Talk:Israeli apartheid/Archive 37

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Archive 30

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Archive 35

Israel and the apartheid label

I wonder if the name "Israel and the apartheid label" would be better than the existing title of the article.

Sources both in favour of the apartheid label[1][2] (including sources accusing Israel of the crime of apartheid[3]) and sources opposed to the apartheid label[4][5][6] (included sources saying Israel is not commiting the crime of apartheid[7]) have described it as a "label".

I suggest this because it's a neutral term that can describe all discourse relating Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to either historical Apartheid or the crime of apartheid, whether as a comparison or as a more direct description. Ryan Paddy (talk) 04:49, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Ryan, can you explain the benefit of "label" vs "analogy"?

I can't speak for everyone, but many, many move changes have been proposed, and they generally break down over a divide between those who wish the article to be about substance (once it was called Israeli apartheid; more recently Apartheid and Israel has been proposed) and those who want it to be about discourse (like the current title). It's not clear to me why a different version of the discourse titles would help, or whether any such change could appeal to the first group.

Speaking personally, I think that the discourse side is interesting and notable, while the substance side is sufficiently coherent to merit an article (controversial and denied practices often have their own articles without having these odd circumlocutions in the title: see Torture in the United States). However, I hold a continuing objection to the way Israel/Palestine debates muck up the simplicity of wording on Wikipedia. Label v. analogy is no help to me. However, given how much of a headache moving this article is anyway, I'm not about to stand in the way of such a minor change.--Carwil (talk) 14:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Linguistically speaking, "label" can include accusations that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. "Analogy" cannot. We have such content in the article, and it naturally belongs here alongside the comparison material. This minor title tweak would correct the scope of the title to match that of the content, and I think it's a neutral change from both the pro and con camps perspective. I don't think it's some vast improvement, just a minor technical tweak. The main credible objection to "Israel and apartheid" was that it was ambiguous. This suggestion wouldn't have that issue. Ryan Paddy (talk) 19:22, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Personally I think it is a good idea worth consideration. But given past history of this article I'm not sure it will be accepted. Marokwitz (talk) 09:31, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't really have an opinion either way about this proposal, but for my curiosity, why do you think that using the word analogy in the title implies it cannot include accusations that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid? (that notion is a sort of UN dystopia by itself, not even SA was convicted of it.) Tijfo098 (talk) 23:14, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

An analogy is a comparison. A number of sources don't treat the apartheid label as a comparison to SA. Those sources are not saying that it's like SA apartheid, they're saying it is apartheid. Those sources use apartheid as a term to describe a political concept, not a historical era in a specific place (for comparison, consider calling something genocide as opposed to calling something the Holocaust - in the case of apartheid, unfortunately the same term is used for both the general term and the specific historical instance). Some of the sources that use apartheid as a description rather than an analogy in reference to Israel are talking about the crime of apartheid, although not all are. Such sources are poorly described by the current title. Ryan Paddy (talk) 06:24, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Egyptian foreign minister

The Egyptian FM made some interesting comments here about Israel and apartheid, but I'm not sure if/how they should be included in the article. I don't think we have senior Egyptians represented yet. --Dailycare (talk) 22:01, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Sources

@ Petri Krohn - your comment in the explanation as to why you removed my tags is quite uncivil. I am a registered editor, and your suggestion that I approach Wikipedia content in the same way people approach fast-food is not acceptable.

Removal of a tag tat requires third-party sources is justified considering numerous sources that would seem to me to be unacceptable based on Wikipedia policy.

On the other hand there is nothing in Wikipedia policy that says quality = quantity. Even if there are 3,000 references in an article, they can be challenged at any time, and the subject of this article is so tendentious as to warrant their assessment very carefully.

While you removed the request for third-party reliable sources, you also removed to other tags, {who} and {cn} in the intro. This was based on the following observation.

The article introduction states: "The State of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has been compared by United Nations investigators, human rights groups and critics of Israeli policy to South Africa's treatment of non-whites during its apartheid era."

Of the three categories who are said to have made this comparison, neither the United Nations investigators, nor the human rights groups are mentioned anywhere in the article.

Given the duration the discussion over this article has been taking place, if no support for this statement has been located, these groups should be deleted from the introduction. However, because I follow the Wikipedia policy, I added tags before deleting in good faith that the references fro these comparisons will be provided.

I would therefore ask you to restore the tags until such time as they are removed for the right reasons, or I will ask an uninvolved administrator to do so. Thank you Koakhtzvigad (talk) 09:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

UN investigators (Falk and Dugard), as well as HRGs (B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel) have been named in the article. --Dailycare (talk) 10:29, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Basis for this article

The basis for this article is the accusation that Israel is conducting a policy of apartheid.

The definition of apartheid has been supplied as: "The 'crime of apartheid' means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime."

The article has to address itself to the formulation of this definition, and not 'fish' for 'evidence'.

That is:

1. Are there institutions in Israel that target any races, systematically in an oppressive or domineering way?

2. Are any claims made in accusing Israel backed up by data that shows systematic oppression and domination?

3. Is oppression and domination racially based?

4. Is there an institutionalised intention to maintain this oppression and domination?

I am unable to at this time address points 1,2, and 4, but point 3 was addressed earlier here

It seems that Jews are not a recognised race! The fact is that there are lots of non-white Jews in Israel, including a few Arab converts.

Moreover, Palestinians are not classified as a race either! Not only that, but there are Arab citizens of Israel, so clearly there is no institutionalised apartheid since in South Africa non-whites were denied citizenship.

It seems to me that there is little point in having an article that can not support the basis on which it was written Koakhtzvigad (talk) 09:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

For example:

Sudan - News: July 19, 2004 - Headline: Human Rights Group Charges Systematic Rapes In Darfur. Excerpt: An international human-rights organization says Sudanese soldiers and government-sponsored militia operating in the war-torn Darfur region are responsible for systematic rape of women to spread terror among the population. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 15:13, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, while you are right, the article exists as a neutral presentation of the topic. While I also find the accusation completely absurd, it merits mention not because it is necessarily legitimate, but its ubiquity among Israel critics. If you wish, feel free to add your commentary under the criticism of this analogy. You should, however, cite a source, and write "so-and-so said this about the analogy...". Arielkoiman (talk) 23:11, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem is not in the absurdity of the accusation, which is a value judgment, but in the methodology chosen to pursue it. I post below the introductory paragraph from the relevant article so participating contributing editors can familiarize themselves with the concept at the core, and in the title, of the article.

Analogy (from Greek "ἀναλογία" – analogia, "proportion"^[1]^[2]) is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. In a narrower sense, analogy is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction, where at least one of the premises or the conclusion is general. The word analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often, though not necessarily, a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy.

To apply analogical reasoning to this case, one has to firstly establish what the analogue or source is in the first instance. However, this is not done in the article. Even the definition of the crime is not used to match supposed data to the 'target'. This is left to the last (!), 10th section of the article as the Criticism of the apartheid analogy. However, even the 'target' is not defined! The very introduction takes if for granted that the 'target' is the state of Israel, but the creation of apartheid in South Africa was by a minority European colonial descendant population, where as in Israel these policies represent the view of the majority of its population, including 1.5 million of refugees and their descendants following the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim lands.

In short, this analogy is not comparing apples and oranges, but is in fact seeking to eventually find 'a fruit' of close-enough appearance that will eventually be accepted based on the effort of the search alone, i.e. the volume of accusations rather than its pertinence to the case! Koakhtzvigad (talk) 04:51, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

If I understood your comment correctly, you're criticising the title of this article. You may want to have a look at the archives where long discussions have been exchanged trying to think of another name for this article which would be both better than the current one, and acceptable by consensus. So far, none have been identified. Currently the article has two kinds of content, namely comparisons to South Africa's apartheid regime and accusations that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, independently of comparisons to SA. One name candidate has been "Israel and Apartheid", which doesn't yet have consensus. --Dailycare (talk) 11:24, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I looked in archives. If no better title can be agreed on, maybe the article should be rewritten to fit the title.

Interestingly Israel is the only country that is listed under See also at South Africa under apartheid, but quite a few other international states have been accused of this crime. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 05:36, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Legal basis for the article

The legal basis for the article are:

a. Murder;

b. Extermination;

c. Enslavement;

d. Deportation or forcible transfer of population;

e. Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;

f. Torture

g. Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, compulsory sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;

h. Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;

i. Forced disappearance of persons;

j. The crime of apartheid;

k. Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health

I should add that they have to be seen in the context of the definition of the crime, i.e. "The 'crime of apartheid' means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." to count as a 'crime against humanity', and therefore have to be comparable to other such crimes

Other than the case of South Africa, there is no evident comparative data in the article other than item j., but the definition for this item does not match data as presented Koakhtzvigad (talk) 09:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

The definition of item j. apartheid based on the South African case (from South Africa under apartheid) is:

apartheid as an official policy
was introduced following the general election of 1948, i.e. supported by at least a 'power' minority
New legislation classified inhabitants into racial groups ("black", "white", "coloured", and "Indian"),
New legislation classified [all]] inhabitants into racial groups ("black", "white", "coloured", and "Indian"),
residential areas were segregated, sometimes by means of forced removals.
residential areas were segregated, sometimes by means of [unlawful] forced removals.
From 1958, black people were deprived of their citizenship,

I hope the article can address itself comparatively to justify its inclusion in Wikipedia Koakhtzvigad (talk) 10:31, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm finding your posts very hard to make sense of. Our articles are based on what reliable sources say. Do you have any sources to propose here? Itsmejudith (talk) 15:38, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I intend to examine the reliability of the sources at a later time.

What part do you have a problem with, and I will attempt to explain.

It seems to me the sources, regardless of reliability, are here used to support an idea which is factually incoherent Koakhtzvigad (talk) 05:02, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The article is about the accusations made, accusations which are notable and have received significant overage in reliable sources. It seems that you confuse existence of the article with advocacy for the article's premise. As verifiability, not truth is one of the core policies of the Wikipedia, nothing could be further from the truth. Tarc (talk) 15:41, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Tarc, this is not about truth. This is about the premise on which the article is based.

The article seeks to ascribe to the state of Israel a recognised international crime thorugh analogical reasoning.

However, the crime is not defined in the article, and neither is the logical process by which the accusations are made, nor how the sources support this process.

Simply speaking the article is extremely badly written, 300 references not withstanding!

Wikipedia is about informing the readers, not confusing them, right? Koakhtzvigad (talk) 05:02, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

"The article seeks to ascribe..." Er, no, it does not. The fact that you just continue right along without listening to what others are actually saying is just going to lead to a bad end. Tarc (talk) 14:03, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

My difficulty in understanding starts at the top of your post. I don't know what "the legal basis of this article" means. Our articles don't have a legal basis. You say something similar to Tarc: "the premise on which the article is based". Our articles aren't based on premises. They are short overviews of topics and don't present arguments for points of view - at least they ought not to. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:23, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

As you say the concepts of "legal basis" and "premise" are meaningless here. However, the article does present arguments for various points of view, as it should when the existence of those arguments is verifiable. In accordance with WP:NPOV, it should present the POVs and arguments for them in a neutral manner, giving them weight according to the significance afforded to them by reliable sources. The article is not perfect, partly because ongoing POV-warrior editing from various perspectives delays improvements to it, but it does meet the NPOV policy relatively well given the circumstances. Ryan Paddy (talk) 01:57, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

The three of you don't get it. POV/NPOV has nothing to do with it. The article is not about Israel, but about apartheid, which is a legally defined term under international law. Ascribing this to any legal entity, in this case Israel, is the basis of the article. Just like any other crime that anyone may be accused of. It doesn't matter who the subject of the accusation is. How the crime is defined, is what the evidence is evaluated on. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 05:42, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Latest round of edits

There has been a rash of problematic editing recently. I've done some reverting but don't want to run afoul of 1RR, so if anyone else wants to fix the following remaining problem edit please do:

This edit 1) is unsourced 2) says "following" about events two years apart 3) attempts to undermine a source by mentioning criticism of that source before the statement is even made. The relevant counter-information here is what the Israeli response to this specific statement from the source was, and any such info should follow the statement and would need a reference. However, where possible it's best to avoid the article devolving into a tit-for-tat exchange of perspectives as this is difficult for readers to follow. Ryan Paddy (talk) 09:22, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to ask editors to please take your time making edits, there is no hurry to make lots of potentially controversial edits all at once - it just stirs the wasp nest. Please discuss things on the talk page if your edit is reverted, and listen to what people are saying. This is a delicate subject, a lot of the text has been carefully formulated after long discussions here on the talk page, and it can be difficult at first to fully grasp how Wikipedia's policies apply to articles about controversies such as this, so please listen carefully when other editors say you're running afoul of policy or guidelines. Ryan Paddy (talk) 09:22, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree, there is a bit of OR going on in that edit in the sense that it conveys that the report was a response to the criticism, I am going to go ahead and revert for that reason - as such a sequence is unsourced at present. I would encourage everyone to mind Ryan's advice so that we can seek to work together a bit more. u n☯mi 09:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Authority to investigate

Your two UN investigators don't include the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food Jean Ziegler, who according to a pro-Israel activist group has accused Israel of apartheid. Dunno if he's mentioned in the article currently, but it does illuminate how your personal count of "two" is likely to be inaccurate through excessive and unreferenced exactness. The same goes for there being exactly two human rights groups using the apartheid label - which also sounds like an extremely unlikely personal count. Have you got a reliable source saying there are exactly two of each of these entity types using the apartheid label? No? Then it's not verifiable - unsurprisingly, because it's probably inaccurate - so your attempt to include it is original research. As for the Special Rapporteurs being investigators, if you wish for me to find a reliable source saying that's what they are, I'll find one. However, I'd suggest that it would be more mature for you to just acknowledge that their fact-finding and reporting functions obviously amount to investigation - it's common sense, and will save me the bother of producing a source for the blindingly obvious. Ryan Paddy (talk) 09:31, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Ryan in this one, saying "two" is unnecessary detail in the lead and gives the impression that we know the number is exactly two, whereas if we have two described in the article, the correct term would be "at least two" which is pedantic. I don't see any problem in the longstanding version of this sentence. --Dailycare (talk) 19:45, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Reliable sources saying special rapporteurs can investigate and are investigators:

Franck, Thomas (1984). "Of Gnats and Camels: Is there a Double Standard at the United Nations?". The American Journal of International Law. [The UN] then appointed a special rapporteur to study the situation in that country. The rapporteur did investigate the trail of atrocities committed by the regime of Macras Mguema and presented his report to the Commission on February 12, 1980.65
Weissbrodt, David (1986). "The Three "Theme" Special Rapporteurs of the UN Commission on Human Rights". The American Journal of International Law. ...at its 1986 session the Commission on Human Rights received fact-finding reports from special rapporteurs or special representatives on human rights situations in Afghanistan, Chile, El Salvador, Guatamala, and Iran. These "country" investigators can provide thourough, relatively detailed, well-analyzed reports that establish what the international community knows about particular situations.

