Treatment of Jews in the Arab World
- “Arabs cannot possibly be anti-Semitic as they are themselves Semites.”
- “Modern Arab nations are only anti-Israel and have never been anti-Jewish.”
- “Jews who lived in Islamic countries were well-treated by the Arabs.”
- “As ‘People of the Book,’ Jews and Christians are protected under Islamic law.”
- The Situation Today
MYTH
“Arabs cannot be anti-Semitic as they are themselves Semites.”
FACTThe term “anti-Semite” was coined in Germany in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr to refer to the anti-Jewish manifestations of the period and to give Jew-hatred a more scientific sounding name.1 “Anti-Semitism” has been accepted and understood to mean hatred of the Jewish people. Dictionaries define the term as: “Theory, action, or practice directed against the Jews” and “Hostility towards Jews as a religious or racial minority group, often accompanied by social, economic and political discrimination.”2The claim that Arabs as “Semites” cannot possibly be anti-Semitic is a semantic distortion that ignores the reality of Arab discrimination and hostility toward Jews. Arabs, like any other people, can indeed be anti-Semitic.
“The Arab world is the last bastion of unbridled, unashamed, unhidden and unbelievable anti-Semitism. Hitlerian myths get published in the popular press as incontrovertible truths. The Holocaust either gets minimized or denied....How the Arab world will ever come to terms with Israel when Israelis are portrayed as the devil incarnate is hard to figure out.” — Columnist Richard Cohen3 |
“Modern Arab nations are only anti-Israel and have never been anti-Jewish.”
FACT
Arab leaders have repeatedly made clear their animosity toward Jews and Judaism. For example, on November 23, 1937, Saudi Arabia’s King Ibn Saud told British Colonel H.R.P. Dickson: “Our hatred for the Jews dates from God’s condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus) and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet.” He added “that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew ensures him an immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty.”4
Anti-Semitic articles also regularly appear in the press in Jordan and Syria. Many of the attacks deal with denial of the Holocaust, its “exploitation” by Zionism, and a comparison of Zionism and Israel to Nazism. To its credit, the Jordanian government canceled the broadcast of an anti-Semitic television series base on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.13In November 2001, a satirical skit aired on the second most popular television station in the Arab world, which depicted a character meant to be Ariel Sharon drinking the blood of Arab children as a grotesque-looking Orthodox Jew looked on. Abu Dhabi Television also aired a skit in which Dracula appears to take a bite out of Sharon, but dies because Sharon’s blood is polluted. Protests that these shows were anti-Semitic were ignored by the network.14
The Palestinian Authority’s media have also contained inflammatory and anti-Semitic material. A Friday sermon in the Zayed bin Sultan Aal Nahyan mosque in Gaza calling for the murder of Jews and Americans was broadcast live on the official Palestinian Authority television:Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them and those who stand by them they are all in one trench, against the Arabs and the Muslims because they established Israel here, in the beating heart of the Arab world, in Palestine....15Even Palestinian crossword puzzles are used to delegitimize Israel and attack Jews, providing clues, for example, suggesting the Jewish trait is “treachery.”16
“Jews who lived in Islamic countries were well-treated by the Arabs.”
FACTWhile Jewish communities in Islamic countries fared better overall than those in Christian lands in Europe, Jews were no strangers to persecution and humiliation among the Arabs. As Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis has written: “The Golden Age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam.”17Muhammad, the founder of Islam, traveled to Medina in 622 A.D. to attract followers to his new faith. When the Jews of Medina refused to recognize Muhammad as their Prophet, two of the major Jewish tribes were expelled. In 627, Muhammad’s followers killed between 600 and 900 of the men, and divided the surviving Jewish women and children amongst themselves.18The Muslim attitude toward Jews is reflected in various verses throughout the Koran, the holy book of the Islamic faith. “They [the Children of Israel] were consigned to humiliation and wretchedness. They brought the wrath of God upon themselves, and this because they used to deny God’s signs and kill His Prophets unjustly and because they disobeyed and were transgressors” (Sura 2:61). According to the Koran, the Jews try to introduce corruption (5:64), have always been disobedient (5:78), and are enemies of Allah, the Prophet and the angels (2:97-98).Jews were generally viewed with contempt by their Muslim neighbors; peaceful coexistence between the two groups involved the subordination and degradation of the Jews. In the ninth century, Baghdad’s Caliph al-Mutawakkil designated a yellow badge for Jews, setting a precedent that would be followed centuries later in Nazi Germany.19At various times, Jews in Muslim lands lived in relative peace and thrived culturally and economically. The position of the Jews was never secure, however, and changes in the political or social climate would often lead to persecution, violence and death.When Jews were perceived as having achieved too comfortable a position in Islamic society, anti-Semitism would surface, often with devastating results. On December 30, 1066, Joseph HaNagid, the