Alex Jones, an anti-Jewish conspiracy theory, and pseudo-history

A popular conspiracy theory amongst anti-Semites and the haters of the State of Israel is that the majority of modern day Jews are not really Jews at all, but are descended from a Turkic nomadic people, the Khazars. As such, the argument goes, the majority of Jews alive today have no ancestral connection to the Middle East, and consequently their claim to land there is based on a lie. The conspiracists further assert that these Ashkenazi Jews are actually aware that they are not 'real' Jews, and are conspiring both to keep this secret, and to attack all those who get in their way. In this discourse, 'Zionist' is usually a term directly interchangeable with 'Ashkenazi' and 'Khazar Jew'. In common with many conspiracy theories, there is also the claim that some Jews have 'revealed' this information, but that the majority attempt to hide these alleged 'facts' from public view.

Recently, in reponse to two blog posts of mine linking Alex Jones with anti-Semites, an Alex Jones fan decided to respond, and did so by alleging that I am 'a Jew, or rather an Edomite' (I'm neither, incidentally, not that it would matter), and continued: 'Modern day Jews are not Israelites, they are Khazars. Khazars derive from Edom. Something tells me you knew that though'. In another response, the Alex Jones fan added: 'Why don't you just be honest (impossible for a Jew) and admit that you hate White Christians. I have no problem with you being a racist. However, the fact that you feebly attempt to mask it is disgusting. But what more could one expect from Esau-Edom, the Ashkenazi-Khazar Jew?'

The very same day the last comment was posted, I discovered that the people over at the biggest white racist forum on the internet, Stormfront, were very pleased with Alex Jones. Why? Because in a recent edition of his radio show, Jones discussed the Khazar theory at length and gave it, and some 'Christian Identity' pseudo-history, his scholarly seal of approval.

The audio can be heard here.

On the show, Jones took a call from a listener, one 'Mark in Illinois'. Mark had 'information' on 'the most touchy subject of all' that he felt he should share. The information, it turned out, was as follows:

'It it is incorrect to call a modern day Jew an Israelite, they are not Israelites they are Israe-Lies' and that the 'true Israel' is ' the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Germanic and kindred people, commonly called the white race, which has been demonised'.

He based these claims largely on an inaccurate rendering of an alleged quote from 'The 1980 Jewish Alamanac', as follows: 'It is incorrect to call a modern day Jew an Israelite or a modern day Israelite a Jew'.

The usual wording of this quote is 'Strictly speaking, it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite a "Jew" or to call a contemporary Jew an "Israelite" or a "Hebrew"', and the reference that is given is '1980 Jewish Almanac, P.3'. I will come back to this quote later, but it is worth noting that both it and the reference are repeated word for word on numerous anti-Semitic and racist websites, both secular and religious ('Christian Identity' and Muslim/Islamist) - see Google search results for the quote and the reference.

Having heard this information, Jones split it into two sections - the Khazar claim and the Christian Identity claim, and then went on to give credence to them both.

I shall start with what he had to say about the Khazar theory:

I happen to have actually looked into that ... and the part you talked about with the Rabbi saying that, that's in all the Jewish Almanacs and it's true that about 80-85 [sic], they debate this, of Jewish people are Khazarian [sic] ... It's in all the major Jewish encyclopedias ... 80% of Jews are a mix of Germanic and Asian, whereas your mainline Semitic Arabs are a mix of Negro, Caucasian, and Asian. Now, again, this is the mainline sociology, mainline anthropology; you have the Caucasoids, the Negroids, the Asians, and those are your three major groups, and you've got sub-groups that are divided, where those groups have touched.

Jones claims that 'the main group [of modern Jews] comes out of Khazaria' and states that 'this is just mainline history'.

I shall now show how completely false these assertions of Jones and others who hold this theory to be true actually are.


