How Nixon got shot of Munich 

 

By Amir
Oren 

 

Eleven
members of the Israeli delegation to the Munich Olympics were murdered by
people belonging to the Black September organization, or killed in a failed
rescue attempt, on September 5, 1972. One angle of the story remains vague: the
politics and diplomacy in the wake of the terror attack. 

 

Now the
missing information has been supplied, thanks to the declassification last
summer of secret documents from U.S. President Richard Nixon’s administration. Some
verbatim excerpts from these documents provide a rare lesson in personal and
international relations, with the help of an American team then headed by
President Nixon, Secretary of State William Rogers, his rival – and ultimately
successor – National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and Kissinger’s deputy,
General Alexander Haig. 

 

‘They
have got to hit somebody’

 

September
5, 10:35 P.M. Haig reports to Nixon that all the hostages have been killed. “The
Israelis are going to react,” he says. 

 

Nixon:
“Who are they going to hit though?” 

 

Haig:
“Lebanon, though they will find out where based [sic].” 

 

Nixon:
“They are capable of it. They have got to hit somebody, don’t you
think?” 

 

Ten
minutes later, Nixon says to Haig: “Hell, what do we care about Lebanon. Think
we have to be awfully tough. I want you to run that by a couple of people. Any
nation that harbors or gives sanctuary to these international outlaws – we will
cut off all economic support. Obviously Lebanon. Jordan’s another. Don’t know
who else we have relations with.” 

 

Haig: “We
may have some Chinese problem on this.” 

 

Nixon:
“Screw the Chinese on this one. Be very tough.” 

 

At
10:55, Haig phones Rogers and tells him that Nixon plans to call a meeting at
8:30 A.M. the next day. “He has asked you to come over and sit down and
see where to go on this. He’s threatened to break relations with nations that
harbor or give sanctuary to these guerrillas.” 

 

Rogers:
“He can’t do that, especially when we don’t know which nations. What we
are trying to do tonight, we are trying to get some protection against a JDL
[Jewish Defense League] blowup.” 

 

Haig:
“He always wants to do something. We have to be careful not to do
something he will regret.” 

 

Five
minutes later, Nixon tells Haig over the phone: “I might consider showing
our position on this by flying to the Israelis’ funeral. Tell them that I am
here at the White House getting reports as they come in, and that I am saddened
and shocked by this terrible incident and we will comment in the
morning.” 

 

At
11:25 P.M. Rogers and Haig talk on the telephone. Rogers suggests that Nixon
issue an executive order for a day of mourning in Washington with flags at half-mast. 

 

‘I
talked to Rabin’

 

September
6, 1972. Morning. Nixon and Kissinger, some of the time in conversation with
Rogers and Haig, some of the time with White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman,
Kissinger’s rival in ingratiating himself with Nixon: 

 

Kissinger:
“Now, let me say a word about the Israeli situation, Mr. President,
because I feel very, very strongly about it. I look at it the way we would look
at it if eight Pakistanis killed eight Indians. I think you have been a
statesman … And I don’t think we should throw it away in cheap shots. And
this thing could easily turn now. My great fear is, World War I started because
the Austrians had been frustrated for 15 years, had the archduke assassinated;
the Germans and the whole world was outraged. And they thought that for once
they would have a free shot, and they were going to settle the Serbian problem
once and for all.” 

 

Nixon:
“The Austrians thought so?” 

 

Kissinger:
“I beg your pardon?” 

 

Nixon:
“The Austrians thought so?” 

 

Kissinger:
“The Austrians thought. Now, my worry is that if we say to the Israelis
too much that the …” 

 

Nixon: “I talked to Rabin last night.
He sure hasn’t talked that way.” 

 

Kissinger: “Well I would really like
to talk to Rabin in a formal way today when he comes back.” 

 

Nixon: “The thing that I would
emphasize to Rabin, I hadn’t thought on this, which would be a very good test
for the Israelis – I don’t know whether they are able to do it or not. Mrs.
Meir, and she’s the only one that can do it, should call upon the International
Olympic Committee to go forward with those games.” 

 

Kissinger: “I agree with
you.” 

 

Nixon: “But the other reason is she
can say, ‘Well that’s what my boys would have wanted.’ It will make them look
good rather than … You see, the trouble with the Jews is that they’ve always
played these things in terms of outrage. You’ve got the Jewish Defense League
raising hell and saying we ought to kill every Arab diplomat. What we have to
do is enough here, that we’re showing an interest. It’s my thought that the
best thing here is to let Rogers take the lead in the damn thing – rather than
me … We’ve got to show we care on this one because, you were in this country,
well I guess you weren’t, you don’t really know, Henry, what the Jewish community
will do on this. It’s going to be the goddamnedist thing you’ve ever saw. Did
you see both papers this morning?” 

 

Kissinger: “Yes.” 

 

Nixon: “And you’re absolutely right
that that can stir it all up into something very, very … so we’ve got to show
the greatest understanding and sympathy and the rest so that they don’t get
into the hands of the extremists.” 

 

Kissinger: “Mr. President, Haig and I
have been on the phone half the night with the Israelis, who wanted us to do
the opposite of what you suggested, which is the right thing. They wanted us to
appeal to the International Olympic Committee to cancel it [the
games].” 

 

Nixon: “They’re crazy. But they want
to look good, don’t they? … You see, that’s exactly … the reason Mrs. Meir
should do it. She’s the only one that can. Is that what the terrorists want?
They want to make it appear that they’ve stopped the games. It’s like these
assholes that tried to stop us running the government.” 

 

Kissinger: “I will talk to Rabin
because they don’t trust Rogers, but they do trust me. But I’ll talk to him
quietly.” 

 

Nixon: “What does Rogers think we
should do?” 

 

Kissinger: “Well, Rogers thinks we
should declare a national day of mourning. I’m against even that. It’s not our
day of mourning, Mr. President. It’s easy enough now to do a number of
grandstanding … And also, God I am Jewish. I’ve had 13 members of my family
killed. So I can’t be insensitive to this. But I think you have to think also of
the anti-Semitic woes in this country. If we let our policy be run by the
Jewish community …” 

 

Nixon: “By the radical Jewish
community …” 

 

Kissinger: “By the radical Jewish
community and declare a national …” 

 

Nixon: “You understand what I was
talking to Haig about last night was gestures. Let’s do some things here. But
nothing that would make the Germans too mad and so forth …” 

 

Kissinger: “What I would favor, Mr.
President, is to go to the UN …” 

 

Nixon: “Me?” 

 

Kissinger: “Not you. Not physically.
To have the United States to go to the UN and see whether we can get some
international rules on harboring guerrillas and so forth.” 

 

Nixon: “Now, I’ve called Rabin. I’ve
asked him to call me this morning to get me a report. You know they have the
best intelligence. You know he was so good last night … He says I haven’t got
all the information.” 

 

Kissinger: “I’m really concerned that
it’s easy enough now there’s a lot of emotion for it, but if they take Beirut,
which they could, they’ll do something.” 

 

Nixon: “They mustn’t do that … They
can’t start a war over this. You think they might?” 

 

Kissinger: “I think they might.
They’re in the best position they’ve ever been in. No Russians there. We’ve got
an election campaign. Now I got a promise out of Golda Meir two months ago when
you asked me to that they wouldn’t take military action. But this is an
enormous provocation. And they are emotional. And I don’t want them to think
that they’ve got you in their hip pocket.” 

 

Nixon: “Well let me say, you have no
problems with Rabin. The way he’s talking, he’s very rational.” 

 

Kissinger: “Rabin is the sanest guy.
But they …” 

 

Nixon: “But he has others that are
not.” 

 

Kissinger: “They have their own
election campaign coming up next spring.” 

 

Nixon: “Well, you don’t start a war
over anything like this.” 

 

The Jewish swimmer

 

The continuation of the conversation,
according to a memorandum from Haig: 

 

“The president stated that the United
States should not agree to drop out of the Olympics and that Israel should
remain consistent with the position it announced earlier to see the games
through. 

 

“Secretary Rogers stated that all had
agreed on this stand the day before since it would be a terrible slap at the
Germans to precipitously withdraw. It appeared that the Germans were in deep
difficulty already for their handling of the situation at the NATO air
base. 

 

“Rogers said: ‘Perhaps we should send
some of our athletes such as the U.S. swimmer who is of Jewish descent [Olympic
gold medalist Mark Spitz].’ Dr. Kissinger stated that no resolution would be
likely to pass. The question is how to posture ourselves. The resolution should
talk about rules of conduct of those who sponsor radicals who operate across
international borders. It is probable that the Peoples’ Republic of China would
veto … 

 

“Rogers stated that it would be
impossible to get any kind of action. Kissinger stated that this was true, but
it would serve as a deterrent to Israeli action … Rogers stated that another
advantage of the tragedy was that it will again underline the need for an
overall settlement. 

 

“The president commented that it was
ironic that the German government found itself in the position of protecting
Israeli athletes … The president stated that he did not think the flag at
half-mast was a good idea. Kissinger agreed. Rogers said that we would just do
this in public buildings. The president stated maybe just the White House.” 

 

After Rogers and Haig leave the Oval
Office, the conversation between Nixon and Kissinger continues: 

 

Nixon: “I want to get him [Rogers]
off of the other thing. As you know, he wants to have a long talk with me this
morning, and [unclear] … I don’t want to get into the Russian thing, so let
him do this thing.” 

 

Kissinger: “Oh, no, no
…” 

 

Nixon: “[Unclear] Let him be the lead
horse.” 

 

Kissinger: “Oh, God. The only thing I
want – the Israelis distrust him so much they wouldn’t do a thing without
checking with us anyway … I don’t think he should go to Tel Aviv for the
funeral even if he should engineer an invitation.” 

 

Nixon: “Bill? Oh, shit
no.” 

 

Kissinger: “Yeah, but they might want
him. That might give them some visible American support, and that would embroil
us with the Arabs.” 

 

Nixon: “Listen, let me tell you
something. My view – this incident blows any chance at [a peace agreement].” 

