Original sentence: " In a debate with Isreali historian Benny Morris, Massad saidThe claim made by the Zionists, and by Professor Morris, that late nineteenth-century European Jews are direct descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews is what is preposterous here.Massad considers claims to Israel made by the Zionists movement based on that connection to be "problematic.Massad has spoken of genetic links being established between 19th century European Jews and the ancient Israelite kingdom and the creation of a "semitic" identity for Jews at that time as actually a European, racist construction designed to portray European Jews as foreigners.This kind of anti-Semitic claim that European Jews were not European that was propagated by the racist and biological discourses on the nineteenth century, that they somehow descend from first-century Hebrews, despite the fact that they look like other Europeans, that they speak European languages, is what is absurd
Edited sentence: Massad has "questioned the genetic links between 19th century European Jews and the ancient Israelite kingdom"  and denied that Jews "are the descendants of the ancient Hebrews