Best, Joel
On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Itamar Turner-Trauring
<itamar at itamarst.org> wrote:
>> Which raises, of course, the next key
>> question - what happened to the Jews who were
>> still in Palestine after the destruction of the
>> Second Temple? Where did they go? Sand's answer
>> is that they didn't go anywhere. They are today's
>> Palestinians, most of whom converted to Islam in
>> the early years of Islam's expansion into the
>> rest of the Middle-East. These are not
>> unsupported conjectures, for the great strength
>> of Sand's book lies in the enormous wealth of
>> evidence and careful, scholarly argumentation he offers for each of his
>> claims.
>>
>> Where does all this leave the central idea that
>> underlies the whole Zionist project - that Jews
>> everywhere have not only a duty but a right to
>> return to "their original homeland," Palestine? I
>> can't think of a more fundamental critique of
>> Zionism and therefore of Israel too than the one
>> found in Sand's book.
>
> Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but the conclusion here by Prof.
> Ollman seemingly accepts the premises of nationalism, the right of self
> determination based on some common ancestry, only saying that based on
> Sand's evidence it doesn't apply in *this* case. Can he really not "think
> of a more fundamental critique"? Sand may yet be proven wrong, but the
> Palestinians' rights have nothing to do with whether their ancestors were
> Jewish two thousand years ago. If I can prove without doubt that my
> ancestors lived in Spain before being kicked out 1492 (as family legend
> claims), does that give me the right to engage in a personal Reconquista
> of Cordoba?
>
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-- joel schalit editor, Zeek author, Israel vs. Utopia skype:jschalit email: jschalit at gmail.com web: www.joelschalit.com