The Invention of the Jewish People

As a man with limited formal education I first off admit to being no critic of books of history nor books of books of history. My interest in The Invention of the Jewish People is a logical progression from reading the King James Old Testament in its entirety (I'm on the second go), The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy - by John Mearesheimer and Stephen Walt, The Middle East in World Affairs by George Lenczowski, A History of the Modern Middle East by William Cleveland and Martin Bunton, Theologico and Political Treatise, and Political Treatise both by Benedict de Spinoza, and Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence. Through this limited collection of sources it became apparent to me there was much more to zionism than I would be able to read about in one book. That is until I read The Invention of the Jewish People. Whatever your takeaway from this book, I as a heritage Christian highly recommend The Invention of the Jewish People to those church-goers who subscribe to the fantastical notion put forth by many evangelical congregations. The book is tough sledding in some spots, particularly the first chapter which sets out to define nationalism, the purpose of which is to ground the investigations and conclusions put forth by Professor Sand. But man doesn't progress by reading down but only by reading up. It is important to realize students in Israel are not even permitted to read some of the sources Prof. Sand cites in this thorough and enlightening book so that I urge anyone interested in having a deeper perspective of our current bloody posture in the Middle East to read Professor Sand's book. I appreciate Professor Sand's book so much and look forward to The Invention of the Land of Israel. It is becoming more and more apparent to me that the Zionist movement is not so much about religion and promises the Hebrew God made to a long past tribe, as it is money and the effete lust for power. P.S. And with the newly initiated war Israel and the U.S. vehemently deny is happening, this book is even more pertinent to understanding our irrational and immoral attachment to the political machine of zionism, camouflaged as a religion.

Schlomo Sand is employed as a professor of contemporary history at the University of Tel Aviv. The Invention of the Jewish People was originally published in Hebrew in Israel. Translations of his work are now being published throughout the world in many languages, including English. Sand is the son of a World War II era veteran of the Polish Communist Party. He is also the son-in-law of a Spanish anarchist who fought Franco nationalists in the streets of Barcelona during the Civil War/Revolution. Professor Sand would probably describe himself as an apple, fallen somewhat distant from those trees, perhaps as a cosmopolitan liberal. His view of Israel is that it would better off giving up being an `ethnocracy'--Sand's term for the ethno-biologically defined Jewish political State. Professor Sand's preference is for Israel to become a garden variety, secular capitalist democracy like France or the United States of America. Dr. Sand gives his readers many insights into the general intellectual foundations of the modern era's nationalist ideological project and of Zionist nationalist project in particular. In this reviewer's opinion, The Invention of the Jewish People is worth reading for these critical observations alone, as nationalism has been and continues to be a strong ideological force in our time. Sand makes the case that class societies up until the 18th century were made up mostly of sedentary peasants and nomadic herdsmen. Sand effectively argues that there was no official ideology of nationalism embedded in the consciousness of the people who lived within these pre-industrial societies. Historically speaking, these agrarian formations were dominated by classes of aristocrats, landlords and slave owners. The nomadic and peasant majorities of this ancient world had no notion of being part of a nation. Comprehending this insight is fundamental to grasping Sand's arguments about how nationalism, and in particular Jewish nationalism, was an ideological invention. As opposed to modern day nationalist conscious, based on self-regulated `patriotism' , schooled with `pledges of allegiance', ubiquitous posters of `our fearless leader' and `hats off at the sports match in honour of the national anthem', ancient rulers relied on keeping the mostly peasant producers of wealth in a constant state of fear of the absolute power of the sovereign. There was no sense of being a part of a national political State amongst the general populace. At best, the sovereign only had to, "secure the loyalty of the state's administration in order to preserve the continuity and stability of the government, but the peasants were required simply to pass along the surplus agricultural produce and sometimes to provide the monarchy and nobility with soldiers. Taxes were of course collected by force, or at any rate by its constant implicit threat, rather than by persuasion or efforts at consensus." (p.26) Capitalist rule erupted out of political revolutions against these ancient expressions of absolutism. The revolutions of modernity (from Cromwell's Puritans in the mid 17th century to Colonial America's yeoman farmers and private property owners, to the overthrow of monarchism in France by its citizens and in country after country well into the 19th and 20th centuries) all resulted in the establishment of national political States. All nationalisms were political expressions of the rapidly changing social relations of the producers of wealth. From peasant subjects, to wage-labouring citizens, the producing classes were united, after nationalist revolt, as citizens with the ruling capitalist and landlord classes in one big political State. These conditions were accompanied by new political notions, primary amongst them, the rule of law and the classless identity politics which proclaimed that sovereignty was no long the king's; but for the `people' of the nation. From these material circumstances sprang a need by the ruling class for the legitimation of their system of political dominance thus, the impetus for public intellectuals to invent and spread the gospel of the various and sundry nationalist brands. One of the first tasks these amplified intellectual voices had to confront was to define who `the people' were. Sand contends that modern public intellectuals invented all nationalist ideologies thus, all `peoples'. Most of these intellectuals mixed history with cultural myths in order to fashion their nationalist ideologies. Sand calls these nationalist ideologies passing for history, `mythistory'. More than a few of these nationalist mythistories were combined with the pseudo-scientific invention of `race', an ideology originating in the 18th century. "In the nineteenth century, national cultures often tied the soft term, `people', to the rigid and problematic `race,' and many regarded the two words as intersecting, supporting, or complimentary. The homogeneous collective origin of `the people'--always, of course, superior and unique, if not actually pure--became a kind of insurance against the risks represented by fragmentary, though persistent, sub identities that continued to swarm beneath the unifying modernity. The imagined origin also served as an efficient filter against undesirable mixing with hostile neighbouring nations." (p.27) However, by 1945, the horror of the Nazi holocaust, most especially its connection with `Ayrian' racist mythhistory, prompted world leaders and public intellectuals to officially renounce `race' as having any scientifically based, genetic substance. UNESCO statements on race in the early 1950s explained `race' as a social myth and the 1998 American Anthropological Association statement on `race' proclaimed it to be a pseudo-scientific concept. Still, the `commonsense' notion that there are `races' has persisted and is present to this day in public discourse even though, as Sand observes, pre-WWII notions of `race' have more and more morphed into the bourgeois intellectually acceptable concept of `ethnicity'. To be sure, the oppressive force of racism persists. Not only that but, it is often legitmised, Sand would argue, by continuing to legitimate an ethno-biological linkage with nationalist ideological concepts defining, `the people'. That the Nazi extermination of `inferior races' during WWII, threw a spanner in the ideological works of those attempting to link `race' with `nation', is true. However, as Sand points out, it was particularly problematic for Zionist ideologists. Since its inception in the mid-19th century, its legitimacy was based on the notion of a genetic connection between ancient and modern peoples of the Jewish faith and culture. According to this mythistory, modern day Jews were genetically linked to those people who inhabited that portion of the Middle East known as Israel, Judea and Palestine in the early 1st century CE. A fusing of Biblical stories with actual history had long become part of the Zionist ideological project. As the nationalist ideological story goes (Sand writes a much more detailed account in a chapter he titles, `Mythistory'), the Jewish people were deported from their homeland after much of Jerusalem, along with the Second Temple, was destroyed in 70CE by the Roman soldiers under the command of Titus. As the story went, this came as punishment for an unsuccessful revolt against the Roman Empire by the Jewish people. According to this mythical tale, the whole of this Jewish people then wandered the Earth in exile from their homeland. The Zionist nationalist project was designed to bring the Jewish people home to "Eretz Israel" from their long exile. What Sand demonstrates, in his meticulously researched book, is that great mass of the people who lived in what was then the Roman province of Palestine in 70CE were not exiled. As he conclusively shows, conquerors of that era, including the Babylonian conquerors related in the Biblical story of the destruction of the First Temple and the Romans who destroyed the Second Temple, never exiled whole peoples because those peoples were the peasant producers of wealth and obtaining that wealth, along with the power that goes with it, is what being a ruling class is all about. Peasants are generally tied to