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Your edits at Balfour

I suggest you read the following:

• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Israel_Palestine_Collaboration#ARBPIA_sanctions
• McMahon–Hussein_Correspondence#List_of_British_interpretations_over_time
• Talk:Mandatory Palestine/FAQ

Onceinawhile (talk) 17:06, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

You might read the third of these again - the “Jordan is Palestine” trope seems to have come up again in one of your comments.

Looking at your edit history, you have the potential to be a great editor, as your edits are often precise and well worded. However, it is very rare to see you referring to sources in your edits or talk page comments. Sources are the bedrock of everything written here, and should be used to back up every statement you make.

Onceinawhile (talk) 10:04, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile:The notion that "Jordan is Palestine" is not a "trope" if one is talking about the period in which Palestine was being organized into a definitive, defined territory under British mandate. There are ample sources to back it up.

1. See, for instance, Article 25 of the 1922 Palestine Mandate document (also referred to in the Trans-Jordan Memorandum):

"In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined..."

This is a clear indication that the Jordan River was not, as yet, seen as the eastern boundary of Palestine, and that Palestine was seen as including land beyond the Jordan.

2. See also the terminology used in the Interim Report on the Civil of Administration of Palestine, during the period 1st July, 1920 - 30th June, 1921.

"Included in the area of the Palestine Mandate is the territory of Trans-Jordania."

"When Palestine west of the Jordan was occupied by the British Army...", which implies that Palestine includes territory east of the Jordan.

3. See further the Palestine Order in Counicil, August 22, which explicitly citing Trans-Jordan as a territory of Palestine, while making distinction for administrative purpose. https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/C7AAE196F41AA055052565F50054E656

"This Order In Council Shall Not Apply To Such Parts Of The Territory Comprised In Palestine To The East Of The Jordan And The Dead Sea As Shall Be Defined By Order Of The High Commissioner."

4. See further the British White Paper of June 1922, regarding the British pledge for Arab independence:

"The whole of Palestine west of the Jordan was thus excluded from Sir. Henry McMahon's pledge."

A clear indication that Palestine did include territory EAST of the Jordan.

5. See further pg. 28 of the 1937Britsh royal Report on Palestine:

"...Abdullah, had become Emir of the part of historic Palestine east of the Jordan which was allotted under the name of Trans-Jordan to the area of Arab independence, in accordance with the "McMahon Pledge"".

http://biblio-archive.unog.ch/Dateien/CouncilMSD/C-495-M-336-1937-VI_EN.pdf

6. The actual fixing of a boundary within the Palestine Mandate was as an ADMINISTRATIVE division, between the area to be granted for Arab indepndence and the area in which the Jewish National Home was to be established.

See, thus pg. 38 of the above report:

"The field in which the Jewish National Home was to be established was understood, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, to be the whole of historic Palestine, and the Zionists were seriously disappointed when Trans-Jordan was cut away from that field under Article 25. This was done, as has been seen, in obedience to the McMahon Pledge, which was antecedent to the Balfour Declaration."

7. See further in that regard the Report on Palestine Administration, 1922.

https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/A682CABF739FEBAA052565E8006D907C

"Following a memorandum presented by His Majesty's Government in September to the League of Nations, a resolution was passed by the Council of the League to exclude Transjordan from the Articles of the Mandate which concern the Holy Places and the measures to be taken in concert with the Jewish Agency for the establishment of a Jewish National Home.

The Order in Council also contains a provision that it shall not apply to the Transjordan territory."

8. See further the explanation of Herbert Samuel for the reason behind the administrative separation between Palestine and Transjordan, i.e. in order to satisfy both the Balfour Declaration and promises made to Hussein for Arab independence.

https://www.jta.org/1936/12/20/archive/sir-herbert-samuel-explains-separation-of-palestine-transjordan

Some relevant maps:

1. A map of Palestine from 1901 showing territory in Transjordan included in the area of Palestine. http://www.britishempire.co.uk/images2/palestinemap1901.jpg

2. See also the map of Palestine in the 1911 Edition of Encyclopedia and the text of the article regarding bounndaries.

https://en.wikisource.org/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Palestine

"Eastward there is no such definite border. The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine; but it is practically impossible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian desert begins."

