Calling Judea and Samaria the “West Bank” Is historical erasure and a distortion

Peloni:  There can be no honest defense in using the term “West Bank” in lieu of the honest titles of the lands of Judea and Samaria.  Meanwhile acquiescing to those advocating such rewrites on the history, geography and civilizational record of these lands.

Using the term “West Bank” shows how thoroughly some Israelis have internalized the language of their adversaries.

Dr. Alex Grobman | Aug 3, 2026

A revealing dispute has erupted inside Israel’s left-wing Democrats Party over whether its leader, Yair Golan, should use the term “Judea and Samaria” or not. Gaby Lasky, a former radical left Meretz member who placed sixth in the party’s recent primary, reportedly demanded that Golan use the supposedly more acceptable term “West Bank.” Golan rejected the premise, correctly responding that “Judea and Samaria” is not inherently a right-wing expression.

The controversy is not trivial, and it is not merely semantic. It demonstrates how thoroughly some Israelis have internalized the language of their adversaries. Before debating whether Jews may live in Judea and Samaria, they are being asked to concede that Jews may not even call these regions by their historical names.

That concession should be rejected.

“Judea and Samaria” is not partisan terminology. It is geographical, historical and civilizational terminology. The phrase “West Bank,” by contrast, is a relatively modern political label created to describe territory conquered by Jordan during its invasion of the newly established State of Israel.

Those who insist that “West Bank” is neutral while “Judea and Samaria” is ideological have the matter precisely backward. They are treating the vocabulary produced by an Arab military conquest as objective, while dismissing names used for thousands of years as political propaganda.

The Politics Behind the Name

Language shapes political reality. Once Judea and Samaria are routinely described only as the “West Bank,” the Jewish connection to the land begins to disappear from public consciousness. Jerusalem becomes an isolated city rather than the capital of an ancient Jewish civilization. Hebron is separated from Abraham and Sarah. Bethlehem is detached from King David. Shiloh is stripped of the Tabernacle, and Bethel of the patriarchs.

The land is transformed linguistically into an anonymous strip of territory whose history supposedly began when Israel took control of it in 1967.

That is not neutral geography. It is historical erasure.

For many years, diplomats, journalists and international organizations have focused obsessively on Judea, Samaria and Gaza-as if the disposition of these relatively small territories were the sole obstacle to peace throughout the Middle East. Political scientist and international jurist Paul S. Riebenfeld noted that these regions represented only a small part of the territory originally placed under the British Mandate for Palestine.

During the Mandate period, Samaria was used as an official administrative designation. British administrative arrangements changed over time, but a Samaria District appeared in the Mandatory system, and the geographical names Judea and Samaria were commonly understood and used long before Israel assumed control of the territories in 1967.

They are therefore neither invented Israeli terminology nor obscure biblical relics. They describe the historical regions in which much of the Jewish people’s national, religious and political history occurred.

The term “West Bank” emerged only after Jordan seized Judea and Samaria during the 1948 war. Jordan used the expression to distinguish the territory west of the Jordan River from the kingdom’s original territory on the river’s eastern side.

Jordan formally annexed the territory in April 1950. That annexation received almost no international recognition and was rejected even by most Arab states. Britain recognized it, while the precise positions attributed to Pakistan, Iraq and the United States have been described differently by historians and legal authorities. What is not seriously disputed is that Jordanian sovereignty over the territory was never broadly accepted.

Yet the geographical terminology produced by Jordan’s conquest survived. The conquest was not recognized, but its vocabulary was.

That is an extraordinary political achievement. Jordan’s military occupation lasted less than two decades, yet the name devised during that occupation is now presented as more authentic than Judea and Samaria-the names connected to the land for millennia.

Jewish Rights Were Recognized, Not Manufactured

The terminology debate also reflects a deeper misunderstanding about the legal foundations of Jewish national rights.

Israel’s adversaries frequently claim that the international community “gave” Palestine to the Jews and may therefore take it back. Under this theory, Jewish national rights exist only at the pleasure of foreign governments, international institutions or shifting diplomatic majorities.

Douglas Feith, an American lawyer who served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, has emphasized the crucial distinction between granting Jewish rights and recognizing them. The League of Nations Mandate did not purport to invent a Jewish relationship with Palestine. Its preamble stated that recognition had been given to “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and to the grounds for “reconstituting their national home in that country.”

The word “reconstituting” was deliberate.

One cannot reconstitute something that never previously existed. The Mandate recognized that the Jewish people had established a national civilization in the land, had been forcibly separated from political sovereignty there and retained a historical claim to national restoration.

