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Perils of internet & social media research:

I'm always on the lookout for stories about , regarding either the empire (in what was today's Ukraine & southern Russia) or contemporary

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

Jim Wald

The idea that Eastern European (Ashkenazim) were descended from remnants of the Turkic 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 2/n

By the mid-C20, the idea that Eastern European were the descendants of converts had become the province of cranks & (usually both). Although the states tried to invoke this canard in the 1947 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 and 3/n

The use of the myth by Jamal Kanj shows the pattern.

Zionist Myths: Israeli Invention of Artificial Reality palestinechronicle.com/zionist

The term appears only in only 2 places: the subtitle & penultimate line

"75 years following the , I stand as the son of two 'invisible' 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

4/n

Palestine ChronicleZionist Myths: Israeli Invention of Artificial RealitySeventy-five 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.

A favored technique of proponents of the myth--like pseudoarchaeologists, & 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)

middleeastmonitor.com/20140125

The innocent reader will not know the website is a Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Islamist outlet en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_E

5/n

Middle East Monitor"The invention of the Jewish people"The Invention of the Jewish People was a book written by Shlomo Sand, an Israeli professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv. The author wasn't probing a belief system, but Zionist fabrications...

There & in the pointedly entitled, "When Europeans Became Semites" (english.almayadeen.net/article), Kanj cites the favored sources of support for the 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.

6/n

Al Mayadeen EnglishWhen Europeans became SemitesResearchers, historians, and theologians have debated the origins of European Jewry for centuries. Except for the roughly 100 Jewish captives who were brought to Rome as slaves in the period 66-73, European literature offers little information linking European Jews to Palestine, nor a significant collective presence or widespread persecution of Jews prior to the 11th century.

The problem with the deployment of the hypothesis in debates over & is not just that it is bad (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.

7/n

Speaking of , here's some more cheerful news.

Look what came in the mail last week:

@MagdaTeter very important new book

Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and

A panoramic cultural and legal history that traces the roots of antisemitism and racism to early Christian theology

Collections:
, &

Princeton University Press press.princeton.edu/books/hard

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.

@mlinssen @MagdaTeter

Thank you very much! I have bookmarked it and look forward to reading it

@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 😀

@MagdaTeter

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

@MagdaTeter

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!
smithsonianmag.com/history/civ

Ditto for for Dewey 😄

Smithsonian Magazine · A Civil War Cartoonist Created the Modern Image of Santa Claus as Union PropagandaBy Lorraine Boissoneault