8,000 bedouin claim they are related to Obama

There’s some extreme hopejacking going on in northern Israel, where Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, one of the leaders of a bedouin tribe of more than 8,000 people, is claiming President-elect Barack Obama as a member: It was his 95-year-old mother who first spotted the connection, [Abdullah] says. Seeing the charismatic senator on television, she noted ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

There's some extreme hopejacking going on in northern Israel, where Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, one of the leaders of a bedouin tribe of more than 8,000 people, is claiming President-elect Barack Obama as a member:

There’s some extreme hopejacking going on in northern Israel, where Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, one of the leaders of a bedouin tribe of more than 8,000 people, is claiming President-elect Barack Obama as a member:

It was his 95-year-old mother who first spotted the connection, [Abdullah] says. Seeing the charismatic senator on television, she noted a striking resemblance to one of the African migrant workers who used to be employed by rich sheikhs in the fertile north of British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s.

The Africans would sometimes marry local Beduin girls and start families, though, like many migrant workers, would just as frequently return home after several years.

One of those men was a relative of Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother, Sheikh Abdullah maintains. […]

Sheikh Abdullah swears that he has papers and pictures to back up his claim but has promised his mother not to divulge them until he has presented them to Mr Obama, something he hopes will happen once his "relative" is in the White House.

Sheikh Abdullah has apparently been entertaining dozens of well-wishing visitors per day and assuring them that Obama will "end all wars and intervene here to solve our problems in Israel."

Something tells me he might have some explaining to do in four years.

(Hat tip: FP‘s Lara Ballou)

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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