I have always heard the residents of Judea/Samaria described as settlers. I just learned that “settlers” is an inappropriate translation of the word “mitnachalim.” It is Hebrew and is properly translated as “inheritors” in English; not settlers, as it is too often. Translating from one language to another is not easy all the time.
Too often Jewish people, today, are accused of occupying and settling “Muslim lands.” Jews are accused of being settlers; especially in Judea/Samaria. A gross mistranslation of mitnachalim: The Inheritors.
He is ever mindful of His covenant, the promise He gave for a thousand generations. Psalms 105:8
Now, there was a time when “settlers” was a positive word: people who come from one land to another and make a home on the land. At one time we used the word pioneer. When I was growing up – during the time of the dinosaurs-there were movies and television shows, like Rawhide – my favourite – that extolled the virtues of the men, women and children who got into their covered wagons and made their way West to SETTLE the prairies. They were SETTLERS and they were considered brave.
But today, because of DEI, CRT and Woke “values,” settlers now carries a negative connotation.
Today, there are those who have decided that the meaning of settler is evil- an occupier of another’s land. A victimizer.
Words change meaning – in time (synchronic) and through time (diachronic).
Think of the word “gay.” In the 1920’s gay meant happy. Now it refers to a person who is a homosexual. This is a change of meaning through time. Diachronic.
Now, the word “fag.” Unless the meaning has recently changed in Britain, a fag is a cigarette. In America and Canada it is a derogatory word for homosexual. Same word. Different meaning. Synchronic.
Jews living in Israel, in JUDEA/SAMARIA, Biblical lands, are called settlers; which now means occupiers/victimizers; taken from the improper translation of mitnachalim. Why the mistranslation? A mistake, or an intentional error?
I keep asking how Jews can be settlers in and on the land they have been cultivating for more than 3000 years? Long before Christians or Muslims walked the earth. How did a people who built TWO Temples on the Temple Mount, the second destroyed in 70 CE long, long, long before Islam and the Dome of the Rock, become labeled as settlers, today?