 

Kissinger: “You are 100 percent
right.” 

 

Nixon: “But the point is, let’s let
Bill be out in front. Your idea of going to the UN, he finally got the point
… And it will be great for him and it will be great for us.” Kissinger:
“Above all, it will be good for you, Mr. President … Because if he goes
up to the UN, he will be doing something concrete. Of course, nothing will come
out. Nothing ever comes out. But we could make a lot of statesman-like speeches
about curbing terrorism.” 

 

Nixon instructs Kissinger to get Rabin on
the phone, and says: “Would you tell him that … let me put it this way:
Tell him, ‘Look, Mr. Ambassador, the president wants to get Rogers on the right
side of this issue.’ And second, tell him it will be good to put the goddamn UN
on the spot. We want to put them on the spot on this issue, because we think we
got them by the balls here. For him to urge Rogers to go to the UN. Would you
tell him the president would like for him to do that? … 

 

“Also, tell Rabin that I consider it
very statesmanlike, Mrs. Meir’s statement. Would he please convey that to her.
Particularly with regard to going forward with the games. That I had
independently reached that conclusion, but did not want, of course, to suggest
it. But I think that’s exactly the kind of thing that will make tremendous
points in the world by not trying to knock off the games. That’s what the
athletes would have wanted. Third point is that now that they’re in this good
position, don’t blow it. Tell him, ‘Don’t blow it.’ [Unclear] You’ve got to
remember that the president is their friend. Now we’ve got some world opinion
for them. But don’t … these things can turn very fast.” 

 

Kissinger: “You’re right.” 

 

Nixon: “I don’t want them to go
conquer Beirut. I don’t mind them going in and knocking off a few camps, but
even that’s bad right now.” 

 

Kissinger: “I think …” 

 

Nixon: “They would be very well to be
the injured, play the injured martyr.” 

 

Kissinger: “But if we can get to the
UN within the next 24 hours. Now this statement here will hold us for 24
hours.” 

 

Nixon: “What statement?” 

 

Kissinger: “Well, where we say we’ve
consulted with other governments. Frankly, I wouldn’t consult because if you do
it, they’ll say no. And if we go …” 

 

Nixon: “All right.” (Turns to
Bob Haldeman.) “You see, Bob, of course nobody understands what the
president is trying to do here. I’m trying to get Bill doing something! As I
told you last night on the phone, Bob, rather than farting around whether Henry
sees [British Prime Minister Edward] Heath, or [West German Chancellor Willy]
Brandt, or some other. Now Brandt may pose a problem at this point.” 

 

Haldeman: “The UN thing is an ideal
thing.” 

 

Nixon: “Let’s talk a little about
lowering the flag. What I’m concerned about is that you can be sure as hell
that [New York City Mayor John] Lindsay [a former Nixon rival in the race for
the Republican nomination] is going to lower the flag, Congress is going to
call for lowering the flag … Here’s the point. [Unclear] Why don’t you order
the flag when some Irish nationalists get killed?” 

 

Kissinger: “That’s right. What will
Irishmen say if you didn’t lower it when the school children got killed in
Belfast …” 

 

Nixon: “That’s right. It really hits
the point that the flag ought to be low all the time.” 

 

Haldeman: “You didn’t lower it when
the guys [from the Japanese Red Army, which launched a terror attack on Lod
Airport in May 1972] went in the airport and shot up the people.” 

 

Nixon: “Well, it’s the Olympics. The
Olympics, they’re international and all that business. Suppose, for example,
somebody went in and machine-gunned the UN and killed six Arabs
there.” 

 

Kissinger:
“My instinct is – sure, right now you’ll get a lot of indignation. But
whether more people won’t feel that this is the president of all the people …
” 

 

Nixon:
“Going too far?” 

 

Kissinger:
“But Bob would have a better judgment than I.” 

 

Nixon:
“Yeah. Now the idea of the church thing appeals to me if I do it my way. My
way would be I call upon all Americans to go to church and a moment of silence.
But I think, in my way, I quietly slip out of this damn door …” 

 

Kissinger:
“That doesn’t bother me. ” 

 

Nixon:
“… and pick maybe that little church across the way without … any
notice of it. I just walk round, sit in the church for five minutes and walk
out. Get my point? That’s my moment of silence.” 

 

Kissinger:
“That I think, that has meaning. That has human compassion. You show where
you stand, but you don’t involve the presidency of the United States in an
official act.”

 

Source

 

Die 68er waren die erste Generation nach der staatlich organisierten fabrikmäßigen Ermordung von Millionen Menschen. Nach Auschwitz konnten wir keine Gedichte schreiben. Geistiges Leben war nur als Revolte gegen eine Kultur denkbar, die das Volk der Dichter und Denker zu einem Volk der Richter und Henker (Tucholsky) werden ließ.

Nie waren die Deutschen tugendhafter als zu der Zeit, als sie den besseren Teil von sich in den Konzentrationslagern und in den Gaskammern der Vernichtungslager umbrachten.

Die Töchter und Söhne jener deutschen Eltern, die so stolz und heldenhaft gegen die ganze Welt Krieg geführt und nebenbei – in unterschiedlicher Beteiligung – das grauenhafteste Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit verübt hatten, das je geschehen ist, konnten kein normales Leben führen. Sie waren die Kinder gebrochener Eltern, von denen sie – wie Peter Gauweiler vorigen Donnerstag in der taz schrieb – nicht lernen konnten, was Kinder brauchen. Diese Eltern hatten nicht mehr den Mut, jene Tugenden zu lehren, die sie zum Gehorsam im Völkermord tauglich gemacht hatten.

Für uns 68er war “die Gnade der späten Geburt” die lebhaft gefühlte Verpflichtung, sich der Verantwortung zu stellen, die mit dieser Geschichte auf dem deutschen Volke lastet.

Wir haben deshalb eine Leistung vorzuweisen, auf die wir stolz sein können: Wir sind – nachdem die Feinde Deutschlands das mörderische Naziregime zerschlagen hatten – mit der Tugendhaftigkeit der Deutschen ins Gericht gegangen. Wir haben, als unser Volk zur Normalität übergehen wollte, als sei nichts gewesen, der Demokratie in Deutschland Wurzeln gegeben, indem wir uns gegen einen Staat erhoben, der die Spuren seiner eben erst überwundenen Verschmelzung mit der Hitlerbande noch an sich hatte.

Doch das ist nur die Oberfläche. Die 68er haben Tradition und Religion als weltbildprägende Mächte – mehr noch, als es vorher die Naturwissenschaften und der Rationalismus vermocht hatten – zerstört und damit unser Volk der Mündigkeit einen Schritt näher gebracht. Erst jetzt ist der Boden für die Vollendung der Aufklärung, die zugleich ihre Überwindung sein wird, bereitet.

Wir erleben dieses Resultat der Kulturrevolution von 1968 jetzt als die Hölle, denn mit Tradition und Religion ist unsere sittliche Substanz verflogen. Wir wissen nicht mehr, wer wir sind. Gottes Tod ist auch der Tod des Menschen. Wer nicht mehr an Gott glauben kann, nicht von seiner Unendlichkeit und Allgegenwart weiß, erkennt in sich und im Anderen nicht das Moment der Göttlichkeit. Der Mensch ist so etwas Verächtliches – ob er ist oder nicht ist, ist belanglos. Wozu Mensch überhaupt (Nietzsche)?

In den Medien, insbesondere im Fernsehen, stellen wir uns als eine geistlose Spezies dar. Vielen in unserer Mitte gilt ein Mensch, der nicht auch Deutscher ist, allein deshalb als hassenwert, als Objekt staatlich zu verordnender Wegschaffung. Ist er von anderer Hautfarbe, erwachen Mordgelüste.

Unsere Alten entsorgen wir in Sterbe-Ghettos.

So ist als Folge der kulturellen Defundamentalisierung das Heidentum auferstanden: Der Kulturbetrieb, der ja weitergeht wie ein Perpetuum mobile, ist nur Schein. In ihm bewegt sich nichts. Als kulturloses Volk leben wir in einer zweiten Steinzeit.

Es erfordert einige Anstrengung des Denkens, das geistige Vakuum – diesen Zustand der absoluten Negativität, die uns als Menschen und als Volk ja jetzt wirklich auszulöschen droht – als etwas Positives und in diesem Sinne als eine geschichtliche Leistung der 68er zu erkennen und anzuerkennen. Aber das Leiden an der Geistlosigkeit, der horror vacui, ist zugleich die Kraft zum Positiven. Indem sie Bewegung im Denken bewirkt, ist sie an sich schon das Positive. Die 68er sind ein Teil dieser Kraft.

Der Holocaust hat gezeigt, daß die nur erst geglaubte Wahrheit, daß Gott im Menschen gegenwärtig ist, den staatlich organisierten Mord an den europäischen Juden nicht verhindern konnte. Die Wahrheit wird erst als Wissen zu der Macht, die das Grauen überwindet, seine Wiederholung in der Geschichte unmöglich werden läßt. Dieses Wissen entsteht in der Philosophie, die gegenwärtig aus dem Weltbild der klassischen Physik entkommt und dadurch fähig wird, den Menschen als geistiges Wesen zu erfassen und damit Gott zu denken und dann auch wieder zu fühlen.

Der Kultus des Wissens ist der philosophische Diskurs. Niemand ist davon ausgeschlossen; denn wir alle sind Ebenbilder Gottes. Seien wir Krieger des Denkens! Laßt uns miteinander streiten – für Gott und Elternland!

Quelle: jf 17.4.1998

Source

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was visiting Israel for the recent Presidential Conference in Jerusalem.

Israel Hayom: In your lectures you made numerous references to the situation in the Middle East. You claim that people in the West do not understand that what is taking place in the Middle East is not a dialogue.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: More than one issue is at stake here. Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian context, the main problem is that you may speak of a peace process, but what you get is a process, not peace. And why is this process so prolonged? Because for the Israelis this issue is a territorial problem. For the Palestinian negotiators, on the other hand, it is not a territorial problem but a religious and ethnic one, It is not only about Palestinians but about all Arabs. Most of all, it is a religious problem.

