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The intellectual dishonesty of Shlomo Sand His new book is a work of sophistry

Protestors rally in Tel Aviv (AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)

Protestors rally in Tel Aviv (AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)


September 11, 2024   6 mins

I saw Shlomo Sand speak once. It was at a public event in 2008, but I remember him well: a preening man with a leather jacket and a manner of such monumental self-regard that he reminded me of an Israeli George Galloway, if such a thing could ever exist.

The book he was promoting was called The Invention of the Jewish People, which argued that the concept of Jews as a distinct people with a shared lineage, culture and homeland didn’t exist until the arrival of 19th-century nationalism. The exile from ancient Israel in 70AD, a central event in Jewish tradition, he called a “myth”. These sorts of claims were, he wrote, thrown together to give the Jewish people a cohesive national identity and, inevitably and tediously, to justify Zionism.

Leaving aside that the phrase “Next year in Jerusalem” (“L’Shanah Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim“) — recited at the end of both the Passover Seder and Yom Kippur — dates at least from the Middle Ages, and that the book was intended to provoke, its objective was clear: the delegitimisation of Jewish nationhood and, by extension, any Jewish claims to the land of Israel. It was desperate stuff; even The Guardian’s reviewer wasn’t convinced.

And so, we come to his latest book Israel–Palestine: Federation or Apartheid?. Here, Sand “explores” two political solutions for the current conflict: a bi-national federation or what he terms an apartheid-like reality. There is, glaringly, no option of two states. The idea of a state for Jews, the state of Israel, is a non-starter.

It is from this bogus binary that we begin. What follows is expected: the first chapter opens with Sand quoting the Right-wing Zionist thinker Vladimir Jabotinsky, allowing him to make the case for Zionism being an entirely colonial endeavour. Predictably, there is no mention the continuous Jewish presence in the land since the defeat of the Jewish prince Simon Bar Kochba in AD135 and the fact that, apart from a brief period in the 18th century, the Palestinians who lived there did so as subjects of foreign rulers.

Jabotinsky, by the way, is more comprehensively dealt with by the other Israeli revisionist historian Avi Shlaim, in his book Iron Wall. I have my own issues with Shlaim’s work, but he is a harmless man and possessed of magnificent hair. I once sat in a lecture of his at university, marvelling at how it corkscrewed out of his skull in all directions, so white and flocculent you could stuff a duvet with it.

Sand is a more aggressive polemicist, but he does make some valid points. His youthful activism was, he said, filled with hope that “the Israelis would see that, logically speaking, they simply could not expand their country at the expense of others while continuing to live in peace with them”. Few would disagree with that. He then goes on to lament that the articles he wrote and the marches he attended didn’t succeed in drilling this notion into the establishment — a sentiment also shared by many Israelis.

He fails to properly interrogate the degree to which the Palestinian side is culpable for the failure to reach peace. But again: fair enough. He’s far from alone in this. No, the bigger problem here is one of intellectual dishonesty. Take this — frankly pretty important — paragraph:

“And then October 7 came upon Israel, with Hamas’s brutal attack on areas next to Gaza. This horrible massacre bears certain similarities to the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, which was carried out by Christian Phalangists while the Israeli Defence Forces under Ariel Sharon stood by, allowing the attack to take place. It was the same Ariel Sharon who, later, in 2005, evacuated the Gaza Strip and contributed to Hamas’s rise to power, further exacerbating the discord within the Palestinian leadership.”

It doesn’t take much effort to parse this sort of guff. The biggest single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust is perfunctorily dealt with in a single line, before Sand moves on to invoke a massacre committed by Lebanese Christians almost half a century ago. As it happens, the two events “bear certain similarities” (mark the weasel phrase) to the degree that almost any acts of horrific violence do — and this illuminates nothing. He then castigates Ariel Sharon for literally doing what Sand says he spent most of his youth calling for: withdrawing from occupied Palestinian land. Sand goes on to describe how October 7 “came as an utter shock to the Israeli public”. I’d argue it came as a “shock” to any right-thinking person – unless you believe that Palestinians are savages, which I do not.

He then asks: “So what was the source of this raging hatred that translated into such terrible war crimes?” It was “convenient”, he says, “for many Israelis to explain the massacre in terms of the traditional hatred of Islam towards Jews, thus ignoring the long history of Muslim–Jewish relations since the Crusades and Salah ad-Din”.

Well, ok. It’s true that Jews tended to fare better in Muslim lands than in Christian ones, but they did so as dhimmis — religious minorities under Islamic rule who could not bear arms, hold various public offices, were generally forced to wear distinctive clothing, and often subjected to pogroms. And then there is the question of Jew-hatred.

Unlike most armchair pundits, I have been to both the West Bank and Gaza. There I have met countless Palestinians who impressed me with their charm, their stoicism in the face of undoubted suffering, and their hospitality. Many Palestinians are absolutely not antisemitic.

But there are also a lot who are; and they tend to be in Hamas. The conditions in Gaza will inevitably create resistance, but October 7 was about something else. Just weeks after the atrocity, I was shown footage of a jubilant Hamas terrorist calling his father after the attack. “Father… I killed 10 Jews with my bare hands,” he roared. “Check your WhatsApp. Father, be proud of me!” In Khan Younis, a member of Islamic Jihad told me that Jews are the descendants of pigs and apes and should be killed.

These people are of little concern to Sand, whose sophistry leads him to his central concern: “Given these circumstances, can an exclusively Jewish state in the Middle East have any secure future?”

Again, to be fair to him, Sand understands the geopolitical Molotov cocktail that one state would be. But, he says smarmily, “as Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist idea, once said [of the idea of a Jewish state]: ‘If you will it, it is no dream.’”. Sand correctly points to the systematic settler theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank, and the reprehensible legal architecture that has sprung up to enable it, giving many incontestable examples of both. These “facts on the ground” make two states no longer viable, he argues. The reality, however, is that there is no “solution” to this nightmare other than compromise, and certainly not self-erasure by one side. Because in the end, when you strip away all the rhetoric, hate, and endless debates about history, the only germane fact is this: the land has two peoples, and neither of them are going anywhere.

Let’s be clear: the one-state “solution” is not an alternative for Israel but an alternative to Israel. To expect the only Jewish state in the world to voluntarily extinguish itself is fundamentally unserious. My family lived as Jews in Iraq for centuries — possibly even before the advent of Islam. But none of that mattered: a few years after Israel was founded, they were forced to leave for fear of facing violence or worse. This is why Israel exists. Against that there can be no retreat.

“Let’s be clear: the one-state “solution” is not an alternative for Israel but an alternative to Israel.”

In a recent update to his book Jerusalem, the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore proposes a different mental formulation for thinking about the future: “Two nations, two republics.” Two peoples living in two separate sovereign states alongside each other. This is the only viable future. Yes, the settlements must be dismantled (or equivalent land given from Israel). Yes, it will be an immense political (and indeed physical) undertaking, but it happened in Gaza, albeit on a smaller scale. It just takes political will. And for now, that is lacking on both sides.

Even so, we must hope that it will come because “one state” is not just delusional, it is dangerous. It helps to keep the conflict alive by making Palestinians believe that no compromise is necessary, which emboldens Israel’s fanatics and undermines its moderates. In the interim, both sides are condemned to interminable suffering. This is what matters. Not that people in Europe or the United States, which really do have long traditions of meting out colonisation and genocide, get to feel better about themselves.

Sand is an Israeli — though he has publicly declared that he no longer wishes to be considered a Jew — so he does have skin in the game. But in the end, one has to ask: what’s the difference between him and Netanyahu? Both are living in an alternative reality, talking about different variations of a one-state “solution” that, practically speaking, will only bring civil war, which the Israelis would win, as they have an army, navy and Airforce. Look around the Middle East and consider how non-Muslims fare in society. Look at Lebanon to see how trying to cram various confessions into a single entity has worked out.

