August 16, 2010
To the Editor,
Proving that the pen is mightier than the sword, the Arabs have turned the Middle-East conflict into a war of semantics and narratives. After the defeat of Bar Kokhba (123-135 CE) the Roman emperor, Hadrian, determined to eradicate the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea, renamed Yehudah after the long extinct Philistines, Philistina. Until the end of the 1967 "six day war", all maps showed it as Judea-Samaria which in Hebrew is Yehudah and Shomron, shorted to Yesha by those who live there. Let’s be very careful in picking up the propaganda language of the "Palestinian narrative". It is a fiction from start to finish aimed at wiping out the Jewish reality of Israel. "West Bank" is antisemitic code as is "Palestinian" and "two state solution". We should not be using them.
Marshall Shapiro,
(Hebcom News Service, Hebron)
Vineland, ON