Witness - The Last Jew of Babylon - 15 Jul 07 - Part 1

Ezra Levy is one of the last of his kind - a Jew in Iraq. His tale is a quest for lost love, a woman called Daisy whom he last saw more than 50 years ago. Clutching a photo of the young, beautiful Daisy, the spry 85-year-old sets off for Israel and a family he has not seen for many years. Once there, Ezra challenges the assumption that in an anti-Semitic world, Jews are better off in Israel than elsewhere.

Category:

News & Politics

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• Witness
• Last
• Jew
• aljazeera
• Israel
• Arab
• Ezra
• Iraq
• Iraqi
• lost
• love
• jewish
• babylon
• levy

[mewoone]

@ShmorgelBorgel so it will be 40% 50% which also left 50% who could be converted to Judaism through history. I agree with you No one can claim purely ancestry even Ishmael tribes got about 75% 65% . By the way you compared with Palestinian genetic which is mix between many invaders as well as Jewish (converted to Islam), ancient Arab (could be j2 and E) and Ishmael sons Arab.

[ShmorgelBorgel]

@mewoone Ashkenazi Jews are of both European AND Middle Eastern descent. I never claimed that Ashkenazi Jews were of "purely" Middle Eastern ancestry- endogamy wasn't complete--and there was gene flow between the Middle Eastern Jews who founded the Jewish communities in Europe and the various European populations. About 14-20% of Ashkenazi Jews show evidence of haplogroup J1 and and 25 % evidence haplogroup J2--interestingly enough about the same frequency it shows up among Palestinian Arabs.

[mewoone]

@ShmorgelBorgel I will not say that all Askenzi Jew are European but many are! Tell me please which haplogroup ? I know that Arab (with Ishmael background) as well as Cohen (Araon background) are both J1c

[ShmorgelBorgel]

@mewoone You are mistaken. All the most recent genetic research demonstrates that Ashkenazi Jews (Jews whose ancestors lived in Central/Eastern Europe for the past millenium) have substantial recent Middle Eastern ancestry that links them closely by ancestry with their fellow Jews whose families have never left the Middle Eastern/North Africa regions. To be sure, Ashkenazi Jews have some European ancestry that is not connected to the Middle East IN ADDITION to their Semitic ancestry.

[mewoone]

@ShmorgelBorgel mmmm not true.. even genetic prove it... I saw a study about it

[Musicofthissphere]

Only Al-Jazeera could turn a positive story into an, inevitably, anti-Jewish one

[ShmorgelBorgel]

@superhamzah85 "That's because Jews by and large are not from the Middle-East!"

Jews are by and large from the Middle East. Genetic testing has confirmed that the Ashkenazi Jews who lived in Europe of Middle Eastern descent and are closely related to their fellow Jews from the Middle East. Moreover, not wanting to be part of an Arab tribal collective doesn't mean we are not of the Middle East-- Hebrew is an indigenous MiddleEastern language. Arabic is not the only Middle Eastern language.

[ShmorgelBorgel]

@superhamzah85 RE: "you'd have an eternity to learn Jewish culture and language - but peace wasn't the main goal, "

Jews developing their own culture and language in their own communities is entirely an internal Jewish matter--and really was no concern of Arabs or anybody else. Only an insecure group could portray Jews doing so as contrary to the interests of peace. And as for an "eternity", two millennia of powerlessness and statelessness was enough, I should think.

[ShmorgelBorgel]

@superhamzah85 re: 'China has been consistently Chinese for millenia, Jews had sovereignty for a fraction of that lands history."

And "Palestinians" qua Palestinians have NEVER had sovereignty over the land. If we are to use your argument over how long a given national community has exercised sovereignty over a given piece of territory for determining their right to exercise it again, then Palestinians can never make that claim.