We Fanatics are No Longer Alone in Not Saying “West Bank”
#1308 February 8,, 2026
By me, among the most damaging of the loaded lexicon’s Jewish homeland delegitimizing pejoratives is “West Bank.” Those of us who’ve railed against this haven’t done particularly well getting even we American Jews to stop saying it. But a WSJ article this week shows we so-seen unrealistic fanatics are no longer alone.
Much-admired-by-me Melanie Phillips has a pertinent warning for grassroots Diaspora Jews like you and me. In her posting “Judaism Without Zionism”: The Latest Form of Jew-Baiting, she drives home that “Judaism is the inseparable fusion of the people, the religion and the land,” that we Jews “are the only people in the world who have retained an unbroken connection to their homeland since antiquity,” that “there were always communities there,” including a renewed majority in Jerusalem since the pre-Zionist mid-nineteenth century.”
To this I [Israel 3,000 Years: The Jewish People’s 3,000 Year Presence in Palestine, Amazon] and others append that today’s State of Israel is the land’s next native state after Roman-destroyed Jewish Judaea, every ruler in between having been a foreign empire invader, and mostly non-Arab at that.
Melanie’s warning is that while “Diaspora Jews are very reluctant to put their heads above the parapet” for fear of raising accusations of “dual loyalty,” we have to recognize that “Zionism has become a dirty word,” that Diaspora Jews “should declare on every possible occasion that they’re proud Zionists – and that Zionism is the ultimate decolonization movement.”
Melanie calls for three Diaspora Jewish responses: “the community should call out anti-Zionist Jews for the noxious fringe-artists that they are”; that we should “educate young Jews better,” that “they need to be taught pride in the State of Israel as the ultimate moral project – which means teaching them the truths necessary to counter the lies”; but “First, reclaim the language.”
Which brings me to a Wall Street Journal article Thursday this week, 2/5/26, disseminated to our community (thank you) by ZOA: “Judea” and “Samaria” are Faithful to History, as U.S. Lawmakers Increasingly Realize. Lede:
“(February 5, 2026/WSJ) In the Middle East, a place name is never just a name – it is a claim. For decades, the term ‘West Bank’ has stripped the land of its historical identity. A mid-20th-century substitution, it replaced the indigenous names Judea and Samaria with a generic compass point to sever the Jewish connection to the region in the eyes of the world.”
It’s not just that Judea and Samaria are essential to the military security of our Jewish people’s homeland, which they are, but that along with historic Jerusalem they’re the heart & soul of our peoplehood heritage. As House Speaker Johnson put it, “Judea and Samaria belong to Israel.”
My own shtik lo these 1308 weeks has been a plea to us U.S. Jewish grassroots to totally purge from our own mouths the loaded lexicon of poisoned pejoratives literally designed to delegitimize our Jewish connection to our people’s three-millennia homeland of Israel. Among the most devastating of these dirty words, and ironically among the most difficult to get us to divest from our mouths, is of course “West Bank.” I’ve been called unrealistic, naïve, Don Quixote. That’s particularly frustrating these days with two more forceful than windmill forces – the President and Vice-President of the United States – both touting “Israel will not annex the West Bank.” But beyond them, we ourselves saying “Judea and Samaria” and not “West Bank” is a matter of self-respect and a public manifestation of pride in our homeland and peoplehood.
And so this week I was pleased to read this WSJ article’s second paragraph:
“Now U.S. lawmakers in at least a dozen states and both houses of Congress are advancing legislation to restore these original names in official U.S. documents. More than updating nomenclature, they are reclaiming a stolen identity and forcing a collision between manufactured labels and the weight of history.” [emphasis added]
But is there a context in which it’s ok for Jews to say “West Bank”?
Is there a context in which Jews ourselves saying “West Bank” is justifiable? Perhaps, there’s one. Consider my exchange with CAMERA back during Andrea Levin’s stewardship. You decide.
Here’s my #912 of 7/15/18, “This Week: A Conversation with CAMERA”:
“In last week’s #911, I took issue with a position taken by an organization – CAMERA, The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America – that I greatly respect. CAMERA had criticized the Los Angeles Times’ use in multiple articles of the expression ‘Israel and Palestine.’ The corrections CAMERA suggested and obtained included ‘the Israeli government and the Palestinians … Israel and the West Bank … [Israel and] the Palestinian territories.’
“I took exception to the suggested corrections, saying:
“The case we must make is that undivided Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria are intrinsic parts of the Jewish homeland, the land of Israel, and aren’t ‘Palestinian territories’; that ‘Israel and the West Bank … Israel and Palestine’ aren’t two separate places; that Palestinian Arabs aren’t ‘the Palestinians’; that ‘Palestine’ is not a dirty word but references the historic homeland of the Jews; and that the Palestinian Arab state of ‘the two-state solution’ is Palestinian Arab-majority, 78% of the Palestine Mandate, Jordan.” [emphasis original]
I copied this to CAMERA, which sent me a reply by Tamar Sternthal, Director of CAMERA’s Israel office, requesting I print it, which of course I did in that #912. The essence of CAMERA’s reply was this paragraph:
“Use of the terminology Judea and Samaria is historically justified. Nevertheless, the insistence that mainstream media outlets adopt a term used by only a very minute fraction of the world population and which ignores the political reality for some 40% of the West Bank in which Palestinians rule themselves guarantees irrelevance. An emailed request for use of the nomenclature ‘Judea and Samaria’ will immediately end up in the editor’s trash box.” [emphasis added]
Given that that “very minute fraction of the world population” that uses “Judea and Samaria” is us, I replied that
“I would have us ordinary Jews use historically justified Jewish homeland-consistent terminology – e.g., ‘Judea and Samaria’ (which btw the UN used in 1947), and the more contrasted it is what the media and the rest of the world today uses, the more important it is that we use it.” [emphasis added]
Does this apply not just to us grassroots, but also to those who professionally seek balanced portrayal of Israel by the media to the rest of the world? I think it does, even more so, but you make the call.
