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Talk:1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight

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Latest comment: 1 month ago by IOHANNVSVERVS in topic Grammar issue with intro

Hebraization of Palestinian place names

[edit]
Latest comment: 1 year ago13 comments7 people in discussion

I'll make an RfC if it becomes necessary, but I think we can obtain consensus without one. Hebraization of Palestinian place names has been marked as non-sequitur or removed despite ample RS on the page pointing out that it was a direct consequence of the expulsion and flight.[1] (See sources below.) We discuss it as part of the process this page describes on the main page for the topic as well.

@אקעגן can you please provide RS for why this topic is not relevant to this page? Smallangryplanet (talk) 17:59, 7 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

My intro to this issue was by one of the books by Meron Benvenisti, "Sacred Landscape", if I recall correctly. Of course this issue deserves mentioning on this page, Huldra (talk) 20:39, 7 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
My reversion to status-quo was re-reverted after this discussion began. Please self-revert in accordance with. WP:STATUSQUO: do not revert away from the status quo ante bellum during a dispute discussion. אקעגן (talk) 21:46, 7 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
WP:STATUSQUO is only an essay, not policy, and nobody else is voicing a support for your views. I am actually surprised this hasn't been mentioned earlier, thanks to User:Smallangryplanet for adding that paragraph! Huldra (talk) 22:38, 7 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
This article's subject is the exodus of Palestinians from their homes during and around the 1948 war. The Hebraization took place as part of the aftermath of the exodus, but also took place place before. Hebraization was a policy that held for any land that was obtained, whether by UN parition, through conquest, or through purchase. In these ways, Hebraization is not "direct consequence of the expulsion and flight" and is an orthogonal matter. Even if viewed as a direct consequence, it is not notable enough with respect to this subject to warrant inclusion in the lede, let alone in an entire section.
The non-sequitur label in the lede was due to the fact that Hebraization was mentioned out of the blue. There was a list of causes of Palestinian exodus and this was immediately followed by "Other sites were subject to Hebraization..." as though there were some connection to be made there.
Hebraization was carried out to restore the nature and names of older Jewish sites (that had been Arabicized). This was meant to emphasize historical continuity and Jewish connection to the region, for a Jewish and Hebrew-speaking country, not as a sort of colonial punishment.[2][3][4][5][6]
I am not opposed to this concept being "mentioned" on this page, but, to be clear, I don't think it deserves its own section, or to be in the lede. אקעגן (talk) 21:19, 7 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
You seem to be the only one who considers it irrelevant. I also agree with Smallangryplanet and Huldra. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:28, 7 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
Naturally, no one actually wants to engage with the points, but are more eager to push a contentious non-WP:NPOV... אקעגן (talk) 23:53, 7 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
No need to be snide or make accusations here, please remember to WP:AGF. The sources provided do not make the case that Hebraization is not relevant here, just that it happened in other circumstances too. I've updated the Other sites... line as it's a bit oddly phrased indeed. I think that This was meant to emphasize historical continuity and Jewish connection to the region, for a Jewish and Hebrew-speaking country, not as a sort of colonial punishment is itself a contentious POV that we can definitely mention, but to maintain NPOV we can't then ignore that many RS take issue with the notion that it wasn't a colonial punishment. I'm all over the place today IRL and might not be able to keep a close eye on this but I plan to improve the dedicated section some more and have added the POV you describe in short already: diff. Smallangryplanet (talk) 09:45, 8 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hebraization of place names was part of the parcel of dispossession. I can't see how anyone would think it's not relevent to the discussion of the topic of Palestiniant expulsion. TarnishedPathtalk 00:50, 8 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
I support inclusion of this issue in the article. I'm not sure about the first paragraph though, and the wording is not great ("Other sites.." — other than what?). Zerotalk 09:24, 8 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've updated the wording on that sentence to be less ambiguous, I hope the current version makes more sense. 😅 Smallangryplanet (talk) 09:51, 8 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
I am not that certain if the Hebraization of toponyms is particularly relevant here. It was not a new policy during the 1940s. Per the main article:
    • "In 1925, the Directorate of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) established The Names Committee for the Settlements, with the intent of giving names to the new Jewish settlements established on lands purchased by the JNF.[7] It was led directly by the head of the JNF, Menachem Ussishkin.[8] The Jewish National Council (JNC), for their part, met in parley in late 1931, in order to make its recommendations known to the British government in Mandatory Palestine, by suggesting emendations to a book published by the British colonial office in Palestine in which it outlined a set of standards used when referencing place-names transliterated from Arabic and Hebrew into English, or from Arabic into Hebrew, and from Hebrew into Arabic, based on the country's ancient toponymy.[9] Many of the same proposals made by the JNC were later implemented, beginning in 1949 (Committee for Geographical Names) and later following 1951, when Yeshayahu Press (a member of the JNC) established the Government Naming Committee.[10]" Dimadick (talk) 04:43, 10 August 2025 (UTC)Reply
    I don't agree with you on this. The concept of "transfer" was also a thing well before 1948 but it is obviously relevant to this article. In this case the program of replacing Arabic names by Hebrew names, not only for settlements but for hundreds of springs, mountains, rivers, etc etc, was an intentional program of erasure of the Arab past. So I believe it is deserving of a mention. As I said before, I'm not sure about it being in the first paragraph, though. Incidentally, thanks for finding a source for old issues of Reshomot, which I couldn't find at gov.il last time I tried. Zerotalk 05:30, 10 August 2025 (UTC)Reply

