Misplaced Pages

I've heard that Abraham was a Kurd. The reason for this was because he's from the Iraqi city of Ur, which was dominated around Abraham's time by the Gutians, a tribe of the Zagros mountains which many believe are the forefathers of modern Kurds. The other reason was that Jews are scary closely related to the Kurds, particularly Ashkenazi Jews, even moreso than they are to some Semitic populations. It's an interesting theory. --Monochrome_Monitor 21:39, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and thanks. I'm certainly still learning. --Monochrome_Monitor 21:52, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

My five ethnic criteria for St. George's inclusion into the infobox in place of Sophronius still stand. Lazyfoxx (talk) 00:06, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

1. Same religion as some palestinians
2. Similar language since arabic came from aramaic
3. may have looked similar to them
4. may be genetically related
5. is revered by palestinians
These criteria aren't nearly substantive enough to justify an infobox inclusion. --Monochrome_Monitor 00:29, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

What is your definition of an ethnic group then, Monochrome Monitor? Lazyfoxx (talk) 00:37, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster's definition of ethnicity "of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background." Lazyfoxx (talk) 00:45, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Your criteria make a lot of assumptions and are almost entirely speculative. For one, there's no evidence that St. George self-indentified as anything but Greek. --Monochrome_Monitor 00:51, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

You seem eager to identify him as a Greek rather than a Palestinian, when in reality he was both. Do you have a source stating that St. George referred to himself as a Greek? I have an encyclopedia of Saints that states he was half Palestinian and half Greek by ancestry. Lazyfoxx (talk) 00:58, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Both of his parents were Greek, however one of them was a Greek born in Syria Palaestina. --Monochrome_Monitor 01:35, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Please source your statement. Here is my source. Lazyfoxx (talk) 01:49, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Also, little is known about him. We don't even know if he was born in Syria Palaestina or if he moved there after his father died. He's more myth than man at this point. But as for his mom being Greek? Here's a few. "his mother, Polychronia, was a Greek from the city Lyda." Also and Remember that at this point the region of Palestine was heavily hellenized, and it had a Greek rather than an Arab majority. --Monochrome_Monitor 02:17, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

And if we are basing his "Palestinianess" on the fact he was born in Lyda, Lyda is the city of Lod in modern Israel. Does that make him an Israeli? --Monochrome_Monitor 02:19, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Are you denying that modern Palestinians descend in part from the hellenized population of ancient Palestine? Lazyfoxx (talk) 02:21, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

What? There's no significant Greek genetic component in Palestinians. In fact, Ashkenazi Jews have a far larger Greek component (accounting for most of their non-Levantine maternal admixture along with Italians) in them than Palestinians. Does that mean St. George was Jewish? --Monochrome_Monitor 02:24, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Have you genetically sequenced St. George and other hellenized Palestinians from the 3rd century or are you saying there is no modern Greek component in Palestinians? Lazyfoxx (talk) 02:28, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm saying there's little modern Greek component, yes. --Monochrome_Monitor 02:29, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

So would a hellenized Palestinian from the 3rd century be identical to a Greek from Greece today? Lazyfoxx (talk) 02:32, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

It's also wrong for you to call him a "hellenized Palestinian". He wasn't "Hellenized", he was Greek. And he wasn't Palestinian in any modern sense of the word. He was from Syria Palaestina, but Syria Palaestina was originally Judea and Lydda is in modern Israel. You are drawing a bullseye around an arrow here. You're the one who is calling him a hellenized Palestinian, not me. Both of his parents were Greek, as I just showed you. --Monochrome_Monitor 02:38, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm really sorry if it causes you personal distress but, "According to Rashid Khalidi, the modern Palestinian people now understand their identity as encompassing the heritage of all ages from biblical times up to the Ottoman period." These two sources state Polychronia as a Palestinian Christian, 2 Lazyfoxx (talk) 02:55, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Let me also remind you, you are only addressing one of my ethnic criteria out of the five above that support St. George in place of Sophronius. Lazyfoxx (talk) 03:12, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Right... Rashid Khalidi is a Palestinian Nationalist more than he is a scholar. As for Polychronia being a Palestinian christian, she was. A Palestinian Greek Christian. Palestine being the region, Greek being the ethnicity. Ask any catholic/church scholar to if Polychronia is Greek and they will say yes. --Monochrome_Monitor 03:24, 12 May 2015 (UTC) You're going off the deep end here. You need to convince yourself that St. George was a Palestinian despite all the evidence. This is my problem with this article. Instead of offering facts it offers the opinions of someone named Rashid Khalidi, apparently the representative of all Palestinians. Apparently "Palestinians view themselves as going back to biblical times" but they can't show any evidence of this. There are millions of artifacts testifying to ancient Jewish history, yet not a single one testifying to ancient Palestinian history, unless you consider Jewish history to be Palestinian history, which many do (more cultural appropriation). --Monochrome_Monitor 03:24, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Rashid Khalidi is an eminent scholar, a full professor at Columbia University. This present thread in which you are arguing that one group of people has greater racial purity than another is not your finest moment. Zero 03:52, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Greater racial purity? Is that a joke? I didn't say anything in the like. As for Rashid Khalidi being an "eminent scholar", he was a PLO spokesman. MAJOR conflict of interest. Also he has been caught lying at times.--Monochrome_Monitor 11:28, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

So what? See WP:BIASED. Do you dismiss Michael Oren too? Secondly, nearly all scholars have misquoted or been wrong on some things. You have to work a lot harder to show why Rashid Khalidi is not a good source. --IRISZOOM (talk) 13:51, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I already addressed your other criteria. We don't know what Jesus or St. George looked like. The possibility of them looking like Palestinians when Jesus was a Judean and St. George was a Greek is very slim. As for language, the vast majority of Palestinians speak Arabic, not Aramaic. As for religion, the vast majority of Palestinians are Muslim, not Christian. And lastly, just because some Palestinians revere George doesn't make him a Palestinian. You know who else likes George? British. The love him. He inspired their flag. Does that mean he was a Brit? Of coarse not, that's absurd. --Monochrome_Monitor 03:28, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Ugh, sorry. I'm getting a bit hot-tempered. I just can't stand historical revisionism. --Monochrome_Monitor 03:40, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

1. The reconstruction of a Palestinian in the time of Jesus does not look drastically different than Palestinians today, it takes only a glance to see that.

2. Palestinians speak Palestinian Arabic, look it up. Palestinian Christians retain the Aramaic language as well.

3. Religion, many Palestinians converted to Islam, that is true (This does not erase their Christian history before Islam by the way), but Palestinian Christians still remain today, and have since the time of St. George, it is a continuity of the same religion by the same people, I do not see how you do not understand this.

4. You do not understand the social/cultural criteria of an ethnic group, he is revered by Palestinians as a Palestinian hero, the British do not revere St. George as a British hero, because he is not British. Lazyfoxx (talk) 03:43, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

1. One reconstruction of Jesus based on pure speculation looks somewhat like Palestinians. Though it actually looks most like a Mizrahi Jew, but regardless its one artists reconstruction. The majority of actual contemporary sources draw the indigenous non-Arab peoples of the Levant as looking like Jews, like the one on the right from Seti's Tomb showing a Semite (specifically a Phoenecian), 3rd from the left

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2. Yes they do speak Palestinian Arabic. And the Egyptians speak Egyptian Arabic. Also your contention that Palestinian Christians retain Aramaic is simply not true. The majority do not speak Aramaic.

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3. Show me one genetic study showing that Palestinian Christians are descended from Greek Christians.

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4. It doesn't matter if Palestinians think St. George is a Palestinian. They can think that the earth is flat and that Israel flattened it and it wouldn't matter because it's not true. Misplaced Pages:How many legs does a horse have? --Monochrome_Monitor 04:05, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Like I said towards the beginning of this conversation, please keep Zionist political theory off of Misplaced Pages, thanks. Lazyfoxx (talk) 04:15, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

What's Zionist political theory? The "earth is flat and israel flattened it" is from some UN Guy, I think Kofi Annan. It referred to UN's unequal standards against Israel. --Monochrome_Monitor 04:22, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm obviously not convincing you since apparently everything I say is "Zionist political theory". Feel free to put it in the infobox, but it will likely be reverted. --Monochrome_Monitor 04:24, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Your belief that Palestinians are Arabs that come from Arabia and that Muslims do not descend from Jews and Christians that lived there in the past. That Zionist political theory, which is not only blatantly racist against the Palestinian ethnicity, it is not substantiated by scholarly sources.

And no you are not convincing me, your line of thinking seems incredibly biased and we should strive for neutrality on Misplaced Pages. Lazyfoxx (talk) 04:30, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Oncenawhile, you are correct in that the "idea that Copts, Maronites and Palestinian Christians are the only regional inhabitants who can claim descent from pre-Islamic inhabitants is bigoted...". Many Islamophobic websites etc. present Muslims in many parts of the Levant and Egypt as immigrants and that spreads to Misplaced Pages articles too. In the case of Palestine and Israel, it has a special meaning as it is a myth told often by the Israeli state and Zionists. --IRISZOOM (talk) 05:57, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

"Pre-Islamic inhabitants" is a misleading word. The Arab people obviously come from long before Islam, and some Palestinians are Arab immigrants who arrived in the early first millennium AD. Most of the theories out there that contend that Arabs outside of the Hijaz and surrounding regions (the location of the bulk of Arabian tribes) are indigenous are manifestations Arab nationalism—ie Phoenicianism and Pharaonism, both dubious. The belief that Palestinians are not "pure Arabs" but rather wholly descended from Christians/Jews/Canaanites/Phillistines/etc. is a component of Palestinian nationalism. Also, I don't read "Islamophobic Sites". --Monochrome_Monitor 11:28, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I didn't speak specifically about you, MM. That view is common by Islamophobes and Zionists. Sure there have been Arab immigrants to Palestine just like there have been emigrants from there (to for example South America and Jordan) and I haven't seen anyone say that all of them have been there for ever. However, the claim that most Palestinians or other people in the Levant or Egypt are from Arabia is false. It has nothing to do with Phoenicianism, Palestinian nationalism etc. --IRISZOOM (talk) 13:51, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Monochrome Monitor, from reading your comments I would suggest that you dump any ideas stemming from the race theories of the 19th and 20th centuries: being 'Arab' is a cultural, not 'racial', identity and the concept of a "Pure Arab" is a nonsense; there are people who speak Semitic languages, but the concept of a 'Semitic race' is another nonsense.     ←   ZScarpia   12:36, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I am sorry if I missed something, but as far as I know Sophronius was born in Damascus and Damascus was never part of Palestine. Beside there are WP:RS which precisely define Sophronius, so we should use them without personal interpretations. --Tritomex (talk) 18:22, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Being Arab is more than cultural. It's panethnic. Ie, Arabs are more or less genetically related loosely even though they don't form a monolithic genetic group. Also, when applied to Arabian tribes, ie Hashemites and Beduin, it's a distinct ethnic group. --Monochrome_Monitor 17:24, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

You're right. He was from Syria, he moved to Palestine. I'm not sure this would disqualify him as not being Palestinian (moreso than other reasons at least), since a lot of people considered Palestinian don't come from Palestine. Yasser Arafat is a good example, he was an Egyptian. --Monochrome_Monitor 17:33, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I think Arafat father originated from Gaza. However the case of Sophronius is very much clear. He was a Syrian saint born in Damascus --Tritomex (talk) 22:24, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

So, again, why should Sophronius be on this article? Look at the Italians or Germans articles. Do they incluye Romans or other Germanic tribes? No. They just included people that existed after those kingdoms were born. 201.230.248.3 (talk) 05:20, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

As Rashid Khalidi stated: the Palestinian nationalism developed a historiography that "anachronistically read back into the history of Palestine over the past few centuries, and even millennia, a nationalist consciousness and identity that are in fact relatively modern.".

The inclusion of Sophronius of Jerusalem in the infobox propogats this POV, which anachronistically read back into the history of Palestine an identity which is relatively modern. His picture should be removed from the infobox. Ben tetuan (talk) 17:37, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

The process that Khalidi describes took place during the creation of every ethnic nationalism on earth. See Historiography and nationalism. All national identities are relatively modern.

Look at Indian people for example. The concept of being "Indian" did not exist until a few decades after the British turned up. Oncenawhile (talk) 23:51, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

The use of Khalidi to claim Palestinian identity now is a kind of recent fabrication, as implied here, is to misread him. As Oncenawhile noted, the process of retroactive identification with the deep past is characteristics of all national communities: many people are discovering their Jewishness because of a 500-centuries buried link, via some ancestor or name, with the Jews of the Iberian peninsula, though in the meantime they were thoroughly assimilated, as Spanish Catholics etc.Nishidani (talk) 11:41, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Nobody claimed that to anachronistically read back a modern identity into history is a uniquely Palestinian issue. All we say is that we should refrain from doing it in Misplaced Pages's voice. Ben tetuan (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:35, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Sea peoples

I find the addition of the Sea Peoples under related groups problematic.
1. They are a conjectured people.
2. They are an ancient/now non-existent people, and therefore no actual (genetic, cultural) links will be possible to prove between them and Palestinians.
3. No sources. --Monochrome_Monitor 23:54, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

We don't deal in 'proof' here, but we transcribe what reliable sources state

• They are not a 'conjectured people', they are a confederated tribal movement, probably of predominantly Aegaean-Anatolian extraction, to judge from the ethnonymic evidence in Egyptian. Many might have been speakers of paleo-Greek or Hittite dialects like Luwian, but there is no certainty. I think Sea Peoples is not necessary there, not however for the reasons you give. I don't mind its removal, but I'd wait for further input from others.Nishidani (talk) 13:19, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

From the article Sea Peoples: "Sea Peoples were conjectured groups of seafaring raiders". Is that wrong? I'm confused. --Monochrome_Monitor 21:18, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

MM, you are right. If you read some of the quoted sources in the Sea Peoples article (e.g. Drews), it is arguably worse than "conjectured" - it is arguably not much more than a romantic story made up by the early Egyptologists from some sparse evidence and large assumptions that happened to catch the imagination of the late 19th century public. The "Peleset" are not connected to the sea in any known Egyptian record. And the Aegean migration hypothesis is still no more than a hypothesis, with no known proof, despite 100 years of attempted etymological connections between Egyptian inscriptions and modern place names.

Nish, if you ever have time, can I encourage you to look into a little Egyptology. I believe that science of Egyptology would greatly benefit from Egyptologists who understand Chinese / Kanji. The etymological jumps that have been made over the last two centuries of research would have been done with much more caution if people had understood how Chinese characters represent different sounds in different regions of China and wider region. Oncenawhile (talk) 22:07, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually I was reading the late lamented Dominic Montserrat just the other day. No, those folks don't need a dabbler like me, and in any case Japan has plenty with a total mastery of both, folks like Kondō Jirō (近藤 二郎) and Yoshimura Sakuji (吉村作治). My father wanted to be an Egyptologist, poverty and the great depression stopped him. He was delighted at the outbreak of WW2 to have the opportunity to pretend to be a soldier, get shipped off to North Africa at government expense, and spend his time touring the pyramids and museums. He changed the dates on his birth certificate because he was overage, and managed to take it all in.Nishidani (talk) 15:13, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Monochrome Why did you remove Phillistines entirely from the list instead of just moving it out of the Semitic category? Probably should discuss before changes like that are made. Lazyfoxx (talk) 14:33, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

It's not quite fair to call those poor blighters philistines. They have enough abuse on the plate without that :)Nishidani (talk) 15:13, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

No doubt the Phillistines settled a region of Palestine the same era the Canaanites did.

http://www.biblestudy.org/maps/large-map-land-of-canaan-during-book-of-joshua.jpg Lazyfoxx (talk) 15:33, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Lol on the Philistines. Living in the same place doesn't make you related. No one says that the Turks are descended from the Anatolians. I also think Syrians and Lebanese should be re-added since they are the ethnic groups closest to the Palestinians. --Monochrome_Monitor 15:37, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually researchers do say that about the Turkish people. And Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians are already on the list under the first term, Levantines. Lazyfoxx (talk) 15:50, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

No, they don't. You should do more research. They say Turks are descended from Chinese and Siberian ethnic groups. --Monochrome_Monitor 16:15, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

And why not just say "Jews"? Instead of listing all the major Jewish ethnic groups? --Monochrome_Monitor 16:17, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

'Living in the same place doesn't make you related. No one says that the Turks are descended from the Anatolians.'

Actually, nearly everyone says precisely that. Genetically, the Turks of Turkey are largely of Anatolian descent, as the Hungarians are of Indo-European descent (see the refs at Genetic history of the Turkish people ). Language is no marker of origins.Nishidani (talk) 17:36, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but that's actually part of the point; culture is not genetics, and that the Sea Peoples are genetic ancestors of the modern Palestinians means little if there is no reasonable cultural connection. Really, every Eurasian human alive today is likely descended from the Sea Peoples. The most recent common ancestor of all humans on Earth lived between 2000-5000 years ago (excluding genetically isolated populations) and it's much closer for people from populations which have had more recent chances to intermingle. It is meaningless to say the Palestinians are genetically descended from the Sea Peoples, since essentially so haven't the French and the Swedes and the Russians and the Moroccans and the Afghans and etc.... When we're looking at a culturally-defined people group, the only thing that matters is social connections, language, and culture. I know of no scholarship that indicates the modern Palestinian people are culturally related to the Sea Peoples/Philistines/etc. --Jayron32 19:02, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I deleted it so yeah. Also, there's no genetic evidence either since we have no genetic samples of Sea Peoples or Canaanites for that matter. --Monochrome_Monitor 20:02, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

The point being that there is agreement that Sea Peoples should be removed as not a specific ethnonym but a vague term for a congeries of tribal groups. If you check the thread, MM, I and Lazyfoxx have already concurred on this. Philistines is a biblical ethnonym, like Amorites, etc., and since the Philistines qua Sea Peoples settled in Palestine is another question, autonomously or via Egyptian fiat, or both, they no doubt constituted one of the ethnoi that went to make up the resident population, and, just as the Israelitic groups, they mixed heavily with other populations already present in the area. The number of groups who ended up there is extremely numerous. There is a lot of 'spin' in the history of the scholarship (it took decades to establish the obvious fact that there is a profound overlap between Semitic and Greek mythic cores. History is promiscuous. There is even a 'Slavic' constituent in certain Palestinian areas, like Yanun, dating back to the 1870s.Nishidani (talk) 20:15, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. The archaeological record is overflowing with evidence for the existence of "ancient central hill peoples" and "ancient coastal peoples". But in 150 years of research, there is absolutely no evidence connecting the "ancient central hill peoples" to the name "Israelites" and the "ancient coastal peoples" to the name "Philistines". These are just Biblical designations that have been applied by modern scholars for ease of use based on an assumption (and perhaps some cognitive bias). Oncenawhile (talk) 20:51, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

The cognitive bias is not a 'perhaps'. Most neutral scholars accept that the Bible is a partisan document, rewriting heavily tribal legends with significant 'romantic' elaboration, and thus what is said of both ingroup and outgroup is not to be taken as 'historical fact', but rather evidence to be scoured to ascertain possible facts, as they are framed by a variety of internally cogent hypotheses that sit better with what archaeology actually tells us. Much of the tale of David and Goliath recurs in the Iliad, and it was quite possible a bilingual Greek-speaking coastal bard who passed the story on in a way that enabled the biblical rewriters to patch it in to the David cycle. Who said 'Philistines' were culturally illiterate!Nishidani (talk) 21:07, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

There is a great reluctance to do DNA tests on the ample ossuary remains (it's technically difficult) from the Biblical period, as well, some of it stemming from religious quarters. If it were possible to extract DNA from the massive Tel Lachish gravesites you'd have a very precise index of the genetic makeup of that region at the time of Sennacherib. The stuff's all sitting in the museum storerooms. No one seems interested.Nishidani (talk) 20:16, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

It goes against sentiments regarding the treatment of the dead. --Monochrome_Monitor 22:52, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

No. That's not quite correct. If the skeleton is early neolithic it's analysed.Nishidani (talk) 07:50, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Also, Canaanites probably shouldn't be in related groups either, unless there are genetic sources. --Monochrome_Monitor 23:31, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Nope. Genetics and history are two different disciplines, in a relationship of evidentiary complementarity, meaning their independent results or hypotheses have to be harmonized. To make genetics the hermeneutic dominus, particularly when genetic papers make historical comments that are often stupid to any historian's eye, is to exclude the harder field and textual evidence which is highly specific on dates and cultures, to favour 'race', always a dubious concept, even if masqueraded under words like ethnos etc.Nishidani (talk) 07:50, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Right, but the vast majority of ethnic groups pages only list extant peoples. Ie, you could put Canaanites under related groups for Jews (they are far closer to Canaanites than Palestinians because Israelites were an offshoot of Canaanite), but we don't. --Monochrome_Monitor 17:20, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Also, no one said anything about earlier neolithic. Canaanites are largely Bronze Age. --Monochrome_Monitor 17:25, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Israelis and Jordanians

Since when are the 1.6 million Arab Israelis and 3.2 million Jordanians classed as "Palestinians"? This is nothing but propaganda. Intelligent Mr Toad 2 (talk) 04:19, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

See for self-identification as Palestinians for the Palestinians in Israel. As far as Jordan, I wasnt even aware thats in dispute. nableezy - 15:17, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

An article can't just assert that citizens of other states are "Palestinians." Arab Israelis are citizens of Israel. In Jordan, apart from the Palestinians living in the UNRWA camps, Jordanians are Jordanian citizens. The assertion (often made) that they are "really" Palestinians is nonsense, since both Palestine and (Trans)Jordan were artificial entities created by the British at the same time. Before that the Arab inhabitants of region had no national identity other than as Ottoman subjects. In the Arab world nationality is determined by state frontiers, arbitrary those these may be. If you live in Jordan you're a Jordanian. This is just a propagandist exercise designed to inflate the number of Palestinians in the world. Intelligent Mr Toad 2 (talk) 00:07, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Whether it is a surprise or not, being a citizen of Israel or Jordan does not magically change their ethnicity and ancestry. Lazyfoxx (talk) 19:08, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

There is no "Palestinian ethnicity" (Palestinians are Arabs), and no "Palestinian ancestry" beyond 1918, when the British drew lines on a map of Ottoman Syria and said "let's call this bit Palestine." The Palestinians are a nationality, like Israelis and Jordanians. The Palestinian nation consists of the (Arab) residents of the Palestinian Territories, plus the residents of the UNRWA camps in the neighbouring states. Intelligent Mr Toad 2 (talk) 08:05, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is based on reliable sources, not on the prejudices of visiting Toads, intelligent or not. If you want to present a rule-based argument for a change to the article, go ahead. If you just want to sound off as you have been so far, go away. Zero 09:15, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 July 2015

The beginning part of the page should state that they are ethnically Arab. 79.181.174.49 (talk) 20:42, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Not done: The second paragraph of the lede goes into quite some detail on the genetic background of Palestinians Cannolis (talk) 12:22, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Not enough words about the denial of the existance of the Palestinian People

• Zuheir Mohsen, leader the the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) between 1971 and 1979 said: The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
• Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist said: "Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?"
• Joseph Farah, an Arab journalist said: "There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Iraqis, etc. Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today... No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough".
• Awni Abd al-Hadi, a Palestinian political figure said: "There is no such country .... Palestine is a term the Zionists invented.... Our country was for centuries part of Syria." Crum, Bartley C. Behind The Silken Curtain. Page 25. Victor Gollancz Ltd., London. 1947.
• The delegate of Saudi Arabia United Nations Security Council, Ahmad al-Shukeiri, the first Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization said in 1956: "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."
• Hafez al-Assad said to Yasser Arafat: "You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people" Bolter21

Thanks for illustrating exactly what rubbish we must keep out of the article. Zero 00:45, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Yep. It's an interesting point though. These type of quotes are known amongst a right-wing community of conspiracy theorists, who believe that they somehow lift the lid on a grand political scheme. It could be worth adding a deconstruction of this as a paragraph in the article. It would in effect be "an introduction to nationalism 101". As an illustration, perhaps we could compare it to the Jewish national identity debate in the 19th and early 20th centuries, where many Jews believed that the concept of a "Jewish people" was bunk. Oncenawhile (talk) 08:22, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Genetics

Monochrome Monitor, "Palestinian Christians" are not mentioning in the link you provided. Please provide a new link. Your edit will shortly be reverted - please get consensus here first before proceeding. Oncenawhile (talk) 13:21, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

There is already a paragraph devoted to discussing some haplotype differences found between Christians and Muslim Palestinians, I think adding another paragraph about it is redundant, as was adding the word Jewish before Rabbi. Lazyfoxx (talk) 17:35, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

It's mentioned in the article. The source listed as "Ana Teresa Fernandes; Rita Gonçalves; Sara Gomes; Dvora Filon; Almut Nebel; Marina Faerman; António Brehm (November 2011). "Y-chromosomal STRs in two populations from Israel and the Palestinian Authority Area: Christian and Muslim Arabs". National Center for Biotechnology Information." The very distinct haplotype distributions of Muslim and Christian Palestinians is certainly significant enough to warrant inclusion in the lead. --Monochrome_Monitor 19:25, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Upon further review, I think mentioning the haplotype differences between Palestinian Christians and Muslims would be fine. But Perhaps it would be better to say it has an effect on their haplotype, a specific part of their genetics. So instead it would read, "Genetic studies have found religion has a large effect on the YDNA of Palestinians — with Palestinian Christians and Muslims showing distinct distributions of many different haplotypes." Lazyfoxx (talk) 18:25, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to add that, I can't stand confrontation. --Monochrome_Monitor 01:32, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

"Ethnic Group"

Consensus was gained for the statement that Palestinians are an ethnic group long ago. See for example /Archive 22. Oncenawhile (talk) 11:57, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

: No, there was no consensus, but the discussion was about, how to define the most efficiently the Palestinians And also, if the Palestinans could be define as a People....

::::There is a problem, since last year, in this area regarding articles on history, of trying to overcome our natural state of uncertainty, or provisory knowledge, or temporary consensus on complex historical questions, by leaping on the genetics bandwagon. Genetics is being used to back one of several theories of the origin of Yiddish, of the territorial origins of modern people, to define indeed, modern peoples, and to support one side in a multi-faced, theoretically intricate series of hypotheses. This is extremely dangerous because the incremental growth of knowledge is due to the sophistication of research awareness of how political, social and other factors tend to impinge on our conceptualizations, something that affects particularly an area as ideologically overheated as the I/P area. There is a substantial literature on the political uses by Palestinians of Canaanite roots, as there is on the sociology of theories of Jewish (or any other) identity. There are assumed facts, and meta-analysis of the way historiography produces those facts, and in all ethnic-invested areas of wiki, these two levels of discourse are confused by partisans who fail to disentangle the two.

I'm personally unhappy with all restrictive definitions of identity, which is, I believe how we reconstruct selectively our various, respective pasts in terms of a group affiliation. I like the Palestinian definition we have because it is very generic. As soon as you get into the nitty gritty, however, by trying to add to its vagueness, points that highlight one or other part of it, you get into trouble, as you do with all such definitions. I've been accused of double-standards in adducing the genetic paper here. In fact I do not think genetics papers are satisfactory sources for history (NMMGG rightly notes this). I do however think that when biblical scholars, historians, area specialists, and public intellectuals can be shown to concur on a definition, then adducing also a genetic paper as a supplementary source, (as Dlv argues) is reasonable, if only to show that the simple sentence has support from several interrelated disciplines. What one should not do, as was done on the Ashkenazi Jews page, is invent a definition that is itself definitionally flawed and historically false, and then, since no historical source supports it, propose an ostensible RS from genetics as unique confirmation of its veracity. Anne Hart there was patently wrong (distinguished geneticists do not publish self-publish and a glance at the text will show the writer is not a geneticist). Nor can you, as Tritomex now says, replace it with a better source in genetics.

One of the complications here, which I haven't mentioned, is that if you consult the literature on the definition of Palestinian Christians, then you will google up dozens of very good sources which clearly affirm their historic roots in ancient Israel/Palestine. If you do this for Palestinian Muslims, then all of a sudden the issue gets tetchy, difficult, controversial, and an extremely high bar of evidence is demanded before any statement that implies, suggests or states that they have historic roots in the area is passed, and even then grudgingly. I see that as a systemic bias in our eurocentric sources and in our general failure to step out of our natural frameworks of perception to try and get a balanced perspective. The sentence we have is vague, generic and well-sourced, though not perfect. In the meta-context it is a fair navigation between the pressures, official and otherwise, of denial of Palestinian roots, and the flimsy rhetoric of Palestinian Canaanitism.Nishidani (talk) 11:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Khazen48 (probably a sockpuppet of Silvertrail) propose by POV pushing whitout even one reference to change the proper definition to this incorrect statement : "The Palestinian people are an ethnic group .

--Point by point (talk) 20:33, 10 October 2015 (UTC)--Point by point (talk) 20:41, 10 October 2015 (UTC)(edited)

Agree with Oncenawhile, last time I checked Palestinians were an ethnic group, the only people who deny this seem to be extreme Zionists, not the consensus of scholarly sources. Lazyfoxx (talk) 20:30, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

No, there is no scholary consensus. If you are supportive of the Khazen48 proposition, cite sources. The issue is not about me nor Zionism. --... Point by point ... (talk) 22:35, 13 October 2015 (UT

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/10/3/khattab.html Lazyfoxx (talk) 22:46, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Could you provide sources of the exact subject or of a scholarly consensus? Nabil Khattab and Sami Miaari describe the Arab israelis as Palestinians, to back up their thesis of an hypothetical inequality between ethnic groups in the Israeli Labor Market. While other studies prove the opposite. I think, adding this sentence would suffice:

The PLO molded and developed the construction and creation of the palestinian ethnicity symbolized by Islam and the Arabic language.

... Point by point ... (talk) 02:31, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry you seem to not believe the Palestinian ethnic group exists, when in plain site a scholarly source says it does. I wonder why you are not giving other ethnic group pages the scrutiny of this one? Lazyfoxx (talk) 02:36, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the fact that it is not consensual, is not serious to write it in the opening sentence, whatsoever. And it is not like if, the Palestinian were stricly an ethnic group. Why don't you consider all other groups as ethnic groups then? (e.g. the syrians, the lebaneese or the jordanians)--... Point by point ... (talk) 03:18, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

They are all respective ethnic groups, just as Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, and Sephardi Jews are ethnic groups. Lazyfoxx (talk) 03:26, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

No, these are not ethnic groups but divisions, part of the Jewish ethnicity. Same as Palestinians are part the Arab ethnicity. Where are those "scholarly sources"? BTW, This article regards Jews as well and that creates a contradiction. Infantom (talk) 13:53, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Wrong, Palestinians are a part of the Arab pan-ethnicity, which includes many different ethnic groups. In modern usage Arabic-speaking populations are a highly heterogeneous collection of peoples, with diverse ancestral origins and identities. Lazyfoxx (talk) 14:45, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Could I suggest everyone here reads Imagined Communities. Ethnicity is not a scientific fact, but a political construct. European Jews debated their identity throughout the Haskalah; only with the advent of Zionism did the concept of a modern "Jewish ethnicity" become widely held. Palestinian ethnicity is no different. Jews and Palestinians are both ethnic groups, because their nationalisms define them as such. Oncenawhile (talk) 22:14, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

It is by no means easy to determine this. There are plenty of strong sources that underline the idea that Palestinians are an ethnic group, at least according to Max Weber's definition, 'subjective awareness of common descent', and, as Oncenawhile correctly notes in Benedict Anderson's noted classic. Dowty says that on p.8 of the book we cite; also Baruch Kimmerling p.74 (I think), etc.etc. This certainly qualifies the Jews to be an ethnic group, for example. In the Palestinian case, there are significant divisions between Bedouin, Druze, Christian and Muslim Arabs, divisions Israel has always encouraged and tried to exacerbate (ask any Christian Palestinian what games are played at checkpoints when they drive with Muslim friends out for a picnic; the Christians can get waved through, the Muslims delayed, leaving the designed impression among the latter that the Christians are collaborators etc) , but which exist. Just as Jewish identity was formed by outside pressure (anti-Semitism) and internal doctrine (the centrality of rabbinical education) so too Palestinian identity is being forged by Israel's politics of colonial oppression, but the internal processes of a collective self-awareness of a shared identity is still strongly conditioned by the external element, while the internal process of ethnocultural unity lags. It is something the intellectual elite and the diaspora has, and is undoubtedly well-grounded throughout the territories, but those who are opposed to the use of the term here (even if, apart from Jeppiz, who has always been studiously independent in his calls, they are visibly motivated by a political antagonism) have some technical reasons for challenging it.Nishidani (talk) 20:12, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

1. Toland, Judith Drick (1993). The final factor in the developpement of the palestinian ethnicity was the explicit effort of the OLP to mold and develop it. Transaction Publishers. p. 178.
2. González, Nancie L. Solien (1989). Conflict, Migration, and the Expression of Ethnicity. Perseus Books. p. 121.
3. Schulz, Helena Lindholm. The Reconstruction of Palestinian Nationalism: Between Revolution and Statehood. Manchester University Press.

JSTOR article

Does anyone have access to:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.2.11

Oncenawhile (talk) 12:19, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Check your email. Zero 13:16, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Suggested extension of WP:ARBPIA to this article

For your information, I've posted a request that WP:ARBPIA be extended to this article . Jeppiz (talk) 19:04, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I think all you need do is post the Arbpia 2008 decision (copy it from any relevant IP page) at the top of this talk page. I don't think you need anyone's permission to do this. Your suggestion fixes an obvious oversight, or editorial failure and is commonsensical.Nishidani (talk) 20:59, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Nishidani, but I want to let arbcom rule on it. Thank you also for your support, you're of course welcome (as is anyone else) to state your view at site of the suggestion Jeppiz (talk) 21:26, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the article on Jews comes under ARBPIA, and shouldn't either, in my view. The article on Palestinians does, certainly, because their identity is inextricably intertwined with that of Zionist nation making. Jewish identity has not been inextricably associated with Zionism, or even Palestine: it is a far-larger, far more variegated and historically complex set of realities that lie outside the problems of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.Nishidani (talk) 21:45, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Ethnic group again

I actually read though

“Palestinians in Diaspora: An Ethnographic Study of Ethnic Identity Among Palestinian Families in Maryland” a few months ago.

page 3 in the introduction does indeed call Palestinians an ethnic group. However

page 41 says “Despite the fact that many Palestinians acknowledge an Arab ethnic identity, they carry on with strong commitment of their own culture and their homeland". Throughout the work it stresses that Palestinians do indeed consider themselves Arab. Not only that it’s about Palestinians in Maryland and thus quite limited in scope.

The other source The Penguin Book of Facts I do not believe is a reliable source. Jonney2000 (talk) 04:19, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Jonney, glad you read, I hope you will not remove the ethnic group label from this page again. Regarding your reference to Arab identity, the lead sentence refers to the Arabization of Palestinians already if you didn't notice. Please read through and respond in the other discussion, I believe Nishidani made without doubt a case for Palestinians having this label on their page. Lazyfoxx (talk) 04:27, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

You are abusing these sources. Your own source says many Palestinians have an Arab ethnic identity!! Jonney2000 (talk) 04:40, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Even if many Palestinians decided to have an Arab ethnic identity, that does not make the Palestinian ethnicity cease to exist, you have a poor understanding of what an Arab by definition, or someone that identifies as an Arab is.Lazyfoxx (talk) 04:45, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Well if you want to be NPOV you need to mention that many Palestinians have an Arab ethnic identity not just Arabization whatever that vague term mean. Arabization can mean adoption of Arabic language or Arab culture and or Arab identity. You can have varying degrees where Arabized people many not identity as Arab. Jonney2000 (talk) 05:03, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Sorry you're incorrect in your assumption, Palestinians are an ethnic group that has been heavily arabized, and that is noted in the lead sentence and supported through many sources. Lazyfoxx (talk) 05:07, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I do not agree that is your nationalist POV. Jonney2000 (talk) 05:28, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

It is hard to take this seriously. Just search for "Palestinian ethnicity" at Google Books and you'll find tons of sources. Search at Scholar for academic journal articles. And that doesn't catch the many sources which discuss Palestinian ethnicity without using that exact phrase. Noting that most Palestinians identify as Arabs is irrelevant; such multiple identities are normal in the world. Zero 07:49, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Page title should be singular, Palestinian

Notwithstanding any _________ sensitivity, the title of this page should be Palestinian. This is the appropriate demonym of a person of Palestine ethnicity, whether or not political.

Demonym (/ˈdɛmənɪm/; δῆμος dẽmos 'people, tribe', ὄνομα ónoma 'name') is a word to identify residents or natives of a particular place, which is derived from the name of that particular place.

The first (sometimes only) definition of Palestinian as an adjective is "a native or inhabitant of Palestine" in most if not all dictionaries, including Wiktionary.

When used in any phrase on Misplaced Pages, e.g., Palestinian people, Palestinian leader, Palestinian protester, Palestinian representative, Palestinian shooter, ad infinitum, the user doesn't get redirected to Palestinians, he/she will get the Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation page Palestinian.

Too many clicks for the normal user to get to this page, one if s/he chooses correctly.

Every time I write one of the above phrases, the wiki-link has to be written ] (improper coding for display only) to appear as Palestinian. I know that from experience. One learns this by clicking, improperly coded Palestinian.

Simplify. Palestinian with remark, "for other uses see _____________"

Thanks. RaqiwasSushi (talk) 14:24, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 December 2015

Please remove "... are an ethnic group". I avoid taking political sides here, but claiming that Palestinian are ethnic group is false.

Rejeting the fact that they are an ethnic group has nothing to do with their national identity (that appeared in the 60s) or their need for a state.

The sources that claim they are ethnic group are not strong enough for such claim and in no way can compete with other[REDACTED] articles that has any kind of relation to the subject - that means it creates a "domino effect" where you have to modify many[REDACTED] articles. The complexity of this matter is mentioned in the provided sources themselfs, referring to them as Arabs in certain parts, which adds an other good reason why to remove that line.

Therefore this little edition means that now many[REDACTED] articles need to be edited, as they in no way help to identity Palestinians as an ethnic group.

In short, Please remove this small line that has quite an impact on article accuracy.

