Outstanding anti-racist Jewish Israeli Professor Shlomo Sand is a professor of history at Tel Aviv University and author of “When and how was the Jewish people invented?” (for biographical details see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlomo_Sand ), a book that argues for a non-racist state in Palestine and the following Jewish origins for North African Jews (Berber and other converts to Judaism in the 6th century AD), Jews of Yemen (remnants of the Himyar Kingdom in the Arab Peninsula remnants, converts to Judaism in the 4th century) and the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe (refugees from the Kingdom of the Khazars, converts to Judaism in the 8th century).
Professor Shlomo Sand on a future non-racist state in Palestine: “"We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law. Anyone who is acquainted with the young elites of the Israeli Arab community can see that they will not agree to live in a country that declares it is not theirs. If I were a Palestinian I would rebel against a state like that, but even as an Israeli [Jewish Israeli] I am rebelling against it." [1].
Professor Shlomo Sand in “Israel deliberately forgets its history”, Le Monde Diplomatique, 2008: “During the 5th century, in modern Yemen, a vigorous Jewish kingdom emerged in Himyar, whose descendants preserved their faith through the Islamic conquest and down to the present day. Arab chronicles tell of the existence, during the 7th century, of Judaised Berber tribes; and at the end of the century the legendary Jewish queen Dihya contested the Arab advance into northwest Africa. Jewish Berbers participated in the conquest of the Iberian peninsula and helped establish the unique symbiosis between Jews and Muslims that characterised Hispano-Arabic culture. The most significant mass conversion occurred in the 8th century, in the massive Khazar kingdom between the Black and Caspian seas. The expansion of Judaism from the Caucasus into modern Ukraine created a multiplicity of communities, many of which retreated from the 13th century Mongol invasions into eastern Europe. There, with Jews from the Slavic lands to the south and from what is now modern Germany, they formed the basis of Yiddish culture… By validating an essentialist, ethnocentric definition of Judaism it [Zionism] encourages a segregation that separates Jews from non-Jews – whether Arabs, Russian immigrants or foreign workers. Sixty years after its foundation, Israel refuses to accept that it should exist for the sake of its citizens. For almost a quarter of the population, who are not regarded as Jews, this is not their state legally. At the same time, Israel presents itself as the homeland of Jews throughout the world, even if these are no longer persecuted refugees, but the full and equal citizens of other countries. A global ethnocracy invokes the myth of the eternal nation, reconstituted on the land of its ancestors, to justify internal discrimination against its own citizens.” [2].
[1]. Shlomo Sand quoted in Ofri Ilani, “Shattering a “national mythology”, Haaretz, 21 March 2008: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html .
[2]. Shlomo Sand, “Israel deliberately forgets its history”, Le Monde Diplomatique, September 2008: http://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel .