ISIS Out of Mesopotamia In IRAQ And The World Bleeds

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Land of Shinar or Kasdim (Chaldees) - One of 7 Wonders of the World

Iraq was the major part of Mesopotamia.  Who has not heard of Babylon?  "Mesopotamia is a name for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, roughly corresponding to modern-day Iraq, Syria and Kuwait, including regions along the Turkish-Syrian and Iran–Iraq borders.  The tigris-Euphrates Rives is where the Jews were said to have come from that entered Ur, a city in Western Mesopotamia that became Iraq.  
                                                                         
Today Iraq is becoming  the major part of the bloodthirsty  Islamic State, so called ISIS or IS or in Arabic-Daesh.  It had been part of the 400 year old Turk's Ottoman Empire that died with World War I in 1917.
                                                                   

ISIS: Arab and Foreigners  killing Arabs of the Land

Right now a terrific battle is going on as IS slaughters and beheads anyone in their way.  The world leaders have stepped into this with the American Army having a base here that is an operational hub for the US led 66 nation coalition that is "combating" the Islamic State takeover in Iraq and Syria.  They have entered  with their medivac Blackhawk heliicopters along with Army Apache attack helicopters.  They also have as their base their intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft.  A variety of armed special operations aircraft from different military branches are here.
                                                                           

Assyria attacked Israel in 721 BCE and took away  10 Tribes
Babylonia attacked in 597 BCE, then 586 BCE and took away Israelites
There was Israel and Syria, but none of the other states then.  

Why can't a coalition of 66 countries take back one city from ISIS, which is Mosul which lies in northern Iraq?  And what happened to Israel which is erased from this map?  It is hugging the Mediterranean Sea on the West of Jordan.  Mosul has been  occupied by ISIS since June 10, 2014.  It is a city normally holding about 2 1/2 million people. This city, about 250 miles north of Baghdad, " is completely ruled by the Islamic State terror group headquartered in Al-Raqqah, Syria. The current government of Iraq stopped paying salaries soon after the city was overrun by militants  (that ISIL allegedly exploited by stealing a generous percentage)  which it had previously paid to city workers, including nurses and doctors. 

The USA and their coalition personnel coordinate airstrikes against IS to support their Kurdish peshmerga forces.  "Iraq's genocidal war against the Kurds began in the early 1960s and has continue to the present.  The Iraqis have used bombs, napalm and even poison gas against Iraqi Kurdish positions and towns in the struggle to suppress Kurdish nationalism." They've behaved like Saddam Hussein of Syria  towards his own people who went against him, an  Alawite, a slightly different shade of Islam. In 1975, Iraq conducted a relocation of the Kurdish population.  Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been forcibly removed from their rural villages, and Kurdish political and cultural institutions have been savagely suppressed.   Kurdish DNA is the closest to the Jewish people. "Where northern Iraq and Turkey are today, they shared a common ancestor.  This was the northern half of the Fertile Crescent during pre-historic times.  Professor Ariella Oppenheim and Dr. Marina Feirman, who carried out the research at the Hebrew University, said they were surprised to find a closer genetic connection between the Jews and the populations of the fertile crescent than between the Jews and their Arab neighbors.  Most likely, Kurds were descended from Israelites.  Kurdistan was actually the core of the old Assyrian Empire, the one that carried off the Ten Lost Tribes. 
                                                                         

Kurdish Israeli, Shemun Levi 

A note on the Kurds, who are doing most of the face to face fighting in Iraq, is that they originally had their own Kurdistan.  The land is now divided up in Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  The 1st Jewish settlement outside of Israel was in Kurdistan in the days of Ezra of the 5th century BCE.  Kurdish Jews spoke with an Aramaic dialect up to modern times.  It's close to the language used during the makings of the Babylonian Talmud.  Nestorian Christians use this language, also.  12,00 to 18,000 Jews lived in this land by the end of the 19th century.  After 1948, these Jews immigrated to Israel in or near Jerusalem.  Kurds trace their ancestry back 4,000 years and became Muslims but maintain their own language, traditions and tribal leaders.  They have over 15 million with about 3 million in Turkey, and more than 2.5 million in Iran and in Iraq and 500,000 in Syria.   180,000 Kurds have been slaughtered in an Iraqi government campaign against them in the late 1980s.  The Iraqi Defense Minister, Ali Hassan Majid was recorded describing how the Kurds would be dealt with:  "We have gassed them not once;  not twice, but until we get rid of them."