176.12.150.145 (talk) 19:19, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Done, see below. Jeppiz (talk) 20:45, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Ethnic group, fails WP:OR

I removed the claim about 'ethnic group' as per WP:OR. Please note that this does not mean I say Palestinians aren't an ethnic group, I'm just saying it must be sourced. Three "sources" were given. The first, from ProQuest did not satisfy RS, and even if it did, it only dealt with Palestinians in Maryland, so no support for the claim there. The third source was by David Crystal, an amazing academic! But an academic in linguistics, whatever his views on ethnicity, they are not RS. That left the second source, which is fully RS (a peer-reviewed academic publication) but it says the opposite!. It claims Palestinians are three different ethnic groups, so in direct contrast to saying they are one ethnic group. So please find proper sources before readding the claim. Jeppiz (talk) 20:20, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Jeppiz here. Doesn't the traditional understanding hold that the Palestinians are a national group i.e. people from historic Palestine (and their descendants) who generally identify as Palestinian? A number of ethnic groups make up the composition of the Palestinian people, who are socially and linguistically part of the broader Arab people. I would think taking the big step of calling the Palestinians a separate ethnic group rather than a national group would require something close to a consensus of RS. So far such a consensus has not been demonstrated. --Al Ameer (talk) 00:19, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't like the word 'ethnic(ity)' which, once the concept of race was cleansed, rightly, from the language in 1946, took over the same functions. It cannot be adequately defined so as to apply indifferently to a humongous number of groups, despite internal differentiations, but (that is the logical premise) nonetheless it is. This is all complicated here by editorial fights: only Palestinians seem to be challenged everywhere on wiki for the claim of having an 'ethnic' identity, and by editors who, in the same breath, insist that the Jews are an 'ethno-religious' people (in Israel itself though 137 'nationalities' are recognized, all the manifold differences among Israeli Jews are cancelled out in one 'national' definition, while the classification of Arabs is insistent on making political rather than descriptive distinctions). Between the lines, these editors are not willing to look at the merits of the evidence, but rather translate the Israel/Palestine conflict into one of a people with ethnic origins in Palestine qua Israel, and another people who are, it is insisted, not an ethnos, and, as 'Arabs' have no local historical roots, the implication being that they have no historic claim, even if their continuous permanence in the land is longer than most. The Christian Palestinian community has documented descent over two millennia, they survived mostly by infra-sectarian marriages, they have a defined and shared religious and cultural identity, and would clearly fit all definitions as an 'ethnic group'. This is ignored, as they are bundled up with Palestinian 'Arabs' where 'Arab' though a cultural definition, is made to bear an 'ethnic-racial' connotation. In editing the topic, these presuppositions should be born in mind, with the reminder of Edward Said's remark that few national groups have been deprived of their humanity in the eyes of the world more comprehensively than Palestinians,. They should not have to 'pass' stringent tests which are of a technical severity customarily ignored by any other group that claims an ethnic identity. Nishidani (talk) 13:29, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

To illustrate the paradox above, examine the evidence below:

The nakba is uncontroversially called ‘ethnic cleansing’ and no one in his right mind would doubt the appropriateness of the epithet there.

‘Palestinianhood is defined not only by the land (‘those who lived in the land until 1947’) but also by ethnic descent (‘anyone born to a Palestinian father after that, within Palestine and outside of it’. Raphael Israeli,Palestinians between nationalism and Islam, Vallentine Mitchell, 2008 p.151

Whereas, because of the discursive prejudices I named above, defining ‘Palestinian ethnicity’ within Palestine/Israel is discursively challenged, once you step out of that troubled imbroglio of nitpickety argufying by all sides, it is everywhere stated in books on Jordan that there is a rift between native Jordanians and ‘ethnic Palestinians’.

• See Steven Salaita Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom, Publisher Haymarket Books, 2015 p.72;
• Caroline Glick, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, Crown Publishing Group, 2014 p.162 ;
• Maura McAdam, Female Entrerpreneurship, Routledge 2013 p.84‘Given the complexity and diversity associated with Palestinian socio-political identity and status in the Middle East region, the term ‘ethnic Palestinian’ to encompass the Palestinians living in Jordan as Jordanian nationals of Palestinian origins, refugees or displaced persons is adopted.’;
• Denis Sindic, Manuela Barreto, Rui Costa-Lopes (eds.) , Power and Identity, Psychology Press, 2014 p.67 n.1 for ‘ethnic Palestinians’ in Jordan);
• Stephen Glain, Mullahs, Merchants, and Militants: The Economic Collapse of the Arab World, Macmillan, 2014 p.135;
• Barry Rubin, The Middle East: A Guide to Politics, Economics, Society and Culture, Routledge, 2015 p.172
• See also here andthis and this, and this

The struggle for the land, in conflict studies, is very frequently called an ‘ethnic conflict’, and that would be meaningless if only one party was deemed to constitute an ethnicity.

See also here on Israeli Palestinians as a subordinate ethnic minority.

We are in 2015, and there is no reason to treat Palestinian claims to ethnicity as unique among the 5,000 peoples who are normatively given the status of an 'ethnic group', since the literature now does so, from right (Israeli, Glick>) to left.Nishidani (talk) 14:38, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

It could very well be that I have a different understanding of what constitutes an ethnic group, but as a proud Palestinian myself, I always viewed my fellow Palestinians as a people/nation with a shared national identity along the lines of the Lebanese people or Syrian people rather than an ethnic group, which I always thought relied more on shared ancestral roots, real or perceived, i.e. Arabs, Berbers, Assyrians, Kurds, Turkmens, Armenians. The Palestinians are a tapestry of different ethnic groups (the indigenous inhabitants who have since been Arabized, Arab tribes, and smaller immigrant communities who have since assimilated into Palestinian society such as the Greeks, Egyptians, Maghrebis, Kurds, Turkmens and Balkan peoples). And it is not strange on Misplaced Pages to require decent sources, (in this case anthropologists, ethnographers, historians) that describe the Palestinians as an "ethnicity" or "ethnic group". That's not to pick on Palestinians by any means, it's something that should be required for all such articles to avoid the rampant nationalism that has permeated throughout this encyclopedia. "Ethnic clashes" when referring to Jordanians and Palestinians fighting doesn't satisfy that requirement (are the Jordanians an ethnic group too or aren't they a people of largely Bedouin descent who have inhabited Transjordan?) And for the record, the Palestinians being a nation instead of an ethnic group doesn't shrink their claim to Palestine by one iota. --Al Ameer (talk) 19:25, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Al Ameer son, thanks for your interesting points. A few points from me in response to some of your implied questions:

• Recognising this is circular sourcing, it it worth noting that the first paragraph of the ethnic group article applies to Palestinians in every sense.
• I think the root of the perceived distinction you are raising is the historical pan-Arabism which has been a part of the identity of many Palestinians. Firstly, I understand this sentiment is dying out among Palestinians, although this may be less about science than about the fact that the Arab world has proved time and time again to be utterly disunited, and hopeless in its support of Palestine. However, from a more scientific point of view, it is now clear that there is no such thing as an Arab ethnic group, at least not in the sense it is commonly used. In its broad usage (i.e. not narrowly defined as a Bedouin), "Arab" is either a linguistic group or a panethnic group, or both, but not an ethnic group. The same is true of the concept of Semitic people, an historical ethnic idea which is now obsolete.
• All ethnic groups are genetic tapestries, because all borders have been porous throughout history. You might consider where Palestine is on that global spectrum by considering relative natural borders vs. other ethnic groups. The region of Palestine is bounded by desert and sea on three of its four sides. That is better than most countries, consider France for example, and even island countries like Britain and Japan have hundreds of years of history of sea based immigration in their histories.
• Of course, like every other country, some parts of the Palestinian nation may not view themselves as ethnically Palestinian, particularly recent immigrants with their own ethnic identity such as Kurds, Armenians etc. However, if by Greeks you meant Greek Orthodox or similar, then I am not aware of a separate ethnic identity and it would make little sense given the perceived ancient heritage of that community in the region.

I hope that was in some way interesting, and helped to answer your question. Oncenawhile (talk) 23:57, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your response Oncenawhile. To be clear, when referring to "Arabs" I was referring specifically to Arab tribes (settled or nomadic) not the linguistic/cultural definition which is far more inclusive. Of course, the earlier non-Arab populations were Arabized in the linguistic/cultural sense over time anyway. Like I said I could be wrong, but I thought ethnic groups were more or less homogeneous while nations could be more ethnically diverse. I still believe Palestinians are a nation like the Lebanese or the Syrians rather than an ethnic group, but in any case, if the Palestinians indeed constitute an ethnicity, shouldn't there be specialized sources (historians, anthropologists, geneticists, ethnographers, etc.) that say so? --Al Ameer (talk) 00:12, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

P.S. I wasn't even aware that Palestinians saw themselves as an ethnicity instead of a nation. --Al Ameer (talk) 00:19, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with much of what you say. The problem is, many sources will say Palestinians are a nation, and many say they are an ethnic group and that is not necessarily (Latin. natio) a contradiction. The contradiction lies in the sloppiness of these terms, even in scholarly sources, since both are inflected by transformations in how the two words were used over the last centuries. My father once astonished two American soldiers whom he befriended on the beach at Waikiki because he realized that their melancholy silence might have reflected anxieties about going to Vietnam (very early in that war). He understood their feelings, as a WW2 vet. Offered them beers, and when one said:' Actually, we are native Americans', he asked with delighted curiosity:'Oh, really! What nation do you hail from?' (followed by a rote list of a dozen major tribes whose histories he had memorized): they beamed: it was the first time in their lives that someone, and someone who wasn't even American, thought of them as they thought of themselves, as belonging to a 'nation' that wasn't just a political reality, but a distinct cultural/historical reality within the state. 'Sir! We've had to come all this way to learn that a foreigner understands who we really are, when our own neighbours have never honoured us by the recognition that we're something more than Americans, we're one of the nations within the nation'.

The same problem exists with definitions of Jews. I beg to differ re 'ethnic' ('an ethnic group, which I always thought relied more on shared ancestral roots, real or perceived,'). Historically, in pre-modern history, continental tribes/nations were subject to the promiscuous tides of ethnic fluxes, and this is particularly true of a notorious crossroad of cultures like Palestine. The Israelite tribes were, to judge from the Bible traditions, once they are threshed out, were a complex medley of groups from Egypt (many in the Exodus narrative have typical Egyptian names) Edom, Arabia, Syria, Phoenicia, Canaan. Since 1948, and it's pretty bizarre for my eyes, huge efforts have been made to redefine the Jewish past in terms of a guarded conservation of the same gene stock, as rabbinical theory hijacks historical facts, so conversion, interbreeding etc., is down played. The 'Arabs' themselves are attested in the area, not, as the cliché has it, from the 7th. century C.E, with the conquest, but a millennium before, in the First Temple Period, and these constant influxes of generic 'Arabs' inflected the constitution of the peoples of ancient Palestine. The southern Hebron hills Palestinians are particularly rich in this aspect, having attested flows from 'Arabs' from the 5-4th century, B.C., the 7th century conquest, and the 17th. century influx of Bedouins settling the town, and intermingling. You can see this in the 'tribal' definitions that still persist for quarters and hamula. A pathology of modernity was to recast the notion of a unified polity in racial terms, defining the heterogeneous populations as one nation and ethnicity, and our troubled usage reflects this. In my ideal world, I would chuck away a word like 'ethnic': I hate it, and I think it a cover term for 'race', with all of the toxic implications that bears. But here, we have to go by sources, and, sources keep telling me Palestinians are also defined as an 'ethnic group'. Nishidani (talk) 08:49, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Lazyfoxx attempts to start an "edit war"?

I am not sure why, but he re-added the "ethnic group" part once again without trying to continue discussion over the matter. Could perhaps anyone step forward and remove that small line again, please?

In another matter, Sophronius of Jerusalem should be removed from the picture in my opinion, as he was born in Byzantine Empire and was most likely an Arab. I am quite confused why he is even mentioned in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.108.171.88 (talk) 23:37, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry you seem to have an aversion to the "small line", it is your right to have your own personal opinions about the Palestinians, but Misplaced Pages is based on sources, which I provided. Are you disagreeing with the new reliable sources I provided after Jeppiz requested I do? Lazyfoxx (talk) 23:48, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't see Lazyfoxx edit warring. I removed the claim some days ago, and explained on the talk page why the sources were not good. Lazyfoxx found other, better sources and then put the claim back with these sources in. I saw it as a good example of how Misplaced Pages should work, and the article was improved. So as the user who was "reverted", I say there was no edit warring, only good editing. Jeppiz (talk) 00:06, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Where does it provide evidence that they are an ethnic group? From my understanding, the source on cgpublisher is based on collection of data and interviews. I'd like to know where it has done solid research that concludes that they are indeed with ethnic group and why this particular research is seen more highly than any other research that is mentioned in the article.

I don't see where it provides proof or source of why they are an ethnic group, but mentions them as one because that is how the type of people he collected the data from identify themselfs. This in no way can count as a solid proof to why they are an ethnic group, which continues to make this matter disputed. It is a good source, yes, but it does not deal with the ethnicity issue from what I am seeing so far. (If you could provide quotes, that would be useful but I doubt it would effect much the outcome)

That could be added to any other academic research you might look for, where when it will need to refer to certain ethnic group among the Palestinians, it will refer to them as "Palestinian ____" where the blank can be replace with ethnicity.

Examples: Ethnic groups and the meaning of urban place: The German Colony and Palestinians and Jews in Haifa Chapter 6 – Barriers Impeding Access to Higher Education: The Effects of Government Education Policy for Disadvantaged Palestinian Arab and Jewish Citizens Y-chromosomal STRs in two populations from Israel and the Palestinian Authority Area: Christian and Muslim Arabs Epidemiology of multiple sclerosis in Arabs in Jordan: a comparative study between Jordanians and Palestinians

Additionally: " That left the second source, which is fully RS (a peer-reviewed academic publication) but it says the opposite!", you said it yourself. A source that was shared by Lazyfoxx himself. Doesn't that adds to the fact on how disputed this subject it? I might be wrong with Lazyfoxx starting an edit war, but you see that this is a disputed matter. Wait before you modify something, see if anybody can respond to that. Otherwise that page would end up getting modified on that line on a daily basis.

In fact, if you continue reading this wiki article you'll see the following (obviously with the already included sources:) The history of a distinct Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars. Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th century. "Palestinian" was used to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by the Arabs of Palestine in a limited way until World War I. The first demand for national independence of the Levant was issued by the Syrian–Palestinian Congress on 21 September 1921. After the creation of the State of Israel, the exodus of 1948, and more so after the exodus of 1967, the term came to signify not only a place of origin, but also the sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian state. According to Rashid Khalidi, the Palestinian nationalism developed a historiography that "anachronistically read back into the history of Palestine over the past few centuries, and even millennia, a nationalist consciousness and identity that are in fact relatively modern.". The modern Palestinian people now understand their identity as encompassing the heritage of all ages from biblical times up to the Ottoman period.

In conclusion: This issue is already mention in this wiki article, among other articles similar to it, and starting the current article that Palestinians are an ethic group like it's a solid fact and agreed upon everyone is just wrong.

On the side note: Any opinions on the Sophronius of Jerusalem matter? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.108.171.88 (talk) 01:23, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Please review WP:Soap and . Question, have you ever been indefinitely blocked from editing Misplaced Pages before? Lazyfoxx (talk) 03:38, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Let's go over this one by one: 1. Propaganda. Why do you think I spread propaganda? As already mentioned, I did not provide my own source and instead relay on websites you shared. There was even a source you shared and it conflicted with your claims. Additionally I quoted phrases other[REDACTED] user/s have added to the article, and you can see on what source they relayed on. 2. Opinion pieces. I tend to type "in my opinion" in the aim to be polite. I base my opinions on sources, but that perhaps is an issue with my writing style. 3. Scandal mongering. I don't think I even need to explain why that is not the case, as I assume you've read our conversation. 4. Self-promotion. I highly doubt this article has anything to do with me. 5. Advertising, marketing or public relations. I don't see where profit is gained here. I do keep a natural point of view, but disagree with calling Palestinians an ethnic group for the reasons above (It's a group made of different ethnic groups)

Reading through your previous discussion it seems like you believe it is "known to all" "fact" that Palestinians are an ethnic group, while it is obvious that is not the case just from reading through our discussion (or the previous discussions you had).

I will not send you far, and instead tell you to take your time and read through some historic articles on wikipedia. This way you will know when the Palestinian nationality (in the sense of unity among different ethnic groups) appeared and why. You want to go as far during the roman times? You have the Jewish - Roman war, when the land was renamed to Palestine. You want to go back to the crusaders? You have military campaigns over the land, which was called "kingdom of Jerusalem" when Jerusalem was conquered. Many different ethnic groups lived there, but I have yet to see one that identify itself as a "Palestinian".

We can clearly see that there has been a period of time of many ethnic groups were living in Palestine. When some of them merge under one flag they don't automatically create a new ethnic group.

As stated before, Palestine is used to describe a geographical area. Sophronius, for example, didn't see himself belong to the "Palestinian people" as no such thing existed yet. Not to mention his place of birth. It was only later in history when people of different ethnicity wished to create an independent state called "Palestine".

I also find it amusing that you want to swap Sophronius for St. George, but I assume that is the result of someone who believes it is an ethnic group, or existed as a nation during that time. This is the very reason why I recommend removing it and swapping Sophronius with someone who is in no doubt a Palestinian. You are also welcome to read the Arabic Wiki page and check out the sources they provided. 84.108.171.88 (talk) 11:40, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Nishidani you mentioned the ethnic clashes between the Native (Bedouin Hashemite) Jordanians and the Palestinian refugees/refugee descendants, but that's not the only one (although probably the most known since by now the Palestinians have become the majority in Jordan)ץ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guy355 (talk • contribs) 17:26, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Palestinians in Jordan are customarily called 'ethnic Palestinians', as numerous sources arttest. It is rather silly therefore to object to the idea of a Palestinian ethnic group, of the same origin, just a few miles across the border.Nishidani (talk) 18:06, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Precisely, Nishidani, "An ethnic group or ethnicity is a socially-defined category of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, social, cultural or national experience. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language and/or dialect and sometimes ideology, manifests itself through symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, physical appearance, etc." It is indeed rather silly that this is one of the few ethnic groups that requires a source to have the word ethnic that in the lead at all. Lazyfoxx (talk) 02:03, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Lazyfoxx has now brought additional sources, and we are done here. Frankly, if the Palestinians' self-identification does not qualify them as an ethnic group, then no other ethnic group in the world can exist either. Ethnic groups are defined in the real world not by hard science but by consensus, much like wikipedia. Oncenawhile (talk) 10:28, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Infobox Picture

I would like to request the location of the stated consensus to remove infoboxes from every ethnic group article, if either of you could provide it I would appreciate it, as per the confusion, thank you. @PacificWarrior101 and Bolter21: Lazyfoxx (talk) 21:30, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

@Lazyfoxx: There was a recent RFC at WT:ETHNIC, and the result was formalized as WP:NOETHNICGALLERIES. Favonian (talk) 21:33, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

WP:NOETHNICGALLERIES --Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:35, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Thankyou both! Lazyfoxx (talk) 21:37, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Understanding

"The modern Palestinian people now understand their identity".

