My legions of fans and admirers

Among the many and varied expressions of affection that have come my way in response to a certain essay I wrote in the Vancouver Sun a while back, my favourite is an email I received from an American gentleman by the name of Curtis B. Maynard, an associate of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Maynard reflected on the growing acceptance of antisemitism at large in the world, and then wished me well in these words: "What it all means is that the time of the Jewish media is at hand. What it is likely to mean for you in a couple of years is - pay back for all those years you've carried the kike torch."

Good news, then. I've got a couple of years left before ill luck comes my way. Today, I see I have more good news, in that at least for now I am to be spared the legal wrath of the fantasist Greg Felton, whose weird theories were tangentially related to the subject of that Vancouver Sun essay. In his latest contribution to "the Canadian Arab News" (which for all I know doesn't even exist), Mr. Felton takes me to task and goes off on another obsessive tangent about the racial origins of the Jews, specifically the Ashkenazi Jews, from whom less than half of the population of Israel can claim descent. If you're at all interested in the black arts of language abuse and obfuscation, you will find Mr. Felton's latest efforts a treat.

If you're at all interested in the story of the Khazars - a fascinating story, sadly ruined by the racist and hysterical purposes to which it has been put - read Steven Plaut's excellent essay, in which he makes the important point: "The greatest irony is that even if the entire Khazar theory of Ashkenazi Jews were correct - and virtually none of it is correct - it would be entirely irrelevant. Judaism has never defined Jews on racial grounds. Anyone from any race is welcome as a convert to Judaism as long as he or she is sincere."

If for some reason you're interested in the racial origins of the Jews - the subject that so captivates Mr. Felton - there is an intriguing explanation of the genetics involved here, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The upshot: "The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora."