On ‘The invention of the Jewish People’

By Jamal Kanj

The Invention of the Jewish People was a book written by Shlomo Sand, an Israeli professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv.

The author wasn’t probing a belief system, but Zionist fabrications of a spurious common lineage for people of the Jewish faith.

Sand argues the implausibility of Jews having a common ethnic identity as Judaism was originally, like Christianity and later Islam, a “proselytising religion”.

The notion of Judaism as a “race”, rather than a religion of various races, is incompatible.

The results of a recently published study by Israeli-American geneticist Dr Eran Israeli Elhaik at John Hopkins University have scientifically and genetically validated Sand’s research.

The idea of a “nation race” was progressively developed and reinforced over centuries of segregated Jewish communities in Europe.

With the rise of German nationalism in the 19th century, Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz “retrospectively” crafted a discrete identity for the ghettoized people – mapping their origin to an old kingdom and wandering exiles.

The exile tales transpired from a Christian myth of “divine punishment” imposed on Jews for rejecting the new religion.

The parable was likely to have originated from the Old Testament story of Jews wandering the desert for disobeying God and worshipping the golden calf.

Christians propagated the concept of exile to lure “disobeying” Jews to a new religion, becoming their savior from another eternal banishment.

Modern political Zionism, which otherwise rejects the Christian Bible, adopted the untested story of “Jewish exile” to establish mythical linkage between European Jews and the Middle East.

But Jewish history tells us that Romans did not expel the original Jews from Palestine when they crushed the Simon bar Kokhba revolt in 136 AD, instead barring them only from city of Jerusalem – and even then they were allowed to visit it during Tisha B’Bv, the annual fast day on the ninth day of the month of Av in the Hebrew calendar.

Followers of the first monotheistic religion continued to have a presence in Palestine hundreds of years after the waning of the Roman empire.

The last recorded history of an autonomous Jewish entity was under the tutelage of the Persian empire in 614 AD, before it was dismantled by Byzantine forces in 625 AD.

A little over 10 years later Palestine was conquered by the Muslims and became part of the new Arab and Muslim nation.

Under Christianity and during the Roman empire, a large number of native Jews converted to Christianity and – with the advent of Islam – most adopted the new religion and assimilated under the new power.

In addition to the descendants of the Canaanites, the original denizens before patriarch Abraham’s arrival from Mesopotamia, Sand concludes that today’s Muslim and Christian Palestinians are actually the true progenies of the original Jews.

So if there was no exile, where did European Jews come from?

Sand suggested that most of today’s Jews did not originate from the Middle East.

He argues that the Ashkenazi (European) Jewish ancestry can be traced back to the Caucasus region.

In the 8th century, the Khazar’s subjects and subordinate tribes experienced the largest religious conversion in the history of Judaism.

The recent study by John Hopkins geneticist Dr Elhaik confirmed that the common genome structure of the Ashkenazi (European) Jew gravitated towards an origin in old Khazaria.

“The majority of Jews do not have Middle Eastern genetic component,” he told Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Founded on a mélange of myths and manufactured historical tales, Israel has failed the archaeological test of time and is now exposed by DNA science.

Today’s genetics prove unequivocally that in 1948, “the children of the original Jews” were replaced by 8th century converts with no roots in the Middle East.

– Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes weekly newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. (A version of this article was first published by the Gulf Daily News newspaper.)

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6 Comments

  1. So what? Are you saying that most Ashkenazi Jews are not really Jewish…But most Palestinians are Jewish?

    I agree, Israel should prosletyze the remaining Palestinians living in Israel and the territories to return back to their roots which their ancestors were forced to abandon long ago.

    Maybe that is the solution to the problem.

  2. The “origin” of the “Jewish people” only matters because zionists make a claim to Palestine based on the supposed ancient Jewish origins. But even if modern European and other Jewish peoples were mostly descended from Jews who lived in Palestine 2000 years ago, the such ancient origins would not make modern claims valid. Property ownership and territorial claims were very different in the ancient world. Law under the Romans and Jews was different than today, which law of inheritance would you apply? Would all the land belong to the heir of King Herod or whoever the last Jewish king was? How would you find this person and establish his claim?

  3. At the time of the Simon bar Kokhba revolt in 136 AD, the land in question was called Judea – a Roman province reflecting the Jewish population that inhabited the place. After the Simon bar Kokhba revolt in 136 AD, the Romans renamed the region “Palestine” so as to insult and punnish the remaing Jews for the afformentioned uprising, as that name harkens back to the nomadic-Philistines whom the Jews defeated to claim the territory in the first place.

  4. No matter how much you argue who was or is a Jew or who was or is an Arab or Palestinian the fact remains that Israel was created as a colonial project armed to the teeth to protect the strategic interests of the superpowers then and now. By then it was the French and British and now The United States of America. As Lyn pointed out which law of inheritance applies? The answer lies in modern day land ownership which the zionists stole outright and continue to steal with the world watching from its rightful inhabitants which happen to be Palestinian Arabs. To trace back to race and genes and argue a “melange of myths and manufactured tales” is misguided at best and does not tell the true fact that Palestine was stolen outright and its people continue to suffer for one thing and one thing only the almighty dollar.

  5. Logically, there are no “Jewish” genetics. Jews are people of many different ethnicities, cultures, languages and nationalities, just as any other religion, except in Israel where “Jewish” becomes a nationality as well as a religion. If an Arab is Christian and he converts to Judiaism,” that person will still be an Arab regardless of what religion he chooses to follow. If someone is Black and Jewish, and converts to Christianity, that person will no longer be Jewish, but he still remains Black.

    Although Israel has a “Law of Return,” which gives the definiton of who is Jewish and who is entitled to “return,” it also distinctly states that this is not applicable to one who has changed his “religion.” Therefore, if Jewish was indeed an ethnicity or race, it would make not one iota of difference what that person believed in or did not believe in. One’s race and/or ethnicity does not change according to one’s religious beliefs. I think the world has been so conditioned into believing that Jews are an exclusive people with exclusive rights to “their” homeland, that logic is simply buried beneath all the misrepresentations.

  6. Shlomo Sand wrote a book, and he put forth an alternate theory, good for him. So what?
    Let’s say he’s correct. Modern Israel was carved from land taken from the Turks after WWI. More than 99% was given to people who believe in Islam. Less than 1% to believe who believe in Judaism. In 1947 India was also divided among “Indian” people. Two parcels of land was given to “muslim” Indians and one part was retained by the Hindu Indians. Islam is a fairly new event to a very old society, yet it was felt appropriate to make the division. So why would it not be okay to have a very small Jewish nation and deposit all the Jews from around the ME and many from Europe. DNA is irrelevant, religion is key.

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