Talk:Zionism

@Selfstudier and האופה: Can the two of you please discuss here what you think this should say?

In particular, User:Selfstudier, can you please offer what you think should be said here as a direct quote from a source you cite? And maybe choose verbiage to acknowledge that the term "colonial project" may be interpreted differently by a general audience today than how it was interpreted by Zionists in late 19th century Europe?

If the original was in a language other than English, we should include the quote in the original language. Languages evolve, and a translation that may have been appropriate in the late 19th century may not be appropriate today. If you could use help with translation, we might be able to arrange that.

I think User:האופה has a point that the term "colonial project" may be inflammatory and therefore constitute POV editing in today's political environment. With luck, we might find a way to include that term as a direct quote from some Zionist from late 19th century Europe in a way that User:האופה and others will find acceptable.

DavidMCEddy (talk) 07:29, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Early Zionists sometimes referred to their project as "colonial" in the sense of establishing agricultural settlements (in Hebrew moshavot) and reviving Jewish life in the ancestral homeland. This quote appears to be used anachronistically in this context, to imply as if the Zionists were adherents of the contemporary sense of colonialism, the control of resources and people by countries, notably imperial powers, in foreign lands. This usage is more political than encyclopedic and totally unnecessary here. HaOfa (talk) 08:34, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Agricultural land and water sources are resources, so agricultural settlements (or colonies) control resources. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:02, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Iskandar323: The text was added by yourself on 5 June, care to comment? The lead is a summary of the body and I assume you are relying on the material in para 4 of the lead. "Similarly, anti-Zionism has many aspects, which include criticism of Zionism as a colonialist,[26] racist,[27] or exceptionalist ideology or as a settler colonialist movement.[28][29][30][31][32] Proponents of Zionism do not necessarily reject the characterization of Zionism as settler-colonial or exceptionalist.[33][34][35]" Selfstudier (talk) 09:42, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Although it is true that Zionists called their settlements "colonies" (moshavot), it is more relevant here that they called their whole enterprise colonization. They used that word in English, and they used it in German. The minutes of the Zionist Congresses used that word hundreds of times, not for individual settlements but for the overall enterprise designed for mass settlement. Zionism only stopped calling itself colonial when the concept of colonialism developed a bad odor in world opinion. It is simply not true that the meaning of the words has changed in the interim (suppose a century from now the Mormons decide to settle all of Mars—we will call it colonization just the same). Of course one can identify differences between colonization by a nation state and colonization by some other group of people, but those differences were recognised back then in just the same way as they are recognised today. That difference is one of the motives behind modern analyses that distinguish "settler colonisalism" from other types. Zero^talk 11:37, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes, whatever Zionism is believed to be today, it emerged as an expressly colonial endeavour. Hence, the World Zionist Congress established the Jewish Colonial Trust; the Jewish Colonisation Association was established in the UK; and the like. This shouldn't be in the lead as a criticism, but as a basic description of the movement's early formulation. After 1948, the nature and characterisation of Zionism naturally morphed. Much more recently, the conceptual framework of "settler colonialism" has been applied, but that is a distinct label from the basic colonial characterisation, which early Zionism was open and unabashed about. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:00, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I support inclusion of the word colonization or colonial in the lead; As others have said, Zionism began as an openly colonial project, aligned geopolitically and in many ways ideologically with European colonialism. We should not leave that out of the article because of a modern day aversion to the attitudes of the past. Unbandito (talk) 22:08, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The problem is that "colonialism" has multiple meanings. There's the way it is most commonly used today - with all the negative value judgment of the colonial enterprise as in the Colonialism article- "maintaining of control and exploitation of people and of resources by a foreign group of people. Colonizers monopolize political power and hold conquered societies and their people to be inferior to their conquerors". And there's colonialism in the sense of moving to a new place and establishing a settlement there- a colony - as in Colonization of Mars- migration and establishing long term presence, without any negative associations. Zionists thought of themselves in the latter sense, while the proposed edit will likely be understood in the former.Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 16:54, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Zionists thought of themselves in the latter sense...

this is just not true. See the writing of the leaders of the movement, and the scholarly discussion on these writings. DMH223344 (talk) 18:39, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

::I am quite family with thew writings of the Zionist leaders, and none of them thought their project was about conquering, controlling and exploiting inferior people. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 19:01, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Strawman. Not the issue at hand, which is, was it a "colonial project", yes it was. Selfstudier (talk) 19:06, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

::::Not in the sense described in our article on "Colonialism" Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 19:08, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

There is no such link in the material that you reverted in this diff. Selfstudier (talk) 19:11, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

::::::The confusion as a result of multiple meanings I described above is obvious, wether or not a link exists. The text I restored has been in the article for years (with minor variations). I don't think there is agreement here to change it to the version you like, Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 19:19, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

What are the multiple meanings of "colonial project"? Selfstudier (talk) 20:24, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

::::::::read above Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 20:30, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I did, answer the question, please. Selfstudier (talk) 20:32, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

::::::::::read it again, I am not going to repeat myself. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 20:34, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

You just did. Selfstudier (talk) 21:43, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

You've of course omitted the most relevant part of that paragraph which mentions settler colonialism specifically. "While frequently advanced as an imperialist regime, colonialism can also take the form of settler colonialism, whereby colonial settlers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace an existing society with that of the colonizers, possibly towards a genocide of native populations"

Is your point that the early zionists didnt' think they were doing anything negative? DMH223344 (talk) 21:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

::::The early Zionists did not "invade" anything - they emigrated to a land with the authorization of its sovereigns, and the only territory they "occupied" was territory they bought or leased. I don't see anything negative in that, Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 21:37, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

You're citing the fact that Zionists got permission from colonial authorities to settle in Palestine as evidence that it wasn't colonialism?? Unbandito (talk) 22:27, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

::::::I don't think the Ottoman Empire colonized Palestine ("The Ottomans neither colonized the territories they conquered nor carried Ottoman Islamic law to all the new settlements" [1]), but let's assume ad argumentum that they did - getting permission from a colonial power to move to Palestine is not the same as colonizing it yourself - or do you think the Ciracassians also colonized Palestine? How about the Templars? Arabs who moved there during the Ottoman rule? Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 22:54, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Though I support both renderings in this article, I would point out that my edits changed the phrasing in the lead from a "colonial project" to "colonization" Unbandito (talk) 00:15, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

For the editors who think that Wikipedia should not describe Zionism as "colonialism," can you name one book about Zionism that does not describe it as colonialism? Levivich (talk) 21:32, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:You could start with המהפכה הציונית (The Zionist Revolution) by David Vital. There are many more. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 21:56, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Is that the same as The Origins of Zionism, written in 1975? Levivich (talk) 22:00, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::I don't think so, it was published in 1978, and "The Origins" seems to be part 1 of a trilogy, which this isn't. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 22:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

OK that's very old, and WP:AGEMATTERS. And if Google Books is correct, it was published by the WZO. [2] If there are many more as you say, it should be easy to link to a book written in the 21st century, in English, by an independent publisher. Levivich (talk) 22:08, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi. Check out this review by Dr. Benny Morris (starting from "Colonialism is commonly defined as"). With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 11:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Benny Morris, in a book review, doesn't agree with Khalidi's The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017.

And? Selfstudier (talk) 12:24, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, now we are getting somewhere. No doubt Benny Morris is real 21st scholarship. But, a few "buts":

1. I know it's a bit pedantic, but that's not a book about Zionism, and neither is Khalidi's book a book about Zionism. That's Morris reviewing Khalidi's book about the conflict. A book review shouldn't be given as much WP:WEIGHT as a book, and a book about the conflict -- for this article -- shouldn't be given as much weight as a book specifically about Zionism (or the history of Zionism).
2. I'm not sure that either Khalidi or Morris have ever written a book about Zionism? They are experts in the conflict, but I wouldn't call either of these "WP:BESTSOURCES" for this article.
3. Nevertheless, even if we "count" this, we have one scholar (Khalidi) saying Zionism was colonialism, and one scholar (Morris) saying it wasn't. Call it a tie. So that begs the question: which, if either, is the mainstream view?

I assume I don't have to prove that there are, say, three books entirely about Zionism that call it "colonialism," although I can post three if anyone wants. (If we open it up to looking at books about the conflict in general, and not just Zionism specifically, then there will be even more books like Khalidi's.) That leaves the question: are there more books/scholars (and I mean 21st century real scholars like Morris and Khalidi) that share Morris's view that it's not Zionism? I'm going to guess without looking that we'd find something by Efraim Karsh agreeing with Morris's view that Zionism was not colonialism. And some would argue about whether Karsh "counts" but let's skip ahead and say Morris and Karsh are two. I could post like six examples that say "colonialism." So are there like six or more examples like Morris or Karsh that say "not colonialism"? What I'm getting at is that I think "colonialism" is the mainstream view and Morris is in the minority. "Prove me wrong"? Levivich (talk) 12:25, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::Why would Karsh, an academic historian and professor (emeritus) of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College not count? Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 12:35, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Extreme bias, still, let's count him, still going to be a minority. Selfstudier (talk) 12:36, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::And Khalidi or Morris are not biased? C'mon, let's be serious. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 12:41, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Both biased, of course, all sources are biased. Not extreme though. Selfstudier (talk) 12:42, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::::I find Khalid to be every bit as extreme as Karsh, just from the other side. That's not a serious argument for exclusion. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 12:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I totally agree, Khalid is extreme too, I don't see why we give preference to his work over that of Karsh. HaOfa (talk) 15:29, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Who is Khalid? DMH223344 (talk) 15:30, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

::::::::::::::It's an obvious typo - Khalidi Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 18:35, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Bring sources, that's where we are at. Like this one, for example https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-socialism/socialism-zionism-and-settler-colonialism-in-israelpalestine/845325220666E2F7BD373A1271E24060

"It was also a settler-colonial project. Until the Second World War, Zionists commonly referred to their ‘colonization’ of Palestine with no pejorative implications. Selfstudier (talk) 15:31, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Aside from bias, I don't think Karsh has ever written a book about Zionism (as opposed to a book about the conflict). But I think we'd all agree to "count" Karsh so as not to be distracted by arguing about him, and still, Morris and Karsh would make a minority of two, so the question remains: who else is there among 21st-century scholars who say Zionism was not colonialism? (And note: the number of books about Zionism, meaning BESTSOURCES, that say it's not colonialism is currently 0.) Levivich (talk) 12:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::You are moving the goalposts (slightly, but moving them nonetheless). You first asked for " one book about Zionism that does not describe it as colonialism" and I gave you one, , which you dismissed on a pretext ("not 21st century"). Now you are asking for something else - multiple books that explicitly says it is "not colonialism" - that's not the way academic books on a topic are usually written, as opposed to polemics seeking to prove or disprove a point. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 12:54, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

What was that about moving goalposts? There is no unresolved question here and no real argument against colonization (or colonial project). Selfstudier (talk) 12:57, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::::I thought I explained it: Levivich first wrote 'can you name one book about Zionism that does not describe it as colonialism'. When that was done, he switched to "who else is there among 21st-century scholars who say Zionism was not colonialism" - Moving_the_goalposts#Logical_fallacy Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 13:02, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'll take a book about Zionism -- 21st century independently written/published -- that either doesn't describe it as colonialism or says explicitly it's not colonialism, but to your point, Morris's book review disproves it: there you see him explicitly say not colonialism, so that is in fact how academic works are written. There are so many books/works about Zionism that say it's colonialism that if the mainstream view was that it wasn't colonialism, we'd have no problem coming up with many modern works that say so explicitly. As an example of this, I can show you modern scholarship that explicitly says the mainstream view is not that it's settler-colonialism, but I'm not aware of any that say it's not colonialism at all. Levivich (talk) 12:59, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::::I said books are usually not written this way, not that you can't find an example or two that do. Morris is well known for his polemical style, and that is a book review - not a book. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 13:05, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I would still count crossing the first goalpost ("doesn't say colonialism") as a score :-) But we're still at zero examples...

You know, 1978 was before the Israeli archives were opened, before the New Historians, anything that old is obsolete when it comes to scholarship on this subject, so that doesn't count. That's why WP:AGEMATTERS. Plus it appears to be out of print, published by the WZO, and in a language I do not know how to read so I can't verify it. Levivich (talk) 13:17, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Modern Zionism dates to the late 19th century, you think there's some mysteries document hidden in Israel's archives that suddenly exposes the true nature of Zionism as a colonial project that wasn't known before? You will note that the most notable of the New Historians - Morris - is actually one that holds the position that it is not colonialism.

If you keep inventing pretexts (has to be a book, has to be explicitly about Zionism, has to be 21st century, has to be in English, has to be in print, can't be published by WZO[which incidentally is not quite accurate - it was published by Am Oved, an independent publisher, in partnership with WZO]) - then naturally you are going to arrive at the result you want.

But here you go- Sachar's "A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time ", 3rd edition revised and expanded, published in 2007 Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 13:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

you think there's some mysteries document hidden in Israel's archives that suddenly exposes the true nature of Zionism as a colonial project that wasn't known before? Yes, actually, that's exactly what the New Historians found in the archives, isn't it, and why people now call the Nakba an ethnic cleansing when they didn't before? Also there are other primary source documents that were declassified or published decades later, such as the diaries of leaders like Hertzl and Ben-Gurion, which caused historians to re-evaluate history. That's how it works, of course: documents get declassified, historians revise history. I'm not familiar with Sachar, thanks for that, I'll take a look. Levivich (talk) 13:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::::::::More goalpost moving. We were not discussing the Nakba, a 1947-1948 event, but the origins of Zionism. :::::::::::::::I can certainly see that released archival documents would shed new light on plans and goals of the 1947-1949 war, and whether or not the depopulation of Arab towns was pre-planned - but what has that got to do with the origins of Zionism 70 years earlier? Teh protocols of the 1st Zionist Congress from 1897 were open to all historians in 1975 Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 14:25, 9 June 2024

That one wasn't goalpost moving, it's using the Nakba as an example of something, other than Zionism, that was re-evaluated when archives were unsealed, and as an example of the broader point, which is that as time goes on, historians learn new things about history, which is why we need to look at recent scholarship and not 50-year-old scholarship. This is true in every historical field (hence, Wikipedia has the WP:AGEMATTERS policy), but it's especially true when it comes to the history of Israel/Zionism, because there has been so much re-evaluation in the subject area over the last 50 years.

As a concrete example of this, here is Ilan Pappe writing in 1998 about "Fifty Years Through the Eyes of “New Historians” in Israel," and the first section of that paper is called "Early Zionism Revisited", where he says In the new historiography, Zionism began as a national awakening in Europe but turned into a colonialist movement when it chose Palestine as its target territory. And I'd say that even that paper is outdated because it's 25 years old. Whatever was revisited by 1998 has been revisited again by 2024: Pappe has written many books and papers since, and so have Morris and Karsh and Khalidi and many other scholars. So we look at current scholarship, frankly the more recent, the better. As a kind of rule of thumb, I go with "21st century," it's an easy place to draw a line. Levivich (talk) 14:47, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::::::::::I don't dispute that archival material can shed new light - I am disputing that there's anything in the Israeli archives (or any other archives for that matter) that could shed light on the origins of Zionism, when all the protocols of that movement were previously available. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 16:12, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I looked and Howard Sachar's A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (Knopff 2007, 3rd ed.) describes Zionism as colonization, many many times in the book. Let me know if you want quotes. Levivich (talk) 15:02, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

yes, please. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 16:06, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Zionism is nationalism it's not colonialism. Political Zionism promoted settler colonialism as being necessary to achieve the goal of a Jewish majority state. Eventually this becomes the mainstream.

This article includes the history before that view gained political consensus. The influence of cultural Zionism and non-political Zionists is foundational and precedes and even actively opposed a settler-colonial project. this article should include all content relevant to an encyclopedia article.

Many early Zionists were vulnerable displaced people who were dependent on Israel and did not have any other country where they could live. They were opposed to an open-ended conflict aligned with european colonial ideologies. it was europeans who had displaced them, after all. Of course, it is normal that early zionists in large numbers wanted consensus, stability and meaningful security. When the geopolitical circumstances changed to include more armed support from the United States and Germany the politics of Israel became more aggressive. Nowadays claiming "all teh land" is the norm.

This article is broader in its coverage than to simply dismiss Zionism and its history as settler colonialism (a separate article). Ben Azura (talk) 13:59, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

This discussion has already moved on. Selfstudier (talk) 14:04, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Ok, I'm copying and pasting my comment to the new section. Ben Azura (talk) 14:07, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have the ebook so references are to "chapter, section" rather than page number. Bold and blue links are mine.

These are not the only mentions, but should be enough to demonstrate that Sachar describes Zionists as colonizers, and of course Zionists described themselves the same way. Levivich (talk) 20:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:Thanks for this. Go back and read what I wrote above about the multiple meanings of colonization. When someone writes, e.g " establish a model agricultural colony in Palestine" it is the exact parallel of a colony on Mars. This is also exactly what User:האופה wrote at the top of this thread - 'Early Zionists sometimes referred to their project as "colonial" in the sense of establishing agricultural settlements (in Hebrew moshavot) and reviving Jewish life in the ancestral homeland. This quote appears to be used anachronistically in this context, to imply as if the Zionists were adherents of the contemporary sense of colonialism" Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 20:10, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

So tell me which do you think is true:

1. You know something about the multiple meanings of colonization that Howard Sachar doesn't know, and Sachar made a mistake when he used the word "colonization" in his book, OR
2. Sachar knows about the multiple meanings of colonization, and decided to use that word anyway

I think it's #2.

And BTW, you should drop the comparison of colonizing Palestine with colonizing Mars, because there are no people who live on Mars. So even if the Zionists thought they were colonizing a barren, empty land, they were wrong. Either way, this article says "colonization" because the sources say "colonization," and it really doesn't matter if editors think that's not the right word to use, because it's the word the sources use. Levivich (talk) 20:32, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::The fact that Mars is barren is exactly the point - it demonstrate you can "colonize" a land, in the sense of building communities there, w/o subjugating a population you believe to be inferior and exploiting it - which is the common, modern connotation of colonization, which was missing from early Zionist use of the term. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 21:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sure, you can "colonize" a land, in the sense of building communities there, w/o subjugating a population you believe to be inferior and exploiting it ... if there are no people there! Anyway, do you think Sachar doesn't know the modern connotation of "colonization" and made a mistake using the word, or that he knows the modern connotation and used it anyway? Levivich (talk) 21:07, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::No, you can also an "colonize" a land, in the sense of building communities there, w/o subjugating a population you believe to be inferior and exploiting it even if there are people there. Do you think The People's Temple colonized Guyana when they established their colony there? :::::I think Sachar didn't anticipate that 15 years later, wikipedia editors would try to use his choice of words in order to paint Zionists as subjugators. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 21:28, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

You're absolutely right, Wikipedia should not call Zionists "subjugators." Let's instead use the exact same word Sachar used: "colonization." Levivich (talk) 22:13, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::Or, we could just say what the article has said for a long time - "Zionism is a nationalist movement that emerged in the 19th century to enable the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine", without any potentially POV-laden terminology. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 22:48, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

WP:NPOV says Wikipedia articles should say what mainstream scholarship says. So if mainstream scholarship says "colonization" (and it does), then it would be "POV-laden" to not say "colonization." Levivich (talk) 23:03, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::Somehow this article existed for years without this characterization, even as a "featured article" without anyone claiming it violates NPOV. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 23:09, 9 June 2024 (UTC)dReply

This was a featured article from 2003 until 2004, when it was delisted. The 2003 version that was promoted to FA said (bold mine):

The early Zionists were well aware that Palestine was already occupied by Arabs, who had constituted the majority of the population there for over a thousand years. The Zionist leaders generally shared the attitudes of other Europeans of the period in the matters of race and culture. In this view the Arabs were one of the world's many primitive races, who could only benefit from Jewish colonisation. This attitude led to the opposition of the Arabs being ignored, or even to their presence being denied, as in Israel Zangwill's famous slogan "A land without a people, for a people without a land". Generally though, such myths were propaganda invented by leaders who saw the Arabs as an obstacle to overcome, but not a serious one.

The 2004 version that was delisted from FA changed that line from "Jewish colonisation" to "Jewish immigration."

So the FA version of this article said "colonisation."  

After all this discussion, we are still at zero modern books about Zionism that don't describe it as colonization. Levivich (talk) 04:58, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::::Sure. And similarly, the current version of the article mentions colonization and colonies, multiple times, in a paragraphs discussing the actions of early Zionists like Montefiori, and if you wanted to include something like the featured article version, about the thinking of early Zionists that the natives would benefit form Colonization, somewhere in the body, that would porbbaly be fine. :::::::::::But as you obviously realize, that is not the same as describing Zionism as a colonial project in the first sentence of the lead of the article Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 11:52, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Is it feasible to ask the people who list and delist "Featured Articles" what needs to happen to get this again listed as FA -- and whether any use of a term somehow related to "colonial project" or "colonization" can impact that?

To me "colonization" sounds more neutral than "colonial project".

Also, am I correct that we are discussing here exactly where in the lede to introduce a term like "colonial", "colonialism", ...?

I just found 42 matches in this article for "coloni", starting with the last sentence of the lede: "Similarly, anti-Zionism has many aspects, which include criticism of Zionism as a colonialist,[26] racist,[27] or exceptionalist ideology or as a settler colonialist movement.[28][29][30][31][32]"

The Israel-Hamas war was ongoing when this discussion began, and it's still continuing. I think the lede is fine as it is now. What do you think about not changing the lede and focusing on making sure that other uses of terms like "colonialism" and "colonialist" later in the article are used in a way that appears neutral, citing credible sources? ???DavidMCEddy (talk) 11:32, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Material under discussion has once again been POV editwarred out of the lead so I'm right out of AGF atm. Selfstudier (talk) 11:44, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

::Did you similarly object when material under discussion was POV edit warred back into the artilce, by people who share your POV? Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 11:55, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The discussion above is concluded in favor of the material, that's the why of it. This article, once an FA isn't even a GA now, quite right, too. Selfstudier (talk) 11:57, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

What are the obstacles to getting it back to GA? DavidMCEddy (talk) 12:06, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Stability in the article. Meanwhile it is written in a manner which encourages disputes over and frequent changes to content, GA and in particular FA, is not going to happen. Since this is primarily a kind of history article for the most part, stability with best sources should not actually be that difficult. Selfstudier (talk) 12:24, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This discussion above is not in favor of the material, there's clearly a consensus against it, and @Levivich should revert his last revert. At least five people here are against the recent inclusion, but you are forcing it anyway. HaOfa (talk) 15:31, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's not a head count. Sources or move along. Levivich (talk) 15:32, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This is not how consensus is achieved on Wikipedia. This is not a good faith conversation. HaOfa (talk) 15:48, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It actually is how consensus is achieved on Wikipedia. No matter how many people shout no, the sources are what count here. nableezy - 15:57, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

No it never was a good faith conversation. Look, as I recently stated in the message elsewhere I pinged you to, I don't know where you guys got the idea that a handful of new or sleeper accounts pressing the undo button and saying, essentially, "nuh-uh" on talk pages, is going to be enough to influence the content of articles, but that is a very old trick that this entire topic area is engineered to address, more so than anywhere else on Wikipedia. Content disputes are resolved by reliable sources, not by the number of editors, so just give it up. Wikipedia follows sources; if you want to change that, you have to change the sources. It doesn't matter how many accounts you have. I thought we made that point this past fall. Levivich (talk) 15:59, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Above in Round 1, we determined that nobody seems to know of any modern books about Zionism that do not describe it as colonization, although Benny Morris wrote a book review in which he said Zionism was not colonialism. The objection was raised, however, that even if this Wikipedia article should describe Zionism as colonization in the body, this description is not WP:DUE for the lead. So, let's look at how many modern books about Zionism mention colonization or colonialism in their titles. Here are some:

1. Halper, Jeff (2021). Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State. Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-4339-6.

   Nutt, S. (2019). Self-determination, Sovereignty and History: Situating Zionism in the Settler-colonial Archive. University of Exeter.

2. Masalha, Nur (2014). The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-54464-7.
3. Masalha, Nur (2007). The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel. Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-84277-761-9.
4. Shamir, Ronen (2000). The Colonies of Law: Colonialism, Zionism and Law in Early Mandate Palestine. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-63183-9.

And, more broadly, here are some books about Israel/Palestine that mention colonialism in their titles:

1. Zureik, Elia T. (2023). The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-000-85711-5.
2. Greenstein, Ran (2022). Anti-Colonial Resistance in South Africa and Israel/Palestine: Identity, Nationalism, and Race. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-429-67075-6.
3. Rabinovich, Silvana (2022). Biblical Figures in Israel's Colonial Political Theology. Springer Nature. ISBN 978-3-031-03822-8.
4. Todorova, Teodora (2021). Decolonial Solidarity in Palestine-Israel: Settler Colonialism and Resistance from Within. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78699-642-8.
5. Gowans, Stephen (2019). Israel, a Beachhead in the Middle East: From European Colony to US Power Projection Platform. Baraka Books. ISBN 978-1-77186-183-0.
6. Shihade, Magid (2011). Not Just a Soccer Game: Colonialism and Conflict among Palestinians in Israel. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-5111-6.

Seems WP:DUE to me. Levivich (talk) 19:54, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:Jeff Halper is an anti-Zionist activist, a supporter of BDS and not a historian.

Nur Masalha, who for some reason you chose to mention twice, is a Palestinian anti-Zionist.

Ronen Shamir is a far-left anti-Zionist BDS supporter, and also not a historian.

Pluto Press, which published Halper's book, is self described as "radical", and was kicked out of its relationship with the University of Michigan because it does not peer review its publications. Zed Books, who published Masalha, is also described as "radical" by multiple sources. You are literally advocating for views of radical presses and activists who are opposed to Zionism to be in the lead of this former featured article - perhaps as far from WP:DUE as one can imagine.

Relying on these sources for the lead in Zionism is about as compelling as relying on Tucker Carlson's Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution in an article about the Ruling class, or Ann Coulter's Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America in Liberalism. I think you are actually making my point that this is a radical , non-mainstream view, or else you'd be able to come up with examples from non-partisan historians. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 20:37, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I listed Masalha twice because he wrote two modern books about Zionism that have colonialism in the title. (You realize this list was compiled by searching book titles for "Zionism" and "colonialism" and variations, right?) Because reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective (WP:BIASEDSOURCES), your whole argument about partisan historians is moot. BTW, have you considered that anti-Zionism is the mainstream view, in the same way that anti-colonialism and anti-terrorism are mainstream views? Anyway, I look forward to reviewing your (or anyone's) list of non-partisan modern books about Zionism. Levivich (talk) 20:59, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If Masalha had written 5000 books with that word in its title published by a radical press, would that make the argument more compelling? It's still just one person, who is an ideologue opposed to Zionism.

:::Sources do not need to be neutral, but our presentation of view points does. And if this is the viewpoint anti-Zionists, it may belong in the article body, in a section describing the views of opponents or critics of Zionism, but no way it belongs in the defintion of Zionism as the 2nd or 3rd lead sentence.

By way of analogy, or comparison - Marx wrote quite a few books with "Capitalism" in the title, but we don't use his views on Capitalism in the lead paragraph of Capitalism - we mention his views in the body. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 21:30, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Still looking for any alternative views, tho, seems to be a shortage of those. Until we see them, then the sourced views are NPOV. Selfstudier (talk) 21:39, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::The alternative view is what was in the article for years, before the recent POV-push: "Zionism is a nationalist movement that emerged in the 19th century to enable the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition". :::::Should I compile a list of books with both Zionism and Jewish in the title? Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 21:45, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

WP:NPOV doesn't mean neutral between anti-Zionism and pro-Zionism, it means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. "Proportionately" means in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources (WP:DUE). So if the mainstream view is that Zionism was colonialism or colonization, then that's what Wikipedia's going to say in WP:WIKIVOICE. And if the mainstream view is that Zionism's colonial character was/is a significant aspect of Zionism, then that's what Wikipedia's going to say in the lead.

And I'm not sure why you'd compile a list of books about Zionism with Jewish in the title, since this article already says "Jewish" in the lead.

To Self's point, though, as much fun as this back-and-forth is, your arguments are easily contradicted by quoting from Wikipedia policy pages, so unless your next reply is a list of modern books about Zionism, you're wasting your time.

BTW, of course our article about Capitalism mentions Marx's views in the lead: it links to Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory). (It also mentions the views of Engels, linking to state capitalism.) The reason why? Because the mainstream view is that those are significant aspects of capitalism. Levivich (talk) 21:48, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::If the mainstream view is that Zionism was colonialism or colonization, you'd be able to produce books by Zionists or "neutral" authors saying that, instead of the list of anti-Zionists ideologues you compiled. :::::::Do you seriously not see the difference between linking to the Marxist theory of production (through a pipe that says y"The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century established capitalism as a dominant mode of production,") and saying "Capitalism is a system that alienates the masses" or "Capitalism will eventually destroy itself", per Marx, in the 2nd sentence of the lead? Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 22:00, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Good catch -- the lead of capitalism didn't mention any of the criticisms of capitalism, and so was not in line with WP:NPOV (I fixed it). If the mainstream view is that Zionism was colonialism or colonization, you'd be able to produce books by Zionists ..., lol, there are lots of examples of Zionists saying Zionism is colonialism. After all, they gave their organizations names like Jewish Colonisation Association and Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, and their bank was called the Jewish Colonial Trust. Do you want me to quote from Herzl's diary as well? Again, I look forward to reviewing your list of modern books about Zionism by "neutral" authors. Levivich (talk) 22:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::Again, there are multiple meaning of colonization - the one meant by Zionists naming their organizations "colonial association" is similar to the meaning of "colonisation of Mars" - we are going to create new communities - colonies - in the new land. :::::::::And if you wanted to do something similar to what you just did in Capitalism here - add a paragraph at the end of the lead describing the views of anti-Zionists , and saying that they see it a a colonial movement, that would be fine. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 22:22, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Do you have a source (preferably about Zionism) that talks about these supposed multiple meanings of "colonization"? (Also, seriously man, Palestine is not another planet or a "new land," it was already inhabited, unlike Mars. As far as we know.) Or, for the third time, do you have any sources of what you call "neutral" or "non-partisan" modern books about Zionism? Levivich (talk) 22:41, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::::Are you deliberately being obtuse? I already addressed you Mars complaint, and I understand why it irks you - because it precisely shows that the world "colonization" is commonly used to refer to a situation where no one is exploited, contrary to the POV that you desperately want to push into this article. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 22:59, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The point is that it's actually a bad analogy because there were people there. The analogy doesn't work. In any case I don't see any work referring to the colonization of palestine as the "non-negative" kind of colonization which you are referring to, if there is indeed such a concept outside the context of uninhabited areas. DMH223344 (talk) 23:17, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

...and also unless you have a source making this distinction between Zionist/Martian colonialism and other kinds of colonialism, it's WP:OR anyway. Levivich (talk) 23:36, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Original research refers to article content, not to page discussions.

