Harry's Place

A few links…

Interview with Sand-http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html

Israel Bartel’s review-http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999386.html

Anita Shapira’s very detailed review-http://www.isracampus.org.il/Extra%20Files/Anita%20Shapira%20-%20Shlomo%20Sand%20book%20review.pdf

So surely by your logic every downtrodden group needs its own home land? I remember the apartheid regime in South Africa making similar arguments.

Luckily the native americans and Australian aborigines think its all bollocks.

What the native americans and australians want was to live somewhere where their human rights and culture was respected, and where they weren’t subjected to genocide.

I don’t think that’s an unreasonable desire.

It certainly wasn’t one which was respected until recently.

Jews in the Middle East are in precisely the same position as aborigines and native Americans were in the 19th century, and as Jews were in Europe 60 years ago. To be frank, I also increasingly have little confidence that Jews will not be subject to genocide again in Europe.

A self governing state is certainly one way of preserving the rights of regional minorities. That is why we don’t insist that Croatia and Bosnia become one with Serbia. Because we know precisely what will happen if that union is forced.

It isn’t the only way of doing it. Another way is to establish a state which is firmly based upon pluralism and human rights guarantees. We’ve moved towards doing that in the United Kingdom, from a starting point of independent nation states pooling their sovereignty on a voluntary basis. But to achieve that, you first need to have nation states.

But, certainly, if you feel strongly opposed to small nation states, and believe that regional minorities should be merged into the nearest large state, you can argue for it.

You could start with encouraging the union of Ireland with the United Kingdom, or Greece with Turkey.

Stuart, being murdered in their millions does not define Jews as being merely “downtrodden.”

Good post, Gabriel. I am becoming more and more disturbed about what I call the entrancement of Israel and the west by Islam, to the extent that many in the west appear to have lost their capability to think critically about the impact of Islamism on us or to question it. In consequence many have unthinkingly taken on Islamist versions of events without objective supporting evidence to back them up, simply because they have been spoken of often enough and with apparent authority.

At its base level we see this on blogs like Comment is Free and in the comments of some posters to them.

And it’s pernicious in the extreme.

The other problem I can see, Gabriel, is why he doesn’t extend the same reasoning to decree what are called Palestinian (or Lebanese or Syrian or Jordanian) Arabs as a non-people. Add to his relying on the remaining of large Jewish populations in the region since Antiquity to delegitimalize a Jewish-majority state, it makes me wonder who unties him from all his daily knots.

Worse, according to his wiki entry, his area of ‘expertise’ includes cinema. Add to that the French intellectual history, I’m getting an idea of otiose cultural theory and impenetrable statements which fell out of fashion in French-land 10 years ago.

So surely by your logic every downtrodden group needs its own home land?

Surely by your logic, because you cannot do so for all means you should not do so for any?

I remember the apartheid regime in South Africa making similar arguments.

Zeeland? Ile de France? Somewhere in Flanders?

Luckily the native americans and Australian aborigines think its all bollocks.

Define Native American… Sioux, Apache, Hopi? Plus, in addition to your commending compliant pre-European societies which supposedly submit to European rule, you’ll find that Australian Aborigines are, in many cases, in utterly parlous states. Good to see your sympathetic humanity shining through!

Sand is successful because he tells certain people what they like to hear.

But there is not much point in trying to educate people about how wrong-headed he is.

Rather it is necessary to change the “culture” so that it again can evaluate rationally and discriminate as it did until the last decade or so.

At one time I thought that blogs could do this. But now it’s clear that blogs are just contributing to the noise that makes people unable or uninterested in going beyond a “he says she says” account of globally important issues like nuclear Iran or vaccination.

It will most likely garner excellent reviews in the usual publications and I’d stake my life that it will be enormously popular in the Muslim world. If Jews do not really exist, how can one be an anti-Semite?

This is a hideous paragraph and emblematic of why hatred of a distilled anti-Semitic Islam and its similarly distilled, stereotypical adherents is passed of as criticism these days.

To assume that such a book would be popular is one thing, but to so brazenly associate the false construct ‘Muslim world’ with Jews not existing and anti-Semitism in the very next sentence is shameless; the worst kind of projection.

Contrary to popular belief, the bookshops of the Middle East are not replete with anti-Semitic treatises, and nor is there any evidence that anything more than a tiny minority of ‘Middle-Easterners’ hold anti-Semitic views.

…and shouldn’t the title be ‘When and How were…’

“To be frank, I also increasingly have little confidence that Jews will not be subject to genocide again in Europe”

Really? How on earth do you work that one out? Is it because people object to the bombing of Gaza?

Gameboy, a post with more than one word. Have you been supping on the espressos?

Anyone else notice how Gameboy links a mooted *genocide* against Jews in *Europe* to Israeli actions? Good, it wasn’t just me.

Give France back to the Franks and Goths. Give America back to the Americans. And of course the Mogols have a legitimate claim on most of Russia.

(or Lebanese or Syrian or Jordanian) Arabs as a non-people

To be fair, I’ve never come across anyone from these countries claiming to be a ‘race’ or a ‘people’. Arabic media refer to citizens of these countries and others as ’sh’ab’ which equates to ‘British or French people’, namely ‘citizens’. One often comes across Palestinians referred to as ‘qaum’ or ‘distinct people/tribe’. Islamists or even Muslims in general could never sincerely deny the historical presence of a Jewish ‘people’ given that the term ‘Bani Isra’il’ (tribe/children of Israel) occurs so frequently in the Qur’an.

That’s interesting, Manchurian.

Really? How on earth do you work that one out? Is it because people object to the bombing of Gaza?

No John, it is because you and your party, and others who share your thinking and politics have been working very hard to:

- promote genocidal antisemites

- accuse of racism or worse, anybody who points out that these people are genocidal antisemites.

Frankly, 60 years ago, you’d have said this:

“Really? How on earth do you work that one out? Is it because people object to the Jewish monopoly on banking, the professions, and the media?”

Obviously, you don’t say this yourself. Your lot just restricts yourself to

- the claim that Zionists have a stranglehold on the world, and

- political movements which conspiricise about the Jewish monopoly on banking, the professions, and the media is merely “fighting imperialism”, and should be understood in this context.

What I think will happen is this. First, I think that antisemitism has become acceptable, in the context of resisting imperialism. Secondly, antisemitic Islamist movements are regarded by a significant part of the ‘progressive’ movement as their comrades. Thirdly, I think that objecting to antisemitism, in pretty much any context, is now seen as a Jew trick. Finally, I think that traditional European expressions of antisemitism are now being rehabilitated, by riding on the coat tails of this politics.

Congratulations, John.

Thanks for a great article.
This line made me laugh:
“The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century.”

Oh, FFS, not ANOTHER ignorant asshole writing a book about something he knows nothing about! A classic troofer.

“…and shouldn’t the title be ‘When and How were…’”

No. It should be “When and How the Jewish People was Invented”. Clearly, you don’t understand how questions are formed in English any more than Shlomo’le does (reading his nonsense brings irresistibly to my mind a clever 14-year old, now believing himself as clever as anyone in the world after his bar mitzva, teaching those decrepit “professionals” a thing or two).
The Jewish People here is a singular, a nation; not individuals in the plural. I hope even Shlomo’le doesn’t dispute that individuals self-identifying as Jews exist; but maybe I am giving him too much credit for an IQ above room temperature.

Manchurian, I would disagree with this
nor is there any evidence that anything more than a tiny minority of ‘Middle-Easterners’ hold anti-Semitic views.

But agree with your views on this.
It will most likely garner excellent reviews in the usual publications and I’d stake my life that it will be enormously popular in the Muslim world. If Jews do not really exist, how can one be an anti-Semite?

To criticise the logic and good faith of Sand’s argument and come out with this solipsistic turn of phrase is shoddy. Gabriel, do you think anti-Semitism is prevalent in the ‘Muslim world’ because Muslims believe Jews are a construct? Is it not the reverse? The construction of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy supporting Zionism, the authenticity of texts supportive of this, e.g. the Protocols, is by the lights of many posters on here, a founding basis of Muslim anti-semitism.

You’re suggesting that ‘the Muslim world’ (not anti-semitic Muslims mind, the whole bloody Muslim world) would ditch all of this and begin arguing that Jews are a recent, contingent political construct just because Shlomo Sand provides them with an opening. This is to suggest that Muslims will ditch everything they believe and think about Jews at the drop of a hat if given the opportunity. So Muslims are not driven by (even deplorable) logics of culture, history and politics, but rather, by simple, blind hatred. You might find that plausible, but to me, that seems to morph anti-Semitism in Muslim cultures into a strange and magical phenomenon explainable only by psychoanalysis, and not politics or culture. Which isn’t so egregious or unusual – many anti-Semites themselves would do the same when trying to explain their views. But when you’re attempting to debunk a historian for the bad faith of his arguments, as a political tract rather than history, or an attempt to understand, it seems pretty dubious.

You’re suggesting that ‘the Muslim world’ (not anti-semitic Muslims mind, the whole bloody Muslim world) would ditch all of this and begin arguing that Jews are a recent, contingent political construct just because Shlomo Sand provides them with an opening.

No. The book will be yet one more – like Walt and Mearsheimer – that will be quoted from and distributed on sites like Electronic Intifada and events like UN Human Rights conferences.

No. It should be “When and How the Jewish People was Invented”.

Thanks, NO, for your contribution, but I thinks that’s open to debate. Could you explain why you think ‘Jewish People’ should take the singular form of the copular?

Clearly, you don’t understand how questions are formed in English

Evidently not, no.

Was,
what you fail entirely to take into account is the very real ability of many anti-Semites to hold opposing views at the same time. Anti-Semitism is not a rational outcome of the “logics of culture, history and politics”, and to grace it with that excuse is highly deplorable. It is irrational hatred. We have seen its advocates regarding the Jews as subhuman vermin on the one hand, and as extremely clever manipulators of world history on the other. That does not say “rationality” and “logic” to me. If the Jews are monkeys and pigs, how can they manipulate the gentiles? Similar effects are seen among troofers.

Gabriel, do you think anti-Semitism is prevalent in the ‘Muslim world’ because Muslims believe Jews are a construct? Is it not the reverse? The construction of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy supporting Zionism, the authenticity of texts supportive of this, e.g. the Protocols, is by the lights of many posters on here, a founding basis of Muslim anti-semitism.

I also don’t think it is possible to generalise about ‘the Muslim World’. We can, however, predict what government and Islamist linked publications and campaigning organisations are likely to think and say. And I would expect them to be enthusiastic about a thesis such as this.

In fact, if you look around the web for mentions of Khazars, you’ll find that Islamist (and neo Nazi) sites enthusiastically claim that all Jews are false Jews, descended from Khazars. The completely contradictory believe that Jews are real Jews but are being punished by God for disobeying him is also extremely popular in Islamist websites.

Contradictory views on Jews are very popular amongst Islamists. That is why it is possible to argue that (a) the Holocaust didn’t happen or was exagerated by Jews (b) the Holocaust was carried out with Zionist connivance and (c) the Holocaust unfortunately didn’t go far enough, all at the same time.

That is because these views aren’t actually contradictory. They’re all expressions of the same view: i.e. that Jews are very bad indeed.

“To assume that such a book would be popular is one thing, but to so brazenly associate the false construct ‘Muslim world’ with Jews not existing and anti-Semitism in the very next sentence is shameless; the worst kind of projection.”

Not really. The reality is that the Muslim world it broadly antisemitic. Yes, there are major differences between Libya and Indonesia and Yemen but antisemitic attitudes are commonplace in every Muslim country. This pew centre survey done in 2006 (Pre Gaza blockade and war) shows that conclusively. http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=248. None of the five Muslim countries surveyed (and they are generally moderate ones) had favourable opinion of Jews that even reached 20%. “The Muslim World” is a giant generalization, but it is not a false construct in the least.

“Contrary to popular belief, the bookshops of the Middle East are not replete with anti-Semitic treatises, and nor is there any evidence that anything more than a tiny minority of ‘Middle-Easterners’ hold anti-Semitic views.”

This is simply not true. When I was in Cairo, the book-sellers that line the corners without fail had books and DVDs with stereotypical Jews rubbing their hands over a globe. Maybe that’s the Egyptian cover for the latest James Bond, but I doubt it. And as for the “tiny minority holding anti-Semitic Jews.” From the pew survey-Unfavourable/Favourable opinion of Jews:
Turkey-60/18
Pakistan-74/5
Indonesia-76/13
Lebanon-99/0
Jordan-100/0
Morocco-88/8

That should read “stereotypes of Jews” not “stereotypical Jews”.

Another trashing of an anti-Zionist Jewish academic.

However, the book sounds interesting so thanks for the alert.

What the native americans and australians want was to live somewhere where their human rights and culture was respected, and where they weren’t subjected to genocide.

I think you’ll find they want their land back. Unless you have some evidence that they find living on marginalised worthless land is actually preferable.

Here is the kind of non-judgemental, let’s-be-open-and-discuss, kind of response that one can expect from the “mainstream” reviewers:

http://markcrispinmiller.com/2009/04/the-invention-of-the-jewish-people.html

But Sand’s arguments are valuable not only for their complication of the founding myth of Zionism, but also for their devastation of the idée fixe of modern anti-semitism–i.e., that “the Jews” are an eternal monad, who have somehow stayed genetically distinct from every other people throughout history. (That anti-semites and far-rightist Jews both buy that notion
is, to put it mildly, problematic.)

Glib dismissal of ” Zionism” -> check
“he’s the type who I dine with so therefore he is good” -> check
pretentious use of foreign language and academic jargon -> check
total lack of interest in the quality of the scholarship -> check

>>> The other problem I can see, Gabriel, is why he doesn’t extend the same reasoning to decree what are called Palestinian

Palestinians are people who live in, or are descended from people who lived in, Palestine. Not a difficult one to work out, is it?

That includes muslims, jews, christians, atheists and everyone else with a link to the territory.

Israelis are in fact Palestinians – it’s just that the Israeli state does not recognize the rights of other Palestinians.

Manchurian, I would disagree with this
nor is there any evidence that anything more than a tiny minority of ‘Middle-Easterners’ hold anti-Semitic views.

I’d just like to say that I’m not doubting the presence of anti-Semitism in the NME and Muslim-majority countries; MEMRI translations are, to my knowledge, meticulously accurate; and HP has done more than perhaps anyone in the UK to highlight the vile strains of Jew-hatred that exist in the NME, and amongst some Muslims and Islamic clerics.

Anti-Semitism is a significant problem today and would not wish to in anyway deny this fact or dispute its presence amongst, shall we say, a significant minority of Muslims and those who live in the NME.

Open to debate methinks. But the ‘Muslim World’ is not Ahmadi Najad or al-Qaradawi or Hamas; it’s too patronisingly simplistic to just write off all Muslims as anti-Semites because the Qur’an and Hadith contain some abhorrent texts or even because of the media exposure of the aforementioned and others…as I’m sure you agree. Certainly, channels like al-Rahmah and an-Nas have helped to stoke feelings of hatred towards Jews in Egypt and the wider ME, but…

As for the second point, I think you articulated my feelings far better than I ever could.

what do you count as academic jargon?

“Israel needs to exist as a Jewish state because books like Sand’s are so popular.”

You forgot the most important thing. Israel needs to exist because its people want it. Nekudah.

Even if Israel were not a democracy, it would still have the right to exist if its people would want it. The large majority of countries in the world are not in any sense democracies and people in the latter don’t go around removing “certificates for existance”. Not from China, not from Latvia, and nor from any Latin American country during the several decades they were not democracies.

Therefore Israel doesn’t have to comply with being a democracy to have the right to exist. The fact that being a democracy doesn’t exempt idiots from trying to remove her right speaks volumes about their ANTISEMITISM.

Re: Sand:

He simply discovered -after everybody else- that Jews are not a race, but a cultural construction. Bravo!!!

Nobody, not even the nazis thought that the Jews were a pure race. On the contrary in fact. Jews were supposedly the most mongrel and mixed race in existance. That is why they were to be eliminated according to nazism.

> what do you count as academic jargon?

“Monads” ??

Throwing in a little Leibnizian metaphysics can make a Britney Spears tune sound significant.

Contradictory views on Jews are very popular amongst Islamists…They’re all expressions of the same view: i.e. that Jews are very bad indeed.

This is true of all “antisemitisms.”

Jews are marxists or industrialists.

Primitive tribalists or dangerous liberals.

etc.

Jews are everything bad *and* its opposite.

What Fabian has just said.

The worst, weakest, most stupid argument used to deny people the right for self determination is “they don’t exist, they are an invented construct”. Invented by whom? Well, by themselves, actually.

It is legitimate to argue about ways self determination might take. Whether it should take the form of a nation state or any other form. Whether sovereignty should be pooled or not. Whether the justice a particular course of action might result in another injustice. All these are legitimate issues for a vital argument between grown ups. But it is simply idiotic (as well as completely unjust and ahistorical) to deny the right of nationhood, indeed the right for self determination, because “they don’t exist, they are an invented construct”: whether “they” are Jews, Palestinians, Kurds, Bosnians, Serbs, Bosnian Serbs, Kosovars, Tibetans, whatsoever.

Incidentally, why is it that professors of literature – first Jacqueline Rose and then Shlomo Sand – believe that they have the expertise and the knowledge to write “scholarly” books on subjects they know so little about? Is their (justifiably, frankly) low opinion of their own craft translating to low opinion of scholarship in general? Or is it just plain, old idiotic postmodernism?

Jews are everything bad *and* its opposite.

Well, at least Jews aren’t those fucking little yappy dogs that Stuart breeds ;)

How can Sand not understand how people were exiled back then? Is he an idiot? Does he know what slavery was?

The Jews in Roman times were probably more rebelious than other conquered people. Perhaps that is why they exiled the people there rather than in other places.

Transportation technology wasn’t that much more advanced in Roman times than in the colonial era. Roman ships were operated by slaves. How can Sand not see the ability and reason for the Romans to exile the Jews from Judea?

Or is it just plain, old idiotic postmodernism?

For a book (and thus the writer) to be successful, it doesn’t have to be correct. It just has to play to the prejudices for the elite while still being interesting, so that cretins like Mark Crispin Miller can riff on how it is so complex and thought-provoking.

Excellent post, Gabriel. I wish HP would do more stuff on historical themes.

It has to be said that one notable aspect of ‘weak’ historians (and I use the term loosely) is their inability to engage with existing historiography, and as a consequence a failure to prioritize, sift through and arrange in an intellectually coherent fashion the arguments and evidence which is pertinent to a particular period of history.

So instead historical evidence is battered into shape, inconvenient arguments ignored and significant historical facts dismissed on the basis of trivia or some inconsequential element, which conveniently fits the writers preconceptions.

WW2 is a prime example of that phenomena, where contentious nonsense is dressed up as new discoveries and a wealth of historiography often dismissed, based on a particular author’s prejudices and whims.

Book bin end shops are littered with such nonsense.

Not really. The reality is that the Muslim world it broadly antisemitic.

I try not to read too much into surveys, though they are an invaluable tool and the only sort semi-reliable analytical tool at our disposal over large demographics. However, and I note the survey uses the word ‘endemic’, one cannot interview approximately 5000 people and project their answers across a population of hundreds of millions with any degree of accuracy, IMHO.

No interviews were conducted in Egypt, the most populous country in the ME.

Yes, there are major differences between Libya and Indonesia and Yemen but antisemitic attitudes are commonplace in every Muslim country.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t think you make such a statement with a straight face. Even if you’d lived in every Muslim-majority for most of your life, it would still be almost impossible to distill your experiences into such a general, dare I say, sweeping statement.

“The Muslim World” is a giant generalization, but it is not a false construct in the least.

I think it is, though like you, I’m ‘guilty’ of using it in the past. It’s just a convenient but very inaccurate typology in the same vein as ‘the West’ or ‘Christendom’ is. If you’re talking about trends then you do obviously have to refer in generalities and essentialise, but I’d be very wary of assigning negative behaviours to such a divise group of people.

This is simply not true. When I was in Cairo, the book-sellers that line the corners without fail had books and DVDs with stereotypical Jews rubbing their hands over a globe.

It is true, my friend, or at least more accurate than your experiences would suggest. I’ve travelled extensively in the NME and lived for substantial periods of time in several countries. The book you refer to is called ‘as-Sahiouniyyah’ (the Zionists) and it has been doing the rounds in Cairo/Lebanon (I didn’t see it at all in Damascus when I was last there) for the last 5 years or so. It is by no means the only one either as I believe HP demonstrated once with some pics of the sort of fayre on offer. However, books about Jews in particular form a tiny, tiny proportion of the books on display. The fact that you saw this book on most of the vendors stalls and in and around Tahrir Sq. doesn’t prove that the entire ‘Muslim World’ is anti-Semitic. What’s more, if you go down towards al-Azhar, where most of the specialist Islamic bookshops are to be found, I almost guarantee you will not find one book about Jews.

Peace

So, get rid of the Jews theoretically; then get rid of the Jewish state practically; and then get rid of the Jews themselves; after all, they never existed anyway!

I don’t think there were many trains in 1948 Palestine either. Does that mean…oh forget about it.

