In reply to Population Origins

Submitted by Bob Gardner (United States), Dec 21, 2014 at 00:27

Arafat was half Egyptian--but his father was from Gaza, and furthermore a member of the prominent Al-Husseini family. He's related to a lot of big names in palestine: The insane Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as well as the noteworthy humanitarian Hind Al-Husseini. Also look a little more carefully at Edward Said's family history and you'll see his genetic ties to palestine are pretty strong--in fact you need only look at where his two parents came from. His family may have lived in Egypt, but that wouldn't disqualify him from being palestinian in the same way an Ashkenazi jew from America wouldn't be disqualified from being Jewish despite being born in America.

If you understand this guy's argument, it's almost as if he's alleging that the palestinians were their own long lasting ethnic group, though if that's got a grain of truth to it, it's likely that lebanese arabs and even syrian arabs also have some hebrew roots.

But I did check out one of Jack's sources here. Nebel et al (2001) says pretty clearly that their research seemed to confirm the historically held belief that the palestinian non-bedouin arabs were descended from jews and christians who converted to Islam in the 7th century (Where those same people were descended from the core population living there alongside the ancestors of today's jewish people).

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