Nadene Goldfoot
Year: 5783/2023
The Taliban are a predominantly Pashtun, Islamic fundamentalist group that returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021 after waging a twenty-year insurgency.
Taliban fighters hold a flag for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in August 2022. Ali Khara/ReutersPashtuns (also called Pushtan, Paktun or Pathan) are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Though their exact numbers are uncertain and as with other communities are contested, previous estimates have suggested that they make up around 42 per cent of the population.
Pashtuns are actually the remnant of the Northern Tribes of Israel that were kidnapped by the Assyrians in 721 BCE. At least 7 of the 10 tribes made up the people taken away. The Assyrian Shalmaneser V's siege of Samaria and its capture by his successor, Sargon annexed the country, and deported 27,290 Israelites to Assyria, Media and replaced them with Syrian and Babylonian prisoners.
TALIBAN FORCES patrol in front of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, September 2(photo credit: STRINGER/ REUTERS)
They have showed Dr. Shalva Weil of Hebrew University of Jerusalem some of their customs which are Jewish customs. Pashtun practices include circumcision on the eighth day and refraining from mixing meat and milk — Is there a connection to ancient Hebrews? Are they our long-lost relatives, descendants of the Israelites who were cast into exile by the Assyrian empire more than 2,700 years ago?
Weil has published extensively on the Ten Lost Tribes historically and in contemporary times. In particular, she has written on the Beta Israel, the Bene Israel, and the Pashtuns, as well as on Judaising groups all over Africa, China and elsewhere. In 1991, she curated an exhibition at Beth Hatefutsoth: the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora on the Ten Lost Tribes entitled "Beyond the Sambatyon: the Myth of the Ten Lost Tribes". She is on the international board of ISSAJ [International Society for the Study of African Jewry], and presented a paper at their latest conference in Nairobi on the Jews of Africa. She also held an important meeting for all in Jerusalem on the Pashtuns several years ago.
A group has visited Jerusalem already. Assyrian cuneiform states that 27,290 captives were taken from Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, by the hand of Sargon II.
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSRxeXV0T8YThe American movie, Lone Survivor, tells of a riveting story chronicling Operation Red Wings, where four highly trained Navy SEALs are sent on a mission to kill a dangerous “Al Qaeda” leader in a remote mountain village of Afghanistan, but they are discovered and overrun by enemy fighters. Mohammad Gulab, follows the ancient Pashtun code of honor called, Pashtunwali. The main principals of Pashtunwali are hospitality, protection for all guests, justice against wrong doers, bravery, loyalty to family, righteousness, belief in Allah, courage, and protection of women. Gulab is the Afghan village leader who risks his own life, his family’s life and perhaps his village’s future security to give this stranger, the 4th Seal, Marcus Lattrell, refuge from his enemies.
This unwritten code of conduct among traditional Pashtun tribes serves as a system of law and governance in parts of Afghanistan. It has its origin in the teachings of Moses, I'm sure.
The Taliban is a Sunni Islamist nationalist and pro-Pashtun movement founded in the early 1990s that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until October 2001.
The Taliban have imposed a harsh interpretation of Islamic law despite pledges to respect the rights of women and religious and ethnic minority communities. Meanwhile, as they have transitioned from an insurgent group to a functional government, the Taliban have struggled to provide Afghans with adequate food supplies and economic opportunities. 
Pashtuns visiting in Jerusalem
Some anthropologists lend credence to the oral traditions of the Pashtun tribes themselves. For example, according to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Theory of Pashtun descent from Israelites is traced to Maghzan-e-Afghani who compiled a history for Khan-e-Jehan Lodhi in the reign of Mughal Emperor Jehangir in the 16th century CE. Another book, that corresponds with most Pashtun historical records, Taaqati-Nasiri, states that in the 7th century a people called the Bani Israel settled in Ghor, southeast of Herat, Afghanistan and then migrated south and east. These Bani Israel references are in line with the commonly held view by Pashtuns that when the twelve tribes of Israel were dispersed (see Israel and Judah and Lost Ten Tribes), the tribe of Joseph, among other Hebrew tribes, settled in the region. Hence the term ' Yusef Zai' in Pashto translates to the 'sons of Joseph'. A similar story is told by Ferishta.
Sorry, but we had no tribe of Joseph. Joseph was Jacob's 11th son by Rachel who had been sold by his brothers to a camel caravan and taken to Egypt where he became the pharaoh's right hand man. Joseph's rights of ownership of land in Israel were given to Joseph's sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Their mother was Asenath. (Gen.41:50.) They could have come from them, as they were taken by the Assyrians.
Maghzan-e-Afghani's Bani-Israel theory has largely been debunked due to historical and linguistic inconsistencies. The oral tradition is believed to be a myth that grew out of a political and cultural struggle between Pashtuns and Mughals, which explains the historical backdrop for the creation of the myth, the inconsistencies of the mythology, and the linguistic research that refutes any Semitic origins.
Other Pashtun tribes claim descent from Arabs including some even claiming to be descendants of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad (popularly referred to as sayyids). Some groups from Peshawar, and Kandahar, such as the Afridis, Khattaks, and Sadozais, also claim to be descended from Alexander the Great's Greeks. The Khakwani tribe found in an area from Khogyani district in Nangarhar province to as far east as Bahawalpur city in the south of Punjab claims to be Sayyid descendants of Muhammad.
Genetics Genetic study sets out to uncover if there is a 2,700-year-old link to Afghanistan and Pakistan, decided on 13 years ago in 2010.
Paradoxically it is from the Pashtuns that the ultra-conservative Islamic Taliban movement in Afghanistan emerged. Pashtuns themselves sometimes talk of their Israelite connection, but show few signs of sympathy with, or any wish to migrate to, the modern Israeli state.
Now an Indian researcher has collected blood samples from members of the Afridi tribe of Pashtuns who today live in Malihabad, near Lucknow, in northern India. Shahnaz Ali, from the National Institute of Immunohaematology in Mumbai, is to spend several months studying her findings at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa. A previous genetic study in the same area did not provide proof one way or the other.
Some have claimed to have found traces of them in modern day China, Burma, Nigeria, Central Asia, Ethiopia and even in the West. But it is believed that the tribes were dispersed in an area around modern-day northern Iraq and Afghanistan, which makes the Pashtun connection the strongest.
"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. That is the sweet irony," said Shalva Weil, an anthropologist and senior researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The Pashtuns have a proud oral history that talks of descending from the Israelites.
Their tribal groupings have similar names, including Yusufzai, which means sons of Joseph; and Afridi, thought by some to come from Ephraim. Some customs and practices are said to be similar to Jewish traditions: lighting candles on the sabbath, refraining from eating certain foods, using a canopy during a wedding ceremony and some similarities in garments.
Weil cautioned, however, that this is not proof of any genetic connection. DNA might be able to determine which area of the world the Pashtuns originated from, but it is not at all certain that it could identify a specific genetic link to the Jewish people.
Some are more certain, among them Navras Aafreedi, an academic at Lucknow University, himself a Pashtun from the Afridi tribe. His family trace their roots back to Pathans from the Khyber Agency of what is today north-west Pakistan, but he believes they stretch back further to the tribe of Ephraim.
"Pathans, or Pashtuns, are the only people in the world whose probable descent from the lost tribes of Israel finds mention in a number of texts from the 10th century to the present day, written by Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars alike, both religious as well as secularists," Aafreedi said.
But Weil said the work was absorbing, well beyond questions of immigration. "I find a myth that has been so persistent for so long, for 2,000 years, really fascinating," she said.
Moreover, we linked the unexplored genetic
connection between Ashkenazi Jews and
Pashtun. The presence of specific haplotypes J1b (4%) and K1a1b1a (5%) pointed to a genetic connection of Jewish conglomeration in the Khattak tribe. Khattak or Khatak (Pashto: خټک, Urdu خٹک), is the name of an Afghan tribe belonging to the Karlan branch of the Afghans. The tribe's history is quite ancient. One of the earliest references about them are found in the 4th century BCE in Median Empire (Media And Arachosia). "The Medes were the sons of Japheth (son of Noah) and mentioned in the Bible. They cooperated with the Babylonians. in the 6th century BCE. Then they were defeated by Cyrus, the Jews' hero. It's highly possible that some of our northern Israelite tribes were sold to the Medes, and that's my opinion.
This was a result of an ancient genetic influx in the early Neolithic period that led to the formation of a diverse genetic substratum in present day Pashtun.
I checked Family Tree DNA and they have over 300 in a group testing the haplotypes of people from Afghanistan and Pakistan. https://www.familytreedna.com/public/dna_afghan_pak?iframe=yresults They tested with haplogroups that Jews also are found to have, with a lot of R, J1, J2, then they had L, O, C,H, and G. There were men with Q, and my father was a Q. (QBZ67) to be exact. I saw Q-M242 and that's ours at the beginning of our testing.
Pashtun
As Chabad tells us: In the year 3154, one hundred and ninety years after the two kingdoms had split,
Menahem ben Gadi (743-736 BCE) seized the throne by assassinating Shallum (743) —who had ruled for a mere month—and became the sixteenth king of Israel. His brutal treatment of the citizens of Tiphsah, who refused to open the gates of the city, is recorded in II Kings, 15:16. When Tiglath-Pilser III invaded Syria and Israel, King Menahem was forced to pay him a heavy tribute.
It was during his reign that the Assyrians invaded the land of Israel. King Menahem, a brutal monarch who at the slightest hint of rebellion would destroy entire cities, had to contend both with his rapidly decreasing popularity and with the Assyrian invasion.
As such, rather than resist the invaders, he preferred to levy a heavy tax on his subjects in order to pay tribute to the Assyrians in exchange for a promise to support his rule.
The weight of Assyria’s dominion over the land of Israel began to bear down more heavily. King Pekah (735-730 BCE) seized the throne after assassinating King Pekahiah (736-735 BCE), Menahem’s son. Seeing that there was no escape from complete subjugation by Assyria, he joined the revolt which King Rezin of Syria had organized against Assyria, in the hope of enlisting Egypt in an effort to stem the tide of the Assyrian conquest.
That's what the northern tribes were left with when the Assyrians marched them away, brutality in their own land. It's a wonder they had learned about candles on a Friday night that they still practiced, not knowing why. They would have met up with brutality practiced by the Assyrians as well. Considering the environment they had lived under, it's amazing they held onto Pashtunwali, the creed of creating a kinder society.
Following the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the original regime in 2001, the Taliban regrouped across the border in Pakistan and began taking back territory less than ten years after their ouster. By August 2021, the Taliban had swept back into power. Their swift offensive came as the United States withdrew its remaining troops from Afghanistan as outlined in a 2020 peace agreement with the group.
The Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, twenty years after their ouster by U.S. troops. Under their harsh rule, they have cracked down on women’s rights and neglected basic services.
Reference:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalva_Weil
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/17/israel-lost-tribes-pashtun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_captivity
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/losttribes.html
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/taliban-afghanistan
https://muslimbaniisrael.wordpress.com/khattak-the-tribe-of-manasseh/#:~:text=Khattak%20or%20Khatak%20(Pashto%3A%20%D8%AE%D9%BC%DA%A9,Empire%20(Media%20And%20Arachosia).
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/are-the-taliban-descendants-of-israel-678995