When Jones talks of 80% of modern Jews being 'Khazarian' [sic] he is referring to an unscientific and historically bogus 'theory' popular among anti-Semites. The basic story is that in the late 8th or early 9th Century CE, all the inhabitants of the Khazar Khanate (the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic people) converted to Judaism and, over the centuries, through migration throughout Europe, went on to become the dominant Jewish group in the world today, the Ashkenazim. There are various versions of this story; in some 'hardcore' versions, Ashkenazi Jews are viewed as completely genetically unrelated to other historical groups of Jews, while in other versions they are said to be an 'Asian-Jewish' mix (it appears that Jones favours this view), in which the Jewish ethnic aspect has become so diluted as to render it inaccurate to refer to the Ashkenazim as Jews in the generally understood sense at all.

As noted earlier, the theory appeals to anti-Semites because it is seen to provide proof that modern Jews (with the possible exception of Sephardic Jews) have no rightful claim to the State of Israel as they are not even Jews, and are consequently merely some kind of racially mixed (or even entirely non-Jewish) imposter group, 'stealing' land in the Middle East and conspiring under various guises (the current favourite, of course, being the 'neo-cons') to further their own interests to the detriment of everyone else. In the 'Christian Identity' ideology, the Khazar story serves to add further 'proof' to the absurd claim that modern day Jews are not related to the Israelites of the Bible, and that actually the 'true Israelites' are the 'Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Germanic and kindred people', a claim repeated by the caller to Jones' show (and promoted, incidentally by 'Scriptures for America', a hate group that advertises on Alex Jones' Prison Planet website).

Not every aspect of the Khazar story is derived from anti-Semitism, although the vast majority of people who promote it now clearly have antipathy towards, and often outright hatred of, the Jewish people. The main populariser of the tale was the novelist Arthur Koestler, whose 1976 book The Thirteenth Tribe was a piece of speculative history that mixed some historical facts about the Khazar people and Judaism with theorising about modern Jewry being primarily derived from this non-Jewish people. His work is regarded by mainstream scholars as pseudo-history. Bernard Lewis, for example, in his 1987 book Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice, notes that the theory 'has long since been abandoned by all serious scholars in the field, including those in Arab countries, where the Khazar theory is little used except in occasional political polemics' (see note 45 here. A good summary of what is and isn't accurate in the thesis can be found in the articles here). It should be noted that Koestler was a secular Zionist - for him the notion that there is this 'thirteenth tribe' in Judaism in no way negated the Jewish claim to the State of Israel, a fact conveniently ignored by the anti-Semites who promote his theories today.

Jones appears to have some awareness of the 'thirteenth tribe' theory, which he seems to combine with the 'British Israel' theory (the largely non-anti-Semitic precursor to 'Christian Identity'). He makes the garbled statement that 'Jew is just one of thirteen tribes - the Tribe of Judah'. The Koestler theory posits Khazar converts as a 'thirteenth tribe' (but of course religious Jews recognise only twelve Tribes of Israel), while the British Israel theory sees Jews as the Tribe of Judah and white Europeans as constituting the other tribes. Either way, his statement is meaningless and no evidence for this claim is offered.

In addition to the Koestler theories, many promoters of the Khazar story cling to supposed entries written by Rabbis in Jewish reference works, in particular the 1980 Jewish Almanac, first brought up by the caller. As we have seen, the quote that is given is 'Strictly speaking, it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite a "Jew" or to call a contemporary Jew an "Israelite" or a "Hebrew"', and the reference that is given is '1980 Jewish Almanac, P.3'. Not being in possession of a copy of this book (as indeed the caller wasn't, and I very much doubt Jones is, either) I'm not able to confirm the accuracy of the quote and reference, however a number of questions arise: Firstly, there is the question of context - what discussion is the quote actually taken from and what was the thrust of the argument? Secondly, there is the question of why the only place one can find a reference either to the quote or to the source are on unscholarly, largely anti-Jewish websites, including hate sites such as Stormfront? Thirdly, if a mainstream Jewish publication really argued for the Khazar claim, then why don't mainstream Jewish organisations accept this claim, and why is there no evidence they ever have done? And finally, why are those who are hostile to Jews happy to quote from a book written by the very people they mistrust? Of course, logic, coherence, and continuity are not the strong points of those who advocate conspiratorial visions of history, so perhaps this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.


