The Invention of the Jewish People

It always intrigued me how Zionism as a political movement and Israel as its embodiment can claim to act on behalf of the Jewish people. Sand brilliantly explains that the specific conditions of Jews in Eastern and Central Europe, particularly discrimination and violent outbursts (pogroms), produced a sense of nationhood.

As a historian, I am fascinated by Sand’s account of Zionist ideologues from that part of the world manufacturing powerful myths, which have buttressed the new Israeli identity even among Jews transplanted to Israel from Asia and Africa, where this kind of Jewish nationalism had been virtually unknown. 

There’s an old cliche that the victor always get to write the history, yet probably the most enduring story in the world was written by a group of people who pretty much lost every war they fought throughout their long history – the Jewish people.

They lost wars to the Assyrians and the Babylonians, who carted them off to settle in their far-flung empires, were enslaved by the Egyptians, then lost a revolt against the Roman occupiers and were – allegedly -- driven out of their homeland for thousands of years before a Biblical return to the promised land.

Shlomo… show more.