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Pure condescension from a pseud in Polonius's corner but

I'm breaking my rule again, but this is not editing, which I deeply enjoy, and therefore . . . Twenty years ago I spent a week arguing night and day with a friend on the proposition 'If I am hit by a thrown stone, no matter whoever threw it, I am to blame'. My friend lives in terms of this principle of absolute responsibility. I think that, philosophically, I won the argument, i.e., that it is simply not operationally true, though psychoanalytically there is a deep truth hidden there, in that we are by nurture and nature, driven to be complicit in the world's woes while, on a conscious plane, deploring them and disavowing our personal responsibility. Still I accept that it is a useful moral myth, worth adopting. The advice my anecdote is intended to proffer is, I hope, evident. Never allow situations to arise in which you feel you are the victim. You do, read by others, appear to seek out situations in which you are personally challenged. You will find an inexhaustible number of people ready to exploit an heroic frailty of this order. If you have an inkling, however well founded, that this is how you feel, then you'll have to work it off. Bringing it into your edits is precisely what those who would rid wiki of your presence desire. If these situations recur and you play by the standard rules, then you are indeed complicit. Use occasions, where that possiility is being prompted by provocative edits, to examine your conscience, rather than indulge in (an otherwise justifiable) sense of outrage. In a certain sense, we also construct our grievances, and when one reads a vignette like, to name one of many, 'Tagar and the Teepee Family (in Henryk Broder’s ‘A Jew in the New Germany’ 2003 pp.122-129, from memory), one should murmur, if one reads deeply, 'I too can see myself in this', though the story invites, on one plane, the reader to view those it describes as bizarre. Take a break, reflect on your conviction of certainty, which is a dangerous thing to have, use your extensive knowledge frugally, to enrich the texts, not to bait those who bait you, and, please, lastly, try an experiment. Find two figures within Judaism or Jewry, and Palestinian culture who have yet to earn themselves the page due to them, research them, and write the two bios up with care, contemporaneously. For Palestine I suggest Yitzak Shami, the Hebronite writer. Not to convince those who hunt for you scalp to lay off. But overfocusing on I/P conflicts, and not on many other dimensions that are less conflictual, is balm to the self, or, if you will, the soul. Best wishes. It is summer, enjoy it. Apologies for the paternalism, and goodbye for now Nishidani (talk) 18:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

PR, you are innocent of the charge, as 'framed'. But you have been asked by this community (I am not a community man, but signing on here means accepting that community's rules) to be mentored. Whatever the reasons, four have given up. Avi may have been harsh, but he has a point. Jaakobou may have had far more industrious mentors that you have had, I do not know. I would probably differ profoundly with Jaakobou on almost everything, but I simply must note here that, when you were brought under review here, the Jaakobou of the past did not comment. Jaakobou behaved impeccably by examining the diffs, and saying there was simply nothing there to warrant the request for a community ban, and he did this in defence of a person for whom he may well have an antipathy. This is not an inquest into ulterior motives. It is a matter of judging people by their actual online behaviour, and that intervention is something you should have learnt from. I don't think you realize sufficiently how what you may write bounces off other minds. You sound, often, aggrieved or triumphant ethically, and this (while, as a person who on most political issues would appear an extremist, (I do believe our everyday world is insane and literally totalitarian) I share your perspective) has absolutely no utility to securing NPOV articles on I/P pages. You simply cannot see things coming. In the past I have been able, on more than one occasion, to intuit a disaster looking you in the face, from a trend in editing, and sigh 'Oh, dear, here we go . .' and sure enough, you stepped up and got whupped. Why? Because you appear to be so giddily assured astride your moral high horse (I saddle up on an absurd leviathan of a hobby horse in privately thinking of Palestinians and their shocking historical plight, but I have had to dismount when editing to the text, because one must write with the head, antennae rigged for full reception, not with the heart, if one is to establish a strong neutral text) that you forget the point of editing, which is to get text that is impeccably sourced, and faithful to the facts. You are managing to do that rarely now, because you are so (understandably) disconcerted by what you see in your adversaries edits. Don't then think of your adversaries, think of the article. There is a vast amount of good information that simply is not here because many readers don't read in libraries, but get their info off the net. It is information that cannot be challenged with impunity, because it comes from the best university presses, from authoritative academics who are not necessarily Finkelsteins, Chomskies or Shahaks (men I hold in the highest esteem). Since you do research and read, I ask myself why you keep coming back over the same ground. Perhaps I miss much. I don't track people.

