Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ancient persecution of non-Jews by Jews

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

The result of the debate was DELETE. An unusually clear debate for this kind of topic. -Splash^talk 23:30, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ancient persecution of non-Jews by Jews

See reasons on Talk:Ancient persecution of non-Jews by Jews that reflect a consensus that this article is a POV attempt at "blame the victim" racism. It is also full of shoddy original research, citing "examples" from vaguely "Jewish" groups in Yemen and Africa. In sum, this short sorry excuse for an article is pathetic and should never have been allowed to exist this long. IZAK 05:58, 20 January 2006 (UTC) IZAK 05:58, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

• Delete --Rachack 16:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete IZAK 06:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as non-notable and also for being flame/hate bait. That said I think an article on persecutions by Old Testament era Judah or Israel could be appropriate.--T. Anthony 06:20, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - what's the argument for deleting the article? The article is just fine and it provides sources. Why call it pathetic? --Candide, or Optimism 06:57, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Candide: Simple, it's full of garbage, not worthy of an encyclopedia. IZAK 09:35, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
  • My reasons would be slightly different. The article as written is a nonsensical bunch of largely rumored statements, but that's an argument for improvement not deletion. However this doesn't merit the effort to improve it for several reasons. For starters virtually all persecution by Jews, and here's where I part company with many here as I think there probably was some, occurred in ancient times that are hard to verify. We don't deal with ancient religious persecutions because of that and because no one had an idea of religious freedom then. I know some prefer to believe that in pre-Christian times everyone was tolerance and sweetness, but in reality most empires or kingdoms punished those who rejected the official or civic religion. I don't see any reason to think the Jewish kingdoms of ancient times were any worse, or also enough better, to merit any special attention on this. Also I don't entirely approve of any of these "persecution by" articles as there a recipe to say "Aren't XYZ terrible!" and heap on. Lastly it really is non-notable and an opener to a hate-fest as mentioned.--T. Anthony 14:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
    • • Ancient Persia was tolerant and allowed people to worship whatever they wanted. They were too tolerant, if you ask me. Rome was, for the most part, also tolerant, but they also required that you sacrifised to the Emperor. It doesn't matter if sources from ancient times cannot be verified as well as other sources. They are sources and Wiki allows those sources to be used. If those sources would not qualify, then we would have very few articles about the ancient world. But, as usual, when it comes to criticizing Jews, it is not allowed; what is allowed is to say how Jews were persecuted. Yeah, okay, I got it. It's quite obvious that you guys are organizing yourself on Wiki. I've noticed this on RfCs and I've noticed this here. You message fellow Jews to support your side. --Candide, or Optimism 06:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
        • I'll give you Persia, mostly. However Shapur II of Persia and a few other Sassanids persecuted religious minorities. I won't give you Romans because this is one of those "polytheists are wonderful" mythos. By their own admission Romans desecrated other faiths on conquest, drove people to genocide, and punished religions that could not reconcile or syncretize with the Roman pantheon.--T. Anthony 00:35, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
    • What about treatment of non-Jews and Jewish heretics under traditional Jewish law, for instance? What about treatment today of those brought up as Orthodox Jews who then cease their observation of Jewish law? Has there been any systematic analysis of this? The Shulchan Aruch states that if a close relative dies who was a heretic, then rather than observing the normal week of mourning, one should wear white clothes and celebrate the end of an enemy of God. Doesn't this deserve mention somewhere (along with the fact that this prescription is rarely observed, and the question of what exactly a "heretic" is)? This is a perfectly reasonable topic to write about, an interesting subset of Jewish history. The current content is probably lousy, but the topic is fine. Work it out, don't just delete it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:53, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I don't oppose any and all articles concerning periods or movements within Judaism that are more militant/persecuting. However what you're talking about is largely fights within Jewish culture.(Who is Jewish, how do you treat "heretics", etc) What concerns other things I think can be dealt with in other ways. Perhaps something on the Jewish kingdoms or on debates among Jewish people. This is too open to abuse I feel. Added to that ancient persecutions are too difficult to prove or even understand in our day.--T. Anthony 00:35, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete this title, refactor any solid material. See my lengthier remarks at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Contemporary persecution of non-Jews by Jews. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:26, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete this exercise in WP:POINT. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 07:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Perpetual renaming is a good evidence that this "article" is nothing more than a disparate collection of "anything fishy about the Jews". ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 00:24, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete this tripe. I thought we'd taken care of this rubbish already. Tomer^talk 07:59, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete This is absolutely rediculous, it's articles like these that give wiki a bad name. 70.48.174.244 08:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, pertinent material can be summarized in two sentences at History of Judaism. dab (ᛏ) 08:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Hard to believe somehting like this ended up in wiki. Kempler video 010:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Rachel1 08:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. POV propaganda. Kuratowski's Ghost 09:04, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. All those articles in the "religious persecution" series seem a little suspect to me, maybe we need to take a look at all of those too (there are so many of them...) Grandmasterka 09:33, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

