Asghar_Massombagi

The Invention of Jewish People is the title of a book by Professor Shlomo Sand, an Israeli academic who has created quite a stir in the Middle East, and indeed everywhere.  In this book, he questions the legitimacy of the concept of Jews as a people and the historical veracity of the Jewish exile by the Romans in the first century AD.  He also, for the first time I think, asserts that Judaism, like Christianity or Islam was a prosthelytizing religion, that the Jews converted other people, either by evangelism or force.  And that's how Shlomo Sand explains the large number of Jews all around the world. Indeed, if the Exile by the Romans didn't happen, how else can the existence of Jews all around Europe and Asia be explained?  This is big explosive stuff. If the Exile didn't happen, then there is "no right of return" and if there are no Jewish people or nation then Zionism has no basis.  Sand has other very interesting ideas regarding formation of nationhood and the changes a people go through that is relevant regardless of the question of Palestine.  For instance, can any one living in Iran claim for certain that they are the descendants of Cyrus the Great, considering the number of conquerors that have passed through Iranian plateau in the past two thousand years?  Perhaps mountain people of Afghanistan can lay better claim to Cyrus's legacy than residents of Tehran.

I've included two links, one a short interview, and one a long talk that Professor Sand delivered in New York.  Regardless of how much of Sand's views one agrees with, you can't deny the audacity and freshness of his work: