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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.
- 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.
- Genesis, ch.2, verses 19-20, with apologies for my transcription
- 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
- Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, Jonathan Cape, London 1997, pp.8,615
- George Steiner, After Babel, Oxford University Press 1975 p.58
- Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,, vol.1, tr.Ralph Manheim, Yale UP 1955 pp.119ff.,p.122
- 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
- Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1986 passim
- John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, Oxford University Press US, 2004, p.131
- Abbiamo fatto l'Italia. Ora si tratta di fare gli Italiani
- 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
- M. Daphne Kutzer, Empire's Children:Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Children's Books, Routledge, 2000 p.120
- Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986
- ‘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
- 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
- Susan Gay Drummond, Incorporating the Familiar, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1997 p.32 .
- Alfonso Pérez-Agote, The Social Roots of Basque Nationalism, University of Nevada Press, 2006 p.xx
- Selwyn Ilan Troen, Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement, Yale University Press, 2003 p.152
- 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.’
- Cf.Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, Jonathan Cape, London 1987
- Benvenisti, ibid, p.19
- 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.
- Amar Dahamshe Off the linguistic map. Are Arab place names derived from Hebrew? in Haaretz 30.06.10
- Benvenisti, ibid. p.17, p.18
- ‘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
- Yasir Suleiman, A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East, Cambridge University Press, 2004 p.161, p.162.
- 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.
- Yasir Suleiman, A War of Words, ibid p.140
- Theodor Adorno, Minima moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben (1951), in Rolf Tiedemann (ed.) Gesammelte Schriften, Bd.4, Suhrkamp, 1980 p.123
- Paul Francis Diehl, A Road Map to War, Vanderbilt University Press, 1999, pp.15-16.
- '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
- 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.
- 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.
- Shlomo Gazit, Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories, Routledge, 2003 p. 162
- '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
- '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
- '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.
- 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
- Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: a critical analysis of Israel's security & foreign policy, University of Michigan Press, 2006 p.441
- William B. Quandt, Peace process: American diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967, Brookings Institution Press, 2001, rev.ed.2001 p.130
- 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
- Howard Jones, Crucible of Power: A History of U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1897,Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd.ed. 2001 p.469
- Rex Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival: The PLO in Lebanon, Westview Press, Boulder, 1990 p.2
- 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'
- Eric J. Schmertz, Natalie Datlof, Alexej Ugrinsky, President Reagan and the world, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997 p.44.
- See Uri Bar-Joseph, Israel's National Security Towards the 21st Century, Routledge, 2001 p.185
- Numbers, 32:18
- David C. Jacobson, Does David still play before you? Israeli poetry and the Bible, Wayne State University Press, 1997 p.50
- Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The construction of modern national consciousness, Columbia University Press, 1998 p.14
- Nigel Craig Parsons,The Politics of the Palestinian Authority: From Oslo to Al-Aqsa, Routledge, 2005 p.299
- Michael Sfard, Occupation double-speak,' at Haaretz, 12 June 2012.
- Jonathan Cook, Israeli Road Signs, Counterpunch 17-19, July 2009
- Nir Hasson, Give Arab train stations Hebrew names, says Israeli linguist, Haaretz 28/12/2009
- Yossi Sarid 'Israel is not killing the Palestinian people - it's killing their culture,' Haaretz 3 Octobr 2014
- 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
- 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)
An Apology
Hello again. I apologize for my unfounded libeling of you as antisemitic. I only skimmed your page and decided without credence that you reverted my edit due to an ulterior motive because it was easier than actually debating it. I certainly won't vilify you again. I hope that we can both make Misplaced Pages a more comprehensive knowledge base while avoiding confrontation in the meantime. Thanks, (and I'll be more careful about omitting my nonfinite verbs!) --monochrome_monitor 00:23, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
- Hi Nishidani. I hope you are not as depressed by the human condition as I am at the mo. I mean everything, Ukraine/Russia, Gaza, the ongoing oppression of Tibet and the Kurds..so I went off-line for ten days, to chill, in an idyllic Norfolk village. Gardening helped :)
I am mentoring MM, I decided to shortly before I left. I should have "publicised" it somehow, or told MM, but I didnt. I think if I had been around, we all could have agreed to put it away days ago. I have spoken to her, and I reproduce fully my initial email, knocked out about 2 hrs after I got home. I trust MM will not object.
Hi Georgia :)
Now listen up.
a/ I am not happy with you calling Nishi d an anti-semite. As a Jew who was 16 in 1978 allow me some advantage here. I can smell an anti-semite at 12,000 miles and no, neither he nor Sean are. I have studied N's writings through a microscope, my anti-semite detector lens. It reads zero. His writing has always been deeply respectful of the Jewish people and religion, and has explicitly and repeatedly spelled out the positive aspects of the state of Israel. He admires its democratic institutions and it's plurality, its scientific and cultural and economic achievements. He just demands from his own POV, a moralistic action-based series of measures from Israel. He is not a existential Israel rejectionist. He holds to the 2 state solution as far as I can see. The same seems to go for Sean. As for user pages, my own handle alone is provocation enough to the inexperienced ;)
b/ I advise you go to N's page and apologise. You can freely quote the contents of these mails. Then we can see what we can do about that scappy mess of a fight that I am wading through. Have you been banned in any way? It does not look like it from my scan-reading so far. I will go to N's page too if necessary. We have mutual repect. Say I was out of town as your mentor and take full responsibility. Never throw the AS charge around Georgia, unless you are DAMN sure, and you have consulted with me.
Apart from that you are doing ok. You will be intellectually roughed up sometimes, but you will grow. IMPROVE YOUR GRAMMAR. LOL
Shalom!
S
- Please forgive youth Nish. Anyway, I shall be keeping her out of trouble, and getting her faculties sharpened to deal with the formidible intellectual standard required of contributors to any aspect of I/P on Misplaced Pages, crucially in the intelligent selection of strong RS. Cheers N Irondome (talk) 02:55, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
- A leeuwenhoekian linguist would note that troubling confusing of 'it's' for 'its' in your email, but ignore it because the orthographic peccadillo is expunged by the generosity of the sentiments in my regard. Thanks. It's a wet summer here, but precisely for that reason, my gardens thrive, though, mindful of Shakespeare's fondness for the tender-horned snails that proliferate under such conditions, much of the day is spent picking those creatures, with their gypsy-waggoned, vardo-shells, off the cabbages and lettuce and moving them over to a lush abandoned olive grove where they can feed off weeds, and do less damage. As I harvest and transport upwards of 200 a day, I think it's like editing: one doesn't 'attack' the problematical agent, one just nudges them off grounds where their presence conflicts with the slow growth of life. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 10:10, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Reading and listening list. Contributions only of original and incisive quality will be appreciated
Nishidani, I have transferred the contents of this section to a new sub-page:
I've done this partly because your talk page was getting too big (again!) but also because it will be convenient for other editors to be able to refer to a separate page.
Been waiting to do this for some time, until the unbearable horrors of what US-Israeli militarism is doing in Gaza, and commentaries theron, have died down - which may never happen. Anyway, now seems as good a time as any. --NSH001 (talk) 11:44, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks N, as ever. Have retitled to make the content clear. Nishidani (talk) 15:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for
your thoughtful commentary here. I know a (very) elderly man who survived the Warsaw uprising and the concentration camps, and he wholeheartedly agrees with you. -Darouet (talk) 19:38, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
- May he be blessed with many more of the years denied to those who grew up with him. Some unfortunately think Israel is the Warsaw ghetto (here and here), and fail to see that the more compelling analogy is with Gaza.Nishidani (talk) 21:22, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
- Nishidani, thanks again for all your work. By the way I recall reading somewhere (don't remember where) that the tactic of inversion, i.e., blaming the (relatively weak) victim as the (overwhelmingly more powerful) aggressor, and painting the aggressor as the victim, was used extensively by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and in fact even thousands of years even before the advent of these two fascist, ancient so-called 'civilizations' whose elite pretended they were 'democratic' or 'republican' (respectively) and 'law abiding' and 'humane and peace-loving.' IjonTichy (talk) 17:19, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think it helps to retroject modern concepts like fascism back into antiquity, or the orient or anywhere else in time. Leni Riefenstahl is one thing, the Athenian tragic theatre another: If people in Sderot, or Cicero, or we in our livingrooms, reacted as Leontius did in Plato's Republic Bk.IV 439ff, or as Seneca did in his 7th Epistle, the world would be a saner place.Nishidani (talk) 20:54, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
- Nishidani, thanks again for all your work. By the way I recall reading somewhere (don't remember where) that the tactic of inversion, i.e., blaming the (relatively weak) victim as the (overwhelmingly more powerful) aggressor, and painting the aggressor as the victim, was used extensively by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and in fact even thousands of years even before the advent of these two fascist, ancient so-called 'civilizations' whose elite pretended they were 'democratic' or 'republican' (respectively) and 'law abiding' and 'humane and peace-loving.' IjonTichy (talk) 17:19, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
- IjonTichy You make some rather strongly worded and ill-informed statements here
What is it that makes you think you have to perspective to even venture such a ludicrous and overreaching comment? What is it that makes you want to demonize the Ancient Greeks and the Romans?...the ancient Greeks and Romans, and in fact even thousands of years even before the advent of these two fascist, ancient so-called 'civilizations' whose elite pretended they were 'democratic' or 'republican'
- Apologies to Nishidani for intruding here to respond to that.--Ubikwit見学/迷惑 23:49, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
- Harry's gaiters.Nishidani (talk) 19:10, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
- IjonTichy You make some rather strongly worded and ill-informed statements here
Remove of a picture of soldiers shielding a boy
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Hi, you removed this picture from 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, and I didn't quite get the reason. Can you elaborate please ? - WarKosign (talk) 18:50, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
See this section in the talk page archives. This was apparently uploaded from the ID flickr account, and constitutes war propaganda. There are serious doubts about its authenticity. Two editors, myself included, gave considered arguments that it looks as though it was a posed photo. Therefore, because of its provenance, because so far no one can track down where it was taken or under what circumstances, because, if it is, as it certainly looks, staged, it is laughably inept (the photographer taking the photo frontally is exposed to the same rocket fire the kid being protected, partially, is apparently exposed to. Note that there is a wall providing a background and, absurdly, the soldiers do not put themselves between the child and the wall: they are holding the boy outwards from the wall, presumably to make the fact that he is a child visible to the photographer, who is standing in the optimal position, despite a threatened rocket about to explode there, to capture the shot frontally. If you've ever protected a child from a threat, the instinct is universal: you grab him in your arms and put the threat to your back, which neither of the two soldiers is doing. Also in the discussion no editor in favour of its inclusion responded to these doubts, it should not be included until much further work is done consensually, if someone can provide the citation asked for. You don't in good practice, add 'stuff' without verifiable sources and then plaster a cit needed tag that might never produce the requested information, particularly when serious doubts exist as to the authenticity of that material.Nishidani (talk) 19:08, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- I particularly like the fact that the sun is overhead but the studio has shadows high to the left and right forming a halo typical of background lighting to throw into relief the central scene, and that the most protective soldier took care to find some paper or a hankerchief to place under his right knee to avoid getting his fatigues dirty.Nishidani (talk) 20:47, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- I hope the child and the two soldiers are safe and healthy and I wish them a long and happy life.
- (By the way it looks almost as if one soldier may be pointing at the camera.)
- Theodore Postol, the MIT scientist cited in the WP article on Iron Dome, recently gave a long interview (part 1 and part 2) on Democracy Now! where he explained that Israelis - especially soldiers - are well aware of the scientific evidence that shows that in case of a missile attack the best thing to do (if you can't make it to the nearest bomb shelter within 9 seconds after the warning sirens begin to sound) is to lay completely flat on the floor or on the ground, because doing so reduces the probability of serious injury exponentially, compared to standing or even crouching. IjonTichy (talk) 20:24, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks indeed. I didn't think of that, but of course it is true. I'll happily stand corrected, but I think one could write a long essay on what is, unless we have a miracle, wrong about that and screams 'fake' from every pixel. There is no tension in the body of the soldier to the right. The kid's body looks relaxed and intent on some object in his hands, as if this were a game. The rubble is out of place, suggesting a scene where a bomb has already dropped, and the use of the wall to reenact a scenario, rather than anticipating a 'bottle bomb' about to fall, etc.etc.Nishidani (talk) 20:52, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Your comments how it is obviously staged bothered me. As I wrote, I really found the mother's address and phone number. I did not want to bother them, however given her description how they were just entering their neighborhood I was looking for a red wall near their address on google street view and couldn't find one. Finally I understood - the wall is not red, the soldier's vests reflect red light on it.
I believe the photo was taken right behind this wall. On the photo you can see a concrete wall of a matching height, and a yellow strip that is the Plexiglas frame right bellow the dark semi-circle on top. The semi-circle on top that you said is studio light is probably the mother's hand or finger partially covering the lens. If it was light we'd still be able to see something in the corners, given it's harsh sun light (or a studio light). From here you can see sand and rubble under the wall, this is why I think they were on the other side of the wall. Either they were driving there or the kid ran to hide behind this wall after he left the car.
I would like you to re-consider your flat statement that the image is staged.
The argument that this is not the correct procedure to protect children during the attack is valid - I'm sure their main concern was calming down a frightened child, it is possible that the picture was taken after the rocket already fell. The mother wrote that the soldiers remained with them for 10 minutes after the alarm talking to the child. In this case the caption saying that the soldiers are protecting him with their bodies wasn't factually correct - solders were calming a child frightened by an attack, but I see no reason to suspect the picture is not genuine. WarKosign (talk) 13:54, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
- The impressions I gave, one after another, are multiple, and several conjectural inferences that confirmed the doubt which my basic sense of the scene gave me, are not necessary to 'prove' them. The light from above coincides with the mother's date or timing of the photograph and I presumed there is some veracity behind her account once you (?) supplied the interview material. That it was posed is irrefutably indicated in her own declaration where she was so happy to see IDF protecting her son that she asked them if she could take the photo. All of the circumstantial detail (her husband, the other child, the siren, imminent bombs, meaning the photographer-mother was supposed to be in a threat situation like the children, is belied by the fact that she requests soldiers to allow her to photograph and, when they agree, she stands there, perhaps as you say, carefully shading the camera, to take the image, which is so constructed that her son is clearly visible. If she hadn't said she asked permission, everything would change of course. Asking permission means not only getting it but suggesting to the soldiers they pose, and presumably they adjusted their postures to that end. Whatever the scene, the body language is wholly devoid of the stress of threat and emergency, and that is what seals it for me. Its claim to be an 'authentic' snap of a real-life situation' is therefore far more fragile than the Robert Capa shot in the Spanish Civil War or the long controversial Rosenthal snap on Suribachi, which, despite the description, was not spontaneous but programmatic. Both served ideological ends ('leftist'/'patriotic'), as does this. Putting an image 'under a shadow' into the text, structurally, which goes out of its way to pin the huge death toll of Palestinian children on Hamas soldiers is ugly. (aside from ignoring what we know about the underside of this national framing of the IDF soldier as a protector of children).
- I appreciate your attempts to get at the truth of this, of course. I'm just sceptical by nature, and often feel disgruntled that, in order to adjust a text having an Israelocentric claim, I am constrained to give the other version (about which, as with Shlomo Eldar's piece of Hamas responsibility, to cite one of many examples, I privately remain wary).Nishidani (talk) 14:55, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
- If they were hugging the boy and talking to him, they did not need to pose - they were already in this pose for at least a few seconds, surely enough time to ask "may I take a picture?" while aiming the phone's camera. The fact that the top of the frame is covered does not indicate shielding against the sun - it indicates her holding the phone awkwardly, partially covering the lens and not noticing it at the time the picture was taken. There indeed is no feeling of urgency, because at this distance from Gaza the danger isn't high and if they already heard the explosion at a distance practically non-existent, but they are supposed to stay in cover for 10 minutes anyway. You'd have to be here to appreciate it - whenever there is an alarm people dutifully do as instructed, but everybody understand that statistically chances of being hit by a rocket are far less than being injured in a car accident. Near Gaza where mortars fall is entirely different story, as evident by the casualties.
On a totally different subject, given your background and interests - what do you think about this theory ? WarKosign (talk) 16:57, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
- My first reaction on seeing the analogy between the symbol of Herod's gate and the Imperial symbol of the chrysanthemum was to recall that in Japanese sexual jargon, 菊 kiku, the name for that flower, signifies anus, clearly one not afflicted by haemarhoids. As to the Yamabushi's tokin 頭襟, or phylactery, miniaturization is a fundamental feature of Japanese art, though the world record for writing a document like the Lord's Prayer is (or so I read a half century ago) held by a gentleman from Shanghai who managed to inscribe it with a steel needle on the head of a nail. It has been argued, not irrationally, that there is an Eskimo component in Indo-European languages, but not for that does one conclude that the two are related (See Louis Hammerich, “Can Eskimo Be Related to Indo-European?” International Journal of American Linguistics 17 (1951): 217–23.) I'd better stop free-associating but, generally, humanity is promiscuous, borrows and travels: then nationalisms arise and appropriate things as peculiar to themselves, forgetting the liens (the Bible is full of this submerged or suppressed mythic and ritual borrowing from pagan cultures), in this case, that the Eurasian landmass was one constant exchange system whose conduit were nomads, many of whom formed one of the core populations of Japan, which is however, despite its national sense of apartness, deeply miscegenated. Great civilizations, like great poets, thrive on theft.Nishidani (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
- So you are not suddenly overcome with an urge to help your long lost people. Here is another interesting theory, that the Palestinians are one of the lost tribes. There is genetic evidence that supports it, as well. WarKosign (talk) 06:31, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- I grew up reading about the Nazis' Rassentheorien and their genocidal consequences, which inoculated me at any early age against anything but a prophylactic wariness about biological claims to a common identity. Most people are 'lost',and the few that aren't are usually told to 'get lost'. I certainly have no attachment to abstractions like 'a people'. All communities are imagined (Benedict Anderson) and I have no desire to be part of any group's collective nightmare. Nishidani (talk) 09:46, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- Wow Nish, you're in top form today! "
Great civilizations, like great poets, thrive on theft.
" (and composers, not to mention many Misplaced Pages editors), and now "Most people are 'lost', and the few that aren't are usually told to 'get lost'.
" Gold! Johnuniq (talk) 10:10, 4 September 2014 (UTC)- Must start the day more often as I did this one, and take a regular drag or two on a rollie made from a recent gift of home-grown Croatian tobacco, and a cup of hot cappuccino to take the edges off a Chivas Regal hangover!Nishidani (talk) 10:20, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- Since your compliment flattered me, I must disown, for my own ethical well-being, the implication that my remark was original. Like everything else under the sun, it was a recycled pastiche, i.e. of St.Augustine's De civitate Dei 4:4 and John Dryden's 'Of Dramatic Poesy' (George Watson (ed.) Of Dramatic Poesy and other critical essays, Everyman, (1962) 1967 2 vols.vol.1 p.69), the probable source for T.E. Eliot's famous remark on poets as thieves (which in 'formulating', he himself impudently stole in order to pass it off as his own 'conceit'/or blandish his own 'conceit'!) Nishidani (talk) 10:45, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- I wouldn't expect original research from a good editor, so thanks for the refs! Regarding the sun, I prefer
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new
and I am sure you won't have to Google that. Johnuniq (talk) 11:06, 4 September 2014 (UTC)- Yeah so do I, but of cause (deliberate pun not a lapsus calami!), in adherence to the principle that everything is a 'recycled pastiche', Beckett, like all true Oirishmen, knew his Bible by heart and was only alluding to Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verse 9, as of course it is evident you know from the way you phrased things. (It is Beckett's version of Ecclesiastes you prefer to the original which inspired him) Nishidani (talk) 12:25, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- OK, I'm going to call you on that. If a writer now were to mention "nothing new under the sun" we would not think of Ecclesiastes because the phrase is so well known. Are you suggesting that in 1938 (when Murphy was written), the author and most readers would have had the Ecclesiastes text in mind (no time on research please—just yes/no/dunno)? BTW, a wonderful example of musical theft (and the real reason I'm reopening this) is Recomposed which I thoroughly recommend, although tolerance of Philip Glass and friends is a prerequisite. Johnuniq (talk) 04:14, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
- Bref. Yes. He and his readers at the time knew it was an allusion.Nishidani (talk) 10:26, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks indeed, had missed that. Magnificently enjoyable, and am now midway through a second audition. Reminds me of Schoenberg et al's rearrangement of waltzes, or say Glenn Gould's use of dragging tempo (almost Bachian) to rearrange familiar pieces like The Appassionata, which makes them, after excessive exposure tends to make the ear rebel, once more audible as if for the first time. So, it's an old device of course. Kafka's Das Schloß does the same thing to Božena Nĕmková's Babička, i.e. takes over the piece/novel completely and rewrites it (odd the wiki articles have no mention of this). The operative word in your challenge is now. No one reads the Bible these days, priests, pastors and rabbis included (some exception should be made for the backroom agitprop boys in the IDF who coin names for their wars: they all have a deliberate biblical resonance, and are translated into King Jamesian terms to get that over to the fuindamentalist tubthumpers in the US. cf. 'Operation Brother's Keeper' (Genesis:4,9) But it's all over literature down to the end of WW2 at least. This goes down even to the musical lilt of prose styles. Look at the rhythm of the opening pages of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, which I read a few weeks ago). People in those days learnt to read via the Bible and such things like The Book of Common Prayer. As to Beckett, one of his favourite maxims (ostensibly from Donatus) was "pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt" (Let'em cark it, those (buggers) who said (before us) what we (now) say), and it would have been impossible for him to say or write those words without registering their provenance, since he is so thoroughly allusive. The metaphor of theft is of course hyperbole. Theft is clandestine, whereas creative borrowings like the one you mention from Richter are done in the light of day, with the author, painter, musician or (in film, like scenic allusions to Hitchcock) the auteur, expecting the reader/audience to recognize the source, and more often than not, doing so as homage to a master whose influence is thereby recognized. It's only since John Locke and the establishment of the notion of property rights, and the rise of Romanticism's cult of the bardic virtuoso's putative capacity for 'invention' that we worry this. It is even programmatic in postmodernism, and one school of art(citationism/citazionismo) based its whole technique on 'quotational' pastiche. Indeed, part of the pleasure engineered by authors lies in nudging readers to see what to them is the obvious theft: the technique is all over Umberto Eco's Il Nome della Rosa to the point of banality (William of Baskerville =Sherlock Holmes), which reminds me that Doyle's figure provided Kafka with the opening lines of his Der Proceß, which are nothing but a straightforward paraphrase of two lines in A Study in Scarlet (ch.2: para beginning 'It was on the 4th of March . . .'), etc.etc.etc.Nishidani (talk) 10:13, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
- On a related note, I can quote Charles Seeger here. "Plagiarism is basic to all culture". Kingsindian (talk) 19:41, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
- OK, I'm going to call you on that. If a writer now were to mention "nothing new under the sun" we would not think of Ecclesiastes because the phrase is so well known. Are you suggesting that in 1938 (when Murphy was written), the author and most readers would have had the Ecclesiastes text in mind (no time on research please—just yes/no/dunno)? BTW, a wonderful example of musical theft (and the real reason I'm reopening this) is Recomposed which I thoroughly recommend, although tolerance of Philip Glass and friends is a prerequisite. Johnuniq (talk) 04:14, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
- Yeah so do I, but of cause (deliberate pun not a lapsus calami!), in adherence to the principle that everything is a 'recycled pastiche', Beckett, like all true Oirishmen, knew his Bible by heart and was only alluding to Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verse 9, as of course it is evident you know from the way you phrased things. (It is Beckett's version of Ecclesiastes you prefer to the original which inspired him) Nishidani (talk) 12:25, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- I wouldn't expect original research from a good editor, so thanks for the refs! Regarding the sun, I prefer
- Since your compliment flattered me, I must disown, for my own ethical well-being, the implication that my remark was original. Like everything else under the sun, it was a recycled pastiche, i.e. of St.Augustine's De civitate Dei 4:4 and John Dryden's 'Of Dramatic Poesy' (George Watson (ed.) Of Dramatic Poesy and other critical essays, Everyman, (1962) 1967 2 vols.vol.1 p.69), the probable source for T.E. Eliot's famous remark on poets as thieves (which in 'formulating', he himself impudently stole in order to pass it off as his own 'conceit'/or blandish his own 'conceit'!) Nishidani (talk) 10:45, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- Must start the day more often as I did this one, and take a regular drag or two on a rollie made from a recent gift of home-grown Croatian tobacco, and a cup of hot cappuccino to take the edges off a Chivas Regal hangover!Nishidani (talk) 10:20, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- Wow Nish, you're in top form today! "
- I grew up reading about the Nazis' Rassentheorien and their genocidal consequences, which inoculated me at any early age against anything but a prophylactic wariness about biological claims to a common identity. Most people are 'lost',and the few that aren't are usually told to 'get lost'. I certainly have no attachment to abstractions like 'a people'. All communities are imagined (Benedict Anderson) and I have no desire to be part of any group's collective nightmare. Nishidani (talk) 09:46, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- So you are not suddenly overcome with an urge to help your long lost people. Here is another interesting theory, that the Palestinians are one of the lost tribes. There is genetic evidence that supports it, as well. WarKosign (talk) 06:31, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
- My first reaction on seeing the analogy between the symbol of Herod's gate and the Imperial symbol of the chrysanthemum was to recall that in Japanese sexual jargon, 菊 kiku, the name for that flower, signifies anus, clearly one not afflicted by haemarhoids. As to the Yamabushi's tokin 頭襟, or phylactery, miniaturization is a fundamental feature of Japanese art, though the world record for writing a document like the Lord's Prayer is (or so I read a half century ago) held by a gentleman from Shanghai who managed to inscribe it with a steel needle on the head of a nail. It has been argued, not irrationally, that there is an Eskimo component in Indo-European languages, but not for that does one conclude that the two are related (See Louis Hammerich, “Can Eskimo Be Related to Indo-European?” International Journal of American Linguistics 17 (1951): 217–23.) I'd better stop free-associating but, generally, humanity is promiscuous, borrows and travels: then nationalisms arise and appropriate things as peculiar to themselves, forgetting the liens (the Bible is full of this submerged or suppressed mythic and ritual borrowing from pagan cultures), in this case, that the Eurasian landmass was one constant exchange system whose conduit were nomads, many of whom formed one of the core populations of Japan, which is however, despite its national sense of apartness, deeply miscegenated. Great civilizations, like great poets, thrive on theft.Nishidani (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
Here is a picture that was taken when the alarm was activated by accident and people thought there was a rocket attack. Reminds of you of anything ? WarKosign (talk) 14:04, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
- Yep. I think such photos should only incentivate the Israeli government to be far more thorough in teaching parents and people generally how not to hold a child if they really want to successfully protect their threatened progeny from mortars and rockets in the vicinity. If you want to ensure someone's safety you put yourself between the imminent threat and the loved one (not in Strachey's proverbial joke: when asked when on trial for being a pacifist, what he would do if a brutal German were about to rape his sister or mother. He answered:'Oh, I should try and come between them!'(Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: The New Biography, 2005 p.349) (He was homosexual).
- Seriously, you appear to think I doubt Israelis were shocked, panicked, and didn't duck as sirens went off. Obviously they did, and there is substantial evidence to that effect. The picture of course reminds me also of This report, and you have to imagine the photo, were such people sufficiently unpoor to have cameras,(remember the IDF banned the importation of tampons into Gaza, to prevent tunnels being built I guess), this, this, and the fact that 13,000 people were killed or wounded in that war in Gaza, not counting those who suffered shock. Almost none of that reality is on film, except in the Unit 8200 film archive studies.Nishidani (talk) 14:46, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
- There were plenty of horror scenes in Israel after suicide bombings, with body parts scattered everywhere. A friend of mine was at Park Hotel and his family left unharmed by a miracle. You are not likely to see these horror pictures presented anywhere in Israel because of the difference in culture, but be sure they exist. Sderot people had full right to happy that the terrorists who were firing rockets on them for years are at last handled. They would have more sympathy for Gazan civilians if they hadn't elected Hamas and supported continued rocket fire on Israel. Perhaps popcorn was in bad taste, but so is distributing candies after a particularly successful murder of Israeli civilians. I do not know what is the deal with tampons, but if the terrorists found a way to use water pipes, fertilizers and concrete for murder - perhaps there is intelligence that they are using tampons to make guncotton.
- I did not duck at every siren and it was not a matter of shock but of common sense - unless I'm 5-30km from Gaza the danger to be involved in a car accident is much greater than the danger from the rockets. Hugging and calming a child scared by the sirens is far more important than laying flat on the ground reducing the danger from 0.01% to 0.001%. And yes, I know the children in Gaza are scared too. I wish their parents chose a different government that would have some regard for their lives.WarKosign (talk) 19:46, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
- I've seen almost everything you mention, but in the documentary records of several countries. I have no illusions. Only I don't think in terms of 'it began with suicide bombings'. Anyone can choose a starting point of convenience for their narrative, and spin everything out as a 'reaction' to that germinal event (as I am reminded after rereading Daniel Deronda these last days. You can read it as the heading of chapter 1 'Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning'...(etc). A Palestinian might start with the effects on 30,000 youths of Yitzhak Rabin's order, to put down an unarmed rebellion against the occupation in the West Bank a decade earlier, to 'break their arms and legs' (you can see videos of soldiers doing just that). Playing that game gets everyone nowhere fast.
- Gazans can't duck. The universal metaphor for what they have put up with for nearly a decade is 'shooting into the fish bowl'.
- As to your final sentiment.It's not our business to wish Gazans voted for a different government. It's a bit like me citing the remark by Uri Avnery (whose two books on the 1948 are required reading for any Israeli):
- Still, that government has a plebiscite, and though I dearly wish Israeli parents voted for a different government, rather than choosing one that has zero regard for non-Jewish lives, and contempt for international law, the reality is otherwise, and I, like the Palestinians, must respect that verdict at the polls. What an occupied people should never be asked to do is accept they are destroyed, turn tail, say 'yes bwana' and allow themselves to be turned into a caricature of the dumb natives that will eventually disappear. What Hamas is, is was the rebels of Judea were from the insurrection against Rome, down to Bar Kochba, led often by sicarii. Their cause was legitimate, even noble, their tactics stupid. Perhaps the same can be said of Hamas: they found themselves adopting at one point Israel's model for statehood (assassination, terrorism, massacres and suffering as a horrendous spectre (holocaust) that will appeal to the world's conscience etc.,) as their own, because PLO politics proved only productive of Quislings. Those who died at Masada or in Jerusalem thought exactly like the Gazans. Better die fighting than yield to foreigners. Israel's foundation (not uniquely, most states are based on criminal foundations) owed much to the effect of those spectacular assassinations and massacres of innocents ordered and executed by terrorists who, once statehood was achieved, became ministers of state and indeed Prime Ministers. It set a bad example for Palestinians. A good part of the political elite descends from Irgun families (even so-called moderates like Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert etc). We really must desist, this is off-topic, though I think it important to exercise some latitude from time to time, so that editors in a difficult area understand where each are coming from. I only accept arguments however that tell me my interlocutor tends to be wary of all sources of information, and sieves it through a sceptical lens, before using it to persuade others. I must see Brad Pitt in Troy now playing on TV this last half hour. As a child of 6, reading it for the first time, I rooted for the Trojans, against all of the evidence of the master narrative. Prejudices die hard, like Colonel Inglis and his men. Nishidani (talk) 20:51, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
- You are saying that it's impossible to tell who did a bad thing first, and I agree. Yet you're saying that founding of Israel set a bad example for Palestinians. Arabs populating the land of Israel (sorry, "Palestine") then, even before they came up with the great idea of calling themselves Palestinians, weren't exactly innocent. I do not think I ever said how it began and who's fault it is. I have an opinion and you can guess it, but it's irrelevant. The question is how it can end. Since there are two peoples and one isn't going to kill the other, the only way is to reach some kind of agreement. This agreement cannot be reached while one is determined to destroy the other. Freeing Gaza is a noble goal and it was within reach in 2005. Destroying Israel is wrong and it just won't happen. Open-minded liberals (I believe it includes you) don't understand that by justifying and backing up the atrocities committed by radical terrorists they causing more suffering to their brainwashed but otherwise innocent subjects/hostages. You are right, this is off topic and most importantly pointless.WarKosign (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
- Just a correction. I'm not a liberal. In this area, my model for understanding what is going on is Jabotinsky, the only Zionist who was an unbleary-eyed rational analyst of historical logic. Were I a 'liberal', I'd agree with everything asserted above, which, however, has nothing to do with reality, and everything with feeling comfortable in an otherwise impossibly toxic world.:) Nishidani (talk) 09:28, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
- (flippant and silly) Given that Ben-Gurion used to call Jabotinski "Vladimir Hitler", it seems that NMMNG's comments have something to them after all. Kingsindian (talk) 10:43, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
- I've always believed that Ben-Gurion was a liar, since reading almost a half a century ago an interview in which he showed a visitor his personal library, of 20,000 books if I remember corrrectly, and, waving his arm over the treasured stacks, added that he had "read them all" (equally flippant reply!). I began to take VJ less ideologically, when I read that he had translated Dante into Hebrew and stated that Italy was the only country he'd lived in where he was never made to feel he was a 'Jew'. He was a rotten politician because he was rigorously honest in his realism. All the rest, the successful pollies, win because they manage to make their inner, often malevolent or puerile dishonesty seem thoroughly sincere and decent (like Hitler, and, in NMMGG's estimation, my ignobly anonymous, self).Nishidani (talk) 11:26, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
- (flippant and silly) Given that Ben-Gurion used to call Jabotinski "Vladimir Hitler", it seems that NMMNG's comments have something to them after all. Kingsindian (talk) 10:43, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
- Just a correction. I'm not a liberal. In this area, my model for understanding what is going on is Jabotinsky, the only Zionist who was an unbleary-eyed rational analyst of historical logic. Were I a 'liberal', I'd agree with everything asserted above, which, however, has nothing to do with reality, and everything with feeling comfortable in an otherwise impossibly toxic world.:) Nishidani (talk) 09:28, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
- You are saying that it's impossible to tell who did a bad thing first, and I agree. Yet you're saying that founding of Israel set a bad example for Palestinians. Arabs populating the land of Israel (sorry, "Palestine") then, even before they came up with the great idea of calling themselves Palestinians, weren't exactly innocent. I do not think I ever said how it began and who's fault it is. I have an opinion and you can guess it, but it's irrelevant. The question is how it can end. Since there are two peoples and one isn't going to kill the other, the only way is to reach some kind of agreement. This agreement cannot be reached while one is determined to destroy the other. Freeing Gaza is a noble goal and it was within reach in 2005. Destroying Israel is wrong and it just won't happen. Open-minded liberals (I believe it includes you) don't understand that by justifying and backing up the atrocities committed by radical terrorists they causing more suffering to their brainwashed but otherwise innocent subjects/hostages. You are right, this is off topic and most importantly pointless.WarKosign (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
I hope you can discern this auto-translation, looks like there is no English version of this article. WarKosign (talk) 06:31, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks. You labour under a misapprehension if you think I think Israelis and soldiers don't protect Jewish children. They do. But this is a posed photo after the event. The nation is moved. The nation takes extraordinary measures to protect the soldiers who protect their children, and shoot, bomb, wound, arrest, beat up children on the other side. Nishidani (talk) 11:17, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
- Not posed, but probably taken after the fact, and mis-titled - the soldiers were calming and not protecting the kid while the photo was taken. Harming children on the other side is not a goal but the unfortunate result of their parent's choices. WarKosign (talk) 16:32, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
- We basically agree on the photo then. As to children, that is the standard PR response. It never explains the way courts treat know cases of deliberate murder (Iman Darweesh Al Hams, one of hundreds I know of). Anyway, we can close this.Nishidani (talk) 17:37, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
- Not posed, but probably taken after the fact, and mis-titled - the soldiers were calming and not protecting the kid while the photo was taken. Harming children on the other side is not a goal but the unfortunate result of their parent's choices. WarKosign (talk) 16:32, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks. You labour under a misapprehension if you think I think Israelis and soldiers don't protect Jewish children. They do. But this is a posed photo after the event. The nation is moved. The nation takes extraordinary measures to protect the soldiers who protect their children, and shoot, bomb, wound, arrest, beat up children on the other side. Nishidani (talk) 11:17, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
Ashkenazim
You seem to be the only one who has a considerable amount of influence regarding that page. I'm surprised how people don't understand the policies regarding WP:SYNTHESIS, WP:OR, AND WP:FRINGE. They want to mention "Levantine origins" in the same sentence as "coalesced in the Roman empire" despite the fact that there's an entire paragraph in the lead covering the former topic. Take a look for yourself. Khazar (talk) 19:06, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
- Didn't notice this (travelling) will examine.Nishidani (talk) 17:53, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Oops
I forgot about your "to-do" list - so I've set it up near the top of this page, where you can easily find it. It will stay there and will never be archived. --NSH001 (talk) 05:51, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Wickey-nl topic banned indefinitely
This is an amazing decision, The decision says that "Wickey-nl is temperamentally unsuited to editing this controversial topic area", based wholly on intemperate responses on the WP:AE page. Nobody could point to any edit on article or talk pages which demonstrates this. The evidence presented by Brewcrewer was ignored completely (rightly) and most of the evidence presented by Shrike was also deemed not actionable. There was indeed the issue of bias, but who doesn't have bias in I/P area? I certainly do, and a very strong one.
The exchange on the talk page and the spat with admins was indeed wrong. But it is amazing to me that if Wickey-nl had simply made no statement at all, he would probably not have even got a sanction, except perhaps a warning. This shows me that the admins have wholly made the decision based on responses on the WP:AE page and 'social' skills rather than any edits on actual articles or their talk pages.
I wonder how someone can judge whether someone is suited to edit in an area without editing in the area, or even evaluating the content of the person's edits? Four other editors (including myself) who actually edit in ARBPIA talked about the content of the edits, and giving neutral-to-good assessment, but they were ignored. Coming on the heels of the decision to topic-ban Sean.hoyland, it makes me very sad and annoyed about the ARBPIA sanctions process. Kingsindian (talk) 18:32, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
- I want to point that admins usually disregard additional positive comments by involved editors--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 21:03, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
- @Shrike: I do not know much about the process, but what are the comments by editors for, if they are to be disregarded? Kingsindian (talk) 21:11, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
- @Kingsindian:Lets say that they given much lesser value, editors from the same side usually defend each other so it obvious that their response have less value that comment from uninvolved editor.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 21:49, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
- @Shrike: There is some truth to that, I suppose, though that is a very "tribal" way to look at it. Anyway, the uninvolved editors (EdJohnston and Robert McClenon) also only talked about the behaviour on the WP:AE page. The discussion was about calling some editor corrupt etc. I do not know what this has to do with topic ban. If this was the criterion, a full site ban or block was appropriate, as Robert McClenon said. Kingsindian (talk) 22:11, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
- @Kingsindian:Lets say that they given much lesser value, editors from the same side usually defend each other so it obvious that their response have less value that comment from uninvolved editor.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 21:49, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
- @Shrike: I do not know much about the process, but what are the comments by editors for, if they are to be disregarded? Kingsindian (talk) 21:11, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Could you look at
Talk:Israelites. And the article itself. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 08:12, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks
- Sorry, I didn't know. Yours, Quis separabit? 15:42, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- "This user is no longer very active on Misplaced Pages as of foals' ages." -- glad this is not true at the moment, although I am acity boy and have no idea what you mean by "foals' ages". We need you. Quis separabit? 16:11, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- One of the defects of English is that it has no specific term for a donkey's offspring other than the generic 'foal'. Had I written 'donkeys' ages' it would have been an exaggeration. I wanted it shorter than that - so thought of replacing the aged donkey with its 'foal', hence the neologism. By the way thanks for that assistance. I miscalculated in creating the page, presuming it was unimaginable to think of a modern state killing a more than a thousand civilian hostages with impunity on a petty pretext. Since I intend to press ahead and finish the list, which will take months, and since we are close to 2,000, there's a size problem looming. I think it will have to be split up into a week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4 etc., series. Your technical mastery and suggestions would be most welcome, as always.Nishidani (talk) 16:47, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- "This user is no longer very active on Misplaced Pages as of foals' ages." -- glad this is not true at the moment, although I am acity boy and have no idea what you mean by "foals' ages". We need you. Quis separabit? 16:11, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
The Tradition
@Nishidani: Yeah, and well, the tradition is wrong. It has been proven incorrect by DNA analysis. The Kuthim from Iraq would not have the Cohen gene, they would most likely not even be from J1a, but from J2, and if they were from J1a it would not be in the same northwest semitic cluster as the CMH. There are many areas where the tradition is wrong. I just do not think that the Israelites sat around deciding to completely make stuff up just to frustrate the efforts of future archeologists. I think that if a very specific, rather mundane, emphasis is placed in the Tanakh on something like the location of Beth Shemesh, or the northern border of Dan, I don't think they would go out of their way, or even have any incentive, to make nonsense up. For one, the people reading it at the time would have said, wait a second, this is incorrect the border of Dan is not over here. It would discredit the Tanakh in the eyes of the people. Even if you assume the entire Tanakh was written in 400 BCE by Ezra, the people living at the time would have a cultural memory of the borders of their land, their lineages, what distinguished them from other ethnic groups, who their actual kings were, et cetera. It used to be assumed there was no real difference in lineage between Celtic and Germanic nations, now because of DNA testing we know they are founded by two totally different haplogroups, one form R and the other from I. The lineage of the Israelites from a man who lived in the late bronze age, and immigrated to Canaan from the Aramaeans in Syria, I think is most likely true, I don't know, but why would anyone make up a story so specific, that is not even very epic? I mean, if you are going to make up a false origin, why not do it like the Romans or Greeks and claim you were founded by gods who fought some mythological beast, why the idiosyncratic and boring origin of an Aramaean traveler?--Newmancbn (talk) 18:49, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- You can't go round picking and chosing stuff you like and discarding stuff you disagree with.::Read the Bible. How do you know the genetic profile of the Kuthim of Iraq? If you want to know the genetic profile of the Israelites, get permission to examine the 700 skeletons from Lakish'0s cemetary died ca.712 BCE., and, if it survives, extract the DNA. Why all this inference from far-flung populations, and zero interest in Israel in examining skeletal remains that survive, but whose DNA is only mapped if it is Neolithic? The Israelites, so the story goes, came from people who were not Canaanites, who ancestors came from all of the Middle East, like Ur of the Chaldees etc. I'm afraid your comments show no awareness of modern historical scholarship on the ancient Middle East, and genetics is not going to fill in the gaps of this nescience. Ezra and co., had it in for the am-ha-aretz, the masses of people the priestly caste disdained, but who inhabited ancient Palestine and set up strict lineage rules. Most of the genealogies are based on a mix of fantasy and mied traditions: they couldn't even resolve the tribal issue of how to name God, since southern and northern traditions had different words and traditions, some Israelitic tribes holding he had a spouse. In high antiquity, as the wives of the Biblical patriarchs show, people fucked around from tribe to tribe, ethnos to ethnos, and there was no such thing, as is also the case to day, of a quintessential genetically marked population, except for the Andaman islanders and other isolates. I've read thirty of the scientific papers on the genetics of this area often used in wikipedia and almost all make an historian wince for the sheer lack of familiarity with historical research. It's all over Harry Ostrer's book, hopelessly out of key with what any colleague in a department of religious or historical studies could tell him over a snifter of whiskey in 2 minutes. Nishidani (talk) 18:56, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Your standings on Palestine
Why do you engage yourself in such a controversial topic in the most controversial way? I never understood why a man from Japan would care so much about the Palestinians. Khazar (talk) 18:57, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- Saeki Yoshiro:). Read Jeff Halper's article. I could list twenty major innovations in Israel's handling of Palestinians, innovations that break customary law, which are forming, in the US esp., precedents for changes in laws that will affect citizens. What happens there will probably happen throughout modern Western societies some time in the future. One example: targeted assassinations without due process. That was invented to kill Palestinians. Obama has adopted it to kill US citizens suspected of terrorism. What happened in Ferguson, Missouri, namely the dynamics of the Shooting of Michael Brown takes place every other week in the Palestinian territories, and has so for 3 decades. Palestine is an index of what lies in the future for Western law, and since the precedents set will affect our civil institutions, egotistically, I study Palestinians to imagine what my nephews and nieces might have to live through, unless one foresees in what happens to others an omen of what might well befall those one knows. To me, what happens to Palestinians is analogous to what happened to Jews in the 1930s, and what might happen to people across the world in the bitter regressive future I expect is waiting around the corner. Nishidani (talk) 19:50, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- I read the Halpers article. While it's not incorrect to say that the rhetoric of targeted assassinations can be used elsewhere, it is too misleading to give Israel the credit, in my view. Israel is using tactics which have always been used. "Assymmetrical warfare" was also seen in Algeria and Vietnam. Targeted assassination was also seen in Lebanon and Cuba. This is a matter of power. Israel has overwhelming power against the Palestinians, so it is free to ignore the law. And it does so in a familiar pattern, of other colonial powers. Kingsindian (talk) 20:05, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- Israel takes the credit for theorizing its legitimacy. I wrote the introduction of that article where this is outlined. Halper's article gives now other examples of legal scholars lending their wits to justify what is, at the moment, a violation of law in order to remake it, and provide the theoretical underpinnings for the new regimen, one that breaks radically with Western civilization's vaunted systems of law. This, the theorization of racial violence as necessary to save civilization, did not occur under the major colonial powers, whatever they did in practice. They acted hypocritically. These folks are trying to iron out the hypocrisy by legislating draconian measures, that Plato's players in The Laws would envy. And, personally, they are all nice decent, smiling people socially. It is, though obvious, chilling. Nishidani (talk) 20:19, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- So you are Japanese! Your name always threw me off. Khazar (talk) 20:37, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- I don't have a national identity, just passports, and I rarely speak my mothertongue. By the way, the topic area is not 'controversial', except in the minds of people who read mainstream newspapers and watch Fox television. Both Shin Bet analysts and way-left libertarians see this very much as it is, which is obvious.Nishidani (talk) 21:45, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- If any of this speculation relates to my saying "ho mikado" earlier, that was more of a smartass attempt at a reference to the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta I'd just seen than anything else. John Carter (talk) 21:55, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- Really now? Then what's your ethnicity and mother tongue? I don't identify with my country neither so I understand your point there. Khazar (talk) 22:42, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- I've never empathised with, or understood the attraction of, 'ethnicity', and so can't admit to having one: national identity for me is a sense of primal landscape, nothing else. 8-15% of children are born, unknown to the father, from adultery, and that translates out, over three or more generations into promiscuous origins for most of us. The only friends I made at primary school were immigrants: I instinctively shied away from what others would call 'our kind'. As to my mother tongue, it was a brogue or dialect, different from the 'foreign' language they tweely taught at school. By some freak of circumstances, what Viktor Shklovsky called остранение or as I prefer to translate that, 'de-family-iarization', came naturally to me.
- You can't figure much out from handles. Our 'John Carter' only means that he grew up reading Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom tales, and thinks in Martian terms, which is not a bad perspective to adopt, as long as it's tempered by a yen for Gilbert and Sullivan! Nishidani (talk) 09:56, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
- Amazing. You've typed this much and still haven't revealed anything important about your ethnicity, genetic ancestry, nor the first language you spoke. D:< Khazar (talk) 00:38, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
- I don't have a national identity, just passports, and I rarely speak my mothertongue. By the way, the topic area is not 'controversial', except in the minds of people who read mainstream newspapers and watch Fox television. Both Shin Bet analysts and way-left libertarians see this very much as it is, which is obvious.Nishidani (talk) 21:45, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- So you are Japanese! Your name always threw me off. Khazar (talk) 20:37, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- Israel takes the credit for theorizing its legitimacy. I wrote the introduction of that article where this is outlined. Halper's article gives now other examples of legal scholars lending their wits to justify what is, at the moment, a violation of law in order to remake it, and provide the theoretical underpinnings for the new regimen, one that breaks radically with Western civilization's vaunted systems of law. This, the theorization of racial violence as necessary to save civilization, did not occur under the major colonial powers, whatever they did in practice. They acted hypocritically. These folks are trying to iron out the hypocrisy by legislating draconian measures, that Plato's players in The Laws would envy. And, personally, they are all nice decent, smiling people socially. It is, though obvious, chilling. Nishidani (talk) 20:19, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
- I read the Halpers article. While it's not incorrect to say that the rhetoric of targeted assassinations can be used elsewhere, it is too misleading to give Israel the credit, in my view. Israel is using tactics which have always been used. "Assymmetrical warfare" was also seen in Algeria and Vietnam. Targeted assassination was also seen in Lebanon and Cuba. This is a matter of power. Israel has overwhelming power against the Palestinians, so it is free to ignore the law. And it does so in a familiar pattern, of other colonial powers. Kingsindian (talk) 20:05, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
There is no such thing as "Palestine." Palestine is a racist colonialist fantasy envisioned by Arabian imperialist powers. Falsely comparing Israelis to Nazis as Nishidani just did is a vile tactic used by anti-Semites to defame Jews and deny the Holocaust. As any intelligent person not brainwashed by the Muslims would know, it is the "Palestinians" who are the Nazis. They are illegal colonist-settlers from Arabia intent on stealing the Jewish homeland to further expand their colonial Arab empire consisting of 21 different countries already. Communists like Nishidani hate Israel obviously because communism is an anti-Semitic totalitarian ideology that is basically the same as Nazism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.91.199.221 (talk) 09:20, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
RE: List of Israeli strikes and Palestinian casualties in Operation Protective Edge
Hi, unless my bifocals are acting up, I think the header title for the "Day 12 Saturday 19 July" chart is duplicated. I tried to fix by tweaking but couldn't. Quis separabit? 13:53, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
- Well with your specs you're picking up more errors than I, eyeglassless on Gaza, manage to note. This is definitely something the quiet unobtrusive genius of User:NSH001 can fix. He watches the page, so let's cross our fingers, hoping he isn't out on one of his marathon runs.Nishidani (talk) 14:09, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
- Fat chance of running any more marathons any time soon - I had an operation, some time ago, to fix a hernia, but it never seemed to be quite right, and now it's atarting to hurrt again when I move (long story short: I think I got an incompetent surgeon). Anyway, as you can see, I fixed it. --NSH001 (talk) 17:43, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
- If only highly paid professionals in medicine, law and politics were as efficient as the unpaid volunteers for wikipedia like yourself. Thanks, N, and hope it heals or the heel that botched it ends up with a truss.Nishidani (talk) 19:35, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
- Fat chance of running any more marathons any time soon - I had an operation, some time ago, to fix a hernia, but it never seemed to be quite right, and now it's atarting to hurrt again when I move (long story short: I think I got an incompetent surgeon). Anyway, as you can see, I fixed it. --NSH001 (talk) 17:43, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Battle comments
I said parts of the text were POV, I didn't say there weren't legitimate comments in there. However, is there were many POV comments in there it is proper to revert it and allow the user who posted it to fix it and put it back. You now just put back POV comments, as I had clearly explained was the reason I did it. I suggest you either fix up his POV comments or undue your revert. - Galatz (talk) 15:23, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
- Nope. Your call was that there were POV statements, that called for revert, which shows inexperience and lack of familiarity with policy. NPOV is also secured by the balancing of POVs. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a point of view, articles here consist mainly of POVs: we are obliged to see that both parties in a conflict that merits an article get due and balanced representation, and your edit summary ignored this
- (b) If you had an objection to a large amount of text, you should not just make a mass revert, but rather address the issue on the talk page, here by giving examples of what you object to. You did not do this, and failed to clarify what you consider to be illegitimate POV statements.
- (c) The text was POV before I balanced it. I.e. it discussed the battle as a set of IDF battle moves and details and incidents: there was no mention of what actually was occurring on the other side to thousands of people caught up in the 'hellfire'.
- (d) I mention 'hellfire' because if you read Battle of Antietam you will see that 'POV' statement attributed, and given in the text:
The conflagration caused heavy casualties on both sides and was described by Col. Lee as "artillery Hell." Seeing the glint of Confederate bayonets concealed in the Cornfield, Hooker halted his infantry and brought up four batteries of artillery, which fired shell and canister over the heads of the Federal infantry, covering the field. All at once, the cornfield exploded into chaos as a savage battle raged through the area. Men beat each other over the head with rifle butts and stabbed each other with bayonets. Officers rode around on their horses swearing and cursing and yelling orders no one could hear in the noise. Rifles became hot and fouled from too much firing. The air was filled with a hail of bullets and shells.
Lt. Col. Joseph S. Fullerton wrote, "Kennesaw smoked and blazed with fire, a volcano as grand as Etna." Battle of Kennesaw Mountain
- All these details are not elidible as POV. They consist of sourced statements made by survivors of the conflict, and are absolutely normative for accounts of war and battles. I could give dozens of examples of this from military history pages.
- I suggest in future you familiarize yourself with wiki practice and policy and employ the talk pages before making a mass revert of the kind you just did.Nishidani (talk) 15:44, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
B'Tselem and destruction of homes
Regarding your edit here. I had earlier included it in the section below, though in a condensed form. So might be just duplication. Kingsindian (talk) 22:04, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
- Sorry about that. I intended to remove it on seeing your note, but examined both the contexts. Your earlier edit had it in the house destruction section and reads
B'Tselem has documented 59 incidents of bombing and shelling, in which 458 people have been killed.
- My edit was in the civilian deaths section and reads
B'tselem has compiled an infogram listing families killed at home in 72 incidents of bombing or shelling, comprising 547 people killed, of whom 125 were women under 60, 250 were minors, and 29 were over 60.(should read:'According to B'tselem's infogram of 72 bombing/shelling incidents involving 547 people among families killed at home, 125 were women under 60, 250 were minors, and 29 were over 60.')
- On second thought, given that (a) I consulted the updated B'tselem count and (b) the issue is not house destruction, but civilian families being killed. On reflection I think the data best suits the civilian death section, and the updated ref is more appropriate, which makes me reluctant to revert, though I should have noticed that you had already used part of that source. I am culpable of reduplication, in a sense, but these two factors suggest to me, I will stand corrected of course, that the edit I made is both updated and relevantly positioned thematically. (?)Nishidani (talk) 10:32, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- Nishidani You might be right. A bit of duplication here to examine both contexts, which are important (destruction of homes and the indiscriminate killing leading to lots of civilan deaths), might be warranted. Kingsindian (talk) 10:45, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- We'd probably do well to look for a comprehensive source to get down the best neutral calculation of actual housing damage, total, partial etc.. I'll look into it when I get some time. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 11:02, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- Nishidani You might be right. A bit of duplication here to examine both contexts, which are important (destruction of homes and the indiscriminate killing leading to lots of civilan deaths), might be warranted. Kingsindian (talk) 10:45, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- "Families bombed at home, Gaza, July-August 2014 (initial figures)". B'Tselem. 11 August 2014.
- 'Families bombed at home, Gaza, July-August 2014 (initial figures),' B'tselem 11 August 2014.
Historicity of Jesus
Not necessarily your cup of tea I know but if you wanted to subject yourself to being involved here it would be appreciated as you are probably one of our better informed people in general. John Carter (talk) 18:18, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- Actually as you know that's decidedly my cuppa, but I'm 1,600 behind in my Palestinian casualties tally, and that alone will take months. I'll look over it and bookmark it though.(Does it really matter if he existed? Oedipus didn't, yet the myth informs human understading. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ethics were profoundly Christian, though I figure from his letters he was in fact an atheist).Nishidani (talk) 19:47, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- It's a fucking useless article, John (what's Blainey doing there? He knows zilch about the subject etc.etc.etc.) It's a waste of time trying to fix crap like that, and there's donkeys' loads of it all over the religious area.Nishidani (talk) 20:23, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- I don't disagree. I think the primary concerns are that the article is currently one of the more prominent links in the Jesus sidebar whether it should be or not and that some organization of the topic of "Jesus and history" is in order. That would include the material relating to the John Allegro pipe dream Jesus and the broader Christ myth theory, the quest for the historical Jesus, the reliability of the sources from the era and a whole mess of other articles. Personally I would love to see an article on the pronounced lack of contemporary sources from the first century CE in Israel as well but have no idea where to even look for such material.John Carter (talk) 20:46, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- Allegro! A mate stole the hardback version The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross just so I could read all the details of pseudo-Sumerian etymologies, when the book came out, without having to waste time note-taking rapidly in the library. It's still on my shelves, and makes me feel twinges of guilt over the theft. 99% of the religious-historical articles re Near Middle East are painful to read, and I think the only way around this is to take the core articles one by one and work through one at a time methodically to fix them up according to the strictest wiki quality standards and best sourcing. But that means edit-warring with tub-thumpers.Nishidani (talk) 08:53, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
- I don't disagree. I think the primary concerns are that the article is currently one of the more prominent links in the Jesus sidebar whether it should be or not and that some organization of the topic of "Jesus and history" is in order. That would include the material relating to the John Allegro pipe dream Jesus and the broader Christ myth theory, the quest for the historical Jesus, the reliability of the sources from the era and a whole mess of other articles. Personally I would love to see an article on the pronounced lack of contemporary sources from the first century CE in Israel as well but have no idea where to even look for such material.John Carter (talk) 20:46, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
- It's a fucking useless article, John (what's Blainey doing there? He knows zilch about the subject etc.etc.etc.) It's a waste of time trying to fix crap like that, and there's donkeys' loads of it all over the religious area.Nishidani (talk) 20:23, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Notice
DRN discussion on Hamas rockets.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:11, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for support in the arbitration
Very decent of you, after me not always behaving in the most civil manner. WarKosign (talk) 08:30, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
- No need to thank me, though I appreciate it of course. It's obligatory to intervene where an injustice is in the air. I was only tardy because I am reluctant to pitch in at A/I and AE where bad faith is rampant, and admins usually consider all sides delinquent in regard to NPOV, and defences of the accused are taken implicitly as proof of partisanship.Nishidani (talk) 09:49, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
Add sign
Hi. You forgot to add your signature here. --IRISZOOM (talk) 14:06, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
- Whoops. thanks.Nishidani (talk) 18:08, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
ANB discussion
There is a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive265#Move War at History of the Jews in Nepal, and RFC review that concerns you because you were recently involved with one or more of the related Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/History of the Jews in Nepal, Misplaced Pages:Deletion review/Log/2014 June 30 (History of the Jews in Nepal), Talk:History of the Jews in Nepal#RfC: Should we change article name to 'Judaism in Nepal'?. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 09:06, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Question
Is there a source to "many of which have resulted in mass civilian deaths"?. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 14:56, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
Please don't get topic banned
- I am going to be a bit blunt because I would regard it as a great tragedy if you get topic-banned. If I do nothing except simply follow your edits around to make gnomish changes, WP would be improved greatly. (I sense another great article in the making, about water in the West Bank. Noam Chomsky often talks about the importance of water in decision making, much more than "security".)
- There is no point at all edit-warring on Misplaced Pages, as you did (slightly) on the 8200 letter. Firstly, it is totally useless in WP:ARBPIA given the numerical realities. Secondly, it is a "bright line" that WP:AE can see very easily. In this regard, I consider the actions of Sean.hoyland monumentally stupid. Again I am blunt because from reading the archives, it is clear that it was a great tragedy that he got topic banned, and then retired. I will show why it is stupid. Plot Spoiler did the same "moving without consensus" stuff in the article 2014_Israeli_raids_on_UNRWA_schools article. Was I infuriated? Of course. But I did not stupidly revert his edit. I left a message on his talk page (he still did not revert). Huldra had the article on her watchlist and she reverted within a few minutes, nothing Earth-shaking happened. Eventually, a mutually agreed suggestion was found. Why couldn't have Sean done the same? No, he had to uphold some "ideal", the result of which was that nothing happened to Plot Spoiler and Sean got topic banned.
- With all the obfuscation carried out nationalists on either side, it is very hard to conceal the facts. Can any amount of blather about "human shields", which has a big section in the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict article, conceal the reality? The truth will set you free. It is sufficient to present the facts, even with all the qualifications and garbage which is added. This is the reason I regard the retiring of Wickey-nl, to be a (not so great) tragedy. He had a strong bias, but as John Stuart Mill said, everyone has something to contribute to the truth, even if the world is right and they are wrong. He was clearly knowledgeable about the West Bank, and it was totally idiotic to get topic banned.
- One has to be a consequentalist to a large degree on Misplaced Pages. The project is so huge, and stuff you add can be so ephemeral, that any abstract notion of justice is meaningless. I saw somewhere that you said that you have some rule that you will not self-revert to introduce some knowingly false edit, even if you break 1RR. This is, again, really idiotic. This is a standing invitation for people to bait you, and it is a much greater tragedy if you get topic-banned, than anything which happens to the edit. Self-revert, wait 24 hours, and revert. Will the world stop turning in the meantime?
- I have been thinking of writing an essay on editing in WP:ARBPIA, inspired by User:Ravpapa/Tilt. I have much less experience, but I think I have other insights which he has missed out. Kingsindian (talk) 23:32, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks. I like bluntness from serious people, and don't mind at all being remonstrated with. I wasn't doing a Sean-Hoyland, however, and I wasn't 'infuriated'. SH asked to be banned, I guess because he was sick and tired of the normative gaming and the failure of administration to come up with a solution to the chronic IP et al abuse in the I/P area, which he spent years dutifully blocking: he didn't understand that wikipedia, for all its cautions, has no defences against a certain kind of intentional malice and manipulation, because admins are trained to be 'objectivists' (Ayn Rand's puerile attempt to be 'philosophical' transformed pathetically into a cognitive bias, which anyone with philosophical training knows is just dopey, though it has had a far better, expectedly, afterlife in the moronocracy of American political discourse) and read only for diff evidence for technical infraction. This means programmatically, they only evaluate 'behaviour' in an extremely restrictive sense, excluding the obvious and overwhelming evidence of destructive intent that anyone working in a problematical, war-torn area can see at a glance. Whenever there is a real 'war', the pattern of one or two rule-and process-savvy people will turn up, and work 24/7 to defend what is more or less the official government position. With these people, there has never been a problem. They are very careful and are ready to discuss the technicalities and proprieties of method and appropriate input meticulously. Even if one is sure this is the case, one can work with them. But they will be assisted by numerous blow-ins or old hand POV-pushers who make no bones that they will edit as a group of intuively- or otherwise- coordinated mavericks, reverting, making huge noise on the talk page, attempting to stir conflict so their perceived adversaries will make a false step, and be outed at A/I and A/E, and in general making the relevant articles impossible to edit per WP:NPOV, driving serious wikipedians off, so that the page can more or less be dominated by the official editing line. This this has happened three times in my experience, and I have studied the pattern. It is the latter who should not be on wikipedia, but nothing can be done about it.
- If you examine these several articles, you will note I have edited them rarely, and have almost never straight reverted (as the others do customarily), because, in commonsense, it is pointless. I did revert Plot Spoiler, one of the most noxious POV pushers on wikipedia, because (a) User:WarKosign opened a query about the edit I made for discussion, as is proper. The bloke with the Lithuanian handle, said it needed a POV balancing statement, within minutes, which WarKosign, immediately provided, while awaiting input. Fine. This was how things are done. (b) Within 28 minutes, Plot Spoiler did what he always does. He walked into the page, reverted my edit, and only then hastened to drop a distracted one line note on the new section saying my edit was 'tangential', a purely subjective view, and question-begging. I.e. rather than adding his voice to the section opened by WarKosign, he preemptively cancelled the edit in favour of one outcome in the proposed discussion, creating a fait-accompli which would not be overturned because there is a consolidated 'voting majority' in favour of Israel's official position working that page. So Plot-Spoiler's revert was an evident abuse, and I used, which is perfectly normal, my right to revert it until the discussion WarKosign proposed could be completed. Shrike, of course, immediately re-reverted with a spurious ((please follow wp:brd)) edit summary. immediately reverted by User:Shrike. That was obvious gaming because, were he to be a dedicated follower of WP:BRD, he would have automatically reverted Plot Spoiler's edit. The relevant, section, applicable to Plot Spoiler's prior edit, reads:
Consider reverting only when necessary. BRD does not encourage reverting, but recognises that reverts will happen. When reverting, be specific about your reasons in the edit summary and use links if needed. Look at the article's edit history and its talk page to see if a discussion has begun.
- i.e. Plot Spoiler, unlike myself, ignored the fact that 'a discussion had begun', and the advice specifies that one revert only when necessary. There was no 'necessity' to warrant his abuse of 1R. There was a reasonable necessity for me to protest this abuse by reverting him in turn, because he was patently prejudicing the page by established as a fait accompli the verdict he would prefer in the developing discussion. In this case it was (a) drive-by reverting (b) assisted by a tag-teaming reinforcement from Shrike, in the face of the fact that only WarKosign, and myself, were adhering strictly to the normal procedures.
- This didn't exasperate me. I've been round for 8 years and see this malicious bad faith every other day. Indeed, my reaction on observing it was:'of course!'. I fully expected that my edit would see 5, perhaps 8 (7 of whom are plain disruptive) no votes rolled out in the discussion section. I thought to myself, 'I'll leave it overnight', and if this pattern continues, will report PS and perhaps one other there. This is all a cameo of the kind of rigging of the text that's been going on for two months, and I have far too busy a life off-line to get dragged into this nonsense.Nishidani (talk) 09:03, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
- You might be right about the gaming etc., and I was perhaps overly concerned. I do not have much experience in this area, but I have seen enough. The point of gaming is simple but effective: it works, if not always. And I am very unsure that WP:AE would see your point sympathetically.
- Of course Sean.hoyland himself will know better about his own motivations, but the fact remains that nothing good happened by his stubborn refusal to revert.WP:AE is not equipped to handle such issues. From reading the archives, in particular some of the cases involving Nableezy, I can see that often either (a) nothing happens (b) both parties get sanctioned - "a pox on both houses". Given the volume of bad editors and tribalism the area attracts, it is hardly worthwhile and hugely risky going to WP:AE to get rid of one or two of them. It also forever makes one a marked "enemy". It seems that Nableezy has also retired from this area. I see this pattern, which is silly. My own philosophy is Keep Calm and Carry On. Kingsindian (talk) 09:57, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
- I trust in a fairly substantial experience in psychiatric wards, and helping 'schizophrenic' or 'narcissistic' friends, to consolidate a phlegmatic nonchalance in crises. The I/P area attracts people with cognitive disorders, and that, like reading the non-scholarly, newspaper accounts of that reality, supplies one with a lot of practice in handling the instinctive reactions of countertransference. The only time I experienced (much to my own surprise and curiosity) a sense of panic was when a man, (neither Jewish nor Israeli: aforeigner) tried to murder me in a wild wooded area of the Negev at 4 am. It only lasted a few seconds, until I got my running rhythm, and knew that he'd never be able to catch me, though I could hear him 20 yards off, trying to, in the darkness. The only thing that worries me in wikipedia is that to edit here, esp. in this area, I have to strain, sift, and distort the spontaneous prose I think in, which is, normally complex, jokey and eudaimonic, to create the austerely dull sanitized drone that passes as a flag for 'neutrality' here. Nishidani (talk) 10:29, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
- Re Keep Calm and Carry On, now that I have dined, reminded me of many examples of British phlegm, most recently of something reported about soldiers, facing almost certain death, in the trenches of the battle of Hill 235 during the Korean War (in the past war actually required courage, not nerdish computer skills at a quiet desk close to home, picking off shadowy suspects with missiles). The officer checking the trenches around dawn, when the final assault was expected, heard one of the footsloggers say to his mate, in a Bristol accent:
I don't care what you say about your fancy London beer, Jack. As far as I'm concerned, there's no beer in the world like George's Home Brewed' (Anthony Farrar-Hockley, The Edge of the Sword, (1954) 1955 p,54)Nishidani (talk) 12:39, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
AE
--Shrike (talk) 22:05, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Systemic bias: he who pays the piper calls the tune
On 'mainstream source bias, and many links to relevant analyses that show the corruption that threatens many of our sources Stephen Walt 'Hacks and Hird Guns,' Foreign Policy 9 September 2014.Nishidani (talk) 08:26, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
- As to the recent flutter of insults here and here i.e. 'Listen, you. When I get a hold of you, I'm going to gull out your eyes and shove them down your pants so you can watch me kick the krap out of you,' I much prefer the imagery in that antipodean idiom.’May your balls drop off, bounce off the turf and turn into bicycle wheels that backpedal up your coit.’Nishidani (talk) 10:22, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
- Let's just let him or them waste their mornings. Who cares, really?Nishidani (talk) 10:41, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
- Sounds good. I'll keep blocking as it's no trouble for me and makes more work for them :) —SMALLJIM 10:43, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks. I'll remove reduplications of the same stuff in the interests of page economy, and hr I'll just add for the record a few more accidentally removed. Sometimes, we need to conserve abuse to document the kind of 'toxic' atmosphere of hostility in which some of us have to work. Nishidani (talk) 11:04, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
- Sounds good. I'll keep blocking as it's no trouble for me and makes more work for them :) —SMALLJIM 10:43, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
- Let's just let him or them waste their mornings. Who cares, really?Nishidani (talk) 10:41, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
- (1) Dirty Jap. It was a wonderful moment when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked. (2) better watch your back, Muslim. Nazis like you are known to die of asphyxiation; (3) You and George Galloway are gonna get it You'd better watch out; You squinty-eyed yellow menace- I'm going to kick your irradiated ass!/Nishidani loves having anal sex with George Galloway, and together they have orgies in which they rape Palestinian Arab children- The Arabs children's parents love to watch. That's how sick and twisted Arab culture is.Nishidani (talk) 11:24, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
- Someone with "issues", clearly. Hopefully, he restricts himself to getting his rocks off calling people he disapproves of paedophiles and nazis and imagining himself handing out beatings rather than editing articles. ← ZScarpia 22:00, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
- (1) Dirty Jap. It was a wonderful moment when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked. (2) better watch your back, Muslim. Nazis like you are known to die of asphyxiation; (3) You and George Galloway are gonna get it You'd better watch out; You squinty-eyed yellow menace- I'm going to kick your irradiated ass!/Nishidani loves having anal sex with George Galloway, and together they have orgies in which they rape Palestinian Arab children- The Arabs children's parents love to watch. That's how sick and twisted Arab culture is.Nishidani (talk) 11:24, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
ANI
User:CONFIQ has opened an ANI concerning you, but hasn't notified you. I'm correcting that. DeCausa (talk) 11:59, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for that courtesy, which is in short supply these days. Regards Nishidani (talk) 12:55, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
- I apologize to both. This is something that I know I should do but I did forget. --CONFIQ (talk) 15:30, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
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Saturday and Sunday
In case you missed it, I agreed that the article needs to be an analysis rather than a list of reports of the phrase. I think the PFLP quote helps a bit. I still don't know how or if I will !vote in the AfD, which I encouraged. And thanks for your support. The AfD is a bit of a clusterfuck right now. Dougweller (talk) 16:04, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
- Forgot - did you notice I deleted a lot of the new edits to Queen of Sheba? Some interesting stuff had to go but the editor doesn't like or know our copyvio policy and I had to raise a WP:CCI. Dougweller (talk) 16:06, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks Doug. I don't know how I would vote there either. I've been busy these days on other things, and still must get round, what is it, a more than a year after promising to do so, to these cluster of articles. Sorry to be so lazy. Cheers. Nishidani (talk) 17:08, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
- In some respect you seem to be so offended by my provocative use of the assyrian story, that you missinterpret my actual position. Thats a pity and hindering a possible fruitful cooperation. I ask you to have a look on my recent changes on Eurabia to get a more differentiated perspective. Serten (talk) 16:09, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- Given the huge disinformation that accompanies ethnic conflicts and clashing geopolitical interests, editors who subscribe to NPOV must exercise particular care in getting their details absolutely correct, to ensure that anyone, from any side, can see their narrative represented objectively. I am not offended by people. I am annoyed by the amount on nonsense (thanks for the Eurabia edits, but you are, by the way, not alloweed to add 'sic), even if understandably this is 'sick' stuff) one has to wade through in order to establish a correct text on any article. In editorial exchanges, the vice here is to trim one's opponents to fit one's arrows, to borrow a phrase from Karl Kraus. In this case, my opposition to that article is seen as reflexly 'anti-Israel/anti-Jewish' and the arguments against what I wrote, concerning getting the facts straight, seem to be replied to not on their merits, their precise philological and historical focus, but in terms of that perceived animus.Nishidani (talk) 16:28, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- In some respect you seem to be so offended by my provocative use of the assyrian story, that you missinterpret my actual position. Thats a pity and hindering a possible fruitful cooperation. I ask you to have a look on my recent changes on Eurabia to get a more differentiated perspective. Serten (talk) 16:09, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- I am as experienced as provocative and try to get through always with my POV AND the one or other joke based on quality sourcing. Take Shazia Mirza, Muggeseggele and Men's parking space, the latter caused a major feminist uprising including three lengthy afD attempts on deWP. In your case, I tried to reduce the amount of bad spirit with my notion of the proverb collection AND as well the notion of "the Walfish of ashkelon". „Aussi bini, aussi bleibi, wai Ascalun, ihr grobi Kaibi“ will say, I think the article grew better when it went away from the Jews versus arabs narrative, which is as old as boring and started to include the arab Christian perspective, which is much more interesting. That said, I would like to interact with you based on less distrust and more fun. Serten (talk) 19:23, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- No problem. When I first saw the proverb article, I thought of W.H. Auden's remark that 'if men knew what women said to each other about them, the human race would die out'. I deeply distrust anyone who uses a proverb to sum up an ethnic attitude and make it typify another culture. Were that true, the Italians (l'ospite è come il pesce dopo tre giorni puzza:'a guest is like a fish, stinks to high heaven after three days), Russians (Незваный гость хуже татарина:'An uninvited guest is worse than the Mongol horde ), Japanese (人を見れば泥棒と思え:'Consider any stranger you see to be a thief'), wouldn't be as graciously hospitable as they are in reality (nor, on the strength of this proverb we're discussing would Gazans be so famously generous with guests, even with a Jew walking through their rubble a few days after the most recent catatrophe, with what little their poverty leaves them). The Yiddish proverb An ofter gast falt tsu last,(since you're German there's no need to translate that, I guess) is contradicted by what so many Jews practice as a duty, hakhnasat orehim, etc.
- The Egyptians have a proverb that explains the circulation of memes in newspapers, I guess: 'When the imam farts, those behind him have a crap.' I.e. once a lead writer, in this case Bernard Lewis makes the proverb famous in the West in one article, everyone grasps at it and yodels it aloud on every occasion when an incident involving Arabs with Jews and/or Christians occurs. Karl Kraus came to mind for precisely this reason. He thought the world went on with its madness because of slipshod language, and though he was an odd fellow, I think he was correct in this.Nishidani (talk) 20:25, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- I just read your link to Muggeseggele. Australians have the same concept, though since 'blowies' conjures upan unpoetic unpleasantness, they say 'within a bee’s dick', meaning 'very close'. I.e. 'I came within a bee's dick of being kinghit by the mongrel' (I almost got knocked out by some bastard) etc.Nishidani (talk) 20:37, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- I am as experienced as provocative and try to get through always with my POV AND the one or other joke based on quality sourcing. Take Shazia Mirza, Muggeseggele and Men's parking space, the latter caused a major feminist uprising including three lengthy afD attempts on deWP. In your case, I tried to reduce the amount of bad spirit with my notion of the proverb collection AND as well the notion of "the Walfish of ashkelon". „Aussi bini, aussi bleibi, wai Ascalun, ihr grobi Kaibi“ will say, I think the article grew better when it went away from the Jews versus arabs narrative, which is as old as boring and started to include the arab Christian perspective, which is much more interesting. That said, I would like to interact with you based on less distrust and more fun. Serten (talk) 19:23, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- Lewis commented on the Rushdie issue as well, in that case the fart was a stinky mess :) I think it was in one of the Rabbi Kemelmann crime stories, when one guy said that while the Jews are said to be smart and greedy and the Irish fame is about being hospitable, nice in their cups and friendly, most personal encounters with such persons reveal the opposite. I cannot confirm both issues, as my experience in either case was rather positive. I however need to improve the english Eike Geisel entry, he once used „Some of my best friends are German“ as lede to one of his books. ;) Serten (talk) 20:57, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- Please think before posting here, if you wish collaboration or assistance or whatever. The allusion to the fatwa in the Rushie affair is just another swipe. I could easily cite hundreds of similar things (theologically) Lewis and others of his influential stature quietly ignore which were and are still being said by rabbis in the West Bank, or even in Rabbi Shalom Lewis's Congregation Etz Chaim in Atlanta the other day, endorsing genocidal measures to 'exterminate Islam'. I see that crap every other week, and don't write articles in wikipedia about it. It's incitement, as Israeli PMs love to say of the other camp, as they turn a studiously blind eye to crap churned out in their own backyard. One would say:'Thank goodness for paganism,' were it not for the writings of people like Reuven Firestone, most recently his No, Pamela Geller, the Qur'an Is Not Anti-Semitic, The Forward 29 September 2014, which a lot of wiki articles should catch up with.Nishidani (talk) 21:22, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- Lewis commented on the Rushdie issue as well, in that case the fart was a stinky mess :) I think it was in one of the Rabbi Kemelmann crime stories, when one guy said that while the Jews are said to be smart and greedy and the Irish fame is about being hospitable, nice in their cups and friendly, most personal encounters with such persons reveal the opposite. I cannot confirm both issues, as my experience in either case was rather positive. I however need to improve the english Eike Geisel entry, he once used „Some of my best friends are German“ as lede to one of his books. ;) Serten (talk) 20:57, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- I have written Im schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon in the meanwhile. With regard to antisemitism, I prefer to use the auld Austrian definition "it occurs when you dislike Jews more than actually necesary". In a way, your reaction describes part of the problem - I havent planned another swipe, but checked the Lewis issue on google, found the fatwa point first and gave a feedback on that. I think the serious background is about important differences in the history of religions. Jewish interaction with God is rather on even level, take Jacob's Ladder or Job, Christian theology has been dealing with failure much earlier than Muslims - I mean the founder of the religion was crucified at the age of thirty three, thats where others start their career. Islam was so successfull in the start, that some of the adherants still believe it has to go on like that for ages. That said, please take the notion that I am willing to use and take swipes easily, and I love Shazia Mirza for the sort of self deprecating humour (its written in my pilote licence) she provides. There is more like that, take Bülent Ceylan and I am looking forward to see it advanced ;) Best regards Serten (talk) 22:34, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- Okay, so you don't like Muslims, and know even less about history and theology, and you can't help yourself (I think you are just not as bright as you think you might be) making a personal swipe again. ' antisemitism "occurs when you dislike Jews more than actually necesary". In a way, your reaction describes part of the problem.' The paranoid trend of seeing communists, Jews, witches, islamists, the Pope, everywhere is invariant in history, and there is nothing unique about its most devastatingly recent recrudescence in 'antisemitism' (see Norman Cohn's works). It has biblical roots, going back to God's advise re the Amalekites, and what to do generally about everyone else being disruptive of theological claims to some real estate. The impact of 1 Samuel 15:2-3, and the Book of Joshua has affected all monotheisms descending from that tradition, which is one reason I am happier identifying myself with pagan Greece, or mixing with 'primitive' or oriental peoples who hadn't the misfortune to inherit in their cultural genes this obsession with a brimstone deity's commandments re Blut und Boden.I have a low boredom threshold. Please don't interact with me, or ask for assistance. Thank you.Nishidani (talk) 09:18, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
- I have written Im schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon in the meanwhile. With regard to antisemitism, I prefer to use the auld Austrian definition "it occurs when you dislike Jews more than actually necesary". In a way, your reaction describes part of the problem - I havent planned another swipe, but checked the Lewis issue on google, found the fatwa point first and gave a feedback on that. I think the serious background is about important differences in the history of religions. Jewish interaction with God is rather on even level, take Jacob's Ladder or Job, Christian theology has been dealing with failure much earlier than Muslims - I mean the founder of the religion was crucified at the age of thirty three, thats where others start their career. Islam was so successfull in the start, that some of the adherants still believe it has to go on like that for ages. That said, please take the notion that I am willing to use and take swipes easily, and I love Shazia Mirza for the sort of self deprecating humour (its written in my pilote licence) she provides. There is more like that, take Bülent Ceylan and I am looking forward to see it advanced ;) Best regards Serten (talk) 22:34, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
- Among others, I have written Popular image of Native Americans in German-speaking countries was much more fun for me than Unfriendly use of Popular proverbs in, around and against how youever want to call that peace of earth ever would be :) Serten (talk) 18:14, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
Compare Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Korean influence on Japanese culture. The long discussion about details fails to grasp the issue with the generic narrative, which is about Nihonjinron, similar as sut/sunday has to do with dual convenant theology. Serten (talk) 17:50, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
- No it isn't about Nihonjinron. It's about using the best Japanese and Korean scholarship on each item listed on that page. Most of the bibliography shows that the editors or editor have no knowledge of either. The adage Sat/sunday has to hasn't anything to do with Dual-covenant theology (another unreliable wiki page), for the saying pre-existed for centuries dual convenant theology.Nishidani (talk) 18:53, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
- Goodness, Dual-covenant issues are as old as Paulus controversy with Petrus on Christians with Jewish respectively gentile background. The point is, as long as Christians could play a role in arab nationalism, the theology was not questioned, that changed with rising "muslim-only" tendencies - similar as the use of the proverb. Serten (talk) 19:24, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
- No. That is retrospective interpretation by bad theologians but excellent Zionists like James Parkes. Theology shouldn't trump history: Paul was a turncoat and arguably more offensively anti-Judaic than anyone or anything attributable to/associated with Jesus or his immediate followers, with whom he broke.See Heerak Christian Kim, Zadokite Propaganda in the Late Second Temple Period, p.112 which has just come out, to cite one of hundreds of sources.We discussed bees' dicks earlier on in this thread. Now I'm reminded of the contiguous 'fly's fart' (Tom Sharpe,Wilt in Nowhere, 2004 p.218Nishidani (talk) 20:08, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
- Goodness, Dual-covenant issues are as old as Paulus controversy with Petrus on Christians with Jewish respectively gentile background. The point is, as long as Christians could play a role in arab nationalism, the theology was not questioned, that changed with rising "muslim-only" tendencies - similar as the use of the proverb. Serten (talk) 19:24, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
User talk:MarciulionisHOF
Nishidani, I can understand you felt the need to post a comment, but please leave it at that, really. Don't put any more pennies in. Bishonen | talk 12:13, 9 October 2014 (UTC).
- You're right as usual. It's just that this is, I think, the 5th editor to campaign against me this year to settle some observed score from the past, and it is becoming programmatic. I don't want immunity of course, but clarity, and in repeating decontextualized diffs from the past, all this is lost from view. Admins can't remember everything. Now back to my books, that's that. Nishidani (talk) 12:29, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
Kids Behind Bars
Kids Behind Bars: Israel's Arbitrary Arrests of Palestinian Minors, Spiegel Online International. IjonTichy (talk) 06:48, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
AFD "no consensus" result, and how to deal with that other problem
Hey, I've been out of the AFD game for a while -- is it common for AFDs with a pretty clear trend to delete after 7 days to wait for a few late-comers to !vote keep without actually reading the prior discussion? I'm halfway considering WP:DRV in this case, but I guess since no one other than Curtis and maybe Andrew actually objected to my assertion that virtually everything in the article needed to go one way or the other then no harm no foul.
But regarding that latter point -- I wasn't lying when I said the guy has interacted with me three times outside of my initial AFD on his Tomomitsu Taminato article (an equally dodgy "no consensus" close with a 2/3 majority in favour of deletion...), and on all three occasions he has showed up on a page he had never shown any interest in before or since and opposed my removal of blatant POV/OR. I don't wanna go to ANI and ask for an IBAN, since they tend to be two-way and that didn't work out last time I requested it, and the problem with a TBAN is that the "topic" in question is supposed to be something all Wikipedians are permanently banned from anyway...
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:47, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
About the Korean influence on Japanese culture discussion -- it does seem to have been closed rather abruptly (even though I suppose it was going nowhere). I find it very difficult to understand why a bunch of people always come along, and just ignore fundamental problems with (non-)articles. Anyway, what you said about the "Coffee table Needham": of course you are right, I should have said "by Robert Temple, with a foreword by and no doube sourced from Joseph Needham". But this might be a demonstration of the same problem: what does Needham say about the Chinese and biochemistry? They discovered how to isolate things with medical effects from urine, but they knew nothing (obviously) of DNA, enzymes, and whatnot, and as far as I know were still stuck with fire, water, wood, metal, and earth to make stuff from. But to call this "anticipating modern biochemistry" seems to me to be just dishonest. Imaginatorium (talk) 15:04, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
Plot Spoiler. Evidence
- This edit summary is (a) accompanied by no comment on the talk page.
- (b) It is answered by the article itself, which uses blogs 14 times, most of them being pro-war Israeli sources, and including several references to the idf.blog, which, by the record, has less reliability than Richard Silverstein.
- (c) Challenging Richard Silverstein as not RS (to be demonstrated) for his own widely read opinions is silly but
- (d) the edit summary is a pretext, because Plot Spoiler reverted not only my reference to Silverstein, but also to Uri Avnery (former Knesset member, writer and distinguished commentator) and Gideon Levy (a highly notable Israeli journalist), the last of whom was writing for Haaretz, a mainstream Israeli newspaper. That Uri Avnery posted his comments on Counterpunch is neither here nor there. His views are quoted for what he thinks, not what Counterpunch proposes.
- As to the relevance, the page has made intensive efforts to showcase Israel's thesis, all over the world press, that there is something unusual in Hamas having weapons in schools, mosques, hospitals, kindergartens etc. We have given numerous sources stating this thesis. Per WP:NPOV it is perfectly fair to present the opposite opinion, one indeed widely known in Israel, i.e., that the IDF rhetoric contradicts the history of the IDF, since in its early manifestations as the Palmach/Haganah, in a similar struggle for independence, it used all of these civilian facilities to hide its weaponry from the British.
- The edit therefore was more than legitimate. It is obligatory, and Plot Spoiler's revert is in line with his long history of reverting me, and many others, on pretextual grounds (WP:RS) which (as in his simultaneous elision of Haaretz) are belied by what he he actually does, which is rather explained by WP:IDONTLIKEIT.Nishidani (talk) 19:15, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
(2) same revert preempting ongoing talk page discussion in which he doesn't participate 2 November 2014. The object is R Silverstein's blog, 'not RS', whilst it is RS for Silverwstein's own opinion, which is cited as evidence of one of several similar views, and therefore perfectly acceptable in that context, to illustrate a viewpoint. Nishidani (talk) 15:01, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
- Plot Spoiler immediately rereverted (2nd revert) with this edit summary:'Actually it's not on the talk page right now, and more tendentious nonsense from you.'
- The time stamp is 15:09, 2 November 2014
- The page referred to is 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict
- The talk page section which was opened up earlier today 02:42, (12 and a half hours earlier) by User:Knightmare72589, and which four editors, Knightmare, WarKoSign, JDiala, and myself had offered a discussion.
- So, Plot Spoiler's 'it's not on the talk page right now' is counterfactual, i.e. flies in the face of the evidence he was directed to review. So much for 'tendentious nonsense'.Nishidani (talk) 15:48, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
Your rollback - 20:20, 19 October 2014
FYI: Nishidani's rollback - 20:20, 19 October 2014 --Igorp_lj (talk) 23:19, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
- A word on the meaning of English words. 'Rollback' means scaling back down to a prior situation. Therefore your use of the word distorts what I did: I rewrote a passage with outdated statistics, while you and another editor each warred over which version of dated or irrelevant statistics to use.Nishidani (talk) 17:37, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
- It's not about English. Pls re-read beginning of my topic:
@User:Nishidani, please explain this your edit:
Sorry, but I do not see any base for your "Don't edit war" charge.
My edit does follow on @user:Dr. R.R. Pickles erasing the information from ITIC with such symptomatic description as "ITIC is a propaganda source, completely untrustworthy for basic facts", so I've asked him to add his info accurately "This is your opinion only, pls add your data w/out deleting other ones"...
- and paid attention to the diff's link pointed just to your "'Rollback'... scaling back down to a prior situation", i.e. back to Dr. R.R. Pickles' "Revision as of 07:20, 19 October 2014". :) --Igorp_lj (talk) 20:35, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
- The answer to your question is in my original response above, which I invite you to actually read.Nishidani (talk) 20:58, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
- And "I invite you to actually read" the title too: "20:20, 19 October 2014" --Igorp_lj (talk) 21:32, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
- No thank you! Мне кажется, я со стенкой разговариваю Nishidani (talk) 21:49, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
- Взаимно. А жаль :(. --Igorp_lj (talk) 21:57, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Shuja'iyya
I highly recommend the series of investigative reports by Eidan Landau on the socio-economic and political impact of the I-P conflict. The website contains a series of well-researched, well-supported pieces of investigative journalism, studying the issues in great depth and breadth. The articles focus mostly on the impact of the conflict on the lives of average people, including both Palestinians and Israelis. The articles also investigate closely related issues, e.g. how Israeli companies exploit the occupation for financial profit, corruption in the Israeli government, etc.
The most recent posting is titled Slow Death in Shuja'iyya: Work by the Artist Sabah Iyad, 18 October 2014, Gaza. Translation of the sentence at the bottom of the page: According to UN figures, at least 1,473 civilians were killed by the IDF during operation "Strong Cliff," including 501 children and 257 women. More than 11 thousand people were injured. During the day of July 20, 2014, the IDF rained on Shajai'yya 7,000 shells, including 120 bombs of one ton each. 72 civilians were killed in Shaja'iyya.
Eidan Landau writes in Hebrew. You may want to use google translate (or bing translate etc). These free online translation services are not good but they are not entirely useless either, and they are constantly improving. And besides, Landau's articles often contain links to YouTube videos in English or in Hebrew with an English translation, or links to newspaper articles from around the world in English.
Best regards, IjonTichy (talk) 23:26, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks. I found the artwork quite good. As to Shuja'iyya, the rule applies to everything else. Exercise patience until strong RS by independent minds emerge with the wisdom and superior accuracy of hindsight. These articles, written on breaking news, are all infantile. One would never guess reading them what everyone who studies these things knows: that rocket attacks had nothing to do with the decision to go to war. Both Hamas and Netanyahu found themselves with no other option if they were to ensure their political survival.Nishidani (talk) 17:37, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Comparing Arab-Israeli matters to WWII
The comparison between "undereported" events and "Vad yashem accounts of the Holocaust" is quite offensive and lacks basic sensitivity. The same goes for misrepresenting Israeli officials with fake/out-of-context quotes (Note: Weissglass says nothing about food) and soapboxing about genocide, "military power out to be a lachrymose victim", et al. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 02:06, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
- Dov Weissglass:'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,' Source:Conrad Urquhart, 'Gaza on brink of implosion as aid cut-off starts to bite,' The Guardian 15 Apr 2006 (the remark was made in February 2006)
- I don't even know what this talk section is about, having not looked, but I saw this quote and remembered this. Zero 08:30, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
- Ah, wikileaks and US cdablegrams corroborating Weissglass's policy. Nothing new, of course, but these basic materials without newspaper spin, clarify the point. Thanks Zero.Nishidani (talk) 10:27, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
Israeli officials have confirmed to Embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.
As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to econoffs on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge
- Genocide/Holocaust analogy was made by Matan Vilnai.'"The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," .' 'Israeli minister warns of Palestinian 'holocaust,' The Guardian 29 February 2008.
- 'lachrymose,' was an allusion to a famous complaint by Salo Wittmayer Baron:'“it is time to break with the lachrymose theory of pre-Revolutionary woe, and to adopt a view more in accord with historic truth”,' given a neat exposition by David Engel in hisHistorians of the Jews and the Holocaust, Stanford University Press, 2010 p.56.
- Yad Vashem's foundation stone was set just after the massacre of Deir Yassin and rises close to that village (1,400 metres away if I remember correctly) whose destruction precipitated the nakba, and on which, somewhat ironically, the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center stands. A curator of the museum who happened to mention this fact was sacked. Do you think I should be deplored for remembering what I read? Cf. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Trauma: A Social Theory, Wiley 2012 p.120.
In short, editors in this area should familiarize themselves with the topic (any brief allusion to the real history of this area is habitually dismissed as 'soapboxing' ). Lack of knowledge of both history and who said what means that the obvious seems surprising, if not a travesty of the (lack of) knowledge one might possess. So kindly drop it. I'm busy. Nishidani (talk) 10:48, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
- @Nishidani:
- The Hebrew meaning of 'shoah' (not 'The Shoah') is disaster, not 'genocide' -- so you can retract that word and future use of Matan Vilnai (or Ovadyah Yosef, for that matter).
- Itamar Shapira, a self-described "ex-Jew" which you mistakenly call "A curator" (he was a tour guide) was indeed fired. Isn't that a big enough clue?
- I don't know why you think it pertinent to mention him and the Deir Yassin massacre. Do you believe soapboxing justifies earlier soapboxing? Your comments are long and philosophical. Quotes by "anti-Zionist rabbis" and "ex-Jews" that take things out of context and have little historical accuracy. Promoting political or ideological struggle, e.g. "Just as the Nazi final assault", is prohibited. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 12:41, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
- Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes. The article on The Holocaust here reads>:
The biblical word shoah (שואה; also transliterated sho'ah and shoa), meaning "calamity", became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s, especially in Europe and Israel. Shoah is preferred by some Jews for several reasons, including the theologically offensive nature of the word "holocaust", '
- 'Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai went as far as threatening a "shoah,"the Hebrew word for holocaust or disaster. The word is generally used to refer to the Nazi Holocaust,'
- That Vilnai backtracked and tried to cover up what everyone who heard him understood by the term with the limp excuse that when he personally uses the word 'shoah' he doesn't think of the meaning attached to it in Hebrew and by all Jews, and Westerners, but meant it to refer to a 'disaster'. It's like saying that when you use the word 'apple' no thoughht of the fruit crosses your mind, but only an image of New York or Microsoft's competitor. Sure, yeah. Yawn.
- Look at the context. You want to remove a source that details a series of Israeli massacres from oral memories of the survivors.
- Itamar Shapira exercised his right to remark on a feature in the landscape: -as you recall the holocaust, recall that next door there existed a village where over 100 Palestinians were murdered-. He would make an excellent wikipedian editor, but recalling both versions of a country's history, Jewish and Palestinian, is evidently good enough warrant over there for getting fired. You don't understand that. People raised on free speech, democratic principles do.
- The tendency of editors to find excuses for any remark or fact deleterious to one side's image, while editing vigorously to showcase everything negative about the other side, is why this area of wikipedia is worked in continual violation of the obligation to assure neutrality, whatever one's private opinions.Nishidani (talk) 13:40, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
- The article on The Holocaust says rightly that the word "Shoa" translation is "calamity". Usually, people refer to the Holocaust the use the term "Hashoa" ( The Holaucaust) or "Shoat yehudei Romania" (Romanian Jews Holocaust), so it seems that MarciulionisHOF is right. Ykantor (talk) 14:13, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
- Not to comment on the substance of your discussion here, I would point out that it is doubtful that Vilnai was referring to the Holocaust in his use of the word "Shoa". In modern Hebrew, the word "Hashoa" (with the definite article) universally refers to the Holocaust; but without the definite article, it is often used as a general term for catastrophe. See, for example, this quote by Yair Lapid:
- "מה שקורה בארץ עכשיו לא פחות משואה אנשים נאלצים לעבוד בשלוש עבודות רק כדי לשלם שכירות"
- (translation: What is happening in Israel now is no less than a shoa' - people have to work three jobs just to pay rent.)
- --Ravpapa (talk) 14:40, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks Rav. I'm aware of the distinction between'shoa/hashoa, which Ykantor points up. The problem is, um, hermeneutic. I was taught to read, and write, with attention to the resonance of words. Freudian 'lapses' didn't begin with psychoanalysis. All of classical and Talmudic exegesis accepts as an interpretative truism that the full range of meanings given a word is relevant to the interpretation of the content. Consider the verbal and cultural context I wrote out below (in response to the premise that somehow these numerous reports of wild statements by senior figures in Israel are, one by one, just 'misunderstandings').
- --Ravpapa (talk) 14:40, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
- Many sources say you are both wrong. 'shoah'/'ha-shoah' is an equivocation.Both Ynet/Reuters, commenting:'"Holocaust"(shoah) is a term rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi genocide during World War Two. Many Israelis are loathe to countenance using the word to describe other contemporary events.' and Haaretz are Israeli newspapers that took his comment, as did many other Jewish sources, as utterly distasteful because it evoked the Holocaust. Language works that way. When the town council of Or Yehuda posted a sign outside the cityduring the recent gaza War telling its local boys serving in the IDF:
- Residents of Or Yehuda are with you!
- Pound (kansu) their Mom so you can return safely to yours.
- The word 'pound' means 'fuck/bang' in hebrew slang, and can't avoid that connotation, even if the jerk who thought it up comes back and justifies the phrasing by arguing that 'bang' means (just as bad) 'bomb the shit out of them'. When Professor Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University said that raping Palestinian women was a deterrant to terrorism, though adding that is wasn't meant to be advice to soldiers or, yesterday, his colleague emeritus professor Hillel Weiss called for the annihilation of the Palestinians, saying it is inevitable and won't constitute 'genocide' since that applies to a people, which the Palestinians are not, you don't as an editor equivocate, or run to the defense of whoever said what, as if it were impossible, uniquely for some eminent israelis, among them rabbis Dov Lior, Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Congregation Etz Chaim in Atlanta, to consider the murder of innocents or genocide itself as an option. If Moshe Feiglin calls for the extermination not only of Hamas but anyone who supports it, and bundling the rest of Gazans into camps where they will await relocation abroad, with a subsidy so Israel can build a nice commercial tourist industry for itself in Gaza(a move supported by Rabbi Ben Packer here), or if Yochanan Gordon calls for genocide, and Ayelet Shaked, a Knesset member groomed as potential prime ministerial material on the eve of the murder of Abu Khdeir, and before the war broke out wrote 'in wars the enemy is usually an entire people, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure. Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”', then it is unwise to pretend, on every occasion that there is a (foreign) misunderstanding, that genocide wasn't invoked, or murder of innocents justified.
- Update: 'In the post, written Friday and titled “Dealing with Savages,” Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck offers suggestions that range from destroying whole Palestinian towns to uprooting the Dome of the Rock.“There is a war for the land of Israel that is being waged, and the Arabs who dwell in the land of Israel are the enemy in that war and must be vanquished,” Pruzansky writes. . .Pruzansky refers to “the Arab-Muslim animals that span the globe chopping, hacking and merrily decapitating,” and then writes, “At a certain point, the unrestrained behavior of unruly animals becomes the fault of the zookeeper, not the animals.”' Ben Sales, 'New Jersey Rabbi Steven Pruzansky Spews 'Savage' Hate in Blog Post,' The Forward 24 November 2014.
- The point Ykantor is that as editors, we are obliged to find the facts, and report them, whatever the consequences, and it is disappointing to observe the large influx of editors now who seem to edit defensively or aggressively to promote an official agenda that appears to read: 'we are incapable of evil, malice, wrongdoing. These are properties associated with the other side.' No one is exempt from evil, and even the devil has, by late report, some good features. Nishidani (talk) 15:39, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Wider review
Nishidani I'm having trouble getting past these repeated 'genocide' assertions, as well as the matter of allusions between Arab-Israeli matters and WWII. I am posting for wider review on WP:AE. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 20:29, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
- They are not 'generic assertions'. They are links to documents in the public domain. I am not to blame if so many people consistently make these remarks.
- Could I counsel you, in your own interests to withdraw that? You came to my page, with a sense of offense over our disagreement at Rafah massacre. The implicit request above was that I clarify what I meant in remarks you took to be injurious. I did so by documenting the kinds of sources that lay in my mind as I wrote those remarks. This was necessary because your misprision appears to come from a lack of familiarity with the facts. You silenbtly passed over my corrections, and challenged a thing or two. I went to the trouble to illustrate in depth the issue as I saw it, which is an editorial problem: namely, learning, whatever one's POV, to know the subject sufficiently thoroughly that you are not discountenanced by anything that might, in an edit, show the unseemly side of an issue. We are under an obligation to see all sides of these realities, not to muckrake for one side, and defend to the last comma the bona fides of the other. Please note that almost nothing of what I know of these things has influenced my editing. I read a lot of trash like the above, but do not rush to cram wiki pages with damning evidence. Unfortunately this is not the case with many new editors.
- You now use this to report me for a sanction. Now, jumping at that to report what was a time-consuming act of courtesy to clear up something that appearted to bother you as if I had said something indictable, looks as though from the outset you were on a 'fishing expedition.' I'm willing to believe that this contretemps is just typical of a certain newbie naivity, and not gamesmanship. Others may think otherwise, but perhaps you should familiarize yourself with WP:Boomerang and calculate whether your interests are served by making such a complaint.Nishidani (talk) 21:50, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
The same comparison
in description of your revert:
- "In all wars, children have fought. They did so in the Warsaw ghetto"
I am not sure that Misplaced Pages is the right place for such comparisons. --Igorp_lj (talk) 22:21, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
- I must admit (as I said in Russian to you the other day) that I am completely perplexed by recent trends here. In several pages, a notable number of editors have swept in, all intent on making an IDF talking point stick: Hamas uses children as human shields (translation= we aren't to blame for the 557 killed in bombing runs), Hamas uses children in war translation= we aren't to blame for the 557 killed in bombing runs), Hamas uses civilian structures, mosques, schools, and charities to store weapons (translation= we aren't to blame for the destruction of several hundred social centres, mosques and schools). Well, obviously the pages must register these claims, for that is what RS report. When I simply edited in several sources, from Israeli and Jewish commentators, which compare this talking point with the fact that in 1947-1948 Jews in their fight for independence used schools, synagogues and kindergartens and all sorts of civilian institutions to stash weapons, and therefore that this claim (true or untrue) about Hamas is also a fact about Israel's foundational history, shocking if Hamas does it, glorious if Israel did it, the edit is immediately reverted, and several editors complain that I (not Uri Avnery, Gideon Levy, Richard Silverstein et al.,) am making offensive analogies!? The analogy, sir, is in the sources.
- Today WarKoSign wanted to fuss the casualty page with a dubious source suggesting Hamas used children in several instances. I personally don't find that claim absurd: it's quite possible youths in Gaza have helped their fathers, brothers, relatives in fighting. After all, this, as I documented in detail (Military use of children) is what happened in Europe in 1939-1945, and Jewish youths in Poland such as among the Bielski partisans and in many other places valiently fought against those who plotted their extermination. My objection was to the poor source, and to WP:Undue. The lead there is minimal, and plunking the 'Hamas are contemptuous of children's lives' meme on every page, when it is amply covered on the main articles, suggests to me POV-extremism gone amuck. Nishidani (talk) 22:49, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
- I am afraid that there is something wrong in your understanding of current Arab-Israeli reality when you trying to apply today the WW2 framework to this new, not black & white, reality. May be the reason is that same Avnery, whom you call the "one of the greatest Israelis of our time" (:), that same Levi, and others such your sources are not the most respected men in Israel. Their point of view here, if not marginal, but isn't shared by more than few percents of society.
- Did you try to read some other authors? --Igorp_lj (talk) 00:08, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
- Science, culture, philosophy, art, everything that makes us civilized, comes from the 'few percents of society' (the same is true of everything that makes us barbarous). The premise in your remark is that an idea is sound if a majority underwrites it.57% of American believe in the existence of Satan; 77% believe aliens have visited earth; 46% believe God created man on the 23 October 4004 BC. The only corrective to the general impression one gets from mainstream newspapers that mankind is insane is to read New Scientist sedulousy from cover to cover each week.Nishidani (talk) 10:30, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
- Nishidani, observing this farcical interaction reminded me of this quote from Molly Scott Cato:
You seem to be doing a good job of producing "furrows" (metaphorical or real) on your interlocutors' brows! And, as MSC points out, the increasing corporate control of university education might (partly) explain why it seems that so few people nowadays are intellectually equipped to see through the framing of issues presented in mainstream sources. --NSH001 (talk) 06:55, 23 October 2014 (UTC)Perhaps most important of all, real education is not always an enjoyable experience. Genuine education is emancipatory and revolutionary, which may be a reason why conservatives distrust it. The good educator challenges the student's world-view and this cannot always be a comfortable experience. You know you are teaching successfully when you see a furrow begin to appear on the youthful skin of your students’ foreheads. This connotes the performance of ‘thinking’, an activity that has been increasingly rare in universities since the advent of the market. (Universities of Transition, Red Pepper, March 2011.)
- Perhaps I should just ignore these requests on my talkpage. The human mind is wired so that synaptic maps are formed by associational leaps. Analogy is the natural mode for reducing randomness in the infinite, potentially chaotic linkage of ideas or impressions. It is also the affective template for the roots of ethics in a sense of empathy for the other. Ideology is a system for creating mental buffers or circuit-breaks that hamper the formation of analogies: it is a system for cementing in-group identity by erasing analogy's tendency to cross taxonomic borders, as per the ritual exclamation one was taught to recite inwardly as a child on witnessing calamity befall a stranger:'There, but for the grace, of God, go I.' In ideologically-suffused worlds, this reflex is not only deprecated, it is engineered discursively so that it does not even arise as a possibility. A Roman in Gaul or among the Picts, Cortez in Tenochtitlan were perhaps just illustrating 'nature, red in tooth and claw'. Modernity provides elaborate doctrinal justifications that serve a Han immigrant in Lhasa,a Zionist settler in Hebron, a pioneer rancher on Apache land, a Boer in Transvaal, a Brazilian logger in Amazonia, the squattocracy of Queensland, . . Well, I hope that this can close an unfortunate interlude. I don't have much time these days to edit, let alone explain them to people who are not interested in listening. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 10:27, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
- Nishidani, observing this farcical interaction reminded me of this quote from Molly Scott Cato:
Historically children often participated in conflict, and often died as a result. If the article reports deaths of underage militants as something out of the ordinary, then their participation in the fighting must also be represented as something out of the ordinary. If there is nothing unusual in their involvement in fighting, then the number of children dying (513) is notable only for being relatively low - 23% of the causalities vs 44% of general Gaza population.“WarKosign” 11:06, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
- I think you miss the point. The fact that some children may have participated in the conflict is, contrary to the way all Israelocentric sources frame it, not anomalous. In Germany WW2, 20% of the civilians who died were children, in Gaza 23% of the casualties were children.20% reminds me of the percentage of German youth fighting in the Battle of Remagen Bridge, 200 I think out of 1,200, made famous but not featuring in the famous The Bridge at Remagen film, all will recall for Robert Redford's panic-sedative 'Hail Marys' as he paddled under fire to the other bank.
- This doesn't mean that in the case of Gaza, a high percentage of those children died in combat. The numerous and graphically recalled accounts of families of 10-27 bombed to smithereens is evidence to the contrary. Your persistence in trying to lard articles with ill-sourced trivia (using a fringe private think tank's agenda-driven propaganda claim that several children of 513 killed were killed while in proximity to, or abetting combatants) suggesting a nexus between the high number of children killed, and juvenile militancy, is agenda driven, and indifferent to what is required of wikipedians. Please don't write any more on this topic on this page. Do want you are minded to do on these articles, but personally I find all of this cool discussion of how many of half a thousand children killed in 51 one days deserved what they got appalling. Nishidani (talk) 12:35, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
I suppose the difference between "ill-sourced trivia" and "integral part of the debate" is whether the statement promotes your agenda or hinders it. Nobody belittles the number of children - but the nature and reason of their deaths have to be attributed properly. Some of the reported children participated in fighting, some of them were in fact adult militants, some were killed by Hamas's own rockets, some were "urged" to stay at homes, and some were killed by the IDF. Not stating these facts in the article misleads the reader into thinking that IDF killed more than it in fact did. I'm sure that after all the validations are complete there will still remain enough children killed by IDF to satisfy any Israel hater. “WarKosign” 13:18, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
- Your editing strikes me as a mimeograph of official IDF or government window-dressing, and utterly predictable, as are your comments. I'm familiar with them because I read press briefings. So it is quite pointless trying to converse rationally here, esp. since any disagreement is implicitly (here explicitly) understood to be symptomatic of 'Israel-haters', of whom, in this 'logic' the President of Israel itself is one, judging from the fact that he said recently precisely the sort of thing detected by a few editors as enmity here. People who think in these terms don't think: they represents official talking-points 'to win the minds and hearts' of the 'majority'. So, do me a courtesy and stay off this page.Nishidani (talk) 13:29, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
Sorry I wasted both of our times. As my usual experience with you, I did not get a response to the essence but a flood of obscure references to unimportant points. You repeatedly accused editors of serving hasbara, yet you follow Hamas's manual almost point-for-point. I will try to suppress my urge to open this page in the future, even if I see other editors making comments here. “WarKosign” 14:28, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
- Bathetic Parthian shot, because amnesial. When Hamas defines itself as I have done, calling it 'stupid, terroristic, murderous, and intoxicated by an instrumental indulgence of suffering,' still on this page, you may come back and say that I 'follow Hamas's manuel almost point-by-point,' only in the sense that they would be admitting to copying my remark for some future reference text.
What Hamas is, is was the rebels of Judea were from the insurrection against Rome, down to Bar Kochba, led often by sicarii. Their cause was legitimate, even noble, their tactics stupid. Perhaps the same can be said of Hamas: they found themselves adopting at one point Israel's model for statehood (assassination, terrorism, massacres and suffering as a horrendous spectre (holocaust) that will appeal to the world's conscience etc.,) as their own, because PLO politics proved only productive of Quislings.
- Israel and Hamas are just mirrors of each other. There is one difference I admire in the latter, a prejudice I admit to. Courage, fearlessness, something a strategist would not identify as typical of most who have served in the IDF these last decades. One Parthian shot for another is the proper way to end this. This is not a forum for such opinions, but a place to work out how to edit. So that's it.Nishidani (talk) 15:05, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
If I may add an opinion here, I really don't understand the obsession some have with this conflict. Supporters and haters of any side both need to relax. To put things in perspective: much more Syrians were killed in the last few years than Israelis and Palestinians, combined, were ever killed by each other. Ever. Simply absurd, and that's just one example. There are way more urgent things and conflicts happening in the world than the Israeli-Arab one. Yuvn86 (talk) 12:35, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
- This is a meme. 'the obsession some have' was identified as that of John Kerry by Moshe Ya'alon, who is no longer persona grata in Washington after remarking that Kerry was '“inexplicably obsessive” and “messianic” in his efforts to coax Israelis and Palestinians into a peace agreement'. If the Secretary of State of a country that is Israel's strongest ally is regarded with contempt for desiring a peaceful settlement of the I/P conflict, the reverberations of this will be picked up by editors, who duly refer the quite normal 'obsession' with achieving peace to the relevant articles. Nishidani (talk) 12:34, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
- Yuvn86, I answered your question on my user page. Dr. R.R. Pickles (talk) 21:37, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
WP articles on Exceptionalism/ Indispensability
Nishidani, which books or scholarly articles do you recommend on the ancient roots of today's delusional belief among almost all countries in the globe that they, and their people, are exceptional or indispensable?
Did you by any chance read The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti? I recommend it.
Additionally, you may want to take a look at a somewhat interesting recent article by David Bromwich on some of the ancient roots (going back to ancient Greece) of the modern Israeli, Palestinian, American, Chinese, Japanese, UK, Australian, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Indian, Brazilian, Nigerian, South African, Chilean, Columbian, Arabian (as well as many more countries') elites pushing their citizenry into the mental illness of falsely believing in their own exceptionalism/ indispensability/ grandiosity.
IjonTichy (talk) 03:23, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
- It depends on how technical one wants to get or how far oine has leisure to read around. There's a good if sometimes abstruse book by Giorgio Agamben called the State of Exception, on the historical roots and philosophical ramifications, which given your mention of Parenti's book, comes to mind because of its excellent examination of homo sacer. But the literature is vast, and much of it psychoanalytic, which is out of vogue, though Freud's remarks on der Narzißmus der kleinen Differenzen, or 'narcissism of minor differences' is a fundamental insight. Generally the works of Norman Cohn are in my view, indispensable for understanding historical trends of paranoia, esp. The Pursuit of the Millennium, Europe's Inner Demons, and Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith. Of course, they are more concerned with paranoid trends in history from messianism to antisemitism, rather than 'exceptionalism', which is in every sense of group identity, as we see from the common endonym of many tribes whose languages frequently define themselves by a word denoting 'people', implying 10,000 out-groups aren't quite people. But more specifically, engineering a notion of 'exceptionalism' is characteristic of all drives towards national statehood. The paradox of this kind of exceptionalism was well put by Ernest Gellner in his Nations and Nationalism: to form a distinct national identity, nation-builders had to mould or rig the micro-world views of numerous regional peasant communities to conform to a fictive sense of belonging to a larger state. You dissolved many 'exceptionalist' internal differences in order to assert an homogenized difference from the rest of the world. Modernization meant cancelling internal differences and exchanging them for a larger difference, that constructed by the new state to differentiate it as distinct from all neighbouring countries. Since democracy is premised on respect for internal differences, there is a natural tension between democracy and nationalism. Nationalism is powerful because it allows maximum expression in a group assertion of being exceptional for individual communities and persons who, sucked into the homogenizing world of industrialism, must sacrifice their personal sense of being individuals qua individuals. It's a safety valve for the loss of a real sense of intimate difference as we are drilled to conform to a broad model of seamless social group-identity. The paradox here is that the United States has a powerful political sense of its version of the fiction, in the idea it has an historic mission as an exceptionalist state, and yet is a democracy. Even in international law, it underwrites general principles and then adds clauses saying it alone is exempt from them (as Noam Chomsky repeatedly points out). It has deep roots, that you can get an idea of by reading any number of works, Jack P. Greene's The Intellectual Construction of America, University of North Carolina Press, 1993, or Byron E Shafer (ed.) Is America Different! A New Look at American Exceptionalism, Clarendon Press 1991 etc.
- As for the engineering of delusional states of mind, and passing them off as normal, that is inherent in all modernization, and Walter Lippman's Public Opinion is a classic and germinal analysis of the problem.
- I haven't read Parenti's book. I haven't read for that matter most books I should read. I'll keep an eye out for it.Nishidani (talk) 12:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for the detailed information.
- Talking about Michael Parenti, here is a recent article by him. Reminding us that in all human clashes over the last several thousand years, including but not limited to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, power elites on all sides of the conflict send low-income and poor people to kill other low-income and poor people and to be killed by them, while the wealthy elites and high-ranking military officers on all sides smile all the way to the bank.
- Regards, IjonTichy (talk) 14:14, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
- The Ghosts of Gaza: Israel’s Soldier Suicides. IjonTichy (talk) 18:18, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks. A useful summary, perhaps worth inclusion in the article. I don't think that blaming the jihadi elements like Col. Winter gets one anywhere. The IDF's policies haven't changed because of the rise of religious fanatics in the IDF ranks: their presence just makes explaining the usual policies, and criticism of Islamic jihadis, more difficult.Nishidani (talk) 18:57, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for demonstrating your extreme anti-Semitism and complete disregard for WP:BLP by calling an honorable Jewish soldier a "religious fanatic." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.207.47.232 (talk) 06:42, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
- Jehovah akhbar! Nishidani (talk) 09:48, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
- Perhaps a direct link to this Times of Israel article might be useful. ← ZScarpia 13:43, 2 November 2014 (UTC) (By the way, did you read about Netanyahu's gross, abominable, sickening, insulting etc. comparison between rocket attacks on Israel and Nazi aerial assaults on the UK during WWII? ;) )
- Yes I did. Perhaps he got that hyperbole from his father, an excellent historian on medieval matters, but a wild-eyed apocalyptic fantasist with regard to contemporary history.Nishidani (talk) 20:05, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
- From an interview Prof. Netanyahu did with Maariv: . ← ZScarpia 02:10, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
- Yes I did. Perhaps he got that hyperbole from his father, an excellent historian on medieval matters, but a wild-eyed apocalyptic fantasist with regard to contemporary history.Nishidani (talk) 20:05, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
- Perhaps a direct link to this Times of Israel article might be useful. ← ZScarpia 13:43, 2 November 2014 (UTC) (By the way, did you read about Netanyahu's gross, abominable, sickening, insulting etc. comparison between rocket attacks on Israel and Nazi aerial assaults on the UK during WWII? ;) )
- Apologies for being pedantic, but there's an embarassing typo there, which means you wrote something very different from what you meant (think of the elative from the root K-B-R). Regards, NSH001 (talk) 22:51, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
- Whozzat? I love pedantry, but where's the typo, and in whose remark?Nishidani (talk) 23:12, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
- See elative and akhbar and, err, a few lines up. --NSH001 (talk) 23:21, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
- Ah, I see. My cousins used to say that I was a great punner, only the point each time required a footnote or tedious paraphrase before you understood it (the irish joke about micturating, a malapropism for the intended 'matriculating', had to be glossed, and it was that which elicited my elder cousin's riposte).
- In writing:'Jehovah akhbar!' I added the 'h' to make such a pun, 'Jehovah' (a misreading of YHWH) and 'akhbar' a distortion of '(Allahu akbar). The point was to liken distortions of holy writ for fanatical ends to slips in orthography, by twisting the terms, and driving home that our own evangelical fanaticism (Jehovah) made God out to be a 'mouse'(that roared). And I suppressed the pedantic temptation to add notes to the fact that in Mycenaean Greek there is a form 'si-mi-te-u' that is linked probably to an inscription at Chryse in the Troad attesting to a cult of Apollo Smintheus (Apollo the Vole). The god of the Trojans was a field-mouse (σμίνθος: as opposed to your average domestic mouse,μῦς), just like the akhbar in 'Jehovah akhbar'. I can't help making private puns, but it relieves the boredom of working here, at least makes me smile, and if flagged would only give the impression of a braggart display of pseudo-erudition. Cheers, pal. Nishidani (talk) 11:21, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
- Jehovah akhbar! Nishidani (talk) 09:48, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for demonstrating your extreme anti-Semitism and complete disregard for WP:BLP by calling an honorable Jewish soldier a "religious fanatic." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.207.47.232 (talk) 06:42, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks. A useful summary, perhaps worth inclusion in the article. I don't think that blaming the jihadi elements like Col. Winter gets one anywhere. The IDF's policies haven't changed because of the rise of religious fanatics in the IDF ranks: their presence just makes explaining the usual policies, and criticism of Islamic jihadis, more difficult.Nishidani (talk) 18:57, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
- The Ghosts of Gaza: Israel’s Soldier Suicides. IjonTichy (talk) 18:18, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
Quotes from the book Johnny Got His Gun. IjonTichy (talk) 08:06, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
- Coincidence. I read a long article on that extraordinary man, Dalton Trumbo, some weeks ago.Nishidani (talk) 20:05, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
- Yale chaplain forced out by Zionist attacks. The chaplain was forced to resign over a brief letter to the New York Times in which he explained that actions such as the recent Israeli war on the people of Gaza were breeding anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere. IjonTichy (talk) 20:29, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
- Noted that the day it occurred. He's the last on a list I have of, at last count, 36 prominent academics kicked out of academia or harassed or denied tenure for trying to make a reasonable case for Palestinian rights over the last few years. We have no wiki article on the phenomenon, despite the fact that it is a chronic problem.Nishidani (talk) 20:33, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
- How is this a problem? Anti-Semites who demonize and tell lies about Jews and Israel should not be brainwashing students. Western universities are infested with anti-Semitism, as can be witnessed with the growing influenced of the racist hate group "Students for Justice in Palestine" in demonizing and slandering Israel on American universities. (unsigned comment left by 190.94.210.123)
- Noted that the day it occurred. He's the last on a list I have of, at last count, 36 prominent academics kicked out of academia or harassed or denied tenure for trying to make a reasonable case for Palestinian rights over the last few years. We have no wiki article on the phenomenon, despite the fact that it is a chronic problem.Nishidani (talk) 20:33, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
- Yale chaplain forced out by Zionist attacks. The chaplain was forced to resign over a brief letter to the New York Times in which he explained that actions such as the recent Israeli war on the people of Gaza were breeding anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere. IjonTichy (talk) 20:29, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
ZScarpia, care to explain your deliberate mischaracterization of Netanyahu's accurate comparison of the Hamas rocket attack on Israel to Nazi Germany's attacks on Britain? The Gazans are very similar to the Nazis and even have the same ideology of wanting to genocide all Jews. How come you people never post links that cast Arabs or Muslim in a bad light? You always post anti-Israel crap. Here are some things to enlighten you:
- Fatah official calls for blood to ‘purify’ Jerusalem of Jews
- Palestinian savages massacre rabbis in Jerusalem synagogue
- Song urges Palestinians to ‘run over’ Jews
- “Palestinian” Muslims have a new song, “Car Intifada,” urging Muslims to use their cars to kill Jews
- 26-year-old Jewish woman stabbed to death by murderous Arabs after being deliberately run over by a car
- US “deeply concerned” not over recent “Palestinian” jihad attacks, but over Jews building houses
- Jordanian MPs hold moment of silence for two Palestinian terrorists -- Lawmakers read Koran in memory of cousins who perpetrated deadly Jerusalem synagogue attack, hail them as ‘martyrs’
- Hamas praises the brutal murders of innocent rabbis
(unsigned comment left by 190.94.210.123)
- Is that an 'answer' to the documentation above about Israeli calls for a genocidal solution? This is the 'Yes,-but-they-are-even-worse' gambit in the dishwater polemical vein of public discourse on ethics and law. In Italy and Greece, many average people avoid taxes and scream when their services don't function, and their excuse is, 'But they (politicians and bigwigs) steal millions.' So your gambit is proof only of an an-ethical crowd attitude, based on focusing on the sins of others in order to turn the conversation away from one's own faults, shortcomings. It works of course, because, as the poet said Humankind cannot bear very much reality. And as another poet wrote:
- I and the public know
- What all schoolchildren learn,
- Those to whom evil is done
- Do evil in return.
- One was also told as a child that it is pointless talking back to garrulous airheads with a lopsided sense of outrage, esp. if that outrage is envenomed by a unilateral sense of righteousness and victimization. In any case, you will be reverted if you offload the usual junk of blinkered pathos on this page. So don't waste your time, or mine, further. Thank you.Nishidani (talk) 12:08, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
ZScarpia, care to explain your deliberate mischaracterization of Netanyahu's accurate comparison of the Hamas rocket attack on Israel to Nazi Germany's attacks on Britain? The theme of my postscript was hypocrisy and double standards. A bit of context: recently, a complaint was made about Nishidani's use of the Warsaw Ghetto as an example, the complaint being based on the (bogus) grounds that the ADL has stated that comparisons between the regime in Israel and that in Nazi Germany are anti-Semitic. Now, if supporters of Israel find such comparisons objectionable, shouldn't supporters of Israel avoid making those comparisons about others? If making comparisons between the two regimes is anti-Semitic, then what adjective should be used when supporters of Israel make similar comparisons about others. A case in point, which is why I highlighted it to Nishidani, is Netanyahu's comparison between Hamas rocket attacks on Israel and German ones on Britain during the Second World War . The justification comment you left above serves as another case in point: The Gazans are very similar to the Nazis and even have the same ideology of wanting to genocide all Jews. As far as accuracy goes, you might like to read the linked-to Telegraph articles and also look at the Misplaced Pages ones on Qassam and V-2 rockets. If Netanyahu's speech writer had read the latter, perhaps he or she might not have made the historically erroneous claim that, "There's only been one other instance where a democracy has been rocketed and pelleted with these projectiles of death, and that's Britain during World War Two." Since the total Israeli death toll due to rocket attack is three people, if Hamas is really trying to "genocide all Jews", obviously their current rocket strategy isn't the way they're going to achieve it. ← ZScarpia 23:33, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
Clarification motion
A case (Shakespeare authorship question) in which you were involved has been modified by motion which changed the wording of the discretionary sanctions section to clarify that the scope applies to pages, not just articles. For the arbitration committee --S Philbrick(Talk) 19:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
What you never read in the mainstream Western press. Links
David Sheen’s Bundestag presentation Alomost every single point was mentioned in passing in most sources, but in isolation, and often en passant. Nishidani (talk) 18:26, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
- Youre far from being in line with reality with that statement. Sheen's hazzling partner Blumenthal has been elected by the Wiesenthal center among 2013 top antisemites for their gibberish, since log they got all the global coverage they deserve. Same for the current incident in the Reichstag, which was not as violent as the shootings in Ottawa but of similar symbolic importance. The two, on the anniversary of the Nazi pogrom night, tried to hazzle linkspartei leader Gysi, a Jewish member of the Reichstag within the spell mile of the parliament. Thats been enough to have those guys expelled there for a lifetime. "Toiletgate" got all the coverage as deserved, but it would be sort of fringy to believe anyone in the mainstream takes those morons for serious, even within ex-communist linkspartei that sort of behavior is unheard of. Serten (talk) 18:45, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
- Like so many people who form opinions quicker than Bob Mundan can draw his pistol, you have no knowledge of the people or the subject, and indeed from the timestamp it is clear that you hadn't taken the trouble to read the link, since you replied within 19 minutes, whilst Sheen's speech to the Bundestag committee lasts 25 minutes. And of that 19 minutes you spent at least several googling the usual blogs that associate criticism of anything israeli with anti-Semitism. The Wiesnthal list is a farce, and Blumenthal, had you listened to the related Russell Tribunal on the Gaza War speeches, was proud to be included in it, along with several other distinguished Jews whose humanity is not compromised by an 'ethics' which draws judgements based on the ethnic identity of the subject. If Sheen and Blumental are anti-Semites, so is Mads Gilbert (BBC HARDtalk - Dr Mads Gilbert - Doctor and Activist) (who is anchored in the practical realities, not in your blogospheres of kibitzing nitwits), and, for that matter, myself. Still, as a philologist, I register the fact here that anti-Semitism now also refers to anyone who has empathy for the dispossessed, doesn't look at the ethnicity of a person before expressing sympathy for his plight, and is not blinded by ideologies of ethnic exceptionalism. But, this is pointless. Go away.Nishidani (talk) 19:48, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
- I'd add to that that Serten should check his facts better, especially when writing about living people. Sheen, for example, hasn't, as far as I can make out, featured on any Wiesenthal Center list, but particularly not on its 2013 "top-10 list of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs". Gregor Gysi's "paternal grandmother was Jewish, as was one of his maternal great-grandfathers", which doesn't make him, at least in standard usage, but particularly not halachically, a Jew or Jewish. ← ZScarpia 20:36, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
- Sheen NEVER spoke and never will speak to any Bundestag comittee, God forbade. He was invited by two extremist fringe members of the already extremist Linkspartei, Gysi - which is no practising jew but intelligent enough to count as one - tried his best to get the morons excluded from the premises but could hinder them getting access to the MoPs bureaus. Blumenthal made it on the Wiesenthal list. (UTC) The spiegel covered the issue online, the claim about not maing it into the mainstream press is ridiculous.Serten 02:40, 14 November 2014
- 'God forbade.' The past tense indicates that, in your view, God had a direct hand in denying to an Israeli the right to address the Bundestag! Germans apparently are as deeply informed of the situation in Palestine as they were of the Holocaust while it was underway. Gottes Wege sind unergründlich. Nishidani (talk) 10:22, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
- Sheen NEVER spoke and never will speak to any Bundestag comittee, God forbade. He was invited by two extremist fringe members of the already extremist Linkspartei, Gysi - which is no practising jew but intelligent enough to count as one - tried his best to get the morons excluded from the premises but could hinder them getting access to the MoPs bureaus. Blumenthal made it on the Wiesenthal list. (UTC) The spiegel covered the issue online, the claim about not maing it into the mainstream press is ridiculous.Serten 02:40, 14 November 2014
- First you claim Toiletgate is not in the main press, in reality its covered broadly. even the NZZ has an article about it. Now you claim Gysi, about whom the pogromers ran around, has no jewish background but the two progromers are discriminated against. Gosh. Shimon Peres has spoken in the Bundestag, he was invited and it was an honor to have him there. The two morons won't and ain't. Serten 14:31, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
- While I appreciate your assiduous attempts to document your textual illiteracy, incapacity to construe English prose and make the correct inferences, I'm quite busy, no golden lad but still sprightly, cleaning my chimneys this afternoon, and I prefer to accompany the household routine by reciting memorable poems, not ruminating on the hack jobbery of non-thinkers. Thanks. As I said, go away.Nishidani (talk) 14:54, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
Work notes
- 'some 48,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in the Occupied Territory since 1967.'
Jeff Halper (Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions(ICAHD), 'Israel sows despair and senseless violence,' Mondoweiss November 19, 2014
- '"We must make it absolutely clear that anti-Semitism is a sin. One of the reasons I'm here is to remind the Christian world that our roots are in Judaism. In every Christian, there is a Jew; and you can't be a true Christian if you don't recognize your Jewish roots. I don't mean Judaism in the ethnic, origin, sense, but from the religious aspect. . .In conversations with other religious figures, he likes to tell a tale about a group of anti-Semitic priests who were sitting together in a room and badmouthing the Jews, with a picture of Jesus and Mary hanging on the wall above their heads. "And then, suddenly," Pope Francis says, "Jesus steps out of the picture and says, 'Mom, let's go, they don’t like us here either." ' Henrique Cymerman, 'It's hard to build peace; but living without peace is an absolute nightmare' Ynet 28 November 2014.
- There's something nice about finding one's views on a tricky subject endorsed by the Pope. Perhaps because in every Western pagan, there is a Christian, and ergo, a Jew, culturally, which is all that counts, even if I'm more comfortable with Athens ca.450 B.C.E., before monotheisms got a toehold on philosophy.Nishidani (talk) 12:15, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
barnstar
|
The Special Barnstar | |
| for working to keep POINTY articles off WP DocumentError (talk) 12:09, 27 November 2014 (UTC) |
(this will have to do until they make an Anti-Zionism barnstar)
- How can I repay that? By a trivial secret. One of the major frustrations of my life is that I never learnt to read Ferdowsi's Shahnameh in the original. I'll die thinking I missed something of great importance for this lacuna in my education.Nishidani (talk) 12:30, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
Hi!
RE: "Occupied": to be honest I wasn't aware of the discussion regarding the "occupied" portion of "occupied territories", but that is a lot of discussion on a lot of different threads. I am not disputing that 200 kilos of olives are months of subsistence for a family in that economy -- but:
- a) I don't recall using the term "petty", to the best of my knowledge
- b) I am referring to the term "reportedly". If the settlers stole the olives then they did, but if they didn't then they didn't. If we don't know if/who/when the olives were stolen then that should be clarified.
- c) I also added the why tag because it is not explained why "the IDF ordered Palestinian farmers in Kafr Qaddum villagers in the Qalqilya Governorate to leave their properties"
- Thanks anyway for your civilized response. I know that this topic can bring out the worst in people. Please correct as you see fit as per BOLD. Quis separabit? 17:14, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
- P.S. I would give you a barnstar but I don't know how. I am rather ignorant about the technical side of things, i.e. a Luddite. Quis separabit? 17:14, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
- I used the term "reportedly" as a sop to editors who often complain when my sources are OCHA or 'pro'-Palestinian. It's no skin off my nose. I don't know the facts, few do, and, having to read a mother-lode of newsprint, I doubt whether most of our RS are written by people who "know the facts". It often takes me, in my private work, a decade or two to ascertain with the assurance I desire, that something reported in a source is verifiably true. In this instance, the UN report I used is at variance with the PLO official report made on the day, 3 bags becomes 200 kilos (I assist yearly monks in picking their olives so 65 kilos per bag made sense), one individual becomes several, etc. My explanation on your page is WP:OR, a private reflection one often has to make to figure out why source dissonance is so frequent, and as often, I cannot judge the truth of the matter. No one knows why the IDF ordered the farmers to leave their property, since their access to it, as per the regulative norm governing these things, is that they may put foot on their land near settlements only two or three days a year, and they had the permission here. The fact that Kedumim settlers quickly exploited the situation may be coincidence, grasping at the opportunity given by the result of the IDF order, or informally coordinated, since there is much tacit collaboration between the IDF (which has a rising settler component) and settlers. God/destinty works in mysterious ways, the cliché runs: I've always found human behavior more mysterious than the god hypothesized by monotheistic theologies. Ours is not to reason "why", ours is but to transcribe and sigh. In Hebron, houses in Shuhada street are invaded by settlers, who often are accompanied by IDF regulars in their invasions of private property. Sources simply don't tell one what one would wish to know, so as editors we have to resign ourselves to the puzzling incompleteness of articles, ours and the newspaper sources we use. Regards.Nishidani (talk) 18:04, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks anyway for your civilized response. I know that this topic can bring out the worst in people. Please correct as you see fit as per BOLD. Quis separabit? 17:14, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
Earthing
I still do not understand what "earthing" is in regards to not committing suicide. Can you explain to me, one to one. I admit I am a dunce. Quis separabit? 17:42, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
- The men of that particular suburb of East Jerusalem are noted electricians,- they are responsible for wiring up a large part of Jerusalem, east and west. Evidently their jargon draws off their trade. In everyday Islam, one standard measure (as opposed to classical Islam which took on board Greek humoural theory) for ridding oneself of madness/deep depression/homicidal-autocidal feelings is the recitation of specific suras or prayer at a mosque. The devout have a "raisen" on their foreheads (zebibah) from frequently bowing and touching the mosque's pavement with their brows. Presumably this is what the men of that district alluded to: since they imagine that a mind is like an electrical circuit, and when its discharges go haywire (abnormal mental states) then, just as Franklin's lightening rod discharged dangerous atmospheric lightening strikes by earthing the charge to the ground, so praying in Muslim fashion, with one's head touching the earth, would function similarly to 'earth' the tensions building up in a person.Nishidani (talk) 18:09, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
- (In the earthing article, one reads: 'People use an earthing system mainly for these applications:To protect a structure from lightning strike, directing the lightning through the earthing system and into the ground rod rather than passing through the structure.' That is more or less what I was alluding to, but if we have a better wiki link, perhaps we should change it.Nishidani (talk) 18:09, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks. Interesting. Quis separabit? 18:26, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
- Interesting anthropologically, indeed, but of course counter-intuitive. It means one only kills in cold blood, which is not of course true.Nishidani (talk) 18:45, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks. Interesting. Quis separabit? 18:26, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
- I thought "murder" meant in cold blood, whereas "killing" is far more varied. Quis separabit? 19:02, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
- I was just going to strike my comment out as fatuously obtuse in its ethnocentrism, while somewhat ashamedly pondering over it and thinking it frivolous at the dinner table. What I as a Westerner might construe as 'counter-intuitive' might, in a different, in this case, micro-culture like that, be eminently reasonable as an explanation of why suicide is to be excluded. As for 'murder'/'killing', my impression is that the former is a legal definition applied to taking someone's life, whereas the latter is generic for the same thing. Did Max Schur kill or murder Sigmund Freud? Many Christians would say he murdered him, making a sectarian-theological and legal judgement. Idem for Koga Hiroyasu's beheading of Mishima Yukio, which, like killing one's wounded companion in Britain's Afghan wars, was, in terms of military culture, an act of pity, though forbidden in law. How does one define Herschel Grynszpan's killing of Ernst von Rath? Legally, it's murder, though the Holocaust was round the corner. The Nazis called it symptomatic of a vast Jewish terrorist conspiracy, just as newspapers habitually call these days any murder with some profound political grievance behind it 'terror'. There is a cultural and technical bias in our use and application of these terms. Murder is distinguished from manslaughter in that in the former there is malice aforethought. I guess as distinct from assassinations which, if made by a state, putatively are not driven by malice, but are cold-blooded liquidations of perceived enemies of that state, though to an outside eye, quite primitive notions of vengeance typical of frontier wars or feuds would be seen to be compact of many such acts. The Israeli indictment against the soldier who furtively changed his ammo case, and shot dead, first Nadim Nuwara, and then apparently, after an hour shot dead Odeh Salameh in the Beitunia killings cites the soldier for manslaughter, not, as murder, though it is difficult to see how, in the space of an hour one can sight up and shoot two individuals without premeditative enmity of the kind usually defining murder charges. We call them killings, but, had the subject been an Israeli, the newspapers would have reported them as murders. Thanks for raising these issues, and cleaning up my sloppy oversights. Now, to this evening's movie, hopefully a comedy. Regards Nishidani (talk) 20:01, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
Caution-2014-12-01
Regarding to your "(Russian immigrants were raised in an imperial dictatorship..." (without any smile) as well as for the following your edit's description "Sure, but from a PA perspective, inviting an Israeli investigation is pointless. They only investigate Arab crimes against settlers" - I just have to remind you about the wp:NOTFORUM & wp:NPOV rules. --Igorp_lj (talk) 00:07, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
- (Your friendly neighbourhood stalking Zionist) There may be a grain of wisdom there N. I believe it was meant kindly. Irondome (talk) 01:36, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
- Fair enough. It might look like a personal attack, but, it was intended as a sociological message, straight out of a remark by Ernest Gellner, tinctured by memories of reading Richard Pipes's Russia Under the Old Regime (disastrously for my education, the Peregrine reprint of 1977 lacks pp.239-270), to alert several editors why I find their approach perplexing. If I find the travails of 'liberal Zionism' understandable in terms of the peculiarities of American history, I find the confusions of Israel's revarnished, neo-post-Zionist rhetoric illustrative of the impact of a new constituency, that of the ex-Soviet immigration (everyone knows that the demographic urgency to fill that 'empty land' brought unintended (if obvious to the sociological mind) consequences: the Mizrachi inflow undercut the confident Ashkenazi faith in their enduring primacy by electing the marginal world of Herut to Likud ascendency, just as the Soviet influx altered the parameters by the emergence of Yisrael Beiteinu. It is remarkable that Arutz Sheva has more Russian readers than those who peruse its Hebrew version. I learned Russian from very astute exiles who gave me a wonderful education in how to parse a Marxist literary critique of Lermontov or Pushkin to shovel out the regime rhetoric (a palliative to censors) from what Brodsky would call the 'nitty-gritty' of the kernel, which, contrariwise, addressed the realities. Because of this, I expect people, perhaps unfairly, of that background to thresh out the difference between the chaff of ideology (which Zionism, like any nationalism is), from the substance of facts. Igorp's edit, which I responded to, was not necessary. My original edit gave the bare bones of what happened. His edit added an 'explanation' (how can Israel investigate a crime if it is not allowed on the scene?) That is a defensive adjunct. It elicited my second compensative edit (a fact: 90% of Palestinian complaints to the occupation authorities are shelved; specifically, settlers are almost never indicted for observed crimes for 'lack of evidence', and of 10 mosque arson cases since 2011, none have ever come to an indictment or conviction). It's a pity to me to observe that the culture that produced Osip Mandelshtam, Joseph Brodsky, Boris Pasternak and Vasily Grossman is less influential among contemporaries than Ayn Rant, just as one is disappointed to see how Mizrachi culture's standing is tainted by the recent lyrics of Amir Benayoun, better known now than the music of Berakhah Zephira which so moved Einstein to remember his Jewish roots in 1930. Okay, I admit it: I'm a fossil, with the musky redolence of that collapsed world that once, when it heard the word 'Russian', didn't think of politics, but of a great tradition of humanism where, even under Soviet rule, a first edition of Yevgeny Yevtushenko or Andrei Voznesensky would be sold out on day one, and run through numerous editions within a year, till everyone in Moscow and the provinces had their major verses off by heart, and no longer needed a printed copy, something that was unheard of in the sanctimoniously cultured West. Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 11:14, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
- Sorry, but your answer (as usual) has little to do with my questions.
- I can also tell you that:
- Degree of your radical estimates' of "Russian" Jews and their integration in Israel is inversely proportional to your understanding of their life in the former Soviet Union and Israel (1990 ++). Actually, this is true for many Western liberals, idealizing "proletariat", "oppressed nations", etc, abstracting from the negative consequences of their errors. But you can read about them in the Useful Idiot article. However, they do consider themselves as the the main democratizers and feel entitled to distribute derogatory evaluation for those who do not share their opinion :) By the way, I'm afraid that Lev Kopelev would turn over in his grave if he knew that his prize was awarded to Uri Avnery. :(
- Your words are very similar to such Gideon Levy's Haaretz blood libel:
"A million immigrants from Russia, a third of them non-Jews, some of whom were also found to have a degree of alcohol and crime in their blood, were not a problem. Tens of thousands of Africans are the ultimate threat."
- and others like him, whom you often regard as RS,..
- But again ... WP isn't a place for such your personal assessments, there is a lot of other sites for. I agree to find another Internet's desk and continue the conversation there, but in the meantime I'd propose you to comply with above mentioned WP:NOTFORUM Rule in your future posts here.
- Regarding to the Alexa's statistics : as I showed in Talk:Silent_Intifada#Arutz Sheva, its data raise many questions, including the lack of data for non Israeli visitors.
- Your interpretation of your "Sure, but from a PA perspective, inviting an Israeli investigation is pointless. They only investigate Arab crimes against settlers" edit's description may cause only a sad smile. But about it - later. --Igorp_lj (talk) 01:18, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
- I think that edit could be resolved. "Chiam Levinson claims in a H article..." and allow the short section to stand. This would make it clear that this was one jouno's opinion in Israel's equivalent of the Guardian. It would take off the slightly misleading "authoritative" edge that I think you object to here. I understand that. Regards Irondome (talk) 01:44, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
- Always thoughtful and challenging. Your post is appreciated. The colleague known as Irondome (talk) 02:37, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
- I would like to discuss the points you make in more depth, when you, and indeed I, have the time. I am basically a Labor Zionist, a sucker for the wonderful 20's and 30's Boy meets tractor type domestically produced films, so heavily borrowed stylistically from the contempory Soviet school of film. I totally agree with your point regarding the intensely rich Russian Humanist/Artistic heritage, which many early Zionists regarded as a cultural and philosophical touchstone, a unique product of a glorious fusion of the Russian and Jewish identity reflected in the gifted individuals whom you mention in your post. This remarkable period created the Kibbutzim movement, and the true beginnings of the essentially Socialist, communal Israel which was stymied in the 70s and 80s, curiously at about the same period when Thatcherism destroyed the huge gains made by the post-1945 welfare state consensus in the U.K, which has had such toxic effects on this society. This Israeli "Thatcherism" also crippled (for some tragic decades) any attempts for an early 2 state solution, which may have been achieved by the 80s. But I am optimistic due to Israeli historical socio-political patterns. Arguably Israel was the only truly successful Socialist state in the world in it's first 3 decades, coupling a radical political synthesis of State Socialism and Anarcho-Syndicalism with a unique freedom in the arena of public and media discourse, both intellectual and popular. I suspect you rather approve of those aspects of early Israeli socio-political development, and you have often remarked favourably on the almost unprecedented and unfettered self-criticism in current Israeli media discourse. When the 2 state solution eventually is achieved (as it will) then these aspects will enjoy a resurgence. A nation which has such a pure and almost masochistically democractic inner dialogue, conducted within the Hebrew media in all its forms, has a foundation of intellectual and humanistic granite, which testify to many of the original left Zionist traits still being in place and ripe for a renaissance of thought and deed. I remain optimistic of a socially aware, radically open Israel which regains the admiration of progressive Western socialism and humanism, as it did prior to 67 as a remarkable experiment. It is a disaster that Ottoman oppression inhibited any similar sentiments of socialism and humanism, blended with a sense of nationalism developing in I/P's Islamic leadership cadres which may have dovetailed with early Zionism. (If you are aware of similar movements that developed, I would be interested to hear) Excuse my ill-formed initial impressions, which I will refine. I hope I am welcome on your page by the way. Yours aye Irondome (talk) 03:23, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, I largely agree with that (though I am not optimistic as you are), historically, because it is the Israel I knew when I worked there. I must have a coffee to get my post-prandial neurons stirring, but will reply in duke horse. And of course stimulating interlocutors like yourself are always welcome here, it hardly need be said. Cheers for the mo'. Nishidani (talk) 13:23, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
- (talk page stalker) A horse belonging to the Duke University Equestrian Team? Bishonen | talk 13:42, 2 December 2014 (UTC).
- Nope, though topologically not far off, if temporally askew. John Wayne's nickname has inflected some dialect jokes, and this was a common misprint, when not intended, in letters back in the 1940s (so it must exude a rather jaded air, easily lost on someone with the youthful moniker of 美少年). As I said earlier above, one problem with my attempts at being comical is that I have to footnote everything. Shades of Mark Pattison in Middlemarch! Nishidani (talk) 13:51, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
- From Old Horse jalda? Huh. Bishonen | talk 17:44, 2 December 2014 (UTC).
- Very good! Just a slight correction: Old Horsa:)Nishidani (talk) 18:05, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
- From Old Horse jalda? Huh. Bishonen | talk 17:44, 2 December 2014 (UTC).
- Decisions in politics are, overwhelmingly, when not grounded in ideological obsessions or moral self-inflation (Tony Blair's person decision to trample on what the best legal and academic (Arabist) advice in 2003's invasion of Iraq told him) based on hard numbers calculations, nothing else. Psephologically, there is no basis for optimism. Demographically, the situation overrules confidence for similar reasons: the three constitutive blocks of any viable majority - the religious vote, the Russian immigrant vote, the Mizrachi constituency, all respectively have very rich traditions, but have no roots in the kind of enculturated enlightenment thinking which is required to sustain the institutional fabric of democracy.* Gellner said Russia missed out on the (a) separation of church and state (b) the Protestant reformation (c) the Enlightenment, and all 3 factors predisposed the state to autocratic imperio-religious/slavoiphilic-ethnic thinking. In Israel (a) is deeply problematical (b) is true in the economic sense, (1) in that ethical principles do not conflict with, but rather enhance rationality in the productive sphere, but (ii) not true in so far as ultra-orthodoxy trumps reformist Judaism, tending towards a kind of fundamentalism that is, unlike Protestantism, collectivist and messianic rather than individualistic; (c) the haskalah tradition in Judaism has, after the Holocaust and 1967 and the occupation, dwindled into a fringe of outraged anti-Zionism which liberal Zionism, itself fading as it got compromised with the neo-conservative politics of the U.S,, disowns. The outside world can do little with all this: the battle is essentially between 'Tel Aviv' and 'Jerusalem', but either way, all of these things are swept up in a much larger discourse, in which empires vie for resource dominance and the imposition of a fast-buck-return 'rationality' which will, if it hasn't already, dissolve the old nation-state as a civil and civic construction and replace it with the politics of the jungle. As to Islamicism, this is a trivial thing: in the last decade the West has picked off, isolated or dismantled the three Arab states, Iraq, Syria, and Ghedaffi's Libya, which were secular, two of them protective of significant Christian minorities, and had a relatively high standard of living (repellant dictatorships, but so are our regional allies in the Arab world). The states that best embody its worst traits, are solid allies of the Western states, despite their largesse to terrorists, while the non-state actors that use it, together with a commitment to social justice and technocratic training (Hezbollah), are dismissed as terrorists and nothing else. Israel is now a key military power in geopolitics, and 'Palestine' is a third-worldish rump-state, a congeries of district statelets or bantustans, with no hand to bid, and nothing to offer in return for recognition. The purpose of Zionism was to create a space where Jews didn't need to think in terms of 'us/them', but could grow up, raise a family, work and live out their lives without looking over their shoulder, sniffing a pogrom in the air, or hearing those at times intermittent yet chronic anti-Semitic innuendoes even in the finest democracies, not only as one shopped or worked in a factory, but in Yale or Oxford, etc. over casual conversations or between the lines of print: i.e. some place on earth where they could finally be normal people without an identity problem invented by amicably inimical 'others' thrust on them every other day by the ingrained recourse to a millennial toxic prejudice. I don't see Zionism as having solved that effectively. It created an urbane milieu where this dream is now largely realizable, but in an area where a 'they' now penetrates the headlines even more obtrusively, to disturb the equanimity of normalcy, and the 'they' won't go away. It is, to an outside eye like mine, the paradox or irony of the project - the dream to create the normalcy most humanity takes for granted has its nightmarish underside in which the enfranchised minority tormented by prejudice is now a majority threatened by its own ineludible minority of neighbours, who for several decades haven't been allowed the same right, i.e., to live normal lives free of the pressure of demonization. Until that enfranchisement towards the secure sense, even in the unconscious, of normalcy comes to terms with the hidden cost of Zionism, the disenfranchisement of Palestinians aspiring to precisely the same thing, there is no solution. Sometimes an apology can do wonders. This is a very scrappy reflection, digited while listening to a relative's woes over the phone, so, my apologies.Nishidani (talk) 16:25, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
- A parallel is with the way American politics have been radically changed by the impact of the formative evangelical Baptist cast of Texan politics, which came to ascendency within the Republican Party in the late 70s. The only outside hope this might suffer a sea-change is with the gradual Hispanic expansion in the South, which has, at least culturally and in terms of religious values, diametrically opposed values.Nishidani (talk) 17:27, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
- Not "scrappy", but excellent. Having one's current political thoughts given such an insightful scrutiny is deeply refreshing, and oddly reassuring..strange. I do hope the relative is now, or soon will be, woe free. Yours till the horses come home. The curly fossil known as Irondome (talk) 20:14, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
- Nope, though topologically not far off, if temporally askew. John Wayne's nickname has inflected some dialect jokes, and this was a common misprint, when not intended, in letters back in the 1940s (so it must exude a rather jaded air, easily lost on someone with the youthful moniker of 美少年). As I said earlier above, one problem with my attempts at being comical is that I have to footnote everything. Shades of Mark Pattison in Middlemarch! Nishidani (talk) 13:51, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
- (talk page stalker) A horse belonging to the Duke University Equestrian Team? Bishonen | talk 13:42, 2 December 2014 (UTC).
WP=:NOTFORUM violation, no.2
- 27 November 'Cricketer Phillip Hughes dies two days after being hit by ball during match,' The Guardian 27 November
- 29 November 'Cricket umpire dies after being hit with ball in Ashdod,' Ynet 29 November 2014.
- 30 November Shabak Agent in Belgium Falsely Accuses Pakistani of Terrorism, Family Deported Tikun Olam.
- Terrible poor taste to speak of a Hat trick. The third was more of a bat trick. It was definitely not cricket.Nishidani (talk) 20:22, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
A beer for you!
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A toast to you for the regular abuse you continue to put up with on your user talk page here. John Carter (talk) 15:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC) |