From the perspective of the Arab leaders, reaching a two-state solution is to betray God, the Koran, the hadith and the tradition of Islam.

Israel Hayom: Even though they are portrayed as secular?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The presumption that the Palestinian negotiators are secular is not supported by facts. Were they secular, there would already be a settled territorial agreement of some kind. But there is no agreement as of today, because on one side it has become religious jihad of all or nothing, while on the other side it is still a territorial issue. Of course I know that there are Israelis who also perceive this as a religious problem; but their numbers pale in comparison to the Muslim side. Reaching a settlement that brings about two states is a religious betrayal — not only for the leadership but for most Muslims today. The West does not understand this.

Israel Hayom: Why? After the many years you have lived in the West, how can you explain this?

The conception of religion in the West in the 20th and 21st century differs from that of Middle Eastern Muslims. The West successfully separated religion and politics, but even in places in the West where there is no distinct separation, still the concept of God and religion, even in the 13th or 15th century, differs to the current reality in the Middle East.

Islam is an Orthopraxy, Islam has a goal. So if you are a true Muslim, you must fight for that goal. You can achieve a temporary peace or truce, but it is not ultimate, not everlasting. It is not just about the territory. Because the territory does not belong to the people; it belongs to God. So for a Palestinian leader — even if he is secular, even an atheist — to leave the negotiating room with the announcement of a two-state solution would mean that he would be killed the minute he walks out.

Israel Hayom: Many wise people come here advising us Israelis to act rationally. Do you think this dispute has anything to do with rationalism?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Europeans and Americans — and I do not refer merely to the leadership, but to people in general — when they have a problem, they think there must be some kind of compromise on the table. What they cannot accept is that one party would say “the only rational outcome is our complete victory.” If you put aside the Israeli-Palestinian situation, you see components of this culture in the events in Syria, in Lebanon. You’ve seen it with Mubarak. There is a winner and there is a loser. But there cannot be two winners.

Israel Hayom: So the proposal of compromise stems from naivety?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: You can give it any label you like. I have listened to someone like Tony Blair, I was in two or three conferences where he spoke, and he is not naïve anymore, he is not the same man he was ten years ago in regards to this conflict. More and more leaders see that this conflict is not going to be resolved Western-style, namely that all conflicts are resolvable and no-one leaves the table empty-handed.

In a culture dictated by honor and shame – in addition to the religious issue – defeat of any kind, accepting a compromise, is to leave the room empty-handed. Compromise is loss in this culture. It is very hard to explain this to contemporary Westerners.

Israel Hayom: Many liberals around the world, who support the compromise solution, also tend to blame Israel.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Many liberals perceive Israel to be one of their kind; another liberal, white, rational state, etc. Therefore they expect you to approach matters the way they would. But then they approach the subject in the context of the U.S. or Europe, or some other Western system, where there is rule of law, arbiters, an ability to go to court in case of disagreement. There is a district court, a court of appeals, a supreme court, and once the judges have spoken their decision is final. You lose face, but you have to accept defeat.

What these liberals do not understand is that we are speaking of a fundamentally different context, where such a judicial infrastructure does not exist, and those who aspire for it are a persecuted minority.

And yet I am optimistic, after the Arab Spring. I see people, albeit few in number and very disorganized, but who do want that infrastructure where religion is put aside and where compromise becomes central. They just don’t know how to go about it. They lack the resources and the institutions to make that happen. But it is possible.

Israel Hayom: Your views are not prevalent within the liberal media or liberal intellectual elite. Have you encountered difficulties in delivering such ideas?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Among Western liberal elites there are those who have actual experience and those who have not. Those who have actual experience with any aspect of Islamic culture or religion, who have really given it their all to achieve some kind of compromise, come out — after years of endless abortive attempts — with a completely different perspective. Them I do not need to persuade.

I mentioned earlier Tony Blair, the most-renowned liberal to change his perspective. He once believed that the ability to always find a compromise for whoever was in the negotiations room was an art. He no longer thinks this way. As we are dealing with a wholly different phenomenon, we need voices like his to educate liberal Westerners on why this is different.

I think that whoever acts on the presumption that we are all the same and that we are able to solve this — is uninterested, indifferent, and inexperienced.

Israel Hayom: There is also a certain measure of idealism…

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Idealism is a good thing. But when idealism encounters reality, you must not try to manipulate it to fit your utopia. You have to take in the reality. 93,000 people have died in Syria because the fighting forces could not, cannot, and will not compromise. This toll is higher than all the fatalities on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!

So, to go on and on about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in my view is to take a tranquilizer or smoke pot. You do it just to feel better. You cannot face reality, so you just keep on harping about something that can make you feel better. One can also mention the number of people who died in Libya because Kaddafi and the opposition would not find the way to the negotiating table. This phenomenon is repeated throughout the region, not only today but throughout history. Reaching compromise is to lose face.

Israel Hayom: So do you think that talk about negotiations brought up by the Arab counterparts is a game, with no real intentions behind it? We know that right after the Oslo accords, Arafat spoke in a mosque in South Africa, comparing the Oslo accords to the hudaiba treaty by Muhammad with his enemies. In Israel, there were those who accepted this, as they said that Arafat had to resort to speaking two different languages, one for his people and one for us.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: I hear this argument constantly, also in relation to the Turkey’s Erdogan and in regards to the Saudis. Do you know what is wrong with this argument? If you want peace and not merely a process, you must make peace with the people. The negotiators themselves are of no importance. They are a few individuals who may tomorrow be out of power or dead. You have to have peace with the people you are in conflict with, and as long as they do not want to hear a different tune, you will not have peace. Until the people at large are ready for that compromise, there is no compromise.

This is true of the domestic politics of any nation or the external politics with foreign nations, for whom the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is seen symbolically as the biggest icon of all foreign affairs relations with the Arab Islamic world.

There has to be a change of attitude and a change in attitude within the culture and of culture, and I hope that we can see this.

I believe that true emancipation cannot exist without the freedom of the individual, without the individual’s space and voice. The fact that individualism is not given a chance in the Arab Muslim world is related to belonging and the collective. If you want to belong and be part of the collective you have to be a winner. If you are not, then you are a source of shame.

So you have to ask yourself why the Syrian regime and its likes are incapable of putting an end to the bloodshed after killing ten, or 1,000, or 10,000 people. Why not? It is not caused by Israel, the Americans or any outsiders; it is part of the culture. And for the culture to grow out of such phenomena, change has to come from within.

Israel Hayom: If so, do negotiations have any meaning when we talk about peace while the Palestinian Authority use anti-Israeli school books, which do not even mention Israel by name in their geographical maps?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Not now. Not as long as a majority of the people do not want peace. An Arab leader who genuinely wants peace has to convince the Arab people first, must get their endorsement and then go and get peace. That is why the first thing that needs to be worked out is not so much the relationship with Israel but changing the culture, Islamic and Arab. This process does not depend on you, though you can help it, facilitate it, be a catalyst; but it does not depend on you, on America or the rest of the world.

Israel Hayom: In reference to Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” theory, is there any sense that Europe is awakening to the threat it faces? We have a feeling that Israel is a scapegoat of sorts for the rest of the world. Do you not think that Europe is overcome by a quiet conquest of the Muslims there?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Yes, but it is no longer quiet, ever since 9/11 and the terrorist plots. Because the countries of Europe and the U.S. are democracies, their citizens enjoy freedom of speech. The more we listen, the more discernible is the extreme cultural divergence between the civilizations, as Huntington claims. One must first face it before blaming Israel or scapegoating others, otherwise things will not change. And the Europeans are waking up to this.

I visited Israel for the first time in 1998 or 1999, and saw people in uniform with guns in buses, in the market, on the streets. My European friend who came with me found this so strange. You would never find this in Holland. Now all airports in Europe and the U.S. have security men, all wielding machine guns, just like I saw in Israel at the time. After the Boston marathon bombings, I think that on the Fourth of July this year there will be more security than spectators.

So, as these liberal Western democracies are beginning to face the same challenges as Israel, or at least a tiny fraction of them — you see attitudes changing.

Israel Hayom: Do you perceive attitudes changing towards Israel? An understanding of Israel?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Well, some people get hardened. I do not understand Stephen Hawking’s refusal to come to Israel. There is a boycott on Israel by the intellectuals. Yet, the people in Boston are the most liberal in the United States, maybe short of San Francisco, and they were really quite happy with people in uniform patrolling the streets, which compromises their civil liberties. But people would rather face reality than lose limbs.

Israel Hayom: What would you like to say to the readers of Israel Hayom?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Exactly what I say in my lectures. You have to be a realist and acknowledge that Israel is not the problem, though neither is it the solution. I also speak of the signs of hope, of [Muslim] women who aspire to improve their lives, of homosexuals, of religious minorities. If anyone in Israel, including ordinary people, wants to be an activist, they need to forge relationships with those individuals in the Middle East who have developed something closer to what the Israelis want.

Israel Hayom: And you think that it will be a huge mistake to give away territory before a cultural change occurs?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: I will just say that Israel is not the problem nor is it the solution. Even if you give up all the land, it will not solve any of the problems in the Middle East. It will not obliterate despotism, it will not liberate women, it will not help religious minorities. It won’t bring peace to anyone. Even if Israel does not give up an inch of land — the result will be the same.

If you want a process, continue the way you are. If you want real, lasting peace, then things have to change first within the Arab Muslim individual, family, school, streets, education, and politics. It is not an Israeli problem.

You must learn to take advantage of opportunities. Due to technology, things can develop quickly. Look at the Iranians; what took the Iranians thirty years could take the Egyptians five or ten.

Israel Hayom: To become secular?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: No, just for the majority of the people to stand up to Shariah. This is what I want to say about Muslims in general: Muslims want Shariah until they have it…

For cultural change to transpire we need one hundred years and more to pass.

