Edward Said Falsifies History -- But You're Not Surprised, are you?

Lying seems to have come naturally and comfortably to the late Professor Edward Said, a prof of comparative lit at Columbia University, who was somehow able, with the help of the organized American communications media, to change how Americans, especially would-be intellectuals saw Islam and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Here is one of his gems:

p56 ". . . . both [Zionism & Judaism] speak of Palestine as the land of Israel. . . . Zionism sees itself as redeeming the land whose natives [Said means the Arabs] have called it 'Palestine' for over a millenium." [emphasis added, see: Edward Said, Peace and Its Discontents (New York: Vintage Books 1995), p 56]

Said was a professor so he could get away with a Big Lie as long as he delivered it in a very Authoritative manner, allowing no contradiction or nuance. In fact, Jews have traditionally called the Land the Land of Israel. This usage appears in the Christian New Testament [Book of Matthew, chap. 2, vv. 20-22]. So Christians have been aware of the name Land of Israel since the New Testament circulated among them in the first centuries of the Common Era. Indeed, Said was right about what Jews called the Land, and this usage was maintained by Zionists. However, Jews were not the only ones to be aware of it. Christians who read the New Testament were too. The New Testament also calls the country Judea, which was the usual Greek and Roman/Latin name for the whole country up to the Bar Kokhba Revolt [approx 131-135 BCE]. So Said is not lying as to the name that Jews and Zionists used for the country -- Land of Israel. Watch out for the usage in the New Testament. In some places in the NT Judea refers to the whole country. This is the broad Greco-Latin usage. However, in some passages in the NT, the term "Judea and Samaria" is used. In these passages, Judea refers only to the south of the country, including Jerusalem. That is, the former kingdom of Judah. This is the narrow Jewish usage of the term Judea [and Judah], whereas  Greek and Latin writers used the broader meaning of the name.

His lie has to do with what the Arabs and Muslims in the country and beyond generally called it.  After the Crusades, the Mamluk and Ottoman Empires saw the country as an undefined, indistinct part of bilad ash-Sham [variously translated as Levant, Syria, Greater Syria]. The Muslim Arab majority did not call the land Palestine.

Few except for the rare scholars among them [and illiteracy was very high] even knew that once, before the Crusades, the Arab and Muslim rulers had used the term Filastin for the southern part --roughly speaking-- of the country, of the Land of Israel. Filastin did not mean the whole country but only what today we call southern Samaria, Judah [not Judea but Judah, the territory of the southern Israelite kingdom], and the southern and middle coastal plain and coast. The Arabs took the term Filastin from the Roman district of Palaestina Prima which had roughly speaking the same borders. Palaestina Secunda, northern Samaria, the Galilee and Golan as well as territory east of the Jordan River was called Urdunn by the early Arab conquerors.

Judea was in fact in Roman usage the name for --roughly speaking-- what the Jews called the Land of Israel. See an authentic Roman document, a metal military discharge certificate [called a diploma] which attests to a veteran of the Roman legions having served in Judea [IVDAEA in Latin]

Another of Said's lies was calling the Arabs in the country the "natives." The Jews were the indigenous population of the Land, inhabiting it long before the Arab invasion of the 7th century. The Jews were reduced by the Crusader massacres to a small fraction of the population but Jews have always lived in the country since ancient times, for more than 3000 years. So out of three assertions that Said makes in this short excerpt, two are false.

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Historical sketch of the land  and its name [here]

Jewish exile from Jerusalem [here]

The usage of the name Judea or PROVINCIA IVDAEA by Rome [here]

My assertion that the Arabs generally did not call what is today Israel by the name "Palestine"  or "Filastin" is acknowledged by one of Said's professorial Arab friends, none other than Rashid al-Khalidi, who just so happens to be a good buddy of one Barack Hussein Obama, the previous president of the United States. Khalidi acknowledged this, for instance, in an article in the journal International Journal of Middle East Studies in the year 1988 or about then. I do not now have the exact citation but you can check the journal for the years 1988, 1987, and 1989.

The Name "palestine" an Imperialist Imposition

When the Roman empire under Emperor Hadrian had suppressed the last major Jewish revolt in the Land of Israel, the Bar Kokhba Revolt [135 CE], the Romans renamed the Province of Judea "palaestina," more exactly Syria Palaestina, using "palaestina" as an adjective and thus subordinating the country semantically to Syria. That is, as by Herodotos much earlier, Israel was seen by the Romans as a mere section of Syria, the "palestinian" section. The historian and classical archeologist, Elsa Laurenzi, affirms that although "palestine" had been used in early classical times by Herodotos [also as an adjective for what he believed was part of Syria], the term was not generally used in the Roman period until it was brought back from "the dustbin of history," so to speak, after defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. I see the name change as a sign of Roman triumphalism and vindictiveness, an expression of antagonism to the vanquished Jews.

