Talk:Anti-Zionism/Archive 14

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anecdote

To editor GHcool: It is completely ridiculous to have an anecdote about a German hijacker whose personal motivation you don't even know. What has it got to do with this page? The source doesn't identify him as anti-Zionist. Lots of radicals and antisemites are pro-Zionist. And why is one person's off-the-cuff retort representative of anything other than that person's off-the-cuff retort? Beyond that, there is a danger of this page becoming a list of terrorist attacks, which are well represented in other articles. I don't think Entebbe should be here at all. Zero^talk 06:45, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Zero, I agree completely with everything you're saying here. Moreover, this little "anecdote" is only the tip of the iceberg, there is a great deal more in this article that is very worrying. I made a series of technical edits this moring; please note, for the record, that these edits do not imply my endorsement of the preceding series of edits by GHcool (far from it). This, of course, also applies more generally. --NSH001 (talk) 10:53, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

If every act of terrorism or violence where Jews(Israelis are the targets is to be bundled up into an article on anti-Zionism, the list would be as long as acts of terrorism/violence perpetrated by Israel (which we don't add, event by event, to the Zionism article, and rightly so). We address this by citing some synthetic scholarly source that specifically identifies certain acts as 'anti-Zionist' in the sense of opposition either to (a) the existence of Israel, or to (b) Israeli state actions that are protested (the word is used indifferently of both, despite the fact that they are conceptually distinct: to deny the right to exist of Israeli is antisemitic in its anti-Zionism. To protest at the vast abuses of human rights by Israel in its treatment of Palestinians is formally premised on a notion that states must be obliged to adhere to the universal criteria of human rights). Anti-Zionists in the first sense can get into that act, but to assert that therefore human right movements or protests are thereby anti-Zionist in the first sense is guilt by association, which is why, in public polemics, it is convenient rhetoireically to blur the two senses. Nishidani (talk) 11:56, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

The effort to "prove" that anti-Zionism is either equal to anti-Semitism or an endorsement of terrorism via the inclusion of this sort of material is depressing. Selfstudier (talk) 12:04, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

The conceptual development of the subject in particular appears to be getting lost in the mire - I wonder whether it might be worth creating a section devoted to the conceptual development of the subject (as teased apart from the historical activities of individuals and groups characterized by the subject). This is an article on the subject, not a timeline of linked events. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:14, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

To anticipate my approach's latter half, the conceptual development of anti-Zionism falls into a chronological divide. (a) The first half runs from 1896 to 1948, from the inception of the proposition to its realization in statehood. The objection was overwhelmingly against the creation of a Jewish state, one predominantly argued by secular and religious Jews. The anti-Semitic element was minimal.

With the creation of Israel, and its formal institutionalized legitimation in international law, the cogency of this objection collapsed. A Jewish state existed, and therefore it was pointless denying it. From then on, objections to it shifted to the affected Arab world mainly. A second phase appears to have begun in 1967, when Israel occupied territory and began to rule another people. This engendered a different kind of anti-Zionism, one concerned with human rights abuses. This phase was dominated by a mixture of leftist objectors, many of whom had pro-Arab sympathies. A strong component remains the Jewish diaspora intelligentizia. The primary objection there has been not against Israel's statehood, but against Israel's geopolitical ambitions to nibble away at Gaza and the West Bank and absorb them, at whatever costs to Israel resulting from the abuse of human rights the exercise of that policy option makes for. The apartheid theme came to the fore as a key element in anti-Zionist discourse. This led to the invention of the 'New Antisemitism' mark 1 after the 1973 October war.

The third phase begins as a response to the Al-Aqsa intifada. At that point, the impact of far more comprehensive media coverage globalized and intensified reportage on the conflict, as measures by Israel and Palestinians took an increasingly daily, violent form. The objections by anti-Zionists remain generally focused on human rights abuses and the destruction of Palestinian aspirations, rather than questioning the legitimacy of Israel within its constituted, or recognized borders. The Israeli response, esp since 2004 has been to invest heavily in hasbara and external political lobbying in order to defend itself, the thrust of which is that sensitivity to human rights is an excuse by people who are actually avatars of the ancient anti-Semitic incubus. You get precisely at this time, the reinvention of 'New Antisemitism' mark 2 and the IHRA definition, the pressure on state legislatures and even nations like England, Germany and France to accept the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, in a way that would make it illegal to criticize Israel except in extremely narrow terms, apparently under continual committee review. A complicating factor was that concomitantly, global human rights bodies that are notably neutral, HRW, Amnesty etc., essentially took over the anti-Zionist ground, and became institutional representatives of anti-Zionism as opposition to the abuse of human rights. of course, the antisemitic lunatic fringe is always there, and after 2014, we see signs of a 'New Antisemitism' theory mark3.

If there is cogency in this reconstruction of the broad outlines, the article must deal with 1896-1948, part one (internal objections within the Jewish fold mainly), and then 1948-1967 (not much there apart from Arab anti-Zionism) and then 1967 to the present day.

I would propose that the present arrangement of citing one after another snippets of big names, with wiki bios, for their views pro/contra, one simply isolates the main principles of Zionism's critique of anti-Zionists and what anti-Zionists argue. I.e. Zionists often state that anti-Zionism is tantamount to objecting to the right of self-determination of Jews. The corresponding anti-Zionist argument is that the right of self-determination doesn't cover self-determination in a country where a different ethnic majority existed, or exists (WB/Gaza). That way, the conceptual framework becomes propositional rather than relying on the opinions of notables for one or the other party. The proposition, pro-and-contra, is elicited from sources on this topic, and the names and refs are attached as illustrations of those who propound these respective positions. Nishidani (talk) 16:32, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

I think you are rather missing the point there, Nish, and conflating anti-Zionism with criticism of the acts of the Israeli state. The essence of anti-Zionism remains, as it always has been, an objection to the existence of any Jewish state in Palestine, and in particular to the existence of the state of Israel in the territories occupied in 1948, rather than merely an objection to the policies and practices towards the areas occupied in 1967. This is precisely what distinguishes anti-Zionist criticism of Israel from that of others.

Of course anti-Zionists also criticise the 1967 occupation, and raise humanitarian objections to Israel's behaviour - as do many others. But it is perfectly possible to be a Zionist - and not even of the Chomsky variety - and to hold some of these positions. The Meretz party, removed from the Knesset at last week's election, has held such views for decades. Uri Avnery, often mischaracterised as an anti-Zionist, once won a defamation case against one such critic, and used to say that he was the only person in the world with a court document asserting that he was a Zionist. The essence of an anti-Zionist position is to see the post 1967situation, and post second Intifada developments, as a logical - almost inevitable- conclusion of the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine, rather than as an aberration. Therefore, anti-Zionists would argue that a lasting, just and peaceful resolution of the conflict requires addressing issues beyond the occupation of East Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights - in particular, the nature of the Israeli state and its Zionist structures and institutions, and the return of Palestinian refugeed and their descendants.

I am not presenting this here in order to advocate these views (I do that elsewhere), but to argue against your approach above, which I believe would obscure rather than clarify this key aspect of the topic. RolandR (talk) 18:01, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

You know the topic more intimately than anyone on wiki Roland, so any criticism from you can only help. I made large impressionistic generalizations (something I dislike doing). My problem is two-fold. I've read of numerous Zionists, people proud of that badge disgruntled with Israel's ethnocidal policies -skewered in turn by their fellow Zionists as 'anti-Zionist' -to be comfortable with the simple conflation (which is an official hasbara talking point) of opposition to the existence of the state of Israel with opposition to the programmatic abuse of human rights regarding non-Jews. You mention, rightly, Avnery, but dozens of impressive names might be added, from Zeev Sternhell to even Walter Laqueur. I think Laqueur's historical books generally very middling at best, but he did go on the record as stating that Zionism, in the strict sense, ended its mission in 1948. The state was established, punto e basta. It received international legitimation and the endorsement of law, whatever one may think about the rights and wrongs. I may be temperamentally, and analytically, hostile to the idea that any good can come out of a state which defines itself ethnically - it can't, as long as that prejudice perdures in its structural principles. I admit to a personal bias - coping with the trials and challenges of diaspora existence, per Hobsbawm, is precisely what makes 'Jewish' (by which I mean what people who happen also to have be raised within that part of their traditions eventually do within the larger secular non-Jewish world) contributions to civilization so startlingly creative down to 1948, ergo a source of profound pride among Jews, and equally deep gratitude among outsiders like myself who learnt so much from it. But in life, one has to work within the constraints of institutional arrangements as they are grounded in laws whose principles are, in theory, taken since Grotius, and I might add, Spinoza, to have universal extension. (That is why the diffusion of Zionist argumentation is so shatteringly embarrassingly jejune within the diaspora communities' 'neo-Israelocentric' discourse - it makes them ideologically immune to the logical incoherence such defensiveness cannot but impose on their communities) Principles are either universal, above national or self-interest, or they collapse as instrumental, as devices of power. When Arafat before the UN denied Israel's right to exist in 1974, logic should have cautioned him to rethink why that denial would not mutatis mutandis cause him to rebuff the state of Pakistan, which was created, with huge violence as an ethno-national society (this analogy is a hasbara favourite, but core differences exist. A Muslim majority pre-existed Britain there, the anomaly of Israel's foundation is that it is the only known example of an extraterritorial people claiming a right to self-determination consisting in the colonization of another country where they were a marked minority, a claim that implicitly denied self-determination to the indigenous majority. The assertion of such a right is a contradiction in terms, for the universal principle appealed to is, at the same time, negated by the ostensible application of such a right in that context. This is the essential of your anti-Zionism=denial of the state. I admit that foundational flaw, but not that it disinvalidates the legality of contemporary Israel. History is an immoral brothel where things fuck up, but if children are born from the screwup, they cannot lose their right to life)

Since Israel, like Australia, the United States, and Canada to name a few, was founded on violence (the first two indeed through a kind of intrinsic if not consciously willed or political, genocide), one cannot object to Israel's foundation as somehow anomalous. Non-Jews who do so are treading, if they do so, very close to the ragged borders of anti-Semitism. Again that's my instinctive feeling.

