Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

276 THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
Palestinians. The conclusion reached was that two-thirds of the Palestinians and
roughly the same proportion of Jews shared three male ancestors eight thousand
years ago. In actual fact, the expanded scientific paper showed a somewhat more
complex, and much more confusing, picture: those mutations in the Y-chromosome
also indicated that the "Jews" resembled the "Lebanese Arabs" more than the
Czechs, but the "Ashkenazis," as opposed to the "Sephardics," were relatively closer
to the "Welsh" than to the "Arabs."
The study had been written and edited during the period of the Oslo
Accords, before the outbreak of the Second Intifada. Unfortunately, by the
time it appeared in print the uprising had already broken out. The genetic data
showing that Jews and Palestinians had some ancient ancestors in common
did not cause the conflict to be described as an internecine war, but it did
indirectly reinforce the assumption, which had struck root some time earlier,
that the origin of all the Jews lay unquestionably in the Near East.
The rigor of those investigating Jewish DNA in Israel was demonstrated
by the sequel to the team's biological adventure. A little over a year after the
first important discovery, the inside pages of Haaretz carried a sensational
new scoop. It transpired that the genetic resemblance between the Jews and
the Palestinians, discovered by the previous research, did not exist. The scientists
admitted that their earlier experiment had not been sufficiently grounded
and detailed, and that its conclusions had been hasty. In fact, the Jews—or, at
any rate, the male ones—were related not to the neighboring Palestinians but
rather to the distant Kurds. The new paper, published first by the American
Society of Human Genetics, showed that the sly Y-chromosome had fooled its
inexperienced investigators. 40 But never fear, the updated genetic picture still
indicated that the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews were related, only now they
did not resemble the local Arabs, but rather the Armenians, Turks, and chiefly,
as noted, the Kurds. Needless to say, it is not suggested that the raging intifada
had indirectly advanced the science of genetics in Israel, yet from then on the
blood brothers were once more apart and alien.
The scientific correspondent of Haaretz, who was positive that the Jews
were the descendants of the ancient Hebrews, at once approached historians
of antiquity to explain this disturbing discovery of a strange origin. Several
respected professors were unable to help—they had no information about an
40 Tamara Traubman, "A Great Genetic Resemblance Between the Jews and the
Kurds," Haaretz, December 21, 2001; and Oppenheim et al., "The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews
as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East," American Society of Human Genetics 69
(2001), 1,095-112. It should be noted that mutations on the Y-chromosome can point to a
single patrilineal inheritance, not the entire descent on the father's side.