Jewish vizier of Granada, Spain, was crucified by an Arab mob that proceeded to raze the Jewish quarter of the city and slaughter its 5,000 inhabitants. The riot was incited by Muslim preachers who had angrily objected to what they saw as inordinate Jewish political power.Similarly, in 1465, Arab mobs in Fez slaughtered thousands of Jews, leaving only 11 alive, after a Jewish deputy vizier treated a Muslim woman in “an offensive manner.” The killings touched off a wave of similar massacres throughout Morocco.20Other mass murders of Jews in Arab lands occurred in Morocco in the 8th century, where whole communities were wiped out by the Muslim ruler Idris I; North Africa in the 12th century, where the Almohads either forcibly converted or decimated several communities; Libya in 1785, where Ali Burzi Pasha murdered hundreds of Jews; Algiers, where Jews were massacred in 1805, 1815 and 1830; and Marrakesh, Morocco, where more than 300 Jews were murdered between 1864 and 1880.21Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in Egypt and Syria (1014, 1293-4, 1301-2), Iraq (854-859, 1344) and Yemen (1676). Despite the Koran’s prohibition, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in Yemen (1165 and 1678), Morocco (1275, 1465 and 1790-92) and Baghdad (1333 and 1344).22The situation of Jews in Arab lands reached a low point in the 19th century. Jews in most of North Africa (including Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Morocco) were forced to live in ghettos. In Morocco, which contained the largest Jewish community in the Islamic Diaspora, Jews were made to walk barefoot or wear shoes of straw when outside the ghetto. Even Muslim children participated in the degradation of Jews, by throwing stones at them or harassing them in other ways. The frequency of anti-Jewish violence increased, and many Jews were executed on charges of apostasy. Ritual murder accusations against the Jews became commonplace in the Ottoman Empire.23As distinguished Orientalist G.E. von Grunebaum has written:It would not be difficult to put together the names of a very sizeable number Jewish subjects or citizens of the Islamic area who have attained to high rank, to power, to great financial influence, to significant and recognized intellectual attainment; and the same could be done for Christians. But it would again not be difficult to compile a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms.24The danger for Jews became even greater as a showdown approached in the UN. The Syrian delegate, Faris el-Khouri, warned: “Unless the Palestine problem is settled, we shall have difficulty in protecting and safeguarding the Jews in the Arab world.”25More than a thousand Jews were killed in anti-Jewish rioting during the 1940’s in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Yemen.26 This helped trigger the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries.
“As ‘People of the Book,’ Jews and Christians are protected under Islamic law.”
FACTThis argument is rooted in the traditional concept of the “dhimma” (“writ of protection”), which was extended by Muslim conquerors to Christians and Jews in exchange for their subordination to the Muslims. Yet, as French authority Jacques Ellul has observed: “One must ask:‘protected against whom?’ When this ‘stranger’ lives in Islamic countries, the answer can only be: against the Muslims themselves.”27Peoples subjected to Muslim rule usually had a choice between death and conversion, but Jews and Christians, who adhered to the Scriptures, were usually allowed, as dhimmis, to practice their faith. This “protection” did little, however, to insure that Jews and Christians were treated well by the Muslims. On the contrary, an integral aspect of the dhimma was that, being an infidel, he had to acknowledge openly the superiority of the true believer — the Muslim.In the early years of the Islamic conquest, the “tribute” (or jizya), paid as a yearly poll tax, symbolized the subordination of the dhimmi.28Later, the inferior status of Jews and Christians was reinforced through a series of regulations that governed the behavior of the dhimmi. Dhimmis, on pain of death, were forbidden to mock or criticize the Koran, Islam or Muhammad, to proselytize among Muslims, or to touch a Muslim woman (though a Muslim man could take a non-Muslim as a wife).Dhimmis were excluded from public office and armed service, and were forbidden to bear arms. They were not allowed to ride horses or camels, to build synagogues or churches taller than mosques, to construct houses higher than those of Muslims or to drink wine in public. They were forced to wear distinctive clothing and were not allowed to pray or mourn in loud voices — as that might offend Muslims. The dhimmi also had to show public deference toward Muslims; for example, always yielding them the center of the road. The dhimmi was not allowed to give evidence in court against a Muslim, and his oath was unacceptable in an Islamic court. To defend himself, the dhimmi would have to purchase Muslim witnesses at great expense. This left the dhimmi with little legal recourse when harmed by a Muslim.29By the twentieth century, the status of the dhimmi in Muslim lands had not significantly improved. H.E.W. Young, British Vice Consul in Mosul, wrote in 1909:The attitude of the Muslims toward the Christians and the Jews is that of a master towards slaves, whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place. Any sign of pretension to equality is promptly repressed.30
The Situation of Jews in Arab/Muslim Countries Today
Sources:
1Vamberto Morais, A Short History of Anti-Semitism, (NY: W.W Norton and Co., 1976), p. 11; Bernard Lewis, Semites & Anti-Semites, (NY: WW Norton &Co., 1986), p. 81.
