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Whereas a colloquium is classified as an open forum to debate ideas, professor Miller's event is clearly defined to present Shlomo Sand's book as fact. … However, Sand's book is replete with historical inaccuracies. … Rather than being a groundbreaking or original scholarly work, Sand's book is just a rehashing of anti-Semitic tracts distributed by a Jewish convert to Christianity in the pay of Arab interests named Benjamin Freedman who claimed the same historical nonsense from about 1946 to 1961. … Sand also tries to claim today's Palestinians are the real Jews who were forcibly converted to Islam after the seventh century. This, too, is academically false, as the majority of Arabs and Muslims residing in Israel and the Palestinian Authority today immigrated to the region in the mid 20th century as a result of the Zionist movement. … Part of the anti-Israel campaign on U.S. campuses is to suggest that Jews in America need not support a Jewish or "Zionist" state where Israel is in order to be Jewish. The number of Jewish students at New York University is staggering in terms of the student population there, so what better place to have a Marxist professor like Miller and pseudo-historian like Shlomo Sand from Tel Aviv University come and speak to explain that the Jewish people was nothing more than an invention to justify taking Palestine from the Arabs. However, the event is really just another form of anti-Semitism and hatred against the Jewish state masquerading as an academic discussion to indoctrinate impressionable students.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=113092#

Marxist prof: The Jews were invented

By Lee Kaplan
October 16, 2009

A "Marxist Theory Colloquium," that is, a conference at which scholars or other experts present papers on, analyze and discuss a specific topic, is taking place at New York University today with the principal speaker being an Israeli history professor who says the Jewish people was invented in order to justify the taking of the Holy Land from the Arabs, and that today's Palestinians are in fact the descendants of the real Jews from biblical times.

The guest speaker is a history professor at Tel Aviv University named Shlomo Sand who recently published a book titled "The Invention of the Jewish People." Sand has been called a pseudo-historian by organizations that monitor anti-Israel academics working in Israeli universities.

The meeting has been promoted by an NYU "professor of media ecology" named Mark Crispin Miller who claims his expertise is in "modern propaganda, history and tactics of advertising." However, the Sand theory of today's Israeli Jews being part of an invention to steal Arab/Muslim land is being presented as scholarly fact and not as another form of anti-Israel propaganda. Miller has also written books claiming the 2000 and 2004 elections of George W. Bush were "stolen" and that 9/11 was an inside job by the U.S. government.

Whereas a colloquium is classified as an open forum to debate ideas, professor Miller's event is clearly defined to present Shlomo Sand's book as fact. On his blog, Miller writes, "It is an extremely scholarly, very original and often shocking work – the title is meant literally – with profound implications for Zionism and the ongoing conflict between Israel and its neighbors."

However, Sand's book is replete with historical inaccuracies. For one thing, it claims there is no historical evidence that Jews were forced out of Israel into the Diaspora after the Third Jewish Revolt. Numerous historians of Rome have long ago confirmed that the Roman Coliseum was built by Jewish slaves. The ruins of Pompey show the corpses of Jewish slaves left behind as caretakers when the volcano erupted wiping out the city. During the siege of Masada, the Roman armies brought in Jewish slaves who were simply worked to death without water because the nearest water was deemed too far away in Ein Gedi to transport it to the site. At the time, a Jewish slave was considered of lesser value than a horse and were dispersed throughout the empire because the Jewish nation had revolted more often than any other Roman colony.

The Romans, in fact, after the Third Revolt changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina and forbid circumcision. Israel was renamed Philistia (which later become Palestine in English) after the Philistines (once the greatest enemy of the Jews) as an insult. Jews, however, still maintained a presence in the Holy Land for millennia afterward even after pogroms by the Roman occupiers.

Part of Sand's thesis is based on the existence of the Kingdom of Khazaria that once existed near the Black Sea that converted to Judaism circa A.D. 1200. The pagan king there converted his people, of Turkic Asian extraction, to Judaism as a compromise between the expanding Christian and Muslim hordes on his doorsteps. Khazaria disappeared after being defeated and swallowed up by Russia. Sand maintains that Ashlenazic or European Jews are the descendants of Khazarians (including Sand's parents) and have no title to the land of Israel. His theory ignores the fact that less than half of Israel's Jews are of Ashenazic origin, most coming from the Middle East. Sand also explains that Yiddish, a bastardized German spoken by European Jews, was developed from the Turkish language of the Khazars with a few borrowed German words. However, Yiddish contains no Turkish or Asian words in it at all.

Roman records tell us that there were sizable Jewish communities along the Rhine as the Empire died out that then moved further into Germany. In addition, Khazars as converts would not have so many Cohens or Levis, the priestly Jewish class, as exist in the modern Ashkenazic community.

Rather than being a groundbreaking or original scholarly work, Sand's book is just a rehashing of anti-Semitic tracts distributed by a Jewish convert to Christianity in the pay of Arab interests named Benjamin Freedman who claimed the same historical nonsense from about 1946 to 1961. The only difference was that Freedman also tried to claim falsely that the Jewish Talmud encourages pedophilia and sex with animals. Freedman's career was built on first opposing a Jewish state from the U.N. and later to alienate American Christian support away from the Jews. Sand merely took Freedman's thesis and spruced it up for anti-Israel groups to use as propaganda against the Jewish state.

Sand also tries to claim today's Palestinians are the real Jews who were forcibly converted to Islam after the seventh century. This, too, is academically false, as the majority of Arabs and Muslims residing in Israel and the Palestinian Authority today immigrated to the region in the mid 20th century as a result of the Zionist movement.

"The Invention of the Jewish People" is published and distributed by Verso Books in London, a firm that used to be called New Left Books. It is a publishing house that specializes in Marxist, Communist, Maoist, anti-Israel and even pro-jihadist literature for radical groups and bookstores. Its most recent book is proudly promoted as having been written by and expressing the wisdom of Osama bin Laden. Shlomo Sand is a lifelong communist who has run with Israel's Communist Party factions since his teens. In adhering to the old Soviet party line, most communist parties in Israel are opposed to the existence of a Jewish state.

Part of the anti-Israel campaign on U.S. campuses is to suggest that Jews in America need not support a Jewish or "Zionist" state where Israel is in order to be Jewish. The number of Jewish students at New York University is staggering in terms of the student population there, so what better place to have a Marxist professor like Miller and pseudo-historian like Shlomo Sand from Tel Aviv University come and speak to explain that the Jewish people was nothing more than an invention to justify taking Palestine from the Arabs. However, the event is really just another form of anti-Semitism and hatred against the Jewish state masquerading as an academic discussion to indoctrinate impressionable students.

Lee Kaplan is an investigative journalist who writes frequently about Middle East and anti-Israel issues on college campuses. He has written articles for Front Page Magazine, the Israel National News, Canada Free Press and Isracampus.org.il. He has appeared on Bill O'Reilly's "The Factor" and "Dayside" on Fox News and hosts a weekly homeland security hour on K-Talk Radio in Utah. He also runs the websites DAFKA.org and StoptheISM.com.