Talk:Palestinians/Archive 8

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Archive 10

→

Archive 15

Genetics additions

Genetic Evidence for the Ancestry of Palestinians

Haplogroup J (Y-DNA)(previously known as HG9 or Eu9/Eu10) is one of more than 150 Haplogroups found in humans around the world. It is group of genes on the Y Male chromosome and represent a Paternal ancestry that originated in the Levant in the middle East 10000 years ago. Haplogroup J1 is a sub Haplogroup J found mainly in Arabs ( meaning people from Arabic countries including Palestinians have the highest percentage of this Haplogroup on their Y chromosomes in the world). The recently discovered genetic signature in J1 known as The Cohen Modal Haplotype found only in Jewish people of Cohenite ancestry ( ie the claimants to be descendents of Aaron among jews worldwide). J1 haplogroup became a marker of the Arab expansion in the early medieval period (Semino et al. 2004)[[1]]. A genetic study by (Nebel et al. 2000) of Hadasa Hospital (Jerusalem University)[[2]] found another signature in J1 termed the Modal Haplotype of the Galilee (MH Galilee) that is considered a marker of moslem Arab population in North Israel (Galilee). Later He and many reseachers found the same signature (MH Galilee) in several Arabic countries (NW Africa, the Southern Levant, and Yemen). A quote from the study by Nebel reads "The highest frequency of Eu10 (30%–62.5%) has been observed so far in various Moslem Arab populations in the Middle East (Semino et al. 2000; Nebel et al. 2001). The most frequent Eu10 microsatellite haplotype in NW Africans is identical to a modal haplotype (DYS19-14, DYS388-17, DYS390-23, DYS391-11, DYS392-11, DYS393-12) of Moslem Arabs who live in a small area in the north of Israel, the Galilee (Nebel et al. 2000). This haplotype, which is present in the Galilee at 18.5%, was termed the modal haplotype of the Galilee (MH Galilee) (Nebel et al. 2000). Notably, it is absent from two distinct non-Arab Middle Eastern populations, Jews and Muslim Kurds, both of whom have significant Eu10 frequencies—18% and 12%, respectively (Nebel et al. 2001). Interestingly, this modal haplotype is also the most frequent haplotype (11 [~41%] of 27 individuals) in the population from the town of Sena, in Yemen (Thomas et al. 2000). Its single-step neighbor is the most common haplotype of the Yemeni Hadramaut sample (5 [~10%] of 49 chromosomes; Thomas et al. 2000). The presence of this particular modal haplotype at a significant frequency in three separate geographic locales (NW Africa, the Southern Levant, and Yemen) makes independent genetic-drift events unlikely." Palestinians have 39% of J1 second only to Beduins in Arabic countries.

I am pretty sure the above is not OR as Tewfik stated in a short edit summary, thus I have moved it to the talk page. I was reading through the sources provided and they mention explicitly the Palestinian Arab popluation, especially with regards to the Eu10 frequencies. It should be cut down because some of the contextual connections are not necessary, the author of the above is probably a professor/academic type who wants to describe the full academic context. Tewfik's accusations of OR seems completely out of place though. --64.230.120.196 18:56, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Also this article should be renamed "Palestinian Arabs" or a similar article should be created. --64.230.120.196 18:56, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I second that. --GHcool 20:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

It is OR because it does not actually support the hypothesis, but merely discusses general Arabian population expansion. If anything, a paper like this one would probably be much more relevant (by some of the same authors), though I am not sure in what context. Tewfik^Talk 23:26, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure this article needs to be renamed. Judaism is, for example, a religion and not an ethnic group so since there was a small Palestinian Jewish population before first aliyah, they would, in essence, constitute Jewish Palestinians/Arabs just as there are Muslim and Christian Arabs. Thus, in this manner everyone is a Palestinian, with Muslims making up the majority followed by Christians, Jews, Druze etc. Given the nature of how ethnic groups are perceived, it's pretty much redundant to call the article Palestinian Arabs as that is obvious. Even tiny minorities like Armenians generally speak Arabic (I've met a few from Jordan who were more at home with Arabic than Armenian for example). I think the article, as it exists seems okay to me. Tombseye 03:54, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you insinuating that Jews living in the Land of Israel before Zionism (if that's what you mean under "first aliyah") were actually Arabs? Beit Or 17:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

