DS113.4.S2613

Includes bibliographical references and index

Introduction: banal murder and toponomy -- Making homelands: biological imperative or national property -- Mytherritory: in the beginning, God promised the land -- Toward a Christian Zionism: and Balfour promised the land -- Zionism versus Judaism: the conquest of 'ethnic' space -- Conclusion: the sad tale of the frog and the scorpion -- Afterword: in memory of a village

What is a homeland, and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for them throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest running national struggle of the twentieth-century. The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand's account dissects the concept of 'historical right' and tracks the invention of the modern geopolitical concept of the 'Land of Israel' by nineteenth cntury Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of israel; it is also what is threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.