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Sock puppet

Nishidani,

I know this may seem rude, but I think you should make a personal page containing your introduction as it seems a certain editor named Hermeneus considers your account a sock puppet created by me to bolster my argument with him on the Nihonjinron article's discussion page.--Jh.daniell 01:24, 28 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

I don't think a personal page would help. On the net, we are all virtual, and personal pages can be as fictional as, say, much of Hermeneus's thinking about his knowledge of the nihonjinron. Let me say that were I you, I certainly would not write 'Nihonshoki', the title of one of the two primary classics of early Japanese mythohistory, for 'Nihonjinron' as you did in your last post. I should add that I think Hermeneus had a point, only it got lost in his attitude, which certainly lacks any delicacy of feeling, in its hypersensitiveness to, apparently, what he takes to be Japan's endangered status. My argument was with his attitude, which might be tolerable were he erudite, since his knowledge would balance out his character defects. I detect in his manipulation of contributions to this site a political strategy to tone down to what he construes to be ideas that might cast shadows ons Japanese dignity, by throwing up pseudo-distinctions, as though there were established academic distinctions, between 'stereotype' and 'theory' (ron). All stereotypes, as Lord Keynes would have reminded Hermeneus had the latter ever read him, are born of theories. Most cultural theories of the kind we witness in the nihonjinron degenerate into clichés. In some sense the cliché reflects back on the theory. But Hermeneus can't grasp this. If, in warning you, I upset you by creating a misleading impression, I apologize. But the game underway has been played many times in here, and the eventual outcome was forseeable. I hope I saved you your time and probable wasted efforts, at least Nishidani 20:29, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Hermeneus’s behavior here violates all the implicit rules of serious contributions to Misplaced Pages in so far as he refuses to write the article (apart from some mediocre contributions to the corresponding Japanese voice), asserts a knowledge of the material he never divulges, and seems intent only on impeding others from contributing to the article. In fact, if you go back over the discussion, it becomes quite clear that he has succeeded in driving away anyone who tries to write anything substantive on the subject. It is clear by now that he knows, with acute omniscient insight, what should not be written. The joke it he cannot write one word as to how it should be written. He always of course appeals to Wiki rules, but in such a laboriously dull-minded style, that, while he manages invariably to convince himself, he bores the rest of the potential readership to tears.

It is scandalous that Hermeneus and a few of his allies have managed to hoist a ‘disputed site’ banner when the person whose contributions they took exception to erased his material (some of it appears to have been adopted in the meantime). Since what was objected to was removed, the flagging of the article as ‘disputed’ should also have been dropped. No. It stands there as a warning to all and sundry not to meddle with Hermeneus’s fussypot dominance over the page, and its meagre contents. Nothing can, apparently, stand without his approval. Nothing can pass his scrutiny, which asserts an ideal of ‘neutrality’ in order to defend a perspective of bias. The bias being, nothing that injures what he, with thin-skinned punctiliousness, thinks is the proper international reputation of Japan. His scrupulous call for documentation can be read also as a fishing expedition, to elicit information he pretends to know, but actually lacks. Thus, while stopping the article from being written, he enriches his own personal knowledge by badgering potential contributors. A clever game, in so far as the pedestrian mind that plays it can be called ‘clever’. If no one in Misplaced Pages monitors Hermeneus’s spoiling tactics, the article will never be written. There is no device to stop sterile kibitzers of his kind from playing this malevolent game. Therefore, I propose that Hermeneus, ‘the interpreter’ translate the Japanese article he apparently approves of, and post the English version here. If he does not accept the challenge, his bad faith will be self-evident. Nishidani 18:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

(1) We are currently discussing the relevance of this particular excerpt from a book written by an armature historian and published from a vanity publisher. If you think that such an excerpt should be included in the article, then state the reason why and prove it's relevance. (2) ja:日本人論 on the Japanese Misplaced Pages has no more significant contents than this article and so there is no point in translating it into English. (3) The "Types of Nihonjinron" section, "History" section except the first paragraph, and the first half of the "Nihonjinron as cultural nationalism" section are my inputs, all of which are well-sourced with reputable works of scholarship by Dale, Yoshino, Sugimoto, and Mouer as required by the Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines. I'm only holding other edits to the same decently rigorous standard. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia and not a personal website; you cannot publish any unfounded unsourced craps on here. See WP:NOR and WP:NOT. (4) You created a new account just to say this? Hermeneus (user/talk) 18:58, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

WP:MOS-JA

Hello. I would like to make sure that you are aware of WP:MOS-JA. When transcribing Japanese, Misplaced Pages uses macrons for long vowels instead of the circumflex. Also, the {{nihongo}} template may be of use to you. Regards. Bendono 12:53, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Message received, Bendono. My apologies for the oversight and my thanks for the corrections, and for your many contributions. Regards Nishidani 10:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

(== A query Bendono's homepage== Dear Bendono, A clarifying link to Kizama Kiyozo on the Ono Susumu page, with a stub on that linguist (I would be interested eventually in creating a category of profiles on Japanese scholars of classical Western languages) has been deleted by an administrator apparently interested in birding and rock groups, Jimfbleak. Is it normal practice for administrators unfamiliar with a terrain or discipline to interrupt work in progress so mercilessly, without even signposting for the author that the article they wish to delete is unsatisfactory, or without consulted with informed colleagues in the area concerned?

Regards (Nishidani 19:54, 20 June 2007 (UTC))

Hello. Unfortunately really short articles with little information and references are often deleted quickly. Ideally it would be best if a little bit of time was given to allow that to be improved. Kazama Kiyozō is an important linguist, and I would like to see an article on him. As a start, you could begin with the Japanese content: ja:風間喜代三. I suggest that you take the issue up here: Misplaced Pages:Deletion review. Regards. Bendono 21:36, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. Actually, I have one of his books awaiting me in the library and will do more when I get to read it. I know quite a bit from memory, but can't clearly write from personal recollection.

I'd like to restore my stub, adding the little the Kazama Jap.stub has, but I have the distinct impression Jimfbleak looks bleakly on my stubs as bumf. For, unfortunately, after I took up the issue with the administrator who deleted that small stub, I suddenly found he'd taken umbrage within minutes, and started hunting or stalking through the entries I'd written on Japanese scholarship, branding 'unreferenced' 'could be deleted unless' (Ueyama Shunpei, Takeda Taijun (which is a translation of the Japanese text in Wiki (unbannered), slightly touched up); Murayama Shichiro etc.)on every single stub that could warrant the banner. (I note that no adminsirator has wasted time bannering the Japanese stub on Kazama, which has no footnoted references). I've done twenty in the last several days, some reasonably detailed, but I must admit that this behaviour does not strike me as 'neutral' but rather a petty abuse of authority. I'm rather disappointed that an administrator/editor, when questioned on one issue, especially in an area he knows nothing of, can be allowed to run amuck, running down everywhere I have posted and putting up 'banners'. That smacks of personal vendetta, and I confess I feel like withdrawing from what has been an interesting new hobby. I dislike working, freely and happily as I have until now, under conditions of an abused right of surveillance. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Sorry for this note. But I have been impressed and instructed by your many contributions, and have appreciated your own mode of quiet but firm suggestions, not bannering but by direct intervention in the problem at a textual level, or by dropping notes on a user's discussion page. Forgive me the impropriety of discussing another administrator/editor on your page, but I don't know how to protest to Wiki at what looks like a personalized campaign against my honest efforts to pitch in. Please feel disobliged from replying, which would only embarrass me, and perhaps the person referred to.Best regardsNishidani 22:15, 20 June 2007 (UTC)).)

I think the page you meant was Kazama Kiyozō. It was deleted because it did not give sources or references for notability, that doesn't necessarily mean he's not notable. Please be aware of WP:OWN. I don't have to be an expert on Japanese topics to see whether notability is demonstrated. Also note that messages should be added to the bottom of talk pages or they may be overlooked. If you haven't saved the text, it will shortly be here Jimfbleak 19:52, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Intense dislike of an edit you have no valid arg.against. A ring-in(?) happens by, draws the editor into a viol. of rules, and he gets banned. A black mark as a precedent if it comes to a challenge, and persistent efforts to restore than disagreeable edit. If the trapped person persists, call him for vandalism, and cite the precedent. Possible, and possibly paranoid. Let's see.Nishidani 19:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

deleted page

Well, could you do me a favour and flag the problem before deleting pages on Japanese matters the next time round. That stub clarifies another text in Wiki where his notability is evidenced, with references. The link I made to Kizama is now useless, and readers of that article will not know who he is. (2) I am still waiting for a book that will assist me in defining Kizama's work. I consider this erasure an abuse, since it should have been preceded by a query, a note or a heading flagging the reasons for your dissatisfaction.

p.s.WP:OWN. I can't see the point of your referring me to this. I have a lifetime's reading on the subject, and freely give to the public domain things I know about the subject in question. I have no problems with other people using 'my' material. I do object to someone who knows nothing about a topic erasing it as soon as a squeak of an outline is made of it, because it is not, apparently, a full and complete article. Sir, I am not at your beck and command to write full articles. I do them when interest and time allows. Stubs are indications to surfers that there is a page they may know something about which they are invited to improve. I'm quite welcome to mark out the large number of areas in Wiki's English-Japanese section where collaboration is needed. All you have done is to badger the initiative, and destroy the possibility for others who might have caught the stub of improving on it. Read Aristophanes, 'Ornithes' and get a sense of humour, and patience.

Thanks for your work on the Japan-related articles. A few things: it is a generally established practice to delete incomplete and unverified articles that do not establish the notability of the subject, because it is thought that they detract from the reliability and professionalism of the encyclopedia. Some may laugh at applying the terms "reliability" and "professionalism" to Misplaced Pages, but that is precisely why such policies are in effect. In actuality the page was temporarily flagged before it was deleted, and it required the judgment of two editors (the person who left the tag, and the person who hit the delete button) for the article to be deleted. I highly doubt that the article will be deleted again in its current state.

Next, a few conventions: by the manual of style for articles related to Japan, we use Western naming order for modern Japanese subjects, particularly when those subjects have never published works in English. Accordingly, I have moved Kazama Kiyozō to Kiyozō Kazama. Also, when creating articles that utilize macrons in the title, please be sure to create redirects from the unmacronned forms. Most users cannot type the macronned o into the search box, and this can cause navigation trouble. I created the redirects this time. I'd appreciate it if you could do the same fixes in the future, although you are not at my beck and call. Dekimasuよ! 11:53, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm seventy five years old, and I'm afraid I haven't the time, health and patience to learn all of the conventions you speak about. I tried to apply what you requested and found I was messing up articles. Particularly on the issue of Japanese name order. My generation learnt to despise eurocentric impositions on the non-white world, and why I should have to sweat and fiddle with dots, brackets and programming mumbojumbo, when a vital young pup like yourself can fix it all in a jiffy, and leave the grind of actual writing to sappers in the front-line like myself, is beyond me. Why, uniquely, do we have a convention for the Japanese wiki of imposing a eurocentric world order as 'defaultsort' (?) when Korean and Chinese names are left in their proper, and natural order?

There are quite a few of us out here, of my wrinkled generation, who have much information, but a poor understanding of what you call netiquette, and whatnot, and not enough time left to learn. Just a little time left to instruct. I can contribute in several languages, but I'm afraid it looks like taking more trouble than it is worth it for an old 'geezer' like myself. I know this sounds prickly, but you youngsters have the instinctive knack for the clean-up side of things, with all of its odd (to folks teetering on their anecdotage like me) conventions and it would be nice if in looking at contributions, you could just adjust them technically. Sorry for the grumbling, but I don't like being hounded by editors who know nothing of the subject they are bungling about supervising, and the editor in question began stalking posts in my name as soon as I asked him what he was up to on the Kazama file. (Nishidani 15:17, 21 June 2007 (UTC)).

Stalking behaviour by an administrator

Thank you for your message. I have not taken up any interest in articles dealing with Japanese scholarship, I was simply housekeeping, based on your recent contributions.

You are welcome to work through my contributions if you wish, all non-deleted edits are open to everyone to see. Your message implies that adding a ref tag is an abuse of admin power; adding tags is not an admin-only function, it is one that any editor can do. I would accept that one may have been incorrect, but that can easily be removed and isn’t exactly an issue deserving what seems to me to be a disproportionate response.

I’m sorry that you find the refs tags silly, but they are not designed by me.

You should be aware that any editor can edit any page, and they should not be viewed as personal property. I don’t remember (I’m sure you will correct me if I’m wrong!) changing any of the actual content, so I’m not sure why I’m being accused of meddling with material I know nothing about, or why I need to consult anyone else. If you don’t like my edits, just change them (none of these pages are on my watchlist, so I won’t even know), you don’t need to leave a message to tell me.

All the best, Jimfbleak 16:22, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

A civil answer, Jimfbleak. Had I had a note like this dropped in earlier I should have saved myself the shot-nerve syndrome, with its ticklish sensitivities. I went, to borrow a youngster's idiom, "ballistic" when I noted several tags placed on my work-in-progress within a half-and-hour of my initial query. You know, paranoia afflicts all ages, but old-fangled gits like myself are especially prone to it when finangling with new-fangled media like the Internet.

Best regards Nishidani 19:10, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I myself was worried that the article might seem like hype. I'm far more comfortable with the dead! I generated this in order to provide background for the Gill citations in the bibliography of the Nihonjinron article. I have taken the information from Gill's website, and from reading 7 books, some two thousand odd pages. Though he frequently alludes to his life in these books, the allusions are scattered all over the place, and it has taken a lot of time to draw them in. He doesn't even have an adequate curriculum posted on his own site, since he appears too busy to trouble himself about one. If the curriculum is fine, the problem remains of summing up what he is doing, without promoting him. One could just leave a bibliography, of course, but that is not informative, since it is hard to gather from the titles exactly what he is doing, which strikes me as important. I have adjusted the text, but would ask Dekimasu or others for further precise indications on how to present the material. Biographical articles on contemporary authors vary from excessive, if carefully hidden hype (the most notorious example I know off is the wiki article on Ayn Rand, which is several pages of promotion for the institutions associated with her philosophy), to moderate synopses of works (Le Carré) to simple bibliographies after the CV (Donald Keene and Roy Andrew Miller). I suspect that part of the problem is that Gill, unlike many, is an unknown quantity for academics, save for a handful of specialists, so that merely mentioning him looks like hype. Some way round the impasse must be found, preferably with help from you guys out there, because it would be silly to wait round for an obituary to write up the fact that he is the most productive translator of Japanese haiku in the history of Western studies on Japan, as far as I, who have never met him, am aware. Nishidani 08:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Dekimasu et al. Re Robin Gill:-

I myself was worried that the article might seem like hype. I'm far more comfortable with the dead! I generated this in order to provide background for the Gill citations in the bibliography of the Nihonjinron article. I have taken the information from Gill's website, and from reading 7 books, some two thousand odd pages. Though he frequently alludes to his life in these books, the allusions are scattered all over the place, and it has taken a lot of time to draw them in. He doesn't even have an adequate curriculum posted on his own site, since he appears too busy to trouble himself about one. If the curriculum is fine, the problem remains of summing up what he is doing, without promoting him. One could just leave a bibliography, of course, but that is not informative, since it is hard to gather from the titles exactly what he is doing, which strikes me as important.

I have adjusted the text, but would ask Dekimasu or others for further precise indications on how to present the material. Biographical articles on contemporary authors vary from excessive, if carefully hidden hype (the most notorious example I know off is the wiki article on Ayn Rand, which is several pages of promotion for the institutions associated with her philosophy), to moderate synopses of works (Le Carré) to simple bibliographies after the CV (Donald Keene and Roy Andrew Miller). I suspect that part of the problem is that Gill, unlike many, is an unknown quantity for academics, save for a handful of specialists, so that merely mentioning him looks like hype. Some way round the impasse must be found, preferably with help from you guys out there, because it would be silly to wait round for an obituary to write up the fact that he is the most productive translator of Japanese haiku in the history of Western studies on Japan, as far as I, who have never met him, am aware.Nishidani 08:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Munich massacre

Hi! Regarding this edit to Munich massacre, do you have a published source supporting that striking analogy? I have no problem with the text being in there, as long as it can be sourced per Misplaced Pages:Verifiability. Please do cite your source, as otherwise the analogy will almost certainly be removed. Thanks! -- Jonel (Speak to me) 01:52, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Dear Jonel.

Your remark 'otherwise the analogy will almost certainly be removed' is odd in its peremptory threatening. In the overwhelming number of cases I am familiar with, editors who query an edit that is unsourced post 'citation required' and leave it at that. Will you please explain why my single contribution is to be wiped out because it requires, according to you, a source? If you do go ahead and wipe it out, then you legitimate the application, by anyone, of this arbitrary critierion to every unsourced line in the article, which will only make a mess of it.

The verifiability of the factual content is in the links in the passage I posted, which will send the reader to the relevant facts. (2) The analogy is precise, in that the Munich Massacre consisted of the elimination by terrorist groups of athletes at a prestigious international competition, precisely what occurred with the Posada Carriles downing of the Cuban airline. In the text, nothing that is subjective is asserted, but only factual correlations, and therefore it cannot with any editorial justification be eliminated simply because it happens to be an analogy. I could overcome your objection by simply removing the word ‘analogy’, and rewriting, in perfect accord with the rules again, that the Munich massacre’s terrorist assault on athletes is only superceded by the Cubana airline downing. Would the slight word change alter anything? No. I might add that the quotation from Simon Reeves preceding it is sourced, but demonstrably untrue (nb. Wiki rules state:'Sources should be appropriate to the claims made: exceptional claims require exceptional sources.'. Reeves has made an exceptional claim, but he is not an exceptional source, since he has no technical qualification in the area he writes about). The Lod Airport Massacre of May that year was far more violent, and costly to Jewish lives. In the relevant Cubana Flight 455 article, that massacre is defined as ‘what was then the most deadly terrorist attack in the Western hemisphere.’

(3) A large part of this article lacks ‘publishing sources’ for each ‘fact’. There is much irrelevant information (that murdered athletes had children is not pertinent, to note but one example, and it is not sourced). I would suggest that if you wish to blue-pencil, go to these numerous passages first, before challenging the ‘analogy’, which you agree is striking. If I wished to annoy or damage contributions by others, I could apply wikipedia verifiability criteria to the article strictly and wipe half of it out. I do not do so because were those criteria applied with relentless mechanical efficiency, no article would ever be written. It is facile for individuals to erase, quite difficult to write consensually. I prefer the latter approach.

(4) Look at the Qibya Massacre and Deir Yassin massacre articles where numerous unsourced and tendentious assertions bury the historically verifiable record, and which is a disgrace to careful neutral historical writing in what it carefully omits. Since it deals with Arabs, these prior episodes can be fiddled down to a minor ‘incident’, understandable in context, though one could find many better scholars within Israel who take these 'incidents' (like El Burj in Gaza which has no article in Misplaced Pages), like Reeves does Munich, as a defining moment in modern terrorism and Arab-Israeli relations. In all cases of an Israeli massacre of Palestinians, the articles have a 'background' that contextualizes the massacre in a prior record of Arab provocations. In the Munich massacre, there is no such 'background'. Personally I am opposed to such 'background' contextualizing, which frames the obscenity, whoever commits it, in some form of retaliatory justification. Wiki articles on massacres are disturbingly partisan (5) To remove an analogy which, you yourself say, repeating my words, is ‘striking’ cannot but strike a neutral observer as aleatory, or make many wonder whether it is not an invasive and unscrupulous use of editorial niggling censoring details in order to maintain the semblance of ‘singularity’ which Reeves’s tendentious opinion has underlined.

Woah, calm down. I guess I wasn't clear: I wasn't saying that I would remove it. I agree with your analysis here of Misplaced Pages's articles on massacres. They tend towards partisanship, there are often major problems with sourcing, and so on. Editing them can be like stepping onto a battlefield. But that's exactly why I expected your addition to be removed (especially with your aggressive edit summary--that was just asking for someone to revert). I also note that my prediction was accurate (). The bottom line here is that no matter how blindingly obvious the comparison is, you'll probably need a source to make any addition stick when faced with those who disagree with you (which you'll find plenty of in any of these sorts of articles). -- Jonel (Speak to me) 14:05, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Jonel. I can assure you I am quite calm. And not, I think, aggressive. Stern, yes. It seems that when I am voluble in explaining what went on to make me form the judgements I do make, it is taken as intemperate. As you will appreciate, when someone writes 'it will be removed' the impersonal future form in English often functions as a threat or a warning of automatic penalty ('People who deface buildings will be fined' etc). As to people not agreeing with me, and therefore exercising the right of erasure, I fail to see how sourcing the point makes my contribution safer. There is a vast amount of material throughout wikipedia which is sourced, uselessly, because the opinion quoted is not really relevant to the article. In the Qibya article one datum is sourced to the New York Times 1954, with no link, and therefore unverifiable, unless you go to a public library. If you do, and check it out, it turns out that the article was based on reportage of what government spokesmen said at the time to cover up the scandal. But it sits there, unchallenged, as a 'source', a convenient one since it allows the poster to filter in misleading evidence that no historian, in retrospect, would now use.

Sourcing simply means 'I patched this bit in after reading it elsewhere', independently of whether it is appropriate, germane or insightful. The quote from Reeves is demonstrably wrong, since, as I have been now forced to add, the Munich massacre cannot be said to the a defining moment in modern terrorism by any competent student of the subject (I'm ethnically Irish, which gives me some personal feeling for the subject, as the IRA bombed its way through England in the same period). Whoever stuck that Reeves piece in, did so however in order to create the false impression that the Munich Massacre was different from so many other massacres. Since this is not the case, it requires balance. I'd much prefer that the Reeves quote be eliminated, since it is tendentious. If eliminated, then I would be happy to excise my own clarification. But if it stays, it requires a corrective that allows the reader to balance the tendentious perspective purveyed by Reeves with information on the public record which counters its subjective interpretation of the significance of that event. Sorry to be long-winded.

I'm sorry to hear you have so little faith in sourcing. And my initial comment was indeed meant as a warning, but more in the manner of "People who pour grease on fires will get burned" than anything else. A probabilistic expectation of result rather than a threat of penalty; my apologies if you took it otherwise. And now, since I am no student of terrorism and have little interest in getting embroiled in articles on that topic, and since you seem quite well equipped to argue your case, I guess there's not much left but to wish you the best of luck in future editing. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 16:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Jonel, in response, closing the issue.

It is not that I have little faith in sourcing, but rather little faith in pseudo-sourcing. I could source the statement of analogy I made (Noam Chomsky, “Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World,” South End Press, Cambridge Mass. rev.edition 2002 p.99 footnote 8) but I don't think it necessary, because an analogy of this kind does not need sourcing since the given, uncontrovertible facts speak for themselves. I.e. you do not need to, but may of course, source the obvious, put a link under 'is' and refer us to Parmenides, or 'fact' and refer us to the dictionary, as any academic knows. The Reeve quote was sourced, but was a misleading item in that page in so far as it was one of any number of subjective opinions immaterial to the article in question. Wiki cruisers should have spotted that before my intervention. In erasing both Reeve's exaggerated and strategically placed 'quote' I have also eliminated my counter-example. And I think the article's first paragraph gains in lucidity.

1929 Hebron massacre

i found you a clear explanation to the discrepancy, please stop reverting to include false material as if it were factual. Jaakobou 04:51, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Three-revert rule

You are in serious danger of violating Misplaced Pages's three-revert rule. I suggest you review the policy and self-revert. Tewfik 17:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for informing me, I hadn't noticed. Mind you, I don't think I am the only one to have engaged in extensive reverting. I will 'self-revert' and then post my version tomorrow. Thanks

Between myself and Jayjg there are only three total reverts - you've reverted far more than both of us combined. The point of the rule is to signal that your position is against the consensus on the page (else yours would have stayed). The solution is not to simply revert back later, but to work things out on Talk, though if you hadn't realised it on your own, I can assure you that charging "censorship" will not end productively. Please self-revert soon (Hertz only repaired the mark-up that you inadvertently broke). Tewfik 18:06, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, well, then, I haven't checked, but I take your word for it that I am in violation. Moral. Never play by a 'game' without mastery of the rules. I was trained as a youth to take the scrupulous ascertainment of facts, textual or historical, as a moral obligation, in a community of scholars. Perhaps I fall short of the ideal inculcated into me, though I've never had that charge laid against my academic work. It only appears to function in wikipedia.

Pity, I would have liked to do this on a daily basis, collaboratively, but this is pointless. Without alluding to yourself or jayjg, obviously the rule which convicts me, can be rigged, like any system of rules. You only need 1 revert each by 3 people who agree in disagreeing with a single poster, to make him trip the wire, and have his record marked as a rule violator. Now that you have clarified this rule for me, I can see it militates against day by day work on wikipedia. I'll take it more casually. Indeed I'll drop it, and Sozomenos and the terebinth ritual, and so much else, to my gain - I much prefer reading up history in real books, that being sucked into the subtle politics of editing. Politics it is. What is remarkable about this and so many other sites, is the inability to be informed adequately. It's Orwell's memory hole, under daily revision. Thank goodness the Encyclopedia Britannica, and scholarly journals still exist.

I won't 'self-revert', because I'm too tired to check out how to do that (it's a new word to an old man like myself), so denounce me to the appropriate authorities. I won't resent it. It is the rule, and rules are there to be obeyed. The law does not admit of ignorance.Regards Nishidani 18:53, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Blaming this on 'politics' seems quite unfair to me, as very specific norms in play across Misplaced Pages are what I have been attempting to preserve. Imagine the mess if everyone could add whatever point they felt was relevant to whatever subject, or the same point to a dozen articles. It is natural human urge that many a contributor have felt, but the result is a mess. We all very much appreciate any new attributable and neutrally presented information you could add to broaden the coverage of this entry, but they must be just that. Cheers, Tewfik 19:01, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Tewfik

In my opinion, you both misuse the norms, and are incoherent in your application of those norms, often, in my view, abusing them. You never reply to the points raised by those who contrast your judgements, but simply repeat ostensible violations of rules. I am not to cite other wiki pages for evidence. Okay. I remove the link. I note that the remarks on 700 BC seals links to a wiki page, not to an independent archeological document, and, thinking to impose the policy I just learn about, remove it. It is immediately restored, in violation of the principle which I was accused of transgressing. No comment from Jayjg or Tewfik.I have no problem with the evidence. It seems fine to me. But it needs a specific non wiki-source, relating to reliable sources reporting the digs of 1998.

Hence what is not good for the goose is great for the gander. You are both obsessively strict on what you regard as anything that might upset the sensibilities of Kiryat Arba settlers. On this material, the pedantic scruples of pilpul are exercised. You both wasted time, with Jaacobou,dithering anxiously over the 59/67 figure, even though I had a source that fits wiki rules. The ref. at last, was kept, but the figure erased, so that the curious can not see it, but must tramp off to a library to consult the material book. It was suppressed, challenged, doubted, erased, reverted. I will note that in all cases where Arabs are the victims of a massacre,the pages allow at the beginning the issue of disputed figures (see Deir Yassin). In pages, like Hebron, where a dispute exits, this is disallowed. That is incoherent, and your dual failures to address the incongruity show most lucidly your parti pris.

All this finangling amused me, because I was waiting for a NPOV scruple to emerge about the loss of the number of wounded in that other Hebron massacre by Baruch Goldstein (and it merits an independent wiki page 1994 Hebron Massacre, since the place in modern times has had two, one against Jews, one against Arabs (the latter with higher casualties, by the way). How many of those wounded by BS, namely, 150, died afterwards as a result? This interests no one. What passionately interests people here, by contrast, is the rigid confirmation of the figure of 67 at Hebron, maintaining the difference of 8 is due to fatalities following the 59 apparently killed on that day. (citation required. One of that 8 died not of 'wounds' but of a heart attack several days later. Not that it makes much difference to the horror, but technically it renders the word 'wound' inexact, and perhaps accounts for why the figure 66 occasionally crops up). The dead and wounded are meticulously defended in one context, the Jewish one, the details in the other disattended to. It doesn't interest you. Go to the Baruch Goldstein site and most of it is filled up with material saying what a decent guy he was to Arabs, testimony coming unilaterally from members of own community who praised his act as saintly, worthy of a martyr, on the day of his burial, and then testified before the Commission, of his respect for Arabs later on! Such are the indignities to truth enacted by a very well planned intent to play the pedant with adversary but reliably sourced information, and close a generous eye to whatever is passed off as 'reliable' by biased posters on your side of the interpretative line. The partisan POV is structural, in short, as much in what never catches your eyes on a page marked by unbalanced reportage, in the silences of a waved editorial posture, as much as in what you do censor, for no other word fits the behaviour.

Cheers Nishidani 13:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Raymond Tallis

Nishidani, the formatting problem with this article is now solved. The chnages I made to the punctuation were to conform to Misplaced Pages house style, rather than necessary for the tags to 'work' properly. See Misplaced Pages:Footnotes if you need further details.

Cheeers. Philip Cross 19:07, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Scholem edit

Nishidani, Congratulations on a very short and elegant, but so precise and accurate edit to the Gershom Scholem page. One word makes all the difference! Thanks, warshy 12:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

warshy My pleasure. Nishidani 12:40, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Eternal return (Eliade)

I tried to incorporate that Kirk quote you mentioned on Talk:Mircea Eliade into Eternal return (Eliade) as Dahn had suggested. When you get a chance, please take a look. Thanks! --Phatius McBluff 03:28, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Request from a neophyte

It's impossible to understand the criteria for who is a reliable source and who is not. There could be a campaign going on against anyone who dares to criticise Israel, of course - look at Finkelstein's denial of tenure.

• Lustik quotes an unidentified Rabbi at Goldstein's funeral as saying 'A million Arab lives are not worth one Jewish fingernail". There should be no problem here, it was Rabbi Yaacov Per(r)in, conducting the service(s?) at Goldstein's funeral on the 27th of February, 1994. Quoted on the front page of the The New York Times the following day.
• Shahak however was recognized as a reliable historian by the Council on Foreign Relations at Washington, whose house journal published his papers. Israel Shahak gets the most bizarre treatment in his biography here (which is/was protected from editing). Compare Shahak's treatment in his article with the article Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Or see what I posted on the subject here.
• rejects sourcing from Noam Chomsky, on the grounds that he is a linguist, not a specialist historian. Very disturbing - particularily when Shmuel Katz is used as a "Reliable Source" on other pages to deny and/or defend the Nakba. PalestineRemembered 13:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. In brief, it's a war of nerves, and a battle of attrition, won by whoever, wiki rules or not, can jam up the objective writing of material on Arab-israeli relations until exhaustion prevails in his adversary, and the page, with all of its tendentious bias, is left to stand.Nishidani 13:47, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Please consider joining the discussion on Reliable sources (talk) here. The discussion specifically mentions Noam Chomsky. --DieWeisseRose 04:10, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

You have violated 3RR on Hebron

Revert or risk a ban. Amoruso 14:06, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

== No I haven't, even though your game-plan was to get me to do so. Check each textual revision.Nishidani 14:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Blocked for violation of three revert rule on Hebron

The duration of the block is 8 hours. — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 16:53, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Nishidani (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

your reason here

Decline reason:

No unblock reason provided. — Sandstein 21:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Please consider Amoruso's behaviour in terms of the following rule:

Do not revert good faith edits. In other words, try to consider the editor "on the other end." If what one is attempting is a positive contribution to Misplaced Pages, a revert of those contributions is inappropriate unless, and only unless, you as an editor possess firm, substantive, and objective proof to the contrary.

I considered Amoruso's objections (all opinions, no sourcez) seriously at each step. So Would someone please verify if I have indeed violated the three-revert rule. I was very careful not to, and an accusation is not a proof. A certain Amoruso tried to push me into violating that rule by twice reverting a page that had not been challenged by other users, and one which he had not participated. He kept trying to reinstall a statement that is palpably untrue, and refused to justify that unsourced statement (Kiryat Arba is not technically part of Hebron. It is classified by Israeli government documents and maps as outside of Hebron (see www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Hebron2000map.html).

He complained that in my attempt to repair his vandalism (for his reverting was unmotivated) I’d violated the 3 revert rule, which, I presume, was what he designed me to do. By blocking me, you have now punished the person who was endeavouring to hold the page, as agreed by others, intact against an intruding and uninformed Amoruso’s falsifications.

Amoruso did not read the discussion page before reverting twice. A lengthy discussion ensued, in which I noted that I had reverted automatically, but in successive replies to Amoruso, rewrote phrasing to suggest an equable compromise, and restored a link that was lost either by Amoruso's edits, or by one of my own. I repeat, the discussion page will show that before conducting any edit, I analysed and replied to objections, and did not revert automatically the page three times.

Still, the ban is rather a gift, even if improper. No enmity: to the contrary. It means, 8 hours, a book and a half to be read, instead of trying over that time to remove a falsification on one wiki page. CheersNishidani 17:58, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Please note that blaming someone for vandalism over content disputes is not allowed. Please read WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. Amoruso 20:59, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Then why was Amoruso not blocked? Memo to self

Ah, Eureka, now it is all clear!! I never repeated the same text. Amoruso did. Perhaps he was right to report me for trying to cancel his wilful vandalism, and managed to checkmate me in the game. Still, it follows that he too is guilty, since in a brief space he reverted thrice. For the record:-

What is counted as a revert is this, a slight change in Tewfik's suggestion after mulling it over four several hours. Note this, as per the talk, is provisory.

Tewfik

‘city at the center of the Biblical Judea region in the West Bank, along the eponymous Mount Hebron.

Nishidani.

‘is a southern city of the Plaestinian West Bank, at the center of the Biblical Judea.

There is an error here the misspelling of ‘Palestine’. Otherwise it is a perfectly normal edit. I explained why I did the edit. It is not a revert in any normal sense I can understand of the word.

(1) An hour later Amoruso makes his first change (12.23), which is a revert to Tewfik’s prior posting, adding to it a false report, whose falseness I had registered on the talk page.

is a city at the center of the Biblical Judea region in the West Bank, along the eponymous Mount Hebron. It is home to some 166,000 Palestinians and 700-800 Israeli settlers; another 7,000 Israelis live in the suburb of Kiryat Arba on the outskirts of Hebron.

Which I revert. My first revert. i.e. of Amoruso.

is a southern city of the Plaestinian West Bank, at the center of the Biblical Judea. It is home to some 166,000 Palestinians and 700-800 Israeli settlers. Hebron lies 930 metres (3,050 ft) above sea level. It is the second holiest city for Jews, after Jerusalem.

Amoruso makes his second revert:- (12.31)

at the center of the Biblical Judea region in the West Bank, along the eponymous Mount Hebron. It is home to some 166,000 Palestinians and 700-800 Israeli settlers; another 7,000 Israelis live in the suburb of Kiryat Arba on the outskirts of Hebron

which I revert, for the second time, (12-36) only in the sense that I restored the earlier page, correcting ‘Palestinian’

is a city in the Palestinian West Bank at the center of the Biblical Judea region. It is home to some 166,000 Palestinians and aldebaer⁠] 22:08, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

|}

Well deserved. —  14:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

new subsection

i'm sorry i'm opening up a new subsection after you've mentioned some type of info regarding your concerns... however, due to the volume of the issues and how they intermix, i request you post them indiviually into the "issue1","issue2",etc. subsections within' this new subsection. a copy paste with minor changes is probably a reasonable request to help promote the discussion regarding the dispute. Jaakobou 16:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Jaakobou No need to apologize for using this page: that's what it's here for. I appreciate it actually, since it's where I'm notified more rapidly. I'll check your link out.Nishidani 16:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

actually, my apology was for a new subsection on the other talk page after you've made some mention of your concerns. anyways, thank you for noting some of the issues on the talk, if you have more, don't be shy about openeing issue 4 and 5... to the issues themselves, i'm a bit backed up, but will try to participate seriously on the talk soon (hopefully by tomorrow i'll give some proper response to all), i guess you can try to sliightly implement a few of the changes that you think are less objected to in the meantime.. but in general, i don't think i've missed anything in my edit. Jaakobou 17:26, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Qibya massacre (2)

Hello. We can start working on this whenever you like. Kind Regards, Alithien 18:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't give up at 1929 Hebron massacre

There appears to be a serious problem with ownership in this article (and others) by people with quite poor grasp of English and very poor understanding of reliable sources. This behaviour is having a serious effect on the project, driving away literate editors such as yourself. I noted two other cases and of people apparently driven from the editing of another article under similar circumstances. PalestineRemembered 16:49, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I knowPalestineRemembered. Jaakobou considers it his territory, and jumps at any effort to touch it which does not meet his personal approval. I haven't given up. I think under the circumstances that the only way, since there seems to be no governing authority that can check this proprietorial self-assertiveness and editorial monopoly and curtail its abuses, is to write up, using primary and secondary sources, the article in private, and when completed, begin posting it in pieces, which is what I intend to do. Jaakobou on the evidence has a very weak command of English, particularly of style, and I'm not going to help him smooth out his heavyhanded lashings of dull prose. He can frig about with it as a private toy as long as he likes, but sometime in the future, a serious and concentrated effort by several hands, with a good record on the area, will make it a respectable article. It worries me rather that he is trying to intrude elsewhere, trying to mess up hard-work done on other pages dealing with Palestinians. As for the 1929 page, I will simply post remarks on the Talk page, noting what is wrong. If he cares to try and improve the page along the lines suggested, well and good. By the way, just to see what sort of games are being played here, click on the 700-800 settlers ref. in para 1 of Hebron. It will take you to the Kiryat Arba page (infrawiki referencing for sources is forbidden, I am told). Click on that ref. in turn, which is supposed to back the figures and, lo and behold, it will update you to the same Kiryat Arba page! An example of ouroboric obiter dicta(torial) self-referentiality* I find this astonishingly amusing. Don't worry, then. I don't give up on things that easily, but I take a longer perspective. RegardsNishidani 17:28, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, note to self: I've just rechecked, and it seems the ref is updated, since I am now sent to the bottom of the page. And the three references consist of an article one cannot see without payment in the NYT and 2 Jerusalem Post articles which simply assert there are 800. If there are 800, why are we given 700-800? Of course the only reliable source is the Israeli Bureau of Statistics.

notice.

it may not have been your intention, but you have now twice reverted the article of Qibya massacre blindly.

in this revert, you've broken the fix to the npov tag, and in this one, you've readmitted an npov tag to the now resolved intro debate dispute and also removed the farsi cross-wiki link from the article.

i also note to you that adding phrases like "Jaakobou. You cannot edit English texts if you write with a tin ear. The phrasing is absurd." into a content POV dispute, is unhelpful. Jaakobou 18:55, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

p.s. i've just noticed you allow this content conflict slip into personal attacks on articles i was not even invloved in. Jaakobou 12:44, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, don't mess with the text in a way that the next time I am forced to mend clumsy phrasing these ancillary problems recur. What the 'farsi cross-wiki link' refers to I do not know but will check. If it refers to that ridiculous link to Arab terrorist acts against Israel as further reading, I will continually remove it. That should not be allowed, no more than, in the massacres of Jews I would allow someone to ref to a justificatory page on Palestinians killed by Israelis. It is sick to 'justify' or contextualize massacres in terms of the logic of 'retaliation', and violates elementary rules of neutrality.

As to style, there's no defence. Before making edits in English check with a native speaker, or if you are one, with someone who has experience in writing English prose professionally. It will save us a lot of time. Drafting these articles is often a question of style and feel for the nuances of language and you constantly miss them in what others write, and don't notice them in what you write.Nishidani 19:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

if only the native speaker was a little less POV and uncivil. Jaakobou 06:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Nishidani - Many non-native speakers of English manage to contribute usefully to the project but I wonder how long it will take before this matter explodes at ArbCom. Your e-mail is not engaged, I think you need to tick 2 more boxes under preferences. PalestineRemembered 06:48, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Jaakobou. Jaakobou. I have used strong language, in good part out of an understandable exasperation at your inability to listen to other editors, and also because you often appear to be scrounging around for tidbits of any information whatsoever that might 'prove the case for Israel', as in that extraordinary instance over at the Deir Yassin talk page, was it?, where you were going to investigate the possibility that behind the atrocity there were justified fears that the Arabs would destroy Jerusalem's water-supply, something which, as I had to remind you, wasting my time on telling you what is common knowledge, that the attempt on Jerusalem's water supply occurred after, not before the massacre, and secondly, that the Haganah High Command was assured months before that massacre that no eventual damage to the water mains would imperil Jerusalem's Jewish community. That is what I mean by reading unilaterally to a purpose, and then, perhaps worse, using language which cogs the text towards a strong POV. I repeat, a neutral integral page anywhere here could be written by one hand by simply reading reliable sources in a library, and writing it up according the standard professional criteria, within a day or two, and much behaviour in here looks like high school pro and con debates, with the lessons of historical method ignored in order to score points.

It is quite absurd that one has to spend weeks if not months trying to get a proper figure for the Jewish Hebronite population, which is linked to another wiki page, which in turn links to unreliable newspaper reports, when any well-intentioned editor could merely give the correct figure from ther Israeli Bureau of Statistics. Every request this be done is met by fribbling excuses, though the request is one of using correct Wiki procedure for RS. One is left with the impression that the absurdly wobbly 700-800 figure, is defended because any other figure might be marginally lower, and look bad against the native resident Arab Hebronite population. Facts are facts, but in this case, 'ascertaining' in two minutes the correct data is held hostage, apparently, for considerations of image. I don't care if the Israeli Bureau of Statistics gives 2,000, instead of what other sources say (which I don't trust because they are not official), namely 500-600. I can't access the Bureau, you all can, and you refuse to, and I suspect it is because one order of facts is best kept under wraps in order to help the image of the Kiryat Arba community. So, why not relieve me of this suspicion by spending two minutes checking that IBS data and providing us with the correct link, and the exact figure? It would lighten the atmosphere round here, and show bona fides. To any such gesture I will correspond in kind, and supply data that improves the page.Nishidani 07:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

PalestineRemembered. I'm afraid I haven't 'engaged' my email at Wiki for a simple reason. I decided when I noticed the option that, potentially, enabling that facility would militate against the propriety of contributing neutrally to these articles, in that conduits off-the-public-page that allow private communication between people who perhaps share similar views lend themselves to abuses. Any communication with me, at least, I decided, must be public, i.e. on this or another wiki editor's page, so that all those who may disagree with me can see precisely what I am doing. I certainly don't wish to imply you, for example, would abuse a private channel, to the contrary, I find myself in substantial agreement with your outlook on many of these questions, and admire the considerable effort you put into Wiki. But the unfortunate problem remains, at least in my mind, that using a private channel, back-door communications, to which others are not privy, would create an impression of a cabal, or of off-line rigging of the agenda. In my readerly way, analysing the quickness of a new editor jumping in to intervene in a dispute, I have suspected that this occurs quite frequently, and do not wish that I, or yourself, for one, give grounds to others to a similar suspicion. In terms of functional efficiency, it no doubt is invaluable and useful. In the long view however, it is one of those pleasures and tools I find myself obliged to surrender. Perhaps I don't trust myself. Best regardsNishidani 07:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

(1) i don't think this conversation about the actual content dispute belongs outside of the article's talk page. (2) i don't make the habit of attacking you for POV (seems you just noted you see things the same as PR) and i request you consider applying the same civility towards me. (3) regarding the "you don't listen to other editors" notion you seem to have adopted, i suggest you try to notice things from my perspective, where not every statement by benny morris or moshe sharet or sir martin gilbert overrides that of other important israeli figures and historions. (4) please consider that keeping it short and to the point would certainly help our communication and dispute resolution. Jaakobou 12:44, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Jaakobou I've tried to understand your perspective, and see you are extremely sensitive to any material that might lend itself to damaging what you consider to be the right perspective on Israel. Historiography doesn't work that way. It ascertains the salient facts, usually from written documents, organizes them into a coherent narrative, and only at the end are deductions to be drawn (which we don't do here). I don't take Morris, Sharett, or Sir Martin's word for things: they represent a very small number of hundreds of reputable historians whose work should form the basis of our texts, instead of that fossicking in search machines for newspaper accounts of hearsay, opinion, and whatnot which dominate the composition of so many articles here. You surprised me the other day by mentioning Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal's Palestinians: the making of a nation. That is a very fine work of scholarly repute, and if you have read it and find material for these pages, by all means harvest it. No one can object to that as a reliable source, nor to thousands of other books. My point is, I hardly ever see books cited here, it is all skimmed off the froth of the internet through tertiary sources.Nishidani 13:36, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

i agree with your last point 100% and hope we can get along better with future disputes. to your first concern, i assure you that no, i am not overly sensetive to materials against israel if they are correct and not abused. i believe i've been able to demostrate that with how i rephrased the problematig intro on the Qibya article. other than a few "fluffing up" of the terms (which i partially contest), is has stayed the same until now. i can only hope you will attmpt to apply WP:AGF as i do with you despite our POV differences. Jaakobou 16:51, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I take people as I find them, I think.WP:AGF? My primary assumption is to practice good faith with the historical record. If it tells me something that runs against my natural prejudices or POV then good faith means I must honour that difficulty truth and adjust myself to it, not try to twist the facts so that my POV remains untroubled. I judge editors by their good faith with respect to the arduous ascertainment of historical truth. That is something that requires an integrity which most of us naturally fail to honour. I trust, instinctively, people who are aware of this, and worry their self-assurances about being in the right. I distrust people in whom I see no trace of doubt, no readiness to entertain a doubt, and in whom the capacity to understand an adversary's position, as one entitled to an exact and empathetic hearing, is deficient. This makes me conflictual, perhaps, but I prefer direct confrontation on issues to diplomatic blanc mange. I.e., I call a spade a spade, so my interlocutor doesn't have to waste time reading between the lines to work out that POV we all have, ineludibly Nishidani 08:54, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

A. Toaff and the Passovers

Please note that, as an effect of the splitting and rejoining of the articles, they are now diverging: the risk is that Passovers of Blood: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders is being modified independently from Ariel Toaff. I have not a strong view whether make separate articles or not, but if not, "Passovers" should be deleted. Happy editing, Goochelaar 16:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Dear Goochelaar. An old medieval dictum says: 'Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate' which, in Wikispeak translates: 'Pages should not be multiplied, as if they were the progeny of Genesis, unless absolutely necessary'. I was working on the Toaff page, when Beit Or created a separate page suggesting that this was an improvement. I am not convinced. True, the draft is bulky (I could paste it into Toaff's talk page eventually) but should be able to be winnowed down to a few pages once all the chapters have been described. Other editors, for example, on the Oriental Pages, tell me brief biographical pages are usually eliminated unless they are expanded enough to justify their existence in Wiki. Without a discussion of the 'Bloodlibel' book on his bio page, Toaff, by this criterion, will also eventually be dropped. My suggestion then is that the separate page be cancelled. My work on the Toaff page is highly provisory, and requires some patience, since the synopsis is being posted there so that others, who haven't read the book (which is no longer in print) if they are so minded, can use my précis to get an idea of the book, ask me to elaborate or prune, and discuss it without leaving the article to a survey of gossip about it at third or fourth hand.Nishidani 18:00, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

On reporters

Hi! I saw your message on the Noticeboard about Reliable Sources, specifically concerning CounterPunch. You might, perhaps, be interested in knowing that CP was not the only Western newspaper to have real reporters in Iraq; L'Humanité also had one, at some point, and I'm pretty sure that Il Manifesto also had - has? - one. Of course, there's not many of them... Tazmaniacs 00:29, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Tazzie, it's always refreshing to be shaken out of one's intellectual complacencies. Il Manifesto did have one, Giuliana Sgrena, but after her kidnapping, and the tragic killing of the heroic agent who twice saved her life, Calipari, by an American soldier, the editorial board decided to cancel their policy. Newspapers use Iraqi stringers mainly. Regards Nishidani 06:38, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi again! And today, just found out that Rue 89 has one now ) (), Anne Nivat, whose report has been diffused first by Rue 89, and then TSR. The problem is, for a lots of this kind of reporters, is that the embassies are often not too keen in having let them do their work, so they are also under political pressure... Cheers! Tazmaniacs 12:49, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

G'day again,Tassie. Thanks for the links. I'll keep an eye on her work. I wouldn't be too hard on the embassies. Kidnapping reporters was a profitable business. The tragic thing is, we knew everything that would happen long before the war itself. Most of the disaster was forseeable down to small details. Reporters can give us scant details. I think they function best there in correcting the endless disinformatsia put out by those who conduct the war. I.e. they do best in reporting to us on how what we read in the mainstream press is calibrated for local political effect, and has little to do with Iraq or elsewhere.Nishidani 13:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree... By the way, you might be interested in taking part of the debate here, not that I know if it's going to lead somewhere, but I think we need some sort of guideline on this subject... Talking about disinfo', I'm sure you've heard of Alexis Debat?... Tazmaniacs 13:28, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for these English references, I'll probably try to add them to the relevant entries. Tazmaniacs 15:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Your recent edits

Hi, there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Misplaced Pages pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot 13:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Ebionites

Please note that a request for Arbitration from the Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee regarding the above article has been filed here, in which you are named as a party. John Carter 16:02, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

You're right. My mistake. I will correct it now. John Carter 16:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Beit HaShalom

I understand you reasoning you posted on the talk page for Hebron and I agree. I had first placed Beit HaShalom only in the "See also" section. This was deleted though. I only included the few sentences in the Post 1967 section, so as to contextualize Beit HaShalom's place in the history of Hebron. I will do as you have suggested above and add only the following wording,

"Beit HaShalom, was established in 2007." Thank you and take care. Culturalrevival 19:24, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Battle or massacre

Hi. Just wanted to say that I noticed your comment at Jenin and wasn't 100% sure about your point. Maybe you should clarify whether you are satisfied with the current title or believe it should be changed. Thanks. HG | Talk 00:03, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to clarify. Best wishes, HG | Talk 15:29, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I fear this is yet another red-herring. Nobody has suggested changing the title of this article (even if perhaps two? people have hinted at the fact that the current title is that of the deniers and is wrong). The RfC concerns whether an alternative title in the form "(also known as Jenin Massacre)" should be included in the lead (the Hated Google Test appears to make this alternative title very popular indeed). The answer is, of course, "Yes, alternative title should be included, that's the way we operate". It is difficult to understand how the intention of this RfC could be so misunderstood and it's scope so exaggerated. PR 09:09, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

PS - I was going to copy the statement I've made above across to User:HG's page, but the response already made there is so elegant that I am loath to spoil the effect. PR 09:16, 3 October 2007

Dear PR. Since I haven't studied the page closely, I withhold an opinion. HG asked me my opinion, and I could only post a comment on his page highlighting the motive for my intervention on that talk page. My private opinion is that the history of Jewish/Palestinian realities shows that we will only have the truth about what really occurred several decades in the future after each specific event (as occurred with regard to 1948), and that in the meantime, until the struggle over how much of that 22% legally Palestinian land is to become a Palestinian state is resolved, hundreds of articles in here will just suffer from revert-wars because the interests on both sides are too high. What these wiki pages are condemned to suffer is relentless POVing in order to justify, before the eyes of an otherwise uninformed public, either the landgrab by Israel in the West Bank, or the Palestinian defence of what little land and resources remain to them.

Of course, international law, the UN, and commonsense tell us that Israel is a classic 19th century occupying power which refuses to allow Palestinians to fight for their rights by any means sanctioned by the Geneva and international conventions, including armed defence, and successfully construes what is a classic struggle for independence against a colonial power as an Islamic jihadist plot against the Western world. The incessant expropriation of property, the onslaught of provocative assaults in the name of securing Israel's security at whatever cost to Palestinian claims for security, is designed to drive Palestinians to a despair that either will have them emigrate or resort to sanguinary insurgent retaliations, hopefully, in the eyes of darker politicians, against Israeli civilians. The worse things get, the better it is for Israel's long term designs on all of the West Bank, for the fanaticism that breeds out of despair takes forms that can easily be construed to the world as proof that 'Arabs' are intrinsically violent, irrational and deserve the extreme measures that have, otherwise, been relentlessly placed on Palestinians long before, when they were, under occupation, neither Islamicist nor fanatical nor terroristic. It is an extraordinary con job, which has won the day, because I cannot imagine the world press, which is tired of reporting the facts on the ground, changing its perspective, which now identifies Palestinians as terrorists. History eventually won't confirm the alibis, but by the time history is written, if we shall have a history to write about, Israel will probably control all of the West Bank one way or another, and, as with the American example, will then be in a position, as victors over the Biblical residue, to concede the truth about the destruction of the Palestinian world they expropriated, since they will now own it, will have built settlements and universities and touristic industries, and will acquire the conscience for due regard to history their wealth and leisure will provide them with, particularly since descendents of robber-barons cannot be accused of guilt for what their ancestors did, and tend to have more liberal and cultured outlooks. A good many Israeli/Jewish posters here know this, and have the patience to defend the current story, because of its use value in being a rapid source for people googling up their history. It's a numbers game. In the face of this, I will try, where I can, to stick to areas where I can contribute usefully to the construction of pages that do not clutter the record with newspaper gossip, (since the real history hasn't been written) but which allow a reasonable and comprehensive guide to the real, and deeper issues based on reliable historical sources. Best regards Nishidani 09:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of being accused of soap-boxing, I don't believe that Israel can survive much longer, all its top youngsters are baling out and all sources of immigrants have dried up. 5 years ago stiff, repeating, jail sentences were handed out to refuseniks - now over 25% of Israeli men and 43% of Israeli women manage to draft-dodge, since Israel dare not try and push them. Many descendants of the original Zionists have already gone - both Olmert's sons amongst them. If we and they are very lucky, it will cease to be an apartheid state with a whimper, not a bang. But I don't hold out too much hope even for that, those who live by the sword often die the same way. PR 14:00, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

You overlook the fact that the electronification of warfare means recruited or drafted armies are no longer needed. One kills at the console. I personally hope that Israel survives much longer, within her 1967 borders, with not one soldier beyond those lines, as long as any other nation. Unfortunately the tactics of its realpolitik over the decades has raised a generation of envenomed Arab youths from forgotten generations who had their right to education (higher in pre-1967 Palestinian Jordan than in Israel) cancelled, and the risk now is that by its choice, Israel will been seen as having produced a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As Renan says, most nations built their identity on collective forgetting, but, most civilized nations are so defined by their capacity to remember, especially what was done by their forefathers in establishing the nation. Most of the academic conflicts, as reflected in here, are between those who wish to subscribe to the heroic narrative of foundations, and those who wish to look at the unheroic storyline behind the legendary simplifications. That those who have no swords, often die on the receiving end of one, is probably a more truthful historical cliché, but no argument for not subscribing to a Gandhian principle of resistance as the last hope for a people history has contrived to vilify, execrate, murder, rob and destroy.The truly religious Zionist Jews knew this at the outset, and I hope sometime a page will be created in their honour, for the honesty of their reportage, even if, paradoxically, it came from a perspective informed by a curious if fascinating conflation of secular Zionists with the Amalekites (whom the ultra-orthodox of Kiryat Arba define as Palestinians). Regards as always Nishidani 14:23, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Ebionites

I note that Dbachmann, the admin involved, seems to have retired for the day. Please return to the talk page tomorrow, if you will. I believe that there will likely be questions whether, given Price's history, simple page numbers will be enough. I think we will need as many voices as possible to establish consensus that they are not. Thank you. John Carter 20:51, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Please see my reply re "jackals" on my talk page. Thanks. Ovadyah 22:06, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I left you a reply on my talk page. Thanks. DrorK 14:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

FYI. Michael left this link to a diff on his userpage here. I assume he intends to use it against you later. Just thought you should know. Ovadyah 00:16, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Pace yourself

I've said this before, don't put every fibre of your being on the line because there's an awful long way still to go. PR 19:36, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't have to pace myself! My pacemaker looks after that. You'd be surprised how little time I devote to this stuff. I just type fast, as one can tell from the slovenly grammar.:>)Nishidani 21:01, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm even more full of admiration ...... however, I don't see how either of us can do any good work when faced with total idiocy. Our esteemed administrators are understandably determined to keep away from content disputes, but nevertheless, they can guide us through the maze of procedures by which we decide what is acceptable in the project and what is not. PR 21:09, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

No, I disagree. Look at the Ebionism page, if you want to writhe sleeplessly with sadomasochistic Schadenfreude. We've tried to get an idiot out of there for weeks, and the administrators twiddle their thumbs. I think in some cases, after thoroughly explaining one's reasons to the deaf, one simple, on certain pages, must revert over the idiot once a day for the rest of one's days. G'nite Nishidani 21:40, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I asked that Jaakobou or anyone else find and utilize the Sefer haHebron or Book of Hebron, because it does contain, apparently many documents and oral records of the events of 1929. Now this is not by any means an historical work, and I prefer Benny Morris, Segev, Wasserstein and many others who have read it, and then built their historian's narratives, excluding what they take as partial. I can't make a judgement on the book, because I can't read it. I don't trust Jaacobou to use it honestly, but he is entitled to refer to it if he provides the other editors with a competently precise translation of the specific details bearing on this point'

(As one knows, the British took administrative measures against troops who broke discipline and disobeyed orders, Cafferata shot one he found slaughtering a Jew, and would have had no problem with ridding his force, by court-martial or whatever sanctions were available to him to impose, of murderous elements. Since these measures, as far as I can ascertain, weren't taken against other members of the Hebronite Arab force, I presume the Hebronite witnesses's testimonies were, if reported to the authorities, dismissed. But this is speculative. In any case, one should never disallow dissentient voices, esp. in history, where so much falls through the nets cast by the best students). Regards Nishidani 21:56, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you aware of the "Kurdi Bear" story, where we have an excellent translation, it's highly pertinent to the article, but we still cannot get it in? Have a look what I've posted here. PR 22:05, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I knew of it, I think I posted a note somewhere on Gush Shalom's reliability, after all its founder was a member of the Knesset (you might enjoy his counterpunch.org piece today, along with the ChicagoTribune piece on USS Liberty). It must go in eventually, there are, as far as I can see, no valid objections to it. I'll try to keep an eye on it to see that it does Nishidani 22:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you've got it in one "he is entitled to refer to it if he provides the other editors with a competently precise translation of the specific details bearing on this point'". Anything else drives a cart'n'horses through verifiability, one of the core principles of the project. PR 11:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

mass murder

Please see here. This is not a canvas, since User:Nishidani and myself are at loggerheads over using the phrase "mass murder" in another article, I think the phrase has been misused even in teh definition. PR 13:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

note, 1929 massacre

i'm interested in scaling back from our accusative level of interactions.

i've made a good faith attempt to resolve the dispute here and i am hoping that you will both agree to the material suggested for translation and also agree to the stated "conditions". Jaakobou 14:29, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Your definition of good faith doesn't correspond to usage. If a man speaking my language suddenly switches to another language I don't know at a crucial point, and, smiling, says, 'it's up to you to hire an interpreter. I've said what I have to say,' he is not acting in good faith but engaged in a taunt. So I will not engage with you on this till you provide the translation required, the only objective sign of good faith.Nishidani 14:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

you can take this gesture as you wish. as far as i am concerned, i've taken a step towards resolution, and i do believe it's now your turn to either accept the suggested terms or reject them (which seems to be what you have just done). Jaakobou 14:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm busy on serious work. You still haven't addressed the requests made to you, for instance, that you translate a sample 2 small sentences of that text, which requires some thirty seconds. What is the reply? messages all over wikipedia pages frittering away valuable hours of time better spent on other issues. When you do show a desire to work with others, and not press relentlessly for your own viewpoint, ignoring legitimate requests for explanations from others, then get back to me. You'll find me a model of amicable cooperation.Nishidani 15:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

It is posible to use the bable boxes to find other hebrew speakers.Geni 15:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I hope Jaakobou uses it to find them and translate for us the text he wants to introduce.Nishidani 15:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Nishidani,

Sorry that I was away from the article for a bit. I just finished reading through much of the Talk page, and I feel strongly the need to reiterate that we must discuss content, and not contributors. I'm sure that the comments are borne of often understandable frustration more than anything else, but you probably realise that it is not very helpful to make accusations like 'kiryat arba-ising' etc. I do realise that there is a political subtext here, but my experience on Misplaced Pages taught me that it is usually most helpful to ignore it and focus only on the text. You are really a good editor with a sense of respect for historical detail, and it isn't worth your getting into such exchanges. Keep up the good work, and I'm still looking forward to your contributions to the older history on the Hebron entry. All the best, Tewfik 10:32, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Dear Tewfik. Welcome back. Yes I allow myself to be dragged into extenuating argument, or rather, if I find behaviour that is repetitively insistent on a dubious point, I tend to justify my editorial judgement in extenso perhaps with boring and distractiver intensity. I don't think this holds up the pages concerned, as much as derails more sensitive projects which require both great tact and concentration, such as my desire to assist folks over at the Ebionism page and to do a reasonable page on Ariel Toaff. I would note that these contretemps occur almost as frequently at times with those who find some generic sympathy with my POV, as with militant editors who do not share it. There are ways for people who differ pronouncedly in their political philosophies of history can meet on common ground, when understanding of nuance, sensitivity to relevant detail, and dislike of agitated wadding of materials prevails. With them I have worked rapidly and productively. Alas, some pages that interest me are intrinsically difficult because, as experience shows, there are deep and rooted interests, where the politics of knowledge prevail over the dry historical imagination. I don't exclude myself from such interests. From Mannheim to Habermas we know what the problem is, and it is unresolved. I try at least to be aware, and let others know, where I stand in that obscurer, off-the. page dimension, and, when in conflict, explain aspects of this 'POV' I detect in the other, not because I wish to drag in extra-wiki issues of epistemology, but because, despite strong evidence at times, I remain convinced that logic and sincerity can prevail over an obdurate irrationality.

I have abstained from the Biblical side because, though relatively prepared for it, I can see that it will, given the state of hyper-attentiveness to implications on the Hebron pages by all parties, almost inevitably precipitate into a bunfight. If our mutual friend insists in the intro. to 1929 on plural Arab policemen for so many weeks, it cannot be simply because he loves to get things straight, particularly since the detail he requested is already duly footnoted. When I detect that, well, I don't go, as youngsters say, 'ballistic' but I get my defensive shield out. The Biblical Hebron material is, in retrospect, almost impossible to handle. Mention Joshua and similar implications, by themselves, emerge, and look though one is loading the page against the KA settlers (who however, from my knowledge (and it is far more detailed that I give out in these pages) take a charter from Joshua's example for their own behaviour). So rather than do that, I abstain. I appreciate your gesture and invitation, and will mull this further. Of course, you certainly know more than myself about this material that indeed does beg inclusion, so eventually perhaps the saner approach is to sketch what of the Biblical narrative on Hebron is sufficiently salient to merit the attention of all editors, on the Talk page. I'd be happy to collaborate on this, once I have fixed up a few articles that are inchoate and require intensive construction. Till them, I am in a defensive salient here generally, trying to keep the pages simple, straightforward and untroubled. Regards Nishidani 08:14, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

A quick question. Does this source present "rising tensions" and Zionist initiatives in equal terms? I understood there to have been a causal relationship, with latter following the former (and I think that the Farhud and events in the late 1940s are better described as persecution than tension, no?). Cheers, Tewfik 22:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

You're quite right to pick me up for that sloppy edit, which I wrote on the spur to iron out a dangerous simplification, rather than to give an even-handed account. I cited Gat because he has a far more nuanced and balanced analysis of the issue raised by the earlier Giladi account (which reflects of course mainly a strong current of rumour among Israeli Iraqis rather than the known documentary record). And left the Hebrew versions in the hope you or someone else might check them both for this article, and other relevant articles. I've made some adjustments, but perhaps swollen the point beyond what is required for a highly synthetic section. Feel free to edit it down, or finesse it. I'm not quite happy with it myself, but am pretty busy off-line, at the mo'. The more you look at any one issue, the more complex it gets, and I was basically worried at the general drift to simplify things in a pro-Zionist narrative, or its mirror image, a conspiratorial anti-Zionist slant. Note I changed also the obvious error of the 1,000,000 Iraqi Jews to the real figure. It's been, checking back, there for some time. There's a lot of loose stuff like this posted around and we should get the broomsticks out. Regards as always Nishidani 09:20, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to keep you waiting, but I was about to reply and was distracted by something from your Talk :-) . I'll take a look at the Iraq phrasing in a bit, but what stood out to me, and maybe still exists in the current wording, is a sense of parallelism between the one and the other, rather than the causality that I expected - the Zionists could only have successful initiatives after the persecution created motivation methinks... Regarding the Quran quote, I think the editor, despite his other edits, may be technically correct. I couldn't find that exact phrasing anywhere else in "the book", although I do recall there being a roughly similar phrasing elsewhere. Of course I might be conflating that with something from a Hadith, where there are many more of those types of quotes, and my search was very rough, and so I may have missed other examples. Perhaps check with someone at WikiProject Islam. I hope that this was helpful. Cheers, Tewfik 21:07, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Times slips by, Alzheimar gets the better of me, watched pages mount and this dodderer misses things. I just caught your note and hasten to thank you (before the heavy hand of a 3RR decision falls on my blundering fingers!). Thanks for the advice re the Quran quote, and, as to the Iraqi business, it's far too complex for me to meddle with. I've done some deeper research on other pages dealing with the Jewish diaspora, in Egypt, for example, so for that I'll hold off from annoying the page. Thodah rabah/Thanks again,and laila tov.Nishidani 21:58, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Your recent edits

Hi, there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Misplaced Pages pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot 17:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Ebionites

Hello,

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened: Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Ebionites. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Ebionites/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Ebionites/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Newyorkbrad 15:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Nishidani, I have finished presenting my initial evidence to ArbCom. Unfortunately, I have used up all of my 100 diffs, so I could not present our detailed talk page arguments refuting the Eisenman / Tabor conflations. I hope you can still do this using diffs when your computer is working better. Michael Price shows a history of passive-aggressive behavior, so if nothing is done, he will return to the article worse than ever and make life hell for the new editors. Ovadyah 03:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I have proposed a remedy on the Workshop page that Michael Price should be permanently banned from editing on the Ebionites article, and I detailed my reasons for your review and comments. Ovadyah 17:09, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

1929 Hebron Massacre - AGF

Please assume good faith when dealing with other editors. Thank you.

"I'm glad to note, for future reference, that you validate information by privately phoning the editor of a hate site to confirm that the text is correct."

— by User:Nishidani, 9 October 2007

If you have something that you think i've done improperly you can either ask me, or forward your concerns through the proper channels. Jaakobou 11:24, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I do, and it's duly noted on the page. You are not supposed present a justification for pushing something as a reliable source by personally informing others you did some original research into their website, directly phoning the person running it, obtaining assurances, and then asking other people to take your word for it. You don't understand procedures, unless they support your POV. I'm in no hurry.Nishidani 12:08, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

your false declaration (noted above) is a breach of WP:AGF. now, you made another false declaration about my validation and added, "You don't understand procedures, unless they support your POV" - this I believe is a personal attack. please follow your concerns through the proper channels rather than continue this type of interactions. Jaakobou 11:09, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

For a person with your long record (and block) for harrassment on editors and admins on their TalkPages, I'm astounded you're still doing the same thing. You were let off on one occasion with these warnings "If Jaakobou is promising to mend his ways and only crap in the litter box in future (metaphorically speaking...) I think he should be given the chance to prove his sincerity." and "The important thing is to see a change in behaviour and it is clear now that Jaakoubou is apologizing, explaining and promising not to do so in the future".

Question for you - have you or have you not carried out extensive harrassment of people on their TalkPages since you were handed those warnings in April? PR 15:01, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Jaakobou Nonsense. I have read quite thoroughly through the Webpages of the Kiryat Arba site, downloaded substantial references in those pages that repeat the view Arabs are virtually all terrorists, including Arab parliamentarians in the Knesset, and have that document now under preparation. If you wish to take me up on this, be my guest. I look forward to it. There is nothing 'false' about my declaration and I here confirm it. Clean up your act, stop telephoning around to such places and then assuring us on your personal connections you can go guarantor for material found on sites hosted by people who hate Palestinians, and read more closely what I say, if you wish to controvert my remarks objectively. I don't lend myself to intimidation. On the contrary, it makes me cooler, more objective and determined.Nishidani 15:15, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Let's confine our content related discussion to the article's talk page. Jaakobou 00:47, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Administration Noticeboard

See here.

Dear User:MPerel. The original text gave a dramatic scenario, culled from a selective paraphrasing of Tom Segev's account of the massacre, that highlighted a period some several years before the 1929 massacre, in which Jews in Hebron were subject to taunting, and harassment. A formal complaint was laid before the British authorities. The text then jumped to 1929. There was, I thought, a need to note that most contemporary sources I am familiar with, even from survivors who changed their view (understandably) about Arab attitudes,attest to a general atmosphere of good, amicable relations between Hebron's traditional Jewish community and the Arabs. PR gave the Kaplan testimony, and it was rejected on formal grounds (the Jewsagainst zionism site under examination). I noted that the Jewish Virtual Encyclopedia account by Shira Schoenbaum confirmed the substance of Kaplan's remarks (and I have several other contemporary sources which say the same).

I intervened because Jaakobou keeps showcasing tensions, denying common historical details over the massacre (59 buried, of which 58 slaughtered: one died of heart attack, then several others died of wounds over the subsequent weeks, perhaps irrelevant detail but it does mean that, since two weren't slaughtered but died of heart attacks, you cannot technically say 67 were slaughtered: 64-65 were (makes no difference to the horror, of course). You must say something along the lines, 'a massacre in which 67 died, 64-65 directly as a result of slaughtering assaults by the Arab mob'). Jaakobou in the thread seemns to admit this may be true, now that I have provided the evidence, but refuses to change the syntax on this minor point. All of this is particularly delicate because anything to do with Hebron touches directly on well-represented Hebron settler interests, which seem to trouble the neutrality of the article. For example, the intro.mentions the seizure of Jewish property, which was only taken back after 67. True, but that is a very complex issue, since after 67 much more than Jewish property has been 'taken back'. Indeed one of the Arab families who, with neighbourly charity, risked their lives to save many Jews by protecting them in their house, El Zeitoun's family, lost their property to the Ashkenazi settlers, who have turned it into a kindergarten. Jaakobou in short seems to support any text which provides a rhetorical and onesided presentation justifying the present position on Hebron maintained by Kiryat Arab settlers, who run what is a hate site, where Jaakobou sources some material (itself an historical document of worth, but to be used with great care), where all Arabs are defined as 'terrorists'. Hence the fuss. Regards Nishidani 10:56, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you that was a very helpful summary. As I have time, I'll try to throw in my two cents on the applicable article(s). --MPerel 16:29, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

wikiquette.

interactions with you have not been working out for me, as i'm sure is the same for you.

therefore, i've opened a wikiquette case, that i hope will resolve our dispute and result in better co-operation in the future. Jaakobou 00:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Fine. I note in the meantime that you have been examining overnight my pages to fish up people whose bad editing not only I, but several other editors, have had to restrain on pages where they have consistently blanked and posted highly POV statements. I repaste this from BigLeaguer's talk page, someone who repeatedly messed up with Joel Beinin's page, forcing arbitrators to place it under control against destructive interference:-

==Welcome==

if in trouble, keep it civil and consult with WP:DR and WP:HELP.

cheers. JaakobouChalk Talk 06:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

You're putting your feet in deep, lad, trawling among new posters whom I for just one have had to repeatedly remind about basic rules of editing, people with a very poor record, and explicitly encouraging them to familiarize themselves with Dispute Resolution measures. The matter there is not dispute resolution with Nishidani (of the kind you yourself have now embarked on) but learning the elementary rules of writing NPOV edits for Misplaced Pages.Nishidani 10:15, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Nishidani, please stop, we - me and most of the people who volunteer on this website - are trying to build an encyclopedia, not pickup fights for resolving the issue of who has the bigger ego. Jaakobou 10:21, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Stop trying to create an impression on my Talk page that somehow I am a contentious person. I have contributed in a few months substantively to some 50 pages, and usefully to another 100, and you are virtually the only person in Misplaced Pages who consistently objects to my edits. I note for the record that once more you accuse me of something there is no evidence for, namely 'picking fights'. The only reason I engage with you is because you persist in making bad edits against the objective evidence so far accumulated on pages I have otherwise significantly helped to write. This is not picking fights. It is simply a matter of insisting on NPOV evidence as opposed to stacking texts to drive home a national POV. Until you understand that distinction you will invariably accuse those who oppose your lack of interest in getting objectivity onto Misplaced Pages as lacking etiquette. Now please address your complaints to the appropriate page, and do not abuse my hospitality by making absurd charges (insinuating false claims to stack the page with accusations that are unfounded but may catch wandering eyes) on this page.Nishidani 10:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Nishidani. Thanks for your reply. Haven't read it yet but I've noticed that you misspelled my User name in the section head and then wrote HGcool instead of GHcool. Some folks don't like their typos fixed, but I'll do it just to avoid confusion, ok? Though it's flattering that even a Freudian slip might think me cool. HG | Talk 15:52, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm old enough to think, after years of controversy, that Freudian slips are silky pieces of lingerie that give blokes the, well, euphemistically, what drivers toot in peak-time traffic. But yes, you are right, that is undoubtedly an unconscious confusion on my part, and as put, bears an innuendo that is improper. I can only defend myself, while apologizing, by remarking that it was at the classic level of the unconscious, since most of what I was doing was pasting from a master (there! I just wrote 'mater'!!) file.

I will admit that having, apparently, coalesced the two identities, I did wonder, and checked both user pages, and noted the difference, and dismissed it as mere coincidence. Highly uncool of myself, and thanks for the correction. Mea culpa, mea culpa, me a mexican cowboy, as Catholic boys used to chant at mass, much to the annoyance of the friary. p.s. in these silly wars, I think both Jaakobou and myself (I thought I was clear, thinking in day periods, with two reverts, and not according to the clock) have violated the 3RR rule. I never have got a handle on that danged thing, but if you think it appropriate, perhaps we should both be rapped on the knuckles by the appropriate authority. If so, no excuse for either of us. Regards Nishidani 16:05, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the cheerful msg. How recent were these 3x reverts? I'd be happy to see you both temporarily blocked, if only from Hebron, if you aren't both observing a virtual editing moratorium during the 3O and AN/I. Thanks. HG | Talk 16:10, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Well I thought a moratorium was what was supposed to be in place. I certainly observed one. In fact from the 13th to the 15th, if I recall, I hadn't even checked the 1929 Hebron page. Then I noticed that the old, disputed or controversial edit by Jaakobou had been sitting there, and reverted it. You'd better check, I am not an expert on these things, and in a preceding case, the only violation of rules I've fallen foul of, only proved to others I did not understand the rule. In any case, as said, I did challenge Jaakobou's insistent reverts on the 15th twice, I think, and once today, and then, reminding myself of 3RR, looked, and realized I'd probably broken the rule. Still, I have great difficulty, at my age, in working up diffs and examining them. Whatever, rules are rules, and if you think the evidence of 15th-16th October 2007 indicates we are both at fault, I certainly will not make excuses, and bear the consequences, with no ill will. I can't complain of others on this futile practice, if I myself, willingly or not, happen to do the same. Regards Nishidani 16:35, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I replied w/more q's in the 3O section. BTW, it's approx a 24 hr rule. Anyway, I'm not planning to intercede w/edit warring myself. Ciao, HG | Talk 17:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Note to self 2

'Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. Instead of impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. The most effective propaganda is often completely truthful, but some propaganda presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience. from Wiki

Toussaint Louverture and blocking v. protection

Regarding your comment and vandalism report relating to edits at Toussaint Louverture:

Apparently I failed to follow the correct procedure, but I find it difficult. I.e. the IP keeps changing, the edits are obscene, antisemitic, or just silly.

If an IP is making multiple abusive edits, then a report to WP:AIV is in order to block that address. If multiple IP addresses are targeting an article, then a request for protection may be in order at WP:RPP. I'm going to look at the article here in a second and see if protection is in order. —C.Fred (talk) 22:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the page history, there were a number of IP addresses vandalizing the page. I've protected the page for a day; this will block IP addresses and new editors from editing the page. If the vandalism recurs after tomorrow, leave me a talk message, and I'll extend the protection—or report it to WP:RPP and any admin can do so. —C.Fred (talk) 22:06, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Hebron Massacre

Hi Nishidani - what's this about at 1929 Hebron Massacre "the survivors' books and memoirs speak of a distinct rift between the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi communities"?

Here's a new book and author you might not have come across, "A threat from within" (sub-titled "Jewish Opposition to Zionism") by Yakov M. Rabkin, Professor of History, University of Montreal. Published in French 2004, translated 2006. p136 " Accusations of the utmost gravity are brought against the Zionists, who are considered to be more dangerous than the Karaites or the followers of Sabbatai Tevi, for they threaten to turn the Jews away from the straight path and corrupt their souls. The memoirs of a German general attached to the Ottoman troops in Palestine during World War I present a point of view distant from intra-Jewish polemics: How curious that the war has brought about an upsurge in the struggle between the Zionists and the non-Zionists, a battle that has turned ugly and done little to further the interests of Jews in general. The non-Zionists, that is to say those Jews who had no political objectives and who belonged to the Orthodox current, at the time the preponderant majority in Palestine. The Zionists residing there represented no more than 5 percent of the population, but were very active and fanatical, and terrorized the non-Zionists. During the war, the non-Zionists attempted to free themselves from the Zionist terror with the aid of the Turks. They rightly feared that the activities of the Zionists would destroy their good relations that prevailed amongst long-time Jewish residents in Palestine and the Arabs. (Von Kressenstein, Freidrich Kress, "Im ha-Turkim el Taalat-Suez" With the Turks towards the Suez Canal, Tel Aviv, Maarakhot (2002), cited in Dromi, Uri, Turks and Germans in the Sinai, Haaretz, Sept 27 2002.). PR 20:17, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

p135 ... The secularism of the Zionists made them immediately unacceptable to the Jews who then resided in the Holy Land. While Arab opposition remained primarily political, the rejection of Zionism and, later, of the State of Israel by traditionial Jews was deeply rooted in their Judaism and was hardly influenced by political considerations. ... the Haredim were alarmed at the danger of the divine punishment that the actions of those whom they viewed as miscreants threatened to bring down all the inhabitants of the Land of Israel.

... At first, the local Arab population enjoyed cordial relations with Zionist leaders like Haim Weizmann ... Only when Arab leaders become fully aware of the political ambitions of the Zionist movement did their views come around to those of the pious Jews in taking a rejectionist stance PR 21:00, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

When did the followers of Judaism really swing to supporting Israel? Was it after 1948, or was it not really until 1967? How about the estimates of the "True Torah Jews" on their JAZ web-site - they claim 1 million non-Zionist Jews and 150,000 anti-Zionist Jews - are they exaggerating? PR 21:11, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

'followers of Judaism' is a bit vague. Most of the population flowing in was terrorized by the experience of the Holocaust, and religious scruples, mainly entertained by community rabbinical leaders, had little point when you have just survived the threat of extermination on an industrial scale. After 1948. Actually, one of the crises caused by the expulsion or flight of Palestinians, something which created space for the European refugees, was that, as the Zionists themselves realized, a cheap source of labour was being subtracted from the state. The new labour could not be expected to work at the prewar wage level of Arab farm hands, and this even persuaded some top government planners that Palestinians should be, at least 100,000 odd, allowed to come back, because the economy was in crisis. This was eventually solved by heavily promoting a return from Arab lands of Mizrahi and Sephardi. Very strong efforts were made to induce them to return, also for this very concrete reason, that they would substitute at low cost for the loss of cheap Arab labour.

I wouldn't trust 'True Torah Jews' on these figures. Their theology is undoubtedly better! There was a European wave in 48, an Arabic wave from 1956-1958, (which elected Begin eventually) and then a Russian wave from the late 80s-90s. I don't have figures for how these waves break up in religious terms.

A second point. The French book you cite mentions Kress von Kressenstein. Remember that this is, though sourced, the statement of a Prussian general (perhaps with the usual German antisemitic views) who was beaten in battle, as an assistant to the Ottoman army, by the British, by an adversary which had just recently proposed the Balfour Plan. So his testimony, though sourced in a scholarly work, requires close care, has to be contextualized in the milieu he came from, the war he fought, etc. He had even reason in terms of his cultural background to think of all this as a dastardly Jewish plot (he may not have had any such idea, but, when I see a German of that period talking about Jews, I get very very wary). regards Nishidani 21:27, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

From Pr's page, for my own records. New Book

Thanks PR, that looks like an interesting book, and I will order the French edition (after checking out the author of course). It usually takes me a few months to absorb, think over, and then use any new material, and that's why I'm uncomfortably with internet quickie research. I tend to prefer to build up files off-line, unharassed by the stress of immediate rejoinders, and then go into a page with some selective edits which I'm then pretty sure of. I find this gives one a certain serenity even in controversy, because the work has been done, circumscribed by details, and, in case of controversion, can be defended without prodding the search engines. I appreciate book-sourced material, and that one touches on a subject which I have frequently read about en passant in many other books. Mind you, this is only a small corner of my mental world, and I don't have that much time. But I think in a long-term perspective, while living short-term!

Hope the mentorship is going well. You've certainly done a large amount of work round here, and I personally appreciate the commitment, (I think you've let yourself at times in the past get caught up in the toils of other problematical posters' haste and obstinacy, and gather you're edging your way to the ideal we all should try to pursue (ain't easy), i.e., a long, unhurried but serious commitment to getting things right. One of my intellectual heroes is Raul Hilberg, as you've probably noted. Never allowed himself to get rattled, never joined a camp, but looked slowly and carefully over the evidence, unstressed by possible complications, and, when certain, wrote to the truth of things. It's a tall order, and probably means less immediate engagement, but in the long run, it pays. I noted today that only 3,000 of 2,000,000 wiki articles are judged up to snuff (FA). We should bear that in mind. When effort is required, it has to be put where it will stand the test of time, and quality. Kerriist! I'm preachen. So apologies, and best wishes (and thanks for the tip) Nishidani 20:40, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

ps. One should be never blinded by a word. Take Zionists. I think that Zionist project had tragic consequences, and I would have much preferred that Jews remained in my world, wherever I happen to live, as neighbours than in Israel, for Europe is much the less for the loss of that cultural genius which flowed on with exuberant creativity into the veins of Western civilisation, as the the sons of victims of millenial ghettoisation gradually took up the torch of the Enlightenment and leapt at the possibilities it offered to a society rich in intelligence, but too often cramped of exploiting its full possibilities by the nature of its ostracised life. There were many many Zionists of great human decency who went to Israel with a good and idealistic will, or even out of shocked and desperate refuge from the deep antisemitic strains resident in, especially Central and Eastern Europe, evinced so mercilessly during the Holocaust. In the endemic conflicts that ensued, much of that originative spirit of liberation and idealism was put to an extremely hard test. So while the Zionist project and most of its political artificers stir in me a dour judgement, I try to keep that political and historical judgement clear of my feeling for the complexities many in those formative generations had to face. I think that, were it not for the stubborn acuity of conscience of so many Jews, many of them of Zionist or Orthodox origins, who have devoted themselves to unearthing the history of these events, we should be much the poorer. All this is small consolation for the Palestinians. But ultimately, Israel is a reality, and not a small part of the Palestinian struggle for its own version of a return to the land, and a state of their forefathers, finds sustenance in those within the world of Israel and Jewry who still bear witness to that tradition of intellectual integrity. Newspapers will tell you little of this, as of the world, but it's worth bearing in mind when addressing conflict in these drafts. What you see, as in Haaretz's forums, for example, is often not representative. It's just that ideologues are more nhighly motivated than the rest of us, and we do well not to catch the virus by contagion. Regards (sorry, it's Sunday and as a residue of childhood, the day predisposes me to orotund preaching!)Nishidani 21:02, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Just got your other note. David Vital deals with this in his works on Zionism, if you are interested in further exploring the theme. There were doctrinal reasons among the Orthodox for strongly opposing Zionism, and Vital notes that the majority of rabbis in Europe were opposed to it because it was a secular attempt to preempt what was the task of the Lord. I don't know whether you like novel reading but Chaim Potok's works (The Chosen) for example, often beautifully capture the tensions within American religious communities roused by the foundation of Israel.Nishidani 21:08, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Answered that further note on my page. I'm lazy and it's a tad late. Good evening for the mo'.Nishidani 21:29, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello

Hi Nishidani,

You seem interesting, yet I can't find anything about you... It would be nice to hear a bit about who you are.

Jonathan Telaviv1 10:21, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello Telaviv1. Well, that's nice of you! But I'm afraid that to give details about myself would be a violation of WP:Fringe since I appear to many as a crashing pedantic bore! I would reply to your query, but I fear that in doing so, someone might edit out my remarks by noting that they do not come from a WP:Reliable Source! I will say this, that my father fought on the right side in WW2, and brought back vivid memories of Palestine, and I had a wonderful time in Israel and contiguous areas for several months as a young man, everywhere from Gaza city to the Golan, from the Sinai to Jerusalem. Shalom uv'rakhah/salaam. Best regards Nishidani 10:36, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Nishidani - knowing your computer problems, I took the liberty of tidying up your evidence at the ArbCom. No changes made. PR 17:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Nishidani - I don't like blockquotes, certainly not for short passages. Can we not use italics instead? Did you activate your e-mail? PR 20:54, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Structure

How would you structure the article 1948 Palestinian exodus ?
Would it look like this ?

• Events

• Context
• Waves of refugees

• 1st wave
• 2nd wave
• 3rd wave
• 4th wave

• Blockading the return
• Resolution 181
• Borders' cleaning

• causes of the exodus

• Traditionnal versions
• First critics (I mean here Childers and Glazer)
• Opening of Israeli and British archives
• The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
• Historiographic debate on the causes
• Political debate on the causes

• consequences of the exodus

• Absentee property law
• Historiography debate on the right to return
• Political debate on the right to return
• Palestino-Israeli peace process

• jewish exodus and emigration

Alithien 11:51, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate you addressing me for my opinion on this,Alithien but I hesitate because, as often, a lot of people have worked on the page, and I am only a cursory kibitzer, trying to offer some outside advice. You know Morris's work fairly intimately, and I think it a shame, here and in so many other pages, that two or three years work yields a couple of dense pages, poorly organized, because most of the effort has been in defence of positions, and not in championing a collaborative project based, let us say, on high journalistic or medium academic or graduate standards of performance. If one could simply drop POV anxieties, and get a consensus over there, that, as I gather a few others like yourself think evident, the page does need a structural reorganization (3,000 wiki articles are deemed of quality, in 2,000,000) then the article would profit greatly, and I think you'd find a more satisfying sense of return on invested effort all round.

I should have underlined it was not for the English version but for the French version I was asking your mind where I am preparing to write the article.

I have been following this article here for 2 years and it is a mess.

I doubt any collaboration is possible on this hot topic here.

But to comment specifically, I would simply note in the Introduction that the argument was not explored in the early 1950s, since both sides, Israeli and Arab stuck to a unilateral and simplistic 'blame the other side' account. Childers (admittedly on one side) noted that the study of causes was stuck in national positions, and required evidence. A debate grew, Pappe, Simcha Flapan, Efraim K. etc. briefly mentioned, but the whole subject was refocused by Morris' work, which dismissed the two earlier positions, with those two pertinent characterizations, and nuanced the positions of most previous historians.

I agree. Maybe I would have said that Pappe and Karsh were concerned AFTER Morris's work.

(2) A detailed account of Morris's view, 4 waves, as you delineate in your schema, perhaps leavened out with relevant matter from the earlier books, from Shechtman and others, and criticisms of his position from both conservative and other positions (brief). In other words, I think Morris's master narrative should hold sway, and that much of the historical material, can be adapted around it.

Ok. That is what I except to do in "traditionnal versions".

(3) Since Morris's work is, though not definitive, certainly very comprehensive, putting it at the centre will mean much of the rest will have to interleave it, pointing out where earlier research differs, contradicts, or is, according to judgement, not satisfactorily addressed by Morris.

Indeed. That is what I expected to deal in the section titled with the name of his book.

(4) As to the last two elements, I don't know whether they fit. Certainly one should gave a link to a page which addresses the parallel problem of the Kibbutz Galuiot, and to the play of the claims which flow from this event in political discourse. Both both should be brief, in my view.

I agree if you mean palestino-israeli peace process and jewish exodus but did you mean so or did you mean "causes" and "consequences". I think 3 lines max for both. Just to be mentionned and having a link to this matter.

As I say, I prefer not to worry the page directly (I just tried to fix the introduction a bit, the rest is too complex to interfere with unless those who have worked on it come to some prior agreement on how to reorganize the matter. Your model looks much more rational, in any case. I'll keep an eye on the page, and see how discussion develops. Best wishes Nishidani 13:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

This is the result of user:JaapBoBo who interfered with user:Pedro Gonnet who was working on it but abandoned. user:Jorditxei worked also on this matter.

In more of the matters you "put forward", there is the fact that Pappé and Morris theories are not even described properly on their current version.

If they want to improve this, they have no choice but to delete everything and to agree on a "structure". Then they should discuss about what "elements" they will add in the structure and finally write.

Just to have your mind, what would you change in the structure I suggest here above ?

I don't say I will follow you. That is for my (see WP:OWN) article on french wikipedia where hopefully there is no challenge such as here so that it is possible to write not too bad things ! ;-) Alithien 13:48, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think probably the best thing is for you to do that French article, and give the guys on the English page an example of how this sort of page should be done. Your schema looks sound, and you can cannibalize the English rubbish-dump for subsidiary material. Actually, now that I think of it, perhaps when these English pages get so swamped with POV edit warring (or whoring), the only way out is to confide in the serenity of other language-users, who find less harassment and dwell in a more sophisticated discursive culture than we Anglophones do. I have many things to follow, but do drop me a note when you've done a full draft, and I'll notify the editors on the English page of how things can be done, with a little 'clarté française'. Best wishes Nishidani 13:59, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, p.s. a little note I hope in there of Erskine Childers, who really opened up the question. I hope you have read the original article. I provided a book source for it over on the page, which is readily accessible. Cheers Nishidani 14:03, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

It is less a question of culture than a question of number of contributors.

On wp:fr there are maybe 4-5 editors max. working on these topics.

We know each other very well and know what we can do together.

There are numerous articles to write and everybody is happy to contribute on his own under the comments of the others.

Here, that's another stuff due mainly to the number of editors, particularly on the middle east topic.

More on wp:fr, we would have censored and banned all these pro-israeli pov-pushers who are definitely unbearable. If you have time, could you take care about Amin al-Husseini, because, he will soon become a virulent antisemite :-)

To come back on the main topic : of course I have Childers's paper :-). From my point of view, it is more him who opened the door and broke the taboo (tabou) than Morris. But he is less known. Flappan is -from my point of view- quite interesting too and said nearly everything before Morris didi.

About the facts, I think 90% of the material is gathered in the Birth.

About how to read the facts and what context to take into account, that is more complex.

Today, I think I have a clear vision of the war of 1948. Concering the exodus, I think I know the material about the 'transfer idea' facts and that I understand the different interpretations and critics of the theory (with Childers, Morris, Masalha and a little bit Segev and the one who criticize them). Same for the Master plan theory (with Khalidi and Pappe). I understand the Karsh-Schechtman-Katz-Bard-... point of view. I just lack the current Israeli historians point of view. Gelber is interesting but I feel he is somewhere between Morris and them and sometimes lack clarity. I have also that strange feeling that he doesn't write the same according to the people with whom he talks... I read recently a paper from Shapira and I don't understands Morris the same way as she does, so I think I don't understand her. I don't have any material from Selah or Millstein, which prevents me from working. Rogan and Shlaim Palestine 1948's book is particularly intersting about the arab leaders responsibility with numerous scholars who are less known and who studied that matter. The revelation came nevertheless from a French historian (Henry Laurens) who edited the French version of that book (simply) that after Morris, there was just one thing to add : there is a controversy between intentionalists and circumstancialists and there is today no material to decide which ones are right or not.

Alithien 15:52, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, sorry for my silly presumption that with your background you might not have Childers at hand. You're clearly far better read than myself on this. I think I once, inadveertently, appeared to have offended you by remarking on the different of numbers between Fr (and other languages) and English wiki. I did mean that actually as a nod your way - conditions there are easier, since you don't have what you get here, a huge tumult of POV twitting, which once it starts, spirals out of control, and compels even sober spirits to either join in, and lose their balance, or, as not infrequently, neutral editors to throw up their hands in despair. I've no problem with editors seeing that an 'Israeli' position is well defended (even if I think that scholarship that allows national interests to get mixed up with it condemns itself to mediocrity. I like Morris's work because he does have an explicit 'metaphysics', one I disagree with, but rarely, if ever, allows that to get consciously in the way of what he harvests from the archives (as far as I can see).) What troubles me is incompetence, work by people who replace care for sources with obsession with possible implications, and edit accordingly, whatever side they be on. When I am tempted to throw in the towel, I reflect that nonetheless these rules (which are required primarily for those many, often intelligent people who do not have any formal training in method) do train quite a lot of people on the problems of editing neutrally.

You've mastered Morris, so I don't think you should feel impeded from drafting the article. The details, from writers not yet accessible, Milstein et al., will come in. The important thing is that the French page will be in competent serious hands, and put our page to shame (I dearly hope! Please don't disappoint us. Your example may just provide the quality we can judge and condemn the present English article by))

Unless I have read Morris wrongly, the distinction between 'intentionalists' and 'circumstantials' collapses there because he says different elements, circumstances, then intentions, then combinations (aside from the Arab panic, etc) had different weight during the various phases. When the intentionalist policy was made explicit to some leaders, it was put drastically into effect on the southern front by Allon, and not put into effect, because of a different commander and quieter situation, on the Galilee front, for example. History never allows holus-bolus theories. Good history is nuanced, which doesn't mean that case by case, as with Morris, one cannot make a clear and unambiguous judgement for one judgement or another.

I don't know who Amin al-Husseini is, other than the historical figure. I presume you are referring to an editor. I try to keep to a manageable number of pages, because time here is time off reading, which is more important. I think antisemites, like any other racists, should generally be ignored, after an engagement shows their temper. To engage them seriously is only to 'feed the beast'. Unfortunately, malicious lunatics are not rare. But I think chasing them with rage only stokes their manias. I grew up having stones thrown at me every week, and being jeered as I walked to school, because I belonged to a Catholic minority in a Protestant town. My brother liked punching them out. I learnt that a studied indifference, while looking these tormenters in the eye, shamed most of them to stop. There is nothing that offends them more than the contempt of indifference. I'll look around though, and see if I can spot the person. I don't like reporting anyone, since it was forbidden in smallworld milieu I hail from, even on deadly 'enemies'. But usually, these fools are banned. Regards Nishidani 16:37, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey Alithien, well, I'm a right regular dickhead for not catching your wry humour. Thought you referred to a pster by that notorious name! So ignore nonsense above. Have looked at the page, which is fairly good, and offered a few edits. I don't think I can save him from being what he was though! Nishidani 18:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Goliath and the Greeks

Hi. Thanks for your recent adition to the Goliath article concerning G. and the Iliad. I moved it down to another section where it seemed more appropriate - now called Goilath and the Greeks, about the archaeological/literary record and their relevance to dating the story - but I'm not satisfied with the way I was able to weave it in. You might like to contribute. PiCo 03:35, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Note to me (though addressed to Joel Beinin) from Bigleaguer

'There is nothing distinctive about your contributions. People who've been around since the 1970s know there are standard templates for these arguments, outdated, factitious, and POV pushing. Virtually everything you've posted fits one of these hackneyed templates.' Nishidani

'OK there is nothing humanitarian about yours-- you love the destroyed Jewish communities and hate the existing ones. Your hackneyed contributions to mass hysteria, repetition of POV descriptions of history from the PLO sourcebook, make it clear that membership in the club of historians means subscription to these outlandish tales-- everything except Jews using uranium and Holocaust denial which is where the line is (right now). Whether you are a Jewish Uncle Tom or something worse, writing as the Cairo Jew, you have emerged as a scholar of Judaism who, like the Poles and Russians who are the shamases of the synagogues that were destroyed three generations ago, are curious creatures. You just wish that their love extended to the people and not just the buildings. You have forgotten who you are.' Bigleaguer 14:33, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Arab Jew and exodus from Iraq

You've reverted me here calling the claim that Zionists threw bombs at Jews in Iraq a "Fringe Theory", when you must know it's nothing of the sort. There was a conviction for it, Iraqi Jews say this is what happened, the US military attache says it's what happpened and so do the anti-Zionist Jews. Even if it were not well known, the Zionists recklessly bombed all kinds of people, killing over 200 Jews in 1941, carrying out a false flag operation in 1954 - and in every case they deny it. The default position must be that Zionists are first suspect in all bombings.

Here's a paper presented at the "14 Jewish Studies Conference Melbourne March 2002" held by the "Australian Jewish Democratic Society" by Philip Mendes of the Latrobe University, "THE FORGOTTEN REFUGEES: the causes of the post-1948 Jewish Exodus from Arab Countries". "The alternative anti-Zionist view highlights the positives of Arab-Jewish history. The Jews of Iraq are depicted as an overwhelmingly prosperous and integrated community. Their exodus is attributed not to anti-Semitism, but rather to a malicious Zionist conspiracy including instances of bomb-throwing aimed at achieving mass Jewish emigration to Israel (Hirst 1977; Wolfsohn 1980; Shiblak 1986; Alcalay 1993:45-51; Bahry 1996:111; Gat 1997:2; Abu Shakrah 2001)."

I don't understand, when there is so much good work to, do you'd try to dig in on something so un-controversial. PR 09:04, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

... a conviction by the government accused of persecution isn't helpful. Giladi is entitled to his views, and you to yours, but there is no indication that "a malicious Zionist conspiracy" is at all accepted in the mainstream. Tewfik 10:07, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

A conviction for the bombing means it's not a "Fringe Theory". Giladi was an Iraqi Jew and Zionist who was there when it all happened (he knows a lot about persecution and racial discrimination - it didn't happen in Iraq, it happened in Israel). Mendes (who appears to be even-handed) lists us 7 more good sources for this claim, Nishidani gave us two and there are others. This is a "major view" and of course it belongs in the article. PR 10:29, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Again, a "conviction" in 1940s Iraq proves nothing. Mendes is listing sources for the anti-Zionist beliefs, not sources "proving" that there was indeed a conspiracy. Nishidani's sources as well are controversial, and haven't been checked. If it was mainstream, it would be very easy to show that from some news piece etc. Tewfik 11:23, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I hope that my edit is in line with your source, but that is more of what I meant - i.e. not blaming the "exodus" on the "emigration", but rather noting that the facilitation of "emigration" also facilitated the "exodus". Feel free to suggest a different wording. Cheers, Tewfik 22:38, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you going to tell us that anti-Zionism is also a "Fringe Theory"? How about the number of times Israel has been condemned by UN resolutions, or is in actual breach of UN resolutions - or is that just a "minority view" too? Most people would think that a conviction in Iraq, under the British-instituted system of justice operating, was a lot more credible than still more denials from bombing specialists. The whole business of the bombings and the Zionist involvement was published in Ha'olam Haze in April-June 1966 and re-published by the Black Panther journal in November 1972, defying the threats of Ben-Porat to sue them. Giladi says there were 11 caches of weapons found in Baghdad, 33 sub-machine guns, 97 cartridges for sub-machine guns, 436 British-made grenades, 25,000 rounds for submachine guns and tens of thousands of rounds for handguns, along with the charges and hundreds of detonators and delay switches. He believes there were at least 30 such caches at a time when very strict control was being exerted to prevent leakage from the army and police. Giladi wonders what an Israeli court would do if Israeli Arabs were found with such material. Two Jews were executed - it was Ben-Porat's determination to memorialise them in Or Yehuda on 15th June 1966 that led to the scandal breaking in Israel. PR 12:50, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Tewfik and I are, often, poles apart on key issues, PR: but despite that, I take him as an editor whose scruples over factualness in material offered by someone who sees things differently from him, are salutary. They prod one to be precise, and more meticulous (I only wish he would fine-tune that keen gaze to many passages on pages which represent a far from factual lay of the land, written by 'pro-Zionist' (sorry, T) hands. When I have come up with sure evidence for a position he thought controversial, unlike many editors, he immediately accepted the point, and that bespeaks honesty. I will put in here that I don't think the matter raised by Giladi is resolved (I know the details of the Lavon Affair far more intimately, and naturally that and several other things influence my judgement, but not all possible analogies are, by that appearance of resemblance, such that evidence for one proves suspicions about the other). But, if I may intervene, there is a large literature on this incident, and, if you are interested in the subject, it may be worth glancing at. Indications can be found for that historical controversy on the relevant Iraqi Jews wiki page. One testimony is not sufficient. Tewfik's challenge is a valid one, even if one doesn't share the view he's coming from. Nishidani 19:00, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

You've lost me - the "Iraqi Jews left because Israel wanted them all out" pretty much wraps it up. They'd been there 2,500 years, the Nazis had been defeated (and their supporters in Iraq routed). Giladi blames the one moderately serious problem they'd had on the British. Furthermore, there is highly credible evidence (I'd have thought) that Israeli agents threw bombs in public (and presumably caused them much more trouble privately). They went to Israel, they're bitterly regretting it, and they're in much more danger than they were before. I don't promise to provide a good NPOV statement of the facts, but I do know when I've got sources on my side. PR 21:22, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

There are things I'm almost certain of, but I wait months, sometimes years, for the clinching element that I feel is still lacking, before drawing a conclusion I have already privately arrived at. It's probably a bad habit. I don't like to get into edit wars, despite being dragged into them, and so even though I have many strong opinions, far stronger that those that appear here, I don't go to texts with sometimes substantial evidence, because I don't want to waste my time having this challenged, reverted, edited endlessly. What ruined life for Jews in Arab countries was the geopolitical repercussions of the foundation of Israel, which roused Arab rage and paranoia, also the Jewish internal presence became an object for internal politics, and extremists, Zionists had their undergrounds manipulating the situation. No one fact or incident ever explains a mass phenomenon, and though Israeli geopolitics used every trick in the bag to get Jewish communities in Arab countries back into the fold, for a number of reasons, many cynical (having them in Arab countries meant they could form a hostage population in the case of conflict, and checkmate Israel's expansionist vision, having them in Israel meant cheap labour etc.etc.) these things do not completely explain the phenomenon. Many were in real danger from the potential hysteria seeded into Arab national politics by the emergence of Israel as a state on what was Arab land. I could write more. My note was simply one of concern to get you to not rush into edits like this (there are thousands to make, many simple. The other day I had to take off the 1939 White Paper page the stupid insinuation that it greatly contributed to the holocaust, or the assertion that the UN mandate authorities condemned it, all things one can change, and edit out because untrue, and no one can challenge those edits. I think many of these pages can be corrected because they are so poorly written, and seeded with unverified, or untrue statements one can spot at a glance. The heavy points you wish to make require keeping one's hand, waiting until more cards drop in and strengthen the hand, so you can play it when the odds of your edit sticking are stronger. Best regards Nishidani 21:46, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Zeq forgot his courtesy today

I believe it is commno to inform others when they are reported for something, so you may be interested in this report. Tarc 16:41, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh well, probably champagne corks will be popping tonight. Thanks for the notice. I will post the relevant piece here, for the record.

User:Nishidani reported by User:Zeq (Result: )

• Three-revert rule violation on

Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Nishidani (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log): Time reported: 15:34, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

• Previous version reverted to:

5th revert (a full revert): 15:12, 26 October 2007

the other revertes are partial as they involve intemidiate edit by other users as well as many edits by User:Nishidani himself. This clouds the picture somewhat but since the 3RR policy speaks about "revert in whole or it part " - these are clearly reverts:

4th – restored material removed by this edit:

3rd: – restored material removed by this edit

2nd: - Restored a sentence (from Uri Avnery) that was removed by this edit:

1st: 11:13, 26 October 2007 - removed title (section header) that was added by this edit:

Note: User has been warned before few times (on her talk page) to avoid such 3RR violations.

reported by Zeq 15:34, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

• added later: 6th revert: 16:13, 26 October 2007 - this was adding a paragraph which was removed by this edit: Zeq 16:18, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I didn't think it occasioned a violation of the 3RR to try and stop a concerted attempt by two apparently coordinated editors, (one of whom formally and inexplicably denounced me for antisemitism elsewhere today because of his failure to understand nuanced English) to remove information doubly sourced to RS historians of world stature like Walter Laqueur and Benny Morris. I was labouring under the impression that I was countering vandalism to a specific passage that is grounded historically. The page in question is one I had over the last day substantially rewritten to conform to criteria of clarity of exposition, synthesis, and grammar, without a murmur of objection from one editor,Zeq, who appears to have a proprietorial attitude to that page, and use it to indict a people. But, rules are rules and thus, if the evidence above fits the case, and infringes on the proprieties, obviously I should wear the penalty. The integrity of that passage must be maintained, since it is not my opinion, but that of first-rate historians. And, I would have appreciated it had either of the two editors troubled themselves to notify me. Whatever the administrator decides is fine by me. I will add that I have, at the very outset of my wiki editing, violated the rule once, from ignorance. And that, on a successive occasion, when I believed I had violated the rule, I reported myself immediately. Regards Nishidani 17:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

rused

Bonsoir Nishidani,
J'ai corrigé. J'avais juste copié/collé ton texte.
Cela m'embête que tu aies des ennuis alors que tu n'as fait que répondre à ma demande de surveiller l'article. J'ai également demandé à Tarc et Gatoclass.
L'article sur 1948 n'est pas en de bonnes mains à mon avis. Hélas. Et je vais l'abandonner dans les prochains jours. Bonne continuation, Alithien 19:17, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Dans la phrase que j'ai corrigée, il ne manquerait pas la négation : il refusa les garanties officielles qu'ils n'avaient pas de vues sur les lieux. ??? Alithien 19:21, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Blocked

From ANI:

Blocked 24 hours. The 3RR violation is not in dispute. Please remember, Nishidani, that disagreements about content (even when you are think you are right because you use good sources) do not justify edit warring. Try using the methods listed at WP:DR next time. Sandstein 22:03, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I've no objections: your judgement strikes me as serene, and the advice sensible. One point, which is not intended as contesting the application of a necessary rule. I did not think I was engaged in edit warring, I was thinking of the integrity of the page, not my interlocutors, and in that perhaps lies my error, excess of subjectivity that blinded me to the objective game being played. Still, best regards Nishidani 22:18, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Note to self. The said Zeq was banned by the same editor for edit warring on the 22 October 2007.

Conservation of the Al Husayni page from POV damage. For personal reference

It is evident that the two recent editors are both suppressing historical information they dislike, and adding material from inferior sources to falsify the record.
(A) The old version had (i)The riots (ii) Shaw Commission's dismissal of Husayni's role in the incitement, with Snell's minority report supporting his role (iii) The League's Mandate Commission report 7 years later* reviving Snell's claims (iv) Morris and Laqueur's recent historical work which shows both Husayni and Revisionist Zionists were involved in the incitement and riots that precipitated events towards the massacres.
(B) In the version pushed by Zeq (after getting me suspended from the page for trying to maintain historical equilibrium) and Armon, the whole sequence (ii) (iii) is preceded by a personal judgement of unilateral guilt for the riots on al-Husayni's part, supported by a quotation from a minor historian unfamiliar with recent historical research, while (iv) has been suppressed. Furthermore, the lead-in to this section now reads:-

After his appointment, Al-Husayni's propaganda, including sponsoring a new translation into Arabic of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, led to the 1929 Palestine riots, including the 1929 Hebron massacre and the 1929 Safed massacre. At the time, his role was hotly disputed.

I.e. the lead-in disputes the Shaw Commission's, and supports the Mandate Commission's version, while ignoring post-war historical research which gives far better evidence for the period, evidence which was not motivated by political considerations. The lead-in takes sides on an early dispute whose simplified and conflicting verdicts have now been clarified by serious historical research on evidence not avilable to both earlier, and official commissions.

Secondly, they have supported a text in which Benny Morris and Walter Laqueur's more recent evidence is suppressed, evidence which shows that both Husayni and Revisionist Zionists contributed, by their incitements, claims, and propaganda, to the inflammatory mood which concluded with the massacres. The evidence now available shows that, notwithstanding official assurances from the Jewish Council, there were indeed unofficial and radical Jewish groups who indeed did claim, and militate for, Jewish control over the disputed areas, precisely what Amin al-Husayni and his propagandists asserted.

This is uncomfortable, as real history always is, and both Zeq and Armon wish to suppress the facts in order to buttress the impression that al-Husayni's real contribution to the tensions was a pure fantasy inspired by anti-semitism, and wholly unconnected to the realities of the time, namely, nothing more than what the officials of the Jewish Council happened to assert. Al-Husayni's espousal of Nazism, his fanaticism, is not in dispute. But this crucial period of the late 1920s cannot be read retroactively as purely evidence for antisemitism as his exclusive motivation. He was also reacting to threats, coming from Revisionist organs and activities, which happened to give substance to his claims about the Wall. He was undoubtedly responsible for the massacres. But the analysis by both Morris and Laqueur shows that his incitements were in parallel to similar incitements from extreme Zionists, who, in exacerbating tensions, cannot in turn be wholly absolved from some responsibility for in turn feeding al-Husayni's febrile imagination.

Therefore, I will keep a copy of the text here which gives the full details so far ascertained, in safekeeping from edits that censor, suppress and edit according to a unilateralist POV.

(*note to above.This passage is defective, and wrongly sourced Notes (1) The following passage is wrongly sourced. It does not refer as the text makes out to the 1937 investigation, but to the Mandate Commission's discussion of 1930

'Snell's opinion was, several years later, endorsed by a further British re-investigation, which considered the Mufti's innovations at the Wailing Wall doubly provocative, in aiming to both annoy the Jews, and to emphasize Muslim ownership of the site. It concluded that the Wailing Wall episodes constituted 'one of the principle immediate causes of those disturbances'

The document referred to is the Mandatory Commission doc of 1930 not the Peel Commission doc. of 1937. The whole section must therefore be written according to sources.

The text

Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (ca. 1895 - July 4, 1974, أمين الحسيني, alternatively spelt al-Husseini), Mufti of Jerusalem was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and a Muslim leader in Palestine and Egypt. He is from the prominent al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem. Known for his anti-Zionism, al-Husayni fought against the establishment of a national home for Jews in the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine particularly during the Great Arab Revolt. Sent into exile in 1937, Husseini collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II and helped recruit Muslims for the Waffen-SS. During the 1948 Palestine War, he led the Palestinian Arab opposition to Zionists and opposed King Abdullah's ambitions in Palestine but without success. Afterwards, he lost most of his remaining political influence and he died in 1974.

Early life

Amin al-Husayni was born in 1893 or 1895 in Jerusalem to a prominent al-Husayni clan. The al-Husaynis were wealthy landowners in Jerusalem and southern Palestine, and thirteen members of the clan were mayors of Jerusalem between 1864 and 1920. Both his grandfather, Mustafa al-Husayni, his father Mustafa Taher al-Husayni (Shayk Taher), and his half-brother Kamal al-Husayni, had served as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Amin al-Husayni, the son of Mustafa Taher al-Husayni and his second wife, Zainab, attended a government school in Jerusalem and Al-Azhar University in Cairo, studying Islamic law for about one year and founding an anti-Zionist society. In 1913 at the age of 18, al-Husayni went to Mecca and received the honorific of Hajj. Prior to World War I, al-Husayni studied at the School of Administration in Istanbul.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, al-Husayni joined the Ottoman Turkish army, received a commission as an artillery officer and was assigned to the Forty-Seventh Brigade stationed in and around the predominantly Greek Christian city of Smyrna. In November 1916 he left the Ottoman army on a three month disability leave and returned to Jerusalem where he remained for the duration of the war. After the British conquered Palestine and Syria in 1918, he was employed in various positions by the British military administration in Jerusalem and Damascus, including one where he recruited soldiers for Faisal's army.

Early political activism

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In 1919 al-Husayni attended the Pan-Syrian Congress held in Damascus where he supported Emir Faisal for King of Syria. That year al-Husayni joined (perhaps founded) the Arab secret society El-Nadi al-Arabi (The Arab Club) in Jerusalem and wrote articles for the newspaper Suriyya al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria). The paper was published in Jerusalem beginning in September 1919 by the lawyer Muhammad Hassan al-Budayri, and edited by Aref al-Aref, both prominent members of al-Nadi al-Arabi.

During the annual Nabi Musa procession in Jerusalem in April 1920, al-Husayni, then a teacher at the Rashidiya school in Jerusalem, incited the Arab crowds against the Jews. The Nebi Musa festival had for some decades been politicized to focus Muslim public protests against the anti-Muslim changes in the city, earlier by Consuls who had a record for interfering in community affairs to favour Christian interests. For his role in the riots, al-Husayni was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in absentia, since he had already fled to Transjordan.

Until late 1921 al-Husayni focused his efforts on Pan-Arabism and Greater Syria in particular, with Palestine understood as a southern province of an Arab state whose capital was to be set in Damascus. Greater Syria was to include territory now occupied by Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. The struggle for Greater Syria collapsed after Britain ceded control over present day Syria and Lebanon to France in July 1920 in accordance with the prior Sykes-Picot Agreement. The French army entered Damascus at that time, overthrew King Faisal and dissolved Greater Syria.

al-Husayni then turned from Damascus-oriented Pan-Arabism to a specifically Palestinian ideology centered on Jerusalem, which sought to expel the Jews and foreigners from Palestine, thus in his mind restoring it to Dar al-Islam.((fact|date=October 2007))

Mufti of Jerusalem

Following the death of the former Mufti, Amin's half-brother Kamil al-Husayni, the British High Commissioner, the Jewish liberal Herbert Samuel, pardoned both Amin al-Husayni and his adversary Ze'ev Jabotinsky for their role in the riots. Al-Husayni and another Arab had been excluded from an earlier general amnesty because they had fled before their convictions had been passed down. Elections were held, and of the four candidates running for the office of mufti, al-Husayni received the least number of votes. Nevertheless, Samuel, anxious to keep not only a balance between al-Husaynis and their rival clan the Nashashibis , but also to compensate the Arabs for his the pardon given Jabotinsky, decided to appoint Amin al-Husayni Mufti of Jerusalem, a position that had been held by the al-Husayni clan for more than a century.

In 1922 al-Husayni was elected President of the newly formed Supreme Muslim Council, which controlled the Waqf funds worth annually tens of thousands of pounds, and the orphan funds, worth annually about 50,000 pounds. In addition, he controlled the Islamic (Shariah) courts in Palestine. Among other functions, these courts were entrusted with the power to appoint teachers and preachers.

Al-Husayni launched an international Muslim campaign to improve and restore the mosque known as the Dome of the Rock. Indeed, the current landscape of the Temple Mount was directly affected by constructions built as a result of al-Husayni's fundraising activities. Al-Husayni also served as president of the World Islamic Congress, which he founded in 1931.

The British initially balanced appointments to the Supreme Muslim Council between the Husaynis and their supporters (known as the majlisiya, or council supporters) and their rivals, the Nashashibis and their allied clans (known as the mu'aridun, the opposition) , for example by replacing Musa al-Husayni as mayor of Jerusalem with Ragheb al-Nashashibi. The mu'aridun or 'Opposition', were more disposed to a compromise with the Jews, and indeed had for some years received annual subventions from the Jewish Agency. During most of the period of the British mandate, bickering between these two families seriously undermined any Palestinian unity. In 1936, however, they achieved a measure of unity when all the Palestinian groups joined to create a permanent executive organ known as the Arab Higher Committee under al-Husayni's chairmanship.

The Mufti's role in the 1929 Palestine riots

Al-Husayni's role in the1929 Palestine riots, including the 1929 Hebron massacre and the 1929 Safed massacre, was hotly disputed at the time. An observer on the committee investigating the riots noted that during the interview, the Mufti held a copy of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.. The Jewish Agency charged him with responsibility for inciting the violence. The Shaw commission of enquiry by a majority acquitted the Mufti of legal responsibility for the riot. A minority opinion by Mr Snell held the Mufti as accountable, in that he was fully aware of the dangers of incitement in religious propaganda and had failed to exercise his religious authority to restrain outbreaks of violence. . Snell's opinion was endorsed by the League of Nations's Mandatory Commission review, which was conducted later that year. .

It adduced the Mufti's memorandum, delivered to the British authorities, on October the 8th, in which the Mufti accused the Jews of wishing to take possession of the sector called Al Buraq. This accusation had been challenged in turn by the Jewish National Council in Palestine, in an open letter dated November 1928. The Mufti did not accept these official assurances, the accusation was repeated, and led to a widespread conviction in the Arab community that the Jews did indeed wish to take possession of the Mosque of Omar. The Mandates Commission concluded that al-Husayni’s accusations had exacerbated Arab hostilities.

Later historians such as Benny Morris, Christopher Sykes, Joseph Schechtman, Yehuda Benari and Walter Laqueur, in reviewing the evidence, have given a more nuanced account. Sykes argued that the withdrawal by Jewish authorities of what turned out to be groundless charges that the British themselves were complicit with the riots may have induced the Shaw Commission thereafter to ignore strong evidence on the other hand that pointed to Zionist incitement as a factor in the riots Morris argues that by 1929 the Arabs realized that the Yishuv's growth, abetted by Mandate policies, would turn them into a minority in their own land.' Internal clan politics weakened a united opposition, and the ascendancy of the Nashashibis, in part spurred al-Hussayn's campaign against the Jews, and the violence that resulted from it.

'By exploiting religious passions, he hoped to sway the Muslim masses to back his camp.'

.

As early as 1922, the Palestinian delegation to Mecca had declared that: 'the Holy Places are in great danger on account of the horrible Zionist aggressions', and the theme reflected a long tradition in Arab propaganda. On Yom Kippur 1925, Jewish worshippers had set up benches before the wall, subsequently dismantled by the police after Arab protests. On September 23-24, 1928, the Supreme Muslim Council complained of a screen fastened to the pavement on Yom Kippur to separate Jewish men and women in orthodox worship. The acts interrupted the Ottoman status quo that had prevailed down until that time. Unable to have it dismantled by persuasion, the Mandatory constabulary removed it by force. As part of the Muslim attempt to have their traditional rights at the Wall confirmed, Husayni reacted to what he took to be provocations by, in turn, engaging in building new structures, and in reviving old and noisy Islamic rituals above the wall. The builders' methods disturbed Jews at prayer below. Husayni opened a long-shut gate that opened into the alley where Jewish worshippers prayed, to allow donkeys to pass. The English failed to intervene, and Zionists transformed the dispute into one of national honour. There was in fact increasing pressure from 'Right-wing Zionists' to take control of the Wall. As Laqueur notes, the Revisionist newspaper Doar Hayom had begun ‘to agitate the Jews for a fight against the Mufti' over the property, claiming on its pages that, ‘the wall is ours’. . On August 14th, 1929 some 6,000 Jews marched in Tel Aviv, chanting The Wall is ours, and prayers by half that number were made at the Wall that night. A predominantly Betar demonstration followed the next day, with several hundred youths, some with weapons and explosives, marched to the wall, and a detachment with knives and sticks on hand raised the blue-white flag and sang the Zionist anthem at the wall. and heated rumours raced round the Arab community to the effect that the haram itself was in danger. Al Hussayni's activists stoked the flames enjoining them to attack Jews and defend the holy sites. Official Jewish assurances that they had no claims to the Wall were to no avail. In the escalating tensions, with the parts of the Arab community inflamed by rumours that the Jews did indeed wish to take possession of the Mosque of Omar, the notorious massacres took place. The force and violence of these disturbances shook Britain's commitment to the Balfour Declaration. Jabotinsky had been out of the country at the time, but his Beterim demonstrations and inflammatory articles in Doar Hayom were, at the time, blamed for provoking the Muslim outrages. On his return he wrote that the rally 'had been a useful and a fine thing', insisting that,

'It is the main thing in all strategy to force the enemy to attack before he is ready. A year later it would have been infinitely worse.'

.

The British seized the opportunity of his departure from Palestine in December 25 of that year by barring his return.

By early 1931, however, Zionist pressure in the press and lobbying by Chaim Weizmann in London had rescued the status quo ante.

Arab revolt of 1936-1939

On April 19 1936, a wave of Arab violence against the Jews broke out in Palestine. Initially, the riots were led by Farhan al-Sa'ada, but al-Husayni soon decided to seize the initiative. He controlled waqf and orphan funds, which generated annual income of about 115,000 Palestinian pounds; after the start of the revolt, most of that money was used to finance the activities of his representatives throughout the country. The guerillas recruited by al-Husayni's men were responsible for most attacks on Jews during the first months of the revolt; later, they were joined by volunteers from the neighboring Arab lands led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji. Upon al-Husayni's initiative, the leaders of Palestinian Arab clans formed the Arab Higher Committee under the mufti's chairmanship. The Committee called for nonpayment of taxes after May 15 and for a general strike of Arab workers and businesses, demanding an end to the Jewish immigration. The British High Commissioner for Palestine Sir Arthur Wauchope responded by engaging in negotiations with al-Husayni and the Committee. The talks, however, soon proved fruitless. The mufti issued a series of warnings, threatening the 'revenge of God Almighty' unless the Jewish immigration were to stop, and the general strike began, paralyzing the government, public transportation, Arab businesses and agriculture.

As the time passed, it turned out that those were the Arabs deprived of their usual sources of income who bore the brunt of the cost of the strike. Under these circumstances, the Mandatory government was looking for an intermediary who might help persuade the Arab Higher Committee to end the rebellion. Al-Husayni and the Committee rejected King Abdullah of Transjordan as mediator because of his dependence on the British and friendship with the Zionists, but accepted the Iraqi foreign minister Nuri as-Said. As Wauchope warned of an impending military campaign and simultaneously offered to dispatch a Royal Commission of Inquiry to hear the Arab complaints, the Arab Higher Committee called off the strike on October 11. When the promised Royal Commission of Inquiry arrived in Palestine in November, al-Husayni testified before it as chief witness for the Arabs.

In July 1937 British police were sent to arrest al-Husayni for his part in the Arab rebellion, but, tipped off, he managed to escape to the Haram where the British deemed it inadvisable to touch him. In September, he was removed from the presidency of the Muslim Supreme Council and the Arab Higher Committee was declared illegal. In October, he fled to Lebanon, where he reconstituted the committee under his leadership. Al-Husayni retained the support of most Palestinian Arabs and used his power to punish the Nashashibis. He remained in Lebanon for two years, but his deteriorating relationship with the French and Syrian authorities led him to withdraw to Iraq in October 1939.

The rebellion itself lasted until 1939, when it was finally quelled by British troops. It forced Britain to make substantial concessions to Arab demands. The British abandoned the idea of establishing Palestine as a Jewish state, while Jewish immigration was to continue but under severer restrictions, with a quota of 75,000 places spread out over the following five years. On the expiry of this period further Jewish immigration would depend on Arab consent. Besides local unrest, another key factor in bringing about a decisive change in British policy was Nazi Germany's preparations for a European war, since would forseeably, develop into a worldwide conflict. In British strategic thinking, securing the loyalty and support of the Arab world assumed an importance of some urgency. While Jewish support was unquestioned, Arab backing in a new global conflict was by no means assured. By promising to phase out Jewish immigration into Palestine, Britain hoped to win back support from wavering Arabs.. Al-Husayni nonetheless felt that the concessions did not go far enough, and he rejected the new policy. See also Peel Commission, White Paper of 1939.

Nazi ties and activities during World War II

Pre-war

In 1933, within weeks of Hitler's rise to power in Germany, al-Husayni sent a telegram to Berlin addressed to the German Consul-General in the British Mandate of Palestine saying he looked forward to spreading their ideology in the Middle East , especially in Palestine and offered his services. Al-Husayni's offer was rejected at first out of concern for disrupting Anglo-German relations by allying with an anti-British leader. But one month later, Al-Husayni secretly met the German Consul-General Karl Wolff near the Dead Sea and expressed his approval of the anti-Jewish boycott in Germany and asked him not to send any Jews to Palestine. Later that year, the Mufti's assistants approached Wolff, seeking his help in establishing an Arab National Socialist (Nazi) party in Palestine. Wolff and his superiors disapproved because they didn't want to become involved in a British sphere of influence, because the Nazis desired further Jewish immigration to Palestine, and because at the time the Nazi party was restricted to German speaking 'Aryans' only.

On 21 July 1937, Al-Husayni paid a visit to the new German Consul-General, Hans Döhle, in Palestine. He repeated his former support for Germany and 'wanted to know to what extent the Third Reich was prepared to support the Arab movement against the Jews.' He later sent an agent and personal representative to Berlin for discussions with Nazi leaders.

In 1938, though Anglo-German relations were a concern, Al-Husayni's offer was accepted. From August 1938, al-Husayni received financial and military assistance and supplies from Nazi Germany and also from fascist Italy, with which his enemy, Jabotinsky's Irgun had just broken off ties. Though in the ensuing war, the Mufti was strongly pro-Axis, this did not reflect the position of the entire Palestinian leadership. Al-Husayni's cousin Jemal, for example, was in favour of cutting a deal with Britain for Palestine.

In May 1940, the British Foreign Office declined a proposal from the chairman of the Vaad Leumi (Jewish National Council in Palestine) that they assassinate al-Husayni, but in November of that year Winston Churchill approved such a plan. In May 1941, several members of the Irgun, (several members of which were themselves feeling out the Nazis in Beirut about a possible collaboration between the Jewish underground and Germany to throw the British out of Palestine), including its former leader David Raziel were released from prison and flown to Iraq on a secret mission which, according to British sources, included a plan to 'capture or kill' the Mufti. The Irgun version is that they were approached by the British for a sabotage mission and added a plan to capture the Mufti as a condition of their cooperation. The mission was abandoned when Raziel was killed by a German plane.

In the Middle East

In April 1941 the Golden Square pro-Nazi Iraqi army officers, led by General Rashid Ali, forced the Iraqi Prime Minister, the pro-British Nuri Said Pasha, to resign. From his base in Iraq, al-Husseini issued a fatwa for a holy war against Britain a month later, in May. . Forty days later, British troops occupied the country and the Mufti was once more forced into exile, this time to Germany, via Iran, Turkey and Mussolini's office in Rome.. Throughout the the war, the Mufti repeatedly made requests in Berlin to 'the German government to bomb Tel Aviv.'

In Nazi-occupied Europe

Al-Husayni arrived in Rome on October 11 and immediately contacted Italian military intelligence. The mufti claimed to be head of a secret Arab nationalist organization with offices in all Arab countries. On condition that the Axis powers "recognize in principle the unity, independence, and sovereignty, of an Arab state of a Fascist nature, including Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan", he offered support in the war against Britain and stated his willingness to discuss the issues of "the Holy Places, Lebanon, the Suez canal, and Aqaba". The Italian foreign ministry approved the mufti's proposal, recommending to give him a grant of one million lire, and referred him to Benito Mussolini, who met al-Husayni on October 27. According to the mufti's account, the meeting went amicably with the Italian leader expressing his hostility to the Jews and Zionism.

Back in the summer of 1940 and again in February 1941, al-Hussayni submitted to the German government a draft declaration of German-Arab cooperation, containing a clause:

Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.

Now, encouraged by his meeting with the Italian leader, al-Husayni prepared a draft declaration, affirming the Axis support for the Arabs on November 3. In three days, the declaration, slightly amended by Italian foreign ministry, received the formal approval of Mussolini and was forwarded to the German embassy in Rome. On November 6, al-Husayni arrived in Berlin, where he discussed the text of his declaration with Ernst von Weizsäcker and other German officials. In the final draft, which differed only marginally from al-Husayni's original proposal, the Axis powers declared their readiness to approve the 'elimination' (Beseitigung) of the Jewish National Home in Palestine.

On November 20, al-Husayni met the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and was officially received by Adolf Hitler on November 28. He asked Hitler for a public declaration that 'recognized and sympathized with the Arab struggles for independence and liberation, and that it would support the elimination of a national Jewish homeland'. Hitler refused to make such a public announcement, saying that it would be strengthen the Gaullists against the Vichy France, but made the following declaration, requesting al-Husayni "to lock it deep in his heart:

1. He (the Führer) would carry on the fight until the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony had been obliterated.
2. In the course of this fight, the German army would - at a time that could not yet be specified, but in any case in the clearly foreseeable future - gain the southern exit of Caucasus.
3. As soon as this breakthrough was made, the Führer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany's only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the Vernichtung des...Judentums living under British protection in Arab lands..". Al-Husayni replied that it was his view that everything would come to pass just as the Fuhrer had indicated.

The Holocaust

In his book The Mufti and the Führer, the Revisionist historian Joseph Schechtman insinuated that the execution of the Final Solution was linked directly to Al-Husayni's move to the Reich, even if he was not the sole or major factor in the shaping of the decision:

.'It is hardly accidental that the beginning of the systematic physical destruction of European Jewry by Hitler’s Third Reich roughly coincided with the Mufti’s arrival in the Axis camp.'

The Mufti was in Berlin during the war, but later denied knowing of the Holocaust. Defendants at the Nuremberg trials, including Adolf Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny, accused him of having actively encouraged the extermination of European Jews. Eichmann himself enjoyed spreading what became known as the Sarona legend, according to which he was on intimate terms with al-Husseini. This testimony was subsequently dismissed as without factual basis by the court examining the issue during Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem. 'The trial revealed only that all rumours about Eichmann's connection with Haj Amin el Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, were unfounded. (He had been introduced to the Mufti during an official reception, along with all other department heads).'. In a recent paper, the German historians Klaus-Michael Mallmann and

Martin Cüppers, on the basis of research into Nazi documents in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Military Archive Service in Freiburg, repeat the charge that the Mufti and Eichman closely collaborated on a programme to annihilate the Jews of Palestine, in the form of a special corps of Einsatzkommandos attached to Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, charged with enlisting Arabs to complete the Holocaust in Palestine, as soon as Rommel's forces could link up with the German army breaking through from the northern Caucasus. They bring no fresh evidence to support the Eichmann-al Husayni connection, other than Wisleceny's discredited testimony and a note to the effect that one of the members of the Einsatzkommando, Hans-Joachim Weise, was an assistant of its leader Rauff, and also RSHA liaison officer to the Mufti when the latter arrived in Berlin . They cnclude that:

'the most important collaborator with the Nazis and an absolute Arab anti-Semite was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem.'

Husseini did intervene on May 13,1943, with the German Foreign Office to block possible transfers of Jews from Bulgaria, Hungary and Roumenia, after reports reached him that 4000 Jewish children accompanied by 500 adults had managed to reach Palestine. He asked that the Foreign Minister 'to do his utmost' to block all such proposals and this request was complied with..

The Mufti also blocked an attempt to rescue 500 Jewish children from the town of Arbe in Croatia, in September 1943, by causing negotiations for their departure to Turkey to collapse, because he feared they would end up in Palestine. As a result, they ended up in Auschwitz.

A year later, on the 25th July, 1944, he wrote to the Hungarian foreign minister to register his objection to the release of certificates for 900 Jewish children and 100 adults for transfer from Hungary, fearing they might end up in Palestine. He suggested that if such transfers of population were deemed necessary, then:-

'it would be indispensable and infinitely preferable to send them to other countries where they would find themselves under active control, as for example Poland, thus avoiding danger and preventing damage.'

Among the acts of sabotage al-Husayni attempted to implement was a chemical warfare assault on the second largest and predominantly Jewish city in Palestine, Tel Aviv. Five parachutists were sent with a toxin to dump into the water system. The police caught the infiltrators in a cave near Jericho, and according to Jericho district police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi, 'The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers.' .

In his memoirs after the war, Husayni noted that "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours'.'

Toward the end of the World War II, al-Husayni worked for Nazi Germany as a propagandist targeting Arab public opinion and a recruiter of Muslim volunteers for the German armed forces. Beginning in 1941, Al-Husayni visited Bosnia, and convinced Muslim leaders that a Muslim S.S. division would be in the interest of Islam. In spite of these and other propaganda efforts, only half of the expected 20,000 to 25,000 Muslims volunteered." Al-Husayni was involved in the organization and recruitment of Bosnian Muslims into several divisions of the Waffen SS and other units. The largest was the 13th "Handschar" division of 21,065 men (sometimes spelled Hanjar: the word Scimitar in Turkish, Arabic Khanjar خنجر), which conducted operations against Communist partisans in the Balkans from February 1944.

Propaganda and recruitment

The Mufti established close contacts with Bosnian and Albanian Muslim leaders and spent the remainder of the war conducting the following activities:

• Assisting with the formation of Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans
• The formation of schools and training centers for Muslim imams and mullahs who would accompany the Muslim SS and Wehrmacht units.

al-Husayni continued to work as a propagandist for Nazism to the Arabs and a recruiter of Muslim volunteers for the German armed forces, until war's end. Beginning in 1941, Al-Husayni visited Bosnia, and convinced some local Muslim leaders that a Muslim S.S. division would be in the interest of Islam. Despite his efforts, only half of the 20,000 to 25,000 Muslims recruits he anticipated joining up actually volunteered. Al-Husayni helped organize and integrate these Bosnian Muslims into several divisions of the Waffen SS and other units. The largest was the 13th Handschar division of 21,065 men which conducted operations against Communist partisans in the Balkans from February 1944. Though Al-Husayni insisted that, 'The most important task of this division must be to protect the homeland and families (of the Bosnian volunteers); the division must not be permitted to leave Bosnia,' the request was ignored by the Germans.

On March 1, 1944, while speaking on Radio Berlin, al-Husayni said:

'Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you.'

Post World War II Activities

Arrest and Trial

After the Second World War, al-Husayni fled to Switzerland, where he was detained and expelled back to Germany. He was captured by the French and put under house arrest in France after he was sentenced by the Yugoslav Supreme Military Court to three years imprisonment and two years of deprivation of civil rights as a convicted war criminal. During the Nuremberg Trials, Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny testified that The Mufti was one of the initiators of the extermination of European Jewry and a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the initiation of the Final Solution. In 1948, Husayni escaped and was given asylum in Egypt. Jewish groups petitioned the British to have him indicted as a war criminal. The British declined because such a move would have added to their growing problems in Egypt and among Palestinians - where al-Husayni was still popular. The Yugoslavia unsuccessfully sought his extradition.

1948 Palestine War

From his Egyptian exile al-Husayni used what influence he had to encourage Egyptian participation in the 1948 war. Although the mufti was involved in some of the high level negotiations between Arab leaders before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War at a meeting held in Damascus in February 1948 to organize Palestinian Field Commands, the commanders of his Holy War Army, Hasan Salama and Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, were allocated only the Lydda district and Jerusalem respectively. This decision paved the way for undermining the Mufti's position among the Arab States. On 9 February, only four days after the Damascus meeting, he suffered a severe setback at the Arab League's Cairo session, when his demands for the appointment of a Palestinian to the League's General Staff, for the formation of a Palestinian Provisional Government, for the transfer of authority to local National Committees in areas evacuated by the British, and for both a loan for Palestrinian administration and an appropriation of large sums to the Arab Higher Executive for Palestinians entitled to war damages were all rejected.

The Arab League blocked recruitment to the mufti's forces, which collapsed following the death of his most charismatic commander, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, on 8 April.

Following rumors that King Abdullah of Transjordan was re-opening the bi-lateral negotiations with Israel that he had previously conducted in secret with the Jewish Agency, the Arab League, led by Egypt, decided to set up the All-Palestine Government in Gaza on 8 September (year?) under the nominal leadership of the mufti. Avi Shlaim writes:

The decision to form the Government of All-Palestine in Gaza, and the feeble attempt to create armed forces under its control, furnished the members of the Arab League with the means of divesting themselves of direct responsibility for the prosecution of the war and of withdrawing their armies from Palestine with some protection against popular outcry. Whatever the long-term future of the Arab government of Palestine, its immediate purpose, as conceived by its Egyptian sponsors, was to provide a focal point of opposition to Abdullah and serve as an instrument for frustrating his ambition to federate the Arab regions with Transjordan.

Abdullah regarded the attempt to revive the mufti's Holy War Army as a challenge to his authority and on 3 October his minister of defence ordered all armed bodies operating in the areas controlled by the Arab Legion to be disbanded. Glubb Pasha carried out the order ruthlessly and efficiently.

During the 1948 War, the Mufti is also alleged to have said, I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!'

The Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah, had assigned the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to someone else, and al-Husayni, appears to have had contacts with the Arab conspirators behind King Abdullah's assassination in 1951. followed Abdullah was succeeded by King Talal, who refused to allow al-Husayni entry into Jerusalem. Within a year, King Talal was declared incompetent, but his successor King Hussein renewed the ban on al-Husayni entering the city.

Al-Husayni died in Beirut, Lebanon in 1974. He wished to be buried in Jerusalem, but the Israeli government refused this request.

Legacy

• The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry's report of April 20, 1946 stated: "The flight of the Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini, to Italy and Germany, and his active support of the Axis, did not lose for him his following, and he is probably the most popular Arab leader in Palestine today."
• Israeli historian Tom Segev paraphrased a letter that the commander of the British forces in the British Mandate for Palestine, General Evelyn Barker, a publically anti-Zionist, wrote to his wife in around May 1947 about the mufti's legacy: "Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former mufti, thought only of his own interests and not of his people, and had done the Palestinian Arabs a great disservice. The mufti sought only to augment his political power. The Arabs had only dissension and petty jealousies. Their tragedy was that they had no real leadership."
• Yasser Arafat's interview with the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat was reprinted by a leading Palestinian daily Al Quds (August 2, 2002):

Interviewer: I have heard voices from within the Palestinian Authority in the past few weeks, saying that the reforms are coordinated according to American whims...

Arafat: We are not Afghanistan. We are the mighty people. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini?... There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops."

• John Marlowe said: "The dominant figure in Palestine during the Mandate years was neither an Englishman nor a Jew, but an Arab — Haj Amin Muhammed Effendi al Husaini... Able, ambitious, ruthless, humourless, and incorruptible, he was of the authentic stuff of which dictators are made."

See also

• Arab Higher Committee
• Palestinian nationalism
• Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
• Islam and antisemitism
• Arabs and antisemitism
• Palestinian political violence
• Nazi Germany

Notes

1. David G. Dalin, Hitler’s Mufti, First Things (August/September 2005)
2. http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/3d14c9e5cdaa296d85256cbf005aa3eb/5f21f8a1ca578a57052566120067f658!OpenDocument]
3. The British government and the Mandatory authorities were themselves opposed to the revisionist project of a Jewish state, which though not supported by the Zionist mainstream, did find some documentary backing from various Zionist groups.'(S)ome of the Jews going to Palestine had come from other countries far away and, having very different conditions, they had not quite realised the real position in Palestine. Some of them had perhaps been aggressive and had an inaccurate idea of the nature of the Jewish National Home. They had not realised that it was to be a National Home in Palestine and not a Jewish State.'Statement of Mr.Drummond Shiels. To which the Mandatory Commission's Mr Van Rees replied: 'This, however, was only an ambitious conception of a fraction of the Zionists who did not take fully into account the replies of the Zionist Organisation to the British Government contained in the White Paper of 1922. Moreover, the accredited representative had not omitted to point out that the conception of the Jewish National Home held by this fraction of the Zionists known as "revisionists" was not that of the other Zionists, who formed the great majority.' League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission Minutes of the Seventeenth (Extraordinary) Sesson, 21 June 1930
4. 'The leadership of al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Arab Higher Committee, which had dominated the Palestinian political scene since the 1920s, was devastated by the disaster of 1948 and discredited by its failure to prevent it. The socio-economic base underlying the political power of traditional Palestinian notables was severely disrupted.'Rex Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival: The PLO in Lebanon, Westview Press, Boulder, 1990 ch.2.
5. ^ Sachar (2006), p. 170
6. The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin Al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement Page 6
7. The facts are that newspapers were published earlier in Palestine, the first major one being the Haifa daily al-Karmil, set up by Najib Nasir in 1908. A Jaffa-based newspaper Filastin started up by the brothers Isa and Yusuf al-‘Isa came out in January of the same year
8. Ilan Pappé The Rise and Fall of the Husainis (Part 1), Autumn 2000, Issue 10, Jerusalem Quarterly
9. On Christian interests in the Holy Land see Eitan Bar-Yosef , The Holy Land in English Culture 1799-1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism,Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005.
10. For the rivalry Benny Morris, Righteous Victims,pp.111ff.
11. Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall, ibid.ch.8
12. Glenn E. Robinson, Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution. Indiana University Press,1997 p. 6
13. Benny Morris, Righteous Victims ibid. p.111
14. Palestine Commission on the Disturbances of August 1929, Minutes of Evidence (London 1930), Vol 2 page 539 paragraph 13,430, page 527 paragraph 13,107 (interview on 4/12/1929)
15. The Shaw Report, Minority Opinion by Mr.Snell p.174
16. Permanent Mandates Commission (page sourcing required), citing Shaw Report p.31
17. reproduced in the Shaw Report, ibid p.30
18. Christopher Sykes, Cross Roads to Israel, London, Collins, 1965 p.113.
19. Benny Morris, Righteous Victims pp.109-110
20. Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall, ch.8
21. Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall, Ch.8, London 1984 citing Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism, p.255; Cf.'Right-wing Zionists began to demand Jewish control of the Wall; and some even publicly advocated rebuilding the Temple, confirming Muslim fears.' Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, ibid.p.113
22. Benny Morris, Righteous Victims p113
23. Yehuda Benari and Joseph Schechtman, History of the Revisionist Movement:1925-1930. Hadar, Tel Aviv 1970, vol.1, p.338, cited Brenner, op.cit.ch.8
24. Joseph Schechtman, Fighter and Prophet p.120, cited Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall.
25. Lenni Brenner,The Iron Wall, ibid.
26. Morris, Righteous Victims, ibid. pp.112-113
27. Sachar (2006), pp. 199-200
28. Sachar (2006), pp. 200-201
29. Sachar (2006), pp. 202-203
30. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, (1961) New Viewpoints, New York 1973 p.716.
31. Nicosia (2000) p.85-86
32. Ami Isseroff and Peter FitzGerald-Morris, 'The Iraq Coup of 1941, The Mufti and the Farhud';http://www.mideastweb.org/iraqaxiscoup.htm
33. Mattar, 1984.
34. "Iraqi Coup: Introduction". Retrieved 2007-10-18.
35. Lewis (1995), 351.
36. Lewis (1999), pp. 150-151
37. ^ Lewis (1984), p.190.
38. The German term primnarily refers to 'clearing out' or 'getting rid of'. It appears to lie behind the phrasing used elsewhere by German interlocutors of the Mufti. Cf.Despite such knowledge-or possibly because of it-Prufer collaborated during the first half of 1943 as head of the Oriental section in the Foreign Ministry with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, the Arab leader exiled in Berlin. Husayni recruited Balkan Muslims for the SS, Hitler's elite guard significantly responsible for the atrocities in the East. Husayni urged the German government to halt the migration of Jews from Hungary and Bulgaria to Palestine. Instead, the Mufi insisted, the Jews should be shipped to Poland "under strong and energetic guard.29 On 17 July, Prufer recorded in his diary the Mufti's determination to destroy the Jews in the Middle East. Husayni, said Prufer, 'was insistent about getting rid of the Jewish settlements in Palestine.'(diary entry of Curt Prufer for 17 July 1943) Donald M. McKale 'Traditional Antisemitism and the Holocaust: The Case of the German Diplomat Curt Prufer,'tp://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=395117
39. Lewis (1999), pp. 151-152
40. Segev (2001), p. 463
41. ^ Lewis (1999), p. 152
42. official transcript, trans. Fleming
43. Joseph Schechtman, The Mufti and the Führer p.152
44. Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, (1953) Sphere Books, London 1973 p.27
45. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.(1963) Viking Press, New York 1965 p.13
46. 'Eichmann had, indeed, been sent to Palestine in 1937, but that was on office business at a time when he was not even a commissioned officer. Apparently it concerned the Ha'avara Agreement for Jewish immigration into Palestine from Germany. As for contacting the Arab rebels in Palestine, or their leader the Mufti, Eichmann was turned back by the British authorities at the Egyptian border. It is doubtful whether Eichmann made contact with the Mufti even in 1942, when the latter resided in Berlin. If this fallen idol makes an occasional appearance in Eichmann's office correspondence it is because Eichmann's superiors at the Foreign Office found the Mufti a very useful sacred cow, always to be invoked when the reception of Jewish refugees in Palestine was under discussion. Dieter Wisliceny even believed that Eichmann regarded the Mufti as a colleague in a muuch expanded post-war Final Solution.' G.Reitlinger, The Final Solution,ibid.pp.27-28
47. Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, 'Elimination of the Jewish National Home in Palestine: The Einsatzkommando of the Panzer Army Africa, 1942,' =http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/studies/vol35/Mallmann-Cuppers2.pdf
48. 'Hätte Erwin Rommel 1942 die Truppen seines Gegners, des britischen Feldmarschalls Montgomery, in Ägypten geschlagen und wäre anschließend bis nach Palästina vorgedrungen, hätte das Einsatzkommando den Auftrag erhalten, die Juden in Palästina zu töten. Das Einsatzkommando sollte nach dem Muster der NS-Einsätze in Osteuropa arbeiten; dabei waren hunderttausende von Juden in der Sowjetunion und anderen Ländern Osteuropas ermordet worden. Die Nationalsozialistischen Machthaber wollten sich die Deutschfreundlichkeit der palästinensischen Araber für ihre Pläne zunutze machen. 'Bedeutendster Kollaborateur der Nationalsozialisten und zugleich ein bedingungsloser Antimsemit auf arabischer Seit war Haj Amin el-Husseini, der Mufti von Jerusalem,' schreiben Mallmann und Cüppers. In seiner Person habe sich exemplarisch gezeigt, 'welch entscheidende Rolle der Judenhass im Projekt der deutsch-arabischen Verständigung einnahm.' El-Husseini habe unter anderem bei mehreren Treffen mit Adolf Eichmann Details der geplanten Morde festgelegt.'http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/aktuelles/presse/2006/36.html
51. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, (1961) New Viewpoints, New York 1973 p.504
52. Joseph Schechtman, The Mufti and the Führer, ibid. pp.154-155
53. Ami Isseroff and Peter FitzGerald-Morris, 'The Iraq Coup Attempt of 1941, the Mufti, and the Farhud,' http://www.mideastweb.org/Iraqaxiscoup.htm. Much of this article and sources are taken from this rather tendentious page
54. The Black Book of Bosnia by Nader Mousavizadeh, (Editor), Basic Books, New York, 1996, p. 23
55. "Hall Amin Al-Husayni: The Mufti of Jerusalem". Holocaust Encyclopedia. June 25, 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
56. Nader Mousavizadeh,(ed.)The Black Book of Bosnia Basic Books, New York, 1996, p. 23.
57. Sometimes spelled Hanjar: the word Scimitar in Turkish, Arabic Khanjar خنجر),
58. "Hall Amin Al-Husayni: The Mufti of Jerusalem". Holocaust Encyclopedia. June 25, 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
59. German archives cited in Lepre, p34
60. Pearlman (1947), p. 51
61. Levenberg, 1993, p. 198.
62. Sayigh, 2000, p. 14.
63. Shlaim, 2001, p. 97.
64. Shlaim, 2001, p. 99.
65. Leonard J. Davis and M. Decter, (eds., Myths and facts: A Concise Record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Washington DC: Near East Report, 1982, p. 199.
66. Anglo-American Committee of inquiry, Report to the US and UK Governments, April 20, 1946 Appendix IV. Palestine: Historical Background. The Arabs and the War. Verified 23 Oct 2007.
67. Segev (2001), p. 498

References

• Carpi,Daniel. The Mufti of Jerusalem: Amin el-Husseini, and his diplomatic activity during World War II, October 1941-July 1943, in Studies in Zionism, Vol VII (1983), pp101-131.
• Elpeleg,Zvi, The Grand Mufti: Haj Amin Al-Hussaini, Founder of the Palestinian National Movement, tr. David Harvey, ed. by Shmuel Himelstein Frank Cass Publishers, 1993, ISBN 0-7146-3432-8)
• Jbara,Taysir. Palestinian Leader, Hajj Amin Al-Husoyni, Mufti of Jerusalem]] -->, Kingston Press Series. Leaders, Politics, and Social Change in the Islamic World, No 5, Kingston Press, 1985, ISBN 0-940670-21-6)
• Khalidi, Rashid. 'The Formation of Palestinian Identity: The Critical Years, 1917-1923' in James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni (eds.) Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, (Columbia University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-231-10695-5)
• Laqueur, Walter and Rubin, Barry M. The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (Penguin Books 6th Rev edition, 2001, ISBN 0-14-029713-8)
• Levenberg, Haim. Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine: 1945-1948. London: Routledge, 1993. ISBN 0-7146-3439-5
• Lewis, Bernard. The Jews of Islam, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1984, ISBN 0-691-00807-8}}
• Lewis, Bernard. The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years. New York: Scribner, 1995.
• Mattar, Philip. The Mufti of Jerusalem (Columbia University Press revised edition, 1988, ISBN 0-231-06463-2)
• Mattar, Philip. 'Al-Husayni and Iraq's quest for independence, 1939-1941' in Arab Studies Quarterly 6,4 (1984), 267-281.
• Nicosia,Francis R. The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, Transaction Publishers, 2007 ISBN 076580624X
• Parfrey, Adam. (ed.) Extreme Islam: Anti-American Propaganda of Muslim Fundamentalism, Last Gasp, 2002, ISBN 0-922915-78-4)
• Moshe Pearlman|Pearlman, Moshe. Mufti of Jerusalem: The Story of Haj Amin el Husseini, (V Gollancz, 1947)
• Philip Rees,Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 Macmillan Library Reference, 1991, ISBN 0-13-089301-3)
• Schechtman, Joseph B.. The Mufti and the Fuehrer: The rise and fall of Haj Amin el-Husseini, (T. Yoseloff, 1965)
• Taggar, Yehuda , The Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Arab Politics, 1930-1937 (Outstanding These from the London School of Economics and Political Science) (Garland Pub, 1987, ISBN 0-8240-1933-4)
• van Paassen, Pierre Days of our Years (Hillman-Curl, Inc., 1939, LC 39027058) pp. 363-373

• Article on Amin al-Husayni, including a picture with Hitler

• Robinson, Glenn E. (1997). Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21082-8
• Sachar, Howard M. (2006). A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 2nd ed., revised and updated. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0679765638
• Schlor, Joachim (1999). Tel Aviv: From Dream to City. Reaktion Books. ISBN 1-86189-033-8
• Scholch, Alexander (1985) "The Demographic Development of Palestine 1850-1882", International Journal of Middle East Studies, XII, 4, November 1985, pp. 485-505
• Segev, Tom. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate. Trans. Haim Watzman. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001.
• Shahin, Mariam (2005). Palestine: A Guide, Interlink
• Sayigh, Yezid (2000). Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-829643-6
• Shlaim, Avi (2001). Israel and the Arab Coalition. In Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds.). The War for Palestine (pp. 79-103). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-79476-5
• Zertal, Idith (2005). Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-85096-7
• "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust" 1990 Macmillan Publishing Company New York, NY 10022
• "Himmler's Bosnian Division; The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943-1945" by George Lepre. Algen: Shiffer, 1997. ISBN 0-7643-0134-9
• Deutsche - Juden - Völkermord. Der Holocaust als Geschichte und Gegenwart (Germans, Jews, Genocide — The Holocaust as History and Present). Klaus Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 2006.
• The Trouble with Islam Today by Irshad Manji, St. Martin's Griffin (paperback), 2005, ISBN 0-312-32700-5

External links

This August 2007's use of external links may not follow Misplaced Pages's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• HUSSEINI, HAJ AMIN (1895-1974) at passia.org (with photos)
• Islamic Fascists?
• Mufti's Biography at the Jewish Virtual Library
• A biographical sketch of Haj Amin al-Husseini, Michal Gado, at "Omedia"
• Hajj Amin al-Husseini: the Mufti of Jerusalem (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

ar:أمين الحسيني bg:Амин ал Хусейни de:Mohammed Amin al-Husseini el:Χάτζι Μοχάμεντ Αμίν αλ Χουσέινι es:Amin al-Husayni fr:Amin al-Husseini it:Amin al-Husayni he:אמין אל-חוסייני nl:Amin al-Hoesseini ja:アミーン・フサイニー pt:Amin al-Husayni ru:Амин аль-Хусейни sv:Haj Amin al-Husseini yi:מוחאמד אמין אל חוסעיני

Been reverted - can you see sense of it?

Hiya Nishidani - can you have a look at this revert and tell me whether you think it's justified? PR 18:42, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

(Unrelated pt. Nishidani -- it's probably better to save a whole article (above) by downloading to your computer or by copying it onto a User Subpage. Do you know how to make those? WP:SUBPAGE. Take care, HG | Talk 20:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC))

Non-free content

Hi. I have removed Image:Grossmufti-inspecting-ss-recruits.jpg from your talk page because it is non-free content. Please note that such material is not permitted outside the mainspace. Thankyou. -- Chris B • talk 21:54, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

No problem. Good luck with the article by the way. -- Chris B • talk 22:07, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that the image was back, so I commented it out. That'll preserve the formatting of the original page for you, without causing problems by breaking fair-use restrictions on it. -Hit bull, win steak 22:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

530 Hebron Settlers

According to Zionist Source http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hebron.html ابو علي (Abu Ali) 17:59, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The publications of the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics are all available online in Hebrew and English. They do not give a figure for settlers in Hebron, but merely a global number for settlers in "Judea and Samaria" (ie excluding occupied East Jerusalem) of 255,600 on 31 December 2006.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics does offer a breakdown of settler numbers by locality. The PCBS statistical report Number of Settlers in the Settlements and Palestinian Population in the West Bank,by Governorate/Region, 2006 found 551,746 Palestinians and 14,801 Jewish settlers in 19 settlements in the Hebron Governorate; a breakdown finds that 7801 of these were in 18 rural settlements, and 7000 in one urban settlement. I can't find anywhere an authoritative figure for the number of settlers in the town itself. --RolandR 00:34, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Goliath again, and Iardanos

Hi. Thanks for your contribution to the Goliath article (which I've turned from point-form to prose, but without sacrificing anything.) Just a question abt Iardanos, the river involved in Nestor's battle: according to you, the name is not known to Greek topography; but I did a google-search, and it seems there's a modern Iardanos in Elis, just north of Pylos, and an ancient one in Crete - see this and this. I assume your source is the Helicon book, but are you sure this is right? Just curious. PiCo 14:32, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Good grief!, dear PiCo. Terrible lapse, inexcusable. West almost never gets things like this wrong, I, one of his constant readers do. I was misled by his remark 'The event is located at a river Iardanos (135, contradicting 133) which later commentators could not find .'(p.370). I then checked the Greek and Leaf and Bayfield's old commentary (1895) 1908 vol.1 p.413, and read 'The geography of the passage seems confused...nothing is knwn of a Keladon or Iardanos near the town (of Elis), nor apparently are there any rivers than could correspond', without double checking Geoffrey Kirk's recent edition (1990, vol 2 p.252) since it was on the other side of the house and not at hand. In that volume one reads:-

'The setting of this encounter between Pylians and Arcadians is described with notable vagueness. Pheia is said to be on or by two different rivers, Keladon and Iardanos (of which Keladon might be a tributary, Ameis-Hentze); yet classical Pheia was not on any river worth the name, neither was a Keladon or Iardanos known in the Peloponnese. According to Strabo 8.248 some thought the town was Khaa and the river Akidas. Aristarchus, on the other hand, took κeladontito be an epithet like okurooi, with a change of case by the time their noun, Iardanou, finally appears in 135. This is unacceptable, even if one suspects that rooi keladonti (cf. roos keladon at 21.16) lies at the root of the problem. As for Iardanos, the same Iardanou amphi reethra denotes a river in West Crete at Od. 3.292 (see S.West ad loc.), and the poet may have repeated the name almost automatically - though a river as such is not required by the context.'

Stephanie West (M.L.West's wife) in her edition of the Odyssey (Oxford 1988 vol.1 p.178)says of the Iardanos. 'the name is sometimes said to be Semitic, representing Jordan; but the same formula is used at Iliad vii.135 of an unidentifiable river in Elis.'

Rechecking now, I note that ML West has a note to p.370 where he remarks on three rivers by that name, the two in the Odyssey and Iliad, and another located in Lydia. I'll have to adjust my note to Goliath (or you can if you like) to correct the oversight. My apologies, and congratulations on your commendable lynx-eyed checking of the text. Regards Nishidani 11:33, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Nafez Assaily

I deleted Nafez Assaily because at first glance I couldn't see anything indicating a concrete assertion of notability per WP:BIO. If you have some reliable secondary sources attesting to that, then I'd be happy to restore the article. --Coredesat 18:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The Massacre in Maalot

Yes maybe my writing looks like the text of a novel because that is what it is from. I am in the process of compleing a novel on the Massacre in Ma'alot. As a long time,31 year resident of Ma'alot, I have gained deep insight into the background of the terrible incident. As a long time member of the Civil Guard here I have access to police reports and logs. As a journalist I have had access to notes from the original articles of the, Jerusalem Post, Ha'Aretz, Ma'ariv, IP and UPI. It is my stance to to tell the truth and only the truth based on fact as a contributing journalist, military analyist and freelancer. To lie or give false information would be to belittle the memory of the martyred children As to what happened on the night of the terrorist break in and attack on the school I have first hand eyewitness testimony. I interviewed the Druse driver of the van that was wounded by Lini, and I have written what he saw that night just as I described in the article. As to the breaking into block 134 by the terrorists before murdering the Cohen family. I have read the Israeli police records of interviews carried out after the murder in adddition to which I have talked with neighbors who witnessed the immediate aftermath. I talked with the son, who lives on a nearby Moshav of the elderly gentleman who lived on the third floor who refused to open the door to the terrorists,thereby saving his life. I had talks with Menachem Pessach who was the first police officer to arrive on the scene with the commander of the police station, Shabbati Alon located near Tarshicha and Moshav Meona. As to the children being in Gadna they were not "paramilitary". Gadna is more like being in the Eagle Scouts in the USA. By the way as an Eagle Scout from Mountain Brook Alabama, my home town we learned how to fire weapons and to do other things similar to a paramilitary organization.Also knowing the quality of anti-Jewish hatred and anti-Israel felling expressed by many. There are those who represent humanity for the sake of truth and peace. As I told another editor of Misplaced Pages. Hatred will not solve the problems of our area. Only the mutual desire for peace and the end of blind hatred will a real peace be achieved. Sincerely yours, Yakov Marks —Preceding unsigned comment added by YakovM (talk • contribs) 17:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Dear Yakov, I don't think you need detail the considerable amount of work you have done in researching the background of that tragedy. I had no doubt, when I read the page, that the person who wrote it had an intimate sense of the event and its immediate environment. Others went in there and raised the issue of its being Original Research, and if you look at my response to this, you will see that I asked for some leniency on the matter, because, though undoubtedly this page draws off original research (and therefore violates one of the pillars of Wiki policy), I personally do not think editors should use this as a pretext to wipe out the page or suppress the work done on it. To do so would, certainly, in this case, be a political act, tantamount to suppressing reportage of an incident on sheer technical grounds, because it puts into a harsh light a cause, such as that of the Palestinians, that an editor might wish to defend. I am one such editor, and yet I hope my remarks have helped to keep the page, as you wrote it, and I edited it (referring to my revision of the grammar and style), on Wiki, against those who would throw it out by an appeal to OR.

The only significant edit in terms of content which I did add to it was the reference to Said's book, which did contextualize the slaughter in a chain of events in that area, namely, the napalming of Lebanon in the preceding weeks. I myself have no way of ascertaining, unlike yourself, who live in Ma'alot, whether Said's report is true. However, he was both a Palestinian, and academic of worldwide standing and a man of some integrity in trying to ascertain the truth as he saw it - bitterly disliked and often challenged as a RS on Wiki, in my view simply because his books are written from a Palestinian perspective. I did not add that remark out of malice, nor, as some have argued, in order to diminish or justify the terrorism conducted by Palestinians at Ma'alot. I added it because I believe there is a general tendency in Wiki articles to (a) contextualize Jewish violence or acts of terror as responses to, or reprisals for Palestinian terror (b) where Palestinians have conducted terroristic acts and massacres, to deprive this of context and give the impression that someone Palestinian/Arab terror is ontological, i.e., in the very nature of their existential or cultural or ethnic being, and devoid of any motivation, or political historical rationale. I.e., there is a troubling tendency to slant the whole tragic history of Israeli-Palestinian relations in terms of victim/victimizer. Terrorism is a deplorable and despicable political act, and should never find warrant or sanction in the conscience of humanity. But terrorism, however revolting, must be understood as not ontological, i.e. an expression of some ahistorical temperament, but as flowing from a congeries of complex chains of cause and motivation, such that the trip-wires of self-restraint and humanity are snapped, and the innocent become the primary targets of a conflict. States can employ terrorism, and yet be absolved, with their agents, of that charge because states are defined, classically, as entities which have a monopoly on the exercise of territorial violence in exchange for their concession of security, rights and redress from the citizenry they both disarm and are obliged to protect. The victims of state terror, especially the stateless, if they react by similar means, have no such vindication for the violence they engage in, because they lack the sanction of an institutional legal status that might entitle them to justify their acts in terms of raisons d'état. Ma'alot is justly remembered for the savagery of its terrorism. Many similar episodes that befell Palestinians aren't even registered on our historical consciousness, though, as Benny Morris has uncovered, some dozens of incidents in which scores of innocent civilians were machine-gunned took place during the war of 48, and certainly did not end there. Ma'alot is not an isolated incident. These things have happened also to many other schools and villages in the area, only they are justified as military operations. To note this is not to justify Ma'alot. It is simply to say that if one is horrified by Ma'alot, one should be horrified by all incidents of this kind, independently of the ethnic origin of the victims. Regards Nishidani 18:14, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Hello

		The Purple Star
		In recognition of the insults and other damage you received. As I think we all know by now, there is occasionally a price to be paid for acting with integrity. Thank you for having done so, despite the difficulties involved. John Carter 17:24, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

There are now evidently some results available regarding a related matter here. Thought you might like to know. Oh, yes, and on a completely unrelated matter, I have this seemingly random list of pages I would welcome your perhaps looking over, if you are so inclined. Joses, James the Just, John the Baptist, Pauline Christianity, Nazarene (sect), James Tabor, Robert Eisenman, Herod the Great, Essenes, Gospel of the Ebionites, Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera, Clopas, Mandaeism, Historicity of Jesus. There's no real rush on any of those, of course. Thanks again for all your efforts. John Carter 17:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

• Actually, I can't see how you could have let anyone down, given the fact that apparently a decision has been reached, as I linked to above. It may take awhile for it to be announced, however. And without your input before the recent discussion elsewhere, I sincerely doubt the apparent decision now reached would have been made. You have no reason to be ashamed of matters beyond your control. John Carter 18:24, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Ebionites

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. The Arbitration Committee found that MichaelCPrice (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has engaged in sustained edit-warring and is subject to an editing restriction for one year, he is limited to one revert per page per week and must discuss any content changes on the article's talk page. Should any user subject to an editing restriction in this case violate that restriction, that user may be briefly blocked, up to a week in the event of repeated violations. After 5 blocks, the maximum block shall increase to one month. For the Arbitration Committee, Cbrown1023 talk 04:56, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

National home

Hi Nishidani,
I am not sure to understand what you wrote on my page but to be clear :

• those who were against a jewish national home in Palestine was against Jews live there or have recognised rights to live there and so were expecting to chase them.
• those who opposed against a jewish state was opposed to the fact this national home were

British and all those who wrote those texts were aware of that. This is explained by scholars who specialized on Zionism.
I don't have find to what exactly Mufti was opposed but if it is chosen to write thathe was opposed the a jewish national home, it means he was opposed the the presence of Jews in Palestine.
The consequences are important. Alithien 16:07, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Cher ami,

I changed the original text 'state' into national home for the Jewish people in order to reflect the linguistic reality of these times, and the statements to which Husayni and other Arabs were opposed. It distresses me that this small edit made for historical precision has now been overturned. My training tells me correct historiography uses the juridical and political language of the period under analysis, and avoids retrospective recasting of the terminology.

Simply put, the word 'state' is not used in early documents, at least down to 1937, as far as I know. One reads:

(1)'His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, (and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine)' Balfour Declaration-

(2)'The tension which has prevailed from time to time in Palestine is mainly due to apprehensions, which are entertained both by sections of the Arab and by sections of the Jewish population. These apprehensions, so far as the Arabs are concerned are partly based upon exaggerated interpretations of the meaning of the Declaration favouring the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, made on behalf of His Majesty's Government on 2nd November, 1917.

Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that Palestine is to become "as Jewish as England is English." His Majesty's Government regard any such expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they at any time contemplated, as appears to be feared by the Arab delegation, the disappearance or the subordination of the Arabic population, language, or culture in Palestine.In this connection it has been observed with satisfaction that at a meeting of the Zionist Congress, the supreme governing body of the Zionist Organization, held at Carlsbad in September, 1921, a resolution was passed expressing as the official statement of Zionist aims the determination of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people on terms of unity and mutual respect, and together with them to make the common home into a flourishing community.' British White Paper of June 1922

(3)'in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, (it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country)'.Palestine Mandate of League of Nations 1922

(4)'In Palestine, Great Britain had undertaken, in the face of the world, not only to permit the establishment of a Jewish National Home, but to encourage to a certain extent the creation and development of that Home'. Mandatory Committee 1930

(5)'It has been urged that the expression "a national home for the Jewish people" offered a prospect that Palestine might in due course become a Jewish State or Commonwealth. His Majesty's Government do not wish to contest the view, which was expressed by the Royal Commission, that the Zionist leaders at the time of the issue of the Balfour Declaration recognised that an ultimate Jewish State was not precluded by the terms of the Declaration. But, with the Royal Commission, His Majesty's Government believe that the framers of the Mandate in which the Balfour Declaration was embodied could not have intended that Palestine should be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population of the country. British White Paper of 1939

As you can readily see, (a) the standard official term throughout the period 1917-1939 is 'national home for the Jewish People/Jewish national home' (b) The distinction between a 'state' and a 'national home' was considered subsequent to 1922, as crucial, for obvious political reasons. A 'state' for the Jewish people would have meant the exclusion of the Arab majority from representation, rendering the British exercise of the Mandate impossible. A 'national home' in Palestine did not overtly threaten the Arab majority with eventual dispossession. The tension you will note between the Shaw Report and the Mandatory Commission Report on the 1929 riots derives from this.

The political elites of the area had several things in their sights. They were influenced by Turkey's revolution under Ataturk, by MacMahon's explicit agreement to give the area east of Damascus to an eventual Arab state, by the de facto cancellation of that promise in the Balfour declaration, by rising Pan-Arabic nationalism, fueled by both British interests during the war against the Ottoman empire (Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom documents the betrayal), and the American school in Beirut. The elements for opposing the Balfour Plan were a mixture of these influences, and when immigration increased hostilities increased, not because of antisemitism but because, effectively, the Balfour Declaration was seen as a threat to local Arab dominance of what was overwhelmingly land in Arab title. Al Husayni is just one of many figures, beloved by all because he is such an easy figure to finger as the 'culprit', (as if, were he not to have been born, Arabs and Jews would have lived in wonderful symbiosis, as the latter yielded their land to the former) and pinning him down as the 'leader', given his later Nazi associations, means dismissing what was a real and legitimate movement of opposition to Zionist colonisation. All serious historians I know recognize that. The Balfour declaration, Britain quickly understood, had formally enmeshed the Empire into a massive quagmire. That is why they, in this period, backtracked, and adopted a policy of effectively promoting a 'national home for the Jewish people' coterminous with a home for the Palestinians.

Regards Nishidani 18:50, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Massacre categorization

Hi, I have re-categorized some of the massacres you tagged as Massacres in Palestine as Massacres in Israel. Israel was created on May 15, 1948, and anything after that date should not be under Massacres in Palestine, especially considering the fact that there is no such country, while the category in is 'Massacres by country'. -- Ynhockey 15:18, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

By extension, articles about villages, such as Eilabun, should not be categorized as massacres. Feel free to create separate articles or sections, such as Eilabun massacre, and the like. Basically, there should be no articles in the category Massacres in Palestine strictly other than massacres committed between 1917 and May 15, 1948. Since then there was no such country, and massacres committed in Gaza would be under Massacres in Egypt, while ones committed in the West Bank would be Massacres in Jordan. -- Ynhockey 17:22, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually you got some of those recategorizations wrong. The date for Israel's creation refers to the borders as established by the UN partition plan in 1947. In the subsequent war, much fighting occurred outside those borders, until an armistice was drawn, and new boundaries determined. Some incidents occurring outside the UN sanctioned borders do not refer to Israel as it is today constituted, but to the areas outside Israel's May 15 boundaries, in areas marked out for an Arab state. Some of these areas were later incorporated into Israel (1967). Your judgements on categories appear to ignore these temporal distinctions. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 16:16, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

This does not change the fact that there was never a country called Palestine, and anything which can remotely be called a country existed under the British mandate from 1917 until May 14-15, 1948. Territorial distinction hardly matters in the context of the 1948 war. About Jordan and Egypt, I was referring to the Kafr Qasim Massacre, which happenned well after the 1948 war and was on the international border of Israel and Jordan, and not Palestine. -- Ynhockey 18:34, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Note to self. For the record then, there was never a country called Palestine. All of that Zionist literature I've been reading from Herzl to Morris about migration to 'Palestine' is a Borgesian fiction, and aliyah never took place. Gogol would have loved this.

Still, I find it fascinating to collect these quotes. Who forges them? On what anvils of primordial hasbara nescience are they hammered into shape? Whatever, I hope Ynhockey hastens to delete the Palestine page. No use talking to the chap, evidently. After all his geography is so shoddy that he is convinced Hebron is in Israel 15:10, 19 November 2007 Ynhockey (rev - the massacre was in israel, not palestine)Nishidani (talk) 18:32, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi Nishidani,

When you meet such guys, just ask them how was named the Jerusalem Post before 1948... ;-) Ceedjee (talk) 20:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Indeed.

I am not optimistic for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict where politicians will have to manage all their fanatics and explain them that what they said was only for propaganda purposes and that it is time to negociations...

If even wikipedia is an ideological battleground, I don't think they will ever succeed in closing the Pandora box. Ceedjee (talk) 10:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I agree, but I think it is in Israel's interest, rather than the Palestinians', not to close the Pandora Box. My reasoning is simple. So far they have all of the land West of the Jordan in their hands. Any negotiation means losing the heartland of Eretz Israel to Palestinians. The United Nations gave the non-biblical sector to the Jews, and the Bible sector to the Arabs, and as long as Israel's identity is confused with Jewish identity, to negotiate a peace which gives up 'Judea' and 'Samaria' is politically and emotionally impossible. Therefore, it is logical to keep a state of tension, and not resolve the issue, since that way, Arab terrorism will continue to justify Israel's retention of what is, under international law, Palestinian land earmarked in good part for an autonomous Arab state in 1947. Israel has the 4th most powerful army in the world, the Palestinians have to ask for jeeps and ammunition just to patrol their shanty towns, so there is not only no reason to negotiate seriously, but every strategic and political reason for only pretending to. In the meantime, however, one struggles to get the documentary story straight. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 14:24, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Peace has always been the interest of the weakest.

Since end of XXth, it is also the ideology of the wiser.

but let's forget wisdom in this conflict. It doesn't weight and let's come back to the weakest :

The weakest is not always the one without the tanks and the bombers.

Israel has so much won against her enemy that Palestinians have come to a status where they have nothing to lose while Israeli society is rich for most of it, some squarred km^2 have less value than living in peace (ie without fear) with their neighbours (I think less for moral wisdom value than for self-comfort values).

It is not clear to determine today who is the weakest in the context of asymetric wars.

But what is sure is that you cannot make live together the former jewish orthodox settler of Gaza expelled by Ariel Sharon, the young former-USSR 20-year-old nationalist who had never heard about Palestinians 5 years ago and the little-little-children of a former Palestinian of Jaffa who has nothing else to do than working for Hamas. Ceedjee (talk) 11:50, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

My friend, you say 'wisdom' doesn't weigh. Wisdom is not to be expected in politics, but common sense is, and common sense and long term interests require that Israel simply stop its century long drive for all of the land. It has 78%, and the remaining 22% is, under international law, Palestinian territory. One can prevaricate for decades, but it is simple as that. But commonsense, as someone remarked, is rather uncommon, and rarer as the years slip by. Nishidani (talk) 17:41, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Another thing: I would have absolutely no problem with categorizing massacres in 1947-UN-declared Arab areas as 'massacres in Palestine', if only that category wasn't a part of the category 'massacres by country', which creates a problem seing as how there was never a country called Palestine. The British mandate could somewhat constitute as a country, but the moment the mandate ended, you can no longer call it that. There has been at least a declared 'country' called Palestine since 1988, without any sovereign territory, but that of course has nothing to do with 1948. If you're so sincerely opposed to categorizing these articles under 'massacres in Israel', feel free to remove this method of categorization entirely. In fact, I oppose it myself, and feel that it was wrong to categorized disputed massacres in the area by country. -- Ynhockey 19:20, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Corrections

Thank you VERY - VERY - VERY much :-). Ceedjee (talk) 14:25, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Samaritans

Hey Nishdani. Thanks for your note. Please see this link which I just posted on the talk page. I don't know if that answers your concerns. It would be good through to look into the issue furtyher for the Samaritans article itself. Tiamut 20:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the Ireton reference. I'll try to take a look at it tonight, but an off-hand observation from the title, it seems his focus is rather more on the Israeli Samaritan population. It would be nice to have a more comprehensive perspective or one more specifically focused on the Palestinian Samaritan community. The founding of the Holon community is relatively recent after all. I recall that in an article (which I will try to relocate) it noted that many Samaritans had adopted Israeli citizenship simply because of the hardships of life under occupation and the social benefits (and added rights) they could enjoy as Israeli citizens. Thanks for the source though. Tiamut 15:11, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

terrorism

There is more room here for this. Nothing to deal with Ilan Pappe. Ceedjee (talk) 17:58, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

---

Concerning "terrorist", I think this issue has been solved by wikipedia :

There are no terrorist, no freedom fighters but only activists.

Ceedjee (talk) 11:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Well,Ceedjee , I beg to differ. Terrorist is as terrorist does. I don't think Misplaced Pages is a reliable guide to this or most other delicate questions. To use the word 'activist' of whoever shoots for political purposes is the most execrable of euphemisms. The problem is not to define who is and is not a terrorist, but to explain why the terrorist, state or stateless 'actor', as the case may be, does what he does.Nishidani (talk) 11:46, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree you disagree ;-)

But Nishidani you will never succeed in making the difference between a freedom fighter and a terroriste except in stating that they are synonyms because all terrorists also killed enemy soldiers and all freedom fighters also killed enemy children.

(that is another issue that should be discussed somewhere else but there is clear policy about these words in wp). Ceedjee (talk) 11:58, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Ceedjee. Of course there are differences. Nazis killed the innocent in reprisals, and the resistance killed troops, they did not, as in my village, line up 11 people, 6 brothers, and shoot them because one of their own had been killed by the resisting population. You've forgotten, I'm afraid, the old distinction between a 'resistance' and an 'occupying power'. The former defended their territory and people, the latter invaded another territory and its peoples, and used terror to repress the natural resistance. Nishidani (talk) 13:48, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Nishidani, there are many other exemples to take into consideration.

It is a little bit easy to deal with people who killed Nazis after they performed atrocities... Yes, 99,9% of people will agree that this was not terrorism to kill these Nazis.

But that is rather the exception in that "struggle".

What about freedom fighters who raped women at the liberation because she had slept with Germans... Isn't this a form or revenger or terror ? And what about the carpet bombing of Dresden ? Isn't this state terrorim ? And if few/some/many/all historians consider Hiroshima saved many lifes, what do they think about Nagasaki ? That is not as simple as you claim.

There is no room for moral appreciation here. The rule is that the activist who wins become a freedom fighter while he is a terrorist when he loses, at a few exceptions, such as 9/11 or Nazis.

But for what concerns Irgun - Hamas - Haganah and/or Hizbollah ? Good luck to get the "moral" consensus for their actions.

Ceedjee (talk) 15:20, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

A resistance is a resistance, people fighting on their native soil against violent intruders. I know of 'resistance' fighters who exploited the movement for settling personal scores: in that case they were both part of a resistance and, when acting for personal revenge, plain murderers or terrorists. Some things lend themselves more to Venn diagrams, than to neat categories. I know of die-hard fascists of the Salo (Salaud) Republic whose lives were saved by Jews. That does not mean that, in a general analysis, I withhold judgement on the profoundly antisemitic nature of Salo fascists. I can only hint at a reply because the issues you raised are not things that lend themselves to an exchange of opinions simplified for rapid discussion. Regards Nishidani (talk) 17:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

---

In your country (sur ton sol), he would be a freedom fighter and outside your country he would be a terrorist... Is this what you mean ?
And you think one can be both when he acts for personnal reasons...
I don't agree. That is theory and it doens't withstand precise case and practive...
Chose any out of Haganah/Irgun/Hamas/Hizbollah and tell me if they are terrorist or freedom fighters. They are/were both and none of them. Ceedjee (talk) 18:00, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The distinction is between a general movement, and specific 'incidents'. A 'resistance' is a general movement, whose violence is judged in terms of a fight against an occupying power. This is actually allowed in international law. That terroristic acts, of pure violence against civilians, are undertaken by either a resistance group generally, or occasionally, or by fringe subgroups, or individuals of the resistance, does not mean therefore that the 'resistance' movement itself is intrinsically terroristic, as contemporary propaganda likes us to think. Resistance movements, if they are successfully and brutally repressed over a long time, and the horizon of 'revolutionary' hope dwindles into despair, can easily disintegrate into pure terroristic movements. Indeed, one strategy of an occupying power is to force them to so degenerate, so that their otherwise legitimate claims to be freedom fighters are destroyed in the public eye by examples of pure unfocused violence. This happened in Algeria, and is happening in Palestine.

Both Hamas and Hizbollah have been democratically elected, and therefore, like it or not, they are legitimized in free elections, something that neither the Irgun or the Stern gang ever were. Both Hamas and Hizbollah started out with dual functions when in opposition, as Islamic social assistance societies and community defence organizations (the Shia in South Lebanon, the non-secular part of Gazan society). Both were created under conditions of occupation by an alien and very powerful military force, the IDF in its invasion of Lebanon, and idem the conquest of the Gaza strip. Both have military arms, and both have conducted operations that can, but not always, be classified as 'terroristic'. Both are relatively rational actors in that they are both hard-line parties and, at the same time, parties that have respected negotiations.

Neither Haganah nor the Irgun grew up under occupation of this kind. They were built up as private ethnic organisations to defend Jewish lives and interests in a land that was administered by the British who often had less than 1000 policemen to patrol the whole territory. Haganah did not emerge as a resistance movement against an occupying power, but as a defensive force to protect Zionist encampments in a land that was being populated by immigrants. The Irgun was again a splinter group, like Lehi/Stern which treated the legitimate mandatory power as an enemy equal to the Arabs, who, in their vision, had to be cleansed of the land, and were, from the beginning, terroristic in nature, terror being a strategy, inspired by the example of Michael Collins' IRA. But whereas the IRA fitted the classic pattern of an insurgent local force representing the military side of a battle for decolonialization, the Irgun, and later, the Haganah became a force for colonization. Nearly all the Irgun/Stern leaders were foreigners to Palestine, often from Eastern Europe, with no experience of civil society or democratic institutions. Indeed, their history is full of fascist temptations, the Irgun training at Civitavecchia (Stendhal's town!) or with the intensely antisemitic Polish army (as in Begin's case). What conclusion do we derive from this? Three of Israel's PMs were ex-terrorists, with a long-track record for targeted assassinations, and these three were the ones most intensely interested in expelling Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, and they did so by preaching endlessly about 'terrorism', when their own example in the 40s and 50s provided the model, unfortunately, which both Hizbollah and Hamas have been tempted to imitate (because it was successful). Not to note this influence, the fact that Palestinian and Lebanese groups have often imitated (disastrously) the cynical Israeli terroristic model for achieving statehood is to miss most of the hypocrisy of the Western commentariat on the Middle East. regards Nishidani (talk) 19:07, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok.

• You gave in details all the arguments why Hamas and Hizbollah are freedom fighters
• You underline at the end that Palestinian and Lebanese groupes have often imitated the cynical Israeli terroristic model.

I assume you referred to Hamas and Hizbollah.

So, even if you explain why they did, these freedom fighters used terrorism...

About Haganah and Irgoun.

They were indeed defense movements and they indeed used terrorism.

Originally, they Haganah was created in 1921, just after the violence in north Galilea, the riots of 1920 and 1921... Up to here, no violence from them and no offensive.

After the riots of 1929 and again violence vs Jews, yishuv leaders quarrelled : some stating it was time to go from the defensive versus arabs to the offensive versus Arabs and versus British who didn't respect their obligation to protect them in Palestine. The latter founded Haganah Beth that will become Irgoun.

All these were convinced they were fighting for the freedom of their nation in a land where they had the right to live (due to their origin and due to the league of nation decision).

There is no much terrorism there.

After it is another story...

Ceedjee (talk) 21:15, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

'I assume you referred to Hamas and Hizbollah.' No, Lebanon's various groups, since 1968 when Israel began its systematic assault on that country's Palestinian refugees, were fractured into many groups.

I don't like the term 'freedom fighters', since it is a rhetorically-charged badge. Many such soi-disant groups are fighting to impose ideas that have nothing to do with freedom, or which would suppress the freedom of other parallel groups.

Irgun was never a defensive movement. From its inception it was a shadow group breaking with the Haganah over political and ideological differences, and quickly began a positive role as a provocative terrorist militia, identifying with the model Mussolini had established.

That they were convinced they were fighting for their nation does not alter the fact that, objectively, they were fighting to expel the Arab population from what was an overwhelmingly Arab land.There is a clear distinction between a militia formed to defend a wave of immigrants who aim to take over a foreign land, and a militia arising in a land to defend it from expropriation by foreigners. None of this of course means that morality stood by one side or the other of necessity. One of the earlier problems of Arab insurgency, for example, was that it weas tethered to traditional clan and regional gangs, and had difficulty assuming a coherent structure as a genuine national counter-insurgency. Nishidani (talk) 09:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Here above, you mixed periods when stating Hizbollah and Hamas had been democratically elected and that then defended against Israeli invader. It doesn't matter but there is the same problem when you talk about Irgun and Haganah.

Concerning Irgun members when they started to become "terrorists", objectively, they only answered to arab and british violence (in 1929 and in 1937) and at that time, these people didn't intend to chase Arabs. They simply didn't realize Arabs deserve rights; a sort of unhumanity equivalent to those of these British who talked about the Jew and the Arab races, that humanity that give birth to fascist ideologies, that unhumanity of European and Western countries who only gave right of vote to women in 1948 or who only de-colonized in the '50's and the '60s. But like Balfour was not antisemite, these guys were not racists. They were "like everybody was at that time".

The only matter is to judge or analyse the past with a current morale value scale.

During the 1948 War, most of fighters were not immigrants. They were Sabras. They fight for the land where they were born even if their parents were immigrants. I know what was the Zionist project about (what is and was seen as positive ; what is seens and was seen as negative) but I don't see any difference between the young arab and the young jewish Palestinian who fought in Palestine.

You cannot objectively find a freedom fighter resistant and a terrorist; a guilty and an innocent; a victim or a killer... Both feared the others, both had xenophobe feelings and both wanted the other not to be there, none of them had more right than the other to live on that land planet and it seem those who could have wanted to share the place didn't convince the others...

Anything else is morality and judgements and only depends of the conviction, the feeling of good and right and the education of the one who judge.

All politicians, all old commanders or young fighters, all workers, all peasants, all they fought for what they believed was right, with their brain and their heart and the judgement of their acts only rely on morale value (on the contrary of what you write).

Do you know the jewish French singer JJ Goldman ? Her mother fought in the resistance against Nazis. In this song he tries to explain that nobody could say what he would have done if he was born in 1917 in Leidenstadt (the city of the dolor).

Ceedjee (talk) 10:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

We are back to the old difference. A century ago, 90% of that land was dwelt in by Arab Palestinians. A foreign government said to another foreign people, you can have it. The inevitable logic of history occurred, violence, occupation, expulsion. As it is, Israel has 78% of the land, and is settling large parts of the 22% remaining. It's time to call it a day, and simply stick behind the 67 lines, and indeed, perhaps have the courage to apologize, as Willy Brandt did in Poland, and today the Australian Prime Minister Mr Rudd has declared he will shortly do to the aboriginal population. Courage and humility in the powerful are what is required. Not battles over history. France had that courage in Algeria, and Israel is only being asked to accept, for a definitive peace, not withdrawal elsewhere, but simply behind the legal lines of its statehood. Nishidani (talk) 11:29, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe.

A century ago, A millenium ago. All this is equivalent. All these have died for a long time.

The only matter was the difference between a terrorist and a resistant.

And there is no one because this is only based on morale value, point of view. And nothing is never as simple as "one has legitimate rights to kill while the other hasn't.".

Ceedjee (talk) 11:18, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I have difficulty following your reasoning. Language makes distinctions, and a set of distinctions that are important are between a terrorist and a resistance fighter, between an occupier and an occupied people. The distinction is semantic, and the implications are moral (though I see you are enamoured of the Athenian logic in the Melian debates), but also legal, since they are upheld by international conventions subscribed to by all civilized nations. In saying, as your last line implies, that in self-defence my right to kill an assailant is no different from the right of my assailant to kill me for whatever reasons he may have, you have documented a, to put it mildly, fascinating point of view, Ceedjee.Nishidani (talk) 12:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi,
Concerning the set of distinctions between a terrorist and a resistance fighter, I am still waiting for them and I don't think it is a good direction because Hamas and Hezbollah are considered to be terrorists by all western countries on bases of juridictionnal issues (and actions) while, you -I think- don't share that mind given all you wrote about them was that they were legitimately elected.
This is once more a good exemple that the terrorist of one if the resistance fighter of the other one (don't both these groupes call them "resistors" in Arab ? : see this short stuff I wrote on wp:fr : fr:résistance islamique)
I don't say that in self-defence my right to kill an assailant is no different from the right of my assailant to kill me for whatever reasons he may have.
I say noboby as such a right to kill.
And I would add this is even more important when there is no real defender or assailant (as in most conflicts) but when there are only two sides that fight against each others with equal rights or no-rignts, such as in the Palestinian-Israli conflict. Ceedjee (talk) 12:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

You will have to get your facts right before reasoning on these issues- Hezbollah is not' considered a terrorist organization by most Western countries. The European Union specifically excludes them from that category. Hamas uses terror, and is legitimately elected, just as Israel uses terror, and is legitimately elected. One can be both, you know, and being democratically elected and being terroristic are not mutually exclusive categories. International politics and the vagaries of political definitions obtained by lobbying are never good guides to clear-cut conceptual analysis.

I'm afraid you consider the Israeli-Palestinian conflict's issues unique, in that in all regards there is parity, equal rights if rights are the issue, equal amorality if rights can be disposed of. It is all resolved by a simple amoral conflict between equal parties, whose logic is that of classical physics. In eliminating the differences between the 4th military power in the world, occupying a small piece of foreign land, and treating the 'natives', who for the most part are disarmed, like sh*t, the equation fits nicely into place. But humanity, unless you think like Bazarov, is not a set of billiard balls. In Hebron settlers, backed by soldiers strut with guns, while Palestinian children, aged 5 years old, have their school-kits examined for bombs. The former steal, the latter are stolen from. The former kick and spit, the latter are kicked and spat upon. Fine parity.Nishidani (talk) 13:54, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

See L6 and L7 here :

This is a resolution of the EU Parliament but I was not aware the position had been modified, particularly after attacks vs French UN soldiers.

You mix everything in jumping from Israel today to the Zionism in the past and from the topic of the defense to the topic of terror.

Israel today would be the agressor because Zionist 100 years ago colonized Palestine but about the suicide attacks of Palestinians nowaydays ? This is what legitimaze them ???

Israel is indeed far more stronger than the Palestinians and what ISrael do with Palestinians is not acceptable. No more and no less than suicide bombers do or did and no more or less as the 1920 Palestine riots, the 1921 ones, the 1929 ones, the murders of Jews, the Irgun bombs in market, the expulsions of Palestinians, the massacres of the '48 war, Qybia and the remainings, Black September, ...

If somebody has the power to defeat his adversary ennemy, I don't see how you can convince him not to not use all he can do. Ceedjee (talk) 15:43, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Your link does not change the facts, which are that the European union does not classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

I don't legitimize terror. I classify similar acts in similar categories.

The present cannot be understood without the past. To understand the past does not legitimize whatever happens in the present.

The simple fact you will not face is that Israel rose from the colonization by Europeans predominantly, of an overwhelmingly Arab country. Just as France colonized Algeria, Italy Libya ertc. That the usurpers met with fierce resistance was to be expected.

The one area which Israel is endeavouring to colonize, but which is not part of Israel, is the West Bank (it gave up on Gaza). Those lands are colonized and occupied militarily by Israel, in defiance not only of 90 UN resolutions but of International Law (2004). To maintain the occupation Israel uses state terror, and this in turn engenders resistance of various types, one of which is terroristic. What is the result of the 34 years of effective peace (no war) between Israel and her neighbours, Egypt, Syria, Jordan? - the creeping seizure of Palestinian lands, and a regime of state-theft and impoverishment which led to two popular uprisings to protest this expropriation. What do you expect, that Palestinians prove to have a high morality of self-restraint under humiliation and colonialism than any other people in history?

In the past three years, terrorism from Palestinian sources has waned significantly. Yet Israel maintains high pressure with state terrorism, not to eliminate terror, but, I think, to provoke it, for terroristic threats from Palestinian groups are the only justification it can bring towards the world for holding onto, and stealing, land that can never be Israel's under international law. I receive detailed daily reports of what occurs in several areas of the Occupied Territories, and most Israeli actions consist of everything from harassment to IDF-back land theft, to outright terror. I do not expect a terrorized population to be totally devoid of people whose antipathy and hate arrives to such a pitch of intensity that they are willing themselves to resort to terror. It is not the past that interests me, but the use of the past to justify the present. Nishidani (talk) 16:51, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Good Evening,

considère qu'il existe des preuves irréfutables de l'action terroriste du Hezbollah et qu'il convient que le Conseil prenne toutes les mesures qui s'imposent pour mettre un terme à cette action;

Personnal translation :

European Parliament considers they are irrefutable proofs of the terrorist action of Hizbollah and that the Counsil has to take all measure to put an end to this.

Ok. You are right. EU doesn't classify Hizballah as a terrorist organisation.

But its parliement voted full power to the Counsil to stop its "alleged" terrorist actions...

Hey ! If it was a wikipedia talk page, maybe I owuld have problem with WP:UNCIVIL due to no respect of WP:assume good faith ;-)

...

I will read next and answer next later.

Have a nice evening and/or day (I don't know if you are in the EU or in the USA or in New Zealand ;-)...

Ceedjee (talk) 17:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

No need to worry. I did read the whole document. It cannot be adduced, as you recognize, to support the allegation that the EU classifies Hizbollah as a terrorist organisation. Even were it to do so, it would have little use in terms of conceptual classification, for, to repeat, political definitions are of convenience, done for reasons of strategy and shared interests, and are thus normally useless, as most academic works on the theory of terror admit.

Groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, which strive for impartiality, classified many acts by Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel recently as terroristic. I live mainly in Italy. A bientot.Nishidani (talk) 17:14, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Help for English issue

Is he right :  ? Ceedjee (talk) 07:47, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

On 'Mandatory' it is correct that the word is ambiguous. But if Mandatory (with link) is spelled with a capital M, it is readily distinguished as the specialized adjective referring to a Mandate, from the word 'mandatory', which means 'conveying a command'. Actually, in these illiterate times, many forget that the noun 'Mandatary' used to exist, referring to an organization or nation that has received, and undertaken to execute, a Mandate. Regards Nishidani (talk) 10:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

RfC: On the use of the term "occupied"

I had to write a "neutral" summary, which is why it came out kind of non-brained ;) Thanks for the comments, though! Cheers, pedro gonnet - talk - 29.11.2007 11:25

P.S. You might want to hire User:MiszaBot III to keep your talk-page tidy... Some of these threads are more than a year old! ;)

December 2007

Nishidani (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

I have had no evidence presented as to where and on what page I broke the 3RR rule, no warning, no link to clarify what apparently is a totally arbitrary gesture of the unaccountable exercise of administrative fiat. All I can offer is the extended analysis of my own incomprehension at this extraordinary measure on my talk page below. The only surmise I am capable of is that the administrator is acting on misleading information about my editorial practice, for I haven't to my knowledge violated the 3RR rule recently, and of two prior instances, one was due to lack of knowledge of the rule, the other to a single, and culpable inadvertency in dealing with an attempt to elide material sourced to three historians of repute. That single prior violation can hardly justify interpreting two reasoned reverts on the Finkelstein page, if that is the page, as worthy of a 3 day suspension for chronic edit-warring

Decline reason:

Being insulting towards other admins is certainly not the way to get an unblock. Especially when you are doing so to me, who had nothing to do with this block whatsoever.— ⇒SWATJester 01:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

What can one say? 意識朦朧, perhaps, though I am, on waking, and seeing this extraordinary measure, uncertain as to whether the four-character dictum applies to my own groggy state, or that of the casual administrator User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry, who has barged in like a bull in a china shop to wield his arbitrary judgement on a page of whose complex history he seems wholly unaware.

I see a GA review, remarking, before raising a host of problematical issues to do with formatting and style, that:-

'The article seems stable and has no NPOV tags. At least to the eye of someone completely uninitiated in related topics, it seems relatively well-balanced, if skewed a bit in Finkelstein's favor Ling.Nut (talk) 07:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I download the page to examine User:Ling.Nut's judicious remarks quietly. Obviously they are an invitation to work slowly and methodically, in consensual editing, over the text in order to secure its status as a GA article. It will take at least several days to clarify all this, much of it new to me. I've worked substantially and methodically on the page, and have found generally that there has been more rational discussion here over the text than elsewhere. No one seems in a hurry.

Out of the blue User:Andyvphil removes a substantial amount of text.

He is someone who sticks in my mind for several reasons. He edits without consensus. recently he remarked:-

I will not stop at 10 in reverting the deletion of Plaut.' here

There was no evidence, other than a brief, and what I find rather mysteriously allusive edit note, not on the talk page, that justified User: Andyvphil's decision. As in the recent Ilan Pappé conflict, he seemed dug in to start up yet one more edit war, convinced that his take on the page was the only valid one. So I restore the text and request him to bring his edit reason, more expansively, to the talk page. He doesn't: he simply reverts. I undo his revert and request again he talk his elimination of material on the talk page. I leave it at that, since I dislike edit-warring. I wake up and find I have been banned for three days for 3RR violations, after 2 reverts.

I haven't violated the 3RR rule, but examining it gather that the administrator,User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry, skimming over my record(?), takes me to be a chronic edit-warrior. This is the third suspension, but of the other two, the first was due to a neophyte's lack of knowledge of the rules, at the outset of my decision to contribute to Wiki, the second a culpable violation certainly, due to inadvertency on my part, and irritation with an editor with an astonishingly poor knowledge of both English and the subject he was editing (User:Zeq a POV poster who persisted in eliding as unreliable sourced material from three distinguished historians). In 3500 edits, I had thus violated the rule twice. Looking round, it is not evidence for edit-warring, particularly given the highly polemical area where most of my edits have been made.

Note then. I reverted twice because an editor who did run close to the limit pressed for the elimination of material without asking for consensus, and I simply blocked the text and appealed for consensus, through the talk page. My request for consensus has been taken as edit-warring. To the contrary, neither of the two administrators involved appear to have a minimum familiarity with the long history of difficulties leading to the stabilization of the text Ling Nut himself remarks on. Given that past travail, it was some significant achievement that for the past months, no editor has seriously jumped over the text to eliminate material unilaterally as User Andyvphil did (See above on his behaviour at Ilan Pappé page where, against consensus he kept posting smear material, and openly said he would continue the practice whatever the consensus argued, even if it meant editing in this rubbish time and time again). A culture of discussing changes of some significant scope, before charging in like a wounded bull with a monocular intolerance of disagreement, had been established, and Andyvphil's disruption of this consensus caused both my 2 reverts, and, I presume that of Roland Rance (whom I don't know or coordinate 'policy' with, by the way). I find this extraordinary therefore, and an abusive exercise in intemperate all-round power-mugging on the part of the administrator who intervened to impose these three-day blocks. I won't protest the decision - since I don't even know how to - my only regret is that with this arbitrary act of administrative violence, my page has been tainted with an accusation as untruthful as it is damaging to my record as a responsible editor. If this capricious muscling of obscure administrative arbitrium is what Wiki is about, then I suppose I have no alternative than to withdraw from the encyclopedia,in protest at the farce we see here Nishidani 10:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry, I note, is a member of the Armed Forces of the Crown, as User:Swatjester is a Marine fascinated by sniping and guns. The latter intervened unilaterally to cancel a 24 hour suspension imposed on User:Jaakobou after an edit conflict with myself, in which I was proven innocent, and User:Jaakobou guilty of a 3RR violation, by User:Penwhale for the following reason here:-

'I unblocked him early for his 3RR vio on 1929 hebron massacre. If you object, please go ahead and reblock, with my apologies. Jaakobou explained what happened to me, and it appears that he is inserting valid sourced information into the article, which is being reverted without so much as a reason why, with the other user logging out to attempt to bypass 3RR. As I see it, removing sourced information is vandalism, which is an exception to the 3RR; however even without that, I felt that he was apologetic enough to warrant an unblocking. Please let me know if there are any problems. ⇒ SWATJester Denny Crane. 23:15, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

(The validly sourced information Swatjester refers to concerned the otherwise unattested participation of Arab policemen in the 1929 Hebron massacre, for which Jaakobou had no reliable source, and which no modern history by competent historians confirms. (2) My reasons for reverting the edit were argued at extreme length (3) if 'removing sourced information is vandalism' then the only serious 3RR violation I have received occurred as a result of my reverting Zeq's vandalism, since he systematically rejected 3 eminent historians' interpretations I posted simply because he disliked them. Thus SWATjester didn't check the record, took Jaakobou's offline remarks at face value, and did him a favour,'which another administrator Penwhale then seconded, taking Swatjester at his word, as Swatjester took Jaakobou at his word. This is not arbritration. It is arbitrary personalistic authority working in the dark on the strength of unilateral personal assurances to which the other party is not privy.)

I.e. In a prior incident, a Marine with extended tour duty in Iraq, and much taken with weaponry, who happens to be an administrator, is contacted privately by an editor, apparently by email, for there is no record on the relevant wiki pages of their exchange, and overturns (on completely false grounds) another administrator's decision. Jaakobou is one of the most intense pro-Israeli POV editors in Wiki. He used private means, to overturn a just decision, of which no notice was posted on his own page, thus leaving it clear of the violation he was charged with and convicted of. Jaakobou is prepossessed by Palestinians in the Occupied territories as terrorists: the one Wiki administrator he calls offline to cancel his violation is a soldier in the armed forces of Israel's major ally, with ongoing tours of duty in Iraq. What is going on here cannot be established, but the technique itself cannot but tempt one to make worrying surmises.

I have nothing against the armed forces, but now that another member convicts me of a 3RR violation out of the blue, and does so with regard to obnoxious practices by an editor highly disposed to attack a page devoted to a critic of Israel, a pattern is forming which looks extremely bad for the neutrality of wiki arbitration procedures. It strikes me as self-evident that people who have risen to administrative office, requiring strict neutrality, who at the same time belong to armed forces that are engaged in active combat on Arab territory, should recuse themselves from interfering as administrators with pages that deal with aspects of that conflict, as is the case in these two instances. I have no alternative but to withdraw from the encyclopedia in protest. One cannot edit confidently if there is even a glimmer of an appearance that under-the-table politics, rather than the official rules, may determine what content will stick, and which posters prevail. Nishidani 12:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect

I am not a Marine, I was an Army Reconnaissance Scout who happened to be attached to the Marines. And I have nothing to do with your recent block, so I'm not sure why exactly you are mentioning me, other than to pass the buck. ⇒SWATJester 01:46, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Because he is left-wing pro-Palestinian and JaabKobu is right-wing pro-Israeli and their conflict is also due to that.

So we can understand (not accept, just understand) that Nishidani is *frustrated* to be blocked by an "Army Reconnaissance Scout" who -even if perfectly neutral- may probably (it doesn't matter) be right-wing pro-Israeli (as I am for exemple).

Did you know that during the Mandate period British soldiers and authorities really tried to be neutral in the conflict between Zionists and Arabs but never succeeded in getting their trust !!! And they left this country disgusted by both of these and with numerous casualities...

Whatever : it is a pity wikipedia is a battleground for the M-E conflict historiography... Ceedjee 08:57, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

That were my 2 cents. ;-) Ceedjee 08:58, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. User:Andyvphil was blocked for running close to the 3RR limit. User:RolandR who happened to draw the administrators' attention to Andyvphil's behaviour suffered a block also by User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry, as did I by the same agent, though neither of us had gone anywhere near violating the 3RR. User:Andyvphil pleads that he did not technically violate the rule, and has his block cancelled. Sometime later, User:RolandR had his block removed. My request was turned down.

My request was reviewed by an administrator, also like User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry serving in armed forces that are engaged in fighting Arabs, because I mentioned him. I mentioned him for the simple reason that on a previous occasion he too intervened quietly to overturn a 3RR violation by an editor, who had actually transgressed the rule, unlike User:Andyvphil who ran very close to the limit. Here it appears that a Reconnaissance Scout for the US armed forces in Iraq, privately contacted, off the Wiki record, by an Israeli violator of Wiki rules, used his discretion to cancel a legitimate call, though the user concerned User:Jaakobou adduced completely false arguments and spurious accusations about me in his petition, arguments that were taken at face value by User:Swatjester. Worse still, no notification of the fact that, in this dispute User:Jaakobou had been correctly judged as having violated 3RR was posted on his page. Despite the decision, his page was kept clean, the charge cancelled after a private piece of pleading, and thus an American soldier helped keep clean of taint an Israeli poster's otherwise shabby record, despite the latter's transgressions.

This fact, which I noted but did not report at the time, returned to mind when another administrator with a military background acted irrationally to punish myself and another poster for a violation that had never occurred, regarding a page dealing with a critic of Israel, a presumed violation that had never even been reported on the appropriate administrative page. User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry's judgement was aleatory, and was indeed overturned, but contextually it remains inexplicable. Contextually it only makes sense to me in terms of the extratextual politics of the area. Andyvphil was running close to a violation of 3RR on a page dealing with criticism of Israel, but if he is to be punished, so must those who caused him, in the administrator's superficial examination of the page record, to violate 3RR, though they have, objectively, no culpability whatsoever. The objective fact remains that User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry attached to an army engaged in Iraq, sought to punish two editors who challenged a third, typically engaged (Ilan Pappé page) in smearing critics of Israel. A US soldier User:Swatjester got a pro-Israel-POV-fixated editor as notorious as User:Jaakobou off the hook after a private exchange off line with him, in which he took that poster's mendacious justifications (involving myself as a 'vandal') at their word, and then User:Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry, attached to the Army of the Crown likewise engaged in military activities in Iraq, punishes with a spurious pretext two editors who he deemed responsible for another (in this context) pro-Israeli editor's ostensible violation of 3RR, as though they were equally culpable of violating a rule they never even came close to breaking. That, User:Swatjester is a pattern, a pattern, I repeat, of people, within the Wiki administration, who are also attached to military organisations fighting on Arab territory, intervening arbitrarily to help two people who either violated the 3RR rule or who ran very close to violating it, according to several other administrators. Undoubtedly the two administrators do not know each other, but the similar in the pattern, of arbitrary assistance to highly Israeli-partisan editors on pages dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is obvious.

To state this is apparently judged offensive to Swatjester's dignity. Note that, in reviewing my request to unblock, it is, with superb (in the Latin sense) irony that Swatjester himself choses to intervene, though making a call on this constitutes a conflict of interest (again). He writes:

'Being insulting towards other admins is certainly not the way to get an unblock. Especially when you are doing so to me, who had nothing to do with this block whatsoever.

Stating the record as it is set out on your own page, and in the relevant section of User:Penwhale's page, is not an insult. Charging an administrator with arbitrary and irrational behaviour when, in the case of your intervention on Jaakobou's behalf, you overturned a 3RR violation by accepting his private protestations, without checking the record (which show his private protestations were false), is not 'insulting', it is simply a matter of registering the facts. That you use this now to intervene personally and confirm a suspension which, in the other two instances which accompanied it, has been recognized as incorrect, proves, to me at least, that you are completely unaware of your conflict of interest, and act politically, and with partisan enmity. You have, young man, endorsed a suspension that was based on another military man's incorrect application of Wiki punitive measures concerning 3RR violations: in a court of appeal you confirm a sentence that in two other parallel instances has been adjudged incorrect, because, I can only assume, your amour propre is offended by my legitimate defence of my integrity against your and your fellow soldier's arbitrary administration on issues regarding Israel. Extend the punishment, do as you will. I have no further interest in an encyclopedia which allows this kind of political violence and editorial incompetence to occur at the highest levels. For someone like myself, though, it's rather nice to go out in a small-scale version of the wild fiasco of US and British intervention in Iraq, i.e. by incompetence in the field and in judgement exercised by people intrigued by the power of their arbitrary might. I am perhaps shocked, but not awed. That your handle alludes to 'swat' as in 'Swat Squad' and 'jester' says it all Nishidani 10:37, 3 December 2007 (UTC)