These two posts are two sides of the same coin.
Let’s talk about it.
JEWS DEFINE JEWISH IDENTITY
The concept that blood or DNA purity defines one’s belonging to a national, tribal, racial, or ethnic group has its roots in scientific racism. It’s an idea that was further propagated by the Nazis in Europe and blood quantum policies in the United States.
Though genetic studies overwhelmingly demonstrate that the majority of Jews can trace their lineage to the Canaanites and the Israelites, Jewish identity is not and has never been defined by “blood purity,” a concept that is racist at its core because there is no such thing as pure and impure DNA. Instead, for thousands of years, Jews have observed matrilineal descent; that is, if your mother is a Jew, you are a Jew. Today the Reform movement accepts patrilineal descent if the child is raised Jewish, and Karaite Jews still practice patrilineal descent.
Long before the modern, non-Jewish designation of “religion,” Jews have identified primarily as a “nation” — “am” in Hebrew — or a collective identity with common language, history, ethnicity, culture, territory, and/or society. Non-Jews can become naturalized members of the Jewish nation through a process known as “giyur,” which is colloquially described as “conversion” but more accurately translates to “one who sojourns/resides with.” It must be noted that Jews are not the only ancient nation or tribal group with a formal process of adoption for non-members.
ERASING JEWISH IDENTITY
At its core, antisemitism functions as a conspiracy theory that portrays Jews as deceitful and manipulative, plotting together to advance nefarious interests. When you accuse us of not being who we say we are, not only are you erasing the history that our ancestors fought so hard to preserve in the face of unspeakable oppression, but you are also playing into classic antisemitic tropes.
When people claim that Palestinians are the “true” descendants of the Jews in antiquity because of alleged purity of blood, they are echoing the very same ideology that led to the murder of six million Jews in Europe. Furthermore, while it’s certainly true that many Palestinians have distant Jewish ancestry, their ancestors long abandoned their Jewish identities. It was our Jewish ancestors that preserved Jewish nationhood, culture, belief, tradition, and identity in spite of a countless string of discriminatory policies, persecutions, massacres, expulsions, and even genocides. If people with distant Jewish ancestry wish to reclaim their Jewishness, there is a formal, respectful process for that: giyur. Absent of that, they have no right to claim they are “more Jewish” than Jews because of some phony belief that their blood is cleaner than ours.
Jewish ancestry or not, Palestinian national identity has never claimed Jews. With the beginnings of Palestinian nationalism, it was the most ancient and most vulnerable Jewish communities in Palestine that were attacked in a series of brutal massacres, such as the Nebi Musa Riots in 1920 and the Hebron Massacre in 1929. In 1948, the entirety of the ancient Jewish communities in the Palestinian Territories — Gaza and the West Bank — were expelled. It’s rather audacious to profess “true” Jewishness now.
ANCIENT TROPE
The idea that Jews are “not the real Jews” can be traced all the way back to antiquity.
- Early Christians believed that the Christian Church had replaced Jews as God’s covenanted people. This idea is known as replacement theology or Christian supersessionism, which Jews consider deeply offensive. But the fact that Jews continued to exist challenged supersessionist theology. For this reason, we were persecuted.
- In the early days of Islam, Muhammad proselytized to the Jewish tribes of the Arabian Peninsula by emphasizing Islam’s Biblical foundations. However, most Jews rejected and resented Muhammad’s interpretation, even going so far as accusing him of appropriating historical Biblical figures in the Quran. When Muhammad failed to convert most Jews in Arabia, he accused them of “intentionally concealing [the Tanakh’s] true meaning or of entirely misunderstanding it.” Islam teaches that it’s the most authentic, final iteration of Abrahamic monotheism, superseding both Judaism and Christianity. For this reason, Muslims believe that Biblical figures such as Moses or King David were actually Muslim.
To the best of anyone’s knowledge, there is only one person who can possibly claim direct, fully uninterrupted descent from the Jews in Ancient Israel. Her name is Margalit Zinati, and she is descended from the priestly families that fled Jerusalem to the Galilee after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Zinati is an Israeli Jew.
In the 1930s, in the midst of the Arab Revolt against the British and Jewish immigration, Zinati and her family had to be evacuated from their homes in Peki’in, after Palestinian Arab nationalists threatened her father’s life. Palestinian national identity never claimed Jews like the Zinati family, so it’s rather ludicrous to now claim that true Jewishness is actually Palestinian.
Zinati is a remarkable Jewish woman, but she is no more and no less Jewish than any other Jew.
