Michael: Most people think the name 'Palestine' is a 20th-century political invention. A modern term for a modern conflict. Kevin: Yeah, that’s the general vibe, right? Something that emerged in opposition to the state of Israel. Michael: What if I told you the Greek historian Herodotus, the "Father of History," was writing about a region he called 'Palaestine' almost 500 years before the birth of Christ? Kevin: Wait, really? 500 BC? I always assumed it was a term that came about much, much later, maybe with the British Mandate or something. That’s… a pretty significant time difference. Michael: It’s a historical bombshell. And that’s the explosive premise at the heart of Nur Masalha's book, Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History. And Masalha isn't just anyone; he's a Palestinian historian who grew up in Galilee and was educated in Israeli universities, giving him this incredible, critical insider-outsider perspective. Kevin: Right, so he's lived the modern reality but is digging into the ancient past. The book itself is widely acclaimed in some circles for its meticulous research, earning praise from outlets like the New York Times Review of Books, but it's also deeply controversial for how directly it challenges foundational Israeli narratives. It’s definitely not a light read. Michael: Exactly. And it starts by tackling that very first assumption—the name itself. Masalha argues this isn't just a trivial naming game. The history of that name is the first thread he pulls to unravel a much bigger, and far more complex, story.

Michael: The book’s foundational argument is that the name 'Palestine' has these incredibly deep, well-documented roots. It didn't just appear out of thin air. Masalha traces it back to the 'Peleset,' a name found in ancient Egyptian and Assyrian texts for a group of people who settled the southern coastal plain around the 12th century BC—you might know them by their biblical name, the Philistines. Kevin: Okay, the Philistines. I know them from the David and Goliath story. But they were just one group in one part of the land, right? How does their name become the name for the whole region? Michael: That’s the fascinating part. The name sticks and expands. By the 5th century BC, Greek writers like Herodotus are using 'Palaestine' not just for the coast, but as a geographical term for the entire region between Phoenicia and Egypt. He’s describing a distinct district of Syria. Even Aristotle, in his work Meteorology, mentions a unique lake in 'Palestine'—he’s talking about the Dead Sea. Kevin: So the intellectual giants of the ancient world were using this name as a standard geographical term. It wasn't some obscure label. Michael: Precisely. And then the Romans make it official. After crushing the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 AD, Emperor Hadrian formally merges the province of Judaea with Galilee and the coast and renames the entire administrative unit 'Syria Palaestina.' For the next thousand years, under the Romans and then the Byzantines, this region is officially, administratively, and cartographically known as Palestine. Kevin: Hold on, though. A lot of critics would argue that Hadrian did that specifically to erase the Jewish connection to the land, to punish them for the revolt by renaming Judaea. So couldn't you say the name was imposed as a political act of erasure? Michael: That’s a common and important counter-argument, and Masalha addresses it head-on. While the timing was certainly political, the key point he makes is that the Romans didn't invent the name. They chose a term that was already in widespread, secular use for centuries to describe the broader region. They were formalizing a name, not creating one out of nothing. It was a known geographical entity. Kevin: Okay, that’s a crucial distinction. It’s one thing to invent a name to erase another, it’s another thing to elevate an existing regional name to an official provincial title. But still, this is all outsiders—Greeks, Romans—calling it that. Does it prove a continuous, local 'Palestinian' identity? Michael: This is where the book's evidence gets even more compelling. Masalha shows how the name was adopted and used internally. For instance, during the early Islamic period, after the Arab conquest in the 7th century, the region becomes the administrative district, or Jund, of 'Filastin'. And they weren't just using the name on maps. They were minting coins there. Archaeologists have found coins from that era clearly inscribed with the words 'Struck in Filastin'. Kevin: Wow. So it's literally currency. That’s not just an external label; that's a local economic and political identity. You don't put something on a coin unless it means something to the people using it. Michael: Exactly. And it doesn't stop there. He cites Palestinian Muslim scholars and jurists, like the 15th-century historian Mujir al-Din, who lived in Jerusalem and wrote a comprehensive history of the region. In his work, he repeatedly refers to his native country as 'Filastin'. He’s not writing for a European audience; he’s writing for his own people, using the name that was common and understood. Kevin: That completely reframes the modern argument that the name was 'invented' in the 20th century to oppose Zionism. Masalha is basically saying the name has been there all along, evolving from Peleset to Palaestine to Filastin, used by empires and locals alike for millennia. Michael: That's the core of his first major argument. The name has a four-thousand-year history. And once you accept that, you have to ask: what else about this land's history have we been missing?

