The Myth of Palestine: Language Manipulation and Historical Fabrication
Just as the Romans used language manipulation to dissociate Judea from the Jews, totalitarian ideologues created the myth of Palestinian martyrdom and resistance.
George Orwell famously wrote in 1984: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Tyrants have always understood that language control is mind control. Among the most egregious examples of language manipulation are the myths and fallacies that surround Palestine.
A wise man once told me that memory is the essence of life. We all have witnessed tragic instances of people with dementia who no longer know who they are, as though they never existed. Similarly, erasing historical memory is tantamount to deleting a people’s existence.
The Romans knew this well and practiced a “condemnation of memory,” damnatio memoriae. They physically erased from monuments the names of previously honored persons who were later perceived as disgraced public enemies. After the Jews bravely revolted against Roman rule in 135 A.D., the Romans punished them not only by suppressing the rebellion with extreme cruelty but by renaming the province of Judea as Palestinian Syria, thus removing any reference to the Jews from their land.
The term Palestinian in the name Palestinian Syria was a reference to the Philistines, who were one of the ethnicities inhabiting the area centuries prior. The ancient Philistines are of unclear, possibly Greek, origin, and have nothing to do with the so-called “Palestinians” today. There is no Arab ethnicity that is historically or linguistically Palestinian. While the Jews have inhabited their ancestral land for millennia and have formed various states in that territory, the Arab inhabitants of the region are much later colonizers.
Just as the Romans used language manipulation to dissociate Judea from the Jews, totalitarian ideologues created the myth of Palestinian martyrdom and resistance. They fabricated tales of heroic sacrifice against a powerful aggressor, while in fact it is the Jews who need to constantly defend themselves against fanatical terrorists whose goal is Israel’s annihilation. The enemies and detractors of Israel have no desire to accept the so-called Palestinians in their countries but prefer to keep them indigent and manipulated by terrorists as a political weapon.
Totalitarian ideologues have turned language manipulation into an art form. This is poignantly illustrated by Holocaust survivor and prominent linguist Victor Klemperer (p. 14):
[L]anguage does not simply write and think for me, it also increasingly dictates my feelings and governs my entire spiritual being the more unquestioningly and unconsciously I abandon myself to it…. Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all. If someone replaces the words “heroic” and “virtuous” with “fanatical” for long enough, he will come to believe that a fanatic really is a virtuous hero, and that no one can be a hero without fanaticism.
Similarly, reflecting on the Soviet use of language, Russian historian and dissident Mikhail Heller remarked (pp. 280-81):
Total power over the Word gives the Master of the Word a magical power over all communications…. In the Soviet language there are no neutral words—every word carries an ideological load…. That is why the same words are repeated over and over again, until they become a signal that acts without any effort of thought.
While both national socialists and communists employed repetition of propaganda slogans to elicit brainless obedience, the communists surpassed the Nazis in manipulating language and distorting facts. The Marxist professors who have trained the leftist political elites in the West today see the world as a battleground of victims and oppressors; to them anyone who is successful, independent, and prosperous is automatically an oppressor, regardless of the truth. This is evident from the terminology leftist media use to describe the current conflict in the Middle East. They twist and transpose the meaning of words and create a labyrinth of moral confusion.
Today’s leftist elites, programmed to mindlessly recycle Marxist falsehoods, have no historical memory and care little about the facts. They disregard the fact that the ancient name Palestine has nothing to do with any Arab ethnicity; that Israel is a prosperous and humane country that is the only democracy in the Middle East; that it needs to defend itself in order to survive; and that Palestinian terrorists purposely use children as a human shield and do not value human life.
It is no surprise that such ignorance has led to the appalling instances of campus anti-Semitism that continue to disgrace once reputable institutions of higher learning. The lack of historical memory and education is painfully visible in the deceptive way in which Israel has been vilified as the “colonial” and “imperialist” power in the Middle East, while, in fact, its ancestral land has been colonized, and it grants full rights and benefits to its non-Jewish minorities.
Renowned British and Israeli journalist Melanie Phillips wrote in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre:
People in Britain don’t understand how support for the Palestinian cause has destroyed the west’s moral compass. In fact, it’s been part of a lethal cultural feedback loop: the west signed up to the Palestinian cause because it had already lost its moral compass.
Having lost its ability to discriminate between truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor, it inevitably reversed truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor over a range of issues. Hatred of its own culture and its inherited values made it all too vulnerable to Palestinian Arab lies, forged in the infernal crucible of Soviet mind-control and laundered by the west’s intelligentsia and progressive classes.
