Talk:Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by reviewer, closed by Narutolovehinata5 (talk) 14:43, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that the genetic origin of modern Jews is considered important within Zionism, as it seeks to provide a historical basis for the belief that descendants of biblical Jews have "returned"? Source: McGonigle, Ian V. (2021). Genomic Citizenship: The Molecularization of Identity in the Contemporary Middle East. MIT Press (originally a Harvard PhD Thesis, published March 2018). p. 36 (c.f. p.54 of PhD). ISBN 978-0-262-36669-4. Retrieved 2023-07-08. The stakes in the debate over Jewish origins are high, however, since the founding narrative of the Israeli state is based on exilic 'return.' If European Jews have descended from converts, the Zionist project falls prey to the pejorative categorization as 'settler colonialism' pursued under false assumptions, playing into the hands of Israel's critics and fueling the indignation of the displaced and stateless Palestinian people. The politics of 'Jewish genetics' is consequently fierce. But irrespective of philosophical questions of the indexical power or validity of genetic tests for Jewishness, and indeed the historical basis of a Jewish population 'returning' to the Levant, the Realpolitik of Jewishness as a measurable biological category could also impinge on access to basic rights and citizenship within Israel.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Gracie Graves and the Kids from Room 402

Created by Onceinawhile (talk). Self-nominated at 07:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Zionism, race and genetics; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• Article is new enough and long enough. However, it's the subject of a POV flag and there's ongoing debate on the talk page about the article's WP:NPOV. Indeed, the article's (lengthy) lede section largely pulls from 2 journal articles that seem to not represent scholarly consensus to frame the discussion. Hook is interested, but the cited source seems to be one scholar's opinion, rather than a fact. Would suggest waiting to have more editors, especially with more specialized subject matter expertise than I, weigh in on the matter at hand in the article. Longhornsg (talk) 08:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi Longhornsg thanks for your comment. Since you have an interest in the subject of Jewish History (WikiProject), please could you comment on the article talk page and help develop the article there? Your comments above seem intended to cast doubt (“seem to not… seem to be”), which is helpful if you are willing to provide the evidence underpinning your uncertainty. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:43, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Article is a transparent attempt to portray studies on Jewish Genetics as "Zionist" and thereby ideological/untrustworthy, without any source actually describing the studes as such. The article itself is full of Synth and assertions that are not actually in the sources. The article should be deleted, and certainly not featured on a "Did you know". Drsmoo (talk) 13:54, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Note: the above editor has been adding various tags to the article. When challenged to explain the above claims he wrote: Allegations of bias and synth in a wikipedia article are not substantiated by scholarly reliable sources, they are an individual judgement. The observation that an article combines disparate ideas to push an original viewpoint is not something that would be sourced.[1] Onceinawhile (talk) 16:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

After the allegations of bias were substantiated, the above editor and a supporting editor asked me to provide "sources" to prove that the article was biased/Synth. As if it has been subject to a scholarly peer review and JSTOR had articles about this wiki page. Drsmoo (talk) 16:22, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I archived reference to this nomination on the article's (very crowded) talk page as I assumed the conversation was over but that was reverted as it has not been closed. I oppose the nomination for the moment. The article is very unstable and has been under heavy dispute. Although the contention is starting to quieten, the article is nowhere near consensus-approved enough to feature. There has been a conversation for nearly two months over whether it needs to be renamed, for example. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:51, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

• The article's neutrality has been in dispute for over a month at this point, and the prior reviewer's assessment still seems largely correct. It reads like an essay on a particular aspect of race science, and issues are still being identified (for example, an editor just today was removing close paraphrasing from sources). The talk page still has active disputes regarding the content and presentation of perspectives. All together, I doubt that this article is "reasonably complete and not some sort of work in progress". Not presentable and given the time spent already, I find it unlikely that it will become presentable in a reasonable time frame for DYK. — Wug·a·po·des 21:51, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Recap

• To recap. This article began as a stub, and was immediately subject to 2 deletion proposals.
• The name was, it was argued, a compound of three terms. No literature covered those three terms together, ergo it was a classic example of WP:Synth.
• Three term titles do exist, i.e. Race and ethnicity in the United States, where the locative ‘in the United States’ has the same function as ‘Zionism’ (the ideological area) in our title. In any case, this argument was demolished: an ample literature exists discussing those three terms conjointly. There was no WP:Synth. Or if any examples could be pointed out, they would be eliminated.
• I stepped in, asked for three weeks to redraft the article. Some 90 sources of excellent quality were read, and harvested rigorously to respect the terms of the title. I.e. they dealt with various aspects of the nexus between the concept of race, and genetics in the history of Zionism. Despite the radical revision, the use of not 15 but 90 sources, and the expansion of text by 100,000kbs, discontent expressing the same original diffidence about the stub has persisted, as if nothing had changed.
• The article thus is written strictly to reflect the title we have. A large amount of matter extraneous to these entwined thematics was ignored for that reason.
• From the beginning of redrafting to the present only two aspects of the article were challenged: (a) the title (b) the lead.
• It is objected that (a) ‘Zionism, race and genetics’ gives the misleading impression that race and genetics are interchangeable, notwithstanding the fact that one is a subjective notion in relative desuetude, the result of a pseudoscience, the other predicated on the ideals of a pure science detached from the ideological biases of the earlier idiom of race. This is to (i) misconstrue the title, and (ii) ignore the witness of contemporary scholarship.
• (ib)If one were to write an article:’Democracy, equality and liberty,’ (this has been a fundamental question of political science at least since the 1950s), no one would infer that such a formulation cross-contaminates equality and liberty, which are distinct values, though conceptually connected. Indeed they exist in dramatic and dynamic tension in all discussions of democracy. Likewise, the juxtaposition of race and genetics in no way presupposes the two terms are either interchangeable, or being confused, with one undermining the scientific cogency of the other.

• (iib)Despite repeated denials on the talk page, the literature on race and genetics unequivocally underlines currents of conceptual continuity between the old language of race, and the newer idiom or methods of genetics. I cited Gilman and Duster. Here are two further examples. The first is just published, a joint work sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and written by experts for Nasem

• ’The misconception that human beings can be naturally divided into biologically distinguishable races has been extremely resilient and has become embedded in scientific research, medical practice and technologies, and formal education. Many elements of racial thinking, including essentialism and biological determinism, have influenced modern thinking around human genetics, to the marginalization of some peoples and the benefit of others . . racist concepts of race that are deeply embedded in science and U.S. society more broadly continue to affect scientific thinking and research, Scientists must critically examine the underlying assumptions about race—and human commonalityand difference—that shape their research studies..’‘Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research: A New Framework for an Evolving Field,’ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine/. National Academies Press 2023 pp.1,32.

• Most human geneticists are aware of the problems of imprecise or misused language, but face the difficulty that such language is embedded in many of the methods, tools and data we use. Clinical and anthropological datasets, which can be of enormous utility, often use outdated and scientifically incoherent labels to describe the individuals whose data they include . . the social categories and other groupings that individuals belong to are inescapable components of genetics research. However, within the human genetics community, some aspects of the academic language used to describe groups and subsets of people may foster erroneous beliefs beyond academia about human biology and the nature of these categories. Such descriptions frequently invoke concepts of ancestry and population structure, for reasons we will discuss below. But ancestry itself is often a poorly understood concept, and its relationship to genetic data is not straightforward. There are many implicit assumptions involved in inferring ancestry and population structure, and a similar number of pitfalls when interpreting the output of population genetic clustering analyses and algorithms. For example, the structures found in principal components analysis (PCA) of genetic variation depend strongly on the distribution of genetic ancestry included in the dataset, and is necessarily a sample-specific representation of genetic relationships. Similarly,the clusters identified by widely used methods such as STRUCTURE are often assigned ‘ancestry’ labels based on the present-day populations within the analysis in which cluster membership happens to be maximised, rather than any explicit inference of ancestral demography. The collection and sampling of genetic data - which often follows existing cultural, anthropological, geographical or political categories - also has a substantial impact, to the extent that some aspects of the clustering reflect sampling strategies rather thanany inherent genetic structure.’ ,Ewan Birney, Michael Inouye, Jennifer Raff, Adam Rutherford Aylwyn Scally,’ ‘The language of race, ethnicity, and ancestry in human genetic research,’ Biology June 2021.

• The impasse here is that half of the editors on the talk page dislike the title, and attempts have been made to accommodate their desire for a different title. The problem with a different title is that any one alternative will implicitly question virtually the legitimacy of the article as completed, one written with a singular focus on representing the complex aspects of the three terms as covered in very high quality RS, and thus suggesting that it be rewritten comprehensively to reflecf the new title which, unlike the present one, will not reflect or summarize the content we have. As AndytheGrump noted, if that is the purpose, then it should be clearly stated, since a name-change of this kind would constitute by all appearances a kind of AfD by the back door.

Since I've retired and have a lot of work I'm more interested in doing off-line, I hope these points might spur reconsideration of the flat refusal to accept the legitimacy of the original title. Best wishes Nishidani (talk) 16:43, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I think you make a lot of good points, and I'm friendly to the idea that the page has been improved to where it's legitimately a single subject. However, I want to correct one aspect of what you said about why some editors object to the current title. It isn't that it makes it sound like race and genetics are interchangeable. It doesn't make them sound like that, and that isn't a concern. It's that, by pairing them, the title makes it sound like we are saying that "race and genetics" are a "thing" in the way that scientific racism says it, and that's a problem. The fact that you put a lot of work into improving the page, and indeed you did, does not mean that, because you wrote it according to the present title, efforts to come up with a different title will inevitably change the focus and content of the page. And it does not mean that every suggestion of a new title is an underhanded attempt to delete the page. Actually, I think that the seeming intransigence of editors on this talk page to finding any kind of consensus on the page name is a bigger threat to this page continuing to be kept. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:01, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Tryptofish: Re the comment …by pairing them, the title makes it sound like we are saying that "race and genetics" are a "thing", should we infer that you also disagree with the title of the article Race and genetics, or such wording in the various Wikipedia articles which include the words "race and genetics" in their prose? For what it's worth, I looked through the archives of that article, and cannot see anyone actively disputing the title – the closest is this RM discussion from 10 years ago which found no support. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:54, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

No, because that's all WP:OTHERSTUFF. A page about race and genetics can address how those two things have sometimes, as in scientific racism, been treated as a "thing", but how that has also been rebutted. Once we make a triple combination of those two along with Zionism, it sounds like we are attributing a scientific racist position to Zionism. The longer this discussion, and the RM discussion, go on, the more convinced I am that something like Zionist thought on Jewish racial identity is a better title, and in no way would go against the current content of the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:19, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the title implies a conjunction in this manner or that people would naturally infer this. Whatever other reasons there might be too change the title, I don't think that this is a particularly strong one. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:35, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Obviously, other editors, and not just me, feel that it is a problem, or there wouldn't have been such a history of deletion proposals and rename discussions. I suspect that, as long as some editors steadfastly oppose any kind of change, the probability increases that there will be a new, and possibly successful, attempt to delete the page. I'm trying to find ways to get consensus to fix things so that this doesn't happen, but I may not be able to get such a consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:56, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

some editors steadfastly oppose any kind of change,

Please do not repeat this refrain. Two editors made enormous changes to this article, working for a month for several hours a day, mastering the sources to effect improvements (changes) while extensive and inconclusive arguments on the talk page simply about three words in the title have continued with no semblance of consensus, even among those who propose a change. The support votes, representing just half of the votes above, all admit that one proposed title is not quite satisfactory. it is also not helpful to suggest that unless your advice is taken, a third AfD might succeed. That is not the language of serene and objective deliberation. I)nflexibility in insisting on any change to a mere title, while describing as 'inflexibility' the substantial work invested in transforming this stub into a fully-fledged description of a phase in Zionist thought that has received significant coverage in recent academic sources which to date, have been ignored on wikipedia is, to put it kindly, somewhat curious.Nishidani (talk) 23:03, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I guess I should have said it was opposition to any kind of change to the changes that they, themselves, have made – although, actually, I definitely wasn't referring specifically to the two editors you have in mind. I'm referring just as much to some editors who constantly disagree with those two editors. I'm not threatening that unless my advice is taken, bad things will happen. But I'm giving advice in good faith, trying to avoid some very possible bad results. That's not a threat, just trying to be constructive. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:40, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I have no idea about who these other 'two editors' might be. I was referring to the primary drafters, Onceinawhile and myself, and I therefore haven't a clue who 'some editors who constantly disagree with' myself and Onceinawhile may be. Nishidani (talk) 23:58, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

The "two editors" are the ones you referred to above: "Two editors made enormous changes to this article, working for a month for several hours a day, mastering the sources...". You said "two editors", so I said "two editors" for the same two. And yes, they are you and Onceinawhile, because it was the two of you who did the very large majority of the writing of the page. As for editors who have disagreed with you, I'm sure that you can look over this talk page and find numerous places where you reply to another editor who disagreed with you.

But that's all just noise. What really matters is the need for editors to find WP:CONSENSUS. I'll say this to anyone who reads my comment, and not specifically to you, but a lot of editors in this talk have a single preferred way to treat any given issue, such as the page title, for example, and regard any other way as unacceptable. Some editors want the current title, and nothing else is acceptable to them. Some editors want a title that includes "origins", and don't want to consider any alternative. Some editors consider "origins" absolutely unacceptable, and won't budge on that. A huge number of possible page titles have been suggested in talk, and every single one of them has one or more editors who regard it as absolutely unacceptable – but their preferred title is similarly opposed by some other editors. When I supported the rename proposal that is in process here, I said that I was supporting it despite having some qualms about it, because I wanted to find consensus and I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of some improvement. I'm glad that some editors agreed with that. But we have some editors here who have their own, personal, views of "the perfect", and for them, that's that. But their views of "the perfect" are different than those of other editors who similarly want that perfect, and that's that. That's not how Wikipedia works. We're supposed to be willing to compromise, to accept something that's not our first choice, but something that isn't awful and can get support from enough other editors to reach consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:58, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

The article was 99% written by two editors in terms of the title we have, which dictated the content. The two editors are experienced GA/FA quality content specialists. When objections were raised as to the title, they were duly answered. The strange assumption appears to be that the two who wrote the article didn't have a clue as to the nature of the content they were writing up. As far as I can recall, every objection raised to the present title was thoroughly answered. Of course talk page editors can express preference for another title. But at this point, they should also explain why, after such exhaustive replies to the objections regarding the title we have, it still remains in their view inadequate to the article's content. This is particularly important because half of the editors here have not objected to the title as it exists. title change requires cogent reasons which are what consensus is essentially about. If you can list anything I've missed, by all means . . . Nishidani (talk) 23:21, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure from the indenting who you are replying to ("If you can list..."), but I'll assume it's me. "When objections were raised as to the title, they were duly answered". But were there editors who were dissatisfied with those due answers? "But at this point, they should also explain why...". Is it true that editors have not explained why? Maybe not explained in a manner that you agree with, but that doesn't mean that they didn't explain. "The strange assumption appears to be that the two who wrote the article don't have a clue as to the nature of the content that they were writing up." I don't think that, and I've repeatedly said positive things about what you and Onceinawhile have done. And I doubt that other editors think that. But there also shouldn't be an assumption that the two who wrote the article are entitled to say what should or should not be done with the page, and that all other editors should defer to them, because the other editors don't know enough about the subject. That's not how Wikipedia works. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:40, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I make no such assumption of ownership. Indeed I have seen quite a few changes to the article I think poorly considered, but reverted nothing. The point is, many arguments for a title change were made months ago while the article underwent radical revision. We have a different textual reality now. Since there is no consensus even among editors desiring a title change, the only sensible way forward is for them is to switch from the exhaustingly inconclusive listing of different possible titles, towards a listing of what outstanding objections remain to the title as it now stands. That is a practical way forward from the impasse you worry about.Nishidani (talk) 23:47, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

"I make no such assumption of ownership." But also "Two editors made enormous changes to this article, working for a month for several hours a day, mastering the sources to effect improvements (changes) while extensive and inconclusive arguments on the talk page simply about three words in the title have continued with no semblance of consensus, even among those who propose a change." And "The two editors are experienced GA/FA quality content specialists." And to repeat: "When objections were raised as to the title, they were duly answered". But were there editors who were dissatisfied with those due answers? "But at this point, they should also explain why...". Is it true that editors have not explained why? Maybe not explained in a manner that you agree with, but that doesn't mean that they didn't explain. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:00, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I am quite capable of understanding my own prose, no need to make a florilegium. The ruling assumption from the AfD onwards is that there is something intrinsically unacceptable about a title containing three terms. As far as I have managed to grasp in reading threads, conjoining 'Zionism' and 'race'/'race and genetics'/genetics and Zionism, is problematical in some obscure way. Yet the three are analysed together in over 30 high quality academic sources. Nishidani (talk) 08:51, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I certainly would expect that you would understand what you, yourself, have said. Thank you for introducing me to a new word: florilegium. Of course, I wasn't seeking to create a florilegium, but rather to point out flaws in what you have been saying. But now that you have said that you understand what you have said, I suppose that you understand those flaws, even if you are evading an admission of them. If, in contrast, you don't understand why some editors say that conjoining Zionism, race, and genetics in the pagename is a problem, it's that "race and genetics" is a hot-button term, one that implies that there is a genetic difference between races, which is an offensive product of scientific racism, and something that we should best avoid saying in Wikipedia's voice. Of course, all three things are discussed together in 30 plus high quality academic sources, and of course it's reasonable to cover all three on this page. But it's untrue to claim that there is simply no other way to word the page title that would be consistent with those 30 plus sources, and with the content of the page as currently written.

In any case, I regret that I have gotten side-tracked from what I really wanted to say here, by getting into this back-and-forth. I should know better. I started off by saying that I agreed with a lot of the "recap", but I just wanted to correct the statement that editors were concerned that readers would think we were saying that race and genetics were the same thing. My main point after that was, and remains, that I urge editors – all editors and not just one person – to be willing to compromise and be flexible, in order to reach consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Could you again desist from personalizing this, and making extraordinary inferences about what I supposedly think. When you write:

I wasn't seeking to create a florilegium, but rather to point out flaws in what you have been saying. But now that you have said that you understand what you have said, I suppose that you understand those flaws, even if you are evading an admission of them.

This is another example of the recent tendency to make offensive insinuations in my regard. I generally ignore them as fishing expeditions, but they are now repetitive. Here, you claim that you pointed out flaws, I recognize them, and refuse to come clean about them. That is a blatant WP:NPA/WP:AGF violation, the second from you alone in the last two days.

