Talk:Zionism

RFC about a recently added claim about Zionism

Does this sentence violate NPOV and should it be removed from the lead and the body?

"Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible" Bob drobbs (talk) 18:33, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (RFC about a recently added claim about Zionism)

Please specify the RFCbefore discussions, thank you. Selfstudier (talk) 18:36, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Note that the text is preceded in the article lead by the following hidden comment "The following text is the result of consensus on the talk page. Changes to the text have been challenged and any further edits to the sentence should be discussed on the talk page and consensus obtained to change." This hidden text was added by an admin as noted at User talk:ScottishFinnishRadish/Archive 38#Full protection at Zionism where RFC opener discussed this question previously. Selfstudier (talk) 18:45, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes an admin labeled this sentence as having consensus. That decision was made only after a few days of discussion with only a few editors weighing in on the topic.

This issue has been discussed heavily on the talk page with no resolution. You actually suggested creating a RFC to discuss it [1], and bringing in a bunch more voices on whether or not this sentence violates NPOV seems very appropriate. Bob drobbs (talk) 23:54, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

I posted this and I strongly support removing it. 'Consensus' was rushed through without waiting a reasonable amount of time for comment and it has a huge number of issues:

1) It presents opinions as if they were fact

2) It presents opinions from authors who are hostile towards Zionists as if their views on Zionism were fact

3) Synth issues, combining things like "Zionist leaders" or "some zionists" into "Zionists"

4) Stripping important context away like "by 1948" to imply this was true of all Zionists throughout all of history

5) Cherry picking when an author says something which agrees with this claim, but ignoring when the same author contradicts.

I've only reviewed the very reference in depth depth, but here are some of the problems.

In the into to his book, Manna is pretty clear that he's hostile toward Zionists:

""This author hopes that the dis-comfort that this book causes to Zionist and pro-Zionist readers will drive them to seek out the truth ...""

The claim which was put into the article has the time frame was stripped from it:

"...in the 1948 war, when it became clear that the objective that enjoyed the unanimous support of Zionists of all inclinations was to establish a Jewish state with the smallest possible number of Palestinians"

In the same book the author say that some history "refutes" the existence of a high-level policy of ethnic cleansing, but this is ignored:

"the history of the Palestinians who remained in the Galilee both attests to the existence of a high-level policy of ethnic cleansing at times and refutes that policy at other times."

The second source Khalidi is presented as an opinion elsewhere in the article, but somehow in just this one place is presented as fact. I didn't review all of the other sources, these first two seem like more than enough reason to remove this sentence from the lead and body of the article.

This sentence seems to have some many issues it doesn't seem possible to fix it. It should be removed. Then it can be replaced relying on the 'best sources' which are being collectively compiled. Bob drobbs (talk) 18:41, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

The sentence is currently sourced as follows Selfstudier (talk) 18:59, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Sources

yes I've read through the hidden text and the visible text. The claim that "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible" should be removed to restore NPOV. Allthemilescombined1 (talk) 02:53, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Which hidden text? Bitspectator ⛩️ 03:20, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Some lists required expanding. Allthemilescombined1 (talk) 00:43, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@Allthemilescombined1 I'm not sure what this response is supposed to mean, so I'll echo @Bitspectator's question in hopes of understanding. What do you mean when you say that you've "read through the hidden text"? What "hidden text" are you referring to? Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 01:10, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

One example is: Note that the text is preceded in the article lead by the following hidden comment "The following text is the result of consensus on the talk page. Changes to the text have been challenged and any further edits to the sentence should be discussed on the talk page and consensus obtained to change." This hidden text was added by an admin as noted at User talk:ScottishFinnishRadish/Archive 38#Full protection at Zionism where RFC opener discussed this question previously.) 18:45, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply] Allthemilescombined1 (talk) 01:13, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 01:25, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

LLM generated arguments and taking the bait. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:19, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Relying solely on sources that portray Zionism as aiming to minimize the Arab presence risks cherry-picking and oversimplifying a complex historical movement. While some scholars emphasize demographic goals, many prominent historians, including Benny Morris, Anita Shapira, Walter Laqueur, and Shlomo Avineri, highlight the diversity within Zionism. These historians show that Zionist leaders also pursued peaceful coexistence, economic cooperation, and cultural revival. Ignoring these perspectives skews the narrative and fails to meet Wikipedia's standards of neutrality and balance. A comprehensive view requires incorporating the full spectrum of scholarly interpretations. 1. Benny Morris In Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001, Benny Morris discusses Zionist leaders’ views on coexistence: “From early on, the Zionist leadership sought ways to coexist with the Arab population. They acknowledged the Arabs' attachment to the land but believed that a demographic Jewish majority was necessary for self-determination. This did not preclude peaceful relations with the Arab population.” Source: Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001. Vintage Books, 2001, pp. 45–47. ---- 2. Anita Shapira In Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948, Anita Shapira explores the transition in Zionist strategies: “Initially, the Zionist movement sought peaceful coexistence, with an emphasis on agricultural development and cultural revival. The shift toward a more militant stance was a response to increasing hostility and rejection by the Arab leadership.” Source: Shapira, Anita. Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948. Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 118–120. ---- 3. Walter Laqueur Walter Laqueur, in A History of Zionism, highlights the diversity of Zionist attitudes: “Not all Zionist leaders viewed the Arab population as an obstacle. Many believed in the possibility of coexistence and sought alliances with moderate Arab leaders. The idea of a shared future was integral to some streams of Zionist thought.” Source: Laqueur, Walter. A History of Zionism. Schocken Books, 2003, p. 78. ---- 4. Shlomo Avineri In The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State, Shlomo Avineri discusses Herzl’s inclusive vision: “Herzl envisioned the Jewish state not as a colonial outpost but as a refuge for Jews and a place where Jews and Arabs could coexist peacefully. He believed economic development would benefit all inhabitants of Palestine.” Source: Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. Basic Books, 1981, pp. 126–128. ---- 5. Itamar Rabinovich In The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, Rabinovich critiques one-sided interpretations: “The Zionist leadership was divided over how to deal with the Arab population. While some leaders emphasized demographic dominance, others promoted coexistence and even federation with the Arabs.” Source: Rabinovich, Itamar. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 34–36. ---- These sources illustrate that while some Zionist leaders prioritized creating a Jewish majority, others emphasized peaceful coexistence and collaboration with the Arab population. Michael Boutboul (talk) 19:24, 30 November 2024 (UTC) What diverse sources! Levivich (talk) 19:57, 30 November 2024 (UTC) These sources make it clear that the Zionist leaders and thinkers had different opinions about this topic. The sentence in question presents opinions as fact and violates WP:NPOV. Alaexis¿question? 20:18, 30 November 2024 (UTC) C'mon Alaexis. Look at the dates of the sources. Look at who's writing them. You know this doesn't represent modern scholarship. And let's not enable the obvious socks please with "I agree" statements. Levivich (talk) 20:29, 30 November 2024 (UTC) No responsible editor can miss that these sources don't even come close to outweighing the 12+ modern authors in the citations. We've got to stop playing these bullshit games. Levivich (talk) 20:30, 30 November 2024 (UTC) @Levivich Regarding those 12 modern authors in the citations, should their views be included in the article as opinion or as fact? Start with the first source. Manna says he hopes his book will cause Zionists discomfort, so it certainly appears he has anti-Zionist bias. Can you explain why his views should be included in the article as if they were factual? Bob drobbs (talk) 23:42, 30 November 2024 (UTC) Thank you for your input, Levivich. I understand your concerns, but I respectfully disagree with the suggestion that the sources I presented do not represent valuable scholarship or that they are outdated. On the Sources' Dates and Relevance: The sources I referenced—Laqueur, Morris, and others—remain foundational to the historiography of Zionism. While some are not "modern" in the strictest sense, their contributions are widely cited and continue to influence contemporary scholarship. Moreover, more recent works, such as Anita Shapira’s Israel: A History (2012) and Shlomo Avineri’s Herzl's Vision (2014), build on these foundational sources and offer nuanced insights: Anita Shapira emphasizes that Zionism's primary goal was self-determination, noting, "The goal of Zionism was not to displace Arabs but to create a refuge for Jews. While demographic concerns influenced policy, many Zionist leaders sought coexistence with the Arab population, particularly in the early stages of the movement" (Israel: A History, p. 102). Shlomo Avineri clarifies that Herzl envisioned a model of mutual benefit, writing, "Herzl’s vision was one of mutual benefit and coexistence. He believed that economic development and modernization would serve both Jews and Arabs, rather than aiming to marginalize or exclude the Arab population" (Herzl's Vision, p. 147). These works demonstrate that scholarship on Zionism is diverse, and earlier foundational texts continue to inform modern interpretations. Balancing Modern and Foundational Sources: While recent sources contribute new perspectives, Wikipedia's policies emphasize representing a range of views, including foundational works. Modern interpretations are essential, but they do not "outweigh" or negate the contributions of earlier, seminal scholars. Excluding these works risks skewing the historiographical balance. Neutrality and Avoiding Cherry-Picking: The current lead risks over-relying on critical perspectives from modern authors like Khalidi and Pappé, which frame Zionism as a colonialist movement. My intention in referencing sources such as Shapira and Avineri is to ensure balance and to reflect the diversity of Zionist motivations—self-determination, cultural revival, and responses to antisemitism—alongside its contested aspects. Avoiding Personal Criticism: I encourage us to focus on the substance of the sources and their interpretations rather than implying bad faith or dismissing arguments as "games." Constructive engagement helps ensure the article aligns with Wikipedia's neutrality and verifiability standards. Michael Boutboul (talk) 21:34, 30 November 2024 (UTC) @Boutboul Apologies, but despite your citations, I seem to be having issues finding these quotes (It's probably on me, but I'd like to clarify regardless). “From early on, the Zionist leadership sought ways to coexist with the Arab population. They acknowledged the Arabs' attachment to the land but believed that a demographic Jewish majority was necessary for self-determination. This did not preclude peaceful relations with the Arab population.” I can't find a version of Anita Shapira's Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948 online, so I can't comment there. “Not all Zionist leaders viewed the Arab population as an obstacle. Many believed in the possibility of coexistence and sought alliances with moderate Arab leaders. The idea of a shared future was integral to some streams of Zionist thought.” “Herzl envisioned the Jewish state not as a colonial outpost but as a refuge for Jews and a place where Jews and Arabs could coexist peacefully. He believed economic development would benefit all inhabitants of Palestine.” “The Zionist leadership was divided over how to deal with the Arab population. While some leaders emphasized demographic dominance, others promoted coexistence and even federation with the Arabs.” Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 21:38, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Regarding these 12 sources, how many (if any) should be treated as if their views are factual vs. given as opinion?

Again, starting with Manna, in the intro to his book he says hopes his book will cause Zionists discomfort. He certainly appears to have an anti-Zionist bias. Maybe he should be included as an opinion, but can anyone explain why his views should be included in the article as if they were factual? -- Bob drobbs (talk) 02:59, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

1. If we exclude anti-Zionists like Manna, does that mean we exclude pro-Zionists like Morris, too? 2. Fact/opinion is a false dichotomy. We state opinions in Wikivoice when they're mainstream opinions (eg Michael Jordan is one of the greatest basketball players of all time). Levivich (talk) 03:27, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

From the references, do you think that Morris presents the mainstream opinion here?

"underlying thrust of the ideology, which was to turn an Arab-populated land into a State with an overwhelming Jewish majority"

The article has an entire section on "demographic majority", and I suspect that if we were to use the best sources on the topic, instead of a collection of biased sources synthensized into nonsense, we'd see the mainstream opinion is that Zionists, certainly by 1948, wanted a clear demographic majority, not necessarily "as few Palestinians as possible". Bob drobbs (talk) 03:42, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Responded on your talk page. Levivich (talk) 04:35, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

No. Levivich lays it out well. If we wanted to quibble, we could opt for something like At least by 1948, at the beginning of the sentence. But that would probably require a footnote to further explain what we mean by that and give the range of dates given by experts. At the moment the wording implies that anyway without the debate over when exactly it is/was/becomes true. Lewisguile (talk) 22:32, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

• Lacks impartial tone. While it's literally true that Zionists wanted to have a Jewish majority, and were concerned about the risk of a growing Arab minority as a potential threat due to the risk of conflict between the peoples and the clear antipathy between the peoples, not without plenty of history already, the phrasing continues to be awkward. The idea of "as few Arabs as possible" is not the clearest way to explain "the largest feasible majority Jewish state." It creates an implication that Zionists perhaps wanted that number to be 0, but we know that not to be the case. "Lowest possible" is not the best summary of the sources. I think we can do a better job of explaining that Zionists sought to create a Jewish majority state, without implying that expulsion was an express goal of Zionism. Andre🚐 06:20, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  Wikipedia says:

  • as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible

  The cited sources say:

  • maximum territory, minimum Arabs - Segev
  • maximum land and minimum Arabs - Masalha
  • the largest possible Jewish state in Palestine with as few Arabs inside it as possible - Shlaim
  • as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians as possible - Pappé
  • as few Arabs as possible ... the smallest possible number of Palestinians ... fewer Arabs in the country and more land in the hands of the settlers - Manna
  • as much of Palestine as was feasible ... a large Jewish majority ... as few Arabs as possible ... a Jewish state in all of “Palestine,” ... appropriate additional territory - Slater
  • increase the Jewish population of Palestine ... expand the territory a partitioned Jewish state might eventually receive ... in parts of Palestine formerly beyond their sights ... more expansive borders ... the smallest possible minorities ... ‘Jewish’ ... by the inclinations of virtually all of its inhabitants ... non-Jews ... numbers should be small enough compared to the Jewish population that their impact on public life would be minimal ... as many new Jewish immigrants into the country as possible - Engel
  • increase the Jewish space ... dispossess the Palestinians - Lentin
  • a state without Arabs or with as small a minority as possible - Cohen
  • as few Arabs as possible - Stanislawski
  • getting rid of as many of the Palestinian inhabitants of the land as possible ... demographic elimination - Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury
  • transformed most of Palestine from ... a majority Arab country—into ... a substantial Jewish majority ... the result of two processes: the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas ... and the theft of Palestinian land and property ... There would have been no other way to achieve a Jewish majority ... Nor would it have been possible to dominate the country without the seizures of land. - Khalidi
  • on both sides of the Jordan River, not as a minority, but as a community numbering millions ... an Arab minority in Palestine, no matter what its geographical dimensions - Lustick & Berkman
  • displacement of Arabs ... to turn an Arab-populated land into a State with an overwhelming Jewish majority. - Morris

  Wikipedia is using the same language as the cited sources. Levivich (talk) 00:10, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  IMPARTIAL: Even where a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinions, inappropriate tones can be introduced through how facts are selected, presented, or organized. I'm not disputing the facts, just the tone. You'll note that many of the best sources refer to the "majority" and "minority" language, which is different from how the article does. Andre🚐 19:48, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

  Note to closers, mine is a "yes" Andre🚐 22:33, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

• yes no it does seem to be the case, so this looks very much like a blue sky situation, their own pronouncements stated they wanted a Jewish State (hell Israel is even called that now, sometimes).We have WP:FALSEBALANCE for a reason. So yes we can say this. Slatersteven (talk) 11:05, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  @Slatersteven: The way the RFC is phrased requires a No if you think the sentence should be kept? Selfstudier (talk) 11:11, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks I think the problem was trying to word "it is not neutral but does not violate NPOV, as it is what is said by zionists". It is almost an Ish question. Slatersteven (talk) 11:19, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

• Bad RfC as it fails to neutrally discuss the sources that support the statement and instead editorializes about the assumed politics of just one of the sources. Simonm223 (talk) 12:19, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not sure what issues you see with rfc which is just a question. But one of the many issues, is that the text engages in a SYTH of different claims, and each case seems to cherry pick whatever paints the most number of Zionists to look as bad as possible.

  As a few examples, in the reference Morris says "overwhelming Jewish majority" but the text says "as few Palestinians as possible" Shlaim says "Most Zionist leaders" but the text just says "Zionists".

  Looking at this same set of references someone could have also written "Most Zionist leaders wanted a demographic majority". Bob drobbs (talk) 17:12, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  Well, you might write that, I wouldn't. Selfstudier (talk) 17:16, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  Not really, when we (and RS) say "Zionists" or "Zionism" we mean the mainstream movement and its leadership. DMH223344 (talk) 17:37, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  Wikipedia says:

  • Zionists ...

  The cited sources say:

  • the Zionist leadership ... Zionists of all inclinations ... The Zionists - Manna
  • the Zionists ... all the major leaders ... The Zionist movement in general ... Zionism - Slater
  • the Zionist movement ... the mainstream as represented by Labor Zionism and its leadership headed by Ben Gurion ... the Zionist project ... the Zionist movement - Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury
  • Zionist ideology ... Zionist praxis - Morris
  • the core of Zionism - Pappé
  • the Zionist dream - Segev
  • the Zionist Yishuv - Masalha
  • the Israeli desire - Stanislawski
  • Ben-Gurion ... 'Our ...' ... Zionism - Lustick & Berkman
  • political Zionism - Khalidi
  • Zionism ... the ZO ... Haganah ... their leaders ... Israel ... the state’s leaders ... most Zionists ... Zionist imaginations ... the bulk of the Zionist leadership ... Israel’s leaders ... Israel ... the state - Engel
  • many [Zionist activists] ... Zionist leaders and activists - Cohen
  • the Zionist leadership - Lentin
  • most Zionist leaders - Shlaim

  The word "Zionists" (or "Zionism") is the right word to summarize those sources. Levivich (talk) 00:15, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  The RfC was constructed, and advertised, non-neutrally. It's a bad RfC. Simonm223 (talk) 19:33, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

• No. This is not biased wording, since it is in marked agreement with the pertinent sourcing. I don't have a substantial objection to rewording it somehow anyway, but this present wording is not actually "broken" at all. I also agree that this was not really a proper RfC because WP:RFCBEFORE wasn't followed and the question posed is not neutrally phrased. But the horse is already out of the barn with the level of input so far, so we might as well proceed (especially since the evidence presented contradicts the RfC opener's apparent position against this language being used; that is, the non-neutrality of the OP has had no effect except perhaps short-circuiting their own proposal).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:42, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
• This is a really badly formed RfC but I would say that the sentence, especially in the first para, is problematic. This is the comment I just wrote in what I guess is now the RFCBEFORE discussion, a couple of sections up this page: None of the 13 (actually fewer, as Sand and Engel aren't used for this point) sources are unreliable, although they are not all as strong as they could be. However, the key point is that in relation to this quote, many are talking about very specific moments in Zionist history (i.e. the Nakba and maybe the period leading up to it) and/or about some or many Zionist leaders (specifically the political Zionists in the case of Khalidi or of the Labour Zionists of Ben Gurion's generation in the case of Lustick and Berkman and Rouhana and Sabbagh-Khoury), and not about Zionism in general. A couple describe it as the esoteric, inherent or secret logic of Zionism rather than its explicit policy (Rouhana and Sabbagh-Khoury, Pappe, Morris, Lentin). So the only sources here that come close to saying this was generally true are Segev (we quote him as saying this is the Zionist dream from the start but I've not got the book and the google snippet is too small to see the context) and Slater (but he is a weaker source, not a historian, let alone of Zionism, who frames his book as a contrarian revision of what we know). BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:07, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  I think this is really the key problem with the current phrasing - it totally removes the context that is present in at least in some of the references and generalizes their claims to Zionism as a whole since its very inception.

  The overgeneralization also leads to ignoring the RSs that contradict this claim, if the chronology is taken into account - e.g., Rubin (2018). "Vladimir Jabotinsky and Population Transfers between Eastern Europe and Palestine", that talks about Jabotinsky's initial opposition to the idea of population transfer of Palestinian Arabs (i.e., the " as few Palestinian Arabs as possible" part) and his change of heart around 1939. DancingOwl (talk) 20:27, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  The lead is a summary. Specifically, it is a summary of the mainstream Zionist movement with some brief coverage of dissident's within the movement. We summarize in the same way that RS do. You want the lead to cover jabotinsky's change in positions in the lead? That's obviously undue for the lead. DMH223344 (talk) 20:47, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  The summary should summarise accurately. If it says "all Zionists" when the sources say "some Zionists" (or even "most Zionists") then that's not accurate. If it says "Zionism want x" when the sources say "in the 1930s Zionists wanted x" then that's not accurate. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:02, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

  The disputed content states "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible" (Emphasis mine). Wanted, past tense, & as Levivich showed above, that is reliably sourced to cover the mainstream movements at the time. There will always be outliers in every category, but outliers are generally removed from summaries for succinctness, then described later in the more detailed analysis.

  We could have a separate line describing these outliers &/or that in modern times, some movements have diverged from the original mainstream, but that doesn't contradict the current line in question. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 16:41, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

  it doesnt say "all zionists" DMH223344 (talk) 17:25, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

• No/Bad RFC - discussion has been had before, also no RFCBEFORE done and RFC is poorly formatted overall. I think SMcCandlish describes it best. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 23:34, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
• No - of the 14 sources are cited:
  1. All were published within the last 20 years
  2. All written by experts in the field (11 historians, 2 political scientists, 1 sociologist), including Palestinians and Israelis, left-of-center and right-of-center
  3. 10 are published by academic presses, 2 by "leftist" presses (Zed, Verso), 2 by mainstream publishers (Farrar, Oneworld)
  4. 1 expressly says all Zionists; 10 say "Zionists," "Zionist movement", "Zionism", or "Zionist activists"; 2 say Zionist leaders; 1 says "political Zionism" (see 2nd set of quotes I posted above)
  5. 10/14 convey the idea of maximum land
  6. 7/14 convey maximum Jews
  7. 10/14 convey minimum Arabs (which is just another way of saying maximum Jews)
  8. 12/14 juxtapose land and demographics (see 1st set of quotes above)
  9. 11/14 say "always", "from the start", "inherent" or similar (see third set of quotes below)

Other words could be used to express the same meaning, of course, but WP:NPOV means the article should say that Zionism sought maximum territory with minimum Arabs. Levivich (talk) 06:22, 3 December 2024 (UTC) ETA Levivich (talk) 18:00, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

...minimum Arabs (which is just another way of saying maximum Jews)..

No, those are two different claims - "maximum Jews" implies maximizing Jewish immigration, "minimum Arabs" implies population transfer of Palestinian Arabs - those are two distinct goals achieved using completely different means. DancingOwl (talk) 11:37, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Do please source that opinion. Selfstudier (talk) 12:19, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I will look for relevant sources, though I'm curious - what would you consider to be a source for "...minimum Arabs (which is just another way of saying maximum Jews)..."? DancingOwl (talk) 12:55, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

those are two distinct goals achieved using completely different means is what I would like to see sourced. Selfstudier (talk) 13:03, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes,I understand - I just asked whether you think that the opposite claim conflating those two goals also needs to be sourced, and if it does - what would be the best source for that. DancingOwl (talk) 13:28, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, we already have sources doing that but no sources doing what you suggest so I am asking for some. Selfstudier (talk) 13:46, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

You can't have Jewish immigration without Arab emigration. For just one example of a source saying this, here's Benny Morris:

The idea of transfer is as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past century. And driving it was an iron logic: There could be no viable Jewish state in all or part of Palestine unless there was a mass displacement of Arab inhabitants, who opposed its emergence and would constitute an active or potential fifth column in its midst. This logic was understood, and enunciated, before and during 1948, by Zionist, Arab and British leaders and officials ... Both before and during 1948 all understood the logic of transfer: Given Arab opposition to the very idea and existence of a Jewish state, it could not and would not be established, as a viable, lasting entity, without the displacement of the bulk of its Arab inhabitants.
— [2]

Levivich (talk) 15:19, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Morris doesn't mention Jewish immigration here, but rather links the idea of transfer to Arab opposition to the very existence of Jewish state. DancingOwl (talk) 17:04, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

OK, here's Morris in Birth (aka "Morris 2004", one of the 14 citations for the sentence under discussion in this RFC), which has an entire chapter (ch. 2) about 'transfer', and which specifically talks about Jewish immigration (bold added):

Pages 40-41:

The same persuasive logic pertained already before the turn of the century, at the start of the Zionist enterprise. There may have been those, among Zionists and Gentile philo-Zionists, who believed, or at least argued, that Palestine was ‘an empty land’ eagerly awaiting the arrival of waves of Jewish settlers.5 But, in truth, on the eve of the Zionist influx the country had a population of about 450,000 Arabs (and 20,000 Jews), almost all of them living in its more fertile, northern half. How was the Zionist movement to turn Palestine into a ‘Jewish’ state if the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants were Arabs? And if, over the years, by means of massive Jewish immigration, the Jews were at last to attain a majority, how could a truly ‘Jewish’ and stable polity be established containing a very large, and possibly disaffected, Arab minority, whose birth rate was much higher than the Jews’?

The obvious, logical solution lay in Arab emigration or ‘transfer’. Such a transfer could be carried out by force, i.e., expulsion, or it could be engineered voluntarily, with the transferees leaving on their own steam and by agreement, or by some amalgam of the two methods.

Page 43:

Rather, the Zionist public catechism, at the turn of the century, and well into the 1940s, remained that there was room enough in Palestine for both peoples; there need not be a displacement of Arabs to make way for Zionist immigrants or a Jewish state. There was no need for a transfer of the Arabs and on no account must the idea be incorporated in the movement’s ideological–political platform.

But the logic of a transfer solution to the ‘Arab problem’ remained ineluctable; without some sort of massive displacement of Arabs from the area of the Jewish state-to-be, there could be no viable ‘Jewish’ state.

Page 45:

To be sure, the Zionist leaders, in public, continued to repeat the old refrain – that there was enough room in the country for the two peoples and that Zionist immigration did not necessitate Arab displacement ... But by 1936, the mainstream Zionist leaders were more forthright in their support of transfer.

Pages 59-60:

What emerges from the foregoing is that the Zionist leaders, from the inception of the movement, toyed with the idea of transferring ‘the Arabs’ or a substantial number of Arabs out of Palestine, or any part of Palestine that was to become Jewish, as a way of solving the problem posed by the existence of an Arab majority or, down the road, a large Arab minority that was opposed to the existence of a Jewish state or to living in it. As Arab opposition, including violent resistance, to Zionism grew in the 1920s and 1930s, and as this opposition resulted in periodic British clampdowns on Jewish immigration, a consensus or near-consensus formed among the Zionist leaders around the idea of transfer as the natural, efficient and even moral solution to the demographic dilemma. The Peel Commission’s proposals, which included partition and transfer, only reinforced Zionist advocacy of the idea. All understood that there was no way of carving up Palestine which would not leave in the Jewish-designated area a large Arab minority (or an Arab majority) – and that no partition settlement with such a demographic basis could work. The onset of the Second World War and the Holocaust increased Zionist desperation to attain a safe haven in Palestine for Europe’s persecuted Jews – and reinforced their readiness to adopt transfer as a way of instantaneously emptying the land so that it could absorb the prospective refugees from Europe.

* * *

But transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism – because it sought to transform a land which was ‘Arab’ into a ‘Jewish’ state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population; and because this aim automatically produced resistance among the Arabs which, in turn, persuaded the Yishuv’s leaders that a hostile Arab majority or large minority could not remain in place if a Jewish state was to arise or safely endure.

Is that enough to establish that Morris says that Zionists believed "transfer" of Arabs was necessary to make room for Jews, that it was an inherent and inevitable part of Zionism? He wrote an entire chapter proving this point. It's one of the things Morris is famous for. Levivich (talk) 18:03, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Not quite - in all but one quote above the necessity of transfer is explained by Arab opposition to the existence of Jewish state:

p. 41:

...how could a truly ‘Jewish’ and stable polity be established containing a very large, and possibly disaffected, Arab minority, whose birth rate was much higher than the Jews’?

The obvious, logical solution lay in Arab emigration or ‘transfer’.

on p. 43, immediately after the part you quoted Morris says:

The need for transfer became more acute with the increase in violent Arab opposition to the Zionist enterprise during the 1920s and 1930s. The violence demonstrated that a disaffected, hostile Arab majority or large minority would inevitably struggle against the very existence of the Jewish state

on p.45, before the part you quoted, there is the following passage:

The outbreak of the Arab Revolt in April 1936 opened the floodgates; the revolt implied that, from the Arabs’ perspective, there could be no compromise, and that they would never agree to live in (or, indeed, next to) a Jewish state.

as a sidenote, the part you omitted from this page's quote says:

Jabotinsky, the leader of the Revisionist movement, had generally supported transfer. But in 1931 he had said: ‘We don’t want to evict even one Arab from the left or right banks of the Jordan. We want them to prosper both economically and culturally’; and six years later he had testified before the Peel Commission that ‘there was no question at all of expelling the Arabs. On the contrary, the idea was that the Land of Israel on both sides of the Jordan [i.e., Palestine and Transjordan] would [ultimately] contain the Arabs . . . and many millions of Jews . . .’ – though he admitted that the Arabs would become a ‘minority.’

which shows that the idea of population transfer was far from being a consensus among Zionist leadership.

on p. 59 Morris once again talks about

...the problem posed by the existence of an Arab majority or, down the road, a large Arab minority that was opposed to the existence of a Jewish state or to living in it.

This page's quote is the only place where he makes a connection between Jewish immigration and transfer, but notice that this connection appears only following the beginning of WWII and the Holocaust, that is, more than 40 years after establishment of the Zionist movement:

The onset of the Second World War and the Holocaust increased Zionist desperation to attain a safe haven in Palestine for Europe’s persecuted Jews – and reinforced their readiness to adopt transfer as a way of instantaneously emptying the land so that it could absorb the prospective refugees from Europe.

One more quote that you didn't mention, but is highly relevant in context of the wider discussion about transfer:

The bouts of Zionist reflection about and espousal of transfer usually came not out of the blue but in response to external factors or initiatives:
In the early 1930s, Zionist meditation on the idea of transfer was a by-product of Arab violence and the frustration of efforts to persuade the British to allow Zionist settlement in Transjordan; in the late 1930s, it was triggered by the Arab revolt and the Peel Commission’s recommendation to transfer the Arab population out of the area designated for Jewish statehood;...

In other words, according to Morris, the idea of transfer wasn't some "built-in" feature of Zionist ideology from its very inception, but an historical development that followed Arab violent response to the Zionist project. Moreover, Zionists were not the only ones who arrived at this conclusion; the same sentiment was equally shared by many within the British and Arab leadership:

By the mid-1940s, the logic and necessity of transfer was also accepted by many British officials and various Arab leaders, including Jordan’s King Abdullah and Prime Minister Ibrahim Pasha Hashim and by Iraq’s Nuri Said. Not the Holocaust was uppermost in their minds. They were motivated mainly by the calculation that partition was the only sensible, ultimately viable and relatively just solution to the Palestine conundrum, and that a partition settlement would only be lasting if it was accompanied by a massive transfer of Arab inhabitants out of the Jewish state-to-be; a large and resentful Arab minority in the future Jewish state would be a recipe for most probably instantaneous and certainly future destabilisation and disaster.

DancingOwl (talk) 19:42, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

"In other words, according to Morris, the idea of transfer wasn't some "built-in" feature of Zionist ideology" is synth. Morris literally says: "transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism" DMH223344 (talk) 19:49, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps, "built-in" wasn't the best characterization and I should've used a different word - my point is that according to Morris the "inevitability" of transfer was a result of Arab hostility, rather some a priori ideology, and that it was a reaction, not a pre-planned action.

See the full passage, from which the "transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism" quote was taken:

My feeling is that the transfer thinking and near-consensus that emerged in the 1930s and early 1940s was not tantamount to preplanning and did not issue in the production of a policy or master-plan of expulsion; the Yishuv and its military forces did not enter the 1948 War, which was initiated by the Arab side, with a policy or plan for expulsion. But transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism – because it sought to transform a land which was ‘Arab’ into a ‘Jewish’ state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population; and because this aim automatically produced resistance among the Arabs which, in turn, persuaded the Yishuv’s leaders that a hostile Arab majority or large minority could not remain in place if a Jewish state was to arise or safely endure."

DancingOwl (talk) 20:30, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

"rather than some a priori ideology" what is this supposed to mean? That "transfer" was purely a practical solution, rather than an ideological one?

Morris:

The Zionists were intent on politically, or even physically, dispossessing and supplanting the Arabs; their enterprise, however justified in terms of Jewish suffering and desperation, was tainted by a measure of moral dubiousness.

Indeed Arabs were hostile towards a movement which was "intent on politically, or even physically, dispossessing" them. What you're saying is that if the Arabs had accepted their dispossession, then "transfer" would not have been a consideration of the Zionist movement? DMH223344 (talk) 21:11, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

The RFC is not about whether there was Arab opposition to the existence of Jewish state Selfstudier (talk) 19:51, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I know - I brough up this point in response to the claim that, according to Morris, "you can't have Jewish immigration without Arab emigration", while the actual quotes above show he links the need for Arab emigration to Arab opposition to the existence of Jewish state, not to Jewish immigration. DancingOwl (talk) 20:34, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

• No I am keeping it short, since other editors have already argued about this above and in older discussions. This topic appears to have already reached consensus not too long ago. The content also seems to be very adequately sourced. Piccco (talk) 14:59, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• Comment I'd like to remind editors here of recent additions to WP:CT/A-I, specifically "Editors limited to 1,000 words per formal discussion – all participants in formal discussions (RfCs, RMs, etc) within the area of conflict are urged to keep their comments concise, and are limited to 1,000 words per discussion." - Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 20:43, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  FWIW, there was some discussion of not including quoted material in the word count limit. I tend to agree. @ScottishFinnishRadish, was this your understanding of the final outcome there? Valereee (talk) 12:55, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  This probably needs an ARCA (or wrap it up in the current case). At any rate, it seems unreasonable to include refs/quotes. Selfstudier (talk) 13:10, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  There's also this. I don't think anyone has to worry about quoted sources putting them over the limit. It is worth keeping in mind, however, that it isn't necessary to convince everyone in a discussion, just convince enough people to establish consensus. If consensus clearly favors your position there's really no need to go back and forth with someone who's likely never going to agree with you. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:31, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I'm generally sympathetic to the idea of rewording the lead, including the second part of that sentence. But I really don't see here any substantiated, good justification for it. Actually, the excellent comments left by Levivich have made me more in favor of keeping the current wording. Bitspectator ⛩️ 01:37, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
• No. The sourcing is clear-cut, high-quality, and covers authors writing from diverse perspectives; nor has anyone actually presented anything contradicting it to substantiate the idea that it's even controversial. The sources make it clear that it is simply not controversial to state that a core component of Zionism has historically been to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel at any cost, including keeping the Arab population to a minimum. Some aspects of the topic are esoteric or complex, but this one is extremely basic and uncontroversial - hence why it was so easy to find broad, high-quality sourcing for it. --Aquillion (talk) 03:59, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
• Yes, on net. Some issues have been well explained by Andre above. Additionally, this sentence, like others, makes a sweeping and politically contentious claim but fails to give context indicating what time period this applies to and doesn't mention change over time - for example, do modern-day Zionists, or all factions thereof, seek the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel? The sentence implies that they do, despite this being a completely novel claim as far as I can tell. Pointing to sources about historical Zionism isn't enough to address this issue since this isn't a purely historical subject. If it applies to the time period prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, it should say so and the lead should then say how modern-day Zionist factions relate to Arab people/Palestinians within and without Israel. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:34, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  fails to give context indicating what time period this applies to and doesn't mention change over time - Because the sources say it didn't change over time:

  • as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past century (Morris 2002) and inherent in Zionist ideology ... in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise ... during the first five decades of Zionist land purchase and settlement (Morris 2004)
  • The history of Zionism, from the earliest days to the present - Shlaim
  • always - Lentin
  • From the late nineteenth century and throughout the Mandatory period ... always - Masalha
  • From the outset of the Zionist movement ... During every round of the national conflict over Palestine, which is the longest running conflict of its kind in the modern era - Slater
  • From the outset - Engel
  • from its inception - Khalidi
  • from the start - Segev
  • for years - Cohen
  • an inherent component of the Zionist project as a settler-colonial project, although it has taken different manifestations since the founding of the Zionist movement - Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury
  • the core of Zionism - Pappe
  • Lustick & Berkman are discussing pre-state Zionism specifically
  • Stanislawski is discussing 1948 specifically
  • Manna's book is about early Israel (1948-1956) specifically

  The Wikipedia article says Zionists wanted, past tense, not "want", present tense, but the sources support the meaning of "always" or "from the beginning", except for 3 that are talking about specific time periods (from the beginning to 1948, in 1948, and during the early Israeli state 1948-1956). The other 11 says "always" or "from the start" or "inherent" in the very idea or similar. Levivich (talk) 17:58, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

  A list consisting mostly of one-to-four word quotes is less than convincing that all the relevant sources are indeed imputing this POV to all of Israel's history and all factions of Zionism today. Again: do modern-day Zionists, or all factions thereof, seek the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel? The sentence implies that they do. And I still have yet to see a policy-based justification for the article failing to include how modern-day Zionist factions relate to Arab people/Palestinians within and without Israel and how they relate to the proposed solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict. You've clearly read a lot about this topic, so I ask directly: Why is this not being included? Crossroads ^-talk- 22:29, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

  The statement is in past tense, so no it does not imply that. DMH223344 (talk) 22:55, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

  It is immediately followed by a statement that Zionism is the state ideology of Israel, which is a present fact, so yes, it does imply that. Especially when there remains no mention of any subsequent change. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:06, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  But that isn't the right conclusion to make at all, especially considering that the next sentence starts with "Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948," DMH223344 (talk) 01:40, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

• Yes - the current phrasing is problematic in several respects:

1. Unlike the wide consensus that Zionists wanted to achieve significant Jewish majority, the claim about "as few Palestinian Arabs as possible" is controversial and is contested, for example, by Morris in context of 1948 war.
2. The use of past tense and sentence's placement before "Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948" implies it supposed to be a general description of mainstream Zionism from its inception till 1948. However, it ignores major difference in attitude between different Zionist fractions (e.g., Jabotinsky's pre-1939 vehement objection to the idea of population transfer), as well as between earlier proposals for Arab-Jewish cooperation and later pragmatic approach formed in reaction to Arab violent opposition to the very existence of Jewish state.
3. The qualifier "as much/few... as possible" does a lot of heavy lifting here, by masking the major differences mentioned above, and by allowing to dismiss every evidence of attitudes inconsistent with any part of the current phrasing by saying "well, that's what X considered to be possible". So, while formally true, the phrasing is misleading on substantial level.

Sources

DancingOwl (talk) 18:03, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the purpose of your first four citations are. No one here is disputing their desire for a Jewish majority. Your citations [5], [6], and [10] are all to Morris, with the one most explicitly making the argument you're making being from 33 years ago. I have no idea what the purpose of [10] is. Because "the need for transfer became more acute" in the 1920s, they didn't actually want as few Arabs as possible? I'm not sure what you want us to be looking at in [9]. [7] and [8] are primary sources.

This is completely incomparable to Talk:Zionism#c-Levivich-20241202001000-AndreJustAndre-20241201062000 and Talk:Zionism#c-Levivich-20241202001500-Bob_drobbs-20241201171200. Bitspectator ⛩️ 18:56, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

• The purpose of my first four citations is to show that the phrasing "wanted a Jewish majority" would be much more NPOV-compliant than the current one
• Regarding the thesis that there haven't been any pre-planned coordinated campaign to leave "as few Arabs as possible", Morris is far from being the only one making this claim - here another example from Efraim Karsh.
• [10] shows that the idea of transfer wasn't seriously considered by Zionist leadership before late 1920s - Morris explicitly talks about

  "...transfer thinking and near-consensus that emerged in the 1930s and early 1940s..."

  and states that:

  The bouts of Zionist reflection about and espousal of transfer usually came not out of the blue but in response to external factors or initiatives: In the early 1930s, Zionist meditation on the idea of transfer was a by-product of Arab violence and the frustration of efforts to persuade the British to allow Zionist settlement in Transjordan; in the late 1930s, it was triggered by the Arab revolt and the Peel Commission’s recommendation to transfer the Arab population out of the area designated for Jewish statehood;..

In other words, while the theoretical idea of minimizing the number of Arabs through population transfer was floated by some Zionists for some time, it only began to be seriously discussed by Zionist leadership and reached a consensual status in the 1930s.

• [7] and [9] are not primary sources

DancingOwl (talk) 20:36, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

The purpose of my first four citations is to show that the phrasing "wanted a Jewish majority" would be much more NPOV-compliant than the current one

They don't show that. Most BESTSOURCES say "Jewish majority" and "as many Jews as possible". You say we should remove "as many Jews as possible" because there are some sources that say "Jewish majority" without disputing "as many Jews as possible". Your [4] is Finkelstein. Do you think he disputes "as many Jews as possible"? The argument doesn't make sense. And your [3] is Morris again.

Morris is far from being the only one making this claim

Then find every BESTSOURCE that makes it, and we can compare to Talk:Zionism#c-Levivich-20241202001000-AndreJustAndre-20241201062000.

here another example from Efraim Karsh

This is an opinion article from a magazine from 24 years ago. This is not a BESTSOURCE.

shows that the idea of transfer wasn't seriously considered by Zionist leadership before late 1920s

It literally doesn't. It says "the need for transfer became more acute". Became more acute. Not "wasn't seriously considered". It does not say that.

In other words, while the theoretical idea of minimizing the number of Arabs through population transfer was floated by some Zionists for some time, it only began to be seriously discussed by Zionist leadership and reached a consensual status in the 1930s.

Definitively answered by Talk:Zionism#c-Levivich-20241205175800-Crossroads-20241204223400.

[7] and [9] are not primary sources

I didn't say [9] was. I said [7] and [8] were. [7] is a direct quote from Jabotinsky with no commentary other than a straightforward description of the context the quote was said in.

I'm not interested in continuing this conversation unless you can provide an alternate wording citing secondary BESTSOURCES on Zionism in which they dispute the points the current wording is making, and it gets anywhere to the same level as Talk:Zionism#c-Levivich-20241202001000-AndreJustAndre-20241201062000. If you or anyone else can do that I will !vote yes. Bitspectator ⛩️ 21:13, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Most BESTSOURCES say "Jewish majority" and "as many Jews as possible". You say we should remove "as many Jews as possible" because there are some sources that say "Jewish majority" without disputing "as many Jews as possible". Your [4] is Finkelstein. Do you think he disputes "as many Jews as possible"? The argument doesn't make sense

The most non-NPOV part is "as few Arabs as possible" - I'll do my best to put together a list of RSs that talk about "Jewish majority" and yet refute the claim that "as few Arabs as possible" was a core Zionist goal throughout the pre-1948 period - hopefully will have the time to do it over the weekend. DancingOwl (talk) 21:52, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

That's exactly what I, and I think some others, are looking for. That would be appreciated. Bitspectator ⛩️ 21:58, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Just finished compiling the list, along with analysis of the currently used sources - due to the length constraints, I posted it as a separate topic:

Talk:Zionism#"as few Arabs as possible" - sources contesting this framing + analysis of the existing sources DancingOwl (talk) 16:38, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I will !vote Yes to reward you for this effort. I have some criticisms of what you've written, which I will leave in that thread, but I'm happy to keep the door open to a rewording. Bitspectator ⛩️ 17:10, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

• No, this sentence is well sourced and captures the mainstream narrative regarding the mainstream zionist movement's objectives. DMH223344 (talk) 18:31, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

• No, not as a matter of policy, but it may be best to reword anyway. Wikipedia is a website anyone can edit, and readers, knowing this, are likely to see such an accusatory claim in the lede as dubious. What may avert this is to move this language to the body, where it can be backed up with all the sourcing justifying it, and soften the tone in the corresponding lede sentence. ByVarying | talk 03:06, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  This sentence already appears verbatim in the "Role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" section, in addition to the lead DancingOwl (talk) 12:42, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  so? TarnishedPath^talk 15:33, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  @ByVarying suggested to move the current sentence to the body and rewrite the lede sentence - I just pointed out that the current sentence already appears verbatim in the body, in the "Role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" section. DancingOwl (talk) 17:35, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  We could change what's in the body so as to more properly reflect the whole bunch of sources saying this one way or another and leave the lead as the summary, if you like. Selfstudier (talk) 17:41, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  I'm currently preparing an in-depth overview of the currently cited sources, showing that they DON'T support the "as few Arabs as possible" part of the current phrasing. In addition, I collected a list of RS, which haven't been cited yet and that contest this claim - I need a bit more time to write it up in a organized and readable form - it should be ready by tomorrow.

  Hopefully, it will convince you and the others that both the lead and the "Role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" section need to be rephrased, and I do agree that that section could be the right place to elaborate about the controversy and the different POVs. DancingOwl (talk) 17:59, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

• No the sentence is supported by the best sources, from authors having differing viewpoints. No one has presented sources with sufficient weight to contradict the sources used which support the sentence. Per WP:DUE, "neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views. TarnishedPath^talk 06:54, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• Pinging @Selfstudier, @XDanielx, @Levivich, @DMH223344, @Dan Murphy, @Nishidani, @Jeppiz, @Theleekycauldron, @Mawer10, @IOHANNVSVERVS and @nableezy as editors who were involved in the discussion at Talk:Zionism/Archive 24#Revert where that sentence was discussed. TarnishedPath^talk 07:01, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• Yes I'm not sure if the same weight should be given to sources who are Zionist and sources who are anti-Zionist within the ideological definition of the movement. From a personal experience, the majority of the people I know are Zionists, and have in fact asked me as an editor to remove that blood libel (I received about 16 different requests, an amount I've never encountered before). None of them want to have as few Palestinians as possible in Israel, but Wikipedia says they do. I told them Wikipedia turned into a weapon for spreading propaganda and there's nothing I can do about it. Bar Harel (talk) 09:37, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  Moreover, you have plenty of news articles spawning just about this sentence claiming it is a provocative propaganda. I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are written by Zionists. How often do you have news articles spawning about "facts" in Wikipedia being non NPOV propaganda? At minimum it is highly controversial. But it's fine, Wikipedia knows better about Zionists than what the Zionists believe in, so carry on. Bar Harel (talk) 09:45, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  Sensationalist reporting in the press doesn't dictate how we interpret our policies. TarnishedPath^talk 10:54, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  No, but if you have heavy reporting in numerous reliable sources, it means that maybe our statements are not as mainstream as we claim they are. Discounting so many press reports and adding only the sources supporting one theory can be seen as POV-pushing. More so when it is brought at the opening paragraph as the actual definition. Bar Harel (talk) 11:57, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  Those "reliable sources" haven't presented any evidence to the contrary either, just a lot of noise. Selfstudier (talk) 12:05, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not sure what evidence is expected, that Zionism as an ideology does not strive for as few Palestinians as possible? If there are 10 papers over 130 years of the existence of the Zionist movement claiming such a thing, majority of them not by Zionists whatsoever, I highly doubt you'll find a research article claiming the opposite.

  In essence, a researcher can state that Zionists enjoy eating hamburgers. You will not find any research stating that Zionism has nothing to do with hamburgers. Does that make his statement true because there's no opposition? Bar Harel (talk) 14:23, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  These aren't 10 papers from the last 130 years, these are 14 books from the last 20 years written by the world's leading experts on the history of Zionism. You really think your Zionist friends know more than Benny Morris, Hillel Cohen, Tom Segev, and Avi Shlaim (and 10 others) about what happened in Israel before 1948? Levivich (talk) 15:45, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  +1 Selfstudier (talk) 15:46, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  Seems like some were refuted below, and their quotes were actually WP:CHERRYPICKed, while the rest of the text stated the opposite. Bar Harel (talk) 13:10, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

  We go with the best sources, not noise in what is often sensationalist reporting. TarnishedPath^talk 12:19, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  So today's news media is more likely to write complimentary things about Zionism than the well-researched RS (e.g., academic books of history) used in this article. The latter are still better sources. ByVarying | talk 17:29, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

• No. The statement is well sourced and other sources can easily be added if needed. It literally took me seconds to find these reliable sources:

The objective of Zionism was and remains the exclusive control of historic Palestine through incremental removal of the Palestinians, replacing them with Jewish settlements.[1]

From its inception the Zionist movement and ideology has been colonial and eliminationist in its essence aimed at the removal of the indigenous population and replacement of Palestinians with the exogenous colonial settler population from Europe.[2]

M.Bitton (talk) 10:53, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I highly doubt it took you seconds to find these "reliable sources". Your second link is a journal from Kazakhstan ("Journal of oriental studies") that is not ranked or cited on any journal ranking system I have searched in, including SJR, JCR, and can't be found on Google Scholars either. Basically I couldn't have found it even if I wanted. In fact, not only it's not listed or cited anywhere, but if you'll go to the journal's main page it claims that they're listed on citefactor, but when you click the link they take you to a different journal of experimental biology claiming that it's the same journal. I don't know how you found that gem... Bar Harel (talk) 12:47, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

It did take seconds to find the first, I just forgot to adjust the statement for the second source that I added minutes later.

it claims that they're listed on citefactor they are.

can't be found on Google Scholars it's there. Search for "The historical-ideological roots of the Zionist-Israeli settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing of Palestine" and you'll find it. Here's the journal's editorial team (if you're interested) and a list of books and papers that have been published by Gabit Zhumatay and indexed by Google Scholar.

