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Talk:Zionism

Kodmani-Darwish and Féron

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

@Ciroa: in this edit in 2011 you added references to Bassma Kodmani-Darwish and Féron, but did not provide the book/article names or dates. Are you able to provide the full sources you were referencing? -- Cdjp1 (talk) 09:17, 25 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

The term "ethnocultural nationalist" is not helpful

Latest comment: 9 days ago114 comments14 people in discussion

The term "ethnocultural nationalist" in the lead section is supported by only a single source. It is quite vague, and does not help understanding. The lead section would be much easier to read without it: "Zionism is a movement that emerged in late...". In a later section, we can write that "Gans (2008) categorizes Zionism as an ethnocultural nationalism". It is an interesting fact, but not important enough to be included in the first sentence. --Erel Segal (talk) 21:15, 27 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

I think removing the word ethnocultural is best (maybe explain in the body). Nationalist as a descriptor is indisputable. As the source explains, the term has no negative connotations, so I'm not sure why it causes so much fuss, but it would certainly make the sentence shorter and more understandable. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 21:23, 27 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Removing "ethnocultural" is a good suggestion. --Erel Segal (talk) 10:05, 28 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
While I am more strongly opposed to ethnocultural in the first sentence (it’s a rarely used term that doesn’t correspond to Wikipedia article), I am strongly opposed to both: as violating our MoS for the first sentence, as violating NPOV by portraying an interpretation as a fact, and as not being grounded in any section in the body BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:52, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Removing two words that reliable secondary sources use to define nature of Zionism does not meaningfully simplify the sentence. It instead makes it less informative and precise. But I would not object to reducing it by one word, from "ethnocultural nationalist" to simply "ethnonationalist", since that is the term most commonly used in the sources. This also aligns with the proposed one-word reduction, as it shortens the sentence by exactly the same amount while retaining accuracy of description per the sources. Lf8u2 (talk) 03:09, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Can you not recognise the distinction between facts reported in reliable secondary sources and interpretations made in reliable secondary sources? BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:56, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Gans' characterization of Zionism as ethnocultural has been quoted in an academic essay in Philosophies of Place: An Intercultural Conversation (page 258) on the discussion between ethnocultural and civil nationalism when applied to Israel-Palestine. So I do think its helpful, but of course, we can discuss where is the best place to mention this.VR 08:34, 28 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
It is not sufficient to show sources for one adjective, as there are many other well-sourced adjectives that could be inserted here, such as ideological movement, Political movement, National revival movement, etc. One should explain why, out of all possible adjectives, specifically the adjective "ethnocultural" is best fit to appear in the lead section. Why not "national revival"? --Erel Segal (talk) 10:07, 28 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Strongly support removing this. It has been discussed many times and I don’t think there’s an actual consensus for inclusion, but its long-standing presence stops it from being removed despite that. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:25, 28 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is a very poor source to use for the first sentence of this article. For the first sentence we should be using the words that are used by the very best sources there are most specifically about our whole topic, especially the best tertiary sources, not what one theologian happened to think. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:32, 28 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Bobfrombrockley when I was doing a literature review of the very best broad overview level sources on Zionism, Chaim Gan's works on Zionism (most notably A Just Zionism) came up at the top. He is definitely a scholar who is very focused on the modern study of Zionism. His books on Zionism and on nationalism in general (in which he also talks about Zionism) have been widely cited: [1][2][3][4][5] etc. VR 16:50, 28 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Sorry I meant the Philosohies of Place book not Gans. I had vaguely heard of Gans previously. I’m still not sure he’s a BESTSOURCE for the FIRST sentence, but not a poor source per my earlier comment BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:50, 28 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
I haven't read Gans on this but I've just looked at the abstract, maybe I'll try and get access later. The abstract says that "Many writers conceive of ethnocultural nationalism as necessarily collectivist, illiberal, and regressive" and that this has "motivated many of the objections to Zionism", but that Gans posits ethnocultural nationalism and Zionism "need not necessarily be illiberal and regressive" and "explains and rejects objections to ethnocultural nationalism and thus to Zionism that are based on cosmopolitan and neutralist interpretations of liberalism."
Unless the abstract does not faithfully summarise the content, it seems like we're sourcing a term to someone who is noting common connotations of the term and explicitly specifying that their usage does not carry those connotations. Our text does not convey that. Obviously the place for covering that is not in the first sentence of the article. Samuelshraga (talk) 12:45, 28 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
That is not what Gans says. In A Just Zionism itself, on page 3, in the chapter "Zionism as an Ethnocultural Nationalism", he explicitly states:
Zionism belongs to the category of ethnocultural nationalism, according to which groups sharing a common history and culture have fundamental and morally significant interests in adhering to their culture and in sustaining it for generations. Cultural nationalism holds that such interests warrant political recognition and support, primarily by the means of granting the groups in question the right to national self-determination or self-rule.
That is a direct and categorical classification of Zionism. Gans separately argues that ethnocultural nationalism need not necessarily be collectivist, illiberal or regressive. That argument rejects a purported necessary consequence of ethnocultural nationalism. It does not qualify his classification of Zionism as ethnocultural nationalism or indicate that he is using the category in some special sense that the article has omitted.
Nor is this merely Gans's individual terminology. I previously cited the following sources:
Steven Beller, "In Zion's Hall of Mirrors", Patterns of Prejudice (2007), page 215: Zionism is an ethnonationalist ideology. On pages 226–227, he writes: Yet Zionist ideologues, such as Moses Hess, Leon Pinsker, Nathan Birnbaum, Ahad Ha'am and Herzl, took modern European notions of nationalism and transposed them on to the Jewish example. Their aim was to turn a group with a complex ethnic, religious and historical basis of community into a nation like all other nations, and, following the trends of the time, one with an ethnonational, not civic national base. Zionism has always been, almost by definition, an ethnonationalist movement. How can it be otherwise when its principal goal was the creation of a state whose principal criterion for membership was being Jewish?
Yaacov Yadgar, Israel's Jewish Identity Crisis, Cambridge University Press (2020), page 180: This liberal-Zionist stance does not offer, in other words, a challenge to the "demographic" outlook. Such a challenge would offer, for example, alternative ways for understanding the notion of Jewish sovereignty, such that do not rely on the number of Jews but rather on some core Jewish constitutive normative infrastructure. Rather, as this book has discussed throughout, the foundational Zionist, ethnonationalist sense by which the Jew precedes Judaism, meaning that descent trumps normative outlooks and traditions, has been a mainstay of (political-Zionist) "Jewish politics," as this notion is understood and maintained by all major streams of Israeli political thought.
Alon Confino, "The Nakba and the Zionist Dream of an Ethnonational State", History Workshop Journal (2023), page 140: The Zionist idea of an ethnonational polity was culturally based and circumstantially dependent. He further writes on the same page that the changes after the mid-1930s built on the ethnonational Zionist idea itself and refers to Zionist talk, plans, and imagination about an ethnonational state.
Jeff Halper, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State, Pluto Press (2021), page 33: Zionism was a Central/Eastern European form of ethno-nationalism. He continues: Zionism adopted this form of ethno-nationalism, and exported it to Palestine.
There are many further examples.
Prominent Israeli historian and expert on Zionism Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology, Brandeis University Press (1995), page 389: This study has sought to examine the ideology of Zionism in a dual context, as an emanation of the modernization of the Jews and as a phenomenon belonging to the genre of nationalism. As such, it has accounted for the genesis of the nationalist ideology that came to be known as Zionism by approximately the mid-1890s in terms of the remarkably enduring ethnic roots of Jewish ethnicity in Europe, notwithstanding modernization—to be sure, an ethnicity whose most obvious, although not sole, attribute was the Jewish religion. It has identified Zionism as manifestly a case of ethnic nationalism sparked by a convergence in the early 1880s of ideas generated within distinguishable categories of social carriers.
Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914, page 8: At the outset, Zionism was a variety of Eastern European nationalism, that is, an ethnic movement in search of a state.
Sammy Smooha, "The Model of Ethnic Democracy: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State", Nations and Nationalism (2002), page 489: Zionism emerged in Eastern Europe as a brand of ethnic nationalism, accepting the Jews as an ethnic nation.
Yitzhak Conforti, "Between Ethnic and Civic: The Realistic Utopia of Zionism", Israel Affairs (2011), page 565: Since Zionism is a clear example of an ethnic national movement, scholars usually tend to ignore its civic components. The article also states on page 563 that Israel developed from a nationalist ethnic-cultural movement.
Jerry Z. Muller, "What Americans Don't Get About Zionism and Israel: Jewish Nationalism in Comparative Perspective", Society (2025), page 382: Zionism, in short, is a species of ethnic nationalism.
Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: The Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine, page 144: The differences from "typical" European settler movements include Zionism's nature as an ethnonational and not an economic project, the status of most Jews as refugees, the loose organization of Diasporic Jewish communities as opposed to the well-organized metropolitan countries, and the notion of "return" to Zion enshrined in Jewish traditions. Lf8u2 (talk) 02:55, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would be strongly opposed to removing the description of Zionism as ethnic nationalism from the first sentence. It's basically the primary defining characteristic of the ideology. Katzrockso (talk) 04:35, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not convinced that Halper in Pluto Press or the History Workshop Journal, for example, are the best non-partisan and most reliable sources to apply the first description of the subject we see in the first sentence of the article. This doesn't mean we shouldn't include them in a typological discussion of Zionism as X form of nationalism elsewhere in the article.
Just from what I happened to already have available, you also seem to have missed central themes of Conforti's piece, like that Zionism contains both civic and ethnic elements, or the part about how the distinction between "civic" and "ethnic" nationalisms is itself a problematic one contested by major figures in the study of nationalism.
How did you compile your list here? Samuelshraga (talk) 06:20, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yes, these sources (or more specifically these quotes) represent one side i a debate. Yet again, as constantly seems to happen with this article, editors search through the enormous literature on this topic to find the ones that use the words they favour (and inevitably find it, because almost everything under the sun has been written about this topic), instead of starting with the best sources and seeing what they say. BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:12, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Where are the sources that contradict this description? Katzrockso (talk) 20:42, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
I’m sure I and perhaps others shared a bunch last time this came up. Will look in archives. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:51, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
OK, I have finally found the 2025 discussion thread where multiple sources contradicting the description was shared. In that thread, I summarise all the previous threads on this phrase (introduced in a 2024 drive-by edit by an editor who never edited this page before or since) and showed that it had no affirmatory consensus and was only there by virtue of longevity. We reached informal consensus to remove the word and add it to a footnote, actioned by Cdjp1. This must have then been reverted; two editors, without providing sources, insisted we needed an RfC to change it. We then workshopped the RfC framing, but the page archived before this was actioned. A missed opportunty. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:01, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for that, I thought we had a rough consensus (though not a formal one) on the "ethnocultural" being superfluous. Beyond that, my position remains the same, that nationalism without adjectives is fine enough for the lede (and is more than enough supported by sources to it being a SKYISBLUE situation). Should people feel the need for a descriptor, as we had status quo standing for such, a footnote should suffice, but I don't hold a strong position to include a footnote. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 18:01, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
And more importantly, for the MOS:FIRST sentence, it needs to be due in the first sentence not just verifiable. We can ascertain that by which key adjectives are used by the very best overview sources and the predominance of good tertiary sources in concisely defining the topic, and it seems that none of them use "ethnocultural"/"ethnonational"etc whereas they all use "nationalist".
  • The first sentence should introduce the topic, and tell the nonspecialist reader what or who the subject is, and often when or where. It should be in plain English.
  • If its subject is definable, then the first sentence should give a concise definition: where possible, one that puts the article in context for the nonspecialist.
  • Do not overload the first sentence by describing everything notable about the subject. Instead, spread the relevant information out over the entire lead.
BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:17, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yes, Bobfrombrockley, I really haven't seen sources that would consider Zionism a form of civic nationalism as opposed to ethnic nationalism. VR 01:19, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps but there are several that see it as containing elements of both. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:50, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Including Conforti in the very extract being used above to justify ethnocultural, where he talks about “civic elements” BobFromBrockley (talk) 04:52, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I wouldn't be opposed to adding content later into the lead describing the civic nationalism aspects of Zionism but it certainly shouldn't be given equal weight to the ethnonationalism aspect Katzrockso (talk) 05:21, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I agree. It is absolutely the case that the majority of scholars who make the ethnic/civil distinction place it on the ethnic side and it would be extremely undue to over-emphasise the civil. BUT what we want to avoid is stating ethnic as a fact. Hence my proposal below to delete the word in the opening sentence, and add a sentence in the final lead para saying something like "Many scholars see it as a form of ethnic rather than civic nationalism". BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:41, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
It is ethnic nationalism - this is not disputed. I didn't see any sources in the discussions you linked that dispute that it is a form of ethnic nationalism and all of our sources say that it is. We are supposed to present a summarization of what our sources say - and that summarization is indeed that they all find that Zionism is ethnic nationalism. Katzrockso (talk) 15:01, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Well it might make sense to call it a "Jewish nationalist" movement and ideology. The operative meaning of Jewishness is contested within Zionism. You have Religious Zionists who seek to define Jewishness religiously, and others who define it as a matter of descent - sometimes without recourse to religious definitions at all - and this feeds into the (ongoing) political and ideological struggle on Who is a Jew in the Israeli political context.
Further detail can be provided somewhere that's not the first sentence. Samuelshraga (talk) 07:18, 2 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Our sources don't seem to find the religious aspects relevant - seemingly because scholars typically still see Religious Zionism as a form of ethnonationalism Katzrockso (talk) 08:27, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I looked for expert scholars who have written on the subject in response to the claim that the description rests on Gans alone. Even setting Halper and Confino aside, Gans, Shimoni, Shafir, Smooha and Conforti all make that classification directly, with Conforti citing Gans for it (his discussion of civic aspects does not negate this).
Whatever biases you believe Halper and Confino may have, both are subject-matter experts who have written extensively on Zionism and published through reputable academic venues. Confino is a historian of Jewish and Israeli history whose areas of expertise include Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while Halper is an Israeli anthropologist and the author of several books on Zionism, Israel and Palestine.
"Non-partisan" is not the test we apply to academic sources. The relevant considerations are scholarly expertise, publication by a reputable academic press or journal, and direct relevance to the claim. Gans's book is published by Oxford University Press and devotes a chapter to "Zionism as an Ethnocultural Nationalism", and VR already discussed his expertise.
Shimoni's scholarship is centered on Jewish history and Zionism, and The Zionist Ideology is a book-length study of the subject. Shafir is a comparative-historical sociologist specializing in nationalism, ethnicity and citizenship. Smooha is a sociologist of comparative ethnic relations and Israeli society whose work developed the model of ethnic democracy. Conforti is a historian of modern Jewish history who has published extensively on Zionist history, Jewish nationalism and Zionist historiography. Yadgar is Oxford's Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies, and his research centers on nationalism, Zionist ideology and Israeli politics. Yiftachel is a political geographer whose scholarship on Israel/Palestine developed the concept of ethnocracy. Beller is a historian of modern Central European and Jewish history who has written specifically on Herzl and Zionist ideology. Muller is a historian whose fields include nationalism and modern Jewish history.
These are not incidental commentators selected merely because they use a convenient adjective. Their principal fields and substantial published work bear directly on Zionism, nationalism, Jewish history, Israeli society or the precise typological question under discussion. They are the WP:BESTSOURCES. Lf8u2 (talk) 03:51, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yes these are mostly solid scholars that we could say are the best sources for facts. But so are eg Conforti, Berkowitz, Yakobson and Rubinstein, who see Zionism as mixing ethnic and civic nationalism. We cannot report the interpretations of one group of scholars in our voice as if it’s a fact BobFromBrockley (talk) 05:00, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Stating that Zionism is a form of ethnonationalism does not preclude it from also being civic nationalism. Katzrockso (talk) 05:22, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