Palestine
This place name, connected with the Philistine population, is first found in the classical [Greek] sources in Herodotos [5th century BCE]. It was introduced as the official name for the region by the Romans after the events of 132-5 [CE], deliberately counterposing it to the official name Iudaea, traditionally used up to that time, in the setting of a series of repressive actions. As such it is often rejected in Jewish circles who prefer "Land of Israel."

Palestina
Questo toponimo, legato alla popolazione dei Filistei, si riscontra per la prima volta nelle fonti classiche in Erodoto (V secolo a.e.c.). E` introdotto come nome ufficiale della regione dai Romani dopo gli avventimenti del 132-5 [e.c.], contrapponendolo programmaticamente a quello di Iudaea, tradizionalmente usato fino a quel momento, nell'ambito di una serie di interventi repressivi. Come tale e` spesso respinto negli ambienti ebraici, che preferiscono "Terra di Israele." [Elsa Laurenzi, Le Catacombe ebraiche (Roma: Gangemi 2011) p22].

Again, as Laurenzi says, "palestine" was a name imposed on the country by enemies of the Jews. It was part of a series of repressive actions by imperialists who had defeated a Jewish rebellion. Nevertheless, the Romans too considerably regretted the Bar Kokhba War which had seen many Roman soldiers slain by the Jews, as the Roman Fronto pointed out. As least one full legion was wiped out, the XXII Deiotariana Legion. Maybe one more met the same end. In the view of the Bar Kokhba Revolt making such an important impact on both the Jews and the Roman Empire, it is curious that Laurenzi refers to the uprising as "the events of 132-5."

Note that in Roman usage the name Judea applied to the whole country, to all of Israel. In fact the Province of Judea and the earlier Kingdom of Judea ruled by Herod, a client king of Rome, included Samaria, Galilee, the Golan Heights, and the east bank of the Jordan River. Sometimes, as in several verses of the Christian New Testament, Judea is used in a narrow sense together with Samaria as separate regions. But this was a reflection of Jewish usage, not Roman. Jews sometimes used Judea to translate Judah [Yehudah], the ancient southern kingdom of the Israelites after the split of the monarchy.

UPDATING 8-3-2014
Gian Domenico Mazzocato in his footnote 1 to his translation of the Histories of Tacitus, on p1240 [Tacito, Publio Cornelio, Storie, Intro. Generale di Lidia Storoni Mazzolani, cura e traduzione di Gian Domenico Mazzocato (Roma: Newton 1995). Latin text on facing pages]

"Judea, in this context, indicates Palestine as a whole (that is, beyond  Judea in the true and proper sense, the Galilee, Samaria, Perea)"

"Giudea, in questo contesto, indica l'intera Palestina (cioe', oltre la Giudea vera e propria, la Galilea, la Samaria, la Perea)"

Exile of the Jews from the Jerusalem Polis

UPDATING 7-3-2009 see at bottom

We are now under a multi-faceted psychological warfare assault which uses a whole series of lies which aims, among other things, to deny our very history. Hence the need to know the documents, Jewish and non-Jewish, that relate what happened to the Jews in the Land of Israel [called IVDAEA, Judea, by the Romans].
Here is an important passage from the Greek-speaking Christian Church Father, Eusebios (in Latin, Eusebius), describing the Bar Kokhba uprising [approx. 132-135]. As a consequence of this war, Rome forbid the Jews to live in the Jerusalem region, which was renamed and reconstituted as the polis or colonia of Aelia Capitolina, named after Emperor Hadrian's clan (Aelius).

Eusebios, The History of the Church (Historia Ecclesiae), IV:6

When the Jewish revolt again grew to formidable dimensions, Rufus governor of Judaea, on receiving military reinforcements from the emperor, took merciless advantage of their crazy folly and marched against them, destroying at one stroke unlimited numbers of men, women, and children alike, and -- as the laws of war permitted-- confiscating all their lands. The Jews at that time were under the command of a man called Bar Cochba, which means a star...
The climax of the war came in Hadrian's eighteenth year, in Betthera [Beitar], an almost impregnable little town not very far from Jerusalem. The blockade from without lasted so long that hunger and thirst brought the revolutionaries to complete destruction, and the instigator of their crazy folly paid the penalty he deserved. From that time on, the entire race has been forbidden to set foot anywhere in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, under the terms and ordinances of a law of Hadrian which ensured that not even from a distance might Jews have a view of their ancestral soil. Aristo of Pella tells the whole story. When in this way the city was closed to the Jewish race and suffered the total destruction of its former inhabitants, it was colonized by an alien race, and the Roman city which subsequently arose changed its name, so that now, in honour of the emperor then reigning, Aelius Hadrianus, it is known as Aelia...
[translation-G.A.Williamson, revised & edited by Andrew Louth-London: Penguin Books, 1989]

The matter of when and to what extent the Jews were exiled by the Romans has been subject to much confusion, ignorance, and misrepresentation in later generations. This passage, which can be dated to about 315 CE, is one of the most authoritative primary sources on the subject.
Note that the Jews were not expelled from all of the Land of Israel, the country that the Romans called Judea [IVDAEA], but only from "the neighborhood of Jerusalem." Israeli historian Michael Avi-Yonah says this area comprised four toparchies (local districts); E. Mary Sherwood claims that it included only three toparchies. Judea in Roman usage [Provincia Iudaea] included the Golan, Galilee, Samaria, the coastal plain, most of the east bank of the Jordan, the area of the former kingdom of Judah, and the northern Negev. This is the Land of Israel, roughly speaking. Judea as used in Israel today refers to the area of Judah alone, and is thus distinct from Judea in Greco-Roman usage.
The Jerusalem area was constituted as a colonia or polis (both terms were used). When Eusebios writes of "their ancestral soil," he is thinking in Greek terms of a state starting from a city and its surrounding rural area, possibly spreading from there. Both instances of the word "city" in the quoted passage translate forms of the word polis, thus the meaning of polis also includes the surrounding rural territory of the city. Jews remained a large and substantial population in the country, in several parts of Judah, the coastal plain, the Jordan Valley, the Hebron area, the Galilee and Golan.
Note especially that the Roman governor "confiscated all their lands." This means that non-Jews, Arabs and others, inhabiting the Land of Israel today, are likely living on land that earlier belonged to Jews and was confiscated by the Roman imperialist governor. Further, note 1) that the Colonia Aelia Capitolina (here called Aelia) was "colonized by an alien race" by the Roman empire. These aliens included Syrians and Arabs according to Avi-Yonah. The Arabs had to be rewarded for supplying troops as a part of a Roman legion for suppressing the Jewish revolt, as they had supplied auxiliary troops to help suppress the earlier revolt (see blog entry below). French historian Maurice Sartre writes in L'Orient Romain: "Colonia Aelia Capitolina was completed and populated by veterans of the Vth Legion, the Macedonica" [based on an article by J. Meyshan in PEQ]. Felix Abel, historian of the Land of Israel and Dominican priest, writes: "... the new inhabitants of Aelia and its territory" were non-Jewish residents of the Hellenistic cities in Israel and of neighboring provinces" [Histoire de la Palestine]. There is no necessary contradiction between Avi-Yonah's seeing the new settlers as Syrians and Arabs and Sartre's seeing them as veterans of the Vth Legion. This is because legionnaires could be recruited in the broad region where they were to fight. In this vein, Israeli historian Aryeh Kasher reports that Arabs from Provincia Arabia [the Arab-occupied areas of former Moab, Ammon, Edom, etc.] were recruited into a legion to fight against the Jews under Bar Kokhba.
2) the Emperor Hadrian changed Jerusalem's name to humiliate the Jews and honor his own clan (gens);
3) the country is called here Judea (IOUDAIA in Greek). Eusebios does not mention here that the name of the province was changed too, from Provincia Iudaea to Provincia Syria Palaestina, also for the purpose of humiliating the Jews. However, the geographer Claudius Ptolemy used the name Judea, after the revolt's suppression, together with the name Palaestina, as names for the country.
How do today's "post-colonial" theorists deal with the facts that the Jews were driven by imperialists from their ancestral soil, that their lands were confiscated by imperialists, and that the Jerusalem area (called "their ancestral soil" by Eusebios), was "colonized by an alien race" (including Arabs)?? How do they deal with Arab collaboration with the Roman Empire against the Jews??

Without getting into all the historical details and vicissitudes after the Bar Kokhba revolt, we note that Jews were still a substantial part of the country's population, especially in the Galilee, until the Crusades (Jerusalem conquered 1099) when most Jews in the country were massacred by the Crusaders [according to Prof. Moshe Gil and other Jewish historians].
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UPDATING and the Start of the Jewish Exile 7-3-2009
Here is an article on the town of Beitar, Bar Kokhba's last fortress holding out against the Romans and the start of the Exile from the Jerusalem region. This article is not entirely correct since the exile referred to was only from the Jerusalem region [polis, colonia] at that time.