Obviously, both sources are solid RS. M.Bitton (talk) 21:31, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

The citefactor link is still a different journal and Google Scholar is well-known to be nonselective in what "journals" it includes, such as predatory journals. (e.g. [3]) Crossroads ^-talk- 20:40, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I repeat: the two sources are solid RS and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong on this. M.Bitton (talk) 21:21, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm usually very accurate with what I write. Please show me the journal ranking in Google scholars. Bar Harel (talk) 23:41, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

So am I, and no, I don't need to prove anything to you. I said what I needed to say. If you still feel that the sources are unreliable, then WP:RSN is that way. Best of luck to you. M.Bitton (talk) 23:44, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

• No The latest claim based on sourcing produced well after this RFC began appear to be directed principally at excising the phrase "as few Arabs as possible" on the grounds that it would be more NPOV to say that "a state with a significant Jewish majority" was what Zionism/Zionistts wanted. It is difficult to see how in all the circumstances a significant Jewish majority could be obtained without Arab displacement and in fact this is what has actually occurred (and continues to occur for that matter). Can the wording of the lead be improved in regard to issues of temporality, perhaps but the RFC question addresses the removal of an entire sentence well supported in high quality sourcing. A subsequent RFC with less ambitious goals might produce a different outcome. Selfstudier (talk) 12:14, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
• Meh. The sentence tries to cram too much into a few words. I would stretch it out a little. After thinking for at least 30 seconds: "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land as possible and a substantial Jewish majority. The latter was to be achieved by massive Jewish immigration, removal of Palestinian Arabs, or both." I left out "as many Jews as possible" because almost all the early Zionists were selective in the type of Jew they wanted in the first generations. See Muscular Judaism for a hint of that large literature. Zero^talk 13:07, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

  +1. I think this phrasing both reads well & presents a proper level of nuance. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 17:01, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

  This is a great alternative. DMH223344 (talk) 18:14, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

  It's definitely better than the current phrasing - I'd suggest to add a word "partial" before "removal", because otherwise it can be read as implying "complete removal". DancingOwl (talk) 18:46, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

  The phrase is "removal of Palestinian Arabs," not "removal of 'the Palestinian Arabs." DMH223344 (talk) 18:53, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

  I know, but if even someone as intelligent as Eduard Said managed to misquote "a land without a people for a people without a land" and turn it into "without people", there is a considerable chance some readers will similarly misinterpret the suggested phrasing. DancingOwl (talk) 19:01, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

  The extent of the desired transfer varied between Zionists, so it is better to not insert words that imply an extent. As DMH wrote, the absence of "the" already indicates that "all" is not implied. It doesn't refer to "the Jews" either. Zero^talk 00:31, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

  Right, the best we can do is to be precise and clear. Trying, in addition, to be robust to possible misinterpretations due to misreading the sentence will guarantee we make no progress. DMH223344 (talk) 17:42, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

  Agree this is a positive direction, in general it's too cramped. I'd suggest the modification: "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land as possible and a substantial Jewish majority. The latter was to be achieved by massive Jewish immigration, and, those in leadership generally advocated, the voluntary or forced removal of many Palestinian Arabs." Pharos (talk) 00:30, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

  That seems like a substantive improvement. Andre🚐 01:21, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

  This is much more precise and a great improvement. _{too_much} curiosity (talk) 22:22, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

• No, and I support the original phrasing, it accurately and concisely conveys what in the cited RS and what is the scholarly consensus. And frankly the continued attempts to have it altered or removed entirely following extensive and ongoing off-site canvassing (1 2, 3) after failing to gain consensus should not be rewarded. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 01:35, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

  I see no evidence those tweets have impacted this discussion. Bitspectator ⛩️ 01:41, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

  I don't believe there's any evidence that ties any editors to that, to be clear. But those viral posts are but a few of the many off-site attempts over the past months that have focused on altering or removing that line from the lede. The Jerusalem Post published an entire article on it, and there are many more that have focused on it. I find it very worrying that there are off-site attempts to have accurate, concise and RS-backed consensus content removed. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 02:06, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

  1. I don't think public criticism of Wikipedia content (unlike targeted contacting of editors off-wiki) qualifies as WP:CANVASS

  2. The whole debate above is exactly regarding the questions whether:

  • the sentence accurately conveys what the the cited RS say

  the core criticism being about cherry-picking and using heavily truncated quotes that omit critical context, in some cases significantly distorting the claims actually made in the sources

  • the sentence reflects the broad scholarly consensus

  the discussion contains multiple examples of RS that contest the narrative promoted in this sentence

  However, for some reason, many of the responses to this RFC uncritically assume that the answer to those two question is affirmative, without examining the evidence to the contrary, presented in this discussion - for example, in this table analyzing the actual statements made in the sources, in the context of the "as many Jews/as few Arabs" part.
  

    DancingOwl (talk) 20:07, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

• No - I support the current phrasing, which reflects the academic consensus and the stated intention of early Zionist leaders. Firecat93 (talk) 04:20, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
• No - like Raskolnikov.Rev, Levivich, and others, the current phrasing is fine as-is. I'm also skeptical of the off-site canvassing explicitly targeting this sentence and this page. I'm not accusing the editors in question of malfeasance (unless evidence arises to the contrary), but it's certainly interesting that, for example, we have this post (as flagged by Raskolnikov.Rev) about the lead to the article on 19 September, followed almost immediately by this discussion on this talk page. It's not the only time this has happened, either - just using the tweets already mentioned, we have this tweet followed by a rash of talk page requests about the same line, starting here, and then a few weeks later this tweet followed up by edit requests and various soon-reverted/arbitrated edits, e.g. this one. While canvassing here is difficult to prove with the information available, it's concerning to me that there appears to be a concerted off-wiki effort to... inspire, let's say, people to modify this specific sentence, often immediately or soon-after followed with relevant edits and edit requests. Smallangryplanet (talk) 10:15, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

  As I said above, public criticism of Wikipedia content, in and by itself, is not WP:CANVAS and unless there is a strong evidence indicating that those publications have been initiated by some of the editors, the canvassing insinuation sounds like an ad hominem argument collectively directed at the editors criticizing current phrasing.

  So, instead of addressing the actual arguments suggesting that the current phrasing does NOT accurately reflect the scholarly consensus, the discussion is deflected to some vague insinuations about the editors, which is regrettable, in my view. DancingOwl (talk) 20:21, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

  I think it is regrettable that external criticism appears to lead to more or less immediate changes to content that has been agreed upon by consensus and is represented in a wide array of reliable sources. WP:NOTCENSORED only works if we apply it even in situations where we disagree with the content. I don't have anything new to add to the arguments around the content of the phrasing itself that I or others have not already said ad infinitum on here, let alone what has been said by countless reliable sources both primary and secondary. If there's a specific argument you'd like me to address, we can take this to the discussion section. Smallangryplanet (talk) 19:05, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

  There has been an ongoing debate about this line since the moment it was introduced on August 11, way before any of the tweets mentioned above, and trying to attribute any particular discussion or edit to some external criticism seems to ignore multiple other similar discussions/edits that happen some time before or after the external event.

  In any case, any external criticism should not be a factor either way - it neither should be a reason to change a well sourced content, nor should it prevent us from considering - on its own merits- internal criticism voiced by the editors.

  As to the previous discussions regarding this line - as far as I could see, none of them contained a systematic analysis of the actual quotes from RS allegedly supporting this line or a list of additional sources contesting the narrative it promotes, like the one I prepared as part of this discussion.

  I believe it's a substantially new argument that haven't been made previously, and if you, and other editors responding to this RFC, could address it, that would be very helpful. DancingOwl (talk) 20:04, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

• Yes I agree with Andre that it lacks an impartial tone. I would also like to add it conflates facts of history with stated beliefs. "Zionism" was a term that encompassed a broad set of ideologies, with some forms promoting binationalism or deprioritized statehood, so it feels imprecise to make this claim (even if the forms of Zionism I mentioned never became mainstream). Yes, the sentence provides many sources, but it still seems that, the beliefs of Zionism with regard to the desire to minimize the Palestinian population in Palestine (as a matter of ideology) is still very much in debate and no scholarly consensus has emerged on this topic yet (although it might in the future).

I still think it is critical to keep the content itself, but some simple rephrasing could make it impartial and more precise. Some suggestions:

- "Many critics and historians contend that Zionists ..."

- "Historians have found that Zionists organizations in Palestine campaigned to create a Jewish state ..."

- "Several Zionists leaders expressed a desire ..." _{too_much} curiosity (talk) 19:28, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

• Factual but flippant While the current sentence is indeed factually accurate in one of its many possible meanings, it is so cramped and imprecise, that the reader would find half-a-dozen other misleading interpretations equally plausible. This is not the encyclopedic tone we should be aiming for in this context, and we can convey the same information by a better rephasing along the lines of what Zero0000 or I have suggested.--Pharos (talk) 18:24, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Tag on Race and Genetics section

Can someone explain the tag on the Race and Genetics section? Why is it there? DMH223344 (talk) 06:19, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

That tag along with multiple others was added by Qualiesin with no meaningful explanation in their first and only edit to this article or its talk page. This feels like drive-by tagging of one of Wikipedia's most contentious articles, Qualiesin. Can you please discuss? Valereee (talk) 13:23, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

I am simply trying to restore some semblance of NPOV to this article that has become a vehicle for strongly biased views. Qualiesin (talk) 17:24, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Aight, @Qualiesin. Well, for the record, drive-by tagging is seldom helpful anywhere, and in a CTOP even less so, and at one of the project's most contentious articles it's almost inexcusable from an editor with 20K edits over five years. Please consider in future actually reading discussions and participating instead of dropping tags with no meaningful explanation onto CTOP articles where you have had zero talk page participation. That's disruptive on its face. Valereee (talk) 18:14, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Is this supposed to make me want to participate in these discussions? Knowing that my edits will be functionally ineffective and reverted, unless I wade through tens of thousands of words of argument? Qualiesin (talk) 16:11, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

@Qualiesin, I do understand how daunting it is. It totally sucks that so many article talks in contentious topics -- and at this article in particular, one of the most contentious on the entire site -- are so difficult to keep up with, but doing so is important if you want to contribute in any meaningful way and also if you want to avoid being disruptive to the process of other editors trying to do so.

The point of reading the talk page of a highly contentious article before editing the article directly (or opening a new talk page section) is to get yourself up to speed, in order to avoid being disruptive to the process because you're unfamiliar with sourcing/previous discussions.

Editors here can see you're an experienced editor in general, with multiple article creations, so you probably understand sourcing and multiple other policies well. You would quite likely be valuable here. We do want you to participate. But if you aren't willing to familiarize yourself with sources and previous discussions, your contributions are likely to be unproductive at best and disruptive at worst. Does it suck that means a daunting amount of reading? Yes. Valereee (talk) 16:30, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I think it is unbalanced as too focused on genetics but This re-conceptualization of Jewishness... is really important. It's a nation for a people. Maybe too focused on a particular present debate/look at 'people'? Need Nishidani's input here i think. Might look better as part of "Jewish nationalism and emancipation"? Article seems light on 'nationalism'. fiveby(zero) 15:19, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Originally the main Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism was titled Zionism, race and genetics but here we still have that (in effect), maybe retitle the section "Racial conceptions of Jewish identity". Selfstudier (talk) 15:34, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Not that the issue is not important today and also for earlier conceptions, just reads odd and i don't think a novice reader would be able to understand the section. fiveby(zero) 15:56, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Also don't think a reader has been provided with enough to understand the McGonigle quote at this point in the article. Really covering a lot of ground with that quote. As i recall he is a sociologist looking at current use of genetics for conceptions of peoples? Probably not a best source for covering all that ground. fiveby(zero) 15:39, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

"as few Arabs as possible" - sources contesting this framing + analysis of the existing sources

Following the "RFC about a recently added claim about Zionism" discussion above, I carried out a thorough analysis of the sources allegedly supporting current phrasing, and also compiled a list of sources contesting the claim that Zionists wanted "as few Palestinian Arabs as possible".

Due to the length constraints, I post this as a separate topic, rather than a response in the RFC discussion:

The current phrasing is "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible". - the use of past tense and sentence's placement before "Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948..." implies that this is supposed to be a general description of mainstream Zionist core goals before 1948.

However, as I show below, about half of the sources quoted DON'T support the claim that "as few Arabs as possible" was a core Zionist goal since its inception till 1948, and several sources were quoted in a way that omits critical context or even completely distort actual author's position.

• For example, in Cohen 2017, p.78, the following quote is used:

"As was suggested by Masalha (1992), Morris (1987), and other scholars, many preferred a state without Arabs or with as small a minority as possible, and plans for population transfers were considered by Zionist leaders and activists for years."

But immediately after that the author says:

"However, in the post–World War II political context, the Zionist leadership was prepared to accept (though not happily) a large Arab minority in the Jewish state and its declared position was that it would enjoy civil equality, collective rights, and the allocation of resources as outlined by the UN Partition Plan."

Moreover, on p. 73 he adds:

“ the Zionist leadership seriously considered following the guidelines stipulated by the Partition Plan and to enable the existence of a large Arab minority within the Jewish state”

on p. 75:

“Some historians, such as Ilan Pappé (2006) and Nur Masalha (1992), claim that the Zionist movement from the very beginning sought to expel Arabs from the Jewish national homeland, and that in 1948 the Jewish military forces followed an existing plan to implement this goal. One source that Pappé (2006) uses to support this argument in his book is a widespread survey of the Arab villages undertaken by the Haganah’s intelligence services between the end of the 1930s and the eve of the 1948 war. This does not, in my opinion, constitute an irrefutable evidence base, as armies are known to prepare contingency plans for worst-case scenarios without intending to implement them unless forced to do so. I would argue that the Zionist leadership had considered several possible scenarios and that an all-out war was only one of them. More important to our discussion is the fact that at the same time, the Jewish Agency prepared for the contingency of a large Arab minority and explored ways to integrate it into the future state. This is the conclusion we can draw from documents that are much less known to both the general public and historians; I will present them here briefly.”

and on p. 77:

“In my view, it would not be unrealistic to deduce that the Zionist leadership prepared itself – among other options – for a peaceful implementation of the partition resolution and for the existence of a significant Arab minority in the Jewish state. Moreover, in such a scenario, there were elements within the Jewish leadership who pushed toward improving Arab conditions and Arab-Jewish relations in the new state."

That is, Cohen is contesting the quoted claims made by Masalha and Morris, not agreeing with them, as the truncated quotation tries to imply.

• The quote from Pappé 2006, p. 250 actually refers to the “Realignment plan” promoted by Ehud Olmert in 2006, not to pre-1948 Zionism goals (the truncated quote used in the reference is in italic):

“Ehud Olmert, now prime minister, knows that if Israel decides to stay in the Occupied Territories and its inhabitants become officially part of Israel’s population, Palestinians will outnumber Jews within fifteen years. Thus he has opted for what he calls hitkansut, Hebrew for convergence’ or, better, ‘ingathering’, a policy that aims at annexing large parts of the West Bank, but at the same time leaves several populous Palestinian areas outside direct Israeli control. In other words, hitkansut is the core of Zionism in a slightly different garb: to take over as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians as possible.”

• in Manna 2022, p.2, the quote is taken from the part that says:

"It is clear that “non-expulsion” in northern Palestine was not arbitrary, but was the result of high-level orders and policy on the part of the Israeli leadership. Saying this does not contradict the principal objective of the Zionist leadership to keep as few Arabs as possible in the Jewish state, since the exception due to special reasons and circumstances proves the rule.”

In other words, the statement is made specifically in the context of 1947-48 war and not as a general characterization of Zionist goals.

The same applies to the second quote from Manna 2022, p. 4:

"in the 1948 war, when it became clear that the objective that enjoyed the unanimous support of Zionists of all inclinations was to establish a Jewish state with the smallest possible number of Palestinians"

as well as the third quote from p. 33:

To spur Palestinians to leave their cities and villages was an objective that the Jewish side implemented as part of the Zionist operation to uproot and occupy. The Zionists had two cherished objectives: fewer Arabs in the country and more land in the hands of the settlers. The argument between so-called extremists and moderates was not about fundamental differences, but rather a question of the timing and evaluation of the negative consequences of some terrorist activities carried out by Jewish organizations. Indeed, at the end of December 1947 there were several attacks on Arab villages in the middle of the country, particularly in the vicinity of major cities where there were concentrations of Jews.

and also to the quote from Stanislawski 2017, p. 65:

"...on the Israeli side there has been in recent years a dramatic revision of the interpretation of 1948, acknowledging that Palestinians had indeed been expelled from various parts of the country... ...what happened in Israel was a combination of forced expulsions, panicked flight, and utter chaos. The upper classes of Palestinian society quickly fled the fight to places of safety within the Arab world and outside of it; the lower classes were caught between the Israeli desire to have as few Arabs as possible remaining in their new state and the Palestinians’ desire to remain on the lands they regarded as their ancient national patrimony.

• Several of the sources talk about "Jewish majority/Arab minority", not "as few Arabs as possible" (claiming that the two are equivalent would be a clear wp:synth):

Khalidi 2020, p. 76:

"The Nakba represented a watershed in the history of Palestine and the Middle East. It transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium — a majority Arab country — into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority. This transformation was the result of two processes: the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country seized during the war; and the theft of Palestinian land and property left behind by the refugees as well as much of that owned by those Arabs who remained in Israel. There would have been no other way to achieve a Jewish majority, the explicit aim of political Zionism from its inception. Nor would it have been possible to dominate the country without the seizures of land.";

Lustick & Berkman 2017, pp. 47–48:

"As Ben-Gurion told one Palestinian leader in the early 1930s, 'Our final goal is the independence of the Jewish people in Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan River, not as a minority, but as a community numbering millions" (Teveth 1985:130). Ipso facto, this meant Zionism's success would produce an Arab minority in Palestine, no matter what its geographical dimensions."

• Similarly, Engel 2013 talks about "desire to increase the Jewish population of Palestine" and explicitly says that until the late 1930s, that is for most of the pre-1948 period, most Zionists just wanted "Jewish majority", not “as few Arabs as possible”, and the change only came following a suggestion coming from the Peel Commission:

p. 96:

"From the outset Zionism had been the activity of a loose coalition of individuals and groups united by a common desire to increase the Jewish population of Palestine

p. 138:

"The prospect that Israel would have only the barest Jewish majority thus loomed large in the imagination of the state’s leaders. To be sure, until the late 1930s most Zionists would have been delighted with any majority, no matter how slim; the thought that Jews in Palestine would ever be more numerous than Arabs appeared a distant vision. But in 1937 the Peel Commission had suggested ... to leave both the Jewish state and Arab Palestine with the smallest possible minorities. That suggestion had fired Zionist imaginations; now it was possible to think of a future state as ‘Jewish’ not only by international recognition of the right of Jews to dominate its government but by the inclinations of virtually all of its inhabitants. Such was how the bulk of the Zionist leadership understood the optimal ‘Jewish state’ in 1948: non-Jews (especially Arabs) might live in it and enjoy all rights of citizenship, but their numbers should be small enough compared to the Jewish population that their impact on public life would be minimal. Israel’s leaders were thus not sad at all to see so many Arabs leave its borders during the fighting in 1947–48 ... the 150,000 who remained on Israeli territory seemed to many to constitute an unacceptably high proportion relative to the 650,000 Jews in the country when the state came into being. This perception not only dictated Israel’s adamant opposition to the return of Arab refugees, it reinforced the imperative to bring as many new Jewish immigrants into the country as possible, as quickly as possible, no matter how great or small their prospects for becoming the sort of ‘new Jews’ the state esteemed most.")

• Finally, while Morris 2004, p. 588, does say in the conclusion section:

"But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise. The piecemeal eviction of tenant farmers, albeit in relatively small numbers, during the first five decades of Zionist land purchase and settlement naturally stemmed from, and in a sense hinted at, the underlying thrust of the ideology, which was to turn an Arab-populated land into a State with an overwhelming Jewish majority."

a more careful reading of the book shows that his position is much more nuanced and that, in his view, this "underlying thrust of the ideology" only turned into an actual goal/"want" in the 1930s, that is in the second half of the pre-state period , and it only happened in response to external factors or initiatives:

p. 44:

“Hence, if during the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century Zionist advocacy of transfer was uninsistent, low-key and occasional, by the early 1930s a full-throated near-consensus in support of the idea began to emerge among the movement’s leaders. Each major bout of Arab violence triggered renewed Zionist interest in a transfer solution.”

p. 59:

“The bouts of Zionist reflection about and espousal of transfer usually came not out of the blue but in response to external factors or initiatives: In the early 1930s, Zionist meditation on the idea of transfer was a by-product of Arab violence and the frustration of efforts to persuade the British to allow Zionist settlement in Transjordan; in the late 1930s, it was triggered by the Arab revolt and the Peel Commission’s recommendation to transfer the Arab population out of the area designated for Jewish statehood;”

This, along with the fact that even when discussing "transfer", Morris still speaks in terms of "majority/minority" and never talks about "as few Arabs as possible/minimum Arabs" or any equivalent, shows that framing his position as support for the claim that Zionist core goal was "as few Arabs as possible" would be SYNTH.

Now, before I move to additional sources that not currently mentioned in the article and that refute the "as few Arabs as possible" claim, I just want to point out that two of the quoted sources - Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury 2014, p. 6, and Lentin 2010, p. 7 - are actually citations from Pappé 2006 and a Hebrew article published by Pappé in 2008, respectively, hence they are, in fact, tertiary sources, and given the complex and controversial nature of this issue, shouldn't have been used in this context, as per WP:DONTUSETERTIARY.

Now, here are several additional sources that refute the "as few Arabs as possible" framing:

• Laqueur, Walter (2009). A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel.

p. 232 (context: pre-WWI proposals of “limited population transfer”):

“...the idea of a population transfer was never official Zionist policy. Ben Gurion emphatically rejected it, saying that even if the Jews were given the right to evict the Arabs they would not make use of it. Most thought at that time that there would be sufficient room in Palestine for both Jews and Arabs following the industrialisation of the country and the introduction of intensive methods of agriculture…”

• Ther, Philipp (2014). The Dark Side of Nation-States: Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe.

p. 191:

“The extent to which the Zionists advanced the idea of population transfers during World War II is much disputed in the secondary literature. Palestinian authors such as Nur Masalha and advocates of “new history” in Israel have supported the argument that the Zionists had a master plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from the start. There is little evidence to support this claim.”

• Heller, J. (2006). "Alternative narratives and collective memories: Israel's New Historians and the use of historical context". Middle Eastern Studies. 42 (4): 571–586.

p. 573:

“In spite of its realistic base we see a two-fold weakness in Morris’s thesis. First, it goes back to Herzl, the founding father of political Zionism, as the supposed creator of the idea of transfer. In reality, like everybody else in European politics in his day, Herzl was ignorant of the existence of Arab nationalism. At one point he noted briefly that transfer of the poor native population was possible for economic reasons, only to reject it a little later…
Until the Royal Commission, better known as the Peel Commission of 1937, proposed the partition solution, with its corollary of population transfer, the Zionist decision-making agenda was preoccupied with one theme: the consolidation of power in terms of demography, economics and culture, leaving the military responsibility to the British authorities. Since the British government adopted the transfer idea only for a short period of time, the Zionists, too, shelved it, adopting the other British option – partition."

