The Israeli narrative on Palestinians' roots

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The only sensible thing, in my opinion, is that the individuals, regardless of their ethnicity, that lived there (and if they were forced out their descendants) when Israel was founded has a legal claim to citizenship. This talk about any other historic roots is pure nonsense to me.

The only sensible thing, in my opinion, is that the individuals, regardless of their ethnicity, that lived there (and if they were forced out their descendants) when Israel was founded has a legal claim to citizenship.

This talk about any other historic roots is pure nonsense to me.

And let's face it, the real reason it's become open season on Israel lately isn't because of war crimes or "zionism", it's because they're a close US ally. There's been too much anti-Americanism everywhere online these days because too many people are drinking the kool-aid of propaganda.

I think people are just coming up with any excuse to justify hating Israeli Jews these days and then deny it by claiming they're just being "anti-zionist"

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is being approached incorrectly. This is because Palestinians are not Arab. They are culturally arabized Jews/Israelites.

I am not the first person to hold this position. Both President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and Prime Minister David Ben Gurion believed that the Palestinians were descended from Jews. David Ben-Gurion wrote several books and articles on the subject and even created a task force with Moshe Dayan to “Judaize” the Bedouins. As war and conflict continued this idea was eventually abandoned. At the time there was no way to really know. However, genetics has progressed incredibly far, and we now know that Ben Gurion was largely correct. Palestinian fellahin are the descendants of the Jews and more broadly Israelites who survived the Roman conquest.

I accidentally fell into this story. I am a Persian-Jew and a few years ago I decided to take a genetic test. Much to my surprise, the test indicated that I was genetically Lebanese. This confused me as I thought Lebanese were Arabs. As a naturally curious person I began to investigate the genetics of the Middle East. Through this process I discovered that most of the Middle East is not Arab, but rather indigenous peoples who are culturally arabized. For example, the Lebanese are largely just arabized Phoenicians. Lebanon is right next to Israel, which is partially why the test plotted me as Lebanese. This then immediately raised the question, what about the Palestinians?

[...]

So, who are the Palestinians? Until recently it would have been guess work as Palestinian Christians could hypothetically be a mix of people from around the world. However, recently genetic archeology had advanced, and for the first time scientists were able to extract genetic data from ancient dead bodies. As a result, we now know what the populations of ancient Israel looked like, and we can track the genetic changes of a region over thousands of years by dating the dead bodies. We will start with the first inhabitants of Israel, Natufians and their historical evolution in the area. However, to telegraph where we are going Palestinian Christians are 88-97% Israelite. Alongside the Jewish adjacent Israelite sect of Samaritans, they are the most closely related population in the world to the ancient Israelites.

[...]

So let us talk discuss the actual history of Palestinians, not the fairy tale Arab replacement version. A good starting point is when the region was named Palestine. In 63 BCE the Romans conquered Israel from the Hasmonean dynasty. In 132-136 the Bar Kochba revolt takes place. The Romans arguably commit a genocide against the Jews with some historians placing the number of deaths north of half a million. The population of Israel collapses. The Romans name the area Syria-Palestina to spite the Jews. The survivors of the genocide would be the first Palestinians.

It is important to note that this war in Israel was between the Jews and the Romans. The surviving Christians and Samaritans would be ethnically Jewish/Israelite. Christianity was originally a Jewish sect after all. To reiterate almost all these Christians in Israel are Israelites/Jews who converted to Christianity.

[...]

So, who are the Palestinians? Until recently it would have been guess work as Palestinian Christians could hypothetically be a mix of people from around the world. However, recently genetic archeology had advanced, and for the first time scientists were able to extract genetic data from ancient dead bodies. As a result, we now know what the populations of ancient Israel looked like, and we can track the genetic changes of a region over thousands of years by dating the dead bodies. We will start with the first inhabitants of Israel, Natufians and their historical evolution in the area. However, to telegraph where we are going Palestinian Christians are 88-97% Israelite. Alongside the Jewish adjacent Israelite sect of Samaritans, they are the most closely related population in the world to the ancient Israelites.

[...]

Today there are only 900 Samaritans left in Israel. Samaritans claim to be one of the descendants of the Israelites. The main difference between them and Jews is that Samaritans claim that the temple was not in Jerusalem, but actually in Samaria specifically on Mount Gerizim. The Samaritan genetic profile looks very similar to the ancient Israelite samples. It does seem that they are largely descendants of the ancient northern kingdom.

[...]

So let us talk discuss the actual history of Palestinians, not the fairy tale Arab replacement version. A good starting point is when the region was named Palestine. In 63 BCE the Romans conquered Israel from the Hasmonean dynasty. In 132-136 the Bar Kochba revolt takes place. The Romans arguably commit a genocide against the Jews with some historians placing the number of deaths north of half a million. The population of Israel collapses. The Romans name the area Syria-Palestina to spite the Jews. The survivors of the genocide would be the first Palestinians.