I could go on and on with sources demonstrating that special rapporteurs are investigators. Ryan Paddy (talk) 20:06, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The two sources you cite here are not reliable since neither of these gentlemen determined terms of reference for the role of spécial rapporteur at that time, the role having only been established in 1982 (Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions).

Be that as it may, are you aware that the term 'investigator' carries with it a legal definition?

Are you aware that investigative authority, in both national and international law, are limited by jurisdictions in which they are undertaken?

Why is it that this article United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict is not called United Nations Investigative Mission on the Gaza Conflict?

Are you aware of the United nations Independent Inquiry Committee's terms of reference?

Are you aware of what purpose the reports submitted by the spécial rapporteurs serve within the mandate of the United Nations Organisation?

If you look at the earlier-mentioned spécial rapporteur's more recent report on say Sri Lanka, you will find The Special Rapporteur concludes that Sri Lankan video is authentic, calls for an independent war crimes investigation. Now why would someone who according to Wikipedia consensus is already an investigator call for an independent investigation?

I look forward to your answers. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 00:39, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Both of the sources I cited are academic legal articles published in a reputable legal journal, so they appear to meet the very highest level of reliability as Wikipedia sources. Such academic legal sources presumably choose their words carefully, so if they can use the term "investigate" and "investigator" in relation to UN special rapporteurs (SRs) then we can too. As I said, many more such sources are available. I'm not really interested in your personal interpretation of what SRs are, our supposed personal "expertise" is not relevant here because Wikipedia works on reliable sources. I've provided reliable sources showing that SRs are described as investigators in the academic legal literature in the same manner that we are applying it, the onus is now on you to provide reliable sources stating that the term cannot accurately be used in this manner. Otherwise, my reliable sources trump your original research. If you can find such sources, then we can compare them and consider the discrepency, otherwise there's nothing more to discuss. Ryan Paddy (talk) 02:26, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Just to be clear: I'm more than happy for another term to be used if reliable sources are found which demonstrate that "investigators" is inaccurate in this context. The reason I'm defending the use of this term in the opening sentence is that I think we should keep the wording of this sentence as simple as possible, in order to avoid drowning the reader in more complex terms like "special rapporteurs" that many will not be familiar with and that will impede comprehension of the opening sentence, which is already rather complex. Also, I recall from previous discussions that there have been UN investigators who weren't special rapporteurs who used the apartheid label, so a more general term seems preferable as a catch-all. Ryan Paddy (talk) 02:32, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Just because something comes from an academic journal does not make it right. You should not presume anything where the article concerns itself with a crime.

The interpretation of 'investigator' I reject is not a personal choice, but one dictated by both, the organisation that employs these individuals, of which there are currently 24 in the UN, and the fact that the ICC was established as the ONLY organisation with investigative authority, see Rome Statute, Part V, Article 53. This is why for example Israel took measures to "head off an independent criminal investigation of the report and other complaints filed with the International Criminal Court." [8] You will also find in the Rome statute that only when the submissions to the report are accepted that "It is the Prosecutor's job to conduct a preliminary analysis of the report to determine if there is jurisdiction and evidence or elements of a crime that warrant further investigation." But even after the report is accepted, and not just from a special rapporteur, but from for example "an Independent Fact Finding Committee by the Arab League with the tasks of investigating and reporting on violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law during the Israeli operation Cast Lead." on which Prof. Dugard (former Special Rapporteur) was asked to serve, "The Committee was comprised of Professor John Dugard (South Africa: Chairman), Professor Paul de Waart (Netherlands), Judge Finn Lynghjem (Norway), Advocate Gonzalo Boye (Chile/Germany), Professor Francisco Corte-Real (Portugal: forensic body damage evaluator) and Ms Raelene Sharp, solicitor (Australia: Rapporteur). Their report, which cited the findings in the ICJ Wall case, was delivered to the ICC Prosecutor On 9 May 2009 by Secretary General Musa. Arab League members, like Jordan, are also members of the ICC. The Prosecutor met with the members of the investigating Committee to discuss their report on 15-16 October 2009. See para 8 of the ICC Letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, dated 12 January 2010" So you see, even an Independent Fact Finding Committee lacked investigators though it had been tasked with this, because of a certain thing called Procedural law.

Wikipedia's 'promotion' of UNHRC Special Rapporteurs to 'investigators' instantaneously transfers them to the status of the Office of ICC Prosecutor employees that they are not!

The confusion may have emanated from the wording here where it says "The Human Rights Council,

14. Decides to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission;"

However, despite the wording, The Human Rights Council has no investigative powers in the legal sense, hence the very carefully named fact-finding mission, where as investigators appropriately conduct investigative missions, since their reports go to the Prosecutor and not the Council. Hence no where in The Human Rights Council documentation on the subject of any of its investigations will you fins any of the Special Rapporteurs called Investigators (a proper noun job title). To use such a descriptor in an encyclopaedic article in its simple noun sense of 'investigator' is I think deceptive.Koakhtzvigad (talk) 03:30, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

You may have a point, but I'm not sure because your sources are inadequate and you've misrepresented them. Rome Statute, Part V, Article 53 does say that Prosecutors will initiate an investigation. However, it doesn't say this is the only type of investigation undertaken by the UN. Neither does it make any special mention of the job description of "Investigator", it just describes one situation in which an investigation should take place. In terms of the sources I've quoted, you seem to have decided they are bad, inaccurate sources who shouldn't be using the term the way they are, but you haven't presented any evidence that they're not reliable, just your personal opinion. And your opinion is circular: you apparently think they're unreliable sources because they're "using the term wrong". It's entirely true that academic articles are not always reliable, but you still haven't presented any sources that state that "investigator" shouldn't be used about SRs, you've just interpreted sources. In the case of Rome Statute, Part V, Article 53 your interpretation adds the word "only", making it an especially personal interpretation. I do get the general point you're making: in law, "investigation" has a special meaning. But you haven't provided sources that directly state this means it's an inappropriate term to use about SRs. Ryan Paddy (talk) 18:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

start from the top

I'd like to examine the quality of this article, and how it conforms to rules, guidelines and other considerations Wikipedia demands of its content.

It seems to me the place to start is the title. I know it has been discussed previously (having examined archives on your suggestion. However it says here that "Titles should match the article contents, and should be neither too narrow nor too broad."

