{"id":91707,"date":"2026-02-25T20:36:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T01:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=91707"},"modified":"2026-02-27T06:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T11:45:07","slug":"why-was-tucker-carlson-pushing-for-dna-testing-for-jews-what-to-know-about-the-khazar-theory-that-antisemites-cant-shake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/why-was-tucker-carlson-pushing-for-dna-testing-for-jews-what-to-know-about-the-khazar-theory-that-antisemites-cant-shake\/","title":{"rendered":"Why was Tucker Carlson pushing for DNA testing for Jews? What to know about the \u2018Khazar\u2019 theory that antisemites can\u2019t shake."},"content":{"rendered":"

By ANDREW LAPIN<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 During Tucker Carlson\u2019s interview last week with Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, both men made considerable waves with their takes on history and theology.<\/p>\n

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Tucker Carlson and Mike Huckabee speak in a Feb. 19, 2026, interview filmed at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel and released by Carlson online. (Screenshot)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Huckabee sparked a diplomatic row by citing the Bible to argue that Israel had a divine right to claim all of the Middle East \u2014 even though he didn\u2019t back doing so politically.<\/p>\n

But Carlson\u2019s own interpretation of Israeli sovereignty was also notable, as the far-right pundit insisted that Israelis should undergo genetic testing to determine if they have a rightful claim to the land.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t we do genetic testing on everybody in the land and find out who Abram\u2019s descendants are?\u201d Carlson asked Huckabee at one point, using the name Abraham used before he made a covenant with God to become the first Jew. \u201cIt\u2019s really simple. We\u2019ve cracked the human genome. We can do that. Why don\u2019t we do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

At another point, Carlson singled out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu specifically as an illegitimate Israeli.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you\u2019re saying is that certain people have a title to a highly contested region. They own it, in some deep sense,\u201d he told Huckabee. \u201cSo I think it\u2019s fair to ask, who are they, and how do we know? So the current prime minister\u2019s ancestors weren\u2019t from here within recorded history. He has no deed. Bibi Netanyahu, on one side, his family\u2019s from Poland, they\u2019re from Eastern Europe. So how do we know he has a connection to the people who God promised the land to?\u201d<\/p>\n

The line of questioning made little sense to many Jewish listeners, who understand Judaism as a blend of religion, ethnicity and community in which converts have always been accepted. For Jewish listeners, too, the idea of tracing bloodlines is often associated with the Nazis, who chose their victims based on how many Jewish ancestors they had.<\/p>\n

But both Carlson\u2019s critics, and supporters across the ideological spectrum who have agreed with his views on Israel, understood what he was getting at. They identified his line of questioning as a variation on the \u201cKhazar theory\u201d: the belief that Ashkenazi Jews, like Netanyahu, are genetically descended from a Turkic minority that converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages rather than from the 12 tribes of Israel. <\/p>\n

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A 15th-century drawing of the Khazars, the Central Asian people, demanding tribute from the Polyans. (Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThe people currently occupying Israel are Khazarian Turks,\u201d far-right pundit Candace Owens, a promoter of many antisemitic conspiracy theories, wrote on X.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has ZERO ancestral connection to the land. He\u2019s Polish,\u201d the far-left influencer Shaun King wrote on X about Netanyahu in praise of Carlson\u2019s interview. \u201cHis real last name is Mileikowsky.\u201d<\/p>\n

The theories as to why the Khazars, who were a real people, would have converted en masse to Judaism have varied according to the teller; one tale holds that a Khazar royal held a debate between representatives of Judaism, Islam and Christianity to hold the best religion, and Judaism won out. But no matter how it happened, the theory goes, Jews who trace their genetics to Eastern Europe should not be considered rightful heirs of Israel, and should instead claim the Caucasus as their ancestral home.<\/p>\n

The Khazar theory has a long history but was largely discredited with the advent of DNA analysis. Yet it has grown in prominence among antisemitic circles since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel and ensuing Gaza war, according to research by the Anti-Defamation League. <\/p>\n

\u201cAntisemites suggest that if Jews are descended from people not native to Israel (i.e., Khazars), then they have no legitimate claim to the land,\u201d the ADL\u2019s own description of the theory\u2019s popularity notes. \u201cIn addition, because Nazis sought to expel Jews and others from their homes in Europe in order to obtain lebensraum (\u2018living space\u2019) for \u2018Aryan\u2019 people, antisemites have argued that Jews are doing the same thing because they have no historic claim to the land of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ADL also notes that, setting aside the validity of the theory, most Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi but rather trace their roots to North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

The origins of the Khazar theory date back centuries and have always had some promulgation from Jews; Hungarian Jews in the 19th century latched onto the theory, according to researchers. The Khazar theory has also been promoted by some Jewish and Israeli scholars in more recent years, including Arthur Koestler in his 1976 book \u201cThe Thirteenth Tribe\u201d; Shlomo Sand, a historian at Tel Aviv University who identifies as \u201cpost-Zionist,\u201d in his controversial 2008 book \u201cThe Invention of the Jewish People\u201d; and Israeli geneticist Eran Elhaik. <\/p>\n