But as always, the problem is in the terminology. My immediate objection to the line you argue is that it is 'ontological' in its definition of anti-Zionism. That is, it assumes there is a semantic essence in the term 'anti-Zionist'. For me, that premise or working definition, comes parlously close, even if inadvertently, to accepting the way the pro-Zionist political and hasbara establishment, wishes to set the agenda. Anti-Zionist viewpoints vary greatly, historically, depending on contexts, on who said what where and within what terms. But TLDR and WP:Notforum kicks in. I can only refer you to Richard Marienstras's 1975 essay. He was 'anti-Zionist' but, not to my knowledge, a denier of the acquired right of Israel to be recognized as a state, however deplorable its behavior in the name of Jews might be. I agree with your concluding remarks: unless Israel redefines itself out of its Zionist ideological foundation, both the plight of Palestinians and the disastrous dilemmas it creates for Jews culturally will never be addressed. But realism tells me that will never happen. Nishidani (talk) 11:15, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

I think this still misses the point. Anti-Zionism is not simply an extreme form of opposition to Israel's practices, nor an ideological standpoint which became irrelevant with the establishment of the state of Israel. It is, in its various forms, a continuing opposition to a "Jewish state" in Palestine - even, for some, to such a state anywhere. This approach has implications for the actions and positions of the solidarity movement, particularly towards any advocacy of a "two-state solution", and regarding the rights and position of Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel. And it has proved to be a contentious and sometimes divisive position among critics of Israel. For instance, when we set up the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in 1982, the aims explicitly included opposition to Zionism. However, by the early 1990s, a majority of members disagreed with this, and the clause was removed from the aims - leading to the departure of most anti-Zionist Jews and left Palestinian activists from the organisation. More recently, following extensive internal discussion, in 2019 Jewish Voice for Peace defined itself as anti-Zionist, leading to criticism and attacks.[1] Although it will again be difficult to document this, since far-left politics is rarely covered in what would be considered reliable sources, I am aware from personal involvement that Jon Lansman argued against Momentum adopting an anti-Zionist position and George Galloway argued against Respect defining itself as anti-Zionist. There is a very real distinction between pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel politics and anti-Zionism, and it really isn't helpful to conflate these and erase the specificity of anti-Zionism - which, after all, is the subject of this article. RolandR (talk) 23:11, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

No, I didn't miss or ignore your point, and what you write about the inner debates is certainly spot-on. What you say reflects the viewpoint of institutionally formalized anti-Zionist movements. They are underreported, and where reported misrepresented. T

The confusion between pro-Palestinianism and anti-Zionism is in the sources themselves. I am obliged to be mindful of dozens of articles that interpret anti-Zionism differently from the way both Zionists, and anti-Zionists like you do (admiring all the while the political coherence and cogency of the specific tradition in which you work). If I read, for example, Leifer's reply to Michael Walzer's characteristically slipshod screed on this issue, I note the following:

However, the strongest version of anti-Zionism—and the one I believe the left should critically endorse—does not firstly derive from any argument about history, though, of course, recognition of and reparations for historical injustices will have to be part of any durable, just, and peaceful resolution to the conflict. Nor does it firstly derive, contrary to Walzer’s claims, from any theoretical opposition to the nation-state or belief about the “essence” of Zionism or Jewish peoplehood. It derives instead from a values-based assessment of the political reality on the ground in Israel–Palestine, from a principled opposition to what the writer Adam Shatz has called “actually existing Zionism.” Joshua Leifer, Israel–Palestine Today: A Values-Based Approach, Dissent, Fall 2019, Vol. 66 Issue 4, pp 91-96, pp.93-93

By training I look first into the meaning of the terms used,(and, if mostly privately, both their propositional status (almost zero in this area) and the way the various usages are embedded in historical contexts). Zionism itself has multiple definitions according to the various lines and factions. People here are generally taking the word to mean one thing, and anti-Zionism idem, as a response to that one thing - the establishment of a state for Jews with whilom Palestine. But of course that Zionism had a tacit agenda, of taking the whole of Palestine over, with perhaps Jordan and parts of Lebanon. Post-1867, a lot of anti-Zionist demonstrations and literature, however, has been focused on criticizing, not the legitimacy of Israel proper, but Israeli practices in Gaza and the West Bank, without necessarily challenging the existence of the state. Laqueur and Avnery were Zionists, but like hundreds of other notable Zionists, they objected deeply to imperial Zionism, not to the reality Zionism established in 1948. Objecting to the operative ideology of Israel is not ipso facto tantamount to denying its right to exist. It simply means denying the right of a state, however it defines itself, to occupy, ransack, colonise an area outside of its de jure confines and torment the victims of its dispossessive possessiveness, and is 'anti-Zionist' in the sense that it is a critical reaction to imperialist Zionism. Being opposed to British imperialism à la J. A. Hobson did not mean opposition to the state existing in the British Isles.

It was inevitable that the foundation of a state based on ethnicity would entail the success/disaster, triumph/tragedy realities that followed. But there is a correlation between surges in protests against Israeli actions and the actions themselves, they spike after 1967, during the first and second Intifada, and during Israeli's blitzkriegs into Gaza after 2008. Most people, from Jacques Chirac down, criticized these 'Zionist' practices without thinking they were denying Israel the right to exist. To the contrary, they were saying Israel has no future as a potential fully-fledged democracy if it persists in its mania of paranoia and persecution- As opponents of imperial Zionism, or ethnocratic Zionism, their stances are frequently described in the polemical literature, esp. that put out by Israeli hasbara teams, as 'anti-Zionist', and the latter discursive strategy is to assert that one cannot be opposed to Zionism/Israel without being tendentially opposed to Jews. As an editor I am obliged, not to redefine a topic in terms of my personal definitions of what constitutes Zionism or anti-Zionist, but in terms of the way the literature defines them, which is much wider than what one kind of Zionist polemic, or a strictly anti-Zionist movement, might argue is the case.Nishidani (talk) 14:25, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

But that approach would empty the term "anti-Zionism" of all specificity, and thus bring into question the entire rationale for this article. The fact that some people misuse or misunderstand the term, and attack someone like Avnery as an anti-Zionist, does not make their confusion correct. There is a difference between the use of anti-Zionism as an analytical framework for understanding the conflict, and the use of the term "anti-Zionist" as an (often unfounded) smear, and your approach risks blurring this. By all means include a section here on how the term is often misused in an attempt to delegitimise all harsh critics of Israeli acts; but don't make this the main content of this article. RolandR (talk) 14:49, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Well, you are arguing then, that to use anti-Zionism in the extended sense, is an abuse of the intrinsic meaning of the word, and that what is required, for this article, as a rectification of names. Unfortunately, sources beg to differ. It is not 'some people'. I began to grasp conceptually the nature of these things on reading Chomsky in the 80s. In his Fateful Triangle he wrote:-

Israeli intelligence apparently contributes to these efforts. According to a CIA study. one f its functions is to acquire "data for use in silencing anti-Israel factions in the West," along with "sabotage, paramilitary and psychological warfare projects, such as character assassination and black propaganda." "Within Jewish communities in almost every country of the world. there are Zionists and other sympathizers. who render strong support to the Israeli intelligence effort. Such contacts are carefully nurtured and serve as channels for information, deception material, propaganda and other purposes." "They also attempt to penetrate anti-Zionist elements in order to neutralize the opposition.' p.11.

Here Chomsky appears to be talking of the way Israel tries to discredit and subvert specific groups who are anti-Zionist in the sense you mean. But elsewhere in the book it is clear that he takes the term in the broad sense I find to be descriptively accurate.

It might be noted that the resort to charges of "anti-Semitism" (or in the case of Jews, "Jewish self-hatred") to silence critics of Israel has been quite a general and often effective device. Even Abba Eban, the highly regarded Israeli diplomat of the Labor Party (considered a leading dove), is capable of writing that "One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism [generally understood as criticism of policies of the Israeli state] is not a distinction at all", Noam ChomskyFateful Triangle pp.11,16 Black Rose Books (1999) 2nd.ed. 2017 p.16.

So, to repeat, Wikipedia obliges me, whatever my views, to subordinate myself to what reliable sources state, and, on this, there is no more reliable source than Chomsky, writing back in 1999. I am following the standard technique in descriptive linguistics - defining a term according to ascertained usage. From your point of view, Chomsky gets this wrong, but, again, wiki is not concerned with who is right or wrong, but only with reliably reporting and writing according to what RS state.

(he terrible thing about reading Chomsky is that every single argument or exposé or disinformatsia technique he pulled apart, with meticulous documentation, in the 80s and 90s, is still systematically touted in new books and articles, year in year out, to this day. Indeed, The techniques of Corbyn's political assassination are all laid out presciently there. It's all déja vu).Nishidani (talk) 17:24, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Chomsky is not necessarily the most authoritative source for a definition of anti-Zionism. In any case, I think you oversimplify his position. When I discussed this with him in 1988, he maintained that the Zionist view that he held in the 1940s, and which he still held, had become characterised as anti-Zionist by the 1980s. But he insisted that he was still a Zionist, and that his critics were inconsistent. An anti-Zionist would argue that, even in the 1940s, Chomsky's advocacy of a binational state in Palestine would lead to an injustice to the Palestinian people and in all likelihood to continuous war.

In any case, we have to agree on the scope of this article. Anti-Zionism is more than harsh opposition to or criticism of Israel. If we are going to use the article as an opportunity to highlight to every statement of opposition to the Israeli state and its actions, no matter what the motives or analysis behind such statements, then, I repeat, there is no rationale for keeping it as a separate article. RolandR (talk) 17:58, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

You have to take that up with other editors, the ones who jam the page with material associating anti-Zionism with a putative antisemitic rejection of Israel's right to exist all over Western societies. (2) if you were to reason with those editors, you would have to insist that,since anti-Zionism is a rejection of Israel as constituted in 1948, essentially the second part should focus on those countries:North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Indonesia, the Maldives, Qatar, Algeria, Iran, Mali,Bangladesh, Iraq, Mauritania, Somalia, Brunei, Kuwait, Niger, Syria, the Comoros, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya, Oman, Djibouti, Malaysia, Pakistan and Yemen, with due attention of course to the ineffective BDS movement and small groups in the US and Europe that are similarly rejectionist. (3) I note so far that numerous erasures or proposed removals are being made whenever the narrative touches on the history of Jewish anti-Zionism, -it's something many don't like to be reminded of, however forceful it was - while no one appears to be interested in correcting significantly the bias, the Israeli talking point, that sees anti-Zionism as an antisemitic virus infecting basically the West, which is irremovable 99% in its support of Israel and rejection of antisemitism. This page looks crafted to create the impression rejectionism is widespread where it is least visible.Nishidani (talk) 21:10, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

By all means include a section here on how the term is often misused in an attempt to delegitimise all harsh critics of Israeli acts; but don't make this the main content of this article

I'll certainly, now that you suggest it, make a preliminary section on the clarification of the term. I haven't made this the main concern of the article. 99% of my editing has been on the pre-1948 infra-Jewish objections to Zionism. In the second part, the text as it stands is basically a tidbit tirade against those in the non-Jewish world who object to Israel's programmatic abuse of Palestinian human rights. That has been other editors' priority. If I ever get to that, I can't set myself preconditions because wiki doesn't allow that. I'll just follow what RS state. I understand what you are getting at. Every time I edit around here, I sigh that I have to buckle under the weight of huge mountains of stuff that is bullshit, because it is RS bullshit, or because others belief it is the driven snow. Editing in those conditions is like refusing to budge from the procrustean bed in a torture chamber, and I seriously ask myself whether I have a masochistic streak or not.Nishidani (talk) 17:53, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

tend to agree with that analysis. At the outset, we say "Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism" albeit that the footnote tries to explain this more clearly. I always think of AZ as opposition to "political Zionism", the "Jewish state" variety, which is all tangled up with Zionism as settler colonialism, racism and apartheid practices. Not sure that this is coming across properly. Miloon Kothari of the Permanent United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Israel Palestine conflict says "Apartheid is a useful paradigm/framework to understand the situation but not sufficient" and "We need to figure in settler-colonialism, general issues of discrimination, occupation and other dynamics to get a fuller picture of the root causes of the current crisis…ending "apartheid" will not end the crisis of occupation for the Palestinian peoples…the issue of self-determination requires many other changes." Selfstudier (talk) 12:24, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

The source does indeed identify the Entebbe hostage crisis as anti-Zionist. I will add the quote to the reference in the article. GHcool (talk) 17:44, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

There is an obvious consensus against you here, and it is you who has the burden of getting consensus to include challenged content. You haven't explained why the off-the-cuff retort of one person is relevant to this page and believe you can't explain it because there is no relevance. Maybe you think that pushing an anti-Zionist=Nazi bandwagon is a fine thing to do; is that it? Beyond that, I don't think it is properly sourced. Gallner, who wrote the introduction appears to cite Amery's 1976 essay "The New Antisemitism", but that essay is reproduced in the book (p50) and doesn't have it. So the actual source is Gallner who provides no evidence. Were the kidnapper's words recorded? In what language were they spoken and who translated it? It smells exactly like one of those cute stories that always pop up after significant events. Zero^talk 03:14, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

ill add to that consensus, this is silly. What one random anti-Zionist said does not belong in this article as representative of anti-Zionism, and it completely fails WP:WEIGHT. nableezy - 03:20, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

I'll add that Gallner has accepted more serious myths about the Entebbe incident too: "the kidnappers separated the hostages into two groups, Jews and non-Jews, releasing only the latter". I believe (without a source at the moment) that that story was part of the version Israel put out for public consumption. In 2011, Ilan Hartuv (one of the hostages and the son of the murdered woman Dora Bloch) told Haaretz: "There was no selection applied to Jews: Entebbe was not Auschwitz ... The separation was done based on passports and ID cards. There was no selection of Jews versus non-Jews. ... Many of the freed hostages were Jewish". That same article has a longer version of the conversation between hijacker Böse and hostage Yitzhak David. I'll quote it here, but I don't think any of it should be on this page.

(Hartuv reporting) David showed him the number tattooed on his arm and said to him in German: 'I was mistaken when I told my children that there is a different Germany. When I see what you and your friends are doing to women, children and the elderly, I see that nothing has changed in Germany.' Bose, who up until that moment had been calm and resolute, blanched and trembled. 'You're wrong,' he answered. 'I carried out terrorist acts in West Germany because the ruling establishment took Nazis and reactionaries into its service. I also know that in September 1970 the Jordanians killed more Palestinians than the Israelis did, as did the Syrians in Tel al-Zaatar. My friends and I are here to help the Palestinians, because they are the underdog. They are the ones suffering.' So Yitzhak David answers: 'Well, then, when the Palestinians fulfill their promise and throw us in the sea, we'll come to you to help us hijack Arab planes.'"

From this we can see that the brief Gallner version is not a bad synopsis, but it isn't a quotation. Some of this is appropriate for Operation Entebbe and Wilfried Böse but none of it is appropriate here. Zero^talk 04:18, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Whether quote, or synopsis, it does not belong in this article.Pngeditor (talk) 16:44, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Opinions presented as fact

To editor GHcool: This is obviously not a fact that can be stated in Wikipedia's voice. It is a highly pov opinion that at least needs to be attributed to someone. This is not the first time either. Zero^talk 23:42, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Fair enough. I revised. --GHcool (talk) 23:55, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

No that won't do. This is the third time editors have noted a very simple confusion in one of your edits that messes the text up. Caught out in patent misrepresentation or failure to distinguish facts from opinions, or in passing off a noted internal contradiction as not contradictory at all, you reply each time, 'fair enough'. I notified you of an 1R violation, and you thanked me for not reporting you, and reverted. A day later you made another 1R violation - Nableezy called your attention to it on your talk page - and thanks again 'I'll self-revert'. You've too much experience here for this kind of behavior. It looks more like an expectation that of many dubious edits, one will slip under the radar.

In the present case, you were told that reviews of Susie Linfield's book were highly critical of several things in her approach. You nonetheless went ahead, gave her a whole paragraph as an authority on 'left-wing' protests against Israel. I.. you ignored the talk page's suggestion to step warily with that particular book. Well, here's what Fischbach states (Michael R. Fischbach, The Lions' Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky, American Jewish History (Vol. 104, Issue 4) October 2020 647-650).

Linfield's own voice is strongly present throughout. Indeed, the book is as much about her attitudes as the writers under study

Linfield is not a historian, which shows in some serious errors she makes

Sweeping denunciations of "the Left" as monolithically anti-Israel, certainly in the I96os-I97os American context, are inaccurate

Linfield's ahistorical and incomplete definition of Zionism sets her up for misunderstanding a crucial dimension of left-wing criticisms of Israel

Her thesis is that "Israel is the Rorschach test of the Left" and that it and its struggle with the Arabs are the "templates upon which the Left has projected all sorts of inapt ideologies, hopes, anxieties, and fears" in ahistorical and unrealistic fashion . . .Linfield spares no criticism of those who "mistake one's fantasies for facts, or one's hopes for truths ... [which] is a dangerous and narcissistic game" (281). The irony is that she herself falls victim to precisely these kinds of fantasies. . .To berate Palestinians for their "irredentism" and "radical nostalgia of return," absent tangible diplomatic steps to address their grievances, is not grounded in the realistic understanding of the Middle East Linfield claims to champion (217, 305). She parries Palestinian refugees' demand for their right of return by saying in the real world "history does not flow backwards" (189). Yet Palestinian refugees might counter that, to them, Zionism represents the ultimate example in the real world of history flowing backwards: reversing the Jews' exodus from their ancestral homeland by, in Zionist parlance, ingathering the exiles over two millennia later (and replacing the vast majority of the locals in the process).

Palestinians might find the following assertion ironically amusing: "One would be hard-pressed to find a case in which millions of refugees and their descendants have returned to a country from which they were exiled in the midst of a war that they started, especially when many of those returnees reject the legitimacy of the extant nation and their population might overwhelm it ... This sort of radical nostalgia has a name: reaction ... the restoration of an imagined past rather than the building of a modern future" (304). Palestinians seek a modicum of justice, and until then will continue to demand both their right to return and their right to mourn. If Jews did not get over Jerusalem after 2,000 years of exile ("next year in Jerusalem"), then might not Palestinians be forgiven for pining for Jerusalem after just seventy-two years? And if so, might that lead Linfield to a more realistic understanding of left-wing criticisms of real, existing Zionism?

In short Linfield's idiotic assertion that the occupation did not start when Israel occupied the West Bank, noted earlier, is just one of a piece. She cannot see that polemically dismissing Palestinians' claim of a right of return as a fantasy sits side by side with her own 'liberal Zionist' premise that Jews are justified in asserting an identical right of return. The Palestinians must get over their fantasy, while Jews are just being realistic in bringing their parallel fantasy to birth. Evidently, Linfield is trying to punch as a heavyweight while flailing as a bantam.

So obviously, that whole paragraph based on her is giving undue weight to a highly partisan source, and attribution won't save it because she is one of dozens of scholars, many of them competent historians unlike Linfield, which means that any broad generalizing section requires multiple RS converging to corroborate each other on an historical generalization, not just the obiter dicta of a single literary scholar visibly out of her depth on many of these issues.Nishidani (talk) 08:27, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

One might note that the Susie Linfield wiki bio itself was created by a notorious POV-pushing I/P sockpuppet E.M.Gregory immediately after the publication of her book, obviously to promote it and its theories via wiki. Adding her to a list is useless. The numerous lists of Ted said this, Jill or Jack said that which pass for 'encyclopedic' coverage are no such thing and should everywhere be reorganized in terms of the positions/theories/ views proposed for the pro/contra sides of a topic. Generally, one should give the argument, and then adds the people with whom that particular view is associated. Nishidani (talk) 09:36, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Recent eviscerations

It takes several hours, mostly reading, to do one serious edit here, and 2 seconds to wipe it out with a three or ten word edit summary.

The argument sustained by their practice, by both GHcool and Bob is that an article on anti-Zionism mustn't mention Zionism, esp. anything negative, but stick strictly to anti-Zionism. I.e. to repeat, an article on anti-matter mustn't mention matter. (Mark Oliphant, R.I.P. after answering my 14 yr oldish query on precisely this)

If that doesn't work, then imagine watching a video of the Rumble in the Jungle where Ali flails away, or plays his rope-a-dope gambit, with George Foreman edited out. Like shadow-boxing. Patently this argument is inane. And aggressive. One works for several hours on a few lines, -after reading several articles or consulting books, to get one edit right, and a passing editor, in three seconds can wipe it out with an 5 or 10 word edit summary whose cogency is obscure. One raises the issue at length on the talk page, goes to bed, and wakes up to a talk page silence, as one notes the scissors have been active on the text, as if Freddie Krueger mistook the article for Elm Street.

So, I'll have to waste more time on the talk page than actually editing the article, it appears. Comments on the a-bombing of extensive areas of the text will follow. Nishidani (talk) 14:50, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

The source just has to relate the material being added about Zionism to the opposition of Zionism. We cant just take one source not discussing any opposition to Zionism to include material on what anti-Zionism is opposed to. But if a source does relate the material to the opposition then it absolutely is not OR and it absolutely belongs. And I find the edits about "seems OR" to be absurd. Either you looked at the source and determined that it does not relate, or you are just assuming something and removing material on that assumption. One is ok, the other is not. nableezy - 14:58, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• (1) Excision after 'through dialogue, antisemites themselves would support and organize.'(sfn|Penslar|2020|pp=80–81)

efn|"Herzl believed that the anti-Semitism of his day contained certain elements of what he called 'legitimate self-defense,' for emancipated Jews were particularly well-suited for commerce and the professions, thus creating 'fierce competition' with bourgeois Gentiles...Herzl believed that anti-Semites themselves would appreciate the desirability and feasibility of the Zionist project and would gladly help ensure a smooth transfer of unwanted Jews from Europe to Palestine." {{harv|Penslar|2006|pp=13–14

Bob. Your justification for rubbing that out reads:'Relevance-section OR.' How in the eff could it be WP:OR when it comes from the same scholar just cited earlier, dealing with Anti-Zionism, Herzl and antisemitism - two sources dealing with Herzl's attitude to anti-Semitism, one you accept, the other, with the gloss you reject. That is an illustrative note, again buried in a footnote. As with other edits, any text mentioning antiZionism+Zionism+antisemitism, which mentions Zionist anti-Semitism, has been the target of elisions, and that is just WP:IDONTLIKETHAT. So that goes back. As Nableezy noted, additional background in footnotes, if cogent to the topic, shouldn't be questioned.

• (2)Addition to 'those of the antisemitic Drumont,

efn|According to Lenni Brenner (citing the novelist Desmond Stewart, Nordau,' in an interview with Drumont's fiercely anti-Semitic

That is pure mischief-making, adding a useless tidbit about Brenner's source, calling the latter a novelist (ergo the primary source is out of his depth and field) and so far not notable (redlinked). Well, Stewart was also a biographer, not just a novelist. if you did some work and found that the majority of reviews of his Theodor Herzl: Artist and Politician Doubleday(reliably published) slammed it, you might have had a point in this pointy 'fix'. Nah, Not at all. It is not hagiography, but a warts and all portrait. Brenner too, is not fringe, see below. So that goes out.Nishidani (talk) 16:18, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• (3)You question the relevance on a section Anti-Zionism in the 1920s-1930s

This section highlighted the rift between anti-Zionists who were assimilationists and Zionists. This rift is massively documented, both in the sources already used and broadly in any number of standard texts, that confirm Brenner’s truism:'The main and real Zionist aim, then, was to convert the bulk of German Jewry to unassimilated life in Germany.' Donald L. Niewyk,Jews in Weimar Germany, Routledge, 2018 (2) 'Zionists in France had two major opponents assimilationist and Bundist socialist nationalism Hershel Edelheit,History Of Zionism: A Handbook And Dictionary, 2019 p.119 etc.etc. Don't ask me to do your work, and illustrate a truism familiar to anyone who reads this literature.Nishidani (talk) 16:50, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• (4) The text had

  ‘Werner Senator (1896–1953) is on record as stating that, despite its nationalist ends, its modus operandi. Werner Senator (1896–1953) is on record as stating that, despite its nationalist ends, its modus operandi’

This you rewrite as

'given that the prominent German Zionist Werner Senator (1896–1953) is on record as stating that, despite its nationalist ends, its modus operandi' efn|The same contextual pragmatism might be said to characterize Zionism itself, given Lenni Brenner asserted that the prominent German Zionist David Werner Senator (1896–1953) once remarked that, despite its nationalist ends,...'

Why not, if you dislike that phrasing, simply rewrite:’ efn|the Zionist David Werner Senator (1896–1953) also once remarked that, despite its nationalist ends,etc.? The point of this WP:OR claim is to suggest my introductory phrase on ‘contextual pragmatism' (attested for anti-Zionists) was shared by Zionists, a harmless point no one familiar with the literature would question.(see note 3 above). I can't see any point here other than again linking Lenni Brenner's name as if he were fringe and suspect for what he writes. Where is your evidence that Brenner consistently invents stuff? What is so controversial about citing a figure who repeats a truism?Nishidani (talk) 16:56, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• (5)You question the relevance of

and spying on labour unions is organized. Goldfarb eventually wheedles him out of his money {harv|Balthaser|2020|pp=449–450}

Why is that questionable. The novelist was a Jewish communst anti-Zionist who made a comparison between what Zionists do to the Jewish working class, in his view, in the US, and what Zionists are doing in Palestine, and coopting the former to help them with the latter while shafting them. The source is Balthaser. Have you read it? The title proclaims its object:When Anti-Zionism Was Jewish: Jewish Racial Subjectivity and the Anti-Imperialist Literary Left from the Great Depression to the Cold War. This article is about anti-Zionism, pal.Nishidani (talk) 17:04, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• (6) Excision After the text illustrating an Italian example – we are talking here about Zionist and anti-Zionist response to a common threat in the 30s, antisemitism- which runs( and you do not question it).

though the latter were far more vigorously in polemical challenges to antisemitic statements in the fascist media {harv|Piperno|1982|pp=15–18

I: mentioned Spain. You erased it..

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Zvi Kullitz, writing for the revisionist HaJarden defended General Franco's coup d'état, stating that, despite evidence to the contrary, Franco was "not anti-Semitic... Jews have suffered from the rebels, it is true – but those Jews are communists. Not only every honest Spaniard, but every honest Zionist must wish them, the rebels, complete victory."efn|Abba Ahimeir, another leading revisionist right-wing intellectual, published a short editorial denouncing the concern of leftist militans in the Histadrut in Palestine "for the well-being of the anarcho-bolshevist government some where far off in Spain". Defense by Jews of the elected Spanish government was a "sure sign of assimilation" and lack of "Jewish' patriotism" {harv|Rein|2008|pp=10–11,11}

That unfortunately ignored the fact that the article and its sections are being worked on, and I hadn’t even got half way through my notes on this section. The point left hanging there, which is in the source, is that events in Spain caused a rupture between two forms of Zionist interpretations. Betar hailed Franco’s revolt, and Mapai opposed them. To Mapai Zionists, the Betar Zionists were, in supportiung Franco, showing themselves to be ‘anti-Zionist’. That is an example of how a Zionist can accuse other Zionists of being 'anti-Zionist', a very common feature of the history of the topic. That is in the source used, Rein (The Rein in Spain fell mainly on the plain text details you excluded while I was working on this). It would be much easier all round if you allowed me time to finish my review of the article, and then challenge me point by point on the talk page. As it is, the page, with these flurries of ill-considered excisions, just means time wasted, all round.Nishidani (talk) 17:28, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• (7) Excision The text as I wrote it had, and what you struck out.

(de Haan, a Zionist turned anti-Zionist)'was ridiculed by Zionists who eventually, in 1924, had him assassinated through the agency of their underground Haganah military wing.efn|The executioner Avraham Tehomi is believed to have carried out an order from higher authorities, some suggest Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, a leader of the Jewish National Council (Va'ad Leumi) in Palestine, and perhaps with the foreknowledge of David Ben-Gurion'

You preferred to suppress all of the details in a footnote, impeccably sourced. Here there is no excuse re relevance. The text deals with a Zionist assassination of an anti-Zionist. Let there be no shame on Haganah, no mentions of the fact that a future president, and a premier are suspected by some scholars in Israel of complicity. That is WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Nothing more, and the details in a harmless footnote should be restored.Nishidani (talk) 17:38, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• (1) Bob's correct. This is OR. The source has nothing to do with the topic of this article (anti-Zionism). It should not be in this article.
• (2) I removed the word "novelist."
• (3) Some of the "Anti-Zionism in the 1920s-1930s" is relevant, but much of it isn't. It could do with some trimming. Until that time, the tag should stay up.
• (4) See (1). Frankly, I would have cut the whole thing out as the OR that it is.
• (5) This seems to be a moot point now that there's no relevance tag here.
• (6) See (1). --GHcool (talk) 17:33, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

This is not an opinion forum. All you give is your opinion. No reasoning. If you can't prove your assertions or justify them, or just stick to obiter dicta, your points are pointless. Try harder. I work 12 hours a day on this page, and have so for two weeks, so I expect those who disagree to roll up their sleeves and actually swot and sweat, say 2% of the degree I do, rather than drop terse notes that are empty of cogency. Nishidani (talk) 17:43, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• (7) This interesting factoid is irrelevant to a general article on anti-Zionism. Put it in a different article (perhaps the article on Mr. de Haan would be more appropriate). --GHcool (talk) 17:51, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Are you doing this deliberately, i.e. wasting editors' time. I guess I'll have to illustrate with just one example, but then I'm finished listening and responding if this is the quality of analytical engagement.

Point 1 above. I wrote the text using two sources by Penslar.

Penslar,Anti-Semites on Zionism: From Indifference to Obsession 2006

Penslar,Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism: A Historical Approach, (2020)

Bob elided the note, saying it was irrelevant and OR. That was meaningless because he preserved one point by Penslar, while repressing the additional point from Penslar's second text, which expands on his earlier remarks.You endorsed this with your usual one-liner opinion. I'm tempted to speak of dishonesty, but I'll settle for disingenuity. The two texts, by the same scholar, deal with the same topic, anti-Zionism, and in both Herzl is mentioned for his views on the utility of anti-Semites for Zionism, one text supplements the other at a distance of 16 years. There is no OR, and the sources both establish the relevance. You're wasting everyone's time with this deceptive sandintheeyes argufying.Nishidani (talk) 18:06, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

You wrote, "The two texts, by the same scholar, deal with the same topic, anti-Zionism, and in both Herzl is mentioned for his views on the utility of anti-Semites for Zionism." This is the crux of the problem and you have identified it yourself. The two text may deal with anti-Zionism in however many pages the length of the books are, but it is apparent to almost nobody on Wikipedia why Herzl's views on the utility of AS for Zionism is relevant to a general article on wikipedia about anti-Zionism. I'm tempted to speak of disingenuity, but I'll settle for untutored in the norms of Wikipedia. --GHcool (talk) 20:01, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Well, thanks for trusting me, because I appear to be the only editor of the three of us who has actually read the two articles. Please dont' consider Bob and yourself as '(almost everybody) on Wikipedia'.

To repeat (a) you asked for texts on anti-Zionism (b) I furnished two (c) The two remark on Herzl's views on anti-Semitism in that context, anti-Zionism (d) people on Wikipedia don't count: the authority of sources counts, and our use of them is governed by rules (e) You both said it was original research to cite similar material from a text on anti-Zionism regarding the utility of anti-Semitism for Zionism. (f) No body with any competence in the WP:OR policy would persuasively argue that citing two supplementary texts from the same authority, dealing with the same topic, and contextualized within anti-Zionism, is original search. Articles all over Wikipedia cite two authorities for the same datum, and that is not 'original research'. It would be original research only if I cited two different sources, drew an inference that the independent remarks were connected, and fudged a synthesis, That has not been done.

it is apparent to almost nobody on Wikipedia why Herzl's views on the utility of AS for Zionism is relevant to a general article on wikipedia about anti-Zionism.

Please read the article you have (be)laboued on for years, where the Zionist response to anti-Zionism as interchangeable with anti-Semitism is hammered home. Herzl was the founder of Zionism, and like numerous Zionists he thought anti-Semitism was useful. That is why it is more than appropriate in an article whose POV was to associate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, to draw on the evidence in the literature of anti-Zionism that Zionism historically itself had key figures who regarded anti-Semitism instrumentally (too big a word?), i.e. an unwitting instrument for making diaspora Jews into scions of Eretz Israel.

Whatever, both you and Bob were caught here with your fingers in the till of policy abuse. There is no OR in glossing Herzl's remark from Pensler. All we have here is (a) distortion of policy and (b) WP:IDONTLIKETHAT, both of which contradict what a major authority on anti-Semitism considers appropriate to document. Neither you nor Bob nor I count. What counts is what authorities consider relevant to the topic. Nableezy set forth a criterion, and what I wrote fits that. You wrote some time back that he is fair. So, unless he can pick holes in my reasoning here (and he does regularly), you must accept that the edit is fair, and should be restored. cheddar.Nishidani (talk) 22:02, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

WP:TLDR ergo let me put that in the short version. Bob made two assertions (a)WP:OR (b) relevance. You backed him up. In your last post you admit there is no WP:OR. If you deny that, then you are obliged to cite the relevant lines in that policy's text which would make dual use of Pensler original research. Secondly, you shifted the goalpost to 'relevance'. The relevance falls under Nableezy's criterion for admissibility, which we all share. You are obliged to show why Pensler's material's inclusion violates Nableezy's criterion. You've done neither.Nishidani (talk) 22:39, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

A final note, which might be included as an illustration for Wikipedia for Dummies, or Wikipedia for kindergarten slackers. I don't think the two editors, with long experience, are stupid. To the contrary, but people with long years of editing under their belt should not indulge in what strikes me as an abuse of policy that lends itself to a perception their textual adversary is being giving the run-around, blindsided, in order to strongarm the cancellation of facts some are uncomfortable with.

The full text was,

(a)For Herzl and those persuaded by his proposal, the creation of such a state was the only rational response to pervasive antisemitism in Europe, one which, through dialogue, antisemites themselves would support and organize.{sfn|Penslar|2020|pp=80–81} (b) {efn|"Herzl believed that the anti-Semitism of his day contained certain elements of what he called 'legitimate self-defense,' for emancipated Jews were particularly well-suited for commerce and the professions, thus creating 'fierce competition' with bourgeois Gentiles...Herzl believed that anti-Semites themselves would appreciate the desirability and feasibility of the Zionist project and would gladly help ensure a smooth transfer of unwanted Jews from Europe to Palestine." {harv|Penslar|2006|pp=13–14}

I used two sources by the same expert, dealing with the same point. Herzl and anisemitism(i) Anti-Semites on Zionism: From Indifference to Obsession 2006 (ii) Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism: A Historical Approach, (2020) The erasure accepted (ii) was fine, Herzl wanted dialogue with antisemites but with (i) it was asserted that a quote clarifying Herzl’s reasons for why antisemites would accept dialogiue with Zionist was original research.

(a) For Herzl and those persuaded by his proposal, the creation of such a state was the only rational response to pervasive antisemitism in Europe, one which, through dialogue, antisemites themselves would support and organize.{sfn|Penslar|2020|pp=80–81} Penslar,Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism: A Historical Approach, (2020)

(b)efn|"Herzl believed that the anti-Semitism of his day contained certain elements of what he called 'legitimate self-defense,' for emancipated Jews were particularly well-suited for commerce and the professions, thus creating 'fierce competition' with bourgeois Gentiles...Herzl believed that anti-Semites themselves would appreciate the desirability and feasibility of the Zionist project and would gladly help ensure a smooth transfer of unwanted Jews from Europe to Palestine."Penslar,Anti-Semites on Zionism: From Indifference to Obsession 2006

I've given the full text, and what was deleted as 'original research'. What in the technical literature is called an 'exepegetic' note involves no inference, or synth, as is obvious. It simply, as with all the notes here, provides further detail, elaborates on the same topic point, locating it in a note. If you state in the main text a Jew wanted dialogue with anti-Semites, a note clarifying this striking paradox begs inclusion. So the elision was justified by an edit summary that is self-evidently false. I made that point yesterday, asked for an explanation, none is forthcoming, so it goes back. Don't try that kind of fudging gamesmanship with a patently specious manipulation of policy again. Nishidani (talk) 09:20, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

So there's a lot here, and I might create new sub-sections to look at each issue one by one. Before I start to read and digest and respond, let me just say that I really appreciate the overwhelming majority of the work that Nishidani in particular has done to this article. It is vastly improved, with much more solid referencing and much better distribution of weight to the different elements. My position is absolutely not that "an article on anti-Zionism mustn't mention Zionism, esp. anything negative". Of course we need to mention Zionism here. But the beauty of Wikipedia is that for a reader to fully understand a topic that isn't the actual topic of an article, they simply have to click on the link. Therefore, the details on Zionism we include here should only be those which are required to understand anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is not to Zionism as anti-matter is to matter. Better comparisons would be our articles on anti-communism, anti-fascism or Anti-nuclear movement. These articles let you understand what these movements were up against, but don't go into details of what Lenin said or the details of atomic physics. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:48, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Please do the one by one as mentioned, thanks. Selfstudier (talk) 10:51, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Will do. Also, as I start to read through this section, I really think it's best to assume good faith. I don't think it's right to talk about people's motives for editing. It's also not "time wasting" to give brief answers that show where consensus is; yes, actually reasoning through the right edit is better, but not all editors have as much time as others, and it's still good to know whether there is consensus. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:02, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Herzl

On (1) the Herzl quotes (key diff). I just simply think that there is no reason to include Herzl's views on antisemitism in this article. It's a fascinating quote, and well sourced, but it goes in Herzl's article. We just don't need to know this to understand anti-Zionism. I really don't understand what the argument for inclusion is. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:26, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

It's difficult to see how to address this, but the quote is certainly relevant. One of the reasons that I identify as an anti-Zionist is my awareness that the early Zionists, and the Zionist movement as a whole, started from the premise that European antisemitism was natural, even justified, and that there was no point in vainly trying to combat it. I know many others who share this understanding. So Herzl's view (and that of many others, who I could list at length) is of definite relevance in explaining the background to the anti-Zionist position of many Jews. However, I am not aware of any reliable source that discusses this aspect. Possibly David Landy's Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights; I will have to reread it and check. RolandR (talk) 15:27, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Bob (by the way, thanks for the above in earlier section, and, by the way the post-war section is a way down the road for me at the minute/week, uh, month but, if you haven't read it, chuck a shufti at Benjamin Bland's, Holocaust inversion, anti-Zionism and British neo-fascism: the Israel–Palestine conflict and the extreme right in post-war Britain, Patterns of Prejudice, 2019 Vol. 53, No. 1, 86–97, which is the kind of strong source we need to supercede the somewhat clumsy, too particularistic material we so far have in that area.)

As I said, it certainly was not WP:OR to include the Herzl footnote. When I saw your edit I thought you must be thinking of WP:SYNTH specifically, but the relevance of that policy also fails.

The rift between Zionists (an exiguous minority in the pre-war Jewish world) and anti-Zionists reflected also the larger communities' responses to ubiquitous anti-Semitism. There is an extensive literature on Zionist contempt for the stereotype of the Jew in the galut as a sniveling stunted, pathetically pious, unworldly weakling, and Zionism's ambition to engineer a different type (the macho sabra). Even people like Kafka and Freud echo it. And anti-Zionists, and Jews broadly, were disconcerted by this strain in their minoritarian antagonists' thinking. You'll say this is Zionism, and irrelevant to anti-Zionism, perhaps, but sources on the latter or by writers in the latter school of thought, mention it, they mention that this ambiguity, and their readiness to make political arrangements with the common adversary, anti-Semites, down to the mid-30s reflects this breach in the ranks. Herzl's point is taken up quite consistently by Zionists, and, since the equation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism plays such an important role in post-war Zionists arguments, this background, particularly if it is cited specifically by a scholar of Pensler's standing, makes it more than relevant to mention, if only in a footnote, for the pre-war period.Nishidani (talk) 15:49, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/transnational-movements-and-organisations/international-organisations-and-congresses/tobias-grill-jewish-anti-zionist-movements

"Within liberal and Orthodox Judaism in particular, the reservations regarding this new movement were so grave that organizations came into being, the main aim of which was to oppose Zionism. While the anti-Zionism of liberal Jews was primarily based on the fear that Jewish nationalism might endanger integration into non-Jewish society and give new momentum to anti-Semitism, anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews usually rejected Zionism not only because of the secularist trend at its core, but also because it was an attempt to bring about the messianic age by human intervention." Selfstudier (talk) 16:27, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Not all orthodox rabbis. Indeed, I strongly suspect that Herzl's point was borrowed from such a source, say from people like rabbi Bloch, who long before him, made what was certainly, in a German context, an allusion to Goethe's Faust (the famous lines at 1334-1335) to the effect that anti-Semites were doing religious Jews a favour and should be credited for bringing lapsed Jews back to the fold. But that's just my private OR, and not appropriate for our article (but it is fascinating. Someone out there in academe should pursue it philologically).Nishidani (talk) 16:43, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Roland wrote, "It's difficult to see how to address this, but the quote is certainly relevant." Relevant to what? Relevant to the Herzl article? Maybe To the Zionism article? Perhaps. To the anti-Zionism article? Certainly not.

Selfstudier gets it intuitively. He wrote, "You'll say this is Zionism, and irrelevant to anti-Zionism, perhaps, but sources on the latter or by writers in the latter school of thought, mention it, they mention that this ambiguity, and their readiness to make political arrangements with the common adversary, anti-Semites, down to the mid-30s reflects this breach in the ranks." Selfstudier understands that anti-Zionists often mention the history of Zionism in their critiques. Does this mean that we need to mention the history of Zionism in the anti-Zionist article? Of course not. As stated above, that would be like detailing the history of communism in an article on anti-communism. --GHcool (talk) 21:51, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Think you mean Nishidani, I haven't the wit. Selfstudier (talk) 21:56, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

anti-Zionists often mention the history of Zionism in their critiques. Does this mean that we need to mention the history of Zionism in the anti-Zionist article? Of course not

Inane. Let me translate.

Antisemites often mention the history of the Jews in their 'critiques' Does that mean that we need to mention the history of the Jews in the Antisemitism article. Of course not. (Jeezus, nah, holy cow!Nishidani (talk) 22:55, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't know why you say this is inane. It appears that you also understand it intuitively. --GHcool (talk) 23:50, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Brenner

Re 2/4: There's a few issues. First, I strongly believe that Lenni Brenner is a fringe source that we should not use without attribution, and generally avoid using. We removed a lot of Anthony Julius, who was described on this page as, I think, "toxically partisan". Brenner is surely more partisan and more toxic by any measure. The most accessible versions of the text on the web, I saw when I searched for the quotes and whether they had alternative sources, are literal Nazi websites. I looked for the originals of these quotes and failed to find them.

