Jews in Israel should become Biblical Christians when faced with many enemies from within and without.

Woohoo, I agree with Shlomo - Down With Israel.

Interesting. Let's watch the Zionist spin this one.
So what tactic will they use? Discredit his research, smear him, call him a traitor, etc etc etc.....you know what I am getting at.

Clifford, why is he an enemy from within?

To me, he seems to be someone who has a moral judgement that is more important to him than misplaced loyality.
You seem to have lost your sense of right and wrong.

Sarah:

What an amazing country Israel is! A book which appears to undermine the basis of its existence becomes a best-seller. What open-minded and tolerant people. Really, a lesson to us all.

looking forward to reading this, it is refreshing to finally hear a jewish scholar espousing the true nature of the sinister and terrorist, not to mention illegal, state of israel. may the world buck up and take notice of this. what is strange is that it has remained a best seller on israels list, surely the jews of israel dont agree with his findings??

amazing country? well thats one way of looking at it i suppose...

Yeah, real open-minded and real tolerant.

It perhaps answers your question: "what is strange is that it has remained a best seller on israels list, surely the jews of israel dont agree with his findings??"

(PS - I don't think what he has said is anything new. Perhaps new from an Israeli academic - but testament to the strength of identity of Israeli society that it can tolerate it.)

Open minded and tolerant of your own community, well that certainly is a new precedence. How about being open minded and TOLERANT of those not within your community. Now that really would be refreshing.

or maybe sarah is correct and so many israelis are absorbing it solely to discredit him in all manner of ways. i guess it will remain to be seen.

clifford you do make me laugh, your very persistant, if not a little repetitive :)

It doesn't take a Jew so long to read a book. If there was uproar we'd have heard by now.

Give me a break, since when did buying a book become an indicator of how tolerant and open a society was.

Open and tolerant people would say, people come and live side by side with us. You have a right to this land as much as we do. We are BOTH victims of history.

Open and tolerant people do not deny others their human rights whilst claiming to protect the rights of their people.

A marker of a civilised, tolerant, open society is how it deals with the downtrodden. Now tell me, how does it deal with the millions of displaced palestinians?

Don't kid yourself. Sarah mentioned the zionist spin, well look it didn't take that long did it.

Excuse me?

Has Ahmedinajad moved to Israel and changed his name?

Well, fair is fair! The muslims invaded these infidel lands in the first place, the western allies overran the muslims in WW1. Originally of course, Israel was indeed the homeland of the Jews, so what is wrong in giving them just a little place? If only the Arabs had let the displaced 350,000 Palestinians into their homelands, or they had returned to Israel as most were allowed to, we wouldn't have this huge problem now. The numbers of Palestinians have increased so much it would be difficult to place them anywhere now and room in Israel had to be found for the 800,000 who were displaced from Arab lands after the '48 war. If the Arabs had not invaded Israel in '48 things would just have sorted themselves out naturally. We must ALL be tolerant - however, I could sell you vast lands in the outback for the Palestinian diaspora.

"Give me a break, since when did buying a book become an indicator of how tolerant and open a society was."

Well if Israelis were burning it, attacking the embassies of countries who publish it and making death threats against the author, rather than reading it, it might say something about them.

Kiwi the people of palestine did not fall from the sky,they are the offspring of people who have resided in palestine for thousands of years,you comment is like saying since ther romans invaded britain and bought christianity with them,it is ok for others to come and kick out the christians from britain.
so israel was founded in 1948 as it would be needed in future for 800,o00 jews coming from arab countries, this comment proves that jews were enticed and fear mongered into leaving their homes for centuires by zionists hate mongers.
if they had not ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of palestinians then hundreds of thousands of jews would have lived in their homes and lands.
since israel has been the cause of pain and hurt to millions, it should be dismantled.

Israel will exist whether people like it or not, but the true activist for Palestine like myself would agree that a two state solution is the only way forward and there has got to be an agreement especially from Israel and it's fascist neo-con zionist ideology to return to the 1947 UN partition plan.

