Arab-Israeli Conflict
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Origin: Prst/Palusata/Plishtim/Philistines (c 1150 BCE) & Palaestina (c 450 BCE)
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Origin: Prst/Palusata/Plishtim/Philistines (c 1150 BCE) & Palaestina (c 450 BCE)
Egyptian Records record the invasion of the Prst (Philistines) from the Aegean/Europe around 1150 BCE. Defeated by the Egyptians, they settled in the southwest coastal plain of Canaan, in an area slightly larger than the modern Gaza Strip. The Akkadians referenced them as Palusata. In Hebrew, the Israelites called them Plishtim. They lived in Eretz Plishtim, the Land of the Philistines.
The Semitic root PLSh means invader.
The Philistine invasion forced the Tribe of Dan to relocate from the area that is today Tel Aviv (still known as “Gush Dan”, the Dan block) to the Golan Heights.
DNA Study Reveals Philistines Were Originally From Europe
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/03/738586883/dna-study-reveals-philistines-were-originally-from-europeThe Philistines were annihilated by the Babylonians in 604 BCE.
The first reference to “Palestine” comes 150 years later (c. 450 BCE), by Herodotus – the Greek (European) father of history. He erroneously expands the area from the southwest coastal plain to include all of the Land of Israel or Canaan. There was no such district, jurisdiction or demographic, or local usage at that time. Herodotus calls the people living here not “Palestinians” but “Syrians”.
It is unlikely that Herodotus actually visited the land. While he gets credit for founding the field, the methods weren’t yet perfected. He had no means to verify what he recorded (e.g. fox-sized gold-mining ants in India).
What actually existed in his time was the Yehud Medinata (539-332 BCE), an autonomous Judean province in the Persian Empire (Just 47 years after the Babylonian exile – “on the Rivers of Babylon”, the Babylonians were defeated by King Cyrus who restored Jews to their land).
Thus why Herodotus wrote that the people of his “Palestine” practiced a strange ritual of circumcision (the Egyptians had earlier, but at that time in this region only Jews did so).
Much like Columbus’ misnomer of “Indians” for Native Americans, the term stuck The Jewish historian Josephus noted some 500 years later, nearly 2,000 years ago:
|| Nor, indeed, was Herodotus of Halicarnassus unacquainted with our nation, but mentions it after a way of his own… This, therefore, is what Herodotus says, that “the Syrians that are in Palestine are circumcised.” But there are no inhabitants of Palestine that are circumcised excepting the Jews; and, therefore, it must be his knowledge of them that enabled him to speak so much concerning them.
From its first use, by Europeans, we see that “Palestine” was the foreign, Greek/Latin name for Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.
npr.org
DNA Study Reveals Philistines Were Originally From Europe
A DNA study of an archaeological site shows the biblical Philistines, long vanished and derided as primitive, were originally from Europe.
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4 Replies
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To be clear, there were no “Palestinians” in antiquity.
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While GREEKS, EUROPEANS, continued to reference the region by the name given it by Herodotus, locally it was conquered by Alexander the Great. His encounter with Jews was peaceful and well documented (to this day, Jews name children after him), but he neither traded, fought or made treaties with “Palestinians”. The Arabs who had by then settled in the southern edge of the region fought him and in turn he massacred the entire population of Gaza.
After Alexander’s death, the region came under the occupation of the Assyrian Greeks Seleucid empire. They imposed Hellenistic (colonial European) ways on Jews and defiled the Temple, leading to the revolt of the Maccabees – still celebrated by Jews today, the holiday of Hanukkah.
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The Jewish Hasmonean Dynasty (Maccabees) ruled from 167-37 BCE and was followed by the Jewish Herodian Dynasty.
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The Jews would revolt against Rome, with Jerusalem being sacked in 70 CE.
By this point Israelite/Jews had been living on this land – as Israelites – for over 1,500 years.
(With their Canaanitic ancestors present likely for thousands of years before that.)Only after the defeat of the Bar Kochva Revolt was the region renamed “Palestine” – by the foreign European colonial power.
Left: Bar Kochva era coins
Right: Ptolemy’s 2nd century map of Roman Palestine (showing also Judea & Samaria).
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