2Oxford English Dictionary; Webster’s Third International Dictionary.
3Washington Post, (October 30, 2001).
4Official British document, Foreign Office File No. 371/20822 E 7201/22/31; Elie Kedourie, Islam in the Modern World, (London: Mansell, 1980), pp. 69-72.
5Howard Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 196.
6Jordanian Nationality Law, Official Gazette, No. 1171, Article 3(3) of Law No. 6, 1954, (February 16, 1954), p. 105.
7Modern World History, Jordanian Ministry of Education, 1966, p. 150.
8Meyrav Wurmser, The Schools of Ba’athism: A Study of Syrian Schoolbooks, (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI), 2000), p. xiii.
9Aaron Klein, “Official PA site publishes ‘Protocols’ in Arabic,” WorldNetDaily, (May 21, 2005).
10Al-Mussawar, (August 4, 1972).
11Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI); Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, (May 15, 1997); Jerusalem Post, (May 23, 2001); Palestine News Agency WAFA, (April 28, 2005).
12Al-Ahram,(October 28, 2000).
13“Anti-Semitic TV Series Cancelled by Jordan,” History News Network, (October 27, 2005).
14Jerusalem Post,(November 19, 2001).
15Palestinian Authority television, (October 14, 2000).
16Palestinian Media Watch, (March 15, 2000).
17Bernard Lewis, “The Pro-Islamic Jews,” Judaism, (Fall 1968), p. 401.
18Bat Ye’or,The Dhimmi, (NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985), pp. 43-44.
19Bat Ye’or, pp. 185-86, 191, 194.
20Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, (PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), p. 84; Maurice Roumani, The Case of the Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, (Tel Aviv: World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, 1977), pp. 26-27; Bat Ye’or, p. 72; Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984) p. 158.
21Stillman, pp. 59, 284.
22Roumani, pp. 26-27.
23G.E. Von Grunebaum, “Eastern Jewry Under Islam,” Viator, (1971), p. 369.
24New York Times, February 19, 1947).
25Roumani, pp. 30-31; Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times, (NY: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), pp. 119-122.
26Bat Ye’or, p. 61.
27Bat Ye’or, p. 30
28Louis Gardet, La Cite Musulmane: Vie sociale et politique, (Paris: Etudes musulmanes,1954), p. 348.
29Bat Ye’or, pp. 56-57.
30Middle Eastern Studies, (1971), p. 232.
As posted on Speedy Media blogspot
The vast majority of Leftists attitude toward Israel, particularly in the United Kingdom, have decided to trade in their civil liberties for the munificent benediction of those who would not think twice about destroying a secular democracy.
For example:
- Why is it that many Muslim nations have legislated ‘Jew/Christian free’ land space (e.g.: Jordan), but Christians and Jews have no such right? Jews are not even allowed to be citizens in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Jews and Christians cannot live in Mecca or even enter it as tourists. It seems that Muslim entitlement to live free from infidels is unquestioned, but any intimation of the reverse is met with ardent accusations of ‘racism’.
- Why is it that the 23 Muslim countries in the Middle East, that have 600 times the land of tiny Israel, demand that the Israelis give up parts of their infinitesimally small land space? The holy land was virtually absent in population prior to the 1880s. Arabs who call themselves ‘Palestinians’ hail from persons who lived in Egypt, ‘Trans-Jordan,’ Lebanon, and Syria 150 years ago. Such was the irony seen in PLO leader, Yassir Arafat. Muslim Arabs already “OCCUPY” 600 times the amount of land that tiny Israel does, so why deprive the Jews of this 1/600 fraction of land space?
- Why is it that Jewish Settlers can’t live in parts of Israel, but Arabs can live anywhere in Israel, often living on Jewish owned land? The Israeli gov’t tosses Jews off of Arab land, but does not do the same to Arabs because of media hypersensitivity to Arabs.
