The problem with the deployment of the #Khazar hypothesis in debates over #Israel & #Palestine is not just that it is bad #history (and even if true, it would be irrelevant), but also that it represents a regression of 75 years, a zero-sum game of competing claims.

The conflict will be resolved only when both sides can acknowledge one another's histories and legitimate needs.

Falsifying the past is no way to achieve peace in the present.

#Mazeldon #antisemitism 7/n

There & in the pointedly entitled, "When Europeans Became Semites" (https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/when-europeans-became-semites), Kanj cites the favored sources of support for the #Khazar hypothesis: Shlomo Sand's 2008 The Invention of the Jewish People & Eran Elhaik's 2012 genetic study (earlier it was: Arthur Koestler's The 13th Tribe: The Khazar Empire & its Heritage; 1976). All are legitimate but deeply flawed works of scholarship, whose conclusions the academic community has resolutely rejected.

#Mazeldon #antisemitism 6/n

A favored technique of proponents of the #Khazar myth--like pseudoarchaeologists, #creationists & #ClimateChange deniers--is to cloak themselves in the mantle of scholarship: misinterpret mainstream scholars, invoke marginal scholars--or both

Kanf here asserts, Jews are Khazars, linking to his own review of a book (more on that later)

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20140125-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people/

The innocent reader will not know the website is a Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Islamist outlet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Monitor

#Mazeldon 5/n

The use of the #Khazar myth by Jamal Kanj shows the pattern.

Zionist Myths: Israeli Invention of Artificial Reality https://www.palestinechronicle.com/zionist-myths-israeli-invention-of-artificial-reality/

The term #Khazar appears only in only 2 places: the subtitle & penultimate line

"75 years following the #Nakba, I stand as the son of two 'invisible' #Palestinian parents who were 'spirited' from their homes to make 'room' for European Khazar converts"

Tellingly: So ubiquitous has the canard become that the author has no need to explain

#Mazeldon 4/n

By the mid-C20, the idea that Eastern European #Jews were the descendants of #medieval #Khazar converts had become the province of cranks & #antisemites (usually both). Although the #Arab states tried to invoke this canard in the 1947 #UN Partition debate, they made relatively little global use of it afterward. It is thus very disturbing that this canard is again popular--among the racist lunatic right, but also in some Arab and pseudo-left discourse on #Israel and #Palestine #Mazeldon 3/n

The idea that Eastern European #Jews (Ashkenazim) were descended from remnants of the Turkic #Khazar Khaganate, which adopted Judaism in the course of the 8th and 9th centuries, arose in the later 19th century as a plausible hypothesis to account for (1) the demographic surge of Ashkenazic Jewry, which, by the end of the early modern era, outstripped the once more numerous Sephardic (Mediterranean and Middle Eastern) Jewish population, and (2) the physical differences between them #Mazeldon 2/n

The author of the article is Eran Elhaik who, a decade ago, revived the #Khazar thesis of #Ashkenazi origins

The missing link of Jewish European ancestry: contrasting the Rhineland & the Khazarian hypotheses https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23241444/

Scholars rejected it:
Phylogenetic applications of whole Y-chromosome sequences and the Near Eastern origin of Ashkenazi #Levites https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3928

Scholars Blast New Study Tracing Ashkenazi Jews to Khazars of Ancient Turkey https://forward.com/news/breakingnews/339910/scholars-blast-new-study-tracing-ashkenazi-jews-to-khazars-of-ancient-turke/

5/n

A much more sweeping theory posited a #Khazar origin for the core #Ashkenazi population as a whole. A century ago, it was at least plausible to the extent that, like Ptolemaic astronomy, it accounted for appearances. However, modern #genetics and #history alike have rejected this view, which is today essentially the province of cranks & #antisemites.

And that brings us back to the present article

Ancient DNA Analysis Reconstructs Legacy of the Biblical Levites |https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/levites-dna-0018037

4/n

The connection between the Levite and Yamnya histories is that the dominant ancestral haplogroups among the Yamnaya were R1a and R1b.

https://www.eupedia.com/genetics/yamna_culture.shtml

The seemingly anomalous Ashkenazic Levite #DNA was also a variant of R1a: R is commonly associated with Slavs, Vikings, and some populations of Iran and the Indian subcontinent.
Thus, some geneticists hypothesized that the source was converts from the #medieval #Khazar Khaganate.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1274378/

3/n

When #Europeans became #Semites | Al Mayadeen

https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/when-europeans-became-semites

Sigh. Here we go again with the #Khazar myth. 🙄
Slick piece of historical denial, combining fragments of fact with rhetorical sleight of hand & pure nonsense.
The conversion happened but did not embrace the masses of the population or leave major identifiable traces in the Jewish gene pool.
Sand's polemical book is simply bad history. Elhaik's provocative #genetic hypothesis has not garnered significant scientific support

@Manigarm Excellent! (Don't get me started on British Israelites and the #Khazar Myth 😖 )