Haaretz - Shlomo Sand - The Jewish People

 

Chinese Jews

In haaretz.com/, 27 April 2008, Tom Segev wrote An invention called 'the Jewish people'

Segev tells us about historian Shlomo Zand of Tel Aviv University.

Zand has written "When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?" - published by Resling in Hebrew.

According to Zand:

1. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion.

2. The exile of the Jews never happened.

The Romans did not generally exile whole nations; most of the Jews were permitted to remain in the country; the number of those who left the country was at most tens of thousands.

3. Most of the Old Testament Bible stories about the Jewish people, including the exodus from Egypt and the conquest under Joshua, are fiction and myth.

4. When the Arabs conquered this area, many of the Jews converted to Islam.

The Palestinian Arabs probably have Jewish origins.

David Ben-Gurion, and others, believed this.

5. There are millions of Jews in the world.

In 1914, in Israel-Palestine, there were 731,000 Arabs but only 60,000 Jews. 

The Jews were only 7% of the population.

Why, in 1914, were most Jews living in places like Europe and America?

Zand says Jews emigrated of their own free will.

And many people, outside Israel-Palestine, converted to the Jewish religion.

According to Zand, the Jews in Spain were originally Arabs and Christians who converted to the Jewish religion.

People from the Khazar Kingdom in the Caucasus converted to the Jewish religion and became the first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany).

6. Zand believes that Israel should be a "state of all its citizens" - Jews, Arabs and others.

Caucasus