8,000 Bedouin Arabs in northern Israel are the latest to stake their claim as a lost tribe of Barack Obama. “A sheikh in the Galilee says he has evidence that he and his family are linked by blood to the new President,” reports The Times of London.

“We knew about it years ago but we were afraid to talk about it because we didn’t want to influence the election,” said Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, a 53-year-old local council member in the small Bedouin village of Bir al-Maksour.

Following Obama’s election victory, Sheikh Abdullah has been handing out sweets and huge dishes of baklava traditional honey-sweetened pastries to everyone in the area, and plans to hold a large party next week at which he will slaughter a dozen goats to feed the village.

It is true that many African migrant workers were brought to the Galilee by rich Arab sheikhs in the 1930s. One of those men was a relative of Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother, Sheikh Abdullah maintains.

“The sheikhs from all the villages are talking about it. There’s a whole delegation of Druze leaders coming from the Golan Heights to congratulate us,” reports The Times.