I don’t think at all that you are anti-Semitic; you seem a person of genuine goodwill, with a desire for knowledge and justice. Norman Finkelstein, however, whom you cited in your first comment, is notoriously anti-Semitic, Jew or not. I will agree that the Palestinian people have had an awful time over these past 60 years. That it’s a “deal,” raw or not, handed to them by others, rather than the consequence of their own actions, I would have to dispute with you. It is not by any action of Israel that the Palestinians have not had their own nation, larger than Israel, for those 60 years. To know my position on this score, you might wish to read my post The Refusal.

I agree that the charge of anti-Semitism is levied a bit too easily and frequently. There are people who think that. There are people who think the general charge of racism is too easily made. I also believe that peoples long subjected to hateful and discriminatory feeling from others are more sensitively attuned to it than are outsiders, and can perceive it when outsiders sense nothing. Racism is so often covert.

You might be interested to know that I was in Virginia very recently, where we worked with the Pamunkey Indians on their reservation, the oldest in the nation. One older gentleman, about 75, with whom I spent time was a lovely and very good humored man. It was when I sat down to record an interview with him that he told me that white people had “treated me like shit” all of his life. He said that when his wife admonished him not to look back so much, he said to her, “You’ve had an operation. You have a scar. You ever look at that scar?”

Jews shouldn’t have to justify this or that regarding what they consider Jewishness. Knowing the DNA connection is better than not knowing. As far as history is concened, I say whatever is true let it be known. Suppose the Khazar myth were true–even that wouldn’t discount the true Jewishness. I would prefer it be a myth.

The only thing that bothers me about Israel, is that I think the Palestinians got a raw deal. Sorry, I am not anti-semitic. I am really sensitive about how that term is being used today by powerful groups like the ADL and the status quo media. Gentiles like myself often fear being labeled anti-semitic over very innocent and legitimate concerns. There was no anti-semitism in my upbringing at all.

Jewishness does fascinate me ( in a possitive way.) But, I would rather not think of someone’s whateverness too much, because it gets in the way of their humanness. I am a “mutt” from european groups. Virginia is my only homeland as I was born there. Even that bothers me because Virginia was taken from the Native Americans and it was once a slave state. I don’t think I have a parallel identity to Jewish identity. I think it’s ok to want a national homeland. What would mine be, Ireland, England, France?

You don’t get the “homeland thing”? I don’t know where you’re coming from, whether you hold to what I would consider some form of Utopian political philosophy that rejects the very notion of nationalism, or if you are limiting your mystification to Jews and Israel. Jews want a homeland for the same reasons as everyone else, and might be fairly asked to transcend that petty human limitation when everyone else does, and not before. Another answer is to ask, with some surprise, how can you look at Jewish history – a millennial history of rootless (even when rooted) persecution as a scapegoated other – and not get why Jews decided it was time to have a homeland. But the primary answer is that the land is the historic Jewish homeland. The situation is not remotely comparable to Europeans and Native Americans. Europeans were not from the Western Hemisphere; Jews are from the area of present-day Israel (and beyond), which was their homeland. And, of course, this is what the whole malicious Khazar focus is intended to challenge.

You seem to have a clear sense of the complexity and injustices of history. The Palestinians have claims too, and they need to be satisfied, while satisfying the legitimate claims of Jews too. No party gets all it wants, and it certainly isn’t so, if Israel were to hold out – for how many centuries? – that the Palestinian claim would be wiped out by time. Neither is that true of the Jews.

Determinative genetic study presented by the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates clear and strong genetic relationship between Western and Eastern European Jews, between Ashkenazim and Sephardic Jews, and between all and an ancient Middle Eastern founder population, with no extraordinary degree of the expected mingling with host populations. Even a later analysis of the findings, one that claims some greater presence of Khazar mitochondrial DNA among the Eastern European Ashkenazim, does not contradict any of these findings. And currently, nearly 60% of the Israeli Jewish population is of Sephardic descent.

Hold whatever opinions you like. Hold them according the facts.