In an extract from his most recent book, How I Stopped Being A Jew, published in The Guardian, the Israeli historian, Shlomo Sand, expressed the hope "that the cultural distance between my great-grandson and me will be as great or greater than that separating me from my own great-grandfather."


His wish stemmed from a sense of exasperation with fellow citizens of Israel. "I have the misfortune," he wrote, "of living now among too many people who believe their descendants will resemble them in all respects, because for them peoples are eternal - a fortiori a race-people such as the Jews."  Read Swapan Dasgupta's column for the Telegraph.