Can someone please explain the distinction between (among?) the terms “Israel,” “Zion,” and “Palestine”?
Of course I understand that the term “Israel” refers to the modern nation of Israel. But what is the difference between “Israel” and “Palestine”? Is Palestine the older name for the region? How old is the term “Israel”? Was it used before this century? (I understand that it is a Hebrew word, so, more precisely, I guess my question is, was the word used to refer to the region before the founding of the modern state of Israel?)
What about “Zion”? I believe that is a fairly old word, but is it the name of a particular region? Is the term synonomous with either “Israel” of “Palestine”?
Constantine
Israel was originally the northern kingdom, along with Judah to the south, both comprising Palestine. From 1948, this was the name given to what we now know as Palestine – although it seems that what Arabs call Palestine, the Israeli government still calls Israel.
Zion is a name given to a utopian vision of the Jewish state prior to the 20th century (dating from the 14th century, named after a fortress in Jerusalem), by groups of Hebrew activists who considered themselves Zionists. It can be said that modern-day Israel is their Zion, so these terms could now be synonymous.
It’s down to history. Until 1948, there was the Palestine region. After 1948, there was Israel, and now a part which is considered Palestine as well. The Zionists wanted the perfect Jewish homeland, but this was not necessarily Palestine.
Ok, here we go. 
Israel, in the ancient world, was a kingdom in what’s modern Israel, and parts of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. It lasted as a unified kingdom for a while, then split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians, the southern by the Babylonians. During the Hellenistic period, a revolt against the Selucids set up a second kingdom of Israel in the same spot, and which lasted until the Romans conquered it (which is an oversimplification, but…). After that, even though the region was known as “Israel” to Jews, there wasn’t a state of Israel until 1948 when it got its independence.
The name Palestine comes originally from the Greek name for the region. In the ancient world, there was, in that region, a confederacy of city states containing a tribal group called the Philistines. The Greeks, and then the Romans, called the area “Palestina”, and when the Romans set up a province there, they called the province Palestina, and so the region got that name, and kept it throughout the centuries.
Zion, in the bible, refers to the city of Jerusalem.
<< Zion, in the bible, refers to the city of Jerusalem. >>
Well, actually, Mount Zion is a central hill in Jerusalem, but the term “Zion” has been used to mean Jerusalem, or Israel, in a religious (rather than geographic) sense. Thus Biblical poetry speaks of God’s power shining forth from Zion, etc. using the mountain/hill as a metaphor for the Divine Throne.
Beginning in the middle 1800s, “Zionism” was the political movement that supported a return of Jews to that area in an independent state. The foundation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 was the realization of that political dream.
The name Zion referred to a fortress within Jerusalem that was taken by David and came to be known as the City of David. As such it was used as a metaphor for the “heart” of the Jewish kingdom, and appears in that role in several of the Psalms and Prophets (and was used to indicate the place for which the Babylonian captives yearned, and so came lend its name to the desire of the Diaspora that wished to return to the Jewish homeland, as noted by Ice Wolf).
Palestine was the Roman corruption of the Greek Philistia, “Philistine lands,” and appeared in their identity of the region when they set up their Province of Syria–Syria Palaestina being the southern section of that district.
After the Romans, the name Palestine became simply one of many poetic references to the region until the British took it away from the Turks during WWI. They reached back to the Roman name and used it to describe the entire region.
At the independence of Israel, Jordan took all the land that was not part of Israel, proper, until the 1967 war, at which time ithe land that was not Israel came to be called the West Bank. However, the British use of Palestine and Palestinian came to be a handy way to identify the non-Israeli, non-Jordanian, non-Egyptian, non-Saudi, non-Lebanese, non-Syrian Arabs of the region along with the land where they lived.
On preview, I see that I’m late. Well, I typed it, I’m not going to delete it.
It is interesting to note that not all Jews recognize Israel, because of the belief (maybe reminiscent of that biblical poetry CK Dexter speaks of) that Israel cannot exist until the coming of the Messiah.
Israel, both ancient and modern, were established within the geographic area commonly known as Palestine. The U.N. recommended Palestine be split into Jewish and Arab states, and after the British withdrawal from Palestine in 1948, the political state of Israel was established.
Since then, Arabs have been fighting for the political recognition of the Arab “state” called Palestine, but it continues to go unrecognized.