It does, though, for those scholars who see a rigid binary between these two forms of nationalism, following Kohn. However, other scholars say either that all nationalisms are basically ethnic so the binary makes no sense and the adjective is reduundant (following AD Smith) or that Zionism has historically included and/or theoretically includes a civic as well as ethnic dimension (Conforti's thesis). This diversity of interpretations is why we want to avoid stating interpretations as facts. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:44, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Some scholars believe that ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism are incompatible, but us saying "Zionism is ethnic nationalism" does not imply "Zionism is not civic nationalism".
Some scholars believing that all nationalism is ethnic in no way implies we should omit the word from the lead. Our readers don't know this and we certainly don't state that in the article, so the omission would be misleading.
Us saying "Zionism is ethnic nationalism" invokes no particular interpretation and is consistent with every scholar's belief that you listed - indeed it is the best possible encyclopedic summarization of all of the scholarly interpretations you have presented. Katzrockso (talk) 14:57, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
"Zionism is ethnic nationalism" does not imply "Zionism is not civic nationalism". I disagree. I think it does imply precisely that, when we use one qualifying adjective, that specificity does in fact leave an implication of exclusion. Otherwise we'd just call it nationalism.
Given that the extended discussion of Zionism as ethnic or civic nationalism we're having here, comprising opinions that it's just ethnic, or that it's both, or that it's a false binary, is pretty much absent from the article itself (WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY anyone?), that implication is never corrected. Samuelshraga (talk) 07:22, 2 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Your train of logic here is completely fallacious and if someone conducted that about a source we'd say it was Wikipedia:Original research.
I noted elsewhere that I wouldn't be opposed to adding content later into the lead describing the civic nationalism aspects of Zionism. Katzrockso (talk) 08:22, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don’t see any fallacious logic or original research in this comment and don’t understand why you’d say that.
“I wouldn't be opposed to adding content later into the lead describing the civic nationalism aspects of Zionism”. This would be bizarre. We’d be adding more things to the lead that aren’t in the body; we’d be adding more interpretations; and we’d be leaving this interpretation in the first sentence unduly. We should either delete here while we write the relevant body section and then summarise it at the end of the lead. Or we should delete here and put a brief sourced sentence in the last paragraph of the lead saying that many scholars call it ethnonationalist. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:43, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Please reread my comment. I didn't say there was any original research, what I said was that if this logic was used to analyze a source, it would be original research. That's usually a hint that the train of thought is not going in the right direction.
Specifically, the fallacious argument is this I think it does imply precisely that, when we use one qualifying adjective, that specificity does in fact leave an implication of exclusion. Otherwise we'd just call it nationalism. There is no implication of exclusion - the English language doesn't work that way. I don't know how any reader might take away that "Zionism is not civic nationalism" by the fact that we say "Zionism is ethnic nationalism". Should we also take the implication that "Zionism is not an ideology" and "Zionism is not real" since we don't positively state those things in the first sentence? Katzrockso (talk) 16:03, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ok, fair points. But anyone who knows anything about scholarship on nationalism knows that “ethnic nationalism” pairs with “civic nationalism” and that to say one implies not the other. Just as saying it’s conservative would imply it’s not liberal or saying it’s left wing would imply it’s not right wing. BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:57, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
It's not original research if that analysis appears in published sources. Conforti has been mentioned above. Dieckhoff (The Invention of a Nation: Zionist Thought and the Making of Modern Israel) attacks the dichotomisation of "political" and "cultural" nationalism, defining those terms in ways that clearly correspond to the ethnic/civic distinction we're using (p.99) and says that the distinction should be preserved to discuss different facets/stages of all nationalist movements (p.100), and then deploys this in his analysis of Zionism (p.100-101). Samuelshraga (talk) 07:28, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
For those reading this discussion: so far no editor has offered a single secondary RS from a subject-matter expert saying explicitly that Zionism cannot be defined as ethnic nationalism. I would appreciate it if they could do that before arguing for removing RS content that is backed by many secondary RS that have been cited.
@Samuelshraga @Bobfrombrockley, Conforti does not back what you claim about Zionism not being ethnic nationalist, as he repeatedly and explicitly says that it is, so I'm not sure why you both keep referring to him to argue for removal.
In the 2011 article cited by @Lf8u2 here, he says "Since Zionism is a clear example of an ethnic national movement, scholars usually tend to ignore its civic components", and "Israel developed from a nationalist ethnic-cultural movement."
He's stating clearly that Zionism is an ethnic nationalist movement, and also has civic components. The fact that he does not present the latter as negating the former confirms that in his view there is no tension or conflict let alone inherent contradiction between the two. You're imposing that interpretation onto him to argue that the ethnic nationalist definition, one that he uses, is somehow being contested by him and therefore we should remove it.
He reiterates his position in 2014's "Searching for a Homeland: The Territorial Dimension in the Zionist Movement and the Boundaries of Jewish Nationalism", where he writes on page 37 that "Zionism is an unmistakably ethnic national movement, and thus it was relatively easy to substitute the ethnic and religious content for national values."
@Samuelshraga, I am glad you mentioned Alain Dieckhoff, which is a very good source. He is a renowned expert on nationalism, Zionism and Israel, having written many works on these topics. I'm very familiar with his work give my own background in sociology. I am not sure why you decided to quote him to back your view that he opposes defining Zionism as ethnic nationalism when he has written explicitly and repeatedly that it is an ethnic nationalist movement and project.
Here he is in 2006's "The Nation in Israel: Between Democracy and Ethnicity" on page 95: "The national project to which Zionism gave birth is founded on an ethno-cultural conception of the nation, rather than on a political one." So your claim that his discussion of political and cultural nationalism maps onto the "ethnic/civic nationalism" binary and excludes Zionism from the ethnic classification is a patently inaccurate reading of Dieckhoff.
The context is also relevant. The sentence opens a section titled "Israel: An ethnic democracy", where Dieckhoff discusses the unequal position of Palestinian Arab citizens. He then explains that Israel is not a neutral state impartially administering several national communities because "the Jewish group is directly linked with the State and is objectively favored."
He is distinguishing an ethnocultural nation from a civic-political nation encompassing the citizen body as a whole. This is a core part of Dieckhoff's analyses of Israel that he repeats in many works.
In 2017's "The Jewish Diaspora and Israel: Belonging at Distance?" he writes the following: "The second trend of Jewish nationalism was Zionism, which advocated the migration of the Jews out of the diaspora and their settlement in Palestine where they should build a sovereign state. Zionism promoted a political modernisation project while drawing upon an ethnic identity, which was preserved by religion." Here he contrasts Zionism as ethnic nationalism from another trend of Jewish nationalism, diasporic nationalism, which "fought for national rights of the Jewish people in the diaspora. It took various forms such as Dubnow’s diaspora autonomism (Dubnow 1970) or bundism. The Bund, which became a large mass party in the Russian empire, claimed cultural autonomy for the Jewish people, i.e., their right to develop their own culture within democratic states, mainly in a democratic Russia, which should have superseded the tsarist empire (Levin 1978, 219–373)."
This is also why your suggestion for changing the lede description to "Jewish nationalism" and leaving out ethnic doesn't work, as there were different kinds of "Jewish nationalisms" to quote Dieckhoff, and Zionism was specifically the ethnic nationalist kind.
With respect to his work on Israel's nature as a society and state he is most known for his analysis of it being an "ethnic democracy". As the term suggests, this means that he sees Israel as being an exclusionary ethnic-nationalist type of state that privileges Jewish citizens over Arab-Palestinians. In his 1999 "Démocratie et ethnicité en Israël", he specifically engages with the civic dimensions of Zionism's state project, and concludes that behind the pretense of universalism lies restrictive and ethno-nationalist foundations: "These different routes to citizenship immediately reveal that, behind citizenship's universalist form, another particularist dynamic is covertly at work: it is ethno-national in character." That's from page 167. The "different routes" are the automatic citizenship available to Jewish immigrants through the Law of Return and the more restrictive residence-based requirements originally applied to Palestinian Arabs. He then goes on to further discuss this with respect to how the Law of Return extends rights to non-Jewish relatives of Jews, and how this proves the point: "This amendment, unquestionably liberal, since it gives its beneficiaries the same rights as Jews, nevertheless brings the importance of the ethnic dimension into still sharper relief: the criterion adopted is kinship with a Jew, rather than religious affiliation. What is operating here is a principle of 'extended ethnicity.'" Continuing on page 169, he reiterates his analysis that Israel is an ethno-nationalist project in very clear and explicit terms:
"By assigning a privileged position to the Jewish ethno-national group while granting citizenship on an inclusive basis, Israel appears as a specific kind of democracy that Sammy Smooha proposed calling an 'ethnic democracy.'...This description corresponds well to the dual nature of the State of Israel, where political sovereignty belongs to all citizens, Jews and Arabs, but the state belongs not to an Israeli nation that would comprise all Israeli citizens, but to the Jewish nation…Such a combination makes ethnic democracies political systems marked by recurring contradictions between formal civic equality and the predominance of the ethno-national group associated with the state…In this case, ethnic logic makes it possible, in certain fields, to grant preferential treatment to the majority group, the 'owner' of the state, and thereby circumvent the egalitarian logic of citizenship…Whereas affirmative-action policies aim to enable disadvantaged ethnic minorities to attain genuine equality, the advantages enjoyed by the Jewish majority in Israel are intended to maintain its supremacy, not to reduce it."
In 2005 he makes the same point, in ""Quelle citoyenneté dans une démocratie ethnique?": "From the moment Israel defines itself as the state of the Jews, it is compelled to distinguish them from non-Jews through an ethnic categorization. This leads to discrimination, raising questions about the democratic character of the State of Israel." And later on: "Behind citizenship's universalist form, another particularist dynamic is covertly at work: it is ethno-national in character."
I also read the pages you cited from his 2003 book and cannot figure out how you ended up with that interpretation based on the cited pages. Can you please explain why you decided to cite Dieckhoff in support of a claim that he explicitly rejects in his work based on a book wherein he does not say what you claim he said?
For example elsewhere in the book, like on page 135, he asks rhetorically to affirm his view that Zionism is ethno-nationalist in nature: "Did not Zionism also place the ethnic group, which it sought to turn into a nation, at the centre of its ideological outlook?" Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 10:21, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
At the risk of repetition, because my point seems to keep getting missed (implying to me I've not made it clearly yet), no editor has argued that "Zionism cannot be defined as ethnic nationalism". This is not, and has never been, what this discussion is about. This discussion is about what ought to be in the first sentence in our voice. We don't need RSs saying it's not ethnic nationalism or not "ethno-cultural" nationalism; we just need to see that that's not how it is described in most concise definitions that list its key features. As I keep saying, while no scholar argues that it is wholly "civic nationalism", lots of scholars don't see the validity of the classification system or argue that it is a mix of ethnic and civic, and that's enough for us to see that it is an interpretation that isn't universally held in the solid scholarship.
Conforti: is not hard to digest. Here's the money quote from the 2010 article where focuses directly on the question of whether Zionism is an ethnic nationalism: Zionism ntegrated Eastern and Western elements, and between ethnic and civicelements, and was not a clear-cut example of Eastern-ethnic nationalism.... The question of how to understand the development of Jewish nationalism – as an Eastern, ethnic nationalist movement or as a Western, civic nationalist movement – still remains valid, both in academia as well as incontemporary public debate, with regard to the character of the State ofIsrael. In the modern discourse, some follow Kohn’s approach and viewJewish nationalism as a development of ethnic nationalism (Dahan and Wassermann 2006: 11–28; Sand 2008; Wassermann 2007), but others believe that the Jewish nation-state follows the principles of Western liberalism (Yakobson and Rubinstein 2009). Specifically, he describes Herzl as maintaining the "Western" civic form, and our current article in fact if anything overdoes it in making Herzl the main exemplar of Zionism as such. Conforti's 2011 article cited above he reprises the same argument: I will argue that the two characteristics, civic and ethnic, were continuously present in mainstream Zionist thought and activities from the 1880s to 1948. The primary aim of the 'Zionist consensus' was to create a Western Jewish nation-state, in contrast to two alternatives that were proposed by marginal movements within Zionism: a bi-national state or the messianic Israelite kingdom. The quote above is rather incomplete: This research concludes that the state of Israel, which developed from a nationalist ethnic-cultural movement, integrated within it ethnic values as well as Western civic values. So, yes, Conforti does believe it was a form of ethnic nationalism, but his caveat that it integrated civic values and departed from the classic model of ethnic nationalism, is crucial here, and to summarise him as saying "It was ethnic nationalism" is to do violence to his argument.
Dieckhoff: The quote from "The Jewish diaspora and Israel" doesn't argue for ethnic nationalism. The passage you quote is this: Two main varieties of Jewish nationalism developed. The first one was a fully assumed diaspora nationalism which fought for national rights of theJewish people in the diaspora. It took various forms such as Dubnow’s diaspora autonomism(Dubnow, 1970) or bundism. The Bund, which became a large mass party in the Russianempire, claimed cultural autonomy for the Jewish people, i.e. their right to develop their ownculture within democratic states, mainly in a democratic Russia which should have supersededthe tsarist empire (Levin, 1978, 219-373). The second trend of Jewish nationalism was Zionism which advocated the migration of the Jews out of the diaspora and their settlement in Palestine where they should build a sovereign state. Zionism promoted a political-modernization project while drawing upon an ethnic identity which was preserved by religion (Roshwald, 2004). What distinguishes Zionism from Bundism or Dubnow was not ethnic nationalism, but a nation-state in Palestine. He nowhere calls Bundism or Dubnow's diasporism "civic", because these were varities of cultural nationalism, arguing for national cultural autonomy and not for a nation-state. It's absurd to suggest that if we didn't say "ethnocultural" people would get Zionism mixed up with Bundism. The other Dieckhoff passages you draw attention to are not about Zionism as an ideology or movement but about Israel as a state. Nowhere does he call Zionism itself an ethnic or ethnic-cultural nationalism, as far as I can find.
We could also cite Shafir: Faced with the multi-ethnic Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman Empires, which impeded modern state formation, the Eastern European method23 did require nationalist ideological mobilization for secession. This model is applicable to Israeli state and nation formation, but only in part. At the outset, Zionism was a variety of Eastern European nationalism, that is, an ethnic movement in search of a state. But at the other end of the journey it may be seen more fruitfully as a late instance of European overseas expansion, which had been taking place from the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries.
Or Uri Ram, although like Dieckhoff focused on the Israeli rather than Zionism: The concept of ethnicity plays a key role in both accounts, yet it may mislead English readers, as in this case ethnicity does not refer simply to communities ofdescent, tradition or culture (e.g. Polish Jews or Yemenite Jews), but rather to the form of ascriptivenationalism which is usually contrasted with "civic" or territorial nationalism; or if one wishes, the"German" versus the "French" models of nationalism (see Brubaker 1998). In critical studies of Israel, one school of thought has for quite some time discerned a tensionbetween these two types of nationalism. For instance, Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled (2002) pointto a mounting tension between the ethnic and liberal discourses of citizenship (or incorporation regimes), that results from the decline of a third such discourse, that of republicanism. I have proposed(Ram 2007) in this regard that new global conditions contribute to the bifurcation of Israeli politicalculture into a liberal "McWorld" versus an ethno-religious "Jihad." [Pappe's] Ethnic Cleansing and [Yiftachel's] Ethnocracy epitomize a contrary critical school of thought, highlighting the consistency, continuance, and evenescalation of the inherent ethno-national logic of Zionism in Israel, or even of Israel. In other words, the ethnic nationalism school is one current within critical studies, the other being the ethnic-vs-civil school (that would also include Dieckhoff I think, and Conforti).
In short, the just-ethnic-nationalist interpretation has a lot of robust support in the literature, but there is also important literature caveating this, and if we go with one school as speaking the facts in our voice, we're erasing that. This is too complex for the first sentence, which should be free of technical language, and just say "nationalist", leaving later paragaphs to deal with this properly. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:57, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Gosh. Rather a long comment. It's hard to respond concisely to all that.
Bob's first paragraph covers the most salient point: that the you seem to have missed the argument being made here. Beyond that:
So your claim that his discussion of political and cultural nationalism maps onto the "ethnic/civic nationalism" binary and excludes Zionism from the ethnic classification is a patently inaccurate reading of Dieckhoff.
I explained my reading of Dieckhoff and I don't see anything you said that undermines it, so much as misrepresents it. The distinction discussed by Dieckhoff is

between political nationalism, based on liberal ideas and in accordance with the democratic ideal, and cultural nationalism, based on sentimental irrationalism likely to lead to ethnic exclusiveness (p.99)