What is the subject of the article? It seems to me that the article is intended to inform the readers about the analogy some draw between 'apartheid' and the policy of the Government of Israel towards some populations that are not Jewish.
Which apartheid is it? This may seem like a strange question, but is the analogy being drawn between apartheid as exhibited in South Africa, or is it the legal definition of the apartheid as a crime against humanity, or both? It seems not to be entirely clear in the article, but they are not one and the same Koakhtzvigad (talk) 02:55, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Call me Ryan. I agree that the scope of the article's content and its title do not match well, that's why I have been in favour of changing the title in previous discussions, however consensus has not been reached to change at this time so we're currently stuck with this title. In my opinion, the scope of this article (based on the content it actually contains, which is more important than the title) is a public discourse in which the term "aparheid" is applied to Israel in any manner. I see three ways that the term has been applied: 1) in comparison with South African apartheid 2) with consideration to the legal definition and 3) in a non-historical, non-legal sense in which the word "apartheid" has become a generic term, much like say "genocide" has a broad meaning in general language beyond historical examples and legal definitions. This article covers the use of the term in any of these manners (or any other manner) in regards to Israeli policy and practice relating to the Palestinians. In keeping with NPOV it also covers any discussion in reliable sources about the inaccuracy of using this term in relation is Israel. It's about the whole "Israel and aparheid" discourse. Ryan Paddy (talk) 03:28, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Well Ryan, you are wrong. Given apartheid is now a legally defined term, which it was not when South Africa instituted apartheird after the Second World War, it is difficult to apply it to Israel based on actual practice before the UN recognised it as such in 1973. This law is not retrospective as you may, or may not appreciate.

Because the term is now defined, the use of "non-historical, non-legal sense" is not possible either, particularly since the term genocide is also now legally defined.

Israel and apartheid is not a discourse, but, for some at least, an intent to gather evidence under Article 7 of the Rome Statue that would be presented as a legal argument in court. That is only done to commence criminal proceedings in the ICC. ICC will only recognise the legal definition, so regardless of what you or anyone else would like to call it, much of the material presented in the article is immaterial. It simply serves to heap a volume of information on a less legally-informed reader, clearly against the explicit policy of Wikipedia.

The very intent to do so is a POV presentation of the content since it has assumed guilt before the investigation (by the ICC) has even begun!

If there is no consensus to change the article title, then the content of the article needs to match it.Koakhtzvigad (talk) 03:48, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe I need to make it clearer. IF the term apartheid is taken in its legal definition, you can only use that material which supports this definition under the Convention. If it is taken in any other meaning, drawing analogies with South Africa before 1973, then no material relating to the legal definition can be admitted, and one can only relate observed behaviours of the two subject societies. This is how International Law works, whether you like it or not Koakhtzvigad (talk) 03:53, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

The discourse has a number of aspects, and the legal aspect is one of them. The scholarly, historical, journalist, legal, activist, and popular aspects of the "israeli apartheid" label are all intertwined: for example the same sources frequently both make analogies to South African apartheid and also make comparisons to the legal definition of apartheid. For that reason, an argument can be made that they should all be presented together to avoid duplication, which is how things currently are. The current structure of the article does provide a section specifically on the legal considerations, so readers chiefly interested in that aspect could start there. However, such readers would be well advised to also cast their eye over the rest of the article, where more specific examples of supposed apartheid are given, sometimes with reference to the legal definition. A reasonable argument could be made that this article should be split into two articles, one on Israel and the apartheid label and one on Israel and the crime of apartheid, in order to separate the sources that address the sociological considerations from those that address the legal considerations, respectively. But no reasonable argument can be made that either the legal or sociological aspects of the existing article should be purged, without splitting the article, because that would involve removing notable content from the encyclopedia. Ryan Paddy (talk) 04:30, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, just in case my view on this wasn't clear:

Because the term is now defined, the use of "non-historical, non-legal sense" is not possible either, particularly since the term genocide is also now legally defined.

The UN creating a legal definition of a term doesn't nullify the definitions used in other parts of society. It solely defines what the term means in international law, the term may still be used with a somewhat different meaning elsewhere. For example, for many people (especially historians) "apartheid" primarily means the historical policy and practice of apartheid in South Africa. Ryan Paddy (talk) 04:37, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

The reason that the legal definition was agreed to under the Convention is that the crime could be identified and prosecuted once it is recognised as such. The formulation of the legal definition in 1973 was arrived at by consulting the very sources you mention: scholarly, historical, journalist, legal, activist, and popular, as you will find if you go back to consultative submissions documents. I would argue that when a term is defined for the purpose of lawful compliance, all earlier definitions are null and void, otherwise no court case would ever succeed in proving anything.

If the word has no defined meaning, it can not be used to draw analogy.

Its a long an confusing article that is quite difficult to read because the many references supplied are not readily related to the points being made. Also, structurally the article fails at the analogy, because although based on the HSRC report (broadly) it fails to reflect the arguments made there (and that is of course book-sized).

However, I want to identify the core issue of whats wrong with this article, and that is the subject, which is the crime of apartheid.

I reject that something can be 'discoursed over' when that subject is a crime. I don't see many discourses written about rape of murder. For this reason the subject does not belong in the Category:Comparative politics (and where is the method?), which compares variables in political dynamics, but in Category:International law because 'crimes against humanity' are a province of International human rights law, which is a Public international law. It is there you will find other mention of similar internationally defined criminal treaties

And I have already pointed out, the very first section states its a crime, and this alone is sufficient for the reader to know that what is being discussed here is a crime, and not a philosophical concept of right and wrong as it was before apartheid became a subject of crimes against humanity Military Law Tribunal (Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950, No. 82, Principle VIc), which is where the original definition comes from and I quote "Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime."

It seems to me that intellectual honesty would demand the article be about allegations of a legally defined crime Koakhtzvigad (talk) 06:44, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh I see, Wikipedia uses a redirect from Apartheid South Africa under apartheid, and then directs the reader elsewhere to the For the legal definition of Apartheid, see crime of apartheid. However, this is disingenuous. South Africa is a historical case that serves as a precedent. Once this is established, another judicial body (in this case ICC) may utilize [the law] when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. The historical case could only have been tried once since no two cases are exactly the same. In any case, the precedent is used in common law, not criminal law! International criminal law is a body of international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetration. Principally, it deals with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity as well as the War of aggression. How can Wikipedia editors author articles without understanding the basic principles behind the concepts they write about?

The international legal system has already determined that apartheid is a crime, and determined the penalties for it. There is no case argument. Any such 'discourse' is just a moralistic polemic which disputes the point of view held by at least 114 nations. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 07:59, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Your perspective appears to place law before other considerations. Personally, I place ethics before law, because it's perfectly possible to make bad, unethical laws. But both of our views on this are merely perspectives. The reason that apartheid redirects to South Africa under apartheid on Wikipedia is that the most common use of the term "apartheid" in most reliable sources is in references to the historical South African practice. That's how Wikipedia works: it uses terms the way their most often used in reliable sources. See WP:NAME if you're interested in reading the policy on that, you'll see what I mean. Coming back to this article: the sources use a melange of definitions for apartheid in consideration of Israeli policy and practice, and a mixture of legal, ethical, and sociological analyses. Thus the article does the same. The article reflects the sources. That's how things work here. Could the article be made clearer? Absolutely. But you can't change the content so that it no longer reflects the sources, because it's not up to us to decide what perspectives are significant, it's based on the sources. Ryan Paddy (talk) 08:15, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Ryan, thats not how Wikipedia works.

Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.

