Tsvi Jekhorin Misinai (; born 15 April 1946) is an Israeli researcher, writer, historian, computer scientist and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the Israeli software industry, he now spends most of his time researching and documenting the common Hebrew roots he believes shared by world Jewry and the Palestinians (including Arab citizens of Israel).Bedouin Sheikh: My People are of Jewish Descent – Israel National News, 15 October 2009
Biography
Tsvi Misinai was born in 1946 in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine to Ashkenazi Jewish parents who immigrated from Ternopil in Poland Galicia (now Ukraine) in 1939.אחים יקרים – Haaretz, 27 March 2006 He graduated in Physics from the Haifa Technion in 1968. He was the first Israeli to receive the Rothschild Award for industrial development in the field of software in 1992.Brother Shall not Lift Sword against Brother (Paperback) – Amazon.com
Misinai is the founder of Sapiens International Corporation and served as its president until 1994. He embedded the principle of Positive Thinking in computers and invented the Rule Based Object Oriented technology for developing data processing applications, the development of which he started in the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1972.Profile of Tsvi Misinai – (ACPR)
Misinai self-identifies as a secular Jew and currently resides in Rehovot.
Misinai first heard about the "Hebrew origins of Palestinians" theory from his father, Kha'yim Avraham, who served in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War. His interest was rekindled after the 1991 Gulf War, when there was talk about a new order in the Middle East. After the failure of the Oslo Accords that led to the commencement of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, he abandoned his career as a computer scientist and devoted his entire life to investigating the Jewish roots of Palestinians. He now spends his entire time tracking down Palestinians who acknowledge their Jewish heritage, and lobbying ministers, ambassadors, religious leaders and activists in both communities. Misinai, and his team of Arabs and Jews, have embarked on a mission of trying to bring peace to Israel through a unique and controversial project called "The Engagement".
Project on Palestinians
Hebrew origin
Background
Tsvi Misinai claims that the majority of the Palestinian people—including those with Israeli citizenship or residency, known variously as Arab citizens of Israel, Arab Israelis, Israeli Arabs, including the Bedouin Arabs of Israel—are descendants of the ancient Hebrews, as most of the world's Jewish ethnic divisions are. Furthermore, he claims that at least half of them are quietly aware of this fact.Arabs of Jewish Descent in Israel – 9 August 2009, Israel National News
According to Misinai, unlike the ancestors of the modern day Jews who were city dwellers to a large extent, the Hebrew ancestors of the Palestinians were rural dwellers, and were allowed to remain in the land of Israel to work the land and supply Rome with grain and olive oil.
Misinai states the topic of Hebrew origin was spoken of openly by Palestinians until relatively recent history, much like the Egyptians or Lebanese are aware of their origins in the ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians respectively, even if these ancestral origin topics arouse the passions in those countries among those wishing to either stress or de-emphasise them.
As with other "Arabs" whose local indigenous non-Arab origins became relegated issues over time, the Hebrew origin of Palestinians also became a relegated issue over time. For the Palestinians, however, the additional emergence of Zionism in the early 19th century introduced a quandary complicating an unbiased assessment to either acknowledge or deny the local indigenous non-Arab ancestry of a culturally and linguistically Arabized people. In the context of the Palestinians, this quandary was a competing national interest in the land they inhabited. Arab nationalism for Palestinians would thus serve as a counter-force vis-à-vis Zionism. The topic of the Palestinians’ ancestral Hebrew origin thus became admonished. Then, the establishment of modern Israel by world Jewry, having transpired to the detriment of the Palestinians, transformed the topic of the Palestinians’ Hebrew origin into a liability in the historical narrative for either side to admit, ultimately becoming the object of outright hostility.
Conversions and Arabization
As a result of remaining in the Land of Israel, the ancestors of the Palestinians partially converted to Christianity during the Byzantine era. Later, with the coming of Islam, they were Islamized through a combination of mainly forced conversions, but also nominal conversions (that is, conversions for form's sake to derive benefits as Muslims, and avoid tributes owed by non-Muslims in Muslim-ruled lands) and others yet out of genuine theological conviction.
Conversion to Islam occurred progressively throughout the successive periods of foreign elite minority rule over Palestine, both on an individual basis and en masse, starting with the conversions during the various dynasties of Arabian Muslim rulers from the initial Muslim conquest of Palestine. Following these came rule by Muslim non-Arab dynasties such as the Ayyubids (Kurdish Muslim), Mamluks (Turkic Muslim) and finally the Ottomans (Turkish Muslim). This continuous phase of elite minority foreign Islamic rule over a local indigenous (now largely Muslim) mass was only briefly interrupted by the elite minority foreign Christian rule by the European Crusaders, which lasted from 1099 until their expulsion by the Mameluks in 1291.
