Book Calls Jewish People an ‘Invention’

SHOOT: Easy now. One of the arguments the book makes is that once it was politically convenient to admit/acknowledge that the Jews and Arabs were decended from the same people. When it became clear that this strategy wouldn't benefit either group [in 1919], Emir Feisal, who organized the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire and tried to create a united Arab nation, and the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann - broke off their negotiations.

The idea of a Jewish nation as being separate then is analogous - in some ways - to the North Koreans declaring themselves separate and different to the South Koreans. This is for political expediency. Of course, religion, in the case of the Middle East, serves as a great political device to ensure that these peoples remain unreconciled. It is one of the enduring criticisms of religion in general. That while fostering and developing communities is good [this is what religion does], it's not good if the scale is too small, in the sense that you have many communities that then compete for moral authority in the sort of self-destrcutive conflicts, wars without end, that we see in the Middle East in particular. In that case it is better to have a wider, overarching system that creates one unified, but diverse community. Here I mean unified simply in the sense of being in moral consensus about what is right, rather than arguing endlessly over the details.

I once wrote that the entire religion of Judaism, and possibly Islam too, are written out of a need to claim the title deed to land that couldn't otherwise be successfully occupied by either group. In other words, the motive for bringing God into existence, was to serve political interests. And the political interests were based on wanting to own resources, wanting to claim resources, specifically the pursuit of land ownership. That has been the case and continues to be the case.

You miught ask what is so special about Israel. Well, for a couple of reasons, israel is valuable. Over the ages it was a land bridge that connected Africa to the the rest of the world. So what better place to build hotels and shops and toll gates. Today the strategic significance is even greater given the energy resources of the region. Britain realised this mid-century, and once again, for political reasons the British elites decided to have a Western presence in land that was generally occupied by, and belonged to the Arabs. If that had not happened, the power scenario in the world today would be quite different. Saudi Arabia, probably, would be a great regional power, rather than a family in cahoots with the USA [while the rest of the country effectively are swindled out of their national inheritance]. But, I digress.

Cohen: The idea of unjust exile and rightful return undergirds both the Jews’ and the Palestinians’ conviction that each is entitled to the land.
Nicholas Lange (Harcourt, 1997), notes, “Every generation of Jewish historians has faced the same task: to retell and adapt the story to meet the needs of its own situation.”

SHOOT: Exactly my point.

Read more on Israel's claims to the Holy Land.

clipped from www.nytimes.com What accounts for the grasp that some misconceptions maintain on popular consciousness, or the inability of historical truths to gain acceptance? Sometimes myths persist despite clear contradictory evidence because people feel the story embodies a deeper truth than the facts. Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake,” but the fictional statement captured the sense of a regime that showed disdain for the public’s welfare. Experts dismiss the popular notion that the Jews were expelled from Palestine in one fell swoop in A.D. 70. Yet while the destruction of Jerusalem and Second Temple by the Romans did not create the Diaspora, it caused a momentous change in the Jews’ sense of themselves and their position in the world. For later generations it encapsulates the essential truth about the Jews being an exiled and persecuted people for much of their history.