Perils of internet & social media research:
I'm always on the lookout for stories about #Khazars, regarding either the #medieval #Jewish empire (in what was today's Ukraine & southern Russia) or contemporary #antisemitism
But because the late Bob Lee unwisely chose to hook up with Khazar Elyassnia, the murder case has been flooding my timeline
Fortunately (for my research, at least) the haters & nutjobs are still out there, if one is but patient & knows where to look
Here goes 1/n #Mazeldon
The idea that Eastern European #Jews (Ashkenazim) were descended from remnants of the Turkic #Khazar Khaganate, which adopted Judaism in the course of the 8th and 9th centuries, arose in the later 19th century as a plausible hypothesis to account for (1) the demographic surge of Ashkenazic Jewry, which, by the end of the early modern era, outstripped the once more numerous Sephardic (Mediterranean and Middle Eastern) Jewish population, and (2) the physical differences between them #Mazeldon 2/n
By the mid-C20, the idea that Eastern European #Jews were the descendants of #medieval #Khazar converts had become the province of cranks & #antisemites (usually both). Although the #Arab states tried to invoke this canard in the 1947 #UN Partition debate, they made relatively little global use of it afterward. It is thus very disturbing that this canard is again popular--among the racist lunatic right, but also in some Arab and pseudo-left discourse on #Israel and #Palestine #Mazeldon 3/n
The use of the #Khazar myth by Jamal Kanj shows the pattern.
Zionist Myths: Israeli Invention of Artificial Reality https://www.palestinechronicle.com/zionist-myths-israeli-invention-of-artificial-reality/
The term #Khazar appears only in only 2 places: the subtitle & penultimate line
"75 years following the #Nakba, I stand as the son of two 'invisible' #Palestinian parents who were 'spirited' from their homes to make 'room' for European Khazar converts"
Tellingly: So ubiquitous has the canard become that the author has no need to explain
#Mazeldon 4/n
A favored technique of proponents of the #Khazar myth--like pseudoarchaeologists, #creationists & #ClimateChange deniers--is to cloak themselves in the mantle of scholarship: misinterpret mainstream scholars, invoke marginal scholars--or both
Kanf here asserts, Jews are Khazars, linking to his own review of a book (more on that later)
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20140125-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people/
The innocent reader will not know the website is a Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Islamist outlet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Monitor
#Mazeldon 5/n
There & in the pointedly entitled, "When Europeans Became Semites" (https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/when-europeans-became-semites), Kanj cites the favored sources of support for the #Khazar hypothesis: Shlomo Sand's 2008 The Invention of the Jewish People & Eran Elhaik's 2012 genetic study (earlier it was: Arthur Koestler's The 13th Tribe: The Khazar Empire & its Heritage; 1976). All are legitimate but deeply flawed works of scholarship, whose conclusions the academic community has resolutely rejected.
The problem with the deployment of the #Khazar hypothesis in debates over #Israel & #Palestine is not just that it is bad #history (and even if true, it would be irrelevant), but also that it represents a regression of 75 years, a zero-sum game of competing claims.
The conflict will be resolved only when both sides can acknowledge one another's histories and legitimate needs.
Falsifying the past is no way to achieve peace in the present.
Speaking of #antisemitism, here's some more cheerful news.
Look what came in the mail last week:
@MagdaTeter very important new book
#Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and #Racism
A panoramic cultural and legal history that traces the roots of antisemitism and racism to early Christian theology
Collections:
#Race, #Justice & #Equity
Princeton University Press https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691242583/christian-supremacy
#Mazeldon 8/n
@CitizenWald This a deeply fascinating thread. I knew vaguely of the Khazars but I had no idea it was still a "live" topic with horrible uses. Thanks for sharing your research and reflections.
@seanbala Thanks! Like some of those who taught me, I have an unfortunate interest in the history of bad ideas.
It's very disturbing that it has moved from far right to some sectors of the left.
It's sad, really: the actual history of the empire and its civilization is plenty fascinating without the need to resort to fantasy and conspiracy theories.
@CitizenWald @MagdaTeter Very interesting!
Coincidentally I wrote a few pages about the same earlier this year given another context; pages 21-24 and 30-34 of
Thank you very much! I have bookmarked it and look forward to reading it
@CitizenWald this is so well said.
@CitizenWald
I have to admit that I was taken in by this when I first encountered it in the 1990s—I was just starting to learn early medieval history and I’d never heard of the Khazars before in any context, so I had no idea of the ickiness associated with the ‘theory’... and I didn’t know enough about far-right discourses back then to spot the red flags...
@tkinias Understandable. As I said, it began as a legitimate theory (and it would be fascinating if true--just as I would be thrilled if we had hard proof of alien visitation) , and people such as Sand and Elhaik are operating as scholars (vs. a figure such as, say, Graham Hancock), although their findings have not met with widespread acceptance. The problem, as always, was with those who latch onto their ideas for other reasons.
@CitizenWald It was also an argument of some Jews who wanted to defend themselves against the idea that they were responsible for a deicide and tried to argue for rights within the Russian empire, while explaining what happened to the Khazar kingdom and the converts to Judaism.
@MagdaTeter Yes, an unfortunate approach in the long run. Mikhail Kizilov (as you know) has most thoroughly explored this in the context of Karaite history (and of course, the distortions and outright forgeries of Firkovitch have considerably muddied the waters).
BTW You are just about the only person with whom I could have this conversation
@CitizenWald true. It's a niche.
BATW we start your book tomorrow. Hoping I can first-semester students to understand it, but the topic should interest them, and I think I've brought them far enough along in their reading ability
@CitizenWald let me know how it goes! Eager to hear! Thank you for assigning it
@CitizenWald how did it go?
It's a tough slog for them because they are 18 and not used to doing so much reading, including dense descriptions and analyses (e.g. we just finished the chapters on things such as Dred Scott, Plessy v Ferguson etc.)
BUT they are getting the main ideas and understand the arguments (I try to fill in where I can).
E.g. they were appropriately horrified by the Nast image.
I asked: Do you know who he was?
They: no.
I: Yes you do!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-cartoonist-created-modern-image-santa-claus-union-propaganda-180971074/
Ditto for for Dewey
@CitizenWald Dewey always gets people excited