The Downside of the Internet

I have discussed positive aspects of the internet but haven't had cause to do so with regard to the opposite side of the coin. People tend to believe anything they read online if it is couched appropriately. I think that in this way the internet is extremely dangerous.

Case in point: This past summer, 2012, there was a flurry of activity after an Israeli Genetecist working at John Hopkins posted an unpublished paper that claimed to prove that Asheknaz (Central and Eastern European Jewry, 85% of all Jews on the planet) are in fact not the progeny of migrating Judaeans who arrived in Europe after the fall of Judaea to Rome in the Second Century CE/AD. For a few decades now there have been many attempts to disprove Ashkenaz Jewry's Semitic origins and instead place their origin in what was the nation of Khazaria, in Central Asia.

The Khazars were a Turkic people who, after migrating from Mongolia established themselves in the Caucus Mountains of Central Asia. In the 9th Century CE/AD, cushioned between the Muslim Caliphate and Byzantium Christianity the Khazarian Monarchy converted to Karaite Judaism, a form of the religion that rejects the Talmud and which does not intermarry with Rabbanite Judaism, the form practiced by 97% of World Jewry. In the Middle Ages Khazaria fell and its people were assimilated into other groups.

Supporters of the Khazar Theory believe that the Khazars then migrated into Eastern Europe, and later into Central Europe and that they formed the bulk of Ashkenaz Jewry. This theory especially appeals to racists and Muslims because it negates the Semitic origins of 85% of Jews and thereby nullifies the Zionist premise of a "return" to the Jewish Homeland vis a vis the establishment of Israel.

There are few problems with this theory from purely common sensical perspectives. Racists and Muslims often point to those Ashkenaz Jews who appear European and argue that their physical appearance shows that they aren't Semitic. I personally laugh at that because I am Mizrachi Sephardi, NOT Ashkenaz and am fair skinned with blue eyes. Indeed, so is the ruling family of Syria, who are Arab. Physical appearances are deceiving. What really makes me laugh though is that supporters of the Khazar Theory never stop to consider that while a minority of Ashkenaz do not appear Middle Eastern (Jeff Goldblum and Hal Linden, both Ashkenaz, look like stereotypical Arabs), not a single Ashekanaz that I know of appears to resemble Ghengiz Khan. "Well what do you expect, Khazaria folded almost 1,000 years ago, they aren't going to still look like Mongolians." Yet the fact that they don't appear Semitic supports your premise?

For educated people though there is a different denominator. Only the Khazar Monarch and its nobility converted and they converted to Karaism. Less than a half of 1% of Ashkenaz were ever Karaites at the height of the movement. The bad blood between Karaites and Rabbinites often results in violence though in the last couple of generations things have settled down.


Lastly, Genetic Science loves Jews because all Jewish groups are highly endogamous. Until WWII inter-marriage between Jews and non-Jews was extremely rare. This makes all Jewish groups perfect subjects for study. More than 300 peer reviewed papers have shown that Ashkenaz do in fact descend from Judaeans who fled Judaea in the 2nd Century CE/AD, during the Roman Jewish War. The rate of admixture on average hovers at just under 12% so that 88% of Ashkenaz are absolutely Semitic. This past summer though, the aforementioned Geneticist began posting his unpublished paper online touting it as the last word in the debate, though a debate only still existed amongst fringe racists and various Muslim groups.

The paper was full of nonsense, quoting unscientific books like "The Thirteenth Tribe" by Arthur Koestler, an author who pushed the Khazar Theory in the early 1970s. The paper was bizarre in that it contrasted two hypotheses, both fringe. Aside from the Khazar Theory, it examined the Rhineland Hypothisis which had Judaeans migrating into Central Europe after the rise of Islam. The author made no mention of the almost universally accepted theory that placed that migration in the 2nd Century, a theory now supported by hundreds of genetic assays which place the date in that same time period. He made dozens of mistakes in historical narration but since he is a dehreed Geneticist working at a reputable institution I decided to consider his "findings." I contacted the author and began corresponding with him in an attempt to see just why someone would risk their career on junk science. I mean, 300 plus papers, and you post an unpublished paper that doesn't even use live subjects but is merely an analysis of other published findings. Why? Yesterday the author sent me an interesting email.