(not related to this debate) I didn't know the two words 'Arab' and 'Jew' were mutually exclusive... are they? Ramallite ^(talk) 18:18, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

This is an interesting question. My stepmother is a Jew that traces her ancestry to Iraq. She is clearly a Mizrahi Jew, but is she an Arab? I say she is, but she insists that she is not. Her family spoke Arabic, they are a Semitic people, they lived in the Middle East for hundreds (thousands?) of years. If somebody can explain to me why my stepmother is not equally an Arab Jew and a Mizrahi Jew (she cannot without using ethnocentrism) in the same way that a someone can call themselves an Ashkenazi Jew and a Russian Jew, I would be very greatful. --GHcool 20:35, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Well you always hear "Arab Muslims" and "Christian Arabs". I know I hear "Arab Jews" a lot in my own environment, especially when describing "50% of the population of Israel" or people like Amir Peretz or Yitzhak Mordechai and others. But the Jewish people are also a nation as well as a religion. In that sense, they are like Armenians. Armenians live dispersed in many countries, and consider themselves Armenian as well as French or Lebanese or American or whatever. Ramallite ^(talk) 21:21, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, in essence all Jews living in Arab lands were Arabs just as Persian Jews were Persians and German Jews were German (regardless of what the Nazis believed). They spoke the language, culturally were very similar if not identical and historical records show that many Jews converted to Islam so there is no doubt a wide variety of intrinsic relations. Of course, since the creation of Israel that identity has shifted to a "Jewish" one, which for some people has been a religious identification (many Austrian Jews for example viewed themselves as Austrians first and Jews second as was also the case with many Berber Jews). They are today like the Armenians etc. in that they view themselves as both a religious and an ethnic group (but this too varies from person to person). It's also just as viable to view Jews as Iraqi Jews, Persian Jews, Cochin Jews, etc. If they were historically from Palestine, then they would be Arab Jews and Palestinians like the Muslims and Christians though. Tombseye 18:35, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

You're projecting modern nationalities too far back into the past. I know that's way history came to be revised in Europe beginnign from the 19th century when historians suddenly saw Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Russians etc. in the Middle Ages, but unfortunately, that was agenda-driven revisionism rather than serious scholarship. True, many German Jews thought of themselves as Germans of Jewish faith. However, this line of thinking only emerged somewhere in the mid-19th century together with the notion of German and other nationalities in Europe. Panarabism and local Arab nationalisms emrged only in the 20th century. Speaking of "nationalities" in the Middle East before that time is anachronistic. Before the notion of nationality was imported from Europe, one could only speak of religions, tribes, and ethnicities. Ethnically, Jews never qualified as Arabs. I can see another claim here, that "Of course, since the creation of Israel that identity has shifted to a "Jewish" one". The sentence implies that Jews living in Arab lands identified as Arabs (or Arabs first, Jews second). This is again a fantasy. Traditional Muslim societies were organized strictly along religious lines with Muslims, Jews, Christians etc. forming well-identified and separated communities. In those societies, Arabs were defined as Muslims who trace their paternal line to the inhabitants of the Arab peninsula. Granted, many Muslims were able to forge their genealogies to prove they were Arabs, but otherwise it was well known who among the Muslims were Arabs and who were not, since the division had legal implications (for example, for marriage). To say that Jews of Muslim lands identified as Arabs is makes no sense: they wouldn't have been allowed to do so, even some of them had wanted to. Beit Or 08:27, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

