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Prof. Shlomo Sand from TA University was interviewed on 9 November 2009 in the prestigious BBC 4 radio program 'Start the Week' in relation to his book the 'The invention of the Jewish people'. He will lecture about it again in London's SOAS in the middle of the week. He was taken very seriously by everybody present. He dismissed the importance of the Zionist historians stressing he is not one. According to him this myth about the existence of a Jewish people was necessary for the justification of the 19 century Zionist ideology. He said these Zionist ideologists talked about the Jews as superior race with respect to the Germans (implying the usual analogy between Nazism and Zionism).

He announced the events described in the bible are not facts but these mythological events are mobilized by the Zionists to justify Zionism and this is why from the age of 7 he had to keep studying the bible in Israeli schools. In fact, it is remarkable to what extent modern archaeology provides supports for many of the biblical events. This why the Arabs are so keen to deny Jewish history in Palestine and wherever possible to destroy this historical and archaeological evidence. He is a fellow traveler with them in this denial of Jewish history.

According to him all those groups known the world over by the name "Jews" are all just converts (e.g. the Kuzars, the Berbers from North Africa) and that it is not true that Judaism is not a proselytizing religion. Thus he contends that there is no blood and racial relation between the various groups of people who are called Jews. They are all a result of conversion. He is quite explicit about the lack of justification for the existence of Israel as a Jewish state: There are no ethnic Jewish people. The "Jews" do not originate from Palestine.

His main thesis is that there was no exile of Jews by Rome 2000 years ago. In fact since he dismissed the whole bible as a historical document, it means that Babylonian Jews and other communities of Jews all over the world (say in Yemen or Iraq) are all converts. So one wonders if Jews were never exiled, how did they succeed to convert so many groups of people all over the globe? Through the internet, or perhaps through the telephone? Did such hi tech devices exist during the Babylonian and Roman exiles. Did traveler Jews have a magic power of persuasion? Was there a Jewish conspiracy to convert the world? How did this wide spread conversion of gentiles to Jews started in the first place in the absence of exiled Jews?

But his theory is such an absurd one on so many counts. Jews were known through the generations never to be proselytizing. On the contrary they were blamed all through history that they keep themselves apart. "Am Levadad Yishkon". In fact they excluded themselves not only because of their religion but were obliged to exclude themselves by the surrounding gentiles. For example the yellow badge was not invented by the Nazis but was used in Arab countries to label the Jews as second class beings. The Jews in the Diaspora constituted secluded cohesive groups and rarely married outside their community. Jews were always blamed for making it difficult for non-Jews to become Jews by conversion. They were and are also blamed for being reluctant to marry with non-Jews. Only more recently with the advent of the 'reform' streams of Judaism this reluctance to accept non-Jews into the Jewish community has been relaxed but to a minor extent. So in view of this reluctance it is hard to imagine that all Jews in the Diaspora are the result of conversion of gentiles, as the learnt professor claims.

Palestine and the Diaspora abounds with historical relics demonstrating the continuity of real historical ethnic Jews and always physically and mentally connected with Palestine. Consider for example the Geniza documents from Cairo which are now in the collection of Cambridge University which go back a thousand years. Are these documents referring to converted Jews? What an absurd statement! The Jews driven out of Spain in 1492 or from York in England were they all converts? Consider, Arch of Titus in Rome. It is a historical relic 2000 years old. It has engraved on it a procession of Jews carrying the Menora from the temple. If Jews were not exiled by Rome in this period — which is the main thesis of the learned professor — why does the Arch of Titus come to be? The engraved picture is a victory parade of the humiliated Jews in Rome. Such a triumphal arch in Rome had to signify a major event in the Roman Empire. The various Roman coins from this period have a humiliated captive Jew engraved on them as well (bat Zion hashevuya). Were the Arch of Titus and the various coins planted by the sinister Zionist Jews of the 19 century?

There are many Jews all over the globe with the name of Levi (or names derived from Levi such as Levine), and the name Cohen and derived names. Does it make sense to argue that these Jews too have no Jewish ethnic lineage originating in Palestine and in the holy priests of the temple in Jerusalem, but that the gentiles who converted to Judaism also adopted names like Levis and Cohens? Hardly likely. But in a world where the Arabs say that there was no Jewish temple in Jerusalem, despite the mass of archaeological evidence, the paper suffers every absurd claim.

If the "Jews" the world over are not an ethnic nation with a common history of 4500 years and originating from Palestine, a history which includes the Roman exile, it means that modern Zionism and Aliya (emigration of Jews to Palestine) is not a home coming. The implication is enormous since it deprives Israel from its rationale as a Jewish state. It corresponds to the main Arab argument that the Jews are just a religion but not an ethnic nation with a long history. Even Hitler wanted to kill all Jews on the basis of their common ethnicity. At least let us grant him this recognition. Judaism is unique as it corresponds to both a religion and a nation based in Palestine and stretching thousands of years. No other group of people has got such a long national, cultural, religious and cohesive history. The denial of the Jewish ethnicity and nationhood is in the same category as holocaust denial. It should be treated with the same contempt.

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