The Gene Wars

By Diana Muir Appelbaum, Paul S. Appelbaum

What can science teach us about the validity of nationalist claims?

What can we say, then, about the claim that genetic science has proven that “Palestinians are, in most cases, descended from the old Hebrew tribes”? Or about the alternative formulation that the Palestinians’ “ancestors, the Canaanites, were the original inhabitants of the land”?⁴⁹ In short, existing genetic data lend no support whatsoever to these assertions. True, both Jewish and Palestinian genetic endowments bear some of the similarities found in most Levantine groups, but they differ substantially as well, and both groups resemble other Middle Eastern populations (other Arabs in the case of the Palestinians, and groups from the Fertile Crescent for the Jews) more than they do each other. Hence, there is no basis for the belief that Palestinians are descended from the Hebrew tribes.

The difficulty involved in comparing the genetic heritage of ethnic groups, however, does not mean that good studies cannot be conducted and their results accurately analyzed. Indeed, as DNA sequencing technology improves, genetic inquiry will no doubt be more common in the future. We therefore must begin to think about one critical question: How far can genetic evidence take us in establishing the competing claims of two peoples to a land?

Genetic data on ancestry are appealing to nationalists because of their aura of scientific certainty, but they will always be an uncertain descriptor of the relationship between modern groups and ancient peoples. At least four factors contribute to this inherent indeterminacy: (i) The limits of comparisons to ancient populations; (ii) the intrinsically mixed nature of almost all population groups; (iii) the variation in results depending on the markers examined; and (iv) the effects of pure chance. None of these problems is likely to be overcome by technical advances, and, taken as a whole, they suggest that genetics should have little or no role to play in the adjudication of disputes over sovereignty.

For example, both Jews and Palestinians, or at least some advocates in each group, claim descent from the ancient Hebrews who held sovereignty over the land. Without knowing what the Hebrew genome looked like, or even whether it was distinctive in any way from the surrounding populations, Jews and Palestinians are both left to compare themselves with other populations in the Levant to demonstrate their general degree of relatedness to the other peoples who are presumed to have lived in the region.⁵⁰ Such data, however, only get one so far. For even if both groups could demonstrate an equal genetic relationship to the ancient populations of the western Mediterranean, there would be no way to know whether one of them was descended from the twelve tribes of Israel, while the other comprised the distant grandchildren of the Midianites or Phoenicians. This difficulty in fine-resolution comparisons to a population that no longer exists is not likely to be overcome by advances in science or technology.

In addition, both Jews and Palestinians, like all modern population groups, bear the genetic imprint of the ebb and flow of peoples over time. Roughly 15 percent of Palestinians and other Arabs carry mitochondrial markers associated with sub-Saharan Africa, probably the legacy of a slave trade of millennia and of the close ties between Yemen and the Horn of Africa.⁵¹ Such markers, however, are essentially absent in Jews. On the other hand, while Jews carry the genetic legacy of their Middle Eastern roots to a substantial degree, there is no question that infusions of genes from host populations occurred over the centuries of their existence in the diaspora. Similarly, like all modern Finns and Scandinavians, today’s Sami show descent from three population groups: Paleolithic Europeans, the Indo-Europeans who arrived next, and the Finno-Ugric migration that followed. Because no contemporary group is a pure descendant of any ancient people, genetic claims will always be a matter of degrees of relatedness. What is often mistakenly viewed as a black-and-white question becomes in practice something much more like distinguishing points on a continuum, and we are then left with the question: Should the difference of a few percentage points on a scientific table of genetic markers entitle a group to territorial control?

If this were not messy enough, the degree of genetic relatedness between populations will often vary depending on which marker is being examined. The conclusions that can be drawn about the indigeneity of the Sami may turn on whether one looks at their mitochondrial DNA or Y chromosomes. Similarly, some writers still want to claim a genetic influence for the Khazars on the Ashkenazi Jewish population (though the notion that Ashkenazim are entirely descended from the Khazars seems to have been retired).⁵² Assuming that a minority of Ashkenazi Jews carries haplotypes with Khazar origins—which is by no means certain—does that dilute the probative value of the much larger number of Jews with markers derived from the Levant? And if one person carries markers from both sources, into which category should he or she be sorted? How can one ever hope to resolve these questions?

A final complicating factor is the role of chance in determining genetic makeup. Two population groups starting out from the same origin but isolated from each other will, over time, begin to differ from each other—and from the parent population—on account of the random nature of mutation. Those differences will be enhanced by contingent events, such as the phenomena that population geneticists refer to as “founder effects” and “bottlenecks.” In the case of the former, when a small group breaks off from a parent population—such as the first Jewish merchants who migrated to Yemen—merely by chance, the proportion of haplotypes in its genetic endowment is likely to differ from that of the larger group. Over time, those differences may be enhanced by endogamous marriage and the chance survival of some group members as opposed to others. As for bottlenecks, should there be a dramatic decrease in population due to war, plague, or famine—as occurred multiple times with Jews in both Israel and the diaspora—followed by a resurgence in numbers, there can be a dramatic shift in the proportion of haplotypes in the group merely on the basis of who happened to survive. Hence, it is not improbable that of two groups that each split from a common parent population, one will undergo greater change in its collective genome than the other, and thus will bear a lesser resemblance to the parent group. Such chance phenomena hardly seem the right foundation on which to make determinations on the merits of two national groups’ territorial aspirations.

For all the acrimony aroused by countervailing genetic claims to historical primacy, then, genetics seems unlikely to contribute much to the resolution of contending claims of territorial sovereignty. But what, we may ask, is the relevance of historical primacy, for whose sake the gene wars were begun? Here, it seems, is the deepest flaw in the claims to land arising from the gene wars.

The claim of a people to sovereignty over a disputed territory must involve two contentions. First, there is the assertion—almost always contested by the rival claimant—that the people in question actually constitute a nation. Second, there is the assertion that this nation’s claim to sovereignty over the disputed territory is superior to that of any rival group. David Miller, a professor of political theory at Oxford University, offers perhaps the most thoughtful set of definitions on what constitutes a nation, and none of them involves genetics. The first of his five criteria is that “nations exist when their members recognize one another as compatriots.”⁵³ In other words, they exist only at the will of their members. For example, Savoy has a national liberation movement, but as long as most putative Savoyards continue to think of themselves as French, the Savoy League is unlikely to get very far.⁵⁴Indeed, with some Sami caring strongly enough about not becoming a nation to form an anti-autonomy movement, Sami nationalists have a similar problem. So, too, are Palestinian nationalists challenged by the fact that some proportion of the population of the West Bank and Gaza prefer to identify as members of a larger Islamic umma, or nation.

Second, nationality “embodies historical continuity.” Members of a nation believe that, “Because our forebears have toiled and spilt their blood to build and defend the nation, we who are born into it inherit an obligation to continue their work, which we discharge partly toward our contemporaries and partly toward our descendants.”⁵⁵ Belief in a shared future and memory of a shared past are essential components of national identity. This lack of a history as a nation makes it more difficult for the Sami, Macedonians, or Palestinians to build effective national identities.

PDF Format

previous (page 4 of 5 - view all) next