2012. 8. 26.
... Aviv Professor of history Shlomo Sand in his scholarly best-selling book, ... At the onset, “Are modern ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAYgwBT5BHs
2009. 1. 6. - 업로더: animations4you
Shlomo Sand - Shattering a 'national mythology' ... This is Zionist bullshit to try and Hebraize and Judaize ...
The Invention of the Jewish People
Book Review
Shlomo Sand (Translated by Yael Lotan)
Reviewed by Leon Hadar, Research fellow, the Cato Institute
Verso Books, 2009. 344 pages. $34.95, hardcover, $16.95, paperback.
When I visited Greece in the summer of 2000, that state was in the midst of a heated debate about its national identity, closely tied historically to its national religion. Indeed, about 97 percent of Greece’s native-born population is baptized into the Orthodox Church, which sees itself as the true guardian of Greek identity and traditions. But, in 2000, the European Union (EU) — Greece has been a member since 1981 — was putting pressure on the Greeks to follow in the footsteps of the secular members of the EU and take the historic step of accentuating the non-religious elements of its national identity.
The constitution of Greece recognizes the Greek Orthodox faith as the “prevailing” religion of the country; in fact, the blue canton in the upper hoist-side corner of the Greek national flag bears a white cross that symbolizes Greek Orthodoxy. And while the constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief for all, Greek citizens had for years carried government identity cards that stated their religion. So, by the end of the twentieth century, Brussels was demanding that Athens remove “religion” from the government’s identity card.
During my visit, the debate over religion was reaching a climax of sorts. One Greek newspaper editorialized that Greece was experiencing “a profound identity crisis as it wrestles with what it means to be Greek, fundamental ties between church and state, and how Greek traditions fit in with the rest of Europe.”
An American Jewish tourist from Marin County, California, whom I met at a hotel in Athens, was furious. “Could you imagine American citizens being required to carry government identity cards that name their religion?” she asked during one of our breakfasts. “And Greece is one of our closest allies,” she noted. I surprised her when I mentioned that Israeli citizens also have to carry official identity cards that identify their religion and nationality. “But I thought that Israel was very much like us,” she responded.
I recalled that exchange after reading Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People, a study of Jewish historiography that has ignited a lot of interest and some controversy in Israel and abroad. Sand, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, challenges the biblical and conventional history of the Jewish people. He attempts to prove that Israeli Jews as well as those Jews who are citizens of other states are not the direct descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period but include peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, mostly in the Mediterranean Basin and its periphery.
Countering official Zionist historiography, Sand questions whether the Jewish People ever existed as a national group with a common origin in the Land of Israel/Palestine. He concludes that the Jews should be seen as a religious community comprising a mishmash of individuals and groups that had converted to the ancient monotheistic religion but do not have any historical right to establish an independent Jewish state in the Holy Land. In short, the Jewish People, according to Sand, are not really a “people” in the sense of having a common ethnic origin and national heritage. They certainly do not have a political claim over the territory that today constitutes Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem.
An intellectual committed to the secular and liberal traditions of the West, Sand criticizes the Zionist historians and ideologues — he suggests that Zionist historians are ideologues — who introduced a mythical conception of the Jewish People as an ancient race. He charges them with racist thinking. “Today, if anyone dares to suggest that those who are considered Jews in the world ... have never constituted and still do not constitute a people or a nation — he is immediately condemned as a hater of Israel,” Sand writes. He contrasts the Zionist dogma that legitimizes the classification of Israeli Jews as members of the Jewish “religion” and “nation” in the government’s identity cards with “civic” or “contractual” nationalism. This latter concept, developed by Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, defines the nation as an association of people with equal and shared political rights and allegiance to similar political procedures. This sort of civic nationalism excludes religious, racial and even ethnic origins from the definition of the collective identity of Americans or, for that matter, the French and other Western societies. It is celebrated by liberal American-Jews (and non-Jews) like the one I met in Athens in 2000. They recognize that any attempt to impose a more exclusive definition on American identity that reflects the white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant origin of the founders would result in the political and cultural marginalization of American Jews.
