To help answer the delicate question as to which group of people actually belongs in Palestine, I want to present a great new article, from the website: Aletho News, at www.alethonews.wordpress.com, entitled: "Israeli Scholar Disputes Founding Myth". In this report, Shlomo Sand brings forward interesting information that shows proof positive that those who call themselves "Jews" today have no rights to Palestine, what so ever!
I have that Aletho News report right here for everyone to view for themselves, and I do have some of my own comments to follow:
Israeli Scholar Disputes Founding Myth
Introduction by Consortium News:
Republican presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich seems to be laying the groundwork for ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Greater Israel, calling them “an invented people” who “had a chance to go many places.” But an Israeli scholar offered a contrary view, as Morgan Strong reported in 2009.
Morgan Strong | April 12, 2009
The founding narrative of the modern State of Israel was born from
the words in the Torah (or Old Testament), that God granted Abraham’s
descendants the land of Israel and that Moses led the Jewish people out
of Egypt to conquer it.
A second part of the narrative was the story of the Diaspora – that
after Jewish uprisings against the Romans in the First and Second
centuries A.D., the Jews were exiled from the land of Israel and
dispersed throughout the Western world. They often were isolated from
European populations, suffered persecution, and ultimately were marked
for extermination in the Nazi Holocaust.
Finally after centuries of praying for a return to Israel, the Jews
achieved this goal by defeating the Arab armies in Palestine and
establishing Israel in 1948. This narrative – spanning more than three
millennia – is the singular, elemental and sustaining claim of the State
of Israel as a Jewish nation.
But a recent book by Israeli scholar Shlomo Sand challenges this
narrative, claiming that – beyond the religious question of whether God
really spoke to Abraham and Moses – the Roman-era Diaspora did not
happen at all or at least not as commonly understood.
In When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? [published in English as The Invention of the Jewish People],
Dr. Sand, an expert on European history at the University of Tel Aviv,
says the Diaspora was largely a myth – that the Jews were never exiled en masse from the Holy Land and that many European Jewish populations converted to the faith centuries later.
Thus, Sand argues, many of today’s Israelis who emigrated from Europe
after World War II have little or no genealogical connection to the
land. According to Sand’s historical analysis, they are descendents of
European converts, principally from the Kingdom of the Khazars in
eastern Russia, who embraced Judaism in the Eighth Century, A.D.
The descendants of the Khazars then were driven from their native
lands by invasion and conquest and – through migration – created the
Jewish populations of Eastern Europe, Sands writes. Similarly, he argues
that the Jews of Spain came from the conversion of Berber tribes from
northern Africa that later migrated into Europe.
The Zionist Narrative
Sand, himself a European Jew born in 1946 to Holocaust survivors in
Austria, argues that until little more than a century ago, Jews thought
of themselves as Jews because they shared a common religion, not because
they possessed a direct lineage to the ancient tribes of Israel.
However, at the turn of the 20th Century, Sand asserts, Zionist Jews
began assembling a national history to justify creation of a Jewish
state by inventing the idea that Jews existed as a people separate from
their religion and that they had primogeniture over the territory that
had become known as Palestine.
The Zionists also invented the idea that Jews living in exile were
obligated to return to the Promised Land, a concept that had been
foreign to Judaism, Sand states.
Like almost everything in the Middle East, Sand’s scholarship is
fraught with powerful religious, historical and political implications.
If Sand’s thesis is correct, it would suggest that many of the
Palestinian Arabs have a far more substantial claim to the lands of
Israel than do many European Jews who arrived there asserting a
God-given claim.
Indeed, Sand theorizes that many Jews, who remained in Judea after
Roman legions crushed the last uprising in 136 A.D., eventually
converted to Christianity or Islam, meaning that the Palestinians who
have been crowded into Gaza or concentrated in the West Bank might be
direct descendants of Jews from the Roman era.
Despite the political implications of Sand’s book, it has not faced
what might be expected: a withering assault from right-wing Israelis.
The criticism has focused mostly on Sand’s credentials as an expert on
European history, not ancient Middle Eastern history, a point that Sand
readily acknowledges.
One critic, Israel Bartal, dean of humanities at the Hebrew
University, attacked Sand’s credentials and called Sand’s thesis
“baseless,” but disagreed mostly over Sand’s assertion that the Diaspora
story was created as an intentional myth by Zionists seeking to
fabricate a direct genealogical connection between many of the world’s
Jews and Israel.
“Although the myth of an exile from the Jewish homeland (Palestine)
does exist in popular Israeli culture, it is negligible in serious
Jewish historical discussions,” Bartal wrote in the newspaper Haaretz.
“Important groups in the Jewish national movement expressed reservations
regarding this myth or denied it completely. …
“The kind of political intervention Sand is talking about, namely, a
deliberate program designed to make Israelis forget the true biological
origins of the Jews of Poland and Russia or a directive for the
promotion of the story of the Jews’ exile from their homeland is pure
fantasy.”
