It is an entrenched and ancient notion stemming from Assyria’s exile of the northern kingdom to “Halah … Habor, the River of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes” (2 Kings 18:11).
This lost part of Israel, it is said, will one-day rejoin the Jewish people in the Land of Israel (Isaiah 49:8, 9). But until then, tradition states that the 10 Lost Tribes reside beyond an elusive river of shifting sand and rocks called Sambatyon.
According to certain Afghan Pashtun tribes, to which belong the Indian Pathan, Bokhtnasser (Nebuchadnezzar) exiled Israel to the Afghan “mountain districts of Ghor, Ghazneen, Kabul, Kandahar and Koh Firozeh” (History of the Afghans 1823:25). Today, many of the fearsome Taliban warriors, if these histories can be trusted, are actually Israelites. A famous rabbi once said that an army of those “Israelites” would one day make short work of Arab hostility toward Israel.
Eyal Beeri is one of the few Israeli scholars willing to go out on the academic limb...
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