I don’t normally commend the work of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, but today I’ll make an exception. CAIR, a bitter foe of Jewish civil rights here and abroad, has released a set of talking points opposing legislation that would have the U.S. government use “Judea and Samaria” in place of “the West Bank” in official documents.
Wading into this issue as CAIR has is an own goal of epic proportions, even for an organization that cheered on Hamas’s barbarousness on October 7. Because to oppose the term “Judea and Samaria” requires CAIR to acknowledge that it is the biblical (and therefore historical) term for the area—which in turn calls attention to the Jews’ indigenous status in the Land of Israel.
CAIR claims the move would “erase Palestinians from existence by erasing them from the map.” But of course that’s nonsense: The West Bank isn’t a Palestinian term. It’s a Jordanian term that was applied when the Hashemite Kingdom illegally occupied the territory after the Israeli War of Independence. So the only way it could be a Palestinian name is if… Jordan is Palestine.
If CAIR is admitting that Jordan is Palestine and that the original name of the West Bank is one that proves Jewish indigeneity, we can consider the conflict pretty much solved. It’s all over but the crying.
The truth is, “West Bank” isn’t really even a Jordanian name as much as it’s a descriptive term. It has no significance whatsoever to any of the peoples who have ever lived in the territory. And again, there was never any legal Jordanian sovereignty so its nickname for Judea and Samaria is irrelevant.
The West Bank isn’t the only descriptive term involving the Palestinians. So is “Palestine,” which was an area of the Ottoman Empire and considered part of Syria in the minds of the Arabs of the region—including those in Palestine. Amin al-Husseini, the father of Palestinian Arab nationalism, had begun the period of the British Mandate by declaring Faisal I the king of Syria, including Palestine. Until about 1920, Husseini was a contributor to a the Jerusalem-based Arab newspaper called (in Arabic) Southern Syria. Once the Western European allies severed the territories, Palestinian nationalism was born.
All that aside, CAIR’s opposition to using the term Judea and Samaria instead of the West Bank has no Arabic or Palestinian-specific rationalization. It is only to deny the history of the Jews. The idea that calling the area something other than the West Bank amounts to the erasure of Palestinians from the map is a laughable claim; nothing Palestinian would be touched in the process.
The Arabs have given Arabic names to Jewish towns in the area, of course. But no one is even suggesting changing those back.
No one who calls it the West Bank is going to stop calling it the West Bank. And that’s fine—I use the term regularly. But CAIR’s policy memo suggests to me that I shouldn’t. If even CAIR understands that the West Bank is a term made up by an illegal Jordanian occupier which has long since renounced any claim on the land, and if even CAIR knows that the land has a proper historical name, perhaps that’s what the rest of us should use. Thanks, CAIR!