It is worth noting that arguably the most likely explanation for this quote is that it refers to nothing more controversial than the change in name that occurred among the Jewish people after their return from the Babylonian Exile. Prior to this, we find Jews designated as 'Israelites' (members of the Tribes of Israel) or 'Hebrews', but in the post-exile period and to the present day as 'Jews'. The quote rightly notes that 'strictly speaking [i.e. technically] it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite a "Jew" or to call a contemporary Jew an "Israelite" or a "Hebrew"'. This has nothing to do with Jews actually being Khazars and everything to do with the technically correct use of terminology. Given the fact that mainstream Jewish opinion has never considered the Khazar claim to be accurate, this would appear a far more likely interpretation of a quote taken from an article by a mainstream Rabbi writing in the Jewish Almanac.


Jones claims on the basis of quotes in 'all the major Jewish encyclopedias' (no sources cited) that the assertion that 80% of Jews today are 'Khazarian' [sic] is 'just mainline history', which it most certainly is not. He also claims that '80% of Jews are a mix of Germanic and Asian, whereas your mainline Semitic Arabs are a mix of Negro, Caucasian, and Asian. Now, again, this is the mainline sociology, mainline anthropology'.

I would like to know how much mainstream scholarship in the fields of sociology (which is, incidentally, a field completely unrelated to what he is talking about) and anthropology Jones has actually read. My suspicion is that, beyond reading decontextualised quotes online and a selection of (probably 'Christian Identity' based) crackpot conspiracy articles, he has no knowledge at all of the subject matter of any major academic discipline. Certainly, if he thinks citing articles in old Jewish encyclopedias and mixing this with a confused understanding of history and anthropology constitutes presenting the fruits of 'mainline' scholarship, he clearly has no understanding of the scholarly method, standards of evidence, or the views of mainstream scholars in the relevant fields.

Not that any of this actually matters, as recent scientific studies in the field of population genetics render the need to refute Jones' alleged Jewish encyclopedias and 'mainline' history/sociology/anthropology sources redundant.


Three studies of interest focussing on Jewish population genetics provide scientific evidence that the claim that Ashkenazi Jews are not 'real Jews' is simply false.


In 'Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes', Hammer et al present the following findings:

Haplotypes constructed from Y-chromosome markers were used to trace the paternal origins of the Jewish Diaspora. A set of 18 biallelic polymorphisms was genotyped in 1,371 males from 29 populations, including 7 Jewish (Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Ethiopian) and 16 non-Jewish groups from similar geographic locations. The Jewish populations were characterized by a diverse set of 13 haplotypes that were also present in non-Jewish populations from Africa, Asia, and Europe. A series of analyses was performed to address whether modern Jewish Y-chromosome diversity derives mainly from a common Middle Eastern source population or from admixture with neighboring non-Jewish populations during and after the Diaspora. Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. Admixture estimates suggested low levels of European Y-chromosome gene flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.

[...]

Among the Ashkenazim, haplotypes Med and 1L were the most diagnostic for distinguishing the parental Jewish (P1) and parental European (P2) population components. All other haplotypes had δ values below 20% (data not shown). The m values based on haplotypes Med and 1L were ≈13% ± 10%, suggesting a rather small European contribution to the Ashkenazi paternal gene pool.

[...]

To address the degree to which paternal gene flow may have affected the Jewish gene pool, we estimated approximate admixture levels in our Jewish samples from Europe. This question remains unresolved in particular for the Ashkenazi community. Our results indicated a relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim. If we assume 80 generations since the founding of the Ashkenazi population, then the rate of admixture would be <0.5%>.

This study clearly refutes the claim that Ashkenazi Jews are somehow 'Asiatic' non-Jews, demonstrating an estimated less than 0.5% of Jewish/non-Jewish reproduction (between Jews and white Europeans) in each generation. The study also concludes that 'despite their high degree of geographic dispersion, Jewish populations from Europe, North Africa, and the Near East were less diverged genetically from each other than any other group of populations in this study'. If the Ashkenazim were really non-Jewish or only partially Jewish, this would clearly not be the case, and they would not be found in the same cluster as other Semitic peoples such as the Palestinians and Syrians.