To be continued...

 

Wow. It sounds like this guy went off the deep end, huh? A few months ago, my old graduate adviser published a "For Dummies" book, and until I read this post, I was wondering what he was thinking. But this gives perspective. There is nothing wrong or silly or a waste of time or career-compromising about writing a "For Dummies" book.

 

I don't think "For Dummies" would damage any academic's careerm Those are merely digests dumbing down subjects so that the mainstream can more easily grasp a particular subject. Two things are going to trash a career, shitty methodology and clearly articulated bias. My favourite example is the Spanish Immunologist Dr. Antonio Arnaiz Villenz of Madrid's Universidad de Complutense. In 2001 he had a paper published in "Human Immunology," the journal of the American Society of Histocompatibility. The paper, "The Origin of Palestinians and their Genetic Relatedness to other Meditarranean Peoples."

After it was published the Society pulled the article and made sure to distance itself from it, declaring it, basically, to be shit. The author labeled Jews then living in Gaza as "colonists" and said that "Palestinians" lived in "concentration camps," and those were the tamer labels used. The author then lied saying that the "concentration camp" shtick only applied to camps in Syria and Lebanon so it shouldn't be labeled as offencive to Jews. He actually had stated though, " ("Palestinians") live either in concentration camps or are scattered in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon." That "or" denotes the "concentration camps" existing under Israel. This is how deluded the guy is in thinking that noone will actually read the paper to verify his claims.

One of my windmills (Cervantes IS said to be Jewish haha) is the manipulation of science in pursuit of political objectives. I do not give a shit if it is a Zionist Jew negating non-Jewish contributions to the history of Judaea, or a Spanish dickhead who calls Jews Nazis then plays the Equivocation card.

As humans it is very difficult not to allow our inherent bias steer our work, whether in science, journalism or any other pursuit. The Spaniard wanted to prove the "theory" that originated with none other than Yasser Arafat that held that the "Palestinians" were the descendants of Canaanites victimised by Jewish invaders. Amazingly, he used the Bible in his historical narrative and referred to the Biblical Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) and others (Ishmael, Moses, Joshua) as historical figures. That alone should render his paper nothing more than junk science. Then he flew to the far fringes, claiming that in fact "Palestine" pre-dated the Jewish arrival because the Phillistines ("Palestine" means "Land of the Phillistines") had formed a number of city states before the Jews left Mesopotamia. He tried to rationalise the well established and universally accepted fact that Phillistines were Proto-Greeks by claiming that upon arrival they began intermarrying with the Semitic Canaanites.

Explaining Afro-"Palestinians" he claimed that in various epochs the Egyptian Pharoes were black and that black Egyptians made their way to Greece, including Crete where, in the Mycenean Epoch they migrated to the Levant and became the Phillistines. He should actually be given a medal for utilising Afrocentric claims that have been almost universally rejected to engage in Apologetics for "Palestinian" slavery which existed until Israel was established. Even today "Palestinians" ask Black Arabs, "Who was your owner" to determine which tribal or clan alliance such a person belongs to. "Palestinians" are quite racist unfortunately and this just cannot fit into the author's scheme of "Israel = Racist Colonialist Oppressor and 'Palestinian' = Indigenous Noble Bravely Oppressed." Acknowledging this would shift the entire irrational paradigm.

Anyway, in the end the Spaniard's career was trashed and the co-authors were heavily tainted with some moving to have their names removed.

This current paper is just as much garbage but with a different angle at work. First, the author has no co-author and as anyone who has ever even taken university level science coursework knows analysing data is a herculean endeavour. When attempting a meta-analysis (kind of/sort of in this case) not having a co-author arouses the suscpicions of anyone examining the work.