That is why I wish to broach the idea, which I only alluded to last night, of you offering to take a rest off Misplaced Pages to review your commitment to it. For over the past several months, all you have had is a life at the terminal with wikitrouts slapping out of the screen, and little satisfaction in seeing material you have influencing the shaping of an article. One has to be creative in these circumstances. I tried to set some example by withdrawing with a self-imposed sanction. You have done nothing to merit a sanction, and I think those who pressed the suit against you were grievously, perhaps maliciously, in error. But even if the suit closes in your favour, the problem of that hostility which feeds off a style you have of kibitzing, remains, and above all, you, of whom the community required a mentor, no longer have the confidence of the fourth, and last. Phil Knight, a very good admin, who says little, is wholly neutral, and warrants respect, mentioned three months, notwithstanding the thin evidence. Why not simply, as in chess (much of wiki arbitration is a virtual version of three-dimensional chess), make a sacrifice gambit. Something like that would clear the air, give you time to work, as Tiamut, Eleland, perhaps myself, and others have decided to do, off-line, away from wiki, so that, in the future one will return, perhaps rarely, to make edits whose quality simply jumps over the usual pettifogging arguments, but in particular, by working that way, one saves most of that time (which is most of the time, negotiating exhaustively on minor points on talk pages, without having an effect on a text?). You have been patient with my presumptuously paternalistic intrusions, and I hope you do not read this as in anyway endorsing the bad treatment you have had on many (nota bene, not on all) occasions in the past. It is just that, as I said last night, by nature, even if I am innocent, I tend to blame my lack of anticipative foresight if I find myself, without wishing to be there, up shit creek in a barbed wire canoo. I should conclude nonetheless that you are perfectly in your rights to dismiss this as improper, given that, objectively, you appear to have been subjected, in this instance, to a kind of barratry. But the danger at the edges, to nurture that sense of injustice, should not blind you to the long-term issue, of being a highly useful, perhaps even in time, authoritative editor in wiki, which is what all should aspire to. Regards Nishidani (talk) 19:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that WP is an important project that deserves our support and patience and cooperation. However, it's plainly gone wrong, with even real scholars (I don't count myself) hounded by illiterates. One of our dearly esteemed fellows claims to be well informed on Rudolf Kastner, and told us he's mostly written the article on his accuser. Needless to say, the article trivialises the guy personally (calling him "an amateur journalist and stamp-collector") and undermines the crucial work he did (at a minimum, proving that Kastner had protected a Nazi jew-killer from prosecution). If you think that WP is strong enough to bite the bullet and cure itself of such a cancer, then I'll stand aside to let it do so. PR 19:56, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

(<-)Not being as eloquent as others, I will spare you copying in my long talks with Nishdani, but for what it is worth, I agree with Nishdani that you have significant potential, but that it gets lost in your particular style and the concomitant drama it entails. A break from P/I articles and a return which demonstrates the willingness to work with all editors will go a long way in helping your interactions with others, the state of the I/P articles, and the project as a whole. -- Avi (talk) 20:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

PR, I was tempted to say that writing these things has caused me some grief, because, and I repeat this before Avi, I do think that here you have been wronged, somewhat disgracefully. However, in being tempted to say this, I realize that I am causing you grief, because I suggested that, in a sense, you accede freely, by a symbolic gesture, to withdrawing for a time precisely in one instance where I think you happen to have just cause. I think WP, especially in articles where nationalisms clash, is in perpetual, Heraclitean flux, which means that most work on these articles is unstable, and therefore a waste of effort. Only work of such quality that its merits as a closely researched and comprehensive contribution are sufficient to commend tactful response and collaborative improvement here and there warrants consideration. To do this requires some of the virtues James Joyce asked of artists in the dénouement of his Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. I do not wish to exaggerate. We are humble millers at the grindstone, when not bullshit artists. I have said elsewhere several things about how some tests might improve the writing of these articles. Competitive pages on the same subject, each written by one side, to see which page best meets NPOV conditions. It won't occur. So one thinks of other options. Silence, deeper study, drafting a page with a meticulous review of the evidences so far available on the existing wiki pages, adjusted with what library research tells us, etc. Working in silence, with oneself, means the only relevant conflict is with one's self and the conflicting evidence before one. A Norman Finkelstein, a Chomsky, etc., can afford to push for a strong interpretation. I basically agree with their work, particularly Chomsky whose works most Israeli wikipedians unfortunately know only by hearsay. But in accepting to work in Misplaced Pages, I had to suspend that intellectual sympathy, because encyclopedias are NPOV, not strongly argued points of view. I think you (but then again who doesn't) confuse at times these two dimensions, one's personal sympathies which can be solidly grounded in the finest scholarship, and what an encyclopedia asks for, 'both sides' (even the side whose version one may dissent with strongly) fairly represented. You are as far as I am concerned, completely at liberty to choose to ignore my advice, and if you do, I will not think for a minute that, in doing so, you are doing anything more than exercising a just sense that nothing so far, regarding your very recent behaviour, should require you to renounce the pleasure of continuing to edit. My concern, and I think Avi shares this, is that it is not improbable, however this one plays out, that if one or two more incidents do occur (whatever again their merits) the temptation by the community will be, and these things are rather irrational despite the due process, to hand out a permanent ban. It is that possibility which troubles me, not the present fiasco.

I think a fine editor like G-Dett might well dissent from my advice, and would have some substantial reasons for suggesting you do otherwise. I would ask you to ask G-Dett for a a review of things via email. I would ask Avi for a little patience, another day or two at most, for PR to get more imput, and reflect on what proposal (s)he might consider making. I should, as a matter of principle, have givemn you notice of the fact that I have discussed this off the ANI page with Avi, at his and my own page.

