Sand's Foolish Extreme Negativism

Shlomo Sand, Communist, who is involved in his own deinventivity model and who published a book claiming the concept of a 'Jewish people' is somehow invented, The Invention of the Jewish People, is back.

His new book in Hebrew is concerned with the when and how of the "creation" of the Land of Israel.

In a review (in Hebrew) I learn that his main claim, other than asserting, correctly, that British Christians assisted to formulate the concept of the need to reconstitute the Jewish national home, is that the concept of "Eretz-Yisrael", the Land of Israel, does not exist in the Bible, even if its borders are indeed delineated, and first appears only after the destruction of the First Temple, in the Mishnah and Talmud. The Bible, Sand believes, was composed by immigrants from Babylon, members of the Babylonian elite, who fled to Canaan during the First Temple period.

He is forced to admit that with such a belief, it would be impossible to deny the right of Jews to reside in the heartland of the Land of Israel, Judea and Samaria.

The reviewer, Motti Fogel, calls Zand a purveyor of naive fundamentalism no different than any other. He denigrates Sand's attempt to prove who was here first.

From the Google-translated blurb, (and here) with a bit of help from me:

After dealing with the myth of the eternal existence of the Jewish question, Shlomo Sand turns to examine the myth of a sacred territory which became the longest conflict of the 20th century. In his new book, he tries to break the long years of legends that strangle with prejudice. He wonders about the nature of the term "historic right", and describes how evangelical Protestants and Jews, Zionists, invented in the 19th century the 'Land of Israel "as a geo-political modern concept. This is a nationalist invention which allowed and encouraged the settlement in the Middle East [of a non-native people] and brought about the establishment of Israel and represents an existential threat today.

Finally, he has gone to the extreme in his foolish negativism.

Thank God.

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For those who are a bit lost:

Twenty-five hundred years ago, the prophet Ezekiel spoke of the restoration of Israel to its land in the last days...We read in Ezekiel 37:11-12:

"Then He said to me, 'Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.' Therefore prophesy, and say to them, 'thus says the Lord God, Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of ISRAEL.'"

And that's just a hint of how wrong Sand is.


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UPDATE


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