Talk:A land without a people for a people without a land

Shapira's Quiote
The link provided is the result of a Google book search. It shows that Shapira's book does indeed contain that phrase - so you may include material from the page of her book that actually discusses the phrase. That discussion is limited, as far as I can tell, to stating that it was a common phrase among Zionists at the end of the 19th century, and that it was used as a form of legitimization of their claim on the land, alleging no competing claims. The fact that a 464-page book briefly mentions the phrase, once, on one page (42) is not a license to present other ideas from that book, which do not refer to the phrase, as if they are related to that discussion. (To the extent those ideas are even in that book - I could not, for example, find the phrase "Australian outback" anywhere in the book, using Google, nor the term "steamship"). Canadian Monkey (talk) 00:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The section her quote is under is not about use of the phrase, it's about interpretation of the phrase. The section is called "An expression of the wish that the arabs would go away". Shapiras argument gives context to this argument. Not evry single sentence in this article has to be 100 percent about the phrase. annoynmous 01:03, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I added back the shapira section with the part of the book where she uses the phrase.


 * I also added back the childrens book reference because it is an example of what Ben-amotz was talking about. It's part of an argument made by Nur Masalha in Ghada Karmi and Eugene Cotrans book. Jayjg agreed to it being in the article so I feel it should stay. annoynmous 02:59, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't understand why people are insisting on this rigidly narrow set of parmeters of what can be included in the article. Why can't you include sources that give context to how the phrase is interpreted.


 * I removed the childrens book quote because it obvious that there are going to be a lot of people like Canadian Monkey who are going to complain about this and I don't have the strength to argue with each one of them. annoynmous 03:36, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I must say again I thought this page was going to be expanding beyond just the phrase. That's the impression I got by the post Peter Cohen made on the wikiproject Israel/Palestine colloboration page. If it does in the future than I feel all this material should be put back in. annoynmous 03:43, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

She doesn’t cite examples to back up the claim it was common, and neither does any other source, so there’s absolutely no point in repeating it multiple times throughout the article. Undue weight. —Scharb (talk) 18:39, 14 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Shapira is one of the leading historians of Zionism. Perhaps the leading historian who is not a "new historian". She doesn't need to cite examples, it is enough that she tells us what her extensive knowledge led her to understand. Also, once Muir and Dowty have been cited in the lead that the phrase was not in widespread use, NPOV requires us to note that there is a scholarly alternative opinion. (Actually Shapira is correct and before long I will add many examples.) Zerotalk 04:04, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@—Scharb This article is under ARBPIA restrictions.Nishidani (talk) 16:03, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Going elsewhere
This edit by an anon has removed a claim that the phrase encapsulated a Zionist desire that Palestinian Arabs would go elsewhere. The reference to Garfinkle was also removed. The page linked by the remaining reference doesn't seem to support the go elsewhere claim. Does Garfinkle?--Peter cohen (talk) 16:35, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

