Talk:Palestinians/Archive 10

message: Palestinian people-hood does not exist. They are of Arab national. Palestine was never a state but merely a region. The word Palestine was created by the Romans when they expelled the Jews from Judea and Israel to further humiliate the Jews. The now called Palestinian Arabs are not a cohesive people as we speak.  They are ARABS who basically were nomads originated from the Arabian desert, today Saudi Arabia. Palestinian people-hood was created in the 1969 charter of the PLO for political reason, to distory the one tiny Jewish state-Israel. In fact prior to 1948, it was the Jews who were referred to as Palestinian. The Arabs used to despise the word "Palestinians"; they use to say that it was a Zionist invention but still referred to the Jews as Palestinian. See here: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33506  Here: http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/whopals.html and see here: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/1948--israel--and-the-palestinians--annotated-text-11373
this article is still a riiculous mess regarding the imagery chosen. i don't mind too much the weird avoidance from important figures on the template... but images of a few people sitting in an ally as representative of the palestinian family cell?? ridiculous. Jaakobou 10:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  pictures de jour 

message: In the opening paragraph, we read:
"Prior to 1948, they were immigrants of Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. After 1948, those Arab countries refused to allow them to return forcing them into lives as refugees."
This is outrageous on its face, and contradicted by everything that follows in the article.  I protest strongly and ask for this and all similar sentiments to be removed by a monitor.70.95.168.25 08:49, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. I will look into what can be done about this. Tiamut 10:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  removed that unsourced and false claim in this edit: . Thanks for your comments. Tiamut 10:41, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Some palestinians are native or at least have been in paletine for hundreds of years. Others clearly came from other areas. Just go and ask them. Issayia near Tapuah junction wa founded by a merchant from Maroco. The large Humala called al-masri orginated from maser (egypt) but what difference does it make ? they are here now. They are palestinas and have aright to,live in palestine. can't understand why you are pushing away data just to justify your political POV Zeq 19:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  We've heard this before: Palestinian Arabs are somehow not native to Palestine. 

message: They do exist. See here: In practice, therefore, the question is to determine the status of a small non-Arab minority which in the 1931 census was placed in the category of "Others", as opposed to the category of "Arabs", in which all Arabs belonging to the Palestine Arab community, or who considered themselves as belonging to that community, were placed.  The Armenians#Diaspora spring to mind. <<-armon->> 13:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: With their main journal named Palestine Post ? I wonder if they really stopped calling themselves Palestinians ? They would have chosen the Yishuv Daily or why not the Jerusalem Post as they did far later... Alithien 11:56, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  non-Arab Palestinians 

message: * Historians Marcia Kunstel and Joseph Albright in their book, The Promised Land: Arab and Jew in History’s Cauldron, One Valley in the Jerusalem Hills claim that Palestinians are an amalgamation of every people who has ever lived in Palestine, and that their origins and early attachment to the land derive from the Canaanites five millennia ago. 
**Yes, this source is OK. We can cite it, but not devote too much space to it per policies WP:UNDUE, WP:FRINGE. nadav (talk) 11:11, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody is saying that "the Palestinians are not the descendants of earlier peoples that populated the region". Nobody is saying that "historians and archaeologists largely reject Palestinian descendancy from earlier Semitic tribes". People are only objecting to this particular unproven assertion that Palestinians are directly descended from the Canaanites. Most historians/archaeologists reject this notion. Again, I have absolutely no problem with saying that Palestinians identify with the Canaanites, but we cannot assert that they are direct descendants of them. What we can write is that Arabs have been in Palestine since its conquest upwards of a thousand years ago, and that undoubtedly, Palestinians also share roots with the population that existed in Palestine before that, which included many Semites, but also other non-semitic Christians. Moreover, many Palestinians share similar  genetic material with Jews, and this genetic material has been native to Palestine for millennia.  This, I believe, is all born out by the studies. But the claim of direct ancestry from Canaanites is not proven by anything. nadav (talk) 11:11, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I have no issue with anything that was just added. The quote from Khalidi is obviously important and should be included, and I don't think there is anything controversial about what Mckean is saying. I think we understand each other now. We just have to be cautious when citing the genetic studies to not take the results out of context or add to their conclusions. Best, nadav (talk) 11:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text: And I remain perplexed as to why you refuse to accept that non-experts writing in the 1920s and 1930s are not reliable sources for your claims. It's an extremely simple concept to grasp. Jayjg (talk) 18:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this issue is resolved for now. No need to stoke the fire. nadav (talk) 18:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Scholarly evidence that Palestinians are descendants of earlier Semitic peoples in the region

