Simon Schama in the Financial Times disputes Shlomo Sand re Jewish identity and says we’re connected to Palestine. Typical of Sand’s reviewers, Schama accuses him of having a political value system (yes, he’s an anti-nationalist) but fails to interrogate his own, more-traditional political attachment:
the legitimacy of Israel both within and without the country depends not on some spurious notion of religious much less racial purity, but on the case made by a community of suffering, not just during the Holocaust but over centuries of expulsions and persecutions. Unlike the Roman deportations, these were not mythical.
The Goldstone report alleges that the Palestinians suffer "persecution" in Gaza. I saw that for myself. And yes, they too have experienced expulsion. When are Jewish historians going to integrate Jewish privilege into the picture? Isn’t that what General Jones’s anti-Semitic joke was all about?