• What the fuck does "now understand" mean?
• Is there anything we can connect this properly to (school materials)?
• Who is the one that "now understands" exactly (Palestinian Dentists, Palestinian Runway Models, Notable Palestinians)?

p.s. where can I find information about current state of the Arabs and others' support of the Palestinians? Omysfysfybmm (talk) 13:54, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

The full sentence is "The modern Palestinian people now understand their identity as encompassing the heritage of all ages from biblical times up to the Ottoman period"--Bolter21 (talk to me) 14:20, 8 February 2016 (UTC).

The editor makes a good point. It is an odd phrase, not used for other ethnicities. We could just as well have a similar phrase at Jews: "The modern Jewish people now understand their identity as encompassing the heritage of biblical times". Evolution of national historiography is common across all national identities. Oncenawhile (talk) 14:25, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Related ethnic groups

The line says Palestinians are related to other Levantines and then include a list of Levantines and Jewish divisions (Ashkenazi, Mizrahi etc.), also "Mediterranean race" is not an ethnic group and Canaanites are non-exist today.. Shouldn't we just write: Other Levantines, Semitic people: Jews, Samaritans, other Arabs. (Assyrians are far and already included in Semitic). In addition, this whole line is unsourced.

• A source for the connection with Jews can be this (Although I think we may find a better one): link
• This may be used to explain Palestinian relation with Samaritans. link.

What about Assyrians? I know Jews are genetically related to them but what about Palestinians? Anyone has a source? And any other offers to improve this line in the infobox?--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:55, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Palestinian are in fact mixed people

Palestinian are Arabized and islamized mixed people and not Arabs.--Romano Marchese (talk) 15:29, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Source it baby (and you better bring a better sourced consensus that opposes the current sourced consensus--Bolter21 (talk to me) 17:49, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

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Fatah, Hamas, PFLP-GC, UNRWA et al.

Why is there no mention of these bodies intrinsic to the cause in the lead? All I see is way too much stats about my brothers and sisters are spread. I wonder if anyone can get through the first paragraph without nodding off. Who wrote this hot mess? Also, what would make Khalidi so important as to have his name in the fucking lead? There are others with better contributions. Martyrs who did not sell out.

Reliable sources

Michael Prior and James Parkes are NOT reliable sources on palestinian history. They are theologians writing personal essays. Personal essays aren't history.--Monochrome_Monitor 06:13, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

I guess you want to try and tear to pieces the definition in the lead? If so, before doing so, look at the definition of Jews, which is the most egregious, anti-historical, piece of WP:SYNTH I know of on wiki ethnic articles (and contradicts its own sources). It is resolutely defended despite all notifications that Albert Einstein, a physicist and Louis Brandeis, a Supreme Court justice, Atzmon a geneticist etc.etc.etc. are not historians of the Jewish people.

Rephrase that in logical terms and it means

The history of Palestine can only be written by qualified historians

Michael Prior and James Parkes were not primarily qualified as historians

Therefore they cannot be cited for the history of that country.

You don't observe this rule yourself since you repeatedly cite journalists with no knowledge of genetics for articles on genetics. The parallel pages on Israel /History of Israel uses theologians, primary religious texts written by theologians (Genesis, Nehemiah, Sefer HaCharedim Mitzvat Tshuva etc.etc.etc.) to source its history, or theologians themselves (John Barton), Rabbi James Ponet, Rabbi Abraham P.Bloch fropm Brooklyn, political scientists (Ahron Bregman), sociologists (Roger Friedland), attorneys and political advisors David Fromkin, a duchess, Jill Hamilton (whose book was written before she began to do graduate studies); etc.etc.etc.

In short you raise the RS high bar to object to Palestinian articles, but ignore the fact these high standards are nowhere observed on historical articles dealing with the same topic in Jewish articles.Nishidani (talk) 08:01, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

The article Jews has "good" article status. This does not.("Jebusites", how cute! We don't even know who the jebusites were!) There's a big difference between the hebrew bible and the opinion of an anti-zionist supercessionist cleric.--Monochrome_Monitor 03:55, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

What's "good article" status have to do with the price of chips? GA does not mean a stamp of approval on content. You picked two sources to question, one by a deeply committed philosemite, the other by a deeply committed pro-Palestinian. Parity in opposite POVs. But what appears to determine your objection to both is that in either case, 'Christian' values drove their scholarship. You really ought to get over this animosity: Christianity is just a form of Judaism that dropped the ethnic restrictiveness and idea that the transcendental utopia was attached to a specific piece of real estate on the planet. In any case, Einstein, Brandeis et al, fail your criterion, so if you want to prove your objection here is serious, show me that you can object to the same ostensible sourcing error there.Nishidani (talk) 07:04, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

You need to discard your weird preconceptions about Jon Entine. He has plenty of knowledge about genetics. He runs the genetic literacy project. It's an offshoot of the science literacy project, an NGO which runs classes for journalists so they don't publish psuedoscientific bullshit. Next, two wrongs don't make a right. You're stretching his credibility. He's a theologian. Theologians often learn languages like hebrew, greek, aramaic, latin... or even Arabic. That doesn't make them historians. Unless you're fine with me citing William E. Blackstone?--Monochrome_Monitor 07:12, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

"Ethnic restrictiveness"- you sound a lot like Marcion. Judaism was only ethnically restricted because the romans banned conversion to it and jews had no peace to evangelize since. I'm afraid you're basically saying "Christianity is improved judaism that has lost its backwards tribal bullshit", which might I say, is a highly condescending and orientalist outlook. Inclusivity aside, christianity is not JUST judaism with gentiles. It's judaism without monotheism.--Monochrome_Monitor 07:17, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

As for your gaza statement, that's an extremely offensive thing to say. Israelis don't bomb gaza because they hate muslims. They bomb gaza because hamas shoots rockets at israel from gaza and digs tunnels from gaza into israel and gazans elected hamas. My dad's family came to america because of the pogroms in ukraine, and I don't recall anyone mentioning that leaflets were dropped from the sky reading "PLEASE EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY: RUSSIANS ARRIVE IN 15 MINUTES" But I would argue that the current "stabbing operations" perpetrated by Palestine Arabs constitute "low-tech" pogroms.--Monochrome_Monitor 07:28, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

More and more you are sounding like a spokesperson for a hasbara organization. There is no individuality, in short, in your statements; it is the standard boilerplate, and is fatal to good editing for an encyclopedia.

You are, as usual, unfocused, and adopt the rhetorical trick of ignoring what you have no answer to. You used Cnaan Lipshiz and Yori Yanover as sources for genetics when they are cub reporters that know zilch about genetics and history. You defended the use of Jon Entine as authoritative, being, putatively, a geneticist, for weeks, only quietly dropping it as a line of defense when I challenged you to show where his curriculum indicates any university level acquaintance with the subject. So you have the usual manipulative approach to articles: anything that blandishes the content result you desire is RS on one page; no high quality source is acceptable on another page if the authors are, in this case, 'Christian' or respected historians of the Middle East, and competent scholars in semitic languages. In one, the POV suits you, so everything can go in; in the other the POV is one you despise, and you'll grasp for any straw to try and undermine its credibility by talking of an RS highbar.

As to Christianity you admit you haven't read the New Testament, let alone its intricate scholarship, and I'd bet you haven't read Marcion either, so drop it. I know the subject thoroughly from the inside, and since early boyhood repudiated it for many reasons: my nature is indifferent to belief systems, - they are all totalitarian in that they eviscerate one's abilities to step outside of what are corporative systems of blind assent to anything the interpretative caste might say, and when religion, as opposed to ethics, mixes with politics, or science, or history you'll get public insanity from the discursive inanity.

p.s. You find everything 'offensive' except Israeli offensives. You have the 'terror tunnel syndrome' of hasbara handouts. Jews throughout their history dug tunnels, used caves, to defend themselves, or prepare guerilla attacks against their oppressors. Palestine/Israel is pitted with them, and they are the object of excited tourist visits by Israelis admiring the work put into them by their ancestors as they resisted the Roman imperial powers. 'Israelis' don't regularly carpet-bomb Gaza. The government and the IDF make those decisions and implement them, Israelis do not. Russians aren't responsible for the slaughter of Chechens, nor Americans for the genocide enacted by their government in Vietnam/Cambodia;nor the Chinese for the destruction of Tibet; populations aren't implicated in anything unless, individually, they assent to what is done, ostensibly in their name. 99% of Gazan 'rockets' are things that fizzle in the sky and hit the southern desert (the estimated explosive content of their mortars/rockets over 51 days, in hitting the desert, is 40 tons; Israel 'responded' with at least 4,900 bombing runs, 6,000 tons of bombs/rockets, and artillery shelling ran over the 10,000 figure. The result? I Israeli child killed, 553 Gazan children killed. You may be a whiz at mathematics, but your capacity to infer the obvious is questionable) 99% of Israel's ultra-sophisticated rocketry hits the designated target. You're talking about aborigines brandishing woomeras at white men with rifles, or Kitchener's Maxim guns mowing down 23,000 tribesmen for the loss of 48 soldiers at Omdurman. :::::That said, you dislike Prior and Parkes. If you think them inappropriate, go to RSN.Nishidani (talk) 10:00, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Ireton

Much of the local Palestinian population in Nablus is believed to be descended from Samaritans who converted to Islam. Even today, certain Nabulsi surnames including Muslimani, Yaish, and Shakshir among others, are associated with a Samaritan origin.

1. ^ Sean Ireton (2003). "The Samaritans – A Jewish Sect in Israel: Strategies for Survival of an Ethno-religious Minority in the Twenty First Century". Anthrobase. Retrieved 29 November 2007.

While on the subject of reliable sources, we do not usually allow MA theses. Even PhD theses are treated with caution, see WP:SCHOLARSHIP. That eliminates this one, even though it is interesting. Zero 03:25, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Quite true. There's just one point I'd like you to reconsider, while deferring to your decision (remove text with unreliable source, see talk page).

The only point I’d like feedback on is that Ireton’s MA has been accepted as an important contribution in academic Samaritan studies. Reinhold Pummer is the doyen of Samaritan scholarly studies, and he is not alone in thinking Ireton's paper sufficiently well-done to warrant reference to, and inclusion of its results in, his recent revised book:

• Reinhard Pummer, The Samaritans: A Profile, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2016 p.3
• Monika Schreiber, The Comfort of kinship:Samaritan Community, Kinship, and Marriage,, BRILL 2014 p.7
• Julia Droeber, The Dynamics of Coexistence in the Middle East: Negotiating Boundaries Between Christians, Muslims, Jews and Samaritans in Palestine, I.B.Tauris, 2013 pp.49.175-176

I don't want to lower the high bar we insist on in these areas, but the policy guideline does not quite appear to cover this anomaly? Nishidani (talk) 13:57, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Samaritan and Jewish descent

Some Palestinian families descend from Arabized Jews, such as the Mahamra clan of Yatta.

1. 'This is a conflict between brothers; it's all a big misunderstanding'

I've come across this for almost 2 decades. The source should actually, if edited in, read:

• David Shamah, 'This is a conflict between brothers; it's all a big misunderstanding' Jerusalem Post 20 August 2009

Tsvi Misinai is the source, or intermediary for 2 Yatta Palestinians who seem to be confirming his theory, which has zero status, in the form he presents it, in scholarship. The 2 happen to have contradictory stories. One claims to be a member of the Mahamra clan, the very one from which, incidently, the killers in the June 2016 Tel Aviv shooting hail from. The other from the Sawarka Bedouin clan of Al Arish in Egypt. Our article says Bedouins are from the Arabian peninsula, but this one claims his family is of indigenous Jewish origins converted to Islam. Everything is possible. One of these stories holds that a 10th of the population of Yatta itself consists of covert Jews, but not originative of Palestine, but rather descended from a Jew called Mehamar who several centuries ago was expelled from the Arabian Peninsula.

This particular story came into circulation after a Norwegian tourist guide,Tormod Lundgren Hansen, picked up the gossip n the late 70s. It got some minor attention in Richard Oestermann's Born Again, Gefen Publishing House Ltd, 1999 pp.90ff.

There are any number of reasons why this might be useful for POV partying: (a) Palestinians in Yatta have lands in Area C, and pleading Jewish credentials is a card to play (b) inter-clan hostilities, leading to hamula links with Jewish settlers, who have been there since the early British Mandate (c) settler interests, since the claim would validate the idea that the land, though in the hands of apostates, is Jewish (I think there's a Talmudic ruling on that). Likewise it might be denied, as uncomfortable to Palestinian national aspirations,etc.etc. In short, until some serious groundwork by anthropologists gets into the nitty gritty and analyses it, this is just gossip, and can't be used.Nishidani (talk) 15:52, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

MM

this 08:21, 20 June 2016 alteration] of this is inserting a POV spin on the original text, which does not say ‘though some only do so in order’: It says:

Villagers typically trace their family or their hamula’s origin back to a more recent past in the Arabian peninsula. Many avowed descent from some nomadic tribe that migrated from Arabia to Palestine either during or shortly after the Islamic conquests. By such a claim they inserted their family’s history into the narrative of Arab and islamic civilization and connected themselves to a genealogy that possessed greater local and contemporary prestige than did ancient or pre-islamic descent.'

Your justification reads: 'that is true. many often though? also not all are lying'.

You appear to be incapable of just transcribing fairly and correctly the original sources, because of some private evaluation of how anything looks spin-wise. This has nothing to do with the truth or lying. We have 'many' inserting that claim, transformed (WP:OR) into some only (of the many). Don't persist in meddling with the plain language of sources, please, which only looks like you are trying to, without textual support judge, that of the 'many' who make a claim, 'some' are just making a claim, and therefore (implicit) the others are stating not a claim but a truth/reality.Nishidani (talk) 10:45, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

I would have loved to put in the actual wording, but I knew you would object to that. I thought you would think it was a positive spin.--Monochrome_Monitor 18:50, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Israel statistics

In the infobox, a 2013 source of the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics reveal that there are there are some 1,400,000 Arabs in Israel. But we all know that not all of them identify as Palestinians. According to a research (in Hebrew) made by Israeli Professor of Sociology Sammy Smooha, some only 60% of the Israeli–Arabs identify as Palestinians (some as Palestinian–Arabs and some as Palestinian–Israelis). Should we add a note?--Bolter21 (talk to me) 17:39, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

That's not a bad point to raise. No one of course, not even Smooha, that the Arab population of Israel descends from the Palestinian Arab population remaining within the state of Israel after 1948. Worth thinking about and checking around. To self-identify is one thing, ethnic origin another. The same problem emerges in disputes over the number of Jews in various countries, like the US, given the variations between those who are of Jewish descent, and those who register themselves as Jewish, etc.Nishidani (talk) 19:10, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Generally Jews are Jews according to religion (I doubted god at the age of 3 and yet I am a Jew cause my mother is). Palestinians are exclusively a nation unlike Jews who might be considered an Ethno-religious group (the religion is based on a nation, the "Sons of Israel") I don't think that comparing the Palestinians to Jews will be the right thing. The term Palestinians simply refer to the non-Jewish or all indigenous people (non-migrants) who lived in Mandatory Palestine in 1947. A similar example might be Syria. The term Syrian pretty much refer to someone whose origins are within the borders of Mandatory Syria (exluding Lebanon). Now Alexandratta was part of Syria for a short while and there are Arabs there (i.e. not Turkish) but today Alexandratta is part of Turkey. Can the people in Alexandratta be called Syrians? And if so, is it correct to refer to those who identify as Turkish as Syrians? Today indeed Arab-Israelis live in the region of Palestine but they are citizens of Israel and some don't feel like identifying as Palestinians. The fact that Um Rashrash (where Eilat is today) is only a few kilometers from Aqaba and yet Aqaba citizens are subjects of the Jordanian Kingdom while Um Rashrash refugees demand return to Palestine, is one of the things the establish the opinion that the Palestinians are not an ethnic group and although I am not willing to change the article's lead, I still stand behind this opinion, and therefore I think that even though the Arab-Israelis are subjected to old PLO charter and fall in the category of Palestinians, I don't think it is right to say that a society such as the Druze ir others are Palestinians if they disagree. I am not asking to change the number in the Infobox, just to add a note saying not all Arab-Israelis identify as Palestinians and according to one reliable research, only 60% do.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 02:22, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Generally, these issues should be simple, but prove immensely complex when examined, because the methodologies to achieve an objective judgement are flawed by political interests from either side. Figures are dated, perceptions shift over time, and the ethnic categories have political uses, and each interest group pulls the available data one way or another. I usually don’t touch this stuff because I prefer avoiding headaches. Use the same logic on the Israeli Jews page, and you would have to figure out how in the fuck to readjust the actual given figure for ‘core Israeli Jews’ when large numbers of the Haredi population, 750,000,(10%) of Israel’s population, should be subtracted, for example, because doctrinally, the Haredi don’t recognize the secular entity of Israel, and see themselves as Jews, not Israeli Jews.

• (a)The info box has an Israeli gov source stating there are approximately 1.658 million Arab residents in Israel, not as we have it 1,470,000. So the infobox source is out of synch with the data.
• (b)The source in any any case does not mention ‘Palestinians’ but ‘Israeli Arabs’
• (c) there is a gap of roughly 200,000 between the 2 figures.
• (d) Israel’s Arab population, as you say, descends from Arabs registered as citizens of Palestine under the British Mandate down to 1948.
• (e) There is a distinct difference between ethnic origin and self-identification. They are two different registers. The Palestinian official view, which happens to be the historic reality, is that Israel’s Arabs are ethnic-Palestinians because they were born there, or descend from Palestinian Arabs born there.
• (f) Your suggestion needs, technically, an RS making a distinction between Israeli Arabs who self-identify as Palestinians, and Israeli Arabs who do not. This you have, but the only problem is WP:OR, i.e. taking the figure of 1,470,000 or 1,658,000 and taking out 40%.
• (g) If we take the Israeli Jews page we find the kind of note you suggest.

6,335,000 74.9% of the Israeli population are ‘core Jews’ while the ‘enlarged Jewish population (includes non-Jewish relatives of Jews) and peripheral ‘Jews’ (by subtrraction) 607,000

However, the article also notes that ‘The Israeli government does not trace the ethnic origin of Israeli Jews,’ contradicting itself, since the figures for the enlarged Jewish population are based on quite precise data about ethnic origin. Whereas the Palestinian authorities trace the ethnic origin of Arab Israelis’.