References

  1. ↑
    • Bardi, Ariel Sophia (March 2016). "The "Architectural Cleansing" of Palestine". American Anthropologist. 118 (1): 165–171. doi:10.1111/aman.12520.
    • Sa'di, Ahmad H. (2002). "Catastrophe, Memory and Identity: Al-Nakbah as a Component of Palestinian Identity". Israel Studies. 7 (2): 175–198. doi:10.2979/ISR.2002.7.2.175. JSTOR 30245590. S2CID 144811289. , Al-Nakbah is associated with a rapid de-Arabization of the country. This process has included the destruction of Palestinian villages. About 418 villages were erased, and out of twelve Palestinian or mixed towns, a Palestinian population continued to exist in only seven. This swift transformation of the physical and cultural environment was accompanied, at the symbolic level, by the changing of the names of streets, neighborhoods, cities, and regions. Arabic names were replaced by Zionist, Jewish, or European names. This renaming continues to convey to the Palestinians the message that the country has seen only two historical periods which attest to its "true" nature: the ancient Jewish past, and the period that began with the creation of Israel.
    • Pappe, Ilan (2022). A History of Modern Palestine (3 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 198. ISBN 978-1-108-41544-6. Retrieved 2 August 2025. Half of the villages had been destroyed, flattened by Israeli bulldozers which had been at work since August 1948 when the government had decided either to turn them into cultivated land or to build new Jewish settlements on their remains. A naming committee granted the new settlements Hebraized versions of the original Arab names: Lubya became Lavi, and Safuria Zipori, although Iteit retained its original name. David Ben-Gurion explained that this was done as part of an attempt to prevent future claim to the villages. It was also supported by the Israeli archaeologists, who had authorized the names as returning the map to something resembling 'ancient Israel'.
    • Salvatore, Armando; Ḥanafī, Sārī; Obuse, Kieko (2022). The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East. Oxford University Press. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-19-008747-0. Retrieved 2 August 2025. The Nakba was manifested in the elimination of the Arab features of the country and destruction of the Palestinian landscape. Alongside the Nakba, a dual process of Hebraization and Judaization was launched. ... Indigenous Palestinian names were wiped out of official records and replaced by new, biblical, Zionist, and Jewish toponyms. ... the striking of Arab names from official records and maps and their replacements by Hebraized and Judaized place names was a tool to reconstruct the landscape in line with an imagined biblical Jewish chronology.
    • Musleh-Motut, Nawal (15 May 2023). Connecting the Holocaust and the Nakba Through Photograph-based Storytelling: Willing the Impossible. Springer Nature. p. 9. ISBN 978-3-031-27238-7. Retrieved 2 August 2025. Second, since 1948, multiple "[s]cenes of [e]rasure" (Swedenburg, 2003, p.38) were created by the Israeli state to remove the ghosts of the landscape's former inhabitants-a process Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe terms "the memoricide of the Nakba" (p. 225). This form of forgetting was most often enacted through the de-Palestinization or de-Arabization and then Hebraization and/or Judaization of the Israeli landscape and history (Benvenisti, 2000; Masalha, 2012; Pappe, 2007). Land formally owned and/or inhabited by Palestinians was confiscated, depopulated, and/or destroyed, and then built upon by Israelis, who replaced Arab names with Hebrew ones.
  2. ↑ Cohen, Saul B.; Kliot, Nurit (1 September 1981). "Israel's Place-Names as Reflection of Continuity and Change in Nation-Building". Names. 29 (3): 227–248. doi:10.1179/nam.1981.29.3.227. Thus, place-names in Israel reflect the Jewish nationhood of the past by imprinting the landscape with Ancient-Biblical and Mishnaic-Talmudic place-names. These names emphasize the continuity of culture in the land of Israel for more than 3,000 years, and enhance the perception of Israel as the "land of the Bible" in the eyes of its settlers and outsiders"
    "[...] While the Zionist and military-heroism origins of place-names symbolize change and innovation in the cultural landscapes, Arabic-origin names, as with the Ancient-Biblical, strengthen the sense of cultural continuity.
