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Dammi Israeli: The Genetic Origins of the Palestinians
Times of Israel ^ | 27th December 2025 | Jonathan Kohan

Posted on 05/21/2025 11:05:05 AM PDT by Cronos

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 the first President of the state of Israel Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, and the 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?

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.timesofisrael.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: arabs; genealogy; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; israel; palestine; palestinians; romanempire
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To: Sacajaweau

Palestinian is a new ethnicity created in the 70s by Arafat.

They are basically Arabized Levantines who aren’t Jewish.

New ethnicities are created all the time. Like in the late 1700s.

The present day “Palestinians” have, as the article points out, little actually Arab blood, and are related to the Jews and Samaritans so most likely have these aming their ancestors


21 posted on 05/21/2025 12:18:30 PM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: af_vet_1981

Arabs conquered much of the current “Arab world” in the 7th century but the majority remained Christian or Jewish until the 12th century.

Egypt was majority Christian until the 12th century


22 posted on 05/21/2025 12:20:01 PM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: monkeyshine

There are the “true Arabs” who are from the arabian peninsula.

And lots of Arabized people’s who were Levantines, Egyptian, Berber, etc etc

In the same way that Turks have, on average inky about 5% turkiC blood, like the Azerbaijanis. Yet they consider themselves Turks.


23 posted on 05/21/2025 12:22:00 PM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: MikelTackNailer

That is because Mohammedans practiced cousin marriage. The consanguine issues reduced their iq.

Kind of like how orcs are suppose to be distorted Elves in Tolkien lore


24 posted on 05/21/2025 12:23:36 PM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: Cronos
There were people in the Land of Canaan before the Israelite conquest--Amorites, Hivites, Jebusites, etc. The Philistines are reported to be recent immigrants from the Aegean area. I once saw a suggestion that the tribe of Dan was also immigrants--Danaans (one of the terms for Greeks in Homer). Another publication argued that "Hivites" were Achaeans (another early term for Greeks).

What differentiated the Canaanites from the Israelites other than religion? Jacob's sons must have married local women for the most part (except for Joseph).

The Samaritans were mostly descended from the Ten Northern Tribes (but the Assyrians seem to have settled some Mesopotamians among them--but told them to learn the religion of the native population). How does modern Samaritan DNA compare to Jewish DNA?

In the early medieval period, before the Arab conquest, the population seems to have been mostly Christian (with some Samaritans and some Jews)...these people were probably a mix of Israelite, Canaanite, Philistine and Greek ancestry. The later "Palestinian Arab" population would be mostly descended from those who were there in the 7th century since Arabia didn't have that big a population and there were more attractive places for Arabs to settle.

Some Lebanese are descended from Crusader ("Frank") ancestors. Jerusalem historically had an Armenian quarter in the Old City.

25 posted on 05/21/2025 12:23:55 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Cronos

If you add up all the speakers of Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, Catalan, Sardinian and others) it may be around 900 million people. Very few of them have ancestors who spoke Latin in 250 B.C.


26 posted on 05/21/2025 12:28:35 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Cronos
Arabs conquered much of the current “Arab world” in the 7th century but the majority remained Christian or Jewish until the 12th century.

The estimates in this source are quite a bit lower for the areas conquered in the Middle East.

After the Arab Muslim conquest of the Middle East and North Africa in the seventh century, Christianity slowly declined in those regions. By the tenth century Christians constituted some ten percent of the population of the Islamic Empire. Into this situation at the end of the eleventh century came the Crusades, which brought with them the Roman Catholic Church. Dominant in the regions of the East Mediterranean where the crusaders established short-lived states, the Roman Catholic Church remained as a minority after the last Crusaders left at the end of the thirteenth century. During the crusader period, in the thirteenth century one group of Eastern Christians, the Maronites, entered in its entirety into communion with Rome. The Maronite Church is the largest Christian group in Lebanon.
27 posted on 05/21/2025 12:58:34 PM PDT by af_vet_1981 ( The bus came by and I got on, That's when it all began.)
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To: MtnClimber
They don’t look like Jews. They look like crazy Arab muslims.

Jews don't look like Jews. They look like Khazars.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3595026/

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2017.00087/full

28 posted on 05/21/2025 1:21:30 PM PDT by nitzy (I don’t trust good looking country singers or fat doctors.)
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To: MtnClimber
They don’t look like Jews.

What does a Jew look like?

29 posted on 05/21/2025 4:06:28 PM PDT by Right_in_Virginia ( )
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From the Canaanites keyword, sorted:

30 posted on 05/21/2025 4:23:17 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: Cronos
The divide between the Israelis and Palestinians is on religious and linguistic lines only.