  By the end of April, the USA had conducted 9,073 airstrikes against IS in Iraq and Syria.  Almost all their military aircraft were launched from bases and Navy vessels outside of Iraq and Syria.  50,000 US military personnel are deployed throughout the Middle East, including Navy personnel at sea.  Yet IS seems to still hold onto Mosul.  If they can rid the city and state of ISIS, al Jazeera points out that then the real challenge is "finding a political settlement that allows the local Sunni inhabitants to address their legitimate political grievances with the central government in Baghdad." Religion is the problem between Sunni and Shi'a run government.  Evidently it's no easy task to rid the city of ISIS from afar.  "Mosul is Iraq's second-largest city, and urban warfare is no easy task as the recent operation to liberate Ramadi has shown.  Ramadi has a population of around 200,000 compared with Mosul's estimated population of 1.8 million (albeit many of them left the city for safer refuge).  Ramadi is still being cleared of booby traps and insurgents even though it was "liberated" months ago."                                       

Terah, from the Tigris and Euphrates River Country in the East,
Father of Abraham 

This land is part of the Crossroads of Civilization.  It was in the city of Ur that Abraham's father, Terah, came from the East and set up a shop making idols.  This is why Abraham left, to escape the environment of people believing in such things..

The Muslim Arabs conquered Babylonia in 637, five years after Mohammad had died.  The Jewish community who lived there helped the Arab conquerors in the hope that they would be better than the Sassanid (Persian Empire)  persecutions against them.  After the Arabs occupied the land, Jews had been expelled from Saudi Arabia because they wouldn't convert to Islam, so they moved  to Kufa (Kufa is a city in Iraq, about 170 kilometres south of Baghdad, and 10 kilometres northeast of Najaf. It is located on the banks of the Euphrates River) and settled there,"  a place they may have originated from originally.   Babylon and what was to become Iraq was the center of Jewish life.  Jews from all over the world went here to settle questions they had about Judasim.
                                                                             

King Feisal of Iraq-1921-1933.  

Ibn and Emir Hussein Feisal (May 20, 1883 or 85--September 8, 1933)was the  prince who had led the Arab uprising against Turkey from 1916 to 1918 and wanted to be compensated and rewarded for their part in the war effort.  He  became king of Iraq from August 23, 1921, apppointed by the Allies who won the 1st World War.  The Brits were holding a 30 year mandate over Palestine and the French had other parts of the Middle Eastern defunct Ottoman Empire they were cutting up.  Feisal was the eldest son of Hussein, sherif of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.  He was a prince who wanted to be a king so needed a country.  He was a leader and an educated man, a rarity in these parts, and was sympathetic to Zionism and the creation of a Jewish National Home.  He admired the Jews to the point of hoping his own Arab people could learn something from them and hoped the Jews would help him build his future kingdom.
                                                                                 

Weizmann and Feisal 

 He met Dr. Chaim Weizmann in 1918 in Transjordan and again in Paris in 1919 where they agreed on mutual aid that was conditional on the implementation of British promises. to the Arabs. Feisal was first made King of Syria.  That didn't work out, so they made him King of Iraq.

Feisal was later expelled from Syria by the French in 1920 and the influence of the Palestinian Arab leaders changed his attitude so that his ideas about Zionism turned hostile in the end.
                                                                         

Husseini and Hitler, quite a pair

Iraq gained independence in 1932 so turned around and persecuted the Jews.  Hundreds of Baghdad Jews were killed and wounded in a pogrom during the revolt of Rashid Ali in 1941, a time reflecting Haj Amin al-Husseini's visit to German Nazis to get help in ridding the world of Jews.

Today, Israel supports the Kurds in their struggle for independence and life.  How do the Iraqis feel?  "
                                                                             

Muqtadā al-Ṣadr is an Iraqi Shia cleric, politician and militia leader. He is the leader of a political party, the Sadrist Movement and the leader of Saraya al-Salam, a Shiite militia.

Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr of Iraq describes American Sec. of State, John Kerry as a terrorist, asserts that Israel is spoiled son of America.  

Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
America's Quiet War in Iraq by Nolan Peterson (National Interest).
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/05/liberating-mosul-solve-iraq-problems-160515065236609.html
http://www.iraqinews.com/baghdad-politics/sadr-describes-kerry-terrorist-asserts-israel-spoiled-son-america/
Myths and Facts by Mitchell G. Bard, Joel Himelfarb
http://www.haaretz.com/study-finds-close-genetic-connection-between-jews-kurds-1.75273
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/11/07/the-assyrians-kurds-and-the-jews/

Were Jews Originally Non-Semitic Elamites of Babylonia?

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Before Abraham was born, his father, Terah,  had been in the traveling crowd of the Ivrim  from the East who had settled in Ur, now a part of Iraq.  Coming from the East, they must have come from the area of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Who were these people?  We call them Hebrews today.  They spoke Hebrew.  Were they from Babylonia, also called the land of Shinar or of the Kasdim (Chaldees)?  It was looked upon as the cradle of humanity and the scene of man's first revolt against G-d with the Tower of Babel.  Many biblical stories have a parallel in Babylonian literature such as the FLOOD.  Abraham was born in UR, a symbol of pagan tyranny, city of idols, made by Terah, Abraham's father.
                                                                             

Terah, Abram's father

In Genesis 14: 13, Abram was called Abram, the Ivri, spelled from right to left with an ayan, vet, and raishעִברִי, meaning-the other side.  Literally, the rabbis say this means the other side of the Euphrates River.  The name also means that he was a descendant of Eber.  Only Abraham's descendants are called "Ivrim" for they alone spoke Hebrew, which was Eber's language.  His other descendants spoke Aramaic, and are called Arameans.  Abram was one  who lived in the plains of Mamre, the Amorite, the brother of Eshcol and the brother of Aner who were Abram's allies.  HEBREW written in Hebrew looks like this:  עִברִית.  The letters, reading from right to left, are: ayin, vet, raish and to make it plural, a yud and a tuv. The first letters spell out Ivri.   


                                                                             

The Tel el Amarna tablets is an Arabic name of the site of the capital of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV of Middle Egypt.  In 1887, many cuneiform tablets were discovered there including letters from kings in Asia Minor from the archives of Amenhotep III of 1413-1377 BCE and Amenhotep IV of 1377-1361 BCE.   Other letters were found later.  Of special interest were several scores of letters from vassal kings in Canaan like the kings of Ascalon (Ashkelon) , Acre, Jerusalem, Megiddo, Sidon, Gebal, etc.  These complain of the disorder happening in the country following the invasion of the HABIRU.  We believe this referred to the Hebrews.  The disorder was the frequent wars among Pharaoh's vassal kings, and the letters requested Egyptian assistance.
                                                                             

 Almost all the letters were written in Akkadian.  A few lines were written in Hurrian and Hittite, and some have words in Canannite.  It figures correctly that Joshua had arrived.  
                                                                               

Akkadian was a Semitic language, formerly known as Assyrian owing to the prevalence of Akkadian inscriptions in the cuneiform script found in Asssyria.   Akkadians were the first people to use it in writing.  It was a spoken langue from the 4th millennium BCE and served as the language of diplomacy and commerce throughout the Middle East until the Greek conquest.  It resembles Hebrew and Aramaic in structure, phonology and vocabulary but is different from them in the verb formations, in the use of tenses, syntax and in the fact that its gutturals lost their distinctive character.  

 His people were called Habiru for a reason.  
"Habiru or Apiru (Egyptian: ˁpr.w) was the name given by various Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Mitanni, and Ugaritic sources (dated, roughly, between 1800 BC and 1100 BC) to a group of people living as nomadic invaders in areas of the Fertile Crescent from Northeastern Mesopotamia and Iran to the borders of ... Egypt in Canaan.    This sounds more like the Assyrian areas.  
                                                                               

Egyptian mural of slaves making bricks for building
 in c1700 BCE-1300 BCE

                                                                                 

Much later Assyrians leading away the 10 tribes as slaves in 722
and 721 BCE back to Assyria again. 

