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The West Bank/Judea and Samaria Problem

Personal work section notes. I get headaches and am as slow as a wet week, in dragging up diffs, and even have a geezer's trouble in following these arguments all over several pages, so I can't really make an adequate case. So I'll have to make my contribution in the next few days, according to the fashion I normally work after, when I did work, in the real world. Reflecting from principles, through to the problem, the evidence and conclusions. Apologies to anyone reading this. It's written to help myself get some order into this chat, not to guide others.

• An editorial split between those in favour of using 'Judea & Samaria' to designate (a) parts of, or (b) all, or (c) all of the West Bank and parts of Israel, and those who oppose the usage, except on those specific pages devoted to (i) Samaria (ii) Judea (iii) the administrative territory known in Israel as 'Judea & Samaria'.

• The 'Judea and Samaria' school holds that (a) these are geographical and historical designations predating the West Bank (b) used in a variety of sources published in Israel and abroad to denote the territory, or parts of it, known as the West Bank (c) and that opposition to the employment of these words in wiki constitutes an 'ethnic-based discrimination' against both Israeli and Jewish people.(d) specifically, that MeteorMaker, Pedrito and myself have conducted a campaign to denigrate or deprecate Jewish terms in the I/P area, a kind of ethnic cleansing of nomenclature, in a way that lends substance to fears our position is motivated by, well let's call a spade a spade, anti-semitism.

• The 'West Bank' school asserts that (a) these terms have an intrinsic denotative vagueness because they refer to different geophysical, administrative and political terrains depending on historical period, and that to use the terms of the territorially bounded and defined area known internationally as the West Bank creates cognitive dissonance (b) that these terms, as documented, were used under the British Mandate, then dropped for 'West Bank', which has remained to this day the default term of neutral usage internationally and in international law and diplomacy (c) that, after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, in 1967, the terms 'Judea & Samaria' were pushed onto the political agenda by an extremist settler group, Gush Emunim, then adopted by the Likud government in 1977, and imposed by government decree on the Israeli mass media, which suppressed the international term, West Bank (d) that, as documented, the terms 'Judea and Samaria' have a potent ideological charge as appropriative nomenclature, renaming Palestinian land presently occupied, annexed or expropriated illegally by Israel (ICJ judgement 2004), over which Israel has no sovereignty, where Israel is establishing illegal settlements at least half of which on land with private Palestinian title, and with its own Arabic toponyms, and erasing the traditional native nomenclature by creating a neo-biblical toponomy (d) that reliable secondary sources explicitly define the term as partisan, even in contemporary Hebrew and Israeli usage (e) that the evidence for usage overwhelmingly documents the prevalence of 'West Bank' (northern, southern) in neutral sources, whose neutrality is affirmed also by the very sources that otherwise employ the words 'Samaria and Judea' adduced by the former school, (f) that if explicitly attested partisan Israeli toponymy and administrative nomenclature is allowed on non-Israeli territory, then by WP:NPOV criteria, automatically this would mean the corresponding Palestinian toponymy and nomenclature, often covering the same areas, would have to be introduced (g)that in this whole debate, the West Bankers have not even represented the Palestinian side, which is absent, invisible, while the Israeli side is being treated as though its national naming were on terms of parity and neutrality with international usage (h) that wiki criteria, WP:NPOV, WP:Undue, WP:RS, WP:NCGN etc. require that neutral terminology, particularly as evidenced by the overwhelming majority of reliable sources, be employed. (i) If we are to allow Israeli terminology to be generally employed in denoting territory over which Israel exercises no sovereignty, but is simply, in law, an occupying belligerent, a very dangerous precedent, with widespread consequences for articles where ethnic conflicts exist, would be created.

(ii)Note on language, naming as an appropriative act of possession and dominion.

'According to the aboriginal theory, the ancestor first called out his own name; and this gave rise to the most sacred and secret couplet or couplets of his song. The he 'named' (tneuka) the place where he had originated, the trees or rocks growing near his home, the animals sporting about nearby, any strangers that came to visit him, and so forth. He gave names to all of these, and thereby gained the power of calling them by their names; this enabled him to control them and to bind them to his will.'

Wa’-yitser’ Yĕhôwāh’ (Adonai) ĕlôhīm’ min-hā'ădāmāh’ kol-‘ha’yath’ ha’-sādeh’ wĕ'ēth kol-ôph ha’-shāma’yim wa’-yāvē ‘ el-hā'ādām’ li-r'ôth mah-yiqrā-lô’ wĕ-kôl ăsher yiqrā-lô’ hā'-ādām‘ ne’pfesh ‘ha’yāh’ hû shĕmô. (20) Wa’- yiqrā’ hā'-ādām‘ shēmôth….

‘And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20. And Adam gave names.. .'

Wa-‘allama ādama l-asmā’a kullahā,

'And He taught Adam the names, all of them.’ Qu’ran 2:31.

In Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon, the narrator Cherrycoke recounts, against the huge backdrop of seismic shifts in the political and scientific world of that time, the story of the eponymous figures who have undertaken to draw a scientific map of the wilderness and terrain between Pennsylvania and Maryland:

‘what we were doing out in that Country together was brave, scientifick beyond my understanding and ultimately meaningless, - we were putting a line straight through the heart of the Wilderness, eight yards wide and due west, in order to separate two Proprietorships, granted when the World was yet feudal and but eight years later to be nullified by the War for Independence.”

Late in the novel, the Chinaman of the piece remarks:

‘To rule forever, . .it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call . . Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,- to create thus a Distinction betwixt’em. –’tis the first stroke.-All else will follow as if predestin’d, into War and Devastation.’

The dispute here in wiki, like the historical reality it refers to, has its ‘Bad History’. In the novel, the apparently empirical task of defining boundaries is found unwittingly implicated in the later travails of American history, with its exceptionalism, erasure of native peoples, of possible alternative worlds, of Frostian paths never taken. American innocence and pragmatic realism, in the innocuous work of two surveyors, is swept up in the torment of power: cartographic principles embody an Enlightenment’s reach into the unknown, while, applied, to the ends of order and control, they inadvertently engender violent confusion and disarray. What is the ‘right line’ to take on nomenclature, when history’s line demarcating Israel and the West Bank was drawn by war, then the West Bank was occupied in the aftermath of war, and the world of Israeli settlers begins to redraw the map? One thing that happens is that the complexities have drawn editors into a minor war, as Pynchonesque as it is Pythonesque. There is one difference: most the cartographers say one thing, and Israel, the controlling power, asserts a different terminology. So what’s in a name?

Before the world was tribalized and invested by the collateral damage or fall-out from the Tower of Babel, God assigned to the mythical forefather of all, ‘man’ or Adam, the faculty to name the world, though God himself had exercised this right in naming the light (or) day (yom) and the darkness (hôshek) night(layĕlāh) (Gen.1.5) There was only one name for each thing, and in later European thought the primordial language employed in this taxonomy was to be called ‘the Adamic vernacular’. The thesis was that the pristine jargon employed by Adam, being pre-Babelic, represented the true name for every object: every thing had a proper name intrinsic to its nature. The Greeks, as we see in Plato’s Cratylus, were much prepossessed by the philosophical crux of the correctness of names (ὀρθότης τῶν ὀνομάτων): did names have an intrinsic relation to, or represent, things, or was the link arbitrary.. The Confucian school’s doctrine of the Rectification of names (zhèngmíng: 正名). In the Bible itself the Hebrew text is full of the magic of words, of the power of words themselves to alter reality, a belief testified to in Isaiah:

'So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.'

Modernity, especially after Ferdinand Saussure (1916), has opted, correctly, for the latter position, and disposed of the magical force of naming. But nationalism, another product of modernity, reintroduced it, via the backdoor, in a new sense. Naming was an act of assertive territorial control, of defining ethnic rights over land, especially as Anthony Smith argues, ethnie are defined also by attachment to a specific geophysical reality, the ‘homeland’ that defines in good part their identity ). Since national identities are a political construct, the inculcation of a uniform language, and the use of its lexicon to define or redefine the landscape, are crucial instruments in forging a national sense of common tradition. Nationalism demanded toponymic unison, and linguistic conformity.

John Gaddis, glossing James Scott’s recent book on North Dakota roads and maps, remarks on maps that they reflect

‘what states try to do to those portions of the earth’s surface they hope to control, and to the people who live upon them. For it’s only by making territories and societies legible – by which he means measurable and hence manipulable – that governments can impose and maintain their authority. “These state simplifications,” he writes, are “like abridged maps.” They don’t replicate what’s actually there, but “when allied with state power, (they) enable much of the reality they (depict) to be remade.”

The idea of a nation as a territorial unit speaking one language over that territory is a parlously modern ideology, one engineered by nation-builders into a plausible if specious semblance of commonsense. As Massimo d’Azeglio is said to have remarked at the dawn of the Italian Risorgimento, ‘we have made Italy: our task now is to make Italians’, 95% of whom could neither read, write and nor often even speak ‘Italian’.

