Thoughts On the Ongoing Massacres in Gaza - July 2018

Not- so- good afternoon

BOSTON GLOBE July 20. 2018

Just hours after Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned that Israel is gearing up to launch a "large and painful military operation" in Gaza that would rival Operation Protective Edge—a 2014 assault that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians—the Israeli military carried out "wide-scale" airstrikes and deployed tanks against “militant sites across Gaza on Friday following weekly anti-occupation protests along the border fence”.

WHY?

BOSTON GLOBE July 22, 2018

“Even after last week’s cease-fire ended the fiercest exchange of rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes since the 2014 war, incendiary kites and balloons continued to float from Gaza into Israel, setting off damaging fires to farmlands.”

That is what it says. Gazans continued to release incendiary kites and balloons from Gaza into Israel, which were said to have set “off damaging fires to farmlands”.

You heard it right. Israel carried out wide-ranging airstrikes and deployed tanks against (so it is said) “militant sites” because Palestinians, during their ongoing protest against intolerable living conditions had resorted to releasing incendiary kites and balloons.

Let me repeat that. Israel carried out wide-ranging airstrikes and deployed tanks against (so it is said) “militant sites” because Palestinians, during their ongoing protest against intolerable living conditions had resorted to releasing incendiary kites and balloons.

For some, this picture (by Carlin) is worth many articles describing the ongoing massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.

First, Israel converts de facto apartheid into de jure apartheid by enacting the Nation-State law.

Then it continues to massacre, and make life intolerable for, Palestinians in order to effect ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Gaza and in Israel.

Israel’s end-game for decades, its only goal, is, not a just peace or two-states but a West Bank with no Palestinians that can be annexed legally to Israel.  

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded to the ongoing massacre of Palestinians by Israel, saying “he was ‘gravely concerned” about the escalation and called on both sides to step back from the prospect of another devastating conflict adding  “Any further escalation will endanger the lives of Palestinians and Israelis alike, deepen the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and undermine current efforts to improve livelihoods.”

Yes. He called on “both sides” to step back.

You can be certain that his “whining” will be totally ineffective in pressuring Israel to end its 40 year brutal oppression.

Then there is the role of the United States in supporting the ongoing decade of massacres in Gaza.

The airstrikes began to slam Gaza just hours after Israeli soldiers gunned down at least three Palestinians during anti-occupation demonstrations. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says one of its soldiers was killed by retaliatory gunfire from the Palestinians. "Palestinian defense forces fired back at Israeli snipers who have been murdering Palestinian men, women, and children for weeks," noted journalist Ali Abunimah. Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, added: "Israeli snipers shoot and kill scores of unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, including kids, then calls it self-defense. When a Palestinian sniper fires at one Israeli soldier, Israel bombs Gaza with F-16s and preps for all out war." "Israel has been planning another war on Gaza for some time. They recently conducted exercises, declared Friday as an ultimatum day, and the Americans to wrote a WaPo oped to open the Israeli propaganda campaign," Munayyer noted, referring to an opinion piece co-authored by White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, which blames Hamas for Israel's brutal decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory. "Seems Israel is hell bent on war, again," Munayyer added.  Israel’s bombardment of Gaza comes just days after Israel further intensified its collective punishment of the Palestinian people by imposing "genocidal" trade restrictions on the occupied territory. As Common Dreams reported, Israel's legislature also approved a bill this week that enshrines "apartheid into law" and makes the 1.8 million Arabs living in Israel second-class citizens. COMMON DREAMS July 20, 2018

Kushner’s op-ed, the kind of truly fake news the MSM spews in the United States, is another example of the Israel propaganda campaign exposed in Occupation of the American Mind.

Israel’s brutal oppression began when …… 1948?, 1967?

And in 1987 when Israel brutally repressed a Palestinian attempt to opposed the occupation and the settlements, one consequence was the founding of Hamas in 1987

Here are excerpts from Wikipedia on Hamas and the First Intifada.

Hamas was founded in 1987,^[17][18] soon after the First Intifada broke out. The First Intifada or First Palestinian Intifada was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.^[6] The uprising lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference in 1991, though some date its conclusion to 1993, with the signing of the Oslo Accords.^[7] The uprising began on 9 December,^[8] in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinians.^[9][10][11] In the wake of the incident, a protest movement arose, involving a two-fold strategy of resistance and civil disobedience,^[12] consisting of general strikes, boycotts of Israeli Civil Administration institutions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an economic boycott consisting of refusal to work in Israeli settlements on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, refusal to drive Palestinian cars with Israeli licenses, graffiti, barricading,^[13][14] and widespread throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails at the IDF and its infrastructure within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel, deploying some 80,000 soldiers and initially firing live rounds, killed a large number of Palestinians. In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed.^[15] Given the high proportion of children, youths and civilians killed, it then adopted a policy of 'might, power, and beatings,' namely "breaking Palestinians' bones".^[15][16] The global diffusion of images of soldiers beating adolescents with clubs then led to the adoption of firing semi-lethal plastic bullets.^[15] In the intifada's first year, Israeli security forces killed 311 Palestinians, of which 53 were under the age of 17.^[15] Over the first two years, according to Save the Children, an estimated 7% of all Palestinians under 18 years of age suffered injuries from shootings, beatings, or tear gas.^[16] Over six years the IDF killed an estimated 1,162–1,204^[17] Palestinians. Between 23,600–29,900 Palestinian children required medical treatment from IDF beatings in the first 2 years.^[18]

So, Israel was, in a way, the founder of Hamas.

And a few years earlier, Israel similarly founded Hezbollah, a consequence of Israel’s invasion of, and massacres in, Lebanon.

With all that in mind, it is inconceivable to me that anyone concerned with peace and justice would oppose the non-violent BDS movement.

Strong global action is required and needed to end Israel’s massacres, to end its occupations, to close its settlements and to establish one democratic state with equal rights for all.

The Long Overdue Shunning of Alan Dershowitz

Here is a column of mine that was published in the August 9, 2018, issue of the Marblehead Reporter.

The Long Overdue Shunning of Alan Dershowitz

Shunning is quite a valuable tool and, of course, is being quite effectively used against Donald Trump. The shunning of Alan Dershowitz by summer residents of Martha’s Vineyard, however, is long overdue. He reacted to this by saying “I stand by my principles”. By that, I think he means fighting for civil rights.

That might sound good to some in the United States. But if you are a Palestinian, you might shun him because of his decades long opposition to their civil and human rights.  

Dershowitz seems to be quite selective in which US presidents he supports. While Donald Trump is his new BFF, he has constantly attacked Jimmy Carter. Ten years ago, on May 1, 2008, I posted on my blog “Dershowitz’s Despicable Smear of Jimmy Carter” in response to an article by Dershowitz “Jimmy Carter for Sale” which would have made Joseph McCarthy proud. He begins by alleging “recent disclosures of Carter’s …. connections to Arab oil money” and says that one of these connections is an “unredeemable anti-Semite” who funds a think tank which hosted a speaker that called Jews “the enemies of all nations”. He then connects Carter to receiving funds from an anti-Israel bank. With that he then attacks Carter as having “dirty money”, being “complicit in evil”, “dependent on Arab oil money” having “deception bordering on corruption” and concludes that ”His real integrity is extraordinarily low”.

Below are excerpts from Dershowitz's Despicable Smear of Jimmy Carter dated May 1, 2008

Alan Dershowitz is, by all accounts, a brilliant lawyer and an extraordinarily effective advocate for many individuals, organizations and causes – one of them being the Government of Israel.

CURRENT NOTE – another is Donald Trump – “Alan Dershowitz picked a bad week to defend President Trump. Nonetheless there was the famed former Harvard Law professor Wednesday night, sitting on the stage at the Katharine Cornell Theater on Martha’s Vineyard, arguing that a special counsel should not have been appointed to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia. A polite, somewhat subdued, crowd turned out to hear Dershowitz, who is a longtime summer resident, tell the gathering why he defends the man so despised by many on the island.” Boston Globe July 19, 2018

Here is his conclusion about Jimmy Carter, “He is no better than so many former American politicians who, after leaving public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and become lobbyists for despicable causes.”

