Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1660 Safed massacre

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was KEEP. Notability established; complaints about the subject's veracity or lack of coverage in particular sources are beside the point. The article can note any disputes or doubts over historical accounts to the extent those criticisms are attributable to reliable sources. postdlf (talk) 18:09, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

1660 Safed massacre[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This was originally a very short stub with serious neutrality and original research problems, by a new editor adding numerous articles alleging Arab violence against Jews. Searching on Google and Google books, I found no independent, reliable historical sources that say there was a massacre in Safed in 1660. The article, after elimination of some self published and non-historical sources, now relies solely on Joan Peters' widely discredited From Time Immemorial. Sources such as Jewish Virtual Library don't mention any massacre. No such massacre is asserted in our article on Safed. At best, a sentence or two could be added to Safed if it can survive consensus there, but the topic does not warrant a separate article unless better sources with much more detail can be provided. Jonathanwallace (talk) 06:08, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I don't think the absence from any single source is a reason to delete. It is a disputed topic discussed in multiple reliable sources. By deleting it there is no way for the general reader to compare the contrasting information. And of course we don't use the absence of something in Wikipedia as evidence that something in history occurred or did not occur. If a biography gets deleted from Wikipedia it isn't prima facie evidence that that person never existed in history. That only works in George Orwell novels. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment by nominator. I would argue Peters is not a reliable source. At last no controversial assertion of historical fact should be sourced solely to Peters. (From our article on From Time Immemorial citing a 1985 NY Times article: "Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath described the book as a "sheer forgery," stating that "[i]n Israel, at least, the book was almost universally dismissed as sheer rubbish except maybe as a propaganda weapon.") Nor could I find other reliable sources saying there was a massacre in Safed in 1660. Scholem, a reliable source, says there wasn't. WP:V says, "Material must be attributable to a source with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, which is appropriate for the claim being made." Peters doesn't qualify, so we have no such source to support the article. Jonathanwallace (talk) 06:41, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This the classic strawman fallacy, you ignore the 4 other references with identical information and pick the one identical one from a controversial author and demolish it like it was made of straw. Except it doesn't negate the other identical 4 references. If an author presents a list of presidents and slips in one fictional one, it doesn't mean all the presidents on the list are now fictional. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:33, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

More precisely, Cherry picking (fallacy). Anarchangel (talk) 01:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you are more correct. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:18, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment If you stop deleting the sources while the AFD is ongoing it would be a nice show of good faith. That way people can decide for themselves the reliability of the sources. When you delete them during the discussion you leave nothing for people to look at except the ones that take your side of the discussion. The article is a stub now but can be re-expanded into a full paragraph or two after the debate, with the sources cited by Gershom Gerhard Scholem that he says are exaggerated. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 07:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I have not reverted any more of your edits. You are adding sources such as Christian inspirational publishers and Zionist advocates that fail WP:REDFLAG's requirement of high quality sources for exceptional claims. You also re-added the lede which says, in Wikipedia's voice, that a massacre occurred. Again, there is not a single professional historian quoted saying a massacre happened in Safed in 1660. Also, please remember WP:AGF. All edits I made were to remove patently unreliable sources, synthesis and unsourced assertions, consistent with my understanding of our verifiability and sourcing rules. Jonathanwallace (talk) 07:56, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia does not require the blessing of historians. If we did, we could not write about current events or about fictional people or about myths, or about philosophy. With current events we would have to wait until someone took the time to write a scholarly book on the topic. We only need reliable sources. When something is controversial we try and show a NPOV as best we can. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 15:53, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

