so, you initially had sumerian groups in modern day iraq, and they were neither indo-european speakers nor semitic speakers. they were probably speakers of a lost offshoot of the caucasian language group and probably looked like modern day armenians. they mingled with akkadians, who were semitic speakers.

they were eventually pushed back to the north by invading semitic tribes - babylonians, assyrians.

to their east, were elamites, who were probably dark-skinned, like modern indigenous indians, and who probably spoke a dravidian language. they were eventually overrun by indo-european speakers, who in turn took over mesopotamia for about a thousand years, before they were pushed out again by another northward movement of semitic tribes, called arabs.

the jews are admittedly weird. the closest thing to monotheism in the ancient world was zoroastrianism, and the sky god is a broadly indo-european motif, and certainly not a semitic one. yahweh is a skyfather - a zeus. and, some influence from the north is consequently apparent.

genetically speaking, jews - and palestinians, who are the descendants of the ancient hebrews - cluster more with caucasian groups than they do with "purer" arabs from the peninsula. they are not alone in this. the same is true of syrians and kurds. and, one must remember that hebrews have often spoken aramaic or greek rather than hebrew, which has often been a strictly liturgical language.

short of inventing a time machine, history will probably never be able fully untangle the complex syncretism that underlies jewish religion and culture - they speak a semitic language, have an indo-european religion (with deep egyptian influences) and appear to be genetically caucasian. you can make a strong argument in any direction.

but, none of this changes the archaeological record, which has found no evidence of destruction horizons, or even of large scale settlement. the archaeologists will tell you that the jews were always in canaan. and, so one must ask the question of whether it was ideas the migrated to jerusalem, rather than people.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.