P. 574-575:

“...one must conclude that it was the partition plan that was at the top on the Zionist agenda, and not transfer, even though both plans were inspired by the Peel Commission…

… ‘The fundamental dimension refers to the principles which determine the final goals and grand vistas in which the ideology is to be realized, while the operative dimension concerns the principles which guide concrete political actions’. I argue that both transfer and partition were expressions of ‘operative ideology’ not of ‘fundamental ideology’. Arab ethnic cleansing was therefore not more than an option of last resort in the event of war."

P. 584

“Morris’s concept of transfer of the Arabs as the focus of Zionist decision making has no basis in political reality. “

• Galnoor, Itzhak (1995). The Partition of Palestine: Decision Crossroads in the Zionist Movement.

pp. 179-180

“The commission investigated the possibility of voluntary populations and land exchanges and the prospects of finding solutions for those who would be moved and reached the conclusion that it is "impossible to assume that the minority problem will be solved by a voluntary transfer of population." Incidentally, the commission also concluded that the Jews opposed forced transfer. Transfer as a concrete political possibility never exceeded the bounds of the 1937 royal commission report - it was born and buried there. It was not even mentioned in the United Nations partition plan of 1947. Had transfer not been included in the Peel commission report, it would not have been placed on the political agenda of the Zionist movement, even though the idea itself had been mentioned occasionally in the past.”

• Karsh, Efraim (2019). "Book Review: 'A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion'". The Wall Street Journal. (review of Tom Segev's book)

“The truth is that, far from seeking to dispossess the Palestinian Arabs as claimed by Mr. Segev, the Zionist movement had always been amenable to the existence of a substantial Arab minority in the prospective Jewish state. No less than Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of the faction that was the forebear of today’s Likud Party, voiced his readiness (in a famous 1923 essay) “to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone.” And if this was the position of the more “militant” faction of the Jewish national movement, small wonder that mainstream Zionism took for granted the full equality of the Arab minority in the prospective Jewish state… Ignoring these facts altogether, Mr. Segev accuses Ben-Gurion of using the partition resolution as a springboard for implementing the age-old “Zionist dream” of “maximum territory, minimum Arabs,” though he brings no evidence for this supposed behavior beyond a small number of statements that are either taken out of context or simply distorted or misrepresented.”

• Karsh, Efraim (2010). Palestine Betrayed. Yale University Press.

“...the recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British mandate and Israel’s early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the “new historians,” paint a much more definitive picture of the historical record, and one that is completely at odds with the anti-Israel caricature that is so often the order of the day. They reveal … that the claim of premeditated dispossession is not only baseless but the inverse of the truth; and that far from being the hapless victims of a predatory Zionist assault, it was Palestinian Arab leaders who, from the early 1920s onward, and very much against the wishes of their own constituents, launched a relentless campaign to obliterate the Jewish national revival which culminated in the violent attempt to abort the UN partition resolution. Had these leaders, and their counterparts in the neighboring Arab states, accepted the resolution, there would have been no war and no dislocation in the first place, for the simple reason that the Zionist movement was amenable both to the existence of a substantial non-Jewish minority in the prospective Jewish state on an equal footing, and to the two-state solution, raised for the first time in 1937 by a British commission of inquiry and reiterated by the partition resolution.”

• Shapira, Anita (2014). Israel: A History. Brandeis University Press.

p. 161

“Pro-Palestinian researchers present Plan D as the draft of a preplanned, total population transfer of the Arabs of Palestine. But as the plan text shows, while it did order commanders to destroy villages and expel the inhabitants if they resisted, it also instructed commanders to leave them where they were if they did not resist, while ensuring Jewish control of the village. There is a great difference between an order for total expulsion and a selective order, which assumes that Arab villages will be able to live in peace in the Jewish state."

To summarize, only about half of the currently used sources claim that "as few Arabs as possible" was a core goal of Zionism movement throughout the pre-1948 period and several of them actually refute this claim. In addition, there are multiple RS - some of which I listed above - that contest this claim.

This makes the "as few Arabs as possible" part of the current phrasing non-NPOV-compliant, and careful examination of the sources shows that a much more accurate reflection of the academic consensus would be to say "a state with a significant Jewish majority". DancingOwl (talk) 16:35, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Okay. There are 12 sources for the statement: Manna, Khalidi, Slater, Cohen, Lustick & Berkman, Stanislawski, Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury, Engel, Masalha, Lentin, Pappé, Morris. You are attempting to illustrate that about half of these sources don't actually support "as few Arabs as possible". I'll go through each.

Cohen:

You use was prepared to accept (though not happily) a large Arab minority in the Jewish state as evidence that they didn't want as few Arabs as possible. I don't quite buy this, because I interpret "as few Arabs as possible" as meaning as few Arabs as possible [given what is feasible]. That they reluctantly accepted some doesn't contradict that for me.

The p. 73 quote is about something they seriously considered, implying that this wasn't their main line of thought, not what they really wanted. This is actually validated by the p. 75 quote you share: the Jewish Agency prepared for the contingency of a large Arab minority. Contingency? It seems like they didn't want it. Same point for the p. 77 quote.

So, I think the Cohen quote of As was suggested by Masalha (1992), Morris (1987), and other scholars, many preferred a state without Arabs or with as small a minority as possible, and plans for population transfers were considered by Zionist leaders and activists for years is accurate. I don't see how he is "contesting" Masalha and Morris. I think Cohen supports "as few Arabs as possible".

Pappé:

I think you're right. "as few Arabs as possible" is about before the establishment of the state of Israel, this quote is imprecise and could be about modern Zionism. I don't think this should be used.

Manna:

I'm not seeing how p. 2 says the principal objective of the Zionist leadership to keep as few Arabs as possible is only about 1947-48. In p. 4 in the 1948 war, when it became clear that the objective that enjoyed the unanimous support of Zionists of all inclinations was to establish a Jewish state with the smallest possible number of Palestinians doesn't imply to me that it wasn't the main opinion pre-1948, just that it became unanimous in 1948. And even if Manna was saying that the idea only came about in 1948, I don't think it couldn't be used to justify "as few Arabs as possible", which is about the period up to the establishment of the state of Israel. The primary expulsions took place in 1948, and Israel was founded in 1948.

I don't see your argument with p. 33: The Zionists had two cherished objectives: fewer Arabs in the country and more land in the hands of the settlers... Indeed, at the end of December 1947. Okay, this just means they had the objective in 1947. So? I think Manna supports "as few Arabs as possible".

Stanislawski:

Again, you're just saying that Zionists wanted as few Arabs as possible in 1948, therefore they couldn't have wanted that before 1948? It doesn't say that. I think Stanislawski supports "as few Arabs as possible".

Khalidi:

Agreed, I don't think this should be used. "Majority" is not strong enough IMO.

Lustick & Berkman:

Agreed, I don't think this should be used. "Minority" is not strong enough IMO.

Engel:

This one is mixed. I think it can probably be used to support "as many Jews as possible", but it doesn't support "as few Arabs as possible". The p. 138 quote again brings up the issue of when expulsion became the consensus idea. It concedes that eventually it did. This is interesting, but really doesn't refute that Zionists wanted "as few Arabs as possible". I guess there could be a rewording to include this nuance, but I'm not sure if it's necessary.

Morris:

Again, the timing issue. See above. I do think displacement of Arabs from Palestine cannot be used support "as few Arabs as possible", but overwhelming Jewish majority is enough to support "as many Jews as possible" IMO.

Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury and Lentin:

I don't think these are tertiary just because they cite Pappé. I'm not sure if Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury is a BESTSOURCE though.

---

I will need a little bit more time to go though the new sources you brought. But to address your thesis:

a much more accurate reflection of the academic consensus would be to say "a state with a significant Jewish majority"

I don't see that. Your proposed new statement is weaker than Morris' overwhelming Jewish majority, and Morris clearly leans a certain way on this. And it replaces the part about Arabs with nothing, even though there are not yet addressed BESTSOURCES clearly saying it (Slater, Segev, Shlaim), in addition to Cohen, Manna, and Stanislawski, which I don't think you have nullified. I really do appreciate the effort though. This is a great thing for Wikipedia to have. Bitspectator ⛩️ 18:23, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback - looking forward for your comments regarding the newly added sources.

Regarding the chronology - I think the question of if and when the idea of transfer became more or less consensual within Zionist leadership is key in context of a correct phrasing in the lead, because the lead should reflect the core Zionist goals - what Heller refers to as "‘fundamental ideology" - throughout the whole of the pre-state period. If this idea was adopted only towards the end of the period, and if - as Heller describes it - it was only "operational", rather than "fundamental" - then this might be too specific to be mentioned in the lead, let alone in the opening paragraph, and should rather be deferred to the body. DancingOwl (talk) 18:59, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

This is a very detailed analysis. Based on this, I think "significant Jewish majority" would be a better framing. Andre🚐 19:02, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:52, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

@Bitspectator: I'm curious as to your and others' views of temporal sourcing of statements in Wikivoice: If some sources say this was the case from the beginning until the present (Morris, Shlaim, Lentin, Slater), some say from the beginning without specifying an end date (Engel, Khalidi, Segev, Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury), two say from the start until the creation of Israel (Masalha, Lustick & Berkman), one says "for years" without being more specific (Cohen), one says in 1948 (Stanislawski), one says in the first decade after the creation of Israel (Manna), and one says it's the "core of Zionism" until the present day (Pappe)... don't these, taken together, support the idea of "always"? Especially when not a single source says anything like "...until time period X, when it changed"? Levivich (talk) 20:50, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it matters for the lead. But you should clarify whether those temporalities are for "as many Jews as possible" or are for "as few Arabs as possible". I think @DancingOwl's arguments about this just relate to "as few Arabs as possible". Bitspectator ⛩️ 21:12, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the work you've put into this. This is conflating the notion of political consensus with the notion of desirability. To be clear, within the Zionist movement, the arguments made against transfer were made primarily on a practical basis, not because transfer was not desirable. The only quote put forward which denies the desirability of "as few Arabs" is Karsh 2019, a book review.

a more careful reading of the book [Morris] shows that his position is much more nuanced and that, in his view, this "underlying thrust of the ideology" only turned into an actual goal/"want" in the 1930s, that is in the second half of the pre-state period , and it only happened in response to external factors or initiatives

This is synth, since morris does not say anything about the "want" developing in the 30s, only that the political consensus became strong during this period. The "external factors" are in this case fundamental to the situation which comes with, as Morris says, the zionist goal of "politically, or even physically, dispossessing and supplanting the Arabs." That's why transfer was "transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism – because it sought to transform a land which was ‘Arab’ into a ‘Jewish’ state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population; and because this aim automatically produced resistance among the Arabs which, in turn, persuaded the Yishuv’s leaders that a hostile Arab majority or large minority could not remain in place if a Jewish state was to arise or safely endure" DMH223344 (talk) 00:48, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I think we're painting all Zionists with too broad of a brush. We know that many Zionists including Herzl had dismissive views toward the Arabs and were OK with a transfer - though they often thought the transfer would happen through economic means, for example. Others didn't consider the Arab inhabitants or thought there weren't many, and still others did know about them but thought they would welcome them. Consider Bregman 2002[4]. While not one of the absolute best sources, it's a decent enough source and I happened across this passage while perusing it on p.3. (and p.1 Palestine was in fact a barren, rocky, neglected and inhospitable land with malaria-infested swamps.) The passage on p.3: scrutinizing the speeches and writings of Zionist leaders of the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, one comes to the inevitable conclusion that some of the Zionist leaders did truly believe that Palestine was derelict and empty – ‘A land without a people waiting for a people without a land’. This, it is worth noting, was not an unusual thought, for some early Zionists suffered from the common Eurocentric illusion that ‘territories outside Europe were in a state of political vacuum’. But there were also Zionists who did realize that an Arab community existed in Palestine – working the land, bringing up children, living and dying – however, they took it for granted that the native Arabs would welcome the new arrivals, whose zeal and skill and, of course, money would help develop the barren land for the benefit of all of its inhabitants. Andre🚐 01:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Again, this doesn't say anything about the desirability of "as few Arabs as possible" DMH223344 (talk) 02:15, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

This is conflating the notion of political consensus with the notion of desirability.

This is a fair point, but it, in turn, leads to several additional questions:

1. Is the lead the right place to make this distinction?
2. If it is, shouldn't we also make a distinction between what Heller refers to as operative vs fundamental ideologies:

'The fundamental dimension refers to the principles which determine the final goals and grand vistas in which the ideology is to be realized, while the operative dimension concerns the principles which guide concrete political actions'. I argue that both transfer and partition were expressions of 'operative ideology' not of 'fundamental ideology'.
and let the lead describe fundamental ideology, while deferring the discussion of the operative ideology to the relevant section(s) in the body?

The only quote put forward which denies the desirability of "as few Arabs" is Karsh 2019, a book review

I've just added one more source that makes this point, and I also have a few more that talk about opposition to the idea on moral grounds - will hopefully have the time to add them tomorrow.

The "external factors" are in this case fundamental to the situation which comes with, as Morris says, the zionist goal of "politically, or even physically, dispossessing and supplanting the Arabs."

This is, indeed, how Morris describes this, but other sources - e.g. Gorny (2006) that I added today - offer a different perspective, and several other RS discussed above consider "as few Arabs as possible"/"transfer" ideas to be secondary in Zionist thinking. At the very least raises the question of whether discussing it in the opening paragraph is justified, as per MOS:LEADREL. DancingOwl (talk) 21:09, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Here's an additional source that provides an important perspective on Zionist ideology, in particular, in its fundamental approach towards Jewish-Arab relationships and Zionist demographic goals, and also clearly contradicts the "as few Arabs as possible" framing:

Gorny, Yosef (2006). From Binational Society to Jewish State: Federal Concepts in Zionist Political Thought, 1920-1990, and the Jewish People. BRILL.

Two key points:

• Zionism's goals included both Jewish majority and cooperation with Arabs

P. 6-7:

“Therefore, national values such as return to the soil, Jewish labor, the renaissance of Hebrew culture, and the aspiration to a Jewish majority became political fundamentals in Zionism...
Zionist policy from Herzl’s time to the establishment of the State of Israel had three dimensions…
The second dimension, the intercommunal, included Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine in all their senses. In an attempt to work out joint arrangements, if only partial and provisional, that would allow them to coexist with the Arab population of the country, the Zionists aspired to cooperation in municipal government, an arrangement for relations between Jewish and Arab labor organizations, general agrarian reform, and other matters.
The third dimension was reflected in the Zionist Movement’s political plans and its ideas for the shaping of fair and enlightened relations between Jews and Arabs, who were embroiled in struggle for the same piece of land. By the very fact of having such plans, the movement signaled its intention to replace side-by-side existence with coexistence. It is in this sense that Zionist policy was informed by a Utopian element tempered by political realism, a policy that recognized its limits as a national force and, usually, knew how to exploit political opportunities that the era created.
At first glance, our remarks here point to a material clash between the Utopian inclination and the pragmatic consideration in Zionist policy. It is not so. The entire intent of this study is to note that the Utopian element in Zionist policy was neither a marginal and unimportant appendage nor an artificial embellishment with which politicians could adorn themselves. In fact, it was a structural and intrinsic feature of the policy. It was embedded in the policymakers’ personalities; it played a role in long-term plans for the regularization of Jewish-Arab relations; it influenced the aspiration to align the political solutions with Jews’ and Arabs’ national ideals and rights; and it served as a moral yardstick for use in distinguishing between permissible and forbidden ways and means of prosecuting the armed conflict. It was this characteristic that gave the movement and its leaders the strength to cling to a political vision that clashed with the existing conditions.
Viewed from this perspective, the Zionist reality was charged with Utopian meaning. It is for this reason that I define the relationship between reality and vision as “Utopian realism.” This seeming oxymoron, in my opinion, is one of the keys to understanding Zionism as a national idea and as a social and political doctrine that fulfilled itself.

p. 11:

“I use the term “Zionist consensus” to denote the ideological common denominator among all Zionist Movement intellectual currents and political entities, which disagreed severely on all other topics. The consensus was made up of four basic principles: an unbreakable bond between the Jewish nation and the Eretz Israel; a Jewish majority in Eretz Israel; changing the socioeconomic structure of the Jewish people as part of a comprehensive national effort; and the revival of the Hebrew language and culture.“

• Zionists viewed Jewish emigration as the primary vehicle for obtaining Jewish majority
  

p. 33:

“From the Jewish standpoint, the onset of the Fourth Aliya heralded the emergence of the Zionist Movement from the crisis that had engulfed it at the end of the Third Aliya. The Jewish masses that began to reach Palestine instilled hope, for the first time after the Balfour Declaration, of the possibility of attaining a Jewish majority in Palestine.”

p. 65:

“For Ben-Gurion, in contrast, the Fifth Aliya—which infused Zionism with new hope and made the Jewish majority a realistic goal — was a basis for a broad-based federal settlement between Jews and Arabs at both the local and the regional levels.”

Also, the words 'transfer/transferring,' in the sense of 'population transfer,' are mentioned only four times, and only in passing, and one of the four instances actually refers to Jewish immigration. On the other hand, actual long-term plans assumed continued growth of Arab population - for example, see description of Jabotinsky’s 1940 constitution proposal that talks about Arab minority of two million (twice its size in 1940).
p. 102:

“In his background remarks to the proposal, Jabotinsky based himself solely on examples of federative regimes that had passed the test of political durability and met human and social moral standards. He disputed the argument that the Arabs of Palestine would become a nationally oppressed group after they became a minority of two million amid five million Jews, as his proposal envisaged.”

  DancingOwl (talk) 20:30, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't have a copy of that book of Gorny's, but here is a relevant quote from his 87 book in the context of discussing the Zionist conception of the Arab question:

It was generally accepted among Zionists that the eventual solution, whether a Jewish state in all of Palestine, partition, or an international protectorate, would have to be imposed on the Arabs by force, because of their obduracy, which precluded negotiations and compromise for the foreseeable future.

Also, I'm familiar with Gorny's other writing on Zionist utopia, and his definition of "utopia" is certainly not "utopia, an ideal commonwealth whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions.":

I am aware that utopias are not ideal regimes even when their intentions are the best, and that they are not free of totalitarian tendencies, which can lead at times to excessive and even abhorrent oppression of individuals. Zionist utopias have not escaped this flaw.

Lastly, these quotes are also not claiming that "as few Arabs" was not desired by the movement. DMH223344 (talk) 05:18, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't have a copy of that book of Gorny's, but here is a relevant quote from his 87 book in the context of discussing the Zionist conception of the Arab question:
"It was generally accepted among Zionists that the eventual solution, whether a Jewish state in all of Palestine, partition, or an international protectorate, would have to be imposed on the Arabs by force, because of their obduracy, which precluded negotiations and compromise for the foreseeable future.
When the war ended, and the full truth became evident, the Zionists clung to what remained of their political expectations: a Jewish state in a , divided Palestine."

The sentence preceding this quote is "When the war ended, and the full truth became evident, the Zionists clung to what remained of their political expectations: a Jewish state in a , divided Palestine.", that is the quote describes the Zionist attitude at specific point int time, after WWII.
 

Lastly, these quotes are also not claiming that "as few Arabs" was not desired by the movement.

The first quote talks about coexistence and cooperation and the last one talks about doubling of Arab population - the exact opposite "as few Arabs as possible".
  DancingOwl (talk) 10:28, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

The first quote talks about coexistence and cooperation and the last one talks about doubling of Arab population - the exact opposite "as few Arabs as possible".

That's definitely not the same as wanting the opposite of "as few Arabs as possible". Did the Zionists accept an Arab minority, of course, did they want it? Also no. They specifically wanted as few as possible, as shown by the long list of quotes cited by the claim in the article. DMH223344 (talk) 02:52, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Only 2 of the sources - Slater and Shlaim - talk about "wanting" as few Arabs as possible.

To that we can add Stanislawski that uses the word "desire" and Segev, who talks about "dream". DancingOwl (talk) 12:32, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not sure any of the sources give different temporalities for the two; they say the temporality, they say the actor/subject, and then they say one, two, or three out of "more land/many Jews/few Arabs". Here's a table:

Source	time	who	"as much land"	"as many Jews"	"as few Arabs"
Manna 2022	doesn't specify [work is about 1948-1956]	"The Zionists", "Zionists of all inclinations", "the Zionist leadership"	"more land in the hands of the settlers"		"as few Arabs as possible", "the smallest possible number of Palestinians", "fewer Arabs in the country"
Khalidi 2020	"from its inception"	"political Zionism"	"seizures of land", "theft of Palestinian land and property"	"a substantial Jewish majority"	"systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas"
Slater 2020	"From the outset of the Zionist movement ... During every round of the national conflict over Palestine"	"the Zionists", "Zionism", "The Zionist movement in general", "all the major leaders"	"as much of Palestine as was feasible", "a Jewish state in all of 'Palestine'", "appropriate additional territory"	"a large Jewish majority"	"as few Arabs as possible"
Segev 2019	"from the start"	"the Zionist dream"	"maximum territory"		"minimum Arabs"
Cohen 2017	"for years"	"many [Zionist activists]", "Zionist leaders and activists"			"without Arabs or with as small a minority as possible"
Lustick & Berkman 2017	doesn't specify [work is about pre-state Zionism]	"Zionism", "Ben-Gurion"	"on both sides of the Jordan River"	"not as a minority, but as a community numbering millions"	"an Arab minority in Palestine"
Stanislawski 2017	1948	"the Israeli desire"			"as few Arabs as possible"
Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury 2014	"an inherent component ... since the founding of the Zionist movement"	"the Zionist movement", "the Zionist project", "the mainstream as represented by Labor Zionism and its leadership headed by Ben Gurion"			"getting rid of as many of the Palestinian inhabitants of the land as possible ... demographic elimination"
Engel 2013	"From the outset"	"most Zionists", "Zionist imaginations", "Zionism", "the ZO", "Israel", "the state", "their leaders", "the state’s leaders", "the bulk of the Zionist leadership", "Israel’s leaders", "Haganah"	"expand the territory a partitioned Jewish state might eventually receive", "in parts of Palestine formerly beyond their sights", "more expansive borders"	"increase the Jewish population of Palestine", "‘Jewish’ ... by the inclinations of virtually all of its inhabitants", "as many new Jewish immigrants into the country as possible"	"the smallest possible minorities", "non-Jews ... numbers should be small enough compared to the Jewish population that their impact on public life would be minimal"
Masalha 2012	"From the late nineteenth century and throughout the Mandatory period"	"the Zionist Yishuv"	"maximum land"		"minimum Arabs"
Lentin 2010	"always"	"the Zionist leadership"	"increase the Jewish space"		"dispossess the Palestinians"
Shlaim 2009	"from the earliest days to the present"	"most Zionist leaders"	"the largest possible Jewish state in Palestine"		"with as few Arabs inside it as possible"
Pappe 2006	"the core of Zionism"	"Zionism"	"as much of Palestine as possible"		"with as few Palestinians as possible"
Morris 2004	"inherent ... from the start of the enterprise" (Morris 2002: "as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past century")	"Zionist ideology", "Zionist praxis"	Morris 2001: "Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement"	"an overwhelming Jewish majority", "massive Jewish immigration"	"massive displacement of Arabs", "instantaneously emptying the land so that it could absorb the prospective refugees from Europe"

I agree this could be expanded with more nuance in the body; it already is, but could of course be further expanded. Levivich (talk) 22:47, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree with some of your points here. I am confused about some of these readings though.

First sources:

Are you sure that you have not reversed the intended "exception" and "rule" in the Manna p. 2 quote? I think more context is needed there about the "non-expulsion" in northern Palestine. I don't see how the other Manna quotes contradict the current wording in the article.

—

I also don't understand why Stanislawski 2017 p. 65 is supposed to help your argument. It's hard to see how that characterization of Israeli desires for the future state can be read to apply only to the "heat of the moment" of 1948.

—

For the sources supporting that "as few Arabs as possible" arose late in the pre-1948 period, what change in the wording of the article do these warrant? After all, if you're conceding that this was policy after sometime around then, that would mean it was policy from the beginning of the existence of the State of Israel.

