The Myth of Modern Zionism - Part II
Continued from Part I:
After the Fall of Jerusalem in 135 AD, there remained a small Jewish population in Judea. Although Hadrian forbade the practice of Judaism—much of the Jewish population migrated to Galilee, where the rabbinical class compiled the Talmud over the next 200 years at Tiberias.
Another Jewish revolt erupted in 351 AD, this time led by Jewish Galileans, and it was crushed by Constantius II, son of Constantine. Constantius II sent his general, Ursicinus, who slaughtered thousands of the rebels, in yet another failed rebellion.
During the fifth and sixth centuries, a series of Samaritan revolts broke out across Syria Palestina (Judea). Especially violent were the third and fourth revolts, which resulted in near annihilation of the Samaritan community. It is likely that the Samaritan revolt of 556 was joined by the Jewish community, which had also suffered brutal suppression of their religion under Emperor Justinian.
Today, there are only about 900 Samaritans left, split between Israel and the West Bank.
What Happened Next is the Key to Everything
In 636 AD, just two short years after the death of Mohammed, Muslim forces attacked Byzantine forces, just outside Damascus in Syria. The Battle of Yarmouk, named after the nearby Yarmouk River, southeast of the Sea of Galilee. The Muslim forces defeated the superior Byzantine forces during a six-day war in August of that year. This battle marked the beginning of decades of gradual Islamic conquest of the entire Levant region and the end of centuries of Roman rule.
The significance of the Battle of Yarmouk has been lost to all but a handful of historians. George F. Nafziger, in his book Islam at War, summarized:
“Although Yarmouk is little known today, it is one of the most decisive battles in human history ... had Heraclius’ forces prevailed, the modern world would be so changed as to be unrecognizable.”
The Muslim forces regrouped after the Battle of Yarmouk and sacked Jerusalem in November, after a six-month siege.
Jewish historians have estimated that somewhere between 150,000 and 400,000 Jews were in the land, mostly concentrated in 43 settlements in Galilee. Primary among these historians, Moshe Gil, claimed in his History of Palestine:
“We may reasonably state that at the time of the Muslim conquest, a large Jewish population still lived in Palestine. We do not know whether they formed the majority but we may assume with some certainty that they did so when grouped together with the Samaritans. An important source regarding Palestine’s demographic structure during Byzantine rule are the stories of the Christian monk Bar-Sawma. In the hiography of this fighting monk, who was born in Samosata in Asia Minor and active in Palestine in the fifth century AD, it is told that the Jews, together with the heathens, constituted the majority in Palestine, Phoenicia and Arabia (which included the south of Palestine). There were as yet few Christians. The Jews and the Samaritans virtually governed the land and were persecuting the Christians.”
The myth circulated ad nauseam by the Zionist propaganda machine is that the Israelites were driven from the Levant region by the Romans. This never happened, and the historical record states that the Jews were only banned from Jerusalem. Most Judeans migrated approximately 125 kms north to the region of Galilee, with Tiberias as their new capital.
Where Did The Jews Go?
The truth is that many of the Jews after the Fall of Jerusalem in 135 AD converted to Christianity, others migrated to Galilee and then, after the Muslim conquest in the 7th Century, the remainder were converted to Islam by the sword.
We are confronted with the supreme irony, that the modern-day Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank are the Jewish ancestors of these Muslim converts who claim the land belongs to Palestinians. And rightly so.
According to a study of 46 Palestinians published in June 2017 by Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia, and Eran Elhaik in Frontiers in Genetics:
“In a principal component analysis [of DNA], the ancient Levantines clustered predominantly with modern-day Palestinians and [Levantine] Bedouins...” and that the Palestinians in their sample have a “predominant” ancient Levantine origin (58%) and residual Iranian origin (18%).
In a study published in August 2017 by Marc Haber et al., in The American Journal of Human Genetics, the authors concluded that: “The overlap between the Bronze Age and present-day Levantines suggests a degree of genetic continuity in the region.”
Another DNA study by Almut Nebel found substantial genetic overlap among Israeli and Palestinian Arabs and Jews. Nebel proposed that “part, or perhaps the majority" of Muslim Palestinians descend from “local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD.”
Who Are the Jews?
The Zionist movement that was initiated in the 1800’s by Moses Hess and Theodor Herzl is based on Aliyah, the right-to-return. How could the Jews have a right to return to a land they never left?