The phrase "Arab Jews" was very common in the late 19th and first part of the 20th century and is fairly common in academic literature still today. I don't think it was generally used to denote a genetic connection, but rather to describe Jews who were Arab in culture, language, etc.. The dispute about the phrase seems to be mostly a result of Zionist ideology. As Ella Shohat wrote ("The Invention of the Mizrahim", J. Pal. Studies, Vol. 29 (1999), pp. 5-20): "official Israeli/Zionist policy urges Arab Jews (or, more generally, Oriental Jews, also known as Sephardim or Mizrahim) to see their only real identity as Jewish. The official ideology denies the Arabness of Arab Jews, positing Arabness and Jewishness as irreconcilable opposites. For Zionism, this Arabness, the product of millennial cohabitation, is merely a Diasporic stain to be "cleansed" through assimilation. Within Zionist ideology, the very term "Arab Jew" is an oxymoron and a misnomer, a conceptual impossibility. ... in the case of Middle Eastern Jews, the Euro-Israeli separation of the "Jewish" and "Middle Eastern" parts has ideologically facilitated the actual dismantling of the Jewish communities of the Muslim world, while pressuring the Oriental Jews in Israel to realign their identity according to Zionist Euro-Israeli paradigms." (Not sure how this relates to the present article, though.) --Zero^talk 09:30, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

The phrase "Arab Jews" is no more problematic than phrases "American Jews", "Russian Jews", or "Persian Jews". The problem is rather the idea, advocated by some editors here, that Jews of Arab lands could be legitimately called "Arabs". This idea is largely based on the anachronistic and otherwise unjustified projection of the modern European concept of nationality onto the pre-modern Orient. Beit Or 09:49, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

All nationalisms are based upon the modern "European" definition anyway so it's not a question of projecting, but simply what is. Now how would say Arabs who are pagan and Christian and Jewish then exist if not as a collective group called Arabs? Muhammad appears to have viewed the Jews of Medina as a religious group, but they were also Arab tribes. The application of the term "Arab" is itself difficult to define. For many people it's simply someone who speaks Arabic and often Arabs from Arabia look at people from the Maghrib (not just the Berbers) as non-Arab as well. Who then is the Arab and how much of a factor is religion. In fact, the question is not one of universal acceptance, but rather of what is. Were German Jews any less German just because Hitler viewed them as non-Germans? Yet we're all digressing here as the question is the Palestinian people and that should be a group that covers all of the people who live and lived in the area regardless of religion, which was really my main point. Tombseye 00:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

This talk page is not an appropriate place to discuss your personal opinions on miscellaneous unrelated issues. Beit Or 07:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Just because you don't agree with me does not me it's a "personal opinion". My history professor discussed the Jews of the Arab world so it's actually an academic opinion whereas your views appear to more less opinions. Tombseye 01:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Haplogroup J1 ( Y-DNA) is the semetic ancestry (the only paternal semetic ancestry) ar verified in Wikipedia- [[Haplogroup J1 (Y-DNA). if you look on the Y haplogroups map you see J1 is highest in arabic countries, means its origin. For this reason the researchers who claim that Cohen Modal Haplotype ( marker of the descendents of Aaron) insist that only the CMH in J1 represent descent from Aaron ( descendent of Abraham father of the Arabs) J2 is a different ancestry that split from J2 10000 years ago, So Aaron or any given human being on the earth can be only from one haplogroup. Their insistance on J1 for their modal is because the Arabs have the highest of J1 in the world. Come that J1 is not the ancestry of Aaron, then this Cohen Modal Haplotype are non jews period ( ie not descendent from Aaron or Jacob or Abraham). Now, Bedoin of the Negev desert in Israel are descendents of Nabataeans, yet they have J1 THE highest in the world 82%, next in line the Palestinians ( 50%), this makes Palestinians Arabs. However the minor haplogroups found in Arabic countries including palestinians are markers for well known peoples ( markers of their own rights). Some of these nations live completely in arabic countries like Berber, some live disparesely in arabic countries (Kurds, Armenians, Checkess, Chechens, Turks, Anatolians, European turks ( Albanians, Bosnians, etc) To claim that these minor markers in the palestinians is outragous because these markers belong to different home lands ( Albanians have R1a1 for example its home is north of the black sea( people from north of the black sea are not known to be the ingiginous people of Palestine (!?) Hope this explains little. Adam