In other words, Bartal, like some other critics, is not so much
disputing Sand’s historical claims about the Diaspora or the origins of
Eastern European Jews, as he is contesting Sand’s notion that Zionists
concocted a false history for a cynical political purpose.
But there can be no doubt that the story of the Diaspora has played a
key role in the founding of Israel and that the appeal of this powerful
narrative has helped the Jewish state generate sympathy around the
world, especially in the United States.
“After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained
faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and
hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their
political freedom,” reads the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of
Independence.
Reality from Mythology
In January 2009, as the Israeli army bombarded Palestinians in Gaza
in retaliation for rockets fired into southern Israel, the world got an
ugly glimpse of what can result when historical myths are allowed to
drive wedges between people who otherwise might have a great deal in
common.
After the conflict ended – with some 1,400 Palestinians dead,
including many children and other non-combatants – the Israeli
government investigated alleged war crimes by its army and heard
testimony from Israeli troops that extremist Rabbis had proclaimed the
invasion a holy war.
The troops said the Rabbis brought them booklets and articles
declaring: “We are the Jewish people. We came to this land by a miracle.
God brought us back to this land, and now we need to fight to expel the
non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land.”
In his book – and in an interview with Haaretz about his book – Sand challenged this core myth. In the interview, he said:
“I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land –
a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But
to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is
that no one exiled the people of the country.
“The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so
even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to
deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until
the 20th Century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the
realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled.”
The True Descendants
Asked if he was saying that the true descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians, Sand responded:
Asked if he was saying that the true descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians, Sand responded:
“No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But
the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic
people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its
descendents.
“The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-1939], knew that
there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from
the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don’t leave until
they are expelled.
“Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel,
wrote in 1929 that, ‘the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not
have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in
the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of
the land.’”
Sand argues further that the Jewish people never existed as a “nation
race” but were rather an ethnic mix of disparate peoples who adopted
the Jewish religion over a great period of time. Sand dismisses the
Zionist argument that the Jews were an isolated and seminal ethnic group
that was targeted for dispersal by the Romans.
Although ruthless in putting down challenges to their rule, the
Romans allowed subjects in their occupied territories a great many
freedoms, including freedom to practice religion, freedom of speech, and
freedom of assembly.
Thousands of Jews served in the Roman legions, and there was a
sizable Jewish community in Rome itself.
Three Jewish descendants of
Herod the Great, the Jewish Emperor of Jerusalem, served in the Roman
Senate.
Jewish dietary laws were respected under Roman law, as well as the
right not to work on the Sabbath. Jewish slaves – 1,000 carried to Italy
by Emperor Titus after crushing the first Jewish rebellion in 70 A.D. –
were bought and set free by Jewish families already long settled into
Roman society.
After the final Jewish rebellion, the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132-136
A.D., historians say the Romans placed restrictions on Jews entering
Jerusalem, which caused other areas, such as Galilee in northern
Palestine, to become centers of Jewish learning. But there is little or
no evidence of a mass forced relocation.
Sand says the Diaspora was originally a Christian myth that depicted
the event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected
the Christian gospel.
Genetic Evidence
There has been no serious rebuttal to Sand’s book, which has been a
bestseller in Israel and Europe. But there were earlier genetic studies
attempting to demonstrate an unbroken line of descent among Ashkenazi
Jews in Europe from the Hebrew tribes of Israel.
In a genetic study published by the United States National Academy of
Sciences, the Y chromosomes of Ashkenazi, Roman, North African,
Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Ethiopian Jews were compared with
16 non-Jewish groups from similar geographic locations. It found that
despite long-term residence in different countries and isolation from
one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different
from one another at the genetic level.
Although the study also demonstrated that 20 percent of the
Ashkenazim carry Eastern European gene markers consistent with the
Khazars, the results seemed to show that the Ashkenazim were descended
from a common Mid-Eastern population and suggested that most Jewish
communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring
non-Jewish communities during and after the supposed Diaspora.
However, a monumental genetic study entitled, “The Journey of Man,”
undertaken in 2002 by Dr. Spencer Wells, a geneticist from Stanford
University, demonstrated that virtually all European males carry the
same genetic markers found within the male population of the Middle East
on the Y chromosomes.
That is simply because the migration of human beings began in Africa
and coursed its way through the Middle East and onward, stretching over
many thousands of years. In short, we are all pretty much the same.
Obsessive Delusion
Despite the lack of conclusive scientific or historical evidence, the
Diaspora narrative proved to be a compelling story, much like the
Biblical rendition of the Exodus from Egypt, which historians and
archeologists also have questioned in recent years.