keep But clean up. If sources say a massacre occurred and others do not, then that controversy needs to be discussed in the article, not by warring in the references section of the article or deleting it entirely. Remember: Verifiability not Truth, if sources exist which say contradicting things, that's alright, we need not be the arbiters of truth only the third-party reporters of the fact these beliefs are held. Also, this appears to be a content dispute better handled on a talk page than in a deletion discussion. HominidMachinae (talk) 13:06, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep A search of Google Books using "1660 Safed massacre" turns up several sources that directly mention the incident. As we are providing verifiable information, not some perfect "truth", there is no reason to delete the article. Material that rebuts any of these sources should also be included, but what's here now is encyclopedic, neutral and supported by appropriate sources. Alansohn (talk) 15:34, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is but a small point, and I would prefer not to undermine your Keep vote and mine, but I must say that my search (search results can vary) returns separate parts of the phrase "1660 Safed massacre" presented together, rather than the exact phrase. Anarchangel (talk) 01:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Israel-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:56, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:56, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep despite the obvious concerns that misinformation will be introduced in service of the vying agendas of the sources concerned, because the massacre itself is well sourced; while there is much contention over its severity, none of the sources dispute that a massacre happened. Anarchangel (talk) 01:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment by nominator responding to user Norton's "strawman" argument above and to Anarchangel. This began as a classic WP:REDFLAG scenario, with a user adding articles making claims of mass murder, sourced to self published works, blogs, etc. and on talk pages claiming a conspiracy of editors to hide details of massacres of Jews in the Ottoman empire. The clearly self published sources of this article are now gone, but what has been substituted are 1. A book by David Dolan, an American journalist, published by a charismatic Christian publisher with no reputation for fact checked or peer reviewed academic works. 2. A book by Jacob de Haas, who per his Wikipedia bio, served on the propaganda committee of the World Zionist organization. 3. An article from another Zionist organization, the Theodor Herzl foundation. (My argument regarding Zionist sources is that they should be regarded as advocacy organizations, not as impartial reporters of fact, for the purpose of these kinds of assertions.) 3. The Joan Peters book From Time Immemorial per our own article about it, is highly discredited as a source. 4. That leaves the Jewish Encyclopedia, the only work written by actual professors in an academic style, which includes a single sentence saying that Safed--not the Jews of Safed, merely "Safed"--was destroyed in 1660, with no context or detail. This is significant because another editor, responding on a talk page to another effort of the article creator, 1011 Córdoba pogrom, has pointed out that an opposing army killed the whole town, Jews and Muslims together, and didn't single out the Jews as the article claimed. WP:REDFLAG says, "Exceptional claims require high-quality sources". A claim of mass murder is an exceptional claim. I am still waiting for someone to bring a high quality, peer reviewed academic history which actually tells us what happened in Safed in 1660, and that's not happening. The fact that multiple unreliable, casual or polemical tertiary sources all "agree" doesn't give us enough context on which to base a Wikipedia article.Jonathanwallace (talk) 02:41, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, I have not seen one scientific journal showing that God exists, we really need to purge Wikipedia of stuff like that. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 04:32, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Even assuming that it happened, which is debatable (even the reliable sources can't provide any information about it except that there was supposedly one survivor, which sounds like the stuff of a legend), it fails WP:EVENT. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are confusing "truth" with "verifiability". It may be a legend, maybe not, but it is backed up by reliable sources. Also, please don't wave WP:EVENT in your hand and say it fails it. Please cite a specific clause in the guideline that it fails. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 15:56, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Depth of coverage" is the big one (perhaps "diversity of sources" too), but it doesn't really pass any of them. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Demonstrate notabality per WP:INDEPTH or delete: Despite the back and forth over the quality of sources, what we really have is mostly tertiary sources citing the Safed incident in a single sentence. I would suspect that a web of citation unites this material, which makes it extremely difficult to verify anything about the event. Roscelese's very clear point stands unless and until notability is established by verifiable sources talking about the event in depth (beside Scholem who calls the event itself into question).--Carwil (talk) 22:02, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What do you consider a tertiary source? The only one I see is the Jewish Encyclopedia. It is one of the six footnotes used, and the information is identical to 4 of the other 6 sources. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 15:46, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Richard, I think you should take Jonathan's appeal for "independent, reliable historical sources" seriously here. The sources are identical in part because Peters seems to be quoting De Haas. Singer & Adler is precisely a tertiary source, a compendium. Dolan and the Herzl Foundation are tertiary sources on this event because they aren't doing research on the event but compiling a list of events for polemical purposes. Peters is as well, but her scholarship itself is discredited. That leaves, possibly De Haas, who also seems to be compiling a 2000-year historical survey. In the strictest of senses, none of these are secondary sources, since none appear to have analyzed the primary sources available (while Scholem clearly has). That doesn't mean they (Peters excepted) should be excluded from Wikipedia, but that we should prefer other closer, credible, and historical sources to them.

WP:INDEPTH turns out to help us not follow potentially spurious chains of one-sentence citations into descriptions of events. More on the article's talk page...--Carwil (talk) 17:55, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Of course what you are doing is providing original research on what level of research into primary and secondary sources you think was performed by each of the authors. We can all guess how thorough they were and speculate on what sources they used, but Wikipedia discourages that. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Scholem's comments on the "utter destruction" are his, not mine. Wikipedia would be quite a mess if we abandon a preference for secondary scholarship over tertiary sources, exactly because we end up with "verifiable" events that never happened or that happened in a totally separate time and way than reported on Wikipedia. I have no problem reporting these reports: for example, as "A variety of sources[4][5][6][7] have reported a 1660 massacre of the entire Jewish community in Safed; GGS[8] dismisses these reports as…". Still, the problem of notability (per WP:INDEPTH) remains.--Carwil (talk) 18:43, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as sourced and notable.--Yopie (talk) 14:37, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There seem to be at least three reliable sources cited as covering this event, thus it is notable and verifiable. Marokwitz (talk) 11:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep this well-sourced and notable event in Jewish history. IZAK (talk) 06:59, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Based on the sources cited, it is (if you will pardon the expression) just another pogrom, to which no one dedicates more than a sentence or two, except for one discredited source and another that did the discrediting. Given the lack of a detailed study (except for one that concludes in the negative), it is hard to put any faith in the claims that it even happened, or at least that it happened as described. As per Carwil and Roscelese, this fails WP:INDEPTH. We shouldn't have an article created by pasting together a set of passing references. This would be fine as an entry in a list of possible pogroms, but not a whole article all to itself. Again, there are citations but they are window-dressing not detailed study and hence they don't prove notability, not at all. Agricolae (talk) 01:53, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or merge - very thinly sourced article, mostly from questionable sources making contradictory claims, while a newly added source questions that it was a notable event at all. At most, it merits a line or two in the Safed article. Gatoclass (talk) 02:08, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Article does meet general notability criteria.--יום יפה (talk) 14:47, 6 April 2011 (UTC) Struck !vote of confirmed sockpuppet. Gatoclass (talk) 08:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC) [reply]
Keep - I believe the references are both reliable and sufficient. With the exception of Porath, the vast majority of those who "discredit" Joan Peters are partisans. You can't brush aside endorsements by people of the stature of Theodore H. White, Saul Bellow, Arthur J. Goldberg and others. Joan Peters should be considered reliable unless a particular point she makes is proved incorrect, but the 1600 Safed event seems to be a verifiable one. Snakeswithfeet (talk) 06:09, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment by nominator. This is not really about Joan Peters, but her book From Time Immemorial has been discredited as a work of historical scholarship by Israeli historians such as Yehoshua Porath who wrote in the Times that "[i]n Israel, at least, the book was almost universally dismissed as sheer rubbish". Jonathanwallace (talk) 06:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Most events from the 1600's will rely on a small number of sources. That doesn't mean that they were insignificant. Just that it was a long tome ago and not many people write about it anymore.I.Casaubon (talk) 17:10, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.