Michael: And this idea of local identity and agency goes way beyond just a name. The book uncovers these incredible periods of practical sovereignty that have been almost completely written out of the popular historical narrative. Kevin: What do you mean by 'practical sovereignty'? Like, full-blown independence? Michael: In some cases, pretty close to it. The most stunning example, and a story that I think is the heart of the book, is the rise of a leader named Dhaher al-ʿUmar in the 18th century. Kevin: I have to be honest, I've never heard of him. Who was he? Michael: He was a local Arab leader, a sheikh from the Galilee region. In the mid-1700s, the Ottoman Empire was vast but its central control was weakening in the provinces. Al-ʿUmar saw an opportunity. He started by consolidating power locally, but he was brilliant. He built a professional, loyal army, not just from his own tribe but from a diverse group of mercenaries. He allied himself with the local peasantry by creating a fair and stable tax system, which was revolutionary at the time. They were used to being exploited by distant Ottoman governors. Kevin: So he won the loyalty of the people on the ground. Smart. Michael: Incredibly smart. With that support, he expanded his control over most of modern-day Palestine and southern Lebanon. He fortified the port city of Acre and made it his capital. And here's the kicker: he turned Palestine into an economic powerhouse. He monopolized the cotton and grain trade and began exporting directly to Europe, particularly to France. His state was helping to fuel the British Industrial Revolution. Kevin: Hold on. An 18th-century Palestinian state, with its own army, a modernizing economy, trading directly with Europe? That shatters the image of Palestine as just a neglected, dusty Ottoman backwater waiting for someone to come and 'make the desert bloom.' Michael: It completely shatters it. He founded the modern city of Haifa. He transformed Nazareth from a tiny village into a major town. He was religiously tolerant, protecting Christian and Jewish minorities and encouraging them to settle and trade in his territory. For all practical purposes, he created a state. It was so successful that for a time, the Ottomans were forced to formally recognize him as the autonomous ruler of the region. Kevin: That's incredible. Why isn't this story more widely known? It feels like a crucial piece of the puzzle. Michael: Masalha argues it's because this history is inconvenient. It runs directly counter to the colonial narrative, which needs the land to be 'empty' or 'undeveloped' or 'without a people' to justify its own settlement project. The story of Dhaher al-ʿUmar is proof of indigenous modernity, economic innovation, and political self-governance, long before European Zionism arrived on the scene. It shows that the capacity and the ambition for statehood were already there. Kevin: So the erasure of his story is part of a larger pattern. It's not just forgetting; it's a deliberate sidelining of any history that complicates the simpler, more convenient narrative. Michael: Precisely. And that theme of erasure, as you call it, becomes the dark and powerful conclusion of the book. It's one thing to ignore history, but Masalha argues that in the 20th century, it became a deliberate, systematic project.

Kevin: This is where the book gets really intense, isn't it? Because he frames the conflict not just as a fight over land, but as a war on memory. How does he argue this was done systematically? Michael: The most visible and brutal tool was the battle over place names. Masalha details the Zionist strategy of 'Hebraicization.' After 1948, special committees were formed, like the Israeli Army's Hebrew Names Committee, with the explicit goal of replacing the thousands of Arabic place names with Hebrew ones. Kevin: But was it just replacing them? Or was there a deeper logic to it? Michael: There was a very specific logic. It wasn't just about giving a place a new Hebrew name. It was about finding, or sometimes inventing, a connection to a biblical place name, no matter how tenuous. The goal was to create a new-old map of the land, one that looked anciently Jewish, and in doing so, to completely overwrite the centuries of Arabic and Palestinian history that were physically and linguistically present. Kevin: Can you give me a concrete example from the book? Michael: The story of al-Majdal is a powerful one. On the eve of the 1948 war, al-Majdal was a thriving Palestinian town of about 10,000 people, a center for weaving. It was captured by Israeli forces, and over the next two years, its population was systematically expelled and forced into refugee camps in Gaza. The 'abandoned' homes were given to new Jewish immigrants. Kevin: And the name? Michael: The town was first renamed Migdal-Ad. But then, in 1956, it was officially renamed 'Ashkelon.' This was a masterstroke of this strategy. Ashkelon was the name of a major ancient Philistine city in the same area. So, by using that name, they leapfrogged over nearly two thousand years of Arab, Christian, and Muslim history to connect the new Israeli city directly to an ancient, pre-Israelite past, effectively erasing the memory of the Palestinian town of al-Majdal that had just been destroyed. Kevin: That is… incredibly direct. It’s like surgically removing a layer of history. And the book has that quote from Moshe Dayan, right? Where he basically admits to this whole process? Michael: Yes, and it's one of the most chilling quotes I've ever read. In 1969, speaking to students, the celebrated Israeli general Moshe Dayan said, and I'm quoting directly: "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either." Kevin: Wow. He’s not hiding it. He’s stating it as a fact, almost as a point of pride. The erasure was successful. Michael: It’s a direct admission from a founding father of the state. He continues, saying that there is not one single place built in Israel that did not have a former Arab population. The book argues that this process—the physical destruction of over 400 villages, the expulsion of the people, and the renaming of the landscape—was the logical conclusion of the settler-colonial idea of a 'land without a people.' If the people were inconveniently there, then they, and their memory, had to be removed. Kevin: It’s a brutal concept. And it explains why the book is so controversial. It’s not just presenting an alternative history; it's accusing a nation-building project of being founded on a systematic act of historical and cultural erasure. Michael: That's exactly it. Masalha is arguing that the Nakba, the 'catastrophe' as Palestinians call it, wasn't just a political or military event. It was a historical event. It was an attempt to end one history and begin another on the same piece of land.

Kevin: Wow. So when you put it all together—the ancient name that wasn't invented, the forgotten history of statehood, and the modern, systematic erasure—it's a completely different story of Palestine than the one we usually hear in the news. Michael: That's the power of Masalha's work. He argues that history isn't just something that happened in the past; it's an active battleground. The struggle over land is also a struggle over memory, over names, over the right to have a history at all. The book's deepest insight is that to deny a people their past is to deny them their future. Kevin: It really makes you question every map, every place name you see, not just in that region but everywhere. It’s a call to look deeper, to ask who named this place and whose name was erased for it to exist. For our listeners, what's one thing they can take away from this? Michael: I think it’s this: next time you hear someone claim Palestine is a 'modern invention,' or that it was an empty land, remember Herodotus writing about 'Palaestine' in 450 BC. Remember Dhaher al-ʿUmar exporting cotton to Europe from his capital in Acre. Remember that history is never as simple as the headlines make it seem. The roots are always deeper and more complex than we imagine. Kevin: A powerful and necessary challenge to our assumptions. This is a heavy topic, and we'd love to hear what you think. Find us on our socials and share your thoughts on this one. It’s a conversation that needs to be had. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.