Finally, nothing so drastic as a 'cancer' will intervene if you, or I, or anyone else withdraws for a while, or permanently, no more than, were Avi or Jaakobou to withdraw, articles would suddenly have Hamas-perspectives on rampage over the Jerusalem page. I don't believe in 'sides'. There are good and trustworthy editors on both sides, old and new ones are regularly recruited. Much is subjective, I have a fine working rapport with my virtual friend Ceedjee, but he annoys some others on 'my side' (ugh!), for example. We argued against and past each other quite vigorously at first, etc.etc. I'll stay on, against protests from my library's unread summer books and my wife, until this can seen through to a decent solution, in which your undoubted integrity comes out unblemished. Best wishes, and take your time Nishidani (talk) 22:27, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Re Avi

PR. I simply do not have the kind of omniscience required to give proper advice. You cite Avi's suggestion to you, and seize on Avi's use of the example of how he co-mentored, with Fayssal, Isarig. As I read it, Avi's suggestion bears absolutely none of the insinuation that you see in it. He is not comparing you to Isarig, who was an extremely disruptive editor. Avi, and mentoring is a great burdon on anyone's time, generously offered to take you under his wing. Until now, people have been saying '4 mentors' strike out, PR should have a permanent ban. Avi stepped in, and, modifying his earlier remarks subsequent to extensive discussions with, among others, me, but above all, after reflecting, it appears, on the evidence, he appears there to have withdraw his initial request for a 6-month site ban, and allowed you the chance to continue editing under 2 mentors. Now, given the atmosphere, that is an extraordinarily meritorious gesture. I.e. Avi could have pressed for (a)a ban, (b)a suspension for several months (c) your spontaneous withdrawal from IP for some months, and, instead he now says: 'Look, forget this case. The problem is basically, 'who mentors PR' now that Ryan has left? and, despite little time, a certain exhaustion, he has extended you hospitality by offering to spend some of his day helping you review the edits you like. The analogy with Isarig is not intended in any way to compare you to Isarig. The analogy was the nature of Isarig's dual mentorship. Isarig was a pro-Israeli editor, Avi being Jewish, had Isarig's confidence, while Fayssal, being Arab could offer advice and perspectives that Avi might miss, and yet would be important were Isarig to learn to understand both sides. Avi was therefore saying to you. Look, you've had a hard time getting mentors. I'll make a sacrifice of my time to help you. As a Jewish editor, those whom you regard as engaging with you, and your mentors, with a certain animosity, will have me to deal with. I am, ideologically, on that side, though I aspire to fairness and neutrality. At the same time, as with the Isarig case, if you accept my offer, you could then ask for someone with a perspective closer to your own, of wide experience, to collaborate with us both, as Fayssal did with me. The comparison, Dear PR, is over a situation requiring, optimally, dual mentorship with a Jewish person and a pro-Palestinian editor, both of whom are held in high regard for their intelligence, fairness, and experience. Avi has all of those qualities. You are at liberty, if you have grounded suspicions, to reject his generous offer (the other mentor is still hypothetical, until forthcoming), but it distresses me that you have misread what Avi said, to the detriment of the regard that is his due. To me, you appear to have snubbed a person who held out a hand to you, and, while I have argued strongly and with conviction that you have been victimized by a shabby piece of barratry, I have also said to you several times that you do, despite an intelligence that mugs up details and works hard to get good material, on occasion radically misunderstand at times the tone of what other people say to you. It is precisely this unfortunate reading through or over people (and not those necessarily hostile to you, who are easy to read) which gets you into trouble. As I said, this is what makes you an easy target. It is not the material you wish to edit in that has ever worried me. It is to the contrary the exhibition of hurt, of a sense of justice thwarted which you tend to express when you find your edits challenged by hostile, or tendentious coeditors. That is why I suggested you rest off for a few months, spontaneously, and just think this specific, and recurrent problem through. You are asked to edit quality material. You will encounter, like everyone, opposition. To edit requires patience, intelligence, and above all, an acquired mastery of that private world of idealistic outrage or patriotic amour-propre, which, if evidenced or influencing one's online approach, wrecks contributions because it is so, as youngsters say, in-your-face. These are private things better said on email. They are my purely subjective opinions, and I apologize for the frankness. Anyone looking at this and using it in the future should be warned that it is only on PR's page because I refuse to use email on ethical grounds, and yet have been requested to comment. PR if you think this unfair, please erase it immediately. Nishidani (talk) 14:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I may have misunderstood Avi's intentions completely. But I'm seeing repeated assertions that "mentoring failed" in my case, when it plainly did not. As I've repeatedly pointed out, my mentors were systematically harassed - even #1, SpecialJane could likely have got away as a banned returned user if she'd not put herself forwards as my mentor. (There were 4 real mentors in all before the last volunteer was controversially de-syssoped).

Nor am I seeing any discussion of what "mentorship" is supposed to mean (this is a bit more significant than it might appear).