New sources:

I had thought that the sentence in the lede was saying Zionists wanted as small an Arab minority as possible in whatever territory the state was to encompass. So Heller 2006, talking about "partitioning" the former mandate into a Jewish part and an Arab part, doesn't contradict that. ByVarying | talk 20:22, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

For the sources supporting that "as few Arabs as possible" arose late in the pre-1948 period, what change in the wording of the article do these warrant? After all, if you're conceding that this was policy after sometime around then, that would mean it was policy from the beginning of the existence of the State of Israel.

The lead section, and the opening paragraph, in particular, should provide a general description of the Zionism ideology as a whole, and not just its realization during a particular period. And since the sentence in question is formulated in past tense and appears immediately before "Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948...", it is implied that this is supposed to be a general description of the core goals of Zionism since its inception and till 1948.

However, if those ideas became mainstream only towards the end of the pre-1948 period, this means that framing is as a general characteristic of the Zionism throughout that period would be inaccurate and misleading.

I hope this clarifies the point I was trying to make.

I had thought that the sentence in the lede was saying Zionists wanted as small an Arab minority as possible in whatever territory the state was to encompass. So Heller 2006, talking about "partitioning" the former mandate into a Jewish part and an Arab part, doesn't contradict that.

Heller makes several important points:

1) First, he makes a critical distinction between ‘operative ideology’ and ‘fundamental ideology’, and argues that that both transfer and partition were expressions of the former. And the lead should be focused on the fundamental ideology, described by Heller as "the principles which determine the final goals and grand vistas", and the discussion of operative ideology, that is the specific ways in which those "final goals and grand vistas" were realized in practice, should be deferred to the body.

2) Second, he -as well as several other sources I quoted above - disputes the framing of "transfer" (which is closely related to the "as few Arabs as possible" claim) as the focus of Zionist decision making. Which means that even as "operative ideology" the transfer thinking wasn't as prominent in his view, as Morris and several other authors currently quoted in the article, claim it to be. So, again, while this is something that could be discussed in the body, the opening paragraphs is not the right place for this discussion. DancingOwl (talk) 21:44, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Levivich, since the discussed sentence is a synthesis of numerous statements dispersed across the cited sources, putting partial quotes in the table is misleading, because this obscures the different contexts to which those quotes belong - for example, several quoted temporal statements refer to the "as much land" part, but not to the "as few Arabs" part etc.

In order to get a clear understanding of what the sources are REALLY saying, one needs to look at the full quotes - I've prepared a table that does exactly that, while focusing on the two more controversial claims - "as many Jews" and "as few Arabs".

In the second part of the table I also put several additional sources that offer a significantly different perspective on those claims:

Source	full quote	time	"as many Jews"	"as few Arabs"
Manna 2022	P.2; ” It is clear that “non-expulsion” in northern Palestine was not arbitrary, but was the result of high-level orders and policy on the part of the Israeli leadership. Saying this does not contradict the principal objective of the Zionist leadership to keep as few Arabs as possible in the Jewish state, since the exception due to special reasons and circumstances proves the rule.” P.4 “That is what also happened in the 1948 war, when it became clear that the objective that enjoyed the unanimous support of Zionists of all inclinations was to establish a Jewish state with the smallest possible number of Palestinians.” p. 33 "To spur Palestinians to leave their cities and villages was an objective that the Jewish side implemented as part of the Zionist operation to uproot and occupy. The Zionists had two cherished objectives: fewer Arabs in the country and more land in the hands of the settlers"	1947-1948	not mentioned	Y
Khalidi 2020	p. 75: "The Nakba represented a watershed in the history of Palestine and the Middle East. It transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium—a majority Arab country—into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority. This transformation was the result of two processes: the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country seized during the war; and the theft of Palestinian land and property left behind by the refugees as well as much of that owned by those Arabs who remained in Israel. There would have been no other way to achieve a Jewish majority, the explicit aim of political Zionism from its inception. Nor would it have been possible to dominate the country without the seizures of land."	"from its inception" refers to the goal of achieving Jewish majority "ethnic cleansing" refers to 1948	N the goal is formulated as "(substantial) Jewish majority", not "as many Jews"	N no mention of "as few Arabs" (deducing it from "ethnic cleansing" is SYNTH)
Slater 2020	p. 49 "There were three arguments for the moral acceptability of some form of transfer. The main one—certainly for the Zionists but not only for them—was the alleged necessity of establishing a secure and stable Jewish state in as much of Palestine as was feasible, which was understood to require a large Jewish majority."), p. 81 ("From the outset of the Zionist movement all the major leaders wanted as few Arabs as possible in a Jewish state")	From the outset of the Zionist movement	N the goal is formulated as "large Jewish majority", not "as many Jews"	Y
Segev 2019	p. 418, "the Zionist dream from the start—maximum territory, minimum Arabs";	"from the start"	not mentioned	Y
Cohen 2017	P. 75: “Some historians, such as Ilan Pappé (2006) and Nur Masalha (1992), claim that the Zionist movement from the very beginning sought to expel Arabs from the Jewish national homeland, and that in 1948 the Jewish military forces followed an existing plan to implement this goal. One source that Pappé (2006) uses to support this argument in his book is a widespread survey of the Arab villages undertaken by the Haganah’s intelligence services between the end of the 1930s and the eve of the 1948 war. This does not, in my opinion, constitute an irrefutable evidence base, as armies are known to prepare contingency plans for worst-case scenarios without intending to implement them unless forced to do so. I would argue that the Zionist leadership had considered several possible scenarios and that an all-out war was only one of them." P. 77: “In my view, it would not be unrealistic to deduce that the Zionist leadership prepared itself – among other options – for a peaceful implementation of the partition resolution and for the existence of a significant Arab minority in the Jewish state. Moreover, in such a scenario, there were elements within the Jewish leadership who pushed toward improving Arab conditions and Arab– Jewish relations in the new state. Such an analysis would become even more plausible if we consider a parallel committee that was established by the Yishuv leadership to deal with the Jewish settlements situated in areas designated to be incorporated into the Arab state. This view should not come as a surprise, as it goes hand in hand with what remained official Zionist policy for years. In 1943, i.e., after the Jewish Agency had adopted the idea of a Jewish state as an urgent political demand, Ben-Gurion said that the Zionist aspiration was to reach a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel in the shortest period possible." p. 78 "One should bear in mind, though, that the democratic, equality-oriented, inclusive position was not the only one considered by Zionist activists. As was suggested by Masalha (1992), Morris (1987), and other scholars, many preferred a state without Arabs or with as small a minority as possible, and plans for population transfers were considered by Zionist leaders and activists for years. However, in the post–World War II political context, the Zionist leadership was prepared to accept (though not happily) a large Arab minority in the Jewish state and its declared position was that it would enjoy civil equality, collective rights, and the allocation of resources as outlined by the UN Partition Plan"	"from the very beginning" and "for years" are not Cohen's own claims, but are attributed to Pappe/Masalha/Morris, and most of the article is dedicated to critically assessing their claims	N the goal is formulated as "Jewish majority", not "as many Jews"	? Cohen disputes Pappe/Masalha claims about existing plan to expel. He does recognize the fact the having a large Arab minority was not "ideal', as far as Zionist leadership was concerned, but at the same time points out preparations for existence of such large minority.
Lustick & Berkman 2017	pp. 47–48, "As Ben-Gurion told one Palestinian leader in the early 1930s, 'Our final goal is the independence of the Jewish people in Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan River, not as a minority, but as a community numbering millions" (Teveth 1985:130). Ipso facto, this meant Zionism's success would produce an Arab minority in Palestine, no matter what its geographical dimensions.";	early 1930s	N the goal is formulated as majority "numbering millions", not "as many Jews as possible"	N "Arab minority", not "as few Arabs as possible"
Stanislawski 2017	p. 65, "The upper classes of Palestinian society quickly fled the fight to places of safety within the Arab world and outside of it; the lower classes were caught between the Israeli desire to have as few Arabs as possible remaining in their new state and the Palestinians’ desire to remain on the lands they regarded as their ancient national patrimony."	1948	not mentioned	Y
Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury 2014	p. 6, ""It was obvious to most approaches within the Zionist movement—certainly to the mainstream as represented by Labor Zionism and its leadership headed by Ben Gurion, that a Jewish state would entail getting rid of as many of the Palestinian inhabitants of the land as possible,³³”... (33. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.) ... Following Wolfe, we argue that the logic of demographic elimination is an inherent component of the Zionist project as a settler-colonial project, although it has taken different manifestations since the founding of the Zionist movement.";	not specified ("inherent component" doesn't provide a clear indication regarding temporality)	not mentioned	Y ? the authors quote Pappe, hence in context of this claim should be viewed as tertiary source
Engel 2013	p. 96 "From the outset Zionism had been the activity of a loose coalition of individuals and groups united by a common desire to increase the Jewish population of Palestine ..."), p. 138 "To be sure, until the late 1930s most Zionists would have been delighted with any majority, no matter how slim; the thought that Jews in Palestine would ever be more numerous than Arabs appeared a distant vision. But in 1937 the Peel Commission had suggested ... to leave both the Jewish state and Arab Palestine with the smallest possible minorities. That suggestion had fired Zionist imaginations; now it was possible to think of a future state as ‘Jewish’ not only by international recognition of the right of Jews to dominate its government but by the inclinations of virtually all of its inhabitants. Such was how the bulk of the Zionist leadership understood the optimal ‘Jewish state’ in 1948: non-Jews (especially Arabs) might live in it and enjoy all rights of citizenship, but their numbers should be small enough compared to the Jewish population that their impact on public life would be minimal…")	Explicitly considers two distinct periods - before and after the Peel Commission (1937)	N Before the Peel Commission the goal was "any majority, no matter how slim". Y By 1948 - "virtually all of its inhabitants"	N Before the Peel Commission the goal was just minority Y The Peel Commission proposed "smallest possible minorities" Y 1948 - " small enough compared to the Jewish population that their impact on public life would be minimal"
Masalha 2012	p. 38, "From the late nineteenth century and throughout the Mandatory period the demographic and land policies of the Zionist Yishuv in Palestine continued to evolve. But its demographic and land battles with the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine were always a battle for 'maximum land and minimum Arabs'	"From the late nineteenth century and throughout the Mandatory period"	not mentioned	"minimum Arabs" Y
Lentin 2010	p. 7, "'the Zionist leadership was always determined to increase the Jewish space ... Both land purchases in and around the villages, and military preparations, were all designed to dispossess the Palestinians from the area of the future Jewish state' (Pappe 2008: 94).";	"always"	not mentioned	Y ? the author is not a historian, but a sociologist and the claims are direct quotes from Pappe, hence in context of this claim should be viewed as tertiary source
Shlaim 2009	p. 56, "That most Zionist leaders wanted the largest possible Jewish state in Palestine with as few Arabs inside it as possible is hardly open to question.";		not mentioned	Y
Pappe 2006	p. 250: “Ehud Olmert, now prime minister, knows that if Israel decides to stay in the Occupied Territories and its inhabitants become officially part of Israel’s population, Palestinians will outnumber Jews within fifteen years. Thus he has opted for what he calls hitkansut, Hebrew for ‘convergence’ or, better, ‘ingathering’, a policy that aims at annexing large parts of the West Bank, but at the same time leaves several populous Palestinian areas outside direct Israeli control. In other words, hitkansut is the core of Zionism in a slightly different garb: to take over as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians as possible.”	N talks about “Realignment plan” promoted by Ehud Olmert in 2006 - not relevant to the discussion of the pre-1948 period
Morris 2004	p. 588, "But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise. The piecemeal eviction of tenant farmers, albeit in relatively small numbers, during the first five decades of Zionist land purchase and settlement naturally stemmed from, and in a sense hinted at, the underlying thrust of the ideology, which was to turn an Arab-populated land into a State with an overwhelming Jewish majority" p. 44: “Hence, if during the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century Zionist advocacy of transfer was uninsistent, low-key and occasional, by the early 1930s a full-throated near-consensus in support of the idea began to emerge among the movement’s leaders. Each major bout of Arab violence triggered renewed Zionist interest in a transfer solution.” p. 59: “The bouts of Zionist reflection about and espousal of transfer usually came not out of the blue but in response to external factors or initiatives: In the early 1930s, Zionist meditation on the idea of transfer was a by-product of Arab violence and the frustration of efforts to persuade the British to allow Zionist settlement in Transjordan; in the late 1930s, it was triggered by the Arab revolt and the Peel Commission’s recommendation to transfer the Arab population out of the area designated for Jewish statehood;”	"inherent" or "underlying thrust"≠ explicit "want", therefore temporality of "want" is not defined in the currently used quote On the other hand, two additional quotes from p. 44 and p. 59 point to early 1930s as the time when such explicit near-consensual "want" began to form	N the goal is formulated as "overwhelming Jewish majority", not "as many Jews as possible"	N - "piecemeal eviction" or "displacement" ≠ "as few Arabs as possible" - claiming they are equivalent would be SYNTH.
Additional sources
Morris 2009	p. 351 " the idea of transfer was never adopted as part of the Zionist movement's platform, nor as part of the programme or platform of any of the main Zionist parties, not in the nineteenth century and not in the twentieth century. And, in general, the Zionist leaders looked to massive Jewish immigration, primarily from Russia and Europe, as the means of establishing and then assuring a Jewish majority in Palestine or whatever part of it was to be earmarked for Jewish statehood.	until 1929	N the goal is formulated as "a Jewish majority"	N Jewish majority was expected to be established through massive Jewish immigration, not "transfer"
Laqueur 2009	p. 232: “...the idea of a population transfer was never official Zionist policy. Ben Gurion emphatically rejected it, saying that even if the Jews were given the right to evict the Arabs they would not make use of it. Most thought at that time that there would be sufficient room in Palestine for both Jews and Arabs following the industrialisation of the country and the introduction of intensive methods of agriculture…”	pre-WWI period		N mainstream rejection of transfer proposals "sufficient room in Palestine for both Jews and Arabs"
Ther 2014	p. 191: “The extent to which the Zionists advanced the idea of population transfers during World War II is much disputed in the secondary literature. Palestinian authors such as Nur Masalha and advocates of “new history” in Israel have supported the argument that the Zionists had a master plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from the start. There is little evidence to support this claim.”	WWII		? This source casts doubt on the claims about "master plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine", which is closely related to the "as few Arabs as possible" claim
Heller 2006	p. 573: “In spite of its realistic base we see a two-fold weakness in Morris’s thesis. First, it goes back to Herzl, the founding father of political Zionism, as the supposed creator of the idea of transfer. In reality, like everybody else in European politics in his day, Herzl was ignorant of the existence of Arab nationalism. At one point he noted briefly that transfer of the poor native population was possible for economic reasons, only to reject it a little later…" P. 574-575: “...one must conclude that it was the partition plan that was at the top on the Zionist agenda, and not transfer, even though both plans were inspired by the Peel Commission… ‘The fundamental dimension refers to the principles which determine the final goals and grand vistas in which the ideology is to be realized, while the operative dimension concerns the principles which guide concrete political actions’. I argue that both transfer and partition were expressions of ‘operative ideology’ not of ‘fundamental ideology’. Arab ethnic cleansing was therefore not more than an option of last resort in the event of war." P. 584 “Morris’s concept of transfer of the Arabs as the focus of Zionist decision making has no basis in political reality. “			N Heller disputes the framing of "transfer" (which is closely related to the "as few Arabs as possible" claim) as one of Zionist core goals
Galnoor 1995.	pp. 179-180 “The commission investigated the possibility of voluntary populations and land exchanges and the prospects of finding solutions for those who would be moved and reached the conclusion that it is "impossible to assume that the minority problem will be solved by a voluntary transfer of population." Incidentally, the commission also concluded that the Jews opposed forced transfer. Transfer as a concrete political possibility never exceeded the bounds of the 1937 royal commission report - it was born and buried there. It was not even mentioned in the United Nations partition plan of 1947. Had transfer not been included in the Peel commission report, it would not have been placed on the political agenda of the Zionist movement, even though the idea itself had been mentioned occasionally in the past.”			N According to Galnor, transfer wasn't seriously considered by Zionist leadership either before Peel Commission's proposal or after it, and it wasn't an inherent part of mainstream Zionist thinking.
Karsh 2010	p. 5: “...the recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British mandate and Israel’s early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the “new historians,” paint a much more definitive picture of the historical record, and one that is completely at odds with the anti-Israel caricature that is so often the order of the day. They reveal … that the claim of premeditated dispossession is not only baseless but the inverse of the truth; and that far from being the hapless victims of a predatory Zionist assault, it was Palestinian Arab leaders who, from the early 1920s onward, and very much against the wishes of their own constituents, launched a relentless campaign to obliterate the Jewish national revival which culminated in the violent attempt to abort the UN partition resolution. Had these leaders, and their counterparts in the neighboring Arab states, accepted the resolution, there would have been no war and no dislocation in the first place, for the simple reason that the Zionist movement was amenable both to the existence of a substantial non-Jewish minority in the prospective Jewish state on an equal footing, and to the two-state solution, raised for the first time in 1937 by a British commission of inquiry and reiterated by the partition resolution.”			N "the Zionist movement was amenable ...to the existence of a substantial non-Jewish minority in the prospective Jewish state "
Gorny 2006	p. 6: “Therefore, national values such as return to the soil, Jewish labor, the renaissance of Hebrew culture, and the aspiration to a Jewish majority became political fundamentals in Zionism... Zionist policy from Herzl’s time to the establishment of the State of Israel had three dimensions… The second dimension, the intercommunal, included Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine in all their senses. In an attempt to work out joint arrangements, if only partial and provisional, that would allow them to coexist with the Arab population of the country, the Zionists aspired to cooperation in municipal government, an arrangement for relations between Jewish and Arab labor organizations, general agrarian reform, and other matters. The third dimension was reflected in the Zionist Movement’s political plans and its ideas for the shaping of fair and enlightened relations between Jews and Arabs, who were embroiled in struggle for the same piece of land. By the very fact of having such plans, the movement signaled its intention to replace side-by-side existence with coexistence." p. 102: “In his background remarks to the proposal, Jabotinsky based himself solely on examples of federative regimes that had passed the test of political durability and met human and social moral standards. He disputed the argument that the Arabs of Palestine would become a nationally oppressed group after they became a minority of two million amid five million Jews, as his proposal envisaged.” (description of Jabotinsky’s 1940 constitution proposal)		N "aspiration to a Jewish majority"	N "the Zionists aspired to cooperation" "Zionist Movement’s political plans and its ideas for the shaping of fair and enlightened relations between Jews and Arabs" constitution proposal envisioning two million Arabs in future state - double their number in 1940, when the proposal was written
Rubin 2019	p. 497: "Jabotinsky’s commitment to minority rights in Europe also shaped his outlook on the future of Palestine. From 1917 until the outbreak of the Second World War, Jabotinsky envisioned a majority Jewish state in Palestine with elaborate guarantees for the protection of the Arab minority. This vision was premised on a major moral leap that characterized many Zionist leaders – conceiving of Palestine’s Arab majority as a future minority subject to minority protections" p. 506 "...Jabotinsky also rejected the plan on moral grounds, fiercely opposing the idea of transferring the Arab population from Palestine. Jabotinsky underscored this point in several letters and speeches from 1937..." p. 508 "Zionist leaders had mocked Zangwill’s proposal for the expulsion of Arabs from Palestine during the First World War"	Jabotinsky's position until the outbreak of WWII	N "a majority Jewish state"	N "elaborate guarantees for the protection of the Arab minority" "fiercely opposing the idea of transferring the Arab population from Palestine" "mocked Zangwill’s proposal for the expulsion of Arabs from Palestine"
Penslar 2023	p. 67 "There is a deep divide, however, between scholars who do and do not conceive of Zionism as a variety of colonialism. Debates about virtually every aspect of the history of Zionism and Israel boil down to clashing conceptions of the essence of the Zionist project—whether it has been one of homecoming and seeking asylum or one of colonial settlement and expropriation. Two key questions run through the debate over Zionism and colonialism. First, is Zionism inherently inclusive or separatist, open to the coterminous exercise of Jewish and Arab self-determination within historic Palestine, or determined to drive the indigenous Palestinians out of the land?..."			N points out that the narrative of "as few Arabs as possible" is just one side of the scholarly debate about Zionism and is far from being a consensus

As can be seen from the table, several of the existing sources don't support the "as many Jews, as few Arabs as possible" framing, and some of them support it only as description of a particular period, rather than a core Zionist goal throughout the pre-state period.

And the additional sources either dispute the "as few Arabs" part entirely, or at least acknowledge that there is no scholarly consensus about it. DancingOwl (talk) 10:29, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Levivich, i really like thinking about your table, am renaming columns and adding lots more. I am also deleting the "more Jews" and "fewer Arabs" columns tho and don't agree with the table's intent.

The result of the ideology and praxis, the movement, was not only moving Jewish people in but also moving Palestinian people out. "fewer Arabs" needs said somehow and prominently in the lead. I don't think there is any real question here except how to say it. fiveby(zero) 13:46, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

well, actually, if you consider the totality of different RS - like the ones described in the table above - it becomes clear that there is no consensus on this question.

There is a very wide spectrum of opinions, ranging from the claim that Zionists wanted to expel Arabs from the very start, through the views that this was considered only during particular periods in response to Arab violence and were never one of the Zionist core goals, and to the claims that from the early days of Zionism and till establishment of Israel Zionist were looking for ways to peacefully coexist with Arabs in Palestine.

The current phrasing only represents one extreme end of this spectrum, hence clearly violating the NPOV principle, so the question is what is the appropriate weight that the "fewer Arabs" thesis should receive in this article - in particular, whether it should be addressed in the lead at all, and if it should - what phrasing would reflect the spectrum of opinions in a most balanced way. DancingOwl (talk) 19:53, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

I think DancingOwl has shown a reasonable enough doubt that we need to reflect minority and alternate POVs and address the lack of an impartial tone. Andre🚐 20:20, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

claims that from the early days of Zionism and till establishment of Israel Zionist were looking for ways to peacefully coexist with Arabs in Palestine.

This is not the opposite end of the claim that Zionists wanted to expel Arabs from the very start. DMH223344 (talk) 02:21, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

I didn't say that this claim is the opposite of the "always wanted to expel" claim, but that there is a spectrum of opinions and this claim is on the other end of the spectrum.

Or did you mean to say that you'd define the other end of the spectrum differently? DancingOwl (talk) 04:17, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

My point is that the movement planning for existing alongside an Arab minority does not mean that they did not want as small a minority as possible. The two are not mutually exclusive in any sense. DMH223344 (talk) 04:30, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

They are not mutually exclusive, if you interpret the "as few Arabs as possible" claim as a neutral statement about preferences, rather than a core goal determining the policy.

However, if you consider it in context and look at the sentence in its entirety, it's a clear expression of the "separatism/expropriation" end of the spectrum that Penslar talks about in the last quote in the table, and the other end of the spectrum is not represented at all. DancingOwl (talk) 05:01, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Certainly Zionism was not open to arab self-determination in Palestine at the expense of Jewish self-determination. No one argues that. And neither does Penslar actually argue that the mainstream Zionism perspective was that Arabs and Jews could have self-determination in Palestine. In Zionism, Palestine is for the Jews, and the Arabs can be at most inhabitants without national rights. DMH223344 (talk) 05:27, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

What you are describing is not "the mainstream Zionist perspective", but mainly Jabotinsky's views, and even his views evolved with time - for example, in the early 1920s he proposed a Jewish-Arab federative state. As a sidenote, for most of his life Jabotinsky's also vehemently opposed the idea of population transfer (i.e., "as few Arabs as possible") and only changed his position after the WWII broke out.

As to the rest of the Zionist movement, several models of bi-national or federalist state have been considered throughout the pre-1948 period (including several variants proposed by Ben Gurion) - Gorny describes them at length in his 2006 book and also gives an short overview here.

