Pashtun clue to lost tribes of Israel

Pashtun clue to lost tribes of Israel
Thursday, 10 June 2010 Genetic study sets out to uncover if there is a 2,700-year-old link to Afghanistan and Pakistan Rory McCarthy, Jerusalem Israel is to fund a rare genetic study to determine whether there is a link between the lost tribes of Israel and the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. Historical and anecdotal evidence strongly suggests a connection, but definitive scientific proof has never been found. Some leading Israeli anthropologists believe that, of all the many groups in the world who claim a connection to the 10 lost tribes, the Pashtuns, or Pathans, have the most compelling case. Paradoxically it is from the Pashtuns that the ultra-conservative Islamic Taliban movement in Afghanistan emerged. Pashtuns themselves sometimes talk of their Israelite connection, but show few signs of sympathy with, or any wish to migrate to, the modern Israeli state. Now an Indian researcher has collected blood samples from members of the Afridi tribe of Pashtuns who today live in Malihabad, near Lucknow, in northern India. Shahnaz Ali, from the National Institute of Immuno haematology in Mumbai, is to spend several months studying her findings at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa. A previous genetic study in the same area did not provide proof one way or the other. The Assyrians conquered the kingdom of Israel some 2,730 years ago, scattering 10 of the 12 tribes into exile, supposedly beyond the mythical Sambation river. The two remaining tribes, Benjamin and Judah, became the modern-day Jewish people, according to Jewish history, and the search for the lost tribes has continued ever since. Some have claimed to have found traces of them in modern day China, Burma, Nigeria, Central Asia, Ethiopia and even in the West. But it is believed that the tribes were dispersed in an area around modern-day northern Iraq and Afghanistan, which makes the Pashtun connection the strongest. ´´Of all the groups, there is more convincing evidence about the Pathans than anybody else, but the Pathans are the ones who would reject Israel most ferociously. That is the sweet irony,´´ said Shalva Weil, an anthropologist and senior researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Pashtuns have a proud oral history that talks of descending from the Israelites. Their tribal groupings have similar names, including Yusufzai, which means sons of Joseph; and Afridi, thought by some to come from Ephraim. Some customs and practices are said to be similar to Jewish traditions: lighting candles on the sabbath, refraining from eating certain foods, using a canopy during a wedding ceremony and some similarities in garments. Weil cautioned, however, that this is not proof of any genetic connection. DNA might be able to determine which area of the world the Pashtuns originated from, but it is not at all certain that it could identify a specific genetic link to the Jewish people. So far Shahnaz Ali has been cautious. ´´The theory has been a matter of curiosity since long ago, and now I hope a scientific analysis will provide us with some answers about the Israelite origin of Afridi Pathans. We still don´t know what the truth is, but efforts will certainly give us a direction,´´ she told the Times of India last year. Some are more certain, among them Navras Aafreedi, an academic at Luck now University, himself a Pashtun from the Afridi tribe. His family trace their roots back to Pathans from the Khyber Agency of what is today north-west Pakistan, but he believes they stretch back further to the tribe of Ephraim. ´´Pathans, or Pashtuns, are the only people in the world whose probable descent from the lost tribes of Israel finds mention in a number of texts from the 10th century to the present day, written by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars alike, both religious as well as secularists,´´ Aafreedi said. The implications of any find are uncertain. Other groups that claim Israelite descent, including those known as the Bnei Menashe in India and some in Ethiopia, have migrated to Israel. That is unlikely with the Pashtuns. But Weil said the work was absorbing, well beyond questions of immigration. ´´I find a myth that has been so persistent for so long, for 2,000 years, really fascinating,´´ she said. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/17/israel-lost-tribes-pashtun *** Lucknow Pathans have Jewish roots Sachin Parashar, TNN, 11 January 2010, 02:52am IST NEW DELHI: Despite their animosity, do Jews and the Pathans in India come from the same ancestral stock — the biblical lost tribes of Israel? A subject of speculation among academicians in the past, the Israeli government has now asked an Indian geneticist, Shahnaz Ali, to study the link between the Afridi Pathans based in the Lucknow region and certain tribes of Israel who migrated from their native place to all over Asia a few thousand years ago. Ali, who has been granted a scholarship by Israel´s foreign ministry to work on the project, is genetically analysing blood samples of the Afridi Pathans of Malihabad near Lucknow which she collected earlier to confirm their Israeli origin. Ali is based in Haifa where she is working in collaboration with the prestigious Technion — Israel Institute of Technology. ´´Shahnaz´s research would be important if it does establish the genetic link between Pathans and Jews, as it could be seen as a scientific validation of a traditional belief about the Israelite origin of Pathans and can have interesting ramifications for Muslim-Jew relations in