Talk:Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry

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@Skllagyook: Can you give me a source or evidence that confirms that the hypothesis is "largely abandoned"? Can you also explain to me why the science reporter Danielle Venton is not an "expert" source? Is there a Wikipedia policy that says science reporters should not be cited? or is this your personal opinion? It is also self-evident that proponents of the Khazar hypothesis say that the Khazars fled to Eastern Europe after the destruction of their empire, certainly the proponents of the hypothesis are not so stupid that they do not see the absence of the Khazars in the Caucasus, and now they say that they emigrated to Eastern Europe. --Averroes 22 (talk) 00:54, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: Genetic research generally has rejected the hypothesis. This can be seen in the genetics section of the articke (studies by Behar, Koppelman, Richards, Hammer, etc.)l The exception would be Elhaik and his group (though even he modified his hypothesis somewhat in his 2016 study, as covered in the article). Either way, it is a minority opinion. Experts in linguistics and onomastics have also rejected the theory.

There is not a general policy that reporters cannot be cited at all, but as I understand, per WP:RS the opinions of non-scientists (such as science reporters) on matters scientific would not be reliable. She is not an expert in any of the relevant disciplines (history, linguistics, genetics, demographics, etc.).

Regarding the addition of the following text to the lead: "The hypothesis postulated also that after collapse of the khazar empire, the khazars fled to Eastern Europe and they made up a large part of the Jews there."

I don't have so much of an issue with it (it is what proponents of the hypothesis argued), except that it seems unecessary and a bit redundant, since such a migration would already be implied by the text (already in the lead) that states that the theory's proponents believe the Jews of Eastern Europe derived from the Khazars who lived in the Caucasus and Ponto-Caspian steppe (thus, accirding to the hypothesis, they would have had to migrate from there to Eastern Europe).

Regarding the opinion of Koestler, it seems undue in the lead and, if used, would be better placed in the "History" section. Koestler is controversial and it gives undue weight to the opinion of one thinker on the subject (whose arguments regarding Jewish Eaatern European population expansions were challenged by more recent research such as that of DellaPergolla and others). Skllagyook (talk) 01:16, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: That Genetic researchers refuse the theory because there are no confirmed genetic evidence linking the origins of the Ashkenazim to the Khazars, but at the same time, there is no confirmed genetic evidence to refute this link, therefore, some researchers, such as Eran, argue that the unconfirmed evidence is sufficient to prove the theory, what is your evidence that the number of researchers who reject the theory is greater? and what if that section focuses more on researchers who reject it? Also, there is many historical evidence that confirms the conversion of some Khazars to Judaism, and this evidence is more certain as there are no historians who deny the conversion of some Khazars to Judaism. How about writing "controversial" as many sources describe it, rather than writing "largely abandoned" which is a personal opinion?

So what? What is your evidence that it is not permissible to cite science reporters? Note that the job of science reporters is to write the opinions of scientists and specialists, not their personal opinions.

So what is the problem with the text being clear? Why do you think it should be understood "implicitly"? --Averroes 22 (talk) 02:25, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: I was under the impression that you were using the article by the science journalist to support removing the statement that the Khazar theory was mostly abandoned (perhaps I was incorrect and you were not using it in that way). That source would be reliable where it reports the statements of specific scientists (such as where it quotes/paraphrases Elhaik) but not if/where the author herself offers her own synthesis or opinion on the science/topic (since she is not a scientist/relevant expert). (Her article, being from 2012, also predatates later work such as the large 2013 study by Behar et al.)

The majority of research on the subject (including the Behar et al study, with many co-authors and citations, among others before and after) has found no evidence that Ashkenazi Jews have Caucasus and/or Central Asian ancestry (to a significant degree) and has stated that a Khazar origin is unlikely (or refuted)/has rejected the Khazar theory, instead finding that they have mainly other ancestry (from Europe and the Middle East). As far as I know, there have been no contemporary scientific studies (by experts in the field) supporting the Khazar hypothesis (arguing that the Ashkenazi are substantially or largely of Khazar origin) that would be WP:RS (with the possible exception of Elhaik, whose Khazar proposals were widely challenged). Using a word like "controversial" instead seems to risk creating the impression of WP:FALSEBALANCE when one position is in fact a minority one.

The Khazar hypothesis (that Ashkenazi Jews derive largely from Khazars) is very different from the idea that some Khazars converted to Judaism. The latter is less disputed and does not imply that those converts went on to become the ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews.

Regarding the sentence, "The hypothesis postulated also that after collapse of the khazar empire, the khazars fled to Eastern Europe and they made up a large part of the Jews there."

I don't object to it if you think an the addition of explicit statement like this is an improvement, though it does not seem to me necessary. I have added it back. Skllagyook (talk) 04:24, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: As any other science reporter, it is assumed that everything she writes are the opinions of professionals, not her own opinion, and she was clearly reports the statements of specific scientists when she said that there are several scholars who prefer it. What is your evidence that she lied and interpolated her personal opinions? Also, she has mentioned the behar study on her report, please check the citation again.

Certainly there is no connection between the origins of the Ashkenazim and the current inhabitants of the Caucasus, and this is what the proponents of the theory themselves say, but they explain this that the Khazars fled from the Caucasus, so the current inhabitants of the Caucasus are not considered descendants of khazars, and they also explain their association with the Middle East is that the inhabitants of the Caucasus are genetically close to populations from the Middle East. Accordingly, the existence of an Ashkenazi association with the Middle East is not confirmed evidence that refutes the theory.

That as far as you know, and that doesn't mean that only what you know is correct, give me a source that support what you know.

So they are ancestors of who? Are they ancestors of Falash Mura Jews or what? Where are the Jews Khazars now? Did they simply disappear? --Averroes 22 (talk) 14:26, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: I was referring to the Behar et al. 2013 study, which came after Elhaik's 2012 paper. Daniel Venton, the science reporter, mentions Behar et al. 2010, but not Behar et al 2013 (which addressed some of the propositions of Elhaik 2012). Here is a link to Venton's article (which is from 2012):

https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1093%2Fgbe%2Fevs129

The statement that modern Jews lack Caucasus affinity because the Khazars fled the Caucasus (leaving no Khazar descendants there) appears to be your own intepretation and is not in any of the reliable sources (the Khazars would have to have been very different from other Caucasian peoples for that to make sense, and that argument does not seem to be present in the sources). The Khazars, both those thay practiced Judaism and those that did not, would have had mainly Caucasian and/or Central Asian affinities (similar to other local peoples). And it is not stated that all fled (some would have abandoned Judaism and remained and others likely were never Jewish to begin with).

It is not the case that, as you said "Accordingly, the existence of an Ashkenazi association with the Middle East is not confirmed evidence that refutes the theory." Behar 2013 for instance specifically finds greater affinities (in Ashenazi Jews) with Middle Eastern populations than with those from the Caucasus. And thus it is concluded that a Khazar origin is unlikely. So far you have not provided and reliable sources (such as contemporary genetic studies) explicitly supporting the Khazar theory, that would go in the direction of supporting the statement that it has not been "mostly abandoned". Can you cite any?

You wrote:

"As any other science reporter, it is assumed that everything she writes are the opinions of professionals, not her own opinion, and she was clearly reports the statements of specific scientists when she said that they are many scientists prefer it."

I don't know that we can make that assumption when no specifics are given. A science reporter is not a scientist and does not have scientific expertise. Nor does she mention who these scientists are or give, names, quotes, or specfics (or how she came to that statement,), or according to whom. This seems to be an example of the synthesis/opinion on the topic of someone who is not an expert in it. We do not know who/what Venton means by "several"; she could have meant Elhaik and his co-authors. And "several" can mean anything from a few (a minority) to many/a lot. Venton is a reporter who covers a wide range of scientific topics, some far removed from population genetics (as seen in this link: https://www.kqed.org/author/dventon) and is in no way a specialist in the field. A vague statement by a non-expert is not sufficient for basing statements regarding consensus/general opinion on a scientific topic. Skllagyook (talk) 14:59, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: Your recent addition of the statement to the lead that "there is no doubt" that Khazars contributed to the formation of Eastern European Jews but that the extent is debated, is also WP:UNDUE. This statement is the opinion of one source (a review of Elhaik and not a study in itself), and it also predates the 2013 Behar study in response. There is no reason to assume that this definitive statement is generally held and it should not be added to the lead nor written in Wikivoice (i.e. in the voice of Wikipedia) as thoufmgh definitive. But the statement could perhaps be added elsewhere in the article, and attributed to its author (instead of being stated in Wikivoice). Skllagyook (talk) 17:25, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: If what the source says is not true, then where are the Khazars now? You said that they left Judaism and strayed there, but there is no source that says this. The explanation that they went to Eastern Europe is the best explanation for the lack of the Khazars in the Caucasus. --Averroes 22 (talk) 17:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: That is your own interpretation and is not in the sources. They (even Khazar theory proponents) are not claiming that the entire Khazar population abandoned the Caucasus and resettled in Eastern Europe, but that a part of it did. (Also there still are groups that practice Judaism in the Caucasus, like the Krypchaks and Crimean Karaites, but whether they descend from Khazars is very uncertain/debated.) Editing based on your interpretation, and what you think is the best explanation, would be WP:OR (which isagainst Wikipedia policies). The Khazar Empire/Khaganate collapsed, and it and its elite (who may or may not have practiced Judaism) and their identity subsequently lost prominence in the area. Also, the Khazar Empire was a multi-ethnic conglomerate made up of various peoples, not just one, but those peoples would have been mostly of Caucasus and Central Asian origin (the elite, having been Turkic-speaking, would have been of Central Asian origin initially). Skllagyook (talk)

@Skllagyook: WP:OR It has nothing to do with my question, because this policy talks about adding personal analyzes that are not supported by sources to articles, but what I add to articles depends on sources. You said that when I add this information to the introduction, I give undue weight, I am trying to prove to you that this information is important, contrary to what you say. Krypchaks is no longer be existing, and Crimean Karaites is living in Crimea, not in the Caucasus, and a part of them have immigrated to Israel. Also, you're based basically on your own personal opinions when you said science reporters can't be cited. So you think that khazars are simply disappeared? Can you explain to me how? --Averroes 22 (talk) 19:37, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: I previously explained why adding the statement that "there is no doubt" that the Khazars contributed to Eastern European Jews to the introduction is undue. It is not the general opinion/is contradicted by statements from other research, and it definitely should not be written in the voice of Wikipedia as though definitive (and, as mentioned the source of thay statement predates the large 2013 study by Behar et al. that investigated the issue). I never said anything about the Khazars disappearing. Your personal opinion that they must have gone west and vacated the Caucasus is not admissable here, and is, as explained, WP:OR (which does seem relevant since you continue to use this personal opinion as an argument). As I also explained, cultures rise and fall, despite nonetheless leaving lineal descendants. The Celtic Gauls of France, the various pre-Roman non-Latin tribes of Italy, and the Phoenicians of Lebanon no longer exist as distinct cultures (their cultures collapsed or were conquered and their identities essentially no longer exist), but they did not go biologically extinct (nor fully vacate their homelands) and still have many descendants and contribute significant ancestry to many people in France, parts of Italy, and Lebanon respectively. (And, as also explained, the Khazar state was a conglomeration that included various ethnic groups, generally of Caucasian and Central Asian origin) which covered most of the northern and central Caucasus (and parts of Ukraine). But neither of our opinions (what either of us personally "think" is likely) matters here. What matters is what reliable sources explicitly say and that they are represented in a WP:DUE manner.

Also, I did not say that science reporters can not be cited. I said that a vague unspecified assessment by a non-exoert (on the state of a science they have no expertise in) should not be cited as though it is authorative (let alone one from 2012). That is not my personal opinion but rather Wilipedia policy. I already explained all of this in previous comments. Please do not disregard my explanations. Skllagyook (talk) 20:05, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: Which statements that contradicted what is written in the citation? other citations said that there is no evidence associated the Ashkenazim generally with the Khazars, but does not negate the Khazar immigration. There is historical evidence indicating that the Phoenicians converted to Christianity, for example, but there is no historical evidence indicating the conversion of the Khazars to Christianity or Islam. You initially used your opinions as an argument to prove that science reporters cannot be cited, and you have used your opinions as arguments other times, don't deny that now. --Averroes 22 (talk) 20:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22:. You said: "You initially used your opinions as an argument to prove that science reporters cannot be cited.."

That is not the case, and that is not what I said (and even if I had said that, I am not arguing that now). I said from the beginning: "There is not a general policy that reporters cannot be cited at all, but as I understand, per WP:RS the opinions of non-scientists (such as science reporters) on matters scientific would not be reliable." I have since, in following replies, explained and expanded upon this several times now. As I also explained, neither of our opinions are admissable as a basis for editing. What matters are statements from reliable specialist sources. Contemporary genetic studies have rejected the hypothesis that Ashkenazi Jews substantially descend from the Khazars, hence the statement that the hypothesis has been mostly abandoned (the non-specific claim from 2012 of a non-scientist that "several" scholars believe in it is insufficient to establish otherwise, especially since her statement was made before the Behar et al. 2013 study, and we cannot know exactly what "several" means in that context). If you have a contemporary study/studies from WP:RS supporting the Khazar hypothesis, you are wellcome to present it. I would greatly appreciate it if you would please carefully read my replies and and engage with what I am saying. Skllagyook (talk) 21:15, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22:.

Also, regarding this edit [[1]], it misrepresents the source, and is similar to contentious edits you mafmde in the past (and edit warred over). The study clearly concludes that Khazar origins are unlikely. Your addition misleadingly represents the results of the study as tentative or more inconclusive than they were. The study clearly concluded against the Khazar hypothesis. The issue, as you may remember, was discussed here. Skllagyook (talk) 21:20, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: I did not delete the results of the study, the source clearly says that there were difficulties, so I explained it. Why do you think the mention of difficulties should be ignored? --Averroes 22 (talk) 21:25, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: Your addition is was contentious when you added it before, and is misleading for reasons that were already explained then, here:

[[2]]. Now you are attempting to re-add it against WP:CONSENSUS. Before your addition, the edit already stated that there were no known Khazar samples. But that the study nonetheless concluded that Khazar origins (for the Ashkenazi) were unlikely. As, explained to you before (some months ago), which I will explain again, the study stated that determining the issue of Khazar ancestry had been difficult in the past. But that their large collection of Caucasian (and Near Eastern and European) population samples (much larger than before) sought to remedy this difficulty. And, having used their large collection of samples, they conclude against the Khazar hypothesis. To add the statement that determining whether Ashkenazi Jews are of Khazar origin is difficult because of a lack of known samples misrepresents what the study says/concludes in ther final analysis (which is that due to their large collection of samples, it is now less difficult, and that a Khazar or other Caucasian origin is unsupported.). Skllagyook (talk) 21:50, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: Also, you didn't answer all my questions I asked you before, which statements that contradicted what is written in the citation? other citations said that there is no evidence associated the Ashkenazim generally with the Khazars, but does not negate the Khazar immigration. There is historical evidence indicating that the Phoenicians converted to Christianity, for example, but there is no historical evidence indicating the conversion of the Khazars to Christianity or Islam. --Averroes 22 (talk) 21:32, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: Whether the Khazars immigrated or not, or where they went, the sources do not support the claim that there is no doubt that the Khazars contributed to contemporary Ashkenazi Jews, nor do they support your removal of the statement that the Khazar hypothesis (which again posits that the Ashkenazi are substantially Khazar) has generally been abandoned by scholars. Please read my last several replies to you if you have not (I left several recently in rather close succession, perhaps you did not see all of them.). Please read all of the thread. I have attempted to explain in detail my issues with your additions. Skllagyook (talk) 21:50, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: Please check the source well, the large collection of samples was to solve the limited genetic data, not to solve the lack of known Khazars' descendants. --Averroes 22 (talk) 22:15, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: And the purpose of that was to investigate the theory of Khazar origins for Ashkenazi Jews. The conclusion/result of the study was against that theory. Skllagyook (talk) 22:54, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: So did you see me deny that result? I will ask again, why do you think the difficulties they faced should be ignored or not mentioned?

@Skllagyook: Please specify for me exactly, where are the sources that do not support the addition or contradict it? Why do you think that this source is not enough and that other sources should support it? Note that other sources attempt to discuss the origins of the Ashkenazim in general, but do not deny the Khazar immigration. --Averroes 22 (talk) 22:25, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: As I explained, whether Khazars left the Caucasus or not, does not answer the question of whether the Khazar hypothesis is accurate. The hypothesis is the idea that the Ashkenazi are descended from the Khazars. The majority of research concludes against that position (and thus does not support the Khazar hypothesis). (If they migrated out, that would not necessarily mean the Ashkenazi are descended, or significantly descended, from them.) It could be that Khazars did immigrate but were not ancestral (or substantially so) to Ashkenazi Jews, in that case the Khazar hypothesis would still not be true (and editing according to assumption that the former necessitates the latter would be WP:OR). And some researchers, such as Shaul Stampfer (mentioned in the "History" section of the article) contest the idea of the Khazar conversion to Judaism to begin with (and if it did occur it would have only involved a part of the population).Skllagyook (talk) 22:54, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: Exactly, that's what I meant, it's seem that you thought I added that in order to support this theory, but what I mean is that the Khazars have emigrated, but they may were not ancestral, or their contribution was little to the Jews of Eastern Europe, so that the Khazar immigration isn't contradicting with the sources that say the Khazar hypothesis is not correct, do you think it is justified to add that information now? --Averroes 22 (talk) 23:18, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: What information are you proposing adding/do you want to add? Skllagyook (talk) 23:24, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: The information I have put here, but apparently you misunderstood it and thought it contradicted the sources that say the Khazar hypothesis is incorrect. --Averroes 22 (talk) 23:32, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: That addition says:

"While there is no doubt that the Jewish Khazars fled to Eastern Europe and contributed to the establishment of Eastern European Jews, the extent of this contribution has been debated."

It states that "there is no doubt that the Jewish Khazars contributed to the establishment of Eastern European Jews" which clearly does claim the Khazar hypothesis is correct (or somewhat correct) and it does so in Wikipedia's voice as though it were consensus. I explained the problems with this earlier. Also, as mentioned, it is not even agreed upon that Jewish Khazars fled to Eastern Europe or that a significant number of Khazars were Jewish to begin with (though that at least appears to be less controversial than the idea that they substantially contributed to Eastern European Jews). Skllagyook (talk) 23:47, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: No, this does not necessarily mean that the Khazar hypothesis is correct. The Khazars certainly emigrated and did not simply disappear, but the fact that they emigrated does not necessarily mean that they themselves founded the Ashkenazi ethnic. This is seem to be your personal opinion, since it seems that the fact that the Khazar Jews immigrated is enough to prove the theory to you, but it may not be enough for others. --Averroes 22 (talk) 00:03, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: It does say that. It clearly says that "there is no doubt that the Jewish Khazars contributed to the establishment of Eastern European Jews" meaning that Ashkenazi Jews have Khazar ancestry, not just that Khazars migrated. I explained the issues with this. Skllagyook (talk) 00:06, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: Oh, I have finally understand what do sources mean, it seems that Ashkenazi Jews have a Caucasian and middle eastern origins, to be sure, please read behar study again, he doesn't completely denied the Caucasian origins, this mean that there is no doubt that Khazars Jews didn't disappear and emigrated to eastern Europe, then they mingled with other Jews there, but the problem is in the extent of their contribution to the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews, meaning is: were the Khazar Jews the majority and contributed greatly to the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews, or were they a minority and did not have a significant impact on the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews? The answer of this question is what Bihar, Eran and others argue for. --Averroes 22 (talk) 00:51, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: You do not seem to understand. Behar (Behar 2013) does not say that Ashkenazi Jews have Caucasian and Middle Eastern origins. He (and his co-authors say that they have mixed Middle Eastern and European origins but that there is no evidence that they have Caucasus ancestry (and that they show no signs of having it). The statement (from your 2012 source reviewing Elhaik) that there is no doubt that Khazars contributed to Ashkenazi Jews is from a source that came before the Behar 2013 study. The Behar 2013 study does not agree with that idea (there are other sources cited here that also do not agree). That is why the statement is undue and should certainly not be added to the lead in Wikipedia's voice as though most scholars agree with it. I explained this before. Please re-read my replies.

