At my homepage www.rolf-martens.com I've added today, under "News with
brief
comments":
Monday, 24 March 2008 (NWBC 357) Fw: Shattering a 'national mythology'
[of
"Israel's"]
2008-03-24, 12:21 GMT:
The article reproduced below I find very interesting and am guessing is
probably basically correct, though I don't have enough knowledge by far
either
to confirm its veracity or else to refute it.
The historian quoted in this article, Shlomo Sand, obviously at least in
practice is an adherent of arch-reactionary Zionism. But those historical
findings which he re****ts on go a long way towards refuting that ideology.
On "Israel", see also my "UNITE! Info #169en: 'Israel', 'rich' states' mad
dog"
(12.04.2002).
[QUOTE:]
From:
World View <ummyakoub@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Date:
Sun., 23 March 2008 22:38 [CET]
To:
wvns@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:
Shattering a 'national mythology'
Shattering a 'national mythology'
By Ofri Ilani
Ha'aretz,
March 21/08
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html
Of all the national heroes who have arisen from among the Jewish people
over
the generations, fate has not been kind to Dahia al-Kahina, a leader of
the
Berbers in the Aures Mountains. Although she was a proud Jewess, few
Israelis
have ever heard the name of this warrior-queen who, in the seventh century
C.E., [The designation "C.E." was new to me. It's "Common Era, secular
alternative to Anno Domini (A.D.)". - RM] united a number of Berber tribes
and
pushed back the Muslim army that invaded North Africa. It is possible that
the
reason for this is that al-Kahina was the daughter of a Berber tribe that
had
converted to Judaism, apparently several generations before she was born,
sometime around the 6th century C.E.
According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author
of
"Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was
Invented?"; Resling, in Hebrew), the queen's tribe and other local tribes
that
converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang.
This
claim that the Jews of North Africa originated in indigenous tribes that
became
Jewish - and not in communities exiled from Jerusalem - is just one
element of
the far-reaching argument set forth in Sand's new book.
In this work, the author attempts to prove that the Jews now living in
Israel
and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient
people
who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple
period.
Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to
Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the
Mediterranean
Basin and the adjacent regions. Not only are the North African Jews for
the
most part descendants of pagans who converted to Judaism, but so are the
Jews
of Yemen (remnants of the Himyar Kingdom in the Arab Peninsula, who
converted
to Judaism in the fourth century) and the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe
(refugees from the Kingdom of the Khazars, who converted in the eighth
century).
Unlike other "new historians" who have tried to undermine the assumptions
of
Zionist historiography, Sand does not content himself with going back to
1948
or to the beginnings of Zionism, but rather goes back thousands of years.
He
tries to prove that the Jewish people never existed as a "nation-race"
with a
common origin, but rather is a colorful mix of groups that at various
stages in
history adopted the Jewish religion. He argues that for a number of
Zionist
ideologues, the mythical perception of the Jews as an ancient people led
to
truly racist thinking: "There were times when if anyone argued that the
Jews
belong to a people that has gentile origins, he would be classified as an
anti-Semite on the spot. 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."
According to Sand, the description of the Jews as a wandering and
self-isolating nation of exiles, "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 nothing but
"national mythology." Like other national movements in Europe, which
sought out
a splendid Golden Age, through which they invented a heroic past - for
example,
classical Greece or the Teutonic tribes - to prove they have existed since
the
beginnings of history, "so, too, the first buds of Jewish nationalism
blossomed
in the direction of the strong light that has its source in the mythical
Kingdom of David."
So when, in fact, was the Jewish people invented, in Sand's view? 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. 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, became a wandering people and ultimately turned around and went
back
to its birthplace".
Actually, most of your book does not deal with the invention of the Jewish
people by modern Jewish nationalism, but rather with the question of where
the
Jews come from.
Sand: "My initial intention was to take certain kinds of modern
historiographic
materials and examine how they invented the 'figment' of the Jewish
people. But
when I began to confront the historiographic sources, I suddenly found
contradictions. And then that urged me on: I started to work, without
knowing
where I would end up. I took primary sources and I tried to examine
authors'
references in the ancient period - what they wrote about conversion."
Sand, an expert on 20th-century history, has until now researched the
intellectual history of modern France (in "Ha'intelektual, ha'emet
vehakoah:
miparashat dreyfus ve'ad milhemet hamifrats" - "Intellectuals, Truth and
Power,
From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War"; Am Oved, in Hebrew). Unusually,
for a
professional historian, in his new book he deals with periods that he had
never
researched before, usually relying on studies that present unorthodox
views of
the origins of the Jews.
Experts on the history of the Jewish people say you are dealing with
subjects
about which you have no understanding and are basing yourself on works
that you
can't read in the original.
"It is true that I am an historian of France and Europe, and not of the
ancient
period. I knew that the moment I would start dealing with early periods
like
these, I would be exposed to scathing criticism by historians who
specialize in
those areas. But I said to myself that I can't stay just with modern
historiographic material without examining the facts it describes. Had I
not
done this myself, it would have been necessary to have waited for an
entire
generation. Had I continued to deal with France, perhaps I would have been
given chairs at the university and provincial glory. But I decided to
relinquish the glory."
Inventing the Dias****a
"After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful
to
it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their
return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom" -
thus
states the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of Independence. This is
also
the quotation that opens the third chapter of Sand's book, entitled "The
Invention of the Dias****a." Sand argues that the Jewish people's exile
from its
land never happened.
"The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a
long-range
memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the
direct
continuation of 'the people of the Bible' that preceded it," Sand
explains.
Under the influence of other historians who have dealt with the same issue
in
recent years, he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally
a
Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on
the
Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.
"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a
constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. 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 de****t 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."
If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real
descendants
of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?
"No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. 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.'"
And how did millions of Jews appear around the Mediterranean Sea?
"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. The Hasmoneans were the first to begin to
produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence
of
Hellenism. The conversions between the Hasmonean Revolt and Bar Kochba's
rebellion are what prepared the ground for the subsequent, wide-spread
dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the
fourth
century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the 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 that stage 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."
How did you come to the conclusion that the Jews of North Africa were
originally Berbers who converted?
"I asked myself how such large Jewish 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."
Sand argues that the most crucial demographic addition to the Jewish
population
of the world came in the wake of the conversion of the kingdom of Khazaria
- a
huge empire that arose in the Middle Ages on the steppes along the Volga
River,
which at its height ruled over an area that stretched from the Georgia of
today
to Kiev. In the eighth century, the kings of the Khazars adopted the
Jewish
religion and made Hebrew the written language of the kingdom. From the
10th
century the kingdom weakened; in the 13th century is was utterly defeated
by
Mongol invaders, and the fate of its Jewish inhabitants remains unclear.
Sand revives the hypothesis, which was already suggested by historians in
the
19th and 20th centuries, according to which the Judaized Khazars
constituted
the main origins of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.
"At the beginning of the 20th century there is a tremendous concentration
of
Jews in Eastern Europe - three million Jews in Poland alone," he says.
"The
Zionist historiography claims that their origins are in the earlier Jewish
community in Germany, but they do not succeed in explaining how a small
number
of Jews who came from Mainz and Worms could have founded the Yiddish
people of
Eastern Europe. The Jews of Eastern Europe are a mixture of Khazars and
Slavs
who were pushed eastward."
'Degree of perversion'
If the Jews of Eastern Europe did not come from Germany, why did they
speak
Yiddish, which is a Germanic language?
"The Jews were a class of people dependent on the German bourgeoisie in
the
East, and thus they adopted German words. Here I base myself on the
research of
linguist Paul Wechsler of Tel Aviv University, who has demonstrated that
there
is no etymological connection between the German Jewish language of the
Middle
Ages and Yiddish. As far back as 1828, the Ribal (Rabbi Isaac Ber
Levinson)
said that the ancient language of the Jews was not Yiddish. Even Ben Zion
Dinur, the father of Israeli historiography, was not hesitant about
describing
the Khazars as the origin of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and describes
Khazaria
as 'the mother of the dias****as' in Eastern Europe. But more or less since
1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of
Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck."
Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?
"It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to
the
land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly
knock
the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning
of the
period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply:
'We
came, we won and now we are here' the way the Americans, the whites in
South
Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will
be
cast on our right to exist."
Is there no justification for this fear?
"No. I don't think that the historical myth of the exile and the
wanderings is
the source of the legitimization for me being here, and therefore I don't
mind
believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the
undermining of
our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel
undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis
for
our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would
be
for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli
citizens."
In effect you are saying that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.
"I don't recognize an international people. I recognize 'the Yiddish
people'
that existed in Eastern Europe, which though it is not a nation can be
seen as
a Yiddi****st civilization with a modern popular culture. I think that
Jewish
nationalism grew up in the context of this 'Yiddish people.' I also
recognize
the existence of an Israeli people, and do not deny its right to
sovereignty.
But Zionism and also Arab nationalism over the years are not prepared to
recognize it.
"From the perspective of Zionism, this country does not belong to its
citizens,
but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a
group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of
the
Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even
though
nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen
as a
nation."
What is so dangerous about Jews imagining that they belong to one people?
Why
is this bad? "In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of
perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But
Israel
has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become
an
open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. The
consciousness concerning the right to this place must be more flexible and
varied, and if I have contributed with my book to the likelihood that I
and my
children will be able to live with the others here in this country in a
more
egalitarian situation - I will have done my bit.
"We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli
republic
where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of
the
law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab
community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that
declares
it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state
like
that, but even as an Israeli I am rebelling against it."
The question is whether for those conclusions you had to go as far as the
Kingdom of the Khazars.
"I am not hiding the fact that it is very distressing for me to live in a
society in which the nationalist principles that guide it are dangerous,
and
that this distress has served as a motive in my work. I am a citizen of
this
country, but I am also a historian and as a historian it is my duty to
write
history and examine texts. This is what I have done."
If the myth of Zionism is one of the Jewish people that returned to its
land
from exile, what will be the myth of the country you envision?
"To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted
mythologies of
the past. For the Americans, and today for the Europeans as well, what
justifies the existence of the nation is a future promise of an open,
progressive and prosperous society. The Israeli materials do exist, but it
is
necessary to add, for example, pan-Israeli holidays. To decrease the
number of
memorial days a bit and to add days that are dedicated to the future. But
also,
for example, to add an hour in memory of the ****ba literally, the
"catastrophe"
- the Palestinian term for what happened when Israel was established],
between
Memorial Day and Independence Day."
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_____________________
Message posted by:
Rolf Martens
Malmö, Sweden
Phone and fax:
+46 - 40 - 124832;
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