The End Of Palestine: Why The Land Belongs To The Jews

What would the Israeli-Palestinian conflict look like today if the Roman Emperor Hadrian hadn't changed the name of the Roman province of Judaea to Syria-Palaestina in 136 AD? The answer is indisputable: there would be no Israeli-Palestinian conflict because there wouldn't be a people group called Palestinians! The only reason why the Arabs who lived in the land started calling themselves Palestinians in the mid-1800s was because the land had been called Palestine since Roman times by the empires that occupied it.

But prior to the Third Jewish-Roman War (132-136 AD), it was called Judea, where millions of Jews lived. Even in the 1st century AD -- a millennia after the Israelites founded Israel -- Jews were the majority, with estimates ranging from 1.5 million to 2.3 million. How many Palestinians lived in the land? None! There was no people group called Palestinians in the 1st century AD.

That's why maps like the one on the front cover that circulate widely on social media are nothing less than pseudo-scholarly. There was no "Palestinian Loss of Land" because Palestine was never the country of the Palestinians. Simply because Hadrian renamed the Jewish nation of Judea to Palestine in 136 AD is irrelevant and meaningless.

Since the Jews are the indigenous people of the land because they were there first, it means the land belongs to the Jews. Just because a people group -- the Jews in this case -- were a minority ever since the Romans expelled them from their country does not nullify their rights as the indigenous people of the land. The Palestinians will never understand this inherent truth.