It is a shame that Shlomo Zand’s book is getting all this media and blog attention. His ideas are nothing new, but copied from Paul Wexler and Arthur Koestler. I just read that Zand’s work will be published in French and Arabic. So his distortions will get an even greater audience.

But there is something else people can read:

In the Second Edition of my book “The Jews of Khazaria” (2006) I have a large chapter (10) on the early history of Ashkenazic Jews, proving that the Slavs and Khazars are not the primary ancestral element. I discussed all the genetic evidence which suggests that between 60 and 80 percent of Ashkenazic ancestry comes from Israelites. I also have an appendix discussing the other examples Zand mentioned, like converts among the Berbers and Yemenites, and the evidence I gathered there doesn’t prove that the Sephardic Jews are mostly converts either.

It is startling to hear that Zand’s book does not address genetic evidence
at all. The first edition of my book was written in 1998, before most of the genetic studies were released, but the second edition discusses the studies published up to the start of 2006 including the ones connecting Jews with Samaritans, and Jews with Kurds, and Jews with Palestinians and Lebanese.

Zand does not have the intellectual honesty that I do if he wants to deny that the genetic studies are valid in interviews, when he has no idea what he is talking about, and when his biases blind him. Has he even read the genetic studies? As historians, we have to evaluate all new evidence that comes in.

Zand and Wexler prove that having a professorship and a Ph.D. is no guarantee of the ability to do correct and objective historical research.

Kevin Brook

My point was that there is also a good secular argument for Israel’s legitimacy — that we didn’t steal the land, that we rebuilt it, and that there is international sanction for the state. Everyone in the world, regardless of what they think about Jews or Judaism, regardless even of what they think about the history of the Jews — and I think Zand is simply crazy from a historical point of view — has to accept that.

For a more complete refutation of Zand’s thesis, see Ami Isseroff’s article here.