But, as Sand demonstrates in his study, the ideology of Zionism is exclusivist — having more in common with the kind of “organic” (or romantic) nationalism under which the collective identity of the nation is based on a mix of language, race, culture, religion and customs of the “people.” It excludes those who do not share them. An ideology of organic nationalism, reflected in the work of German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, had an enormous influence on the nationalist movements of Eastern and Central Europe as well as the Balkans. Zionism was clearly a product of that kind of organic nationalism, a popular intellectual trend in Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century, where Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, was trying to “invent,” or more likely to reinvent, the Jewish People and create a national mythology. According to this story line, Sand writes, the people “who wandered across seas and continents, reached the ends of the earth and finally, with the advent of Zionism, made a U-turn and returned en masse to their orphaned homeland.”
Is the development of that specific national mythology very different from those embraced by other national movements in Europe (and later in the Third World)? They fantasized about a lost Golden Age through which they could invent a grand historical narrative to help mobilize their people to action against the “other” — foreign occupiers and enemies — and provide political legitimacy for the establishment of a separate nation-state. In truth, contemporary Greeks and Germans are no more the descendants of, respectively, the ancient Greeks or the Teutonic tribes than Israeli Jews are the offspring of the Biblical Hebrews.
As a materialist who attaches more importance to the role of “real” political and economic factors in shaping history — as opposed to the ideologies that they produce and that leaders use as instruments to advance their interests — I am a bit skeptical about the power of ideologies or national myths to transform reality. Therefore, I find Sand’s preoccupation with the topic less than useful and some of his historical research less than convincing. He does not really prove that the Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of the population of the kingdom of Khazaria, who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages. And his dismissal of new genetic studies that try to trace the ethnic origins of contemporary Jews (and other peoples) is not persuasive.
At the end of the day, the successes and failures of various national movements are determined by political and economic forces. Hence, notwithstanding their inspired national myths, the Basques and the Kurds have yet to win political independence, something that the people of Panama, a superficial entity created by the United States, have achieved. In the case of Zionism, it was the rise of anti-Semitism in Eastern and Central Europe and the ensuing Jewish Holocaust, coupled with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the British occupation of the Middle East that made the creation of a Jewish state possible.
Without buying into Sand’s entire thesis, one could recognize (as I do) the devastation that Zionism and Israel have inflicted on the Palestinian people and endorse a post-Zionist vision of Israel under which it would become a state of all its citizens by embracing a more liberal conception of its collective identity, including by eliminating the archaic classification of religion and nationalism in Israeli identity cards. I will not be surprised, when Israelis and Palestinians resolve their conflict and create the foundations for new political entities and identities, if they also end up inventing new national myths to legitimize their projects.
http://www.mepc.org/create-content/book-review/invention-jewish-people
Zionism: A Terrible Disease of the Mind
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Posted on January 19, 2009
By Zaid Nabulsi
I lost my gloves one day in a coffee shop in Geneva, and I tell you, it's difficult to ride a motorcycle without them when it's really cold. So as I was paying for a new pair with a credit card, the salesman - who I knew was from Israel - asked me what my family name means. I told him that it relates to the city of Nablus where my family is originally from. Suddenly, the most bewildered look got plastered on his face.
"Where is Nablus?" he asked, "I've never heard of it". Then he pretended to remember. "Ah, Shkheim you mean?"
With my insistence not to learn these ugly sounding names that the Zionists have dug up from oblivion to erase our identity, that name certainly didn't ring a bell.
Now it was my turn. Although I knew where he was from, I asked: "And you're؟ from?"
As he smiled, I replicated the look on his face moments ago. "Israel? Where is that?"
Then after a brief pause: "Ah, the land of Canaan you mean. Palestine."
You see, if you want to get biblical, there was never such a thing as Israel, and I made that very clear to this gentleman with obnoxious chutzpah.
So here we were all of a sudden; my family descended from a place called Shkheim, and this guy became a Palestinian. God does work in mysterious ways, but I still thanked Him for His small mercies; that at least my name was not Zaid Shkheimy.
While the gloves warmed up my grip on the bike, my heart was still frozen. I just cannot stand thieves who steal your gloves, or any other kind of thieves.
Then it finally dawned on me. Zionism is a sickness, for it takes much more than just a twisted ideology to make people think like that. It requires a profound leap of immorality of a higher order to instill this mentality in your followers. Zionism is not merely a political movement, but in its essence represents a deeply disturbed view of the world, resulting from a terrible affliction of the mind.