But of course we can never retun to the original plan because the zionist are to pig headed

As far as I can tell Mr. Sand is not calling of the abolition of Israel. He is challenging the national myths of the Jewish people. The flaw in his arguments is that he does not contextualise the evolution of the Jewish national myths. Prior to WW2 there was a powerful debate amongst Jews whether they were simply nationals of the countries they resided in who happened to believe in Judaism, or a separate & distinct nation that could either accept exile & isolation or seek to follow the path of other nations and form a state. This debate has to be understood in relation to the countries that Jews lived in the majority of which denied them equality or security.
If Mr. Sand's arguments are to be accepted they inherently challenge both Christian and Muslim societies. For if Jews are just Berber, Khazar, German, Spanish believers in Judaism, on what basis other than oppressive sectarianism have the dominate communities denied the Jews equality - certainly not race. Modern day Zionism arose in the mid 19th C a century before the Nazis, so WW2 is not the cause. Thus what is the cause and for what are the Palestinians paying a price?

Shan - As Islam only appeared in 600AD and we are now only in 2008AD I don't think your argument about the Palestinians(muslims) having been there for thousands of years stands up. The Palestinians who were there originally were Christians (remember the ones that the Romans threw to the lions) and Jews who built the Temples that the Muslims found(albeit in a terrlible state) when they arrived in 638. The Romans had renamed Israel Palestine becuse they they thought that Judea sounded too much like a Jewish country. They then included Samaria etc. and named the area Palestine.

Until the Arabs left their peninsula, only Arabia was muslim. Iran was Zoroastrian, North Africa was a mixture (but no muslims obviously)Spain, Italy and Greece, the Byzantian lands of Turkey,Syria, Messopotamia etc. and the Balkan areas were Christian/Jewish.India was Hindu. Millions died and were displaced when the Islamic armies invaded these countries.

So, you took these lands long ago, so does that mean the original inhabitants aren't allowed to return to the land they were disposessed of by Islam?

Can't quite understand your anology of Roman/Britain/Christians altho' the Celts/Picts/AngloSaxons and other are mostly still there - known as Brits.

Kiwi

Re 'Celts/Picts/AngloSaxons and other are mostly still there - known as Brits' -- the Christians/Zoroastrians/Hindus are all still there: they are no called Muslims. You can't tell a South Asian Hindu and a Muslim apart, based on looks. (Note: not all the earliest Muslims were 'Arabs' -- e.g. Bilal was African).

The fact of the matter is that the Book of Exodus proves that the Jews were NOT the original inhabitants of what is now called Israel/Palestine. (Excuse me, but didn't the Jews come FROM Egypt TO Palestine?) If you don't believe that, then you must reject Exodus.

If your argument has any credibility then, as far as you are concerned George Bush is NOT American -- he is European. Only the Red Indians are 'American' (likewise for Australia/Central & South America/New Zealand etc.).

Israel is just a fantasy 'theme-park': it is 'Judaeo-Disney'-- Jews go there to play at being 'Jews'.

Shan may I suggest that from a Jewish perspective that the existance of Christianity and Islam has been little more than a litany of brutality and exploitation. Islam and Christianity have caused more deaths than the Zionazi Entity, and that basis shouldn't both lead the way and dismantle themselves?

Here is a good article on this

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21020.htm

not so rsd if you look at the muslims through the ages they have treated the people of the book on the whole with respect. for example through the first crusade it was the christians who killed the jews in pogroms in the rhineland and in the holy land, if you fast forward to the third crusade it was leaders like saladin who actually allowed the jews safe passage and even places to remain in jerusalem after he had conquered it, so can the BS please im getting sick of the subtle digs that you always post.

aftab: so throughout the history of Islam jews were afforded legal equality with Muslims and never subject to any violence whatsoever? And the following is a zionist islamophobic fabrication "On December 30, 1066, Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada, crucified Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred most of the Jewish population of the city. "More than 1,500 Jewish families, numbering 4,000 persons, fell in one day.""
Particularly instructive in this respect is anti-Jewish poem of Abu Ishaq, written in Granada in 1066. This poem, which is said to be instrumental in provoking the anti-Jewish outbreak of that year, contains these specific lines:

Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them, the breach of faith would be to let them carry on.
They have violated our covenant with them, so how can you be held guilty against the violators?
How can they have any pact when we are obscure and they are prominent?
Now we are humble, beside them, as if we were wrong and they were right!