NPOV tag
As argued correctly above, parts of this article rely too heavily on the opinion of Diana Muir, who has no apparent qualification in the area (see her wiki page) and published only on the propaganda site of Daniel Pipes. I think we can use her usage examples (but check them if possible), but quoting her opinions about what they meant is not acceptable. Zerotalk 11:55, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Point of information. Edward Said has no qualifications whatsoever in the field of Middle East Studies. Neither does Noam Chomsky.  Shall we cease to cite them on the subject?Historicist (talk) 17:01, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Daniel Pipes, by contrast, holds the PhD in this subject, which he has taught at major universities.Historicist (talk) 17:01, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The issue you introduce was argued and settled months ago.   Unless you have something new to add, it is not appropriate to hang tags.Historicist (talk) 12:30, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I read all of the preceding discussion before adding the tag. In my opinion, the issue was not resolved.  Even if it was, I am under no obligation to accept the resolution.  I will give an example of why the tag is deserved.  Consider the paragraph
 * A variation apparently first used by a Christian clergyman and Christian Restorationist, Rev. Alexander Keith, D.D., appeared in 1843, when he wrote that the Jews are "a people without a country; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people"..[4][5] The context in which it was published was the fact that in 1831 the Ottomans were driven from Greater Syria (including Palestine) by an expansionist Egypt, in the First Turko-Egyptian War. Imperial Britain (worried by the prospect of a rising military power sitting atop Suez and the route to India, and by the prospect of a weakened Ottoman Empire allowing Russia access to the Dardanelles) sent the Navy, which bombarded Beirut and, in 1841, anchored in Alexandria harbor, forcing Egypt to withdraw from Greater Syria (including Palestine.) This left the Levant with no effective government.[4]
 * The quote from Keith is genuine and we even have the text linked. However, the ridiculous claim that "in a great measure a country without a people" meant "with no effective government", that we state as if it is a fact, comes from where? The cite is to Muir's article but I can't find it there.  Muir does want us to believe that Keith was not arguing that Palestine was devoid of people, but Keith wrote "as subsequently to be shown", so we just have to read the rest of his book to find out what he means.  He is very clear about it: "the land be utterly desolate, and the cities desolate without inhabitants, and the houses without man" (p220), "desolate without man, hundreds of houses...left without man, without possessors, without claimants, without tenants, or any to dwell therin" (p270) and so similarly in many passages.  It is a major theme of the book. In other words, when he wrote "without a people" he meant "without a people".  This example shows why we are supposed to base our article on reliable sources, not to rely on dubious sources like Muir's article or to make up things ourselves.  Zerotalk 15:06, 23 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I have improved the wording and supplied standard works on the area as references. While Palmerston's eastern policy is rarely discussed today, it iw well-documented and well-explored by historians.   Within the British government of the period, there was real concern over Ottoman weakness, fear of the rise of new powers (i.e. Egypt), sympathy for the plight of the Jewish and Christian (especially Maronite) minorities in the region, and a determination to protect British trade at all costs.  This led to serious consideration of giving the Jews sovereignty in their ancient homeland at a moment when neither Egypt nor the Ottomans was in possession.Historicist (talk) 16:58, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * None of which addresses the issue. Anyone who looks at Keith's book can see that his motivation was religious.  Your tying of Keith to British policy is original research.  I have to stop editing for a few weeks but that tag is going to go back until a consensus is reached. Zerotalk 00:05, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * As I wrote in the articles revisions today, while the motivations were often religious, the wording was not. Certainly Keith's wording was about policy, not religion. It's easy to look up.Historicist (talk) 00:19, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I acknowledge that Keith's motivations were religious. As to how much context we should give in the article to the circle of important men around Palmerston arguing that in the void created by Muhammad Ali's withdrawal in the face of British naval power Judea should be given to the Jews (not all of these men were motivated by religion) I would like to hear the opinion of another editor.  In my view the fact that Keith wrote not as a religious visionary unaware of politics, but at a moment when there was actually no government on the ground in the Levant and Palmerston might have created nation states  - including on e for the Jews - at the stroke of a Pen (he might, for example  have created a Maronite state or made Syria a state instead of giving them back to the Ottoman Empire, certainly the Ottomans had no power to oppose him.)    Religious Christians had been writing in an unrealistic way about giving Judea back to the Jews since early in the Reformation.   It is very relevant to this article that Keith wrote at a moment when the British Navy was actually in control of the Levant. Historicist (talk) 15:15, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Use of the Phrase by Zionists

 * Okay I don't want to get sucked back into this article again except to say that the sentences Historicist added to the quotes are POV and not supported by the sources he gives.

Take this sentence:

"In 1914 Chaim Weizmann, referenced this phrase in a speech criticizing the wrongheaded ideas of other Zionists, presumably a veiled reference to Zangwill who had left the movement.[4]"

The source given is Muirs article. There is absolutely nothing in Muirs article about Weizmann making a veiled reference to Zangwill. So this comment is pure POV. Here is what Muir says about Weizmann:

"In 1914, Chaim Weizmann referred to the phrase as descriptive of attitudes common in the early days of the movement."