The Allies possessed the military power to dispose of former Ottoman territories after World War I. Nevertheless, the legal instruments relating to Palestine did not assert that Jewish rights arose solely from Allied victory. Instead, they grounded the establishment of the Jewish national home in the Jewish people’s pre-existing historical connection to the land.

That connection cannot be erased by changing the vocabulary.

Nor can an international institution that recognized a pre-existing historical right plausibly claim that it invented the right and may revoke it whenever political fashion changes.

What the British Understood

The British commissions that examined Palestine understood the exceptional place of the land in Jewish history, even when British policy itself was inconsistent and frequently hostile to Zionist objectives.

After reviewing centuries of Jewish history, the Palestine Royal Commission wrote:

“The history of Jewish Palestine…had been enacted for the most part in a country about the size of Wales; but it constitutes one of the great chapters in the story of mankind.”»

The Commission continued by identifying the development of ethical monotheism and the expression of Jewish religious, social and political ideals in enduring prose and poetry as contributions to civilization comparable to those of ancient Greece and Rome.

Christians, the Commission added, could not forget that Jesus “was a Jew who lived on Jewish soil and founded His gospel on a basis of Jewish life and thought.”

The same Commission observed that in the many centuries following the Arab conquest, Palestine had largely ceased to exist as an independent center of political, economic, scientific or literary life:

«“In the twelve centuries or more that have passed since the Arab conquest, Palestine has virtually dropped out of history.”»

This was not an assertion that Arabs lacked individual rights or attachments to the land. It was recognition of a historical reality: Palestine had not been an independent Arab state, and no sovereign Palestinian nation had ruled Judea and Samaria before Israel arrived in 1967.

The territory had passed from empire to empire-Roman, Byzantine, various Muslim dynasties, Crusader, Mamluk, Ottoman and British. Jordan then conquered and annexed it after rejecting the establishment of Israel.

To describe Judea and Samaria exclusively as the “West Bank” conceals this history and encourages the false impression that Israel seized the territory of a previously existing Palestinian state.

It did not.

History Cannot Be Voted Away

Speaking in the House of Lords on June 27, 1923, Lord Alfred Milner made the point with unusual clarity. Milner supported a pro-Arab policy and looked forward to the creation of an Arab federation. Nevertheless, he rejected the demand that Palestine be treated as merely another Arab country:

«“Palestine can never be regarded as a country on the same footing as the other Arab countries. You cannot ignore all history and tradition in the matter.”»

He continued:

«“It is a sacred land to the Arabs, but it is also a sacred land to the Jew and the Christian, and the future of Palestine cannot possibly be left to be determined by the temporary impressions and feelings of the Arab majority in the country of the present day.”»

Milner’s warning remains relevant because the campaign against the terms Judea and Samaria is an attempt to do precisely what he cautioned against: ignore history and tradition in order to make the land conform to contemporary political demands.

People may legitimately disagree over Israel’s future borders, the appropriate political arrangement for the Arab population, the wisdom of extending Israeli sovereignty or the risks of establishing another Palestinian state.

But those disagreements do not require Jews to falsify their own history.

Using the names Judea and Samaria does not dictate a particular diplomatic solution. It simply refuses to begin the discussion by surrendering the historical record.

An Israeli political party-especially one claiming to be Zionist-should not require the approval of foreign diplomats or hostile international institutions before using the authentic names of the Jewish heartland. It should certainly not treat those names as embarrassing expressions that must be purged from respectable conversation.

The demand to replace “Judea and Samaria” with “West Bank” is not a demand for neutral language. It is a demand that Jews describe their country through the vocabulary of those who conquered it and sought to prevent Jewish sovereignty.

Before territory is surrendered, language is surrendered. Before history is denied, its names are erased.

Israelis should understand what is being demanded of them-and refuse.

August 4, 2026 | 8 Comments »

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8 Comments / 8 Comments

    • @Sebastien
      Robert Meyer was gracious enough to allow Ted to permanently post this video on the front page of Israpundit. I just moved it above the Chit Chat box so it will be more visible. Even after several years, it remains to be a very important video, so thanks for reminding us of this fact. I will post it so it will be included in the coming newsletter either Friday or Saturday to help remind others about it as well.