Indeed, to deny the existence of a vibrant communit! y such a s the Palestinian society in the early 20th century and describe Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land" is a serious blinding ailment.
To assert property claims over real estate after thousands of years with the same certainty of title as if one resided there yesterday is the essence of arrogance.
To describe the colonial immigration to Palestine of a European people with no proven historical link to the ancient Israelites - and whose great, great recorded ancestors have never set foot there - as some kind of a "return" to that land is a distorted misapplication of the verb to "return".
To blame the Palestinians for being unreasonable in rejecting a partition plan in 1947 which gave the Jews, who only owned 7 per cent of the land, an astounding half of Palestine, is an arithmetical impairment.
To eventually grab 78 per cent of Palestine through war, evict the population through massacres and then live in their same houses is unashamed theft.
To deny the orchestrated eradications of hundreds of Palestinian villages in 1948 and then denounce the Israeli historians who later exposed this truth as self-hating Jews is compulsive forgery.
To claim that having escaped the horrors of the Nazis is a justification for the murder, expulsion and occupation of another, guiltless, people is moral incapacity.
To legislate that any resident of Poland, New York or Brazil, who happens to be blessed with a Jewish mother (yet cannot point to Palestine on the map), has a right to "return" and settle in Palestine, unlike someone who has been expelled from his own land, confined to a squalid refugee camp and still holds the keys to his house, is racism.
To blame God for the theft and occupation of someone else's land by claiming that it was He who had pledged this land exclusively to the Jews, and to seriously promote the myth of a land promised by the Almighty to His favourite children as an excuse for this crime, is insanity.
To milk t! he pocke ts of the entire world for the atrocities of the Nazis, while stubbornly refusing a simple admission of guilt, let alone compensation or repatriation, for the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people, is perverted conceit.
To keep blackmailing the world with expensive museums and endless movies of the plight of the Jews under Hitler 70 years ago, while at the same time inflicting on the Palestinians today the fate of the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto, is acute schizophrenia.
To impose collective guilt on the Western civilisation for the Holocaust and to criminalise all legitimate historical debate of the nature and extent of that horrific event is thuggery.
To incarcerate the Palestinian people inside degrading cages, destroy their livelihoods, confiscate their lands, steal their water and uproot their trees, and then to condemn their legitimate resistance as terrorism, and to exact vengeance on the innocent families of suicide bombers by punishing them with the dynamiting of their homes is sadistic cruelty.
To describe the offer of giving the Palestinians 80 per cent of 22 per cent of 100 per cent of what is originally their own land as a "generous" offer is macabre Shylockian humour.
To believe that you have the God-given right to continue to humiliate the Palestinians at gunpoint by making them queue for hours to move between their villages, forcing their mothers to give birth at checkpoints, is a predisposition to bestiality.
To flatten the camp of Jenin on its inhabitants' heads and deny any wrongdoing is a severe delusional disorder.
To build a huge separation wall which disconnects farmers from their farms and children from their schools, while stealing even more territory as the wall freely zigzags and encroaches on Palestinian land is unrepentant immorality.
To leave behind, in the last 10 days of a losing war in Lebanon, more than one million cluster bombs which have no purpose except to murder and maim unsuspecting civilians is murderou! s deprav ity.
To believe that the entire world is out to get you, and to denounce any critic of the racist policies of the state of Israel as an anti-Semite, the latest victim being none other than peace-making Jimmy Carter, is hysterical mass paranoia.
To possess, in the midst of a non-nuclear Arab world, more than 200 nuclear warheads capable of incinerating the whole planet, in addition to having the most lethal arsenal of weaponry on earth, while continuing to demand sympathy, is the ultimate false victimisation syndrome.
And today, to blockade the world's most densely populated strip of land for 18 months, suffocate its already displaced and miserable inhabitants by asking them to die a slow death, and then punish them for refusing to die silently by deliberately bombing their schools, mosques, hospitals and ambulances with internationally prohibited weapons and poisonous gasses in the ugliest televised massacre of children in modern history, all the while looking the world in the eyes and claiming that this is an act of self-defence, is a critical stage of dangerous psychosis, and is pure, unadulterated madness.
