The Invention of the Jewish People

I consider myself essentially in agreement with the thesis in Shlomo Sand's book, The Invention of the Jewish People.

I'm also quite respectful of the earlier positions of many groups of Reform Jews that "Jews are not a race, Jews are people who practice Judaism."  This was a majoritarian view among Jews before 1945.

This is one (of very many) arguments which I believe refute the claims of Zionists.

Wikipedia has a page on Conversion to Judaism which includes a comment which, while it appeared in a critical review of Sand's book by Israel Bartal in Haaretz, essentially confirms what I view as the central thesis, that Jews are not a "race" and do not constitute (the only) "people" who descended from the area called Palestine prior to 1948.

Bartal writes:

My response to Sand's arguments is that no historian of the Jewish national movement has ever really believed that the origins of the Jews are ethnically and biologically "pure." Sand applies marginal positions to the entire body of Jewish historiography and, in doing so, denies the existence of the central positions in Jewish historical scholarship. No "nationalist" Jewish historian has ever tried to conceal the well-known fact that conversions to Judaism had a major impact on Jewish history in the ancient period and in the early Middle Ages. Although the myth of an exile from the Jewish homeland (Palestine) does exist in popular Israeli culture, it is negligible in serious Jewish historical discussions. Important groups in the Jewish national movement expressed reservations regarding this myth or denied it completely.

That's essentially calling it Old News.  The problem is that this understanding among Jewish historical scholars is completely lost on modern Jewish and Christian Zionists, even very well educated ones.