Jewish Origins (1592 hits)
Category: NoneRating: -1 on 9 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Ralph Master Nator (View user info) at 2004-01-13 03:17:46 EST
Jewish Origins
The outspoken Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad (now retired) has been under intense fire for his recent speech where he said among other things, like attacking Muslim fundamentalism, that "...today the Jews rule by proxy: they get others to fight and die for them," in Kuala Lumpur, October 2003. The Senate with Bush support reacted by slapping financial restrictions on his country, a key trading partner while Congress unanimously voted to condemn everything Mahathir said - but the doctor made his point, my but the Jews make for a hyper-sensitive topic don't they? Let me try to be as concise and accurate as possible.
It's estimated that the total Jewish population in the world today is about 13 million making them less than two tenths of one percent of the world population. Yet practically every newspaper and every nightly newscast in the western world has at least one and usually more references to Jews every day, usually Israel. In contrast Indians make up about 17% of the world's population, yet how many news stories do you hear about India? The disproportion is obvious, the reasons behind it less so.
Although the actual influence of the Jews is generally magnified by paranoia it is true nonetheless that contemporary world history cannot be understood without first understating the Jews, more specifically who they really are and where they really came from. How did the Jews become so influential and where did they really come from?
Jewish history as it is commonly known today is a complete fabrication. Ashkenazi Jews descend from a large and particularly vile Turkic speaking Asiatic horde in west Asia called Khazaria.¹ They dominated key east-west trade routes through their borders northwest of the Caspian Sea and accumulated great wealth in a world that is still murky in details from historical records and archaeological resources even today. But although 'tribe' may adequately explain the social structure to a modern audience it does a disservice to their magnitude for Khazaria was definitely a formidable and powerful force at the time. Unfortunately for us today they were illiterate and semi-nomadic thus not leaving much for archeological posterity. But we do know that eventually the Khazars were defeated and scattered by the Rus around the 10th century and subsequently headed westward even out to Spain but mostly clustered in Eastern Europe. This was a tactical success but a strategic defeat for Russia because it opened the gate for the Mongols to invade.
Note that Jews are broken up into two distinct genetic groups, the Ashkenazi already mentioned and the Sephardic ones who are the Jews in the Bible, the ones that have actually lived in Israel, the ones who are possibly Semitic, but also the ones who are a minor 15% of the total. The Ashkenazim can be genetically traced to Asia while the Sephardic Jews to the eastern Mediterranean region.
Back to the Ashkenazi; as Christianity gradually conquered the pagans of Europe the more organized Christian authorities established laws that restricted Jewish activities and forced them to live in proscribed parts of the city, the ghettos. To the Europeans they were very scary looking, very strange people "a peculiar people" (Deuteronomy 14:2 King James version) full of very odd rituals, and since they couldn't intermix it was very much a black and white issue for both sides, them and us; this deeply ingrained mentality remains today. The stereotypical Jewish jobs such as doctors, dentists and moneylenders arose because those occupations were outside the mainstream as defined by the Christian (Catholic) Church.
The approximate boundaries (orange circle) of 10th century Khazaria superimposed over a 1943 map. Khazaria occupied some very important real estate as we can see even today.
This religious and cultural duality was the steady state of affairs until the 18th century when Napoleon swept through Europe on his way to Russia and broke open the ghettos and established laws that usurped religion in favor of merit, essentially. Then in the last part of the 19th century Theodor Herzl dreamed up the nationalist theocracy of Zionism and sold it to both Jewish and Christian leaders who both found it attractive for their own reasons. Zionism offered the Jews their own state and a chunk of real estate in Palestine to go with it, which was chosen because it matched the religious texts and the land was politically feasible to acquire, basically. European Jews gradually moved into what is now the state of Israel and then came another conqueror, Adolph Hitler, who was less charitable towards the Jews than Napoleon. Hitler and the anti-Jewish policies of his Third Reich effectively put the last nail in the coffin for Jews in Europe who packed up and left for the Americas and Israel.
And there you have it. The religious holy texts were adopted from the Semitic tribes that originally concocted the ideas of God, chosen people, etc. hundreds of years before Khazaria. The Ashkenazi, the vast majority of Jews, have no valid historical claim to Palestine, not even through the fantasy world of their holy books, no more than say white European Christians have a claim to owning Jerusalem, but it sure doesn't stop 'em from trying!
Religion just makes a bad thing worse; it magnifies culture differences and turns them into very perverse weapons. Jews started out and stayed a very crude, primitive people because they never gained any cultural enlightenment since they never were a party to the social advances of Europe for even though they lived there they were not a part of it. Further the Jews had no incentive to develop on their own. Jewish authorities loved they ghetto, it meshed perfectly with their religion because they could always claim persecution and it kept their culture and their beliefs separate from the influences of the outside and ossified in their ways. The Christians got a good deal because they could keep the Jews from competing.
