Talk:Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism/Archive 3

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Reviews of Baker

Drsmoo added a review giving a seemingly irrelevant quote. I tagged this for relevance.

I then added a review with a quote that is exactly about the "connection" so Drsmoo in turn tagged that for relevance. E The Satlow quote is undue as well as irrelevant and should be removed. Selfstudier (talk) 12:06, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I don’t understand your argument. The source is an Ivy League professor of Judaic Studies offering a perspective on material cited right above, as well as commenting on the impact of genetic studies on Israeli Law and modern Judaism; much as other sources have, though with actual concrete examples (rather than hypotheticals).

The quote from the review you added just quotes from the same source that is already right above. Why not use original thoughts from the review? Quotes from Baker can go in the section for quotes from Baker. Drsmoo (talk) 17:38, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

The section header is Research into the connection and begins "Several scholars have studied the early connection between Zionism and race science," (including Baker). The quote provided by yourself has nothing to do with that, it is just a para about genetics and says nothing whatever about the connection whereas the quote I gave is directly about what Baker says about the connection.Selfstudier (talk) 18:47, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Huh? It directly describes the tangible impact (or lack thereof) on Israeli policy (Zionism). Did you actually read the full paragraph? Earlier you said it was a blog post when it was clearly a scholarly journal. Drsmoo (talk) 19:52, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Since Drsmoo is edit warring so as to include only one cherry picked and irrelevant review of only one book, I have removed it altogether.Selfstudier (talk) 12:30, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Selfstudier, you have now tried to remove highly relevant material three times. First by falsely claiming it was a "blog" when it was a reliable source, then by falsely claiming it was only about genetics, now by falsely claiming it is cherry picked. I am re-adding this information to the lead, as it is highly relevant. If it is removed again, this will be brought to AE. Drsmoo (talk) 12:32, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I have made precisely one removal of an irrelevant (in the location where it was placed per above comment) cherry picked quote from a single book review. An obviously cherry picked quote from a single review by a non wikilinked author in a non wikilinked journal is not NPOV whereas I note your removal of a second review by a notable author in a notable journal containing material completely relevant to the section in which it was placed. Selfstudier (talk) 12:43, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Again, your argument makes no sense. Satlow is very much relevant, certainly more so than Baker, and the quotation is relevant to the topic outside of its relationship to Baker. The excerpt of the review you posted contained no new information and simply quoted from/paraphrased an existing source. It provided no benefit to the article except to seemingly hide Satlow. You’ve now made three distinct arguments for removing Satlow, and all three are demonstrably incorrect. Drsmoo (talk) 12:50, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

In fact, I kept Satlow and the full quote, merely moving it to a section for book reviews where it would be relevant but you reverted that as well as restoring it to a location where the quote was not relevant and at the same time deleting a wholly relevant review. Nor is adding Satlow to the lead, where it is self evidently undue, a good idea. I will admit to confusing the issue initially, because I mistakenly looked at Satlow's blog post and did not realize that it was a copy from a published source, nevertheless I did not remove it, instead starting this discussion. What is it about that particular quote from a single review of a single book that is so relevant exactly? Selfstudier (talk) 13:12, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

The material from Satlow is notable beyond its placement inside of a review of Baker. It is relevant as it directly describes the impact (or lack thereof) of Population Genetics Drsmoo (talk) 13:24, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

And that information is not available elsewhere? In a book or paper about the subject rather than in a book review? Selfstudier (talk) 13:37, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

The Satlow material was previously in the Impact section. A scholarly review of a book by a reliable source is reliable. This article currently has a quote in the lead about a criticism of genetic studies that is A. Attributed to the wrong source (so much for reading source material). B. Only found in the lead. Yet it does not have an undue tag. Drsmoo (talk) 14:27, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Let's fix that then, point me in the right direction, please. There are so many sources now and the article has been in a state of flux since inception so it is not surprising that there are errors. This is not the sort of thing that usually interests me but in for a penny, in for a pound. Selfstudier (talk) 14:47, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

• (1) Our text

Michael Satlow notes that while some scientists on the margins have used the science of population genetics "to make ideological claims", this "has not had an impact on religious law (or the Israeli Law of Return) and remains something of a novelty item in general discourse".

• Source

The second context in which Baker places the pathologized Jew is genomics (104-110, 142-148). There has been an explosion of work on population genetics. Within this work, “Jew” – particularly Ashkenazi Jew – has emerged as a distinct population. While most scientists with whom I have informally talked (including Harry Ostrer and Gil Atzmon, who come under particular critique) believe that the science of population genetics is entirely solid, Baker is suspicious. “Genome biology,” she writes, “has been harnessed to creating and sustaining a Jewish genetic-identity discourse…”(p. 105). Elsewhere, however, Baker seems to retreat: “my interest has been in briefly examining some of the ways in which this new Jew, this genomic Jew, is being constituted both through the measuring, compiling, and comparing of genetic data and through the framing and narrating of the findings thus derived” (p. 109). I am not sure if Baker fully knows what to do with the science of population genetics, but in truth, I am not sure if any of us do. It seems to me that while some on the margins have used it to make ideological claims (whether that Jews don’t really exist, as in Shlomo Sand’s deeply flawed book,9 or that Jews remain relatively “pure”), it has not had an impact on religious law (or the Israeli Law of Return) and remains something of a novelty item in general discourse: look how Jewish I am, my friends announce on Facebook, giving the number from the results of their mail-order genetic analysis. They mean nothing by it except for a laugh.

i.e.

• Most scientists are contrasted to Cynthia Baker, a professor of religious studies, not a scientist.
• Satlow then adds his general opinion: 'while some on the margins use it (science of population genetics) to make ideological claims' , themargins does not refer to scientists but to an historian, Shlomo Sand.

So the text we had in the lead was an outright example of WP:OR, falsifying the original perhaps through hasty reading, but certainly to the effect of suggesting, that only marginbal scientists have used genetics in this field ideologically.Nishidani (talk) 16:27, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

• (2)Satlow. Satlow's work is always highly informative. It perhaps may be used below, but not in the lead, where this edit puts it to state that genomic testing has not affected the Law of return. Thus put this is Satlow's personal view, which is contradicted by the far more detailed scholarly work precisely on this issue. For one
• Ian V. McGonigle 1, Lauren W. Herman, 'Genetic citizenship: DNA testing and the Israeli Law of Return,' Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 17 June 2015 pp.469-478

After the news of this one student’s experience made headlines, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that many Jews from the Former Soviet Union (‘FSU’) are asked to provide DNA confirmation of their Jewish heritage in order to immigrate as Jews and become citizens under Israel’s Law of Return. According to one source, the consul’s procedure, which was:

approved by the legal department of the Interior Ministry, states that a Russian-speaking child born out-of-wedlock is eligible to receive an Israeli immigration visa if the birth was registered before the child turned [three]. Otherwise a DNA test to prove Jewish parentage is necessary.

There is no mention of genetic testing in the Law of Return, so Satlow is technically correct. In actual procedures however, Israel’s official legal authorities have ruled (and the ruling has been applied in numerous cases) that exercising a right of return can be challenged by the state on DNA grounds, so Satlowe's statement is misleading.

This point can be addressed much later down the page, but not in the lead, at least for now.Nishidani (talk) 15:48, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I don’t see an argument for how this information is OR, or not lead worthy. Drsmoo (talk) 16:35, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Leaving aside dueness, I would like to pin down exactly what it is you are relying on Satlow for because it seems possible that the same or at least similar material can be located in a more usual source. If it is something peculiar to only this source, that's different. Selfstudier (talk) 16:53, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Do you consider an Opinion Paper to be a usual source? Drsmoo (talk) 17:08, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

We regularly remove opinion from contentious articles unless by an acknowledged expert in the subject area, I have not given any consideration as to whether this exemption applies to Satlow and did not initially remove him because of this possibility, even though no wikilink.

