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.
Joanna Kakissis has a nicely reported piece in The New York Times today on climate-driven migration in developing countries. The concept's pretty simple: As the planet heats up, many regions are expected to see more frequent (and more severe) floods, droughts, and storms, which will uproot a bunch of people, especially in rural areas. So we're likely to see many more stories like this one:
In the few hours between landing after a swing through Pakistan, the Middle East, and North Africa and taking off again for Berlin, Singapore, Japan, and the Philippines, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found time on Friday to stop over in much friendlier territory: a subterranean banquet hall at Washington’s Reagan International Trade Center. There, she addressed the people who tried to make her president of the United States.
The occasion: a “policy conference”—really more of a reunion—put on by a Hillary-centric advocacy group called NoLimits.org, which her staunchest defenders had founded in the wake of the 2008 election. They wanted to preserve the sisterhood that had grown up around her campaign, and the secretary, by being there, was just returning their loyalty. “We have had some extraordinary times,” Hillary said, relaxed and smiling. “There were so many of you here who were there with me on that long, exciting, death-defying journey across our country! You’re the ones who helped put all those cracks in the glass ceiling.”
The conference drew a peculiar mix: well-preserved Hillraisers, mingling and gossiping in their blonde coifs and furs, alongside supporters of a more pedestrian stripe, many of whom came with one friend or sat alone. They had all paid upwards of $175 apiece to listen to speakers like Barney Frank and Obama aide Jim Messina talk about issues of the day. The real draw, though, was Hillary herself.
The crowd (women, mostly) sat spellbound while she narrated her travels. They shook their heads when Hillary told them, in intimate tones, of visiting rape survivors in the Congo. When she finished, they surged forward to touch her hand, catch her eye, or take her picture—flashes of recognition crossed her face as she bent down from the dais to greet them.
To follow up on my item on Human Rights Watch, I slightly mischarcaterized HRW's reply. The organization didn't say that the vast majority of its reports were on othe countries, it said that about the vast majority of its Middle East/North Africa reports. That certainly narrows it down. But it still doesn't respond to the complaint, which is that the attention to Israel is disproportionate.
The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome
By Christopher Kelly
(W.W. Norton, 350 pp., $26.95)
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age To the Present
By Christopher I. Beckwith
(Princeton University Press, 472 pp., $35)
The extraordinary reputation of Attila and his Huns requires an explanation, because they had so much competition. Their apogee, until Attila's death in 453, came just after the invasions that were extinguishing the Roman Empire in the west: the invasions of Germanic Alamanni, Burgundians, Ripuarian Franks, Salian Franks, Gepids, Greuthungi and Thervingi Goths, Heruli, Quadi, Rosomoni, Rugi, Sciri, Suevi, Taifali, and the original Vandals, as well as Alan horsemen of Iranic origin and probably Slavic Antae as well. Yet it is the Huns who are more vividly remembered than any of them, including Alaric's Goths, who in 410 had the historical distinction of being the first to sack Rome since the Gaulish raid of 387 B.C.E. (and to loot the accumulated wealth of centuries of empire); and more vividly remembered than the proverbial Vandals, who later inflicted greater damage by cutting off North Africa's grain supply to Italy.
What with all that hot sun beating down on the Sahara Desert day after day, it's no surprise that energy planners have suggested lining the sands of North Africa with mirrors and building vast concentrated solar plants to deliver lots and lots of carbon-free power to Europe. It's not just an idle fantasy, either: One $573 billion proposal, known as Desertec, has attracted a dozen finance and industrial companies, and its backers claim that the solar arrays could one day satisfy up to 15 percent of Europe's electricity needs.
Early last spring, outside a guesthouse in Kabul where I was staying, an injured Afghan man limped up to the locked gate. He wore a blazer with suede elbow patches and leaned on crutches. Because a suicide bomber had attacked the building not long before, a guard blocked the entrance of the unannounced supplicant. The fact that the man refused to give his name didn't help his case.
So far America's war on terrorism has converged nicely with the regional interests of the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism: Iran. After September 11, 2001, the United States worked with Tehran's mullahs to help oust their Sunni rivals to the east in Afghanistan, the Taliban. And now, nearly 13 months after Osama bin Laden's hijackers toppled the World Trade Center, President Bush has made it clear he intends to repeat the favor by toppling Iran's rival to the west: Saddam Hussein.
