In his book Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi (When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?) (sic) What if the Palestinian Arabs who have lived for decades under the heel of the modern Israeli state are in fact descended from the same "children of Israel" described in the Old Testament? And what if most modern Israelis are not descended from the ancient Israelites at all, but are actually a mix of Europeans, North Africans and others who didn't "return" to the scrap of land we now call Israel and establish a new state following the attempt to exterminate them during World War II, but came in and forcefully displaced people whose ancestors had lived there for millennia? What if the entire tale of the Jewish Diaspora - the story recounted at Passover tables by Jews around the world every year, detailing the ancient Jews' exile from Judea, the years spent wandering through the desert, their escape from the Pharaoh's clutches is all wrong? That is the explosive thesis of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? a book by Tel Aviv University scholar Shlomo Zand (or Sand) that has sent shockwaves across Israeli society when it was published last year. More at http://www.alternet.org/ : Controversial Bestseller, by Joshua Holland, January 28, 2009
