Last week, I argued you couldn’t be Jewish (in any religious sense) and defend Israel’s actions.
The great Rabbi Hillell, challenged to teach the Torah while standing on one leg, said:
“What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”
It should then be obvious that stealing people’s houses, beating them, destroying their orchards, and killing them is in complete opposition to the whole Torah.
Now everyone who isn’t a bald-faced liar or a fool knows that Israel uses its “Jewish” status as a shield. If you criticize Israeli crimes against humanity or war crimes, you are called an anti-semite. Lives are destroyed, routinely, by accusations of anti-semitism.
Meanwhile, we have actual anti-semitism caused by the reaction to Israel’s crimes. People get mad, and a very few attack Jews.
“Somebody in one of the cars driving by started throwing glass bottles or glass cups at the tables and they shattered everywhere,” she said. A bunch of the cars stopped, and maybe 30 of the men in the cars got out, started running towards the tables and asking indiscriminately, ‘Who’s Jewish?’”
No one was seriously hurt. Los Angeles police said they are investigating this as a hate crime, with five victims who were either punched or injured by broken glass.
Obviously this is horrible, though nothing near as bad as what is happening to Palestinians as I write. But it could be a precursor of far worse actions.
Anti-semitism is terrible. It shouldn’t be tolerated.
And Israel creates it on a vast scale by claiming to be a Jewish state, then committing atrocities, then using that they are Jewish as a shield from criticism or change.
In effect, Israel claims that its crimes are Jewish crimes. To criticize them is to criticize Jews.
This is bullshit. Israel is a settler apartheid state, but it’s not Jewish except somewhat ethnically, because what it does routinely; what it did to create itself (cleanse Palestinians at its birth, and steal their homes) is against the whole Torah.
Israel isn’t Jewish. They’re an evil state who has stolen the cloak of a great religion, which under Rabbinical guidance has largely been peaceful, and used abhorrence of the Holocaust and anti-semitism to allow them to steal and murder.
Stealing and murdering aren’t Jewish, they are what Judaism stands against.
The way forward is simple: Jews and non-Jews need to push back, at every chance, when Israel claims to be Jewish. It isn’t
When it is seen that it isn’t, this will both make Jews outside of Israel (and within Israel who oppose Israel’s crimes) safer, and make a one-state settlement which makes everyone in Israel-Palestine a citizen and equal before the law more likely.
If Israel isn’t Jewish, then it’s no big deal to have Palestinians be citizens.
Israel as a state that claims to be Jewish, and uses its supposed Judaism as a shield against criticism of its crimes, needs to end.
What will remain is a state that by treating everyone equally (do not do to your fellow what is hateful to you) will be more Jewish for proclaiming it less.
May God, in all his forms, bless those who seek equality and peace and cast his gaze upon Israel, who claim to be his children, and bring to them Justice with Mercy.
(The more people subscribe or donate the more I write and the happier
Willy
The ultra-orthodox Jew is said to be the second most hated group by Israelis, next to the Arabs. Go figure. Apparently greed is good, because it’s even stronger than Yahweh.
Hugh
Curiously, diaspora comes from Greek. The verb shows up once in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament book Deuteronomy 28:25. The modern use does not show up until the early nineteenth century, not with reference to Jews, but to Moravian Protestants.
Jan Wiklund
One can add that during the Prohibition, the mobsters were recruited mainly from three ethnicities – Italian, Irish and Jewish.
Of course mostly because they were late immigrant with too few foots in the legal labor market. There was nothing particularly Italian, Irish or Jewish about being a mobster.
Joan
@Willy, why is that, do you know? I’d think the Orthodox would be super pro-Israel.
nihil obstet
Zionism came out of the nationalism movements of the 19th c. The various “peoples” of the Austro-Hungarian empire were seeking their own nations, and used terrorist methods to pursue their dreams. Their most famous act was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist, acting for a nationalist organization. Woodrow Wilson’s “self-determination of peoples” as a condition of the WWI peace treaty enshrined this ethnic/racial vision. This applied, however, only to whites. The European empires were left undisturbed.
By mid-19th c., various Jews had adopted the dream of a Jewish nation, like the other European nations. And, like other Europeans, they felt that the presence of natives was no barrier to their own desires.
Israel was formed during the heyday of racist doctrines awarding good things to whites. It’s hard to break out of that ideology.
DMC
It’s as I remarked a few articles ago, the Haredim, who have called Palestine home for hundreds if not thousands of years, completely reject the modern state of Israel and consider Zionism to be heresy if not apostey. “If they do not live as Jews if they do not act as Jews why call them Jews?” It is precisely because they are Orthodox, that they reject Zionism and are consequently thoroughly hated by the Zionists for giving the whole “Zionism equals Judaism” away for the lie it is. Originally, essentially no religious Jews supported Israel. They’ve been won over by the Zionists by putting orthodox rabbis in charge of who is deemed a Jew for purposes of immigration and marriage. Just remember that when Zionists pull the anti-Semitism card, to tell them they are no Jews and then watch the fun ensue.
Soredemos
I appreciate that Hillel quote in that it’s advocating universal humanist values, but it’s also a reading that is completely incompatible with what the Torah actually says. Particularly if we’re talking about ‘Torah’ as just referring to specifically the first five books of the Tanakh. Because the narrative as a whole is incredibly ugly (genocide, among other things), and the laws given are frequently insane and anything but humanistic (specific rules for slavery, stone non-virgin women to death, and so on).
Here’s the part where someone jumps in and says something like “well see, it’s actually all a complex poetic metaphor for something something something”, in which case the divine is apparently the most inept communicator imaginable.
@Joan
Because they see modern Israel as a man-made affront to God™. If and when God wants Israel reformed, he’ll do it himself. Israel is seen as a presumptuous act of human arrogance.
Trinity
‘Israel uses its “Jewish” status as a shield’
This is fantastic, just kind of summed it up and gave me a great visual, too.
Also made me start thinking about what other “shields” are in play.
And how a shield can also be a weapon. Captain America does this frequently.
Great article, Ian. Thought provoking as always.
Purple Library Guy
@Joan The Ultra-Orthodox get a special deal in Israel. No military service and some kind of welfare thing. And they tend to big families. The other Israelis feel they’re a bunch of moochers who breed like rabbits and aren’t doing their fair share of the work oppressing Palestinians.
Feral Finster
Israel is officially a secular state. Therefore, reliance on Judaism for its claims to Palestine is but a figleaf, an justification for robbery. It’s as if the village atheist were to excuse himself by saying that God told him that he had to steal other people’s cars.
Anyway, the largest Hassidic dynasty, as measured by number of adherents, the Satmar, consider Zionism and the State of Israel to be literally Satanic, not to mention a moral embarrassment to Jews everywhere.
The Satmar and some other branches of Hassidism will have nothing to do with Israel. IIRC, the Satmar refuse to even set foot there for as long as Israel exists.
Joan
Thanks everyone for the clarifications. They make a lot of sense and also explain why I’ve never seen an Israeli flag in the Jewish sector of my city.
Ché Pasa
Clarifying, yes. Israel is a throwback to the 19th Century, a colonial-settler state that very much doesn’t belong there, as the madness of so many of its residents too often demonstrate. Most of those residents are Europeans, Americans or Russians (not necessarily the same thing), in the midst of a largely Arab population, who might have come and stayed in relative peace but for their apparent ideology of conquest — directed by the Sky God Yahweh, for ancient, twisted karmic reasons of his own.
Throwbacks everywhere.
Observers are still trying to piece together the puzzle of what happened to bring the current conflict between Israel and the prisoners of Gaza to a relatively quick though bloody close. Somehow Netanyahu’s chain got yanked I guess.
Meanwhile, yes, there are plenty of Jews who despise the Zionist Project in the Middle East. It was misbegotten to begin with. And there are many Christians (“”) who love it to death.
Literally.
Plague Species
Diamonds are Forever
Bridget
Israel and its history as told by the Zionists is a mainstay of Jewish life in the United States.
anon
“Israel isn’t Jewish. They’re an evil state who has stolen the cloak of a great religion, which under Rabbinical guidance has largely been peaceful, and used abhorrence of the Holocaust and anti-semitism to allow them to steal and murder.
Stealing and murdering aren’t Jewish, they are what Judaism stands against.”
Well said. I have more respect for the teachings of Buddhism and Judaism than many other religious thought. They are not innocent of atrocities either, but they have largely been peaceful compared to other religions. I have also seen Jewish radicals attack their own people who criticize Israel. We saw it with Bernie Sanders who was actually accused of being anti-Semitic despite having family who died in the holocaust. It’s a shame that good Jewish people across the world who will be victimized for Israel’s crimes.
Plague Species
So, bringing it back to center, what should be done contrasted with what can practically be done to finally solve this dynamic worsening dilemma.
Here’s a starter list of what should be done.
1) Have AIPAC register as a foreign agent.
2) As James Baker insisted three decades prior before he was shouted down and admonished, make aid to Israel of any form dependent upon conditions and those conditions much be even more strict than what James Baker was suggesting.
3.) Make it a law that no one with dual citizenship can hold public office. Call that discriminatory, I don’t care. There are plenty of people who can hold office who don’t have dual citizenship. The reason for this is, many who are in influential government positions past and present who were born in America and were American citizens first and foremost, out of fealty to Israel and because of Israeli influence, have obtained Israeli citizenship. This should preclude them from public office and if they try to influence government via lobbying, they also must register as foreign agents.
4.) If Israel continues this path of destruction even if aid is withheld, boycott Israel as Cuba was boycotted. Render it a pariah apartheid state and ostracize it into submission.
That’s just part of what should be done. A start. But what can practically be done considering Israel’s far-reaching influence on American and Western governance and media. This is a tougher nut to crack.
Considering that last statement, my prediction is nothing substantial will be done and this will all continue and only get worse. The ingredients don’t exist to resolve it constructively and equitably. No ingredients and no oven, no cake.
Plague Species
An epic blockbuster film called The Nakba would go a long way in much the same manner as Roots did or Holocaust (1978 miniseries) or Schindler’s List or The Pianist. Heart and minds.
Jeremy
Listening to the hateful invective emanating from these Jewish Israelis is truly shocking.
https://youtu.be/dC36i3NRJgI?t=438
Plague Species
From that video, the twerp says “we were kicked out and a thousand years later we come back and take what is rightfully ours” is complete bullsh*t. Most Israelis are Ashkenazis and Ashkenazis are not the original Jewish people — they are converts. This dork doesn’t know his history. He is living a lie. A lie of convenience.
The British are as much to blame for this predicament as any other group. Without British meddling and double-dealing, Israel wouldn’t exist today or at least not in Palestine.
Bridget
In a letter dated November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour presented Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, of the famous banking family, with a statement of policy from the British government. The letter stated:
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
The British government was in perpetual debt to high finance. This letter was presented to Lord Walter Rothschild. Just pause and reflect on the language here. Who has the power?
Of course mostly because they were late immigrant with too few foots in the legal labor market. There was nothing particularly Italian, Irish or Jewish about being a mobster.
What were the Italian-American and Irish-American equivalents of Goldman, Sachs, Kuhn, Loeb, Lehman, Seligman, Semon Bache, Lewisohn, Belmont. Abraham, Speyer, Wertheim, Hellgarten, Guggenheim, Strauss, Rothschild. I could go on.
These conversations are ridiculous on their face.
Howard
As a resident of the United States, I must say that of the Jewish people of my close acquaintance, all but two are active and vocal supporters of the Palestinian people, and all are decent, kind people in general (including the two who identify as Zionist).
I tremble for all of them:
At some point US empire will either be too weak or will have changed its interests to the point where it no longer needs the State of Israel. Material support of Israel will stop, and at that time, many of the Christian Zionist and non-Jewish neocon supporters of Israel will go over to the side of overt, traditional, rabid anti-Semitism.
Soredemos
@Plague Species
“Most Israelis are Ashkenazis and Ashkenazis are not the original Jewish people — they are converts.”
No, this is crap. This is the Khazar myth, which is much beloved by actual antisemites, as well as Jewish intellectual lightweights centered around Shlomo Sand.
It’s been completely demolished by the genetic evidence, which shows very clearly that the Jewish diaspora is descended from a Levantine population and has maintained a remarkable degree of genetic coherence over the centuries (Sand’s response to this fact was basically to whine that scientists were proving Hitler right. What Hitler would or would not have approved up is irrelevant to what the science shows).
It’s also logically nonsensical from the point of view of opposing Zionism, since it implicitly concedes the argument that “my ancestors once lived here” is a valid reason to steal the land of someone living in a place in the present. It isn’t, and that’s not even getting into the fact that Palestinian ‘Arabs’ are also mostly the descendants of people who never left the Levant in the first place. Zionists have been murdering their own cousins this whole time.
metamars
Steve Bannon’s War Room Pandemic crew, which I generally respect, and find hopeful in that they are correctly directing disgruntled MAGA types to seize real power in the Republican Party away from RINO’s, have nonetheless shown themselves to be very one-sided toward Israel. Indeed, just today I heard Bannon declare himself a “Christian Zionist”. His friend, Rabbi Spero, says prayers on his show that sound like too-long editorials, which somehow overlook the desperate position of the Palestinians. As God already knows all the details, it would appears that the War Room Pandemic listenership is the real target of these ‘prayers’.
Based on what I’ve heard over the last 3 weeks (maybe 3 hours per week; I don’t listen to all their shows), War Room Pandemic have no more interest in giving a Palestinian perspective than they do in examining how consistent an “America First” policy can be with one that largely kowtows to Israel’s “Israel First” policy.
Thus, Bannon’s personal position on Israel appears to be unofficial policy for his entire War Room Pandemic operation.
Srdja Trifkovic, the brilliant foreign affairs editor for paleo-conservative chronicles magazine, is far more rational and even-handed on IP. Alas, he and other paleo conservative don’t seem to have any particular talent for promoting political organization, or ability to command eyeballs. Thus, his pessimism about any resolution on I/P, in our lifetimes, seems inescapable. See “The Forgotten Reason for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” at chroniclesmagazine.
Finally, I’m not aware that Trump, the Great Negotiator, got ANYTHING for the Palestinians for moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. In his own, blunderful way, Trump appears to have contributed to the current flareup, by making the Palestinian situation even more desperate.
Bridget
Bannon was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, then an executive producer in Hollywood, then co-founded Breitbart with….Andrew Breitbart. He ‘s moved in these circles his entire life. Jewish circles. Israel circles.
Trump had Chabad-Lubavitch in-house, for chrissake. The Kushner family. Ivanka knows all about this stuff. Well, apparently she didn’t learn so well and her conversion wasn’t exactly kosher. Then Trump became president and….well, so much for those steadfast Judaic principles. [see article below for a chuckle]
Trump was funded by Adelson, the Mercers, et al. Trump himself grew up around – and later operated in – New York real estate circles. New York real estate. New York finance. He probably owes money to these guys. He was a gift to Israel.
Last summer, Israel’s religious authorities issued a ruling that raised doubts about her conversion to Judaism. But after her father was elected president, they have changed their tune, raising eyebrows among activists who have long lobbied the rabbinical establishment to be more tolerant toward converts.
President Donald Trump’s daughter converted to Judaism under a prominent Orthodox rabbi in Manhattan before her 2009 marriage to Jared Kushner, an observant Jew.
In its ruling last July, an Israeli government religious court rejected the legitimacy of another conversion by the same rabbi. Although it didn’t directly affect Ivanka Trump, it raised questions as to whether Israel’s powerful religious establishment would recognize her as being Jewish.
But in early December, just weeks after Trump’s election victory, Israel’s chief rabbis said they would work to change the rules for recognizing conversions performed abroad — and they singled out Ivanka Trump.
“According to the new proposed plan … her conversion will be certified without the need for additional checks,” the announcement said.
Israeli activists say the sudden policy change appears to be an attempt to curry favor with the new U.S. president. Ivanka Trump’s husband has been appointed a senior adviser to Trump and is expected to focus on Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
https://news.yahoo.com/ivanka-trump-jewish-israel-she-trump-card-061445404.html
The indigenous population of what the entire world knew as Palestine* never had a chance. Trump was Israel’s man the entire time.
*except for the small Jewish population that was native to Palestine and lived peacefully, which was safely incorporated into the new Jewish ethnostate (although some of them were threatened by Zionists to support the state, much as Jews native to neighboring regions were terrorized by Jewish Zionist thugs into emigrating to Israel).
Mark Pontin
Soredemos: ” Zionists have been murdering their own cousins this whole time.”
Quite. On one level they know that, too, because back in the 1980s and 90s the Israelis researched bioweapons with targeting specificity to effect Arabs only, till they gave it up because they found that for practical purposes they were the same population genetically.
In the bigger picture, Israelis and Palestinians are engaged in a demographic war — trying to out-breed and out-populate the other — for a part of the Earth that as global warming proceeds will be uninhabitable before the century’s end.
Two tribes of vicious morons, essentially.
No one should be naive enough to believe that if matters were reversed, the Palestinians wouldn’t be trying to do to the Jews what the Israelis are now trying to do the Palestinians. The British came in at the end of WWII because the Palestinians tried to do a local genocide on the Jews there; the Grand Mufti spent WWII in Berlin with the blessings of Hitler and the Nazis.
metamars: “Steve Bannon’s War Room Pandemic crew, which I generally respect…”
I find Bannon amusing. But whenever I listen to his self-presentation as a Leninist revolutionary populist trying to save the people of America from the predatory elites, I really want to hear whoever his interlocutor is tell him: “Yeah, those elites are your old buddies and colleagues at Goldman Sachs, Steve, and you were right in there with them doing what they were doing.” I haven’t heard anybody grind Bannon about that.
metamars: “In his own, blunderful way, Trump appears to have contributed to the current flareup…”
Trumpism will do a lot better without Trump.
Plague Species
Soredemos, I’ll meet you half way. The patrilineal DNA evidence indicates a Middle Eastern origin consistent with Sephardic Jews. The following clarifies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1336798/
So, the original matriarchs (Judaism is allegedly a matriarchal religion) of the Ashkenazi were indeed converts and the men weren’t kicked out of Israel, but instead were most likely insignificant traders who decided to settle in Europe. In otherwords, the biblical story is bullsh*t which any intelligent person knows logically and intuitively. The twerp in the video is reciting the biblical story to support Israel’s justification for claiming Palestine. This new DNA evidence refutes that, just not in the way you or Shlomo Sand do, each of you having your own agenda of course.
Too funny. Soredemos first calls me a hasbarist and then an anti-semite. Make up your mind already. Jesus.
Plague Species
What he got was no Hamas rocket attacks during his entire tenure. Curious, that. More circumstantial evidence the hard liners of Israel and Hamas are one and the same. Playing for the same team. Teammates. Four months into Biden’s reign and out come the Hamas rockets just as Bibi ordered it.
The aid to Gaza, U.N. or otherwise, needs to go directly to the people and needs to circumvent Hamas or no aid at all. Hamas will usurp it and confiscate it and not distribute it humanely and equitably. Israel gives Hamas construction materials and Hamas builds the tunnels with it so Israel can bomb the tunnels every several years and yet Israel continues to give the construction aid. I wonder why? Because Israel wants Hamas to build the tunnels so the hamster wheel can keep on turning. And Hamas obliges. Teammates. Aligning with Hamas is not resistance, it’s suicide. It’s complicity with your own ethnic cleansing.
Synoia
To state the Jewish people are peaceful appears to ignore the first 5 books of the Bible, and Much of the other books of the Old Testament.
Christ appears as the major peaceful person in the Christian Bible, and I note with Irony that his teachings about violence are followed more in the breach than otherwise.
If the US truly believed in the teachings of the Bible, the largest government department in the world or should not be the US Department of “Defense.”
Bridget
No one should be naive enough to believe that if matters were reversed, the Palestinians wouldn’t be trying to do to the Jews what the Israelis are now trying to do the Palestinians. The British came in at the end of WWII because the Palestinians tried to do a local genocide on the Jews there
The British didn’t “come in at the end of WWII.” The symbiotic relationship between Britain and Jewish high finance long predates WWII. You can’t understand WWII without understanding WWI. You can’t understand WWI without understanding…
The native inhabitants of Palestine – of all ethnic and religious persuasions – weren’t at each other’s throats until the Zionist movement – borne of certain Judaic circles – decided to “Judaize” the entire region.
the Palestinians tried to do a local genocide on the Jews there
“…tried to do a local genocide on the Jews…” This is rich. “The Jews” were systematically taking over their homes and erasing their history. A “local genocide” is neat language. Do you mean they knew what was happening, who was aligned with whom, and fought back?
Naeim Giladi can explain things better than you or I.
https://ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-giladi.html
The retort to this will be a character assassination of Naeim Giladi which serves to question his motives and casts doubt on his reporting. This is how they operate.
In his book, Ben Gurion’s Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews, Giladi discusses the crimes committed by Zionists in their frenzy to import raw Jewish labor. Newly-vacated farmlands had to be plowed to provide food for the immigrants and the military ranks had to be filled with conscripts to defend the stolen lands. Mr. Giladi couldn’t get his book published in Israel, and even in the U.S. he discovered he could do so only if he used his own money.
The Giladis, now U.S. citizens, live in New York City. By choice, they no longer hold Israeli citizenship. “I am Iraqi,” he told us, “born in Iraq, my culture still Iraqi Arabic, my religion Jewish, my citizenship American.”
https://ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-giladi.html
metamars
@PS
“Hamas will usurp it and confiscate it and not distribute it humanely and equitably. Israel gives Hamas construction materials and Hamas builds the tunnels with it so Israel can bomb the tunnels every several years and yet Israel continues to give the construction aid. ”
Unfortunately, I think everything you wrote in your comment is plausible. More recently, Israel surreptitiously supported terrorists in Syria, by patching them up when they got injured, then sending them back in.
I vaguely recall that Hamas was created by Israel as a counterweight to Fatah. However, I thought they had gone “rogue” – i.e., independent of their creators.
Do you have any references for your statement that Israel gives Hamas all of the construction material? While plausible, I would have hoped some NGO’s that were honestly supporting the Palestinians would have blown the whistle on Hamas/Israeli collusion.
Soredemos
@Mark Pontin
“Two tribes of vicious morons, essentially.”
No, essentially not. This is a really quite disgusting thing to say about a colonized people who were deprived of their land within living memory and are fighting back. Your knowledge of the history of British mandate Palestine also seems to be very confused.
@Plague Species
“Too funny. Soredemos first calls me a hasbarist and then an anti-semite. Make up your mind already. Jesus.”
Since that very clearly isn’t what I actually said (and do you also think I’m also accusing Sand of being an antisemite?)…
As for the genetics, how fun that you cite a study that says what you want it to say. Here’s what more robust evidence shows: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1274378/
“Neither Ashkenazi Jews nor the two Sephardic samples clustered with their former host populations (non-Jewish Eastern European, Iberian, and North African populations).”
[…]
“Genetic Relationships among Jewish Communities
It is believed that the majority of contemporary Jews descended from the ancient Israelites that had lived in the historic land of Israel until ∼2000 years ago. Many of the Jewish diaspora communities were separated from each other for hundreds of years. Therefore, some divergence due to genetic drift and/or admixture could be expected. However, although Ashkenazi Jews were found to differ slightly from Sephardic and Kurdish Jews, it is noteworthy that there is, overall, a high degree of genetic affinity among the three Jewish communities. Moreover, neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic Jews cluster adjacent to their former host populations, a finding that argues against substantial admixture of males. These findings are in accordance with those described by Hammer et al. (2000).”
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol_preprints/41/
“Employing a variety of standard techniques for the analysis of population genetic structure, we find that Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations, and among non-Jewish populations, with groups from Europe and the Middle East. No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews with populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly with the populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region.”
Also, Judaism is matrilineal, not matriarchal. These are two very different things.
Plague Species
Soredemos, points taken. What we both agree on is, Israelis cannot use genetics as a basis for their claim to Palestine and as cover for their abuse of Palestinians anymore than genetics can be used as an argument against their claims. European Jews are effectively mutts. They have so much genetic baggage that isn’t Levantine, it far outweighs any Levantine genetics. Genetics is a distraction. It has no place in this discussion. I stand corrected. Thank you for helping me see the light.
Soredemos
I like how you just ignored everything I cited and plowed right along, while pretending to have reached some agreement with me.
Ashkenazi are not ‘mutts’, at least not significantly more so than any other group of diaspora Jews.