The crux of Khazaria's interest to us today is the fact that their khakan (leader) adopted Judaism as their official religion sometime in the 8th century. It should be noted that top-down mass conversion from paganism to the very fashionable monotheism was not uncommon at the time, Russia did the same. In 988 Prince Vladimir studied all of the major monotheistic religions and picked Orthodox Christianity because he was impressed with Byzantium's wealth and didn't want to have to give up eating pork (and alcohol). Similarly Khazar's khakan could have flipped a coin for all we know, the particular religion wasn't nearly the issue so much as was gaining a singular belief-set to hold together a disunited horde of cutthroat rabble.
It's amazing but fairly true that the stereotypes commonly associated with Jews show up in Armenians too! Many characters thought to be Jewish are actually Armenian. But even though Armenians are genetically similar to the Khazars in ancestry (and geographic origin) they are Christians. So I would posit that religion is just a smokescreen for history. The real thread of continuity resides partly in genetics but mostly in the culture, belief system and set of social expectations that are perpetuated from one generation to another. Religion muddles and covers serious identity issues and is a tool abused by disingenuous authorities to hijack minds and men alike; the khakan of Khazaria knew this. Maybe it's time the modern world figured out what he already knew a thousand years ago? 02.11.03
1. A History of Russia, sixth edition, by Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, pages 16-17 & 31-36, Oxford University Press, 2000.
///////
Source: www.holology.com - Filed somewhere under religion, Empire of Faith. (site was down so I couldn't get exact page)
PS: I realise this may upset some people and I'm expecting a lot of intelligent replies and counterarguments from people (read: Razor and Yidele) and I apologize for not being able to reply to them. It's not my subject. I'm not the author.
User Reviews
Submitted by Jonny_UK (user info) at 2004-08-15 18:46:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
wow you really ARE full of shit
Submitted by yidele (user info) at 2004-01-19 12:53:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
So, I'm guessing you didn't want a discussion. All the better for you, since discussing khazaria is much like discussing atlantis; People have heard of it, but there's no concrete knowledge. Still, there's nothing like vague generalities for libeling...
Submitted by yidele (user info) at 2004-01-15 15:18:32 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
derivative & weak. The various pseudo-hiostorical theories describing jews as people of turkic origin aren't particularly original.
While it is a historical fact that Khazars, a turkic people, converted to judaism, it is reaching pretty far to ascribe the origins of europe's ( or world's) jewery to them.
While the history Of Khazaria is fascinating (if mostly unknown, or known as well as the history of prester john's kindom ) what little is known suggest that The khazars were absorbed by the sourrounding peoples after the fall of the kaganate ( a sort of a double kingship)and the dissolution of their state which was a buffer between the hordes of the east and south-east-central europe. For some hundreds of years afterwards, the region which was chazaria became the stomping grounds for tartars, various invading turk armies, bulgars and other people in transit from the east to europe.
Where the theory laid out in the above post leaves the world we know as reality and enters the dark, schizophrenic realm of revisionist, conspiratorian fancy, is in the attempt to reduce the known & documented history of europe's jews, their various cultures and languages, to an almost unknown kingdom lost in history.
There's no need to reach for myth here, Jews have been in europe since antiquity. The Sephardim, jews who settled spain and portugal after the beginning of the diasporah, have pretty much throughout their history spoken a dialect called ladino, basically sdpanish/romish written in hebrew. The Askhenazim likewize developed a national tongue - yiddish - which is basically a dialect of german written in Hebrew. The Jews of Kaiphong, china, spoke a fine mandarin dialect. The jews of the ottoman empire likewise spoke turku and arabic.The jews of Egypt ( alexandria) spoke greek & kopt. The Jews of Rome spoke latin.
Wherever in the world we jews have settled, we have adapted the local culture to our needs and ourselves to local culture. While this is all nice and fine ( I know that the antisemites & the cryptoantisemites are bored by now) this does not explain why, the jews that supposedly ( according to the khazar origin theory, anyway) were supposed to come from the east, speak a dialect of german. German is a western tongue & one which the khazars never had any contact with. By all rights, they ought to have been speeking some turkic tongue, but as far as the records of jewish presence in Poland or Russia reach ( about 1000 years), there has never been a record of european jews speaking anything but 1) Yiddish, a dialect of german 2) hebrew ( liturgical) 3) Polish 4) russian 5) Ladino(spanish) 6) portugese 7) Latin 8) greek
Furthermore it is known that when the Car closed us jews off in the pale to keep us from emigrating TO russia, he closed us off his western borders. This is why the Pale consited of the territories of Poland, Ukraine, Beylorussia - not Chechenya, kirgyzya, crimea - all areas east-southeast the Rus have always fought to conquer & keep. Jews were migrating to Russia FROM europe, moving eastwards.
To this day, there are two main stems of Jewish tradition - The Sephardic ( from Sepharad - the hebrew word for spain) and Ashkenazim ( from the Hebrew word for Germany - Askhenaz). Both of these cultures have produced uncounted reams of books, scientific knowledge, inventions, art.
