You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

RE: Cry for Palestine - Meanderings Collection

in #poetry7 years ago (edited)

This is a very creative (and patently incorrect) take on the ethnic history of the Middle East. Its also more than a little offensive to an Ashkenazi like me.

Yes, ashkenazi are decended from the line of abraham and jacob. No, we aren't light skinned because we interbred with light-skinned europeans, and somehow lost our heritage in the process. That is an abborhent racist myth, and its been conclusively disproven by genetic testing.

In biblical times, the middle east had people with many different skin colors. It had light skinned people like me, it had black people, and it had bronze and olive skinned people who probably looked a lot like southern italians and or present day arabs.

For example, an examination of king tut's remains indicate that he may have had african features. An examination of Ramses II's remains indicate that he probably had red, wavy hair. Mohammad is described as having what we would probably consider arab features today. His uncle abu lahab, was called "the father of flame" because of his red flushed appearance. That is to say, he was fair complected.

The dark skin color of present day arabs, persians and sephardic jews comes from migration and interbreeding of many different skin types and ethnicities.

Jacob and Esau were twins. Biblical myth holds that Jacob's decendents were the jews, and Easu's the arabs.

Esau is described as having been born "red all over" and being covered in red hair. In fact, his people were called the edomites, which means "red people". There is no physical description ever given of jacob (except that he was less hairy than his brother), but we can assume that even if jacob was very dark skinned, he would have at least potentially had recessive light-skinned genes.

King david was also described as having a "ruddy complexion and fair countenance"

Sort:  

I wasn't trying to say that white Jews have lost their heritage, or even necessarily that they didn't have any ancestors from the middle east.

The truth is, biblical times were so long ago that we can't have any perfect idea of who inhabited it and what color they were, but it's really not important.

The fact is that before WW2 and Zionism there were Arabs on that land and if you go there today the Arabs have been pushed back and trapped into a comparatively small piece of land now called Palestine.

I'd also like to point out that you called the very idea of Jews getting their skin color from interbreeding a racist myth but you claimed that modern Arabs got their skin color from interbreeding.

The only thing I said that could be "patently incorrect" is that the Jews of biblical times aren't the ancestors of the white European Jews. The truth is that the Jews of biblical times are the ancestors of people from many different ethnic backgrounds.