Pashtuns: and the Jewish Redemption: Afghanistan-Pakistan

Nadene Goldfoot                                              

12 Tribes of Israel, from 12 sons of Jacob:  Judah and Benjamin made up the Empire of Judah after King Solomon died in 920 BCE.  This is when the Empire of Israel had divided itself.  Israel then stood alone for about 200 years before being attacked and lost the major part of their 10 remaining tribes.

 Starting at the top or north of the map there was Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Zebulun, Issachar,  Gad, Ephraim, Benjamin, Dan, and Reuben to the east of the Dead Sea, Judah, the largest tribe and Dan, and Simeon which was farthest south.

The Pathans of Afghanistan and Pakistan are thought seriously to be the Lost Tribes of Israel from the Assyrian attack on Israel in 722-715 BCE.  That was 2,736 years ago, and people do change. From the time of entering the Promised Land with Joshua to the time of the Assyrian assault and kidnapping must have been about 1271 BCE when Moses died to 721 BCE when Assyrians attacked, which was 550 years, and the 2nd census taken by Moses showed the population of each tribe.
1. Reuben:         43,730
2. Simeon          22,200
3. Issachar         64,300
4. Zebulun         60,500                                    11. Benjamin 45,600
5. Dan               64,400                                    12. Judah      76,500
6. Naphtali        45,400
7. Gad              40,500                                 TOTAL:         601,730 entered the Promised Land
8. Asher           53,400
9. Ephraim       32,500
10 Manasseh   52,700

 We had Jews out looking for the lost tribes because the redemption of the Jewish people cannot take place until we are re-united with the whole House of Israel.   There was Eldad ha-Dani, Benjamin of Tudela, David Reuveni, Antonio de Montezinos, Shaabbetai Tzevi or absorbed with the last Judean exiles who were deported forcefully to Media, Assyria and Mesopotamia in 497-586 BCE.    Many lost tribal members  with good proof are returning today to Israel to live, but not the Pashtuns who are thought to be a major part of the 10 lost tribes.  They have become Muslims and are against Israel.
                                                                                   

Pashtun children of Peshawar, Pakistan

 The fact is, however,  that many Pashtuns have held onto enough Jewish practices to make this fact believable.  History goes back to Kish who had 5 sons.  One was Irmia Jeremia and Afghana descended from him. Afghana was the grandson of King Saul of the tribe of Benjamin.  Other people think they came from the ancient Aryans who intermingled with the invaders of the land.   Today they make up about 60 tribes and each tribe lives in its own territory.                                                                                  

Possible Afridi Pashtuns, with  Jewish history, are Muslims today

                                                                               

DNA testing could tell us so much, but only a few have been tested who live in India today and a few from either Afghanistan or Pakistan.  One Pashtun I matched with was of the haplogroup Q1b1a.  5% of Jews have this haplogroup.   Family Tree DNA in Houston, Texas, has "The Afghan-Pakistan Y-DNA Project welcomes all those who come from, or trace their ancestry to the communities of present day Afghanistan or Pakistan."  All one has to do is go to their website and order a test for their Y (male side) dna.  The kit will be mailed to you.  There is no blood involvement.  In one test, 22 Y STRs were studied from Pashtuns in Pakistan and most frequent haplogroup was R1a1a with 49.3% frequency    They haven't found a connection yet to Jews from this testing company of Anthrogenica as yet.                                                                    
Dr. Shalva Weil, an anthropologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was doing research on the Lost Tribes in 2000.
                                                                                   

Visiting Pathans in Jerusalem  at Western wall.  

 There was a planned study to be done on the Afridi Pashtuns, but though Dr. Weil did go to Pakistan, did not go further into the study.

