‘Judea and Samaria’ for 3,000 Years, ‘West Bank’ for 19

Peloni: The pejorative term ‘West Bank’ has been modeled around a false assertion that there is no association between these lands and either the Jewish State of Israel or the Jewish People when in fact the lands indicated by this malicious term are integral to the Jewish state, the Jewish people and their respective histories. A point which should be understood in all of this is the fact that prior to the Hashemite Kingdom having illegally seized the lands in Judea and Samaria during its illegal invasion in the 1948 War of Independence, what is now termed as “the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” was actually known as ” the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan”.  Notably, it was only due to the illicit Hashemite conquest of the lands of Judea and Samaria from Israel which forced the Hashemites to rename their kingdom from “Transjordan” to “Jordan”.  The motivation for this renaming the entire country was hinged upon the truth which was revealed each time the “Kingdom of Transjordan” was spoken.  Indeed, the word Transjordan was taken from a long recognized cartographic description exclusively referencing the region of land on the far side, trans Jordan, ie East side of the Jordan river.  Hence, the name of the country Transjordan was evidence of both the fact that the Hashemites had no claim to the lands of Judea and Samaria, as well as the fabricated nature of renaming these conquered lands as the “West Bank”.  So apparent was the false connection between Jordan and its ill-gotten gains during the 1948 War that nearly no one on the international field recognized Jordan’s use of the term ‘West Bank’.  That is, until Israel liberated the indigenous lands of its forefathers in 1967, and a manufactured campaign was launched to imply that these lands held no connection to the Jews or the state of Israel, when the opposite was actually true going back three millennia.  So, as Hugh Fitzgerald explains below, these lands were ‘Judea and Samaria’ for 3,000 Years, but ‘West Bank’ for 19.

By Hugh Fitzgerald | May 10, 202

Judea-Samaria-8-Khirbet-Tibna-to-Artabe by Bukvoed, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

The place name “West Bank,” although universally used today, appeared out of thin air. More on this relatively recent invention can be found here: “A 19-Year Name vs. 3,000 Years of History: Judea vs. ‘West Bank,’” by Micha Danzig, Algemeiner, May 7, 2026:

Read a story about Israel from almost any major news outlet and you’ll see the same convention: “West Bank,” stated as fact, and “Judea and Samaria” treated as controversial.

In fact, these outlets all treat “Judea and Samaria” as a label used by Israel, often with a caveat that it is “biblical,” “right wing” or even “far-right.”

One term is presented as neutral. The other arrives with a warning. That is not linguistic housekeeping. It is a political choice, often made in a conscious way that reshapes history.

“West Bank” is a directional term. It describes where the land sits relative to the Jordan River. It was coined in 1949 by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after its army crossed the river in 1948, seized the territory as part of the Arab League’s declared war to annihilate Israel, and later annexed it. East Bank, West Bank. It is a geographic label attached to a military and political act. Jordan’s 1950 annexation was recognized by only a handful of countries and never produced a Palestinian state.

“Judea and Samaria” are not modern inventions, and they are not merely “biblical” in the dismissive sense often implied.

They are the names by which this region was known across centuries of rule, from antiquity through successive empires. They appear in ancient records, persist through administrative usage, and reflect a continuous historical vocabulary.

Even the 1947 UN Partition Plan — the plan that proposed to create the first independent Arab state in the Holy Land — referred to this area as the “hill country of Samaria and Judea” in describing the territory proposed for this new Arab state….

Move to 1948–1967. Jordan controlled what it called the “West Bank,” while Egypt controlled Gaza. No Palestinian state was created in either territory. There was no serious effort to create one. That absence is rarely emphasized, though it is central to claims about what the conflict has always been “about.”

Then there is June, 1967. Israel took control of Judea and Samaria, and Gaza, because its neighbors tried to wage a war to destroy it and kill or subjugate all its Jewish residents. However one evaluates the legal debates that followed, the sequence is not credibly in dispute. Yet retellings often begin later, presenting outcomes without any reference to the threats and actions that produced them.

None of this resolves the conflict. But it does something more basic. It restores sequence. It places events back in order and returns language to its context.

That context is what is lost when “West Bank” is treated as neutral, while “Judea and Samaria” is treated as suspect or extreme….

I think it is not enough to make people — make the world, in fact — aware that the place names “Judea” and”Samaria” have been in use for 3,000 years, and that the government of Jordan only replaced them with the term “West Bank,” for obvious political reasons, in 1950. Bills have been introduced in Congress to require the government to adopt, in all of its branches, use of the place names “Judea and Samaria” instead of the “West Bank.” Representative Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) reintroduced the RECOGNIZING Judea and Samaria Act (H.R. 902) on January 31, 2025, in the 119th Congress, to require all official U.S. documents and materials to use the term “Judea and Samaria” instead of “West Bank.” Original cosponsors of the bill (House Bill (H.R.902) included Rep. Randy Weber, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, Rep. Mary Miller, Rep. Barry Moore, and Rep. Andrew Ogles. The bill aims to replace the term “West Bank” in federal documents, specifically targeting amendments to laws such as the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the United States-Israel Free Trade Area Implementation Act of 1985. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced the same bill in the Senate. Both bills need to be reintroduced for the 2026-2027 year.

This is an important matter: winning the war of words. Israel should have been raising holy hell about that “West Bank” place name ever since the Jordanians introduced it, but they had so many other things to worry about that they dropped the ball. It’s time to repair that error.