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Judaism |
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eclaration of Independence states that the
Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and
was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli
schoolchild is taught that this happened during
the period of Roman rule, in 70 CE. The nation
remained loyal to its land, to which it began to
return after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says
the historian Shlomo Zand, in one of the most
fascinating and challenging books published here
in a long time. There never was a Jewish people,
only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never
happened - hence there was no return. Zand
rejects most of the stories of national-identity
formation in the Bible, including the exodus
from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors
of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction
and myth that served as an excuse for the
establishment of the State of Israel, he
asserts.
According to Zand, the Romans did not generally
exile whole nations, and most of the Jews were
permitted to remain in the country. The number
of those exiled was at most tens of thousands.
When the country was conquered by the Arabs,
many of the Jews converted to Islam and were
assimilated among the conquerors. It follows
that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs
were Jews. Zand did not invent this thesis; 30
years before the Declaration of Independence, it
was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi
and others.
If
the majority of the Jews were not exiled, how is
it that so many of them reached almost every
country on earth? Zand says they emigrated of
their own volition or, if they were among those
exiled to Babylon, remained there because they
chose to. Contrary to conventional belief, the
Jewish religion tried to induce members of other
faiths to become Jews, which explains how there
came to be millions of Jews in the world. As the
Book of Esther, for example, notes, "And many of
the people of the land became Jews; for the fear
of the Jews fell upon them."
Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of
which were written in Israel but shunted out of
the central discourse. He also describes at
length the Jewish kingdom of Himyar in the
southern Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish
Berbers in North Africa. The community of Jews
in Spain sprang from Arabs who became Jews and
arrived with the forces that captured Spain from
the Christians, and from European-born
individuals who had also become Jews.
The first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) did not
come from the Land of Israel and did not reach
Eastern Europe from Germany, but became Jews in
the Khazar Kingdom in the Caucasus. Zand
explains the origins of Yiddish culture: it was
not a Jewish import from Germany, but the result
of the connection between the offspring of the
Kuzari and Germans who traveled to the East,
some of them as merchants.
We find, then, that the members of a variety of
peoples and races, blond and black, brown and
yellow, became Jews in large numbers. According
to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a
shared ethnicity and historical continuity
produced a long series of inventions and
fictions, along with an invocation of racist
theses. Some were concocted in the minds of
those who conceived the Zionist movement, while
others were offered as the findings of genetic
studies conducted in Israel.
Prof. Zand teaches at Tel Aviv University. His
book, "When and How Was the Jewish People
Invented?" (published by Resling in Hebrew), is
intended to promote the idea that Israel should
be a "state of all its citizens" - Jews, Arabs
and others - in contrast to its declared
identity as a "Jewish and democratic" state.
Personal stories, a prolonged theoretical
discussion and abundant sarcastic quips do not
help the book, but its historical chapters are
well-written and cite numerous facts and
insights that many Israelis will be astonished
to read for the first time.
The Mosquito from Kiryat Yam
On March 27, 1948, a meeting was held in Hiafa
concerning the fate of the Bedouin of Arab al-Ghawarina
in the Haifa area. "They must be removed from
there, so that they, too, will not add to our
troubles," Yosef Weitz, of the Keren Kayemeth
(Jewish National Fund), wrote in his personal
diary. Two months later, Weitz reported to the
organization's director, "Our Haifa Bay has been
evacuated completely and there is hardly a
remnant of those who encroached our border."
They were probably expelled to Jordan; some were
allowed to remain in the village of Jisr al-Zarqa.
The fate of the Arab al-Ghawarina Bedouin has
recently made the headlines thanks to Shmuel
Sisso, mayor of the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Yam.
He has filed a complaint with the police against
Google. The reason is the addition that one of
the site's surfers, a resident of Nablus,
attached to the center of Kiryat Yam in the
world satellite photo, stating that the city is
built on the ruins of a village that was
destroyed in 1948, Arab al-Ghawarina. Sisso's
complaint says that this is slanderous.
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Zevulun Valley |
The facts are as follows: The lands of the Zevulun Valley
were purchased in the 1920s by the JNF and by various
construction companies, among them one called Gav Yam. The
Zionist Archives have the plan for the establishment of
Kiryat Yam, dated 1938, and a letter from 1945 states that
there were already 100 homes there. Government maps from the
British Mandate period identify the territory on which
Kiryat Yam was built by two names: Zevulun Valley and
Ghawarina. Thus it appears that this was not a settlement
but an area in which Bedouin resided.
The Web site of the Israeli organization Zochrot
(Remembering) states that there were 720 people at the site
in 1948 and that the area was divided among three kibbutzim:
Ein Hamifratz, Kfar Masaryk and Ein Hayam, today Ein Carmel.
This story has been making the rounds on the Internet and
drawing responses, which can be summed up as follows: "If
Sisso is suing Google because they stated that he is living
on a destroyed Arab village, the implication is that he
thinks this is something bad." Sisso, a lawyer of 57 who is
identified with Likud and was formerly Israeli consul
general in New York, says, "I don't think there is anything
bad about it, but other people might think it is bad,
especially people abroad, and that is liable to hurt Kiryat
Yam, because people will not want to invest here. Since we
are not sitting on a Palestinian village, why should we have
to suffer for no reason?"
Moroccan-born, Sisso arrived in Israel in 1955. "I wandered
around the whole region and I saw no trace of anyone's
having been here before us and supposedly expelled." He
asked an American law professor how, if at all, Google could
be sued for slander or for damages. This, he says, is the
contribution of Kiryat Yam to the struggle against the right
of return (of the Palestinian refugees).
It could turn out to be the most riveting trial since Ariel
Sharon sued Time magazine, but mayor Sisso has no illusions:
"Me against Google is like a mosquito against an elephant,"
he said this week.
Who
America Belongs To
Two professors, Gabi Shefer and Avi Ben-Zvi, were guests
this week on Yitzhak Noy's "International Hour" current
events program on Israel Radio. The anchor, sounding
slightly concerned, asked whether the achievements of Barack
Obama show that the United States no longer belongs to the
white man. Prof. Shefer confirmed this: Obama is an
immigrant, he said. Prof. Ben-Zvi asked to add a remark:
Gabi Shefer is right, he said. They are both wrong. If Obama
were an immigrant, he would not be eligible to be elected
president. He was born in Honolulu, some two years after
Hawaii became the 50th state of the union.
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