Controversial Bestseller challenges the basis of the Israeli State
On the northern side of the Old City of Jerusalem, a frenzied dig is funded by the same American group, Elad, that teaches Zionism to Israeli troops. Haaretz, a major Israeli newspaper, reported that a leaflet distributed to the troops cited Rabbi Aviner: "The Palestinians claim they deserve a state here, when in reality there was never a Palestinian or Arab state within the borders of our country. Moreover, most of them are new and came here close to the time of the War of Independence." This is from the "Books of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner," who heads the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva in the Muslim quarter of the Old City in Jerusalem.
In its archeology Elad also discards all Islamic archeology as unimportant, ignores the widespread Paganism in the region in and before the Roman occupation, and searches for anything that proves great Judaic cultures existed two or three thousand years ago and dominated the region. Israel may well be the only country where archeology has a place on its Foreign Affairs website, for on it is founded the claim Jews has a right to this land that predates and replaces that of the Palestinians.
When I researched this, I was surprised to find on the contrary that Jews and Palestinians seem to be in part descended from the same ancient Canaanite people that lived between the Gaza and Haifa coast and the hills of Judaea. The Jews of Europe, I also learnt, are mostly descended of Jewish merchants who wedded converted women of the Black Sea region, founding what are known of as the Khazars.
But now a new book puts much flesh on this narrative. A review posed these questions. "What if the Palestinian Arabs who have lived for decades under the heel of the modern Israeli state are in fact descended from the very same "children of Israel" described in the Old Testament?"
"And what if most modern Israelis aren't descended from the ancient Israelites at all, but are actually a mix of Europeans, North Africans and others who didn't "return" to the scrap of land we now call Israel and establish a new state following the attempt to exterminate them during World War II, but came in and forcefully displaced people whose ancestors had lived there for millennia?"
"That's the explosive thesis of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?, a book by Tel Aviv University scholar Shlomo Zand (or Sand) that sent shockwaves across Israeli society when it was published last year. After 19 weeks on the Israeli best-seller list, the book is being translated into a dozen languages and will be published in the United States this year by Verso."
It seems the Romans did not expel the whole people from the land, as is widely recounted in stories of the Diaspora. Rather Judaism was for a period an evangelical religion that converted many from other nations. The consequence of this? It seems the Palestinians of today may have more roots among the ancient peoples of this land than do most Israelis.
A very revealing review of the book by Prof. Israel Bartal, dean of the humanities faculty of the Hebrew University, was published in Haaretz. What he chose to attack was not that its thesis, but that this history was hidden by Zionism! He reported.
'Here is what was written about the conversion of the Khazars, a nation of Turkish origin, in the Zionist Mikhlal Encyclopedia that the State of Israel's Zionist Ministry of Education recommended so warmly during that "period of silencing": "It is irrelevant whether the conversion to Judaism encompassed a large stratum of the Khazar nation; what is important is that this event was regarded as a highly significant phenomenon in Jewish history, a phenomenon that has since totally disappeared: Judaism as a missionary religion.... The question of the long-term impact of that chapter in Jewish history on East European Jewry -- whether through the development of its ethnic character or in some other way -- is a matter that requires further research. '
'The Zionist "Toldot am yisrael" [History of the Jewish People] explains that the number of Jews in the Diaspora during the ancient period was as high as it was because of conversion, a phenomenon that "was widespread in the Jewish Diaspora in the late Second Temple period .... Many of the converts to Judaism came from the gentile population of Palestine, but an even greater number of converts could be found in the Jewish Diaspora communities in both the East and the West." The number of Jews living outside Israel in that period "exceeded that of the tiny Jewish community in Palestine."
He asks: "What is Sand trying to prove in this study? In his view, the homeland of the Jewish people is not Palestine, and most Jews are descendants of the members of different nations who converted to Judaism in ancient times and in the medieval period. He claims that the Jews of Yemen and Eastern Europe are descendants of pagans."
He makes no attempt to disprove this, but retorts: "My response to Sand's arguments is that no historian of the Jewish national movement has ever really believed that the origins of the Jews are ethnically and biologically "pure."
He then extraordinarily asserts: 'No "nationalist" Jewish historian has ever tried to conceal the well-known fact that conversions to Judaism had a major impact on Jewish history in the ancient period and in the early Middle Ages. Although the myth of an exile from the Jewish homeland (Palestine) does exist in popular Israeli culture, it is negligible in serious Jewish historical discussions."
Perhaps this is true in his academic circles, but the opposite view certainly dominates much of the popular discourse. It is fervently believed in by the Christian Zionists who have much strengthened the American and British Israeli lobbies. I have also heard it repeated by many of the Israeli settlers that have moved into the West Bank. It is in the teachings of certain prominent Rabbis - and it is in some of the literature distributed to members of the Israeli armed forces. It seems from his testimony, and from that of this book, that the story that a Jewish nation was owned this land, was dispossessed and has now returned, is not yet proved.
Janine Roberts
(This article draws on a review by Joshua Holland in Alternet, Jan 28th, as well as on that of the Professor cited above. The book came out recently in Hebrew.)
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