This is the civic/ethnic distinction, and that is completely clear as Dieckhoff explicitly attributes it to Hans Kohn - and uses other terms from the Kohn typology, like "Western" and "Eastern" nationalism. The same distinction is discussed throughout the literature as "civic" and "ethnic" nationalism (see, e.g. Jaskulowski, "Western (civic) "versus" Eastern (ethnic) Nationalism. The Origins and Critique of the Dichotomy", which reviews the origins of the dichotomy in Kohn and uses the political/cultural Eastern/Western civic/ethnic adjective pairs together and interchangeably).
Dieckhoff says that the distinction should not be used to classify nationalisms into types:

Hans Kohn’s conceptual intuition merits preservation, so long as it is modified and is seen not as a cut and dried distinction between two sorts of nationalism but rather as a view of two separate stages, political and cultural, that can be discerned in any national movement (p.100)

He then goes on to apply both in the case of Zionism (p.101).
Can you please explain why you decided to cite Dieckhoff in support of a claim that he explicitly rejects in his work based on a book wherein he does not say what you claim he said?
What you've done seems to be mining Dieckhoff's work for any mention of ethnicity and nationalism in any kind of Israeli/Zionist context. None of these quotes directly address, as does the section I referenced, how Dieckhoff classifies Zionism within the study of nationalism. For instance your quote from Dieckhoff 1999 is about citizenship in Israel. It does not verify any claims about Zionism whatsoever, let alone the claim that we are discussing.
But since you seem (bizarrely) to have set the bar that to quote Dieckhoff, I need to be familiar with his entire corpus, I'll admit that I'm not. However, you don't appear to be either: scholars of nationalism understand Dieckhoff's point the same way I do: Zubrzycki "The Classical Opposition Between Civic and Ethnic Models of Nationhood: Ideology, Empirical Reality and Social Scientific Analysis" cites Dieckhoff's 1996 article about the political/cultural nationalism distinction[6] as critiquing the ethnic/civil nationalism dichotomy, Beyen & Van Ginderachter (eds.) Nationhood from Below cite the same paper to say "Each and every nationalism contained both ethnic – or ethno-cultural – and civic elements, albeit in varying proportions" (p.3). This reinforces the point - any reasonable reader, and numerous reliable sources, consider that when Dieckhoff discusses "political" and "cultural" nationalism, these are synonyms for "civic" and "ethnic" nationalism, and furthermore that Dieckhoff opposes the use of these categories in classifying particular nationalisms.
The argument being made is not that Zionism is not in any way a form of ethnic nationalism. It is that it is not exclusively a form of ethnic nationalism, and indeed would critique the use of ethnic as a modifier of nationalism in typological discussions of particular nationalisms.
Lastly, your argument against using "Jewish nationalism": changing the lede description to "Jewish nationalism" and leaving out ethnic doesn't work, as there were different kinds of "Jewish nationalisms" to quote Dieckhoff, and Zionism was specifically the ethnic nationalist kind. Dieckhoff uses "Jewish nationalism" dozens of times without qualification, unlike his approach to the whole category of ethnic nationalism which is heavily qualified. That makes Jewish nationalism a much better candidate for the first sentence, with further refinement later. Samuelshraga (talk) 06:56, 7 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Given that you yourself have pointed to authors arguing that ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism are not mutually exclusive, I doubt anyone familiar with the literature would really take away that impression. Moreover, our intended audience isn't someone highly familiar with the literature and who might misinterpret every sentence of the article, but the general public with little specialized knowledge of the topic.
Indeed, the lead to our Wikipedia article Types of nationalism already introduces scholars that criticize the view that civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism are a bright line distinction. We certainly should not assume this distinction is a fact and write our article to cater to this interpretation. Katzrockso (talk) 10:04, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Given that you yourself have pointed to authors arguing that ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism are not mutually exclusive - yes, but that's against the back of a literature that for several decades did view ethnic and civic as a strict dichotomy, and indeed authors discuss this.

There is a long tradition in studies of nationalism that opposes two models of nationhood, one civic, the other ethnic... it is still the prevailing view of nationalism in everyday discourse and journalistic accounts, persisting in attenuated form even in certain academic works.