particular and the world at large,´´ Dr Navras Aafreedi, a researcher in Indo-Judaic studies and one of the first proponents of the common-origin theory in India, told TOI. It is believed that the Pathan are descendants of the Ephraim tribe, one of the 10 Israelite tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel who were exiled by Assyrian invaders in 721BC. Some descendants of these lost tribes are said to have settled in India between AD1202 and AD1761, Afridi Pathans of Malihabad being one of them. According to experts, Israel´s decision to facilitate the research could also be because of the theory supported by many that Afghanistan´s Pashtun fighters, the community from which the Taliban draw their strength, are descendants of Afridi Pathans. ´´Malihabad in Lucknow district is the only Pathan, or Pashtun, territory safely and easily accessible to those interested in the probable Israelite origins of Pathans. It is certainly not possible to collect DNA samples in Afghanistan or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where most of the Pathans or Pashtuns live,´´ Aafreedi said. India has only a sprinkling of Pathans, primarily at places like Malihabad near Lucknow and Qayamganj in Farrukhabad, predominantly of the Afridi tribe. But these were the only Pathans, said Aafreedi, who could be approached for academic purposes. According to Aafreedi, the Afridi Pathans in India, even though they claim Israeli origin, are just as hostile and antagonistic towards Israel as Muslims anywhere else in the world. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Lucknow-Pathans-have-Jewish-roots/articleshow/5431654.cms Israelis and Taliban Separated at Birth Israel Finances Study About Pashtun Bloodlines By SIMON McGREGOR-WOOD JERUSALEM, Jan. 12, 2010 Don´t tell the Taliban, but their ancestors may be Jewish. Israel´s foreign ministry is funding research into whether members of the ethnic tribe from which the Taliban draws its manpower have Jewish ancestors. Pashtuns are the largest ethnic community in Afghanistan. It is widely believed they are an offshoot of the Pathans whose members are scattered across northern India and Pakistan. Both are today exclusively Muslim. Neither has any sympathy for modern Israel. Scientists are now trying to determine whether the Pathans themselves are directly descended from the tribe of Ephraim which was exiled from the land of Israel by the invading Assyrians in 721 B.C. Pathan folklore and culture are filled with references to an Israelite past. The last king of Afghanistan Zahir Shah who reigned in Kabul until 1973 reportedly claimed his family was descended from what he called the tribe of Benjamin. The Taliban spare no effort in expressing their hatred for Israel. Any genetic link they may have with people of Jewish descent would be a dark irony. Last year, a Persian blog item set off rumors suggesting that Iran´s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is of Jewish descent. Several global news outlets picked up the story and examined the notion of a Jewish Ahmadinejad, rooted in the claim that his original family name of ´´Sabourjian´´ links him to weavers of the Jewish prayer shawl. But Meir Javednafar, an Iranian Jewish scholar on the Middle East, dismissed the idea, telling ABC News that the political vetting process would make it nearly impossible for someone to reach the post of president of the Islamic Republic without solid Muslim credentials. Until now the supposed link between Pathans and Jews has only been discussed on the fringes of the academic and anthropological worlds. But now Shahnaz Ali, an Indian researcher from the National Institute of Immunohaematology in Mumbai has received a grant from Israel to test the theory with DNA samples she collected from Pathans in India. She will conduct her research at the prestigious Technion Institute in Haifa. abcnews.go.com/Technology/taliban-jewish-roots/story?id=9535559 Could the Taliban be genetically linked to the Jews? By Haaretz Service Israel has asked an Indian geneticist to study the link between the Indian Pathans tribe and certain tribes of Israel, the Times of India reported this week. Geneticist Shahnaz Ali has been asked to study the link between the Afridi Pathans, based in the Lucknow region of India, and certain tribes of Israel who migrated across Asia thousands of years ago. Ali is based in Haifa where she is working in collaboration with Israel´s prestigious university the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Some experts attribute Israel´s decision to fund the research to a theory supported by many that Afghanistan´s Pashtun fighters, the community from which the Taliban draw their strength, are descendants of Afridi Pathans. This is not the first time speculations of a deep rooted connection between the two seemingly unrelated people have been raised, yet this is the first time Israel´s Foreign Ministry has offered to fund the research. Ali has been genetically analyzing blood samples of the Afridi Pathans of Malihabad which she collected earlier to confirm their Jewish origin. In an interview with the Times of India, Dr. Navras Aafreedi, a researcher in Indo-Judaic studies and one of the first proponents of the common-origin theory in India said ´´Shahnaz´s research would be important if it does establish the genetic link between Pathans and Jews, as it could be seen as a scientific validation of a traditional belief about the Israelite origin of Pathans and can have interesting ramifications for Muslim-Jew relations in particular and the world at large.