You can pick any number you want. I am speaking of a lengthy, bloody period. But it is going to change.

Source, 6/29/2013

Die Juden in Deutschland sind tot, vernichtet, es gibt sie nicht mehr. Dennoch gerät man hier leicht in den Verdacht, einer zu sein. Zwar wird dieser Verdacht (noch) nicht ausgesprochen, aber er ist in sonderbaren Verknüpfungen enthalten, die ohne ihn nicht zu erklären sind. Man rechtfertigt zum Beispiel Begins klares und entschiedenes Urteil über den westdeutschen Bundeskanzler als politisch-moralische Person und wird dann prompt aufgefordert, sich vom Zionismus zu distanzieren – als schlösse die Zustimmung zu einem wahren Urteil über den Bundeskanzler dann, wenn es von einem israelischen Ministerpräsidenten gesprochen wurde, auch die Verpflichtung ein, sich über den Zionismus eine Meinung gebildet zu haben und in Fragen israelischer Politik kompetent zu sein. Weil zwischen beidem aber nicht der geringste sachliche oder logische Zusammenhang besteht, muß die Aufforderung, man solle sich zum Zionismus äußern, auf der Vermutung gründen, ein solcher Zusammenhane sei durch die Person gegeben: Wer Begin gegen die beleidigte Volksgemeinschaft in Schutz nimmt, muß ein Jude sein. Als solcher hat er die Pflicht, zu beweisen, daß er ein guter Jude ist, d.h. er muß sich vom Zionismus distanzieren. Die Bitte, den Arier-Nachweis vorzuzeigen, schwingt verstohlen auch in der bei allen linken und alternativen Versammlungen und Diskussionen mittlerweile üblichen Standard-Frage mit, wer er denn eigentlich sei. Die Frage ist leicht zu beantworten, ganz ohne Ahnenforschung: So sicher, wie man kein Jude im Sinne von vor 1933 ist – denn diese Juden existieren nicht mehr -, so sicher ist man einer im Sinne von nach 1933. Man hat nämlich damals den Begriff ‘Halbjude’ eingeführt, einen Begriff, der nach weiterer Differenzierung verlangt, und je weiter diese Differenzierung getrieben wird, desto großer wird auch die Anzahl der Juden, spätestens beim Promille-Juden ist dann aus Gründen statistischer Gesetzmäßigkeit wohl jeder dabei. Stets folgert aus dem Ideal absoluter Reinheit die deprimierende Diagnose: Totalverseuchung. Totalvernichtung inklusive der eigenen Bevölkerung, war konsequenterweise die Therapie. 
Wenn also, nach Auschwitz, die Juden alle und niemand sind, gegen wen richtet sich dann der Antisemitismus in Deutschland? Er richtet sich nicht gegen jene Deutschen, die beträchtlichen inszenatorischen Aufwand betreiben müssen, um als Juden zu gelten, sondern er richtet sich gegen Israel, und die Rehabilitierung Deutschlands als Nation ist sein Zweck. Weil gerade die Linken hier weder den Nationalsozialismus noch Auschwitz begriffen haben, weil sie ersteren mit einem besonders tyrannischem Regime und letzteren mit einem besonders grausamen Blutbad verwechseln, deshalb haben sie die Hoffnung nicht aufgegeben, das Unrecht, welches sie anderswo entdecken, könne Deutschland entlasten. Wenn sich die deutsche Vergangenheit schon nicht verteidigen und rechtfertigen läßt, dann soll wenigstens niemand besser sein, und schon gar nicht die Juden. Die Annahme, der Zionismus könne diesem Nachweis dienen, hat ihn für die westdeutsche Linke so außerordenthch und weit über das Maß seiner realen Bedeutung hinaus interessant gemacht. Dreihundert von der südafrikanischen Polizei in Soweto erschossene Schüler kümmern niemand. Drei erschossene Schüler in Hebron machen die westdeutsche Linke vor Empörung fassungslos. Die Unterdrückung und Verfolgung der Palästinenser durch Israel wird so genau beobachtet und so leidenschaftlich angeprangert, weil sie beweisen soll: es gibt keinen Unterschied. So merkt die westdeutsche Linke nicht, daß ihr der Unterschied zwischen Deutschland und den anderen Nationen mit jedem Versuch, ihn zu verwischen und zu tilgen, nur umso kolossaler entgegentritt. Gewiß werden die Palästinenser von Israel unterdrückt, in Einzelfällen gefoltert; dies aber unter Bedingungen, unter denen es in Deutschland längst keine parlamentarische Demokratie, keine Opposition und keine bürgerlichen Freiheitsrechte mehr gäbe. Ob im Recht oder im Unrecht -jedenfalls sind die Palästinenser für Israel eine reale Bedrohung. Hier aber hat eine fiktive Bedrohung genügt, um die ganze Bevölkerung in ein Volk von Häschern und Denunzianten zu verwandeln, damals, als man in Stammheim drei Leichen fand, und keiner der tapferen Wortführer gegen Israel hat den Mut gehabt, nach der Todesursache zu fragen. 
Das Unrecht überall auf der Welt zu verurteilen ist das Recht auch der Deutschen. Moralische Empörung aber ist hier stets mit einer guten Portion Heuchelei vermischt. Empörung setzt voraus, daß man sich wundert, daß man die Dinge, die geschehen, für unglaublich hält. Viel weniger aber noch als anderswo kann es in Deutschland wundern, daß Israel seinen erklärten Gegner blutig unterdrückt. Die einzige Frage, die hier Rätsel aufgeben kann, lautet: Warum waren die Machthaber in Israel so zimperlich? Warum sorgte Israel nicht dafür, daß militante Schülerdemonstrationen in Hebron oder Ramallah nicht mehr stattfinden können? Oder ist denn, anders gefragt, auch nur ein Fall bekannt, wo Juden nach 1933 in Deutschland der Polizei eine Straßenschlacht geliefert hätten? Hat es Unruhe und Aufruhr unter denen gegeben, die in Sammellagern auf ihre Deportation warten mußten? Gab es blutige Kämpfe und Schießereien wie in Ramallah oder Hebron, die das Interesse der Weltöffentlichkeit auf sich lenkten? Man kennt die Antwort, und damit kennt man den Unterschied. Überall auf der Welt und zu allen Zeiten wurden Menschen umgebracht. Hier aber hat ein namenloses Grauen lebendige Menschen in bewegliche Tote verwandelt. Gestorben waren sie schon, bevor sie in die Lager kamen. Dort sind sie nur noch vernichtet worden. An deutschen Vernichtungslagern, und nirgends sonst, findet der Begriff Genozid seine Bestimmung: als planmäßiger, systematisch betriebener, kontinuierlicher Mord an Millionen Menschen, mit welchem sich kein anderer Zweck und keine andere Absicht verbindet als bloß die der Vernichtung. 
Wenn nun, im dritten Nahostkrieg, Mitte Juni 1982, die westdeutsche Linke und allen voran die ‘taz’ von Völkermord, Holocaust und Vernichtung spricht und die Operationen der israelischen Armee damit meint, dann ist mit dieser verlogenen Zweckpropaganda weder den bedrohten Palästinensern geholfen noch erleidet die israelische Armee den redlich verdienten Schaden, sondern der eizige Nutznießer sind deutsche Nationalgefühle. Im Lichte israelischer Untaten besehen verliert, so muß es dem regelmäßigen taz-Leser scheinen, Auschwitz sowohl seine Einmaligkeit als auch seine Schreckhchkeit. Und der Verdacht muß keimen: so außergewöhnlich völkermörderisch, wie die Israelis nun sind, war Auschwitz vielleicht nur ein kleiner Fehler. So nahe liegt dieser Gedanke, daß ein taz-Kommentator namens Reinhard Hesse die Ungeheuerlichkeit fertig bringt, ihn in seine Argumentation einzuflechten, indem er ihn dementiert: “Diese schreckliche Vergangenheit (gemeint ist die NS-Zeit) noch gegenwärtig, mußte (und muß) mit aller Entschiedenheit den Deutschen entgegengetreten werden, die bei israelischen Angriffen auf arabische Nachbarn mit dem Kommentar zur Stelle waren: ‘Die hat man zu vergasen vergessen!'” (taz vom 15.6.82). 
Von einer Linken, die solche Entschiedenheit eigens bekräftigen muß, weil ihr die Selbstverständlichkeit abhanden kam, daß man den zitierten Deutschen nicht entgegentreten, sondern daß man sie kräftig treten muß, hat Israel nichts zu befürchten und haben die Palästinenser nichts zu erwarten, auch keine propagandistische oder moralische Unterstützung. In Relation gesetzt zu Begriffen wie Vernichtung oder Völkermord, mit denen die Operationen der israelischen Armee im Libanon von der westdeutschen Linken benannt werden, nehmen diese in der Tat mörderischen Operationen sich eher niedlich und harm]os aus. Unter die Völkermorde subsumiert, kann der Libanonkrieg nur als Kavaliersdelikt betrachtet werden. Selbst wenn dieser Krieg 10.000 Zivilisten das Leben gekostet hat: um solche Bagatellfälle in der deutschen Geschichte zu finden, muß man weit zurückgreifen in die Vergangenheit, in d
ie gute alte Zeit, als der Führer noch Kaiser Wilhelm hieß und deutsche Schutztruppen 10.000 Hereros in Süd-West-Afrika in die Wüste trieben, sie einkesselten und dort verdursten ließen. Was die Palästinenser für die westdeutsche Linke so sympathisch macht, was ihr erlaubt, sich mit den Palästinensern zu identifizieren, ist die Annahme, die Palästinenser führten eigentlich einen Stellvertreterkrieg für genuin deutsche Wünsche, Vorstellungen und Ideale: für völkische Einheit und nationale Selbstbestimmung auf heimatlicher Scholle. Die Palästinenser firmieren gewissermaßen als der große, militante Heimatvertriebenenverband, den die Westdeutschen gerade jetzt gern hätten, den sie sich aber nicht leisten können. 
Die westdeutsche Linke vergißt in ihrer Begeisterung für die Palästinenser, daß auch Israel sich als großer, militanter Heimatvertriebenenverband versteht. Sie vergißt weiter, daß aus ihrer Parteinahme für die Palästinenser logisch nur folgert, daß Palästinenser und Israelis gleiche Rechte besitzen, daß zwischen gleichen Rechten die Gewalt entscheidet, und daß Israel über die bessere Armee verfügt. Den Kampf für völkische Einheit und nationale Selbstbestimmung auf heimatlicher Scholle, zu welchem auch die westdeutsche Linke die Palästinenser ermutigt hat, kann deshalb, weil dieser Kampf ein bloßer Machtkampf ist, unter den gegebenen Voraussetzungen nur Israel gewinnen. 
Weil der Antisemitismus, ob er will oder nicht, es stets mit den Mächtigen hält, kann er Israel, welches kein jüdischer Staat – eine contradictio in adjecto – sondern ein Staat ist, nicht schaden. Schaden kann er nur den Ohnmächtigen, den Staatenlosen, den Flüchtlingen, zu denen auch jene Palästinenser zählen, die jetzt verbluten, unter den mörderischen Schlägen der israelischen Armee zwar, aber auch unter den anfeuernden Rufen ihrer verantwortungslosen Führer (Kampf bis zum letzten Mann) und unter dem heuchlerischen Wehgeschrei ihrer falschen Freunde nicht nur in den arabischen Ländern, welche den Streit schürten, ohne im Ernst den Palästinensern helfen zu können, ohne es auch nur zu wollen. Denn außer den Palästinensern selber kann niemand wirklich Interesse daran haben an einem zweiten Israel im Nahen Osten -nach den Erfahrungen, die man mit dem ersten Israel machte, und die sich jetzt aufs Deprimierendste bestätigen: Wenn Menschen sich als Volk zusammenrotten und einen eigenen Staat bekommen, sind alle humanitären Traditionen und ist die ganze Leidensgeschichte vergessen. Als Patrioten fügen sie anderen zu, was sie erlitten, als sie als vaterlandslose Gesellen galten. Kein Grund zur Annahme, die Palästinenser würden sich, wenn sie Erfolg hätten, anders verhalten als die Israelis. Kein Grund freilich auch, von den Palästinensern zu erwarten oder zu verlangen, aus den Bombardements ihrer Flüchtlingslager durch die israelische Luftwaffe eine andere Lehre zu ziehen als jene Juden, die Israel gründeten: daß man vertreiben und verfolgen muß, will man nicht zu den Verfolgten und Vertriebenen zählen.

Just before Christmas, 2012 (12/24/12) , I wrote an extensive critique of US policy in Syria (with the eponymous title, “Why Is America Midwiving a Muslim Brotherhood-Ruled Syria?”).  My analysis highlighted the deep seated, mainstream Islamic, vox populi-supported Syrian Muslim Brotherhood jihad to reverse both Western colonial, and subsequent dictatorial Baathist secularization.

Now, aligned with the modern “Al Qaeda movement” jihadist fighters the global Muslim Brotherhood has spawned, the long held dream of re-imposing full-fledged Sharia in Syria is being realized, as acknowledged in an April 28, 2013 New York Times report.

My 12/24/12 essay included a December, 1947 State Department assessment of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (curiously, the report was still “classified,” but I was able to obtain it with a Freedom of Information Act request). Written in an era before the twin scourges of debased educational standards and post-modern cultural relativism thoroughly crippled both the diplomatic corps’ patriotism and intellectual capacity, the report provided these sobering, and remarkably prescient (or perhaps just timeless?) insights:

One of the strong points of the Brotherhood is the fact that its leaders, dangerous fanatics in American eyes, are respected by the Syrian people. Unwavering in purpose, the top men are all “good” Moslems and far more honest than most Syrian politicians.

The Brotherhood is an increasingly important organization in Syria and is of vital interest to the American observer because it plays a leading part in hammering anti-foreign sentiments into a population already basically suspicious of Western “Colonizers.” …It demands for Moslems to return to the old customs and traditions of Islam. Although recognized by the Government as a non-political association, in practice it [the Brotherhood] illustrates its strong opposition to the separation of state and religion by actively participating in politics…The Ikhwan al-Muslimin [Muslim Brotherhood] is dedicated to reversing [the] secular trend and its success has not been negligible. The Brotherhood in Syria is a growing organization with an apparently assured future. The hysteria surrounding Palestine and the deep-seated popular dissatisfaction with the proposed United Nations settlement, supported by European and Western Powers, of that troublesome problem is exploitable by the Brotherhood. It has already been so exploited.

This then is the Moslem Brotherhood, an organization determined to reform the Arab World, built on faith in Islam, dedicated to the defeat of secularism and convinced that direct intercourse with foreigners is evil. It opposes and will continue to oppose Soviet Communism, British Imperialism, and American colonization believing these derogatory words to reflect the true aims of the powers and acknowledging no good from any of them. Growing rapidly, capitalizing on the Palestine hysteria, and respected by the populace, the Brotherhood is a force to watch in Syrian politics.

Fast forward from December 1947 to May 28, 2013 and this NY Times reportwhich puts the lie to a—indeed any significant—fighting “secular” Syrian opposition to the (Baathist) Assad regime:

In Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce. Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government. Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

Source

Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People
By Harry Ostrer
Oxford University Press, 288 Pages, $24.95

In his new book, “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People,” Harry Ostrer, a medical geneticist and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, claims that Jews are different, and the differences are not just skin deep. Jews exhibit, he writes, a distinctive genetic signature. Considering that the Nazis tried to exterminate Jews based on their supposed racial distinctiveness, such a conclusion might be a cause for concern. But Ostrer sees it as central to Jewish identity.

“Who is a Jew?” has been a poignant question for Jews throughout our history. It evokes a complex tapestry of Jewish identity made up of different strains of religious beliefs, cultural practices and blood ties to ancient Palestine and modern Israel. But the question, with its echoes of genetic determinism, also has a dark side.

Geneticists have long been aware that certain diseases, from breast cancer to Tay-Sachs, disproportionately affect Jews. Ostrer, who is also director of genetic and genomic testing at Montefiore Medical Center, goes further, maintaining that Jews are a homogeneous group with all the scientific trappings of what we used to call a “race.”

For most of the 3,000-year history of the Jewish people, the notion of what came to be known as “Jewish exceptionalism” was hardly controversial. Because of our history of inmarriage and cultural isolation, imposed or self-selected, Jews were considered by gentiles (and usually referred to themselves) as a “race.” Scholars from Josephus to Disraeli proudly proclaimed their membership in “the tribe.”

Ostrer explains how this concept took on special meaning in the 20th century, as genetics emerged as a viable scientific enterprise. Jewish distinctiveness might actually be measurable empirically. In “Legacy,” he first introduces us to Maurice Fishberg, an upwardly mobile Russian-Jewish immigrant to New York at the fin de siècle. Fishberg fervently embraced the anthropological fashion of the era, measuring skull sizes to explain why Jews seemed to be afflicted with more diseases than other groups — what he called the “peculiarities of the comparative pathology of the Jews.” It turns out that Fishberg and his contemporary phrenologists were wrong: Skull shape provides limited information about human differences. But his studies ushered in a century of research linking Jews to genetics.

Ostrer divides his book into six chapters representing the various aspects of Jewishness: Looking Jewish, Founders, Genealogies, Tribes, Traits and Identity. Each chapter features a prominent scientist or historical figure who dramatically advanced our understanding of Jewishness. The snippets of biography lighten a dense forest of sometimes-obscure science. The narrative, which consists of a lot of potboiler history, is a slog at times. But for the specialist and anyone touched by the enduring debate over Jewish identity, this book is indispensable.

“Legacy” may cause its readers discomfort. To some Jews, the notion of a genetically related people is an embarrassing remnant of early Zionism that came into vogue at the height of the Western obsession with race, in the late 19th century. Celebrating blood ancestry is divisive, they claim: The authors of “The Bell Curve” were vilified 15 years ago for suggesting that genes play a major role in IQ differences among racial groups.

Furthermore, sociologists and cultural anthropologists, a disproportionate number of whom are Jewish, ridicule the term “race,” claiming there are no meaningful differences between ethnic groups. For Jews, the word still carries the especially odious historical association with Nazism and the Nuremberg Laws. They argue that Judaism has morphed from a tribal cult into a worldwide religion enhanced by thousands of years of cultural traditions.

Is Judaism a people or a religion? Or both? The belief that Jews may be psychologically or physically distinct remains a controversial fixture in the gentile and Jewish consciousness, and Ostrer places himself directly in the line of fire. Yes, he writes, the term “race” carries nefarious associations of inferiority and ranking of people. Anything that marks Jews as essentially different runs the risk of stirring either anti- or philo-Semitism. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the factual reality of what he calls the “biological basis of Jewishness” and “Jewish genetics.” Acknowledging the distinctiveness of Jews is “fraught with peril,” but we must grapple with the hard evidence of “human differences” if we seek to understand the new age of genetics.

Although he readily acknowledges the formative role of culture and environment, Ostrer believes that Jewish identity has multiple threads, including DNA. He offers a cogent, scientifically based review of the evidence, which serves as a model of scientific restraint.

“On the one hand, the study of Jewish genetics might be viewed as an elitist effort, promoting a certain genetic view of Jewish superiority,” he writes. “On the other, it might provide fodder for anti-Semitism by providing evidence of a genetic basis for undesirable traits that are present among some Jews. These issues will newly challenge the liberal view that humans are created equal but with genetic liabilities.”

Jews, he notes, are one of the most distinctive population groups in the world because of our history of endogamy. Jews — Ashkenazim in particular — are relatively homogeneous despite the fact that they are spread th
roughout Europe and have since immigrated to the Americas and back to Israel. The Inquisition shattered Sephardi Jewry, leading to far more incidences of intermarriage and to a less distinctive DNA.