Imperialism, venturing into terra incognita to appropriate foreign land and incorporate it into an empire, went side by side with nationalism, which was a form of internal colonization over, and homogenization of, the disparate cultures that made up an historically defined territory. For the natives, their indigenous naming is ‘essentially a process of asserting ownership and control of place and landscape’

Daphne Kutzner, in her analysis of the role of Empire in classic children’s fiction, looks at the question from the perspective of the intrusive Empire and its refraction of imperial renaming as reflected in popular books, notes that

‘Naming a place gives the namer power over it, or at least the illusion of power and control. Colonial powers literally transform a landscape once they rename it and begin reshaping it.’

Terra incognita is the foreigner’s name for an ostensibly empty landscape which, had they taken the trouble to learn the local languages, would have revealed itself to be replete from every rocky nook to crannied gulley with ancient toponyms. The tendency was one of erasure, and, as with introduced fauna and flora , the landscape was consistently remade as it was renamed to familiarize the alien by rendering it recognizable, a variation on the landscape settlers came from. The new mapping, as often as not, represent as much the settler’s mentality, as the queerly new features of the foreign landscape under toponymic domestication.

Australia is somewhat the extraordinary exception, and broke with the gusto for imperial nomenclature. There, following the pattern set by the earlier land surveyor Thomas Mitchell and his assistant Philip Elliott that “the natives can furnish you with names for every flat and almost every hill” (1828), native names were adopted in a standarized English form for both euphony and their characteristic relation to the landscape, and indeed a resolution was passed as early as 1884 which established the priority of native names in international usage.

Often imperialism and nationalism go hand in hand. Napoleon’s troops, in 1796, could hardly communicate with each other, such were the grammatical, semantic and syntactical rifts between the various provincial patois at the time. By 1814, Napoleon had formed a European empire, and millions of provincials spoke the one, uniform language of the French state’s army. When two nations, or ethnie, occupy the same territory, the historical victor’s toponymic choices, dictated by the victor’s native language, and as articulated in bureaucratic documents and maps, usually determines what names are to be used. However, the presence of two distinct ethnie on the same national soil creates fissiparous tensions in nomenclature. Speaking of French and British conflict in Canada over areas, Susan Drummond, remarks that, 'Symbolic appropriation of a territory is a critical index of control’, and notes that, as late as 1962, the Québec cartographer Brochu, invoked the political dimension of place names as important, in the conflict with the majoritarian English heritage of Canada over the naming of the northern Inuit lands.

Again, in another familiar example, Alfonso Pérez-Agote notes that Spain has its Basque Autonomous region, Euskadi. But the original force of that name covers an area beyond the administrative and territorial units of Spain, and Basque nationalists evoke its symbolic territory, comprising also the Basque area of Navarre in France. Euskadi has, on one level, within Spanish administrative discourse, a ‘territorial political objectification’, and on another level, in Basque nationalism, a ‘non-administratively objectified’ territory extending into a neighbouring country.. The analogy with Israeli and Palestinian nationalism is close. In Israeli discourse, Israel or Eretz Israel can denote Israel and its outriding West Bank, while Palestine, which is the favoured term of West Bank Arabs for the land they inhabit, also can refer to the whole neighbouring territory of Israel as well.

The anomaly, in comparative terms, is that history has settled the question, whatever local separatist nationalisms, revanchist or irredentist, may claim, except for such places as ‘Palestine’. For there, while Israel is a constituted state, it emerged the victor, manu militari in a conflict that gave it control over a contiguous land, but has no recognized legal right, since that land is defined as and ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory. Acts of unilateral annexation, the extension of administrative structures, settlements, toponymic remapping, and widescale expropriation of land in Palestinian title, is not only not recognized, but judged ‘illegal’ by the highest international bodies of law. All major encyclopedias (Encyclopædia Britannica, Encarta etc.,), except Wiki, maintain a strict neutrality, and, in recognition of the fraught difficulties, adopt the neutral toponymic convention of ‘(northern/southern) West Bank’ in order to avoid lending their prestige to the partisan politics of the parties in this regional conflict.

(iii)The specific instance of Palestine and the West Bank

When the British wrested control over Palestine from the Ottomans in the First World War, and established themselves there to administer the region, Selwyn Troen notes that, 'naming also became part of the contest for asserting control over Palestine'.. As early as 1920 two Zionists advising the British Mandatory authority on everything regarding the assignment of Hebrew names, fought hard for the restoration of Hebraic toponymy, and when, with such places as Nablus, or indeed 'Palestine' itself, were given non-Hebrew names, they protested at the designations as evidence of discrimination against Jews. The point is made by the Israeli historian and cartographer Meron Benvenisti:-

'When the Geographical Committee for Names, which operated under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society (the only body authorized to assign names throughout the British Empire, decided to call the Mandatory geopolitical entity “Palestine” and the city whose biblical name was Shechem, “Nablus” these Jewish advisers saw this as an act of anti-Jewish discrimination, and a searing defeat for Zionism.'

One pauses to reflect. We are being accused here of 'anti-Jewish/Israeli discrimination' for refusing to insert Israeli toponyms into the West Bank. Nothing is said of the logic of this POV-pushing, i.e. that a Palestinian reader might well regard a Wiki endorsement of suc h foreign nomenclature as a 'searing defeat', and adduce it as proof of 'anti-Palestinian discrimination' both by Zionist editors, and Misplaced Pages itself.

Since Zionism took root, and especially since Israel was founded, the making of a people, living in a defined territorial unit and speaking one language, has followed the universal pattern of modernity. The landscape, full of Arabic words, had to be renamed, often according to Biblical terminology, but, more often, by the invention of Biblical-sounding names. To do this, a good part of the 10,000 odd Arabic toponyms collected by Herbert Kitchener, T. E. Lawrence and others in surveying that part of the Middle East had to be cancelled, and replaced with Israeli/Hebrew terms, to remake the landscape and its topographic songlines resonate with historical depth. Hebrew is a ‘sacred tongue’ (Leshon HaQodesh:לשון הקודש), the Bible describes the conquest of Eretz Yisrael, and the dispossession of its indigenous peoples, who were not part of the chosen: the pattern is repeated in modern times, down to the renaming. The revival of Hebrew, with its potent shibboleths, understandably exercises a powerful hold over the new culture of the country.

The problem is, as Steven Runciman pointed out in the mid-sixties, that the part assigned to Israel by the UN deliberation of 1947 was the western, non-Biblical part, whilst the part assigned to a future Palestinian state, what we now call the West Bank, is precisely the area most infused with Biblical associations cherished by the Jewish people, with sites and names redolent of the founding myths and realities of their ancient forefathers. Israelis, in their secular land, mostly dwell where the Philistines dwelt. The Palestinians dwell where the ancient Jewish tribes once settled. The tensions simmer between the secular Israel, which thrives in its new Mediterranean world, and the religiously-identified Israel that aspires to return to a geophysical space where origins and the present, the sacred nomenclature of the Bible and the modern world of Jewish life, might at least, once more overlap, in an ‘Adamic’ harmony congruent with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

(iv)The Negev Precedent With the foundation of Israel, and in the aftermath of the 1948 war, the vast Negev and part of the Arava were captured, and Ben Gurion duly established a Negev Names Committee to ‘hebraize’ the landscape’s features, its mountains, valleys and springs. The area already had a rich Arab toponymy, and some on the committee thought these terms might be preserved as a ‘democratic gesture towards the Arab population of the new state.’ It was not to be. The nomadic Bedouin who dwelt throughout the area were rounded up and expelled by force. They had terms for everything, but with their uprooting and displacement, Benvenisti notes, ‘an entire world, as portrayed in their toponomastic traditions, died.' Ben Gurion wrote to the committee setting forth his view that:-

We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state. Just as we do not recognize the Arabs’ political proprietorship of the land, so also we do not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names.

Political pressure and ‘the influence of patriotic arguments’ prevailed over those who, like S.Yeibin, thought the erasure of Arab names, many of which might preserve an archaic Hebrew origin. Yeibin thought this a disaster:-

‘With a clap of the hand they were wiping out an entire cultural heritage that must certainly conceal within it elements of the Israeli-Jewish heritage as well. The researchers did indeed endeavour to identify all those names that had a link to ancient Hebrew ones in an attempt “to redeem, as far as possible, names from the days of yore.” <

Any Arabic toponym in short only interested the topographers in so far as it might provide a clue to reconstructing the hypothetical Hebraic original that might lie behind it. This consideration, however, often created a mess of concocted pseudo-traditional names. The hebraization of such Arabic toponyms did not restore the historic past, but invented a mythical landscape, resonant with traditionalist associations, that had, however, no roots in Jewish tradition. The most striking geologic formation in the Negev, Wadi Rumman was rewritten as if that word disguised an ancient Hebrew Ram ('elevated'), whereas the Arabic term it was calqued from actually meant 'Pomegranate Arroyo', for example.

