the wandering who? - gilad atzmon

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THE WANDERING WHO?

BY GILAD ATZMON

(2/9/08)

Tel Aviv University historian, Professor Shlomo Sand,

opens his remarkable study of Jewish nationalism

quoting Karl W. Deutsch:

“A nation is a group of people united by a common

mistake regarding its origin and a collective hostility

towards its neighbours.”(1)

As simple or even simplistic as it may sound, the quote

above eloquently summarises the figment of reality

entangled with modern Jewish nationalism and

especially within the concept of Jewish identity. It

obviously points the finger at the collective mistake Jews

tend to make whenever referring to their ‘illusionary

collective past’ and ‘collective origin’. Yet, in the same

breath, Deutsch’s reading of nationalism throws lightupon the hostility that is unfortunately coupled with

almost every Jewish group towards its surrounding

reality, whether it is human or takes the shape of land.



While the brutality of the Israelis towards the

Palestinians has already become rather common

knowledge, the rough treatment Israelis reserve for their

‘promised soil’ and landscape is just starting to reveal

itself. The ecological disaster the Israelis are going to

leave behind them will be the cause of suffering for

many generations to come. Leave aside the

megalomaniac wall that shreds the Holy land into

enclaves of depravation and starvation, Israel has

managed to pollute its main rivers and streams withnuclear and chemical waste.

“The Invention of the Jewish People" is a very serious

study written by Professor Shlomo Sand, an Israeli

historian. It is the most serious study of Jewish

nationalism and by far, the most courageous elaboration

on the Jewish historical narrative.

In his book, Sand manages to prove beyond any

reasonable doubt that the Jewish people never existed

as a 'nation-race', they never shared a common origin.

Instead they are a colourful mix of groups that at

various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion.

In case you follow Sand’s line of thinking and happen to

ask yourself, 'when was the Jewish People invented?'

Sand’s answer is rather simple. “At a certain stage in the



19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany,

influenced by the folk character of German nationalism,

took upon themselves the task of inventing a people

‘retrospectively,’ out of a thirst to create a modern

Jewish people.”(2)

Accordingly, the ‘Jewish people’ is a ‘made up’ notion

consisting of a fictional and imaginary past with very

little to back it up forensically, historically or textually.

Furthermore, Sand - who elaborated on early sources of antiquity - comes to the conclusion that Jewish exile is

also a myth, and that the present-day Palestinians are

far more likely to be the descendants of the ancient

Semitic people in Judea/Canaan than the current

predominantly Khazarian-origin Ashkenazi crowd to

which he himself admittedly belongs.

Astonishingly enough, in spite of the fact that Sand

manages to dismantle the notion of ‘Jewish people’,

crush the notion of ‘Jewish collective past’ and ridicule

the Jewish chauvinist national impetus, his book is a

best seller in Israel. This fact alone may suggest that

those who call themselves ‘people of the book’ are now

starting to learn about the misleading and devastating

philosophies and ideologies that made them into what



Khalid Amayreh and many others regard as the “Nazis of

our time”.

Hitler Won After All

Rather often when asking a ‘secular’ ‘cosmopolitan’ Jew

what it is that makes him into a Jew, a shallow

overwhelmingly chewed answer would be thrown back

at you: “It is Hitler who made me into a Jew”. Though the

‘cosmopolitan’ Jew, being an internationalist, would

dismiss other people’s national inclinations, he insistsupon maintaining his own right to ‘self determination’.

However, it is not really he himself who stands at the

core of this unique demand for national orientation, it is

actually the devil, master-monster anti-Semite, namely

Hitler. Apparently, the cosmopolitan Jew celebrates his

nationalist entitlement as long as Hitler is there to beblamed.

As far as the secular cosmopolitan Jew is concerned,

Hitler won after all. Sand manages to enhance this

paradox. Insightfully he suggests that “while in the 19th

century referring to Jews as an ‘alien racial identity’

would mark one as an anti-Semite, in the Jewish State

this very philosophy is embedded mentally and

intellectually”(3). In Israel Jews celebrate their

differentiation and unique conditions. Furthermore,



says Sand, “There were times in Europe when one would

be labelled as an anti-Semite for claiming that all Jews

belong to a nation of an alien type. Nowadays, claiming

that Jews have never been and still aren’t people or a

nation, would tag one as a Jew hater”.(4)

It is indeed pretty puzzling that the only people who

managed to maintain and sustain a racially orientated,

expansionist and genocidal national identity that is not

at all different from Nazi ethnic ideologyare the Jews

who were, amongst others, the leading targeted victims

of the Nazi ideology and practice.

