In a bustling fish restaurant in Jaffa, the ancient sea port just south of Tel
Aviv, an Israeli Jewish man tries to convince the eatery's Arab owner that
everything he has ever thought about his Palestinian heritage is wrong -
that the conflict that has killed so many and which is claiming hundreds
more right now in Gaza - has been nothing more than a tragic case of
mistaken identity. Khamis Aboulafia, a well-known figure in the Israeli Arab
community, listens politely as Tsvi Misinai, a retired computer expert and
pioneer of Israel's IT sector, reveals the burning vision that has consumed
him for years. He believes that the Palestinians with whom Israel is at war
are, in fact, descendants of Jews who stayed on the land when the Roman
legions sent most of their countrymen into exile 2,000 years ago.
When he hears that he may be a long-lost relation of a Jew, rather than of
Arab stock, Aboulafia - an educated man who speaks Hebrew as fluently as
Arabic - does not ask his guest to leave. Instead, he nods slowly. “Why am I
willing to accept the idea?” he says. “Because all of the other ideas have
fallen down.”
After a century-long struggle with guns and tanks, human bombs, soaring walls
and settlements on remote,windswept hilltops, a small group of Jews and
Arabs are now using an old theory and new genetic research to redefine -
and, they hope, end - the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the death toll
from the latest round of carnage in the Gaza Strip topping 900 people,
Misinai believes that his quixotic cause is more pressing than ever.
The theory was originally developed by David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime
Minister. But it has gained a new lease of life since a study into a rare
blood disorder shared by Jews and Palestinians revealed a closer genetic
match between the communities than between Palestinians and other Arabs.
“It's all a tragic mistake, a tragic misunderstanding,” said Misinai, who
divides his time between tracking down Palestinians who acknowledge their
Jewish heritage, and lobbying ministers, ambassadors, religious leaders and
activists in both communities.
His relentless pursuit echoes the work, more than a century ago, of Theodor
Herzl, the spiritual founder of modern Zionism, who petitioned emperors,
sultans and politicians for the creation of a Jewish homeland - which for a
while was slated to be set up in British-run Uganda.
“It takes time for people to get used to the idea. Assume that you are brought
up to think that this is your enemy, and they are brought up to think that
we are the enemy. And telling them now, this is a mistake, we are brothers,”
said Misinai, a portly 62-year-old with a brown goatee and boundless energy.
He admits that it could take decades for the communities to come to terms
with his “revolutionary” theory, but he takes comfort from Ben Gurion's
saying: “In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.”
Instead of waiting for his own miracle, Misinai is enlisting an increasing
number of Israelis and Palestinians. He has already recruited some unlikely
supporters, from a Fatah official, to the secretary of the Sanhedrin, a
council of 200 rabbis based on the biblical rulers of Jerusalem. Misinai has
also taken his idea to at least one Israeli Government minister, who
expressed interest but asked not to be identified. According to his theory,
when Jewish fighters waged a series of unsuccessful campaigns against the
occupying Roman forces in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, the Romans exacted a
heavy price: they destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and exiled the vast
majority of Jews.
Those who ended up in the Diaspora - mostly city dwellers - were determined to
keep their Jewish identities during exile. But according to Misinai, many
were allowed to stay behind to work the fertile uplands of Judea and Samaria
- now known as the West Bank - to supply Rome with grain and olive oil.
Gradually, these people lost their ethnic identities, converting first to
Christianity under Byzantine rule and then to Islam, as power in the land
changed hands and rulers sought to homogenise the population, either through
force or the offer of social privilege and tax incentives.
“We, the Jewish people, have kept our Israeli or Jewish identity by the book,
by our religion, but we disengaged from the country,” said Elon Yarden, a
lawyer and close associate of Misinai, who has also written on the subject.
Those who stayed behind, in what became Palestine, “did not leave the
country, but lost their identity”.
Misinai first heard the theory from his father, a German Jew who fought in the
Royal Artillery in the Second World War. He rekindled his interest after the
1991 Gulf War, when world leaders were talking about a new order in the
Middle East. After the failure of the Oslo Accords a decade later, he gave
up his career and threw himself full time into his new brainchild. “From
2000, this has taken over my entire life,” he said.