Also, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "actually argue that the mainstream Zionism perspective was that Arabs and Jews could have self-determination in Palestine", given the fact that most of Zionist leaders accepted the partition principle proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937, as well as the UN Partition Plan in 1947. DancingOwl (talk) 06:28, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Are you sure? Finkelstein:

The cultural Zionist Ahad Ha’am was (in Gorny’s words) ‘firm in his insistence that both peoples in Palestine be treated justly’, but he ‘saw the historical rights of the Jews outweighing the Arabs’ residential rights in Palestine’ (pp. 103–4). Max Nordau declared that Palestine was the ‘legal and historical inheritance’ of the Jewish nation, ‘of which they were robbed 1900 years ago by the Roman aggressors’; the Palestinian Arabs had only ‘possession rights’ (p. 157). Jabotinsky asserted that since the Arab nation incorporated ‘large stretches of land’, it would be an ‘act of justice’ to requisition Palestine ‘in order to make a home for a wandering people’; the Palestinian Arabs would still have a place to call their own, indeed, any of fully nine countries to the east and west of the Suez (pp. 166, 168–9). In Ben-Gurion’s view, Palestine had a ‘national’ significance for Jews and thus ‘belonged’ to them; in contrast, Palestinian Arabs, as constituents of the great Arab nation, regarded not Palestine, but Iraq, Syria and the Arabian peninsula as their ‘historical’ homeland – Palestine was of only ‘individual’ importance to them, the locale where they happened to dwell presently. The Jewish people were therefore entitled to concentrate in Palestine whereas the Palestinian Arab community should enjoy merely those rights redounding on residents (pp. 210–12, 217–18).16

As for Jabotinsky, he was well within the mainstream Zionist movement (and Gorny treats him and his revisionists that way):

As a member of the Zionist Executive in 1921-3, he soon discovered that what divided him from his col­leagues in the Zionist leadership was not political differences, but mainly his style of political action

It's well established that partition was accepted to enable the eventual control of all of Palestine. Morris on the Peel commission partition principle:

But leaders like Ben-Gurion, while saying yes, continued to entertain in their hearts the vision of “the Whole Land of Israel” (“Greater Israel,” as it was later to be called). Ben-Gurion repeatedly declared (though not in front of the British) that the ministate London was offering would serve merely as the springboard for future Jewish conquest of the whole land: Palestine was to be taken over in stages.

DMH223344 (talk) 17:02, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this all supports the existing wording too. Lewisguile (talk) 19:55, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure. (sorry for the delayed response - turned out that the text below, which I thought I published already, remained in drafts).

For example take the passage about Ahad Ha’am that Finkelstein is quoting from Gorny - the next sentence in Gorny's books is:

But his further claim that continued Jewish national existence depended on the creation of a Jewish majority in Palestine did not conflict with the Arab demand for justice. Moreover, in insisting on ‘historical rights’, Ahad Ha'Am was implying the superiority of spiritual aspirations over material existence.

and just before that, on pages 101-102, Gorny says:

We have seen that Ahad Ha'Am’s general outlook was based on the following principles: special political status for the Jews in Palestine as a small minority within the Arab population; recognition of the need to find ways of achieving peaceful co-operation with the Arabs;...
... He pointed to the fact that the phrase ‘building a national home in Palestine’ was not a mere question of semantics. The Government did not in fact intend to hand over all of Palestine to the Jews. It had guaranteed to respect the rights of the local population and hence its insistence that the granting of rights to the Jews did not annul the rights of other residents. We noted above Ahad Ha'Am’s emphatic demand that Weizmann stress the historical right of the Jews to Palestine. Here he attempts to explain the significance of this concept under prevailing conditions. ‘The historical right of a people to a country settled by others’, he explains, ‘means only one thing: the right to return to settle in the land of their fathers, to cultivate it and to develop its potential uninterruptedly.’ This right is not only theoretical but also practical, because it helps the returning people to withstand the opposition of the local population...
‘But’, Ahad Ha'Am cautions, ‘this historical right does not abolish the right of the other residents of the country, who have enjoyed the real right to reside and labour in the country for generations past. This country is their national home as well and they too have the right to develop their national powers to the best of their ability.’ The conclusion is unequivocal. ‘This situation renders Palestine the joint home of various peoples, each endeavouring to build its national home there.’

In other words, the sentence quoted by Finkestein doesn't mean that Ahad Ha’am thought 'historical rights' of the Jews negate Arabs' rights for self-determination, but only that they grants the Jews the right to build their national home in Palestine, side by side with Arabs, despite Arab opposition.

Similarly, the full quote about Nordau says:

The Jewish people, Nordau believed, had received international recognition as a nation, and this implied ‘the right to Jewish possession of their legal and historical inheritance, the land of their fathers, of which they were robbed 1900 years ago by the Roman aggressors’. His conclusion was that the term ‘national home’ could have only one meaning: ‘an autonomous Jewish state in Palestine, and nothing else’. As a positivist, he was aware, however, that if the ‘historical right’ was to become ‘historical reality’, some forceful ‘historic deed’ was required, i.e. mass Jewish immigration, accompanied by vast capital investment. As long as the Jews constituted the minority, their moral and historical proprietorship was in question. As for the Arabs of Palestine, they had ‘possession rights’ to Palestine, and their existence attested to the fact that they were a separate national and anthropological entity.

So the meaning of the full passage is exactly opposite to how Finkelstein tries to frame it using out-of-context truncated quotes - Gorny saya here that, for Nordau, the rights of Arabs of Palestine were self-evident, stemming from their very existence in this land as "a separate national and anthropological entity", whereas the right of the Jews, on the other hand, "was in question", as long as they remained a minority in Palestine.

In other words, for Nordau, "historical rights" were not superior to "possession rights", but on the contrary - the former were nothing more than a potentiality, while the latter was the real thing, and Arabs already had it as given, while Jews still had to "earn" it.

With Jabotinsky, again, Finkelstein misrepresents what Gorny is actually saying.

Here is the full quote from p. 167:

Requisition of an area of land from a nation with large stretches of territory in order to make a home for a wandering people is an act of justice, and if the land-owning nation does not wish to cede it (and this is completely natural) it must be compelled. A sacred truth, for whose realization the use of force is essential, does not cease thereby to be a sacred truth. This is the basis of our stand on Arab opposition; and we shall talk of a settlement only when they are ready to discuss it.

Now, notice what Gorny says just before that, on page 166:

To control Palestine through military might did not inevitably imply a perpetual struggle between the two peoples. According to Jabotinsky’s dialectical approach, the reverse was true. He was not suggesting that it was impossible to arrive at a settlement: ‘ What is impossible is voluntary agreement’, because ‘as long as there lingers in the heart of the Arabs even the faintest hope that they may succeed in ridding themselves of us, there are no blandishments or promises in the world which have the power to persuade them to renounce their hope — precisely because they are not a mob, but a living nation.’ Only when the wave of adamant opposition was shattered against the ‘iron wall’ would moderate response and more practical and measured elements come to the fore. When these forces took up the reins of power, the road would be open to negotiations based on mutual concessions, respect for the rights of the local population, and protection of this population from discrimination and dispossession.

and also what he says on p. 168:

In the political context, however, such indifference could not be maintained, because he was well aware that they were a permanent element in Palestine, and regarded their expulsion from the country as ‘totally unthinkable’. Thus, any solution of the Arab problem must be based on recognition of their national rights, and not only of their civil rights.

If you read this in its entirety, it becomes clear that Jabotinsky doesn't talk about dispossession of Palestinian Arabs or denial of their national rights, but about standing firm against Arab denial of Jewish national rights.

Finkelstein's presentation of Ben-Gurion's views is similarly full of omissions and distortions. For example, Finkelstein's implication that Palestine "belonged" to Jews and not to Arabs is directly contradicted by what Gorny says on p. 210, in the beginning of the passage on which Finkelstein allegedly bases his claims:

This plan was based on several underlying assumptions: (a) ‘Palestine belongs to the Jewish people and to the Arabs who reside therein’.

Moreover Gorny continues:

Ben-Gurion sought to establish a constitutional regime in Palestine in which Jews and Arabs as individuals and as communities would enjoy equal rights. It would be based on the principle that neither people had the right to dominate the other. ‘It is essential to establish just relations between Jews and Arabs, irrespective of majority-minority relations. It must at all times guarantee to both peoples the possibility of undisturbed development and full national independence, in such fashion that at no time will Arabs rule Jews or Jews Arabs.

The passage about "Iraq, Syria and the Arabian peninsula", which Finkelstein misattributes to Ben-Gurion, in fact belongs to Moshe Beilinson, who said (p. 214):

"...The Arab community is not the sole proprietor of this country. It also belongs to the Jewish people, as their homeland...
...the Jewish people should not be deprived of their right to existence because of the need to guarantee the right to self-determination of the Arab inhabitants of the country ... There is a fundamental and decisive difference between the situation of the Arabs as a nation and that of the Jews as a nation. Palestine is not needed by the Arabs from the national point of view. They are bound to other centres. There, in Syria, in Iraq, in the ; Arabian Peninsula lies the homeland of the Arab people.

In other words, the context here is, once again, assertion of Jewish right to build a national home in Palestine, not a denial of Palestinian Arabs' rights.

Finally, here's the full passage about Jewish people's right "to concentrate in Palestine" (p. 218):

Palestine was important to the Jews as a nation and to the Arabs as individuals, and hence the right of the Jewish people to concentrate in Palestine, a right which was not due to the Arabs. This idea of inequality of status was partially amended in his constitutional plan through the self-administration he proposed, aimed at ensuring political equality for the Arab majority (which would some day become a minority).

Here again, Gorny talks about political equality for Arabs, contrary to what Finkelstein tries to imply using a truncated quote. DancingOwl (talk) 14:46, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

None of that contradicts that the Zionist perspective was that the Jews could not permit themselves to compromise or to make significant concessions, and thus the motives of the Arabs (whether base or noble) were of no moral or historical significance. (Gorny's words) DMH223344 (talk) 17:42, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Once again, you omit critical context:

1. Gorny is not making a general statement about Zionism, but talks specifically about Beilinson

2. The passage refers specifically to partition discussions following the Peel Commission proposal

3. The next paragraph reads:

Despite his gloomy, even tragic perception of the situation, Beilinson called for public avowal that the future Jewish state would grant the Arabs full equal political status through a constitutional regime based on parity.

DancingOwl (talk) 20:34, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

No he's not talking specifically about Beilinson, that's why the paragraph I quoted from starts with This was perhaps the ultimate expression of the theory of the necessity of force, accepted by most trends of Zionism. DMH223344 (talk) 00:09, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

So this discussion applies to Zionism as a whole, not just Beilinson. DMH223344 (talk) 00:10, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Let's look at the full quote:

Two months after violence erupted (and shortly before his death), Beilinson asked:
Till when? Till when is the Zionist movement condemned to fight and to struggle for its existence? Until the might of the Jewish people in their own land will, a priori, spell defeat for any adversary who attacks us; until the most ardent and most daring within the enemy camp, wherever they may I be, realize that there is no means of breaking the spirit of the Jewish people in their own land, for theirs is a living need and a living truth and there is no alternative but to accept them. This is the meaning of the struggle.
This was perhaps the ultimate expression of the theory of the necessity of force, accepted by most trends of Zionism. It was accompanied by the assumption that the struggle of the Jewish people, for Palestine was a question of basic survival, ’while for the Arab people, whatever their motives, the fight is not a question of life or I death’. Consequently, the Jews could not permit themselves to compromise or to make significant concessions, and thus the motives of the Arabs (whether base or noble) were of no moral or historical significance. These remarks were based on belief in moral relativity in historical development, but their dangerous implications were tempered by Beilinson’s social democratic value system.
Despite his gloomy, even tragic perception of the situation, Beilinson called for public avowal that the future Jewish state would grant the Arabs full equal political status through a constitutional regime based on parity.

So while the sentence about "the necessity of force" does refer to Zionist views after the Arab Revolt in general, the part about "moral or historical significance" that you quoted initially is a Gorny's paraphrase of Beilinson's words he quoted earlier.

More importantly, as the last quoted sentence shows, this view didn't entail a negation of Arabs' political rights, but only an insistence on assertion of Jewish right to self-determination, despite violent Arab resistance.

This distinction is critical and, as I showed earlier, it also applies to all the passages that Finkelstein selectively quotes from Gorny - when you look at the full passages, it becomes clear that the discussion was never about negating Arab's right to self-determination, but about Jews also having the same right. DancingOwl (talk) 11:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Beilinson's quote does not even mention the arabs, so how could it be a paraphrase? DMH223344 (talk) 17:03, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

He wrote this two month after the Arab revolt broke out - whom do you think he refers to by "adversary who attacks us"? DancingOwl (talk) 18:37, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Also note that the comment about "full equal political status" is based on the assumption that the Arabs would be a small minority. DMH223344 (talk) 17:09, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

What in Gorny's text suggests that Beilinson was making this assumption as a pre-requisite for equal political status? DancingOwl (talk) 18:45, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

On parity:

The intention was to guarantee the civil status of the Arabs in the light of the future expansion of the Jewish population and to consolidate the national rights of the Jews in the face of the existing Arab majority. DMH223344 (talk) 19:03, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

And along those same lines, Ben-Gurion advocated a bi-national regime in which the Jewish people would have ownership rights over Palestine and the Arab community would have the right to reside therein DMH223344 (talk) 19:05, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

We were talking about Beilinson's ideas regarding parity - but the first quote is about Weizmann, the second - about Ben-Gurion, so it doesn't address my question. DancingOwl (talk) 16:32, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

No, I'm talking about Zionism as a whole. The leadership of the movement and its mainstream ideology. DMH223344 (talk) 16:33, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I know you do, but in order to analyze their positions in a meaningful way, we need to look at each of them in context, taking into account the evolution of their views.

Mixing quotes referring to different leaders at different time periods obscures important controversies within the Zionist movement, as well as the evolution of both the personal views of the leaders and of the general consensus. DancingOwl (talk) 16:42, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

We can make a section in the article about all the arguments Zionists had with each other (and when they had them). Selfstudier (talk) 16:44, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Discussion of editors rather than content

The DancingOwl account only got started on Nov. 4, 2024. Top 10 editors to this talk page, measured in bytes: Levivich, 14.9%. AndreJustAndre, 14.5%. Nishidani, 14%. Selfstudier, 11.5%. BrandonYusufToropov, 11.2%. Jayjg, 8.6%. DancingOwl, 7.2%. DMH223344, 7.1%. 1.122.113.194, 6%. Vegan416, 5%. I'm not even mad. This is frankly amazing. (On the substance, the DancingOwl account is wrong. Very, very wrong.)Dan Murphy (talk) 20:15, 12 December 2024 (UTC) 1. I started a year ago 2. Not sure what conclusions need to be drawn, in your view, from the fact that I made two large edits with thorough analysis of the referenced sources 3. Will be happy to hear which part of what I wrote is "very, very wrong" DancingOwl (talk) 20:37, 12 December 2024 (UTC) The DancingOwl account's first edit to this talk page was not a year ago. It was on November 4 2024.[5]. You appear to believe a blizzard of edits and swamping the talk page is the way to victory. But there are no gold stars for the prolix. You should give it a rest.

Any suggestion that it was not an existential issue for Zionists/Zionism to drastically limit the Arab/Palestinian population in Israel is nonsense, as the scholarly literature shows.Dan Murphy (talk) 20:47, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

There's a difference between the obvious cross-interests and animosity versus "as few as possible." This wording really suggests that Zionists were out to make that number 0, and we know that's not true. If they did want it to be 0 it would be by now presumably. Yet the Arab population of Israel is about 20% or over 2 million people. In 1948, that was like 150,000, so if Israel wants that number to be as low as possible, they're very bad at this aim. Andre🚐 20:51, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Not to get too FORUMy, but this kind of argument should also consider the pre-Zionism demography. If the Zionist movement reduced the Arab population in what would become Israel from (say) 95% to 20%, the 20% means something different. Bitspectator ⛩️ 21:16, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Not FORUMy, a good point. Bickerton Klausner has diagrams of the land ownership changes. We know that the total population was changing and the relative populations of Arabs and Jews were changing. AFAIK, there were always many more Arabs, and the Jewish population small but increasing enough that it causes unrest. Actually, I was just reading Bregman and it talks about this somewhere in the first 4 or 5 pages. The number was changing because both groups were moving around prior to any of the formal displacement writ large, which was a discontinuous break. Andre🚐 21:20, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

I like DancingOwl's comments. Bitspectator ⛩️ 20:59, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks DancingOwl (talk) 21:44, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

The table I published earlier shows that the scholarly literature contains a very wide range of perspectives in this question.

You are welcome to address my argument on its merits, instead of taking the ad hominem route. DancingOwl (talk) 21:43, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, the Dan Murphy account's contribution is snarky and unhelpful. Andre🚐 22:03, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

[6] An interesting read: “Karsh has a point,” Morris wrote to The Times Literary Supplement. “My treatment of transfer thinking before 1948 was, indeed, superficial.” He also acknowledged my refutation of his misinterpretation of an important speech made by David Ben-Gurion on December 3, 1947: "[Karsh] is probably right in rejecting the ‘transfer interpretation’ I suggested in The Birth to a sentence in that speech.”13 He also admitted elsewhere that “Karsh appears to be correct in charging that I ‘stretched’ the evidence to make my point.”14 Andre🚐 05:24, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Having spent some time reading all of the evidence presented here, I am very convinced that we cannot say in our voice that "Zionists wanted ...as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible" especially in the very start of the lead. It is a gross over-generalisation that is at odds with the complex reality. We simply can't say "Xs wanted Y" if a significant non-fringe part of the literature says that's not true and if most of the sources say something like "Some Xs wanted Y" or "In some periods most Xs wanted Y". It is also clear to me that enough editors have the same view such that there is no longer a consensus for including this in the lead, so it should be removed.

Personally, I think the proposed alternative "with a Jewish majority" works well and is supported by the literature, so I hope we can get consensus for adding that. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:54, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

We simply can't say "Xs wanted Y" if a significant non-fringe part of the literature says that's not true

Which BESTSOURCES say that it's not true?

I think the proposed alternative "with a Jewish majority" works well

Why would the compromise be weaker than Morris' overwhelming Jewish majority? Bitspectator ⛩️ 14:03, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Which BESTSOURCES say that it's not true?

Did you have a chance to look at the table of sources I published a few days ago?

Why would the compromise be weaker than Morris' overwhelming Jewish majority?

Morris uses this phrase as description of what he calls "underlying thrust of the ideology", which is substantially different from explicit goal/want. And if you look at all the BESTSOURCES listed in the table, you can see that most of them use similar descriptions of the goals/wants only with regard to the later part of the pre-1948 period (mostly forties and late thirties). DancingOwl (talk) 15:06, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

I saw the table. The basic problem is that there is a difference between a source making a weaker claim ("Jewish majority") and a source saying "as many" is not true. For the latter I only see Karsh, and Laqueur, who qualifies it as a pre-WWI position. The Laqueur book was also originally written in 1972. Bitspectator ⛩️ 15:32, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

The basic problem is that there is a difference between a source making a weaker claim ("Jewish majority") and a source saying "as many" is not true

You are absolutely right about the difference, but explicit refutal is not required in order to show that the current phrasing is not the best reflection of the scholarly consensus.

If the statement in the lead makes a certain - very strong - claim, it needs to be supported by a clear consensus among ALL the BESTSOURCES, not just some of them. And if we have an alternative phrasing that is supported by a larger number of explicit quotes from BESTSOURCES, then the second phrasing is clearly preferable, as far as NPOV is concerned. DancingOwl (talk) 15:51, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

The tables above very clearly show that there are BESTSOURCES saying it's not true. There simply isn't a scholarly consensus for "as few Arabs as possible"; there IS a scholarly consensus for "a Jewish majority". I could live with "overwhelming Jewish majority" as closer to the scholarly consensus but it still exceeds it. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:14, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Penslars Herzl and the Palestinian Arabs: Myth and Counter-Myth, Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture, 24:1, 65-77, DOI: 10.1080/13531040500040263 is interesting:

"Intriguingly, very few scholars writing from a Zionist perspective have engaged Herzl’s diary entry of 12 June 1895, in which he writes:

We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. The property owners may believe that they are cheating us, selling to us at more than [the land is] worth. But nothing will be sold back to them.

This text, we shall see, is central to anti-Zionist propaganda and even to respectable recent scholarship that examines Zionism from a critical perspective. But it is not addressed in any of the standard biographies of Herzl5 and in most literature by Israeli scholars on early Zionism’s approach to the Arabs." Selfstudier (talk) 19:29, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

ibid, p. 70:

...The association between Herzl and transfer is not limited to polemics but has recently crept into the work of serious historians such as Lockman, who claims that Herzl’s diary entry specifically envisioned “dispossessing and displacing Palestine’s Arab peasantry,” although in fact at that time Herzl had not determined the location of the Jewish state...

Stewart admits that at the time of the writing of these passages Herzl was unsure where the Jewish state would be established and believes he was leaning towards Latin America...

p. 71-72:

Consider Herzl’s rationale for opposing in May 1903 the proposal, made by the Zionist opposition that favored immediate settlement activity, to purchase lands in the Jezreel Valley made available for sale by the Sursuk family. He displayed not only principled opposition to “infiltration” but also conviction that, according to his first biographer, Adolf Friedmann, “Poor Arab farmers must not be driven off their land.” Two months previously, after visiting the pyramids near Cairo, Herzl jotted in his diary that “the misery of the fellahin by the road is indescribable. I resolve to think of the fellahin too, once I have the power.” This statement could be easily dismissed as yet another puerile fantasy of power and control, but if one is going to approach the diaries in a fundamentally skeptical fashion, consistency should be maintained regardless of the orientation of the entry in question.

p. 74:

By 1901 Herzl had come to believe that in the interests of state building some native landowners might need to be coaxed to cede their property and move elsewhere. But this charter, drawn up after years of negotiation and politicking both within the Zionist movement and among the crowned heads of Europe, is a far cry from the program for total expropriation jotted down in the late spring of 1895, before Herzl had even effectively formulated a Zionist program.

DancingOwl (talk) 20:16, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Morris goes into it as well, linking it to transfer. Selfstudier (talk) 12:58, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

And Karsh goes to great lengths criticizing the fact that Morris also omitted critical context:

Morris’s only ‘evidence’ for this claim is a truncated paragraph from Herzl’s 12 June 1895 diary entry, which had been a feature of Palestinian propaganda for decades prior to its ‘discovery’ by Morris. But this entry is not enough to support such a claim, given contradictory evidence. There was no trace of such a belief in either Herzl’s famous political treatise The Jewish State (1896) or his 1902 Zionist novel Altneuland (Old-New Land). Nor for that matter is there any allusion to ‘transfer’ in Herzl’s public writings, private correspondence, or his speeches and political and diplomatic discussions. Morris simply discards the canon of Herzl’s life’s work in favour of a single, isolated quote.
But what did Herzl actually write in his diary? Here is the complete text, with the passages omitted by Morris in italics:

When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly ...
It goes without saying that we shall respectfully tolerate persons of other faiths and protect their property, their honour, and their freedom with the harshest means of coercion. This is another area in which we shall set the entire world a wonderful example ... Should there be many such immovable owners in individual areas [who would not sell their property to us], we shall simply leave them there and develop our commerce in the direction of other areas which belong to us..

By omitting the opening sentence, Morris hides the fact that Herzl viewed Jewish settlement as beneficial to the indigenous population and that he did not conceive of the new Jewish entity as comprising this country in its entirety. This is further underscored by Herzl’s confinement of the envisaged expropriation of private property to ‘the estates assigned to us’ – another fact omitted by Morris. Any discussion of relocation was clearly limited to the specific lands assigned to the Jews, rather to the entire territory. Had Herzl envisaged the mass expulsion of the population, as claimed by Morris, there would have been no need to discuss its position in the Jewish entity.
Most importantly, Herzl’s diary entry makes no mention of either Arabs or Palestine, and for good reason. A careful reading of Herzl’s diary entries for June 1895 reveals that he considered Argentina, rather than Palestine, to be the future site of Jewish resettlement...
‘I am assuming that we shall go to Argentina’, Herzl recorded in his diary on 13 June. ... Indeed, as vividly illustrated by Herzl’s diary entries during the same month, all political and diplomatic activities for the creation of the future Jewish state, including the question of the land and its settlement, were conceived in the Latin American context...
In short, Morris based his arguments on a red herring. He not only misrepresents a quote to distort its original meaning, but he ignores the context, which had nothing to do with Palestine or Arabs.