The result is the horrifying situation now on display, in which untold thousands of people believe that genocide by Palestinian Arabs is resistance and true resistance against this by Israel is genocide.
Historical education can provide an enduring antidote to this toxic propaganda and a way out of this moral maze. In order to secure a long-term victory for civilization over barbarism, we need to preserve the historical memory of what made the West free and prosperous and reverse its enemies’ “long march through the institutions.” As Elie Wiesel reminded us, “Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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Comments
Give me a break. The Arabs did not even enter Lebanon and Israel until Mohamed was dead and gone for years…..if he ever lived. There are no contemporaneous accounts of his life other that the works of religious fanatics 2 centuries later. Very suspicious.
Jesus? Multiple accounts in Roman and Hebrew texts.
I believe there is only one primary reference – Josephus. And he doesn’t say anything about anyone rising from the dead and appearing to his followers.
No, there aren’t. You’re just told there are.
References by Tacitus, Pliny, Celsus, Lucian, et. al., don’t count?
Unfortunately, the amount of Arab propaganda about Jews and Palestine dwarfs the truthful accounts. This is a subject that should be taught in public schools and college.
I wish Israel would be more hard nosed in their responses, this is war and war should be all out, totally crushing an enemy.
Orwell’s 1984 expanded on his essay “On Politics and the English Language.” We can see the same thing here, where abortion becomes women’s reproductive health and opposing the sexual mutilation of children becomes violence against transgender people.
Interestingly trivia – the Philistines, the tribe of the giant Goliath, were of Greek origin. The pottery was Mycenaean. Think Greek Viking raiders that settled along the coast.
Palestinian leaders have claimed that the Palestinians are descendants of the Philistines. And the Jebusites or other Canaanites. Or pre-Canaanite. Or Jews who converted to Islam.
Oddly enough, no one seems to think it’s suspicious that the Palestinians have more mutually contradictory origin stories than Batman, with no archeological evidence to back up any of them.
Respectfully there’s a few errors in this piece.
The brave ‘135 AD revolt’ was actually the third and final Jewish revolt, specifically the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-136 AD), a catastrophic failure led by Simon ben Kokhba, considered by some to be the messiah, a charismatic but ruthless leader e.g. Christians who failed to fight the Romans were allegedly tortured to death.
While the Romans were ruthless in their suppression of the revolt, the Jews fought ruthlessly too, leading to devastation on both sides – some think one of the legions lost to history vanished during this war. Cassius Dio records nearly the whole of Judea was made desolate, hundreds of thousands of men slain, almost a thousand of the most famous villages razed to the ground, and with famine, fire, and disease killing untold others. Some Jewish settlements were only re-occupied in the late 2nd or early 3rd century, and then by non-Jews.
Contrary to the popular claim the term Palestinian/Palestinian Syria was not a reference to the Philistines who had vanished from history by the time Herodotus used it in the 5th century BC. Rather Palaistínē is a Greek pun – palaistês means wrestler, rival, or adversary, and the name Israel comes from Jacob wrestling with an angel of the Lord.
Note too the Septuagint refers to the Philistines as Philistieim, and the Hebrew Peleshet is rendered as Gê ton Philistieim not Palaistínē. If Palestine meant the land of the Philistines why not use that term? Herodotus clearly knew of the land and people!
Modern Palestinians i.e. Gazans and West Bankers, are a myth – the descendants of Arabs, Turks, Crusaders, Byzantines, and Romans, they are settlers, colonists, and invaders. The native population of Palestine do however still exist – the Jews. Palaistínē meant Judea, (technically the whole of Israel – from Phoenicia/Lebanon to Egypt, from the Jordan River to the sea), and the Jews are the native people of the land.
Thank you George for some of the info, in particular the name Palestine. One very slight correction. Those who viewed Bar-Kochba as the messiah did so as an earthly king who was anointed (me’shuch) and not as a divine being.
Very true but of course that’s the Jewish view of the messiah, period. The idea of the messiah as a divine or semi-divine being is a Christian concept, not a Jewish concept.
Very interesting history; thank you for elaborating.
At any rate, whatever the precise etymology of the word “Palestine” is, the salient point that leftists ignore/are ignorant of, is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Arabs, Muslims or Islam.
Also FWIW, in Hebrew the Philistines are P’lishtim, whereas the Palestinians are Falestinaim.
