate as it is presented in the original series, showing the first lands ever to be ruled by Palestinian Arabs.
By 1995, the map shows the withdrawals undertaken during the first two years of the Oslo process, just up to but not including the 1997 Hebron Protocol.
Israel remains undefeated, a cause for more uproar
Despite the many Arab countries that want Israel obliterated, it not only continues to exist, but they thrive economically. Israel, as we know it today, is only a portion of what it used to be during Biblical times.
When the Jews were allowed to return in 1948, the land of Israel was barren, a desert with no valuable natural resources. Today, Israel is the land of Milk and Honey, where the world benefits from its agricultural and technological advancements.
Disarming Israel
In 2022, the United Nations General Assembly affirmed that Israel must give up its nuclear weapons in a 149-6 vote. The Palestinian Authority and 20 countries put forward the resolution. [Jerusalem Post]
The rebuilding of the third Temple.
Important facts to remember about the Israel-Palestine conflict
1. In 134 A.D., Emperor Hadrian changed the name of Judea into Palestine (Roman Syria-Palestina).
2. The Arab population that lived in Israel during the British Mandate only started calling themselves Palestinians in 1964.
3. Jesus is not a Palestinian. He was a Jew living in Judea, part of ancient Israel.
