@oralloy,
You're conflating "Jews" with "Israelis" and
here you conflated "Israelites" with "Israelis."
Your understanding of history and ethnicity is as simplistic as Netanahu's worldview.
Tomas Rees' speculation that a close genetic relationship between "Jews" and Palestinian Arabs probably stems from pre-Judaic times, rather than any more recent conversion of Palestinian Jews to Islam is itself simplistic and completely ignores the studies he's reporting on.
To quote his very own report:
"Analysis of elements in mitochondrial DNA (which is passed from mother to daughter) seemed to show that Jewish populations around Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East were derived from at least 8 unrelated 'founding mothers'.
"Where they came from wasn't clear, but the most likely explanation was that they were from local populations that bred with immigrant Jewish males. Their offspring became absorbed into the Jewish community.
"In 2008, a more sophisticated analysis was published that made use of whole mitochondrial DNA sequences. They found no evidence for the genetic bottle necks that indicate founding mothers in the large Jewish populations. Instead, they found a complicated picture with a very diverse gene pool suggesting intermarriage both with local populations and other Jewish groups.
"The overall conclusion is that the female Jewish line deviates a lot more from the Palestinian heritage than the male line, but the heritage is still there."
"Jews" are a mixed people having mostly the genetics of the peoples from the countries from where they originated with some Palestinian genetic admixture, e.g. the Ashkenazim are mostly European peoples, the Maghrebim are mostly North African peoples--Phoenicians (who were themselves descendants of Canaanite peoples), Berbers and others--the Mizrahim make up a large group of "Jews" that are mostly Syrians, Iraqis, Kurds and Persians among others.
