Dr. Rafael Medoff, Visiting Scholar in the Jewish Studies Program at the State University of New York-Purchase College, has written an article based on the fact that the Columbia space shuttle broke apart in the vicinity of a Texas town named Palestine. While Arabs around the world see it as an omen that "Allah was punishing America for supporting Israel" and as cause for hope that "America will fall in Palestine," the fact is, writes Medoff, that the Texas town was given its name out of affinity with the "People of the Bible." Excerpts:
"In Texas, there are also towns named Hebron, Goshen, Bethlehem, and Jonah. There is a Sinai in South Dakota, a Jerusalem in Arkansas, an Ephraim in Colorado, a Naomi in Georgia, a Jericho in Vermont, a Nazareth in Pennsylvania, and a Zion in Maryland. Every state in the union, except Hawaii, has one or more towns named after biblical sites or individuals. Altogether, there are more than 1,000 biblically-named towns from coast to coast.
"That's not because residents of those regions have some special sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs. Towns like Palestine were established by 19th-century religious Christian settlers who chose such names to express their spiritual attachment to the land and people of the Bible. When they thought of Palestine, they recalled the Jewish kingdom of ancient times. In their prayers, they prayed for the return of the Jews to the Holy Land...
"Americans were aware that Palestine had some Arab residents. Mark Twain had mentioned them in his account of his visit to the Holy Land, The Innocents Abroad (1869), as had Herman Melville in his famous Clarel: A Poem and the Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876).
"But it was common knowledge that the Arab population of Palestine was relatively small and unsettled. H. Allen Tupper, Jr. wrote in the New York Times in 1896, after having ridden on horseback more than four hundred miles through Palestine and Syria, that virtually the only local people he encountered were merchantmen with their long camel trains and wild Bedouin tribes that reside in one locality not more than two months.
"Moreover, the Arab residents of 19th-century Palestine did not consider themselves Palestinians... The vast majority of the Muslim Arabs did not show any nationalist or separatist tendencies except when the Turkish leaders themselves, after 1908, asserted their own nationalism.
"If there had been a conflict between the Arab and Jewish residents of Palestine in the 1800s, the original residents of Palestine, Texas, undoubtedly would have sided with the Jews, whose claim to the land is clear from the Bible that Christians and Jews both cherish. It is for the same reason that Bible-believing Christians today - probably including more than a few residents of Palestine, Texas and Palestine, Illinois -- constitute one of the major sources of pro-Israel sentiment in the United States."
"In Texas, there are also towns named Hebron, Goshen, Bethlehem, and Jonah. There is a Sinai in South Dakota, a Jerusalem in Arkansas, an Ephraim in Colorado, a Naomi in Georgia, a Jericho in Vermont, a Nazareth in Pennsylvania, and a Zion in Maryland. Every state in the union, except Hawaii, has one or more towns named after biblical sites or individuals. Altogether, there are more than 1,000 biblically-named towns from coast to coast.
"That's not because residents of those regions have some special sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs. Towns like Palestine were established by 19th-century religious Christian settlers who chose such names to express their spiritual attachment to the land and people of the Bible. When they thought of Palestine, they recalled the Jewish kingdom of ancient times. In their prayers, they prayed for the return of the Jews to the Holy Land...
"Americans were aware that Palestine had some Arab residents. Mark Twain had mentioned them in his account of his visit to the Holy Land, The Innocents Abroad (1869), as had Herman Melville in his famous Clarel: A Poem and the Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876).
"But it was common knowledge that the Arab population of Palestine was relatively small and unsettled. H. Allen Tupper, Jr. wrote in the New York Times in 1896, after having ridden on horseback more than four hundred miles through Palestine and Syria, that virtually the only local people he encountered were merchantmen with their long camel trains and wild Bedouin tribes that reside in one locality not more than two months.
"Moreover, the Arab residents of 19th-century Palestine did not consider themselves Palestinians... The vast majority of the Muslim Arabs did not show any nationalist or separatist tendencies except when the Turkish leaders themselves, after 1908, asserted their own nationalism.
"If there had been a conflict between the Arab and Jewish residents of Palestine in the 1800s, the original residents of Palestine, Texas, undoubtedly would have sided with the Jews, whose claim to the land is clear from the Bible that Christians and Jews both cherish. It is for the same reason that Bible-believing Christians today - probably including more than a few residents of Palestine, Texas and Palestine, Illinois -- constitute one of the major sources of pro-Israel sentiment in the United States."