Talk:Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism/Archive 7

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Editwarring/The genome era

I reverted this effective elision made by Andrevan, which rewrote:

(a)Jewish geneticists themselves were caught between the demands of professional commitment to objective science and their own personal emotional investments in the topic.

as

(b)Jewish geneticists were inspired by their own heritage to pursue the topic.

The error is obvious. Andrevan thinks that the generalization in (a) is based on Goldstein, the immediate, illustrative source. It wasn’t. It was based on the three successive citations to Abu-Haj (2012), Burton (2022) and Schaffer (2010) What is worse, Goldstein is a single instance, whereas the generalization in (b) retains the plural (Israeli geneticfists) which can only be justified in terms of Schaffer, Burton and Abu-Haj plus Goldstein. This is incompetent, the result of a lack of mastery of the sources.

Abu El-Haj (2012) poignantly describes how Jewish geneticists constantly navigate tensions between their professional commitments to objectivity and their openly acknowl edged personal attachments to studying Jewish populations. These tensions are par ticularly fraught given that, historically, non-Jewish scientists charged their Jewish counterparts with being too biased and subjective to speak credibly about Jewish biology (Abu El-Haj 2012, pp. 130–135). Burton p.435

Schaffer In Abraham's Children, Entine has noted that the pioneering scholar of the Priestly gene, Karl Skorecki, was 'motivated as much by his commitment to Israel as by scientific curiosity'. 59 Similarly, David Goldstein states clearly and openly his attachment to Israel in jacob's Legacy, describing his romantic ideological connection to the country as a Jew at an Israeli rock concert: Schaffer 2010 pp.86-87

That kind of careless rewriting seriously damages the article. Nishidani (talk) 22:07, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Fine, I'll restore this part, but you reverted several other of my edits, some of which were fine. Andre🚐 22:10, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, no.

“Jewish geneticists themselves were caught between the demands of professional commitment to objective science and their own personal emotional investments in the topic.”

Aside from the strangeness of “ Jewish geneticists themselves were caught” this is alleging in wikivoice that these geneticists were not objective or fully professional. That may be some critics opinions, but it is not a fact and can not be presented as such. Drsmoo (talk) 00:45, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

The only author who describes a conflict between objectivity and research is El-Haj, as described by Burton. The others are describing choice of research. And none of the selections above allege lack of objectivity as strongly as this paraphrase does. Drsmoo (talk) 01:05, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Could someone restore the text to the shape it had which is faithful to all four sources? Nishidani (talk) 22:09, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I have restored that [1] if you had simply explained about Goldstein, I would have done so rather than reverting several other good edits. Andre🚐 22:11, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I know I'm just talking into the wind, but "This is incompetent, the result of a lack of mastery of the sources" and "That kind of careless rewriting seriously damages the article" do not belong on this, or any, talk page. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:45, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Not talking into the wind. Calling an edit incompetent is unacceptable. Drsmoo (talk) 00:52, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

That said, maybe we can remove the POV-section tag? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Not when the article is calling professional geneticists less than objective by presenting critical viewpoints as facts. Drsmoo (talk) 00:46, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

If that is the only objection, then Tryptofish is right. If several core sources from 'professional scholars', many cowritten by 'professionist geneticists' note that genetics, like any other science, has had problems with pure objectivity (which doesn't exist in any discipline), they must be respected. It Nishidani (talk) 07:42, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

To remind editors of what has already been extensively shown in the threads above, the following two quotes come from papers written by geneticists in the last two years or so.

’The misconception that human beings can be naturally divided into biologically distinguishable races has been extremely resilient and has become embedded in scientific research, medical practice and technologies, and formal education. Many elements of racial thinking, including essentialism and biological determinism, have influenced modern thinking around human genetics, to the marginalization of some peoples and the benefit of others . . racist concepts of race that are deeply embedded in science and U.S. society more broadly continue to affect scientific thinking and research, Scientists must critically examine the underlying assumptions about race—and human commonalityand difference—that shape their research studies..’‘Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research: A New Framework for an Evolving Field,’ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine/. National Academies Press 2023 pp.1,32.