Nationalism In General and Jewish Nationalism In

Particular

Louis-Ferdinand Celine mentioned that in the time of

the Middle Ages in the moments between major wars,

knights would charge a very high price for their

readiness to die in the name of their kingdoms, in the

20th century youngsters have rushed to die en mass

without demanding a thing in return. In order to

understand this mass consciousness shift we need an

eloquent methodical model that would allow us to

understand what nationalism is all about.

Like Karl Deutsch, Sand regards nationality as a

phantasmic narrative. It is an established fact that



anthropological and historical studies of the origins of

different so-called ‘people’ and ‘nations’ lead towards

the embarrassing crumbling of every ethnicity and

ethnic identity. Hence, it is rather interesting to find out

that Jews tend to take their own ethnic myth very

seriously. The explanation may be simple, as Benjamin

Beit Halachmi spotted years ago. Zionism was there to

transform the Bible from a spiritual text into a ‘land

registry’. For that matter, the truth of the Bible or any

other element of Jewish historical narrative has verylittle relevance as long as it doesn’t interfere with the

Jewish national political cause or practice.

One could also surmise that the lack of clear ethnic

origin doesn’t stop people from feeling an ethnic or

national belonging. The fact that Jews are far from

being what one can label as a People and that the Bible

has very little historical truth in it, doesn’t really stop

generations of Israelis and Jews from identifying

themselves with King David or Terminator Samson.

Evidently, the lack of an unambiguous ethnic origin

doesn’t stop people from seeing themselves as part of a

people. Similarly, it wouldn’t stop the nationalist Jewfrom feeling that he belongs to some greater abstract

collective.



In the 1970’s, Shlomo Artzi, then a young Israeli singer

who was bound to become Israel’s all-time greatest

rock star, released a song that had become a smash hit

in a matter of hours. Here are the first few lines:

All of a sudden

A man wakes up

In the morning

He feels he is people

And he starts to walk

And to everyone he comes across

He says shalom

To a certain extent Artzi innocently expresses in his

lyrics the suddenness and almost contingency involved

in the transformation of the Jews into people. However,

almost within the same breath, Artzi contributestowards the illusionary national myth of the peace-

seeking nation. Artzi should have known by then that

Jewish nationalism was a colonialist act at the expense

of the indigenous Palestinian people.

Seemingly, nationalism, national belonging and Jewish

nationalism in particular create a major intellectual task.

Interestingly enough, the first to deal theoretically and

methodically with issues having to do with nationalism

were Marxist ideologists. Though Marx himself failed to



address the issue adequately, early 20th century

uprising of nationalist demands in eastern and central

Europe caught Lenin and Stalin unprepared.

“Marxists’ contribution to the study of nationalism can

be seen as the focus on the deep correlation between

the rise of free economy and the evolvement of the

national state.”(5) In fact, Stalin was there to summarise

the Marxist take on the subject. “The nation,” says

Stalin, “is a solid collaboration between beings that was

created historically and formed following four significant

phenomena: the sharing of tongue, the sharing of

territory, the sharing of economy and the sharing of

psychic significance…”(6)

As one would expect, the Marxist materialist attempt to

understand nationalism is lacking an adequate historicaloverview. Instead it would be reliant upon a class

struggle. For some obvious reasons such a vision was

popular amongst those who believe in ‘socialism of one

nation’ amongst them we can consider the proponents

of a leftist branch of Zionism.

For Sand, nationalism evolved due to the “ rapture

created by modernity which split people from their

immediate past”.(7) The mobility created by

urbanisation and industrialisation crushed the social



hierarchic system as well as the continuum between

past, present and future. Sand points out that before

industrialisation, the feudal peasant didn’t necessarily

feel the need for an historical narrative of empires and

kingdoms. The feudal subject didn’t need an extensive

abstract historical narrative of large collectives that had

very little relevance to the immediate concrete

existential need. “Without a perception of social

progression, they did well with an imaginary religious

tale that contained a mosaic of memory that lacked areal dimension of a forward moving time. The ‘end’ was

the beginning and eternity bridged between life and

death.”(8)

In the modern secular and urban world, ‘time’ had

become the main life vessel which illustrated an

imaginary symbolic meaning. Collective historical time

had become the elementary ingredient of the personal

and the intimate. The collective narrative shapes the

personal meaning and what seems to be the ‘real’. As

much as some banal minds still insist that the ‘personal

is political’, it would be far more intelligible to argue

that in practice, it is actually the other way around.Within the post-modern condition, the political is

personal and the subject is spoken rather than speaking



itself. Authenticity, for the matter, is a myth that

reproduces itself in the form of symbolic identifier.

Sand’s reading of nationalism as a product of industrialisation, urbanisation and secularism, makes a

lot of sense when bearing in mind Uri Slezkin’s

suggestion that Jews are the ‘apostles of modernity’,

secularism and urbanisation. If Jews happened to find

themselves at the hub of urbanisation and secularisation

it shouldn’t then take us by surprise that the Zionists

were rather creative as much as others in inventing their

own phantasmic collective imaginary tale. However,

while insisting on their right to be ‘like other people’

Zionists have managed to transform their imagined

collective past into a global, expansionist, merciless

agenda as well as the biggest threat to world peace.

There Is No Jewish History

It is an established fact that not a single Jewish history

text had been written between the 1st century and early

19th century. The fact that Judaism is based on a

religious historical myth may have something to do with

it. An adequate scrutiny of the Jewish past was never a

primary concern within the Rabbinical tradition. One of

the reasons is probably the lack of a need of such a

methodical effort. For the Jew who lived during ancient



times and the Middle Ages, there was enough in the

Bible to answer most relevant questions having to do

with day-to-day life, Jewish meaning and fate. As

Shlomo Sand puts it, “a secular chronological time was

foreign to the ‘Diaspora time’ that was shaped by the

anticipation for the coming of the Messiah.”

However, in the light of German secularisation,

urbanisation and emancipation and due to the

decreasing authority of the Rabbinical leaders, an

emerging need of an alternative cause rose amongst the

awakening Jewish intellectuals. The emancipated Jew

wondered who he was, where he come from. He also

started to speculate what his role might be within the

rapidly opening European society.

In 1820 the German Jewish historian Isaak Markus Jost(1793-1860) published the first serious historical work

on Jews, namely “The History of the Israelites”. Jost

avoided the Biblical time, he preferred to start his

journey with the Judea Kingdom, he also compiled an

historical narrative of different Jewish communities

around the world. Jost realised that the Jews of his timedid not form an ethnic continuum. He grasped that

Israelites from place to place were rather different.

Hence, he thought there was nothing in the world that

should stop Jews from total assimilation. Jost believed



that within the spirit of enlightenment, both the

Germans and the Jews would turn their back to the

oppressive religious institution and would form a

healthy nation based on a growing geographically

orientated sense of belonging.

Though Jost was aware of the evolvement of European

nationalism, his Jewish followers were rather unhappy

with his liberal optimistic reading of the Jewish future.

“From historian Heinrich Graetz on, Jewish historians

began to draw the history of Judaism as the history of a

nation that had been a ‘kingdom’, expelled into ‘exile’,

became a wandering people and ultimately turned

around and went back to its birthplace.”(9)

For the late Moses Hess, it was a racial struggle rather

than a class struggle that would define the shape of

Europe. Accordingly, suggests Hess, Jews better return

and reflect on their cultural heritage and ethnic origin.

For Hess, the conflict between Jews and Gentiles was the

product of racial differentiation, hence, unavoidable.

The ideological path from Hess’s pseudo scientific racist

orientation to Zionist historicism is rather obvious. If Jews are indeed an alien racial entity (as Hess,

Jabotinsky and others believed), they better look for

their natural homeland, and this homeland is no other

than Eretz Yizrael. Cleary, Hess’s assumption regarding



a racial continuum wasn’t scientifically approved. In

order to maintain the emerging phantasmic narrative, an

orchestrated denial mechanism had to be erected just to

make sure that some embarrassing facts wouldn’t

interfere with the emerging national creation.

