Jerry Seinfeld Was Right – Palestine Doesn’t Exist

A jubilant Jerry Seinfeld, emerging from Madison Square Garden after the New York Knicks unbelievable victory against the San Antonis Spurs in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on June 10, was approached by FinesseFave, a social-media streamer and TikTok personality who held a microphone out to the beloved comedian and asked: "What up, Seinfeld? What up? Can we get a 'Free Palestine'?" Before walking away, Seinfeld responded tersely with three words for the ages: "It doesn't exist."

Bravo!

Stripped of slogans and emotion, his statement invites a serious historical question. If Palestine was a country, when exactly did it exist? This is no mere rhetorical trick. Countries leave records, they have governments, capitals, rulers, borders, laws, armies, currencies, and diplomatic relations. France existed, Egypt existed, England existed, Persia existed. If “Palestine” existed as a sovereign state, when was it founded? What were its borders? Who were its leaders and who governed it? What dynasty ruled it? What coins did it mint? What treaties did it sign? How and when did its alleged sovereignty begin and end?

Some maintain that the answers to these seminal questions are somehow elusive. But, in fact, the situation is plain as day: the historical reality is that there has never been an independent sovereign Arab state called Palestine. The territory known today as Israel, Judea and Samaria, and Gaza has been ruled by numerous powers: Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arab caliphates, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, and the British, but at no point in that long succession of rulers did an independent state called “Palestine” emerge.

This does not mean that the word "Palestine" did not exist. The question is what the term meant.

The term itself became prominent after the Roman suppression of the Jewish revolt led by Shimon Bar Kokhba in 132–136 CE. Following the revolt, Emperor Hadrian reorganized the province of Judea and renamed it Syria Palaestina. Many historians have maintained that the name change was intended, at least in part, to weaken the connection between the Jewish people and their ancestral homeland by replacing the name Judea – which derived from the Jewish kingdom – with a name associated with the ancient Philistines, who had already by then long since disappeared from history.

Whether one accepts every aspect of that interpretation or not, one fact is undeniable: the name Palestine was imposed by foreign rulers, it was never the name of an independent Arab or Palestinian state and, for centuries thereafter, it functioned primarily as a geographic designation. Under the Ottoman Empire, which controlled the region from 1517 until 1917, there was no province called “Palestine;” the territory was divided among administrative districts governed from Damascus, Beirut, Constantinople, and elsewhere, and no Palestinian parliament ever existed, no Palestinian king ever sat on a throne, and no Palestinian foreign ministry ever negotiated treaties.

When the British Mandate was established after World War I, the territory officially became Mandatory Palestine; even then, it was not an independent country but a British-administered territory established by the League of Nations. Ironically, many of the institutions bearing the name “Palestine” during this period were unquestionably Jewish: the Palestine Post later became The Jerusalem Post, the Palestine Philharmonic became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Anglo-Palestine Bank evolved into Bank Leumi. Jewish athletes competed as Palestinians, Jewish businessmen called themselves Palestinians, and Jewish organizations throughout the Mandate period proudly used that designation. I have thousands of original documents in my collection spanning the eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century – many of which I have featured and discussed in my Collecting Jewish History columns in these pages – where the Jewish inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael were called “Palestinians” and everybody understood exactly what that term meant.

Unlike Arabs and contemporary so-called “Palestinians,” the Jewish connection to the land can be traced continuously through thousands of years, long before the rise of Christianity, long before the rise of Islam, long before the Arab conquests, long before the Ottoman Empire. Jerusalem stood at the center of Jewish civilization: the Hebrew Bible describes the establishment of Jerusalem as the capital of King David's kingdom, the First and Second Temples stood there, the Sanhedrin sat there, Jewish kings ruled there, Jewish pilgrims traveled there, Jewish prophets preached there.

The connection, not merely political, became integrally woven into the religious, cultural, and national identity of the Jewish people. When the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE and later crushed Jewish resistance, they did not destroy Jewish memory, as for two thousand years, Jews throughout the world prayed toward Jerusalem. At the conclusion of Passover, they proclaimed, "Next year in Jerusalem;" at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, they proclaimed, "Next year in Jerusalem;" Jewish wedding ceremonies, at the height of joy, included a sorrowful remembrance of Jerusalem's destruction; daily prayers repeatedly invoked Zion and Jerusalem; and synagogues were oriented toward Jerusalem. 

In the history of the world, no comparable national memory survived with such intensity for such a length of time – and against such monolithic antisemitic hatred spanning eons. Empires disappeared, languages ceased to exist, entire civilizations were forgotten, yet Jews in Morocco, Poland, Yemen, Iraq, Germany, Ethiopia, and dozens of other lands continued speaking of Eretz Yisrael as their ancestral home and Jerusalem as its capital. And no scientist or historian can explain how – in a remarkably singular anomaly – in the entire history of the world, no other nation or people has ever been exiled from its land and later returned to reestablish sovereignty. Jews see this as a direct manifestation of the hand of G-d, whose prophets from antiquity foretold the return of the Jewish people to their homeland, a return that we are blessed to witness continuing today.. Although belief in Hashem is ultimately an act of faith, I often challenge people to come up with an alternative explanation – with a notable lack of success.

Critics of Zionism – and, as I have written and proven in these pages, anti-Zionism is antisemitism – love to portray Jewish return to the Eretz Yisrael as a contemporary nineteenth-century colonial project, but that interpretation simply cannot explain why generations of Jews who had never seen Jerusalem nevertheless prayed for it every day and why the Jewish habitation of their Holy Land never ceased through the ages. Colonial movements generally seek wealth, power, resources, and strategic advantage, but Zionism was driven by something different: a people seeking a historical return to a homeland that had occupied its collective memory for nearly two millennia. Throughout the centuries, Jewish communities remained in Jerusalem, Chevron, Tzefat, and Tiberias and, although their populations fluctuated due to persecution, economic hardship, war, and migration, Jewish life there never disappeared.

