this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 84 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The Middle East Media Research Institute is an Israeli-US effort that deliberately mistranslates or otherwise misleads with a bias towards Israel. Assad didn't doubt the existence of the Holocaust nor that 6 million Jews were killed. He did state two problematic things, however:

  • Speaking imprecisely on the extent to which Jews were targeted when trying to draw attention to the fact that Germans used the same concentration camps and mass death on an even larger number of non-Jews.

  • Delving into the Khazar origins hypothesis for Ashkenazi Jews, which was originally based on scanty evidence and is now an academic quagmire in terms of genetic evidence. The real reason for the hypothesis in these situations is to undermine the idea that European Jews are a diaspora from The Levant in order to undermine Zionist claims to the land, and to that end it's a counterproductive overreach, as it rhetorically implies that a 2000-year-old diaspora would indeed have the right to settler-colonize and brutalize the populations living in "the homeland".

Both are in the spirit of lazy narratives that flirt with antisemitism but are not the naked antisemitism that the headlines are falsely claiming.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Agreed. There's no reason whatsoever that Assad would take this line. It sounds like Hasbra message manipulation.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Isn't the Khazar hypothesis debunked long ago?

There is proven Jew presence in Germany from like III century and even the term Ashkenazi was used not long after destruction of Khazar Khaganate while there was entire centuries old Jewish organisation in Western Europe. Eastern European Jews are descended from mostly German Jews who were fleeing from the mass oppression and pogroms in XIII-XIV century.

Krymchaks and Karaites might be descendants of Khazar since last mentions of them are from Crimea and Krymchaks and Karaites do not speak Yiddish but a Turkic language, but it's unclear.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In terms of non-genetic evidence it's always been on shaky ground. Not necessarily disproven so much as it wasn't established as likely in the first place.

In terms of comparative genetics analysis, the studies are fraught. The more typical hypothesis of origins near the Levant is the most popular and does have decent evidence. At the same time, some scientists, including Israeli ones, have reasonably entertained hypotheses of origins in the caucuses and have some amount of evidence. IMO there have not been good enough studies in general, they need to sample more populations, particularly different ethnic groups, and do proper work testing alternative hypotheses under different (appropriate) modeling methods. This research is also challenging because of the hypothesis being favored by antisemites. I probably wouldn't work on the topic myself if I were in the field. There's a lot of potential for negative outcomes without having rock-solid evidence and rock-solid evidence may be impossible.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I generally don't think genetic research of ethnicity is very useful, it smells of calipers for mile and entire history already showed us it's basically completely irrelevant. Culture and language research is much more useful.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

well there's two types of northern European Jews: Ashkenazi and Russian. I say this because Israel's statistics counted them separately

the Ashkenazi ones definitely have some influence from the Middle East, although they're extremely mixed with Northern European, to the point they cluster with croatians/serbs rather than actual Mizrahi Jews

the Russian ones idk, it doesn't seem farfetched that they could be descended from the Khazars

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Majority (huge majority i think) of Russian Jews were the same Ashkenazi that were running from pogroms in Germany, they ended up all over Poland, Lithuania, Russia, etc, but there were multitude of other, non- Ashkenazi Jewish groups in Russia too - abovementioned Krymchaks and Karaites plus Sephardi, Romaniotes (Jews from Greece), Juhuro (Jews from Caucasus), Georgian Jews, Bukharan Jews, Armenian Jews etc, so even just looking at sheer diversity of those people cultures and languages the Khazar hypothesis immediately fails.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I just want to know a bit, jews are called children of Israel so Askenazi Jews are those who fled Israel after 70 AD after the 2nd temple destruction by romans? Or they existed before the 2nd temple period and so the period before existence of Torah?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (4 children)

That's somewhat right, but it was gradual and did not happened in the next few centuries. Jewish diaspora existed even before 70AD, though indeed refugees fleeing from the Roman massacres speed up things. Most of Jews in diaspora lived in the Mediterranean shores, notably Egypt, but also in Italia, Iberia, Narbonensis, Greece, Dalmatia etc. where their presence is confirmed in I-II century already. Ashkenazi are decendant of those diaspora Jews that moved north together with romanisation (for example their first main community in Germany was in Cologne) and organising of states on that areas. Next was a period of opression in the kingdoms of Visigoths and Merovingian France where Jews were forced to convert or exiled, but after Charlemagne build his empire he gave Jews the merchant and financial privileges which stabilised their situation and allowed to develop into the medieval Ashkenazi in the next few centuries.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Can you elaborate on you second bullet point a little? I’ve definitely not surveyed all academia on the Khazars but almost all criticism of the hypothesis I’ve been able to find is straight up hasbara talking points that simply treats the idea as a heresy without actually engaging in any sort of objective evidence based response. They even call it the Khazar Heresy even though the Jewish religion is indifferent to the “genetic” origins of Jewish groups across the world. The heresy is a heresy against the Zionist religion in that formulation. And from proponents of the Khazar idea, while I’ve seen them use it, in part, as a cudgel against the idea of a Jewish nation emerging from a specific gene pool in the Levant, arguing that this is actually a concession to Zionism seems like accepting Zionist bad-faith counter-framing (which is done by Zionists in bad faith).

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (2 children)

the problem of evidence is for the Khazar hypothesis, there's a handful of letters & coins showing the Khazar leaders practicised judaism, to what extent the whole state or people did is speculation. then it's speculation and entirely undocumented how these "khazars" got so far west of where the khazar state had been, yet did not leave a much of a trace in the caucauses.

and then why did jews in eastern europe speak yiddish? that just has to be ignored or chalked up to... cultural imperialism? on the part of later migrants.

genetics are a) useless for determining anything but the most generalized impressions of migrations that have happened b) no "khazars" or descendant groups exist to test against. c) to the extent they've tested, it doesn't support the theory

you're right in that the theory has been used in various ways, both to try to create the impression of jewish indigeneity to russia (from russian jews), also to deny ashkenazi indigeneity to palestine (anti-zionism)---but it makes lots of people uncomfortable because after being mostly run out of academia for the above reasons, the people left talking about it are mostly antisemitic cranks making the case ashkenazi were 'turkish' interlopers in europe.

it doesn't matter where the people doing apartheid in Palestine "actually" came from though, the problem is they're doing apartheid. if groups of european jews had just moved to palestine like normal immigrants and not taken over and stolen everything, no-one would care if they believed their mythic ancestors were from there, right?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The two chiefs issues are the pre-genetics claims and the genetics claims.

The pre-genetics claims were hand-wavy guesswork that antisemites latched onto rapidly and then some anti-Zionists reflexively used because they wanted to undermine Zionism (using a bad argument, as I argued). Israel's conflation of Judaism and Zionism has often created situations in which there are varying degrees of antisemitism used against Zionism, ranging from explicit and raging antisemitism to casual tropes to simply mixing up Judaism and Israel when making criticisms. Several anti-Zionist groups, including some Soviet ones, latched on to the poor pre-genetics evidence and ran with it for political reasons, for example.

The genetics research is fraught. Comparative genetics is complex to analyze and very sensitive to the method used and assumptions made. There are scientists who claim that Ashkenazi Jewish population data suggests origins roughly in the area of Turkey to Palestine and this is generally the most popular interpretation. It certainly has decent evidence. At the same time, there are others who do see ambiguity there and markers that suggest ancestry near the caucuses as well, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Slavic. Ashkenazi Jews are certainly the result of diaspora, the only mystery is exactly where it started, so it's challenging to tell the difference between "the diaspora started here" vs. "the diaspora moved here for a while and then continued". From my perspective (and I do know a decent amount about the general methodologies), it seems like there are not enough seminal studies on the topic to properly challenge either hypothesis and it's also difficult to disentangle from scientists' biases, as the Khazar origins hypothesis has this history with antisemites and most people are unwilling to touch on it with ambiguous data. Some of the scientists who did, though, were Israeli, for what it's worth.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Outside of two Israeli sources I wasn't able to find anything on this. Not saying that he didn't say it, but still.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The text under the headline doesn't necessarily support the title, even without looking further into it. Depends whether it's been accurately or poorly translated. '[W]eren't specifically targeted' could be a translation of a few things, among them the idea that others were also targeted. 'Specifically' is a word like 'literally', which doesn't always mean 'literally' anymore. He's wrong if he does mean something like Jews weren't targeted for being Jewish, of course, and I don't defend that. I'm only highlighting that it wouldn't be the first time that 'loose' translations have made some enemies of the west look bad (Lukaschenko gets this a lot, I believe).