In the Guardian a few weeks ago, David T said that it is antisemitic to claim that there exists “a huge and incredibly powerful Jewish lobby”. Today, he is ploughing the same furrow in order to make it appear that antisemitism is on the rise. In fact, David’s remark on the Israel Lobby is utterly false, and the complaints that are made about the Lobby are entirely justified.

For various significant reasons, people talk about the ‘Israel Lobby’, not the ‘Jewish Lobby’, but regardless of the name we apply to it, the Israel Lobby *is* ‘huge and incredibly powerful’. The Lobby consists of over fifty different groups. The most influential of these, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has over 100,000 members; the American Jewish Committee (AJC) has over 150,000.

On its website, AIPAC gives an indication of its activities. “AIPAC is involved in more than 100 legislative and policy initiatives involving Middle East policy or aimed at broadening and deepening the U.S.-Israel bond. AIPAC works to secure vital U.S. foreign aid for Israel to help ensure Israel remains strong and secure…In addition to working closely with Congress, AIPAC also actively educates and works with candidates for federal office, White House, Pentagon and State Department officials, and other policymakers whose decisions affect Israel’s future and America’s policies in the Middle East.. Throughout the year and around the country, AIPAC sponsors exciting events and educational programs featuring leading members of Congress, policymakers and top analysts. AIPAC also works on hundreds of college campuses, teaching student activists how to answer Israel’s detractors and how to use political involvement to build support for Israel”.

According to Jeffrey Goldberg, AIPAC also “analyzes congressional voting records and shares the results with its members, who can then contribute money to candidates directly or to a network of proIsrael political-action committees”. Given that Jewish Americans are noted for the level of their political contributions, this is a very significant point.

As for the power of AIPAC, in 1997 Fortune magazine asked members of Congress, senior White House aides and a number of senior figures in the various lobbying organisations to name the most powerful lobbying group in the US. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) came second out of 120 groups. In 2005, the National Journal also rated AIPAC the second most powerful group. Hence, AIPAC is rated as more powerful than the National Rifle Association, the American Medical Association, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Association of Trial Lawyers, and many others.

Moreover, in the run-up to the Iraq War, a large number of hardline Jewish American Zionists who are active in the Lobby were in some of the highest positions in the US administration. Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense; Lewis Libby, Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney; Richard Perle, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board; Elliot Abrams, Special assistant to President Bush; Abram Shulsky, Director of the Office of Special Plans; David Wurmser, Mideast Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney; Harold Rhode, Michael Rubin, Michael Ledeen, Michael Makovsky, David Schenker, all involved with the Office of Special Plans.

As for their actions, after 9/11 Wolfowitz was almost fanatical in his efforts to push for the war; Douglas Feith set up departments that fabricated evidence for the war; and Lewis Libby was involved is producing the largely false report that Colin Powell repeated to the UN. In 2005 the US Jewish newspaper Forward should reported “According to [Barry] Jacobs, a former State Department official with broad contacts in Washington’s bureaucracy, the notion that American Jews and Pentagon neoconservatives conspired to push the United States into war against Iraq, and possibly also against Iran, is pervasive in Washington’s intelligence community”.

Innumerable individuals have also spoken of the Lobby’s power. Bill Clinton “…better than anybody else lobbying in this town … You have been stunningly effective”. J.J. Goldberg, editor of the US Jewish newspaper Forward, states “AIPAC has a lot of influence on foreign policy; they work hard to ensure that America endorses pretty much Israel’s view of the world and the Middle East”. James Schlesinger, who was a senior figure in both the Nixon and Carter administrations, says “It is scarcely possible to overstate the influence of Israel’s supporters on our policies in the Middle East”. Even Alan Dershowitz says of his “generation of Jews” that they “became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy”.

An American Prospect report from 2004 gives some indication of AIPAC’s pulling power: “AIPAC’s 2002 annual conference included 50 senators, 90 representatives, and more than a dozen senior administration officials; this year’s conclave boasted President Bush himself, plus House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and an array of State and Defense department officials”.

Hence, the Israel Lobby is ‘huge and incredibly powerful’, and it is appropriate that people should criticise it. Moreover, given that criticism of the Lobby, together with the equally just criticism of Israel, makes up almost all the mainstream criticism of things concerning Jewish people, it would seem that there has been no increase in antisemitic comment in popular discourse in the West.

I’m afraid David T will have to look elsewhere for evidence.

I’m not a fan of religion having a roll in governance anymore than I’m in favor a system where we empty the psychiatric wards into Parliament and let other sorts of loonies run things.

That said, Israel needs to exist as a Jewish state because the main opposition to this are a bunch of religious supremacists who insist that theirs is the master religion. If we accede to their demands, they won’t stop with Israel.

“Well, at least Jews aren’t those fucking little yappy dogs that Stuart breeds”

Dogs do resemble their owners, finds study

http://tinyurl.com/6zjah4

What SOS Muffin said, and David T said about Islamist websites…I’d extend this even to mainstream sites like IslamOnline, which I read a lot. It’s an excellent portal but it does use all the readily identifiable anti-Semitic vocabulary that we see in use across the web.

Yawn, fringe “history” talks truth to power…………..just as the truth of 1918 was the the “stab in the back”, just the truth of 9/11 was Mossad; just as the truth of landing on the moon was Capricorn One. I mean, the only reason these truths are not seen as truths is because Power controls access to the Truth; and, as real radicals, we oppose Power and, therefore, support anything, ANYTHING, that challenges that Power. What other reason can there be for not accepting any of these truths?
Smash Power, smash Truth!

Ken, Ken, keep up.
The Israel Lobby is soooooooo last week.

John

“To be frank, I also increasingly have little confidence that Jews will not be subject to genocide again in Europe”

Really? How on earth do you work that one out? Is it because people object to the bombing of Gaza?

Maybe its because people never objected to the rockets being fired at southern israel.

Johng

As for their actions, after 9/11 Wolfowitz was almost fanatical in his efforts to push for the war; Douglas Feith set up departments that fabricated evidence for the war; and Lewis Libby was involved is producing the largely false report that Colin Powell repeated to the UN.

He forgot to mention that Colin Powell speaks Yiddish.

http://www.jewishlegends.com/displayExp.php?rumor=1

Oh, look, here’s the oxymoronically named Internationalist.

Palestinians are people who live in, or are descended from people who lived in, Palestine. Not a difficult one to work out, is it?

Good. Now, tell that wheen of so-called “Palestinian refugees” who, just three or four generations whence, hailed from what is now Jordan or Syria or Egypt or Lebanon to stop claiming UN money.

You didn’t think of that, did you?

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t think you make such a statement with a straight face. Even if you’d lived in every Muslim-majority for most of your life, it would still be almost impossible to distill your experiences into such a general, dare I say, sweeping statement.”

This is a problem I have with the response to generalizations in general. If If I were to write “women like shopping more than men” and used a survey to back it up it would be generally true despite not meeting a fraction of the women in the world. The logic you employ ends up leading to “you can’t know anything” because you simply cannot experience close to everything. My “sweeping statement” is that this book will be very popular in the Muslim world. That doesn’t mean that it will be popular with everyone, or even close to the majority of people. Most people in every country don’t read historical non-fiction.

Yes, surveys do not tell the whole story, but they tell a lot more in broad terms than personal experiences. It is the difference between “Unemployment is at a 20 year high” and “my friend Jim got a new job so the economy is doing well.” Every survey ever done about attitudes towards Jews of Muslim countries has been, not just bad, but horrendous. These countries average under 9% who have a favourable opinion of Jews (certainly lower after Gaza). Even if this figure was five times higher, it would be terrible.

Maybe its because people never objected to the rockets being fired at southern israel.

Yeah that and you’ve got people like Ken putting his arm around guys who want another holocaust, right? No one seems even slightly ashamed of all the monsters they’re paling around with.

” Palestinians are people who live in, or are descended from people who lived in, Palestine. Not a difficult one to work out, is it?”

There is a book-can’t find it at the moment, by an Israeli historian who says that the vast majority of modern Palestinians emigrated to the area 200-300 years ago. Like Sand’s book, I don’t care if it’s true. The problem is not in trying to disprove each others’ claim to the land, the problem is trying to deal with the crisis now. Would the fact that Jews are fabricated make the suffering of the last two thousand years any better? Would the fact that Palestinians don’t really exist make their plight any less sad? Books like Sand’s are part of the reason we keep going in circles, unwilling to give an inch on any front. Israelis and Palestinians both live there. Make peace. End of story.

Gariel, Yehushua Porath, maybe?

The reality is that the Muslim world it broadly antisemitic.

The OBVIOUS reality is that the Muslim world it broadly antisemitic.

Fixed.

Would the fact that Palestinians don’t really exist make their plight any less sad?

I think the plight of people who refuse to make peace with their neighbors is a lot of things, infuriating, comic, pathetic, ironic, degraded… but “sad” isn’t on my list.

“Gabriel, Yehushua Porath, maybe?”

I don’t think so. I think it was a woman although I may be mistaken.

The random Muslim on the street may or may not harbor antisemitic sentiments. The fact remains, however, that Islam itself fosters antisemitism. Anyone out to “prove” an antisemitic stance will have no trouble at all finding the needed proof texts in the Qur’an and Sunnah. And, at that, in abundance.

Those who would argue otherwise should try and explain the case of Ahmad Sirhindi, a renowned Islamic scholar. There is no evidence that this eminently worthy titan of Islamic scholarship ever came within even a hundred miles of a Jew in his entire life. Yet, he wrote: “Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam”.

Every survey ever done about attitudes towards Jews of Muslim countries has been, not just bad, but horrendous. These countries average under 9% who have a favourable opinion of Jews (certainly lower after Gaza). Even if this figure was five times higher, it would be terrible.

So that a 54% favorable opinion of Jews would be terrible.

But in Israel, 68% of Jews don’t want to live next to an Arab neighbor. What do you make of that?

What I can’t understand is why Israel should be a Jewish state. 60 years ago a State that contained both Arabs and Jews was formed. Most of the Arabs were expelled in the process and they have remained as refugees ever since. Yes, yes, YES!!!, the Südeten Germans et al., but the Südeten Germans are not asking to return. If they were, they would have exactly the same right as the Palestinians.

So a State in which Arabs were present from the beginning, and from which other Arabs were expelled, MUST, by some divine decree, be a Jewish state. Arabs did not immigrate, they were there from the start; WHY should such a state be Jewish?

The Jews came to a place already populated with Arabs. They must accept this and give its Arab population, including the refugees, the same rights accorded to Jews. That’s how democracy works. If the Jews didn’t want to share their country with Arabs, they should have tried Patagonia or Madagascar.

By its nature, Zionism concentrates ultra-nationalism, chauvinism and racial intolerance, excuse for territorial occupation and annexation, military opportunism, cult of political promiscuousness and irresponsibility, demagogy and ideological diversion, dirty tactics and perfidy… Absurd are attempts of Zionist ideologists to present criticizing them, or condemning the aggressive politics of the Israel’s ruling circles, as antisemitic… We call on all Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, representatives of intelligentsia: take active part in exposing Zionism, strongly rebuke its endeavors; social scientists: activate scientific research to criticize reactionary core of that ideology and aggressive character of its political practice; writers, artists, journalists: fuller expose anti-populace and anti-humane diversionary character of propaganda and politics of Zionism…”

Pravda leader signed “From the Soviet Leadership”, 1983.

Well done, Professor Sand. The Israeli Leninist-Stalinist anti-zionist heritage lives on in your work today, as it does in that of your fellow literary critic and historical ignoramus of Middle East history, Professor Jacqueline Rose.

Thanks for your comment! It has been placed in the moderation queue, and if it is approved it will be published here soon!

Could someone please publish the criteria for placing posts into the moderation queue? Thanks!

What I can’t understand is why Israel should be a Jewish state….

You know there is something you can do about it.

Immigrate to Israel, gain citizenship, and then when it’s your turn to vote, vote for a secular party. Isn’t that easy? That’s how people have a say over how democratic countries are run. You could also volunteer your time and money promoting a secular party in Israel. Once again, that’s how democracy works. You should look it up some time.

If that’s not enough for you, the only right answer is “piss off you fascist”

K?

Mr. Sand’s action is undersandable and a well known way to become famous. Who would know these names: Finkelstein, Walt, Mersheimer, Sue Blackwell, Ilan Pappe etc if they wouldn’t engage themselves in controversies? If you have an academic carrier and you are not especially successful pursuing it the best thing you can do is publishing something controversial and offensive and wonder of wonders you become untouchable. Your job will be secure, no head of a faculty will dare to tell you that your work on your field is not good enough and your contract won’t be extended, you inmediately become famous, celebrated and lionized by a certain sector of “intellectuals” and political groups. Mr. Sand will pocket some hundreds of thousand of dollars and will get a professorial job in a UK university, will be a favourite of millions of “anti-Zionists”.

“Gabriel, Yehushua Porath, maybe?”

I don’t think so. I think it was a woman although I may be mistaken.

I definitely heard “Shuka” Porath talking about his research on the huge levels of Arab emigration to Mandate Palestine. For the record, exactly like with Gabriel, it didn’t make an iota of difference to his views on the rights of contemporary Palestinians: Porath was one of the founders of the peace movement in Israel.

Madagascar………..
I see that the antisemitic twat thinks the Eichmann scheme had its benefits. Why am I not surpised?

Of course, if they had survived that plan, the idiot would now be arguing that the Jews came to a place that Madagascans were already there, and so, Jews have no rights to a Jewihs state there.

Ooooh, Jews have no place in the world……………now,,where have I heard that before?? I know genocidal antisemites………….

What a scumbag!

Historians with minority, even marginal positions, are given primacy. People do not read Norman Finkelstein because they want to understand history. They read Norman Finkelstein because they want to confirm what they already believe.

This is pure and utter supposition presented as ‘fact’. People read Finkelstein for a lot of different reasons. Because he provides an alternative view to the Hasbara narrative, because he’s successfully debunked cowpads like ‘From Time Immemorial’, because he stands up to bullies like Dershowitz, because they don’t like him (’know your enemy’), out of sheer curiosity, because it’s difficult to refute someone’s views without actually knowing them, etc. And I think you’ll find that Dershowitz outsells Finkelstein. For instance ‘The case for Israel’ ranks 36,969 and ‘Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict’ ranks 106,913 (both in Books on Amazon). No primacy for the ‘marginal’ position here then.

No doubt Sands will be read for the same variety of reasons: the book is already a best seller in Israel.

Israel needs to exist as a Jewish state because the world is, at best, ambivalent about Jewish suffering.

The world is ambivalent about Jewish suffering… sheesh. Says who? How much more unambiguous can the world become before Gabriel stops this kind of nonsensical, counter-empirical twaddle?

Lemmesee, just about every Western Liberal Democracy supports Israel almost unconditionally. Most of these countries have elaborate systems in place for monitoring anti-Semitism, in some countries anti-Semitism is a crime, in some Holocaust denial is a crime. Most have multiple Holocaust museums/memorials and commemorate the Shoah annually.

Yet, according to Garp, the world is ambiguous (at best!) to Jewish suffering! Perhaps I should interpret Gabriel’s statement as follows: until the world gives Israel complete carte blanche (and not near carte blanche as today) to create Eretz Israel as, how, when and where the Zionists see fit, as a form of reparation for past Jewish suffering, Gabriel will not be convinced the world is unambiguous about Jewish suffering?

The Jews came to a place already populated with Arabs. They must accept this and give its Arab population, including the refugees, the same rights accorded to Jews. That’s how democracy works. If the Jews didn’t want to share their country with Arabs, they should have tried Patagonia or Madagascar.

No, the Middle East is not “populated with Arabs”. It is populated with a number of distinct peoples, of whom Arabs are one and Jews are another.

Regional minorities, without states, in the Middle East have tended to do badly.

Kurds, until recently, for example.

I know that there are some who would insist on destroying Kurdish autonomy, although they don’t have quite the same following as those obsessed with Jews and Israel.

the Protocols, is by the lights of many posters on here, a founding basis of Muslim anti-semitism.

Not really, the bulk of that hails from an earlier and even more celebrated Jew hating fabrication – the Koran.

David T:

I also increasingly have little confidence that Jews will not be subject to genocide again in Europe.

A very distinct tone of leaden pessimism there; sadly I agree.

Lemmesee, just about every Western Liberal Democracy supports Israel almost unconditionally.

While funding Hamas. Funny that.

You’re suggesting that ‘the Muslim world’ (not anti-semitic Muslims mind, the whole bloody Muslim world) would ditch all of this and begin arguing that Jews are a recent, contingent political construct just because Shlomo Sand provides them with an opening.

He is and they will; not so much ditch it but some will adopt this as well. Because congruence is not seen as much of a requirement in this sort of discourse. It’s a sneaky infidel construct…. see.

Also funding the PLO – I mean “Fatah”*.

* by the way, “Fatah” means “conquest” doesn’t it.

First of all, Sand’s book flies in the face of all recent DNA scholarship, which has found that the Jews do indeed share common ancestry. Ashkenazi and Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews are identical with each other (or nearly so) and share little if anything with their European host populations. This is true even after so many centuries. Here are some links:

From various sources:
http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/jewish-genetics/
http://tinyurl.com/oqm6xz

And from the New York Times:
http://tinyurl.com/qw957h
http://tinyurl.com/pz8823
http://tinyurl.com/pc8chm

It’s said that the Jews resemble each other very closely, but they don’t resemble their host populations. Jews, like Icelanders, are so consistent genetically that (like Icelanders) they are considered excellent subjects for DNA studies.

And I’ve read that the Jews from anywhere most resemble Levantine Arabs more than any other non-Jewish population; though, later on, I read that they may be even closer to groups along the northern flank of the Middle East (e.g., Armenians, Kurds).

But the Khazar theory has been completely debunked, as has the view that the Jews are “just a religion.”

Purity is not the issue. Who is “pure” anyway? And what does purity really mean? Even the so-called purest of ethnicities are combinations of earlier groups. What is interesting is not purity, but continuity, and the Jews certainly have that.

There is absolutely no reason, other than intellectual dishonesty, to claim that the Jews have no common descent.

It really gets me angry when I see well-accepted scientific evidence of common Jewish heritage being brushed aside, while debunked (but politically convenient) theories are treated as unchallenged truth.

If those same scientific studies had found that the Jews did not share a common descent, but that Polish Jews were actually Poles and Russian Jews actually Russians, the news would have been shouted and broadcast all over the place. The real findings, however, are inconvenient for anti-Zionists.

As for people like Sands, I imagine that there are far-left-wing Jews (”red diaper babies” in the US and their post-Zionist equivalents in Israel) who put their left-wing credentials above the truth. They are opportunists or they simply cleave closely to their “progressive” identities. Or perhaps it’s the sense that scholarship should serve political values.

It seems that very rigorous standards are being held up to the Jews’s claim to be a nation. What standards to the Palestinians satisfy? Or the Iraqis or the Lebanese or Jordanian? Should be Palestinians be considered a nation? Certainly. But let’s not forget that they are a nation recently forged (as are several Arab nations).

There are several characteristics that qualify a group as a people or nation: common language; common descent; common culture and customs; sometimes shared religion; and common boundaries. I’m sure there are others that I’ve forgotten. Not every nation will have all the characteristics, but each will have several of them.

I don’t know what Sands’ research methodology was, but I’m sure that those who want to believe him won’t look too closely.

I used to think this absolute paranoid rubbish, but the speed at which things have progressed have really surprised me.

A few years ago, the issue was the championing of antisemites and genocidal antisemitic movements by the extreme Left.

Now, were into mainstream politicians trying to host Hamas meetings at the Houses of Parliament, and the comment editor of the Indie claiming that it was wrong to walk out on Ahmedinejad because, basically, he didn’t say anything wrong or even that controversial.

Now, parts of the Tories and parts of the Labour party are very sound in their stand against antisemitism.

However, there’s no popular antiracist politics which stands against any of this.

I’d guess that, eventually, those politicians that have made standing against antisemitism a matter of principle will be targeted and voted out, or will otherwise disappear and not be replaced.

I think that we’ll then have a politics in which one side of the argument pushes ever more antisemitic themes, while others stand by and either hand wring, or blame Jews for bringing it on themselves (by their actions, by crying wolf, or what have you). A certain number of Jews will also say this, and will be paraded around to prove that it is true, and is not racist to say so.

Obviously, I have absolutely no way of knowing whether things will take a different tack, and one should always hope. But I’m not at all optimistic.

“The world is ambivalent about Jewish suffering… sheesh. Says who?”

Well your comment denying contemporary antisemitism for start.

Your own post on your own cite where you think antisemitism is erm, bad for the Palestinains but good for the Jews.

And you idea of “Zionists” blackmailing the world over guilt over the Holocaust.

Apart from that, Jews have never had it so good; and because of the likes of good folk like yourself!

Josh Scholar:

While funding Hamas. Funny that.

No, they don’t. Even of the $4 billion or so in reconstruction aid pledged to Gaza, not a dime has been received so far. Not even a sack of cement or a pane of glass…

Fatah means conquest. Yeah, you’ve really nailed it with that one…

Don’t be surprised at Johng’s appearance: I have known him on and off for nearly 8 years. Throughout that time he has pursued a unique interest in desconstructing Jewish national identity, just as his predecessors’ pursued a unique interest in deconstructing a Jewish ethnic identity long before the Jewish state of Israel existed.