Palestinians genetic links to the country

It has genetically been proven that ancestrally, the Palestinians descend from all the indigenous Semitic groups that have lived in Palestine for the past several millennia, including the Philistines, the Canaanites, the Hebrews themselves, and other groups. The Jews of Israel today are closer to the Palestinians then the Palestinians are to the people of Saudi Arabia. This should prove that just as the Iraqis descend from Arabized Assyrians and Babylonian, the Lebanese descend from Arabized Phoenicians and the Egyptians descend from Arabized Pharonic Egyptians and Greco-Romans, the Palestinians descend from Arabized Hebrews and Canaanites. This makes them very much indigenous to that country and have as much a right to it as the Israelis if not a stronger right. Ironically, there are groups of Jews such as the Beta Israel from Ethiopia and the Bene Menashe from northeast India who have no Semitic ancestry whatsoever, and yet live in Israel in perfect harmony with all rights, priveleges, etc. Bnei Menashe in particulary have settlement rights in the West Bank. If you ask me, the Palestinian peasant has full right over that land and the Bnei Menashe should just go back to his native hills in Northeast India, rather then settle on a claim that for all we know was partially concocted by British imperialists or made up by a tribal chieftain to gain favor with missionaries or some other religious-motivated reason. Afghan Historian 03:55, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

This talk page is not the place for expressing personal opinions advocating ethnic cleansing (i.e. "the Bnei Menashe should just go back to his native hills in Northeast India."). --MPerel ^{( talk | contrib)} 04:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I think Mperel's comment here is totally uncalled for. It would be enough to ask User:Afghan Historian to state the relationship f his comments to the talk page. He didn't adovcate "ethnic cleansing", he expressed a controversial opinion that a group of recent immigrant to Israel go back home. It might be bad taste for some, but it certainly isn't advocacy for a war crime. I don't think more hyperbole here is necessarily the best repsonse. With respect. Tiamut 12:48, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

You said "if you ask me", well we didnt ask you... I suggest you read more about Wikipedia as this is not a free-for-all forum. --Shamir1 05:25, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your friendly advice. Tiamut 04:01, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Isn't the actual population of the west bank and gaza strip only 2.5 million?

--J intela 04:27, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

New additions to edits

There are several problems with the some new (and some old) edits on this page. First, is the "accent" ordeal.

The line regarding the Palestinian pronunciation of qaf as kaf is incorrectly written in the ancestry section. It appears to try to suggest that it is proof of a separate ethnicity. It is not. Syrians and Lebanese similarly use the kaf, as do many other Arab nationals. Secondly, the language beforehand in the land (Aramaic) has the same letter (qof) which makes the same noise. Also, none of that would prove anything anyway. Accents are regional. Does it prove that the residents of Long Island are a separate ethnic group because they replace "uh's" with "ur's" and vice-versa? Of course not. --Shamir1 05:31, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Many edits are not based on sources, misrepresent the sources, or violate WP:NPOV. Some of them are stated as facts when they are opinion.

Other sources are used to suggest a point that is not suggested by the source. Other statements are written and are completely not even supported by the source given. This includes the History Channel source and Encarta.

As for the book quotes, they are opinions. The quotes given by James Frazer is not a historical account, it is his belief. When Christopher Columbus landed in America, he, and many others, said and truly believed that the inhabitants were Indians. Cortez even believed that a tribe he saw descended from "the House of Israel." Does that prove anything? No.

These are facts that need to be considered:

• The Canaanites, like the Lost Ten Tribes, are unknown to have even survived through history. Some believe they adopted Maronite Christianity, and their descendants are the Lebanese Maronites, but even that has not been accurately proven.
• Palestinian genes show similarities with other Arabs, and like other Arabs they are related to Jews. All Arab groups, including Palestinians, show Black-African similarities.
• Incomplete studies have suggested that Palestinians are more related to Jews than other Arab groups.
• Palestinians do have differences. There is a higher frequency of Eu10, which the American Society of Human Genetics suggests originated from the southern part of the Fertile Crescent. This is also found among Bedouin Arabs.
• Several studies have suggested that the difference is based on European blood, which they say is found more among Palestinian Arabs.