Under these circumstances, it is absurd to suggest that "mentorship" is a genuine option unless I'm completely free to choose my own mentor. Despite some very kind offers you're the only person really in the frame as lead mentor and I'd leave it to you to choose a second. You might choose one or more admins strongly resistant to bullying for essential back-up. PR 15:45, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Please read the last three sentences of my suggestion. Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 15:52, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

With respect, Avi - the following: "If there is someone else willing to take the primary role in attempting a fifth go-round with you, PR" is nonsense. My mentors MUST be protected from the outrageous harassment they've suffered in the past. You don't need reminding of the disgusting things that happened back last summer, but you might care to check this and be reminded what degree of impunity has appeared to exist (and of course, actually did exist - see this devastating charge sheet go unpunished) just in the most recent past. Just how bad do the I-P articles have to get before we reverse ourselves and start operating NPOV in some recognisable form? PR 17:07, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

My point was simply that I agree you have the choice to choose your own mentor. With respect, PR, may I say that the above back-and-forth (which actually started on Nishdani's talk page) is somewhat indicative of part of the problems. Very few of us are authors or orators on the level of a Cicero or a Daniel Webster, and we may not be able to craft the ideal turn of phrase. For most people, one needs to look at intent, and if that is unclear, ask for clarification. One can almost always find a sentence or two which may be (mis)interpreted in some manner. You are very intelligent, and well-written, and can re-direct a conversation or a discussion down a tributary by such analysis. However, wouldn't it be in everyone's interest to try and give the benefit of the doubt or at least ask for clarification before making statements that place others on the defensive? Nishdani's analysis above is a good example of this. Perhaps I could have phrased my offer better, but to insinuate that I was directly comparing you to Isarig was a misrepresentation. I understand that you feel constantly on the defensive, so I do not think you were acting in a malicious manner with intent to pervert the idea my offer into a veiled insult. However, I hope you can understand that responding to many conversations with the such defensiveness will result in people's becoming less likely to give you the benefit of the doubt that you do not extend to them, and the cycle perpetuates. Part of the benefit of having mentors is that you can discuss ways of phrasing responses in a less antagonistic or defense-inducing manner (not that I think you need the guidance, but perhaps the advice as to the result of your actions) to stop the cycle from your end. It also helps in that the mentors can act as buffers with others, trying to stop the cycle from their end.

In my opinion, what you need to ask yourself, PR, is what do you really want to accomplish on wikipedia. Do you really want to help ensure that wiki articles, especially P/I ones, provide a neutral (in the wiki definition, not lobotomized) description? Then you will have to be willing to work with editors who do not share your ideological perspective, be willing to engage them in conversation that does not immediately become a veiled wikilawyerfest or an ad hominem free-for-all, and be willing to compromise to create a consensus version (see Avi's definition #22 - a consensus version of an article is the version that is least offensive to the greatest number of editors) of various articles. If, however, you feel that wikipedia is wrong, and you must spread the the truth about an issue, while I understand your feelings, that is not wikipedia's purpose and you would be better served by posting in influential blogs and listservs.

We all agree to be bound by wiki's policies and guidelines when we post here, and even if, at times, it may seem like you, I, or someone else may be getting a bum rap, or an unfair dispensation, that is a result of us all being human. At this point, you have, for better or for worse, developed a certain amount of wikidrama around your posts and editing, which generated enough interest by others in the project to call for some kind of resolution. You are a free man, with free will, and you may choose how you wish to act. Please recognize that the community is also compose of people with free will who may choose how to respond. I hope you do take advantage of the shared mentorship experiment, and more importantly, I hope that you eventually choose to continue to edit articles in a non-conforntational non-defensive, non-defensiveness inducing manner that allows for your natural ability to be used by the project. But, that is your choice, no one elses. -- Avi (talk) 18:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

If the result of an RfC packed with mendacity is that I have to have a mentor but I get to choose my own, then I want Nishidani. However, we need cast-iron guarantees that he not be harassed and villified and blocked as happened to each of my previous 4 voluntary mentors. PR 18:53, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

It's taken me a half an hour of time I should have spent talking to my wife just to get this frigging post past the wrecked disk of my computer. I note further discussion. i won't add to that except to say that you may have a need you are well aware of, a cause you have reason to complain about, but, intensely focused on this need, you have not evinced a moment's notice that I have expressed a desire to abandon wiki, a right you think inferior to your need to have me back (I am flattered on one plane but that is not the point), and Avi himself has been magnanimous with his own offers, and you couldn't perceive that either. What follows is my last word here.

Notice:This is one of several personal emails, faute de mieux from me to PR, with Avi's right to be privy to its contents. It should not be harvested by other parties as evidence for anything in the future'.

PR. I don't know how to reply except by a rather spontaneous divagation. I hope you will bear with me. Please note that, in discussing, anything from Hezbollah to Nietzsche, I am thinking in terms of propaedeutic analogies, that you are free to accept or reject as bearing on your own circumnstances as an editor.

As you know I withdrew from editing I/P articles, and I am still trying to justify to myself my violation of that undertaking, in the sense that while I have abstained from editing these articles, I have, seeing an injustice done, returned to defend you from what struck me from day one as barratry. I must look, with these solemn declarations and exits and reentries, like some faggy old ham in a failed vaudevillean matinée show, hauling himself back for curtain calls, when his day has past, or like Judy Garland on her woeful last days as an ever-retiring prima donna several decades past her prime. I'm embarrassed that I'm still here, and can only say in justification that I am so because, still following things, I imagined you would get banned, on zero-evidence. That was simply too much, and, PR, you shoot yourself in the foot when conducting your own defence.