This is quite an absurd reading of the thread above, and is snarkily provocative. It doesn’t merit a reply, because correcting your misprisions on what I wrote would only lead to a pointless resuscitation of the conversational mode that is so disruptive here.

To @Selfstudier, about his last remark. Several editors (Onceinawhile, Nishidani, Iskander, Nableezy, Zero, Levivich) see nothing problematical in the title, which simply lists the three themes interlinked in current scholarship as a unified topic. I appreciate the fact that you, like Levivich, exercise an autonomy of judgment that refuses to be drawn into those 'sides' which, unfortunately, all too often, are imputed to exist and to determine voting patterns. Still, attempts here to finger me as some lone hold-out are wholly misdirected.

Several editors, yourself included, prefer an exegetic title, one that explains the content, like Designation of workers by collar color. Attempts to find an acceptable alternative falter on a lack of internal consensus among the latter as to a title that they all consider adequate to the very complex array of issues covered by the article.

When two and a half months of intense talk page discussion fails, the only resolutive procedure would be to do what is done in science, logic and chronic conflict studies: return to first principles and examine the assumptions that undergird different perspectives. Many ‘problems’ arise simply because, to quote Auden, people engage in ‘baiting with the wrong request/ the vectors of their interest’. Some should ask themselves, rather than puzzle over this Nishidani oddball, why several other editors of good standing, like him, cannot see the problem others assert exists. Why is it that they cannot see any of the putative troubling implications in the mere listing of three elements as a title, a listing that is commonplace in scores and scores of academic books whose thematizing titles list three intertwined topics unproblematically.

• Mary M. Burke, Race, Politics, and Irish America, Oxford University Press 2020 ISBN 978-0-192-85973-0
• Les Back, John Solomos,Race, Politics and Social Change, Routledge ISBN 978-0-415-08578-6 1992
• Henry A. Giroux, Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy, Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN 978-1-350-18444-2 2021
• James Jennings (ed), Race, Politics, and Economic Development, Verso Books ISBN 978-0-860-91589-8 1992
• Jean Ait Belkhir and Bernice McNair Barnett, Race, Gender and Class Intersectionality, in Race, Gender & Class, 2001 Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 157-174
• Joshua Bartholomew,Race, Economics, and the Future of Blackness, in Critical Black Futures 2021 pp 181–205
• James Boettcher, Race, ideology, and Ideal theory, in Metaphilosophy Vol. 40, No. 2 (April 2009), pp. 237-259
• Alejandro de la Fuente, Race, Ideology, and Culture in Cuba, 2000
• R. E. Nisbett, 'Race, genetics, and IQ,' In C. Jencks & M. Phillips (Eds.), The Black–White test score gap, Brookings Institution Press. (1998 pp. 86–102
• L. N. Borrell et al., • Race and Genetic Ancestry in Medicine,' The New England Journal of Medicine 2021; 384: pp 474-480 (That would yield, analogically ‘Race and Genetic ancestry in Zionism’ as a legitimate alternative title for example. But no one has suggested this obvious compromise. I wonder why?
• Lourdes Beneria, Günseli Berik, Maria Floro,Gender, Development and Globalization, 2015
• Gary Goertz, Amy Mazur Politics, Gender, and Concepts, 2008
• Margaret Brabant, Politics, Gender, And Genre, 2019
• Ronald L. Dotterer, Susan Bowers Politics, Gender, and the Arts, 1992

All objections to this title ignore English grammar and idiom, the irrefutable evidence of google books that such tripartite listings are normative. So, if some wish to continue to assert there is something wrong, they should give an adequate and cogent set of reasons why standard English usage and book titles may not apply to the present article. Why find a problem when the documented evidence that the article title is normative in English can be multiplied by thousands of similar examples, instantly, by googling?Nishidani (talk) 12:02, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, that reply is full of black-and-white, absolute, statements of things that are actually much more nuanced than what you say. Editors who see the pagename differently than you do "ignore English grammar and idiom" – which is extremely personalizing and simply untrue. The evidence is "irrefutable" – well that's like telling everyone who disagrees with you that we are ignoring overwhelming evidence and should shut up. And yet – you present a list of 14 sources above, and although they all use multi-term language, 12 of the 14 do not say "race and genetics". Only 2 of them do. One, by Nisbett [2], makes the case that "the most relevant studies provide no evidence for the genetic superiority of either race". The other, by Borrell et al. [3], is the single one out of the 14 that addresses "race and genetics" as a significant subject, but in the context of health care delivery, of making sure that specific genetic factors can be used to provide the best personal healthcare – not at all in the context of defining membership in a nation state. A Google Scholar search on "Zionist thought on Jewish racial identity", [4], shows that this combination of words is also used in various forms in thousands of sources, and a lot of those sources look like those that are used for this page. Oh, but it's "irrefutable", so I should know my place and be quiet. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:41, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I asked Selfstudier to explain why titles of the type:X,Y and Z, standard in English usage, and endemic in books and articles, are not acceptable to a wikipedia article which fits the formula, i.e. 'Zionism, race and genetics'. If you are not interested in addressing the question directly and analytically, you are under no obligation to talk past it. Nishidani (talk) 19:49, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

That's good, because I didn't talk around it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

A Google Scholar search on "Zionist thought on Jewish racial identity", [5], shows that this combination of words is also used in various forms in thousands of sources(Tryptofish)

Compare the correct result, i.e. one bracketing the words with inverted commas which yields zero correspondancesNishidani (talk) 21:14, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Self? Nishidani (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Just noting that you originally said "no obligation to talk around it", but then changed it to "past it" after I had replied.

Here's a similar "correct" Google Scholar search for "Zionism, race and genetics": [6], which gets 0 results. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:18, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Which is totally irrelevant because the title is not vauntedly drawn from google books evidence. It simply alerts the reader to the topic of the page using the three terms that contemporary scholarship deals with conjointly as linked themes, scholarship which has been used to write the article we have.Nishidani (talk) 07:23, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

This discussion keeps getting so, well, toxic, that I really should repeat something I said earlier in this section: In any case, I regret that I have gotten side-tracked from what I really wanted to say here, by getting into this back-and-forth. I should know better. I started off by saying that I agreed with a lot of the "recap", but I just wanted to correct the statement that editors were concerned that readers would think we were saying that race and genetics were the same thing. My main point after that was, and remains, that I urge editors – all editors and not just one person – to be willing to compromise and be flexible, in order to reach consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

There are two proposals asking for consensus (a)That the title be changed because it is full of skewed implications and (b) the title is quite normal, one in conformity with widespread usage. (a) has dominated the talk page (b) has been totally ignored. As soon as I tried to break the impasse by asking the editors supporting (a) to give rational reasons for their dismissal of the present topic title, my request was ignored. To be thorough, I still think the assumption or premise for challenging what is a fact, that X,Y and Z is a normative title format in academic studies and books, be answered. There is nothing 'toxic' about being thorough, and insisting on logic and evidence.Nishidani (talk) 07:23, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

From my perspective, I and other editors actually have given rational reasons for objections, not dismissals, but objections, and those rational reasons are being ignored, and to me that feels toxic. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:30, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

:I would do an RFC perhaps to get a sense of what wiki in general thinks of the title. I don’t think this current group of editors is going to come to a consensus unfortunately. Drsmoo (talk) 23:59, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

For example, I am in agreement with selfstudier re both race/genetics or neither, while you have the opposite opinion. It would be good to solicit outside feedback to see how others interpret the scope of the article and what the right title, if anything, should be. Drsmoo (talk) 00:01, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I asked Selfstudier to explain why titles of the type:X,Y and Z, standard in English usage, and endemic in books and articles, are not acceptable to a wikipedia article which fits the formula, Is this the latest distraction? You keep talking about everything except what I am talking about. Let me be clearer, all your objections/answers to the current proposition just seem to lend credence to the coatrack argument put forth elsewhere. I didn't have a problem with the title originally and I still don't but I also don't have a problem with the current proposition and yet you do and it is your explanations in that regard that are giving me pause with regard to the original title. Selfstudier (talk) 11:14, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

No great rewrite is needed, it's principally the same sources that are in the article right now, Falk, McGonigle, Baker, Hirsh, etc, it's only necessary to add some material that is present in these sources. Selfstudier (talk) 18:42, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, in my humble opinion, even "Zionism and the politics of race" is a much better title than the current one. Andre🚐 15:00, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

There was a lot of discussion about this (and some about the variant that only mentions genetics) and in the end I concluded that it is either both or neither. Selfstudier (talk) 17:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

When you say, of race and genetics, that it is either both or neither, is that an absolute line in the sand for you, or something you would be willing to compromise on for the sake of consensus? Obviously, I'm hoping for the latter. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:51, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

In principle, I would oppose a title that only included one element, sorry about that. As you have seen, I am not averse to dispensing with both in favor of some other formulation. Selfstudier (talk) 08:20, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

The problem remains that the people proposing new titles are seeking titles they find less objectionable, regardless of whether that title actually covers the same topic as this article. You cannot propose a substantially new scope of an article under the guise of a rename. If the scope of the article is not notable then try AFD again. If it is then the title needs to accurately encompass that scope, and the proposals above do not do that. nableezy - 12:26, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I just wanted to note that I don't totally sign up to this recap's representation of what happened. Specifically: From the beginning of redrafting to the present only two aspects of the article were challenged: (a) the title (b) the lead. No, I gave a long list of issues I had with the article above. Some were addressed wholly or partially; others remain. I haven't pushed them, because participation on this talk page has been exhausting. Once again, in summary, my concern all along has been that the conjunction in the title creates a "thing" where there is no "thing", and that this has led to a skewed/non-NPOV article. Being the title of one or two books or articles doesn't make something a "thing" in my view. (We don't have an article for Race, Economics, and the Future of Blackness for example.) Clearly, there is a rich literature on Zionist perspectives on race - on how race science and racial antisemitism contributed to a raciological strain within Zionism, that was shared by some non-Zionist Jewish race scholars and contested by others. This literature focuses overwhelmingly on the period of the formation of classical Zionism to the rise of the Nazis. The current article (thanks mainly to Nishidani) does a great job in setting that out (although obviously with some room for improvement still, in ways I suggested above). There is also a literature on post-war Israeli genetic science that might be briefly described in an aftermath section of an article along the lines I've just described, and which might be discussed too in Genetic studies on Jews and more briefly in other related articles (e.g. Who is a Jew?/Jewish identity). But the unhappy conjunction in the title (without assuming any deliberate intent from editors) pushed the article to sources that are more marginal in a truly encyclopedic article on whatever our article is about, which focused the article on the mysterious interconnection between the three title terms, giving the continuity between Zionist race science and Israeli genetic science enormous undue attention. Although not particularly keen on any one alternative title proposed, my instinct at the moment is that a new title would enable us to keep the best of the article, removing the skew. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:10, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

My apologies for missing what you point out in the recap. As you say, this has been exhausting. Unless mistaken the gravamen of your worries is that

that the conjunction in the title creates a "thing" where there is no "thing",

Conjunctions between terms don't create a "thing": they isolate a thematically plural topic which exists to the degree that reliable sources treat them as an interrelated set of terms. There is nothing 'mysterious' about the relationship. Indeed, as several quotes I have supplied over the last week show, geneticists themselves are now analysing the assumptions of 'race' that both historians of science and cultural or social anthropologists found problematical in the way genetics came to be used, and indeed, its methodologies formed, in the last few decades. This is a pretty exciting field, and my impression is that much more will emerge in the near future (may be wrong). As to the last part, a large part of Israeli genetic science is (like Zionist policy) purely practical: how to address, analyse and cure Israeli citizens who suffer from genetically-related illnesses- People in those labs are not thinking 'Zionistically'. They are scientists pure et simple. But at the same time, the overlap between broader historical genetics and Zionist ideological concerns is patently there - Israel historians document it, and just as, say, American geneticists are now going public by talking among themselves of this historical residue of race assumptions in their technical work, their Israeli colleagues are doing the same. Whatever, the genealogy of ideas is of intrinsic merit. They didn't want any mention of this in Genetic Studies of Jews so it was only natural to create a distinct page where justice could be done to the issues. Nishidani (talk) 16:32, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I should not have used the word "mysterious" for the "intertwining" of the three topics; that wasn't justified. I'll strike that out.

Meanwhile, this hit me: They didn't want any mention of this in Genetic Studies of Jews so it was only natural to create a distinct page where justice could be done to the issues.

In other words, it seems, this entire article (and talk page) was the result of content forking when consensus went against inclusion of the content desired by a minority of editors at another article? On this issue, my view is the same as that in the short essay WP:Should I fork? BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:57, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I should have said that an attempt to mention this article, more or less a stub under development, on that other page was immediately cancelled. That article was, if I remember correctly, on the 'science'. It is nothing of the sort of course. That rejection and the irrationality of the AfD, with its sheer denialism of the weight of sources, spurred the effort to fill out the promise in the stub. No. It's not an essay, unless all wikipedia articles that trace the history of an idea (Democracy) are essays. It's not a fork. It's the sort of thing one has been reading about for over a decade and noting, but with no prompting occasion to actually do this rather than some other article (at least speaking for myself) Nishidani (talk) 17:18, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Is "in" the magic word?

I have been looking at other "tripartite title" articles, of which a surprisingly large number include race. For example:

• Race and ethnicity in Colombia
• Race and ethnicity in Brazil
• Race and ethnicity in Latin America
• Race and ethnicity in the NBA
• Race and ethnicity in the NHL
• Race and ethnicity in censuses
• History of the race and intelligence controversy
• Race and capital punishment in the United States
• Race in the United States criminal justice system
• Race and health in the United States
• Race and crime in the United Kingdom
• Race and maternal health in the United States
• Sociology of race and ethnic relations

This is a wide base. The logical conclusion for our article would be Race and genetics in Zionism. Onceinawhile (talk) 15:53, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd be fine with that as well. Selfstudier (talk) 16:26, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd have no objection either. I suggested that six weeks ago (The article is about race in Zionism and its subsequent inflection in genetics, and actually thought of precisely this formula at the time, but was more interested in writing the article than engaging in talk page discussions). No one took it up. I alluded to a solution like that a few other times, most recently yesterday with a variant that had of course one word too many, above ('the obvious compromise'). I still prefer the title we have for stylistic reasons. But it's tweedledum or tweedledee conceptually.Nishidani (talk) 20:37, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

You know, you might have hit on something here. I'm going to have to give some thought to this before I can put my finger on why I have a favorable reaction to it, but somehow, it doesn't strike me as being a problem in the way that the current title is. I think it has something to do with the way it treats race and genetics as not being "all of race and genetics", but rather, as only being those aspects of race and those aspects of genetics that have come up in the context of Zionism, because they are the aspects that are "in" Zionism. Thanks for suggesting it. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:03, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree it's a step in the right direction. I also think "Race and ethnicity" is an improvement over "Race and genetics." Even "race and biology" might be better. Andre🚐 22:05, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd prefer keeping it with "genetics", rather than "ethnicity" or "biology", because I think it stays closer to the page scope. But I'll go along with alternatives like that, as a way to get consensus, if that's the way the discussion goes.

I've though about this some more, and I can add a bit to what I said above, about how I think this is not as much of a problem as the current title. If one thinks of a diagram, with one circle representing Zionism, one representing race, and one representing genetics, and the three circles overlap in part, but not entirely, I think most editors here would agree that this page is about the part where all three circles overlap, and not about any part of the diagram where all three are not overlapping. The existing title sort of implies that, and has been intended that way, but can also be construed as the sum of all three circles, not the intersection. "Zionism, race and genetics" can be reasonably misconstrued as being about Zionism+race+genetics, which is clearly wrong from the perspective of the page we are trying to create. Until Onceinawhile proposed this new idea, I hadn't really been able to put my finger on that. In contrast, "Race and genetics in Zionism" is clearer, without losing anything: it's the subset of "race and genetics" that intersects with Zionism, because it's what's "in" Zionism. That way, the pagename doesn't give me the feeling that the page is trying to impose scientific racism upon Zionism. Scientific racism sits outside of the triple intersection. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:08, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Grammatically there is no way one can derive from three substantives 'Zionism, race and genetics' the idea that racism, scientific or not, is being imposed on Zionism. That is pure imagination, not grammar.Nishidani (talk) 23:19, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

You know what, I actually agree with that. It's not a matter of grammar, but rather, a matter of human subjectivity. But the public that we write for is human, with all the complexities of human nature. And it's appropriate to write for our audience, in a way that respects their intelligence while also not overlooking the fact that they are real people, not automatons (yeah, I know that ChatGPT and the like are mining us). --Tryptofish (talk) 23:51, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I understand that, but we are part of that very same public. I have always been unhappy with the pseudo-objectivism of that nutter, Ayn Rand, whose scribblings apparently influenced some of the principles of wikipedia. But working here for decades nonetheless tells me that the mini-culture of objectivism curated to elide editorial subjectivism, which includes second-guessing things, say, among ourselves, the psychological profiles we might imagine, of each other and, by extension, the readership, has its functional merits. In sum, we must suspend from our judgment on how a text is to be written all the pressures of the personal, and look exclusively at the authority of relevant sources of high quality (which often I might personally disagree with or be tempted to challenge), construe them with precision by the sharp exercise of grammatical discipline, and get, source by source, the content over. Thanks for prompting this reflection. It is a fundamental consideration.Nishidani (talk) 06:42, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Is there a policy or guideline that advises setting aside what you call "the pressures of the personal"? (I don't mean WP:NOR or WP:NPOV.) My understanding of policies and guidelines is that it is appropriate to consider what readers will think, and my reading of WP:TITLE is that, although page titles must reflect sources, the titles should also be understandable to real people, and not misleading. (In this case, I, as a member of that same public, had that reaction about scientific racism, and I don't consider myself to be unreasonable, so I haven't been attributing this reaction to some imagined other. I'm figuring that if I had that reaction, then other readers will, too.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:18, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't write or edit plying the worrybeads about what people might think, or get agitated that if I write this or that it may affect some political or ethnic constituency. That opens the door to infinite subjective speculations that derail the simple and yet very complex task of reading precisely what the best scholarship says, on this or that, and construing it correctly. When I wrote "affirm" I found out some very intelligent editors believed it meant something that is alien to what the English Oxford Dictionary says it means, and all sorts of confusions, even a suspension, arose from their misprision. After a huge waste of time, it was recognized that "affirm" meant what the dictionary states, not what people thought it might imply. Too many talk pages are vexed by the paralysis Shakespeare identified in such intensive overthinking, that nothing can ever be decided, in the brilliant passage on 'thinking too precisely on the event'

Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When honor's at the stake.