• Drumont (2, this diff) comes from Stewart, about whom I know nothing so I went with the word novelist as that's what Google said. The nearest I saw to a bio is this: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/95786.Desmond_Stewart#:~:text=1924%2D1981.,as%20well%20as%20several%20novels "Writer" would definitely be a fairer term than "novelist". I couldn't see an online version of Stewart's text, so in terms of verifiability, given Brenner is not reliable, I think the double attribution is necessary. (I also removed "perfectly", as it seems hyperbolic.) My preference would be to remove this footnote altogether, not just because of its reliance on a fringe source but also because it doesn't seem relevant. Nordau's views on Drumont are again fascinating, but relevant in the Nordau article, or maybe in the Zionism article, not here. What is the justification for including?
• David Werner Senator (4, this diff) has multiple issues. First, Senator (not "Werner Senator") is not notable enough to have an article, so I fail to see why he's noteworthy. Second, the only source is Brenner, and I don't think Brenner even gives a source so it's Brenner's assertion (we definitely can't say "is on record as stating", plus Brenner's text he says Senator "remarks", which makes me further doubt we can consider this noteworthy). Third, he's not talking about anti-Zionism and it isn't helpful in understanding anti-Zionism. Fourth, the contextual pragmatism gloss seems to be one editor's not that of a reliable source, which is what makes it OR. This is clearly indicated by the "might be said to characterise", which, per MOS:WTW, begs the questions "if it might be said to characterise Zionism, has anyone actually said this, and might it be said that it doesn't characterise Zionism?" BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:31, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Julius has been pared down for 7 or so references. So far Brenner, (whose importance lies in the fact he constitutes the anti-Zionist case (appropriately for this article) has been used parsimoniously, twice. From the point of view of style, Brenner and Julius could not be further apart. Julius is fervent, passionate, whereas Brenner's firs book is written in an unhysterical deliberative tone. I suspect that this is because knowing he has strong evidence, all reputably sourced, he allows his case to rest on that, whereas Julius adopts a hectoring tone to win over sceptics, or shame them. If you have any evidence of passages from Brenner's 1983 work of intemperate misrepresentation, I'd like to see them quoted. Certainly, like several other sources (Wistrich after his 1989 book on Vienna strikes me as a driven partisan for example), Brenner is 'partisan': most scholars in the area are. What counts is the quality of the scholarship. I don't know of anyone who contests Brenner's material. Tom Segev happened to come to similar conclusions. To the contrary, defensive scholarship that reviews it, say for example, the article by Eshkoli-Wagman (1997, is it?) I added to the bibliography intending to draw on it precisely to balance Brenner's take, mentions him (and Segev) without hysterics. She says his material highlights what is marginal to Zionism. She does not conclude, from that, that he is himself 'fringe'. The facts he cites are not contested. I must have a beer, but will address your two points later.Nishidani (talk) 17:59, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I started reviewing scholarly discussion of Brenner and started making a couple of edits to his page. But then I looked at the article for the book cited, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, and it is very clear that the book is deeply contentious, and considered fringe by several serious authorities, even though some others have taken him seriously. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:03, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

"Upon its initial publication the book received a positive review in The Times, with Edward Mortimer describing it as "crisp and carefully documented" Guess you missed that part, along with "However, Brenner has criticised and condemned the use of his work by neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers." The criticisms are mainly from those you might expect.

From a review by Uri Davis "There is no doubt that through his work Brenner has made an important and lasting contribution to anti-Zionist scholarship and to the elucidation and illumination of important aspects of Zionist history."

So perhaps not as controversial as you would like us to believe? Selfstudier (talk) 11:00, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

• (Drumont). Redlinking Stewart to show he has no wiki bio ergo not notable is fallacious logic. I was quite familiar with David Dean Shulman, but never thought of writing his bio until, on citing him, an admin who should have known better, given their interest in the area, sneered, 'Shulman who?' using a redlink to insinuate that extraordinary scholar was not notable. Shulman was extremely notable but like many such people, didn't appear because no wikipedian thought of writing them up. That Stewart was also a novelist (and apparently a very good one, cf.jstor) is irrelevant. The only thing that counts is whether his bio of Herzl is respected. It is. The Jewish Agency for Israel cites Stewart’s biography of Herzl in its reading guide. Were that source suspect it wouldn’t be there. It’s cited 4 times on our article Theodor Herzl. No one raised their hackles there. It’s frequently cited in the literature on Herzl, indeed our Wistrich cites it several times in his The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph (1989).
• You question the use of Stewart's work, cited to Brenner. There is no critical evidence I am aware of that anyone has noted any pattern in Brenner's work of invention or miscitation of sources. Where I have been able to check, his reports are accurate. You think he is fringe. Then why do scholars like Eshkoli-Wagman refer to him, and reply to his thesis? They don't challenge his facts, they challenge the weight he gives to them as a pattern, overall in his book. Desmond Stewart is reliable: we hav e no grounds for suspecting Brenner misquotes him, ergo
• That he was interviewed by La libre parole would not be unusual, given that Drumont’s rag often cited Nordau’s views with adulation, called him a ‘great Jew‘ while attacking assimilationists. That same year, 1903, Drumont publicly congratulated Nordau (Herf 2013 ch.8) Googling Nordau+libre parole+Drumont+1903 gave me Anna Nordau, Maxa Nordau, Max Nordau: l'homme, le penseur, le sioniste, Editions de la terre retrouvée, 1948 p.250, But unfortunately I cannot access the entire page. In my book all this primary digging is not necessary, because the case for Brenner's unreliability as a scholar is undocumented.Nishidani (talk) 20:56, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

(2)Senator. Actually, he is notable, at least because the Encyclopedia Judaica (2007) vol,18 p.287 considers him so. Again that fallacy of deducing from non-coverage on wiki that one can judge notability. But, on this, I'm quite happy to concede your point. I thought the point interesting, but if you dislike it, no worries.Nishidani (talk) 21:30, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

1920s-30s

Re 3: I think this and this are the relevant diffs. Again, my argument is pretty straightforward. How Zionists responded to Hitler and what the Zionist Klatzin thought about assimilation are simply not due in this particular article. Again, the story is fascinating, and some of this material should be covered in articles on Zionist Federation of Germany or Jakob Klatzkin, but it is about Zionism and irrelevant for understanding anti-Zionism. The Klatzkin quote is via Brenner, but there are additional sources so it is more verifiable than the Brenner quotes discussed above, and/or could have a different citation if restored. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:47, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. --GHcool (talk) 21:55, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

What you wiped out was this:-

Zionism, and it has been argued that in this it bore similarities to fascism, promoted an ideology centered on an integral national character and racial community. For this reason, it rejected on principle any participation in political struggles in Germany, unlike the Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith. According to Lenni Brenner, the Zionist Federation of Germany, rather than oppose the rising tide of Nazism through the 20s down to 1931 spent more time and effort combating anti-Zionist Jewish assimilationists who were actively engaged in defending their rights against this new threat. Jakob Klatzkin, for example, the Zionist editor of the Encyclopedia Judaica, was critical of assimilation and stated that "[i]nstead of establishing societies for defense against the antisemites, who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defense against our friends who desire to defend our rights."

Soon after Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933, Jews, and anti-Zionists among them, were galvanized to organize global protests against the new regime's discrimination against their German confreres. At the same time, pro-Zionist statements underlining the opportunity afforded to Zionist colonization of Palestine by Hitler's anti-Semitic policies quickly emerged. HaJarden, the organ of Revisionist Zionism, opined that "If the segments of our people draw the appropriate conclusions from the Hitlerism, then we will be able to say that something good came out of a bad situation."

The reason given was that 'Your pretexts were that this article is about anti-Zionism not Zionism/This is also irrelevant to this article.'

Assumption. It is your theory that an article on Anti-Zionism mustn't mention Zionism. How this is possible when the whole history of anti-Zionism is that of a critique of Zionism, hasn't been explained. Technically therefore, all of the books and articles of germinal importance in the Timeline of Anti-Zionism, cannot be cited because they mention Zionism in all its varied aspects. All anti-Zionist texts of relevance mention what it is, the ideas, theories, politics, etc., of their Zionist opponents. Your assumption puts anti-Zionism into a vacuum, where Zionism, the object of contention, has disappeared. Your premises asserts that what anti-Zionists say of Zionism is immaterial. In the second half of the article, to the contrary, what Zionists or pro-Zionists assert of Anti-Zionism, whether they be idiots like some confused donkey talking to the press or scholars, must be minutely registered. (1) You queried the original phrasing of

Zionism, and it has been argued that in this it bore similarities to fascism,

Brenner is not reliable? He is, since he is cited by many historians. But he is only stating a cliché in the literature, and why you take exception to him or his point is unintelligible. Everyone who follows the literature knows that:

Contrary to many of the assimilated or integrated Jews of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Romanticism who focused on the cultural aspect of being Jewish, the Zionists-to-be stressed that Jews were not merely members of a cultural or a religious entity, but an integral biological entity, even though they had been dispersed and had no country of their own. In other words, the Zionists adopted the concept of Volk in terms of a nation-race as molded by the notion of Blood and Soil(Blut und Boden)–current in central Europe of the time. Accordingly they demanded the materialization of their nationality rights in a country of their own. Blur und Boden became one of the popular inciting slogans of the Nazi Party. Raphael Falk, Zionism and the Biology of Jews, Springer, 2017 ISBN 978-3-319-57345-8 p.5.

I didn't use Falk, he was a great molecular biologist and his book doesn't deal with anti-Zionism. I used two books written by anti-Zionists writing on Zionism, who are stating something that is not-controversial.Nishidani (talk) 17:19, 5 November 2022 (UTC) You then object that

How Zionists responded to Hitler and what the Zionist Klatzin thought about assimilation are simply not due in this particular article

Again the same assumption. Historically, Hitler's rise to power and the measures he took met a vigorous reaction from the diaspora and Germany's Jews, who were assimilationists, opposed to Zionism, and they quarreled with those Zionists who, though appalled, disagreed with the majority of Jewish opinion, pro-Zionist in Chomsky's sense, anti-Zionist, or neutral. So if in an article on Anti-Zionism in its historical development, one must cover their response to the establishment of Nazism, mentioning that they were often challenged by Zionists is simply a matter of narrative context and accuracy. Take Zionism out, and you are obliged to ignore the details that anti-Zionists of the period took exception to: that within the broad Jewish constituency, some Zionists disagreed. History is not done by quietly passing over details, but by embedding a theme within the broader context. I note that while obliterating these well-grounded sources (that deal with anti-Zionism) you suggest they would be better elsewhere, say, in the Zionism article. But, at the same time, you do not shift the material there . Unless I do it, the details drop dead, fall off Wikipedia, and some will feel comfortable that the full record has been neatly tampered with by erasures. Hard-won knowledge should not be put down an Orwellian memory hole. Those who respect it, if they believe it is noteworthy but inappropriate, should take three seconds to place it where they think it is more pertinent. Not to do so is deleterious to our encyclopedic commitments in its facile rejectionism of solid history. Nishidani (talk) 17:38, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

(3)

'some of this material should be covered in articles on Zionist Federation of Germany

Again, toitally errant. The anti-Zionists, whose history we must write, were assimilationists, who found their views staunchly opposed by Zionists. You are saying that we cannot mention the anti-Zionist assimilationist view point. You erased that, on the pretext, I guess, that if you mention there were large corporate Jewish bodies who pressed for assimilation, then you have to note that they were strongly opposed by Zionists. And since the Zionist record has no place in the article, we must rid it also of anti-Zionist positions that conflicted with Zionism. That is discursive cleansing to keep Zionism invisible even if in doing so one must damage the narrative of anti-Zionism. It's not irrelevancy here. It's POV pushing to keep an image of Zionism spick and span, and free of 'noisy' dissonances, as far as I can see.Nishidani (talk) 17:51, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

