Why Does Israel Call the West Bank “Judea and Samaria”?

Hint: It's the same reason they put bombs in Lebanese pagers.

Photo by David McLenachan on Unsplash

Words matter. As the carriers of knowledge, they have the power to shape the truth and spark movements. To elaborate on the famous saying, the sword is mighty, but it is the pen that inspires armies to wield it. With such ability, a seemingly unimportant change in language can subconsciously shift reality. In the context of geopolitical affairs, where the audience is the entire world, a slight name change can shift borders, build nations, and turn the course of history. This is doubly true when it comes to disputed and occupied territories. Here, vocabulary is imperative. A country’s name holds sentimental value amongst the oppressed, who know that if their national identity is erased, their personhood is soon to follow. This is why Irish nationalists firmly reject the term “Northern Ireland” and prefer “the north of Ireland” as the name of the Irish territory still ruled under the Union Jack. 

A similar linguistic battle is being fought in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. While the international community refers to the land between the Jordan River and Israel as the West Bank, Israeli politicians call it “Judea and Samaria.” Israel has illegally occupied the territory since 1967, imposing apartheid rule upon the Palestinians as they slowly displace them with settlers. As you can probably infer, the use of biblical terminology has a deeper meaning than a simple preference for nomenclature. Misnaming the West Bank as Judea and Samaria isn’t just an insult to the occupied population — it’s a declaration of war. 

A statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu using the Zionist term “Judea and Samaria” for the West Bank.

Eretz Israel

Israeli politicians and their Zionist allies demanded the West Bank be called Judea and Samaria for decades. In 2022, when Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet said “the West Bank during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, he was chastised by fellow Zionists for his “moral lapse.”¹ If one is unaware of Israel’s intentions in the territory, such strong condemnation may sound like a bold overstatement. But once we recognize Israel’s plan for the West Bank, it becomes clear why Zionists fervently insist upon the ancient term, as well as why it is equally vital for decent people to reject it. 

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While Washington and Tel Aviv have spent billions of dollars promoting the narrative that Israel is a harmless nation struggling to survive in a sea of aggressive neighbors, inspection of its founding documents and modern politics proves the contrary. As stated in its declaration of independence, Israel seeks to establish “Eretz-Israel,” the hypothetical holy land God gave to the Jewish people. While Zionist scholars differ on the exact borders of the supposed Eretz-Israel, they unanimously agree it extends beyond modern Israel’s internationally recognized borders. That means to establish Eretz-Israel, they must conquer and drive out non-Jews, i.e. the Palestinians. As admitted by its founders (quote below), the Zionist state has yearned for the religious conquest of this hypothetical nation from its very inception.

“We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.” — David Ben Gurion, founder of Israel, 1948²

Previously, the notion of Israel’s potential conquest of its neighbors was shrugged off as impossible, the vapid pipedream of a few fanatics, no different than the theologian Republicans who want to end divorce here in the United States. Sure, a few lunatic Tea Partiers tell radio hosts they think it should be illegal for a wife to leave her abusive husband, but that would never make its way into American law… right? (Please tell me I’m right.) Statements of Israel’s desire for Eretz-Israel was disregarded in the same manner. But ever since October 7^th, Israel has moved to make its dream of turning the West Bank into Judea and Samaria a nightmarish reality.

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Conquest

On September 4^th, Benjamin Netanyahu held a foreign media press conference. The Prime Minister’s speech included a map with cartoonish bombs and masked men pulled from the mind of Wile E. Coyote. More troublingly, Netanyahu’s presentation depicted Israel stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, erasing the West Bank.

Netanyahu displays a series of maps, equally laughable as sinister.

“(Israel) goes from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” - Benjamin Netanyahu

While Netanyahu had used a similar prop at the United Nations a few weeks before October 7^th, this time things were different. Just a few days before his presser, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli Army to assault alleged Palestinian militant strongholds in the West Bank, the largest Israeli action in the area in two decades. The invasion killed scores of Palestinians, including the 26-year-old American peace activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot in the head by the Israeli military.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi’s graduation photo from the University of Washington, Spring 2024.

With Netanyahu’s reinforcement of the misconception that the West Bank is part of Israel coinciding with the military intrusion, the true purpose of duplicitous terminology become clear. By using the term “Judea and Samaria” before foreign journalists while the Israeli army attacked the West Bank, Netanyahu is attempting to shift the narrative from one of Zionist colonization to one of justified defense. As world leaders have shown they will not stop Netanyahu’s scheme, is the job of decent people everywhere to refute this project, in both rhetoric and practice.

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As Palestinians have warned the world for nearly a century, Israel’s talk of seizing Judea and Samaria and establishing Eretz-Israel is not bluster. It is a declaration of intent to conquer the land, dispel its indigenous inhabitants, and spread ethno-religious Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Given this project is happening before our eyes, we’d be wise to heed the saying: “When people tell you who they are, believe them.”

And when Israel tells us it plans to conquer its neighbors — and then attacks them with indiscriminate pager bombs — the world should believe them. 

“Accepting partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan (modern-day Jordan). One does not demand from anybody to give up His vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today — but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concerns of the Jewish people, and no external factor will be able to limit them.” — David Ben-Gurion, founder of Israel

1. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220328-bennett-criticised-for-saying-west-bank-instead-of-judea-and-samaria/

2. https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/