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From Newsweek:
What We Can Learn From the Jewish Genome - Newsweek
The portions I underlined are significant as they refute some of the claims some have made in this forum concerning the realities of Jewish historic legitimacy in the Middle East and that the Jewish people are a distinct people. Hence, going back to the initial arguments about Israel's re-establishment, UNSCOP was, in fact, dealing with the needs of two distinct peoples, both of whom had historic legitimacy in the region.
The latest DNA volume weighs in on the controversial, centuries-old (and now revived in a 2008 book) claim that European Jews are all the descendants of Khazars, a Turkic group of the north Caucasus who converted to Judaism in the late eighth and early ninth century. The DNA has spoken: no.
In the wake of studies in the 1990s that supported biblically based notions of a priestly caste descended from Aaron, brother of Moses, an ambitious new project to analyze genomes collected from Jewish volunteers has yielded its first discoveries. In a paper with the kind of catchy title you rarely see in science journals—“Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era”—scientists report that the Jews of the Diaspora share a set of telltale genetic markers, supporting the traditional belief that Jews scattered around the world have a common ancestry. But various Diaspora populations have their own distinct genetic signatures, shedding light on their origins and history. In addition to the age-old question of whether Jews are simply people who share a religion or are a distinct population, the scientific verdict is settling on the latter.
What We Can Learn From the Jewish Genome - Newsweek
The portions I underlined are significant as they refute some of the claims some have made in this forum concerning the realities of Jewish historic legitimacy in the Middle East and that the Jewish people are a distinct people. Hence, going back to the initial arguments about Israel's re-establishment, UNSCOP was, in fact, dealing with the needs of two distinct peoples, both of whom had historic legitimacy in the region.