[14][15][16][17] Sand began his work by looking for research studies about forcible exile of Jews from the area now bordered by modern Israel, and its surrounding regions.

He accounts for the appearance of millions of Jews around the Mediterranean and elsewhere as something that came about primarily through the religious conversion of local people, saying that Judaism, contrary to popular opinion, was very much a "converting religion" in former times.

He holds that mass conversions were first brought about by the Hasmoneans under the influence of Hellenism, and continued until Christianity rose to dominance in the fourth century CE.

"[18] In this, Sand writes, they were similar to other nationalist movements in Europe at the time that sought the reassurance of a Golden Age in their past to prove they have existed as a separate people since the beginnings of history.

According to Sand, the ancestry of Central and Eastern European Jews stems heavily from mediæval Turkic Khazars who were converted to Judaism, a theory which was popularized in a book written by Arthur Koestler in 1976.

He states that he is untroubled by the book's historical perspective, and that "Sand – for example in his emphasis upon the conversions and ethnic mixing that characterise the Jews in earlier times – is telling us nothing we do not already know.

Sand, for example, does not mention the fact that, from 2000 onwards, a team of scholars from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem labored on the production of a three-volume study on the history of the Jews of Russia.

Yet this does not prevent every Israeli government, right, center or 'left', through which many of these same intellectuals may rotate as ministers, advisors or spokespersons, from justifying land grabs, settlements and demolition of Palestinian homes all over 'Greater Jerusalem' under the banner of 'the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

'"[27] Evan R. Goldstein, editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education, has called it, in part, a recycled version of The Thirteenth Tribe, another book with a controversial thesis on the genesis of the Jewish people published in 1976 by Arthur Koestler.

According to Lazare, Sand "rightly insists on the relevance of the ancient past to contemporary politics, but his distortions are an obstacle to a full understanding of the modern Israeli-Palestinian predicament.

He apparently has never heard of Aviel Roshwald and George Mosse, who are among the first names that should spring to mind in any consideration of Jews and nationalism... Perhaps the fundamental problem with this book, which also applies to the above-mentioned works of Goldhagen, Piterberg, and Mayer, is that the thesis runs way ahead of the supposedly dispassionate investigation (despite Sand's protest to the contrary), and therefore the book assumes the character more of a legal brief than a scholarly monograph".

[20] British historian Simon Schama, reviewing the book in the Financial Times, argues that Sand misunderstands Jews in the diaspora, specifically, that he thinks that "the Khazars, the central Asian kingdom which, around the 10th century, converted to Judaism have been excised from the master narrative because of the embarrassing implication that present day Jews might be descended from Turkic converts.

"[33] Schama states that, on the contrary, when he was a child, "the Khazars were known by every Jewish girl and boy in my neck of Golders Greenery and further flung parts of the diaspora, and celebrated rather than evaded.

"[33] Schama adds that "Sand's sense of grievance against the myths on which the exclusively Jewish right to full Israeli immigration is grounded is one that many who want to see a more liberal and secular Israel wholeheartedly share.

But his book prosecutes these aims through a sensationalist assertion that somehow, the truth about Jewish culture and history, especially the 'exile which never happened,' has been suppressed in the interests of racially pure demands of Zionist orthodoxy.

"[34] British historian Max Hastings, in his review for the Sunday Times, writes that the book "represents, at the very least, a formidable polemic against claims that Israel has a moral right to define itself as an explicitly and exclusively Jewish society, in which non-Jews, such as Palestino-Israelis, are culturally and politically marginalised."

He adds that Sand "rightly deplores the eagerness of fanatics to insist upon the historical truth of events convenient to modern politics, in defiance of evidence or probability...

[35] In a follow-up exchange with Shmuel Rosner he adds that his criticism of Sand applies equally to versions of the origin stories produced by the right.

"[18] Therefore, some historians of Judaism have stated that Sand is dealing with subjects about which he has no understanding, and that he bases his book on work that he is incapable of reading in the original languages.

This has been the case in June 2010, as the popular press reported on two studies in this field, (Atzmon et al., American Journal of Human Genetics and Beha et al., Nature).

[4]Geneticist Harry Ostrer presented findings that were generally viewed as disproving Sand's notion that the Jewish people is an ex-post invention.

Balter's article further cites Noah Rosenberg of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as saying that although the study "does not appear to support" the Khazar hypothesis, it "doesn't entirely eliminate it either.

In a new afterword for the paperback edition of The Invention of the Jewish People, Sand writes: This attempt to justify Zionism through genetics is reminiscent of the procedures of late nineteenth-century anthropologists who very scientifically set out to discover the specific characteristics of Europeans.

And it is all the more repulsive that this kind of research should be conducted in a state that has waged for years a declared policy of "Judaization of the country" in which even today a Jew is not allowed to marry a non-Jew.