So “two nations, two republics” it must be. It is the only hope of real justice for two peoples who are, however much they might wish otherwise, manacled to each other forever. The road will be long and incredibly hard — but remember, Shlomo, if you will it, if you truly will it, it is no dream.


David Patrikarakos is UnHerd‘s foreign correspondent. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)

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Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
1 month ago

Thank you David. Some interesting characters and thoughts. In the end though revolution or change comes out of the barrel or point of a weapon, wielded by savages. Not by rhetoric nor books. Although the latter can be influential. Interestingly the world is well supplied with the savage at present.

jane baker
jane baker
1 month ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

Power comes from the barrel of a gun eh. I don’t think so. Maybe temporarily. It’s the strategy of a bully. Leave your house or I’ll burn it down with all your family inside. If I see you in the playground I’ll steal your lunch money. I’m bigger than you. Well,all my life,up till recent years I’ve had it instilled into me that the little guy wins the fight. Quick clever small but charismatic David always beats out Goliath. But now all I’m hearing is WE NEED OVER-WHELMING FORCE ON OUR SIDE. WE NEED MORE GUNS,MORE WEAPONS. MORE DEATH. Doesn’t that make us Goliath.

Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
1 month ago
Reply to  jane baker

The comments say more about the authors than about the context. Whether the Jewish people deserve a homeland based on “something” or not is a moot question. Whether it be religion, genes or the right of being there first the Jews do have to most Western minds a right to be there. However to Eastern or Southern minds they do not. The raiding Vikings did not give a hoot. That is the unfortunate truth. The wonder is that we still discuss it. The only reason for that being barbarism from both sides disturbing our peace. Be aware though, that your comments no matter how vigorously held are as valid as those of the first millennial Norse.

jane baker
jane baker
1 month ago

I’ve got two of his books and in my opinion every word is accurate. Just because you don’t like one interpretation of history doesnt make it incorrect as I tell my two servants who are black women and thus destined to be subservient to me and do my bidding -and it says so in The Bible,just like it says a portion of land in one particular geographical location belongs to anyone who says so. My reason is obviously just as correct because IT SAYS SO IN THE BIBLE.

Tony Plaskow
Tony Plaskow
1 month ago
Reply to  jane baker

In your opinion it is accurate – the issue there is that in the real world it is quite literally false and lies. Ruins your whole being, appreciated, but worth sharing.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
1 month ago
Reply to  jane baker

Do you hold that the borders described in Numbers 34 should hold?

jane baker
jane baker
1 month ago

Oh I get it. The next strategy to get us not regarding the Gaza genocide in a bad light. Monster the historians so you can doctor the History. Didn’t Hitler do that? Now,let’s look at the evidence. God told Moses and Joshua that the land He was giving them was well populated,a host of different people’s with a string of names lived there,in peace and harmony mostly it seems,albeit with no doubt border.scuffles and jockeying for power but they all thrived. This land it was confirmed was rich and fertile,a land of milk and honey. It was well populated by happy people who (obviously) farmed the land well and took care of it and enjoyed a good life of ENOUGH if not more. And into this Eden came,doesn’t history repeat itself,the first recorded examples,proudly and gleefully.recorded,example of savage,blood thirsty,insatiably cruel, merciless and ENJOYED,the perpetrators ENJOYED it,GENOCIDE. As the saying goes,start as you mean to go on. So it’s now time to doctor.History.

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
1 month ago
Reply to  jane baker

I think that people have avoided answering you because of your anger. Instead, they’ve given you downticks, which is the lazy way.
I do not have knowledge of your history but I do agree with the general point that history is being manipulated every day by unscrupulous people. As a person who was born just after Hit*ler died, whose parents fought Hit*ler, who remembers rationing, I think it’s crazy that young people in the UK actually believe that Churchill was evil. But they do. This shows to me that history is not a fixed thing, not a series of facts, not a right to possess, but simply a view which depends on your life so far. If you are brought up spoilt, you have everything and loads of spare time on your hands – you can believe anything at all.
I recommend anything written by Elie Kedourie, especially those ‘histories’ relating to Palestine.

