The Great Debate UK In his controversial book, “The Invention of
the Jewish People,” author Shlomo Sand challenges historical
notions of the link between Judaism and Israel, and argues that
there is no record of exile of the Jewish people. Israel has
deliberately forgotten its history and replaced it with a myth,
writes Sand, a Jewish scholar and historian based at the
University of Tel Aviv. Without exile, there is no right to
return, he says. “The disparity between what my research
suggested about the history of the Jewish people and the way
that history is commonly understood – not only within Israel but
in the larger world – shocked me as much as it shocked my
readers.” Early Rabbis and 19th century Zionist Scholars were
responsible for the construction of a continuous genealogy for
the Jewish people, Sand argues. He attributes the Jewish
diaspora to early Judaist evangelism across North Africa,
Southern Europe and the Middle East, not a biological lineage.