Most human geneticists are aware of the problems of imprecise or misused language, but face the difficulty that such language is embedded in many of the methods, tools and data we use. Clinical and anthropological datasets, which can be of enormous utility, often use outdated and scientifically incoherent labels to describe the individuals whose data they include . . the social categories and other groupings that individuals belong to are inescapable components of genetics research. However, within the human genetics community, some aspects of the academic language used to describe groups and subsets of people may foster erroneous beliefs beyond academia about human biology and the nature of these categories. Such descriptions frequently invoke concepts of ancestry and population structure, for reasons we will discuss below. But ancestry itself is often a poorly understood concept, and its relationship to genetic data is not straightforward. There are many implicit assumptions involved in inferring ancestry and population structure, and a similar number of pitfalls when interpreting the output of population genetic clustering analyses and algorithms. For example, the structures found in principal components analysis (PCA) of genetic variation depend strongly on the distribution of genetic ancestry included in the dataset, and is necessarily a sample-specific representation of genetic relationships. Similarly,the clusters identified by widely used methods such as STRUCTURE are often assigned ‘ancestry’ labels based on the present-day populations within the analysis in which cluster membership happens to be maximised, rather than any explicit inference of ancestral demography. The collection and sampling of genetic data - which often follows existing cultural, anthropological, geographical or political categories - also has a substantial impact, to the extent that some aspects of the clustering reflect sampling strategies rather thanany inherent genetic structure.’ ,Ewan Birney, Michael Inouye, Jennifer Raff, Adam Rutherford Aylwyn Scally,’ ‘The language of race, ethnicity, and ancestry in human genetic research,’ Biology June 2021.Nishidani (talk) 07:46, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

IN other words, we cannot keep a POV tag here simply because one doesn't want to offend a vague 'class' of professionals, who themselves openly admit that bias exists (and that they work to eliminate it).Nishidani (talk) 07:49, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

You are incorrect. That is why we have attribution. Wikipedia must not “offend” (in this case impugn/disparage) by casting unfalsifiable aspersions at the objectivity and professionalism of ”Jewish Geneticists” as facts. Drsmoo (talk) 11:53, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

OH good grief. Completely invented and a rather serious insinuation, because it suggests that this article's paraphrase of what, mostly, 'Jewish' scholars have written on the history of genetics, race and Zionist, is 'antisemitic'. Where on earth in the tetragrammaton's good name were 'unfalsifiable aspersions thrown at the objectivity and professionalism of "Jewish geneticists"? Strewth!!! Nishidani (talk) 14:35, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

In the article where it said “Jewish geneticists themselves were caught between the demands of professional commitment to objective science and their own personal emotional investments in the topic.”

I have already modified the section. Drsmoo (talk) 15:12, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not going to worry about attribution. But that is misleading itself. It suggests this is the (informed) opoinion of just two experts. It isn't. It reflects the work of Kirsh (2003), which was recognized as a fact 'determined' by her by Falk, and which successfully was endorsed by numerous sources (most recently Mitchell Hart). The text should only make clearer that "Jewish/Israeli geneticists" (contextually, those who work on this specific issue) were, in their bias, not significantly different from population geneticists generally, whose work, as is now increasingly recognized in several studies since 2020, reflected a broader Western bias that confused nations with ethnicities. Nishidani (talk) 21:07, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I'll just note that Andrevan, who placed the POV-section tag, removed it yesterday. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:13, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Since according to Drsmoo, that tag was justified when ' the article is calling professional geneticists less than objective by presenting critical viewpoints as facts.' Since Drsmoo himself changed that by attribution, by his own criterion, the POV tag is not longer legitimate.Nishidani (talk) 21:07, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm referring to the POV-section tag that was formerly in the genetics section of the page. The POV tag at the top of the page is a different tag. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:40, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

In my view, this section needs quite a bit of work. Seems to be some editorialising here that could do with attribution (E.g. see words “arguably” and “admitted”), I’m not sure the sources for “important” say that, and it’s unclear how a lot of the section relates to Zionism or Zionist ideology. A lot of this material should move out of this article to Genetic studies of Jews imho. BobFromBrockley (talk) 02:35, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Some editors might consider cleaning up for a few months the inept POV article on Genetic studies on Jews before worrying about that gutting proposal. This article uses secondary sources, while that is in large part patched incongruously together by paraphrases of snippets from the primary sources, mainly the abstracts, when the proper protocol should be to describe the the various results, frequently in blatant contradiction over time, only via what secondary sources state.

Words like 'arguably' are not 'editorializing'. That adverb, for example, comes straight from the source, to relieve the reader of the ridiculously repetitive 'according to' formula which many editors appear to love sticking everywhere, as if it subjectivized as an opinion what is fairly a straightfoward consensual viewpoint. I.e.

This article will consider the history of some of these arguments about Jewish ethnic and racial difference over the last century in an attempt to weigh up the potential and/or wisdom of encouraging scholarly interventions into the question of what constitutes, and marks out, Jews as a distinct group. It will argue that for all the scientific innovation and achievement of the last 50 years, much of the core agenda of these debates remains unchanged. It will also argue that the terrain of research has consistently been so clearly demarcated by intransigent ideological positions 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 p.76.

I.e. 'Arguably' just flags that this has been argued, and the source of the statement tells you by whom. This is called stylistic variation, to avoid making the tedious prose recitation of 'according to' even duller than required.

What happened (in a virtual consensus of recent scholarship,not just El-Haj as claimed above) in Israel and among the overwhelmingly 'Jewish' geneticists engaging with this topic was what happened, as Burton's book and articles show, is exactly what happened with Turkish, Syrian, Lebanese, Iranian etc., geneticists, all of whom pursued their science, as in the Israeli/Jewish instance we outline here, against a background of nationalist beliefs, and all of whom were affected by this cultural bias. And this national framework in turn reflects a broader set of premises in the subject of population genetics in the West, as the two quotes I cited above indicate. There has been two much editing here that looks at the page in terms of 'ethnic' sensitivities and, I would argue, a protective-defensive sensitivity(which i can well understand but think misplaced) to anything regarding 'Israel'/'Jews') while neglecting the need to master all of the sources. Much of this attributive stuff ignores that the said source is as often as not, stating variation of a point made in several other sources, not mentioned to avoid overcramming the text with footnotes and multiple sourcing that is not needed. Only if one reads and retains in one's memory the content of all of the sources can one exercise a fair critical judgment as to when to attribute and when not to. One attributes only if the particular position is exceptional. Otherwise it is just a nervous formula.Nishidani (talk) 08:34, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

@Bobfrombrockley: FYI, this page was in part created because material not identical to but related to this page was ejected from Genetic studies on Jews as being too off-topic and hyper-specific. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:00, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Most teachers and academic editors will tell their students and writers to avoid the word "arguably". Someone writing a journal article should instead boldly state that they are arguing something - as in the Schaffer quote above. And then secondary and tertiary sources (like us) should tell the world that that writer did indeed argue something (e.g. "Burton argues..."). When historians establish a fact (X happened in 1952), we can say that in our voice without attribution. When historians are making an argument about their interpretation, we should attribute the argument. We shouldn't act as if a particular line of interpretation (even if "fairly" consensual) has become a fact.

You may be right that Genetic studies of Jews is inept and POV; I don't know enough about genetics to judge it. But we shouldn't use that article's problems - or not being able to win consensus for our version of that article - to fork off and create a problematic article here. Content about genetics that isn't directly about "Race and genetics in Zionist ideology" (or whatever this article is now called) simply doesn't belong here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:01, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Bob, Since it is not about editwarring, please open a separate section about this alleged fork (also mentioned in the preceding section) and we can address it there. Selfstudier (talk) 12:48, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Good point but I think I will amend the title of this section, as most of the preceding section has been about what should go in the "The genome era" section of the article. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:38, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Well 'most teachers and academic editors'(where?) should read, at least for the quality of the prose, - ignoring the political bullshit - Christopher Hitchens's last book Arguably. He was widely admired for his sensitivity to language and for his prose style. All scholars and historians are 'arguing' a position in their field. There is no such thing as a book or research paper in the humanities that is strictly factual. Were your rule to be applied, every single sentence in an encyclopedia article that cannot reflect an explicit mention of 'consensus' would be qualified by attribution. That's the reductio ad absurdum. 'Arguably', Bob, flags that what follows is not a 'fact' but an informed view that can be rationally defended. To hold that adverb hostage ('most teachers' must refer to some recent fad) while ignoring the stylistic crassness of using 17 times 'according to' when we have a dozen ways of implying attribution ('in one account/version'/ it has been argued/ 'Burton interprets this'/A number of scholars' etc,.etc,etc,

Content about genetics that isn't directly about "Race and genetics in Zionist ideology" (or whatever this article is now called) simply doesn't belong here.

There is no content about genetics in this article that does not bear directly on "Race and genetics in Zionist ideology". It's authoritative sources that determine relevance. It is somewhat of a contradiction to admit you don't know much about genetics regarding the other page, and yet claim that material by geneticists like Burton, who do the history also here, are not relevant to a page on the history of genetics in Zionist ideology. Nishidani (talk) 12:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Hitchens is a great writer, if not necessarily a model for either scholarly writing or a neutral encyclopedia. As far as I can see, the book of that title only actually uses the word once in its page. I am not in favour of constantly repeating "according to", and all in favour of using a mix of phrases such as "X argues". Arguably is a weasel word. If someone has argued something, say who; if noone has argued it, it's OR.

Please don't put words in my mouth but read what I've actually said. I don't know a lot about genetics, which is why I've not edited that page. But I am very familiar with the sources on the history of Zionism and history of race. Burton's historical writing is really rigorous and it's very proper her work on things that fall within the topic of this article are cited. As far as I can see, she is cited just once in the "The genome era" section. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:50, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

The point was about sensitivity to language, for which scholarly articles or encyclopedias are not well-known. I have to grit my teeth to read most wiki articles, and this is true also of this one. Hitchens in that title is summing up what his project is there, to argue for or against something. If you google 'T.S. Eliot+arguably' or 'James Joyce+arguably' or any other great writer, you will find that there are a huge number of ranking specialists in each who use 'arguably' to introduce some aspect of those writers' oeuvre. It is simply wrong to assert as though it were true that 'arguably' is frowned on in good writing.

I drew a logical inference from two related remarks. That is the impression I got, no more nor less. (b) I have a fairly strong knowledge of Zionist history: it is overwhelmingly written by scholars who appear to have a strong commitment to the world Zionism produced. Just as much of Catholic history is written by Catholics, or Japanese history by Japanese scholars. Nothing anomalous, though one cannot write these days histories of anything from within in the fold because all known scholarly fields are no longer ethnic or denominational. If I have any knowledge about a topic that I hazard to suggest is very strongly grounded in familiarity with the ongoing scholarship, and about which I've published, it is on the concept of 'race'. And it is precisely this which has long puzzled me about the relative historical silence of histories of Zionism on that seminal, formative element in the tradition. You only really begin to observe historians tackling it after a full century of prolific scholarship on the movement and its ideas, a scholarship which focused on the political dynamics of a theory which in 1913 hardly any Jews had heard much of (1% according to an estimation I once read somewhere) and yet managed by extraordinary political genius to realize its principles and win the adherence of the majority of Jewish communities the world over. It's an old dictum of historians that the 'past' of a nation only emerges in all of its troublesome undersides when a country achieves full maturation, a certain measure of confidence and security in its achievements. This is particularly true of 'race', where recognizing the problem took centuries in Australia and the U.S., and Israel is no different. When I did those 667 Australian aboriginal articles, I read scores and scores of primary sources down to the 1950s which described as an unfortunate byblow of progress the 'inevitable' disappearance of the original inhabitants of the continent. It was normal for even front-ranking scholars down to the 1970s to consider mentioning 'race' and its lethal impact as a marginal matter, not worth dignifying with the name of scholarship.

So Burton is not mentioned in the genomics section more than once? Well, while writing, I tried to avoid the temptation of using anyone source excessively. Editors always criticize relying on one source too much. She is used where she is decidedly better, and more informed, than even Falk (not to speak of Weitzman): on what the archives now yield up as the personal motives of geneticists, in-house conflicts, disputes over methodologies etc., in genetic approaches to populations/races, where Zionist cultural beliefs inflected or influenced the 'Israeli' school somewhat distinctively. I can't see the problem in doing that.Nishidani (talk) 16:21, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Zionism, and which race?

It occurs to me that, if one is defining the scope of the page based upon the existing pagename, then there is a great deal of source material about Zionism and race that pertains to present-day Zionism in the occupied territories and its relationship to the Palestinian people in terms of their racial differences from Israeli Jews. This page does not cover that. That's obviously because the assumption underlying the existing pagename is that "race and genetics" refers only to how race and genetics might apply to Jewish people, but not to people who make no claim of being Jews. But that's an assumption, not anything that follows logically from the pagename as it is written. That's either a problem with the pagename, or a problem with the page scope. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:15, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Good point. And I think that's why a number of editors in the discussions above proposed titles that had wording like "on the origins of the Jewish people" or "on Jewish identity" in the title. We have a whole article Racism in Israel, which should probably be in the See also section if it isn't, that it would not be a good idea to rewrite here, so

I would argue for narrower scope (and if necessary narrower title) rather than widening. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:15, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree that the scope should be kept narrow. Having an in-depth section on Neo-Zionism would make this page unwieldy. I also agree that the pagename is really going to have to be something that specifies "Jewish" with regard to "race", and, for that reason, I can no longer support a rename to "Race and genetics in Zionism". --Tryptofish (talk) 18:12, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I think this is a good point, and although I do not know what this means for the best article title, I want to express my support for this concept. I think there is an implication that Zionism is concerned with the race and genetics of Jewish people. I think that Zionism is definitely considered with the provenance of Jewish DNA, writ large, which is why genetics is being thrown in there, I think. Race was a pseudogenetic or pseudoscientific proposal of one way to view Jewish ethnicity. Contrary to what some have argued on this page, ethnicity is a description of a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a common nation of origin, or common sets of ancestry, traditions, language, history, society, religion, or social treatment. The term ethnicity is often used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism. I would argue that Jews have all of these, and post-Israel there is a specific Israeli Zionist nationalism that we seem particularly concerned with in the context of its rhetoric in the pre-1940s time period. The "ancestry" is perhaps the part that belongs in the article title. Ancestry is not an article that Wikipedia recognizes as it redirects to "ancestor," but it seems to be a widely accepted synonym for genetic heritage. Andre🚐 19:26, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that we should replace the word "race" in the title with a different word, but I am arguing that we cannot simply use the word "race" without specifying that we are talking only about the "Jewish race" (so-called), and not "race" in general. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:37, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm thinking about proposing an RM to Jewish racial identity in Zionism. Any thoughts? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's better. Andre🚐 23:25, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Definitely prefer it to current title. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:06, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Doesnt seem to match the topic at all, but feel free to propose whatever you like. nableezy - 16:36, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

"Jewish racial identity in Zionism" is a different, though overlapping, topic than "Zionism, race, and genetics." Anyone can go ahead and start the "Jewish racial identity in Zionism" article, but I don't see the benefit of changing the scope of this article rather than starting a separate article about Jewish racial identity in Zionism.

To respond to the point in the OP, it's true that there is plenty of coverage about Zionism, race, genetics, and Palestinians, and the Zionism, race, and genetics article could be expanded to include that content. But the fact that the article currently is not complete -- that aspects of the topic aren't fully covered -- is a reason to expand the article, not to re-scope it. An obvious place for expansion is -- hey, you guessed it! -- Falk's 2017 "Zionism and the Biology of Jews," which BTW has a free PDF linked at Google Scholar, who makes a point that has probably been made by others and probably could be covered in the Wikipedia article somehow, for example at p. 201:

Even though not a race in a biological sense, political Zionism, after a century of attempts to prove contemporary Jews’ material, biological relationships – not merely their spiritual, cultural ones – to the ancient people of the biblical stories, in spite of widespread interspersing with local communities, finally has succeeded. It is tragic that Zionism, as well as Arab Nationalism, have failed to recognize the Palestinians, many of whom similarly appear to share phylogenetic relations to the historic inhabitants of the country, as equal partners.

Levivich (talk) 16:50, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the 2nd part. Andre🚐 16:58, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I did suggest myself at one point adding Jew(s)/Jewish somewhere in the title but I also said that I would not support a title that did not match up with the article content. Although anything is possible, it seems doubtful that the proposed title would gain consensus. Selfstudier (talk) 17:22, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

The proposed title is not only inept, but disturbing. The form 'Jewish racial identity in Zionism' assumes that there is such a (ridiculous) 'thing' as a 'Jewish racial identity' ('Jewish racial identity in Rabbinical thought'/Jewish racial identity in Israel' etc.etc.) and that the article will handle it as it was treated in Zionism. 3 months have been wasted on this minority but very vocal disgruntlement with the natural title. One cannot expect that editors return to devote much of their wiki time to rehashing ad infinitum a question which has been framed and reframed at least a dozen times, to no productive purpose. As per Levivich, nothing is stopping editors from developing a sister article for that hypothetical title.Nishidani (talk) 19:09, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I actually agree with the point that Jewish racial identity in Zionism, and Zionism, race and genetics, are two different, though overlapping, topics. I also think that the page, as it is now, is about Jewish racial identity in Zionism, and is only about a subset of Zionism, race and genetics. Let me be very clear about it: the page content as it is now matches very closely with Jewish racial identity in Zionism, and matches very poorly with the existing title – because it completely omits a big chunk of what the existing title is about. Anyone who thinks it does not omit that, or who thinks that the page is not currently about Jewish racial identity as it has been discussed in Zionism, is being, well, inept and disturbing.

So I think the question becomes whether the page should be expanded to match the current title, or whether the title should be changed to match the current scope of the page. One could certainly expand the page, but editors should seriously consider what that would look like. First, if done properly, it would very nearly double the length of the page. Second, it would make the page feel like there are two parts to it: how race and genetics in Zionism have been used to argue about the identity of the Jewish people, and how race (and genetics??) in Zionism have been used to "other" the Palestinians.

I have a very strong feeling that if someone were to expand the page in that way, two things would happen: some editors would want to revert it, and some editors would want to delete the page as being a "coatrack". How would one define what belongs here, and what fits better at other pages about Zionism and the Palestinians (of which there are many)? I would like to see those editors who want to keep the current title and support expanding the page propose more than using the Falk source, and actually describe what the content would consist of. How would it be organized, and how long would it be? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:26, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Editors who want to keep the current title and support expanding the page have already proposed more than using the Falk source. Many sources have now been identified and discussed.

We went over this in August, extensively, up above at "#Sources on Zionism, race and genetics," where there is a long list of sources in the refbox at the bottom of the thread, some in bold. That's the thread where I talked about my algorithm, which I wrote on my userpage so I wouldn't have to write it out again.

Then, this month, we discussed what are the sources and what is the content again at "#X,Y(,) and Z as a title format," where I pointed specifically to half a dozen sources.

The sources for the article "Zionism, race, and genetics" include Kirsh 2003, Falk 2006, Hirsch 2009, Abu El-Haj 2012, Baker 2017, and Falk 2017, among many others that are already cited in the article and have been mentioned or discussed on this page.

In my view, the content should be determined by following the algorithm I lay out at User:Levivich#Forward editing article writing algorithm (although that's not policy or consensus, just what I think is best practice). If you want to know exactly what that content is, go read those half-dozen sources and whatever they all talk about is what's WP:DUE for inclusion. For my part, I have not read them all (merely skimmed), so I don't know exactly what's DUE and what's not DUE, and I don't see how anyone could know that until they actually read all the sources.

I trust there will be no further need for anyone to ask again what the scope of the article is or what the sources for the topic are. Levivich (talk) 19:53, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't address the elephant in the room, namely that these sources cover Zionism, purported Jewish race, and purported Jewish genetics, and not Palestinians. Andre🚐 19:56, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I literally just quoted a source that covers Zionism, race, genetics, and Palestinians in the same paragraph. How are you saying "and not Palestinians" when the quote is right here? Have you actually opened any of the sources I just listed to see if they cover Zionism, race, genetics, and Palestinians? If not, please do so before making any more comments here. Levivich (talk) 20:03, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I obviously read your quote, which does not address the genetics or race of Palestinians as a contemporaneous concern of lack of concern by Zionists to those of Jews, but merely laments that very issue that we are discussing. I do not see where any of the sources provided discuss the genetics or racial issues around Palestinians other than that to say that Zionists, lamentably, have not considered them. I have not read the sources in full, I have skimmed those which have intersected with our discussion, and read others in excerpt. Some I have read most or all of especially shorter journal articles. I am happy to read where the question of Palestinian genetics is addressed either as a historical matter or a current one, for Arab nationalists, other than simply to again, lament the lack of coverage of this topic. Maybe that's a pointer that it's a less significant topic, but I suspect we simply haven't read for example, an article about Nasser, 1967 and Arab nationalist views on race. You can say that's a different article, and you may be right. Still, I think the point stands that the article focuses on the question of Zionist rhetoric on Jewish racial or ethnic composition and its impact on geopolitics. Andre🚐 21:30, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I didn't ask what the scope of the article it, or what the sources are. I was there, in those earlier discussions that you link to. And I'm not seeing any previous discussion about us covering race or genetics being used to "other" the Palestinians. I'm certainly not worried about finding enough sources. But what I did ask about included whether it would make this page too long, and whether it would make this page feel like a coatrack. I trust there will be no further need for me to repeat myself. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:05, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Let's stay away from the "inept" language if we can... I question the logic here. I agree that there is no such thing as a "Jewish race," I thought we agreed that "race" itself was a historical subject of study, and not an actually extant thing other than that it is socially constructed and appears in papers and on census forms. As far as editors devoting their time, you are certainly welcome but not obligated to devote any time to a discussion, but what you should avoid doing is gatekeeping, WP:OWNing, or otherwise engaging in personal attacks or questioning of good faith or of competency (absent a compelling reason to invoke WP:CIR, that is, which I do not see how we can do here, for a content dispute) Andre🚐 19:34, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

About there being "no such thing", I did actually say above "Jewish race (so-called)", so I agree that it's a dubious concept. But it's also a concept that numerous sources tell us has been taken quite seriously, in the history of things that this page is about. (For that matter "race and genetics" is a dubious concept, too.) So it's OK for us to use a pagename that reflects what the sources tell us. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:51, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree with that Andre🚐 19:57, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

As a sort of experiment, I'm going to expand the page in this way, and I think it will be interesting to see whether or not editors feel that it works. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Zionism, race and genetics#Race and non-Jews. Doubtless, it can be improved upon, but it's a start, and I avoided making it overly lengthy. Do editors think this really improves the page? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:57, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry but that violates one of the fundamental working rules of experienced content editors - namely, in building a new page, do not copy and paste or closely paraphrase material already existing in other wiki articles. It disobliges editors from actually reading the sources themselves, which has been a perennial problem with this talk page - excessive opinions about opinions by other editors without due attention to actually reading the extensive and high quality sources we have. I have given some reasons below for why this new material is totally out of line with the protocols that so far have governed the composition of the article as we have it, and as is dictated by the title itself.Nishidani (talk) 21:55, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, article reorganization and/or splitting isn't discouraged, but you simply must cite and attribute (see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia Andre🚐 22:06, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Which I did, via my edit summaries. By the way, I am an experienced content editor, and I know full-well how to write much more carefully, including in FAs. I did this expecting that it would never be a stable version. I wanted to see if other editors would revise it, which has happened to my satisfaction, or whether it would simply be reverted, which I'm pleased hasn't happened so far. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

copying content from another page within Wikipedia requires supplementary attribution to indicate it. At a minimum, this means providing an edit summary at the destination page—that is, the page into which the material is copied—stating that content was copied, together with a link to the source (copied-from) page, e.g. Copied content from [[<page name>]]; see that page's history for attribution. It is good practice, especially if copying is extensive, to make a note in an edit summary on the source page as well. Content reusers should also consider leaving notes on the talk pages of both the source and destination.

That wasn't done. Two, whatever that guideline states, in practice, a lot of damage has been done in the I/P area by copying and pasting material over several pages, which smacks of pushing a POV. We have a link system which dispenses with that. But most importantly, as a practicing content specialist, that guideline appears to be ignorant of what we all know: wikipedia is not a reliable source. Since we all recognize this principle, to copy-and-paste (without known reverification) from one page to another is to assume that the original page is reliable. So there is an internal contradiction in guidelines. Nishidani (talk) 22:17, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

There is no contradiction in guidelines; you simply must copy the references, or you should not copy unreferenced material, if copying is called-for/merited, it may/should be reverted or deleted if it is unreferenced. Andre🚐 22:24, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

There's a lot of noise in this talk, but everything any editor does is subject to subsequent improvement by others. No big deal. And if one looks at the comment by the administrator who disapproved the #Did you know nomination, he pointed out that "an editor just today was removing close paraphrasing from sources". That editor was me. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Here are some additional potential sources: [2], [3], [4], [5]. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:10, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

The insertion of extraneous matter

The article deals with the themes of Zionism, race and genetics. The following passages, apart numerous problems, contains almost nothing on race and genetics, and neither do the sources.

Neo-Zionism is a right-wing, nationalistic and religious ideology that appeared in Israel following the Six-Day War in 1967 and the capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Neo-Zionists consider these lands part of Israel and advocate their settlement by Israeli Jews. Some advocate the transfer of Arabs not only from these areas but also from within the Green Line. Neo-Zionists consider "secular Zionism", particularly the labor version, as too weak on nationalism and that it never understood the impossibility of Arabs and Jews living together in peace. Neo-Zionists claim that the Arab attitude to Israel is inherently rooted in anti-Semitism and that it is a Zionist illusion to think living in peace and together with them is possible. They consider Arabs in Israel to be a fifth column and to pose a demographic threat to the Jewish majority in Israel. From their point of view, the only solution for achieving peace is through "deterrence and retaliation" or preferably "transfer by agreement" of the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinian population of the occupied Palestinian Territories to neighboring Arab states.