 * That's the sole mention of Weizmann in Muirs article.


 * Then theres this sentence:

"He was speaking to encourage a Zionist club in Paris shortly after the killing of a Zionist pioneer by Arabs in the fields of Kibbutz Degania Alef in November 1913."


 * The source given for this is page 108 of Anton La Guardias book "War Without End". The problem is that theres no mention of Weizmann on page 108. Theres a brief mention of him on page 111, but nothing about a killing in November 1913. So either Historicist got the page number wrong or the source doesn't say what he claimed it did.


 * Either way the quotes should be allowed to stand on there own and not be prejudiced by POV words intended to bias the reader to a particular viewpoint. annoynmous 16:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've looked into it further and the page number from La Guardias book that mentions Moshe Barsky being killed is on page 113, not 108. Weizmann isn't mentioned anywhere on the page. The only reference to barsky is to the fact that Moshe Dayan was named after him.


 * Furthermore it is completely disengenious to say this occurred "shortly" after Barsky's death. Barsky was killed in november 1913, whereas this speech occured in april 1914, that's a difference of 5 months. It gives a false impression as if the speech was in response to barsky's death as if it had just happened a few days ago.


 * As for whether or not Weizmann mentioned Barsky in his speech, I don't see how it's relevant to the article either way. The matter at hand is Weizmanns use of the phrase and his interpretation of it's meaning in zionist thought. I don't see how the murder of a kibbutz leader 5 months earlier is in any way relevant to this matter. annoynmous 18:28, 29 June 2009 (UTC)


 * annoynmous demonstrates one of the great problems with Wikipedia, to wit many editors edit article about matters of which they are profoundly ignorant. From 1903 to 1905, Weizmann and Zangwill were political opponents.  In 1905 Zangwill left the movement, this phrase and everything else associated with Zangwill was rejected.  Weizmann plainly says as much, referring in this speedh to it as representative of outmoded ideas that must be replaced. And in this speech to the Barsky murder as exemplifying the reasonswhy "mechanical" thinking like Zangwills must be rejected in favor of a struggle for the homeland in Israel.  It is ignorant, politicized, aggressive  editors like annoynmous  who some days make me think that editing Wikipedia is a fool's errand.Historicist (talk) 14:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Repeated personal insults like these are going to get you banned if you don't stop. Zerotalk 14:33, 3 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Historicist demostrates that certain editors prefer to insult other editors rather than provide evidence of there claims. There is nothing in Weizmanns speech rejecting the phrase or any specific reference to Zangwill. I simply pointed out the fact that barsky was killed 5 months before Weizmann made the speech and therefore the speech could not have been in response to his death. If historicist has such a library of resources at his disposal than he should add them to the article instead of accusing other editors of ignorance.


 * Also I find it rather amusing that Historicist accuses me of politicizing wikipedia after his antics on the Rashid Khalidi article. I find it odd that in Historicists playbook Daniel Pipes is a considered a top scholar, but a Yale and Oxford educated professor isn't.annoynmous 13:35, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

prior use of concept
Just found this:
 * "Nevertheless besides forwarding the purposes of humanity and general convenience in bringing a people without land to a land without people the benefit of a mutual intercourse with a neighbouring and friendly colony would in itself be no inconsiderable advantage." William Bligh, A Voyage to the South Sea (1792), referring to the possibility of settling South Sea islanders in Australia.

Zerotalk 07:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

And this:
 * "As had been well said, before the emancipation they had there a Church without a people, and a people without a Church." (1843 but suggesting it is older)

Zerotalk 14:15, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Additional uses of the phrase
I have two clear recollections about this phrase, but no sources, so no inclination to add to the article. I describe them in as much detail as I can in hopes someone else might find sources.

1) Growing up in Binghamton, New York, circa 1960, this phrase was used in a positive light in my Jewish sunday school classes at Temple Concorde under Rabbi Schagrin. I seem to recall it emblazoned on a book about Israel used in these classes. Only later did I come to realize this as a horrendous phrase, whatever the interpretation. This could be a sign that this phrase was in wide use in the US at a certain period in Jewish education (but I have no specific knowledge whether it was used in other temples).

2) When I mentioned this recollection to an Israeli coworker, he was quite familiar with the phrase and had a different rationalization of than any presented in the article: that it referred specifically to Tel Aviv, which he claimed really was un-inhabited at the time (I have no knowledge whether this was the case or not).

Pallen (talk) 03:31, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Lassner&Troen
Lassner&Troen's explanation of what "without a people" means is not at all the same as Garfinkle's. While Garfinkle claims it is about national identity, Lassner&Troen explain it as "Palestine was a sparsely settled and economically underdeveloped country from the perspective of Western observers who compared it both with other countries and with Palestine's own distant past." They didn't believe it had no population at all, but they believed the population was well below what it could be. That's what Keith, Shaftesbury and Zangwill, to name a few, thought too. We need to provide Garfinkle's viewpoint of course, but we shouldn't present it as "the" explanation since it is only Garfinkle's opinion. And we shouldn't insert Garfinkle's premises into the text in various places like the lead so as to construct his argument for him. Zerotalk 13:53, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Can you explain why you took out Meir's assertion that Der Judenstaadt DID contain mention of Arabs? Source four is a link to a reputable publication that has Meir saying that Khalidi is wrong and sources his misconception to the book Land and Power: The Zionist Recourse to Force, 1881-1948

So we have a trustworthy and verifiable expert saying "Khalidi's statement is wrong." Now, that doesn't mean you have to take out Khalidi's comments. As I understand it, Mr. Zero, you very much like polemics. But if you want Khalidi's accusation, its fair to balance it with Meir's counter, since Hertzl is dead.

So, let's not have Interpretation of the phrase by scholars be nothing but a chance for academia to infere that long-dead Zionists were racist.Modinyr (talk) 22:53, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


 * We don't need a separate source to cite what a book contains. Der Judenstaat is the most reliable source for what it contains and we could cite it directly if it was relevant. Khalidi wrote that Der Judenstaat doesn't mention Palestinian Arabs.  He is strictly correct, since the word Arab doesn't appear even once in the book.  Muir notes that there is a mention of "native populations", in a place where Argentina and Palestine are considered.  If Khalidi reported that it would have made his case stronger.  Think about it, Herzl wrote a whole book about establishing a Jewish state somewhere, and the only mention of existing populations is a single sentence which describes them as a nuisance! It is worse than not mentioning them at all. Muir was trying to score a point, she failed, it is not our job to repeat it (and if we did, it would need to be repeated correctly). Zerotalk 00:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