What would justify Alan Dershowitz devoting such time and effort to personally attacking Jimmy Carter? What “despicable cause” has Jimmy Carter been lobbying for?

Not his work in … “Havana so that I could speak directly to the Cuban people about democracy and human rights.” Page 250, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”. 

Here’s a clue “Three of the most honest, fair and peaceful of our elections have been in Palestine.” Page 250

Jimmy Carter has become the most respected prominent individual openly critical of the policies of the Government of Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians. He has put in decades working for a “just” peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He has even been talking to everyone about “the terrible plight of the Palestinians” Page 251;

He talks about three options available to the Government of Israel – one of them being “A system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights. This is the policy now being followed.” Page 215;

CURRENT NOTE - “now” includes July 19, 2018 – “Israel passed early Thursday a controversial bill that officially defines Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people and asserts that "the realization of the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people," sparking outrage from Israel's Arab community and provoking concern from the international community.” Ha’aretz July 19, 2018

Alan Dershowitz is a symbol of those who support peace, justice, love, fairness, human rights, and dignity and equality for all unless they are Palestinians.  Herre’s a few values of Judaism embodied by the work of Jimmy Carter and opposed by Alan Dershowitz when the subject is the Palestinians: Exodus 22:20-21 - You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt;”  Deuteronomy XVI, 18:20 – “Justice, Justice shalt thou follow.” 

But I do think that his article is symbolic of what is happening in what is fortunately an increasing smaller segment of the Jewish community - those who agree with any action taken by the Government of Israel. As more and more people in this country and around the world become aware of the injustices and human rights violations being carried out by that government, these tribal nationalistic oriented individuals and their organizations are likely to ramp up the volume and intensity of their personal attacks on, and verbal persecution of, those who criticize the Government of Israel.

Dershowitz ..  hopes to divert our attention from any recommendations Jimmy Carter proposes that might bring appropriate pressure on the Government of Israel to negotiate in good faith for a “just” peace.

… while Alan Dershowitz is not a public official who, after leaving public life, sold himself to the highest bidder, he is, in my opinion, actually the one who is a “lobbyist for a despicable cause” – support for the Government of Israel as it continues the occupation and deprives millions of Palestinians of their basic rights and freedoms.

The shunning of Alan Dershowitz, as I said, is long overdue.

To read the entire post and the attack article by Dershowitz on Jimmy Carter, go to  http://judaismandisrael.blogspot.com/2008/05/dershowitzs-despiciable-smear-of-jimmy.html

PLEASE READ THIS WARNING FROM GEORGE ORWELL - THERE IS STILL TIME

THERE IS STILL TIME

By Ronald W. Fox

IN 1949 GEORGE ORWELL WROTE “1984” AND FORESAW THE DYSTOPIAS OF 2018

I find it difficult to put into a few words the contempt I have for Donald Trump and Israel’s “Prince of Darkness”, or, as I referred to him recently, “Net and Yahoo”.  The words, corrupt, immoral, unjust, venal and barbaric just don’t capture their essence. I have read a number of excellent articles that attempt to condemn them.  But, as I mentioned in a previous email, I was, and have finished, reading 1984 by George Orwell. This book, published in 1949, is a remarkable warning to us today. 

As Erich Fromm says in the Afterword, here is one option:

feeling there is still time, and by responding with greater clarity and greater courage.

Here are excerpts from the book and an excerpt from the Afterword by Erich Fromm published in 1981.

“WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.

“It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism .. and even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evil invariably escaped their notice.

“DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. .. DOUBLETHINK lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty… “To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word DOUBLETHINK it is necessary to exercise DOUBLETHINK. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of DOUBLETHINK one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth … “Whatever the Party holds to be the truth IS the truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.

(Note – I wrote here on the page “Trump and Nunes”)

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

Erich Fromm in the Afterword refers to 1984 as a “negative utopia” which asks, “can human nature be changed in such a way that man will forget his longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for love – that is to say, can man forget that he is human?” Or does human nature have a dynamism which will react to the violation of these basic human needs by attempting to change an inhuman society into a human one.  .. (Orwell) assumes that man has an intense striving for love, for justice, for truth, for solidarity … the basic question which Orwell raises is whether there is any such thing as “truth”. “Reality”, so the ruling party holds, “is not external”. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else …whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth”’ …  Certainly Orwell’s picture is exceedingly depressing,  .. One can react to this picture in two ways: either by becoming more hopeless and resigned, or by feeling there is still time, and by responding with greater clarity and greater courage.”

THERE IS STILL TIME!!!

We are witnessing a situation analogous to that described in 1984. We have Big Brothers here and in Israel. We have The Party – Republicans here and Likud there.

We have an attempt to alter the truth in the United States with Donald Trump lying thousands of times and Republicans cravenly hiding their heads in the sand.

In Israel we have Hasbara – lies after lies intended to (and in the past successful) convince unprincipled and doublethinking politicians (Republicans AND Democrats) in the United States that brutal Israeli oppressors are simply protecting themselves and that Palestinian women, children and men seeking to end the stamping on their faces are terrorists.

 

Further, Israel’s 30 year Hasbara campaign (doublethink) is described in a powerful post Hasbara is Dead from Philip Weiss: “Hasbara has died. The Israeli effort to “explain” its actions to the world– that era is over. Israel has given up trying to explain itself to fair-minded people. Because the fair-minded have all made up their minds; the slaughter in Gaza has seen to that. And Israel doesn’t think they are fair anyway. No, its explanations are reserved now for the hard-core supporters. The hasbara is pure propaganda, aimed at rallying the base. And everyone else is tuning out.” This propaganda has been revealed and shredded in the  movie Occupation of the American Mind which can be viewed free.

In 1984 Winston is tortured as he is reeducated, learns the art of “doublethink” and finally believes that two plus two is 5. Reminds me of one of my favorite education songs that I used to play during the 1980’s for 1L’s at Harvard Law School in the six-session seminar I presented during their first three months before the law school began to funnel them to large law firms at high salaries so they could repay the law schools for the excessive cost to attend.

The disservice law schools did to women students continues today as women are still encouraged to take BigLaw positions when the law schools have known for decades about the mistreatment and abuse that lies ahead for women. 

(To me this song written by Harry Chapin, Flowers are Red, is a vivid explanation of the defects in most elementary, post-high school and graduate education – learning how to be a lemming).

Will we all soon believe that there were more people at Trump’s inauguration than in any other inauguration in history?

Winston’s experience in Oceania makes Offred’s life in Gilead seem like Mary Poppins’ work as a nanny or Maria’s position working for the Von Trapp family.

THERE IS STILL TIME!!!

For what? Possibly the only solution. Last year, there was a movement for a National General Strike . Perhaps it was too soon in 2017. The organizers were prescient.  They saw what was coming.

To combat apartheid and oppression in Israel, support for the BDS movement is essential. Soon everyone will understand that the only solution that combines peace with justice is one democratic state with equal rights for all.

THERE IS STILL TIME.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men (and women) to do nothing." - Edmund Burke.

IT DID HAPPEN HERE

It Did Happen Here

Ronald W. Fox

April 20, 2039

Tomorrow is my 100^th birthday.  The key to my home in the village of Marblehead, Massachusetts, hangs on my wall. I wonder who lives there now. Someday I hope that my descendants will again be able to return to my house and live there.

Was it really just 19 years ago that the 2020 election was canceled? The then current United States President declared himself Czar Donald 1.

Soon, thereafter, he appointed Pastor John Hagee as Minister of Racial Health. Every member of the Jewish community should have been alarmed knowing since Hagee has referred to Hitler as a half-breed Jewish descendant of Esau and says the disobedience of Jews to God gave rise to their persecution for centuries.

Many of the leaders of the Jewish community were silent or urged caution knowing that Hagee was a huuuuge supporter of Israel (because the bible says that when Israel is invaded by Russians and Muslims, God will destroy them, the Messiah will return, those who believe in Jesus will be taken to heaven and those who don’t (me and my family) will be Left Behind as the world is destroyed in a global conflagration).

Within weeks after Minister Hagee declared New England to be the White Anglo Christian Keystone Outpost (WACKO), Jewish organizations armed themselves and fought valiantly but were overcome by Hagee’s militia.

The violence and brutality of his militia forced us to flee our homes, but we were able to take refuge in northern Maine where we were quickly surrounded. Soon thereafter with funding supplied by Mexico and equipment provided by Caterpillar, a wall was built and we were trapped. The area became known as the Aroostook Zionist Action Grant (AZAG) Strip.

Soon thereafter we began to organize politically and militarily to fight against the Czar. With support, advice and guidance from Jimmy Carter, we held an election for delegates to the newly formed Hebrew Aid Members Armed Society (HAMAS) with Risay Tafara as our first president.  Upon hearing that there was an attempt to establish a democracy within WACKO, Czar Donald 1 immediately imposed a blockade of the entire AZAG Strip.

Within a few months we were no longer able to obtain sufficient water, electricity, food, medical supplies, building supplies or any other of the necessities of daily living.

Despite our pleas to the UN and the EU, nothing happened to alleviate our plight.  On top of that, the Czar had negotiated with the new Canadian Prime Minister, Unjustin Falsedoe, to extend the blockade along the Canadian border.

While I was worried about throwing out my back, I worked with others in the “Marbleheaders” Unit to dig a tunnel into Saint-Pamphile in an attempt to find and bring back bread and eggs. Sadly, Hagee’s militia found the tunnel and destroyed it.

We continued to fight back by building hurling potatoes over the wall but our resistance was met with attacks from helicopters, missiles, drones and armored vehicles.

Unemployment reached 80%.  Children were suffering from malnutrition. On rare occasions, some were able to exit through one of the checkpoints connecting us with WACKO. The process was time-consuming and humiliating. In some instances, pregnant women lost their children because of the time consumed trying to enter WACKO on their way to the Boston No Abortion Hospital Complex. 

We were also extremely upset when one our high school graduates with 1550 on her SAT’s and a full scholarship to Bowdoin College was not granted permission to leave AZAG. When she complained, two of the militia tore her from her parents and took her crying hysterically to a former brig in Portsmouth, Gilead, oops, I mean New Hampshire.

Finally, in late 2038, with AZAG no longer being inhabitable, we had had enough. We called for a peaceful protest at the Danforth Checkpoint.

All went well until someone catapulted strawberries causing a rash on the nose of one of Hagee’s militia. 

At that point Hagee’s militia began firing through the checkpoint fence, killing 30 and injuring 1400 men, women and children.

A New York Times reporter, Christian White, interviewed members of Hagee’s militia and concluded they had acted in self-defense. Another reporter, Roland Hedley, formerly of Doonesbury reporter (see attached report from him) but now with Fox News, suggested there might be two sides to the story and that this might be a case of apartheid and possible ethnic cleansing but the NYT quickly reassigned him to Myanmar.

Minister Hagee promised a full investigation.

Czar Donald 1 applauded Hagee’s militia for their restraint and Hagee’s commitment to peace with justice.

The majority leader of the US House, Donald Trump, Jr., from the newly formed Nationalist Party, also praised Hagee’s militia and asked “How would you feel, what would you do, if thousands of terrorists stormed your wall.”

How WOULD you feel? What WOULD you do? 

P.S. Please don’t try to send me a birthday card. Hagee prohibits all mail for fear that it might contain coded terror messages and won’t allow us to connect to Net and Yahoo.

PLEASE TELL ME I’M NOT A KHAZARIAN CONVERT TO JUDAISM

PLEASE TELL ME I’M NOT A KHAZARIAN CONVERT TO JUDAISM

by Ronald W. Fox

Thank you, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, for allaying my fears that I cannot, based on having been descended from “real” Jewish people living in the promised land two to three millennia ago, emigrate to Israel and move into a residence vacated by, really, no one 70 years ago.

In this article in the Washington Post, How to Tell When Criticism of Israel is Actually Anti-Semitism,  she warns about Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas resurrecting the old canard that today’s Jews descend from Khazar converts in a this recent and much-criticized speech, Palestinian Leader Incites Uproar with Speech Condemned as Anti-Semitic “citing a widely discredited book from the 1970s by Arthur Koestler called ‘The Thirteenth Tribe,’ he posited that Ashkenazi Jews were descended not from the biblical Israelites but from the Khazars, a Turkic people who converted to Judaism in the eighth century.”

When my mother-in-law passed away, we saved some books from her library including “The Thirteenth Tribe”. One day I picked it up and began to read Chapter 1 “About the time when Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the West, the eastern confines of Europe between the Caucus and the Volga were ruled by a Jewish state, known as the Khazar Empire.  … (about) AD 740, the King, his court and the military ruling class embraced the Jewish faith, and Judaism became the state religion of the Khazars.” And the beginning of Chapter II “‘The religion of the Hebrews’, writes Bury ‘had exercised a profound influence on the creed of Islam and it had been a basis for Christianity; it had won scattered proselytes; but the conversion of the Khazars to the undiluted religion of Jehova is unique in history.’”

Clearly this is a work of fiction from the author of Darkness at Noon, right?

Easy enough to confirm. I went to another set of saved books, the Encyclopaedia Judaica and opened Volume 10 -Jes-Lei.  There I found, to my dismay, nearly six full pages (incredibly small type) in the section on “KHAZARS” including subsections entitled “Date of the Khazar Conversion to Judaism” and “The Extent of Khazar Judaism” where it says “While the Khazars were generally known to their neighbors as Jews .. they seem to have had little or no contact with the central Jewish organization in Iraq.” (In terms we can understand, they did not send a delegate to the World Jewish Congress).

But I took heart reading this entry in Wikipedia on Khazar Hypothesis of Ashkenazi Ancestry from which I have excerpted this:

The Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry, often called the "Khazar myth" by its critics, is the hypothesis that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars, a multi-ethnic conglomerate of Turkic peoples who formed a semi-nomadic Khanate in the area extending from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. The hypothesis draws on some medieval sources such as the Khazar Correspondence, according to which at some point in the 8th–9th centuries, the ruling elite of the Khazars was said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism ... In the late 19th century, Ernest Renan and other scholars speculated that the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe originated among Turkic refugees who had migrated from the collapsed Khazarian Khanate westward into Europe, and exchanged their native Khazar language for Yiddish while continuing to practice Judaism. Though intermittently evoked by several scholars since that time, the Khazar-Ashkenazi hypothesis came to the attention of a much wider public with the publication of Arthur Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe in 1976. It has been revived recently by Eran Elhaik, who in 2012 conducted a study aiming to vindicate it. Despite skepticism, he reformulated the concept in 2016 by developing a novel method of genetic analysis that uses the fringe linguistic theories of the Yiddish expert Paul Wexler. Genetic studies on Jews have found no substantive evidence of a Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews, as opposed to evidence they have mixed Near Eastern/Mediterranean and Southern European origins.

What a relief that there is no genetic evidence that I may be of Khazar origin. For years I have been proudly proclaiming to all that would listen that I am a Kohane. I have even written a proposal that we give up on Rabbis who seem not have been able to get the job done and return to the reign of the High Priests. With my expertise on the grill, I would be able to hit the yearly Yom Kippur sacrifice running.

But then, why did 23andMe tell some users with Ashkenazi heritage that they may be descended from an extinct tribe from the Caucasus known as the Khazars?

Just a short term glitch.

While I have no proof, I think, and I thank, the alliance that worked to create a massive PR campaign to insure that the American public never got unreasonably upset about Israel’s violations of international law and possible charges of war crimes, gently informed 23andMe that any hint that Israelis are descended from converts would be a gross act of anti-Semitism and could lead to a boycott of the business (certainly more warranted than those true anti-Semites who are supporting the BDS movement). 

So, fortunately, recently we learned in Why Did 23andMe Tell Ashkenazi Jews They Could Be Descended from Khazars?

The genomics company 23andMe has retracted a statement made on the profiles of some users with Ashkenazi heritage that they may be descended from an extinct tribe from the Caucasus known as the Khazars, inadvertently wading into a political-genetic debate with far-reaching implications for Jewish identity and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The company said in a statement that it will remove any reference to the theory from its site.

