Rejecting an Imposed Identity: From “Palestine” Back to Israel

Although the term “Palestinian” historically referred to Jews for nearly 1,800 years, the moment the Jewish people regained sovereignty in their ancestral homeland, they immediately rejected the foreign-imposed name. When the modern State of Israel was established in 1948, Jews restored their ancient, indigenous name — Israel — and the historical name Land of Israel. They did not want to carry the Roman colonial label “Palestine” any longer. This name had been forced upon them as an act of cultural erasure after the Bar Kokhba Revolt. By reclaiming their original identity, Jews were finally free from the psychological burden of their oppressors’ terminology.

Unfortunately, by largely abandoning the use of the term “Palestine” to describe the land, Jews unintentionally ceded important semantic ground. For decades, the name “Palestinian” went largely uncontested in international discourse. This allowed others to adopt and redefine it exclusively for Arab political purposes. What began as a Roman tool of humiliation became a modern weapon in the battle over nomenclature and legitimacy.

“From the River to the Sea”

Two hundred years ago, if you had asked a Jew what they thought of the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine should be free,” they likely would have agreed with it wholeheartedly. The phrase echoes the biblical description of the Promised Land given by God to the children of Israel:

“Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea.” (Deuteronomy 11:24)

To Jews throughout the centuries of exile, “From the river to the sea, Palestine should be free” would have meant one thing: the Land of Israel should finally be liberated from foreign oppressors — Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, and British — and restored to its rightful owners, the Jewish people.

It is therefore deeply ironic that the slogan has been revived in modern times. Opponents of Israel have cleverly taken a biblical-style expression of Jewish longing and turned it into a weapon against the Jews themselves. What was once a Jewish prayer for freedom in their own land is now chanted as a call for the elimination of the Jewish state. The revival of the slogan is not just political — it is a sophisticated rhetorical move that throws the Jewish people’s own ancient aspirations and prophecies back in their face.

By reclaiming their true name and identity, the Jewish people have reasserted their indigenous rights, even as others continue to wage a war of words using terminology originally designed to erase them.

Today, if a person used the historical meaning of “Palestine” (referring to the Land of Israel as the Jewish homeland), Jews would fully agree with the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine should be free.” They would understand it as a call for the Land of Israel to be free from the leftovers of the Ottoman Empire and others from foreign lands, restoring it in its entirety to its rightful owners — the Jewish people — exactly as promised in the Bible.

Of course, this is not at all what modern chanters of the slogan typically mean. They have inverted its original significance into a call for the elimination of the Jewish state and the Jewish presence in the land