Bnei Menashe - Controversial DNA Tests

Controversial DNA Tests

2003: Hillel Halkin initiates a collection of 350 genetic samples from Mizo-Kuki which are tested at Haifa's Technion – Israel Institute of Technology under the auspices of Prof. Karl Skorecki. According to the late Mizo research scholar Isaac Hmar Intoate who helped collect the samples, no evidence was found which would indicate a Middle-Eastern origin for Mizo-Chin-Kuki . t].

2004: In paper posted to the internet without peer review, Kolkata's Central Forensic Science Laboratory claimed to have discovered evidence through DNA testing of Middle Eastern genes among a sample of Mizo-Kuki-Chin. The paper was titled Tracking the genetic imprints of lost Jewish tribes among the gene pool of Kuki-Chin-Mizo population of India. The paper remains unreviewed as of October 2011 and the paper elicited a few critical responses:

• 1 April 2005: In a Haaretz article In Search of Jewish Chromosomes in India, Professor Skorecki is quoted as saying the Kolkata geneticists "did not do a complete `genetic sequencing' of all the DNA and therefore it is hard to rely on the conclusions derived from a `partial sequencing, and they themselves admit this". He added that "the absence of a genetic match still does not say that the Kuki do not have origins in the Jewish people, as it is possible that after thousands of years it is difficult to identify the traces of the common genetic origin. However, a positive answer can give a significant indication".

• A BBC News article on the same day, entitled Rabbi backs India's lost Jews reports that "the Central Forensic Institute in Calcutta suggests that while the masculine side of the tribes bears no links to Israel, the feminine side suggests a genetic profile with Middle Eastern people that may have arisen through inter-marriage". The same article states that Israeli social scientist Lev Grinberg told the BBC that "right wing Jewish groups wanted such conversions of distant people to boost the population in areas disputed by the Palestinians."

• Hillel Halkin: "I contacted two of its authors, V.K. Kashyap and Bhaswar Maity, with a request for additional information that would enable us to evaluate their findings more scientifically. Unfortunately, this information was never given us, nor have Kashyap and Maity taken the next step of publishing their paper in a scientific journal, which would have required it to pass peer review and to display a higher level of scientific argumentation than that of the Internet paper. Why they have behaved this way is a mystery".

July 2006: Hillel Halkin says "laboratory analysis has shown that, with one or two possible exceptions, they fail to demonstrate any link between Kuki-Mizo haplotypes, or DNA profiles, and haplotypes typical of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East such as are common among Jews. In plain language, the study has so far come up with no clear evidence that the Kuki-Mizos, or any part of them, have a biblical “lost tribe” past". He says that in any case, Jewish DNA testing has never been and can never be a requirement in applications for Israeli citizenship. "My conclusions from my research, expounded at length in my book Across The Sabbath River, are that, although the overwhelming majority of Kuki-Mizos are not descended from the “lost tribe” of Manasseh, small numbers of them probably are. It is this small group that has transmitted certain biblical memories, traditions, and customs to the Kuki-Mizo people as a whole .

November 2006: In a Jerusalem Post article about an Indian historian's claims of finding a genetic link between his Northern Indian Pathan clan and the Lost Tribe of Ephraim, Hillel Halkin says that "there's no such thing as Jewish DNA. There is a pattern which is very common in the Middle East, 40% of Jews worldwide have it and 60% do not have it. But many non-Jews and people in the Middle East have it also".