THE "SEMITIC RACE"
The idea that Jewish DNA is “diluted” has some pretty sordid, racist origins. In the Middle Ages, Europeans believed that “Asiatic” peoples – including Jews – descended from Shem, one of the sons of Noah. The word “Semite” comes from Shem. By the 19th century, the prevailing belief in Europe was that Jews belonged to a distinct “Semitic” race.
Nineteenth century race theorist (and racist) Arthur de Gobineau believed that three distinct races existed: white, black, and yellow. Among the “white” races was the “Aryan” race, which had remained the “purest” over time. Meanwhile, other “races,” such as the “Semitic” Jews, were an impure, mixed race made up of white, black, and yellow ancestry. This idea that the Jews were “diluting” or “soiling” the white Aryan race was later adopted by the Nazis.
19TH CENTURY IDEAS
A couple new ideas sprung up in the 19th century that further denied Jews our identity.
- Frank Cherry and William Saunders Crowdy started the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, which alleged that African Americans were the true descendants of the ancient Israelites in the Bible. While Cherry considered Jews “frauds,” Crowdy claimed that Jews had “diluted” their Israelite ancestry by intermarrying with white European Christians.
- In the early 19th century, a number of non-Jewish orientalists argued in favor of the “Khazar Theory” of Jewish origins, which hypothesized that Jews originated from the long-extinct Khazars, a Turkic ethnic group. Then, in 1839, the Russian Empire appointed a Karaite Jewish scholar, Abraham Firkovich, to research the origins of the Jewish people. One of Firkovich’s colleagues, a non-Jewish orientalist, posited the Khazar Theory. Though Firkovich rejected it, he also believed that in declaring Karaite Jews of Turkic origin, the Karaites could be exempt from Russia’s antisemitic legislation. Several decades later, the theory – which has since been thoroughly debunked – was picked up by a number of antisemites and Jews in Europe.
CANAANISM
In the early-to-mid 20th century, as Palestinian Arab nationalism clashed with the Zionist movement, some Palestinian Arabs began promoting the ideology of “Canaanism,” or the claim that Palestinian Arabs are descended directly from the Canaanites, bypassing any Jewish ancestry. Some early proponents of the ideology included Aref al-Aref, who wanted to negate Jewish historical ownership of Jerusalem and Mustafa Dabbagh, who argued that the Palestinians are descended from Canaanites who arrived to Palestine from the Arabian Peninsula in 2500 BCE.
Canaanism has been criticized by Palestinian and non-Palestinian historians alike as a fad ideology with little basis in reality. Archeological, linguistic, and genetic evidence demonstrate a link between the Canaanites and the Jews. Furthermore, the Canaanites disappeared as a distinct people around 1200 BCE, assimilating into other identities (including Israelite, and later, Jewish, identity).
SEVERING TIES
The earliest Christians believed that the church had replaced Jews as God’s covenanted people. But for this theory to work, the continued existence of the Jewish people posed a big problem. In a similar vein, for those who believe that only Palestinians have a longstanding, legitimate claim to the land, the continued existence of the Jewish people presents a problem, especially given that the Land of Israel abounds with extensively documented Jewish history.
This erasure is strategic and intentional: for the early Christians, to divorce us from any claim to the Hebrew God; for some people today, to divorce us from our history so that they can justify their rejectionist, binary views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Consider this, for example: in 1925, the Islamic Waqf in charge of Temple Mount – known as Haram al-Sharif to Muslims – wrote in its tourist guidebooks that the fact that Solomon’s Temple was located at Temple Mount was “beyond dispute.” In 1948, following Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the Waqf quietly revised its guidebooks to erase all references to the Jewish Temple.
Jewish identity and history are treated as universal, as though they belong to everyone but us. They are not.
SOME IMPORTANT NOTES ON THIS POST
- For a more thorough explanation about the relationship between the Canaanites and the Israelites, please see my post, “Who Were the Canaanites?” Genetic studies seem to conclude that most Levantine populations— including Jews and Palestinians — have genetic ancestry that can be traced to the Canaanites. However, DNA is not what makes one Jewish (or a Canaanite, for that matter. Canaanites no longer exist).
- Any time I mention that Judaism traditionally accepts matrilineal descent, some people take it to mean that I am personally invalidating patrilineal Jews. That is not the case. If your father is Jewish and your mother is not, you are absolutely welcome in my online community.
- Your religious beliefs are your prerogative, and I welcome my Christian and Muslim followers. It’s when those beliefs are weaponized to invalidate my identity and my history that I have a problem.
For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Instagram and Patreon.