Talk:A land without a people for a people without a land/Archive 1

Neutrality

The article is clearly written from the point of view of discrediting Said, Chomsky et al. and pushing forward the views of others. Almost all the sources are obviously pro-Israeli. Let's get a vague attempt at neutrality here. I know it's hard kids, but we can do it.

1) Immediately, the phrase is justified or mitigated. We are not allowed to hear criticisms of the phrase, or rather the effect its implementation has had on the Palestinians (cf. 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' by Pappé)

2) The article implies that Zionists never used the term, specifically Herzl. In fact the Israeli Foreign Affairs website , Americans for Middle East Understanding , and various other sources , including scholarly articles reference this term to early Zionists. The Future of Freedom website quotes Herzl as saying: "The problem of Zionism is one of means of transport: there is a people [Jews] without a land, and a land without a people", although they don't reference it so it's not particularly convincing. It could well be the case that Herzl didn't say it.

3) POV: "By omitting the article "a," Said distorted the meaning of the phrase." "By omitting the article "a" Chomsky gives the false impression..." This is obvious POV. State their position. State the criticism of their position. No emotive words.

4) There is no doubt the phrase is hugely well-known now, without about 25,000 Google results (if we count both constructions of the phrase). This article should note the popularity of the phrase, and the reason for this, namely that:

• It was an early Zionist slogan (perhaps not oft-repeated, but certainly well-known at the time, as well as now).
• It appeared to typify the view of Israel towards the Palestinians as 'non-people' or 'non-existent'. There has been much scholarly work on this, which we can't just ignore because it's inconvenient. Let's allow space for both sides of the argument here. I think it can be done. Jamal (talk) 11:42, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Jamal what the MFA website actually says is: "the founders of Zionism knew that Palestine (the Land of Israel) had an Arab population (though some spoke naively of "a land without a people for a people without a land"). " this only proves that the MFA may have made the same mistake others have and assumed believed that this was a Aionist phrase when it was not. Unless, of course, you wish to argue that the ISRAELI MFA is infallibleAmerican Clio (talk) 16:30, 31 March 2008 (UTC)America Clio

This is an important subject and IMO worthy of a Wikipedia page, but that page should not be an essay arguing one point of view in a political dispute. For instance, I am unhappy about this paragraph, especially the last line:

What is odd, viewed from the Arab perspective, is the lens through which not only Shaftesbury, Blackstone, and Stoddard, but all Christians look at the Holy Land. To many Christians, the eastern Mediterranean is permanently overlaid with the outline of a bordered territory labeled ‘the Holy Land,’ or ‘the Land of Israel.’ Christians are aware that Jewish political existence in the land was terminated by Rome, and that the land has been part of other peoples’ empires for most of the time since. Nevertheless, the impress of those ancient borders – “from Dan to Beersheba” - is widely known in Christian countries. Westerners equate lands with peoples and, therefore, even post-Christian Westerners expect to find a people identified and coterminous with the Holy Land.

I don't accept that the author of this paragraph can speak on behalf of 'post-Christian Westerners'. There is a Wikipedia article Holy_Land_(Biblical), and I would suggest that much of this paragraph could be redirected towards that article.--Lopakhin (talk) 17:16, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The point here is to help understand why these Christians insisted that this populated land was without a people. The people living there in the ninetteenth centruy were largely Arabs (we'll ignore the Greeks, Circassians, Armenians etc. , because the largest gorup was Arab.) In retrospect, why didn't these Christian gentlemen just say, oh, the people are Arabs, so, its all Arabia.

They did not. they said,more or less, Look there lies the Holy Land (or the Land of Israel) ant it doesn't have a people. that is because they saw it as a defined land, frm Dan to Beersheba, and felt taht it ought to have a People identified with it.

Even post-Christian westerners feel this way. That is why every campus in this country has a student club that supports the rights of the Palestinians to Palestine, but I know of no clubs supporting, say, the rights of the Lebanese Arabs not to be ruled by Syria, I see no Kurdistan Solidarity Movement to rivel the Palestine Solidarity Movement. the point is that the palestinians easily persuade us of their cause because all westerners, even post-Christian Westerners, expect that Palestine is a defined and bordered place, with edges , like Japan, rather than seeing it as Arabs saw it thorugh out history - as an integral part of the Arab world with no distinct identity or sharp edges. —Preceding unsigned comment added by American Clio (talk • contribs) 19:15, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

There is already another article on this phrase, A land without a people. At the very least, the two should be merged. I also agree with Lopakhin's concern above, that this is actually an essay taking a position, rather than an encyclopaedic article. Too many of the assertions are unsourced -- and, in my opinion, unfounded. There is also an inappropriate attack on Edward Said, for making the same citation error as other reputable scholars as Hans Kohn and Amos Elon. The article in its current state should not remain. RolandR (talk) 22:47, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The error E. Said made is widespread and non-trivial. We can't cite everyone who made the error. See emmendation "many scholars" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.39.35.17 (talk) 20:23, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The article as it now stands is heavily sourced and neutral in tone. It is and should remain narrowly focuses on this particular slogan, not on the issue of whether Palestine was actually empty or on whether or when the Palestinians became a people.American Clio (talk) 21:39, 5 March 2008 (UTC)American Clio

neutrality

It looks to me as though the original objections have been cleared up. The disputes about what right Jews did/did not have to the land, and about whether the Arab residents were/were not "a people" belong elsewhere. On the specific question of the use of this phrase, the article seems to be based on two scholarly articles devoted to this narrow topic : the Garfinkle and Muir articles. It is extensively-sourced. Lopatkin's objections appear to have been cleared up by later edits by American Clio. The tag has been up since December. No one has introduced any further arguments about bias or evidence that there is anything going on other than the Garfinkle/Muir argument that this phrase was some king of error compounded by misinterpretationof "a people" and false impression that it was a Zionist slogan. I am taking down the tag.Thomas Babbington (talk) 13:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)Thomas Babbington

Wow, this article is a violation of WP:UNDUE if I ever saw one. "Extensively-sourced" is a pretty dubious assessment! We can't just arbitrarily assign two essays criticising the use of the quote as the only good sources, and use them to contradict and denigrate all the other sources, including internationally-renowned historians.

The main source here is an article published by the Middle East Forum, which sets off alarm bells right away. MEF is the outfit of Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer, two highly controversial scholars-cum-political activists. MEF basically dissents from the entire field of academic Middle Eastern Studies, regarding it as infilitrated by nefarious pro-terror advocates. The author of the piece is a fairly obscure historian-economist-ecologist-gadfly who is known mostly for her work on New England, not the Middle East. Muir seems to be pretty extremist herself; anybody who says "the black-checked keffiyeh [...] is the symbol of Palestinian determination to destroy the Jewish State"[3] doesn't really have standing to talk about historical fabrication.

The quote you cite was in an article discussing a formal, academic paper correlating European anti-Israel activity with old-fashioned anti-Semitism, and, specifically, in a section discussing accusations that Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain demonstrated his "anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and Israelophobia," by wearing a palestinian keffiyeh and making anti-Israel remarks.American Clio (talk) 18:17, 31 March 2008 (UTC)American Clio

The second source, the Garfinkle article, seems to be better quality, although I do wonder at the problems of political bias. The fellow worked for Scoop Jackson and Alexander Haig, and The American Interest after breaking away from The National Interest because it was too liberal (!) - those are some pretty impressive neoconservative credentials. I'm not suggesting we dismiss such a source, but he is definitely coming from a known ideological perspective, and it's contrary to WP:NPOV to elevate his standing above people like Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi and Noam Chomsky, who are also ideological but all at least as qualified as he. Heck, even Benny Morris, no bleeding heart himself, used this quotation.

Fukuyama, Garfinkle et al broke from the National Interest and formed the American Interest because the neo-conservative National Interest supported the invasion og Iraq and Fufuyama and Garfinkle did not. More to the point, why are you attacking the sources instead of addressing the issues here?American Clio (talk) 16:16, 31 March 2008 (UTC)American Clio

We need to rewrite this article completely, so as not to present the views of Muir and Garfinkle as authoritative and those of Said, Khalidi, Chomsky, Morris as false and discredited. It does seem that this phrase was more associated with Christians than Jewish Zionists, who did not use it as a primary slogan, but that doesn't mean that Said et al are being dishonest when they use it as a summation of what they see as Zionism's ideology. WP should not be used as a soapbox to favour one side of a legitimate academic dispute. <eleland/talkedits> 02:01, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

• The two articles in question are from a reputable academic jorunal. MEQ has a political stlant (as does every journal dealing with the Middle Ease, and i do mean EVERY academic journal in this field) but, it is reliable on facts.

The thing about the Muir article is that tha author went back to the pre-State period and tracked down not only th esource of the article (decisively not Zionist) but the uses of the article, and established that it was hardly used by Zionists. Moreover you are not reading carefully, the page cites two highly regarded historians of Zionism, Dowty, Lassner and Troen, who agree with Garfinkle and Muir. Moreover, the Muir article discusses Khalidi citation and establishes that he does not produce any actual uses of the phrase by n actual Zionist. She says that Said cites Zangwill, but one use by a guy notorious among historians of Zionism mostly for quitting the movement after a brief involvement is not the same as widespread use. As I see it, this article cannot be refuted by passing references to this phrase without sources, which is all Said, Khalidi and Chomsky have produced. It could only be countered by an academic article in a refereed journal, like MEQ, but on the other side of the political fence. Whig historian (talk) 15:40, 31 March 2008 (UTC)Whig historian

• I believe that Eleland misunderstands the nature of the Muir article. Muir is arguing that there has been a mistake. Specifically that a great many commentators and historians (and by the way, Said and Chomsky are not historians, Said was a literature professor and chomsky a linguist, and both have been savaged by historians for the use of bad facts and for poor scholarship when dealing with historical sources) back to Muir, her argument is that many commentators and historians made a mistake, or repeated mistakes made by others. It happens. As she demonstrates, it happpened here. People, including some scholars, mistakenly believed that this was a Zionist phrase. They were worng. The article is well supported by evidence. finito. American Clio (talk) 16:24, 31 March 2008 (UTC)American Clio

The Muir and Garfinkle articles could be refuted, but only if someone were to write a formal article bringing evidence that the phrase was in fact used by pre-state Zionists, or that there were Zionists who used it to argue that the land was empty, rather than that it was without a people organized around a political idea of peoplehood or nationhood. Merely alleging that this was so, as Khalidi and Said have done, is not a refutation of Muir, it is merely an example of the error she demonstrates.American Clio (talk) 17:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)American Clio

• It may not be perfect, but it looks pretty clear to me. This phrase is very widely cited. I have certainly seen it many times. Interestingly, google and you get more hits for the phrasing "land without people" than "land without a people." We are all taken in by mistakes that pass into conventional wisdom. but, there is quite a line up os serious scholars telling us that this slogan was not what Said, Chomsky et al claim that it was. S. Ilan Troen Jacob Lassner Diane Muir Adam Garfinkle Steven Poole Alan Dowty. Moreover, the debate about "Zionist ideology" that Eland suggest including belong elsewhere, not on a page dedicated to this particular slogan which was, apparently, a kind of propaganda hoax. April 2008 (UTC)Evidence-based Evidence-based (talk) 14:51, 1 April 2008 (UTC)Evidence-based

• Perhaps Eleland or someone could find an article or a passage in a book by Said, Chomsky or a scholar who takes their position that directly addresses the history and use of the phrase, or discusses a number of uses (by Zionists) of the phrase and what was meant by those who used it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.39.35.32 (talk) 15:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

• Jamal and Eleland appear to conflate the concept (that the land was empty, or that there wase no Palestinian people) with the slogan itself. this is a page about this particular slogan. Not about Edward Said's views of Zionism. Athena's daughter (talk) 17:09, 1 April 2008 (UTC)Athena's daughter

• I have balanced the article. I agree that this article should be confined to the discussion of this phharse or slogan, and not stray to the issue of what Edward Said or anyone else thought about Zionism or Zionists.Yankee Scribe (talk) 20:30, 1 April 2008 (UTC)Yankee Scribe

Tags

Most discussion of the use of this quote is sourced to the Middle East Quarterly. It is not an academic journal, and is barely a reliable source. In this case the author is also not reliable, as Diana Muir is a writer without academic association who normally specialises in books about the ecology of New England.

A major rewrite is needed to bring the dependence on this particular source to an acceptable level. The tags indicate this. --Relata refero (disp.) 13:07, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

• Let's take this one part at a time

1. There is discussion about the origin of the phrase 2. there is discussion in this article about whether this was a Zionist phrase at all 3. there is discussion about the meaning of this phrase.

• Let's take these one at a time.

On the question of who said it first. Garfinkle, publishing a decade ago introduced evidence that Shaftesbury penned this phrase before Theodore Herzl was even born. Muir has evidence that a scotch theologian said it even before that. someone could trump Muir with an even earlier use. so I am inserting the word "apparently."

• 2. Was this a Zionist slogan?

Muir is not the sole source on this. Alan Dowty published this years ago, albeit in a footnote where it was totally ignored until Muir noticed it. Moreover, the slogan is wiely cited to Herzl, and Garfinkle maintains that he never said it. We also have Rachel Neuwit, but I don’t know who she is. In a larger sense, of course, Retero is correct. The assertion that this was not a Zionist slogan depends on Muir’s work. But here’s the thing. Muir has published a well-crafted, scholarly article (albeit in an academic journal whose politics are pro-Israel) What she argues is prima facie not implausible, i.e., that post 1964 the idea that this was once a Zionist slogan passed into general use, became the conventional wisdom. These things happen. Muir is not unreasonable in her claims. She suggests that in the light of her findings, "Unless or until evidence comes to light of its wide use by Zionist publications and organizations, the assertion that 'a land without a people for a people without a land' was a 'widely-propagated Zionist slogan' should be retired." Frankly, in the light of a scholarly article with as much evidenceas she brings, I cannot see what we could put up to balance her position, unless or until somebody finds a string of early Zionists using this phrase.

• 3. So, now the harder question, what did the phrase mean. Here’s the rub. We could add sections on guys like Said, who discuss what this phrase meant. But they are discussing it based on an assumption that now appears to have been an error, i.e., that this was once a Zionist slogan. But now that the Muir article seems to demonstrate that this was not a Zionist slogan, it would be irresponsible to publish mere assertions that it was one. What are we going to say, “Based on his apparently erroneous but, at the time he published, widely shared, assumption that this was a Zionist slogan, Edward Said wrote..” Discussions of Zionist attitudes toward the resident population in the Ottoman and Mandate periods belong elsewhere. On this page we are discussing one little slogan.American Clio (talk) 18:54, 2 April 2008 (UTC)American Clio

• We should look at some of the literature that deals with the phrase critically, seeing at as legitimising ethnic cleansing. Jamal (talk) 18:09, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
• The problem of ethnic cleansing and the question of the Zionist and/or Arab intention to carry out ethnic cleansing need to be dealt with elsewhere. Here, if we add such a discussion it will need to be in the context of the recent demonstration by Muir that Said and others were apparently in error in believing that this was a Zionist slogan 2 April 2008 (UTC)American Clio

• 'Proponents of Zionism', sounds better than '...a Jewish return to the land.'

• the problem is, Keeith, Shaftesbury et al wrote before the term Zionis was coined.American Clio (talk) 18:18, 2 April 2008 (UTC)American Clio.

A reminder: unless better sources are found, WP:REDFLAG indicates that the current assumption that Muir is right will have to be revisited, rewritten, or deleted. I have no objection to Garfinkle, as MES is a scholarly journal published by Routledge. --Relata refero (disp.) 18:28, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

• You cannot disqualify an academic journal merely because you do not like what it says.American Clio (talk) 19:04, 2 April 2008 (UTC)American Clio

Chomsky, pg 47

You know, for a POV essay written to explain how Chomsky and Said are a bunch of sloppy distorters of fact, this page is pretty sloppy itself. It says:

Chomsky attributes to Theodore Herzl the statement that Palestine was "a land without people for a people without land, [31] incorrectly according to historian Adam Garfinkle who states that Herzl "never" used this phrase. [32]

And what does the cited source #31 actually say?

In "an open letter to the occupiers of my homeland," a Palestinian refugee writes these words:

Theodore Herzl once said the Jews must go to Palestine because it was "a land without people for a people without a land..."

