US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is in Israel for a historic summit with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid along with their counterparts from Bahrain, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, held a joint press conference on Sunday with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Jerusalem prior to the summit.
During the press conference, Bennett, the former chairman of the Yehudah and Shomron council, called Yehudah and Shomron by its left-wing term of “the West Bank.”
One former Bennett supporter wrote on Twitter: “What a bushah! The man sitting on his chair thanks to my vote and hundreds of thousands of others who support the settlements and he calls it the ‘West Bank!’ A disgrace!”
Religious Zionism chairman Betzalel Smotrich wrote: “Unfortunately, from the moment this government was formed, it was clear to me that this would happen. Bennett is in a process of disengagement from the nationalist camp. There’s no other way for him to live in peace with his betrayal of it. He will adopt more and more left-wing positions and feel contempt and alienation toward the positions of the nationalist camp of which he was part until recently. This is the last wake-up call for the last of the innocent who are still following and trusting him.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
3 Responses
Mandatory Palestine used to comprise of territory on both banks of the Jordan River – East and West.
Historic Yehuda and Shomron are, indeed, on the West Bank of the Jordan River.
“West Bank” is not a “left-wing” term. It is the standard international name for that area.
The Zionists are the ultimate Galus Jew and are totally dependent on the will of the gentiles.
Every Zionist leader has shown that, once he gets into power, his prior convictions are meaningless.
So, if the gentiles want the Zionist leader to use the term West Bank, then that’s what he will do.
TO the aptly named “Hakatan”, you are wrong: “West Bank” is not and has never been “the standard international name for that area”. The western part of Eretz Yisrael was historically known as “Cisjordan”, as opposed to “Transjordan”.
“West Bank” is a term that was invented by the Transjordanian government when they annexed Yehuda, Binyamin, and Shomron, and changed their country’s name to “Jordan”, since it now had both an “East Bank” and a “West Bank”. The term was practically unknown in the Western press until the 1970s.