The German Mujahid

By Boualem Sansal

Translated by Frank Wynne

(Europa Editions, 240 pp., $15)

I.

The Invention of the Jewish People
By Shlomo Sand
Translated by Yael Lotan
(Verso, 400 pp., $34.95)

By the books an age reads and respects ye shall know it. What, then, shall we say of an age in which a book so intellectually shoddy that once, not very long ago, it would have been flunked as an undergraduate thesis by any self-respecting professor of history becomes a best-seller upon first appearing in Hebrew in Israel in 2008; goes on to win the prestigious Aujourd’hui Award of the association of French journalists; and now, in English translation, is taken seriously by reviewers and reporters, and nets its author an honored place on talk shows and in “advanced” opinion? Perhaps one might charitably say that such an age is forgetful and poorly educated and credulous. And to be fair, The Invention of the Jewish People does make one valid point. But let’s begin with the shoddiness.

Sand’s book is about Jewish nationhood, Jewish nationalism, and Zionism--each of which, in the best postmodern fashion and with due acknowledgment to such well-known theorists of national identity formation as Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, Sand seeks to “deconstruct” by viewing it as an artificially cobbled modern notion rather than as a historically rooted phenomenon. This he does by means of two shopworn arguments, one completely absurd and one partly so.

I last wrote in this space about American universities in the Arab oil orbit on April 23, 2008. That Spine was called “The New Colonialism, Education Division,” and it focused on the exploits of New York University in Abu Dhabi. Now, in matters like these, N.Y.U. is really in the business of whoring.

It's certainly starting to seem that way. Last week, in Pakistan she talked tough about the Pakistani government tolerating Al Qaeda and then immediately backpedaled.

Within a few minutes of Noman Benotman's arrival at the Kandahar guest house, Osama bin Laden came to welcome him. The journey from Kabul had been hard, 17 hours in a Toyota pickup truck bumping along what passed as the main highway to southern Afghanistan. It was the summer of 2000, and Benotman, then a leader of a group trying to overthrow the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, had been invited by bin Laden to a conference of jihadists from around the Arab world, the first of its kind since Al Qaeda had moved to Afghanistan in 1996.