I would like an answer to my question though, since a well sourced view can be given as fact in WP voice.Selfstudier (talk) 17:20, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

To clarify, my edit did not mention scientists. So Iskandar323 edited my post to add a reference to scientists, and then you removed the whole thing as OR because of the reference to scientists, is that correct? Drsmoo (talk) 16:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

The text as it stood, from whatever combination of edits, was a distortion. I'm not interested in blaming. I'm interested only in the integrity of the article. (2) I gave you a source which shows what you in particular cited Satlow for, was misleading. He had an opinion, which happens not to be correct, since Satlow fails to clarify that a Law of return is one thing, the state's legal interpretation and judicial practices produces a practice which makes the abstract principles of the Law of Return irrelevant. In practice genomics has already influenced immigration policy via government guidelines. We should not be fiddling with the leads over this, particularly in a partisan way (a) because the information given was partial, not the full picture, and (b) per WP:LEDE, we would require a substantial section in the article to warrant summarizing the issue in the lead. For that reason alone, it can't be restored to the lead unless we have a section with several sources on genomics and the Law of Return.Nishidani (talk) 17:11, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Ok, after 1RR I’ll restore it to the lead and the correct body section per your feedback Drsmoo (talk) 17:17, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Could you link me to the 'correct body section'? I can't see what section it is supposed to summarize.Nishidani (talk) 19:41, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

These two papers are not conflicting, Satlow discusses population genetics. McGonigle's example from Times of Israel is DNA testing to determine a child's parents a DNA test to prove Jewish parentage is necessary, which is well established in many legal systems. fiveby(zero) 18:39, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

No you are wrong on both counts. I agree with Selfstudier's analysis for a different reason. This article has a large body of work by historians of science on genetics and of Zionism. Satlow's paper is a solid synthesis of several directions in the discussion of what constitutes Jewishness and it is concerned with Cynthia Baker's general book Jew. I.e. two specialists in Jewish studies, neither with a science background. Satlow is cited for a statement which is misleading in its simplifications, no doubt an oversight given his general excellence. His input comes from personal talks with two geneticists known for supporting a thesis which other geneticists, and historians of science, contest, in a short paragraph which hardly amounts to a 'discussion of population genetics' (his few notes indicate no familiarity with the large literature on it, but only impressions and anecdotal evidence. Selfstudier is correct that this is not the quality of sourcing the article is striving to maintain. Secondly Fiveby's analogy is just that, an editor's analogy, find for a talk page, but not cogent for determining if Satlow's remark be included or not. It is not a commonplace in legal system the world over to deny citzenship by a DNA criterion. That is what at least one ethnic state requires, but in other legal systems, DNA testing is not about legal entitlement to be a citizen, but about determining paternity or maternity in civil suits. You looked at one primary source, one footnote of 79 used by McGonigle, and deduced that it backs Satlow. So its is a tendentious inference on your part, as well as a personal analogy.

The Law of Return was written before genetics began to impose its viewpoints on the debates. (a) Governments have instructed legal offices to require them in a number of cases, and, since 2018, rabbinical courts accept mitochondrial evidence. There are thus 2 different systems now in place, the secular state guidelines and the rabbinical religious guideline. The state in such cases accepts aliya if a parent or grandparent, regardless of sex, is genetically 'Jewish': the religious authorities only accept Jewish identity if the mother is Jewish (and of course, even there, the rule can be ignored if a person or group with zero Jewish ancestry converts). This ia all detailed in McGonicles later book, Chapter 2: The “nature” of Israeli citizenship pp.31-62 of his Genomic Citzenship (2021). In short, in usi9ng Satlow's remark that genetics

has not had an impact on religious law (or the Israeli Law of Return) and remains something of a novelty item in general discourse

three errors are introduced into the lead: (a) it has had an impact on religious law (2018,and the Supreme Court 2020 per McGonigle 22021 pp.32-33 (i.e. Satlow's point is outdated, overrun by developments) and (b) that genetics hasn't had an impact on the Law of Return is a truism only because that law was written in 1950, before molecular biology entered the fray. We know that the Law of return as interpreted in secular legal guidelines has been 'impacted' since 2013 by genetics. Thirdly for McGonigle writing in 2021, it is not a novelty in general discourse

This man's stance on the use of genetics in political action, extreme as it is, speaks to the way in which genetics has infiltrated the Israeli popular imagination'.2021 p.32

So, no. If that material is to be restored somewhere, one needs (1) consensus, and (2) a detailed multisourced section on 'Genetics and the Law of Return' where Satlow's equivocal and now dated claim has no place.Nishidani (talk) 20:24, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I didn't comment on inclusion of Satlow. But you do understand the difference between population genetics and DNA paternity testing? fiveby(zero) 22:41, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

“His input comes from personal talks with two geneticists”

…that is not what he says.

”While most scientists with whom I have informally talked (including Harry Ostrer and Gil Atzmon, who come under particular critique)8 believe that the science of population genetics is entirely solid, Baker is suspicious.

He is including those two, they are not the only ones from which his statement is based. He names them because they are singled out in Baker’s book. And his statement “ it has not had an impact on religious law (or the Israeli Law of Return)” is not “misleading”. It’s a statement of fact. Drsmoo (talk) 00:35, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Gentlepersons. There is still a large body of evidence to be harvested and placed in an orderly exposition for this page. Let's not get bogged down in extenuating arguments over the utility of errant phrasing in dated sources. etc. One cannot construct an article by reading snippets. I'm sure more cogent objections or challenges might come if one read the several major books and articles listed which cover the whole field, as a minimum.Nishidani (talk) 20:27, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Agreed – this is the key point. If we keep to the absolute highest quality sources only – peer reviewed journals and scholarly monographs, we will not need to have these debates. The nuance that Drsmoo is rightly looking to ensure is properly captured in this article can be found throughout the main sources – if one looks carefully at their work, they are all balanced in their use of words, just as we must continue to strive to be in our article. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:37, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, someone's not listening, dumping in the one thing Satlow screws up on with a misleading opinion, presumably because it is thought important because Satlow is notable and teaches at Brown University. All this means is that, since wikipedia should not purvey false information that Satlow's oversight will have to carry a note on DNA and the law of Return.Nishidani (talk) 07:18, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

What's the basis for "screws up on with a misleading opinion"? Are you still conflating population genetics and DNA paternity testing? A DNA test to determine a parent or grandparent is not population genetics. fiveby(zero) 12:27, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Don't play games. Satlow says

it has not had an impact on religious law (or the Israeli Law of Return) and remains something of a novelty item in general discourse:

I cited the post 2018 evidence of sources which report the impact of genetic arguments on religious law, practical applications of the Law of Return in administrative guidelines of who qualifies as a Jew for aliya and evidence that it is no longer a novelty in general discourse. Read them. Trying to shift the goalposts gets you nowhere. Satlow's remark is outdated, a fossilized opinion. and only of historic interest for Satlow's views.Nishidani (talk) 12:39, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

You are still confused, “a DNA test to prove Jewish parentage” is not the same as population genetics. Drsmoo (talk) 13:29, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Sigh. Cyril of Alexandria could be called the patron saint of hairsplitting, as he belaboured heretics with what he thought was the art of Aristotelian logic. Tibetan monks recite a prayer to Manjushri before they engage in rtsod pa, which is their equivalent to pilpul, and what we have here is pilpulling one’s leg.

Population genetics is the plural of DNA testing: the same analytical technique is used for a plurality of individuals correlated or corralled into ethnic groups for their ostensible allele similarities as is used in individual DNA analysis. You ought to know that if you want to contribute positively to this article. Since it seems you don’t. but ‘frenetise insignificance’, it is pointless to take the above seriously, since you don’t appear to have read past page 1 of McGonigle 2015, or even glanced at his discussion of how the Law of Return was amended to extend citizen rights to the zera Yisrael, ‘the seed of Israel’ which means 23 million people could technically become olim, 9 million beyond those who fit the strict halakhic criterion. Were you to trouble yourself to google around for information rather than opinions, you would find that Satlow’s view is outdated, incorrect, misleading. The amendment to the law of Return means simply, if you cannot provide proof of a birth certificate attesting your mother’s Jewishness, if challenged, you do a DNA test to ascertain what is assumed by the scrutiny of a ketubah or whatnot (adultery accounts for 2-8% of extramarital conceptions, depending on the society examined, a factor ignored consistently here).

The DNA test you do individually comes straight from the admixture analysis techniques developed by population genetics.

Drop the hairsplitting. Read up on the topic. Doing so allows one to discriminate between off-the-cuff opinionizing in book reviews and serious scholarship by competent area specialists.Nishidani (talk) 14:55, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Could you please quote the section that details how population genetics, and not paternity tests, are now used in the law of return? Drsmoo (talk) 22:48, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Nope. Read the book. One cannot expect everyone else to plough through books, and do one's work. One cannot ignore the several points showing where Satlow is obscure or misleading just to niggle away at one detail that you may think underminds everything else argued. No pilpul then when serious reading and serious commitment to an article's quality beckons. Reread the thread. If you can't grasp the point, fine.Nishidani (talk) 22:58, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

With all due respect, Satlow isn’t wrong, you are. Drsmoo (talk) 23:17, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

The first principle of seriousness in these matters is to take in that each and everyone of us is liable to error. One cannot argue anything unless the principle of uncertainty is invited to hover over one's judgment. It should become instinctive. That applies also to scholars, but all the more so, to those who would construe and interpret them. I've never seen - it may be a personal defect - you ever backing down from an assertion. But that is neither here nor there. One is entitled to 'stick to one's opinion', but not in the face of public evidence that renders it questionable or immaterial. Please note that of several points I raised about Satlow's passage (and I am an admirer of his scholarship) - the semantic obscurity of the snippet you prize, the question-begging nature of his assertion about the Law of Return, which is challenged by later studies and developments, the fact that his information on the specific theme of population genetics is admittedly anecdotal, picking up things from private conversations with geneticists like Harry Ostrer and Gil Atzmon, one at least of whom entertains a view that numerous geneticists and historians challenge as totally wrongheaded, or testimony that, contrary to Satlow's aside, population genetic conversations do influence public opinion, -all these points you sedulously sidestep, ignore, talk past, and focus on the idea 'population genetics' to press your point that Satlow's wording does not mean what I say it means, or fails to signify adequately. It's like entertaining scepticism about Gregor Mendel's theory because a slight statistical anomaly appears, arguably, to exist in his study of heterozygous/homozygous plants - we call this proverbially, an inability to see the wood for the trees. Or rather, like admiring an old growth forest's aesthetic mass (Satlow's paragraph overall) while overlooking the ominous presence of one or two examples of Ailanthus altissima thriving amid the native trees or the knotweed quietly taking over the undergrowth which forms part of the basal ecosystem of that landscape (analogously, the slipshoddiness of Satlow's generalization here spoils what is otherwise a delightful lecturer-style excursus on the question of Jewish identity).