their land and most people living in Roman Palestine were peasants. Peasants don't move around. They're sedentary. Ancient ruling classes always liked it that way. As Sand points out, conquering rulers of ancient times would routinely enslave defeated elites from the ruling class whom they had conquered but, they would leave the great mass of the people (mostly peasant farmers) on the land, to continue to produce wealth, as these peasants had done for various other ruling classes for centuries before. The implications of this revelation for the current relation between peoples identifying themselves as Palestinians and those identifying themselves as Jews both inside and outside the immediate borders of Israel are pretty obvious in this reviewer's opinion. The classless nationalist identity politics, which keep rank and file Palestinian and Israeli workers at each other's throats, is based on a series of invented fictions. Of course, this is true for all the world's nationalisms, for all are ideological inventions which assume that the working class and the employing class have interests in common. So, where do most of the people of the Jewish faith in the world come from, if not from an ethno-biologically connected people who were exiled from their homeland by the Romans in 70 CE? Sand's answer is that most come from "proselytising". Sand demonstrates that the first great monotheistic religion, Judaism, was spread to eager pagan converts throughout the Mediterranean basin a long time before the competing monotheistic religions of Christianity and Islam arose. The question which came to this reviewer's mind was, "Why would polytheists find this monotheistic religion, with its invisible deity so attractive?" Shorter work time is one of Sand's fascinating insights. The weekly day of rest, the Sabbath, turned the practice of Judaism into a way of legitimising free time, much to the consternation of the slave owning ruling classes of the ancient, polytheistic world. As Sand relates, a great victory for the proselytisers of the Jewish faith came with the conversion of the Punics. Punic Carthage was not a Hebrew speaking city state. It was located in what is today the political State of Tunisia. After the defeat of Carthage by the Roman Republic in 146 BCE, the Jewish religion continued to be practiced amongst the peasant people of this region. The faith also spread to nearby nomadic Berbers, who were later to accompany the Arabic Muslim conquerors of Spain as soldiers in 711 CE. The implications here are enormous, especially considering what happened to Jews who refused to convert to Christianity during Ferdinand and Isabella's reign in Spain, circa 1492CE. Sand presents historically documented evidence of the many other conversions to Judaism within the confines of the heavily used trading routes of Mediterranean, in the late BCE and the early CE of the Roman Empire. He shows that this proselytising tendency was more or less suppressed with the rise of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century CE and of Islam after the 8th century CE. "Proselytizing Jews were driven from the arena of rival monotheisms, Christianity or Islam, to the land of paganism, with immigrants who convinced the pagans that their faith was preferable. The great mass proselytizing campaign that began in the second century BCE, with the rise of the Hasmonean kingdom, reached its climax in Khazaria in the eighth century CE." (p. 220) As Sand shows, the conversion of the Kagan of Khazaria, a kingdom located above the Black Sea, helped create a great mass of people of the Jewish faith. Many of these Jewish religionists spread out into what is now Eastern Europe after Khazaria was overrun by the Mongols under Genghis Khan in the early 13th century CE. Sand writes, "The Khazars were a coalition of strong Turkic or Hunnic-Bulgar clans who, as they began to settle down, mingled with the Scythians who had inhabited these mountains and steppes between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, which was known for a long time as the Khazar Sea. At its peak, the kingdom encompassed an assortment of tribes and linguistic groups, Alans and Bulgars, Magyars and Slavs. The Khazars collected taxes from them all and ruled over a vast landmass, stretching from Kiev in the northwest to the Crimean Peninsula in the south, and from the upper Volga to present-day Georgia." (p.214) As Sand demonstrates time and again, actual history profoundly conflicts with the `mythistory' of the BIBLE which forms the very foundation on which Israeli nationalist ideology and ultimately, the Israeli political State rests. For example, the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, 1948: "After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom." (p.129) The Invention of the Jewish People is a work which will be useful to any reader interested in making sense of the social relations of power and current political conflicts arising from them in the modern day Middle East. Doctor Sand's work should be helpful to those eager to grasp the conceptual intricacies of nationalist ideology and how it has come to distort political judgements amongst and between workers of the world today.