It is certainly true that all nations use myths and legend for
sustenance; some tales are based on fact, others are convenient
self-serving contrivances.
However, when myth and legend argue for excess, when they demand a
racial, ethnic or religious purity to the exclusion of others – so that
some prophecy can be fulfilled or some national goal achieved – reason
and justice can give way to extremism and cruelty.
The motive for creating the state of Israel was to provide respite
for the Jews of Europe after World War II, but that worthy cause has now
been contorted into an obsessive delusion about an Israeli right to
mistreat and persecute Palestinians.
When right-wing Israeli Rabbis speak of driving non-Jews out of the
land that God supposedly gave to the Israelites and their descendants,
these Rabbis may be speaking with full faith, but faith is by definition
an unshakable belief in something that taken by itself cannot be
proven.
This faith – or delusion – also is drawing in the rest of the world.
The bloody war in Iraq was an appendage to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, as is the dangerous rise of Islamic fundamentalism across the
region. There is also now the irony that modern Israel was established
by Jews of European origin, many of whom may be ethnically unconnected
to Palestine.
Another cruel aspect of this irony is that the descendants of the
ancient Israelites may include many Palestinians, who are genetically
indistinct from the Sephardic Jews who were, like the Palestinians,
original and indigenous inhabitants of this ancient land.
Morgan Strong is a former professor of Middle Eastern history, and was an advisor to CBS News “60 Minutes” on the Middle East.
Related articles
- Newt Unleashes His Tetrodotoxin at the Palestinians (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- The Invention of the Jewish People (middleeastatemporal.wordpress.com)
NTS Notes: I have long stated that the real "invented" people who are screaming that they have the fraudulent biblical claim to Palestine, are the Jews themselves, and this report only reinforces that as fact..
The fact is again, readers, that the majority of the criminals who are now occupying Palestine and saying it is their land, these Jews, have no rights to that land at all.. The vast majority of them are Khazars, that originated from the central steppes of Russia after converting to Judaism back in the 8th century AD. They have absolutely not one drop of "Semitic" blood in them what so ever.
The Jewish Torah itself is a load of hogwash as well. Easily researched information shows that there never was an "Exodus", a "Passover", a Jewish "Moses", a "Solomon's Temple", etc. In fact, the real history of the Hebrews stems from a group of criminal traders who invaded Egypt around 1400BC known as the Hyksos. These Hyksos enslaved the Egyptians, started a crude system of Usury, and were eventually expelled and sent running by the Egyptians rising in revolt against their rule. The scribes who wrote the Torah sometimes around 800BC twisted many of the true facts about the Hyksos, to give their followers their false "history".
What is also known is that the Talmud originates from Babylonian texts which dealt with ancient beliefs in Kaballistic magic. Many of the scribes and scholars who promoted the Talmud in Babylon eventually carried this sick and criminal book of filth with them and converted the Khazars in the 8th century AD to Judaism based on Talmudic beliefs and scripture.
The bottom line is that the majority of the Jews who are now living in Palestine and claiming they have the right to that land by their fraudulent "Torah" and "Talmud" have no rights to that land at all.. These are the real "invented" people of Palestine.
Why is this important? Right now, the criminal and terrorist state of Israel is again attacking and murdering the innocent and impoverished people of Gaza using massive air attacks, and calling on the United States and other nations to destroy Iran and any other nation that it views as a threat... All in their insane and twisted rhetoric and logic that Israel must be "protected", and it has the right to "exist". But what we see instead by easily researched evidence is a people who are invaders and alien to Palestine who have absolutely no rights to the region.
More to come
NTS
1 comment:
Thanks for reposting this article from Aletho. Schlomo Sands' book has been articled on quite a few websites for the past couple of years, but I've never seen it reviewed in the online MSM - or at least, not the ones I flick through! Not likely to, either!
Especial thanks for your final comments about the 'Hebrews' being in reality the Hyksos, and yes, they were eventually run out of Egypt, an event which began in the reign of Pharoah Ahmose I. There are no ancient Egyptian records about the 'Hebrews' but quite a few about the Hyksos, who originally came from Scythia (Sicarii)apparently. Thieves and brigands to the end, they managed to steal a great deal of gold on their way out, gold which is presented in the Bible as being 'gifts' from the Egyptian people! Which I suppose is true, if you can believe that stealing has the same meaning as 'harvesting'!
There have been efforts in some comment threads over the past couple of years claiming that the pharoahs were really Hebrews, and that everything we've been taught about ancient Egypt is really the history of Hebrew/Jewish beginnings. No doubt you've come across some of them; they are always attended by the usual sock-puppets, and the claims these rewriters of recorded history make are truly wild, considering how much information we have been left by the ancient Egytians themselves, through their magnificent art works.
Sorry for the long post; just wanted to say thanks.
From a long-time Egyptian resident.
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