The Khazar Canard Laid Bare (video)

 I don't recall touching this subject since this post.

So here's a recent video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw0G9COpeMY

"The Demonization Of Israel Through False Or Simplistic Images Of The Struggle For Israel's Independence Has Penetrated Right To The Heart Of The pro-Palestinian Soul"

Wrong at a rally (today): where did this Sydney kid learn that fashion?!

Lapping up Lies (I use the capital L advisedly) is, whether through naive ignorance and gullibility or sheer malice, a widespread characteristic of the West's leftist Israel-haters, whether it be on the origins of the Jewish People, on the Israeli response to sustained aggression on its borders, or on the origins of the Jewish State.

 The words in my header are those of that great Irish friend of Israel, Professor Denis MacEoin, who writes, inter alia:

'Anti-Israel propaganda has been driven from the start by lies distortions and a massive rewriting of history. Blame for everything is piled on the Jews, while the crimes of the Arabs, including the Palestinians, are exonerated.

The American Vice-Consul, along with British officers and the British High Commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham, stated at the time that the Arabs were encouraging flight while the Jews were doing all in their power to prevent it.

The Hagana's behavior was the exact opposite of "ethnic cleansing." Once order was restored, Arabs were appointed to key posts and part of the supplies originally earmarked for the Jewish inhabitants were given freely to the Arabs.....

Anti-Israel rhetoric in Ireland is commonplace, and the press regularly prints diatribes against the Jewish state. A particularly galling example of this occurred when the Irish Examiner, a newspaper with a long history and a claimed readership of 189,000 per day (but a circulation of about 37,000), published an op-ed piece on July 31 by a little-known journalist, Victoria White, the wife of Eamonn Ryan, leader of the Green Party in the Irish parliament, the Dáil.

Entitled, "We are washing our hands of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians", this piece was an uncompromising diatribe, a spittle-flecked assault on Israel that dragged out the usual false claims of "ethnic cleansing" during Israel's War of Independence in 1947 and 1948.

Ms. White seems either to have stumbled on or been given an infamous and widely discredited book by an anti-Israel Israeli "historian," Ilan Pappé. His book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), has long been castigated as a non-history in which facts are distorted, important information disregarded, and only one side of the story told. There is no space here to write a review of Pappé's fiction, but it is the sort of book, like the equally discredited, totally fraudulent "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," that poorly educated pro-Palestinian activists revel in without setting eyes on other histories by far better historians than Pappé.

It is obvious that White has not read anything else. She does not quote even once from any of the major historical studies of this crucial period, such as Efraim Karsh's deeply-researched Palestine Betrayed (2010) or Benny Morris's archive-based re-evaluation, 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War. White thinks she knows all the answers. She does not.Now, an op-ed like White's in a small Irish newspaper may be small enough beer in itself, yet it is important to comment on what it stands for. White may be taken to stand for that vast brood of anti-Israel writers, journalists, and hacks who cobble together a warped narrative out of one or two books and a couple of pamphlets by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, while quite happily dismissing professional historians who work on archival material from across a mountain of sources.

Riight at a rally (one of Mudar's current tweets)

The demonization of Israel through false or simplistic images of the struggle for Israel's independence has penetrated right to the heart of the pro-Palestinian soul. Like most amateurs, White never checks or cross-checks her sources. She takes sides without any mastery of the facts, and fetishizes Palestinian victimhood as if it were the golden standard by which all moral issues must be judged. So her diatribe merits a rational, historical refutation....

Anti-Israel propaganda has been driven from the start by lies, distortions, and a massive re-writing of history. Blame for everything is piled on the Jews, while the crimes of the Arabs, including the Palestinians, are exonerated. Israel was and is a legally established state, and the 1947-48 war was initiated, sustained, and fought as a jihad by Arabs in an attempt to kill as many Jews as possible two years after the end of the Holocaust.

The charges against Israel — just like those being made today over Gaza — must be refuted one by one through the judicious use of accurate historical facts, an emphasis on the morality of Israel's struggle to survive, an equal stress on the immorality of those who seek to wipe the tiny nation out, and a firm refutation of charges brought by the ignorant and the gullible.'

Read all of the professor's fine article here

As for "Apartheid" ...  Spot a familiar face in this Palestinian wedding crowd?

Time To Ditch Her, Reverend Sizer!

Our old mate the vicar of Virginia Water has some rum characters among his Facebook followers, including, as I've noted before, a number of apparent antisemites.

The Jewish Chronicle recently reported in relation to comments by certain of his Facebook faithful:

"The vicar said he had removed users who persistently posted offensive comments and would do so again."