(Zubrzycki, The Classical Opposition Between Civic and Ethnic Models of Nationhood: Ideology, Empirical Reality and Social Scientific Analysis, 2002).
It's probably also worth pointing out that one of the academic works in which this dichotomy persists (certainly in an attenuated form) is Gans, the actual citation for "ethnocultural" in the first sentence now.
We can't have it all ways. Either the distinction is so not current that we shouldn't be using a source that is based on it, or it's current enough that we should be concerned that readers will read it into our text (correctly, given the cited source). Samuelshraga (talk) 07:13, 7 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I will keep this as brief as possible, though there is much to address: I fail to see a response to the fact that Dieckhoff explicitly describes Zionism as ethnic nationalism and analyzes it as such both directly and through the state project that emanated from it. In fact, this is a central part of his scholarship, which is why I found the attempt to use him in support of removing the classification particularly odd. I don't really understand what you mean by
Dieckhoff writes in his 2006 chapter "The Nation in Israel: Between Democracy and Ethnicity": "The national project to which Zionism gave birth is founded on an ethno-cultural conception of the nation, rather than on a political one" (p. 95).
Dieckhoff makes the relationship between Zionism and the broader category of Jewish nationalisms, plural, equally clear in his 2017 article "The Jewish Diaspora and Israel: Belonging at Distance?", distinguishing two principal currents of modern Jewish nationalism. The first consisted of diasporic movements such as Dubnow's autonomism and Bundism, which sought Jewish national and cultural rights within democratic states, and the second is Zionism, which he defines as pursuing political modernization while "drawing upon an ethnic identity which was preserved by religion". This is also backed by Gans, who also distinguishes Zionism from other Jewish nationalist ideologies, in his case two others, and then states what type of Jewish nationalism Zionism represented (page 3):
"Zionism was one of several Jewish nationalist ideologies prevalent among European Jews at the end of the nineteenth century. Two other Jewish nationalist ideologies were those of the Bund, which was the Jewish socialist party of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, and of the followers of the Russian-Jewish historian Shimon Dubnow. Zionism belongs to the category of ethnocultural nationalism, according to which groups sharing a common history and culture have fundamental and morally signifi cant interests in adhering to their culture and in sustaining it for generations."
The fact that Dieckhoff does not insert the adjective "ethnic" every time he uses the shorthand "Jewish nationalism" does not negate his detailed analysis of Jewish nationalisms, plural, existing and Zionism being the ethnic-colonialist variety of it. And there are many other scholars, who are the best sources, who also corroborate the plural definition of Jewish nationalism. Since I don't want to make this reply too longer I won't cite more of them, but if you insist on claiming that there is only a singular Jewish nationalism and that is Zionism, I will.
Regarding the rigid binary ethnic/civic understanding of nationalism; no scholar that has been cited here defining Zionism as ethnic nationalism believes in this kind of rigid binary conception of nationalism, and neither Samuel or Bob have presented any evidence that they do (and not a single source has been presented that denies its definition as such). Dieckhoff demonstrates that scholars define Zionism as ethnic nationalism without adhering to such a rigid framework, and instead being critical of it. His criticism of the rigid civic/ethnic dichotomy is not a criticism of describing Zionism as ethnonationalist, it's a criticism of treating the categories as completely sealed, ahistorical and mutually exclusive. His position is that all modern nationalisms involve some interaction between political institutions and culture, while differing in which conception supplies their foundation and structures the other elements.
Dieckhoff is particularly relevant here as he argues that Zionism's civic or universalist language does not displace its ethnic basis. Rather, the universalist dimension operates within, and is restricted by, an ethnocultural national project. Civic institutions and claims of equal citizenship can coexist with a state whose national identity, collective ownership and immigration regime are organized around a particular ethnocultural people. The civic component therefore does not supersede the ethnic one, it's shaped and limited by it.
The methodological sources cited say the same thing in more general terms. "Nationhood from Below" states that "Each and every nationalism contained both ethnic - or ethno-cultural - and civic elements, albeit in varying proportions" (page 3). The words "in varying proportions" are crucial. The passage does not say that the distinction becomes analytically meaningless. It says that empirical nationalisms combine the elements in different ways.
Zubrzycki asks whether criticism of the binary means that scholars should stop using the categories, and answers on page 286: "Given the unacceptable normative use of the dichotomy, and its relativization in both the spheres of practice and discourse, should we stop using the civic/ethnic categories in our analyses of national phenomena? I believe not".
She says that the categories remain useful as ideal types and analytical markers, provided that they are not treated as exhaustive or immutable descriptions. The appropriate question is the extent to which a nationalism resembles each ideal type and how the different elements are combined. That is exactly compatible with sources describing Zionism as fundamentally ethnocultural while also discussing civic/cultural features, or leaving open the possibility of its existence.
Most relevantly however, Gans, whose citation you and Bob have been primarily concerned with, is the perfect example of a scholar who directly acknowledges the existence of civic/cultural aspects to Zionism, while concluding that these co-exist with its foundational, defining nature as an ethnic nationalism. He's very clear about this in his text. He acknowledges that Zionist thinkers expressed civic ideas and that some developments in Zionist history could be characterized as civic, and nevertheless concludes that (page 10) "Nonetheless, Zionism is fundamentally an ethnocultural nationalism. Accordingly, I believe that it should be interpreted as such and not be forced into categories that are alien to it".
He then directly addresses the alleged contradiction: "The claim that Zionism is fundamentally ethnocultural does not necessarily preclude acknowledging that some of the concepts expressed by Zionist ideologues and some of the processes that took place in the history of Zionism could prima facie be considered to be characteristic of civic nationalism" (page 11).
Gans says that describing Zionism as fundamentally ethnocultural does not exclude civic characteristics. It is therefore incorrect to assume that the adjective "ethnonationalist" must mean "exclusively ethnic", "purely ethnic", or "ethnic rather than civic". None of those formulations has been proposed.
Conforti reaches the same conclusion. He describes Zionism as "a clear example of an ethnic national movement" and says that Israel "grew into a nation-state out of a national ethnic-cultural movement", while also emphasizing the presence of Western civic values (pages 565, 577). His criticism is directed at a rigid Kohnian binary and at scholarship that overlooks civic elements. It is not a rejection of Zionism's ethnic-national classification.
I saw Bob also referring to Berkowitz earlier as part of a critic of the ethnic/civic dichotomy. If you read his text "Nationalism, Zionism and Ethnic Mobilization of the Jews in 1900 and Beyond", he calls Zionism "a leading example of effective ethnic-national mobilization" (page 6).
I think the discussion is being displaced because no reliable secondary source has been produced that explicitly contests defining Zionism as ethnic, ethnocultural or ethnonationalist nationalism. Instead, the argument has shifted from the classification of Zionism to a meta-level debate over the stability and permeability of the category "ethnic nationalism" itself, even though not a single scholar has been cited that rejects a rigid binary and in doing so argues that Zionism isn't definable as ethnic nationalism, whereas none of the best sources cited that define it as such have been shown to adhered to such a rigid binary, in fact the opposite with several of them explicitly disavowing it.
It is true that concepts in the humanities and social sciences have contested boundaries, changing applications and fuzzy edges. That applies to nationalism, colonialism, liberalism, socialism, fascism, religion, ethnicity, class and almost every other major analytical category used by Wikipedia. It does not follow that Wikipedia cannot use those classifications where reliable sources repeatedly apply them. Wikipedia does not resolve article wording by entering a general philosophical debate over whether concepts possess perfectly stable boundaries. We summarize how the relevant reliable sources classify the subject. If the overwhelming weight of specialist literature identifies Zionism as ethnic or ethnocultural nationalism, that classification belongs in the article.
The meta-argument therefore confirms rather than undermines the proposed wording. The sources recognize overlap between civic and ethnic dimensions while continuing to identify which dimension was foundational in Zionism. Their conclusion is not that Zionism escapes classification, but that its civic dimensions existed within an ethnic-national framework.
The most constructive way forward would be to strengthen both the lead and the body. The citation supporting "ethnonationalist" could be expanded beyond Gans to include several of the strongest and most directly relevant sources, such as Shimoni Shafir and Dieckhoff. The body should then contain a fuller discussion explaining that Zionism is an ethnic or ethnocultural nationalism, that arose alongside other Jewish nationalisms that weren't ethnic nationalist, and that it also has some civic/cultural elements per Dieckhoff, Conforti and Gans. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 14:26, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
On all the sources you're now adducing to say that ethnic doesn't exclude civic - great, welcome to the party. Notice how plenty of them also note an established tendency to use them as in a dichotomised way (e.g. Zubrzycki)? That's what I mean when I say that if you use "ethnic nationalism" (or some version of it) without qualification, people are liable to think you're engaging in the dichotomy.
I did respond to the quote about "ethno-cultural conception of the nation", by saying that ctrl-f for "ethnic" and related words is not a good way of finding the most relevant sources. There's nothing contradictory between saying that Zionism (and all nationalisms) are neither fundamentally ethnic or civic but that the national project born from Zionism had an ethnic/cultural/ethno-cultural conception of a nation. This is not a direct classification of Zionism as an ethnic nationalism. The way I know it isn't is that Dieckhoff explicitly opposes making a dichotomy and classification between these types of nationalism! And other sources cite him to make that point. And he additionally makes that point in a book solely focused on Zionism. All nationalisms, according to him, are ethnic and also all nationalisms are civic (or "cultural" and "political"), and these represent more different stages in their histories. For instance on p.101, he says that Zionism at the time of Herzl was mainly "political" (his term for civic). Using Dieckhoff here in the way you describe would be ridiculous.
But adding material on this in the body is a good idea. Samuelshraga (talk) 16:06, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
No one outside scholars who are steeped in this material reads "ethnic nationalism" and thinks "I'm not exactly sure what this means, because this could be referring to Kohn's rigid binary definition of ethnic/civic nationalism rather than the more open version", and even if your idealized average reader who thinks like a trained social theorist does read it in that way it wouldn't make any difference whatsoever as the understanding of Zionism as being ethnic nationalist is the consensus view in the scholarship regardless of the particular conception of ethnic nationalism that is utilized by the scholar in question.
This kind of post-structuralist all concepts are inherently blurry so no one really knows what they mean isn't productive in my view. You don't have a single secondary RS that contests Zionism being ethnic nationalism when there are many that have been presented that explicitly say it is, regardless of which understanding of the concept they utilize, and Wikipedia goes by what RS from the best sources say.
Also I didn't ctrl+f for ethnic, as I said I'm intimately familiar with Dieckhoff's work, whereas you keep citing page 100-101 (ignoring what I said its context earlier). I quoted him at great length in my prior responses, and since I don't want to repeat myself, I'll just leave it at the clarification that you're misrepresenting Dieckhoff as the quotes and fuller contexts of the texts plainly make clear. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 17:45, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Regarding your first point that No one outside scholars who are steeped in this material reads "ethnic nationalism" and thinks of the ethnic/civic dichotomised view of these, I again quote Zubrzycki on the dichotomy: it is still the prevailing view of nationalism in everyday discourse and journalistic accounts, persisting in attenuated form even in certain academic works. Emphasis my own.
As to what I keep citing about Dieckhoff, yes, I keep citing the part where he talks about using these markers as a typological classification of nationalism, when he says explicitly that this shouldn't be done and that they mark different stages in the history of any nationalism, explicitly pointing to a political (civic) stage in Zionism. That doesn't mean nothing about Zionism is ethnic (quite the contrary) but it does specifically and explicitly address the issue of how to describe Zionism definitionally as a form of nationalism which is our subject. You quote voluminously from other parts of Dieckhoff which address other issues (e.g. the ethnic component of Israeli citizenship/immigration laws), which are clearly not directly addressing our question. So I won't apologise for focussing on the relevant, explicitly stated opinion of Dieckhoff on this question.
If you want to call that misrepresentation - well that sounds like a conduct issue to me, you should raise it somewhere. Samuelshraga (talk) 07:17, 19 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
And your point about why not to use Jewish nationalism is odd to me: "Jewish nationalism" does not negate his detailed analysis of Jewish nationalisms, plural, existing and Zionism being the ethnic-colonialist variety of it. And there are many other scholars, who are the best sources, who also corroborate the plural definition of Jewish nationalism.
So we can't say "Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement" because there are other Jewish nationalist movements, but it's fine to say that "Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement" despite the fact that there are other ethnocultural nationalist movements? Samuelshraga (talk) 16:20, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Very peculiar objection: "Zionism is Jewish nationalism" is factually incorrect per RS, as it is merely one variety of Jewish nationalism (the ethnic one). "Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement" is not the end of the sentence in the lede, it goes on to say: "that emerged in late 19th-century Europe to establish and support a Jewish homeland through colonization in the region of Palestine."
That's why adding "Jewish" to "ethnocultural nationalist movement" is redundant. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 17:49, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
No one suggested replacing the entire first sentence with "Zionism is Jewish nationalism".
The two suggested beginnings to the sentence are:
  1. Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement ...
  2. Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement ...
Holding the rest of the sentence at status quo, are either of these factually inaccurate? Samuelshraga (talk) 17:52, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
These are incredibly long comments with a lot to reply to, and maybe I will if I can find the time. But for now it is clear to me that you are summarising lots of arguments and interpretations (the clue is in phrases like “he argues”) and asking us to relate them in the article as facts. Moreover, not just in the article but its first sentient that is meant to use plain English to give a concise and non controversial definition, and you want us to use a jargony technical term, “ethnocultural nationalism”, here, rather than use a later place to more carefully summarise the complex scholarship that you’re marshalling here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 01:51, 15 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Us saying "Zionism is ethnic nationalism" invokes no particular interpretation and is consistent with every scholar's belief that you listed. Please read what I have written here and in the previous thread as that is absolutely not the case. "Zionism is ethnic nationalism" IS precisely a “particular interpretation”. It’s the most common but not only interpretation; it is not a fact and we cannot express interpretations in our voice as facts because we report disagreements rather than take sides. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:37, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I have read all your posts. None of them include any source that contests "Zionism is ethnic nationalism". I don't understand your point about "interpretations" - an uncontested description of Zionism should not be excluded from the article. We aren't taking any side at all, we are simply reporting what all of our sources are saying. Katzrockso (talk) 10:08, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I have never argued for the exclusion of ethnic natinalism "from the article" and have made a couple of suggestions about how we could include it in the lead, including by unpacking all of this in the body. I have simply argued for the removal of the word from the MoS:FIRST sentence, per our policy on how a lead should open. I don't know why I need to keep restating it, but the my argument is simply that "ethnocultural" or "ethnonationalist", are not plain English uncontested defining terms for the topic of this article, and are therefore best introduced more careful in a later paragraph. The subsection below on how tertiary sources describe it, and the linked discussion where a series of good concise "Zionism is" paragraphs are given, show clearly that "ethnonational" and "ethnocultural" are not terms used in concise definitions of the term, whereas "nationalist" universally is. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:42, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Placing a reliably sourced ethnic-nationalist classification directly in an article's opening definition is neither unusual nor inherently confusing; on the contrary, it is an established and entirely ordinary encyclopedic practice. Comparable Wikipedia articles routinely use precisely this structure in their first sentences:
  • Han nationalism: Han nationalism is a form of ethnic nationalism asserting ethnically Han Chinese as the exclusive constituents of the Chinese nation.
  • Bengali nationalism: Bengali nationalism is a form of ethnic nationalism that focuses on Bengalis as a single ethnicity by rejecting imposition of other languages and cultures while promoting its own in Bengal.
  • Greek Cypriot nationalism: Greek Cypriot nationalism [...] is a form of ethnic nationalism emphasizing the Greekness of the Cypriot nation.
  • Turkish Cypriot nationalism: Turkish Cypriot nationalism [...] is a form of ethnic nationalism emphasising the Turkishness of the Cypriot nation.
  • Punjabi nationalism: Punjabi nationalism is an ethnonationalist ideology that focuses on Punjabis as a single nation...
  • Völkisch movement: The Völkisch movement was a Pan-German ethno-nationalist movement active from the late 19th century through the dissolution of Nazi Germany in 1945...
  • Slovak nationalism: Slovak nationalism is an ethnic nationalist ideology that asserts that the Slovaks are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of the Slovaks.
  • Persian nationalism: Persian nationalism is an ethnonationalist ideology that defines the Persian people, language, and culture as the central foundations of political and national identity in Iran.
  • Amhara nationalism: Amhara nationalism is a form of ethnonationalist and political movement that advocates for and advances the interests of Amhara people in Ethiopia...
  • Zo nationalism: Zo nationalism is an ethnic nationalist movement among the Zo people—a broad umbrella of interrelated tribes...
  • Serbian nationalism: Serbian nationalism [...] is an ethnic nationalism, originally arising in the context of the general rise of nationalism in the Balkans under Ottoman rule...
  • Ethnocacerism: The ethnocacerist movement is a Peruvian ethnic nationalist movement that espouses an ideology called ethnocacerism.
  • Fano (militia): Fano is an ethno-nationalist Amhara militia and former protest movement.
I don't see a policy-based reason for removing the same kind of classification here. The apparent concern seems to be that ethnic nationalism carries an inherently negative connotation, but that is mistaken. In political science, ethnic nationalism is a descriptive analytical category used to distinguish forms of nationalism organised principally around shared ancestry, history and culture. Its use is not inherently pejorative and does not itself constitute a value judgement.
Per MOS:LEAD, the opening should define the subject clearly and use the terminology employed by the relevant reliable sources. Where high-quality scholarship repeatedly and directly classifies a movement within a particular category of political theory, removing that classification in favour of broader and less informative wording reduces rather than improves the article's precision and neutrality. Paprikaiser (talk) 16:02, 14 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not familiar with the discussions or sources that led to these sentences, so I can't attack or defend them. However, looking at the pattern and comparing with other pages: French nationalism, Belgian nationalism, British nationalism, English nationalism(!), Scottish nationalism, Italian nationalism which don't begin this way, I see a pattern that mirrors what scholarship critical of the civic/ethnic distinction has said.
Kohn invented the dichotomy here referring to Eastern and Western [European] nationalisms, and there's more than a hint of that to the distribution between your and my examples, though perhaps counter-examples can be found.
However, there's plenty of scholarship that criticises the dichotomy between ethnic and civic nationalism (including and especially the tendency to apply them in an East/West framework).
If some sources say "X nationalism is an ethnic form of nationalism" and other sources say "We shouldn't use the ethnic/civic distinction to typologically classify nationalisms", then the first description is contested. In this case we can cite that to at least one major source doing so specifically in the case of Zionism, but there are far more sources who make that case generally. Samuelshraga (talk) 05:15, 15 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
