I dunno, I always learned that it was a term used to refer to semitic peoples, which originate from that area.
" a member of any of the peoples mentioned in Genesis 10:2131 as descended from Shem, one of the sons of Noah, traditionally interpreted as including the Hebrews, Aramaeans, Assyrians, and Arabs. Subsequently also: a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language."
"
Semitic people or
Semites is an
obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people#cite_note-FOOTNOTELiverani1995392-2][2][/url][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people#cite_note-Lutz-3][3][/url][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people#cite_note-Pope-4][4][/url][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people#cite_note-Gl%C3%B6cknerFireberg2015-5][5][/url] associated with people of the
Middle East, including
Arabs,
Jews,
Akkadians, and
Phoenicians. The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "
Semitic languages" in linguistics."
Right. It's not a denying of the existence of a Palestine, they say there neve existed a Palestine like we would refer to in modern terms as a country. Which is true. But if you just google "Palestine never existed" or something like that, you'll have plenty of people arguing that the concept of Palestine is new, as if there was never a Palestinian territory at all. The US has multiple territories, some of which were always countries, some of which never have been, and some of which became countries at some point. Doesn't mean they didn't exist. If that makes sense.