It would take some sort of feverish paranoiac to suggest that thousands of years of euro history, living & breathing cultures, whole languages & reams of literature have been forged just to convince him & others like him that turks were jews. It would take someone truly derranged to suggest that millions have been living a lie over the span of thousnads of years to fool him.
The trully tragic ( and funny in its own tragic way) fact is that folks like this exist.
Submitted by Goldeneyes (user info) at 2004-01-13 14:31:48 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Squattail:
"The Palestinians were sold out by their own people. Then, even when offered the chance to rebuild their lives in a section of Jordan given to them, and with funds and materials donated by Saudi Arabia, they sat on their fat fucking asses and did shitall. They thought, if we hold out long enough, everyone will feel sorry for us and give our land back."
You are 100% correct. So few people realize that the Palestinian's HAVE a homeland...or, could have had one, at least.
And this guy's post is so full of holes, I won't even bother responding. Just because it's on the Internet somewhere doesn't make it accurate.
Submitted by Thanatos (user info) at 2004-01-13 11:01:16 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Holy shit, squattail you perfectly articulated the situation. Bravo....and -2 because this guy just copied some other website.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-01-13 10:23:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Hmmm, I read this, thought it was interesting, then I was disappointed that way down at the very end you say you didn't write it and can therefore not explain your point.
Not to thumb my nose at history here, but what difference does it make what happened in 988 to modern Israel? I'm not being a smart ass I really don't see how that is relevant.
I'm not one of those blind pro-Israel monkeys either. I don't agree with a lot of what is going on in the Middle East and the fact that most Christians I know have this bizarre love-hate with Jews further complicates the issue for me. Essentially, I don't know who to believe on this because everyone seems to bring an agenda of some kind to the table. I've even seen some things online about certain groups of people who think that certain actions in Israel should be supported because they will facilitate the second coming of Christ. Yes that one, the rapture. I don't get it either but it makes me not trust what anyone says. No one can seem to separate the religion of Judaism from the nation of Israel. Maybe it's not possible since that seem to be kind of the idea of a "Holy Land".
I did note the irony in the fact that the Senate & Bush responded to the allegation that Jews control the world by proxy by imposing financial sanctions on Malaysia. Maybe I'm missing something, but they did seem to prove his point didn't they? Wouldn't this by sort of like a playground dispute where say one kid is accused of always running to his older brother for protection and that kid responds by having his older brother beat up the accuser?
Submitted by Nator (user info) at 2004-01-13 07:21:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Yer, well I have no idea how to reply either way. It's not my article, it's not like I agree with this. Lot's of the things I've read about this contradict eachother heavily, and I don't know who to believe.
Submitted by Acarnis (user info) at 2004-01-13 06:52:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I think this the first time I've ever seen Squattail type something seriously.
I don't think you properly addressed Nator's arguments, though.
Submitted by squattail (user info) at 2004-01-13 03:51:29 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
http://www.holology.com/religion.html
This is just another anti-semitic webpage. The person running the page is smart with their false facts, in that it doesn't say anything about Jew burning and it doesn't have animated Swastika gifs. Just because the page looks professional doesn't make what it says true.
Now this says why are these people in the media so much? Well, for one thing there are already dozens of posts like this on this site, all discussing the same topic. By posting this you just added to that media, congratulations.
Israelis are in the media so much because their political situation are so interesting.
"The Ashkenazi, the vast majority of Jews, have no valid historical claim to Palestine, not even through the fantasy world of their holy books, no more than say white European Christians have a claim to owning Jerusalem, but it sure doesn't stop 'em from trying!"
What claim do the Palestinians have to the land? During both the Israeli War of Independence the Arabs destroyed their own holy sites just to gain military advantage in Jerusalem, which put the Israelis as a disadvantage because they wouldn't dare fire near their own holy sites just to hit an Arab aid convoy.
What is most interesting about the Israelis taking back their land is the way they did it. They had money, but no armies. They had to buy swampland in Palestine for outrageous prices, and farm it until it could be useful. They slowly bought piece by piece of the land, the Palestinian landowners happy to make a buck off the Jews. They built nearly every modern building that is there today.
It is the Arab's own deceit that has led to the situation in Israel today. When Israel declared its independence as a nation, it was more than willing to live side by side with the Palestinians as had been done before the UN approval. Then, the surrounding Arab countries armies attacked, with the belief they would easily win and then split the land up between themselves. Had Israel lost either the Independence war or Six Day War, the Palestinians would still have no home. Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Egypt would just be fucking bigger. The Palestinians were sold out by their own people. Then, even when offered the chance to rebuild their lives in a section of Jordan given to them, and with funds and materials donated by Saudi Arabia, they sat on their fat fucking asses and did shitall. They thought, if we hold out long enough, everyone will feel sorry for us and give our land back. That is the truth of the matter, you don't have to trace back thousands of years to see why they are in this situation. The Israelis won, won against the odds, so the fucking Palestinians should just do what they were expected to do five decades years ago, blend in with the other Arab nations.