My own feeling for the moment would along the lines of a possible note updating the figure, using perhaps 'Arab-Palestinian' and adding a bracketed note that 40% of these may not identify as 'Palestinian'. But I wouldn't rush it. I'd like wider input, and a little more research, and certainly a consideration as to why the Israeli Jews figure is inclusive and ignores self-identification as a criterion, whereas the proposal here for Palestinians is to exclusive, breaking them down by a criterion of self-identification. All we have at the moment, thanks to your intervention, is that the source for that figure is outdated and not material to the topic, and that definitely needs fixing.Nishidani (talk) 09:27, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

According to Smooha 20% of Israeli Arabs do not feel "Israeli" but this doesn't prevent me from calling them Israeli-Arabs because the term which historically referred to Arab citizens of Mandatory Palestine, todey refer to the Arab citizens of Israel. The Palestinians in Israel as you say it are indeed decendents of the Mandate population and fall in the category of "Palestinians" (and also the Haredi are Israeli citizens regardless of how much they refuse to die for me as I am forced by law to die for them in battle), but as I don't recognize them as an ethnic group, I don't think it it make sense to call them all "Palestinian", but I am not willing to violate the consensus about ethnicity or re-open the discussion, just add a not saying as much as "not all Arab citizens of Israel refer to themselves as Palestinians".--Bolter21 (talk to me) 11:55, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Let's wait for further imput. I'm inclined to accept a note on this, along the lines you suggest.Nishidani (talk) 12:24, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

I've just found a percentage which throws some further light on this and may help us

The Palestinian Muslim population inside Israel (which comprises 82 per cent of the total Palestinian population inside Israel)' Michael Dumper (ed.), Palestinian Refugee Problem: Global Perspectives, Routledge 2006 p.317

Though it doesn't tell us of Christian or Muslim Palestinians who disavow an identity as Palestinians.Nishidani (talk) 15:43, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

A 2009 study made by Tel Aviv University found out that 24% of Christian Arabs identify as Palestinian-Arabs while only 43% of the Muslims do (while 94% of the Druze identify as Druze-Israelis). The Ynet report (Hebrew) on that might not contain all the information, as the later research by Smooha reveled that 20% of the Arabs refer to themselves as "Palestinian-Arabs" and 40% as "Palestinian-Israelis", which is something many Arabs can identify with, as they feel solidarty with other Palestinians but still want to be normal citizens of Israel. The TLV University study might be less relevent to today becuase it is from 2009 and I belive that things such as the Arab Spring or the 2011 Israeli social justice protests, as well as the shieft of the Israeli government to the right since 2009 and the regresivenes of Israel's approach to solving the I/P conflict might have all contributed to a wider identification of Arabs as Palestinians, after realising they might never be fully incorperated into the Israeli society. Either way, both studies show that not all of the Arab citizens refer to themselves as Palestinians. While searching for it, I found many Haaretz opinion-articles desperately crying for the Israeli public not to use the term "Arab-Israelis" and many other sources such as OCHA refer to the Arab citizens of Israel as "Palestinian citizens of Israel", mainly backed by a political ideology.

As I said, there are enough sources to safely write in a note that "not ". I am one of those who dislike and oppose the political usage of the term "Palestinians" and I find no legitimate logic behind the claim that the Palestinians are an ethnic group, regardless of how many WP:RS you"ll show me, but I really all Arab citizens of Israel identify as Palestiniansdon't care that the article will say that the Palestinians are an ethnic group (and the article already have things I see as problematic like the WP:DUE in the lead section about land confiscations) but becuase I don't recognize the Palestinians as an ethnic group (but more of a national group based on self-identification), I don't think it will make any good for me to try and change the article beucase it won't go with sources, since many of them don't match my ideology, so I only ask for a sourced note (and keep the main information to an article such as Arab citizens of Israel).

And I think RolandR can always prove that I am not bluffing when citing Hebrew sources. Just for the record.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 01:43, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Okay Stav. Put 'not all Arab citizens of Israel identify as Palestinians'. Good solid work as usual. And I don't need Roland's checking to verify the integrity of your representation of sources. The idea never crossed my mind. Cheers-Nishidani (talk) 06:32, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I.e.Of 1,658,000 Israeli Arabs, 60 percent self-identify as Palestinians (Smooha 2013+the Israel official website already cited there.Nishidani (talk) 13:07, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Hey Nishidani, I started adding the note but I had some problems in the way and I decided to leave it and make myself a toast. Now I cam back but I still have two problems: I am not sure how to phrase it; I lack expiriance with notes (and my attempts were messy. Can you put a source inside a note?). Help maybe?--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:07, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

You've caught me 5 minutes before tonight's Uefa soccer kick-off.Just add the bracket

Just adjust the Israeli Arabs to 1,658,000 Israeli Arabs', as the source we have actually states (2013) and then in brackets ('60% self-identify as Palestinians'ref Smooha 2013./ref, I.e. Cheers,Nishidani (talk) 18:58, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if you screw up. I'm offline now but if you can't get it right, Monochrome's a whiz: give her a buzz.Nishidani (talk) 18:58, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

MM Failure to control sources, tampering with text language to create a POV spin, plain reverting with no talk page or adequate edit summary explanation

Context. MM. Most of your recent edits are erratic and it is patently evident you are trying to spin a discredited thesis. Your incompetence is creating just one more in a long line of messes. For third parties let me outline the POV interests one could argue are at play.

(A)The POV can be one that argues that populations -especially its timeless 'peasant-productive base' -in any area that has not witnessed, in terms of the historical record, massive deportation for at least 2,000 years, must have substantial continuities of descent. That is a fairly standard rule of thumb. Even the fixed story of the Assyro-Babylonian and Roman deportations have been discarded because at most, certainly in the former, the strong likelihood is that a proportionately small elite was forced into exile: most of the am ha-aretz stayed firmly rooted to their soil, mostly Israelitic-Canaanite.

(B)Zionist historiography - they even set up a research bureau in 1938/9 to gather evidence of this - at some point tried to dismantle the embarrassing idea the great majority of the Palestinian population basically descended from the same people tilling the soil for centuries and millenia, had somehow come to the land fairly recently. This found expression in Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial (1984) which left the American intelligentsia dazzled by its 'proof' -rave reviews from all the big shots in the commentariat - that in the 19th century Palestine was an 'empty land', and the Arabs basically began a late drift in from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, attracted by the economic prospects opened up by the wave of early Ist aliyah settlement, with its modern agricultural know-how. In other words, Palestine was repopulated by two contemporaneous waves of immigrants, Jewish and Arab. There was, therefore, no supplanting of an original people by strangers/colonialists, but merely a balanced pursuit by two groups, with the difference that the Jews had an 'historic attachment' to the land, and were returning, whereas the Arabs had no identity, and were basically just immigrants like the wave of Africans today trying to get into the EU countries.

The Peters thesis drew on earlier Zionist arguments, chief of which was that the 'Arabs' overwhelmed this Jewish-Christian country from 635 BE onwards. Even, if one concedes that these Palestinians have long roots in the land, they are, in the longue durée relatively recent blow-ins descended from warlike tribes coming from the Arabian peninsula, compared to us Jews, who were thrust out by Rome and were only going back to the land history had denied us for millenia.

The worst part of frivolous sourcing on this issue is to conflate the 'Arab' presence in Palestine with the Arab conquest of the 630s. As numerous scholarly works, including Fred Donner's argue, the whole peripheral economy of Palestine has always had a permeable relationship between nomadic tribes (from Ivri to Bebouin). Arabs are strongly attested in the 5th century BCE in southern Palestine; the Arab conquest was strategically won by advance groups seeking out local Bedu from the highlands, to thed Golan, to the Negev, who had centuries old arrangements and marriages with the local population, but who spoke dialects similar to the new Arab armies. Some of the Arabs who joined in the assault, from Syria, converted to the Arabian peninsular religion at the last moment. So while settlement definitely was important, it included not only the conquerors from Arabia, but many more contiguous Arab groups who did not travel to the region of Palestine, but had been around there for at least a millennium. Not to take care over this niceity is to push the modern Palestinian-Arabs-descend-from-Arabian -peninsular-invaders thesis of textbook Zionism and slapdash popular histories.Nishidani (talk) 13:07, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

This is the drum MM's edits have been thumping.

MM has been trying to bolster the discredited Zionist myths by accentuating the 'Arab' conquest meme. I don't contest the right of anyone to defend a legitimate interest, but in MM's case, it is done with superficiality, erratically, and total disattention to the meaning of language, and the sources we use. I will proceed to outline this shortly, but please note. Every mess created like this demands that editors clean up, and fix things the insouciant don't worry about. It's burdencreating editing, not constructive.Nishidani (talk) 10:45, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Example We have a profoundly stupid sentence, whose existence or form can only be explained by blind POV pressure. No thought has gone into it, and its retention and modulation is the object now of an edit war by MM. It is as follows

According to historical records part of the Muslim Palestinian population is descended from local inhabitants who had resided in the area several centuries prior to the Islamic conquest, and some possibly since prehistoric times.

The message being sent is this:

• Part of the Muslim population of Palestine today is not descended from the population that pre-existed the Islamic conquest, i.e. an unverifiable and insane proposition which could only be asserted by someone who believes the Muslim Palestinian population has 2 parts, those with pre-Islamic descent, and those with no pre-islamic descent, excluding the fact that populations are historically created by admixture.

A moment's thought would allow any impartial eye to note the idiocy of the phrasing.

At this time, Palestine had a mixed Christian-Jewish population with some notable pagan remnants,and a nomadic/seminomadic periphery of Arab tribes of long standing. Much of the South had Arab populations since the 5th century BCE.The Christian population claims it descends from early Christians several centuries before the Arab period. The Muslim population today consists of people who claim or have roots also connecting them with the Arabs who settled the area in the wake of the conquest. That does not mean they never intermarried with the indigenous population, which has roots in the pre-Islamic conquest. By analogy, using the 'logic' of this POV spinning, because conversion was frequent for 1,500 years of Jewish history, a POV pusher could start writing:'

part of the Israeli Jewish population descends from Christians and pagans who had resided in Europe for millenia.

That is so stupid no one argues that. But Arabs are always described differently.

How did this mess get forged? There are three overt sources(a fourth is in Nebel).Nishidani (talk) 11:15, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

It was fabricated thus: The 3 main sources are:

• (a)Shaban MA (1971) Islamic history AD 600–750: a new interpretation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Nota bene. No link. No page number provided. MM has not done her homework.

• (b)Gil M (1992) A history of Palestine, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, pp 643–1099

Nota bene No link to a linkable text. The page range is so vast it is unverifiable. MM has not done her homework.

• (c)Nebel (2000> Human Genetics 2000,vol.107,pp630–641

Nota bene. The link is to the abstract not to the paper. The section cited (see below) is not in the link. More importantly, everyone on Misplaced Pages knows that historical data are the domain of historians, and must not be taken from papers written by geneticists with no background in the discipline of history.

It turns out that the whole sentence comes not from independent sourcing, but from the genetics paper by Nebel et al:

"According to historical records part, or perhaps the majority, of the Muslim Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD (Shaban 1971; Mc Graw Donner 1981). These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistorical times (Gil 1992)... Thus, our findings are in good agreement with the historical record..."

There you have it. Fraudulent. 'Part' is highjlighed while its qualification or may have been descended from a 'Jewish-Christian majority' is suppressed, to give the Arab-influx thesis typical of Zionist propagandists, but not of modern Israeli, Jewish or general scholarship. Pretending to cite secondary sources when, it emerges, those secondary sources are taken from a tertiary source that has no competence to synthesise historical details.

Nebel also contains a fourth source for this.

Fred Donner The Early Islamic Conquests, (1981) Princeton University Press, 2014

It is futile edit-warring when these flaws in method are not addressed. Anyone who wants that sentence has to show by specific page no., from each historical work ( Shaban, Gil, Donner) where that statement is justified. To persist in frigging with the language of the text, while trusting a geneticists' team with getting their sources right, is sheer laziness, and blind POV-pushing.Nishidani (talk) 11:35, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Example 2 In her second revert MM rewrites

Many Palestinian families claim the clan (hamula) to which they belong hails from nomadic tribes in the Arabian peninsula, viewing this as indicating their historical precedence over Jews in the country, though some only do so in order to share the prestige of Arab-Islamic descent, which is more highly valued socio-culturally than origins of a more ancient pre-Islamic descent

As

Despite the popularity of primordialist claims to primeval roots in the land in Palestinian nationalist thought, individual Palestinian families largely eschew these archaeological justifications, with many avowing a more recent past in Arabian tribes that immigrated during and after the Islamic conquest. Such genealogies possess a greater local prestige than ancient or pre-Islamic descent.

This is justified as you may not like what the source has to say, but this is a very faithful representation of it, practically word-for-word. in contrast what I wrote "some only do so" is pure conjecture, not in the source

Rubbish. The source is Ted Swedenburg p.81 Despite is used to convey the idea:'whatever they might say is contradicted by themselves, for they avow that they are indeed foreigners.'

It suppresses the whole context, selects just one sentence (‘The primordialist claims regarding the Palestinians’ primeval and prior roots in the land operated on the level of the collective’ (as opposed to individual family claims) and then embroiders its ideological spin.

The Palestinians primordialist claims are, Swedenburg notes, a mirror of Zionist/Jewish primordialist claims. MM suppresses the analogy, of Palestinians copying and reversing Zionist, ideology, in order to put over that this is just a ‘Palestinian nationalist’ claim, and not one taken from the identical Zionist argument.

'Such claims represented a kind of shadow discourse to that of the Zionists, a discourse articulated in virtually the same terms as its rival’s.p.81

There is no textual basis for ‘largely eschew these archaeological justifications’ which is totally inept because referring to the Bible text’s mythology is not an ‘archaeological justification’, proof again we have a distracted, fretfully hasty editing style.

Thirdly the revert cancels what Swedenburg also notes, namely that ‘Villagers claiming descent from Arabs who entered Palestine during the Arab-Islamic conquest equally viewed these origins as establishing their historical precedence over the Jews.’

Unless you drop this folly, and start trying to actually read sources, collaborate on the talk page, and desist from fiddling with the POV to get your way, you'll be up for a report again.Nishidani (talk) 12:21, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

You expect anyone to collaborate with this verbosity? I can't see anyone taking the time. How about summing it up a bit?

p.s. Zionists are not the problem. Omysfysfybmm (talk) 21:08, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

With editors who show high intelligence, accurate edits, and a close familiarity with sources I am extra concise. With those who persist in meddling with texts showing none of those traits, I am, yes, minutely verbose, in the sense that I exercise surgical methods to dissect their nonsense, just for the record. It's more to testify I do actually examine the guts of the issue, than to convince them, since anyone who waves a WP:;TLDR flag is only signaling a twitterishly diminished attention span, of which encyclopedic editing has no need.Nishidani (talk) 21:52, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Précis. I removed this passage:

According to historical records part of the Muslim Palestinian population is descended from local inhabitants who had resided in the area several centuries prior to the Islamic conquest, and some possibly since prehistoric times.

1. Shaban MA (1971) Islamic history AD 600–750: a new interpreta- tion. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
2. Gil M (1992) A history of Palestine. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 643–1099
3. Nebel; et al. (2000). "High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews". Human Genetics. 107: 630–641. doi:10.1007/s004390000426. PMID 11153918."According to historical records part, or perhaps the majority, of the Muslim Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD (Shaban 1971; Mc Graw Donner 1981). These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistorical times (Gil 1992)... Thus, our findings are in good agreement with the historical record..."

Because (a) the statement makes a nonsensical assumption (b)two of the three sources failed verification,(c) the editor adjusting it did not look at those historical sources but (d) replied on a summary of them in a genetics paper, which on wiki cannot be used to source historical topics, esp. as controversial as this. Genetic papers source genetic sections: historical sources source historical sections.Nishidani (talk) 22:01, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

My turn

Oh, you're asking for it this time. I'll be awfully through and by the time I finish you'll probably edit what you wrote. I will ignore this and respond to your original statements. I need some room for this.

Despite the popularity of primordialist claims to primeval roots in the land in Palestinian nationalist thought, individual Palestinian families largely eschew these archaeological justifications, with many avowing a more recent past in Arabian tribes that immigrated during and after the Islamic conquest. Such genealogies possess a greater local prestige than ancient or pre-Islamic descent.

This is justified as you may not like what the source has to say, but this is a very faithful representation of it, practically word-for-word. in contrast what I wrote "some only do so" is pure conjecture, not in the source

Rubbish. The source is Ted Swedenburg p.81 Despite is used to convey the idea:'whatever they might say is contradicted by themselves, for they avow that they are indeed foreigners.'

It suppresses the whole context, selects just one sentence (‘The primordialist claims regarding the Palestinians’ primeval and prior roots in the land operated on the level of the collective’ (as opposed to individual family claims) and then embroiders its ideological spin.

The Palestinians primordialist claims are, Swedenburg notes, a mirror of Zionist/Jewish primordialist claims. MM suppresses the analogy, of Palestinians copying and reversing Zionist, ideology, in order to put over that this is just a ‘Palestinian nationalist’ claim, and not one taken from the identical Zionist argument.

'Such claims represented a kind of shadow discourse to that of the Zionists, a discourse articulated in virtually the same terms as its rival’s.p.81

There is no textual basis for ‘largely eschew these archaeological justifications’ which is totally inept because referring to the Bible text’s mythology is not an ‘archaeological justification’, proof again we have a distracted, fretfully hasty editing style.

Lets see what else he has to say. The section is titled "popular primordialism", I'll quote the whole thing for proper context!