Pashtun Afridi Warriors, 1895 and the Khyber Rifles Regiment

 A previous genetic study had been done in the same area but didn't provide proof about their origins.  I do not know who did such a study but am sure it was not done with enough people.    Dr. Weil maintained that "Of all the groups, there is more convincing evidence about the Pathans than anybody else, but the Pathans are the ones who would reject Israel most ferociously because of their Muslim religion of today.  This is also ironic in that many have joined up and are part of the Taliban who in turn have been known to attack their own people.
                                                                         

Taliban  make up a major part of the Afghanis and many are Pashtuns.  Pashtuns make up 60% of Afghanis.  Afghanistan's population has been at about 28,395,716 people.  Pakistan has about 172,800,000.  

                                                                               THE TALIBAN

"The majority of the Taliban are made up of Afghan Pashtun tribesmen.   The Taliban's leaders were influenced by Deobandi fundamentalism  and many also strictly follow the social and cultural norm called Pashtunwali.

"After the September 11 attacks on the U.S. and the PENTTBOM investigation, the United States made the following demands of the Taliban,

1. Deliver to the U.S. all of the leaders of Al-Qaeda
2. Release all foreign nationals that have been unjustly imprisoned
3. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats, and aid workers
4. Close immediately every terrorist training camp
5. Hand over every terrorist and their supporters to appropriate authorities
6. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps for inspection

                                                                     

Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir interviewing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, November 2001.  bin Laden was from Saudi Arabia,  born in 1957 His father,  Mohammed Awad bin Laden,  came to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia  from Hadramout (South Yemen) sometime around 1930.  His mother was a Syrian.  His family was very rich.  

"In 1996, Osama bin Laden moved to Afghanistan from Sudan. He came without invitation, and sometimes irritated Mullah Omar with his declaration of war and fatwas against citizens of third-party countries,  but relations between the two groups improved over time, to the point that Mullah Omar rebuffed his group's patron Saudi Arabia, insulting Saudi minister Prince Turki while reneging on an earlier promise to turn bin Laden over to the Saudis.

Bin Laden was able to forge an alliance between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Therefore, he brought much misery to the Pashtuns who wanted to just remain free of all war and terror.  

                                                                           

NATO forces 'have used every weapon except the atom bomb" on the Taliban and have probably accidentally killed Pashtuns not part of this terrorist group as well.  In 2007 a new group of Taliban appeared called TTP, Therek Taleban of Pakistani.  They are 100 times more ruthless and brutal than the Mulla Omer Taliban.  There are 68 groups in the TTP and each one is working for different secret agencies.

"According to the United Nations, the Taliban and their allies were responsible for 75% of Afghan civilian casualties in 2010, 80% in 2011, and 80% in 2012."  It was "after the September 11 attacks, the Taliban were overthrown by the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. Later it regrouped as an insurgency movement to fight the American-backed Karzai administration and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).  

The 2nd President of Israel, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, wrote "The Exiled and the Redeemed" in 1957 and said that Hebrew migrations into Afghanistan began with a sprinkling of exiles from Samaria who had been transplanted there by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria (719 BCE).

Jews have lived for generations among Afghan tribes who are Moslems.  "They have retained their amazing tradition about their descent from the 10 Tribes"  They maintain that they were once Hebrews and later embraced Islam.  Today there are millions of Pashtuns but not all seem to claim this history.

They live on their own land in a fortified residence called a qala which is divided in half.  There is the general living area and then the private quarters.  A high wall separates the 2 areas, so it's like 2 large rooms.  The extended family lives nearby.  Their land consists of barren rugged mountains, the Indus and the Hindu Kush, Syistan Plateau of Iran.  Communities are also found in 10 other countries.  They live by the unwritten code called Pushtunwali or the way of the Pushtun.
                                                                         
 It consists of hospitality and protection for guests (like Abraham offered),  that fugatives can seek refuge there and be peaceful, but there is the right of revenge also.  Their tying of their  turbans in certain ways identifies their tribe, and in some places, rifles, pistols, knives and other weapons are part of their dress, so there are no concealed weapons here.  Men and women's clothing may be similar but women wear brighter colors.  The daftari is a man who owns some of the tribal lands and speaks in tribal councils who is considered with high esteem.

They lived through the cult of Brahminism and the harshness of Buddhism, so now cherish Islam as a unifying force.  Evidently they have forgotten the teachings of Judaism, only the practices remain seen today, such as lighting candles.

These Pashtuns claim they ruled India 3 times, the Ghelji Dynasty, the Sori and Lodhi.  Of the Sori king, Shar Shah Sori is the most famous.  His name was Fareid Khan Sori and his reforms are still valid.  After that Moghul came and the Afghans fought for their freedom.  After the Moughals, the British entered India and another phase started.  Some  may live in cities.  Some may even live in tents and therefore are nomadic.

Aside from the Pashtuns who converted to Islam, Jews (of the remaining tribe of Judah and Benjamin)  were found living in Afghanistan in the early medieval times but what happened to them after the 12th century is not known.  This is a community today from the 19th century which is an extension of the Persian community.  Most Afghan Jews speak Judeo-Persian.  Their religious rites are the same as the Persian Jews, but they do not study the Talmud, so they must have been cut off from that book by time.  They have been living in a medieval atmosphere and were confined to ghettos.  Their Jewish clothing was distinguished by black turbans.  There were 40,000 Jews in Afghanistan 100 years ago including wealthy merchants.  Repression by the government after 1870 and the mid-1930s reduced the Jewish population.    Most all emigrated to Israel after 1948 and about 50 were found living in Afghanistan in 1990.

" Pashtuns reigned as the dominant ethnic group, while being amongst the most intransigent tribes that fought British Indian incursions. The Pashtuns gained world-wide attention following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and with the rise and fall of the Taliban, since they constituted the main ethnic contingent in the movement. Pashtuns represent an important community in Pakistan, where they have a dominant representation in the military and comprise the second-largest ethnic group."

DNA testing from India has Ms Shahnaz as the researcher.  While the vast majority of Afghan Taliban are Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, the theory that they are descendants of the Afridi Pathans is widespread in the area. The theory is based on a variety of ancient historical texts and oral traditions of the Pashtun people themselves, but no scientific studies by any accredited organizations have upheld the claim. It continues to be believed by many Pashtuns, and has found advocates among some contemporary Muslim and (to a lesser extent) Jewish scholars.  
                                                           

Zahir Shah b: October 15, 1914, He d. at the Arg-i-Shahi, Kabul, 27^th July 2007

Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, when asked about his ancestors, claimed that the royal family descended from the tribe of Benjamin.  This would be the same claim of others that said they were from King Saul of Israel.  

The irony of the Pashtun history is that these Israelites were taken  in 721 BCE from their brothers of the nation of Judah and held in captivity but remained alive and multiplied as a Muslim people after 632.  The new nation of Judah remained, only to become the Jews who were the scapegoats of the Christian world in that they were attacked by the Nazis in the 1930's and 6 million were slaughtered.  Now there are barely 13 or 14 million Jews remaining out of 2 of the 12 tribes.  Yet the numbers of the Pashtun, the remaining 10 tribes, numbers anywhere from 1.5 million to 40-45 million people.  By their Taliban group teaming up with Osama bin Laden of al Qaeda, they brought down more killing on their own people.  They brought down the wrath of the whole NATO allies and especially the USA.  
                                               

Arab, Haj Amin al-Husseini and Hitler in Germany, beginning of WWII

 The biggest irony of all is that the Nazis admired Islam.  What would they have thought of the bloodline if they knew Pashtuns carried Jewish blood?  They were so sure that Jews, who they were jealous of in reality, were an inferior race.  Here they were, stemming from barbarism when Jews were reading and writing and trading throughout the world, and they thought Jews were inferior.  

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Hikmat Shah
Tanakh, The Stone Edition, ArtScroll Series, Mesorah Publications, Ltd
https://jtf.org/forum/index.php?topic=41752.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
http://www.royalark.net/Afghanistan/barak15.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
http://joycebaynews.blogspot.com/2014/01/pashtuns-dna-test-research.html  video, last part by Simcha..J. which is good.