Shlomo Sand > Quotes
Showing 1-29 of 29
“Dans chaque démocratie libérale s'est élaboré un imaginaire de citoyenneté au sein duquel la projection dans l'avenir est devenue plus significative que le poids du passé. Cet imaginaire s'est traduit par des normes juridiques, et a même pénétré par la suite à l'intérieur du système éducatif étatique.[...] La souffrance du passé justifie le prix exigé de la part des citoyens dans le présent. L'héroïsme des temps qui s'éloignent promet un avenir rayonnant pour l'individu, du moins sûrement pour la nation. L'idée nationale est devenue, avec l'aide des historiens, une idéologie optimiste par nature. De là, notamment, vient son succès.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
“Peoples, populations, native populaces, tribes and religious communities are not nations, even though they are often spoken of as such.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
“If certain Jewish communities had distinctive qualities, they were due to history, not biology.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
tags: facts, history-of-mankind, jews
“Dominated by Zionism's particular concept of nationality, the State of Israel
still refuses, sixty years after its establishment, to see itself as a republic that
serves its citizens. One quarter of the citizens are not categorized as Jews, and
the laws of the state imply that Israel is not their state nor do they own it. The
state has also avoided integrating the local inhabitants into the superculture it
has created, and has instead deliberately excluded them. Israel has also refused
to be a consociational democracy (like Switzerland or Belgium) or a multicultural democracy (like Great Britain or the Netherlands)—that is to say, a state
that accepts its diversity while serving its inhabitants. Instead, Israel insists on
seeing itself as a Jewish state belonging to all the Jews in the world, even though they are no longer persecuted refugees but full citizens of the countries in which
they choose to reside. The excuse for this grave violation of a basic principle of
modern democracy, and for the preservation of an unbridled ethnocracy that
grossly discriminates against certain of its citizens, rests on the active myth of an
eternal nation that must ultimately forgather in its ancestral land.”
― Shlomo Sand
still refuses, sixty years after its establishment, to see itself as a republic that
serves its citizens. One quarter of the citizens are not categorized as Jews, and
the laws of the state imply that Israel is not their state nor do they own it. The
state has also avoided integrating the local inhabitants into the superculture it
has created, and has instead deliberately excluded them. Israel has also refused
to be a consociational democracy (like Switzerland or Belgium) or a multicultural democracy (like Great Britain or the Netherlands)—that is to say, a state
that accepts its diversity while serving its inhabitants. Instead, Israel insists on
seeing itself as a Jewish state belonging to all the Jews in the world, even though they are no longer persecuted refugees but full citizens of the countries in which
they choose to reside. The excuse for this grave violation of a basic principle of
modern democracy, and for the preservation of an unbridled ethnocracy that
grossly discriminates against certain of its citizens, rests on the active myth of an
eternal nation that must ultimately forgather in its ancestral land.”
― Shlomo Sand
tags: history-palestine
“To the dismay of anti-Semites, the Jews were never a foreign “ethnos” of invaders from afar but rather an autochthonous population whose ancestors, for the most part, converted to Judaism before the arrival of Christianity or Islam.17”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
“History can be ironic, particularly with regard to the invention of traditions in general and traditions of language in particular. Few people have noticed, or are willing to acknowledge, that the Land of Israel of biblical texts did not include Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, or their surrounding areas, but rather only Samaria and a number of adjacent areas—in other words, the land of the northern kingdom of Israel. Because”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
“the term “Land of Israel” was a later Christian and rabbinical invention that was theological, and by no means political in nature. Indeed, we can cautiously posit that the name first appeared in the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
“Die Abgrenzung Jahwes als einzigem Gott von seiner vormaligen, bunten Familie - seiner Frau Aschera, selbst eine Göttin des Bodens, und ihren begabten Kindern, dem wilden Baal, der promisken Astarte, der Jägerin Anat und dem Meeresgott Jam - erscheint als Sysiphosarbeit.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland
tags: monotheismus, polytheismus, religion
“Behind every act in Israel's identity politics stretches, like a long black shadow, the idea of an eternal power and race.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
tags: israel, middle-east, politics
“One of the secrets of the Muslim army's power was its relatively liberal attitude toward the religions of the defeated people-provided they were monoththeists, of course. Muhammad's commandment to treat Jews and Christians as "People of The book" gave them legal protection.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
“I concluded that the Zionist “return” was, above all, an invention meant to arouse the sympathy of the West—particularly the Protestant Christian community, which preceded the Zionists in proposing the idea—in order to justify a new settlement enterprise, and that it had proven its effectiveness.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
“I believe neither in the past existence of a Jewish people, exiled from its land, nor in the premise that the Jews are originally descended from the ancient land of Judea.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
“Canaan, therefore, would serve as a spiritual bridge between the faith born in the northern Fertile Crescent and the cultures of the Mediterranean region. Jerusalem would become the first stop in the mighty theological (Jewish-Christian-Muslim) campaign that would eventually conquer a large portion of the earth.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland
“The fine and varied literature that I read was almost all in translation: from classic works by Jack London, Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens, to detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon, not to mention fascinating pornographic books. I also appreciated the biblical stories that contained all three genres.”
― Shlomo Sand, La fin de l'intellectuel français ?
― Shlomo Sand, La fin de l'intellectuel français ?
