Language is never neutral in political conflict. Names encode power, legitimacy, and historical memory. Few terms illustrate this more clearly than the phrase “the West Bank” — a label now treated as self-evident, but which is in fact a recent, ideologically loaded colonial imposition designed to sever Jewish history from its own homeland.1
If we are serious about historical accuracy and intellectual honesty, it is time to stop using the term “West Bank” and to restore the region’s proper name: Judea and Samaria.
A Name Invented by Conquest
The term “West Bank” did not exist prior to 1948. It was coined by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after its army invaded the territory during Israel’s War of Independence. Having failed to destroy the nascent Jewish state, Jordan occupied the area east of the 1949 Armistice Line and formally annexed it in 1950 — an act recognised by only two countries and rejected by the international community.2
Jordan’s naming was not descriptive; it was ideological. The territory was defined not by its own history, but by its position west of the Jordan River, relative to Amman. In other words, the land was linguistically subordinated to the conqueror’s geography. This is the essence of colonial naming — redefining a place to suit the worldview of the occupying power while erasing the indigenous past.
Judea and Samaria: The Indigenous Names
For more than 3,000 years, the hill country running from Jerusalem through Hebron in the south and Shiloh and Shechem in the north has been known as Judea and Samaria.3 These names are not modern inventions. They are embedded in biblical texts, Second Temple literature, Greco-Roman historiography, Byzantine and early Islamic administrative records, and continuous Jewish liturgy and law.4
Judea takes its name from the Kingdom of Judah, whose capital was Jerusalem. Samaria derives from the Kingdom of Israel, whose capital city — Shomron — gave the region its name. Long before Islam, Christianity, or Arab nationalism, these were Jewish lands, with Jewish polities, Jewish capitals, and Jewish population centres.3,5 Jews are from Judea.
A Familiar Pattern: From Judea to “Syria Palaestina”
Jordan’s renaming of Judea and Samaria followed a familiar imperial pattern. After suppressing the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian deliberately erased Jewish national identity by renaming the province of Judea “Syria Palaestina.”6 The intent was explicit: to break the Jewish connection to the land by replacing it with a name associated with their ancient enemies, the Philistines.
This was not administrative tidiness. It was punitive de-Judaisation.
The modern resurrection of similarly erasing terminology should alarm anyone who claims to oppose colonialism. The irony is stark: those most eager to brand Israel a “colonial project” routinely adopt the vocabulary of past empires that sought to dispossess Jews of their history.
The Politics of Terminology
Using the term “West Bank” is not merely descriptive shorthand. It embeds several false assumptions: that Jordan possessed a legitimate sovereign claim; that Jewish presence is foreign rather than indigenous; and that Jewish history there begins in 1967 rather than antiquity.7 None of these claims withstand legal or historical scrutiny.
Jordan’s occupation (1948–1967) was the only period in recorded history when Jews were entirely barred from Jerusalem’s Old City, including the Western Wall. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated, synagogues destroyed, and ancient communities ethnically cleansed.8 To adopt Jordan’s imposed terminology while condemning Jewish “occupation” is a moral and logical inversion.
Words Shape Reality
Names frame narratives. Narratives shape policy. When journalists, diplomats, and academics uncritically repeat colonial terminology, they do not merely describe the conflict — they distort it. Restoring the use of Judea and Samaria does not pre-judge final political arrangements or deny Palestinian civil rights. It simply insists on historical truth: that this land has a Jewish name because it has a Jewish history.9
If colonialism means anything, it means imposing foreign identities while erasing indigenous ones. By that standard, it is not Israel — but the term “West Bank” — that deserves to be retired.
Conclusion: Precision Is Not Partisanship
Insisting on accurate language is not propaganda; it is scholarship. Judea and Samaria are not rhetorical inventions. They are the authentic names of a land whose history long predates modern political disputes. Those who claim to oppose colonialism should begin by rejecting colonial names. And those committed to truth should stop repeating a lie — no matter how fashionable it has become.
References
- Ze’ev Vilnay, The Holy Land in Old Prints and Maps (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1963).
- Eugene V. Rostow, “Palestinian Self-Determination: Possible Futures for the Unallocated Territories of the Palestine Mandate,” Yale Studies in World Public Order 5, no. 2 (1979).
- H. H. Ben-Sasson, ed., A History of the Jewish People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976).
- Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. G. A. Williamson (London: Penguin Books, 1981), Book 3, sections 48-56.
- Michael Avi-Yonah, The Jews of Palestine: A Political History from the Bar Kokhba War to the Arab Conquest (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976).
- Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 69, trans. Earnest Cary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927).
- British Mandate for Palestine, League of Nations, July 24, 1922.
- Martin Gilbert, Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996).
- International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Advisory Opinion), Separate Opinion of Judge Stephen Schwebel, July 9, 2004.
