Georgia: Israel's Home Sweet Home

By Hesham Tillawi

ccun.org, August 24, 2008

The Israeli Georgian Connection is more than a thousand years old. Most of the Jewish residents of Israel are of the same stock as of the Jews of Georgia. Non should be shocked to discover the depth of Israel’s involvement in the Georgian/Russian conflict. Once examined, the historical blood relation between Israeli Jews and Georgian Jews, it all becomes clear. Let us take a look first at the current relationship after which we will prove the historical connection between them a little later.

Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili said Saturday August 9, 2008 one day after Georgia attacked South Ossetia–“The Israelis should be proud of themselves for the Israeli training and education received by the Georgian soldiers…”

The Jerusalem Post on August 12, 2008 reported: “Georgian Prime Minister Vladimer (Lado) Gurgenidze(Jewish) made a special call to Israel Tuesday morning to receive a blessing from one of the Haredi community’s most important rabbis and spiritual leaders, Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman.” The Prime Minister of Georgia, principally a nation of Orthodox Christians called Rabbi Steinman saying ‘I’ve heard he is a holy man. I want him to pray for us and our state.’

In addition to the many government officials in Georgia who are ‘Jewish‘ in one way or another is one man in particular, Davit Kezerashvili who holds the position of Defense Minister and who just so happens also to hold Israeli citizenship. Interestingly, his last name happens to be ‘Kezerashvili’ which translates in the Georgian language to ‘child-of-the-Kezer(khazar)’.

Besides the aforementioned men, over a 1000 Israeli military trainers are in Georgia as well as many retired Israeli Generals who have made Georgia home. Lasha Zhvania, Georgia’s former Ambassador to Israel who won election to Georgia’s parliament back on May 21 on the promise to increase Israeli tourism and investments in his country. His mother is Jewish, and in 1988, she brought him to Israel to meet his grandfather, aunts, and other relatives. After that, he returned to Israel every year to get together with relatives dispersed in Kiryat Bialik, Haifa, Nahariya and Netanya. Tens of thousands of Israelis made Georgia their favorite tourists destination. It is clear that the relationship between Georgia and Israel is more than just a political or diplomatic relationship, it seems they also have a Jewish connection and maybe Jewish blood that dates back over 1400 years ago.

Author Arthur Koestler, a Jew himself wrote ‘The evidence adds up to a strong case in favor of those modern historians — whether Austrian, Israeli or Polish — who, independently from each other, have argued that the bulk of modern Jewry is not of Palestinian, but of Caucasian origin. The mainstream of Jewish migrations did not flow from the Mediterranean across France and Germany to the east and then back again. The stream moved in a consistently westerly direction, from the Caucasus through the Ukraine into Poland and thence into Central Europe. When that unprecedented mass-settlement in Poland came into being, there were simply not enough Jews around in the west to account for it; while in the east a whole nation was on the move to new frontiers.” The Caucasus is where the Georgians dwelled and still do. Lets follow this a little deeper to see if we can make a connection between the Jews of Georgia who found themselves on top of Georgia’s political hierarchy with the help of our own CIA and the Jews of Israel who came to Palestine after WWI and II which makes the bulk of Israeli Jews.

Abraham Poliak, an Israeli professor of Medieval Jewish History asked ‘How far we can go in regarding this [Khazar] Jewry as the nucleus of the large Jewish settlement in Eastern Europe? The descendants of this settlement constitute now the large majority of world Jewry.” Austrian historian Kutschera wrote that ‘Eastern European Jews are entirely of Khazarian origin. Even Western Europe Jews who spoke Yiddish or a derivative off such as the Jews of France and Germany had to have came from the Khazar Jews due to the fact that there are no trace of Yiddish in any Western European language.

For those unfamiliar with the term ‘Khazar,’ it was a person from the Khazar Kingdom which occupied the land between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. Until the 9th century the Khazars were the masters of the land, very rich due to its vast resources, strategic location and its unrealistic taxation (extortion) systems of surrounding kingdoms. The Khazars adopted the Jewish religion after being pressured to adopt a monotheistic religion similar to the Christians in the West or the Muslims in the East, but decided to adopt Judaism in order to remain independent of the other two religions of the time. The Khazar Kingdom enjoyed strength and prosperity which allowed it to increase its size to include the regions north of the Black Sea and the adjoining steppe and forest regions of the Dnieper. The Khazars controlled the southern half of Eastern Europe for a century and a half, and presented a mighty bulwark, blocking the Ural-Caspian gateway from Asia into Europe. During this whole period, they held back the onslaught of the nomadic tribes from the East.

“The collapse of the Hun Empire after Attila’s death left a power-vacuum in Eastern Europe, through which once more, wave after wave of nomadic hordes swept from east to west, prominent among them the Uigurs and Avars. The Khazars during most of this period seemed to be happily occupied with raiding the rich trans-Caucasian regions of Georgia and Armenia, and collecting precious plunder. During the second half of the sixth century they became the dominant force among the tribes north of the Caucasus”

In 965 AD Russ prince Svyatoslav of Kiev, undertook many military campaigns which led to the breaking up of the Khazar Empire. The Khazar state may have survived until the middle of the 12th century where from 965 AD until its destruction went through many periods of war, peace, and alliances with the Arabs, the Russ, the Persians and the Byzantines separately or in conjunction. Many of its subjects adopted either Islam or Christianity and those who decided to keep their faith migrated to Eastern Europe, Russia or migrated to the south as we are told by Persian poet, Khakani (circa 1106-90) who spent most of his life as a civil servant in the Caucasus and had first hand knowledge of the Caucasian tribes. Khakani told us of ‘Devent Khazars’ where Darband being the defile or ‘turnstile’ between the Caucasus and the Black Sea through which the Khazars used to raid Georgia in the old days. Therefore, it is a fact of history that many Khazar Jews went through this passageway to take refuge in Georgia.

It took 800 years for the Khazar Jews to meet again, after going through Russia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Palestine before they joined forces, again, with their brethren in Georgia against their old arch enemy, the Russ. What took place on August 8, 2008 in South Ossetia proves two points: first, that the Khazar Jews never forgot the war of 965 AD and their defeat by the Russians and (2) today’s “Jews” in “Israel” have no historical claim to the land of Palestine.

Once again we see Zionism, manifesting itself in the illegal state of “Israel” dragging the World into yet another new conflict between a nuclear armed Russia and a nuclear armed US.

Dr. Hesham Tillawi is a talk show host at Current Issues TV.