Reflecting on Benvenisti’s account in his larger study of language conflict in the Middle east, the Palestinian expatriate scholar Yasir Suleiman makes remarks that,

’By assigning Hebrew names anew to places on the map, the committee was therefore ‘redeeming’ these places from the corrupt and ‘alien’ Arabic names that they have acquired over the centuries’

and likens this process of linguistic erasure of Arabic and the reconstitution of Hebrew metaphorically to the nakba:-

‘The cartographic cleansing of the Negev map of Arabic place names and their replacement by Hebrew names is an enactment of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their homeland’

The record is therefore one of a linguistic cleansing of Palestine of any trace of its long Arabic history, and, as we shall see, an attempt to remodel Arabic usage in the territories Israel conquered and controls, to conform with Hebrew. Toponyms can only retain some semblance of an Arabic form, if that form is suspected to camouflage, in turn, an original Hebraic name. Adapting the reborn Hebrew language to the alien realities of the Palestinian landscape, the obvious problem was that the nomenclature for much of the flora and fauna, not to speak of the landscape itself, was infused with the very language, Arabic, a revarnished Hebrew had to compete with. As early as 1910 Jacob Fichman, a member of the Language Council, stated that Hebrew:

‘will not digest the new names of plants, especially those which have been taken from the Arabic language’ and that these borrowed names ‘will always be like atrophied limbs’ for ‘despite the fact that the Arabic language is our sister language in the family of Semitic languages, it has no foundation in our |psyche ’

Hebrew was thus to be programmatically sealed off from Arabic, to prevent atrophisation, and cultivate purism by means of a fake Biblical antiquarianism. Theodor Adorno, writing in the melancholic aftermath of the Holocaust on the effects of cultural purism, once remarked on the purging of foreign words from German undertaken by nationalists intent restoring an ideal of cultural authenticity. He saw this as part of the pathology of nationalism in Germany. Foreign words were treated as if they were 'the Jews of language' (Fremdwörter sind die Juden der Sprache). In expunging the landscape and the human world of Palestine of its Arabic language, of landscape and culture, Zionism likewise treated Arabic as German or French linguistic purists treated loan-words in their own languages, or, later, actual Jews in their midst, as foreign bodies to be expelled, or expunged if a proper 'foundation for an authentically Jewish psyche' were to be successfully engineered. One would call this ironic, were it not so tragically melancholic in its unintended resonances.

(v)The West Bank. History and Naming The relationship between demographic displacement and the loss of one's landscape through the erasure of its traditional placenames in Palestine has been remarked on by Paul Diehl.

‘The exclusive attachment to territory is reflected in the naming and renaming of places and locations in accordance with the historic and religious sites associated with the dominant political group. Not only did the outflow of Palestinian refugees bring about a change in the Jewish-Arab demographic rations, it brought about the replacement of an Arab-Palestinian landscape with a Jewish-Israeli landscape. The names of abandoned villages disappeared from the map and were replaced with alternative Hebrew names . . Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank have taken on biblical names associated with the specific sites as a means of expressing the Jewish priority in these places and the exclusive nature of the territorial attachment. Modern Israeli and Palestinian maps of Israel/Palestine possess the same outer borders, but the semantic content of the name is completely different.. The means by which new landscapes are created to replace or obliterate former landscapes is a good example of the way in which metaphysical and symbolic attachment to territory is translated into concrete realities on the ground.’

In 1950, when King Abdullah, of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, unilaterally annexed the territory he had conquered in 1948, he changed the name of his country to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which incorporated the remaining fragment of Palestine as aḍ-Ḍiffä l-Ġarbīyä, or 'the West Bank' of that kingdom. The usage is still current in German (Westjordanland). Though only Britain recognized his annexation, the word itself found ready acceptance in, and was not, 'forced on', the international community, as Binyamin Netanyahu argued.

In 1967, Israel conquered what the world knew as ‘The West Bank’, the Biblical heartland, and a decree calling it ‘Judea and Samaria’ was issued by the Israeli military on December 17 that year with the explicit definition that it would be identical in meaning for all purposes to the West Bank region to replace the interim terms 'Occupied Territories' (ha-shetahim ha-kevushim), and ‘the Administered Territories’ (ha-shetahim ha-muhzakim) in use since the immediate aftermath of the June war. The term 'Judea and Samaria' however was rarely used until Likud took power. The Labour Government never enacted a settlement policy, though Gush Emunim, an extremist settler ground with a fundamentalist ideology, pressed settlement, and propagated the terminology ‘Judea and Samaria’. When the Likud party, the maximalist, expansionist party with strong ties to both religious and ultra-Zionist groups and traditions, was elected in 1977, it imposed Samaria and Judea as the vox propria in modern Hebrew on the mass media, expressly forbidding the use of the international term West Bank. Notably, the government's imposing of these terms on Israeli usage was seen as a prerequisite for an envisioned settlement policy, since accepting the terms would predispose the public to accepting the policy.

Gideon Aran describes the achievement:

‘The importance of changing names in the process of conquering territory is well known. Assimilation of the name “Judea and Samaria” in normal and official language, as well as in jargon, attests to G(ush)E(numin)’s political and cultural achievements.'

The Camp David Accords negotiations of and the final agreement, in 1979, only underline how great was the linguistic rift between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's position and the American government intent on brokering an agreement.

‘Begin consistently proved to be the most extreme member of his delegation, insisting on seemingly innocent terms such as “autonomy” as opposed to “self rule,” on the labelling of the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” in the Hebrew text, and on the use of the phrase “undivided Jerusalem.'

A huge amount of wrangling between the American negotiators and Begin revolved around this term.

‘for what must have been the tenth time, he (Begin) objected to the term West Bank, giving a lesson to the president on the geographic and historical appropriateness of the term and the importance of using the words Judea and Samaria.’

Begin refused to back down from his ‘rock-hard’ intransigence on using ‘Judea and Samaria’ and at the Camp David signing ceremony, (March 26,1979) several interpretive notes were required to be added as annexes to the basic documents, one specifically dealing with the West Bank, which President Carter annotated with his own hand with the words:

‘I have been informed that the expression ‘West Bank’ is understood by the Government of Israel to mean ‘Judea and Samaria’.

An ambitious programme of colonising settlement, toponomastic Hebraisation and cultural Judaization was undertaken, and indigenous Palestinians were shifted off their land, in a repetition of the Negev programme, which forms the precedent. The programme took wing especially after the unprovokedinvasion of Lebanon in 1982, whose key political objectives included ousting the refugee Palestinian resistance in the para-state on Israel’s northern flank from Lebanon, where the PLO projected a 'state in waiting' image that threatened Israel’s plans for long-term control over the West Bank. The war was, the head of the IDF said at the time, ‘part of the struggle over the Land of Israel. It aimed to further the isolation of Palestinians on the West Bank by depriving them of close support, halt the rise to political respectability of the PLO, which embodied Palestinian nationalist aspirations, and deprive that body of its claims to be a political partner in the peace process for Israel’s normalization of its relations with the outside world. One calculation, a minority view entertained by both Ariel Sharon and Raphael Eytan, however, was that, expelled from Lebanon, the PLO would be forced to return to Jordan, topple king Hussein, and establish a Palestinian state there to satisfy Palestinian national ambitions that Israel would thwart on the West Bank.

Changing the realities of occupied territory by the manipulation of language, Hebrew, Arabic, and in controllable sources like the global Misplaced Pages, became a programmatic goal. The settlers were in fact 'colonists' in the old sense, but Israeli English usage has here prevailed in the politics of the culture wars to determine how the international community perceives the dynamics of that area. The corresponding Hebrew usage is complex (see Israeli settlements), but continuity with the biblical setlement of Eretz Yisrael is evoked by referring to Jewish settlers as mitnahalim. The root *n-h-l directly evokes a passage in the Book of Numbers where each tribe is assigned its portion on entering Canaan, or the Land of Israel, particularly as ' in the pledge by the tribes of Gad and Reuben that they will fight on the west side of the Jordan river to help the other tribes take possession of their assigned portions' Settlers, qua, mitnahalim are not colonizing anybody's land, in this usage: they are simply taking up their 'assigned portions' as those were marked out by God to the Chosen People.

Rashid Khalidi has remarked how the Israeli authorities themselves try to engineer the way Palestinians think in Arabic by tampering with that language's natural idiom in the Arabic broadcasts they authorize. Over Israeli Arabic channels, one does not hear Jerusalem referred to, as it is customarily in Arabic, and by Palestinians, as Bayt al-Maqdis ('The House of Sanctity') or Al Quds al-Sharif ('The Noble Holy Place'). Arabic usage as sanctioned by Israel speaks rather of Urshalim ('Jerusalem') or Urshalim/al-Quds ('Jerusalem Al-Quds'). The purpose is to diffuse a variety of Arabic names for places that are calques on the Hebrew terms chosen for the area..

This goes right through the bureaucratic language, a form of linguistic colonization that reinforces the physical occupation of the west Bank by cultural re-engineering. A new travel permit was imposed on the colonized Palestinians in the West Bank in 2002, and required of any of them wishing to travel in that area. This was issued, printed and released by Israeli authorities who call it in Arabic Tasrih tanaqul khas fi al-hawajiz al-dakhiliyya fi mantaqat yahuda wa al-samara. ('Special Travel Permit for the Internal Checkpioints in the Area of Judea and Samaria.'). Here, Palestinians who must travel in the West Bank, for them 'Filastin', are required to obtain a document which requires that area to be referred to by the settler term, 'Judea and Samaria'. It is this form of Arabic which they are expected to use in negotiating their way with Israeli authorities through checkpoints. But West Bank Palestinians simply abbreviate it and refer to their tasrih dakhili (Checkpoint permit), , thereby eluding the settler term imposed on them.

Michael Sfard indeed has spoken of Hebrew being mobilized to lend itself to the national emergency of occupying Palestine, and denying the Palestinians the liberty to be themselves. They are passive subjects of an activist language that wraps them about in bureaucratic euphemisms.

'It has been tasked with providing a soothing, anesthetizing name for the entire project of suffocation, for the blanket system of theft we have imposed on those we occupy . . Thus extrajudicial executions have become “targeted assassinations”. Torture has been dubbed “moderate physical pressure”. Expulsion to Gaza has been renamed “assigning a place of residence”. The theft of privately owned land has become “declaring the land state-owned”. Collective punishment is “leveraging civilians”; and collective punishment by blockade is a “siege,” “closure” or “separation".'

A proposal is now being made to apply the principle of Hebraization, as of 2009, even to those places within Israel which the world designates by traditional toponyms, such as Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) Nazareth (Natzrat) and Jaffa (Yafo). According to Yossi Sarid, the process, illustrated further by Knesset proposals to eliminate Arabic as one of Israel's official languages, constitutes a form of ethnocide.

(vi) Analysis of Ynhockey's suggestions

‘Mapmaking was one of the specialized intellectual weapons by which power could be gained, administered, given legitimacy and codified’

'Mapmaking is not, however, solely an instrument of war; it is an activity of supreme political significance – a means of providing a basis for the mapmaker’s claims and for his social and symbolic values, while cloaking them in a guise of “scientific objectivity.” Maps are generally judged in terms of their “accuracy”, that is, the degree to which they succeed in reflecting and depicting the morphological landscape and its “man-made” covering But maps portray a fictitious reality that differs from other sorts of printed matter only in form.'

After 1967 ‘Cartographers . .had many options, which tended to reveal their political proclivities. Those who were sympathetic to Israel labelled the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Sinai as “administered territories” and used the phrase “Judea and Samaria” for Jordan’s former West Bank. They also included all of Jerusalem within Israeli territory,. Mapmakers who were ideologically neutral generally referred to “occupied territory” and maintained the term “West Bank”. . . In the post-1993 period a Palestinian Authority has been established in the West Bank and Gaza, yet there is no actual independent state of Palestine. Most international maps have stayed with the terms “West Bank” and “Gaza” but maps published by the Palestinian Authority describe these areas as “Palestine.” Furthermore, Palestinian Authority maps usually leave out Israel and assign its territory to “Palestine,” with the added designation that it is “occupied territory.”Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, Harvey Sicherman, The power of projections: : how maps reflect global politics and history, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006 pp.37-8

We are dealing with a defined territory and its naming. User:Ynhockey would make tidy distinctions, define the bound geographical territory (CIA Factbook) as just a political reality, and use Judea and Samaria for all other contexts. In his own work on Wiki, much of it admirable, we find many maps. Examine the following map he authored and uploaded, and which is employed on the Battle of Karameh

The central colour, a washed acquamarine tint, allows one to highlight the field of movement in the battle, and blurs the neat territorial division between the West Bank, and Jordan. But note that, in a wholly unnecessary manner, Israel is stamped in large bold characters and made to overlay the West Bank, which is placed diminutively in parentheses. Willy-nilly, the impression is that the West Bank is some territorial hypothesis or province within Israel. Whether Ynhockey meant to give the reader this impression or not is immaterial. Maps, as one source already quoted noted, reflect the cognitive bias of the mapmaker as much as an interpretation of a landscape, and here the bias is that the West Bank is under Israel, behind Israeli lines, a subset of that state. It is a fine example of what many cartographers and historians of cartography argue: the making of maps, and toponymic nomenclature in them, serves several purposes, to clarify, as here, a battle landscape, for example, but also to impose or assert power, or claims, or blur facts. Objectively, User:Ynhockey has loaded wiki with a map that cogs our perceptions, tilting them to an annexationist assumption. Indeed, unlike the Israeli government so far, his map actually looks like it has the West Bank annexed.