I have been immersed in Latin and Greek Christian texts of the 1st to 4th centuries CE, and they all assume an enforced Jewish exile. When Christianity becomes the state religion, that is the imperial view too.

The pagan empire punished the Jews of diaspora for the rebels of Judea, and the Christian did the same. This both was both rooted in and tended to further effect a common national identity (which pagan Romans had assumed anyway).

The Romans in truth did not commonly exile or commit ethnic cleansing, true. But Dacia and Judea are exceptions to the rule. The Romans did not commonly rename provinces to punish and “deconstruct” rebellious peoples’ identities. But they did with Judea, which is the origin of ‘Palestine’.

It does not matter, in a sense, if it is not strictly historical. An enforced Palestinian exile is not strictly historical either, most Palestinians’ still living within the borders of original British Palestine, most of the rests’ living very close to those borders.

Ditto re. the diaspora. In Christian, then Islamic, as well as rabbinic, world view, the people are or were a people humiliated and dispossessed as a punishment for their sins. These were the narratives to which most subscribed, nor were they more nuanced since most did not possess or have access to the sources that nuance the picture.

But, again, the Jewish state of Israel arose because Jews were treated as a national group foreign, not merely to European Christendom, but also Arab Islam.

What S said in agreement with Gabriel’s comments, it doesn’t make a difference.

My current shampoo is called Alberto.

Could someone please publish the criteria for placing posts into the moderation queue? Thanks!

Close your eyes, what can you see? There’s your answer!

“Perhaps I should interpret Gabriel’s statement as follows: until the world gives Israel complete carte blanche (and not near carte blanche as today) to create Eretz Israel as, how, when and where the Zionists see fit, as a form of reparation for past Jewish suffering, Gabriel will not be convinced the world is unambiguous about Jewish suffering?”

That is complete nonsense. I don’t believe any of that, but of course, you know that.

“People read Finkelstein for a lot of different reasons.”

Seriously, drop the anti-Zionist rhetoric and tell me why. If you are interested in the founding of Israel, why read a historian who doesn’t use primary sources and who just takes the work of historians who do and removes anything he doesn’t like? Why not read a historian who deals with primary sources who reads Hebrew and/or Arabic. Why read a historian who writes about the Holocaust who, again, doesn’t read German, does not use primary sources, and just takes what he wants from historians and leaves out anything he doesn’t. Finkelstein is the Ayn Rand of politics. People like Rand because it justifies their greed and people like Finkelstein because it justifies their prejudices.

I also love how you believe that there is one single Israeli narrative (Incidentally, why use the words “Hasbara” and “Eretz Israel”? Do you sprinkle Farsi into your writings about Iran, little mocking Arabic phrases when mentioning Egypt?).

I believe 100% that Israel has a right to exist, and has had so for, what is it?
5,000 years.

One of the great things about Jews is that this silly book is a big seller in Israel.

That’s why Western culture (Classical/Judeo Christian/ Enlightenment) is superior to all others.

We self examine, we criticize & ridicule ourselves. Unfortunately, our ever more confident enemies see this as weakness.

Why do Israel haters keep pretending that the Muslims in that part of the world are other than relatively recent immigrants who keep trying to steal
land & property from Jews ?

The so called Palestinians are mainly a product of the Islamic offensive against Jews. I sympathize with the genuine hard cases amongst the Palestinians who have been ill used by all sides, especially the Christians.
Since Hamas got control of Gaza, it must be hell for decent human beings

If it wasn’t for the bottomless pits of money from certain oil rich states supporting Islamic terrorism & the UN (of course) the whole mess would have been sorted out 40 years ago.

Martin – Atheist gentile

Historians with minority, even marginal positions, are given primacy. People do not read Norman Finkelstein because they want to understand history. They read Norman Finkelstein because they want to confirm what they already believe.

Zionists, on the other hand, read Joan Peters to gain new insights that completely demolish their previously-held views.

Yes, Gert I see:

Conquest is Peace;
Freedom is Slavery;
Ignorance is Strength.

Here’s a video for you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu2NqfISm9k

Gert is the spoilt child of the information age. Cast Lead has not been over for four months, yet he’s expecting immediate action from international bodies which, even at the best of times, spend much on admin and paperwork rather than actual aid.

Also, by saying “not a dime”, his statement becomes immediately false. But, then again, he’s not very bright.

The world is full of nation states where there is no or very few ethnic or race connection between its citizens, but very strong other binding factors like common language, history, faith, culture etc. (For example anyone with the minimal knowledge of the history of the Hungarian people knows that practically there is no Hungarian ethnicity only a common past, language and culture).
Undeniable that one of the strongest connection linking together the Israelis is the thousands of years of persecution and existing world-wide anti-Semitism. I don’t see any problem with the theoretical possibility that a minority of our ancestors are originated from other parts of the world and not from the ME. They are part of our nation exactly like the Jews who never left the land.

BTW Comrade Kronstadt your example of the Sudeten Deutsche population is utter bullshit.
Did you ever heard of the Hungarians of Slovakia and Transsylvania, the East-Prussians of Mazuria, the Hungarian Schwabs, the Volga Deutsch just mentionning a few of the people who never abandoned the idea of return, be it against the relity and political possibility?

Oh yes, Joan Peters.

Currently touring US and UK campuses, her books prominently displayed in major bookshops, cited by academics and polemicists alike – the cool, with-it historian of our era.

er…

Ignorance is Bliss:

Well your comment denying contemporary antisemitism for start.

Your own post on your own cite where you think antisemitism is erm, bad for the Palestinains but good for the Jews.

And you idea of “Zionists” blackmailing the world over guilt over the Holocaust.

Apart from that, Jews have never had it so good; and because of the likes of good folk like yourself!

I don’t deny the existence of contemporary anti-Semitism, but I don’t believe it’s nearly as bad as some make out and that some alleged forms of anti-Semitism simply aren’t real anti-Semitism.

Where, when and how, e.g. in today’s Britain, are Jews being discriminated against?

The rest of your comment is Manichean jibberish.

My, my; you ARE pessimistic David!

Sadly I learned in my early 20s in Northern Ireland how some people can really hate. Deep, visceral irrational hate, at a level beyond my experience, beyond anything I thought possible, it gave me a completely different take on conflict in the World.

Jew hatred is becoming mainstream, it’s now pretty much socially acceptable again, even in polite middle class, non political junkie, educated company. Hell, to some degree I see it in my own extended family….just small things, little comments and attitudes here and there. It’s really not far below the surface in Europe. Islamic politics have acted as an effective catalyst, fanned by post colonial guilt, Guardianista sentiment etcetera….liberalism….in the pejorative American sense of witless cunt of a Moonbat).

(Incidentally, why use the words “Hasbara” and “Eretz Israel”? Do you sprinkle Farsi into your writings about Iran, little mocking Arabic phrases when mentioning Egypt?).

Gabriel, meet Gert Meyer. The answer is “no”. His tatty and sick web-page should tell you all you need to know about his pathopsychology. If that fails, he is very popular at Elf’s Grotto.

His recent comment about one female Jewish poster’s attributes would also be apposite to consider.

Do people have opinions as to whether “The Hasbara Buster” is either a shithead or douchebag? Its unclear to me.

Sand’s basic argument is that the fact that Jews are not “pure” is hidden, claiming in once instance that “mention of the Khazars in the public arena in Israel was increasingly considered eccentric, a flight of fancy, even an open threat.

The claim that the European Jews who emigrated to Israel from the mid 19th century to post 1948 were not “real” Jews, but descendants of the Khazar kingdom who converted to Judaism was a central staple of radical PLO anti-zionism. It was constantly reiterated in marxist-dominated PLO propaganda as one of the main ways of delegitimizing Jewish claims to be returning to their homeland. Contemporary full-on anti-semitic anti-zionists like Neil Clark keep recycling it to this day, citing such Jewish intellectuals as Erich Fromm and Arthur Koestler who propagated the myth on the basis of zilch expertise in the field as authorities “because they were Jewish”.
.
Genetic research shows the Khazar myth to be exactly that– a myth at variance with the genetic history of European Jews.

Another clear indicator that Professor Sand is likely to be a worthy intellectual equivalent of Gilad Atzmon. Of course, he’ll be lionised across Europe. Respectful interviews in hushed tones by Jeremy Bowen. A nice extended spot on one of BBC R4’s book programmes.

Stand ready for the cries of how brave he is to stand up for truth against the onslaught of the zionist autobots who cry anti-semitism every time someone dares to publish any criticism of Israel.

Who is Joan Peters?

It’s a bit lame to complain that Sand does not specialise in ancient history and then not come up with anything better reposte than “The absence of proof is not in itself proof.” There were some deportations from Judea in the post-Rebellion period, but there was also a gradual movement of Jews out of the area for other reasons (including, possibily, climate change). The Galilee remained a Jewish centre for centuries.

“Riposte”, even.

“Do people have opinions as to whether “The Hasbara Buster” is either a shithead or douchebag? Its unclear to me.”

Is much as I loath our Nazi-in-residence, I found your joke annoying the first time – please don’t turn it into a running gag.

“(Incidentally, why use the words “Hasbara” and “Eretz Israel”? Do you sprinkle Farsi into your writings about Iran, little mocking Arabic phrases when mentioning Egypt?).”

This is why I don’t use words like “Dhimmi” or “Kafir” unless it is by far the best word to use (which it very rarely, if never is.). Using these types of words is done to pretend that you have an insight into the mind of “the other”. “I know what you are really thinking.” You don’t.

“Another trashing of an anti-Zionist Jewish academic”

Poor, poor Linda.
Listen, boyo: he is NOT an “academic” in this field: he is a complete amateur. Preening himself in his academic qualifications in French Medieval Knitting when writing about Middle East history, is evidence of hubris and stupidity combined.
Will you get it? I doubt it. After all, your hero Chomsky does exactly the same thing.

Judy, as an observer, a principle objection of mine to the Khazar Fallacy (verily, Myth is not a perjorative term) is that it assumes that because the largest concentration of European Jews was in Eastern Europe their antecendents could not have arrived from Palestine.

Oh, yes… never heard of the Bosphorus or Caucasian route?

Of course, if we’re accused of not “really” being people of the orient, then we’re accused of practioners of “race science” who discourage intermarriage, so we can’t win. But here is a review of the science:

“The earlier study, led by Dr. Michael Hammer of University of Arizona, showed from an analysis of the male, or Y chromosome, that Jewish men from seven communities were related to one another and to present-day Palestinian and Syrian populations, but not to the men of their host communities.”

http://www.humanitas-international.org/perezites/news/jewish-dna-nytimes.htm

It has always baffled me that:

–The Jews should have the right of return because 2,000 years ago their ancestors may or may not have lived in present-day Israel.

–The Palestinians, on the other hand, should not enjoy the right of return because 60 years have already passed, and they should forget that folly of getting back to where their grandparents lived.

“However, books about Jews in particular form a tiny, tiny proportion of the books on display”

This is a very weak argument. In fact, it demonstrates nothing at all. Yes, there are books about cookery and football and knitting and spear-throwing, because people have a lot of interests and a lot of opinions, so a lot of books are published. This says nothing at all about the degree of antisemitism exhibited in the books about Jews. At most it says that the population doesn’t think about Jews to the complete exclusion of everything else. Big deal. The fact is that they do think and write about Jews – and the hook-nosed portrayals tell us WHAT they think about them. And it ain’t pretty.

I vote for shithead, although douchebag works.

It’s a bit lame to complain that Sand does not specialise in ancient history and then not come up with anything better reposte than “The absence of proof is not in itself proof.”

Bartholomew, I took Gabriel’s objection to be to Sands’ blatent self-confidence and belief his various observations created their own reality (the post-modernist that he is). As Sands appears to be believe his thesis is water-tight, the critical evaluation that Gabriel and others have made disprove it.

There were some deportations from Judea in the post-Rebellion period, but there was also a gradual movement of Jews out of the area for other reasons (including, possibily, climate change).

You are Ban Ki Moon and I claim my five pounds!

It has always baffled me that:

–The Jews should have the right of return because 2,000 years ago their ancestors may or may not have lived in present-day Israel.

Quite clearly it has baffled you if you believe this, but you don’t.

Don’t feed the troll!

Gabriel, I agree about Dhimmi, but if you listen to Islamist preachers or read their books they use Kafir and variations on it a lot. Which is kind of like sprinkling you speech with the word “nigger”.

I don’t think we should proudly claim that word, because that would be playing in their hands – accepting the roll as their enemy and as God’s enemy. But I do think we should challenge its use and the sort of attitudes that go along with it, no matter what words they’re using. Hate speech, incitement to hatred or violence, these should be unacceptable in society and prosecuted as a crime as well.

Ken goes on and on and on in his self-importance:

“Hence, the Israel Lobby is ‘huge and incredibly powerful’, and it is appropriate that people should criticise it.”

Really? I would say that is a complete non sequitur. Other countries have huge and powerful lobbies (I take it you have heard of Saudi Arabia?). Various industries have them. Do you go around criticising them for existing? Do people write books about the evil Saudi lobby? What about the motor industry one? Oh, wait a minute: those lobbies promote legitimate interests. The interests of the Jews, on the other hand, are not legitimate.
Go and peddle your nonsense somewhere else, mate.

It has always baffled me that:

–The Jews should have the right of return because 2,000 years ago their ancestors may or may not have lived in present-day Israel.

–The Palestinians, on the other hand, should not enjoy the right of return because 60 years have already passed, and they should forget that folly of getting back to where their grandparents lived.

I wrote a post on how the Palestinians have destroyed the right of return a while back:
http://weblog.nightstudies.net/?p=45

Alec, did the Yemenite Jews also get there by way of the Bosphorus, or can we take it that they are REALLY Khazars?

I hope that someday, a Palestinian will write a book asserting that the Palestinians don’t exist as a people, and that it will be a controversial best-seller in a future Palestinian state.

I hope that someday a Palestinian will write a book asserting that Jews are actual people, not pigs or dogs, and it will be a controversial best-seller in a future Palestinian state.

To complain about lack of historical criticism and then to come up with this, is hilarious:

“There were some deportations from Judea in the post-Rebellion period, but there was also a gradual movement of Jews out of the area for other reasons (including, possibily, climate change). The Galilee remained a Jewish centre for centuries”

There are two completely separate ideas here:
1. Sentence 1 – I love “some” deportations. At least you accept that this is possible without trains.
However, the fact (is it?) that there was ALSO voluntary emigration is neither here nor there.
2. Sentence 2 – so some Jews remained. And? How does that negate the existence of deportations?

I hope that someday, a Palestinian will write a book asserting that the Palestinians don’t exist as a people, and that it will be a controversial best-seller in a future Palestinian state.

People that I know are in a different mental space entirely.. where there are concerns about global shifts in power towards Asia, Iranian nukes, decline of American global influence and prosperity, absence of any semblance of an “objective media”, declline of “free speech” in the West for the sake of global harmony, Gazafication of the West Bank, Hezbollah-ization of Hamas etc.

“Jews, like Icelanders, are so consistent genetically that (like Icelanders) they are considered excellent subjects for DNA studies.”

And not just DNA studies. There are a great many international clinical studies – into all kinds of medical conditions and drugs – conducted in Israel all the time. Minimising, as far as possible, the variance in as many parameters as possible, is an excellent principle in scientific research.

I live in the US and I don’t know a single person who is concerned about the “decline of American global influence” nor of the decline of free speech in other countries. Why should Americans care if Britain falls further behind us in free speech rights?

Gabriel:

The criticism you level at Finkelstein’s readers is very pot and kettle: few readers are historians or historiographers, whether they are Zionists, non-Zionists or anti-Zionists. Maybe they’re not as discerning as they should be (well, according to you) but that’s hardly an anti-Zionist prerogative.

Your remark about Ayn Rand is simply repetition: I like neither Rand nor greed and I read Atlas Shrugs out of sheer curiosity. I also think Mad Mel Phlips is completely bonkers (mustn’t forget to wave to some of her fan base here) and read Londonistan to see what all the fuss was all about.

I also love how you believe that there is one single Israeli narrative (Incidentally, why use the words “Hasbara” and “Eretz Israel”? Do you sprinkle Farsi into your writings about Iran, little mocking Arabic phrases when mentioning Egypt?).

No. Your point?

David T.:

Oh yes, Joan Peters.
Currently touring US and UK campuses, her books prominently displayed in major bookshops, cited by academics and polemicists alike – the cool, with-it historian of our era.

You seriously underestimate the influence that book still has today on American non-Jewish Zionism. I’ve been asked countless times (admittedly by the more moronic part of US Conservative Zionism): (rhetorically) “You haven’t read From Time Immemorial, have you?”

Old myths (like anti-Semitic myths) die hard…

“Yes, yes, YES!!!, the Südeten Germans et al., but the Südeten Germans are not asking to return”

Alberto’s “academic” attempts at German spelling are as self-importantly ignorant as that idiot talking about “monads”.

Here is a link to Anita Shapira’s review of Sand:

http://www.isracampus.org.il/Extra%20Files/Anita%20Shapira%20-%20Shlomo%20Sand%20book%20review.pdf

It’s a pdf so I can’t copy and paste it.

“The Jews should have the right of return because 2,000 years ago…”

No, Gollum. Jews have the right of return to Israel because a law to that effect was passed by the Knesset in 1950.
Cry, Miyar.a.

“I also think Mad Mel Phlips is completely bonkers”

I am sure you know best, being a professional psychiatrist – or the patient of one?

“Arabs did not immigrate, they were there from the start; WHY should such a state be Jewish?” (Gollum)

I wonder why the city in which you live, Alberto Mi.yara must be called “Rosario” (rosary). As far as I know the Indians who are native to that place were not Christian when the Spaniards arrived.
Also, what is doing a M iyara in a foreign land, living there as if he had any right to do so?

’sorry, I can copy and paste it, here it is:

REVIEW ESSAY
The Jewish-people deniers
Eikh u-matai humtza ha-am ha-yehudi? (When and how was the Jewish people
invented?), by Shlomo Sand, Tel Aviv: Resling, 2008, 358 pp.
Judaism’s distinctive association between nationalism and religion has confounded both
Jews and non-Jews alike. In substance, Judaism is a universal religion; by definition, it is
tribal. The boundaries of Jewish nationalism are defined by adherence to the Jewish
religion. This marriage of religion and nationalism is not unique to Jews. In the case of
other peoples too (Ukrainians, Poles, Irish, Greeks, Hispanics, Pakistanis, Iranians, Arabs
etc.), the definition of identity contains an inherent religious component; their religions,
however, having been adopted also by non-nationals, may be portrayed as universal. In the
case of Jews, the boundaries are blurred: from the start of modern times, there have been
Jews who considered themselves affiliated with the Jewish religious community but opted
out of Jewish nationality, embracing the national identities of their countries of residence.
This innovation started with Claremont-Tonner’s demand during the French Revolution
that Jews shed their separate identity as a nation and become part of the French state and
nation if they wished to enjoy equal rights. But most Jews considered themselves part of
Klal Yisrael, that amorphous commonality of Jews who profess to belong to the Jewish
people, bear its burdens and share its joys, and identify with the fate of Jews the world
over. In the nineteenth century, this mass of Jews spawned a Jewish national movement
with Zionism as one of its branches.
For those outside of the Jewish collective, the link of religion and nationality is hard to
accept; even insiders find it strange. Conversion as the entry ticket to Jewish nationality, as
the tribal rite of passage, appears anachronistic and embarrassing in an increasingly
secular era. Thus, in every decade we have seen attempts to undo that link by inventing a
new past; to eradicate the symbiotic relationship between religion and nationality and to
allow the new Israeli nationality to spread its wings and soar away from Jewish history as
it was, to an imaginary past cleansed of Jewish shortcomings and weaknesses. The first
major attempt in this direction was made by the “Canaanites,” a small though highly
influential group of young intellectuals who sought to cut themselves off from two
thousand years of exile and see themselves instead as the offspring of the fierce peoples of
the Fertile Crescent, rather than as the descendants of the poor, humble inhabitants of
Eastern Europe’s townlets. It was an attempt to invent a local identity connected to the
territorial space of the Fertile Crescent, free of the bond to the Jewish people down the
generations. This local secular identity also made room for native Arabs who were meant
to be citizens with equal rights and obligations in the state that was to arise in the land of
Israel. In the past decade, author A. B. Yehoshua has sought in his own way to shake off
the national-religious symbiosis, which he regarded as the source of Jew hatred through
ISSN 1353-1042 print/ISSN 1744-0548 online
DOI: 10.1080/13531040902752531
http://www.informaworld.com
The Journal of Israeli History
Vol. 28, No. 1, March 2009, 63–72
the ages; he wanted to see Jewish identity freed of its religious component.1 Between the
“Canaanites,” who vanished from the public horizon in the 1980s, and Yehoshua, several
other figures, such as Boas Evron and Joseph Agassi, conceived and spread similar ideas.2
The latest thinker along these lines is Shlomo Sand, whose expertise is French history.
Sand contests the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel.
He argues that the Jewish people, to use his words, is an “invented” entity or “implanted
memory” with no connection, in fact, to the land of Israel. The denial of such a connection
and the narrow definition of Jews as just a “religious community” – a millet, a Turkish
term used by the “Canaanites” to define exilic Jewry – aims to influence Israeli Jews to
change their self-image and open up to a civil concept of identity; this would enable the
State of Israel to become a “state of all its citizens,” unrelated to diaspora Jews who are
also just local religious communities (e.g. “Judeo-Americans,” as he calls them). When
that happens, the discrimination practiced in the State of Israel against its Arab citizens
(“Palestino-Israelis”) on the basis of the Law of Return will disappear, and they will be
given the opportunity to fully integrate into an Israeli state that will shed its undesirable
Jewish identity yet enable Arabs to keep their separate identity and unique culture.
I have no intention of arguing with Sand’s version of a “state of all its citizens.” I would
like to examine the attempt to drag history into a topical argument, and with the help of
misrepresentations and half-truths to adapt it to the needs of a political discussion, and all
this, ostensibly, under an academic mantle. Sand has written a sharp, pointed polemic
drawing on much varied historical material which he re-kneads at will in order to prove
that there is not and never was a Jewish nationality. If we were to remove Sand’s long
discourse on the essence of nationalism, which is not essential to the basic discussion, as
well as his meandering discourse on Zionism’s ostensibly racist nature, which looks like
little more than a sideways dig, Sand’s main thesis is: there is no such thing as a Jewish
people, there are only Jewish-religious communities which were formed mainly by mass
conversions throughout Jewish history.
Sand is bent on undermining the traditional Jewish narrative, which depicts the Jewish
people of today as the descendants of the biblical and Second Temple Jews who lost their
land, dispersed over the world, yet retained their bond to the land-of-Israel homeland, to
which – as the Scroll of Independence states – they have now returned. This portrayal of
the Jewish people, he contends, is the result of the work of the great Jewish historians of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially Heinrich Graetz, Simon Dubnow, and
Ben-Zion Dinur. The “bad guys” in the story are the historians for having invented the
Jewish people. Sand does not distinguish between Zionists and other types of Jewish
nationalists; hence he situates Graetz and Dubnow in the bosom of Zionism, as having
created the national narrative that eventually served Zionism. He dismisses the great
Jewish historians and finds fault with the concepts of sociologist Anthony Smith because
they are not consistent with his own conceptions. Smith saw nationalism as stemming not
only from economic developments and the emergence of a class of intellectuals, but also
as the self-expression of an ethnic community with memories of a shared past, common
myths about founding fathers, a common culture, a bond to the homeland, and a certain
degree of solidarity. Sand goes on to “grade” Jewish history departments, which – in his
words – are characterized by a “stubborn refusal to open up to innovative historiography
that addresses Jewish origins and identity” (p. 28). This topic has been treated in a
comprehensive article by my colleague, Israel Bartal, and I will not deal with it again
here.3 However, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to Sand’s methods: he creates a
problem where one does not exist and then protests: why is it not being dealt with?
64 Review Essay
Is there really an innovative historiography pressing for the study of Jewish origins and
identity? Moreover, why should the question of Jewish origins be the key to the analysis of
identity? Isn’t this topsy-turvy: a racist proposition that pins identity on origin? No one is
claiming that Jews have been racially pure since antiquity. No sane historian would make
such a claim. On the contrary: the historians whom Sand both relies on and dismisses have
all acknowledged the conversions of the Second Temple period and the early Middle
Ages, a phenomenon that added thousands of new “members” to the Jewish people.
Alongside the conversions to Judaism, the Jewish people also lost many of its members
since the Second Temple period – to Christianity, to Islam, or to assimilation. Belonging
to the Jewish people was never conditional on race but on adopting the Jewish religion,
and it is still so. Consequently, the discussion of Jewish origins may be intellectually
interesting, a curiosity, so long as it does not degenerate into racial overtones. But it is
hardly clear why the topic is so important to historical research that it merits accusing all
Jewish history scholars of narrow conservatism.
Sand bases his arguments on the most esoteric and controversial interpretations, while
seeking to undermine the credibility of important scholars by dismissing their conclusions
without bringing any evidence to bear. Here are several examples: as regards the Bible, he
attacks the Zionist narrative that held up the Bible as a title-deed to the land of Israel. He
cites the reservations of archeologists as to the beginnings of the Jewish people, the
Exodus etc. Israeli archeologists maintain that they have found no archeological evidence
to substantiate the Bible’s presentation of the greatness of the kingdoms of David and
Solomon. They believe that Judaism apparently took its first steps in the days of Josiah and
the major religious reformation then, to which time Judaism may plausibly be dated. Even
this interpretation does not satisfy him. He enlists the extreme Copenhagen School which,
following Julius Wellhausen, totally ignores the First Temple period and situates the
emergence of Judaism in the Babylonian exile (p. 122). In so doing, he seeks to downplay
the periods of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. By his lights then, the Hasmoneans
were in fact Hellenists (to wit: their Greek names), noteworthy for their policy of
conversion. He gleefully brandishes Alexander Yanai’s forced conversion of the people he
conquered: already during the Second Temple period, the Jews were not “Jews.” The real
Jews were Judeans, i.e. natives of Judea. Sand “uncovers” the well-known fact that during
the Second Temple period, a Jewish diaspora emerged throughout the Roman Empire.
Menachem Stern, a historian of the period, cited several causes for its emergence at that
time, from expulsions to economic reasons and conversions. Sand comments: “The
technique of spreading information in national-history studies finds pointed expression
here” (p. 145). In other words, the fact that Stern listed conversions at the end of his series
of causes is interpreted by Sand as a ploy to conceal what he, Sand, regards as the decisive
factor. Stern may have listed conversions at the end of his series of causes because he
differed from Sand in his assessment, or by pure chance, with no hidden agenda
whatsoever, but Sand sees secret motives everywhere. In much the same way, Sand treats
the historians Haim Ze’ev Hirshberg and Israel Ben Ze’ev, who wrote on the Jewish
kingdom in Himyar and on Berber tribes that converted in North Africa, and from whom
Sand drew his knowledge about the converts. Hirshberg claimed that most of the converts
to Judaism became Muslims upon the Islamic conquest. Sand does not accept this
assertion, as he wishes to claim that North African Jewry stemmed from these converts.
So he lambasts the historian for “not having understood” this “fact” (p. 200). When the
fourteenth-century Arab historian, Ibn Khaldun, expresses doubt about the conversion of
the Berbers and writes that, in any case, the Muslim conqueror who captured North Africa
obliterated all trace of the religions extant prior to the conquest, Sand interprets him
The Journal of Israeli History 65
contrary to the cited references: “It may be reasonably assumed that Ibn Khaldun supposed
that . . . .”. What Ibn Khaldun supposed does not lend itself to the probability of an
assumption if he did not state so explicitly. However, since Ibn Khaldun was not a Zionist
historian, he cannot be rejected out of hand. . .
Another topic Sand likes to punch holes in is the myth of exile: the Jews (were there
any or weren’t there any?) were not expelled from the land of Israel, not exiled from it;
most of them remained there and in the end adopted Islam, and they were the forefathers of
today’s Palestinians. On the other hand, the Jewish diaspora in the Second Temple period
and later originated mainly with Jewish converts who had no ties to the land of Israel. This
is the obverse of the conversion claim: not only were the Jews not forced out of the land of
Israel, not only were Jews in the diaspora unconnected to the land of Israel, not only do
diaspora Jews not belong to the land of Israel, but those who do belong to the land of Israel
are, rather, the Palestinians, the land’s inhabitants since antiquity. Again, he uses the
words of Dinur and his colleagues, who questioned the concept of expulsion: they often
stressed that a significant Jewish community had remained in the country until the seventh
century, remnants of whom, according to current research, lingered on until the conquest
by the crusaders of the eleventh century. The Zionist movement sought to show that Jews
cleaved to the country; from its point of view, the question of expulsion was less important
than showing that Jews had stayed in the land. Again, Sand erects a phantom – exile – and
“proves” that it never happened, something historians do not deny. On the other hand, he
ignores the fact that even if Jews were not exiled from their land, and many of them did
scatter all over the Roman Empire of their own free will, the very loss of Jewish
sovereignty in the land of Israel, the Romans’ change of its name to Palestine out of a
desire to erase all trace of Jews from it, and the establishment of an idolatrous Roman
colony on the ruins of Jerusalem after the Bar-Kokhba Revolt was crushed, went down in
Jewish collective memory as traumatic. This is true even if the Jewish community in the
land of Israel, particularly in Galilee, did continue to flourish, at least until Christianity
became predominant in the Roman Empire in the fourth century.
The awareness of exile was deeply ingrained in Jews, and their sense of humiliation at
having lost sovereignty over the land of Israel only heightened with the rise of Christianity
and Islam – unrelated to the question of whether or not they had been forced into exile.
Sand flaunts the assumption of one historian that the myth of the “wandering Jew,” which
interprets the sojourn of Jews in the diaspora as retribution rather than free choice, came
down to the Jews via Christian sources. Even if we take this assumption to be true, it does
not detract from the importance of the self-image of Jews as a suffering collective pushed
from pillar to post in exile. In this matter as in others Sand presents, there is also another
interpretation for the founding of the myth of exile: the expression “because we sinned we
were exiled from our land” appears in Hebrew prayer and was documented in writing as
early as the ninth century and apparently dated back much further: it is not necessarily a
Christian concept, but a Jewish one, that sees the distancing from the land of Israel as
divine retribution, a wretched state in quest of tikkun – repair. Since there were no Zionist
historians for the first thousand years AD it appears that the “implanted memory” Sand
speaks of was not created by them, but has belonged to the self-image of Jews since the
Temple’s destruction. Ideas about the end of days were connected to dominion over the
land of Israel. “There is no difference between this world and the days of the Messiah
except [that in the latter there will be no] bondage of foreign powers,” said the Babylonian
Amora Shmuel.4 Maimonides explains that in the messianic era, “Except for the fact that
sovereignty will revert to Israel, nothing will be essentially different from what it is now.”5
The messianic belief certainly contained universal elements, but the Messiah was also
66 Review Essay
meant to be a particularistic Jewish Messiah. In other words, the concept of exile is not
necessarily related to expulsion but to the self-awareness of a people that had lost control
over itself and its land. The Jews were no less “a people” than the Romans or Greeks,
which is how their contemporaries saw them.
The sense of exile and yearning for messianic redemption lent the sojourn in the
diaspora a sense of transience that has nationalist connotations. Indeed, these are found in
the letter of Khazar King Joseph to Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, asking for the latest news about the
coming of the Messiah in advent of the return to Jerusalem. The “implanted memory,” it
transpires, was already very firmly lodged by the end of the first millennium, and even
Jews by conversion, like the Khazars, felt a sense of exile though they lived in
independence on their own soil. On the other hand, for Hasdai Ibn Shaprut and everyone
else who wrote about the Khazars, the very fact of a Jewish kingdom even outside of the
boundaries of the land of Israel was a source of encouragement and pride against all the
humiliation and degradation heaped on Jews stripped of power and sovereignty. These are
not religious emotions. They are an expression of collective memory bound up with
national heritage, ancient memories, a culture of life, and day-to-day customs that foster a
consciousness of religious and national separateness. Anyone living by the Hebrew
calendar, which is attuned to the seasons in the land of Israel, anyone annually reading the
Passover Haggadah, which is the story of the liberation of a people from bondage to
freedom, cannot help but identify with that collective and with the sense of being a group
apart, at odds with its surroundings, a clash defined not solely in terms of religion but in
terms of peoplehood. It does not necessarily denote a common origin, but the embracing of
the same historic memory, the same self-awareness, the same echoes of the past. These
were not “implanted” by Zionism. They were integral to the consciousness of the Jewish
collective up to the Jews’ encounter with the various forms of modernism, which
unraveled the fabric of Jewish identity.
At the heart of Sand’s book we find the claim that the Jews of Eastern Europe, the
“Yiddish people” by his definition, do not originate with the Jews who came from the
Middle East via Ashkenaz to Poland, but with the Khazars, nomadic tribes that built an
empire between the Black and the Caspian seas, converted to Judaism in the eighth
century, and scattered to the four winds when their state was destroyed between the tenth
and thirteenth centuries. Sand claims that until the 1960s the “Zionist reconstructors of the
past” (well-known forgers) did not conceal the Khazar origins of Jews but since then, a
“time of silence” has cloaked the subject. He surmises that the change stemmed from one
of two causes: either (1) decolonization, which made it necessary to prove that Jews are
not merely the white settlers of a country not theirs (such claims against Zionism had
already emerged at the start of the British Mandate, during that very same period in which,
according to Sand, the Zionists did not conceal their Khazar origin); or (2) the added
weight given to ethnicity in the politics of identity in the 1970s (but, he claims that the
“time of silence” began earlier . . . ). There were people who took pains to play down the
Khazar connection, Sand asserts, “as the state’s memory mechanisms became established
and consolidated in the State of Israel” (pp. 206–8). The idea of a conspiracy of dark
forces sitting and plotting what to excise from collective memory reflects the paranoia of
an ideological minority that seemingly believes that if they were in power, this is how they
would behave.
Have historians really claimed what Sand is attributing to them? It appears that their
assertions were far more qualified though they did mention the Khazars and were even
enthusiastic about the idea of a Jewish kingdom in the early Middle Ages. On the question
of the Khazars, Sand’s methods again come to the fore as he grabs at the most unorthodox
The Journal of Israeli History 67
theory in the field and stretches it to the outer limits of logic and beyond. A few examples:
scholars disagree on whether all the Khazars or only the monarchy and aristocratic elite
converted to Judaism. To Sand it is clear that all the Khazars converted. When the Khazar
state was conquered by the Russians and the royal family and nobility were apparently
killed, the sources speak about some of the Khazars converting to Islam and some to
Christianity. Some apparently continued to be Jewish, settling in the Crimean Peninsula
and the city of Kiev in Russia. What the actual figures were remains unknown, but they did
not number in the masses. The sources are very sparse; to the extent that there is any
archeological evidence, it is very little. The whole subject straddles the seam between
legend and historical reality. The most esteemed scholar of the Khazar monarchy, by
Sand’s own acknowledgment, is D. M. Dunlop, a British non-Jew in command of the
languages needed to study the Khazars, on whom information is found in Arabic, Hebrew,
Byzantine and Chinese literature. This information is fragmentary and at times
contradictory. Dunlop, at the end of his book, relates to the theory that the Jews of Eastern
Europe are the descendants of the Khazars; he states that “This can be dealt with very
shortly, because there is little evidence which bears directly upon it, and it unavoidably
retains the character of a mere assumption.”6 With typical English understatement, he also
adds that to speak of East European Jewry, i.e. the Ashkenazim, as the descendants of the
Khazars “would be to go much beyond what our imperfect records allow.”7 Sand defines
Dunlop as “extremely cautious” and the gist of his work as “apprehensive” (p. 227).
Certainly, Dunlop was cautious since he did not find any material to corroborate wild
flights of fancy. Sand, on the other hand, allows himself to soar beyond the existing
historical evidence to history as it might have been.
Sand is far from being a pioneer in asserting that present-day Ashkenazi Jews stemmed
from the Khazars. The question of Jewish Khazarian origins has stirred tremendous
interest in the last 60 years, mostly out of unsavory motives. An Internet search for
“Khazars” or “Khazaria” yields dozens of websites on the subject, some pro-Jewish
though the overwhelming majority frighteningly filled with Jew hatred. Orthodox Russian
nationalists present the Khazar kingdom as an expression of the eternal clash between
Judaism and Christianity. Anti-Christian, neo-pagan nationalists regard the Khazars as
part of the Zionist-Jewish plot to debilitate and thereby control humanity. Christian
fundamentalists invoke the Khazars to undermine the idea that present-day Jews are the
descendants of the “divine people” (not that they exonerate them of the charge of deicide).
The Khazars feature on the website of the “biblebelievers” (www.biblebelievers.org.au)
which claims: “that the Khazars are the lineal ancestors of Eastern European Jewry is a
historical fact.” The writer goes on to claim that Hitler may have been a descendant of one
of the Ten Tribes, and Chaim Weizmann of the Khazars. Therefore, “the home to which
Weizmann, Silver and so many other Ashkenazi Zionists have yearned to return has most
likely never been theirs.” White Power members denounce Jews in U.S. government along
the lines of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and explain that they are not really Jews
but the descendants of the Khazars; they are therefore unworthy of American aid to restore
them to the land of Israel – aid that comes from the thinking that Jews are the descendants
of the Chosen People to whom God promised the land of Israel. This chorus has been
joined by Islamic extremists who blame the Jews for 9/11; among the other sins they
ascribe to them, the extremists contend that Jews are descended from the Khazars, they
are not true Jews at all yet they have the effrontery to lay idle claim to the land of
Israel and their connection to the Patriarch Abraham, etc. Arthur Koestler’s book,
The Thirteenth Tribe, also stars in this inventory: “Is the Jewish ‘Chosen People’ Cliche´
and Falsehood Masquerade Finally Over?” (“Research Proves Jews are not Israelites,”
68 Review Essay
http:/assemblyoftrueisrael.com/TruthPage/JewsarenotIsraelites.htm). Those citing it, help
themselves to the anti-Semitic writings of Henry Ford. As a scholar of the history of East
European Jewry, noted: the terms “Khazaria” and “Khazars” can “be employed for any
ideological purpose to hand.”8 The abundance of anti-Jewish polemic boasting that it is
not anti-Semitic since Jews are not really Semites exposes the racist layer at the root of the
discussion of Jewish origins. Sand does not refer to this literature and does not seem
conscious of the suspect company he keeps.
Another example of Sand’s methodology: some scholars contend that Yiddish comes
from Slavic rather than German. They are very few and their position is far from mainstream.
Paul Wexler is the most prominent of them.9 They are hard put to explain where the German
elements came from, elements that are so dominant that Yiddish-speaking Jews can
understand modern German quite easily. Sand has embraced Abraham N. Pollak’s
explanation that Polish Jews had trade contacts with Germans in Poland and thereby
absorbed their language (p. 232). But it is difficult to find evidence of such intensive contacts
between Jews and Germans in Poland that ostensibly would have lent Yiddish its German
character. An example of Sand’s manipulation: to contradict the claimthat Yiddish stemmed
from German, he injects the following statement: “there is no historical finding to point to
the migration of Jews from west Germany to the eastern part of the continent” (p. 232, my
emphasis). The uninformed reader does not notice the word “west,” but Sand well knows that
evidence has been found of Yiddish origins in German dialects in Germany’s east and south.
His claim is thus dubious, but the reader glosses over the above definition with the
impression that Jews from the west – Germany – did not migrate to Eastern Europe and
could not have brought the Yiddish language with them. The attempt to source Yiddish in
Slavic countries is an example of ideology imposing on history.
The history of ethnic groups is very difficult to map. The thirteenth-century Mongol
expeditions decimated populations, caused mass flight, laid waste entire regions.
The fourteenth-century Black Plague destroyed at least a third of Europe’s population.
What happened to the local population in the land of Israel to which Sand attributes Jewish
beginnings – did it not endure conquests, expulsion, plagues etc.? The same applies to the
Khazars: how many of them retained their Judaism or survived the Mongols, and how far
afield did they migrate? All these questions cannot be easily answered by the research
today. To be sure, it is known that Jews settled in southern Russia at the start of the second
millennium, and they apparently were Khazars. But there is a missing link between them
and the Jews who began to arrive in the kingdom of Poland from the thirteenth century on,
for whom there has been continuous documentation ever since. According to the mapping
of Jewish communities in the fifteenth century, it is clear that the great majority of Jews
lived then in western Poland, and during the next two centuries gradually spread over
eastern Poland and the Ukraine.10 How many of the Khazars joined them? How many
Spanish exiles reached Poland? How much intermarriage was there? How many
conversions or mass rapes took place in this space, diversifying the genetic pool of these
Jews? There is no way of knowing. One of Sand’s main claims involves numbers: if not
from the Khazars, then where did the millions of East European Jews come from? After
all, in Germany’s Jewish quarters in the early Middle Ages there were only several
thousand. The answer lies in the statistical data: during the census taken on the eve of
Poland’s partition (1764), the kingdom of Poland and Lithuania had some 750,000 Jews.
If one reckons a moderate average demographic growth of 1.6 per annum, then in 1660
Poland-Lithuania had 150,000 (by a different calculation, only 100,000). According to the
calculations of historians such as Itzhak Schipper and Salo W. Baron, which are based on
estimates of taxes paid by Polish Jews, in 1500 (about 400 years after the destruction of the
The Journal of Israeli History 69
Khazar kingdom), Poland had only 24,000–30,000 Jews. According to another historian
(Bernard D. Weinryb), there were only 10,000.11 One way or another, these figures match
both the migration rates of Jews from the west and the natural increase without having to
resort to masses of Khazars to balance the account. The great demographic increase of
Jews in Eastern Europe occurred in the nineteenth century, not before. This is not the place
to explain the causes for its growth but it must be stated that it did not stem from unknown
migrants.
Sand claims that, apart from religion, the Jewish communities had no common
denominator and they therefore did not constitute a people. But he brings no evidence to
bear. Consequently, he accuses the historians of having omitted to study the way of life of
the Jewish communities in Poland and Lithuania: had they conducted ethnographic
research, they would have found that the Jewish communities had no “secular
ethnographic common denominator,” which goes to show that Judaism is no more than a
religious culture (p. 236). It is not clear what is meant by a “secular ethnographic common
denominator” when speaking of an era in which religion molded every walk of life. In any
case, there certainly has been research on a “secular ethnographic common denominator”:
if it means folklore, it was undoubtedly researched; if it means attire, music, food – these
too were researched. The same goes for economics and commerce, community structure,
family life. The research, it seems, won’t satisfy Sand unless one finds the “absence” of a
“secular ethnographic common denominator.”
Sand feels threatened by genetics: what if it turns out that there is a genetic link unique
to several Jewish communities? After all, the whole factual basis of his denying the
existence of a Jewish ethnic group will fall away. He does not bother to understand the data
that has come to light about Jewish genetics, which, in some cases points to kinship in the
genetic pool of widely-flung Jewish communities, as, for instance, the Jews of Eastern
Europe and of Iraq.12 It is so much easier to diminish all geneticists, especially as they
argue among themselves and do not generally agree about one finding or another, a
phenomenon typical of independent research. He is content to point to their disagreements
in order to dismiss the science out of hand, and to present it as unreliable and to be shunned
by anti-racists (p. 262). As far as he is concerned, it is more reliable to construct a theory
on the flimsy legs of meager archeological findings on Khazaria, or a linguistic analysis
spurned by linguists, than on genetics.
Sand borrows his definition of “nationalism” from the French case. “National
consciousness is first and foremost a desire to live in independence in a separate state,” he
states (p. 287). This definition ignores the nationalism of minorities, who desire to express
themselves and their cultures, not necessarily within the framework of a separate state.
There can be a cultural nationalism, striving for autonomy and self-expression in language
and culture, and not necessarily for territorial government. There can be a diaspora
nationalism, i.e. a nation whose members are spread over several states but who see
themselves as belonging to the same collective. All these forms of nationalism emerged in
the nineteenth century among Jews. As Ernst Renan said in his well-known essay “What Is
a Nation?” (1882), nationalism is a daily plebiscite – it is a conscious choice to belong to a
collective characterized by identification with a common destiny, with myths of the past,
with creating a common culture, religious and secular, with ties to a homeland, and with
the wish to continue to exist as a collective. Until the onset of modern times most of the
Jewish people did not doubt that they were a people. Down the generations, different
Jewish communities retained contact with one another and, separately, with the land of
Israel on questions of religion and religious law, in commerce and mutual help. Even
though the Jews in the Middle East and the Jews in Europe were not identical to one
70 Review Essay
another in their way of life, they retained the common consciousness of a community with
a shared destiny, which found expression in moments of crisis such as the ransom of
hostages or the Damascus Blood Libel. I would define it as a nation-in-the-making. This is
also how non-Jews regarded Jews and even granted them privileges of autonomy beyond
the religious sphere – see the Council of Four Lands in Poland. A confirmed anti-Jew such
as Voltaire saw the Jews as a people and linked the Jews of his times with the biblical
people of Israel.13 Only upon the separation of church and state, which occurred in modern
times, did objections begin to be heard to the religious-national dualism of Jewish
existence which was now presented, in Arnold Toynbee’s words, as “a fossilized relic of
an extinct civilization.”14 However, the Jews are alive and would like to go on living a
national life, in Israel and the diaspora, while retaining a changing relation between
religion and nationality. The right of Jews to define themselves on the basis of their own
definitions rather than on definitions that do not correspond to their history lies at the basis
of the right of self-determination.
The assertion that there is no Jewish people is shared by many groups: Jews who would
like to appropriate a different national identity or challenge every national framework
whatsoever; people looking for reasons of every sort and type to question the links
between the different Jewish communities; those who object both to the bond between the
Jewish people and the land of Israel and to that people’s right to a state of its own. To deny
the existence of the Jewish people sometimes stems from a search for universalism,
sometimes from considerations of a rival nationalism, sometimes from mere hatred of
Jews, and sometimes from intolerance of an entity that does not fit into the neat definitions
of nation and religion. Sand would like to promote a new Israeli agenda, striving for
harmony between Jews and Arabs, to be based on the remodeling of Jewish identity.
However positive the goals he is targeting may be in their own right, there is something
warped and objectionable in the assumption that for Jews to integrate into the Middle East,
they, and they alone of all the peoples in the region, must shed their national identity
and historical memories and reconstruct themselves in a way that may (perhaps) find
favor with Israeli-Palestinians. But reconciliation between peoples makes necessary
a mutual recognition of truth, not an artificial analysis that presents a fabricated front, a
quasi-mask that hides the real differences. What Sand is offering is this kind of artificial
analysis.
Anita Shapira
The Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel, Tel Aviv University
Email: ashapira@post.tau.ac.il
q 2009, Anita Shapira
Notes
1. Yehoshua, “Nisayon le-zihui ve-havanah shel tashtit ha-antishemiyut.”
2. Evron, Ha-heshbon ha-le’umi; Agassi, Bein dat le-le’um.
3. Israel Bartal, “Hamtza’at ha-hamtza’ah” (The invention of the invention), Ha’aretz, 28 May
2008.
4. Brakhot 34 72 (Soncino translation).
5. Mishna commentary of Maimonides, Sanhedrin 10a, cited in Twersky, ed., A Maimonides
Reader, 414.
6. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars, 261.
7. Ibid., 263
8. Klier, review of Victor Shnirelman, 780.
The Journal of Israeli History 71
9. Wexler, Two-Tiered Relexification in Yiddish.
10. Rosman, Ha-yishuv ha-yehudi.
11. Cited in ibid.
12. Shpilberg et al., “One of the Two Common Mutations.”
13. See Bein, The Jewish Question, 186–90.
14. Toynbee, A Study of History, 171–72.
References
Agassi, Joseph. Bein dat le-le’um: Likrat zehut le’umit yisre’elit (Between faith and nationality:
Towards an Israeli national identity). Tel Aviv: Papirus, Tel Aviv University, 1984.
Bein, Alex. The Jewish Question: Biography of a World Problem. Trans. Harry Zohn. Madison, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990.
Dunlop, D.M. The History of the Jewish Khazars. New York: Schocken, 1967.
Evron, Boas. Ha-heshbon ha-le’umi (A national reckoning). Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1988.
Hundert, Gershon David. Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of
Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Klier, John D. Review of Victor Shnirelman, The Myth of the Khazars and Intellectual Antisemitism
in Russia, 1970s-1990s (Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of
Antisemitism and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002). The Slavonic and East European
Review 83, no. 4 (2005): 779–81.
Rosman, Moshe. Ha-yishuv ha-yehudi be-Polin: Yesodot ge’ografiim u-mishpatiim (The Jewish
community in Poland: Geographic, demographic and legal foundations). Tel Aviv: Open
University of Israel, 1991.
Shpilberg, Ofer et al. “One of the Two Common Mutations Causing Factor XI Deficiency in
Ashkenazi Jews (Type II) is also Prevalent in Iraqi Jews, Who Represent the Ancient Gene Pool
of Jews.” Blood 85, no. 2 (January 1995): 429–32.
Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History: Abridgement of Volumes VII–X by D.C. Somervell.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Twersky, Isadore, ed. A Maimonides Reader. New York: Behrman House, 1972.
Wexler, Paul. Two-Tiered Relexification in Yiddish: Jews, Sorbs, Khazars, and the Kiev-Polessian
Dialect. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002.
Yehoshua, A.B. “Nisayon le-zihui ve-havanah shel tashtit ha-antishemiyut” (An attempt to identify
and understand the foundations of anti-Semitism). Alpayim, no. 28 (2005): 11–30.
72 Review Essay