DancingOwl (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Uh huh, I'm sticking with best sources tho, I can pull up any number of sources if we open it up to Karsh type sourcing (ie polemical). Selfstudier (talk) 15:45, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

1. Karsh is a professional historian and "Israel Affairs" is a peer-reviewed journal published by Taylor & Francis - so his article definitely qualifies for inclusion in BESTSOURCES.

2. Penslar says very similar things in the paper that you yourself quoted. DancingOwl (talk) 16:08, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

No objections to using Penslar, he was on the bestsources list we drew up a while back and I am not saying that Karsh cannot be used, Idk how reliable this is but I would at least start there if I was going to look into the matter. Selfstudier (talk) 16:14, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I find this characterization of Karsh rather ironic, in context of the ongoing RFC about the lead: :)

"...focusing on sources which support his argument, whilst failing to engage with the full range of evidence...

DancingOwl (talk) 16:26, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

More importantly, Penslar - whom you quoted as allegedly supporting the interpretation that Herzl wanted "as few Arabs as possible" - is actually disputing this interpretation, if you look at his article in full. DancingOwl (talk) 16:34, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Then why mention Karsh at all? Selfstudier (talk) 16:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

because you mentioned Morris using the same quote DancingOwl (talk) 16:44, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

So your idea is that Karsh refutes Morris? Selfstudier (talk) 16:48, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

He definitely disputes Morris' interpretation, and I don't think it's our job as editors to try determine whose interpretation is "better" - we just need to take into account the fact the such a controversy among the experts exists. DancingOwl (talk) 17:00, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

It depends, on what it is you want to cite Karsh for, I might not be disposed to accept what he says as due, whereas I would have much less difficulty in accepting what Morris says as being due. Selfstudier (talk) 17:13, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

could you elaborate why you consider that Morris' thesis is due and Karsh's is not? DancingOwl (talk) 18:35, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

That's not what I said either, I said it depends on what you want to cite Karsh for. Selfstudier (talk) 18:37, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

whom you quoted as allegedly supporting the interpretation that Herzl wanted "as few Arabs as possible" That's not what I did, look again. Selfstudier (talk) 16:40, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

ok, perhaps I misunderstood - what was the point you wanted to make with this Penslar's quote? DancingOwl (talk) 16:45, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I will repeat a part of what I quoted already This text, we shall see, is central to anti-Zionist propaganda and even to respectable recent scholarship that examines Zionism from a critical perspective. But it is not addressed in any of the standard biographies of Herzl and in most literature by Israeli scholars on early Zionism’s approach to the Arabs."

My interest lies more in this type of statement rather than (some historian) thinks (whatever they think), which is just the view of one historian. Selfstudier (talk) 16:52, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

ok, got it - I agree that such meta-statements are important, but first of all, after making this statement, Penslar himself undertakes the task of critically addressing this quote, hence - at least partially - filling the gap he pointed to.

And second, here is another meta-statement from his 2023 book, that is highly relevant to this whole discussion:

"There is a deep divide, however, between scholars who do and do not conceive of Zionism as a variety of colonialism. Debates about virtually every aspect of the history of Zionism and Israel boil down to clashing conceptions of the essence of the Zionist project—whether it has been one of homecoming and seeking asylum or one of colonial settlement and expropriation. Two key questions run through the debate over Zionism and colonialism. First, is Zionism inherently inclusive or separatist, open to the coterminous exercise of Jewish and Arab self-determination within historic Palestine, or determined to drive the indigenous Palestinians out of the land?..."

And, as I said earlier, this is the core point of my criticism of the current phrasing about 'as few Arabs as possible.' It's not that this perspective is not a valid POV held by several important scholars — it certainly is. However, it reflects just one side of the spectrum, rather than a broad scholarly consensus on the essence of the Zionist project. DancingOwl (talk) 18:31, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

And you have determined this broad scholarly consensus how, exactly? Selfstudier (talk) 18:38, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

1. Using Penslar's definition of the two side of the spectrum

2. By examining what multiple RS belonging to different parts of the spectrum have to say about core Zionist goals regarding Jewish-Arab relationships and demographic balance (see table above). DancingOwl (talk) 18:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Those sources you brought earlier are only to do with the few Arabs as possible thing not the "essence of the Zionist project". Penslar (again, one historian) says of the essence, return or colonialism, perhaps it is both and how much of each is open to debate, Idk. Then two key questions...inclusive or separatist? And ME integration (the continuation that you omitted). We are not going to get very far with this if all we do is pick out bits of quotes that we like. Selfstudier (talk) 19:03, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

It's a good point, here Penslar is talking about "essence" specifically, not about whether it is and has been "inclusive or separatist." DMH223344 (talk) 19:20, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

He talks about scholarly debates regarding this "essence", and then elaborates:

Two key questions run through the debate over Zionism and colonialism. First, is Zionism inherently inclusive or separatist, open to the coterminous exercise of Jewish and Arab self-determination within historic Palestine, or determined to drive the indigenous Palestinians out of the land? And second, has Israel been willing to integrate into the Arab Middle East, or is it determined to dwell in isolation, buttressed by alliances and cultural ties with Western powers?"

The first of those question - ...is Zionism inherently inclusive or separatist, open to the coterminous exercise of Jewish and Arab self-determination within historic Palestine, or determined to drive the indigenous Palestinians out of the land? - is directly related to the discussion we are having about the "as few Palestinian Arabs as possible" part of the lead. DancingOwl (talk) 19:38, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

And the answer is? Selfstudier (talk) 19:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Those are the questions being discussed as part of the debate Penslar describes, and naturally each side of the debate gives a different answer to those questions. DancingOwl (talk) 19:49, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

The sentence being discussed in RFC describes core Zionist goal as "create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible".

My claim is that at least the "as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible" part is not a reflection of scholarly consensus, which why the table above focuses only on those two aspects, with particular emphasis on the "as few Arabs" part.

For the purposes of this discussion, the key observation Penslar makes is a meta-statement about existence of major controversies regarding the "essence of the Zionist project". In particular, he points out two key questions/dimensions, one of which is directly related to the "as few Arabs" claim - "... is Zionism inherently inclusive or separatist, open to the coterminous exercise of Jewish and Arab self-determination within historic Palestine, or determined to drive the indigenous Palestinians out of the land" - which is why I quoted this part and not the second one, which is irrelevant to this discussion.

So it's not a matter of "bits of quotes that we like", but of relevance to the topic being discussed. DancingOwl (talk) 19:30, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I have said what I wanted to say. Selfstudier (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I already cited that in an earlier debate about colonialism (see the archives). Selfstudier (talk) 18:40, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

This doesn't really tell us much. Plenty of colonial projects said that they would bring benefits to the natives. And the fact that Palestine had not been decided on at this point also does not mean much. The project required demographic homogeneity (Shafir: The goal of Zionism was to colonize Palestine and establish homogeneous Jewish settlements while suppressing Palestinian national aspirations.) which depended on the removal of the native population, regardless of its location. DMH223344 (talk) 16:35, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the "benefits" is the weaker part of Karsh's critique, and, in any case, as I said above, Penslar makes a much more thorough argument against interpreting this diary entry as evidence of Herzl's support for "as few Arab as possible" narrative. DancingOwl (talk) 16:54, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I think Masalha's treatment of this entry captures the main point well (as an early reference to the idea):

The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat . An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem”—the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land” and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.

DMH223344 (talk) 17:08, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

yes, this is pretty much how Penslar describes this thesis, as promoted in "anti-Zionist propaganda and ... recent scholarship that examines Zionism from a critical perspective".

but then the bulk of this article is dedicated to the question of whether this interpretation of a single diary entry is indeed justified, and he provides several examples contesting such interpretation and pointing to evolution of Herzl's views, concluding with (emphasis mine):

By 1901 Herzl had come to believe that in the interests of state building some native landowners might need to be coaxed to cede their property and move elsewhere. But this charter, drawn up after years of negotiation and politicking both within the Zionist movement and among the crowned heads of Europe, is a far cry from the program for total expropriation jotted down in the late spring of 1895, before Herzl had even effectively formulated a Zionist program.

DancingOwl (talk) 18:17, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

That can be read as saying that his thought (albeit less forceful) continued through 1901? Selfstudier (talk) 18:31, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I think that would be inaccurate, because the difference between "some" and "all" (or even "most") is a categorical one, it's not just a difference of degree. DancingOwl (talk) 18:38, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Putting it all together, Penslar acknowledges that most scholarly references to the diary entry are part of a discussion of the origins of "transfer" in Zionist thought. My understanding is that he doesn't think much weight should be given to that entry. So it's his assessment against most scholarly references. DMH223344 (talk) 19:33, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

On this particular question - it is, indeed, his (and Karsh's) assessment against proponents of the "as few Arabs as possible" narrative.

But if we look at the discussion about this narrative as a whole, and not only the question of importance (or lack of) of this particular diary entry - there is a multitude of scholarly voices contesting this narrative (again, see the table above) DancingOwl (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

A private diary from the 1890s definitely isn't the place where mainstream Zionist positions were publicly articulated for the 1900s to 1940s period. Again, it's clear there is no scholarly consensus for "as few Arabs as possible" being the broad Zionist position, particularly in this period, so we just need to agree a form of wording to replace it, e.g. "with a Jewish majority". BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:45, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree (lots of sources reference it) and it will need a new RFC for that once the current one is dealt with. Selfstudier (talk) 15:49, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Lots of sources reference it doesn’t mean it’s taken as a good gauge of mainstream Zionist opinion for all subsequent decades. BobFromBrockley (talk) 04:11, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Bob, but good look finding a consensus for an alternative text, or even a consensus to make any change. Despite I think a good argument being made above, we appear to still not be winning over the hearts and minds on this. Andre🚐 04:24, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Imo, we need to move away from the list (of those historians who agree with me) mentality and look for more meta type discussions, after all this is primarily a history article so those should exist. I realise the historiography is fraught and polarized so then we should reflect that but we should do it properly, at least to the extent possible. Selfstudier (talk) 11:59, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree that meta-level discussions would be extremely valuable, but apart from Heller 2006 and Penslar 2023, mentioned above, I haven't encountered any other attempts to provide a balanced bird-eye view of the topic. DancingOwl (talk) 15:27, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

The question is bound up with the idea of transfer. If we take The British Mandate in Palestine A Centenary Volume, 1920–2020 Ed by Michael J Cohen then

There is a contribution by Hillel Cohen, 9. Zionism as a blessing to the Arabs: History of an argument presented as "in contrast to the Zionist approach that focused on the Jewish people only, and believed that it was better to evacuate (“transfer”) the Arabs of Palestine in order to establish a homogenous Jewish state. Whereas the idea of transferring the Arabs has been discussed at length in the literature by supporters and opponents, 1", where the "1" is footnoted to these four:

Israel Shahak, A history of the concept of ‘transfer’ in Zionism, Journal of Palestine Studies, 18/3, 1989, pp. 22–37;

Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians:The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948, Washington DC: Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1992;

Chaim Simons, A Historical Survey of Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895–1947, Gengis Khan Publishers, Internet edition 2004;

Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 39–64

Well we have Masalha and Morris in our Transfer section of the article (along with Gorny, Finkelstein, Ben Ami and Flapan) but I don't see the other two, nor in Dancing Owl list either, perhaps there is a reason for that. So there is part confirmation for our sourcing and a path to perhaps seek out more.

We should try to see if there are more such reference which pick out suitable sourcing on the issue of transfer in order to confirm that our sourcing constitutes a representative sampling. Selfstudier (talk) 17:33, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

So far I think only a single source (Karsh) denies the desirability of a "as few Arabs as possible" and we have a whole list saying that mainstream Zionism did indeed want "as few Arabs as possible." And Penslar says that there is a debate about the essence of Zionism: is it "inclusive or separatist?" While some authors cited do describe "as few Arabs as possible" as a fundamental, or essential aspect of the Zionist "ethos" (Ben-Ami's word), our statement is about the goals of Zionism, not necessarily about it's essence. DMH223344 (talk) 18:15, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

For some reason, you keep ignoring what Penslar says immediately after "inclusive or separatist":

"open to the coterminous exercise of Jewish and Arab self-determination within historic Palestine, or determined to drive the indigenous Palestinians out of the land?

."determined to drive the indigenous Palestinians out of the land" is exactly the "as few Arabs as possible" part of the spectrum, and it's the only one that is being reflected in the lead currently, whereas the "open to the coterminous exercise of Jewish and Arab self-determination within historic Palestine" view is being completely ignored. DancingOwl (talk) 07:46, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree, and it's splitting hairs to claim the essence of Zionism is completely a different animal from the ethos of Zionism. Penslar clearly regards this as an issue and not a settled question. I also don't think Penslar and Karsh are standing alone. Well, Penslar's more in the middle, and Karsh on the conservative side. I'll offer some more quotes from Sachar in late 1930s: Evidently there was no way to divide Palestine without leaving a substantial Arab minority within Jewish borders... p.207, and late 40s summer of 1947, the Zionists had been explicit and emphatic in their assurances that the Arab minority of a projected Jewish state would enjoy full civil, national, and cultural rights p. 382, and from Laqueur about Jabotinsky (p.530) Revisionism recognised that there would be a substantial Arab minority in Palestine even after Jews became the majority. Or Engel, (p.138) Demographic issues worried Zionist leaders greatly after the UN partition plan left the Jewish state with an Arab minority of 400,000 – nearly 40 per cent of its population. The 1948 war mitigated those worries only somewhat. Three-quarters of the Arabs in question fled or were chased from areas designated for the Jewish state; several hundred thousand Arab residents of the additional regions Israel added in the course of repelling the invading armies became refugees as well. Nevertheless, 150,000 Arabs remained in Israel following the armistice, and international pressure for repatriating the refugees was considerable. The prospect that Israel would have only the barest Jewish majority thus loomed large in the imagination of the state’s leaders. To be sure, until the late 1930s most Zionists would have been delighted with any majority, no matter how slim; the thought that Jews in Palestine would ever be more numerous than Arabs appeared a distant vision. But in 1937 the Peel Commission had suggested that partition be accompanied by a negotiated ‘exchange of populations’....Still, the 150,000 who remained on Israeli territory seemed to many to constitute an unacceptably high proportion relative to the 650,000 Jews in the country when the state came into being. This perception not only dictated Israel’s adamant opposition to the return of Arab refugees, it reinforced the imperative to bring as many new Jewish immigrants into the country as possible, as quickly as possible, no matter how great or small their prospects for becoming the sort of ‘new Jews’ the state esteemed most.... Stanislawski, p.66: challenge to Zionism in the new state was resolved by a formal recognition of the equal rights of the Arab minority in Israel in the Declaration of Independence, combined with the imposition of military rule over Arabs in Israel... Shapira p.462, speaking of recent times The demographic growth of the Arab minority in Israel, which in the year 2000 numbered about 900,000, heightens its self-confidence. Paradoxically this growing self-confidence is evidence that Israeli Arabs are internalizing the Israeli democratic ethos, which enables them to use their numbers to achieve rights and equality. ... In addition government allocations to the Arab sector for education, development, and industrial projects are far lower than those for the Jewish sector. Discrimination is slowly but surely diminishing, and among Jews there is growing recognition of the need to prevent discrimination in the future. But the prospect of civil equality peace, war, and indecision in the future does not satisfy the Arab public, and a prominent sector of its elites demands a basic change in the identity of the state as a condition for them to accept it. The definition opposite to a "Jewish and democratic state" is, as suggested earlier, ‘‘a state of all its citizens’’—that is, a state that is neutral with respect to nationality and ethnicity, whose citizenship will be solely secular-Israeli. Within the framework of such a citizenship, the entire population would be subject to a single standard in the immigration laws. In fact this would be "a state of all its nationalities," since the Arabs demand recognition as a national group, partnership in decisions pertaining to them, regional autonomy, and equal status for the Arabic language. As an interim stage, the Arabs of Israel seek recognition as a minority with intrinsic minority rights, such as recognition of their organization as a national organization, their leaders’ right to represent them on the national stage, and cultural and educational autonomy. ...The Israeli Arabs see themselves as citizens of the state, and as such eligible for all the rights that status gives. But they do not recognize the Jewish state per se as their state, as representing them too. ...the Israeli Arabs bitterly oppose suggestions regarding repartition of the country, including transfer of Arab-populated areas on the Israeli side of the Green Line to the PA in return for the West Bank settlements; they accuse the Israelis of racism. The political, economic, and social instability of Palestinian society compared with Israeli democracy (despite all its shortcomings)... [08:10, 22 December 2024 (UTC)] Also checkout the chapter "Zionist Thinkers and the “Arab Question" of Amar-Dahl about Zionism not being a monolith: The alternative approach to the Arab question was what Gorny calls the “altruistic-integrationist” one. Here, the realization of Zionism is predicated upon the Jewish capacity to integrate into the Orient. Yitzhak Epstein (1863–1943) is regarded as a major proponent of this position. In 1907, he published an essay entitled “The Hidden Question,” in which he addressed what he saw as the crucial problem of Zionism, namely whether it was able or willing to integrate into the region. He criticized the prevalent Zionist approach of blocking out the Arab question and advocated instead for its active integration into Zionism. Epstein believed this to be the right course for the Zionist objective, from the moral as well as the realpolitik point of view. A favorable reception of the Jews by the Palestinians would benefit both. It would mean progress for the latter while the Jews would be given a homeland. He saw the shared Semitic origins of both peoples as a basis for such cooperation and actually considered it counterpro- ductive to Zionist goals that the new immigrants to Palestine take a colonialist or repressive stance. Furthermore, Epstein didn’t think that the Arab nationalism of the early twentieth century was necessarily an adversary of Jewish nationalism. Rather, he endorsed a policy geared towards balance and compromise with the objective of advancing the national development of the Arabs, which would be in the interests of Zionism as well. Andre🚐 08:21, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Im not distinguishing between ethos and essence. I'm saying that for example Ben-Ami characterizes the desire for minimum arabs to be part of the essence of zionism. Other authors describe Zionism as wanting as few arabs as possible, but do not describe that as part of the essence of Zionism. DMH223344 (talk) 08:22, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

But some Zionists thought that the Arab minority would remain and integrate. For example, Amar-Dahl: In the utopian novel The Old New Land (Altneuland, 1902), in which Herzl sketched his ideas of the new Jewish society in Eretz Israel, the author does ded-icate several pages to the Arabs who are already living in that region. But the main viewing directionof these passages remains fixated on the firm belief in the positive effects that a Jewish settlement would have on the development of the country, and thus presents a fixed conception that the Jewish presence would elevate the living standard of the Arab population. As such, Herzl thought that they would be grateful to Zionism Andre🚐 08:24, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Of course you can pick out statements and writings from zionist leadership along these lines. But here we are talking about the movement as a whole. At times when the movement was struggling or its success less clear, it was more open to compromise; that doesn't mean that the movement wanted to compromise. For example, recall that it was the arguments put forward against transfer were primarily on the basis of its practicality; Shapira: The mainstream viewed it [transfer] as a good thing that one could, if need be, do without. I'm not saying that Shapira is the ultimate authority on this issue, what I'm saying is that the movement wanted one thing but felt it had to settle for another.

So the desirability of transfer was certainly there. And we have a wide range of scholars who state "as few arabs" explicitly when describing zionism as a whole: off the top of my head, Shlaim, Slater, Ben-Ami, Masalha. The presence of Ben-Ami in this list is a strong indicator that this is in fact a mainstream view. DMH223344 (talk) 18:51, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Since this whole dispute concerns the question of if and when population transfer was considered by the Zionist mainstream to be one of Zionism's core goals, the relevant meta-level discussion would be one that explores different views on this "if and when" question in a neutral and balanced way.

An article starting with unqualified assertion that Zionist approach was "focused on the Jewish people only, and believed that it was better to evacuate (“transfer”) the Arabs of Palestine in order to establish a homogenous Jewish state." is nowhere near that and is just another example of "the list (of those historians who agree with me) mentality" I thought we were trying to avoid. DancingOwl (talk) 07:34, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

As a sidenote, I find the following passage from the "Editor's introduction" to the volume you quoted from quite illuminating:

The second ‘absentee’ is Ilan Pappé, the Israeli expat who has become something of a popular cult figure, arguably the chief advocate of the Palestinian Arab cause on European University campuses. His absence here is due to his having crossed the clear line between academic integrity and propaganda. Fifteen years ago, he wrote:
My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the ‘truth’ when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and preposterous.

This could be relevant in context of our previous discussion about BESTSOURCES, given the fact that Pappe is being quoted above both directly and indirectly (via Rouhana&Sabbagh-Khoury 2014, p. 6, and Lentin 2010, p. 7). DancingOwl (talk) 08:03, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

If you want to discuss bestsources again, best open a new section. Getting back to the transfer issue, we have Morris and Masalha sort of confirmed as being good sources on this subject and can we please find other sources that cite them and/or anyone else for this topic, individual quotes from individual historians are not that useful, there are hundreds of them. We need a list and then we can see what that looks like when we run it past what we think are our best sources. Selfstudier (talk) 10:10, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

It is alarming that editors have so-far succeeded in pushing edits that paint with a brush that portrays the most extreme extensions of Zionism as integral to it. keep In mind: people like Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Elijah Cummings identified with Zionism, which does not pare with how Zionism is now being portrayed in this article. 10:19, 22 December 2024 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SecretName101 (talk • contribs)

Idk what this is supposed to be about but it is unsourced personal opinion afaics and has nothing to do with the subject under discussion here.Selfstudier (talk) 10:37, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

portraying the most extremist strands of Zionism as integral core beliefs of all Zionists is a SERIOUS problem. This would be akin to portraying the views of jihadists as the integral core beliefs of all Islam SecretName101 (talk) 03:09, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree - this is exactly why multiple editors objected to this phrasing since it was introduced back in August, and also the reason for the RFC above DancingOwl (talk) 06:59, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

More unsourced personal opinion. The sentence first made it's appearance in the Nakba article a year ago, it was merely copied here. Multiple editors supported this phrasing, sufficient of them for it to gain a consensus (including over objections by socks) and the RFC above (seeking removal of the entire sentence) appears at present likely to reaffirm that consensus. Selfstudier (talk) 09:17, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

1. As I showed above, a large part of the cherry-picked sources allegedly supporting this phrasing do, in fact, talk specifically about 1947-1948 period, so in the Nakba article this sentence at least made sense period-wise, but it's very innacurate as framing of Zionist consensus during the whole pre-state period.

2. While the way the RFC was formulated is problematic, most if not all the editors supporting the change talked about rephrasing the sentence in question, not removing it.

3. Most of the editors supporting the phrasing accepted the list produced by @Levivich as evidence of scholarly consensus, without going back to the sources and checking the context from which the truncated quotes were taken. However, as I show above, when considered in full and within context, it becomes clear that most of the cited sources don't support this characterisation of core Zionist goals since movement inception, especially the "as few Arabs as possible" part. Moreover, the additional references I provided either explicitly contest parts of this narrative promoted in this sentence, or at least point to academic controversy around this narrative. DancingOwl (talk) 10:05, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

No objection to revisiting all sources in order to once again determine best sources. Editors have already commented on your list of sources (btw, why are only your sources not cherrypicked?). Look at semantic scholar stats below and see where Karsh, prominent in your list and who you posit as refuting Morris, comes in comparatively. We should do a similar exercise for all sources including those not in your list such as Zureik. Selfstudier (talk) 10:34, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

1. I didn't say that the sources currently used don't qualify as BESTSOURCES (apart from a couple of them who are tertiary sources and one that talks about 2006, the rest are perfectly ok), but that they only represent one side of the scholarly spectrum, and not the consensus, and that at least some of them don't really support the sentence in question.

2. Since all the currently used sources represent only one side of the academic debate, naturally the complementary list I shared contains sources from the other side of the spectrum. And since I don't suggest that those additional sources are the only ones that should be used, but rather propose to look at the entire spectrum of academic positions - including both the current sources and the ones I added - this is literally the opposite of cherry-picking.

