Top BBC presenter hosts eulogy to author who argues that the Jewish people do not exist, as UK anti-Zionist discourse hits another low
Shlomo Sand is a “historian” whose name you are likely to be hearing a lot more of. Following in the footsteps of Ilan Pappe, he is a far-Left, “non-Zionist”, Israeli ideologue who has just published a book –The Invention of the Jewish People — seeking to delegitimise the historical foundations of the State of Israel.
But Sand’s technique is not merely to delegitimise the Israel that was established in 1948, though he refers to that as having been accomplished by the “rape” of the Palestinian people. It is to assert that the notion of the Jewish people as a “nation-race” that was exiled from its historic homeland is pure fabrication. There is no Jewish people in the sense of having a bloodline that can be traced back to Biblical times and, therefore, there is no Jewish homeland for the current imposters to return to.
Needless to say, he has instantly acquired the status in Britain of a hero of the Israel-hating mainstream. This week on BBC Radio Four’s flagship “Start the Week” programme, star presenter Andrew Marr hosted Sand in the most one-sided, uncritical eulogy to an anti-Israeli commentator that I for one have ever heard broadcast on the BBC.
Early on in the interview, Marr quotes from Sand’s book the words of a Jewish historian of the 19th century involved in what Marr had previously described as a “masterplan” to invent the idea of the Jewish people:
“You cannot destroy a pure Caucasian race,” the historian is quoted as saying, “this is a psychological fact, a law of nature. No punitive system no physical torture can cause a superior race to be consumed or destroyed by an inferior one.”
Marr goes on, evoking a chuckle from Sand, to comment that:
“[This] sounds to our ears like some kind of Nazi propagandist but this is actually a Jewish historian talking about the inferior race [which] there is the German race isn’t it”?
Marr continues by elucidating (without challenging them) the main points of Sand’s book as follows: there was no exile of the Jews by the Romans; the Jewish communities around the Mediterranean at that time did not have Jewish names, they didn’t speak Hebrew, they didn’t behave as Jews, they were just farmers; and that Judaism was a proselytizing religion much like Christianity and Islam.
That last point is central to Sand’s argument and is later used to argue that the Jews of Europe were really Russian, Spanish and German converts who “returned” to Israel in modern times. There is no Jewish people in the sense of an ethnic group with a racial-ethnic identity.
Marr’s tone is always of the awe-struck and fascinated student listening to the revelatory insights of a great sage. When Sand refers to the “myth” of the Jewish people as fulfilling an ideological need for Zionist propaganda, Marr gleefully jumps in with the following:
“You remove this myth and you change a great deal about the situation in the Middle East ultimately don’t you?”
“Yeah, I hope, I hope,” says Sand in response.
A little later, Sand protests that he is not actually opposed to Israel’s existence in terms which I will leave to readers to decide whether he is faking or being serious:
“I don’t want to question the existence of Israel…When I’m speaking before Arab students I compare the birth of the Israeli state as an act of rape. But you have to recognise even a son that was born of an act of rape, you have to recognise him. [But] the existence of Israel I don’t put in question today. You understand?”
“Sure”, whispers Marr while seamlessly bringing in another speaker to offer yet more criticism-free, adulatory questions.
You really have to listen to the programme in its entirety (see link below) to get a sense of the sheer obsequiousness of Marr’s approach. There are a few references to the fact that Sand’s book has evoked controversy in Israel. But there was not a single critical question. Not a single member of the discussion was willing or able to refute a thesis which the vast majority of historians have rubbished as tendentious, ideological propaganda.
This is an author whose work seeks to totally delegitimse the Jewish people and their historic claim to the State of Israel. It is nothing less than an existential challenge to both. The response of the BBC on its flagship programme is to grovel to such a writer, to give him a free hand to say whatever he likes, to affirm his credibility and thus to legitimise his message.
Mark my words, there is much more of this sort of thing to come….
To listen to the show, click here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006r9xr
To get your antidote in the form of my new book on the subject (for which I won’t be invited on Start the Week), click here:
November 12th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Robin, your book was described last week in a review by Professor David Conway as “the best book on the Middle East conflict to appear in years”. As one licence payer, I totally agree. Come on BBC, I think Robin’s book is worthy of some more exposure. Or will you continue to censor views that don’t fit your complacent narrative?