By chance Gollum, were you invited by some Cacique indio?
Of did the M iyaras collaborated in the ethnic cleansing of the native population of “Argentina”? Why don’t you write about your grandfather’s adventures murdering indians?

And just my own, which resonates with Gabriel’s: the idea that these post-Zionist identities could someone resonate with Arab is somewhat undermined by the Arab Islamic and, to a lesser extend, Christian nationalist narrative, identity and states that tended to define non- or anti-Zionist Arab Jews as de facto Zionist Jewish nationals, leading to their effective purging from Araby, mostly to Israel.

HasbaraIbrahim — don’t waste time with being baffled, rush to place your order for Sandman’s book, it will be sold out in no time at all!!!

So, if there was no expulsion of the Jews, who didn’t exist anyway, then St. Peter et al didn’t exist and live in Greece or Rome; nor did Christianity. All that is left that is true is Islam.

Someone,

In terms of foreign policy, no other lobby compares with the Israel Lobby. Hence, little is said about them.

When pro-Israel writers attempt to show that antisemitism is on the rise, they almost invariably mention references to the power of the Israel Lobby. In fact, it is often the central pillar of their case. David T referred to it several weeks ago in the Guardian, as I mentioned above, and today he refers to it again, albeit in an exaggerated form, when he refers to “the claim that Zionists have a stranglehold on the world”.

Of course, no one says that Zionists have a stranglehold on the world; they say that the Israel Lobby has a great influence on US foreign policy. In fact, this claim is true, and given the importance of US foreign policy to the West, it’s obvious that one of David T’s grounds for saying antisemitism is on the rise is not credible, since it is natural that such things are widely debated.

Also, David T cites the fact that certain groups are talking to Hamas as evidence of growing antisemitism. Plainly, the talks with Hamas are all predicated on the assumption that Hamas’ current position is a result of the conflict, and will change over time. Moreover, according to an article in Newsweek last year, the majority of Israelis advocated such talks.

Newsweek reported “In a Haaretz-Dialog poll last month, 64 percent of Israelis said they supported direct talks; among those who belong to the country’s dovish Labor Party, 72 percent favor negotiations. Yet even among those surveyed from the hawkish Likud Party, almost half–48 percent–said they favor a face-to-face dialogue”. The US Jewish organisation J Street has also said that Israel ought to talk to Hamas.

David T says, “I used to think this absolute paranoid rubbish, but the speed at which things have progressed have really surprised me”. The ‘things’ that have progressed are legitimate criticisms of Israel and its lobby, and a few connections to Hamas that have been advocated by a majority of the population of Israel and by many others outside Israel. David T is clearly exaggerating.

The reason the sudeten germans aren’t asking to go home is that they were accepted and welcomed by the neighboring germans around them (in Germany, Austria, etc.). Had the neighbouring arab states done the same, i doubt you’d be hearing the same clamour to return to former homes in Israel, especially from the second and third generation.

It does prove that western “supporters of the Palestinians” are entirely motivated by propaganda that there is no movement to pressure countries where Palestinians live such as Lebanon to give them citizenship rights.

I’m reminded that Edward Said went to Lebanon to stand at the border with Israel and spit at Israel. I don’t remember him sparing a word to call attention to the plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon being sequestered in grubby camps in Lebanon itself.

The point vildechaye is making is interesting.

How is it that some groups of refugees persist, often for centuries, and others are absorbed by their host communities? Here I must overcome my prejudice and part-agree with Sartre’s claim that “who is a Jew” is ultimately defined by anti-Semites. What he meant (I gather) is that the hostility of the host community defined Jews and kept them apart for millennia.

Let us extend this reasoning to all refugees. Those who were accepted have not just settled but ceased to feel themselves as a group apart. In few generations it is difficult to distinguish them from the rest of the population: this applies not just to the Germans expelled from Poland in 1945 but also to Poles expelled from Ukraine in the same “round”. Now, both German and Polish refugees were expelled to “their” polities, and this might explain why they were accepted and rehabilitated – but the Huguenots, whether in England, Switzerland or Prussia, were accepted by a totally different host community and became assimilated in few generations.

Take two opposite cases. First, the Jews. Had the Jews not been persecuted, isolated, singled out, forced to live among themselves, the reality of human interaction is that sooner or later they would have melted away into their host communities. Perhaps it would have taken centuries, but sooner or later they would have disappeared as a separate ethnic or cultural group. Secondly, Palestinian refugees. Their host communities (including indigenous Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza) didn’t accept them, insisted on their separation in both physical and human terms. And so they remained apart.

So, it really boils down mainly to how refugees, asylum seekers, newcomers are treated.

Contrary to popular belief, the bookshops of the Middle East are not replete with anti-Semitic treatises, and nor is there any evidence that anything more than a tiny minority of ‘Middle-Easterners’ hold anti-Semitic views.

Contrary to this load of bollocks the Middle East has more than an accidental occurence of antisemitism in print and broadcast media.

WHy is Mein Kampf such a popular book in Arab countries if it wasn’t for the fact that it lead to Jew hatred and The Holocaust.

How can you release Muslims from the potential (and actuality) of developing antisemtic views when attacking Jews is denigrating them appears in The Koran and throughout the history of Mohammed and Islam. This doesn’t mean ALL Muslims but does seem to mean a lot of Muslims in the Middle and Far East.

We would all wish it not to be so but its an unfortunate fact.

For being a people who don’t really exist, it is amazing how easy we are to find.
The Spanish had no trouble making the distinction between Jews and Christians during the inquisition, the Russians knew who we were during the pogroms, and Hitler easily found millions of us in the 1930s and 40s.

I can just see the same people saying one day that “Jews do not exist, ” then the next day “Jews control the world,” then the third day claim that anyone questioning their logic are Zionists suppressing free speech.

Stan

In fact, if you look around the web for mentions of Khazars, you’ll find that Islamist (and neo Nazi) sites enthusiastically claim that all Jews are false Jews, descended from Khazars. The completely contradictory believe that Jews are real Jews but are being punished by God for disobeying him is also extremely popular in Islamist websites.

Extremely popular as my riposte is to tell Muslims to re-consult The Koran where Allah granted The Children of Israel their own land and made them His “Chosen People” – and then work out why all Arab armies get well-defeated by Israel because, obviously, Allah is punishing them for disobeying His will.

Of course, for non-religious people I’ll call it mumbo-jumbo and refer them to The Mandate For Palestine but for anyone who declares themselves a follower of a religion I pull that one out on them!

Vildechaye:

Had the neighbouring arab states done the same, i doubt you’d be hearing the same clamour to return to former homes in Israel, especially from the second and third generation.

So basically you support expulsion of Arabs from Eretz Israel and then blame their misfortune on the inhospitable Arab countries and not the usurpers?

Do you think Belgium (for instance) would have the right to invade, say Holland (or Luxemburg) and expel all Dutch (or Luxemburgers)? Would neighbouring countries be obliged to settle these refugees/ If they didn’t do that, would this somehow absolve Belgian guilt? Do you think Europe would keep quiet about this?

Israelis are in fact Palestinians – it’s just that the Israeli state does not recognize the rights of other Palestinians

Israelis are NOT Palestinians. When the Mandate For Palestine covered what is now Israel, West Bank and Gaza the place was given the name Palestine, as a working title. There is no real place called Palestine since its a space defined by The League of Nations which is NOT The Lebanon, Syria, Jordan or Egypt. It is a volatile place because at the last minute part of Palestine became Jordan.

The Jews WERE called Palestinians by the British until Israel became independent in 1948 at which time they renamed themselves “Israelis”.

Within Israel are Arabs who’s rights are enshrined with equality in the Declaration Of Independence.

Perhaps you could now tell us what legal rights the Arabs in West Bank and Gaza have to form a state – except by the consensus will of the International Community. According to the unrescinded Mandate For Palestine 1922 both Jews and Arabs have equal rights in West Bank and Gaza with only Jews with the permission to form governmental institutions.

However, we ALL recognise that the Palestinians should have a state but NOT as a right but as a logical extension of their needs and as a way of Israel not having responsibility for them. It is equally logical that they become part of Jordan and Egypt who were previous landlords until 1967.

If that review, and the one above is correct, we’re looking at a contemporary Chariot of the Gods.

So basically you support expulsion of Arabs from Eretz Israel and then blame their misfortune on the inhospitable Arab countries and not the usurpers?

One either supports the right of people to live where they were born or you don’t. We have a few of generations of Israelis born in Israel and a few generations of Palestinians born in other countries.

Also, I find it’s the fascists who go on about keeping hurts to past generations alive promoting war today on that basis. That would be you.

Poor old Josephus Flavius must be turning in his grave and asking himself why he ever bothered writing ‘The Jewish Wars’.
Can I take it that Mr. Sand doesn’t have a copy?

Jerusalem, 70 CE
‘With battering rams and portable bridges, the Romans stormed the walls of Jerusalem. Like termites they spilled into the city, slaughtering a populace reduced to helplessness by starvation. Four years of bitter defeats at the hands of the Jews had made a mockery of the vaunted invincibility of the Roman legions , and now only killing could soothe their bruised vanity. The Temple was put to torch, infants thrown into the flames, women raped, priests massacred, Zealots thrown from the wall. Survivors of the carnage were earmarked for the triumphal procession to be held in Rome, sold as slaves, held for the wild beasts in the arenas or saved to be thrown off the Tarpeian Rock in Rome for amusement…..Altogether, Tacitus estimates 600,000 defenseless Jewish civilians were slain in the aftermath of the siege.’
Judea 135 CE
‘Jerusalem, and what had been Judean Palestine, was now made off-limits to the Jews. Those who had not perished in the war (the Bar Kochba revolt) or managed to escape into Parthia were sold into slavery.’
Max Dimont -’Jews, God and History’

Whilst it is true that the Romans did not usually banish conquered populations, in the case of the Jews the usual Roman tactic of destroying a local population’s national identity through intermarriage did not work.
The three Jewish wars against the Romans had been considerably more protracted than either side thought possible and had shown other groups within the Empire that Rome was not entirely invincible. Worried about the possibility of further uprisings, the Romans made sure to demonstrate to the whole of their world how dissenters would be taken care of by using the treatment of the vanquished Jews -including their banishment from their own country – as an example to all.

Ohad, there seems to be a sort of psychological kink in people like Sand for whom there is little or no inclination to appraise critically any argument which is in the least bit complicated; rather many think in black and white because it’s easier and consquently there are no shades of grey for such people.

And I agree with you, Manchurian about the distilled antisemitism in the cockeyed “the Jews are not a people.” Iminadinnerjacket’s fundamental thesis is a variation of this – he set out to minimise the impact of the Holocaust so that he could try out argument that the remaining Jews had no need of a country of their own – and he regularly trots out the umpteen Islamist variations on, “Why are we placed in such a position when Europe is to blame for the Holocaust?”

Preestleigh, that argument may be truer than you think for some benighted believers.

Hasbara Buster please don’t hurry away from your bafflement. The (very) little regard I have for you as a human being is around the fact that your ignorance must be bliss for you and that it explains why you post as you do and add nothing of substance to debates here. I doubt that you could cope if you were, heaven forfend (!) suddenly struck by enlightenment. (Sorry, Alec, I fed the troll!!)

(Psst: Talking of rushing out to buy a copy of Sand’s book, how many copies of Seth Freedman’s book have you bought, Hasbara, and were they remaindered copies? I have a bet with some friends that they’ll be going for £1 before Christmas if they haven’t been pulped before).

Gert, you know I expect that Mad Mel Phillips would think you are bonkers, too; if, that is, she bothered to read anything you wrote. Unfortunately I happened on some of your posts, and I think you are bonkers, and I doubt that I am alone in doing so.

And why are you getting so antsy about what you perceive to be fiction presented as fact? This is the raison d’etre of blogs like Comment is Free, ElectronicIntifada and others, as well as much of what is said by Islamist leaders, particularly about Jews. Surely you know this (you probably drool over them into the small hours) or does the presenting fiction as fact bit matter only because you are paranoid and believe that others are doing it to you rather than you to them?

Ken Fulcrum, your fantastic analysis of the Israeli/Jewish Lobby brought tears to my eyes. I sobbed. I didn’t realise how powerful us Jews are and whereas I’ve been pletzing over us losing our grip I can relax now that I can see we’re embedded and the project is up-and-running.

Only 13m Jews in the World and we’ve got the most powerful lobby in the whole Universe. So comforting! Thanks!

I’ll always remember a quote by Matahir, ex head of Malaysia who hosted an Islamic conference about four years ago and said “How come 13m Jews can achieve things that 1.8bn Muslims can’t?”

No comment is necessary, He said it!

Ken at 6:43 -

Well done. 360 words, and completely failing to address my points, going off instead on a rant at David T. I am impressed.

johng, David T is not alone in fearing another genocide of Jews.

Ken Fulcrum – “In terms of foreign policy, no other lobby compares with the Israel Lobby. Hence, little is said about them….”

Pardon me??

This sounds like a variation on something from Daniel Pipes’ “The Hidden Hand” about the unfortunate tendency of the Arab/Muslim to believe conspiracy theories along the lines of, “The Jews/Zionists are very cunning and involved in every nefarious plot,” and to persist in such belief, and believe even more strongly if they can find no proof any alleged conspiracy. They believe, the Jews are so cunning that they can erase all signs of their plotting, which makes them very clever indeed….

You should read “The Hidden Hand” Ken. You may feel really understood, perhaps for the first time in your life :~))

Ken Fulcrum, your fantastic analysis of the Israeli/Jewish Lobby brought tears to my eyes. I sobbed. I didn’t realise how powerful us Jews are and whereas I’ve been pletzing over us losing our grip I can relax now that I can see we’re embedded and the project is up-and-running.

Only 13m Jews in the World and we’ve got the most powerful lobby in the whole Universe. So comforting! Thanks!

That’s an old nazi era joke. Sad that we can use it again.

they say that the Israel Lobby has a great influence on US foreign policy. In fact, this claim is true, and given the importance of US foreign policy to the West

Well most Jews in the US are Democrat voters – perhaps 70-80%, Oh, and Israel specifically, prevailed upon the US Bush administration, quite concertedly in the run-up, NOT to invade Iraq in 03. I remember, because I take a Hitchenesque view and thought, and still think they – Israel – were wrong and that GW Bush, was right.