Many interviewees were anxious to have me understand that their national identity possessed a primordial genealogical continuity. In a large part, their allegations represented a kind of rejoinder to constant zionist allegations that Palestinians are relatively "recent" immigrants to Israel/Palestine. (they try to counter zionist claims. okay. he puts recent in quotes because the 7th century is not recent. I agree that it isn't, that's a fair criticism.) Several old men claimed that there was a long genealogical chain of Arab residence in Palestine that spanned the centuries. Many old Palestinans traced their collective ancestry back to the "Arab canaanites." By such means they meant to affirm that their original title to the land of Palestine predated and took precedence over rival Israeli Jewish claims. (Palestinians claim nonsense like that canaanites were arab because they want to rival jewish claims. How damning! I can't believe I left that out.) Such assertions resembled those those made by Palestinian nationalistic folklorists like Tewfik Canaan in the 1920s and 1930s (Canaan 1927), as well as arguments found in more recent official nationalist discourse. (official nationalist discourse, sounds approving. ie, they are reading a script.) Abdallah Frangi, for instance, claims that the Arab Palestinians are the descendants of the autochthonous Canaanite inhabitants of Palestine and that the Israelis are the offspring of ancient Hebrews who invaded Palestine later. The Zionist movement, Frangi therefore concludes, is simply another instance of the perennial interventionist projects of the ancient Hebrews (Frangi 1983: 1-16). (referring to pereniallism, ie primordialism, as in palestinians insert themselves into the position of israel's ancient enemies to make it seem like they have been put down by the jewish oppressor since the dawn of time.) Similarly, Akram Zu'aytir has asserted that Palestine was historically "Arab" long before the Islamic conquests. The Jews were not the original inhabitants of Palestine, according to Zu'aytir, but "foreigners" (note scare quotes) who owned only a part of Palestine and never comprised a majority of its population. The Jewish kingdom, he asserts, lasted only a short time and and left no lasting influence on the country's civilization (Zu'aytir 1955: 35, 58-59). (jews left no influence whatsoever on christian and islamic civilization. reasonable.) People I met told stories that elaborated or expanded upon these "official" narratives. Some alleged that because the prophet Abraham (revered by Muslims) was an Arab, the Jews were therefore the descendants of the Arabs. The Arabs, who who were Abraham's original offspring, therefore possessed prior rights to the land of Palestine. (remarkable feat of logic) One shopkeeper in Jerusalem was a veritable fountain of Arab-nationalist-inflected stories derived from the biblical tradition. He explained, for instance, that when Moses came to Palestine from Egypt, the Jews were reluctant to believe in him but the indigenous Arab Bedouin population of Palestine immediately accepted him as a prophet. The Arabs, by this account, were therefore more genuine followers of the Mosaic creed than the Jews and hence were the true and deserving heirs to the sacred land. Such claims represented a kind of shadow discourse to that of the Zionists, a discourse articulated in virtually the same terms as its rival's. (Here's the kicker! palestinian claims are articulated in similar terms as zionist claims. That totally means he considers them equally valid! Except, that's exactly what zionists say, that palestinian nationalism is a mirror image of zionism. He's saying that ridiculous palestinian claims are a response to zionist discourse, an attempt to one-up the jews.) Yet at the same time, many people also routinely referred to the Jews as "our paternal cousins," awlad 'ammna, and recognized a common descent from Abraham (the Jews as offspring of Isaac, the Arabs as offspring of Ishmael). This view coded the struggle as a kind of feud occurring within the same Semitic family. (you quote this without context to imply palestinians have an affinity for jews. that's not what he's saying. the next sentence makes that clear) Such "genealogical" discourse, typical of the nation's impulse to represent itself as having an eternal past, had the unfortunate side effect of reproducing Orientalist and Zionist assertions that the "Arab-Jewish" struggle is ancient and virtually natural and thereby obviated any need to understand the conflict in its current context. (If that's what you're referring to, it does not say what you think it does. It says that palestinians and jews are guilty of making the claim that the conflict is rooted in ancient blood feuds. But they make it for different reasons- zionists to simplify history into us vs them, them hates us, so lets wash our hands of any responsibility to help solve the conflict. The orientalist aspect is part of this polarization: isaac the favored son vs. ishmael the wild man, wild arabs, you get the point. it's frankly racist, though to be fair the people who make it are either evangelical christians or national-religious. BUT Palestinians make the claims for a different reason: "typical of the nation's impulse to represent itself as having an eternal past") These primordialist claims regarding the Palestinians' primeval and prior roots in the land (Here we are back to talking about palestinian claims, not zionist claims. There's no way in hell zionists would claim palestinians have "prior and primeval roots in the land".) operated at the level of the collective. When it came to an individual's family, however, Arab-Islamic discourse took precedence over archaeological justifications. (no textual basis, eh? he's not talking about the bible. he's talking about palestinian claims of prior roots in the land, those are archeological justifications. instead of saying, the jews have been away for 2000 years while we've been here for 1300 years, they say, the jews were here 4000 years ago, but we were here 7000 years ago! The former is largely true, the latter is largely not. "proof again we have a distracted, fretfully hasty editing style".- proof again you're a jerk who doesn't read his own sources) I ran across no Palestinian villager (or urbanite) who claimed personal descent from the Canaanites. Villagers typically traced their family or their hamula's origins back to a more recent past in the Arabian peninsula. Many avowed descent from some nomadic tribe that had migrated from Arabia to Palestine either during or shortly after the after the Arab- Islamic conquests. By such a claim they inserted their family's history into the narrative of Arab and Islamic civilization and connected themselves to a genealogy that possessed greater local and contemporary prestige than did ancient or pre-Islamic descent. (This does not mean they are concealing ancient roots. It is an explanation of why "When it came to an individual's family, however, Arab-Islamic discourse took precedence". On a collective level, "primordialist claims regarding the Palestinians' primeval and prior roots in the land" are advantageous. But on a local family basis, they "typically trace" their families origins to "a more recent past in the Arabian peninsula". He ran across no villager that claimed canaanite origins, instead they avowed arab origins, which are more prestigious. So on a collective level, ancient origins are more prestigious. On a local one, arab origins are more prestigious. So they are both lies! Nope, it's politics. So which one is closer to the truth? Obviously the latter. Note the difference: "trace their family's history" and "avowed descent", vs "claimed personal descent from the Canaanites" The implication is that the former is a claim, the latter is more honest. However, not entirely honest:) Several men specifically connected their forefathers' date of entry into Palestine to their participation in the army of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin), a historical figure whose significance has been retrospectively enlarged by nationalist discourse such that he is now regarded not merely as a hero of "Islamic" civilization but as a "national" luminary as well. (Modern nationalist discourse tends to downplay Salah al-Din's Kurdish origins.) (Nationalist discourse has appropriated saladin from an islamic hero to an arab one, ignoring his kurdish origins. This is true. The Eagle of Saladin is a pan-arab symbol and it's on many arab coats of arms, including the PLOs.) Palestinians of all political stripes viewed Salah al-Din's wars against the Crusaders as a forerunner of the current combats against foreign intruders. Many considered Salah al-Din's victory over the Crusaders at Hittin (A.D. 1187) as a historical precedent that offered hope for their own eventual triumph — even if, like the Crusader wars, the current struggle with Israel was destined to last more than two centuries. (Ahah! so that's why they claim to be descended from his forces. They have a particular admiration for him because they consider him a precedent for their struggle against the zionist entity. Except saladin gave the jews access to jerusalem that they hadn't enjoyed in centuries, but who cares about facts? Anyway, just because the specific claim of saladinish origin is probably a lie, doesn't mean as a whole they lie when tracing themselves to arabian tribes. Again: "claim" vs "avow".) Family histories affiliated to earlier "patriotic" struggles against European aggression tied interviewees to a continuous narrative of national resistance. (Here he explains the politics more. Just as claims of arab-canaanite descent are intended to put palestinians in a continuous narrative of being oppressed by the jews, claims of descent from saladin are intended to put them in a continuous narrative of national resistance.) Villagers claiming descent from Arabs who entered Palestine during the Arab-Islamic conquest equally viewed these origins as establishing their historical precedence over the Jews, whom they basically regarded as Europeans who only began arriving in Palestine in the late nineteenth century. (If palestinians came in the 7th century than jews have no roots in the land, if jews are israelites than palestinians are canaanites. and anything you can do i can do better.)

Here's what you write to sum that mess up:

Many Palestinian families often claim (actually the source says "many avow", not "many often claim") the hamula(clan) to which they belong hail(s) from nomadic tribes in the Arabian peninsula, doing so in order to share in the greater prestige of pertaining to the genealogies of Islamic civilization, which have greater prestige than those of more ancient pre-Islamic descent. Ted Swedenburg, p.81. Some trace their origins back to the Kurdish Saladin's armies.

Vs my summary:

Despite the popularity of primordialist claims to primeval roots in the land in Palestinian nationalist thought, individual Palestinian families largely eschew these archaeological justifications, with many avowing a more recent past in Arabian tribes that immigrated during and after the Islamic conquest. Such genealogies possess a greater local prestige than ancient or pre-Islamic descent. Nonetheless these Palestinians still consider themselves to have historical precedence to the Jews, as most Jews in Israel immigrated in the 19th and 20th centuries.

We'll let Providence decide which is more faithful to the source, which is entitled "popular primordialism", not "claims of arabness".

Next is the "origins" section. I'll be more brief here, that took a few hours.

What you intend to convey here is not just spin, it's false. Arabization was not some force from afar controlling the minds of the palestinians-who-didn't-know-they-were-palestinians making them forget their true nature. But I digress. Arabization was not solely a result of the caliphates. ISLAMIZATION was. Arabization ultimately began with the gradual immigration of arab tribes PRECEDING the islamic conquest, which if anything goes against the "Arab conquest" story you say I promote, since it acknowledges a core pre-invasion population, some of whom were arabs. I cited nebel since he was already used as the source - I was not the one to cite nebel in the context of "historic sources say...." The page had cited nebel for a while. I actually made the wording clearer and the sources clearer. I didn't add new sources- I used current ones. Your opposition to me expounding upon them is pure WP:IDONTLIKEIT.
Let's do another before and after, shall we?

Like the Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians, Maghrebis, and most other people today commonly called Arabs, the Palestinians are an Arab people in linguistic and cultural affiliation. (not cited and misleading, given its invocation of phonecianist and pharoahnist nationalist claims which are only partly true, as egyptians and lebanese do have a real arabian component as well as indigenous elements, whereas maghrebis are quite different altogether- they're arabized berbers and unlike palestinians/egyptians/lebanese actually are known to have predominantly non-arab origins, historically and genetically ) Since the Islamic conquest in the 7th century, Palestine, a then Hellenized location, came under the influence of Arabic-speaking Muslim dynasties, including the Kurdish-descent Ayyubids, whose culture and language through the process of Arabization was adopted by the people of Palestine. (ignores pre-islamic arabization- the nabateans were culturally aramaic but were arabized, and guess what? they were in palestine, and their culture influenced levantine christians. and so did the ghassanids.) According to historical records an undetermined part of the present-day Palestinians have roots that go back to before the 7th century, maybe even ancient inhabitants of the area. (undetermined is just sloppy, so is "maybe", I just changed undetermined amount to part, added in the several centuries from the source, and changed maybe ancient to possibly prehistoric. again, the source says prehistoric, and prehistoric is actually better than ancient) During the Ottoman period, the population declined and fluctuated between 150,000 and 250,000 inhabitants and it was only at the end of the 19th century, (unnecessary comma) that a rapid population growth appears, (wrong tense) particularly due to the amelioration of the sanitary condition. (not in the source)

Here's mine:

The origins of Palestinians are complex and diverse. (cited and true. there is no monolithic origin, palestinians themselves claim to be descended from all the peoples who lived in the region.) The region was not originally Arab (true)— its Arabization is due to the immigration of Arabian tribes in the first millennium, most significantly during the Islamic conquest of Syria in the 7th century. (what would you prefer, islamic liberation of syria? It's the wording in the source. again, arabization was not solely political. there were actual real-live arabs involved, as you sort of acknowledge above. Anyway, I'm not one to complain about muslim conquest, it's peaches and cream compared to the christians) Palestine, then a Hellenized region controlled by the Byzantine empire, came under the political and cultural influence of Arabic-speaking Muslim dynasties, including the Kurdish Ayyubids, and following this much of the existing population of Palestine was Arabized and gradually Islamized. (I added islamized since it's different from arabized. The levant was arabized before it was islamized. Basically the same as in the prior version, but better cited, and a less simplistic view of history. Palestine was not purely non-Arab and then suddenly arabs conquered the region and everyone was arab because of soft power. there were population exchanges! like in practically all conquests!) Like other "Arabized" Arab nations the Arab identity of Palestinians, largely based on linguistic and cultural affiliation, is independent of the existence of any actual Arabian origins.(here I expounded on the prior version- saying palestinian arabness is merely linguistic and cultural implies it's purely a facade. Saying it's independent of arabianness is a truity- some palestinians are actually descended from arabians, some aren't, but all are arabized.) According to historical records part of the Muslim Palestinian population is descended from local inhabitants who had resided in the area several centuries prior (I added several centuries prior, it's in the source) to the Islamic conquest, some possibly since prehistoric times. (essentially no change except I was more descriptive and included the actual sources referenced in the source, not just the source itself. you act as if I pulled the sources out of my ass. I pulled them out of the source.) The Palestinian population has grown dramatically. (a truity added to provide narrative flow) For several centuries (more specific and actually favorable, since it doesn't say that for the entire ottoman period the population was struggling, arab life in palestine was quite vibrant till the empire began to weaken, which is when the europeans visited and found the land "barren", extrapolating it to "the muslims can't take care of it") during the Ottoman period the population in Palestine declined and fluctuated between 150,000 and 250,000 inhabitants, and it was only in the 19th century that a rapid population growth began to occur. (deleted sanitary condition since it wasn't in the source)

Now I didn't want to mention this, but you've pulled no punches in assailing me. Your accusation of me making impulsive shitty poorly sourced edits is demonstrable hypocrisy. Some of your edits have been riddled with errors which I have fixed. You also show little indication of actually reading (let alone comprehending) what you cite, as I demonstrated above. And you aren't just reckless in your edits, but in what really matters- the kind of things that have lasting consequences for real-life human beings. You reported me, fair enough. That's not what gets to me. I broke 3RR for the severalth time, it would have been silly to turn a blind eye. What vexes me is that you had the gall to say my sanction "was far more severe than what expected". What the hell did you expect?!?! I actually would have preferred it if you told me you intended to get me topic-banned all along. But you didn't even recommend a punishment! And then you have the nerve to say, "oops"! Sorry, better luck next time, maybe this greek you can't read will make you feel better. You still think I'm a stupid kid, don't you? Like I didn't research this conflict for years and everything I know is from some hasbara pamphlet? I would say more, but it would hurt your feelings, which I still have some concern for (to my chagrin).--Monochrome_Monitor 11:00, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

1. Mapping exile and return : Palestinian dispossession and a political theology for a shared future.
2. ^ Ted Swedenburg, p.81. Some trace their origins back to the Saladin's armies, downplaying his Kurdish ancestry.
3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Dowty was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
4. ^ Nebel; et al. (2000). "High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews". Human Genetics. 107: 630–641. doi:10.1007/s004390000426. PMID 11153918."According to historical records part, or perhaps the majority, of the Muslim Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD (Shaban 1971; Mc Graw Donner 1981). These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistorical times (Gil 1992)... Thus, our findings are in good agreement with the historical record..."
5. Kacowicz, Arie Marcelo; Lutomski, Pawel (2007). Population Resettlement in International Conflicts: A Comparative Study. Lexington Books,. p. 194.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
6. Shaban MA (1971) Islamic history AD 600–750: a new interpretation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
7. Gil M (1992) A history of Palestine. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, pp 643–1099

Reply

What vexes me is that you had the gall to say my sanction "was far more severe than what expected". What the hell did you expect?!?!

I expected that my twice repeated comment that you needed a one month suspension (expecting the closing admin, if he decided against you, to mediate between that, and Simon's suggestion of a 2 week break) would lead to something like 2-3 weeks. Note please.

• (a)If an infraction has occurred, then it should be sanctioned. I think a month is due (07:22, 13 June 2016)

when your inability to recognize the erratic nature of your editing persisted, I was forced to add more evidence I had withheld, but repeated my belief one month was sufficient

• This is one of several reasons why I think you need a month to just reconsider your behavior, and try to learn to be a little less dramatic, and overly invested in editing Misplaced Pages. (13:26, 13 June 2016)

A verdict of a 6 month suspension from those articles then emerged.

This surprised me, and I then wrote the words which expressed my surprise, and you call a correct memory of the record, and my honest expectations gall. Nishidani (talk) 13:54, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

(You or anyone else may reply interleaving your responses under each point I make below. This improves comprehensibility.) And ps. I don't have feelings to be 'hurt'. I'm pissed off by disattentive behavior, for it wastes my time. You have plenty of that, so use it to actually study topics, rather than editing them before you have mastered them.

• (1) I am not contesting primordialist claim. I am saying if you use it, you are obliged per NPOv to mention as per the source, that this Palestinian claim mimics and borrows from the identical Zionist claim. Using, furthermore, despite which is not in the source, and attempts to spin this as a contradiction, whereas Swedenburg doesn't do that. Your reading skills are deficient, or, because you edit with one ethnic obsession uppermost, you cannot understand history, which is multiethnic, and which must be written with an eye to all perspectives.Nishidani (talk) 11:31, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
• (2) Whatever you found, you did not control the sources, as I did. Editors who merely rewrite a page without checking whether the existing sources confirm what the text had before, or after they adjust the words, are not doing their job.
• (3) Nebel was wrongly used for history: the principle is historical details come from historians, so he cannot be used.
• (4)'Arabization was not solely a result of the caliphates. ISLAMIZATION was. Arabization ultimately began with the gradual immigration of Arab tribes PRECEDING the islamic conquest, which if anything goes against the "Arab conquest" story you say I promote
  • Teaching grannie to suck eggs, again. I added all the sources showing the Arab presence preceded the Arab conquest by 1,000 years. This has nothing to do with the 'Arabization' that ensued linguistically, culturally and institutionally in the long wake of the Islamic conquest.
• (5)(Nebel). I actually made the wording clearer and the sources clearer. I didn't add new sources- I used current ones.

You haven't replied to the point I made. The way you rephrased it made a profoundly stupid sentence, in that it implies the modern Palestinian population, descent-wise, is divided into 2 mutually distinct descent groups, that in 1,300 years didn't intermarry. You don't pay attention to what your edits actually mean or imply, and the result is nonsense.

• (6) The Arabization is a complex issue, which the selective use of sources, or failure to actually use more sources, distorted and still distorts:

It was a process that took off significantly 4 centuries after the Arab invasion, over which period scholarship generally considers the majority of the population remained Christian. The sectarian switch was engendered by 3 factors. (a) the negative impact of the Crusades, which acted with extreme prejudice against Eastern Christians (b) the emergence of the Mongol threat (c) and the conversion of the Mamluks, with their rise to power, to Islam, as they fought to defend themselves against Mongols and those Christian communities in alliance with the latter. This is 4-5 centuries after the conquest. There is zero awareness in your text of this context. Nishidani (talk) 11:48, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

• (7)The origins of Palestinians are complex and diverse. The whole article evidences the depth of Palestinian origins timewise and in terms of spatial demographics. Timewise they come from high antiquity, spatially as a key crossroad, they have constantly absorbed populations flowing in from north south east west. The section with those bolded words is stupid because it is called 'Origins' and yet arbitrary starts with the Arab invasion, as if this were the beginnings of Palestinian identity. You've just endorsed this. It's stupid. The whole section needs rewriting to make it cohere with the rest of the text and its evidence. Nishidani (talk) 11:55, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Generally, you are frequently reverted by multiple editors: this has been noted; you have had recent arbitration reminders that your behavior is not satisfactory. In particular, the complaint, which was accepted as you were banned from a page where your impetuous editing was chaotic, included a complaint you don't use the talk page. As soon as you were sanctioned, you repeated precisely this behavior, making large-.scale screwed up edits to a page without once dropping a note on this talk page. Your long unfocused rant above was forced our of you by my equally tedious remonstration. So ease up, drop the know-all barging about on subjects you know little about, and make some proposals on the page before making radical revisions.Nishidani (talk) 12:03, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

section break

Holy cows.. Both of you.. (not calling you cows) You are making arguments as long as an avarage article (even longer), maybe split it to spesific points and go one by one or just go straight (using an electronic Spirit level) to the point, concerning the goals of Misplaced Pages? I tried to read but it seemed like a Greek Drama dialogue rather than a roundtable (which is what talkpages should be). From what it seems, this is a debate about what should we put more weight to? Zionist propaganda or PLO propaganda? I think it was Nish that once said "Palestine is a state of mind, a state that no one minds about" (probably wrong English-wise), so please, this whole subject is already politically motived by settler and Shariah utopists so at least be more constructive than your sources and reach a discussion less violent than the siege of Stalingrad. Some Palestinians are Arabized-Islamized Jews and some Palestinians are just Fallahs from Arabia. Jee it looks like an argument originated in the rural areas of the Balkan. I guess my comment didn't help anythinh eh?--Bolter21 (talk to me) 14:38, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I got a laugh there, and appreciate this sensible hyperbole. It reminded me of a review in the TLS of a book of mine which made an equally comical resort to hyperbole, in describing what the reviewer called my discursive overkill, (while agreeing that I was right: the reviewer was not particularly familiar with the subject-matter's specifics). But I don't get angry. I get annoyed when thoughtlessness or lack of curiosity for wide reading just flags the message:'Nishidani: there's a motherlode of crap I've just dropped. Could you clean that up with a spoon old man, there's a good chap.'

We should accept neither Zionist nor PLO propaganda. The PLO and its mouthpieces, and even well-meaning but ignorant 'spokesmen' who have descanted on these topics, have nothing to add that would interest an historian, unless we wish to write the history of bullshit. The 'Zionist' side once hogged the limelight in talking about Palestinian history (as the history of Palestinians) but that kind of material, aside from the blogosphere, died of exhaustion in serious quarters some decades ago. If you make your starting point the beginning of Zionism, 1917-1919, you will find many Zionists and anti-Zionists like Lucien Wolf agreeing on one thing, together with the new Mandatory Authority experts: that the Palestinian population represented basically the modern remnant of the ancient population of that territory. As soon as Zionism became a territorial project, a huge effort was made to spin their presence as historically deracinated or extraterritorial, for obvious reasons.