ADDENDUM NO. 2: June 2011 On re-reading Sand's book, I see that like so many other readers I was caught up in the history that was new to me. The book, however, is not a history -- it's historiography, a book about the evolution of historical writing: who the authors were, the historians' backgrounds, historical environments, and purposes, their relations with one another and how they based their works on previous histories. Sand's historiographic study concludes that Jewish history, like history of many other subjects, comes in two flavors: a canon that serves nationalism and adjusts to political exigencies, and scientific history that evolves along with the availability of documentary and physical evidence, as well as with changes in professional techniques. Sand gives several examples of politically motivated changes in the canonical history of the Jews. Most of the changes originated from the rise of "ethnic" nationalism in the late 1800s in Eastern Europe (as contrasted with the earlier "citizenship" nationalism of the early 1800s in Western Europe -- see pages 46-54). This political movement in the region where most Jews lived led Jewish nationalist historians to re-define Jewish identity as ethnic, rather than religious. For example: -- The existence of other ethnic communities that had converted to Judaism was progressively ignored as ethnic identity was emphasized. -- Racialist theories about Jews were promoted in the late 1800s when such analysis was fashionable but dropped after the Nazi episode put it in a bad odor, only to be revived after the 1967 conquest of the West Bank once again put a premium on distinguishing Jews from their neighbors inside the same borders. -- While historians, including David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, knew and wrote that Palestinian fellahin were by-and-large descended from Judean Jews, the anti-colonial Palestinian revolt of 1929 led Jewish history to cease mentioning it. The most important lesson of Sand's book is that modern nation-states reward an historical canon that serves nationalism, and they combat scientific history where it contradicts the canonical history. This is an important lesson because political pressure can affect other sciences as well. The public in the main only knows canon history thanks to government schools and political festivals. Sand recounts some scientific history not only because it appeals to him but because he wants the public to be more aware of the existence of scientific history. ORIGINAL REVIEW: Shlomo Sand argues that the Jewish religion was a huge success in gaining converts -- so much so that the number of Jews in ancient times (around 4 million) was vastly more than the imaginable number of exiles from the Judean population. This made the Jewish people cosmopolitan, not simply a Judean group. The "invention" in Sand's title is the subsequent claim that Jews were "essentially" all Judean exiles. Sand points out that exiling whole countries was physically impossible. In Judea's case, he says there is no evidence that more than a few thousand elite would have been forced to leave. The Jewish society, farmers and shepherds in its majority, continued. Alexander the Great and then the Romans conquered many nations, and Sand says that the scope for international interchange within the Hellenistic and Roman Empires tempted many people from nations like Judea to re-locate, especially to attractive metropoles like Alexandria and Rome. This would have been interesting mainly to elites and intellectuals, and it was these elite Judeans who were so successful in attracting pagans to convert to Judaism. One response to these findings that one hears is that they're true but that they don't change the "essential truth" that Jews were "exiled" from Judea, propelled by a change in the Jews' sense of themselves. Sand's book frequently refers to "essentialist" arguments like this, and evidently he does not agree. It's very useful to have these points made in a prominent way. Sand's book also contains some intricate and interesting discussions of nationhood in the abstract. He can over-talk a subject, however, and the last chapter about democracy in modern Israel seems like almost a change in subject. ADDENDUM NO. 1: I characterized Sand's book as a "useful confirmation of under-reported information." Prof. Tony Judt is in a better position to judge, so I was gratified to read this section from his review in The Financial Times: "His [Sand's] contribution, critics assert, is at best redundant. For the last century, specialists have been perfectly familiar with the sources he cites and the arguments he makes. From a purely scholarly perspective, I have no quarrel with this. Even I, dependent for the most part on second-hand information about the earlier millennia of Jewish history, can see that Prof Sand - for example in his emphasis upon the conversions and ethnic mixing that characterise the Jews in earlier times - is telling us nothing we do not already know. "The question is, who are "we"? Certainly in the US, the overwhelming majority of Jews (and perhaps non-Jews) have absolutely no acquaintance with the story Prof Sand tells. They will never have heard of most of his protagonists, but they are all too approvingly familiar with the caricatured version of Jewish history that he is seeking to discredit. If Prof Sand's popularising work does nothing more than provoke reflection and further reading among such a constituency, it will have been worthwhile." Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