It is, as often, not a Manichean 'he's right, you're wrong' matter. It is simply that the source you like is visibly, when closely construed, obscure so that the author's point-of-view, thus stated, lacks the requisite lucidity, ergo cogency we should demand of texts we cite.Nishidani (talk) 06:28, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Not to mention that the quote is dredged out of a book review. Selfstudier (talk) 12:43, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Agree with that, should use best sources. The "seems to me that while some on the margins" is not something to take from a book review, opinions on that should come from a serious work. But it is incorrect to say that population genetics has somehow been incorporated into the Law of Return based on DNA parentage tests. fiveby(zero) 13:51, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Any careful analysis of the that phrase -"seems to me that while some on the margins"- would show that it is unquotable because (a) a mere personal opinion on a topic the author is unqualified to speak of by his own admission (b) who does some refer to and (c) on the margins of what discipline? (genetics, historiographt per Shlomo Sand). When no one can determine what an outsider kibitzer here means with such a statement, the implication is obvious. It has no encyclopedic value.Nishidani (talk) 14:55, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Bibliography

We currently have almost 80 scholarly works in the bibliography, and we still have some way to go in developing the article. Conscious of an upcoming RM discussion, and considering the experience at the AfD that many editors will come to !vote having just glanced at a handful of sources, I think the article would benefit from some organization in the bibliography. I also think it would help us keep a keen eye on the core sources to ensure that the overall structure and weight of the article matches them. I would propose:

• A Core subsection, containing only those works which describe (to use Sirfurboy's phrase) the whole line of thinking within Zionism, from race through to genetics
• A Pre-state Zionism and race section, containing those works which describe only the race science element (i.e. which, by definition, are time-bound by WWII and/or the creation of the state of Israel)
• A Modern genetics and Zionism section, containing those works which cover only genetics
• An Other works section, for the rest

Please could other editors confirm whether this would be helpful, and if so whether they agree with the proposed categories. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:43, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I'd rather keep everything alphabetical for easier reference. Havradim leaf a message 01:20, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Almost all of the sources that deal with research into Jewish origins are focused broadly on the Jewish aspect, with Zionism being a small part. This article combines sections discussing research into Jews with sections discussing Zionism to SYNTH the Jewish research into being about Zionism. This is one of the major flaws in this article. Drsmoo (talk) 03:44, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Please provide a specific example of your claim in your penultimate sentence. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:09, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

@Drsmoo: a gentle reminder to please provide the evidence underpinning your assertion. I am certain you are wrong, but if evidence is there to support your assertion then I will have to change my mind. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:19, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

A large number of sources in this article simply describe genetic or anthropological studies on Jews, and have no relationship whatsoever, aside from maybe/sometimes a reference or two, to Zionism or Race.

The general thrust of the article has been to Synth together a claim that genetic studies of Jews are "Zionist" and inherited from Racial Science, which, while sometimes connected to make a particular argument, are not actually related/the connection is not supported by the body of literature. This has been pointed out repeatedly. Drsmoo (talk) 00:50, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

We need specific examples please - which exact source is being incorrectly used? Onceinawhile (talk) 07:51, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Drsmoo: I assume that you have accepted that no sources are being incorrectly used, or you would have pointed out examples. You acknowledge above that "Zionism, race and genetics" are "sometimes connected", and then overlay subjective commentary to suggest that the connection is not significant in the literature.

Whether you are right or wrong on the relative significance in the literature, more importantly you are mixing up two of our policies / guidelines:

• WP:SYNTH: You have misread the policy. We have dozens of sources (your "sometimes connected") which state A+B=C explicitly, and none that say the opposite. Your objection is that we are also using sources which say A, and other sources which say B, but that objection has no basis in policy. That is why, whilst you have "pointed [it] out repeatedly", such comments do not get traction. A+B=C is explicitly confirmed by the literature, and your proposed objection would need a major change in policy to be relevant here.
• WP:SIGCOV: This is the relevant guideline about the amount of coverage ("Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material"). But it is only about the notability of a subject and whether an article is warranted. Again, you have incorrectly conflated this question with the question of synth in your statement above (and a number of your other such statements).

Onceinawhile (talk) 08:38, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

”We have dozens of sources (your "sometimes connected") which state A+B=C explicitly, and none that say the opposite.” Both of these statements are demonstrably false. Please list the “dozens of sources” with relevant quotations. Repeatedly asking the same question over and over after being replied to in detail is tendentious. This article is WP:SYNTH, as has been pointed out in detail multiple times both here and on the AFD, including from keep voters. Until you act to address the glaring issues with this article, I will no longer respond to your sealioning. Drsmoo (talk) 15:28, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Or mine. I see nothing but flagwaving without substance. Selfstudier (talk) 15:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

It is true that some articles (History of Palestine is a perfect example) will benefit from having the bibliography split into subsections, but this article is not one of them. It is generally much easier to have a single biblio listing in alphabetical order. --NSH001 (talk) 06:42, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Drsmoo. Your repeated (well twice) rsponse to legitimate requests for information that will allow other editors to address your flagwaving without substance, as invariablySealioning, is becoming problematical. It is essentially a NPA violation against Onceinawhile, for his attempts at requesting collaboration are provocatively 'spun' as badgering (as you earlier put it) i.e. in your view, WP:Bludgeon, a reportable offense. If, as you say, a statement is 'demonstrably false' and no one else can see it, the onus is on you to prove it. You are shifting the goalposts. Please desist.Nishidani (talk) 16:46, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

”and no one else can see it”. Aside from the many editors on here and the AFD. Nishidani, Onceinawhile claimed there are “dozens” of sources that explicitly connect the disparate elements of this article. You are asking me to prove a negative, I am asking him to substantiate his claim and produce the sources. Drsmoo (talk) 16:53, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Okay. If it weasn't self-evident here (which it is) 'no one else can see it'. The AfD is history. If you can't see the obvious point Onceinawhile made, then read the article, and tote up the number of sources which in dealing with postwar genetics in Israel, mention the impact of earlier Zionism. Those sections will be even more strongly documented in a day or two. You are not asking Onceinawhile to substantiate a claim, you are asking him/her to waste time answering your erratic comments rather than work on the article, which still requires several days of intensive work. It ain't collaborative, esp. since your view that this article should be trashed is well known.Nishidani (talk) 17:08, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

No, most can see it, and little has changed. The claim was that there were “dozens of sources” That support “A+B=C” and connect Zionism, race, and genetics. Having read this article, it is abundantly clear that there aren’t. I am inviting Onceinawhile to substantiate his claim. I anticipate he will not be able to. Drsmoo (talk) 17:15, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

• I am for weeding out quite a few sources once the article is in good shape. The bibliography arose in its present shape because many editors at the AfD had no idea of the topic and the scholarly range. The rationale for that - which changes the article from an historic overview to a bibliography compendium, is over.
• Drsmoo. If there has been any principle guiding the selection of sources for consultation it has been one diametrically opposed to what you assert. I have a substantial resource base on Jewish origins, and have used none of that. Your statement is descriptively false. In my own contributions, as as far as I can see, in bibliographic citations by others (I haven't read all of those yet) the material has been added only if the focus is on the next between Zionism+race+genetics. Were what you claim true, we'd have 300 books and articles in there. People who keep bandying the word 'synth' should give evidence by specific reasoned examples of that, or stop the flagwaving-
• I agree with NSH001. Since we don't need all this material, splitting the sources would be unwieldy. A second point. I imagine, given the repeated attempts to AfD it off wikipedia, that6 here will be a determined attempt to (a) break up the article or/and (b) rename it so that some new title will redefine the topic and thereby give excuses for excising substantial parts of the text. So any such bibliuography splitting would be just one more headache.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Nishidani (talk • contribs)

I don’t feel strongly but just to note that this proposed split evidences the concern I’ve had all along: that this is essentially two articles that don’t go together naturally: pre-state Zionist race science and contemporary genetics. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:11, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Bobfrombrockley: the split above is simply time-based:

• Core = 1890s to 2023
• Pre-state/WWII = 1890s to 1940s
• Modern = 1950s to 2023

Like every single sociology article on this encyclopedia, some sources cover the whole relevant time period, others focus on just part of it. The suggestion that the time periods don’t go together naturally is provably incorrect, as every single one of the “core” sources confirm that they do, and no known sources question the continuity. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:44, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Bob, the sources disagree. Nothing that occurred post 1945 is comprehensible unless one has a thorough grasp of what preceded it. I consider the pressure to split it as, objectively, reflecting a perception that race theory in Zionism is best left as an historical artefact, and wholly unrelated to modern Israel, in the face of abundant (Israel, diasporic and otherwise) scholarship which emphasizes continuities in this as in all history. History has no clean breaks.Nishidani (talk) 12:16, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

It’s like arguing that the article Taxi should only cover motor vehicles. The requirement to get from A to B without owning a vehicle was met by different modes of transport in history, with clear continuity despite horses and cars looking very different. So our article covers them together. Likewise, the requirement to get from A to B with respect to Jewish biological origins in Zionism was met by different modes of science, one outdated and the other modern, but also with clear continuity. Onceinawhile (talk) 16:13, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

An analogy closer to this article would be "Republicans, horses, and taxis" where the article cites some sources that discuss politicians and horses, some that discuss politicians and taxis, some that say specifically Republicans did such and such with horses, some saying taxi drivers are influenced by Republican policies, and some articles that say taxis are related to horses conceptually. Drsmoo (talk) 01:26, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, right. Did you ever note how dishonest Tolstoy was in entitling one of his books, War and Peace? I mean, the blighter then goes on to delude us all by mentioning Egyptian metempsychosis, the nobility of facial wrinkles, moves in chess, the quality of women's breasts etc.etc.etc. things that disappoint readers who, looking at the title expect to read only about guns, artillery. hussar manoeuvres or breaks in the action when silence falls and no one shoots. They do the same thing with the life of Herzl, and instead of focusing on what he did day by day, divagate about financial crises in Hungary, fashion in Paris, the court of the Turkish sultan, politics in Vienna, schmisse, a chap called Dreyfus, all sorts of claptrap. Shocking.Nishidani (talk) 07:44, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Drsmoo: thanks for the good idea. An article on "Republicans, horses, and taxis" will work well - I have checked the highest quality scholarly research, and as you can see from the below, this is a well studied and notable topic:

Scholarly quotes on Republicans, horses, and taxis:

1. Oxford Bibliographies, 2015: ...contemporary taxis often travel similar routes to earlier horse-cabs. Republican politics significantly inform historical and contemporary taxi literature, at times explicitly and more often implicitly in the questions that scholars ask.
2. Falk 2017: there is no other example known to me like the Republicans’ of an intensive effort to travel around urban areas in shared vehicles
3. Weitzman 2019: …[the study] aimed to expose the assumptions and biases implicit in taxi research and to critique the way it has been used politically and culturally by Republicans… From what I have read, this view of taxis and their historical relationship to horse-cabs, a perspective that stresses the lines of continuity between the two fields, is common among the anthropologists who write about taxis.
4. Ostrer 2012: the taxis of which Sand is critical have set the bar higher for travel than the horse-cabs of a century ago. The stakes in taxi travel are high… It touches on the heart of Republican politics.
5. Burton 2021: In contrast to the rest of the region, the history of taxis in America has been relatively well studied. Historians and anthropologists have critically examined how the horse-cabs in early-twentieth-century, and their relationship to Republican politics, reverberate within the taxi industry from the 1950s to the present
6. Abu El-Haj 2012: Looking at the history of Republicans through the lens of urban shared travel brings into focus a story long sidelined in histories: Republicans invested in horse-cabs as they forged an understanding of urban travel and fought to found the Republican party. By the mid-twentieth century, urban shared vehicles, although not with horses any more — had become standard for many Republicans, and, in significant ways, this commitment to such vehicles framed membership of the entire Republican party
7. Kohler 2023: In the American context, taxis are mainly criticized as being designed in the framework of a “Republican narrative", as doing the same thing as horse-cabs, or both.

I hope the above illustrates the point clearly. All these quotes, in their original form, are currently in this article for your inspection. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:51, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

History has no clean breaks. But articles have to, otherwise we have only one article to cover all of history. You have to think about where the logically coherent place for an article to end and start is. This imho is still two articles with an enormous amount of editorial effort going into the stuff that links them, even though that’s marginal to both of the two relevant bodies of literature. (I won’t speculate now what the pressure to create one article reflects.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:14, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

No need for two articles if there is a cohesive whole that is not of excessive length. Selfstudier (talk) 13:17, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Bob, 11 days ago you claimed:

the overly capacious title brings in genetics and forces the article to yoke this period of high race science together with a much later genetic debate, which has implications for Zionism but is very marginal to Zionism’s story.

There is no 'enormous amount of editorial effort' involved in 'yoking' these themes together, and, though you personally repeat that race and genetics is marginal to Zionism, that, I must infer, reflects the kind of Zionist history you are extensively familiar with. I can understand that because I know some of those general histories you allude to, and I too never noted in them any significant mention of this tradition. But I noted the silence as I followed scholarly developments over the past 2 decades. Almost all major Zionist histories have been produced by scholars working from within a Zionist framework understandably (from Nahum Sokolow down to David Cesarani, Walter Laqueur etc.etc) The effort consists simply in mastering what has become a voluminous development in post-Zionist scholarship, which openly allows that the story of Zionism has traditionally ignored the issue of race (though it focused intensively on the antisemitic environment out of which Zionism emerged. Antisemitism was to its lethal core 'racist' and grounded on a pseudoscience that had enormous traction for the first formative 50 years of Zionist thinking. And it is not we editors who link this to genetics in Israel: a dozen strong technical studies highlight the nexus between demographic calculations, Jewish population genetics and planning after Israel was founded. The connection is not contrived, it has simply been established by numerous scholarly sources which are bringing to light this consistent strain in Zionism. I think you will see this more clearly as the decade by decade survey of the continuities thickens, which I, for one, hope to do shortly (the only delay has been unusually dense social obligations here). Nishidani (talk) 14:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

You may be right Nishidani in your interpretation of the history but what you’re saying here suggests your agenda is to right great wrongs and revise the false histories promoted by the mainstream scholars who suffered from too much Zionism. The article is increasingly becoming an original essay in historiography, which may be interesting and well researched but is not a Wikipedia article. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:31, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Agenda? 'right great wrongs'!!! Was SlimVirgin running a feminist agenda when she did a massive amount of source reading and wrote/rewrote from top to bottom Female genital mutilation? It is almost twice as long as this, with 3 times the notes. When she radically overhauled and brought up to snuff both 1948 Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle and Killing of Muhammad al-Durrah I might differ with her choices and relative emphases, but I didn't challenge. Sarah was privately a 'pro-Zionist'.She was always a scrupulously fair content editor, a rare thing. She wasn't '(re)(w)right-winging a great wrong'.

That caricature alludes to our page on tendentious editing. Really Bob, I'm sure a moment's reflection will remind you that historical writing year by year is constantly revising recent scholarship by expanding on something neglected in traditional accounts of this or that. A strong tendency in the transition to power of the later Protestant ascendancy in England wore its conservative Anglican and secularist bias on its narrative sleeves for centuries until people like Eamon Duffy, from a different religious background, came along and upset the applecart, by documenting in detail what the mainstream narratives ignored or underplayed, the massive cultural and social devastation on the medieval Catholic world the new men wrought. Read Macaulay et al., and there's hardly a hint of it. Your point ignores what I wrote in the overview: scholars who for two decades have worked to repair the silence in 'mainstream' histories about the interconnected themes of 'Zionism, race and genetics' are not 'righting great wrongs'. They are simply exploring what earlier scholars missed, and wiki peons like me simply 'write the wrong' (the glaring lacuna in earlier books that consistently ignored the material, or relegated it to a footnote). In many southern US states, Republicans are ridding school libraries of textbooks that, reflecting the revisions of traditional American narratives of the country's 'heroic' past, development and founding, mention the institution of slavery, and the ethnocide of the Indian wars which were given short shrift. 'That stuff is just catering to the wrong voting constituencies. It's offensive to a lot of poor white folk's American dream!'

It is now an integral part of mainstream Zionist scholarship to re-examine the records of the past dwelling on details that upset common traditional perceptions of 'the miracle', and there is no writing of great wrongs involved when we update articles to cover new scholarship. Wikipedia does not censor, it looks at the state of the art encyclopedically, and dutifully updates its knowledge base.Nishidani (talk) 08:14, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Brief version. The gravamen of any split proposal of the kind which, in the logic of things, will be advanced eventually must lie in showing that the numerous high quality sources linking zionism, race and genetics provide no warrant for writing such an article. Nishidani (talk) 15:02, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

A core source: Noa Sophie Kohler

We have not used Noa Sophie Kohler's works yet. But this article in the bibliography is an excellent summary of this entire topic. One of the clearest we have. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:30, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

It has been used. The quote in the lead with “being designed or interpreted in the framework of a "Zionist narrative” is from this article but is incorrectly attributed to a different article. The article is also an “Opinion paper” as opposed to a research paper. Drsmoo (talk) 02:47, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

In case of any confusion, an “opinion paper” in a peer reviewed journal is a very different thing to an “opinion piece” in a newspaper. The Journal of Anthropological Sciences, one of the world’s most prestigious anthropological journals, holds opinion papers to the same academic standard and peer review process as its “research papers” – the only difference being that the former does not need to include new primary data, and can be a review of existing scholarship. Most journals publish such papers without specifically calling them opinion papers; this is simply a way of differentiating between primary and secondary types of publication. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:16, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Drsmoo. If you note an incorrect citation, and know the real source, the proper thing to do (this is a collaborative enterprise) is either make a corrective edit yourself or alert others who will fix it. Otherwise it just looks like one is storing ammo for later, to machinegun the credibility of the article by a bulleted list whose issues could have been addressed collegially during the work in progress. Kohler's paper is not an 'opinion' unless you underwrite the idea everything is opinionable if the writer is not a nuts-and-bolts scientist. Most of the genetics papers written by scientists, several articles by scholars doing the history state, make historical assumptions for which they have no scientific evidence, and overviews like Burton,. Kohler. Azoulay, Lipphardt etc., serve to contextualize the science in the cultural, national, historical milieux in which they were written. Nishidani (talk) 07:39, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Not about “ammo”, just 1RR. It happens to be particularly funny given the meme going around about reading all 8000 pages.Drsmoo (talk) 12:09, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Nothing to do with IR. Any editor of any persuasion, if notified of an attribution error, would do the edit. It's obligatory. Facinated that there's a meme circulating about someone having read 8000 pages on this. Could you tell me who has managed that remarkable achievement? It's over 4 times what my slow brain has tried to take in these last two weeks or so, or did I miskey 8 for 2? Nishidani (talk) 12:33, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Some stuff taken out. Can be reconsidered if thought cogent or indispensable

• Zangwill in 1909 asked, "Whoever heard of a religion that was limited to people of particular breed? Of divine truth that was only true for men of dark complexion?"

Nishidani (talk) 03:09, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

• Rubstein, Amnon. "The lie behind 'genetic citizenship'". www.israelhayom.co.il. Retrieved 2023-07-27. The truth becomes clear in the article, which does not refer to Israel's Law of Return, but discusses one young woman who asked to participate in the Taglit-Birthright Israel program, which offers free trips to Israel to young Jews around the world...There is no proposal to amend the Law of Return to include genetic testing.
• The name is wrongly transcribed. It is Rubinstein. Amnon Rubinstein has the credentials to speak about law,even at the venerable age of 87, but IsraelHayom is not a respectable RS. This is barrel-scraping, and falls far short of the quality standards applying here.Nishidani (talk) 20:30, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

References

Title #1

Maybe Zionism and Jewish genetics? Selfstudier (talk) 18:10, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

The word "race" in the title gives a wider scope - population genetics in this way didn't begin until after Watson and Crick in the 50s. Prior to the 1940s the Zionist discourse of this nature was about race. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

A discourse emerged

Can somebody find a better word than “discourse” in the opening sentence. What does it even mean? BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

The second para of the history says "....notable proponents of the idea of a Jewish nation-race included...", I assume that the discourse (discussion, debate, argument) was between them at least. I understand discourse to mean that but if you want to summarize the body differently, go for it. Selfstudier (talk) 17:54, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Would "In the late 19th century, a discourse emerged in Zionist thinking seeking to reframe conceptions of" → "Beginning in the late 19th century, Zionist thinking sought to reframe conceptions of" work? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:03, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

That’s much more understandable. But it might overstate the case: the “discourse emerged” formulation acknowledges a slow and partial process. I wonder about “some Zionist thinkers sought” or “a current of thought within Zionism emerged which sought”? BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:59, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

tryptofish's suggestion is worth keeping alive.My editing practice is to write nothing without a source at hand, several preferably. So altering language requires a grounding in sources. 'Some' isd a weasel word. Any familiarity with Herzl and his time, and his collaborators, will tell you that discourse at that time was thoroughly saturated by concepts of race. Nishidani (talk) 17:05, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

As discussed above with Drsmoo and in addition mentioned by Sirfurboy, the first and second paras likely both need some work for a final version. Selfstudier (talk) 17:14, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Lipphardt 2012, p. 570

@Nishidani: I think this ref has a typo in it - can you confirm what it was intended to be? Onceinawhile (talk) 15:56, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Nah, it's just I forgot to put that item in the bibliography. Check it now. Nishidani (talk) 16:41, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Impacts and McGonigle

The "Impacts" section content didn't really seem to match the section title, so i went through McGonigle's Genomic Citizenship. He took an ethnographic look at concepts of citizenship, nation, and genetic in Israel and Qatar; "a book about the relationship between science and identity". He provides an overview and survey much in line with other sources. There's some possible content there, but probably better sources available. His work is looking at NLGIP, talking with geneticists and others to see if the reality matches the rhetoric and mythological imaginings.

• As an ethnographer, I was disappointed by my experience at the NLGIP. In the context of the wide circulation of gene talk and the potential biopolitical role of genetics in Israeli society, I had expected the NLGIP to be replete with research and discourse concerning the genetics of Jews. I was expecting to find work on the genetic nature of the Jewish nation and perhaps also on the genetic basis of a return to Zion. But these expectations were not met. It turned out that the NLGIP is tightly woven into the fabric of Israel’s burgeoning secular technoscience. It is concerned with an unmarked global science and the imagined move toward a future era of precision medicine. The Zionist pioneer at the NLGIP is, rather than a religious-nationalist fanatic, the secular humanist scientist pushing the boundaries of global biomedical progress forward. This is the Zionism of twenty-first-century secular global modernity—in Tel Aviv, global scientific hotbed.
• Ultimately my expectations for the biobank were supplanted: although the work I observed in the lab depended on certain racial or ethnic categories, I could not identify a clear moment when the framing national context swayed the research in a particular direction or became an identifiable influencing factor in scientific reasoning. This is a crucial ethnographic finding that has relevance for the methodology of studying science and society. It also problematizes the idea of a local “site” when studying the globalized discourses of science. I found that the discursive social life of genetics and Jewish identity vastly exceeds the science that underpins it. In fact, it raises the question of whether credible biological science underpins the imagination of genomic citizenship at all. The “National Laboratory,” I realized, was somewhat like a genetic Holy of Holies: a hollow, empty symbolic space to which is attributed a powerful truth value, coordinating a set of mythical beliefs about the nature of the Jewish nation. Inside the labs, however, there was no Jewish essence to be found. Not only was there no research focus on Jewish origins or the genetics of the Jewish nation, but the work of the biobank and the labs I visited focused predominantly on contemporary trends in biomedicine and an unmarked global rush to precision medicine.

There is other possible content: resistance to genetic and biological concepts of identity, the 2018 rabbinical courts, etc. So why was it that the particular content was chosen from this source? There are now some 13 quotes in the text 55 in footnotes and 11 in citations. Looks like a real failure to read and summarize sources, and a lot of quote mining to belabor a particular POV. fiveby(zero) 19:01, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

It seems like a recurrent problem with this article is that it is organised around an argument rather than a topic. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:38, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

You think quotations in a citation summarized in the body is a real failure to read and summarize sources, and a lot of quote mining to belabor a particular POV? Huh. nableezy - 18:34, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

If there is a recurrent problem, then it suffices to identify it more clearly so editors can fix it. I for one don't understand what is meant, in the context of this article, that its organizing principle is 'an argument' rather than a 'topic'. yes I know 'argument' as in 'the argument of this book' means a POV, but the topic of the article is not a personal thesis: it is a reasonable thorough survey of the scholarly literature covering the 'arguments' in a different sense, that emerged when Zionism reformulated Jewish identity in racial terms, and, once Zionism became the dominant voice of Israeli political culture, the way this tradition re-emerged in genetics. A survey is not an argument. This survey studies the arguments in this kind of entangled discursive tradition, following what the scholarship on it does.Nishidani (talk) 19:46, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

“once Zionism became the dominant voice of Israeli political culture, the way this tradition re-emerged in genetics.”

That is a POV, but it is not a statement of fact, and not a foundation for an article.

Wikipedia would need very strong and unambiguous consensus to base an article on the claim that a scholarly and sound field of genetic research is actually based on debunked racial pseudoscience. It may be a theory espoused by few, but it can not be the basis of an article unless it is well established that the above actually happened.

So far it has been claimed that the quoted sentiment is supported by “dozens” of reliable sources, but no substance to support that has been forthcoming. Drsmoo (talk) 00:07, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Actually that is not my POV, as you must know. The words you cite with a shiver of protest paraphrase a truism, repeated a zillion times by the major Zionist organizations since Basel. If you're worried about my reference to this on the talk page, perhaps you'd better fix dozens of articles on wikipedia that actually state that Israel is founded on Zionism, such as, to quote just two:Zionism and Politics of Israel (shockingly, the latter states:Politics in Israel are dominated by Zionist parties. The rest of what you ascribe to the article is nonsense. It nowhere states the absurd notion that 'genetic research is actually based on debunked racial pseudoscience'.Nishidani (talk) 03:50, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion, to clarify: The notion that a “Jewish identity in racial terms”, “re-emerged in genetics” is a POV, but it is not a statement of fact, and not a foundation for an article. Wikipedia would need very strong and unambiguous consensus to base an article on the claim that a scholarly and sound field of genetic research (genetic studies on Jews) is actually based on debunked racial pseudoscience. It may be a theory espoused by few, but it can not be the basis of an article unless it is well established that the above actually happened.

So far it has been claimed that the quoted sentiment is supported by “dozens” of reliable sources, but no substance to support that has been forthcoming. Drsmoo (talk) 07:35, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Whatever confusion exists here arises from, I guess, trying to ignore the mass of evidence from scholarship cited on the page, in main text and footnotes, and saying that my talk page comment which summarizes it reflects my POV, and not the results of a vast amount of contemporary scholarship. I think, rather than make an extensive copy of all of these quotes here, I should ask you to (re)read the article, where you will find ample evidence that scholars can speak of the "racialization of Jewish identity"(Egorova). Falk, if you actually take the trouble to read him, speaks of Zionism as 'a national sociocultural doctrine'(Falk 2017 xi) formulated in a period when 'Jewish identity became “biological” . . . in the last decades of the nineteenth century' (Falk 2017 p.xi) when '(t)oward the turn of the twentieth century, .. the Zionist movement granted a kind of approval to the national social alliance of Jews, rather than merely to their traditional religious or cultural uniqueness,' as 'the flood of studies that ascribed to Jews a biological essence as a race swelled.'(Falk 2017 p.29) If you are upset that a 'racial Jewish identity' of the kind developed in early Zionism dragged over into some genetic studies, take it up with the scholars who remarked on this, amply cited here, and not with the hapless amanuensis who duly paraphrased several academic papers on this phenonmenon. This has nothing to do with my POV.Nishidani (talk) 09:10, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

“take it up with the scholars who remarked on this, amply cited here” The opinion that genetic studies on Jews inherit from racial science, which is the thesis of this article, is not amply cited here, or anywhere. It is SYNTH’d together in this article by different sources saying completely different things. To be clear, there is no preponderance of scholarly work making the claim you are making, and if there were, you would have been able to easily provide it. Drsmoo (talk) 11:55, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

The opinion that genetic studies on Jews inherit from racial science, which is the thesis of this article That's not the thesis.

Per the lead. "In more recent times, genetic science generally and Jewish population genetics in particular have been used in support of or opposition to Zionist political goals, including claims of Jewish ethnic unity and descent linked to the biblical Land of Israel." Selfstudier (talk) 12:00, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Okay, you stubbornly refuse to read the text, or, if you have read it, distort it. The article does not say that 'genetic studies on Jews inherit from racial science'. The article cites several scholars of the discipline of the history of genetics who document that 'genetic studies on Jews' in the post-war period carried over some ideas and suppositions characteristic of earlier race studies on Jews. We quote Falk (2007 p. 154) specifically to this end:'These notions have persisted, though in a thinly disguised mode, in post-Second World War Israel.' Your persistence is making an argument where none exists, unless by conjuring up a phantom idea from twisting words, works only if one ignores the evidence of the scholarship quoted. If you won't accept the evidence, replying seems pointless.Nishidani (talk) 12:14, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

And since you just edited the article, changing 'concluded' to 'writes', what do you make of that quote? I.e.

"the history of the relationship of Zionism and scientific biology, which has made an effort to single out Jews from non-Jews on the one hand, and to unite the distinct Jewish communities on the other hand, provides a problematic case of the utilisation of biological arguments as “evidence” for whatever social, economic, or political notion that has been put forward."Nishidani (talk) 09:20, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Arguments over whether the Ashkenazi are primarily of Middle Eastern or European descent, McGonigle argues, fuel fierce controversies in what are the politics of Jewish genetics: if the latter were true, critics of Israel, could find genetic grounds for contesting Zionism as a settler colonial project. That is a very poor summary of McGonigle, who includes much running counter to the narrative being established in the article. To pick that out from the source, yes, i do feel is a failure to read and summarize sources, quote mining, and non-neutral editing. fiveby(zero) 14:58, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

(a)One quote doesn't make a theory, i.e. citing a paraphrase of McGonigle, one of 80+ sources, doesn't furnish a reason to make the generalization that the article shows a 'failure to read and summarize sources, quote mining, and non-neutral editing.' This is elementary.

(b)the point for which McGonigle is quoted is also made by several other sources, it is not unique to him

(c) So let's examine whether or not the passage is a poor summary of the source. Our text:-

• (i)Arguments over whether the Ashkenazi are primarily of Middle Eastern or European descent, McGonigle argues, fuel fierce controversies in what are the politics of Jewish genetics: if the latter were true, critics of Israel, could find genetic grounds for contesting Zionism as a settler colonial project.

The source

• (ii)Interest in the topic of Jewish origins is hardly universal among the world’s Jews or the communities in which they live. But in Israel, the stakes of the debate over Jewish origins are high, because the founding narrative of the Israeli state is based on exilic “return.” If European Jews have descended from converts, the Zionist project can be pejoratively categorized as “settler colonialism” pursued under false assumptions, playing into the hands of Israel’s critics and fueling the indignation of the displaced and stateless Palestinian people. The politics of “Jewish genetics” is consequently fierce.

If you don't think the article at this precise point (i) represents the text as cited in the footnotes (ii) the simple solution is to offer your own improving paraphrase of the passage, which, on the face of it, cannot be more than a tweak.

You shouldn't certainly be jumping on this one item to proffer some 'proof' that the article is a travesty of the sources.

I might add that the metaphorical phrasing 'the stakes of the debate . .are high' recurs at least four times in our sources, but I've been striving to keep notes to a minimum, and overlook a mass of points like that for economy.Nishidani (talk) 15:26, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Again, you misunderstand. Fiveby wasn’t calling out the summation, they were calling out the selective use of citing that section only. The same happened, for example, with Weitzman. One of the only sources that actually does discuss Zionism, race, and genetics, he called out how different the fields are. After originally not being not included, the quote I added was silently removed in it’s entirety, with no edit summary, and reduced only to him making a “similar point” to Falk. Drsmoo (talk) 17:03, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes,"The source" is not the excerpt above but the whole work. I'd like to ask Nishidani if you do have access to the full work beyond the Google preview, for instance chapter 6 and what he says is the ...ultimate lesson from my ethnographic work in Israel.? If so, what is the reasoning behind picking this one particular statement out as opposed to all the other content which tends to contradict the article narrative? fiveby(zero) 17:35, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

This is all so predictable, AfD, doesn't work, so trash the title, doesn't work either, so trash the sources, question editor motives, etcetera. Edit the article so as to add balance if that's all that's needed. Selfstudier (talk) 17:49, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

"The epistemics of Jewish genetics fall short of its mythic circulatory semiotics. This is the ultimate lesson from my ethnographic work in Israel."

What has it to do with anything? Selfstudier (talk) 18:37, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I haven't misunderstood anything. All citations are 'selective' by definition.

I've been professionally trained in two distinct disciplines where you are taught to read masses of material, often translate it, and make paraphrases, before venturing beyond. (Of course I have McGonigle's Genomic Citizenship and have read chapter 6 pp.143-158. Selfstudier's quote above comes from p.150. If you don't believe me, ask me to quote the first passage of any page chosen at random, in that book)

Now, rule of thumb when you do this comprehensive reading: use index cards to note, over say 30 or 50 books and a 100 articles, content under thematic headings. The other day, my nephew finally retrieved from storage our uncle's files on Aristotle, two boxes, about a yard of cards indexing by book and theme everything he read in six languages on Aristotelian logic. Do people do this anymore? Apparently no. No doubt computers, and googling for keywords, has changed all this, but I for one can't shake the habit, so that I indexed, among scores of others, a theme, 'zionism, race/genetics, political repercussions'. When I came to write that paragraph, I simple gave some samples from that index's listing of sources and their pages touching on that aspect, reread them, and paraphrased. So, to ask me, when I added McGonigle p.36 under that heading, along with the others, 'but what about the whole book?' I fail to understand what your point is. I'm tempted to think you haven't a clue about how these things are done. perhaps I'm wrong. One simply, in the world of scholarly practice, does the above. It utterly misses the point of topical citation. Any of the 80+ sources, if you read them, are 'bespate' (I've been thinking of Browning's Child Roland) with passages like:

whether Jews constituted a single race or ethnicity and whether their present genetic traits represented those of the biblical Israelites (see, for example, Efron 1994; Hart 1999; Steinweis 2006; Hirsch 2009; Falk 2017) Burton 2022

Or more cogently for the precise context of that passage:

Nevertheless, scholars coming from the perspective of social sciences and humanities disciplines have suggested that this work indicates a worrying trend in DNA research, as they appear to naturalise social and cultural differences (Abu El-Haj 2007, Palmie 2007, Palsson 2007, Reardon 2005, Simpson 2000, Skinner 2006, Smart et al 2008) Egorova 2011

All that paragraph does is register several comments in the sources which all deal with aspects of a perceived 'worrying trend' in genetics, and that is what McGonigle p.36 is cited for.

It's called methodology. No cite represents a whole book or article. It represents what it is cited for. I thought everyone who reads knows that. Apparently I'm wrong. Wikipedia talkpages never fail to surprise.

Since you appear not to have the book, you may be interested in p.52., which like loads from other sources, I don't quote in order not to burden the article:

In brief, Israeli Jews’ imagination of a unified Jewish race has its roots in European diaspora host nations, twentieth-century biology, and essentialist nationalist imaginaries. Addressing the ways in which Jewish race science has transformed, and reemerged, in the twenty- first century, anthropologist of medicine Susan Kahn has identified three key ways in which Jewishness has now entered the molecular realm, with genes being defined as Jewish in three major ways: population genetics, genetic testing for both disease and Jewish identity, and human ova and sperm donation in the domain of assisted conception (2010, 21). In these different conceptual arenas, “Jewish genes” and Jewish inheritance are determined in markedly different ways.

