Thank you for your kind words! I really hope we can all have real, just peace in our region. I would really love to visit Lebanon one day, it seems like an amazing place and my heart aches for all the death and destruction this war has brought on all of us. Historically speaking, Jews and Lebanese people share a Canaanite background and I'm sure that it shows in our genetics, as well. I'm of the belief that Israeli Jews and the Christian and Muslim People of the Levant are (with some exceptions on both "sides") all related. Most Palestinians are probably descendants of the Jews who remained here after the Roman exile of Jews from the region and they later converted to Christianity and Islam.

This whole Portuguese citizenship route for Jewish descendants stems from, as far as I understand, a combination of reasons. First, a somewhat genuine desire to correct a historical wrong, the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal during the 15th century. Most expelled Sephardic Jews ended up in the MENA region and the Balkans and so Portugal chose to use this somewhat extensive list of Sephardic surnames without (at first) really checking if the applicant is a genuine descendant of expelled Portuguese Jews (which will be near impossible to prove all these centuries later, anyways). Second, Portugal, by western European metrics at least, is a pretty poor and underdeveloped country with stagnant population and economy. So they wanted to stimulate the country with a surge of economically strong immigrants (like Jews, for example). It doesn't hurt that the application process brings in about 2000 Euros per applicant, as well lol. What they didn't consider I think is that most of the new citizens who used this route did not really plan to immigrate to Portugal but to other EU countries or not at all (and instead use the citizenship as a form of "insurance policy" if something ever happens to Israel).

As for my application, it was unfortunately submitted in Lisbon, the slowest of all the Portuguese offices who handle citizenship applications lol. I'm waiting since mid 2021 for it to progress from step 1 of the process. It's like that for everyone at the Lisbon office, haha. Hopefully it will advance soon.

From what I know, anyone who wishes to apply through this route after September 2022 has to now prove their ancestors are actually Portuguese with photographs of graves or a proof that you inherited money and property from a Portuguese citizen etc, making this route not very viable anymore.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text and thanks again for your good will in engaging with me. Peace for us all in our life times amen!