To the best of my knowledge, Crete etc were populated by Greeks at the time. Palestinians don't look very Greek to me.
Just found this. Guess what? Pals don't seem to be Arabs. They are Jews :)
idesign.fl.net.au
The Origin of Palestinians and Their
Genetic Relatedness With Other
Mediterranean Populations
ABSTRACT: The genetic profile of Palestinians has, for
the first time, been studied by using human leukocyte
antigen (HLA) gene variability and haplotypes. The comparison with other Mediterranean populations by using
neighbor-joining dendrograms and correspondence
analyses reveal that Palestinians are genetically very close
to Jews and other Middle East populations, including Turks
(Anatolians), Lebanese, Egyptians, Armenians and
Iranians. Archaeologic and genetic data support that both
Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites,
who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian and
Anatolian peoples in ancient times. Thus, Palestinian-
Jewish rivalry is based in cultural and religious, but not in genetic, differences. The relatively close relatedness of both Jews and Palestinians to western Mediterranean
populations reflects the continuous circum-Mediterranean
cultural and gene flow that have occurred in prehistoric
and historic times. This flow overtly contradicts the demic
diffusion model of western Mediterranean populations
substitution by agriculturalists coming from the Middle
East in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. Human
Immunology 62, 889-900 (2001). ã American Society
for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, 2001.
Published by Elsevier Sciece Inc.
Oh wait...
cosmiverse.com
The journal Human Immunology is making history, but not for anything it would like to be known for. In a move of unprecedented self-censorship, they are begging libraries and private readers alike to physically remove an article from their most recent issue and throw the offending story into the nearest trash receptacle. Really.
"I have authored several hundred scientific papers, some for Nature and Science, and this has never happened to me before," said the article's lead author, Spanish geneticist Professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena, of Complutense University in Madrid. "I am stunned."
Other geneticists are similarly appalled: "If the journal didn't like the paper, they shouldn't have published it in the first place. Why wait until it has appeared before acting like this?'" Why, indeed?
Dolly Tyan is president of the American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, which runs the Journal. She issued a statement to the effect that the Society was "offended and embarrassed" by the whole thing.
The journal's editor, Nicole Sucio-Foca, of Columbia University, New York, claims the article provoked such a welter of complaints over its extreme political writing that she was forced to repudiate it. The article has been removed from Human Immunology's website, while letters have been written to libraries and universities throughout the world asking them to ignore or 'preferably to physically remove the relevant pages'.
Arnaiz-Villena has been sacked from the journal's editorial board. Just what is all the fuss about? The paper, 'The Origin of Palestinians and their Genetic Relatedness with other Mediterranean Populations', involved studying genetic variations in immune system genes among people in the Middle East.
In common with earlier studies, the team found no data to support the idea that Jewish people were genetically distinct from other people in the region. In doing so, the team's research challenges claims that Jews are a special, chosen people and that Judaism can only be inherited.
Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East share a very similar gene pool and must be considered closely related and not genetically separate, the authors state. Rivalry between the two races is therefore based 'in cultural and religious, but not in genetic differences', they conclude.
Source: The London Observer |