Obviously, there's a major difference between quoting a source which attributes that phrase to Herzl — in a context which is hardly dependent on the "without people" quote to begin with — and actually attributing the statement to Herzl. <eleland/talkedits> 19:23, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

- I haven't read the Chomsky source, but it seems pretty clear to me that Chomsky is quoting that Palestinian approvingly. --Lopakhin (talk) 15:13, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Separating belief from evidence

• Eleland, Jamel, Liquid words and Relata refero need to encounter the possibility that Said , Chomsky and others were taken in by a widely-held belief that has turned out to be incorrect. I will confess that until reading Muir, I also accepted that “land without a people for a people without a land” was at one time a popular Zionist slogan. Sometimes we believe things that are not true because people we trust tell us that they are so. Many, actually, most academic historians used to doubt that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemmings’ child. New evidence emerges. Reasonable people accept it and move on. Evidence-based (talk) 19:54, 2 April 2008 (UTC)Evidence-based

• Edward Said was not infallible. He made two errors of fact: asserting that this phrase was coined by Zangwill and that it was a popular Zionist slogan. Of course, he was not a historian of Zionism or a political scientist studying Zionism. He got it wrong. Get over it. Said also changed the wording, which may have been inadvertent, but, nevertheless, in a published work by a professor of literature, is not good. What would you have us do? Airbrush these errors out of the picture? Athena's daughter (talk) 21:42, 2 April 2008 (UTC)Athena’s daughter

• • Please refrain from Internet psychoanalysis; it's neither civil nor constructive. (Also try to limit yourself to one account per article, so it doesn't look like you're trying to stack a vote.) On point, I personally suspect that Muir is correct in stating that the slogan was not prevalent among early Zionist Jews. However, this article has demonstrable errors (see Chomsky pg. 47 above) and seems to exaggerate the importance of the slogan to critics of Zionism. It also presents the misattribution of the "without people" quote as a distortion by anti-Zionists, when we all seem to agree that it is a very common belief among neutral historians as well as partisans of all sides. **When you strip away the undue weight on certain opinions, the point is that ALWAPFAPAL is a controversial slogan apparently coined by Christian sympathizers of Jewish nationalism, and today generally believed to be a slogan used by Jewish Zionists, although that belief has been challenged and may not be well-founded. Muir and some others believe that its use by anti-Zionists is a malicious distortion, and that the true roots of the slogan undermine and collapse their arguments. There is no evidence that this belief is a generally or widely held one, and thus no justification to structure the article around it. <eleland/talkedits> 12:34, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

• • • Let's be very careful here. the impression that this was a popular Zionist slogan is widely shared by pro and anti Israel folk. Only anti-Israel writers omit the indefinite article, altering the meaning of the phrase. American Clio (talk) 13:06, 3 April 2008 (UTC)American Clio

• • • Eleland states: "There is no evidence that this belief is a generally or widely held one, and thus no justification to structure the article around it." But this is not a matter of belief. Muir has presented new evidence. In the article, she states that she employed word searches of large archives of newspapers and books only recently available online. She has used these new resources to overturn a widely-held assumption, i.e., that this slogan was once in wide use by Zionists. the article was published this spring. so, you cannot possibly demand that it be widely accepted. The justification for putting it in the article is that it and the Garfinkle article are the only two academic articles published about this phrase. Other scholars cite the phrase, they do not study it. Moreover, it is quite an exaggeration to assert that the article is "structured around" the Muir article when the Wikipedia page predates the publication by Muir.American Clio (talk) 13:12, 3 April 2008 (UTC)American Clio

Second attempt at balance

I took a second swing at balancing this article, while holding it tightly to the discussion of this troublesome phrase. i.e., not to discussions of whether the Zionists thought that the land was empty or wanted it to be empty. Yankee Scribe (talk) 14:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)Yankee Scribe

Article should be Deleted

Sense the main editor has been revealed to be an unscrupulous sock puppet who is now been banned for his behavior I propose that this entire article be deleted and whatever relevant material it may possess be moved to the Israel Zangwill article. It seems to me though that just about everything that this editor as added is tainted with potentional bias. It seems to me that with the recent revelations of Israeli PR people trying to slant wikipedia towards the Zionist perspective that everything Evidence based or whatever his name is should be treated as suspect.

Who hell is Dana Muir anyway. Outside of the extremely biased history news network what real sources are there for this. The Muir article was started by evidence based as well, obviously to make her views legimate.

Evidence based has tainted several articles at wikipedia with this garbage. With the exception of the Zangwill article, all of evidence based's contributions need to be reversed because I think it's obvious this was part of concerted POV Pushing campaign.annoynmous 13:26, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your message on my talk page. I see that you have now retagged it for CSD as patent nonsense! Please cool down and think about this? Do you really think that this article has "...unsalvagably incohrent material"? I can understand if you want to say this is a strong POV, but I disagree that this is a CSD nominee, more so, as patent nonsense. Consider a PROD or an AfD. I am removing the tag for now. Please note that I have no particular POV or interest in the topic itself. I am only doing this because, this wont survive a CSD. Do justify appropriate CSD criterion if you are tagging it again. THanks. Prashanthns (talk) 22:24, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello Annoynmous. Have you tried contacting any of the above editors to try and balance the article? Is the deletion deemed necessary ONLY because its creator was a sock, or because, the present state of the article or its presence itself is unacceptable by WP policy? I think you will have to address this concern before the article gets deleted. It might be a good idea for you to review the deletion policy and understand it before taking further action. Just not liking an article is not enough!Prashanthns (talk) 08:19, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

There is really only one editor an that is the aformentioned sock. He added all the content and the sources and everything else is just correction of minor spelling errors or things like that. Hardly any of the sources can be linked too. The main source is Diana Muir's article on History News Network.

Why does phrase like this need it's own page anyway. The only reason it was started in the first place was to smear people like Noam Chomsky and Edward Said. As I said above the claims made in muir's article can be moved to the Israel Zangwill article, but the phrase itself doesn't need an article.annoynmous 10:55, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The article has imperfections - don't we all. However, it is heavily sourced and the phrase itself is widely used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.39.33.150 (talk) 20:44, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The Article is not heavily sourced. Hardly anything in the article can be linked to and it is based almost entirely on Muirs article. If look closely at muir's article you'll see that the editor basically just replicated all of Muirs sources. This whole article is basically just an advertisement for her article.

That ignores the far more pressing matter that this article was most likely created by an Israeli PR man. That he was banned the smae time as the Camera propaganda campaign was uncovered says a lot to me. The article was created with malicious intent and therefore everything in it is tainted.

Muir's accusations can be moved to another article like the one on Israel Zangwill, but the phrase "A Land Without a People for a People without a land" doesn't need it's own page. The article for muir was created around the same time as this article and the olny reason to do so was to make her seem legitimate.

This article isn't an article, it's propoganda plain an simple.annoynmous 00:52, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

If you have a valid reason that the article should be considered for deletion, feel free to nominate it via the AfD process. Please do not replaced previously removed {{prod}} tags. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 00:54, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

The article was nominated for AfD and the result was to keep due to withrdrawl of nomination. The debate is archived here. Prashanthns (talk) 18:50, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

American Thinker

This is not a reliable source, because the publisher "American Thinker" itself isn't reliable.Bless sins (talk) 16:52, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Some clean-up

Declaring here that I am not aware of the subject at all. Due to several concerns expressed about the POV, am trying to see if I can balance the article a little by rm peacock terms and like.

• rm this from the second section on Historical context. Did not think it belonged there. Logic was quite convoluting also. Putting it here for comments and consideration. Please feel free to reinstate if you feel it improves the article. The phrase is "..Keith did not perceive the Holy Land to be the seat of a people constituted as a nation, in the way that Greece was the seat of the Greek people. His solution was modeled on the successful British diplomatic and military operations by means of which “Greece was given to the Greeks” in 1829 (following centuries of Ottoman occupation.) " Prashanthns (talk) 17:36, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Reverting silliness

the page as it stood was silly. Edwars Said cited a quote to Israel Zangwill. Twenty years later Garfinkle prooved that, actually, the wrote was used by shaftesbury 50 years before Zangwill. Garfinkle did not assert this , he proved it. Ten years later Muir proved that another guy used the quote ten years before before Shaftesbury. she die not assert this , she proved it. wikipedia looks silly when ti cannot differentiate between an asserion and a proven quotation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.215.171.130 (talk) 06:33, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

You misread the use of "attributed." In the article, "X attributed the phrase to Y" means, "X said that Y invented the phrase." It is not even remotely an attempt to cast doubt on Muir's documentation of an earlier use of the phrase, and I'm rather bemused that anyone would read it that way. Is English not your first language, or maybe the hostile media effect is working in overdrive...? <eleland/talkedits> 21:02, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

reverted POV words

Why was the editor above allowed to put back in POV words. The fact a matter is that Zangwill did coin the phrase, but he based it on a quote from shaftesbury. Also saying that is has been proven that it wasn't a zionist slogan is flat out untrue.annoynmous 23:31, 29 May 2008 UTC)

Cherry-picked

I use this template because our entire article structure, especially the "Criticizing the Critics" section, is built around a single contrarian essay in the quasi-journal Middle East Quarterly by a historian with no qualifications in Middle East scholarship. The article contains elementary distortions; for example, the very first footnoted claim is that "Anti-Zionists cite the phrase as a perfect encapsulation of the fundamental injustice of Zionism: that early Zionists believed Palestine was uninhabited.[1]" In fact, if you actually read the page Muir sites, Edward Said says that "Many of [Zionism's] European supporters - and others - believed that the land was empty and sparsely cultivated. This view was widely propagated by some of the movement's leading thinkers [...] it was summed up in the widely-propagated Zionist slogan, 'A land without a people for a people without a land. However, whatever Zionists in Europe may have chosen to believe, things looked different on the spot. There was little doubt in the minds of most Jewish settlers and of the officials responsible for purchasing land for settlement that the actual situation in Palestine was quite different from what this slogan indicated."

As is obvious, Muir advances a highly tendentious interpretation of Said's writing, and then proceeds to beat up her own straw man. "Many of [Zionism's] European supporters" becomes, "early Zionists," "this view was widely propagated" becomes "Zionists believed," "it was summed up" becomes "it was the perfect encapsulation," and the crucial qualifying addition that the actual Zionists on the ground understood the situation is wholly omitted. Furthermore, Muir's critique is written as if the "Land without a people" quote is a central pillar of anti-Zionist critique, rather than the ancillary anecdote that it actually is.

Lest it be objected that I'm arguing against a reliable source, and thus engaging in original research, I must point out that there's actually no reliable source here. Diana Muir Appelbaum is a historian of 18th century Massachusetts, not Palestine. Middle East Quarterly is an explicitly contrarian, politicized joural published by a who's-who of American neo-conservative activists. They can't get their extremist advocacy into normal scholarship, so they denounce mainstream academia as "dhimmis" and "leftists," take their soccer ball, and go play in their own yard. Well, good for them, but Wikipedia is not their yard, nor anybody's playground. This article has become a dumping ground for scurrilous and politically motivated "debunkings" of legitimate research, and it needs to be corrected. We can quote Middle East Forum here or there as an example of the rightwing American Jewish point-of-view, but we can't write entire articles just to showcase their aggressive and questionable denunciations of respected academics. <eleland/talkedits> 23:48, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't follow you. The section you tagged references 8 different sources, only one of which is Diana Muir Appelbaum's Middle East Quarterly article. Either those sources made the arguments attributed to them, or they didn't. If they didn't, let's get rid of them altogether - why bother with the tag? And if they did, what difference does it make if their arguments were also repeated by an advocacy group? That's a classic ad hominem fallacy. Canadian Monkey (talk) 03:54, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

CM, if they didn't say something more or less like what they're quoted saying, I'd have removed the information altogether. The problem is the WP:UNDUE weight on "the critics of the critics," who are not "many historians" as the text claims, but one historian of the middle east in a real journal, one historian of Massachusetts in a quasi-journal, and one journalist. Furthermore, the only "critics" that are being in turn criticized are anti-Zionist critics, even though one can find countless examples of contemporary Zionist authors embracing the "land without a people" slogan. Finally, a doubtful over-interpretation of "the critics" is presented on their behalf, then attacked by the "critics of the critics."

As advocacy or propaganda, this is fine, but it's not a neutral presentation in an encyclopedia. This is unsurprising, given that this whole article was lovingly crafted by a now-banned, propagandistic editor who had a single-minded pattern of creating WP:COATRACK articles to promulgate such advocacy. <eleland/talkedits> 16:16, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I still don't get it. There are 8 cited sources, several of whom are highly qualified to comment as historians or journalists, which you concede say more or less what they're quoted as saying - so how can it be WP:UNDUE weight to present their views in a small sub-section dedicated to criticism of the critics? Phrased another way, what would it take to remove the tag you've placed on the section? Will adding criticism of Zionist critics do it? Canadian Monkey (talk) 16:30, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

There actually aren't 8 cited sources by highly qualified sources there only two. Most of the sources are essentially plagarized from muir's article. I doubt the banned editor actually looked at those sources to see if Muir quoted them right, they just copoyed them from the article. Thank you eleland, it's nice to see there's someone as mad I was several months ago about this article. annoynmous 14:23, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

have you asked the editor where he read the sources, or are you asking us to go by your speculation that he/she did not read the sources? What If I read the sources in the original, and can vouch to their veracity, can we then remove the template? Canadian Monkey (talk) 14:43, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

The editor was banned from wikipedia after he was exposed as a shill for an advocacy group trying to slant the article. Click on the the Muir article, all the sources are sighted the same with the exact same page numbers. The only the other sources besides muir is the jacob lassner book. As I said there are really only two sources. I think the template should stay. annoynmous 23:55, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'd expect that Muir, a competent scholar, would be able to get quotes right, with the correct page numbers, so I'm not surprised that the page numbers are the same, and I can only wonder why you are, or what you think that proves. But, back to the main point: If I read the sources in the original, and can vouch to their veracity, can we then remove the template? Canadian Monkey (talk) 03:54, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

She isn't a competent scholar, at least not on this subject. She's a historian of of new england, not the middle east. Her article is published in a non peer reviewed website that is biased towards a zionist outlook.

Also I would think plagarism would be more of an issue. Saying "Well I'm sure muir quoted them right" is a very disengenious stance. When you don't do the research yourself and just copy someone else's citations that's plagarism. That's why I don't think the template should be removed because the entire article was created by a sock puppet vandal editor who took two highly biased sources and passed them off as legitimate. That's not even including the fact that the sources list is padded because the sock editor listed several sources multiple times to make it look like the article has more documentation than it does.

Call me crazy, but I think the quality of this article should be determined by more than your personal faith in what a good scholar muir is.annoynmous 05:36, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

The template does not say "created by sockpuppet". It does not say "someone else's researchg" (naturally - as this whole project is predicated on using someone else's research, and original research is prohibited). It says the alleged problem is that it 'relies extensively on quotes that were previously collated by an advocacy or lobbying group'. So I ask again, ff I read the sources in the original, and can vouch to their veracity, can we then remove the template? Canadian Monkey (talk) 20:52, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

No. You misunderstand the purpose of the templae. It isn't to say that the quotes were inaccurate, but that they are selected with a view to propagating a particular worldview that may not represent all views on the subject. --Relata refero (disp.) 06:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I share Annoynmous' suspicions that the sockmaster didn't actually check the relevant sources, or didn't represent them accurately. In at least one case, this is absolutely proven - see Talk:A land without a people for a people without a land/Archive 1#Chomsky, pg 47. If Canadian Monkey will review the sources, that will at least negate this concern. However, I used the template because the article's overall structure, arrangement of sources, and broad intent are clearly copied from Muir's article in the "quasi-scholarly" -- honestly, that's how the founder himself described it to the Philly Inquirer -- MEQ. An article by a nonspecialist in a quasi-journal has determined the broad scope of this article, regardless of whether the individually cherry-picked quotes are accurate. That's the whole definition of cherry picking; the "cherries" really exist, but they're being used selectively and unfairly. But I do appreciate CM's offer, and his diligence in volunteering. <eleland/talkedits> 23:27, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and in fairness, the MEQ does have a soi-desant peer review board, and is published in print. In my opinion it's something like the JPANDS in medicine; a closed loop of politically motivated, tendentious scholars who do have academic qualifications but dissent from everyone else in their ostensible field of study. Maybe they're quotable here or there for a "pro-Israel" viewpoint, but they can't be taken as a generally reliable source, let alone as the backbone source for entire articles. <eleland/talkedits> 23:33, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Eleland, I'm not necassarily disagreeing with your assessment of the overall article structure - it probably does need improvement. I have a problem with this specific template, which I think is poorly thought out (and indeed - I have nominated it for deletion). Although it is named "cherrypicked" (which, as far as I can tell is just another name for POV - and we already have a NPOV tempalte), what it really compalins of is the fact that the alleged POV argumets were previously made by a partisan group - which is a fallacious argument, of the Ad Hominem variety. Can we change this to the standard {{npov}} template? Canadian Monkey (talk) 23:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I guess I would be okay with getting rid of the word "Cherrypicked", but I do feel that the article should have some indication for the average reader that much of the information in this article came from an editor who was an agent of an advocacy group. Is there a way to keep the template and just erase the word "Cherrypicked"?annoynmous 05:28, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Annoynmous Editing

• Interesting article. It is based on a pair of academic papers. as having been Not coined by Zionists, NOT intended to imply that Palestine was empty (merely that it was without a national entity,) and NOT widely used by Zionists.

• The Garfinkle/Muir thesis is supported in whole or part by other historians who have looked at the question: Alan Dowty, Ilan Troen and Jacob Lassner. As far as I can discover, no one has refuted the Garfinkle/Muir assertions, i.e., I can discover NO ARTICLES that claim to have found uses of the phrase beyond the limited period, circle, and meaning cited by Garfinkle and Muir.

• On the other hand, type the phrase into Google books or Google news, and up pop myriad uses, albeit overwhelmingly by people who would cheerfully see the Zionist State wiped off the map.

• The article could probably use a little work.

• I have reverted the edits by USER:Annoynmous who appears (above) to have some sort of animus against this article. And who presents no support for his assertion that the article was cherrypicked.Historicist (talk) 16:38, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Historicist obviously hasn't looked very thoroughly into the history of this article, otherwise he would know that the article was created by a sock who was revealed to be part of an attempt by the group CAMERA to slant wikipedia towards Israels viewpoint. If you don't believe me go back the edits made in in early 2008 and you will find that editors have all been banned from wikipedia for sock puppetry.

Second the article is basically plagarised from Diana Muirs article. With the exception of the Jacob Lassner book all the citations come from Muirs article.

Finally, Muir's article is written in a highly biased publication run by Daniel Pipes who isn't exactly neutral on this issue. Not too mention that Muir isn't qualified to talk about the middle East as her specialty is the history of new england.

Now if you want add more sources that you feel strenghthen the case made by Muir, by all means go ahead. I however will not except attempts to whitewash the history of this article and that fact that it was created by a sock with a biased agenda. That means the neutrality and cherrypicked tags stay.annoynmous 05:15, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Pace USER:Annoynmous the article is, as I explained above, primarily based on two, well-sourced academic articles, one by Garfinkle and one by Muir. These articles are supported by a large number of academic books and article. Quoting retutable histoians like Diana Muir, Adam Garfinkle, and S. Ilan Troen Jacob Lassner and Alan Dowty cannot be labeled cherrypicking.Historicist (talk) 12:43, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

As I said the page is basically plagarised from muirs article. All the page numbers and citations are virtually indentical to the way Muir cited them. Muirs article is the only thing we can link in this article so we have no way of knowing if she quoted them correctly. Also many of the so called reputable historians are very conservative like Garfinkle or unqualified like Muir whos specialty is New England, not the middle east. Not to mention the fact that muirs article is published in the highly biased Middle East Forum.

The word cherrypicked is not at the top of this article, the only way you can see it is if you go to the edit page. The tag above merely informs the average viewer that this article was primarily edited by a sock editor with a nefarious agenda. I think the average reader deserves to know that. If you don't like the word "cherrypicked", fine then place another tag at the top that informs the viewer of the articles history. Until you find a way to do that the tag stays.annoynmous 13:50, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I have read the article and pace USER:Annoynmous the article is far from "plagiarized".

• 1) It is primarily based on a pair of well-sourced, academic articles, one by Garfinkle and One by Muir. However, it also includes a substantial number of sources that appear in neither the Muir article nor in the Garfinkle article. These include a footnote in a book by the highly regarded historian S. Ilan Troen.

• 2) Some of the quotes in the artocle do appear in the Garfinke and Muir articles. So what? Drawing on and even citing sources found in an academic article is hardly illegitimate, either in scholarly writing or in Wikipedia articles.

• 3) Pace USER:Annoynmous's assertion that citing Muir is illegitimate because her PhD is not in Middle Eastern Studies, it is common to cite academics, journalists and authors writing on fields in whigch they do not hold the PhD. Do we remove all citations to Noam Chomsky that are on topics outside the field of linguistics?

• 4) The article does appear to have been created by a user who is not blocked. So what? the question is what are the sources and is it a solid article.

• In conclusion, unless USER:Annoynmous can come up with some reasons beyond the fact that he doesn't like the original editor, both tags should come down.Historicist (talk) 16:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, you obviously didn't read my comments above because I specifically said that other than the Jacob Lassner, S. ILan Troen book the entire article is plagarized from Muirs article. When you don't do the research yourself and just copy the sources from another article, that is plagarism. If you look at the sources cited, all the page numbers and the way there displayed in the article are identical.

What I have said all along is that there are only two real sources for this article, only one of which you can link to. Furthermore the article is published in the highly biased Middle East forum, which is an advocacy group.

I have never said you can't cite Muir or any other source you feel contributes to the case presented in the article. What I said was that the tags at the top of the article should stay so the average reader knows that the article was created by a sock who worked for and advocacy group. The average reader should also know that the article is largely based on one article written by a highly biased commentator in a highly baised publication that functions as an advocay group for Israel.

The article as it stands is essentially an advertisement for Muirs article and until more sources independent from her article are addded than the tags should stay. I am not saying you can't add more sources to the article, I'm just saying that for know the tags should stay up.

Historicist is free to add anything to the article he wants, but I won't tolerate the history of this article being whitewashed.annoynmous 14:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Revised, Rearranged, and Removed unsuported tags

annoynmous dislikes the article on the grounds that "The average reader should also know that the article is largely based on one article written by a highly biased commentator in a highly baised publication that functions as an advocay group for Israel." The problem is, this is not true. i frankly don't care who wrote the article in the original version. The fact is that it has been edited and added to by numerous editors and has a very large number of sources. Some - but hardly all - of the article is drawn from the Garfinkle and Muir articles. This is hardly a disqualifier. Two scholarly articles have been written on this rather narrow topic. Naturally, they cite much of the material that is out there. That is what makes them solid scholarly sources. They cite stuff. We really cannot exclude such major sources ad Shaftesbury, Zangwill and Edward Said on the grounds that Muir cites them. Nor can we allow users like annoynmous to mislead readers by hanging tags on well-sourced and well-balanced articles.

• the remaining weakness is in the section on The meaning and use of the phrase by opponents of Zionism It could use some further documentation of claims that this slogan was intended to imply that the land was empty as in void of people. Recent anti-Zionist books that I examined for such evidence, such as The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-colonialism Page 40 Nur Masalha , presented little beyond what seemed to me unsupported assertion of this point. but if annoynmous wants to include them, he may. Historicist (talk) 14:18, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I have to say, I generally do not think phrases merit encyclopedia articles - I would suggest merging this with the article on Zionism except that article is quite large. The question is, is this phrase notable neough to have been the object of attention for a variety of significant views? If so, let's have an article and make sure those views are represented. I fail to understand Anonymous's complaint that this is an "advertisement" for one source. The only question is, are all significant views represented accurately? If Anonymous is saying there are some significant views not represented, well, why not just add them? Slrubenstein | Talk 14:49, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Article is biased, unscholarly and was created by a sock for an advocacy group

Okay its obvious now that historicist is not an honest broker. Look at the POV edits he made like changing criticizing the critics to scholarly quibbles. Does that sound like someone interested in neutrality to you?

I'm suprised that slrubenstein doesn't take this matter more seriously. The fact that the article was created and primarily edited by a sock editor who was exposed as an agent of the advocacy group CAMERA I would think be a cause for concern. So once again I must explain why the article is biased, unscholary and cherrypicked.

There is only one source that can be linked to and that is Diana muirs.

Her article is published in the Middle East Forum which is a right wing site that doesn't qualify as scholary.

Muir is a historian of New England and therefore not an expert on the middle East. Plus before this article was created I doubt many people had heard of her

Almost all the sources in the article are basically plagarized from muirs article down to the page numbers and the way there cited. The only exception is the Jacob Lassner, S. llan Troen book. So this basically means there are only two real sources for this article.

The entire article is based on muirs argument, it basically a promotion campaign for her thesis.

Finally the article was created by a sock who was exposed as having and agenda to bias wikipedia towards Israel.

Now if you want to add sources to this article fine. I however will not tolerate the whitewashing of the history of this article. This article is not neutral and it was created by someone with and agenda. The reader deserves to know that and I will not tolerate the removing of the tags or attempts to further slant the article.

If you ask me I think this article should be deleted and the subject should be moved to an article dealing with the history of zionism. I tried to get it deleted last year, but I was overruled. So I decided if the article is gonna stay fine, but then it's going to have tags explaining that isn't neutral and that it was palgarized from muirs article.

This article in my opinion is pure propaganda and in my opinion it is a disgrace to wikipedia. I will not tolerate people trying to sweep that disgrace under the rug. annoynmous 22:04, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

My recent edits

Last week I took a close look at this article. Although it already had many storng sources, I looked up the phrase and added additional scholarly sources that discuss and place the phrase in context. I then went through and edited in an attempt to improve the article. I am not saying that it is perfect, only that User:annoynmous's main contention, i.e., that the article is cherrypicked is demonstrably untrue. It is extensively sourced. The two sources i added last week are not from the Muir article. I am not certain what User:annoynmous's animus against this article is based on. It is so irrational as to sound personal. It is disingenuous of User:annoynmous to say that adding additional sources is acceptable, and then to remove them when I do so. I am replacing the material recently removed by User:annoynmousHistoricist (talk) 00:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

My problem with this article is, as I've said about a billion times know, is that the article was created by a sock who was exposed as an agent for an advocacy group.

If Historicist would actually do some research on the history of this article instead of trying clean up the articles dirty laundry then he would see how nefarious this article is.

Also anyone who thinks this article is well sourced obviously didn't do any real research. With two exceptions there are no sources for this article. So forgive me if I don't take historicists word for it that he carefully researched the article.

Know, if Historicist wants to add back those sources he feels contributes to the articles case fine, but I will not tolerate him removing the tags and santizing the headings of the article to fit his own personal views.

An for your information, yes I do take it personally when a piece of propoganda is allowed to be stated as fact. Excuse me for thinking that an online encyclopedia should try to be encyclopedic.annoynmous 03:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi guys. I don't have any real desire to participate in this debate, but I would like to note that if you look over the talk page and the talk archive, it's clear that a number of editors have expressed serious concerns about the structure of this article, the sources used (and the sources not used). For example, the most important source here, Diana Muir Appelbaum, is a scholar of colonial New England, not of the Middle East, and has made outright insane claims about Palestinians, such as interpreting traditional Levantine dress as inherently anti-semitic. The Middle East Quarterly is a contrarian journal written by people who explicitly dissent from mainstream Middle East studies; its founder and editor actually calls it a "quasi-scholarly" source. Some information has been shuffled around and some sharp edges rounded off, but I don't see how these fundamental objections have been addressed seriously at all.

Full disclosure, annoynmous prodded me about this dispute on my talk page, and I'm sure he knows where I've stood on this article previously. Good luck sorting this tiff out. <eleland/talkedits> 22:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

OK. I bit. I clicked the link User:Eleland put up. Here is the passage:

“ This week, the Spanish Foreign Minister felt compelled to defend Prime Minister Zapatero from charges of anti-Semitism.

Zapatero had donned the black-checked keffiyeh that is the symbol of Palestinian determination to destroy the Jewish State and criticized Israel for using "abusive force that does not protect innocent human beings.

”

• Note that Muir is citing other people who called Zapatero anti-Semitic fo rdonning the keffiyeh and making anti-Israel statements. She goes on to discuss a piece of social science research on the correlation between anti-Israel attitudes and old-fashioned anti-Semitism in European populations.

• The keffiyah is, in fact, "traditional Levantine dress," when worn by traditional Levantines. When worn by Europeans, Americans, and Spanish Prime Ministers in modern western dress from the neck down at anti-Israel events, it seems to me a little strong in terms of language choice, but hardly "insane" to describe it as a "symbol of Palestinian determination to destroy the Jewish State." The Wikipedia article on Kefiyyeh has an entire section on the use of the kefiyyeh to make just this kind of statement. User:Eleland summery is hardly accurate.

• Should we disregard everyting Edward Said wrote about Israel on the grounds that he was a professor of English literature? What about linguist Noam Chomsky? Or can we stop with the ad hominem attacks, stop calling people we disagree with "insane" and examine the facts in the Wikipedia article which, I repeat, has many sources.Historicist (talk) 01:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Well one difference is that people have actually heard of Edward said and Noam Chomsky whereas before this article I don't think anyone considered Diana Muir to be a great source of information on the middle east.

Anyway, no one is saying she can't speak out on Israel/Palestine, just that it shouldn't be treated like neutral scholarship when no one knows who she is other than an obscure academic from new england.

I think it would be just as wrong for anyone to base an entire article on something Chomsky wrote as well. Chomsky mostly cites scholars who are experts on the subject as well. That is essentially what muir is doing and it shouldn't be treated as neutral scholarship.

Also, because someone wheres a head scarf, that means there determined to destroy Israel? It says a lot that you think thats a sane argument annoynmous 05:17, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Restored Historicists edits, but kept tags

To show that I'm fair I have restored historicists edits. My main bone of contention is not the the content of the article itself, it's the tags.

To be honest I find the entire article to completely useless, but as long as it exists I want the reader to know it's history and that it isn't neutral. So Historicist can add any nonsense he wants to it, but I will not tolerate removal of the tags because the article is still heavily based on Muirs article which was published in a highly biased publication. annoynmous 03:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• The problems with the tags as I see them are these:
• The Muir article is not "an advocacy or lobbying group." is false. It is a scholarlay article published in the Middle East Quarterly.

• this Muir article is far from being the sole source of this article, which draws also on sources that include (Garfinkle, Adam M., “On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase.” Middle Eastern Studies, London, Oct. 1991, vol. 27) The Garfinkle/Muir thesis is supported in whole or part by other historians who have looked at this phrase: Alan Dowty, S. Ilan Troen Gudrun Krämer Gil Eyal and Jacob Lassner. By my count, this makes seven scholars, several of them distinguished, who thave examined this phrase and who are cited in thie article supporting the idea that this phrase was NOT coined by Zionists, NOT intended to imply that Palestine was empty (merely that it was without a national entity,) and NOT widely used by Zionists.

• Editors are currently in dispute tag refers to annoynmous alone. No one else seems to have a problem here.

• Re: the inaccurate or unbalanced tag on the meaning and use of the phrase by opponents of Zionism section. The article is divided like the Middle East itself, into sections treating seeming irreconcilable points of view. This section appears to me to present a reasonable expression of the meaning and use of the phrase by opponents of Zionism. Historicist (talk) 12:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The Middle East Forum is not a scholarly source, it is a right-wing neo-conservatice forum and therefore qualifys as an advocacy group.

Most of the sources are cited in a similar fashion as they are in muirs article, that is plagarism. I doubt the sock editor actually read the sources himself.

There are many other editors who have a problem with this page such as eleland.

Just because you like Diana muirs thesis doesn't make her a scholar on the middle east.

As I said above I kept all your edits, but just restored the tags. Why does everyone contunue to ignore the fact that this article was created by a sock for CAMERA.

The NPOV tag applies because the article is heavily biased towards muirs thesis in her article.

.User:annoynmous continues to ignore the fact that Muir is joined in this thesis by the six other (from my search, the six only) historians who have examined the use and history of this sloganHistoricist (talk) 18:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The cherrypicked tag applies for two reasons, one bacause most of them were collated at The Middle East forum as I said above, and the other because the person who created the article was an agent for an advocacy group

Why should we care who the sorginal author of a much-edited article was?Historicist (talk) 18:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The only significant edits I can see that historicist made are he rearranged things a little bit and added back 3 sources that elan26 added several months ago. He is free to make more edits like that, but I will not tolerate removal of the tags. The article is still 80% based on muirs article and therefore is still not neutral or scholarly.annoynmous 17:46, 9 March 2009 UTC)

Please show us where the sources I added last week had been previousl added to the article, because I found them myself and cannot discover that they were previously in the article.Historicist (talk) 18:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

This is the point I've been making all along, the sock editor didn't actually do any research of his own, he just copied most of the sources from muirs article. The way there cited in muirs piece and the way there cited in this article are virtually indentical. That's why I continue to say that this article actually isn't heavily sourced, it is basically a reproduction of muirs article.

Basically the supposed credibilty of this article relies on our trust that Muir quoted all those sources correctly. This doesn't even include the fact that there is abosolutely nothing you can link to in this article except muirs article.

Also I would think that the fact that an article was primarily created by an editor with an agenda to bias wikipedia would be cause for more alarm.

I was referring to the Gudrun Kramer and Nur Masalha sources which I believe were originally added by elan26. I haven't reverted any of your edits, all I've done is restore the tags. You haven't given me any reason why they should be taken down. Adding 3 new sources doesn't change the fact that the article is heavily biased towards muirs viewpoint.annoynmous 19:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

• annoynmous; Assuming that only sources that appear online are valid for Wikipedia is a common misapprehension among new editors. Wikipedia reliable sources include books and academic jorurnals not available online or, like the Garfinkle article, only available through University library computers. This policy exists for the very good reason that sources available in print include most new books and academic journals, sources that are generally far more reliable than online materials.Historicist (talk) 20:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
• Another common misapprehension under which you labor is that it matters that an edior of an article was unreliable or even ill-intentioned. It does not. What matters is whether the material is accurately cited and the article as it presently stands is well written. If some of the many sources in this article are inaccurately cited, tell us that. But please stop telling us about socks and puppets because this is not a reason to tag an article that is patently well-sourced.Historicist (talk) 20:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Well excuse me, but when a sock basically copies most of the material of an article from one source without doing any original research that is cherrypicking.