message: I would like to propose that material from the Palestinian culture section be moved into this article. As it stands, that article refers to smaller article subsets on language, food, music, etc. I don't really understand why this material isn't included here. Instead of describing Palestinian people and their culture, this article is very politically heavy. It would help the reader to know that Palestinians have an identity outside of the conflict with Israel and a culture with a rich historical tradition. Any objections? Tiamut 13:14, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I find the suggestion appealing. --Ian Pitchford 13:24, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text: No objection whatsoever. Similar articles such as Egyptians and Jew all have a culture section with summarized material from the main article per WP:SUMMARY. The article Palestinian culture, though, needs to be heavily expanded. The section on literature, for example, is a disgrace. I'll put in a request for Palestinian literature on the project page. nadav (talk) 15:37, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't realize that you were proposing to completely merge the culture article into this one. Isn't it a bit much to describe the fine points of musakhan preparation in a general article on the Palestinian people? I think we should compress some of the culture information in this article and greatly expand the culture article. nadav (talk) 16:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text: What I'm trying to do is incorporate the outline that is the Palestinian culture page into this one. I think Palestinian culture should redirect here eventually and that there should be brief descriptions with headers that lead to each page on each specific subject. So you're right, the finer point of mussakhan preparation don't need to be here, but they shouldn't be in a Palestinian culture article either. They should be in the article on Palestinian cuisine. This is going to need a alot of time to organize. You can help by paring down the sections here and placing the material that is too detailed in its respective article sections. Tiamut 17:14, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah I think that's a good idea, and I agree with your reasoning to merge regarding avoiding a lot of the politics. A couple of points. Obviously musakhan can be offloaded to the cuisine article, and I think the whole DNA section could be seriously trimmed or removed because I don't see that sort of  section in other articles. Also, is there any objection to just titling the merged article "Palestinians"? <<-armon->> 23:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the DNA section is worthy of inclusion though it could use some clean-up. About the titling, I think you should get the opinions of others who know why it was named the way it was too. I don't have strong opinions or policy reasons for one or other either way right now. Tiamut 02:00, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Palestinian culture]]

message: Could we have a proper source for the Golda Meir quote please? Jayjg (talk) 18:47, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This won't do. A proper source, please. By the way, a proper source would include things like an article title and author, and ideally a page number. Jayjg (talk) 19:51, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text: O.K., now it's a La Guardia book. What page is the claim on? Jayjg (talk) 19:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm increasingly dubious of this claimed 1969 quotation from the Sunday Times. Not one of the many sources I've seen seems to be able to state the name of the article, its author, or page number, and many quote it inaccurately, not realizing the alleged quote it much longer. If they had actually seen a proper source, they would have at least inserted ellipses. Some of them claim it was made in the New York Times, rather than the Sunday Times. Even more worrying, there's a source from 1964 that is already referring to it:  Can anyone verify that she actually said this? Jayjg (talk) 20:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks like the full quote, including the question and Golda Meir's answer, is here . Beit Or 20:28, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Great find, Beit Or, I'll update the article. -- Avi 20:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The quote is quite well known, to the extent that Golda Meir wrote a letter to the NYT in 1976 where she attempts to answer the critics. . ابو علي (Abu Ali) 20:38, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Hmm, I'm still suspicious. These sources:    say it was in The New York Times. Jayjg (talk) 22:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Jay, please, please read them carefully, they are quoting the NYT on the sixteenth, saying Meir said it on the fifteenth. WHile I do not have the articles in front of me, I am very certain that the NYT ran the Meir interview in the US the day after it ran in the Sunday Times in the UK. Jay, this has been verified near sixteen ways to Sunday here; we have reliable sources that she said it, and you know how adamant I am about demanding reliable sources. Now, does it mean what Khalidi and Said make it out to mean? That seems to be a scholarly debate as depicted Gelvin and by Weiner (Commentary 108; if you can find it, see footnote in second source you brough above). We cannot make any connotation one way or the other; we are supposed to bring examples of the primary opinions from reliable sources with sufficient citations that the interested reader can research and make his or her own decision. -- Avi 23:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, as far as ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times is concerned, there was no interview with her in the paper then. However, she was in England at the time and gave a couple speeches, so it's very possible she was interviewed by The Times (of London). And you know how people always get those two papers mixed up. nadav (talk) 00:04, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll say it again, check the DATES . Before the advent of fax machines, it was not uncommon for a paper in the US to run something the day after a paper across the pond. -- Avi 00:16, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Golda Meir quote 

