Yesterday I went to a new olive oil factory in the North, near Jenin, the biblical Ir HaGanim (The City of Gardens). A city of that size peopled by Jews would be full of activity, industries, traffic; but full of catathonic Arabs as it is, presents a very quiet, almost pastoral impression. The entrepreneurs are a couple of Oriental Jews from Bney Brak. I find that these religious people - "primitive" would be the world to describe them but the world primitive says nothing and it is offensive - are our "adelantados" in Samaria. These people built most of the houses in the settlements and live there, they were the firsts to buy plots in the industrial areas on paper and built factories there. Almost all of the industrial areas are now owned by these kind of people and as Samaria is becoming expensive, they are now very rich. Maybe 80% of the Jews living in Samaria are Orientals, although the journalists visit only the Ashkenazi villages because they speak English and have a set of concepts more or less understandable to foreigners, and physically they look the role of European colonizers. Oriental Jews look like Arabs, dont speak English and cannot understand any Occidental concept (If you live in the Book of Joshuah, how do you translate "human rights"?). But they do share a language with the Palestinian villagers around, who are mostly descendants of Biblical Jews of the Galilee, and live in world of ideas and customs that is not foreign to the Bible. Interestingly, Oriental Jews assume naturally their role of "conquerors" (God gave them the land, something undisputable to them and to the locals. They mean it in a general way, because they will fight to death for any specific plot on their name) and of "bosses" employers of Arabs, and there is no friction between them and the Palestinian villagers around. There is a lot of mutual shouting in modern Hebrew-Arabic but no cultural friction. The pic shows Jenin from one of the hills that surround it.
13 comments:
Descendents of the Biblical Jews??
Anon.
Maybe 80% of the Jews living in Samaria are Orientals
Citation? It's been a while since the last time I checked, but I remember the statistics showing that the West Bank had one of the highest percentages of Ashkenazi Jews in the country.
It's possible that the statistic I looked at didn't include Eastern Jerusalem, but still.
The natives of this country are descendants, I dont know exactly in what percentage, from the original Jewish population. A large percentage of the current Arab population are immigrants of recent times, for example, almost all the Beduins arrived in the 19th Century. All the Caucasian villages (like Amman for example) are consequence of the resettlement by the Turkish of Caucasian Muslims (who were expulsed when the Russians conquered the Caucasus). All the Africans among the Arabs (and there are some purely African villages) are imported slaves and settled in malaria infested swamps (Africans are resistant to malaria). The Turks in their 500 years old rule, tried to develope the country and imported foreign populations. Many Christians settled in Nazaret, JErusalem, Beyt Lechem and so on. But the population of Hebron is, apparently, genetically Jewish. The Druzes are also purely Jewish and their secret religion is none other than Judaism. Jenin and other villages that have conserved their original Biblical names (of course, Arabized) are of Jewish descendance. It is a well known fact that till recent times Saudi Arabs and other pure Arabs called Palestinian Arabs - Jews. We had a President, Ben Zvi, who wrote books on this subject and tried to reintegrate Hebron population into the Jewish People. It was us the Jews who rejected them.
Regarding the percentage of Oriental Jews in Samaria, they are a large majority. Modi'in Ilit (30 or 40 thouosand) is almost all Oriental, Ariel about 50%, Emmanuel 100% and so on. Ashkenazi Jews make the noise and a lot of noise, but when it comes to head counting, we are very few.
Here's the official information from the Central Bureau of Statistics:
http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton61/st02_23x.pdf
In Judea and Samaria, there are 80 thousand people of recent European origin - which means either they or their father was born in Europe or the US.
There are only 48 thousand people of recent African and Asian origin.
The ethnic origin of the other 153 thousand, whose fathers were born in Israel, is not counted by the CBS. They are simply Israeli.
I wonder if Modiin Ilit and Beitar Ilit are counted. And East Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem clearly isn't counted, otherwise there would be far more than 281,000 Jews in the tally.
The genetic data do not indicate that the Druze are "purely Jewish" at all. We can only guess at the full autosomal genetic profile (not accessible in ancient bones) of the ancient biblical or post-biblical Jewish population, so with whom are you comparing the Druze to make that statement? More likely, the Druze and Jewish populations all contain a large portion of Levantine ancestry from prehistoric times establishing population genetic similarity. But you are taking it too far to say that they are descended from ancient or medieval Jews specifically.
On the contrary, the Druze are a genetically isolated population that is very close to modern Jews. Regarding the religion, it was one of the religious leaders who declared recentlythat there is no morepoint to keep their religion secret and they should tell the truth that they are Jews and all their prophets are Jews.
The rioters at Majdel Shams certainly don't think they're Jews.
They sure know the secret.
There are no riots in Majdel Shams, only ritual demonstrations of their fidelity to Syria.
BTW, Druze youth is conscripted to army service. What do you think, the Golan Druze are excepted?
"one of the religious leaders who declared recentlythat there is no morepoint to keep their religion secret and they should tell the truth that they are Jews and all their prophets are Jews."
So one guy goes off half-cocked, and you accept it as gospel? Is he really such an authority among them, and (assuming he is Israeli Druze) might he be trying to curry favor for his group with the government?
You didn't understand my point about the genetics. All Levantine-origin populations without significant recent sub-Saharan admixture will show genetic similarities. These similarities are based in prehistoric times, and the burden is on you to prove (with something better than a religious loon's spoutings) that Druze are descended from ancient Jews.
As more genetic information accummulates, we shall see through all the national myths. Within the Jewish people, we have already discovered that there are some groups who are unrelated to the descendants of Jacob and Yitzhak. Ethiopian Jews,for example. And we shall discover non-Jewish groups who are descendend from the Fathers.
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