Cutting off the retreat from biblical Israel
Matt Giwer
As so many believers are still trying to get some hidden message
across in their continued posting AFTER complete agreement that biblical
Israel never existed, let me now address what is hidden.
The desire is to claim there was a "jewish people" from Time
Immemorial and long exposed juvenile collection of nonsense.
To address this I given you a professor of history from Tel Aviv
University, needless to say the man is both an Israeli by citizenship and a
Jew by his own declaration.
The following article is but one of many. Most of them are from
impeccably Jewish sources such as Israeli newspapers. I chose this one
because it is by the author himself. No rational person can say he is
misinterperating himself. Believers are not rational.
If anyone has a legitimate refutation, write it up and start
shopping it around. There has to be market for a refutation as I have not
found a single refutation of these facts from Israeli sources. Do not waste
you time posting to me when you could be making real money selling your
rebuttal.
Bottom line is the "jewish people" is a modern political invention
by the zionist animals.
=====
Le Monde diplomatique - English edition
September 2008
Zionist nationalist myth of enforced exile
Israel deliberately forgets its history
An Israeli historian suggests the diaspora was the consequence, not of the
expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north
Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East
By Schlomo Sand
Every Israeli knows that he or she is the direct and exclusive descendant of
a Jewish people which has existed since it received the Torah ([25]1) in
Sinai. According to this myth, the Jews escaped from Egypt and settled in
the Promised Land, where they built the glorious kingdom of David and
Solomon, which subsequently split into the kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
They experienced two exiles: after the destruction of the first temple, in
the 6th century BC, and of the second temple, in 70 AD.
Two thousand years of wandering brought the Jews to Yemen, Morocco, Spain,
Germany, Poland and deep into Russia. But, the story goes, they always
managed to preserve blood links between their scattered communities. Their
uniqueness was never compromised.
At the end of the 19th century conditions began to favour their return to
their ancient homeland. If it had not been for the Nazi genocide, millions
of Jews would have fulfilled the dream of 20 centuries and repopulated Eretz
Israel, the biblical land of Israel. Palestine, a virgin land, had been
waiting for its original inhabitants to return and awaken it. It belonged to
the Jews, rather than to an Arab minority that had no history and had
arrived there by chance. The wars in which the wandering people reconquered
their land were just; the violent opposition of the local population was
criminal.
This interpretation of Jewish history was developed as talented, imaginative
historians built on surviving fragments of Jewish and Christian religious
memory to construct a continuous genealogy for the Jewish people. Judaism’s
abundant historiography encompasses many different approaches.
But none have ever questioned the basic concepts developed in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. Discoveries that might threaten this picture of a
linear past were marginalised. The national imperative rejected any
contradiction of or deviation from the dominant story. University
departments exclusively devoted to “the history of the Jewish people”, as
distinct from those teaching what is known in Israel as general history,
made a significant contribution to this selective vision. The debate on what
constitutes Jewishness has obvious legal implications, but historians
ignored it: as far as they are concerned, any descendant of the people
forced into exile 2,000 years ago is a Jew.
Nor did these official investigators of the past join the controversy
provoked by the “new historians” from the late 1980s. Most of the limited
number of participants in this public debate were from other disciplines or
non-academic circles: sociologists, orientalists, linguists, geographers,
political scientists, literary academics and archaeologists developed new
perspectives on the Jewish and Zionist past. Departments of Jewish history
remained defensive and conservative, basing themselves on received ideas.
While there have been few significant developments in national history over
the past 60 years (a situation unlikely to change in the short term), the
facts that have emerged face any honest historian with fundamental
questions.
Founding myths shaken
Is the Bible a historical text? Writing during the early half of the
19th century, the first modern Jewish historians, such as Isaak Markus Jost
(1793-1860) and Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), did not think so. They regarded
the Old Testament as a theological work reflecting the beliefs of Jewish
religious communities after the destruction of the first temple.
[Note 150 years ago Jewish historians did not consider it to contain
history. How the bible believers have gone retrograd since them. MMG]
It was not
until the second half of the century that Heinrich Graetz (1817-91) and
others developed a “national” vision of the Bible and transformed Abraham’s
journey to Canaan, the flight from Egypt and the united kingdom of David and
Solomon into an authentic national past. By constant repetition, Zionist
historians have subsequently turned these Biblical “truths” into the basis
of national education.
But during the 1980s an earthquake shook these founding myths. The
discoveries made by the “new archaeology” discredited a great exodus in the
13th century BC. Moses could not have led the Hebrews out of Egypt into the
Promised Land, for the good reason that the latter was Egyptian territory at
the time. And there is no trace of either a slave revolt against the
pharaonic empire or of a sudden conquest of Canaan by outsiders.
Nor is there any trace or memory of the magnificent kingdom of David and
Solomon. Recent discoveries point to the existence, at the time, of two
small kingdoms: Israel, the more powerful, and Judah, the future Judea. The
general population of Judah did not go into 6th century BC exile: only its
political and intellectual elite were forced to settle in Babylon. This
decisive encounter with Persian religion gave birth to Jewish monotheism.
Then there is the question of the exile of 70 AD. There has been no real
research into this turning point in Jewish history, the cause of the
diaspora. And for a simple reason: the Romans never exiled any nation from
anywhere on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean. Apart from enslaved
prisoners, the population of Judea continued to live on their lands, even
after the destruction of the second temple. Some converted to Christianity
in the 4th century, while the majority embraced Islam during the 7th century
Arab conquest.
Most Zionist thinkers were aware of this: Yitzhak Ben Zvi, later president
of Israel, and David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister, accepted it as
late as 1929, the year of the great Palestinian revolt. Both stated on
several occasions that the peasants of Palestine were the descendants of the
inhabitants of ancient Judea ([26]2).
Proselytising zeal
But if there was no exile after 70 AD, where did all the Jews who have
populated the Mediterranean since antiquity come from? The smokescreen of
national historiography hides an astonishing reality. From the Maccabean
revolt of the mid-2nd century BC to the Bar Kokhba revolt of the 2nd century
AD, Judaism was the most actively proselytising religion. The Judeo-Hellenic
Hasmoneans forcibly converted the Idumeans of southern Judea and the
Itureans of Galilee and incorporated them into the people of Israel. Judaism
spread across the Middle East and round the Mediterranean. The 1st century
AD saw the emergence in modern Kurdistan of the Jewish kingdom of Adiabene,
just one of many that converted.
The writings of Flavius Josephus are not the only evidence of the
proselytising zeal of the Jews. Horace, Seneca, Juvenal and Tacitus were
among the Roman writers who feared it. The Mishnah and the Talmud ([27]3)
authorised conversion, even if the wise men of the Talmudic tradition
expressed reservations in the face of the mounting pressure from
Christianity.
Although the early 4th century triumph of Christianity did not mark the end
of Jewish expansion, it relegated Jewish proselytism to the margins of the
Christian cultural world. During the 5th century, in modern Yemen, a
vigorous Jewish kingdom emerged in Himyar, whose descendants preserved their
faith through the Islamic conquest and down to the present day. Arab
chronicles tell of the existence, during the 7th century, of Judaised Berber
tribes; and at the end of the century the legendary Jewish queen Dihya
contested the Arab advance into northwest Africa. Jewish Berbers
participated in the conquest of the Iberian peninsula and helped establish
the unique symbiosis between Jews and Muslims that characterised
Hispano-Arabic culture.
The most significant mass conversion occurred in the 8th century, in the
massive Khazar kingdom between the Black and Caspian seas. The expansion of
Judaism from the Caucasus into modern Ukraine created a multiplicity of
communities, many of which retreated from the 13th century Mongol invasions
into eastern Europe. There, with Jews from the Slavic lands to the south and
from what is now modern Germany, they formed the basis of Yiddish
culture ([28]4).
Prism of Zionism
Until about 1960 the complex origins of the Jewish people were more or less
reluctantly acknowledged by Zionist historiography. But thereafter they were
marginalised and finally erased from Israeli public memory. The Israeli
forces who seized Jerusalem in 1967 believed themselves to be the direct
descendents of the mythic kingdom of David rather than – God forbid – of
Berber warriors or Khazar horsemen. The Jews claimed to constitute a
specific ethnic group that had returned to Jerusalem, its capital, from
2,000 years of exile and wandering.
This monolithic, linear edifice is supposed to be supported by biology as
well as history. Since the 1970s supposedly scientific research, carried out
in Israel, has desperately striven to demonstrate that Jews throughout the
world are closely genetically related.
Research into the origins of populations now constitutes a legitimate and
popular field in molecular biology and the male Y chromosome has been
accorded honoured status in the frenzied search for the unique origin of the
“chosen people”. The problem is that this historical fantasy has come to
underpin the politics of identity of the state
of Israel. By validating an
essentialist,
ethnocentric definition of Judaism it encourages a
segregation that separates Jews from non-Jews – whether Arabs, Russian
immigrants or foreign workers.
Sixty years after its foundation, Israel refuses to accept that it should
exist for the sake of its citizens. For almost a quarter of the population,
who are not regarded as Jews, this is not their state legally. At the same
time, Israel presents itself as the homeland of Jews throughout the world,
even if these are no longer persecuted refugees, but the full and equal
citizens of other countries.
A global ethnocracy invokes the myth of the eternal nation, reconstituted on
the land of its ancestors, to justify internal discrimination against its
own citizens. It will remain difficult to imagine a new Jewish history while
the prism of Zionism continues to fragment everything into an ethnocentric
spectrum. But Jews worldwide have always tended to form religious
communities, usually by conversion; they cannot be said to share an
ethnicity derived from a unique origin and displaced over 20 centuries of
wandering.
The development of historiography and the evolution of modernity were
consequences of the invention of the nation state, which preoccupied
millions during the 19th and 20th centuries. The new millennium has seen
these dreams begin to shatter.
And more and more academics are analysing, dissecting and deconstructing the
great national stories, especially the myths of common origin so dear to
chroniclers of the past.
Shlomo Sand is professor of history at Tel Aviv university and the author of
Comment le people juif fut inventé (Fayard, Paris, 2008)
Translated by Donald Hounam
([30]1) The Torah, from the Hebrew root yara (to teach) is the founding text
of Judaism. It consists of the first five books of the Old Testament (the
Pentateuch): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
([31]2) See David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi, Eretz Israel in the past
and present, 1918 (in Yiddish), and Jerusalem, 1980 (in Hebrew); Yitzhak Ben
Zvi, Our population in the country, Executive Committee of the Union for
Youth and the Jewish National Fund, Warsaw, 1929 (in Hebrew).
([32]3) The Mishnah, regarded as the first work of rabbinic literature, was
drawn up around 200 AD. The Talmud is a synthesis of rabbinic discussions on
the law, customs and history of the Jews. The Palestinian Talmud was written
between the 3rd and 5th centuries; the Babylonian Talmud was compiled at the
end of the 5th century.
([33]4) Yiddish, spoken by the Jews of eastern Europe, was a Germano-Slavic
language incorporating Hebrew words.
--
If you believe religion to be infallible be thankful your
neighbor is not a man of the cloth.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4189
http://www.giwersworld.org/environment/aehb.phtml a2
Sun Oct 25 08:31:05 EDT 2009
Whiskers
[...]
> Le Monde diplomatique - English edition
>
> September 2008
>
> Zionist nationalist myth of enforced exile
> Israel deliberately forgets its history
>
> An Israeli historian
of French cinema
> suggests the diaspora was the consequence, not of the
> expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north
> Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East
>
> By Schlomo Sand
[...]
A response <http://www.zionism-israel.com/ezine/Jewish_Origins.htm> "Are
the Jews a people? The Zand controversy" by Ami Isseroff.
--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
Matt Giwer
> On 2009-10-25, Matt Giwer <matt@localhost> wrote:
> [...]
>> Le Monde diplomatique - English edition
>> September 2008
>>
>> Zionist nationalist myth of enforced exile
>> Israel deliberately forgets its history
>> An Israeli historian
> of French cinema
European history actually. But both Jewish and Israeli and not
suffering from the disease of excessive in-breeding, self-hate. Not worth
debating of course. As a trained historian and tenured as such he is
qualified to apply the methods of historians.
>> suggests the diaspora was the consequence, not of the expulsion of the
>> Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north Africa,
>> southern Europe and the Middle East
>> By Schlomo Sand
> [...]
> A response <http://www.zionism-israel.com/ezine/Jewish_Origins.htm> "Are
> the Jews a people? The Zand controversy" by Ami Isseroff.
Which is trivial from the outset.
<quote>
For almost all peoples of the world, the accepted definition of a nation is
something like this, from the Britannica:
People whose common identity creates a psychological bond and a political
community. Their political identity usually comprises such
characteristics as a common language, culture, ethnicity, and history.
For the Jewish people, for some reason, it is different. Why is this people
and this nation different from all other nations and peoples?
</quote>
If that is the definition then we need only find a common language,
culture, ethnicity and history.
It is obvious by inspection Jews share none of these. The magical
one is history but most Americans share a European history much more recent
and of much greater duration and includes most of the Jews in the US.
What was your point in posting the URL to this fluff piece?
--
What is the point of worshiping a god that cannot be seen when its
performance is no better than a statue of Apollo?
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4193
http://www.giwersworld.org/israel/is-seg.phtml a14
Mon Oct 26 03:18:23 EDT 2009
Matt Giwer
> A response <http://www.zionism-israel.com/ezine/Jewish_Origins.htm> "Are
> the Jews a people? The Zand controversy" by Ami Isseroff.
Come to think about that barely rises to the level of a fluff piece.
It demonstrates a total incomprension of material which should be elementary
before anyone participates in this newsgroup.
Which begs the question as to why you posted it. Obviously you are
unqualified to participate. You will of course whine with irrelevancies and
non sequiturs. Feel free to make a greater ass of yourself in public.
--
A biblical archaeologist is like an astrological astronomer
or an alchemical chemist. None are scientists.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4199
http://www.giwersworld.org/holo3/ a12
Mon Oct 26 05:49:11 EDT 2009
Whiskers
> On Sun, 25 Oct 2009, Whiskers wrote:
>
>> A response <http://www.zionism-israel.com/ezine/Jewish_Origins.htm> "Are
>> the Jews a people? The Zand controversy" by Ami Isseroff.
>
> Come to think about that barely rises to the level of a fluff piece.
> It demonstrates a total incomprension of material which should be elementary
> before anyone participates in this newsgroup.
It points out some of the 'difficulties' in Sand's thesis; difficulties
which are obvious to anyone not blinded by prejudice.
> Which begs the question
No it doesn't <http://begthequestion.info/>
> as to why you posted it.
Perhaps because it popped up first and is an easier read than
<http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Seth%20Frantzman%20-%20Shlomo%20Sand.htm>
> Obviously you are
> unqualified to participate. You will of course whine with irrelevancies and
> non sequiturs. Feel free to make a greater ass of yourself in public.
Most gracious.
Matt Giwer
> On 2009-10-26, Matt Giwer <matt@localhost> wrote:
>> On Sun, 25 Oct 2009, Whiskers wrote:
>>> A response <http://www.zionism-israel.com/ezine/Jewish_Origins.htm> "Are
>>> the Jews a people? The Zand controversy" by Ami Isseroff.
>> Come to think about that barely rises to the level of a fluff piece.
>> It demonstrates a total incomprension of material which should be
>> elementary before anyone participates in this newsgroup.
> It points out some of the 'difficulties' in Sand's thesis; difficulties
> which are obvious to anyone not blinded by prejudice.
By giving the four possibilities from which a "people" car arise at
the beginning it obviated the need to read any further as Jews as a group
have none of those characteristics.
QED
>> Which begs the question
> No it doesn't <http://begthequestion.info/>
>> as to why you posted it.
>
> Perhaps because it popped up first
It was certainly self-defeating.
>> Obviously you are unqualified to participate. You will of course whine
>> with irrelevancies and non sequiturs. Feel free to make a greater ass of
>> yourself in public.
> Most gracious.
It kept you from responding withe irrelevancies and non sequiturs so
it was worth adding.
--
When one says a thing is worse than he is also saying it is no better than.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4197
http://www.giwersworld.org/israel/is-seg.phtml a14
Mon Oct 26 22:06:50 EDT 2009
Whiskers
> On Mon, 26 Oct 2009, Whiskers wrote:
>> On 2009-10-26, Matt Giwer <matt@localhost> wrote:
>>> On Sun, 25 Oct 2009, Whiskers wrote:
>>>> A response <http://www.zionism-israel.com/ezine/Jewish_Origins.htm> "Are
>>>> the Jews a people? The Zand controversy" by Ami Isseroff.
>>> Come to think about that barely rises to the level of a fluff piece.
>>> It demonstrates a total incomprension of material which should be
>>> elementary before anyone participates in this newsgroup.
>
>> It points out some of the 'difficulties' in Sand's thesis; difficulties
>> which are obvious to anyone not blinded by prejudice.
>
> By giving the four possibilities from which a "people" car arise at
> the beginning it obviated the need to read any further as Jews as a group
> have none of those characteristics.
>
> QED
[...]
Ah, now /that/ is an example of 'begging the question'. It's also a
confession that you aren't interested in debate or argument, merely in
trying to justify your own beliefs.
Matt Giwer
The four are given. Jews share none of them. There is nothing to
debate. The only thing of interest is if someone is dumb enough to claim all
Jews share one or more of those four things.
Consider attempting to divert the discussion to argument when there
is nothing upon which to disagree.
--
The amount of sleep the average person needs is one snooze more.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4200
http://www.giwersworld.org/holo/nizgas3.html a4
Tue Oct 27 20:43:00 EDT 2009
Kendall K Down
Matt Giwer <matt@localhost> wrote:
> I still mean biblical Israel as defined by the united kingdom.
The United Kingdom has never offered a definition of biblical Israel,
even though British archaeologists have probably done more than anyone
else towards identifying places mentioned in the Bible and excavating
many of them.
Ken Down
--
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