So, you admit that hertzl makes reference to the native inhabitants? Done. It doesn't matter if you find the reference to be a brush-off. The statement "Herzl never even mentioning the Arabs" is an untrue assertion. The rest of the quote can stay. I'm glad we agree on this issue. Modinyr (talk) 19:53, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Original research.
The sources should use or mention the phrase per WP:OR " sources ... that are directly related to the topic of the article"--Shrike (talk) 16:33, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * What makes you think that it is not "directly related to the topic of the article"? Al-Andalusi (talk) 16:50, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Although Anderson's paper is related to the topic of this article, it does not address the topic directly. We are not supposed to bring in sources in order to construct our own case for or against anything. So I think Shrike is correct. Zerotalk 05:45, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't think your reading of the article is right. Anderson's paper is centered around what he calls "settler developmentalism". In fact, the abstract states "The effort to ameliorate the crisis of landlessness, however, clashed with the dominant colonial conception of settler developmentalism, the notion that Jews, not Arabs, were the agents of modern economic development in Palestine". This is directly and clearly related to the claims made under the "efficiency-based territorial claim" section.
 * Shrike's argument against inclusion is that Anderson's paper doesn't use the exact phrase of the wiki article title ("A land without a people for a people without a land"). But this is a technicality at best. It is like refusing to include in Anti-Zionism, arguments that are clearly critical of Zionism because the sources do not use the term "Anti-Zionism". Al-Andalusi (talk) 16:17, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Shrike. There has been edit-warring at Hanukkah because two sections list or mention battles and warriors connected with the Maccabee revolts, and, when an editor requested, to use your logic, evidence connecting these numerous events and persons to Hanukkah, he was reverted by people who think the connection self-evident. In short, applying your reading here, you would have to strike out all of that material, along with MHossein, as WP:OR, and allow only mention of any of a score of battles or people if reliable sources connect them directly with Hanukkah. Am I correct in this interpretation? Nishidani (talk) 16:38, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I'll try to explain why I disagree with Al-Analusi. Anti-Zionism is an article about anti-Zionism, so properly sourced material about opposition to Zionism is appropriate there whether or not the source uses the actual word "anti-Zionism".  However, this is not an article about Zionist colonial practices, or about Palestinian landlessness and dispossession. There are other articles where such material is welcome.  This article is narrowly focussed on the use and abuse of a particular slogan. I would expect a source to connect content somehow to this slogan before it becomes relevant. I view this an another example of when the tendency for Middle-East articles to expand until they cover the entire Zionist-Arab conflict should be resisted. Zerotalk 05:55, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * , do you know any article where the content could be moved to? Al-Andalusi (talk) 01:03, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Regional Population at Time of Quote
Post-Crusader Palestine’s population experienced a profound stagnation 600+ years, prior to a significant population boom in the mid-late 19th century. (see: Demographic history of Palestine (region)).

It’s likely that the population of the entire region did not exceed 350,000 people at the time of the writing of that quote (as opposed to the population of the region at the time of most of the critical responses, when the population had far exceeded 1.9 million people).

Not saying this as grounds to delegitimize criticism against the quote and its subsequent usage, but the context of the population of Palestine at the time (which historically had hosted populations upwards of 1 million during the late Roman period) is not without merit. Should find a place somewhere in this article. Mistamystery (talk) 16:11, 14 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Depends on whether there are reliable sources mentioning it in context. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:45, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Keith’s context
In response to a recent removal:

"The phrase derives from a paraphrase of a statement made by Christian clergyman and Restorationist Rev. Alexander Keith, D.D.. Following an expedition to Ottoman Palestine in 1839, Keith published a retrospective of his journey - Land of Israel - in 1843. Citing familiarity with Roman Judea-era population estimates by Josephus, Volney, and Tacitus that placed first century Jewish and Samaritan populations in the millions, Keith noted upon "the scantling of a population left in the land...which in times more ancient had been thickly studded with cities." (Ottoman Palestine's total population was estimated to have been under 340,000 in 1839 )"

This is hardly a “juxtaposition of quotations from different parts of the book to create a story” (and an edit less than an hour after the change was made does not make a convincing argument that editor in question has read enough of Keith to make that assertion.)

There is no synth made here, and the context given to the quote is wholly appropriate. Keith did not generate the phrase in question in a vacuum. He visited Palestine under the mindset (and a significant amount of research) that it used to be populated by a significantly larger population than what he found there. The book is replete with these arguments.

I’ll wait for the next edit before attempting to work the above back in, but I do not think the removal of my edit was remotely warranted and requires a more considerate and thorough discussion and explanation before just ripping out a well researched addition. Mistamystery (talk) 09:15, 19 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I am familiar with all of Keith's book. The "scantling" quotation is from page x, Volney's claim re the ancient population is on page 175, Josephus and Tacitus are on page 178, while the "country without a people" quote is on page 34. (Page numbers in the 1843 edition.) By bringing these all together and claiming that these are the points that led Keith to his famous slogan, you are doing your own analysis of Keith's thinking. This is what SYNTH looks like. (Although you are correct to a point, your analysis ignores the Christian eschatology underlying all of Keith's thinking; but that's my opinion which I won't put in the article either.) Attaching Grossman's population estimate, with the unsubtle subtext "Keith was right", is pure SYNTH unless Grossman relates it to Keith (which he doesn't). Zerotalk 12:16, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 1. Not ignoring the fact that he was a Christian Restorationist. The article literally introduces him as a Christian Restorationist and links to the article in question before his name. No one is hiding that.
 * 2. I take umbrage at the assertion that I'm somehow saying "Keith was right" - that is your read and your read alone. I wasn't saying that at all, and there's not a single thing in my edit to indicate that.
 * 3. Including cited estimated population numbers of the region at the time he visited it (and commented on population numbers) is not synth, it's context.
 * 4. If you are familiar with Keith's book, you will note it is basically a one note drum of a single point: "wow! this place is desolate now when it used to be filled with people!" I'm not saying he was right. That's just what he said - found its way into a quote - which was then appropriated and used for other means.
 * The moment you remove the projected assumption that I'm trying to say "Keith was right" (which I wasn't, thank you), indicating that he cites historians he was familiar with over and over again (those aren't the only four instances he does this by the way, just four I referred to) does not mean I'm *validating* his opinion (especially since any one who click into the scholars cited can see that - as you likely know yourself - scholarly opinion on those historians' population assessments have changed since Keith's time).
 * This article is not merely about a quote's usage and journey, it's about its original phrasing and context, and then how it was distorted and otherwise utilized once it left its original context. I don't think there's anything remotely controversial or leading (or synth) by pointing out the context in which the original author said "a land without a people". He was not remarking that because he saw sparsely populated areas, he *makes clear in his own words* over and over again that - in his understanding (correct or not - and we now know that some of the estimates he was operating off of were higher than modern estimates of the Roman period) the lands he was looking at used to be populated by millions of people, and were no longer.
 * By his *own admission*, over and over again, this is the context of the phrase (and sentiment expressed widely in the book) and should be included.
 * Is there any other context to the phrase? We cannot have it just sitting here as if it emerged in a vacuum, especially when it was used for political context later on. Mistamystery (talk) 17:01, 31 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree with you more than you realise, but still there is an OR problem. Consider what Keith meant by "without a people". You take it as meaning "with a minimal population", but is that true? First, note that most of Keith's pronouncements in that direction are actually biblical quotations. For example, "wasted without inhabitant" (Isaiah 6:11) appears 4 times, and there are many others (e.g. almost every use of "desolate" or "desolation" comes in a biblical context). So was Keith reporting his empirical observations, or what his bible told him to see? I guess he would have denied the distinction, but for us it is an open question. The second problem is that the only source we have which analyses Keith, the paper of Muir, denies he is referring to a minimal population: "Keith was aware that the Holy Land was populated because he had traveled to Palestine in 1839 ... Nineteenth-century Westerners associated peoples or nations with territory, and so to be a land without a people did not imply that the land was without people, only that it was without a national political character." Adam Garfinkle gives the same opinion of 19th-century users of the slogan (without mentioning Keith in particular). I think that both Muir and Garfinkle oversimplify this, but we can't add a theory about Keith's reasoning that disagrees with the sources. A third problem concerns the logic. Even if Palestine was empty and the Jews had no country, it doesn't follow that the Jews must go to Palestine. So we shouldn't write it in a way that implies Keith had only those reasons. Keith's religious perspective was required to complete the logic, so it's an essential part of the story. Personally I don't think there is a problem with just stating what and when Keith wrote. In the article there are multiple sections concerning the meaning of the slogan. Zerotalk 07:38, 1 January 2024 (UTC)