The theory challenges the definition not just of Palestinians but also of
Jews, always a contentious issue in a country based on Jewish identity but
deeply divided among religious and secular strands. Misinai's ideas have met
with interest and scepticism. Some ultra-religious Jewish settler leaders
welcome the idea with open arms, since they believe that once all the
biblical land of Israeli is populated with Jews, a new era of peace on Earth
will be ushered in. “They like this, they are starving for this,” said
Misinai. He insists that by emphasising Jewishness as a nationality, he can
sidestep the thorny religious issue of who qualifies and who does not.
“If they want to stay Muslim, let them stay Muslim, we don't care about your
religion,” he told The Times at his large villa in a flower-filled street in
Rehovot, a sleepy town near Tel Aviv. “But the majority will stay Jewish
from the national, ethnic point of view. An individual can be ethnically
Jewish and his religion can be Muslim, or Christian. As in the UK, someone
can be a British citizen and be a Muslim or a Jew.”
In this part of the world, however, nothing is simple. Dov Stein, secretary of
the Sanhedrin council of rabbis, is a supporter of Misinai's theory, but
rules out accepting Muslims into the country on the grounds that it would be
a violation of the Jewish people's covenant with God, enshrined in the Torah
scripture. “We can't ignore the fact that these communities of ‘Arabs' were
forced [to convert], they are the children of the children of forced
families,” he said. “It's obvious that we want them back, but also obvious,
not at any price. If the price should be that they see themselves as
Muslims, we won't receive them. And they remain enemies. They have to give
up Islam.”
While Stein's group is trying to find some common points between the two
faiths to attempt to bridge the divide, he reiterated that merely being
“Jewish” would not be enough. He recalled the bitter civil war fought in the
2nd century BC between the so-called Hellenised Jews, who accepted the
culture of their Greek overlords, and the resistance of the Maccabeans, who
upheld stricter traditions.
“According to the Bible and our faith, we don't say this country belongs to
the Jewish nation because God gave it Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” said Stein,
a thickly bearded man, who lives in Jerusalem. “This is an additional
reason. It's because we hold the Torah - if not, we don't have the right to
the country. That's why we can't receive them, even a Jew who is not
believing, it will be a disaster.”
Yet a process of transformation is under way in many areas. Like Aboulafia,
many Arab Israelis, especially in Galilee, speak Hebrew as well as Arabic -
and mix the two liberally - 60 years after the Jewish state sprung up around
them.
A number of Palestinians acknowledge their Jewish roots, although many say
that doing so is more risky since the two intifadas, or uprisings, fought
against Israel. In Hebron, the main city in the southern West Bank which was
a renowned city in biblical days, several families and tribes quietly
acknowledge their Jewish background.
“Avi” is from one of them. From the village of Yatta, near Hebron, he speaks
fluent Hebrew and has even adopted a Jewish name. He has a family in Yatta
but works near Tel Aviv as a welder. With his piercing blue eyes, many of
his Israeli friends are unaware that he is Palestinian.
“It didn't surprise me,” he said, when his grandparents told him that the
family had moved to Yatta centuries before from the Jewish kingdom of
Khaibar in the south-western Arabian peninsula. Khaibar flourished in the
centuries after the destruction of the Jewish temple before being destroyed
by the Fatimid Muslim dynasty in AD1037. The population fled, some to India
and China, others back to the land that their ancestors had migrated from
centuries before. “I knew my grandparents came from Khaibar, and they told
me that they became Muslims. We are Muslims now,” he said.
His attitude to his roots shows some of the complexities faced by Misinai's
budding project. The occupation of the West Bank, and the confiscation of
land by Jewish settlers since 1967, has created deep-seated animosity,
regardless of whether the land-grab was done by foreigners or fellow
citizens. “Land was taken from us by Israel,” said Avi, who preferred not to
be identified by his Arabic name as his family still lives in Yatta. “We are
angry that this land was taken, we don't care who's a Jew and who's a
Muslim. Some people, because they are so angry, are ready to become a
shaheed [martyr], to kill. We have a problem which is very severe.”