For Nebel et al's study 'The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East',

DNA samples were extracted from mouth swabs collected from 79 paternally unrelated, otherwise randomly selected, self-designated Ashkenazim in Israel. The Ashkenazi subjects' paternal families came from various parts of Europe, spanning areas from Germany, in the west, to Russia, in the east'. It was found that '[n]either Ashkenazi Jews nor the two Sephardic samples clustered with their former host populations (non-Jewish Eastern European, Iberian, and North African populations).

If the Ashkenazim were a predominantly racially mixed or even non-Jewish group, they clearly would have clustered with at least some of their host populations. The fact that they didn't indicates the fact that, despite some mixing of European Jews with their non-Jewish host populations, the Ashkenazi Jews have remained strongly genetically tied to other Jewish groups and are clearly not so-called 'fake Jews'.


Finally, in 'The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event', Behar et al present their findings that 'using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only 4 women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews'. The authors also found that some people in Egypt, Arabia, and the Levant carried the set of mutations that defines one of the four women, thereby providing yet more proof that the Ashkenazim are part of the Middle Eastern Semitic family, and are not a group of Turkish converts, as asserted by the theorists of the 'Khazar Jews'.


In conclusion, both historical scholarship and scientific research show the 'Khazar fake Jews' theory to be completely false and without merit.


Having espoused the Khazar myth, Jones then moved onto the caller's second piece of 'information' - the Christian Identity claim that white Europeans are the 'true Israelites':

Now when you get into Christian Identity and British Royal Israeliism [sic] and the rest of it [sic]. Every British King and Queen for more than a thousand years, even before William the Conqueror in 11 whatever came in, they have been coronated [sic] as Sons of David and they are coronated [sic] on the stone that supposedly Abraham almost sacrificed Jacob on, and they believe that, ah, they were, when the Christians showed up, more than a thousand years ago, in the British Isles, they saw Hebrew, and they, the people, a lot of them already thought that. So I actually looked into this about a decade ago; I didn't believe it, I was just like, "Oh, that's ridiculous, yeah, I mean the Europeans are Jews." Well, Jew is just one of thirteen tribes - the Tribe of Judah. Now to say that all Europeans, you know, came out of the Middle East and really are... No. But there's no doubt that they all migrated, different groups.

Here Jones is referring to the 'Stone of Destiny' or the 'Stone of Scone', a stone used in British coronation ceremonies until its recent return to Scotland. The main legend is, contrary to Jones' version, that the stone was used as a pillow by the biblical Jacob, but of course no serious historian would pay any heed to a folk legend like this. English Kings were not crowned on this stone for 'thousands of years', and there is another ancient stone that was used by English Kings of the past until the 'Stone of Destiny' was taken from the Scots as an act of subjugation. There is no evidence that British Kings considered themselves 'Sons of David' prior to the arrival of Christianity in Britain (or afterwards) and the claim that 'when the Christians showed up, more than a thousand years ago, in the British Isles, they saw Hebrew [whatever that is supposed to mean], and they, the people, a lot of them already thought that' is fanciful and meaningless British Israel theory nonsense, without a shred of historical evidence to back it up. The earliest record of Christianity in Britain is found in the hagiography of St Alban, thought to have lived in the 4th Century CE, so 'the Christians showed up' a lot more than a thousand years ago. Finally, it should be noted that Jones' knowledge of British history is simply hilariously bad. Jones thinks William the Conqueror came to Britain in '11 whatever'! Even children know better than that - the famous date of the Battle of Hastings is, of course, 1066.


It would appear from his words here that Jones doesn't completely buy into the Christian Identity mythology - he doesn't think all Europeans are Israelites - but he certainly does think that some of the pseudo-historical myths of Christian Identity/British Israelism are credible, especially the claim that British Royalty has or had some cultural and genetic link to the biblical Israelites.


I have saved the most amusing quote from Jones' detour into the world of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory and Christian Identity nonsense for last:

'I gotta do whole shows on this, cos I actually have a pretty great knowledge of it'.

Oh dear.