True, Jews are over represented in science, the arts and as business leaders; especially in the US. But then, Jews score notably better than the general population in Europe and America in cognitive faculty tests. So one could, and I do argue, that this is best explained as manifestation of meritocracy rather than any grand conspiracy.

Given European history over the last 2 millennia, it’s not very difficult at all to come up with parsimonious candidate theories as to why Jewish cognitive faculties, on average, trump the general population’s in Europe and the US.

Could you expand on your last para., please, Nick? Those theories sound as though they could be interesting. Thanks.

“but the Südeten Germans are not asking to return. If they were, they would have exactly the same right as the Palestinians.”

HB No, they would NOT have the same right as the Palestinians and you know it. You know full well that uniquely among all refugees, to be classified as a Palestinian refugee all you had to do was to have lived in Palestine for 2 years during a specific decade in the 40s, not to have lived there from time immemorial. You know full well that uniquely among all refugees the status of Palestinian refugee is passed down unto the nth generation, instead of ceasing with the original generation who actually departed the country.

What he meant (I gather) is that the hostility of the host community defined Jews and kept them apart for millennia.

I disagree. The fact that there are a mere 15 million Jews in the World, despite Judaism pre-dating both Christianity and Islam considerably, even given the murder of many Jews in the last 2 millenia; suggests that something else is afoot. Factor in that Judaism is non evangelical and ‘inherited’ thorough the female line, that modern DNA tests suggesting that many modern European ‘gentiles’ are of Jewish ancestry…..and it’s clear other factors are at play, including massive – over time becoming the norm rather than the exception – Jewish integration.

I answered your objections in the first line of my response. The Saudi Lobby simply cannot compare to the Israel Lobby in terms of influence. As for the motor industry lobby and other lobbies of that type, the consequences of their actions are nowhere near as significant as those of the Israel Lobby. Contrary to what you seem to be implying, the Israel Lobby is not being unfairly singled out.

In 1993, the bombers of the World Trade center sent a letter to the New York Times saying that their actions were a response to “the American political, economical and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region”. Bin Laden’s first fatwa in 1996 states “Your brothers in Palestine and in the land of the two Holy Places are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy –your enemy and their enemy– the Americans and the Israelis”.

In 2004, a group of retired US diplomats wrote to President Bush urging him to change his policies in regard to Israel. They said “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the core of the problems in the Middle East”.

In 2008, Bin Laden said “The Palestinian cause has been the main factor that, since my early childhood, fuelled my desire, and that of the 19 freemen (Sept. 11 bombers), to stand by the oppressed, and punish the oppressive Jews and their allies. We shall continue the fight, Allah willing, against the Israelis and their allies, in order to pursue justice for the oppressed, and we shall not give up one inch of Palestine, as long as there is still a single true Muslim alive”.

I could go on, but I think the point is clear. It is very unlikely that a major terrorist organisation will carry out a significant terrorist attack because of, say, the policies of the Ford Motor Company.

Given European history over the last 2 millennia, it’s not very difficult at all to come up with parsimonious candidate theories as to why Jewish cognitive faculties, on average, trump the general population’s in Europe and the US.

One reason would be, I suspect, because those Jews examined represent/ed a much smaller and inter-dependent population group than the wider population. Add to that, also, that 70 years ago, the inclusion of an impoverished and often lowly-educated cohort of European Jews in the East would have queered any statistics.

That Scots have been over-represented in British politics or banking doesn’t indicate a racial/cultural superiority, or explain away the slums of the big cities.

I answered your objections in the first line of my response. The Saudi Lobby simply cannot compare to the Israel Lobby in terms of influence.

I am not aware of Israeli pressure having shut down investigations into bribery over major defence companies in Western countries, Israeli businessmen using Western defamation laws to have books pulped, Israeli diplomats continuing to allow their septic tanks to leak into adjacent properties whilst claiming diplomatic immunity.

“That Scots have been over-represented in British politics or banking doesn’t indicate a racial/cultural superiority, or explain away the slums of the big cities.”

I was reading in Niall Ferguson’s Empire how Celts are over-represented in the 18th, 19th and 20th century Anglo-colonial movements: around 50%, I think.

To complain about lack of historical criticism and then to come up with this, is hilarious:

“There were some deportations from Judea in the post-Rebellion period, but there was also a gradual movement of Jews out of the area for other reasons (including, possibily, climate change). The Galilee remained a Jewish centre for centuries”

There are two completely separate ideas here:
1. Sentence 1 – I love “some” deportations. At least you accept that this is possible without trains.
However, the fact (is it?) that there was ALSO voluntary emigration is neither here nor there.
2. Sentence 2 – so some Jews remained. And? How does that negate the existence of deportations?

My purpose was not “to negate” the existence of deportations. I just wanted to point out that the depopulation of Jews from Galilee and Judea during Late Antiquity is a far more complex story than just a dramatic mass “exile” comparable to the end of the First Temple period.

Margaret Smallwood (a bit old as a source, I know, but easy to find on Google Books), wrote this about the post-Bar Kochba era:

Death in battle, the deportation and sale of prisoners, and voluntary post-war emigration has all taken such a toll of the Jewish population that in some districts the balance between Jews and gentiles was now tipped in favour of the latter. This was especially true in Judaea…The once despised Galilee was now the chief area of Jewish residence

And I know the climate change angle might sound a bit naff and trendy, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to it:

The decline of the Roman and Byzantine Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 1,400 years ago may have been driven by unfavorable climate changes.

…[The] analysis, to be reported in an upcoming issue of the journal Quaternary Research, reveals increasingly dry weather from 100 A.D. to 700 A.D. that coincided with the fall of both Roman and Byzantine rule in the region.

Given European history over the last 2 millennia, it’s not very difficult at all to come up with parsimonious candidate theories as to why Jewish cognitive faculties, on average, trump the general population’s in Europe and the US.

Could you expand on your last para., please, Nick? Those theories sound as though they could be interesting. Thanks.

I’d love to hear it too. I’ll work on the theory that Jews needed to develop cognitive faculties to be aware of all the people who have tried to kill them throughout the ages.

I’ll bet its deeper than that!

Press release: German Islamic Organisations Against Sharia
http://manifestgegenscharia.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/organisations-against-sharia/

Nick (Ex South Africa) says, “Oh, and Israel specifically, prevailed upon the US Bush administration, quite concertedly in the run-up, NOT to invade Iraq in 03. I remember, because I take a Hitchenesque view and thought, and still think they – Israel – were wrong and that GW Bush, was right.”.

In May 2002, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres stated on CNN “…there is a feeling that Iraq is developing nuclear weapons. They possess chemical weapons. They possess biological weapons. They are building missiles. And simply, you cannot sit and wait for meeting this challenge”. In September 2002, he said “The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must”.

Also in September 2002, in the Wall Street Journal, Benjamin Netanyahu (who was to be Israeli Foreign Minister from November 2002) had an article in the New York Times “The Case for Toppling Saddam: The longer America waits, the more dangerous he becomes”. Having claimed that the US can act without approval, he says “Two decades ago it was possible to thwart Saddam’s nuclear ambitions by bombing a single installation. Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do…For if action is not taken now, we will all be threatened by a much greater peril…”.

Again in September 2002, in the New York Times, Ehud Barak in “Taking Apart Iraq’s Nuclear Threat” wrote “Saddam Hussein’s nuclear-weapons program provides the urgent need for his removal. His previous violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions already provide the legal ground and legitimacy to remove him before it becomes too late…”.

How could Israel have been acting “quite concertedly” against the war, if their Foreign Minister, among others, was telling the US that it could not “sit and wait”?

In 2004, a group of retired US diplomats wrote to President Bush urging him to change his policies in regard to Israel. They said “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the core of the problems in the Middle East”.

So, why not invade Gaza with American troops, Destroy Hamas and liberate their civilians and then say to Israel. “Terrorists all gone!”

What a great idea.

My favourite bit from the obsessive Gert (he’s got a bit of a thing about Israel)

“I don’t deny the existence of contemporary anti-Semitism, but I don’t believe it’s nearly as bad as some make out and that some
alleged forms of anti-Semitism simply aren’t real anti-Semitism.”

So, for Gert, not only is (most) antisemitism not really antisemitism (no doubt just a clever ploy, Jews are good at that!) but “real” antisemitism is actually good for the Jews,

(From Gert’s website),
“Ahmadinejad: a great gift to Israel”
“What would Israel do without Ahmedinejad? The Holocaust denying, ‘wipe Israel off the map’ drivelling idiot of the Global Village is precisely the kind of lightning rod the Israeli leadership wants and needs”

Those Jews are so lucky – they just win all the time…………

And you claim to be an antiracist! Yeah right!

My favourite bit from the obsessive Gert (he’s got a bit of a thing about Israel)

“I don’t deny the existence of contemporary anti-Semitism, but I don’t believe it’s nearly as bad as some make out and that some
alleged forms of anti-Semitism simply aren’t real anti-Semitism.”

So, for Gert, not only is (most) antisemitism not really antisemitism (no doubt just a clever ploy, Jews are good at that!) but “real” antisemitism is actually good for the Jews,

(From Gert’s website),
“Ahmadinejad: a great gift to Israel”
“What would Israel do without Ahmedinejad? The Holocaust denying, ‘wipe Israel off the map’ drivelling idiot of the Global Village is precisely the kind of lightning rod the Israeli leadership wants and needs”

Those Jews are so lucky – they just win all the time…………

And you claim to be an antiracist! Yeah right!

The Saudi Lobby simply cannot compare to the Israel Lobby in terms of influence.

I remember Rudy Guiliani turning down a donation from a Saudi Prince after 9/11.

I guess the Arab lobby ain’t got anything we want to buy. Market forces dear boy! Got to have a good product and great marketing.

Arab Lobby in USA suffers from a slight bit of bad publicity on 9/11.

Carter don’t mind because it saved his peanut farm. He will take the shekel.

My post at 8.30 pm is addressed to ‘Someone’. (I forgot to copy the name).

I was reading in Niall Ferguson’s Empire how Celts are over-represented in the 18th, 19th and 20th century Anglo-colonial movements: around 50%, I think.

Oh, that’s our cover blown.

In 2008, Bin Laden said “The Palestinian cause has been the main factor that, since my early childhood, fuelled my desire, and that of the 19 freemen (Sept. 11 bombers), to stand by the oppressed, and punish the oppressive Jews and their allies. We shall continue the fight, Allah willing, against the Israelis and their allies, in order to pursue justice for the oppressed, and we shall not give up one inch of Palestine, as long as there is still a single true Muslim alive”.

I think he was lying – I’ve been told that Bin Laudin has been putting out tapes for decade and has just recently discovered that Israel is a good topic for him.

My post at 8.30 pm is addressed to ‘Someone’. (I forgot to copy the name).

In case of doubt all my posts are for “Anyone”. Or, their alias “Someone or other”. Good job my handle isn’t “Everyone”.

Jewish integration

I believe it was Newton who invented integration and he wasn’t Jewish. Do you mean assimilation? ;)

To continue Josh’s point, he is lying. His tapes after 11/9 made next to no mention of it, and what did the murder of 200 Kenyan workers *three* years previously have to do with Israel? Okay, those other Kenyans they aced whilst trying to get Israeli tourists could, arguably, have said to have got in the way.

I could go on, but I think the point is clear. It is very unlikely that a major terrorist organisation will carry out a significant terrorist attack because of, say, the policies of the Ford Motor Company.

Your blind willingness to accept OBL’s post hoc justification (have you heard his views on environmentalism? They’re great!) has been responded to, but to this, so what? This is warped, unfeeling nihilism could be used by any bunch of sociopaths and murderers to argue ‘heart-felt’ anger at something or other.

There was me thinking that opposition to the bombing of General Motors (along with the symbols of Western corporate power, the World Trade Centre) would be a basic duty of any normal human being with a scintilla of compassion, but now I see it’s a courtesy.

There’s also the matter, so often expressed by such Eurocentric understanders of terrorism, of your overlooking the vast majority of deaths from these a “major terrorist organisation(s)” are not in Western countries or, even, representatives of Western power.

Greg

Do you mean assimilation?

Yup, that I do…thanks!

Spikey Brendan O’Neill is good on how people read what they want in Bin Laden:-

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAECC.htm

Exploiting Palestine

Take Palestine. It is widely assumed that al-Qaeda’s violence is primarily motivated by Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and will continue until that issue is resolved. Yet bin Laden’s nods to Palestine over the past 10 years tell a different story.

In 1994 he only mentions Palestine as a way of having a pop at the rulers of Saudi Arabia, whom he really despises for ‘betraying’ Islam and for having the nerve to expel him from Saudi territory (his birthplace) in 1991 and revoke his citizenship in 1994. Bruce Lawrence, editor of this collection, has given bin Laden’s first major public pronouncement – made on 29 December 1994 – the heading ‘The betrayal of Palestine’; but when you read it, Palestine is cynically mentioned as part of bin Laden’s spat with Saudi rulers.

Sand wrote a book the equivalent of “The Da Vinci Code.”

Useless historical fiction.

The Roman expulsion is well documented in history not least by the Romans themselves. Also the Rabbis made numerous mention of it in the Talmud.

The expulsion wasn’t a single event. First it was from the Jerusalem area and then after the Bar Kochba rebellion it was from all of Judea which the Romans renamed Palestine.

To say that an event didn’t happen because no books were written about them is very unscholarly.

Jews didn’t write the kinds of histories that Herodotus and Thucydides introduced the Romans to. But that doesn’t mean that they didn’t take note of it.

Also to argue thus is the same as saying that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays because he never wrote about himself as a writer nor was he interviewed by anyone else. I have read such silly argument on line and even a sitting supreme court Justice holds to that view which goes to show that even the smartest people can be very stupid.

As Saul Bellow said, ‘a lot of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is great.’

What comes across most clearly in this 10 years’ worth of rants is the extent to which bin Laden borrows and steals from Western media coverage to justify his nihilistic actions.

D’you think he reads Harry’s Place?

So, according to Ken Fulcrum, the idea of an all-powerful Jewish lobby is correct because the 1993 WTC bombers and bin Laden himself, in various fatwas (some of them from beyond the grave) said that it is. Presumably everything else they say is ipso facto true as well. And of course, if we and Israel gave in to all their demands everything would be peaceful. (Anyone remember “our last territorial demand in Europe”, 1938?)

Let’s face it; some people just don’t like Jews, or at least don’t like “uppity” Jews: Jews that know their place, and accept being gassed or not being gassed, according to the whim of their “host nation”, are occasionally OK.

All we can do is tread on these people the minute they emerge from under their flat stones.

D’you think he [OBL] reads Harry’s Place?

I’m not sure, though I rather doubt it.

That said, he definitely has lapped up, ruminated upon and regurgitated Michael Moore and has, quite specifically, by name, endorsed Robert Fisk.

I have little doubt he would be quite dandy with Pilger and Chomper’s editorial line, and worthy of a regular rather than one-off column, given half a chance by Milne and his cabal in the Groan.

Parity -the Hashmonean queen Alexandra who ruled from 78-69 BCE (the widow of Alexander Janneus) founded free elementary schools and made primary education compulsary for both girls and boys. In the first century BCE illiteracy amongst Jews was therefore practically eradicated. I guess therefore you could say that we had a bit of a head start as far as cognitive skills go.

D’you think he reads Harry’s Place?

It would embarrassing to have Obl attacking the SWP, don’t you think?

Ken Fulcram’s attack on the Israel lobby actually ties in quite well with this article I think. There is a book to be written about AIPAC. How did it come about? Why is it a mostly Likud lobby when Likud is only one party in Israel and most American voters are Democrats? Why is it so powerful? However, the book that was written confused “powerful lobby” which is true of AIPAC with “lobby that controls the government/foreign policy” which is nonsense. The lack of subtlety of thought or indeed honesty, ensured that “The Israel Lobby” would become a book for people, like Ken, who want to believe in this all powerful Israeli lobby. This requires a complete lack of understanding of how the lobby system functions and the limits of the power of lobbies. (Incidentally, the most powerful lobby in the US is the AARP. Retired people control America!)

I think it is generally accepted that not all Jews were exiled from Judea. In fact, the claim is the very opposite: that there was a dispersal but that there was still a continuous Jewish regional presence. In Hebron, for example.

Remember that for the better part of Jewish history, Judaism was essentially a city-based religion, centering on Jerusalem. There’s even the record of the Jerusalem priests suppressing regional altars. So, what was significant about the exile was not simply the large number of people who were deported. It was, rather, the unimaginably huge impact of losing the city which the faith was wholly centred upon. Basically, that broke Judaism.

Now, that’s not to say that this was a wholly centralised faith, with Jews only worshipping at the Temple. There were – and continued to be – synagogues in that area of the Middle East.

What happened, however, was that

- Judea becomes Palestine: a symbolic erasure

- there are mass deportations and enslavements, combined with periodic expulsions from Rome. These must, incidentally, had the effect of accelerating assimilation. Within Palestine, the land becomes mainly non Jewish.

- Jerusalem is raised, and renamed Aelia Capitolina. The Temple is destroyed.

So you get people like Akiva, who gets tied up with the Bar Kokhbar revolt, but who is living in Caesarea. There are still Jews in the area. Just fewer. And they’re forbidden from entering Jerusalem.

In fact, there are Jews all over the Roman world, before the destruction of the Temple, and afterwards. What has changed is that they’ve lost a nominally self governing homeland, and they’ve lost the two things that their religion centres on: Jerusalem and the Temple.

So what happens to the Jews who stay in Israel. Well, some remain Jewish. There is an ongoing Jewish presence in the region, some time later even in Jerusalem. There’s an attempt to rebuild the Temple which stalls. That tells you, possibly, that the heart really has been ripped out of the religion. It is a minority faith. It has recast itself as a memorialiser of catastrophe, and a vessel of hope of an unimaginable restoration of Jerusalem, as well as a code for domestic – rather than national – self government.

What happens to those Jews over time. Well, there were anti Jewish riots following the Jewish-Roman wars, and that will have driven some out. Jews were subject to punitive taxation, which would also have encouraged flight – to somewhere where the significance of being Jewish would have been less obvious and personally detrimental. There is lots of mobility in the Roman Empire.

Then, lots of them would have stayed, and will have blended into what would have been a fairly mixed and cosmopolitan population of Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Africans and whoever slavery and trade brought to the region.

There’s an odd echo of what we’re seeing at the moment in the past. With the Babylonian exile, which wasn’t nearly as long as the Bible says it was, the returnees decided to build a Temple. They were approached by the Samaritans, who claimed to be those Jews who were left behind, and not exiled. Rubbish, claimed the returnees. We’ve never heard of you. And anyhow, your prayers are all wrong.

The Samaritans are still there, but aren’t doing to well. They’ve recently decided that it is ok for a certain degree of intermarriage with Jews.

On, and the Sudeten Germans DO have a right to return to their ‘homeland’. They’re EU citizens.

How did that happen? By not having exterminatory wars, but instead by adopting common standards of human and social rights, by free trade, by opening borders, by having free movement of persons – knowing that it would only be exercised by a few – and by pooling sovereignty to create a common citizenship.

None of this is beyond the wit of man.

Not sure this has been posted here:

www(dot)newstatesman(dot)com/society/2009/03/jews-anti-friend-syria-dinner

Ken deflecting again:

“I answered your objections in the first line of my response. The Saudi Lobby simply cannot compare to the Israel Lobby in terms of influence. As for the motor industry lobby and other lobbies of that type, the consequences of their actions are nowhere near as significant as those of the Israel Lobby. Contrary to what you seem to be implying, the Israel Lobby is not being unfairly singled out.”

You failed to answer my point about critising the Israeli lobby. Criticising, Ken. NOT mentioning. NOT discussing. Criticising.

And now you seem unable to grasp the different between an assertion and proving that assertion:

“In 1993, the bombers of the World Trade center sent a letter to the New York Times saying that their actions were a response to “the American political, economical and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region”.

Yes, so they say. And?

“In 1993, the bombers of the World Trade center sent a letter to the New York Times saying that their actions were a response to “the American political, economical and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region”.

But there is also speculation (the Guardian is one source) that the date – 9/11 – coincides with the Islamic defeat in the Battle of Zenta on September 11th 1697 (Vienna). This battle was apparently part of the last attempt to defeat Christendom.

Prince Eugene of Savoy killed 20,000 Ottomans, seized their treasure and ten of the Sultans wives. This was followed by the Ottoman losses of Croatia, Slavonia, Hungary and Translyvania.

If this was the reason for choosing this date – and it’s a fairly random date otherwise – it has little to do with Israel or American foreign policy.

AIPAC isn’t even in the top 50 groups of the US terms of membership or funding. If you want to foam and spew about powerful lobbies then check out AARP, NRA, tobacco, oil, finance, insurance, health care, autos, electronics, home building, chambers of commerce, pharma, the AMA, autos, ports, software, defense contractors, farming and coal.

To those who are fiercely defending the thesis that we’re all descended from peoples living at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean but who choose not to live there.

