Jews are NOT a Race

The anti-Jewish Apartheid libel is based on the notion that the Jews of Israel are a racial group that oppresses the Palestinians who ostensibly also are “a racial group”. It is of course complete nonsense to claim that Jews and Palestinians are different racial groups. Various Palestinian local communities have different origins but the majority are descended from Jews and Samaritans who converted first to Christianity and then to Islam. Some Palestinian local communities are descended from other Muslim countries. The definition of Apartheid is that of one racial group legally oppressing one or more other racial groups and the Jewish people is comprised of many Jewish ethnic groups, each of which was historically genetically homogenous and became genetically distinct from each other during the long history in the Diaspora. Most of those Jewish ethnic groups are of Middle Eastern patrilineal origin.

Anti-Zionists often claim that Ashkenazi Jews are white imposters, fake Jews who are entirely descended from European converts to Judaism. This is completely rebutted by genetic studies which have proven a Middle Eastern patrilineal origin for Ashkenazi Jewry. However, when the Anti-Zionists make the Apartheid accusation are Jews suddenly a single racial group. The notion that Jews generally constitute a racial group is Nazi in origin and is at the core of the Anti-Jewish Apartheid libel.

Jewish organizations and the Israeli government need to fight the attempts to racialize Jews. The attempts to one the hand stigmatize Ashkenazi Jews as “European converts” and on the other hand stigmatize Jews as ostensibly constituting a single unique racial group is infuriatingly inconsistent, yet this message, however false, is effective and the Apartheid libel gains more and more support. It is urgent to begin fighting Anti-Jewish racialization which lies at the very core of the Anti-Jewish Apartheid libel.