Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

280 THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
In 1940 the philosopher Walter Benjamin told a story about a famous
chess-playing automaton (known as the Turk) that used to astonish audiences
with its clever moves. Underneath the table hid a hunchbacked dwarf who
actually played the game. In Benjamin's analogy, the automaton represented
materialistic thinking, and the hidden dwarf theology—meaning that in the
age of modern rationalism, religious faith had to stay hidden. 48
This image may be applied to the culture of biological science in Israel,
and the public arena that it periodically furnishes with novelties: the genetic
robot appears to be making the moves on the chessboard, while the little
hunchback—the traditional idea of race—is obliged to hide because of the
politically correct world discourse, yet continues to dupe and conduct the
thrilling chromosome show.
In a state that defines itself as Jewish yet does not present distinguishing
cultural markers that might define a worldwide secular Jewish existence—
except for some depleted, secularized remnants of religious folklore—the
collective identity needs a misty, promising image of an ancient biological
common origin. Behind every act in Israel's identity politics stretches, like a
long black shadow, the idea of an eternal people and race.
FOUNDING AN ETHNOS STATE
In 1947 the UN General Assembly resolved by a majority vote to establish a
"Jewish state" and an "Arab state" in the territory that had previously been
known as "Palestine/Eretz Israel." 49 At that time, many thousands of displaced
Jewish persons were wandering in Europe, and the small community that had
been created by the Zionist settlement enterprise was supposed to take them
in. The United States, which before 1924 had taken in many of the Yiddish
Jews, now refused to open its gates to the broken remnants of the great Nazi
massacre. So did the other rich countries. In the end, it was easier for these
countries to solve the troublesome Jewish problem by offering a faraway land
that was not theirs.
The governments that voted for the resolution did not concern themselves
with the precise meaning of the term "Jew," and did not imagine what it would
come to mean as the new state consolidated. At the time, the Zionist elite—
which had aspired and struggled to achieve a Jewish sovereignty—would
have been unable to define clearly who was a Jew and who a gentile. Physical
48 Walter Benjamin, "On the Concept of History," in Selected Writings, vol. 4,
Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003, p. 389.
49 See the declaration available at www.knesset.gov.il.