That avowedly being the case, the Rev. Sizer will surely now remove from his followers the Facebook friend of his who has posted these offensive messages (the racist Jews-are-Khazars slur) today in response to two of the many anti-Israel posts that the vicar, ever the anti-Zionist crusader, has put on Facebook in the last few hours:

Incidentally, no less a blogger than the Elder of Ziyon subjected one of the Rev. Sizer's own blogs to scrutiny very recently.

Meanwhile, despite the Iran regime's appalling human rights record, not least to Christians, our old mate goes (as he not infrequently does) on the Iranian propaganda organ Press TV to applaud the Prebyterian Church's divestment from Israel.

"The Descendents of Asian Nomads": Scottish PSC chief gets a bee in his bonnet

Some time ago Mick Napier, who heads the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, brought to the attention of his followers on Facebook (who include my trusty informant reader P) a Palestinian coin of some sort dated 1927, which he, in common with a number of anti-Israel activists (see left) seemed to think proved the existence of a sovereign Arab entity at that juncture minting its own coinage.  I blogged about this strange misconception here.

Now, Mr Napier has waxed fantastical on Facebook regarding the fur hat, or shtriemel, worn by many Chasidim.

Hat tip (no pun intended): reader P

He evidently believes that since this item of apparel originated, according to one source, among the Tatars, the Jewish wearers themselves are of similar origin with no biological claim to Eretz Israel: as he writes on Facebook:

"Zionist project to 'return' Jews to Palestine (and expel the natives) is mad, but it is also based on 'returning' the descendents of Asian nomads to the shores of the Mediterranean. The Jewish hat widely seen in Jerusalem - of Asian steppe or Palestinian/Mediterranean origin? Compare it to the examples at bottom of Mongol and Tatar headgear. Encyclopedia Britannica states the obvious - that the Jewish headgear (called a shtreimel) is of Asian Steppe, Tatar, origin.

Scots should equally 'return' to Brazil."

It's widely believed that the fur hats and black caftans associated today with members of Strictly Orthodox sects both in and outside Israel mimics the costume of the Polish and Russian nobility of two centuries and more ago.

Jews similarly attired can be seen in depictions of the Holy Land in the nineteenth century.

But equally, so can Jews attired like the denizens of the Ottoman Empire, of which Palestine was then a mere and rather backward province.

What headgear Jews wore in Biblical times, the Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1904; online), tells us, is largely unknown:

'Neither the monuments nor the written documents of Biblical times give any information of value concerning head-gear. On the marble relief of Sennacherib the Israelites appear uncovered; and while on the Shalmaneser stele Jehu's ambassadors have head-coverings, these are evidently patterned after the Assyrian fashion. Only one passage of the older literature (I Kings xx. 31) makes mention of "ḥabalim" that are wound around the head; these recall the Syrians on Egyptian monuments, who appear with a rope coiled around their long, flowing hair, as is still the custom here and there in Arabia. This custom, probably a very ancient one, did not long obtain, since it afforded no protection against the sun. It may be assumed, therefore, that even the ancient Hebrews had a style of head-covering still used by the Bedouins. This consists of a square woolen cloth ("kaffiyyah"), folded triangularly, and laid upon the head, over which one corner depends to protect the nape of the neck, while the two side corners are crossed under the chin and also hang down the back. A heavy woolen cord ("'aḳal") holds the cloth firmly on the head. In later times both men and women wore a covering more closely resembling the turban of the modern fellaheen of Palestine.

The cap (ṭaḳiyyah), often the only head-covering worn by boys, is generally made of two or three thicknesses of cotton cloth, intended to protect the rest of the head-covering against perspiration; over this are placed one, and often two, felt caps ("lubbadah"), and then the Turkish national head-covering ("ṭarbush"); finally a fringed cloth of unbleached cotton, a colored figured mandil, a yellow and red striped kaffiyyah, a black cashmere shawl, a piece of white muslin, or a green cloth is wound around this. This style of head-covering not only protects against the sun, but is also an admirable pillow, and serves as a repository for valuable documents (compare "Zeit. Deutsch. Paläst. Ver." iv. 57 et seq.). The use of a similar head-covering among the Hebrews seems to be indicated by the noun "ẓanif" (from the verb "ẓanaf"; Job xxix. 14; Isa. iii. 23), as well as by the verb "ḥabash," applied to the act of arranging the "ẓanif"; for the verb "ḥabash" means literally "to wind around," and the verb "ẓanaf" similarly signifies "to wind into a ball." It is possible that the various classes gradually came to use different forms of the turban.'

In the Diaspora, Jews wore various types of head coverings, dependent on time and place: 

'In Eastern countries both law and custom compel a distinct difference in costume between Jew and Moslem, which difference was also enforced by Jewish law....  In Egypt, Jews were obliged to wear yellow turbans....