That’s because they can’t even pronounce a P sound. So it’s absurd that they claim to have a nation with a name that they can’t pronounce.
This! Thank you.
They can all return back and leave America forever
A clear and concise historical lesson for this area. The only significant point to add is the obvious lack of will by the “Palestinians” to actually have a state, as they, almost too many times to count, have rejected all attempts at that. Of course, it isn’t just them. Most of the Muslim (as this is the salient designation, not Arab) countries surrounding Israel join in this obfuscation and reluctance as it suits them.
But a most important aspect is the spiritual one. Jews even maintaining a group identity points to the truths in God’s Word. What other people group lost their land and their language for almost 2,000 years and returned so vibrantly. Likewise, the enemies of God, both physical and spiritual, continue their work to try and make God a liar – to invalidate the many prophecies of their return to their land, to stay as long as land exists. Thankfully, that won’t happen!
Somewhat off-topic, years ago I predicted that Merkel’s lasting legacy would be the final conquering of much of Europe within 100 years by the Muslims – enabled by her mass migration polices combined with the effect of differential birth rates. I am no longer sure it will even take that long. I wonder if, as this becomes increasingly evident, the historical focus on conflict in the Middle East might recede somewhat into the background as its importance diminishes relative to events in an unstable Europe.
So Palestine was the name from the Roman colonialist occupiers. There. It’s in their language now.
The Arab invaders from Arabia (Fakestinians), in a brazen and evil bid at theological supremacy and historical erasure/revisionism, have greasily re-branded themselves as so-called “Palestinians.” Yet, a cursory glance at the etymology of the word “Palestine” reveals it to be a word that was contrived by the ancient Romans, after they had conquered Judaea, invoking the Jews’ enemy, the Philistines, as a triumphant insult. This having taken place 600-plus years before the founding of the supremacist, totalitarian, belligerent, hate-filled and pathology-laden ideology of “Submission.”
Thus, the word “Palestine” and its derivatives not only have nothing to do with Muslims and Arabs, the word itself is an indirect reference to Jews.
If there are any true “Palestinians” in existence, today, they are fairly described as Jews living in Israel who are the descendants of the Jews who lived in the ancient state of Israel, millennia before Submission’s wretched founding.
Translations are funny things.
There is no P sound in Arabic.
Then again there is no J sound in Hebrew, which is why in Hebrew we are Yehudim from the tribe of Yehudah living in Yehudah rather than Jews from the tribe of Judah living in Judea.
There was no J sound in Latin or Greek either. In Latin it was called Iudaea, and in Greek it was Ἰουδαία.
The letter J didn’t exist in Latin; it wasn’t invented until about the 15th or 16th century. Until then the shape we recognize as J was simply a fancy way of writing an I, at the end of a word that ended with at least two Is. So “radii” would be written “radij”, just so it would look nice.
I understand the point that the Palestinian people have no real indigenous claim to the land. But I do not understand the objection to the name “Palestine” in itself.
Sure, it’s what the Romans called the place. That puts it in line with “Greece”, “Germany”, and “Britain” (and many more). While one may bemoan the fact, Europe is a descendant of the Roman Empire. They were key in forming it, and therefore, us.
This complaint sound to me like the objections to names like “Fort Bragg.”
It’s not just that it was the Roman name, it’s that it’s a name the Romans imposed for the specific purpose of wiping out the Jewish nation forever. Their idea was that if there was no longer a place called Judaea, then there couldn’t continue to be a Judaean people, and the exiles from Judaea would soon lose their identity and blend into the peoples of all the places they were living. In other words, the name was a tool of attempted genocide.
Well that fits. The name was a tool of attempted genocide and here they are nearly 2000 yrs later still attempting the same genocide and playing it off as resistance.
The Romans did exactly what they did to all troublesome people. Ask Boudicca, or any Carthaginian. It wasn’t genocide in our sense; they didn’t try to massacre the Jews in the Diaspora.
It’s a mistake to read Roman behavior in modern terms.
It was genocide in the modern sense; the modern definition includes exactly what the Romans attempted with this name change. Genocide doesn’t have to include massacring anyone, though it usually does,
Every religion is historical fabrication.
Some religions are more real than you.
What is a historical fabrication? That makes no sense.
A historical fabrication is a fabrication that happened a long time ago. The Zimmerman Telegram is, by now, a historical fabrication.
Absurd.