also read: Evron's JEWISH STATE OR ISRAELI NATION? Sands is a scholar's scholar. I think any Arab or Palestinian who decides to take revenge on Israel and kill all the Jews should first spend a year at an Israeli university. There you find truly beautiful minds with giant hearts. There you find the real Jewish Ethic struggling with the Zionist Myth. There you find thinking, debating, talking and delving into complexity as you find nowhere else. If you think we need another Holocaust to rid the world of Jews,then write down your reasons on a paper, put it in your pocket, and go to any Israeli university. There you will see that your reasons apply to no one there. You will see that Jewish intellect-- even Israeli intellect-- cannot be characterized in any generality as Jewish/Israeli intellect is always: SIX OF THE WORLD'S BEST MINDS ARGUING ENDLESSLY OVER SEVEN OPINIONS. So how could you have a reason to love them, to hate them, to be neutral towards them....IT IS AN ENDLESS ROLLERCOSTER RIDE!!!! Their intellect cannot be pinned down to this and that. All you can say is that Israelis/Jews are divers. They love to dive into the darkness of complexity and bring back to the light of understanding to the surface. Then, only then, ask yourself if you really want to destroy these monuments to human evolution. Israel is not where you find perfection. But it is where you find endless contemplation. Israelis are *SECRETLY* constantly searching their souls asking: WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME? They have been over-propagandized with the HOLOCAUST and think it is an INEVITABLE fate, like a Sword of Damocles, hanging over their heads. They are scared that 1) Diaspora Jews will abandon them; b) that their past lack of mensch-hood will come to haunt them and cause them to become victims again and; 3) that everyone hates them because they think they are miserable people. Well, my father was just like an Israeli Jew. That is because he is an East European. We are not very easy to take. Me, I'm far more traveled than my dad and never felt compelled to prove myself to others or to compete in order to survive. But East Euros are all like that. I'm more like my mom-- East Euro women are wonderful, like Asian women. They are everything the men are not. Well, Sands, like Boas Evron, is trying to tell you that, when you strip the Zionist myths of some sort of blood line identity, what you've got is the best of Eastern Europe because the Jews who "came back to the Holy Land" are really East Euros from a long line of converts. You see, Judaism spread north far, far faster than it could through reproduction and migration. Like Christianity, it was Middle Eastern monotheist mysticism that got right to the heart of East Euros. Unfortunately, Israel is really East Euros who rightly despised how they were treated by their fellow East Euros so they moved to Palestine and there are treating the Arabs exactly as they were treated. Hey, no one is perfect! These two books-- Evron and Sands-- are hard to read. Afterall, guys who learn European languages think like European in complex sentences. None of the American type: "Jack and Jill went up the hill. Jack turned to Jill. Jill said "what?" Jack jumped her bones. Jill loved it...." No, it's more like: "Jack, step by step, Jill's right hand in his left--eyes fixed on her small (nevertheless succulent cleavage"-- and those ankles...Lord God, how did you think of making such ankles...so gracefully walking up the hill-- made love fire up his brain and desire burn in his loins....." Get what I mean? But don't be put off by that, nor by the small print. When you read them both, you are left wondering: my God, from afar Israelis all seem like Zionazis. Yet, there they go, producing such deep introspection. Everyone of these books that you would imagine would produce a scandal about Zionism and surely would be suppressed by American Zionists, labeling them "anti-Semitic," in fact, are common fare in Israel and create quite a discussion. Why? Because Israelis are the sabra children of East Euro's best intellectuals. Sabra is a prickly plant and that they are indeed, but they are the BEST minds of a Europe that may have been primitive and wild but, nevertheless, regarded its intellectuals as gifts from God. It is unfortunate that they so mistreated their Jews. But you see, East Euros ALWAYS HURT THE ONE THEY LOVE and live the rest of their lives in tragedy. I'd say the main problem is that we're kind of paranoid and, therefore, extremely jealous. Take Stalin, he came to love Jews as his mentors and teachers as he moved from the path of an Eastern Orthodox monk to that of a Communist revolutionary. But as soon as he saw Golda Meyer come to Moscow as Israel's ambassador and how Jews bowed to her in admiration as a rep from the world's first Jewish State, he got jealous and began the Doctors' Plot. Everything is a lot more complicated to be sure, but there's truth in what I say. Jews in East Europe are OF US so they are like us....That's why no one likes them as no one likes us: because we're perpetual drama queens. But go to Israel and see how--even the wrong headed and the hasbara liars-- they produce such marvelous thinking and have such kind hearts (though they have an inferiority complex, are paranoid and very jealous types) that you leave wondering: HOW THE HELL COULD ANYONE HATE THESE PEOPLE. Well, then read BLOODLANDS to see what a murderous place East Euro was through the 1930s and 40s. I can't believe that I'm still alive. Perhaps, the East Euro Israelis should intermarry with the Italian ones to soften their edges. But, be that as it may, these two books: Sands and Evron will make you understand and see what BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE ISRAELIS ARE and what victims they are of insecurity, fearing betrayal by their kin in Diaspora-- that's what they think will bring about their Holocaust. Yet, when you get Israeli Jews and Arabs together, invariably you realize: Wow, these guys are family...it just clicks perfectly. So read about Israeli Jews and Arabs and East Euro too and you'll see that, though a pain in the ass, they are well worth putting up with and trying to keep up with their genius because beneath it all is the best heart of mankind. I would love nothing more than to end my days as a goy olim making my aliyah to Israel where I'd be on their turf and nobody there would tell me: "you can't talk about that because if you question in any way Zionist exceptionalism, you're an anti-Semite. No way, in Israel you've got brilliant intellectuals who-- if they're not doing brilliant science-- are disemboweling all their myths subjecting them to philosophical inquiry. In conclusion, what I'm saying is read anything an Israeli writes introspectively because you know it is profound, in no way self-sparing (even brutal) and will make you think, think, think. In America that's exactly what we need to do to avoid waking up one morning and realizing that we're nothing but a bunch of chimps who can only say: "SAVE ME JESUS!" Reading Jewish self-criticism or inteospection is the best way to immunize yourself against anti-Semitsm and to see what a wonderful home for your mind is an Israeli cafe. As soon as Arabs realize that, there will be wonderful family gatherings between the two....all it takes is tweeking Israeli's East Euro craziness. Sands is a perfect example of mensch-hood with limitless intellectual courage. But the fine print and torturous Englsih syntax...oy!

A fascinating history of how a political movement has turned the world's most diverse, morally-correct culture into an ethno-centric blood-creed of cultural imperialism. It is written by a secular Jewish professor of History, who worked in France and now teaches in Tel Aviv University. This book is a history book. The first 100 pages or so beyond the introduction (which is beautiful) is very dry history or European Nationalism. It is tedious reading for the lay person but it sets the stage for the rest of the book. This book is monumental in its insight, research and revelation. The only shortcoming is that some of the sentences are structurally complex and must be read slowly. This could have been caused by the difficulties is translating from Hebrew to English. You might have noticed that the reviewers of this book either loved it or hated it, as evidenced by 5 Star and 1 star review rating numbers are much more than 2, 3, or 4 star ratings. There an obvious reason for that. Sand makes a simple case, based on solid history and references, that the "Jewish race" is an invention of European elitists, driven by the perceived need to nationalize a morally correct, religious, mystical culture. Zionism turned the historic character of this culture on its head. Shlomo simply shows that the tribal perception that all Jews are related by blood, has been exploited to the maximum, and Sand proves this "Jewish" association to be totally false. Judaism is/was a religious ethnic group/culture through most of its history, and only recently has been remodeled primarily as a blood-identity ethnic group. Many Palestinians could have more of the original tribal "Jewish blood" than do the Eastern European converts that now oppress them. Few rural Jewish farmers were ever "driven into exile" and may well have converted to Islam centuries ago to keep their farms, and to keep his/her family from scattering into abject poverty and/or homelessness in the wilderness, either of which could have been literally life-threatening. The great coversions to Judaism in Eastern Europe, North of the Black Sea, in the 700-1000 CE centuries were never recognized by the Zionist, as they rallied Jewish people to believe they were all "bloodline" inheritors of the holy land. This ignoring of historical conversions was essential for the tribal consciousness required to justify the Zionists terrorists seizing farms from indigenous people of former Palestine. The first 100 pages of the text is difficult reading, as Sand teaches us about the world race towards nationalism in the 20th and 19th century, of which Nazi Germany was the most notorious example. There were rediculous myths and stories of nations' blood line identities in many countries and ethnic groups. The European Jewish people were no different and started the Zionist movement around the turn of the century. After the first 100 pages or so, the book becomes very interesting. There are footnotes at the bottom of each page, and a robust index. The book ends declaring that one true democratic State (not a two-state solution; and not an exclusive "Jewish State") of all Israelis, and a right of return for both the indigenous Palestinians as well as Jews, is the only way to peace in Israel. That's why this book is so contraversial.

In short, this book is a LANDMARK book. No doubt, it will cause a new tectonic movement shift in opinions regarding Jews and Israel in the entire world. What the author has done is to organize existing materials into their proper context (there is no new research in the book). No longer is the Jewish history discussed in isolation. When the Old Testament stories are discussed in proper world historical and archaeological contexts, virtually ALL the stories fall apart as historical facts (Exodus, Joshua's fight, where the term Israel originated from, marginal existence of the kingdoms of Solomon and David, the fall and exile in 70 CE, etc. etc.). Secondly, the author reviews and devastatingly demolishes the notion that the current global Jewish populations are connected to the Land of Israel, in any significant manner. Once again, he argues using historical documents regarding conversion to Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds as significant sources of Jews. In short, it's like having Christians in all corners of the world; they were converted, not descendants of the people of ancient Israel/Palestine. It is again presented in the context of world history. It is a grand history encompassing all the way from the Berbers of North Africa to the Volga and the Don in present-day Ukraine. The more one knows of world history, the more the author's narrative makes sense. It is powerfully and logically presented so that the main conclusions are inescapable; the present global Jewish population originated from multiple stocks--and are primarily the results of conversion. Thirdly, the author extensively documents the changing historical narratives the European Zionists concocted for political ends. This is wonderfully presented, once again, in the context of modern European history. He further shows how "expert" individuals and scholars were repeated co-opted to support the "prevailing" winds; similar to Stalinist Soviet Union and even the Nazis under Hitler. National histories were invented to make a point--that is Chosen people of the Old Testament, whose descendants are returning to their Homeland. Reading this book, absolutely convinces you how absurd this Jewish Israeli narrative is. Lastly, he reviews the attempts of modern science to prove the connection of modern Jewish population to the ancient ones. Here, the Zionists' attempts are pathetic and patently racially-motivated. I almost fell off my chair when the author mentioned Prof. Karl Skorecki's involvement on p. 277. Karl and I used to be good friends and he even came to my wedding thirty years ago!! What a shame that such a brilliant physician ended up doing such marginal and pseudo-science. I am terribly saddened. There is much, much more in this book that I cannot cover adequately here. It is a profound book that needs to be read carefully--I read it twice before I decided to write a review. It is the equivalent of the introduction of Copernicus' heliocentric universe. The earth-centered model could survive as long as there was no better model to explain, even though there were lots of inconsistencies. But once a better explanation is made widely known to the public, there is no going backwards. The Israel Myth is now shown to be totally bogus at the most fundamental levels. (The detractors, of course, claim that there is nothing new here. The significance is that now the world is going to know the story, that's NEW!!) Given the current awareness of the nature of Israeli actions (Occupation, Gaza War, Lebanon War, Apartheid policy, Settlements etc. etc.) and the near universal condemnation of its policies, the impact of this book will be nothing short of revolutionary in the long run. Shlomo Sand is a man of courage above all. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the truth. (This will be my Christmas gift to all my friends and family this year!!!. THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORDS.

Although he never mentions the "two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in "The Invention of the Jewish People" Israeli historian Shlomo Sand implicitly rejects it in favor of what has come to be called the "one-state solution": "The ideal project for solving the century-long conflict...would be the creation of a democratic binational state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River." (p. 311) Sand, however, is deeply pessimistic concerning the likelihood of any solution being reached at all. Implicitly he takes the position that the possibility of peace rests not so much on the Palestinians, or on the Arabs in general, as on the Israeli Jews themselves. They must somehow come to understand that the Israeli policy of apartheid (Sand's term, p. 309), and the false notion that Israel can be a "Jewish state" and yet a democracy at the same time, doom the chances of peace. But is it possible that the Israelis will ever come to believe that they must share the land on an equal basis with the Palestinian non-Jews? Sand identifies two major factors - two associated myths -- which stand in the way. These have served the Zionist cause well but they are historically false: the myth of the Jewish "people" and the myth of the "exile" of this people from the land of Israel. If essentially there is no Jewish people -- rather only a Jewish religion; and if the Jewish diaspora was driven not by forced exile -- rather by the impulse to proselytize, then the Zionist-sponsored "return" of the Jewish "people" to the land of Israel in the mid twentieth century has lost its entire theoretical framework. Sand is a scholar and in style the book is a scholarly work. The general reader may be put off at first. I suggest the book may be more approachable if you begin by reading Chapter 2, "Mythhistory: In the Beginning God Created the People". The first chapter "Making Nations" is a bit difficult to get through, and might be dispensed with. The Introduction contains four personal histories whose relevance is at first obscure. I suggest you read the Introduction after you finish the rest of the book, not before. For only then is the point of these personal stories, which are quite moving, readily understood. According to Sand Zionism's traditional discrimination against non-Jews ("gentiles") has rested upon and required the false notion that Jews constitute a distinct biologically-grounded race. This idea originated and first thrived amidst the nineteenth century obsession with "nations". Political Zionism grew up in the atmosphere of that obsession. But the history of Judaism undercuts it. In three cases in particular Sand demonstrates that gentile populations found the religion attractive enough to adopt it en masse. Thus there is no racial or biological distinction between Jews and gentiles. These are the case of the Himyarites in what is now Yemen, the Berbers in northwest Africa and the Khazars who lived in what is now southern Russia. Zionist historians, for whom Sand has special scorn, have downplayed or ignored the facts surrounding this history. If proselytizing Jews have spread Judaism to gentile populations, it could still be true that the movement of Jews into gentile lands in the first place was due to their having been expelled long ago from the land of Israel. According to traditional Jewish thinking, this expulsion happened after the Roman emperor Titus destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in the year 70AD - or, perhaps it was after 135AD when the Bar Kochba revolt was put down by the Romans. Or again, perhaps the forced exile of the Jews occurred in the 7th century after the Muslims took ownership of Palestine. In fact the historical record contains no evidence of any forced exile of Jews from Palestine - ever -- according to Sand. He believes that a significant portion of the Arab population in Palestine is probably descended from early Jewish inhabitants of that land - who were never expelled but who were eventually converted to Christianity or to Islam in later centuries. Sand points out that some of the early Zionists, including Ben-Gurion himself, believed the same thing (until it eventually became inconvenient for them to do so.) Unsurprisingly "The Invention of the Jewish People" has aroused controversy well before its publication in English translation. That will only increase now. The fact that it is the work of an Israeli academic will make it so much harder for Zionists in America to ridicule or ignore it. (The title of this review comes from p. 13 of the book.)

