(1) DNA evidence shows that on their paternal side Ashkenazi Jews are primarily descended from the Middle East, not from Khazars or any other indigenous European peoples.
(2) There is no trace of any Turkic language in the language spoken by Eastern European Jews, Yiddish.
(3) Jewish peoplehood, and the longing for a return to Zion long predates modern political Zionism. For centuries (over two thousand years) , throughout the world, on every Passover, Jews have said “Next Year in Jerusalem.
Last year an article entitled “The Khazar Myth and the New Anti-Semitism” dealt with the myth, popular these days on Neo-Nazi web sites, claiming that Ashkenazi Jews are not descendant from Jews at all
but are “Khazars” and nothing more than interlopers in the Land of Israel, people who cannot claim the land as their ancestral homeland. The article can be read here:
http://www.jewishpress.com/displayContent_new.cfm?mode=a&contentid=21499&+contentName=The+Khazar+Myth+and+the+New+Anti-SemitismThe American Journal of Human Genetics (Cell.com) published a paper titled, Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry. The authors are mostly affiliated with Albert Einstein, NYU, and Columbia Medical Schools in NYC. They are Gil Atzmon, Li Hao, Itsik Pe’er, Christopher Velez, Alexander Pearlman, Pier Francesco Palamara, Bernice Morrow, Eitan Friedman, Carole Oddoux, Edward Burns, and Harry Ostrer. In an effort to define the relatedness of contemporary Jewish people (European, Mizrahi and Sephardim), the authors conducted a genome-wide analysis of seven Jewish groups (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek, and Ashkenazi) (they left out the eighth, which is called Brooklynite) and compared them with surrounding non-Jewish groups and found that their are distinctive Jewish population clusters, each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations, and variable degrees of European and North African admixture.
http://www.jewlicious.com/2010/06/you-mean-im-not-a-khazar/Two major groups were identified by using principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analyses. They are Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews. The results suggested suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry.
The study stated that the rapid decay of IBD in Ashkenazi Jewish genomes was consistent with a severe bottleneck followed by large expansion, such as occurred with the so-called demographic miracle of population expansion from 50,000 people at the beginning of the 15th century to 5 Million people at the beginning of the 19th century. Thus, this study demonstrates that European/Syrian and Middle Eastern Jews represent a series of geographical isolates or clusters woven together by shared IBD genetic threads.
This is an almost perfect confirmation of what we knew, said Francesc Calafell, a human population geneticist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain.
“Although the new study doesn't contain any real surprises, it gives a more complete picture of ancestral ties and leaves little room for doubt about the origin of different Jewish groups.” The lead researcher from NYU, Harry Ostrer, said that this is not a way to define a Jew, they will still leave that issue to clerics, communities, and the Knesset.
Two new genome studies of Jews worldwide prove that the Jewish people — long called the “People of the Book,” the “Chosen People” or, in unkind circles, “those people” — are, indeed, a people after all.
The first study, by researchers at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, found that Jews across the globe share distinct genetic traits that are different from other groups and that trace back to the ancient Middle East.
Researchers say the study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, puts to rest age-old questions about whether Jews are a group of unrelated people who share a religious ideology or a distinct ethnicity with common ancestry.
“The debate is over,” said Dr. Edward R. Burns, one of the lead authors of the study. “The Jewish people are one people with a common genetic thread that evolved in the second or third century BC.”
The study, “Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era,” compared the genetic analyses of 237 Jews, including Sephardic (Middle Eastern) and Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews — as well as an analysis of 418 non-Jews worldwide, and found that the Jews were more closely related to each other than to their fellow countrymen.
Past studies have reached similar conclusions, but they looked at smaller populations and considered only blood groups, mitochondrial DNA (a type of DNA passed down by mothers) or Y chromosomes (passed down by fathers).
For this inquiry, researchers conducted a genome-wide analysis of the major groups of the Jewish Diaspora — Ashkenazi Jews; Italian, Greek and Turkish Sephardic Jews; and Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian Jews.
The study — and a second genetic study published in the journal Nature — scientifically undermines arguments made by all those who have challenged Jews’ historical relationship to Israel, such as former White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who resigned after saying Jews in Israel should “go home” to Germany, Poland and the United States.
Turns out, the Jews in Israel are already home.
The Restoration of Israel:
"I will restore from captivity My people Israel; they will rebuild and inhabit the ruined cities. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
I will firmly plant them on their own land, and they will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the LORD your God." (Amos 9:14-15)
(1) DNA evidence shows that on their paternal side... (