It's extremnely embarrassing to have to tutor anyone in the abcs of how to read, write and quote.Nishidani (talk) 20:18, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I see, then what does not match a theme, 'zionism, race/genetics, political repercussions', where he finds generally the opposite is then excluded. ok. fiveby(zero) 21:44, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

fiveby, that is not what Nishidani wrote above, and frankly is disappointingly rude in the context of his 600-word effort to address your concerns.

I started writing a response to your 30 July post about McGonigle when you first wrote it, but got distracted before I submitted it. I also have read his whole book, and his 2018 PhD thesis. I found, and find, your implied suggestion that the thrust of McGonigle's work has been misrepresented to be incomprehensible.

You are presumably focused on McGonigle's (frankly, misplaced) surprise that biobanks are scientific (and financial) rather than nationalist organizations:

I was expecting to find work on the genetic nature of the Jewish nation and perhaps also on the genetic basis of a return to Zion... Inside the labs, however, there was no Jewish essence to be found. Not only was there no research focus on Jewish origins or the genetics of the Jewish nation, but the work of the biobank and the labs I visited focused predominantly on contemporary trends in biomedicine and an unmarked global rush to precision medicine.

Yet in the very same excerpts he writes:

I found that the discursive social life of genetics and Jewish identity vastly exceeds the science that underpins it. In fact, it raises the question of whether credible biological science underpins the imagination of genomic citizenship at all. The “National Laboratory,” I realized, was somewhat like a genetic Holy of Holies: a hollow, empty symbolic space to which is attributed a powerful truth value, coordinating a set of mythical beliefs about the nature of the Jewish nation.

What he is saying here, in this excerpt that you personally provided as supposedly-opposing evidence, is about how politics and propaganda extrapolate science in this topic area. This is right at the very core of this article. It is what all the other scholars are saying, from Abu El-Haj, to Burton, to Falk, etc etc. And he explains what he means here throughout the rest of his monograph. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:50, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

@Fiveby: so you don't just need to take it from other editors here, I suggest you read the 15-page detailed review of McGonigle's book by Dr. Snait Gissis of Tel Aviv University, in our bibliography entitled: "Is nationalizing universalizing and/or vice‐versa?". It is a comparative review together with Burton's book.

In her concluding comments on p.13, Dr. Gissis writes of McGonigle's and Burton's works:

If I were to offer an inclusive frame for both books, with differing time-range, emphasis and methodology, I would suggest “the varieties of nationalizing style of human population genetics” — the genetic (and genomic) transmutations of ‘race’ and the genetization of ‘nation’. The combined result of the endeavor of the two books, which relate to the Middle East, exposes and explicates the emergence, existence and significance of this style of reasoning, its non-Western agents and users, its significance within the historical narrative of twentieth / twenty-first centuries genetics of human populations. Both authors cast light on the changing conceptions and classifications of Middle-Eastern populations in the 20th–21st centuries by focusing on how ’race’, ’nation’, later on combined with ‘ancestry’, have framed the localized / national social and political deployment of genetics and later on of genomic research, using ever-changing and constantly updated investigative technologies.

She continues with further detail - it is well worth reading. This exact topic is the core of this Wikipedia article.

Sorry it took me a week to write this, as we could have saved a lot of time. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:12, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I've stated multiple times that the content is valuable, and missing from other articles. The 'Genomic Citizenship' of McGonigle and other concepts are not unique to Israel yet of particular importance to what is hotly debated in some quarters due to the founding history. No need to reiterate on the talk page. In my opinion, and what i would hope would be that of a encyclopedia article would be that race science and the misappropriation of genetics is fundamentally flawed at the outset. McGonigle is very concerned with the ethical application of genetics, and has some useful content. But look at what is selected for use: Arguments over whether the Ashkenazi are primarily of Middle Eastern or European descent, McGonigle argues, fuel fierce controversies in what are the politics of Jewish genetics: were the Ashkenazi to turn out to be descendants of converts of European origin, he continues, critics of Israel could find genetic grounds for contesting Zionism as a settler colonial project. The conclusion of the article. He does not 'argue' this in the sense implied as an 'impact' but is pointing out another side of the fundamentally invalid debate. The content looks like it was chosen to get "settler colonialism" (where i notice the quotation marks have been removed and no longer a "pejorative categorization") into the conclusion as an "impact". The narrative of the article and focus of editing appears to be engage in exactly the manner he calls out. It looks like you are trying to "find genetic grounds for contesting Zionism as a settler colonialism pursued under false assumptions". fiveby(zero) 17:04, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I am not really bothered about the "settler colonialism" aspect, we have an article for that, Zionism as settler colonialism and it can go in there. Whether there are or not "genetic grounds", there is absolutely no need for them in order to advance that thesis.

If this is the sum total of your objections to this article, it is easily resolved. Selfstudier (talk) 17:13, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

You made that point several times, and were comprehensively answered. No need to restate it. This is about what 80+ sources discuss, not about one quote from McGonigle. By all means suggest a further tweak to that single item among 200 sourced items. 'pejorative connotation' could be added as 'negative implication' for instance.Nishidani (talk) 17:15, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Fiveby: I think there is consensus to fix that point - please feel free to be bold. Any other points like this which you think require amendment to achieve full balance, please do make the changes. I think everyone here wants the article to be 100% neutral. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:21, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

The same with Weitzman, where he offered a detailed examination of the differences between race science and genetics, which was first omitted, and then after I added it, removed with no edit summary. Drsmoo (talk) 02:13, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

You've mentioned that twice. I don't know how that happened, and I never have the time to do diff searches to find who did this or that. I don't know how to do that quickly and it takes me an inordinate amount of time to do so, time stolen from serious reading. I do distinctly remember using an edit summary announcing I was trimming Weitzman's quote under Falk to make them closer in length, and that I would reintroduce what i excerpted, in another place. Apparently I never got round to that. Any reader might read into that two possibilities (a) I'm a POV pushing swine stealthily ensuring stuff that upsets my perceived (anti-Israeli) POV doesn't get a hearing, or that exhaustion (this month ended up with flashes in my eye, and perhaps retinal problems, some days ago) and the natural disattention of an ageing mind are responsible. I know that the latter explanation fits better, but I don't deny independent minds the right to prefer the former hypothesis. No one is a complete master of the unconscious.Nishidani (talk) 05:40, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

It would lead us too far afield to expatiate on the point in McGonigle's book which Onceinawhile eloquently makes, the conflicting vectors between the politics of nativist nationalism and hi-techn start-ups, which are driven by market forces. Nishidani (talk) 05:40, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I noticed the various quotes of Weitzman that Drsmoo added to the article some time ago and felt that they stopped in a misleading place. Weitzman explores all directions of the topic at the heart of this article, and the additional angles that Drsmoo added are valuable in that regard. But Weitzman's conclusion on the topic is on pages 324-325:

What made the question of Jewish origin such an insistent one for many of the scholars we have looked at was its perceived implications for their own identities as Europeans, Christians, Jews, cosmopolitans, Israelis, or Palestinians. These scholars believed that their answers to the question of Jewish origin addressed pressing questions of their times: Is it best to try to integrate Jews into Europe or to exclude them? How to resolve competing claims of indigenousness among Israelis and Palestinians? Present-day research is no different in this regard. Always there seems to be something beyond historical curiosity that motivates the scholarship: insecurity about the ambiguities of one’s identity, the trauma of having been uprooted, a need to recover something that feels like it has been lost, a fear of being dislodged from one’s place by another people, or profound discontent with some other origin account and what it implies about the present. It is to these kinds of considerations—the psychological, sociological, and political motives for scholarship—that we must look if we are to understand what makes the lost origin of the Jews appear as a relevant absence to scholars, why they see a mystery worth solving… The inconvenient truth, however, is that there is no way for scholarship to close the gap. Scholarship has done a good job coming up with new evidence, and it is quite expert at debunking existing origin accounts for the Jews, but it has failed to generate an alternative narrative that can do the kind of work the Book of Genesis does in helping people to comprehend themselves and their places in the world. What we have seen suggests that leaning on scholarship to play the role of creation myth leads to claims that are tendentious at best, and sometimes quite destructive. This is the only honest way I can describe where the scholarly search for the origin of the Jews has led after so many centuries of effort, and yet I do not think it suffices to leave a hole at the beginning of Jewish history.

Onceinawhile (talk) 06:23, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, cherry picking quotes to push a POV is a theme throughout this entire article Drsmoo (talk) 13:12, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

This is two topics

After reviewing and some thought, I think this should be two topics:

• Zionism and race, an article about modern (since 19th c) ideology
• Origin of Jewish ethnic divisions, an article about deeper Jewish history rather than just genetics

Of course these topics are related, and they are also related to what should be a more science-oriented article on Genetic studies on Jews, but I think they work better as distinct articles. Pharos (talk) 04:34, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for both reading carefully the article and for your suggestion. There is a discussion above where, so far, a large majority of talk page watchers think anything might do as a title, so long as 'race' is never mentioned, even though as you perceive race in Zionism is what all of the 80+ sources focus on. Your suggestion perfectly parallels the distinction we make by having two articles regarding Race and the United States

• Racism in the United States That is not about ideology as much as historical practice.
• Race and ethnicity in the United States This is about ethnic divisions in the United States.

