Renaming Palestinian places in Hebrew fabricates an ancient biblical claim to the land

Evidence

Over the past half-century, then, Israel has managed to evaporate the Arab landscape by renaming, in Hebrew, places removed of Palestinian people though still haunted by the ghosts of those fled. Very often the names are those from the Old Testament. This evaporative renaming thus fabricates Israeli jurisdiction as an ancient biblical claim, reducing Palestinian insistence to return to a delusional, manic vision, to political propaganda, as former Jerusalem deputy mayor Meron Benvenisti characterizes it in his bitingly incisive study of this history of renomination. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 626 (#expands, via linked claim)

As Theodor Herzl, founding father of Zionism, observed in his allegorical manifesto/novel, ‘If I wish to substitute a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct.’ In a kind of realization that took place half a century later, one-time deputy-mayor of West Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti recalled, ‘As a member of a pioneering youth movement, I myself “made the desert bloom” by uprooting the ancient olive trees of al-Bassa to clear the ground for a banana grove, as required by the “planned farming” principles of my kibbutz, Rosh Haniqra.’ Renaming is central to the cadastral effacement/replacement of the Palestinian Arab presence that Benvenisti poignantly recounts. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 929 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Calling a place by its true name transforms wilderness into homeland — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 123; Sacred geography overlays a buried and materially different Jerusalem; Zionist land imagery gendered the land and denied Arab history (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Israel erased the Arab landscape by renaming Palestinian places with Old Testament Hebrew names #expands (0.97) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 626
• Zionist land practices deliberately effaced Palestinian presence through demolition and renaming #expands (0.93) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 929