That distinction doesn't track East/West geography, only whether the relevant sources classify a given movement that way. The exclamation mark after "English" reads as though English nationalism were an obvious ethnonationalist case, but the literature says otherwise; Krishan Kumar's The Making of English National Identity treats the English case as atypical, dominated by a "missionary" or "imperial" self-conception in which the English submerged ethnic self-assertion into Britain's larger civilizational project rather than presenting as one ethnic nation among others. Michael Kenny's The Politics of English Nationhood doesn't classify it as ethnonationalist either. English nationalism isn't a counterexample, just a case where the specialist literature reaches a different classification, which is the same standard being applied to Zionism.
Regarding the East/West framework, Kumar gives a counterexample relevant here: Irish nationalism [...] seems to belong clearly to the "Eastern", cultural variety, while Russian nationalism, both in the Tsarist and the Communist periods [...] seem[s] to belong more to the "Western", political kind. So this is not a geographic rule under which nationalisms originating in the East are automatically ethnic and those originating in the West automatically civic. Treating that typology as a categorical rule would make the use of ethnic nationalism across Wikipedia impossible, as editors would be imposing a general theoretical scheme on every nationalism article instead of following what RS say about each particular movement. The existing article comparisons themselves disprove this supposed East/West pattern:
The reverse examples are also equally obvious. Völkisch movement, Identitarian movement, Slovak nationalism and Greek Cypriot nationalism are all European cases described as ethnic or ethnonationalist. The distribution therefore cannot be explained by East versus West. It reflects the source basis for the individual article.
This brings us back to the core issue regarding Zionism: you are conflating criticism of treating civic and ethnic nationalism as mutually exclusive categories with rejection of the ethnic-nationalist classification itself. But that doesn't follow: a scholar can reject a rigid Kohn-style binary while still describing a movement as ethnic or ethnocultural nationalism, and the sources discussed here do exactly that. To establish that this classification is contested for Wikipedia purposes, it's necessary to produce relevant scholarship that rejects or materially disputes applying that description to Zionism. General methodological criticism of an overly rigid civic/ethnic binary does not establish that, and the passages cited so far do not say it. Paprikaiser (talk) 21:56, 23 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those would be contested, especially if there were more prominent articles, but apart from Slovak and Serb, which emerged from ethnically secessionist states created in very recent decades, the others are all ideologies of insurgent ethnic minorities or of supremacist ethnic majorities that do not correspond with the boundaries of the civic nation, and so are distinct from Zionism in which has a somewhat different genealogy BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:10, 16 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Here are several sources that present Zionism as a movement of "national revival" or "national liberation". One of these terms should be mentioned in the lead section, instead (or in addition to) "ethnocultural".
National revival implied a break with the past and the attempt to replace Judaism ... with Jewishness, a modern identity.[1]
Zionism became the modern coinage for the new politics of Jewish national revival[2]
the Jewish national revival first coalesced as a movement in what we know as Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) and the First Aliyah[3]
Zionism was now an organised movement of national liberation, although Herzl’s premature death in 1904 would mean he would not witness its fruits[4]
With the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state, Zionism succeeded in achieving the most important goal that it set for itself as a movement of national liberation[5]
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Erel Segal (talk • contribs)
  • The term ethnocultural nationalist is heavily used in the sources to describe and characterize Zionism in the article voice, usually as a neutral descriptor for Zionism as a whole; by comparison, "national revival" or "national liberation" are usually attributed (and even then I would characterize several of these sources as more on the WP:BIASED or opinionated side of the spectrum.) I would be careful with it and absolutely would not give it the same weight without broader sourcing. It's the kind of non-neutral language that requires very strong sourcing to use in the article voice, which we don't have here. --Aquillion (talk) 15:08, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Both "ethnocultural nationalist" and "national revival" are attributed and opinionated. To make the lead section neutral as well as more readable, I suggest to simply remove these adjectives and write "Zionism is a national Jewish movement that emerged...". The other adjectives can be discussed in more detail in a later section. --Erel Segal (talk) 19:08, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would support that. BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:13, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Specifically, I would propose (a) removing the word "ethnocultural" from the first sentence, and (b) introducing a sentence immediately before "Advocates of Zionism" in th fourth paragraph saying something like "Many scholars identify Zionism as an example of ethnic rather than civic nationalism". BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:32, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
National liberation redirects to war of independence. And no doubts Zionists fought the Israeli war of independence, but sources don't say Zionism was a militarist movement from the start, right? In fact, one of your source says "Zionism was now an organised movement of national liberation" implying a transformation that happened later on.VR 01:24, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
(1) The term "national liberation", as used in academic sources, definitely does not refer only to "war of independence". The redirect in Wikipedia is inaccurate and should not be used to argue that the terms are equivalent. (2) It may be a transformation that happened later on. Still, it could be relevant for the first paragraph, which describes the current status. --Erel Segal (talk) 08:41, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Strongly oppose removal when it is clearly the standard view in the relevant RS that Zionism was an ethnonationalist movement. I'm not sure about the term "ethnocultural nationalist", I suppose it is more expansive and covers the cultural aspect of it as well, but I'm fine with either that or "ethnonationalist". Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 19:51, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
so in previous discussions there’s been consensus to remove, and in this discussion an equal number of editors are in favour of keeping it and removing it. Clearly there is no affirmatory consensus for inclusion. Can we just delete or do we need an RfC? BobFromBrockley (talk) 00:14, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
At the very very least, I see consensus to remove ethnocultural and replace with ethnonationalist. Not sure anyone disagrees with that. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 05:19, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think "ethnic nationalist" is more readable than "ethnonationalist" but this misses the plentiful reasons that have been offered above to omit the adjective altogether and to describe typological discussions of what form of nationalism Zionism is in the body, rather than simply assert one conclusion of them in the first sentence. Samuelshraga (talk) 06:44, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Discussions are not a vote and ignoring the sources to remove what our sources characterize Zionism as will take at the very least an RfC, if not a complete contravention of the NPOV policy. Katzrockso (talk) 08:23, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
There has never been consensus for including this in the first sentence but I guess enough editors are passionate about it so I guess an RfC is the way to proceed. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:44, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I have no idea how you got those numbers, but they are definitely not from the linked discussion. Katzrockso (talk) 16:07, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Sorry which numbers? BobFromBrockley (talk) 20:25, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
In other words, six against ethno and two for it, with one of each swapping in opposite directions. Katzrockso (talk) 22:58, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ok it’s pretty tangled.
In this discussion:
  • on opening Andrevan proposed removing and Selfstudier proposed moving it out of first sentience.
  • Then DMH223344 argued for ethnic
  • Then Bitspectator argued for ethnocultural (but with a preference for “cultural nationalist”)
  • Levivich argued against ethno-cultural nationalist (as jargon)
  • Nishidani agreed
  • Andrevan (switching positions) then argued for ethnonatonalist
  • I argued against ethno and especially ethnocultural
  • SJ agreed with me
Andrevan argued both ways so counting him as neutral we have just one supporter of ethnonational and one of ethnocultural, four who argue against ethnocultural, of whom two definitely don’t want ethnonational either, and one who moves it out of first sentence.
So my counting was pretty close but not quite right. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:33, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
But the numbers are not that important. What matters to me that that I believe we never had a consensus for it. If you can find a well attended discussion where there was a consensus for this phrase, I’d be very interested. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:52, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The discussion in question has a rough consensus for "ethnic nationalism". In any case, a discussion from almost 2 years ago holds little water on the current practice. As S Marshall has put it - On Wikipedia, the consensus is that old discussions expire after a while. Katzrockso (talk) 09:57, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
There certainly wasn't a consensus for "ethnocultural", but I counted 5 in favor of either ethnic or ethnocultural nationalism and only two opposed to a prefacing word. Katzrockso (talk) 09:53, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Well, anyone interested to go and look at this 2024 discussion and count for themselves. We might be reaching different totals because you are counting arguments against ethnocultural as being for ethnic by itself? Anyway, there’s no reason to get fixated on that discussion. More important as the 2025 discussion I actually linked to in this thread which summarises all of the discussions but reaches a strong consensus for removal. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:24, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think at this point a new RfC might be the way to go. Something like:
What should the first adjective(s) be in the first sentence's description of Zionism?
  1. "ethnocultural nationalist"
  2. "ethnic nationalist"
  3. "Jewish nationalist"
  4. "nationalist"
  5. Other
Samuelshraga (talk) 12:03, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would appreciate it if before we went to an RfC you, Bob or anyone else offered secondary RS from subject matter experts that contest the definition of Zionism as ethnic nationalism explicitly and clearly. So not meta-discussions about the category of ethnic nationalism and conceptual binaries that don't do this, and which as I've addressed in detail just now in fact say the opposite, but actual RS that directly contest defining Zionism as ethnic nationalism.
Otherwise I'm not sure what we're even doing having an RfC to remove a definition that is the established consensus in secondary RS per the best sources.
Also why do you want an RfC with an option that is incoherent as RS (Dieckhoff, Gans and many others) make clear that there was not a singular Jewish nationalism but multiple that arose in the 19th century, with Zionism being the ethnic nationalist variety? Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 14:35, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I find it weird that you oppose an RfC on a topic where we clearly don't have a consensus and where in this discussion a minority support the status quo (which has never had consensus). Surely an RfC is precisely the way to escape this logjam. You oppose an RfC on the grounds that we haven't provided sources saying Zionism is NOT ethnic nationalism, and yet (a) the status quo doesn't use the words ethnic nationalism, and (b) the argument for removing the word "ethnocultural", repeated again and again above, is that it is not approrpriate in our voice for the first sentence rather than because Zionism is not ethnic nationalism.
I don't understand why you think it's "incoherent" to describe Zionism as Jewish nationalism just because there are other Jewish nationalisms. It would be incherent if someone proposed a first sentence saying "Zionism is the only form of Jewish nationalism to have existed" but nobody is proposing that. Waht distinguishes Zionism from autonomism, territorialism, Bundism, Dubnow's folkism, etc, is not that Zionism was uniquely ethnic, but that it wanted a national home in Palestine. (There was no language for "ethnic" in that period other than national, volk or (in Yiddish) folk. Folkism can literally be translated as ethnicism, so to say that calling Zionism nationalist rather than ethnic nationalist in the first sentence might make people assume we mean Folkism is the incoherent statement.)
If you oppose an RfC, how to you propose we reach consensus? BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:55, 20 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I guess if we don't have an RfC an alternative is requesting an uninvolved editor close based on this discussion. They would note that just three editors have argued for the status quo (while six have argued against it) and that a further three have argued for "ethnic nationalism" instead of "ethnocultural". The only alternative (argued for again by three editors) that has no opposition is "nationalist". The simplest thing therefore would be to simply remove "ethnocultural" -- and for the first time in years we'd have at least 20 words starting the lead that nobody disagrees with. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:06, 20 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Do you have any thoughts/modifications you'd make to the way I proposed the RfC above? Different/more/fewer options or changes to the wording of the question? Samuelshraga (talk) 10:29, 20 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
No I think that list covers it well. One editor briefly raised "national liberation movement" but then walked it back. I don't think that would get much support and could come under "Other" anyway. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:30, 20 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The count in this discussion for retaining the ethnic-national classification in the first sentence, whether as ethnocultural nationalist, ethnic nationalist or ethnonationalist, is six: Aquillion, Katzrockso, Paprikaiser, Raskolnikov.Rev, Vice regent and myself. Five editors have supported removing the ethnic classification from the first sentence: you, Cdjp1, Erel Segal, Chicdat and Samuelshraga.
Dividing the discussion into three supporters of the exact status quo and six opponents is misleading. Three editors supporting a shorter ethnic formulation are not supporting its removal. They represent a substantive middle position that retains the classification while changing the wording. Nor can nationalist reasonably be described as having no opposition when six editors have argued that removing the ethnic classification would make the opening less precise. However, I do not believe there would be any objection from that side to changing it to ethnic/ethnonationalist, and we can pick from the range of best available sources to cite for that.
Of course, consensus is not determined by counting editors. A closer must assess the quality of the arguments through the relevant policies and sources. I agree with Raskolnikov's more important point that, despite the extraordinary length of this discussion, no reliable secondary source from a subject-matter expert has been presented that rejects describing Zionism as ethnic, ethnocultural or ethnonationalist nationalism. The sources repeatedly invoked against the wording criticize a rigid and mutually exclusive civic/ethnic dichotomy while continuing to describe Zionism as founded on an ethnic or ethnocultural conception of the nation. Showing that a movement also contained civic features does not contradict its ethnic-national classification unless a reliable source draws that conclusion. The tertiary-source argument for removal also ran aground against policy and other tertiary sources, as I have showed in my reply there and the source list.
Ideally, before proceeding to an RfC, those proposing removal should assemble a representative corpus of directly relevant scholarship supporting the proposition they want editors to accept, that Zionism is not appropriately classified as ethnic nationalism. Lacking this, the proposed RfC would ask outside editors to choose between a classification stated directly by numerous specialist sources and a removal case based on general methodological discussions and editorial inference. I have already presented a list of sources that classify Zionism as ethnic nationalism based on sources already presented in this and prior discussions, and there are many others from subject-matter experts that can be added. I will work on improving it, and I invite others to also do so.
As regards the RfC, I object to the options as presently framed. They isolate a few words from the sentence rather than showing editors the substantive formulations they are being asked to assess, whether to retain or remove the ethnic classification. I have not seen any editor wedded to ethnocultural nationalist, and it appears as though the only reason that particular phrasing was used is because it is cited to Gans. Reviewing the source list below, both ethnic nationalism and ethnonationalist/ethnonational recur across the compiled sources as exact phrasing: Muller, Rouhana, Shimoni, Smooha and Conforti use ethnic nationalism or ethnic national movement directly, while Beller, Abulof, Confino, Yadgar, Halperin and Yiftachel use ethnonationalist or ethnonational. Given that spread, I propose ethnic/ethnonationalist as the option to retain, as the formulation that best reflects the actual range of terminology in the sources.
Furthermore, the Jewish nationalist option has to be clarified. It would produce the following version of the first sentence: Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement that emerged in late 19th-century Europe to establish and support a Jewish homeland through colonization in the region of Palestine, which roughly corresponds to the Land of Israel in Judaism—itself central to Jewish history. This repeats Jewish/Judaism four times in the same sentence, thereby replacing the more informative typological ethnic classification with information already conveyed. An additional problem is that Jewish nationalist, ethnic nationalist and ethnonationalist are not mutually exclusive descriptions, as the sources show. Jewish identifies the nation to which the nationalism relates, while ethnic or ethnocultural identifies the type of nationalism. A formulation such as Jewish ethnic nationalist movement is entirely coherent. Presenting Jewish nationalist as a separate alternative risks creating a false choice between descriptors that can be combined.
To avoid getting into discussions on altering other wording, I believe it would be best to follow BobfromBrockley’s suggestion and present Yes, keep ethnic/ethnonationalist, No, change to nationalist, and Other as options, with the question being: Should the lead sentence include the classification of Zionism as an ethnic/ethnonationalist movement?
If Jewish is retained, it should be included in brackets as an optional component of both relevant full-sentence alternatives, so editors can assess formulations with and without it: (Jewish) ethnic nationalist movement and (Jewish) nationalist movement.
That would make clear that the substantive question is whether to retain the ethnic-national classification, while separately allowing editors to consider whether adding Jewish improves the wording despite the resulting repetition. Lf8u2 (talk) 04:12, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Having read most this entire discussion (a humbling and exhausting exercise) and many of the referenced pages, I oppose removal and support retaining "ethnonationalist" or "ethnic nationalist".
The case for bare "nationalist" supposes that the shorter sentence is the clearer one. However, I would argue the reverse. The image that a non-expert reader has of "nationalism" is a people concentrated in a territory seeking sovereignty over it. Zionism conspicuously does not fit that image, since its constituency was dispersed across dozens of states, formed a territorial majority nowhere, and defined membership by descent, religion, history and culture rather than residence or citizenship. This is exactly why Lockman, quoted approvingly above by editors favouring removal, stresses that Zionism was different from other contemporary European nationalisms precisely because Jews did not live in a compact mass, on a more or less defined territory. The adjective is not decorative jargon. It is the load-bearing word that tells the reader what kind of "nation" the movement was. The rest of the sentence tells the reader "who" the movement was for - a Jewish homeland, but not what kind of nationhood the movement was based on - whether Jews were understood as a religious community or as a people bound by descent and shared culture. The modifier clarifies that, and explains how a nationalism of a dispersed population was conceptually possible at all. MOS:FIRST asks for a definition that puts the article in context for the nonspecialist - the modifier does exactly that work, so MOS:FIRST cuts for inclusion, not against it.
Those arguing for removal have not produced any single source that actually disputes the classification. The removal case rests on taxonomy-skepticism, doubts about the sorting scheme itself, and on what abbreviated tertiary definitions happen to leave out, while the affirmative sourcing (Gans, Shimoni, Shafir, Smooha, Dieckhoff, Abulof, and the rest) goes essentially unanswered on its own terms. A well sourced classification should not be removed on the strength of sources that do not address it. Dualpendel (talk) 18:45, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm sorry you've come away from the discussion thinking the removal case leaves the affirmative sourcing unanswered. Specifically Dieckhoff is quoted above explicitly rejecting this taxonomy of nationalisms, and Aviel Roshwald below (in Nationalism, Zionism and Ethnic Mobilization of the Jews in 1900 and Beyond) is similarly quoted - both are explicitly talking about Zionism when they critique the use of the ethnic/civic dichotomy in defining types of nationalism. Samuelshraga (talk) 19:19, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Lead sections of the "Zionism" entry in various encyclopedias

