Should We All Stop Using the Word “Levant” ?

Rami Khoury suggests we do:

I suggest we declare the death of the “Levant” label because the citizen revolts across much of the Arab world capture the fact that Arab citizens are now in the very early stages of rewriting their own history and crafting their own national narratives. The region where they are acting deserves to be called something reflecting this fact, namely the “Arab world.”

I don’t use the word in my writing (or my thinking for that matter), but sure, by all means let’s replace one artificial political construct with another bigger one with an equally bad foundation, all because of a revolution with uncertain outcomes on which writers like Mr. Khoury happily project wishful ideologies..

Update: The response of a proud Levantine..