Yes, and for that salesman in peaceful Geneva to be as insecure as a common thief to refuse to acknowledge the name of the largest West Bank city under his country's brutal military occupation is, sadly, more of the same infectious and ultimately fatal disease of the mind.
The writer is an attorney, partner in Nabulsi & Associates law firm. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.
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http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General/Story12190.html
Terrible Disease of the Mind: Part II
by Zaid Nabulsi / August 19th, 2010
My family and I long to return to the Gardens of Cordoba (Qurtuba). We agonise with every breath to re-inhabit the castles of Seville (Ishbeelyah). In our veins, there runs an eternal longing to walk again in the footsteps of our forefathers in Zaragoza (Saraqusta). We yearn to once again cultivate the orchards of Valladolid (Balad Al Waleed). We shall strive, by military means if necessary, to see the blessed day when we can tread along the rose-scented pathways of the splendid palace of Al Hambra (Al Hamra’a) in Granada (Ghirnata). Every stone and every particle of sand in that Iberian holy land belongs to me and to my people, exclusively. No Spaniard terrorist has the right to obstruct the will of God and deny my family the legal title to the land of our ancestors. It is God who had given us Andaluc’a (Al Andalus), and it is God who promised us that we, the exiles, shall ingather there once again.
I would indeed have to be a certified lunatic if I had meant a word of the above. Yet, the only difference between my disease of the mind and that of the millions of Jews who claimed to have “returned” to Palestine, is that in my case, at least the monuments and Arab names I am referring to are real and do actually exist today, and it is not contestable that the direct ancestors of my people did actually build that great civilisation.
On the other hand, all Zionist archaeologists have failed – after digging up every conceivable corner of Palestine for the last 62 years – to come up with a single credible Jewish teapot or tablespoon, let alone excavate an alleged Jewish temple remotely matching the grandeur of any of the visible relics of Andaluc’a.
Not only that, but they needn’t have bothered digging. Two years ago, Israeli Professor, Shlomo Sand, argued, with meticulous scholarship in his earth-shattering book, The Invention of the Jewish People, that the claim that the Jews of today are the ethnic offspring of the biblical Jews is yet another Zionist myth, because all records tell us that the current Jews are the descendants of Khazar tribes who converted to Judaism, and have no genetic link whatsoever to the Jews who lived in Palestine during Roman times. The latter, he concludes, are, most ironically, none other than the Palestinians of today who converted to Islam (or Christianity), because the Romans apparently never exiled anybody. Moreover, Sand demolishes the myth of the kingdoms of David and Solomon by proving they are pure legends that never existed. What is astonishing is that, to date, no Israeli historian has been able to debate, let alone refute, any of Sand’s devastating findings.
Yet, not only would I need to be in a straitjacket if I were serious about reclaiming Spain for the Arabs – irrespective of our real history there – but the Spanish people would have the right to laugh at the sheer absurdity of my hallucinations, if not get gravely offended by their audacity.
I cannot, for example, visit the magnificent Hall of Abencerrajes (Ibn Sarraj) in Al Hambra and then, after explaining to my children that it was Arab Muslims who constructed these wondrous architectural miracles, go on and indoctrinate them that this piece of real estate should belong to them. I cannot do that any more than an Italian tourist can visit Jerash in Jordan, and thereafter decide to build a settlement and live there because, he says, it really belongs to his great uncle, a certain Mr Julius Caesar.
This is the case simply because, in this modern world, we do not go around stealing other people’s land by attributing our crime to an ancient historical link to such land, or because we believe that we belong to the same race or religion of the people who once lived there.
But the Zionists get away with it the whole time, and have been doing so for far too long – despite the total lack of any real historical connection to the land of Palestine (not that it matters or makes it any more legitimate if they did have such a connection).
For who can, in their heart of hearts, credibly deny the blatant repugnancy of the whole underlying premise of Zionism, the very madness upon which Israel was founded? Indeed, any person who happens to support the immorality of the theft of the land of Palestine under such religious or forged historical pretexts would, in reality, be making up excuses for blatant colonisation that are far more ridiculous than my demented ranting about returning to the gardens of Cordoba.
So why do these Zionists get away with such a ludicrous monstrosity?