The next rule should be - trust no one. Academia in particular is rife with people who are often happy to fudge the figures or data to get a desired result. I just showed you that two academics, admittedly 25 years ago, could not use correctly the term 'investigator', or did not properly define how they are using the term. Yet much in their articles depended on who the said 'investigators' were working for.

the sources use a melange of definitions for apartheid in consideration of Israeli policy and practice, and a mixture of legal, ethical, and sociological analyses. - but in court there is generally a team representing the defendant and the prosecution team and they both use same language the court's judge or panel are familiar with. Proving that someone committed an ethical wrong is great, but what next? Do you take the the 'law' into your own hands?

And what is exactly the Israeli policy? There are lots of interpretations of Israeli policy, but not one document, not one statement from a policy maker, not one quote with an English translation. So who makes Israeli policy, the Government of Israel or anyone who wants to interpret their personal observations?

In reality anything that is used as a reference should be well referenced itself. This unfortunately puts a lot of material out of bounds as far as I'm concerned. In general one has to be very careful with WP:RELIABLE, and more so when dealing with a subject like International Law because depending on agenda people WILL skew their perception of it as far off the truth as they can get away with.

Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in an article, and should be appropriate to the claims made - so far this is my greatest issue with the article (aside from structure). There are lots of references, but it's taking a lot of time to go through them because some reports that are quoted a huge, and are quoted out of context from their original. I hadn't even started on that yet, but eventually we can go reference-by-reference and you will see what I mean.

Personally, I place ethics before law, because it's perfectly possible to make bad, unethical laws. But both of our views on this are merely perspectives. - I can't disagree more. There is a field of study in the ethics of law-making. However, if you think that my advocation of accepting laws as they are, is just a perspective than how do you arrive at your ethical perspective? What's more, why should your perspective matter? Its a personal perspective after all. This is why there are such things as judicial systems. And here you are at every post telling me to read Wikipedia's rules! Maybe I think they are unethical? So you will tell me to go and start a blog, and I can tell you to try moving to the Moon.

Laws after all are not made arbitrarily, nor in a vacuum. As I had shown, it took from 1950s to 1973 to formulate apartheid into a crime against humanity. Of course apartheids existed before, and the fact that such a law exists shows that the ethical point of view by much of the humanity has changed significantly.

However, that is not really a point here. There is nowhere an argument in the article that apartheid is ethically wrong since the article seeks to draw an analogy with South African case which has already been deemed ethically a crime against humanity (and any crime is ethically wrong) by the virtue of the Convention on its prevention. Simply put, the World, or at least majority of the members of the UN, agree with you. However, there is still the issue of proving that what is alleged is in fact an analogy, and that it can be shown as such through evidence. The law as formulated becomes the benchmark for testing this analogy. Ethical perceptions can't serve this testing because they are value judgments.

And you think ethical people are incapable of being bad? How do you define someone 'ethical'? Most people think they are 'good', and yet 70% admit to lying when applying for a job.

As it happens neither Israel, nor 38 states of the OIC (including the 'state' of Palestine which OIC recognised in-spite of the UN process) are signatories to the Convention anyway. This means the ICC has no jurisdiction on their territories. Not that thats generally a problem since the provisions of the Convention depend on the state having a functioning justice system and one that can see reason of International law. Do you know that aside from Pakistan and the apartheid analogy (which is not getting nearly as much attention) there are quite a few countries in which apartheid has been alleged by various minorities? Many are Islamic states. Where are their articles with analogies of apartheid? They are not here, because of the attitude in Wikipedia like yours which places personal perspectives above the law Koakhtzvigad (talk) 11:21, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

This has the makings of a very long discussion with little in the way of tangible improvements to the article. Koakhtzvigad, I would urge you to read through the archives and the move related mediation effort so that the scope of the article is more clear. The Crime of Apartheid is not the defining aspect of the article and the content is by no means limited to material that relates to such a crime. As the current material in the article shows, there are a number of notable commentators which have made comparisons between conditions that they understood to exist in South Africa and conditions that they believe have been/are/will be imposed on a population by Israel, and other commentators who believe that this is not the case. Rather than the meta-discussion of whether one side or the other is wrong, I believe that you should jump directly to discussing the references. u n☯mi 13:07, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Koakhtzvigad, there is no comparable apartheid analogy against any other state (apart from the original of course), Islamic or otherwise. A smattering of fringe criticisms does not compare to the depth and breadth of coverage and discussion that has taken place about this subject matter. A few years ago, some very highly-partisan, pro-Israeli editors created a slew of "Allegations of X apartheid" (the naming convention of this article at the time. Know what happened? Every single one was either deleted or redirected to a more benign article on the nation, and pretty much every perpetrator of that mass project-wide disruption was blocked or banned from the Wikipedia. Tarc (talk) 14:28, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Koakhtzvigad's objections are valid, but not likely to be implemented because of the massive rewrite required, and the unlikely cooperation of highly partisan anti-Israel editors. Nevertheless, his major point, a request for more neutral and objective definition of the key terms of the article, is a just one.

The crucial turning point that decides whether this article will be propaganda or a responsible encyclopedia article is in how we define its key words. Of course, those who wish to tar Israel with the term remove from "apartheid" its defining characteristics, generalizing it into an umbrella term of opprobrium, so meaningless we can even include non-racist policies in it (such as the roads to Israeli communities in the West Bank that are closed to Palestinians, but open to Israelis including Arabs of exactly the same race as the Palestinians), and non-institutionalized casual or social discrimination, indeed any discrimination at all whether legally justified or not. So then "apartheid" no longer really applies to racism, or to institutionalized discrimination. It need not even apply to anti-democratic disenfranchisement of a majority population by a minority, another key characteristic of actual apartheid. In that way, a liberal democracy like Israel's can be said to be an "apartheid state." Standard Western liberal democracy itself is no longer an antonym of "apartheid" policies.

We can even find here in the main article that many citations to support the use of the apartheid analogy are to sources that just say that "if" Israel does this or that in the future, "then" it will be an apartheid state -- in other words, according to the article such partisan exaggerations become actual endorsements of the idea that the apartheid terminology does factually apply to Israel, and their authors are said to endorse the apartheid analogy. A future hypothetical, or partisan slander, that however unjustifiably uses the word "apartheid" somehow becomes factual and presently notable. "Apartheid" is just a derogatory rhetorical term, empty of clear and certain content, a loose partisan hypothetical, perhaps over-generalizing from alleged instances or only relating to non-existent future policies one wishes to discredit for whatever reason. We also have such terms as "gender apartheid," "economic apartheid," "religious apartheid," and other such usages, frankly and openly turning the word into whatever one wants to condemn.

As such, real apartheid disappears. There is then no objective standard. The crucial step in propagandizing the term is the first one of generalizing away from and breaking the actual meaning of the word: then it can be made to mean anything. The logic is the same one behind turning the name of body parts into curse words used to diminish and dehumanize others, but which denatures the terms and makes them inappropriate for any further neutral and specific use for the actual body parts. Propaganda always proceeds by emptying words of their actual meaning, filling them instead with emotive content, and as George Orwell famously described in his book 1984, "war" can come to mean "peace" and vice versa, and discriminative thought and ethics itself are made impossible. If the main article is to rise above propaganda or being a means of promoting it, it would be desireable to restore some objective and specific meaning to its terminology.Tempered (talk) 14:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Ryan, Unomi, Tarc, Tempered, et el., you still don't get it.

This article is not about Israel, or its Arab population. Its can be about almost any nation with an aggrieved minority.

Reading some of the sources brought here, if they were court submissions, they would be used for toilet paper, notable names on them not withstanding.

Lets assume that this article is part of comparative political analysis and not international crime against humanity (i.e. a hypothetical academic exercise for 4th year students), and every student in the class gets a different state, with a different VARIABLE. In this case one state, called Israel, has a variable that affects its minority through economic segregation by choice. 15% of its population refuse to participate in the state's domestic economy 14.5% of the time, and are therefore claiming persecution. So go and figure out which aspect of international law applies to this minority, and what jurisdiction they get a hearing in, and what sort of evidence is brought to the prosecution, etc. This is how its done.

That others tried to start other articles, and all these were deleted is not an indication that they were wrong, but just inexperienced in formulating their cases in the articles, and not supporting them with sufficient evidence from available literature on the subjects.

Most of the 'references' in this article are useless. They are either:arguing from a position of assumed superior moral platform, or emotional guilt-tripping, or not addressing the relevant legislation, i.e. the Rome Statute Convention, or they are not addressing the specific Article/s, or they are failing to address the evidential format, or any number of other purely procedural failings that would make them excluded from either the prosecutor's or the defense reports to the court.

Really people, do not espouse Wikipedia rules like its some dogma or worse, mantra. When Wikipedians that went before you said reliable sources, they did not say, abandon all mental faculty of your own if the article was written by a 'notable' person. You still have to READ the article and understand the argument, or lack there of.

EVERY DAY around the globe law faculty undergrads cut their teeth on finding fault with stuff written 100, 60, 40 and even 20 years ago by professors. This is why there is the article here called Argument from authority (also known as appeal to authority) which is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative. Arguing from authority was how Communism started in Russia and Nazism in Germany though neither was short of clever people who saw the fallacy of such arguments. It is the mental attitude that drives most cults. Is Wikipedia a cult? I hope not.

There is nothing wrong with admitting the article is improperly designed, and needs a major rewrite. Admitting one is wrong is a sign of humility, not weakness.

Put the article through a revision process rather than just using the software for reverting [9]

Define the subject of the article, which to me is obviously the crime.

State clearly where that comes from and what its substance is.

Pay attention to the words; people with much education and experience wrote those.

Then evaluate each allegation in how it relates to what is admissible. if its not admissible, 80% of the time its only good for journalistic attention-grabbing to increase sales of their particular publication.

Here for example is advice for Journalism - Five Easy Rules For Successful Newspaper Writing (from ezinearticles.com which is a blocked spam site) Writing for newspapers is different than writing for magazines, blogs, and websites. Rules governing journalism writing keep the interest of the reader as they navigate through a story. The rules, however, are simple to follow.

1) Create an attention-grabbing lead.
2) Get to the point.
3) Avoid unnecessary words.
4) Let the newsmakers tell the story.
5) End with a bang.

This is not what an encyclopedic article should look like!

Any reference that was written by anyone who seems to have followed this process probably has negligible value for an article dealing with a crime against humanity! Most journalists commit a crime against intelligence daily and are hardly ever prosecuted ;)

Oh, and regarding NPOV. NPOV does not mean that one writes without having a point of view. What it does mean is that one writes while evaluating both points of view, which is called advocacy. This is the difference between being a lawyer with a law degree, and practicing law, i.e. being an advocate. Journalists don't have this as a professional constraint. Academics in different disciplines also have their agendas (as do most people). So editing here doesn't mean throwing it all in one 'heap', but separating the 'chaff' from the 'wheat', and then 'grinding' it slowly in the hope of producing 'flour', i.e. something that eventually, if not 'half-baked' with be nice to 'digest' since knowledge is also a consumable.Koakhtzvigad (talk) 23:40, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

It's true that non-legal sources wouldn't be taken seriously in a court of law. But this isn't a court of law. It's an encyclopedia article about an issue with multiple aspects, and multiple definitions, not all of them legal. The legal aspects do not have any special importance here above the other aspects. Suggesting that this article be pruned to be purely about legal aspects cannot succeed, you're wasting your time. If you want an article purely about the legal aspects, then you should be suggesting that this article be split. Once split, the split Israel and the crime of apartheid article would be exactly what you're looking for. The remaining sociological aspects of the subject would remain here, with the sociological sources. --Ryan Paddy (talk) 02:22, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I didn't name this article.

The article title specifies apartheid, which is an internationally recognised defined crime.

Please do not put words into my posts. No where had I said that the article has to be "pruned". What I suggested is that the article has to deal with a clearly defined subject, and not be a catch-all repository of blame material as it is now. This, is Wikipedia policy by which all articles are evaluated, though seemingly not this one?

Please note that a crime against humanity is a sociological crime, given it is perpetrated against segments of Humanity that are discrete societies!

However, feel free to suggest what parts of the apartheid allegations are sociological, but do not fall within the definition of apartheid as a crime.

Israel and the crime of apartheid sounds like a post factum conviction. It seems to me that all one can say now is that allegations exist. However, the intent behind this article was to draw analogy to South Africa as per the personal agendas of the individuals with whom the 'theory' originated, but South African apartheid was not defined using same terms. Hence my previous suggestion that either the historical case, or the criminal definition need to be selected, but not both.

Now you are suggesting that there is content in the article that belongs to neither of the above, but is sociological in nature, undoubtedly being leveled at Israel on ethical grounds not defined in law. This potentially makes for three articles!

I hope the article will eventually escape the description of a certain resultant declaration [that] had 62 paragraphs of introduction, followed by a document that appeared to commentators as being the result of every lobby putting its pet aversions in. It described Israel as a "racist, apartheid state" that was guilty of "racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing". Koakhtzvigad (talk) 13:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

It does deal with a clearly-defined subject; many notable people, covered by reliable sources, have compared the actions of Israel towards Palestinians with those of apartheid South Africa towards blacks. There's little else that needs to be said to refute your Wall o' Text. Tarc (talk)

Tarc, if the subject of the article is so clearly defined then what is Ryan talking about?

You may also be interested to know that allegations of crimes are not dependent on the notability of the individuals making them. First word of the Cambodian killing fields came from ordinary Cambodians fleeing their own country.

Reliability of sources is disputed.