[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago (2 children)

MEMRI is an op, literally founded by Israeli intelligence

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

MEMRI is an op, but to completely disregard anything and everything they say is ridiculous. We have a responsibility to police ourselves, and ignoring the flaws of our "critical" allies that we critically support gives the enemy opportunity to exploit.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Yeah I already wrote a comment about this before this one. Just pointing out that MEMRI is completely unreliable. And the headline itself, promoted by them, is bullshit. The contents is where you find some actually problematic statements, though they are in no way new for Assad.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Bro, there were other channels who reported the same. He also said about Khazar jews who were pagans and got converted into Judaism. These are popular tropes in mainstream right wing islamic community to deny the very existence of judaism and jewish people as a whole.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Yes I know I pointed this out in a different comment first. Just wanted to clarify MEMRI's status as absolute trash that will always paint Israel's perceived enemies in the worst possible light, both through uncharitable translations and misleading editorialization on meanings.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Mfw Luka did not really massacring the NGO minions 😔

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

tag an Arabic speaker

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (1 children)

considering it's Memri TV, can anyone confirm that the subtitles in the video are accurate?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Unfortunately they are. I checked each bit and there's nothing wrong with the subs. I'll find the full video to see the context of this, but it's looking real bad for him.

the full memri video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlzpnP1221Y

the original video it was taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZaQzBcjOgM

i'll check if there was any convenient cutting of words from the original clip.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

4:40 is the part

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (9 children)

🏢🎙📹🇸🇾 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said there is no evidence that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust and accused the United States of financing the German Nazi Party.

"There is no evidence that six million Jews were killed [during the Holocaust]. There may have been a Holocaust, no one denies that... Yes, there were concentration camps, but this is a politicized issue, not a humanitarian or real one. Why are we talking about these six million [Jews] and not about the 26 million Soviet people who were killed in this [World War II]? Is that six million more expensive? There were the same actions, there was no method of torture or murder specific to Jews. The Nazis used the same method everywhere. However, this issue was politicized in order to falsify the truth, and then to prepare for the resettlement of Jews from Europe to other regions or to Palestine," Bashar al—Assad said during a meeting of Baath members on Monday.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago

I mean yes the genocide of millions of jews is highlighted the most of all the WW2 deaths but to say there is no evidence of it is just weird.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oof....rare super L from Assad 😩

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I honestly dont trust it. All from 2 israeli sources and not even like 1-2 years ago Assad was talking about how horrible nazis were and how NATO incorporated them into their network in europe with operation gladio after pretending to be against fascism. I expect this is just another hit job trying to paint anti Zionists as holocaust deniers and nazis. The Israeli media and govt has shown how quick they are to lie about even the most obvious shit, saying things like calendars with days of the week are lists of hamas members and that palestinian school books are in English with dedication pages to terrorists.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Yeah I find this hard to believe cause I just read a post about him explaining exactly that...like ain't no way man...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

Anyone have a full transcript of this speech? Even in Arabic? Some have alleged deliberate mistranslation.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (4 children)

The translation is correct

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Naooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

On the other hand, there's no manipulation of words by Memri itself?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Syria criminalizes same sex relations, It's just a part of the global south being a bit underdeveloped the "western measures of progression™" due to colonialism and underdeveloped economies.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I don't mean that, I'm talking about Bashar possibly denying the scale of the holocaust on this post...

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I will do so later if I don’t forget. Is there a remind me bot here?

The video is cut right before he questions the Holocaust’s Jewish death toll figures, but he doesn’t deny the Holocaust happened. He just says it has been politicized and he gives evidence to the fact that the Soviet death toll is ignored.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

It's a popular trope among certain islamic intellectuals to deny the Holocaust and also to tow the judo-bolshevik conspiracy theory. Assad just made a left wing version of that trope. If you can't deny the Holocaust then it means you shouldn't deny a great amount of atrocity had been committed to the European jewry by Nazis. 6 million jews were systematically killed by gas chambers and death marches and shooting. It was also USSR who addressed the mass atrocities when they supported the 2 state solution.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Not an Arabic speaker, just posting relevant sources for people to verify.

SANA's 40-min video posted on 2023-12-18 titled "حديث الرئيس الأسد في الشأن السياسي خلال اجتماع اللجنة المركزية لحزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي", also posted on their website (https://sana.sy/?p=2018974): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZaQzBcjOgM

SANA's English news article titled "President al-Assad to al-Baath Party’s Central Committee meeting: Commitment to issues protects nations and homelands", summarizing the main points of his speech, but doesn't mention this particular topic posted by MEMRI TV: https://sana.sy/en/?p=322180

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Haha, the karma that Zionists have been expecting.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I think he's just saying there's no evidence that Jews were killed and other concentration camp victims were spared. I don't know if this is historically accurate. But he does say that 6 million Jews were tortured to death like 1 second later.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

I think he doesn't.. He like Iranians have trivialized the Holocaust as sort of military pogroms.

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