3. A British Cabinet map from 1921, showing Palestine incorporating some area beyond the Jordan.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Middle_East_in_1921%2C_UK_Government_map%2C_Cab24-120-cp21-2607.jpg

4. A map presented by T.E. Lawrence at 1918, showing a thin sliver of Trans-Jordanian territory included in Palestine.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Lawrence_of_Arabia%27s_map%2C_presented_to_the_Eastern_Committee_of_the_War_Cabinet_in_November_1918.jpg

Please let me know if you require more references in support of the fact that during the period in question Palestine WAS seen as including Trans-Jordanian territory, and that the establishment of a boundary at the Jordan River was an administrative boundary within Mandatory Palestine demarcating the area of the Jewish National Home from the autonomous Arab territory in Transjordan.

Jacob D (talk) 14:21, 7 January 2018 (UTC)Jacob D

Do you have any comments on the sources I pointed you to? Wasserstein for example explicity states that this theme is propaganda nonsense.

On the ones you have brought:

• The documents you referred to can only be understood in the wider context at the time. See British_Mandate_for_Palestine_(legal_instrument)#Key_Mandate_dates_from_assignment_to_coming_into_effect. Note in particular in April 1921, following the March 1921 Cairo Conference (1921), Transjordan was made an Arab emirate. All the documents you brought from post that date are therefore irrelevant.
• The British position in 1919 is set out clearly here:
• The 1936 Herbert Samuel source was clear that Transjordan was not included in Palestine
• As to your map links, you’ll see that I uploaded two of them myself. On the first, this is one person’s cultural definition, one of hundreds on the region - and are you really saying you think Damascus is in Palestine? On the second, same issue - cultural and irrelevant. On the third and fourth, these are roughly drawn illustrative maps, and even if you took them at literal value, you’d still conclude that we’re talking about s tiny 2-3% of modern Jordanian territory.

Either way, all of this is original research. We are not allowed to do that here; this conversation is a good example of why not.

Please comment on the high quality secondary sources provided in my link above. The first six sources at the San Remo conference article are worth reading too.

Onceinawhile (talk) 22:30, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Jacob, Back when "Palestine" was not a precisely defined region, maps showed lots of different things. To illustrate how shaky your case based on maps is, here is a map showing the UK War Office's concept of "Palestine" in 1918. Of course there are other maps showing other extents, but it is important to remember that carefully worded public statements like BD were not intended to be precise. They were deliberately imprecise so as to allow flexibility in implementation. The actual meaning of the word "Palestine" in BD is "whatever we will decide it to mean". Zero 00:32, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile:You ask: "Do you have any comments on the sources I pointed you to? Wasserstein for example explicity states that this theme is propaganda nonsense."

I find it curious that you would use Wasserstein's statement, made in recent times and specifically employed as a counter to an ideology ("Greater Israel") that he disagrees with, as though it somehow invalidates the statements made in the historial documentation I supplied...all of which would indicate that prior to the LoN Mandate of Palestine taking legal effect, (a) Palestine was not yet seen as a territory with fixed boundaries, and (b)was seen as including territory (of undefined scope) beyond the Jordan.

But since we are on the subject of secondary sources from the list that you mention, why not also cite the statement from Gideon Biger?

"After the decision to separate western Palestine from Trans-Jordan was reached, it took more than a year until the question of the borderline’s precise location was addressed."

Note that the distinction made here is between western Palestine and Trans-jordan, not Palestine and Trans-Jordan.

You then write: "Note in particular in April 1921, following the March 1921 Cairo Conference (1921), Transjordan was made an Arab emirate. All the documents you brought from post that date are therefore irrelevant."

However in March-April 1921, the distinction made between Palestine and Trans-Jordan was purely an administrative one, not a legal one formally creating two separate entities. As such, a British memorandum from March 1921 laying the groundwork for this adminstrative division states the following:

"Further, His Majesty's Government have been entrusted with the Mandate for "Palestine". If they wish to assert their claim to Trans-Jordan and to avoid raising with other Powers the legal status of that area, they can only do so by proceeding upon the assumption that Trans-Jordan forms part of the area covered by the Palestine Mandate."