I.e. an excursus on Neo-Zionism almost totally lifted from the paraphrase of one source, Uri Ram, as he is cited on the wiki Neo-Zionism page. Cross-wiki copy-and- paste stuff, one of the worst editorial vices afflicting this topic area. And relying on one source which nowhere writes of 'Zionism', 'race' and 'genetics. At the least that is a gross violation of WP:Undue in its exposure of a single viewpoint by one scholar for over 180 words, in his papers that do not mention zionism and race/genetics.

(b)According to the 2004 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Israel and the Occupied Territories, the Israeli government had done "little to reduce institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens". The 2005 U.S. Department of State report on Israel wrote: "[T]he government generally respected the human rights of its citizens; however, there were problems in some areas, including ... institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens." The 2010 U.S. State Department Country Report stated that Israeli law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, and that government effectively enforced these prohibitions. Former Likud MK and Minister of Defense Moshe Arens has criticized the treatment of minorities in Israel, saying that they did not bear the full obligation of Israeli citizenship, nor were they extended the full privileges of citizenship.

i.e. in 2004-2005 the US state department said Israel did little to counteract discrimination against Israeli Palestinians. In 2010 it changed its view and said Israel generally enforces the prohibition against such discrimination.Moshe Arens noted something similar. No scholarly secondary sourcing, no mention of race or genetics or Zionism, unlike Falk who does mention all three.

There is quite a lot of 'stuff' on Zionism as a form of racism, which hasn't been included because the sources used for the page simply do not take this as their focus. In any case, that kind of material on the institutional politics of discrimination can be found in many other wiki articles, whereas this focus on the concept of race as it developed under Zionism, and that formative influence on later genetic studies, a very specific issue. The article could allow expansion on it through Falk (who deals with it en passant and often somewhat weakly) and others, but should not be derailed into a divagations of this highly generic type. By all means discuss this, but for the moment the material must be excluded as replicating another article, introducing matter not related to the topic's focus and essive use of a single source, while aimlessly quoting the variations in US State Department's self-contradictory standpoints. Nishidani (talk) 21:42, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

That's certainly one answer to what I asked just above the section break, and I'm not at all averse to undoing it. Alternatively, I think it would be fine to significantly revise it. But here's the thing. If we remove it, then we really are not covering everything about Zionism, race and genetics. So I'm not seeing the logic behind editors who say don't change the pagename but don't add material like this either. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:54, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Articles are written to criteria of minimal adequacy only if their composition begins and ends with the search for, close reading of, and paraphrasing of sources bearing directly on the theme(s) announced in the topic header. One could easily swamp this article by covering 'everything' directly or vaguely reflecting the issues of Zionism's view of other peoples. But familiarity with the topic will tell anyone that it is not customary for other peoples, over the last decades, to be referred to as 'races'. That is why the ground you are probing is best covered by a new article, as several of us here have often said.Nishidani (talk) 22:00, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

As I said, it was certainly appropriate to revise it from what I originally put there. And I'm fine with the changes/deletions that you made. If we leave it at that, or if the section subsequently gets revised further, with additional material on, especially, the genetics, that's fine too. And with that, I'm willing to accept that the page really is about "Zionism, race and genetics", that it doesn't omit an obvious aspect of Zionism and race. So, with that, I'm no longer feeling like it should be renamed to "Jewish racial identity in Zionism" – because, with this change, it's no longer limited to Jewish racial identity (so-called). That was my concern in the opening of the main part of this talk section, and it's been resolved to my satisfaction. But if, hypothetically, the section gets entirely deleted, then I think we will have to revisit the pagename. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:12, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Levivich, as usual, pointed the way to expansion under the present title. Though I am retired, I will be rereading for some months all of the given sources used here and anymore that are forthcoming. Perhaps I, for one, may come up with some useful suggestions in this regard. But we should try to not plunge the page into a political morass. Politics is all over the I/P area and I personally am wearied by the havoc it makes to succinct encyclopedic work. The affliction of wikipedia is often also a matter of haste. Some editors, ask Zero and others as well, take several months, if not years, just to get some difficult material organized. I had noticed this topical nexus for over a decade, but never rushed it despite the fact that there was ample material for it. Patience is one of our guarantees of strong editing towards a reliable text, which is always under revision.Nishidani (talk) 22:24, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I welcome patience. And I paid attention to what Levivich said about it, even to the point of quoting what he had said in talk, with an edit summary that pointed to the diff where he said it – and that's one of the parts that you did not delete. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:27, 28 September 2023 (UTC)