From: punditster@gmail.com   
      
   On 2/16/2026 1:53 PM, dart200 wrote:   
   > brits still cucked by the joos ehh???   
   >   
   What's in a name? You can call them Canaanites, or you can call them   
   Jebusites, or you can call them Edomites. They were all Semitic speakers.   
    >   
      
   > On 2/16/26 12:41 PM, Julian wrote:   
   >> What’s in a name? Quite a bit if you’re the British Museum and the P-   
   >> word is involved: ‘Palestine’. Pro-Palestinian activists are outraged   
   >> – it is Monday, after all – because the museum has altered its   
   >> terminology. Representatives of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) objected   
   >> to displays in the British taxpayer-funded institution giving the name   
   >> ‘Palestine’ to the historical land now home to Israel, Gaza and Judea   
   >> and Samaria (the West Bank). They pointed out that these territories   
   >> went by various names over the centuries, including Canaan, Israel and   
   >> Judah, and that using only ‘Palestine’ is a) historically inaccurate   
   >> and b) plays into highly contested modern-day Palestinian political   
   >> narratives.   
   >>   
   >> Since ‘Palestinian’ is now associated exclusively with Arabs, where a   
   >> century ago it was routinely used to refer to Jews, the concern is   
   >> that these displays reinforce the misconception that the land between   
   >> the Mediterranean and the Jordan was home to a single continuous   
   >> nation or culture that endured for centuries or even millennia. In   
   >> fact, the territory repeatedly changed hands, usually as the   
   >> possession or protectorate of a conquering empire, and the only extant   
   >> civilisation to be an independent sovereign in this strip of hills and   
   >> deserts and water-starved fields were the Jews.   
   >>   
   >> Anti-Zionists often downplay, ignore or even deny this part of the   
   >> historical record because it debunks their claim that the   
   >> Palestinians, as we understand them today, were a sovereign nation on   
   >> the land until the Jews arrived in the late nineteenth and early   
   >> twentieth centuries and supplanted an indigenous people. In truth,   
   >> there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the land, even   
   >> following the Roman Republic’s defeat of the Hasmoneans in 63 BCE,   
   >> subsequent conquest of Judea, and enslavement or expulsion of many of   
   >> its Jewish citizens.   
   >>   
   >> We started out in Culture War of the Week, 2026, and somehow ended up   
   >> halfway across the world in the time before Christ, and I don’t blame   
   >> those of you who quit the tour and handed back your headphones along   
   >> the way. Do people really get worked up about this stuff? They do.   
   >> What’s more, they should. Our regard for the history of past   
   >> civilisations is a good barometer for the regard in which we treat our   
   >> own. Truth either matters or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, why are we   
   >> bothering? Incidentally, the truth involves acknowledging that, while   
   >> the propagandistic mythologies peddled by pro-Palestinian activists   
   >> distort history in service of ideology, so too do those Zionist   
   >> counter- narratives that attempt to write out the Arabs altogether to   
   >> justify the domination or expulsion of contemporary Palestinians.   
   >>   
   >> In some ways, the pro-Palestinian movement is hoist by its own petard:   
   >> in pushing for recognition of ‘Palestine’ as a state it has embedded   
   >> the modern definition in the public consciousness, so that the   
   >> historic term, highly useful for propaganda purposes among the general   
   >> public, must be deployed more cautiously to guard against   
   >> misrepresenting history.   
   >>   
   >> The British Museum has replaced some references to ‘Palestine’ and   
   >> ‘Palestinian’ with ‘Canaan’ and ‘Canaanite’, but UKLFI says   
   that the   
   >> work and financial cost involved mean further changes will be carried   
   >> out ‘in phases over the coming years as part of the museum’s long-term   
   >> “Masterplan” redevelopment’. (An unfortunate name when facing charges   
   >> of having erased Jews from history.)   
   >>   
   >> Something about this rankles, though. The ideological rewriting of   
   >> history is offensive to opponents of the progressive movement, but   
   >> isn’t lawfare just as objectionable, exactly the kind of cry-bully   
   >> finger- wagging progressives unleash to get their way? This is the   
   >> paradox of lanyard legalism: can the procedural tools of coercive   
   >> progressivism – lawfare, language-policing, institutional and policy   
   >> capture – legitimately be used to counter progressive ideology? Are   
   >> those who long for the Before Times merely fighting to restore   
   >> institutional neutrality, or are they also battling against a culture   
   >> of politically mandated compliance?   
   >>   
   >> It’s a genuine dilemma but those troubled by it must contend with an   
   >> equally legitimate, and more practical, point: a culture war in which   
   >> only one side is prepared to fight isn’t a culture war, but a series   
   >> of merciless onslaughts met by agonised self-restraint. Noble defeat   
   >> is still defeat. Defending civilisation in the present means defending   
   >> it in the past, too.   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> Stephen Daisley   
   >   
   >   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)