Here is a quote from Behar 2013:

"Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region." https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol_preprints/41/

Skllagyook (talk) 01:06, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: Notice that he said "and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region," notice that he said "significant genetic contribution", and he doesn't said "any genetic contribution", this indicates that there are a contribution of the Khazars, but it is not a significant contribution. Finally, I would like to ask, where are the Khazars now? --Averroes 22 (talk) 01:27, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: It does not indicate that there is a contribution from the Khazars. That is not stated anywhere in the study. The study, on the contrary, specifically says:

"With the inclusion of the new data from the region of the Khazar Khaganate, each of a series of approaches, including PCA, spatial ancestry analysis (SPA), Bayesian clustering analysis, and analyses of genetic distance and identity-by-descent (IBD) sharing continues to support the view that Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry derives from the Middle East and Europe, and not from the Caucasus region."

And:

"Analysis of this large data set does not change and, in fact, reinforces the conclusions of multiple past studies, including ours and those of other groups (Atzmon et al. 2010; Bauchet et al. 2007; Behar et al. 2010; Campbell et al. 2012; Guha et al. 2012; Haber et al. 2013; Henn et al. 2012; Kopelman et al. 2009; Seldin et al. Genetics of Ashkenazi Jewish Origins / 8852006; Tian et al. 2008). We confirm the notion that the Ashkenazi, North African, and Sephardi Jews share substantial genetic ancestry and that they derive it from Middle Eastern and European populations, with no indication of a detectable Khazar contribution to their genetic origin." (Pages 184-5) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264390976_No_Evidence_from_Genome-Wide_Data_of_a_Khazar_Origin_for_the_Ashkenazi_Jews The 2013 Richards study (quoted in the article) also stated that its findings (on maternal lineages) contradicted the Khazar hypothesis and found no evidence of Caucasiam origins. Skllagyook (talk) 01:35, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: I'm not saying that the source says it directly, but if what this source says is compared with other sources, what I'm saying makes sense to a large extent. I want to ask too, why the study used "significant" instead of "any"? and where are the khazars now? And which of your quotes contains a text that denies any origin from the Caucasus? --Averroes 22 (talk) 01:57, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: If the source does not say it directly, adding it is WP:OR. Per, policy, we only add material that is explicit/directly stated in the sources. The source does say that there is no evidence of Caucasus ancestry in the Ashkenazi (please read the quotes from the study I just added above), not only no significant Caucasus ancestry ("...continues to support the view that Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry derives from the Middle East and Europe, and not from the Caucasus region."). And it is not the only source that says that. Your opinion of what makes sense is not relevant. We edit based on the sources, not on out own opinions of what makes sense. Likewise, my personal opinion on where the Khazars are now (as you keep asking me) is not the point. The point is what the sources say.

You wrote: "but if what this source says is compared with other sources, what I'm saying makes sense to a large extent."

That sounds like WP:SYNTH, which isa form of WP:OR (editing based on your synthesis/personal reasoning from more than one source, which is against Wikipedia policy). Anyway, ou aplear to be mistaken aboug what Behar 2013 says. Skllagyook (talk) 02:04, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: You did not give a single evidence confirming that what I am saying is incorrect, I am trying to explain to you what the sources mean, and I do not write my personal opinions, and if you do not understand the sources in this way, it will seem to you as if the sources contradict each other, and this contradiction results from a misunderstanding of the sources. --Averroes 22 (talk) 02:18, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: It is not up to us to interpret what the sources mean (that would be WP:OR). It is our job as editors to report only what the sources directly say. Behar 2013 (and other sources) do in fact contradict the one review essay you cited claiming that there is no doubt that the Khazars contributed to the Ashkenazi (even most studies that proposed it were not that certain). That is because the Behar et al. Study is not in agreement with that statement. Sometimes sources do contradict. And in this case, the contemporary sources are mostly against the idea that Khazars genetically contributed to ancestry of the Ashkenazi (or at least against the idea that there is any evidence they did). I have already explained this many times and I feel that you are not engaging with what I am saying. It is clearly very WP:UNDUE to add to the article that "there is no doubt" that the Ashkenazi have Khazar ancestry/admixture (as though that were generally agreed upon, when it clearly is not). I'm afraid don't understand what you are missing. Skllagyook (talk) 02:30, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: This policy WP:SYNTH or this policy WP:OR have nothing to do with us, because this policy is talking about adding personal analysis which sources don't mention to the articles, but what I want to add to the article is mentioned clearly in the source. This policy WP:UNDUE also has nothing to do with us, because these speak of giving undue weight to the views, but what I want to add is beyond doubt, and certainly the Khazars have not simply disappeared. If what I'm adding is contradict with behar study, so why the study used "significant" instead of "any"?--Averroes 22 (talk) 12:59, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: You are trying/proposing to add a statement that claims that "there is no doubt Ashkenazi Jews have Khazar ancestry (as though it is generally agreed upon) based on one old source, when other, often more recent, and better quality sources (Behar, Koppelman, Richards, etc.) which are studies with many citations, do not agree with that statement. It is NOT generally agreed among scholars that "there is no doubt" that Eastern European Jews have Khazar ancestry. It is not generally agreed upon. There IS doubt (a lot of doubt according to some, including Behar). It should not be added to the lead in Wikipedia's voics as though most scholars agree on it. They do not. Adding it there in Wikipedia's voice (like it is an indisputed fact) implies that it is generally agreed upon, when it is not. I have already explained this several times. I have given you quotes from Behar. Behar (whose study is more recent than the source you want to add) did not find evidence of Caucasus ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews. You are trying to use you own reasoning to argue that your source and Behar agree somehow, but they do not agree according to what Behar actually says. The attempt to harmonise sources based on your own reasoning is WP:OR.

The source you want to add (which is old and not even a study) claiming that there is no doubt Khazars contributed to Ashenazi ancestry, is clearly in conflict with other sources (like Behar 2013). The source you want to add to the lead is one single source that other sources do not agree with, and it does not represent the current general opinion of geneticists. Behar's (more recent) results do not agree with that position. That is why it is not appropriate to add to the lead (the introduction) that there is no doubt that the Khazars contributed to Eastern European Jews (as though that were a generally agreed upon fact, when it is not a generally agreed upon fact). Do you understand what I am trying to explain? I'm not sure what you are not understanding

The quotes from Behar I gave above did not only say there was "no significant" Caucasian ancestry in Ashenazi Jews.

Behar et al. also said "that Ashkenazi, North African, and Sephardi Jews share substantial genetic ancestry and that they derive it from Middle Eastern and European populations, with no indication of a detectable Khazar contribution to their genetic origin."

The study found no detectable indication of a Khazar contribution.

Behar also (in the study) says that the study "...continues to support the view that Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry derives from the Middle East and Europe, and not from the Caucasus region."

"Not from the Caucasus region" meaning that their study suports the view that Ashkenazi Jews do not have Caucasus ancestry.

These quotes (which I quoted before) are in contradiction with the statement that there is no doubt that Khazars contributed to Ashkenazi Jews (and they are not the only statements like that in the study). Behar did not detect any Khazar contribution and also stated that "Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry derives from the Middle East and Europe, and not from the Caucasus region." This is not in agreement with the position that there is no doubt that the Ashkenazi have Khazar ancestry. There clearly is doubt. The "no doubt" statement is not generally agreed on not be added to the article as though it is.

I feel as though you are not reading my replies. Please try to read them fully. Thank you. Skllagyook (talk) 13:44, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: No, I read it all, but you don't convince me, behar study doesn't completely denid the the Caucasian origin, but he said their origin most to be Middle Eastern than to be Caucasian. If what I'm adding is contradict with behar study, so why the study used "significant" instead of "any"? --Averroes 22 (talk) 13:53, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: The quote that says "no significant is from the abstact (the introduction), but there are other quotes. As I showed before, the study also says that there is "no indication of a detectable Khazar contribution to their genetic origin." and "Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry derives from the Middle East and Europe, and not from the Caucasus region." (Not just that they are more Middle Eastern than Caucasian but that there is no evidence of a Khazar contribution or Caucasian ancestry). That clearly is in conflict with the view that there is no doubt of a Caucasian origin/Khazar ancestry (there is certainly doubt at the very least). Behar did not find Caucasian ancestry in them at all. The quotes ard clear. What is your objection? Skllagyook (talk) 14:04, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: Hey, do you think me stupid or what? Where does the study mentioned that? --Averroes 22 (talk) 14:17, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: I'm not sure what you mean. The quotes I gave in my last reply are from the study (Behar 2013). This one is from pages 884-885:

"We confirm the notion that the Ashkenazi, North African, and Sephardi Jews share substantial genetic ancestry and that they derive it from Middle Eastern and European populations, with no indication of a detectable Khazar contribution to their genetic origins."

And from page 865:

"Our study is the first to integrate genomic data spanning the Khazar region together with a large collection of Jewish samples. With the inclusion of the new data from the region of the Khazar Khaganate... continues to support the view that Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry derives from the Middle East and Europe, and not from the Caucasus region."

These are direct quotes from that study that state that no Caucasus ancestry was found and also "no indication of a detectable Khazar genetic contriution."

Here is the full study:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264390976_No_Evidence_from_Genome-Wide_Data_of_a_Khazar_Origin_for_the_Ashkenazi_Jews

Skllagyook (talk) 14:41, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Just for the record, Behar et als., own data on the localization of Ashkenazim 's ancient admixture proportions compared to neighboring populations places them not quite in the classic 'Middle East' but on both sides of the Bosphorus and environs. They refuse to share the data base on which their conclusions were based.Nishidani (talk) 15:38, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: Your edit (to the lead re Behar and the movement of the other material) is an improvement (over your earlier edits). Thank you. Skllagyook (talk) 15:49, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: I'm happy that we finally arrived to a solution that satisfies all parties. --Averroes 22 (talk) 15:59, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: Looking over the source (Science Daily) from which you took the statement that there is no doubt that the Khazars contributed to the Ashkenazi, I am uncertain whether it is a reliable source WP:RS in this context. The source of the statement does not appear to be a scientist. It is instead a source of popular journalism (not a scholarly journal). It is clear who the author is. Thus the opinion that there there is no doubt that the Khazars contributed to the Eastern European Jews may be an unqualified opinion, and seems to be possibly WP:UNDUE even in the place you moved it. Thus it seems that I may have been mistaken to agree to its retention here (but am unsure). It would be helpul to know who the author was and what kind of background they had (I will try to look into that). Here is the Science Daily link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScienceDaily Skllagyook (talk) 23:02, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

No, ScienceDaily is not a reliable source. It's churnalism. XOR'easter (talk) 23:16, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@XOR'easter: I suspected as much. The founders of Science Daily, though they may have some affiliation with the biological sciences generally, do not seem to have a background in genetics. I will look more into churnalism. In that case, the addition (citing Science Daily) should be removed from the Genetics section. Skllagyook (talk) 23:21, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: The fifth Paragraph of section of Genetic Studies quotes from the Jewish Voice newspaper, apparently not a reliable source. --Averroes 22 (talk) 23:39, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: It depends what is being quoted. For instance, if it's quoting the opinion/statement of a researcher it is likely reliable. That article is quoting the scientist Martin B. Richards. [User:Skllagyook|Skllagyook]] (talk) 23:41, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: If it is really quoting from a statement from a specialist, we will replace the source for the Jewish Voice magazine with the website of the university/research center in which that specialist works. If you have another source, put it. --Averroes 22 (talk) 23:53, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: That is not necessary. It is a reliable source on the opinion of the specialist/scientist it is quoting (the article explicitly attributes the statements to the scientists Richards and Ostrer). The other source was not reliable because the quote from it that was used from it came from the journalist's opinion and not the scientist it was discussing. Skllagyook (talk) 00:02, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: So how can we be sure that this specialist/scientist is really stated this? --Averroes 22 (talk) 00:08, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: Journalistic sources are considered reliable (per Wikipedia policy) on the events and statements they report. Whether or not you doubt that the person quoted said what was reported is not a reason to exclude a source (otherwise we would have remove all journalistic articles quoting people and all information from interviews) - as you know, we don't edit based on personal opinion. There is a problem when one relies on statements on a specalised topic made by a non-specialist like a journalist's opinion on science that is not attributed to a specialist (which is not the issue here).

This is the full quote from the article (quoting thr Richards and Ostrer):

"The finding should thoroughly debunk one of the most questionable, but still tenacious, hypotheses: that most Ashkenazi Jews can trace their roots to the mysterious Khazar Kingdom that flourished during the ninth century in the region between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire, Richards and Ostrer said."Skllagyook (talk) 00:18, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I see the language of "largely abandoned" has been previously challenged. WP:BURDEN requires this be properly sourced. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:59, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323: I hope you don't mind my moving your post to the end of the thread. Its position in the middle of an exchange with someone else seemed a little strange and would make it very hard to find and reply to.

It was previously challenged by one user, but as I explained to them in the discussion here, the Khazar hypothesis (i.e. the idea that the Ashkenazi are largely of Khazar origin) is rejected by the majority of relevant experts (including most geneticists who have published on the subject, historians, and linguists). This is sourced in the body of the article and in the lede. Thus "largely abandoned" is accurate. Skllagyook (talk) 13:14, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

It would be better to reflect the language used in reliable sources - the lead I edited was replete with colourful, almost chatty language that simply did not sound like the introduction to an encyclopedic entry. I see but a single source using the word "abandoned" (no largely) in the article, and that is from Bernard Lewis in 1987, making it a fairly outdated statement preceding most of the genetic studies on the subject, and definitely the one put forward by Elhaik in 2012. That is far from ideal. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:23, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323: I don't see how "largely abandoned" is chatty or encyclopedic. It seems accurate and informative given that the majority of relevant scholars (including geneticists) do not currently support and reject the theory. Elhaik may have supported it (albeit in a modified form). But his view was and is a minority one. That an idea is largely abandoned does not preclude there still being some proponents of it. Rather it means that they are in the minority, which is true in this case (among relevant experts). It would be inaccurate to call it "entirely abandoned". But we are not doing that nor would I propose such. But to remove the wording that is there would likely contribute misleadingly to the impression that the Khazar hypothesis is more accepted than it is, thus being WP:UNDUE and violating WP:FALSEBALANCE. One might perhaps propose some other/alternate wording along the lines of "The Khazar hypothesis has not been supported by most scholarship.", "The Khazar hypothesis is not supported by the majority of recent scholarship." , or even possibly as "a mostly rejected historical hypothesis" if you consider it preferable. But such a replacement seems to me unnecessary and seems to convey the same idea less concisely (at least the first two proposals would). The current wording seems to communicate its status as a hypothesis that is mostly rejected in a concise and accurate manner early in the article.Skllagyook (talk) 13:40, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

The first sentence of a lead should just state what a thing is, here a theory, not apply value judgement statement to it, which is a gross violation of NPOV. The only source that semi-supports this wording is wildly out of date. That the theory is not supported by the genetic evidence was still amply stated in the lead following my edit. At the same time, the actual article notes the huge unpredictability of genetic studies. Genetic science is still very young, flawed and coloured by bias. To quote the article: Summing up the results in 2015, the Yiddish scholar Alexander Beider stated that genetic studies often resulted in contradictory outcomes, complicated at times by the political or religious views of some researchers. As also noted, here, there is no clear population of supposed Khazar-descent to even study, adding further challenges. So the rather daft lead is a combination of a POV-y opening statement supported by an out-of-date characterisation of the theory (Lewis, 1987) that preceding all of the theoriy's genetic assessments, which themselves are by nature somewhat uncertain in their conclusions and remain contested. It's a disordered mess. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:58, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323: Several genetic studies (some covered in the article) have explicitly rejected the Khazar hypothesis. I think that (and other recent scholarship) is what supports the statement more so than Lewis. This includes the 2013 study by Behar et al., which, despite not having a clear Khazar population to test (which the current edit mentions), found no affinities between Ashkenazi Jews and (their large and diverse samples of) the populations of the Caucasus and Central Asia (where the Khazars lived and originated) and explicitly stated that the Khazar hypothesis was very unlikely. Your edit also removed that information which, was relevant and important. Also, Alexander Beider does not support the Khazar hypothesis. Later in the article he is quoted (accurately) as rejecting any Khazar or Turkic influence on Yiddish in an article by him entitled "Ashkenazi Jews are not Khazars. Here's the Proof".

The first sentence of a lede should sum up what a thing is. And in my opinion this one does. The thing in this case is a hypothesis that is supported by a minority of researchers (e.g Elhaik) but rejected by the majority (i.e. "largely"). There is nothing POV about stating this there. Skllagyook (talk) 14:12, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

As it stands, the first sentence absolutely does not say what the hypothesis is. It is a truncated POV colour statement about it being "largely abandoned" - an unsourced wording most closely resembling Lewis' 1987 conclusion based on the historical elements of the theory, not the genetic ones. Then and only then, in the second sentence, does the lead actually explain what the hypothesis is. As far as I can see "majority" is another word that does not appear anywhere in the current text summarizing the weight of the scholarship for or against the theory - so, like the language of "largely abandoned", this would appear to be a form of editorial WP:SYNTH. We can't just add up studies and claim an academic "majority" - we need a source stating this. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:38, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Lead reduplication

Ist lead sentence

The Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry, often called the Khazar myth by its critics,[1]:369[2]:VIII[3] is a largely abandoned historical hypothesis that has sometimes been abused to further antisemitic or anti-Zionist agendas.

Last lead sentence

The hypothesis has been abused at times by anti-Zionists to challenge the idea that Jews have ties to ancient Israel, and it has also played some role in antisemitic theories propounded by fringe groups of American racists, Russian nationalists and the Christian identity movement.

This violates the basic criteria of lead composition, and is a clear case of bludgeoning the point by repetition. Suggestions?Nishidani (talk) 22:30, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Nishidani. This sentence, starting with "The hypothesis..." is irrelevant to the facts that directly concern the article, and I believe it's an attempt to prejudice the reader towards a negative view of the theory. Iwasathought (talk) 21:44, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Original research

@Skllagyook: Where was this discussed and unanimously considered unnecessary? --Averroes 22 (talk) 17:26, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: I explained in the last topic that the Khazar theory was a minority view when you wanted to remove the statement that it is now "mostly abandoned". It is also the case (as I mentioned then) that the majority of geneticists/genetic resarch on the topic does not support it (and rejects it). That statement is not original resarch. Skllagyook (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: This sentence violates this policy WP:OR and this policy MOS:AWW. It is not allowed to add content that is not explicitly mentioned by the source, even if an editor believes that content is true. --Averroes 22 (talk) 17:42, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: In this case it is fairly clear that the Khazar theory is not suported my most contempary scholarship (again, if you can find contemporary studies supporting it, you might have a better case). The Behar study was large (many co-authors from several universities) and has been cited many times (citation counts are one measure of reliability/engagement by the mainstream) and explicitly rejected the Khazar hypothesis. And, as mentioned, it is not the only study that rejected or expressed skepticism of the Khazar hypithesis. Regarding words like "most" and "many" (per your link), these are not always considered "weasel words" and are sometimes appropriate. From the second link you gave:

"The examples above are not automatically weasel words. They may also be used in the lead section of an article or in a topic sentence of a paragraph, and the article body or the rest of the paragraph can supply attribution"

I can however, see how the use if the word "vast" in the current edit might seem a little too strong ("the vast majority of contemorary geneticists dismiss ig"). As a compromise I would propose removing the word "vast" so it reads/says "the majority of contemporary geneticists dismiss it." Skllagyook (talk) 17:58, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: I know, but even that, It is not allowed to add content that is not explicitly mentioned by the source, that what clearly mentioned in this policy WP:OR , especially since there are some scholars who support it, such as Eran and Koestler --Averroes 22 (talk) 18:17, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: Koestler is not a contemporary scholar (his work was decades ago) and he was not a geneticist (there were writers in the past that supported it, but we are talking about contemporary/recent research. Eran Elhaik is one who did support a version on it, but that the article says "most contemporay geneticists dismiss it" (not literally all of them). The Behar study (authored/co-authored by many including prominant often-cited geneticists in the field includin Behar himself) explicitly rejected it (along with other studies). It is not unjustified nor original research to say that most (not necessarily all, but most) contemporary geneticists reject it (two important words here are "contemporary" and "geneticist").Skllagyook (talk) 18:27, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: I know, but even that, It is not allowed to add content that is not explicitly mentioned by the source, that what clearly mentioned in this policy WP:OR. --Averroes 22 (talk) 18:31, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22:It is clear that the majority or geneticists that have published on the topic do not support the theory and that is is a minority view among contemporary geneticists. It would be extremely misleading to remove that statement and would create the inaccurate impression that the Khazar hypothesis is currently mainstream among geneticists and has as much support (or nearly so) as other theories, which it does not. This would violate WP:FALSEBALANCE. I understand that it may be too unclear/uncertain whether the majority of geneticists reject it because cannot know for sure what all geneticists believe (since many may have not published on the subject at all) but we do know what most who have published on the topic think based on the research that exists. Therefore we could rewrite the sentence to say either "the majority of contemporary geneticists who have published on the topic dismiss it" or alternately as "the majority of contemporary genetic research dismisses it." I prefer the first, but both of these statements are clearly supported by the contemporary genetic research (most of which which clearly does not support the Khazar hypothesis). Both alternatives seem fine to me. Skllagyook (talk) 18:46, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: Regarding your recent edit here [[3]], the proposed edit was "the majority of contemporary geneticists who have published on the topic dismiss it" not "many contemporary geneticists who have published on the topic dismiss it" as you just wrote. Your version was not agreed on; it's too ambiguous and does not communicate that the Khazar hypothesis is a minority view. "the majority" (or "most that have published...") communicates this. Skllagyook (talk) 19:17, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Skllagyook: So I prefer to remove it in order this controversy is over, it is anyway violate Wikipedia policy. --Averroes 22 (talk) 19:46, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Averroes 22: I explained why my proposed edit does not violate Wikipedia policy and why it is important to communicate on the page that the Khazar hypothesis is a minority position in genetics scholarship (which is clearly and adequately supported by the sources). Removing that information would be highly misleading. I do not see the problem with "The majority of contemporary geneticists who have published on the topic dismiss it" That is clearly true. What is your objection, given what I explained above (and in my other recent replies)?Skllagyook (talk) 19:55, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Short description

@Skllagyook, @Jeppiz: I'd like the reason why you both reverted this edit restored a short description well in excess of 40 characters in defiance of the WP:SHORTDESC guideline. Despite being made in a clearly separate edit, this was reverted without clear explanation. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:14, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323, contrary to what you say (no doubt in good faith but without having verified), it was not a separate edit. You made this single edit which is the only edit of yours I've reverted. Jeppiz (talk) 14:41, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Jeppiz: That was my revert, not the original edit, here [4]. Just because @Skllagyook reverted multiple edits together with inadequate explanation does not mean you are not obliged to follow suit, and you could have performed a partial revert. That other editors did something is not a justification. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:54, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323, well, the problem here is that you reverted back in the first place. After your original edit had been reverted by Skllagyook, you should not have reverted to reinsert it. Jeppiz (talk) 14:57, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Jeppiz: I reverted partly because @Skllagyook's revert was poorly explained, and partly because it rolled together changes that were entirely unexplained, such as reverting the changes to the short description - something that I explained in my revert, but which neither of the other reverts did. You still haven't explained why you reverted all of it or weren't able to perform a partial revert. I very much hope you didn't blind revert simply to make a point. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:24, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323. I did not revert you "to make a point", but I will make a point now: You have already been topic banned once from this topic area; your actions today make me wonder whether that topic ban should not be reinstated. You have edit warred in the same 1RR area from you were already banned, and now you're being very argumentative (including the entirely unwarranted warning you posted at @Skllagyook's talk, and now arguing that others should go through partial reverts when you're the one who whole-reverted. Drop the stick. Now. Jeppiz (talk) 15:31, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Jeppiz: I posted a DS alert, which is something that should be posted on the talk pages of all editors that are new to a conflict area. I'm going to ignore the rest of this post, which borders on personal attack. So you have no reason for reverting the short description then? Iskandar323 (talk) 15:35, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Iskandar323 I found the short description you suggested less accurate than the one in the stable version. Jeppiz (talk) 15:37, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Jeppiz: Then perhaps you'd like to suggest an alternative short description of around 40 characters (instead of 79) to abide by WP:SHORTDESC - simply reverting to a version that fails the first hurdle for a short description (being short) is not constructive. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:42, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

I'd recommend 'fringe theory of Jewish descent from Khazars'. Jeppiz (talk) 15:47, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Without the 'fringe' that's what I put - I don't think 'fringe' usually appears in short descriptions - I can't see it for any other 'fringe theories', and there is obviously the more general point that any theory is theoretically 'fringe' until proven or disproven. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:16, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Request new section to discuss Brook 2022 and later studies that confirm or disconfirm it

A new subsection called "Brook et al. studies" ought to be created on the entry "Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry" under the section "Genetics and the Khazar theory" on the basis of the following data and interpretations. Although the following line of thinking from Brook represents a paradigm shift, it's not to be labeled as fringe because these are actually sound arguments in favor of a Khazar contribution unlike those that came before, in addition to meeting the minimum standards of having been peer-reviewed and published by a respected academic publisher. The book is endorsed by Dr. Karl Skorecki who is listed as a co-author of three population genetics papers referenced in this Wikipedia entry.

First, it could be noted that this is yet another change in Brook's viewpoint, in comparison to Brook 2018. In his book The Maternal Lineages of Ashkenazic Jews (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2022), Kevin Alan Brook proposed that there actually are or may be multiple Khazar and Alan uniparental haplogroups in the modern Ashkenazi population in addition to small traces of Turkic and North Caucasian autosomal DNA.

The Ashkenazic branch under N9a3 is a daughter branch of a variety found in Turkic-speaking Bashkirs - citation: pages 85-86 in Brook 2022. Brook 2022, following YFull (https://www.yfull.com/mtree/N9a3a1b/) and Dr. Ian Logan (http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/sequences_by_group/n9a_genbank_sequences.htm), calls the Ashkenazic branch N9a3a1b1 and the Bashkir branch N9a3a1b.

Subsequently, a Mongolic-speaking Daur person from northeastern China was found to be at the same level as the Bashkirs - citation: "Genetic Diversity Analysis of the Chinese Daur Ethnic Group in Heilongjiang Province by Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequencing" by Mansha Jia, Qiuyan Li, et al. in Frontiers in Genetics volume 13 (21 June 2022), article no. 919063, url = https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2022.919063/full but in its supplemental data set and specifically GenBank accession number ON127764, which YFull and Logan both accept as members of branch N9a3a1b. Wikipedia has a standard format to cite accession numbers which is to use the "ref" tag between left and right angle brackets (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/angle_bracket) followed by two left curly brackets (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curly_bracket) then GenBank|ON127764.1 followed by two right curly brackets and a closing "/ref" tag between left and right angle brackets.

At this time, Han Chinese people have not been assigned to N9a3a1b or N9a3a1b1. The pattern is Turko-Mongolian, the population cluster that the core founding ancestors of the Khazars belonged to.

In addition, the Ashkenazic type of N9a3 was already present in Jews buried in Erfurt, Germany during the 14th century, specifically in female sample number I14740 from the population cluster "Europe-EU" which had more eastern origins and can be considered part of Knaanic Jewry in comparison to the "Europe-ME" group which was associated with Rhineland Jewry - citation: "Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century" by Shamam Waldman, Daniel Backenroth, Éadaoin Harney, Stefan Flohr, Nadia C. Neff, Gina M. Buckley, Hila Fridman, Ali Akbari, Nadin Rohland, Swapan Mallick, Iñigo Olalde, Leo Cooper, Ariel Lomes, Joshua Lipson, Jorge Cano Nistal, Jin Yu, Nir Barzilai, Inga Peter, Gil Atzmon, Harry Ostrer, Todd Lencz, Yosef E. Maruvka, Maike Lämmerhirt, Alexander Beider, Leonard V. Rutgers, Virginie Renson, Keith M. Prufer, Stephan Schiffels, Harald Ringbauer, Karin Sczech, Shai Carmi, and David Reich in Cell volume 185 (30 November 2022), an open access article with the doi = 10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.002 and url = https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01378-2 and she is specifically listed as N9a3a1b1 under the column labeled "mtDNA terminal (YFull)" on "Data S2, Table 1: The characteristics of the Erfurt samples." within Supplemental Data S2 at the url = https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.002/attachment/d79f736e-ddf7-4d98-af4e-50036da7e219/mmc2.xlsx and it is also noteworthy that on page 26 of Supplemental Data S1 at url = https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.002/attachment/22896784-6f78-4e3d-a8d9-b21531ad6809/mmc1.pdf it says that although there is "no major East-Asian ancestry" in Erfurt's Jews, "one individual (I14740) carried the mtDNA terminal haplogroup N9a3a1b1, which is nested within a Central/East Asian branch (https://www.yfull.com/mtree/N9a3a1/)."

Also, the Ashkenazic branch under A12'23 which is called A-a1b3* by YFull appears to be Central Asian, matching ancient Central Asians and ancient Siberians and a modern Turkmen from Uzbekistan - citation: page 17 in Brook 2022.

Further, the Ashkenazi paternal haplogroup G2a-FGC1093 is the same haplogroup that some North Ossetian and Kumyk people from the North Caucasus belong to - citation: page 7 in Brook 2022.

G2a-FGC1093 was subsequently also found to have been present in a man from ancient times (5th century BCE) from the Koban culture who was unearthed from the Zayukovo-3 Cemetery in Kabardino-Balkaria in the North Caucasus - future citation: the upcoming paper "Koban culture genomes sequencing" and its sample name lib7al_PE which is listed in a table circulated in public forums such as https://m.facebook.com/groups/417281705806518/posts/1189249118609769/ and at https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?8066-Genetic-Genealogy-amp-Ancient-DNA-in-the-News-(DISCUSSION-ONLY)&p=890549&viewfull=1#post890549 but it does not yet appear in public databases such as https://www.yfull.com/tree/G-FGC1093/

Page 141 of Brook 2022 highlights a passage in the 2013 study "No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews" where its authors acknowledged that they "cannot rule out the possibility that a level of Khazar or other Caucasus admixture occurred below the level of detectability in our study" and explains why their methodology was faulty and led to their inability to capture it.

Despite all this, at this moment there are no confirmed direct linkages between Ashkenazi haplogroups and Khazar haplogroups, as acknowledged in Brook 2022 on pages 140-141. Ashkenazi X2e2a is in the same broad haplogroup family as Khazar X2e but this is seen as insignificant because the Khazar was not confirmed to be X2e2a (page 141).

The preprint "Tracing genetic connections of ancient Hungarians to the 6-14th century populations of the Volga-Ural region" by Bea Szeifert, Dániel Gerber, et al. studies the genetics of "Novinki-type sites" that they say could include Khazars and one or two of their Novinki samples had the haplogroup they call A+152+16362 as stated on Figure 5 at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2022/04/28/2022.02.04.478947.full.pdf A reading of A+152+16362 is at the base of multiple subclades, one of which is A12'23 which includes Ashkenazi A-a1b3*. But the carriers in this study might not carry the extra necessary Ashkenazic mutation T16189C! but we don't know at this time because databases such as YFull and GenBank do not yet include this sample.

Ashkenazi haplogroup H40b is listed on page 141 in Brook 2022 as another haplogroup that cannot be found among Khazar samples already collected but its inclusion in that section implies, but does not directly state, that some Khazars could have had it, maybe. Page 52 in Brook 2022 states that H40b was common in the Kushnarenkovo-Karayakupovo culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushnarenkovo_culture says "N. A. Mazhitov thinks that the population of Kushnarenkovo culture were the ancestors of the ancient Bashkirs." But H40b is also in Poles, for whatever reason, so maybe that is its true origin for Ashkenazi Jewry.

Ashkenazi haplogroup U5a1d2b is also listed on page 141 of Brook 2022 in the sentence dealing with it being absent from existing Khazar samples. Brook did not commit to a Turkic ancestry hypothesis for Ashkenazi U5a1d2b but noted on page 107 that it is found in several Turkic populations (Bashkirs, Volga Tatars, Tubalars, Uyghurs) and North Caucasian populations in addition to many European populations.

Nowhere does Brook 2022 describe the Khazars as being related to Armenians, Georgians, Anatolians, Iranians, or Azerbaijani Jews. On page 140, the Khazars are described as an ethnicity of Turkic origin. This is in distinction to Elhaik.

On page 4, Brook 2022 disagreed with the hypothesis of a Khazar origin for Ashkenazi Levite haplogroup R1a1a.

On pages 140-141, Brook 2022 asserts that some Khazars and Alans did convert to Judaism. He does not state in this book that all of them converted.

Nothing in this book proves "that Ashkenazi Jews were primarily, or to a large extent, descended from Khazars," as Wikipedia interprets the Khazar hypothesis to be. It is only about small contributions of small lineages and small genome-wide percentages. But even a small amount would demonstrate the truth to the part Wikipedia says about "after collapse of the Khazar empire, the Khazars fled to Eastern Europe".

Brook 2022 and Brook 2006 did not agree with Koestler's assertion that Khazars "exchanged their native Khazar language for Yiddish" (Wikipedia's wording), contending instead that Khazars exchanged their Khazar language for a Slavic language and that the switch to Yiddish came centuries later. Brook 1999 argued that the Slavic-speaking Jews were not only part-Khazar and part-Alan but also part-Slavic in terms of ancestry, not only in terms of language. According to Waldman et al. 2022, the "Europe-EU" subpopulation in 14th-century Erfurt had high amounts of Slavic admixture. The Turkic-associated haplogroups N9a3a1b1 and A-a1b3* have not been identified in Slavic populations so Slavs aren't plausible transmitters of those haplogroups into a Jewish population and this is a separate phenomenon that stems from an originally separate non-Slavic population. Contrastingly, the existence of Slavic carriers of U5a1d2b and H40b renders weak the theoretical case for the Khazar origin of those two Ashkenazi haplogroups.

Further up, in the historiography section, Wikipedia refers to Brook's views that changed over time as he expressed across the first, second, and third editions of The Jews of Khazaria but does not yet mention how his views changed again as seen in Brook 2022, which was published four years after the third edition of the earlier book. 2600:1000:B12B:24B:185:E5E4:3D6E:BB01 (talk) 08:18, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

As you allude, Brook's book argues that there is may be a small Khazar contribution, but not that Ashkenazi Jews are substantially Khazar. He argues that Ashkenazi maternal lineages are mainly derived from the Middle East and various parts of Europe, with the Khazar contribution being small (as well as there being small contributions from China and North African Berbers). (Here: https://www.academicstudiespress.com/out-of-series/9781644699836#:~:text=It%20focuses%20on%20the%20129,lasting%20legacy%20of%20conversions%20to). I'm not sure sure it would be a paradigm shift since the possibility of small Khazar contributions was suggested by some before, and it is distinct from the idea that the Ashkenazi are mostly or to a large extent Khazar (i.e. the Khazar hypothesis). You wrote: "...that Khazars exchanged their Khazar language for a Slavic language and that the switch to Yiddish came centuries later." It seems that Brooks is arguing (as he did in earlier times) that Ashkenazi Jews descend mainly from proto-Askenazi Jews from west and central Europe - perhaps represented by the "Erfurt-ME" population - (who would have spoken a Germanic language ancestral to Yiddish) who then moved east and absorbed some Slavic-speaking Jews who were part Khazar (rather than the latter switching to Yiddish en masse). Anyway, an alternative to a new Brooks section might be to add a mention of Brook's new book to the the part of the "History" section where Brooks books are mentioned. Skllagyook (talk) 10:35, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

He argues that Ashkenazi maternal lineages are mainly derived from the Middle East

The study by Richards et al., (2013) found that 80% of the maternal lineage was European. Hence one should be very wary of a non-expertarriving at conclusions diametrically opposed to a team of informed specialists.Nishidani (talk) 15:10, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

One would need a source like an independent review written a competent professional paleogeneticist to evaluate Brook's new book. He is a dedicated scholar, and we gave leeway for the fact he was self-published and not reliably published in wiki terms for the earlier work. This may be different, but again, the field he summarizes is intricately complex, and only high level professional positive reviews could be used to refer to his results here. Nishidani (talk) 15:07, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

You wrote: "The study by Richards et al., (2013) found that 80% of the maternal lineage was European. Hence one should be very wary of a non-expert arriving at conclusions diametrically opposed to a team of informed specialists.

I wrote above that:

He [Brooks] argues that Ashkenazi maternal lineages are mainly derived from the Middle East and various parts of Europe

(with a minority from elsewhere). That would be different from but not exactly diametrically opposed to Richards and definitely not diametrically opposed to the 2014 study by Fernandez et al., which questioned the findings by Richards 2013 that Ashkenazi K lineages (around 35-40% of Ashkenazi mtdna lineages) are European, instead proposing that they (or some of them) could be Middle Eastern. (There were other geneticists that also questioned Richards 2013 such as Behar and Skorecki, though some others such as Ostrer, Goldsetin, and Torroni were more favorable.) So the idea that Ashkenazi mtdna could include a significant Middle Eastern component is not radical. It is true that Brooks was a non-expert whose past work was not professionally published. But this source is peer-reviewed and endorsed by Karl Skorecki, a prominent geneticist in the field. I think I might agree with you that it may not be appropriate (at least yet) to give Brooks his own section in "Genetic studies" given that the majority of his work was not peer-reviewed. But I don't see a problem with adding a mention of his 2022 book and its findings in the "History" section where Brooks' work is already described. Skllagyook (talk) 16:27, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Nishidani, Brook's other main book publisher, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, is not a self-publishing or non-professional operation but on par with Academic Studies Press. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowman_%26_Littlefield and, regarding peer review taking place for their books, https://rowman.com/page/rlauthres An anonymous author at https://humanitiesjournals.fandom.com/wiki/University_Presses_/Academic_Publishers wrote "Yes Rowman and Littlefield does indeed count for tenure at "prestige" x2. I'm in a top-ranked R1 department and my book with R&L counted in my promotion file and made a stir in the subfield." Karen Kelsky wrote at https://theprofessorisin.com/2012/09/21/does-the-status-of-the-press-matter/ "Presses like Ashgate, Rowman and Littlefield, and Palgrave and so on are an indeterminate rank and will count at some universities and departments more highly than at others."

The earlier press involved, Jason Aronson Publishers, was a mainstream press with separate religious/history and professional psychology divisions that was acquired by Rowman and Littlefield in 2003. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Aronson Brook's book was published by their religious/history division.

It was misleading of you to have quoted the part "He argues that Ashkenazi maternal lineages are mainly derived from the Middle East" while cropping away the other part of Skilagyook's words: "and various parts of Europe". Skilagyook already called you out on this. Page 139 in Brook 2022 offers the possibility that 8 of them are Italian or Greek. A paragraph on pages 137-138 includes 32 lineages interpreted to come from German and Slavic converts to Judaism. The end of page 138 "shows closer Spanish ties" for still another lineage. Only one lineage is seen as Chinese here (page 81). Two are viewed as North African but non-Egyptian on page 140. North Africa outside of Egypt is excluded from the Near East (Middle East) category according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_East The ones proposed to be Middle Eastern, such as the 7 lineages on the bottom of page 139, in raw numbers are outnumbered by these others combined with haplogroups for which Brook did not suggest a definitive origin, though proportionally some of the Middle Eastern ones have among the highest frequencies in the Ashkenazi population (page 15).

Besides, we can still see on page 77 of Brook 2022 that three non-Jewish European populations (but which are known for having Sephardic Converso ancestry, which may or may not be relevant in this case) have the Ashkenazi lineage K2a2a1 so this mainly departs from Richards 2013 in disassociating K2a2a1 from central or northern Europeans.

Brook 2022, page 72, repeated the plausibility of the possibility from Richards 2013 that K1a1b1a in Ashkenazi Jewry might derive from "southern or western Europe."

Brook 2022, page 84, agreed with Richards 2013 that the most common Ashkenazi N1b lineage could come from the "west Mediterranean" region of Europe.

Page 142 of Brook 2022 speaks of "remnants from the East Slavic-speaking pre-Ashkenazic Jewish population of eastern Europe, the East Knaanim" and goes on to state that "all Ashkenazim also descend from the ninth-century founders of the Ashkenazic population in Germany". He quotes Beider that the Erfurt-EU Jews who arrived were "Few in number". The isotopic analysis on page 5 in Waldman 2022 showed that Erfurt-EU and Erfurt-ME had "differences in water sources during childhood". Page 48 of Data S1 in Waldman 2022 uses the differences in isotopes to support the documentation about Jewish migrations into Erfurt from different lands with different dominant languages and cultures. 2600:1000:B12B:24B:1D42:A5C7:3560:3CFB (talk) 19:08, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

It is true that at the moment no second scientist has chimed in about Brook 2022, but any published reviews of it in academic/scientific journals could appear one, two, three years from now. The book was only published a little more than a month ago. 2600:1000:B12B:24B:1D42:A5C7:3560:3CFB (talk) 22:48, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Skllagyook. A small mention of the small amount of possible Khazar admixture according to Brooks may be merited but this isn't a major paradigm shift in the hypothesis. Andre🚐 20:54, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I didn't clip out anything wittingly. My mistake came from copying and pasting while watching the Argentina/Australia World Cup Match. What struck me in the line from Skllagyook's summary,

He [Brook] argues that Ashkenazi maternal lineages are mainly derived from the Middle East and various parts of Europe

Was the priority, in order, given to the Middle East; (b) that it contradicted Richard et al's study; (c) that the sentence is meaningless factually.

It is meaningless factually because Brook is construed as saying that the Ashkenazi genetic profile comes from an area extending from the western Mediterranean across Egypt, to Yemen, Saudi Arabia and eastern Iran, inclusive northwards of most of prsent day Turkey. I.e. there is zero specificity. It's like saying, when asked where one's mother's origins lay, 'Oh she and her kind came from somewhere between Spain and Iran.'

I presume our interlocutor is Mr Brook?Nishidani (talk) 23:37, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Brooks in his recent book proposes that the Middle Eastern lineages (or at least many of them) come from the region of ancient Israel. (From the link in my first post above "...the 129 maternal haplogroups that the author confirmed that Ashkenazim have acquired from distinct female ancestors...indigenous to diverse lands that include Israel, Italy, Poland, Germany, North Africa, and China, revealing both their Israelite inheritance and the lasting legacy of conversions to Judaism.")

My intention was not to imply that the Middle Eastern component was necessarily the majority merely by mentioning it first. By "mainly the Middle East and Europe" I meant that both that they were each significant elements and together made up the bulk (with Berber, central Asian/Khazar, or Chinese lineages being much more minor). Brooks' conclusions do differ from those of Richard's but, as mentioned, they do not differ so much from those of all other notable experts e.g. Fernandez et al. or the opinions of Behar of Skorecki. Skllagyook (talk) 23:43, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

But returning to the OP, all of the haplogroups Brook considers to be possibly Khazar could just as soon, and probably are, Slavic/Eastern European. N9 is explained to be Sarmatian, Magyar, or Hungarian. U it talks about Finnish, Polish, Belarussian, etc. Haplogroup H is said to be Italian and Iranian. I is Syrian and Turkish. And so on. K1a1b1a was thought to have a Levantine origin for the three Ashkenazi K founders while research considers it potentially Western European[5][6] Andre🚐 00:12, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

N9a was indeed in Sarmatians and Magyars (Brook 2022, page 86), as Andrevan said, but it has not been established that they were in the Ashkenazic branch of N9a named above. Slavic populations, in this case Czechs and Russians, belong to a different branch of N9a (Brook 2022, page 85). 2600:1000:B12B:24B:1D42:A5C7:3560:3CFB (talk) 04:04, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Brooks in his recent book proposes that the Middle Eastern lineages (or at least many of them) come from the region of ancient Israel.

All of this is inflected by the cultural bias that seeks to ascertain proof from the science of paleogenetics for the concept of a 'return to one's homeland' underwriting the religious ideology of Judaism. We all should know by now, it has been apparent since Behar 2013, that 'Middle East' is a code word for 'Israel', even though Behar admits that by 'Middle East' he is referring to Turkey. If one examines the literature in chronological sequence, there is a generic semantic drift from reflex affirmations of a Hebrew/Israel/Levantine origin in the 1990s, to a Middle East qua Turkish origin, which retains the mythistorical narrative of a common origin around 2500-Ist century CE point of departure, i.e. around the times of the Babylonian exile or the putative Roman 'expulsion' (79.135CE) As studies progressed,-and since in orthodoxy Jewish descent is determined through the maternal line, hence the germinal importance of mitochondrial DNA -the Israelite/Levantine origin broadened to encompass a northern Middle East hearth. Costa and Richards note that this specific topic has resisted clear conceptual resolution, and whatever the dissent (Fernandze) it remains true that no one seriously speaks of an Israelite origin having been determined. The myth is dead.

That said, ther are three points to consider. (a) An extremely high level of competence is required, given the nuanced and even fundamental variations in the numerous papers on the topic. It requires an overview by an expert. However much I admire Brook's passionate mastery of the historical literature, he doesn't qualify to synthesize the results of molecular biology; (b) If as Skllagyook puts it, Brook considers 'Middle Eastern lineages (or at least many of them) come from the region of ancient Israel,' he is dissenting, as a raw amateur, with what the scientific literature, which has distanced itself from that fixation, generally states. Zero evidence has emerged linking genetically Ashkenazi founders to Israel (that term in ancient times is a misnomer by the way, for the biblical Israel's dates would restrict diasporic founders origins to a short few centuries 9th-7th centuries BCE. The proper neutral term, Palestine, has no such political implications). (c) With all due respect, we have to consider WP:Promo here. Wikipedia cannot be an outlet for one's own research or a site promoting one's views.

Given (c), one is required to bide one's time until scientists with a thorough grounding in this recondite topic review and cite his work. Once this secondary assessment becomes available, then his latest contribution can be evaluated for inclusion. That is the way the rules work here.Nishidani (talk) 12:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

You wrote: "even though Behar admits that by 'Middle East' he is referring to Turkey"

Where does Behar state that? That is not his position as far as I know. In his 2013 study, he finds affinities in the Mid. Eastern component of Ashkenazi and Levantines such as Cypriots, Druze, Lebanese, and Samaritans. In his 2017 study on Ashkenazi Levites he suggests that Ashkenazi r1a lineages originate from "a minor haplogroup among the Hebrews". He is far from the only geneticist whose research argues that the Middle Eastern component in the Ashkenazi is from the Levant region (whether one calls it "Isreal", "Palestine" "the Levant", or something else). It is not a dissenting position.

And, as mentioned, Brook's book is endorsed by Karl Skorecki, who is a prominent and widely cited scientist in the field. Given that we have included Brook's other works here, which were non-peer-reviewed, I do not see why we cannot include this one (in a WP:DUE manner in the relevant section - as I said, I agree that Brooks does not need a section of his own).

You wrote: "Wikipedia cannot be an outlet for one's own research or a site promoting one's views."

I'm not sure what you mean by the above. It is not my research. I am not Brooks and have no connection to him or his work. It's a peer-reviewed source by an author endorsed by a prominent geneticist, and whose non-peer-reviewed works we already cite in this page. Skllagyook (talk) 13:33, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Science is based on verifiability. (a) Behar and a few others apparently restrict their data base access, it is not available to potential critics, which means, technically, that one of the fundamentals of verifiability is missing. (2) since one of the methodological keystones of population genetics, Principle Component Analysis, has been challenged as mathematically suspect recently, one must review research where that figures as a core tool with considerable caution, until this is sorted out, or the math refined. (3) Das, Elhaik et al., 2017 nonetheless elicited from Behar et als., 2013 paper an AJ mapping which suggests that the published Behar results all show a concentration in northwestern Turkey. Not Levantine, Israel, or some generic Middle East. (Das Elhaik 2017 p.2) In layman's terms, the 2013 paper implies that the Middle East is being used there for Turkey, though this is not explicitly stated by the authors. The admission lies in their data.

In science, if some other peer interprets your work in a way you disagree with, one replies to correct the perceived misprision. Elhaik, Das say that Behar's 2013 work supplements their own northern Turkey/AJ connection. If their reading is flawed, then one would expect a collegial rebuttal. I am not aware that Behar has since challenged that reading. Correct me if I err.

2600:1000:B12B:24B:1D42:A5C7:3560:3CFB is almost certainly Brook, wqho brought his recently published book to this page of wikipedia, asking that it be covered. That is prima facie a serious WP:Promo WP:COI issue.

Finally, to repeat a point I've made over these years. There is a simple egg of Columbus solution available to this crux. Israel/Palestine abounds in Israelite bones from which DNA can be extracted and analysed. Rather than engage in often conflicting rersearch directed towards making an inference from AJ samples, the premise should be to define what we know of an Israelite genetic profile, and then compare the results with the AJ data. As far as I am aware, this is studiously avoided. I personally wouldn't care if the results confirmed the myth of origins we have. To the contrary. Science is value neutral and follows wherever the data leads, regardless of moral, ethnical, ideological concerns.Nishidani (talk) 17:37, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Waittasec. The academic consensus is that Ashkenazi Jews are extremely similar to Middle Eastern Jews. They have European admixture, but the major similarity is to Middle Eastern peoples ie Palestinians, Druze. But that's not what's being discussed here. This is about the fringe hypothesis that there is Khazar admixture - Central Asian/Turkic. So, I have to disagree with Nishidani's argument. Andre🚐 19:25, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

The academic consensus is that Ashkenazi Jews are extremely similar to Middle Eastern Jews.

Wonderful. Translated that means that though 80% of the maternal lineage of Ashkenazi is neolithic European, this doesn't dent the 'fact' that the Ashkenazi are strikingly similar to Middle Eastern Jews (aka Palestinians) who do not have this maternal Ashkenazi component. All you need to do is throw the gender difference out.

In any case, if you read the thread (a) Mr Brook's outline of his book is all over the place thematically (b)Skllagyook's summary addressed a major theme of his book which, if so, is patently nonsense, and (c) therefore I addressed that. Apropos the Khazars, which as you note, should be the focus here, Brook has very little to add that couldn't be said in one line. But the chops and changes over time in this one author, this is just the more recent version, don't strike me as significant, particularly in so far, as opposed to his intense historical knowledge re Khazars, he simply doesn't have the requisite scientific background to be noteworthy. If the majority here disagrees, well, I've a lot of other things on my plate, . . .Nishidani (talk) 21:41, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Middle Eastern Jews (aka Palestinians) I think we're a bit confused here. There's good research showing that AJ have more similarity to Middle Eastern Jews - which could be Yemenite Jews, etc., not necessarily Palestinians. They are also closely related to non-Jewish Palestinians, Druze, Lebanese, etc. There's a healthy dose of European admixture and good evidence that Europeans make up a good portion of the heritage of AJ. See for example: [7] These results support the view that the Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry and that over their history they have undergone varying degrees of admixture with non-Jewish populations of European descent. Andre🚐 21:52, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

• The academic consensus is that Ashkenazi Jews are extremely similar to Middle Eastern Jews. the major similarity is to Middle Eastern peoples ie PalestiniansAndre

My ironic paraphrase

• the Ashkenazi are strikingly similar to Middle Eastern Jews (aka Palestinians).Nishidani

• I think we're a bit confused here. There's good research showing that AJ have more similarity to Middle Eastern Jews - which could be Yemenite Jews, etc., not necessarily Palestinians.Andre

What is confusing is the vagueness, loose language and arbitrary selection of sources, as citing Koperlman from 14 years ago in a rapidly evolving field of science. Please don't take wiki articles on this topic as guides. The section of Yemeni Jewish genetics is, put politely, farcical, admitting from genetic arguments large-scale conversion and no large scale conversion in the same section. All wiki pages on this topic share the same carelessness, a lack of a cogent overview. There is no consensus here, and shouldn't be, in a field that has such am intense pace of evolution and hypothesis.Nishidani (talk) 22:33, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Just look at the latest research then [8] [9] ". The comparisons suggested the Ashkenazi circa 1350 had a mix of ancestry resembling populations from southern Italy or Sicily today, with components found in modern Eastern Europe and the Middle East mixed in." How is that inconsistent with Kopelman?

Genetic evidence supports a mixed Middle Eastern (ME) and European (EU) ancestry in AJ. This is based on uniparental markers with origins in either region

• Behar et al., 2006, Behar et al., 2017;
• Costa et al., 2013
• Hammer et al., 2000
• Hammer et al., 2009
• Nebel et al., 2001

), as well as autosomal studies showing that AJ have ancestry intermediate between ME and EU populations (

• Atzmon et al., 2010
• Behar et al., 2010
• Behar et al., 2013
• Bray et al., 2010
• Carmi et al., 2014a
• Granot-Hershkovitz et al., 2018
• Guha et al., 2012
• Kopelman et al., 2020

Andre🚐 22:36, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

This is a strawman argument, consisting of a list of papers that, probably unread, have been clipped from the relevant wiki pages, regardless of the numerous differences and figures that can be elicited regarding hypothetical admixture percentages in research over 2 decades (Nebel 2001) to Kopelman (2020). No one is contesting that there is a ME component among the Ashkenazi, as your assumption above suggests. If you are familiar with the literature, that component has been estimated to range from 3% upwards. What was noted is that (a) wiki genetic articles are slapdash piles of reports whose details conflict, often as with Yemeni Jews, where our article asserts two contradictory theories, each appealing to DNA studies i.e., (I) that there were almost no conversions (pure descent) and (ii)there were large-scale conversions (something historically known to be the case) (b) that Middle East is an empty term abusively used to hint at a Levantine or Israeli founding origin whereas (c) as with Behar 2013, it appears to point to northern Turkish origins. One could add dozens of other incoherences, such as (d) the ignorance of history illustrated by many of these papers (e) and its replacement by a religious narrative so that (e) miraculously, per Behar et al., the suggested foundation dates are made to coincide with the mythical dates of a putative expulsion or imposed exile; (f) that the whole literature is marked by a philosophical ineptitude full of unargued assumptions or ignored difficulties, (not least the incongruency between the modern Jewish religious definition of Jewishness as grounded in descent from a Jewish mother, and the Old Testamental belief that legitimacy as a Jew comes through the paternal line). Namely, in any lineage both maternal and paternal origins have equal weight. If I have mixed parentage ethnically, it is wholly arbitrary to privilege just one line to the exclusion of the other. Harping on 4 founding fathersmothers of apparent ME origin (while studiously avoiding any precision about where in the vast ME they may have hailed from) as defining one's ethnicity as an Middle-Eastern descended Ashkenazi, sits unhappily beside a feasible estimate that 80% of the female line descends from a European genomic heritage going back to the Neolithic. The massive obfuscation is POV-driven, and, if the critique of PCA is correct, the results of these various papers throughout those decades has, wittingly or unwittingly, reflect the historical preconceptions (the myth of return/the idea that identity is biological) of their authors, rather than the extremely complex realities of the past. It is quite pointless my stating this. The ideological commitments are too deeply enseamed into our public and scientific discourse, so that commonsense has no traction, and passages like the following are, if read, quickly forgotten, because their exposure of the absurd assumptions underwriting the literature on genetic identity would put a lot of people out of work.

How far back must we go to find the most recent shared ancestor for – say – all Welsh people or all Japanese? And how much further is it to the last person from whom everyone alive today- Welsh, Japanese, Nigerian, or Papuan-can trace descent. . . Speculative as they are, the results are a surprise. In a population of around a thousand people everyone is likely to share the same ancestor about ten generations. Some three hundred years- ago. The figure goes up at a regular rate for larger groups, which means that almost all native Britons can trace descent from a single anonymous individual on these islands who lived in about the thirteenth century. On the global scale, universal common ancestry emerges no more than a hundred generations ago-well into the Old Testament era, perhaps, around the destruction of the First Temple in about 600 B.C.Steve Jones, Serpent's Promise: The Bible Retold as Science Hachette 2013 p.27.

That means, analytically, that attempts to define Jewishness by selective manipulation of haplotypes is nonsensical, since all one is doing is repressing everything else in the genome that points to cross-ethnic affinities.Nishidani (talk) 13:16, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

This list of sources is from the Waldman work in Cell, Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century. It is not a straw-man. Your figure of 3% is much too low. From the research, Under the extensive set of models we studied, the ME ancestry in EAJ is estimated in the range 19%–43% and the Mediterranean European ancestry in the range 37%–65%. Andre🚐 15:52, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Your argument is a strawman since you assume I am denying some ME component, which is not the case. If you were familiar with the literature, you would have immediately realised that the figure in my 'from 3% upwards,' is not 'mine' but a dcirect allusion to Ranajit Da1, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia and Eran Elhaik , Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish Frontiers of Genetics 21 June 2017:

Briefly, we analyzed 18,757 autosomal SNPs genotyped in 46 Palestinians, 45 Bedouins, 16 Syrians, and eight Lebanese (Li et al., 2008) alongside 467 AJs [367 AJs previously analyzed and 100 individuals with AJ mother) (Das et al., 2016) that overlapped with both the GenoChip (Elhaik et al., 2013) and ancient DNA data (Lazaridis et al., 2016). We then carried out a supervised ADMIXTURE analysis (Alexander and Lange, 2011) using three East European Hunter Gatherers from Russia (EHGs) alongside six Epipaleolithic Levantines, 24 Neolithic Anatolians, and six Neolithic Iranians as reference populations (Table S0). Remarkably, AJs exhibit a dominant Iranian (88%) and residual Levantine (3% ) ancestries, as opposed to Bedouins (14% and 68% respectively) and Palestinians (18% and 58% , respectively). Only two AJs exhibit Levantine ancestries typical to Levantine populations (Figure 1B). Repeating the analysis with qpAdm (AdmixTools, version 4.1) (Patterson et al., 2012), we found that AJs admixture could be modeled using either three- (Neolithic Anatolians [46%], Neolithic Iranians [32%], and EHGs [22%]) or two-way (Neolithic Iranians [71%] and EHGs [29%]) migration waves (Supplementary Text). These findings should be reevaluated when Medieval DNA would become available. Overall, the combined results are in a strong agreement with the predictions of the Irano-Turko-Slavic hypothesis (Table 1) and rule out an ancient Levantine origin for AJs, which is predominant among modern-day Levantine populations, (e.g., Bedouins and Palestinians).

Had you paused to reflect on your own figures, 19-43%/35-65%, you should have realized that the substantial variations in the ranges indicate discrepancies that underline how rubbery the these conclusions are. We are not in the realm of facts ascertained by a consensual scientific methodology.

Had you actually familiarized yourself with the discussions that followed the Waldman paper you would have noted that the marked heterogeneity instanced by the Erfurt DNA gave rise to speculations to explain this high degree of differential genetic complexity in that community that broached the possibility, on the basis of the data, of Iberian, Berber, Roma, Avar-Longobardic, East-Asian, Siberian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Khazar, Mitanni, Armenian, Carthaginian etc.etc., input.

It is obvious that the house of these genetic population theories, and their wiki reflexes, needs to be put in order, tidied up to make the constant dissonance in results comprehensible. Some people who might take a hint from Emily in Ian McEwan's Atonement,(2000)

She would soothe the household, which seemed to her, . .like a turbulent and sparsely populated continent from whose forested vastness competing elements made claims and counter-claims upon her restless attention.'(p.70)Nishidani (talk) 20:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

My focused requests are about improving the page by adding content, including from new studies by Brook, Waldman, Jia, and others.

The issue at hand in this entry is about whether the Khazar contribution to Ashkenazi Jews is zero or non-zero and if non-zero to what degree, and what historians and scientists of all perspectives have to say about that controversy, not about the degree of a connection to the Levant or to the Middle East more broadly. But, for the record, Brook 2022 page 139 lists HV1a'b'c and T2g1a as "more likely" stemming from Israelites than from Europeans, and Brook 2022 page 136 remarks that ancient samples of HV1a'b'c and T2g1a were recovered from ancient residents within the boundaries of today's Israel. When ancient Judean genetic sequences come out (next year? there are rumors) we will learn whether any of them had K1a9 or K1a1b1a or other prominent Ashkenazi haplogroups. This, along with certain paternal lineages, would start to chip away at Nishidani's claim that "Zero evidence has emerged linking genetically Ashkenazi founders to Israel" which was intended to discredit Brook 2022's back cover that mentions Israel as one of the places of maternal origin. Nishidani's long-standing political bias against Israel and Zionism clouds his thinking and he has no publications or scientific endorsements or reviews or peer reviews or work citations of his own so why listen to him or allow him to control this topic's coverage?

It's inappropriate that you've severely restricted who can edit this entry on the so-called "encyclopedia that everybody can edit" (how the site was in the beginning). I saw the messages "This page is currently protected so that only extended confirmed users and administrators can edit it." and "Editors to this page: must be signed into an account and have at least 500 edits and 30 days' tenure" which were limitations imposed by Johnuniq on 27 May 2021. That is why this had to be requested in this Talk page. Then Nishidani blames me for doing so on the grounds that it looks promotional! What other option was there? My purpose was to bring your attention new data in support of a small Khazar contribution that have heretofore not been published and which are superior to the previous arguments that were strawmen easily knocked down such as the "Khazar Levite" hypothesis and the "Khazars as Armenians" hypothesis. Brook 2022 presented specific arguments that need to be summarized in the entry, at whatever length you deem appropriate, to be expanded as other scientists start to write about it and cite it.

Brook 2018 (not, of course, Brook 2022, which wasn't out yet) was cited within the June 2019 scientific paper "Substructured Population Growth in the Ashkenazi Jews Inferred with Approximate Bayesian Computation" by Ariella L. Gladstein and Michael F. Hammer in Molecular Biology and Evolution, albeit as a source on Khazar history.

Wikipedia inappropriately props up and promotes certain books with their own entire entries, such as The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler and The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand, at the expense of other books, simply because those are more notorious and received widespread international mass media attention. This problem then gets compounted by Google's bias in favor of frequently displaying Wikipedia as the first result in searches. In recent years, Google still has had a near-monopoly on searches. Wikipedia then becomes a malign influence on the field of Khazar studies because multitudes of people visit this page and think any non-zero Khazar hypothesis has no grounding to it and is associated only with crazy or antisemitic people and debunked explanations by certain researchers with "credentials". Other, balanced and politically unmotivated voices with less media coverage but more data replicatability get less space or no space. Is that fair?

In Google Books, Brook's The Jews of Khazaria was found to be cited at least 217 times, Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe 343 times, The Invention of the Jewish People 689 times, Golb and Pritsak's Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century 308 times, Golden's Khazar Studies (1980) 307 times, Dunlop's The History of the Jewish Khazars 582 times. Despite far exceeding Koestler's in scholarly citations and being widely considered a more trustworthy source, Dunlop's book was not deemed to merit its own entry.

I would also argue that you did not adequately cover the zero plausibility point of view expressed in Behar's 2013 article "No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews", which should appear under your subsection entitled "Behar et al. studies". You have room to add some more words about that study and about Brook 2022 (which disagrees with it) considering you discuss the pros and cons of Elhaik in 10 paragraphs.

At the present moment, readers of the entry are not informed about the current parameters of the debate. Whether readers are ill-informed about other topics like Yemeni Jewish genetics when there are conflicting narratives or interpretations, as Nishidani said, is another matter. 2600:1000:B12B:24B:C66D:AB21:B40B:4CDE (talk) 04:12, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

If a consensus leads you to continue to object to a dedicated section for Brook 2022, you could instead add one new paragraph under the subsection "Behar et al. studies" that expressses both the sentiment from Behar's "No Evidence" paper that there was no Khazar or North Caucasian contribution at all and then Brook 2022's analysis of that paper's flawed method (page 141) and Brook's presentation of evidence in support of likely Khazar and North Caucasian contributions (especially pages 7, 16-17, and 85-86). 2600:1000:B12B:24B:C66D:AB21:B40B:4CDE (talk) 04:30, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong. As a published author, I'm all too aware of how exasperating it can be to work within wiki rules that militate against informed scholars citing their own work. But that is the system, and its overall effect is positive, despite the collateral lacunae this causes. I appreciate much of your work, and I agree with much that you state above. Khazar matters generate hysteria unfortunately, and the best I could do was simply show that speculation over the Khazar-Jewish hypothesis has an honourable lineage within Jewish historical discourse, and therefore the panicky reactions to any mention of the topic, with their fall-back shouting about 'anti-semitism' and 'anti-Israeli-ism' are just political bullshit, when not, perhaps more insidiously, an abuse of science that approaches the material with ideological, and often racial, preconceptions about what constitutes 'Jewishness'. Numbers will decide if your work is to be included or not, and I will abstain from voting either way.Nishidani (talk) 13:16, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, but I must disagree with you. per RS, the Khazar hypothesis is indeed tied to anti-Semitism as sources have shown, for example [10] Andre🚐 15:53, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Puerile, read the article's history of the concept. Anyone can prove anything by sweeping fringe lunatic sites from Telegraph and Twitter playing to minor constituencies (10,000 more or less) of paranoid conspiracy theorists.Nishidani (talk) 20:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, Andre, but notice that I included the word "only" in my phrase "associated only with crazy or antisemitic people". The problem is not only the existence of extreme/fringe and hateful personalities but that the extensive space given over to discussing them skews the discussion of the controversy, which leads many people to assume it's too tainted from guilt-by-association. Nishidani's observations that the topic generates "panicky reactions" and "hysteria" are apt. I have seen it play out that way in social media (Facebook, Twitter) and newspapers and elsewhere. The mere word "Khazar" sets some people off. It has even led Schelly Dardashti to ban the topic from being discussed altogether in her popular Jewish genealogy Facebook group Tracing the Tribe.

Ariel David's 30 November 2022 Ha'aretz piece "DNA of Medieval Skeletons in Germany Sheds Light on Origins of Ashkenazi Jews" https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2022-11-30/ty-article/dna-of-medieval-skeletons-in-germany-sheds-light-on-origins-of-ashkenazi-jews/00000184-c3ec-d05a-a3b4-e3ecc8940000 interviewed Waldman 2022 co-author Shai Carmi who explained that there are "no major direct links to the Caucasus" (Mr. David's wording). That is not the same as saying none at all and does not address the Turkic elephant in the room, N9a3a1b1, which was not originally from the Caucasus. But Mr. David tried to claim that Waldman 2022 does not "support the long-discredited “Khazar hypothesis”" and then defines that hypothesis in the same mistaken maximal and mutually exclusive way as your entry sometimes states or implies. Mr. David expresses that hypothesis in the following terms: "the claim that Ashkenazim have no link to the ancestral population of Judah but descend instead from the Khazars, an early medieval kingdom in the Caucasus where part of the population had converted to Judaism." Excuse me for repeating this, but this is not an either-or proposition: either Khazaria or Israel.

Antisemites frequently contradict other antisemites. Some believe one thing, others believe the opposite. There is no reason to promote the idea that only the Khazar connection is tainted but the Judean connection is not. The notion that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from Khazars is associated with 1940s-era German Nazism and with the current viewpoint of certain prominent Jew-haters such as David Duke and Kevin MacDonald ( https://davidduke.com/dr-kevin-macdonald-utterly-destroys-debunks-khazar-theory/ and https://nationalvanguard.org/2015/06/rethinking-the-khazar-theory ). The Nazis saved many Crimean Karaites from extermination on the basis that they were allegedly Khazars. Some Jew-haters in message boards think the promotion of the Khazar hypothesis by some Jewish authors in the 20th century was misdirection and sinister because it supports a narrative in support of Judaism.

On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Andrevan you show an excellent pyramid, the top rungs of which emphasize the importance of scholarly arguments based on tactics like "counterargument" and "refuting the central point" as opposed to dismissing an idea or a writer out of hand "ad hominem" "without addressing the substance of the argument". As of 5 December 2022, the current Wikipedia entry is missing both a key argument and a key counterargument or refutation.

So a new paragraph would be warranted that would say words to the effect that Behar et al. 2013(b) "No Evidence" argued against any Turkic or North Caucasian contribution to Ashkenazi genomes but that was based on IBD matching within 20 generations, so Brook 2022 explained that this did not reach back to Khazar times and Brook found several Ashkenazi haplogroups (A-a1b3 and N9a3a1b1) that are candidates for being of Khazar origin and one (G2a-FGC1093) that is a candidate for North Caucasian origin. The same N9a3a1b1 assignment and its Central/East Asian rootedness appeared one month later in the definitely non-fringe paper Waldman 2022 (which was co-authored by world-renowned Jewish geneticists among whom are David Reich, Harry Ostrer, Gil Atzmon, and Nir Barzilai), which pointed to its YFull page for its genetic family tree on which a Daur member was recently added in addition to the Bashkirs who were already on there.

I cannot take issue with Nishidani's observation that particular Jewish lineages have been emphasized in certain studies and certain newspaper articles at the expense of others, except that he meant to say "4 founding mothers" instead of "4 founding fathers". 2600:1000:B12B:24B:C66D:AB21:B40B:4CDE (talk) 20:00, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for correcting my slip.Nishidani (talk) 21:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I oppose the suggestions by N2600:1000:B12B:24B:C66D:AB21:B40B:4CDE to either add more evidence or argument of the Khazar hypothesis, or the idea that Had you paused to reflect on your own figures, 19-43%/35-65%, you should have realized that the substantial variations in the ranges indicate discrepancies that underline how rubbery the these conclusions are. We are not in the realm of facts ascertained by a consensual scientific methodology. Sounds to me like a confirmation bias situation where you are picking and choosing which papers already support your conclusions. Waldman is the absolutely latest cutting-edge research. Furthermore the Erfurt group is a group of German Jews post-AJ founding event so the existence of likely ME at lower-bound 19% is much higher than the 3% from the R Das 2017 which also contains problematic fringe ideas that Yiddish is Irano-Turkic or more mention of the debunked Khazar connection. This is a WP:FRINGE view. Had you actually familiarized yourself with the discussions that followed the Waldman paper you would have noted that the marked heterogeneity instanced by the Erfurt DNA gave rise to speculations to explain this high degree of differential genetic complexity in that community that broached the possibility, on the basis of the data, of Iberian, Berber, Roma, Avar-Longobardic, East-Asian, Siberian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Khazar, Mitanni, Armenian, Carthaginian etc.etc., input. Where are you getting this list from? You say the discussions that followed the paper. What discussions? Andre🚐 21:23, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The entire section which begins Ariel David's 30 November 2022 Ha'aretz piece "DNA of Medieval Skeletons in Germany Sheds Light on Origins of Ashkenazi Jews" and ends misdirection and sinister because it supports a narrative in support of Judaism. is basically WP:RGW and WP:OR. We follow what RS sources say not lead. And the idea of the Khazar hypothesis being pro-Semitic scarcely makes sense. The bottom line is the most cutting edge genetic studies do not suggest North Caucasus, that doesn't mean a few Jewish Khazars might not have been in the mix at some point, but per Shaul Stampfer there seems to be unclear documentation as to the size of the supposed mass Khazar conversion or whether it happened at all. Andre🚐 21:37, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The pot calling the kettle black. The confirmation bias is all yours. Note that in the thread, I refer to various theories, estimates without espousing any view, unlike yourself. I note contradictions in a literature that is supposed to be scientific, you cite one or two sources and take them as the last word, i.e., a fidetistic approach. I never espoused the Khazar theory: I wrote it up because the furor caused by Elhaik's paper with its personal assaults on his research and his person went flagrantly and ignorantly in the face of the history of the Khazar hypothesis, which has been an object of legitimate, serene infra-Jewish speculation for centuries. I wrote the Khazar article for the same reason, aside from a long interest in central Asian cultures. In all this, I have suspended taking sides, pro-or anti-Khazar. I merely sum up the state of the art. Of course, I have a viewpoint, one informed by 4 decades of studying nationalism and identity. That means I read for POV pushing in the fact of historical facts, th(the logical analysis of whatever I read, and the epistemological assumptions I detect within any discourse of this kind. The POV pushing to assert a genetic connection between Israel and the Ashkenazim in this area is blatantly political - an endorsement of the religious myth of return, and inflects the results. The Jews, like the Greeks, have been in voluntary diaspora since their beginnings, united by a religious tradition as the Greeks are by a linguistic tradition. All have intermarried local populations the world over. There is no such thing as a genetic Greek or a genetic Jew, since identity is cultural, not, as the Nazis asserted, racial. I've exceeded my boredom level, apart from foruming, and therefore on both grounds will leave it there.Nishidani (talk) 21:56, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm happy to leave it there but you say you aren't going to take a position, yet you then take one: The POV pushing to assert a genetic connection between Israel and the Ashkenazim in this area is blatantly political - and who is the one doing that, because it isn't me? you cite one or two sources and take them as the last word I cited quite a few sources and I also haven't mainly made any changes to the article. I am merely defending what I understand to be the present consensus view that Ashkenazi Jews do indeed have a Middle Eastern component - consistent with heritage shared with the Semitic peoples of the Mediterannean. I will note you didn't answer the question about the discussions and your list, but note that Berber, Carthaginian, and Southern Italian are all groups that also have a heavy Middle Eastern (i.e. Semitic) genetic component whether from the Phoenicians, Arabs, etc. This is not a political claim about Israel at all. Andre🚐 22:10, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Just in case you wonder why I don't reply. You are totally focused on what you think, and never address anything except by misdirection. One needs at least an elementary knowledge here, something your reference to Berbers as semites suggests you lack. Correcting misprisions when they come thick and fast and if answered, just lead to more of the same, is a waste of everyone's time, not least your own, which would be better employed doing some serious reading.Nishidani (talk) 17:26, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Your accusation of misdirection is not well-taken since you yourself have also decided to discuss whatever is of closest interest to you and accuse others of malfeasance or lack of information, which verges into WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL territory. Of course Berbers have ton of Middle Eastern connections. See Arab-Berber Andre🚐 17:36, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I made a mistake above, Mr Brook corrected it, I thanked him, and adjusted. You made a mistake, asserting Berbers were semitic. I corrected you. You come back with a link to to justify your error without acknowledgin it. Did you read that page? It states 'Arab-Berbers are people of mixed Arab (i.e. 'Semitic') and Berber (i.e. non Semitic) origin.' You didn't refer to Arab-Berbers, but to Berbers. If one fucks up, it is not shameful to admit it.Nishidani (talk) 21:19, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

No, we just disagree. It's possible to disagree and to legitimately misunderstand for innocent reasons. I'm trying to get at the crux of the issue. I asked you for the source of the list which included among other things, Carthaginians, Berbers, and others as possible explanations for the rate of Middle Eastern admixture in AJ. As we know, Carthage was a Phoenician colony. The Berbers of North Africa had multiple waves of migration from the Middle East such as the documented Arab migrations. The point of my saying this was that it is very likely that the Berber samples of the population would have ME in it similar to other North African populations, as my statement said, Berber, Carthaginian, and Southern Italian are all groups that also have a heavy Middle Eastern (i.e. Semitic) genetic component. The same could be said for Ethiopians. The Berber language group is also classified in the Afroasiatic group distantly related to Semitic languages. I did not say that Berber and Semite are 1:1 mappings or that one is entirely within the other. I said there's a relationship there and that is a true statement. One would expect, if the AJ ME admixture is consistent with origination in the region of the Levant, that Berber should be in the next ring of relationship based on geographic proximity and known migration patterns. Andre🚐 21:28, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Just to note I’ve taken this off my watchlist as I don’t think I know enough to take part. Doug Weller talk 13:15, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

No problem Doug. Hope you are doing well. Returning to the OP and their proposal, if anyone wants to read Brook 2022, it is available on De Gruyter through the Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library[11][12] and it's clear to me on some perusal that OP's message is a lot of original research. Andre🚐 23:33, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Heavy use of Shlomo Sand

Shlomo Sand's book The Invention of the Jewish People is extensively used in this article, including as a source for facts. While Sand is noteworthy and should be discussed here, we should not be using his controversial book as a source for facts without attribution. Right? BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:59, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I totally agree. A noteworthy book, but clearly not the most trustworthy source regarding, say, the origins of Ashkenazi Jews, as genetic tests have already demonstrated. Tombah (talk) 17:15, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Sand is an academic expert, on what grounds would you say he cannot be cited for facts? Where other experts disagree then sure attribute both. But just saying "controversial" does not in any way mean "not reliable". nableezy - 17:19, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Virtually every academic book I read has an error or two, sometimes several (rereadiing a work by Ritchie Robertson recently, I noted he got a date wrong, out by a year for example). That doesn't make them untrustworthy. Since Sand deals extensively with the topic of this article, all that is required is for editors wishing to challenge him as a source for this or that fact, to show where he gets it wrong, and we use another source then. Nishidani (talk) 17:27, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd say the over-reliance on Behar is more worrying. As a pop-geneticist with a commercial operation providing genetic testing, he has a significant conflict of interest with the research that he engages in. It's in his interest for the data to be led towards the conclusion that a reading of genetic samples can produce meaningful, conclusive findings, since that is the fantasy his company sells. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

That isn't a legitimate criticism of Behar. His published genetic studies are not tied to his former position (Chief mtDNA Scientist) at Family Tree DNA - he no longer works there - in the sense of trying to foster any agenda through the company, although he did utilize numerous Jewish as well as non-Jewish Family Tree DNA customers' mitochondrial samples for which they had granted permission for use in studies like his because Family Tree DNA's database was larger than any other at the time so new discoveries were being made there that could not be made elsewhere at the time. He used those samples to expand the mitochondrial tree, which is a non-ideological pursuit. His main paper using them was entitled "A “Copernican” Reassessment of the Human Mitochondrial DNA Tree from its Root", https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322232/ Behar did not write the papers to advertise Family Tree DNA's services. Meanwhile, nowadays, another geneticist referenced in this entry, Eran Elhaik, overtly references his own commercial interests on his blog https://khazardnaproject.wordpress.com: "Over the years I developed many DNA tests and DNA testing kits for the public, health, and government from the Genographic Project to the Ancient DNA Origins. Below are some of my most popular public tests, including Ancient DNA Origins and its ancient DNA testing kit, the GPS Origins, and the Bronze Age test. Try them out." And he links to pages where some of those tests are offered for sale. (Genographic Project has been discontinued so there is no link to it.)172.56.217.228 (talk) 22:23, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

The following advertisement was posted 18 May 2023 by Eran Elhaik at https://www.facebook.com/KhazarDnaProject/posts/pfbid0i3j9t3Vgt6sX5DYEBMkyp1n7JpB9WSW6JYsHQ5hMYZjbpMwEpSLf3nxM15Koo5T2l

"Discover the Untold Stories in Her DNA with Our Ancient DNA Origins Test!"

"Enjoy a 30% discount until the end of the month on all our tests and subscriptions!"

You have a problem with this sort of thing? 172.56.217.228 (talk) 22:27, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

There is already a very large section on criticism of Elhaik's study, so that's rather moot. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:40, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

@Iskandar323 I’m interested in this Ancient Dna Origins as I ran into them on a Facebook group. Do you know anything about them? Besides the fact that there are a lot of coupons! Doug Weller talk 21:10, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Another professional geneticist with a commercial interest who was important in early genetic research was Bryan Sykes, founder of the company Oxford Ancestors. See, for example, Genetic history of the British Isles. 172.56.217.228 (talk) 22:40, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree largely with Bob - Sand is controversial, not authoritative, and should be attributed. That is also true for the more pro-Israeli-nationalistic authors as well. Andre🚐 22:51, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with you two and Tombah on this.172.56.217.228 (talk) 22:57, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

If the criterion is 'controversy', then what applis to Sand would apply to Behar, and not simply for COI. It is obvious that much of the output on 'Jewish' genetics is agenda-driven, i.e. to ground the national claim that Israel's foundational policy, as premised on a 'return' of Jews to their homeland, in an ostensible empirically-demonstrated descent of all Jews from some original Israelitic 'stock' local to the area of Palestine/Israel. It is true also historically that the Khazar hypothesis was hijacked by antisemites to 'prove', not the obverse,, i.e. the non-indigineity of Jews to Palestine/Israel, but rather to claim Jews were not 'Caucasian' but 'Turks', 'Asiatic' and therefore a threat to white civilisation. The geneticists who pushed for a 'Levantine' origin haven't, after two decades, much ground to stand on - Behar's results elicit the same profile more or less as Elhaik's revised view, whatever component exists of a line in Jewish ancestry hailing from that area, is located much further to the north, northern Turkey.

Everybody challenging Sand here has been asked to provide examples of material harvested from Sand which are historically controversial. Silence. It is lazy to avoid close editing by simply making abstract challenges that relieve one of the effort to actually read the book and the related scholarship. but above this article, to identity what one considers problematical. So indicate where the text using Sand is problematical, so we can address the issue. Harry Ostrer makes bizarre claims in his book, which are totally unhistorical, and we don't use that crap. Likewise with Sand. The article as I originally wrote it has nothing at all to say about the merits of the Khazar hypothesis. In that sense, it was neither an endorsement or a rebuttal. It simply outlined the genealogy of the idea. Unfortunately, passionate POVs are aroused and the article gets jammed up by unreadable chunks of genetics which are tedious and whose only function is to disprove what doesn't need disproof. It is obvious that the 'Jews' do not descend from the Khazars, just as it is obvious that the 'Jews' do not descend from the Israelites, except as cultural heirs of the latter, which, for that matter, we all are, at least those of us who were and are raised within the framework of Western and Semitic civilizations.Nishidani (talk) 07:52, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

I have seen you state this before. But I am not sure that is the necessarily the only interpretation (at the risk of derailing the conversation, which I hope not to do). Elhaik argues that that is what Behar's autosomal pca data for the Ashkenazi shows - a clustering in northwestern Turkey near the Bosphorus- and argues for an origin there. But that is not what Behar (or most others) conclude at all. And Elhaik goes on to argue, and his clustering shows, that the Ashkenazi Jews derive largely from eastern Turkey and Iran (both of which would be different genetically from western Turkey). Assuming that, his depiction of Behar's data is correct, it does not seem unlikely that a population of mixed Levantine (and/or other Near Eastern) and European ancestry could cluster in a position intermediate between the Levant and Europe (which is quite where northwestern Turkey near the Bosphorus is) - and might not necessarily indicate an origin in Turkey. And Ashkenazi Jews certainly do have significant European admixture. I am only suggesting this to point out that Elhaik's argument may not be as definitive as you may believe. Though certain I agree that more definitive research is desirable (using compairisons with ancient samples, including those from the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and various parts of Europe) to more remove or reduce what ambiguity may still exist. Skllagyook (talk) 11:08, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

As youn know, a cutting edge science's results are fluid. Elhaik 1 and Elhaik 2 are quite different, and, from memory, Elhaik 2016/17 reinterpreted Behar's work of 4 years earlier. It remains therefore to see -perhaps you know- if anyone, Behar et co, or others, contested Elhaik's rereading of Behar's evidence (or rather results, for unless I am mistaken, both Ostrer and Behar refuse any 'outsider' access to their databases). That is the proper procedure. As to 'Levantine' several genetics papers consistently confused this with Middle East, when the strict Levantine/southern Levantine derivation began to look increasingly thin. The introduction of 'Middle East' as a virtual synonym was astute rhetorically, but it faslsifies history and science to treat it as a synonym. Thirdly, the fundamental flaw in all these studies lies in an acceptance of an extremely flexible word like 'Jews', as if religion and descent imbricated. As you again know, they don't. And, again, the science of descent privileges the Tanakh rule of 'Jewish' descent via the patrilineal line, whereas rabbinic practice for 2 millennia has insisted on Jewish legitimacy as vectored through matrilineal descent. This has vast interpretative consequences, since the European data, in a religious sense, would strongly suggest that the religious definition of the Ashkenazim is invalid for that 'authentic Jewish' population. Genetics in short adopts a definition of Jew which Judaism repudiates, and all remain quiet on the embarrassing dissonance.

In any case, I return to my point. The excessive nervousness shown in jamming the article with intricate (mostly copy and pasted) 'stuff' on genetics, to attack or defend Elhaik's original viewpoint is WP:Undue. All one needs is a link to the relevant pages on Jewish genetic questions, with a paragraph summarizing Elhaik 1, and responses (technically flawed in sampling, etc., with a brief couple of sentences citing the major research contesting it. Elhaik 2, summarized laconically, with then a summary of genetic papers citing and rebuffing the hypothesis 2017-2019. We should drop the politics of the Khazar hypothesis, and simply keep updating the paper on the curious meanderings the hypothesis had, from legitimate historical speculation mainly by Jews, through fringe antisemitic uses, modern historical treatments, and genetic failures to endorse it. Nishidani (talk) 11:34, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

And by the way, I don't think Elhaik is definitive. I started editing this area when I found it plagued by an upset editorial constituency that tried to get this dissonant voice suppressed as fringe, bizarre. Large quantities of newspaper comments by people who know nothing of the topic were thrown his way. I have never espoused the Khazar theory in any form. Elhaik's high competence in his field is obvious, but science is never definitive, and people uncomfortable with uncertainty should be more aware that complacency offers none of the wanted answers. Nishidani (talk) 11:57, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Elhaik is controversial and has met with strong criticism; he should be contextualized and placed in context along with those who have been critical of his novel hypotheses. Yes he is qualified and he has credentials, that's not at issue. But he is a minority view and should be placed in due weight. Andre🚐 16:35, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Controversial has nothing to do with reliability. You can’t just say I don’t like why a reliable source says and then demand attribution. If there are other reliable sources that dispute Sand then we discuss relative weight, but this game of trying to poison the well with attribution to solid sources because of the content of their work is a non-starter. nableezy - 12:41, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

But let's be clear: Sand and his critics are political, not simply dispassionate scientists and historians with no POVs, Sand has taken stands on issues, and he is more liked by the pro-Arab factions, while more pro-Zionist factions have criticized him along political lines. Sand's detractors portray the book as an assault on Jewish identity and the legitimacy of Israel[13] He's publicly renounced his Jewishness and attacked Israeli racism, making him a lightning rod. He's seen some critique from more pro-Zionist historian Simon Schama for example. It's not for us to take sides or like or dislike, but to portray neutrally the controversy. Andre🚐 15:36, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Let's be clear, dispassionate scientists and historians are as rare as hen's teeth in this area. We everywhere on wiki cite- no one challenges their use - Benny Morris's books when we all know Morris's publicly stated views on Paòestinians are repulsive: has branded the entire Palestinian population as barbarian serial killers, who should have been completely expelled in 1948. And Morris is, in many respects, a 'moderate'. Why single out Sand? And who are these 'pro-Arab factions'? Nishidani (talk) 18:38, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Morris has not been challenged as a scholar, while some of his political views are obviously highly contentious. We can use Morris as a source for facts (although not in this article, as it's not his area of expertise - although it's not Sand's either) unless he's been specifically challenged, even while making sure that we don't express his opinions in our voice. Sand is a different case; his actual scholarship has been widely challenged. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:20, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Actually he has been challenged because his I/P scholarship deals predominently in Israeli archives sources. His facts are the facts he elicited from those, and he regards oral memory (mainly Arabs) as unreliable. (The same bias long afflicted conservative Australian scholarship on the aborigines. In both cases, the written sources were those of the victor, as are consequently the facts that are deemed 'solid' as opposed to the memories of the victims (we don't extend that distinction to Holocaust studies, thank goodness). Sand is a bit like Martin Bernal. One would never use him for facts on philology, but classical scholars do recognize that his historical analysis of racist thinking in 19th-20th classical scholarship has much cogency. Nishidani (talk) 17:17, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

No one's singling out anyone. Nor is the issue about one's views. I'm sure many "old line" historians, who are largely white British or white American men, have repulsive views. In this case what we're discussing is the question of whether the academic world as a proportional representation of that world, generally views Sand (or anyone else) as authoritative. I agree with the OP that perhaps our usage of Sand and Elhaik, who I think most people would very much characterize as new line, dissident thinkers, who nevertheless may be bringing a lot of historical scholarship to bear on important questions, but not without pushback and rebuttal from the establishment. Thus is the way of academia, but Wikipedia is supposed to slightly lag, while being responsive to the important modern scholarship. However it is very much an open, and not settled question, how much the population of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, etc Jews can claim that at some point in perhaps 800 BCE or whatever, a Canaanish tribes person ancestor of theirs inhabited some land in the Levant and might share some recognizably Jewish traits. It's not for us to get involved in weighing the validity of these viewpoints. But it's also not the case that I can tell, that it's settled that Sand is authoritative. Shaul Bartal, of Bar-Ilan, is quoted saying that Sand is the Arabs' darling. You may determine which Arabs to whom he refers, I don't know. Andre🚐 19:12, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Ooo ... I think we can settle the question of how many people have an ancestor in Canaan in 800BCE: that's probably about half the world's population by now. As for anyone working to identify "recognizably Jewish traits" (there's a phrase to make one squirm): that would presumably only be those foolishly meddling in the same scientific racism that was thought extinguished in the early 20th century. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry and that over their history they have undergone varying degrees of admixture with non-Jewish populations of European descent. This is a valid POV for the article and not scientific racism. By traits I mean that the shared culture and heritage would be familiar but different. It is not a question of what was the Middle Eastern ancestry - was it Jewish or non-Jewish? It's a common ancestor of both Arab, Jewish, and other non-Jewish populations, right? So yes, Jewish and non-Jewish traits, common and not-common, but that's why this topic is fraught. It's not scientific racism to say that there were diaspora peoples from X area in Y area and they had these DNA indicators of these ancestral populations. Andre🚐 19:45, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry and that over their history they have undergone varying degrees of admixture with non-Jewish populations of European descent.

This is of course a meaningless statement empirically, crafted to sustain a myth. It is the unshakable, irremovable assertion of the lead of Jews. POV implies that it is a legitimate perspective, and not just the reflection of a myth. Australian aborigines largely share a common European ancestry, as a result of having undergone admixture with white populations of European descent. There! That's a game anyone can play to 'fix' an identity according to (dis)taste. The Levantine component of Ashkenazi profiles out at 3%, the figure gets larger if one counts Middle Eastern elements, and expands substantially if one considers European descent via the maternal line going back to 4000 years BCE. These are all exercises in rhetoric, that beg the simple question: why is a common identity primarily determined by some minor features of a genetic profile that overide every other consideration.Nishidani (talk) 20:13, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

The problem is you are taking sides rather than portraying the controversy, as is evidenced in your message. You are putting your finger on the scale based on your own original analysis rather than simply surveying all the scholars and meting out according to how they weigh. You're right that 3% may be a number, though we could quibble numbers, but it's not useful to do so at this point. But 3% is also the number of genetic relationship to your own first-cousin. Andre🚐 20:29, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Well then I would say to be more careful when you use the word "traits" in a discussion about ancestry and genetics, and say culture and heritage when you mean those things. Part of the precise problem in this topic area is the confusion of genetics with sociocultural heritage. Off the deep end, it is the attempt to assert genetic continuity as some sort of link to the past with real world meaning and real world ramifications, i.e.: justification for political goals, and this is where scientific racism very definitely rears it ugly head. But don't take it from me, take it from Falk, who alludes to it prominently, noting: Anti-Semitism conceived the socio-cultural traits of Jews to be a consequence of their biological essence. [14] Iskandar323 (talk) 07:07, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Andrevan. I keep having to cite the following because editors don't appear to grasp the point (and I did not conduct any 'original analysis' in those figures. It gets even worse if you cite the huge gap between the various results genetic papers have come up with in the component analyses for the last twenty years). The point about 'cousins' is that:-

How far back must we go to find the most recent shared ancestor for – say – all Welsh people or all Japanese? And how much further is it to the last person from whom everyone alive today- Welsh, Japanese, Nigerian, or Papuan-can trace descent. . . Speculative as they are, the results are a surprise. In a population of around a thousand people everyone is likely to share the same ancestor about ten generations. Some three hundred years- ago. The figure goes up at a regular rate for larger groups, which means that almost all native Britons can trace descent from a single anonymous individual on these islands who lived in about the thirteenth century. On the global scale, universal common ancestry emerges no more than a hundred generations ago-well into the Old Testament era, perhaps, around the destruction of the First Temple in about 600 B.C.Steve Jones, Serpent's Promise: The Bible Retold as Science Hachette 2013 p.27.

I have, and the situation is not rare, several nieces and nephews who could, had they a minimal awareness of these games, claim a right to aliyah, because in 300 years among hundreds of forebears and kin, there were a few Jewish folks, female or male. Were they to prioritize this thin element to make it trump every other genetic element, 99% of their known kin's Irish-English-Norman, and perhaps Indian (and god knows who else) descent could be refactored as irrelevant to their genetic profile, just as anyone with a 'Jewish-sounding' name and some linguistic heritage retained, whatever density of outmarrying occurred in the intervening 500 years of life in South America, for example, can claim Portuguese citizenship as a descendants of Sephardim expelled by the proto-fascist regnants of Portugal a half a millenium ago. The results of the opportunistic business and identitarian farces created by that law are well-known. Of course, all of these people can become 'Jewish' if they choose to exercise that option, and good on'em, but it has nothing to do with genetic origins, but rather wangling one identity out of many for some other reason, emotional, political, social, economic, whatever.

Sand's book, even in just the incipit (forget the Khazar interlude) did usefully point out some of the chaotic shenanigans that emerge from recent innovations in laws about who is or can be a Jew, showing that pure descent is nonsense. That is why he upsets so many people, particularly geneticists who have little grasp of the complexities of historical reconstructions of identity. Nishidani (talk) 08:19, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

My original comment was trying to make a more modest point than that which has been argued over here. I'm not saying we should exclude him from the article or see his views as beyond the pale. He's obviously noteworthy. I'm simply saying we cannot use him as a source for facts without attribution. See below for why. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:24, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Controversial can be an issue for reliability: Sand is controversial in that his more recent and well-known (and highly noteworthy) work on the origins of the Jewish people (which is a departure from the historical area where he built up his expertise) is considered to be fringe pseudo-scholarship by many (not all) mainstream scholars. Anti-Zionist scholar Derek Penslar: Sand’s critique comes in the form of rhetorical assertions towards the end of the book, not painstakingly researched narrative, as was the case with the New Historians. The Invention of the Jewish People is not a work of scholarship at all, but rather the sort of passionate, articulate, but tendentious, selectively-researched work that in the western world increasingly dominates trade publishing aimed at a broad readership among the intelligentsia... Sand’s book represents a radically different phenomenon, not only because of its content, not only because it persistently seeks to be, and succeeds at being, outrageous, but because of its method. Historical scholarship can be refuted via counter-narratives based on publicly accessible source material. A polemic, imbued with passion and rhetorical flourish, can be shown to be shot through with falsehoods, yet the polemic’s arguments stand, because from the very start style dominates substance. Exposure of its distortions can be dismissed as the work of fussy, pedantic, and territorial scholars, the same ones who for decades have trumpeted the Jews’ sham peoplehood and therefore cannot be trusted... Sand’s internal logic is that of the conspiracy theorist, and he appeals precisely to people who see the Zionist project as a monumental exercise of bad faith.[15] A sympathetic review in Socialism and Democracy said His fellow scholars were less comfortable with his work. Their common response pointed out that some of the new truths were not “new” and others were not “truths”.... That before Christianity acquired its dominant position Jewish rulers and employers had encouraged some of their subordinates to convert to Judaism was also known, though the scale and spread of that practice is disputed. Critics accuse Sand of inflating its scope by transforming conversion – forcible or voluntary, individual or group-based – from one among many contributions to Jewish demographic growth into the primary factor, without grounding such claims in solid empirical evidence, using instead meagre, fragmented and contradictory sources. That Sand is not a historian of antiquity or the Near East (his disciplinary specialization is modern France), does not help his case among professional colleagues. He is regarded by many as an “intruder”, who pursues a political agenda and, in the process, fits the evidence to a pre-conceived argument.[16] Nicholas Wade, a genetics specialist, in an article for the NYT described Sand's work as "refuted".[17] Colin Shindler said The reductionist approach of Sand also leads to selectivity. Some facts are chosen, others are not. Those selected are stretched to sketch out a generality... Quotations are often selected to fit an explanation while the context is missing.[18] Another very sympathic take in the journal Dialectical Anthropology said Sand’s critical post-Zionist historiographies are extremely heterodox, highly controversial and have generally been met with approval by Marxian historians and other scholars who are critical of nationalism. However, more mainstream historians, especially in Israel, have been less than friendly to Sand’s approach, criticizing him for selective historiographic reading and the creation of a Zionist myth-believing historiographic strawman. A defence of the book in the Journal of Palestine Studies by anti-Zionist scholar Adam Sutcliffe includes this passage: Responses to this book by specialists in Jewish history (which Sand is not—he teaches in the “general,” that is, non-Jewish, history department at the University of Tel Aviv) have for the most part been sharply hostile, alleging, sometimes with strained coherence, that Sand’s argument is both obvious and wrong. It would be surprising, though, if this ambitious book, covering two millennia of Jewish history in three hundred pages, were empirically startling to specialists in the early periods through which it gallops; it would also be surprising if those specialists were unable to point to a few factual errors or misleading simplifications. Moreover, this avenue of attack misses Sand’s central thrust, which he spells out very clearly: “Please note: the present work . . . does not deal directly with history . . . its main purpose is to criticize a widespread historiographic discourse” (p. 22). The alternative account of Jewish history that Sand lightly sketches out here does not purport to be anything more than synthetic, speculative, and suggestive.[19] I could go on, but the point is that the overwhelming majority of scholars, including those sympathetic to Sand's project, do not see him as a reliable source for facts without attribution or context. We should discuss his work here, as obviously noteworthy, but we should not use his text as a footnote for anything other than his own, attributed views. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:17, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Sure a lot of people hate his book, as they do Elhaik, and you get a mother-lode of expostulatory arguying, but the likes of a (epithet withheld) Nicholas Wade (Penslar is the only person there I take seriously). There is nothing wrong with scholarly works being polemical, from Marx to Popper and so on. You wrote above ' He's obviously noteworthy. I'm simply saying we cannot use him as a source for facts without attribution', and then put in a query ('clarify'), which was unnecessary if one actually consults the sources cited. I did so. Sand cited Levinsohn, and his citation is confirmed by Spolsky. So there is no need in that case, a specific fact, for attribution. As I said from the outset, if we cite a fact from Sand that looks problematical then raise this on the talk page. I actually once wrote to him over a quotation from Ben-Zion Dinur, and the good man took the trouble (I do this extremely infrequently, as with Martin Gilbert once) to check, provide further details, and confirm the veracity of the Ben-Zion Dinur's quotation. Penslar excels in a different form of scholarship, one I prefer, but you don't get to be an historian if you knowingly invent stuff, or screw up on sourcing, pagination etc. Sand simply used a very influential set of theses advanced in the 1980s regarding the formation of identity, and the way our concepts of peoplehood are historically manipulated, fabricated nor cultivated for specific national purposes, and applied it to the case of 'Jews'. if you look at his thesis historically, within Jewish discourse, then it is a defense of bo the Haskalah and Reformist Judaism's insistence Jews are defined by their religion, not by their ethnicity. It is the triumph of Zionism to have so thoroughly worked modern imaginations that its revolutionary redefining of Jews in terms of ethnicity and nationhood that many Jews themselves have forgotten how alien this was to the common sense view prevailing within reformist Judaism in the 19th century. Penslar is upset, Hobsbawm, an historian of great distinction as well, was not. The citations are, therefore, understandable as highly emotional reactions to a very touchy topic.The only sensible things is to distinguish what Sand advances as an interpretation, from the matter which is presented as factual. If it isn't factual or looks dubious as a fact, you have a case. The problem is people overwork a talk page and don't do much to improve the page, which should, I repeat, simple give the genealogy of the idea of the Khazar hypothesis from its origins to its recent demise, neutrally. It is a fascinating story and we need not be nervous in telling it. Nishidani (talk) 20:14, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

That's not what the last review, for instance, says at all. It says he gallops through history, and specialists will no doubt be able to point out a few errors. That does not mean the work is generally erroneous. There's no reason to consider it more or less erroneous than any other sweeping work for any given statement unless said statement is directly contradicted by better sources. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:42, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