As you know, and Coppertwig alludes to it in his last comment (his judgement altered as I reviewed the evidence from 'ban' to 'non-ban'), I'm old enough to be set in my ways. I come from a verbal and textual-critical culture that simply cannot fit into a discursive environment where, optimally, one sticks to facts without comment on the hinterland, textual, historical, political and psychological, behind those facts and those who use them. As a former editor, I elided from what I wrote virtually everything (95%) of what I perceived, since it was not germane to the task I assumed, i.e.,(a) harvest what little knowledge I have on specific areas and get those facts onto a page that lacks them (b) in a condition where most editors not only do not share my worldview, but think of history, events, and facts in ways that are diametrically opposed to my own. Since, within the rules of the 'game' that is their right and entitlement, mirroring my own, one wrestled over sources to get a reasonably NPOV text. In the first year, I got into trouble for discursive effrontery, and wasted time in disputes. In one vigorous dispute I clashed with an editor, Ceedjee, who, notwithstanding the fact, obvious to both of us, that we would agree on little, had the courtesy to appreciate that I was serious, reasonably well-informed, and dedicated to the encyclopedia's highest aim, despite my garrulous opinionizing. That virtual friendship proved most productive. I could trust him, and he could trust me, to edit over 95% of articles whose editing we shared, without friction by seeing where the important facts lay, and what the rules allowed. On 5% of things, fundamental things, we simply have no common ground, but this was understood. Secondly, a certain tolerance for the way I develop my thoughts, a way that is simply not compatible with a strict reading of WP:NPA, etc.etc., has tacitly by appearances, been conceded to me, even by many very strong pro-Israeli editors, with whom I have clashed, because, I presume their code of manners makes exceptions for age and its irremediable foibles, one of which is lack of respect for the rules of what is a young community. From text to text, also, I found an improved environment esp. after the new sanctions came in.

You keep reciting the wrongs of the past, and that is, basically, what both I and Avi have been talking about. I have a congenital dislike of ressentiment ever since, as a 16 yr.old, I cam across Nietzsche's essay on it. Resentment is often grounded in realities which justify one entertaining it, but, as a sentiment, it spells failure for those who cultivate it. For one thing, one's adversaries, if inured to the harsher logic of history, and endowed with a highly intelligent and eminently practical outlook, can fish in those waters and string along on a lengthy line the gudgeons that run to that kind of bait. Once you're hooked, whatever injustice trails in your wake, you will flap along in protest, feeding on resentment all the while, to the point where you can't see the water for the mud you stir, nor the angler at the end of the line. Great beliefs which command the most respectable and idealistic sentiments we have, can, at a deeper level, Nietzsche argued, can arise from resentment, and push its affective logic into the sphere of a strong moral position. All sorts of moral postures are self-punitive. Arthur Koestler, who wrote an impassioned book, highly biased, and yet deeply informative,Promise and Fulfillment on Zionism and its struggles against Palestinian national aspirations, once remarked that war is the product of our deepest virtue, altruism. I think Dr.Johnson concurred, when he famously quipped that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Why? because we are wired to sacrifice ourselves for a principle, usually pushed by people who wipe their arses on principles, and whose idea of sacrifice is to forsake the pleasures of fasting at Lent in order to go trout fishing with Richard Brautigan, or dining at La Tour d'Argent. But if everybody were as egoistic as Richard Dawkins's gene, war would never take place, because, were a call to arms forthcoming, by the usual clique of pompous idiots who prevail in the palace, and no one expressed any readiness to die for the touted principle of fatherland, or the Volk under seige, or the women said to be at imminent risk of mass rape, or the children to be butchered, the appeal, from both the president or king, or premier, and the concomitant appeal to a war of defence by the enemy king, president or premier, would fall on deaf ears.

Let me illustrate. I am someone who thinks Hamas and Hezbollah are normal phenomena in the historical circumstances that gave rise to those movements, and am congenitally incapable of being swept up in the hysteria that generally arises whenever they are mentioned. Suspend all tendentious, polemical or instinctive reflexes of thought and emotion, all moral judgements, ethnic or political bias, and look objectively at the larger, less 'incidental' state of 'play'. Hezbollah, whatever its propaganda, fits the pattern Ernest Gellner imagined before his untimely death of a religious fundamentalism within Islam that would have superior modernizing capacities than its its secular competitors within the Arab world. It does not, as a matter of what my generation called praxis, at least since Nasrullah, indulge in actions irrationally prompted by blind resentment, outrage, platitudinous appeals to the world for 'justice', or appeals to types of action that require large numbers of its adherents to commit suicide. It fights, mainly, according to rational calculations of war, thorough mastery of the terrain where conflict will occur, of the enemy's language, culture and communications, and not on the traditional terms its enemy would dictate. It has, over the last decade and a half, lost few casualties comparatively, secured its terrain against occupation, developed infrastructure, creating a state within a state (whether for good or bad I do not know). Hamas, an understandable phenomenon given the incompetence and corruption of the PLO/PNA, seems keen, on the other hand, to play according to terms determined by its enemy, and which its enemy can't lose, since it designs the rules. It wants to reform morals, as much as it might aspire to build infrastructure, exploits powerfully a culture of understandable resentment bred of desperation, and plays on the idealism of youth to recruit martyrs ready to kill themselves for a cause. It loses every military encounter except those against the hopelessly incompetent PLO, as if defeat were something to be desired in order to vindicate its cause and inculcate through the consequent suffering that defeat guarantees, how evil its enemy is. The more it is checkmated by Israel, the greater its pride in defeating the PNA, which happens to be its only potential territorial ally. Gazan society is drawn into a spiral of self-sustaining futility and clan-based segmentation. As some elements in Hamas think, 'uh, this is not working, we must moderate', the very world whose in whose impoverishment it has inadvertently collaborated by its suicidal policies, turns now to Salafi 'reformism'. The logic is one of incessant fragmentation (long understood as a weakness in Palestinian society with its strong regional, pre-modern and clan-based traditions), towards the dead-end of religious extremism. All this is not unfavourable to certain policy makers in the IDF. Hamas's very success, despite the rockets, can be read as in part a success also for that part of the IDF and Israeli political society that prefers the sidebenefits that flow from paralysis, to the abstract benefits of resolution, since resolution would require territorial loss of sacred or strategic ground.

