British scientists have confirmed with DNA testing that an African tribe in northern South Africa that claims Semitic origins is telling the truth. The Lemba, whose oral traditions state that their ancestors were Jews, practice customs that are remarkably similar to those of the House of Israel. They keep one day of the week holy, bless the new moon, circumcise their boys, slaughter meat in a ritual manner, avoid eating food with blood and do not eat pork. Some of the men wear yarmulkas (kippot), they strongly discourage marriage outside the tribe, and the custom of the tribe is to inscribe a Star of David on the gravestone of the deceased.
None of these practices are common among the peoples of Zimbabwe or South Africa. The Lemba are also divided into 12 tribes, and among the Buba, the priestly class, was found the exact same DNA element as among those Jews of the priestly class elsewhere around the world.
A number of genetic studies have confirmed the findings. Initial research in 1996 indicated that more than half of the Lemba Y chromosomes (the male chromosome) are Semitic in origin. That study was followed by another in 2000, that reported more specifically that a significant group of Lemba males carry the “Cohen [Kohen] modal haplotype” (CHM) on the Y chromosome, which indicates the Y-DNA Haplogroup J found among Jews and some other populations across the Middle East.
The Buba clan carried most of the CMH markers among the Lemba, similar to other Jewish groups around the world where the males of the priestly class, the Kohenim, carry the CHM marker. Lemba tradition states that it was the Buba clan that had a “leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel” and into southern Africa.
The oral tradition handed down among the Yemenite Jews is similar, stating that after the expulsion following the destruction of the First Temple, the Levi’im (assistant priests) and Kohenim fled towards Yemen; the group then split, with some continuing on towards the south, in the direction of Africa.
The University of London’s Professor Tudor Parfitt , who spent six months living with the tribe, and 20 years researching their people, expressed his amazement in an interview this week with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Parfitt stated that it appears that the Jewish priesthood continued in the West by people called Cohen, and in the same way it was continued by the priestly clan of the Lemba. They have a common ancestor who geneticists state lived about 3,000 years ago somewhere in north Arabia, which is the time of Moses and Aaron, when the Jewish priesthood started.
The Lemba tradition states that their ancestors fled the Holy Land some 2,500 years ago, traveling first to “Sen’a” and then south to Africa. Their sacred prayer language is comprised of a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic. The tribe, approximately 80,000 strong, lives in central Zimbabwe and the northern part of South Africa, and prizes above all its holiest object: the ngoma lungundu, “the drum that thunders.” According to tribal leaders, it is this, a wooden replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, that connects the Lemba to their Jewish ancestry.
The oral traditions regarding the ngoma lungundu said it had been used in battles, and thus was rebuilt several times, possibly from original remnants, Parfitt explained. He added that the replica that recently went on display at the Harare museum, about 700 years old, is “the closest descendant of the Ark that we know of.”
The Lemba people of today, however, are Christians and Muslims, although many define their ties to Judaism as their “culture.”
The excavations inside the Old City of Jerusalem at Jaffa Gate have exposed a water canal, 40 meters long (44 yards) and 1.5 meters (5 feet) high of an upper Jerusalem waterway from the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E. The ancient precursor of today’s Old City road leading from Jaffa Gate to Mt. Zion was uncovered previously, precisely where an ancient and now-famous Mosaic map indicated it should be.
Dr. Ofer Sion, director of the archaeological works at the site, stated that the newly-uncovered section is part of a waterway that was once some 13 kilometers long, leading from Solomon’s Pools. At the end of the 19th century, the Land of Israel archaeologist and architect Dr. Conrad Schick (designer of the Meah She’arim neighborhood) described the location of part of the waterway. “His work gave some clues that led to this discovery.” During the course of the excavation the wall of the waterway was exposed when some of the large stones were removed revealing a perfectly-designed waterway, with a flat stone roof on top. People can walk inside it, bent-over, for a length of 40 meters.”
Originally, water was supplied to Jerusalem chiefly from the Gichon Spring. Just over 2,000 years ago, however, with the population of the city growing, a new source was sought. King Herod began work on large projects bringing water from the Hevron Mountains, using the power of gravity, to Solomon’s Pools just south of the city. From there, two waterways channelled water to the city: The upper channel brought water to the King’s palace, Hezekiah’s Pool and other areas in the higher levels of the city, while water on the lower waterway went to the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount and the lower areas. The now-revealed section is part of the upper channel. The excavations are being conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority as part of a “rescue” operation, customary in Israel before major construction work, prior to the replacement of underground infrastructures there.