The only thing we can link to in this article is muir, and most of the sources are cited exactly the same as they are in this article.

Also neither Middle East Forum or diana muir can be called reliable sources. As I said above were basing this entire article on the idea that Diana Muir quoted her sources correctly.

I'll say again you are free to make any edits to the article you want, but the tags stay. The average reader deserves to know that this article is biased and primarily relies on one unreliable source.annoynmous 20:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way I'm not a new editor, I've been at wikipedia for over two years know.

Yes I'm aware that not all sources have to be linked too. My point was that the sock editor didn't actually research those quotes himself, he just copied them from muirs article. That is why the cherrypicked tag applies.annoynmous 20:49, 9 March 2009 (UCT)

• Neither of us knows what the first editor read or did not read, who that editor was, or what his motives were. Nor do I care. That said, the only thing that matters is: is the material valid. It is easy to prove that it is. The first quote that appears in the article is: “give Judea to the Jews." Type it into google and the first citation that comes up is to Alexander Keith's 1844 book.
• The second quote is "Is there such a thing? To be sure there is, the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!” This is cited not to Muir but to Garfinkle. In fact, much of the article is cited not to Muir but to Garfinkle. User:annoynmous's objection to Garfinkle as a source is that he has not read the Garfinkle article because it is not online. If you have a research library you can readily find the Garfinkle article. Type the quote into books google and up comes a book from Yale University Press. I have just added it to the article as a source.
• Continuing down the article reveals many sources other than Muir and the sources check out. Granted, some require either posessing or logging into or actually - gasp! - traveling to an actaul research library.
• I repeat, it does not matter who the first editor of an article was. What matters is that the sources check out and that the article, as it presently stands, is accurate.Historicist (talk) 21:54, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Well I say it does matter because the only thing you can link to in this article is muir. The fact is that most of page numbers and sources are cited in tthe exact same way as they are in muirs article. Outside of the 3 sources you added and the Jacob lassner book, there is not one source in this article that is not also in muirs piece.

Plus I'm sorry but the fact that the editor was exposed as an agent for an advocacy group does matter. Taking Muirs sources and citing them without doing the reasearch yourself doesn't mean you did the proper research.

Finally the Middle East Quarterly is not a neutral organization and the article primarily relies on there article.

Plus how do we know the sources check out. Why should we take your word that muir quoted the sources right. Whether she did or not is irrelevant, the main point is that the entire article is primarily copied from her article and is also biased towards her viewpoint.

I'm not saying you can't edit the article further, all I'm saying is that the tags should stay so the average reader knows this article isn't balanced.annoynmous 22:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Also one more thing, historicist continues to say that he doesn't care who the original editor is. Well I do care and so did Eleland who originally added the tags. Just because you don't care about doesn't make it not relevant.

Imagine if an article on global warming was found to be primarily edited by executives of GM and the gist of the article was skeptical of global warming. How about an article that dealt with an aspect of the Holocaust and relied primarily from quotes collated from a holocaust denier website. Don't you think the average reader deserves to know that information?

That's all I'm asking for. I haven't advocated taking out any edits, all I want are tags above to inform people of the articles history. The reader is still free to read the article on there own and determine whether or not they agree with it. All I've been saying is that the articles history shouldn't be whitewashed.annoynmous 23:01, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Deja vu

Scrolling up, I see that annoynmous repeats the same arguments over, and over , and over until, apparently, his interlocutor gives up and leaves the page. Here are one editor's attempts at reason form last August.Historicist (talk) 12:15, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

have you asked the editor where he read the sources, or are you asking us to go by your speculation that he/she did not read the sources? What If I read the sources in the original, and can vouch to their veracity, can we then remove the template? Canadian Monkey (talk) 14:43, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

The template does not say "created by sockpuppet". It does not say "someone else's researchg" (naturally - as this whole project is predicated on using someone else's research, and original research is prohibited). It says the alleged problem is that it 'relies extensively on quotes that were previously collated by an advocacy or lobbying group'. So I ask again, ff I read the sources in the original, and can vouch to their veracity, can we then remove the template? Canadian Monkey (talk) 20:52, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I still don't get it. There are 8 cited sources, several of whom are highly qualified to comment as historians or journalists, which you concede say more or less what they're quoted as saying - so how can it be WP:UNDUE weight to present their views in a small sub-section dedicated to criticism of the critics? Phrased another way, what would it take to remove the tag you've placed on the section? Will adding criticism of Zionist critics do it? Canadian Monkey (talk) 16:30, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't follow you. The section you tagged references 8 different sources, only one of which is Diana Muir Appelbaum's Middle East Quarterly article. Either those sources made the arguments attributed to them, or they didn't. If they didn't, let's get rid of them altogether - why bother with the tag? And if they did, what difference does it make if their arguments were also repeated by an advocacy group? That's a classic ad hominem fallacy. Canadian Monkey (talk) 03:54, 3 August 2008 (UTC)Historicist (talk) 12:15, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Well I I have to keep repeating myself it's because it seems the point never sinks in. I thought the debate had been settled several months ago with Canadian monkey, but then Elan26 came along and removed the tags. annoynmous 16:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC

templates are not supposed to stay on articles forever, as some sort of "warning". Let me ask again what I asked several months ago: what would it take to remove the template you have placed on the article? Canadian Monkey (talk) 19:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Well I don't see how 7 months counts as forever, but the problem is that the nothing significant has changed in the article. It's still heavily based on muirs article. Historicist has rearanged things a little bit and added 3 sources, that really doesn't change the article that much.

I asked you several months ago if there was a better template than cherrypicked, but you never responded.

By the way when Elan26 originally removed the tags there were virtually no changes to the article. He just took them off. It wasn't until I restored them when historicist started restructring the article a little bit.annoynmous 19:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Thoughts on tags

I was invited by User:Historicist to consider the tags on this article. I see that there is a long-running debate here and have gleaned from it that there are reasonable grounds for not assuming good faith about the origins of the article. Some have suggested that the article be deleted, but I think it is appropriate to have articles on the use of this and other phrases associated with the Middle East conflict such as making the desert bloom, Zionist entity, Right to Exist and Land for peace. I haven't read every word of debate above nor have I examined the edit history of the article in detail. So much of the following should be regarded more as observations and a statment of principles.

What strikes me as the higher priority tag is that of single sourcing and with it the suggestion of plagiarisation. In normal academia the expectation would be to go to sources and check that any articles whose citations ar sourced to Muir actually do so what she suggests and to check the context. (This lack of checking primary sources is one of the key allegations in the Dershowitz-Finkelstein saga.) Of course, Wikipedia favours secondary sources, but when a source article is alleged to represent a particular point of view, then it becomes more appropriate to check how fairly it is representing its sources. If no one has yet done so, I suggest that people do so before removing the tag. Further sources reflecting other points of view should also be used to provide content.

What strikes me as strange is that there are sections dedicated to Christian Zionist use of the term and to anti-Zionist critiques of it but not to Jewish Zionist use of the term. The quoes from anti-Zionists certainly suggest tghat they have come up against it being used by Zionsts. Indeed it is a term that is familiar to me from my childhood where I think I heard it used by my grandmother and also think I met it when attending Hebrew classes in the late 60s or early 70s. If that historical use is covered then I think the article will become more balanced.--Peter cohen (talk) 16:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

As per Peter cohen's suggestion , I have added a seciton on use of the phrase by Zionists. The thing is, I am in the same poistion as Muir in that in my extensive reading of pre-state Zionist literature, I cannot recall coming upon the phrase. In other words, I endorse the assertion she and alan Dowty make, that the phrase was rare to the vanishing point in the pre-state era, an era saturated with scores of competing Zionist phrases rarely heard nowadays. In the post 1948 period, of course, the phrase comes into widespread use, at least among anti-Zionists.

I have indeed examined Muir's notes, and they check out. In checking Muir's footnotes I just pulled Rashid Khalidi off the shelf in my office. He cites Anita Schapira as his source for the assertion that this is a widely cited phrase. So I pulled Schapira off the shelf, she also simply makes the assertion without a citation to an actual use of the phrase by a Zionist. Edward Said cites only Zangwill, just as Muir writes. I think that if we are going to take seriously Annonymous's assertion that Muir is unreliable, Annonymous will need to show an example of that unreliability.Historicist (talk) 19:02, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

However, this is far from being a single-source article Pace Annonymous, the article has many sources, most notably the Adam Garfinkle article. But the article draws on the work of other distinguished historians who have examined and published on the history and use of this phrase, including S. Ilan Troen, Alan Dowty and Gudrun Krämer.Historicist (talk) 19:02, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

It nice that historicist has decided to due some original research, but it is irrelevant because the average reader doesn't have all the books he has and can't check to verify themselves. Anyway, Historicist must know that original research doesn't count as verification.

Anyway, as I've said so many times before, it really doesn't matter whether Muir quote the sources correctly the issue is that the sock editor didn't actually look up those sources, he just copied them from muirs article. Before Historicist added his extra sources there were a total of 2 sources for this article, Muir and the Jacob Lassner S. llan Troen book. When you copy someone elses sources from there article that isn't research, that's plagarism.

Also despite what historicist says, the fact that the editor was a sock for an advocacy group is relevant whether people like it or not. Just because you don't care about it doesn't mean other people don't have the right to know about it.

By the way, have I reverted any of your recent edits, no. Your doing what I always said you should do. You still haven't given one valid reason why the tags should be removed. The article is still heavily biased towards muirs viewpoint and unless a radical overhaul is done of this article I don't see that changing in the near future.

The editor who originally added the tags Eleland agrees they should stay and from what can tell above Peter Cohen agrees as well. Why don't you just go ahead and make whatever edits you want to make and let people know the relevant history of this article.annoynmous 19:21, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the inappropriate tags. The Middle East Quarterly is the equivalent of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, but from the opposite editorial slant. It is a peer-reviewed journal, not an "advocacy group". Jayjg ^(talk) 21:12, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

As Eleland stated above, even they refer to themselves as "Quasi scholarly". The site is run my Daniel Pipes who is not a neutral source.

Plus the original editor was exposed as an agent for the advocacy group CAMERA. annoynmous 21:21, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Plus your wrong, until recently they weren't a peer reviewed site. The source you cite admits that until this winter they were a non peer-reviewed site. That means that the article in question by Diana Muir wasn't peer reviewed when it was published last year. That makes them an advocacy group. annoynmous 21:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I've just lost a couple of pages of commentary here. A summary is that I

1. support the removal of the tags,
2. Think the first section is rather odd as the fact that the age originated with Christian pre-Zionists was not a new discovery
3. Think that material in Kraemer could be used to show how the concept that the Palestinians are not a people was used by the British to reject national self-determination for Palestine (with its being part of the province of Syria indicating their nationality) and by left-Zionists who thought that the Effendi class were using nationalism to develop a false consciouness in the Palestinian peasantry
4. Think that a connection should be made with how Golda Meir continued to view the Palestinians as not being a people and with how the same view that the historical province of Syria was the identity of Palestinians is used by Greater Syrian nationalists opposed to Lebanese statehood.--Peter cohen (talk) 17:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I have consolidated the footnotes to the Garfinkle article to make patent the absurrdity promulgated by annoynmous that the article is invalid because it is based on a single source.Historicist (talk) 18:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I have made a good-faith effort to balance the article and improve the section on scholarship by incorporating the opinions of the more important academics who have looked at this slogan. I am not claiming that the article is perfect, only that the article is sufficiently well-balanced and well-sourced to make annoynmous's tags absurd.Historicist (talk) 18:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

You know I have to hand to historicist, never before have I seen so much flash and show that added up to absolutely nothing. He spent 3 hours editing this site today and the article is virtually the same. In fact he did something I didn't think was possible, he actually made the article more like muirs article. He added Norman finkelstein who is in muirs article, but until now hasn't been in the wikipedia page.

After all this, what was historicists big change to the article. He added one new source to the article that wasn't there before, an academic named Tamar meisels, who he then created a wikipedia page for so as to give him legitimacy. Other than that he basically did what he has always done, restructure the article and change the wording somewhat, but other than that nothing substantive.

I must admit I find historicists attempt to perform plastic surgery on a corpse somewhat amusing, but that doesn't make the dead body stop stinking. That also means he still has not given a valid reason why the tags should be removed.

It occurs to me that I have to explain the facts more clearily this time so here I go.

27 of the 36 footnotes in this article come from muir. That means that nearly 80% of the material on this page is based on muirs article.

This page cites the sources in same manner and context as muirs article does which means the editor didn't check them himself, but just copied them from muir. You may say how do I know what the editor intended, well muirs article is the only thing you can link to in this article and seems more than just a coincidence that all the same sources appear in her article. Historicist saying he personally checked the sources means absolutely nothing, most people don't have all the books he has and can't verify whether or not muir quoted the sources correctly.

Muirs article is in the Middle East Quarterly which is an advocacy group. For the past sixteen years they were a non peer-reviewed publication with a strong neo-conservative bent. It was only this previous winter that they decided to change that policy. Muirs article came out last spring before they changed there policy. Sense most of the quotes came from muirs article that would seem to meet the definition of "collated by an advocacy group".

Finally, an most importantly, the article itself was created and edited by a sock for the pro-Israel advocacy group CAMERA. So the article itself was literally collated an edited by an agent of an advocacy group.

Now, as I have said about a billion times now, historicist is free to add all the pretty pictures and subterfuge he wants, but the article is still primarily biased towards muirs viewpoint and therefore the tags stay.

The cherrypicked tag doesn't mean that the quotes that were collated were inaccurate, just that they were collated by an organization that had a biased agenda. The reader can still look at the article and decide for themself whether or not the quotes are accurate or whether or not muirs argument is valid. All I have ever advocated is letting the reader decide by knowing the relevant and nefarious history of this article. annoynmous 00:01, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Sources

This article has over thirty sources, including two academic articles devoted to this one little phrase. Type the phrase into google books and you discover that Saree Makdisi and Norman Finklestein and Tamar Meisels have devoted entire chapters to the phrase, Saree Makdisi wrote a n entire bok with this phrase as the title. Does annoynmous wish to exclude them merely because Muir cites them? Anyone writing on this topic would pretty much have to cite most of the same sources Muir cites. Tamar Meisels is a hot young political theorist, I think she is brilliant, but, then, annoynmous probably doesn't read political theory.

The important points here are these:

The article is heavily sourced.

It includes statements form all perspectivesHistoricist (talk) 00:40, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Historicist, your claim about "entire chapters [devoted] to the phrase" is utterly wrong. Your incisive Google-based research actually finds "entire chapters" which use the phrase as a pithy title or epigram, but are not about the phrase at all. For example, Finkelstein's "Land Without People" chapter has nothing to do with the phrase, but is his debunking of Joan Peters. Meisel's "Land Without People" chapter is about "efficiency-based territorial claims," which is her way of describing the colonialist's argument that "they weren't using exploiting this country's resources properly, so we were justified in taking it away from them." I don't know what book you're referring to by Saree Makdisi; I can't find it and I've never heard of it.

Look, there's a vital, essential distinction between just mentioning the phrase, or using it as an epigram, versus actually discussing the phrase itself in any depth. The only sources that do that are Muir and Garfinkle, both of whom have a definite tendency, although Garfinkle at least is writing in a real journal (even if it is a small and not very impactful one.) Come back when you understand WP:PSTS. < eleland/talkedits> 03:47, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Well I'm glad historicist likes Tamar Meisels, but unfortunately encylcopedias don't base there substance on the fact you think someone is brilliant.

I'm beginning to think that historicist is purposely ignoring everything I write because I've had to repeat this point several times. I'm not for taking out any sources. All I want are tags above that inform the reader that the article is biased towards one source and that it was also primarily edited by a biased sock.

Historicist obviously wants the reader to remain ignorant of this and wants to make sure the article looks nice and squeaky clean. Well I'm sorry but theres no cleaning up this rotting corpse as I said above. annoynmous 01:17, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Another point, Historicist says that anyone who wrote on this topic would have to cite these sources. I'm supsicious of that statement, but let's assume thats true. Well the point I've made is that the editor didn't cite those sources, he simply copied them from muirs article. I base that on the fact that the structure of this page and the way the footnotes are cited are very similar to muirs article and also the fact that muir is the only thing you can link to on this page. When you copy someone elses sources without doing the reasearch yourself that is plagarism.

I should also add that the sock editor also created the pages for people like alan dowty and Muir herself after he edited this article. Does that not seem suspicios to anyone, cite obscure academics and then create pages for them based on there university websites? annoynmous 01:35, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Lets pause for a minute to ask what exactly am I advocating here. The way historicist makes it out you would think I was advocating removing whole paragraphs of material from the article. In fact I've restored some of historicists edits to show that I'm interested in fairness.

At this point I have zero interest in the content of the article as I regard the whole article to be a joke. All I'm asking for are some tags at the top of the article to show that article is biased towards one source written in an advocacy group publication and that the article itself was created by a sock who worked for an advocacy group.

What's the big deal? Lots of articles have neutrality tags that stay up for long time, especially ones that involve controversial subjects like this one. For this article both tags are especially appropriate given its history. People are still capable of making there own judgements on the articles thesis. The only reason not to include is to hide the articles past from the viewer and make it appear neutral when it isn't. annoynmous 02:57, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

A journal, regardless of your opinion of it, is not an "advocacy group", and the article currently cites approximately 30 different sources. The editor who created it is irrelevant, as is the article's "history" - the only relevant issue is its current content. If you "have zero interest in the content of the article", then you shouldn't be editing it. Tags are not weapons, to be used to permanently deface articles you were unsuccessful in getting deleted. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:32, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Well when 27 of those sources are plagarized from a heavily partisan non-peer reviewed source and the editor who created the article was exposed as an editor for another partisan organization I would say we should call it what it is, propoganda. I would have liked the article to have been deleted last year, but I accepted that loss and frankly don't have the strength to fight on with it it. That doesn't I have to accept propoganda stated as fact at a place that's supposed to be encyclopedic. I also don't have to accept other editors "oh just go away mentality" just because I've aired the articles dirty laundry. annoynmous 06:00, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Sources

The sources that discuss the origin, original meaning, and use of the phrase in some detail are: Gudrun Krämer Alan Dowty Gil Eyal S. Ilan Troen and Jacob Lassner . The sources that discuss it at length and in great detail are Garfinkle and Muir, each of whom has a ful-length, scholarly article on the subject.

Nur Masallah (in a book entitled "A Land Without a People,) Tamar Meisels and Norman Finklestein (in chapters with the same title) discuss the phrase as the embodiement of political ideas that they ascribe to Zionism. I discuss these ideas in the scholarship section. These three do so in the the broad context of Zionist history, without bringing a single example of an actual use of the phrase in the pre-statehood era.

Edward Said, whom I cite because of his prominence, does bring such a reference to the actual use of the phrase, albeit he gets the date, the author and the wording of the phrase wrong. Rashid Khalidi, perhaps the best known historian to discuss the phrase, does not examine its actual use in the period in question. He merely asserts that it was widely used and tells us how, without, as I said, any references to suggest that he examinined the work of of any Zionist who actually used it. Alan Dowty and Diana Muir maintain that they cannot discover any actual pre-statehood uses except for Zangwill and (according to Muir) a small group of his adherents before he famously stalked out of the Zionist movement to become a territorialist.

annoynmousUser:Eleland, I truly fail to understand what would satisfy you. The article already inculdes all the sources I can find that discuss this phrase.Historicist (talk) 10:47, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Online sources Pace annoynmous many, though not all, of the cited boks are abailable online. I'm putting up some links.Historicist (talk) 13:05, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Context

Perhaps some participants in this discussion are not aware of some of the newer scholarship on early Zionism. Anita Schapira, for instance, describes the early Zionists as aware of the Arabs who lived in Palestine, but as choosing to ignore them. As she describes it, the Zionists knew that there were Abars on the land, followed events in Palestine closely, even armed them. She suggests that examining the published record is misleading because the Zionist leadership conducted a two-leveled discourse, realistic discussion of the Arab problem in private, rose-tinted portrayals of Eretz Israel in public. She compares Zionist descriptions of Palestine to the popular immigrant-promotion propaganda of the day, put out by steamship and land companies to inform potential European immigrants about the mild winters in Dakota. Gil Eyal (who is, as you probably know, pro-Palestinian) has very interesting detail in ‘’ The Disenchantment of the Orient’’ on the debates among early Zionists who closely followed the development of Palestinian Arab nationalism.

No Zionist were ignorant of the presence of Arabs after Ahad Ha'am published. (1891) Frankly, I doubt that many were even before that date. Recent scholarship on the regular visits of meshulachim from Hebron, Safat, and Jerusalem in all Jewish communities, on special collections taken up for the welfare of the communities in Eretz Israel after events such as earthquakes, pogroms and the Muhammad Ali invasion, on flows of European Jewish aliyah the regularly followed close on the heels of imporvements in conditions in the land, and on the circulation of news letters detailing events in Eretz Israel make it clear that nineteenth century European communities followed events in Eretz Israel closely indeed.

Palestine, of course, was sparsely cultivated by European standards. We tend to forget that the Greek orange-growing industry along the coast is younger than modern Zionism. Khalidi himself in Palestinian Identity has an interesting section on the nineteenth-century depopulation of the Galilean lowlands due to the inability of the Ottoman government to prevent Bedouin raids. Documentation of similar depopulation in Greece makes an interesting comp. Egypt, notoriously, never again achieved its Byzantine levels of population after the Arab conquest until the British period.

Two things appear to have been true at once. The land really was undercultivated by European standards. And the Zionists knew all about the Arab Palestinians and preferred not to talk about them. But that is not what this particular slogan was about.

The plain facts of the slogan are certainly that it was coined by and widely used by Christian Restorationists. They knew that there were Arab populations (most of them had been to the Holy Land) The plain meaning of the phrase in their minds was that the Arabs of Palestine did not constitute a separate nation (a people) but the Jews did. They made a distinctionbetween (a people, i.e., a natin) and (people) To men like Keith, “give Judea to the Jews” followed naturally form the Bible.

Whether Jews every used the phrase in the pre-statehood period beyond Zangwill has yet to be proven.

This page, however, is confined to this one slogan.Historicist (talk) 11:43, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Your post precisely highlights the problem with this article. While ostensibly it is, as you say, confined to the slogan, in fact it is about the attitudes that this slogan embodies. Did the early Zionists really think that Palestine was a land without people (or a people, if you prefer)? What were the attitudes of these settlers to the indigenous population?

This is a topic which may well be worthy of a Wikipedia article, but this article isn't it. The dispute over whether this was or wasn't really a Zionist slogan is moot; the real dispute is whether the attitude embodied in the slogan was real. And, once you separate out that argument from the purely academic question of who made it up, "ALWOaPFaPWOaL" is no more notable than any other Zionist slogan - "If you will it, it is not a dream"; "We came to build and be built"; "Jewish land, Jewish labor, Jewish produce": and on and on.

Look at other Wikipedia articles about slogans. They deal exclusively with the history of the slogan, without any winks to what the slogan actually says. In God We Trust - it never discusses the existential issue of whether we really do or do not trust in God.

It is because of this tension between the very uninteresting question of who made up the slogan and the very interesting question of what the slogan says that this article smacks of non-neutrality. --Ravpapa (talk) 13:37, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The Muir article intrigues me. This is why. Type the phrase in each of its variants into books google , Historical Newspapers, and similar search engines limiting the field to pre-1918 or pre-1948 . You get Zangwill and a couple of his followers only; until the post WWII period. Type in some of the other Zionist slogans, and you can find lots of hits. This also works in German and Yiddish (the only languages I tried it with.) What you do get are scores of hits in missionary and Christian Restorationist literture. They used it a lot. Then after Balfour, you get hists from anti-Zionists. One thing no one can deny about Zionists is that they wrote incessantly. The fact that you don't find Zionists using it proves that it was not a Zionist slogan, as Dowty and Muir state. Since you don't find usage, it wasn't a Zionist slogan. So, why shoehorn Zionist attitudes into an article on a Christian slogan?Historicist (talk) 14:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Further thoughts. I am troubled by what you say. There were, indeed, a great many Zionist slogans, mostly forgotten today. this one, by contrast, is notable because it continues to be used widely, and the use has apparently been increasing in recent years, yet almost all discoverable uses are by anti-Zionists. The anti-Zionists are, as you say, using it to prove a point. It seeme notable to me that they are using a slogan that a) was Christian, b)did not mean that the land was without people, and c) may never have been used by Zionists other than Zangwill and his immediate circle. The assertion in the slogan, that there was no Palestinian people, was certainly true at the time Christian Restorations used this slogan. The problem with writers like Khalidi and Said and Finkelstein is a lack of respect for facts and evidence. If the early Zionists did not use this slogan, that is a notable fact. Finkelstein, Khalidi, Masalla et al are certainly free to promulgate their interpretations of Zionist history, they are not, however, free to cite as evidence a slogan that Zionists dis not actually use. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, what they are not free to do is to invent their own facts.Historicist (talk) 15:33, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

On the disproportionate power of truly dogged editors

One of the great problems with Wikipedia, as I see it, is that dogged editing by one or two individuals can make it impossible to reach consensus simply because other editors get tired and give up. Here, then, are comments from editors who lack the stamina displayed by User: Annoynmous. In addition, User: Mr. Hicks The III has actively removed the tags put up in violation of the 3RR by User: Annoynmous.Historicist (talk) 14:45, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I still don't get it. There are 8 cited sources, several of whom are highly qualified to comment as historians or journalists, which you concede say more or less what they're quoted as saying - so how can it be WP:UNDUE weight to present their views in a small sub-section dedicated to criticism of the critics? Phrased another way, what would it take to remove the tag you've placed on the section? Will adding criticism of Zionist critics do it? Canadian Monkey (talk) 16:30, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

templates are not supposed to stay on articles forever, as some sort of "warning". Let me ask again what I asked several months ago: what would it take to remove the template you have placed on the article? Canadian Monkey (talk) 19:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the inappropriate tags. The Middle East Quarterly is the equivalent of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, but from the opposite editorial slant. It is a peer-reviewed journal, not an "advocacy group". Jayjg ^(talk) 21:12, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

1. support the removal of the tags,
2. Think the first section is rather odd as the fact that the age originated with Christian pre-Zionists was not a new discovery
3. Think that material in Kraemer could be used to show how the concept that the Palestinians are not a people was used by the British to reject national self-determination for Palestine (with its being part of the province of Syria indicating their nationality) and by left-Zionists who thought that the Effendi class were using nationalism to develop a false consciouness in the Palestinian peasantry
4. Think that a connection should be made with how Golda Meir continued to view the Palestinians as not being a people and with how the same view that the historical province of Syria was the identity of Palestinians is used by Greater Syrian nationalists opposed to Lebanese statehood.--Peter cohen (talk) 17:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I have made changes as suggested by Ravpapa, Peter Cohen, Eleland and Annoymous. I hope that we can reach a consensus on removing the tags (not on the prerfection of the article, merely on its attempt at balance and multiple souces.Historicist (talk) 14:45, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Will continue to fight propoganda stated as fact

First off sorry I was gone for so long a combination of personal matters and computer issues kept me away.

First off historicist, if your gonna make a statement about facts and credibility, I wouldn't quote someone who endorsed the rape and murder that went on in East Timor.

Secondly Historicist says things "Well everyone agrees the land wasn't cultivated by european standards" well maybe everyone in right wing zionist circles does, but unless you have evidence to back that statement up it is irrelvant.

Third it's interesting the links historicist provided to google books. It's just as eleland said above, almost none of them mention this subject in any depth or detail. The definetely don't refer to it in the way muirs does. The Alan Dowty source is literally one sentence and who does he cite, Adam Garfinkle. This is what I have been saying all along. The sock editor didn't actually doe any reasearch of his own, he just copied muir. If he had done the research on his own he wouldn't have included Dowty because all Dowty does is cite a source already cited elsewhere in the arictle.

It obvious historicist has a bias and agrees with the thesis laid out by muir. That's fine, but that doesn't mean it should be stated as neutral fact. I might agree fully with an article written in electronic intifada, but I would never claim it was a neutral scholarly piece of work.

The fact is that Middle East Quarterly is an adovocacy group and the article is still, no matter how many superficial face lifts you perform, heavily based on muirs article and therefore the cherrypicked tag applies.

An yes, no matter how many times you try to deny otherwise, the fact that the editor was a sock for an advocacy group does matter. I admit I would have preferred had the article been erased, but I lost that battle a year ago and have accepted the articles existence for now. I have not reversed any of historicists edits in a week now. All I've asked is that people know the true history of this article.

I ask again if an article on the holocaust relied extensively on quotes collated from a holocaust denier website, would not both a cherrypicked and neutrality tag not applie? annoynmous 06:27, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I understand that you do not like the fact that the article was begun by an editor who was, according to you, a puppet editor for a Zionist organization. The thing is, we have guidelines at Wikipedia, and if the article as it now stands many editors and many, many sources and edits later is a good, well-balanced article, it really would not matter if the original editor was Atilla the Hun.Historicist (talk) 23:48, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

A Note to Editors New to This Page

• annoynmous has what turns out to be a long-standing animus against this page. He has tried an AFD and failed. Recently, he has performing Herculean labors (i.e., edit-warring, repeatedly violating the 3RR, and endless repition of the same invalid arguments on the talk page) in an effort to keep two tags on the page, one for neutrality and one for cherrypicking.

He defends the cherrypicked tag on the grounds that the original editor was a puppet and, according to Annonymous, worked for a Zionist outfit. The cherrypicking tag has been repeatedly dismissed by multiple editors (and the tag removed by multiple editors) on the grounds that it does not matter who the original editor may have been and the article is now heavily sourced.

The neutrality tag I have addressed by improving the page to include multiple points of viewthe satisfaction of multiple editors.

Annonymous’s real objection appears to be WP:IDONTLIKEIT. He asserts that he "ha(s) zero interest in the content of the article", and, “regard(s) the whole article to be a joke.” Certainly, he has made no attempt to introduce new sources, and although at one point he was aggressively removing material he does not like, he has, to his credit, recently ceased to do so. The real problem appears to be that the article draws on multiple, reliable sources to make several points inimical to an understanding of history that many anti-Israel activists hold dear.

Tags are not meant to stay up forever. They are meant to prompt improvements, which I and others have now made. Despite meeting all of his content objections, Annonymous insists on putting tags up to reveal that an early editor of the page was a Zionist puppet. He is much given to such heroic declarations as : “I however will not tolerate the whitewashing of the history of this article,” “I will not tolerate the removing of the tags,”' and “I will not (ac)cept attempts to whitewash the history of this article and that fact that it was created by a sock with a biased agenda. That means the neutrality and cherrypicked tags stay.” “If you ask me I think this article should be deleted and the subject should be moved to an article dealing with the history of zionism. I tried to get it deleted last year, but I was overruled. and "I decided if the article is gonna stay …it’s going to have tags.”Historicist (talk) 23:52, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Historicists attempt to perserve propoganda

Historicist is wrong, I have not once violated the 3rr in regards to this article. I haven't once made more than 3 reverts in a 24 hour period so saying I've violated that law is ridiculous. Plus I don't think my recent edits count as reverts sense I haven't reverted anything, all I've done is put the tags back.

Yes I will not tolerate the removal of the tags because I regard this article as propoganda and I feel it wrong that this article should be allowed to be seen as a neutral piece of scholarship. The majority of it is based on an article written by somone in a, until recently, a non-peer reviewed journal and basically plagarizes all that articles sources. No one has given me an adequate defense of how Middle East Quarterly can be considered a scholarly journal so if you ask me the tag is not only appropriate, but necessary.

Historicist likes to brag about all the edits he's done, but all he's done is superficially move things around and reword the headings. His only substantive changes have been the inclusion of 3 sources that weren't previously in the article. 80% of the article still comes from muir. He also continues to make claims like "everybody agrees on this" and "This person is a brilliant scholar" that violate the wikipedia original reaserach guidelines. He also engaged in copyediting of google books that supposedly prove his point only all the sources either don't mention this subject in detail or they refer to sources already sighted elsewhere in the piece.

Yes I admit I tried to get the article deleted last year, I've never once been shy about that fact. After I lost that battle I decided that a neutrality tag would be appropriate to let people know that article was biased heavily towards one viewpoint. It was a user named eleland who originally put the cherrypicked tag on. He based it on the fact that the Middle East Quarterly was not a neutral source and that the article was basically an advertisement for muirs thesis and I supported his position which he still holds today.

Then a few months later an editor named elan26 came along and removed the tags without hardly any change to the article at all. The only change I think he made was to add Gudrun Kramer, but other than that the structure of the article was exactly the same.

Histroricist claims above that he found that version of the article to be strong. So even before he made his so called improvements he was already against the tags. I don't believe historicist really cared about improving the article at all, he just wanted to make enough superficial changes to shut me up and hope that I'd go away. Well I'm not going away and I'm not going to let propoganda be stated as neutral fact.