´´ The Pahtans in India are believed to be descendants of the Ephraim tribe, one of the 10 Israelite tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel who were exiled by Assyrian invaders in 721 B.C.E. Some descendants of these lost tribes are said to have settled in India between 1202 C.E. and 1761 C.E., Afridi Pathans of Malihabad being one of them. ´´Malihabad in Lucknow district is the only Pathan, or Pashtun, territory safely and easily accessible to those interested in the probable Israelite origins of Pathans. It is certainly not possible to collect DNA samples in Afghanistan or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where most of the Pathans or Pashtuns live,´´ Aafreedi said. There are few Pathans left in India, primarily at places like Malihabad near Lucknow and Qayamganj in Farrukhabad, all of whom Aafreedi approached for the academic research. According to Aafreedi, the Afridi Pathans in India, even though they claim Israeli origin, are just as hostile and antagonistic towards Israel as Muslims anywhere else in the world. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1142690.html Are Taliban descendants of Israelites? By AMIR MIZROCH Are the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan descendants of an Israelite tribe that migrated across Asia after it was exiled over 2,700 years ago? This intriguing question has been asked by a variety of scholars, theologians, anthropologists and pundits over the years, but has remained somewhere between the realms of amateur speculation and serious academic research. But now, for the first time, the government has shown official interest, with the Foreign Ministry providing a scholarship to an Indian scientist to come to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and determine whether or not the tribe that provides the hard core of today´s Taliban has a blood link to any of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and specifically to the tribe of Efraim. Shahnaz Ali, a senior research fellow at the National Institute of Immunohaematology, Mumbai, has joined the Technion to study the blood samples that she collected from Afridi Pathans in Malihabad, in the Lucknow district, Uttar Pradesh state, India, to check their putative Israelite origin. Shahnaz, an expert in DNA profiling and population genetics, will be supervised by Prof. Karl Skorecki, director of Nephrology and Molecular Medicine at the Technion Faculty of Medicine. Skorecki is famous for his breakthrough work on Jewish genetic research. Shahnaz´s research, which is expected to last anywhere between three months and a year, will be supported by a scholarship from the Foreign Ministry for the 2009-2010 academic year. Shahnaz, who is staying in Haifa for the duration of her research, earlier worked at the prestigious Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). While the scholarship only provides her with $600 per month (excluding travel to and from India), her work will be followed closely by many here and abroad. While the vast majority of Afghan Taliban are Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, the theory that they are descendants of the Afridi Pathans is widespread in the area. The theory is based on a variety of ancient historical texts and oral traditions of the Pashtun people themselves, but no scientific studies by any accredited organizations have upheld the claim. It continues to be believed by many Pashtuns, and has found advocates among some contemporary Muslim and (to a lesser extent) Jewish scholars. Official confirmation of the link by the Technion would lend immense weight to the argument. Afridi Pathans have an age-old tradition of Israelite origin, which finds mention in texts dating from the 10th century to the present day, written by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars. According to some researchers, members of the tribe still observe many Israelite customs in their native places in eastern Afghanistan and in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan´s North West Frontier Province, though they have lost all these traditions of theirs in India. In Afghanistan and Pakistan they are all Muslim today and form the core of the Taliban. In his 1957 The Exiled and the Redeemed, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel´s second president, wrote that Hebrew migrations into Afghanistan began ´´with a sprinkling of exiles from Samaria who had been transplanted there by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria (719 BC).´´ Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, when asked about his ancestors, claimed that the royal family descended from the tribe of Benjamin. On the academic level, British researcher Dr. Theodore Parfitt has been conducting research on genetic effects and chromosome Y among numerous tribes around the world. In India he is assisted by a young researcher from the University of Lucknow - Dr. Navras Afreedi - who claims that his ancestors were Afreedi, descendants of the tribe of Efraim, and that many of the Pathans and other tribes are descendants of the Ten Tribes. Afreedi did his post-doctoral work at Tel Aviv University, titled ´´Indian Jewry and the Self-professed Lost Tribes of Israel in India.´´ Shahnaz´s genetic research would examine Navras´s theory that Afridi Pathans are descendants of the tribe of Ephraim, which was exiled in 721 BCE. The research uses DNA analysis to trace shared ancestries and origins of certain populations of interest in the eastern provinces of India, to map the cause of a certain disorder that is very frequent in the large populations of those provinces, and to see if the DNA mutations originate in a certain ´´founder event.´´ Shahnaz traveled to Malihabad and collected blood samples from the tribal population there. It is thought that the Afridi Pathans migrated from the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, areas that are now ´´ground zero´´ in the war on terror. Shahnaz herself, while aware of the possible connection, is cautious to jump to conclusions. ´´The research itself will take some three months, and after that we´ll see what happens. It could take a huge amount of time to analyze all the data, as it was taken from tribal people in India, and we will need to examine how much the men from this tribe mixed in with the local population,´´ she said. Navras welcomed Shahnaz´s research grant. ´´It´s a great news that now my research would be analyzed scientifically,´´ he said on his blog. ´´I don´t know what would be the outcome of the DNA analysis, but it would provide us a direction to resolve the complex issue. I also hope that such effort will have positive ramifications and will bring the Muslims and Jews close and enable them to forget historical animosity,´´ Navras wrote. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1262339436797&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Thursday, 10 June 2010
Genetic study sets out to uncover if there is a 2,700-year-old link to Afghanistan and Pakistan
Rory McCarthy, Jerusalem
Israel is to fund a rare genetic study to determine whether there is a link between the lost tribes of Israel and the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
Historical and anecdotal evidence strongly suggests a connection, but definitive scientific proof has never been found. Some leading Israeli anthropologists believe that, of all the many groups in the world who claim a connection to the 10 lost tribes, the Pashtuns, or Pathans, have the most compelling case. Paradoxically it is from the Pashtuns that the ultra-conservative Islamic Taliban movement in Afghanistan emerged. Pashtuns themselves sometimes talk of their Israelite connection, but show few signs of sympathy with, or any wish to migrate to, the modern Israeli state.
Now an Indian researcher has collected blood samples from members of the Afridi tribe of Pashtuns who today live in Malihabad, near Lucknow, in northern India. Shahnaz Ali, from the National Institute of Immuno haematology in Mumbai, is to spend several months studying her findings at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa. A previous genetic study in the same area did not provide proof one way or the other.
The Assyrians conquered the kingdom of Israel some 2,730 years ago, scattering 10 of the 12 tribes into exile, supposedly beyond the mythical Sambation river. The two remaining tribes, Benjamin and Judah, became the modern-day Jewish people, according to Jewish history, and the search for the lost tribes has continued ever since. Some have claimed to have found traces of them in modern day China, Burma, Nigeria, Central Asia, Ethiopia and even in the West.
But it is believed that the tribes were dispersed in an area around modern-day northern Iraq and Afghanistan, which makes the Pashtun connection the strongest.
´´Of all the groups, there is more convincing evidence about the Pathans than anybody else, but the Pathans are the ones who would reject Israel most ferociously. That is the sweet irony,´´ said Shalva Weil, an anthropologist and senior researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The Pashtuns have a proud oral history that talks of descending from the Israelites.
Their tribal groupings have similar names, including Yusufzai, which means sons of Joseph; and Afridi, thought by some to come from Ephraim. Some customs and practices are said to be similar to Jewish traditions: lighting candles on the sabbath, refraining from eating certain foods, using a canopy during a wedding ceremony and some similarities in garments.
Weil cautioned, however, that this is not proof of any genetic connection. DNA might be able to determine which area of the world the Pashtuns originated from, but it is not at all certain that it could identify a specific genetic link to the Jewish people.
So far Shahnaz Ali has been cautious. ´´The theory has been a matter of curiosity since long ago, and now I hope a scientific analysis will provide us with some answers about the Israelite origin of Afridi Pathans. We still don´t know what the truth is, but efforts will certainly give us a direction,´´ she told the Times of India last year.
Some are more certain, among them Navras Aafreedi, an academic at Luck now University, himself a Pashtun from the Afridi tribe. His family trace their roots back to Pathans from the Khyber Agency of what is today north-west Pakistan, but he believes they stretch back further to the tribe of Ephraim.
´´Pathans, or Pashtuns, are the only people in the world whose probable descent from the lost tribes of Israel finds mention in a number of texts from the 10th century to the present day, written by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars alike, both religious as well as secularists,´´ Aafreedi said.
The implications of any find are uncertain. Other groups that claim Israelite descent, including those known as the Bnei Menashe in India and some in Ethiopia, have migrated to Israel. That is unlikely with the Pashtuns.
But Weil said the work was absorbing, well beyond questions of immigration. ´´I find a myth that has been so persistent for so long, for 2,000 years, really fascinating,´´ she said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/17/israel-lost-tribes-pashtun
***