What we as editors think is of little or no account. All that counts is getting what scholars write correctly paraphrased. Anything that strays from this detracts from article composition.Nishidani (talk) 08:27, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

You and the Danish Prince both have the right to see things that way, but other editors have the right to edit as we see fits Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:26, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

A lame insult. I co-wrote the Shakespeare Authorship Question to FA standard, meaning I wrote it not as I saw fitting wiki policies and guidelines, but according to the criteria wikipedia's experts on FA writing asked be rigorously applied. Drop it.Nishidani (talk) 21:36, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

No insult intended, and my apologies if it came across that way. I'm just saying that I regard your approach as something that you are entitled to, but that it is not binding on other editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:42, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Since loose construal is endemic here, let me construe your prior remark. I, like Hamlet, have a right to see things in a certain way. Other editors have a right to edit according to ' Wikipedia's policies and guidelines'. The two by juxtaposed contrast ('but') are mutually exclusive, meaning I do not edit, in your view, according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. This, ironically, in the face of evidence that FA reviewers endorsed my rigorous adherence to policy guidelines. You just happen to think I, unlike yourself, don't follow wiki guidelines and those experts who have judged my work as perfectly policy-compliant, one is left to suppose, are apparently misguided. Drop it.Nishidani (talk) 23:15, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I asked "Is there a policy or guideline that advises setting aside what you call "the pressures of the personal"?" You never provided one. Sigh. Now, I'm dropping it. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:18, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Is there a policy or guideline that advises setting aside what you call "the pressures of the personal"? (I don't mean WP:NOR or WP:NPOV.)

Courtesy required that one not answer a question which explicitly excluded the obvious answer to it. Sigh indeed. I'ìll now join you in dropping this.Nishidani (talk) 07:08, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

This title has the advantage of concision and consistency, and more naturalness than other proposed alternatives. It's probably precise enough. It only really suffers in terms of recognisability, and doesn't fully address the skewing effect I noted in my comment in the "Recap" section above, but that can maybe be addressed in editing once we finally agree a stable title. Overall, I don't object to this change. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:05, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

You argued there was a skewing effect caused by treating three elements as a 'thing'. I think I answered that. When numerous sources treat the three together, it is not editors here who create such a a thing, but the literature itself. And I might add, 'race' is not something that died off in Zionism with the defeat Nazism,. as you appear to suggest in pursuing the idea of ridding the latter part of 'skewed' material. It persisted, and persists to this day, as we all know. Ethiopian Jews resent being labelled as Cushi, and even within their own ranks, there is a strong race division between 'whites' and 'blacks', etc.etc.etc. Nishidani (talk) 17:33, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I concur with Bob's post in the "recap" section above. Nishidani, I fear you may be perhaps conflating the existence of racism or the continued issue with racial discrimination being in the world at large and in Israel or in other Jewish spaces, with that somehow being germane to a Zionist view as a matter of generalizable or mainstream adherence. I agree with Bob that this article skews toward covering the early 20th century, and skews toward a specific strain of Zionist thought. Whereas plenty of things have happened in the world, such as the aforementioned airlift of the Ethiopian Jews. There is also quite a bit to talk about as pertaining to contemporary Arab-Israeli politics, and the racial politics of contemporary Israel and Palestine. For example, there are quite a few contemporary Israeli politicians who have a pretty blatant right-wing dog whistle. I continue to think the title manages to be both vague and over-broad. There's also quite a bit of weight on the thinking of El Haj, someone with specific views of genetic anthropology and biological determinism. I agree with concerns that this is a POV fork. Andre🚐 23:44, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

This article is not about racism per se, and barely even touches on racial ideas outside of science, i.e. in the sense of engendered prejudice towards any specific group, except with respect to antisemitism. So what is all this off-topic chatter with regards to airlifts and whatnot about? ... and how is this supposed to meaningfully relate to the subject here? Iskandar323 (talk) 02:56, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

You think it's OK to have the portion about the Ethiopian Jews talking about how they were referred to as an offensive epithet and excluded, but not mention that they later were accepted and came in? Andre🚐 03:13, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

A public policy on immigration has no bearing on thematic undercurrents either within society or an ideology. You are conflating a state with the actual subject here. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:02, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Really now, so your position is that the views of the Zionist movement and ideology have no bearing on the activities of the Israeli government? Andre🚐 04:08, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the ideology has bearing there, but that does not mean you can deduce or assume things about the ideology based on the actions of an ideologically involved government. Still, what I'm more confused with here is the overall tangential segue. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:49, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

The Jewish Agency for Israel, which is the operative branch of/a parallel organization to the World Zionist Organization, was heavily involved. Drsmoo (talk) 08:48, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Andrevan. We must avoid the temptation to chat. I made an allusion to the Ethiopian case to illustrate a point (it arose because I accommodated your request that we mention Operations Solomon and Moses). That doesn't mean the page focus must now swerve into major expansions on Ethiopians in Israel, or racism in Israel or every other country in the world.Nishidani (talk) 08:27, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I just posted a similar suggestion in a previous section before (consciously) noticing this section. I agree with it though I don't like "in Zionism" much as it makes Zionism sound like a place or organisation as in all of the other examples. I'd prefer "in Zionist ideology", for example. Zero^talk 08:09, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

As Andrevan has pointed out, there is an issue with "race and genetics" which is obviated by the alternatives they suggest, or with just "Race in Zionism". None of the examples provided by Onceinawhile have "race and genetics" and I have argued and Levivich agreed[7] that the phrasing "race and genetics" should be avoided in article titles because of the conflation of race (a social construct) with genetics. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 18:22, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Zionism, race and genetics, vs other topics

Hi @Sirfurboy: I'm not sure I fully understand your last sentence. Per the illustration on the right (from an earlier discussion), the connection between race and genetics – far from being avoided – is standard from a sociological perspective, so should not be avoided in Wikipedia articles on sociology topics. This article covers a sociology topic, just as the article race and genetics does. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:35, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm OK with "in Zionism", but I'll also go along with "in Zionist ideology" or "in Zionist thinking" if that gets consensus. As I said above, I don't have a problem with "race and genetics" in this configuration. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:33, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Seconding Tryptofish, I think we now have a decent and commendable promise of putting an end to over two months of argument we must all find exhausting. There's been convergence to the formula 'Race and genetics in Zionism/Zionist ideology', a meeting point for editors who otherwise saw the other options from opposing perspectives. Might we not seize the chance to conclude it by agreeing on how to tweak this? (I might add, I am still strongly in favour of the title as it stands, but am happy to drop that if this last formula is adopted).Nishidani (talk) 17:03, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm in favor. Andre🚐 17:42, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

It sounds to me like a requested move for this version has a very good chance of getting consensus, and I think that it would be good if we could move ahead with it. However, we already have an active RM discussion. But that one looks to me to be stalled, and looks unlikely to get consensus. @Selfstudier: as the editor who started that RM, would you be willing to close it, in order that this new one can proceed? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:39, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Given this is Wikipedia I have BOLDly moved it to "Race and genetics in Zionist ideology" and if nobody reverts or is objecting to this, we can close the RM. Andre🚐 21:51, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I oppose the title and the bold move. It should be an RM to get outside opinions. This title makes it sound like race and genetics are one thing (no comma between them), and that race and genetics is an important aspect of Zionist ideology, and that there is one Zionist ideology. Imagine: "race and genetics in Christian ideology" or "race and genetics in nationalist ideology" or "race and genetics in communist ideology," etc. "In" is a preposition best used for location or an organization. All of the other "in" titles have "in" followed by a country or organization. Zionism and Zionist ideology are neither. Levivich (talk) 15:43, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

There was already an active RM above that failed to achieve consensus, which Selfstudier closed per Tryptofish; this proposal seemed to be coming to a good compromise consensus in this thread, but you may certainly open a new RM to solicit a new discussion, though perhaps it would be good to get some kind of alignment on what the proposed new title would be if you have one in mind. Andre🚐 16:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

That's what you should do: open an RM to propose a move rather than boldly moving to a new title. If you don't want to self revert, I can do it for you. Levivich (talk) 17:01, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I have complicated feelings about this, and my highest priority is to minimize drama. Strictly speaking, what I posted above was "It sounds to me like a requested move for this version has a very good chance of getting consensus, and I think that it would be good if we could move ahead with it", and I was asking that the older RM be closed, so that we could have a new RM. I didn't anticipate that, instead of a new RM, we would have a bold edit. I'm also not sure that we have consensus for "in Zionist ideology" versus "in Zionism". On the other hand, it is incredibly difficult to get consensus for anything on this page, and I'm very, very, loathe to undo the recent name change, unless there is a stronger case than I am currently seeing for doing so. It's pretty impressive, under the circumstances, how many editors have supported the name change, and if the few who oppose it are such a small minority that the consensus would end up being the same (or would just descend into a morass), I'd rather just leave things as they are. Only if there are enough editors opposing the new pagename that the consensus would likely change, would I now support a new RM. And, given 1RR, let's not have any reverting. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:54, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Andre, you wrote if nobody reverts or is objecting to this, and somebody is now objecting. Kindly self-revert and open a new RM. You know that is what needs to be done. Our move procedure allows for bold moves if and only if they are uncontroversial, and once somebody, anybody, objects it is no longer uncontroversial. nableezy - 19:10, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I should take this page off my watchlist. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:17, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

that seems like a personal choice not related to the article, which is what comments on this talk page are meant for. nableezy - 19:42, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

No, it was a personal comment about your comment. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I understand there is an objection, however, while I would say my BOLD move lacks the consensus of a formal closed RM even though a consenus was forming, as a point of technical limitation, I cannot actually revert myself as I lack the page mover permission to move over a redirect. Also, I didn't say "if anyone asks, I'll self-revert," and I'm going to say that someone else should revert it if they feel so inclined, so it doesn't count against my 1RR in the topic area. You can certainly say my BOLD move was BOLD and the revert is proper if someone objects to it, and then a new RM can be opened, but I am not going to open it myself because I do not know what the new RM proposal should be if this one is not amenable. I would also perhaps ask that if 1 or 2 editors don't like this title they still let it stand rather than forcing an RM that will possibly likely lead to this outcome anyway. Andre🚐 19:56, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Let me add that anyone who seriously objects in favor of a different pagename, and thinks that their preferred pagename can get consensus, should feel free to open a new RM. But don't revert. Just open a discussion. Anyone who cannot in good faith be confident that their preferred pagename will be supported by other editors, enough other editors to get consensus, please don't waste everyone's time. And anyone whose only objection is procedural, please find something else to do. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:21, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Im sorry, but you simply do not get to decide what the status quo should be for a new request. And you likewise dont get to insist that others not ask people to abide by the correct procedure. I mean you can do it, Im not going to stop you, but Im also not going to pretend like you decide these things. Make a new move request yourself if you please. nableezy - 21:49, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Of course I don't get to decide those things, and I wasn't. But neither do you. And you don't even seem to have an idea for what the pagename should be, just a rigid idea of what The Rules^TM are. As a result, we are going to have another couple of weeks of discussion over something that probably won't result in anything being improved. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:59, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the current name is vastly superior to the proposed, either in Zionism or in Zionist ideology. But my understanding of The Rules is based on those rules, which say: The discussion process is used for potentially controversial moves. A move is potentially controversial if either of the following applies: ... someone could reasonably disagree with the move. Somebody could not just disagree with move, somebody did disagree with it. And that means the status quo ante is returned until there is a consensus to move away from it to a new title. You are free to propose whatever you like. Or not. Doesnt really matter to me tbh. nableezy - 22:06, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

As for "vastly superior", you do know, don't you, that most editors agreed that if the pagename should stay sort-of like this, then there should be a comma, as in Zionism, race, and genetics? I'd fix that myself, but I don't have the page-mover permission. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Dont think you need it, nableezy - 22:35, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

(I assume you mean page mover, not the comma.) I actually tried to make the move, but it didn't go through. Apparently too many things that need to be deleted to make way, or something like that. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:38, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I did it for you. nableezy - 21:46, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Pre-RM discussion

Let's see if we can get something to stick, this time. The purpose of this sub-section is not to say why "in" is a bad idea. The purpose is only to consider what the best option, among the "in" options, would be, to put forward in the next RM. (In other words, let's postpone arguments about why the present pagename is better for the RM itself.) As I see it, there are three "in" variations that have been mentioned:

• Race and genetics in Zionism
• Race and genetics in Zionist ideology
• Race and genetics in Zionist thinking

Personally, I have a preference for Race and genetics in Zionism, because it's the simplest. I've also been doing some looking at other "in" pagenames, based upon talk comments that such titles are only used for places or organizations. And we have plenty of related hot-button pagenames where something is "in" things very akin to Zionism, as opposed to places or organizations. For example: Rape in the Hebrew Bible (sorry, that one came up when I put "race in" in the search box), Racism in sport, Racism in the LGBT community, and Race in horror films. That said, I'm willing to support any of the three above.

I realize that some editors prefer none of the above, but I'm specifically interested in what would be the best choice for a new RM discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:15, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

We already had a preRM discussion, lots of them. In other words, attempts to get preagreement have largely failed. So I think that any editor that feels like taking a shot should put up the RM they think will fly based on all those previous discussions. Selfstudier (talk) 22:20, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Does that mean that you will support any of these three? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:26, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I am reserving my comments for a formal RM discussion.Selfstudier (talk) 22:27, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't see this as "taking a shot" and seeing what "will fly", but as trying to use discussion to get the strongest possible result. Other editors may have other priorities. Anyway, if other editors have any advice, I'd welcome that. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Read what I actually said. Selfstudier (talk) 22:36, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd be fine with that as well. ([8]) So I'll take that as support for Race and genetics in Zionism. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:40, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I find all these better than the current title. Andre🚐 22:43, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Although I still think a construct based on "in" might work, I can no longer support these versions, for the reasons given in #Zionism, and which race?, below. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:37, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

The subsequent resolution of the issue in #Zionism, and which race?, below, means that I no longer have the objection that I expressed in the sentence just above. But given that we cannot even get past "no consensus" over a comma, I'm reluctant to start another RM over Race and genetics in Zionism, although I'd support it if someone else does. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:13, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia has its own fun special policies about Oxford comma and the like, and I consider them pedantry and not worthy of consideration. A substantive question in my view is, why is the article still called "Zionism, race and genetics" which is just still a jumbly hodgepodge of a title. How about, "Zionist conceptions of Jewishness in terms of racial identity." Andre🚐 21:36, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Flogging a dead horse. Nishidani (talk) 21:43, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Horse is kickin, and a live WP:NOCON means more discussion. I thought you were retiring, though. Is it that you are retiring from edits, but not editorial oversight? Andre🚐 21:47, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Also: nay. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:53, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In a sense, it's accurate, but it's awfully verbose. I could maybe see "Zionist conceptions of Jewish racial identity", although other editors have objected strongly to "Jewish racial identity". Or maybe "Racial conceptions of Jewishness in Zionism". Similarly, "Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism"; I actually kind of like that one. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:50, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I like that one too. Andre🚐 22:09, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

De horse is thoroughly flogged but continues to be beaten regardless. Selfstudier (talk) 23:36, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Well look I mean, clearly you and Nishidani consider the horse dead, but Tryptofish resurrected it and I agree frankly. The title isn't good. That's my humble opinion. Andre🚐 23:52, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

If editors don't want to discuss this on the merits, perhaps they would like to have an extended discussion on why it upsets them to see other editors discuss it on the merits. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:13, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm all for discussion but it needs to be something which hasn't been discussed at length already. The situation hasn't really changed, any RM will need to propose a title that has a chance at gaining a consensus and the discussions to date set boundaries on that. Selfstudier (talk) 16:44, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't discuss pagenames that have already been discussed and shown to be inadequate, but that doesn't mean that anyone should assume that it's impossible for editors to come up with new and better ideas. And just because there hasn't been consensus for previous ideas about new pagenames, no one should make the logical fallacy of assuming that there is a stable consensus in favor of the existing pagename. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:10, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

For WP:CCC, a new RM will be needed. I tried one with a few editors on board and it went nowhere so that's the problem, any significant pushback will result in nocon and we stay where we are, a consensus by default if you like (or inertia). Selfstudier (talk) 17:22, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

You tried an RM and that happened, and then I tried one and the same thing happened, so I very much understand how you feel. I agree, a new RM is the only way to actually effect a change. But it's reasonable to have some preliminary discussion among interested editors before starting a new RM, and uninterested editors need not participate in that if they don't want to. In a sense, we have what could be called a consensus by inertia, in the sense that there has not been a consensus to change to any particular new title, and that means that no one has consensus to simply move the page unilaterally to a new title. But I want to emphasize that this is not a consensus that the existing pagename is OK. A few other potential titles have been discussed, resulting in no consensus. So there isn't an active consensus that those few potential titles were better than the existing name. But nowhere has there been a consensus that the existing name is really good, and every discussion about that has revealed significant dissatisfaction with it among some editors, even while some other editors support it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:31, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

So, that said, there's an idea for Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism. I like that it gets rid of "race and genetics". I also think it's useful to re-read the lead paragraph of this page, with that possible title in mind. It seems to me that it matches extremely well with the lead paragraph, and actually matches with it better than the existing pagename does. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:40, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

While I don't know if it will gain consensus, I'd be interested to try. Andre🚐 17:55, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Have done, so alerting this thread to continue the discussion in the new RM i started. Andre🚐 18:40, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for having done so. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:26, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Zionism, and which race?

It occurs to me that, if one is defining the scope of the page based upon the existing pagename, then there is a great deal of source material about Zionism and race that pertains to present-day Zionism in the occupied territories and its relationship to the Palestinian people in terms of their racial differences from Israeli Jews. This page does not cover that. That's obviously because the assumption underlying the existing pagename is that "race and genetics" refers only to how race and genetics might apply to Jewish people, but not to people who make no claim of being Jews. But that's an assumption, not anything that follows logically from the pagename as it is written. That's either a problem with the pagename, or a problem with the page scope. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:15, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Good point. And I think that's why a number of editors in the discussions above proposed titles that had wording like "on the origins of the Jewish people" or "on Jewish identity" in the title. We have a whole article Racism in Israel, which should probably be in the See also section if it isn't, that it would not be a good idea to rewrite here, so

I would argue for narrower scope (and if necessary narrower title) rather than widening. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:15, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree that the scope should be kept narrow. Having an in-depth section on Neo-Zionism would make this page unwieldy. I also agree that the pagename is really going to have to be something that specifies "Jewish" with regard to "race", and, for that reason, I can no longer support a rename to "Race and genetics in Zionism". --Tryptofish (talk) 18:12, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I think this is a good point, and although I do not know what this means for the best article title, I want to express my support for this concept. I think there is an implication that Zionism is concerned with the race and genetics of Jewish people. I think that Zionism is definitely considered with the provenance of Jewish DNA, writ large, which is why genetics is being thrown in there, I think. Race was a pseudogenetic or pseudoscientific proposal of one way to view Jewish ethnicity. Contrary to what some have argued on this page, ethnicity is a description of a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a common nation of origin, or common sets of ancestry, traditions, language, history, society, religion, or social treatment. The term ethnicity is often used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism. I would argue that Jews have all of these, and post-Israel there is a specific Israeli Zionist nationalism that we seem particularly concerned with in the context of its rhetoric in the pre-1940s time period. The "ancestry" is perhaps the part that belongs in the article title. Ancestry is not an article that Wikipedia recognizes as it redirects to "ancestor," but it seems to be a widely accepted synonym for genetic heritage. Andre🚐 19:26, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that we should replace the word "race" in the title with a different word, but I am arguing that we cannot simply use the word "race" without specifying that we are talking only about the "Jewish race" (so-called), and not "race" in general. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:37, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm thinking about proposing an RM to Jewish racial identity in Zionism. Any thoughts? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's better. Andre🚐 23:25, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Definitely prefer it to current title. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:06, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Doesnt seem to match the topic at all, but feel free to propose whatever you like. nableezy - 16:36, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

"Jewish racial identity in Zionism" is a different, though overlapping, topic than "Zionism, race, and genetics." Anyone can go ahead and start the "Jewish racial identity in Zionism" article, but I don't see the benefit of changing the scope of this article rather than starting a separate article about Jewish racial identity in Zionism.

To respond to the point in the OP, it's true that there is plenty of coverage about Zionism, race, genetics, and Palestinians, and the Zionism, race, and genetics article could be expanded to include that content. But the fact that the article currently is not complete -- that aspects of the topic aren't fully covered -- is a reason to expand the article, not to re-scope it. An obvious place for expansion is -- hey, you guessed it! -- Falk's 2017 "Zionism and the Biology of Jews," which BTW has a free PDF linked at Google Scholar, who makes a point that has probably been made by others and probably could be covered in the Wikipedia article somehow, for example at p. 201:

Even though not a race in a biological sense, political Zionism, after a century of attempts to prove contemporary Jews’ material, biological relationships – not merely their spiritual, cultural ones – to the ancient people of the biblical stories, in spite of widespread interspersing with local communities, finally has succeeded. It is tragic that Zionism, as well as Arab Nationalism, have failed to recognize the Palestinians, many of whom similarly appear to share phylogenetic relations to the historic inhabitants of the country, as equal partners.

Levivich (talk) 16:50, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the 2nd part. Andre🚐 16:58, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I did suggest myself at one point adding Jew(s)/Jewish somewhere in the title but I also said that I would not support a title that did not match up with the article content. Although anything is possible, it seems doubtful that the proposed title would gain consensus. Selfstudier (talk) 17:22, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

The proposed title is not only inept, but disturbing. The form 'Jewish racial identity in Zionism' assumes that there is such a (ridiculous) 'thing' as a 'Jewish racial identity' ('Jewish racial identity in Rabbinical thought'/Jewish racial identity in Israel' etc.etc.) and that the article will handle it as it was treated in Zionism. 3 months have been wasted on this minority but very vocal disgruntlement with the natural title. One cannot expect that editors return to devote much of their wiki time to rehashing ad infinitum a question which has been framed and reframed at least a dozen times, to no productive purpose. As per Levivich, nothing is stopping editors from developing a sister article for that hypothetical title.Nishidani (talk) 19:09, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I actually agree with the point that Jewish racial identity in Zionism, and Zionism, race and genetics, are two different, though overlapping, topics. I also think that the page, as it is now, is about Jewish racial identity in Zionism, and is only about a subset of Zionism, race and genetics. Let me be very clear about it: the page content as it is now matches very closely with Jewish racial identity in Zionism, and matches very poorly with the existing title – because it completely omits a big chunk of what the existing title is about. Anyone who thinks it does not omit that, or who thinks that the page is not currently about Jewish racial identity as it has been discussed in Zionism, is being, well, inept and disturbing.

So I think the question becomes whether the page should be expanded to match the current title, or whether the title should be changed to match the current scope of the page. One could certainly expand the page, but editors should seriously consider what that would look like. First, if done properly, it would very nearly double the length of the page. Second, it would make the page feel like there are two parts to it: how race and genetics in Zionism have been used to argue about the identity of the Jewish people, and how race (and genetics??) in Zionism have been used to "other" the Palestinians.

I have a very strong feeling that if someone were to expand the page in that way, two things would happen: some editors would want to revert it, and some editors would want to delete the page as being a "coatrack". How would one define what belongs here, and what fits better at other pages about Zionism and the Palestinians (of which there are many)? I would like to see those editors who want to keep the current title and support expanding the page propose more than using the Falk source, and actually describe what the content would consist of. How would it be organized, and how long would it be? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:26, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Editors who want to keep the current title and support expanding the page have already proposed more than using the Falk source. Many sources have now been identified and discussed.

We went over this in August, extensively, up above at "#Sources on Zionism, race and genetics," where there is a long list of sources in the refbox at the bottom of the thread, some in bold. That's the thread where I talked about my algorithm, which I wrote on my userpage so I wouldn't have to write it out again.

Then, this month, we discussed what are the sources and what is the content again at "#X,Y(,) and Z as a title format," where I pointed specifically to half a dozen sources.

The sources for the article "Zionism, race, and genetics" include Kirsh 2003, Falk 2006, Hirsch 2009, Abu El-Haj 2012, Baker 2017, and Falk 2017, among many others that are already cited in the article and have been mentioned or discussed on this page.

In my view, the content should be determined by following the algorithm I lay out at User:Levivich#Forward editing article writing algorithm (although that's not policy or consensus, just what I think is best practice). If you want to know exactly what that content is, go read those half-dozen sources and whatever they all talk about is what's WP:DUE for inclusion. For my part, I have not read them all (merely skimmed), so I don't know exactly what's DUE and what's not DUE, and I don't see how anyone could know that until they actually read all the sources.

I trust there will be no further need for anyone to ask again what the scope of the article is or what the sources for the topic are. Levivich (talk) 19:53, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't address the elephant in the room, namely that these sources cover Zionism, purported Jewish race, and purported Jewish genetics, and not Palestinians. Andre🚐 19:56, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I literally just quoted a source that covers Zionism, race, genetics, and Palestinians in the same paragraph. How are you saying "and not Palestinians" when the quote is right here? Have you actually opened any of the sources I just listed to see if they cover Zionism, race, genetics, and Palestinians? If not, please do so before making any more comments here. Levivich (talk) 20:03, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I obviously read your quote, which does not address the genetics or race of Palestinians as a contemporaneous concern of lack of concern by Zionists to those of Jews, but merely laments that very issue that we are discussing. I do not see where any of the sources provided discuss the genetics or racial issues around Palestinians other than that to say that Zionists, lamentably, have not considered them. I have not read the sources in full, I have skimmed those which have intersected with our discussion, and read others in excerpt. Some I have read most or all of especially shorter journal articles. I am happy to read where the question of Palestinian genetics is addressed either as a historical matter or a current one, for Arab nationalists, other than simply to again, lament the lack of coverage of this topic. Maybe that's a pointer that it's a less significant topic, but I suspect we simply haven't read for example, an article about Nasser, 1967 and Arab nationalist views on race. You can say that's a different article, and you may be right. Still, I think the point stands that the article focuses on the question of Zionist rhetoric on Jewish racial or ethnic composition and its impact on geopolitics. Andre🚐 21:30, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I didn't ask what the scope of the article it, or what the sources are. I was there, in those earlier discussions that you link to. And I'm not seeing any previous discussion about us covering race or genetics being used to "other" the Palestinians. I'm certainly not worried about finding enough sources. But what I did ask about included whether it would make this page too long, and whether it would make this page feel like a coatrack. I trust there will be no further need for me to repeat myself. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:05, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Let's stay away from the "inept" language if we can... I question the logic here. I agree that there is no such thing as a "Jewish race," I thought we agreed that "race" itself was a historical subject of study, and not an actually extant thing other than that it is socially constructed and appears in papers and on census forms. As far as editors devoting their time, you are certainly welcome but not obligated to devote any time to a discussion, but what you should avoid doing is gatekeeping, WP:OWNing, or otherwise engaging in personal attacks or questioning of good faith or of competency (absent a compelling reason to invoke WP:CIR, that is, which I do not see how we can do here, for a content dispute) Andre🚐 19:34, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

About there being "no such thing", I did actually say above "Jewish race (so-called)", so I agree that it's a dubious concept. But it's also a concept that numerous sources tell us has been taken quite seriously, in the history of things that this page is about. (For that matter "race and genetics" is a dubious concept, too.) So it's OK for us to use a pagename that reflects what the sources tell us. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:51, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree with that Andre🚐 19:57, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

As a sort of experiment, I'm going to expand the page in this way, and I think it will be interesting to see whether or not editors feel that it works. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Zionism, race and genetics#Race and non-Jews. Doubtless, it can be improved upon, but it's a start, and I avoided making it overly lengthy. Do editors think this really improves the page? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:57, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry but that violates one of the fundamental working rules of experienced content editors - namely, in building a new page, do not copy and paste or closely paraphrase material already existing in other wiki articles. It disobliges editors from actually reading the sources themselves, which has been a perennial problem with this talk page - excessive opinions about opinions by other editors without due attention to actually reading the extensive and high quality sources we have. I have given some reasons below for why this new material is totally out of line with the protocols that so far have governed the composition of the article as we have it, and as is dictated by the title itself.Nishidani (talk) 21:55, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, article reorganization and/or splitting isn't discouraged, but you simply must cite and attribute (see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia Andre🚐 22:06, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Which I did, via my edit summaries. By the way, I am an experienced content editor, and I know full-well how to write much more carefully, including in FAs. I did this expecting that it would never be a stable version. I wanted to see if other editors would revise it, which has happened to my satisfaction, or whether it would simply be reverted, which I'm pleased hasn't happened so far. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

copying content from another page within Wikipedia requires supplementary attribution to indicate it. At a minimum, this means providing an edit summary at the destination page—that is, the page into which the material is copied—stating that content was copied, together with a link to the source (copied-from) page, e.g. Copied content from [[<page name>]]; see that page's history for attribution. It is good practice, especially if copying is extensive, to make a note in an edit summary on the source page as well. Content reusers should also consider leaving notes on the talk pages of both the source and destination.

That wasn't done. Two, whatever that guideline states, in practice, a lot of damage has been done in the I/P area by copying and pasting material over several pages, which smacks of pushing a POV. We have a link system which dispenses with that. But most importantly, as a practicing content specialist, that guideline appears to be ignorant of what we all know: wikipedia is not a reliable source. Since we all recognize this principle, to copy-and-paste (without known reverification) from one page to another is to assume that the original page is reliable. So there is an internal contradiction in guidelines. Nishidani (talk) 22:17, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

There is no contradiction in guidelines; you simply must copy the references, or you should not copy unreferenced material, if copying is called-for/merited, it may/should be reverted or deleted if it is unreferenced. Andre🚐 22:24, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

There's a lot of noise in this talk, but everything any editor does is subject to subsequent improvement by others. No big deal. And if one looks at the comment by the administrator who disapproved the #Did you know nomination, he pointed out that "an editor just today was removing close paraphrasing from sources". That editor was me. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Here are some additional potential sources: [9], [10], [11], [12]. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:10, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

The insertion of extraneous matter

The article deals with the themes of Zionism, race and genetics. The following passages, apart numerous problems, contains almost nothing on race and genetics, and neither do the sources.

Neo-Zionism is a right-wing, nationalistic and religious ideology that appeared in Israel following the Six-Day War in 1967 and the capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Neo-Zionists consider these lands part of Israel and advocate their settlement by Israeli Jews. Some advocate the transfer of Arabs not only from these areas but also from within the Green Line. Neo-Zionists consider "secular Zionism", particularly the labor version, as too weak on nationalism and that it never understood the impossibility of Arabs and Jews living together in peace. Neo-Zionists claim that the Arab attitude to Israel is inherently rooted in anti-Semitism and that it is a Zionist illusion to think living in peace and together with them is possible. They consider Arabs in Israel to be a fifth column and to pose a demographic threat to the Jewish majority in Israel. From their point of view, the only solution for achieving peace is through "deterrence and retaliation" or preferably "transfer by agreement" of the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinian population of the occupied Palestinian Territories to neighboring Arab states.

I.e. an excursus on Neo-Zionism almost totally lifted from the paraphrase of one source, Uri Ram, as he is cited on the wiki Neo-Zionism page. Cross-wiki copy-and- paste stuff, one of the worst editorial vices afflicting this topic area. And relying on one source which nowhere writes of 'Zionism', 'race' and 'genetics. At the least that is a gross violation of WP:Undue in its exposure of a single viewpoint by one scholar for over 180 words, in his papers that do not mention zionism and race/genetics.

(b)According to the 2004 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Israel and the Occupied Territories, the Israeli government had done "little to reduce institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens". The 2005 U.S. Department of State report on Israel wrote: "[T]he government generally respected the human rights of its citizens; however, there were problems in some areas, including ... institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens." The 2010 U.S. State Department Country Report stated that Israeli law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, and that government effectively enforced these prohibitions. Former Likud MK and Minister of Defense Moshe Arens has criticized the treatment of minorities in Israel, saying that they did not bear the full obligation of Israeli citizenship, nor were they extended the full privileges of citizenship.

i.e. in 2004-2005 the US state department said Israel did little to counteract discrimination against Israeli Palestinians. In 2010 it changed its view and said Israel generally enforces the prohibition against such discrimination.Moshe Arens noted something similar. No scholarly secondary sourcing, no mention of race or genetics or Zionism, unlike Falk who does mention all three.

There is quite a lot of 'stuff' on Zionism as a form of racism, which hasn't been included because the sources used for the page simply do not take this as their focus. In any case, that kind of material on the institutional politics of discrimination can be found in many other wiki articles, whereas this focus on the concept of race as it developed under Zionism, and that formative influence on later genetic studies, a very specific issue. The article could allow expansion on it through Falk (who deals with it en passant and often somewhat weakly) and others, but should not be derailed into a divagations of this highly generic type. By all means discuss this, but for the moment the material must be excluded as replicating another article, introducing matter not related to the topic's focus and essive use of a single source, while aimlessly quoting the variations in US State Department's self-contradictory standpoints. Nishidani (talk) 21:42, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

That's certainly one answer to what I asked just above the section break, and I'm not at all averse to undoing it. Alternatively, I think it would be fine to significantly revise it. But here's the thing. If we remove it, then we really are not covering everything about Zionism, race and genetics. So I'm not seeing the logic behind editors who say don't change the pagename but don't add material like this either. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:54, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Articles are written to criteria of minimal adequacy only if their composition begins and ends with the search for, close reading of, and paraphrasing of sources bearing directly on the theme(s) announced in the topic header. One could easily swamp this article by covering 'everything' directly or vaguely reflecting the issues of Zionism's view of other peoples. But familiarity with the topic will tell anyone that it is not customary for other peoples, over the last decades, to be referred to as 'races'. That is why the ground you are probing is best covered by a new article, as several of us here have often said.Nishidani (talk) 22:00, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

As I said, it was certainly appropriate to revise it from what I originally put there. And I'm fine with the changes/deletions that you made. If we leave it at that, or if the section subsequently gets revised further, with additional material on, especially, the genetics, that's fine too. And with that, I'm willing to accept that the page really is about "Zionism, race and genetics", that it doesn't omit an obvious aspect of Zionism and race. So, with that, I'm no longer feeling like it should be renamed to "Jewish racial identity in Zionism" – because, with this change, it's no longer limited to Jewish racial identity (so-called). That was my concern in the opening of the main part of this talk section, and it's been resolved to my satisfaction. But if, hypothetically, the section gets entirely deleted, then I think we will have to revisit the pagename. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:12, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Levivich, as usual, pointed the way to expansion under the present title. Though I am retired, I will be rereading for some months all of the given sources used here and anymore that are forthcoming. Perhaps I, for one, may come up with some useful suggestions in this regard. But we should try to not plunge the page into a political morass. Politics is all over the I/P area and I personally am wearied by the havoc it makes to succinct encyclopedic work. The affliction of wikipedia is often also a matter of haste. Some editors, ask Zero and others as well, take several months, if not years, just to get some difficult material organized. I had noticed this topical nexus for over a decade, but never rushed it despite the fact that there was ample material for it. Patience is one of our guarantees of strong editing towards a reliable text, which is always under revision.Nishidani (talk) 22:24, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I welcome patience. And I paid attention to what Levivich said about it, even to the point of quoting what he had said in talk, with an edit summary that pointed to the diff where he said it – and that's one of the parts that you did not delete. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:27, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 28 September 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Zionism, race and genetics → Zionism, race, and genetics – There have been a lot of discussions here about renames, but this proposal is simply to put a comma after "race", and before "and genetics". This is something that was raised earlier, during the previous requested move, and it appeared to be non-controversial then. Although just a comma, it has the effect of breaking up the phrase "race and genetics". My hope is that it will be acceptable to editors who approve of the existing pagename, while also being at least a small and incremental step for editors who dislike the current title. -- Tryptofish (talk) 20:20, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Sources on triplets using or avoiding the Oxford comma are about even. So there is no problem either way.Nishidani (talk) 21:50, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

• Neutral leaning Oxford. Academic, in my mind. Leaning slightly toward Oxford vs no Oxford, but I do not see it as material or impactful. Andre🚐 22:10, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support adding the Oxford/Harvard comma for better clarity per WP:PRECISE. Rreagan007 (talk) 18:46, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
• Support, the comma clarifies that race and genetics are two things. Levivich (talk) 19:25, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. The Oxford comma is completely unnecessary. It makes perfect sense without. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:03, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
• Neutral. I disagree that it changes the meaning and so I don't care either way. Zero^talk 13:27, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
• Distinction without a difference, both are valid and both mean the same thing. nableezy - 13:37, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:RETAIN/MOS:OXFORD. Scanning the text of the article I found about 6 lists of more than two items outside of quotes. Of those, 5 did not use an Oxford comma, and 1 did. This suggests that, absent a wider consensus to switch to using the Oxford comma throughout the article, we should not change the article title on its own. —siroχo 04:48, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 13 October 2023

Zionism, race and genetics → Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism – Better and more descriptive title that matches the article text and the sources more closely, and removes ambiguous and confusing reference to "genetics" which is being used to mean "eugenics" not "molecular genetics" or "Mendelian genetics" given the anachronism of pre-1930s race science. Present title implies an association between "Zionism" and "race and genetics," which can be problematic. Additionally, present title fails to relate the 3 free-floating concepts, whereas the new title exactly relates the racial conceptions of Jewish identity that are being discussed in Zionism as opposed to implying some problematic relation between "Zionism" and "race and genetics" (i.e., discredited race science/eugenics) Andre🚐 17:55, 13 October 2023 (UTC)— Relisting. estar8806 (talk) ★ 02:41, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support. I suggest that editors evaluating this RM read the lead paragraph of this page, with the RM in mind. The proposed new title nails it, in terms of reflecting what the page is about, as reflected, in turn, by the lead paragraph. The proposed rename tracks very closely with the wording of that paragraph – and the existing pagename doesn't. I agree with the nom, that "race and genetics" is a very problematic thing for us to associate with Zionism, without giving more nuance (and the long history of proposals to delete this page reflects, to a considerable extent, discomfort with that awkward language). Anticipating that there may be objections to leaving "genetics" out of the proposed title, I'll point out that, according to this page, genetic analyses were used simply as a more modern tool to examine what was earlier lumped under the term "race", so genetics here are not some sort of separate topic, outside of "racial conceptions", but instead a tool to study race. I recognize that the proposed new title is a bit on the long side. But it takes that many words to capture what the page is about (believe me, there have been endless discussions in this talk, rejecting anything more concise). So if one takes it as given that the page is about what it is about, then this title captures what it's about, as a pagename must. And if one dislikes the complexity of the proposed title, that's really a dislike of having this page, which is an issue for AfD, not RM. In contrast, the deeply flawed existing pagename achieves comparative brevity by way of lumping together, with no real connection, three independent concepts, almost in the manner of a slogan. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:43, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

  Adding to my original comment, it occurs to me that editors who come to this discussion without being familiar with the history of this page may be concerned about comments below, about a supposed few editors who supposedly ignore previous discussions. As should be obvious from the current pagename, this page has had a very contentious history. In fact, there are a few editors who walk a line bordering on WP:OWN, who constantly make that accusation, about others ignoring previous discussions. I want to emphasize what I said in the first sentence above: that editors who want to evaluate this RM should read the lead paragraph of this page. Look at how closely the proposed new title matches with that lead paragraph. Then look at how the existing title matches far less well. And see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Opening paragraph, which says all one needs to know about finding the scope of a page. Decide for yourself which pagename really reflects the page scope. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:09, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support The proposed article name is better, much more in keeping with article subject matter. The current article title contradicts parts of the article which discusses racial identity and historical "race science" which should never be confused with genetics. TarnishedPath^talk 01:05, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Question Is there a particular reason not to use "Jewishness", as is used in the article? (e.g. Racial conceptions of Jewishness in Zionism) ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 04:29, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Simple answer: it's a weirder word, and "Jewish identity" is used more. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:40, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Per Google: "the quality of being Jewish or of having characteristics regarded as typically Jewish". I second Iskandar's comment. TarnishedPath^talk 07:31, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose the proposer's rationale suggests they have not read the earlier talk page discussions, or the core sources on which this article has been built. Their claim that that article’s …reference to "genetics"… is being used to mean "eugenics" not "molecular genetics" or "Mendelian genetics" is clearly incorrect. The 191 instances of genetic* throughout the article evidence this clearly. A title which incorrectly excises this element of the article is inappropriate. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:47, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  I think it's unfair to assert that someone did not read the discussions or sources simply because you disagree with what they say. Andrevan has taken part in those previous discussions, as have I, so it seems pretty likely that we were both aware of what was discussed. And nobody claimed that "genetics" was being used to mean those things; the concern is that the word can be misunderstood that way when paired with "race". And I've refuted the claim that we must include the word "genetics", in my own comment: genetics are treated by all the sources as a modern method to study "racial conceptions", so they are not a standalone concept that must be included in the pagename, but rather something that is a subset of "racial conceptions". --Tryptofish (talk) 22:56, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  The green text in my comment is a direct quote from Andrevan’s post. He used the word mean. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:33, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  What I meant was that no one is claiming that editors are using it to mean that. We can agree that individuals have historically used it with that meaning. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:32, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  As we discussed at length, which you can find in the archive by Ctrl+F for the discussion of Mendelian genetics, no conception of modern genetics, nor one of Mendelian inheritance, was ever discussed or considered, but race science and eugenic ideas certainly were. Mendelian genetics was mentioned in passing in one of the sources. There is certainly a more modern contemporary discussion, which probably belongs not in this article, but at genetic studies on Jews and appears to be just a split or fork of that article with a different spin. But that has nothing to do with Zionists that are discussed in the article like Ruppin. Andre🚐 23:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose I made it plain in preRFC discussion that I would not accept a title that did not address both race and genetics per the sources, so I will repeat that here. Selfstudier (talk) 22:52, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support Better as it indicates a cogent subject. Drsmoo ( talk) 00:13, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per Onceinawhile. This is the nth attempt by some two or three editors to challenge the no consensus outcome of several different formulations successively and exhaustively discussed. The no consensus reflected consistently a majority of editors' views that there is nothing problematic in the existing title, which has excellent source backing. There must be a natural limit to how many times the same challenge is thrown down (attrition) and the same arguments repeated, most of them ignoring the detailed rebuttals concerning inadequate formulations made in the several threads earlier on. Nishidani (talk) 17:42, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  I said this earlier: [13]. There is no consensus that the existing pagename is good. And just because some editors disagree with those "detailed rebuttals", does not mean that they are ignoring them. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:15, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  It is obvious there is no consensus in favour of the existing title. This is a good faith attempt to identify is there is an alternative that might find consensus. Two or three editors have consistently, strongly defended the existing title, but a range of other editors have expressed disagreements, but so far no alternative has generated new consensus. Please assume good faith and don't misrepresent the history of this page. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:04, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - per Onceinawhile, this proposal ignores that genetics is used repeatedly in the sources and makes the OR leap that what they really mean is eugenics. This is another title that would change the scope of the article. nableezy - 20:32, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  What parts of the page would have to be removed? What new content would have to be added? None, so far as I can see. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:42, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  There are sources in the contemporary portion that are referenced in the article, but it's a WP:SYNTH leap that it's the same genetics that pre-1948 Zionists were thinking about. The early portion of the article discusses Ruppin and other Zionists who were possessed of pseudoscientific ideas about humanity, in several ways, and then goes on to touch on contemporary academic views on Jewish genetics that aren't related to that at all, and then makes the synthetic leap to say that Ruppin's eugenics/race science is really the same question as what my 23andme DNA test says, which it isn't. It's confusing, obtuse, and probably creates a bad apprehension in readers as to the veracity of the question "are most Jews today descended from Middle Eastern ancestors." As opposed to the consensus on the other article where that particular content belongs. Andre🚐 22:40, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Andrevan, I actually don't agree with you about the SYNTH, because it seems to me that there are secondary sources that discuss the topic as it developed over time (and contrary to rumors, I don't have a secret agenda of getting this page deleted). But that's not an RM discussion. What is relevant to RM is that "Zionism, race and genetics" does not help the reader understand how the page scope evolved over time, whereas "Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism" makes clearer what the continuous thread is. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Well, regardless of whether you agree that the contemporary analyses of Jewish DNA inheritance and admixture, such as Ostrer and the response to Ostrer, aren't related to Zionism or Zionist views on race, which didn't know about genetics, and that Mendelian genetics is mentioned in passing but not relevant to the topic; regardless of one's view on that material, the present title implies that there were Zionist views on genetics, which as we've established, is an anachronism and temporally confusing as a title since genetics would not have meant heredity in the 1930s. Andre🚐 22:56, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  All of this has been said, and resaid, and restated, and rebutted, and repeated for 3 months. The majority of editors have never voiced a concern about the present title. Two editors alone keep asserting that there is a problem. That is the only problem. One cannot expect editors to keep derailing their working lives on wiki by being called on to return to address an exiguous dissent by two editors alone. The original bone of contention has been gnawed to the point there's nothing left to chew on.Nishidani (talk) 23:01, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  It's clearly more than just two of us. There's never been a WP:Consensus of editors supporting the present title. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:10, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Without particularly arguing the merits of your claim, there are already 3 editors supporting this RM, in addition to me, the proposer; maybe that will be the extent of the support, but either way, WP:CCC. Andre🚐 23:44, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  This is simply inaccurate.

  It's true that the most recent RM only had 2 !supporters (but it only had 2 !opposers). However, Selfstudier's proposed move last month had five !supporters, the archive is littered with discussions where editors raised doubts about the name, and the AfD closure a couple of months ago concluded There seems to be a higher level of agreement (if not yet a consensus) that the current title is less-than-ideal, and that perhaps Zionism and racism (currently a redirect to a section of Racism in Israel), or some other expression of these topics, would be a more appropriate title. That can be taken up as a move request. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:48, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support per Andrevan. Loksmythe (talk) 04:04, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Proposed title is convoluted. The argument that this current article title is linking three separate, unattached ideas together for no reason at all is ridiculous, never mind the same argument can also be applied (more so) to the proposed title. Antiquated racial genetic science is a foundational part of Zionism, see Israeli citizenship law for recent examples. JJNito197 (talk) 08:34, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Israeli citizenship laws are not based in genetics. Can you substantiate your assertion? Drsmoo (talk) 09:46, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  "Every Jew in the world has the unrestricted right to immigrate to Israel and become an Israeli citizen." It is based on the myth of ethnic decent, which is antiquated racial science. How is this otherwise quantified? JJNito197 (talk) 10:01, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  It is not quantified through genetics. Drsmoo (talk) 12:06, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  You are quite correct that the law is not quantified through genetics stricto sensu. In practice cases where genetic testing can play a role exist. Ian V. McGonigle, Lauren W. Herman, Genetic citizenship: DNA testing and the Israeli Law of Return,' Journal of the Law and the Biosciences 2:2, July 2015 469-478. Nishidani (talk) 14:05, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  This was already discussed, that was a paternity test. Drsmoo (talk) 14:19, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  I don't understand your point, since DNA paternity testing is based on genetics. Levivich (talk) 14:58, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  The Israeli Law of Return is based on descent, not genetics. It is based on family tree and ancestry. It happens to correspond with genetics, which is to say, that if I, as a person whose DNA tests say 99% Ashkenazi, were to marry a non-Jewish woman, then that child marry again non-Jewish, that resulting child that has 25%, roughly, of my DNA, they can get Israeli citizenship. However, they do not conduct genetic tests to grant citizenship, but they will accept DNA proof toward the descent required. Other countries have similar laws for hereditary citizenship such as several EU countries. It is not, again, based on genetics, except indirectly. Andre🚐 00:36, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  It is based on the idea of descent, but to call that "genetics" is an anachronistic misuse of the term, and a good reason why "race" or "ethnicity" or "Jewish identity" are better terms than "genetics" for our title. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:38, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  (of course most (all?) nationalisms are based ultimately on the myth of ethnic descent, and most nation-states use some form of jus sanguinis in determining nationality, so we don't need a Wikipedia article specifically to tell us this is also true of Zionist nationalism.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:40, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  To be descended from something or someone (unless applied loosely) has ethnic and genetic connotations foremostly. This can be applied ethnically to individuals, communities, clans... the list goes on. If we were to hypothetically apply the same jus sanguins principle to Israel today, what would be the outcome other than what it currently being applied in the modern state? Israel is a self proclaimed, multi-ethnic Jewish state, so why make a comparisons to other countries as if Israel's isn't inherenty unique. Its antiquated regardless. JJNito197 (talk) 19:19, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support - per JJNito197, this is a bit long as a title, but per Tryptofish, it does encapsulate the page subject very well. There has been much discussion of the title, and I doubt this would be the end of the matter, but it constitutes an improvement. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There remains a distinct problem in the linking of race and genetics in the article title, and this proposal removes that whilst encapsulating the article scope. Sometimes improvement needs to be incremental, and this is a distinct step forward. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Okay. I've been avoiding commenting much because I can see that this is an open invitation to waste everyone's time by repeating, or ignoring, what has been written over three months of relentless attrition by, mainly, two editors who can't accept the existing title.

  Either you derive the title from the existing article or you change the title in order to have a mandate to change, perhaps significantly or radically the articler we have. The proposed alternative is, once more, inept. 'Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism' (why the plural?) is an example of the latter. At least half of this article is not about 'racial conceptions of Jewish identity' or even about 'Jewish identity' (a genetic or biological profile is only a very small part of 'identity', Jewish or otherwise).

  The article simply states that in its formative decades, Zionism adopted a racial definition of Jewishness. The article then shows how this thesis, formally disowned by science in the world and elsewhere, continued to exercise a formative impact both in Israel and abroad, often as an unconscious ideological bias which inflected methodologies in genetics. This held for many Zioonist and non-Zionists. The focus in exclusively on this specific tradition, not on how Zionism, politically, or via social planning, or immigration policies, or in terms of legal or religious ideas, applies 'racial' ideas.

  So this title can't avoid the implication of trying to engineer a different article. If you both, Trypofish /Andrevan, want a different article, as variously clear from the several titles proposed and disposed of over three months, please write that alternative article. You'll find zero objections to such a new article. The energy wasted in endless argufying would, if used to actually write something for wikipedia, be productive, and not a repeated drag on the time of other editors, the majority of whom for three months have found none of your many alternatives persuasive.Nishidani (talk) 11:41, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  From top to bottom, that comment is a catalog of falsehoods. I won't waste my time rebutting every single point, and I hope that no one else does, either, but I'll trust that uninvolved editors will be able to see what nonsense it is. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:25, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  I won't reply to the inaccurate description of the history of this article, as I've already made that point above, but on the substantive points:

  1. At least half of this article is not about 'racial conceptions of Jewish identity' or even about 'Jewish identity' (a genetic or biological profile is only a very small part of 'identity', Jewish or otherwise). True, identity is about much more than biology, but "racial conceptions" of identity foreground biology, and the whole current article is about exactly how that happened with Zionism, both in its early (race science inflected) period and its later period (when genetics replaced discredited raciology).
  2. The article then shows how this thesis, formally disowned by science in the world and elsewhere, continued to exercise a formative impact both in Israel and abroad, often as an unconscious ideological bias which inflected methodologies in genetics. That's an accurate summary of a big part of how this article is currently framed, i.e. as an essay with a strong argument or thesis which it tries to prove by occasionally selective use of sources, exactly the problem with the article as it now stands. (Even including starting with a "literature review", it follows the style of a dissertation, not a Wikipedia article.) The "and genetics" in the title is the justification for this synthetic approach, and needs to go.
  3. please write that alternative article. You'll find zero objections to such a new article. That approach is precisely the origin of the messed up state of the current article, as far as I can see. As the main originators of this article, who have an understandable sense of ownership, have told us on the talk page, it came about because they couldn't get a consensus for their version of Genetic studies of Jews so they set up this fork. Asking people to set up a new fork every time consensus can't be reached is a recipe for a whole series of POV-pushing non-encyclopedic articles.

  BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:55, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Look,Bob. How many articles do objecting editors actually write for wikipedia, rather than talkpaging or tweaking? I cannot see any sign of it over the last years. The smearing of it as an 'essay' seems to be simply your subjective term for dislike of it. he last remark above is particularly offensive. There are severe and competent editors here who have never noted anything 'messed up' in the article. It is false that the 'originators' (plural) 'couldn't get a consensus for their version of Genetic studies of Jews and thus set up this 'fork'. Onceinawhile wrote a stub, made a note to the Genetics article which was reverted as irrelevant to a science article. His stub was then subjected to an AdF, based on Synth/OR accusations which were patently silly. Astonished by the extraordinary refusal by many editors to address the evidence, I expanded the stub to more or less the shape it has now. There was no such forking, as you suggest. Throughout there has been a persistent unease, irascibility, antipathy to what numerous academic texts state, that Zionism had a tradition of racial definition of Jews which dragged over into genetic studies of Jews particularly in israel. All alternatives offered have no other function that to bomb that strongly documented linkage out of sight. That is the only perceived function of these repeated challenges - don't link Zionism to either 'race' or 'genetics' or both, whatever numerous books and scholarly articles state, as if Zionism had some unique right to be protected from its own history, unlike every other ideology.

