Hebraization of Palestinian place names

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Street signs for Mevo Dotan and Afula. Afula was a Palestinian town sold by the Sursock family to the American Zion Commonwealth in the 1920s; the Hebrew name follows the Arabic, which means "beans".[1]

Hebraization (or Judaization) of Palestinian place names refers to the replacement of Arabic language place names with Hebrew language place names in Mandatory Palestine and Israel, primarily in the 1920s and the 1950s.[2][3]

According to Professor Virginia Tilley, "[a] body of scientific, linguistic, literary, historical, and biblical authorities was invented to foster impressions of Jewish belonging and natural rights in a Jewish homeland reproduced from a special Jewish right to this land, which clearly has been occupied, through the millennia, by many peoples."[4]

In certain areas of Israel, particularly mixed Jewish–Arab cities, there is a growing trend to restore the original Arabic street names which were Hebraized after 1948.[5][6]

Early history

Hebraization efforts began from the time in the First Aliyah in 1880.[7] In the early 1920s, the HeHalutz youth movement began a Hebraization program for newly established settlements in Mandatory Palestine.[8]

Early efforts were led by leading Zionists such as David Yellin; their efforts were focused on the British Royal Geographical Society's "Committee for Names", which had jurisdiction over names.[7]

JNF Naming Committee

In 1925, the Jewish National Fund established the JNF Naming Committee, led directly by the head of the JNF, Menachem Ussishkin.[9]

Meron Benevisti writes that the Arabic geographical names upset the new Jewish community, for example on 22 April 1941 the Emeq Zevulun Settlements Committee wrote to the head office of the Jewish National Fund:[10]

such names as the following are displayed in all their glory: Karbassa, al- Sheikh Shamali, Abu Sursuq, Bustan al-Shamali - all of them names that the JNF has no interest in immortalizing in the Z'vulun Valley.... We recommend to you that you send a circular letter to all of the settlements located on JNF land in the Z'vulun Valley and its immediate vicinity and warn them against continuing the above-mentioned practice [i.e., the use of] old maps that, from various points of view, are dangerous to use.

Between 1925-48, the JNF Naming Committee gave names to 215 Jewish communities in Palestine.[7]

1949: Committee for the Designation of Place-Names in the Negev

In late 1949, after the 1947–1949 Palestine war, the new Israeli government created the Committee for the Designation of Place-Names in the Negev Region, a group of nine scholars whose job was to assign Hebrew names to towns, mountains, valleys, springs, roads etc in the Negev region.[11] Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had decided on the importance of renaming in the area earlier in the year, writing in his diary in July: "We must give Hebrew names to these places - ancient names, if there are, and if not, new ones!";[12] he subsequently established the committee's objectives with a letter to the chairman of the committee:[11]

We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state. Just as we do not recognize the Arabs' political proprietorship of the land, so also do we not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names.

In the Negev, 333 of the 533 new names which the committee decided upon were transliterations of, or otherwise similar-sounding to, the Arabic names.[13] According to Bevenisti, some members of the committee had objected to the eradication of Arabic place names, but in many cases they were overruled by political and patriotic considerations.[13]

1951: Governmental Naming Committee

In March 1951, the JNF committee and the Negev committee were merged to cover all of Israel.[14] The new merged committee stated their belief that the "Judaization of the geographical names in our country [is] a vital issue".[14] The work was ongoing as of 1960; in February 1960 the director of the Survey Department, Yosef Elster, wrote that "We have ascertained that the replacement of Arabic names with Hebrew ones is not yet complete. The committee must quickly fill in what is missing, especially the names of ruins."[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ Masalha, Nur (15 August 2018). Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History. Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-78699-275-8. APPROPRIATION, HYBRIDISATION AND INDIGENISATION: THE APPROPRIATION OF PALESTINE PLACE NAMES BY EUROPEAN ZIONIST SETTLERS... From Palestinian Fuleh to Jewish Afula... The etymology of the Zionist settler toponym Afula is derived from the name of the Palestinian Arab village al‐Fuleh, which in 1226 Arab geographer Yaqut al‐Hamawi mentioned as being a town in the prov‐ ince of Jund Filastin. The Arabic toponym al‐Fuleh is derived from the word ful, for fava beans, which are among the oldest food plant in the Middle East and were widely cultivated by local Palestinians in Marj Ibn 'Amer.
  2. ^ Noga Kadman (7 September 2015). "Naming and Mapping the Depopulated Village Sites". Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948. Indiana University Press. pp. 91–. ISBN 978-0-253-01682-9.
  3. ^ Benvenisti 2000, p. 11.
  4. ^ Virginia Tilley (2005). The One-state Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock. Manchester University Press. pp. 190–. ISBN 978-0-7190-7336-6.
  5. ^ Rekhess, Elie. “The Arab Minority in Israel: Reconsidering the ‘1948 Paradigm.’” Israel Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, 2014, pp. 187–217. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.2.187; "A new trend that has become particularly popular in recent years in mixed Jewish-Arab cities, is attempts to restore original Arabic street names, “Hebraized” after 1948."
  6. ^ Ofer Aderet (29 July 2011). "A stir over sign language: A recently discovered trove of documents from the 1950s reveals a nasty battle in Jerusalem over the hebraization of street and neighborhood names. This campaign is still raging today". Haaretz. Retrieved 18 December 2011.
  7. ^ a b c Fields, Gary (5 September 2017). Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror. Univ of California Press. p. 222. ISBN 978-0-520-29104-1.
  8. ^ Boaz Neumann (2011). Land and Desire in Early Zionism. UPNE. p. 167. ISBN 978-1-58465-968-6.
  9. ^ Benvenisti 2000, p. 26.
  10. ^ Benvenisti 2000, p. 30.
  11. ^ a b Benvenisti 2000, p. 12.
  12. ^ Nur Masalha (9 August 2012). The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory. Zed Books Ltd. pp. 72–. ISBN 978-1-84813-973-2.
  13. ^ a b Benvenisti 2000, p. 17.
  14. ^ a b Benvenisti 2000, p. 24.
  15. ^ Benvenisti 2000, p. 40.

Bibliography

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