Talk:Instrumentalization of the Holocaust

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A fact from Instrumentalization of the Holocaust appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 12 October 2025 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that numerous historians and academics have argued that Israel has used the Holocaust to justify its treatment of Palestinians? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2025/October. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Instrumentalization of the Holocaust.

Wikipedia

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by TarnishedPath talk 13:02, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that the instrumentalization of the Holocaust by Israel is regarded by some as an antisemitic trope, others as a fact? Source: various including https://cgcinternational.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Weaponizing-Language_OB_Mar24.pdf , https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-49238-9_20
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Vietnamese migrant brides in China

Created by Buidhe (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 263 past nominations.

(t · c) buidhe 02:42, 22 September 2025 (UTC).[reply]

• Comment (not a full review yet, but it can certainly turn into one): this is a very weaselly hook. "By some ... others" for a (potential) conspiracy theory is dangerous: we could just as well replace the article title with "blood libel" or "Pizzagate". The phrasing in the article would also, in my view, be enough of a concern to add a weasel words tag: Although it's been argued that the Holocaust is one of the primary justifications for the foundation and existence of Israel as a Jewish state, others say that any suggestion that Jews or Israel supporters instrumentalist the Holocaust for political gain is inherently antisemitic. I think we need to either find something verifiable here -- put a name on these claims, a statistic for how many poeple believe them, or something -- or go in another direction. There's another concern that the article starts out ambivalent as to whether this thing exists, and then has a last sentence which takes its existence as fact. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:51, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • • User:UndercoverClassicist, I would not say there is a dispute over whether it exists, rather which cases the invocation of the holocaust is considered to be wrongful "exploitation" as opposed to a legitimate conclusion. Given the various contradictory lessons of the Holocaust, it's not possible to find agreement on this point. I don't think the comparison with blood libel or pizzagate is illuminating because we have no rs arguing that either is real. I expanded the article with more options for attribution of specific viewpoints. (t · c) buidhe 17:50, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      • The expansion is good, but I'm still concerned about it has been argued that the Holocaust is one of the primary justifications for the foundation and existence of Israel as a Jewish state. This is cited to a single source, which seems to be making that argument rather than documenting it in other sources -- and that source isn't particularly good. The author is clearly an expert in the field, but the document itself is an online publication by an Indian NGO: I can't see any evidence that it's been peer-reviewed. Has Bartov (or anyone else) made this argument in academic print? Separately, I think the join between these two sentences is a problem -- there is a difference between "the Holocaust is one of the reasons why the State of Israel exists" and "Jews use the Holocaust as a political tool", and as far as I can see the sources don't link the two. The source cited for the bit on antisemitism is fairly clearly talking specifically about the present day, not the events leading up to 1947. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:21, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
        • Sentences separated, more sources and attribution added. (t · c) buidhe 03:35, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
          • OK, looks good. Any ideas for an alternative hook? I would have concerns about a hook of the form "... that it has been said that [potentially controversial political statement]", since placing that on the front page would de facto give a lot of credence and raise the suggestion that Wikipedia was endorsing that position. However, I think there are a few other points of the article that could be spun out. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:33, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• ...ALT1:... that numerous historians and academics have argued that Israel has used the Holocaust to justify violence against Palestinians?

Or did you have something else in mind User:UndercoverClassicist? (t · c) buidhe 13:39, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• No objection to that in principle, but what would the source be? At present it isn't stated in the article: we name two people who have done this, each cited to themselves. A statement of that source would need to be phrased as and cited to a source saying "many historians and academics" or similar, not merely a conflation of various "this historian says..." (WP:SYNTH). UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 13:45, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not sure what you mean, it's basically word for word copied from the article. (t · c) buidhe 23:34, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Ah, I see what you mean: Numerous historians and academics have argued that Israel has used the Holocaust to justify its actions towards Palestinians.. I think there's an obvious and important difference between "its actions against" and "violence against". I can see "oppress" in the article but I'm not sure we can quite put "violence" so directly in either article or hook (Israel would no doubt argue that violence is not its policy, and that some forms of repression and limiting freedom do not qualify as violence). I can't immediately tell from Klein exactly which policies are being justified, so perhaps "its treatment of Palestinians" or similar would work? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 08:40, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for your comment. some forms of repression and limiting freedom do not qualify as violence I'm not sure its necessary to split hairs here, I don't think it's disputed that all states are violent (that's the entire meaning of monopoly of violence), military occupation is a form of violence by definition, and moreover any form of "oppression" would be a kind of structural violence. However, if you prefer to reword the hook I don't object. (t · c) buidhe 03:14, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think we should: I don't disagree with what you say there, but DYK isn't a great place for that kind of nuance, and we need to think about the impression it will create on the front page as much as whether it's technically correct by the "proper" meaning of its terminology. Would you be OK to work with ALT1a: ...that numerous historians and academics have argued that Israel has used the Holocaust to justify its treatment of Palestinians? If so, I'll pop back soon to do the admin for the review. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 18:29, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Sure that's fine. Thank you for the review. (t · c) buidhe 19:09, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• OK, let's do it: new enough and long enough, generally in good shape. Fully cited, which I think is probably necessary to put an article on this topic on the front page, and to my non-expert eyes the sources seem to be of high quality. The exception here is the Bartov source, but it's attributed and seems to be saying something generally accepted -- I'm sure we could find a similar statement in an academic history book if we were to try. QPQ is done (more than) as far as required. I'm obviously not totally detached on ALT1, but it fits the guidelines, is clearly cited and included in the article, and to me at least seems to meet WP:DYKINT. That makes this Approved for ALT1. Nice work. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:33, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request 15 October 2025

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Description of suggested change:

Matthias Becker, who is cited in the article, is never qualified in it nor has his own article, giving little context to his assessment.

Please change "Matthias Becker argues that..." to "Linguist Matthias Becker argues that..." as per here, or "Antisemitism scholar Matthias Becker argues that..." as per his profile on ResearchGate (which we could also use as the reference to the cited chapter itself correspondingly). Mystic Cornball (talk) 18:23, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Day Creature (talk) 20:11, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]