Talk:Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism/Archive 4

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Opposition to Zionism

If I understand correctly, the major rewrite is winding down, so I think it's OK to start looking over the focus of the page, now that it has been improved. One of the concerns that have been raised about whether or not this is a single topic relates to where the current version of the lead section says: "genetic science generally and Jewish population genetics in particular have been used in support of or opposition to Zionist political goals". I'm referring specifically to the "opposition to" part of it. I've gone through the current version of the page (and please correct me if I missed something), and I see some passing mentions of opposition to Zionism, and there are certainly some quotes from sources that refer to both support and opposition, but it looks to me like the very large majority of the content is about the variety of views of people sympathetic to Zionism, and even when people who are not Zionist are referred to, they are generally not using racial/genetics arguments to argue against Zionism.

So if I'm right about that, it might be appropriate to take some of the language about "opposition to Zionism" out of the lead. I think that would help establish the focus of the page and strengthen the arguments against there having been SYNTH. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:33, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, good point. I kept searching for material to indicate how genetic arguments are used against Zionism. There are several references that use precisely this language, but none give details. When Falk speaks of non-Zionists, he is referring to assimilationists who were wary of race arguments by Zionism, and we do deal with that. I'm still searching for examples, for example, of such uses in anti-Zionist approaches. Unfortunately, we are strictly bound to state what the sources state, and if the sources fail to elaborate, there's nothing we can do. We can't invent stuff. Perhaps someone can come up with quality references to this. It's not for want of searching.Nishidani (talk) 20:44, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. As I see it, I'm not finding a problem with the main text of the page, just in terms of the lead. And I agree with continuing to quote sources as they exist, even if the source does not elaborate. If there's consensus, I'd be satisfied for now with just deleting "or opposition to" from the one sentence that I quoted from above, and leave it at that. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:09, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

As to taking 'opposition to Zionism' out of the lead, that would be deleterious with regard to NPOV, for the race and genetics positions in the article cover (a)Zionists (b) non-Zionist assimilationists (c) scholars who are critical of this aspect of Zionism while remaining Zionists (Falk, Weitzman etc.,) (d) critics of Zionism tout court and (e) esp. many scholars who simply look at the evidence on Zionism, race and genetics as a topic of research, whose positions about Zionism are unknown.Nishidani (talk) 21:14, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I see your point. But I'm wondering how much those are actually positions in opposition to Zionist goals. Some of those are views of non-Zionists that critique the racial/genetic analyses, as opposed to citing racial/genetic data as evidence that Zionism or Zionist political goals are wrong. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:22, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

The work of Eran Elhaik should be mentioned. He himself stated that it has been used by anti-Zionists. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:57, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Looking at Elhaik's page here, it sounds like his genetic findings have been seized upon by anti-Zionists and anti-semites, as opposed to there having been a scholarly use of genetic data as an argument against Zionist political goals. Perhaps there is something in his publications that goes beyond that, that I'm not aware of. This goes to my basic concern above. It seems to me that there is obviously a large history of racial and genetic argument by anti-semites, that goes way beyond the specific bounds of Zionism, and it seems to me that this should be outside the scope of this page. I'm, personally, satisfied that there is a single (not SYNTH) topic about how race and genetics have played into thinking about Zionism. But that's a much narrower topic than everything where racism has been raised against the Jewish people. That's why I'm trying to find a clear boundary between the subject of this page, and some broader topics that relate to "opposition to Zionism". --Tryptofish (talk) 17:46, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Tryptofish: you might find the paper of Elhaik listed in the bibliography of this article interesting; it is the editorial overview for a set of papers in Frontiers in Genetics. In it he writes:

In reconstructing the past from the distribution of genetic variation, population geneticists oftentimes rely on narratives. To decide between scenarios, geneticists have a multitude of accessories ranging from evolutionary theories to advanced computational tools applicable to modern and ancient genomes (Veeramah and Hammer, 2014; Morozova et al., 2016). In their efforts to understand human origins, geneticists also reach out to other disciplines like anthropology, linguistics, archeology, and history. However, as with any historical reconstruction, the inferred past remains a subject of controversy due to the subjectivity of the data, tools, assumptions, and, most importantly, the narratives that guided the scientist (Sand, 2015). Genetic studies of Jewish communities are especially vulnerable to such controversies as these communities have adopted various narratives since their inception (e.g., Patai and Patai, 1975; Kirsh, 2003, 2007; Kahn, 2005; Falk, 2006; Sand, 2009).

Onceinawhile (talk) 23:00, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks very much for that. In my reading of it, it does not support us saying in Wikipedia's voice that such research methods "have been used in... opposition to Zionist political goals" (but if I'm missing something, I'm happy to be corrected on it). I can see how the source covers the concept of how genetic studies are significant, and how they have been "vulnerable to such controversies" about "various narratives", and I could probably do a bit of original research to say that opposition to Zionism is one of those "various narratives". But I still think it would be an improvement to find language for the lead section that omits the "opposition to" language. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:35, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Beware of WP:BLP. The devil can cite scripture for purpose. Antisemites have cited Zionists and anti-Zionists, indifferently, just as Zionists have approved of antisemitic judgments about Jews as reflecting a putative racial reality(and I presume this is what sticks in the craw, and which no one wants any readership outside of academia to be reminded of). There is nothing in Elhaik's papers, anymore than there was in Koestler's book, to warrant that abuse, and yet they were subject to a merciless onslaught of critical hostility from within certain sectors of the Jewish communities. Wikipedia is chock-a-block with extensive pages covering antisemitism. The story of racial oppression in Jewish history is in virtually every historical article on Jewish history. What is vastly underplayed on wikipedia, as opposed to what the very substantial historical scholarship documents, is the dynamics of disagreements, of rifts, within both Zionist and between assimilationists and Zionists. It is all basically a narrative of (we) Jews and them (the oppressive non-Jewish majority), which is the tabloid version of history, what Salo Wittmayer Baron famously described as the 'lachrymose view of Jewish history', a POV that has political uses. One could write a good page on any number of these issues. Opposition to Zionism, for example, would generate a sjgnificant set of sister articles like Zionists disenchanted with Zionism, Dissent within Zionism covering a very large number of historical figures. I for one know a lot about both, but it's not my mission in life to invest what time remains in studying the history of Zionism or jumping at every opportunity to 'attack' it. Every article means a good deal of time reading stuff I'm really interested is put on the back-burner. Why don't editors do more content work? Everyone here has plenty of alternative proposals. I see no evidence that these different versions or aspects of so much Jewish and Zionist history that are neglected have any prospect of being written by anyone around here. Nishidani (talk) 19:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

All I'm really saying is that "opposition to Zionism" is probably, for the most part, outside of the proper scope of this page, and probably should not have much weight in the lead section. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:37, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

The example Falk gives for non-zionists is of “orthodox-religious circles that seek support of the “biological” argument”.

These are not “assimilationists”, quite the contrary.

In the example given, by non-Zionist Jews, he is referring to religious Jews who are indifferent to Zionism. Drsmoo (talk) 05:41, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the wording could simply be clarified as "certain Zionist political goals", since Zionism is inherently a political ideology and anyone Zionist cannot remain a Zionist while forsaking all Zionist political goals. The actors in support and opposition could also be clarified as "Zionists and non-Zionists alike" - that is already somewhat implied, even if not directly stated, but maybe stating it would help clarify. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:24, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Well the problem is one of words again and what they mean. 'Zionism', like so many political terms, lapses into a humpty-dumpty logic of meaning something and its opposite depending on the speaker (compare Liberalism, which can range from describing a free-market minimal state to a communist or socialist type regime (the latter in American rightwing usage)). I have Israeli friends who accept Zionism only in one sense, that used by Walter Lacqueur, who said the objectives of Zionism were completed in 1948, and everything else done in that cause since is a tragic excess. This is actually quite common in certain circles, from Daniel Barenboim to Avraham Burg, and I think even Falk. And it essentially consists of the idea that Zionism achieved a state where any Jew can go if endangered, with a sense while in diaspora that there exists a haven or sanctuary offering them 100% security if they suffer harassment. In that sense, I am a Zionist, for that matter, but it ends there. (As Hannah Arendt said in her masterpiece on The Origins of Totalitarianism 1948 solved the 'Jewish Question' and, in doing so, created the 'Palestinian Question').Nishidani (talk) 07:40, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Surely a judicious "certain" would still cover the bases? Iskandar323 (talk) 07:59, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I was pondering how the Jewish Question morphed in to Palestinian Question just the other day. Hannah Arendt really was the most fantastic of 20th-century minds. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:14, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Continuation of race science ...

Making a new section for this, which started in the “Sources on Zionism, race and genetics” section and has already been responded to by Onceinawhile there:

The asserted linkage between population genetics and race science is not a fact, it is an opinion asserted by critics of the field of population genetics. This article can not state, claim, or infer in Wikipedias voice that population genetics is a continuation of race science without describing it as an assertion made by critics that is viewed by “many practicing geneticists” as inaccurate and as impugning their work.

[1]

From Generation to Generation: The Genetics of Jewish Populations - Rosenberg, Weitzman

Criticism of human population genetics, especially from scholarly fields that as a premise regard the scientific endeavor with skepticism, has asserted continuity between this earlier race science and present-day genetics research— an argument that in the view of many practicing geneticists dramatically exaggerates the linkages, belies their personal orientations toward their own research programs, underestimates the consideration they devote to challenges and subtleties of issues of race in genetics, and unfairly impugns the anti-racist positions that they may in fact hold with an intensity equal to that of the critics. Especially in the ways that it enters the public dialogue, however, present-day research in Jewish genetics has sometimes been treated as reintroducing a biological conception of Jewish identity that many may have thought permanently discredited by the Holocaust and its catastrophic racialization of Jewish identity.

Kahn calls for a shared understanding between the positions represented by Ostrer and El- Haj, critiquing both Ostrer’s provocative claims about the meaning of the scientific data and the aspersions cast by El-Haj on the science without attending to its actual content. Is Kahn’s call for a shared understanding viable? El-Haj's critique runs deep, arguing that the entire enterprise of Jewish genetics is culturally and politically self-serving. It does not matter to her perspective whether the research is scientifically sound; what is relevant for her project is the subtle apparent continuities with earlier race science, the work the research does as a part of identity construction, and the rhetorical, cultural and political practice that it entails or enables. Does such a perspective have something to discern from people that it considers objects of study? El-Haj does not clarify whether population-genetic research—for Jews or for other population groups—can be a helpful form of inquiry under any circumstance. Would she think she has anything to learn at all from such research? And what can geneticists gain from a scholar like El-Haj who questions the very premises of their work, who seems uninterested in the truth claims that they make as genuine efforts to understand the world, and who reads their scientific efforts only with a hermeneutics of suspicion?

Drsmoo (talk) 09:50, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Considerations such as WP:DATED apply quite strongly to this. The work referenced here is from 2013, i.e. a decade-old, which is quite a long time in genetic scholarship. Falk's Zionism and the Biology of the Jews came out in 2017. Of the bolded sources in the list compiled by Once, 8 post-date this piece by Rosenberg and Weitzman, so the information that was available then is simply not the information available now. Perhaps the only scholars addressing this topic then were indeed Ostrer and El- Haj, but that is no longer the situation, and the premise that it is is fairly moribund. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:16, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

If 2013 is dated, where does that put Abu El-Haj, whom the article analyses, or many (most?) of the sources in this article? One can’t use sources from a wide range of dates, including 1991, and then assert that a source from 2013 is dated, while the older sources it analyzes are not.Drsmoo (talk) 10:28, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

The Falk essay this article is named after “Zionism, race and Eugenics” is from 2006. The others are from 2014, 2006, 2007, and 1998.Drsmoo (talk) 10:35, 16 August 2023 (UTC) Edited 2017 date to 2006 Drsmoo (talk) 11:07, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

The page can obviously reference all of these sources, but in drawing its conclusions about the current assessment of the topic in scholarship, we obviously want more current sources. Also, it does seem a lot like you are trying to set up and then battle the same straw man that you have waved around a few times here, i.e.: no one has said, and this page does not say, that population genetics is a continuation of race science (that statement itself is fairly daft); the topic here is the influence of Zionism on both early race science and later population genetics, and, as the lead of the page concludes, for the latter, "the interpretation of the genetic data has been unconsciously influenced by Zionism and Anti-Zionism". The only mention of "continuity" in the lead is "thematic continuity". Iskandar323 (talk) 10:42, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Zionism and the Biology of the Jews by Falk was originally published, in Hebrew, in 2006 actually. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-57345-8#about-this-book https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/science-in-context/article/abs/zionism-and-the-biology-of-the-jews/E6B2070E215F1C3D9A1CE359621431FDDrsmoo (talk) 10:44, 16 August 2023 (UTC) Edit: Hebrew version is from 2006 Drsmoo (talk) 11:07, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

The later version is revised and edited, and I can't speak to the differences, being neither the editor nor publisher, but that it was republished presumes its currency. The latest version is a 2017 edition, so plenty current, and if it is good enough for Springer then it is good enough for us. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:55, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I have no issue with including that the analysis is from 2013. The broader issue is that this article currently claims in Wikivoice that population genetics is a continuation of race science. It’s self evident that that’s a criticism by social scientists and not a fact that should ever be in wikivoice. That we now have a source that both A.Post-dates most of the core of this article and B. Explicitly states that many geneticists reject this connection makes reformulating the way the connection argument is presented more imperative. Drsmoo (talk) 11:00, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Your primary assertion here, this "continuation" statement, remains false. Again, there's nothing to argue against here, because it's simply not stated anywhere in wikivoice. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:04, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the alleged continuation is daft, however that’s what the lead says “ these same themes have continued to appear in genetic studies on Jews in relation to studies on the genealogical origins of modern Jews. Drsmoo (talk) 11:11, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

It says continuity of "themes", not race science. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:21, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

The main thing is that we’re fundamentally in agreement Drsmoo (talk) 12:39, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

The current version of the lead doesn't specify what the "these same themes" it refers to are, one of the reasons the current lead is poor. A reading of the preceding (first) two sentences would suggest "these themes" are "conceptions of Jewishness in terms of racial identity and race science" and "the idea that Jews are a race". In other words, it does assert continuity between race science and genetic studies. If you think the article should be reframed to avoid suggesting such a continuity is an established fact, then indeed we all seem to be in agreement. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:45, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I did notice that. The lead definitely needs rewording/clarifying. "Themes" is not a phrase that actually pops up in the body, but what I see it as reflecting is Falk's assertion of the continuation of racial and eugenic notions, which I think is somewhat of a softer point than the continuation of racial identity and race science per se. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:58, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

My reflection on the earlier conversation with Drsmoo is that there has been confusion about exactly what is continuing in Zionism’s relationship with race science and genetics. All sources say there is some form of continuation, whilst some specific forms of continuity are disputed. This has been discussed above but we need to “pin it down”. This will help tighten the language in the article, ensuring we don’t describe or imply in Wikipedia’s voice those forms of continuity that are disputed, and use consistent language to explain the form(s) of continuity that are accepted by all scholars.

Onceinawhile (talk) 21:44, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

“All sources say there is some form of continuation”

Sorry Onceinawhile, with all due respect, that statement is not correct. To reiterate, Wikipedia cannot use Wikipedia’s voice to say anything stronger than critics of population genetics have criticized it as a continuation of race science, while noting that these aspersions are considered by many geneticists to be inaccurate and impugning their work. Drsmoo (talk) 23:47, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

We've had these arguments endlessly, and it is all about precision of language and method.

this article currently claims in Wikivoice that population genetics is a continuation of race science

How many times must several editors be forced to reply that nowhere is it asserted that 'population genetics is a continuation of race science'? That was asserted a month ago, and was successively rebutted.

This is getting murky again, because of unaddressed confusions, unexamined assumptions and loose language.

The study of any discipline, and particularly one like the history of any discipline,-science, politics, philosophy etc., will show evolution and continuity. This is written all over such standard works (speaking of just genetics) as Ernst Mayr's The Growth of Biological Thought, 1982 and Stephen Jay Gould's Ontogeny and Phylogeny, to cite just two masterpieces, and this is how Falk's 2017 book works.

What is happening here is to take one article, or book, then another, and target some ostensible defect, inadequacy of completeness with respect to what another states, and therefore by challenging each source on differences in emphasis, or focus, to try to put in doubt the appropriateness of covering the three related fields in this article. The assumption is false, and no one engaged in the field could get anywhere were they to subscribe to this procedural fragmentation.

In the literature we have, there are two fields that, discursively, have interacted. Pure science, and the sociology and history of science. with regard to the theme of race. The science covers early race concepts and modern genetics. The sociology of knowledge addresses the way - no one contests this - science as a human practice is embedded in an historical world, and is subject to the particular stresses and interests that the world it works in is liable to. Scientists in genetics know little of history generally, and social scientists have no formal grounding, generally, in science. Both try to grub up. You can see this in the Weitzman -Rosenberg edited issue of Human Biology. Weitzman and Rosenberg make the points they are cited for, about historians who have interpreted the social background of past science, and are sceptical. Social scientists and historians look at the documentary record (Efron, Kirsh et al.,) for the political or social impact of historical moments on scientific directions.

Concretely, genetics papers on Jewish genes almost invariably allude to what their discipline might allow them to infer about the ancient populations of the Middle East, and to that end they cite some standard historical narratives. Historians and sociologists of knowledge, who are more familiar with the complexities and ambiguities of those historical narratives, question the reliability of any science which draws naively on history to infer that it endorses their conclusions. The method, some of them (El-Haq but also Burton) involves circular reasoning). The historical premises frame the focus of research, and the methodology, and the results confirm in turn the historicist assumptions.

At the end of their piece Weitzman and Rosenberg cite (but not in their bibliography) Aaron J. Brody and Roy J. King's Letter to the Editor Genetics and the Archaeology of Ancient Israel. This is a collaborative letter by an historian and a geneticist, and in essence it is telling the scientists that any conclusions of this kind cannot draw on traditional historical knowledge, but must produce genetic evidence that is independent of those stories. They note (I've remarked on this on talk pages for years) that as of 2013, despite a mass of ossuaries, very little DNA research has been conducted on the remains of people whose bones have been uncovered in strata relating to the period of Israelite ethnogenesis. Were science to do this, we would have (a) an independent purely scientific grasp of continuities (or dissonances) between contemporary and ancient Levantine populations (b) which could then aid the historians in refining their interpretation of ancient ethnonarratives.

Ancient DNA testing will give us a further refined understanding of the individuals who peopled the region of the southern Levant throughout its varied archaeological and historic periods and provide scientific data that will support, refute, or nuance our sociohistoric reconstruction of ancient group identities. These social identities may or may not map onto genetic data, but without sampling of ancient DNA we may never know.

The repeated argument over continuity vs discontinuity between race and genetics is marked by several editors's desire to emphasize the discontinuity. But the recent genetic studies of the Jews have shown, per sources, a strong interest in establishing continuity between modern and ancient Jewish populations. Several editors are arguing: there is no continuity between this science and the earlier race science, and, at the same time, the genetics literature is saying there is strong continuity between modern and ancient Jewish populations, precisely what race science tried to determine. So the assumptions are in conflict. This makes for dramatics, and incessant challenges. The same editors who insist on a discontinuity between the early race science and modern genetics, also appear to prefer the genetics papers which affirm an essential identity between two Jewish populations separated by two millennia of history. Methodologically, this means the criteria used switch depending on what one may prefer to think in either case.

There is no need for the latter, if we simply hew to the normal practice of historians of ideas. trace continuities and discontinuities, with the constraint as wiki editors of simply paraphrasing what our relevant sources state about both. Underplaying this tidbit, overplaying some other, will get none of us anywhere fast, as per the last month.

The article can be improved in many respects. I can see no cogency in proposals that it be split, cut up, blown up, dismantled, and reassembled with whatever pieces of rubble remain. That is a recipé for endless talk page work better spent on practical improvements. A practical way to show how, nonetheless, it might be rewritten, is simply to organize a sandbox, whose version will compete with the mostly completed article we have, and show how a better alternative exists. No one is doing that. (It was the way arbs suggested we fix the chronically maimed Shakespeare Authorship Question. Three editors were asked to present their ideal rewrites. The tweaker and argufier refused to provide his version, while the other two collaborated and produced the FA article we have. Nishidani (talk) 06:18, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

@Drsmoo: this edit [2] is explicitly against consensus. Your wording "These criticisms [(asserted continuity)] are rejected by many geneticists who view them as inaccurate and impugning their work" was carefully and thoughtfully contradicted above, five days ago. The key point was that some types of continuity many be disputed, but others are not disputed by anyone. You have not addressed this yet. Onceinawhile (talk) 00:56, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Onceinawhile, that is incorrect. The source is clear. All forms of continuity are rejected by many geneticists. Even more so, the criticism is of population genetics broadly, not of population genetics as it related to Zionism specifically. As has been explained to you, Wikipedia can not state a critical view of population genetics in a neutral voice, and must be clear that this is a criticism that is rejected by many geneticists. Drsmoo (talk) 01:03, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

We have discussed this source in detail above. You state that "All forms of continuity are rejected by many geneticists" - I have read the quotes from Rosenberg&Weitzman you provided at 04:12, 16 August 2023 and 09:50, 16 August 2023, but neither of them make this claim.

My summary of the same was 06:46, 16 August 2023. To be even clearer, Rosenberg&Weitzman's "exaggerates the linkages" is very different from your rejecting continuity, particularly when followed by their sentence "Especially in the ways that it enters the public dialogue" which sets out where the continuity lies. When Rosenberg&Weitzman say "sometimes", they mean that sometimes scholars have explained this, and nowhere do they state the opposite - i.e. that any scholars disagree that it is used this way in public discourse.

Onceinawhile (talk) 01:13, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

To be specific, Rosenberg and Weitzman write "dramatically exaggerates the linkages, belies their personal orientations toward their own research programs, underestimates the consideration they devote to challenges and subtleties of issues of race in genetics, and unfairly impugns the anti-racist positions that they may in fact hold with an intensity equal to that of the critics", what are they referring to? They are referring to "asserted continuity between this earlier race science and present-day genetics research". If we are at an impasse regarding summarizing this as "are rejected"/"inaccurate and impugning their work", we can just use a blockquote to avoid any ambiguity.

"has sometimes been treated" is because the alleged continuity is theoretical, not factual. The authors are stating that critical social scientists have sometimes treated population genetics as reintroducing race science. Not that it is in fact a reintroduction. This is semiotics, semiotic arguments are not facts. Your usage of "scholars have explained this" is indicative of the confusion. Some social critics have asserted a particular criticism of population genetics. This criticism is not a fact, and Wikipedia can not present this criticism as a fact. Drsmoo (talk) 02:04, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

As I look at it, two things occur to me. The first is that it's unclear that we can say "many" when referring to "many geneticists". It's a difficult thing to define – how many are "many"? – and it might be best to leave that one word out. The other is that there may be a way of covering this without getting into the kinds of specifics where the two of you see the sources differently. It sounds to me like the anthropologists and social scientists are saying (in effect, my paraphrase, rather than their actual words) that there are too many echos of scientific racism in genetics, and the geneticists are denying that they are motivated by scientific racism. How about shortening the sentence like this: This criticism is viewed by many geneticists as one that "dramatically exaggerates the linkages, belies their personal orientations toward their own research programs, underestimates the consideration they devote to challenges and subtleties of issues of race in genetics, and unfairly impugns the anti-racist positions that they may in fact hold with an intensity equal to that of the critics." --Tryptofish (talk) 20:24, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I am fine with that kind of thing - I think we can go a step further by paraphrasing rather than quoting in the lede. I don't think it needs attribution - we can be certain that most if not all geneticists do think it is unfair for their motives to be questioned.

On the anthropologist and social scientist position, when saying "there are too many echos of scientific racism in genetics" we need to add words like "the usage of ... in identity politics" or similar to ensure precision. This is the key distinction in the whole article - most scholars do not seek to impugn genetic science or geneticists, but rather note how the science is used by others. See Azoulay for example: "So let us not delude ourselves: the deliberate endeavour to identify a shared chromosome among different populations is not an innocent pursuit that can be interpreted outside the politics of identity. For this reason, academics and lay people – those with and without expertise in genetic studies – need to be vigilant in challenging the incorporation of a discourse of genes into the sociological discourse of group identities."

Making this distinction clear between those who comment on the geneticists themselves (disputed) and those who note how the science has been interpreted in identity politics (undisputed) would allow for a streamlining of the whole paragraph. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:28, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm generally fine with that approach. I just want to make sure that it's clear that when I referred to echos of scientific racism, I wasn't advocating for putting that language into the article. Also, I'm not sure what language we should use with respect to "identity politics", but I'm not comfortable calling it that in Wikipedia's voice, because anthropology, social science, and genetics, are all scholarly disciplines, but identity politics exists in a different space. Although maybe a significant streamlining, which I think is a good idea (I still find the lead too wordy), might make that concern go away. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

OK. Rather than identity politics, the term used in this context by most of the anthropologists and social scientists is simply "Zionism". Onceinawhile (talk) 22:59, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

The issue we have here is the presentation of criticisms of population genetics as if they were facts. Wikipedia can not present critical theories, semiotics, and paralinguistic theories as being true. There is only a claim (or as Weinstein describes it, an aspersion) of continuation. Statements like “scholars have explained” or “scholars have noted” are incorrect. The whole endeavor is theoretical and unfalsifiable. Drsmoo (talk) 23:46, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Now that you put it that way, it strikes me as problematic to devote that much of the lead to the issue. In fact, that paragraph begins as historically recounting the aftermath of the founding of Israel, but then it pivots to being about this dispute over the continuation of scientific racism. I could see deleting everything starting with "A perspective that..." and continuing through "...equal to that of the critics." Citation 13 and Note c could remain, and be placed just after citation 12. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:00, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

[3]. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:10, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

In my rewrite the only thing I avoided (if I remember) was the lead, leaving that to the discussion underway. Would anyone mind if I had a go at rewriting it to better reflect the page's flow? (for example I don't think genetics should be mentioned in the first para, etc.) Of course, anything I propose can just be reverted back to the unsausagefactory version we have, as further discussions proceed. Nishidani (talk) 16:54, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I would welcome revision of the lead. In particular, I think that will be very useful in evaluating the focus and topic area of the page, which in turn is helpful in evaluating any proposals such as page renames (or splits, although I personally am not very interested in a split). I also welcome continued discussion on the talk page, in which criticisms of the then-current version of the page will be taken seriously. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:09, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I'll have to drop this for a few days. The only think left to fix (for me) is the awkward para 4. Editors don't have to worry about my indisposition. By all means proceed. CheersNishidani (talk) 22:02, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Lead: "science provided evidence"

Beginning in the late 19th century, science provided evidence for the idea that humanity was divided into genetically distinct races.

What science? what evidence? Extraordinary. Nishidani (talk) 14:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Compare in wikivoice

Beginning in the late 19th century, the science of parapsychology provided evidence for the idea that the soul survived death)Nishidani (talk) 14:32, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

The lead appears to be getting rapidly worse, not better. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:58, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Most likely a result of uncertainty concerning the meaning of 'affirmed', which could have been taken as either 'assertion' or 'confirmation'. Don't think the current revistion is best, the notions predated 19th century of course and 'empirically' might not convey the intent appropriately to readers. Original sense was probably better in attempting to 'ground' notions of race? fiveby(zero) 15:12, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Advances in biological science in the late 19th century

Again, what biological science and what 'advances'? In the 600 page compendium by Maurice Fishberg (1911) that surveys comprehensively all of this literature, the methods for determining putative 'races' are those of anthropometrics used in physical anthropology, for which, to adapt a phrase from Protagoras, 'all things of man's body were to be measured' - length of noses, cranial shapes, skin colour, average physical height etc. It wasn't in the late 19th century, but in the first decade of the 20th that Karl Landsteiner discovered and introduced blood type variation as a biological principle, later used as an ancillary to calibrate ostensible differences in 'races'. Nishidani (talk) 16:46, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Biological science as a catch-all for, yes, biological anthropology, and later, yes blood types, genetics, etc. - the same catch-all that Falk uses with 'biology'. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:50, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm sure editors are very aware of the issues here and just seeking the best wording. Ascribing the worst possible reading to their changes is inappropriate. fiveby(zero) 17:32, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for saying that, Fiveby. When I made the edit, I explained it clearly in my edit summary. I think that subsequent edits have made it significantly better than what I had done, so thanks to the other editors who did that (Iskandar and Levivich). Under the circumstances, I'm disappointed that this talk section started off in a manor that is at odds with what the AE admins advised. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:24, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Genetics; specifically, Mendelian inheritance. (I'm not defending the lead, which is poor, just answering the question.) Levivich (talk) 18:05, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Come now, I cited a line which, in my reading of the sources, has no basis, and is, for the period, misleading. I gave two examples one fromn Fishberg, the other a note to Landsteiner, to underline that 'biological' is inappropriate. The response on my page and here is to suggest I am starting a battlefield. Levivich's point about Mendelian inheritance is again an anachronism. Mendel's work from the 1860s was only (re)discovered in the first decade of the 20th century, not in the 19th century, which is the assertion in the first line. Response? suggestions that in making a straightforward objection on technical grounds, I am creating a battleground here by maltreating editors. Whom? I didn't even check who wrote the line. This is a disturbing move in my view to rebegin personalizing what are simply technical issues, with evidence, evidence that is not being addressed.

Can I remind editors that WP:LEDE/WP:MOS requires us to draft leads as summaries of the content of the article. We are noT permitted to pluck things out of the air. If our sources use terms like 'race science' and 'scientific racism', then then we are justified in using them,The correct period term is Rassenkunde.

Die Rassenkunde ist ein Teilgebiet der physischen Anthropologie und als solche eine mit rationalen Methoden arbeitende und “respektable” Wissenschaft.(The science of race is a branch of physical anthropology and, as such, is a 'respectable' science working with rational methods.')Doron (1980:p.389)

Doron later qualifies this, but that is another story. What's my point? The lead has to be written by carefully summarizing what the various sections, sourced in every detail, state. There is no margin for suggesting generalizations that do not directly reflect a specific set of sources.Nishidani (talk) 19:44, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Race science

I'll raise another issue about the lead. The lead includes a blue-linked "race science" in the first sentence: "sought to reformulate conceptions of Jewishness in terms of racial identity and the race science of the time." However, race science is a redirect to scientific racism. Per MOS:EGG, it's undesirable to have a link take the reader to a page that is unexpected, based on what the content here is. And "race science" sounds vaguely respectable, whereas it's actually referring to a form of pseudoscientific racism. I'd be inclined to change the text here to the actual pagename, but I'm unsure whether the sources would support doing that. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:33, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree. "Race science" is not the right term for "genetics" (per Levivich) Andre🚐 18:36, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Race science and scientific racism may currently be hosted on the same page right now, but they have somewhat different meanings. Race science is the use of (pseudo)science in an attempt to determine race, while scientific racism is the use of said race science for racism, which is the direction of hate or prejudice on the basis of perceived race. Same orbit, but slightly different aspect. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:03, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with that distinction (adding: , although the use of "race science" to determine race, even when not specifically motivated by racist intentions, ends up being little more than a euphemism for scientific racism). Perhaps in this case, the best solution would simply be to unlink it? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:09, 19 August 2023 (UTC) added. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:14, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough, but "genetics" isn't a discredited science. There are some true genetic markers for Ashkenazi Jewishness, some of which are shared with Jews of Sephardic or Middle Eastern origin, though of course any given Jewish person may or may not be of that haplotype. They had some awareness of this in the 20th century. I think the article as written is a little heavy of the "skeptical of scientific racism/race science" side and lacks context that, there is a true genetic science which was used to determine say, Tay-Sachs carriers, etc. Andre🚐 19:11, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

But genetics looks at population groups, not race; it intersects with race science when someone takes a collection of overlapping population groups and then infers that the gathering is something more than a collection of overlapping population groups. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:26, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

In the late 19th century the context cannot be genetics. Selfstudier (talk) 19:14, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I believe that is what is being referenced, namely the discovery of genetics around the late 19th and early 20th century. Around the turn of the century. Andre🚐 19:24, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

No, look at the scientific racism page; it's referencing the race science in biological anthropology and onwards. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are not reliable. Biological anthropology would be an anachronism, for its predecessor was physical anthropology, dominant in the period we are dealing with. Physical anthropology did not have the technical means to do what biological anthropology now does.Nishidani (talk) 19:51, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I've just spent some time looking around for something else to blue-link the term to, and I'm not much liking anything I found. (Maybe someone else can come up with something.) I'm thinking that one possibility would be just to have "race science" without blue-linking it at all. An alternative that might perhaps be better would be to replace it with some other wording, also not blue-linked. Maybe something like changing "the race science of the time" to "the scientific views of the time regarding race", or something like that. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't feel comfortable just leaving it unaddressed, so I made this edit for now: [4]. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:53, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Length of lead

I also feel like the current (work in progress, of course) version of the lead is too long, and should be made considerably shorter. It reads like a narrative, rather than a summary. I'm pointing this out, although I'm personally not sure how to revise it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:18, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

My impression is that the lead is troublesome because some editors want a different article to be summarized, not the one we have. Lead writing is simple. You read the text, note the salient points in sections, and summarize them consecutively. That has been done, and compared to the article's length, the lead is succinct. We shouldn't open too many sections for discussion on different issues contemporaneously. it making resolving any one issue difficult, via distraction.Nishidani (talk) 20:17, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I said what my concern was. Where did I say that I wanted a different article to be summarized? (I didn't.) The talk page is for raising concerns or ideas about the page, and there is no reason for anyone to claim that it's procedurally inappropriate to discuss what they wrote, while discussing how they don't like what someone else wrote. And by the way, another editor already shortened it, and improved it by doing so ([5]). --Tryptofish (talk) 20:50, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Law of Return

About [6] and [7], if I understand correctly, the source uses the word "return" in the last sentence of the quote, in order to express skepticism about the use of the word. However, the basic idea of the Law of Return is not normally written with quote marks around the word. At least, that's my understanding, but I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong. But if I'm right, then I think it's best to write the main text without scare quotes, while allowing interested readers to read the footnote. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with your point re the law. Re the quote, I don’t believe it is to express skepticism, but rather to emphasize that the word “return” contains the key assumption that the genetic research is being used to support. I think we need to find a way of making that same emphasis in summary form. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:57, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I understand much better now. I've re-read the source quote repeatedly with that in mind, and I see what you mean. I'm at a loss as to how to express that succinctly in Wikipedia's voice, although maybe I could see quoting part of what the source says in the main text, so it gets attributed to the source. I'm not sure how to do that with sufficient brevity for the lead, although it could readily be done lower on the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:09, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

The source (a book review) does not actually discuss the law of return or the concept of in-gathering. It's making a more subtle point about the idea of return being implicit in the idea of common geographical origin. The lead should not be working with this level of detail so I have moved it out of the lead to the section where the book under review is mentioned. I don't think the sentence necessarily needs a citation; it's relatively straightforward as it is I think. If it does need untangling, that should be in the appropriate place in the body. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:00, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Sources...

Doron

The very first source from Joachim Doron, doesn't even mention anything about Jewish identity, race or genetics. It's all about Zionist "Self Criticism". The only thing that comes close to what the article was trying to say was The Zionist "self-criticism" that necessarily attended the longing for a "new Jew" has been forgotten or even deliberately suppressed. I'll be checking the other sources soon, and removing the one from Doron unless someone can explain to me why it was referenced to support the statement Many aspects of the role of race in the formation of Zionist concepts of Jewish identity were rarely studied or long forgotten, overlooked, made invisible or deliberately suppressed until recent decades. Crainsaw (talk) 18:37, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

• Wrong. For race see Doron p.188 & n.40, p.191, n,51, p.203 (twice); Jewish identity is mentioned on pp.171(thrice), 189,194,195,201; it was referenced to support 'forgotten' in the passage you cited, because the source states:

The Zionist “self-criticism” that necessarily attended the longing for a “new Jew” has been forgotten or even deliberately suppressed over the last generation.'

All of the following sources support the selection of those adjecives. "Zionist self-criticism" is Doron's awkward euphemism for what the text shows, that it deals with Zionist criticisms of other Jews, esp. those who do not subscribe to Zionism. The reason why all of these sources are mustered in an overview is to explain to the reader that the topical thematics spanned in the article have been until recently, subject to scholarly neglect, and Doron gives four reasons for that. It is a necessary preliminary because numerous editors here appear to have never heard of this intertwined issue. Nishidani (talk) 22:01, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

I find it odd that a Wikipedia article start with a historical account of the scholarly works about the topic the article is ostensibly about. That aside, Doron is given a very important status as groundbreaking in the literature. However, according to Google Scholar, the article has only been cited a dozen or so times. The journal describes him as a Lecturer in history at Kibbutz Teachers’ College. I can’t access the article but I’m curious if it is really as important as the article currently suggests. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:15, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I really wish you hadn't thought that one up. I'll have to waste another bloody half hour duly responding when the answer is obvious.

Clearly you didn't search google books where "Joachim Doron"'s work is cited in scores of books.

Doron's TAU PhD was a book length study in Hebrew (title The Central European Zionism versus German Ideologies 1885–1914,1977). That alone qualifies him as an expert. He opened up the field we're exploring.

In this specific field, Doron's work is considered of great importance, and just to mention references to him in the short bibliography we use

• Efron (1994)
• Gelber (2000)
• Kaplan (2003)
• Hart (2005)
• Morris-Reich (2006)
• Olson (2007)
• Nicosia (2008)
• Hirsch (2009)
• Bloom (2011) repeatedly
• Hart 2011, who notes that, after Mosse (1967), Doron's work is the exception in a field marked by neglect
• Avraham (2013) mentions him as one of the most important sources on the topic-
• Vogt (2014)(Zwischen Humanismus und Nationalismus)
• Avraham (2017)
• Falk (2017) 11 times.Nishidani (talk) 04:32, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Morris-Reich

:Neither does the Morris-Reich article mention Zionist concepts of Jewish identity were rarely studied or long forgotten, overlooked, made invisible or deliberately suppressed until recent decades., the only thing it says is attempt to explain why parameters that were interwoven with race could nonetheless transfer relatively easily into later paradigms of Jewish demography that turned their back on race., that's incredibly vague has nothing to do with Zionism (Zionism=/Jewishness), and "Jewish demography" doesn't represent a scholarly, government or media "suppression". Crainsaw (talk) 18:48, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

• Again, wrong. Your assumption is that the several sources mustered for each of the adjectives noting scholarly neglect, appended at the end, should each contain the whole sentence. That is ridiculous. Perhaps you want me to shift the sources each to their adjective in the sentence?

Amos Morris-Reich writes:

(1)Why did Ruppin not express his reservations of Günther in the privacy of his diary, but, on the contrary, describe the conversation as a pleasant encounter? Ruppin's description of his meeting with Günther, the leading theoretician of race in Nazi Germany, was published in the German edition of his diaries (edited by Schlomo Krolik) but was omitted in the English edition (edited by Alex Bein). In the English edition an entry for the date of the meeting appears but without the passage relating to the meeting with Günther. The Hebrew volume (also edited by Alex Bein) entirely omits the entry for this date. Although Bein and Krolik displayed extreme sensitivity toward Ruppin's complex positions on the "Jewish Question" and the "Arab Question" in their impressive editing of his diaries, memoirs, and letters, the reader will search in vain for a reference to Ruppin's complicated and ambivalentpositions on "race".pp.1-2

(2)Certain aspects of Ruppin's legacy were studied thoroughly and comprehensively. There is no common agreement, however, on the significance of race for understanding Ruppin's work. Two important studies published in recent years almost completely overlook the racial aspect in his work. In the index to Arthur Goren's comprehensive biography of Arthur Ruppin, published in 2005, the word "'race" appears on three pages of the almost five hundred and fifty page book. Goren regards the term as marginal to Ruppin's work as a sociologist, a remnant of early twentieth century anthropological views from which Ruppin never freed himself. In an important retrospective article that appeared a few years ago marking the centennial publication of Ruppin's first book on the Jews, Sergio DellaPergola, probably the most distinguished Jewish demographer in the world today, and in a way the "grandson" of Ruppin, almost completely passed over the racial aspect of Ruppin's work.' Amos Morris-Reich pp.4-5

In short Amos Morris-Reich notes the suppression in both the English and Hebrew editions of this crucial evidence which the German edition scrupulously prints.Nishidani (talk) 22:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

The pages which were linked go the Morris-Reich article were 4-5, and is "almost completely passed ocer the racial aspect" a deliberate suppression? I'd say this is a classic example on Synth. If one "Distinguished" scholar looks over something, doesn't mean other scholars do, other scholars still talk about it. Crainsaw (talk) 04:20, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Nope. I'm sure you know Horace's adage:parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. All you are asking for, in technical terms, is that I add pp.1-2 to the Morris-Reich note. You could have done that yourself. And, the elision from both the Hebrew and English editions of fundamental information about Ruppin's encounter with the foremost Nazi racial theorist of his day qualifies as a suppression of evidence. Perhaps it wasn't 'deliberate' though were it not it would certainly be a case of an extraordinary coincidence. But the words 'deliberately suppressed' are straight from Doron. There is no WP:Synth. I won't challenge your removal of 'long'. That's a fair call, though I disagree with it for a simply stylistic reason: preface a long list of adjectives with an adverb like 'rarely' cannot avoid extending the sense of 'rarely' to all of the adjectives, as opposed to the first one. ' The semantic function of 'long' in 'long forgotten' is to break that connotative drift ('long' refers to Doron's remark about what scholars withheld themselves from stating for a generation, 23-30 years, in the postwar years). 'rarely studied,' with out the 'long' can suggest 'rarely forgotten, rarely overlooked, rarely made invisible or rarely deliberately suppressed.' But people don't worry about the fine points of grammar these days and probably won't get the twinges of anxiety someone with my unfortunate background get in seeing such things. Nishidani (talk) 07:07, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Have you read the German or Hebrew version? Do you have access to them? How do we know their discussion was about the role of race in Zionism? Why is the conversation kept in the the Hebrew and German additions, when Hebrew is the official language of Israel, so surely any suppression would also be present in the Hebrew edition. As for the stylistic part, we should also remove the statement "made invincible" from the last sentence since it's more or less a synonym for forgotten, overlooked or suppressed. Crainsaw (talk) 10:19, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

This is the definition of Synth, A and B therefore C, A is a conversation between Ruppin and Günther possibly about Zionism and race (I haven't read the other versions), B is it was ommitted by Bein in the English version, and now your claim or assumption "C" is that the ommition means a deliberate suppression. Crainsaw (talk) 11:21, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm getting confused here, point to the SYNTH in the article, please. Selfstudier (talk) 11:46, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

The confusion is Crainsaw's.

You have misconstrued both Morris-Reich and my paraphrase of it. He states that

• the German edition faithfdully conserves Ruppin's description of his meeting with Günther
• The English edition conserves the date of the encounter, but without the passage
• The Hebrew edition entirely omits the entry for this date.

So when you write:-

Why is the conversation kept in the the Hebrew and German additions, when Hebrew is the official language of Israel, so surely any suppression would also be present in the Hebrew edition.

I.e. the passage is not 'kept in the German and Hebrew editions' but is missing in both the Hebrew and English editions.

That shows you completely misunderstand the plain English of the secondary source, which is a highly reliable one.

'Made invincible' is not the same as 'made invisible' which might be better put, stylistically, as 'rendered invisible'. 'Ommittion' is I guess 'omission'.

I've written about 1,000 articles for wikipedia, using scholarly sources invariably. The one area, and even there only on very 'controversial' articles, where anyone mputed an WP:Synth violation, was in the I/P toxic zone, and I can recall only 3 cases in the first years of a 17 year effort, where the challenge had some merit. I know synth like the back-of-my hand, and Onceinawhile already answered you in replying to Drsmoo above. Please don't waste our time with pointless and unfocused niggling. I have a huge load of rereading to do to ensure the article is comprehensive and consistent with the best principles of wikipedia editing guidelines.Nishidani (talk) 11:58, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I apologize for messing up the occasional word or sometimes not reading properly. But my point still stands, A and B therefore C is synth, and A is a conversation between Ruppin and Günther possibly about Zionism and race (Has anyone read the German version called Arthur Ruppin: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen?), B is it was omitted by Bein in the English version, and now your claim or assumption "C" is that the omission means a deliberate suppression or it being overlooked without the source saying that. I'm not trying to be toxic, I'm just asking you where you got the "deliberately suppressed" or "overlooked" from? Crainsaw (talk) 17:33, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

In the article, the expression "deliberately suppressed" is from Doron, viz

"The Zionist "self-criticism" that necessarily attended the longing for a "new Jew" has been forgotten or even deliberately suppressed over the last generation, primarily for four reasons:·" Selfstudier (talk) 17:48, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

That's my question, why are we even citing Morris-Reich if his article doesn't even support the sentence where it is citied? Crainsaw (talk) 17:51, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

This is a tendentious reading of Morris-Reich. He says that two important editors and two important authors neglected the specifically racial dimension of Ruppin’s views, while others didn’t neglect it.

The authors who he says neglected race here all obviously looked at “zionist concepts of Jewish identity”, so it doesn’t support the sentence at all. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:47, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Frankly, Bob, that's balderdash, There is nothing tendentious in this context of neglect of a topic, to refer to Morris-Reich's observation that the major Hebrew and English critical editions of Ruppin's works omit/suppress/underplay his racism, as do 'two important studies' that 'almost completely overlook the racial aspect in his work'. If you read (downloadable) Bloom's 2011 monograph (414 pages) Ruppin's obsession with racial science is on every other page. That editors omit/edit out a crucial passage, and major experts on his work, to the time of Morris Reich's writing, almost wholly 'overlook' what lies at the core of Ruppin's thinking is obviously congruent with the sentence.Nishidani (talk) 22:47, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

The sentence the footnote explores is not “Ruppin’s racism was underplayed” but “Zionist concepts of Jewish identity were rarely studied or long forgotten, overlooked, made invisible or deliberately suppressed until recent decades”. The texts (rightly) accused of underplaying Ruppin’s racism were about Zionist concepts of Jewish identity. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:39, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Sigh. You deftly left out 'Aspects of' heading that sentence. Read my reply to Crainsaw who made exsctly the same point, misreading the passage. Some of these objections are reaching the level of farce.Nishidani (talk) 08:36, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Ok, yes you’re right the sentence currently reads “Many aspects of the role of race in the formation of Zionist concepts of Jewish identity were rarely studied, forgotten, overlooked, made invisible or deliberately suppressed until recent decades.” But that’s not really what Morris-Reich is saying. For it to work here, wouldn’t he be need saying that race had a role in zionist concepts of identity in general (not just Ruppin’s) and that this was ignored/overlooked etc until recent decades? Even if we allow Ruppin to stand in for Zionism in general, he notes a couple of sources which overlook race, then four (publisdes in 1977, 19,4. 1991and , 20) which don’t overlook race but give it a central role. His point is there is no general agreement rather than any systematic overlooking. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:45, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Bob. Morris-Reich is not cited to back the sentence. None of those sources are. Each one instances 'aspects' of the fact that this topic was ' rarely studied, forgotten, overlooked, made invisible or deliberately suppressed until recent decades.' That is what I replied to Crainsaw. Morris-Reich makes many points, but is cited here for noting an egregious omission of a very painful fact in Ruppin's diaries. In the Hebrew and English editions, this core point is textually invisible, elided, suppressed, or whatever. I don't know why (well I do. I know the extreme precision demanded of any scholar charged with editing a book, and a repeated omission like this would led to strong remonstration in scholarly review. Once, an oversight, twice no accident, but deliberate etc. ) but this bears very precisely on the point the sentence makes. And I warmly suggest to you to download, if you haven't yet, Bloom's book (by the way Morris-Reich reviewed it, somewhat critically. I'll add that eventually in a note if I can wean myself off the talk page for a day or two) and read it.Nishidani (talk) 16:25, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

It seems to me that if none of the sources say what the sentence says, then yoking them together in this way is precisely tendentious: it’s adding two and two to make five. Better to say what they actually say, to allow readers to form their own interpretation. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:49, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Nicosia

I must ask again, in the 5th reference, by Francis Nicosia, in the book Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, on the cited pp. 1-2, where does he say something which supports the statement: "Many aspects of the role of race in the formation of Zionist concepts of Jewish identity were rarely studied, forgotten, overlooked, made invisible or deliberately suppressed until recent decades."? The only thing he said was "This study looks at a somewhat different confrontation, one that was perhaps not as direct, formal, or even openly public, but that was, nevertheless, real, with significant consequences for the Jews of Germany during the Third Reich. It was the relationship of a volkisch German nationalism and anti-Semitism, and the various political movements they spawned, to Zionism, a volkisch Jewish nationalist ideology and movement that started from some of the same philosophical premises as German nationalism with regard to nationality, national life, and the proper definition and organization of peoples and states in the modern world. Few attempts have been made to consider the nature and impact of their responses to each other, within the context of the pressing questions of Jewish life in Germany prior to the Holocaust." Crainsaw (talk) 14:13, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Actually thanks for reminding me of that. It was a placeholder note which I intended to improve. I'll improve the page range (there's morelater in Nicosia's book) but for the moment,

Nicosia presents his study as rather different from the mass of works published on the German-Jewish relationship. Most (earlier) treatments of this encounter contrasted German ethno-nationalism and anti-Semitism to Jewish liberalism and desire for assimilation and emancipation.’ Scholarship tended to treat these two as diametrically opposed and incompatible world views. (p.1)

He describes his own new study from a different angle as one that examines this picture of a mutually exclusive face-off given in most studies(This study looks at a somewhat different confrontation p.2)

That is, he will outline evidence for precisely the opposite of what most earlier treatments have done, by examining the relationship between ‘völkisch German nationalism’ and the ‘völkisch Jewish nationalist ideology’ of Zionism. Both shared some identical philosophical premises and

Few attempts have been made to consider the nature and impact of their responses to each other, within the context of the pressing questions of Jewish life in Germany prior to the Holocaust.’ p.2, see also p.6.

If you read the rest of the chapter, you will note how Nicosia goes to great pains, because the topic touches on the inherent sensitivity in any consideration of the ideological and practical relationship between Zionism and anti-Semitism in modern German history,(p.7) to clarify that this consonance of key points in these respective worldviews of German ethnonationalists and Zionists must not be interpreted maliciously. I.e.

the reluctance of post-Holocaust discourse to recognize the significant impact of völkisch ideas on German Jewry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.p.7

And again,

in the aftermath of the Holocaust, many have found it inconceivable, intellectually and emotionally, that any Jewish interests might in any way have converged with those of German nationalism and anti-Semitism, (p.8)

I'll make a quick adjustment adding those pages. Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 15:38, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

The material presented here doesn’t show that Nicosia said previous scholars omitted/suppressed/etc aspects of race. It shows that he thinks he has a radically different interpretation of the history. Can you quote the bits that support the sentence footnoted? BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:52, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Falk

Where on earth does Falk's book, Zionism and the Biology of the Jews, on pp. 100-101, did he say anything about suppression, neglect or anything similar of Zionist race concepts? Crainsaw (talk) 14:50, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Already in the early nineteenth century, “there was lively interest in the lost Jewish kingdom, especially among the Jewish Russian scholars,” and interest in Khazaria intensified in the second half of the century (Sand 2009, pp. 230–231). But, apparently, fear of compromising Russian nationalism on the one hand, and Jewish Ashkenazi ethnic group identity on the other hand, combined to suppress researching such claims both in the Soviet Union and among Jews.pp.100-101

I.e.Sensitive to Russian ethnonationalist sensitivities, Jewish scholars themselves suppressed their research on the nexus. It differs from the others because it is not self-censure of one's ethnic past's troublesome realities, but censuring one's publication of details of the past for fear such articles/books might provoke an antisemitic backlash in the Soviet Union.

That's a bit iffy, if you like, and I have no interest in defending it, even though I think it defensible in the larger perspective of how Zionist and Ashkenazi debates on Jewish origins reflect or are subject to political pressures. Theories about a putative Khazar link to Ashkenazim caused massive upset twice, in the mid-70s and 2011-2012, and what attracted my eye in reading that passage in Falk was the parallel of the way the idea Russia owed substantial debts culturally and ethnically to Jewish Khazars provoked the ire of Russian ethnonationalists to the point of clamping down on the debate, suppressing it. It's an interesting byline, but not necessary to the present article's focus.Nishidani (talk) 16:02, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

He’s talking about research on Khazars? This is using the idea of “the nexus” (a term he doesn’t use) in quite a stretched way. This should definitely not be here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:55, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Bob.Diannaa just told us a few days that we paraphrase rather than repeating key terms in sources. So this is fallacious. As I stated, that doesn't need to go into the article. And indeed isn't there.Nishidani (talk) 10:25, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Sicher

@Crainsaw. What do you think of the following?

This book contributes to that discussion by opening up previously locked concepts of the relation between the terms “color,” “race,” and “Jews”, in the global discourse of multiculturalism, Hybridity, and diaspora. Sicher 2013 p.2

I take that to mean that the book explores three topics each of which had been hermetically sealed off from the other two in earlier scholarship. 'Locked up 's a rather strong term suggesting some conceptual fencing which has avoided any cross-contamination between what the contributors of Sicher's volume consider to be intrinsically related topics. I.e. many Jews are 'coloured' (but that has been ignored in the standard Ashkenazi narrative); 'race' has been kept distinct from discourse on 'Jews' (and their various skin-pigmentations as an identity marker). Actually, those elements are intertwined in the pre-1945 Zionist and anti-Semitic literature on Jews, so on reading Sicher's statement, I wasn't surprised, though happy to see that modern discourse is now confident enough to allow a multicultural vision of Jews in all of their variegated complexity. Sicher's phrase in short, is close to the kind of revision of silence the several adjectives from sources I had marshalled point to. Perhaps you disagree on its relevance as a further citation in this context, but, whatever, I can recommend that book, safe in the acquired assurance that you are an editor who does take the trouble (if it is a 'trouble' to exercise one's curiosity) to actually read up on a topic.Nishidani (talk) 21:38, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

:"In the global discourse of multiculturalism, hybridity, and diaspora." is the important part, it's not about the concepts of race in Zionism, but rather the wider global discourse. Crainsaw (talk) 08:01, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Familiarize yourself with the whole source, Sicher and the subsequent array of articles.Nishidani (talk) 09:54, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I’m familiar with this book. It attempts to insert Jewishness into live humanities debates about critical race theory (not debates about biological race, although Sander Gilman’s preface relates the book to those debates). Although I believe Sicher is a Zionist, the book does not look at Zionism or make an argument about how Zionist history has been framed in the scholarship. It faces a completely different direction. Looking at uses of the word “Zionism” in the book, the few examples mostly refer to how non-Jews produced racist images of “Zionism” (see eg p.19). Genetics seems to be mentioned twice in the book, p.219 and pp.234-5, neither in connection to Zionism. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:19, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Sander Gilman's absolutely authoritative and we can take his word for it that this is part of the discourse. Nishidani (talk) 10:25, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Yea Gilman is authoritative and his preface may have useful content for this article. However, his preface says nothing about Zionism and does not say anything supporting the sentence under discussion. BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:04, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Bob, I asked Crainsaw's opinion about a sentence. I didn't add it to the article, and have no intention of doing so. The essays deal widely with the issue of Jews and colour (race). The exercise is not one of searching for the word 'Zionist' but reading the material on how colour perceptions influence identity among Jews, which Sicher says has been a neglected issue. Nishidani (talk) 22:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Is how colour perceptions influence identity among Jews the topic of this article? BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:42, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Other sources

@Nishidani: I think we should remove Avraham 2013, since his statement "This topic has not been substantially addressed in the literature so far." is in the context of Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany restating debated over a Jewish Race among German Jews, since many of them weren't Zionists, and saw themselves as Germans first, Jews second. Many of them were secular, converted to Christianity, and thought they were superior to the Ostjuden. (See Fritz Haber for example)

We should also remove Morris-Reich, as I've explained above.

On both counts I beg to disagree. I'll have to recap the methodological error I noted you made in your first objection to this sentence above for you are now questioning virtually every source used without grasping the flaw in your reasoning. I'm not an idiot, and certainly not so inexperienced as to make such a serial set of misjudgments as that would imply (not that I take it you mean that). I have met and compromised on two points. But it strikes me that you misunderstand what aspects means in the generalization. You dutifully quote one by one each source for the adjectives in terms of the whole sentence, and say no source fits. All of these sources speak about some aspect of scholarly neglect for the general subject of Zionist approaches to race, be it Ruppin, or German Jews, etc., and your last point about German Jews in the 1930s not all being Zionists misses the point made by dozens of sources I don't need to cite, but which Avraham's text is alluding to. Namely, German Jews were, in a majority traditionally opposed to Zionism and ardently assimilitionist. The Central-Verein was bitterly attacked for decades by a very militant but small band of dissident Zionists. It bowed finally and reluctantly to acceptance of the Nazi language's use of race, designating itself as a Volkstum, which was precisely the position of the new regime and, coincidentally, of the former Zionist minority. That is also pointed out by Avraham. So, you repeatedly in my view, focus on one snippet cited from the sources, and test its resonance specifically against the generalization (ignoring the aspectual point every time), without assessing each in terms of the contexts in which they are embedded (in this case, what Avraham then goes on to state pp.365ff. You did the same with Nicozia: looked at pages 1-2, since that was all I provisorially cited, without reading the whole exposition from pp.1-9, which, had you done, would have clarified what he was alluding to, how the remarks on pp.1-2 were to be taken. It was important to note the inadequacy of the page range, and I was grateful and fixed it. The new additions from both Avraham and Sicher, esp. if you read thoroughly both the article and the related chapters, make it absolutely clear that topic neglect until recently is a guiding concern of these modern publications.Nishidani (talk) 09:18, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Let me illustrate by an analogy that shows the logical fault consistently at work in these objections. Perhaps that will make the matter clearer-

A chicken’s egg is ovoid (a), encased in a shell(b), formed of calcium carbonate(c), protein-rich(d), edible(e), with a yolk(f), and glair(g), and useful for vaccinal incubation(h).

What you do is say that (a) doesn’t mention (b/c/d/e/f/g/h), (b) doesn’t mention (c and a/d/e/f/g/h), c doesn’t mention (d or a/b/e/f/g/h), e doesn’t mention (a/b/c/d/f/g/h), f doesn’t mention (a/b/c/d/e/g/h), g doesn’t mention (a/b/c/d/e/f/h) and h doesn’t mention (a/b/c/d/e/f/g), and therefore each quote doesn’t support the general description. That is the flaw in your objection. Each source is intended to support one of the aspects of the general subject.Nishidani (talk) 09:48, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

In the modern genomic section, there's a reference to "T chromosomal". I think maybe that should be "Y" instead of "T"? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Revisiting "WP:SIGCOVYNTH"

@Drsmoo: has asked a few times to be shown a list of scholars who have published works on the full topic of this article, suggesting that 10 such sources would be adequate to firmly confirm that the topic passes a novel conflation of WP:SIGCOV and WP:SYNTH. Although I doubt that such a new standard of "WP:SIGCOVYNTH" would have consensus to become part of our encyclopedia-wide policies and guidelines, I have no objection to it being applied here.

Such a list was initially provided three weeks ago, containing 12 scholars – see here. Many sources have been added to the article since then, of which the more obvious ones are below:

• Weitzman, Steven
• Tanny, Jarrod
• Kohler, Noa Sophie
• Gissis, Snait

Drsmoo, please feel free to challenge any of these 16 names, following which I will bring quotes so we can discuss in more detail. But many (most?) of them are so obvious to those of us who have been following the building of this article for the last month that it doesn’t need me or anyone else to bring more evidence to this talk page. As an act of good faith, I would be grateful if you could name which out of the 16 here that you agree cover this subject adequately. We can then focus on the rest. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:40, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Not what was asked for. You were specifically asked to show how multiple sources indicate that genetic studies on Jews inherit from race science. As a starter, Weitzman explicitly details the significant differences between the two. The same is true for McGonigle.

Don’t ask others to do your work for you. As was explained before, there is no subject here. After weeks, your inability to demonstrate significant coverage speaks for itself.Drsmoo (talk) 12:58, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

An odd little straw man. That anybody, including Weitzman and McGonigle, puts pen to paper to detail the difference still makes this a demonstration that the subjects are linked in scholarship, because even in refuting a connection between fields, they affirm the discussion itself about the connection. More than that, this demonstrates that the page has balance by providing competing perspectives on the subject. So neutral too, yeah? Great! Iskandar323 (talk) 13:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Well said. Onceinawhile (talk) 13:26, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

If either of you had actually read the section, you would see that he is in fact explicitly rebuking Abu El-Haj. Drsmoo (talk) 13:28, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

…and in doing so confirming that this is a significant topic area. Onceinawhile (talk) 13:30, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Explain your logic Drsmoo (talk) 13:55, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I am happy to do so, but first please confirm if you have read the quote from Weitzman's conclusion that I posted above at 06:23 UTC today? Onceinawhile (talk) 13:57, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I’ve read it, it has no relevance to his rebuking the alleged connection between race science and genetics. Drsmoo (talk) 14:00, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

What do you think he means when he says "Present-day research is no different in this regard"? Onceinawhile (talk) 14:05, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

That “in this regard” they are asking the same questions of Jewish Origins, which would address Jewish integration and Jewish indigenousness. Drsmoo (talk) 14:19, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Correct - except you elided the key part with the use of "they". By "they" he is referring to his detailed descriptions of the race scientists of earlier times and the genetic scientists of today. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:28, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes that is the current thread, I did not “elide” anything. You asserted that this passage is a reversal of him rebuking Abu El-Haj’s claim that genetics is modern day race science, which is incorrect. Drsmoo (talk) 14:37, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Your interpretation of Weitzman seems to be entirely focused on a single cherrypicked passage of "To accept the critique of genetics as a revived form of race science, there are a lot of things one has to downplay or ignore" (p.308). Yet Weitzman clearly acknowledges the connection in multiple other places, e.g. "One of the more specific links between race science and genetics, in fact, is the prominent role that Jews play as a subject of research within each field." (p.289), "It is not clear how conscious early Israeli geneticists were of continuing the kind of research conducted by race scientists just a few decades earlier." (p.290), "From what I have read, this view of genetics and its historical relationship to race science, a perspective that stresses the lines of continuity between the two fields, is common among the anthropologists who write about genetics research, and Abu El-Haj’s argument is in line with this broader critique of the field" (p.309-310), and the "Present-day research is no different in this regard" quote above from his overall conclusion (p.324-325). Weitzman's discussion - with all its angles and nuances - is an excellent example of a scholar covering the topic of this article in all its glory. Will you acknowledge this? Onceinawhile (talk) 15:10, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

You’re conflating Weitzman stating that the two fields are asking the same questions, with him rebuking the claim that population genetics is modern race science Drsmoo (talk) 15:44, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Drsmoo: bingo. This is the point. No-one except you is saying "that population genetics is modern race science". Everyone, the article, its primary editors, and the sources, are saying "the two fields are asking the same questions". You are asking people to prove that the sky is red when the article says the sky is blue. Onceinawhile (talk) 16:00, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Drsmoo: The first time you (or anyone else) used the words "inherit from" anywhere in this month-long discussion was yesterday at 11:55 UTC, in a discussion you were having with Nishidani. You were then told by Nishidani, and another editor, Selfstudier, that such a claim is a misrepresentation of this article. Whether or not Nishidani and Selfstudier are correct, what is definitely incorrect is your claim of what I was specifically asked for by you. Remember, your 28 July claim that the article’s “general thrust [is a] claim that genetic studies of Jews are "Zionist" and inherited from Racial Science” was also met with a request for proof, which a week later has still not been forthcoming. In the face of 16 high quality sources which each cover the scope of this article, you have now moved the goalposts.

Your statement of "Don’t ask others to do your work for you" applies to the unsupported claims you have been repeating here – stating that the article doesn’t support what you say it does requires two forms of clear evidence from you: (1) proving that the article really does say or imply what you claim it does; (2) confirming that such position is unsupported or even opposed by the scholarship. So far you have done neither of these, but for your claim to hold it is your responsibility to do the work.

I will wait for your response, and if it doesn’t progress the attempt at collaboration between us I will be removing the remaining tag at the top of this article as having no consensus and no remaining credible claims to support it.

Onceinawhile (talk) 13:25, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I like the idea of SIGCOVYNTH, though this article would still pass in my opinion. Crainsaw (talk) 11:08, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

You were asked to provide “relevant quotations” to support sources attesting to a linkage between race science and genetics. You have been unable to do so. Drsmoo (talk) 13:52, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Drsmoo: I am happy to do so in the context of all 16 sources above. In order to save time, and to show good faith, I would ask that you list out which of the 16 you already accept makes the clear link. Onceinawhile (talk) 13:55, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Abu El-Haj Drsmoo (talk) 13:57, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Drsmoo: are you saying that is the only one of the 16 you believe makes the link? Onceinawhile (talk) 13:59, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I’m not interested in playing games. You have failed to demonstrate that this connection is notable. I am providing you an opportunity to do so. Per Weitzman it is Abu El-Haj. If you are able to demonstrate otherwise, this is a great opportunity to do so.

Regarding the warning on neutrality, I’m not sure of your point. It can easily be re-added. Drsmoo (talk) 14:04, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Drsmoo: unless you are willing to work collaboratively, I am not going to spend my time trying to address your moving target. There are a good number of scholars in that 16 where the link is incredibly obvious - it is not rational for me to spend time trying to prove to you that the sky is blue, if you are unwilling to acknowledge it when you see it.

As just one example, the absurdity of suggesting that Falk doesn't make this link - which his entire book is about - is evidence that discussing with you is not a good use of time, and that your claims hold no merit. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:12, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

If that were the case, you would have already done so. You haven’t because you can’t, and we move on. Drsmoo (talk) 14:14, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Do you acknowledge that Falk makes the link? Onceinawhile (talk) 14:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the warning on neutrality, I’m not sure of your point. It can easily be re-added Yes it can and you have done so and I have removed it again because Once's point is that the onus is on you to produce evidence in support of maintaining it, continuously dodging the issue is not evidence. Selfstudier (talk) 14:48, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

You reverted within seconds. Were you sitting there pressing refresh and waiting to undo? If so, this takes tag-teaming to a new level.

The onus is not on me as I didn’t add the tag, nor am I the only editor who finds major issues with this article. Drsmoo (talk) 14:53, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Drsmoo. The above objection is incomprehensible, the intransigence, while switching terms, in not trying to concretely meet with other editors to find 'solutions' rather than endless backchat, unwikipedian. You keep talking in two-liners about other people needing to assume a 'burden' of work/proof, while adding almost zero to the text. That last point is understandable, since you appear to reproach its very existence. A talk page aims to discuss major issues, and reach consensual solutions. When numbered, your 'major issues' have been addressed. Among new accusations there is one about 'tagteaming' suggesting you believe this is some sort of ganging-up. There is no ganging-up. A majority of active editors simply cannot see, after these exhaustive exchanges, any reason to maintain a tag that applied to a very primitive outline of this topic. If some NPOV issue can be now raised, it can go back but only after a serious attempt has been made first of all to enlist other editors in solving point by point the bulleted problems you or anyone else might still detect in the text. Nishidani (talk) 15:18, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile:, @Selfstudier:Per Wikipedia:Tagging pages for problems, editors with a conflict of interest may not remove tags, and tags may only be removed when active discussion has ended or there is consensus to do so. If the tag is not restored within the next few hours this will be brought to AE. Drsmoo (talk) 19:03, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Please clarify what you mean by Onceinawhile having a WP:COI. As it stands, that looks like an insinuation that one editor's private life and work is, according to your personal knowledge, in conflict with the work they do on wikipedia. And it is an extremely serious, indeed threatening, vexatious remark on a page where urbanity has been the general tone of discussions. Nishidani (talk) 19:26, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

There is consensus. The hollow protests of one, unsubstantiated by meaningful follow-up and unfurnished by specifics, does not an active discussion make. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:15, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

There certainly is not consensus. There are multiple editors actively demonstrating that this article is non-neutral in multiple areas. Even if there were consensus, editors with a conflict of interest may not remove tags. Drsmoo (talk) 19:24, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Again, explain what you mean by a conflict of interest in pinging just one editor. That expression on wikipedia has a very specific meaning, and your use of its suggests you know something about Onceinawhile no one else here knows, which makes his editing suspect.Nishidani (talk) 19:29, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Both Onceinawhile and Selfstudier were pinged. Was there a typo? I interpret conflict of interest in this context to mean related to an interest in the article and not personal at all. It is tendentious because of the manner in which it was done. If not restored, we will see if AE agrees. Drsmoo (talk) 19:35, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Please read WP:COI, which as noted by others, has specific connotations on Wikipedia. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:46, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Is there an admin we can Ping to clarify this? Drsmoo (talk) 19:48, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I suggest we ask an admin to opine on the comment made above that this takes tag-teaming to a new level. That is a blockable claim, which I had expected to be retracted, but it is still there. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:50, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I’ll modify my comment Drsmoo (talk) 20:01, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

It began as tag added by Tombah who after a few edits, disappeared, and therefore was 'not involved in the article's developmentì. It is extremely difficult to find in the edit history significant evidence that editors who think it violates POV have tried to develop the article towards NPOV. 3 weeks ago, after Onceinawhile had systematically answered and edited the text to satisfy the bulleted objections raised by Drsmoo, the latter admitted:

At a rough glance, much of the article is much more balanced now. Definitely an improvement. Drsmoo (talk) 00:46, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

The article review has been completed, with a consistent rewriting taking in objections raised on the talk page from July 15 to 7 August. Active discussion has moved to changing the name, but there are, as far as I can see, no outstanding issues raised which have not been arduously discussed and addressed by modifications of the text. The logical move, as I said, at this point, since we effectively have an article totally different from the one which copped the POV badge of shame at the very outset, when it was a stub, for editors who still find NPOV problems here to list those that, in their view, remain.One should not use, as a last resort, threats of AE action against goodfaith editors, if one is not satisfied with the state of an article.Nishidani (talk) 19:23, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

There is not consensus here yet. Several editors on this talk page are disputing neutrality. Until this subsides, the tag should remain. BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:29, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Is there an active discussion that presents discrete, substantive issues that remain unaddressed? There are plenty of ongoing discussions bemoaning the scope and the title, but that is not the same thing as outstanding issues with balance. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:56, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@Bobfrombrockley: please could you set out your remaining concerns? If they are primarily about the scope, your thoughts on the works of the 16 scholars listed earlier in this thread would allow us to move forward. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:02, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Having taken responsibility for the tag, kindly explain the neutrality issues, there cannot be a situation where a tag is being edit warred in without the expression and resolution of said issues. Selfstudier (talk) 09:49, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

“Having taken responsibility for the tag”

What? This is getting bizarre. Drsmoo (talk) 13:15, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Come, come now. Stop trying to raise the temperature in the room by insistent hair-splitting. 'having taken responsibility for the tag' refers to Bob's judgment that 'the tag should remain'. In any game, if a player shouts 'foul', and several others disagree, any other party stepping in to support the claim of 'foul' takes on a 'responsibility' in the purest etymological sense of that word, i.e., he lies 'under an obligation to answer', to give reason for his support. (I guess now we are in for an humongous thread on the concept of responsibility, rather than doing something practical, i.e., responding to a legitimate request that these suspicions of NPOV violations be clarified, so we can fix them) Nishidani (talk) 13:51, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Yesterday you called an editors edit “embarrassing” because they disagreed with you. And you’re complaining about “raising the temperature”? Yes it is odd to bludgeon someone into “explaining” over and over again. There is far too much bludgeoning occurring here. Multiple editors are raising serious issues with this article and each time they are bludgeoned. Not to mention removing tags mid discussion/mid bludgeon, then another editor reverts within seconds It is becoming untenable. Drsmoo (talk) 14:01, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Do comment at the talk page of any editor regarding bludgeoning or any behavioral complaint.

Meanwhile, the wait continues for input on the serious issues with this article that require a POV tag.

Multiple editors are raising serious issues with this article Please point me to where they have been raised and not dealt with? Selfstudier (talk) 14:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Drsmoo. Is that a preliminary to some AE complaint (WP:Bludgeon)? Drop the flagwaving. I read the thread through from top to bottom again today, and there is very little evidence that requests for more details about the putative defects or bias of the article, so that the ostensible issues can be fixed, have been forthcoming. Every day I talk for an hour, socially, with local tradesmen mates about how to fix things, any common piece of household technology. Mention some problem with the washer, or TV, or antennae, and they put their heads together and nut out one or two solutions. Some people at tables nearby use the occasions, as they listen in, to keep complaining about the cost of laundry, the taxes on televisions, the dysfunctional changes in antennae frequency due to the incompetence of the group controlling transmissions. They prefer to vent their exasperation rather than figure out solutions. All very interesting (and we all need at times to work some steam off), but we then get back to the nittygritty, because whingeing is pointless. The aim is to make things work. Wikipedia is the same. If something is wrong with an article, you fix it. And if it works for me, for one, but doesn't for you, I need to know exactly, precisely, what is wrong in the wiring, because if the complainant can't tell me, I can't fix it. Nishidani (talk) 14:30, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@Drsmoo: we were starting to make progress yesterday but you have left two questions unanswered so far – see my comments above at 14:16 and 16:00 yesterday. You have yet to convince a majority of editors that there is any substance to your concern – I am open minded but you will need to do more than just make unevidenced claims. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:51, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

a number of editors have raised concerns about cherrypicked quotations and tendentious use of sources that frame the content so as to present a thesis rather than provide neutral, encyclopaedic coverage of a topic. It is highly unusual for Wikipedia articles to take the fiord this article takes, with the encyclopaedic content (“History”) preceded by a long literature review (“Overview”). A small number of editors, apparently seeking to “prove” that genetics belongs in the same article as early Zionist race science, have worked hard to mine the (parts of) sources that present this thesis, rather than reflecting the weight of existing scholarship on a clearly defined topic. BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:13, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@Bobfrombrockley: you appear to be using more emotive language that usual: "worked hard to mine", "fatal issues" (below). I suspect you have some understandable fatigue with this discussion, but could I ask you to try one more time to put feelings aside and work together on achieving a mutual understanding? There is no reason why we should have reached different understandings of the same sources - where I think the theme of this article is central to a significant number of sources, you do not. So rather than trading claims, could we spend some time together working methodically through the evidence? Onceinawhile (talk) 22:24, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry I’m just trying to summarise the issues raised to show there is still a dispute. I do not assume bad faith and appreciate the diligence of some editors’ research here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:32, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@Bobfrombrockley: understood. Do you acknowledge that views from a month-old discussion where at least half the editors admitted or implied having not read the sources, and where the article has significantly changed since then, can no longer be seen as useful in ascertaining whether there is still a dispute?

What we need to be able to move forward is a diligent editor like yourself to engage in discussion to support your own view that the article is non-neutral. Otherwise we are left to shadows. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:39, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

No I don't acknowledge that Onceinawhile. A month is not a long time here, given most of us have other things to do. An AfD only closed - as no consensus - on 19 July, in which roughly half the participants argued the article shouldn't even exist. It is unfair and an assumption of bad faith that these latter did not put enough time into "reading the sources" to have a valid opinion. Moreover, this a hard talk page to participate in because of the sheer volume of content, overwhelmingly from a very small number of editors. We should not misread asymmetry in the volume of words on a talk page for consensus. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:18, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

It’s problematic to claim there’s no dispute when multiple editors have raised concerns with the article. I’m fine with asking someone to substantiate their assertions, but it’s different when they’re asked to substantiate them over and over and over again. Particularly when under the pretext of asking them to satisfy you or you’ll do such and such. No one is obligated to satisfy you, one has to accept that editors have different viewpoints. Drsmoo (talk) 01:24, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

You have been asked over and over again to substantiate the perceived balance issues with the page only because you have repeatedly failed to do so when asked. As such, your dispute appears to be a hollow one supported by mere conjecture. At the same time, in this thread, you pointed to the presence on the page of contrarian sources that argue against the underlying premises of the subject, thereby demonstrating that a level of balance is already being achieved. Amid this evidence for balance and a lack of evidence for imbalance, how is anyone supposed to agree that there is an ongoing issue? Iskandar323 (talk) 05:20, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Actually I provided a long list of article issues. The response was a string of personal attacks, followed by claims that the issues were addressed. Requesting that editors restate the same unaddressed issues (that the article reads like a thesis rather than exploring a cogent subject) is problematic. It casts the editor making the demands as their own arbiter, who can then judge in their own favor. No one is obligated to satisfy you, especially not repeatedly. You must AGF and accept that people have issues with the article. If there is an impasse, the way to resolve it is to solicit more feedback, perhaps by an RFC. Drsmoo (talk) 13:27, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

All you need to do is link the previous comment with this list that you think was left unaddressed. Doing that would literally be quicker than writing any of these other comments. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:41, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I see Bob has restored the tag without replying to a request he clarify what he thinks is a lack of neutrality. I read the article twice today, looking purely for NPOV problems. I can't see them. That may be my eyesight, so I too ask that anyone who thinks there is a lack of balance help us zero in on it, to make the necessary adjustments. As to 'no consensus', I read the whole talk page in its various threads. 95% of it consists of exchanges between Drsmoo and several other editors. Drsmoo, as the Irish say (it is a compliment) has 'fought the good fight', arguing that the page shouldn't exist, is a travesty and all WP:SYNTH. Several others have, here and there, on specific issues, raised their respective criticisms, which have been addressed. In two cases, I think it fair to say that the complaints were based on a manifest logical fallacy arising from a confusion about policy. As far as I can see, specific objections haven't singled out neutrality but suggested an original sin, a formative flaw. Pharos thinks the article should be split, or retitled in such a way a split would then be necessary. I'll tell you now: a split is technically impossible without seriously maiming the two articles that hypothetically would have to be reconstructed out of the shambles. The best solution, were that the consensus, would be to have another AfD and cancel the article. It wouldn't worry me much. I'd just make a copy and put it into my files. When I work here, one motivation is to educate myself further by filling in the yawning gaps of my sketchy knowledge of this and that, so that, at the end, the rags and tatters of a promiscuous reading finally take shape, under the pressure of method, to provide myself with a coherent grasp of a logically organized, historically informed, overview. I've learnt a lot, and I cannot allow myself to be disappointed if several other readers say there's nothing there but a clumsy patchwork* of scholarly snippets that the broader public has no need to know about.Nishidani (talk) 15:34, 8 August 2023 (UTC) Whoops, there I go again, making a classical allusion that no one will understand. (Wilamowitz once berated Lachmann for treating the Iliad as if it were "ein übles Flickwerk", a 'wretched patchwork'. There's nothing epic about this article, as opposed to the epical length of the talk page discussion. Just a banausic summary of an infra-Jewish controversy the broader public might be interested in. Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

It is not reasonable to expect all other editors to be able to reply to all requests within hours. It’s also difficult to respond to the volume of content on this talk page. I have now replied above. There is clearly no consensus here, as evidenced in the AfD recently closed as “no consensus”, in which around 50% of participating editors thought there are fatal issues with the page. BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:17, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

The relevance of that AfD has all but faded into insignificance at this point given that it was launched a month ago when the page was in a formative state. Now the page is unrecognisable as the same piece of content. Whether or not the time since is short, the subsequent development of the page has been monumental, and so I fail to see how anything raised in the prior AfD, which pertained to how the page was then, addresses its present state. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:51, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

The AfD closed almost three weeks ago. Since then the article has grown from 62,000 bytes to 134,000, doubled in size as it was redrafted, in response to questions and concerns at the AfD, and issues raised continually on this talk page. So we have another article, far more fully documented, and carefully crafted. Editors are still striving to isolate and address outstanding issues which some allude to as existing here. Unless, we are provided with the requested details of what remains to be fixed, continually referring to the status-quo ante constitutes disruptive stonewalling. Nishidani (talk) 07:45, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's a substantially different article, but three weeks is not a long time, and the core objection, that the reliable sources are framed in a way that develops an argument rather than gives an encyclopedic overview of a given topic, remains un-addressed.

For example, as I noted above without response, it's highly unusual for the body of a WP article to be preceded by a long literature review which tells the the conclusion of the article. The article would make a brilliant original contribution to the literature but is simply not a Wikipedia article. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:23, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I think this discrete point, which raises potentially valid questions about page structure and accessibility, could be better discussed in its own thread. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

neutrality

The restored tag reads:

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page.

Okay, though it should read 'has been disputed'. Please list what parts of the article violate NPOV, in bulleted mode, so we can handle this one by one. Nishidani (talk) 15:31, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

See above. BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:18, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

No, Bob. That is not an answer. And even were it, there is no link. It is disruptive to refer to 416,726 bytes of multiple threads as if they constitute a focused reply to a specific question. So, I repeat, could you kindly sum up, NPOV issues not addressed on the talk page which therefore remain outstanding, and require fixing. Not opinions, but evidence for imbalance.Nishidani (talk) 07:24, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

There are two editors supporting the tag - Drsmoo and Bobfrombrockley. They both claim that there are not enough sources supporting the core subject of this article. The only way to ascertain whether they are correct is to engage in detailed discussion regarding the sources which have been brought that explicitly cover the core subject. I have provided an illustrative list of 16 sources, but so far both Drsmoo and Bobfrombrockley have not shown willingness to substantially engage. They have not said it but I suspect the problem is that it will require a meaningful amount of time and effort from either of them. But there is simply no other way to resolve whether their claim is correct - it doesn't matter how many quotations the primary editors of this article bring, unless Drsmoo and Bobfrombrockley make the time to read each source in full they will not be satisfied that the quotes have not been cherrypicked. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:05, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I'll say here something similar to what I said at ANI. If the page has gotten to where the major writing is pretty much finished, save for some ongoing gnoming, then it becomes time to decide whether the tag stays or goes. But I'm not sure that we're there yet. In #Opposition to Zionism, below, you just pointed out that another author needs to be added to the page, something I'm quite happy to allow more time for. Until then, I think there's a two-way street. If some editors are still making edits that might affect the focus and scope of the page, they should have as much time as they want to work on that – but as long as that's going on, other editors should be allowed to have the tag remain. Between now and then, Drsmoo and Bobfrombrockley would do well to make as clear as possible what they want to see changed. But if their concerns remain unclear, no one else should have to worry about reading their minds. When editors feel that the page is far enough along that we know the focus and scope, then we can collectively decide whether to remove the tag. And that's not something that involves a veto. It's a matter of consensus. For now, my own input to that consensus is that the tag should stay, because I do not yet know what will be included or excluded from the page. Once we do know those things, I expect to support removing the tag. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:32, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

In short, the POV tag should remain because we don't know if the page is stable, since further tweaks may occur that change its focus and scope. That means that all wikipedia articles should have a POV tag, because the nature of articles on wikipedia, if they are not FA, allows for continual changes and updating. So essentially, the implication is that, uniquely, this article can never shake off its POV tag as long as it is subject to modifications. The 'focus and scope' will change only if a RM alters the title, however. So the conditions set are impossible. Just as the refusal by Drsmoo and BobfromBrockley to come out and state what are the remaining NPOV problems make any goodfaith attempts to remedy putative POV problems impossible/otiose. These are two catch-22 conditions that ensure the article will be perennially paralysed. Nishidani (talk) 05:35, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

There is certainly a whiff of Catch-22 in the proceedings. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:56, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not basing that on not knowing if the page is stable. All it would really take is if you, Nishidani, were to say that you are done for now with major revisions, so the focus and scope of the page are as you intended it to be when you said that you were beginning those revisions. Once we are there, there's no longer any reason to wait before discussing when to remove the tag, and no longer any reason to wait before discussing a page renaming. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:34, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

By my very rough count, something like 23 editors have commented on this talk page in the last month. Of these, I believe 9 have raised serious concerns about the neutrality of the article, while 5 have defended it from those concerns. Of the ~23, however, 8 are responsible for the overwhelming majority of comments, split 50-50 in to the two camps, although not all equally contributing to the volume of words here. I might have got those numbers slightly wrong, but there’s no reading of that which says we have consensus that the article has achieved neutrality. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:15, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I believe the real question is how many of those 9 have actually bothered to come back in the last three weeks (after the first week of IP-curried notice board furore). Iskandar323 (talk) 12:10, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

That is the same as my count. But most of them disappeared after giving their impression, and very few have 'stayed the course' for the last three weeks of hectic revision. At the moment we have three editors who see problems, and four who do not. Trypofish has been forthcoming on why he thinks the tag should remain. Neither you nor Drsmoo will do so. Both of you refer to the history of the page, reflecting comments made when it was primitive to comments, with far fewer particupants, now that it is completed more or less. So, Bob, accept that the request is in good faith and help us out. Nishidani (talk) 08:26, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Nishidani:, are you happy with the lead as is? If so, then I think we should proceed to a formal RM discussion to see if we can produce a consensus on the title. This may help with the Catch 22 situation. Selfstudier (talk) 11:55, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Nope, I'm not 'happy' with the lead. I'd reduce it drastically, in summary style covering in sequence the sections of the article, without notes. Conditions of editing at the moment do not allow one to do that. Nishidani (talk) 13:44, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

You keep asking me this even though the concerns I've repeatedly raised have not been responded to, so I'll repeat myself again, even though there is too much repetition on this page making it hard to navigate.

In short, the article is threaded around a thesis and not an encyclopedic overview of a topic. Crudely, the thesis is that early Zionism, born partly in reaction to pseudo-scientific racial antisemitism and in a period when race thinking was dominant, had a racial view of Jewish identity and that after the war when race thinking was discredited this racial view shaped Zionist/Israeli genetics.

For example, (a) we've already looked, in the "Sources" section of this talk page, at the somewhat SYNTHy footnote 1, which adds up lots of sources to make a claim that exceeds what any of them actually say.

For example, (b) the article lead concludes with a tendentious snippet from a footnote by Falk that Zionism is unique (despite key sources on whom the article later depends, such as Burton and McGonigle, explicitly placing Zionism in comparison to other nation-building projects, e.g. in Lebanon and UAE).

For example, (c) as I've mentioned already, the body of the article is (unusually) preceded by a long literature review ("Overview"), which articulates the article's thesis.

For example, (d) the "Early Zionism" section gives a well-researched and compelling account of some Zionists (e.g. Ruppin, Nordau), undoubtedly important and undoubtedly grounded in race thinking - but gives the impression that they were exemplary of the movement as a whole, even though there is no discussion of whether similar viewpoints were expressed by e.g. Wolffsohn, Warburg, Syrkin, Borochov, Gordon, Katznelson, or Ben Gurion, or by Zionist congresses and institutions, or by organisations in the Yishuv. Without any such context, it leads the reader to assume that the Zionist movement was thoroughly raciological in orientation.

For example, (e) as several editors above have noted, the article radically changes topic in the second half of the body, veering to a fascinating discussion of genetics in Israel, premised on the thesis of continuity with earlier Zionism. Because it is entirely framed in terms of the thesis of continuity, rather than reflect the weight different issues are given in the literature, the sources are mined for elements which lean towards continuity.

For example, (f) if the article proceeded from an encyclopedic overview of a given topic (something like Zionism and race thinking) rather than a need to prove that the article has a valid topic, the weight given to sources would be rather different, with e.g. Gilman and Mosse taking up space alongside Efron and Hart, with more obscure specialist studies such as McGonigle, Lipphardt or Bloom taking up less weight.

Hope that helps. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:19, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I’d also like to add that a core issue with this article is framing mainstream, peer-reviewed, scholarly research as both “Zionist”, and connected to pseudoscientific race science. Unless the organizations sponsoring this research are explicitly Zionist organizations, and unless the studies themselves profess themselves to be race science, using Wikipedia’s voice, as a topic title no less, to call these studies/imply that these studies are “Zionist” and/or race science (and thereby ideological and unprofessional) is certainly a BLP violation, and arguably libelous. The same would be true of describing, for example, Abu El-Haj’s work as “anti-Zionist”. I do believe it’s possible to keep the information in the article and avoid these issues through changing the title and modifying the article’s structure. Drsmoo (talk) 14:13, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Where does anyone who had edited the article engage in 'framing mainstream, peer-reviewed, scholarly research as both “Zionist”, and connected to pseudoscientific race science'? Don't invent stuff that in rebuttal and counterrebuttal will jam this article with useless argufying. Bob has provided something to work on. Concrete, specific.Nishidani (talk) 14:22, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

This is not my point alone, Pharos made the same point “The problem with the current title is that it adds "genetics" in a sui generis way that implies a uniquely 21st century racialism is at work here much more than in other nationalisms” You hand-waved that away as well. I would add that if you’re concerned about “jamming” the talk page, valid and obvious issues with the article are not a problem. What is a problem is endless WP:FORUM non sequiturs that render the talk page noisy and hard to follow. Drsmoo (talk) 14:38, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Pharos never showed where in the text it was asserted that the multipli-sourced point that in genetics, in Azoulay's words, 'The umbilical cord of racial thinking has not been severed from the project of genetic research, and the subtle racial inflection contained within genetic research harbours political implications for questions that are actually socio-biological in orientation' in the context of Jews and genetics, constitutes or implies a 'sui generis' genetics 'uniquely 21st century racialism is at work here much more than in other nationalisms'. There is no evidence, no diff, no analysis, merely an inference or an impression, whose nasty subtext seems to be that Israel is being singled out.Nishidani (talk) 14:53, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Pharos: in case you’d like to respond. IMO, this is “Sky is blue” territory. Not only is the article title “Zionism, Race, and Genetics”, but multiple times it asserts in wiki voice that modern genetic studies on Jews are both “Zionist” and “race science”. A specific example is what in the source is specifically attributed to Kirsh, and describing studies from 60-70 years ago, in this article is actually written in plain wiki voice and applied to all studies. “The interpretation of the genetic data has been influenced by Zionism and Anti-Zionism, both consciously and unconsciously”. Whereas the source says “during the 1950s and early 1960s Israeli geneticists found many genetic differences between the diverse Jewish groups gathering in Israel. Yet Kirsh (2003) argues that an unconscious internalisation of Zionist ideology by the Israeli geneticists of the time led them to emphasise points of similarity rather than points of difference between the studied groups, thereby in tum reinforcing Zionist convictions."

I’ll also add that I’m done editing for today, so do not read into a non response. Drsmoo (talk) 15:16, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Since Kirsh's work is cited by numerous authorities it is in wikivoice. This complaint could have been addressed by a simple edit adding 'according to Kirsh'. But, no, you did not do that. You prefer to cite it as it stands as proof of an abuse. That is not how wiki articles are written. They are written collaboratively and in good faith, not by holding back something that worries you from the page, as evidence of poor editing. Really!Nishidani (talk) 21:04, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

If you wish to make wild assertions, whipping up fantasies out of thin air, such as:

it asserts in wiki voice that modern genetic studies on Jews are both “Zionist” and “race science”

provide evidence, diffs. That is rubbish, a gross distortion, that's beginning to look deliberate.Nishidani (talk) 20:49, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it is very helpful. Thanks Bob. The best way to reply is, under each bulleted point, to cite sources alone. Each point you raise can be justified by the numerous sources, and for brevity for the moment, I'll cite just one.

*(I)Crudely, the thesis is that early Zionism, born partly in reaction to pseudo-scientific racial antisemitism and in a period when race thinking was dominant, had a racial view of Jewish identity and that after the war when race thinking was discredited this racial view shaped Zionist/Israeli genetics

(Ia)In chapter 6 , 1 investigate the link between science and the politics of Zionism. Zionist physicians used the language of race science to define the Jewish people, defend them against the latest wave of antisemitism, and revive what they regarded as the flagging Jewish identity of German Jews. This group, the most overtly politicized of the Jewish anthropologists, seemed less concerned with the normative methodology of race science, that is, comparative anthropometry (the results of which were often used to point to the superiority or inferiority of certain races) than it was with using the findings of science to effect internal social and attitudinal change among Jews. Elton 1994 pp.11-12; "This essay describes the effects of Zionist ideology on research into human population genetics carried out in Israel during the 1950s and early 1960s... The comparison reveals that during this period the Israeli human geneticists and physicians emphasized the sociological and historical aspects of their research and used their work, among other things, as a vehicle for establishing a national identity and confirming the Zionist narrative."(Kirsh 2003, p. 631

I guess you are intimating through italicizing and that you have spotted synth. No. When Nurit speaks of Zionist ideology's impact in the post-war period on Israeli population genetics, it is not her brief to make a divagation on what she means by 'Zionist ideology'. The context is what Zionists thought of with regard to the Jewish population, and that is explored by a dozen historical sources we use to that end. We don't make the connection. The sources do. Nishidani (talk) 14:12, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

This doesn’t really address my point at all. I happen to agree with the first half of the thesis (maybe even the second half - it’s not so squarely in my area of knowledge), but I don’t think an article should be organised in this way, even it’s not an accurate summary of the range of scholarship.

Some sources make this connection, but there are a range of positions and we can’t take a position ourselves. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:53, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I've bolded the passage since it contradicts precisely your point. I don't take a position. I paraphrase the positions taken by scholars who study this nexus.Nishidani (talk) 21:10, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

*(2)Many aspects of the role of race in the formation of Zionist concepts of a Jewish identity were rarely addressed, forgotten, overlooked, made invisible, sidelined or deliberately suppressed until recent decades

Footnote. Doron 1983, pp. 170–171; Morris-Reich 2006, pp. 1–2, 4–5; Gelber 2000, p. 133; Nicosia 2010, pp. 1–2, 6–8; Hart 2011, p. xxxiv; Avraham 2017, pp. 172–173; Avraham 2013, p. 356; Abu El-Haj 2012, p. 18.

The points you raise were made only by Crainsaw (under investigation, to what result is not yet known, for sockpuppetry by the way) at [8]

You supported Crainsaw that this was synth. I pointed out the logical error here. No one replied. Synth is about making inferences not in the sources. The line makes no inference. It selects the adjectives used respectively in 8 sources to describe aspects of topical neglect regarding race and Zionism in scholarship. In other words, an objection was made, minutely answered case by case, and then its logical fallacy was outlined, with no rebuttal. You are taking the existence of a dispute weeks ago as proof that the dispute is unresolved. Nishidani (talk) 14:43, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I didn’t reply because your response was a complex analogy whose relevance I didn’t get so replying would simply have been to repeat the point. (The sentence with the footnote is not loyal to the sources cited but exceeds them, adding up to a claim far greater than the sum of its parts.) Rather than us repeating our points to each other, I was hoping fresh editors might step in with their perspectives. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:00, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I think we will need an RFC, and I also think the amount of non sequiturs, WP:Forum posts and random asides are inhibiting the ability of people to comment on the article. Drsmoo (talk) 00:50, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

*(3)the article lead concludes with a tendentious snippet from a footnote by Falk that Zionism is unique (despite key sources on whom the article later depends, such as Burton and McGonigle, explicitly placing Zionism in comparison to other nation-building projects, e.g. in Lebanon and UAE)..

The text runs:-

Israeli geneticist Raphael Falk comments that he knows of no other example of an ethnic conflict where this effort to prove or disprove the "biological belonging" of modern Jews to the historical Land of Israel played such a role, suggesting that other such conflicts involved the pre-existence of distinct ethnic or religious entities that struggle for the same piece of land.

It is not tendentious. It is the opinion of one of the foremost genetic scientists of his day, and the foremost expert on the history of Zionism and the Biology of the Jews (the title of his 2017 book)

That is an informed critical assessment by the greatest expert on the topic. It does not say Zionism is 'unique'. It claims that to his knowledge as of 2016, no comparable effort of such intensity (resources, academic interest etc.,) has been conducted elsewhere so, (footnote) 'to prove the immanent biological belonging or non-belonging of communities to what is considered to be the Jewish entity.' It is an assertion of scale, not of anything 'sui generis'. It is perfectly appropriate to note that, because his authority in these connections bears far more weight than, so far, any other contributor to the debate.

If 'tendentious' means 'I don't like what this authority is quoted for,' therefore pass over it in silence, articles would collapse.Nishidani (talk) 15:12, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Indeed it doesn't say it's unique and only claims that to his knowledge no comparable effort was made - but the lead cited him to precisely say Zionism is unique and obscured the bit about to his knowledge until I edited it a couple of days ago to make it a little less POV.

Myself, I had to read "there is no other example known to me like the Zionists' of an intensive effort to prove the immanent biological belonging or non-belonging of communities to what is considered to be the Jewish entity" several times to try to grasp his meaning and am still struggling. It's an obscure and tangled aside in a footnote; it's not something we should be using to conclude the lead. This is an example of the article using cherry-picked quotes to push a POV. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:28, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

By the way, Lebanon has had a few studies, and we duly note the fact. The more imposing effort undertaken by started to get on its feet only as late as 2015 (McGonigle p.112). 8 years not all of them engaged in a biological mapping of Qataris, who don't even have a national identity tradition. Nothing certainly to measure up against the massive output on this in two centuries of modern Jewish tradition and 75 years of nationhood. Falk's statement is more than reasonable.Nishidani (talk) 15:25, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

*(4)as I've mentioned already, the body of the article is (unusually) preceded by a long literature review ("Overview"), which articulates the article's thesis.

The overview was designed specifically to come to terms with the striking evidence in the AfD that many wikipedians hadn't the foggiest notion that this controversy existed. One of its functions was (a) to clarify the antisemitic context out of which this particular Jewish/Zionist literature arose. People who come to an article like this should be forearmed not to make the silly conclusion that Jewish/Zionist thinking of their community as a nation/race grew in a vacuum, unprompted. It was a defensive countermeasure. Secondly (b) most will be unfamiliar with the topic, and therefore their ignorance is not at fault. Many scholars who work on this have noted that the topic in its various angles has suffered historically from neglect. There is no 'thesis' to defend. Both those points are explicitly made by the literature we use. There is simply an indispensable background sketch to alert readers to what will follow, a careful outline of the way these interwoven themes inflected early Zionist discourse. What you keep saying is a 'thesis' is merely a summary of the (a) theses of Jewish/Zionist thinkers on Jewish identity (b) as those are interpreted in secondary sources by, predominantly, scholars in Israel and the diaspora. In a thesis one must strive to find some interpretation not in the given set of references, nudge, under your supervisor's eyes, towards some original slant. There is nothing here that is not in the sources.Nishidani (talk) 15:41, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

This seems deeply problematic to me. An extensive literature review prior to the body was included, you're saying, to win an AfD debate? This is exactly the wrong way around for how we should build articles here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:31, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

*(5) the "Early Zionism" section gives a well-researched and compelling account of some Zionists (e.g. Ruppin, Nordau), undoubtedly important and undoubtedly grounded in race thinking - but gives the impression that they were exemplary of the movement as a whole, even though there is no discussion of whether similar viewpoints were expressed by e.g. Wolffsohn, Warburg, Syrkin, Borochov, Gordon, Katznelson, or Ben Gurion, or by Zionist congresses and institutions, or by organisations in the Yishuv. Without any such context, it leads the reader to assume that the Zionist movement was thoroughly raciological in orientation.

That's not a problem of synth, or a thesis. It is something that could readily be fixed, as long as we have sources which connect those figures to the story of race. The figures chosen were, per the sources, exemplary in early Zionism, the very forefront: Birnbaum the father of Cultural Zionism, Buber its premier philosopher, Nordau the man whose intellectual ascendancy was as charismatic as was Herzl's politically, who came up with muscular Judaism, Ruppin whose role in immigration policy and the development of Zionist institutions was second to none, until Ben-Gurion's ascendancy. Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism, politically, was to win the day, and dominate Israeli politics for the last four decades. On your last point the background showcases the comment made by Todd Endelman that, "[s]ome disputed the stability and permanence of racial traits and the existence of pure races. Others internalized racial thinking and then unconsciously reworked and subverted its premises. Still others accepted the idea of racial differences but turned conventional stereotypes on their head," and that is there precisely to disarm the reader of any impression they might entertain the notion that Zionism was 'thoroughly raciological in orientation.'

In short, (5) lends itself to an easy fix, if you are unsatisfied with Endelman.

*(6) as several editors above have noted, the article radically changes topic in the second half of the body, veering to a fascinating discussion of genetics in Israel, premised on the thesis of continuity with earlier Zionism. Because it is entirely framed in terms of the thesis of continuity, rather than reflect the weight different issues are given in the literature, the sources are mined for elements which lean towards continuity.

No it doesn't. There is no 'radical break' at all, because several scholars amply quoted, note the strain of continuity between the pre-war discourse on race, which was widespread, and not just Jewish/Zionist, and what occurred after the foundation of israel. Kureit documents that continuity as does Falk. 'Race' is discarded, but the focus on Jewishness shifts towards genetics, a serious science, but like all sciences, one embedded in a socio-political and cultural reality that exercised an influence on what was studied, and how population genetics was inflected by these concerns which were (a) to establish a science that grounded all Jews in the diaspora together in terms of biological heritage and (b) by the molecular biology of vertical descent, provide history and politics with the missing proof that Jews were direct descendants on the pristine Israelite/Jewish population of Israel/Palestine. If you can cite me one historian, who in any field focused on revolutionary upheavals, denies that the new regimen of affairs quickly reabsorbed traditions anchored in the earlier socio-political world that was overturned, I'd be happy to embark on that new intellectual adventure. As Burton, Wewitzman, Falk, Kirsh and other note, there is a 'radical change' in the biomedical technologies that became available, but considerable overflow in what they targeted in research, in the models they designed, of passionate concerns that were the earlier hallmark of Zionist/Jewish thinking. And lastly it is not 'entirely framed in terms of the thesis of continuity.' That entirely distorts the opening paragraph of the section.

The effect of Nazism and its genocidal policies discredited racial science and postwar genetics worked hard to distance itself from race science for both scientific and ethical reasons. In a four point Unesco declaration in 1950, any correlation between national /religious groups and race was denied, and it was affirmed that race itself was ‘less a biological fact than a social myth’.] The use of race still lingered on, nonetheless, in the anthropological literature,[ap] and highly influential geneticists such as Leslie Dunn and Theodosius Dobzhansky, who had been critics of race science, persisted in maintaining that races did exist, and substituted 'race' by 'populations'. According to the Israeli historian of science, Snait B. Gissis, an emotional barrier caused Israeli geneticists and medical researchers from 1946 to 2003 to take pains to avoid the term 'race' in their scientific publications.

That preliminary note, which doesn't mention Jewish/Israeli scientists as subscribing to the race-genetics continuum, but two eminent foreign (goyim if you like) eminences grises of the discipline, is written to ensure that what follows must not be taken to exceptionalize what took place in Israel. I'm surprised you missed this. It is only in the second half of the second paragraph that we note the point Kirsh made, which is widely accepted as a fair historical summary of that period's genetics, that 'the approaches adopted by Israeli geneticists at the time were ‘substantially affected by Zionist ideology’. Nishidani (talk) 16:48, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Re 5 (previously d): Yes, as I said this is an issue of POV not of SYNTH, and yes it easily fixed. If it were fixed, that would be one step towards making the article NPOV and thus towards removing the tag. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:34, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Re 6 (previously e): The continuity thesis you are defending seems to me to be of the "dinosaurs are not extinct because birds are descended from dinosaurs" variety. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:36, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

• (7)

  if the article proceeded from an encyclopedic overview of a given topic (something like Zionism and race thinking) rather than a need to prove that the article has a valid topic, the weight given to sources would be rather different, with e.g. Gilman and Mosse taking up space alongside Efron and Hart, with more obscure specialist studies such as McGonigle, Lipphardt or Bloom taking up less weight.

Bloom, Efron, and Hart directly acknowledge the important role Gilman's assistance or pathtaking scholarship has played in their work. Lipphardt cites him. Your point is, you prefer the fathers to the sons, even if the sons, their dads' careful education behind them, strike out on their own to complete what their fathers started.

If you know of materials in Mosse (whom we do refer to) or Sander Gilman's prodigiously erudite output of 80 books that deal with Zionism and race, race and genetics in a Zioonist context etc., bring them to bear, add them to the article. I don't own the article.

When Endelman, who in fact uses two works from Gilman on the ' The double bind in which Jewish scientists found themselves' writes:-

Jewish scholars and scientists were therefore forced to confront the new race science and, in the words of Todd Endelman, "[s]ome disputed the stability and permanence of racial traits and the existence of pure races. Others internalized racial thinking and then unconsciously reworked and subverted its premises. Still others accepted the idea of racial differences but turned conventional stereotypes on their head."[32]

readers will find this much easier going that consulting Gilman's wonderful but extremely intense works. For example, that idea is expressed by Gilman as follows:

‘None of the Jewish physicians involved in the debate about were able to separate the premise of biological determinism from the arguments about the “Jewish race” and achieve an understanding of what “predisposition” implies as an ideological construct. There can be externalization in the form of a romantic reversal and resultant transvaluation of categories. Thus the representations of control applied to the stereotyped group are internalized and seen as a positive attribute, Certainly there is no better fin-de-siècle example than Theodor Herzl’s reversal of the pejorative sense associoated with the label “Oriental” as applied to the Jews . .And finally, there can be a recontextualization of such categories. The qualities are accepted as valid but alternative explanations are sought….etc.etc. Sander Gilman,The Case of Sigmund Freud: Medicine and Identity at the Fin de Siècle, John Hopkins University Press 1993 p.221

No doubt you and I are comfortable reading that, but Endelman's paraphrase of Gilman's point looks more accessible. In checking my copies of two of Gilman's books, further, I couldn't find, at a quick glance, any mention of 'Zionism and race' or 'Zionism and genetics'. So faute de mieux, I had to exclude consideration of the above passage. This objection only has weight if you don't add material from those sources into our article. Nishidani (talk) 20:35, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

The problem here is not the neglect of Gilman as such, but about the way the article has been built in a fundamentally problematic way: looking for texts which mention all three terms together. If it proceeded organically from an obviously existing topic, it would be easy to go through Gilman's work and include the relevant materials. I wouldn't mind doing that, time allowing, if we settle on a clear topic focus; it seems pointless to do it now. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:40, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the 'fundamental flaw' which no one can document. There are over a dozen sources which are explicit that the topic does exist. Going through Gilman's work means selecting from 80 volumes, not to speak of articles, those passages where he links his studies to Zionism. Which book? His book on Freud just mentions that Freud like his almost nextdoor neighbour Herzl grew an 'Assyrian' beard to assert his 'oriental' origins, and not quake and conceal them. Gilman's book on Kafka mentions the Holy Land on p.230. I can see any treatment of Zionism. You would have to show which book of Gilman's deals with Zionism and race. One existing topic which has zero representation on wikipedia is the Jewish body in racial literature. There's a vast, extraordinarily detailed account of these racial stereotypes in Gilman's magisterial studies on the pathologization of Jewishness. There's an article just begging to be written. The 'clear topic focus' here is, as stated in the title, Zionism, race and genetics, which is a thematic triad authorized by Falk's 'Zionism, race and eugenics.' I'm wary of proposals that say, 'let's change the topic, and do something else'. Everybody on wikipedia is at liberty to develop a different topic focus and link it to this, with a note to the effect I'm going to do ***. See my sandbox and contribute if possible. There is no evidence, other than what you suggest you might do, that anyone here has any such intention of embarking on a project of the kind.By the way, someone should seriously look at the Sander Gilman wikibio. It is a disgracefully short stub, with no evidence anyone has ever read anything from Gilman. A genius writes 80 books on Jewish stereotypes, and nary a squeak from anybody that this huge mass of original and pathfinding reorientation of virtually the whole field furnishes anything of use to the many articles we have on these topics (I did cite him for Franz Kafka years ago, but only a snippet from a fundamental study). That is what editors should be doing, not wasting more time than is due on endless talk page litigation. Nishidani (talk) 15:56, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

“Zionism Race and Eugenics” is not a book or article. Rather it’s a chapter within Falk’s book, “Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism”. Drsmoo (talk) 16:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

"Jewish American critics"

Twice this paragraph, recently reverted, uses the weasel-phrase "Jewish American critics." Who are these nameless, monolithic critics? It's not enough to say that Burton refers to them. Andre🚐 04:39, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I wikilinked it, idk if that helps at all. Why do you think it is "weasel"? It's attributed and the identification is clear enough for the purpose. Selfstudier (talk) 10:14, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

"Jewish American critics" is not an attribution. That is too vague and unspecific. Akin to "some critics." Just because we know the critics are Jewish American doesn't un-weasel it. Andre🚐 17:38, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Does the linked article mention the American critics? BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:04, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

If Burtin says Jewish American critics and she’s a reliable source (she is) then it’s technically ok, even if it might be helpful to know who (eg if mainstream or marginal). BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:05, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

No, it's MOS:WEASEL, an unsupported attribution, biased, and unfair. It must be changed or removed. "Jewish American critics" is borderline anti-Semitic as a monolithic description. It'd be like if I wrote "the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action upset the blacks."Andre🚐 19:59, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

In Jewish studies, it is common to distinguish the views of American Jews from European Jews (and, later, Israeli Jews) from non-Jews, e.g., people write about the views of "American Jewish scholars" (or "supporters" or "critics", of Zionism or whatever) vs "European Jewish scholars", etc. Scholars study and write about the variation in views on Jewish topics amongst Jews and non-Jews in various parts of the world, e.g. in Holocaust scholarship, Zionist scholarship, Israeli/Palestinian conflict scholarship, etc. This isn't to say that any of these groups are monolithic; the groups are usually qualified, e.g. "some" or "most." But it's not borderline antisemitic--these distinctions are made by Jewish scholars as well as non-Jewish scholars. If a more specific attribution than "some [group] critics" can be sourced, the Wikipedia article should do that, but sometimes the sources just say "some critics," so that's all there is to summarize. Levivich (talk) 20:10, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

It's a violation of Wikipedia guidelines. Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch#Unsupported_attributions And yes it's problematic and borderline antisemitic to claim that When Arthur Koestler’s The Thirteenth Tribe (1976) propounded the thesis that the origins of the Ashkenazi might be found in the dispersion of the Turkic Khazars, the book encountered an extreme hostility especially among Jewish American critics. Though the book's genetic implications are no longer regarded as tenable, this severity of critical dismissal, according to Elise Burton, reflected an inability or unwillingness to take cognisance of a tradition of a racializing logic in Zionist discussions of a putative Jewish biolog Actually, the Khazar hypothesis is used by antisemites to question Jewish heritage. Andre🚐 20:14, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

"used by" does not mean "characterized by". Just as Wagner wrote fairly innocuous operas, yet first his music, and now his name, have taken on unsavory connotations. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:26, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

These things are determined by paraphrase of sources. Burton writes p.422

Unfortunately for Koestler, what had once been a viable, if not popular, hypothesis on the origins of Ashkenazim was received in 1976 as a polemic of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Koestler included an appendix to The Thirteenth Tribe stating, “whether the chromosomes of [Israel’s] people contain genes of Khazar or Semitic, Roman or Spanish origin, is irrelevant, and cannot affect Israel’s right to exist—nor the moral obligation of any civilized person, Gentile or Jew, to defend that right” (Koestler 1976, p. 223). But this disclaimer fell on the deaf ears of Koestler’s critics, who noted that the potential Khazar ancestry of Ashkenazim, the majority of the world’s Jewish population, had been repeatedly invoked by opponents of Zionism at the United Nations—including during a General Assembly vote in 1975, just months before his book’s debut, on a resolution that designated Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination” (Grossman 1976; Rosensweig 1977). American Zionists thus vehemently attacked Koestler’s work as a product of Jewish self-hatred. Ironically, they generally praised Patai and Wing’s The Myth of the Jewish Race (indeed, it won a National Jewish Book Award in 1976), even though Patai and Wing also acknowledged the Khazar hypothesis without as thoroughly endorsing it.'

It's nonsense to invoke 'antisemitism' borderline or not. I remember Leon Wieseltier's savage review in the New York review of Books. Burton states American Zionists not Jewish-American critics. I sometimes tire of the word 'Zionist' which means describing complex people only in terms of an ideology, something one should be careful about. The only thing that needs fixing is changing Jewish Americans to 'American Zionists'. 'some' etc. is to ignore what Burton is stating. That is the weasel word.Nishidani (talk) 20:57, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

That would indeed change the meaning and make it less problematic, Nishidani. Please change it accordingly. As you know, Jewish Americans and American Zionists are two radically different venn diagram bubbles. You also need to paraphrase more closely to this passage which discusses that the Khazar so-called polemic was viewed and criticized as antisemitic and anti-Zionist. Andre🚐 21:11, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Actually, Burton's usage perfectly justifies 'American Jewish'. I'm watching a film so I didn't quote what continues. It reads:

the critical response to their works, particularly within the Israeli genetics community, revealed what the authors themselves were unable or perhaps unwilling to recognize: the significant extent to which Zionism, like any other ethnic nationalism, relies on a racializing logic of biological ancestry. The publication of their books also coincided with a sea change in American Jewish attitudes toward Israel and Zionism. Prior to the 1960s, most American Jews had cultivated only lukewarm attachments to Israel, remaining largely focused on assimilation as a strategy for survival and advancement in the United States. In that context, Koestler and Patai’s anti-racist narratives of Jews as an admixed people could be warmly received. However, by the late 1960s (especially after Israel’s June War victory), American Jewish public support for and identification with Israel rapidly increased; as a result, American Jews increasingly absorbed and repeated Zionist narratives about Jewish ethnic distinctiveness and ancestral origins in the Middle East (Shain 2002). This sea change, which accounts for the mixed reception of the two books in the 1970s, is also reflected in the political and intellectual activities of some Jewish scientists at American universities. pp423-423

These apparent problems only arise when one does not check the source, but rather relies exclusively on the text given in the article. One cannot evaluate an article's text except by comparing the source, to see if the paraphrase is faithful or distorts. I prefer my original construal.Nishidani (talk) 21:22, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

This is quite a different statement because it's talking about general American Jewish attitudes and not specific critics. As far as Iskandar's edit, changing American Jews to Zionists is a good clarification, at least it's now broad-brushing an ideology and not an ethnoreligious identity.Andre🚐 21:25, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

No.You can only maintain that by ignoring the sentence 'This sea change, which accounts for the mixed reception of the two books in the 1970s. That throws light on what preceded which I bolded. 'American Zionists' were part of a trend in the American Jewish public' to support Israel so that'American Jews' increasingly absorbed and repeated Zionist narratives'. You prefer to restrict this to 'American Zionists' whereas Burton is quite clear that the vehemently negative reception of Koeslter's book reflected a trend among American Jews, not just 'Zionists'. Nishidani (talk) 21:57, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

No. Again, you're equating American Jews and American Zionists. American Jewish public support for Israel and Zionism rapidly increased. This much is clear from what you're posting. It does not say that American Jewish critics criticized Koestler. It says that American Zionists attacked Koestler. It says that Koestler had a mixed reception (doesn't mixed mean mixed, and not negative). You've distorted all of this to claim that American Jews attacked Koestler as a monolithic group. Which does allude to an antisemitic trope. American Jews, as a whole, don't do anything. They/we are not a monolithic group. At least Zionists are united by their support for Israel, and it's conceivable that the entire body of Zionists was critical of Koestler. You're assuming that American Jewish attitudes as a generalization can be used to claim that this means that American Jewish critics attacked Koestler. Nobody said that. Andre🚐 22:07, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

I was a reader of these things at the time. Most reviews came out from the US, and, naturally, were written by American Jews. Don't trust my memory. Just read around. E.g.

The American-Jewish reviews of The Thirteenth Tribe that I know of are very negative. Jits van Straten, The Origin of Ashkenazi Jewry:The Controversy Unraveled, de Gruyter ISBN 978-3-110-23606-4 2011 p.20

You realise all of this niggling fuss was caused by your odd belief that there was something antisemitic writing, quite appropriately, 'Jewish American critics' given what the source states? There is nothing antisemitic about 'Jewish-American critics'. The overwhelmingly majority of reviewers of Koestler's work were, naturally, Jewish-American. Nishidani (talk) 22:51, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

It does indeed allude to antisemitic tropes and is borderline antisemitic to claim that American Jews as a monolith criticized Koestler. and now you explicitly refer to your original research which is forbidden here. And to support your claim we have your pulling rank based on personal anecdata, accusing me of a "niggling fuss" and an "odd belief," and we have Dr. van Straten, a controversial German revisionist who also likes the Khazar hypothesis and hypotheses that Ashkenazi Jews are in fact Slavs. These are indeed borderline antisemitic and violation of NPOV that represents your own specific subjective spin. Andre🚐 22:57, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

If it is referring to the "critics" then surely it is referring only to those "critics", not the wider population from which that criticism derives? In that context, I don't see the monolith. Iskandar323 (talk) 23:08, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Which critics? Again it's a weasel and consists of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The sentence says that the Jewish American critics were unfairly hostile. It's undue weight on a particular interpretation not borne out in the sources here. We don't have the evidence that those Jewish American critics were critical or that it was especially among them. Andre🚐 23:11, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

I write from sources. I don't talk around, over, around speculatively about what I read. I just paraphrase. An editor should never usurp the sources, except when they are patently wrong according to better later sources, by challenging them, as you appear to do. I have given proof that my edit was quite correct. You don't accept it. Nishidani (talk) 23:17, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Au contraire, you are distorting the sources. The sources do not support the statement in the article and it is too liberal of a paraphrase. Andre🚐 23:20, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

The distortion is all yours, even if I'm fairly sure it's not intentional. One should never be complacent about interpretations that are obviously wrongfooted, so I did what any editor should do, if they were to argue that "Jewish-American critics" is a term allusive of 'antisemitic tropes and is borderline antisemitic.' (Just in technical terms 'tropes' here is misused). For it is, on the face of it, laughable in contradicting English usage. So just for the good of the English language,- I have no interest in convincing you,- any careful reader would google first (1) "Jewish-American" (7,740,000 results, then (2) Look up American Jews where the term is used repeatedly. (3) then restrict the search to "Jewish-American critics" and they will get over 5,000 hits. It is a standard phrase in this kind of discourse, and a known identity grouping. Your confusion on this is caused by misconstruing "critics" which 'American-Jewish' qualifies as referring to, a 'monolith'. In context that doesn't mean all American-Jewish critics think alike, to a man. If you are correct, standard English literary talk is seething with Jew-hatred. It's a serious, if silly, accusation.

• If you say 'American Jewish writers have written some of the best-known American novels ' that means, to no native speaker, that all American Jewish writers have written some of the best American novels.
• The writer and the Israeli readers of Noam Gil, Why Are American-Jewish Authors Obsessed With the 'Ugly Israeli'? Haaretz 18 August 2022 do not understand by that title that American-Jewish Authors, to a person, are obsessed with criticizing Israel. Were it taken that way, it would be obviously counterfactual.Nishidani (talk) 14:13, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
• If you say:'American Jewish thinkers have grappled with the necessity for new ways of conceiving human ethics,' that doesn't imply that Saul Kripke, Jerry Fodor, Allan Bloom and Noam Chomsky address that crux, even if many of their philosophical American-Jewish colleagues have done so. Bloom and Chomsky defend a tradition, if in diametrically opposed ways (one ancient, the other modern).
• if one writes:'Japanese-Americans have made significant contributions to agricultural development in Western-Pacific parts of the United States,' no native reader would fall into thinking that Yoko Ono and Ray Yoshida spent time farming in the US Northwest.
• This is called Sprachgefühl, which means native fluency in a language such that you do not misconstrue its nuanced drift, but hear and read for context. Generally, readers of English automatically realize this is the way to construe such generalizations. You have failed to take what the context leaves no margin for doubting is the proper meaning intended by the author(ess). I won't be replying. I'm stating the obvious, which occasionally needs a rational defense when challenged, but if still denied, well . .it's time for breakfast here. Goodbye.Nishidani (talk) 06:36, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

All of your text-walling and your accusation that I am not a native speaker of English (of course I am), does not change the fact that the prose which your wrote, about the "extreme hostility" on the part of the Jewish-American critics (who still, are weasel-worded against wiki guidelines and remain nameless and unattributed, a faceless mass of these extremely hostile critics) does not appear in the sources at all. At best it discusses a mixed reception along with the growth of Zionism amongst American Jews. I have made a change as such in the article. You may choose not to engage further, but I've done nothing to deserve such aggressive disdain. Andre🚐 06:40, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Since there seem to be two points here: a mixed reception from the American Jewish community in general, and a hostile reception among American Zionists specifically, how about we just say that -- laying out both statements -- and bring this thread to a collegiate close? Iskandar323 (talk) 07:12, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

That sounds like a good solution. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:42, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

With that vote of confidence, I've implemented it. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:00, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Can I add a note without being hit with the by now meme-like 'aggressive disdain' epithet thrown at me at the AE page?:) Yes, that is in the direction of a sensible solution to this pointless fuss. Unfortunately, it falsifies the source:) The words 'mixed reception' refer to the differences in the way the Patais' and Koestler's books were received. Koestler's book did not get a 'mixed reception': it was widely and hostilely trashed by Jewish-American reviewers, which was certainly not the case with the Patais' book. Just one example:

Arthur Koestler is of course free to go his own way, but not because his grandfathers roamed the steppes. He is no Khazar. The evidence for his Jewishness rests not in the ratio of his blood cells, nor in his Hungarian birth - the Magyars emigrated from Khazaria in the ninth century - but in the much less controversial fact that only a Jew could have taken so much trouble to come up with an alibi for his own self-effacement. (Leon Wieseltier cited in Iain Hamilton, Koestler:A Biography, Secker & Warburg 1982 p.363.)

That's quite funny directed at a man who militated with Lehi/Irgun terrorists, and advocated violence against Arabs to achieve a Jewish homeland. You'll get an inkling of it in the very POV-mashed up wiki page on The Thirteenth Tribe, which is almost wholly dedicated to crushing its topic and the author. It was widely reviewed at the time 1976-1977, which is what we note in our article, but most of the case against him cited on the 13th tribe page comes from comments decades later. It's not the dismissal that is the point, because that work has significant defects, but the sociology of dismissive outcries at the time of its publication which Burton captures nicely.Nishidani (talk) 09:57, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Ah yes. My mistake. It doesn't seem like that leaves any single statement in Burton summary that is exactly ideal in supporting the 'Jewish American' line. I wonder if there is another source that we can find summarizing the reception that doesn't require us to resort to loose paraphrasing or anecdotal examples. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:14, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so. That merely complicates the page and absolves us of the responsibility to paraphrase clearly what a major source says, and there is little doubt Burton's meaning is clear. No one noticed this as problematical, save for one editor who see it as 'antisemitic'. A lot of editors here, myself included I might claim, have antennae that twitch at anything which might, even slightly, smell of that kind of shit. They never saw it. Well, on the other hand, it's not rare for many people's cognitive antennae to be more highly tuned than the others. So, if I can stir myself out of a kind of otiose tedium at this micro-issue over the next few days, I'll tweak it, though I am dead certain the original phrasing was fair to Burton's text. I might add that it is a good instance of what happens when a general expression constitutes a category in philosophical terms (i.e., defines itself in a way that excludes exceptions), but in the restless shiftiness of semantic usage, slips its anchors from pure logic (everyday language does this with stubborn and creative luxury) because language primarily functions as a social cement, where all users are assumed to recognize how to disentangle the equivocations instinct in speech, viewed abstractly. Nishidani (talk) 12:40, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

if I can stir myself out of a kind of otiose tedium at this micro-issue over the next few days, I'll tweak it, though I am dead certain the original phrasing was fair to Burton's text

+ 100. Selfstudier (talk) 12:50, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Sources on Zionism, race and genetics

Academic publications on Zionism, race and genetics

In a review of the bibliography, I was reminded why I originally proposed the current title for this article. The diagram to the right is the reason. As I have said earlier, I originally set out to write an article on Zionism and genetics, but found that all sources which cover that in detail also cover race. This is because the way that the “Jewish race” question was used in Zionist ideology is the precursor of the way that the “Jewish genes” question is used in Zionist ideology today; for the avoidance of doubt, this last statement is confirmed by 100% of sources on the topic, and disputed by none. Onceinawhile (talk) 16:36, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

(The Venn diagram is an awesome discussion tool.) What are some examples of stuff that would be in the white "Jewish race" section that's not in the white "Jewish genes" section, and vice versa? Levivich (talk) 16:50, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi Levivich, a very good question that I was thinking through in the process of making the diagram. There are a huge number of sources about race science on Jews, from European antisemitic race science, to the work of Jewish race scientists (e.g. as summarized in Fishberg's 1911 work); it really deserves an article of its own (Racial studies on Jews?). For Jewish genes, I was thinking mostly of Genetic studies on Jews. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:04, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile: (I know you're watchlisting but pinging so you can more easily find this reply on a busy talk page, lmk if you'd rather I didn't.) Ok I get that, thanks. My next question is why is the yellow encompassing two sections and not just the middle section? I think that's the correct coloring, if I'm understanding it right, but it leads to another question. Are you saying that all of Zionism+genetics is the same as Zionism+race+genetics; in other words, there is no such thing as "Zionist non-race genetics"? And if so, doesn't that mean that "Zionist+genetics" is a subset of "Zionist+race", in which case... the title should be Zionism and race (already suggested somewhere on this page)? I feel like, while Jewish genetics is broader than Jewish race (there are non-race-related aspects of Jewish genetics), Zionist genetics is a subset of Zionist race studies (there are no non-race-related aspects of Zionism and race). I'm not sure if I'm right or wrong, or if you disagree or agree, but that's what the coloring of the Venn diagram suggests to me. Levivich (talk) 17:39, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Levivich: another good question, thank you. My conclusion is that all sources which cover "Zionism and genetics" also discuss race, primarily in the context of history but sometimes in the context of "reification" (to quote Kohler, i.e. "bringing to life"). The plethora of sources on just "Zionism and race" are all historical by nature - i.e. they stop the story at a certain point in history (usually WWII, sometimes before). So Zionism and genetics is a continuation rather than a subset of Zionist race studies - when making the chart I thought about this point but I couldn't figure out how to visualize this distinction between continuation and subset.

What this means is that an article called "Zionism and race" would have to stop at around WWII, whereas this article covers a topic that continues in to the present day. Onceinawhile (talk) 18:08, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Eugenics is the bridge (Falk). Selfstudier (talk) 18:18, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

And Mendelian genetics as mentioned by a number of the sources below; both overlapped with early 20th century race science. Like all scientific evolutions, there was a grey area during the shift from race to genetics. Onceinawhile (talk) 18:24, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

(That grey area was a very, very dark shade of grey.) What about three articles, even some start as stubs: Zionism and race (up to mid-20th c), Zionist eugenics (20th c), Zionism and genetic studies on Jews (or Zionism and Jewish genetics, mid-20th to present)? Each article could summarize and link the other two (in the first, in an "aftermath" section; in the third, in a "background" section). Reader gets the same information, and it would avoid editorial difficulties (like figuring out what's DUE) encountered if Wikipedia covers all three in a single article (even though there are RSes that do this). Levivich (talk) 18:37, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

This is why I would rather dispense with the too broad (imo) "genetics" and go with biology as in Zionist views of race and biology (I would put Jews/Jewish in there but some resistance to that). Selfstudier (talk) 18:43, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

This has been a really helpful clarification and I think that either Levivich's split suggestion or Selfstudier's title narrowing would solve the core problem. Onceinawhile says all sources which cover "Zionism and genetics" also discuss race, which to me suggests that the "Zionism and genetics" material is a sub-category of "Zionism and race". This seems to contradcit the conclusion What this means is that an article called "Zionism and race" would have to stop at around WWII, whereas this article covers a topic that continues in to the present day. On the contrary, a Zionism and race article (ideally with a better title, such as that given by Selfstudier) could include a section on the later period. Alternatively, splitting would also work: there'd obviously be overlap between articles, but due weight could be given in each to the material actually most relevant to the identified topic. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:53, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Bobfrombrockley: your second sentence is a logical fallacy (affirming the consequent). Whilst all sources which cover the "Politics of cars" also discuss horse-drawn carriages, it is clearly untrue to suggest that "Politics of cars" is a sub-category of "Politics of horse-drawn carriages". Onceinawhile (talk) 16:03, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

But usually as a minor anecdote, and sometimes described as controversial, or in the form of contrasting the two. Very rarely is it in the form of one coherent subject. Drsmoo (talk) 18:53, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Unless you are using the phrase "very rarely" in an artistic manner, this comment is evidence that you have yet to read the list of sources provided below. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:16, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I can only assume your understanding of the phrase “one coherent subject” differs from what one would typically expect. To clarify, I would consider Tekiner as an example of a source centered on arguing the three subjects are tied together. This is in contrast to Weitzman, or even more so Gissis, who barely mentions Zionism at all. Drsmoo (talk) 02:29, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Excellent. Added to your Abu El Haj comment earlier, you have now explicitly acknowledged that 2 of the 10 bolded names in the list of sources below represent core sources addressing the scope of this article. You have also added 1 which wasn’t bolded (Tekiner) and denied 1. So we are at 3 so far, and you still have 7 bolded names to comment on. Most of those are very easy to see and will take you no time at all. Thanks for engaging here. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

If all articles on "Politics of cars" did cover "Politics of horse-drawn carriages" then perhaps the former would be a sub-article of the latter, but obviously cars are not a sub-category of horse-drawn carriages and obviously most sources on cars would not cover carriages. However, genetics is kind of a sub-category of race, or at least of biological descent, and you've already told us that all articles on Zionism and genetics do also cover Zionism and race, so in fact it's clear from your evidence that Zionism and genetics is a sub-article of Zionism and race (or at least Zionism and biological descent).

If, on the other hand, you want to argue that race is to genetics what carriages are to cars, then we definitely need to split the article, it's simply not sustainable to say that carriages and cars are the same, even if a some sources connect them. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:54, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Surely the solution to this hypothetical conundrum would simply to have an article title along the lines of the "politics of land-based vehicular transport", i.e. one that explicitly embraces both horse-drawn carriages and cars (or the approach of "Zionism and the biology of the Jews" by Falk)?Iskandar323 (talk) 09:08, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes exactly. This is the obvious answer. Our roads had both carriages and cars on them at the same time for many decades; the politics was ultimately about making it easy for people to get from A to B, whilst minimizing various forms of pollution. Talking about topics like this separately requires focusing primarily on modern times, rather than the whole story from the beginning, and then a large amount of duplication for the overlap period.

Bob, the sources are crystal clear that the political interplay with race science shifted over time to interplay with genetic science. Is there a good reason to hide or downplay this fact from our readers? Onceinawhile (talk) 09:45, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Iskandar323, Onceinawhile, You don't seem to be saying the same thing as each other. I think I've already said that I'm happy with a more general frame, as proposed by Selfstudier and others (I think "race" or "race and biology" is the equivalent to Iskandar323's land-based vehicular transport here) but that wouldn't mean focusing primarily on modern times (see WP:RECENTISM); it would mean building on the currently already strong historical section as the core of the article and precisely avoiding a presentist teleology that has genetics as the destination. Alternatively, if you want an article that focuses primarily on modern time, i.e on genetics in the state of Israel, then the split proposal made by Levivich and others is the best way to achieve that, via a focused article on the thing you seem to think we most need an article about. (The current post-1948 section of the article isn't much about Zionism so much as Israeli national identity, not quite the same thing.) As I said, I'm happy with either option. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:15, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I think genetics needs to either go or be replaced in the title, not because it is wrong, but because it is simply causing confusion and causing too much emphasis to be placed on the latter. "Zionism and race" would not be too problematic as a title on it own and would still encompass most if not all of what is in the article. As it stands, the word "race" continues to appear throughout the history section, with only a few dry spells in the later parts, and this is because the language of "race" switches to the language of "genes" - one source, I can't remember which but I suspect Falk, specifically makes this point. I prefer Falk's book title, but I fear that might fail to pass muster in terms of WP:CONCISE, and "Zionism and biology" as a contraction introduces problematic vagueness and imprecision. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:44, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

From Generation to Generation: The Genetics of Jewish Populations - Rosenberg, Weitzman

“Criticism of human population genetics, especially from scholarly fields that as a premise regard the scientific endeavor with skepticism, has asserted continuity between this earlier race science and present-day genetics research— an argument that in the view of many practicing geneticists dramatically exaggerates the linkages, belies their personal orientations toward their own research programs, underestimates the consideration they devote to challenges and subtleties of issues of race in genetics, and unfairly impugns the anti-racist positions that they may in fact hold with an intensity equal to that of the critics.”

Is there a good reason to hide or downplay the fact that the asserted continuity is controversial, expressed by critics of population genetics and is disputed? Do you think Wikipedia should be impugning a field of research by expressing a controversial view held by critics in “Wikipedia’s voice”? Drsmoo (talk) 04:12, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

@Drsmoo: thanks for this excellent source; 3 of its 6 pages are dedicated to the scope of this article and my point to Bob above. It is introducing and summarizing two papers from the same journal already in our bibliography - Kahn (2013) and Efron (2013). I suggest you read the text before and after the quote you brought:

Two commentaries seek to probe more directly the connections between present-day research on Jewish population genetics and other current and past areas of scholarship on Jewish populations. Historian John Efron examines the relation- ship between present-day Jewish population genetics and earlier nineteenth-century research in physical anthropology (for a sampling of the earlier scholarship, see Hart 2011). Efron’s contribution aims to fill in the historical background of this past science, noting the rationale that motivated its researchers—some of whom were themselves Jewish. He explores the historical link between topics examined then and still considered now and interprets the meaning of their persistence. Efron’s contribution includes a discussion of the history of the Khazar theory and its origins among Russian Jewish scientists of the late nineteenth century. Geneticists today work hard to distinguish their assumptions and methods from the “race science” of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a subject made infamous by its role as a rationale for Nazi eugenic policies and genocidal practice, and they do not identify at all with the race scientists’ near-extinct intellectual tradition. Criticism of human population genetics, especially from scholarly fields that as a premise regard the scientific endeavor with skepticism, has asserted continuity between this earlier race science and present-day genetics research—an argument that in the view of many practicing geneticists dramatically exaggerates the linkages, belies their personal orientations toward their own research programs, underestimates the consideration they devote to challenges and subtleties of issues of race in genetics, and unfairly impugns the anti-racist positions that they may in fact hold with an intensity equal to that of the critics. Especially in the ways that it enters the public dialogue, however, present-day research in Jewish genetics has sometimes been treated as reintroducing a biological conception of Jewish identity that many may have thought permanently discredited by the Holocaust and its catastrophic racialization of Jewish identity. At the same time that such research is raising concerns among those worried that it is re-racializing Jewishness, it is also exerting a strong fascination both for Jews themselves and for others curious about possible Jewish ancestry in their own lineages…

In summary, this piece says:

• Scholars are examining the connection between Jewish genetics and race science in detail
• Geneticists themselves "work hard" to show their methods and approaches are different (no scholar disagrees with this, just as car technology is different from carriage technology)
• Some critics have apparently criticized the motives and actions of the geneticists themselves (not what our core sources or article state)
• In "the ways that it enters the public dialogue, however, present-day research in Jewish genetics has sometimes been treated as reintroducing a biological conception of Jewish identity... such research is raising concerns among those worried that it is re-racializing Jewishness" (exactly what all the core sources in our article describe in detail, and no-one disagrees with, including the authors of this piece)

It is this last bullet that has unambiguously wide scholarly consensus.

Onceinawhile (talk) 06:46, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Efron 2013 does not use the words Zionism or Zionist once; it does not mention the politics of post-1948 Israel; it does not discuss any Zionist race scientists (Jacobs was not a Zionist, and Weissenberg believed in the integration of Russian Jews into the Russian nation. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:38, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

And Weizmann and Rosenberg do not use the word Zionism or Zionist either, nor the politics of post-1948 Israel, nor Zionist race scientists. Our article duly notes per sources the fact that Zionists and non-Zionists (assimilationists) disagree on racde science. jacobs and Weiseenberg. Efron 2013 is largely a brief recap, for that symposium, of the results of his 1994 book which refers to Zionism 279 times. he didn't in that paper. Nishidani (talk) 04:59, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Well yes. If I recall correctly it's recapping material from the first part of the book, before he moves on to Zionism. I guess one point is that the position some of us have been querying is that all three words in the title form one topic, and here's an example with the second two but not the first. More importantly, to be NPOV it's crucial that our article is very clear that Zionist race science (as well as not being homogeneous) very much mirrored non-Zionist race science of the period. I think the excellent Background and Early Zionism sections do currently do that but it gets lost in the article as a whole because of the way it is framed around what I'm calling the continuity thesis (which it disrupts). BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:05, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I grew up puzzling over a silly story about triadic divinity. I shrugged that off quickly, but it didn't contaminate my use of the word three. The very first point of the AfD was to mock the idea that any article could encompass three aspects. I thought. Good grief, how could one write Plato's life? One has to interweave the crisis of aristocracy in a new democracy, the social impact of the Peloponnesian war, the epistemic crisis, under an emergent materialist science, between heraclitean flux and Parmenidean ontology, the culture of homosexuality etc.etc. to grasp the key aspects of the dynamics of his metaphysics. Why the uneasiness about multiple factors? Perhaps I'm an old duffer, the dull victim of an eccentric education, which used to be normal, but now suffers from the unfamiliarity of desuetude?

History, any history, is, to adopt Ostrer's own metaphor, a tapestry of distinct threads. There is nothing anomalous in writing the history of a theme - the way man over the last half century has tried to measure and, thereby, classify as distinct, human populations. The continuity lies in the project aim, the diversity stems from the great innovations in technique, from the primitive anthropometrics of cephalic indexing to, via blood serum studies, the immensely sophisticated methods of chromosomal analysis. It's not editors here, but numerous texts which establish both the continuities of thematic focus (a Jewish biological identity) and the disruptions. The racial nonsense of the first half century is clearly shown to be such, a caesura occurs after WW2. But the historians, from Lippshardt and Kirsh onwards, note the thematic hangover that bridges the rupture -i-e. the old idea of determining the differential biology and unity of distinct communities remains in the saddle. And this is not specific to Zionism or Israel: the major theorists of the general field, Dunn and Dobzhansky, exemplify the continuity of race, even under the newer dispensation of genetics. Even at the level of method, there are fractures, discontinuities, as two different approaches deploy distinct statistical approaches. We have the ongoing clash between social constructionist versus bio-ontological (scientific) engagements with the topic manifold: this tension is there in early infra-Jewish debates between Lamarckian assimilationists and Darwinian Zionists and, as the literature abundantly shows, returns to plague contemporary genetics (Lipphardt 2012 pp.579-80; Tamarkin 2015 p.1 and many others. We have continuity and rupture, just as, in any field of human scientific endeavour we have shared fundamentals but different theories. I am perplexed that we reach to ply the worry beads just because Israel forms part of this story. The same issues emerge, the same critical dissonances with genetics and race in the United States (Just to instance one of hundreds of studies, one of several I checked out a month ago before embarking on the rewrite, i.e. Kathleen J. Fitzgerald, The Continuing ignificance of Race:Racial Genomics in a Postracial Era, Humanity & Society 2014, Vol. 38(1) 49-66). Israel is an advanced industrial state, controversy is part of its lifeblood, it energizes its cultural elites, and its scholars are at the forefront of all these issues, and politics (as they do everywhere) can inflect core issues for their social implications. This article simply tells a story geneticists in this field debate among themselves, and despite the intricacies, readers don't have many venues available to eavesdrop on what is a fascinating piece of history, which is still of contemporary interest. Nishidani (talk) 15:13, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Onceinawhile, the only reason the rest of that wasn’t quoted was to avoid a wall of text. There is another later part you missed as well. “Kahn calls for a shared understanding between the positions represented by Ostrer and El- Haj, critiquing both Ostrer’s provocative claims about the meaning of the scientific data and the aspersions cast by El-Haj on the science without attending to its actual content. Is Kahn’s call for a shared understanding viable? El-Haj's critique runs deep, arguing that the entire enterprise of Jewish genetics is culturally and politically self-serving. It does not matter to her perspective whether the research is scientifically sound; what is relevant for her project is the subtle apparent continuities with earlier race science, the work the research does as a part of identity construction, and the rhetorical, cultural and political practice that it entails or enables. Does such a perspective have something to discern from people that it considers objects of study? El-Haj does not clarify whether population-genetic research—for Jews or for other population groups—can be a helpful form of inquiry under any circumstance. Would she think she has anything to learn at all from such research? And what can geneticists gain from a scholar like El-Haj who questions the very premises of their work, who seems uninterested in the truth claims that they make as genuine efforts to understand the world, and who reads their scientific efforts only with a hermeneutics of suspicion?

You are confusing “has sometimes been treated as” and “has asserted” with “Is”. It is not a fact, it is an opinion asserted by critics of the field. This article can not state, claim, or infer in Wikipedias voice that population genetics is a continuation of race science without describing it as an assertion made by critics that is viewed by “many practicing geneticists” as inaccurate and as impugning their work. Edit: moved to new section here

Some editors - on all sides of the debate - have disagreed with this above, but I personally wouldn't be opposed to it. Onceinawhile (talk) 18:46, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Levivich. Why break up an article into three stubs? What is gained from that, except a huge amount of work, no one knows who or which editors will take on the tasks, picking up the splintered bits of the article, and jerryrigging them into three new topics. That we have an integral theme reflecting extensive sources that treat all elements together in a clear historical sequence is an achievement, giving clarity to the stated thematic interconnections over time. All that splitting does is disappear the continuity. The continuity is what many object to, though it is attested in the sources. Nishidani (talk) 19:46, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

In would support this as well. What are your views on the title “Zionism and Jewish Origins”? The scope is a bit different from race/biology, but it could document the development of research into Jewish origins as it relates to Zionism. Drsmoo (talk) 18:50, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I think Zionism and Jewish origins would be like a parent article of this article, because its scope would be broader than Zionism and race/genetics, and include non-race/genetic aspects of Zionism and Jewish origins, such as archaeology Levivich (talk) 18:56, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I think "Zionism and Jewish origins" is not the right parent article for the content here now, as the material on race (and I think genetics) is not just about origins but also about Jewish identity and groupness historically and in the present, so we'd be back to something like "Zionism and race" (or maybe "Zionism and biology") as the bigger category. (Jewish origins might be a useful article in its own right, though, and note re archaeology, we have a related article Politics of archaeology in Israel and Palestine.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:01, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

What would you suggest in terms of gaining traction towards this/a proposal? There are many differing proposals on this talk page (with some degree of overlap) but so far, there have only been tentative ideas scattered amongst the different threads. It may also be easier for all involved to move to a wider (and IMO, more mainstream) scope, than to split the article, as the wider scope wouldn’t necessitate having to divide the article content. Drsmoo (talk) 22:39, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

You don’t need consensus to have an article with a wider scope – you can start writing it right now. When it is ready we can have a merge discussion as to whether all the detail in this article would be appropriate weight or not to be fully incorporated in the new wider article.

Let me know if you would like any help with drafting the new article. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:49, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

You created a list of potential alternate titles, are you interested in moving in that direction? Drsmoo (talk) 22:56, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I am open minded. What I do feel strongly about is that before an RM discussion is opened, at least one of the editors who are actively opposed to the current title should complete a detailed review of the list of sources which cover the current scope, providing explicit agreement/disagreement on whether each of these satisfies the proposed sourcing requirements for the article. Until this happens, none of the actively opposed editors will know if the list of sources stands up to scrutiny, and thus there will not be a solid ground for the discussion. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:27, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, as part of that , I think it would be useful to look through the list you’ve provided and document specifically how Zionism, Race, and Genetics are connected/contrasted within that source. Specifically, to ensure appropriate weight. I think there are also scenarios in which someone could completely be in agreement with you per the sources, and still think the current name is clunky or in any other way less than ideal. Drsmoo (talk) 23:52, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

My suggestion for moving forward is what I always say: "forwards editing." Take that list of about 30 sources below and cut it down to just the sources that provide WP:SIGCOV of Zionism+race+genetics ... I'm guessing there will be about a dozen but I'm not sure, not having gone through all 30 ... then (re)write this article (with the current title) by summarizing only those sources (all of which would be WP:TIER1 sources with SIGCOV of the topic "Zionism, race, and genetics"), removing anything that can't be sourced to those sources as WP:UNDUE. And just to be clear: this is just what I think should be done, it's not what I'm going to do, nor do I think it's required by any Wikipedia policy, it's just how I think articles ought to be written. Levivich (talk) 02:00, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the goal of cutting down the source-list below to only those which represent our core. That list will then form the foundation for ongoing discussions. On 11 August (11:15 UTC), BobFromBrockley wrote that Egorova, Gissis, Hart, Kandiyoti, Schaffer, Tamarkin and Weitzman do not seem to me to be examples of sustained discussions of the three words in the title together, so I'd bring the 16 down to 9. I believe the emphasis is on sustained here.

Those 9 (referring to the previous list of 16) are: Abu El-Haj, Baker, Burton, Falk, Kohler, Kirsh, McGonigle, Ostrer, Tanny. I would be inclined to add Gissis back to this list given her detailed reviews of Burton, McGonigle and Falk.

Onceinawhile (talk) 06:20, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps I misread but I take your response to Levivich (whose generous impartiality and cogent reasoning at the AfD helped save the stub from deletion), as a tongue-in-cheek ironic reductio ad absurdum. If you both allow me time to shower, eat and digest a plate of Cannelloni, i will address the suggestion within a few hours to show that it has no lien in policy and good practice.Nishidani (talk) 10:30, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Buon appetito. For the sake of clarity, the below (I have bolded the 9+1 scholars) is what I think of as a "talk page source list", representing a focused group of core sources for those interesting in developing this article to read. If an RM is opened, I think we can assume 95%+ of bona fide voters will not have the time to read our entire bibliography. So building consensus around the core will benefit all involved. Secondly, to Levivich's core point, I also think it provides an objective foundation for structuring the article - such a list may not be perfect but it at least allows some alignment between our disparate group of editors. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:47, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Had all opposing editors taken note of Levivich’s keep vote in the AfD, we would have been saved a month of often pointless argufying. No one can accuse him of partisanship on a difficult topic like this. He recognized the obvious from the outset. A field of sources deals with these three topic together, a fact repeatedly denied for a month.

Onceinawhile’s list of 30 such sources below buried the scepticism, if any skerrick of doubt remained. Levivich, coherently, reafferms this by accepting the title as it stands.

So we are, not only in his view, out of the talkpage’s quagmire, He fairly suggests we leave the past behind, and ‘move forward’. I agree, but disagree with his roadmap. It strikes me as a recipé to go backwards. To employ an analogy, it means taking a musical composition based on the heptatonic scale, and arguing that we should adopt the pentatonic scale, and rewrite by eliding systematically the two notes in the earlier version. One can do that as an exercise, but it does not thereby constitute any grounds for erasing the original composition.

Let us deal with this suggestion slowly and logically.

• WP:SIGCOV refers to the minimal conditions required to create a topic, with guidelines to determine whether it is notable or not.
• Those conditions are fulfilled, and therefore Sigcov is immaterial, since its stipulations for creating articles don’t apply to established articles.
• Levivich’s proposal is to use the notability criteria to determine if an article can be created to argue how an established article should be rewritten. That is highly unusual. I don’t know of any precedent for it. As a content editor, I can see that were it policy, it would mean that at least 6 million articles would have to be rewritten and radically disembowelled of most of their content.

This article developed as the historical background article to Genetic studies on Jews , because as soon as a minimal use of the material was introduced there, it was reverted out immediately by Tombah, who said the mother article was about the science, nothing else, esp. ‘conspiracy theories’ , by which I presume he meant historical context. Now Genetic Studies on Jews is a notorious example of a POV-driven article, based on the privileging of primary sources, which are cherrypicked to construct an appearance of consensus for the ‘thesis’ of the page. It is the exact opposite of our page where high quality academic secondary sources command content. I don’t disturb that article however. I haven’t a year, in a shortening life, to waste my time on correcting it. I do note however that were the sigcov conditions proposed here applied to it, significant things in the historical background would have to be cut, beginning with

As opposed to the religion of Judaism and its formative role in shaping Jewish identity, and the slow formation of a sense of Jewish nationality from Ezra and Nehemiah down to the Hasmoneans[9] and onwards[10] theories on the ethnic origins of Jews, and what constitutes ‘Jewishness’[11][12] have been questioned.

The two sources adduced, a book and an article by Shaye J. D. Cohen and Steve Mason, nowhere mention genetics. But the points made are congruent with the article’s focus. I wouldn’t remove them. This is the same for millions of articles. The sigcov criteria don't apply to highly developed articdles, and to expect that they be written according to its minimalist sourcing criteria for creating an article would be to impose an anomalous condition, once more demanding that extraordinary, non-policy based, guidelines be used uniquely for this article alone.Nishidani (talk) 12:40, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

I think your paragraph beginning This article developed... is very true, much of the content here necessary for the reader, and what i'm trying to keep in mind in arguing for keeping 'genetics' in the title and as the primary driver of the scope. Zionism is "key", "raises the stakes", etc. that should be enough. All the anthropologists pointing to the dangers of what Kohler calls the 'reification of race' should be enough. The historians pointing out the "circular logic" of verifying an narrative should be enough. All necessary for the reader to know and background reading for genetic studies on Jews and other articles. The Venn diagram above is a good discussion tool, but if SIGCOV and OR are really that exacting then they are probably driving the content in bad ways and leading to some unproductive discussion. Maybe a bit more reader focus would help, what should the reader be aware of before being exposed to some of the Jewish genetics content? Plainly much of this content. fiveby(zero) 15:06, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. My sense of wiki is that too many important articles (save science ones) omit what the state of the art scholarship discusses. I say this as someone with a background in ancient Greek scholarship. Most of those articles are painful reading to me. So I try, invariably, to ground those articles that attract my attention in what scholarship, as opposed to newspaper reports, short easy-to-read articles, and popular books say. I felt justified in this when Bob, for one, found the outline of the conflict in method between Cavalli-Sforza and the Israeli school 'fascinating'. Should it be there? Well, eliminate that, and a lot of the rest, and the reader will be shortchanged and wikipedia the poorer. We could do without it, of course, but then, as an immediate consequence, the mess at Genetic Studies on Jews would remain incomprehensible if a reader read also that. If the information carefully culled from the best scholarship is unavailable in other wiki articles, and is of first-rate quality, I don't think it should be removed. To remove it would only leave intact the considerable bias of incomplete coverage in so many other articles.Nishidani (talk) 15:59, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, at least 6 million Wikipedia articles need to be rewritten using forward editing instead of backward editing, but don't worry, an AI will do it before the decade is out :-) You've inspired me to write User:Levivich#Forward editing article writing algorithm. My view is that this algorithm could be followed for any section of the Venn diagram, including the middle section (i.e., the current title). For the examples of Cohen and Mason, they may be (in the parlance of this algorithm) core sources for a subtopic even if they're not core sources for the topic, so following the algorithm doesn't necessarily mean removing them from the article. Levivich (talk) 19:52, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Nice! Just noticed this. As a writer and philologist with a Greek ear, algorithm is all Arabic to me, except in the sense that it sounds like it is comprised of blending ἂλγος and ῥυθμός, a 'painful beat'. Fortunately, I'll be dead before that happens, since you speak of a decade, since the jeans I wear now have greater longevity (the one's I have now have withstood tear for 15 years) than the genes I bear, given my family's statistical average:) In any case, it may well be a fine guide for constructing articles. I doubt, as a content technician, its deconstructive value. It's a futuristic experiment, and, so far, we edit according to precedent.Nishidani (talk) 13:09, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I think you should add something to the neglected WP:BESTSOURCES part of NPOV policy. "Try the library", "look online", "ask on talk", "ask at RD" has always seemed to me pretty much useless advice (tho i wish RD could help). Would point out tho that there are often authors who do the some of the work of your algorithm for you. Bibliographic narratives, literature surveys, specialist encyclopedias, etc. fiveby(zero) 13:55, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I really like this algorithm Levivich. I know I've probably edited backwards several times where I think I have a good knowledge of the topic, and I'm sure most committed WP editors are guilty of it from time to time, but I don't know if I've ever seen such an extreme example of backwards editing as this article. Backwards editing is exactly what I've tried to get at by referring above to an article with a thesis. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:44, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

@Bobfrombrockley: I realize this has always been your underlying concern here. Now it has been put into clear words, so we can address it. This article, and almost all such articles in are encyclopedia, are created in the grey area between Levivich’s extremes. Two main reasons for this:

• The best sources are confirmed collaboratively over time. It is not realistic to expect all 80-100 scholarly sources are found, read in detail, tiered and cross-checked, all before an initial version is submitted. We have to take an early estimate of what the core sources are, and that was done impressively accurately here: in the very first draft here we had 9 citations, all of which had been read front-to-back before writing that initial draft, of which 5 (Hirsch, Ostrer, Abu El Haj, Falk and Kahn) still today sit proudly within our identified core sources.
• Sweeping summaries don’t work in sensitive topic areas: On potentially controversial topics, the sweeping summary style is too difficult to defend against editors who have not read the works themselves; such editors need to see a brick-by-brick buildup to confirm the citations. From the start this article has used quotations-in-footnotes, sticking close to them in the text. That is why there have been no edit-wars on this article, despite all the talk page disagreement, and we should be proud of that.

Onceinawhile (talk) 10:15, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

The forwards editing approach does not require that 100 sources are digested before writing begins; it simply requires fidelity to the what the core sources say rather than seeking and mining sources for the bits where they support a pre-defined thesis. Neither I nor Levivich nor anyone else is in favour of sweeping summaries; we just want the possibility of an encyclopedic overview. As well as appreciating the research work that has gone in to the article, I strongly support the usage of quotations-in-footnotes, which have indeed facilitated collaborative use of the sources. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:20, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

How does continuation differ from ”inherits from “ in this regard?

Per this diff Special:MobileDiff/1169167321, could you clarify why “inherits from”, as opposed to continuation is a misrepresentation? Drsmoo (talk) 18:26, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Not a subclass. Selfstudier (talk) 18:29, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Not referring to computer science. I mean in plain English, what is the distinction between “inherits from” and a continuation.

If this article is about the intersection of the three points, we should also clearly delineate their differences.

To circle back, what exactly is meant by continuation? If continuation != “modern race science” what are the areas of difference? Drsmoo (talk) 18:36, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

In road transportation, the car continues the purpose of the horse and carriage (in the language of our article it replaced horse-drawn carriages). But it would be odd to say that a car inherited from a horse and carriage, even though they both have wheels and seats. Onceinawhile (talk) 18:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

That’s reasonable. So if I understand you correctly, your perspective is that, per the sources provided, the uniting factor between Race Science and Genetics in this context is their purpose, with their purpose being Zionism. Drsmoo (talk) 18:52, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

History is not teleological except theologically. 'Race, science and genetics' don't aren't driven by a purpose. Zionism in this context is not a purpose. historical actors react to specific situations by making choices, those choices have unintended effects. Sometimes they assume discursive authority and executive power. The three elements in the topic show the history of developments, not any purpose.Nishidani (talk) 19:21, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, that’s reasonable as well. So with regard to the history of developments, I see value in, per the sources, and if the title of the article remains the same, assessing and expressing the ways in which the three share similarities, and the ways in which they are different. Does that seem useful? Drsmoo (talk) 19:40, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

The foremost problem in writing wiki articles is that one is constrained to bow to the sources. One must work within the limits of what sources state. I don't know how many times, rewriting this, I thought:'that could be phrased better' but the text says what it says, and I must stick to a close paraphrase; 'I wish the author(s) expanded more or this or that. These comments are not quite exhaustive, and beg questions'; 'Ah, I know a lot about this angle. But, dammit, mum's the word. because my other historical sources do not deal with zionism and race, or some combination of these three, so it's better left as it is', etc. What you suggest is finding ways to express the way the three share similarities'. I agree it would be great to have several 'metacritiques', rather than the few we have (I've heard some are in the wings in the not too distant future), Burton above all, which would expatiate more thoroughly on precisely the dialectics governing the similarities, but also the marked differences, between the three. We must wait. We can't invent anything. What we do have is several sources that do note aspects of these and we have to rely on them, faute de mieux. The outline they provide gives us both similarities and differences, as our article shows, though not in the detail we'd wish for. Nishidani (talk) 19:59, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Actually, without looking for it, but while trying to meet Bob's request about more from Gilman, I came across a passage precisely bridging the two matters, the difference and yet the similarity between the biology of the day as it influenced Herzl's worldview and 'the appropriation of today’s racial arguments in genetic terms.' I've duly entered the point on our article. Small progress, but a step ahead nonetheless in this direction.Nishidani (talk) 21:16, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, could you please list which of those sources cover all three as a singular subject? I know we have the chapter “Zionism Race and Eugenics” from Falk’s book “Jewish Traditions and the Challenge of Darwinism”. Drsmoo (talk) 16:50, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Not Falk's book. He wrote an essay included in a book edited by Cantor and Swetlitz. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nishidani (talk • contribs)

Below are sources which cover this topic as a singular subject. This is a slight expansion on the prior list of 16 scholars. Onceinawhile (talk) 16:53, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, what’s your assessment from these sources on how the three topics are compared and contrasted? Are they treated as being of a kind, different, or a bit of both? Do you find a great deal of agreement across these sources? If not, how do they differ? Drsmoo (talk) 17:09, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Assuming you have perused the material yourself, why not just make your point? Selfstudier (talk) 17:14, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I think it might be useful to organize the article based on a holistic sense of the way the three topics are compared and contrasted.

