Talk:1834 looting of Safed

Page name

I would lie to point out that the "Safed Plunder" is an event name in Jewish literature, not a description like 1834 pogrom or 1834 riot/massacre. Changing its name or including another 1838 event as part of it is incorrect.Greyshark09 (talk) 17:19, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Sources

Biosketch asked me to elaborate on the sources I think are problematic in this article. I haven't looked at the rest of the article, but the sources in the "History" section are all either invalid or dubious. I might add that they do not support the article text either.

About the best and most comprehensive source in this section is Kinglake, and the book is a travelogue from 1864! The next cite is to eretzyisroel.org, an obviously partisan blog citing a discredited source, Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial. The source after that is The goodly heritage, published by the Youth Dept of the Zionist Organization, 1958. The source after that is a rehash of Kinglake. Then comes Joan Peters again. Finally, there's a 1960 book of unknown provenance, and then a book in Hebrew, again of totally unknown provenance (which is used to source some of the more exceptional claims). So there isn't a single decent source in this entire section. Gatoclass (talk) 13:46, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Right, I asked you to elaborate here because generally a comment on the Discussion page should accompany a flag. As for the sources, at first glance at least one of them does appear problematic. A blog should never be linked to as a historical reference, in my opinion. I'll look at the rest a little later.—Biosketch (talk) 17:48, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I would agree on Joan Peters - not WP:RS. regarding the rest of them don't see a problem on the first glance, but i would take a deeper look later.Greyshark09 (talk) 19:11, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Request for full quotes

I have checked the sources cited. Besides being of dubious reliability, I cannot find information supporting key claims in our article. The parts bolded below are not supported by the sources I could see. Could someone provide full quotes please?

They had been incited by a local Muslim clergyman and self-proclaimed Islamic "prophet" called Muhammad Damoor, who "foresaw" the massacre which he instigated. From his "prophecies":

"the true Believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews, and despoil them of their gold, and their silver, and their jewels."

The pogrom went on for 33 days. It caused the Jewish community to dwindle; many Jews were beaten to death or severely wounded. Accounts tell of blinding men, torturing men and women. Alexander Kinglake described the events as a massacre, and Abraham Yaari and others refer to incidents of mass-rape of Jews in Safed, Galilee.

It is not clear how many died, but historians assert the number is high, likely over 500.

Thanks. Tiamut^talk 18:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Just a question. Are you actually trying to make these articles citations better or are you attempting to deny that the Arabs carried out genocides upon the indigenous pre-Zionist Jewish population? Just a question. talk —Preceding undated comment added 18:21, 15 February 2012 (UTC).

I'm totally unfamiliar with this event and am hoping to be better educated about it. I'd like to see better sources but cannot find any. So I am asking for someone to reproduce the passages relevant to the material included in our article. Hopefully, it will contain footnotes citing other works. I'm also aware that sometimes some editors include information in articles that is not actually in th spurces cited. Given that I'v not heard about this event outside of this page, I'd like to make sure that's not the case here. Can you provide the information I have asked for? Tiamut^talk 18:27, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I learned about this event in university. I'll look for more sources but this isn't my exact area of expertise for my bachelors in History. I learned about it in contrast to the Palestinian claim that "Jews and Muslims lived peacefully before Zionism." I think the general problem with these articles is that the Pro-Palestine side wants to delete anything that disproves that the Old Yishuv experienced massacres and the Pro-Israel side wants to delete anything about Plan Dalet. I'll look for sources but I think a authority on this time period and subject should be found. DionysosElysees (talk) 18:35, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[[User_talk:Tiamut|talk] 18:35, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Tiamut's concerns over sources are justified. Something like this should be based on the research of modern historians, but at the moment it is a mixture of old second-hand accounts, primary sources uncritically presented, and in some places no clear source at all. Fortunately I found a good scholarly source: Tudor Parfitt, The Jews in Palestine 1800-1882, has about 6 pages on it. Some of it contradicts what is here, such as the claim of 500 deaths. Parfitt also says that the sources disagree on who the perpetrators were. I'll be doing some rewriting based on this source in the near future. Zero^talk 00:56, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Kinglake's second hand account

All of the sources in this article appear to lead back to Kinglake's 1844 book Eothen. The chapter on this subject is very colourful, and Kinglake is very clear (1) that he did not witness any of these events, and (2) that the people who told him the story wanted him to influence the consul in Damascus.

Does anyone else agree that the tone of this article is totally incorrect in light of this? Or can someone provide sources which lead back to any meaningfully stronger evidence? Oncenawhile (talk) 23:53, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Numbers

The article includes the sentence "It is not clear how many died, but historians assert the number is high, likely over 500". Can anyone verify the source? i cannot see the number 500 in the google snippet. Oncenawhile (talk) 00:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I asked for verification of this and several other things as well above. None has yet been forthcoming. Tiamut^talk 19:17, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Rivlin and Isseroff

Other than Kinglake, this article (and the rest of the internet) have one other underlying source for this event, which at this stage do not qualify as RS. That is, an article written in 1934 by a Zionist journalist named Eliezer Rivlin (born 1889 [1]), and translated recently by the late blogger Ami Isseroff. The article is interesting but the translation cannot be RS without the original, and the original would need to clear a high bar given the context in which it was written. Can any Hebrew speakers find the original? Oncenawhile (talk) 00:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Eothen, what it actually contains

