do you find it ironic that many Arabs insist on calling the holy land Palestine?

Question

Considering the fact that Palestine was a Roman name created to wipe out the Jewish connection to the Land.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea#Bar_Kochba_revolt

B -
What I said went over your head, I all I was commenting on was the interesting name choice, I was not questioning anyone's existance.

Answer 1

No I don't find it Ironic at all, they are Palestinians that would make them call their land Palestine. Im Canadian I call my land Canada, What do you call your land? Israel , America, I don't know where your from sorry, but one day God willing there will be more peaceful people in this world , Cheers!

Answer 2

It is ironic. At one time the Arabs in that region refused to allow themselves to be called "palestinian." They denied any validity to the term "palestine." But, Arafat helped create and popularized the "identity" of a "Palestinian Arab" people as a rhetorical weapon in the war with Israel. Interestingly, the UNRWA, actually redefined the legal definition of "refugee" for the Palestinian Arabs (and no one else before or since) in such a way that maximizes the number of people who would fit the definition. If the UN had not redefined the meaning of the word, there would be very few "Palestinian refugees." For some other answers posted: Although today's Jews are the same people as the Biblical Jews (as confirmed by Non-Jewish history, Jewish history, and genetic testing), whether it is true or not is irrelevant for Israel, the state. Only Arabs moved in and "took" property. Jews legally purchased or rented property. 80% of Palestine was granted independence in 1946 and became Arab-only and Jew-Free. The remaining 20% of Palestine was split and those areas with majority Jewish population were set aside for Israel. That is democracy. And if someone from LA changes their name to an English one you don't have to call them lord. But, if they move to England and get citizenship, they get to vote. And if an Englishman moves to LA and gets citizenship here, they get to vote. And if enough of them move and get citizenship such that they become the majority...they get to vote for who they want and control the govt through their votes. You don't get to sell them your houses and then try to kill them, keep the money and the house because you claim they are "English and not 'real' Americans." And it was wrong of the Arabs to do that or try to do that to Jews in Palestine.

Answer 3

I would say telling, not ironic. It seems that if a people did have an ancestral connection to a land, then they would have a nation-specific name for it rather than a name co-opted from an unrelated people. For example, Jews call the land Israel, which is different than the original name for it, Canaan. Similarly, the Native Americans have names for their tribes' former territories, which for the most part have been replaced by modern names. The Indians (from India) went through a phase of changing British given names back to the former Hindi names. As I said, quite telling.

Answer 4

Arabs didn't care about Palestine until Jews started building wealth there and making it a nice place again after centuries of neglect.
In fact, until the 1930s, Arabs insisted that "there is no such thing as Palestine", that the area is "Southern Syria" (Surriya al-Jenubiya).

Answer 5

The enemy of God is behind all of this. "We wrestle not against flesh and blood".

The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name.

It is the Arab pronunciation of the Roman "Palaestina".

The name Palestine refers to a region of the eastern Mediterranean coast from the sea to the Jordan valley and from the southern Negev desert to the Galilee lake region in the north.

The word itself derives from "Plesheth", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine".

Plesheth, (root palash) was a general term meaning rolling or migratory.

This referred to the Philistine's invasion and conquest of the coast from the sea.

The Philistines were not Arabs nor even Semites, they were most closely related to the Greeks originating from Asia Minor and Greek localities.

They did not speak Arabic. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs.

In AD 135, after putting down the Bar Kochba revolt, the second major Jewish revolt against Rome, the Emperor Hadrian wanted to blot out the name of the Roman "Provincia Judaea" and so renamed it "Provincia Syria Palaestina", the Latin version of the Greek name.

The name "Provincia Syria Palaestina" was later shortened to Palaestina, from which the modern, anglicized "Palestine" is derived.

The Christian Crusaders employed the word Palestine to refer to the general region.

The Ottoman Turks, who were non-Arabs but religious Muslims, ruled the area for 400 years (1517-1917).

The name Palestine was revived after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and applied to the territory in this region that was placed under the British.

The British chose to call the land Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin, a fictional name.

Answer 6

The name Israel or Judea or whatever has been (till recently) out of use when the jews left those thousand years ago.

The jews culturally and racially intergrated into their host societies and became a different people with little or no connection to the land of Palestine/Israel.

The modern Palestinians are predominatly Arab but they also have some leniage deriving fromt he ancient Hebrews and caanities.

Tell me if there was a land 2000 years ago where the mongolians lived and then all of a sudden some people from Korea came and lived their when they left, would you say the land of today is the land of the Koreans who lived there or would you say it is the mongolians who moved on and lost the connection to the land?

Answer 7

Since "ironic" means "poignantly unexpected", and since many Arab states believe in wiping out the Jewish connection to the land, no, I don't consider it ironic at all.

Answer 8

Maybe the "Palestinians" wish they were Greeks and worshipping pagan gods like the Philistines did, since they like stealing there name. It is like if Blacks all of a sudden started to call themselves Chinese, makes no sense.

Answer 9

No not at all. It is an ancient name. Not as ancient as the land and the people, but all the same it is ancient. If they want to call their land that, then what has it got to do with you?

Answer 10

Indeed. From day one, they have based their "state-hood" on a falsehood.