In 1950, the Israeli parliament passed the Law of Return, that enables anyone with Jewish grandparents, or if they were married to a Jew, to claim citizenship in Israel. This is with the caveat that they are not engaged in “anti-Jewish activities,” which means that Israel has ensured that its national base of pro-Zionist population would not include those unfavourable to its agenda.
Since the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, more than 3 million Jews have made Aliyah. As of 2014, Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories contain roughly 42.9 percent of the world's Jewish population.
There have been extensive genetic studies on the topic in recent decades which have identified genotypic common denominators of Jewish people. One such researcher Raphael Falk, concluded in his study, Genetic Markers Cannot Determine Jewish Descent, that while certain detectable Middle Eastern genetic components exist in numerous Jewish communities, there is no evidence for a single Jewish prototype, and that “any general biological definition of Jews is meaningless.”
Rhineland Theory Versus Khazarian Theory
The alternative theory, that is often advanced in academic circles, is that the Kingdom of Khazaria converted wholesale to Judaism during the reign of King Bulan in the 8th century. Those who promote this theory claim that the Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of Khazarians.
In a paper by Israeli geneticist, Eran Elhaik, he argues that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the Palestine region. He favours the hypothesis that they are of mixed Irano-Turko-Slavic and southern European descent. Contrarily, the Rhineland Hypothesis argues that the ancient Israelites were finally expelled from the region by the Islamic invasion and migrated through Italy to southern Europe where they intermarried with Europeans and migrated east.
He also concludes that the name Ashkenaz, has nothing to do with Ashkenaz from the Old Testament, but rather the Jews are so-named after a region of Turkey:
“[The study] traced nearly all AJs [Ashkenazi Jews] to major ancient trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to four primeval villages whose names resemble “Ashkenaz:” İşkenaz (or Eşkenaz), Eşkenez (or Eşkens), Aşhanas, and Aschuz.”
Elhaik was met with fierce opposition from other Israeli scientists, who denounced his work as methodologically flawed. Elhaik contacted one of the lead scientists Harry Ostrer, who proposed that the Jews are genetically related and relatively homogeneous. He asked permission to access Ostrer’s data base, but Ostrer was only willing to share his data provided that Elhaik submit a proposal showing that the project met several criteria, including that it be “non-defamatory nature toward the Jewish people.”
Shlomo Sand, another Israeli academic, (history professor at Tel Aviv University) wrote the very controversial book The Invention of the Jewish People, where he supports the Khazarian hypothesis, namely, that the shrewd King Bulan converted his kingdom to Judaism in 861 AD as a strategy of self-preservation:
“He desired to remain independent in the face of mighty, grasping empires — in this case, the Orthodox Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid Mushm Caliphate — impelled the rulers of Khazaria to adopt Judaism as a defensive ideological weapon. Had the Khazars adopted Islam, for example, they would have become the subjects of the caliph. Had they remained pagan, they would have been marked for annihilation by the Muslims, who did not tolerate idolatry. Christianity, of course, would have subordinated them to the Eastern Empire for a long time. The slow and gradual transition from the ancient shamanism of the region to Jewish monotheism probably also contributed to the consolidation and centralization of the Khazar realm.”
Much of this historical account is based on letters between Hasdai ibn Shaprut, foreign secretary to the Caliph of Cordoba, and Joseph Khagan of the Khazars. The letter describes the “kingdom of al-Khazar:”
“It is quite true, and the name of that kingdom is al-Khazar. It is a fifteen days’ journey by sea from Constantinople, but by land many nations intervene between us; the name of the king now reigning is Joseph; ships sometimes come from their country to ours bringing fish, skins, and wares of every kind [The Khazars, great traders, got their wares from the Rus to the north.]
Despite scholarly criticism of Shlomo Sand’s book, it was on the bestseller list in Israel for nineteen weeks. Shlomo claims two million Jews continued to live in the Roman Empire after 135 AD, and this is common knowledge to historians.
“It’s so obvious for me,” says Sand. “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.”
According to Sand, the description of the Jews as a wandering and self-isolating nation of exiles, “who wandered across seas and continents, reached the ends of the earth and finally, with the advent of Zionism, made a U-turn and returned en masse to their orphaned homeland,” is nothing but “national mythology.”
Mythology is a powerful force for any nation that desires to preserve and promote its legitimacy and identity on the world stage. Mythology, however, also has the power to create blind acceptance of atrocities in the name of national interest. Israel cannot hope to maintain its legitimacy if it continues to exist as an ethnocratic apartheid state while claiming to be a democracy.