• • Zionism did not begin in 1917. Also, British israelites thought they were israelites, and many jews agreed. It's the same reason many on both camps are attracted to the theory that palestinians are descended from jews- kinship is friendship. In theory.--Monochrome_Monitor 19:30, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Thirdly, history this far back is 'speculative': we just don't know enough, and that means we make hypotheses from what little book sources or archaeological allows us to guess. Any strong piece of scholarship will almost invariably tell you, in each narrative section, that various theories have been thrown about, and then advance what newer research reveals.

To illustrate this specifically. There was a demographic drop discerned from the period of the rich and fairly well documented Byzantine Levant through to the early middle ages. Many many sources used to correlate this with the onset of the 'Arabs', wild, Qur'an flourishing but uncultured tribes invading the sophisticated societies of the Sassanian and Byzantine empires. That picture has fallen to pieces, because there is better knowledge of the archaeological record, of the ignored factor of climatic change, of the devastating impact of bubonic plagues etc., and greater detachment from and closer reading of the polemical interests of the Syriac literature of the time. When I see echoes of the old line emerge, I think: 'Oh fuck, here we go: the Pallies are Arab intruders crap again. Someone's forgotten to read what 2 decades of sound scholarship has uncovered.'Nishidani (talk) 16:22, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

The problem is that it seems like everything you'll say will end with Monochrome_Monitor rejection and the same in the other way around. It's not the first I see you both clashing and now we came to the point you two write enough words to build a wall between the US and Mexico, which is quite frustrating for the rest of the editors here. Let me offer you one of my approaches to such thing. Stop for a minute and ask your self wether you are trying to an encyclopedic information to an innocent article or writing your own opinionated blog using sourcrs as an excuse.--

Bolter21 (talk to me) 01:36, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Use the simple method I set forth.

An editor complained at my original length, which is focused on what MM does, not on what I think (blog) of this topic. I complied with the request to be brief, by making a précis of the problems with her edits in 7 numbered points above, inviting MM and anyone else to reply under each. No reply. So? Nishidani (talk) 05:48, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't think that's necessarily true. I'm a pretty logical person (except when I'm not), I can be swayed by reasonable arguments and I have been. I went from an apathetic anti-zionist-jew-because-it's-cool-and-my-neighborhood-is-super-liberal, during the last war i became a tribalistic-super-jew concerned with "my people" getting attacked by terrorists (in actuality my people, my sister was there) to a zionist who's sympathetic to the suffering of palestinians even if I know some of that suffering is arab and corrupt ruler inflicted. I care about the middle east in general, israel in particular but they are doing fine on their own, I'm much more concerned about syria and iraq and lebanon and kurdish independence. I think people from both camps are united when it comes to hatred for assad. Although I'm scared what will happen if/when assad looses... the alawites will be subject to revenge killings, and completely fucked in general. Anyway more than anything with regards to the conflict i've become more practical than ideological. I'm an idealist cynical about idealism. Judea is the homeland of the Jewish people, but I don't think they/we should be settling there. There are convincing arguments that it's not technically an occupation because palestine was never a state and the land's most recent legitimate rulers were the british and under ottoman law that land reverts to the state, technically israel, that's just legalistic prevarication. It feels like occupation, and even if in the letter it isn't, israelis shouldn't be settling there precisely because it upsets them, making peace more distant, or at least giving Abbas (who in reality is more concerned about keeping his job than anything right now) an excuse to not make peace. Anyway, I don't think settlements are very important practically, they form blocks which will inevitably stay part of israel, and people should at least be able to renovate their houses without international opprobrium. Most people don't know it but the settlements were established under the socialist labor zionists, not the likud governments. And there's been less expansion under netanyahu than his predecessors, which really pisses off some in his base. They should also make housing less expensive so poorer secular israelis aren't motivated to live in the settlements. And groceries. So that's my shpiel.--Monochrome_Monitor 13:32, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Meanwhile, brexit. You're british, yes? Your thoughts? Are you the type of leftist who is very upset or the type of far-leftist who is very happy? *cough* george galloway--Monochrome_Monitor 13:37, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Me British? For fuck's sake, one of my forebears was driven into exile for doing an Irgun job on a British colonialist in Ireland. I have no views on Brexit: either option was/is pitted with dangers. Stay in, and you add a powerful actor opposed to the fundamental principle of the EU's post-war political consensus, that harmony between nations requires a structural bedrock of social security. Stay out, and global finance will probably demand you sell off whatever remains of a national health care and pension system anyway.

There are convincing arguments that it's not technically an occupation because palestine was never a state and the land's most recent legitimate rulers were the british and under ottoman law that land reverts to the state, technically israel

There is no convincing argument. Land doesn't revert to an occupying power in international law. Every judge on the ICJ in 2004 sent down a unanimous confirmation of this in their judgement. It is pointless arguing otherwise.Nishidani (talk) 14:55, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

That's circular logic. Israel is an occupying power because it's an occupying power? International law is biased, face it. They don't care about tibet, western sahara, or northern cyprus. All are "disputed", and the cases are much more clear-cut. The argument I gave about ottoman land laws is only one- there are many. Obviously their principles are not consistent, so what exactly are their principles? I agree this is not something to argue about though.--Monochrome_Monitor 20:23, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

That's an abuse of the term,MN.The Israeli government has recognized it is an occupying power, since that is its status in international law. If 'international law' is biased, just simplify the entailed proposition (all inbternational law ruling against any one state is, according to the interests of that state, biased = the 'law' of the jungle, which, given Ehud Barak's remark about the village in the jungle, appears to be an adoption of your hidden premise. Enough. Nishidani (talk) 22:47, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're talking about with a jungle. I'm talking about whether the land is occupied territory, rather than disputed territory. If you have an open mind Israel has a very good case compared to other occupying powers who aren't even called occupying powers. Above all my concern is how international law has been bent to specifically target Israel in this case. That's not an exaggeration. The argument used to call the settlements illegal is a section of the rome statute, more specifically, its rewording by the arab block. First off, the rome statute was adopted in 1997, decades after the settlements were established. And the clause invoked originally condemned "The transfer by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory." However, its wording was adapted to apply to voluntary transfer, specifically because of Israel. It was changed to condemn: "The transfer by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, directly or indirectly, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory." That's a big difference. Does it not bother you that the crime of letting your citizens live in a disputed territory (or even an occupied one) and letting them build some houses is listed as equally severe to forced prostitution, rape, mutilation, medical experimentation, and starving people? Seems a bit odd to me. I can't help but think it's political considering the UN isn't exactly unbiased towards israel- passing more resolutions condemning it than the rest of the world combined. Lastly, Israel isn't a party to the rome statute anymore, as it didn't renew its ratification, and neither is the united states. The settlements issue is blown out of proportion in my opinion. A colonial mandate breaks up into civil war, the colonial power leaves, one state is formed and the other rejected statehood, that state was attacked simultaneously by its neighbors, and it was again in 67, and it occupied territory from which its enemies (Jordan and Egypt) were attacking it. Some day, god knows when, neighborhoods are set up for israelis in this land that has no effective government, many of the neighborhoods being communities reestablished after their destruction in the first arab-israeli war. These settlements grow organically, and then the PLO decides that they actually want the west bank and gaza, though they renounced all claim to it in their foundational charter (very unsuspicious), and these palestinians who used to be arabs are hijacking planes and killing olympic athletes, not to mention committing terrorist acts in jordan and starting the lebanese civil war, which people conveniently forget. Decades later, the arab states whom we all know are so fond of israel, reword a clause in treaty specifically to fuck israel over. You can dispute this as a zionist recital of selective history, but you can't dispute that the ICJ is a pathetic failure which can't even get a guy they convicted of crimes against humanity when he travels to states subject to its jurisdiction. The UN in general is full of corrupt autocrats jerking eachother off. So when you say "the international community", I think, well the international community is full of some shitty people, many of whom hate jews. The fact that its an international opinion does not make it more valid, it makes it less valid in my book. My feelings about the territories not being occupied are not exceptionalism, but rather egalitarianism. What makes the palestinian territories, which have never once been sovereign, occupied, not crimea, part of a sovereign nation which was invaded and is currently under military occupation? How about northern cyprus, invaded and seized by turkey? Or tibet, with an ancient culture distinct from the han chinese, that was brutally conquered in 1950 by china? Or western sahara, once occupied by spain and now by morocco? The international community considers these territories "disputed".[REDACTED] considers them disputed. Please tell me what make israel's situation different. Does this not seem unjust to you? --Monochrome_Monitor 03:18, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Reply reply

• "I am not contesting primordialist claim. I am saying if you use it, you are obliged per NPOv to mention as per the source, that this Palestinian claim mimics and borrows from the identical Zionist claim."
  

The source does not say that the zionist "claims" are identical to palestinians nor equally valid. He never even uses the word primordialist to refer to zionism. Which zionist claim is identical again? The one that says Abraham was Arab? Oh wait... He is not talking about claims, he is talking about discourse. Palestinian claims are articulated in similar terms as zionist discourse. He is not painting palestinian nationalism with the same brush as zionism in this chapter (though he's not uncritical). Since you aren't seeing the big picture, I'll give you the details. The word zionism is mentioned merely four times in a chapter which is supposedly all about comparing palestinian nationalism to zionism. Lets look at word choice. palestinian claims are described in the context of "represent itself as having an eternal past", and are called pereniallist and primordialist. The common theme is that palestinians invent a past to out-past the jews/israelis. Zionist discourse is called "orientalist"- and frankly some of it is, but it's not called primordialist or perenialist. Why? Here's the definition of primordialism: "The belief that nations are ancient, natural phenomena". Jews were actually a nation thousands of years ago, and palestinians were not. The discourse is similar (ie diasporic life, longing to return) but zionists admit that, calling it cultural appropriation. Note that he calls canaanite theology "official nationalist discourse". That's different from just plain "discourse". Subtle, I know. You are reading this through red, white, black, and green colored glasses.

Swedenburg's book is an anthropology of folk memories of the 1930s. It registers popular beliefs, by (in the 30s) a largely illiterate peasantry. These demand great respect for the world-view of a class, they have nothing to do with history. You are confusing what an historian might say with what folks beliefs affirm. We are writing that section basically according to what modern historians generally argue, not what old men recall of their childhood stories about clan origins 1,300 ago. To credit their legends,(which may contain of course grains of a truth) with history is like taking at face value the reconstruction of the history of Canaan from a religious clerisy writing 1,000 years after the event. It's like saying that because someone in Judea recorded a legend that the Ammonites and Moabites east of them arose when Lot's daughters found no men to procreate with, so they dosed dad up with grog, screwed him, befuddled, and thereby you get the bênê 'Ammana (Ammonites). In Jordanian textbooks, all children learn that Canaanites were 'Arabs', this is silly, but no more silly that what you get in Zionist or Israeli schooltexts on ancient Palestine. This is an exact parallel to what we are risking in using Swedenburg in that section. Nishidani (talk) 15:02, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

• "Using, furthermore, despite which is not in the source, and attempts to spin this as a contradiction, whereas Swedenburg doesn't do that. Your reading skills are deficient, or, because you edit with one ethnic obsession uppermost, you cannot understand history, which is multiethnic, and which must be written with an eye to all perspectives."

Fair point. Despite is indeed not in the source. The source uses "however".

"These primordialist claims regarding the Palestinians' primeval and prior roots in the land operated at the level of the collective. When it came to an individual's family, however, Arab-Islamic discourse took precedence over archaeological justifications".

However has multiple meanings. Lets go through them!

however adverb (DEGREE)

› to whatever amount or degree: However fast we drive, we’re not going to get there in time. If Emma likes something she’ll buy it, however much it costs.

however adverb (WAY)

› in whatever way: However you look at it, it’s still a mess.

however adverb (DESPITE)

› despite this; nevertheless: There may, however, be other reasons that we don’t know about.

however conjunction (WAY)

› in whatever way: You can do it however you like, it really doesn’t matter.

I wonder which definition of however is being used in this sentence... hmmmmm. Well it's not a conjunction.... So take off that fourth one. It's not a degree, "however much arab-islamic discourse took precedence" doesn't sound right.....

Now two left. Is it a way? Like "however Arab-Islamic discourse took precedence over archaeological justifications, it still....." Oh, wait. the sentence ends there. It needs another clause to be used in the sense of "way". Well, is it used to mean despite?

"These primordialist claims regarding the Palestinians' primeval and prior roots in the land operated at the level of the collective. When it came to an individual's family, despite this, Arab-Islamic discourse took precedence over archaeological justifications"..... close but no cigar.

Fix that by correcting word order.... and....

"These primordialist claims regarding the Palestinians' primeval and prior roots in the land operated at the level of the collective. Despite this, when it came to an individual's family, Arab-Islamic discourse took precedence over archaeological justifications".

Oh, that's basically what I wrote.

Instead of using a synonym that clarifies the meaning, you propose avoiding the matter (which comprises the majority of the chapter) entirely and never mentioning "popular primordialism" at all, while putting the palestinian's own words under scrutiny "but some only do so..." But some only do so is not in the source. My fault for assuming you intended your sources to actually support your views. I read it and it didn't, I fixed that, but look here you reverted it. Because you WP:DONTLIKEIT.

• "Nebel was wrongly used for history: the principle is historical details come from historians, so he cannot be used."
  

But historical details come from anti-zionist catholic priests? Who are known for their very balanced views about the Jews? Oh, I forgot, WP:YOULIKE what he has to say, and you don't like what a geneticist talking about history in the context of a genetic study has to say. I'll keep that in mind. Now don't play the "your sources are crap too card," since I make the effort to fix them when people ask.

There is no contradiction. I use sources by committed Zionist historians, even immoderate and frequently flawed ones like Moshe Gil, every day. Nebel studies genetics, Prior studied the languages and history of the region at an advanced tertiary level. Nebel didn't. I don't cite Elhaik for history, but for his genetic argument, where, whatever his views, he has technical expertise.Nishidani (talk) 17:02, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

• • You're exaggerating. :P What zionist book did you read today? Anyway, my main problem is that he's biased.--Monochrome_Monitor 19:17, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

• "I added all the sources showing the Arab presence preceded the Arab conquest by 1,000 years. This has nothing to do with the 'Arabization' that ensued linguistically, culturally and institutionally in the long wake of the Islamic conquest."

Arabs were nomads, and some tribes (eg Qedar) make the trip to palestine in ancient times. Several muslim kingdoms- The nabateans and the ghassanids, were present in al-sham pre-islamic conquest. I never claimed otherwise. My problem is the implication that the levant was not influenced by arab culture / language prior to the 7th century, as in arabs were there but didn't really matter historically, and if they were there they aren't mentioned in relation to palestinians as if palestinians were totally non-arab and suddenly they were exposed to arabness and became arab and haven't changed since. It's all simplistic.

The Levant is 'semitic'. Many early Zionists saw in the toiling fellahin the humble world of the Tanakh. A significant part of the Israelite tribal federation was 'nomadic'. The whole first part of the bible origins brocade is one of semitic nomads. Our insistent respective 'ethnicization' of the past runs flush into the face of the fact that all the divides made in the late recension of the OT were mirrors of religious, not 'ethnic' categories. The Edomites, Moabites, Israelites, Ammonites, Amorites, etc.etc., constituted a variegated tribal patchwork of one semitic, part nomadic, part sedentary world, and this did not stop when the post-Babylonian religious authorities started their interdictive classifications. 'Arab' before the Qur'an did not mean what post Qur'anic 'Arab' means.Nishidani (talk) 17:11, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

• • • I know that! They were frankly orientalist, :P finding how "humble" things were compared to europe. Yes, the proto-semites were nomadic.

You will never find me arguing that arabs (in the sense of arabian) aren't more conservatively semitic than jews and pretty much all other semites. When I say conservative, I mean like a language. Sicilian is the most conservative romance language, meaning its the most similar to "proto-romance" (vulgar latin), whereas french is the most innovative. Applying that to semitic culture (which includes language), bedouin arabs are the most similar to the early semites- tribal society, polygamy, nomadic(ness?), and their retention of some linguistic features... The only classic semitic feature they are missing is a fertility goddess.

• "The way you rephrased it made a profoundly stupid sentence, in that it implies the modern Palestinian population, descent-wise, is divided into 2 mutually distinct descent groups, that in 1,300 years didn't intermarry. You don't pay attention to what your edits actually mean or imply, and the result is nonsense."

The source uses "undetermined amount", I used "part", reflecting what the source says (i could even add "or perhaps the majority" which is in the source). There is no difference except WP:YOUDONTLIKE what the study has to say, and decided it needed to go, because it implies not 100% of palestinians were in palestine before the islamic conquest, which is a demonstrable fact.

"2 mutually distinct descent groups, that in 1,300 years didn't intermarry."

Your logic: Everyone had sex and so they have a common history. Here's an idea, maybe there ARENT two distinct groups, nor one monolithic one, and palestinians were historically endogamous within their clans, and are still albeit somewhat less to this day? (there's another group now, city dwellers, who are much more exogamous, and clans in specific villages now often practice village endogamy) Weaker clans may be absorbed by stronger ones and the clans have been split into branches in different countries, but there are strong family traditions and especially in families of pedigree descent is fastidiously recorded, sometimes back to the 7th century. There were waves of immigration into palestine, and a clan-based society was not the model western-style melting pot. I don't know what you find paradoxical about saying some palestinians have pre-7th century roots and others don't. Some families came to palestine more recently, say the ottoman period, others in the 7th century, some earlier, some later. Have the palestinians been put in a blender so they're now a monolithic ethnic group? In truth they are better described as a nation than an ethnic group, and I'm not talking about a state (and yes I know ethnos means nation). Lets take the british isles. The welsh are descended from the earliest settlers, scotts and irish from later continental settlers, english from even later anglo-saxons and some neolithic french. They are all british people. Yes, the palestinians are a single ethnos today, but they didn't always consider themselves as such. Do all welsh marry other welsh? No. Nor do all palestinians marry within the clan. When you operate purely by dna your claims become more tenuous. Humans are wonderful creatures who store most of their "information" not in their DNA, but in their culture. Palestinian culture is by and large levantine arab culture. Now before I go on about how irrational the "canaanite" moniker is I apologize if this is a straw man. I suppose only the most revisionist of palestinian nationalists say they're descended from the canaanites and jebusites (the latter only existing in jewish texts). Others say they're "all the peoples mixed together", which is much more accurate but still very nebulous as far as an ethnos goes. Anyway.... let's establish this once and for all.