Once again, what am I advocating here, am I asking for whole sections to be removed? All 'm asking for are two simple tags that tell the avrage viewer that the article comes from one biased source and that the original editor had an agenda.

I think historicists comments above illustrate a lot about his thinking that he wouldn't care if an article was edited by atilla the hun as long as it conformed to his viewpoint. Well call me crazy, but where the information comes from matters and just because you like what it says doesn't mean it is instantly granted magic credibility. annoynmous 01:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

A journal is not an "advocacy group", and tags are not weapons to permanently deface articles you tried to get deleted but couldn't. You have stated that you have zero interest in the content of the article. That's fine, focus on a different article instead. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:53, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Sense they are considered so innapropriate for this article lets concentrate on what these tags mean.

Cherrypicked means "Relies on quotes previously collated by an advocacy group" notice the word "relies" in that sentence. It doesn't mean that the advocacy group distorted the quotes or that there innacurate, it just means that it was the advocacy group who first brought them together. Well sense most of the quotes come from muirs article and Middle East Quarterly qualifies, according to my argument, as an advocacy group than the tag is appropriate.

Now since the article relies extensively on these quotes that means that the argument is slanted towards said advocacy groups viewpoint so therefore the article is not neutral. That doesn't mean that someone with there own independent judgement can't decide that they agree with the argument even if it does relie on a biased source. All your doing is giving people the relevant facts about where the information in the article came from.

If an article was written at wikipedia that was entirely based on quotes from an article written in Electronic Intifada I might agree with it, but I would fully understand why it would have tags above it. I would also further agree putting tags above the article if it was later found out that the primary editor for the article was someone who worked for Electronic Intifada.

So unless somone can give me an adequate reason why Middle East Quarterly should be considered a scholarly source then I see no reason why the tags should be taken down. annoynmous 02:00 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Again, a journal is not an "advocacy group", and journals don't have to be "scholarly" to be considered reliable. We cite The Atlantic, Time (magazine), and hundreds of other journals all the time. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:22, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Well Jayjg untill recently they were non-peer reviewed and the article in question was written last year before they changed there policy.

An the reson why I've said I have zero interest in the content of the article is because the content on the article has barely changed at all and historicists superficial face lifts aren't going to change that.

Call me crazy, but I don't see much point in improving the content of a piece of propoganda. Putting a band aid on a gunshot wound doesn't stop the bleeding. annoynmous 02:07, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Please re-read my previous three comments on this page. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:22, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Exactly how is Middle East Quarterly in the same level as the atlantic monthly or Time Magazine. They have an extremely conservative slant and therefore they qualify as an advocacy group. If all the quotes came from The National review, which freely admits it's conservative bias, wouldn't you consider them an advocacy group?

Plus you would be fine with an article based entirely on quotes from an article written in Electronic Intifada without tags? annoynmous 02:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Having a political "slant" doesn't make a journal an "advocacy group". The New York Times has a pronounced "liberal slant", that doesn't make it an "advocacy group" either. Please review the meaning of the phrase "advocacy group". Jayjg ^(talk) 02:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Here is an excerpt from the article on The Middle East Forum:

The MEF describes its aims as "[to] define and promote American interests in the Middle East" through research, publications, and educational outreach. The MEF defines "U.S. interests" as "fighting radical Islam, whether terroristic or lawful; working for Palestinian acceptance of Israel; improving the management of U.S. democracy efforts; reducing energy dependence on the Middle East; more robustly asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia; and countering the Iranian threat."[3]

Sounds Like an advocacy group to me. annoynmous 02:37, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

The Middle East Quarterly is not the Middle East Forum. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes they are. It even says so on there site. The Quarterly is a publication of Middle East Forum. Is that really your defense? annoynmous 02:44, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Heres more proof from wikipedias own article on Quarterly:

A publication of the Middle East Forum (MEF) founded by Daniel Pipes, the journal was launched in 1994. Edited by Michael Rubin, it is published in print, and all but the current issue are also available as full texts from the website of the Middle East Forum, which does, however, provide links to full texts of some selected current articles as "MEF's latest releases".

The Forums logo is in the upper right hand corner of muirs article. annoynmous 02:47, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Jayjg obviously has a very narrow definition of what most people consider to be an advocacy group. This is s self-confessed "Quasi-Scholarly" journal that is non-peer reviewed that states as one of there missions is "Working for palestinian acceptance of Israel" how is that not an advocacy group. There founder is a notorious neo-con named Daniel pipes who is against the two state solution:

He wrote in Commentary in April 1990 that "there can be either an Israel or a Palestine, but not both... to those who ask why the Palestinians must be deprived of a state, the answer is simple: grant them one and you set in motion a chain of events that will lead either to its extinction or the extinction of Israel."[43]

Add to this Jayjgs bizarre claim that Middle East Quarterly is not the same as Middle East Forum even though MEF publishes MEQ, I don't see how anyone could say there not an advocacy group. annoynmous 03:22, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Plus how does The New York Times have a "Pronounced Liberal slant" they may have liberal or conservative editorials, but they are a major publication who's reporting is respected around the world.

The Middle East Forum is respected by no one except right wing kooks. It is non-peer reviewed which means it's conclusions have no scholarly relevance and unlike The New York Times, hardly anybody reads it.

Is Jayjgs defense of the MEQ and the MEF that there comprobable to The New York Times? Does anybody else besides me find this logic faulty? annoynmous 03:34, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Also jayjg most know theres a difference between a Journal and a Magazine. MEQ touts itself as an academic journal. So the issue of it's being peer reviewed is relevant to whether or not it's publications are credible. annoynmous 03:45, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

A magazine, journal, newspaper, etc. does not have to be peer-reviewed or free of political "slant" to be reliable, and a magazine/journal/newspaper is not an "advocacy group". You cannot use tags as weapons to deface articles that you cannot get deleted. Your desire to "perma-tag" an article in whose content you have "zero interest" is disruptive. Please stop. Jayjg ^(talk) 06:12, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Well now that I've shown Jayjgs claim that MEQ is not an advocacy group to be false I maintain that there is know reason why the tags should not be restored.

I don't understand were Historicist gets this idea that I'm all alone here. Eleland agrees the tags should stay. Historicist is it seems the only one insisting that the tags be taken off. Peter Cohen may have said he supported taking down the tags, but that was after he said the article appeared to have been created in bad faith. Historicist pretends like he addressed those complaints, but as far as I can tell he incorporated none of cohens suggestions.

I also find it funny that I'm the one who gets lectured about canvassing for requesting help from two sources, eleland an Related ferrero who happen to be the two people who put the tag on in the first place. Meanwhile, Historicist is requesting help from everyone he can whether it be Cohen, Elan26, Canadian Monkey, Hertz, jayjg and Mr. Hicks and he doesn't get lectured on canvassing.

Historicist claims that he tried to make the article more neutral and that I'm just complaining. Well look again at how he has supposedly changed the article. As far as I can tell he is responsible for adding Gil Keyal and Tamar Meisels. Two sources are supposed to fundemantally change the article in his eyes. He also added some links to google books, but there all to very brief passages that amount to nothing more than a few sentences. In fact the the link he posted to Steve Poole omits the relevant page number. The link To Alan Dowty is one sentence, and the reference for that sentence is Adam Garfinkle who is already cited in the article.

The more I look at this page the label cherrypicked fits it like a glove. Indeed I'm beginning to think that muir herself may have committed plagarism sense all she did was reproduce Garfinkles thesis from 17 years ago.

Do I have a bias, of course everyone does, including Historicist. However, while I may disagree with them, I don't ask for every article I disagree with to be tagged as not neutral. The reason I'm particularly angry about this article is because when I came upon it I came to the same conclusions Historicist did at first. Although it seemed very biased in its presentation it seemed heavily sourced and documented. Then I did some research and found out that the primary editors of this article, people like Americian Clio, Evidence Based, Yankee Scribe were all the same person and that the editor had been banned. I then found out about the CAMERA controversy from the Electronic Intifada Article and went to a wikipedia discussion page on matter and saw that those editors were part of that controversy. I then looked at the article more closely and discovered that almost all the sources came from muirs article which was written in a highly partisan journal. I tried to get the article deleted, believeing that the article was tainted and that sense the editor had been exposed as a sock that any relevant material should be moved to a different article. I lost that battle and settled for a neutrality tag.

Then a few months later Eleland put the cherrypicked tag on. I felt that this was an appropriate tag because I had said all along that the sock editor had basically plagarized everything from Muirs article. You may ask what right to I have to make that judgement, well the editor was banned for sockpuppetry and for being an agent for an advocacy group, excuse me if don't put much trust in his research methods.

Sense then the article really hasn't changed much. It's wording and structure are different, but other than 3 sources that weren't previously there, the substance of the article is exactly the same.

It's not my fault that historicist really hasn't done much with the article. In his defense, there really is nothing he could do that would significantly change the article. The article is still tainted by the fact that it was created by a sock. Historicist has a bias towards the thesis so nothing he does could make it more neutral. I'm not even sure if someone who disagrees with the thesis could make the article more neutral no matter what they added that contradicted Muir.

Yes I would prefer it if the article didn't exist. I feel it was created under false pretenses and and that muirs thesis should be stated as opinion in a hsitory of zionism page or something like that. That doesn't mean that as long as the article exists that I have to accept people who want to sweep the controversy under the rug.

I may have a bias, but so does Historicist. It's hypocritical to pretend otherwise because, as I said above, if an entire wikipedia page was based on an article written in Electrnic Intifada he would be all for these type of tags. The difference is that I think I'm more reasonable because I've allowed Historicist to make any edits he feels improves the article. All I asked for are a couple tags above the article that explain the articles history.

Historicist can't have that though, he wouldn't want anyone to second guess the thesis or doubt it's authenticity because he needs it appear legitimate and scholarly. I will say one postive thing in historicists regard, he has made the article less sloppy and less dependent on POV words, but window dressing doesn't change the fact that the house is dilapidated. The substance of the article still stinks and therefore the tags apply. annoynmous 05:22, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

You have not shown my statements to be "false". Please read the comments above. Jayjg ^(talk) 06:12, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes I have, your were wrong when you claimed that MEQ wasn't MEF. MEQ is a publication of MEF. I have given multiple instnaces from there founder and from there stated mission which shows that they are an advocacy group.

You know Jayjg your record here hasn't been that great. First you claimed they were peer-reviewed, but neglected to mention that it was only in the last few months and that for sixteen years they weren't peer reviewed. Then you claimed MEQ wasn't the same as MEF even though one publishes the other

You know an advocacy group doesn't mean just lobbyists. Advocacy groups publish articles as well. Just because they wrap it up in a big bow with nice paper doesn't make them any less than one. annoynmous 06:22, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Sigh. To repeat, a magazine, journal, newspaper, etc. does not have to be peer-reviewed or free of political "slant" to be reliable, and a magazine/journal/newspaper is not an "advocacy group". You cannot use tags as weapons to deface articles that you cannot get deleted. Your desire to "perma-tag" an article in whose content you have "zero interest" is disruptive. Please stop. If you want to improve the article, then find other sources that discuss this slogan. Jayjg ^(talk) 06:34, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Says who? Advocacy groups publish things all the time to bolster there position. What law is there that a journal can't be an advocacy group?

Also, whether or not a journal is peer-reviewed does matter in regards to it's credibily. If it isn't peer-reviewed than it generally isn't taken seriously and therefore isn't considered reliable. Do major colleges regularly cite the Middle East Forum as a scholarly source?

I don't know why I'm suprised given that jayjg doesn't consider CAMERA to be an advocacy group. One of there stated goals is too counter what they consider bias scholarship in regards to the middle east. That is not a neutral scholarly journal interested in the facts, that is a group with an agenda. annoynmous 06:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Once again here is there mission statement:

The Middle East Forum, a think tank, seeks to define and promote American interests in the Middle East. It defines U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam, whether terroristic or lawful; working for Palestinian acceptance of Israel; improving the management of U.S. democracy efforts; reducing energy dependence on the Middle East; more robustly asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia; and countering the Iranian threat. The Forum also works to improve Middle East studies in North America. MEF sees the region, with its profusion of dictatorships, radical ideologies, existential conflicts, border disagreements, political violence, and weapons of mass destruction as a major source of problems for the United States. Accordingly, it urges active measures to protect Americans and their allies. Toward this end, the Forum seeks to help shape the intellectual climate in which U.S. foreign policy is made by addressing key issues in a timely and accessible way for a sophisticated public.

They seek to promote american interests, they don't say they merely seek to analyse history or to report information like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. You could argue that both those papers may have political opinions one way or another, but they don't set out as there goal to influence policy. They care most about selling papers and peer-reviewed journals care about addressing scholarly matters. This is a group with an agenda and that makes them an advovacy group. They are a think tank and think tanks are interest groups. annoynmous 07:08, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way people keep saying "oh tags shouldn't be up forever" well despite the fact that the issues addressed in them haven't been resolved and that there are plenty of pages with tags that stay on for two years, the tags really haven't been up that long. Elan26 took off the tags in late September. I didn't put them back until mid February. The neutrality tag was put up on May 11th 2008, so that means it's been on less than 4 months. The Cherrypicked tag wasn't put on until late July so that adds up to only about 2 months. An until I put them back, virtually nothing in the article had changed. Elan26 never made his case on the talk page, he just took them off. So lets not pretend that these tags have been on for too long. You just don't want them up at all. annoynmous 03:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

You know I find it odd that Jayjg reduces the Al Aqsa Massacre article down to a stub and yet he criticizes me for wanting to put tags on an article plagarized from one biased source. Just because it's based on videos and youtube clips means it's not reliable? All of a sudden when the article favors the palestinian side his standards change. My standards are the same, if theres a controversy it should have tags until it's problems are resolved. Somehow I doubt it that Jayjg would tolerate it if I reduced this article to a stub. annoynmous 08:03, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Compromise

Okay, like everyone else I'm getting a little tired of the constant back and forth on this article. How about as a deal we agree to leave the tags on for 6 months and let other editors come along and make whatever contributions they want. Then on septemeber 15th, whether I like the content of the article or not I'll consent to the removal of the tags. That will give the article some breathing room and for some people who aren't already biased towards muirs thesis to make some contributions. annoynmous 09:36, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

• annoynmous, The article is not biased because it now presents all of the very diverse perspectives on the slogan, including the interpretation of the phrase as advocacy of the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population. It is not cherrypicked because MEQ is not an advocacy organization, and because it is based on many sources. I stand by my assertion that even if the original editor had been Atilla the Hun it would not matter since the article has been reworked, reshaped and improved by many, many editors since. As Jayjg has repeatedly told you, your desire to "perma-tag" this article is disruptive. Please stop.Historicist (talk) 12:13, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Annoynmous, which specific statements in the article concern you? Please list the statements, what concerns you about them, and what sources you have to support your view. Thanks. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:44, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Well you can say that all you want, but it doesn't make it true. What diverse perspectives does this article represent. The article is still heavily slanted towards muirs viewpoint and most of the information still comes from her article. it's not my fault that you really haven't changed the article that much.

Now I have made a compromise offer, I've given you date when the tags will come down. You keep complaining that I'm trying to perma tag this article. Well I say that an article should stay tagged until the issues are solved. In fact had I not put the tags back the article would have been exactly the same as it was last year. You guys obviously think I was wrong to put the tags on in te first place and thought the article was fine before.

How are tags disruptive? They don't have anything to do with the information in the article. The reader is still capable of reading the page themelves and coming to there own conclusions.

Now I have given a date of when we can end this. If you agree to it then we can end this. All I want is 6 months so other editors can come along and add information. My problem originally is that the tags really weren't up for that long, they were just taken off. Let's give the page some time to breath and let other people who aren't already biased towards muirs thesis make some contributions.

Again what am I doing that's so disrputive here? I'm puting tags at the top of the article which is what your supposed to do where there are disputes over an article. You may want to sweep that controversy under the rug, but that doesn't make it go away.

I repeat my compromise offer is the tags stay till September 15 at which time I'll agree to remove them. annoynmous 20:26, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Annoynmous, tags are meant to address specific content issues, not generalized discontent regarding editors, article history, or failed AfDs. Which specific statements in the article concern you? Please list the statements, what concerns you about them, and what sources you have to support your view. Thanks. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Well my content issue is that the article is cherrpicked from and advocacy group website. This in turn naturally makes the article biased. The tags above save "Previously collated by an advocacy group" and a neutrlaity tag and you have yet to give me a coherent reason of how the article is balanced and why MEQ doesn't qualify as an advocacy group.

So what if I originally tried to get the article deleted? Just because I tried something else and failed means I'm banned from adding tags to an article because you don't trust my motives? Well I don't trust yours or Historicists motives. Neither of you has given an adequate defense of the article, you just want it to stay beacause you like it's thesis. Anyway you guys keep telling me the past shouldn't matter, if it doesn't matter that the original editor was a sock, why should it matter that I tried to get the article deleted.