I also dispute your authority to tell me what I need or don't need to say on the article talk page.Koakhtzvigad (talk) 01:50, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Tarc, you are not reading Koakhtzvigad. His point is that the article is not clearly defined: it is all over the place. He is right. As I also pointed out above, it follows the logic of propaganda, not serious and rigorously thought-through encyclopedia articles. Basically, the article is just a collection of insults against Israel without any clear and consistent definition of the key terms, and as it stands not worthy of Wikipedia. Arguing for the inclusion of "sociological" and "ethical" criteria as separate from and in addition to "legal" ones are just attempts to justify the diffuse propagandistic focus. The issue is certainly a legal one, strictly speaking, and one defined by the South African instance. It is made so precisely by the use of the term "apartheid," which refers to a legal system. And sneers about "Wall o' Text" are not a refutation.Tempered (talk) 22:29, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

A further point about "Too Long, Didn't Read" complaints, often justified by reference to WP:TLDR, is that same Wikipedia source states in its introductory summary that while concision is the ideal, "As a label, it is also effective as a tactic which thwarts the kinds of discussion which are essential in collaborative editing. TL;DR is a shorthand observation very much like the complaint that Mozart's music has too many notes.[2] The label is used to end discussion rather than engaging it."Tempered (talk) 06:48, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

It is quite a valid point to make. When we have a "new" ("new" in quotes because we have seen this sort of behavior on this page in the past) user making post after post after post, section after section after section, all quite voluminous and wordy to the extreme, other editors will just start to tune that person out. If someone has constructive suggestions to article improvement (and by improvement I do not mean introducing one's own version of the truth), then one needs to learn how to do it collegiality and succinctly. Tarc (talk) 14:09, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

The subject of the article is the set of significant perspectives found in reliable sources regarding the application of the apartheid label to Israel. (Essentially what Tarc said too). This definition of the subject is simple, but the implied subject is complex, because these perspectives cover a range of perspectives on the issue, including differences in what the sources mean by "apartheid". Most sources refer either to the legal definition or the historical instance in South Africa. Ryan Paddy (talk) 03:05, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

In that case, perhaps they belong in a separate category in the article than the category "Legal Aspects Relating to Accusations of 'Crimes of Apartheid' By Israel," one entitled "Emotive Polemics Loosely Applying the Apartheid Metaphor to Israel"?Tempered (talk) 06:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Please do not get fixated on WP:RS.

Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in an article, and should be appropriate to the claims made. - thats what it says. But...

A reliable source is evaluated based on:

Who wrote - doesn't have to be a professor of anything, in fact a post-grad student is much better because he/she is still afraid of being evaluated by his peers and the career sis still ahead
Why it was written - money and prestige are often up there, so watch out for a 'targeted' piece; everyone has an agenda, even the first year students
How long the author spent on research - as a general rule every expressed idea in a piece of written text should be referenced, just like in Wikipedia, unless its new research data.
Subject of the piece - its much easier to write about general subjects than to focus on a discrete subject, because the later assumes expert knowledge
Objectivity - The best researchers usually don't start out "to prove X." Instead, they start out "to find out about X." http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm

Please read the above article so we are on the 'same page' about reliable sources

There is a noticeable propensity towards argument from authority not just in the article but in the sources I have read so far. Quite frankly I (usually) look at the author last to see where else they are cited, or perhaps other written work. What counts of course is the argument and the evidence. This is immaterial in an encyclopaedia article, but it is vital for accepting or declining to cite a reference in one.Koakhtzvigad (talk) 08:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

A work by a professor is a better source for us than a work by a postgrad. If you have comments to make about sourcing policy in general, then please make them on WP talk: IRS. There is enough to do here without reading your opinions. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:25, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I had personal experiences with professors that would suggest my assessment is true at least some of the time, therefore not an opinion. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 10:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, it's anecdotal evidence. I shall treat it accordingly. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:18, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

The why of the article

Why is the analogical comparison to apartheid made towards Israel? Koakhtzvigad (talk) 01:34, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

That's a question to ask the sources. As editors, all we do is report on what the sources have said. Article talk pages like this one are not for the discussion of the subject of the article, they are for discussion of changes to the article. Ryan Paddy (talk) 03:07, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but since the article doesn't answer this question, doesn't that mean the sources do not ask it either?

It seems to me this is true, and the very existence of the article is under question because the subject has to be notable for something other than volume of references.

If the sources, regardless of volume or notability of authors, are simply value statements about a range of activities and behaviours of the Jews, they are simply opinion pieces, and therefore not admissible as sources. The Jews are different, and have different ethical standards to yourself and many of the authors of the cited sources. Its just a cultural difference that is seemingly at fault, right?

An article based on opinion pieces is therefore also an opinion based on perhaps cultural value judgments like your own, and therefore is not encyclopaedic because Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion.

Please acknowledge this as being true or false.

If true, I would suggest the article be listed for deletion

If false, then a clear consensus has to be reached on defining what this article is about

Perhaps as you suggested, it needs to be replaced by several articles.

In any case, after a definition, other than the legal one I proposed earlier, is found, the content will need to be reshaped to address the subject of the article

I'm finding it onerous to plow through three years of references, many of which appear to be badly conceived in themselves. If a reference does not clearly state why it is supporting the analogy made between Israel and South Africa, and on what logical basis it is made, it would be deemed to be unreliable and removed Koakhtzvigad (talk) 03:48, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I argued before that it's an article about a trope in policy discourse. Others demurred and said that it is also about formal allegations and investigations. What it is not is an indictment. This encyclopedia adheres to the WP:Neutral point of view. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:19, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

NPOV really doesn't come into it yet, because as you say, its not an indictment. There is not even a formal investigation although several requests have been made if one is to believe the references. I haven't searched the databases for any reports lodged at this time, but its too early in the re-editing process to worry about that.

At this time we have only the observed historical case (precedent), the untried (since 1973!) law (trope), and allegations. Allegations don't require NPOV because one assumes prosecution is hostile. So I'm not really concerned about the agenda/motivation/language used by the sources. I am however concerned about facts and relevance, as well as the data, notably the sociological research that Ryan mentioned, that backs it up, and who collected that data.

The other concern that you mention is policy discourse. Israeli policy is mentioned throughout, but, strangely not quoted or even cited! Besides that Israelis have several times acquiesced with ICC's requests to commence investigations of their own that resulted in several convictions. This is documented, but it seems several 'notable' identities are out for blood, literally.

I'd suggest we just stick to 5Ws, etc. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 09:47, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

NPOV is one of the pillars of Wikipedia. Please do not edit this controversial article until you have understood the policy and are willing to abide by it. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I beg your pardon, I was referring to NPOV in sources, not as a Wikipedia editorial policy. That is, sources should be objective. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 10:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

That is a mistaken view. Please re-read WP:Identifying reliable sources. You might also find it useful to read discussions on the reliable sources noticeboard, and its archives. You can search for "Israel", "Palestine", etc or you might find it even more instructive to see the arguments about sources in articles relating to, say, homeopathy. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:47, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Removal of reference

The references to The International Conference of Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People were removed because while every mention of apartheid was in the context of it being a crime against humanity, each and every mention was stated prejudicially, i.e. prior to a proper judicial process through which Israel was found to be guilty of this crime having taken place.

The unattributed quotes are no longer available from http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B9C2E/%28httpNewsByYear_en%29/C5CD4EE1AA30A312C12571E3005669B5?OpenDocument, while attributed quotes can not be verified because they were not part of the sessions available in audio here http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/92AEE0DE70E66367852571F500735AD5

Several mentions of the Wall of Apartheid were also made, though its construction in the security context was not made, and is therefore clearly biased Koakhtzvigad (talk) 04:34, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Sources can be biased. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:16, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Editors that use biased sources are biased by extension...but they are 'good' biased sources ;) ,so they are 'good' editors because they follow the rules. How wonderfully logical Koakhtzvigad (talk) 14:04, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Hazeem Jamjoum

The piece "Not an Analogy: Israel and the Crime of Apartheid", by Hazeem Jamjoum is not referenced, but I went and read it.

