Talk:Safed

Tsfat vs. Safed
Can anyone think of a good reason for the article to be titled "Safed"? Everyone in Tsfat spelles it either Tsfat or Tzfat; Safed is the Arab name and hasn't been in use for decades. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yclorfene (talk • contribs) 21:13, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The article name has to be changed in acordance to official Israeli name of this city to Tzfat. If there is no objection we can change the name of this article immediately.--Tritomex (talk) 11:08, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia guidelines object, see Naming conventions (geographic names). For the same reason, we use Rome even though most people who live there call it Roma.  Zerotalk 11:53, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly because of Wikipedia guidelines I believe that the name of this article have to be changed. Safed is not "a widely accepted English name" nor it is the official name of Tzfat. Similarly like in the case of Beit She'an, the official Hebrew name of this Israeli town has to be the name of this article. I do not see any sources suggesting that the Arabic name of this town represents "a widely accepted English name"--Tritomex (talk) 02:19, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Safed is overwhelmingly the common English name, and the more scholarly the source the more overwhelming it is. You can easily check this for yourself. The Arabic name is Safad, not Safed, but even that is much more common in English than Tsfat/Tzfat/Tsefat/Zefat.  Seems to be about 50 to 1 overall. Zerotalk 02:48, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * If names like Bombay and Burma can be "decolonised" then so can "Safed". Tsfat is not a widely known town and therefore not in common parlance like Rome or Cologne. 2.27.91.224 (talk) 18:04, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

"Late Middle Ages" in the Levant means exactly... what?
"The city appears in Jewish sources in the late Middle Ages." It's mentioned as based on Vilnai book. What period is it referring to? The book is not accessible online, at least not in English, so pls. show quotation! The term Middle Ages has been coined for European circumstances and is NOT commonly used in the Levant, where it doesn't actually fit. At most it's used for the period of European rule, i.e. the Crusader period, so "late Middle Ages" is meaningless. Arminden (talk) 05:38, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Translit.
Shouldnn't the ISO transliteration be with a dotted S instead of an S with cedilla?

Wathiik (talk) 13:22, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Plunder of Safed Jews in 1628, return in 1633
Louis Finkelstein in The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion (very broad coverage) mentioned that in 1628 Safed's Jews were plundered by Mulhim, who the author erroneously refers to as Fakhr al-Din's brother. He only had one brother, Yunus. The latter had a son named Mulhim who became the head of the Ma'ns in southern Mount Lebanon after Fakhr al-Din's capture and Yunus's execution in 1633, as well as the concomitant capture/killing/execution of all of Fakhr al-Din's sons. I could not find anywhere else that such an event took place. Abdul-Rahim Abu-Husayn's Provincial Leaderships and his other works, exhaustingly detail the numerous raids, skirmishes, battles, conflicts, micro and macro, of the region in Fakhr al-Din's time, but does not mention anything even remotely alluding to this incident. It is dubious because Safed was under Fakhr al-Din's control at the time, he was not known to plunder his own territories, his loyal brother Yunus was no rogue, and the latter's son Mulhim does not appear to have played any active role until both his father and uncle were eliminated in 1633–35. Is there any other source, primary or otherwise, that mentions this incident? It may be incorrectly conflated with the attacks on Safed and its Jewish inhabitants during the internal Druze struggles in later decades. Al Ameer (talk) 19:17, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Kam al-Maz quote
I have removed this sentence from the article: The Arab Liberation Army had plans to take over the whole city on May 10 and to slaughter all as cabled by the Syrian commander al-Hassan Kam al-Maz It is sourced to Benny Morris, who sources:

Without the original Arabic the word “slaughter” is hard to decipher, as the translator (or Al Maz himself) could have been using the figurative sense of "to defeat an opponent thoroughly or completely"

And it certainly does not say "slaughter them all". Onceinawhile (talk) 19:27, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed. It is good general idea to go back to the earliest reliable source that reports something, which in this case is the book of Abbasi. When a military commander promises to "slaughter" his opponents, he is promising to thoroughly defeat them and any stronger imputation needs evidence. Zerotalk 02:07, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Exceptional claim, in short. I can recall several documents discussing the disparity between Israeli orders, which lend themselves to an interpretation that comprehensive killings were not ruled out, and the lack of any evidence of such orders in Arab communications. Indeed we have documents in the chain of command, certainly from Pasha Glubb's forces, that the Geneva conventions were to be strictly adhered to. I can't for the moment pin down where I read them though.Nishidani (talk) 09:05, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Demographics change in 1948 (in Intro)
I fixed serious false claims in intro of evacuation of the population of Safed by British soldiers, in this sentence: "During the 1948 war, Arab factions attacked and besieged Jewish quarter which held out until Jewish paramilitary forces captured the city after heavy fighting, precipitating British forces to temporarily evacuate all of Safed's Palestinian Arabs. The evacuated population was not allowed to return after the war, such that today the city has an almost exclusively Jewish population."

Sources in this article and additional historical sources do not state that British soldiers evacuated the Palestinian-Arab population causing the demographic change of Safed in 1948. The only accounts of "British evacuation" in Safad refers to the evacuation of British SOLDIERS from Safad, not them evacuating the population. In that case, I believe that whoever had written it initially in the page, had misunderstood the context of British evacuation from the Galilee and thus misrepresented the events mentioned in the introduction. All sources (both already cited and others which I use below) show that the population fled/was expelled as a result of attacks by Jewish forces during Operation Yiftach.

I have found 4 key sources regarding this matter (which I will link at the end) which document and analyze the events in detail from different perspectives (both Israeli and Arab/Palestinian military/civil documents/accounts are represented by the works), as well as military documents etc. All point to the same conclusion.

 On the evacuation of British troops: 

"Stage one began immediately after the British withdrawal on 16 April." -- Page 40 (or pg. 20 on JSTOR) Abbasi's The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948

"On the eve of the British withdrawal from Safed on 15 April, the Palmach had infiltrated a platoon of troops to strengthen the depleted Haganah garrison." -- Page 32 of Chaim Herzog's "The Arab-Israeli wars"

 On the Ein Zeitun massacre + the subsequent expulsion and fleeing of Safed's Arab-Palestinian population: 

"This [second] stage began immediately after the conquest of the Ein Zeitun village on 1 May. The capture of this village-so close to Safad and linked to it by ties of family and trade-the destruction of the houses in full daylight, and the massacre of the captives while the soldiers of the Arab Rescue Forces in the city stood by without intervening broke the spirit of the Safad Arabs... [Kelman] intended that "the Arab residents of Safad who lived on the opposite slopes could see what was in store for them."' -- Page 40 (or pg. 20 on JSTOR) Abbasi's The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948

"At this [third] stage, the Palmach commanding officers took overt steps to expel the Arab residents, especially by firing mortar bombs in the direction of the Arab neighborhoods" -- Page 41 (or pg. 21 on JSTOR) Abbasi's The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948

"Under Colonel 'Mula' Cohen, who had successfully commanded the Brigade in the battle for Safed and the fighting in Galilee, the 'Yiftach' attack commenced from the south at nightfall on 9 July, and cleared several Arab villages in the area." -- Page 80 of Chaim Herzog's "The Arab-Israeli wars"

"In after the fighting ended and during the combing sweep of the city, it was found that 137 ill and elderly residents remained in their homes. It was then decided to expel them, as well. The Muslims were exiled to Lebanon, and the Christians were transferred to a convent in Haifa." -- Page 41 (or pg. 21 on JSTOR) Abbasi's The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948

"The commander of the Third Battalion says that thousands of Safad residents wandered around and hid in the wadis surrounding Safad. To eliminate any possibility of their return, piper planes were given orders to drop bombs in the surrounding area to induce them to run away." -- Page 41 (or pg. 21 on JSTOR) Abbasi's The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948

"Another point relating to the Arab Rescue Forces was their vehement call to the residents to stay in their city, which counters the claim that the residents were called on to leave." -- Page 41 (or pg. 21 on JSTOR) Abbasi's The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948

"And with regard to the final question, the battle for Safad shows the maximum advantage taken by the Palmach forces of their superiority and their victory vis-a-vis the helplessness of the Palestinians. The expulsion of the Arab residents of the city and nearby villages was done in the cruelest manner, and the slaughter and destruction in Ein Zeitun leaves no doubt as to the policy that was conducted by these forces." -- Page 43 (or pg. 23 on JSTOR) Abbasi's The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948

See "Table 2. Cause of Exodus from Palestinian Localities: Comparison between Israeli Documented History and Palestinian Oral History -- Raw Findings" on page 283 (or page 13 on JSTOR) of Rafi Nets-Zehngut's journal article. Israeli documented history, per the source, states that the Palestinian population of Safed was driven out by expulsion, military attack, prior fear (Ein Zeitun massacre) AND evacuation orders (FM / E / A), while Palestinian accounts attribute the expulsion to only military attacks (M).

The demographics change is sources from Table 3 in Charles S. Kamen's "After the Catastrophe I: The Arabs in Israel, 1948-51" as well as many others.

SOURCES:

Abbasi, Mustafa (2004). "The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948: A Revised Study". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 36 (1): 21–47. ISSN 0020-7438.

Hertsog, Ḥayim (1982). The Arab-Israeli wars: war and peace in the Middle East. London: Arms and Armour Press. pp. 30–40. ISBN 978-0-85368-367-4. -- Name is Chaim Herzog (anglicized)

Nets-Zehngut, Rafi (2011). "Palestinian Autobiographical Memory Regarding the 1948 Palestinian Exodus". Political Psychology. 32 (2): 271–295. ISSN 0162-895X

Kamen, Charles S. (1987). "After the Catastrophe I: The Arabs in Israel, 1948-51". Middle Eastern Studies. 23 (4): 453–495. ISSN 0026-3206 Kollok790 (talk) 00:55, 29 December 2023 (UTC)