The point of all this is to say that Sand is controversial and met with some amount of critique and therefore best seen as speculative rather than authoritative, and treated with some distance and qualification. Andre🚐 16:10, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Again, no, if there is some dispute about something Sand is cited for then demonstrate the dispute with an opposing viewpoint from another reliable source. Just saying "he's controversial" does not at all mean he cannot be cited for facts. That is poisoning the well through attributing where others are not. nableezy - 00:58, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, I guess Bob from Brockley didn't offer a specific fact he was concerned with cited to Sand. I think the point is though that there's a legitimate controversy about Sand's work - whether it is polemical and whether equally, Behar, or other more pro-Israeli-ME-connection writers, whether they are, as some argue, nationalistic and therefore not trustworthy or perhaps there are polemical and controversial actors on both sides, and we should be attributing them both for any controversial statements. Again, OP can offer if there are some specific statements in question; I did not bring any. Andre🚐 20:07, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Just to take one example, we cited him for Levinsohn's opinion. I can't find Levinsohn's own text in English, just quotations from it in others' texts. Sand's text includes a brief mention of Levinsohn with no context, e.g. no sense of what "these regions" meant and no quotation that included the word Khazars. He named the book Testimony in Israel in the body and Document in Israel in the footnote (the former is what it's usually called in English). He cites footnote 2 on page 33. (Raisin also give 33n2, even though he cites a different edition, but doesn't give the full quote. Raisin immediately follows his sentence on Levinsohn with one on Harkavi, as Sand does, leading me to wonder if Sand got it from Raisin.) citing Sand, we say Levinsohn's book was published in 1828, but it was actually published in 1823 and I am still unsure if he mentions Khazars. In other words, Sand turns out to a bad secondary source to use without attribution. I haven't checked the other facts we source from him but suspect, we'd find someone similar. With a real RS, you don't need to do these checks. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:37, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Levinsohn's text is in Hebrew. It's mentioned by many scholars, Weinryb et al., in this context. All Sand did, following up on his reading of several of the sources, was to go to a library in Israel and read the original, and then cite it directly in his his Hebrew edition. If you want the direct quote from Levinsohn just look it up Sand's Matai ve'ekh humtza ha'am hayehudi? All his English translator Yael Lotan did was render Levinsohn's text (1828), as quoted in Sand (2008), into English from Hebrew. Of course Levinsohn wrote classical Hebrew and perhaps Sand rendered that into modern Hebrew. As the quote from Raisin, who himself cited directly from Levinsohn, shows 'these regions' contextually refers to the general area of the Ukraine/Poland/western Russia (the lands of eastern Jewry). Avoiding OR I just linked to the three areas. Bob, Levinsohn's book was completed in 1823, yes, but not published till 5 years later. Sand has the correct date. but I think the clincher for Sand's reliability comes from Bernard D. Weinryb, (who elsewhere rebuffed the idea of a Khazar connection), but in his The Khazars: An Annotated Bibliography, in Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, Spring 1963, Vol. 6, No. 3 pp.111-129 p.119 he glosses the entry under Levinsohn with the description:'Hypothesis of Khazar origin of Jews in Russia and Poland.' Weinryb, like Wexler, read every primary source.Nishidani (talk) 12:53, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Going through Nishidani recent edits (thank you for your hard work Nishidani), I think the issues are now mostly resolved. I attributed one more thing cited to him, as I couldn't find another source.) There's still a couple of facts citing him, and it strikes me that he is himself citing other secondary sources both times. (E.g. we quote an Israeli ambassador talking "an antisemitic action financed by the Palestinians", citing him; he gets that second hand from something published in French, Jacques Piatigorsky, "Arthur Koestler et les Khazars: L'histoire d'une obsession," in L'Empire Khazar. It would be good, for example, to be able to use that instead of Sand, in case there are translation issues. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:50, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Bob. Not hard work, as opposed to time-consuming and I mainly worry that if I allow myself to get distracted here, my tomato crop will fall to aphids, and I'll be constrained to eat at McDonald's, a fate worse than death or dearth. I still hope that folks give me time tocomb back through this and recheck everything and add new material overlooked in the first recension. Sand cites Piatigorsky (who is a banker by the way with a yen for writing books as a sideline). Sand's second language is French, and there is nothing exceptionally surprising in the quote from Piatigorsky. I've seen insinuations that Palestinians (the authorities that is) finance antisemitism too frequently to think that odd, though one asks oneself where they'd find adequate funds in their budget for such a campaign, since they can't even finance their own health care -.:) In any case, this is further down the page, and I'll see what I can come up with.Nishidani (talk) 12:47, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The genetics stuff

Going through this again, I see that there are a lot of genetic papers that shouldn't be here

• They are introduced regardless of thed Khazar hypothesis
• In an attempt to show that Ashkenazim do have Middle Eastern origins.
• That is, some editors have taken it into their heads to scrounge up papers in the larger debate about Jewish origins, and introduce this not to directly confute Elhaik, but rather to vindicate the ME origin of Jews.
• All that is amply evidenced in the relevant pages on Jews and genetics.
• Apart from the sheer irrelevance (Ashkenbazi Levite lines? what is that doing here?) and unreadability, they shouldn't be cited unless the said papers directly challenge Elhaik's Khazar hypothesis. This paper is about the Khazars, and is not a venue for endorsing alternative theories.

Nishidani (talk) 13:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Genetics papers that address/challenge the Khazar hypothesis are relevant, not necessarily only Elhaik's iteration of it specifically - as it predates and exists independently of Elhaik (Richards, Costa et al., for instance, argue that Ashkenazi mtdna is not Khazar nor from the Caucasus but are not responding to Elhaik in particular).

Regarding Levite lines, some researchers (e.g. Nebel) had previously suggested that Ashkenazi Levite lines might be Khazar. But the more recent studies on them (cited here - Behar, Rootsi et al.) conclude that they are not. So they would seem to be relevant for that reason.

I would also argue that, since the Khazar hypothesis posits that the Ashkenazim are primarily or in large part descended from the Khazars, studies finding that they are largely Middle Eastern and/or European would not be irrelevant either. Skllagyook (talk) 14:10, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

As I wrote, genetic papers that address Khazar issue directly are fine by me. So what are you disputing? Every editor who worries over this keeps coming back to Elhaik's first paper, while quietly ignoring the 2016-2017 revisions. The Elhaik Khazar hypothesis2 is not squabbling with a Middle Eastern origin. To the contrary, it argues for a Middle Eastern origin, in so far as that term embraces north-western (Behar) and north-eastern Turkey. It certainly contests the assertion that by ME we are to understand the (southern) Levantine founding fathers hypothesis. As I said, papers that directly address the Khazar hypothesis are welcome and should be retained. But those that don't mention the Khazar hypothesis, but are introduced to discuss specific genetic profiles unrelated to the hypothesis, look like they are being harvested to assert or vindicate or 'debunk' a contentious theory that they otherwise never mention, and therefore shift the focus too broadly, close to WP:OR. Nishidani (talk) 16:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Totally agree with Nishidani here. Including articles that don't mention the hypothesis is WP:SYN. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:32, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree: while the article shouldn't be comprehensively about the genetic origins of the Ashkenazi, to the extent that they are ME/European rather than Khazar (which would show up presumably as Turkic/Asiatic), that is relevant and shouldn't be removed inasmuch as it's well-sourced. The Khazar theory originated long before Elhaik such as Arthur Koestler. Andre🚐 16:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

On 14 June 2023, Skllagyook wrote, "Genetics papers that address/challenge the Khazar hypothesis are relevant" and Nishidani wrote, "genetic papers that address Khazar issue directly are fine by me." Then would you have the courtesy of adding one or two sentences about the Brook 2022 study which does exactly this? It was recently endorsed ("[A] most valuable resource for further reference regarding the Ashkenazi mitochondrial lineages.") by Toomas Kivisild, Professor in the Department of Human Genetics and Head of the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Genetics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, a co-author of multiple scientific papers on Jewish DNA including "The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event" (2006) and "Counting the Founders: The Matrilineal Genetic Ancestry of the Jewish Diaspora" (2008). Since April, this book also has two citable genetic samples in the public database GenBank that directly relate to the Khazar hypothesis and confirm what the book was suggesting about these two particular haplogroups:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/OQ732697.1

Haplogroup A-a1b3a1 sample with an Ashkenazi maternal line from Przyrów, Poland

Its position on the haplotree is evident at https://www.yfull.com/mtree/A-a1b3a/ (which includes this GenBank sample) as being in the descendant branch of a variety found among Uzbekistani Turkmens and ancient Kazakhstani samples from other genetic studies.

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/OQ732365.1

Haplogroup N9a3a1b1 sample with an Ashkenazi maternal line from Rajgród, Poland

This confirms it is the same branch that a medieval Jew held in the Erfurt 2022 study, being another study not yet cited in this Wikipedia entry, even though it directly says this is a Central/East Asian haplogroup. Both of these 2022 scientific studies are peer-reviewed and eligible for inclusion.

Its position on the haplotree is evident at https://www.yfull.com/mtree/N9a3a1b/ (which includes this GenBank sample) as being in the descendant branch of a variety found among Turkic-speaking Bashkirs and Mongolic-speaking Daurs. 172.58.242.203 (talk) 03:21, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I think we had this conversation before. See above. I for one am waiting for peer-reviewed molecular genetic papers that examine your thesis, and discuss it, which the above links don't supply. Virtually none of the queries raised in that earlier thread were answered, as opposed to repeating the contents of your thesis. When Elhaik's contentions were published, they generated a dense and heated set of critical papers, and we duly transcribed those debates. Given that you are not a molecular biologist, we require something of the same reverberation to avoid wikipedia being used as a promotional vehicle for work that as yet has had no notable impact on the field. Your thesis is radical, -indeed, as shown above, it contradicts in key points what major molecular biologists state, hence the caution.Nishidani (talk) 07:18, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Brook 2022 is completely in harmony with the statement on page 883 of Behar 2013 that the scientists involved in that paper "cannot rule out the possibility that a level of Khazar or other Caucasus admixture occurred below the level of detectability in our study." If antisemitic conspiracy theories promulgated by members of Neo-Nazi, Black Hebrew Israelite, and cult organizations continue to be summarized in this entry, scientific studies absolutely need to also be, with the article giving weight to the science over the crazies, even though yesterday Nishidani expressed an objection to the inclusion of some of those pre-2022 scientific studies. If discredited hypotheses about haplogroup R1a (Ashkenazi Levite) being "Khazarian" are relevant to discuss in the four paragraphs that are here, and they certainly are historically relevant, then so too are the emerging ideas on N9a3a1b1 for which the two 2022 publications will surely not be the last to discuss them.

A final comment for the moment is about Nishidani's complaint over Wikipedia editors "quietly ignoring the 2016-2017 revisions" of Elhaik's hypothesis. The same could be said of the suppression of Brook 2022 from this article. From the guidance on Wikipedia:Reliable_sources: "Especially in scientific and academic fields, older sources may be inaccurate because new information has been brought to light, new theories proposed, or vocabulary changed. ... Be sure to check that older sources have not been superseded, especially if it is likely that new discoveries or developments have occurred in the last few years. ... Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses." Since Elhaik and Brook are both major players in this academic debate who are cited often, and both are mentioned in this Wikipedia entry, if Elhaik's revised views and data after 2012 are relevant to mention then so too are Brook's revised views and data from after 2018. If Behar's team of scientists someday admitted to having accidentally missed the Turkic-associated and North Caucasian-rooted haplogroups in Jews, that would be similarly relevant. And Nishidani's repeatedly expressed view that so-called citizen scientists| cannot make genuine discoveries and that only degreed professional scientists can do so is antiquated. Brook didn't make the aforementioned discoveries; other citizen geneticists did (Cooper for N9a3a1b1, Sea for A-a1b3a1, Rothstein for G2a-FGC1093). This isn't about promoting Brook but about discussing new data. 172.58.242.203 (talk) 09:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

If Brook 2022 is completely in harmony with Behar (not true, see the earlier thread), then we have Behar already-

yesterday Nishidani expressed an objection to the inclusion of some of those pre-2022 scientific studies

No, That completely misses the point. I am for the inclusion of all genetic studies that mention the Khazars, and opposed to those that do not mention them (i.e. WP:OR)

Since you are not a molecular biologist, we require secondary sources written by those, books, articles etc., which take up your proposals/results before using them. We cannot use your book directly. That is the way wikipedia works.

Elhaik is a molecular biologist, working at the cusp of his field so any comparison of disparity in treatment ignores that crucial difference. Brook is to be admired for the intense work and effort he has devoted to cover the debates in the field of Khazar studies. He is not a 'major player' in this academic field (so far). Major players in this field, aside from qualified geneticists, are trained academic historians with competence in Jewish history, with several ancient and modern languages at their command, or with archaeological work to their credit, etc. That is not a put-down. It is simply what wiki rules about RS commend as best practice for sourcing. Behar, and Ostrer can be shown to make serious historical errors, because they are not trained historians but geneticists who can't distinguish disproven or questioned historical memes from cutting-edge research in that area, as opposed to their field of competence. An amateur/outsider with no formal qualifications can indeed make crucial discoveries, as Hardy found when he came across the manuscripts of an Indian clerk, Srinivasa Ramanujan. Anton van Leeuwenhoek opened up a vast new world just by grinding lenses, idem Benjamin Franklin etc.etc. The outstanding problem in paleogenetic demographics is advanced mathematical competence, which many molecular biologists do not apparently have, trusting in the programmed algorithms of their number-crunching computer software. Only peer-reviewed articles from within the discipline pass muster. An outsider, if they have stumbled on some oversight, should simply exercise patience, not perhaps that of Gregor Mendel but, if a breakthrough is there, it will be picked up in the literature. One cannot take an outsider's word for it, however sedulous and advanced their studies may be. That is fundamental on wikipedia. Nishidani (talk) 10:57, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The unofficial essay Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(science) suggests citing "reputable scientific journals, statements and reports from reputable expert bodies, widely recognized standard textbooks written by experts in a field, or standard handbooks and reference guides, and high-quality non-specialist publications." Nishidani is disputing the idea that somebody without a formal credential in a particular field can ever become an expert and his argument against mentioning Brook 2022 at all at the present time essentially hinges on that technicality. It also states, "Major academic publishers and university presses publish specialized book series with good editorial oversight. Volumes in these series summarize the latest research in narrow areas usually in a more extensive format than journal reviews." Although currently Brook 2022 as a particular work fails the second part of the following test in terms of its discussion in genetic literature: "The authors and the paper itself are widely cited by other researchers in the paper's field." It passes this one: "Recognized experts in the field have commented or offered informal opinion." (Kivisild and Skorecki). And also passes this one: "The paper has been appropriately reviewed through formal or informal peer review." (five anonymous peer reviewers who included two geneticists and three historians) As an author, several older works by Brook were cited within genetic literature by some credentialed geneticists:

This is not Brook's first foray into genetic research. An aspect of Brook's genetic knowledge (Ashkenazi Levite R1a) is cited on page 186 of professor of genetics Raphael Falk's 2017 book Zionism and the Biology of Jews (the text credits Brook with communicating this to him). A Y-chromosomal haplogroup from Brook's 2014 study "The Genetics of Crimean Karaites" is cited by the genetic study Das 2016 ("Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz") and the related work Elhaik 2016 ("In Search of the jüdische Typus").

Brook 2006, which is mostly about the history and only peripherally about genetics, was cited by Gladstein 2016 ("Population Genetics of the Ashkenazim") and its revision Brook 2018 cited by Gladstein 2018 ("Substructured population growth in the Ashkenazi Jews inferred with Approximate Bayesian Computation"). Brook 2006 was also cited in Dzhaubermezov 2017 ("Genetic characterization of Balkars and Karachays according to the variability of the Y chromosome").

Nishidani considers the discussion of potential Khazar markers in Brook 2022 as "radical". If this had been so, the following sentence from that essay would have applied: "Editors should be especially leery of citing papers making exceptional claims until the relevant community has evaluated the evidence." However, the sentence from Behar 2013 that I cited before did allow for the small possibility of an eventual finding of such markers.

In the context of Waldman 2022 (the Erfurt DNA study), which mentioned N9a3a1b1 but did not mention the other two markers, the population geneticist Razib Khan hosted a December 2022 podcast "The Medieval Origins of the Ashkenazim" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHiKO0EbQ00) with three of the citizen scientist co-authors of the Erfurt paper. At 48:59+ Ariel Lomes says, "N9a3 maternal lineage ... perhaps it ties to either Silk Road going through the Byzantine Empire or maybe some other location which, I don't want to say Khazars but here I am, I mentioned it. ... But I think we can't really disqualify maybe a tiny amount of more elevated Khazar ancestry. Again, really minor, on the low single digits..." At 51:50+, Leo Cooper mentions the Turkic Bashkirs and North Caucasians who carry haplogroups close to N9a3a1b1. Then at 53:03 Khan offers his opinion: "You're talking about Khazars, now. Let's keep it real." This agrees with the interpretation of that haplogroup in Brook 2022. Lomes is currently in an internship in professional geneticist Shai Carmi's lab at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (https://il.linkedin.com/in/ariel-lomes-8bb52465).

Brook 2022's data set has started to be used by others already, albeit not yet in other publications, as this is early in the game. Its A-a1b3a1 mitochondrial sequence helped YFull to clarify the position of the Ashkenazi branch of the "A" tree. This branch had simply been called "A" in Costa 2013 (a major Jewish mtDNA study). YFull requires at least two exemplars of every branch before they name them. This was the second one in that branch and YF085842 was the first one and formerly placed at the level A-a1b3a and, before then, A-a1b3. This was the first of its kind in GenBank. It will likely also be cited in future scientific studies and databases that focus on haplogroup A and/or Jewish populations. N9a3a1b1 was called simply "N9a" in Costa 2013, again not very precise.

YFull MTree and GenBank form major parts of the backbone of public mitochondrial knowledge in the scientific community. Some of this year's scientific papers that cite YFull MTree include "Phylogeographic history of mitochondrial haplogroup J in Scandinavia" and "High Coverage Mitogenomes and Y-Chromosomal Typing Reveal Ancient Lineages in the Modern-Day Székely Population in Romania". 172.58.242.203 (talk) 09:36, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

ADF on 9/11

The term "Khazarian Mafia" sometimes is used by antisemitic media as a derogatory term for Jews, especially in connection with conspiracy theories such as 9/11."Khazars". ADL. Retrieved October 26, 2022.

• Leads summarize. They are not places where youjust plunk stuff without glancing at the body of the article.
• This is a recondite detail.
• The ADL paragraph is too generic for a scholarly article.
• I for one have read extensively on this topic, and no doubt there are some morons on the internet who connect the Khazar theory to 9/11, but it has escaped my radar.
• WP:Undue applies here, apart from not reflecting any extensive text below on the Khazarian mafia or 9/11.

