Somewhere back up this thread, someone wrote about the genetic connection between Jews, Kurds and Armenians. That would be the Cohen Y chromosome, I seem to recall. I also seemed to recall something about the Journal of Immunology having to rip a paper out of issues on a related subject, so I went and looked it up.

The article, which showed that there were very close similarities between Palestinians and Jews, has had some argument about it, which anyone can check up on by googling "Jews Palestinians immunology paper", and so I'm not going to refer to it. It was included by a guest editor who happened to be the lead author.

Instead, that among the discussion of this withdrawn paper, reference was made to another, produced in Israel by Israeli scientists, on genetic connections between populations. The conclusion was that all Jewish groups, Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and even the Ethiopian Jews show genetic connectedness. But, buried in the work was the finding that Sephardic Jews and Palestinians show a greater genetic likeness than between either group and Ashkenazi Jews.

Which places both groups with the same ancestry, and the same link to the place of origin. (I have seen it said that the Palestinian Christians are probably the descendants of Jews who lived there in Jesus' time, and who never left after 76 AD, but who knows.)

It doesn't help either side if arguments are based on fantasy.

Penny