- Statistics from Arab sources about decimated Jewish populations in the M.E.:
Exodus from Arab Muslim countries:
Country 1948 vs 2011
Algeria (1948) 140,0000 – (2011) 0Bahrain (1948) 550-600 – (20011) 37
Egypt (1948) 80,000 – (20011) 100 or less
Iraq (1948) 140,000 – (2011) 11
Lebanon (1948) 20,000 – (2011) 0
Libya (1948) 38,000 – (2011) 0
Morocco (1948) 300,000 – (2011) 3,000 or less
Syria (1948) 40,000 – (2011) 100 or less
Tunisia (1948) 105,000 – (2011) 500 or less
Yemen (1948) 80,000 – (2011) 350 or less
Jordan (1948) 10,000 – (2011) 0
Sudan (1948) 350 – (2011) 0
Total (1948) 953,950 (2011) 4,098 or less
Ma’abarot transit camp, 1950
Exodus from non-Arab Muslim countries:Country 1948 vs 2011
Afghanistan (1948) 5,000 – (2011) 1
Iran (1948) 210, 000 – (2011) 35, 000 0r less
Kurdistan (1948) 120, 000 – (2011) 100 or less
Pakistan (1948) 2,500 – (2011) 100 or less
Turkey (1948) 115, 000 – (2011) 2,500
Total (1948) 452, 500 – (2011) 37, 701
Beit Lid’s Maabara 1950
Looking at these statistics, I think that Arab/Muslims definitely need more living space–NOTAfter getting rid of the Jews in Arab/Muslim countries, I would like to say a word to my Christian friends: try paying a little bit of attention to how Christians are being massacred in tens of Muslim countries, the latest being Pakistan and Egypt where women and children are terrorized for going to Church!
Not to mention over than 2,000,000 (two millions) Christians already murdered in Indonesia.
The Islamic idea is: convert to Islam OR die!!!
Published on Oct 17, 2013
Some say Israel should withdraw its military from the Jordan Valley and rely on international forces for its security. Most Israelis oppose the idea. Our new video explains why.
Learn More: http://jcpa.org/why-israel-opposes-in...
Published on Jun 18, 2013
Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou examines how archaeological discoveries are changing the way people interpret stories from the Bible. Stavrakopoulou visits key archaeological excavations where ground-breaking finds are being unearthed, and examines evidence for and against the Biblical account of King David.
Was the God of Abraham unique? Were the ancient Israelites polytheists? And is it all possible that God had another half? Marshalling compelling evidence from archaeology, Islam and the Bible text itself, she identifies and visits the exact site of Eden.
Did God Have a Wife?
Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou asks whether the ancient Israelites believed in one God as the Bible claims.
She puts the Bible text under the microscope, examining what the original Hebrew said, and explores archaeological sites in Syria and the Sinai which are shedding new light on the beliefs of the people of the Bible.
Was the God of Abraham unique? Were the ancient Israelites polytheists? And is it at all possible that God had another half?
THE GIST
- God, also known as Yahweh, had a wife named Asherah, according to a British theologian.
- Amulets, figurines, inscriptions and ancient texts, including the Bible, reveal Asherah's once prominent standing.
God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar.
In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter.
Information presented in Stavrakopoulou's books, lectures and journal papers has become the basis of a three-part documentary series, now airing in Europe, where she discusses the Yahweh-Asherah connection.
"You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him," writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. "He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many … or so we like to believe."
Despite being regarded in Judaism as the primary factual historical narrative of the origin of the religion, culture and ethnicity, Exodus is now accepted by scholars as having been compiled in the 8th–7th centuries BCE from stories dating possibly as far back as the 13th century BCE, with further polishing in the 6th–5th centuries BCE, as a theological and political manifesto to unite the Israelites in the then‐current battle for territory against Egypt.[2]
Archaeologists from the 19th century onward were actually surprised not to find any evidence whatsoever for the events of Exodus. By the 1970s, archaeologists had largely given up regarding the Bible as any use at all as a field guide.
The archaeological evidence of local Canaan, rather than Egyptian, origins of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel is "overwhelming," and leaves "no room for an Exodus from Egypt or a 40‐year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness."[3] The culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult objects are of the Canaanite god El, the pottery is in the local Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet is early Canaanite. Almost the sole marker distinguishing Israelite villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones.
It is considered possible that those Canaanites who started regarding themselves as the Israelites were joined or led by a small group of Semites from Egypt, possibly the Hyksos poeple, possibly carrying stories that made it into Exodus. As the tribe expanded, they may have begun to clash with neighbors, perhaps sparking the tales of conflict in Joshua and Judges.
William Dever, an archaeologist normally associated with the more conservative end of Syro-Palestinian archaeology, has labeled the question of the historicity of Exodus “dead.” Israeli archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog provides the current consensus view on the historicity of the Exodus: “The Israelites never were in Egypt. They never came from abroad. This whole chain is broken. It is not a historical one. It is a later legendary reconstruction—made in the seventh century [BCE]—of a history that never happened.”[4]
Top Israeli scientist says Ashkenazi Jews came from Khazaria, not Palestine
An Israeli geneticist challenges the “Zionist” hypothesis that all Jews belong to one race and are intimately related, thus giving them a common ancestor in the Holy Land and a Biblical claim to Palestine.
