Israel-Palestine: Which "solution" do you prefer?

[h2ohno]

And the line into outright anti-Semitism has been crossed.

There is no historical basis for the Khazar claim. While the ruling class of the Khazars did convert to Judaism, historians have no idea if the populace as a whole did or not, or their descendants stayed Jewish after that kingdom fell.

The migratory history of the Jewish people in Europe is clear, on the other hand. Jews were living throughout Roman-controlled Europe before the Romans exiled the majority of Judea's population. The population that became known as the Ashkenazim spread northward from Italy into Germany and France. Ashkenaz is a term for Germany. The Jewish population of eastern Europe was relatively small until Poland invited Jews in in the 1300s and 1400s. At the time Poland was actually very hospitable to the Jews, who were being expelled from England, France, and Spain, and who had endured terrible massacres during the crusades. Jews flocked to Poland-from the west, not from Turkic lands. Even Sephardic Jews from Spain moved to Poland. That was when the eastern European Jewish population began to rise to prominence in numbers and centrality.

In addition, genetic testing has shown most Jewish populations around the world to be both related and originating from the Middle East, including the Ashkenazi population. There is also a distinct lack of any remnants of any Turkish or Khazar dialect in Yiddish, the language spoken by the Jews of eastern Europe. Yiddish combined Hebrew and the languages of their host countries, such as German and Polish, but contains no traces of any language associated with the Khazars.  It is possible that a small number of descendants of the Khazars joined the already-existing Jewish communities of Europe, but that is all.

The Khazar theory is a groundless and unscientific theory originally conceived in a misguided attempt to argue that anti-Semites shouldn't care about Jews since they aren't the Jews who supposedly killed Jesus, but it has instead become a justification for anti-Semitism, and any time the subject is brought up that is an immediate red flag of anti-Semitism.