What’s with this diaspora crap? Why aren’t you getting back home? You’re as bad as me, hanging about in Western metropolitan dives, diluting your Jewish identity. It’s all very well proving the link between your genes and the land of Judea, and getting fits of post hoc indignation about the Roman mommzas, but no one’s exiling you now. And it’s all very well socking it to Sand, but in one practical sense, it doesn’t matter whether he’s right or wrong about his history – you behave as if he’s right. That is, the homeland is not your home. Shame on you.

I have to admit that I’m a bit confused: If Jews don’t exist, then the brilliant professor doesn’t exist either. So what, exactly, are we discussing?

By the way, doesn’t Titus Arch in Rome depicts images of Jews led into exile?

Mike R,

We are discussing it, because it is very poor history, for all of the above reasons, which I hope you’ve read :)

Gabriel thanks for the link to Shapira’s article. It was quite a rebuttal. I did a fake historian like Sands ever get his book published by an academic press?

Don’t have to answer that one since there have been many other questionable histories published by academic presses and even reviewed in places like the NY Times.

We do live in intellectual shallow age where ignorance and wishful thinking not to mention and lies in the service of bigotry are too often celebrated as cutting edge thinking.

“And it’s all very well socking it to Sand, but in one practical sense, it doesn’t matter whether he’s right or wrong about his history – you behave as if he’s right.”

What an ignorant tirade! Typical of a Trotskyite jer!

For your information, in another generation or two most Jews will be living in Israel as assimilation, intermarriage and above all the refusal to reproduce will be cutting in ever more sharply into the number of Jews living in the West.

Then there is always that steady small stream of Jews continuously moving to Israel.

“That is, the homeland is not your home.”

It is certainly not yours. Your homeland is the never, never land of Marxist utopia which when it arrives will vomit you out the way it did Trotsky and all the other Yids playing communist.

“Shame on you.”

Yes, shame on you.

Mike Rosen your arguments get weaker by the day.

Why aren’t you out there protesting with your fellow anti-Zionists calling on Jews to be sent back t Auschwitz?

Here are some Mike’s friends:
“VIDEO: ANNE FRANK’S HOLLAND: “Jews to the Gas””
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/01/video-anne-fran.html

and here:

“Just Kill Jewish”

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2009/01/just-kill-jewish.html

Another Penny – “But there is also speculation (the Guardian is one source) that the date – 9/11 – coincides with the Islamic defeat in the Battle of Zenta on September 11th 1697 (Vienna). This battle was apparently part of the last attempt to defeat Christendom.”

But surely everyone at the Guardian knows that 9-11 was chosen to commemorate Pinochet’s coup against Allende – all part of the worker’s international solidarity don’t youk now?

While I support Israel as a Jewish state. Its clear that the US is a much better safe haven for Jews….and we in fact have the worlds largest Jewish population, especially when the definition of what constitutes a Jew is loosened a bit from the strict Orthodox definition.

“especially when the definition of what constitutes a Jew is loosened a bit from the strict Orthodox definition.”

Hell, EscapeVelocity, If you loosen the definition of the term “Jew” then half the country will claim to be Jewish in some way.

But if you stick to a more reasonable definition then the Jewish population here then Israel has more Jews then does the Us whose Jewish population is dwindling fast.

Shirley, you must be joking. Is there some kind of Jewish(Israeli) thing about this state of affairs (US has largest population of Jews (and larger than Israel) that irks them? Are you commenting on the fertility rates of Jews in the US(and the fact that many of them are Leftwingers who support abortion on demand and use that service quite a bit)? Clearly the coming exodus from Europe will swell both Israel and the US.

Additionally, tiny Israel surrounded by a billion Muslims on vast territory with enormous oil welath, who wish her ill, with a continous history of villifying and attacking Israel militarilly is not a safer place for Jews than the US.

Shirley, you must be joking. Is there some kind of Jewish(Israeli) thing about this state of affairs (US has largest population of Jews (and larger than Israel) that irks them?

Additionally, tiny Israel surrounded by a billion Muslims on vast territory with enormous oil welath, who wish her ill, with a continous history of villifying and attacking Israel militarilly is not a safer place for Jews than the US.

Shirley, you must be joking. Is there some kind of Jewish(Israeli) thing about this state of affairs (US has largest population of Jews (and larger than Israel) that irks them? Are you commenting on the fertility rates of Jews in the US(and the fact that many of them are Leftwingers who support abortion on demand and use that service quite a bit)? Clearly the coming exodus from Europe will swell both Israel and the US.

Additionally, tiny Israel surrounded by a billion Muslims on vast territory with enormous oil welath, who wish her ill, with a continous history of villifying and attacking Israel militarilly is not a safer place for Jews than the US.

Shirley, you must be joking. Is there some kind of Jewish(Israeli) thing about this state of affairs (US has largest population of Jews (and larger than Israel) that irks them? Are you commenting on the fertility rates of Jews in the US(and the fact that many of them are Leftwingers who support abortion on demand and use that service quite a bit)? Clearly the coming exodus from Europe will swell both Israel and the US.

Additionally, tiny Israel surrounded by a billion Muslims on vast territory with enormous oil welath, who wish her ill, with a continous history of villifying and attacking Israel militarilly is not a safer place for Jews than the US.

Shirley, you must be joking. Is there some kind of Jewish(Israeli) thing about this state of affairs (US has largest population of Jews (and larger than Israel) that irks them? Are you commenting on the fertility rates of Jews in the US(and the fact that many of them are Leftwingers who support abortion on demand and use that service quite a bit)? Clearly the coming exodus from Europe will swell both Israel and the US.

Additionally, tiny Israel surrounded by a billion Muslims on vast territory with enormous oil welath, who wish her ill, with a continous history of villifying and attacking Israel militarilly is not a safer place for Jews than the US.

What the hell happened?

Ken -for you:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3713083,00.html

Anyways, I was under the impression that the tradition of being born to a Jewish mother has been poluted. It was originally made law(or whatever) so as to ensure that Jewish women who were raped in pogroms children would be considered full Jews and not ostracized. This doesnt mean that children of Jewish fathers but non Jewish mothers are to be ostracized…that is a corruption of the original intent.

“(US has largest population of Jews (and larger than Israel) that irks them” (Escapevelocity)

You are mistaken. In the last two years Israel overpassed the US in the number of Jews. You could keep up with present data, EV.

“While I support Israel as a Jewish state. Its clear that the US is a much better safe haven for Jews….”

The same could be said for Greeks or Iraqis, etc. But there is something that makes the Greeks and Iraqis wish to have their own country.

His book spent 19 weeks on the best-seller list in Israel.

I’ve never heard of it.

I wonder who were the people who bought it.

All right, all right – I’m fucking joking…

Maybe we should all go living in America, since it is the safest country in the world. Just make the last person turn off the lights in all the rest of the countries.

Hello Michael,

you’re at it again: confusing sympathy with Israel, and Zionism, with being pro-Zionist and being actually Zionist. The latter being usually historically a mixture of idealism and need.

Yes, pro-Zionists often call themselves Zionist, but a poet, with his awareness of the many meanings of words, ought to have a finer distinction.

And, by the way, your assertion that, for most people, The Massacre of the Innocents would recall Brueghel rather than Herod and Bethlehem remains nonsense.

In the last two years Israel overpassed the US in the number of Jews. —Fabian

While that may be so, please see my “liberalization of the definition of Jew” remark. In which case the US will still be the country with the largest Jewish population.

I dont begrudge the Jews their state of Israel.

My being an American mutt, I dont have a state based on historical ethnicity. There is nowhere for me to go and be loved and my culture preserved. I guess we will just have to make do over here with libertarian and Enlightenment dedication to human rights and liberty. These ostracized Jewish mutts, me and a whole host of others.

“And it’s all very well socking it to Sand, but in one practical sense, it doesn’t matter whether he’s right or wrong about his history ”

Hmm. Not a very academic argument that, Michael, is it?

“- you behave as if he’s right.”

Well, Michael, that in no small part is due to the fact that liberal, democratic Britain is very different to those places in which originated most Israeli Jews.

In other words, he omits a good portion of the history that is pertinent.

“While that may be so, please see my “liberalization of the definition of Jew” remark. In which case the US will still be the country with the largest Jewish population.”

Still no.

Michael Rosen:

“To those who are fiercely defending the thesis that we’re all descended from peoples living at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean but who choose not to live there.”

well, while that argument, or part of that argument does appear above, and in Anita Shapira’s review, it is not the whole argument. As you would know, had you read the above instead of projecting your own (racial?) concerns on others.

There is also the question as to how Jews have been regarded and defined by the majority other, as well as by themselves.

I think, also, that the way you need to equate sympathy for Israel and Zionism with being Israeli or Zionst, albeit, mockingly, outside Israel, but here, to be curiously reminiscent of antisemitism.

I should explain EV. The issue of the “liberalization of the definition of Jew” also works in Israel.

You may have some issues when you want to get married or buried (because then and only then you have to deal with an orthodox bureocracy), but nobody questions in Israel that if you feel Jewish, you are a Jew the rest of the days of your life.

Does the assertion bother you? Is this something that bothers Israeli Jews or that they concern themselves with?

Wikipedia states…

The United States is home to the second largest Jewish community in the world (after Israel) depending on religious definitions and varying population data American Jewish population was estimated to be approximately 5,128,000 (1.7%)[1] of the total population in 2007 (301,621,000).[2] However, it may be as high as 6,444,000 (2.2%).[3] As a contrast, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics estimated the Israeli Jewish population was 5,435,800 in 2007 (75.7% of the average population).[4]

So here it is, another chapter in the great debate on the number of Jews in America. The much anticipated study conducted by Brandeis University has been published, and as expected, it rediscovers many lost American Jews. “The total number of Jews in the United States, using definitions that parallel NJPS’ ‘core Jewish population’ is likely greater than 6 million individuals and, possibly, as high as 6.4 million? An additional group, perhaps 1 million more than the 6 to 6.5 million estimated to be Jewish by NJPS criteria, might be considered Jewish based on their Jewish family backgrounds. In most cases, these individuals are the children of intermarried parents. Including these individuals would bring our total estimate to somewhere between 7 and 7.5 million individuals.”

continued….

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=823209&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1

No, EV, it doesn’t bother me. I made aliah to Israel when it was the second largest community in the world, so why would bother me NOW if it is the first or is still the second? Chill out, man.

The issue with the numbers is exactly the opposite of what you think. It is very easy to know how many Jews (people who declare themselves Jews) are in Israel. You just take a representative sample of the population or use a census. Those that declare themselve Jews are Jews for the purpose of the census.

The problem is not in Israel. The problem is in America because the only way to reach Jews for the purpose of counting them is when they are affiliated to a Jewish organization, most usual there a synagogue (in Argentina however, you wouldn’t use synagogue affiliation but JCCs affiliation as a measure). The problem is that there are people who feel themselves Jews but are not affiliated to synagogues in America and you can only give a very variable estimate of them.
The variation is not a product of the “liberalization of the definition of Jew” as you think, but a product of assimilation and the gradual and progressive lost of the Jewish identity among American Jews. You cannot be a Jew by yourself. Jewishness is a community endeavor. Therefore, if you live in a remote place in America and do not do anything Jewish, there will be some people who will count you as a Jew in the sense that you can be re-interested in your peoplehood and there will be some people who will not count you as a Jew because you are a lost cause.

What is Rosen angry about again? I suspect he’s projecting views on Jews not all different from what Atzmon projects – I thought he disagreed with that sort of nuttery. Or is he decending into a sort of madness where he can’t tell one delusion from another?

You may have some issues when you want to get married or buried (because then and only then you have to deal with an orthodox bureocracy) — Fabian

Sound racist to me…..this idea of official Jewness.

Native Americans found new wealth in casinos, and consequently recently moved to reneg on honorary tribal memberships (given to people who supported the tribe in the past in some way) so as to not pay out profit dividends to these folks. The whole thing is very ugly and racist, IMO.

Sand is to scholarship as David Irving is to scholarship.

Bediuk, I refer to them: “An additional group, perhaps 1 million more than the 6 to 6.5 million estimated to be Jewish by NJPS criteria, might be considered Jewish based on their Jewish family backgrounds.”

Are these people Jewish? It depends more on what they do and how they will educate their children than on what they think now and with whom they are married.

“Sound racist to me…..this idea of official Jewness.”

Then you have no idea what racism is.

EV: I am not a Christian, officially. I was never baptized.
Christians are so racist!

there will be some people who will count you as a Jew in the sense that you can be re-interested in your peoplehood and there will be some people who will not count you as a Jew because you are a lost cause. — Fabian

LOL! Lost cause?

So an isolated Jewish family without a community to recognize them, can keep all the traditions as best they can, and not be counted as a Jew in the US?

“So an isolated Jewish family without a community to recognize them, can keep all the traditions as best they can, and not be counted as a Jew in the US?”

Counted by whom? Lets say you. How do you find this isolated Jewish family for the purpose of counting them? They are isolated.

Then you have no idea what racism is. — Fabian

It sounds to me like you dont get treated the same by the Orthodox Jewish bureaucracy (and apparently law)….if you arent an offical Jew….by your own account. I think that is pretty straightforward racism. I mean really, difficulties getting married or buried. Good Lord!

Let me get this right: Rosen is angry because there are Jews outside Israel, even though he is a hate-filled anti-Zionist? This is about as bonkers as it gets. The whole point of Zionism is to reach a state of affairs where Jews behave like a normal nation: with most of them living in their homeland, which is an independent country, but with many living elsewhere if they choose to. Obviously, for historical reasons there is a very large Jewish community in the USA, and large ones elsewhere. But there are a great many self-identifying Irish people in the USA. Do they also attract Rosen’s animus?

I am sort-of with EV here on the Orthodox bureaucracy in Israel, although I am not sure that “racism” is quite the right word. The power of the Orthodox bureaucracy is just about the most backward aspect in Israel. It is a shameful state of affairs.
But as to not being counted if you live on your own 20 miles outside Butte, Montana: well, yes, if nobody knows about you, you don’t get counted. I don’t see where the issue is.

Counted by whom? Lets say you. How do you find this isolated Jewish family for the purpose of counting them? They are isolated. — Fabian

I understand the point. Im going to still hold to my assertion that there are more Jews in the US at this time, but that may change in the future depending on events, immigration, and fertility rates.

BTW, Im not trying to stigmatize Israel as a racist state. I realize that they arent perfect. No nation is. The US certainly sets a high standard, and Israel has been under siege since its inception…which is not an ideal situation for a nation to show the better angels of their nature. Even at that Israel still hits high standards and is much better than anything in the region. Europeans that have been sneering at Israel from their isolated lofty purches are going to be dealing with the same issues that Israel has to, thanks to their own foolishness with regards to immigration policy.

Oh, I am not also with the Orthodox monopoly of civil issues like marriage. But I think that this is one of the political issues that my polis itself (Israel and its society) is exclusively authorized to deal with. And it is not one of the issues that defines which party forms the coalition.

Now, to call that racism is evidently a misuse of the word.

KB Player,

Your link to Brendan O’Neill is interesting. O’Neill is attempting to show that Bin Laden began to make significant references to the Palestinians only after 9/11, and he bases his claim on a 1994 Bin Laden article. The implication, of course, is that Bin Laden’s statements about the Palestinians are purely opportunistic.

Yet in his 1996 Fatwa, Bin Laden makes a number of clear references to the Palestinian problem, and given that his words were not merely general comments but part of a fatwa, I would have thought that O’Neill would have referred to them. Can you explain why O’Neill omitted to mention such an important document?

Here are some excerpts from the 1996 fatwa:

“It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq”.

“My Muslim Brothers (particularly those of the Arab Peninsula): The money you pay to buy American goods will be transformed into bullets and used against our brothers in Palestine and tomorrow (future) against our sons in the land of the two Holy places”.

“It is incredible that our country is the world largest buyer of arms from the USA and the area biggest commercial partners of the Americans who are assisting their Zionist brothers in occupying Palestine and in evicting and killing the Muslims there, by providing arms, men and financial supports”.

“My Muslim Brothers of The World: Your brothers in Palestine and in the land of the two Holy Places are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy –your enemy and their enemy– the Americans and the Israelis”.

Because, I mean, lets say that in the future the Orthodox loose the monopoly in civil issues, and the Conservative and Reform movements get a hold on these too, and get to define who is an acceptable Jew for the purpose of holding a Jewish marriage.

Some will still claim that it is “racist” that only Jewish streams are authorized to define who is a Jew.

Ostracizing people because of the nature of their mixed breedness, or lack of conformity seems to me to be pretty shady.

EV: the Jews are a tribe. The tribe has rules.

If you don’t want to conform, fine, get other members of the tribe to change the rules or piss off. Nobody is forced to be a Jew or to live in Israel.

Maybe we should institute that attitude here in the US. If you arent a European Christian, then tough, piss off….no one is forcing you to be an American or live in the US.

After we run everyone who doesnt conform out, we can institute the “get other members of the tribe to change the rules or piss off” policy….and institute racist religionist immigration, marriage, and burial policies.

But I understand that these policies are going to be in force in Europe for the reason that some people dont like to play nice.

As an aside, I find the support amongst American Jews for legal attacks on Christianity and symbols of Christianity and Holidays and such to be rather hypocritical. Would they support the same legal attacks on Jewish symbols in the public government sphere, holidays, and the like in Israel?

I read a heartwarming story about an American Jew that admitted this folly and came to see that Christians saying Merry Christmas isnt an afront to him or Jews…or non Christians.

Here it is…

http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/a-jewish-plea-for-a-merry-christmas/

I suppose this guy is getting a little too integrated. ;)

I think that is part of the difficulty and problem. Jews are both a tribe and a religious group. If it was just religious then you could say, if you dont like the dogma then find another religion. But the racial/tribal aspect of Jewishness, makes for ugliness…when you are ostracized for your lack of bloodworthiness or whatever.

The least Israel could do is liberalize the definition of Jew with regards to the law and and government policy. Let the synagoges run their own affairs how they see fit.

“Maybe we should institute that attitude here in the US. If you arent a European Christian, then tough, piss off…”

So you think that in Israel to those who are not halachically Jews we expell them? (I hope you know what halacha is, but given the quality of your argumentation, somehow I doubt it).

I think you simply don’t know much about Israel, but you have lots of prejudices.

My best friend here never converted to Judaism. He is still a Catholic (married with a Jewish woman), and he feels strongly about that. That has never make him despise his adoptive country, and nobody wanted him out. On the contrary, he works in forming ties between Latin American municipalities and Israeli ones, and between Latin American politicians and Israeli regional developers.

He has never had your attitude. I think that this is because he is not an ignorant, and he actually lived here (he was offered a very very good job back in Argentina, and sadly they went back).

What can I say, you are full of prejudices. Maybe it will help if you took long holidays to Israel.

“But the racial/tribal aspect of Jewishness, makes for ugliness…”

Merry Christmas!

Stop playing dumb, Ken. The quotation Player gave was not “interesting”; it actually discussed his oeuvre and repudiated your childish syllogisms and half-baked analyses of a spoilt scion of a concrete baron. This grudging approval, complete with your only now giving a quotation from 1996 having previously bandied around one from seven years after the fact, points to your changing the parameters as you go along… which is a very dangerous thing to allow patently dishonest posters such as yourself to do.

What the hell gives Bin Laden the right to issue fatwas, anyway? He ain’t even a cleric.

Even if, as you have not demonstrated, he has been citing Palestine as the driving inspiration, so what? They may be doing this because they’re a bunch of bastards who hate Jews even more than Muslims of the wrong confessional or political affiliation, like.

You appear a tad confused in that you use negatively-tinged terms such as “terrorist organization” and then imply approval for their stated aims (unless, of course, you’re scared of Muslims and think they’re capable only of raw and violently expressed emotion).

Plucking firms as Ford Motors (of course that’s what I meant) out of thin air is also doomed to failure, as 11/9 was an assault on the symbols of the corporate West (hint New York =/= Tel Aviv; WTC =/= Ashkelon).

Still waiting for your rationalization of the murder of 200 Kenyan workers, also.

Here is, for those interested, the Pluto Press/UCU-SWP publication (on sale at you next UCU general meeting), John Rose’s The Myths of Zionism, in pdf form.

Dedicated to Tony Cliff/Yigal Gluckstein, interestingly John Rose’s chiefest acknowledgment after his partner, is of Michael Rosen:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9787928/The-Myths-of-Zionism

To those who are fiercely defending the thesis that we’re all descended from peoples living at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean but who choose not to live there.
What’s with this diaspora crap? Why aren’t you getting back home? You’re as bad as me, hanging about in Western metropolitan dives, diluting your Jewish identity. It’s all very well proving the link between your genes and the land of Judea, and getting fits of post hoc indignation about the Roman mommzas, but no one’s exiling you now. And it’s all very well socking it to Sand, but in one practical sense, it doesn’t matter whether he’s right or wrong about his history – you behave as if he’s right. That is, the homeland is not your home. Shame on you.

I’m stupefied to see Michael Rosen resorting to Speak You’re Branes type arguments, along the lines of, if you love zionism so much, why don’t you live there?

Speak You’re Branes characterizes arguments like those thus:

A collection of ignorance, narcissism, stupidity, hypocrisy and bad grammar.

Well, I think Michael’s grammar’s OK. Make up your own mind on the rest.

The “you ignorant bigot” method of international relations.

What a hoot!