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  2. “…The Musta’arabi Jews in the Land of Israel constituted one of the three main components of the Old Yishuv (Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael), together with the Sephardi Jews, and Ashkenazi Jews.[9]
    The Musta’arabi Jews in the Land of Israel were descendants of the ancient Hebrews who never left the Land of Israel, instead remaining there through the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD to the First Aliyah in 1881, prior to the onset of Zionist immigration.[10][11] In the sixteenth century, Musta’arabi Jews were noted as performing agricultural work, as in the ancient periods of Israel.[12] Under the rule of the Ottoman Empirein the mid-16th century, there were no more than 10,000 Jews divided between numerous groups of congregations in all of Ottoman Syria.[4][verification needed] Within the Jewish community at this time, there was some conflict between the Musta’arabim and Jews who had immigrated to Israel from Spain and Sicily. Later on, there was also conflict between Jewish citizens of the Ottoman Empire and those who held foreign passports (the so-called Francos or Señores Francos). From 1839 onward, Jewish subjects of the Ottoman Empire, including the Musta’arabim, were represented by a locally nominated rabbi, whose appointment to serve as a hakham bashi or “chief rabbi” required approval from the Ottoman authorities. This hierarchical system paralleled one previously established for Christian bishops in the empire.
    Due to the persecution of the rural Jewish population since the Islamic period into the Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman periods, the Musta’arabim decreased from a majority of the Galilee’s population to its smallest minority.[citation needed]. In many of them, there were indigenous Jewish villagers until the Ottoman period, including Peki’in,[11][13] Shefar’am,[14]and possibly Alma and Kfar Hananiah. In the village of Peki’in, the Musta’arabi presence survives to the present day, although the Jewish residents were forced to evacuate their ancestral homes during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt. The majority relocated to Hadera, where their descendants primarily reside today, though a small number eventually returned to Peki’in.[11] The synagogues and cemeteries of Musta’arabi Jews, as in Peki’in, are considered the oldest in the Jewish world and can be dated largely to the Talmudic period but also to Mishnaic and Second Temple period.[citation needed]

    Mamluks

    During the Mamluk period, the Jews generally saw a decline in status and demographics.[18][better source needed] Jews started to move out of small villages and into larger ones[15] such as:
    Peki’in
    Safed
    Tiberias
    Jerusalem
    Hebron
    Haifa
    Akko
    Safed, Tiberias, and the area that surrounds them saw an increase in population, in 1500 it is estimated that over 10,000 Jews were living in the Safed Region.[15] Jews started to move towards etrog exportation and rabbinic studies.[citation needed]
    Galilee Revival

    The 1492 Alhambra Decree and the 1496 decree of King Manuel Iconverted or expelled all Jews from Iberia. Many of these settled in the two main cities of the Galilee, Safed and Tiberias; notable Jewish scholars such as Yosef Caro settled in Eretz Yisrael. This had two major outcomes: the adoption of Sephardic practices,[19] and the start of a golden age of Jewish life in Palestine. This golden age happened almost exclusively in the Four Holy Cities: Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron. Along with the Musta’arabim adopting some Sephardic practices, they also intermarried extensively with the Sephardim. In some respects, the Musta’arabim in the four holy cities ceased being a distinct group; only in rural areas such as Peki’in did the Musta’arabi Jews remain dominant.
    Ottoman Era

    The main Jewish population center moves away from the Galilee and towards Jerusalem.[15] Still, the Ladino-speaking Jews dominate Jewish life. New arrivals from the Balkans, North Africa, and Iraq also cemented Sephardic traditions over those of the Musta’arabim…”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musta'arabi_Jews

  3. Google AI Overview:

    Several U.S. states and federal lawmakers have advanced legislative efforts to mandate replacing the term “West Bank” with “Judea and Samaria” in official state documents and materials. While initial pushes involved a core group of states like Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Arizona, delegations of up to 20 U.S. lawmakers have toured and promoted these regional naming conventions.Legislative Push by U.S. StatesState Actions: Legislators across states including Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, Alabama, Louisiana, Idaho, and Iowa have introduced or passed bills and resolutions.Mandates: The proposed or enacted state bills prohibit official state agencies, taxpayer-funded communications, and certain educational or instructional materials from using the term “West Bank,” replacing it instead with “Judea and Samaria”.Federal CounterpartsFederal Bills: U.S. Representative Claudia Tenney and Senator Tom Cotton introduced the federal Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act (H.R. 902), which seeks to enforce the same terminology shift across all official United States government documents and materials.

  5. In response to Leah Zach Aroni I would like to be consoled by your fact list but it only angers and saddens me. Reason being that if these arabs had been transferred in 1967, imagine how much could peace could have reigned over the land with the natural trench of the dead sea?

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    • @shmujew

      Who said, “ no good.deed goes unpunished?”

