CJColucci: The topic doesn’t greatly interest me, but…The holidays can be tough on all of us, I suppose.

CJColucci:…You mean that post from more than eight months ago? That DB didn’t see fit to mention now? That makes the current posts even more pointless? Not to say snarky?

You tell us you are not greatly interested in the topic yet you keep coming back again and again to share comments like these?! Perhaps the holidays were tough on you, but what excuse is that for inflicting yourself on the rest of us?

You mean that post from more than eight months ago? That DB didn’t see fit to mention now? That makes the current posts even more pointless? Not to say snarky?

As for Howe, he has edited and written books for the same publisher as Sand’s book, Verso. Specifically, his book “Afrocentrism” got published by Verso in 1998, and he was the editor of “Lines of Dissent” that Verso published in 1988. Verso is an avowedly pro-Socialist publishing house. So Prof Howe is not one to talk about how “responses are so utterly predictable according to the critic’s political views” within his somewhat friendly review of a book published by his comrades at Verso – a review where he outright said “Sand’s political purpose is (in my view) an admirable one”.

But, in the final analysis, biological origin is not what defines a national group.

Totally agree. I’ve said before that I find these historical debates rather irrelevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even if few Jews are descended from ancient Judeans, or even if most Palestinians’ ancestors didn’t live in Israel Palestine until rather recently, that wouldn’t in any way change the fact that Israeli Jews believe themselves to believe a national entity, as do Palestinian Arabs, and act on that basis. Either group’s national “rights” must be based on their modern national identity, not their ancient ancestry.

yankee:
Can you explain the difference between this and calling Sand anti-Semitic?

It’s the difference between believing something and being associated with anyone else who believes it. Conflating what DB said with calling Sand anti-Semitic would be a form of guilt by association, the association being the mere sharing of an opinion, albeit a harebrained and controversial one. Our discourse already suffers from too much spurious guilt by association. We don’t need any more.

Even Howe tells us, offhandedly, that the book’s controversial factual assertions are either demonstrably false, or very far from proven. Why then take the author’s political views seriously– unless, of course, like Howe you already share them?

In fact, Howe also says at the beginning of the review that he shares Sand’s (anti-Zionist) views.

Colucci: The subject of this post is not Sand’s book, but an arrogant academic who deigns to criticize mere “non-expert” bloggers, who in fact likely have more relevant expertise than he has.

Can you explain the difference between this and calling Sand anti-Semitic?

The fact that someone promotes crank ideas that aren’t inherently anti-Semitic but are generally associated with and used by anti-Semites doesn’t mean that the particular promoter is an anti-Semite. It may just mean that he’s a crank, with crankish motivations of his own.

For that matter, I haven’t seen anyone call Sand anti-Semitic, but many have correctly pointed out that his theory that most Ashkenazic Jews descended from Khazars finds virtually no support among geneticists or linguists, but is quite popular with anti-Semites around the world, who have been basically the only ones keeping the “controversy” alive.

Can you explain the difference between this and calling Sand anti-Semitic?

CJColucci: I take it from reading your two posts on the subject that you think Shlomo Sand wrote a bad book. You may be right. The topic doesn’t greatly interest me, but a post about why it is a bad book would advance human knowledge somewhat. Instead, you write two posts with no apparent goal but to take potshots at people who seem to agree with you that it is a bad book. The holidays can be tough on all of us, I suppose.

CJ, Bernstein has already written , at length, about why this is a bad book. Check out this earlier post A little less snarkiness, and a litte more attention would do you good.

His account of modern arguments over whether ancient Israel ever existed in anything like the biblical stories’ depiction is pretty sketchy, and makes those debates sound far simpler than they have really been. He writes as if the sceptical or “minimalist” side has decisively won that intellectual war. A more open-minded reading would suggest, so far, a draw. His arguments about mass conversion, the Khazars and so on, all have many precursors, and equally many long-established critics. Very few serious scholars in recent times have believed in “the Jews” as a single ethno-biological people or “race”.

Yet if in intellectual and historical terms, Sand is rehashing some old arguments and even setting up straw men for too-easy demolition, he is surely right that the picture is very different both on more popular level and on that of Israeli politics and law. The very ferocity evident in attacks on the book all too surely proves that point.

On the one hand, he admits most of the book’s factual claims are unfounded. On the other, he seems to think the “ferocity” of attacks on the book struck some sort of nerve and perhaps revealed a “larger truth?”

Even Howe tells us, offhandedly, that the book’s controversial factual assertions are either demonstrably false, or very far from proven. Why then take the author’s political views seriously- unless, of course, like Howe you already share them?

Sand should’ve just written a book called “this is my opinion” and spared us the falsehoods. He might’ve even sounded a little more credible.

And Howe’s interest in writing this review isn’t related to his own historical interests- a professional review would’ve started and ended with skewering Sand’s irresponsible “history.” To Howe this is irrelevant or at least unimportant. He wrote the “review” only to say that Sand doesn’t go far enough, and should have called Israel a racist state of haters.

The review itself says nothing of particular interest, and any discussion of the origins of the demographic origins of modern Jews people that doesn’t reference the genetic evidence is doomed to be worthless.

Hey!! This is what I said in the comments of the last post you wrote regarding this book. That’s the bottom line. Questions about the biological origin of one national group from other, or from older, national groups now can be settled definitively, thorough genetic testing. Any other kind of evidence is, at this point, unconvincing and tendentious.

But, in the final analysis, biological origin is not what defines a national group. A “people” is self-defined. Or, perhaps, defined by their enemies, who force them to define themselves in self-defense. Are Americans a “people? Are the Swiss, with their several languages? My guess is that there is more genetic heterogeneity among Americans than among Serbs, Croats and Bosnians, who define themselves as three peoples. And there is more genetic heterogeneity among Americans than among the various Nordic nations.