Perhaps this point sailed over your head, but the Mars example is precisely one case of the multiple meanings of colonialism you asked for, made glaringly obvious by the fact that there were no other people there to exploit.

But if you want other examples, you can look at the German Templer colonies in Palestine. Somehow I don't see a similar determination to call the Templer movement a "colonial project". Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 23:47, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

We are talking about article content :-) So no, we don't write article content based on WP:OR, such as an editor's opinion that Zionist/Templer/Martian colonization is different from other types of colonization. BTW, you know the Templer article talks about colonies, right? Like at Templer#Templer colonies. If you're just objecting to "colonial project" and not to other forms of the word (e.g. colony, colonization, colonial, etc.), then we're done here, because this article doesn't say "colonial project" anymore. Levivich (talk) 00:00, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

No we are not. I am not suggesting we write anything like "there are multiple meaning of colonization" in the article, whcih would be impermissible OR. I am just explaining why we shouldn't write 'Zionism is a colonial project" in the article, and giving my reasoning, which is perfectly acceptable.

:::::::::::::::And yes of course I know the Templer article talks about colonies- that is precisely the point! That's the reason I brought it up, as another example of the use of 'colonization' (alongside the Martian one) which does not imply a 'colonial project' predicated on exploitation of inferior cultures. The Templers established colonies, but there are no POV-pushers seeking to call the Templer movement a "colonial project" (in the first paragraph of the lead of the Templer article, no less!) - which is just another example of how people can talk about colonies, about establishing colonies, and even describing their inhabitants as "colonists", without coming to the conclusion that they all belonged to a "colonial project". :::::::::::::::Similarly, this article can say that Zionists established colonies, it can say they called their organizations "The Colonial Trust" etc.. - but just like the Templer article doesn't call it a colonial project or a movement founded to colonize Palestine in the lead, so should this article avoid that. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 00:54, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I completely agree that the colonization of an empty land, such as Mars, does not involve exploitation of inferior cultures. What I am saying in response is: the colonization of Palestine is not analogous to the colonization of Mars because Palestine was not an empty land like Mars. The colonization of Palestine involved the exploitation of cultures viewed as inferior by the colonists, which is why "colonization" is a perfectly apt description of Zionism.

The reason this Wikipedia article should say that Zionism was a movement founded to colonize Palestine in the lead is because Zionism was a movement founded to colonize Palestine. From the quote of Labor Zionist historian Shlomo Ben-Ami, below, "Zionism was also a movement of conquest, colonisation and settlement in the service of a just and righteous but also self-indulgent national cause. An enterprise of national liberation and human emancipation that was forced to use the tools of colonial penetration ...".

Because the sources say Zionism was a colonial enterprise, literally the words "colonization" and "enterprise" are in that quote, and because what Ben-Ami is conveying is the mainstream view of Zionism, this Wikipedia article should say the same thing. Because, as Ben-Ami writes, Zionism "was a schizophrenic movement, which suffered from an irreconcilable incongruity between its liberating message and the offensive practices it used to advance it," equating Zionism's "homeland" ("liberating") message and it's colonialism ("offensive practices"), and because that's the mainstream view, this Wikipedia should also equate Zionism's "homeland" message with it's colonialist practices. In other words, if we say in the lead that Zionism was a movement to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, for WP:NPOV reasons, we must also say that it was a colonial movement. A colonial enterprise. Or a colonial project, if you will. If you won't, there are other variations that would be fine. What's not fine is omitting the colonial part. Levivich (talk) 01:05, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::::::::::Did the Templer colonies involve the exploitation of cultures viewed as inferior by the colonists? Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 01:08, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

How the hell should I know?   Levivich (talk) 01:11, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::::::::::::You can read the article about them in this encyclopedia, or elsewhere. I'll wait. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 01:16, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

What I see here in a meantime is undue weight for academic figures with former careers in politics, usually left-side politics, I think we should look for teritary sources from major publications that try to define Zionism in contemporary, non-politicized neutral terms. Galamore (talk) 14:25, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Feel free to suggest sources, although Wikipedia articles are built on secondary sources not tertiary. Tertiary might help though. Don't forget to make sure they're modern sources, nobody is going to care about a fifty year old encyclopedia article. Levivich (talk) 14:37, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

::::::::::::::::::::::https://www.amazon.com/Desert-Sands-Golden-Oranges-Settlement-ebook/dp/B0791MFD6S Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 18:46, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

That's a self-published book. You are really bad at this. Levivich (talk) 19:08, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::There are quite a few sources listed here - Templers_(Radical_Pietist_sect), feel free to peruse any or all of them , if you are actually i terted in Templer history and want to educate yourself a bit, rather than in scoring technical points in this debate. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 19:20, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

From Shlomo Ben-Ami, who is of course a zionist:

Zionism was also a movement of conquest, colonisation and settlementin the service of a just and righteous but also self-indulgent nationalcause. An enterprise of national liberation and human emancipation thatwas forced to use the tools of colonial penetration, it was a schizophrenicmovement, which suffered from an irreconcilable incongruity between itsliberating message and the offensive practices it used to advance it. Thecultivation of a righteous self-image and the ethos of the few against themany, the heroic David facing the brutal, bestial Arab Goliath, was oneway Zionism pretended to reconcile its contradictions.

DMH223344 (talk) 22:50, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Nur Masalha is Palestinian (just as Benny Morris is Israeli) and an excellent scholar.

On the other hand, lots of the texts here are a long way short of "best sources", despite Levivich's compelling argument for using such. For instance, Nutt is a PhD thesis, and Gowan is a very fringe non-academic writer, and several are published by radical non-academic presses (such as Zed and Pluto) whose lists mix critical scholarship with activist polemic. Would be better to highlight the actual best sources, and ideally those that are about Zionism at its most general level rather than e.g. about very specific aspects of recent Israeli history. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:45, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

You're right about Nutt -- my bad, I just saw University of Exeter and missed that it's a PhD thesis not a book. I've struck that above.

I don't know anything about Gowan but Baraka Books seems like a mainstream publisher; I'm not seeing any reason to discount them (although I know nothing about them besides what's on their website)

As for Zed Books and Pluto Press, take that to WP:RSN if you want to make the case that they are not reliable mainstream publishers. Being progressive doesn't mean they're unreliable, and there are lots and lots of high-quality sources from mainstream scholars published by those two outlets (like Nur Masalha, who is, despite common protestations, a highly-respected, highly-cited scholar in this field). Remember: bias is not unreliability.

I agree with you, though, that this list is not a list of WP:BESTSOURCES for this article -- there are better sources than the ones listed -- but it is a list of RS (modern books about Zionism) with colonial in their titles. Levivich (talk) 17:31, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Even a casual search throws up a multiplicity of suitable sourcing. Selfstudier (talk) 17:39, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

E.g., 50,000 Google Scholar results for zionism colonialism. Those won't all be relevant or reliable sources, of course, but still, the order of magnitude speaks for itself. 77 in their titles, and that's without checking variations like "Zionist" and "colonization." Levivich (talk) 17:43, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::The point is not that Masalha is a Palestinian, but that he is an anti-Zionist, just like Halper or Shamir. This is an attempt to use the view of anit-Zionists (Israeli, Palestinians or others) to define Zionism. We don't use Hayek or von Mises to define Keynesian economics in the lead of that article, and we shouldn't rely on anti-Zionists to define Zionism in the lead here. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 18:54, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Maybe you missed the comments about best sources, do try and bring some, sometime. Selfstudier (talk) 18:58, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::I've brought several already, only to be met with repeated goalpost moving, by people offering up PhD theses they have clearly never read, by people they have never previously heard of, as "best sources", based on the fact that they had both the words "Zionism" and "colonialism" in the title. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 19:23, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It does indeed seem like we are in agreement that "colonialism" is the right word to use. Should we now open up a discussion about the use of "colonial project" in the lead? DMH223344 (talk) 02:58, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

From the conclusion of Righteous Victims:

Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement.

From Ben-Ami (page 3 of his book):

Zionism was also a movement of conquest, colonisation and settlement in the service of a just and righteous but also self-indulgent national cause.

From Anita Shapira (the conclusion of Land and Power):

One of its (pre­sumably singular) characteristic features stemmed from the fact that it was a national liberation movement that was destined to function as a movement pro­moting settlement in a country of colonization. This incongruity between the lib­erating and progressive message internally and the aggressive message externally acted as a central factor in the shaping of self-images and norms—and, in the end, also patterns of action—in the Zionist movement. Zionist psychology was molded by the conflicting parameters of a national liberation movement and a movement of European colonization in a Middle Eastern country.The Zionist movement was a decided latecomer on the colonial scene: Move­ments of colonization by Europeans were common up to the late nineteenth cen­tury.

All three of these historians are Zionist, and Shapira herself is a traditionalist historian, no less. Of course plenty of non-zionist historians also describe Zionism in similar terms. The word choice here is "movement" rather than "project", but I don't think there is actually a difference between the two in this context. DMH223344 (talk) 05:52, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Where did you see we are in agreement that colonialism is the right word? I'm totally against it, and from recent edits I see I'm not alone. Galamore (talk) 14:26, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It doesn't matter if you're against it, what matters are reliable sources. They all say this, as we've well proven here. You and the other accounts hitting undo doesn't mean there isn't consensus. You and the others can say you're against it all you want, but without any sources backing up your view, and in the face of so many directly contradicting it, your opinions simply aren't relevant. Levivich (talk) 14:30, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::They don't "all say this". and in fact we have first-rate, academic reliable sources (e.g. Morris) who say the exact opposite. :::::Your dismissive attitude here and your forum-like rants below about "seeing the last gasps of Zionism" suggest that you are probably too emotionally invested to be editing here. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 14:33, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Morris's book review makes one. I'm still waiting for a second example. Levivich (talk) 14:35, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hell I gave you a freebie second example with Karsh. How about a third? Levivich (talk) 14:36, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::Still playing this game? Try Einat Wilf. And then ask for a fourth, and a fifth, ad nauseum Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 14:44, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Give me a quote and a citation, I'm not going to go searching for it. Levivich (talk) 14:48, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::"To portray Israel as the outcome of the Holocaust is to engage in Zionism Denial. It robs the Jews of their agency, their history, their historical connection to the land of Israel and their yearning to return to it. It erases all that was dreamt, written, done and achieved by the Zionists before World War II. It turns Israel into a colonial project of guilty Europeans rather than a national liberation project of an indigenous people reclaiming their homeland. In remembering the Holocaust, " [3] Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 14:58, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Peer reviewed, was it? Jeez. Selfstudier (talk) 15:01, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::::And the goal posts move yet again. Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 15:03, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Einat Wilf. That your best shot at WP:BESTSOURCES? A 2 page polemic? Selfstudier (talk) 15:05, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

JFC she's not even an academic? Levivich (talk) 15:25, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Einat Wolf is an appalling source. To quote Kentucky Rain, citing her is as compelling as relying on Tucker Carlson in an article about conservatism. She's a pundit not a scholar. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:47, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This *also* doesn't say that Zionism is not colonialism. It just says that it's not *purely* a project of "guilty Europeans". In any case, there are plenty of sources that describe Zionism as both a colonial project and a nationalist movement (see Ben-Ami and Khalidi). DMH223344 (talk) 15:28, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

And yes of course a fourth and a fifth and more. There are like 10+ sources on this page saying colonialism, so bring 10+ citations saying otherwise. 3 won't cut it anyway. But we're not even at 3 yet. Levivich (talk) 14:50, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

:::::::::From an anti-Zionist: "To this day, Zionist apologists 50 (and Kimmerling himself to start with) argue that Zionism was not a colonial project because it was not predicated on the exploitation of Arab labor. 51 This is essentially correct. That is why Zionism was not colonial in an abstract sense, and certainly not a case of metropolitan colonialism. That is also why, precisely because it was from a very early stage exclusive of native labor, the Zionist project was a typical pure settler colony, with its own distinctive trajectory." [4] :::::::::How long we play this game? Kentucky Rain24 (talk) 15:02, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

WP:NPOV is still waiting for you to catch on/up. Selfstudier (talk) 15:08, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Seriously man, get on the level. Modern books about Zionism. I posted 10+ books that have "colonial" in their titles. Believe, there are 10 more where it's not in the titles but it's in there prominently just the same. Books by scholars published by academic or mainstream publishers written in the 21st century.

If you want to start talking about papers instead of books, I can show you hundreds of peer reviewed papers in academic journals about Zionism and colonialism. That's why we look at books instead, papers is too big of a pile.

This is not "moving goalpoasts," we have standards here, it's WP:BESTSOURCES. Meet them or move along. Levivich (talk) 15:23, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This quote doesnt even say that Zionism is not colonialism DMH223344 (talk) 15:25, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This isn't hard, find and bring sources that support your position, that's it. Selfstudier (talk) 14:58, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Righteous Victims is Morris' respected work. His opinions in later book reviews are certainly not representative of his work as a "first rate scholar". He says exactly: "Zionism was a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement.". DMH223344 (talk) 15:09, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I dont even get how this is in dispute, its a newer thing for Zionists to disclaim any notion that it was/is a colonial enterprise. But even early Zionists were very clear on their goals and the language they used for it was colonization. nableezy - 13:16, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's a natural response to all the recent scholarship about settler-colonialism. Because once you concede it's colonialism, you really have to concede it's settler colonialism, so the only way to fight that is to take the position that it's not colonialism (because you can't dispute the settler part). And if they concede it's settler colonialism, then they look like the bad guy. Even more so than they already do. Six months after the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust and they're facing a united security council, allegations of genocide being taken seriously by the West, and the very real prospect of ICC arrest warrants. The return of left-wing parties to power is just one election away, and settlement dismantlement will soon follow. We are witnessing the last gasps of Zionism, and like in other topic areas, what's happening in the real world is being mirrored on Wikipedia. Levivich (talk) 14:23, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

'the return of left-wing parties'. That sounds like the sighting of a dodo, and if so, the Smithsonian should be alerted.Nishidani (talk) 08:23, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Golan's new heights? Levivich (talk) 12:51, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, Golan, um, golem? He's on record as saying, commendably, the unsayable but . . it's simple: good sentiments and even good ideas will never get sufficient leverage in our political systems to achieve any significant structural change. This is true in particular also of Israel where pure psephological analysis of the makeup of electoral constituencies, and their conflicting interests, together with demographic forecasts, mean a 64 majority in the Knesset for anything identifiably 'left' is unachievable. In 2022, they were scrounging desperately for 7% of votes. Sigh.Nishidani (talk) 13:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

"return to power" may have been a slight overstatement, perhaps more accurately, a "return to relevancy" 😂 Levivich (talk) 13:54, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

History is jealous of its prerogatives, and dislikes, with a vengeance, being upstaged by miracles.Nishidani (talk) 14:00, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah but this isn’t supposed to be about how people feel, it’s supposed to be about what the sources say. This effort to just ignore the sources here makes no sense in a Wikipedia supposedly governed by rules that force us to discuss the sources and not our feelings. nableezy - 15:20, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Tbh I'm just too lazy to collect the diffs for another round of sock sweeping, and I'm guessing everyone else is, too. Levivich (talk) 15:32, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Golf season >>>> diff collecting. nableezy - 15:59, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It probably wouldn't happen if WP:NOTHERE was taken as seriously as 1RR violations and salty language. Sean.hoyland (talk) 17:01, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

• @Levivich: - time for round 3? Decide what wording to include? starship.paint (RUN) 02:07, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I think so. For my part, I'm fine with the wording as is, but open to alternatives. Levivich (talk) 04:13, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The inclusion of the word 'colonization' in the lead is being edit warred over [see here] and needs to be discussed.

- IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:59, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

This has been discussed to death here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Zionism#Colonial_project?

We eventually agreed on the use of "colonial", but did not reach a complete agreement on the terminology "colonial project".

Consensus is definitely to use "colonization" here. DMH223344 (talk) 21:28, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

If sometime in the future a peace agreement will be achieved in which the Israeli settlements in the west bank will be evacuated (like happened in Gaza in 2005) and the descendants of Palestinian refugees will come from abroad to live where the settlements were in Gaza and the West Bank, will you call this process "colonization"? Vegan416 (talk) 08:09, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

WP:NOTFORUM. Makeandtoss (talk) 08:16, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I disagree. This is a highly relevant question. We try to understand if the word colonization is the best word to use here. Comparing to analogies can help clarify the issue. Vegan416 (talk) 08:23, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

We should be citing and relying on RS for that, not our own reasoning. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 18:58, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The repeated movement and rejection of this content clearly demonstrate the opposite, that there is no consensus for the usage of colonization, especially not in the first . If you believe otherwise, you must be defining consensus in a completely different manner, which has nothing to do with how Wikipedia defines it. Actually, it appears that most editors oppose the use of 'colonization' in this context, and we should adhere to WP:ONUS. 916crdshn (talk) 10:48, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

We can have an RFC on the question, since the matter is clearly supported in multiple scholarly sources, I expect that such an RFC will find in favor of including "colonization" in some form, regardless of whether some editors object on no grounds whatever, other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Otoh, if the issue is the wording/ where it goes in the article, then that can be discussed. Selfstudier (talk) 10:56, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also, allow me to call out the elephant in the room; the three/four editors slightly above 500 edits who have consecutively removed it multiple times. I am assuming good faith so far, but this observation is certainly worth noting. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:23, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I would expect someone who assumes good faith to assume good faith. O.maximov (talk) 11:46, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Agreed, there is no consensus for this. Agree with the WP:ONUS. O.maximov (talk) 11:16, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The consensus is in the sources which provide multiple examples, from Herzl onwards, of Zionist descriptions of what they intended doing as 'colonization'. It is not a consensus to play a numbers game to remove strongly sourced text. That is called WP:IDONTLIKEIT. If the founding father of Zionism thought it the appropriate term, then it remains such for an historical article.Nishidani (talk) 11:49, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Consensus, on Wikipedia, involves an "effort to address editors' legitimate concerns through a process of compromise," to that we can add WP:ONUS: "While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. " ... HaOfa (talk) 05:06, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

It is important to note that this discussion is not only about the suitability of the term "colonization" to Zionism in general, but mainly to the question if it's DUE in the first sentence/definition. So the fact that there are RS that use this term would not be enough to justify its inclusion in the first sentence, unless it can be shown that a majority of RS use this term within their one sentence leading definition of Zionism (that is among those sources who have such a definition). Vegan416 (talk) 12:27, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Come now. If the use of the word 'colonization' repeatedly occurs in the writings of the core, founding figures of Zionism, as a political project, as a theory, as a technique of restructuring Palestine, and as a economic practice, and if, as is the case, this is invariably noted in the major secondary sources, then waffle about WP:Undue is totally out of place. No policy flagwaving please. Explain why the words of Theodor Herzl, Arthur Ruppin, Franz Oppenheimer, Berl Katznelson and Ze'ev Jabotinsky, not to speak of the way Jewish newspapers pitched this term to their broad audiences (Weizmann Outlines Plan for Colonization of 250,000 Jews in Palestine Within Five Years Jewish Telegraphic Agency 30 June 1933) are 'undue'.Nishidani (talk) 12:48, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The founding figures of Zionism said many things about Zionism. We cannot put all of them into a one sentence leading definition. So we have to decide which of the many things they said about Zionism should be included into a one sentence leading definition. And the best way to do it without introducing prejudice (or maybe even OR) is to follow the standard of the majority of sources in their definition. Vegan416 (talk) 13:09, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Listen. Editors do not take authorial precedence over specialized sources. I have provided numerous sources to back up what I wrote. It is not a serious argument to just talk around the evidence by expressing your 'impressions', 'personal views', feelings, as you have done now twice. I asked you to come up with solid textual support, and you come back opinionizing. That kind of response is meaningless for the purposes of composing an encyclopedic article based on scholarship. Nishidani (talk) 13:15, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I didn't say anything at all about my 'impressions', 'personal views', feelings in this discussion, so I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe you are confusing me with someone else. Anyway, when I'll have more time in the next few days I do plan to collect many RS that contain short definitions of Zionism, and check if the majority of them include reference to colonization or not. I'll keep you posted. Vegan416 (talk) 13:20, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Please reread your own comments. There is nothing in them other than your impressions about the topic. You were given extensive verbal evidence, and simply walked right past it, to make more remarks and claims or, in one case, a hypèothetical analogy. None of this is material to the question.Nishidani (talk) 13:53, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

please give an example of me talking about my impressions in this discussion. Vegan416 (talk) 14:00, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The founding figures of Zionism said many things about Zionism. We cannot put all of them into a one sentence leading definition.

This is waffle, your opinion or impression, and unfocused. What evidence does another third party have that you are intimately familiar with the multiplicity of things said about Zionism by Zionists, to the point that you can assert with a sense of authority that this element is being unfairly singled out? What are the many other things these Zionists said about Zionism? Name them? Otherwise, it's empty argufying, leaving fellow editors with nothing to get their teeth into.Nishidani (talk) 14:06, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion, and there are many verifiable things that could go into the first sentence. An obvious candidate would be just a basic definition of Zionism, which generally doesn't mention colonialism. Do you have an argument for why such a prominent mention of colonialism improves the article relative to that? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 14:14, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Nishidani, Being a Zionist myself I am of course by definition "intimately familiar with the multiplicity of things said about Zionism by Zionists" :-) For example that Zionism is the movement for the self-determination of the Jewish people, that Zionism is the fulfillment of the hopes of generations of Jews to return to their ancient homeland, that Zionism is a movement for establishing a Jewish state, that Zionism is to free the Jews from the persecutions of the exile, that Zionism is a movement of decolonization of the Land of Israel from the Arabs, etc. etc..

But having said all that, please note that nowhere in this discussion did I claim "with a sense of authority that this element is being unfairly singled out". I just raised the possibility that it is being unfairly singled out, and promised to check this in the mext few days by examining short definitions/descriptions of Zionism in many RS. This would resolve the question. Just be patient. This kind of discussion is not resolved in one day. But if you can't wait you can visit this link to see the progress of my work, and even contribute sources of your own (so long as you don't mess with the format) Vegan416 (talk) 16:42, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

If I want to know what Catholicism is, or Islam is, or Chinese communism is, I don't ask what believers in those systems think also because when I have done so, my general impression is that very few are 'intimately familiar with' the history of their belief-system. Your odd premise is that because you are a Zionist, you must know all about Zionism. All you have given me are schoolbook phrases, the most curious one of which is the last:

that Zionism is a movement of decolonization of the Land of Israel from the Arabs

I.e., that the settlement of whites in Australia was 'a movement of decolonization of Terra Australis from the aborigines.

Nothing surprises me anymore, but I admire your boldness in allowing that Zionism is premised on the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population.

I don't read sandboxes. If I am unfamiliar with something, I read the relevant scholarship on the topic.Nishidani (talk) 17:11, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I responded to most of your argument here elsewhere, so I'll just comment here about your last lines - do you deny that the Arabs colonized Palestine in the 7th century? And with that I'll end this discussion, before we get accused of bludg. I'll return here after I'll finish my collection of RS. Vegan416 (talk) 17:40, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yep, that's what we need to see, I might take a look around myself as well. Selfstudier (talk) 17:42, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

That reads:

While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content.

I.e. it is neither here nor there for the present issue, since the matter of colonialism is not some rare incidental element in one or two sources, but something diffusely attested in virtually every major formative figure for early Zionism. Nishidani (talk) 16:08, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

My point is that pointing to reliable sources is not a complete argument, since it's a necessary but not sufficient condition for us to include some information. There has to be an argument for why including some information improves the article.

Clearly references to colonization should be mentioned somewhere, but why emphasize it in the very first sentence? Why is that better than a first sentence that sticks to a simple factual definition of Zionism?

One downside of mentioning colonization in the very first sentence is that there's no space to elaborate on who called it that and why, or how the connotations of the word have evolved, etc. Mentioning it further down would leave more room for a nuanced discussion. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 16:37, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

That's an argument about due weight, not ONUS, which is clearly met. I would suggest we haul out a few modern sources and see what they say and where they put it, go from there. Selfstudier (talk) 16:41, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Has anyone objecting here ever read the founding documents of Zionism? I have the eerie impression this is like discussing the origins of Christianity with people who haven't read the New Testament. Anyone can download and read in a few hours Herzl's Altneuland and verify for themselves that 'colonization' is the default term there (die Kolonisation des Landes/Neue Gesellschaft für die Kolonisierung von Palästina etc.etc.). It is quite pointless gnawing at the bone of policy to decide for inclusion or not, if editors simply don't know much about the topic.Nishidani (talk) 17:01, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Your entire argument here is irrelevant since this article is not about the "founding documents of Zionism" it is about "Zionism", i.e. about the entire phenomenon from it's birth (and even before that for background) until now. So concentrating about the "founding documents of Zionism" in the one-sentence leading definition may itself be undue, even if proved that the concept of colonization was the most important concept in those "founding documents" (which you definitely didn't so far).

To use your analogy of Christianity. The first sentence in the article about it says: "Christianity (/ˌkrɪst(ʃ)iˈænɪti/) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.4 billion followers, comprising around 31.2% of the world population". It doesn't mention the Trinity, or the Resurrection, or the Virgin birth of Jesus, despite their importance in some of the "founding documents of Christianity". Vegan416 (talk) 17:35, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Of course it doesn't mention to Trinity, the resurrection and the Virgin Birth, because they were not constitutive elements of the foundation of Christianity, but doctrinal positions assumed centuries later.

"Christianity (/ˌkrɪst(ʃ)iˈænɪti/) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

I.e. it puts into relief that Christianity is based on the teachings of an historical figure, just as out text does. Analogically

Zionism is a (Jewish) ideology based on a movement founded by Theodore Herzl to establish by colonization a Jewish state in Palestine.

The founding documents of Zionism are what define its aim and scope. No one is arguing that the whole article is about its foundation, so that is a strawman response. Nishidani (talk) 18:32, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Your personal opinion on what defines the "aim and scope" and "constitutive elements" of Zionism are not interesting. As I said we'll to scan the RS to see what their majority thinks should go into the definition sentence. Bye for now. Vegan416 (talk) 18:41, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Totally undue weight on colonization in this definition, and Zionism was founded BEFORE Herzl. If anything:

Zionism is a (Jewish) ideology aiming for the re-establishment and consolidation of a Jewish homeland/state in the Land of Israel.

Which it did, and still does, through various means. HaOfa (talk) 04:53, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure if ONUS has been met, but that's a separate question about a separate aspect of WP:VNOT. My point is that no argument has been offered for why highlighting this information here would improve [the] article, i.e. why it's better than a simple factual definition as the first sentence. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 17:52, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

No argument has been given why omitting what was a core motivation and aim of Zionism, i.e.

The Zionist idea provided a base on which all humanitarian Jewish effort could unite. Jewish communities everywhere colonized their own poor in Palestine, and thus relieved themselves of these dependents. Their method was cheaper than the former planless sending of wanderers to some foreign land or other.Theodor Herzl, Altneuland, p.134

Not appropriate to this article. Note that this aspect of Zionism, of transporting Eastern Jews out of Europe, Herzl more or less pitches this, of getting rid of them as a burden on assimilated Jews, gets very little traction in the fairytale version we meet so often.Nishidani (talk) 18:52, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

That's funny. You do realize that you are quoting a work of fiction, and not a historical description of what was core motivation and aim of Zionism either primary source or secondary source? Anyway, you are attacking a strawman. Nobody said that this is not appropriate for the article. The discussion here is only whether it is appropriate in the opening definition. So stop wasting our time. Vegan416 (talk) 19:05, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Please don't use the royal we ('our time') since the page is not yours, and it is offensive to suggest by its use that the those who disagree with you are wasting everybody else's time (actually they appear to be, given the fact that none of the factual evidence produced has been addressed by all those who dislike the term 'colonization' in the face of the unanimity of Zionism's foundations that this was what they intended to do).

You are not familiar, again, with the literature on Altneuzeit. In it Herzl intended to use his fiction to persuade Jewish sceptics of the feasibility of his proposal and the epigraph states:'wenn ihr wollt, ist es kein Märchen' which acknowledges that the work is a fiction which, if one really wants its vision to be realized, is no 'fairy tale'. He chose, if you read the secondary literature, the novel as a vehicle to promote Zionism.

In any case, you have openly declared that, as a Zionist, you subscribe to the idea that Palestine must be decolonized of its Arabs, an admission which, apart from its total unfamiliarity with the scholarly literature on the 7th century transformation, suggests your contributions here are ideologically impelled, rather than based on a careful assessment of evidence. There is nothing wrong with being a Zionist. A good many of our finest books on the I/P have been written by them, but no author among those historians who write competent studies, underwrites the idea that Arabs are invaders and should be expelled. For that kind of antifactual extremism automatically would make anything such a Zionist might write suspect, and the same goes for editors who look only for anything that might underwrite their beliefs.Nishidani (talk) 20:07, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Let's stay on topic. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:46, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Nishidani, this is a lie. But as I really don't want to be accused of bludg, I put my full response to your false claim here. If you want you can reply there. Vegan416 (talk) 21:01, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I posted in another section about and was told the discussion had "moved on" but it looks like it just moved to another section. imo, "colonization" is inherently unsuitable for the ledes. I'm not going to copy and paste the whole comment here but this is the most important part of it: "This article is broader in its coverage than to simply dismiss Zionism and its history as settler colonialism (a separate article)."

