The Infinite Cat Project - Slide #1269: Ketem - Added 6-25-06

The name "Israel" is rooted in the Hebrew Bible, where Jacob is renamed Israel after wrestling with a mysterious adversary.[2] The biblical nation fathered by Jacob was then called "The Children of Israel" or the "Israelites". Citizens of the modern State of Israel are referred to, in English, as "Israelis".
In an interlinear, literal translation of Genesis 32:28, the first mention of the word "Israel" in the Bible reads as follows: "And-he-is-saying not Jacob he-shall-be-said further name-of-you but rather Israel that you-are-upright with Elohim and with mortals and-you-are-prevailing."[3] Thus one literal translation of "Israel" is "Upright (with) God" (Ishr-al).
The earliest known mention of the name 'Israel', probably referring to a group of people rather than to a place, is the Egyptian Merneptah Stele dated to about 1211 BCE. [4] For over 3,000 years, Jews have regarded the Land of Israel as their homeland, both as a Holy Land and as a Promised land. The land of Israel holds a special place in Jewish religious obligations, encompassing Judaism's most important sites — including the remains of the First and Second Temples, as well as the rites concerning those temples. [5] Starting around 1200 BCE, a series of Jewish kingdoms and states existed intermittently in the region for more than a millennium.
Under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and (briefly) Sassanian rule, Jewish presence in the province dwindled due to mass expulsions. In particular, the failure of the Bar Kochba Revolt against the Roman Empire resulted in the large-scale expulsion of Jews. It was during this time that the Romans gave the name Syria Palaestina to the geographic area, in an attempt to erase Jewish ties to the land. The Mishnah and Jerusalem Talmud, two of Judaism's most important religious texts, were composed in the region during this period. The Muslims conquered the land from the Byzantine Empire in 638 CE. The area was ruled by various Muslim states (interrupted by the rule of the Crusaders) before becoming part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517..