Habiru was the name used for  mercenaries or slaves, and was used in the Tel el-Amarna tables and in other documents of the 15th and 14th centuries BCE.  Many scholars are emphatic that Habiru is identical with Ivri (Hebrews) and some believe that the reference in the Tel el-Amarna tablets to the threat of the habiru to Canaanite cities alludes to one of the stages in the Israelite conquest of Canaan.  So we have a difference of dates here.  Abram lived in the 2nd millennium BCE or 2000 BCE and Joshua and the slaves from Egypt lived later and arrived in Canaan in about 1271 BCE, about 800 years difference, but both were referring to these Hebrew speakers, descendants of the first group.  How history repeats!
                                                                       "Hebrew, along with Moabite and Phoenician, belong to the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages.  Hebrew was spoken in Canaan before Joshua ever arrived with the 650,000 slaves from Egypt.  The Tel el Amarna Letters prove that Hebrew was spoken in Eretz Yisrael before the Israelite conquest.  Pre-exilic biblical Hebrew was a standardized literary language with distinct idioms for prose and poetry, full-sounding, rich in vocabulary and rhetorical devices.  It borrowed many words from surrounding languages".  

Elam was an ancient state of Babylonia, where the modern state of Khuzistan is today.  It's on the map above. It was on part of the SW Iranian plateau and included the river valley around Susa and the highlands beyond.  Elamite is an unknown language but Elam might have meant "THE LORD-COUNTRY.' In Mesopotamian it would be translated as "THE HEIGHTS."  In Akkadian etymology, it would be related to elu, meaning "HIGH."  Today, it's part of Iran since Susa is the Shushan of the Book of Esther, and the capital of Iran, and Iran not too long ago was called Persia, its ancient name.  Persians are not Arabs.  They are a different people.  It's hard to tell what kinds of people were in Elan since populations change frequently depending on who a country is making war with and taking prisoners. Persians or Iranians as they are now called, are not Semites or even Arabs.
                                                                           

Elam was connected closely with Mesopotamia for this is where they got their raw materials of wood, stone and metals.  It served as a route for getting precious metals and stones like lapis lazuli, the blue stone prized by the Mesopotamians which were brought from Afghanistan.  Elamites raided the valleys of the Diyala and the Tigris.  Elam ruled Sumer for a time.  The kings of the 3rd dynasty of Ur in Mesopotamia annexed Elam, and Susa became a seat of Sumerian governors.  Could it be that Ur was bringing back Elamites to live with them?  We know that Terah was an idol maker and that Abraham knew all along as a child that they were not gods but just statues made of clay by his father.

Being non-Semitic, the Elamites are classed by the Bible as children of Shem (Gen. 10:22).  Was Terah an Elamite?  I know that according to DNA, my father's DNA haplogroup of Q1b1a or Q-L245 came from Ur, Iraq most likely 2,000 years ago, This branch makes up only 5% of the Jewish population today.   Other places they could have come from were  Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and possibly southern Saudi Arabia.  Iraq is the location of Ur, where Abraham and Sarah came from.  They left, seeking their own land that would become free of idol worship with Abraham's leadership.

About half of present day Jews find they are haplogroup J1 and J2, which is called the Cohen gene, and many are Cohens in the synagogue.  This is the largest Jewish haplogroup, and we know it came from Moses and Aaron.  Other haplogroups such as E, I and R are found.

A very long time ago at the beginning of the 19th century BCE just after Abraham was born, there was an independent Elamite royal dynasty who reigned in Anshan in the uplands and Susa on the plain.  Elam had a lot of influence that covered a wide area, and had trading expeditions where they carried raw materials from their lands of Elam as far as Hazor in Canaan.  By the middle of the 18th century BCE, Elam was consolidated under the rule of Kutir-Nahhunte I, whose reign was during the same period of Hammurabi of Babylon and with his son, Samsu-iluna.  From about this time on and thoughout the whole period, Babylonian influence is noticed by the use of Akkadian as the written language of economic and cultural life.  Hammerabi (1728-1686 BCE)  had laws similar to our 10 Commandments.  It's penalties for breaking his legal code was more severe than in the 10 Commandments and its political nature is based on custom and obedience to the king's will instead of being like the 10 Commandments which depends on its appeal to the human conscience.   Both seem to have arisen in the Mesopotamian culture with the 10 Commandments coming from G-d,  given to the people by Moses.                                                                                

Twins, Esau and Jacob, with Esau leaving their father, Isaac  to join the Arabs.  Both are usually called Semites.  

What is a Semite?  Are Jews Semites being Elamites were not?  "The term Semitic people or semitic cultures (from the biblical "Shem",Hebrew: שם‎),  was a historical term for the people or cultures who speak or spoke the Semitic languages. "  a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs with  Semitic languages of: Arabic, Hebrew (Tiberian), Syriac, Ge'ez, and Akkadian.."The racial or ethnic use of the term, together with the parallel terms Hamitic and Japhetic, is now obsolete.  The term also came to describe the extended Semitic religions and ethnicities, as well as the history of these varied cultures as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution.  Was it that Abraham was an Elamite? 
                                                     

Abram, later called Abraham

Abraham's people came from Shem, one of the 3 sons of Noah.  From him came the nations of Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad and Aram.  Arpachshad was the father of Eber and ancestor of Abraham.  People that speak language akin to Hebrew are called Semitic people and their languages are Semitic languages.  According to the experts, we did not come from Elam, then. Eber is not shown on the map because a whole group of Semitic people and tribes came out of him which included the Israelites who are therefore, according to the general opinion, called the Hebrews.   The title of the Israelites comes from Jacob, grandson of Abraham who had a name change to Israel due to something that happened to him when he was traveling home.  He had been gone from his father's house for 20 years and was returning with property he had accumulated.  He struggled as if wrestling  with a heavenly emissary, angel,  and overcame this angel, then being given the name Israel.  It was a name of accomplishment, overcoming a struggle-in his heart or mind.  He's buried in the Cave at Hebron.
Descendants of Shem

1   Shem
. 2   Elam
. 2   Asshur
. 2   Arpachshad b: in 2 years after flood
..... 3   Shelah
......... 4   Eber
............. 5   Peleg-Abraham
................. 6   Reu
..................... 7   Serug
........................... +Milcah
......................... 8   Nahor I
............................... +Iyoska
............................ 9   Terah b: in Ur of Chaldees, Sumeria, Mesopotamia Iraq
................................ 10   [1] Abram-Abraham
...................................... +Sarai-Sarah
................................ *2nd Wife of [1] Abram-Abraham:
...................................... +Hagar
................................ *3rd Wife of [1] Abram-Abraham:
...................................... +Keturah


Resource:  https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0006_0_05716.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/jewish-genes-what-haplogroup-could-they.html
The New Standard Jewish encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hebrews.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habiru

Proven by DNA, We Are Original Jews

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

722 BCE  Assyrian Empire
Notice that Jerusalem is on this map.  It's been there since King David 1010 BCE.
Part of Western Asia with Semitic people
Kings David and Solomon had success against the Aramean states in Mesopotamia and Syria that helped Assyria recover from lost battles.  

Egypt,  Israel , Arabia. Lebanon and Syria ,called Aram originally, now turning into IS, are the oldest countries in the Middle East.  Egypt has been there forever.  The Egyptians  probably have changed very little. The Egyptians started off in about 3200 to 2686 BCE in the Early Dynastic Period.  By the time Abraham came along with descendant, Jacob, it was already the period for Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom from 2055 to 1650 BCE which was the 11th and 12th dynasties. Probably the first Hebrew immigration into Egypt was when the Semitic Hyksos Dynasty of 18th to 16th centuries BCE.

 It's then that Egypt was closely involved in Palestinian affairs, proven by the Tel-el-Amarna letters which   tell of the first Israelite incursions into Egypt.  Moses was born during the Egyptian's New Kingdom period of 1550 to 1069 BCE which was their 18th to 20th Dynasty period.  If anything, a few Jews may bear  segments of Egyptian chromosomes due to rapes, etc while living under slavery.  If an Egyptian man begat a male child, it would have had a new haplotype.  King Solomon married an Egyptian princess.  Before that, Abraham had relations with the Egyptian Princess Hagar, handmaiden of wife Sarah, and had a child.
                                                                       

12 Tribes of Judah-Israel 

 Israel is right behind them in age.  Abraham lived in Canaan around 1800 BCE.  That's how far back the original band of 70 go led by Jacob, his grandson.  Then 400 years were spent in Egypt as slaves and returning 40 years later to live there permanently transpired.  They returned with not only the descendants of the original family of Abraham, but also with other slaves who had been captured by the Egyptians.  All were freed and followed Moses.  By DNA, we find that the family of Jacob probably carried the J1 haplotype, and the other haplotypes of E, G, etc found in the Jewish men could have had this reason for haplotypes other than J1.  Even after 400 years of living in Egypt and becoming slaves, the 12 tribes did a good job of living among their tribal members while under forced labor.  .

Joshua entered the land for Moses, who died just outside at the age of 120.  From then on, they had to fight Canaanites and Phoenicians for the land.  These people were killed in the fight, and if not, were assimilated into the family of Israelites, for that is what the people of Moses and Joshua were called, Israelites and the land was Israel.  Jacob, the ancestor of Abraham, had been so named as Israel, and it was he who led the band of 70 originally.                                    

King David, son of Jesse-grandson of Boaz and Ruth
of tribe of Judah
1010-970 BCE

                                                                                       

King Solomon, David's son
961-920 BCE

                                                                       

King Saul of tribe of  Benjamin
-c1040-1010 BCE
1st king of Israel

The Israelites had 3 kings of importance; Saul, David and his son, Solomon.  When King Solomon died in 920 BCE, the Israelite kingdom split with the southern part which belonged to the tribe of Judah, parted from the north and became Judah.  They fought for a while over political differences.  Jerusalem stayed with Judah.

These Israelites, once called Hebrews as they had entered from the East into Ur and birthed Abraham, stayed together until 722 BCE when the Assyrians attacked and took away 10 of the 12 tribes of Jacob (Israel).  Today we know they were pretty well scattered throughout Assyria.  Many Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan have claimed descendency from this group.
                                                                               

Babylonian Empire 586 BCE
It was known as the land of Shinar or of the Kasdim (Chaldees).
Part of Western Asia 

By 597 and 586 BCE, The Babylonians attacked and also carried away slaves.  The Israelites and Judeans were not killed, but used as slaves.  In the olden days, people were killed in battle, but others were taken for slaves, just like the Greeks and Romans did.   At this point in time, the Israelites  were becoming a mixture of people who had been taken into the fold of their family as husbands and wives.  The southern part of Judah  underwent whole conversion.  That's another source of a different haplotype.
                                                                           

Chaim Weizmann, Jew, on left and Emir Feisal on right.
 Feisal Ibn Hussein 1885-1933 was the eldest son of Hussein, sherif of Mecca. He was from Saudi Arabia.   Feisal became King of Iraq from 1921 CE.
Chaim Weizmann 1874-1952 was born at Motel, near Pinsk, Belarus. A chemist, became the 1st president of Israel.  Belarus was one of states Jews were allowed to live in by the Russians.  We were not allowed to "mix in" with other people of Russia.  

The accusation by Muslims today is that Jews living in Israel today are not the same as the original Jews.  I beg to differ.  If anyone is the same in this world from 4,000 years ago, it most likely is the Egyptians and the Jews.  Take me, for instance.  DNA can find how much Neanderthal genes I carry in my cells, which is 2.9%.  If they can go back that far, don't you realize they can do a pretty good job in finding my Jewish genes?  Realize that I was born Jewish.  That's the ticket.  We are born Jewish.  If our mother is Jewish, we are born Jewish.  It's an inherited religion that goes back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Once we are born, we are labeled as a Jew.  In the world since the days of the Greeks and Roman Empires, that has been a stigma.  Nobody has wanted to cavort with a Jew.  In turn, most of us prefer to marry within our own religion anyway..

It's like being born purple.  We are marked.  We have also been marked so much that we have been locked up in ghettos and have not been allowed to mix in a general population to find mates.  So we have become an endogamous society.  That means we've been forced to keep on intermarrying with each other throughout the centuries and when not forced, a preference.  It's been a rather closed society.  The only division has been after 70 CE when some in escaping a burning Jerusalem and death stayed within the state of Judah and their descendants are today's Mizrachim.  Others traveled to what was to become Spain and are today's Sefardim. They, because of the Spanish Inquisition, have had more incidences of intermarriage leading to less distinctive DNA than the Ashkenazis who were the  other Jews  who most likely were already taken to Rome or lived there as traders before 70 CE were forced to leave and go to what became France and Germany and became the European branch or Ashkenazim Jews.  The Ashkenazim have been relatively homogeneous despite the fact that they are spread throughout Europe and have since immigrated to the Americas and a few back to Israel.
                                                                               

"About 80% of today's Jewish males and 50% of Jewish females trace their ancestry back to the Middle East.  The rest entered the "Jewish gene pool  through conversion or intermarriage.  Those who did intermarry often left the faith in a generation or 2, in effect pruning the Jewish genetic tree.  Many converts became interwoven into the Jewish genealogical line.  Remember Ruth, of Moab who married Boaz and became the great-grandmother of King David.  She began as an outsider, but you don't get much more Jewish than the bloodline of King David!"