message: We should learn to depend on our good friends at Wikiquote, who apparently are better at citations than many books: q:Golda Meir. The Washington Post has a very long excerpt from the Sunday Times interview as a front page article. Meir was interviewed by Frank Giles, the foreign editor of the Sunday Times, while she was in London. Some interesting  highlights:
----
Q. It seems to me that the heart of the Middle East problem as it is today is to be found in the plight of the Palestinians with their sense of grievance. Does Israel admit a measure of responsibility?
A. No, no responsibility whatsoever. If you say, is Israel prepared to co-operate in the solution of their plight, the answer is yes. But we are not responsible for their plight.
This is a humanitarian problem. But the Arabs who created this refugee problem by their war against us and against the 1948 U.N. resolution have turned this into a political problem.
After all, there are millions and millions of refugees in the world, and I have not yet heard anybody say the three million Sudetan Germans should go back to Czechoslovakia--nobody. I do not know why the Arab refugees are a particular problem in the world.
[Question about Fedayeen appears here, and the reply is basically identical to the Gelvin book text. The reply continues:]
There is really no such thing as a representative body speaking for so-called Palestinians...[all ellipses are in the Post article]
Nor do I favor a separate Palestinian Arab state. There are 14 Arab states with immense territories, with natural resources. What would this tiny state of the western bank really mean as to its viability...? I would have to be part either of Israel or of Jordan.
----
nadav (talk) 01:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Excerpt in the Washington Post

message: Shell we write about that now? Gaza will and always wanted to go their own way, or are they like part of Palestine but autonomous?
: No, that's unrelated because what Hamas and Fatah control does not have any bearing on who is a Palestinian person. (Also, don't forget to sign your name, like so:) Smaug(talk to me) 18:49, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Two Palestines

