Ethnic controversies of the Middle East

[golly]

Before we get to the Tartar people, a topic of our ancestry that is dear to my heart, let us read on.

"Moroccan ... they were dark skinned according to 7th century account. As a Somali myself who are dark skinned people the Arabs also called us Berber due to our maternal linage with the Berber"

That is cool and interesting.

"Eqyptian 22th, 23th and 24th dynasties were Berbers"

Woah. Okay! Well, now we've really got the Turks involved in Africa.

"they are not pure berber tuareg are mixed wkth black salves"

I would appreciate a period or comma somewhere in this, but alas. Not sure what to make of it.

"check my playlist "Tuargs are not Arab and Black". The so called Black Tuaregs are called Ikelan search what Ikelan is."

Wow. Someone bothered to make a playlist about Tuargs and I'm not even sure if they're saying they are not Black or merely not Arab.

"To add against the Khazar theory, the supposed conversion most likely never even occurred. When doing archaeological digs and searches in the former kingdoms’ land, not a single remnant of Judaism was found from that time period. From a report on the theory: “archaeologists excavating in Khazar lands have found almost no artifacts or grave stones displaying distinctly Jewish symbols. He also reviews various key pieces of evidence that have been cited in relation to the conversion story, including historical and geographical accounts, as well as documentary evidence. Among the key artifacts are an apparent exchange of letters between the Spanish Jewish leader Hasdai ibn Shaprut and Joseph, king of the Khazars; an apparent historical account of the Khazars, often called the Cambridge Document or the Schechter Document; various descriptions by historians writing in Arabic; and many others.

Taken together, Stampfer says, these sources offer a cacophony of distortions, contradictions, vested interests, and anomalies in some areas, and nothing but silence in others. A careful examination of the sources shows that some are falsely attributed to their alleged authors, and others are of questionable reliability and not convincing. Many of the most reliable contemporary texts, such as the detailed report of Sallam the Interpreter, who was sent by Caliph al-Wathiq in 842 to search for the mythical Alexander's wall; and a letter of the patriarch of Constantinople, Nicholas, written around 914 that mentions the Khazars, say nothing about their conversion.”"

Well, to be fair, if you have a secret plan going on in the ancient world you probably don't want to report it to the most loud mouthed media of the ancient world. I am interested in the idea that there actually is evidence (or none) of a Khazarian false conversion to Judaism. I am not sure what that matters, though, except to racist people trying to pin evil deceptions on a particular ethnic group, when there is plenty of evidence that every ethnic group is more than capable of lying for one end or another. Another strange quality of the racist theory is that because Judaism has been "hollowed out" by an evil Eastern component, that somehow makes all Jews corrupted and slaves to the soulless Khazarian Jews. To me it sounds like these people have conflated a space alien invasion to the behavior of a human group. If I actually believed this "secret mass conversion" idea, I couldn't even assume it was spearheaded by Khazars or some other Eastern people but rather some evil vapors using them. And if I thought that, I wouldn't be decrying the race of people but try to bless them and wake them up. So I think the idea of a secret colonization invasion of Judaism is probably ridiculous. Someone else agrees:

"Most haplogroup progenitors lived 7000-2500 years ago. Some older, some younger. The Haplogroup you referred to is R1-b, with began 18,500 years ago, and therefore is massive. The are hundreds, thousands of sub groups in R1-b, for example one originating in England, r1b1a2a1a. Specific haplogroups describe migration in more recent years. Otherwise, they would be redundant. Genetic Researchers would completely disregard any of their origin theories if what you said was true. These Haplogroups I’m referring to either originated in Israel, or were passing through(from areas like Iran, Iraq, North Africa, etc) around 3000-2000 years ago. Disregarding genetics, which also shows many similarities between Jews all around the world, Ashkenazim can be explained through the Jewish Diaspora. The Khazar Theory is extremely unlikely, with no supporting substantial evidence, and evidence that the great conversion never even occurred(see my earlier response)."

Hmm. On the other hand, are we meant to really credit two Jewish tribes with the colonization of Northern Europe, Assyria and Germany? I guess, maybe. I'll try to stop getting hung up on this until there is more about it. It's true that it didn't take many groups of Europeans to invade Turtle Island. There was a lot of homogeny: Spanish, Italian, English, French. Granted these "nations" were all traumatized mixed salads of colonization and empire, but the point is people shifting their place can indeed make a humungous difference, for better and worse.

Someone posted this link: https://www.eupedia.com/genetics/region ... east.shtml

And then someone replied about a video regarding the Khazar Theory of Ashkenazim origins:

"To Unpacked: Your video claims that there was a 400-year chronological break between the Khazar era (ended in 969) and the time when any Jews lived in Belarus/Ukraine. Actually, Jews lived in Kiev and Volodymyr Volynskyi in the 1100s and in Chernigov in the 1200s -- specific names of Jewish merchants and rabbis from those places and times are known -- although there is no evidence that they were Khazarian descendants, and those Jewish communities declined in numbers during the Mongol invasion. Some of these early Jews were descended from Romaniote Jews who came up through the Byzantine Empire while others appear to have been Ashkenazic Jews arriving from the West."

"According to Genesis 10 the Hiburu/hebrew Holy Scriptures states that the ASHKENAZIS are the descendants of Ja'pheth the father of GENTILES. The Ashkenazis are Ja'phethite and NOT Shemite.Period"

That much is true according to various comments we've explored. Shemite is Semite, is that the argument? But does Semite really mean "Shem"? If so, why is it that Arabs are considered of "Shem" if it's literally an Israelite tribe? I don't think someone saying "Americans are not descendents of Amerigo Vespucci. PERIOD." has as much relevance as it does the energy of an ultimatum.

Then, in the word game category we return to:

"Côte d'Ivoire ("Cote d' Ivri" ) The coast of the Hebrews .
The word for Hebrew used in the Bible is עברי (pronounced "Ivri")"

I would say HEVOREW is to IVORY as HEBREW is to IBRY and you can lean things any way you choose once thousands of years of similar words have floated around a region. On the other hand, will I totally dismiss this as coincidence? I don't know what to think! I can't!

"this right here, if you look like a European Caucasian, chances are your ancestors came from Europe and you’re not Semitic at all. As a Yemeni, I’ve come across many Semitic looking jews, who are non Arab, yet they look similar to Arabs, our cousins. Of course you have have arab jews too. Mizrahi jews, Yemenite jews etc but when I come across these ‘ jews’ who reside in north America or uk/Europe I see no resemblance to them at all. They look more like Anglo Saxons. I wonder which tribe Ashkenazi jews thinks they came from"

Well this Ashkenazim presently leans in the direction of complete unknowing. But I am intrigued by the constant assertions of "Ja'phethite" relation. Here we have something that sounds true as well:

"You are using the name ashkenaz in the bible and you applied to Jews. But jews that are called ashkenaz are not descend[ed] from the biblical ashkenaz.

Its easily verified by reading some books on the history of the Jewish people . They the Jews began using the name ashkenaz when they reached the Reign area in the 6th century. Try reading Paul Johnson a history of the Jews. Otherwise don't comment on topics that are above your educational level."

Aha. Now this makes sense! Yet what are we to make of the supposed history of Japheth's grandson creating Scandinavia? My intuition tells me that, like the mythical Irish legends that merged colonization history with God-Kings of myth, Judaic scribes of the Reign area might have been tempted to try to "tie it all together" with stories that conveniently leap over missing gaps in knowledge in order to, dare I say it, appropriate existing culture? Yep, I said it. Do I believe it? Nah. Just another in the long list of possibilities.

But at least now we're getting into some reality about how history is written not just by winners but by pretty much anyone.

This is also what some people say about the legends of Black African Jews:

"And the LORD shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you- Deuteronomy 28:68

The Hebrew Israelites say that this verse clearly points to them (and no one else) as the true Jews, since they are descended from people who were kidnapped from Africa and taken to the New World in ships to be sold as slaves. When were the people we know as Jews ever sent back to Egypt to become slaves? they ask, rhetorically. Why would they be sent back to Egypt in ships, given that the Land of Israel and Egypt are neighbours? Since it was only Black people who have ever been taken into slavery in ships, this verse clearly demonstrates that only African Americans and Hispanics and West Indians and Native Americans are the true House of Israel, right? And Egypt is clearly a metaphor for America, right, since Egypt means House of Bondage? Clearly, these interpretations are completely wrong, they are based on forced metaphors rather than historical reality.

Obviously, Black people are not the only people in the history of the world to have experienced slavery, whether as slaves or owners. Roman society had no problem at all with one man owning another as his property, and slaves came from different parts of the Roman Empire to be traded in like cattle. Slavery is not a uniquely Black experience, nor does it form the essence of any Black history or identity.

Were Jews ever put on ships to be sold into slavery? Did they ever go back to Egypt as slaves. Oh, yes. This happened after the Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the Bar Kochba Revolt. Josephus records:

Because the soldiers were now growing weary of bloodshed, and survivors appeared constantly, Caesar orders to kill only those who offered armed resistance and to take alive all the rest. (415) The troops, in addition to those covered by their orders, slaughtered the aged and infirm; people to their prime who might be useful they herded into the Temple area and shut up in the Court of the Women (lcl. (416) Caesar appointed one of his freedmen as their guard, his friend Fronto, to decide the fate appropriate to each. (417) All those who had taken part in sedition and brigandage (they informed against other) he executed. He picked out the tallest and handsomest of the lot and reserved them for the Triumph (418). Of the rest, those who were over seventeen he put in chains and sent to hard labor in Egypt while greet numbers were presented by Titus to the provinces to perish in the theaters by sword or by wild beasts; those under seventeen were sold- Josephus, The Jewish Wars, Book 6, Chapter 9:2
Innumerable was the multitude of those who were sold away as slaves. At the Annual Market of Terebrinth of Hebron they were offered for sale in such numbers that a Jewish slave was of no more value than a horse. –Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ.
This means that when Moses told the Israelites that they would be sold into slavery in Egypt if they disobeyed the Covenant that they had made with the LORD, he literally meant Egypt. The claim is made that “Egypt” in the verse does not refer to the land that we know as Egypt, but rather metaphorically to the Americas. This interpretation is based on the idea that the Bible calls any land where the Israelites have been taken into captivity “Egypt”, because this word can also figuratively mean “bondage.” The problem is that the Bible does not always use the term “Egypt” in a metaphorical sense. For example, the Israelites were taken into captivity to Babylon and at no time in the story of this terrible event is Babylon called “Egypt.” Although it is true that Jewish people sometimes use the word “Egypt” poetically to mean “captivity,” it is not true that the word “Egypt” can always be metaphorically interchanged with the word “captivity”. It comes to us from the Greek a-ku-pi-ti-yo , which in turn comes from the Egyptian ḥ wt-kȝ -ptḥ , i.e., “The land of the temple of the ka of Ptah.” The original Hebrew name in the Bible for Egypt is Mizraim, an ethnonym based on the belief that descendants of Mizraim, son of Ham (Genesis 10:6) settled in that land after the Flood. A Hebrew reader would have never imagined that Mizraim could mean anywhere else besides the land settled by the descendants of Mizraim, son of Ham, son of Noah.
OK, what about ships? Egypt and Israel are geographical neighbours, so why would the Romans need to use ships to transport slaves? Yes, the two lands are neighbours, but the Roman Empire found it easier to use ships of its vast navy to link the different parts of its domain that were located around the Mediterranean Sea. And it is documented that Jewish slaves were taken to Egypt in ships. The aforementioned Schürer continues from above:

What could not be disposed of there was brought to Gaza and sold or sent to Egypt, on the way to which many died of hunger, or of shipwreck.
Another source records:

Now that Betar had been captured, everything came under Human control, while Palestine [Judah] was reduced to a desolate mound. Captives were sold into slavery in numbers too great to count. First they were brought to the grand annual market at the Terebinth-Eloh tree in Hebron, or in the words of Hyranumous, to the Tent-Ohel of Abraham near Hebron. Each slave sold for the price of a horse. Those captives who were not sold there were brought to the market place in Azza [Gaza] which, because of the great multitudes of slaves who were sold there, was called Hadrian’s marketplace. And those who were still not sold there were herded into ships and were taken to Egypt. Many died in transit, whether by starvation or by shipwreck, while many also were killed by cruel masters.- Friedrich Münter, Primordia Eccl. Africanae

So, it is an historical fact that slaves from Israel (or the Roman Province of Judea) were transported to major Roman cities like Alexandria by ship. It is reported that the price of slaves dropped drastically, hence and no man shall buy you . In contrast, the Transatlantic Slave Trade endured for so long, the greater part of half a millenium, because it was that profitable for Europeans and Africans alike.

In contrast, the Hebrew Israelites falsely claim that there was a Kingdom of Judah established in West Africa by their ancestors. However, there is no proof for this claim, rather a fictional connection to the historical Kingdom of Whydah in West Africa. It was located in what is now the modern Republic of Benin, and its economy was founded on slave trading. Its name is from the Yoruba Xwéda, but Europeans distorted it variously to Whydah, Hueda, Whidah, Ajuda, Ouidah, Whidaw, and Juda. It is that last version of this name that Hebrew Israelites have erroneously seized on to claim that there was a Kingdom of Judah established by their ancestors in West Africa, after they fled Israel following the Destruction of Jerusalem. The only primary source to support this claim of a mass migration of Jewish refugees to Africa that I have come across is a book called From Babylon To Timbktu by Rudolph R. Windsor, first published in 1969. Mr Windsor claims that millions (p84) of Jews fled into Africa following the Destruction of Jerusalem, but is shy with his sources. Contemporary Roman sources however have it that 100000 Jews were taken to Egypt in ships to be sold as slaves. More were sent to other parts of the Roman Empire.

The history of the Kingdom of Whydah’s history is adequately documented. It was founded around 1100 C.E. (the Fall of Jerusalem happened in 70 C.E, what were the Jews doing in West Africa for a whole thousand years before finally being sold to European slave traders?)

Thus, it can be established as a historical fact that, contrary to the teaching of the Black Hebrew Israelites, that the people we know as Jews have at some point in their history been transported in large numbers in ships to be sold as slaves in Egypt, and that their presence created a glut in the slave markets and many were unsold. This ignoble chapter of Jewish history would actually be closer to the prophecy of Deuteronomy 28 than that of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

By the way, Native Americans and Hispanics did not get to the New World on slave ships, except those who today have some African ancestry…..
And, by the way, there is no Arab record of kidnapping and enslaving Jewish people out of West Africa. Given that the Arab Slave Trader was longer and captured people, it is quite remarkable that there is no mention of Hebrews at all. They documented Christians and Jews everywhere else they met them, including other parts of Africa."

[golly]

A comment on the same topic:

"Beautiful tibid of history.

However, that doesn't in any way, shape, or form prove anything about the racial makeup of those Jews..... because those people that were exiled out of Jerusalem after 70 AD looked absolutely nothing like the Eastern Europeans in Israel today. And yes, they are mostly Eastern Europeans.
There are no records in Egypt, historically or pictoraphically, of anyone of such appearance ever being enslaved in that land; Not during the bronze age (Period of Exodus), nor during the apex of the Roman empire.

All those depictions, that I've seen, of anything remotely resembling a people being oppressed in Egypt are that of dark-skinned people. That's not to say that "This or That" person is the true Israelite because it doesn't matter. But the Ancient Israelites were clearly a dark race of people; no matter how you try to intellectually skirt around this fact.

If Ham is the progenitor of the "Dark Races", according to mainstream Biblical thought, and the Israelites intermarried with these people [Judah's children actually came from his relations with a Hamitic woman] how can their children not also be dark?

I'm sorry, that tonic is not that strong, I can't buy these theories anymore.

Most "Jews" didn't even enter the places of their "exiles" as slaves to begin with---- they mainly went in as merchants, intermarrying with the European elites, which is why they were given some key positions in Old Christian Kingdoms.

And yes, there actually are records of small Jewish groups in West Africa that weren't the Sephardi Portugal Slave traders---- many of these people lived in small quarters of Medieval Mali after migrating from the Upper Maghrebi, and they certainly weren't the lighter complexioned Moroccan Jews. You can read about this in books such as the Tarik Al-Sudan and Tarik El-Fattish. [Even though I'm sure those books will be peculiarly expensive by now].

You people can't have it both ways...... If the current state of Israel is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, who then was the Mosiach? Theodr Herzl? Eleanor Roosevelt?"

This is a good point from someone saying that Jews could very well be Black Africans.

The Mosiach or messiah (named after "shiny face" apparently) is the leader and savior of the Jews that represents a glorious new era of world peace and spirituality. That doesn't seem to have taken place, and therefore, the present State of Israel certainly doesn't resemble anything Biblical at all. It certainly doesn't seem to be a gift from "God" but instead it seems the ill gotten gift of a bloated struggling Empire of the Europeans attempting to take foothold in the middle of affairs they sort of wrote themselves into.

However, the response is reminiscent of what we're already familiar with:

"Of course they are the jews.They have been living in Israel for the past 3700 years uninterrupted. So the jews who were living in Israel recognized their brothers when they began returning.

Furthermore there is a peer reviewed genetic analysis that shows unarguably that ashkenazi and sephardic Jews originated from the Levant.
In addition i have a census published in 1695 which covers the entire Israel. Discussing the Topography and population in Israel, its jews not African people.

I also have a link to a library of 9000 photos from the 1800s and they show Jews and Christians some Bedouins absolutely no African or Palestinian people."

A peer reviewed genetic analysis of Ashkenazim originating in the Levant seems interesting since we already went over the notion that genetic groups have been so intermingled in that region of the world it would be difficult to decipher. But who knows? Maybe Jews are also Black! Or they are only Black. The more I read the more I know I don't know.

Says someone:

"Prior to 1964 there was no "Palestinian" people and no "Palestinian" claim to Palestine; the Arab nations who sought to overrun and destroy Israel in 1948 planned to divide up the territory amongst themselves. Let us also remember that prior to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the name "Palestinian" referred to the Jews of Palestine."

This is useful because it helps us learn that the word Palestinian is not quite as confusing as all the other words with multiple conflated meanings, such as "Jew" or "Arab".

"Genetics have shown that Jews have closest DNA to Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians"

Now this sort of makes sense, again. Maybe. Possibly. I thought we learned those were the most Arabic people. That would confirm our previously established ideas that Arabic and Israelite people are just about the closest cousins imaginable.

"Caucasian is not a real term in anthropology. Caucasian is not a scientific word. It is an outdated term along with negorid and Mongoliod which were created by racist europeans in the late 1700s which classified the races of the world in 3 groups none of it was based in science. The fact that you use this word shows me you know nothing about genetics nor DNA."

Well, it's nice to see someone decrying racist terms, for sure. Then again, racism is still floating around in one form or another:

"I would surmise that if one were to deep-dive into the origins of "dna"/"genetics" (scientist connections, owners of universities, owners of private "dna labs", etc.)....one would discover an uncanny coincidence in presence of a particular group of people. But rest assured, if one did discover such a coincidence it would only be a conspiracy theory. LOL...I just searched "dna labs"....and the first return "international dna labs"...indicates it's accredited by the "dna advisory board, established by the director of the fbi"!!! I'm sure scientists take advice from the police-state! Take a dive brethren. Oh, but sheeple don't know how to do a guugle search."

I mean, I didn't say it, but it's probably not the "particular" I am thinking of. They may be ready to say "Wannabe Jews" and I would be more likely to say "White Supremacists" and we could both be close. Maybe they are even the same thing. Are they the same as Jews? That seems like too much conflation for me, again. I want to split this all open, not crumple it up and throw it away and say "I give up!"

Back to the Khazarian Theory:

"Theyre not from the middle east they know it. But to keep the lie gping you gotta feed whatever bullshit narative. The facts are any historican will tell you the Khazarian Empire was a real thing it was the first mass conversation of Judiasm. This is historical fact. There are no facts supporting jews leaving the middle east for europe they never did that. They stayed in the middle east or moved about to North Africa. This is historically proven. Genetically speaking they have no ties to the Middle east"

Intrigued again! But why no documents or facts besides declaring it's a documented fact? If this juicy conspiracy is real, I want to see some figures!

"let me guess your next statement will be that Swedish people originate from Zimbabwe"

"Saying the Middle East is Caucasian is 100% factual. Go and look at Middle Eastern GEDMatch results. They score higher Caucasian than Europeans.

"I’m not denying that there are no Jews in the world that do not have genetic links to the Middle East that’s simply not true. But a huge majority, like 80 percent are Khazars and they know it."

Not only do all ethnic Jews have genetic links to the Middle East, but every Jewish group is genetically more Middle Eastern than European
You can look at dozens of studies done on Jews. No ethnic Jews derive any ancestry from the Khazars, as this video correctly demonstrates."

Okay. See? Exactly! Of course, if we want to go back to the idea that "soulless Khazars" (sorry, Khazar people, this is a joke!) are really behind all genetic studies, we would have to credit them with super human abilities, and I'm back to my interdimensional alien track. And let's just not go there yet, unless we have to. Sigh. Here's someone who definitely doesn't want to go there!

"…the theory is absolutely without evidence. As any historian will tell you, generations of Jews, like generations of any people, leave historical traces behind them. These traces come in multiple forms. For starters, people leave behind them historical documents and archaeological data. Predictably, archaeologic evidence about the widespread existence of Jews in Khazaria is almost nonexistent. While a series of independent sources does testify to the existence in the 10th century of Jews in the Kingdom of Khazaria, and while some of these sources also indicate that the ruling elite of Khazaria embraced Judaism, the Khazarian state was destroyed by Russians during the 960s. In other words, we can be confident that Judaism was not particularly widespread in that kingdom.

The next historical record of Jews — in a few cities that today belong to western Ukraine and western Belarus — shows up in the 14th century, when Jews are regularly referred to in numerous documents.

And yet, no direct historiographical data is available to connect the Jews who lived in Eastern Europe in the 14th century with their co-religionists from the 10th-century Khazaria.

One city in northwest Ukraine, Volodymyr-Volynskyi, does seem to have an uninterrupted presence of Jews from the 12th century. For example, in 1171 a Jewish merchant called Benjamin from that city lived in Cologne, and a Russian document refers to local Jews in 1288. Another Jewish source describes a circumcision ceremony in that city at the end of the 14th century. But it is only during the 16th century that references to Jews appear in large territories of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, and even in the mid-16th century local communities were not populous. Historical documents also indicate that the earliest known Jewish communities in Poland were all situated in its westernmost part. [1]"

from: https://forward.com/opinion/382967/ashk ... the-proof/

and

Here, at long last, is the article I promised you in The Forgotten Jews almost 3 months ago.
The Ashkenazis, otherwise known as the Ashkenazim, make up the vast majority of world Jewry. They come from Eastern Europe, particularly (but not exclusively) Germany. The second-largest group is the Sephardim, who come from Spain, followed by the Mizrahim, who stayed in the Middle East.

However, there is a theory – founded in the 1800s, and holding some small degree of popularity today – that the Ashkenazim are not Jews; but rather, Gentile descendants of the Khazars. The Khazars were a Turkish people whose empire, known as Khazaria, lasted from about 650 AD to 969 AD.

from: https://jmshistorycorner.wordpress.com/ ... r-khazars/

"Old Testament clearly mentions Ashkenazi as descendents of Gomers i.e. Germanic Europeans in Noah episode. Semitic & Hamitic tribes are mentioned separately in Noah's descendents. Gomer means Cimmerians. The word 'German' is a corruption of the word 'cimmerian'. Cimmerian-> Gimmerian - > German. Old Testament calls them Gomer. cimmerians were nomadic tribes living in Pontific steppe (Ukraine) around Black Sea from 2100 BCE. In 800-650 BCE, Scythians (Nomadic tribes of Mongolia & Tarim Basin Desert, Xinxiang) entered the middle east & started pushing Cimmerians (Nomadic tribes of Ukraine). Thus, Cimmerians were forced to settle in North Europe in 800-650 BCE. Cimmerians became the Celt civilization or Gaul civ. Later, around 500 BCE, some of these Celts settled in Nordic countries. (Look at La Tene culture).

So, Ashkenazi are descendents of Germanic Euro tribes. Gomer are called descendents of Japeth and separate from Samites or Hamites according to Old Testament Table of Nations of Noah. Hams seem to be North Africans & Palestineans. While, Semitics seem to be Iraq & Iran according to Old Testament."

By the glory of Gosh! Yet another weird mix up of the origin of German. It is Kir-man? Is it Cimmerian? Are they former Assyrian slaves and slavemasters? Is this all some bizarre plot for a sadomasochistic porno?

No, wait. I feel like we're really getting close here. Samites (or Hamites) are from Shem? Hence Shemites are Semites are Samites? And Gomer is of Japeth, so clearly the brother of the ancient Koreans that populated Japan, right? Japeth are Japanese? It doesn't make sense, but that's the level we are apparently at. Anyway, no, no, Homer, er rather Gomer birthed those tall white Scandinavian Jews, if I recall. Thank goodness I'm not the only Ashkenazim wondering what the heck is going on here. Here's another confused brother or sister:

"I am confused about Elhaik's genetic study on Ashkenazi Jews and how it has been interpreted by anti-Ashkenazi/Pro-Khazar theory people.
His conclusion to the study:

We conclude that the genome of European Jews is a tapestry of ancient populations including Judaised Khazars, Greco-Roman Jews, Mesopotamian Jews, and Judeans. Their population structure was formed in the Caucasus and the banks of the Volga, with roots stretching to Canaan and the banks of the Jordan.
https://matzav.com/report-new-genetic-s ... m-khazars/

He doesn't deny that Ashkenazi Jews have Middle Eastern nor Jewish ancestry. He includes Greco-Roman Jews, Mesopotamian Jews, and Judeans as some of their ancestors.

He pretty much admitted that Ashkenazi Jews have Jewish ancestry, but somehow anti-Ashkenazi/Pro-Khazar Theory people are spinning the genetic study as Ashkenazi Jews aren't Jewish at all just because he included Judaised Khazars as ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews. Therefore, they assume that he found that Ashkenazi Jews are Khazars.

What he concluded in the study is that the Rhineland theory is false. He believes that he found evidence that the Jews weren't in the Rhineland. He concluded that they formed in the Caucasus and the banks of the Volga, but he also concluded that they have roots stretching to Canaan and the banks of Jordan. He admitted that the Ashkenazi Jews have roots in the Levant. They definitely have roots in the Middle East.
How can his genetic study be concluded as Ashkenazi Jews are Khazars that have no ancestry from the Middle East?

There is no logic in that.

I am a believer in the Rhineland Theory. I do believe that Ashkenazi Jews formed in the Rhineland. Cologne, France already had Jews back in the 4th Century. The Frankish Empire during Charlemagne's reign had Jewish settlements. The Ashkenazi Jewish language, Yiddish is a mixture of German and Hebrew. 100% Ashkenazi Jews have Gallo-Romans, Franks, and Gauls in their MyTrueAncestry Ancient Sample Breakdowns.

I am 1/8 Ashkenaz Jewish from my maternal grandmother's mother who was a first generation Ashkenazi Jewish daughter of immigrant father from Romania and immigrant mother from Latvia."

If that's true, though, why are we ignoring the previous analysis that the Rhineland, or Germanic land, is made of Assyrian Jews that came over from Shemite people? Are we just going to ignore that? So far, Ashkanazim are European Jews descended from white-ish/olive-ish people from Middle East Levant?

[golly]

Now at least we have someone bringing in the whole "race is a social construct" angle which is a huge relief after trying to untangle this pasta:

"In most cases ethnicity is a cultural and social construct not a biological reality. Take Hispanics for example. They view themselves as a ethnic group but they’re a mixed of a lot of other people. Ashkenazi Jews have lived in Europe (especially Eastern Europe) longer than in the Middle East. There is no way, they remain an untouched ethnic group with distinct genes. Nothing proves that they are more related to the Ancient Hebrews than other ethnic groups in the regions (Arabs, Druze...)"

There. Someone said it before me. I want to talk to this person.

"That's another false practice. The fake jews go by their mother's lineage. When the seed is passed by the father. Were there 12 daughters of Israel NO. There were 12 sons of Israel who all had hamitic wives. Their wives weren't jews but the children that they had were jews because of their FATHERS. Sorry you've been lied to. We all have. Jacob had a daughter but the bible doesn't mention her children because their father wasn't a jew. The line is passed thru the father not the mother."

Hmm, this sexism came up before, but now I'm interested in Jacob's daughter. As far as I'm concerned, she is a true Israelite, but I respect women as people. What do I know? I guess that's something only fake people do.

"I'm not saying that Ashkenazim don't form an ethnic group. I'm saying that ethnicity is a social construct. It's artificial. I doubt that Ashkenazim are really the descendants of the ancient Hebrew. Besides the whole Bible story is nothing but a myth. God didn't give this land to a specific people. This region is called the crescent of civilization, many ethnic groups have lived there (the Phoenicians for example). Now, Jews aren't the only people who based their identity on myths. For example, the Palestinian identity is also a myth."

Bible is a myth. Bam! 100% Big old man. Catch me on the run!

I am also so glad someone brought up the Phoenicians again. That is so missing from this whole tale, because yes, there certainly were a number of other important rises and falls of empires and colonizations that happened besides the main ones the world politics are suffering of today.

"Two genetic studies published in 2010 prove that Jewish communities from Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus have shared ancestry tracing back to the Land of Israel in the Southern Levant. One of the surveys conducted a genome-wide analysis of seven Jewish groups (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek, and Ashkenazi) and compared them with non-Jewish groups. The findings “demonstrated distinctive Jewish population clusters, each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations, and variable degrees of European and North African admixture.”

Sigh. Alright. Back to the details.

A 2009 study found that Jewish populations share a high level of genetic similarity to each other. The results “support the view that the Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry and that over their history they have undergone varying degrees of admixture with non-Jewish populations of European descent.”

The goal of a 2000 study, tracing the paternal origins of Jews, concluded that “the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.”

Ashkenazim developed around 900 years ago in the Middle Ages by Jews who migrated to Germany and northeastern France – mostly to Rhineland-Palatinate, including the towns of Mainz, Worms and Speyer. The theory of Jewish migration from Israel to Italy to Germany is called the Rhineland theory. There were earlier Jewish communities scattered across Europe and other proposed migration routes to Europe from the East Mediterranean region. Also, genetic studies and DNA tests point to local groups joining the tribe including Greeks and Romans in antiquity and later in the European Diaspora.

[...] Italian Jews, also known as Italkim (Hebrew for Italians), have a long history on the Italian Peninsula and Sicily dating back to Roman times. The Italkim are historically a mix of Greco-Roman converts and Judeans either brought to Rome as slaves during the Roman-Jewish Wars or as merchants and traders in the Mediterranean Diaspora. The early Ashkenazim in the Rhineland descended from Italkim in Lucca and Rome who migrated north to Germanic and Frankish lands."

Yes! I knew I was Italian. I knew it. Mamma mia, grazie a tutto! Ciao!

"Genetic studies revealed that Ashkenazi Jews originate from an ancient (2000 BCE – 700 BCE) population of the Middle East who had spread to Europe. Ashkenazic Jews display the homogeneity of a genetic bottleneck, meaning they descend from a larger population whose numbers were greatly reduced but recovered through a few founding individuals. Although the Jewish people, in general, were present across a wide geographical area as described, genetic research done by Gil Atzmon of the Longevity Genes Project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine suggests "that Ashkenazim branched off from other Jews around the time of the destruction of the First Temple, 2,500 years ago ... flourished during the Roman Empire but then went through a 'severe bottleneck' as they dispersed, reducing a population of several million to just 400 families who left Northern Italy around the year 1000 for Central and eventually Eastern Europe."

What does "recovered through found individuals" mean? Does that mean some close cousins got freaky and re-merged otherwise distant strains? What a weird reunion.

Various studies have arrived at diverging conclusions regarding both the degree and the sources of the non-Levantine admixture in Ashkenazim, particularly with respect to the extent of the non-Levantine genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi maternal lineages, which is in contrast to the predominant Levantine genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi paternal lineages. All studies nevertheless agree that genetic overlap with the Fertile Crescent exists in both lineages, albeit at differing rates. Collectively, Ashkenazi Jews are less genetically diverse than other Jewish ethnic divisions, due to their genetic bottleneck."

Just say it. Incest. You mean incest, don't you? That's what we get for blending with the white people.

"A 2007 study by Bauchet et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews were most closely clustered with Arabic North African populations when compared to Global population, and in the European structure analysis, they share similarities only with Greeks and Southern Italians, reflecting their east Mediterranean origins."

Aha. Wow, okay, I am beginning to remember why I enjoyed going on this journey so much. Ma certo, sono effetamente Italiano, badda bing. What's interesting about this, too, is that during this whole thing we don't read about Spanish Jews. They were a thing. They were a big deal because as they settled into Spain, the Church became extremely hostile towards them and eventually attempted to convert them (and every other stubbornly non-Christian people) to Christianity and it apparently led to one of the spookiest most horrifying periods of Spanish history.

"Raymond Nolan Scott
In the late 19th century, it was proposed that the core of today's Ashkenazi Jewry are genetically descended from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora who had migrated westward from modern Russia and Ukraine into modern France and Germany (as opposed to the currently held theory that Jews migrated from France and Germany into Eastern Europe). The hypothesis is not corroborated by historical sources, and is unsubstantiated by genetics, but it is still occasionally supported by scholars who have had some success in keeping the theory in the academic consciousness.

Let's face it. Everyone wants to believe in the tall strapping Viking Jew. It's the beards.

A 2013 trans-genome study carried out by 30 geneticists, from 13 universities and academies, from 9 countries, assembling the largest data set available to date, for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins found no evidence of Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews. "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", the authors concluded."

Well, that may be the supposed evidence planted by my secretly Turkish Khazarian German Viking spies I monitor in academic spheres around the world, but we'll find out more of the real truth of my origins when I look into Tartars next. Are my Tartar and Ashkenazim heritages a case of miscegenation? In-breeding? Perhaps we need to stop trying to define ourselves in such negative terms and try to recognize the strange poetry of the ancients that plays within us all.

[golly]

This video summarizes Tartars the way Chinese saw them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THIq1hOQXlc
The Great Tartarian Empire (Part One) - ROBERT SEPEHR posted by Atlantean Gardens on Apr 3, 2019

White Tartar farmers on the other side of the Great Wall
Black Tartar horse riding nomads on the great steppes of Mongolia
and Wild Tartars in cold Russian areas, led by Chiefs and Shamans

Genghis Khan was apparently tall, red-haired and blue-eyed being of the nomadic Black Tartar, and being of the "wild Caucasian people" we know of in that far Eastern area of Russian and other lands. In fact, even the original Prince Siddhartha or Buddha was once depicted as this type of person, in an almost Persian style dress, even though those monuments were defaced later.

Many old maps identified "Great Tartary" as a huge land mass stretching across the middle of Asia from Mongolia to present day Turkey.

Maybe, speculates the video, these were related to original Aryans that survived Atlantis after a cataclysm in 2308 BCE or so (marking an end of the age of Aries). They speculate that Herodotus's "Atarantians" could be a reference to Tartarians. Here we go again with the similar sounds warping!

Interestingly, Tatars were targeted for execution or exile after the Russian revolution in the 1920s and it continued to some extent all the way to the 1950s. I mean, what ethnic group wasn't targeted by Russian leaders after that terrible revolution? But, still, an interesting point. Weirdly, during World War II the Nazis claimed the Iranians were immune to their racist and horrifying "heritage laws" because of their perception of Iranians sharing heritage. They exchanged trade, cultural history, books relating to shared culture and Iran wanted to be known as an Aryan land.

After the Allies invaded Iran to ask them to cool it with the German sympathizing, they met at the Tehran conference. This was the first big publicly known meeting of the three major allies. They discussed how to make Iran an independent nation as well as how to defeat Germany in the war.

That summarizes Part I of this suspiciously Nazi-sympathizing video, but it's interesting to see the parts that aren't building up some drama of "Tartar greatness".

The Tartar greatness I'm more familiar with has less to do with empires and other false glittering promises of colonization. It has more to do with my ethnic connection to the ancient indigenous Tartar people who weaved baskets, traveled close to the land and could apparently commune with rocks.

[golly]

There is a complication arising when trying to examine Tartar and/or Tatar history. And videos about them have more interesting comments.

Pronunciations Ta- Tar

Some seem to imply that Tatar and Tartar are different. Specifically, we are looking at conflation of architecture, culture and history. It is complicated by the fact that some say "Tatar" is just a word that was given to Mongolian people of the Black, White, and IIRC something like Green and Blue hordes.

"History" (the term seems looser and looser as a noun) does remember Genghis as red or ginger haired with light colored eyes. That doesn't mean he couldn't be a leader of people that don't look like him; history is spiced with interesting cases of fascinating cultural mixes. On the other hand, is this a whitewashing in order to paint some European relationship that wasn't there, or which was different than recorded widely?

Is there any Russian who does not have Tatar blood, and why do so many Tatars look Scandinavian, like violinist Alina Ibragimova with her blond hair and blue eyes. Furthermore, Tataria is in Europe.

We will get to Tataria momentarily. But first:

According to Brief History of the Tatars by Институт Марджани (which I think can be read as something like Nestentoot Mardshanye if my mixed up mind's Cyrillic characters do not betray me) they are at least confirmed as a Russian people, which is what I know my Tatar great great grandfather namesake to be.

Continuing this narrative, we hear that the Great Steppe where the East Asian "version" of the Tatar come from is considered as much a cradle of human civilization as the Fertile Crescent was for the Western Asian continent. The Xiongnu ("shong noo") were considered enemies of China and one of the reasons for their Great Wall.

It is said that nomads are credited as "the first to put on pants" and invent other riding implements like the saddle and stirrups. They are able to put up their home in "2 hours" and take it down in "30 minutes" which is certainly something I envy at the moment. As much as the weird haunted structures of this colonized life contain fascinating nooks, crannies, stories and intrigues, I think I still yearn to yawn in a yurt.

Some time in the second century it's said this group collapsed from internal conflicts and one party split for the West and ended up as the Huns hanging around there pre-Moscow.

The connection between the Xiongnu and the Huns has never been firmly established and is more legend than fact.

Yet, it's said, the Huns genes can be found in Bavarian barons. This may spark little red flags in the conspiracy researcher who might note that the Bavarian Illuminati is responsible for the Skull and Bones order that infested the American colonies. It may also add importance for racists to find out how much the corrupt path can be traced back.

Next we move on to another culture that is no doubt a mix of previous cultures, some of them perhaps mentioned: the Turkic Khaganate, who controlled all intercontinental trade routes, Silk Road included. How exactly this leads directly from the collapsed Huns is not totally clear in the video. The rest of the video, therefore, seems sort of abstracted from what we first considered "Tatar" or "Tartar". It is fun that runic writing in columns is credited to their invention in the sixth century (or roughly 500 CE).