  All this again shows that we are merely doomed, with this last POVish erasure push to go over the same tedious, exhausted soils of prior threads, with their errant inconclusiveness, forcing everyone, yourself included to repeat themselves,and it is a total waste of everyone's time. Nishidani (talk) 21:48, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  My understanding of the origin of his article was based on Iskendar’s comment in a thread on this page: FYI, this page was in part created because material not identical to but related to this page was ejected from Genetic studies on Jews as being too off-topic and hyper-specific. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:13, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• Weak Support I don't love this proposed title but it is better than the current one, closer to a real topic, and reflects the strongest parts of the existing article. I don't think it would lead to any substantive material being cut but might lead to a slight refocus of the historically later sections. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:57, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
• Procedural comment. Because discussion is active and opinions are divided, I request that nobody close this discussion for at least several more days. I have also placed a neutrally worded notice at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Uninvolved input would be welcome. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:31, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support The current title is unthinkably bad.....a vague combining of three different terms. It doesn't even define a topic. It's more of a vague coatrack for bunch of essays, innuendo and WP:OR and inclusion of anything that anyone wants, unconstrained by having any specific topic. The proposal solves this problem and can be a guide to an article with an actual topic. This would be a big step forward even if the new title might need tweaks after the dust settles.North8000 (talk) 17:02, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  All said previously at AfD, and many, many times since, didn't hold water then, doesn't now. Selfstudier (talk) 17:07, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  "The proposal solves this problem...", which refers to the proposal in this RM, was said previously at the AfD? --Tryptofish (talk) 17:11, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  " The current title is unthinkably bad.....a vague combining of three different terms. It doesn't even define a topic. It's more of a vague coatrack for bunch of essays, innuendo and WP:OR and inclusion of anything that anyone wants, unconstrained by having any specific topic." has been repeated, over and over, by the the title detractors in the AfD and since. I hope this is clear now. Selfstudier (talk) 17:14, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  And yet (need I say this yet again?) there has never been a WP:Consensus that the current title is good. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:16, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Or bad. Selfstudier (talk) 17:18, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Agreed. That's what "no consensus" means. And that's why discussion of new proposals is appropriate. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:23, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  I didn't say they weren't. Selfstudier (talk) 17:28, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  I never looked at this article before and never looked at comments in previous discussions. I wrote "The current title is unthinkably bad.....a vague combining of three different terms. It doesn't even define a topic. " because it was immediately slam-dunk obvious. "has been said by many others before" is a reason to take it seriously, not a reason to discount it. Also, preferences aside, wiki guidance says that article titles should define a topic. The current title doesn't. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:36, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  never looked at comments in previous discussions Do, it's educational. Selfstudier (talk) 17:42, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  No, I am commenting on this RFC, this article and this title, all of which I did read. My point was that I independently arriving at what (per you) many others have said. North8000 (talk) 18:08, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  The RFCbefore will do just as well. Selfstudier (talk) 18:10, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, you'll see lots of other editors who also said that the title is unthinkably bad, or the equivalent. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:49, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Unfortunately for the detractors there were more on the other side. Selfstudier (talk) 18:02, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  But no consensus. And you were the proposer of one of those previous RMs. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:21, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  An attempt at a compromise, which the current proposal is most certainly not. Selfstudier (talk) 18:24, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  I think I've tried harder than anyone else here, to get compromise, but there are editors who resist any change to the article that they WP:OWN, as if it were a mortal battle. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:39, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  As I’ve said, outside input is needed. Drsmoo (talk) 12:11, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose: The proposal is sufficiently ambiguous that it could be interpreted as a fundamental change of scope. The subject, as it stands in not solely about developments "in Zionism"; when we have articles about "X in Y ideology" it often means only the conceptions of the subject as understood within the context of said ideology, and if this page was moved, it could certainly be construed as such. The current topic is about the intersection and interaction of Zionism, race and genetics that is not quite so simplistic, and is as much about Y in X as it is about X in Y, as it were. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:06, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  I'm really surprised that anyone would argue that this page is about "race and genetics" in things other than Zionism. In fact, the editor who started the page has been in favor of "in" language to describe it. Also, you wrote some of the current language in the lead paragraph, which follows closely with the language of the proposed title. In any case, the very fact that anyone could conclude from the existing pagename that the page should include developments about "race and genetics" that were not "in Zionism" is a very strong piece of evidence that we need a new pagename. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:29, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  The fact that there are consistently more opposes than supports suggests the opposite. Selfstudier (talk) 18:32, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Read my lips: no consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:39, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Same again here. Selfstudier (talk) 18:44, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Can a move request be paired with an RFC to solicit uninvolved opinions? Drsmoo (talk) 18:50, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  If there are good reasons (specified in an RFCbefore) to commence an RFC about the title, then that can be done after this RM is closed. I have some difficulty imagining what those reasons might be, however. Selfstudier (talk) 18:53, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  WP:RM doesn't specifically provide a mechanism for a concomitant RfC, but I certainly agree that this RM discussion would benefit from getting input from previously uninvolved editors, so that it isn't just another iteration of the discussions between the same editors on this talk page. That's why I put a neutrally worded notice at NPOVN, which I linked to a short way above. On the other hand, I think it might be a good learning opportunity for the editors who defend the existing title, if we were to have an actual RfC for the question: Is the current pagename optimal? It would get an overwhelming response of "no", I'm pretty sure, although I feel like it would be WP:POINTy to actually create such an RfC. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:05, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  The better question is "Is the current pagename NPOV/neutral" which is what was done here. Selfstudier (talk) 19:09, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  I don't know how this RFC (a proposal for a specific new title) will end but possibly acknowledging a few things as baby steps would allow inching forward. In the RFC, the conclusion is that the current title failed even the lower bar of being NPOV which means it would certainly fail the higher bar question of whether the current title should be change or kept. If this specific proposed change fails, perhaps folks here could either stipulate that or rlse actually have that RFC. Followed by a process to pick the new name. Slow but decisive progress is faster than no progress. North8000 (talk) 19:35, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  RMs are already a way of pulling in uninvolved editors, and they are centrally listed just like RfCs. RfCs should not be used for renaming articles, per WP:RFCNOT. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:38, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  There were some variants mooted that used turns of phrase such as "in Zionist thought" that I thought were more passable, but "in Zionism", as mentioned above, sounds like the topic is confined solely to internal ideological considerations, whereas the page is about the expansion of ideological considerations out into the wider world. I also more generally think the proposed wording is verbose alongside confusing. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  I agree in part about "in Zionist thought" or "in Zionist thinking", although that would make this proposal even more verbose. As I said in my original comment here, although the proposed title is somewhat wordy, that reflects the chosen subject of the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:28, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  I have absolutely no objection to that modification if it would help this gain consensus. And I'm open to other proposals. If there is one better, I can withdraw this one. Andre🚐 05:54, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  I agree that the qualification about Zionist thought/thinking would help keep the article focused on the topic it has so far focused on (rather than on eg Israel’s state practices), and there does seem to have been rough consensus on this in previous discussions. The downside is of course additional wordiness, but that might be a price worth paying. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:22, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose (coming from NPOVN). The central tenet of the move rationale is false, as much of the article deals with actual genetics, not eugenics. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:27, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, I wish the OP hadn't framed it that way, but I do think, as I said above, that genetics are contained within "racial conceptions" because the sources consistently treat genetics as a more modern tool that was used to study that. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:38, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  "Actual genetics" is a scientific field of analysis. "Actual genetics" is not what Nadia Abu El Haj, a Palestinian anthropologist featured prominently in this article, practices, yet she's given equal billing with Harry Ostrer who is at least a tenured medical geneticist. If genetics should remain in the title, we should remove the anthropologists, and actually have a scientific section about genetics. Not pop anthropology weighing in that it's impossible to define Judaism. Genetic research on Judaism is a real scientific field which requires WP:MEDRS standards and credentials which El Haj lacks. Andre🚐 05:51, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  Geneticists are not necessarily the best authors on the history of genetics. Historians of science, historians of racism, and indeed anthropologists are often better for that. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:12, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  I agree; but historians of science should cover history of science, and geneticists cover genetics. El Haj is being used for genetic facts to dispute real geneticists like Ostrer. Andre🚐 17:34, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Also Nishidani is correct that Abu El Haj being Palestinian is irrelevant here; that is absolutely not a reason that she should not be given weight. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:02, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  It's relevant here because she's a Palestinian nationalist with an anti-Israel POV. Andre🚐 17:33, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  I.e. So once more, we are being dragged into a proposed title change which the formulator(s) admit is not satisfactory, or poorly framed. That, proposing RMs that are acknowledged from the outset to be flawed, inadequate or not quite to the point has now wasted three months of editors' time.Nishidani (talk) 21:59, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Oh, you suffer so! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:01, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Not at all. I don't suffer.. (complete the sentence as you may think fit. My own preferred ending would be an Aeschylean inversion that forms an exception: μάθει πάθος).

  Nishidani (talk) 23:21, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support The proposed reformulation describes the subject matter of the article better. Admittedly, the concept of "genetics" does overlap with the idea of racial biology, which is what this article is about, i.e. defining Jewishness by race and biology, as opposed to shared history, religion and culture. However, as mentioned by other users in this discussion, the word "genetics" has become a loaded word since the last century and has acquired ulterior meaning that would be misleading if adopted as a heading in the context of this article. It is also a narrow, specific concept that fails to capture the full content of this article, which is really about defining the identity of a race by biology. The proposed reformulation squarely captures the theme of this article, and should be preferred. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 12:26, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism" is a different topic than "Zionism, race, and genetics." Anyone can go ahead and start the "Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism" article, but I don't see the benefit of changing the scope of this article rather than starting a separate article about racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism. In general, the content should be changed to match the title, not the other way around.

  Some of the sources for the article "Zionism, race, and genetics" are about Zionism, race, and genetics (e.g., Kirsh 2003); others about Zionism, race, and genomics (Baker 2017); others about Zionism, race, and eugenics (Falk 2006); others cover more than one of the above (Abu El-Haj 2012, Falk 2017). Genes, genetics, genomics, and eugenics, are all covered by the word "genetics" in this article title, which is why I think it's the right title for an article about Zionism, race, and genetics/genomics/eugenics/etc.

  There are multiple sources about Zionism, race, and molecular genetics, such as McGonigle 2021, Ostrer 2012, and, you guessed it, multiple works of Falk.

  (If this sounds familiar it's because I literally just copied and pasted my previous comments from earlier discussions.)

  Students who don't do the reading shouldn't try to participate in the class discussion. Same for editors who haven't read any of the sources. Levivich (talk) 14:36, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  Am I right that some of the sources are about Zionism and race but not about genetics, eugenics, genomics or molecular genetics? BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:38, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  I don't know about all the sources in the world or all the sources in the article, but all of the sources I mentioned are about all three. Levivich (talk) 16:48, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  We already have an article about "Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism". It's this one, right here. All one has to do is read the lead paragraph to see that. But the lead paragraph is not the lead paragraph that someone should write for a page on "Zionism, race and genetics", so anybody who wants to have a page on that should go and write it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:17, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  But those aren’t all of the sources in the current article. Race is the consistent thread. Some of the content about race is ALSO about genetics, genomics or eugenics but not all of it, while ALL of the content is about race. Better to keep race in the title and remove the confusing third word. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:04, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  In context, no, not all the sources are about genetics in the same way, and it's misleading in my view. El-Haj is about the anthropology of genetic studies and analyzing the sociology of geneticists. It's a history of science, not a hard science, topic. Falk has a unique position as a historian of science but perhaps not a really great historian, but he is a geneticist. His writings are overweight, in my view, in the present version. I have not read and I do not know about McGonigle. Anyway, a source like El-Haj is about genetics in the same way it's about science - loosely. We may as well call the article Zionism, race, science, and genetics, humanity, Earth, and people, politics. And practically all of the material which is historical does not deal with genetics or the question of heredity of Jewishness, but rather the racial ideas underpinning Zionist thought, e.g. the entire portion about Doron, Morris-Reich, Avraham, Hart, Kiefer, Efron, Leff. Maybe the article should be called: "History of Zionist racism." I would further add, that Ostrer is not about race, or about Zionism! It's a work of genetics about Jewish genetics.Andre🚐 22:08, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  1. "The anthropology of genetic studies and analyzing the sociology of geneticists" is "about genetics." But here's a quote, from page 4:

     I examine three distinct moments in science and politics: race science, circa 1900, that relied on cranial measurements and phenotypic differences; population genetics, circa 1950, based primarily on blood group data; and genetic history, starting in the 1990s, which examined genetic differences at the level of the nucleotide, focusing on mitochondrial DNA and the Y-chromosome ... What cultural understandings of the (Jewish) self and what range of political projects—distinctly American, decidedly diasporic, and committedly Zionist—is genetic historical inquiry making possible and how?

  2. Ostrer 2012 -- well, there are at least two Ostrer 2012s. This paper, which is about Jewish genetics, and doesn't discuss Zionism. But I was referring to the book, Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People, which is the Ostrer 2012 that is discussed in the Wikipedia article along with Abu El-Haj at "Zionism, race and genetics#The genome era: 2000 to the present". That book most certainly covers Zionism, race, and molecular genetics, as I said, and here's a quote, from page 220:

     ... Are recent discoveries fragmentary and half-truths? I think not, because the molecular genetic studies of which Sand is critical have set the bar higher for discovery, reporting, and acceptance than the race science of a century ago—less standalone observation with more replication and more rigorous statistical testing.

     The stakes in genetic analysis are high. It is more than an issue of who belongs in the family and can partake in Jewish life and Israeli citizenship. It touches on the heart of Zionist claims for a Jewish homeland in Israel ...

  3. McGonigle 2021, p. 35:

     And while Jewishness has often been imagined as a biological race—most notably, and to horrific ends, by the Nazis, but also later by Zionists and early Israelis for state-building purposes—the initial origins of the Ashkenazi Jews who began the Zionist movement in turn-of-the-century Europe remain highly debated.

     Population analysis by geneticists has led to an unresolved debate over Jewish origins (Abu El-Haj 2012; Elhaik 2012; Kohler 2014). Geneticists have begun to describe the genetic basis for common ancestry of the whole of the Jewish population (Behar et al. 2010), even though the historical claims that are entangled with these scientific studies are still contested.

     (Note he cites Abu El-Haj 2012.)

     Page 65:

     I surely had gained access to a rich site where the melding of Zionist ideology and molecular genetics would obtain in ethnographic richness.

  For the umpteenth time, these books are, indeed, about (1) Zionism, (2) race, and (3) genetics, including (3a) molecular genetics. Levivich (talk) 23:26, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  I agree that Ostrer's book addresses Zionism briefly; I agree that El Haj mentions DNA; I agree that Osrer's book also addresses race science; I agree with your analysis of McGonigle, which closely tracks with the article and the text, as I said, I have not read McGonigle. He's also not a geneticist; he's an anthropologist and Middle East scholar again. And I accept that he does cover the "history of genetics." I would accept "Zionism, race, and the history of genetics." What about that? Andre🚐 00:26, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Or how about this: "the history of racial and genetic conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionist thought." Boom. Andre🚐 01:39, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  It's not just Jewish identity. Zionism, race, and genetics is also about Palestinian identity. I dropped a Falk 2017 quote about that in another thread on this page on the subject. Levivich (talk) 01:56, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Fair enough. I'll buy that. "The history of racial and genetic identity in Zionist thought" Andre🚐 02:37, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Briefly? I guess that's a matter of opinion. The words "Zionism" or "Zionist" appear a dozen times or so in Ostrer 2012 based on text searching. Granted, it's not a huge portion of the book, but I'd say more than "briefly."

  Abu El-Haj does way more than "mention" DNA. Look, p. 120:

  In the case of Jewish origins, evidence of Jewish peoplehood is sought against the background of a now longstanding commitment, first articulated by Zionist activists and scientists over a century ago, to the idea that contemporary Jews are direct descendants of an ancient people that originated in ancient Palestine and to the belief that that fact can be—indeed, will be—substantiated on the basis of biological data, once it is properly read and understood. That is the conception of Jewishness that has been sought and reproduced in what is now over a century of the near continuous study of the biology of the Jews. And that origin story, which need not be couched in the Divine, is continually recuperated and reiterated in a variety of ways in genetic historical research today. I begin with the choice to privilege Y-chromosome evidence in narrating Jewish history.

  In an article published in November 2001, Harry Ostrer ...

  What then does the genetic evidence show? Recognizing that “older single-locus studies” have been divided “on whether Jews have had significant admixture with non-Jewish populations, including possible mass conversions,” Ostrer explains the limitations of such studies, including the possibility of alleles (genetic mutations) under selection. By way of contrast, “although by religious law Jewishness is a maternally transmitted trait, studies of mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal polymorphisms provide strong evidence for both matrilineal and patrilineal transmission, and many generations of endogamy” (891). In other words, genetically speaking, patrilineal transmission and not just matrilineal transmission—evidence of a sustained endogamy—has characterized Jewish history. But what about the question of origins? What about the origin of the Jewish people in the Middle East during the Bronze Age? Ostrer focuses on the Y-chromosome evidence: Jewish populations share thirteen common Y-chromosome haplotypes with non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations, “indicating that the original Jews might have arisen from local peoples and are not the offspring of a single patriarch” (891). He then discusses the discovery of the Cohen modal haplotype and explains that it may have originated during the “First Temple Period” in Jewish history (thereby presuming the biblical account to be historical and not mythical), rooting Jewish origins in the ancient Near East here via the priestly line. There is no specific mention of mitochondrial studies, whose historical conclusions in 2001 remained “divided.”15 It is the Y-chromosome evidence that tells the story of “a genetic link among Jewish groups,” as the section on the “maternally and paternally transmitted trait” is named (891)

  And pp. 189-190:

  Modal haplotypes are measures of relative frequency: the CMH can be modal at 50 percent—its reported frequency among Cohanim—because i190 / Chapter Five is found at a higher rate than among “Israelites,” who are the comparison group; the CMH can also be “modal” at 10 percent for Israelites if it is found at a lower frequency in non-Jewish populations. Moreover, the Cohen modal haplotype is found on the Y-chromosomes of Jewish men who do not believe they are Cohanim, and it has been identified on the Y-chromosomes of non-Jewish men as well. As such, the Cohen modal haplotype is not a test for whether or not a particular man is a Cohen any more than it is a test for whether or not a particular Lemba man is a Jew. For that matter, it cannot be used to determine whether or not the Lemba as a group are Jews. Genomic facts of generational connection and halakhic traditions of both priestly status and of Jewishness are and must remain distinct, researchers insist.

  But let us keep in mind the entangled origins of religion and race in nineteenth century thought, an entanglement especially robust with regard to Semites in general and Jews in particular (Anidjar 2008; Masuzawa 2005). And let us keep in mind the merging of biology (as race, as population), religion, and nation in Zionist thought and the Israeli nation-state (see chapter 2). What, then, in the wake of genetic historical evidence, is the relationship between genealogical and religious answers to the question of who might be a Jew?

  Assuming for the sake of argument that it has been resolved that the CMH is the (or a) modal haplotype of the ancient Hebrew population, does the presence of the CMH in the Lemba population (at the “right” frequency) make the Lemba Jewish? ...

  This is what you call "mentions DNA"? These are just two example passages, there are many more in this book. If I quote more, I'm going to run into copyright problems. It's not about just the history of genetics... he argues about whether or not there is genetic evidence for a Jewish race. He argues with Ostrer directly. This Abu El-Haj/Ostrer debate has been commented on by other scholars, as I've quoted from.

