The Invention of the Land of Israel
From Holy Land to Homeland
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
This groundbreaking work deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the ‘Holy Land’ of Israel—and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it.
What is a homeland, and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for them throughout the 20thcentury? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial 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 20th century.
Sand’s account dissects the concept of ‘historical right’ and tracks the invention of the modern geopolitical concept of the ‘Land of Israel’ by 19th-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 what is threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his newest, Sand (The Invention of the Jewish People), a professor of modern history at the University of Tel Aviv, seeks "to deconstruct the concept of the Jewish historical right' to the Land of Israel and its associated nationalist narratives." Supported by religious and historical sources, he shows that the term "Land of Israel" gained primacy in the early 20th century, and that before that time, observant Jews thought of the land as "an internal spiritual state" rather than a "concrete territorial site." However, early secular Zionist pioneers began to incorporate notions of redemption into their migrational aspirations. In the process, Zionist and Israeli leaders often rode roughshod over the rights of Palestinian Arabs. Finally, Sand unpacks the radical "Judaization" of Israel after 1948, and shows how, post-1967, a "mythic Land of Israel" that included the West Bank and East Jerusalem "continued to inhabit the interstices of Zionist consciousness." A thought-provoking, readable, and important work.