I feel that when propoganda is allowed to be stated as fact that there should be some warning for the average reader. What is so unreasonable about this request.

I've made a compromise offer, if neither you or historicist are going to bother to make a good faith effort to at least consider it than I'm going to continue in my present course.

annoynmous 20:43, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Annoynmous, tags are meant to address specific content issues. Which specific statements in the article concern you? Which sentences consist of "propaganda"? Please list the statements, what concerns you about them, and what sources you have to support your view. Thanks. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

My tags do represent an issue, the fact that the quotes were collated by an advocacy group. Tags are supposed to stay up until the dispute is resolved. The dispute isn't resolved and in most cases it wasn't even discussed. What justification was there for elan26 to remove the tags in septemeber. He made zero posts on the talk page and left the article almost exactly as it was. It's not up to me to support my view, it's up to you to give a reason why the tags should come down. annoynmous 20:55, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

You haven't mentioned any specific issues with content yet, though. Tags are meant to address specific content issues with articles. Even if you think "the quotes were collated by an advocacy group", you should still be able to articulate specific concerns with the quotes used. Which specific statements in the article concern you? Which sentences consist of "propaganda"? Please list the statements, what concerns you about them, and what sources you have to support your view. Thanks. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I have expressed and issue and that is that the sources are plagarised from muirs article. Are you purposely ignoring everything I've written or just pretending to be ingorant in order to drive me crazy. I have said before that none of the sources that historicist linked too on google books mention this issue in any detail. The only two people who have ever really addressed this issue are Adam Garfinkle and Muir.

One specific point which I brought up before, why is Alan Dowty linked too in this article when his one sentence references adam garfinkle whos already linked too in the article.

Plus the burden of proof isn't on me, it's on you to give a reason why MEQ isn't an advocacy group. Other than your outright lie that MEQ isn't MEF and your disengenous claim that there peer-reviewed, you haven't given one coherent explanation to dispute the tags. Have you even read the article or are you just on another agenda based war to perserve an article favorable to Israel. annoynmous 22:07, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, if you want to insert a tag, the burden of proof is on you to explain what specifically you want to change in the article content. Regarding the sources "plagarised from muirs article", I believe Historicist has said that he has checked all the sources in the article personally - please correct me if I'm wrong in that. Are there any that you think are inaccurately cited? Jayjg ^(talk) 22:10, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I have checked the soruces in Muir's article and they are cited accurately.Historicist (talk) 22:14, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Historicist checked the sources, so were basing the entire credibilty of the article on what historicist says he read? Excuse me for thinking that the article should be based on what's verifiable in the article. The fact is that most of the sources can't be linked too and those that can barely mention this topic. The page number historicist posted for Steven Pooles book is omitted.

You are wrong, when tags go up your supposed to discuss them on the talk page until a consensus has been reached. I haven't reverted anything in the article, all I'm advocating for are tags. Tags are not vandalism just because you don't like what they say. All they indicate is that there is a controversy.

Also the issue is not whether or not the quotes are innacurate, the issue is that they are cherrypicked from one biased source. All I have to prove is that the source is biased and that the article gives undue weight to that source and you so far haven't given any refutation to that argument that makes sense. It seems you know nothing about this article at all and are only reverting me for agenda based reasons. annoynmous 22:24, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

It's interesting that historicist puts some much weight on Gudrun Kramer and yet who does he cite for his claims, Adam Garfinkle. This why I'm beginning to think that this may be a case of double plagarism. Muir herself it appears just copied Garfinkle. annoynmous 22:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Posted by Annoynmous on Notice board for Palestine-related topics

A land without a People for a people without a land

I have been engaged for nearily year now in a fight to keep certain tags on this article. They are a neutraility tag and a Cherrypicked tag. I originally tried to get the article deleted, but was overruled. The editor who created the article was banned for sockpuppetry and was banned at the same the CAMERA operation to bias wikipedia was discovered. The article is highly biased towards one source in Daniel Pipes Middle East Quarterly. The article by one Diana Muir argues that the phrase was never really used that much by zionists except for Israel Zangwill. The page basically plagarizes all her sources. I think the tags are important because they remind people about the history of this article.

Currently right now I'm battling an editor named Historicist with Jayjg supporting him. Eleland has given me some support an suggested I leave a post on a page like this for some more help. If anyone could come to the article and give me some support I would much appreciate it. annoynmous 08:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)sighHistoricist (talk) 01:42, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, so what, I'm not posting on someone elses user page, I'm asking for help on a notice board for issues related to Palestine. Historicist has left messages on 6 different user pages asking for help. He's allowed to recruit everyone yet I get lectured when I do the same thing. I really am getting tired of the veiled threats here and on my user page. I haven't violated and rules and I've only requested help from people involved in putting the tags on in the first place. This all a smokescreen to intimidate and me so that I'm the only one arguing the case while Jayjg and Historicist gang up on me. annoynmous 01:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Posted by Historicist on Canadian Monkeys page

[edit] tags In August you engaged in a debate on the page "a land without a people for a people without a land" over the appropriateness of the tags that have been hung on it like a Christmas tree. I came recently to the page, and improved it in ways that, I believed met the objections of the tagger. I am not saying that thepage is perfect, only that it is now so heavily sourced from multiple, reliable scholars, that the tags no longer apply. There is a single, adamant editor involved. I recently copied your old artuments, all excellent, to the bottom of the discussion. It would take a few minutes only for you to revisit the issue and arguments. thank you.Historicist (talk) 15:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. If you have a minute, I would appreciate it if you could make another brief visit to A land without a people for a people without a land.Historicist (talk) 00:43, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Well does Historicist get a lecture too. You know I've had up to here with the outright dishonesty of Historicist and jayjg.

Historicist has repeately lied and accused me of breaking the 3RR rule when I have not once reverted an edit more than 3 times in 24 hour period on this page. I haven't even been reverting, all I've done is put back the tags. That doesn't include his threatening tone on my user page complaining about Canvassing when he has left messages at 6 user pages asking for help. His bullying tactics are really starting to great on my nerves and sense he can't get me to go away he wants to find some excuse to block me so he doesn't have to deal with the poverty of his arguments.

Jayjg is even worse, outside of the fact that he appears to know nothing about the page, he has outright lied on two occasions. He first said that Middle East Quarterly was a peer-reviewed journal, but neglected to mention that they were non-peer reviewed until this winter when they decided to change there policy because no one took what they wrote seriously. Then he tried to make the absurd claim that Middle East Forum is not the same as Middle East Quarterly even though MEF publishes MEQ. Top that off with his absurd claim that MEQ doesn't qualifie as an advocacy group because there a journal on level with The New York Times.

The fact matter is that neither of them cared about improving this article until I made an issue of it. In his own words Historicist felt the old version of the article was "Strong" even though there was only one link in the entire article and all the sourcess are identical to muirs piece. An how has Historicist greatly improved the article, well lets looks at this passage:

An expression of the non-existence of a Palestinian naton A second group of scholars interprets the phrase as an expression of the fact that, in the nineteenth century and the twentieth century up to WWI, the Arabs living in Palestine did not constitute a self-conscious national group, "a people".[2]

First this is source is Garfinkle who's already cited below.

As historian Gudrun Krämer writes, the phrase was a political argument that many mistakenly took to be a demographic argument.[34] "What it meant was not that there were no people in Palestine... Rather, it meant that the people living in Palestine were not a people with a history, culture,and legitimate claim to national self-determination... Palestine contained people, but not a people".[35]

An what source does kramer cite for his claims, Garfinkle.

Steven Poole, in a book about the use of language as a weapon in politics, explains the phrase this way, "The specific claim was not the blatantly false one that the territory was unpopulated, nor that those living there were not human, but that they did not constitute 'a people', in other words, it was argued that they had no conception of nationhood in the modern western sense".[36]

Page number omitted at the google books link

According to historian Adam M. Garfinkle, the plain meaning of the phrase was that the Jews were a nation without a state while their ancestral homeland, Israel, was at that time (the nineteenth century) not the seat of any nation.[2]

Political Scientist Alan Dowty writes that the meaning of the phrase was that "Palestine was a land not identified with a specific nation (other than Jews) not that it was uninhabited".[37]

An who does Dowty cite as a source, you guessed it Garfinkle.

According to Columbia University professor Gil Eyal, it is absurd to assert that Zionists used this phrase to assert that the land was lacking a national group, "In fact, the inverse is true. Zionists never stopped debating Palestinian nationalism, arguing with it and about it, judging it, affirming or negating its existence, pointing to its virtues or vices... The accusation of "denial" is simplistic and disregards the historical phenomenon of a polemical discourse revolving around the central axis provided by Arab or Palestinian nationalism..".[38]

How this quote is relevant strikes me as bizarre seeing as how it has nothing to do with whether the phrase was used or not. Plus he doesn't use the word "absurd" at all in the text. In fact he never once says explicitly that the phrase wasn't used by early zionist.

I made a compromise offer above and as far as I can tell both Jayjg and Historicist chose to ignore. I'll state it one more time. 6 months and then I'll consent to taking down the tags no matter what. If they continue to ignore it than I'll continue in my present course. annoynmous 03:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Well I took up jayjgs advice and made some edits in line with my complaints above. By taking a hands off approach I thought I was being generous to Historicist, but I realize now that this approach is being used to paint me as contributing nothing to the article. I removed Gudrun Kramer because all he does is reference Adam garfinkle. Now the article is more reliant on Diana Muir. My compromise offer stands. annoynmous 07:47, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

• annoynmous appears to misunderstand how scholarship works. Gudrun Kramer cites Garfinkle on a specific point, the origin of this solgan with Shaftesbury. Kramer, in a multipage section devoted to the phrase beginning on p. 165, Krämer goes on to explain tat in the British view, the Arab inhabitants did not have "legitimate political claims to Palestine comparable to those of the Jewish people," then goes on to discuss the attitude prevailing not so much among Jews as among British officials and MP's that the weight of Christian and Biblical history had to be taken into account, and taht the Jews, as a people, had a better calim to the land than the Arab "inhabitants."

Unlike annoynmous I do not read editor Jayjg as advising Annoynmous to remove well-sourced, relevant, scholarly material.

References

Historicist (talk) 11:14, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Historicists faulty sources

Apparently historicist doesn't understand that this article is not about claims to land, it is about the origin of a phrase and who first used it. The fact is that kramers reference for this is Garfinkle.

Also the Steven Poole page number is omitted, so the google books link is irrelvant.

Jayjg kept begging me to take up my complaints in the article itself and thats what I'm doing. Thats how I interpreted it. annoynmous 11:29, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't really understand what's wrong with any of Historicist's sources. They are academic sources perfectly within WP:RS. Moreover, a Wikipedian is not required to provide an online source, and offline sources are perfectly acceptable (although admittedly harder to verify). Do you have any sources contesting the statements that Historicist uses? -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 11:50, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

My issue with this is that the source Gudrun kramer bases his conclusions by citing another source adam garfinkle who is already in the article. Plus the link to to Steve Poole on google books has the relevant page number omitted. Most of Historicists sources barely mention this subject with any depth. The only sources who really deal with the origin of the phrase are Diana Muir and Adam Garfinkle. Historicist is padding the list. Not only does Kramer reference Garfinkle, but Historicist uses 3 different links that go to the same page number. annoynmous 12:10, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Ynhockey here. What exactly is the problem? Using three different links to the same page number is a very minor markup thing, and so's the Poole page number. Those are not neutrality or verification issues that warrant a tag. Can you provide a concrete example of a source cited that does not support the preceding information? -- Nudve (talk) 12:20, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Well if the source bases there claims on someone already cited in the page that whats the point of including them. Why does garfinkles thesis need to be sourced by proxy through Gudrun kramer.

Also the fact is that The Steven Poole google link page isn't there, so whats the point of having a link to something that isn't there.

My point was that Historicist was trying to pad the source list. Maybe "faulty sources" was the wrong choice of words.

The tag is based on the fact that all the sources are plagarized from one biased publication in an advocacy group publication. The Middle East Quarterly is a non-peer reviewed journal with a neo-conservative bent. Most of the page numbers and citations are sighted in the exact way as they are in Diana Muirs piece. The Cherrypicked tag doesn't mean that the quotes are faulty, it just means they were collated by an advocacy group.

Plus the editor who created the article was revealed as sock who may have worked for the group CAMERA.

Do I really have to go through all this stuff again? Can't you guys look at all the entries on the talk page above and find out my position.

annoynmous 12:33, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

• I added sources after searching for discussions of this phrase in scholarly books. I added not only Kramer (who discusses the meaning of the phrase at some length), and Poole, who is hardly a Zionist, but Norman Finklestein and Mohammad Amin al-Husayni and others in an attempt - admittedly imperfect - to give space to the full range of interpretations.Historicist (talk) 12:47, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

It is not plagiarizing for a scholar or a Wikipedia editor to discover a source in a scholar's work and cite that source in his own work. Anyone can write taht Shaftsbury used the phrase, citing Garfinkle, and also cite directly to Shaftsbury, provided only that they have actually opened the Shaftsbury source they are citing. thus Muir and Kramer are not plairgiraizing Garfinkle, they are citing him. Kramer, Muir, Poole, Toren, Lassner and other that I cited go beyond Garfinkle to discuss the phrase using further sources. That is it is proper to cite both them in this article even thought they do, indeed, cite Garfinkle. They are not, that is, merely echoing Garfinkle, they are expanding the discussion.Historicist (talk) 12:47, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Do note that User:Annoynmous has, again, annoyingly, replaced the tags in the face of broad opposition and an ongoing discussion here.Historicist (talk) 12:47, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Annoynmous has now removed the tags, as per the consensus on this page.Historicist (talk) 12:49, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

You know what you guys win for now

I'm tired of arguing about this article day in and day out. I don't understand why a couple of tags are so offensive to some people. I don't understand why we couldn't just let them stay up for a little while and let other people come along and attempt to improve this article. I can see know that people from wikiproject Israel are migrating to this page. I sense I'm about to get ganged up on and I frankly don't have the strength right now. Maybe someone will see that message I left at at wikiproject Palestine and pick up where I left off. I'll come back later and fight this battle again when I feel it's worth it again.

Until then congratulations Jayjg and Historicist, you won your little propoganda war. It's just one more notch down in wikipedias seriousness that an article like this, created by a sock with an agenda, is allowed without so much as one tag on it. Hopefully some diligent soul will come along and attempt to improve this travesty. I just don't have the spirit anymore right now.

I will just state it again for anybody who comes upon this talk page:

This article is propoganda, don't take anything in it at face value.

There I've said my piece, I'm gone for now. annoynmous 13:02, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

One last response to Historicist above, it is plagarism when you copy someone elses sources and don't do the research yourself. The tag said "Collated by an advocacy group" which MEQ qualifies as, at least to anyone sane. Most of the Quotes were collated in muirs article and that was the basis for the tag.

Also stop talking about consensus, there never was one. Niether you or jayjg ever cared about building a consensus or improving the article. All you cared about was getting me to go away. You didn't start improving the article until I made an issue of it. You thought the old version of the article was in your words "strong".

I know you subscribe to the Alan Dershowitz school of what constitutes plagarism, but that doesn't make them true. Anyway you succeeded for know in driving me away. I'll be back at some time to take this fight on again. For now, it's another victory for the Wikipedia Israeli Affairs Committe.annoynmous 13:17, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Elaboration of anti-Zionist use of phrase

Although it seems to be firmly established that the phrase not heavilly used by ZIonists, as claimed by some authors, I think more needs to be dome to explain their view point.

A quick google shows that a range of sources such as

• a pro-Palestinian American journal [4]

• the webpage of a member of the far right [5]

• a Christian anti-Zionist site [6]

• a mainstream Indian news magazine [7]

all run articles conecting the phrase with the attitude of Israeli leaders of a generation or two back (Meir, Ben Gurion, Weizmann) that the Palestinians were not a people. In fact the last seems to claim that Weizmann used a version of this phrase.--Peter cohen (talk) 16:18, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Which ones are reliable? Certainly not the second or the third. The third, by the way, is not an "anti-Zionist" site, it is a Holocaust denying, antisemitic site. See Bible Believers. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:21, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I didn't know the history of that site. Clearly they are scum but that they and Duke have similar material shows that the claim is circulated relatively widely in the Western anti-Semitic far right. Frontline, as a mainstream magazine, is reliable and the AMEU/The Line with its academic referencing looks at first glance as if it is reliable though I can't see evidence of peer-review. Of course, Muir has established that they are in error when attributing the phrase to mainstream Zionism. However they are examples of how the phrase is used by anti-Zionists in discussing the line of Golda Meir and her ilk that historically there was no Palestinian people. User:Historicist has suggested a quote from Muir that covers what I say. Given extensive discussion above suggesting partiality on Muir's part, the above sites are example of what is described being said and some could be referenced as examples.--Peter cohen (talk) 14:41, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Alleged Weizmann use of the slogan

You can find the Weizmann use here (Paul Goodman, Chaim Weizmann: A Tribute on His Seventieth Birthday (London: V. Gollancz, 1945), p. 153) It is an object lesson in how careful you have to be with sources. Weizmann doesn't exactly use the phrase, he cites it as an example of how wrong it would be to imagine that Eretz Israel was a land without Arabs living in it. In the context, it can be read either as Weizmann disassociating himself from Israel Zangwill, persona non grata among Zioists who was associated with this solgan, or as a repudiation of ideas common before Ahad Ha'am published in 1891. Weizmann was giving a speech intended to raise the spirits of a Zionist committee in 1914 following an incident where Jews in Israel were killed by Arabs. He goes on to tell them how hard it will be to win a homeland for the Jews, and how great the necessity (in the light of the pogroms in Russian elsewher ein Eastern Europe.)Historicist (talk) 17:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

If you google with enough variations of the phrase (land without people) (country without a people) etc, you will easily get thousands of uses. this does not prove that any of them are accurate. After all, google Serenity Prayer and you will get thousands of citations, most referring to Reinhold Niebuhr. This doesn't make it true. People make mistakes. It is not implausible that the phrase, coined and used by Christian Restorationists was later erroneously believed to have been in wide use by Zionists.Historicist (talk) 17:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I take this section to be a response to my posting above. I have no reason to disbelieve what you say, but I don't think you address my core point which is that rather than simply stating that the anti-Zionists mistakenly claim that many Zionists used the phrase, we should state that anti-Zionists claim that the phrase is emblematic of the Zionist claim that the Palestinians are not a people. And leading Zionists did claim that even though they did not use the phrase. This was a position undoubtedly taken by Ben Gurion and Meir, though not one we would expect to hear from more modern leaders of the Israeli Labour party. I would like to link to an article on an article on the debate over Palestinian peoplehood, but such doesn't exist even though the denial of that peoplehood was a position shared by Shaftesbury, Meir and advocates of a Greater Syria.

BTW I am going to be posting about this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration/Current Article Issues.--Peter cohen (talk) 20:09, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

• Weizmann's entire three-page speech is reproduced in Goodman. He was speaking to a Zionist club in paris in april 1914, shortly after Moshe Barsky was killed in an Arab attack on Kibbutz Dagania. Weizmann is very clear in his use of this slogan only to denigrate it as an example of the naieve thinking of The territorialists (i.e. Zangwill) for whom any "land without a bpeople " would do, and of any Zionists who thought that buuilding a Jewish homeland would be easy, i.e., that the Sultan would give them a homeland as easily as a stone is set into a ring, or a bride is given to a bridegroom. He is clear about the presence of Arabs in Israel, and calls for the sacrifice - including the sacrifice of the lives of pioneers - that will be required to win a national home.160.39.35.50 (talk) 16:49, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

It's funny, people keep saying this, but they never provide any evidence to back it up. Theres nothing in the quote cited so far of Weizmann disavowing the phrase. To the contrary he seems to confirm that the phrase was firmly implanted in zionist thought and that a way should be made to get the ottomans behind the plan. I think apologists for Israel are projecting there own wishful thinking onto what Weizmann said in attempt to make it sound more nuanced than it actually was. annoynmous 04:18, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

You may need to walk to the library and read the book. It's not online.Historicist (talk) 15:31, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

You need to provide sources that verify what you say. Theres nothing in the quote so far of weizmann disavowing the phrase or specifically criticizing Zangwill. Let the quote speak for itself. annoynmous 16:55, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Masalha paragraph

An editor recently inserted the following paragraph into the article:

In his 1992 book Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of 'Transfer' In Zionist Political Thought, Masalha documents the concept of 'transfer' in Zionist thinking from Theodor Herzl, to Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion. Masalha argues that from the mid-1930s on, every significant Zionist political leader was in favour of ethnically cleansing Palestine of Arabs. According to Masalha, in 1948 Ben-Gurion presided over the expulsion of the Palestinians and creation of the Palestinian refugee problem <ref> Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ In Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948, 1992.</ref>

Can those inserting the paragraph explain where the source discusses the phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land"? That is the topic of this article. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:24, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Fatimas Edits

You know Jayjg has a lot of nerve citing original research as his reason for reverting fatimas edits. The whole time he and Historicist are lecturing me that instead of arguing for tags I should add sources to improve the article. So along comes Fatima who adds sources that show the phrase was used by zionists and gives page numbers and everything and he automatically reverts them because they go against his ideological bias.

If your going to go by Jayjg standards than this entire article is based on original reasearch and the article should therefore be reduced to a stub. Unless someone provides evidence that Fatima did not accurately quote the sources then there is no reason not to include them. annoynmous 18:23, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Regarding Fatima's edits, the first paragraph was this:

The phrase and theme of "empty territory" are central to Zionist foundational myths: that the land, until the arrival of European Jewish settlers, was virtually barren, underpopulated, desolate and empty, waiting to be made fertile and populated by Zionist pioneers; it was the rightful property of "returning Jews".

As can be seen, this theory is completely unsourced, and violates WP:NPOV as well - stating as fact claims that are strongly disputed in this article itself. It astonishes me that annoynmous would revert that material back into the article, claiming that it was not original research, and was sourced.

The second paragraph stated the following:

Ben-Amotz was reflecting on the state education in Israel and on the Zionist myth of "empty land" which finds strong expression in children’s literature. One such work for children contains the following excerpt: "Joseph and some of his men thus crossed the land [Palestine] on foot, until they reached Galilee. They climbed mountains, beautiful but empty mountains, where nobody lived ... Joseph said, “We want to establish this Kibbutz and conquer this emptiness. We shall call this place Tel Hai [Living Hill] ... The land is empty; its children have deserted it [reference is, of course, to Jews]. They are dispersed and no longer tend it. No one protects or tends the land now".

There is no indication that Ben-Amotz was reflecting on this specific quotation, and material in question nowhere discusses the phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land". In fact, it discusses as specific section in a children's textbook related to a specific town, Tel Hai. Jayjg ^(talk) 18:31, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I removed the lead paragraph because it has no sources to back it up, but the other 3 do.

If it's about childrens literature than that says that is was a highly held belief in zionist thought. It deals with the idea that Zionists thought the land was empty. It is relevant to the discussion. annoynmous 19:36, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Plus you must know that the article is not just about use of the phrase, but what the phrase meant. Theres the question of whether or not the phrase meant that the zionist movement thought the land was empty or not. The quote shows that some in the zionist movement did believe that. A childrens book is pretty good indication of a societys beliefs if you ask me. annoynmous 18:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

It should also be said that Jayjgs reasoning here is very strange. The sentence above the one he cited says:

In 1982 Israel’s leading satirist, Dan Ben-Amotz, observed that "the Arabs do not exist in our textbooks [for children]. This is apparently in accordance with the Jewish-Zionist-socialist principles we have received. “A-people-without-a-land-returns-to-a-land-without-people”.[16]

Fatima then goes to cite an example from a childrens book. Ben-Amotz may not have been referring to the same childrens book the Journal of Palestine studies cited, but what does that matter. It is merely proof of his claim that such childrens books do exist. annoynmous 19:22, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

1. Did Ben-Amotz refer to that specific example?
2. Does the example refer to the phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land"?
3. Does Fatima's article refer to the phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land"?

Unless the answer to all three questions is "Yes", then the material is original research. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:29, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Fine I changed the wording so it doesn't say the Ben-Amotz was referring to that specific example. The source merely shows that such childrens books do exist. All these sentences have sources to back them up so it can't be original research. annoynmous 19:36, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Do the sources refer to the phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land"? If not, then they are original research. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:58, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I have moved these two sections two a different part of the article. I have kept the Chaim Weizmann quote in the same place since that deals with direct use of the phrase by someone. annoynmous 19:46, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

How will moving the sentences deal with the issue that the second doesn't refer to the phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land"? Jayjg ^(talk) 19:58, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

The section I moved it to is the one of people who think the phrase means the zionist movement thought the land was empty. Ben-Amotz main point was that "Arabs do not exist in out textbooks". The second section gives an example from a childrens book depicting the land as empty. It's relevant to the point. It shows that such books do exist. That isn't original research. annoynmous 20:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I've changed the wording again so as to further dissociate it from the idea that Ben-Amotz is refurring to that specific book. It's not original reasearch to prove his point that such books do exist. The section it's under is called "An Expression of the Zionist Vision of an empty land" so it isn't dealy directly with the phrase. annoynmous 20:17, 29 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.53.158.38 (talk)

Please explain exactly how we know that that quote is directly related to the topic of this article, which is the phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land". Jayjg ^(talk) 20:22, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Once again the section it is currently under is titled "An Expression of the Zionist Vision of an empty land". So if an excerpt from a childrens book depicts the land as empty than that would seem to confirm that some in the movement believed that enough to put it in the book. Ben-Amotz says: "the Arabs do not exist in our textbooks [for children]. This is apparently in accordance with the Jewish-Zionist-socialist principles we have received. “A-people-without-a-land-returns-to-a-land-without-people”. Fatima linked to a source that shows that such books do exist.

Whether or not the zionist movement believed the land to be empty is part of the interpretation of the phrase. That isn't original reasearch, that's just plain research. annoynmous 20:32, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay here are both sections put together:

In 1982 Israel’s leading satirist, Dan Ben-Amotz, observed that "the Arabs do not exist in our textbooks [for children]. This is apparently in accordance with the Jewish-Zionist-socialist principles we have received. “A-people-without-a-land-returns-to-a-land-without-people”.[31]

One such work for children contains the following excerpt: "Joseph and some of his men thus crossed the land [Palestine] on foot, until they reached Galilee. They climbed mountains, beautiful but empty mountains, where nobody lived ... Joseph said, “We want to establish this Kibbutz and conquer this emptiness. We shall call this place Tel Hai [Living Hill] ... The land is empty; its children have deserted it [reference is, of course, to Jews]. They are dispersed and no longer tend it. No one protects or tends the land now".[32]

Now tell me where the original reasearch is in those sections. Both have sources to back them up and both relie on quotes from the source. The second section merely proves Ben-Amotz's point that such books exist. His point was that the childrens books depict the land as empty and that this was an expression of the "A Land Without a People.." ethos.

The world has truly gone topsy turvy. Now all of a sudden Jayjg loves tags. annoynmous 20:49, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I have raised no issue with the first paragraph. Please provide a source for the second paragraph, one that shows it is directly related to the topic of this article, which is the phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land". Quote the source. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:06, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Your claim is that it's original reasearch. How can something be original research if it's sourced.

Actually all the sources happen to be in the book by Ghadha Karmi and Eugene Cotran which does deal directly with the phrase. They cite it as an example of Zionist thought.

There are many quotes in the article that don't deal directly with the phrase like this one from William Blackstone:

"Why not give Palestine back to them (the Jews) again? According to God's distribution of nations it is their home, an inalienable possession from which they were expelled by force.... Let us now restore to them the land of which they were so cruelly despoiled by our Roman ancestors".[17]

The reason for including it is context, because theres a source after this that shows Blackstone using the phrase. Not everything on this page has to be directly related to the phrase. Some links describe the context of the phrase like the one dealing with the childrens book. annoynmous 21:18, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

"How can something be original research if it's sourced."? Please review WP:SYN

Editors should not make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article to reach conclusion C. This would be a synthesis of published material that advances a new position, and that constitutes original research.

The first Blackstone quote probably doesn't belong either, if there's no source tying it to the second Blackstone quote. Now, for the last time, please bring a source which links that quote to the topic of this article "A land without a people for a people without a land ". A source. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:51, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Except that there is no C, theres only A and B. The source is providing context to the article. The Gil Keyal quote also doesn't directly relate to the phrase. Not everything in the article has to be narrowly defined to just one thing.

I already gave you a source where both sections are cited as an expression of the zionist mindset. The Ghadha Karmi, Eugene Cotran book on the palestinian exodus. You can link to it below to see for yourself. annoynmous 22:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Also neither source was combined to reach some sorta arbitrary conclusion. One source spoke of an idea and the second gave an example of it. annoynmous 22:07, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Well, then, bring a source that shows that the quote is relevant to the topic of this article, "A land without a people for a people without a land". That is the topic of this article, not Israeli children's textbooks. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:11, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

But it is relevant to the article. The section it's under is over an interpretation of what the phrase meant. Ben-Amotz referred to the phrase as meaning the zionists thought the palestinians didn't exist. The example he gives is childrens textbooks. The source shows that such books do exist. That isn't original reasearch, that's providing context to this specific interpretation of the phrase. annoynmous 22:18, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I have moved the two sections again to the "Wish that the arabs would go away section" and have put it in the context of the arguments put forth by Ghada Karmi and Eugene Cotran. So it can no longer be called original research. It is providing context to there arguments. annoynmous 23:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

"Providing context" = original research. Please review WP:SYN as well. Now, please bring a source that shows that the quote is relevant to the topic of this article, "A land without a people for a people without a land". That is the topic of this article, not Israeli children's textbooks. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:26, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see now. The material was falsely cited to various sources, when it all comes directly from Karmi and Cotran. Per Wikipedia:CITE#SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT, you must cite the material to the source where you got it. I'll fix that. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:52, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

The topic of this article is the phrase "A land without a people for a people without a land". All material added to it, must discuss that topic. It is not enough that the material be well sourced - it must also be relevant. Taking material which discusses Zionists views on Arabs, or quotes about how the Arabs are "unworthy' are not relevant. NoCal100 (talk) 14:06, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay the Zangwill section directly references the phrase so your not justified in removing that. The Weizmann quote gives an idea of his mindset.

The Amos Oz quote is in a section of the page that doesn't deal directly with the phrase. The sections title says "An Expression of the Wish that the Arabs would go away". It's providing context to an argument given in the book by Ghada Karmi and Eugene Cotran. Not everything in this article has to be so rigidly defined as dealing just with the phrase.

I made a lot of effort to remove POV words and put the sources in there proper sections within the page. I agree Fatima has been a little sloppy in the way he added them, but everything he added has sources and should not be automatically reverted because it doesn't suit the ideological viewpoint of certain editors. annoynmous 14:22, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

You concede "The Amos Oz quote is in a section of the page that doesn't deal directly with the phrase." - it's out. "Providing context" is another word for original research, which is not allowed. NoCal100 (talk) 14:58, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

No because it's in a section of the article that deals with interpretations of the phrase. It's framed within a larger argument made in the book by Ghada Karmi and Eugene cotran.

In order for it to be original research I would have added a sentence after it with no sources that reached some arbitrary conclusion. I haven't done that. Everything in the article is sourced and related to the context of the interpretation of the phrase. annoynmous 15:04, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

You have already conceded the material does not in fact deal directly with the phrase, but allege it is nonetheless relevant, because it provides 'context' - when no single source has made that argument. That is the definition of original research. To quote WP:OR to you: "Even with well-sourced material, however, if you use it out of context or to advance a position that is not directly and explicitly supported by the source used, you as an editor are engaging in original research;' . In order for you to include the material I've removed, those sources must directly and explicitly address the subject.For example, by saying 'Amos Oz's description of the Tel Hai depiction in Israeli textbooks is another manifestation of the "land without a people for a people without a land" concept.' You concede that is not the case. Please stop edit warring over this. NoCal100 (talk) 15:17, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I haven't used it out of context. All those quotes are in Ghada karmi and Eugene Cotrans book. They reference all them as an expression of the zionist outlook. The quotes are the evidence they give for there argument that the zionist movement thought the land was "A Land Without a people for a people without a land".

Besides what's your justification for removing the zangwill quote. That one directly references the phrase. annoynmous 15:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

• I repeat what Jayig a d nocal have already stated, that this is an article about a singel phrase. Ruminations on Zionist intentions that do not cite this phrase so not belong here.Historicist (talk) 15:42, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Well Jayjg agreed to include the other sources that Fatima added. They were under a section that dealt with interpretation of the phrase, not the phrase itself. All the quotes were based in the arguments given in Ghada Karmi and Eugene Cotrans books.

Anyway I have removed Amos Oz material because I agree for right now it isn't relevant. I thought that this article was going to be expanding beyond just the phrase itself after Peter Cohens post on the Wikiproject collaboration page. When that happens I will put the sources back. I agree with Hertz that for right now there cluttering up the page.

I am keeping the Weizmann and Zangwill quotes though. The Zangwill quote directly references the phrase and the Weizmann quote adds context to the Karmi and Cotran argument

I must say I love it how all of a sudden people get so strict on material that deals just with the phrase. It doesn't matter that there are other sources like Gil Keyal and William Blackstone that don't deal directly with the phrase. There included because they provide context to the article. Thats the same thing that Fatimas sources are doing. annoynmous 15:55, 31 March 2009 (UTC)