3. Starting to compare scholars' stats, in order to determine where the needle of the academic consensus should point to exactly, would be WP:OR par excellence. DancingOwl (talk) 11:37, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Determining the relative value of sourcing is something we actually do, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Scholarship "One may be able to confirm that discussion of the source has entered mainstream academic discourse by checking what scholarly citations it has received in citation indexes or lists such as DOAJ." and "However, some scholarly material may be outdated, in competition with alternative theories, controversial within the relevant field, or largely ignored by the mainstream academic discourse because of lack of citations." Selfstudier (talk) 11:50, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

1. The passage you quoted provides a secondary criteria for determining whether a particular publication should be considered a RS - not a ranking of authors holding opposite positions in academic debate.

2. Not sure where you got Karsh's stats from - the numbers I see on his Semantic Scholar page are 18/203/1416/42 DancingOwl (talk) 07:26, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

If I just pick up raw data from semanticscholar:

Masalha - h-index 9, 42 publications, 335 citations, 19 influential

Morris - 15/87/1449/45

Those two are also cited by Zureik 19/102/1304/37 Demography and transfer: Israel’s road to nowhere

(cf Karsh 3/10/24/2 18/203/1416/42 Penslar 10/86/458/11) Selfstudier (talk) 10:51, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Slater (12/91/448/13) Mythologies without End pp 46-51 cites:

Morris, "A New Exodus for the Middle East?" This is a summary of the voluminous archival evidence developed by Morris in a number of his major works, including Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited and Righteous Victims. Other major works on transfer include Shlaim, Israel and Palestine, especially 54–61; Shahak, "A History of the Concept of 'Transfer' in Zionism"; Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine; and Flapan, Birth, especially 103–6. See also the frank appraisal of Shlomo Ben-Ami, a Labor Party activist and minister of Internal Security and then foreign minister of Israel, who wrote, "The idea of population transfers had a long and solid pedigree in Zionist thought” (Ben-Ami, "A War to Start All Wars"). A number of Palestinian writers have discussed the concept of transfer in Zionist thought—and action. The most important is Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians.

Another mention for Shahak there. Selfstudier (talk) 11:18, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

References

KronosAlight additions

To editor KronosAlight:
(1) When did Herzl "[portray] Jewish assimilation as a failed attempt to avoid their inevitable genocide"?
(2) How did the US Emergency Quota Act of 1921 "limit Jewish migration to Palestine"?
(3) How many Jews emigrated to Palestine during WWII compared to the quota set by the White Paper?
I see your edits have been reverted. Now check the notice at the top of this page about obtaining confirmative consensus before repeating them. Pyramids09, that means you too. Zero^talk 10:26, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

These were the edits I mentioned here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Zionism#c-Lewisguile-20241215100100-Revert_of_text_still_being_discussed_at_RfC I realised they were quite extensive and covered the text currently under RfC. Lewisguile (talk) 11:15, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

1) Theodor Herzl, Letters and Journals (Jerusalem: Mizpa, 1928), p. 129., among many other places in his writings and publications.

2) Clearly a typo. It limited Jewish immigration to the US, leaving Jews with few options to escape the intensifying anti-Jewish violence across Europe. This Quota Act was in effect during the Holocaust.

3) Interesting question, you should look it up and find an answer. KronosAlight (talk) 11:23, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

1) I know that citation even with the same punctuation. It refers to a speech that Herzl was planning to deliver to Lord Rothschild asking for a billion francs. Full text in Herzl's diary entry for June 13, 1895. It doesn't mention assimilation. Herzl asserted that the Rothschilds had such vast wealth ("Ihr Kredit ist enorm, monströs. Ihr Kredit betrügt viele Milliarden.") that they would soon have to liquidate their assets and what better beneficiary than Zionism? It was a typical Herzl fantasy that as usual didn't happen. Herzl was concerned about the dangers of growing antisemitism, including violence, but the claim that he foresaw the Holocaust is pure mythology. Incidentally, in this speech he expresses preference for Argentina over Palestine.

3) I know the answer already, but it was you who wrote something relying on it in the article so I wondered what your source was. Zero^talk 14:02, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

El-Haj 2

@Butterscotch Beluga pointed out to me on my talk page that the quote to El Haj isn't even an accurate summation of her views. I agree. It should be revised. El Haj "isn't saying that there will never be proof of shared genetics among Jews. Instead, she points out that, at the time, even when the science wasn't there yet to prove it, it was treated as a guaranteed truth" (quoting BB) and this is a much more nuanced claim than the present article text. Andre🚐 22:30, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Do you have a citation to El Haj rather than another editor? Or maybe some secondary and tertiary sources who reflect on what El Haj means? That would be helpful for reaching speedy consensus on what to replace the quote with. Lewisguile (talk) 09:06, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

The full quote can be read on p. 18 and I agree that this is about something in history, not current. She talks about the Ostrer stuff on p.123. It points out the research was widely acceptd and also says that Zoosman-Diskin was dismissed or widely ignored. This has only accelerated since then. Roughly what I'd want to do is add something from Ostrer's 2020 article or one of the other review or summaries (like Balter 2010, even though old) and attribute whatever critical El Haj quote. We could also use Kahn who summarizes both, or something like one of these [7] [8] [9] [10] Andre🚐 13:40, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

It's not just El-Haj, you have Weitzmann, Yardumian as well, apart from Falk and McGonigle, all saying much the same sort of thing, that genetics is not the be all and end all. So bashing El-Haj, which seems to be a popular sport, has it's limits. Selfstudier (talk) 14:11, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

First of all, that doesn't address that the current material in the article isn't even an accurate summary of El-Haj. Regarding the other sources,

• it's true that McGonigle is also critical of "genomic citizenship" and "biologization of Jewish culture and historical narrative[11], but he doesn't deny that there are markers of Jewish ethnicity in DNA. In fact he's critical of the use of DNA tests to determine Jewishness but doesn't deny that they can. He's concerned more with the politics, not in claiming that genetic evidence of Jewishness is "elusive."
• As I mentioned earlier, Falk is outdated. He also doesn't say what you are claiming he says. Falk also admits that there is a Middle Eastern component to Jewish ancestry: findings support the hypothesis that posits that European Jews are comprised of Caucasus, European, and Middle Eastern ancestries
• Weitzman also doesn't support your argument. Weitzman 2017 on p. 275: I am not a geneticist and cannot claim any expertise... p. 308: El-Haj has convinced many readers that modern Jewish genetics research is a twenty-first-century race science...To accept the critique of genetics as a revived form of race science, there are a lot of things one has to downplay or ignore... p.314 I have read many reviews of Abu El-Haj's work, but scarcely any have been written by geneticists themselves, perhaps a sign that they do not take her argument seriously or are not even aware of it[12]
• Yarudumian also references the studies, and has a nuanced critique that doesn't support what you claim, writing:

  Population genetics research into this question has done much to clarify the related- ness of Jewish individuals and groups, but also fostered its own series of conflicts where geography and chronology are concerned. Of the numerous and varied studies published since the 1950s, some number of researchers have interpreted the genetic data as showing that Jewish people constitute a mostly homogeneous community that emerged from Hebrew-speaking tribes of the Levant, with or without limited European and North African admixture (Behar et al. 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2006, 2010; Hammer et al. 2000, 2009; Livshits et al. 1991; Ostrer and Skorecki 2013; Rootsi et al. 2013; Shen et al. 2004; Skorecki et al. 1997). Other researchers are more circumspect in their conclusions concerning a specific geographic origin or sim- ply have not been directly concerned with the issue, focusing instead on genetic ad- mixture between Jewish and non-Jewish Middle Eastern men (Hammer et al. 2000), within Ashkenazi Jews (e.g., Behar et al. 2004a; Carmi 2014; Listman et al. 2010; Need et al. 2009), and between Jewish populations (Behar et al. 2010; Bray et al. 2010; Campbell et al. 2012; Zoossmann-Diskin 2010). Certain genome-wide stud- ies have yielded a view of Jewish populations as being tightly clustered and reasonably distinct from neighboring populations (Behar et al. 2010; Campbell et al. 2012), while very recent research into admixture history (Xue et al. 2017) has further re- vealed the complexity of Jewish (in this case, Ashkenazi) population history. Various other studies offer further valuable insights into the genetic composition of contempo- rary Jewish communities (Atzmon et al. 2010; Behar et al. 2003, 2004b, 2006, 2013; Feder et al. 2007; Haber et al. 2013; Hammer et al. 2000, 2009; Karlin et al. 1979; Kopelman et al. 2009; Livshits et al. 1991; Muhsam 1964; Nebel et al. 2001, 2005; Olshen et al. 2008; Ostrer and Skorecki 2013; Seldin et al. 2006; Shen et al. 2004; Thomas et al. 1998)..these findings suggest a common ancestry for Ashkenazi, North African, and Sephardi Jews, the analysis also revealed support for an Italian source in the autosomal single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis, thus suggesting a southern European origin.....The most compelling evidence to date of a mosaic ancestry for contemporary Jews comes from the work of Xue et al. (2017). Their admixture analysis suggested a 70% European origin (and within this, 55% Southern Europe, 10% Eastern Europe, 5% Western Europe) and a 30% “Levantine” component in Jewish populations.

  These sources don't support the language that Jewish DNA evidence is "forever elusive." In fact, Yarudumian supports the idea of Middle Eastern heritage and has a nuanced take on whether Jewish ancestry is a mosaic versus more homogeneous, but doesn't in any way support the current claim of "elusiveness."

Andre🚐 20:45, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

I have some different quotes. Selfstudier (talk) 21:04, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

But surely you admit that Weitzman is not in El-Haj's camp, he threw a bit of shade at her currency even though he's sympathetic to some of what she says, but it can't be read as a full-scale endorsement. Yardumian doesn't mention El-Haj at all, unless I missed it, and he does like Xue. Yardumian is skeptical and critical, and I'd be happy to use him for some things. But he also isn't a geneticist nor is Schurr his co-author. Both are anthropologists. Anyway, I know there are definitely quotes in there that are skeptical, and that could be part of balancing the POVs and writing a balanced view of what disagreements there are in this field. But again, this is anthropologists adding nuance to a genetic field. And as mentioned, Yardumian likes Xue and Ostrer likes Xue, so what's the problem with Xue? Andre🚐 04:01, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

As I said, I'm not specifically referring to El-Haj bashing, just the general conclusions, whether by geneticists or not. So, for example, Weitzman writes

"The Jewish Genetic Narrative - The same may well be true of what genetics can tell us about the origin of the Jews. Genetic history is a developing field, and like most science, a self-correcting one, and perhaps someday, scientists will be able to resolve the ambiguities we have noted here. But even then, geneticists will always need to rely on non-genetic evidence to make any historical sense of the data—written texts, oral traditions, and interviews with people about where their ancestors come from. It is impossible to turn the testimony of DNA into a definitive account of the past. The process of assemblage, dot-connecting, and interpretation means there will also always be some degree of imagination involved in the construction of genetic history, and choices to make about which story to believe." Selfstudier (talk) 09:37, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't really see how that Weizman supports El-Haj except vaguely, I don't have any particular objection to including that though. It doesn't directly address anything that was at issue in my view. At any rate, since I added some material to Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism, [13] [14] [15], per your suggestion/request, can we balance it on this page now? Andre🚐 21:41, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Of those three additions, two of them are from 2010 supporting Ostrer/Behar even before the 2013 work. And the third one is just Ostrer confirming himself.

Properly, all we should be doing is picking up the lead of the Racial conceptions article as a summary for here. Selfstudier (talk) 14:13, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Would you care to proffer a version, then? Would it replace or amend the current text sourced to El-Haj? Why don't you go first. I'm not wedded to the specific text. If we agree that the present text is imbalanced, that'd be progress. Roughly, the point is that Zionists wanted genetic confirmation of their traditional history, and in the 1930s a lot of science was tinged with problematic ideas. Today, though, we know that ethnicity is a more flexible concept than "race." There's no biological explanation of "white," but there are genetic markers that can tell me someone is Cajun. Right? Or wrong? [01:35, 23 December 2024 (UTC)] Geneticists like Ostrer and Xue balance and add context to the view expressed by El-Haj currently ("biological self-definition"..."forever elusive" which is about history, not present-day) which ignores modern developments suitable for the general overview on Zionism. Modern research suggests a shared Jewish ancestry, though of course Jewish ethnicity is more than just that.... This counters Abu El-Haj's claim of a purely ideological pursuit; she is an anthropologist, so her expertise on the topic is bounded. Using her quote alone and unattributed may give undue weight to a minority viewpoint. She is a controversial voice in the field who has met with considerable controversy and criticism, such as her interpretation of archeology as well. I can offer more critical sources, but you said you wanted to move on from that. Andre🚐 02:44, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Maybe it seems not to you but to me the Weitzmann para and the El-Haj elusive thing are the same thing using different words but leaving that aside, is there any reason that we cannot just use the lead of Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism for the section here, which, given the earlier kerfuffle over the title, should probably just be renamed as I suggested at #Tag on Race and Genetics section to Racial conceptions of Jewish identity? @Fiveby:? Selfstudier (talk) 12:32, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Weitzmann definitely isn't saying the same thing at all, he's saying that we need non-genetic data to make sense of the genetic data, not that there's something elusive about the DNA evidence of Jewish ancestry. Could you propose the text? Andre🚐 20:51, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't matter since I am not suggesting that Weitzmann or El-Haj be in the text at all. I just did propose a text, didn't I? Selfstudier (talk) 20:53, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't understand. Use the whole lead? Or a specific part? And I guess that'd be an improvement. Andre🚐 21:30, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Right, just use the lead from there, it had a lot of eyes on it during the discussions over the title so it is likely a better summary than we have here, then any further tweaking of that would need to be done there first. Selfstudier (talk) 09:52, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

@Selfstudier:, i see that as an improvement, a step in the right direction at least. Thinking about this more, as you say: genetics is not the be all and end all; the way the content is presented could easily lead the reader down an essentialist path. Probably the ultimate fix here is better organization of the article sections and content, this should maybe flow from Jewish identity and Jewish assimilation? Reorganizing the body content is probably going to be a very complicated task tho so probably just incorporating the lead with some tweaks might be best for now. fiveby(zero) 14:23, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Seems we are agreed, I can't just copy paste it because all the harv refs, will copy it over at some point. Selfstudier (talk) 15:02, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

OK, I copied that in, this is what I took out, case we need to refer back to it:

Early Zionists were the primary Jewish supporters of the idea that Jews are a race, as it "offered scientific 'proof' of the ethno-nationalist myth of common descent". According to Raphael Falk, as early as the 1870s Zionist and pre-Zionist thinkers conceived of Jews as belonging to a distinct biological group. This re-conceptualization of Jewishness cast the "volk" of the Jewish community as a nation-race, in contrast to centuries-old conceptions of the Jewish people as a religious socio-cultural grouping. The Jewish historians Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow are largely credited with this creation of Zionism as a nationalist project. They drew on religious Jewish sources and non-Jewish texts in reconstructing a national identity and consciousness. This new Jewish historiography divorced from and, at times at odds with, traditional Jewish collective memory.

It was particularly important in early nation building in Israel, because Jews in Israel are ethnically diverse and the origins of Ashkenazi Jews were not known. Notable proponents of this racial idea included Max Nordau, Herzl's co-founder of the original Zionist Organization, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the prominent architect of early statist Zionism and the founder of what became Israel's Likud party, and Arthur Ruppin, considered the "father of Israeli sociology". Birnbaum, who is widely attributed with the first use of the term "Zionism" in reference to a political movement, viewed race as the foundation of nationality, Jabotinsky wrote that Jewish national integrity relies on "racial purity", and that "(t)he feeling of national self-identity is ingrained in the man's 'blood', in his physical-racial type, and only in it."

According to Hassan S. Haddad, the application of the Biblical concepts of Jews as the chosen people and the "Promised Land" in Zionism, particularly to secular Jews, requires the belief that modern Jews are the primary descendants of biblical Jews and Israelites. This is considered important to the State of Israel, because its founding narrative centers around the concept of an "Ingathering of the exiles" and the "Return to Zion", on the assumption that all modern Jews are the direct lineal descendants of the biblical Jews. The question has thus been focused on by supporters of Zionism and anti-Zionists alike, as in the absence of this biblical primacy, "the Zionist project falls prey to the pejorative categorization as 'settler colonialism' pursued under false assumptions, playing into the hands of Israel's critics and fueling the indignation of the displaced and stateless Palestinian people," whilst right-wing Israelis look for "a way of proving the occupation is legitimate, of authenticating the ethnos as a natural fact, and of defending Zionism as a return". A Jewish "biological self-definition" has become a standard belief for many Jewish nationalists, and most Israeli population researchers have never doubted that evidence will one day be found, even though so far proof for the claim has "remained forever elusive".

References

Selfstudier (talk) 17:40, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

"of no moral or historical significance"

This quote is in para 2 of the "Beliefs" section. Is it possible to say who we are quoting. I can't see if it's from an author of one of the two secondary sources cited, or if it's a quote from an actual historical Zionist. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:09, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

A quick find search in both of those sources doesn't produce that phrase. @DMH223344: added it here. Selfstudier (talk) 15:48, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

It's from Gorny p 251:

the Jews could not permit themselves to compromise or to make significant concessions, and thus the motives of the Arabs (whether base or noble) were of no moral or historical significance.

We could say something like:

The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that Jews had a historical right to the land which outweighed the rights of the Arabs. According to Israeli historian of Zionist ideology Yosef Gorny, in the Zionist perspective, the Arab right to Palestine was "of no moral or historical significance."

DMH223344 (talk) 16:25, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Or just use the last sentence of the wording you suggested. Lewisguile (talk) 08:02, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. Agree with Lewisguile. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:32, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Uganda/territorialism and statehood in lead

Historically, as we make very clear in the body, initially Zionism focused on a Jewish national home which only later fully cohered on a location in Palestine (definitively from 1905) and only much later still cohered in the demand for statehood (formally adopted only in 1942, although probably a majority position for a little while before then). This important point doesn't currently register in the lead, and I think it needs to. I will probably shortly make an attempt at this, but wanted to raise it here, in case my view isn't a consensus one. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:36, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

That's two things (or three if we count temporality as a separate thing), the location (I agree with 1905) and desire for a state. The latter must date from Herzl, no? As I said before this Jewish national home idea does not seem to me what Zionists wanted, except in the sense that's what the British (said they) wanted to hear, rather than "state". Selfstudier (talk) 15:58, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, two/three things. Herzl did imagine a Jewish state, but the movement as a whole was concerned with settlement before statehood and many (e.g. Ahad Ha'am) were not at all in favour of a state. I think that's clear from the body, but not reflected in the lead, where I think it would merit just one max two sentence. BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:16, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

It's there already in the first sentence: Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people through the colonization of Palestine, an area roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism, and of central importance in Jewish history. I'm not sure devoting even more space to it is WP:DUE when it's already so unwieldy. At best, you could add a footnote after "homeland for the Jewish people" or "Jewish state" to explain it evolved over time? But the lede isn't supposed to convey every nuance, and this is a largely academic point for most readers, since there is a Jewish state. Lewisguile (talk) 22:24, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

This first sentence precisely doesn't allow for the nuance I'm arguing we need later in the lead. It's proper the first sentence is simple and generalising, but I think that later in the lead we need to say that (a) initially it didn't need to be Palestine (Argentina and "Uganda" were considered) and (b) initially it was not always conceived as a state. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:11, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

The lede doesn't need that level of nuance. (a) and (b) belong in the body. Lewisguile (talk) 20:37, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

The first sentence doesn't need that level of nuance, but the lead does, as it's not minor. (a) and (b) get significant space in the body now, as they are significant points in Zionist history, so should be briefly reflected in the lead. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:46, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

A closely related topic that I was thinking about lately is the evolution of the "national home" idea throughout the pre-1948 period, before a consensus about demand for statehood was reached, that is not reflected in the article at all. There have been been some major controversies within Zionist movement regarding different possibilities - ranging from limited autonomy to various federal models - but currently those are not mentioned in the article, even in passing.

This maybe too much details to be mentioned in the lead, but it should definitely be discussed in the body. DancingOwl (talk) 16:19, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I want to circle back around to this "homeland for the Jewish people" thing, at the article Homeland for the Jewish people, it says "The first official use of the phrase "national home for the Jewish people" was in the Balfour Declaration". It did say in the lead "A homeland for the Jewish people is an idea rooted in Jewish history, religion, and culture" but I just removed that as unsourced. We have The Jewish National Home Meant a Jewish State, which is what I think this expression was meant to cover. Bob's "concerned with settlement" may be a better phrasing if we can root out some sourcing for that. Selfstudier (talk) 17:10, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Actually, the Basel program already employed a very similar terminology - "a home in Palestine for the Jewish people". DancingOwl (talk) 22:35, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I can go with that, it ties in with the existing lead and it should be, suitably sourced, in the article body, I can't see it, maybe I missed it. What I said about the other phrase, and it's linking in the first sentence of the lead, still stands tho, that's misleading and refers to something else. Maybe we should be linking to First Zionist Congress#Basel Program. Selfstudier (talk) 23:05, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm happy with some version of this. (The Quigley source is helpful. The British hedged their bets with ambiguous phrasing. The political Zionists, on whom Quigley focuses, aspired to a state and saw it within reach, but used the same ambiguous phrasing to hedge their bets too, only becoming explicit in 1942. Renton is very good on this too. Meanwhile, other factions of Zionism had different aspirations. But that's detail for the lead.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:53, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Muslim support

The quote "Muslims who have publicly defended Zionism include Tawfik Hamid, Islamic thinker and reformer and former member of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an Islamist militant group that is designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union and United Kingdom," falsely implies a connection between Hamid's support for Israel and (former) membership in an Islamist terrorist organization, and fails to mention that he left the group and actively opposes it. This is information in the lede of his own article. Qualiesin (talk) 16:16, 20 December 2024 (UTC) Qualiesin (talk) 16:16, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Also, the information about Druze should be spun off into its own section and expanded, as they do not consider themselves Muslims, and to my knowledge neither do most Muslims. Qualiesin (talk) 16:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, they should not be in the Muslim section. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 22:08, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

It's worth noting that in the #Back_to_Dec_4_version discussion, there were edits to this section that were reverted, though not discussed. See this diff which is a composite of 13 revisions, which broke out a section of === Druze support ===. It was reverted by Levivich and as he indicated in that thread, that was him disputing those edits, so maybe he should subsantiate a reason because per "Consensus required," those changes are now in dispute and cannot be restored. Andre🚐 22:46, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

They said "I understand I've likely wiped out some good-faith changes that happened between Dec 4 and today. I apologize for that, and will be happy to investigate the history and restore good edits, just let me know which ones I should be looking at, or feel free to just restore them if anyone prefers." (emphasis mine).

As such, there should be no issue in breaking the section off again as no one is specifically disputing it. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 00:24, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Read the rest of the discussion, I already asked them to restore those they didn't object to, and they clarified that they were disputing the rest. Andre🚐 00:27, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

They said "Lmk if I missed anything" & never "clarified that they were disputing the rest". You replied that you "assume that anything you didn't restore was an objection", but they never actually replied in the affirmative.

It doesn't matter though, what I'm saying is that we don't need to make a mountain out of mole hill here as it was just an oversight of an issue we can easily fix & Levivich already said we can feel free to restore them anyway. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 00:40, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

OK, go ahead then. If there weren't a consensus required restriction on this page, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But if it's a blockable offense to restore such content, I think we err on the side of caution. It's true that Levivich didn't answer me in that thread. I asked for an explanation or a rationale for not attributing El Haj. However as I said, I took it as a dispute. However, given that you, Cdjp, Qualiesin, and I agree it should be fixed, perhaps that is a suitable consensus anyway. Andre🚐 00:47, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Separated out. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 14:57, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

References

§ Terminology

There are some undue claims in the terminology section. The first attested usage of 'Zionism' should appear with higher priority, and terms and usages should be presented in their original language with accompanying English translations. إيان (talk) 18:22, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

A request

Can we go back to the old definition of Zionism because the one here is full of bias

I propose reverting it back to this version

https://archive.ph/L50Cr Comores 123 (talk) 20:01, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

I trust I can be forgiven for assuming that an editor that has clearly not read the talk page nor any of the archives must be non EC.

At any rate, even if EC, this is just a waste of editorial time. Selfstudier (talk) 21:46, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

@Comores 123, I think you might want to weigh in here as this RfC deals with one of the changes introduced recently. Alaexis_¿question? 21:55, 28 December 2024 (UTC)