Tony Plaskow
Tony Plaskow
1 month ago

It may also be that people do not want to waste time replying to jane baker because, aside from the anger, she starts with the factless lie that a genocide is happening. The question I always ask in this case is this – how long do you think it would take for Israel to wipe Gaza off the face of the planet? I always assume about 8 minutes. So, why hasn’t that happened and, instead, the IDF is orchestrating a war with the lowest ever recorded civilian:military death toll in the history of warfare, despite Hamas using its civilians as human shields.
Bizarre that no one has ever answered me, can’t imagine why?

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
1 month ago
Reply to  Tony Plaskow

You need to read her statement more accurately. Yes, she might start with something which is factually ‘iffy’ but this is only a lead in to her main point. She is taking what she sees as an extreme view and arguing against that extreme. This is how debates proceed.

Jim C
Jim C
1 month ago
Reply to  Tony Plaskow

Well we’re sorry Israel isn’t wiping out the Arabs quickly enough for your tastes. They’ve destroyed almost all of their housing though, so they’ll be able to force them off their land soon enough.

“lowest ever recorded civilian:military death toll in the history of warfare”

You’ve got to be kidding. Or insane. The vast majority of the Gazans killed have been women and children. In fact the Dahiya Doctrine pretty much guarantees it.

Zionism is a genocidal ideology. Anyone doubting this should read the Torah, which made it clear that any non-Israelites – men women and children – in the promised land were to be exterminated.

Liam F
Liam F
1 month ago

I can’t speak for others – I couldn’t be bothered to reply to jane baker simply because her comments are so incoherent. It would seem her argument is to quote some Bible word salad so there’s no point anyway – that sort of stuff knows no reason.

John Hughes
John Hughes
1 month ago

Elie Kedourie’s writing is the best on the Middle East and we could do with him now. Sadly he died in 1992. The one subject he did not write about was Israel – its founding and its history (or indeed about the Yishuv’s development under the Mandate). His only detailed work on Palestine after 1918 is a valuable examination of Sir Herbert Samuel’s role as the first British High Commissioner and how he misguidedly appointed Hajj-Amin Husaini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921.

Chris Whybrow
Chris Whybrow
1 month ago

I have read ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’ from cover to cover. I will not say it is a flawless book, in particular the second half relies on a theory about mass conversion in Khazaria which has since been debunked, to my knowledge, but the claim that the central argument of the book is that ” the concept of Jews as a distinct people with a shared lineage, culture and homeland didn’t exist until the arrival of 19th-century nationalism” isn’t entirely honest. Sand’s actual hypothesis is that to this day there is no firm basis for Jewish identity that is independent of religion.
Likewise the authors ridicule of a one state solution seems to hold little weight given that the world is full of countries where populations which a history of fighting each other live side by side in an uneasy, but maintained, peace. Not that that really matters, when the Israeli establishment have made it clear over the decades that they themselves have no interest in a two state solution anyway.
I assume Sand’s own stance on the issue must have shifted in recent years, given that he used to be a firm advocate of the two state solution.

Liam F
Liam F
1 month ago
Reply to  Chris Whybrow

useful insight. thanks.

