How far they go

Submitted by J. Stein (United States), Nov 3, 2009 at 18:31

Dr. Pipes have you heard about the recently released book "Inventing The Jewish People" by the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand? In this book Sand argues that the Jewish people are not a nation and that they are mostly descended from various people who converted to Judaism in the middle ages. Sand claims that the idea of the Jews as not just a religious group but also a people descended from the ancient Israelites was made up by 19th century Zionist historians. He argues for this despite substantial historical evidence and recent genetic studies that contradict his thesis.

This book was incredibly a best seller earlier this year in Israel and it was praised by the usual suspects like Uri Avnerny, Avi Shlaim and even Avraham Burg. He even won a prize for non-fiction in France for this book. Sand claims that the true descendants of the Israelites are not modern day Jews but actually the Palestinians! He is in favor of the unrealistic one state solution in which Jews and Arabs would share the country. He believes Israel is not a democracy because it is a Jewish state; he thinks the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is that Israel loses its identity as a Jewish state. It is amazing to see how far these anti-Zionists will go to make Israel's right to exist as a Jewish nation appear illegitimate.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".