Sand suggests that the denial mechanism was rather

orchestrated and very well thought out. The Hebrew

University decision in the 1930’s to split Jewish History

and General History into two distinct departments was

far more than just a matter of convenience. The logos

behind the split is a glimpse into Jewish self-realisation.

In the eyes of Jewish academics, the Jewish condition

and Jewish psyche were unique and should be studied

separately. Apparently, even within Jewish academia, a

supreme status is reserved for the Jews, their history

and their self-perception. As Sand insightfully unveils,

within the Jewish Studies departments the researcher is

scattering between the mythological and the scientific

while the myth maintains its primacy. Yet, it often gets

into a stalling dilemma by the ‘small devious facts’.

The New Israelite, the Bible and Archaeology

In Palestine, the new Jews and later the Israelis were

determined to recruit the Old Testament and to

transform it into the amalgamate code of the future Jew.



The ‘nationalisation’ of the Bible was there to plant in

young Jews the idea that they are the direct followers of

their great ancient ancestors. Bearing in mind the fact

that nationalisation was largely a secular movement, the

Bible was stripped of its spiritual and religious meaning.

Instead, it was viewed as an historical text describing a

real chain of events in the past. The Jews who had now

managed to kill their God learned to believe in

themselves. Massada, Samson and Bar Kochva became

suicidal master narratives. In the light of their heroicancestors, Jews learned to love themselves as much as

they hate others, except that this time they possessed

the military might to inflict real pain on their

neighbours. More concerning was the fact that instead

of a supernatural entity - namely God - who command

them to invade the land and execute a genocide and torob their ‘promised land’ of its indigenous habitants,

within their national revival project it was them as

themselves, Herzl, Jabotinsky, Weitzman, Ben Gurion,

Sharon, Peres, Barak who decided to expel, destroy and

kill. Instead of God, it was then the Jews killing in the

name of Jewish people. They did it while Jewish symbols

decorate their planes and tanks. They followed

commands that where given in the newly restored

language of their ancestors.



Surprisingly enough, Sand who is no doubt a striking

scholar, fails to mention that the Zionist hijacking of the

Bible was in fact a desperate Jewish answer to German

Early Romanticism. However, as much as German

philosophers, poets, architects and artists were

ideologically and aesthetically excited about pre-

Socratic Greece, they knew very well that they were not

exactly Hellenism’s sons and daughters. The nationalist

Jew took it one step further, he bound oneself into a

phantasmic blood chain with his mythical ancestors, notbefore long he restored their ancient language. Rather

than a sacred tongue, Hebrew had become a spoken

language. German Early Romanticist never went that

far.

German intellectuals during the 19th century were also

fully aware of the distinction between Athens and

Jerusalem. For them, Athens stood for universal, the

epic chapter of humanity and humanism. Jerusalem was,

on the contrary, the grand chapter of tribal barbarism.

Jerusalem was a representation of the banal, non-

universal, monotheistic merciless God, the one who kills

the elder and the infant. The Germanic Early Romanticera left us with Hegel, Nietzsche, Fichte and Heidegger

and a just a few Jewish self-haters, leading amongst

them, Otto Weininger. The Jerusalemite left us with not



a single master ideological thinker. Some German Jewish

second-rate scholars tried to preach Jerusalem in the

Germanic exedra, amongst them were Herman Cohen,

Franz Rosenzveig and Ernst Bloch. They obviously failed

to notice that it was the traces of Jerusalem in

Christianity, which German Early Romanticists despised.

In their effort to resurrect ‘Jerusalem’, archaeology was

recruited to provide the Zionist epos with its necessary

‘scientific’ ground. Archaeology was there to unify the

Biblical time with the moment of revival. Probably the

most astonishing moment of this bizarre trend was the

1982 ‘military burial ceremony’ of the bones of Shimon

Bar Kochva, a Jew rebel who died 2000 years earlier.

Executed by the chief military Rabbi, a televised military

burial was given to some sporadic bones found in a cave

near the Dead Sea. In practice suspected remains of a

1st century Jew rebel was treated as an IDF casualty.

Clearly, archaeology had a national role, it was recruited

to cement the past and the present while leaving the

Galut out.

Astonishingly enough, it didn’t take long before thingsturned the other way around. As archaeological research

become more and more independent of the Zionist

dogma, the embarrassing truth filtered out. It would be

impossible to ground the truthfulness of the Biblical tale



on forensic facts. If anything, archaeology refutes the

historicity of the Biblical plot. Excavation revealed the

embarrassing fact. The Bible is a collection of innovative

fictitious literature.

As Sand points out, the Early Biblical story is soaked

with Philistines, Aramaic and camels. Embarrassingly

enough, as far as excavations are there to enlighten us,

Philistine didn’t appear in the region before the 12th

century BC, the Aramaic appears a century later and

camels didn’t show their cheerful faces before the 8th

century. These scientific facts lead Zionist researchers

into some severe confusion. However, for non-Jewish

scholars such as Thomas Thompson, it was rather clear

that the Biblical is a “late collection of innovative

literature written by a gifted theologian.”(10) The Bible

appears to be an ideological text that was there to serve

a social and political cause.

Embarrassingly enough, not much was found in Sinai to

prove the story of the legendary Egyptian Exodus,

seemingly 3 million Hebraic men, women and children

were marching in the desert for 40 years without leavinga thing behind. Not even a single matzo ball, very non-

Jewish one may say.



The story of the Biblical resettlement and the genocide

of the Canaanite which the contemporary Israelite

imitates to such success is another myth. Jericho, the

guarded city that was flattened to the sounds of horns

and almighty supernatural intervention was just a tiny

village during the 13th century BC.

As much as Israel regards itself as the resurrection of

the monumental Kingdom of David and Salomon,

excavation that took place in the Old City of Jerusalem

in the 1970’s revealed that David’s kingdom was no

more than a tiny tribal setting. Evidence that was

referred by Yigal Yadin to King Solomon had been

refuted later by forensic tests made with Carbon 14. The

discomforting fact has been scientifically established.

The Bible is a fictional tale, and not much there can

ground any glorifying existence of Hebraic people in

Palestine at any stage.

Who invented the Jews?

Quite early on in his text, Sand raises the crucial and

probably the most relevant questions. Who are the

Jews? Where did they come from? How is it that in

different historical periods they appear in some very

different and remote places?



Though most contemporary Jews are utterly convinced

that their ancestors are the Biblical Israelites who

happened to be exiled brutally by the Romans, truth

must be said. Contemporary Jews have nothing to do

with ancient Israelites, who have never been sent to

exile because such an expulsion has never taken place.

The Roman Exile is just another Jewish myth.

“I started looking in research studies about the exile

from the land” says Sand in an Haaretz intervie",(11)

“but to my astonishment I discovered that it has no

literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of

the country. 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. From this, in effect, the whole book was

born: in the realization that Judaic society was not

dispersed and was not exiled.”

Indeed, in the light of Sand’s simple insight, the idea of

Jewish exile is amusing. The thought of Roman Imperial

navy was working 24/7 schlepping Moishe’le andYanka’le to Cordova and Toledo may help Jews to feel

important as well as schleppable , but common sense

would suggest that the Roman armada had far more

important things to do.



However, far more interesting is the logical outcome: If

the people of Israel were not expelled, then the real

descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah

must be the Palestinians.

“No population remains pure over a period of thousands

of years” says Sand.(12) “But the chances that the

Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic

people are much greater than the chances that you or I

are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab

Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling,

and that the Palestinians were descended from the

inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don’t

leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the

second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929

that, ‘the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not

have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather,

before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous

and a majority in the building of the land.’”

In his book Sand takes it further and suggests that until

the First Arab Uprising (1929) the so-called leftist

Zionist leaders tended to believe that the Palestinian

peasants who are actually ‘Jews by origin’ wouldassimilate within the emerging Hebraic culture and

would eventually join the Zionist movement. Ber

Borochov believed that “a falach (Palestinian Peasant),



dresses as a Jew, and behaves as a working class Jew,

won’t be at all different from the Jew”. This very idea

reappeared in Ben Gurion’s and Ben-Zvi’s text in 1918.

Both Zionist leaders realised that Palestinian culture was

soaked with Biblical traces, linguistically, as well as

geographically (names of villages, towns, rivers and

mountains). Both Ben Gurion and Ben-Zvi regarded, at

least at that early stage, the indigenous Palestinians as

ethnic relatives who were holding close to the land and

potential brothers. They as well regarded Islam as afriendly ‘democratic religion’. Clearly, after 1936 both

Ben-Zvi and Ben Gurion toned down their ‘multicultural’

enthusiasm. As far as Ben Gurion is concerned, ethnic

cleansing of the Palestinians seemed to be far more

appealing.

One may wonder, if the Palestinians are the real Jews,who are those who insist upon calling themselves Jews?

Sand’s answer is rather simple, yet it makes a lot of

sense. “The people did not spread, but the Jewish

religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion.

Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was

a great thirst to convert others.”(13)

Clearly, monotheist religions, being less tolerant than

polytheist ones have within them an expanding impetus.

Judaic expansionism in its early days was not just



similar to Christianity but it was Judaic expansionism

that planted the ‘spreading out’ seeds in early Christian

thought and practice.

“The Hasmoneans,” says Sand (14) “were the first to

begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass

conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. It was this

tradition of conversions that prepared the ground for

the subsequent, widespread dissemination of

Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the 4th

century, the momentum of conversion was stopped inthe Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the

number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who

appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians.

But then Judaism started to permeate other regions -

pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North

Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at thatstage and had it not continued to convert people in the

pagan world, we would have remained a completely

marginal religion, if we survived at all.”

The Jews of Spain, whom we believed to be blood

related to the Early Israelites seem to be converted

Berbers. “I asked myself,” says Sand, “how such largeJewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw

that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the

Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most



of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina’s Jewish

Berber Kingdom had been defeated only 15 years

earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian

sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were

Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large

Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers

who converted to Judaism.”

As one would expect, Sand approves the largely

accepted assumption that the Judaicised Khazars

constituted the main origins of the Jewish communities

in Eastern Europe, which he calls the Yiddish Nation.

When asked how come they happen to speak Yiddish,

which is largely regarded as a German medieval dialect,

he answers, “the Jews were a class of people dependent

on the German bourgeoisie in the east, and thus they

adopted German words.”

In his book Sand manages to produce a detailed account

of the Khazarian saga in Jewish history. He explains

what lead the Khazarian kingdom towards conversion.

Bearing in mind that Jewish nationalism is, for the most

part, lead by a Khazarian elite, we may have to expandour intimate knowledge of this very unique yet

influential political group. The translation of Sand’s

work into foreign languages is an immediate must.



What Next?

Professor Sand leaves us with the inevitable conclusion.

Contemporary Jews do not have a common origin andtheir Semitic origin is a myth. Jews have no origin in

Palestine whatsoever and therefore, their act of so-

called ‘return’ to their ‘promised land’ must be realised

as an invasion executed by a tribal-ideological clan.

However, though Jews do not constitute any racial

continuum, they for some reason happen to be raciallyorientated. As we may notice, many Jews still see mixed

marriage as the ultimate threat. Furthermore, in spite of

modernisation and secularisation, the vast majority of

those who identify as secular Jews still succumb to

blood ritual (circumcision) a unique religious procedure

which involves no less than blood sucking by a Mohel.

As far as Sand is concerned, Israel should become “a

state of its citizens”. Like Sand, I myself believe in the

same futuristic utopian vision. However, unlike Sand, I

do grasp that the Jewish state and its supportive lobbies

must be ideologically defeated. Brotherhood and

reconciliation are foreign to Jewish tribal worldview and

have no room within the concept of Jewish national

revival. As dramatic as it may sound, a process of de-

judaification must take place before Israelis can adopt



any universal modern notion of civil life.

Sand is no doubt a major intellectual, probably the most

advanced leftist Israeli thinker. He represents the

highest form of thought a secular Israeli can achieve

before flipping over or even defecting to the Palestinian

side (something that happened to just a few, me

included). Haaretz interviewer Ofri Ilani said about Sand

that unlike other ‘new historians’ who have tried to

undermine the assumptions of Zionist historiography,

“Sand does not content himself with going back to 1948or to the beginnings of Zionism, but rather goes back

thousands of years.” This is indeed the case, unlike the

‘new historians’ who ‘unveil’ a truth that is known to

every Palestinian toddler i.e., the truth of being

ethnically cleansed, Sand erects a body of work and

thought that is aiming at the understanding of themeaning of Jewish nationalism and Jewish identity. This

is indeed the true essence of scholarship. Rather than

collecting some sporadic historical fragments, Sand

searches for the meaning of history. Rather than a ‘new

historian’ who searches for a new fragment, he is a real

historian motivated by a humanist task. Most crucially,

unlike some of the Jewish historians who happen to

contribute to the so-called left discourse, Sand’s

credibility and success is grounded on his argument

rather than his family background. He avoids peppering



his argument with his holocaust survivor relatives.

Reading Sand’s ferocious argument, one may have to

admit that Zionism in all its faults has managed to erect

within itself a proud and autonomous dissident

discourse that is far more eloquent and brutal than the

entire anti-Zionist movement around the world.

If Sand is correct, and I myself am convinced by the

strength of his argument, then Jews are not a race but

rather a collective of very many people who are largely

hijacked by a late phantasmic national movement. If

Jews are not a race, do not form a racial continuum and

have nothing to do with Semitism, then ‘anti-Semitism’

is, categorically, an empty signifier. It obviously refers to

a signifier that doesn’t exist. In other words, our

criticism of Jewish nationalism, Jewish lobbying and

Jewish power can only be realised as a legitimate

critique of ideology and practice.

Once again I may say it, we are not and never been

against Jews (the people) nor we are against Judaism

(the religion). Yet, we are against a collective

philosophy with some clear global interests. Somewould like to call it Zionism but I prefer not to. Zionism

is a vague signifier that is far too narrow to capture the

complexity of Jewish nationalism, its brutality, ideology

and practice. Jewish nationalism is a spirit and spirit



doesn’t have clear boundaries. In fact, none of us know

exactly where Jewishness stops and where Zionism

starts as much as we do not know where Israeli interests

stop and where the Neocon’s interests start.

As far as the Palestinian cause is concerned, the

message is rather devastating. Our Palestinian brothers

and sisters are at the forefront of a struggle against a

very devastating philosophy. Yet, it is clearly not just the

Israelis whom they fight with rather a fierce pragmatic

philosophy that initiates global conflicts on somegigantic scale. It is a tribal practice that seeks influence

within corridors of power and super powers in

particular. The American Jewish Committee is pushing

for a war against Iran. Just to be on the safe side David

Abrahams, a ‘Labour Friend of Israel’ donates money to

the Labour Party by proxy. More or less at the same timetwo million Iraqis die in an illegal war designed by one

called Wolfowitz. While all the above is taking place,

millions of Palestinians are starved in concentration

camps and Gaza is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis.

As it all happens, ‘anti-Zionist’ Jews and Jews in the left

(Chomsky included) insist upon dismantling the

eloquent criticism of AIPAC, Jewish lobbying and Jewish

power posed by Mearsheimer and Walt (15)



Is it just Israel? Is it really Zionism? Or shall we admit

that it is something far greater than we are entitled even

to contemplate within the intellectual boundaries we

imposed upon ourselves? As things stand, we lack the

intellectual courage to confront the Jewish national

project and its many messengers around the world.

However, since it is all a matter of consciousness-shift,

things are going to change soon. In fact, this very text

is there to prove that they are changing already.

To stand by the Palestinians is to save the world, but in

order to do so we have to be courageous enough to

stand up and admit that it is not merely a political

battle. It is not just Israel, its army or its leadership, it

isn’t even Dershowitz, Foxman and their silencing

leagues. It is actually a war against a cancerous spirit

that hijacked the West and, at least momentarily,

diverted it from its humanist inclination and Athenian

aspirations. To fight a spirit is far more difficult than

fighting people, just because one may have to first fight

its traces within oneself. If we want to fight Jerusalem,

we may have to first confront Jerusalem within. We may

have to stand in front of the mirror, look around us. Wemay have to trace for empathy in ourselves in case there

is anything left.



1.When And How The Jewish People Was Invented?

Shlomo Sand, Resling 2008, pg 11

2.http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html

3.When And How The Jewish People Was Invented?


4. Ibid pg 31

5.Ibid pg 42

6.ibid

7.Ibid pg 62

8.ibid

9. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html

10. When And How The Jewish People Was Invented?


11.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html 12. ibid

13. ibid

14. ibid

15. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html



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