.... The native Algerian Jew wears a "ṭarbush" or oblong turban with silken tassel, a "ṣadriyyah" or vest with large sleeves, and "sarwal" or pantaloons fastened by a "ḥizam" (girdle), all being covered by a mantle, a burnus, and a large silk handkerchief, the tassels of which hang down to his feet....The costume of Tunis ... was described by Mordecai Noah as follows ("Travels in the Barbary States," p. 311, New York, 1819):

"The Barbary Jews wear a blue frock, without a collar or sleeves, loose linen sleeves being substituted, with wide drawers of the same article, no stockings, excepting in winter, and black slippers, a small black skull-cap on their head, which is shaved, and around which a blue silk handkerchief is bound; they are permitted to wear no colors. The Italian Jews dress like Christian residents, with the addition of a haick, or bournouse, thrown over their heads...."

Whatever the costume, in almost every case the outer garment is supported by a belt or girdle. This has Biblical authority, and besides enables the ultra pious to carry a handkerchief as a girdle on Sabbath; on other occasions the handkerchief is tucked inside the girdle, as is seen in a curious caricature of an English Jew of the Stock Exchange, as well-as in a figure after Hans Burgkmair showing a Jewish pedler of the sixteenth century wearing a relatively modern felt hat.... In the eighteenth century the Jew generally wore the ordinary three-cornered hat of the time, and even had his hair powdered...

 In Turkey the costume of the Jews was mainly distinguished by the black turban, but the outer garment was an "'antari," a robe opening in front, of silk or figured calico, reaching a little below the knee and fastened round the waist by a sash passing twice round the body; over this was a "jubbah" lined with cats' fur. Some wore the "bunneṭah," or conical hat; some the "meminah," a cap of dark cloth round which a piece of silk was twisted several times like a turban. The modern Turkish Jew adopts mainly European dress with a fez. An especially dignified dress is that of the Jew of Salonica.... His 'antari is covered by a "kundi," a long, showy, varicolored mantle lined with fur. The 'antarireaches to his feet, and the sleeves are longer than that of the jubbah, under which is to be seen the "salṭah" or cloth fur-lined vest. The Jews of Brusa wear a high cap of pasteboard covered with black material, resembling the cylindrical hats worn by Greek priests. Around this is wound a piece of light-colored cotton to form a turban. This is the only distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish dress in Brusa....

The Jews of the Caucasus are distinguished mainly by their head-dress, the men wearing a kind of busby, mushroom-shaped and made of fur.... The men carry weapons freely, which is quite exceptional among Jews.

The Jews of Cochin are in no way distinguished in their dress from the Hindus of their district.... [B]oth classes [black Jews, and white] wear a cap resembling a smoking-cap. In earlier times the men used to wear the gored pantaloons and white turbans of the Mohammedans of India....

The Ḥasidim of Galicia tend to distinguish themselves in dress as well as in customs; besides the fur hat and the old-fashioned "paletot" reaching to the ankles, the modern Ḥasid is invariably to be recognized by the pair of white socks into which the trousers are tucked....'

Whether Mick Napier considers all Jews "the descendents of Asian nomads" or just the ones who wear the shtriemel is unclear.

By  "the descendents of Arab nomads" he is perghaps thinking of the Jews-are-Khazars myth, beloved by anti-Israel elements; I have blogged about that particular nasty piece of Israel demonisation and the nonsense it is here

To try to deny the Jewish origins of those whose forefathers and mothers have lived, died, and in many cases suffered martyrdom as Jews is exceedingly distasteful and mean-minded, and whether those who do so are consciously antisemitic or not their strategy has, by placing the Jews' ancient genetic ancestry above their recorded  history, religion, and tradition, unpleasant racist overtones.

In any case, scientific investigation is on the shtriemel-wearers' side, not that of Mr Napier and his ilk (see, for instance, here and here).

Cutting The Khazar Crap

On their website Australians For Palestine make a laughing stock of themselves by putting up that map I blogged about yesterday, describing it (with an accompanying story from Facebook about some pesky "Zionists" who took offence at it) as a map of 1700, but that's not the only lie that Australians For Palestine have swallowed and perpetuated.

Elsewhere on the website the organisation (which incidentally does not baulk at reproducing articles from the antisemitic Redress site) quotes extracts from Encyclopaedia of the Palestine Problem by the late Issa Nakhleh, one of which states:

"The Khazars are a people of Turkish origin who lived in the kingdom of Khazaristan in the south of Russia. They were converted to Judaism in the 9th century A.D. Approximately 90% of the Jews of today are of Khazar origin and have no ethnic or historical relationship with Palestine."

It''s the final sentence in that passage that's the mendacious one (though the impression that Nakhleh gives, that the Khazars in their entirety embraced Judaism, is misleading nonsense too).