We all know why. The hegemony over world media exercised by Jews is crucial so that no one can ever challenge the Zionist narrative or point out the naked, unadulterated lunacy of the whole Zionist enterprise. Coupled with a world conscience shrouded in a cloud of Holocaust guilt, an event that is forbidden to even debate, you get an oppressive atmosphere that has suffocated the ability of Western civilisation to deconstruct Zionism down to its most basic insanities.
For how is it conceivable for otherwise rational populations to even entertain, let alone accept and adopt, the twisted Zionist logic about the Jews “returning” to a promised land after so many thousands of years of supposed separation? And how can these same people acquiesce to Israeli politicians openly using such religious nonsense as a justification for the contemporary and ongoing catastrophe inflicted upon the millions of guiltless Palestinian inhabitants of that land?
Take, for example, Jose Mar’a Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister, who recently gave a solemn warning on the pages of The London Times: “anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region ةif Israel goes down, we all go downة”.
Well, Mr Aznar, we do not advocate for Israel to disappear or go down anywhere, because, despite the evil deeds accompanying its creation, Israel is a fact that we have to live with today. Likewise, the Israelis are fellow human beings upon whom I do not wish to impose the televised barbecuing of the eyes and flesh of their children using white phosphorus, nor shall I ever tolerate such horrendous barbarity to be inflicted upon them.
But, hey Jose, if you see nothing wrong with what Israel is, and regard its Goldstone-documented war crimes as a mere “distraction”, while ignoring that it is the source of all the “turbulence” of the region you mentioned, then you might as well give us back Malaga and Marbella. After all, in Andaluc’a, no Christian or Jew was ever persecuted or burnt at the stake, nor had his bone marrow fried by any other means.
Yet, the travesty continues unabated. Take this most recent manifestation of the mental illness enveloping the racist state of Israel (branded by Jewish US Media Inc. as “the only democracy in the Middle East”). Hillary Rubin is a US Jew from Detroit who decided to move to Israel in 2006, something millions of Palestinian refugees can only dream of. But that is not the story. Rubin happens to also be the niece of Zionist leader, Nahum Sokolow, so you would’ve supposed that she is a Jewish notable, revered in Israel for her noble lineage. Last month, she fell in love and wanted to get married to a nice Jewish boy from Herzliya. According to Ha’aretz newspaper, after filing for a wedding licence, she was refused and was told that she needed to prove the Jewishness of her maternal lineage for — listen to this — four entire generations. This is not 1933 Germany, but modern day Israel. So she got letters from four Conservative rabbis and one Chabad rabbi attesting to her Jewishness. But the Herzliya Rabbinate still wouldn’t have it. To allow her to marry her sweetheart, these men of God stipulated she comes up with the birth or death certificates of her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother, something she, of course, failed to do. This is not an isolated incident, but the official applicable Israeli law on the books.
Oh, yes! Adolf Hitler is turning in his grave at this news. “And they dared crucify me for the Nuremberg laws?” the Fuhrer is muttering to himself.
Well, there you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen. Didn’t I tell you that Zionism is nothing but a terrible, incurable disease of the mind?
See also “A ‘terrible disease of the mind.’“
Zaid Nabulsi is a partner in the law firm of Nabulsi & Associates. He has spent many years working for the United Nations in Geneva and has a passion for Harley Davidson bikes. Read other articles by Zaid.
This article was posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at 8:01am and is filed under History, Israel/Palestine, Propaganda, Spain, Zionism.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/08/a-terrible-disease-of-the-mind/
The invention of the land of Israel
- Thursday, 14 March 2013 12:15
Author: Shlomo Sand
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Verso Books
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1844679462
ISBN-13: 978-1844679461
Review by Ramona Wadi
Deconstructing the mythological 'right to land' would prove a crucial requirement to achieve an understanding of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Shlomo Sand's new book, The Invention of the Land of Israel (Verso Books, 2012) immediately negates the idea of a Jewish homeland and commences to outline the existence of a Zionist, colonial elite which held on to a semblance of moral legitimacy in order to maintain expansion and territorial appropriation of Palestine.
Sand's repudiation of the right to land is vividly portrayed in the first chapter, where he expresses astonishment at his friends' disregard for territorial borders and later witnesses a brutal torture and murder of an Arab man in possession of American dollars – an example of the indifference which would characterise Zionist colonial occupation.