  You continue make these misrepresentations of the sources, and I keep posting quoted debunking those misrepresentations. I really, really think it's time for you to stop talking about sources you very obviously have not read. Levivich (talk) 01:44, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Sorry, you're talking about Nadia Abu El-Haj right? she is female. You haven't "debunked" any "misrepresentations." We're discussing the sources. Nobody is claiming to have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything and be able to quote all page and lines where everything takes place. We're trying to get at an improvement to the article title. Yes, El-Haj talks quite a bit about concepts such as Y-chromosomes or Cohen modal haplotypes, but, she isn't qualified to opine on those topics scientifically, and a lot of that is outdated already. It's true that a good portion of her material is dedicated to rebutting and attacking Ostrer. That doesn't mean it actually has "genetics" in it. By which I mean - actual genetic science. I'm not trying to split hairs: this is policy. She's a social scientist, so her domain should be about the history of genetics, not technical data like the frequency of haplotypes. Whereas Ostrer, is not really a historian. That's why I referred to his work as the genetic work, i.e. his actual genetic study - we do not need to go into his book much, since again, it's more a "popular" history work in my view, since he's not a "serious" historian and El-Haj is not a serious geneticist. Andre🚐 01:53, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  So now you're saying what I just quoted isn't "actual genetics?" It doesn't matter what you think about Abu El-Haj's qualifications; her work is cited and discussed by RSes in the field, including by geneticists like Falk. And in no way are Abu El-Haj's qualifications relevant to this RM. Even if you take Abu El-Haj out of the article, it's still about Zionism, race, and genetics, because of the plethora of other sources. Levivich (talk) 02:01, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Please check out WP:MEDRS. Several formal systems exist for assessing the quality of available evidence on medical subjects. Here, "assess evidence quality" essentially means editors should determine the appropriate type of source and quality of publication. Respect the levels of evidence: Do not reject a higher-level source (e.g., a meta-analysis) in favor of a lower one (e.g., any primary source) because of personal objections to the inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions in the higher-level source. Editors should not perform detailed academic peer review. Genetics is a medical subject. Andre🚐 02:02, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Genetics is not a medical subject, medical genetics is a medical subject. To quote from the Wikipedia article on medical genetics: Medical genetics differs from human genetics in that human genetics is a field of scientific research that may or may not apply to medicine, while medical genetics refers to the application of genetics to medical care. Maybe there's some aspect of Zionism, race, and genetics that has to do with medicine, but I don't think I've seen it. Generally, race science, genetic inheritance, and the categorization of humans by their genes, isn't BMI because it's not medical. It doesn't have to do with health or medical care. It's biology (well, plus politics), not medicine. Levivich (talk) 03:45, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Read the corollary. Information that is not typically biomedical may still require high-quality sourcing if the context may lead the reader to draw a conclusion about biomedical information, as can occur with content about human biochemistry or about medical research in animals. For example, if a disease is caused by low activity in a particular enzyme, then information about the enzyme's activity levels is treated like biomedical information. More generally, information which (if true) would affect or imply conclusions about biomedical information is typically itself treated like biomedical information. Genetics, Tay-Sachs, are Jews a race, etc. This is close enough to medical. 23andme and Ancestry show health traits. Genes determine hereditary disease. Andre🚐 03:50, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  I'm sorry, but the attempt to apply this guideline here is tenuous at best. The focus here is clearly not genetic disease or medicine, even if those things are briefly mentioned. It feels like this is roughly 100% more about excluding El-Haj than it is about actually applying the guideline. Drop the stick? Iskandar323 (talk) 03:59, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Currently, the RM has more support than opposition, and is being relisted. But I am happy to withdraw if we can come to a compromise. Andre🚐 04:02, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Pretty sure the bottom of the barrel has been thoroughly scraped now, to go along with the thoroughly flogged horse and no-one has managed to come up with a better title than the current one. Selfstudier (talk) 10:39, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  This comment doesn't add anything constructive to the discussion. There's no consensus for the current title, and at least 6 or 7 editors trying to change it to something better. I had about 4 or 5 other ideas in the discussion which, if any appear palatable, I'm open to. "The history of racial and genetic identity in Zionist thought" seems like the best one to come out of the last round. How does it strike you? Andre🚐 17:36, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  At the risk of repetition, There's no consensus for the current title or against it either. Do feel free to scrape the barrel/flog the horse some more if you feel it is not yet empty/not quite dead. Selfstudier (talk) 17:41, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Your, and other editors', continued statements that good faith constructive discussion is somehow unwelcome, unwanted, flogging a dead horse/scraping the bottom of the barrel, is incivil. Please desist. Let's focus on topics, not editors. Andre🚐 17:58, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  To Iskandar's point about El Haj, to me these issues are linked. Currently we have what amounts to a POVFORK in the genetics section. We have to fix that text, and the title is part of the problem because it implies this article is a scientific genetics article, not a history of genetics, article. Andre🚐 17:40, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  A POVFORK of what? Selfstudier (talk) 17:42, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Of Genetic studies on Jews, as has been stated by others, where there are similar studies discussed as to those in this article, such as Ostrer. Andre🚐 17:59, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Raised at AfD and not upheld. Selfstudier (talk) 18:01, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  I didn't participate at the AFD. WP:CCC. Let's engage on the merits of arguments. Continuing to bring up ad hominem, and discussion of other threads, is sophistic argument. I know you're capable of better than that. I'm fine with genetics continuing to stay in the article and the topic, and making it something that's not a POVFORK. But that means high sourcing standards. Andre🚐 18:03, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Somewhere higher up in this wall of text, the argument was made that the page is, to some extent, about Palestinian identity, and therefore, the page scope is not limited to Jewish identity. I think it's worth pointing out that, in this page, Palestinian identity is dealt with in the context of excluding Palestinians from having a Jewish identity, but not as an exploration of Palestinian identity in itself. Consequently, it's entirely contained within "Jewish identity". Part of defining "Jewish identity" is defining who does not have Jewish identity. Thus, that argument actually supports the proposed title change. On the other hand, the existing pagename suffers from the issue that I raised earlier in #Zionism, and which race?. As long as the pagename is about some sort of intersection of Zionism and race and genetics, then there is potentially no limit to the amount of race and genetics about Palestinians that would fall within the page scope, because all it has to do is be related to Zionism. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:47, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support. The current subject of this page is difficult to define. It reads like a POV content fork of several other pages. However, anything related to real science (as opposhed to bashing and politics), i.e. genetics should be placed to page Genetic studies on Jews, not here. The renaming and refocusing this page will do just that. Yes, the renaming will change the scope of the article, but I think the scope of this article should be made more narrow by excluding genetics. Mixing science with pseudoscience and politics seems to be a bad idea, at least for this "subject". I would probably vote to delete this page on AfD. My very best wishes (talk) 01:24, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  You literally cannot have a POV fork from several other pages. nableezy - 01:58, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  Of course you can, expecially if other pages are also POV-forks of each other. My very best wishes (talk) 02:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  Please read WP:POVFORK. nableezy - 02:25, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  OK. This is a content fork created to enforce someone's POV. Does it matter? My very best wishes (talk) 14:29, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, and youre still wrong but if it didnt take after this many tries I dont think its worth my trying again. nableezy - 14:31, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  Whatever. Just to clarify, we do have pages Race and genetics, Genetic studies on Jews, Racism in Israel and huge section Zionism#Characterization_as_colonialist_and_racist. This page looks to me as a strange mish-mash of the above. My very best wishes (talk) 14:48, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  We have already dealt with the "The point is that the article scope is synthetic and stitched together" assertion. Selfstudier (talk) 14:51, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  Then you must not have read it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . nableezy - 14:51, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  I appreciate the support, but nothing in this proposal would exclude genetics. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:35, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  ) Nice try, not buying. Selfstudier (talk) 14:44, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  You appear to be trying to bait me into incivility, but it's not going to work. I've explained this very clearly already in this thread. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:59, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  Nope, just not buying your assertion which I also have explained previously. Selfstudier (talk) 15:02, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  Given that I'll be taking a break from this page voluntarily or otherwise, would it be helpful for me to withdraw this RM so someone can start a fresh one without anything taking us off track? Andre🚐 14:53, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  Bit late now, too many replies and more than half way, may as well see it through. Selfstudier (talk) 15:04, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  I'm ambivalent. The result of you doing that is that other editors will construe it as proof of "consensus" for the status quo, and will accuse anyone who tries again of being tendentious. It's already off track, and absent a decisive act at AE, anything in the future will also go off track. It might be best to let this play out until it closes naturally, and AE closes however it closes. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:05, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  Got it. I'll leave it open. I do want to say though that I favor a better title and I withdraw any suggestion of changing the scope of the current text that I made or implied. I favor keeping the text and scope as-is, and changing the title. Andre🚐 15:13, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

  As do I, even if other editors insist on not buying it. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:22, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion of ongoing RM

*::"Actual genetics" is a scientific field of analysis. "Actual genetics" is not what Nadia Abu El Haj, a Palestinian anthropologist featured prominently in this article, practices, yet she's given equal billing with Harry Ostrer who is at least a tenured medical geneticist. If genetics should remain in the title, we should remove the anthropologists, and actually have a scientific section about genetics. Not pop anthropology weighing in that it's impossible to define Judaism. Genetic research on Judaism is a real scientific field which requires WP:MEDRS standards and credentials which El Haj lacks. Andre🚐 05:51, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

It is once more clear from this remark that the RM is not motivated by any concern to find a more precise title for the article we have. The title change, as with other examples earlier, has been proposed in order to secure a warrant to change the content of the article. So editors are not being asked what an RM proposal ostensaibly claims, but by a kind of sleight-of-hand, to get a consensus to write a different article. I'm afraid, also, that the arguments being made are completely unhinged of any rational grounding and we are once more subject to a flow of arbitrary assertions about putative incongruencies that simply are not there: they are invented, imaginary. For example,

• Andrevan, jumping on the adjective 'actual' in 'actual genetics' states that since this is 'a scientific field of practice' one cannot use anthropologists to comment on anything an 'actual geneticist' does. Take a deep breath, relax, sigh...First deduction. Andrevan.You obviously don't know what you are talking about. To assert the above would imply you probably haven't read the literature on this, in the article or on the talk page. Anthropologists and molecular biologists work similar problems from different perspectives and constantly engage with each other's analyses. The genetic thinking the article surveys combines elements of molecular anthropology otherwise known as genetic anthropology, with the discipline of population genetics which forms part of biological anthropology. The geneticists are not men in labs just studying DNA samples (actual practice). They are geneticists who make historical deductions, anthropological inferences, from the statistical analyses of populations to construct historical-anthropological scenarios (i.e. their work constantly implies things outside their strict laboratory competence). That branch, which Ostrer ventures into, cannot avoid the crossover with anthropology. What status has a silly sneer about the, yes, 'Palestinian' scholar? She wrote a respected sociologicaL study of genetic theories about middle eastern peoples, which all scholars, historians, geneticists etc., regularly cite. But no. For you, the anonymous wiki expert, this is all 'pop' anthropology. If we allow genetics in the title, we must purge it of reference to that 'Palestinian' woman's 'pop anthropology'.

So the giveaway here is that the purpose of these RMS is to change the title, not because as it stands it doesn't reflect the article's focus, but because only a different title will provide a pretext to gut it of portions of existing text some editors apparently find distasteful. All of this in complete indifference to the actual scholarly literature that generated the article. The RM is speciously motivated. Its only apparent rationnale is to secure a warrant for deleting text. Nishidani (talk) 09:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I think you might have misread Andre, Nishidani. They said: If genetics should remain in the title, we should remove the anthropologists, and actually have a scientific section about genetics. Their point (right or wrong) is that the content needs to change with the current title whereas changing the title would enable content to stay. Cf WP:AGF. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:16, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

No, I didn't misread. The remark I cite is in support of an RM that Andrevan endorses, which elides genetics from the title. I.e. the RM's proposed title would potentially justify, were it approved, the gutting of half of the article, perhaps its core. In his latest comment, which I find offensive in that it mentions as relevant the ethnicity of a source-writer while questioning her competence in a field where geneticists and historiansa accept her competence (Falk, Weitzman et al), his hypothesis is that, even if genetics were to remain, a paragraph or two would have to be gutted. So the purpose remains that of using title language (pseudo)analysis to gut important elements of the existing text. 'If'-'then' syntax happens to assume a question of propositional logic, but there is no logical connection between the 'if' and the 'then' conditions in the proposition advanced by Andrevan. For the simple reason that, though a reader of this talk pagew, and, one assumes, the sources, he doesn't appear to grasp that the 'genetics' we describe consist of historical-anthropological modeling and inferences, and that the field is widely interpreted by sociologists/anthropologists and geneticists with a broader background than merely running laboratory work. Like most of the comments in these endless threads, we are asked to debate questions that a competent grasp of the sources would not normally allow one to raise.

I always assume good faith; I do not assume competence. That has to be shown by the quality of editoirial input. That has to be proven, and in that completely irrational challenge to the presence of an anthropologist in a genetics section, there is an issue of competence. That's understandable, but really, how many months or years do we have to devote to addressing non-issues or an enduring unhappiness with a perfectly source-backed title? Nishidani (talk) 10:48, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that Andre's mention of Abu El Haj being Palestinian was wrong but I think there are enough words on this talk page without us all speculating about each other's motivations and I'd urge you to stop doing so. Other editors can re-read Andre's pasted comments above and form their own judgements for themselves about what they *really* mean. Why don't we try and make this talk page easier rather than harder for un-involved editors to participate in? BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Attacking the motives for creating an RM is problematic. There is no problem with changing the title or the text of the article, both of which are bad, and how long people spent writing it, aka WP:Own should not be a consideration. Drsmoo (talk) 12:03, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I am not attacking the motives of the two editors who persist in challenging the title. I am challenging their competence to make a fair and neutral assessment of the article. I do so because throughout these threads I can see little evidence of a mastery of the sources. The objections are all fixated on three words, a thematic index, informing the present title, which has extensive textual warrant in sources. Every alternative has been shown either to misrepresent the article as it stands, or to suffer from periphrastic ineptness (often admitted).

As to ownership, look at the record. Onceinawhile and then I wrote up the article, but since its completion, I have been inactive, despite numerous tweaks. If anything I am amazed that several obvious improvements that familiarity with the sources would suggest haven't been acted on. It's like the 670 Australian aboriginal articles I wrote. I collected all relevant sources for each tribe with links to access them, then wrote up a brief excursus on each subheading (language/territory/ social structure/history etc. My expectation was that, with the heavy groundwork done, the foundations set out neatly, thaT passing editors (on an average 5 a day for each) would fossick in the overburden (i.e., explore the sources at a click, read further) and fill out the texts. Nah, too much work. Many editors appear far more disposed to argufying on talk pages than actually doing in depth reading to improve pages. And of course a content editor, by the fact they have written a page up, is familiar with the topic. Familiarity with the topic is, alas, not necessary for anyone dropping in, who may wish to spend an inordinate amount of editorial time opinionizing, and expecting a reply, even if the opinion is a misprision, errant or meaningless.Nishidani (talk) 17:18, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Nadia Abu El-Haj is a leader of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Some people consider that movement antisemitic. Andre🚐 01:59, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Andrevan: If it is substantiated in reliable sources that Nadia Abu El-Haj is a leader of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, perhaps you should add that to her biography, but that does not appear to be common information. As far as I am aware she is an academic that simply voices her opinions and pitches in on BDS issues. The second part of this is a borderline, if not actual BLP violation, and I suggest striking. The implication is exceptionally clear if not directly defamatory. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:32, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

It is certainly not defamatory. The statement is from the Wikipedia entry: "Some critics accuse the BDS movement of antisemitism." She's a leader of a group called Anthropologists for Justice in Palestine. They have some selfpublished material which is not reliable, although it would probably be WP:ABOUTSELF. She was on a panel called "The Case for Academic Boycott" at Columbia. She signed a petition created by a Columbia student initiative to rebrand BDS at Columbia as: Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). She's affiliated with Israeli Apartheid Week. I found a source for some of this in Inside Higher Ed[14] and I'm sure we could find high quality sources for each piece of background bio information to extend her article, but that's not really my goal. Andre🚐 05:40, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Some critics, hurrah! Boycott movements, contrary to the prevailing hysteria in the US, are perfectly valid expressions of consumer choice and freedom of speech. But the point is, whether you care to admit it or not, that the positioning of those two statements alongside each other is a pretty exemplary case of the "X is associated with Y, and Y is associated with Z, so X is associated with Z"-type logical fallacy. Are you suggesting your intent here was not aspersion? Iskandar323 (talk) 06:03, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I am merely pointing out she is not just a Palestinian, but a pro-Palestinian political actor. Andre🚐 06:04, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

As opposed to all the inviolately apolitical sources on the subject? The topic is intrinsically political, and, as in any area, all sources are biased. It doesn't really matter what El-Haj gets up to in her free time (least of all the activities that draw the ire of an advocacy organization) so long as her peer-reviewed work continues to pass muster. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:12, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Again, I am merely substantiating, no aspersion or claim, that Abu El-Haj is controversial at best. She has written controversial work attacking a Jewish geneticist. We also have the work by Doron Behar, which is reliable. What is the challenge to that. "It's political." Then, as you say, it's fine. Yes? Andre🚐 06:22, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

My only issue with Doron Behar is that he runs businesses directly connected to the research he conducts. His papers freely admit that they are based on genetic tests conducted at his own commercial labs (presumably with the research funding), and he also sells ancestry testing, whose underlying premise is that the results of it are far more determinative and clear-cut than they actually are, i.e. they need to sell the fantasy of accuracy to sell the product. It's a wide indirect COI streak. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:41, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

That's fair, on the COI piece. But what Behar does in his free time, as you say. If El-Haj can be a Palestinian nationalist and anti-Israel and that doesn't make her controversial, then Behar or Bennett running a DNA business seems OK to me. Or we could limit the weight for both as all are clearly COI. Andre🚐 17:38, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Just to be clear, Behar's COI is marginal, though enough to be disclaimed on his papers. El-Haj's political leanings are not a COI, they are still just a bias. All sources are bias. A COI requires a direct financial interest or close interpersonal or commercial connection. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:08, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

If I'm reading this correctly, the point is simply that the RM is only about potentially changing the title to fit the content. We should not be changing content to fit the title. I think that's a fair point. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 12:33, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

The point is that the article scope is synthetic and stitched together. I believe the proposed title describes the article more accurately. I also simultaneously believe the "genetics sections" need a lot of work. However as far as the scope of the topic versus the title, I am open on ideas to change the title to accurately describe the "genetics content" instead of removing that word from the title. For example, what about, "Zionism, race, and the history of genetics"? Andre🚐 00:39, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Who gives Abu El Haj and Ostrer equal billing? Well, one person is Susan Martha Kahn, former associate director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies [15], who wrote about Ostrer and Abu El-Haj in 2013, "Commentary: Who are the Jews? New formulations of an age-old question." The abstract begins: This commentary contrasts two recent scholarly works on the possibility of a biological basis for "Jewishness." Harry Ostrer's Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People claims a strong shared genetic component of Jewish ancestry tracing to the Levant, extending so far as to suggest a biological basis for Jewishness. Nadia Abu El-Haj's The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology adopts a skeptical perspective on contemporary genetics and claims that genetic studies of the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA cannot be viewed as supporting a common Jewish ancestry. (BTW, that's about molecular genetics.)

Who else? Falk's 2017 Zionism and the Biology of Jews. From page 201:

Susan Martha Kahn (2013) notes the very high stakes and the subjective perspectives adopted even by experienced and essentially objective researchers, when confronted with the issue investigating whether there is a biological component to Jewishness. She compared Harry Ostrer’s Legacy (2012) with that of Nadja Abu El-Haj’s The Genealogical Science (2012). Both published at the same time and both, “referencing the same sets of data,” arrive at entirely different answers to the age-old question: who are the Jews?” (Kahn 2013, p. 919) ...