“In no text or archaeological finding do we find the term “Land of Israel” used to refer to a defined geographic region. This”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
“Names of regions and countries change over time, and it is sometimes common to refer to ancient lands using names assigned to them later in history. However, this linguistic custom has typically been practiced only in the absence of other known and acceptable names for the places in question.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
“Only in the early twentieth century, after years in the Protestant melting pot, was the theological concept of “Land of Israel” finally converted and refined into a clearly geonational concept. Settlement Zionism borrowed the term from the rabbinical tradition in part to displace the term “Palestine,”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
“My main goal in this book is to deconstruct the concept of the Jewish “historical right” to the Land of Israel and its associated nationalist narratives, whose only purpose was to establish moral legitimacy for the appropriation of territory.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
“Mommsen did not think that the Judeans were necessarily the spiritual successors of the ancient Hebrews, and assumed that most of the Jews throughout the Roman Empire were not direct biological descendants of the inhabitants of Judea.37”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
“A Nation … is a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbors. —Karl Deutsch, Nationality and Its Alternatives, 1969”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
“All historical writing that is not aware that the actions and plots related do not coincide with past reality is potentially the bearer of a mythological dimension. It may well be a serious narrative full of references and quotations, distinguished by its “exactness” and abstaining from any polemic, yet it remains nonetheless that that belief of the author, whether naive or not, associates him or her with many propagators of myth history who continue to swell the tanks of discipline today.
A living myth is not a lie; it is a story about the past or the future whose veracity cannot be established in a rational manner, yet that no-one can imagine rejecting. It remains valid, in the eyes of believers, until heretics succeed in refuting it. Even in this case, however, the belief is not necessary shaken; myths in fact tend to preserve themselves as long as they are needed, or else until other myths come along to replace them. In history all societies need myths to ensure their coherence and preserve their collective identity, in particular, that of elites that revolve around the sovereign power.”
― Shlomo Sand, Twilight of History
A living myth is not a lie; it is a story about the past or the future whose veracity cannot be established in a rational manner, yet that no-one can imagine rejecting. It remains valid, in the eyes of believers, until heretics succeed in refuting it. Even in this case, however, the belief is not necessary shaken; myths in fact tend to preserve themselves as long as they are needed, or else until other myths come along to replace them. In history all societies need myths to ensure their coherence and preserve their collective identity, in particular, that of elites that revolve around the sovereign power.”
― Shlomo Sand, Twilight of History
“The construction of a new body of knowledge always bears direct connection to the ideology in which it operates. Historical insights that diverge from the narrative laid down at the inception of the nation can be accepted only when consternation about their implications is abated. This can happen when the current collective identity begins to be taken for granted and ceases to be something anxiously and nostalgically clings to a mythical past, when identity becomes the basis for living and not its purpose - that is when historiographic change can take place.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
tags: culture, identity, ideology, nationhood
“The person residing in the Land of Israel must always remember the name Canaan, indicating slavery and submission”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland
“Una delle massime priorità della pedagogia statale è la trasmissione di memorie indotte, il cui cardine è proprio la storiografia nazionale.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
“It is an irony of history that, had it not been for the 1948 war, which truly was initiated by Arab leaders, the newly established State of Israel would have to have included a large Arab minority that would have gained strength with the passage of time, ultimately counteracting the state’s Jewish isolationist nature and possibly even its very existence.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
“The inescapable and troublesome conclusion was that if there was a political entity in tenth-century Judea, it was a small tribal kingdom, and that Jerusalem was a fortified stronghold. It is possible that the tiny kingdom was ruled by a dynasty known as the House of David. An inscription discovered in Tell Dan in 1993 supports this assumption, but this kingdom of Judah was greatly inferior to the kingdom of Israel to its north, and apparently far less developed. The documents from el-Amarna, dating from the fourteenth century BCE, indicate that already there were two small city-states in the highlands of Canaan—Shechem and Jerusalem—and the Merneptah stela shows that an entity named Israel existed in northern Canaan at the end of the thirteenth century BCE. The plentiful archaeological finds unearthed in the West Bank during the 1980s reveal the material and social difference between the two mountain regions. Agriculture thrived in the fertile north, supporting dozens of settlements, whereas in the south there were only some twenty small villages in the tenth and ninth centuries BCE. The kingdom of Israel was already a stable and strong state in the ninth century, while the kingdom of Judah consolidated and grew strong only by the late eighth. There were always in Canaan two distinct, rival political entities, though they were culturally and linguistically related—variants of ancient Hebrew were spoken by the inhabitants of both.”
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
― Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People
“As a scion of the persecuted who emerged from the European hell of the 1940s without having abandoned the hope of a better life, I did not receive permission from the frightened archangel of history to abdicate and despair.”
― Shlomo Sand, How I Stopped Being a Jew
― Shlomo Sand, How I Stopped Being a Jew
“I am determined no longer to be a small minority in an exclusive club that others have neither the possibility nor the qualifications to join.”
― Shlomo Sand, How I Stopped Being a Jew
― Shlomo Sand, How I Stopped Being a Jew
tags: exclusiveness, exit, privilege
“protonational”
― Shlomo Sand, Comment le peuple juif fut inventé
― Shlomo Sand, Comment le peuple juif fut inventé
No comments:
Post a Comment