Nishidani (talk) 21:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

• oppose change, support cite to the ADL. It's informative and is indeed quite common online. Perhaps you are simply not in touch with many internet forums like reddit or the youtube comments. Andre🚐 22:18, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Overall, it sounds much more like a factoid more suitable for the 9/11 or new world order conspiracy pages, linking back to here for expansion as to where the term ' Khazarian' derives from, but it is just that: derived from this subject. As a data point, it is entirely tangential and insubstantial to the topic here. Conspiratorial, antisemitic mumblings using this notion as a namesake neither add to nor detract from the actual hypothesis itself. It is moot point material. While it could be hosted in the section on related prejudice here, the ADL's specific take is not more relevant or worthy of mention than any of the other examples there, and is certainly not due in the lead at the level of source quality presented by a fleeting glossary entry. If it is a term with serious currency, there are bound to be better sources out there, and even if there are more reliable sources substantiating it, it would still be an aside here with no more relevance than any of the other content in the Antisemitism section. Iskandar323 (talk) 00:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't read twitter, reddit, facebook, instagram etc.etc. I will read any scholarly study of what those trash networks throw up. The antisemitic fringe-idiot aspect of Khazar conspiracy theories was around for decades, beyond the radar of most scholars until Barkun explored it and in doing so, provided us with an excellent scholarly RS for this rubbish. Most people who contribute to twitter, reddit, facebook, instagram probably wouldn't recognize the word 'Khazars'. If what the ADL states constitutes a significant field, then that will come under mainstream and scholarly scrutiny, and we will use it, but certainly not as a stand-alone undue piece of trivia in the lead.Nishidani (talk) 11:10, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Nishidani, I am not advocating you should dive into the wretched hive of scum and villainy of social media, but you should recognize that many people do including our readers and they will benefit from a reliable source such as the ADL providing information on such things. I agree the fringe-idiot aspect of the Khazar stuff is not new or unique to social media, but it happens to be by and large the most prominent existing modern usage of the thing. Yes, it's extremely pervasive and we are doing a disservice by not covering what RS educationally say about it. Andre🚐 14:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

It's a matter of editing per rules. The addition fails WP:MOS on leads, and WP:Undue and perhaps WP:Recentism. The rule is, wait for a reliable source. The ADL is reliable for a lot of things, but way below the quality for sourcing which we have here. There is a whole genre of scholarship which follows all these trends in the rumour-circuits of the digital universe, and until one comes up that gives us hard data, and analysis, a wee para on the ADL's website defining the term has zero value. As you can see in recent edits, one strives to get a scholarly source, and then, add also the sources that scholarship drew on. The curious reader doesn't need to take anything on trust (I don't, in any case). When I read the ADL snippet, I wondered why they don't, as we have abundantly in the Soviet culture sphere where the Khazar-mafia crap is subject to serious analysis (Rossman, Shirelnikov etc) tell us more. That kind of 'stuff' just leaves me, a reader, wondering. I only watch TV to see a film once a day, and use only a few sites on the Internet, otherwise I live disconnected to chat because though a strong swimmer, I only venture out into the infinite sea of opinion when I can see a life-buoy of scholarship. I do, twice a day, for an hour or so chat around in bars, and have so in several countries this last decade. Whenever I've mentioned the Khazars, to young and old (I'm often asked what I do, then what I write etc) no one to date has the slightest idea of what the fuck I am referring to, average, often but not always, well-educated italians, Americans, Australians, English, French, German and Japanese folks. They all work smartphones, Ipads, and social media quite intensively. That is why the ADL note is not enough. Who are they talking out, on what media, in which country, how widespread, if at all, is that usage? Nishidani (talk) 15:09, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I am also incredibly certain few people know who the fuck the Khazars were. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:10, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

This is anecdata. Yes, the Khazars are pretty obscure and most people have not heard of them. But they are disproportionately used in antisemitic Russian/Ukrainian discourse. I'm perfectly fine with moving this content out of the lead and into the body, and simply summarizing differently in the lead. But the ADL is considered reliable for such topics. There's an academic work that covers history through the 70s-90s from the perspective of 2005[20] and one from 2001[21] and also appears as a chapter here[22]. Here's an article from the Canadian anti-hate network which might not be suitable as a reference, but should lend credence to the idea that the Khazar Jewish antisemitic conspiracy theory is widespread[23] Andre🚐 17:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Those sources are all about antisemitism, which has a section and is referenced in the lead, but none seem to mention the 'Khazarian mafia', which was the particular term inserted into the lead as asserted by ADL. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:15, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The ADL is sufficiently reliable to substantiate the truth of such a claim. There are indeed Qanon and neonazi individuals who have posited the existence of a Khazarian mafia as a conspiracy theory about Jews. Strange, but true. There is no actual entity in history or otherwise that would be known as the Khazarian mafia that I know of. Andre🚐 19:35, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Okay. The addition fails WP:MOS on leads, and WP:Undue and perhaps WP:Recentism. Nishidani (talk) 19:08, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I am fine with moving it to the section on antisemitism instead of the lead. Andre🚐 19:38, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Nope as I said, it is a shoddy source. You refer me to Shnirelman above with a link, apparently unfamiliar with the fact that we use him already in the article. There are many things to improve here, and just badgering on about antisemitism when one sees the word 'Khazars', and a single shoddy snippet of an opinion when the text covers that aspect well, is time-wasting. The article can't cram in every single element on antisemitism's vast and reticular history. The article must summarize what those popular sites you refer me to show no awareness of, the scholarship on the history of that hypothesis (incomplete: there's no mention of Carl Vogt though both Weissenberg (1895) and von Kutschner (1909) use him, to note one of several things rereading this and the primary sources referred to, made me think of. Vogt is the idiot who seeded the Eastern/Western Jew meme into the pseudo-science of phrenology, and indirectly caused serious scholars to explain the 'Eastern Jew' as Khazarian.); the antisemitic angle (mostly done), and the genetics (pretty thorough but poor and misleading paraphrases in much of the material used). I know I'm biased: I don't want encyclopedic articles to just paraphrasse the clumsy and simplistic remarks of anonymous sources (who wrote the ADL para?). Anyone can google that stuff and form a strong opinion inn two minutes without even understanding the context that comes from: the reader deserves state of the art scholarship on all significant aspects, not trivia from the whispering margins.Nishidani (talk) 19:46, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Why is it a problem that I brought up Shnirelman? Is he not relevant to shed some light on this? I'm not opposed to improving the rigor and the consistency of our academic material, but that doesn't preclude "shoddy" (according to Nishidani) but otherwise reliable (according to Wikipedia consensus) material from websites and reliable news sources. It's a net improvement for our article on Khazars to mention the "Khazarian Mafia" even though that is definitely not a real thing, just some weird conspiracy theory. You might be interested in the work by Valjean, User:Valjean/Essay/Why Wikipedia documents opinions and nonsense. Andre🚐 19:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Okay. I'll parse that trash for you. Measure it against what both the Khazar main article and the history described in this article state, and you get reductive caricature to the point of moronic simplification.

Khazars were a group of Eastern European non-Jews who allegedly converted to Judaism in the eighth century. Some antisemites believe that modern Jews are descended from those Khazars, rather than from the ancient Israelites described in the Bible. This theory aims to dispute the legitimacy of those who practice Judaism today, undermining both the religious tenets of Judaism and Jews' historical connection to the land of Israel. Some antisemties refer to Jews as the "Khazarian Mafia." Some have associated the Khazars with ISIS and others have even claimed that the Khazarian Mafia is responsible for 9/11.

ADF is not a reliable source and can not be used as a source for anything. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 20:19, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Nope. WP:RSPADL Andre🚐 20:29, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• 'allegedly'. The consensus that the Jewish documents of the period refer to some real historic core in a conversion of some kind, in the Khazar elite. Our article gives the consensus and then gives the dissenting minority view (Shampfer/Moshe Gil). It is neutral.
• 'Some antisemites believe . . .' Note that this immediate reference to 'antisemitism' ignores anything about Khazar history. The only thing that interests the ADL definition of 'Khazars' is that after 6 centuries in which Jewish scholarship discussed it, in the 20th century it was abused by fringe antisemites. So the ADK is only interested in defining a very broad topic and history, but creating the equation>:'Here the word Khazars, think antisemitism' even if this concerns only 'some' antisemites.
• Some antisemities think that modern Jews are descended from those Khazars'. Note the ineptitude. The Khazarist antisemites argue that Ashkenazim descend from Khazars, not all Jews. To those who are familiar with the topic, one could also write:'Some Jews think that modern Ashkenazim are descended from those Khazars'.
• An alternative is given: some antisemites (falsely) believe 'Jews' are Khazar descendants, as opposed to being descended from the Israelites. The latter is the unquestioned, implicit truth suggested by the extreme juxtaposition. No one believes Jews are descended from the Israelites tout court.
• 'This theory aims to dispute the legitimacy of those who practice Judaism today.' Oh really? What scholarship on the issue states that? To argue for Khazar descent for Ashkenazim in the 8th century CE has no relevance to the 'legitimacy' of Judaism, whose core scriptures long precede the historical emergence of the Khazars, Jewish converts or not.
• 'This theory aims to undermine . . .Jews' historical connection to the Land of Israel.' Historically, the theory existed for 150 years before the foundation of Israel, was largely entertained by Jewish thinkers. Both some Jews and some antisemites think that the hypothesis would undermine the cogency of the standard claim to make a state. That the area of Palestine/Israel has deep historic resonance for Jews is denied only by illiterate lunatics. Ergo loose and loaded language to engineer a prejudice.

• Some Jews refer to Jews as the 'Khazarian mafia'. This is shorthand crap that circulates in Slavic antisemitic circles, as our article shows. The term is otherwise unfamiliar to English speakers.

Some associate the Khazars with ISIS. There you go. I've spent a decade, with some months of intense focus, while mostly just keeping abreast of the field, and failed to note the Khazar-ISIS connection. No doubt that crepitative idea farts its way around obscure social sites, but it is trivia. M;afia and ISIS ergo Khazars here is showcasing a trivial connection not to reveal anything, in my view, but to make sure readers, when they encounter the word Khazars, think of ISIS/mafia/9/11 =Jews, creating self-fulfilling prophecy. I.e. the average reader would never connect this up, but would be frightened into thinking, were they Jews, that when Khazars are mentioned there is nothing to it but code-language for a conspiratorial extremist antisemitic fantasies.

All this gimpy trivia was penned anonymously, clearly by an historical ignoramus, or a manipulative POV-pusher. That it finds a voice on the ADL's site doesn't thereby accredit the relevance. If anything, it undermines the general reliability of the ADL. We don't do one-eyed scarifying bullshit-artists on wikipedia. Now, I'm going to attend to the article, that needs close and serious review and overhauling/updating. I've already corrected sedveral errors in just the first two sections, while this pointless argufying drones on about what should never even have been considered RS let alone pertinent to the lead. Nishidani (talk) 10:45, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but you're conflating. The article can be improved. Wikipedia consensus also considers the ADL default reliable by established consensus. Now there can be a local consensus for specific statements that aren't reliable, but this is WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:IDHT, and WP:SOURCEGOODFAITH Andre🚐 12:14, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

That's a laugh, citing WP:IDONTLIKEIT, when I argued that I don't like airhead comments, wherever they appear, even in the ADL website, and WP:IDHT, when you have repeated yourself ignoring any attempt to address the solid reasons given for dismissing a clearly inaccurate piece of dumddowned spin on the Khazars as adequate to minimal requirements for RS criteria on scholarship as the ideal venue for sourcing articles, particularly of this complexity. Still, back to some serious reading and editing.Nishidani (talk) 15:01, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

It seems that we disagree but when it comes to a policy-based reason why the ADL is unreliable we return to ad hominem arguments. You can look in the edit history of the article, but I am not one of the major contributors to this article. I am not saying that we need to say that the Khazars are associated with 9/11 or ISIS. But you are all over the place in your responses including plenty of fairly aggressive, throwing your weight around type of talk. I have never said you should stop editing with improvements. All I am saying is that there's a Qanon usage of the Khazar conspiracy theory. This theory involves a posited Rothschild Khazarian mafia or some other such nonsense. I am not saying we should make the whole article or the lead about that. But I do think if the ADL is mentioning it, while we don't need to verbatim copy the ADL, the ADL is presumed reliable enough to substantiate this, and that it's a net improvement to the article to WP:PRESERVE such content rather than summarily excluding it on the basis that ADL is unreliable (it isn't), or that some POV pusher or ignoramus must have added this (bad faith, and irrelevant). Andre🚐 19:00, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

NB: generally reliable - the standards of thoroughness in any given piece of content still apply: it doesn't mean than any old half-arsed glossary entry on their corporate website is suddenly gold-plated. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:37, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

For material this obscure, one could also quite readily cry WP:ECREE. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:39, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I think that's a well-formed and meaningful argument, but are we actually disputing that it is sufficiently well-sourced that such a conspiracy theory exists or just doing so to prove the point? I'm willing to do some research to improve sourcing about it, there also could be as Nishidani said, a RECENTISM bias. I still do think that the Qanon usage of the Khazar conspiracy is worth documenting provided and only provided that reliable sources document it. So it's valid to ask me to find more sources, but I still think the ADL is de facto reliable enough to be one of those sources purely for documenting the existence and basic characteristics of a conspiracy theory, much as we might use the SPLC or another kind of think tank sort of advocacy organization for basic factual research data about hate groups. Andre🚐 19:05, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

The former. I'm genuinely not convinced at this stage that antisemitic conspiracy theories drawing in references to the Khazars specifically in some sort of NWO or 'mafia'-type setup, is a particularly widespread trope. It seems fairly fringe and worth supporting with multiple sources, but yes, I agree that if multiple sources align on this, then the ADL source is fine to stay as a reference point. I don't think it's badly unreliable, just a rather trivial titbit when taken in isolation. Alone, it does not present a particularly compelling case that these are memes that find currency in anything but most extreme of fringe circles. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:25, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

You can find this crap on QAnon and Stormfront and David Dukes and numerous other websites catering to the lunatic fringe. I've never read any of that 'stuff'. If I want to learn about a neurosis/psychosis, I read competent psychologists who delve into those kinds of discourse (and I certainly don't trust any tabloid or sketchy mainstream paragraph written for the general public. It's the same here. Efron 2013 mentions Stormfront, for example (and he's also interesting on genetics papers like those of Behar and Elhaik showing how embedded that scientific work still remains in conceptions that arose centuries ago). My caution is also due to the fact that billions of people are on social media forums, and anything can be said, shouted, touted and of course snipped out to give the impression that some group, religious ethnic or otherwise is under a massive threat. That is precisely why we need high quality analytical studies that use sophisticated statistical models that allow research to establish what noise out there has impact, and what is just marginal chat or rage by groupies of minor sites set up by grievance entrepreneurs.Nishidani (talk) 21:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you it's loony stuff, but in case you weren't following US politics on the right, there are politicians and even trolls on this very website pushing antisemitic theories from the Republican Congresspeople such as Greene and Boebert. In fact a number of recent incidents with gun violence in synagogues or insurrections in Congress have centered on right wing conspiracy activists. I'm not at all trying to promote it or encourage you read it, but I do think Wikipedia should debunk it. Efron sounds like a good place for me to look next. Do I think that there's a lot of daily risk from right wing conspiracy stuff? No, but there are many worrying risks of right-wing fascism in the US. You're not obligated to peruse such distasteful material. However, I see value in educating if we can. Andre🚐 21:57, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Nishidani made a good point at 10:45, 16 June 2023 ("would be frightened into thinking, were they Jews, that when Khazars are mentioned there is nothing to it but code-language for a conspiratorial extremist antisemitic fantasies."). I saw several Jewish people fly off the handle on Facebook and Twitter whenever Khazars were mentioned in neutral and positive ways and the moderator of Facebook's "Tracing the Tribe" genealogy group started banning discussion of Khazars altogether. Also, the following review at Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5079905986) argued that the children's novel Black Bird, Blue Road had no right to have Jewish Khazar characters because that supposedly reinforces antisemitic ideas: "The claim that Khazaria was a Jewish kingdom is a long-standing inaccuracy that has been transformed into a pernicious lie by antisemites who want to deny the Jewish identity of Ashkenazi Jews. Despite having a Jewish author, this book is dangerously subversive antisemitism because it provides the scaffolding for the broader readership to believe that antisemitic Khazar origin stories are grounded in truth. Unacceptable that a major publisher would greenlight this." At the end of the day, the only sources that matter when it comes to Khazars are scholarly in nature, not the paranoid ravings of antisemites on social media and Bitchute. 172.58.242.203 (talk) 07:40, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

That's interesting, the gist of it is already in Singerman 2004, which is used here. But the banning of a Khazar children's book by a Jewish author indeed is symptomatic of the much more dangerous trend in the US to gut school or local libraries of anything politically incorrect. This manoeuvre started against the so-called 'woke' (what a stupid phrase) constituency, and now, with the principle spreading like Covid, has the unintended lashback effect of removing the Bible, something the originators of bibliophobic book-disappearing hadn't grasped as the logical consequence of trying to control what children read. The art of education is not controlling what one reads: it's getting the young to learn to read, and training them how to read, anything, rather than have them sucked into the miasmic drivel of quick-fix impressionism they get on the basically illiterate webuniverse of social chat. There is a vast physical difference between sitting down, alone, and parsing slowly a book in your hand, and thumbing down a digital thread as you are interrupted by other distractive alerts, and constantly switch back and forth.

The only way to combat this - no one can muffle the airhead arseholery of twitterdom and Faecesbookless ranters on this or anything else is simply to stand outside the arena of discursive ranterdom, and get the historical facts down, thoroughly, calmly, neutrally on the default encyclopedia that is wikipedia. I may sound harsh in my contempt for meme machines and the meatheads who feed them to churn out an inhumane pabulum for an unwitting public of avid consumers, and flaunting a parlous insouciance to what might look like an ominous rumbling from the Dostoievskian underground of ressentiment, that global coalition of hate-spewing simpletons. But one should be wary of playing into their game. You never can with antisemites or any other hate-group's badgering antics. Dismiss Koestler as a 'black belt of Jewish self-hatred' is a catchy rhetorical gambit, but it only elicits in those who wish to believe this nonsense, the thought:'There they go again. The Jewish mafia who try to control any argument will say anything to hide their embarrassment, even attack their own.' and the to-and-fro of supercilious badinage kicks off again. The David Dukes of this world want to be noticed, want to be cited, at length. Every critical mention makes their day.Nishidani (talk) 08:28, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I completely agree. The banning of books should not take place. The "anti-woke" crusade is a joke and a sham at this point. However how I apply this admirable crusade against censorship and in favor of free information is to document and debunk these zombie wrong ideas, like an international Jewish conspiracy or what-have-you. Another book being banned by the anti-wokes is Maus. So I'm not quite sure how we go from "let's not censor/ban books" to "don't dismiss ideas from the David Dukes of the world because that is platforming them." These would seem to be 2 ideas in conflict. Andre🚐 19:40, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I can't see the transition. Books should not be banned-that only feeds into conspiracy theories.And we should just list the major antisemitic figures, like Duke, who use the Khazar theory to attack Jews. As the articles stands we do this. Should we give extensive details about Duke's use of Koestler or even Elhaik? No, that would be platforming Duke and his half-baked misreadings of the Khazar story. There is nothing original to Duke in this regard: he trots out, like all his kind, the crass clichés that the lunatic fringe has kept repeating since the 1920s.The best service wiki can do with stuff like this is to detail the history of the concept, incidentally showing that Jewish scholars have had no problem discussing its merits and failings with that open-minded acuity that is a hallmark of their tradition. We show, for example, that people like Weissenberg explored it to lend dignity to Ostjuden who suffered immensely from slavic antisemitism, but also were somewhat looked down on by Western Jews. We show the theory proved to be heuristically very fruitful because the possible role of Jews in Khazaria spurred an intensive scholarly focus on that area which has been productive of many wonderful books and articles on a once obscure and marginal area of history; we show that Poliak, two decades into his aliyah as a committed Zionist, could reformulate the theory, tie up what he saw as loose ends, and feel no embarrassment at suggesting large numbers of Jews might not have an 'Israelitic' descent; we could show that Koestler, so thoroughly Zionist that he militated in the Irgun, published his book not to invalidate the Israel he strongly supported, but to attempt (obviously he failed) to disarm the virulent tradition of antisemitism in Europe: 'if your hangup is about 'semitic people' why attack communities among you for a millenium who do not descend from a semitic people' seems to be the point of his interesting but shaky thesis. To him, the Khazar theory was an powerful instrument to eviscerate the racist premises of antisemitism: Elhaik also can be read in this sense - he appears to think that being Jewish has nothing to do with race (genetics), that an Ethiopean Beta or Yemeni Jew. or Kaifeng-descended Chinese person who has made aliyah, is a fellow-Jew regardless of their chromosomal idiosyncrasies.

Then we have our section of antisemitism, with its parade of fatuous grievance-mongering Jew-haters from the margins touting a dull cliché, which assumes that it is precisely 'race' which constitutes inexpugnably, a Jew. And it is no wonder that most of them would have been comfortable in Hitler's Germany. This is true even of the Christian identitarians and even Christian Zionists (a much larger constituency that your usual antisemitic rabble, as Singerman I think notes), who as most Jews and Israelis know, support Israel precisely because they are theologically convinced that Israel's existence is a necessary prelude to the extinction of Jews, the coming of the Messiah, and the redemption of Christianity, which mothered antisemitism, as the final outcome of history. Matched against the fascinating, predominantly infra-Jewish scholarly tradition of Khazar studies, the antisemitic crew are rather pathetic ignoramuses, who deserve, each briefly, mention only as antisemites, who would be so even if the Khazar theory did not exist. That is I think what we have in this article, which didn't start out to prove anything, but gives that impression after one has gone through the scholarship. We need to take as our model the same serene objectivity everywhere exemplified by the Encyclopedia Judaica (2nd ed.2007 vol.12 pp 108-114) which throughout shows no trace of anxiety or nervousness about feeding antisemitic feelings, or any intimidated need to rebut the morons who abuse the Khazar story to attack Jews. To tell Jewish readers to think that Khazars is just an antisemitic fantasy, as unfortunately far too many organizations that take on a remit to fight antisemitism, is to deprive Jews of a fascinating episode in their history, to impoverish the immensely variegated dimensions of Judaism, and replace pride at traditions of great historical depth and variety with an unwarranted timidity and errant defensiveness.Nishidani (talk) 22:04, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Recent findings

Can anybody eleborate on this website: https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/khazars/about/background And maybe incoporate that information in this article on the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry. 77.60.121.89 (talk) 15:44, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

No, FTDNA is a user submitted genealogy site, so it won't be used as it isn't reliable. Andre🚐 16:50, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Add black hebrew isrealites

Add them to groups that claim that the jews are actually turkic 93.106.147.186 (talk) 10:08, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

They are there, at the very bottom of the article. Andre🚐 03:50, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Unable to edit this article

I was going to fix a grammatical error in this article, but was prevented from doing so because it appears to be blocked from editing. Please fix this ridiculous situation! 98.123.38.211 (talk) 03:41, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

You can create an account and make 500 edits to obtain extendedconfirmed status. That's how it works for certain controversial articles due to a high volume of anonymous POV pushers and vandals. Andre🚐 03:51, 25 November 2023 (UTC)