Unity

From Unity, 27 March 2010

Inventing a people

by Raymond O’Connell

I have to admit that although I have read a fair bit over the years concerning nations, nationality and nation-building I never really thought about it in relation to the history of modern-day Israel and the Jewish people.
     I generally took it as historical fact that there was a diaspora and that throughout the intervening centuries the Jewish people remained literally a race apart, declining to marry outside the faith or ethos and to seek converts to the faith. In short, that the Jews are not a religious group but a “people.”
     These are, of course, the twin stories that justify the Zionist experiment in creating the modern state of Israel and claiming the land as their own. So what if that is all they are—stories?
     This is the thesis of the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand’s ground-breaking book The Invention of the Jewish People.
     Interestingly, in his introduction he says, “I encountered scarcely any new findings—almost all such material had previously been uncovered by Zionist and Israeli historiographers.” However, anything that did not fit with the nationalist myth was either bent into shape or forgotten.
     The best example of this relates to the ancient kingdom of the Kazars that stretched from the Caspian to the Black Sea and was a Jewish state, with the people converting to Judaism in large numbers. With the rise of Islam, many moved west, and we know the story from there. Similar examples of proselytism are to be found elsewhere in the ancient world.
     Sand demonstrates convincingly that there was no diaspora, the date of which in any case has shifted significantly, as previous assertions proved impossible to sustain even by Zionist historians.
     He also quotes from a book co-authored by David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, writing thirty years before the Proclamation of Independence he argued that the fellahin (Palestinian farmers) were the descendants of the ancient Judean peasants, who for very practical reasons had converted to Islam. When they made it clear they were not interested in being assimilated (the revolt of 1936–1939) Sand says, “From that moment on the descendants of the Judean peasantry vanished from the Jewish national consciousness and were cast into oblivion.”
     The decision by the UN to support the establishment of the modern Jewish state had as much to do with the fact that they did not want to accept the Jewish people left after the holocaust. It was something less than an altruistic decision.
     Effectively Sand is saying there never were a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion. There was no exile and hence no return.
     Where does this leave the present Israeli state and the West’s continuing view of it and support for it?
     This is an important book, and the Israeli author demonstrates clearly that it is possible to be anti-Zionist while not being anti-Semitic.

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