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The first version of this was posted in 2020, back in the very start of our page. It was an important primer then and it is again now.
In any good English 101 course, you are taught to define terms before writing the rest of your paper. Understanding how misinformation is spread through conflation, confusion, and intentional ambiguity is vital and necessary.
As we have, in the last months, been exploring Christian Zionism on our page, we've seen the comments run into issues of confusion on this very topic.
A reason that it's important to separate Medinat Yisrael (the State of Israel) from Eretz Yisrael (the physical land).
I see this coin going around in pro-Palestine circles to combat the erasure of Palestine.
What does the Hebrew say? פלשתינה (א"י) - Falestina (E.Y.)
The א"י that I translated as E.Y. is the acronym for Eretz Yisrael. The Land of Yisrael.
This coin was originally shown to me as a kid to show me that even when it was called Palestine, our connection to it wasn't forgotten, and we always had the right to come here and take over. And conflating the two is allowing for that argument.
Historical connection, remembered or not, does not give anyone the right to commit ethnic cleansing and genocide, and to keep the victims of those acts from returning and rebuilding.