For more information see the sources given in the article. --Shamir1 22:58, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Apparently Shamir1 that is your own research. The fact that Canaanites are of Arabian origin is well-established. You should not remove resources when they are given and very relevant to the subject at hand. The information attached is well cited and there is no point in removing this informative material. There is a long history for Arabs/Arabians in Palestine even before Islam. All this is relevant to this article. Almaqdisi ^{talk to me} 03:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

My own research? It is actually the sources at hand. For starters, you have misrepresented sources. You have also used unreputable sources for unsubstantiated claims. There is no history of Arab/Arabians in Palestine before Islam. You are mistaken. As for the Canaanites (a claim you distorted on Wikipedia), there is no say that they even survived history. Some suggest their descendants are the Maronites, but the results are suggestive and inconclusive.[3][4]

As for the bogus claim of "own research", where does this boloney come from: "As used in this context modelled by traditional Arab nationalism, "Arab citizenship" is independant of any specific religious affiliation. Jews of Palestinian origin, however, were only considered Palestinians "if they were willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine". A clear oxymoron that was once accompanied with more crap: "However, due to the introduction of European Zionism and the very establishment of Israel as an explicitly Jewish State created for the ingathering of world Jewry in the Palestinian Mandate, Jews of Palestinian origin were only considered Palestinians..."

You will also need not only a source for the accent thing, but a reason why it means anything. Obviously it does not, since the pre-Arabic language there (Aramaic) has the letter qof which makes that noise that they apparently do not. Moreover, accents are regional. The people of Barcelona are not a separate race because they pronounce s's with th's. --Shamir1 19:32, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Shamir1, STOP being ridiculuous! No history of Arabs before Islam.!!! What a funny statement... Who were the Nabateans?? who were the Ghassanids who ruled all the way from Damascus? Who were the Canaanites themselves???? Read below:

Encyclopedias and Ancient Arabia books mention the following:

4 Die Keilinschriften and das Alte Testament, p. 181.

These explanations are endorsed by Driver (Genesis,on Gen. x.). 6 See the relevant articles in Ency. Bib. and Cheyne's Genesis and Exodus. from about 4000 B.C. 1 a wave of Semitic migration poured out of Arabia, and flooded Babylonia certainly, and possibly, more or less, Syria and Palestine also. Also that between 2800 and 2600 B.C. a second wave from Arabia took the same course, covering not only Babylonia, but also Syria and Palestine and probably also Egypt (the Hyksos). It is soon after this that we meet with the great empire-builder and civilizer, Khammurabi (2267-2213), the first king of a united Babylonia. It is noteworthy that the first part of his name is identical with the name of the father of Canaan in Genesis (Ham or Kham), indicating his Arabian origin. 2 It was he, too, who restored the ancient supremacy of Babylonia over Syria and Palestine, and so prevented the Babylonizing of these countries from coming to an abrupt end. [5]

From Bernard Lewis book:

"According to this, Arabia was originally a land of great fertility and the first home of the Semitic peoples. Through the millennia it has been undergoing a process of steady desiccation, a drying up of wealth and waterways and a spread of the desert at the expense of the cultivable land. The declining productivity of the peninsula, together with the increase in the number of the inhabitants, led to a series of crises of overpopulation and consequently to a recurring cycle of invasions of the neighbouring countries by the Semitic peoples of the peninsula. It was these crises that carried the Assyrians, Aramaeans, Canaanites (including the Phoenicians and Hebrews), and finally the Arabs themselves into the Fertile Crescent."

From History Channel[6]:

"The earliest known events in Arabian history are migrations from the peninsula into neighboring areas. About 3500 bc, Semitic-speaking peoples of Arabian origin migrated into the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia, supplanted the Sumerians, and became the Assyro-Babylonians. Another group of Semites left Arabia about 2500 bc and settled along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea; some of these migrants became the Amorites and Canaanites of later times."

From MSN Encarta[7]:

"The earliest known events in Arabian history are migrations from the peninsula into neighbouring areas. About 3500 bc, Semitic-speaking peoples of Arabian origin migrated into the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia, supplanted the Sumerians, and became the Assyro-Babylonians (see Sumer). Another group of Semites left Arabia about 2500 bc and settled along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea; some of these migrants became the Amorites and Canaanites of later times."