In traversing this minefield of the genetics of human differences, Ostrer bolsters his analysis with volumes of genetic data, which are both the book’s greatest strength and its weakness. Two complementary books on this subject — my own “Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People” and “Jacob’s Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History” by Duke University geneticist David Goldstein, who is well quoted in both “Abraham’s Children” and “Legacy” — are more narrative driven, weaving history and genetics, and are consequently much more congenial reads.

The concept of the “Jewish people” remains controversial. The Law of Return, which establishes the right of Jews to come to Israel, is a central tenet of Zionism and a founding legal principle of the State of Israel. The DNA that tightly links Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi, three prominent culturally and geographically distinct Jewish groups, could be used to support Zionist territorial claims — except, as Ostrer points out, some of the same markers can be found in Palestinians, our distant genetic cousins, as well. Palestinians, understandably, want their own right of return.

That disagreement over the meaning of DNA also pits Jewish traditionalists against a particular strain of secular Jewish liberals that has joined with Arabs and many non-Jews to argue for an end to Israel as a Jewish nation. Their hero is Shlomo Sand, an Austrian-born Israeli historian who reignited this complex controversy with the 2008 publication of “The Invention of the Jewish People.”

Sand contends that Zionists who claim an ancestral link to ancient Palestine are manipulating history. But he has taken his thesis from novelist Arthur Koestler’s 1976 book, “The Thirteenth Tribe,” which was part of an attempt by post-World War II Jewish liberals to reconfigure Jews not as a biological group, but as a religious ideology and ethnic identity.

The majority of the Ashkenazi Jewish population, as Koestler, and now Sand, writes, are not the children of Abraham but descendants of pagan Eastern Europeans and Eurasians, concentrated mostly in the ancient Kingdom of Khazaria in what is now Ukraine and Western Russia. The Khazarian nobility converted during the early Middle Ages, when European Jewry was forming.

Although scholars challenged Koestler’s and now Sand’s selective manipulation of the facts — the conversion was almost certainly limited to the tiny ruling class and not to the vast pagan population — the historical record has been just fragmentary enough to titillate determined critics of Israel, who turned both Koestler’s and Sand’s books into roaring best-sellers.

Fortunately, re-creating history now depends not only on pottery shards, flaking manuscripts and faded coins, but on something far less ambiguous: DNA. Ostrer’s book is an impressive counterpoint to the dubious historical methodology of Sand and his admirers. And, as a co-founder of the Jewish HapMap — the study of haplotypes, or blocks of genetic markers, that are common to Jews around the world — he is well positioned to write the definitive response.

In accord with most geneticists, Ostrer firmly rejects the fashionable postmodernist dismissal of the concept of race as genetically naive, opting for a more nuanced perspective.

When the human genome was first mapped a decade ago, Francis Collins, then head of the National Genome Human Research Institute, said: “Americans, regardless of ethnic group, are 99.9% genetically identical.” Added J. Craig Venter, who at the time was chief scientist at the private firm that helped sequenced the genome, Celera Genomics, “Race has no genetic or scientific basis.” Those declarations appeared to suggest that “race,” or the notion of distinct but overlapping genetic groups, is “meaningless.”

But Collins and Venter have issued clarifications of their much-misrepresented comments. Almost every minority group has faced, at one time or another, being branded as racially inferior based on a superficial understanding of how genes peculiar to its population work. The inclination by politicians, educators and even some scientists to underplay our separateness is certainly understandable. But it’s also misleading. DNA ensures that we differ not only as individuals, but also as groups.

However slight the differences (and geneticists now believe that they are significantly greater than 0.1%), they are defining. That 0.1% contains some 3 million nucleotide pairs in the human genome, and these determine such things as skin or hair color and susceptibility to certain diseases. They contain the map of our family trees back to the first modern humans.

Both the human genome project and disease research rest on the premise of finding distinguishable differences between individuals and often among populations. Scientists have ditched the term “race,” with all its normative baggage, and adopted more neutral terms, such as “population” and “clime,” which have much of the same meaning. Boiled down to its essence, race equates to “region of ancestral origin.”

Ostrer has devoted his career to investigating these extended family trees, which help explain the genetic basis of common and rare disorders. Today, Jews remain identifiable in large measure by the 40 or so diseases we disproportionately carry, the inescapable consequence of inbreeding. He traces the fascinating history of numerous “Jewish diseases,” such as Tay-Sachs, Gaucher, Niemann-Pick, Mucolipidosis IV, as well as breast and ovarian cancer. Indeed, 10 years ago I was diagnosed as carrying one of the three genetic mutations for breast and ovarian cancer that mark my family and me as indelibly Jewish, prompting me to write “Abraham’s Children.”

Like East Asians, the Amish, Icelanders, Aboriginals, the Basque people, African tribes and ot
her groups, Jews have remained isolated for centuries because of geography, religion or cultural practices. It’s stamped on our DNA. As Ostrer explains in fascinating detail, threads of Jewish ancestry link the sizable Jewish communities of North America and Europe to Yemenite and other Middle Eastern Jews who have relocated to Israel, as well as to the black Lemba of southern Africa and to India’s Cochin Jews. But, in a twist, the links include neither the Bene Israel of India nor Ethiopian Jews. Genetic tests show that both groups are converts, contradicting their founding myths.

Why, then, are Jews so different looking, usually sharing the characteristics of the surrounding populations? Think of red-haired Jews, Jews with blue eyes or the black Jews of Africa. Like any cluster — a genetic term Ostrer uses in place of the more inflammatory “race” — Jews throughout history moved around and fooled around, although mixing occurred comparatively infrequently until recent decades. Although there are identifiable gene variations that are common among Jews, we are not a “pure” race. The time machine of our genes may show that most Jews have a shared ancestry that traces back to ancient Palestine but, like all of humanity, Jews are mutts.

About 80% of Jewish males and 50% of Jewish females trace their ancestry back to the Middle East. The rest entered the “Jewish gene pool” through conversion or intermarriage. Those who did intermarry often left the faith in a generation or two, in effect pruning the Jewish genetic tree. But many converts became interwoven into the Jewish genealogical line. Reflect on the iconic convert, the biblical Ruth, who married Boaz and became the great-grandmother of King David. She began as an outsider, but you don’t get much more Jewish than the bloodline of King David!

To his credit, Ostrer also addresses the third rail of discussions about Jewishness and race: the issue of intelligence. Jews were latecomers to the age of freethinking. While the Enlightenment swept through Christian Europe in the 17th century, the Haskalah did not gather strength until the early 19th century. By the beginning of the new millennium, however, Jews were thought of as among the smartest people on earth. The trend is most prominent in America, which has the largest concentration of Jews outside Israel and a history of tolerance.

Although Jews make up less than 3% of the population, they have won more than 25% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to American scientists since 1950. Jews also account for 20% of this country’s chief executives and make up 22% of Ivy League students. Psychologists and educational researchers have pegged their average IQ at 107.5 to 115, with their verbal IQ at more than 120, a stunning standard deviation above the average of 100 found in those of European ancestry. Like it or not, the IQ debate will become an increasingly important issue going forward, as medical geneticists focus on unlocking the mysteries of the brain.

Many liberal Jews maintain, at least in public, that the plethora of Jewish lawyers, doctors and comedians is the product of our cultural heritage, but the science tells a more complex story. Jewish success is a product of Jewish genes as much as of Jewish moms.

Is it “good for the Jews” to be exploring such controversial subjects? We can’t avoid engaging the most challenging questions in the age of genetics. Because of our history of endogamy, Jews are a goldmine for geneticists studying human differences in the quest to cure disease. Because of our cultural commitment to education, Jews are among the top genetic researchers in the world.

As humankind becomes more genetically sophisticated, identity becomes both more fluid and more fixed. Jews in particular can find threads of our ancestry literally anywhere, muddying traditional categories of nationhood, ethnicity, religious belief and “race.” But such discussions, ultimately, are subsumed by the reality of the common shared ancestry of humankind. Ostrer’s “Legacy” points out that — regardless of the pros and cons of being Jewish — we are all, genetically, in it together. And, in doing so, he gets it just right.

Jon Entine is the founder and director of the Genetic Literacy Project at George Mason University, where he is senior research fellow at the Center for Health and Risk Communication. His website is www.jonentine.com.

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It’s no surprise that Johns Hopkins geneticist Eran Elhaik stirred a hornet’s nest of controversy with his claim to have debunked the scientific theory that Jews are mostly members of a single race, with origins in the land that is now Israel.

But as Rita Rubin, the science writer who penned the Forward’s piece on the dispute, points out, Elhaik isn’t really saying Jews aren’t a distinct race — he’s questioning which race. And that makes all the difference.

“I think what’s at stake is how we Jews view ourselves,” Rubin told the Forward’s Paul Berger during the paper’s weekly podcast. “The conventional wisdom is that we are a people descended from the indigenous Jews of Judea and Samaria …. This new study says that’s all wrong even though it’s been backed up by well-respected scientists in well-respected journals.”

Elhaik’s study flies in the face of 15 years of studies by notable scientists and geneticists who found that Jews — and Ashkenazi Jews in particular — bear more genetic similarities to fellow Jews than their non-Jewish neighbors.

The theory, most strongly promulgated by Yeshiva University geneticist Harry Ostrer, asserts that Jews are mostly descended from a group of people who lived in what is now Israel during Biblical times. That theory, of course, is a critical emotional and political cornerstone of the Jewish claim to Israel.

Elhaik doesn’t dispute that Ashkenazi Jews are mostly descended from a single group of people.

But he identifies their forefathers as the Khazars, a genetically heterogenous Turkic people with links to many other peoples in the Caucasus. A group of Khazars migrated from present-day Armenia to Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. According to Elhaik’s research, the Khazars later massively converted to Judaism, forming the basis of today’s Ashkenazi Jews.

It’s a perfectly respectable story about ancestry. But it pointedly leaves out the connection to the land of Israel, which is the most important part for many Zionists.

Indeed, the real issue, Rubin pointed out, is how this information is being used. Critics of Israel and anti-Semitic bigots have used Elhaik’s claims to trash the Jewish claim to Israel.

“Bloggers have kind of jumped on his research,” she said. “Anti-Zionist bloggers are saying ‘See, Jews don’t have a claim to Israel.’”

There are also a few snags in the study itself, as Rubin points out in the Forward podcast.

Because the Khazars have not existed as a distinct people for “hundreds of years,” Elhaik used modern-day Georgians and Armenians to test for genetic markers. Many scientists have pointed to this decision as a reason to question his findings.

“The critics of this research argue that ‘Well, Armenians also have Middle Eastern ancestry,’” Rubin explained. “It’s not because they’re all descended from the Khazars, it’s because they’re all descended from people from the Mideast.”

So who to believe?

After spending weeks researching the story, Rubin says she still has plenty of questions about Elhaik’s findings. And she finds the reaction to his study, in many ways, as interesting as the scientific debate itself.

“It’s tough,” she said. “What [Elhaik] is saying is that [it] used to be anti-Semitic to say that Jews are a race. And now he’s being called anti-Semite because he’s saying Jews aren’t a race, it’s a religion.”

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Are Jews genetically homogenous? Though it’s certainly been a loaded question historically, the quandary has been the domain of scientists for a number of years now, all of whom have pretty much come up with the same answer: yes. But that was before Eran Elhaik entered the picture. An Israeli molecular geneticist, Elhaik is interested, it seems, not just in doing science, but in reveling in his role as a spoiler.

As a Forward story recently described it, he has written a report that claims Ashkenazi Jews are descendent from Khazars, a Turkic people from the Caucasus who converted to Judaism in the eighth century. This flies in the face of that established genetic research, which did prove a continuous genetic link between Ashkenazi Jews and the Middle East, positing that they descended from Jews who fled Palestine after the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. As Elhaik put it in the article, he sees this fairly well accepted theory as “nonsense.”

Perhaps to be expected, the comments section of this article became a microcosm for all the heated emotion that this issue inspires. Elhaik himself even jumped into the fray.

The person who kicked off the fierce debate was Jon Entine, who wrote a book, “Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People”, which presents the more established reading of Jewish genetic history. He also runs the Genetic Literacy Project at George Mason University. Entine insisted that the evidence is “incontrovertible”: “Ashkenazi Jewry is a coherent population, much like blacks descended from western Africa, the Amish or Icelanders.” Pointing out the Caucasian/Asiatic markers on his own chromosome – which he says typically makes up 20% of Ashkenazi genes – Entine says this might be because of the Khazar conversion, which took place among the elites of Khazaria and not the general population, as Elhaik contends. “When Khazaria collapsed, a fraction of the elite integrated themselves into the then tiny Eastern European Jewish communities,” Entine notes. “Today’s percentage of Khazarian like markers is congruent with the extrapolation of that core group to the founding of Ashkenazi Jewry in the 12-14 centuries, when Jews in Eastern Europe numbered only 15,000-20,000.” In other words, he writes, “Elhaik is just wrong.”

And Entine has a bigger point. He thinks that what really troubles Elhaik is the notion of Judaism as being tribally or ethnically founded in any way:

For those of you pulling out your hair over suggestions that modern Judaism has “racial roots,” get a grip. Christianity and Islam are faith-based religions…anyone can join at a proverbial drop of a hat. Judaism has never been just a faith based religion. It’s a triple helix: belief in god (yet many Jews are atheists/agnostics); belief in the state of Israel as a founding principle of our religion; and recognition of our “blood” connection to fellow Jews. Judaism is one of only two surviving tribal religions (Zoroastrianism, which shares many tribal attributes with Judaism is the other). All or any of those qualities can define one as a Jew. But one can’t just junk the “blood” part in an attempt to be “modern”–that’s an abandonment of a central tenet of what makes us Jewish.

This is when Elhaik chimes in. For him, Entine has revealed his own prejudice in his comments: “I would like to thank Jon Entine for disclosing his scientific guidelines for studying Judaism as believe in God (though it is ok not to), patriotism (though living afar is also okay), and the purity of the blood line…Not surprisingly, the last two scientific principles of Entine share a common ground with the Nazi ideology. While this may makes sense to some people and may fit with their belief, for those of us who actually practice science this is mere nonsense.”

The only thing that matters to Elhaik, the only point of his research, he says, is to discover the cure for genetic disorders in Jews and non-Jews. Identifying the correct genetic provenance of Jews will help find cures for diseases. “Today, we still don’t understand genetic diseases nor do we have a cure (for a large number of them),” Elhaik writes. “Non-Jews who have ‘Jews-only diseases’ are misdiagnosed because they are not Jews. There are serious problems requiring serious solution. The only method that works is the scientific method.”

The frustrating aspect of scientific debates (for us, outside observers, that is) is that both sides assume objective fact is on their side, and so they never really engage with each other’s arguments. As Entine has the last word, this tussle in the comments section is no different. They both seem to be talking past each other:

Elhaik is young enough and immature enough to be a young son of mine. All his rants aside, Judaism is a modernized version of a tribal religion, a fact thatshows up in the genes of Jews, across a range of disease and other traits. Elhaik, in either his overheated “academic” article or his posts just does not come across as a serious intellect. I have not found a mainstream geneticist who thinks much of his analytical ability let alone his care in assembling and analyzing genetic data. Sorry…just stating the facts.

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Scientists usually don’t call each other “liars” and “frauds.”

But that’s how Johns Hopkins University post-doctoral researcher Eran Elhaik describes a group of widely respected geneticists, including Harry Ostrer, professor of pathology and genetics at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine and author of the 2012 book “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People.”

For years now, the findings of Ostrer and several other scientists have stood virtually unchallenged on the genetics of Jews and the story they tell of the common Middle East origins shared by many Jewish populations worldwide. Jews — and Ashkenazim in particular — are indeed one people, Ostrer’s research finds.

It’s a theory that more or less affirms the understanding that many Jews themselves hold of who they are in the world: a people who, though scattered, share an ethnic-racial bond rooted in their common ancestral descent from the indigenous Jews of ancient Judea or Palestine, as the Romans called it after they conquered the Jewish homeland.

But now, Elhaik, an Israeli molecular geneticist, has published research that he says debunks this claim. And that has set off a predictable clash.

“He’s just wrong,” said Marcus Feldman of Stanford University, a leading researcher in Jewish genetics, referring to Elhaik.

The sometimes strong emotions generated by this scientific dispute stem from a politically loaded question that scientists and others have pondered for decades: Where in the world did Ashkenazi Jews come from?

The debate touches upon such sensitive issues as whether the Jewish people is a race or a religion, and whether Jews or Palestinians are descended from the original inhabitants of what is now the State of Israel.

Ostrer’s theory is sometimes marshaled to lend the authority of science to the Zionist narrative, which views the migration of modern-day Jews to what is now Israel, and their rule over that land, as a simple act of repossession by the descendants of the land’s original residents. Ostrer declined to be interviewed for this story. But in his writings, Ostrer points out the dangers of such reductionism; some of the same genetic markers common among Jews, he finds, can be found in Palestinians, as well.

By using sophisticated molecular tools, Feldman, Ostrer and most other scientists in the field have found that Jews are genetically homogeneous. No matter where they live, these scientists say, Jews are genetically more similar to each other than to their non-Jewish neighbors, and they have a shared Middle Eastern ancestry.

The geneticists’ research backs up what is known as the Rhineland Hypothesis. According to the hypothesis, Ashkenazi Jews descended from Jews who fled Palestine after the Muslim conquest in the seventh century and settled in Southern Europe. In the late Middle Ages they moved into eastern Europe from Germany, or the Rhineland.

“Nonsense,” said Elhaik, a 33-year-old Israeli Jew from Beersheba who earned a doctorate in molecular evolution from the University of Houston. The son of an Italian man and Iranian woman who met in Israel, Elhaik, a dark-haired, compact man, sat down recently for an interview in his bare, narrow cubicle of an office at Hopkins, where he’s worked for four years.

In “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses,” published in December in the online journal Genome Biology and Evolution, Elhaik says he has proved that Ashkenazi Jews’ roots lie in the Caucasus — a region at the border of Europe and Asia that lies between the Black and Caspian seas — not in the Middle East. They are descendants, he argues, of the Khazars, a Turkic people who lived in one of the largest medieval states in Eurasia and then migrated to Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. Ashkenazi genes, Elhaik added, are far more heterogeneous than Ostrer and other proponents of the Rhineland Hypothesis believe. Elhaik did find a Middle Eastern genetic marker in DNA from Jews, but, he says, it could be from Iran, not ancient Judea.

Elhaik writes that the Khazars converted to Judaism in the eighth century, although many historians believe that only royalty and some members of the aristocracy converted. But widespread conversion by the Khazars is the only way to explain the ballooning of the European Jewish population to 8 million at the beginning of the 20th century from its tiny base in the Middle Ages, Elhaik says.

Elhaik bases his conclusion on an analysis of genetic data published by a team of researchers led by Doron Behar, a population geneticist and senior physician at Israel’s Rambam Medical Center, in Haifa. Using the same data, Behar’s team published in 2010 a paper concluding that most contemporary Jews around the world and some non-Jewish populations from the Levant, or Eastern Mediterranean, are closely related.

Elhaik used
some of the same statistical tests as Behar and others, but he chose different comparisons. Elhaik compared “genetic signatures” found in Jewish populations with those of modern-day Armenians and Georgians, which he uses as a stand-in for the long-extinct Khazarians because they live in the same area as the medieval state.

“It’s an unrealistic premise,” said University of Arizona geneticist Michael Hammer, one of Behar’s co-authors, of Elhaik’s paper. Hammer notes that Armenians have Middle Eastern roots, which, he says, is why they appeared to be genetically related to Ashkenazi Jews in Elhaik’s study.

Hammer, who also co-wrote the first paper that showed modern-day Kohanim are descended from a single male ancestor, calls Elhaik and other Khazarian Hypothesis proponents “outlier folks… who have a minority view that’s not supported scientifically. I think the arguments they make are pretty weak and stretching what we know.”

