Not a racist thing?

Thanks to Ron for the following links:

Israeli vigilantes target young Arab-Jewish couples
“This is not a racist thing. Statistically, these girls wind up in trouble. We try to step in before real harm can be done by talking to the teens, making social workers available to them. We never use force,” a spokesman said.

YYC: Unfortunately, love is not enough when you have a whole society trying to break up a relationship.  I'm not surprised they end up "in trouble".  But if left alone, it's possible love could solve the whole Middle East.

Shattering a 'national mythology' - Shlomo Sand's new book "The Invention of the Jewish People"
In this work, the author attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history

YYC:  Sand's book is, of course, not the first such study, although Arthur Koestler's "The Thirteenth Tribe" and studies done by others with similar findings are rarely referred to for obvious reasons. When the myth that the ancestors of European/American Jews once lived in Palestine is exposed through historical records, out goes the secular justification for the occupation.

Naturally Sand makes a good case for the "one-state solution", and I particularly like his response to the question of what this will do to the sustaining myth of a scattered Jewish nation: "To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted mythologies of the past".

I do think, however, he could have suggested adding more than just "an hour" of recognition for the Nakba along with the Israeli independence celebrations and memorials.

Here's a YouTube video of Sand saying that he cannot say there is a Jewish people:

For anyone who relies heavily for one's identity on racial or cultural origins, an indepth study of either genealogy or history will eventually remove that crutch.  If you go back far enough you'll find that we're all related to one another. I personally find being a "mutt" a liberating condition, although I'm aware that my anglo-saxon appearance is an unfair advantage in a world that places a value on the myth of racial origins.