Lucknow Pathans have Jewish roots

Sachin Parashar, TNN, 11 January 2010, 02:52am IST
NEW DELHI: Despite their animosity, do Jews and the Pathans in India come from the same ancestral stock — the biblical lost tribes of Israel? A

subject of speculation among academicians in the past, the Israeli government has now asked an Indian geneticist, Shahnaz Ali, to study the link between the Afridi Pathans based in the Lucknow region and certain tribes of Israel who migrated from their native place to all over Asia a few thousand years ago.
Ali, who has been granted a scholarship by Israel´s foreign ministry to work on the project, is genetically analysing blood samples of the Afridi Pathans of Malihabad near Lucknow which she collected earlier to confirm their Israeli origin. Ali is based in Haifa where she is working in collaboration with the prestigious Technion — Israel Institute of Technology.

´´Shahnaz´s research would be important if it does establish the genetic link between Pathans and Jews, as it could be seen as a scientific validation of a traditional belief about the Israelite origin of Pathans and can have interesting ramifications for Muslim-Jew relations in particular and the world at large,´´ Dr Navras Aafreedi, a researcher in Indo-Judaic studies and one of the first proponents of the common-origin theory in India, told TOI.

It is believed that the Pathan are descendants of the Ephraim tribe, one of the 10 Israelite tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel who were exiled by Assyrian invaders in 721BC. Some descendants of these lost tribes are said to have settled in India between AD1202 and AD1761, Afridi Pathans of Malihabad being one of them.

According to experts, Israel´s decision to facilitate the research could also be because of the theory supported by many that Afghanistan´s Pashtun fighters, the community from which the Taliban draw their strength, are descendants of Afridi Pathans.

´´Malihabad in Lucknow district is the only Pathan, or Pashtun, territory safely and easily accessible to those interested in the probable Israelite origins of Pathans. It is certainly not possible to collect DNA samples in Afghanistan or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where most of the Pathans or Pashtuns live,´´ Aafreedi said.
India has only a sprinkling of Pathans, primarily at places like Malihabad near Lucknow and Qayamganj in Farrukhabad, predominantly of the Afridi tribe. But these were the only Pathans, said Aafreedi, who could be approached for academic purposes.