For comparison and reference, I have compiled a list of the first sentence in the "Zionism" entry in some online encyclopedias, as well as other general-knowledge websites:

  • Encyclopædia Britannica: Zionism, Jewish nationalist movement with the goal of the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews.
  • Encyclopedia.com: Zionism may be summarily defined as the Jewish nationalist movement whose endeavors to solve the 'Jewish problem' led to the establishment of the 'Jewish state' of Israel.
  • HISTORY.com: Zionism is a religious and political effort that brought thousands of Jews from around the world back to their ancient homeland in the Middle East and reestablished Israel as the central location for Jewish identity.
  • HowStuffWorks: Zionism is a nationalist movement that established an independent state for Jewish people in 1948, supporting Judaism's claim to Israel.

As one can see, none of these first paragraphs mentions the adjective "ethnocultural". Although this adjective appears in some academic references, it is apparently not central enough to appear in the first paragraph. --Erel Segal (talk) 19:32, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

None of these are WP:BESTSOURCES. Katzrockso (talk) 20:43, 29 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Is there any other reputable encyclopedia that does mention "ethnocultural" in the first paragraph of Zionism? --Erel Segal (talk) 08:38, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
It wouldn't matter either way, since encyclopedias in general are tertiary sources and therefore never WP:BESTSOURCES. We're not engaged in a comparison project here. What Britannica does has no relevance to us at all. Loki (talk) 23:41, 5 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
WP:TERTIARY: Reliable tertiary sources can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other. BobFromBrockley (talk) 06:49, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
These are good tertiary sources, and it is weird that we would be so out of kilter with other tertiary sources. These aren't the best sources for sourcing facts in the body, but these are exactly the sort of sources we should be checking our MOS:FIRST sentence against. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:21, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
In this compilation of ten concise definitions of Zionism in scholarly sources, two out of ten call it ethnic or ethnonationalism (none call it ethnocultural). BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:42, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
Most of them are terrible tertiary sources. We shouldn't even consider looking at history.com. Katzrockso (talk) 05:23, 1 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Introduction to the entry for 'Zionism', authored by Zachary Lockman, in Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2012), edited by Cheryl A. Rubenberg, a tertiary source that is actually academic and specific to the topic:
Zionism: From its emergence as a coherent political project at the very end of the nineteenth century, Zionism sought to unify and mobilize Jews around a nationalist program whose chief goal was the creation in Palestine of an independent Jewish state in which most of the world's Jews would eventually settle. Like other nationalist movements, however, Zionism has never been monolithic but has encompassed a range of distinct political and ideological currents and factions that have often disagreed (sometimes bitterly) over how to pursue Zionism's aims; the social, economic, and cultural character of the projected Jewish state; relations with Palestine's indigenous Arab population; and much else.
Palestinians have regarded Zionism (and the state of Israel, which it brought into being) as essentially a colonial-settler enterprise, whose goal or at least inevitable result was to dispossess them of their ancestral homeland and subordinate or even physically displace them; in fact, these have been the chief consequences of the Zionist project for the Palestinians. Zionists, however, have focused not on the actual consequences of their project for the Palestinians but on their own avowedly benign intentions and on the overriding need (as they see it) to save the Jewish people through the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, to which they deem Jews to have an exclusive, or at least superior, claim. To adequately understand Zionism as a historical phenomenon and to grasp the specificities, contradictions, and ironies of this project, it is therefore necessary to consider both Zionist discourse and Zionist practice, as well as to explore how intentions and ideologies translated, within specific historical conjunctures, into actual outcomes for the Palestinians and other Arabs but also for Jews.
Broadly speaking, Zionism can be seen as one of the many nationalist movements that sprang up in Europe in the course of the nineteenth century. At the same time, the fact that European Jews did not live in a compact mass, on a more or less defined territory within which they constituted the majority population, made Zionism different from other contemporary European nationalisms. It had to be a nationalist movement focused not on securing an independent nation-state for the Jews within Europe, where most of them actually lived—an obvious impossibility—but on organizing migration to and colonization of some territory outside Europe where the Jews could hope to secure a majority and eventually a state of their own. This reality, as well as Jewish immigrants' encounter in Palestine with that land's indigenous Arab popula-tion, profoundly shaped the Zionist project (and the state it created) and gave it much of its specificity.
إيان (talk) 07:00, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
That’s really helpful and clear. I’d say its most concise definition is very close to our current first sentence but only if we delete ethnocultural. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:28, 6 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The claim that general reference and tertiary sources works omit this classification is incorrect.
Uriel Abulof's entry "Nationalism and Ethnicity: Zionism" in the Encyclopedia of Race and Racism opens by stating that Zionism is an ethno-national ideology and a social movement. This is not an isolated formulation. In his 2009 article "Small Peoples: The Existential Uncertainty of Ethnonational Communities", Abulof writes that Israel almost always denoted the Jewish state, an ethnonational polity (p. 237). In "Deep Securitization and Israel's 'Demographic Demon'" (2014), he says that Zionist demographic politics focus on the survival of the ethno-national project (Israel as a Jewish State, not the state per se) (p. 411). His Cambridge University Press monograph The Mortality and Morality of Nations (2015) is even more explicit: For the most part, Israeli Jews still subscribe to Zionism's ethnonationalism (p. viii), while its appendix refers directly to Zionism's ethnonational call (p. 308). The encyclopedia entry therefore reflects a classification Abulof applies consistently across his specialist scholarship.
Abulof is an associate professor of politics at Tel Aviv University whose principal research fields include nationalism, ethnic conflict, political legitimation, and social movements. He has written extensively on Israel and the Middle East and received the Young Scholar Award in Israel Studies. He is therefore directly qualified to address the classification of Zionism within theories of nationalism, and represents yet another instance of WP:BESTSOURCES that explicitly defines it as ethnonationalist.
A separate entry in the same encyclopedia, Ronald Bruce St John's "Nationalism and Ethnicity: The Middle East", independently describes Zionism as a competing ethnic nationalism. St John holds a doctorate in international relations, taught Middle East politics as an affiliate professor at Bradley University, and has published extensively on the history, politics, and international relations of the Middle East and North Africa.
Dafna Hirsch's entry "Zionism" in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism likewise opens by explaining that the various Zionist movements share the beliefs that Jews are an ethnic and not merely a religious group and that Palestine is the homeland of the Jewish people. Her encyclopedia entry is a concise statement of an analytical framework reflected in her wider peer-reviewed scholarship. In her 2009 article "Zionist Eugenics, Mixed Marriage, and the Creation of a 'New Jewish Type'", Hirsch explains that Zionist proponents of racial conceptions regarded a common Jewish biological nature as scientific proof of the ethno-nationalist myth of common descent and writes that a racial definition of Jewish identity was common among Zionists (pp. 592–593). Hirsch is an associate professor of sociology at the Open University of Israel specializing in Jewish society under the British Mandate, ethnic relations, racism and racial thought, and historical anthropology. Her scholarship includes a monograph on culture-building and nation-building in the Yishuv, peer-reviewed studies of Zionist racial and eugenic discourse, and an edited collection on Zionist colonization, nation-building, and Palestinian dispossession. She is therefore directly qualified to address how Zionism relates to nationalism, ethnicity, and the construction of Jewish collective identity. Yet another WP:BESTSOURCES.
Lockman does not use the exact phrase "ethnic nationalism" in his encyclopedia entry, but he describes it in substance. He writes that Zionism defined all Jews everywhere, regardless of language, culture, citizenship, or degree of religiosity, as constituting a single nation and sought their concentration in Palestine, where Jewish national rebirth and sovereignty would be achieved (pp. 1666-1667). This is a transnational Jewish nation, not one defined by common territorial citizenship. He further writes that Palestine was represented as essentially and eternally Jewish, so that no other people possessed an equally valid claim or organic link to it (p. 1668), and that Zionists sought to construct a thoroughly European and, if possible, wholly Jewish society and state in Palestine (p. 1669). That is an ethnic-national conception of the nation and state, even without the compact label.
Other contributors to the same encyclopedia explicitly apply it. Jeff Halper's entry "Transfer and Displacement" states that ZIONISM represents a form of ethnonationalism that was not in situ (p. 1465). Norton Mezvinsky's entry on David Ben-Gurion refers to the pure ethnonationalism of Zionism (p. 179). Uri Cohen's entry "Hebrew Literature" describes the Second Aliya as combining Jewish ethnic nationalism with socialism (p. 514). Lockman's own Histadrut entry likewise refers to The labor Zionist strategy of ethnic exclusion and economic separatism, which contributed to the creation of a Jewish economy, society and state (p. 548). So Lockman describes the same ethnonational structure that other contributors to the reference work name directly.
Encyclopedia.com also cannot be treated as a single reference work expressing one editorial judgment. The particular entry previously linked omits the classification, while the Encyclopedia of Race and Racism entries hosted on the same website expressly include it. Tertiary overviews therefore do not speak with one voice on this wording, and a selected group of omissions cannot be presented as a general-reference consensus against a classification that another reputable encyclopedia places in its opening sentence.
The sources offered for comparison are also not equivalent in quality. Britannica and Oxford Reference are reputable tertiary sources. History.com and HowStuffWorks are general-audience websites. Encyclopedia.com is an aggregation platform whose reliability and specificity depend on the underlying reference work and author. Their first sentences are also necessarily compressed and omit many characteristics that specialist literature treats as important.
Tertiary sources not the controlling or necessarily best sources here even where they agree.
WP:NOR states that Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, tertiary and primary sources. It says tertiary sources can help provide broad summaries and may help evaluate due weight when there's significant dispute in secondary sourcing.
On the specific classification at issue, however, no academic source identified here rejects the ethnic-national classification, let alone there being a notable dispute.
The essay Wikipedia:Identifying and using tertiary sources reinforces this distinction, although it is not policy. It warns that comparative use of tertiary sources for complex or contentious questions can create problems involving undue weight, synthesis, neutrality, and accuracy where the things being compared are subject to real-world contention, and states that It is extremely rare for a tertiary source to be the best such source, for anything, in any context. Using a selected group of abbreviated definitions to override a repeated specialist classification is precisely the kind of comparison for which caution is warranted. Lf8u2 (talk) 02:20, 8 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree with the point about tertiary sources. Tertiary sources all have their own reasons for particular presentations of a topic and we are in no way beholden to that presentation. We have our own policies and guidelines, particularly NPOV, which require us to follow the balance of reliable sources, particularly secondary sources, not copy the presentation of what other tertiary sources say. Katzrockso (talk) 00:05, 15 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The relevant policy here is MoS:FIRST. The first sentence should introduce the topic, and tell the nonspecialist reader what or who the subject is, and often when or where. It should be in plain English. If its subject is definable, then the first sentence should give a concise definition: where possible, one that puts the article in context for the nonspecialist. I think in identifying a concise definition, the best tertiary sources and the best general works on the topic are precisely what we should draw on. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:41, 16 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
But I agree we should follow “NPOV, which require us to follow the balance of reliable sources”. Establishing what the balance of reliable sources says is our task here, not finding individual reliable sources that support our chosen versions of the wording. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:43, 16 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Abulof's chapter is a good tertiary source offering a concise definition extremely close to our current one. It’s a strong data point for the current wording. His other pieces cited here aren’t concise definitions of Zionism so unhelpful for how to frame the first sentence. Nor is St John's, so ditto. (St John sees Zionism as identical in this regard to Arab nationalism, our article on that doesn’t name it as an ethnic nationalism in the first sentence and in the second sentence calls it “a traditional nationalist ideology”, so you might want to argue on that page’s talk page that it reword its first page to be in line with this one if you think that’s a definitive source.)
Hirsch is a great source and her concise definition is “Zionism is the brand of Jewish nationalism that sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Zionism is not a unified ideology but a cluster of movements and ideas, all of which share the belief that the Jews are an ethnic and not merely a religious group and that Palestine (the Land of Israel) is the Jewish homeland.” That is not synonymous with either ethnic or ethnocultural nationalism so a a good data point against the current wording.
As you say Lockman (another great source) doesn’t use it in the concise definition, so adds weight to the argument against the current wording.
The next three sources aren’t tertiary sources with concise definitions of Zionism so don’t help us.
So to the list of ten strong sources compiled in 2024 to identify how the lead should open, we can add Abulof, Hirsch and Lockman, and we would have 13 sources of which maybe 3? might be used to favour ethnocultural or ethnic nationalism. In short, the preponderance of best sources push us against including it in the first sentence. A better use of this energy would be in developing a section in the body that actually discusses it which we can then summarise in a sentence in the last paragraph of the lead. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:36, 16 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I have put the sources cited throughout this discussion in one place below, since relying on links to prior threads makes them hard to check against each other. I invite others to help expand or correct it. I will be updating it, as time permits, over the next period.
You counted several sources against the classification because a short passage omits the adjective. As the section below shows, that is not the same as a source rejecting the classification. Taking the list as it stands: 18 sources apply the classification directly, 5 more support it in substance, 2 are compatible with it without using the adjective, and 1 is neutral on the typological question. None reject it.
On Hirsch and Lockman specifically: Hirsch's Wiley Blackwell entry does not use "ethnic" in its opening sentence, but its second sentence states the shared belief across Zionist currents that the Jews are an ethnic and not merely a religious group. That is the ethnic classification stated in different words within the same short entry, not an absence of it. Lockman's Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict entry does not use the word "ethnic" either, but describes Zionism as defining Jews everywhere as constituting a single nation regardless of citizenship, and Palestine as essentially and eternally Jewish with no other people holding an equal claim. That is a transnational, descent-based conception of the nation, which is the substance of the classification even without the label. Neither is a counterexample so much as a source using the concept without the specific term. Lf8u2 (talk) 03:35, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for putting them in one place. That's incredibly helpful. Some issues for me with your comments though. First, you say "the classification", but don't spell out what that classification is: the current text ("ethnocultural nationalism") or new text "ethnic nationalism" or both? Second, repeating myself yet again because I cannot seem to get this point across to the defenders of ethnic/ethnocultural, for a term to appear in the MoS: FIRST sentence, we don't want to confirm it appears somewhere in a reliable source; we want to confirm it's in the concise definitions, ideally the very first sentence. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:57, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Third, Hirsch's "Jews are an ethnic and not merely a religious group" is NOT a way of say that Zionism is ethnic nationalism let alone ethnic nationalism, so I hope you have counted this as "compatable" not "support". Even more with Lockman. Let's avoid original research for the first sentence. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:06, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Sources describing Zionism as ethnic, ethnocultural or ethnonationalist

I have gathered the sources cited throughout this discussion in one place so that editors can assess what they say rather than relying on links to earlier threads and getting lost in the discussion.

I have limited the main tally to reliable published secondary sources by subject-matter experts whose scholarship directly concerns Zionism, nationalism, modern Jewish history, Israel studies and related fields. Each scholar is counted only once. Tertiary reference entries, general-reference websites and other works that are less suitable for the main expert-source tally are listed separately and are not included in that number.

I invite others to add further sources and correct any transcription errors.

Classification of Zionism as ethnic nationalism in expert secondary scholarship

  • Uriel Abulof, The Mortality and Morality of Nations (2015), page viii: For the most part, Israeli Jews still subscribe to Zionism's ethnonationalism. On page 308: Zionism's ethnonational call. "Deep Securitization and Israel's 'Demographic Demon'", International Relations (2014), page 411: the survival of the ethno-national project (Israel as a Jewish State, not the state per se).
  • Steven Beller, "In Zion's Hall of Mirrors", Patterns of Prejudice (2007), page 215: Zionism is an ethnonationalist ideology. On pages 226-227: one with an ethnonational, not civic national base. Zionism has always been, almost by definition, an ethnonationalist movement.
  • Michael Berkowitz, introduction to Nationalism, Zionism and Ethnic Mobilization of the Jews in 1900 and Beyond (2004), page 6: a leading example of effective ethnic-national mobilization.
  • Alon Confino, "The Nakba and the Zionist Dream of an Ethnonational State", History Workshop Journal (2023), page 140: The Zionist idea of an ethnonational polity was culturally based and circumstantially dependent. On the same page: built on the ethnonational Zionist idea itself and Zionist talk, plans, and imagination about an ethnonational state.
  • Yitzhak Conforti, "Between Ethnic and Civic: The Realistic Utopia of Zionism", Israel Affairs (2011), page 563: Israel developed from a nationalist ethnic-cultural movement. On page 565: Since Zionism is a clear example of an ethnic national movement, scholars usually tend to ignore its civic components. "Searching for a Homeland: The Territorial Dimension in the Zionist Movement and the Boundaries of Jewish Nationalism" (2014), page 37: Zionism is an unmistakably ethnic national movement. The identification of civic components does not negate any of these classifications.
  • Alain Dieckhoff, "The Nation in Israel: Between Democracy and Ethnicity" (2006), page 95: The national project to which Zionism gave birth is founded on an ethno-cultural conception of the nation, rather than on a political conception encompassing the citizen body. In The Invention of a Nation: Zionist Thought and the Making of Modern Israel (2003), page 135: Did not Zionism also place the ethnic group, which it sought to turn into a nation, at the centre of its ideological outlook?
  • Mari Carmen Forriol, Development of the Roadmap of Political Zionism in the State of Israel (2023), page 21: Zionism as a political movement is an ethnic and organic nationalism. On page 22: Zionism is a nationalist movement of an ethnic character in that it conceptualises the nation in terms of ethnicity, conceiving nationality as hereditary, and identifying the state with the nation [...] and not with citizenship.
  • Chaim Gans, A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State (2008), page 3: Zionism belongs to the category of ethnocultural nationalism, according to which groups sharing a common history and culture have fundamental and morally significant interests in adhering to their culture and in sustaining it for generations. Cultural nationalism holds that such interests warrant political recognition and support, primarily by the means of granting the groups in question the right to national self-determination or self-rule.
  • Jeff Halper, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State (2021), page 33: Zionism was a Central/Eastern European form of ethno-nationalism. On the same page: Zionism adopted this form of ethno-nationalism, and exported it to Palestine.
  • Liora R. Halperin, The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past (2021), pages 28-29: Core aspects of Zionism [...] cannot be appreciated outside an ethnonational framework. On page 30: The Zionist desire to achieve an ethnonational project via settler colonization.
  • Jerry Z. Muller, "What Americans Don't Get About Zionism and Israel: Jewish Nationalism in Comparative Perspective", Society (2025), page 382: Zionism, in short, is a species of ethnic nationalism.
  • Derek J. Penslar, Zionism: An Emotional State (2023), pages 43-44: As an expression of collective Jewish ethnonationalist identity, Zionism can be present anywhere Jews live, be they in isolated communities or a Jewish state.
  • Nadim N. Rouhana, "Religious Claims and Nationalism in Zionism: Obscuring Settler Colonialism", in When Politics Are Sacralized (2021), page 56: settler colonialism, exclusively ethnic nationalism, and the religiously justified claims to Palestine.
  • Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914 (1996), page 8: At the outset, Zionism was a variety of Eastern European nationalism, that is, an ethnic movement in search of a state.
  • Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (1995), page 389: It has identified Zionism as manifestly a case of ethnic nationalism.
  • Sammy Smooha, "The Model of Ethnic Democracy: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State", Nations and Nationalism (2002), page 489: Zionism emerged in Eastern Europe as a brand of ethnic nationalism, accepting the Jews as an ethnic nation.
  • Yaacov Yadgar, Israel's Jewish Identity Crisis: State and Politics in the Middle East (2020), page 180: the foundational Zionist, ethnonationalist sense by which the Jew precedes Judaism, meaning that descent trumps normative outlooks and traditions, has been a mainstay of (political-Zionist) "Jewish politics".
  • Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (2006), page 144: Zionism's nature as an ethnonational and not an economic project.

Expert secondary scholarship supporting the ethnic classification in substance

  • Tamar Amar-Dahl, Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine: Jewish Statehood and the History of the Middle East Conflict (2017), page 15: Israeli nationalism developed a self-image based not on citizenship but on ethnicity. On page 17: Peres' ethnicity-based understanding of the state in keeping with Israeli nationalism [...] form the basis of his Zionism and The criterion for belonging to the Jewish nation is defined in the ethnic-biological sense; it is something that is determined at birth.
  • Naim S. Ateek, "A Concluding Theological Postscript", in Donald E. Wagner and Walter T. Davis, eds., Zionism and the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land (2014), page 218: Zionism is a doctrine that provides the State of Israel with a firm—even dogmatic—religio-national identity justified by an appeal to God's will, to historical memory, and to mythical racial ancestry. Ateek is the founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, a former canon of St. George's Cathedral in Jerusalem, and a foundational scholar of Palestinian liberation theology whose work extensively addresses Zionism and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Because this passage characterizes the religio-national identity created by Zionism rather than applying the direct ethnic-national label to Zionism itself, I count it as expert secondary scholarship supporting the classification in substance.
  • Hershel Edelheit and Abraham J. Edelheit, History of Zionism: A Handbook and Dictionary (2000), page 3: Whereas Zionism is, at its root, a secular nationalist movement, followed by: the Jewish religious tradition does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities. This is compatible with an ethnic or ethnocultural classification, although the authors do not themselves apply the direct label in this passage.
  • David Engel, Zionism (2009), page 23: Jews would be able legitimately to constitute their own mononational state. That state would be a "Jewish state" [...] its primary purpose would be to advance the collective interests of "the Jewish people" (or "the Jewish nation"). Engel concludes: This was the basic idea of Zionism. He does not use the direct label, but this account is compatible with an ethnic-national classification and does not reject it.
  • Dafna Hirsch, "Zionist Eugenics, Mixed Marriage, and the Creation of a 'New Jewish Type'", Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2009), page 592: proof of the ethno-nationalist myth of common descent. On page 593: a racial definition of Jewish identity was common among Zionists. The article examines a specific strand of Zionist racial discourse rather than offering a comprehensive definition of every Zionist current, so I count it as substantive support rather than as a stand-alone general definition.
  • Zachary Lockman, "The Left in Israel: Zionism vs. Socialism", MERIP Reports (1976), page 3: Zionism is here defined as that movement (and its ideology and practice) which believes all Jews to be part of a single nation, sees the root of the nation's problems in its lack of a national territory, and seeks to resolve those problems by means of the territorial concentration of the Jewish people in Palestine [...] and their sovereignty there. In Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (1996), page 31: despite their geographical dispersion, their cultural and social diversity, and their small numbers in Palestine itself, Jews everywhere constituted a single nation with permanent and exclusive rights in the country. Indeed, this was a core premise of Zionism.
  • Michael Stanislawski, Zionism: A Very Short Introduction (2017), pages 3-7: The basic premise of this ideology was that the Jews constitute a nation, and not a religion and in most ways Zionism followed the common pattern of modern nationalist movements. Stanislawski describes that pattern through nations possessing a unique history, culture, and "national spirit", national identity superseding other loyalties, and territories belonging in a biological manner to that nation and that nation alone. On pages 5-7, Zionism's divergences concern its unusual historical starting point: Jews had already understood themselves as a people for millennia, Jewish identity combined national and religious membership, and Jews were a territorially dispersed minority with an inherited attachment to an ancient homeland. He nevertheless reiterates that Zionism's alpha and omega was its redefinition of the Jews as a nation like all other nations. These qualifications concern the distinctive circumstances in which Zionism applied the broader nationalist pattern, rather than rejecting its ethnic-national substance.

Neutral expert secondary source

  • Michael Brenner, In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea (2018), page 4: Zionism aimed to overcome this sense of otherness by forcing the Jews to fit into categories valid in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Once they were universally regarded as a nation and had their own state, they would no longer be vulnerable to assaults against their alleged uniqueness. This passage does not resolve the ethnic/civic typological question. Its omission of the adjective is neutral rather than an affirmative rejection.

Additional published secondary works not included in the main expert tally

These are reliable published secondary sources and are included for completeness. They are not counted in the deliberately narrow expert tally because either the author's principal academic expertise lies outside Zionism and nationalism studies, or the work approaches Zionism primarily through theology and ethics rather than as a specialist study of nationalist typology.

  • M. Shahid Alam, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (2009), page 222: Starting in the nineteenth century, Zionist thinkers began to propagate the myth of a common descent to provide a racial foundation to their claim that the Jews are a nation. On page 53: Jewish success during the nineteenth century helped to instill a new Jewish identity, based primarily on race. Alam is an economist whose monograph examines the geopolitics and historical development of Zionism. Because his established academic specialism is economics rather than Zionism, nationalism or modern Jewish history, I have not included him in the narrow subject-expert tally. The source nevertheless supports the ethnic classification in substance.
  • Walter T. Davis and Pauline Coffman, "Introduction to Chapters One and Two", in Donald E. Wagner and Walter T. Davis, eds., Zionism and the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land (2014), page 1: political Zionism sought to create a common secular ethnic identity among these diverse groups and to establish a homeland for all Jews in Palestine. The chapter appears in a volume primarily concerned with theological and ethical questions arising from Zionism. The passage supports the ethnic characterization in substance, but it is not a specialist study of nationalist typology and does not itself use the direct label.

Tertiary and general-reference sources

The first seven academic reference entries explicitly or substantively support the classification. The final five sources were cited for comparison because their brief definitions omit the direct adjective. None affirmatively rejects the classification. Britannica and Oxford Reference are reputable tertiary sources. Encyclopedia.com is an aggregation platform whose reliability depends on the underlying work. HISTORY.com and HowStuffWorks are general-audience websites rather than academic reference works. These sources are not included in the main tally.

  • Uriel Abulof, "Nationalism and Ethnicity: Zionism", Encyclopedia of Race and Racism: Zionism is an ethno-national ideology and a social movement.
  • Uri Cohen, "Hebrew Literature", Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2012), page 514: Jewish ethnic nationalism with socialism.
  • Jeff Halper, "Transfer and Displacement", Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2012), page 1465: ZIONISM represents a form of ethnonationalism that was not in situ.
  • Dafna Hirsch, "Zionism", The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism (2016), page 1: Zionism is the Jewish national movement which sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. On the same page: Zionism is not a unified ideology but a cluster of movements and ideas, all of which share the belief that the Jews are an ethnic and not merely a religious group, which descended from ancient Palestine.
  • Zachary Lockman, "Zionism", Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2012), pages 1666-1667: Zionism defined all Jews everywhere, regardless of language, culture, citizenship, or degree of religiosity, as constituting a single nation and Jewish national rebirth and sovereignty would be achieved. On page 1668: Palestine was represented as essentially and eternally Jewish, while no other people possessed an equally valid claim or organic link to it. On page 1669: a thoroughly European and, if possible, wholly Jewish society and state in Palestine. Lockman's entry on the Histadrut in the same encyclopedia, page 548: The labor Zionist strategy of ethnic exclusion and economic separatism.
  • Norton Mezvinsky, entry on David Ben-Gurion, Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2012), page 179: the pure ethnonationalism of Zionism.
  • Ronald Bruce St John, "Nationalism and Ethnicity: The Middle East", Encyclopedia of Race and Racism: a competing ethnic nationalism.
  • Encyclopædia Britannica: Zionism, Jewish nationalist movement with the goal of the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews.
  • https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/asia-and-africa/israeli-history/zionism [Encyclopedia.com]: Zionism may be summarily defined as the Jewish nationalist movement whose endeavors to solve the 'Jewish problem' led to the establishment of the 'Jewish state' of Israel.
  • https://www.history.com/articles/zionism [HISTORY.com]: Zionism is a religious and political effort that brought thousands of Jews from around the world back to their ancient homeland in the Middle East and reestablished Israel as the central location for Jewish identity.
  • HowStuffWorks: Zionism is a nationalist movement that established an independent state for Jewish people in 1948, supporting Judaism's claim to Israel.
  • Oxford Reference: A movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel.

Summary

On a conservative count limited to reliable secondary sources by scholars with relevant subject-matter expertise:

  • 18 directly classify Zionism as ethnic, ethnocultural or ethnonationalist nationalism, or use a directly equivalent formulation.
  • 5 further expert secondary sources support the classification in substance.
  • 2 are compatible with it but do not apply the direct label.
  • 1 is neutral on the specific typological question.
  • 0 affirmatively reject defining Zionism as ethnic, ethnocultural or ethnonationalist nationalism.

The main expert-secondary tally is therefore at least 23 distinct scholars or author teams directly or substantively supporting retention. Tertiary sources, general-reference websites and the additional secondary works listed separately are not included in that number. Raw source numbers do not replace an assessment of source quality, relevance and argument. They are relevant here because a claimed numerical preponderance of sources was invoked as an argument for removal. Lf8u2 (talk) 03:00, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Well I'll start looking through this, but the idea that some of these are directly or substantively supporting retention is just wrong, and that's been amply shown above. Dieckhoff doesn't define Zionism as an ethnic nationalism, because he rejects the idea of defining forms of nationalism as ethnic or civic.
Your quote from him is an example of him observing ethnic aspects of Zionism or the Zionist project (inc. Israel), and that's a completely different question than what is the definition of Zionism. Dieckhoff affirmatively does that, saying not to draw a distinction between civic and ethnic nationalisms when they are both discernible stages in all nationalisms - as I quoted above.[7]
Berkovitz doesn't appear to support your point either. There's no coherent reading of the Berkovitz paragraph you quoted, which calls political Zionism (you missed the qualifier somehow) an "example of effective ethnic-national mobilization", as wading into definitional questions over Zionism as a type of nationalism. It's not about that, and Berkovitz terms Zionism a form of "Jewish nationalism" in that chapter. But interestingly, in that book edited by Berkowitz that you cited, the very first chapter directly addresses the civic/ethnic distinction and Zionism's place within it, saying similarly to Dieckhoff most contemporary nationalisms cannot neatly be compartmentalized as being either civic or ethnic, nostalgic or modernizing. They may have stronger tendencies in one direction or another at various phases of their development (p.18) and specifically on Zionism (p.23):

In many ways, to be sure, the Jewish and Zionist cases appear to be anomalies that do not clearly fit any well-defined typology of nationalism, be it secular or religious, primordial or modernist, modernizing or nostalgic, civic or ethnic.

Then we get to the sources you claim are supporting the ethnic classification in substance. It's replete with notes by you stating variations on This is compatible with an ethnic or ethnocultural classification, although the authors do not themselves apply the direct label in this passage. I.e. Here are some authors who either didn't address our question, or did define Zionism but without mentioning ethnicity, and you somehow adduce them as substantively supporting your point.
So I would caution anyone forming an opinion that your use and summaries of sources are both selective and inaccurate. Samuelshraga (talk) 07:24, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The point, as has been stated, numerous times, is not whether sources describe Zionism as ethnic nationalism. It's whether those sources identify ethnic nationalism as such a crucial aspect that it appears in the first five words of the article. A source randomly mentioning ethnic nationalism in relation to Zionism is not the same as "Zionism is an ethnic nationalist movement" beginning the first sentence of an article. These sources would be fine if we were citing a statement in the body, and to a lesser degree in the later paragraphs of the lead, that Zionism is related to/is a form of ethnic nationalism. They are not sufficient to label "ethnic nationalist" as the most crucial descriptor of Zionism, acceptable for the first sentence. This point has been made innumerable times throughout this discussion, and has somehow never been addressed by proponents. The argument for removal has never been that there are sources that dispute that Zionism is ethnic nationalism, it's that the sources do not present ethnic nationalism as the most crucial aspect of Zionism. For a comparison, there are no sources that dispute that Zionism was led by Theodor Herzl, but we don't begin the article with Zionism is a movement led by Theodor Herzl because sources do not present Theodor Herzl's leadership of the movement as its most crucial aspect. This is the same point that was made against "national revival" above. I cannot support "ethnic nationalist" as a descriptor in the first sentence unless this crucial point is addressed. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 12:23, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree that the threshold for inclusion the lead sentence is higher, although I partially disagree that the point is not whether sources describe Zionism as ethnic nationalism. Part of the point is whether it is uncontested among reliable sources that Zionism is ethnic nationalism or not. Another part of the point is that the lead should follow the body, where the actual detail and debate over whether and how to classify different forms of nationalism (and Zionism among them) should go if we want to make such striking conclusions in the lead. Samuelshraga (talk) 12:53, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
There are so many ways this list, its annotations and its summary are problematic I don't quite know where to begin.
a) Which of the quoted passages come from concise definitions of Zionism, ideally from texts that are about Zionism and not about someething else, i.e. are good sources for a MOS:FIRST sentance rather than a claim in the body? The right way to construct this, as started by Levivich in the old thread I linked to above, is to see what actual concise definitions say, in order to identify the essential elements that should be in our first sentence, not to create a list of good sources and cherry-pick places they use the word ethnic.
b) A sum total of one uses the word "ethnocultural", the term used now, and yet this is presumably being used to justify the status quo rather than to change it?
c) The idea that not contesting the classification should be taken as supporting the classification is bizarre. Concise definitions, almost by definition, don't list things that the defined term is not. A concise definition of a type of mammal wouldn't state that it's not a reptile.
d) Even before checking the quotes against the sources I know that Berkowitz, Dieckhoff and Shafir are quoted in such as way as to twist their position to one almost opposite to what they say in their texts. I will start to read the others, but this doesn't give me confidence.
e) Even on the basis of what you have quoted, several of those you call "supporting the ethnic classification in substance" do nothing of the kind. Almost all of them are making completely different points. These should just be deleted.
f) At least one source raised in the discussion above hasn't found it's way here, Uri Ram.
g) Why are the tertiary sources and general reference works, none of which support ethno/ethnic, being excluded from the tally, despite being good sources for a concise definition?
I'd urge you to collapse this list, and if you have the energy start again with the sort of list that we actually need. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:38, 21 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Posting briefly to prevent auto-archiving and to confirm that I have read the feedback above. I have been updating the source list accordingly and expect to post the revised version over the weekend, together with responses to the relevant points raised. Lf8u2 (talk) 03:59, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

References

  1. ^ Filc, Dani; Lebel, Udi (2020). "Remember to be Jewish: Religious Populism in Israel". Politics and Religion. Cambridge University Press. National revival implied a break with the past and the attempt to replace Judaism ... with Jewishness, a modern identity.
  2. ^ Eck, Diana L. "Zionism and Israel". The Pluralism Project. Harvard University. Retrieved 2026-06-29. Zionism became the modern coinage for the new politics of Jewish national revival.
  3. ^ Kornberg, Jacques (2023). "On Theodor Herzl's encounters with Zionist thought and efforts" (PDF). Herzl Institute for the Study of Zionism. University of Haifa. the Jewish national revival first coalesced as a movement in what we know as Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) and the First Aliyah
  4. ^ Eichler, William (June 2023). "Herzl's Troubled Dream: The Origins of Zionism". History Today. 73 (6). Zionism was now an organised movement of national liberation, although Herzl's premature death in 1904 would mean he would not witness its fruits.
  5. ^ Don-Yehiya, Eliezer (1998). "Zionism in Retrospective". Israel Studies. Project MUSE / Indiana University Press. With the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state, Zionism succeeded in achieving the most important goal that it set for itself as a movement of national liberation

Reducing history section

Latest comment: 11 days ago12 comments4 people in discussion

Presently the article is 14,942 words in prose length, of which the history section accounts for 45%. Per WP:SIZERULE, the article should be split out/trimmed. I have now completed the main part of the transfer to History of Zionism, so all information from this article's history section is now contained in the "History of Zionism" article. So, we can start to look at cutting back what is the largest section of this article to something more with our guidelines on article size. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 15:46, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

As a note, due to the extensive size now of the "History of Zionism" article (16,294 words in prose length), once some more work on it is completed, I do plan to further split out the article, into specific periods. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 15:52, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
AMAZING work. Thank you so much for this BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:33, 30 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
I have made the first reduction, I'm not heavily invested, so if others think I have cut out vital information for this article, please revert. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 11:35, 3 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

I thought the copy edits by Chicdat, (reverted by Aquillion) were an improvement. Made the (long) article a tiny bit leaner without losing any substance. I’d support reinstating them. BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:16, 15 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

The article is 14,390 words long in prose, and WP:SIZERULE recommends under 9,000. To get the article to that length, condensing is not enough; we will have to straight-up remove a lot of conflict. (Not to worry, though, the whole history section has been incorporated into the History of Zionism article, so no material is being lost.) In addition, a lot of the material that I removed violated NPOV.
  • The Irgun... and Lehi... would lead a series of terrorist attacks against the British starting in 1944. The word "terrorist" is strongly discouraged by MOS:TERRORIST. Uses of the term must be attributed, which would lengthen the section considerably. My version, The Irgun... and Lehi led attacks against the British from 1944 is shorter, has better grammatical flow and avoids NPOV and MOS issues.
  • In April 1948, Zionist forces began implementing Plan Dalet, an ethnic cleansing operation that involved the expulsion of civilians and the destruction of Arab towns and villages in pursuit of eliminating Palestinians seen as potentially hostile, resulting in the loss of Palestine to much of its indigenous population. Your edit summary objected to my removal of the nature of Plan Dalet. But what was the nature of Plan Dalet? The article's lead says: [S]ome historians [characterize] it as defensive, while others assert that it was an integral part of a planned strategy for the expulsion, sometimes called an ethnic cleansing, of the area's native inhabitants. The article's first sentence does not call it an ethnic cleansing operation, but a Zionist military plan.
    • Also, read the sentence you restored. It's very long and doesn't flow nicely.
Compare my edit to Cdjp1's, which straight-up removes a lot more content than mine did. To make this article an acceptable size, a lot of content is going to have to go. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 18:25, 15 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Just to be clear, the “you” here refers to Aquillion not me. I agree with Chicdat about all these edits. The only Chicdat edit I thought wasn’t an improvement was the phrase “sovereign homeland” which doesn’t make sense. BobFromBrockley (talk) 06:05, 16 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I guess "homeland over which they would have sovereignty" isn't that much longer. Yeah, on second thought I guess I was thinking "sovereign state" but "sovereign homeland" doesn't sound right. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 12:11, 16 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The only concise way I can think of is “acquire sovereignty over a homeland” but that’s not much shorter and less clear than the current version.
Aquillion could you explain your reversion a little? BobFromBrockley (talk) 19:24, 16 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Since Aquillion still has not responded and it's been 10 days, I restored it with the text homeland where they would have sovereignty. Of course we can keep discussing this if Aquillion responds here. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 12:11, 26 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Two issues to note for the section as it stands:

Addressing these gaps shouldn't increase the size of the section, which should maintain WP:SUMMARY style. إيان (talk) 15:22, 17 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

History of Zionism (1948–Present) has now been split off of the main History of Zionism article. Presently it covers only a small amount of the developments in Zionism after the formation of the State of Israel, so any help in expanding it is greatly appreciated. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 15:57, 28 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Short description

Latest comment: 15 days ago13 comments8 people in discussion

About a month ago there was a discussion started (by a now banned sock) to change the short description from what it was before: "Ethnocultural movement supporting a Jewish state in Palestine", to "Movement supporting a Jewish state in Palestine". A discussion followed, editors brought forward a variety of arguments, it was changed BOLDly a few times, and the most recent version on May 29th of "Jewish nationalist movement" has remained as the discussion petered out and no clear consensus was formed there.

The problem is that it is factually inaccurate, and thus misleads readers. This concern was already raised during the archived discussion, when an editor objected that the wording placed Zionism too close to other Jewish nationalisms.

RS distinguish between multiple Jewish nationalist ideologies and movements that emerged during the same period:

Chaim Gans, "A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State", page 3: "Zionism was one of several Jewish nationalist ideologies prevalent among European Jews at the end of the nineteenth century. Two other Jewish nationalist ideologies were those of the Bund, which was the Jewish socialist party of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, and of the followers of the Russian-Jewish historian Shimon Dubnow. Zionism belongs to the category of ethnocultural nationalism, according to which groups sharing a common history and culture have fundamental and morally significant interests in adhering to their culture and in sustaining it for generations."

Alain Dieckhoff, "The Jewish Diaspora and Israel: Belonging at Distance?", page 273: "To begin with, as is well known, modern Jewish nationalisms were products of the diaspora. It could not be otherwise, as a matter of fact, because almost all Jews lived as a people in the diaspora at the end of the 19th century. Two main varieties of Jewish nationalism developed. The first one was a fully assumed diaspora nationalism, which fought for national rights of the Jewish people in the diaspora. It took various forms such as Dubnow’s diaspora autonomism (Dubnow 1970) or bundism. The Bund, which became a large mass party in the Russian empire, claimed cultural autonomy for the Jewish people, i.e., their right to develop their own culture within democratic states, mainly in a democratic Russia, which should have superseded the tsarist empire (Levin 1978, 219–373). The second trend of Jewish nationalism was Zionism, which advocated the migration of the Jews out of the diaspora and their settlement in Palestine where they should build a sovereign state. Zionism promoted a political modernisation project while drawing upon an ethnic identity, which was preserved by religion (Roshwald 2004)."

This is not a contested issue, but if more sources are requested for there being no such thing as a singular Jewish nationalism that's identified with Zionism, I can provide them.

RS also defines Zionism as the ethnic nationalist variety of those Jewish nationalisms. Therefore the prior stable version, "Ethnocultural movement supporting a Jewish state in Palestine", is at least accurate per RS. For this reason I have restored that as we can continue discussion on what the best version is, ideally one that isn't factually inaccurate per RS. One of the main problems identified with the earlier version was its length, per WP:SD40.

I participated in the prior discussion, and argued that "Ethnonationalist movement for a Jewish state/homeland is best per the sources". I still agree with this as it accurately describes the specific kind of Jewish nationalist movement it was per RS, the ethnic variety, while also adhering to WP:SD40. Both in that discussion and others on the definition many RS have been cited that define Zionism as ethnic nationalism. I have seen none that contest its definition as such. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 15:54, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

This concern was already raised during the archived discussion, when an editor objected that the wording placed Zionism too close to other Jewish nationalisms. That user reconsidered that objection. Your recent argument that we can't describe Zionism as Jewish nationalism because there are/were other forms of Jewish nationalism is idiosyncratic at best. It frankly doesn't make sense in reference to the first sentence, but in the short description (which is not a definition) it makes no sense at all.
WP:Short description might be a useful guide - it says that short descriptions should:
  • start with the most important information (mobile applications may truncate long descriptions)
  • use universally accepted facts that will not be subject to rapid change, avoiding anything that could be understood as controversial, judgemental, or promotional
  • avoid jargon, and use simple, readily comprehensible terms that do not require pre-existing detailed knowledge of the subject
The change violates all of these. We've also gone from an SD of under 40 characters (WP:SD40 to one with over 60. I'm therefore reverting to the May 29th version. The short description was contested for weeks before the May 29th change and not afterwards. I think this was an issue that was resolved through normal discussion and editing. Maybe tag the participants in the last discussion to see where they're at with this. Samuelshraga (talk) 20:49, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
+1. SDs do not need to be unambiguous (your stated edit summary reason). A short description is not intended as a definition. If we were defining Zionism as such in the lead (i.e. Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement...) then I can see the issue, but that is not the goal of a short description. Gaza war: Ongoing armed conflict in the Middle East, not Armed conflict in the Gaza Strip and Israel, fought as part of the Israeli–Palestinian and Gaza–Israel conflicts. As you have not contended that Zionism was not a Jewish nationalist movement (a universally accepted fact), the SD is not understood as controversial, while given the ongoing talk page thread about it, ethnocultural (also jargon) is very much understood as controversial. Your argument depends on RS, but the WP:SDESC page does not mention RS except in the context of birth years of living people – not applicable here. (We would only need RS to cite a short description if it were likely to be challenged, thus making it unsuitable.) Your continued beating of this dead horse goes against what a majority of editors agreed upon a month and a half ago. Why are we rehashing the last discussion, when nothing has changed? Samuelshraga has stated that your proposal violates the recommendations for short descriptions, and I agree. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 21:57, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
But that discussion clearly did not reach a consensus. The new version was simply edit-warred in. --Aquillion (talk) 22:02, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I count one editor (Lf8u2) who specifically supported the version restored here. Feel free to correct me if this is incorrect. Regardless of head count, opponents of "Jewish national movement" did not address the actual requirements of the SD page at all, making their arguments much weaker even if they did form a majority (they did not). 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 22:13, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Disagree. I think the longstanding version ("Ethnocultural movement supporting a Jewish state in Palestine") is better; the ethnocultural aspect of it is absolutely central and universally-accepted, nor can it reasonably be described as jargon - ethnocultural is a pretty common word with a clear meaning, not some obscure academic concept. If these the arguments you present for moving away from it were reasonable, then we wouldn't use similar language for the first sentence of the lead. --Aquillion (talk) 22:02, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
    If it's universally accepted, why are so many editors a few sections above advocating its removal? Does that not make it controversial? How is ethnocultural not jargon? Is it widely used by non-specialists? Would you expect any reasonably educated person to know the word? What about WP:SD40? What is your reason for making this article an exception to millions of others? To your final sentence, a short description – again – is not intended to be a definition. How does your proposal satisfy the requirements of WP:SDESC better than the current one? 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 22:13, 13 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
As others explained the purpose of a SD is "to complement and clarify the page title, particularly in contexts where this is seen in isolation from the page itself. Taken together, the title and short description concisely explain the subject of the page—for example, to help a user identify the desired article in a list of search results." For this article a SD is not necessary. Michael Boutboul (talk) 07:53, 14 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I still believe the best version for the short description is Jewish nationalist movement. Katzrockso (talk) 23:55, 14 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I support the consensus from the last discussion and agree with Katzrockso, Michael B, Chicdat and Samuel S.
This disagreement is evidence it’s controversial.
SDs aren’t definitions, but if you’re looking for what distinguishes Zionism from other Jewish nationalisms it isn’t that it’s the only ethnocultural one. BobFromBrockley (talk) 02:01, 15 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
With what a short description is actually used for (read Michael Boutboul's quote), there is no need to distinguish it from other Jewish nationalisms. Katzrockso (talk) 05:04, 17 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree with Aquillion and Raskolnikov.Rev. And the previous discussion is being overstated. The 29 May wording was the last WP:BOLD edit in an unresolved discussion, not a clearly established consensus, and the level of support for Jewish nationalist movement is being represented more strongly than the discussion supports. Katzrockso appears to be the only editor who unequivocally said that exact phrase seems the best. Chicdat later said it appeared to be forming a consensus, but that was an assessment rather than a demonstrated consensus. NorthernWinds briefly accepted the wording after retracting one objection, but then withdrew that acceptance two minutes later on the ground that the movement was not exclusively Jewish. VidanaliK preferred Nationalist movement instead. On the other hand, Lf8u2 supported retaining the ethnocultural or ethnonationalist distinction, Darouet proposed Ethnonationalist movement for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Raskolnikov.Rev agreed that Ethnonationalist movement for a Jewish state/homeland is best per the sources, and Smallangryplanet also supported retaining the ethnic character and accepted ethnonationalist movement as an alternative.
So I do not see a consensus for the exact 29 May wording, nor a consensus to remove the sourced ethnocultural or ethnonationalist distinction. WP:SD40 may be a reason to discuss a shorter alternative, but it is not a reason to treat Jewish nationalist movement as settled. I support reverting to either the prior stable wording or an alternative that retains ethnic or ethnocultural nationalist until there is clarity or a fresh consensus on a concise replacement.
As for my own position, I agree that retaining "ethnic" (in any version) is important because it reflects the distinction the sources themselves make. As I also argued in the other discussion, placing a reliably sourced ethnic-national classification in the opening description of a nationalism article is neither unusual nor inherently confusing. The same point applies to short descriptions: Han nationalism uses Ethnicity-exclusive form of Chinese nationalism, Punjabi nationalism uses Ethnonationalist ideology, Ethnic nationalism uses Ethnic identity-based political ideology, Ossetian nationalism uses Ethnic nationalist ideology, Amhara nationalism uses Ethnic nationalism, and Völkisch movement uses German ethnic and nationalist movement. So there is no general practice, let alone a policy rule, against using ethnic-national terminology in short descriptions where that terminology is backed by RS and useful for identifying the subject. Paprikaiser (talk) 23:17, 23 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Paprikaiser: So your reason to re-add "ethnic" is because it reflects the distinction the sources themselves make? Distinctions between what and what? The reason the short descriptions you gave used "ethnic" was, at least in part, because any other form would be redundant to the title. However, Zionism does not have "Jewish" in the title, which allows "Jewish nationalist movement" to be used without redundancy. My question is: Do you think "ethnic" is a more important characteristic of Zionism than "Jewish"? I ask because the proposals that keep coming up that include "ethnic" always seem to exceed WP:SD40, and based on the proposals it appears that to follow SD40 we would have to choose one to include.
The reason I gave consensus forming is because I believed, and continue to believe, that not only do supporters of "Jewish nationalist movement" outnumber its opponents by a lot, the arguments used by supporters are much stronger. Arguments of opponents always seem to rely on vague handwaving at "the sources", including the classic assertion that no sources contest the classification of Zionism as ethnic nationalism. This argument can be easily knocked away with the assertion that no sources contest the classification of Zionism as Jewish nationalism. The classification of ethnic nationalism is also problematic because major strains of Zionism (e.g. Religious Zionism) are far more religious than ethnic in character.
On top of that, WP:SDESC is very clear on what a short description is and should be, as has been explained many times throughout this discussion. It is not intended to be a definition, it should not be controversial, and it should avoid jargon. Ethnonationalist movement for a Jewish state in Palestine, on top of being way too long, is a definition, not a description. Including "ethnic" in any form is inherently controversial: see the discussion above! And both "ethnocultural" and "ethnonationalist" are jargon words that are not used by non-specialists.
I invite you to respond to any of the unanswered questions in my above comment, otherwise I believe consensus, both on headcount and strength of arguments, is quite clear that Jewish nationalist movement should stay. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 13:00, 24 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

Compromise wording for the sentence on the Zionist claim to Palestine

Latest comment: 6 hours ago8 comments6 people in discussion

The wording now under discussion originated from the compromise wording I proposed following an exhaustive discussion, in which numerous sources were examined and several alternative formulations were considered. It was implemented on 9 June 2026. Its wording has since gone back and forth through repeated alterations and reversions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Pinging those involved: @Loodog, Chicdat, Raskolnikov.Rev, Lf8u2, and MarkBernstein:

I broadly agree with Lf8u2's revision replacing perceived historical ties with a perceived historical right. This resolves the objection that perceived historical ties casts doubt on whether Jews had historical ties to Palestine at all, and instead makes clear that what is being characterized as perceived is the political and territorial entitlement said to follow from them, preserving the sourced point about how Zionists justified their claim. My proposed version is: Zionists justified their claim to Palestine by invoking a perceived historical right to it and widely asserting that this right outweighed that of the Palestinian Arab population. However, that revision has not yet gained consensus, and the earlier compromise wording was itself repeatedly challenged, so to avoid further back and forth I have restored the longstanding stable version while discussion continues. Would the wording above be acceptable as a new compromise for both the lead and the body? Paprikaiser (talk) 13:48, 28 July 2026 (UTC)Reply

So... if you want to discuss, why did you restore not the compromise wording, but the universally opposed old wording, which is broadly agreed to be inaccurate and simplistic, and hasn't been the "status quo" for months? On the alternative you provide, how do you think that's superior to the prior status quo, Zionists justified their claim to Palestine by emphasizing historical ties to it, arguing that the Jewish claim outweighed that of the Palestinian Arab population.
Also, if we are going to talk about a historical right, what the range of sources actually appear to say – and the common-sense argument – is that Zionists justified their claim to Palestine by emphasizing historical ties to it, arguing that their ties to it established a historical right which outweighed that of the Palestinian Arab population. We should also consider that there's only one source – one that very closely paraphrases our wording – that uses anything close to our "outweighed" wording. A version more faithful to the sources may say Zionists justified their claim to Palestine by emphasizing historical ties to it, arguing that those ties established a superior historical right. This also improves it because it's all-inclusive: it not only establishes superiority over the Palestinians, but also the Ottoman and British colonists.
And yes, perceived absolutely casts doubt on the Jewish historical ties to the land. You reverted here citing some sources. One is only saying it in terms of individual Jewish immigrants, not the Jewish people collectively. The other appears to be speaking only of the Revisionist argument. However, it's a pretty uncontested historical fact that the Jews are descended from the Israelites. It's possible Massad personally disputes that (considering some of the positions he's taken, it would not be much of a leap) but Wikipedia is implying doubt of that fact as long as the wording you restored remains in the article. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 11:37, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I also support 'perceived' modifying 'right' over 'ties'
I prefer Paprikaiser’s suggested wording as it is more precise and articulate.
Chicdat, to say it's a pretty uncontested historical fact that the Jews are descended from the Israelites is vague and incomplete and implies a variety of assumptions about who is a Jew and other matters. (Research indicates that modern non-Jewish Levantine populations are also descended from Iron Age Levantine populations, for example.) While it is objectively true to a great extent, it is not all there is to say, and to say it with the implication that it establishes something about a group's right to a territory is a POV to say the least. إيان (talk) 13:20, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
To clarify, Zionists justified their claim to Palestine by invoking a perceived historical right to it and widely asserting that this right outweighed that of the Palestinian Arab population is the most appropriate wording I’ve seen. إيان (talk) 20:43, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
From Jews: Jews... [originate] from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. Cited to five sources. And there's no implications that historical ties establish a historical right. The Finns came from central Russia, so they have historical ties to the area. Our article on them says that without implying they have a historical right. We can absolutely say that the Jewish people have historical ties to Palestine without arguing that they have a right to it. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 12:58, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree that "perceived" is better off modifying "rights" than "ties", and I also agree with Chicdat that the old wording now restored was pretty terrible and that we'd be better off using the compromise wording as a status quo to work from while any further issues are discussed. In general I think we'd be better off with two sentences than one. One sentence would discuss the basis of the Zionist claim to Palestine. The second would address how Zionists evaluated their own claim in relation to that of Palestinian Arabs. I think this would get around a lot of the awkwardnesses here. Samuelshraga (talk) 14:33, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I agree that "perceived right" is better than "perceived ties". The existence of the ties is not disputed by any credible source I am aware of, while the question of what those ties entitle Jews to in terms controlling land is of course widely disputed. Louiedog (talk) 19:12, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I support @Samuelshraga's idea of using two sentences. One sentence has to do two jobs at once: say what the Zionist claim to Palestine rested on, and say how Zionists ranked it against the Palestinian Arab claim. That is why perceived is so hard to place.
Proposed:
Zionists justified their claim to Palestine by emphasizing historical ties
to it, arguing that these ties gave them a historical right to the land.
Mainstream Zionist thought held that this right outweighed that of the
Palestinian Arab population.
On ties: Stanislawski (Zionism: A Very Short Introduction, ch. 1)
writes that most Zionists see the movement as continuing two millennia of Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel and of hope to return there. Attachment to the land is what the claim was built on, and ties is what records it.
On perceived: the same author defines Zionism as seeking a state for the
Jewish people "in its ancient homeland". Our
sentence already attributes the reasoning to Zionists, so perceived adds
doubt rather than information (MOS:WORDS). Michael Boutboul (talk) 11:13, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

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