That complex intellectual Arthur Koestler sure left a poisoned legacy with his The Thirteenth Tribe (1976), for, as was obvious the moment it appeared, it was manna to Israel's enemies everywhere.

Reportedly, Koestler believed that if it could be shown that European Jewry descends not from Biblical Semites but from the Khazars, antisemitism would disappear.  I wondered at the time, and I still wonder, whether the thesis that he pursued so avidly was rooted in some psychological anxiety regarding his own identity.  Might the man with the magyarised Jewish background be satisfying a personal quest born of some anxiety in boyhood to assure himself that, like the Magyars themselves, he too was of Turkic stock?

More importantly, it was immediately obvious (though of course not to antisemites and anti-Zionists who received it with joy) that there were and are flaws in the thesis, with more recent investigations into the genetics of Jewish populations undermining the thesis still further.

A most impressive succinct rebuttal of the canard of the Khazar origins of Ashkenazi Jewry is this, posted pseudonymously online  by an evidently erudite person with a deceptively girlish avatar in response to a mischievous questioner:

'One of the most bizarre aspects of this "re-racializing" of anti-Semitism is the role played by the Khazar myth.

It would be hard to exaggerate how widespread the misuse of the Khazar myth is among those seeking to delegitimize Israel and Jews today. A recent investigation showed nearly 30,000 websites using the Khazar "theory" as a bludgeon against Israel and Zionism. 

Arab and Islamofascist propagandists have long bandied about the Ashkenazim as Khazars theory and Iran's genocidal leaders adore it. Al-Jazeera has been using the Khazar story to urge a worldwide Christian religious war against the Khazar pseudo-Jewish imperialists. 

As The Encyclopedia of Judaism (1989) emphatically states,

 "The notion that Ashkenazi Jewry is descended from the Khazars has absolutely no basis in fact."

So what are we to make of the Khazar myth concerning Ashkenazi Jews and their supposed lack of legitimate claims to Israel due to their Khazar origins? The greatest irony is that even if the entire Khazar theory of Ashkenazi Jews were correct –  and virtually none of it is correct –  it would be entirely irrelevant. Judaism has never defined Jews on racial grounds. Anyone from any race is welcome as a convert to Judaism as long as he or she is sincere.  [My emphasis here and below]

The biblical Israelites themselves were already a racial hodgepodge. They absorbed the "mixed multitude" that left Egypt together with them at the time of the Exodus. There are biblical references to Jews of different racial features, including the black-skinned Shulamit mentioned in the Song of Songs.

Jews always defined themselves in religious, ethnic-national and at times linguistic terms, but never along racial lines. If all Ashkenazi Jews were indeed converted Khazars, as the racial anti-Zionists claim, they would be no less legitimately Jews –  and, as such, would have the same legitimate claims to the Jewish homeland as any other group of Jews. (Given the traditional Jewish deference to righteous converts, maybe more so.)

The actual details of the Khazar theory concerning European Jewry are simply pseudo-history and crackpot poppycock.

Jews already lived in Europe a thousand years before the Khazar kingdom was formed. There are no genetic markers or indicators at all showing that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Turkic tribes. In fact, there exists considerable genetic evidence showing that European Jews are closer to Levantine and Syrian Arabs than to Central Asians.

After the Mongol invasion most Khazars probably assimilated into the Jewish communities of Iran and Iraq, which of course eventually emerged as important Sephardic centers, formed mainly of Jews with Semitic racial characteristics, descended from migrants and exiled Jews from the Land of Israel. In any case, there are more "Semitic" Sephardic Jews in Israel today than there are European Ashkenazi Jews. And if the Khazars looked Turkic, how on earth could they give Ashkenazi Jews a European complexion?

There are other problems. If all Ashkenazi Jews are descended from converted Khazars, why are there Cohens and Levis among them? One inherits the status of a Cohen (priest) or Levite from one's father. Descendants of converts through the male line can never be a Cohen or a Levite.

And why are there no Khazar surnames among Ashkenazim, or Khazar names for towns in Europe where Jews lived? And why did most Ashkenazi communities speak variations of Yiddish rather than Turkic?

As mentioned, the popularity of the Khazar myth among anti-Semites represents a return of modern anti-Jewish bigotry to the racialism of the 1930's and earlier.

Nearly every anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi website denounces Zionists and Israelis as "Khazars." Web chat lists in which Jews defending Israel are dismissed as "Khazar usurpers" are too numerous to count.

The racialism once again in vogue holds that Jews would only have legitimate claims to the right of self-determination in their homeland if they were appropriately Semitic from a racial point of view. Palestine is part of the Semitic racial lebensraum and those who do not possess the correct pure racial markings have no business being there. Racial purity is suddenly the new basis for national rights.'