According to Aafreedi, the Afridi Pathans in India, even though they claim Israeli origin, are just as hostile and
antagonistic towards Israel as Muslims anywhere else in the world.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Lucknow-Pathans-have-Jewish-roots/articleshow/5431654.cms

Israelis and Taliban Separated at Birth

Israel Finances Study About Pashtun Bloodlines
By SIMON McGREGOR-WOOD
JERUSALEM, Jan. 12, 2010

Don´t tell the Taliban, but their ancestors may be Jewish.
Israel´s foreign ministry is funding research into whether members of the ethnic tribe from which the Taliban draws its manpower have Jewish ancestors.
Pashtuns are the largest ethnic community in Afghanistan. It is widely believed they are an offshoot of the Pathans whose members are scattered across northern India and Pakistan. Both are today exclusively Muslim. Neither has any sympathy for modern Israel.
Scientists are now trying to determine whether the Pathans themselves are directly descended from the tribe of Ephraim which was exiled from the land of Israel by the invading Assyrians in 721 B.C. Pathan folklore and culture are filled with references to an Israelite past.
The last king of Afghanistan Zahir Shah who reigned in Kabul until 1973 reportedly claimed his family was descended from what he called the tribe of Benjamin.

The Taliban spare no effort in expressing their hatred for Israel. Any genetic link they may have with people of Jewish descent would be a dark irony.
Last year, a Persian blog item set off rumors suggesting that Iran´s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is of Jewish descent. Several global news outlets picked up the story and examined the notion of a Jewish Ahmadinejad, rooted in the claim that his original family name of ´´Sabourjian´´ links him to weavers of the Jewish prayer shawl.
But Meir Javednafar, an Iranian Jewish scholar on the Middle East, dismissed the idea, telling ABC News that the political vetting process would make it nearly impossible for someone to reach the post of president of the Islamic Republic without solid Muslim credentials.
Until now the supposed link between Pathans and Jews has only been discussed on the fringes of the academic and anthropological worlds. But now Shahnaz Ali, an Indian researcher from the National Institute of Immunohaematology in Mumbai has received a grant from Israel to test the theory with DNA samples she collected from Pathans in India. She will conduct her research at the prestigious Technion Institute in Haifa.
abcnews.go.com/Technology/taliban-jewish-roots/story?id=9535559

Could the Taliban be genetically linked to the Jews?

By Haaretz Service

Israel has asked an Indian geneticist to study the link between the Indian Pathans tribe and certain tribes of Israel, the Times of India reported this week.

Geneticist Shahnaz Ali has been asked to study the link between the Afridi Pathans, based in the Lucknow region of India, and certain tribes of Israel who migrated across Asia thousands of years ago.
Ali is based in Haifa where she is working in collaboration with Israel´s prestigious university the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

Some experts attribute Israel´s decision to fund the research to a theory supported by many that Afghanistan´s Pashtun fighters, the community from which the Taliban draw their strength, are descendants of Afridi Pathans.

This is not the first time speculations of a deep rooted connection between the two seemingly unrelated people have been raised, yet this is the first time Israel´s Foreign Ministry has offered to fund the research.

Ali has been genetically analyzing blood samples of the Afridi Pathans of Malihabad which she collected earlier to confirm their Jewish origin.

In an interview with the Times of India, Dr. Navras Aafreedi, a researcher in Indo-Judaic studies and one of the first proponents of the common-origin theory in India said ´´Shahnaz´s research would be important if it does establish the genetic link between Pathans and Jews, as it could be seen as a scientific validation of a traditional belief about the Israelite origin of Pathans and can have interesting ramifications for Muslim-Jew relations in particular and the world at large.´´

The Pahtans in India are believed to be descendants of the Ephraim tribe, one of the 10 Israelite tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel who were exiled by Assyrian invaders in 721 B.C.E.

Some descendants of these lost tribes are said to have settled in India between 1202 C.E. and 1761 C.E., Afridi Pathans of Malihabad being one of them.

´´Malihabad in Lucknow district is the only Pathan, or Pashtun, territory safely and easily accessible to those interested in the probable Israelite origins of Pathans. It is certainly not possible to collect DNA samples in Afghanistan or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where most of the Pathans or Pashtuns live,´´ Aafreedi said.

There are few Pathans left in India, primarily at places like Malihabad near Lucknow and Qayamganj in Farrukhabad, all of whom Aafreedi approached for the academic research.
According to Aafreedi, the Afridi Pathans in India, even though they claim Israeli origin, are just as hostile and antagonistic towards Israel as Muslims anywhere else in the world.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1142690.html

Are Taliban descendants of Israelites?

By AMIR MIZROCH
Are the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan descendants of an Israelite tribe that migrated across Asia after it was exiled over 2,700 years ago?
This intriguing question has been asked by a variety of scholars, theologians, anthropologists and pundits over the years, but has remained somewhere between the realms of amateur speculation and serious academic research.
But now, for the first time, the government has shown official interest, with the Foreign Ministry providing a scholarship to an Indian scientist to come to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and determine whether or not the tribe that provides the hard core of today´s Taliban has a blood link to any of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and specifically to the tribe of Efraim.
Shahnaz Ali, a senior research fellow at the National Institute of Immunohaematology, Mumbai, has joined the Technion to study the blood samples that she collected from Afridi Pathans in Malihabad, in the Lucknow district, Uttar Pradesh state, India, to check their putative Israelite origin.
Shahnaz, an expert in DNA profiling and population genetics, will be supervised by Prof. Karl Skorecki, director of Nephrology and Molecular Medicine at the Technion Faculty of Medicine. Skorecki is famous for his breakthrough work on Jewish genetic research.
Shahnaz´s research, which is expected to last anywhere between three months and a year, will be supported by a scholarship from the Foreign Ministry for the 2009-2010 academic year.

Shahnaz, who is staying in Haifa for the duration of her research, earlier worked at the prestigious Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). While the scholarship only provides her with $600 per month (excluding travel to and from India), her work will be followed closely by many here and abroad.
While the vast majority of Afghan Taliban are Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, the theory that they are descendants of the Afridi Pathans is widespread in the area. The theory is based on a variety of ancient historical texts and oral traditions of the Pashtun people themselves, but no scientific studies by any accredited organizations have upheld the claim. It continues to be believed by many Pashtuns, and has found advocates among some contemporary Muslim and (to a lesser extent) Jewish scholars.
Official confirmation of the link by the Technion would lend immense weight to the argument. Afridi Pathans have an age-old tradition of Israelite origin, which finds mention in texts dating from the 10th century to the present day, written by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars.
According to some researchers, members of the tribe still observe many Israelite customs in their native places in eastern Afghanistan and in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan´s North West Frontier Province, though they have lost all these traditions of theirs in India. In Afghanistan and Pakistan they are all Muslim today and form the core of the Taliban.
In his 1957 The Exiled and the Redeemed, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel´s second president, wrote that Hebrew migrations into Afghanistan began ´´with a sprinkling of exiles from Samaria who had been transplanted there by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria (719 BC).´´
Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, when asked about his ancestors, claimed that the royal family descended from the tribe of Benjamin.
On the academic level, British researcher Dr. Theodore Parfitt has been conducting research on genetic effects and chromosome Y among numerous tribes around the world. In India he is assisted by a young researcher from the University of Lucknow - Dr. Navras Afreedi - who claims that his ancestors were Afreedi, descendants of the tribe of Efraim, and that many of the Pathans and other tribes are descendants of the Ten Tribes. Afreedi did his post-doctoral work at Tel Aviv University, titled ´´Indian Jewry and the Self-professed Lost Tribes of Israel in India.´´
Shahnaz´s genetic research would examine Navras´s theory that Afridi Pathans are descendants of the tribe of Ephraim, which was exiled in 721 BCE. The research uses DNA analysis to trace shared ancestries and origins of certain populations of interest in the eastern provinces of India, to map the cause of a certain disorder that is very frequent in the large populations of those provinces, and to see if the DNA mutations originate in a certain ´´founder event.´´
Shahnaz traveled to Malihabad and collected blood samples from the tribal population there. It is thought that the Afridi Pathans migrated from the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, areas that are now ´´ground zero´´ in the war on terror. Shahnaz herself, while aware of the possible connection, is cautious to jump to conclusions.
´´The research itself will take some three months, and after that we´ll see what happens. It could take a huge amount of time to analyze all the data, as it was taken from tribal people in India, and we will need to examine how much the men from this tribe mixed in with the local population,´´ she said.
Navras welcomed Shahnaz´s research grant. ´´It´s a great news that now my research would be analyzed scientifically,´´ he said on his blog.
´´I don´t know what would be the outcome of the DNA analysis, but it would provide us a direction to resolve the complex issue. I also hope that such effort will have positive ramifications and will bring the Muslims and Jews close and enable them to forget historical animosity,´´ Navras wrote.
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