Two year old Yaakov Halul s the first Israeli to get registered as an Aramean in Israel, according to a Yisrael Hayom report.
Yaacov’s parents, Sha’di and Oxana, held off registering him for two years, as the only option open for his nationality was Arab, and they wanted him registered as an Aramean. Sha’di, who serves as a captain in an IDF reserves paratroopers unit, heads up an Aramean-Christian organization in Israel.
There are 12 million Aramean Christians in the world, 130,000 of them live in Israel. Israel is the first country to recognize Arameans as a distinct nationality.
The Arameans are believed to have originated in the area of the Middle East known as the Fertile Crescent, in what is now Syria and Iraq. Most now live in the Galilee, Nazareth and Haifa.
The Jewish people’s connections to Arameans goes back to Biblical times.