message: Nadav, read this pleae regarding the local languages.. As I have said, Arabic was as common as Aramaic at the end of the Byzantin perion and before the Islamic conquest... In fact, the majority of south Palestine and transjordan and Syrian desert were already speaking Arabic... The Nabatean Aramaic language has already smoothly became Arabic around 100 A.D. The area in Jerusalem and the Galilee were multi lingual and Greek was a common lanugage too. the local indigenous population though was speaking Arabic and Aramaic by the end of the Byzantine time... ....  Please streamline references, imrove language, but let's not try to remove cited information because it is common out there... See this  regarding some of this information... Also do not forget that Herod's himelf was of Arab descent! Almaqdisi talk to me 00:35, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you continue to insert erroneous material from unreliable sources, despite the lengthy discussion and consensus above, it will simply be reverted. Keep that in mind. Jayjg (talk) 06:43, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I had read the entire Griffith source when I said that the main languages spoken in Palestine prior to the conquest were various dialects of Aramaic and (among the elites) Greek. In fact, that was exactly the source I had in mind when I said that. Here are some excerpts from that paper:
----
"On the basis of the distribution of the inscriptions, one recent scholar judges that the CPA-speaking [Christian Palestinian Aramaic]  population was distributed mainly in the area of Jerusalem, the Judean desert, Transjordan, and western Galilee [M. Levy-Rudin]. Presumably these people were for the most part the indigenous Christians of the Holy Land; many of them may also have been Greek speaking." (p. 8)
"And although [CPA] was the language largely of the rural population outside the major cities of Palestine, and of the non-Greek-speakers in the urban areas... (pg. 9. rest of sentence is about it having been preserved in monastic collections)"
On pages 20-1, the article discusses how even when the monks came into contact with Arabs, they spoke CPA because:
the language flourished in Palestine and Jordan, and in the monastic communities, precisely during the period between the fifth and sixth centuries.
What is more, it was, according to the the findings of current authorities, M Bar-Asher, A Desreumaux, and C. Muller-Kessler, very much the language that developed locally from the old Aramaic dialect of the rural and nomadic groups of Galilee, Transjordan, and what Bar-Asher calls "a radius of 30 to 40 kilometres around the [city of Jerusalem]." No doubt there was also a currency of Arabic in this milieu in the fifth and sixth centuries, primarily among those whom Cyril [ancient historian] calls "Saracens." But Arabic in no way infringes on the communicability of CPA; bilingualism had long been a feature of the lives of the nomadic and settled Arabs in those territories in which both Aramaic and Arabic were current and intermingled. Indeed there is evidence of a considerable influence on CPA, especially in the latter period of its currency as a liturgical language.
(Just so there is no doubt, the article says CPA was still used a liturgical language well into the Islamic period.)
"As for the currency of Christian Palestinian Aramaic, the evidence suggests, as we have seen, that it flourished as a spoken and written language in Palestine and Transjordan until it gave way to Arabic in the eighth century, as the local idiom of the Melkite Christians."(p. 13)
"Milka Levy-Rubin has argued that CPA was the language of a relatively poor and disenfranchised population, outside the main urban centers in Palestine. On her hypotheses, neither CPA nor the Christian Arabic that largely supplanted it after the eighth century ever seriously displaced Greek as the dominant cultural language of the patriarchate of Jerusalem."(p. 13)
The author disagrees with her opinion that it was only the language of the poor, because:
deployment of these local languages [Aramaic, Arabic] suggests a burgeoning accommodation to the cultural facts of the place, especially at a distance from the centers of empirewide pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the early Islamic period, when Arabic was quickly becoming the lingua franca of a new world order...Greek persisted in divine liturgy...Gradually, from the ninth century onward, while Greek retained its social prestige and iconic functions, one would be hard-pressed to find any evidence of new compositions in this lingua sacra in Syria/Palestine...CPA too persisted into the Islamic era as a local liturgical language. However, unlike Greek, it was gradually eclipsed altogether by Arabic, which was not the language of a local Christian community but the idiom of the world of Islam, which all communities in the caliphate gradually adopted for purposes of survival.
 (p. 13)
"in the eighth century, Arabic was beginning to occupy that niche in the social fabric of the monasteries and the church in Palestine that had theretofore been solely the province of CPA, that is to say, the language of the non-Greek-speaking local population of the patriarchate of Jerusalem." (p.27)
"The period of the demise of CPA as a spoken language, after the eighth century, corresponds to the period of the rise of Arabic in the same milieu." (p. 27)
----
In short, Griffith says that while Arabic was spoken in Palestine by what the ancient historian Cyril calls the "Hagarene and Ishmaelite" "Saracen" groups, the lingua franca of Palestine prior to the conquest was Aramaic (with Greek also extremely common). Arabic only became the main language afterwards. nadav (talk) 08:16, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aramaic , and Arabic 