Avi has studied the Koran and the Bible, and believes that faith is a personal
matter. “I am a Muslim, I believe in Islam,” he said. He is disappointed by
Israel's policies in the West Bank. “If they were to set a good example, the
majority of the Palestinians would want to join [Israel]. Most won't change
their religion, some will, but most will be ready to be part of it, with or
without changing their religion. Once the circumstances are right, they will
be open about their origins.” Avi has distributed booklets outlining the
theory to some of his closer associates in the West Bank. “We are taking the
Jews and Arabs and putting them into a blender without knives,” he said.
At a meeting at Misinai's house, three men - an Arab Israeli, a Bedu from Gaza
and a Palestinian working in Israel - recently discussed ways to spread the
word. “We should do it the same way as Hamas, it should be grassroots, with
small groups spreading the word,” said the Palestinian, a man in his
forties, who asked not to be identified. Such work is not without risk.
Misinai said that one of his Arab co-workers was caught by Palestinian
police taking photos of doorways where mezuzahs - Jewish prayer icons - had
once been attached to houses in a West Bank village. The man was jailed for
45 days.
The Bedu, who goes by the adopted Hebrew name Ovadia Yerushalmi, said that
many of his fellow desert-dwellers - most of whom have been corralled into
poor townships in the Negev region by the Israeli authorities - are of
Jewish origin.
“Originally, the Beduin were forced to convert to Islam because of the threat
of the sword,” he said. Many Beduin now serve in the Israeli Army as scouts.
Other Palestinians are intrigued by the idea as a novel way to peace, but are
wary of Misinai's assertion that as many as 86 per cent of the population is
descended from ancient Israelites. “It is believable,” said Suleiman
al-Hamri, a Fatah official from Bethlehem. “I believe that we come from the
same origin and sometimes, because of political reasons, some people changed
their religions.” He said that more research was needed into the claim.
“Should we use it to solve the conflict between the Palestinians and the
Jews, or should we use it to give more credit to one side or the other? We
want to use it for peace.”
There is still much scepticism though, even among those Arab scholars who find
the theory intriguing. “It's an entertaining idea, he makes you think about
history and that's why I like it, not as a political theory,” said Dr
Mahmoud Yazbak, an Israeli Arab and an expert on Middle Eastern history at
Haifa University. “When you take such a theory into the political arena,
people will become angry. I don't have any feeling against this idea, but if
he wants to take this into politics, it would be a problem for me.”
Indeed, for some it smacks of identity theft, similar to Turkey's claim in the
last century that its large Kurdish minority were simply “mountain Turks who
have forgotten their language. “The famous story of Zionism is that this was
a land without a people for a people without a land, and it's back to that,”
said Dr Boutros Dali, a veteran Arab-Israeli scholar. All the same, he
admitted that it was “a wonderful idea, if Misinai can convince people they
are Jews...If we are Jews, there's no reason for an Arab Israeli conflict.”
Doubts about the project were aired even by Ariella Oppenheim, one of the
doctors who investigated the similarities between the Y chromosomes of
Palestinian and Jewish men. “Tsvi Misinai has his optimistic ideas that this
is going to help, but I'm less optimistic,” she said at Ein Kere hospital in
Jerusalem. She denied that there is any such thing as a “Jewish gene”.
Rather, she said, genetic studies pointed to the geographical origins of a
population. “I think there are very strong ideologies here, and we know also
that sometimes brothers fight,” she said, citing the brutal mini-civil war
in Gaza in summer of 2007 between the secular Fatah and the Hamas, the
Palestinian Islamist movement.
Aboulafia, the restaurateur, also said that Misinai faces an uphill struggle
to convince people on both sides of the divide who are deeply entrenched in
their own identities. “Maybe not in our generation, but the next,” he said.
But amid all the scepticism, there is one element that may give the theory
some heft, in the same way that would have encouraged the original
conversions centuries ago: the increasing desperation of those living in
occupied territories.
One Palestinian village elder, whose West Bank community is surrounded on the
three sides by Jewish settlement fences and on the fourth by the separation
barrier with Israel itself, looked hopeful when informed of Misinai's
mission.
“How soon could we become Jews?” he asked eagerly. “In time for next year's
harvest?”
James Hider's book The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the
Frontline of Holy War will be
published by Doubleday on January 15 at £12.99.
Copies can be ordered for £11.69 with free delivery
from The Times BooksFirst on 0845 2712134
