It is my experience that anyone referring to the “Levant”, has as their purpose denying the existence of Israel.
“t is my experience that anyone referring to the “Levant”, has as their purpose denying the existence of Israel.”
Probably so, as a general rule.
In this case, I suspect the author of the paper (and source of the quote), one “Israel Hershkovitz” (professor at Tel Aviv U) is probably pretty Zionist.
Sure, I’m working with some stereotypes of my people here, but I think we’re in safe territory on this one.
Or maybe they are describing a region not a country.
We learned the term in my seminary class.
What, or where, in hell is ‘the Levant’?
Scientific pointy headed gibberish?
It was not always the case but now “levant” is almost invariably used with decidedly anti-Semitic overtones.
From the wiki article on the subject:
The term Levant appears in English in 1497, and originally meant ‘the East’ or ‘Mediterranean lands east of Italy’.[23] It is borrowed from the French levant ‘rising’, referring to the rising of the sun in the east,[23] or the point where the sun rises.[24] The phrase is ultimately from the Latin word levare, meaning ‘lift, raise’. Similar etymologies are found in Greek Ἀνατολή (Anatolē, cf. Anatolia), in Germanic Morgenland (lit. ‘morning land’), in Italian (as in ‘Riviera di Levante’, the portion of the Liguria coast east of Genoa), in Hungarian Kelet, in Spanish and Catalan Levante and Llevant, (”the place of rising”), and in Hebrew (מִזְרָח, mizrah, ‘east’). Most notably, “Orient” and its Latin source oriens meaning “east”, is literally “rising”, deriving from Latin orior “rise”.[25]
The notion of the Levant has undergone a dynamic process of historical evolution in usage, meaning, and understanding. While the term “Levantine” originally referred to the European residents of the eastern Mediterranean region, it later came to refer to regional “native” and “minority” groups.[26]
The term became current in English in the 16th century, along with the first English merchant adventurers in the region; English ships appeared in the Mediterranean in the 1570s, and the English merchant company signed its agreement (”capitulations”) with the Ottoman Sultan in 1579.[27] The English Levant Company was founded in 1581 to trade with the Ottoman Empire, and in 1670 the French Compagnie du Levant was founded for the same purpose. At this time, the Far East was known as the “Upper Levant”.[2]
Not necessarily, Levant also refers to Lebanon and Palestine, and I think parts of Jordan and Syria.