3. Shlomo Sand: In the 1970s Israel was caught up in the momentum of territorial expansion, and without the Old Testament in its hand and the “exile” of the Jewish people in its memory, it would have had no justification for annexing Arab Jerusalem, and establishing settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and even the Sinai Peninsula.
4. Shlomo Sand: Any mention of the Khazars in the public arena in Israel came to be tagged as eccentric, freakish, and even menacing. There was anxiety about the legitimacy of the Zionist project, should it become widely known that the settling Jewish masses were not the direct descendents of the “Children of Israel”- such de-legitimization might lead to a broad challenge against the State of Israel’s right to exist.