1. T.G.H.Strehlow, Songs of Central Australia,Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1971 p.126; cited by Barry Hill, Broken Song: T.G.H.Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession, Knopf, 2002 pp.436f.
2. Genesis, ch.2, verses 19-20, with apologies for my transcription
3. For a fascinating study on both the figure of Adam in Islamic tradition, and on commentaries on this particular text specifically, see M.J.Kister, ‘Ādam: A Study of Some Legends in Tafsīr and Hadīt Literature,’ in Joel L. Kraemer (ed.) Israel Oriental Studies, Volume XIII, BRILL, 1993 pp.112-174, p.140
4. Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, Jonathan Cape, London 1997, pp.8,615
5. George Steiner, After Babel, Oxford University Press 1975 p.58
6. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,, vol.1, tr.Ralph Manheim, Yale UP 1955 pp.119ff.,p.122
7. Isaiah 5:11. For this and other passages, see S.J.Tambiah ’s 1968 Malinowsky lecture, "The Magical Power of Words," (the ancient Egyptians, the Semites and Sumerians all believed that “the world and its objects were created by the word of God; and the Greek doctrine of logos postulated that the soul or essence of things resided in their names (pp.182-3). My attention was drawn to this particular essay by Tambiah by Brian Vickers, Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, 1984 p.96
8. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1986 passim
9. John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, Oxford University Press US, 2004, p.131
10. Abbiamo fatto l'Italia. Ora si tratta di fare gli Italiani
11. Regis Stella, Imagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject, University Of Hawaiʻi Press, 2007 p.169 gives many Papuan examples. Compare his remark elsewhere in the same book, ‘In indigenous cultures . .(t)he most important means of taking control of the landscape is by naming, Naming provides the equivalent of a title deed, imbues power and identity to that which is named, gives the named place a presence, confers a reality, and allows it to be known.’ Ibid pp. 40-41
12. M. Daphne Kutzer, Empire's Children:Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Children's Books, Routledge, 2000 p.120
13. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986
14. ‘Maps are a kind of language, or social product which act as mediators between an inner mental world and an outer physical world. But they are, perhaps first and foremost, guides to the mind-set which produced them. They are, in this sense, less a representation of part of the earth’s surface than a representation of the system of cognitive mapping which produced them,’ N.Penn, “Mapping the Cape: John Barrow and the First British Occupation of the Colony, 1794-1803.” in Pretexts 4 (2) Summer 1993, pp.20-43 p.23
15. John Atchison, ‘Naming Outback Australia,’ in Actes du XVI Congrès international des sciences onomastiques, Québec, Université Laval, 16-22 August 1987, Presses Université Laval, 1987 : pp.151-162 p.154-5
16. Susan Gay Drummond, Incorporating the Familiar, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1997 p.32 .
17. Alfonso Pérez-Agote, The Social Roots of Basque Nationalism, University of Nevada Press, 2006 p.xx
18. Selwyn Ilan Troen, Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement, Yale University Press, 2003 p.152
19. Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape:The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, tr. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, University of California Press, 2000 pp.12-13 cf.'Suffused with the sense that “it is impossible for a present-day Hebrew map not to identify by name the places of Hebrew settlement mentioned in the Bible and in post-biblical Hebrew literature,” they set about identifying these sites and putting them on “Hebrew maps,” which they placed opposite the official Mandatory maps.’
20. Cf.Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, Jonathan Cape, London 1987
21. Benvenisti, ibid, p.19
22. Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, op.cit.p.14. The Arabic names were also found ‘morose’ and ‘offensive’ . As one member put it: ‘Many of the names are offensive in their gloomy and morose meanings, which reflect the powerlessness of the nomads and their self-denigration in the face of the harshness of nature’ (ibid.p.17). On the committee see also his memoir, Meron Benvenisti, Son of the Cypresses: Memories, Reflections, and Regrets from a Political Life, tr. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, University of California Press, 2007 p.72.
23. Amar Dahamshe Off the linguistic map. Are Arab place names derived from Hebrew? in Haaretz 30.06.10
24. Benvenisti, ibid. p.17, p.18
25. ‘The name of the Ramon Crater, for example, perhaps the most dramatic geological formation in the Negev, “is derived from the Hebrew adjective ram (meaning elevated), “states an Israeli guidebook. The fact that its name in Arabic was Wadi Rumman (Pomegranate Arroyo), . . was not considered worthy of mention’ Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, ibid. p.19
26. Yasir Suleiman, A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East, Cambridge University Press, 2004 p.161, p.162.
27. cf.Shalom Spiegel, Hebrew Reborn,, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1930, Meridian Book reprint 1962. Shalom Spiegel was Sam Spiegel's more distinguished and erudite brother.
28. Yasir Suleiman, A War of Words, ibid p.140
29. Theodor Adorno, Minima moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben (1951), in Rolf Tiedemann (ed.) Gesammelte Schriften, Bd.4, Suhrkamp, 1980 p.123
30. Paul Francis Diehl, A Road Map to War, Vanderbilt University Press, 1999, pp.15-16.
31. 'The term West Bank was forced onto the international lexicon only after Jordan conquered the territory in 1948'. Binyamin Netanyahu, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations, Warner Books, (1993) 2000 p.20. Netanyahu's dislike of the term (and his faulty memory for dates), is mirrored by the Palestinian poet, Mourid Barghouti, evidence if ever of the neutrality of the term: cf.‘I did not realize what it meant to be a refugee until I became one myself. When the Israeli army occupied Deir Ghassanah and the whole eastern part of Palestine in 1967, the news bulletins began to speak of the occupation of the Israeli defense forces of the West Bank. The pollution of language is no more obvious than when concocting this term: West Bank. West of what? Bank of what? The reference here is to the west bank of the River Jordan, not to historical Palestine. If the reference were to Palestine they would have used the term eastern parts of Palestine. The west bank of the river is a geographical location, not a country, not a homeland. The battle for language becomes the battle for the land. The destruction of one leads to the destruction of the other. When Palestine disappears as a word, it disappears as a state, as a country and as a homeland. The name of Palestine itself had to vanish. . .The Israeli leaders, practicing their conviction that the whole land of Palestine belongs to them would concretize the myth and give my country yet another biblical name: Judea and Samaria, and give our villages and towns and cities Hebrew names. But call it the West Bank or call its Judea and Samaria, the fact remains that these territories are occupied. No problem! The Israeli governments, whether right or left or a combination of both, would simply drop the term occupied and say the Territories! Brilliant! I am a Palestinian, but my homeland is the Territories! What is happening here? By a single word they redefine an entire nation and delete history.’ Mourid Barghouti, 'The Servants of War and their Language', in International parliament of Writers, Autodafe, Seven Stories Press, 2003 pp.139-147 pp140-1
32. Emma Playfair, International Law and the Administration of Occupied Territories: Two Decades of Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oxford University Press, 1992 p. 41.
33. Ran HaCohen, 'Influence of the Middle East Peace Process on the Hebrew Language' (1992), reprinted in Michael G. Clyne (ed.), Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning, Walter de Gruyter, 1997, pp.385-414, p.397.
34. Shlomo Gazit, Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories, Routledge, 2003 p. 162
35. 'The terms “occupied territory” or “West Bank” were forbidden in news reports.'Ian S. Lustick, 'The Riddle of Nationalism: The Dialectic of Religion and Nationalism in the Middle East', Logos, Vol.1, No.3, Summer 2002 pp.18-44, p. 39
36. 'Begin was happy to castigate the media and the intelligentsia for their views, real and imaginary, and their use of politically incorrect language. Israeli television was now instructed to use “Judea and Samaria’ for the administered territories, annexation became ‘incorporation’ and the Green Line suddenly disappeared from maps of Israel and the West Bank'. Colin Shindler, A History of Modern Israel, Cambridge University Press, 2008 p.174
37. 'The successful gaining of the popular acceptance of these terms was a prelude to gaining popular acceptance of the government’s settlement policies'.Myron J. Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions: Cultural Change and Political Conflict, Transaction Publishers, 1991. p. 10.
38. Gideon Aran, 'Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism: The Block of the Faithful in Israel (Gush Enumin),', in American Academy of Arts and Sciences, University of Chicago Press, 1994 pp.265-344, p.291, p.337
39. Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: a critical analysis of Israel's security & foreign policy, University of Michigan Press, 2006 p.441
40. William B. Quandt, Peace process: American diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967, Brookings Institution Press, 2001, rev.ed.2001 p.130
41. William B.Quandt, Peace process, ibid. p.134. This was then accompanied by a formal note to Begin (September 22,1978), it which it was registered that ‘(A) In each paragraph of the Agreed Framework Document the expressions “Palestinians” or “Palestinian People” are being and will be construed and understood by you as “Palestinian Arabs”. (B)In each paragraph in which the expression “West Bank” appears, it is being, and will be, understood by the Government of Israel as Judea and Samaria.’ William B. Quandt, Camp David: peacemaking and politics, Brookings Institution Press, 1986 p.387
42. Howard Jones, Crucible of Power: A History of U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1897,Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd.ed. 2001 p.469
43. Rex Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival: The PLO in Lebanon, Westview Press, Boulder, 1990 p.2
44. James Ron, Frontiers and ghettos: state violence in Serbia and Israel, University of California Press, 2003 p.180. Decoded, the statement means, 'invading Lebanon secures the West Bank for Israel and thus achieves the Biblical borders set forth more or less in the Tanakh's account of the early kingdoms'
45. Eric J. Schmertz, Natalie Datlof, Alexej Ugrinsky, President Reagan and the world, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997 p.44.
46. See Uri Bar-Joseph, Israel's National Security Towards the 21st Century, Routledge, 2001 p.185
47. Numbers, 32:18
48. David C. Jacobson, Does David still play before you? Israeli poetry and the Bible, Wayne State University Press, 1997 p.50
49. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The construction of modern national consciousness, Columbia University Press, 1998 p.14
50. Nigel Craig Parsons,The Politics of the Palestinian Authority: From Oslo to Al-Aqsa, Routledge, 2005 p.299
51. Michael Sfard, Occupation double-speak,' at Haaretz, 12 June 2012.
52. Jonathan Cook, Israeli Road Signs, Counterpunch 17-19, July 2009
53. Nir Hasson, Give Arab train stations Hebrew names, says Israeli linguist, Haaretz 28/12/2009
54. Yossi Sarid 'Israel is not killing the Palestinian people - it's killing their culture,' Haaretz 3 Octobr 2014
55. John Brian Harley, David Woodward, The History of Cartography: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, Humana Press, 1987 p.506, cited Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, ibid.p.13
56. Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, ibid. p.13

Further reading:-

• Mark Monmonier, No Dig, No Fly, No Go. How maps restrict and control, University of Chicago Press 2010

Things to be done/Notes to self (or what pieces are left of that hypothetical entity)

• Huldra trans Talk:Bardala‎
• Huldra trans Talk:Nisf Jubeil
• Sabah as per promise to Doug Weller
• Abu Iyad as per promise to Al Ameer
• The Ashkenazi Jews/Khazarian origins theory
• Werner Muensterberger
• 中里介山 and also his 大菩薩峠, which have no wiki article. ('to call him Dickensian would be utterly inadequate, to call Dickens "Kaizanian" would be to flatter him greatly' William E. Naff, The Kiso Road: The Life and Times of Shimazaki Tōson, University of Hawai'i Press, 2011 p.4.) Nishidani (talk) 21:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

(2)'To call Dickens "Kaizanian" would be an over-statement of his considerable gift for for creating memorable characters, while to call Kaizan "Dickensian" would be a seriously misleading understatement. This richness became all the more impressive when set against the national drive towards human standardization.' ibid. p.430

To be kept close to the bottom of this page because I forget the agenda as time scurries on Nishidani (talk) 21:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

• • e.g.<ref="Horowitz" /> Nishidani (talk) 17:20, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Notes for possible future edits

• New definition of nakba.

a demonstration on Nakba Day—the anniversary of Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948. (Jonathan S. Tobin,'Was Nakba Shooting Another al-Dura Libel?,' Commentary Magazine 21 May 2014.)

• The problem with List of Israeli assassinations is that it is restricted so far to ordered killings, mostly admitted by the state actor. If the 15 May 2014 killings turn out to give the lie to the Pallywood memes circulating, the following data, plus sources indicating the outcome of investigations, should be entered there. It parallels the Mohammad al-Dura incident, given the indeterminacy, save for one element: in the former, responsibility was admitted immediately, only to be denied later. In the latest incident, responsibility was denied, the disinformation on tampered footage deconstructed within days.

Nishidani (talk) 13:31, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

1. Yossi Sarid, 'Holes in their backs,' Haaretz 24 May, 2014.
2. Peter Beaumont,'Footage of Palestinian boys being shot is genuine, says Israeli rights group,' The Guardian, 22 May 2014.
3. Gili Cohen and Jack Khoury,'New CNN footage of Nakba Day killings fuels debate over deaths,' 22 May 2014.
4. Ivan Watson, Kareem Khadder and Mike Schwartz, 'Father blames Israeli military in Palestinian teens' deaths,' CNN 22 May 2014.
5. Jodi Rudoren, 'Video Renews Questions on Death of Young Palestinians,' New York Times, 20 May 2014.

Israel - Palestine Conflict

It said at the top that you can only revert once every 24 hours on that page if you Edit it. You might be blocked now, you reverted twice! XD The Toon Disney Guy (talk) 11:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

What you did was self-evident vandalism. I/P articles are not disneyland, toon comics or a kindergarten sandpit. If you have legitimate objections that have missed the lynx-eyed gaze of a dozen long-term editors, address the talk page. If you wish to take this to A/1 read WP:Boomerang. Whatever, the mass removal of RS-sourced (4) material without warning is vandalism.Nishidani (talk) 12:03, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I've checked your record, and can find no evidence at a quick review of interest in anything other than cartoons and television, except one edit to that page which was a drive-by tag plastering edit. Please correct me if I err.Nishidani (talk) 12:28, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

No, that is wrong, Dude! Also. Why are you bothered about that? You don't need to be a dick about it. The Toon Disney Guy (talk) 07:34, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Unlike you, I wasn’t born yesterday. Nishidani (talk) 08:55, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

JarlaxleArtemis

For the record, it absolutely is him - even down to denying his identity (he also denied that he was Grawp until that was proven). He reacts instinctively - any time anyone challenges his edits, he starts making unicode-infused, empty, cowardly threats against them. As if this had ever worked. This has been going on for ten years, since he was 15, and he hasn't changed a bit. NawlinWiki (talk) 14:43, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm deeply appreciative of the work you, and others like Malik, do in keeping this nonsense clear of pages. Jeez, I never really follow this stuff, but from 15-25 he's wasted a decade doing this? - ten of the best years of one's life, when one writes poems, reads impossibly dull tomes that turn out to be memorable for some gem one discovers or page-turning novels, treks through deserts, or along thin pathways in tropical forests, listens to the Beatles and Elvis, learns languages, travels the world, screws around, and up, goes to concerts to hear Richter, or watch Nureyev, works on a kibbutz, plays football and cricket, skulls and runs in long-distance events, almost gets murdered, carouses till dawn in good company every week in hundreds of pubs from London to Toronto to Los Angeles, and this kid's lost himself in fighting an ephemeral nanosecond war seated before a computer screen instead? It's profoundly sad because pointless. The state of Israel flourishes, and will continue to do so, whatever historians write, or angry POV pushers of the eternal panic-button of antisemitism or anti-antisemitism say, or do. I used to laugh when I saw the otherwise dumb message 'Get a life!' on the net. I now realize that it appears to be appropriate. Cheers and thanks.Nishidani (talk) 15:23, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

And a big thank you from me also, to you :NawlinWiki, and Malik and Zero and all the others who help keep the death threats etc off my page, Cheers to you! Huldra (talk) 23:54, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Good grief! I never realized you had that many. Take it as a backhanded compliment, sys(ter). By a quick calculation (no of death threats etc vs number of edits on Palestinian villages) it is empirical proof at last that you remain the most important and invaluable contributor to wikipedia's database on the Palestinian world.Nishidani (talk) 08:27, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Of course I take it as a big compliment! :D But I really haven´t gotten the larges compliment yet; having socks named after you....I´m green with envy...: NishidaniDoesBadStuffToChildren (talk · contribs)  :) Cheers, Huldra (talk) 20:42, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Beitunia

The Beitunia shootings incident probably deserves its own article at some point given the coverage, although perhaps it's too soon. Anyhow, you may not have seen a more recent NYT article B'Tselem seem to be keeping track of the media reports. Sean.hoyland - talk 12:40, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. I've a whole file on that, thinking that it fits the criteria for a targeted killing but none of the earlier reports gave it as an instance of the same, until I noticed that, today, Human Right Watch reported its considered view that this consisted of a targeted killing. In that report, HRW lists quite a number of civilian killings that result from targeting practices with live fire during demonstrations, which however never figure in the usual lists of targeted assassinations, where the assumption is that there must be some Israeli testimony that the suspect was a 'militant'. This is just of course bias: one could add a large list of such killings that are not labelled that way ('targeted assassinations'), but they can't be added unless we have independent assessments classifying them that way. To note just another:-

• October (24?) , 2001
• Tulkarm
• Abdallah Jarousha.
• Unknown. A businessman
• Shot by Israeli snipers from Battalion 202 of the Paratroop Brigade, on suspicion of using a nearby telephone booth to regularly report Israeli positions.
• IDF(ref Chaim Levinson 'IDF officer promoted despite role in Palestinian's death,' Haaretz 10 June 2014 ref>)

One can't add that to the list, despite the fact that we know who gave the order (now Brig. Gen.) Roni Numa, who, Ofir, relayed the decision to 'neutralize' a Palestinian businessman (driving in a car with his wife and brother-in-law and children), to the two snipers who then shot him dead. It's the best documented example of the genre, but is not classified yet in the targeted assassinations lists. Indeed no internet search will tell you the day the incident occurred, nor the name of the person. Of the several thousand killed so far, on my reading, several hundred would fit that description of being deliberately targeted, though not militants. But we can't do WP:OR syntheses or draw conclusions.

As to the incident deserving a page, I have extensive downloads of reportage that would make that an easy job. But in the past I generally opposed temptations to follow the habit of using wikipedia to showcase individual incidents (Murder of Shalhevet Pass, The Death of Asher and Yonatan Palmer,Death of Yehuda Shoham,Murder of Eliyahu Asheri, Murder of Helena Rapp, Murder of Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran, Murder of Neta Sorek and Kristine Luken,Murder of Ofir Rahum,Murder of Oleg Shaichat,Murder of Yaron Chen,etc.) because all of those articles were written by editors wishing to make a case, assign historic blame or blacken the other side, and the events mostly fail WP:Notable. I wrote Zion Square assault to test these editors, but the event took on a life of its own and was so widely reported that its inclusion on wiki became obligatory. Sound practice would suggest that a potential article The Murder of Nadim Nawareh and Mohammed Salameh can only be justified if reportage continues over several months, and it eventually is included or noted in the ongoing stream of academic books on the I/P world.Nishidani (talk) 13:29, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

I like articles about individual incidents but rarely have time to work on them. They require so much research to ensure accuracy and balance. Done well I think they can be interesting and informative in the sense that they often encapsulate broader aspects, ripples of the conflict in microcosm, in the events that came before and after the incidents, the causes and effects. Unfortunately it seems to be almost impossible to do anything well in ARBPIA. I worked on Murder of Hatuel family for a while to see if I could make it better, but ended up walking away. I genuinely don't understand why editors would only write articles about certain incidents and not others based on the nature of the victims. What's the difference ? I mean I get it, I understand what is going on and why to a certain extent for those editors, but it doesn't make any sense to me. It's a pity that Misplaced Pages's coverage of the day to day things that make up the conflict for the people involved is so piss poor. Sean.hoyland - talk 18:42, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I hadn't thought about it from that angle, which I should have, given that I admire the microstory approach to history, as exemplified by the articles and monographs of Carlo Ginzburg, for example. Perhaps I should reconsider an article like that. When I saw what was being done with the Death of Yehuda Shoham, i.e., using a selective set of sources to underline the viviousness of Palestinians (I just noted because someone edited it, the article Deception: Betraying the Peace Process which should be deleted as a non-notable book whose agenda is to ignore what systematic studies show, by the way - same purpose on wiki), I stepped in, and it was a bit of a firefight, but in the end (haven't checked recently) managed to contextualize it historically in the flow of violence on both sides during that week, and the political consequences. I think that it should be obligatory to do this on all articles of this kind. It's not impossible because of ARBPIA, but because of source bias. We know much more from newspapers about Israeli victims on average than we do of Palestinian victims, who are lucky to get mentioned by name, while articles that deal with close background focus tend to be well informed on the Israeli context, and less so on the Palestinian context. Murder of Shalhevet Pass is a good example (I can't remember if anyone has edited into it the fact that Israeli politicians were so disgusted by the extreme media pressure the Hebron settlers put on them to turn up for the burial and transform it into a signature day for Israel's victimization, that several in the end boycotted the ceremony. It's in the sources, but those who edit the page appear to prefer to coast over it.

As for the editors, if I may hazard a remark, restricting my remarks to bad editors from the ostensibly 'pro-Israeli' side, many of them are raised within an ideology dominated by the historical fact of anti-semitism, which is a eurocentric disease, and Zionism which was originally premised on the idea that indigenous Palestinians could be omitted from the picture. Victor Klemperer caught the syndrome back in his diaries in the early 30s when he, if my memory doesn't err, likened what would happen to Palestinians, they would be forced historically to play the role of wild Indians being shot out of history in an endlessly popular Hollywood storyline of the 'conquest of the West', untinctured by Karl May's romantic defence of the noble savage. Both my parents' generation and mine watched endless Hollywood movies where the historical atrocities of the white conquest were ignored, while the indigenous victims of what was a kind of partial genocide by an invader, were depicted as a murderous bloodthirsty savages, always to blame. This scotoma has been revived in the post 9/11 storyline of terrorism (which of course does exist), while dying out in Westerns, and therefore 'it does make sense' to me, that they cannot see the obvious (IOTTMCO as John Lanchester wrote recently in the LRB). It is hard to feel pity if the 'other' shouldn't exist on principle, and her presence is just some dark anomalous blur on the periphery of one's vision, which is focused solely on one's own tremendous stride towards a dazzling historical achievement.

Klemperer's vision was as prophetic as Kafka's was of modernity and Nazism. They are 'sincere' in the worst sense of that word, i.e., they cannot understand that 'sincerity' can obtain in people who disagree with them: it must be bad faith, or anti-semitism. It is a reflex Pavlovian system of group-think, as inexorable in its conclusions as any ideology.Nishidani (talk) 20:11, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

The other relevant point to consider is system bias. For instance, while we don't have an article for the Beitunia killings, there is already an article for an event less than three days old - 2014 kidnapping of Israeli teens (an example of the format described by Nishidani: "using a selective set of sources to underline the viviousness of Palestinians"). A prodigious output of (POV) articles covering Israeli victims of the the conflict while not covering Palestinian victims is a problem. Dlv999 (talk) 10:49, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I actually checked yesterday, wondering how long this would take to get into wikipedia, and, not finding an article, thought to myself that the area was improving. Alas, not so. I think editors should exercise caution in succumbing to the temptation to imitate this pattern (it does look, even if it isn't, retaliatory), even if there is a strong argument for 'balancing' the evident POV-bias. Whether or not an article should be written on the Beitunia murders or not should depend on WP:NOTABLE criteria (such events fail notability (ugh!) in wikipedia terms because their frequency is in inverse proportion to the follow-up attention given targeted Palestinian murders in the RS mainstream press - they occur almost monthly), esp. on the forensic outcome (partially known) and ongoing reports of the Israeli investigation, while keeping in mind that one can't be bound by the latter, since these notoriously drag on and tend to bury such cases.Nishidani (talk) 13:58, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Fuck, bad editors just mean revert wars, false edit summaries, and the burden of fixing crap placed on others' shoulders. 'I provide the POV pushing and you neutralize it, if anyone's looking.' Nishidani (talk) 16:00, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Your lovely vandal

I asked Alison if an IP was JarlaxleArtemis and she confirmed and blocked several accounts and another IP. Dougweller (talk) 14:08, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Doug. I fail to see the point of this turpiloquent hyperactivism in my regard. I think the Spanish for 'water off a duck's back' is Por un oído me entra y por otro me sale, so I quack rather than quake. I still owe you that article, - just overwhelmed these months by extrawiki work and life. Will do it eventually.Nishidani (talk) 15:15, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Notice

There is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. FatGuySeven (talk) 03:22, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help find a resolution. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! FatGuySeven (talk) 16:15, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

IP socks

Hi, regarding your comment at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement: you seem to have forgotten to sign it. Any full RfC about the matter would be flooded with socks, me thinks. Perhaps we should start finding links to all those off-wiki reports of canvassing, and then show the damage (=huge waste of time) throw-away sock do in the I/P area, and then take it to Arb.com? Cheers, Huldra (talk) 20:35, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

• Btw, have you seen this? Cheers, Huldra (talk) 01:16, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
• I would absolutely love it if you could help me out on Talk:Nisf Jubeil. We need a French and a Latin reader. There are two Nisf Jubeils which have been mixed up, it seems, Cheers, Huldra (talk) 08:52, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Of course. But I will be away for a few days. Nishidani (talk) 09:48, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

SPI case filed

I've filed a sockpuppet case at https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Smatprt. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:36, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

For the task ahead....

Have a beer! Cheers, Huldra (talk) 22:01, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Btw, one very easy task: on Umm al-Fahm Guerin writes that it has "dix huit cents" inhabitants. Isn´t that 1800? Petersen, citing Guerin, say it is 800? Cheers, Huldra (talk) 22:44, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Strewth. You may have seen me making occasional edits in here, but since Monday I have been once more chopping down trees, chain-sawing wood, packaging 31 large bags of leaves for disposal, loading trucks - backload of tasks I finally could do only on those days because a friend turned up with the equipment to rid the place of a year of accumulated woodstock. Same Friday. I'll do it though, just remind me if I haven'ìt by Sunday night.Nishidani (talk) 07:01, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

User reported me

Hi Nishidani....

Just letting you know :) user Gunrpks reported me for "reverting" his editorial wars on your article concerning the war in the middle east. I am a new user and have never reported some one before but I will try to report him as well. --علي سمسم (talk) 12:35, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

I see. I'm afraid you can't enlist people's help, technically. You are new to this place, unlike User:Gunrpks and, I think, you engaged in an edit-war with him. Your excuse would be unfamiliarity with I/P ARBPIA practices, but any editor should inform himself before hand that edit-warring, even in a 'just cause' sends a bad signal. One must not imitate bad editors. In any case, as you are unfamiliar with these things, I will examine this, if only because I informed that editor that he was violating the 1RR, and he persisted. I refrained from reporting him, but, if my perception is correct about his edits, it is certainly odd that he should report you. That would mean he risks WP:Boomerang, when all of the evidence is examined.

In any case, I would advise you not to report him, it is a bad practice, esp. by newbies, to use this. It looks like playing tactical games to out an 'adversary'. Be patience, calm, succinct, in your reply, and if you check the evidence and find you have made an error, apologize. Above all, do not transform your reply into a long screed. Trust administrators to see into it. They have better eyes than most of us, most of the time.Nishidani (talk) 13:07, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you :)--علي سمسم (talk) 13:16, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

It would be wise to withdraw your complaint. You made an error, since it was not User:Gunrpks who reported you but User:Shrike. I have already noted in his complaint the unsatisfactoriness of his report, and you would do well therefore to withdraw your complaint, and allow admiistrators to examine the whole set of diffs for the relevant pages and make up their own minds. Edit-warring did occur on both sides, and they must evaluate from your respective records what to do in each case.Nishidani (talk) 13:57, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Nomination of List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel is suitable for inclusion in Misplaced Pages according to Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. AlanS (talk) 14:37, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

A cup of tea for you!

I find it chills me more than coffee! I think we can work well together, because of, more than despite, our differing POVs. I think most editors misuse or fail to grasp the positives of that dynamic, in many contentious areas. Cheers :) Irondome (talk) 00:22, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, gratefully accepted. Nicely designed cup, though I prefer a mug, because the latter makes me think of myself.Nishidani (talk) 21:30, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Ditto :). With respect, Irondome (talk) 02:04, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks lads for riding shotgun on this page, (NSH001, Sean.hoyland, Sjö and Yunshui)

But now that I see what the removed 150 odd attacks by this Nishidumbass sockster wrote, I wonder at the puerile lack of an ability to connect one's thoughts to real history. Willing death on others in order to defend one's 'ethnic vitalism' is of course a Nazi cast of mind, and therefore, ipso facto unacceptable for anyone with the genocide of WW2 still vivid in recall.

Hitler once said:’ We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew.' Manfred Henningsen, ‘The Politics of Purity and Exclusion,’ Björn H. Jernudd, Michael J. Shapiro (eds.), The Politics of Language Purism, Mouton de Gruyter ‎1989 pp.31-52 p.48 Same pathology in the sock who thinks eliminating Christians, Europeans, Arabs and wikipedia will somehow secure the survival of Israel. Even if that happened I would survive, I guess, being a pagan, and only 'European' by adoption. Then again, if wikipedia was killed off, I might just, qua Nishidani, croak with it! Nishidani (talk) 07:34, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Sjö! tack så mycket

Strömkarlen spelar,

Sorgerna delar

Vakan kring berg och dal.

雲水先生,谢 谢 你 的 帮 助.

喜見行脚人

恥茶無兩杯 Nishidani (talk) 10:19, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

That's very elegant - a pleasure to assist someone of a poetic bent. Yunshui _水 10:29, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

No poetic bent, but a bent for what poets write, reading which keeps me sane when editing in here. The merits of elegance lie elsewhere, I confess. I'd been reading about Ladakh recently, while engaged in a AfD discussion on Nepal, and saw those elegant verses by a Chinese visitor to that wonderful place. Then someone offered me a cup of tea (see above), and I thought of tsampa, and when I saw the 雲 in your handle I thought of the Tümed, and 水, water, by an uncanny coincidence, clicked with the other admin's handle Sjö, which in Swedish means 'lake' and both of you had rid my page of a Strömkarl, who tries to drown people (here by inundating the page with racist hogwash). Thanks again.Nishidani (talk) 10:54, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Your recent editing history shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

Misplaced Pages edit warring noticeboard

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Misplaced Pages's policy on edit warringTritomex (talk) 11:06, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Notice of WP:ARBPIA

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding the Arab–Israeli conflict, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Misplaced Pages, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

Template:Z33--Bbb23 (talk) 20:21, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Pursuant to your call that I effectively violated the IRR at Operation Protective Edge, and in lieu of the obligatory sanction, given your discretionary comments, I will observe a 48 hour self-suspension from editing as of this moment. Best regards.Nishidani (talk) 21:15, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Early Christian history

Ho, mikado! First, is there maybe a missing "a" in the time since your retirement. Second as someone who knows something about the topic, you might maybe be interested in Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Christianity/Noticeboard#Userspace drafts.John Carter (talk) 20:49, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Lynx-eyed, John. Was in a hurry, and, though straining the bean to modify 'donkey's age(s), which would be untrue, as I didn't retire yonks, but a year or thereabouts ago, I thought I'd have to downscale the years in that idiom, and of course a donkey's offspring is a foal, meaning retired less than papa donkey's years. Perhaps it would better be Don Quixote's years? I'm fucked if I know, spending what little spare time I have to give names to history's rerun of a recpetitive tragedy that visits the anonymous, who die under the broadbrush journalistic cant of 'terrorists' every time them furreners shoot into that fish bowl that is the Gaza Strip. Tomorrow's Sunday, so as a gesture to ancient beliefs, I might have a glance at that draft, but I fear the overnight death toll will rise steeply enough to keep my fingers concentrated on the Gaza necrology. Cheers, John.Nishidani (talk) 21:05, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 19 July

