The lie that is Palestine

Israel is an even older name than Judea, and its early origins are found in the Bible (Genesis 32:28):

Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

The name Israel was thereafter identified with the Tribes and Kingdom of Israel, which Jacob’s descendants founded, and came to be synonymous with Judah, before eventually being replaced by it.

The first instance of widespread use of the name and its historic claims to the land of Canaan in the modern era was during the British Mandate: while the official name in English was the Mandate for Palestine, on official documents written in Hebrew the name would include the initials for Eretz Yisrael (The land of Israel).

This, combined with the fact that the name Judah was associated with lands which were mostly not included under the partition plan of 1947, resulted in the name of the new Jewish state: Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel.

Palestine in the Land of Israel

There is a problem with this map.  It gives the name “Palestine” to those areas that have traditionally been Israel/Judah, the lands given to the Chosen people by God. So powerful has been the support for “the people of Gaza” that we in the West have been convinced that the “Palestinian people” are being driven from the land that is traditionally their homeland.  This is simply not supportable by an examination of the history of the land.

This does not mean they have no right to live there.  Clearly, they do as they have been living there for a long period of time and have no other place in which they can live.  The Islamic nations around them refuse to offer them a home among fellow Muslims, a factor that exacerbates the tensions and the fighting.  “Palestine is our home” is a cry that needs to be more acutely examined.

  It is as if those who identify as a particular gender, one that does not match by biological reality.  They might “feel” like or identify with that gender, but the reality has not changed. They are the sex their biology says they are. So it is with the likes of Hamas and their megaphones around the world, those tens of thousands who have bought the lie and would condemn the people of Gaza to decades of ongoing suffering and privation.  Here is the reality. Protesters can march up and down our roads until they wear their boots out, but it will not make Israel/Judah into a home for Palestinians. 

Why Does This Matter?

In a different situation, this would merely be a debate over semantics: Levant, Canaan, Judea, Philistia, Palestine, Israel: they are all different names for the same place. But which one is historically founded?

Unfortunately, a key feature of Palestinian nationalism is the need to erase the nation of Israel and to rewrite Jewish history.  Hamas, along with most of the Islamic nations across the Middle East reject the idea that Israel has a right to exist, to live in the land God gave to them.  This is why what the land is called does matter. 

The Palestinian Authority routinely denounces archaeological finds in the city of Jerusalem as fake or illegitimate.  It is common to hear claims that “Jesus was a Palestinian,” an outrageous attempt to make Palestinian claims to a historical presence in the land.  This is a good example of the subtle ways the anti-Israel lobby misleads. 

Jesus was most likely born in Bethlehem, which today is within the borders of the West Bank, but he was Jewish, and at the time of his birth Bethlehem was part of the Herodian Tetrarchy, a Jewish client state of Rome.

Furthermore, claiming that Jesus was a Palestinian (or Israeli, or Arab, or Middle Easterner, etc.) is inherently wrong because none of these terms existed at the time. Jesus would certainly not have identified himself as Palestinian, nor would any of his followers, the people to whom he ministered or the religious leaders who crucified him so identify.  This was because the concept Palestine existed only as a place name, and not even one in widespread use.

The conclusion to draw is not that Palestinian Arabs have no national history or heritage, because they most certainly do. However, the Palestinian narrative of descent from Canaan, continuously living in the land down through history until today is disingenuous at best and outright false at worst.  It implies that the idea of Palestine as a nation has existed for just as long as Israel has existed as a distinct people.   This is demonstrably false.  If only those street protesters had an inkling of the real truth that lies behind the false assertion, they might reconsider the purpose of their marches.  The great lie is that only when Palestine extends from the river to the sea will they be free.  It is a clever way of saying:  Palestine will only be free when it is given what is historically theirs, and Israel no longer exists.

In summary, the name Palestine originally had nothing to do with the Palestinian people.  It is a word that was associated with first the Philistines, the great sailing and trading nation that lived along a small stretch of land along the Mediterranean coast.   The only thing they have in common with the Hamas of today is their deep hatred of Israel and all things Jewish.   The Palestinian people today are a mix of indigenous and Arabic populations who have taken to themselves the label given to them by the British Mandate.