But turning Palestinians into Jews does not mean that they can have access to their own Palestinian Hebrew ancestors. On the contrary, it is precisely through Zionism’s appropriation of the history of the Palestinian Hebrews as the ancestors of the European-Jewsturned- anti-Semites that the Palestinian Arabs lose any connection to their Hebrew ancestry. While neighboring Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese, and Iraqis can narrate a national history that extends to the Pharaohs, the Nabateans, the Phoenicians, and the Babylonians, Palestinians cannot lay any national claims to Palestine’s past. As recent converts to landless Jewishness, they cannot access the past of a land colonized by anti-Semitic Hebraic Jews, nor can they claim ancestors uncovered by Zionism to be the Jews’ own exclusive progenitors. This is not so unlike the process through which the Hebrew prophets were abducted from the Jewish tradition into Christianity. It is, however, ironic, and particularly scandalous for Zionism, in this regard to find that a young David Ben Gurion had postulated in 1918 that it was indeed the Palestinian peasants who were the descendants of the Jews who had remained in Palestine, and that, despite the Islamic conquest, these peasants had held on to their Hebrew ancestors’ traditions, most obviously through maintaining the same names for their villages. Ben Gurion went so far as to assert that “in spite of much intermixing, the majority of the [Palestinian] fellahin in Western Palestine are unified in their external appearance and in their origin, and in their veins, without a doubt, flows much Jewish blood—from the Jewish peasants who in the days of the persecutions and terrible oppression had renounced their tradition and their people in order to maintain their attachment and loyalty to the land of the Jews.”

Almaqdisi ^{talk to me} 04:21, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

weasel Today, Palestinian Jews generally identify as "Israelis".

I think this is a weasel and thus have marked it as such. My attempt at change was reverted. Lobbuss 08:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Your change was reverted because it constituted vandalism. Please familiarize yourself with WP:NPOV. You are claiming that NK represents Orthodox Jews. Let me tell you that I am NOT a Zionist. My seforim include Vayoel Moshe and Al HaGeuloh VeAl HaTemuroh, which are great seforim and in which I fully believe. I am affiliated with the Edah HaChareidis. You do not need to suspect me of being a Tzioni. But you can suspect me of wanting to keep Wikipedia a civilized place, where facts and only facts are to be written. Most Palestinian Jews nowadays do identify as Israelis, and not just the non-religious. And Neturei Karta does not represent 'Orthodox Jews'. NK is a tiny fringe group even in Meah Sheorim. Most Yerushalmi people that I know do not want to have anything to do with them and consider them to be total outcasts. That includes people affiliated with all other groups in Yerushalaim including Dushinsky, Satmar, Toldos Aharon, Anshei Yerushalaim, Yerushalmi Litvaks, and Yerushalmi Lubavitchers. --Bear and Dragon 09:11, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Editing

It seems that someone working for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs or perhaps a mere zealot keeps reverting changes.

1. The section about the genetic relationship between Arabs and Jews is irrelevant to this page. If that's your desperate attempt at proving, historically, that the land rightfully belongs to the Jews because of the claim that there doesn't seem to be a clear lineage of Palestinians from the beginning of the 700's A.D. to present day, then you're mistaken. This cheap trick is well known.

2. "Family" is different than “ancestry”. I don't know if that’s just a mistake made by someone with English as a second language or if it's another attempt at implying that Palestinians as a people are a new creation of the 20th century. That's racist and shameful. Last time I checked, Wikipedia was supposed to be neutral and balanced, not the mouthpiece of the Israeli government and radical fanatics.

3. The bit about relationships between Nazi Germany and Palestinian leadership is a bogus lie as I have never come across any such claim in all my research about Palestinian identity or Palestinian history for that matter. Whoever included that is desperately trying to smear the Palestinian leadership and the people of the time. It is cheap propaganda and I WILL not tolerate it.

4. Unless someone can post a reliable source countering all the points I have mentioned above (when I say reliable I mean no blogs, no ADL website quotes, no “my grandmother heard her neighbor say” sources) then I will go ahead and make the necessary changes.

5. Just because a few right wing Israeli nuts ganged up and decided to spread lies and half truths, doesn't mean that they will get away with it. I have friends on Wikipedia, as well.