Some misguided people are so devoid of our history that they think Jews just popped up in Europe.  I know this because I've been assailed by this accusation on some of my articles.   They think that the creation of Israel was done by Europeans, and have no business there.  Not so at all.

Many Jews are unaware of their own history.  Because of WWII and 6 million Jews being slaughtered, many lost records of their family lines, records that were quite well kept as of 1040 when RASHI, the great biblical commentator was born in Troyes, France.  Take me, for instance.  I knew that my paternal grandfather, carrier of the DNA haplotype of Q1b1a, was born and raised in Telsiai, Lithuania and managed to get himself to Council, Idaho and then Portland, Oregon.  That's what I knew.  What DNA has supplied me with along with a method called triangulation, was that I discovered our connection to Austrian and German Jews.  Our surname was German as well, being Goldfus in the original form.  So I  found out  that our migration pattern went from Rome (where I have DNA segments) to RASHI through a Rabbi Wertheimer who lived in Worms, Germany born in 1658.  From then to 1870, my ancestors made it to Lithuania.

Looking at history, the reason Jews left Germany and Austria way back then over 1,000 years ago was political and anti-Semitic.  As they kept on traveling north, they would be invited to live in a country, and then expelled for these same reasons.  Finally, terrible anti-Semitism in Russian lands caused many to take the fairly dangerous trip to the United States or "Palestine.' before the USA was available.  Our grandparents found anti-Semitism here as well, but usually didn't lead to pogroms and death.  Europe was another story.  Anti-Semitism was gaining power, causing many European Jews to emigrate to their homeland, now called Palestine.  They started the creation of the original homeland, Israel.

The Jordanians are not native of the land of Israel.  They came from Arabia, losing out on being king, Abdullah  I wanted to have a kingdom in another part of the Middle East.  Palestinian Arabs originally called themselves Palestinian Syrians.   They were from those northern tribes originally and many surrounding neighbors according to the research done by Joan Peters, who went to original sources in her book about their history.   Only a very few owned land in Palestine at the time of the 1880 Russian Jewish aliyah.  More came to the land seeking jobs with the newly arriving Jews.

Lebanon is mentioned in the Bible in relation to the Cedars of Lebanon when they were used by Solomon in building the Temple.  The Jewish population living there goes back to ancient times.  Jews lived in Beirut, Tripoli, Tyre and Sidon and were traders.

 Syria (Aram)  never did have a homogeneous state.  The coast was settled by Phoenicians.  Syria was overrun by the Assyrians in the 8th century BCE.  Jews lived here in Antioch  as well, most likely traders.  During the Seleucid era from 323 BCE to 64 BCE, Jews suffered from the hostility of the Greeks.  The most important Aramean kingdom in Syria in the 10th to 8th centuries BCE was Aram-Dammesek, called after its capital, Damascus/Hebrew is Dammesek.   In 920 BCE, when Israel was divided into Israel and Judah it became the great danger to Israel.
                                                                         

Abram-Abraham-1948 BCE

Abraham came from Aram-Naharaim or Aram of the 2 Rivers.  This was the biblical description for the NE area of Mesopotamia.  It's the land of origin of the patriarchs, and nearly all the names of the ancestors of Abraham, that is Serug, Nahor, and Terah,  all correspond to place-names in this region.  Abraham was the father of Ishmael through Hagar, the Egyptian  and the father of Isaac through his wife, Sarah, who was his niece-family.  Abraham's father was Terah.  Abraham's brother was Haran, who was the father of Sarah.  Nahor was Terah's father.  Serug was Nahor's father.  They keep going back till they reach Shem, one of the 3 sons of Noah.  There was Ham, Japheth, and Shem.  Abraham must have brought the story of the Flood with him and passed it onto his children.

As Noah passed on his story of his flood to his children, so we Jews have passed on our story of our purpose and existence through our Torah.  No, we didn't pop up in Europe.  Our ancestors, of who we carry with us in our DNA, knew Jacob-Israel and the 12 tribes very well.  Jews have claimed back their land.

Jews have been afraid of the concept that Judaism might be a race, but medical geneticist, Harry Ostrer insists the "biological basis of Jewishness" cannot be ignored.


 The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/dna-links-prove-jews-are-a-race-says-genetics-expert-1.428664?...by Jon Entine
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/06/what-are-jewish-origins.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/jewish-genes-what-haplogroup-could-they.html