This Week: Words – Clean and Dirty
“Using the right terminology is critical for defending the Jewish people’s rights to the Jewish homeland.”
– Zionist Organization of America, Nov. 6, 2019
“The West Bank – Not Its Name for 3,000 Years”
Ever feel a few millennia out-of-date saying “Judea and Samaria,” what with the media insistently calling “’Judea and Samaria” the old “biblical names for the West Bank”? But “current,” not “quaint,” is the correct status of what are indeed Hebrew-origin biblical names.
The ZOA, Zionist Organization of America, announced this week that the World Zionist Congress, at the annual meeting of its Zionist General Council at the end of last month, adopted some of the resolutions ZOA submitted, among them “Resolution for the Use of Proper Name ‘Judea and Samaria.’” Whereas-ing that “Judea” and “Samaria” do date back to biblical times, that the United Nations used them, not “West Bank,” in its 1947 Palestine partition resolution, and that “in order to de-Judaize these areas, Jordan renamed Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem the ‘West Bank’ in 1950, shortly after Jordan began Jordan’s 19-year illegal occupation of these areas in 1948,” the World Zionist Organization resolved:
“Therefore, the WZO, the Zionist General Council, and the Inner and Outer Executive, will use, and will recommend to our representatives in Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKL), and all Zionist Enterprises, and all other entities described in the WZO Constitution, to use the names ‘Judea and Samaria’ in their statements, publications and maps, rather than the name ‘West Bank.’”
So, if you’re among those reticent folks who’ve just been patiently waiting for the Inner and Outer Executive of the Zionist General Council of the World Zionist Organization to get around to saying “Judea and Samaria” instead of “West Bank,” at the instance and behest (kick in the butt) of the Zionist Organization of America, your wait is ended. Welcome to language that’s self-respecting, and as ZOA put it this week, “critical for defending the Jewish people’s rights to the Jewish homeland.”
In the book we wrote, Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z, Lee and I devoted the letter “W” to “The West Bank – Not Its Name for 3,000 Years.” Beyond citing a few of the repeated uses of “Judea” and “Samaria” over the post-biblical centuries in writings and maps, and USA Today (9/20/11) writing without irony “Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria, the biblical name for the West Bank, for thousands of years,” we cited instances of the media delighting in divorcing, ‘de-Judaizing’ as ZOA just put it, Judea-Samaria from the Jews.
In one picturesque classic example, the Philly Inquirer (10/3/10) adorned a news article with an utterly irrelevant photo, captioned “A Palestinian shepherd walks near the Jewish settlement of Revava, near the West Bank village of Salfit.” God, what could be more aboriginally native to a Palestinian “village” near a “Jewish settlement” in “the West Bank” part of Palestine than “a Palestinian shepherd”? But then, maybe he wasn’t really tending sheep, just delivering Inquirers.
“Apply Sovereignty” vs. “Annex”
Perhaps you’ve never heard of “The Progressive Israel Network.” It consists “of 10 liberal Jewish groups, including the Israel lobby J Street, the rabbinic human rights group T’ruah and the New Israel Fund.” Together with three other “liberal” groups, “the Israel Policy Forum, the National Council of Jewish Women and the Reconstructionalist Rabbinic Association,” they wrote a letter to the leaders of Israel’s political parties this week “asking them to oppose Israeli annexation of the West Bank – even if President Donald Trump gives it a green light.” JPost, 11/7/19, “Liberal Jewish Groups Ask Israeli Politicians To Oppose West Bank Annexation.”
Here’s the Encarta Dictionary’s definition of “annexation”: “to take over territory and incorporate it into another political entity, e.g., a country or state.” Fans of Israeli rights to Judea-Samaria (and historic Jerusalem) don’t put it that way, preferring “applying Israeli sovereignty” to what means “taking over the territory of another country or state.” But as the president of J Street put it in a statement quoted in Thursday’s JPost article: “It’s vital for Israeli leaders to recognize that whatever the dangerous and deluded policies of the Trump administration, the vast majority of Americans and American Jews are strongly opposed to annexation and remain deeply committed to the achievement of a peaceful two-state solution.”
Like calling the 1949 ceasefire lines “the 1967 borders,” which the Reform and Conservative movements, rabbis and all, and other major American Jewish organizations did in their April open letter to President Trump calling for two-states with borders that “hew precisely” to “the 1967 borders” with any agreed “adjustments,” and the Reform did again in a statement a fortnight ago referencing “the sovereign borders of the State of Israel, known as the Green Line,” characterizing Israel’s application of sovereignty over Judea-Samaria as “annexation” – the taking over of another political entity’s land – misstates legal status against our own interest.
The sad truth facing Israelis and those American Jews who support the Jewish homeland claim to the land of Israel in its entirety, including Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem, is that whether or not President Trump is “dangerous and deluded,” the head of J Street may well be right that “the vast majority of Americans and American Jews are strongly opposed to annexation and remain deeply committed” to “the two-state solution.”
Changing many American Jews’ minds on “two-states” seems unlikely. What we might be able to do is get through to them that calling Judea-Samaria “Judea-Samaria,” not “the West Bank,” and the 1949 military ceasefire lines, declared in their defining document not to be borders, “the 1949 lines,” not “the 1967 borders … the sovereign borders of the State of Israel, known as the Green Line,” puts negotiating value on what they insist on conceding.
If J Street is right that “the vast majority” of non-Jewish Americans, who have no personal stake in the fight over Jewish vs. Arab claims to Palestine – i.e., the Palestine Mandate’s territory of Jordan and Israel, likewise support a new inside-the-land-of-Israel Arab state, their seeing all American Jews “using the right terminology” – “Judea-Samaria, 1949 lines,” not “West Bank, 1967 borders” – may help win some over to recognizing the validity and equity of “the Jewish people’s rights to the Jewish homeland.”