It is your theory that an article on Anti-Zionism mustn't mention Zionism. No, that is not my "theory". My argument is that an article on anti-Zionism mustn't veer off topic to give excessive detail about Zionism beyond what is needed to understand anti-Zionism. Zionism doesn't disappear in my edits; it just doesn't overwhelm the article. The "Orwellian memory hole" analogy is hyperbolic: we have articles on Zionism and its various advocates, which are linked to here, and this well-sourced material can go into those. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:48, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Levin/Gold

Re 5 (this diff): A few different issues with this, mostly relating to due weight, but if editors consider it noteworthy it needs re-wording: {{tq|Throughout the 1930s and 40s, members of the American Jewish left and its Intelligentsia were almost all anti-Zionists, the exception being Meyer Levin. [Mike Gold]]'s 1930 novel Jews without Money, which depicts a Zionist entrepeneur's fatal extortion of a poor Jew, can be read as a proletarian critique of both American capitalism and, tacitly in its subplot, of Zionist practices in Palestine.efn|Levin's works were panned. Jews without Money deals with the travails of a Rumanian Jewish painter who seeks to rise out of his difficulties by cultivating the company of a wealthy Brooklyn Zionist leader Baruch Goldfarb, depicted as a bourgeois fraudster who prays on gullible working-class Jews. Goldfarb offers him glowing prospects, a house in "God's country", a Jewish enclave in the suburbs, away from the multiethnic milieu he lives in and who gets him to join his gaudy, politicized lodge where vote-rigging and spying on labour unions is organized. Goldfarb eventually wheedles him out of his money {harv|Balthaser|2020|pp=449–450} First, the footnote doesn't explain our sourcing for Levin being an exception. It might be better to quote Balthazar in the footnote (Criticism of Zionism was common on the Jewish left in the 1930s and 1940s, so common that a historian of Zionist cultural literature could find only one (exception in English means 'only one') left-wing Jewish author, Meyer Levin, who took up pro-Zionist themes (and indeed, his novels were widely panned). Second, "Levin's works were panned" - by whom? We need to say by other Jewish leftists, but it doesn't seem important. Third, it's a lot of detail about Gold. Do we have an RS saying he was a key anti-Zionist of the time? I don't think Balthazar says that. Fourth, we say Gold "can be read as", which is a very original research type of wording. Is this Balthazar's reading? If so, we should say that - but how noteworthy is it? Fifth, the specific references to the novel seem undue. Balthazar says the above scene is Jews without Money’s lone comment on Zionism, so it's not even a major theme of the single novel. How relevant is a fictional character wheedling money out of another fictional character? What do we take away from that? BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:06, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree you and support your rewording. I also agree that this is so tangential that it doesn't really need to be in the article. --GHcool (talk) 21:57, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

You shouldn't agree to anything before you have heard the arguments out. Nishidani (talk) 15:27, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

• Reply (2) Bob, you write re the article's text reading:('members of the American Jewish left and its Intelligentsia were almost all anti-Zionists,) the exception being Meyer Levin, that

First, the footnote doesn't explain our sourcing for Levin being an exception.

Didn't you even trouble yourself to read the source?

Criticism of Zionism was common on the Jewish left in the 1930s and 1940s, so common that a historian of Zionist cultural literature could find only one left-wing Jewish author, Meyer Levin, who took up pro-Zionist themes (and indeed, his novels were widely panned)Balthaser p.450

It is evident from the footnote that the source is Balthaser. Really, this is piddling barrel-scrapping, causing me at least to waste time answering an objection that never should have been raised.Nishidani (talk) 14:31, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

• I paraphrase Balthaser to the effect Levin's works wqere panned. You ask, 'by whom?' You're asking that the source, Balthaser, be more specific, and therefore, that the editor using Balthaser, Nishi-san, do more work than his cited RS. provides. That is vexatious querying, Neither I nor any other editor is obliged to engage in primary research beyond what sources state. If you have a personal curiosity, you just have to look up the source Balthaser cites for his conclusion, in footnote 4 p.467 namely, Andrew Furman's, Israel through the Jewish-American Imagination: A Survey of Jewish-American Literature on Israel, 1928–1995, State University of New York Press, 1997), 21–38.Nishidani (talk) 14:45, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
• panned. You claim that,'We need to say by other Jewish leftists, but it doesn't seem important'. Importance has nothing to do with it. We don't 'need' to say anything more than what the source states. That the critics may have been 'other Jewish leftists' (oh really? Was the whole of the American literary establishment caught up by the octopus tentacles of some (leftist) Jewish conspiracy? Really. Most articles I read for this work fail to say or add often what I happen to know. That doesn't mean I whinge. The rules are,'stick to what the sources state, whatever one's private knowledge may be,'otherwise one falls into the WR:OR trap.Nishidani (talk) 14:51, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
• Third, it's a lot of detail about Gold. The detail is in a footnote. Footnotes do that, they provide the background minutiae for what is excluded in the article. Aboved you complain that I haven't provided more details about Levin , here you complain I provided details about Gold's novel. Gold's novel has an anti-Zionist subplot (main text). Footnote clarifies this by the resume given in Balthaser, without which the reader of this article would be left clueless. Your WP:Undue gambit doesn't work.Nishidani (talk) 14:59, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
• Fourth, we say Gold "can be read as", which is a very original research type of wording. Is this Balthazar's reading?

So No. It is not original research. If you dislike the phrasing, one just changes 'can be' to 'has been'. The fact that Balthaser is one critic who has read it in this way means that the book can be read that way. 'Can' is utterly innocuous paraphrase which also indicates that it is possible to interpret the work that way, avoiding the suggestion that this is the only way to read the book. Jeezus!Nishidani (talk) 15:04, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

• Fifth- the above scene is Jews without Money’s lone comment on Zionism, so it's not even a major theme of the single novel. How relevant is a fictional character wheedling money out of another fictional character.

You have taken that out of context. Balthaser's overall theme is When Anti-Zionism Was Jewish, and the overture showcases Gold's novel to introduce the theme he then embroiders on. Yes, he states that it is a 'lone comment on Zionism' but continues for three full paragraphs, one line alone of which reads:-

'From a contemporary perspective, what is most remarkable about Gold’s anti-Zionist subplot is not only the prominence of who said it but Gold’s assumption that it did not need explanation.'

I've been terse in reducing almost two pages of commentary in the source on a novel whose elliptic anti-Zionist plotting is regarded by Balthaser as paradigmatic, and a significant point of entry into American Jewish anti-Zionism. Bref'. The five points are pointless niggling, without substance, and the only useful suggestion is to change 'can be' to 'has been'.Nishidani (talk) 15:15, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Relevant article

This article also has plenty of references to other sources that could be tracked down and cited. Zero^talk 04:48, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 13 February 2023

Perhaps you can mention the [League of British Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_British_Jews) under the early Jewish anti-zionism section? Thanks in advance. Jurteggenn (talk) 10:50, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Lightoil (talk) 05:45, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

'Anti-Zionism'

So-called 'anti-Zionism' is antisemitism by definition. Zionism is not what antisemites want it to be, but how Jews define it. And Nabeelzy can screech all he likes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.11.235.197 (talk) 15:24, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

This is a tautologous argument. Only those Jews who equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism accept that it is automatically antisemitic. Those Jews, like me, who do not equate the two clearly do not accept this argument. By restricting your use of the term "Jews" to include only those who agree with you, and to exclude the rest of us, you are creating a false syllogism. And this assumption that all Jews must think the same way and exclusion of anti-Zionist Jews is itself, in my view, antisemitic. RolandR (talk) 16:02, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Jewish anti-Zionism

Jewish anti-Zionism redirects here but has substantial text after the #REDIRECT directive. Please can an editor familiar with the subject un-redirect, merge, delete or otherwise deal with the content? Thanks, Certes (talk) 11:18, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

DONE. Y --GHcool (talk) 17:12, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

@GHcool I don't think it makes sense to redirect "Jewish anti-Zionism" to a Haredi subsection, given that there are many non-Haredi forms of anti-Zionism, particularly socialist and Reform. There's a sentence in the opening paragraph that says "...though many small groups, and bodies like the American Council for Judaism, conserved an earlier Reform tradition of rejection of Zionism", however, most of the listed organizations were secular-socialist in orientation rather than Reform. Maybe that sentence can be tweaked to include non-Reform Jewish anti-Zionism. I don't see any mention of Sephardi and Mizrahi anti-Zionism either, the notable examples would be Israeli leftists like the Black Panthers including left academics like Ella Shohat and Smadar Lavie; Jewish Communists in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, etc,; and Salonikan socialists like Avraam Benaroya. The subsection on Haredi Zionism doesn't mention Haredi Sephardi anti-Zionism. I'm actually not sure why there isn't a separate article dedicated to Jewish anti-Zionism. I think there would be enough content for it. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 03:53, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Historically, anti-Zionism was eminently a Jewish matter for 5 decades. All of the theoretical and religious and political objections that recur in post 1948 but esp.post-1967 times draw on this background. To create a separate article would be somewhat reduplicative, or end up just highlighting the scores of Jewish and Israeli scholars who have continued to critique Zionism in the last half century. The only substantial difference is that anti-Semitism is now the default response because it has become a far more general discourse than the earlier infra-Jewish debate. I hope to continue working on this after the repeated hacking and chopping suffered by my attempts to address the first 5 decades. It's pointless working up one's notes to see them chucked down a memory hole. Nishidani (talk) 18:01, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I amended the redirect to point to the page rather than a subsection. There was a separate article, that's why there is a redirect, maybe see what is missing (check the redirect history) and find a way to include it here. Selfstudier (talk) 09:18, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I've restored the article, which was BLAR'ed by an editor who didn't (and still doesn't) meet ECP requirements to edit topics related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The subject easily meets GNG, with so much coverage on Google Scholar that you could probably even justify creating articles like Jewish anti-Zionism in the United States, Jewish anti-Zionism in Israel, Jewish anti-Zionism in Galicia etc., (although that would be premature at this time). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:53, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Noting that there was a past discussion a few months ago that had a consensus for the merge (with myself chiming in with a neutral comment), but I think given the current structure of Anti-Zionism, which documents Jewish participation throughout but does not have a discrete section for it, I think that a split is justified. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:13, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Put brutally, and I know you would find it as repellent as I do, the risk is to have two articles, goy anti-Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionism. Nishidani (talk) 20:02, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm not worried about that because that's not how peer-reviewed RS discuss the topic. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:12, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

A split will do exactly that, break up the concept along ethnic lines, something not characteristic of RS generally, as far as my reading goes. The persistent disruption of this article began when I began to add the missing or underplayed (with respect to RS) Jewih background of the topic. The objecting editors favour the identity of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, as diffused among non-Jews. Nishidani (talk) 22:21, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I think the crucial aspects still can be summarized in this article and the more detailed material in the spin off. The AZ AS identity is a relatively recent phenomenon and easily demonstrated for what it is. Selfstudier (talk) 22:54, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

