Talk:Jewish diaspora

Severe Weakness and Unreliability of Sources in the Mamluk and Ottoman Sections

The broader section “Byzantine, Islamic, and Crusader periods” is good enough, but the sources are severely lacking and unreliable for the Mamluk and Ottoman Empires. For the Mamluk period, the source is the very questionable Reclaiming Israel's History: Roots, Rights, and the Struggle for Peace by David Brog, 2017.

The blurb states:

“Author David Brog untangles the facts from the myths to reveal the truth about the Arab-Israeli conflict. In Reclaiming Israel's History you'll learn how the Jewish people have maintained a continual presence in the Land of Israel for over 3,000 years—despite centuries of Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim persecution; how the Romans invented the word "Palestine" as a way to sever the connection between the Jewish people and their land (and how subsequent conquerors doubled down on this strategy); how modern Jewish immigration to Palestine did not displace Arabs but instead sparked an Arab population boom; and the largely untold story of how the leader of Palestine's Arabs collaborated with the Nazis to murder Jews in Europe before they could reach their ancestral homeland. You'll also learn why most of Palestine's Arabs never identified themselves as "Palestinians" until after the 1967 War; the extraordinary lengths to which Israel's military goes to protect Palestinian civilians (and the high price Israel's soldiers pay for this morality), and how the Palestinians have on separate occasions rejected Israel's offers of a Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza.”

David Brog is described as thus:

“DAVID BROG, a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, is the executive director of the Maccabee Task Force and was the founding executive director of Christians United for Israel. He served as chief of staff to Senator Arlen Specter and staff director of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He also worked as an executive at America Online and practiced corporate law in both Israel and the United States. Brog is the author of In Defense of Faith: The Judeo-Christian Idea and the Struggle for Humanity and Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State.”

Just about everything in the claims are totally wrong on multiple levels. For example, his last claim is made extremely disingenuous by the fact that Daniel Levy, British-Israeli peace negotiator for decades, and who helped broker the Oslo deal in the 1990s has repeatedly said that Israel never approached the negotiations with good faith. Never really wanted a genuine Palestinian state and would derail the Palestinians with horrible demands.

There was that time Yasser Arafat rejected one deal that apparently involved 92% of the West Bank to Palestine but as expert (unlike David Brog) Ian Black states in Black, I. (2017). Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017. United States: Grove Atlantic:

“Israel’s most important gains — recognition by the Palestinians and the pledge by them to stop fighting — were immediate. But the core issues of the confict — still the subject of enormous gaps — remained untouched.”

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“Israel’s concessions still fell short of minimum Palestinian demands though: the contiguity of the Palestinian state, full sovereignty in Arab areas of East Jerusalem and a compromise on refugees.”

Quoted in , quoted in pp. 153-154

“Black has been lauded by several reviewers for his evenhanded treatment of this highly controversial subject matter. Indeed, he identifes acts of commission and omission on both sides and catalogues every major act of violence inficted by Jews and Arabs, both inside Israel proper and in the territories. Yet he could have achieved even greater objec- tivity had he subjected Palestinian policies to the same critical scrutiny that he applies throughout the volume to the Israeli side. For example, in his analysis of the Barak-Arafat summit at Camp David, Black notes that Arafat walked away from the most generous proposal ever offered to the Palestinians, including Israeli withdrawal from 92 percent of the West Bank and Palestinian sovereignty over some parts of East Jerusalem. But the author fails to pass judgment on the wisdom of Arafat’s rejection, an evaluation that any reader would rightfully expect given Black’s oft repeated observation that when it comes to direct negotiations with Israel, Palestinian interlocutors have been and continue to be in a very weak bargaining position.” (p. 154)

Well….

Fatah at one point was willing to concede East Jerusalem for assurances of west bank and statehood. Israel responded by demanding all of Jerusalem and parts of west bank and additional stipulations of surrendering all arms, knowing that Fatah wouldn't accept them.

This core issue of creating an immediate peace without meaningful changes to the core issues of occupation and colonization, demands to surrender all arms in exchange for vassal state status, and the total asymmetry of power between the two sides (overwhelming violence of the colonizer as aid by Rashid Khalid’s comes to mind) are all at the heart of why Daniel Levy has also repeatedly called these plans form the 1990s to 2010 “Terms of surrender” rather than “peace plans.”

David Brog is thus NOT an academic historian who specializes in this history. What he is, is a propagandist and advocate for Israel, and a leader of a pro-Israel political LOBBYING group. Brog doesn’t even try to be objective aside from a feeble and quibbling comment at the end about how he speaks of “Israeli atrocities” too. It is clear this book has a definitive political/propaganda agenda to fulfill, and has no qualms of manipulating and distorting history to suit his narrative. His status as a Harvard law school graduate and non-historian combined with his clear political agenda when foraying into history makes it unlikely his input is reliable in any sense.

The two Jewish virtual library links are of course already labeled by other fellow Wikipedians as unreliable and in need of better sources. I saw the same for the section on the Mamluk rule over Palestine as his book is the ONLY source for that.

"History of the Jews in Laos" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect History of the Jews in Laos has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 January 5 § Ethnic group redirects until a consensus is reached. Place Clichy (talk) 11:52, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

"History of the Jews in Laos" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect History of the Jews in Laos has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 January 12 § Ethnic group redirects: history of the Jews until a consensus is reached. Place Clichy (talk) 17:13, 12 January 2026 (UTC)