Israel: New Names for Old

Hiding the History of European People, Muslim Places, and Palestine Itself

Gal Gadot would be Gal Greenstein if her father had not changed his name (via Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

The reason for changing a name can be good or bad, but the effect is always the same: it conceals the past. Zionists gave Hebrew names to people and places to erase 2800 years between the fall of ancient Israel and the birth of modern Israel.

People

Lists of Israel’s leaders include many Hebrew names, but the least bit of analysis shows they or their parents were born with European surnames. See Israel’s first six prime ministers: David Ben-Gurion was born David Grün, Moshe Sharett was born Moshe Chertok, Levi Eshkol was born Levi Shkolnik, Yigal Allon was born Yigal Peikowitz, Golda Meir was born Golda Mabovitch, and Yitzhak Rabin’s father’s last name was originally Rubitzov.

While many immigrants change their names to blend into their new homeland, the early Zionists did not think of themselves as immigrants to Palestine and did not change their names to be more like the local Jewish, Christian, or Muslim Arabs. They called themselves colonists, but traditionally, colonists keep the names they had in the countries of their birth. Zionists, however, changed their names to make new identities in a new community. This kind of name-changing is unprecedented for colonists, but it is common for…