I'm not interested in whether this just-so story, which is at one level a gross travesty of a far more complex historical reality, is reasonably true to some key facts, or not. I adduce it as a prompt to reflection on the state of seige and 'warfare' (edit-warring with others over the terrain of I/P articles) you find or feel yourself in. In your several replies, you talk of cheating, the injustices of the past, intimate a certain resentment (resentment is often a legitimate feeling, and a wholly natural one). Everytime I talk about this, you come back with names and circumstances, asking me to check this or that out. No doubt if I did I would, as often as not, see the point of your grievance. What I find pointless, is the sense of grievance. I must have, in my memory and notes, a thousand points I think completely off the planet (the Al-Aqsa intifada page, for example, for one, boasts a section where, a fringe POV is cited, naming I Israeli killed on the eve of Sharon's walk, as the cause of the intifada. Then we have 47 Palestinians dead, and 1950 wounded as riot squads over 5 days shoot into crowds, none with a name (being Palestinians) and this is tucked in with a reference to another Israeli policeman, whose name is again cited, to round off the section. I.e. message, subliminal or not, is 'They are faceless mobs, we are individuals, like you, dear reader' etc) and outrageous. But if I review these things, I do not think of cultivating a sense of grievance. If I am obliged to spend 2 weeks finding for Michael Safyan 145 cases on wiki where 'uprising' is used, and 25 odd academic references using it of the Intifada, and he refuses to yield, I don't start a sniping campaign at him. I might 'resent' that editor's refusal to accept the obvious, but since these are the rules, and he is in his rights to tarry and dally and use cunctorial tactics when not convinced, I hammer away at reliable sources (there is no other option) while keeping my private thoughts to my diary or workbook).

This is what Avi and I, from different perspectives, have been nudging you over. Unless you can edit with, let us say, an appearance of equanimity (as opposed to a completely jusrtifiable private right to feel outrage or disconcertion) you will continue to end up in ANI controversies. Each ANI suit is a call on community and hard-pressed editor's extra time-on. A request as you have just made above, to now extend the inquiry in mentorshop, is again, a request that ignores the private worlds of your interlocutors, who have basically, apart from one or two, agreed that you have, in this instance, nothing really to answer for, except a lapsed mentorship. I am not generous, simply idle. Avi has been generous, and got a wiki-trout straight in the face for it. Whatever your past interactions, indeed, whatever Avi's record in the distant past is, I don't care to know, anymore than I care to go to the log and fossick through it to check out your story. All I am acting on is the 'here and now'. All I have heard from you is a basso ostinato of grievance, and a request for further community time on your case. Wiki is about editing articles, not about, ultimately, personal wrongs and rights. In this, to return to my earlier analogies, one might say that, if indeed a war has been undertaken against you to rid your presence from wiki (I don't discount that), you seem to have played perfectly into the hands of your antagonists. They have your number, but only because you have provided the numerical details, and refused to change the voice you use over the phone. Avi and I are asking you to develop another ball-game. You have knocked back his kind offer, and therefore I now suggest you consider telling the ANI page you are taking a wiki-break till the end of September, when you will come back and broach the community over the question of mentorship. If you do this, though I will not be editing wiki in the forseeable future, I will seriously consider the idea of finding some way to return, at least on my or your talk page, to facilitate your edits, since, as I have often told people, in principle I oppose email. Everything must be above board. Best regards, and, reread what Avi said. It is not an issue of wikiquette, but common courtesy, whatever one's arrière pensées may be in context, to respond to a gentlemanly gesture with a nod of appreciation. Take care, goodbye for the moment, and at least my apologies to Avi for this extenuating and rather provocative tract.Nishidani (talk) 19:57, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

What do you make of this? These ethno-identifying tracts always make me feel uncomfortable, but this essay looks relatively calm and fact-orientated (and is apparently stacked with references). Elie Wiesel is one of the members of the "Holocaust Industry" that Finkelstein lashes out at .... is there significant information in this article that should be included in ours? (I've tried to check whether "David O'Connell" is one of the Holocaust Deniers we'll have rammed down our throats if we dare to mention them, but I'm inclined to suppose he's the "professor of French at Georgia State University in Atlanta" that the article says he is). PR 20:22, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