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article

Good article, nableezy - 22:56, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Are you planning on sticking around for a while ? I hope so. Sean.hoyland - talk 10:44, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Probably not. Forgive me, but its too aggravating, depressing, ... . nableezy - 16:23, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't blame you. It's definitely depressing. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:04, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

At my age I look on the positive side. Things like this comfort me at the prospect of death. Having lived with exceptional good luck a fair dose of years, I don't see much point in hanging round, though I have to while my ineludible biological momentum insists otherwise, to watch both this slaughter, and read articles, or edit with people, who fail the most elementary standards of objective evaluation or humanity. It'll be good to be dead, and not wake up every day in a part of the comfortable world and have to measure one's pleasure in existence against the larger realities of an engulfing cruelty. This is not a sensible perception for the younger to entertain, of course.Nishidani (talk) 17:17, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps you would enjoy a break from the carnage over at Talk:Samaria#.2F.2A_In_the_header._.2A.2F. Sean.hoyland - talk 19:00, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Just what the doctor ordered for a laugh. Phew, some editors are so badly informed they ought to consider a career in politics, aim for the White House or whatever. You can get away with that level of nescience there at least.Nishidani (talk) 20:08, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. It's nice for people to be reminded of the actual facts of real world scholarship, and get them momentarily off that dripfeed of 'terrorist' reportage that makes life exciting for the dull as they browse the internet for the hollywood version of history or watch TV from the comfort of their barca loungers in the air-conditioned nightmare. You'll recall, Nab, Sara Roy said it all in 2009 after the Gaza War here. But of course since she is the world's foremost authority on Israel designed dedevelopment of Gaza, publishing a premonitory study of the problems back in 1987, no one will care to listen. Some quotes:

Gazan farmers are legally forbidden to reclaim their own land unless they obtain permission from the Israeli military authorities.

Gaza expanded its trade in the late 1950s to the COMECON countries of Eastern Europe. .. Immediately after the June 1967 war, all Western markets were banned to Gazan exporters in order to preclude competition with Israeli agricultural producers and then, as now, to limit Gaza's access to foreign economic and political circles.

Restrictions on export markets also extend to the Israeli market.Presently, Gaza's farmers are prohibited from marketing most fruits and vegetables inside Israel, a measure designed to avoid competition with Israeli products. . .Certain products, such as strawberries, eggplants, and zucchini, which are not competitive with Israeli products, are allowed to enter Israel's markets through the Vegetable Marketing Board . . citrus products are also exported to Israel from Gaza for use in juice factories. Israeli producers, on the other hand, have unlimited access to Gazan markets, exporting substantial quantities of fruits and vegetables at prices with which Gazan farmers are unable to compete.

In light of the critical water problems inside Gaza, the Israeli government, through its affiliated water company, Mekorot, has issued restrictions against the digging of new wells and has limited the amount of water that Palestinian farmers may use, These same restriction on water consumption, however, do not apply to the Israeli settlements inside the Strip, which have installed 35-40 new wells in recent years, . . According to the Israeli Water Commission, in 1985 alone, Israelis living in the Gaza Strip consumed, per capita, 2,326 cubic meters of water compared to an average consumption of 123 cubic meters for every Gazan

Nishidani (talk) 11:52, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

In short 'déjà vu', because the political elites read the New York Times headlines, and have no time for the real details. My advice is, keep away. You've done enough in here.Nishidani (talk) 11:52, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Page protection

Guess you'll be needing that again, then... Yunshui _水 10:35, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this tedious mopping up. I guess each dull job exacted on the intelligent, esp. to help others, deserves ther elevation of poetry's thank you. For the moment, after thinking these days that work in this area is like wandering into Dante's selva selvaggia e aspra e forte, one thinks of 鮑照's 路難 and thus,

瀉水置平地

各自東西南北流

人生亦有命

安能行嘆復坐愁

酌酒以自寬

舉杯斷絕歌路難

心非木石豈無感

吞聲躑躅不敢言. Best regards,Nishidani (talk) 11:10, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Full protection maybe? Of course, we'd have to make you an admin, and I'm not sure I'd want to that to you. John Carter (talk) 17:30, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Don't think that's necessary, though it annoys me that admin time is taken up sweeping the Augean stables that IP blow-ins, and assorted teenagers with a logorrhoic capacity for dittological repetition of racist graffiti, wish to impose here. You see far more wit and ingenuity in the Latin inscriptions on the walls of the dunnies and brothels in Pompei, which reminds me that Alec Hope once aspired to get the attention of Christopher Brennan, by then a reclusive drunk, by following him into a pub toilet and, while he too pointed his percy at the porcelain, with his free hand wrote down a piece of Latin verse recently published (late 1920s) from excavations in Pompei, on next cubicle wall. Though pissed as a newt, the erudite Brennan, glanced over while splashing his boots, and, buttoned up, corrected an error in the reproduced inscription's grammar. Patience. I edit to ensure that the Palestinian side of this fratricidal conflict is duly and fairly represented, and it is only natural that the place will be bombed, in a petty and insignificant mimesis of what goes on in the real world over there.Nishidani (talk) 18:49, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Agree with your view on the conflict being fratricidal. In fact all human conflicts are fratricidal. One of my favorite WP articles is Mitochondrial Eve. Regards, IjonTichy (talk) 17:25, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps the better word is, psychoanalytically, 'autocidal', given the doubleness of human identity: you kill something in yourself when you murder others.Nishidani (talk) 09:49, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes. And when we damage the natural environment, we are injuring ourselves. When we degrade it, we are degrading ourselves. IjonTichy (talk) 16:12, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Participate the discussion please

Hi! I think you've missed a discussion occurred at here. Please participate the discussion by presenting your ideas about the background section. Best Mhhossein (talk) 21:39, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Give me a proper link. That one took me to the article, which is not a discussion, but the result of editing. I'm not aware of an ongoing discussion, and have been away for two days visiting libraries (not on this issue). If there is indeed a discussion I missed in the meantime point me to it. Or otherwise, raise here the issues you wish to discuss, so I can get back to reviewing the background (at a glance it seems to have been modified somewhat).Nishidani (talk) 22:17, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 24 July

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• On the Shuja'iyya Incident (2014) page, your edit caused a broken reference name (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:32, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

List of Israeli strikes and Palestinian casualties in Operation Protective Edge

I fixed this up as best I could; please note edit summary contents and hidden text. The list has issues. For one thing, the number of wounded is very hard to specify with any kind of exactitude which is what I think you are (understandably) trying to do. Also, some of the links are no longer active. Best of luck. Quis separabit? 00:45, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

First, thanks for the precision of textual review. All wiki work begins as provisory, and is in a constant state of flux, as sourcing or editors improve. All articles, not only lists, have 'issues': castrate a text by occultation and it will have no issue. Once one begins to hide text because it falls short of perfection, no passing editor will see it and be prompted to improve it, so improvement of the hidden text falls back uniquely on the shoulders of the editor who drafted it and lies under the obligation to check every tinkered contribution. This is just a practical issue of worksmanship. Perfection (exactitude) is acquired festinans lente in itinere, not given. Since this is a working bee, optimally, one thinks of Pliny's community of that species: laborem tolerant, opera conficiunt, rempublicam habent.(HN,XL 9) Nishidani (talk) 09:14, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Evildoer187

User Evildoer187, has returned to Misplaced Pages and has violated his topic ban. This ip belongs to him and he is using it to avoid his topic ban. He states in this edit summary that it belongs to him. AcidSnow (talk) 17:11, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm not an administrator, and as an editor, my general policy is not to report infractions of wikilaw. If this is a problem I'm sure people who follow such things will eventually pick it up.Nishidani (talk) 17:22, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

It is good to see that the article pertaining to the Gaza-Israel situation has been somewhat restrained as of late and is keeping as neutral of a view as is seemingly possible for an article like this. In the mean time, if anything gets out of hand, look at this pretty kitten!

Jab843 (talk) 16:31, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Given the fact that 'having kittens' in British English means 'getting hysterical', I should register that I'm immune to hysteria. My comments can express an undertone of contempt or fatigue or outrage every now and then (every 50 edits) at the idiocy of wikipedia, but I'm not prone to hysteria, since I lack a womb, and even had I one, it would not bear kittens, metaphorically or otherwise, but something more monstrous like a dictionary of etruscan.Nishidani (talk) 17:34, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Your reversion

May I asked what I wrote that what biased and not just the inclusion of facts? Looking at your page you seem to biased and a bit antisemitic, I think I'll consult more neutral parties. --monochrome_monitor 10:24, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Nishidani (talk) 18:41, 28 July 2014 (UTC)