November 12th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
http://cifwatch.com/
http://cifwatch.com/2009/11/10/shlomo-the-sandlout/
See my reports of Sand’s two London appearances this week - there is one more to come, tonight.
The key test of Sand’s bizarre and antisemitic ‘history’ is whether he has ever submitted it before an academic forum for peer review by experts in Jewish history. To the best of my knowledge, he has not.
A clue to his antisemitic agenda is on page 313 of the book: “To what extent is Jewish Israeli society willing to discard the deeply embedded image of the “Chosen People”?
This is the well known ‘chosen people’ trope so beloved of antisemites who use the phrase as implying exclusive rewards - whereas in its true context in the Bible it involves responsibilities as well as rewards — and others are granted the same.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Oh, irony of ironies, Shlomo Sand was born in Linz, Austria. Yes, the very same Linz that Adolf Hitler thought of as his home town. How perfectly apt.
http://tinyurl.com/bmh9fo
Jeffrey Goldberg on Sand:
“Sand is dropping manufactured facts into a world that in many cases is ready, willing, and happy to believe the absolute worst conspiracy theories about Jews and to use those conspiracy theories to justify physically hurting Jews. It is nothing new.”
http://tinyurl.com/ydhezky
Andrew Marr has lots of form. An example:
“Take the 23rd July edition of what the BBC describes as its ‘flagship political programme’, Sunday AM with Andrew Marr. There were four guests, all known for their hostility to Israel: Glenys Kinnock, Matthew Parris, Nayla Mouawad and Sir Menzies Campbell. All were simply invited by Andrew Marr to offer their thoughts. Not one guest was invited on who might have acknowledged that there is another view.
From the very first day it was obvious how the BBC would treat the conflict, when a film on Newsnight concluded with the reporter, Peter Marshall, remarking across a picture of a blown-up bridge: “All this destruction. And still more threatened” - as if it was a given that the IDF was on a wilful mission of destruction.”
http://tinyurl.com/yh26ttw
Another example:
BBC Starts the Week with claim that Israel is like the Nazis
http://tinyurl.com/5pgadn
And here, in an interview with William Hague, Marr spews his poison:
“And one other area of foreign policy. You’ll have seen the pretty appalling looking reports coming out of Israel where members of the Israeli Defence Force who were involved in the Gaza operation have talked about effectively being told to shoot at civilians. Now governments almost never say anything about this because they don’t want to offend people diplomatically. As the opposition spokesman, how did you react to those stories?”
http://tinyurl.com/y8dbj4s
Finally, a coward:
“Jewish history is not my field.” [says Shlomo Sand] No, but once he [Sand] had discovered that the story of the connection of the Jewish people to the Holy Land was a myth, he decided that he would secretly explore the history but not publish until he got tenure for doing other work. Because if he published this first, “there would not be any chance of being a full professor. Not only in Tel Aviv. But at NYU too.”
The above quote comes from a blog run by Philip Weiss, the anti-Jewish extremist. I have for that reason not provided a link.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Shlomo Sand’s book has serious errors and of course it’s a travesty that the media is giving him all this attention, sometimes uncritical as you’ve noted, but even the Jewish Chronicle had an interview with him today yet I don’t believe they’ve ever discussed my book “The Jews of Khazaria”. In reality, the total amount of Khazar and Slavic ancestry in Ashkenazic Jews appears to be 20 percent or less - while the amount of Middle Eastern ancestry is about 60-70 percent. I hope more British people will read my book, especially the second edition’s new softcover version which is more affordable than ever. My book has sections explaining how we know almost every Jewish population in the world is descended from the ancient Israelites. The genetic studies are valid science. The first edition of my book (written before this decade’s genetic studies came out) is cited in Sand’s book. For information about the second edition visit http://www.khazaria.com/brook.html and please spread the word.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Shlomo Sand came up with his book in Israel some time ago and could not interest many.Peple see it as another attempt to catch attention and some media coverage. The European are eager to swallow anything that defames Israel. But as one commentator said if the Jews did not exist what is it that all nations since the Romans hated ?
