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the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and, in the recent past, to large areas located to the east of the river as well. For more than a century, this fluid term has served as an instrument of navigation and a source of motivation for the territorial imagination of Zionism. For those who do not live with the Hebrew language, it is difficult to fully understand the weight carried by this term and its influence on Israeli consciousness. From school textbooks to doctoral dissertations, from high literature to scholarly historiography, from songs and poetry to political geography, this term continues to serve as code, unifying political sensitivities and branches of cultural production in Israel.²³

      Shelves in bookstores and university libraries in Israel hold countless volumes on subjects such as “the prehistoric Land of Israel,” “the Land of Israel under Crusader rule,” and “the Land of Israel under Arab occupation.” In the Hebrew-language edition of foreign books, the word “Palestine” is systematically replaced with the words Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel). Even when the writings of important Zionist figures such as Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Ber Borochov, and many others—who, like most of their supporters, used the standard term “Palestine” (or Palestina, the Latin form used in many European languages at the time)—are translated into Hebrew, this appellation is always converted into the “Land of Israel.” Such politics of language sometimes results in amusing absurdities, as, for example, when naïve Hebrew readers do not understand why, during the early-twentieth-century debate within the Zionist movement over the establishment of a Jewish state in Uganda instead of Palestine, the opponents of the plan were referred to as “Palestinocentric.”

Some pro-Zionist historians also attempt to incorporate the term into other languages. Here, too, a prominent example is Simon Schama, who titled his book commemorating the colonizing enterprise of the Rothschild family Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel,²⁴ despite the fact that during the historical period in question, the name Palestine was customarily used not only by all the European languages but also by all the Jewish protagonists discussed in Schama’s book. The British-American historian Bernard Lewis, another loyal supporter of the Zionist enterprise, goes even further in a scholarly article in which he attempts to use the term “Palestine” as little as possible, by making the following statement: “The Jews called the country Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel, and used the names Israel and Judea to designate the two kingdoms into which the country was split after the death of king Solomon.”²⁵

It is no surprise that Judeo-Israelis are certain of the eternal, unequivocal nature of this designation of tenure, which leaves no room for doubt as to ownership in both theory and practice and is believed to have held sway since the divine promise itself. As I have already argued elsewhere in a somewhat different manner, more than Hebrew speakers think by means of the mythos of the “Land of Israel,” the mythological Land of Israel considers itself through them and, in so doing, sculpts an image of national space with political and moral implications of which we may not always be aware.²⁶ The fact that since the establishment of Israel in 1948 there has been no territorial correspondence between the Land of Israel and the sovereign territory of the State of Israel provides good insight into the geopolitical mentality and the consciousness of border (or absence thereof) that are typical of most Judeo-Israelis.

      History can be ironic, particularly with regard to the invention of traditions in general and traditions of language in particular. Few people have noticed, or are willing to acknowledge, that the Land of Israel of biblical texts did not include Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, or their surrounding areas, but rather only Samaria and a number of adjacent areas—in other words, the land of the northern kingdom of Israel.

Because a united kingdom encompassing both ancient Judea and Israel never existed, a unifying Hebrew name for such a territory never emerged. As a result, all biblical texts employed the same pharaonic name for the region: the land of Canaan.²⁷ In the book of Genesis, God makes the following promise to Abraham, the first convert to Judaism: “And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession” (17:8). And in the same encouraging, fatherly tone, he later commands Moses: “Go up this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, opposite Jericho, and view the land of Canaan” (Deut. 32:49). In this manner, the popular name appears in fifty-seven verses.

      Jerusalem, in contrast, was always located within the land of Judea, and this geopolitical designation, which took root as a result of the establishment of the small kingdom of the House of David, appears on twenty-four occasions. None of the authors of the books of the Bible would have ever dreamed of calling the territory around God’s city the “Land of Israel.” For this reason, 2 Chronicles recounts that “He broke down the altars and beat the Asherim and the images into powder and cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem” (34:7). The land of Israel, known to have been home to many more sinners than was the land of Judea, appears in eleven additional verses, most with rather unflattering connotations. Ultimately, the basic spatial conception articulated by the authors of the Bible is consistent with other sources from the ancient period. In no text or archaeological finding do we find the term “Land of Israel” used to refer to a defined geographic region.

This generalization is also applicable to the extended historical period known in Israeli historiography as the Second Temple period. According to all the textual sources at our disposal, neither the successful Hasmonean revolt of 167–160 BCE nor the failed Zealot rebellion of 66–73 CE took place in the “Land of Israel.” It is futile to search for the term in 1 or 2 Maccabees or the other noncanonical books,²⁸ in the philosophical essays of Philo of Alexandria, or in the historical writings of Flavius Josephus. During the many years when some form of Jewish kingdom existed—whether sovereign or under the protection of others—this appellation was never used to refer to the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

      Names of regions and countries change over time, and it is sometimes common to refer to ancient lands using names assigned to them later in history. However, this linguistic custom has typically been practiced only in the absence of other known and acceptable names for the places in question. For example, we all know that Hammurabi did not rule over the eternal land of Iraq but over Babylonia, and that Julius Caesar did not conquer the great land of France but rather Gaul. On the other hand, few Israelis are aware that David, son of Jesse, and King Josiah ruled in a place known as Canaan or Judea, and that the group suicide at Masada did not take place in the Land of Israel.

      This problematic semantic past, however, has not troubled Israeli scholars, who regularly reproduce this linguistic anachronism unhindered and unhesitatingly. With rare candor, their nationalist-scientific position was summed up by Yehuda Elitzur, a senior scholar of the Bible and historical geography from Bar-Ilan University:

According to our conception, our relationship with the Land of Israel should not be simply equated to other peoples’ relationship with their homelands. The differences are not difficult to discern. Israel was Israel even before it entered the Land. Israel was Israel many generations after it went into the Diaspora, and the Land remained the Land of Israel even in its barrenness. The same is not true of other nations. People are English by virtue of the fact that they live in England, and England is England because it is inhabited by English people. Within one or two generations, English people who leave England cease to be English. And if England were to be emptied of Englishmen, it would cease to be England. The same is true of all nations.²⁹

      Just as the “Jewish people” is considered to be an eternal “ethnos,” the “Land of Israel” is regarded as an essence, as unchanging as its

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