Marilyn Shepherd
Marilyn Shepherd
1 month ago
Reply to  Chris Whybrow

why on earth would Palestinians want to live with their genociders

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
1 month ago

The author should have made, what is known as, a full disclosure statement that he is of Jewish, very likely zionist, stock, to make clear where he is coming from. He cites myths as facts and peddles half truths and buttresses them with casuistry.
There has never been any large scale expulsion of Jews from the Levant, even the Babylonian exile could not have involved more than 5000 people consisting mainly of the members of the ruling classes, and perhaps a few who wanted to see the world, and find greener pastures, as others did repeatedly in large numbers through the centuries. There has never been any real ban on Jews returning to the Levant either. They just did not want to because nobody compelled them to, until the rise of Hitler. Even most of those who were sent to Palestine by European financiers in the 19th century and later, chose to return to their homes in Europe.
Zionism is a European Christian invention cobbled together to provide a respectable glow to the aim of ridding Europe of the Jews, based first on theological and then on nationalist grounds. John Owen, the English theologian, proposed it in the 17th century. Then came J G Herder (1744 – 1803) and J G Fichte (1762 – 1814). They did not call it Zionism, but their proposals amounted to much the same thing. European Jewry were largely hostile to the idea. Herzl and Zangwill, perhaps because they were already refugees from other parts of Europe, felt differently but were outliers. There was, of course, no call for Zionism outside Europe.
Jewish nationalism is an oxymoron, unless the act of repeated abandonment of one’s ancestral homes can be called nationalism. And the Jewish claim to Palestine is only as strong as the Mafia claim to protection money from the local traders. There are no acceptable rational grounds for it. See:
The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews (Suny Series in Anthropology & Judaic Studies), by  div > p:nth-of-type(5) > a”>Paul Wexler 
theconversation.com/ashkenazic-jews-mysterious-origins-unravelled-by-scientists-thanks-to-ancient-dna-97962

Marilyn Shepherd
Marilyn Shepherd
1 month ago
Reply to  mac mahmood

I have read Shlomo’s books, Shlaim’s, Ilan Pappes, and many others in the last 20 years, I find the idea that a man invented religion has caliam to anything let alone to the right to steal someone else’s country. After all the zionist movement wanted Argentina, Uganda or half of Western Australian before Palestine.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
1 month ago

Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian people, whose right to it must be recognised and honoured. The arrival/return of Jews to Palestine before and after 1948 is a fact so they want to live in Palestine also. A one state solution – called Israel/Palestine, a post apartheid state, is the only solution. Anything else is dressed up nonsense.

David Mayes
David Mayes
1 month ago

Jews have willed their dream of a Jewish state into existence – possibly beyond their widest dreams. But can Jews will the same ethnostate dream onto the Palestinians? It may be possible if the Palestinians had no particular dream future for themselves. But that’s not the case.
The Arab’s have dream’t of reviving the Caliphate for over a hundred years. A few decades ago the Palestinians invented themselves (with Soviet assistance) as an Arab people dedicated to bringing about some Pan-Arab entity that would eliminate the state of Israel.
A Palestinian Arab nation state is a dream held by Israeli and Western progressives but not shared by the majority of Palestinian. For the Palestinians, Gaza was always a stepping stone on the path to the Hamasian vision of the Islamic Caliphate, not an opportunity to build a thriving nation state.
No matter how much willing, some dreams are just delusions. Sand’s Point is that Zionism radically disrupted the concept of Jewishness by making Israel a place where Jews could cease being Jewish to simply become Israeli. Netanyahu’s Point is that all Israelis, Jews and non-Jews alike, must prevail against Hamasian Islamic imperialism or else succumb to it. Both are good points.

Yola Miryam Hurwitz
Yola Miryam Hurwitz
1 month ago

YAWN!

Duane M
Duane M
1 month ago

This is the lamest argument for a two-state solution that I have ever seen. Nothing beyond special pleading from start to finish.

Matthew Freedman
Matthew Freedman
29 days ago

The invention of jewish book is just rubbish but typical of ethnic conflict where one side tries to dehumanise or delegitimise the other’s identity. Admittedly this narrative comes from an ex-jew who’s tied to the vile ideology of marxism.

If they then went on to delegitimise all identities and stress common humanity fair enough but they don’t. Instead they support palestinian nationalism as valid.

What is it that makes the currently identifying palestinians so unique from lebanese, syrian or jordanian arabs? There’s no unique language and a lot of the cuisine is ottoman. The borders of perceived homeland were actually pikot-sykes creatios.
To be one of these anti-israel marxists you have to believe some identities are more valid than others and that self determination is only for some groups.