31 posted on 05/21/2025 7:22:41 PM PDT by logi_cal869 (-cynicus the "concern troll" a/o 10/03/2018 /!i!! &@$%&*(@ -')
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To: nitzy

That’s bull. There are lots of Mizrahiand indian and Ethiopian Jews


32 posted on 05/21/2025 8:48:05 PM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: Verginius Rufus

Modern Samaritan DNA has slightly more Cohen genes than Jews on average.


33 posted on 05/21/2025 8:54:57 PM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: Cronos

What is your point?

Another poster said that despite genetic testing saying that Palestinians are genetically Jewish, Palestinians don’t look like Jews. I pointed out that the “Jews” is he comparing them to have significant European ancestry. I provided scientific studies to back up my claim.

What exactly are you trying to say?….That not ALL Jews have European ancestry? Do you think that was what I was claiming?


34 posted on 05/22/2025 4:52:26 AM PDT by nitzy (I don’t trust good looking country singers or fat doctors.)
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To: nitzy

My pint is that Jews in general don’t have Khazar Turkic blood as most are Mizrahi non Europeans or Sephardic from the Iberian peninsula.

The Ashkenazi themselves don’t have significant turkiC blood at all


35 posted on 05/22/2025 8:28:04 AM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: nitzy; MtnClimber

The first link concludes “We conclude that the genome of European Jews is a tapestry of ancient populations including Judaized Khazars, Greco–Roman Jews, Mesopotamian Jews, and Judeans and that their population structure was formed in the Caucasus and the banks of the Volga with roots stretching to Canaan and the banks of the Jordan.”

The Khazars themselves were already mixed, Turkified people. So it looks like the EE Jews have dom Khazar genetics but that itself is diverse. And that isn’t the main component of their genetic history


36 posted on 05/22/2025 8:33:56 AM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: nitzy

“The Ashkenazi Jewish population shows a mix of Middle Eastern (Levantine) and European ancestry, with estimates suggesting approximately 50–60% Middle Eastern and 40–50% European ancestry, primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe. Some studies, particularly those examining Y-chromosomal haplogroups, have identified minor signals of East Asian or Central Asian ancestry, which could theoretically be linked to Turkic populations, as Turkic groups often have some East Asian genetic components. For example, haplogroup R1a1 (found in ~7.5% of Ashkenazi men) is common in Eastern Europe and parts of Central Asia, potentially hinting at a small Turkic influence, but this could also stem from Slavic or other Eastern European populations.”


37 posted on 05/22/2025 8:49:40 AM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: nitzy

Quantitative estimates of Turkic ancestry are low, typically less than 2%, based on studies of autosomal DNA and uniparental markers (e.g., Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA). For instance, a 2013 study by Behar et al. found no significant genetic contribution from populations in the Caucasus or north of it, which would include Turkic groups like the Khazars. Similarly, a 2019 study of Khazar remains showed no genetic connection to Ashkenazi Jews, reinforcing that any Turkic input is negligible.”


38 posted on 05/22/2025 8:50:04 AM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: nitzy

And there are issues about the study you quoted:

The 2012 study by Eran Elhaik argued for a Khazar contribution, citing genetic similarities between Ashkenazi Jews and modern Caucasus populations (e.g., Armenians, Georgians) was criticised for using problematic proxies (e.g., assuming Armenians and Georgians represent Khazars, despite their non-Turkic origins) and for ignoring shared Middle Eastern ancestry that could explain the similarities. Subsequent studies, including a comprehensive 2013 analysis by Behar et al. with 1,774 samples, found no evidence of Khazar ancestry, emphasizing that Ashkenazi Jews are closer to Middle Eastern and European populations than to Caucasus groups.One possible Khazar signal is the Ashkenazi branch of mitochondrial haplogroup N9a3, which may link to a Turkic population (e.g., Bashkirs), but this is a minor lineage and not widely distributed. Even in studies suggesting a small East Asian component (potentially Turkic), the proportion is estimated at 1% or less.


39 posted on 05/22/2025 9:02:54 AM PDT by Cronos ( )
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To: Cronos

You are missing the point.

The person I was responding to noted the different physiognomy of Palestinians compared to Jews despite the fact that the study mentioned in the original post shows that Palestinians are closely related to ancient Jews.

In 1890, the Jewish population of Israel was 43,000. It is currently over 7 million. That increase came from European Jews moving to Israel who have (to varying amounts) less semitic genetics than the native population of that area.

Whether the European admixture is 40%-50% as indicated by on of your previous posts or more or less than that, it will be less than the native population.

This is the reason why the original poster looks at Palestinians and says they don’t look like “Jews”. Because the Jews he is thinking of are partly?, somewhat?, mostly? European and the Palestinians are nearly fully semitic.


40 posted on 05/22/2025 9:08:31 AM PDT by nitzy (I don’t trust good looking country singers or fat doctors.)
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