Shlomo Sand - The Invention of the Jewish People

Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People was a best seller when it was originally published in Hebrew in Israel. As a result it was published more widely with an English edition arriving in 2009. In his 2010 review of the book Jewish socialist John Rose argued that the book would "accelerate the disintegration of the Zionist enterprise... its ideological credibility, already severely shaken, will now shatter more quickly." Reading Invention in the midst of Israel's renewed assault on the Palestinians, which some have called a second Nakhba, it is hard to think that this happened to any extent. Nonetheless Rose makes an important point. Zionism, and the myths that it rests upon, have taken an intellectual beating from Sand's book. This makes it crucialy important.

A second point made by Rose is equally important. Because this book attempts to explore the real early Jewish history, and celebrates that with "elan and gusto", it makes Sand "immune to any accusation of anti-Semitism". This is, as recent movements have shown, the book even more important.

Sand's starting point is that nation states needs an ideological basis:

The birth of the nation is undoubtedly a real historical development, but it is not a purely spontaneous one. To reinforce an abstract group loyalty, the nation, like the preceding religious community, needed rituals, festivals, cermonies and myths. To forge itself in a single, firm entity, it had to engage in continual poublic cultural activites and to invent a unifying collective memory. Such a novel system of accessible norms and practices was also needed ofr the overarching consciousness, an amalgamating ideological consciousness: namely, nationalism.

Zionist ideas, and thus the Israeli state, rest on a number of such myths that seek to justify the existence and presence of the Zionist state in the Middle East. Much of Sand's book is a demolition of the Biblical basis for these myths, based on a close study of archaeological investigations, primary sources and other historical material. In particular Sand notes that the struggle of the Palestinians themselves helped force a recognition that the foundation myths of Israel were not based in reality:

Young archaeologists began to have misgivings and escaped to earlier eras. More resarchers encountered unresolved contradictions. But it was only after the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987, and the advent of greater critical openness in the Israeli public arena, that the excavators began to speak up, their voices hoarse from having so long been muffled by sacred soil.

The biggest "myth" that Sand challenges based on this work is the idea of a Jewish expulsion from their historic homeland and their exile. Zionists argue that this expulsion gives the basis for the right for Jews to return to Palestine, and for the establishment of the Israeli state. In painstaking detail Sand explains why this did not happen. Instead Sand concludes, "the myth of the uprooting and exile was fostered by the Christian tradition, from which it flowed into Jewish tradition and grew to be the truth engraved in history, both the general and the national."

Another myth to be demolished was the existence of a "united national kingdom of David and Solomon". All future political models def on this paragon of the biblical past and drew from it imagery, thinking and intellectual exhilaration." But nothing was ever found, "no vetige was ever found of monumental structures, walls or grand palaces, and the pottery found... was scanty and quite simple". Later he adds, "no trace has been found of the existence of that legendary king, whose wealth is described in the Bible as almost matching that of the mighty imperial rulers of Babylonia or Persia". There is, of course, plenty of evidence for these latter two states.

In exploring the history, Sand has to also confront those thinkers of the Zionist tradition who argued for Zionism on the basis of these and other pseudo-scientific myths. These sections are charateristically detailed, and Sand's demolition of these writers and activists is very important as they undermine many of those academics and thinkers who continue to justify Zionism today. In addition we learn that many contemporary myths are also untrue. Jews and Muslims cannot live together, we are told, because they never have. Yet Sand shows the opposite is true. In fact, in the past, people amicably lived and worshipped side-by-side.

Finally Sand critiques the idea that there is a seamless thread from the original Jewish people in the Middle East historically to Jewish people today. Again, Sand shows that this is untrue, taking up the way that communities regularly did convert to Judaism, for religious and occasionally economic reasons. 

History is always written in the context of contemporary debates. The whole thrust of Sand's book is to demonstrate that the myths that form the basis for Zionism, are exactly that - myths. But the Israeli state and its apologists have, over decades, carefully constructed and managed an alternative history. This forms the basis of justification of today's violent repression of the Palestinian people. As Sand says:

Although most of the professional historians knew there had never been a forcible uprooting of the Jewish people, they permitted the Christian muth that had been taken up by the Jewish tradition to be paraded freely in the public and educational venues of the national memory making o attempt to rebut it. They even encouraged it indirectly, knowing that only this myth would provide moral legitimacy to the settlement of the 'exiled nation; in a land inhabited by others.

Today the Israeli State exists as part of a wider set of imperialist relations in the Middle East. Its current assault on Gaza has everything to do with strengthen its hand and protecting its interests. But as Palestinian resistance is rocking that military confidence, and Sand's honest account of Jewish history and the uses (and misuses) it has been put to, is an extremely important expose of the nature of Zionism. In the context of contemporay events it deserves wide readership again.

Related Reviews

Rose - The Myths of Zionism
Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth
Pappe - Ten Myths About Israel