Falk then quotes Kahn 2013, pp. 919-920:

For Ostrer, these data not only confirm traditional narratives of Jewish history […] but also provide sufficient evidence for establishing a biological basis for Jewishness. For Abu El-Haj, these studies are profoundly problematic […] because they rely on a style of reasoning in which the notion of a biological basis for Jewishness is reinforced and legitimated through scientific discourse. In short, their first disagreement centers on the underlying hypothesis that there is a “population” – a race, a people – of “Jews” that traces its roots to ancient Palestine. Ostrer accepts this hypothesis; Abu El-Haj contests it.

All of page 202 of Falk 2017 is about Kahn, Ostrer, and Abu El-Haj:

According to Kahn, Ostrer’s goal is ... As for Abu El-Haj ... As Kahn stressed, “Abu El-Haj speaks to an audience different from Ostrer’s ..." ...

So, why does this article give Ostrer and El-Haj equal billing? Because scholars like Susan Kahn do so, and because other scholars like Raphael Falk think the comparison is so important that he spends two pages on it. This is how we know that Ostrer 2012 and Abu El-Haj 2012 are both important works in this field: they're discussed by other reliable sources, like Kahn 2013 and Falk 2017.

There is no substitute for reading the sources. No shortcuts. Reading the Wikipedia articles about the authors is not enough, you have to read the literature in the field. If you skip the research and comment about things which you do not know about, you waste everyone else's time. Levivich (talk) 17:06, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• It is once more clear from this remark that the RM is not motivated by any concern to find a more precise title for the article we have.
• I am not attacking the motives of the two editors who persist in challenging the title. I am challenging their competence to make a fair and neutral assessment of the article. I do so because throughout these threads I can see little evidence of a mastery of the sources.
• These are not good faith attempts to discuss the ongoing RM. They are assumptions of bad faith, and personal attacks on Andrevan and me. (And as for "two editors", etc., what I did was to propose a comma, nothing more, and Nishidani and Levivich both supported it. In this current RM, at the time that I post this, there is actually very slightly more support than opposition, so this isn't a matter of what only two editors think.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

It's true that Kahn does give them equal billing, but that doesn't mean Wikipedia should. Wikipedia has policy that only scientific experts get to talk about science. The opinions of El Haj and McGonigle about genetics, the hard science, are less weight than that of geneticists, which includes Falk, and Ostrer. Does anyone disagree? Andre🚐 00:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I disagree. First of all, not only Kahn gives them equal billing, Falk does, too. And Abu El-Haj's 2012 work is cited by others... for example, by McGonigle 2021. And if the RSes give two sources equal billing, then of course Wikipedia should, too, that's what WP:NPOV says. And if RSes routinely cite a scholar or a particular work, then of course that's WP:DUE for inclusion. It doesn't matter what you personally think about Abu El Haj or their qualifications... it just matters what RS think. And RS think Abu El Haj 2012 is a significant work in the field, seeing as they cite and discuss it, as shown in the quotes I've dropped on this page. Levivich (talk) 01:48, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

McGonigle and El-Haj are both not qualified as scientific experts in genetics. They may be treated as experts in the history of genetics. Not interpreting genetic scientific data for conclusions. Andre🚐 01:55, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

And what is your point? Levivich (talk) 02:04, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

If editors insist that the article scope must include genetics, we should rewrite this section to favor meta-analyses and reviews per WP:MEDRS. That means Behar and Ostrer are going to take precedence on the factual determination of the question "are Jewish DNA mostly Middle Eastern with admixture" or whatever it is they say (I'm willing to workshop that) but, if we agree on the applicability of MEDRS, it should be clear we're favoringg Abu El-Haj now, which is the kind of editorial peer review we cannot do per MEDRS. Andre🚐 02:16, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

What is the WP:BMI in this article or topic area? Levivich (talk) 02:19, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Genetic studies are biomedical research. From the NIH NIGMS. [16] Understanding the genetic material DNA and RNA, heredity, and variation—that's genetics. Studies in genetics focus on questions like: What regulates the activity of genes? How do genes affect health and disease? What can we learn about ourselves by studying organisms like bacteria, yeast, and fruit flies? Human studies in genetics like exhuming corpses to test their haplotype markers and sequence their genomes are obviously BMI, but if we disagree, maybe this is a good topic for an RFC or a discussion at a noticeboard, and a more meaningful point of contention to discuss than the above RM. Andre🚐 02:28, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Even if you don't accept the "BMI by association" that's baked into the guideline. Scientific consensus and higher quality sources with more scientific data in reviews and meta-analyses should be preferred for controversial, quasi-medical topics like personal genomes, personal genetics, and ethnicities. Everyone should avoid using poor sources for any type of information. The best source is the one that is appropriate to the type of information: For biographical information, use a source that is reliable for biographical information, such as a book about the person..... The context of non-biomedical information often needs to be presented with caution. For example, discussion of lawsuits which allege harm (such as have been undertaken against various vaccine manufacturers), if presented without context or without careful wording, may imply that a treatment is in fact harmful. Likewise, without context, a statement that a certain treatment is popular or widely used may imply some level of effectiveness. Additionally, MEDRS-quality sources are often higher-quality than non-MEDRS sources even for non-biomedical information, so when they are available it is often better to use them. From the essay you shared. Andre🚐 06:13, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Alan F. Segal really blasted El-Haj's work Facts on the Ground [17] in the Columbia Spectator Andre🚐 06:42, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Is that in the article? Selfstudier (talk) 11:00, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

It's in the article on that book, under academic reviews, as well as scathing reviews by James R. Russell, David M. Rosen, and Aren Maeir. It goes to El-Haj being controversial and her work was not positively received by many experts. Andre🚐 16:40, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

If we do not rely on that book in the article, so what? Selfstudier (talk) 17:36, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Again, I'm trying to impeach El-Haj's credibility as an unbiased voice on genetics issues and issues of fact in science. She has an axe to grind. Andre🚐 17:39, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Take that to RSN and ask if she is reliable for her statements. Selfstudier (talk) 17:44, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

You are free to bring this to RSN. The way it works isn't telling other users to start threads on noticeboards. If you believe what I'm saying needs broader input, you may solicit it, and I will not consider it a problematic action by you. However I'm actually making an assertive, affirmative statement here that 1) El Haj is not a scientific expert, and 2) El Haj is politically biased and must be attributed in context. I would further say that Falk is outdated. We need to look at updating Falk with newer research. That Cohen modal haplotype work that El Haj and Falk focus on is an older generation of research that has been refined extensively. Cohens are just one caste or sub-social-group that is inherited or hereditary in Judaism, but nowadays they can do much more advanced stuff, not just Y-DNA and mtDNA. In fact there are even groups that promise to sequence quite a bit more of one's genome for a fee, though we're not yet at the point where I can CRISPR myself a new pink hair gene. But that will come within 30 years. Regardless, before I veer into foruming about modern genetics and genetic research: you are free to start threads on me or my statements or this article, but I am making arguments here. The response to my arguments can be 1) refutation of the direct discussion, or 2) if you want, start a thread for broader input. This is the correct venue, though for me to discuss this, and it's not appropriate to ask me to move the thread for broader input as though that's something I'm supposed to do. I'm discussing it, here, now, you can refute, engage, agree, ignore, etc. Andre🚐 17:55, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

You are again making this a forum for your personal views on a scientific topic.

The thread preceding it is a good example of what I have several times called the conversational mode of wiki talk page discussions. Opinions are thrown out, one after another, but awareness of the assumptions underwriting them, sentence by sentence, seems absent. One can usually tell at a glance what is a mere conversational gambit and what is an informed judgement whose quality shows that close reading and careful evaluation lie behind this or that assessment. In wiki threads like those we have on an article that deals with several complex areas of research, not opinionizing, should be a sine qua non. But, given the sheer quantity of the talk flow, editors with an austerely critical approach, but not an infinite amount of time, will usually make mental notes of these obvious flaws in an opinionated argument, without making them explicit. Since you constantly repeat variations on a theme, I suppose I should illustrate that I think goes wrong in your numerous assertions. Below is more or less what passed through my mind in a few seconds afterreading and checking your reference to Segal, just one of hundreds of things. I didn’t reply, because it would have only generated another lengthy and pointless thread for which I for one simply have no time to waste on.

• You questioned the use of a book written by Abu El-Haj in 2012 on genetics for our article on Zionism, race and genetics.
• In doing so, you cited as decisive Alan Segal's critique of her 2001 book on archaeology written 11 years earlier.
• You do not link us to Segal’s paper. You cite the wiki page Facts on the Ground which summarizes responses to her 2001 doctoral thesis in its book form.
• The link on that page does not take anyone to the original article, but to today's version of the Columbia Daily Spectator. That link is effectively dead.
• The Columbia Daily Spectator is a student daily newspaper, i.e. automatically it fails RS.
• I.e. you cite Segal as summed up on a wikipedia article, not Segal's paper.
• His paper is conserved at Campus Watch, a militant campus monitoring organization whose surveillance of scholarship consists of showcasing among other things what it considers violations by academics of its politically correct line on the I/P conflict. It reproduces Segal’s paper, but is not RS itself.
• Since the Facts on the Ground link to Segal which you use doesn’t work, anyone actually interested in his views who checks it would normally ccorrect the flaw by providing a link to his actual article, which we lack. This you didn’t do. One might assume, correctly or otherwise, that you simply used the wiki page summary without following the paper trail to read for yourself Segal’s paper. You take another wiki page at its word.
• Segal's area of competence was the history of religion, not archaeology, which is what El Haq's 2001 book dealt with.
• To cite Segal’s opinion from Facts on the Ground as conclusive evidence for El Haq’s status as an academic is selective. Several academics on that page appraise it as important, several lambast it (it is an attack page generally).
• To use Segal’s critique of a 2001 book of archaeological practice to undermine a book on genetics published 11 years later on a different topic is methodologically inane. Segal was commenting on the book version of El Haq's doctoral thesis, published in 2001, not on the book Abu Haq wrote, and which we use, on a completely different topic, in 2012. So using him in that way is utterly pointless (and pointy)
• All experienced editors should know that their personal opinions and dislikes are utterly irrelevant to the assessment of the RS standing of a source.
• If Falk, Weitzman and many other scholars regularly cite El-Haq for her views on genetics, that means she qualifies.
• You mentioned her ethnicity as an invalidating factor: she has a POV. Most academic books have a POV. Falk was a Zionist, but that is completely irrelevant to our evaluations. He was an acknowledged expert in his field.
• The number of scholars whose work was dismissed critically, occasionally or often, in peer review, and yet who were later cited for their viewpoints, is infinite. Hanna Arendt turned down Raul Hilberg’s magisterial The Destruction of the European Jews for Yale University Press, and it had to find a private publisher. It then became the foundationstone for holocaust studies. Michael Astour’s Hellenosemitica was roasted by some critics on its appearance, but is now considered a landmark in the reorientation of studies on the Mediterranean-Semitic context of studies on ancient Greek history. So too Hayden White’s Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe etc.etc.

In short, editors in dialogue should be aware that there are internal constraints on what one can argue, based on a stringent awareness of the unexamined assumptions that arise spontaneously in conversational mode, which, because the assumptions are obvious to many other editors, will be ignored or simply dismissed. Any book or article, esp. on difficult topics, will be written by scholars who practice this art of framing their views in terms of cogency of pertinence, logical coherence and scrupulous attention to evidence. There is no evidence of this above. A careful editor, aware of best practice on wikipedia, let alone what scholars are trained to do, would, for any one of those methodological points listed above, have refrained from making that argument.Nishidani (talk) 15:46, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to be taking a break from this discussion and page. Maybe for a long while. I've made a number of copyedits. I assume there's no particular objection. I'll let that version stand with no plans for any changes; whatever happens with the RM, will happen. The only note I want to quibble on right now is that the Columbia Spectator link is easy to obtain, but I'll leave that as an exercise. Sorry it became a broken link somehow. It was working when I tried it. Try archive.org. I also shared the NYT, New Yorker, and HNN articles elsewhere substantiating El-Haj as controversial. They're in a thread on my talk page if anyone wants them, I can provide. When sources have received extreme criticism from experts, they should be attributed, not used to rest the key aspects of the article (and Segal in the student paper is still an expert source given the author, regardless of the venue. Please read our RS sources policies on WP:SELFPUBLISHED experts) The criticism of the book is so extreme and goes on to be critical of the methods and the qualifications. But as I said, I'm going to take a very long break from this page and discussion. I appreciate you responding point by point to the arguments made. Andre🚐 16:02, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Nishidani, what I see in the above discussions seems to be (on the matters of substance) more confusion about the "other side" than collision. Maybe that's a sign of hope. Maybe I could ask a question that might help sort this out. I gather that the contents of this article is somewhat how you want it to be. Could you make your best effort to write a sentence that clearly, unambiguously defines the topic of the current content of the article? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:22, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Nishidani: I would find it helpful to see that one sentence, too. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:29, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

• (ec) Since I'm closing loose ends in preparation for taking this page off my watchlist, I'd like to blanket apologize for the offense caused by my remarks and withdraw them. I was not intending to imply that El-Haj is suspect due to her ethnicity. On the contrary, I expect that for Jewish and Palestinian scientists, social scientists, and researchers alike, their ethnicity/heritage/background sparks their interest in the topic. I understand why my comment made it sound like I was complaining about El-Haj's ethnicity, and not her nationalism. I think emotions were running high overall, but it's not an excuse for a statement that inadvertently or not, causes someone to feel other or lesser. I have nothing but respect for the great Palestinian people and I wish them peace and their rights. Andre🚐 15:31, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Can anybody write a sentence that clearly, unambiguously defines the topic of "Race and intelligence"? The best you're going to come up with is "'Race and intelligence' is about race and intelligence." You can expand that by defining 'race' and 'intelligence' ("'Race and intelligence' is about the social construct of race and its false association with the social construct of intelligence"), but ultimately, the complex and multifaceted relationship between race and intelligence cannot really be boiled down into one clear, unambiguous sentence. "X and Y" articles are about X and Y. "X, Y, and Z" articles are about X, Y, and Z. Some topics cannot be clearly and unambiguously defined in a single sentence. Some topics are ambiguous. Try writing clear, unambiguous single sentences defining God, woman, justice, genocide, the list goes on and on... Levivich (talk) 16:47, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you were referring to my question....if so, I didn't ask that. I asked for Nishidani's best effort to write a sentence that clearly, unambiguously defines the topic of the current content of the article. And the context was that they seemingly agree with the current general content of the article. North8000 (talk) 16:53, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Maybe Nishidani can do it, but I think you're asking the impossible, and for that reason, the request isn't reasonable. For example, I doubt anyone could do that even for well-established topics like race and intelligence, or god, or woman. Levivich (talk) 16:56, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

It's impossible for them to merely make their best effort? But I'll put it more simply: "What specifically (saying more than just the current title) does Nishidani want the article to be about? North8000 (talk) 17:05, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

OK but before you ask Nishidani to educate you about what "Zionism, race, and genetics" is about -- and mention at AE that he didn't respond -- have you tried to find out for yourself what "Zionism, race, and genetics" is about, by reading the sources? Any of them? I notice you haven't changed your statement earlier that this is "a vague combining of three different terms. It doesn't even define a topic."

Imagine I go to the French Revolution article, having read absolutely nothing about the French Revolution, including none of the sources cited there, and then I say this isn't a topic, and then I ask another editor to please sum up the French Revolution in one clear, unambiguous sentence.

This just doesn't seem like a reasonable approach to me. Levivich (talk) 17:14, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Why don't you quit the false crap like saying I was asking them to educate me on the topic and other mis-stating of what I asked? Do you really not understand / can't you read what I asked, because you are completely mis-0stating it. What P explicitly asked for and what is important is Nishidani's opinion. North8000 (talk) 17:25, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

"write a sentence that clearly, unambiguously defines the topic of the current content of the article" == educate me about what the topic of the current content of the article is Levivich (talk) 17:32, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

North asked a good faith question, and I "bumped" it. This seems like an awful lot of effort to argue that it's impossible to write a sentence on what this page is about, especially coming as it does from an editor who makes a big point of saying that if one just reads the sources, then one will understand what the page is about. And it sounds like it's really an effort to preempt any effort to make an issue of it at AE. It sure seems to me that all the complaining that the RM proposal will change the scope of the page falls flat if the complainers cannot even articulate what that scope is. So I'll offer an alternative approach: explain in one sentence how the RM proposal will change the scope. Don't just complain that it will change the scope, but explain how it will. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:39, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Look, this is an RM, this is supposed to be a discussion about the RM, not 20 questions. Selfstudier (talk) 18:45, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Only 2 questions, and a strenuous effort not to answer either one. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:58, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

An answer is not required, not answering is an answer of a sort. Selfstudier (talk) 19:04, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

"Not answering is an answer of a sort". Indeed, it is. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:20, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

You wrote at AE that most editors have a problem with the title, idk how you reached that conclusion, at least half of editors are fine with the current title. Which doesn't mean that if someone can come up with a better one, it would be thrown out on auto, but in 3 months of back and forth no-one has managed it.

And saying more than just the current title? I actually think that is the answer. Selfstudier (talk) 17:14, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I can't tell from the indenting who you are asking that of.--Tryptofish (talk) 18:45, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I am not asking anything. Selfstudier (talk) 18:46, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

"You wrote at AE that..." I said that it's unclear who the "You" is. But you already know that. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:58, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't you so it was.... Selfstudier (talk) 19:04, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, North didn't post at AE, and Andrevan has said that he is no longer going to post here, so you meant Levivich?? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:20, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

(North did post at AE, FWIW. OK, bye all!) Andre🚐 19:23, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I'll repost my newer re-statement of the question. @Nishidani:, could you describe your opinion on what you feel the topic of the article should be? Please say more than just repeating the current title. Thanks. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:51, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying quickly. I've been mowing lawns with a tractor all day, and took note for your request just now, when I've half stonkered by 2 glasses of Chivas Regal pressed on me by an old man, and three glasses of Prosecco by his less adventurous wife, all on en empty stomach. I don't have an opinion on what the topic of the article should be I saw a stub with that title subject to deletion on wildly negationist grounds, and since I know the topic well, asked permission of editors to undetake an overhaul of the article and bringing it up to something like GA standard by adding all of the scholarship I was familiar with on, precisely, the intertwined issues of 'Zionism, race and genetics'. This remit was courteously conceded to me, and I dutifully excerpted from the numerous sources whatever I found regarding that topic complex. Bref, this article was written to trace how Zionism reformulated Jewish identity in terms of the then current concept of race, the ensuing history of the idea down to WW2 and the residual impact this idea had on scholarship after the foundation of Israel in the impact it exercised on the rising science of the genetics of the Jews. I hope that is clear, but, if it ain't, then you'll have to wait till I swill a bit of the hair of the dog that bit me, tomorrow.Nishidani (talk) 19:46, 25 October 2023 (UTC)