When David Ben-Gurion declared “the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel” 72 years ago today (according to the Jewish calendar), very few people were aware of the decision, made just four days earlier, to call this new country “the state of Israel.” Most assumed its name would be Judea, although other contestants were Zion, Ever (the root of the word Hebrew), or simply “the Land of Israel.” In an essay drawn from a lecture in his new online course on Israeli independence, Martin Kramer writes:

From its outset, Zionism had talked about creating a Jewish state. . . . As Jewish was a derivative of Judea, this name might have seemed a logical choice. But according to the UN partition plan, virtually all of the traditional geographic area [historically known as] Judea was supposed to be either internationalized—Jerusalem and its environs—or part the Arab state. Calling a state Judea that didn’t include the geographic Judea would have been an anomaly.

But even if the state did wind up possessing a chunk of Judea, it would include much more than it—for example, the Negev. And how could the state be called Judea, when most of it was something else? It was problematic in another way. What would its citizens be called? Y’hudim, [i.e., Judeans, but also the Hebrew for “Jews”]? How would that comport with the Arab citizens of the state, projected in the partition plan to number half a million? So Judea was ruled out.

Erets Yisrael, [the Land of Israel], the biblical Hebrew name for Palestine, was ruled out because of the dangers involved in its irredentist flavor.

Ben-Gurion was the first to push for “Israel,” and managed to garner seven out of ten votes in favor of his suggestion from the provisional cabinet. Thus, writes Kramer, “the name ‘Israel’ came to the state by a process of elimination, [and] because there wasn’t time to come up with anything better. A majority voted for it—unenthusiastically.”

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.