Scientists usually don’t call each other “liars” and “frauds.” But that’s how Johns Hopkins University post-doctoral researcher Eran Elhaik describes a group of widely respected geneticists, including Harry Ostrer, professor of pathology and genetics at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine and author of the 2012 book “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People.”
For years now, the findings of Ostrer and several other scientists have stood virtually unchallenged on the genetics of Jews and the story they tell of the common Middle East origins shared by many Jewish populations worldwide. Jews — and Ashkenazim in particular — are indeed one people, Ostrer’s research finds. It’s a theory that more or less affirms the understanding that many Jews themselves hold of who they are in the world: a people who, though scattered, share an ethnic-racial bond rooted in their common ancestral descent from the indigenous Jews of ancient Judea or Palestine, as the Romans called it after they conquered the Jewish homeland. But now, Elhaik, an Israeli molecular geneticist, has published research that he says debunks this claim. And that has set off a predictable clash.
“He’s just wrong,” said Marcus Feldman of Stanford University, a leading researcher in Jewish genetics, referring to Elhaik. The sometimes strong emotions generated by this scientific dispute stem from a politically loaded question that scientists and others have pondered for decades: Where in the world did Ashkenazi Jews come from?
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The debate touches upon such sensitive issues as whether the Jewish people is a race or a religion, and whether Jews or Palestinians are descended from the original inhabitants of what is now the State of Israel.
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Ostrer’s theory is sometimes marshaled to lend the authority of science to the Zionist narrative, which views the migration of modern-day Jews to what is now Israel, and their rule over that land, as a simple act of repossession by the descendants of the land’s original residents. Ostrer declined to be interviewed for this story. But in his writings, Ostrer points out the dangers of such reductionism; some of the same genetic markers common among Jews, he finds, can be found in Palestinians, as well.
By using sophisticated molecular tools, Feldman, Ostrer and most other scientists in the field have found that Jews are genetically homogeneous. No matter where they live, these scientists say, Jews are genetically more similar to each other than to their non-Jewish neighbors, and they have a shared Middle Eastern ancestry.
The geneticists’ research backs up what is known as the Rhineland Hypothesis. According to the hypothesis, Ashkenazi Jews descended from Jews who fled Palestine after the Muslim conquest in the seventh century and settled in Southern Europe. In the late Middle Ages they moved into eastern Europe from Germany, or the Rhineland.
“Nonsense,” said Elhaik, a 33-year-old Israeli Jew from Beersheba who earned a doctorate in molecular evolution from the University of Houston. The son of an Italian man and Iranian woman who met in Israel, Elhaik, a dark-haired, compact man, sat down recently for an interview in his bare, narrow cubicle of an office at Hopkins, where he’s worked for four years.
In “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses,” published in December in the online journal Genome Biology and Evolution, Elhaik says he has proved that Ashkenazi Jews’ roots lie in the Caucasus — a region at the border of Europe and Asia that lies between the Black and Caspian seas — not in the Middle East. They are descendants, he argues, of the Khazars, a Turkic people who lived in one of the largest medieval states in Eurasia and then migrated to Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. Ashkenazi genes, Elhaik added, are far more heterogeneous than Ostrer and other proponents of the Rhineland Hypothesis believe. Elhaik did find a Middle Eastern genetic marker in DNA from Jews, but, he says, it could be from Iran, not ancient Judea.
Elhaik writes that the Khazars converted to Judaism in the eighth century, although many historians believe that only royalty and some members of the aristocracy converted. But widespread conversion by the Khazars is the only way to explain the ballooning of the European Jewish population to 8 million at the beginning of the 20th century from its tiny base in the Middle Ages, Elhaik says.
Elhaik bases his conclusion on an analysis of genetic data published by a team of researchers led by Doron Behar, a population geneticist and senior physician at Israel’s Rambam Medical Center, in Haifa. Using the same data, Behar’s team published in 2010 a paper concluding that most contemporary Jews around the world and some non-Jewish populations from the Levant, or Eastern Mediterranean, are closely related.
Elhaik used some of the same statistical tests as Behar and others, but he chose different comparisons. Elhaik compared “genetic signatures” found in Jewish populations with those of modern-day Armenians and Georgians, which he uses as a stand-in for the long-extinct Khazarians because they live in the same area as the medieval state.
“It’s an unrealistic premise,” said University of Arizona geneticist Michael Hammer, one of Behar’s co-authors, of Elhaik’s paper. Hammer notes that Armenians have Middle Eastern roots, which, he says, is why they appeared to be genetically related to Ashkenazi Jews in Elhaik’s study.