For example, Moshe Sharett is documented by Ruth Gavison as having proposed population transfers like the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey. This isn't within the meaning of "colonization". I' m sorry if it isn't obvious but I don't think enough people were interested in moving to Israel. Ben Azura (talk) 14:22, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

You can both have a colonial outlook and propose ethnic cleansing schemes at the same time? What's mutually exclusive there? We know that ethnic cleansing was baked into Zionism. Even Benny Morris has stated as much. That's what the Nakba was all about. Unapologetic ethnic cleansing is v. colonial. Almost classic! Iskandar323 (talk) 14:39, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Let's keep this discussion about the use of "colonialism" rather than "settler colonialism". Of course it *is* settler colonialism (it is the settler variety as opposed to the franchise variety of colonialism), but the term "settler-colonialism" has become associated with what Wolfe described as the fundamental logic of elimination of the native--so people will of course have complaints about that association. DMH223344 (talk) 02:38, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

You mentioned cultural zionism in your other comment. As benny morris described it was "ultimately marginal" DMH223344 (talk) 03:06, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Benny Morris, primarily an expert on the 1948 Independence War, is not necessarily an authority on the history and development of Zionism. HaOfa (talk) 04:51, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

There are plenty of other sources. Also recall that it had 100-200 supporters. Flapan: Brit Shalom had no popular base nor a political organisation and had neither the intent nor ambition to create them. Gorny describes Brit Shalom as outside the zionist consensus. DMH223344 (talk) 05:17, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

People here need to stop with the original research and cite reliable sources. This is not something for Wikipedia editors to debate or to determine. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:04, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

While we waitin on Vegan's sources, I will kick off with this one, A Century of Settler Colonialism in Palestine: Zionism's Entangled Project. Selfstudier (talk) 19:06, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

This has zero relevance to the issue, you are totally confusing Zionism as settler colonialism, the fringe theory that compares Zionism to Settler colonialism, with Colonization, a term used in former times to refer to the establishment and development of settlements, in the Zionist case, agricultural moshavot. HaOfa (talk) 04:44, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Fringe? Since when? Show me a source saying it is fringe. Selfstudier (talk) 16:34, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't know if fringe is the right term, but based on what I'm collecting now it does seem to be a minority view. Vegan416 (talk) 16:48, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

But a significant one, righty? Pretty sure I can source that, in fact I think I did already somewhere, just can't recall where. Selfstudier (talk) 16:52, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

That depends how you define significant... Anyway you'll see soon what I mean. Vegan416 (talk) 17:20, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

In any case it's still colonialism, can't really dispute the settler part of it, they still doin that. Selfstudier (talk) 16:55, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Believe me, I have read numerous books on the matter. Yes, the Zionist movements promoted the construction of moshavot, which can be termed colonies (hence colonization). However, people here are conflating it with other terms and overlooking the fact that Zionism encouraged many things beyond building moshavot: mass aliyah, the use of Hebrew, the establishment of political institutions, lobbying international powers to support a Jewish state, and more. I completely oppose the use of the term colonization in the first paragraph. HaOfa (talk) 04:48, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

However, all these other things you list are aspects of colonization! They are exactly why "colonization" is more correct than just "settlement". Zero^talk 05:06, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I disagree. Historically, colonization referred to settling, constructing settlements, and developing them. Today, the term often implies people sent by a foreign entity to take over another land, which doesn't align with Zionism according to neutral and mainstream scholarship. Jews originally come from Israel, specifically Judea, and the diaspora has always been in relation to Palestine and Jerusalem, ... doesn't sound too foreign to me.

To sum up, in its former usage, colonization describes only some aspects of Zionism, and in its contemporary usage, it usually refers to imperial colonialism, which is a fringe theory in the case of Zionism, totally irrelevant to the first presentation of the article, and already appears down below in the fourth paragraph. HaOfa (talk) 05:13, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Theodor Herzl: "Colonization can therefore continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population." ... "Without colonization, Zionism is nothing but a castle in the air." [5] Iskandar323 (talk) 16:24, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Please strike this comment or provide RS to support these quotes. I believe the first quote is in fact Ze'ev Jabotinsky not Herzl. Not sure about the second one, but not appropriate to cite information based on a non-reliable source. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 16:43, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

True. It does appear that I let the internet prank me. That'll teach me to leave Google scholar and take a shortcut. The first does appear to be Jabotinsky. Can't match the second up. Mea culpa. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:53, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

There is a distinction between an aim and the means of attaining that aim, which is partly lost in this conversation. The aim of Zionism was a Jewish polity in Palestine. The means was the colonization of Palestine, which included not just establishing settlements but also establishing the trappings of statehood. Both things need to be described. The means can be described without using the word "colonization", but it isn't possible to describe it without using words having the same meaning as colonization. Since practically every Zionist source was perfectly happy to call it colonization I don't see why we shouldn't. Zero^talk 05:24, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Colleagues, please do not POV push. Please come to an agreement here before adding statements that are only mentioned by select scientists and please do attribute them. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 13:56, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Excuse me, why have you deleted archive links and changed ref names in your most recent revert? Selfstudier (talk) 14:04, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hello. It was returned to the prior state before the unegreed change. The archive links can be added using bot in one click. Let me do it. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 14:08, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Since a minority of editors are attempting to enforce their POV against a majority and based on the discussion above I have tagged the article accordingly. Selfstudier (talk) 14:21, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I agree with the tag. In the same time please note that POV is usually considered not based on amount of editors but is based on the facts that such editors provide and RS. The majority is not always right. When there is a consensus there should be an agreement to make the change to have a new consensus. And not is 10 people come and force the change it becomes the new consensus. Until there is a decision we should keep the original state of the article. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 14:28, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I've restored it to its previous state, which reflects the best scholarly sources and early zionist self-description/self-definition.Dan Murphy (talk) 14:25, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I disagree with your change. Please self revert until there is an agreement. The opinion of colonization is clearly a minority. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 14:30, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

That is currently what a majority of editors agree with, tho. If you do not agree, an RFC is an option for determining consensus. Selfstudier (talk) 14:32, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have not done RFC before. Majority based on count of registered accounts that promote one point which they like and not based on analysis of sources that describe that point? With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 14:37, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

In an RFC, one asks a neutrally phrased question such as "Should (some content) be in the article" and then editors will give arguments and sources in support or opposition. Selfstudier (talk) 14:42, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

• @Dan Murphy: - your added sources and content have to be in the body too. starship.paint (RUN) 14:39, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

  You may do it on his behalf. He did only about 30 edits since 2021 so might not have time to do so. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 14:54, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

• 1. Has anyone read those articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6? Do you still believe that Israel is a colony and why?
  

2. Do you believe that the opinion in such articles can't be present in the article? If so, why? With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 16:40, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

They are either opinion articles or non-independent sources, both of which don't belong to the article. Makeandtoss (talk) 16:43, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

In order:

1. op-ed by a Zionist blogger
2. op-ed by an undergraduate student
3. letter to the editor by a professor of Greek and Latin languages
4. self-published think thank article by an Israeli military and government official
5. a newspaper article that is not about Zionism
6. editorial by Canadian Jewish News

I honestly can't believe an admin on another wiki would even suggest that these are WP:RS. Levivich (talk) 16:50, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Makeandtoss: Don't you think that adding it to led without any explanation is improper? As, for example, Yoav Gelber states that "Economic theories of colonialism and sociological theories of migration movements are also inadequate when applied to the Zionist experience". Next, there is an interesting work of Yoav Peled which can be read here. You can also check the work of Dore Gold here. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 17:00, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

OK, those are actual WP:RS! Let's look at them.

Yoav Gelber's chapter in this book:

• The foreward to the book, written by Sari Nusseibeh, begins with this line: It cannot escape the notice of the reader of this volume that there is an imbalance in the presentations in favour of Israeli scholars. As the editor notes, Palestinian scholars on the whole did not feel inclined to participate.
• Other chapters in the book talk about Zionism as colonialism. For example:
  • p. 139, in Chapter 8 by Avraham Sela: Zionism’s colonial-settler nature and unhidden intention to establish a Jewish state over Palestine depicted the Zionist enterprise as a formidable threat to the Arab-Muslim nature of Palestine.
  • p. 159, in Chapter 9 by Hillel Cohen: Herzl used this theory as a tool to ignoring the claims of al-Khalidi, and pretended to know better than the Jerusalemite leader what were the needs of his community and his country. In this he followed the path of Western colonialism in general.
    • p. 161, H. Cohen quotes a Zionist banker, ... when I visit one of our colonies .... Later on the same page, H. Cohen quotes Ze'ev Jabotinsky's The Iron Wall: ... the realisation of Zionism in return for the moral and material conveniences which the Jewish colonist brings with him ...
    • p. 168, in his conclusion, H. Cohen writes As with colonial projects elsewhere, this argument had its factual value also in the unique Zionist case.
  • p. 190, Chapter 11 by Kenneth W. Stein, mentions the 1891 Palestine Colonization Association and the 1899 Jewish Colonial Trust (not mentioned: the 1924 Palestine Jewish Colonization Association)
• Yoav Gelber's Chapter 13 does, indeed, argue that Zionism is not colonialism. But in making this argument, Gelber is arguing against the mainstream view. He acknowledges this. These are the people who, acccording to Yoav Gelber in this chapter, believe that Zionism is colonialism:
  • Palestinian Arabs (p. 220)
  • Israel-baiters (p. 222)
  • Public discourse in the West and Israel since the 1960s (p. 222)
  • French, Jewish, and Arab intellectuals, including Maxime Rodinson and Eric Hobsbawm who contributed to a "massive volume" published in June 1967 in Les Temps modernes (p. 222)
  • Palestinian radicals (p. 222)
  • some Israeli academics (p. 222)
  • The first Palestine Arab Congress in 1919 (p. 223)
  • Rashid Khalidi (p. 223)
  • Baruch Kimmerling (p. 223)
  • Arabs of Palestine (they were not yet ‘Palestinians’) in the 1930s and 40s, However, colonialism was at that time legitimate and their arguments did not attract attention or inspire sympathy. (p. 223)
  • Since the late 1970s, however, anti-colonialist arguments fell on receptive ears, particularly in Western Europe that was haunted by post-colonial guilt feelings. (p. 223)
  • Edward Said (p. 223)
  • Israeli post-Zionists of all creeds (p. 224)
  • Ilan Pappe (p. 224)
  • Jewish communists (p. 224)
  • Palestinian communists (p. 224)
  • Matzpen (p. 224)
  • Israel Beer (p. 224)
  • Uri Avneri (p. 224)
  • Aharon Cohen (p. 224)
  • Eliezer Bauer (p. 224)
  • former Israelis, American, and French Jewish activists of the New Left in the late 1970s (p. 224)
  • several new historians and critical sociologists since the late 1980s (p. 224)
  • Shlomo Sand (p. 225)
  • Yehuda Shenhav (p. 225)
  • Hanan Chever (p. 225)
  • Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (p. 226)
  • David N. Myers (p. 228)
  • Derek Penslar (p. 229)

By arguing against the mainstream view, Gelber's chapter supports the assertion that it is the mainstream view.

As for Yoav Peled's chapter, he is arguing that Zionism is colonialism. The chapter ends with these two sentences: As I have shown in this chapter, the attempts to use the historical specificity of Zionism in order to argue that it does not fit the colonial-settler model do not stand up to historical scrutiny. Not only that, the insistence on denying the colonial-settler nature of Zionism obscures for the opponents of the colonial thesis major areas of the reality in contemporary Israel as well.

Dore Gold's paper, putting aside that Gold was an Israeli government official and the paper is self-published by his think tank, he still admits that "Zionism is colonialism" is the mainstream view, and like Gelber, he argues against it. Page 84: The argument that Israel is a colonialist entity is often marshaled to undermine the Jewish state’s very legitimacy ... The theme has certainly permeated Western academia, almost uncritically. For decades, it has been employed against Israel in one international forum after another. Page 87: Nevertheless, in recent years, the effort to portray Israel as a colonialist entity has expanded.

So, we can count Benny Morris, Yoav Gelber, and Dore Gold, as three scholars who argue that Zionism is not colonialism. On the other side are dozens of scholars; that's what makes it the mainstream view. Levivich (talk) 18:24, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Ok, thanks for taking time a look. I also must admit that I was quite surprised how the paradigm has shifted. The last time I have read about this topic was over a few decades ago and then such representation was much less common. When I checked the sources today I can see that minority and majority here have drastically shifted for some reason. So, I do admit this part. And it was a surprise to me, to be honest. In the same time my original point remains the same. I do not think that we should just add an entirely new concept to the first sentence in the lead without providing an explanation as at least the sources which I have found show that it's meaning is not similar to how average people define the term colonization. We should check how scholars who thinks it's that colonialism define this therm and if they share the same definition. So far I din't get such understanding. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 18:39, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for admitting that. Yes, it has absolutely shifted in the last couple decades (in the 21st century), part of the reason in this topic area I am always saying that we should use 21st-century sources and not 20th-century sources (hence, WP:AGEMATTERS). In the words of WP:NPOV policy, there is a "significant minority viewpoint" that Zionism is not colonialism, and this viewpoint can be seen in the works of modern (21st-century) scholars such as Morris, Gelber, and Gold. And I certainly think this viewpoint should be given in the Zionism article. An example is Nakba, where we say it's ethnic cleansing, we say that's the majority viewpoint, but we also say that there is a significant minority viewpoint that it is not ethnic cleansing, and we give as examples of this viewpoint Morris and Gelber (among others). This Zionism article should do the same. And yes, there is a difference between, for example, "colonialism" and "settler colonialism," not all kinds of colonialism are the same, and I agree this is a distinction that the article should also clarify. Levivich (talk) 18:47, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

You all kind of miss that the topic here is about the use of term 'colonization' in the opening sentence / definition, which is different from the question you are discussing (though of course related to it). I'll expand on this tomorrow with sources. Vegan416 (talk) 20:09, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Please do. We will appreciate it. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 21:25, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Admitting was easy. Seeing and realizing the difference was not. :) Another issue is that various sources call that Israel had Settler Colonialism and Lorenzo Veracini claims (1 2) that "Settler Colonialism is not Colonialism". Which adds to the confusion and reinforces my point that the therm must be properly defined. I also got today a book of this person and two more to see their view on the subject. With regards, Oleg Y. (talk) 21:23, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Specifically talks about economic theories so not really relevant here. The rest seems fringe, although I haven't read what is in them yet. Makeandtoss (talk) 10:57, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

A very fine example here of why I (and many others) do very little editing here anymore. An account throws an out of context source on the talk page and, in effect, says "I win." Then a more diligent editor does the reading and responds at length and in detail, something that takes many multiples of the time and effort expended by the original poster. Then poster number one responds "The last time I have read about this topic was over a few decades ago" and says they were expressing their expectations of what the scholarship has found. And round and round it goes. To my mind, this behavior - either out of ignorance or deliberate bad faith - is the real incivility problem.Dan Murphy (talk) 19:27, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

• There are multiple reliable sources in which Zionists are shown as describing what they intended on doing as being 'colonization'. We should follow the very best sources. WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not a policy argument. TarnishedPath^talk 04:10, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The discussion here is not about whether we have to include in the article the debate on whether Zionism is "colonialist"/"colonizing". I don't think there is really any objection against describing this debate in the article. The discussion here is whether Zionism should be described as "colonialist"/ "colonizing" in the first defining sentence or in the lead section at all, in wikivoice. This is mainly a question of DUE and NPOV. I present here a policy-based argument against including this description in the lead.