The canaanites died in the bronze age collapse. Died, they're dead. I think history would record it if people later on went around calling themselves canaanites. By iron age I the canaanites were split into israelites, ammonites, moabites, edomites, and phonecians. We know what happened to these societies. Israelites became jews and samaritans, and edomites ceased to exist as a distinct people due to the combined forces of judaization and hellenization. Phonecians are, according to lebanese nationalists and maronites, lebanese people, and according to others, a not insignificant component of lebanese people. So if Palestinians are phonecian than the lebanese have just as much a right to claim southwest canaan as they do. Which they don't, because the phonecians are indigenous to north canaan. Now the ammonites aren't totally accounted for, they sort of faded from history. I could suspend disbelief and imagine palestinians have some ammonite extraction. But then they would be indigenous to southeast canaan, which is Jordan! So the only remaining "canaanite" they could be is Israelite, native to southwest canaan. If they just said that, "we're descended from jews and samaritans", I would be a lot more sympathetic, since it's not a blatant lie, but instead they need to revive dead civilizations and claim to be the obsolete "canaanite" and "jebusite", using terms from the Hebrew and Samaritan Torah's which is ironic because they wouldn't know about these supposed ancestors if not for the former. It also relies on the revisionist/biblical ultramaximalist idea that israelites are a fundamentally different stock from the canaanites. Or they could just not make any of these spurious claims and say "we've been here while you were there".... Which is actually an honest argument. Again, this may be a straw man.

You are trying to think out a solution to flesh out the dark holes of history. So do I, in my solitary speculations. But in an encyclopedia, our drudgery consists in simply looking at what the best sources say, and paraphrasing them correctly. It's humble work, humiliating to some extent, since we are the proxy peons doing work for a global readership that wants a quick fix for 'info', without the tedium of actually rolling up their sleeves for themselves to find out. What we have so far is an ill-assorted assemblage of mostly well-sourced statements, edited in under a siege of insecurities. What the truth is, I have no idea. I can spot the POV bent however, be it Palestinian or Zionist, fairly readily. Neutrality will consist in simply producing a text that enlightens and disappoints both types of partisan reader in some regards, but gives the general, detached reader a sense of the state-of-the art commentary on this. I've always intended doing my bit to shape this up better, but it's a touchy issue, and that is why I suggest slow, careful and collegial proposals here. if I have the time, I'll, in the next month or so, show how I think all those quotes can be boiled down.Nishidani (talk) 17:49, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

• "The Arabization is a complex issue, which the selective use of sources, or failure to actually use more sources, distorted and still distorts:

It was a process that took off significantly 4 centuries after the Arab invasion, over which period scholarship generally considers the majority of the population remained Christian. The sectarian switch was engendered by 3 factors. (a) the negative impact of the Crusades, which acted with extreme prejudice against Eastern Christians (b) the emergence of the Mongol threat (c) and the conversion of the Mamluks, with their rise to power, to Islam, as they fought to defend themselves against Mongols and those Christian communities in alliance with the latter. This is 4-5 centuries after the conquest. There is zero awareness in your text of this context.

Yes, the origins section is bad. Particularly egregious is the dumping ground of quotes that promote psuedohistory. But apparently a single sourced sentence about how arabs immigrated to palestine during the first millenium and contributed to arabization shows zero awareness. That genetic study is very favorable to palestinians, I'm surprised you don't want to include it, its angle towards history is something like your own. Its conclusion, that many palestinians have pre-islamic and perhaps prehistoric roots, was put on this page as something to be celebrated, a rebuttal of zionist claims that most palestinians are post 7th century migrants. But not all studies end up that way. It's a pretty mixed bowl. A majority are more sober- finding that jews, bedouin and levantines are very similar y-genetically, meaning they share common prehistoric male lineage(s), not that one is descended from another. It's funny if you think about it that they use jewish DNA to legitimize themselves.... ahem.

That genetic study is very favorable to palestinians, I'm surprised you don't want to include it

If you were surprised you are missing something in my editing pattern. I follow a rule (as far as I am aware of). However 'good' stuff may appear for Palestinians (or any other group) I refuse to accept it if it fails WP:RS, and is not written by an area-competent source. It requires very particular circumstances for me to make an exception on this, and only if I can find a consensus. I can't above re Zero's technically correct removal of an MA, so that stays out. Nishidani (talk) 17:37, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

• The origins of Palestinians are complex and diverse. The whole article evidences the depth of Palestinian origins timewise and in terms of spatial demographics. Timewise they come from high antiquity, spatially as a key crossroad, they have constantly absorbed populations flowing in from north south east west. The section with those bolded words is stupid because it is called 'Origins' and yet arbitrary starts with the Arab invasion, as if this were the beginnings of Palestinian identity. You've just endorsed this. It's stupid. The whole section needs rewriting to make it cohere with the rest of the text and its evidence. Nishidani (talk) 11:55, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

"Timewise they come from high antiquity, spatially as a key crossroad, they have constantly absorbed populations flowing in from north south east west." But that's not proven. Some anthropologists can hypothesize it, but anthropology is the most anthropocentric (and the most left-wing) of the sciences, and is not nearly as reliable as history or archeology. You correctly note that the land connects three continents, with nations from each continent making it part of their empire. So many demographic changes in a community without a distinct identity... and yet you use this as proof of palestinian continuity. As for "high antiquity", technically every people comes from antiquity in some form or another... mitocondrial eve and y-chromosonal adam, amino acids in a primordial soup, carbon fused inside our sun... What makes a people ancient in any meaningful sense is having an ancient ethnogenesis. Palestinian ethnogenesis (when they identified themselves as an ethnic group and/or others identified them as a distinct ethnic group) was in the early 20th century. australians are older. I look to recorded history to support fantastic historical claims. If history changes without new information coming to light, it's probably revisionism. Anyway, starting at the 7th century doesn't preclude a prior past- take the Assyrian people. While the wikicoverage of assyrians is full of primordialist claims that assyrians have a past totally not anachronistically spanning 4500 years, they start assyrian history with the christian period....for obvious reasons.

I'm glad you're being somewhat nicer here (still condescending but less vituperative), but I would respect you a lot more if you admitted you are wrong about some things.--Monochrome_Monitor 12:53, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

I thanked you for your edit removing (pro-Palestinian) nonsense from Canaan, for a very simple reason. You spotted crap, egregious crap. The Ottoman Turks, for one, did not use the Turkish word for Palestine in most of their documents, and when they did, it did not refer to Canaan, but the coastline. I am somewhat obsessive about the precise, nuanced use of words to fit complex political, historical and social realities. I edit little because most of the articles (this one included) look messy, and demand extensive revision from that perspective. I would boil this down radically were edits here no so conflictive and pointy, many of them to do with Palestinian assertions. But this requires long close work. I don't want the problems multiplied.

• • That's actually not why I deleted it, I deleted it because it implies that after 1948 no one called it that, like history was sealed- it was called israel and then palestine and now israel and we go full circle and it's happily ever after. I thought you thanked me because of that. XD I did think "all parties" was weird though. Um, what parties?--Monochrome_Monitor 19:14, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

You're thinking of the politics of texts and editors, in highly simplistic terms, and that is why you'll probably find I challenge quite a lot of edits you make.

anthropology is the most anthropocentric (and the most left-wing) of the sciences, and is not nearly as reliable as history or archeology.

That is another broad-brush generalization that shows unfamiliarity with the topic. You cannot distinguish anthropology from history or archaeology for the simple reason that anthropology is integral to both the latter, so we have disciplines like historical anthropology and archaeological anthropology.

If you approach any subject thinking in Manichaean terms (Left-wing/right wing//Zionist/anti-Zionist) you won't get anywhere, except dig yourself into a deeper hole. Try and find on which side of that pseudo-divide Franz Boas, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Raymond Firth, Irving Goldman, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Franz Baermann Steiner,Clifford Geertz, Marvin Harris, etc.stand. The distinction is meaningless.

I've been reverted on several occasions each by Oncenawhile, Zero, Nableezy, Tom Reedy and dozens of other editors, and I've never squeaked: they are extremely precise, and don't do that unless they are dead certain something is wrong. I first specialized in ancient Greek, which, despite the hodgepodge of ethnic mixing evidenced over the last 50 years, was depicted as a unified ethnos by a traditional ethnocentric reading. This is all changed now: modern Greeks, with millennia of intermixtures added on, are still the descendants of classical Greeks, we don't split hairs and challenge that because their whole history shows immigration flows. I apply the same principle here (on the basis of what I read). Ask yourself why, uniquely, Palestinians are subject to stringent rules of ethnic sifting when their past is analysed?

What makes a people ancient in any meaningful sense is having an ancient ethnogenesis

That's meaningless to me, because ethnic identitites are constructed, and in modern times.

(The Zionist Association would require to have permission at the same time to build Jewish schools, where Hebrew would be taught, and in that was) to build up gradually a nationality which would be as Jewish as the French nation was French and the British nation British.'(Martin Sicker, Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999 p.148.)

You think recent genetics can fix things (science!) Recent genetics has thrown marvelous light on many things, but it is in its infancy. It will take a decade for the discipline to sort out exactly how its partial results square with the wobbly, unstable discursive conceptual tradition of nations, ethnoi etc.

My advice continues to be: don't rush. Don't do multiple edits to complex pages. Do one or two, and make explanations on the page. Neither Israel nor Palestine's fate depends on what we do here.Nishidani (talk) 14:36, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

I told you already, Jews in the mid to late 19th had just gotten basic civil rights and were busy assimilating. You can tell by how they refer to themselves- take the "Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith", the ultra-cautious name for a jewish org set up in 1893's Berlin. You say it like they didn't think of themselves as a people, which isn't true. They desperately wanted to fit in, to be "Jewish Germans", and not "German Jews". Asserting that they were just Germans of the Jewish faith, with no ethnic component, was also a way of combating the new hip philosophy "antisemitism". This moniker, "X of the Jewish faith", replaced the former PC term for themselves, "Israelite". The word Jew was derogatory so they called themselves Israelites, some jewish organizations in Europe are still called that. Anyway, my point is, yes, Jews were not a nation in the sense that france was a nation. That's why zionism was so revolutionary, many jews weren't ready for it. Like the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith. They were anti-zionist like good, loyal german citizens. And when the nuremburg laws stripped them of their citizenship, they had to rename themselves "Jewish Central Association". Poor things, I can't imagine they lived to have grandkids. Jews were a nation in a different sense than France, it's the difference between klal yisrael and medinat yisrael. However, I won't deny that Israeliness was a new/reconstructed identity. --Monochrome_Monitor 16:05, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

You can't call the new jewish nationalism an ethnogenesis by any meaning of the word.--Monochrome_Monitor 16:15, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

These arguments bore me, really. I have to wade in my daily reading through so many articles which harp on just the ethnic identitarian aspect regarding anything, I wonder why people can bear it for weeks, then months, then years, then decades, then a lifetime.

This is the last I hope to have to say on that (since we interact and it's such an important motivating issue for you, as you note above) I grew up where everyone I knew defined themselves by their political nationality, and it was utterly no one's business as to how each person defined his 'descent', recent or otherwise. I knew and know many people who, according to one external definition or another, are or were 'Jewish' (including relatives) but who never showed the slightest interest in this as a public identity to be worn on their sleeve or to get anguished or proud about, let alone to brandish the 'I'm a victim' complex as the start-up topic of any interaction, in someone else's home, without even asking the locals what their experience of the world I represent is'. This goes for all groups. Being tugged by the sleeve one way or another must be terrible. (I've witnessed vigorous even threatening arguments made by ethnic obsessives from the Balkans against people of the same ethnic or religious or linguistic culture badgering individuals to 'declare' this or that one identity. A Japanese fiancée was once harassed by officials at Haneda airport for not using the standard, gender-marking terminological jargon expected from a submissive 'Japanese woman', etc.). Everyone must choose what discursive universe they prefer to live in, of course. Mine is, from the age of 5, to prefer outsiders to insiders. I never had, for my decisive primary school years, kids of my own 'confession' or 'ethnic group' among my elective friends. Call it a prejudice, if you like, but that's part of the structure of my makeup, and it makes me far more detached in reading history than I would be had circumstances made me 'patriotic'. Jews have had 2,000 years of antisemitism, which is basically being told to 'fuck off because you ain't like us.' In the 19th century, thanks to Napoleon, a glimmer of enlightenment allowed some of them to feel Jewish, or French etc., or both or neither, without having to keep battling with an other-imposed and impossible identitarian neurosis. That's all I want to say on this. Let's focus on the specific edits you'd like to propose, re 'Arabization' from the 7th CE onwards in Palestine without being entangled in wider issues, ay. I'm interested in world history, and I have no, and don't want an, ethnic thread of Ariadne to help me grope my way through its labyrinths.Nishidani (talk) 16:46, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Oh, you're talking about jews today? Haha, you don't need to tell me about jews "you know", I live with them. My mom is funny. She doesn't think jews constitute a people but she considers herself a Jew. And when I say, well, what makes you jewish then, you heretic? And she says "my ancestors were jews". Too funny. Those are the contradictions of the post-napolean diaspora jew. Also, I want you to know I don't consider myself a victim. Well, for being a Jew at least. Not at all. Do I bear grudges against certain nations? Yes. What's motivating to me again? My Jewishness? I'm not "patriotic" in the way you imagine. The only jewish things about me are chinese food on christmas and a genetic mutation predisposing me to breast cancer. See, we grew up in different environments. You see irish people killing eachother and think, wow, irish nationalism is scary. On the other hand, I see jews with christmas trees and think: Wow, we're completely fucked. (my aunt: "we celebrate all religions"). --Monochrome_Monitor 18:14, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Assessment

I think many of your above arguments and counter-arguments are getting off-topic. Instead of talking about Palestinians as an ethnic group, the conversation (and its relatively few sources) covers topics relating to the long history of the Palestine region, demographic changes in the area from Late Antiquity onwards, the effects of the Muslim conquest of the Levant and the resulting Arabization and Islamization of the region, the effects of the Crusades and the modern perception of them, and the population growth which turned a relatively sparsely-populated area into an area with over 9 million residents. Do you honestly think that all this is relevant for a basic understanding of the Palestinians?

Also some of your comments and ideas do not strike me as either factual or as accurately representing major viewpoints. Lets see some specific examples:

• Nishidani starts his/her text with the idea of "continuities of descent" in the population of Palestine over a period of millennia. While more sources are needed to establish that such a continuity exists, it is not implausible. But it may not represent the full picture at all. Human beings tend to have two biological parents, four grandparents (excluding the possibility of incest in this line), 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents etc. It is basic genealogy. In any given case where there is interbreeding (genetic admixture) between two interacting populations, the descendants can legitimately claim descend from both of them. In an area such as the Levant with a recorded history of interactions between numerous ancient, medieval, and modern peoples, there is a strong likelihood that they have all interbred and have descendants in common.

I had in mind many passages in recent scholarship on the contradiction in premises between the Jewish narrative, (stressing continuity despite upheavals, deportations, population mixture and invasions) and the narrative bias against Palestinians (where the same elements are interpreted as proof of discontinuity), in the representation of their respective histories in that one land. See for the paradigm here, pp.254-258 here, the Arab transition myth as upheaval here, and chapter 2 here pp26ff., esp. the citation from Maxime Rodinson p.38. Nishidani (talk) 22:26, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Jews have maintained an identity and culture, proving their continuity. Palestinians have not. Jewish history is recorded history for the most part, palestinian history is not. I could go on. The compares to jews are just silly.--Monochrome_Monitor 03:23, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Sheesh. That statement is almost enough to suggest to me you shouldn't be editing this page. The Jewish history of scores and scores of Jewish communities is not well known (Ethiopians, Chinese, Moroccan, Tats, the Jews in Israel for 2,000 years etc.etc. is not well known to them, or scholars, because for 2,000 years their communities wrote no 'history'. I compared the discursive frameworks used to represent two peoples per sources. You took this as a comparison between them. The comparison becomes ridiculous because it's caught up in an us/them vaunting of a collectivist plus for us/ minus for them logic, so that a Jew from Siberia, Yemen,Ethiopia with no documents beyond a few sparse family anecdotes, and perhaps a birth certificate of one grandparent acquires automatically a 'history' written by scribes he's never read, while the Rashidis, Husaynis, Nuseibehs, for example, whose archives allow them to trace 1,300 years of presence in Jerusalem, have no continuity with the land, or history, compared to any Joe-blow from wherever who happens to be 'Jewish'. It's one of the endless examples of total naïve unthinking typical of the Zionist genre. You said you read anthropology:imagine an American of Puritan descent writing

White Americans have maintained an identity and culture, proving their continuity. The Comanche have not. White American history is recorded history for the most part, Comanche history is not. I could go on. The comparions of Injuns to Whites are just silly

Comparing the way an American white historian might write of the glories of their settlement of the land, with the way the same historian might briskly dismiss, or use caricatures, to touch on the indigenous peoples, is more than legitimate. It's not about who has history, but who controls history and dictates its terms. I'm not editing today. I hope you reflect a little. Nishidani (talk) 07:52, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Inane comparisons. Chinese Jews are most likely a myth introduced by european missionaries. Oral Ethiopian Jewish history covers centuries and its reliably has been proven, many recorded historic events line up with their accounts. The history of the Moroccan Jews is recorded, they were the first non-Berber people to settle in the maghreb and their presence is noted by the Romans and later by Arab and Moorish (Arab-Berber) historians- later sephardic jews who arrived after their expulsion are even more well know to historians. The Mountain Jews are descended from Persian Jews who arrived in Dagestan in the 5th century, maintaining a rich oral history and continuous genealogical records. Yemeni Jews are attested since the Himyarite period, their continuous existence further validated by latin, syraic and arabic sources, they were noted by the caliphs, by the early medieval period they were in contact with the andalusian jewish community, most significantly maimomaides. Their exile to mawza is engraved in their collective memory and in historical records... I'm not just talking about western history or inscriptions in stone, I'm also talking about oral tradition and records kept in communities. I'm not saying the Palestinians don't have a history- they DO have a history. Many families trace their families back for centuries, like you said- up to the 7th century. My point is not that they haven't kept a history, it's that they have and this history is different from the history palestinian nationalist theorists now proclaim. That is the difference. Not discontinuity in historical records- A gap in the historical record that maintains narrative continuity is different from a continuous historical record or narrative that is revised in the modern era. The comparison to whites and native americans is the most disgraceful- the anti-zionist meme of white colonialists overtaking the indigenous population. Jews and samaritans are the indigenous population of southwest canaan, every historian worth their salt knows that.--Monochrome_Monitor 21:23, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

• "the Arabs basically began a late drift in from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, attracted by the economic prospects opened up by the wave of early Ist aliyah settlement, with its modern agricultural know-how. In other words, Palestine was repopulated by two contemporaneous waves of immigrants, Jewish and Arab." Nishidani says it with disdain, but if there are reputable sources pointing to immigration waves coming to Palestine in the 19th century, they should be included in the relevant articles. it might give some proper background to the region's population growth.

Most competent historical demographers dismiss it with disdain. 'It is largely accepted . .that at least until the early 1920s the growth of the Arab population.. (not an isolated case in the region). had little to do with external migratory waves. '(Lorenzo Kamel, linked above pp.40-41) Nishidani (talk) 22:26, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

For the discursive framework in Zionist discourse, Kamel documents how:

(The early Zionist thesis that the fellahin were converted Jews was dropped as Zionist colonization got underway) i.e. since the abandonment of the thesis of the Jewish origin of the fellahin) the descendants of Jewish farmers were removed from Jewish national consciousness; the Palestinian fellahin of the present day quickly became, in the eyes of the official memory agents, Arab immigrants who arrived en masse in the nineteenth century in an almost empty land and whose migration continued into the twentieth century, following the economic develiopment of Zionist agriculture that, according to this myth, attracted thousands of non-Jewish labourers’ p.31 Nishidani (talk) 22:42, 25 June 2016 (UTC)