Hammer, who also co-wrote the first paper that showed modern-day Kohanim are descended from a single male ancestor, calls Elhaik and other Khazarian Hypothesis proponents “outlier folks… who have a minority view that’s not supported scientifically. I think the arguments they make are pretty weak and stretching what we know.”
Feldman, director of Stanford’s Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, echoes Hammer. “If you take all of the careful genetic population analysis that has been done over the last 15 years… there’s no doubt about the common Middle Eastern origin,” he said. He added that Elhaik’s paper “is sort of a one-off.”
Elhaik’s statistical analysis would not pass muster with most contemporary scholars, Feldman said: “He appears to be applying the statistics in a way that gives him different results from what everybody else has obtained from essentially similar data.”
Elhaik, who doesn’t believe that Moses, Aaron or the 12 Tribes of Israel ever existed, shrugs off such criticism.
“That’s a circular argument,” he said of the notion that Jews’ and Armenians’ genetic similarities stem from common ancestors in the Middle East and not from Khazaria, the area where the Armenians live. If you believe that, he says, then other non-Jewish populations, such as Georgian, that are genetically similar to Armenians should be considered genetically related to Jews, too, “and so on and so forth.”
Dan Graur, Elhaik’s doctoral supervisor at U.H. and a member of the editorial board of the journal that published his paper, calls his former student “very ambitious, very independent. That’s what I like.” Graur, a Romanian-born Jew who served on the faculty of Tel Aviv University for 22 years before moving 10 years ago to the Houston school, said Elhaik “writes more provocatively than may be needed, but it’s his style.” Graur calls Elhaik’s conclusion that Ashkenazi Jews originated to the east of Germany “a very honest estimate.”
In a news article that accompanied Elhaik’s journal paper, Shlomo Sand, history professor at Tel Aviv University and author of the controversial 2009 book “The Invention of the Jewish People,” said the study vindicated his long-held ideas.
”It’s so obvious for me,” Sand told the journal. “Some people, historians and even scientists, turn a blind eye to the truth. Once, to say Jews were a race was anti-Semitic, now to say they’re not a race is anti-Semitic. It’s crazy how history plays with us.”
The paper has received little coverage in mainstream American media, but it has attracted the attention of anti-Zionists and “anti-Semitic white supremacists,” Elhaik said.
Interestingly, while anti-Zionist bloggers have applauded Elhaik’s work, saying it proves that contemporary Jews have no legitimate claim to Israel, some white supremacists have attacked it.
David Duke, for example, is disturbed by the assertion that Jews are not a race. “The disruptive and conflict-ridden behavior which has marked out Jewish Supremacist activities through the millennia strongly suggests that Jews have remained more or less genetically uniform and have… developed a group evolutionary survival strategy based on a common biological unity — something which strongly militates against the Khazar theory,” wrote the former Ku Klux Klansman and former Louisiana state assemblyman on his blog in February.
“I’m not communicating with them,” Elhaik said of the white supremacists. He says it also bothers him, a veteran of seven years in the Israeli army, that anti-Zionists have capitalized on his research “and they’re not going to be proven wrong anytime soon.” But proponents of the Rhineland Hypothesis also have a political agenda, he said, claiming they “were motivated to justify the Zionist narrative.” To illustrate his point, Elhaik swivels his chair around to face his computer and calls up a 2010 email exchange with Ostrer.
“It was a great pleasure reading your group’s recent paper, ‘Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era,’ that illuminate[s] the history of our people,” Elhaik wrote to Ostrer. “Is it possible to see the data used for the study?” Ostrer replied that the data are not publicly available. “It is possible to collaborate with the team by writing a brief proposal that outlines what you plan to do,” he wrote. “Criteria for reviewing include novelty and strength of the proposal, non-overlap with current or planned activities, and non-defamatory nature toward the Jewish people.” That last requirement, Elhaik argues, reveals the bias of Ostrer and his collaborators. Allowing scientists access to data only if their research will not defame Jews is “peculiar,” said Catherine DeAngelis, who edited the Journal of the American Medical Association for a decade. “What he does is set himself up for criticism: Wait a minute. What’s this guy trying to hide?”
Despite what his critics claim, Elhaik says, he was not out to prove that contemporary Jews have no connection to the Jewish people of the Bible. His primary research focus is the genetics of mental illness, which, he explains, led him to question the assumption that Ashkenazi Jews are a useful population to study because they’re so homogeneous.
Elhaik says he first read about the Khazarian Hypothesis a decade ago in a 1976 book by the late Hungarian-British author Arthur Koestler, “The Thirteenth Tribe,” written before scientists had the tools to compare genomes.