Both are twice as long as this article, and more heavily footnoted, as one would expect.

• This article appears to have arisen when editors at Genetic studies on Jews expressed their dislike of any historical or non-scientific matter being included there. The particular form it takes is that of tracing the genealogy of a concept. It would be a very difficult task - I think impossible - at the present state of knowledge and scholarship to write something on the Origin of Jewish ethnic divisions. At the moment we just have an article classifying them, Jewish ethnic divisions. It could be improved by a sister article describing how these ethnic distinction arose historically, but that would command another and rather intricate historical survey of the rise of historical terminology for the taxonomy within Judaism, and would have nothing to do with Zionism, or 'race'. Regards Nishidani (talk) 07:59, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

  anything might do as a title, so long as 'race' is never mentioned - Again you mischaracterise and misread the discussion. The only person who raised any significant objections to Zionist thought on racial identity was yourself. Also, you can't have it both ways: talk page watchers is a bad faith description of those who are giving you the space that you asked for [1] to develop the article. Until you are talking to us and not past us, a meeting of minds is impossible. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:58, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Well, it is not clear that we want an article that is something of a spinout from Who is a Jew? (which itself is proposed for merger with Jewish identity). The question of who is talking past who is an open one I think. Selfstudier (talk) 10:26, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Regarding “space to write”, that seems like a bad case of WP:OWN

Wikipedia:Collaboration first Drsmoo (talk) 07:44, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

The only thing I see minded here is that the simple, most concise title we have for the content of the article, Zionism, race and genetics has generated a massive flow of deletion discussions and talk, most of it prepossessed to find some alternative wording, all proposals for which exclude one of the three terms. It is extraordinary to me that so much ingenuity can be expended for a month when no one finds anything problematical about such articles as Race and ethnicity in the United States.Nishidani (talk) 12:49, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

It should be "Jewish race", not just race. Ditto "Jewish genetics". And the Zionist take on those things over time. It's not obvious from the current title that's what is meant. Selfstudier (talk) 18:27, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

I would strongly protest against any title mentioning the 'Jewish race'. We are dealing with a sociocultural and ideological construction, not a reality. Genetics about Jews are not therefore 'Jewish genetics' (an ambiguous phrase in any case). Jews were the object and subjects of a huge amount of thinking, conducted by ethnologists, scientists, anthropologists, social scientists, historians of every description all over Europe, regardless of ethnicity.Nishidani (talk) 19:57, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

The Myth of the Jewish Race (isbn 9781611460339), right? Still, that's what it is about, not race in general. And not genetics in general. Selfstudier (talk) 20:13, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Discourse on Jews furnishes the palmary example in Western history of how stereotypes fuel enmity to the point where slurs and clichés, that your historical average man-in-the-street takes as the smart quipping of social backchat, of short-hand joshing, or abuse, under the right ideological conditions and social hysteria, can precipitate beyond control to a warrant for genocide, and a quiet bystanderish complicity in mass murder. And this was possible because a vast, intricate mosaic of multifarious cultures and communities, often with little other than a shared ritual language and common stories drawn from biblical thematics and narratives of social parlousness passed on through folk memory, was all put into a churn, ground down, mish-mashed, into 'the Jew', an essence, and ontology reft of nuance, gutted of that historical variety in continuity that is the hallmark of the immensely complicated world of individualities which make up Judaism. So to tell the full story of how even Jewish accommodations to the rhetorical sciences of the majority in whose bosom they strove to be accepted, of how suited in the narrative straightjacket of Western science, they did their best to cut the cloth of the straightjacket in a way that would fit the sartorial thinking of the times, and make them suitable interlocutors for the non-Jewish, racially-minded masters of their world, is important. The story has a tragic twist in the way Zionism sought to meet anti-Semites on their own ground, by transforming an identity based on a je ne said quoi sensibility combining religion and culture, and, asserting that Jews were a race, had, by virtue of that, a right to self-determination by expatriation from Europe. The Holocaust wiped out one of the most vital folk civilizations in history, and under Zionist direction, the 'Jew' was reconstituted in Israel. But no one can shake off the past, and Zionism, which is ideologically thin, as opposed to tactically rich, carried over a positive conceptualization of race because the symbolic evocativeness instinct in the notion of a redemptive 'return' to one's ancestral lands, and the recreation of an identity, a 'Maccabean' people equal to those of the forefathers in the deep past and one capable of defending themselves collectively, had a persuasiveness few could deny.

What Doron and others picked up, drew scholarly attention because of a crisis internal to the Ashkenazi elite, and gave urgency to the need to ground Jewish identity firmly in a science compatible with modernity, in genetic evidence that would prove Jewishness had an ineludible biological substrate, which, while Jews themselves could never concur on what constitutes being a Jew (that, and it is true of all ethnicities, is ineffable), science could establish an empirical benchmark for that otherwise secure yet indefinable sense of communal identity. Yet all these endeavours lead to haziness, indeterminacy, partial insights and politicval constraints or liabilities that have failed to resolve the riddle: it's a riddle because the question is a dubious one in the first place. (Were I a Jew and some one asked me to define what being a Jew is, I would reply, 'None of your (effing) business' and reach for another beer.) Schaffer writes that after a half-century of strenuous research and thinking, anideological intransigence in all parties to the dispute persists, and that 'discussions of this nature are unlikely to come to synthesis any time soon and instead are destined to remain bogged down in religious dogma and political agendas' (Schaffer 2010:76).

I apologize to the page for this excursus but something like that cannot be avoided now that I am (give me until midday tomorrow) close to finishing my rewrite after wading this last month through so much scholarship dedicated, precisely, to 'Zionism, race and genetics'. That is the natural title for an historical actor (the ideology), the topical focus (the myth of race) and the technology of modern research used to reformulate the discarded and discredited myth (the science of genetics). It is a fascinating byway, when all three strands are shown, to use Ostrer's metaphor, to make a recurrent pattern, a weave in the tapesty of just one of many stories of Jewishness that has persisted for nearly a century and a half. Take anyone weave out of the loom, and the narrative carpet will be duller. Nishidani (talk) 21:58, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Nishidani about “Jewish race” being a bad phrase. I agree with Pharos that this is two articles and roughly agree with the first, but the second is definitely not what it’s about. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:45, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I think the only way out of using the current terms is the way out used in Falk's Zionism and the biology of the Jews - I imagine that this title was arrived at through a highly similar process of editorial discourse as we are seeing play out in the discussions on this page. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:46, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Frankly, I cannot see any issue with using race (or "Jewish race" for clarity) as part of the title because the article is completely clear about that. The genetics bit is a transition from the earlier theories and less clear so if we are going to do away with something then I would rather do away with that part (in the title, not in the article). The continuing claims of synth or shortage of sourcing are complete bunkum. Selfstudier (talk) 12:06, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

We live, in discourse on this, in a resonantly contaminated world. The choice of the primary editor here, Onceinawhile, to avoid 'Jews/Jewish' in the title remains wise. Zionism is a particular movement within the modern Jewish world, and though, once successful in forming a nationstate, Zionist leaders have tried to make Zionism synonymous with Judaism or the Jewish people, the distinction between an ideology and people is fundamental. We don't speak of the 'Russian race' or 'Chinese race' or the 'white race', though there is a substantial, if long negelected, literature on each of these topics, now revived in the respective fields because when you don't master the past, as the germans put it, it comes back to haunt you, as we see under Putin or recent Chinese re-evocations of the racial character of the majority Han people (mínzú.民族), a term inflected in modern times by Western racial theories.Nishidani (talk) 12:30, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I totally agree here. (But am not familiar with the concept of “primary editor”.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:23, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

My second suggestion isn't what the current article is about, but to fill a lacuna on Wikipedia that's been recognized by the article creators. My philosophy is go for article titles that apply to other topics too, for example Socialism/Liberalism/Fascism and race would all be appropriate articles with lots of potential sources. As to fulfilling the other part of what this article is actually about now, I would suggest Nationalism and genetics, which of course can include examples from individual nationalisms. Pharos (talk) 00:36, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

As someone who wrote a well-received monograph on a nationalist ideology, continuously in print till I stopped its republication (it's dated in my view), I can't but agree. The problem you pose is technical: in the rewrite I have tried to boil down a massive literature to readable length, aiming not to go beyond the ideal length proposed for wiki articles. I think we're about 15% over that rarely observed limit. considering the main text and excluding the footnotes, and even then, much that might go in has been withheld. This is just on the very narrow focus adopted in the provisory title. To me Nationalism and genetics would be a fascinating article to serve as the mother for what we have, but that would require, if adequately comparative in scope and focus, at least three times the length we have dealing with just this one case. Content writers who have the leisure and means to tackle from go to woe a topic are relatively hard to come by on wikipedia. Personally, I have limited time and a mass of interests, each of which must be sacrificed when I get absorbed in just one article or one topic area. If this demanded a month, the topic you propose would call for at least three to outline the basics, kicking aside the piles off books, thematically sorted, which I hope to read, and perhaps even write about. One gets selfish in old age.Nishidani (talk) 06:02, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

ANI

Well, I've opened a request for administrative assistance since I believe we have a stonewalling problem here. See here Nishidani (talk) 11:13, 9 August 2023 (UTC)