A tribe of Bedouin from northern Israel claims it is blood relatives of Barack Obama.
The 8,000-member tribe in the Bir al-Maksour village in the Galilee plans to hold a party in Obama’s honor next week at which they will slaughter a dozen goats to feed everyone, Abdul Rahman Sheik Abdullah told the The Times, based in London.
“We knew about it years ago, but we were afraid to talk about it because we didn’t want to influence the election,” Abdullah, a 53-year-old local council member, told The Times Wednesday. “We wrote a letter to him explaining the family connection.”
Abdullah told the Times that he has not heard from Obama or his campaign. He says he has pictures and documents to back his claim.
The tribe believes that Obama’s Kenyan grandmother is the descendant of an African migrant worker who was employed by a rich Arab sheik in British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s and a local Bedouin girl.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
