Palestinian Arabs' Jewish ancestry:

[davidfcooper]

Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog: Israel: More 'hidden' Jews

Many if not most Palestinian Arabs are descended from Jews who were forced to convert to Islam over the past one thousand years. There are numerous stories of Arabs remembering Jewish customs and knowing of specific ancestors who converted. Apparently most Jews did not leave Judea after the two wars against Rome, and centuries later when forced by Muslim rulers to chose between conversion and exile they converted.

Comments

[doc-neuro.livejournal.com]

based on what I came accross in my research at hebrew U that "many if not most" part and the 85% figure are HUGE exaggerations. But I am familiar with a number of those anecdotes and would speculate that a great many of them are credible. arabs and particularly Palestinians tend to place a great cultural importance on genealogy due largely to the intricate political, social, and economic dynamics that are tied to family and lineage. Family elders can generally be trusted to faithfully remember and chronicle these things.

But most literature, including that gathered by anthropologists from the Palestinian Arabs themselves, indicate that the origins for the majority of them are in the arab tribes from the north in what is today Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. They carry with them the particulars of that dialect of Arabic which is typically referred to as the "Syrian" dialect. And while I suppose it is possible that outside of those anecdotes there were other groups of Jews who ended up fully assimilated into their culture and some may indeed have some sliver of Jewish blood buried way back you would not call those people "hidden Jews". I'd say that putting the percentage somewhere in the 20s would be a very generous estimate.