Republicans trumpet “Judea and Samaria”

Michael F. Brown Power Suits 3 March 2025

Congresswoman Claudia Tenney with two American flags behind her

Congresswoman Claudia Tenney is pressing to refer to “Judea and Samaria” rather than the occupied West Bank.

Bill Clark CQ Roll Call

At the beginning of February, a journalist, speaking of the occupied West Bank, asked President Donald Trump whether he supported “Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.” Trump responded that “people do like the idea, but we haven’t taken a position on it yet.”

He then indicated, “We’ll be making an announcement probably on that very specific topic over the next four weeks.”

That time is nearly up as Trump prepares to address a joint session of the US Congress on Tuesday evening.

Since Trump returned to the White House, numerous conservative politicians, religious demagogues and organizations have rushed to push Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank – a crowning war crime over the daily war crimes – and the US is backing Israel with new weapons sales totaling nearly $12 billion. Trump, to be sure, is being pressed to give his approval to Israel to declare sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.

The Trump administration is also enabling Israel in its decision this past weekend to cut off humanitarian aid to Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political allies encourage him to resume the Gaza genocide. Israel’s use of food as a weapon is a war crime.

Up next: West Bank theft?

Congresswoman Claudia Tenney of New York chairs the new Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus, a position from which she is pushing for Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.

She urges Trump in a 25 February letter “to recognize the right of Israel to declare sovereignty over this biblically and historically significant region.”

She goes on to “commend” the president for his “strong and tireless support for individuals living in this region.”

The commendation is risible.

Trump has recently lifted sanctions against violent West Bank settlers and says not a word castigating Israel for promulgating a two-tier system of law in the West Bank that subjects Palestinians to what numerous human rights organizations have called apartheid.

Tenney’s call for Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank makes no mention of the rights of Palestinians.

Will they be expelled? Subjected to permanent apartheid conditions and confined to bantustans?

Or will they be extended equal rights along with voting rights? What say will Palestinians have in any of this or does Tenney simply envision Israel extending total colonial control over them? Her letter to Trump doesn’t provide such crucial details. It’s an openly supremacist approach.

The closest Tenney and her five co-signers get to granting Palestinians a voice – and really they’re not – is when they express “strong opposition to the recognition of any hostile Arab state in Judea and Samaria that supports terrorism and fails to recognize Israel.”

But where would any Palestinian state in the West Bank even exist if Israel extends full sovereignty over what Tenney and her colleagues term “Judea and Samaria”? Tiny bantustan set-asides surely cannot be confused with a state. Such an outcome would be unacceptable, just as it was in apartheid South Africa.

Religious bigots like Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, are pushing Tenney’s proposal.

Tenney’s press release on the subject quotes Perkins as saying: “The term ‘West Bank’ has become a highly divisive label, fueling geopolitical and military tensions in the Middle East. It is time to recognize this region by its historical names: Judea and Samaria, not the ‘West Bank.’ The United States should recognize Israel’s right to declare sovereignty over this land, where nearly 80 percent of the biblical record’s events took place.”

When Perkins addressed Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, he offered not a word of criticism. Instead, he merely noted the idea is “unpopular in Jordan” while emphasizing it could “provide additional security for Israel.”

Earlier this year, Tenney also reintroduced the “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act” and simultaneously announced the launching of the “Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus.” Her legislation would “require all official United States documents and materials to use the term ‘Judea and Samaria’ instead of the ‘West Bank.’”

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who has recommended tearing the skin off of Gaza genocide protesters, has reintroduced accompanying legislation in the US Senate to “eliminate federal use of the term ‘West Bank.”

Like earlier colonizers, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is also taking a religious approach to justify modern-day colonization of the West Bank. In a late February video address to the Sovereignty Conference 2025, co-sponsored by the Yesha Council (a grouping of local authorities representing Israel’s settlements in the West Bank), he asserted, “Israel has an absolute right to determine what happens in Judea and Samaria.”

He then claimed, “This right is described in the Bible and it extends through modern times.”

The office of Senator Cruz did not respond to questions from The Electronic Intifada about the rights of Palestinians – already living under a dual system of law – envisioned by Cruz.

Israeli apartheid and subjugation of the majority Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank apparently are, in his view, biblically ordained. Such language from Cruz is reminiscent of the horrifying justifications once provided for enslavement and Jim Crow segregation.

CPAC seeks to wrest West Bank

The Conservative Political Action Conference passed a resolution in late February calling on not just the US but its allies to recognize Israeli sovereignty over what the group termed “Judea and Samaria.”

West Bank settlement leader and Yesha Council chair Yisrael Gantz extended his thanks to CPAC members and stated that “your declaration is akin to the Balfour Declaration” when the British government in 1917 backed, in the words of British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour, “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

As my colleague David Cronin wrote in 2017 of the racist and anti-Semitic Balfour, that “national home” was “established in Palestine by expelling its indigenous people en masse.” Furthermore, “an assurance in that document about protecting Palestinian rights proved worthless.”

Similar questions arise about Palestinian rights – already routinely denied – if Israel extends its sovereignty over the occupied West Bank territory.

Rabbi Yitzchok Tendler, senior fellow for Israel and Jewish affairs at CPAC, helped co-author the resolution. Along with Rabbi Ben Packer, who years ago organized a Rachel Corrie pancake meal mocking a young activist killed by an Israeli military bulldozer, Tendler is a co-founder of Young Jewish Conservatives.

Tendler bragged, “This year, as President Trump is now in office, there’s been a lot more pivoting towards real-time diplomatic achievements that can be achieved in the context of the president’s lens – the way he looks at the world and the way he looks at Israel, and there’s no question that now is the right time to talk about sovereignty.”

He added, “This is the time to make it clear where CPAC stands and provide political backing to what will hopefully result in Israel applying sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.”

Tendler and conservatives secured the resolution even as Steve Bannon, previously an adviser to Trump, appeared to throw up a Nazi salute at the event, though Bannon denied it. Elon Musk, an enormous donor to efforts to elect Trump and other Republicans in 2024, made an even more emphatic Nazi-like gesture at the Trump inauguration for which he was given a pass by the Anti-Defamation League, a staunchly anti-Palestinian organization masquerading as a civil rights group.

Finally, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast, who has accused all Palestinians of being “Arab Nazis” and denies the presence of “innocent Palestinian civilians” in Gaza, is also pushing “Judea and Samaria” efforts.

He has directed Republican committee staff to refer to “Judea and Samaria” rather than the West Bank. In fact, he turned reality on its head by putting quotation marks around “West Bank.” Gantz and the Yesha Council are enthusiastic backers of Mast’s colonial ambitions on behalf of Israel.

Mast wrote, “Long before Hamas killed Americans and Israelis on 7 October, we saw vile acts meant to dehumanize Jewish people throughout the world and shatter Israelis’ rights to live in peace. As a committee and as representatives of the American people, we must do our part to stem this reprehensible tide of anti-Semitism and recognize Israel’s rightful claim to the cradle of Jewish civilization.”

This last sentence suggests that Mast views it as anti-Semitic not to call the West Bank “Judea and Samaria.” And he seems to think it anti-Semitic to protest Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank and the relegating of Palestinians to apartheid conditions.

Republicans are seeking to normalize colonization and label its critics as anti-Jewish bigots. Democratic leaders, who have confronted other forms of racism but have long stood silent before anti-Palestinian hatred in their midst, are unlikely to push back meaningfully after promoting 15 months of Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Christian Zionism and Christian nationalism are (more) politically ascendant at the moment in Washington and their proponents are poised to push apartheid and ethnic cleansing for Palestinians. How much capacity advocates of international law retain to push back after 15 months of horror and failure to uphold human rights law for Palestinians in Gaza remains to be seen.

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Michael F. Brown

Michael F. Brown is an independent journalist. His work and views have appeared in The International Herald Tribune, TheNation.com, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The News & Observer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post and elsewhere.