Huis Clos

"The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a long-range memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the direct continuation of 'the people of the Bible' that preceded it," [Shlomo] Sand explains. Under the influence of other historians who have dealt with the same issue in recent years, he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.

-- from Shattering a 'national mythology' (hat tip OT). The article appears in Haaretz, which also includes Ten ways Israel keeps Hamas afloat .