  3. ↑ Azaryahu, Maoz; Golan, Arnon (April 2001). "(Re)naming the landscape: The formation of the Hebrew map of Israel 1949–1960". Journal of Historical Geography. 27 (2): 178–195. doi:10.1006/jhge.2001.0297. Conceived of as a restorative measure, the introduction of the official Hebrew map challenged the status of existing Arabic toponymy as the only authoritative and legitimate rendition of the landscape. From a Zionist perspective, the Hebraicization of the landscape may be praised as a restoration of the Jewish past of the land and as an aspect of Jewish national revival. From an anti-Zionist perspective it may be condemned as symbolic erasure of the Arab past. However, as it became apparent, the Hebrew map of Jewish Israel has not replaced the Arabic map of Arab Filastin. Arabic toponymy further persists in the form of Arab folk geography and in Arab-Palestinian maps that assert the validity of Arabic place names.
  4. ↑ Yaar-Waisel, Tal (2023). "The Mystery of Hydronomy in the Land of Israel". Place Naming, Identities and Geography: 147–164. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-21510-0_7. The reasons for the complexity of names are varied: The revival of Hebrew, Zionist settling in the Land of Israel and the desire to preserve the history of the Jewish people in its territory and cultural landscape are the primary factors in the preservation of ancient Hebrew names. This is why the name Eilat was given to the Gulf, although the name was not accepted anywhere else in the world. The same is true for the naming of the northern lake Kineret, even though the Sea of Galilee is common throughout the world. Lastly, a mixture of the Israeli-Arabic every-day language is reflected in geography teaching, too. Despite implied rigidity, Israel has often been found to be flexible, patient with its neighbors and refraining from hurting their feelings, because of a desire for good neighborliness and at the same time fear for the fragility of peace agreements. Even when signing peace agreements, and in day-to-day conduct, both in the military and civilian spheres, Israelis refrain from calling the gulf Eilat Gulf, to avoid issues with the neighbors and use the term that is common outside of Israel.
  5. ↑ Medzini, Arnon (2012). "THE WAR OF THE MAPS: THE POLITICAL USE OF MAPS AND ATLASES TO SHAPE NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS – ISRAEL VERSUS THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY". European Journal of Geography. 3 (1). ISSN 2410-7433. When the Jewish people "returned to Zion," most geographic sites had Arabic names. Thus, at the same time the land was being settled and a Jewish-Zionist community was coming into being, this national rebirth also found expression in the Hebraization of the landscapes of the new-old homeland, with the nationalistic idealistic goal of representing the space of the land of Israel as a Jewish-Hebrew space. One of the ways of achieving this goal was to choose names for the localities on the map.
  6. ↑ Kadmon, Naftali (2000). Toponymy: the lore, laws and language of geographical names (First ed.). New York: Vantage Press. ISBN 9780533135318. Included in this literary codex the Old Testament (comprising the Pentateuch, the Writings of the Prophets and the later Scriptures), the Mishna and the Talmud-were hundreds of ancient toponyms. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, lists 983 biblical toponyms in his Onomasticon compiled in the early 4th century. These toponyms enabled scholars to trace the ancestry of many Arabic place names in Palestine to Biblical (chiefly Hebrew) and talmudic (mainly Aramaic) origins. Some of these names passed through intermediate stages. Thus, the ancient city of Shechem (Shekhem in the official romanization system), named in the Old Testament already in the 2nd millenium BC, became Neapolis [=New City] under Hellenistic rule in the 2nd cent. BC, and this name was corrupted later, in the 7th cent. AD, to the Arabic Nabulus. The Government Names Commission of Israel maintains, as one of its terms of reference, the principle of reviving those biblical names - for both natural and man-made topographic features - which had not been preserved "in the field". But such names may be re-introduced only if there is archaeological or documentary evidence supporting identification of the site. [...]
    The exchange of toponymic accusations between Greek and Turkish cultural factors quoted above (having its sequel at the 4th, 5th and 6th Conferences), was highly charged politically, but hardly supported by specific examples. Similar exchanges have been going on within the same setting-namely UN conferences and meetings of the Group of Experts on Geographical Names - between Arab countries and Israel. Thus, at the 6th UN Conference on the Standardizaton of Geographical Names, 1992, the delegate of Jordan, in presenting his country's national report, listed among other recommendations "Making the United Nations and UNESCO aware of the fact that the Israeli authorities in the occupied territories are trying to efface and abolish the ever existing Arabic names of locations in the occupied territories in Palestine and replace them by Hebrew names".
    In reply, Israel retorted with examples and documentation. All Arab towns and villages in Israel carry their Arabic names, and these appear in official Israeli maps. Where these sites had carried a former Hebrew name, one appearing in the Bible or the Talmud, these allonyms are shown, too. On the other hand, Israel asserted that "Jordan has done just this kind of obliterating ancient Hebrew names [mentioned already] in the Bible, and particularly in the Old Testament. Ancient biblical names such as Jericho and Hebron are well known. They appeared thus in British Mandatory maps of the Holy Land. But since Jordan occupied the so-called West Bank in 1948/49, it printed the Arabized names Arikha and al-Khalil instead. Other examples are [the biblical] Bethel, changed to Bitin, Eshtemoa' (to as-Sammu'), Adorayim (to Dūra), Teqoa' (to Tuqu'), and others. Even the capital of Jordan which, some 3000 years ago, was recorded in the Bible as Rabbat Benei Ammon (Hebrew: the metropolis of the children of Ammon) had its name Arabized and changed to 'Amman after the Arab conquest of AD 635." An interesting case is provided by the name Shechem (or Sichem, in the King James translation of the Bible) briefly mentioned in para. 4.7. This ancient town is mentioned in the Old Testament as existing under this name some 3300 years ago. Under the Hellenistic occupation of Israel (4th - 2nd cent. BC) its name was changed to Neapolis, i.e. New City. This name, in turn, was only much later (in the 7th cent. AD) Arabized to Nabulus. The expression "ever existing names" in the Jordanian document, whether Arabic or other, should therefore be regarded cum grano salis. All this is, of course, part of the process of historical toponymy. It is a "fact of life" that geographical names and their manipulation can be used as arguments by either side in a political conflict.
  7. ↑ Ettinger, Y. (25 August 1925). "Determining the Names of the Settlements acquired by the Jewish National Fund" (in Hebrew). Davar.
  8. ↑ Benvenisti 2000, p. 26.
  9. ↑ Maisler et al. 1932, pp. 3–5 (Preface) "Just as they write in Hebrew 'Shechem' rather than Nablus; 'Ḥevron' rather than al-Khalil; 'Yerushalayim' rather than al-Quds, so, too, it is necessary to write [in Hebrew] 'Dor' instead of Ṭanṭūrah; 'Adoraim' instead of Dūra; 'ʻAin Ganim' instead of Jenin; 'Naḥal Sorek' instead of Wadi eṣ-Ṣarār, etc."
  10. ↑ "State of Israel Records", Collection of Publications, no. 277 (PDF) (in Hebrew), Jerusalem: Government of Israel, 1953, p. 630, The names of the settlements were mostly determined at different times by the 'Names Committee for the Settlements,' under the auspices of the Jewish National Fund (est. 1925), while [other] names were added by the Government Naming Committee.

Edit request 18 March 2026

[edit]
Latest comment: 4 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Answered. TarnishedPathtalk 04:15, 18 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Description of suggested change:

The lead sentence currently describes 700,000 Palestinians as “ethnically cleansed.” This phrasing presents a disputed interpretation as fact. Reliable sources document large-scale displacement during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, but historians differ on whether this constitutes a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing. Consider rephrasing to reflect this debate rather than stating it as uncontested fact.

Diff:

−
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, around 700,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes.
+
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, around 700,000 Palestinians were displaced. Historians differ on whether this displacement constitutes a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing.

~2026-16970-97 (talk) 02:38, 18 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

I'm not able to find this in lede. nevertheless - please refer to WP:NPOV WP:RS 🐈Cinaroot   04:12, 18 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Grammar issue with intro

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Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hey all,

can someone with access to edit this page fix this grammar issue in the intro?

“The Israeli military operated labor camps for captured Palestinians, most of whom civilians.”

should read:

“The Israeli military operated labor camps for captured Palestinians, most of whom were civilians.”

thanks! ~2026-37211-40 (talk) 15:01, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Done. Thank you. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:01, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
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