On various websites the author tells how he had been obsessed with the Khazaria Hypothesis since he was a child. A lifelong obsession does not bode well vis a vis negating inherent bias. Someone who wishes to confirm pre-conceived ideation is almost always going to manipulate data to achieve desired results, albeit often sub-consciously. I was going to include all this in my following post but fuck it...

The descendants of the Khazars have never been unknown. On the Crimean Peninsula there are two groups of Kharaite Jews. There are ethnically Jewish Karaites and there are Turkic Karaites who practice a synchrestic form of Karaite Judaism. Indeed, historical accounts and modern arachaeology both confirm that the slim minority of the upper class in Khazaria that ended up converting to Judaism were never Observantly Jewish. Their religion was a hodgepodge of Karaism and Shamanist Aminism. This is an established fact that most adherents of the hypothesis either ignore or remain ignorant about.

The Turkic Karaites, known as "Karaylars," or "Karaylar Karaites" still speak a Turkic language and still look as if they are living in yurts on the Asian steppes. Most importantly, they traditionally maintain that they are the descendants of the Khazars. They are extremely endogamous and do not intermarry even with true Karaites who happen to reject them as co-religionists because of the mix of religious traditions in their variant of Karaism.

The author of the paper, Ehan Elhaik, sent me an email to let me know that in fact he had finally published his paper in a tiny open access Oxford Journal publication this month. However, neither of the 2 hyper-links he sent me worked. I then Googled the paper and just found countless postings with this same link, or in some cases different hyper-links that were just as non-viable.

After reaching page 50 on Google I wrote back to the author and told him that I could not connect to the publication. In fact, Oxford Journal only listed editions ending in late 2012, according to their own websites (there are several) the journal in question had never had a Volume 5, the volume in which Mr. Elhaik claimed to have published it.

He wrote back and told me to simply go to his own website which sits on an Indian server, strange but OK. Sure enough, I was able to link that way but I already knew what the paper said. I wanted to see if in fact it had passed any type of peer review process. I could not verify it had even been published.

I contacted a German Jewish physician who blogs about Population Genetics who had discussed the paper in great length, going on and on about it being published. I asked him if he had actually seen it in the claimed publication or had he instead, like me, merely viewed it on the author's own page? Sure enough, he had been unable to locate it as well and that set off alarm bells. Having addressed the paper in great detail on a well read blog he stood to face great embrassment if he was being manipulated.

He has sent me corresponding copies of each correspondance he has made as he tries to get to the bottom of this issue. I also have been talking with both activists and academics about the issue. Amazingly, AFP has published a piece on it though the wire has told me that the piece merely utilised the press release it had been sent by the author. Chalk up another source unable to verify publication.

Why does it even matter? The Khazaria Hypothesis seeks to de-legitimise not only Israel and Zionism but 85% of World Jewry. It is a fantasy that has been disproven literally hundreds of times. Up pops a single claimant that is challenging hundreds of physical assays (as opposed to meta-analysis of published data) and hundreds of Arab, Muslim and White Supremacist websites are clicking their heels in unbridled joy.

I finally sent the author 3 questions. In the first I asked what he had done to mitigate bias, his literal answer: "I used my training." I asked him if he had analysed how his results compare to the aforementioned Turkic Karaites, the "Karaylars," "No, there was no data available." The final question asked why he hadn't addressed the almost universally accepted "Roman Hypothesis" which has Judaean Refugees from the Roman Jewish Wars of the 2nd Century CE/AD populating Europe. His answer? "I did not have data on it," which doesn't even make sense because it revolves around genetic markers evaluated on a generational basis. The same assays used to evaluate "Rhineland" and "Khazaria" Hypotheses can be used to evaluate that third hypothesis.

The guy is either mentally ill or engaging in intellectual fraud. Sadly, this paper will be utilised by hatemongers and therein lies my point, the internet can be very dangerous.