      Google AI Overview;

      “The exact origin of the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished” is unknown, and it is credited to several figures like Walter Winchell and Oscar Wilde. [1, 2, 3]

      History and Attributions
      * Walter Winchell: The famous American columnist used a version of it in a 1942 print, writing that a diplomat line reminded him of “No good deed goes unpunished in Washington”. [1]
      *
      * Oscar Wilde: Many people popularize the phrase as a quote by him, but no proof shows he actually wrote or said it first. [1, 2]
      *
      * Early roots: A 12th-century writer named Walter Map wrote a similar line (“left no good deed unpunished, no bad one unrewarded”) in Latin. [1, 2]
      *

      Would you like to know more about how the meaning of this phrase changed over time compared to older religious proverbs?

  6. Leah Zakh Aroni:

    “Every third Palestinian Arab alive today is alive because of Israel.

    I know how that sounds. Stay with me.

    In 1967, when Israel liberated Judea and Samaria (what you call West bank) from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt, we inherited a population of roughly one million Arabs living in conditions the modern world had mostly left behind.

    One in six Arab babies died before their first birthday.

    Life expectancy was 48 years.

    Fewer than 30 villages out of hundreds had electricity.

    Most Arabs in the hills of Judea and Samaria lit their homes with kerosene lamps and cooked over wood fires.

    Only about 10% had running water.

    There were 9 primitive hospitals in the entire territory for nearly a million people.

    And there was not a single Arab university. Not one.

    Then came us.

    Within one generation of Israeli administration, the picture changed so completely that the numbers are hard to believe.

    Water was connected to hundreds of villages that had never had running water in their history. Electricity reached villages that had been dark since the beginning of human settlement.

    Four Arab universities were founded: Bir Zeit, An-Najah, Bethlehem, Hebron, where zero had existed before.

    Israeli doctors trained Arab doctors. Israeli hospitals treated Arab patients for cancer, cardiac surgery, and the pediatric emergencies their local facilities could not handle.

    Israeli vaccination programs reached Arab children whose grandparents had grown up when a childhood illness meant a childhood grave.

    Life expectancy rose from 48 to 72.

    Infant mortality dropped 90%.

    All this in one generation. One of the fastest life-expectancy gains ever documented in any population, anywhere in the world.

    And the population exploded.
    One million Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in 1967. Five million today.

    Fivefold growth in one lifetime.

    That does not happen when a population is oppressed.

    Oppressed populations shrink. American Indians shrank by 90% under European contact. Aboriginal Australians shrank by more than half. Populations that live under colonial oppression do not multiply by five.

    So do the demographic math.

    Every third Palestinian Arab in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza today has a parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent who would have died in infancy or of preventable disease if the healthcare conditions of 1967 had persisted.

    That is not political rhetoric. That is demographic arithmetic.

    And the story does not end at Judea and Samaria.

    Even in Gaza, the famous Shifa Hospital that made international headlines in November 2023 when IDF forces uncovered the Hamas command center operating beneath it, was expanded and modernized under Israeli administration by Israeli architects and engineers.

    Israel built the hospital. Hamas turned it into a military bunker.

    Jews build hospitals. Terrorists convert them into weapons of war.

    Now ask the question.

    If the Jews are foreign colonizers, why is every piece of modern infrastructure that keeps the Arab population alive something that Jews built for them?

    Arab doctors trained in Israeli hospitals. Arab professors teach at universities Israel enabled. Arab babies survive childhood because of vaccines Israel administered. Arab farmers irrigate with water Israel connected. Arab homes are lit by grids Israel extended.

    The Jews did all of this in Judea and Samaria within twenty years of returning.

    The Arabs did none of it in the nineteen years they controlled the same land or in the four hundred years the Ottomans controlled it before that or in the thirteen hundred years since the Arab conquest of the Levant.

    Here is the uncomfortable truth.

    Water. Electricity. Hospitals. Universities. Roads. Vaccines.
    Living children who would otherwise have died.

    Every marker of modern civilization in this territory arrived when the Jews came home.

    The land waited two thousand years for its people to come home. And when we did, we built. And when we built, they lived.

    When you hear about “settler expansion,” remember what was here before the “settlers” .

    Kerosene lamps and infant graves.

    When you hear about “occupation,” remember what the occupier built.

    When you hear about Arab suffering, ask who reduced that suffering by 90% within a generation.

    It was not the Jordanians. It was not the Ottomans. It was not the British.

    It was Israelis.

    Look at what we built. Look at who is alive because of it.

    Every third Palestinian Arab in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza today. Alive because Israel came home.

    Now tell me who the colonizer is.

    Image of Arab women drawing water around 1947 near Bethlehem. Notice the landscape – totally barren”

    https://m.facebook.com/groups/670555775202940/permalink/1373126534945857/?

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