This has further boosted the theory\u2019s seeming validity among proponents: Owens, for example, has cited Sand\u2019s book on X as evidence for the theory.<\/p>\n

But such studies are largely refuted by established historical scholarship. \u201cThis claim, pardon my chutzpah, is nonsense,\u201d Shaul Stampfer, an emeritus history professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has said about the Khazar theory in college lectures.<\/p>\n

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A map of the Khazar region of the Caucasus in the Middle Ages. (Rasl via Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In Stampfer\u2019s own research into the Khazars, he said that while there were a few Jews among the Khazars, he has found no genetic links between the ancient Central Asian tribe and modern Ashkenazi Jews (whose own genetics have been thoroughly studied owing to a preponderance of genetic diseases in the population). There are, however, genetic links between Ashkenazi Jews and ancient Palestine, as well as to North Africa, he says. <\/p>\n

In addition, there are very few Turkic origins to be found in Yiddish, while there are extensive Latin origins in Yiddish, further boosting evidence of broader Jewish migration to Europe and decreasing the likelihood of mass migration from Turkey.<\/p>\n

There are other practical considerations, too, Stampfer told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake a look at a map,\u201d he wrote in an email. \u201cEven if the Khazars had converted, they would not have dragged themselves to Poland. It is far away and cold in the winter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Institutes of Health, too, published an extensive genetic study in 2013 that found \u201cno evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazi Jews.\u201d <\/p>\n

The researchers assembled what they called \u201cthe largest data set available to date for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins,\u201d as well as available genome sets from the Caucasus. Their conclusion, the abstract notes, \u201ccorroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of the evidence has stopped the Khazar theory from emerging as a lodestar of modern antisemitism, thanks in part to influential right-wing personalities such as Carlson. This is not the first time he has toyed with the idea of genetics testing for Jews, though he previously seemed to be aware that such an ask would carry undesirable connotations. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to determine who\u2019s actually inherited the land, we would have to conduct global genetic testing to award property on the basis of the results,\u201d he texted right-wing filmmaker Dinesh D\u2019Souza months ago, according to D\u2019Souza, who shared the text on a recent podcast. Carlson continued, \u201cSounds like a Nazi project to me. As a Christian, I reject that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s necessary any more than it\u2019s necessary to genetically test Indians to make sure their ancestors are from India,\u201d D\u2019Souza, who is Indian-American, responded. \u201cRemember Jews maintained their tribal identity. Very little intermarriage. They didn\u2019t try to convert people, as Christians did.\u201d<\/p>\n

D\u2019Souza continued, \u201cShakespeare\u2019s \u2018Merchant of Venice\u2019 conveys the picture very vividly. The Jews don\u2019t mix. So their continuity as a group is generally more secure than virtually any other group.\u201d (\u201cThe Merchant of Venice,\u201d which features the Jewish villain Shylock, is generally seen as promoting antisemitic stereotypes.)<\/p>\n

Carlson responded by returning to the genetics question \u2014 and this time seeming more open to it than when he first called it a Nazi project. \u201cI agree with all that and I admire it. I\u2019m hardly against Jews,\u201d he texted D\u2019Souza. \u201cBut if the claim is that Jews have a genetic right to certain pieces of land, it\u2019s going to be necessary to do genetic testing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The broader lurch into conspiratorial thinking on the right, exemplified by the views on the Jews and Israel espoused by Carlson, increasingly has some other conservatives worried about losing control of the narrative.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most popular digital content on the Right is now \u2018Erika Kirk killed Charlie,\u2019 \u2018Epstein was leading a pedophile blackmail ring for the CIA\u2019 and \u2018Jews are a diabolical power destroying the world,\u2019\u201d Christopher Rufo, an influential right-wing thought leader who helped orchestrate the larger push against diversity initiatives, warned on X. \u201cIn these instances, we need to correct public opinion, rather than cave to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part after the Carlson interview, Huckabee accused his interrogator of drawing on a \u201cdangerous conspiracy theory\u201d from \u201csome of the darkest realms of the Internet\u201d for his genetic testing line of questioning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do know that the discredited idea that most Ashkenazi or European Jews descended from the ancient Turkic kingdom of Khazaria is bunk,\u201d Huckabee wrote on X. \u201cIt\u2019s also been weaponized by people trying to deligitimize [sic] Jews, to strip them of their history, and to call them \u2018imposters\u2019 or \u2018fake Jews.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Stampfer was hesitant to diagnose why the Khazar theory may be growing in popularity today. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who don\u2019t like Jews might be attracted to the idea that this is one more Jewish lie,\u201d he offered. Yet, he added, \u201cExplaining why people believe what they believe is a tough business.\u201d<\/p>\n

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