Misinai states that of this gradual process of conversions (often accompanied by Arabization), the majority were forcibly converted during the Fatimid era under the reign of Caliph al-Hakim who was crowned at the age of 11, and reigned from the years 996 to 1021. Due to his young age, in practice, it was his ministers who wielded the actual power behind the throne for some time. They gave the young Caliph power to influence religious matters only, and appointed him as Imam. In 1009, the extremists among his ministers gained the upper hand and brought upon a series of decrees against Christians and Jews.
In 1012, the al-Hakem Edict was issued, under which all Jews and Christians in Palestine were ordered to either convert to Islam or leave. Misinai claims that this led to the majority of non-Hebrew origin Christians (i.e., foreign Christians) to leave Palestine, and over 90 per cent of Jews, Samaritans (also of Hebrew origin) and Hebrew-origin Christians to convert and become Muslims. They would also become Musta'arabim (Arabized), acculturated into Arab language, custom and culture.Brother shall not lift his sword against Brother, Tsvi Misinai, Liad publishing, 2007, p. 69
Later, when the edict was finally repealed in 1044 during the reign of Caliph Al-Mustansir of Cairo, only 27 per cent of the Jewish converts to Islam returned to Judaism openly, although they too would remain Musta’arabi (culturally and linguistically Arab). The remainder continued to live as Muslim crypto-Jews in order to continue enjoying the economic advantages of Muslims, such as exemption from paying jizya and kharaj, the ability to sell their agricultural products to the foreign authorities, or gain employment in the government machinery. Many younger persons of Hebrew-origin (Jewish, Christian or Samaritan) saw it simultaneously possible to lead dual lives, incorporating their prior faith while being outwardly Muslim, and accruing material benefits.Brother shall not lift his sword against Brother, Tsvi Misinai, Liad publishing, 2007, p. 73 Later, with the advent of Mamluk rule, Judaism had reached a breaking point in Palestine.
Backing
Tsvi Misinai validates his theory of the Hebrew origin of Palestinians on the basis of various findings in terms of historic-demographic, historic-geographic, national-territorial, genetic, behavioural-religious, nomenclature and linguistics, and Palestinian cultural and oral traditions.Brother shall not lift his sword against Brother, Tsvi Misinai, Liad publishing, 2007, p. 300 In his book Brother shall not lift sword against brother, he details numerous testimonies of their Jewish ancestry by Palestinians and Bedouins, and cites the anthropological studies conducted by Israel Belkind, one of the organizers of the Bilu movement, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (both the first Prime Minister and the second President of Israel, respectively).
Misinai also cites the following three genetic studies as lending credence to his theory. Among the genetic studies referred to by him include recent genetic studies conducted by Professor Ariella Oppenheim of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on the male Y chromosome which revealed that the present day Jews and Palestinians represent modern descendants of a core population that lived in the area now constituting the state of Israel and the Palestinian territories, since prehistoric times.Hammer, et al. Figure 2: Plot of populations based on Y-chromosome haplotype data. In 2001, the Human Immunology magazine published a genetic study conducted by Prof. Antonio Arnez-Vilna, a Spanish researcher from the Complutense University of Madrid, who discovered that the immune systems of the Jews and the Palestinians are extremely close to one another in a way that almost absolutely demonstrates a similar genetic identity. Furthermore, a 2002 test by Tel Aviv University researchers, determined that only two groups in the world—Ashkenazi Jews and Palestinians—were genetically susceptible to an inherited deafness syndrome.
Classification of the Palestinians Tsvi Misinai separates the Palestinian people into three main groups; the "Descendants of Israel", "Brethren of Israel" and "Palestinians of miscellaneous origins". He states that until recently, there had been very few inter-marriages between these groups, as Palestinians usually tended to marry within their own clans or related clans.Brother shall not lift his sword against Brother, Tsvi Misinai, Liad publishing, 2007, p. 295
Descendants of Israel The "Descendants of Israel", he claims, comprise descendants of the ancient biblical Hebrews which are native to the land west of the Jordan River (the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel proper). They are more specifically descended from the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah, as opposed to the Samaritans who are mainly descended from the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Israel.
Misinai claims that the Descendants of Israel had ceased to call themselves Musta’arbim, when the Brethren of Israel returned to their homeland during the 18th and 19th centuries. Despite this, stories about the Jewish origins of the family were passed on among the Descendants of Israel, and a few Jewish customs were preserved. Both groups began seeing themselves as one people, although endogamous marriages with their own clans ensured the purity of their blood lines until very recently.Brother shall not lift his sword against Brother, Tsvi Misinai, Liad publishing, 2007, p. 115
Samaritans
The Samaritans are distinguished among Descendants of Israel, given that their ancient history serves as an analogous precursor to the present situation that Tsvi Misinai argues exists between world Jewry and the Palestinians—that upon their returns from exile and re-establishments of Israel, world Jewry misidentified as foreigners the descendants of those Israelites who had stayed behind, first in antiquity misidentifying the Samaritans as foreigners, and today in modern times misidentifying the Palestinians (Arabized Hebrews of the Muslim and Christian faiths) as foreigners.