My engagement with you is new, PR, but I suppose I would just like to say that, having read through all that Avi has to say, I am surprised that you have not responded more graciously to his offer, even if you do choose to refuse it. It's not like Barak's generous offer, after all.LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 21:58, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I may have treated Avi poorly, since I was under the impression that he'd persuaded me to back down over an edit at Operation Entebbe. Both the BBC and the Times reported newly-released UK Government papers suggesting that the Israelis may have helped the hijackers. Parts of the discussion are still there (disfigured by an editor prone to aggression and incivility and later found to be a serial cheat), we took the discussion to a TalkPage where I was persuaded to my dissatisfaction not to press on trying to add this information. However, on checking, I discover that it wasn't Avi with whom I compromised and never had it returned! I'm really not best pleased to be compared in any way with the individual concerned. PR 15:46, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

My WP:AN proposal

Hi PR. I've just made an alternative proposal at the WP:AN page. Please do me a favor and do not respond immediately or hastily. If nothing else, I'm curious to see if some folks might consider this a viable route. I suspect/hope that it's too weak yet acceptable to your detractors, and too restrictive yet acceptable to you (and your supporters). In any case, PR, for heaven's sake, please do NOT restate at the WP:AN page your point about your past mentors having been harassed. If you do, I'll go out in the cold rain in my bare feet and catch pneumonia and you'll never enjoy my company again! ;->

Seriously, I know this proposal won't be to your liking, but I hope you'll give it serious consideration. Maybe talk it over with Nishidani etc before responding. Thanks muchly. HG | Talk 05:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi again. I realize that you no doubt cast your net more broadly than 6 articles, e.g., to intervene where you disagree with POV balance. To be sure, the 6 article limit would constrain such work. Nevertheless, it clearly leaves you more room to maneuver than a topic ban. Even within the 6 article limit, there are ways you might provide constructive input (fact checking, POV balance, etc) to various articles. For instance, you could set up an informational subpage or otherwise share info via user Talk w/other editors like Nishidani. Mull it over, ok? Thanks. HG | Talk 15:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

PR, hi again. As you may already know, the WP:AN thread has been closed with no decision. However, the closing admin and several others have recommended that the issue be moved to another forum, such as an RFC/U or ArbCom. If I'm not mistaken (don't have diffs handy), on more than one occasion, didn't you say yourself that you'd be glad to go to ArbCom to get the situation cleared up? Sorry that I don't quite remember your phrasing. Well, I'm thinking about possibly of filing a request to ArbCom to address this case. What would you think and, if I do so, might you want to comment on a draft? Since I'm considered a fairly neutral party, and don't have an ax to grind against you (or for you), perhaps it would be beneficial to have the ArbCom request come from me. I'd like your opinion, though I do admit that I might file the request based on my own judgment, regardless of input from other parties. Thanks muchly. Be well, HG | Talk 03:18, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

PR, greetings. Since we've been bumping into each other around town, would you please answer my question above? thanks, hope this finds you well, HG | Talk 17:06, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Requested response

Your response is requested here. With respect, Jaakobou 16:16, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I just answered one of your questions here - as I said, I'm here to write good-quality articles in regular English, citing high-class RS references in the English Language. If I were extremely bold, I'd ask what you were doing here.

But since I cooperated then, perhaps it's time you answered the question I posed you there, or one of a whole slew of other questions eg another editor needs your answer to this: ... Are you saying that the civilians who were killed were not really civilians because they were used as human shields by Palestinians (a claim you have yet to offer a citation for)? Or, even, are you suggesting that the quote civilians were actually voluntary human shields?

How about confirming that you wrote this and are not being meat-puppeted? Your fan club was delighted (and astonished) to see these golden words appear from your fingers: "Wouldn't this give justification both for " little angels" to harass PalestineRemembered on the limited articles he will choose to partake in and also for his supporters to exponentially enhance the drama in response? It's an interesting suggestion though and one that PalestineRemembered should seriously consider.".

And I suppose it's too late to request you deny being the sock-master of User:MouseWarrior and User:Paul_T._Evans, two users who appeared on the very same day and immediately started edit-warring on the same articles as you yourself were engaged in. PR 18:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Dear PalestineRemembered,

I would like to request that you do not repeat the sock accusation which you retracted in January.

With respect, Jaakobou 01:29, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Respectfully, P.R., I concur with Jaakobou. I don't think bringing this accusation out again, simply to discredit Jaakobou, is helpful, especially in light of the fact that the allegations in question have already been shown to be incorrect. Anthøny 01:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Now now, standards, if you insist on returning so quickly, PR

I browse at times. You posted on the M.Durrah page. The points were at times useful, but please don't editorialize ('illiterates'). Be brief, to the point. And above all, check and cross-check. The French foreign minister Karsenty alludes to is not M.Hubert Vardin, but Hubert Védrine. The Canadian Jewish source you cited seems to be playing a rather shifty little game of innuendo by an error that, as it stands, is a rather sly allusion to the German spy Hubert Vardin in a short story by Conan Doyle.