  yes please!! to begin with, Persecution of Heathens and Persecution of Wiccans can probably safely merged in Persecution of Californians :oP dab (ᛏ) 11:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I think the "Persecution by" articles are probably the more contentious ones. "Persecution of" doesn't necessarily lead to blaming any religion, but the "persecution by" leads far more easily to agenda-driving. I know of some people who dislike all the Abrahamic faiths and would be happy to read about all of them persecuting people to "prove" they are so awful. Related to that there isn't any "Persecution by..." Hindus, Buddhists, etc articles.--T. Anthony 14:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Strong delete. Enough of this rubbish. We are writing an encyclopaedia. -- Olve 10:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Ches88 11:53, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Gilgamesh he 11:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete: What's the point? There was an argument made by the other VFD mentioning that the author took a broad list of killings and attacks and sorted it by religion. How is this beneficial? If someone is doing a report on that, they can do the research themselves in periodicals and other sources. A list like this isn't needed, it gives you very little information and provokes anti-semetic feelings. --Hersch 12:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete: Basically agree with what has been said, and with T. Anthony in particular. — Hillel 12:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. A few incidents gathered together to make the point that Jews are capable of persecuting. Please delete with extreme prejudice. JFW | T@lk 12:37, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete article contains no substance gidonb 14:00, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Merge any verifiable information to appropriate article. Delete the rest. Any group be it religious, ethnic, or other will persecute someone else. It is sadly a part of human nature. --StuffOfInterest 14:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - I suppose one can say the article discredits itself, but we should still strive to only have good articles in Wikipedia. --Leifern 14:33, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete very boring flavor. Klonimus 14:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete obviously. DLand 15:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep but rewrite. I don't think censorship is good for wiki. Lapinmies 15:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete in principle, but I would be uneasy about this while Historical persecution by Christians, Historical persecution by Muslims and Historical persecution by atheists remain. In covering all of history, all four articles tend towards making a point. --Vjam 16:23, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, even though the article shouldn't exist, since the Muslim and Christian articles have survived AFD. The need for consistency one way or the other should override. Suspect I may be onto a loser here, but it doesn't reflect well on Wikipedia if it refuses a casefile against only one religion. Should it be kept, it needs a substantial rewrite. --Vjam 16:30, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
  • The problem is determining where to draw the line between persecution by religious people (which is what the name of the article suggests), which is singularly unencyclopedic, and persecution by governments which is done in concert with or as a result of religious authorities urging them to do so in an official capacity. Even in Biblical times, there were no such persecutions by Jews or Jewish-run governments, nor are there even today. The only point in keeping such an article, in fact, would be to say "This phenomenon doesn't exist" or something similar thereto... Tomer^talk 17:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
  • It's unnecessary to be a 100% consistent on this if there's no reason to do so. As we have Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses do we also need Persecution by Jehovah's Witnesses? As Anti-Shaker survived do we need an article on Persecution by Shakers or Prejudices of the Shakers? I mean JWs do have internal bickerings and disfellowships. For that matter so did the Shakers. (Internal fights seems to be the main justification for keep voters) Anyway where do you stop on this?--T. Anthony 14:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Avi 16:49, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Eranb 17:14, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Most of the information there is probably in other articles, anyway. I mean, it has happened, although not to the extent many people allege. I'm kinda reserving judgement on it, but my gut feeling would be to say delete - although weakly. XYaAsehShalomX 17:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. per above. --Eliezer | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 17:39, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Polemic, anything of value can be used in other articles. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep and merge with Historical treatment of non-Jews by Jews (currently undergoing AFD). To copy my statement from there: While all Jews are obviously different, this is a facet of Judaism that's absolutely substantial enough to write about by itself. Things it could note: Biblical commands to wipe out Amalekites, Canaanites, etc.; any findings on how those of other religions were treated under the Maccabean Kingdom and later; how apostates and non-Jews have historically been treated and are treated today (e.g., see if we can find news stories about tolerance toward and/or ostracism of those who "went off the path", and instructions from halachic authorities such as the Shulchan Aruch on how to deal with such heretics); non-Jews' status in Israel; and non-Jews' status under traditional, Conservative, Reform, and other variants of Jewish law. There's a great deal to discuss here, every bit encyclopedic, and it shouldn't be thrown away just because the current content is incomplete.

