Part I: The Scientific Evidence—Twelve DNA Studies Which Disprove the “Khazar Theory”

1. A 1999 study titled “Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes” (M.F. Hammer et.al, Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences 6769–6774, doi: 10.1073/pnas.100115997) found that: “[D]espite 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 . . . 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.”

2. A November 2001 study titled “The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East” (Almut Nebel et. al., American Journal of Human Genetics, Nov 2001; 69(5): 1095–1112) found that in most Jewish populations, male line ancestors appear to have been mainly Middle Eastern. The study found that Ashkenazi Jews in particular “share more common paternal lineages with other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than with non-Jewish populations in areas where Jews lived in Eastern Europe, Germany and the French Rhine Valley. This is consistent with Jewish traditions in placing most Jewish paternal origins in the region of the Middle East.”

3. A September 2006 study titled “European Population Substructure: Clustering of Northern and Southern Populations” (Michael F Seldin et.al., PLOS Genetics, DOI: 0.1371/journal.pgen.0020143) found that both Ashkenazi Jews as well as Sephardic Jews showed more than 85% membership in the ‘southern’ European group which made their results “consistent with a later Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups.”

4. An April 2008 study titled “Counting the Founders: The Matrilineal Genetic Ancestry of the Jewish Diaspora” (Doron M. Behar et.al., PLoS ONE. 2008; 3(4): e2062. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002062) found that about 40% of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four female founders, who were of Middle Eastern origin.

5. A January 2009 study titled “A genome-wide genetic signature of Jewish ancestry perfectly separates individuals with and without full Jewish ancestry in a large random sample of European Americans” (Anna C Need et.al., Genome Biology, 2009; 10(1): R7. doi: 10.1186/gb-2009-10-1-r7) found that “individuals with full Jewish ancestry formed a clearly distinct cluster from those individuals with no Jewish ancestry.” This study showed that in DNA terms, Jews, both Sephardic and Ashkenazim, cluster as a distinct group—something that, if the Khazar theory was true, would be impossible.

6. A December 2009 study titled “Genomic microsatellites identify shared Jewish ancestry intermediate between Middle Eastern and European populations” (Naama M Kopelman et.al., BMC Genetics. 2009; 10: 80. doi: 10.1186/1471-2156-10-80) found that : “Jewish populations show a high level of genetic similarity to each other, clustering together in several types of analysis of population structure. These results support the view that the Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry and that over their history they have undergone varying degrees of admixture with non-Jewish populations of European descent.”

7. A December 2009 study titled “The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people” (Doron M. Behar, et. al., Nature 466, 238–242 (08 July 2010) doi:10.1038/nature09103) analyzed individuals from 14 Jewish Diaspora communities and compare these patterns of genome-wide diversity with those from 69 Old World non-Jewish populations in order to “provide comprehensive comparisons between Jewish and non-Jewish populations in the Diaspora, as well as with non-Jewish populations from the Middle East and north Africa.” The results identified a “previously unrecognized genetic substructure within the Middle East” and that “Most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster,” and that “trace[s] the origins of most Jewish Diaspora communities to the Levant.”

8. A June 2010 study titled “Abraham’s children in the genome era: major Jewish diaspora populations comprise distinct genetic clusters with shared Middle Eastern ancestry” (Atzmon et al., American Journal of Human Genetics, 2010;86:850-859) refuted the idea of large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry. This study found used genome-wide analysis of seven Jewish groups (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek, and Ashkenazi) and “demonstrated distinctive Jewish population clusters, each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations, and variable degrees of European and North African admixture.” This paper specifically excluded the “Khazar theory” as an origin for present-day Jews, saying “the genetic proximity . . . is incompatible with theories that Ashkenazi Jews are for the most part the direct lineal descendants of converted Khazars or Slavs.”

9. A March 2012 study by Steven M. Bray et. al., titled “Signatures of founder effects, admixture, and selection in the Ashkenazi Jewish population” (Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences, 16222–16227, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1004381107) found that the “Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population . . . has a common Middle Eastern origin with other Jewish Diaspora populations” while concluding that the Ashkenazi Jewish population has had the most European admixture.