Am I a detective? I'd recognize this handwriting anywhere... it must be Professor Moriarty?! HG | Talk 17:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

hehe, just goes to show that it pays to fish for compliments.... thanks, HG | Talk 20:31, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I must do a Lazarus, HG, and protest the compliment (about Moriarty!). It was actually written by Nigel Bruce in Mycroft mode. Thanks for the advice to PR, which was spot on. Jaakobou's edits on the Land Day page, by the way, were like anyone else's, proposals. That one does not agree with many of them (I don't) does not mean that the issue should be referred to J's mentor. The points of disagreement should be duly registered, in as neutral a language as one can muster, on the appropriate talk page. Best regards

A suggestion

PR. There is no ban on your editing, is there? Some obvious things on the Land Day page are being fixed by Moreschi, who however failed to emend the unfortunate repetition of 'occur' twice in the lead, something which raises hackles even on hacks' backs. The first such protest occurred on should read: 'The first such protest took place on, ..'. You'd be surprised how much good editing can consist in simply adjusting for clarity or style. I suggest as an exercise that you look round from time to time to see if you can improve the clarity or prose quality even of bits of text you might otherwise disagree with. It builds self-confidence, and is not the sort of thing that runs the risk of revert battles. A good confidence builder. Nishidani (talk) 21:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Land Day /Jewish exodus

The background of the former is completely skewed, as you note. The latter article is premised on a wholly ideological POV attempt to establish a symmetry between the expulsion of Palestinians, and the far more, and much later (generally) exodus of Jewish communities from the Arab world. The Arabs did not encourage Palestinians to leave. Zionists strongly encouraged the Jewish diaspora in the Arab world to make aliyah. As it stands, of all I/P articles, the Jewish exodus registers as the one which narrates almost exclusively an Israeli/Zionist POV. Quite remarkable. This is how Shlomo Ben-Ami puts it, in his review of Benny Morris's latest masterpiece,1948, regarding, precisely operations in the Galilee (celebrated in Land Day.

In October of that year, on the eve of Operation Hiram, which led to the expulsion of many of the Arabs of the northern Galilee region, Ben-Gurion declared, "The Arabs of the Land of Israel have only one function left to them -- to run away." And they did; panic-stricken, they fled in the face of massacres in Ein Zeitun and Eilabun, just as they had done in the wake of an earlier massacre in Deir Yassin. Operational orders, such as the instruction from Moshe Carmel, the Israeli commander of the northern front, "to attack in order to conquer, to kill among the men, to destroy and burn the villages," were carved into the collective memory of the Palestinians, spawning hatred and resentment for generations.

There are only two points on which Morris' splendid analysis falters. He is unconvincing in his attempt to pardon some of Israel's original sins by creating an awkward symmetry between the Palestinian refugee crisis and the forced emigration of 600,000 Jews from Arab countries and Iran, which Morris quotes Israeli leaders as calling "an unplanned 'exchange of population.'" Regimes hostile to Israel were not alone in getting Jews to leave; envoys from the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, and from the Jewish Agency were working underground in several Middle Eastern countries to encourage Jews to go to Israel. More important, for many Jews in the region, the very possibility of immigrating to Israel was the culmination of millenarian dreams. It represented the consummation of a quest to take part in Israel's resurgence as a nation. No matter how painful the memory of their eviction or how humiliating their second-class status in Israel, these new Israelis never sought to return to their lands of origin. By contrast, the Palestinian refugees were forced into the wilderness of exile with no guarantee of a new national home and no prospect of returning to their native land. The yearning for return thus became the Palestinians' defining national ethos.

Morris' characterization of the conflict of 1948 as an Islamic jihad against Jewish-Western infidels in Palestine is also unpersuasive.Shlomo Ben-Ami A War to Start All Wars, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2008. Review of Benny Morris 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. Benny Morris. Yale University Press, 2008 Nishidani (talk) 16:29, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Tiamut just did a great job of getting the Land Day section back in shape. Her approach is a model for all of us to follow. I hope other editors let it stand.LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 17:20, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

PR, please see this cautionary note and please be responsive. Thank you very much, take care, HG | Talk 13:46, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I strongly second HG's note. If you can't rebegin by burying the hatchet and making a fresh start, as Jaakobou is trying to do, then you're wasting your own, and our, time. Those who can't, if not forget, at least 'suspend' the pressure of, the past, will inevitably repeat its errors. Everytime you are tempted to make these boring remarks (boring because no one needs to be reminded of them, since we all know these things intimately), think of the rules you are obliged to honour, and play cat's cradle until the itch passes. Thank you Nishidani (talk) 16:01, 2 September 2008 (UTC).

Thanks PR. And remember, HG, Jaakobou and anyone else would have been perfectly in their rights to haul you over the administrative coals for that lapse. They didn't. Nishidani (talk) 16:28, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

True. But PR did remove it, thank you. HG | Talk 16:36, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Some Tips

Palestine, I think you're stupid. No matter how good the other people doing this work, someone from outside will find out who you are and ruin your life so thoroughly that you'll not even have your own computer to try and do what you're doing.

But I hope you've not given up, if you want to tell the truth about the terrorism from which Israel was born, have a look at this web-site http://www.palestine-encyclopedia.com/EPP/Chapter04_1of2.htm It says it is copyright originally written in 1991 by someone called Issa Nakhleh, but it comes with full British Government references and some of it is from Hansard. Good luck, you'll need it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.157.69.222 (talk) 09:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether to treat that as helpful, friendly advice, a personal attack, or a threat. Coppertwig (talk) 16:20, 6 September 2008 (UTC)