Uzi Silber on Israel: What's in a (Country's) Name?
[Uzi Silber writes the 'Jew's Muse' column in Ha'aretz. His work also appears in The Forward, Jerusalem Post, and The New York Times.]
‘What’s in a name?’ was the rhetorical question Juliet posed to her lover Romeo. The implied answer? Why, nothing of course.
But insofar as national identity in the Middle East is concerned, name is everything, especially for the State of Israel, whose official style should be modified with a single word as profound as it is modest.
Some background: on Friday, May 14, 1948, the nascent state’s founders led by David Ben Gurion had one final task before affixing their signatures to its declaration of independence: coming up with a name.
The finalists were Ever (derived from the word Hebrew), Zion (one of Jerusalem's historic names) Judah or Judea (the arid hilly region south of Jerusalem once home to the biblical tribe after whom Jews were named), Eretz Israel (Land of Israel), Jewish State (the original suggestion of Theodore Herzl, Zionism’s founder) and finally State of Israel...
...In any case, the selection of 'Israel' as the name of the emergent country was understandable at a time when it was widely acknowledged that 'Israel' and 'Jews' were essentially synonymous, and that the new country was to revert to what it had been historically -- in the words of British Foreign Minister Lord Balfour, the Jewish National Home.
But as events and people of the 20th century recede into oblivion, the country’s name has become a source of confusion. So here's a clarification: though Israelis are citizens of Israel, the state was established as a homeland for Jews -- not 'Israelis'. In other words, Israelis are citizens of the Jewish State.
This may be obvious to some, yet the issue is crucial for an Israel facing the hostility of cynical foes who have repeatedly lost on the battlefield but now seek elusive victory through demography...
Read entire article at OpEdNews
‘What’s in a name?’ was the rhetorical question Juliet posed to her lover Romeo. The implied answer? Why, nothing of course.
But insofar as national identity in the Middle East is concerned, name is everything, especially for the State of Israel, whose official style should be modified with a single word as profound as it is modest.
Some background: on Friday, May 14, 1948, the nascent state’s founders led by David Ben Gurion had one final task before affixing their signatures to its declaration of independence: coming up with a name.
The finalists were Ever (derived from the word Hebrew), Zion (one of Jerusalem's historic names) Judah or Judea (the arid hilly region south of Jerusalem once home to the biblical tribe after whom Jews were named), Eretz Israel (Land of Israel), Jewish State (the original suggestion of Theodore Herzl, Zionism’s founder) and finally State of Israel...
...In any case, the selection of 'Israel' as the name of the emergent country was understandable at a time when it was widely acknowledged that 'Israel' and 'Jews' were essentially synonymous, and that the new country was to revert to what it had been historically -- in the words of British Foreign Minister Lord Balfour, the Jewish National Home.
But as events and people of the 20th century recede into oblivion, the country’s name has become a source of confusion. So here's a clarification: though Israelis are citizens of Israel, the state was established as a homeland for Jews -- not 'Israelis'. In other words, Israelis are citizens of the Jewish State.
This may be obvious to some, yet the issue is crucial for an Israel facing the hostility of cynical foes who have repeatedly lost on the battlefield but now seek elusive victory through demography...