Ie., here are the similarities, here are the differences, here are the transition points where one field flowed into another developmentally, here is where they diverged, etc. Drsmoo (talk) 17:18, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

It hasn't been shown that the article needs reorganization. It was consistently denied sources deal with all three topics, therefore, reformulate, TNT, rewrite, rearrange. If the evidence below is correct, these assumptions collapse, as do arguments it should be rewritten.19:16, 12 August 2023 (UTC)Nishidani (talk)

• Abu El-Haj, Nadia (2012). The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology. Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-20142-9. Archived from the original on 2023-07-08. Retrieved 2023-07-08.
• Baker, Cynthia M. (2017). "Zionism's New Jew and the Birth of the Genomic Jew". Jew. Key Words in Jewish Studies. Rutgers University Press. pp. 97–110. ISBN 978-0-813-57386-1. Archived from the original on 2023-07-10. Retrieved 2023-07-10.
• Burton, Elise K. (2021). Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1-503-61457-4. Archived from the original on 2023-07-08. Retrieved 2023-07-08.
• Egorova, Yulia (2015). ""Jewish genetics" : DNA, culture, and historical narrative". In Valman, Nadia; Roth, Laurence (eds.). The Routledge handbook of contemporary Jewish cultures. Routledge. pp. 353–364. ISBN 978-0-203-49747-0. Archived from the original on 2023-06-06. Retrieved 2023-07-14.
• Falk, Raphael (2006). "Zionism, race and eugenics". In Cantor, George; Swetlitz, Marc (eds.). Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism. University of Chicago Press. pp. 137–162. ISBN 978-0-226-09301-7. Archived from the original on 2023-07-21. Retrieved 2023-07-18.
• Falk, Raphael (2017). Zionism and the Biology of Jews. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-319-57345-8. Archived from the original on 2023-07-07. Retrieved 2023-07-08.
• Gissis, Snait B. (2022). "Is nationalizing universalizing and/or vice-versa?". History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. 44 (3). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 45. doi:10.1007/s40656-022-00527-6. ISSN 0391-9714. PMID 36070029. S2CID 252784684.
• Gissis, Snait (2009). "Reviewed Work: םידוהיה לש היגולויבהו תונויצה (Zionism and the Biology of the Jews) by Raphael Falk". Aleph. 9 (1). Indiana University Press: 158–160. ISSN 1565-1525. JSTOR 40385942. Retrieved 2023-07-22.
• Gissis, Snait B. (2008). "When is 'race' a race? 1946–2003. Chapter: "Journal articles by Israeli authors"". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 39 (4). Elsevier BV: 437–450. doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.09.006. ISSN 1369-8486. PMID 19026975.
• Hart, Mitchell B. (2011). Jews and Race: Writings on Identity and Difference, 1880-1940. Brandeis library of modern Jewish thought. Brandeis University Press. ISBN 978-1-584-65717-0. Archived from the original on 2023-07-21. Retrieved 2023-07-13.
• Hirsch, Dafna (2009). "Zionist eugenics, mixed marriage, and the creation of a 'new Jewish type'". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 15 (3): 592–609. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2009.01575.x. JSTOR 40541701. Archived from the original on 2022-11-02. Retrieved 2023-07-08.
• Hellström, Petter (2013). "Genetic diaspora, genetic return (reviewing N. A. El-Haj, The genealogical science: The search for Jewish origins and the politics of epistemology)". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 44 (3). Elsevier: 439–442. doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.05.007.
• Kahn, Susan Martha (June 2005). "The multiple meanings of Jewish genes". Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. 29 (2): 179–192. doi:10.1007/s11013-005-7424-5.
• Kahn, Susan Martha (2011). "'Are Genes jewish?' Conceptual Ambiguities in the New Genetic Age". In Sokoloff, Naomi B.; Glenn, Susan A. (eds.). Boundaries of Jewish Identity. University of Washington Press. pp. 12–26. ISBN 978-0-295-80083-7. Archived from the original on 2023-07-21. Retrieved 2023-07-15.
• Kahn, Susan Martha (December 2013). "Commentary: Who Are the Jews? New Formulations of an Age‐Old Question". Human Biology. 85 (6): 919–924. doi:10.13110/humanbiology.85.6.0919. JSTOR 10.13110/humanbiology.85.6.0919. S2CID 201761565. Archived from the original on 2023-07-08. Retrieved 2023-07-11.
• Kandiyoti, Dalia (2020). The Converso's Return: Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1-5036-1244-0. Archived from the original on 2023-07-21. Retrieved 2023-07-12.
• Kirsh, Nurit (December 2003). "Population Genetics in Israel in the 1950s: The Unconscious Internalization of Ideology". Isis. 94 (4). University of Chicago Press: 631–655. doi:10.1086/386385. ISSN 0021-1753. JSTOR 386385. PMID 15077535. S2CID 42708609.
• Kohler, Noa Sophie (2022). "What are Jews: interrogating genetic studies and the reification of race" (PDF). Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 101 (100). Istituto Italiano Antropologia: 1–16. doi:10.4436/JASS.10001. PMID 35302512.
• Kohler, Noa Sophie (2021-07-26). "Negotiating Jewishness through genetic testing in the State of Israel". TATuP: Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis. 30 (2). Oekom Publishers GmbH: 36–40. doi:10.14512/tatup.30.2.36. ISSN 2567-8833. S2CID 237701995.
• Kohler, Noa Sophie (2014). "Genes as a Historical Archive: On the Applicability of Genetic Research to Sociohistorical Questions: The Debate on the Origins of Ashkenazi Jewry Revisited". Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 57 (1). Project MUSE: 105–117. doi:10.1353/pbm.2014.0000. ISSN 1529-8795.
• McGonigle, Ian V.; Herman, Lauren W. (17 June 2015). "Genetic citizenship: DNA testing and the Israeli Law of Return". Journal of Law and the Biosciences. 2 (2): 469–478. doi:10.1093/jlb/lsv027. PMC 5034383. PMID 27774208.
• McGonigle, Ian V. (2021). Genomic Citizenship: The Molecularization of Identity in the Contemporary Middle East. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-36669-4. Archived from the original on 2023-07-08. Retrieved 2023-07-08.
• Ostrer, Harry (2012). A Genetic History of the Jewish People. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-3-319-57345-8. Archived from the original on 2023-07-01. Retrieved 2023-07-12.
• Parfitt, Tudor; Egorova, Yulia (2005). "Genetics, History and identity: The case of the Bene Israel and the Lemba Culture". Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. 29 (2): 193–224. doi:10.1007/s11013-005-7425-4. PMID 16249950. S2CID 19691358. Archived from the original on 2023-07-21. Retrieved 2023-07-20.
• Prainsack, Barbara; Hashiloni-Dolev, Yael (2009). "Religion and nationhood: Collective identities and the New Genetics: Example 2: 'Falsifying' difference: the story of common ancestry of Palestinian Arabs and Jews". In Atkinson, P.; Glasner, P.; Lock, M. (eds.). The Handbook of Genetics & Society: Mapping the New Genomic Era. Taylor & Francis. pp. 404–421. ISBN 978-1-134-12877-8. Retrieved 2023-07-22.
• Schaffer, Gavin (2010). "Dilemmas of Jewish Difference: Reflections on Contemporary Research into Jewish Origins and Types from an Anglo-Jewish Historical Perspective". Jewish Culture and History. 12 (1–2). Informa UK Limited: 75–94. doi:10.1080/1462169x.2010.10512145. S2CID 143496144. Archived from the original on 2022-10-30. Retrieved 2023-07-10.
• Tamarkin, Noah (2015), Jewish Genetics, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/obo/9780199840731-0112, archived from the original on 2022-11-10, retrieved 2023-07-14
• Tanny, Jarrod (20 May 2013). "What 'Jews a Race' Debate Means for Israel". The Forward. Retrieved 2023-08-06.
• Tekiner, Roselle (1991). "Race and the Issue of National Identity in Israel". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 23 (1). Cambridge University Press: 39–55. ISSN 0020-7438. JSTOR 163931. Retrieved 2023-08-03.
• Weitzman, Steven (2019). "Biological Approaches to the Origin of the Jews". The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-19165-2. Retrieved 2023-07-22.

Weitzman

In Para 3, we have material sourced to Weitzman 2019 book (plus a refquote) followed by some material/quotes sourced to Rosenberg/Weitzman, a 2013 preprint refquoted at length.

The tone and tenor of Weitzman commentary in his book differ quite markedly from the material attributed jointly to him as second author in the 2013 preprint.

Given that it is a preprint and from 6 years earlier I think the sentence/refquote "This criticism is viewed by many geneticists as one that "dramatically exaggerates the linkages" and "unfairly impugns the anti-racist positions that they may in fact hold with an intensity equal to that of the critics." needs to be cut back and attributed. Selfstudier (talk) 15:40, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I support attribution (in fact, I think we should attribute more in this article: in this field of scholarship scholars disagree with each other and are making arguments, not simply reporting empirical facts). I don't see the reason to trim, though, as it's now quite short. What's the contradiction between the two statements? BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:17, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

The phrase "This criticism.." makes it appear as if the subsequent is referring to the part of the previous sentence that refers to Zionist thinking about race. However that is not the case, the entire sentence in the source is as follows:

"Criticism of human population genetics, especially from scholarly fields that as a premise regard the scientific endeavor with skepticism, has asserted continuity between this earlier race science and present day genetics research —an argument that in the view of many practicing geneticists dramatically exaggerates the linkages, belies their personal orientations toward their own research programs, underestimates the consideration they devote to challenges and subtleties of issues of race in genetics, and unfairly impugns the anti-­‐racist positions that they may in fact hold with an intensity equal to that of the critics."

This is essentially the same thing as is said in the previous sentence but sourced to Weitzman (less polemically) so is needless duplication (same thing in the associated refquote). Selfstudier (talk) 16:14, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

That's not quite how I read it. However, the next part of the earlier text comes full circle, after the "impugning" part to state: "Especially in the ways that it enters the public dialogue, however, present-day research in Jewish genetics has sometimes been treated as reintroducing a biological conception of Jewish identity that many may have thought permanently discredited by the Holocaust and its catastrophic racialization of Jewish identity." The quote on page at present just extracts the middle part, rather than reflecting the full arc of the content. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:27, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

If the two aspects are separated, the criticism of the discipline in global and the criticism of Zionist thinking, the duplication becomes clear. I will have a go at it a bit later on. Selfstudier (talk) 16:56, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

OK, this is just a rough first cut at separation without any view on the final form or where the material should go in the article. The first part shows the duplication. The second part (via the 2013 paper mainly) clarifies that the "target" is El-Haj, presumably representing those others that hold a similar view, a view said to be representative of the broader critique:-

In his 2019 book, Steven Weitzman says that critiques made by anthropologists and social scientists have stressed broader lines of continuity between population genetics and race science while in a 2013 paper jointly authored with Noah Rosenberg, he says this criticism is viewed by geneticists as one that "dramatically exaggerates the linkages" and "unfairly impugns the anti-racist positions that they may in fact hold with an intensity equal to that of the critics." In his book, Weitzman says that Abu El-Haj's argument is in line with this broader critique of the field while in a 2013 paper jointly authored with Noah Rosenberg, he discusses the proposition by Susan Martha Kahn "for a shared understanding between the positions represented by Ostrer and El- Haj, critiquing both Ostrer’s provocative claims about the meaning of the scientific data and the aspersions cast by El-Haj on the science without attending to its actual content." and is somewhat sceptical of the prospects for such an understanding.

References

Selfstudier (talk) 18:08, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

As regards the 2013 paper, Weitzman in his book says "In my personal experience, however, a fusion of the two perspectives ["Approaching this debate from a vantage point outside of both genetics and anthropology, I struggle to judge who is right and who is wrong, or rather I struggle to understand how they both might be right, and I find it striking that there has not been much dialogue between the two perspectives"] is not so easy. When I was at Stanford, Noah Rosenberg and I organized a series of talks on Jewish genetics [the 2013 paper is based on these] through which we hoped to bring the two perspectives into conversation with each other, but we found it very difficult to do so. What I did not know then was that we were not the first scholars to attempt—and fail—at this kind of dialogue. In 1927 the German Jewish sexologist Max Marcuse organized an exchange published in the German medical journal Die medizinische Welt that was meant to put race scientists in conversation with anthropological critics, including no less a figure than Franz Boas himself, and the contributors there were not able to bridge their differences either. The problem is not just the challenge of how to communicate across fields or how to integrate different kinds of evidence but how to overcome an incommensurability of paradigms, a challenge that we still did not know how to overcome close to a century after Marcuse made his attempt." This perhaps explains the difference in tone between the 2013 paper and the 2019 work.Selfstudier (talk) 09:53, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I edited the article to reflect the above discussion.Selfstudier (talk) 11:10, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Continuity between "Zionism and race" and "Zionism and genetics", versus continuity between "Race science on Jews" and "Genetic science on Jews"

I have moved these two sentences from the lede here for further discussion:

Steven Weitzman says that in line with broad critiques made by anthropologists and social scientists of population genetics, it is argued by Abu El-Haj and other anthropologists that the study of Jewish population genetics has retained aspects of earlier Zionist thinking about race.{{efn|"...a study of Jewish and Israeli genetics research into the origin of the Jews that aimed to expose the assumptions and biases implicit in such research and to critique the way it has been used politically and culturally by Zionists in Israel" {{harv|Weitzman|2019|p=308}}}} In a 2013 paper jointly authored with Noah Rosenberg, he says this criticism is viewed by many geneticists as a dramatic exaggeration that unfairly impugns the anti-racist positions the geneticists may hold.{{efn|"From what I have read, this view of genetics and its historical relationship to race science, a perspective that stresses the lines of continuity between the two fields, is common among the anthropologists who write about genetics research, and Abu El-Haj's argument is in line with this broader critique of the field."{{harv|Weitzman|2019|p=309}}}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rosenberg |first=Noah |last2=Weitzman |first2=Steven |date=2013-12-01 |title=From Generation to Generation: The Genetics of Jewish Populations |url=https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol_preprints/39 |journal=Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints |volume=85 |issue=6 |quote=Criticism of human population genetics, especially from scholarly fields that as a premise regard the scientific endeavor with skepticism, has asserted continuity between this earlier race science and present-day genetics research— an argument that in the view of many practicing geneticists dramatically exaggerates the linkages, belies their personal orientations toward their own research programs, underestimates the consideration they devote to challenges and subtleties of issues of race in genetics, and unfairly impugns the anti-racist positions that they may in fact hold with an intensity equal to that of the critics. Especially in the ways that it enters the public dialogue, however, present-day research in Jewish genetics has sometimes been treated as reintroducing a biological conception of Jewish identity that many may have thought permanently discredited by the Holocaust and its catastrophic racialization of Jewish identity.}}</ref>

Zionism, race and genetics, vs other topics

This content is useful for the article but probably not ledeworthy, and either way needs to be properly contextualized. Not least because the first sentence and second sentence are not talking about the same thing, although they are incorrectly presented as if one is in direct opposition to the other. As the diagram on the right shows, the connection being disputed by Weitzman and Rosenberg here (bottom half of the diagram) is not the central point in the article. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:32, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

See https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.10041

In the case of human genetics (by which we mean the genetic study of human biology and disease) this often involves terminology inherited from anthropology and population genetics, both of which have evolved significantly in recent years. Both fields now firmly reject longstanding ideas of race as a meaningful biological category and labels which were founded in racist perspectives of the 20th and preceding centuries.

‘Race’ is particularly problematic, and its historical and political connotations, along with the fact that it is not a meaningful descriptor of genetic variation, have led many human geneticists to avoid it altogether

Race is firmly rejected by modern geneticists, along with many avoiding usage of the term altogether.

Note, Social Sciences are conceptual, not empirical. Their claims can not be presented as facts, because they are not facts, and they certainly can not be stated in Wikipedia as facts. The most that can be put into Wiki voice is to note that anthropologists/social scientists have asserted a continuity, which is disputed my many geneticists. Drsmoo (talk) 15:15, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Arxiv, per RSP, is generally unreliable, I am not entirely sure what point relevant to the article is being made by presenting this. As for attribution, I don't think anyone is disputing the need for that as and when appropriate, this would include genetics if interpretations of data is involved as, for example, "Ostrer’s provocative claims about the meaning of the scientific data". Remembering we are speaking here about Zionism and race/genetics, not the thinking of specialists generally on the subject of race, geneticists or otherwise. Selfstudier (talk) 16:08, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

The authors are notable experts in the field, so it fits the exception.

Ewan Birney, https://www.phpc.cam.ac.uk/people/ceu-group/ceu-senior-research-staff/michael-inouye/ (35,390 citations), Jennifer Raff, Adam Rutherford, https://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/directory/aylwyn-scally (21,130 citations) Drsmoo (talk) 16:37, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

That may be, I still can't see what is the relevance for this article. https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2023/03/researchers-need-to-rethink-and-justify-how-and-why-race-ethnicity-and-ancestry-labels-are-used-in-genetics-and-genomics-research-says-new-report is similar. Selfstudier (talk) 16:40, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

@Drsmoo: please could you address the central topic – i.e. the different types of continuity being described by the literature? The quote you brought above is reiterating your prior points, not addressing the topic of this thread. Onceinawhile (talk) 16:44, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

What is the topic of this thread then? You claimed the two Weitzman references are discussing different things. In fact, they are both referencing the exact same criticism by El-Haj. You continue to use words like “explain” and “describe” as if there is a “real continuity”. There is not, only an alleged one.Drsmoo (talk) 16:48, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

The topic of this thread is the difference between the:

1. Continuity between "Zionism and race" and "Zionism and genetics" (a sociological or anthropological observation), and
2. Continuity between "Race science on Jews" and "Genetic science on Jews" (a biological science question)

Weitzman's critique addresses only point 2. Separately, Weitzman, and all other relevant scholars, acknowledge point 1 as a fact. Onceinawhile (talk) 16:56, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Continuity between "Zionism and race" and "Zionism and genetics"

How do you distinguish this from number 2? Drsmoo (talk) 17:01, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

1. is about how these biological sciences are used in identity politics.

2. is about the content of sciences themselves.

In other words, 1 = Sociology and 2 = Biological science.

Onceinawhile (talk) 17:05, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

So your assertion is that the concept of “race” is prevalent in Jewish Population Genetics? And that this is an undisputed fact? Drsmoo (talk) 17:09, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

No. That would be point 2. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:12, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Ok… so you’re asserting that genetics is viewed today in the way that race was viewed in the past within identity politics. Is that your view? Drsmoo (talk) 17:15, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

All the sources say that. Yes. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:30, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

So “all the sources say that”. Is that attested to empirically somewhere, or is that your own research/conclusion? Drsmoo (talk) 17:33, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

That (a part of) El-Haj critique is in line with a broader criticism of the field doesn't mean that El-Haj position is criticized, the contrary, it supports the position she takes. That is why I separated the two things and you edited them back together again so as to present the broader argument as a criticism of El-Haj, which it isn't. Selfstudier (talk) 16:57, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Please strike your incorrect personal attack, which is wrong as they neither criticized nor supported El-Haj. They described her viewpoint as a criticism and an aspersion and being viewed by many practicing geneticists as impugning their work. Drsmoo (talk) 17:00, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

What personal attack? El-Haj is criticized but not for what you are suggesting:

"But it also has to be acknowledged that Abu El-Haj’s book reflects a criticism of population genetics that is not confined to that focused on the Jews. Similar arguments have been made about population genetics in general by Jenny Reardon, Duana Fullwiley, and many others who argue that the field was not as successful in distinguishing itself from race science as its practitioners believe. None of these scholars, including Abu El-Haj, is suggesting that genetics is a simple extension of the race science practices that led to Nazi eugenics;" Selfstudier (talk) 17:09, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

“you edited them back together again so as to present the broader argument as a criticism of El-Haj, which it isn't.”

“ El-Haj iscriticized but not for what you are suggesting” I did not suggest a criticism of El-Haj, nor did I edit to suggest such. Drsmoo (talk) 17:13, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

The article before my edit implied criticism of El-Haj, I separated the two things so as to clarify that there was no such criticism and you edited them back together again, with edit summary "Reorganizing for logical flow". Selfstudier (talk) 17:16, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Correct, to note, they did describe her study as an aspersion and as not being based on the science, but that is not a criticism. Drsmoo (talk) 17:23, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

It is a criticism but it has nothing to do with the race issue generally. Selfstudier (talk) 17:25, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I’m confident that both papers are discussing the same point by El-Haj. Drsmoo (talk) 17:31, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not and I have provided several quotations above that support that. Here's another: "This is why, from the perspective of a critic like Abu El-Haj, the scientific rigor of the research involved in Jewish genetic history is beside the point. To become a genetic history, the data must undergo a process of emplotment, must be turned into a narrative, and that is where bias, stereotypes, and self-interest can slip in. That is true of history, archaeology, or any method we might use, but it is less obvious for geneticists, who are seen as more objective than these other kinds of scholars because of the scientific nature of their work. But even geneticists tend to favor certain narratives over others for reasons that have nothing to do with the science. For example, geneticists are inclined to think arborescently, to interpret the evidence inscribed into the DNA of Jewish populations as a tree that branches off in different directions from a common Middle Eastern root; but Abu El-Haj counters that the data, if read from a more neutral perspective, might more plausibly be conceived of as a bush too entangled to support any coherent narrative of origin." Selfstudier (talk) 17:33, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I see what you’re talking about, but that not actually related to race. More of a general aspersion of bias. I think all aspects of the summary can be made more clear. Drsmoo (talk) 17:43, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I like it with the passage simply left out of the lead, the way it is now, as of me posting this comment. It isn't needed in the lead, and it's better to keep the lead shorter. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:14, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. If the passage needs attributing at every turn and is focusing on individual critiques rather then general narratives then it's sort of left the realm of useful summary. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:30, 28 August 2023 (UTC)