This book of Kinglake is a marginal source, but since we are probably going to keep it we should cite it accurately. Far from describing the affair as a massacre (as our text explicitly states, Kinglake wrote only of theft. There isn't a single death mentioned in his book. There isn't a single rape either, in fact he says that the worst thing that happened ("the most odious of all outrages") was that women were searched for valuables. Zero^talk 19:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

From what I could see of his work online, that was what I had determined as well, but I thought he might have written about deaths elsewhere in the text, which is why I asked for quotes above. Thanks for double checking that. Tiamut^talk 19:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Multiple editions are at archive.org. I checked the two editions cited here. (I also reverted myself as it wasn't 24 hours yet, I'm away from home and can't keep track of the time.) Zero^talk 19:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I've restored your edit (this is when 1RR is just plain stupid - i.e. when there is factually incorrect information in an article and you can't fix it because you already fixed something else in the lt 24 hours). Tiamut^talk 19:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I've asked several Hebrew and Arabic speakers to look for sources in their respective languages. Hopefully unquestionable sources can finally be put into this article so that this horrible massacre of the indigenous people of the Southern Levant can be put into all the Israeli and Palestinian articles that reference this time period.

^talk 3:13, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

About the argument on the sources

Maybe Kinglake's source is one of few sources in english, but if you look at the hebrew article, you'll find there some more sources, which you cannot ignore. I talk about Moshe Raisher's book, Shaarey Yerushalaim (Jerusalem Gates), 1867. (There is a site which contains the full 1875's edition of the book, published in Lemberg, Galicia) - http://www.hebrewbooks.org/35736

also, Yisroel ben Shmuel of Shklov's book, Pe'at ha-Shulchan, published in 1836, testfies about the events.

And the last - Menachem Mendel of Kamenitz, Hotel owner which lived in Safed in the date of the events wrote a book named Korot Ha-Eytim, published in Vilnus, 1839, which also testifies about the events. The text of the book exists as a part of Ben-Yehuda Project - http://benyehuda.org/boym_m/korot_haitim.html

It's not a big deal to search for english sources, cause you barely find some. You need to find a way to investigate sources in more languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.181.11.54 (talk) 16:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that some of these are primary sources that we can't just make our own conclusions from. The book of Parfitt I started to use (and will finish when I get home from my present travels) quotes from these and draws conclusions; that's what we need. Zero^talk 21:59, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

unreliable sources

These sources are unacceptable:

• Bat Ye'or (controversial activist)
• "Sir Moses Montefiore symposium" (no author, no title, quote contradicts better sources in three different ways, who needs it?)
• http://www.israel-palestina.info -- Even if the original source is reliable, which can be argued, this web page is not reliable and we cannot trust its translations

Zero^talk 22:10, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

So Bat Ye'or is a "controversial activist", and let me guess, Ilan Pappé is "eminently reliable", am I right? Pilusi3 (talk) 00:05, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Someone cited Ilan Pappe? Can you point out where? Zero^talk 03:58, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Al over Wikipedia.In any case you have some problem with the source you should use advice of uninvolded editors on WP:RSN.She is well known historian but we can attribute the source to comply with WP:NPOV policy--Shrike (talk) 09:08, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

You won't find any place where I cited Pappe, and I'm not embarrassed to have high standards. Bat Ye'or is not a historian, she's a "journalist and political commentator" like her article says. Her credentials in Palestinian history are zero. Zero^talk 10:32, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I didn't said that you cited Pappe I only said that he is widely cited all over Wikipedia.Like I said I think she is WP:RS but she should be attributed like Pappe and Khalidi in other articles.--Shrike (talk) 11:03, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

We do not need to attribute Ye'or here. The article does rely on her own material, but rather on a quote she reproduces. Chesdovi (talk) 22:09, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

We have to trust this activist to translate and objectively present the quote, which in fact we cannot do. Her style is always to selectively present material in a biased fashion according to her anti-Muslim agenda. Zero^talk 10:55, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Ye'or's translation seems in sink with other accounts I have found in Hebrew. If anyone can provide me for the souce of Farhi's account, (unable to view note 120), or the name of his biography, it would be helpful. Chesdovi (talk) 15:05, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Page title

No sources I could find in English call it the "Great plunder". In Hebrew, it looks like only מנחם מנדיל מקמניץ refers to it as that. No English source calls it "Safed plunder", but some call it "pogrom". I see no reason how the word "great" can be kept. Thoughts? Chesdovi (talk) 20:20, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Actually this event seems to have no common English name at all. Zero^talk 23:30, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Mainly "pogrom" in WP:RS, some "pillage." (Probably can't cite WP:Consistency consideration of 1660 destruction of Safed etc.) In ictu oculi (talk) 04:41, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Don't like "great" and prefer "progrom" and "pillage" over "plunder."--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 02:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't like "great" either, and I don't think "pogrom" is appropriate. Zero^talk 03:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

We could call it "1834 Safed massacre", but that would mitigate the calamity, in which more people were seriously and horribly maimed for life, mentally and physically, in addition to the pillage of prized possessions and violation of girls and boys by crazed predators. "Pogrom" does seem to encapsulate the whole unfortunate month-long event more accurately. Chesdovi (talk) 13:22, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

If the most of the sources use word pogrom then we should use it too.--Shrike (talk) 13:53, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Noting GS's cmt above, I would like his input here. Meanwhile I shall move it to "1834 Safed pogrom," as Zero did not explain why it's not appropriate. Chesdovi (talk) 17:49, 29 February 2012 (UTC)