Here is a relevant policy statement from Wikipedia:No original research#Primary, secondary and tertiary sources "Reliable tertiary sources can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other. Some tertiary sources are more reliable than others. Within any given tertiary source, some entries may be more reliable than others." Tertiary sources are defined there as "publications such as encyclopedias and other compendia that summarize, and often quote, primary and secondary sources."

So I decided to look at encyclopedias articles whose title is Zionism. Following the policy point that "some tertiary sources are more reliable than others" I used only encyclopedias published by reputable punishers, and also almost all (if not all) of the editors and writers are scholars in relevant fields. Also, following Levivich opinion that only 21st century sources should be used in this discussion, I used only encyclopedia editions that were first published in the 21st century. I collected about 30 such encyclopedias.

The results are pretty clear. The vast majority of encyclopedias do not describe Zionism as "colonialist"/"colonizing" in the first defining sentence or in their lead section at all. It seems clear that most of the scholars that edited and wrote those encyclopedia articles think that the description of Zionism as "colonialist"/"colonizing" is either wrong, or disputable, or simply just not important enough to make the head-lines. I think Wikipedia should follow this majority.

Comments:

1. The encyclopedias are ordered by publication date of the edition that is used. This is of course not an exhaustive list of all possibly relevant encyclopedias in the 21st century. There were encyclopedias that were not accessible to me at all, and its very likely there are others that I missed entirely in my searches. However I believe this presents a significant portion, maybe even the majority of relevant encyclopedias that have an article about Zionism. So I think it's unlikely that the results would change significantly when more encyclopedias are found (and anyone is of course free to look for more).
2. I provided links to most of the sources. There were a few that I found offline in my library. For these I supplied the text of the first paragraph in the footnotes. Images can be sent on demand.
3. With regard to opening defining sentence (see MOS:FIRST) specifically it might be useful to also look at reputable dictionaries, which are the experts in defining subjects in one sentence. Looking at 6 of the leading online dictionaries (1 2 3 4 5 6) we find that none of them mentions colonization/colonialism in its definition of Zionism.Vegan416 (talk) 17:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Maybe sign your work? I will certainly have a look at this but you should understand the Zionism as settler colonialism has independent notability so at a minimum, it is a significant view and therefore lead worthy, although precisely where in the lead could be a subject for discussion.Selfstudier (talk) 17:10, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

  The fact that we have an article of the form "X as Y" doesn't necessarily mean that the article on X should mention Y in the lead section. For example the idea that Allah was a lunar deity in pre-Muslim times is deemed sufficiently notable to have an article Allah as a lunar deity, yet it is not mentioned in the lead section of the article on Allah. Vegan416 (talk) 18:24, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

  That's for the editors there to sort out, I am interested in this article right here. Selfstudier (talk) 18:37, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Is there any policy that says that if we have an article of the form "X as Y" then the article on X must mention Y in the lead section? Vegan416 (talk) 18:41, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

  There is a policy that says "summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies" in the WP:LEAD. WP:NPOV requires article coverage of "significant viewpoints" and WP:WEIGHT determines how much of what goes where. Selfstudier (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

  And this is my suggestion (based on policy recommendation) how to try asses what are deemed as important points for the lead. Vegan416 (talk) 19:02, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Erm, because that's a hoax! Iskandar323 (talk) 18:44, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for putting this together. I think it's a worthwhile approach but it needs some refinement. For one thing, 10+ years is old. For another, I don't think this collection is really representative of the encyclopedias we want to be looking at. For example: Encyclopedia of the First World War? That's not really on topic. And forget Britannica altogether (and dictionaries). For another thing, I'm not sure these are entirely accurate. Wiley's Encyclopedia of Political Thought entry does indeed mention colonialism (see WP:TWL link: [6]). Where are the Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, etc., encyclopedias? The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy encyclopedia entry, to take one example, mentions colonialism in the first paragraph: TWL link. Cambridge's History of Socialism, Volume II, has an entry called "Socialism, Zionism, and Settler Colonialism in Israel/Palestine". Cambridge's History of Judaism encyclopedia has an entry on "Zionism and its Critics" that talks about colonialism. I just quickly searched the Cambridge TWL collection to find these. I'm sure Oxford and Harvard and so on all have encyclopedias that cover Zionism. Finally, I don't think the first paragraph of encyclopedia articles is in any way analogous to the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article. What Wikipedia calls its "lead" is essentially the length of an entire encyclopedia entry in a print encyclopedia. We should see if it's mentioned anywhere in these encyclopedia entries, and yes look at how prominently and what's attributed vs. said in the publication's voice, but not cut it off at "first paragraph." And we should really be focusing on last 5-10 years, there's plenty to look at within that time frame. Tertiary sources are always going to lag behind secondary sources, but they can still provide useful information about WP:DUE/WP:ASPECT. Levivich (talk) 17:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I share Levivich's concerns, especially about dictionaries and more generally, well, for lack of a better term, selection effects. I have very slow internet at the moment (our dsl craps out during heatwaves) so don't have the time to go through all of these that are online. But I managed to click through on the first offering, Encyclopedia of the Palestinians. While it's true that the first 95 word paragraph does not mention colonialism, the second graph (without using the word "colonialism") describes very clearly a colonial project.Dan Murphy (talk) 18:31, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

But it doesn't use the word "colonialism" so you argument here is WP:SYNTH Vegan416 (talk) 18:39, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's not synth since other more recent sources do in fact use this term. DMH223344 (talk) 18:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

First thanks for pointing me to WP:TWL I didn't know we had a free access to Wiley online and other resources. That's great. I'll explore those in the next few days. I disagree with most of the arguments you raised, but I don't have time to write at length. I'll just comment on your claim that "What Wikipedia calls its lead is essentially the length of an entire encyclopedia entry in a print encyclopedia". That's absolutely untrue for many (if not most) of the Encyclopedias in this list. Also I used 2 cut offs, at 1 paragraphs and at 4 paragraphs (which is the size of the lead here). Vegan416 (talk) 18:38, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Levivich Now I have some time to expand a little about the points I disagree with. First, the date cutoff you wish to set now seems a bit like you are moving the goal posts, after you had in previous discussions agreed to any 21st century book. Second, you say that "Encyclopedia of the First World War" is not relevant to Zionism, although this was the war that moved Palestine from the hands of a largely anti-Zionist empire to the the hands of a largely pro-Zionist empire, and thus enabled the Balfour declaration etc. And then you bring yourself Cambridge's History of Socialism as if this is more relevant to Zionism than WW1. Third, as I already noted, I think that comparing the lead-section/4-first-paragraphs of these encyclopedias to the lead section in Wikipedia is very valid.

I do agree that there is a value in looking for "colonialism" etc. in the rest of the articles beyond the lead section. Though it won't be directly related to the specific question we discuss here (i.e. what to include in the lead), it can be helpful in assessing the wider question of how common is this view. So I'll add another column to the table. I'll also add a count of the words in each lead and article (or estimation where there is no electronic text) since it seems you have completely wrong ideas on this.

I will also continue on adding sources from the TWL which you revealed to me, and maybe I'll find more elsewhere. I will work on it on my sandbox and not here, because editing an existing table in source mode is a typing nightmare for me. I'll import that table back here when finished. Maybe to a Round 5 section. However since I have some commitments in real life I'll take a wikipedia break until the weekend, which means the updated table will be ready only sometime next week. Vegan416 (talk) 13:53, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

You want to talk about arbitrary cut-offs, you're advocating for looking at the first four paragraphs of encyclopedia articles on the basis that Wikipedia leads are four paragraphs long. :-D I mean that's just stupid. Let's drop the "four paragraphs" criteria.

Yes, I argue for 21st-century, in response to people bringing 20th-century. But really, I generally argue for last-5-years in this topic area.

Here are some (not all) of the books published in the 2020s (last 4.5 years) with the word "Zionism" in their titles:

1. Cohen, Netta (2024). New Under the Sun: Early Zionist Encounters with the Climate in Palestine. Univ of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-39723-1.
2. Fleisch, Eric (2024). Checkbook Zionism: Philanthropy and Power in the Israel-Diaspora Relationship. Rutgers University Press. doi:10.36019/9781978819986. ISBN 978-1-9788-1998-6.
3. Inbari, Motti; Bumin, Kirill (2024). Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Opinion on Israel. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-764930-5.
4. Etkes, Immanuel (2023). The Invention of a Tradition: The Messianic Zionism of the Gaon of Vilna. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1-5036-3709-2.
5. Forriol, Mari Carmen (2023). Development of the Roadmap of Political Zionism in the State of Israel. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5275-1260-3.
6. Hever, Hannan (2023). Hasidism, Haskalah, Zionism. University of Pennsylvania Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv30dxxs8. ISBN 978-1-5128-2508-4.
7. Penslar, Derek J. (2023). Zionism: An Emotional State. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-7611-4.
8. Stanislawski, Michael (2023). Zionism and the Fin de Siecle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-93575-4.
9. Blackmer, Corinne E. (2022). Queering Anti-Zionism: Academic Freedom, LGBTQ Intellectuals, and Israel/Palestine Campus Activism. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-5000-3.
10. Knorr, Brooke (2022). American Biblical Archaeology and Zionism. Routledge. doi:10.4324/b22935. ISBN 978-1-003-29629-4.
11. Peretz, Dekel (2022). Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. ISBN 978-3-11-072643-5.
12. Baji, Tomohito (2021). The International Thought of Alfred Zimmern: Classicism, Zionism and the Shadow of Commonwealth. Springer Nature. ISBN 978-3-030-66214-1.
13. Farmer, Esther; Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack; Sills, Sarah (2021). A Land With a People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism. NYU Press. ISBN 978-1-58367-931-9.
14. Halper, Jeff; Naser-Najjab, Nadia (2021). Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State. Pluto Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv1dm8d20. ISBN 978-0-7453-4339-6. JSTOR j.ctv1dm8d20.
15. Halperin, Liora R. (2021). The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1-5036-2871-7.
16. Lewis, Donald M. (2021). A Short History of Christian Zionism: From the Reformation to the Twenty-First Century. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 978-0-8308-4698-6.
17. Reynold, Nick (2021). The 1945–1952 British Government's Opposition to Zionism and the Emergent State of Israel. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-7936-2926-5.
18. Rich, Cynthia Holder (2021). Christian Zionism in Africa. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-9787-1174-7.
19. Sizer, Stephen (2021). Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-6667-3150-7.
20. Tarquini, Alessandra (2021). The European Left and the Jewish Question, 1848-1992: Between Zionism and Antisemitism. Springer Nature. ISBN 978-3-030-56662-3.
21. Zipperstein, Steven E. (2021). Zionism, Palestinian Nationalism and the Law: 1939-1948. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-48438-0.
22. Goldwater, Raymond (2020). Pioneers of Religious Zionism: Rabbis Alkalai, Kalischer, Mohliver, Reines, Kook and Maimon. Urim Publications. ISBN 978-965-524-343-7.
23. Landes, Richard (2020). Salem on the Thames: Moral Panic, Anti-Zionism, and the Triumph of Hate Speech at Connecticut College. Academic Studies PRess. ISBN 978-1-64469-370-4.
24. Levit, Daphna (2020). Wrestling with Zionism: Jewish Voices of Dissent. Interlink Publishing Group Incorporated. ISBN 978-1-62371-949-4.
25. Shoham, Hizky (2020). Carnival in Tel Aviv: Purim and the Celebration of Urban Zionism. Academic Studies Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv2175qt0. ISBN 978-1-64469-328-5. JSTOR j.ctv2175qt0.

These are not all the books, or even all the academic books, about Zionism published in the last 4.5 years. The point is: it's a lot of books, just in the last 5 years. So if you read an encyclopedia from 10, 15, 20 years ago, that encyclopedia is going to miss 50-100 or more of the most recent academic books about Zionism (and hundreds more journal articles). In other words: out of date. That's not true for all topic areas, but in this topic area -- the I/P conflict, one of the most-studied, most-written-about topics of all topics -- WP:AGEMATTERS, like it really matters, because there is so much being published on this topic, all the time. 10-, 15-, 20-year-old encyclopedia articles are going to be out of date in this topic area. Levivich (talk) 15:37, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

1. No. The cutoff of 4 paragraphs (or other clearly marked lead section if there is such marking, e.g. section titles in the article) is not stupid or arbitrary at all. It is exactly right, because we are after all dealing with the question what should be in the lead section of an encyclopedia article that has 4 paragraphs in the lead! Anyway what is your suggestion? That we have no cutoff at all and give a sentence that appears in the last paragraph of a 100 paragraphs article the same weight as a sentence that appears in the first paragraph? Or should we record for each such appearance the number of the paragraph (or word) it is in and then calculate some sort of average?

2. I am fully aware of the deluge of books and journal articles about Zionism and related issues. That's exactly why I suggested using encyclopedias. In order to make assessment of this deluge at least barely manageable. I believe that's also part of the idea behind the Wikipedia policy I quoted above. That's why we go to tertiary sources.

3. However I would argue that this deluge of books doesn't necessarily adds much new significant historical knowledge. I believe that most of it is repetition of things already discovered in the past, or dealing with minutia, or just political hype. I mean can you point me to some major paradigm-changing discovery that was made regarding the history of Zionism in the last 15 or even 25 years? I mean something that can really change a person view of the question whether Zionism is or isn’t colonialism? Vegan416 (talk) 17:16, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Think you are on a sticky wicket here, first off this about the 4 paras is just baloney, you can't compare random tertiaries with WP. Age does matter, that's the whole point of research, new insights and whether those insights make any headway among the scholarly community. Penslar is top drawer, how can one argue against him? Whatever way you cut it, it's a significant view and perhaps controversy as well, means it's in the lead, the only question is where. Selfstudier (talk) 17:37, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Your sentence "Penslar is top drawer, how can one argue against him?" is quite telling. It seems you are trying to make here an argument ex cathedra. But the truth is Penslar is just one historian out of many, and there are other historians who argue against him. Vegan416 (talk) 18:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

And none that agree with him? Don't think so. Selfstudier (talk) 18:20, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Did I say that? Vegan416 (talk) 18:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

"One historian out of many"? I guess so, except he's the one who was the inaugural Stanley Lewis Chair of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford, so he's more like "one historian out of very few" who have reached that level. Levivich (talk) 18:26, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

And yet there are other historians who argue with him. In the humanities we shouldn't believe in papal infallibility. Vegan416 (talk) 18:41, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

So far, we've identified three historians who'd argue with him about whether Zionism was some variety of colonialism. Levivich (talk) 18:45, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I was about to go off when I saw a notification about this new response of yours. So I would say just that your search methods are apparently not so good... I have now in a few minutes found several more names Tuvia Friling, Robert Eisen, Dov Waxman. I let you fill the details as I really have to go. Vegan416 (talk) 19:52, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

We're now up to six scholars who dispute that Zionism is colonialism--seems like a significant minority viewpoint! Of course, these dissenters also recognize that the view of Zionism as colonialism is so common as to be almost taken for granted, especially in academia. But don't take it from me, take it from Dov Waxman:

The most persistent, and perhaps most common, criticism of Zionism is that it is another instance of European colonialism ... Indeed in left-wing circles in Western societies, and especially on university campuses and in academia, it has become not only fashionable, but almost taken for granted, to view Zionism as synonymous with colonialism.
— Waxman, Dov (2019). "Was Zionism a form of colonialism?". The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford University Press.