  For those who've noticed the remarkable prevalence of Jews here, I would like to note that User:IZAK e-mailed me to point out this page, which of course doesn't show up on his edit history. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Simetrical needs to apologize very quickly here and now for his highly offensive comment that "...For those who've noticed the remarkable prevalence of Jews here..." which is totally disgusting and out of line. What is he saying, that Jews should "shut up" ? This just reinforces the need to delete articles of this nature that are poisonous magnets that attract the wrong kind of misinformed and twisted debate and responses. IZAK 08:35, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
    • To copy my response from the other vote: I'm certainly not apologizing for commenting on there being a remarkable prevalence of Jews here, because there is. How on Earth is that offensive? Stop trying to suggest that anyone who disagrees with you is an anti-Semite—you've lost an RFAr on that already for good reason.

      I was pointing out that you were electioneering, nothing more. You deliberately attempted to skew the proportion of Jews to non-Jews here to well over normal levels, thereby making the vote unrepresentative, and you know it. Don't get upset where you're called out. Not that such electioneering is necessarily prohibited on Wikipedia, but it could be taken into account by the closing admin if the vote were closer than it is. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 06:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

      • I didn't find it offensive exactly, although it did make me uncomfortable. I don't like the implication that it's mostly or largely Jewish people voting delete. It seems a bit patronizing or something. Many of us who voted delete are Gentiles. In my case I've known very few Jewish people in life. However a few things make delete sensible. For starters we don't do "Persecution by" articles for other religions that generally lacked a political apparatus to persecute and represent less than 1% of the world's people. There is no Persecution by Sikhs article and there's almost certainly not going to be either. We also don't do ancient persecution by articles either. We could do an article on "Religious persecution in ancient times" and include the Jewish kingdoms, but that's a different issue. As it stands it seems like unfairly singling Jewish people out as any persecution they did is just not as noteworthy as that of Muslims or Christians.(Or Buddhists or Confucians for that matter)--T. Anthony 14:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
        • I didn't mean to imply that this was a reason for calling off the vote or anything. I just find it appropriate, whenever someone contacts me to vote on something, to note that that person contacted me. Clearly non-Jews as well as Jews seem to feel that this article should be deleted. (I'm an Orthodox Jew myself, in case you don't know.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:29, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Simetrical: There is process and method and then there is meaning and intent. While there may be disagreement about what is the best process and method on Wikipedia, there is no disagreement about the meaning and intent of the phrase you used "...For those who've noticed the remarkable prevalence of Jews here..." which you now compound (for the worse) by saying "...You deliberately attempted to skew the proportion of Jews to non-Jews here to well over normal levels..." (implying that Wikipedia works with some sort of racial or religious "quota system", which it does not). Most impartial and knowledgeable people would say your comments are truly unfortunate and VERY nasty, to say the least. I have not and did not use the words "anti-Semite" here and I have not accused you of being one (so quit playing "victim" please). I merely brought your attention to the fact that you continue to make tasteless and disgusting slurs, considered insulting by many people -- not just Jews -- that would be deemed beneath contempt and not to be uttered in polite company, which you should apologize for, and not, as you continue to do, reinforce and self-righteously "justify". Furthermore, you make it sound that I am running for some sort of office by using the word "electioneering" which is all rather strange. Oh, and I am not getting upset, do you think I should be? IZAK 07:27, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Wikipedia does not have any kind of "quota system". However, AFDs are theoretically supposed to derive their authority from community consensus, and therefore they should as much as possible represent a cross-section of the community. Jews are, I would expect (although I could be wrong), a lot more likely to vote delete here than other groups, and therefore you skewed the demographics of the vote considerably by mass-informing Jews of the debate. This may not have made a difference, of course, but I still find it distasteful, particularly when you did it untraceably.

          You never used the word "anti-Semite". You just called my statement "disgusting", "out of line", "highly offensive", "misinformed", and "twisted", and suggested that I was implying that all Jews should "shut up". Now, might you have reacted the same way if I had remarked on a preponderance of Shinto in an AFD for a hypothetical Persecution of non-Shinto by Shinto article? Perhaps. Based on your past actions, I'm inclined to think the contrary.

          The term electioneering is generally used in actual elections, but can be used to refer to other votes as well. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:29, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Unencyclopedic. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:37, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete unencyclopedic; what content could be included under this rubric is better loctaed elsewhere. Eusebeus 20:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Unencyclopedic. Ynhockey 20:23, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as pewr Jayjg -- Yid613 22:35, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Strong delete per IZAK and Jayjg. 172 22:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Merge with no redirect Anything that is actually good in this article should be moved elsewhere, the rest of it should vanish. KrazyCaley 23:43, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per above. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 05:58, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as per SlimVirgin & Eusebeus. -- Nahum 06:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Evolver of Borg 10:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete and delete all "Persecution by" articles as per T. Anthony. Yoninah 18:37, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete or not... I have edited the article to reflect greater accuracy and a larger overall perspective. Of course, the article in its current state sounds like a joke since the two major claims of "persecution" are debunked. So it probably should be deleted, but if it stayed up, I don't know if it would do much harm. RabbiSimon 17:36, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete As per SlimVirgin. Absolutely useless "article". --Michaelk 08:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
• Strong delete per IZAK and Jayjg. --maayan 15:37, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete There doesn't seem to be any "here" here, as they say. If somebody wants to address the treatment of apostates and heretics under Judaism, that's a different matter. Gzuckier 16:39, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
• Strong delete--196.206.213.71 20:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. There were tidbits of actual history and lots of filler that came out of a dumpster. If this article is kept, someone tell me so I can get out my hacksaw and carve out all the garbage. Hiergargo 03:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete content but I am open to the idea of such a page. Most religious movements with such long traditions have caused the persecution of people... but, not in this way. I am worried that all of these "Persecution by" articles have a lot of rubbish in them... this one just seems to have more of it than the others. gren グレン ^? 06:31, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete I agree with most of what has already been said. This article is complete rubbish. СПУТНИК^{ССС Р} 12:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
• Merge anything unbiased and factual with History of Judaism.
• Delete per pretty much everyone else. And to those saying "merge" ... please consider, someone is actually going to have to go through and merge. If you don't want to do it yourself, just vote delete. Cyde Weys 05:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
• Rework? The topic should have a place in Wikipedia just as Historical persecution by Christians and Historical persecution by Muslims are valid. I would vote for the creation of Historical persecution by Jews (not just a redirect to this article) and populate it with bits of both this article and the one of "current" prosecution. There is always some POV when discussing religious matters (or arguing, as my Conservative Jewish Father does with his Othodox Jewish brother-in-law). The Torah, lay history and the news all contain instances of persecution at the hands of Jews and it should be documented, albeit in a more encyclopedic, NPOV light. Grika [[User talk:Grika]] 17:42, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
  • What encyclopedic content do you foresee this article including? More to the point, what encyclopedic content parallelling the content of the Persecution by Muslims and Persecution by Christians articles do you foresee this article including? Some badly-behaved charedim in the Old City who spit on Christians don't really qualify. The destruction of `Amaleq is hardly "Persecution by Jews" as it was a war against an enemy bent on destroying the Jews. And therein lies the critical problem with arguing that Persecution by Jews is a parallel to Persecution by Muslims or Persecution by Christians: as I've said before, to qualify for comparison, Jews would have to (a) be in power somewhere and (b) have that power directed by religious authorities. Except during a brief period with the Maccabees, that has never happened, anywhere. While mention of the Maccabees incident is encyclopedic, it belongs in History of the Jews (where it is, btw.) ... The idea that this article (to say nothing of two articles!) needs to stay as some sort of "balance" is just silly. Would you support a Persecution by Mormons article? Persecution by Jehovah's Witnesses? Persecution by Quakers? Persecution by Druzes? Persecution by Bahá'ís? (don't be fooled by the blue link...that's actually a redirect to "Persecution of Bahá'ís!) Persecution by Jains? Persecution by Sikhs? Persecution by Amerindian spiritualists (that one might actually be interesting and possibly encyclopedic)? "Balance" in this case is moral relativism. While moral relativism is encyclopedic, it's not a synonym for WP:NPOV, especially not when, as in this case, it requires WP:OR. Tomer^talk 18:53, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
    • There is such a dispute in the works about Mormons, found here: Mountain Meadows massacre, and I don't see any great clamoring to make a separate article about it. If there is a strongly held conviction that every religious group should have an article titled "Persecution of non-<religious group> by <religious group>", then we should prioritize it by the size of the religious group, in which Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Confusian adherents, etc., are covered before we get around to the Jews. --Leifern 19:09, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
    • First off, I didn't realize people had to take a number before submitting an article. In response to TShilo12, if there is valid information on any topic, shouldn't there at least be a stub about it. There are plenty of news articles supporting claims of Jewish intolerance be it from non-secular news sources, non-Jewish religious news sources or even Heeb Magazine and groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace. Obviously both of the "persecution by Jews" articles are filled with non-sourced, sometimes outright, bigoted statements, but that shouldn't condemn a topic as valueless, just it's current content. And just so you know, I wouldn't support any article simply because someone might have this or that viewpoint and is using Wikipedia as a soapbox, but if the topic has merit by virtue of undeniable observables then it deserves mention. And as to its encyclopedic credibility, would it not be true that if a topic can conceivably be the source of a respectable college thesis, then it deserves to be in an encyclopedia? Grika 21:47, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

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