The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland
What is a homeland and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for such places throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest-running national struggle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand’s account dissects the concept of “historical right” and tracks the creation of the modern concept of the “Land of Israel” by nineteenth-century Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of Israel; it is also threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.
Hardback, 304 pages
ISBN: 9781844679461
November 2012
$26.95 / £16.99 / $28.50CAN
Other Editions
Ebook
ISBN: 9781844679478
November 2012
$26.95
Reviews
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“Anyone interested in understanding the contemporary Middle East should read this book.”
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“Perhaps books combining passion and erudition don't change political situations, but if they did, this one would count as a landmark.”
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“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...Truth-telling may be painful but necessary.”
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“A thought-provoking, readable, and important work.”
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“… there is much to enjoy and learn in the evidence in the potentially incendiary material [Shlomo Sand] assembles here.”
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“[Sand] critically consider the ways in which the Zionist colonization of Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel have been justified by claims of ancestral lands, historical rights, and millennia-old national yearnings, all of which he proceeds to critically undermine as either justifiable reasons for mastery over the land of Palestine/Israel or even representative of longstanding mass Jewish aspirations.”
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“This groundbreaking new historical work from a highly controversial author undoes the myth of the Jewish people's historical right to the 'Land of Israel'.”
Blog
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Explaining the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Today is Nakba Day - the annual day of commemmoration of the Palestinian catastrophe, the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians.
A selection of Verso's books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, from explanations to considered outcomes.
These are Verso's key books to explain the situation – what others should we include?
The Conflict Explained
The Case for Sanctions Against Israel edited by Audrea Lim
Leading international voices consider all sides of the conflict including boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. With contributions from Angela Davis, John Berger, Naomi Klein, Omar Barghouti, Dalit Baum and Rebecca Vilkomerson.
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The powerful narrative of Israel's invasion and control over Gaza - examining the abandonment of diplomacy in favour of raw military power, turning Gaza into an enormous open-air prison.
“Gideon Levy’s passionate and revealing account is an eloquent, even desperate, call to bring this shocking tragedy to an end, as can easily be done.”
– Noam Chomsky
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Debunking a Nationalist Myth: Donald Sassoon on Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Land of Israel
Donald Sassoon, in his recent review of Shlomo Sand's latest book, The Invention of the Land of Israel, presents us with the book's main argument, namely, that the entire notion of 'the land of Israel' is an invention. That is to say, most nations' location and borders are the result of endless shifts, changes and movements throughout history, many of them contingent and unwarranted. Israel, on the other hand, claims for itself a specific place on the map based on a transcendental prescription, also known as a divine promise.
First off, this promise, if it was indeed made (by God no less), it does not in fact include Jerusalem, Hebron, or Bethehem. And even less does it follow from this, that peoples should be displaced, wars should be waged and lands should be colonized to fulfill a promise made over 2000 years ago. Indeed, Sassoon reminds us that "in traditional Judaism there is no injunction to "return" to the "land of Israel"", which only serves to make things for the campaigners of such yearnings even harder.
But all this matters very little in the end: nations have always created myths to justify their existence, fabricated enemies to solidify national identities and reserved a special place for themselves in order to warrant domination over others. In the case of Israel, the facts Sand presents are known (at least to specialists), as Donald Sassoon confirms. What matters, and what this book's "painful truth-telling" delivers, is that they become more widely so. In Sassoon's own words:
"[Shlomo Sand's] achievement consists in debunking a nationalist mythology."
Something which, on all accounts, is no small feat.
Visit the Guardian to read the review in full. -
"Do we, too, have a fabricated history?" : Moncef Marzouki on The Invention of the Jewish People
After reading Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People, President Moncef Morzouki of Tunisia asks about the lessons Sand's book might have for other nations and peoples.
Do we, too, have a fabricated history?There is no doubt about it - the book The Invention of the Jewish People by the Jewish Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, which stirred up great controversy in Israel and was translated into 26 languages in less than a year, came as a pleasant surprise to all its Arab readers, including to the author of these lines.
What this historian, whose hostility towards Zionism cannot be dismissed as mere Anti-Semitism, establishes very clearly is that the Zionist claim to their right to the lands of Palestine is void. He proves, relying on a vast amount of sources – many of them Jewish – that the forceful expulsion of the Jews from Palestine after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans is a myth.... that the preservation of a pure race during years of exile is a myth... that the claim that the ones who returned to conquer Palestine were the grandchildren of those exiled thousands of years earlier is a myth... And even the exodus from Egypt and the Kingdom of David and Salomon, all of these are legends upon legends.