Levivich (talk) 21:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

You forgot the qualifier "in left wing circles"... Vegan416 (talk) 05:17, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

While you may wish to shift the goalposts because the scholarship does not support the counter-assertion, no one is obliged to go along with you. Age matters. Source quality matters. Recent, high-quality academic sources beat crusty old general encyclopedias. As for whether there has been a paradigm shift? Ours is not too reason why. Though maybe it's not a what, but a who – say one politician who has made it his mission of the past two decades to ignore the UN, flout international law and expand illegal settlements. Maybe it's just the sheer unsubtly of Israel's colonial ambitions on the West Bank these days that made the scales fall from at least the eyes of subject specialists. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:42, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I didn't shift any goal-posts. The discussion where I started this was about whether this issue should be mentioned at the top of the article or not. Vegan416 (talk) 18:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Please check the publication date of Wolfe's "Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native". Yes there have indeed been dramatic changes in how we understand these historical movements, even in the past 20 years. DMH223344 (talk) 18:26, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Jinx! Levivich (talk) 18:30, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I mean can you point me to some major paradigm-changing discovery that was made regarding the history of Zionism in the last 15 or even 25 years? Um, two come to mind: (1) The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), and (2) same year, Patrick Wolfe's seminal paper about settler colonialism, often credited with launching the entire field of settler colonial studies (though Wolfe himself disagreed with that accolade), in which he describes Zionism as settler colonialism. In round 3--yesterday--we discussed how the paradigm has shifted over the last 20 years. These two things are examples of that. Levivich (talk) 18:30, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I asked for discoveries. Not for book names. Can you say what significant historical facts these 2 books revealed that were not known before 2006? Also even taking your claim at face value that would be an argument for putting the cutoff at 2010 not at 2020. Anyway I really have to take a break until the weekend. So last observation before I sign off. I made a search in TWL for "zionism" & "colonialism" in the last 5 years and got ~2000 results. It is impossible (within a reasonable time) to scan all these articles to assess how many of them support this claim, how many object to it, and how many say that this is not an important question. That's why we need to refer to encyclopedias, whose number is much smaller, to make the problem at least barely manageable.

And now I sign off. Over and out. Vegan416 (talk) 19:13, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

BTW, one of those 25 titles jumped out at me: Derek Penslar's book about Zionism published just last year. Sure enough, Chapter 2 is called "Zionism as Colonialism." "There is a deep divide, however, between scholars who do and do not conceive of Zionism as a variety of colonialism," Penslar writes. Then he traces the history: "Palestnian characterizations of Zionism as a form of European colonialism date to the 1920s ... During the 1960s, associations between Zionism and colonialism gained global currency." He then explores Zionism as settler colonialism in some depth. His conclusion to the chapter begins with: "Our comparative examination of colonial indigenization places Zionism within a settler-colonial matrix while allowing for its particularities, like a celestial body within an eccentric orbit around its sun." Levivich (talk) 15:55, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

To join in the commentary from @Levivich:

Encyclopedias included in original table

1. Encyclopedia of the Palestinians -- refers to Jews moving to the area as settlers in the entry.
2. Dictionary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict -- refers to Jewish colonies in Palestine in the first 4 paragraphs.
3. Encyclopedia of Race And Racism -- entry refers to Jewish settlers throughout the establishment of Israel.
4. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, -- Vegan claims that while colonialism occurs in the first paragraph it "doesn't appear to refer to Zionism", but I would argue it places Zionism within the global complex of colonialism. The entry the later mentions how while many Zionists understood themselves as anticolonialists, Zionism is often viewed as at odds with decolonial liberation.
5. International Encyclopedia of Political Science -- calls Zionism a settler movement, in reference to Palestinians in the first paragraph, and then has 3 paragraphs dedicated to Zionism as a colonial process in their own subsection of the entry.
6. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements -- talks of Jewish settlers in the entry.
7. Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion -- talks of Jewish settlers in the entry.
8. The Encyclopedia of Political Thought -- the entry discusses the view of Zionism as colonialism.
9. Middle East Conflicts from Ancient Egypt to the 21st Century: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection -- refers to Jewish settlers in the first 4 paragraphs. Continues to discuss settlers through the entry.

Other encyclopedias

1. Colonialism: An International Social, Cultural, and Political Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. 2003. Vol. 2. p. 644 -- refers to Zionism as colonial in it's first 4 paragraphs.
2. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier. 2015. p. 16685 -- the entry "Zionism, History of" refers to Zionism as a project of colonization.
3. The Palgrave Encyclopedia Of Imperialism And Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan. 2021. 2nd ed. Vol. 4. p. 2917 -- the entry deals with Zionism as an expression of imperialism, but provides the synonyms colonialism and settler colonialism
4. Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450. Macmillan Reference. 2007. -- Does not have an entry on Zionism, but has resistance to Zionism in the entry on Anticolonialism.

-- Cdjp1 (talk) 17:49, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

1. Settlers/settlement is not necessarily colonialism.
2. With regard to mentions beyond first 4 paras I have already started to expand the table in my sandbox to include that. Hopefully will be finished this week.
3. I'll add the new encyclopedias you found to the list, as well as some others I may found.

Vegan416 (talk) 11:08, 14 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Red herring. Encyclopedias are not necessarily written by experts and can often be out of date. They aren't necessarily the sources that are best for showing due weight. I definitely think colonialism should be mentioned in the article lead. (t · c) buidhe 18:53, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

  That's exactly why I supplied the names and links of the editors and writers of these articles. You can check for yourself that almost all of them are scholars in relevant fields. Vegan416 (talk) 18:56, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

• There are any number of methods one can use to obtain a negative result or the result one desires. The one above has terms of definition so stringently restrictive thathe method will tend to produce the desired result. Namely, (a)the source must be an encyclopedia (b) the subject must be Zionism (c) the only relevant evidence is from the first paragraph in the lead (d) the word to find in that para must be 'colonization' (e) if not in para one, then it must be in para 2 or thereabouts.

• Frankly this looks bizarrely idiosyncratic as a heuristic methodology, designed to elicit a negative result. I happen to have been commissioned to write the entry for a topic related to nationalism for a French encyclopedia. I've just checked it, and the first and second paragraphs nowhere mention what becomes the kernal of what the title alludes to. The first deals with the amplitude of the literature, the second with the historic background, and only then does on start to get to the topic's core itself.
• The justification for this unique procedure, which I've never seen anywhere else, is that using tertiary sources can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight'. But the thrust of the RS policy is that Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources.
• The secondary sources of recent times state and document overwhelmingly that colonization is intrinsic to Zionism. They do so because the Zionist founders used the language of colonialism throughout for the first half century, from Herzl to Ben-Gurion. They did so because, as rational men, they knew that in 1896, when they proposed to create a Jewish majority state in Palestine, the population was 95% Muslim-Christian, and that Zionism could only achieve its ends by massive colonization (Herzl recruited from the outset Otto Warburg because as a co-founder of the Kolonialwirtschaftliches Komitee (German Committee for Colonial Economy his expertise was thought crucial for introducing colonialist models of technocracy into Zionism).
• This open acceptance that Zionist mass colonization required, to work, comparative study of the English and German varieties, wasn't problematic until after 1945, when the wave of decolonializations began. It was then that Israel switched to a non-colonial idiom, one of 'national liberation', esp. in the 50s, to woo backing from those African states in international fora on the basis of an asserted kinship as one of their kind, a people occupied by an imperial colonial power (Great britain) whose shackles the Jews had thrown off. For the details see Yotam Gidron's Israel in Africa: Security, Migration, Interstate Politics, Zed Books. 2020 ISBN 978-1-786-99505-6). While paradigms change over time, the last two decades have witnessed the recursion of scholars to the language of Zionism's formative period, which is colonial. What type of colonialism best fits it is controversial. Colonialism is a category, with subsets like (a) settler-colonialism (b) exploitation colonialism, (c) surrogate colonialism, and (d) internal colonialism (the last again forms a class with a subset, namely sponsored colonization, e.g. Sri Lanka’s replacement of Tamils by Sinhalese people in part directed influenced by the Israeli model of sponsoring settlements in the West Bank).
• In short, the method is defective, tertiary sources like encyclopedias are ancillary to the secondary literature, and, as Levivich notes, the most recent decades show the colonial paradigm ascendent, something difficult to deny given the neo-colonization thrust of Israel's post-67 occupation of the West Bank where colonial and colonizing designs are ongoing.Nishidani (talk) 21:07, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

While it's not dispositive, I do think this is a useful signal. We are not obligated to follow other encyclopedias, but deviating from a large majority of them should give us pause and cause us to reconsider arguments about due weight.

That said, my main concern is about using "colonization" in an oversimplified statement in wikivoice; I would be less concerned about a more nuanced discussion farther down in the lede. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 22:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Yes, there's been numerous sourcing provided above by Levivich and others which demonstrates that that the settler colonialism is entirely notable as used to describe Zionism and can be thought of as a defining characteristic of Zionism. Per MOS:INTRO it should be in the lead at the very least and given how much of a identifying feature it is of Zionism it should preferably be in the first sentence per MOS:FIRST. Question: Why does this discussion keep getting split into new sections? TarnishedPath^talk 22:48, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

  There are lots of ways to describe Zionism though; what makes this one better than the alternatives? And if this is indeed the best (most succinct, informative, neutral, etc) way to describe it, why aren't other encyclopedias using this description? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 00:33, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

  I think I've mostly been the one slicing this discussion off into separate sections. Makes it easier to read on mobile (and I think on desktop too but that's prob a matter of personal preference). Anyone should feel free to refactor if they think it should be arranged differently. Levivich (talk) 01:58, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Encyclopaedias are tertiary and are not ideal sources anyway. As presented by other editors, there dozens of RS describing Zionism as at least colonialism if not outright settler colonialism and this of course is due for mention in the lede and particularly in the opening paragraph. The opening paragraph currently describes "what", the establishment of a Jewish state; "where", in Palestine; and "how" is evidently missing. Makeandtoss (talk) 08:38, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I was recently surprised to discover that Shapira uses the term "colonization" to describe Zionist activity in Palestine throughout "Land and Power". Here is a quote where she almost describes it as a colonial project: In the 1920s, nobody was certain that this interesting project—Jewish colonization in Palestine—would, indeed, survive.

It's really only Karsh who argues that it is not colonialism; here is his argument (which is really very weak and relies on a fringe narrative): https://www.google.com/books/edition/Israel_Israel_s_transition_from_communit/z9pGwAEACAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=colonialism%20is%20by%20definition DMH223344 (talk) 17:25, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Karsh also writes that the literature has by and large subscribed to the image of Zionism as colonialist. Yet another dissenter explicitly stating what the mainstream view is. Levivich (talk) 17:44, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Of course we must remember that what is contested is the use of 'colonization' in the lead, and not 'colonialism'. Colonialism is the category, as I said, and it would be highly arguable that just branding Zionism as one more instance of, synonymous with, that broad category, served any useful purpose. All varieties of colonialism (its subsets) share what Marc Ferro described in writing that 'Colonization is associated with the occupation of a foreign land, with its being brought under cultivation, with the settlement of colonists. (Marc Ferro, Colonization: A Global History, Routledge. (1997) 2005 ISBN 978-0-203-99258-6 p.1) That Zionism 'colonized' Palestinine is beyond dispute. How it did that, in its own distinctive fashion, is a matter of contention (The parallel is with Apartheid). That began as a term for specifically what South Africa's white government enacted. Analogies often skewed interpretations of Israel, despite a certain cogency in the comparison. Therafter 'apartheid' became the generic category, of which South Africa, Israel, Burma, etc., formed distinctive variants, as subsets, so that one could, theoretically, no longer assume pure identity, even mutatis mutandis, between the subspecies). though in the literature the paradigm of Settler colonialism (I haven't read that wiki article however) is the closest fit. Nishidani (talk) 19:01, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't understand the distinction you're making between the use of "colonization" and "colonialism" in this context. How could a movement use colonization, but not be considered colonialist (or a form of colonialism)? DMH223344 (talk) 00:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Colonialism historically involved the exploitation of resources and labor from the colonized territory for the benefit of the colonizing power, alongside the imposition of the colonizer's culture, values, and norms on the indigenous population. Zionism does not follow this pattern. Mawer10 (talk) 00:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

It doesn't? Really!? Show your work, account "Mawer10."Dan Murphy (talk) 01:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

We go with what the very best sources say, not editor's ideas about what things mean. TarnishedPath^talk 03:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

For good measure, from Land and Power (Shapira): Zionist psychology was molded by the conflicting parameters of a national liberation movement and a movement of European colonization in a Middle Eastern country. Karsh's perspective on the nature of Zionism is more fringe than I originally thought. DMH223344 (talk) 23:58, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

And from the paperback edition of Shafir's Land, Labor and the Origins:

Anita Shapira, in a special 1995 issue of History and Memory devoted to Israeli historiography, acknowledges that the use of the colonial model in studying Israel "is both legitimate and desirable," since "defining a movement as settlement-colonialism may well help to clarify the relations between the settling nation and the native one." As she points out, such an admission would not have been forthcoming in the past.

DMH223344 (talk) 17:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Just commenting, but I just note from the lead itself there's also other mentions of Zionism as "colonisation" in the last paragraph.--ZKang123 (talk) 02:28, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@DMH223344. If you did not grasp the distinction I made, it's my fault. I'll bullet it in précis. What is contested is the lead that states:

Zionism is an ethnic or ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside of Europe

Marc Ferro was quoted to define 'colonization'. 'the occupation of a foreign land, with its being brought under cultivation, with the settlement of colonists.' Marc Ferro Colonization: A Global History, Routledge (1997) 2005 978-0-203-99258-6 p. 1.

• Colonialism is a generic category having several subsets or elements (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) etc., which all illustrate the principle of taking over a foreign land/territory and populating it with imported labour. The more familiar forms are
• (a) Settler-colonialism (b) exploitation colonialism, (c) Surrogate Colonialism, (d) Internal colonialism and (e) sponsored colonization.
• Colonialism therefore is the class, whose subsets are (a) (b) (c) (d) and (e) constitute the elements of that class. The edit-warriors here contest the word 'colonization' which they assume is synonymous with the class (Colonialism), rather than being its primary definition. (a)(b)(c) (d) and (e) can be linked and differentiated to each other by Venn diagrams, showing properties that are common and those that are different. None of them alone tell one what Colonialism essentially is. Anymore than a single species can define thegenus to which it belongs, to change metaphors.

