But which location would we use? 
Okay, being a biochemist, you should certainly be more familiar with the scientific and genetic information contained in even the abstracts than I. However, it doesn’t seem as if you bothered to read any of of them. The study by Hamer, et, al, did not study simply Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, but Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews as well as other ehtnic populations from the same geographic area. The graph of their results shows all the Jewish populations with a fairly tight grouping, interspersed with other non-Jewish populations from the Middle East including Palestinians, Syrians Lebanese, Druze and Saudi Arabians.
If there’s some other ancestor who caused the various Jewish populations to have such a close haplotype similarity, then it also affected all the Semetic populations, because they are very similar to the rest of the Middle East populations in the study.
I’d really appreciate it if you could point out just exactly where the faq mentions that the common ancestor. There are six paragraphs of history on the Khazars which is, I must admit, fascinating stuff. Only in paragraph seven does it mention whether or not the Ashekanzi Jews might be descended from the Khazars. While it mentions a couple reasons that “Some believe that they are, at least to a certain extent,” the faq then spends three paragraphs pretty much explaining why that’s not really the mostly likely explanation at all. It mentions archeaological, linguistic and cultural reasons that show that while there was almost certainly a “cross-polination” with that area, the idea that Ashkenazi Jews aren’t really Semites because they’re descended from the Khazars is a very, very long stretch, at best.
[Sartre]If the Jew did not exist, the pro-semite would invent him.[/Sartre]
I’m not even sure what that means, but I figure the Pit is as good a place as any to twist a phrase on its head
I’ve been looking for that second one for you. All I could find so far was (on anti-semitic hate sites, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of it) that Avraham Stern sent some of his people to Turkey in '40 or '41 to say to the Germans. “Hey, you want the Jews out of Europe, we want the Jews out of Europe. Give us guns, we’ll keep the Brits busy here, then after you win the war, let us set up a Jewish state in Palestine, ship all your Jews here, and back me as dictator.”
Now, like I said, I’ve never seen this on anything like objective websites, so I don’t know if I believe it or not. I will say that it’s not something I’d put past Stern doing, because he was, IMHO, a nut and a thoroughly unpleasant person, but I don’t know.
OK, take a number you guys! Thanks I appreciate your interest in this fascinating and vital topic.
Zionist collaboration with Nazis can be found in:
The Hidden History of Zionism. Ralph Schoenman.
Blowback. Christopher Simpson.
The relevant passages from Blowback can be found here: (look for the name Fieval Polkes)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Brunner_B_CS.html
Another fascinating story is that of Rudolph Kastner (or Kasztner). Was he a savior or a Nazi collaborator? Here is a pretty balanced story about him:
http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/1997/September/erseptember.22/9_22_97Lahav.html
And a very detailed story here:
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/19.1/bilsky.html
You can find other sites extolling him and others vilifying him.
ok more later…daughter needs help with homework…
Here is the cite about the Patria affair ( my mistake, it was Mauritius, not Madagascar):
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/irgunill.html#19
THE PATRIA AFFAIR
On October 1, 1940, three vessels sailed from the Rumanian port of Tulcia - the Atlantic, the Milos and the Pacific, carrying some 3,500 immigrants from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. At the beginning of November, the Pacific and the Milos reached Haifa, and their 1,800 passengers were transferred by the British to the 12,000-ton Patria. On November 20, the Atlantic arrived and 100 of its passengers were also transferred to the Patria. The British Government had decided to take drastic steps in order to put an end to the illegal immigration, and announced the following day that the immigrants were to be deported to Mauritius, and that their fate would be decided when the war ended.
The Haganah leaders decided to prevent the Patria from leaving port by sabotage. A mine was prepared at Haifa, concealed in a cloth bag and smuggled aboard the ship, where it was handed over to one of the Haganah liaison officers. On November 25, 1940, at about 9 a.m. the mine was detonated. The intention was to blast a small hole in the vessel’s side so that that it would slowly take in water allowing time to evacuate all those on board. However, the mine blasted a large hole and water flooded into the hold. Within 15 minutes the ship began to list with only a small portion remaining above water. Some 250 people (200 of them Jews, and most of the remainder British soldiers) went down with the ship. This was the largest number of victims of any single operation conducted by an organization since the beginning of British rule in Palestine.
The Patria survivors were eventually permitted to remain in Eretz Israel, but 1,584 of the Atlantic’s passengers were deported to Mauritius, and returned to Eretz Israel only five years later, on August 20, 1945.
Polkes tacitly cooperated with the Nazis in 1932, before the shit hit the fan. Kastner paid Eichmann $2 million to save 1600 Jews in Hungary. Hardly collaboration. Kastner lost his libel suit against those accusing him of being a collaborator (although the trial was more about Israeli politics than Kastner). He was assasinated a few months later, but the verdict was overturned posthumously.
Your claim was for “Zionist collaboration with the Nazis.” You have given us two isolated incidents in which you really have to stretch to describe them as “collaboration.” Yet this is cited as your sole example of “less than honorable behavior by the Zionists.” Seems like your are clutching at straws here – at least you could have thrown us the standard old Deir Yassin and King David Hotel.
Nobody in their right mind would claim that Zionism (or any other movement for that matter) is completely unstained. But here we have another example of how you and your kind lock onto any tiny intransigence ever committed by any one calling themselves a Jew, Israeli, or Zionist, and that these somehow serve to delegitimize the State of Israel. Yet of course the other sides are completely excused for their major violations.
No argument there, the CIA is a terrorist organization too. Any political organization that murders people without trial is terrorist.
Mossad terrorism:
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/israel/mossad/
And Mossad’s record has also been blemished by a few embarrassing failures. In Lillehammer Norway on 07 January 1974 Mossad agents mistakenly killed Ahmad Boushiki, an Algerian waiter carrying a Moroccan passport, whom they mistook for PLO security head Ali Ahmad Salameh, believed to have masterminded the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics [Salameh was killed in a 1979 car-bomb explosion in Lebanon]. Following the attack, the Mossad agents were arrested and tried before a Norwegian court. Five Israeli agents were convicted and served short jail sentences, though Israel denied responsibility for the murder. In February 1996 the Israeli government agreed to compensate the family of Ahmad Boushiki.
On 24 September 1997 Mossad operatives attempted to assassinate Khalid Meshaal, a top political leader of the Palestinian group Hamas. The assassins entered Jordan on fake Canadian passports, and injected Meshaal with a poison. Jordan was able to wring a numbar of concessions out of Israel in the aftermath of the fiasco, including the release of the founder of Hamas, Shaykh Ahmad Yasin, from an Israeli jail.
Then there is the assassination of Gerald Bull. I am sure you can find many more examples. Most of Israel’s PMs were top terrorists, like Ehud Barak. He may talk like Elmer Fudd but he is one bad ass dude.
Mauritius doesn’t equal Madagascar. And this was way after the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which stated the British government’s commitment to a Jewish state in Israel. The British were blocking Jewish immigration into Israel for other reasons – among other things to keep the region relatively stable so it could serve as a staging ground for North Africa. The politics of Jewish immigration into Palestine during the 1920s to 1948 is complex and completely unrelated to having a Jewish homeland in Uganda.
Well there is lots more. I can only type so fast. The overall picture is that the Zionists did anything they could to get Jews to Palestine, even blowing up synagogues in Iraq (“Every Spy a Prince” by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman).
And what is my kind? I am merely a truth seeker. It is clear your mind is made up, so there is no point debating this with you. I traveled to Morocco a number of years ago and was surprised to see Jews, Christians, and Arabs sitting around a table together. I asked them how come they weren’t fighting with each other? They just laughed and said that was only in Israel. Jews and Arabs traditionally have gotten along quite well together. Remember, both Jews and Arabs were kicked out of Spain by the Christians, and the Crusaders slaughtered Jews and Arabs, and Byzantine Christians for that matter. The major problem in the Middle East arose when European Jews went there. They have no historical or ethnic claim to the land. A religion is not a justification for a state. If it were, I could convert to Catholicism and invade Italy, assassinate the Pope and move into the Vatican.
Israel had a chance for a legitimate state, but they blew it. Assassinating Count Bernadotte, blowing up the King David Hotel, the massacres at Deir Yassin, the Lavon affair, the Suez war of 1956, the pre-emptive strike at Egypt in 1967, the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, all these convinced their arab neighbors that Israel is a terrorist nation, a threat to peace and stability.
We are going to war with Iraq for violating UN resolutions, so again I ask, why not go to war with Israel, who has violated more UN resolutions than any other country, has weapons of mass destruction, and is carrying out a campaign of genocide against the Palestinians? They even oppress their own people–Sephardic Jews are second class citizens in their own country because of the racist Ashkenazi oppressors.
But you are ignoring the fact that Haganah blew up the ship and killed more than 200 Jews.
Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews are all Sephardic Jews, who are oppressed within their own homeland of Israel by the racist European Jews.
Ankh_too, It is almost to the end:
“The Ashkenazi Jews are also the direct descendants of the Israelites.
Genetic tests seem to indicate some ancestry from the regions known
today as Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Iran, and Iraq. Mediterranean
Fever, for example, is found among some Ashkenazi Jews as well as
Armenians and Anatolian Turks. It is now asserted that many Ashkenazi
men who belong to the priestly caste (Kohenim) possess a “Kohen”
marker on the Y-chromosome. However, note that this provides no
evidence of Khazar ancestry. Common genetic markers in people from
these regions is expected for the following reasons, which alone could
account for the common markers occurring in some Jews as well as
non-Jews in Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Iran, and Iraq:
1. Archaeological evidence suggests that the some of the earliest
ancestors of the ancient Levantine and Mesopotamian civilzations
originated in the region of Armenia and moved southwards.
2. The Tanach records extensive evidence of intermarriage between
Jews and ancient peoples who originated in eastern Anatolia, viz.
the Hittites and Hurrians (including the Jebusites of Jerusalem).
The Edomites who were of mixed Hebrew and Hurrian ancestry were
also absorbed into the Jewish people.
3. The Armenians and Kurds are the descendants of people who remained
in Eastern Anatolia / Armenia / Kurdistan and intermarried with
the Turks and neighbouring peoples.”
You are not telling the whole story about Kasztner:
_It was in this trial, which took place in 1954–1955, that an Israeli judge first had to address the evils of the Nazi era in his court of law. The defendant was an old Hungarian Jew, Malkhiel Gruenvald, who was accused of defaming the Zionist leader of Hungarian Jewry, Rudolph (Israel) Kastner, by alleging that he had collaborated with the Nazis.2 Kastner had lived in Budapest during World War II and organized, together with other Zionist activists (among them Yoel and Hanzi Brandt), a committee for the rescue of Jewish refugees trying to escape the Nazi terror in neighboring countries by entering Hungary. After the 1944 German takeover of Hungary, Kastner had served as chief negotiator with Adolf Eichmann, the top Nazi official responsible for the deportation of Jews to German concentration camps, and with other Nazi officials on behalf of Hungary’s Jewish community. The deal sought by Kastner and seriously considered by the Nazis was a “blood for goods” pact, intended to save the life of nearly one million Jews in exchange for ten thousand trucks to be delivered to the German Army. This ambitious goal was not achieved and approximately 400,000 Hungarian Jews were eventually sent to their deaths in Auschwitz. However, Kastner did succeed in saving a group of 1,685 Jews who were shuttled to safety in Switzerland. This transport (known as the “Bergen Belsen transport”) included a disproportionate number of Kastner’s friends and relatives."
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/19.1/bilsky.html
He saved his friends and relatives and allowed 400,000 Jews to be exterminated. You are right, he did not collaborate with the Nazis. He only saved his friends and relatives at the expense of others. So let’s make a movie about this hero and call it “Kasztner’s List.” That will be a blockbuster.
- Israel had a chance for a legitimate state, but they blew it. Assassinating Count Bernadotte, blowing up the King David Hotel, the massacres at Deir Yassin, the Lavon affair, the Suez war of 1956, the pre-emptive strike at Egypt in 1967, the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, all these convinced their arab neighbors that Israel is a terrorist nation, a threat to peace and stability.*
Considering that the Lavon Affair, the Suez war, the 1967 war (which was as you said, pre-emptive to an Arab attack), Lebanon etc etc all happened after the 1948 War. So I think it’s highly doubtful that the Arab states gradually came to the conclusion that Israel must be destroyed due to Israel’s various indiscretions. Rather they’ve held that view since 1948, before most of the events you listed even happened.
*He saved his friends and relatives and allowed 400,000 Jews to be exterminated. *
This is a bit misleading. Even if Kastner hadn’t given preference to his friends and family, 400,000 Jews would still have been murdered. He didn’t “allow” the rest to be exterminated. To somehow blame him for the deaths of 400 000 Jews is dishonest in the least.
Was it wrong he gave preference to his family. Probably, but if you know for sure that if they did not get rescued they would be heading for the death camps I think any person thinks first of saving their family. I know I would.
If that isn’t old-fashioned anti-Semitism I’ll be a primates collateral relation. It is the new language of ‘anti-war,’ ‘progressive’ Jew hating. France is the epicenter. Divest now, from Israel! Subtext: ignore everything horrible that goes on within Iraq and pump billions of Francs there.
So, mystic2311, when we attack Israel it’s collateral damage be damned, right? You are nothing if not a flaming hypocrite.
Apos, you came close. Actually I have coarse hair and a brush on my tail.
Nobody has asked: what is a Unitarian agnostic? Answer: someone who doubts everyone’s god. He was an agnostic Protestant really. Just wanted to see if anyone would assume I was Jewish.
I cannot believe that people are going to let this devolve into an intellectual discussion of Semites. Did any of you read that GD thread?
mystic2311: you can fool some of the people some of the time, you’ve proven that.
sigh
Whether you agree or not that Jews have legitimate claim to the region, you can’t change the fact that 5 million of them live there now. The initial conditions of founding are moot, because you can’t move 5 million people. I suppose whites have no right to be in the Americas and Australia either. We can argue the initial conditions until we turn blue in the face, but it doesn’t change the fact that the situation there now is the one we have to deal with. My personal justification, as an atheist who was raised Jewish, is that this was a refugee situation similar to most other refugee situations. Most other refugee situations do not end with massive repatriation, which almost never works. And I don’t think that this one should either.
Here is the list again. I’m surprised you didn’t put Sabra and Shatila on there for shits and giggles. Ya know, the world agreed in 1948 to support a Jewish state in the region. To that point, the Jews had mostly legitimately acquired land in Palestine. Sure there were outbreaks of violence, but they happened on both sides. Chanting “Deir Yassin” over and over again without any acknowledgement of Arab wrongdoings is not winning any points in the argument.
But in 1948, the UN voted to divide Palestine. You seem to ascribe value to UN resolutions (at least when Israel is the one breaking them) so lets start there. From that point, they were a legitimate state in the eyes of the world. And they were attacked and defended themselves. The 1956 Suez Crisis was certainly not precipitated by Israel – Israel only came in as backup to their English and French allies. They gained no land at that point. 1967 should never be held against Israel. They had every reason to pre-emptively attack, and Egypt had been censured by the UN for closing the Straits of Tiran. And Lebanon, I don’t think it was a well advised military action, but again it did not happen in a vacuum. But Israel was supporting their allies in repelling Syrian backed forces. Why no criticism of Syria for invading and holding Lebanon for over 20 years?
Define for us genocide. They are doing a remarkably poor job at genocide if that is what they are aiming to do. And now you care for the plight of the Sephardim. Is the US a racist state because African Americans are poorer than whites? There is no institutionalized racism against the Sephardim, and with the rise of Shas they have gained lots of political power. It is a shame that there is still some prejudice and there isn’t an even distribution of wealth. But why does this delegitimize Israel? Does it not happen in every country?
No, I am not. I never tried to justify that. It was a stupid move on the part of the Haganah. But it had nothing to do with having a Jewish homeland in Madagascar, or for that matter Mauritius.
Sephardic Jews are Jews from Spain and Portugal and their descendants. Roman Jews predate the Sephardic/Ashenazi split and are descendants of those who lived in ancient Rome. The Near Eastern Jewish populations in the study were from Iran and Iraq in addition to those from Yemmen and Saudi Arabia. Although they are often lumped in with Sepharidic Jews in order to contrast them with Ashkenazi Jews, these Arab Jews are more properly referred to as Mizrahi, not Sephardic. Not only are they culturally distinct from Sephardic Jews, they also represent a separate genetic grouping.
Nor did any of this address the close association of haplotypes between the various Mizrahi and the non-Jewish populations of the same area. Again, if your second hypothesis about the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews having a common ancestor from which they derive their similarities in haplotypes, then the entire Semetic genotype had the same ancestor, including the non-Jewish Arabs of the same geographic regions.
That said, I’m certainly not going to argue that the Mizrahi weren’t and aren’t marginalized and discriminated against. But your phrasing starts to make me really curious to your motivations. “the racist European Jews,” is a sweeping stereotype that raises a lot of warning flags. Not only that, but it has absolutely no fucking connection with your original assertion that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars.
Not only is there no statement in that entire paragraph that would lead one to conclude that Ashkenazi Jews do not derive from the Isrealites, a Semetic people, but it also states the affirmative that they are. How you can interpret this to be a “balanced discussion” on the possibility that the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews had a “common ancestor” on the Anatolian plateau is utterly beyond me. The Sephardic Jews aren’t even mentioned on that page, much less that paragraph.