The anti-Zionism qua anti-Semitism meme was a hare started back in the late 1940s, as something Zionists had to hammer home to Gentiles. It really gained momentum after 1967, sped up from 1973 onwards. Its premise was opposition to Zionism was to be spun as a gentile recycling of traditional Judeophobia and the subsequent literature, esp. the industrial output since the Al-Aqsa Intifada of books, even by academics of standing, that adopt this assumption (Jews can't criticize Israel, so any criticism must be goyish and ergo tinged with anti-Semitism) is somewhat overwhelming. That's my own impression, of course, and why I think a split would canonize a political and polemical distinction that ain't there.Nishidani (talk) 13:17, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

You'd maybe have a point if the proposal was to excise Jewish content from Anti-Zionism in order to create another article, but my position right now is to not change Anti-Zionism and simply create a companion article documenting the sub-phenomenon of anti-Zionism by Jews. This is purely in response to available high-quality RS documenting and providing a level of detail not appropriate for a more general article, and no more licenses the creation of Goyische anti-Zionism than the existence of Christian Zionism requires the creation of an article for Christian anti-Zionism (currently a redirect to Anti-Zionism). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:46, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Correct me if I err but half of Jewish anti-Zionism is lifted from this article, even in the formats. Nishidani (talk) 21:31, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that was a recent edit by me following the restoration of the article, as the coverage of early Jewish anti-Zionism here was superior to what had been drafted prior. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:42, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, nothing we write is copyrighted, but I dislike the principle. With over 90,000 edits and about 1000 articles to my discredit, I challenge anyone to find me ever copy and pasting material from one article to another (unless in two cases it was my own work). I observe this principle because I don't trust any page's documentation unless I check it to verify the source is properly reported. The amount of source falsification is notable. And this should apply to my own edits also. (2) 'Poaching' leads to reduplication which, if the sister article gains ground, eventually leads to requests to elide the parallel content, ergo, pressure to gut the article which provided the original details to the advantage of the spawned clone. That is essentially what I am alluding to as the risk here, given the heavy editor investment in making anti-Zionism a showcase for antisemitism (i.e. hostility to Jews). (3) Unless that skimpy article can get up to snuff and stand on its own two feet by independent source investigation and composition, it remains in a parasitical relation to the article it lifts its material from. And that makes it pointless. Someone like myself does the hard yakka of writing here, only to find that the results are copied and pasted elsewhere. What takes days, weeks, moneths (John Donne) to achieve here, becomes a 1 minute edit for another editor shifting it elsewhere, unaware of the consequences for this article down the line if moves are made to use the reduplication to eviscerate this source article in favour of the plagiarized article. Anyone can write this stuff - all it requires is a readiness to roll up one's mental sleeves and dedicate some weeks to research and paraphrase. Nishidani (talk) 23:03, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

For completeness, we also have Religious anti-Zionism#Within Judaism (brief), Haredim and Zionism (subtopic), and many specific articles in Category:Jewish anti-Zionism. Certes (talk) 19:04, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

ROFL. No such thing as 'Jewish anti-Zionism', since by definition Zionism is the liberation movement of the Jews (regardless of how antisemites want to define it). Sure, there are anti-Zionist as-a-Jew idiots, but their anti-Zionism is no more 'Jewish' than Iran's antisemitism is 'Jewish'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.11.235.197 (talk) 15:27, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Oy, Ir Narishe Tsionistn RolandR (talk) 16:27, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 24 April 2023

There is a typo in one of the sources: The source is titled "Millennialism in Contemporary Israeli Politics" but the source, here in Wikipedia, is spelled with "Contempiorary" instead. Sorindc (talk) 17:13, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Y Fixed. SkyWarrior 17:17, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Citations and clarifications needed

Citations and corrections needed for for both sentences here: "Until World War II, anti-Zionism was widespread among Jews for varying reasons. Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism on religious grounds, as preempting the Messiah,[b] while secular Jews felt uncomfortable with the idea that Jewish peoplehood was a national or ethnic identity."

The claim regarding secular Jews is refuted in the article. It would need a qualifier and citation, e.g. "while a minority of secular Jews".

The claim that it was widespread is not supported. 2600:8802:1905:D200:9802:C09:41CA:9E68 (talk) 18:18, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Problem with Citation 30

Citation 30 does not support the statement it is attached to.

It also spreads false potentially politically inflamatory narratives. The rights of Christians and Jews were both moderated through the Pact of Umar-- Jews were not denied the rights afforded to Christians.

Source: Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth Century Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2011),Solun12 (talk) 05:17, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand your objection. The text is about the Balfour Declaration, not about the Pact of Umar. It is reasonably well supported by the given source. Zero^talk 05:57, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 16 October 2023

The link to the article on Jewish Communists in the Early Jewish anti-Zionism section in the last paragraph sends you to an article about Jewish Bolshevism, an anti-semitic conspiracy theory. Change Jewish Communism to Jewish left. Ballincat43 (talk) 13:27, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for drawing attention to this. I have removed the inappropriate link, but have not added a link to Jewish left, as you suggested, because this also includes sections on left Zionists. RolandR (talk) 20:29, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Section is not encyclopedic

Subsection "Equating and correlating anti-Zionism with antisemitism" of the section "Anti-Zionism and antisemitism" is written like a series of testimonials, not an encyclopedic synthesis of information. Many of these are also restating the same claims. ElasticSnake (talk) 05:41, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Opinion (not fact) under “Islamism”

This sentence seems to be an opinion, not fact:

“The anti-Zionism of Hamas is indistinguishable from the group's antipathy for Judaism.”

According to whom is it “indistinguishable”? Seems a clear statement of opinion, far from an undisputed fact.

additionally, the citation links to an article from 2005. Hamas has since (2017) updated the language in its charter to officially state it does NOT oppose Judaism (Hamas Charter). So this sentence is not up to date.

I can’t edit this article but hopefully someone care remove or elaborate on this sentence. 23.93.184.149 (talk) 07:41, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

The article is missing reference to contemporary notable Jewish anti-Zionist individuals & organisations like Jewish Voice for Peace

The only contemporary notable Jewish anti-Zionist that's mentioned is Noam Chomsky.

I think the article should also mention:

Gabor Mate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph9XF39yjgU

Norman Finkelstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF3EE3g8COI

Ilan Pappé: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqFo8BBaC9c

And Jewish Voice for Peace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I7W99OVcjo&t=45s MathewMunro (talk) 02:05, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

can we flag this for potential bias?

the whole second paragraph is opinion or without citations. Frankly, it should be deleted, along with other statements. However, for now, can we at least flag this article for it's questionable content? 2600:8807:6807:BD00:1857:3917:DB25:43A3 (talk) 13:11, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Not done. The citations needed tags were only added recently. Allow some time for these to be dealt with. Selfstudier (talk) 13:39, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@Nishidani: Most of the para being complained of here was written by a blocked sock. Would you cast an eye over it and see if anything leaps out? I cannot easily tell from just looking if what is written is supported by citations in the body or whether it is an accurate summary. Selfstudier (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I cannot see anything that would require the requested citations, esp. since the tagger apparently has not read the article and its sources. Nishidani (talk) 20:21, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Selfstudier (talk) 22:57, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 6 February 2024

The page states: "In December 2023, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution equating antisemitism with anti-Zionism." This is misleading at best as the source does not say this. The closest the resolution comes is: “Whereas Jewish students have been targeted for disparate treatment in classes, and derision and exclusion on college campuses and in official student organizations, not only because they are Jewish but often because of their real or perceived views about or connection to, or support for, the State of Israel.” This is much more ambiguous than what is currently in the wikipedia article and should be changed. 2.96.195.197 (talk) 09:56, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done . Removed the sentence. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 04:30, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@BanyanClimber: You have reverted this edit with the edit summary "this is exactly what source says." Which part of the source supports this? Anti-Zionism is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the article ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 17:29, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

You were right. I thought Jpost reported the resolution on anti-Zionism since it was big news at the time, but it's not explicitly stated what the resolution says for some reason. I've changed it for the New York Times which is clearer. –Daveout(talk) 00:32, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Works for me, thanks. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 01:36, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

H.Res. 894, passed December 5, 2023, includes the language "Resolved, That the House of Representatives—...(4)clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism". The sentence was accurate and should not have been removed. Source ElasticSnake (talk) 01:37, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

@ElasticSnake: Please review the discussion above and the article. It was only temporarily removed, and later restored with a proper source. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 03:09, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

MondoWeiss

Per WP:RSP on MondoWeiss: Mondoweiss is a news website operated by the Center for Economic Research and Social Change (CERSC), an advocacy organization. There is no consensus on the reliability of Mondoweiss. Editors consider the site biased or opinionated, and its statements should be attributed. It should either not be used at all — or used with great caution — for biographies of living people. We need to attribute in text when we use it. Removing attribution goes against the community consensus. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:14, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Not "when we use it", more precisely when it is the source eg if an expert published in MW, the source would be the expert not MW, right? Selfstudier (talk) 14:01, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Btw, that last part about blps looks like it will be amended Selfstudier (talk) 14:03, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

See also my talk page. If any clarification on the wording of the "should be attributed" is needed, it would be better to leave this until after the BLP review is done, to avoid confusing everyone. Zero^talk 14:16, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Criticism of Israel as Antizionism

This page states, "Anti-Zionism includes, for example, criticism of the current policies of the state of Israel as well as moral, ethical, or religious criticism of the idea of a Jewish nation-state, in contrast to a secular state." I understand why this is included, but criticism of the policies of the state of Israel is not inherently antizionist and therefore does not belong in this article. These are criticisms often made by antizionist individuals, but they are not inherently antizionist in nature unless they are objecting to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. There are zionists who make criticisms of the current policies of Israel. Therefore, I wouldn't consider merely criticizing their policies as inherently antizionist, even though that is something antizionists do regularly. Tul10616 (talk) 06:43, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree, that sentence doesn't seem consistent with how the term is generally used. To be fair, the claim is backed up by the JVP citation, which uses similar language. This should probably be taken with a grain of salt since JVP is explicitly anti-Zionist. The ADL (which admittedly isn't neutral either) states essentially the opposite: "Anti-Zionism is distinct from criticism of the policies or actions of the government of Israel."

I think it's clear that the sentence is at least lacking appropriate qualification. Certain specific policy critiques (relating to the Law of Return, for example) might fall under anti-Zionism, but not most. Clearly a Zionist who criticizes tax or zoning policies isn't anti-Zionist, for example.

We could try to come up with carefully qualified version of the statement, but I think the preceding language seems sufficient already, at least for an introduction. I'll remove it. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 09:18, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Neither of these are suitable sources to define a concept; they're both advocacy. Zanahary (talk) 03:11, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I have never encountered a person who believed that criticising the policies of a given government of Israel constitutes anti-Zionism, so it's not clear to me why this Wikipedia article entertains the hypothetical.

Anti-Zionism in real terms simply means denying the right of the Jewish people to a state, uniquely among all the peoples on this planet. KronosAlight (talk) 08:02, 17 July 2024 (UTC)