Let me illustrate by the latest example of this confusion.

Colonialism historically involved the exploitation of resources and labor from the colonized territory for the benefit of the colonizing power, alongside the imposition of the colonizer's culture, values, and norms on the indigenous population. Zionism does not follow this pattern. Mawer10

Here Mawer defines the class Colonialism in terms of just one of its operative modes, by citing features that apply to one or two of the several types and stating this is what Colonialism is. It fails at first sight because one variety at least, the form Colonialism took in Australia, did not exploit the labour of the indigenous population, nor impose on them 'colonizer's culture, values, and norms'. Rather, it marginalized genocidally the indigenous population and imported convicts en masse from the metropolis to establish its extractive labour force. And neither the convicts nor the aboriginals were inculcated with british culture, norms and values'

There are many varieties of colonialism, as said, and one cannot muddle the concept by defining it variously in terms of the definition for one of its several constituent elements. One cannot define a genus by one of its species. That is why we write 'colonization' rather than 'Colonialism'. Nishidani (talk) 09:04, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Here is a statement from Chaim Weizmann of what he meant by colonization and how it compared to other examples:

"our colonization in Palestine compares not unfavourably with similar work done by other nations of infinitely greater experience and in more encouraging circumstances. To the quality of our settlers and of their work we have ample and authoritative testimony. And over and above agricultural settlement, we have created in Palestine all the essentials of nationhood. The organism is not yet fully grown, but the embryo is complete. We have our language, our land, our peasants and work-people, our intellectuals; from the smallest cottage or farm right up to the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, everything is our own achievement. By what that achievement is and by what it is to be, we shall be judged in the eyes of the world."

Chaim Weizmann, address to the Jewish Agency, 7 Dec 1931. The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Series B, Volume II, p5.) Zero^talk 14:27, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Proud of their colonization! And they have their peasants! Jolly good. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:47, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Careful about the tone there, dear Iskander.However one prefers to read the history (my views are known), pride in what Zionism was achieving - an unimaginable and improbable exercise in building a state from the ground up where Jews could be Jews freed of the shackles and uncertainties of a history of subordination- was a most natural human response. One should never underestimate the affective power of such an intense perception, relief at, in purely internal terms, having apparently crawled out of the nightmare of the past. A number of prescient historians and thinkers understood quite early what would be the obverse corollary of this miracle, a death-certificate for the people Zionism would displace ineluctably, effectively transferring onto Palestinians as their future fate the whilom destiny that befell Jews - diaspora, immiseration, contempt as an ethnically opprobrious outgroup incapable of anything but terrorism (as 'Jews' had been ostracized and stigmatized as incapable of anything but shady money dealing). But that was so thoroughly removed from the general awareness of most Zionists that we can hardly blame them for this formative euphoria. The identitarian trauma we are witnessing, not so much in Israel as abroad, has destroyed that pride. But, as editors who must try to borrow a lesson from the historian's craft, we should abstain from feelings of Schadenfreude or mockery. Nishidani (talk) 16:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

And yet the Lord-of-the-Manor-esque pomp and satisfaction at having the "peasants and work-people" ensconsed is very deridable and condescending classism. This is long past the era of Marx. Chaim, like his political fellows, should have chosen his words more carefully. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:11, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't think the analogy is correct, though your point does have a certain cogency. Weizman there is like an urbane very highly placed member of a metropolitan elite, asked by kin in Europe to help do something about a nomadic tribe of their desperate co-religionists. Lords of the Manor would evict their tenants, and deny they had any claim upon the land they worked, other than paying rent to its proper owner. The creation of a 'peasantry' ('mechanical people' in the Italian idiom) had, for Zionists, nothing of the negative connotations it had for the Christian upper classes. It meant providing masses of Jews denied for a millennium access to land and agriculture, the possibility to rehabilitate their lives as petty tradesmen, middle men, schnoorers etc., by the discipline of physical labour infused with a sense of historical redemption. Lords of the Manor would never have undertaken any such mission for their poor. Like Herzl's diaries, Weizman's letters make for unsettling reading. But it is not what he did for immigrant Jews (the source of pride) that shows the man he was: it is what he did when members of the al-Banna, with some 24 sq.kilometres of prime citrus land under cultivation around Ashkelon, turned to him (he had been a neighbour and good friend of Khalil al-Banna) to intercede in 1947-48 and keep them out of the war (as people traditionally on very good terms with Jews). Weizman ignored them, and they lost everything. A core wealth-producing and labour-intense Arab economy was smashed, and the looted territory turned over to immigrants. Weizman and co., were 'proud' they had looked after 'their own' impoverished class. It's less lord-of-the manorly than those Catholics-turned-Protestants under Henry VIII, who became Lords of their Bad Manors by dispossessing their Catholics friends and neighbours to harvest the riches that accrued to them by extending, under royal patronage, their lands. Those men then dispossessed the peasantry over the following centuries, with no sense of obligation to anyone but themselves. Class is still a valid category for me, but for decades we have seen it trumped by ethnocratic values, and the populist leaders who promote the latter do so in the name of securing a future for their poor, even if this is at the cost of obliterating and immiserating those unfortunates who do not pertain to their favoured ethnic group. It is a provincial pride, that sustains itself by erasing all awareness of collateral damage to the chosen outgroup. (one consequence of Weizman's turning his back on his Arab neighbours was Abu Nidal, but he couldn't have foreseen anything so drastic as that. Those generations were temperamentally/culturally different from the criminal hucksters and opportunistic religious caterpillars who proliferate prominently these days. Sorry for the niggle.Nishidani (talk) 19:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Levivich, I don't expect anyone to search diligently for sources that contradict their opinion. While this is the ideal of science and scholarship, we are all human beings and people who never succumb to confirmation bias are very rare indeed. But saying that you have "identified" only X scholars that oppose your view when you have seen more than that, is a different matter. Here is an interesting observation in this regard:

On 18:45, 9 July 2024 you claimed in this discussion that "So far, we've identified three historians" that would argue against the idea that Zionism is some form of colonialism. Later on 21:03, 9 July 2024 after I presented additional 3 scholars, you said "We're now up to six scholars who dispute that Zionism is colonialism". However from your comments in the recent AE discussion about Nishidani’s aggressive behavior we can see that in the days immediately before you made that "3/6 scholars" comments, you have been closely monitoring the articles Settler colonialism and Zionism as settler colonialism. Yet, somehow you "missed" the fact that these articles contain the opinions of several more scholars critical of the idea that Zionism is Colonialism (beyond those mentioned so far in the discussion here): Tom Segev, Ilan Troen, Yuval shany, Jeffrey C. Alexander and Moses Lissak. In fact, some of these names and their opinions appear in two diffs that you yourself brought into that AE discussion on 15:58, 8 July 2024! One titled "adding content for context, opposing views for npov", the other titled "you have removed sourced material without explanation." Vegan416 (talk) 10:08, 14 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Nothing prevents yourself from bringing sources, wherever they may be found and no matter who found them. Go with that and everything will be fine. If you have some behavioral issue to discuss with another editor that would usually be a matter for that editor's talk page in the first instance. Selfstudier (talk) 11:03, 14 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

With a 2 minutes search in google and just lookin at the wikipedia articles for (Zionism as) Settler colonialism I have already brought the number of critical scholars in this discussion from 3 to 11. And there are of course more that I'll bring here later as time permits. Vegan416 (talk) 11:11, 14 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

you have been closely monitoring the articles Settler colonialism and Zionism as settler colonialism 😂 I don't closely monitor any articles. Also, I didn't say that I have identified. Also also, I said "colonialism," not "settler colonialism." Levivich (talk) 11:14, 14 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

LOL. So the diffs you brought with the critical opinions that you "missed" just fell on you from heaven without you looking for them or looking at them... And your trying to distinguish here between "colonialism" and "settler colonialism" is funny because that whole discussion was in the context of Penslar discussion of "settler colonialism". Anyway, here are 3 more critical names that I found in the last few minutes:

Fania Oz-Salzberger (https://momentmag.com/a-guide-to-zionism-in-hard-times/): What about colonialism? Despite its pioneers’ European origins, Zionism is not, and never was, a colonialist project.

Ruth Ginio (https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/r1azjsska|): This is not a situation of colonialism according to its historical definition, but rather a situation of two conflicting nations sharing the same territory.

Avi Bareli (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13531040108576162): The Colonialist School creates, then, a historical fiction which it calls "Zionism," but which is not really Zionism.

More will come when I have more time to search later. Bye for now. Vegan416 (talk) 11:34, 14 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

without you looking for them or looking at them 😂😂 You have correctly deduced that I looked for and at them. your trying to distinguish here between "colonialism" and "settler colonialism" is funny Is it also funny when scholars distinguish between the two, or just when I do it?

I do appreciate you bringing sources though, that's what we're here for. Our count is up to 9, although maybe more like 8.5 because Ginio wavers. (And that Bareli article is kind of old for this topic, as we've discussed earlier.)

By the way, remember when I said "modern academic books about Zionism"? That was to filter the pile of sources, so we weren't going at this forever. You're bringing in journal articles, op-eds, and newspaper interviews. You do realize that if we open up the search to include those non-book sources, it also opens the flood gates to the pro-colonialist sources, right? If I can find 10 books saying it's colonialism, I'll be able to find 100 journal articles and probably 1,000 interviews and op-eds. So be careful. 9 is still a very small number, especially if you're searching op-eds and interviews.

More will come when I have more time to search later. No rush. Levivich (talk) 12:16, 14 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Levivich 1. Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that you admit now that you had looked at the diffs, and when you said that "so far we have identified 3/6" you were aware of the existence of more scholars that had criticized the colonial description of Zionism in general (not only specific "variants" of colonialism). And your excuse for this misrepresentation is that you said "we" instead of "I". Pardon me, but this excuse looks like sophistry.

2. You also had your math confused. Actually so far we have mentioned in this discussion 15 scholars who are critical of the "colonial" interpretation (11 of whom were brought by me). Nor is there any wavering in Ginio’s interview. Nor did Bareli change his mind since 2001, if anything he became more emphatic about it. Anyway very soon I'll post (in “round 5” section) a list that completes this number to 50.

3. The 50 scholars I’ll soon post are quoted from a variety of sources: Academic books, academic journal articles, opinion pieces and interviews etc. Please note that I am counting here 50 different relevant scholars and not articles by just any person, and as Selfstudier said once – if a scholar writes something related to his fields, he is considered a RS even if he wrote it on toilet paper. Anyway, if you believe you can bring here quotes from 1000 different relevant scholars that had written in favor of the “colonialist” view, in similar sources to the ones I used, then by all means feel free to do that. As for me, although I have more leads like these, I don’t intend to continue in this line in the near future, because I want to go back to working on my main argument here, i.e. the “Encyclopedias project”. Vegan416 (talk) 11:12, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

1. Is this you trying to trap me in some kind of bullshit? Stop pinging me, we're done. I'm not down for another Vegan bludgeoning. Levivich (talk) 13:13, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Several editors in previous discussion seem to have wished to create the impression that the number of 21st scholars that are critical of the "(post) Colonial" interpretation of Zionism is only a single digit number (one going even as far as calling it a "fringe" view). To completely debunk this false impression that may have been created I bring here a list of 50 relevant 21st century scholars who are critical of the "(post) Colonial" interpretation of Zionism (most of whom wrote about it in the last 5 years). I actually have more leads like these but I got tired of exploring them and writing them nicely, so I decided to stop at a nice round number. Having made my point here, I don’t intend to continue in this line of randomly collecting scholar opinions in the near future, because I want to go back to working on my more systematic approach here, i.e. the “Encyclopedias project”. News on that will probably come next week on "Round 6".

Vegan416 (talk) 11:25, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Is it to be 10 rounds? Points decision? Wonder if I can produce a source table twice as big as that one? Selfstudier (talk) 11:39, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

As many rounds as it take till we reach a consensus decision. We might even have an RFC if we cannot reach it. But at this early exploratory stage it is still early to even decide what the options is such an RFC would be. And I think that I probably could produce a source table twice as big as that one, but as I said I don't intend to work on this soon, as I want to concentrate on the systematic Encyclopedias approach. Vegan416 (talk) 11:47, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Vegan416 Yoav Gelber is an interesting inclusion, considering he has repeatedly stated that Zionism as colonialism is the mainstream view in the literature, and the view of Zionism as not colonial is a minority view. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 12:48, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Apart from its irrelevancy, for we have been discussing the use of 'colonization' as an appropriate term in the lead, and there is no other word available to explain what we mean when a programme was undertaken to create a Jewish majority, via immigration, in a country that was 95% Arab, and there is no way to get round the documented fact that the Zionist leadership described this, from 1896 to at least 1948, as colonization, this is a very mixed bag, most of it expressing summarily opinions by Zionists dismissing the settler colonial thesis of Colonialism studies, by challenging the adequacy of the latter general concept, poorly defined. One would expect this in any faith-based belief system. I'm going through these but your very first should be removed. I particularly enjoyed the link to Benny Morris, the son of a Belfast immigrant who, in a book review of the Palestinian historian, Rashid Khalidi, discredits a scion of the Khalidi family with its millenial roots in Palestine for his views about colonialism, because he was for a time, a spokesman for the PLO, in 1980s. And because he quotes a definition of colonialism that is no longer in use, in order to rebut it. That is the quality of most of the evidence here (sniping shots from Zionist (nothing wrong with that, but it is an emotional commitment) scholars who, en passant express their distaste for the term which they fail to adequately define, and are mainly concerned with the politics of the debate, and not the merits of the theory. I'll give details when I get the time.Nishidani (talk) 14:05, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

And that Chaim Gans quote... the very next sentence is: "It might have been justified, as I think it was in fact, to propose solving the European Jewish problem by establishing a Jewish colony in Palestine." Somehow that next sentence didn't make it into the table.

Elsewhere in the piece, he draws a distinction between other Western colonialism and Israel, writing that while Western countries moved away from their colonialist roots over time, Israel moved in the opposite direction. Levivich (talk) 14:38, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Cdjp1 actually, Gelber was one of the only three three scholars in this list that I didn't find myself but rather copied from the discussion that happened here before I got involved, and where it was established that Gelber opposes the colonialist view vehemently. So I didn't really look much into his writings. So tell me where did he say what you attribute to him? Vegan416 (talk) 14:59, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Vegan416 his chapter in Cohen's The British Manadate of Palestine to begin with. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 15:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I looked at this chapter (I assume it is identical to this, I couldn't find an accessible version of the book itself either in Google Books or TWL) and didn't find anywhere that he claims that the colonialist view is the majority view. Can you refer me to the sentences where he says that? Vegan416 (talk) 17:59, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Yoav Gelber. Nope. He edited the book and you attribute to him an anonymous sentence in the abstract attached to it. It is bad practice to just google without reading the source.Nishidani (talk) 14:05, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
• Benny Morris, a book review. It defines en passant colonialism as

Colonialism is commonly defined as the policy and practice of an imperial power acquiring political control over another country, settling it with its sons

Palestine wasn't settled by British Jews during the British Mandate, ergo. . . Zionism was not colonialist. Go figure. Nishidani (talk) 14:35, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply