The word philistine shows up in English literature as early as the 17th century. Today, it’s used to describe someone uncultured, crude or dismissive of art and intellect. A brute. A barbarian.
That’s the punchline. But the setup?
The setup is an entire people, the Palestinians, whose name was twisted into a slur. Let’s talk about that.
The original Philistines were an ancient people from the Aegean region, possibly Mycenaean Greeks who settled along the southern coast of Canaan in the 12th century BCE. That’s right: the Philistines weren’t even Semitic. They were foreign invaders, migrants, sea raiders.
They built five major city-states: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath, forming what became known as Philistia. Sound familiar? That’s because Gaza, their major stronghold, is still very much here.
The Philistines clashed often with the Israelites. Goliath of David and Goliath fame? Philistine. These tensions were immortalized in the Hebrew Bible, which portrays Philistines as godless, violent and uncivilized. Thus began a narrative. And like all colonial narratives, it stuck.
Fast forward a couple thousand years. In 17th-century Germany, university students began referring to townsfolk outside the academy as Philister — borrowed straight from biblical imagery. The idea was that those who opposed “enlightened” knowledge were Philistines. Crude. Uncultured. In the way. The term was imported into English by British poets and critics. Matthew Arnold popularized it further in the 19th century. And by then, philistine had entered the lexicon as an insult, an intellectual jab at the unrefined.
Notably, the word now had nothing to do with the actual people it originally referred to. But the damage was already done.
Here’s where it gets cruel. When the British took control of Palestine after World War I, they revived the ancient name Philistia to describe the region — not out of respect, but as a way to tether the land to ancient biblical narratives. It was archaeology with a mission: justify occupation, strip the native population of legitimacy.
And today, even the very name Palestinian echoes that old slur in many people’s ears. To be “a Philistine” is to be backward, anti-civilization, primitive. And for Palestinians, that unconscious association lingers. In media. In politics. In language.
Is it any wonder Zionists so often portray Palestinians as a violent horde rather than a people with deep roots, culture and history? The linguistic groundwork was laid centuries ago.
Words aren’t neutral. They are swords or shields. When you call someone a philistine, you are unconsciously invoking a long tradition of dehumanization. You are echoing biblical propaganda, Enlightenment snobbery and colonial narratives that reduce entire peoples to cartoon villains.
What’s more damning? That many Palestinians themselves don’t realize this linguistic trap. The word’s biblical and academic legacy has become so normalized that its insidious undertones are rarely questioned.
But we need to question it. We need to reclaim the narrative. The Palestinians are not Philistines in the modern pejorative sense. They are poets, architects, mathematicians, shepherds, mothers, engineers, artists. They are people who make bread and bury their dead with grace.
They are not crude. They are crucified.
They are not backward. They are being pushed back by bulldozers and bombs.
They are not primitive. They are resilient.
It’s time we start interrogating the language we use, especially the language built on biblical and colonial scaffolding. When the West paints Palestinians as irrational, uncultured or angry desert people, they’re just dressing up an old insult in modern terms.
Philistine. Terrorist. Human shield.
It’s all the same language: dehumanize, then destroy.
Gracie Gato is a journalist, mother and truth-teller, examining how language, history and power collide in both politics and personal life. Gato lives in Hudson.