Conclusion:

 The word “Philistines” was originally a Hebrew word Plishtim (“פלישתים”) which means “invaders”, or “enemies”. This is the way the ancient Jews referred to the people who “came from the sea” and occupied the territory from modern Tel-Aviv to Gaza. Their state comprised 5 cities and was called “Pentapolis” (not Palestine!).

Genetic studies have been carried out among the people who claim to be Palestinian, descendants of the ancient Philistines.  Those studies have shown that the Philistines came from southern Europe, most probably from Crete. According to the Bible, they were permanently at war with the Jews. The well-known Goliath, who was killed by David, was a Philistine. The story of Samson is also about those events. But after the campaigns of Alexander the Great in the IV century BC, the Philistines disappeared as a nation.

Arabs now living in Palestine today have very little in common with the ancient Philistines. The name “Palestine” was given to this territory by the Romans after they had defeated the Jews in the “Jewish-Roman Wars”.

Originally this land was called “Judea” and belonged to the Kingdom of Judah.  There was not a Palestinian state here; there were no Palestinians here until the time of Yassa Arafat.   Until the late 19th century, the term Palestinian was used only as a regional term.

Residents living in the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean identified themselves primarily in terms of religion: Muslims, a bond that is far stronger and far more defining of what their true identity might be.  They have far stronger bonds with their co-religionists than with nearby Jews and Christians, even though none of their Muslim brothers and sisters want them moving into their countries!  Living in that area did not imply any sense of common political purpose or sense of discrete peoplehood or nationhood.

An identity as a people is one precursor to nationhood.  According to the standard way of identifying a state as a state in its own right  (this is the way the UN sees statehood) is the presence of three key elements:  sovereignty, self-determination and self-sufficiency, none of which apply to the wrongly named state of Palestine. The “Palestinians” have never had this, and they still don’t have it today. The concept that such people exist is being forced on the world to achieve a base political goal. It is something the likes of our Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minster seem to have missed out on in their headlong rush to recognise the people of Palestine as a State and to give it a seat alongside true nations.

In fact, the deliberate creation of the “Palestinian people” as a discrete entity in 1967, and the political group known as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1964 was for the political purpose of destroying a sovereign and legally mandated Jewish state.

Till that point in time, nor, it will be shown, after that time, was there ever ANY sense or mention of a “Palestinian” people or nation.  The term Palestinian was ALWAYS followed by a descriptive noun – Arab, i.e. Palestinian Arab (Alan Meyer).

According to Palestinian historian Muhammad Y. Muslih, during the entire 400-year period of Ottoman rule (1517-1918), before the British set up the 30-year-long Palestine Mandate, there was no political unit known as Palestine.

The bottom line is that Palestine is , at best, a name of a territory. Only a hundred years ago the Jews, who lived in British Mandatory Palestine, called themselves “Palestinians”. Those Palestinian Arabs who claim that they are the descendants of the ancient Philistines are simply lying. They try to prove that historically this land belongs to them and intentionally go about selling this story to the people of the West.  However, a study of the history of the land this land makes a strong case to insist that it belongs to the Jews. Arabs are the occupiers here. We can call them “Philistines” in the original meaning of the word. During the Muslim conquests of 7th-8th centuries, Arabs occupied the Middle East, a part of Africa and some of the European territories. The occupation of Europe had lasted till 1492 AD, when the Europeans finally defeated the Arabs and threw them out.  The war that brought this to an end was called Reconquista. The occupation of the land of Israel had lasted longer, till 1948, and what happened then, and is happening now, may be called a New Reconquista, a struggle for the right of the Jewish people to live in the land God had given to them as a part of the Covenant relationship set down on Mt Sinai.

I will be bold enough to stress that it is not Arab land. Arabs are native to the Arab Peninsula, not to Judea. But that does not mean all “Palestinian” Arabs should be driven out of Gaza and the homes they have made their own since settling in that land.  The Jewish nation has always said they want to share their land with their Islamic neighbours and have asked for little more than the right to exist as an independent, democratic nation in their own land. That is made incredibly difficult when the PLO, Hamas and the majority of the Islamic nations around them are committed to wiping them out.

Bishop Michael Hough                                                                        September 2025