Going back to the year prior, when the Mandate was assigned, perhaps a map pertaining to the 1920 Treaty of Sevres is relevant here. The map, indicating the period prior to the Mandates coming into effect, shows Syria including Lebanon as an undifferentiated region, and northern Palestine without a hard boundary with Trans-jordan.

https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/images/1/14/TreatyOfSevresMapOfTurkey.gif

Next you show a British memorandum by Sir Erle Richards from 1919. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/British_Memorandum_on_Palestine_1919.jpg

However, the text of this memorandum shows that in 1919 Palestine was not yet conceived as a definitive territory with fixed boundaries separate from Transjordan. The text qualifies the description of Palestine's scope as being "for the purposes of this memorandum". Accordingly, the Biblically defined "Dan to Beersheba" description of Palestine cited in this memorandum, excluding most of the Negev from the definition of Palestine, was no longer applicable once the boundaries of Palestine were later formally defined. Likewise, the memorandum states that "the eastern boundary is more difficult to determine". The desire of the author to limit a future eastern boundary of Palestine to the Jordan River is explicitly linked to preventing Zionist claims on land east of the Jordan, while satisfying Arab claims there. And please note, the text implies the fixing of boundaries in the future, not existing in the present:

"It is assumed however, for the purposes of this memorandum, that the Jordan and the Dead Sea will form the frontier on the east."

That would indeed become relevant to the drafting of the Mandate of Palestine document and Trans-Jordan Memorandum. However, when the text of the Mandate of Palestine was drawn up (24 July 1922), it still alluded in Article 25 to Palestine beyond the Jordan and referred to the eastern boundaries of Palestine as not yet being fixed. The Trans-Jordan Memorandum was added later (23 September 1922). This document, however, did not serve to add Trans-Jordan to the Mandate; it served to "postpone or withold application" of certain provisions of the Palestine Mandate in "the territory of Trans-Jordan" (implying that Trans-Jordan was already regarded as an integral part of the Palestine Mandate), and to define its boundaries. The provisions in question relate to the Jewish National Home, which the Mandatory did not want to apply to Trans-Jordan....but with the caveat that the British Government "undertake that such provision as may be made for the administration of that territory in accordance with Article 25 of the Mandate shall be in no way inconsistent with those provisions of the Mandate which are not by this resolution declared inapplicable". Hence, the remaining articles of the Palestine Mandate would continue to apply in Transjordan, and the entire Mandate (including all provisions pertaining to the Jewish National Home) would continue to apply in Palestine WEST of the Jordan.

Finally, you claim regarding map links that "either way, all of this is original research. We are not allowed to do that here". Really? I think the bulk of the map and documentary evidence shows that during the period in which the Balfour Declaration was conceived, planned, issued, and formalized as part of the LoN Mandates policy, Palestine was NOT seen as defined territory with its eastern boundary fixed on the Jordan River, and Trans-Jordan was NOT seen as a defined territory in its own right. That is not to say that most of what would become Trans-Jordan was seen as being part of historical Palestine, however a part of it typically WAS. And as strongly suggested in the 1919 Sir Erle Richards Memorandum, the British Government did not want to commit to a Jewish National Home to ALL of Palestine, which had not yet officially been defined, because they did not want to be seen as potentially facilitating Zionist claims in Trans-Jordan, which the Arabs saw as part of their domain.

As such, since the scope of Palestine was not yet clearly defined at the time that the Balfour Declaration was being formulated, the British Government did not want to commit itself that all of "Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people", as stated in the Rothschild draft antecedent to the Balfour Declaration. Neither did the Milner draft modifying the wording to "in Palestine" automatically and necessarily "reduce the geographical scope" of such a home, as the WP article alleges. The explanation provided by Moshe Arens in his article, "From Balfour to a Palestine state" (Jerusalem Post, 3 November, 2009), is more reasonable. http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/From-Balfour-to-a-Palestinian-state

""In Palestine" could be interpreted as meaning that not all of Palestine should become the national home of the Jewish people. Additionally, the boundaries of Palestine not being defined at the time, left ambiguous the eventual size of the area to be allocated as a national home of the Jewish people."

Jacob D (talk) 14:15, 10 January 2018 (UTC)Jacob D

@Zero0000:I have always affirmed that the definition and boundaries of Palestine were imprecise, though typically at the time of the Balfour Declaration it was interpreted as including a part of Transjordan. I highlighted the fact that in the Mandate of Palestine document of 1922 (article 25), an undefined amount of land beyond the Jordan was still interpreted as forming a part of Palestine. I highlighted the fact that this article, and the Trans-Jordan Memorandum, served to render Jewish National Home provisions inapplicable in Trans-Jordan, to define the boundaries of Trans-Jordan, and to arrange for it to be administered separately as an autonomous territory, but under the aegis of the Palestine Mandate and not as a fully separate entity from Palestine. As the Trans-Jordan Memorandum points out, the Mandatory government "undertake that such provision as may be made for the administration of that territory in accordance with Article 25 of the Mandate shall be in no way inconsistent with those provisions of the Mandate which are not by this resolution declared inapplicable."

I agree with your point that maps only serve to show the imprecise nature of Palestine at that time....although the 1918 map you show is very uncharacteristic, excluding as it does the territory south of Hebron and part of northern Palestine.

Jacob D (talk) 15:04, 10 January 2018 (UTC)Jacob D

Discretionary sanction notification

You are subject to additional rules when you edit this page. If you do not follow these rules, you may be blocked from editing: You must be logged-in to an extended confirmed account (granted automatically to accounts with 500 edits and an age of 30 days) You may not make more than 1 revert within 24 hours on this page (except in limited circumstances) This page is related to the Arab–Israeli conflict, a contentious topic. Pages related to this contentious topic are subject to additional rules as authorized by the Arbitration Committee. Before editing, please familiarize yourself with the contentious topic policy.

Onceinawhile (talk) 17:09, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

ARBPIA Notice

You still haven't received the proper notice. So here it is.

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding the Arab–Israeli conflict, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

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February 2018

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Misplaced Pages, as you did to Circumcision, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. If you only meant to make a test edit, please use the sandbox for that. Thank you. Theroadislong (talk) 19:04, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Richard B. Spencer

From your edit summary: NPI speech is obviously a racist and white supremacist hateful rant, it did not at any point attack Jews as a group, and did not (with the possible exception of "Hail Victory") explicitly quote from Nazi propaganda.

From the New York Times story: But now his tone changed as he began to tell the audience of more than 200 people, mostly young men, what they had been waiting to hear. He railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald J. Trump, were “awakening to their own identity.”

I'm going to go with the New York Times instead of you on this one. --Calton | Talk 08:54, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

@Calton:, when in doubt, always go back to the original source, and not to some media report which might incorporate its own interpretation of events that skew the facts. I hope that you are interested in maintaining an article that is factually accurate, rather than one that repeats the claims of ostensibly NPOV sources, even if they distort the facts.

Here is the link to the Spencer's full 2016 speech at NPI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq-LnO2DOGE

Spencer makes a snide reference to "our friends at the Anti Defamation league", and to "a Jewish celebrity". At what point in the speech does he "rail against Jews" as a group? Do tell.

Spencer makes a reference to the German term "Luegenpresse", but that term has been used since the 19th century THROUGHOUT the political spectrum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/Lying_press

There is no explicit quote from Nazi propaganda in Spencer's speech, with the possible exception of "Hail, Victory", to which some members of the crowd responded with Nazi salutes (which, note, I left IN the article in my edit).

As it happens, I myself am Jewish, and do believe that Spencer has a white supremacist agenda and some of his views are clearly similar to those of the Nazis, as are those of many of his followers. However, I also believe that misquoting him or distorting his words plays right into his hands.

Jacob D (talk) 10:09, 13 March 2018 (UTC)Jacob D

Read this WP:RELIABLE and WP:ORIGINAL. I'm going with the New York Times over you. And I'm especially doing so because policy requires I do so. Again, write to the Times if you've got a problem with their story. --Calton | Talk 10:30, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

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See Talk:Richard B. Spencer for more. --Calton | Talk 10:39, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

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