The Jewish relationship with the Temple Mount is even more deeply rooted. The existence of the First and Second Temples is among the most extensively documented facts of ancient history, as the Hebrew Bible, Josephus, Roman records, archaeological discoveries, ancient inscriptions, rabbinic literature, and numerous non-Jewish sources all attest to their existence. Nonetheless, contemporary “Palestinian” leaders, alleged scholars, and political activists – i.e., liars, frauds, and fools – claim that no Jewish Temple ever stood on the Temple Mount. But no reputable historian challenges the overwhelming evidence that the Jewish Temples stood in Jerusalem thousands of years ago. Archaeology reinforces the historical record; ancient Hebrew inscriptions have been discovered throughout the land; Jewish ritual baths have been uncovered; coins issued by ancient Jewish rulers have been found; synagogue remains dating back many centuries have been excavated; the Dead Sea Scrolls preserve ancient Jewish texts produced in the region. The breadth of archaeological evidence does not merely suggest Jewish presence; it demonstrates that Jewish civilization flourished there going back to ancient times. 

This historical record of continuity only became a significant political issue in the twentieth century. When Britain received the Mandate for Palestine following World War I, the League of Nations unambiguously recognized the historical connection of the Jewish people to the land and supported the establishment of a Jewish national home there. Compromise proposals soon followed; in 1937, the Peel Commission recommended partition, which Jewish leaders accepted and Arab leaders rejected; in 1947, the United Nations proposed another partition plan which, again, Jewish leaders accepted and Arab leaders rejected. One historical fact – relevant, of course, only to those who actually care about facts – remains difficult to ignore: the “Palestinians,” who never existed as a people and never had a state, rejected every offer by Israel to create a state for them, including a nation on more than 95% of the land which they still call “disputed territories.” The world has similarly repeatedly offered Arab leaders an opportunity to establish an Arab state alongside a Jewish one, and, had they accepted the proposal, a Palestinian Arab state would have come into existence before Israel itself. Instead, Arab and “Palestinian” rejectionists launched intifadas, terrorist attacks, and wars.

Perhaps most significantly, there was never even the suggestion of establishing a “Palestinian state” in Eretz Yisrael before the 1967 Six-Day War, when Jordan controlled the “West Bank,” including eastern Jerusalem, and Egypt controlled Gaza. If “Palestinian statehood” was the overriding objective, why did no Palestinian state ever emerge between the nineteen years spanning Israel’s War of Independence and the Six-Day War? Why was there no major international campaign demanding Palestinian independence from Jordanian control, and why did Egypt not establish a Palestinian state in Gaza? I once posed these very questions at a Shabbat table to the Orthodox Jewish then-Ambassador to a Middle East country, and the great “diplomat” turned red and spit out, “I don’t know why I waste my time arguing with a moron like you.” Without missing a beat, I said “in other words, you can’t answer my question, can you.”

He couldn’t . . . because there is no answer.

The notion that Palestinian statehood was the central objective of regional politics during that period is demonstrably false. Indeed, the Palestine Liberation Organization was only established in 1964, three years before Israel gained control of the West Bank and Gaza and Arafat, the first great “Palestinian leader,” was an Egyptian. (Although Arafat himself often lied about being born in Jerusalem, his Egyptian birth certificate records Cairo as his birthplace and this is accepted by all reliable modern historians and reference works).

Most tellingly, in the original Palestinian National Covenant, adopted on May 28, 1964, at the First Palestinian National Congress in East Jerusalem (which was then under Jordanian control), “Palestinian” leadershipexplicitly disclaimed sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.Article 24 of the PLO Covenant could not be clearer: 

This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah [Syria] Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.

This unambiguous provision wasn’t changed until 1968 – after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, when the “Palestinian” claim to the land was first created out of thin air.

From the Six-Day War and thereafter, “Palestinian” nationalism gained increased international visibility and became more focused on statehood in the territories captured during the war, but even as political realities changed, the underlying historical facts remained: Jewish attachment to Jerusalem did not begin in 1967; Jewish attachment to Chevron did not begin in 1967; Jewish attachment to Judea and Samaria did not begin in 1967. These places appear throughout Jewish scripture, history, and memory: Bethlehem was associated with King David; Chevron was associated with the Patriarchs; Shiloh housed the Tabernacle; Jerusalem housed the Temple. For Jews – and for anybody who is intellectually honest – these are not distant foreign locations discovered through modern conquest, but they are among the foundational sites of Jewish civilization.

Even if one sets aside the hand of G-d, which I personally do not think is possible, the strongest pro-Israel argument does not depend upon contemporary politics. Rather, it rests upon documented history; it rests upon the remarkable continuity of Jewish attachment to the land; it rests upon centuries of prayer directed toward Jerusalem; it rests upon archaeological evidence; it rests upon a national memory that survived exile, persecution, dispersion, and repeated attempts at eradication. The modern State of Israel did not create the Jewish connection to the land; it emerged from it.

People speak of “Palestine” as though it were a long-established sovereign country that was conquered and erased. But where is the evidence? Who were its rulers? What were its institutions? When did it govern itself? When did it exercise sovereignty? There are no answers. What the record does reveal is something else: a geographic designation called Palestine that passed through the hands of successive empires, and a Jewish people who, despite exile and dispersion, never relinquished their identification with the land from which their civilization emerged. 

Seinfeld was right. G-d bless him for having the courage and fortitude to state a truth that even many alleged “Zionist leaders” fear expressing openly.