23andMe, which offers direct-to-consumer genome testing services, sent out an email last week to customers, announcing updates to the genetic reports corresponding to different haplotypes, or genetic groups defined by certain DNA variations. The email promised that “a major update” of the company’s genetic history reports would help its customers “gain insights into fascinating and unusual details about your genome, details that set your story apart.”

One of the details in question? That a large portion of Jews may be descended from the Khazars, a semi-nomadic tribe in the Caucasus that was largely destroyed in 10th-century C.E. — and not from the Israelites of the Israel/Palestine area from several thousand years ago. This theory, known as the “Khazar theory,” has been discredited by geneticists all over the world.

“The origin of the Ashkenazi Jews has been traced back to a population of Jewish people living between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea before the Roman exile,” the report on the 23andMe website read. “However, research suggests that Ashkenazi Jews who belong to your haplogroup may descend from a single male who… may have been a member of the Khazars, an enigmatic Turkic tribe that lived in Central Asia, and that converted to Judaism in the eighth century A.D.”

Now, in response to inquiries from the Forward, 23andMe is saying the inclusion of the Khazar theory in the company’s latest genetic report — one of many released to customers on Friday — for some Ashkenazi Jews was “an error”.

Works for me!!

But then, following up to see where the Khazar Empire (Khazaria) was located geographically, I found a helpful map which can be found in this article, Khazaria: A Forgotten Jewish Empire. And a long review of “Are We All Khazars Now?” by Shaul Stampfer (which I am definitely not going to read).

Wha!!!

I thought I could take a stab at writing a frightening account of the consequences that would result if, indeed, it was true that a high percentage (80%?) of all those who claim they were Jews were indeed, descendants of some converts from the Caucasus but I was too late.

Leaked report: Israel acknowledges Jews in fact Khazars; Secret plan for reverse migration to Ukraine by Jim Wald

Israel seems finally to have thrown in the towel. A blue-ribbon team of scholars from leading research institutions and museums has just issued a secret report to the government, acknowledging that European Jews are in fact Khazars. (Whether this would result in yet another proposal to revise the words to “Hatikvah” remains to be seen.) At first sight, this would seem to be the worst possible news, given the Prime Minister’s relentless insistence on the need for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” and the stagnation of the peace talks. But others have underestimated him at their peril. An aide quipped, when life hands you an etrog, you build a sukkah.

Speaking off the record, he explained, “We first thought that admitting we are really Khazars was one way to get around Abbas’s insistence that no Jew can remain in a Palestinian state. Maybe we were grasping at straws. But when he refused to accept that, it forced us to think about more creative solutions. The Ukrainian invitation for the Jews to return was a godsend. Relocating all the settlers within Israel in a short time would be difficult for reasons of logistics and economics. We certainly don’t want another fashlan like the expulsion of the settlers in the Gaza Hitnatkut [disengagement].

Speaking on deep background, a well-placed source in intelligence circles said: “We’re not talking about all the Ashkenazi Jews going back to Ukraine. Obviously that is not practical. The press as usual exaggerates and sensationalizes; this is why we need military censorship.”

Khazaria 2.0?

All Jews who wish to return would be welcomed back without condition as citizens, the more so if they take part in the promised infusion of massive Israeli military assistance, including troops, equipment, and construction of new bases. If the initial transfer works, other West Bank settlers would be encouraged to relocate to Ukraine, as well. After Ukraine, bolstered by this support, reestablishes control over all its territory, the current Autonomous Republic of Crimea would once again become an autonomous Jewish domain. The small-scale successor to the medieval empire of Khazaria (as the peninsula, too, was once known) would be called, in Yiddish, Chazerai.

I have already ordered the kit from 23andMe and feel more comfortable going ahead with this but I do have one concern.

I have been told that my mother’s family came from a village a short distance from Kiev, Russia. When they tell me that, should I think that something has been omitted? Should I ask for “further review”?

As we spiral further into authoritarianism here under a corrupt, immoral, ignorant President, do I run the risk I will find out I am a convert and can no longer emigrate to Israel? Does Ukraine have a Law of Return for Khazarians?

PS I did get back my results from 23andMe and, fortunately, while it did uncover some Asian Indian connection, there was none for the Caucasus. HOWEVER, my wife's did show a 2% connection to that region. I always thought that were a mixed marriage.