Feldman, director of Stanford’s Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, echoes Hammer. “If you take all of the careful genetic population analysis that has been done over the last 15 years… there’s no doubt about the common Middle Eastern origin,” he said. He added that Elhaik’s paper “is sort of a one-off.”

Elhaik’s statistical analysis would not pass muster with most contemporary scholars, Feldman said: “He appears to be applying the statistics in a way that gives him different results from what everybody else has obtained from essentially similar data.”

Elhaik, who doesn’t believe that Moses, Aaron or the 12 Tribes of Israel ever existed, shrugs off such criticism.

“That’s a circular argument,” he said of the notion that Jews’ and Armenians’ genetic similarities stem from common ancestors in the Middle East and not from Khazaria, the area where the Armenians live. If you believe that, he says, then other non-Jewish populations, such as Georgian, that are genetically similar to Armenians should be considered genetically related to Jews, too, “and so on and so forth.”

Dan Graur, Elhaik’s doctoral supervisor at U.H. and a member of the editorial board of the journal that published his paper, calls his former student “very ambitious, very independent. That’s what I like.” Graur, a Romanian-born Jew who served on the faculty of Tel Aviv University for 22 years before moving 10 years ago to the Houston school, said Elhaik “writes more provocatively than may be needed, but it’s his style.” Graur calls Elhaik’s conclusion that Ashkenazi Jews originated to the east of Germany “a very honest estimate.”

In a news article that accompanied Elhaik’s journal paper, Shlomo Sand, history professor at Tel Aviv University and author of the controversial 2009 book “The Invention of the Jewish People,” said the study vindicated his long-held ideas.

”It’s so obvious for me,” Sand told the journal. “Some people, historians and even scientists, turn a blind eye to the truth. Once, to say Jews were a race was anti-Semitic, now to say they’re not a race is anti-Semitic. It’s crazy how history plays with us.”

The paper has received little coverage in mainstream American media, but it has attracted the attention of anti-Zionists and “anti-Semitic white supremacists,” Elhaik said.

Interestingly, while anti-Zionist bloggers have applauded Elhaik’s work, saying it proves that contemporary Jews have no legitimate claim to Israel, some white supremacists have attacked it.

David Duke, for example, is disturbed by the assertion that Jews are not a race. “The disruptive and conflict-ridden behavior which has marked out Jewish Supremacist activities through the millennia strongly suggests that Jews have remained more or less genetically uniform and have… developed a group evolutionary survival strategy based on a common biological unity — something which strongly militates against the Khazar theory,” wrote the former Ku Klux Klansman and former Louisiana state assemblyman on his blog in February.

“I’m not communicating with them,” Elhaik said of the white supremacists. He says it also bothers him, a veteran of seven years in the Israeli army, that anti-Zionists have capitalized on his research; not least because “they’re not going to be proven wrong anytime soon.”

But proponents of the Rhineland Hypothesis also have a political agenda, he said, claiming they “were motivated to justify the Zionist narrative.”

To illustrate his point, Elhaik swivels his chair around to face his computer and calls up a 2010 email exchange with Ostrer.

“It was a great pleasure reading your group’s recent paper, ‘Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era,’ that illuminate[s] the history of our people,” Elhaik wrote to Ostrer. “Is it possible to see the data used for the study?”

Ostrer replied that the data are not publicly available. “It is possible to collaborate with the team by writing a brief proposal that outlines what you plan to do,” he wrote. “Criteria for reviewing include novelty and strength of the proposal, non-overlap with current or planned activities, and non-defamatory nature toward the Jewish people.” That last requirement, Elh
aik argues, reveals the bias of Ostrer and his collaborators.

Allowing scientists access to data only if their research will not defame Jews is “peculiar,” said Catherine DeAngelis, who edited the Journal of the American Medical Association for a decade. “What he does is set himself up for criticism: Wait a minute. What’s this guy trying to hide?”

Despite what his critics claim, Elhaik says, he was not out to prove that contemporary Jews have no connection to the Jewish people of the Bible. His primary research focus is the genetics of mental illness, which, he explains, led him to question the assumption that Ashkenazi Jews are a useful population to study because they’re so homogeneous.

Elhaik says he first read about the Khazarian Hypothesis a decade ago in a 1976 book by the late Hungarian-British author Arthur Koestler, “The Thirteenth Tribe,” written before scientists had the tools to compare genomes. Koestler, who was Jewish by birth, said his aim in writing the book was to eliminate the racist underpinnings of anti-Semitism in Europe. “Should this theory be confirmed, the term ‘anti-Semitism’ would become void of meaning,” the book jacket reads. Although Koestler’s book was generally well reviewed, some skeptics questioned the author’s grasp of the history of Khazaria.

Graur is not surprised that Elhaik has stood up against the “clique” of scientists who believe that Jews are genetically homogeneous. “He enjoys being combative,” Graur said. “That’s what science is.”

Contact Rita Rubin at [email protected]

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The persistent debate over the “racial” origins of the Jewish people makes a mockery of scholarship, trivializes history and perpetuates conceptions of identity that have been misused to justify everything from violent repression to affirmative action.

It is hardly surprising that Johns Hopkins’s Eran Elhaik “stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy,” as the Forward recently put it, with his genetic study alleging the Khazar origins of the Jewish people — for, as readers undoubtedly know, deracinating Jewish DNA from ancient Israel undermines the legitimacy of the modern Jewish state.

If nationalism is based on the premise of “We were here first” and “we Jews” were not here first, then the land is not “ours,” and Zionism is little more than an instance of European colonialism.

But of no less significance is the second layer to this controversy, which involves the debate over whether the Jewish people constitute a race or a religion. Many people, particularly in the West, recoil at the suggestion that the Jews constitute a race or even an ethnicity.

After all, the racialization of the Jews fueled Hitler’s campaign for Aryan purification and paved the way to the Holocaust. It was the Holocaust that rendered the concept of a Jewish race repellent in respectable circles, and in the United States, where race and ethnicity continue to be accepted instruments of classification, the Jews are accorded the status of neither; they are white — according to the census and according to affirmative action practices.

But our current understanding of race, ethnicity, nationality and religion and the way we use these ideas did not emerge until the 18th-century Enlightenment. The ideas were politically mobilized during the American and French revolutions, and later refined through European colonialism and the global wars of the 20th century.

It is not that these concepts were invented, but scientists, philosophers, and politicians have deployed them as rigid categories to define people, to bestow upon them certain rights and to reconstruct history through an anachronistic conceptual lens.

To put it simply, the questions “Who are the Jews?” and “What does it mean to be Jewish?” are modern conundrums; they had little meaning before the Enlightenment, because nobody asked whether the Jews were a nation, a race or a community of faith. The inclusion or exclusion of the Jews in feudal Europe was not contingent on this.

Moreover, the Jewish communities of Europe did not question whether they were a nation, a race or a religion. They were all of these things and none of these things; they were the Chosen People in Exile whose identity was built upon theology, ritual and a narrative of common descent.

Until the the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah, Ashkenazi Jews did not, and had no reason to, separate religion, nationality, ethnicity and race, for they had no bearing on their present and there was no reason to think that such concepts would have profound implications in the future.

But the implications did become profound, because ethnic nationalism became the order of the day during the 19th century. “All nations have the right to self-determination” is rooted in the concept of kinship and common descent; “We were here first” became the battle cry of those seeking a state, and continues to be the mantra of those denied one. It is the primary rhetorical device through which Palestinians have demanded Palestine, much as the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Kosovars deployed it to violently dismember Yugoslavia two decades ago.

The genetic origins of the Jewish people have no relevance as to whether Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, even if the Jews can no longer say, “We were here first.”

For it is undeniable that throughout the 2,000 years of galut, or exile, world Jewry articulated a theological and genealogical connection to Eretz Yisrael. But more important, a Jewish state became necessary because of the pseudo-scientific racialization of the Jews in the 20th century, which rhetorically and politically transformed 9 million Europeans into a stateless Semitic race, unwelcome on the continent and slated for elimination.

The Wandering Jews of medieval Europe may have suffered severe persecution as the killers of Christ, but in the 20th century, “exile” took on a far more sinister meaning, as it rendered the Jews into a deracinated people who allegedly (and one might say genetically) lacked loyalty to European blood and soil.

It would be an overstatement to suggest that the early Zionists from Pinsker to Herzl to Jabotinsky saw the Holocaust coming. But they understood the implications of statelessness in a world increasingly defined by ethnic nationalism.

And with the founding of Israel, the Jews of Arab lands felt the full weight of ethno-national statelessness, as regime after regime — Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and so forth — made it abundantly clear that “their Jews” were no longer “theirs” and therefore not their problem; these centuries-old Jewish communities were involuntarily conscripted into Zionism and forced from their homes.

Not surprisingly, the Palestinians have weighed in on the racial aspect of the Jewish question. Article 20 of the 1968 charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization asserts that “Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity
of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.”

Such a statement is neither true nor false, but has been contingent on time and place. Moses Mendelssohn and the leaders of 19th-century Reform Judaism would have agreed with it; the Nazis and their sympathizers would not, nor would have Pinsker, Herzl and Jabotinsky. And the Jews of medieval Europe would have been utterly perplexed by it, as it was a meaningless question in the world they inhabited.

DNA studies will neither “solve” the Jewish question nor undermine Israel and its supportive Diaspora, because today there is a Jewish nation that lives and governs itself in the Middle East.

And even if most Jews give little thought as to whether or not their ancestors actually walked the streets of Jericho, Hebron or Jerusalem, the unprecedented anti-Semitism of the 20th century made the Jewish state a necessity and gave it legitimacy, and has ensured its tenacity. For all intents and purposes, the Jews are a race today, and Israel is now its historic homeland.

Jarrod Tanny is Assistant Professor and Block Distinguished Fellow in Jewish History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and the author of “City Of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia’s Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa” (Indiana University Press, 2011).

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