Tsvi Misinai

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.

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.

Criticism

Misinai's thesis and work has also garnered controversy, both at home and abroad, among some Palestinians and Jews alike, with the criticisms mostly coming from the Palestinian side.

One Palestinian intellectual, Ismail Al-Shindi, professor of Islamic Jurisprudence at Al-Quds Open University denied that Jews ever maintained a sizeable population in the land of Palestine, or that they were forcibly converted by the Ottomans, and he even went as far as to accuse Misinai of "falsifying" history to Hebraize Palestinians. Another Palestinian, Kamel Katalo, professor of Sociology at Al-Khalil University in Hebron, has stated that he has read Tsvi Misinai's booklet and come to the conclusion that Misinai makes strident generalisations and reaches spurious and completely erroneous conclusions based on questionable premises, stating that there is no such thing as a "Jewish gene".

His most notable Arab Israeli critic is the former Balad MK, Azmi Bishara, who dismissed his thesis as yet another Jewish plot to remove the Palestinians from their land. Misinai has accused both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities of being indifferent to his findings.