Are Israelis really Arabs?

[Philos]

Folks,

Forgive my lack of knowledge here, but if the Arab peoples and Israeli peoples are both descended from the house of Abraham, surely Israelis are really Arabs?

P - peaceful :)

[premjan]

Arabs speak Arabic whereas Israelis speak a related language - Hebrew. Jesus spoke Aramaic, another related languge which is closer to Arabic than to Hebrew.

[Booyakasha!]

They are all Semitic.

[premjan]

For perspective, some Israelis really are Arabs, and Ethiopians (and Assyrians) are also semitic.

[Huon]

Folks,

Forgive my lack of knowledge here, but if the Arab peoples and Israeli peoples are both descended from the house of Abraham, surely Israelis are really Arabs?

P - peaceful :)

Or Arabs are Israelis perhaps ?

Semitic is a group of languages.

[Sakpo]

An Arab is a person who speaks a form of Arabic as his or her native tongue or is recently descended from such people and culturally identifies with them and is accepted as such. Some Israelis (that is, citizens of Israel) are Arabs and some aren't. Most Arabs today are not descended from the original Arabs.

The categories "Arab" and "Jew" are each very large and diverse and capture people of many different backgrounds, cultures, and religious beliefs. Some people are both Arabic and Jewish but not all Arabs are Jews and not all Jews are Arabs.

[Tammuz]

The descendents of Abraham are the Jews through Isaac and and the Arabs through Ismael, at least according to Abrahmic folklore.

The Jews are, well Jews. Though there are different divisions of Jews, such as Ashkenazi Jews, Arab Jews, Sephardic Jews and so on. There are non-Jewish Arabs in Israel with Israeli citizenships, and those are usually referred to as Israeli Arabs. Even a few generals of the Israeli army are (non-Jewish) Arabs.

There are different divisions of the Arabs too. Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabs#Who_is_an_Arab.3F) are some definitions on who is an Arab. In the Middle Ages, the Arabs were placed in three divisions. Those were the pure Arabs, the ancient Arabs and the Arabized Arabs. I believe that today anyone who is culturally an Arab and identifies himself/herself as such, and has ancestors who were culturally Arabs and identified themselves as such would have little problem in being recognized as Arabs. Consider that genetically, the Arabs of northern Africa are indistinguishable from the Berbers. So those Arabs are probably mostly descended from Berbers and other indigenous peoples who adopted Arabic culture during the centuries.

[Booyakasha!]

the forum is going fucking crazy with this triple and quadruple posts.

[WWJD4aKlondikeBar]

I think that the religious differences between these peoples outweighs any importance in their genetic similarities. If you prove to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are distantly related then their leaders will go have meetings to come up with some reason why God/Allah still wants them to hate and kill each other.

the forum is going fucking crazy with this triple and quadruple posts.Lots of latency on the IIDB servers so maybe their host is taking a crap. Impatience leads to quadruple posts.

[dragoon]

I posted this on your other thread, but I think it fits here:

The genetic make-up of the Ashkenazim Jews has undoubtedly been heavily influenced by genetic endowments by northern European co-ancestors. Even so, many of today's Ashkenazim Jews retain patent Semitic features. To deny that is to deny the evidence of your own eyes. As Groucho Marks said “who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

The old stories in the OT are nothing more than myths or, if you will, early theories that, much like our later scientific theories, attempted to explain how things got the way they are. The fact is, the details are most probably wrong (regarding Abraham, et all), but the basic theory is correct, they all belong to the same subset (or metaspecies, if you will) of humanity, the Semites.

Naturally the Sephardic Jews of today have not be genetically influenced to the same degree and their Semitic ancestry is even more clearly discerned.

At least, that's how it "looks to me." (pun intended)

[countjulian]

For you imformation, yes, there are millions of Israeli Arabs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Arabs)

[Liberty]

Jews are a semitic people like Arabs

[Nice Squirrel]

GRD material. Moved.

[Sakpo]

I think that the religious differences between these peoples outweighs any importance in their genetic similarities.

Well, yes and no. For one thing both groups are human so they're nearly gentically identical anyway... any general differences being completely unimportant and meaningless. On the other hand, to boil down the non biological reasons for conflict between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries to "religious differences" is far too simplistic.

Edit: Wtf, this has been moved to General Religious Discussions? Ahahahaha why??? That's asinine.