Koestler, who was Jewish by birth, said his aim in writing the book was to eliminate the racist underpinnings of anti-Semitism in Europe. “Should this theory be confirmed, the term ‘anti-Semitism’ would become void of meaning,” the book jacket reads. Although Koestler’s book was generally well reviewed, some skeptics questioned the author’s grasp of the history of Khazaria.
Graur is not surprised that Elhaik has stood up against the “clique” of scientists who believe that Jews are genetically homogeneous. “He enjoys being combative,” Graur said. “That’s what science is.”
TheThirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler
ABOUT THE BOOKThe Thirteenth Tribe is a book that attempts to explain the origins of Eastern Europe's Jewish population,largely decimated by the Nazi onslaught during the Second World War. Koestler shows through extensive research, how a trading empire was set up by a tribe we know as the Khazars between the expanding power blocs of Christianity and Islam; how the people were converted to Judaism by their king as a way of standing apart from both, and how the people and their wealth were dispersed through the countries of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Khazar Empire.
It is a controversial history; because it challenges both the assumptions of Nazi philosophy and Zionism that the European Jews were racially different from the populations of the countries in which they later settled.
Koestler, as a Hungarian Jew himself, was particularly interested in the major part the Khazars played in the founding of the Hungarian nation; a fact which later led to the tragedy of 1944, when the Nazis exterminated over half-a -million Hungarian Jews, who were virtually indistinguishable from their Christian neighbours.
First published in Britain in 1976, this classic book by Arthur Koestler in now largely unavailable.
The native form of this personal name is Kösztler Artúr.
Arthur Koestler, CBE (5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-British author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931 Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany until, disillusioned by Stalinism, he resigned in 1938. In 1940 he published his novel Darkness at Noon, an anti-totalitarian work, which gained him international fame. Over the next 43 years from his residence in Great Britain, Koestler espoused many political causes and wrote novels, memoirs, biographies, and numerous essays. In 1968, he was awarded the Sonning Prize "for outstanding contribution to European culture" and, in 1972, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In 1976, Koestler was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and, in 1979, with terminal leukaemia.[2] In 1983 he and his wife committed suicide at home in London.
ARTHUR KOESTLER was born in 1905 in Budapest. Though he studied science and psychology in Vienna, at the age of twenty he became a foreign correspondent and worked for various European newspapers in the Middle East, Paris, Berlin, Russia and Spain. During the Spanish Civil War, which he covered from the Republican side, he was captured and imprisoned for several months by the Nationalists, but was exchanged after international protest. In 1939-40 he was interned in a French detention camp. After his release, due to British government intervention, he joined the French Foreign Legion, subsequently escaped to England, and joined the British Army.
Koestler saw in the Soviet experiment the only hope and alternative to fascism. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1931, but left it in disillusionment during the Moscow purges in 1938. His earlier books were mainly concerned with these experiences, either in autobiographical form or in essays or political novels. Among the latter, Darkness At Noon has been translated into thirty-three languages.
After World War II, Mr. Koestler became a British citizen, and all his books since 1940 have been written in English, He now lives in London. but he frequently lectures at American universities, and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 1964-65,
In 1968 Mr. Koestler received the Sonning Prize at the University of Copenhagen for his contributions to European culture. He is also a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, as well as one of the ten Companions of Literature, elected by the Royal Society of Literature. His works are now being republished in a collected edition of twenty volumes.
He died in 1981, in a 'suicide pact' with his wife - a tragedy that has aroused some suspicion since, in conspiracy circles.
This review is from: DNA and Tradition: The Genetic Link to the Ancient Hebrews (Paperback)
According to the author, the book is constructed around a scientific comparison of the genetical properties of sefardita and askhenazim Jews. But accordingly to the book, the samples were obtained from anatolian sefarditas, theoretically expelled from Spain in 1492.But according to Kevin Alan Brooks and Arthur Koestler, when the massive, definitive khazarian diaspora occurred from the 11th to 13th centuries, many khazarians arrived to Spain, motivated by the known existence of a previous powerful, old Jewish comunity , stablished at the iberian peninsula since the roman empire times. Apparently these khazarians arrived to Spain in the same migratory wave than indostanian gypsies. The old iberian jews were, at the medieval times, solid propietors of land and commercial business, with complex ties with both christian and muslim comunities along the entire peninsula. When the pressure to conversion occurs in 1492, a considerable majority of spanish jews prefered to remain in the iberian peninsula, and accepted the conversion to christianism, at least publicaly. As a result, a vast majority of current spaniards have at least a 50% of their surnames from converse-jew origin (names like Garzon, Franco, Delgado, Blanco, Cerdán, Rojo and many thousands more tipical spanish names were originated from this massive jew-to-christian conversion process ).
If this hipotesis is correct, then the jews expelled from Spain in 1492, can be wrongly catalogued as true "sefarditas", as they could be mainly composed of poor, khazarian jews newcomers, that were forced to return as near as possible to their original land -anatolia- when the conversion process was executed. In an opposed way, the old, well stablished jews from older diasporas to the iberian peninsula, surely melt in the spanish medieval society slowly, simply to mantain their well achieved "status quo" in the iberian society.
In other words, to compare askenazim DNA to this "sefarad" DNA can be poorly useful to clarify the true genetical origins of current jews.
I want to made a propossal, an interesting study to be done: I don't see in the book any comparison -by example- between current spaniards and palestinian DNA haplotypes, to see the most than probable coincidences, then if the author wants to shut down forever the khazarian origin theory, this genetical study must be accomplished.
This is the correct starting point to clarify the question, isn't? (Madrid, Spain)
Uploaded on Sep 25, 2010
Excerpt of a lecture by Dr. Jon Entine discussing why the Jewish people are interesting research subjects for genetic and DNA research. And how it helps us track the origins of and the differences between different Jewish Groups. Also in this lecture, Dr. Entine explores the myth about Khazar Jews (Khazars AKA the 13th tribe) and the fact that at least according to Rabbinical Judaism, most Jews today are not Jews according to the halakha (stuff for thought).
More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealog...
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/conten...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars
ABOUT THE LECTURE:
The author of the highly acclaimed and controversial book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It, investigative journalist Jon Entine, in his new book Abraham's Children, attempts to answer new taboo topics, such as: Did Moses really live? What was the real fate of the Lost Tribes? How did the advent of Christianity change the DNA of humanity, and why Jews — the tiniest fraction of the world's population — score highest on intelligence tests and hold so many Nobel Prizes, why there are disproportionately so many more Jewish lawyers and doctors, and what the answers to such questions tell us about human nature and nurture. Entine vividly brings to life the profound human implications of the Age of Genetics, retelling the story of the Bible through the prism of DNA, while illuminating one of today's most controversial topics: the connection between genetics and identity. The focus of genome research has shifted from our shared humanity to human differences, and we are now confronted with questions once considered taboo.
More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealog...
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/conten...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars
ABOUT THE LECTURE:
The author of the highly acclaimed and controversial book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It, investigative journalist Jon Entine, in his new book Abraham's Children, attempts to answer new taboo topics, such as: Did Moses really live? What was the real fate of the Lost Tribes? How did the advent of Christianity change the DNA of humanity, and why Jews — the tiniest fraction of the world's population — score highest on intelligence tests and hold so many Nobel Prizes, why there are disproportionately so many more Jewish lawyers and doctors, and what the answers to such questions tell us about human nature and nurture. Entine vividly brings to life the profound human implications of the Age of Genetics, retelling the story of the Bible through the prism of DNA, while illuminating one of today's most controversial topics: the connection between genetics and identity. The focus of genome research has shifted from our shared humanity to human differences, and we are now confronted with questions once considered taboo.
Orthodox Jewish Zionist harasses a Palestinian woman and calls her a whore (sharmouta) in front of her kids. This Orthodox Jewish Settler from Tel Rumeida will pay for all the damage they are causing to our people in our own land of Palestine. This Hebrew woman is known in the city for harassing Palestinians on a daily basis and throwing rocks at them with other Hebrew settlers.
Judaism is not the same than Zionism
What is Antisemitism today, two generations after the Holocaust? In his continuing exploration of modern Israeli life, director Yoav Shamir travels the world in search of the most modern manifestations of the "oldest hatred", and comes up with some startling answers.
In this irreverent quest, he follows American Jewish leaders to the capitals of Europe, as they warn government officials of the growing threat of Antisemitism, and he tacks on to a class of Israeli high school students on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz.
On his way, Shamir meets controversial historian, Norman Finkelstein, who offers his views on the manner that Antisemitism is being used by the Jewish community and especially Israel for political gain. He also joins scholars, Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer, while they give a lecture in Israel following the release of their book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy", about the disproportional influence the Israel lobby in Washington enjoys.
Yoav visits Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, the must stop for all world leaders on their visits to Israel. While in Jerusalem, he drops by the house of his grandmother that offers her insight on the issue and declares that she is the "real Jew".
US Congressman Ron Paul - Israel created Hamas to destabilize Arafat who was very powerful at the time Zionism is a geopolitical movement founded a little over 100 years ago by Theodore Herzl and pushed forward by the Rothschilds. Israel is a nuclear state Israelis an apartheid state Israelis not a US ally Israel is not a democracy
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