Arguing that definitions of homeland are subject to language and culture, which would then transform land into social property through a social consciousness leading to appropriation, Sand insists that Biblical narrative and references to homeland are void of the patriotism which is associated with the concept of nation. However, Zionists employed Biblical references in order to deconstruct 'the promised land' from a theological perspective to a historical motive. The promised land in Biblical narrative is equivalent to a loan and therefore conditional upon Jews obeying God's law – a Jewish ancestral land never existed. Jewish tribes were spread in various regions. However, Ben Gurion's promotion of the 'Book of Joshua' was hailed as implying a return of the people of Israel. As Zionism strengthened its stance by eliminating the foundations of historic Judaism, nationalism and colonialism became decisive in the formation of Zionist pedagogy.
While the narrative of nationalism established itself within Zionist circles, Sand argues that in reality there was no evidence of forced migration of Jews from Judea, or any attempt by Jews to return to the region. By the late 19th century fewer than 5,000 Jews were living in Palestine, in contrast to a population of two and a half million Jews worldwide. Theodor Herzl, founder of the Jewish nationalist movement, is considered to have set a precedent for Jewish right to national territory. While relocation of Jews to Uganda was discussed prior to establishing a national home in Palestine, Christian Zionists played an important role in furthering the possibility of a Jewish national home in Palestine, in accordance with the yearning to establish an imperial mandate in the Middle East. Colonel Charles Henry Churchill insisted on the settlement of Jews in Palestine and a British force dispatched for their defence. George Gowler's view on restoring Jews 'to their land' was the means through which a safe zone for the British could be created between Egypt and Syria. The colonial agenda was embodied in Lord Arthur James Balfour's words in 1919: "For in Palestine we do not propose to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country ... Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit the land." Balfour was pivotal in advancing the Zionist project in particular. As Arab protests against the Balfour Declaration became more vocal, the Zionists increased their rhetoric pertaining to the 'right of ownership to a national land'.
"In Zionism, the Land replaced the Torah, and the sweeping worship of the future state replaced strong adherence to God." Zionism's disregard from tradition and commandments facilitated the task of locating a fictitious homeland in Judaism. The innovative rules of ownership reeked of colonial ideology, with Zionists insisting that Arabs 'acknowledge the children of Israel's historic right to the land.' However, Zionists never clarified the 'self-evident' claims to Palestinian land. Affinity to land was regarded as inherent by Jews, therefore affinity was also perceived to create rights to a historic land.
The right to land was also adopted by the 1922 League of Nations, approving of an intentionally fabricated historical identity in relation to international law. This new consciousness played upon rights and misfortune. Jews were perceived as a nation prevented from reaching its national homeland despite an aspiration transcending generations. On the contrary, Palestinian self-determination was ignored, and Palestinians were deemed as not possessing 'the unique attributes of a nation'. The UN Partition Plan in 1947 following the holocaust gave the Zionists the foundations from which they were able to declare the false yearning of Jews 'in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland'.
Sand emphasises the importance of Zionist geopolitics in understanding the dynamics of expansion. The preliminary metaphor of 'the desolate abandoned land' was significant in maintaining the claim of a historical right to a homeland. As early as 1897, it was deemed that the 'sacred land' was insufficient to establish a national homeland. Further territorial mapping by Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi was intentionally inconclusive, as it was stated that "The Eastern Border of the land of Israel should not be precisely demarcated." Expansion and appropriation were integral to Zionist consolidation of the national homeland, conveniently ignoring the fact that Judaism was independent of any territorial claim.
The historical narrative is insightful, in particular the graceful disintegration of Zionist historical right to homeland. The Zionist colonial enterprise is fragmented until the reader grasps the ethnic colonization of Palestine as a massacre of immense magnitude. Although the book mainly dwells on historical narrative, the culmination of imposed ownership is evident from the opening chapters. However, there seems to be a degree of hesitation in connecting this historical fabrication with the necessity of accountability. The question of rights for Palestinians is not simply a question of a colonising state bequeathing a reconciliatory gesture to the people it has massacred for decades. If the admission of fabrication of a national Jewish homeland is restricted to a historical study, the question of illegal occupation and the expectation that the State of Israel grants Palestinians their rights would amount to less than a fleeting statement. Without a process of accountability, the fabricated history retains its strength.
http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/media-review/book-review/5492-the-invention-of-the-land-of-israel