message: Rktect expands on the opinions above about Canaanites, and informs us that Palestinians and Philistines are one and the same as well. It seems he is just conflating two meanings of the word "Palestinian": one refers to inhabitants of the geographical region of Palestine, and the other refers to members of the modern-day Arab Palestinian people. For more on this, see Definitions of Palestine and Palestinian (though that article needs work). nadav (talk) 11:34, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm refering to the historical inhabitants of the region having continued to occupy the land  generation after generation farming the same lands, harvesting olives from the same olive groves, continuing through millenia with very little change up until the late forties when some unfortunate events seem to have redefined what it meant to be a Palestinian in about the same way Europeans redefined what it meant to be an American when they arrived in the "New World" they desired to occupy.
Referring to Phillistines and Canaanites as the ancestors of Palestinians is about as contraversial as refering to the Clovis people as the ancestors of some modern American indian tribes. Both have about 12,000 years of historical association with their homeland. Rktect 12:46, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't know who the Clovis are, so I don't know what you are saying, but many if not most Palestinians', in the common modern usage of the word, parents/grandparents/etc immigrated to Palestine in decades preceding Israel's independence.  So saying Canaanites are acenstors of today's Palestinians is as accurate as saying today's Americans are descendants of Native Americans. Dragon Smaug 16:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are correct that most Palestinian Arabs arrived in the last few centuries from other parts of the Arab world as a direct result of the mass immigration of Jews. It is known that people go where there is a potential of a livelihood. So as the Jews immigrated; so did the Arabs, and commerce was good for both. Most Palestinian Arabs cannot prove their ancestry in Palestine for more then the modern era. So all this talk of being of Canaanite descent should be taken in the context of the origin of all the Arabs; Palestinian Arabs are the same Arabs from Syria, Egypt and Arabia who happened to end up in Palestine. Itzse 19:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  In addition to being Canaanites, Palestinians are also Philistines 

message: 1- Is there Wikipedean who thinks that there is no consensus among historians that Canaanites are an extension of tribes from northern Arabia, and to that matter that they are of Arabian origin... Bernard Lewis, among many other historians, does not seem to object to that. In fact, this popular hypothesis of the origin of Canaanites is also mentioned in his book. See  Regarding first Arabs in Palestine, you may read this . See also Lewis' comments to this regard:
:: Cananites are neither semitic nor arab. Its possible they are closer to cro magnon or neaderthal than homo sapiens, they are just really big boned, large, tall, thick people. In the relatively recent past there was discussion among anthropologists as to whether the neanderthals found cohabiting caves on Mt carmel with home sapiens intermarried. The canaanites might be the answer.
[Kebara_Cave]
Canaan Rktect 04:27, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There were no arabs c 2500 BC when the semites from the interior of the Arabian penninsula began moving toward the coasts. The interior is very different from the coast along the Red Sea where the mountains are high and the baboons are thick along the guard rails. There are houses that go back before there were semites. In the interior along the banks of long since dried up rivers there are  kites and cairns of the gazelle hunters that go back to before there were deserts there. All I'm saying is that to this day you can find quite a mix of races and ethnic groups on both sides of the Red Sea that still define themselves as tribe rather than as a people or nation.Rktect 03:29, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

text: 1) I think we basically understand each other now. Arabian is a general term that can refer to many groups that are theorized to have originated in Arabia (including the Hebrews and other groups not designated "Arabs"), though usually some variation of the word "Semite" is used. The word, "Arab," however appears only in the first millenium BCE and I have never seen it used to describe Semites in general. (And, as you say, the modern meaning of "Arab" is now merely Arabic speaking) I've started browsing through this book, which looks to be very informative about all these topics. nadav (talk) 21:46, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there some convention we can agree on that makes clear who, what, when, where, why and how? For example I think it makes some sense to allow the original Canaanites are not entirely assimilated into the general population at a point prior to the 19th Dynasty because we still have recognizable images of them in that period. They are just really really big and tall people. After that its possible to speak of Palestinians with Canaanite ancestors but they aren't really Canaanites anymore. Is it confusing to speak of a non semitic arab, defining by language and culture rather than the genetics some suggest testing?I have always been taught that you can't stereotype populations... does that not apply to cultures and their traditions also?Rktect 00:45, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question