7/14/2021 0:00:01
The well-known Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, in a recent article, reiterated that the Al-Yahoud were never a people.
Sand once again refuted the Zionist claims that claim there is genetic continuity between the ancient Hebrews and modern-day Al-Yahoud, pointing out that the Jewish nationalism founded by the Zionist movement is artificial nationalism and lacks any historical roots, or as he called it “cat-breed nationalism.”
Sand was responding to the allegations of law professor at Tel Aviv University, Haim Gantz, who tried, through a lengthy article published in the Hebrew press last week, to legitimize the Zionist colonial invasion and justify its colonization of Palestine and the expulsion of its people.
Gantz took the middle path, between those who justify Zionism by the existence of a Jewish people who have the right to the so-called “Land of Israel,” and those who deny the existence of a Jewish people. This “right” is the justification for the Zionist action in two ways. The first is the existence of a “temple” or “mould of a Jewish people” that has some sort of historical relationship with the “Land of Israel.” The second is the occurrence of the Holocaust, which created a state of emergency, as he claimed, to find a solution to the problem of the Al-Yahoud in Europe, a state he likened to the state of a wounded man who invades… Pharmacy to get medicine.
Gantz, who worked hard to find these justifications, seeks to transfer Zionism from “a Zionism infested with rabies to a Zionism that believes in equality,” as stated in the title of his article in which he relied on the equality of rights to land between the Palestinians and Zionism based on those justifications, which differ. Because of it, other colonial societies gained the right to self-determination on the land they colonized, de facto and over time, as is the case of America, Canada, Australia, and others.
In his response, Sand ridicules the term “structure” or “people’s template” used by Gantz, and stresses that he does not believe in the existence of peoples before the modern era, even if terms such as “people” or “nation” were used in ancient literature, because these groups did not go beyond Being families, tribes, kingdoms, emirates, religious groups, and other forms of political and social relations, which did not rise, by virtue of the primitive level of development, to the level of a people.
Sand refutes any claim about the Al-Yahoud’ sense of sovereignty over the “Land of Israel,” and points out that until World War II, the majority of Eastern and Western European Al-Yahoud, of all stripes, were hostile to Zionism and did not dream of establishing a “state” in the Middle East, while they rushed their masses to the American continent. From 1882 to 1924, two and a half million Al-Yahoud immigrated to America.
Regarding the use of the Holocaust as a justification, Sand says that Zionism could not save the Al-Yahoud and that Europe, which participated in making the Holocaust, would have had an easier time expelling the remaining Al-Yahoud out of it to cause another “disaster” for others who had nothing to do with the Holocaust.