Interesting read!

Good and interesting book, well written and well documented. Not that easy to read, the work of a great scholar.

Un excelente libro.

What a beautiful book. It destroys all the myths we used to hear. It invites to look at history from totally different angles. Well written and researched.

Livro muito bom. Reflete não apenas sobre a formação de uma consciência judaica, mas também sobre transformações dessa consciência por meio de narrativas e ideologias ao longo de diversos períodos históricos. Concordando ou discordando do autor, o leitor, certamente, terá um momento de reflexão e amadurecimento. Verá que, ao final, não somente o povo judeu teve sua invenção, mas que, na linha de B. Anderson, todas as comunidades são imaginadas, criadas, recriadas, narradas e o sentido coletivo é uma construção narrativa ficcional com carga histórico-ideológica que é dotada do valor quase que dogmático de verdade em toda e qualquer nação ou comunidade. Assim, o sentido de pertencimento, sempre será daqueles que se adequarem à visão dominante e sua "narrativa verdadeira". Mas, o leitor crítico, expandirá o estudo e verá que não apenas todas as comunidades são imaginadas, todas as narrativas são fictícias como, e mais importante, no final, tudo é literatura ou mentira, conforme o prisma que se usa para tratar de qualquer cultura ou comunidade.

This is an exceptionally well written (particularly in the Hebrew original) and bluntly presented exposition. While one may disagree with the political perspective that underlies this compilation, and its more recent companion "The Invention of the Land of Israel", the historical analysis on which it is based is beyond reproach. Incidentally, the correct translation of the respective titles is "When and How was the Jewish People/ Land of Israel Invented" which better reflects the historical perspective of these myths, which is the main focus and interest of these works. The main myth on which the concept of the "Jewish People" is based is, of course the Old Testament. One of the main points that Sand eloquently and systematically demonstrates is that, while being an amazing compilation in its own right, the Old Testament is not a historical document, as some would have us believe. Another myth that Sand attempts to shatter is the direct link of persons currently identifying themselves as belonging to the "Jewish People" to the original inhabitants of the "Land of Israel" (Itself being largely a myth). According to Sand, based on extensive historical analysis, the widespread dispersal of people of the Jewish faith is due not to exile of such people from Judea/ Palestine, an exile for which there is no historical evidence, but to mass conversions to Judaism which took place at certain periods. Themes of a more political flavour relate to the Zionist national movement's claims for a "Jewish Nation State" in "The Land of Israel", claims which are largely based on the myths of the "Jewish Nation" and its connection to the "Land of Israel". As Sand point out, the whole concept of nationality, as a basis for the so-called "Nation State" is a rather modern one, and one that is often based on myths in an attempt to give these new inventions a historical foundation. In the case of Judaism, there is clearly no basis for such interpretation, not only on historical but on simple logical grounds - one cannot be a Jewish Christian, for instance, or an atheist, for that matter. Clearly Judaism is a religion, first and foremost, which does not exclude some common cultural and historical background for persons identifying themselves as belonging to the "Jewish People". Whether such justification is at all needed, especially in view of the Holocaust and persecution of Jews, not just as a religion but as a presumed ethnic group, is a matter for debate.