"The Invention of the Land of Israel" by Shlomo Sand – review 2014
The Invention of the Land of Israel by Shlomo Sand – review
In this second volume of his trilogy of Jewish studies, Sand explores how the 'Land of Israel' was invented, and debunks popular
nationalist mythology
-
-
Donald Sassoon
- The Guardian, Thursday 18 April 2013
-
In 2009, Shlomo Sand published The Invention
of the Jewish People, in which he claimed that Jews have
little in common with each other. They had no common "ethnic" lineage
owing to the high level of conversion in antiquity. They had no common
language, since Hebrew was used only for prayer
and was not even spoken at the time of Jesus. Yiddish was, at most, the
language of Ashkenazi Jews. So what is left to unite them?Religion?
But religion does not make a people – think of Muslims and Catholics.
And most Jews are not religious. Zionism? But that is a political
position: one can be a Scot and not a Scottish nationalist. Besides, the
majority of Jews, including many Zionists, have
not the slightest intention of going "back" to the Holy Land, much
preferring, and who can blame them, to stay put in north London,
or Brooklyn or wherever. In other words, "Jewish People" is a political
construct, an invention. Now Sand tells us, in this second
volume of what will be a trilogy, that even the "Land of Israel" was
invented. Guardian readers who happen to be Jewish should brace
themselves for the third volume: The Invention of the Secular Jew. All this takes considerable chutzpah.
The
"Land of Israel" is barely mentioned in the Old Testament: the more
common expression is the Land of Canaan. When it is mentioned,
it does not include Jerusalem, Hebron, or Bethlehem. Biblical "Israel"
is only northern Israel (Samaria) and there never was a united kingdom
including both ancient Judea and Samaria.
Even
had such a kingdom ever existed and been promised by God to the Jews,
it is hardly a clinching argument for claiming statehood
after more than 2,000 years. It is an irony ofhistory that
so
many past Zionists, most of whom were secular Jews, often socialist,
used religious arguments to buttress their case. Besides, the
biblical account makes it quite clear (insofar as such accounts are ever
clear) that the Jews, led by Moses and then by Joshua,
were colonisers themselves and were commanded by God to exterminate
"anything that breathes". "Completely destroy them – the Hittites,
Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites – as the Lord
your God has commanded you." Imagine if the Amorites
came back and claimed their ancient land. If they did, this is what
Deuteronomy 20 has to say: "Put to the sword all the men ... As for the
women, the children, the livestock and everything else ... you may take
these as plunder for yourselves." Today, such
an injunction would take you straight to the international criminal
court.
The
uncertainty as to what exactly constitutes the "Land of Israel" endures
to this day. There is an internationally recognised state
of Israel with clearly defined boundaries (the Green Line of 1967,
itself the result of the enlargement following the 1948 war) and then
there is the "Land of Israel" whose boundaries depend on who is talking:
for some, it includes the whole of the West Bank,
for others it extends to Jordan. It could be worse: God promised Abraham
and his descendants "this land, from the river of Egypt unto the
Euphrates", which would include also bits of Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
In
traditional Judaism there is no injunction to "return" to the "land
of Israel". The ritual "next year in Jerusalem" that is part
of the Passover Seder prayer was never a call to action, or to
reconstitute a state.
By
the 19th century, those who wanted Jews to "return" to the Holy Land
were more likely to be Christian Zionists than Jews. Lord
Shaftesbury, a compassionate Tory who contributed to improving the
conditions of lunatics in asylums and children in factories (The Ten
Hours Act, 1833), agitated endlessly for promoting a Jewish presence in
Palestine. Sand describes him as an Anglican Theodor
Herzl before Herzl; and with reason, since Shaftesbury appears to have
even coined the famous line: "A country without a nation for a nation
without a country." He hoped, of course, the Jews would also convert to
Christianity. Lord Palmerston, on the Liberal
side, warmed to the idea, not because he cared in the slightest about
Jews (or Christians), but because he thought that British Jews
colonising a part of the Ottoman Empire would increase British
influence.
At
the time, few Jews were Zionists. When persecuted, as they were in the
tsarist empire, they much preferred to flee to the new lands
of immigration such as Argentina and the United States, than to the
Promised Land. What made the "State of Israel" possible was not God's
promise of a return to a long-lost land, but the Holocaust and the
western reluctance to provide a refuge for its survivors.
Much
of what Shlomo Sand reveals is known to specialists. His achievement
consists in debunking a nationalist mythology which holds
sway in large sections of popular opinion. It also normalises Jews,
since it challenges the belief in exceptionalism. The Holocaust was a
unique event, but the basic nationalist litany is similar across nations
– almost a literary genre in itself – for it is
poised between a lachrymose sense of self-pitying victimhood and a
vainglorious account of heroic deeds. "We", so goes the story, have been
around for centuries (1066, famously, in Britain; 966 in Poland; since
antiquity in Italy and in Greece). Eventually,
after centuries, we achieved our freedom, our independence, our
happiness, and we, who are unlike everyone else, can finally be like
everyone else: members and possessors of a country and a nation.
Demystifying what the French call le roman national seems
to be today one of the major tasks of historians (once they used
to write it). This can be an uphill struggle, yet it is to the credit of
the Israeli book-reading public that Sand's previous book, The Invention of the Jewish Peoplebecame a bestseller. Truth-telling may be painful but necessary.