But the only clue we have back to the first thread is that Turks necessarily developed relationships to Chinese they traded with, and Chinese were keeping records of relationships to whom they viewed as such. Such being Turks or Mongols or whomever they deemed "Tatar".

If we can trust all the connections documented to be accurate, we might surmise that Khan Kubrat's Onogur Bulgar civilization "Great Bulgaria" North of the Black Sea could have (hitherto "misplaced") information about any Israelite groups there that were eventually subsumed by neighboring Khazaria. Yet, this view seems to be only a guess based on defining races that have been inextricably linked for over a thousand years.

At this point we have entered the indigenous, imperial and expat (eximperial?) territories and homes of countless peoples of western Asia where my ancestry is muddled as heck. Somewhere there's going to be a Slav, since as far as we can tell the name Slav emerges out of the period, whether they come from a specific turn-of-the-millennium Germanic tribe 600 years earlier or elsewhere. Somewhere there's going to be a Jew of indeterminate ethnicity and possibly a convert from some other religion.

[golly]

For Tartaria let's turn to the dubious and boring starting place of Wikipedia, where we might read:

Tartary (Latin: Tartaria, French: Tartarie, German: Tartarei) was a blanket term used in Western European literature and cartography for a vast part of Asia bounded by the Caspian Sea, the Ural Mountains, the Pacific Ocean, and the northern borders of China and India at a time when this region was largely unknown to European geographers. The active use of the toponym can be traced from the 13th to the 19th century. In European sources, Tartary became the most common name for Central Asia in a series of negatively colored names that had no connection with the real polities or ethnic groups of the region; until the 19th century, European knowledge of the area remained extremely scarce and fragmentary. In modern English-speaking tradition, the region formerly known as Tartary is usually called Inner or Central Eurasia. Much of this area consists of arid plains, the main population of which in the past was engaged in animal husbandry.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartary

This is interesting because we've already established one narrative where Russian people are generally related to Tartar peoples. And even if the term comes out of favor later, it serves as a historical impression of who and where such peoples were dwelling and operating.

If we skip ahead to what I am tempted to call one Tartar city-state (The Islamic Socialist inspired TASSR possibly related to "Tartarstan") around Kazan, then we get closer to what I could call my own ancestry. They were known for being industrialists of their era, and my own ancestry from this period was indeed known for designing tanks of all things. As in, the big shell guns with wheel mounted treads.

If we go the other direction and try to draw the closer associations with Huns, then the second video of the other series is of interest:
The Great Tartarian Empire (Part Two) - ROBERT SEPEHR by Atlantean Gardens on Apr 5, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcA81clJivs

It mostly contains, besides the lovely voices of modern day "Tatarstanians" (?) the contents of the cultural center video. It does add how Atilla the Hun (whom we are supposed to view as "Tartar" at this point) crossed the Danube twice pestering Roman Balkans and also attacked the Gauls (today France). It is said he also claimed lineage to Nimrod and declared himself king of the Goths and Danes among others.

Surprisingly, this succinct information does seem to be most of what we have about the mysterious trail. If more comes up in relation to the Middle East controversies thread, I think I will be happy to post it.

[golly]

Well, there is so much more if you're willing to take quite a deep dive from the lofty board of academia into a tumultuous expanse.

Recently I've found at stolenhistory.net:

The people we call tartarian and who they actually are has never been specific and becoming more of a blanket term for the civilization and people killed off. I have seen old maps that show gog and magog in the part of russia closest to alaska which would be tartarian territory. If you look at Moscow you can tell by the various architecture that there have been numerous cultures living there at different times. As for the haplogroup stuff that is from the same people who talk about ancient aliens and right now I think its all just misdirection from masons. You can only go with what you know but listen and absorb everything but don't believe it without proof or else you will be building on a weak foundation. There was definitely some shit going on in this country after the civil war. I think when the Holy Roman Empire fell, which was really greater germany, the different houses and mafia along with the church went out into the various countries to subvert the countries.

-https://stolenhistory.net/threads/kurga ... rica.3849/

This brings up for me a bunch of drama (that I hope is not stored in any somatic embodied trauma) about Kurgans.

Kurgans are said to be the incursion of heathenous God-worshiping people that came to attack, colonize and erase Goddess-worshiping matriarchal shamanistic priestess cultures of 8000 or 6000 years ago and more recent. If you read the work of Western scientist (hopefully not an offensive term) Riane Tennenhaus Eisler, you may be familiar with this theory and how it dovetails with the message of Daniel Quinn's Ishmael about a distinct division between "giver" and "taker" culture. Obviously, in this drama, the takers are the villains, and gosh I would just hate having villainous intent in my family tree. Yet, here I am looking dead at it, and I must admit it's extremely likely my ancestors consisted of some pillaging rapist pirates and horrible tyrants.

If so, it's best to try to appreciate and understand it all. So, could we be looking at "Tartarians" as merely anything generically considered "out of control evil people" of various Asian troubles of the past, near, middle, far or otherwise?

Earlier in the same thread a different user name writes in response to another user name:

So from Scythians to Tartars. I keep getting this evil empire vibe with Tartaria, what with the description of "scalping and torturing their prisoners." It should be recalled that the Lost Tribes of Israel were cursed by God for a number of evil practices including Baal Worship (child sacrifice.) What if Tartarians/Scythians destroyed the Old Civilization and then erased themselves from history? Can't resist what you don't know about.

Yes, I agree with that. It feels as though, whatever Tartaria really is or was, it encapsulates something that left marvels but which wasn't necessarily good for us.

You can see why people speculate if electricity is bad for us. You can see that we have such a wonderful, technological civilisation and so much more waiting around the corner. But there is so much illness, unhappiness. I spend all day messing with information technology and I really like messing with electricity and electronics. But it does feel as though there is an uneveness in how we apply ourselves. So, I wonder if our masters - our elites, their cronies, their dependents and their fanpersons - have simply inherited attitudes and practices their ancestors learned in Tartarian times. Perhaps they have a very, very limited understanding of other ways to be.

I think what I am trying to express is that it feels as though their technologies have gone, as though their ability to build and perform marvels has gone; and all that is left of them is some psychopathic thread that has survived just fine down through time.

A bleak note but I reject any Tartarian pyschopathic thread I may have inherited and wish all the board members a very Happy Christmas!

I am not so humble to just accept the colonization of Christian holidays as actually holy days for myself, but I sympathize with the rejection of psychopathy. Whether this needs to be pinned down as a generic Tartarian or specific Tatarian or something in that spectrum remains to be seen. I have a feeling even if racism somehow defined what went down, we could end up sympathizing with that whole unfortunate situation as well. What if it was a particular "race", or ethnicity if you will, that just happened to receive and pass down trauma to the rest of humanity?

[golly]

Meanwhile and seemingly still related to the Middle East, we have a potentially "Zionist apologist" position that also sounds worthy of investigation posted at wildheretic.com by zlax:

I suggest you get acquainted with the Jewish conspiracy theory:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010803074 ... /__eb-trs/
In this orthodox conspiracy theory - the Jews is not the conspirators, but the victims of a conspiracy.

The book is called The Rainbow Swastika by Hannah Newman. The first edition of the book appeared in March 1997, when it was posted on the University of Colorado's website by Judaic Student Union activists. Two years later it was removed from the University of Colorado website without explanation.

The key theses that this theory exposes in the New Age ideology are:

- Overcoming the Problem of territorial relationships, i.e. the elimination of sovereign national state entities.

- Solving the problem of sex or changing the motivation of sexual relationships - their sole purpose should be "the production of physical bodies for the reincarnation of souls".

- Rethinking and reducing the psychological Value of Individual Life to conduct a Global cleaning on the planet, eliminating all New Age opponents and conducting a World Initiation into the cult of Lucifer.

- The Final Solution to the Problem of Jews and Judaism.

To this i would add that it is now quite difficult to find the full version of this work on the internet, as a touted book with a similar title, written by an enterprising artist, soon appeared:
https://www.amazon.com/Rainbow-Swastika ... 0956158706
(The Rainbow Swastika Conspiracy by Anthony Padgett)

The Rainbow Swastika by Hannah Newman is written from a religious perspective. But the information provided there is written in an academic style, providing sources of information, so it is therefore verifiable.

In my view, this conspiracy theory combined with another conspiracy theory called "Project Blue Beam by Serge Monast" complement each other. And perhaps they both explain why mass media and New Age agents are actively promoting aliens and paleocontact ("ancient astronauts") ideas. So that when the time comes for the "transition" and newagers who sincerely believe in aliens begin to carry out ethnic cleansing around the world, under the pretext of cleansing the planet of "alien reptiloide invaders", no one will have any questions as to why this is happening. Perhaps a new age order is supposed to be built on such collective traumatic experiences, similar to the way the modern global governance structure was built on the collective traumatic experiences realised by the Nazis during the Second World War.

https://www.wildheretic.com/forum/viewt ... f=27&t=585

Sliding slightly back into the European drama triangles of victim-monster-hero, zlax seems to identify as a sort of freedom fighter for humanity representing especially as a Slav that is under threat of German censorship from the aforementioned stolenhistory.net. There is much more to read from the diligent researcher zlax, and what they have found about some kind of Bavarian/Germanic cover up of whatever "Tatarian" past proves to actually consist of.

This in turn collides completely with oral and cultural history of the native peoples of Turtle Island, for it is suggested in some snippets on this path (specifically the previous post from stolenhistory.net) that some Israelite tribe of Shem (there's shemites again!) are actually the Scythians who bred with Tatarians (as if that were a specific people) who then crossed to Turtle Island and brought some beaded patterns and methods of war and other cultural elements to the indigenous people here.

Everything is really related. Really really really related!

[golly]

Here comes a great perspective (recommended by a friend).

Open Letter to Sylvia Wynter: Unlearning the Disappearance of Jews From Africa

Published June 29, 2020

In this moving account, Ariella Azoulay writes a letter to Sylvia Wynter discussing the Black scholar’s essay “1492.” She passes her reading through the filter of her experience as an Arab-Jew scholar relocated in the U.S. and reckons with the skewed concept of “Judeo-Christianity.”

Dear Sylvia Wynter,

I love teaching your texts. They inspire me and stir the mind of my students. Your essay “1492: A New World View” (1995) helped me understand that the entire world as manufactured out of the events of 1492 is in a dire need of repair, a project that cannot be confined to calls for reparations.

However, each time I read this text, I’m troubled, by your frequent use of the term “Judeo-Christian,” and this is why I am sending you this note. Unlike other terms, whose origins you carefully question and whose meanings you transform, “Judeo-Christian” stands untroubled in your writing, as if there is a confirmed reality behind it. Judeo-Christian — where? When? In whose interest? Against whom? In service of what kind of world? Often, I wish the texts of authors I like to be flawless. But simply changing, excising, or explaining away the vexed term is not enough. A work is required to show how it was manufactured. I finally found the courage to do this in a letter addressed to you. The term “Judeo-Christian,” as I hope you will understand, is in itself a distortion of the work of repair.

Why a letter? Your 1492 text sent me off on a journey, and I feel I owe you a postcard from my travels. I struggled with the writing of this letter, maybe because at the same time I began writing to you, I was also writing a letter to my father who passed away seven years ago. In my letter to my father, I try to reconstruct my failure to grasp the meaning of one brief sentence he told me during a longer interview I conducted for his 65th birthday. He mentioned, in passing, that he was in a concentration camp in Algeria. I had no memory of having heard this, though a few years later, I read it in the booklet that I prepared from the interview. It is as if what he was telling me didn’t register in my conscious mind.

Years later, when my friend, the anthropologist Susan Slymovics, asked to interview my father — knowing his age and guessing he might have been in a camp — that I truly heard for the first time that my father was in a concentration camp.
We never talked about it, though he told me and I heard, he told me and I wrote it down. I know that my failure to hear him the first time he told me is not really mine alone. I could not conceive of concentration camps in Algeria, since as you write, “Man’s memories” of World War II were mainly European. Thus, many of the diverse groups that were targeted by the Nazis, the Fascists, and all other imperial powers were omitted from history and their suffering disavowed, to make room for the exceptional suffering and extermination of Europeans of Jewish origin.

In the Zionist state where I grew up — Israel — there was no room for my father’s memories of persecution during World War II as an Arab-Jew whose French citizenship was revoked, nor for the vulnerability of Jews in Algeria after the creation of the State of Israel, which was constructed as a Europeanized stronghold against the Arab world. In Israel, where my father migrated in 1949, he was able to take advantage of the World War II imperial bargain, as his French citizenship — given to Algerian Jews in 1870 — meant he could pass for a European Jew (that is, a white Jew), and assimilate, at the cost of forgetting his Arabness. In my letter to him, I’m still reconstructing all he had to omit to sustain the self-deception of being French, despite being continually betrayed by the dark color of his skin, his French accent in Hebrew which Arab-Jews readily recognized as a North African one, and his Arab accent when speaking French.
Azoulay The Funambulist (2)
Postcard, School of embroidery, Algiers (1905). / Any of these Arab-looking girls, could have been my ancestor. In 1850, a British traveler who visited the school reported: “there were several little Jewesses squatting most amicably among the Mauresques, conspicuous only by their simpler robe of colored stuff and a conical cap of red velvet, tipped with gold lace.” In the first decades of the 20th century, postcards of them were sent from to France and other European countries. The photographs I have of my grandmother in Algeria, taken a few decades later, show her already as a French-looking woman, a Jewish Arab who has learned the lesson of Frenchness this school was established to impart. Where did my great-great grandmother, who was a native Algerian and could have been one of these girls, disappear to?

Your discussion, dear Sylvia, of the substance of memories “we” share, those memories of a white bourgeois mode of being as the way of being human, hovers above both my letter to you and to him. After I started to write to you, I soon realized that a postcard was too small for what I wanted to say. But I still want to share the image I had in mind for your postcard. It is a photochrome image of twelve Algerian girls around the age of six or seven, posing for a photograph in a Delacroix-inflected harem-like setting — some idly standing, others at work — at what is an embroidery school for Arab girls, founded by a French woman a decade after the French conquered Algeria.

Azoulay-The-Funambulist-2-900x589.jpg (131.96 KiB) Viewed 1921 times

Any of these Arab-looking girls, whose picture was taken in 1905, could have been my ancestor. The photographs I have of my grandmother in Algeria, taken a few decades later, show her already as a French-looking woman, a Jewish Arab who has learned the lesson of Frenchness this school was established to impart. Where did my great-great grandmother, who was a native Algerian and could have been one of these girls, disappear to?

With the conquest, the traditional craft of embroidery, which had been transmitted intergenerationally, was standardized into a European curriculum emphasizing mechanized movements, “orientalist” patterns, and the French language. The young girls in this photochrome were in training to become a labor force producing for European markets. Look at the synchronized movement of their right hands. No doubt, they were asked by the photographer (or their teacher-patron) to act as if they were in the midst of embroidering. This semi-mechanized gesture is not how their ancestors used the needle, outside of the market logic of French educational institutions. Note how everything is standardized: were there no left-handed girls among them? Was this “flaw” also eradicated, along with previous modes of embroidering? Does the standardization of their work connect to the disappearance of my great-great grandmother?

This lesson of Frenchness, standardization, eradication has a name in French: laïcité. The term “secularism” doesn’t quite capture the stripping bare the worldliness, or being-in-the-world, of a person, which laïcité requires. Part of solving the “Jewish question” in Europe required the refashioning of Jews as secular Europeans (who could still be “Jews” at home) before they could go in public. With the French conquest of Algeria, the Jews were singled out from the Arabs and were made into a “problem,” forced to get rid of what identified them as indigenous, so that a few decades later the colonial regime could reward them for their efforts with the ‘gift’ of French citizenship. Thinking of this “Judeo-Christian” bargain in relation to the state process of laicité helped me. As my interlocutor, you helped me to identify the “Christian” component in the secular Jew.

Your uninterrogated use of the term — Judeo-Christian — assumes a readership that recognizes itself in it. If you could have anticipated a reaction like mine while you wrote, I am inclined to think that you would have asked more questions about it. It’s true, some of your Jewish readers, and maybe also some Christians, may find this category reassuring, a confirmation that the post-World War II bargain, the one which promised Jews whiteness and welcomed them into the Christian-secular world, and offered Christians a way out of their guilt, is respected. I’m Jewish, but I am not one of these readers, and I’m not alone.

As I worked to retrieve memories of my family’s Arabness, I joined you in your endeavor to expose Man’s memories as simply one mode of being human, a white, middle-class commitment to perpetuate, as you call it, “unimaginable evil.” The Judeo-Christian, I begin to understand as I write to you, is one of the latest iterations of the imperial practice of assimilation, one that was materialized on a state-scale with the Christian-European interest in the State of Israel. I was born in this State, Israel, and I grew up to refuse to be ruled by the multiple bargains of its creation. I refused to become a memory-less Jew, whose life was mutated and reformatted to begin only with the creation of the nation-state.

I first read your work around 2012, immediately after I moved to the United States. I was still trying to figure out the shape that my book Potential History would take in response to my own migration and my encounter with the afterlives of slavery in the U.S.. I was inspired by your commitment to continually care for a world made through violence.

[golly]

This care manifests itself quite early in your 1492 text, when you account for the “subjective understanding” of both Columbus (“celebrant”) and the Aztecs (“dissidents”), and study the meaning of their respective “glorious achievements.” You know that from the point of view of dissidents, it’s almost impossible to think about Columbus’s “glorious achievements”; but being a dissident yourself, you insist on doing so. It is as if you were saying that without saving some of the world that Columbus’s project unleashed, destruction would continue. In other words, the project is not to surrender to Man’s memories, but rather to rewrite their meanings in conversation with the memories of others — a “conceptual move” into a “realm beyond reason,” beyond Man’s realm. The paradox, you tell your audience,

“is that all of these technological revolutions have increasingly served to more totally submit mankind to the single Western and, in Clifford Geertz’s term ‘local culture’ memory, that has made it all possible; that in effect has made our gathering here today, with all of us in this room, being able to understand each other, conceivable. Unimaginable evil, therefore, side by side, with the dazzling scientific, technological and other triumphs.” (“Africa, the West and the Analogy of Culture – The Cinematic Text after Man,” 2000).

It is clear, however, that you are not implying symmetry between “celebrants” and “dissidents,” but rather asking “can there be, besides these two, a third perspective?” thus offering a way to engage with the central question that “remains unresolved:” “which meaning, for what group, and from which perspective — celebrant or dissident?”

How can dissident’s’ words oppose violence that has become the norm, and still care for the world which made this normalization possible? You start by refusing to go past Columbus, rejecting the teleological assumption that anything that has happened was unavoidable. You halt, and transform 1492 into a pivotal moment from which to reconstruct the cognitive and material conditions under which Columbus’s enterprise happened but also, could not have happened. You reconstruct the challenges he faced while persuading others of his vision: “putting forward the intellectual rationale, in spite of the mockery and derision of the learned scholars of his time.” Thus, what Columbus initiated is accompanied in your text by another eventuality: that it could not have happened, that it could not have been imagined. And indeed, you tell us, this work of un-imagining Columbus has already begun, with the anti-colonial and civil rights movements of the 20th century. Let me remind you of this beautiful reversed temporality from your text:

“I propose that such a ‘move beyond reason’ has already began, even if still marginally so. It began in the context of a ‘general upheaval’ whose dimensions were, and will be, as far-reaching as that of the intellectual revolution of Christian humanism and humanism out of which Columbus and Copernicus’s challenge to the representation systems and categorial models of geography and astronomy was to be affected.”

To make it happen, you imply, in a quite W.E.B. Du Bois way, that actions are not enough. Man’s fictional memories should be unmoored from shared reality so that the memories of Man’s others could be set down. This is what Du Bois did when he wove the un-orchestrated mass flight of slaves into the fabric of a general strike in his account of emancipation.

In your text on the Cinematic text and Africa, you relate to cinema as the vehicle through which memories of Man, etched on celluloid, become etched in people’s mind as their memories, even if these people are in fact Man’s “others.” This happens because, as you tell us, these others, even if they radically oppose to Man, were “educated in the Western episteme or order of knowledge which is based on the a priori of this conception of the human, Man, must normally know the world […] from this perspective.”

Being equally educated in the “Western episteme,” I know that we have to unlearn more of Man’s memories than we can know when we begin. Since I didn’t have to pro-actively unlearn the memories affiliated with a “Judeo-Christian” tradition, I thought that they had not become mine. My first assumption was that they were not included in the memories infused in the veins of Jews born in Israel. My second assumption was that these memories may not have been transmitted to non-white Jews, meaning non-Ashkenazi Jews, meaning Arab-Jews.

I no longer think so. Wrestling with the normalization of “Judeo-Christian” in your writing, I now understand that the state of Israel is actually the materialization of a Judeo-Christian vision, though it would have been superfluous, and probably also antagonistic, to naturalize this term in a “Jewish state.” It is so obvious now. Not only was the state of Israel was created with imperial tools (colonization, partition, deportation, nation-state form); it also replicated the domination of white Europeans of Jewish origin, who turned their way of being Jewish into the only way of being Jewish — a Judeo-Christian Jewishness. In so doing, they imposed the Christian-secular state apparatus (which, in Israel’s case is Judeo-Christian) as a universal form. Like other “universal” forms, it is one based on differential and unequal governance. For this project, Europeans of Jewish origins had to be whitened, to refute the proof provided by World War II of their non-whiteness. To be whitened, European Jews needed other Jews to be their non-white Jews. This lies at the core of the imperial state.

Jews destroying Jewish worlds didn’t start with the aftermath of World War II. Recall the “emancipated” French Jew Isaac-Jacob Adolphe Crémieux, who sought to re-educate Arab-Jews in North Africa and to eradicate their Arabness in an effort to make them French, i.e., secular. European Jews, who negotiated with European governments to aid the movement of Jews from Europe to Palestine, sometimes in collaboration with the Nazis, showed their commitment to the Judeo-Christian impulse to cleanse Europe of its Jews. The memories of the Jews as non-whites, as the white Man’s other (alongside the Blacks and Natives), needed to be erased and replaced with something else: the exceptionalism of the extermination of European Jews. It is this trade that gave birth to “Judeo-Christian” as an adjective for a shared cultural heritage. Thus an Arab country, Palestine, was transformed into a piece of property that Europeans, who acted as if they had rights in it, gave as a gift to another group of Europeans (see Edward Said, The Question of Palestine, 1992). The gift of Palestine was given in reward for the whitening of the Jews. The crimes against humanity, which Europeans committed on the bodies of Jews for the sake of racial purification, now became license to Jewish settlers in Palestine to commit crimes on the bodies of the Arab indigenous population. This was the price of their whiteness, and this is how Jews became Christian secularists. This was the triumph of imperial laïcité.

The creation of the State of Israel and the imposition of a system of differential citizenship made Arabness a threat. This Judeo-Christian blow to the worldly sovereignty previously shared by Arabs and Jews in Palestine is the latest reiteration of the 1492 Christian purification of the Iberian Peninsula from Jews and Muslims whose blood was not pure.

However, much like previous imperial efforts to rid a nation of racial “impurities,” the Zionist purging project failed. Broken promises, histories of suffering, debts, duties, revenge, love, shared habits, mixed languages, images, and cultures escaped any attempt to “solve” their mixture. The question, as you show persuasively, is not if but how what you call “interaltruisitic symbolic cospecificity” can be imagined anew.