It is important to note that this war in Israel was between the Jews and the Romans. The surviving Christians and Samaritans would be ethnically Jewish/Israelite. Christianity was originally a Jewish sect after all. To reiterate almost all these Christians in Israel are Israelites/Jews who converted to Christianity.

The next big demographic change occurred in the 500s. The Samaritan population reached hundreds of thousands. As a result, they decided to rebel against the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire in an attempt to create their own Israelite state. Emperor Justinian mercilessly crushed the rebellion and the Samaritans as well as what was left of the Jews were forced to convert to Christianity. The region was now firmly Christian.

In 634 the Rashidun Caliphate conquered Israel/Palestine. In 1099 the crusaders took most of Israel. Records suggest they killed and expelled most of the non-Christian population.

The Crusader Kingdoms retained control of Israel until 1187 when Saladin defeated them. In 1260 the Egyptian Mamluks conquered Israel. It is likely at this point when we start to see major foreign admixture enter the Palestinian genetic pool and when the “Palestinian Muslim” ethnogenesis forms. It is also at this point that the Palestinian Christian samples stopped changing. It would have been punishable by death for a Muslim to convert to Christianity, so Palestinian Christians were only able to marry other Palestinian Christians. Geneticists believe that Palestinian Christian genetics are frozen at the level found around the year 1200. Again, to reiterate Palestinian Christians are almost entirely Jewish/Israelite and appear usually between 88-97% Israelite on genetic tests.

I have hitherto refrained from discussing Palestinian Muslim genetics because I wanted to set the stage to better understand the general Palestinian background. By 1200 the Palestinian genetic sample probably looked like somewhere in between Samaritans and Palestinian Christians.

[...]

The Palestinian Muslim genetic ancestry would have likely begun to shift starting from this Palestinian Christian core around the year 1200.

[...]

As mentioned earlier the Canaanite and Israelite samples varied heavily in different regions. This remains true of Palestinians. Many Palestinians are uploading their genetic profile onto the website reddit, on the subreddit of illustrativeDNA. What we see it that percent Israelite varies dramatically by region. Some Palestinian Muslims are as high as 90% Jewish/Israelite while others are as low as 15% Jewish/Israelite ancestry.

In general, and this is a rough approximation, as I cannot aggregate the data, the West Bank is 70% Jewish/Israelite in genetic origin with a confidence interval around 10%. The remaining 30% split is very diverse but seems to be of Arab, Kurdish, African, and Turkish origin also varying from North to South, with the North generally having less foreign admixture. For example, Palestinians in and around Nablus can be modeled as nearly entirely Samaritan.

Gazans can in many ways be thought of as a separate ethnicity from West Bank Palestinians. This is because Gazans have substantial Egyptian ancestry not normally found in the West Bank. Egyptians are also an indigenous people and not an Arab people and have a very distinct genetic makeup.

[...]

Another important analytical tool requires analyzing Y DNA. All human DNA is composed of Y and X Chromosomes. Women have two XX and men have one X and one Y. Every time a person has a male child the XX’s are split and recombined, while the Y is directly passed down from your father with little mutation. Therefore, if a population is descended from the same males, they would have similar Y Chromosomes.

Studies have compared Palestinian and Jewish Y Chromosomes and found that there is a 70% match between the Y Chromosomes of Jewish males and Palestinians. The difference in Y chromosomes traces to Kurds, Bedouins, and Egyptians, in line with the mixing we theorize after the year 1200.

Another key question that has yet to be answered is the maternal lineages of Palestinians. It is possible to trace maternal lineages through MTDNA. I have yet to find any good studies comparing the maternal lineages of Palestinians and Israelis. 23and me holds that N1b, K1a1b1a, K1a9, and K2a2a are distinctly Jewish Ashkenazi MTDNA not found in Europe. Some of these maternal lineages are found in Palestinians suggesting possible Jewish maternal descent for many Palestinians (making Palestinians halachically Jewish). However, there has not been much research into this area.

In conclusion, the Palestinian genetic profile is indigenous Levantine and almost certainly comes from the Jews/Israelites. When Palestine became Islamic around the year 1200 we begin to see some foreign admixture. On the coastal plain the foreign admixture is usually Egyptian. In West Bank near Hebron and Jerusalem the foreign admixture is probably Bedouin. In the North near Tzfat the foreign admixture is minimal and believed to be Kurdish. On balance it is fair to state that Palestinians are in fact ethnically Israelite. The divide between the Israelis and Palestinians is on religious and linguistic lines only.


About the Author
Jonathan Kohan is currently a student at Cornell Law School. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. Jonathan is interested in comparative politics, political procedure, and morality. He is currently writing a book discussing religion in the 21st century.

"We are of the same race and blood, and cooperation will bring great prosperity to the land," wrote Emir Faisal to Felix Frankfurter in 1917. Faisal was known for his affinity to the Zionists who had begun streaming to the Holy Land; in 1919, he signed a cooperation agreement with Chaim Weizmann, to whom he wrote that he was "mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people." But Faisal's proclamations of kinship with the Jews were more than lip service to a commonly held belief, says Tsvi Misinai, who knows perhaps more about the origins of the modern Palestinians than anyone. "Faisal's paternal line was Hashemite," he says, "meaning he was directly descended from Muhammad. But the mother of his maternal grandfather, King On, was descended from a family of forced Jewish converts to Islam that immigrated to the east bank of the Jordan, later returning to one of the villages west of the Jordan. Unlike today, when Faisal was growing up, his grandfather's mother's Jewish origin was known, and they made no great effort to hide it. And what was known to Faisal is known to many Palestinians today as well." This is a story of what may be one of the best-kept secrets in history - one that could, in time, heal the terrible rift that has torn the Land of Israel asunder. After years of research, Misinai says that he can declare with certainty that nearly 90 percent of all Palestinians are descended from the Jews. "And what's more, about half of them know it," he says. Not only that, many Palestinians retain Jewish customs, including mourning rituals, lighting Shabbat or memorial candles and even wearing tefillin. While the common wisdom among many Israelis is that the group that calls itself "Palestinian" is a motley collection of Arabs from various parts of the Middle East who immigrated to the Land of Israel following the employment opportunities provided by Jews, Misinai says that the vast majority of today's Palestinians are descended from the remnants of Jewish families who managed to avoid being deported over the past 2,000 years, or returned to their lands after they were exiled, as the Jews in the Holy Land suffered blow after blow - from the Roman destruction of the Temple to the Crusades to famine, poverty and war throughout the Middle Ages. One thing many were unable to avoid, however, was converting to Islam - a forced conversion that never really "took," done more out of fear than conviction. Misinai has made it his mission to spread the word among Palestinians, giving them the opportunity to retrieve their lost heritage. And not just introduce them to their roots; according to Misinai, the reintegration of what he calls the "descendants of Israel" with the Jewish people is the best - perhaps the only - way to solve the seemingly endless Middle East crisis.

In 1956 the PM David Ben-Gurion sent Moshe Dayan with a rabbi to start giving lessons in Judaism to Bedouin in the Negev.

Was Ben-Gurion suddenly struck with missionary zeal?

He was just acting on knowledge that he and Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi, the president, has talked about for years. Most of what we now call “Palestinian Arabs” are descendants of Jews. Among the Bedouin that could reach 100 per cent.

Ben-Gurion’s efforts didn’t go anywhere but give him credit for the thought.

Tzvi Misinai, a software pioneer, who has devoted his life to assembling the facts on this issue, says that 90 per cent of Palestinian Arabs are descendants of Jews and 50 per cent know it.

This would explain some curious phenomena.

When the Jordanians took over Judea and Samaria in 1948, they found no mosques there. King Hussein built the first one.

The Crusaders when they came here found that the Arabs here spoke Aramaic, not Arabic.

Both facts would be explained if most of the “Arabs” in this land were really former or crypto-Jews.

When the original Arabians invaded, the population was comprised of a majority of Greek-speaking Christians and a large minority of Aramaic-speaking Jews.

The Arabians did not colonize the Promised Land because they saw that this population was not hostile.

Skip ahead 400 years and a Shi’ite caliph in Egypt decided to forcibly convert everyone here to Islam. The Christians cleared out. Their numbers from that day to this have remained miniscule. The Jews remained and converted.

The decree was cancelled 30 years later but only a quarter of the Jews returned to practising Judaism openly. There was a practical reason for this and you can’t blame the others. Islamic society consisted of two classes of people, superiors and inferiors or “dhimmis.” The dhimmis were hit with confiscatory taxes and had no rights. Rather than impoverish themselves, those who remained technically Muslims, left well enough alone. But there was no Inquisition among the Muslims. No one was snooping on them. They continued speaking Aramaic and paying no more than lip service to Islam.

A traveller Rabbi Yitzhak Khilu in 1300 said he met many nomad Bedouin who were Jews. They had never left the country ever.

The DNA findings back this up. The Palestinian Arabs, who are descendants of Jews, are very close to Ashkenazi Jews in their gene makeup.

It’s interesting how Misinai comes up with 90 per cent. There are two categories, which he calls “Descendants of Israel” and “Brethren of Israel.” These “brethern” are descendants of Edomites and Moabites. But they had converted to Judaism way back and remained in the fold, so of course they count.

The Wikipedia article on Origin of the Palestinians confirms the close genetic relationship between most Jews and most Palestinians.

Another article on the Times of Israel site: Most Palestinians Are Descendants Of Jews, Aug 21, 2016:


Much of the rest of this article is devoted something I strongly disagree with: Advocating the idea that Israel should outright annex the West Bank. Not a good idea at the present time, although, in the long run, I think a single united Israel-Palestine is the only reasonable solution.

I think people are just coming up with any excuse to justify hating Israeli Jews these days and then deny it by claiming they're just being "anti-zionist".