No one likes to be criticized. Im pro Israel, and generally a fan of Jews. I however have serious political disagreements with the majority American Jews though…though there is probably much we can agree on.

Mazel Tov!

Shalom.

To those who are fiercely defending the thesis that we’re all descended from peoples living at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean but who choose not to live there.

Mike, you’re not speaking to five year olds here! What’s being discussed is Sands’ attempt to present a history of the Jewish identity, so you shouldn’t be too surprised if people provide more scholarly works as rebuttal. If “Jews” aren’t a real historical group, then neither are “Palestinians”, so the territory should go to whomever can scrabble to the top.

Furthermore, the gist of this thread has been that ‘ownership’ belongs, first and foremost, to populations there in the here and now. Even your and Sands’ belief in your ability to create realities with only a pen and piece of paper cannot deny living memory, and the memories of people whom living memory has encountered.

“Maybe we should institute that attitude here in the US. If you arent a European Christian, then tough, piss off….no one is forcing you to be an American or live in the US”

Well, that’s just nonsense. American does not equal “European Christian”, nor is it the counterpart of “Jewish” but of “Israeli”.

Tut tut, Alec. I am sure that Sand, as an “academic”, and Rosen, as a “poet” (neither of which make them professional historians), are sufficiently important to use word processors.

Here is a direct link to that article I was referencing with regards to Merry Christmas.

http://breathofthebeast.blogspot.com/2008/12/annual-botb-jewish-plea-for-merry.html

“No one likes to be criticized. Im pro Israel, and generally a fan of Jews. I however have serious political disagreements with the majority American Jews though…though there is probably much we can agree on.”

It is ok, I have serious political disagreements with the majority of Israeli Arabs, and also with all those Americans who believe in Creationism. But I still think the US is a cool place, and I would say -if I were asked- that I give it the right to exist.

“Maybe we should institute that attitude here in the US. If you arent a European Christian, then tough, piss off….no one is forcing you to be an American or live in the US”

Well, that’s just nonsense. American does not equal “European Christian”, nor is it the counterpart of “Jewish” but of “Israeli”.

It certainly could, if it emulated Israel, apparently. That was the point.

That is also the reason why the US is superior to all of Europe and Israel and every nation on Earth for that matter….though it too is certainly imperfect.

I think they call this a part of American Exceptionalism…..which apparently Obama likens to British Patriotism and Greek Nationalism, the dimwit he seems to be.

BTW, Fabian, I never claimed to be an authority on Israel, Jews, or Judaism.

“BTW, Fabian, I never claimed to be an authority on Israel, Jews, or Judaism.”

I am just saying that on theory you can only know so much about Israel. But you miss the practice. How people actually live here and what does your neighbor here thinks, and whether does issues that concern so much academics have any relevance for them.

“It certainly could, if it emulated Israel, apparently. That was the point.”

Well, I guess that the US is past the point to become a WASP nation-state. Not that you didn’t try. Just ask the Apache or the Sioux…

The “superiority of the US” came a little late for them…

“It certainly could, if it emulated Israel, apparently. That was the point.”

What on earth are you on about now? There are non-Jews in Israel.

“That is also the reason why the US is superior to all of Europe and Israel and every nation on Earth for that matter”

I would like to think that you are trying to be ironical, but I can’t say that I feel certain that you are.

Fabian, I assume you have heard about the large numbers of Italians and Poles and Irish non-Anglo-Saxons and non-Protestants, whether or not you regard them as “white”.

David T, 10 May 2009, 1:33 pm

Well-put, David.

Indeed, someone.

Alec Macpherson says “Stop playing dumb, Ken. The quotation Player gave was not “interesting”; it actually discussed his oeuvre and repudiated your childish syllogisms and half-baked analyses of a spoilt scion of a concrete baron. This grudging approval, complete with your only now giving a quotation from 1996 having previously bandied around one from seven years after the fact, points to your changing the parameters as you go along… which is a very dangerous thing to allow patently dishonest posters such as yourself to do”

1. Brendan O’Neill’s sets out to show that Bin Laden didn’t seem to have much interest in the Palestinians before 9/11. He says “Take Palestine. It is widely assumed that al-Qaeda’s violence is primarily motivated by Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and will continue until that issue is resolved. Yet bin Laden’s nods to Palestine over the past 10 years tell a different story”

“In 1994 he only mentions Palestine as a way of having a pop at the rulers of Saudi Arabia, whom he really despises for ‘betraying’ Islam and for having the nerve to expel him from Saudi territory (his birthplace) in 1991 and revoke his citizenship in 1994”.

Yet O’Neill makes no mention of the 1996 fatwa, which contains numerous direct references to the Palestinians, such as “My Muslim Brothers of The World: Your brothers in Palestine and in the land of the two Holy Places are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy –your enemy and their enemy– the Americans and the Israelis”.

If you don’t think it odd that O’Neill made no mention of the 1996 fatwa, then you are beyond the reach of reason. Of course, I’m not implying that Palestine is the sole reason, but I am saying that it is a significant factor, but O’Neill makes it seem as if Bin Laden had almost no interest in the Palestinians. But he can only do this by means of selective quotation.

Moreover, you say O’Neill discussed Bin Laden’s oeuvre, but he has ignored the latter’s most important document. And I did not give grudging approval to O’Neill’s article – I asked why he has ignored such an important piece. That is why I included the quotes from the 1996 fatwa.

2. If you look at my post from 8.30 pm yesterday, you will see that I do include most of the above quote from his 1996 fatwa. I didn’t include the rest of the quotes for reasons of space. So I didn’t give the quotation from 1996 ‘only now’, and I have not changed any parameters. In fact, even if I had quoted the 1996 fatwa ‘only now’, I still would not have changed any parameters, unless you are saying that in a debate people should not be allowed to add any more data after their original post. As for the dishonesty, would you like to cite some examples?

3. Did you mean to say that the quotation ‘repudiated’ my arguments? I think you mean ‘refuted’.

You’re not very bright, are you, Alec?

Then, as if to prove you are malicious as well as rather dull, you go on to say that I “imply approval for their [al-Qaeda’s] stated aims”. Is this the best you can do?

Finally, you say, “Still waiting for your rationalization of the murder of 200 Kenyan workers, also”. You will wait a long time, because, frankly, I have no interest in debating with you.

Joanne, to your excellent summary (10 May 2009, 4:54 pm) of the clear genetic basis for Jewish claim of peoplehood, allow me to add the famous Hammer study, published by the American National Academy of Sciences in its Proceedings:

Hammer: http://www.pnas.org/content/97/12/6769.full

The study supports the following:

1. Askhenazi and Sephardi Jews resemble each other more closely than any other groups.
2. Both Jewish groups are next closest to other Middle Eastern populations (including Palestinians).
3. Ashkenazi Jews have only a miniscule genetic link to the Khazars.
4. After roughly 80 generations in Europe, Ashkenazi Jews have only a limited (5% to 20%) genetic link to Europeans.

In other words, Jews are a distinct people (no surprise there) who are clearly Semites (no suprise there) who underwent a diaspora abroad (no suprise there).

Of course, all ths gives the Jews a rock-solid claim to self-determination in a state of their own, which is why anti-Semites must develop Khazar and other odd theories so as to deny Jews self-determination.

Most odd, however, is that only the Jews (not Roma or African-Americans) are subject to the double-bind of the loony right who would hate them on a racial basis, and the loony left who would deny them any separate identity. Both, of course, are execrable views. How complex is it to understand that the Jews have a right to a self-defined identity and self-determination in their own state (as the loony-left wishes to deny them), without descending into racist hatred as does the loony-right?

Fabian

“No one likes to be criticized. Im pro Israel, and generally a fan of Jews. I however have serious political disagreements with the majority American Jews though…though there is probably much we can agree on.”

It is ok, I have serious political disagreements with the majority of Israeli Arabs, and also with all those Americans who believe in Creationism. But I still think the US is a cool place, and I would say -if I were asked- that I give it the right to exist.

Brilliantly put, Fabian!

Shmuel aks, “Who is Joan Peters?”

Peters’ book undermines Arab claims of being present in Palestine “from time immemorial”.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Immemorial-Arab-Jewish-Conflict-Palestine/dp/0963624202/

EV

” Im going to still hold to my assertion that there are more Jews in the US at this time”

You’re not only ignorant but live in a reality-denying bubble.

US: 5.275 millions
Israel: 5.314 millions

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/jewpop.html

“You will wait a long time, because, frankly, I have no interest in debating with you”

And this is news? You also run away from debating with me. Now, I wonder why that is … hmm …

” Im going to still hold to my assertion that there are more Jews in the US at this time”

EV the more interesting statistic is that the number of Jews in the US was higher a generation ago. It was I believe slightly over six million. Hence the number should have gone up not down.

That the number keeps going down while the number in Israel keeps going up doesn’t augur well for the future of American Jewry.

The same is true for your other contention. Jews are safer in the US for the moment, but given the demographic changes, the influx of large numbers of Muslims, for example and other not so friendly third world peoples into the US I doubt the calm Jews are experiencing now will continue for long.

Ken, your a fraud.

*you’re

Alec,

I’ve exposed you as the windbag that you are. You call me a fraud, yet you can’t even acknowledge the fact that the quote you accused me of introducing had already appeared in my earlier post. You can’t even assimilate the basic facts of a case.

In detail:

You said in response to my 8:02 am post, “Stop playing dumb, Ken. The quotation Player gave was not “interesting”; it actually discussed his oeuvre and repudiated your childish syllogisms and half-baked analyses of a spoilt scion of a concrete baron. This grudging approval, complete with your only now giving a quotation from 1996 having previously bandied around one from seven years after the fact, points to your changing the parameters as you go along… which is a very dangerous thing to allow patently dishonest posters such as yourself to do”.

This passage is so error-strewn as to be laughable.

1. I wasn’t playing dumb at all. Brendan O’Neill was suggesting that Bin Laden had shown little interest in the Palestinians prior to 9/11. I showed that Bin Laden had, and then enquired why O’Neill had not mentioned the fact.
2. The quotation didn’t discuss Bin Laden’s oeuvre at all, as it missed out, intentionally or unwittingly, Bin Laden’s fatwa, his most important statement of the decade.
3. I didn’t grudgingly approve Brendan O’Neill’s remarks in the least. I spelt out what O’Neill was attempting to do, and then showed that he had omitted a document, Bin Laden’s fatwa, that undermined his case.
4. I gave the 1996 quotation in an earlier post (8:30 pm yesterday).
5. I didn’t change what you consider to be parameters, because I had already made use of one the quotes.

I will put the debate in a condensed form for you.

KB Player quotes Brendan O’Neill: “Take Palestine. It is widely assumed that al-Qaeda’s violence is primarily motivated by Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and will continue until that issue is resolved. Yet bin Laden’s nods to Palestine over the past 10 years tell a different story.

In 1994 he only mentions Palestine as a way of having a pop at the rulers of Saudi Arabia, whom he really despises for ‘betraying’ Islam and for having the nerve to expel him from Saudi territory (his birthplace) in 1991 and revoke his citizenship in 1994. Bruce Lawrence, editor of this collection, has given bin Laden’s first major public pronouncement – made on 29 December 1994 – the heading ‘The betrayal of Palestine’; but when you read it, Palestine is cynically mentioned as part of bin Laden’s spat with Saudi rulers”.

O’Neill then discusses this letter, before he says “Fast forward 10 years to 15 April 2004..”.

So O’Neill is implying that Bin Laden had not expressed much interest in the Palestinian problem before 9/11. But he ‘fast forwards’ to 2004 without mentioning Bin Laden’s most important comments on the matter: his 1996 fatwa, which includes the statements:

“It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq”.

“My Muslim Brothers (particularly those of the Arab Peninsula): The money you pay to buy American goods will be transformed into bullets and used against our brothers in Palestine and tomorrow (future) against our sons in the land of the two Holy places”.

“It is incredible that our country is the world largest buyer of arms from the USA and the area biggest commercial partners of the Americans who are assisting their Zionist brothers in occupying Palestine and in evicting and killing the Muslims there, by providing arms, men and financial supports”.

“My Muslim Brothers of The World: Your brothers in Palestine and in the land of the two Holy Places are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy –your enemy and their enemy– the Americans and the Israelis”.

In short, based on a 1994 letter, O’Neill is implying that Bin Laden had made little mention of the Palestinians before 9/11. I am saying that, on the contrary, a man who goes so far as to issue a fatwa that implores Muslims everywhere to fight the Americans and Israelis on behalf of the Palestinians has made very important mention of them. An analysis that omits the fatwa is worthless.

Of course, all ths gives the Jews a rock-solid claim to self-determination in a state of their own, ….

Without prejudice to the idea that the Jews do have such a claim, why would genetic relatedness provide a “rock-solid” basis to it?? Presumably the Basques have a similar degree of relatedness to one another, but it is at least an open question whether there should be a Basque state.

Yawn…………………..

For the past eight years there has been a right-wing administration in the US. Politically, they thought it best to support Israel.

Idiots like Fulcum think that that political choice is down to some all-powerful, all-conquering “Israel Lobby” – the same all-powerful, all-conquering “Israel Lobby” (what with the placement of a “Zionist” Chief of Staff in Obama’s administration) cannot even get the Israeli PM a quick meeting.

I do find the seriousness with which he writes about these tings highly amusing. He reminds me of the serious discussions 10 year old boys have about how hover-cars are only a few years away.

The fact is, of course, that Fulcrum is an antisemite.
The reason for this fact is that one of the key characteristics of an antisemite is they believe that Jews can determine policy (in this instance, foreign policy) of the world’s most powerful nation.

Bet he gets all upset now that he’s been called an antisemite!!

“Presumably the Basques have a similar degree of relatedness to one another, but it is at least an open question whether there should be a Basque state.”

incredulous? actually you are both ignorant and too credulous.

There is a Basque autonomous region in Spain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_Country_(autonomous_community)

During the 1920’s and 30’s many Jewish organization tried to negotiate such an agreement with their Arab neighbors but to no avail.

The UN partion plan which divided up the land between Jews and Arabs was also a kind of regional autonomous agreement but again the Arabs rejected that.

So that you are wronfg when you say “it is at least an open question whether there should be a Basque state” you are showing ignorance about the realities of Basque history and culture as well as about the history of Jews and of Israel.

By the way, regarding the very last point made in the post, I don’t think the Jews need Israel only because of anti-Semitism. Having a state of their own will enable Jews to realize their full potential as a people, to develop their culture, to have the right to create their own society and institutions. What is wrong with that?

Fabian, Im not down on Israel. Youre taking umbrage much too quickly….but I understand the climate which makes this so/likely. Youve taken the wrong measure of me. Futhermore, I dont deny the right to exist to the state of Israel….and in fact support it strongly. Ive even submitted that I think that Israel would liberalize if given the chance at peace….and even at that it is still the most progressive nation in the region.

Why does the Israel Lobby gain such credence on the Left…..because the Jewish voting support for the Democrat party keeps the Leftist party from turning on Israel….Republicans support Israel on principle.

Jacob, I understand your contention. However Latin Americans and particularly Mexican Catholics arent such bad folks as that you should be afraid for American Jewry in the future. After the villification and demonization of European Caucasians for a half a century (including by Jews), they have been set up for ill treatment by other groups in the US. I would hazard a guess that Jewish population numbers declining in the US have to do with fertility rates…..which is a problem for everyone at this jucture on the planet….but apparently the Greens love the declining populations but not so much as to target Muslim nations for birth control and abortion promotion.

To anyone still reading, I think that Jewish culture produces academic excellence which is rewarded in a free enterprise society and therefore they become prominent figures in many of the times leading movements. That is why they are leading Communists/Socialists and also leading Neo Cons in the Bush Admin. Unfortunately Jewish Americans have promoted a racist discriminatory system in the US to replace the racist system of the past….corrupting the free expression of culture in a free market society and the unequal results among differening populations. How unfortunate that American Jews support third world immigration to the US but not Israel. What a shame, huh? Why is it that what is good for the Israel is not good for the US? I think Israel is a good learning experience for Jews worldwide…as they are no longer a persecuted and ill treated minority as they still act in the US. This long history produces a mindset which supports minority rights over majority rights in countries across the world….except of course Israel. This cognitive dissonance is surely good for the Jews. Now they are the majority and the oppressor of minorities, and they can see how their policy advocations in other nations…fly in the face of Jewish majority interests in Israel which arent evil or designed to persecute others….they are just the interests of a majority…which implies no evil intention against the minority (as is Western Left dogma (and the belief of the majority of US Jews), that any disparity between populations is a sign of nefariousness).

Fabian, who will the superiority of Israel come a little late for?

BTW, the Apache are not a group you should be upholding as sins of the US about….their culture of banditry and hunter gatherer society.

Just as Israeli Jewish culture is superior to that of Arab Muslims.

“Unfortunately Jewish Americans have promoted a racist discriminatory system in the US to replace the racist system of the past….corrupting the free expression of culture in a free market society and the unequal results among differening populations.”

How is that?

What racist dicriminatory system are speaking of?

Ken, as I said, letting you set the parameters of the debate is clearly a dangerous game, so I ain’t going to.

Even if OBL said everything you say he did with full cognizance and chronological accuracy, so what? (And what does it have to do with Sands’ thesis?) Yours is the tactic of making unfalsifiable statements and then retreating when called upon it… of course claiming he responding to the issue of Israel, and not Ford Motors (debatable, considering the target of 11/9), is to throw the germ of doubt in readers’ minds that his actions were borne out of righteous anger at an injustice.

But, by being the fraud and intellectual coward that you are, you cannot even commit yourself to this.

Once again, what did the murder of 200 Kenyan workers have to do with Israel?

At the very, very least you’re a anti-Arab racist and anti-Muslim bigot who doesn’t expect anything other than irrational violent emotion from ‘em. Quite possibly you’re also an anti-Jewish racist.

You said so much that I need to separate some of the topics you jumbled up in your rambling post:

EV “To anyone still reading, I think that Jewish culture produces academic excellence which is rewarded in a free enterprise society and therefore they become prominent figures in many of the times leading movements. That is why they are leading Communists/Socialists and also leading Neo Cons in the Bush Admin.”

Many communists, socialists would dispute your claim that they are Jewish in any meanigful sense. In any case, the education system that produced them is the same that most Americans go through so it’s not as if Jews go to different schools here than non Jews.

“I would hazard a guess that Jewish population numbers declining in the US have to do with fertility rates…..which is a problem for everyone at this jucture on the planet…”

Not just fertility rates but outright assimilation through intermarriage and bringing up their children as non-Jews.

Also Jews used to be a higher percentage of the population than they are now.

“How unfortunate that American Jews support third world immigration to the US but not Israel. What a shame, huh?”

Given that American Jews were never more than 5% of the population, I don’t understand why you are accusing them of fixing your country’s immigration policies. Just as well the WASPS could have refused and voted against it. (That is, if they managed to find a non-Mexican who would pick their oranges)

But if you want a more thorough explanation, certainly instead of looking to the Jews if would be more productive if you looked at how the ideologies of Liberty, the American Way of Life, and America as the “shining city upon a hill” shaped Americans’ understanding of what their country is for or should be for. In that context, a Mexican immigrant is not a threat to Americans the moment he starts singing the Star Spangled Banner with emotion.

Jews founded Israel because Jews were persecuted during 2000 years, and it was not only their liberty but their own very survival which was at stake. Israel’s Law of Return that benefits Jews in this sense, is something you know very well and I know you despise: a mechanism for positive discrimination. This is a country that is open for people who were rejected in all the rest. If you think a little, American Jews do not have different criteria for America and for Israel then.

And American Jews know, by personal experience, that America itself closed its doors for them in 1924, and there was nothing they could do. So America cannot be Israel.

So maybe you should think the issue better?

Laila tov.

Oh joy. Another HP commenter who can’t understand a simple argument ….

Why would anyone advance the absurd idea that genetic relatedness grounds a claim to self-determination? That’s the point.

(Answer: someone with a racial conception of what constitutes a nation.)

In any case, the education system that produced them is the same that most Americans go through so it’s not as if Jews go to different schools here than non Jews. — Jacob

Culture matters Jacob. The values that are taught in the home and reinforced by the community and family matter. Are you so blind as to think that they dont?

Jews punch above their population weight in academics, political movements development and leadership, philosphy, and business in the West. This isnt evidence of some nefarious plotting or chacanery, this is evidence of their culture producing successful individuals and on average in a free society.

The Left sees any inequality as a sign of some chacanery or nefariousness, racism and bigotry. I dont. I see Jews punching above their weight as a sign of Jewish cultural superiority or excellence….being rewarded in a free market/society.

Fabian said:

Given that American Jews were never more than 5% of the population, I don’t understand why you are accusing them of fixing your country’s immigration policies.

—

EV responds…

First of all, I dont blame Jews for policy. However they certainly support it. The Western Left is my nemesis, not Jews. However American Jews are overwhelmingly voters and supporters and proponents of the Western Left, in the US this includes the Democrat Party.

I am pro Israel, and I am generally a defender and fan of Jews….as Ive stated repeatedly.

—-

Fabian said:

Israel’s Law of Return that benefits Jews in this sense, is something you know very well and I know you despise: a mechanism for positive discrimination. This is a country that is open for people who were rejected in all the rest. If you think a little, American Jews do not have different criteria for America and for Israel then.