Bill to replace ‘West Bank’ with ‘Judea and Samaria’ in state documents, textbooks advances to final House panel

A bill to replace references to the West Bank in government materials with the more historic “Judea and Samaria” has cleared its first House hurdle despite vocal, impassioned public opposition.

Members of the Government Operations Subcommittee voted 16-1 for HB 31, which would be implemented in schools at the regular rate books and other materials are replaced, according to Rep. Chase Tramont, the bill’s co-prime sponsor.

Tramont, a Port Orange Republican and former high school history teacher who now works as a pastor, said the bill is about teaching facts, not “politically charged propaganda.” He noted Florida has the third-largest Jewish population in the country, and accurately teaching students about history is important.

“The last thing you want to do is insult your constituency, and you want your trading partners to respect you,” he said. “It’s hard to respect you if you dishonor their history.”

Asked by Fort Lauderdale Democratic Rep. Daryl Campbell, who voted “no,” why Florida should impose nomenclatural changes that don’t comport with federal terminology, Tramont said there’s an effort to make the same change federally, but Florida shouldn’t have to wait.

“A lot of terminologies are used across the world. They used to refer to the Gulf of America as the Gulf of Mexico, of all things,” he said, smiling. “We’ve corrected that.”

Tramont went on to say that referring to the region as Judea and Samaria adheres to historical fact, while calling it Palestine does not.

“You can choose one or the other, here,” he said. “Judea and Samaria are names that are 3,000 years old. West Bank was just given in 1950 after it was occupied by Jordan for a while. And why was it given (that name)? Simply to erase Jewish history.”

The debate over what to call the land and who has claim to it has persisted for decades. But it exploded across the world after Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,200 and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, leading to a conflict that has since resulted in more than 70,000 reported deaths in Gaza, which sits on the opposite side of Israel from the West Bank.

Rabbi Schneur Oirechman, one of two public speakers who supported HB 31, said the bill doesn’t attempt to resolve border disputes, dictate foreign policy or preempt negotiations between two cultures that both have claim to the land.

“The purpose is modest and far more appropriate for this body, to ensure that the state of Florida uses historically accurate and honest terminology in its official government material,” he said. “When government adopts language rooted in recent political constructs rather than millennia of history, clarity is lost.”

Roughly four times as many public speakers, some of whom identified themselves as Jewish, vehemently opposed the proposal.

Eric Rubin, who said his Jewish uncle grew up in the area and witnessed Jews, Muslims and Christians coexisting in harmony, argued HB 31 is less about honoring history than “defining and disappearing” the Palestinian people.

Vance Aarons described the death toll in Gaza as “one of the largest genocides that we have seen in recent history.” Since the conflict began, approximately 3% of the Gaza population has died due to the war, based on numbers provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between combatants and civilians.

John Palm, a reverend, asked why Florida is so concerned about changing the name of “someone else’s country” and asserted that Palestinians have lived in the Levant, which includes Israel and several other Middle Eastern countries, for 14,000 years. He also inaccurately asserted that DNA testing is illegal in Israel.

HB 31, which Lake Worth Beach Democratic Rep. Debra Tendrich is also co-sponsoring, will next go to the House State Affairs Committee, its last stop before reaching a floor vote.

A twin bill (SB 1106) by Inverness Republican Sen. Ralph Massullo is scheduled for the first of three committee hearings to which it was assigned this coming Monday.

Last week, the Governor of Samaria, Yossi Dugan, visited Tallahassee to meet with Tendrich and Tramont in support of the legislation. Dugan’s role, while elected, isn’t a standalone, executive position; rather, it is a title given to the head of the Shomron Regional Council, an Israeli body that oversees Israeli settlements in the West Bank/Samaria.

Tendrich, who is Jewish, said that when she visited Israel in September, she received “intense backlash … more than for any piece of legislation brought forth in the Legislature.”

“That reaction only reinforced why this bill is necessary,” she said. “Standing with our allies and recognizing truth should never be controversial.”