1. >>>"Haplotypes constructed from Y-chromosome markers were used to trace the paternal origins of the Jewish Diaspora. A set of 18 biallelic polymorphisms was genotyped in 1,371 males from 29 populations, including 7 Jewish (Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Ethiopian) and 16 non-Jewish groups from similar geographic locations. The Jewish populations were characterized by a diverse set of 13 haplotypes that were also present in non-Jewish populations from Africa, Asia, and Europe. A series of analyses was performed to address whether modern Jewish Y-chromosome diversity derives mainly from a common Middle Eastern source population or from admixture with neighboring non-Jewish populations during and after the Diaspora. Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. Admixture estimates suggested low levels of European Y-chromosome gene flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora."

--Abstract, Hammer, Redd, et al., "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, 1999.

There you go.

OK, that was fun. But in all seriousness Omooex, FWIW, although I think a Jewish national homeland was and is a marvelous idea in principle, it should never have been located in Palestine, due to the pesky detail of the folks who were already there. I grant you that being there at the relevant time constitutes a more impressive claim than being descended from people who were there long ago.

Zionism's tragic flaw was taking the "Zion" part literally. (Had I been in a position to advise the early Zionists, I might have suggested attempting to acquire a piece of western Canada, which is vast, sparsely populated, and gorgeous.) But Israel's location is a bell that cannot be unrung, so what are we to do? Perhaps Obama is taking steps in the right direction. Let us hope.

>>>Islam historically treated Jews poorly,

All in all, a lot better than Christianity did, I would say.

I'm glad no one in Iraq took your son prisoner and decided that their own safety depended on interrogating him with Cheneyesque "intensity." I mean that. I'm not being snarky. I'm really glad.

>>>Did you enjoy the killing of countless (and uncounted) Iraqis?

Under your logic, Bush didn't do a good enough job of keeping those deaths hidden... Think how many people got pissed about the invasion -- if only the whole thing could've been kept secret to avoid making people mad!

Seriously, do you really not understand that giving the government the power to keep secret the most compelling evidence of its own misdeeds makes future misdeeds -- including but not limited to the killing of countless and uncounted innocents -- exponentially more likely?

do y'all realize how close that is to Guantanamo??!!? Oh sure Greenwald, you can laugh & snicker way up there in New York, but down here, on the front line you might say, there's nothing but a lot of concrete and steel and barbed wire and electrified fences and the US military and Jack Nicholson and some deep water between me and the scary brown Muslims who want to cut off my head!!

Uh-oh, gotta change my pants again...

Yes, it's the picture that makes him seem dangerous, as distinguished from the fact that he shot and killed a total stranger.

Idiots.

I must confess that when I like people, I sometimes treat them better than I would if I did not like them. Is that bad?

How different might the world be if Dick Cheney had a Muslim daughter?

Although Cheney has not done much in concrete terms to advance the cause of gay equality, he has at least refrained from devising and aggressively championing new ways to persecute gays. Given his centrality to America's recent policies and actions that affect Muslims, comparable reticence in that arena might, I suspect, have made a pretty big difference. But we can only speculate... that's why the thought was so deep.

Not true - Krauthammer and Goldberg also care about the suffering of affluent, white, conservative men who are not Jewish.

Most people are members of more than one tribe.

The migrant mother. Napalm girl. Rodney King. Kent State. Birmingham police dogs. Emaciated, vacant-eyed Jews.

The history of the 20th century is replete with examples of minds and hearts changing because people had no choice but to believe what they saw with their own eyes. There's just no substitute for that.

If there is any possibility of accountability for the crimes committed by the United States in the Age of Cheney (as I believe our era will come to be known), that possibility exists because maybe, just maybe, enough Americans will at long last have their consciences shocked by the horrors inflicted in their name. To claim to support prosecutions for torture, while arguing for continued suppression of the most compelling and resonant evidence that torture occurred, is ludicrous.

Muslims around the world already know goddamn well what we've been doing to some of their co-religionists. The only people who don't know are Americans who choose not to know. Every photograph released makes that choice less tenable, both logically and morally. The resulting erosion of comfortable indifference is what the torturers and their apologists fear most.

Deep Thought: American Fascist is Jonah Goldberg, stripped of the laughable intellectual pretensions.