Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

THE DISTINCTION 28l
anthropology and, later, imported molecular genetics also failed to come up
with a scientific yardstick by which to determine the origin of an individual
Jew. Let us not forget that the Nazis themselves—despite their biological race
doctrine, the jewel in their ideological crown—had been unable to do this,
and so they ended up having to categorize Jews on the basis of bureaucratic
documentation.
The first important mission to be undertaken by the new state was the
removal, as best it could, of those who definitely did not regard themselves
as Jews. The Arab states' stubborn refusal to accept the UN's partition resolution
of 1947, and their joint assault on the young Jewish state, actually helped
it to consolidate. Of the approximately 900,000 Palestinians who should have
remained in Israel and the additional territories it had seized in its military
victory, some 730,000 fled or were expelled—more than the total number of
Jews in the country at that time (630,000). 50 More significant for the country's
future was the ideological principle that it was the historical patrimony
of the "Jewish people," so that the state could without compunction refuse to
allow the hundreds of thousands of refugees to return to their homes and fields
when the fighting was over.
This partial cleansing did not entirely solve the identity problems in
the new state. About 170,000 Arabs remained within its boundaries, and
many of the displaced people who arrived from Europe brought their non-
Jewish spouses. The 1947 UN resolution had clearly stated that the minorities
remaining in both of the new states should have civil rights, and made this a
condition of admitting them to the organization. Israel therefore had to grant
citizenship to the Palestinians who remained. It expropriated more than half
their land, and kept them under military government and harsh restrictions
until 1966, but legally they were Israeli citizens. 51
The Proclamation of Independence, the State of Israel's founding charter,
reflected this ambivalence. On the one hand, it met the UN requirements
regarding the state's democratic character—it promised "complete equality of
social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or
sex; [and] freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture."
On the other hand, it would embody the Zionist vision of its founders—
50 On the origin of the Palestinian refugee problem, see Benny Morris, "The Birth of
the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003;
Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007; see also
Dominique Vidal, Comment Israel expulsa les Palestiniens (1947-1949), Paris: L'Atelier, 2007.
51 On the politics of land expropriation in Israel, see the impressive book of Oren
Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine, Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.