- From: un-thesis@wakeup-people.com
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- In response to http://www.rense.com/general26/origin.htm
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- I found a copy of The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler
online and I have since made it available at
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- http://198.62.75.1/www2/koestler/
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- Un-Thesis
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- Once upon a time in ancient Khazaria the entire kingdom
converted to Judaism by decree from the king.
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- Arthur Koestler, a Jew born in 1905 in Budapest, writes
that the Khazars who flourished from the 7th to the 11th century were in
those bygone days a major political power.
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- Their empire extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian
and from the Caucasus to the Volga. They were located "between two
major world powers: the Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium and the triumphant
followers of Muhammad".
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- Since the world was then polarized between these two
superpowers, representing Christianity (western style) and Islam, the Khazar
empire representing a third force could only maintain its political and
ideological independence by accepting neither Christianity nor Islam "for
either choice would have automatically subordinated it to the authority
of the Roman Emperor or the Caliph of Baghdad."
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- Not wishing to be dominated by either of the two, the
Khazar king "embraced the Jewish faith" in AD 740 and ordered
his subjects to do the same. Judaism thus became the official state religion
of the Khazars.
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- Obviously the king's motives in adopting Judaism were
purely political. "The bulk of modern Jewry is not of Palestinian,
but of Caucasian origin", Koestler writes. "Their ancestors came
not from the Jordan but from the Volga, not from Canaan but from the Caucasus."
And he stresses: "The mainstream of Jewish migrations did not flow
from the Mediterranean across France and Germany to the east and then back
again. The stream moved in a consistently western direction, from the Caucasus,
from the Ukraine into Poland and thence into Central Europe".
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- While Jews of different origin also contributed to the
existing Jewish world community, "the main bulk originated from the
Khazar country" in the Ex-Soviet Union.
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- Based on his research which was summed in his book "The
Thirteenth Tribe", Koestler refutes the notion of a Jewish "race"
stating that most Jews of the contemporary world did not come from Palestine
and are not even of Semitic origin. In fact, his research shows that most
Jews originated in what today is the Ex-USSR. And that a group of people
there became Jews through conversion, on the orders of their king.
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- People under Khazar dominion included the Bulgars, Burtas,
Ghuzz, Magyars (Hungarians), the Gothic and Greek colonies of the Crimea,
and the Slavonic tribes in the northwestern woodland. According to the
Jewish Encyclopedia, in the 16th century Jews numbered about one million.
Koestler quotes scholars documenting that at the time "the majority
of those who professed the Judaic faith were Khazars."
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- As Koestler points out, Jews of our times fall into two
main divisions: Sephardim and Ashkena-zim.
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- The Sephardim, the descendants of the Jews who had lived
in Spain until their expulsion, with the Muslims, at the end of the 15th
century, and who later settled in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean,
spoke a Spanish-Hebrew dialect, Ladino. In the 1960s, the Sephardim numbered
about 500,000.
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- The Ashkenazim at the same period were about 11 million.
Thus, "in common parlance, Jew is practically synonymous with Ashkenazi
Jew". However, Koestler adds, the term Ashkenazim is misleading because
it is generally applied to Germany, thus contributing to the legend that
modern Jewry originated on the Rhine. There is, however, no other term
to refer to the non-Sephardic majority of contemporary Jewry, which came
after conversion to Judaism from the Khazar country.
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- After the destruction of their empire (in the 12th or
13th century), the Jewish Khazars migrated into those regions of Eastern
Europe, mainly Russia and Poland, where at the dawn of the modern age the
greatest concentrations of Jews were found. It is "well documented",
Koestler writes, that the numerically and socially dominant element in
the Jewish population of Hungary during the Middle Ages was of Khazar origin.
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- An Israeli scholar, A. N. Poliak, a Tel Aviv University
professor of medieval Jewish history quoted by Koestler, states that the
descendants of Khazar Jews, "those who stayed where they were (in
Khazaria), those who emigrated to the United States and to other countries,
and those who went to Israel--constitute now the large majority of world
Jewry."
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- Since Israel's support among millions of American Christians
is founded on a concept that God had bequeathed territory to a biblical
"tribe" of Oriental Middle Eastern Jews, it becomes ironic to
learn from Koestler's research, that most Jews today are neither hereditary
natives from the "holy land" nor any other eastern tribe.
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- Koestler, who originally published the Thirteenth Tribe
in 1976, noted that the story of the Khazar empire "begins to look
like the most cruel hoax history has ever perpetrated." The Palestinians,
imprisoned and brutalized by this Zionist "hoax" and showered
by ink based resolutions, the likes of UN 194, would be the first to agree.
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- In sight of these findings, one might naively infer that
the only thing standing between the Palestinians and their rightful land
is nothing but a Rabbi waiting to bless them with his faith, hence making
them worthy of their homes.
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- Shall we then say, Mazeltov, or shall we concur that
the Palestinian, under the eyes of his father, is being once more. . .
. Crucified?
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- P.S. The book "The Thirteenth Tribe has been difficult
to find. It disappeared from many library shelves. A check at the Library
of Congress reveals that the most prestigious library in the U.S had one
reading copy.
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- That one copy, however, is "missing from the shelf"
:)
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- ___
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- Arthur Koestler (1905-83) was a Hungarian-born British
author. This article was originally-published December 16, 1997 http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/63/006.html
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- Comment
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- From EricJBrock@aol.com
7-1-2
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- With regard to the article "The Origin of Non-Semitic
Jews," I would like to point out that Koestler's book "The Thirteenth
Tribe" is not difficult to come by at all. It is presently in print
($10 form Amazon.com) and has been almost continuously in print in various
editions and printings since its publication in 1978 (not 1976 as the article
misstates). "The Thirteenth Tribe" is a very interesting book
but the article you publish has distorted its meaning to imply that Judaism
has no historical claim on Israel, which is pure balderdash. It is as though
one were to claim that Christinaity has no claim on Rome since since most
Christians were not originally Italian -- pure bunk. Islam has no claim
on Israel -- Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran and is NOT a
holy city to Islam, regardless of what the militant Islamisc extremists
may claim. It is sacred to the Jewish faith, however, regardless of the
genetic origin of individual Jews.
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- I am SO tired of the "blame the victim" attidudes
that are rising to the surface since 9-11. But that is by-the-bye... There
is no Jewish conspiricy to deprive the world of Mr. Koestler's book as
the Moslem author of the article implies. The book is readily and easily
available. I don't know why the Library of Congress has only one copy or
why it is missing from the shelves. I imagine that the statement is a lie
but assuming it is true it may just be that is was misshelved, lost, or
stolen. In any event, anyone wanting to read it need go no further than
their local bookstore or the internet. It is there, for ten bucks.
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