Of all the words in the modern political lexicon, few carry as much deliberate distortion as the word “Palestine.” It is spoken with the confidence of ancient ownership, invoked as the foundation of a national identity, and deployed by international institutions as though its connection to the Arab population of the land is self-evident and historically established. None of that is true. The word “Palestine” is not an Arabic word. It is not a Hebrew word. It is a Latin word — imposed by a Roman emperor in an act of calculated political vengeance, designed specifically to erase every trace of Jewish connection to the land of Israel. Understanding where this word came from, and what it was never intended to mean, is essential to understanding why the so-called “Palestinian” identity is built on a foundation of borrowed language and manufactured history.
Hadrian’s Revenge — The Roman Erasure of Judea
In 135 AD, following the catastrophic failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt — the third and final Jewish uprising against Roman rule — the Emperor Hadrian made a decision that was not military but psychological. He had crushed the rebellion. He had expelled the Jews from Jerusalem, renamed the city “Aelia Capitolina,” and built a temple to Jupiter on the ruins of the Second Temple. But he was not finished. Determined to complete the erasure of Jewish memory from the land, Hadrian renamed the entire province of Judea — a name derived directly from the Hebrew Yehudah, the tribe of Judah — “Syria Palaestina.”
The name was chosen deliberately. It was an insult. It was a provocation. It was an act of historical vandalism designed to sever the connection between the Jewish people and the land that bore their name for over a thousand years. Every Roman administrator who wrote “Syria Palaestina” on a document knew exactly what Hadrian intended: that Judea should cease to exist in name, in memory, and in the minds of future generations. The Romans understood that to destroy a people’s connection to a land, you begin by destroying the name.
Palaestina — A Name Stolen From Israel’s Ancient Enemies
The Latin Palaestina was derived from the Greek Palaistine, which was itself a transliteration of the Hebrew Peleshet — the Philistines. The Philistines were among the most persistent enemies of ancient Israel, appearing throughout the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings as the coastal adversaries who occupied the southwestern strip of Canaan. They were sea peoples — likely originating from the Aegean region, possibly Crete or the broader Mediterranean basin — who arrived on the Canaanite coast around the 12th century BC.
The Word of God makes their identity unmistakably clear: they were foreigners, invaders, occupiers of a land that was not theirs, enemies of the people of God. When Hadrian chose to name the entire province after the Philistines, he was committing the ultimate insult — naming the Jewish homeland after the Jewish people’s ancient enemies. It was as though someone, seeking to dishonor a man’s heritage, named his estate after his most bitter adversary. The cruelty of the choice was entirely intentional.
The Philistines Were Not Arabs — And They Vanished From History
Here is a fact that the architects of the modern Palestinian identity would prefer the world never examine: the Philistines were not Arabs. They shared no linguistic, ethnic, cultural, or religious identity with the Arab population of the region. They spoke a non-Semitic language. They practiced a religion centered on deities such as Dagon and Baal. By the time of the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC, the Philistines as a distinct people had effectively ceased to exist, absorbed into the broader ancient Near Eastern world and leaving no continuous cultural or ethnic legacy.
There is no biological, cultural, or historical thread connecting the Philistines of the 12th century BC to the Arab population of 20th century Mandate Palestine. The name “Palestinian” was not inherited — it was adopted. More accurately, it was manufactured. To claim the name “Palestinian” as an ancient indigenous identity is to claim descent from a people who disappeared from history twenty-five centuries ago and who had no connection to the Arab world whatsoever.
“The name ‘Palestinian’ was not inherited — it was adopted. More accurately, it was manufactured.”
The Ottomans, the British, and a Borrowed Label
For the fifteen centuries between Hadrian’s renaming and the modern era, “Palestine” remained what it always had been — a geographical designation, not a national identity. The Ottoman Empire administered the region for four hundred years without ever creating a political entity called “Palestine.” There was no Palestinian state, no Palestinian government, no Palestinian currency, no Palestinian flag. The land was divided into Ottoman administrative districts — vilayets and sanjaks — with no particular significance attached to the Roman geographical term.
When the British received the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1920, they inherited the Roman-era designation as a convenient administrative label for a piece of the former Ottoman Empire. Critically, under the British Mandate, the word “Palestinian” was applied overwhelmingly to the Jewish population of the land. The Palestine Post — today known as the Jerusalem Post — was a Jewish newspaper. The Palestine Symphony Orchestra — today the Israel Philharmonic — was a Jewish institution. Palestinian passports issued under the Mandate were carried primarily by Jews. The Arab population of the region largely rejected the label “Palestinian,” identifying instead as Arabs, as Syrians, as members of the broader Arab nation.
The Arabs Who Refused the Name — Until It Became Useful
The transformation of “Palestinian” from a label that Arab leaders rejected to one they embraced as the cornerstone of a national identity did not happen organically. It happened deliberately, strategically, and at a specific moment in history. Following the catastrophic Arab military defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War — in which Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights in six days — the Arab states that had failed to destroy Israel through military force began to pursue a different strategy.
The Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964 — three years before Israel controlled a single inch of the West Bank or Gaza — was restructured and empowered under Yasser Arafat’s leadership to carry the war against Israel into the arena of international public opinion. The weapon of choice was identity. If the Arabs of the region could be repackaged as an ancient indigenous people — “Palestinians” with deep roots in a homeland stolen from them — then Israel could be reframed not as a state defending its right to exist, but as a colonial occupier displacing a native people. The Roman word, Hadrian’s insult, became the cornerstone of the most successful propaganda campaign of the 20th century.
What the Bible Calls the Land
The Bible — which is the oldest and most authoritative historical record concerning the Land of Israel — never once refers to the land as “Palestine.” The land is called Canaan in the patriarchal narratives. It is called Eretz Yisrael — the Land of Israel — throughout the historical books. God Himself names it in His covenant with Abraham: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18). The prophet Ezekiel records the word of the Lord: “For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land” (Ezekiel 36:24).
The land has a name. God gave it. It is not “Palestine.” It is not “Syria Palaestina.” It is the Land of Israel — Eretz Yisrael — and no imperial decree, no propaganda campaign, and no United Nations resolution has the authority to rename what God Himself has named. Joel 3:2 records God’s own words concerning His people and His land: the nations that have “divided up my land” will face His judgment. The possessive is clear, the ownership is unambiguous, and the covenant is everlasting.
Perspective
The word “Palestine” is a ghost — the shadow of a Roman emperor’s spite, pressed into service two thousand years later to accomplish what Roman legions, Arab armies, and international pressure have all failed to accomplish: to strip the Jewish people of their historic, covenantal, and legal right to their land. Every time the word is used unreflectively — every time a journalist writes “Palestinian homeland” without examining what that phrase actually means and where it came from — Hadrian’s strategy achieves a small and silent victory.
The Christian who stands with Israel has a responsibility to know this history. Not because words are more important than lives, but because in this conflict, words have been weaponized with extraordinary effectiveness, and the word “Palestine” is the most powerful weapon in that arsenal. We are not obligated to carry it. We are not obligated to repeat it as though it possesses the authority of antiquity. It does not. The land has a name. The covenant is everlasting. And the God who made it does not revise His Word to accommodate the political ambitions of those who have rejected Him. “The LORD has chosen Zion, He has desired it for His dwelling: ‘This is my resting place for ever and ever; here I will sit enthroned, for I have desired it’” (Psalm 132:13–14).