Jordan [trans-Jordan meaning the east side of the Jordan River] was created in 1922 as a kingdom to serve British imperialist colonial interests according to the British Mandate of the League of Nations Resolution of 1920; and after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill took 77 percent of Palestine, the historic homeland of the Jewish people, and created a colonialist kingdom where today over 90% of the population identify themselves as Palestinian Arabs. If Jordan were to allow democratic elections, the world would be forced to recognize it as both the de jure and de facto Palestinian Arab state.
Judea and Samaria were illegally occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan for 19 years following its British-led invasion into the nascent Jewish state until being won back by Israel during the Six Day War of 1967.
Jordan is already the Arab Palestinian state and that the only factor allowing the international community to continue ignoring this reality is the lack of democratic elections in the Hashemite kingdom. The Western powers and Arab countries today are attempting to extort these lands now to be used for the creation of a new Arab state to be run by the Arab Fatah-led PA.
Hashemite King Abdullah of Jordan [trans-Jordan] assumes that the creation of another Palestinian Arab state in portions of Israel will ease pressure on his kingdom. However, analysts have pointed out that the Jordanian monarch has an interest in the speedy establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria as he fears a repeat of “Black September” led by Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah and other factions with the same goal to succeed this time around.
The “Black September” group’s name derives from the Black September conflict which began on 16 September 1970, when King Hussein of Jordan declared military rule in response to a fedayeen coup d’état to seize his kingdom; resulting in the deaths or expulsion of the PLO to Lebanon and thousands of Arab Palestinians from Jordan in July 1971. The BSO began as a small cell of Fatah men determined to take revenge upon King Hussein and the Jordanian army. Recruits from the PFLP, as-Sa’iqa, and other groups also joined.
In his book Stateless, Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), Yasser Arafat’s chief of security and a founding member of Fatah, wrote that: “Black September was an auxiliary unit of the resistance movement, at a time when the latter was unable to fully realize its military and political potential. Abu Iyad’s claim was contradicted by Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, also known as Abu Daoud, a BSO operative and former senior PLO member, who, according to a 1972 article in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustur, told Jordanian police: “There is no such organization as Black September. Fatah announces its own operations under this name so that Fatah will not appear as the direct executor of the operation.”
Other actions attributed to Black September include:
28 November 1971: the assassination of Jordan’s prime minister, Wasfi Tel, in retaliation for the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan in 1970-71; December 1971: attempted assassination of Zeid al Rifai, Jordan’s ambassador to London and former chief of the Jordanian royal court; 6 February 1972: sabotage of a West German electrical installation and gas plants in Ravenstein and Ommen in the Netherlands and in Hamburg in West Germany; 8 May, 1972: hijacking of a Belgian aircraft, Sabena Flight 572, flying from Vienna to Lod. September and October 1972: dozens of letter bombs were sent from Amsterdam to Israeli diplomatic posts around the world, killing Israeli Agricultural Counselor Ami Shachori in Britain. 1 March 1973: attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, killing Cleo Noel, United States Chief of Mission to Sudan, George Curtis Moore, the US Deputy Chief of Mission to Sudan, and Guy Eid, the Belgian chargé d’affaires to Sudan 2 March 1973 1973 New York bomb plot 5 August 1973: two Palestinian militants claiming affiliation with Black September open fire on a passenger lounge in an Athens airport, killing 5 and wounding 55. A Lufthansa Boeing 737 is hijacked in December to demand that the gunmen be freed from Greek custody. 19 September 1972 letter bomb attacks and assassination of Ami Shachori. Dr. Ami Shachori was the agricultural counselor in the Israeli Embassy to the United Kingdom in the London district of Kensington. At the age of 44 he was assassinated in a letter bomb attack on September 19, 1972, perpetrated by Black September.Eight bombs were addressed to embassy staffers. Four were intercepted at a post office sorting room in Earls Court, but the other four letters made it to the embassy. Three of the letters were detected in the consulate post room but Ami Shachori opened his, believing it contained Dutch flower seeds he had ordered. The resulting blast tore a hole in the desk and fatally wounded Shachori in the stomach and chest. In Shachori’s memory an annual memorial lecture on agriculture in London was established. The Hashemite Kingdom, which is itself an artificially created state, has a majority population that defines itself as ethnically Palestinian.