November 13th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
The other side of the ledger on this is the suggestion that there exists a genetically pure Palestinian people, or even a purely Arabic people. A significant percentage of Druse males carry some genetic traits that are typically Persian, not Arab.
Askenazic Jews have been determined to be more genetically similar to Palestinian and Syrian “Arabs” than they are to eastern Europeans and this is hardly suprising. Without a doubt at least some of the Levant’s Christian and Muslim populations descend from converts from Judaism.
It’s truly a sad statement that someone as lacking in bona fides as Sand can pass off his book as scholarly and authoritative and that there are so many people who are happy to assist.
November 15th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Following Sand rational, the American nation was also “invented”. Historically there is no country that is ethnically poor. Not Germany, Russia or UK. Go to London, Berlin or Paris. Canada, Australia, New Zealand were invented 200 years ago. Nobody is questioning their legitemacy. At least citizens of Israel, 75% of them, are Jewish, same language, holidays, Hebrew Bible etc. Lastly, Sand will find it interesting that Nazi strongly believed that Jews a a nation, though decadent. Pappe, Sand and BBC are irrelevant, a way to make a living, nothing more.
November 16th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Andrew Marr and many, if not most people from the BBC behave/conduct an “interview” this way. Why do you think that is, I am left wondering? What is the motivation and the driving factor for these people? And, most importantly, what actually these rare opportunities for us to have a “peep” into their (Marr and ilk)inner core, and for them to express themselves this way, make them? I mean in the eyes of all “normal”, rational and reasonable human beings, not necessarily only for the “invented” Jews…
November 16th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
1) Jerusalem Post - Nov 15, 2009
TAU historian accused of anti-Semitism
‘The Community Security Trust, a charity that monitors anti-Semitism in the UK, also questioned how there was no dissenting voice at any of Sand’s appearances.
“The book was featured without dissent on BBC Radio on November 9, the 61st anniversary of Kristallnacht,” said Mark Gardiner, the Community Security Trust’s director of communications.
Gardiner said there had also been no contextualization during the appearances. Evident, he said, when presenter Andrew Marr summarized the book on the BBC radio show with Sand saying: “There was a kind of [Zionist] master plan to present the history of the Jewish people in Europe which emerged in the 19th century and the modern world has rather swallowed whole… [The book says] actually the history of the Jewish people is not as you thought… The Old Testament is very, very inaccurate… Most of the story of the Jews as presented in the history of the Old Testament is fictitious, you think…” ‘
http://tinyurl.com/ykuvsyt
2) Gábor Fränkl writes:
‘Andrew Marr and many, if not most people from the BBC behave/conduct an “interview” this way. Why do you think that is, I am left wondering? What is the motivation and the driving factor for these people?’
Naturally, I can’t speak about Marr with any degree of certainty (for all I know some of his best friends might be Jews), but it is obvious that the motivating factor in most cases is the wish to deligitimise Israel, and, if they have to harness anti-Semitism towards that political end, then so be it. Of course, they don’t find that last very difficult as their hatred of Israel is motivated by anti-Semitism in the first place.
Had the BBC been a department in Joseph Goebbels’ Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, it really couldn’t have done less to publicise the plight of the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. Today, having effectively collaborated in the Holocaust through its silence, the BBC seems to be doing its level best to deligitimise and destroy the Jewish state. It just goes to show that when prejudices are as deeply embedded as anti-Semitism in a culture they are very difficult to eradicate (not of course that much has ever been done to eradicate anti-Semitism in Britain; if it was quiescent for a number of decades after World War II that had much more to do with shame over the Holocaust than anything else).
The Independent - 22 August 1993
Why the BBC ignored the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism in the top ranks of broadcasting and Foreign Office staff led to the news being suppressed, says Stephen Ward
http://tinyurl.com/dzn5t9
Richard Dimbleby Describes Belsen
‘The BBC initially refused to play the report, as they could not believe the scenes he had described, and it was only broadcast after Dimbleby threatened to resign.’
http://tinyurl.com/bsocz7
November 16th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
So can someone tell me why this is actually even a story?
Everything this guy brings up is moot, Israel, unlike pretty much every other country on the face of this planet, was established by the UN after WWII…thus making this whole argument rediculous.
Its neither here nor there whether jews exist…Israel exists. End of story.
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