There is no substance in it that can be clearly pointed to as being an analogy between Israel and South African apartheid. Moreover, he says "I have argued that the question of whether apartheid applies cannot be determined by means of comparison with South Africa, but rather by legal analysis." (in Colonialism and the role of comparison) However, his claims are disingenious. For example he affirms that the black South Africans continued to assert their rights during both, the Dutch, British and South African periods of history, yet in claiming Israeli 'colonialism', he fails to point out that no such struggle took place against the Ottoman, British or Jordanian periods of history he describes.

I'm removing it largely because it is a journalistic piece, but a particularly bad one. For example one of his cited references is one Karine MacAllister, and her 'paper' Applicability of the Crime of Apartheid to Israel, but this turned out to be a staff writer who in turn quoted an Israeli policy in 1967 the Allon Plan, which aimed to annex as much Palestinian land as possible immediately after the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the central motto of which was "maximum security and maximum territory for Israel with the minimum Arabs" , which turned out to come from Souad A. Dajani, Ruling Palestine, A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine, Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) and Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Bethlehem, 2005, p. 28, 73....another staff writer!

In fact there was to be no 'minimum of Arabs', an implied forced resettlement, while maximum security is a core consideration of any nation with hostile neighbours.

I therefore remove this reference also due to its unreliability Koakhtzvigad (talk) 05:28, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

You are editing very prolifically, but I would advise you at this stage to go and read WP:Identifying reliable sources very thoroughly. We don't make up our minds about the quality of sources on the basis of our own reading and interpretation. Rather, we need to look at the qualifications of the author and the reputations of the publication and publisher. I will have a look at the nature of the piece you mention. If there is any doubt, the reliable sources noticeboard is there to help. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:15, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I am familiar with how to identify a quality piece of writing. I would however suggest that Wikipedia become far more selective and stringent, based for example on this advice, or any similar available from most university websites. As I said, I have only attempted to evaluate about 30 cited sources here so far, and most seem to have been selected because of their general applicability to the subject, and not for specific applicability to the point being made, or objectivity

What do you mean 'prolifically'? I have so far removed three references and rewritten three sentences in the introduction. Prolific to me would be rewrite of an entire section. However, that is not possible until there is some discussion on restructuring the article as suggested elsewhereKoakhtzvigad (talk) 10:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure you are familiar with how to identify a quality piece of writing. You refer to norms in academic writing and journalism. However, editing Wikipedia is quite different from those kinds of writing. For one thing, you have to work with other people all the time. For another, we are not producing original work but simply reporting what sources say. It is very helpful to subject sources to scrutiny, but you need to use the criteria in our policy, not the criteria that apply in academic writing or journalism. I'll give you an example. You read the Hazem Jamjoun piece and identified weaknesses in it. I only scanned through it. I searched for Jamjoun in Google Scholar, and Googled the online magazine and the organization that publishes it. I found that it is an advocacy NPO that may have some support from international bodies but is not very widely known. On that basis I don't think this article is usable in the article. Not because it may be weakly researched; I have no opinion on that. But because it seems to be to be non-notable commentary, even as an attributed view of "some Palestinian activists". Itsmejudith (talk) 10:43, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

What are you saying, that someone notable can write a completely subjective paper with fudged data, but would immediately qualify as a reliable source in Wikipedia? The Wikipedia articles are only as good as the sources used, and evaluated, by the editors that append them as references. If the articles are not worth the paper, and the editors append them without due diligence in understanding this, the Wikipedia article is also going to fully reflect this. This article fully reflects this. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 12:40, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Just read the policy. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:27, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

They are not on my reading list. I find policy articles incredibly boring. Not even any pictures.

However, I'll tell you what, I'll leave, and you get the User:policy article to contribute here instead Koakhtzvigad (talk) 14:01, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Lead

The lead, and most especially the opening sentences, should be brief and simply worded. This edit is neither. It both unnecessary and undesirable to enumerate some supposed precise number of sources that have made a given statement that the article is about. It's unnecessary because the reader can see for themselves, in due course of reading the article, exactly how many and what type of sources a statement has been made by. It is undesirable, because all such statements would have to be preceded by "at least..." for accuracy, as we don't know exactly how many such sources exist - we only know how many are currently listed in the article. Please also note that the word "investigators" was agreed on after a involved discussion on this talk page, where consensus was reached that this term accurately describes both the Special Rapporteurs and other UN sources. In terms of the bad linking that I reverted, common English words don't need to be linked (it's overlinking) and links that say something that doesn't need to be linked (e.g. "Israeli policy") and then link to something other than the linked word (e.g. Israeli-occupied territories) are doubly awful practice. Also, editors should note that this article has WP:1RR (one revert per editor per article per 24 hour period) in place. Ryan Paddy (talk) 01:54, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

What does your action to revert my editing have to do with the content itself that you need to mention it?

I agree of course that overlinking to articles which discuss common English words is unnecessary. But in the case of this subject, the readers may come from at least three different non-English speaking background societies, and their conception of the seemingly common English word may be different in their cultural context than yours. Cultural awareness would suggest this is a good practice in English Wikipedia, which is often used by non-English speakers.

The entire purpose of hypertextual linking is to create conceptual networks that accurately relate information about a subject, the core purpose for any encyclopedia. I would therefore suggest that my linking was appropriate since not everyone would be aware of the suggested effects of Israel's policy, or criticism of Israel, and this awareness is essential for understanding the content found in the article. In removing them you are denying the reader access to this information that needs to be made available at earliest opportunity.

It doesn't really matter if there was a consensus established on adding the investigative function to the particular role. It doesn't change the fact that this function is not authorised by the employer of the Special Rapporteur, the United Nations. This roles is clearly described under "Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council" Code of conduct. If Wikipedia editorial consensus had this authority to change role descriptions, imagine what can be done with describing the roles of directors of corporations, ministers of governments, of corporate board members, etc. Where an external authority exists that has defined something, in this case the United Nations Organisation, for itself, Wikiepedia is simply misinforming the reader by attributing general tasks, or functions, and responsibilities of a position it lacks.

The subject of the article is a very onerous one in that it seeks to draw an analogy between a recognised democratic society and its elected representatives, and that of 1960s and 70s South African society which was not democratic. In doing so it undermines the very basis on which the Israeli society is founded. It seems to me that the volume of sources from which such parallels are drawn is important because this analogy is either accepted by the Israeli and international societies, or it is not. Please note that both Special Rapporteurs were professional detractors of Israel before their appointment to the role, and therefore hardly qualify as sources of independent international opinion.

As for the two, and only two Israeli human rights groups, although there are many more such groups in Israel, I would make a case to you that such beliefs held about one's own society can be explained in terms of both social and individual psychology of a minority in any population, commonly described as being too close to the problem, and thus lacking objectivity.

However, in terms of data for assessing validity of the claims, measuring volume of such clams is a valid method of analysis that a reader may not realise due to how this is presented in the article. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 04:04, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

TL;DR. Please try to be more concise and to-the-point.

It would also help if you familiarize yourself with the guidance in WP:LEDE. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 04:32, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I am very familiar with the guidelines for creating introductory sections to articles.

The less vocabulary is used, the less precise is the output, and therefore the transfer of ideas is also less precise. Unfortunately English demands many words to be precise, and I so dislike to be misunderstood.

On the other hand there is a certain tendency I noticed by some editors to use Wikipedia template syntax as a replacement for English, in a sort of constrained writing style. It seems ironic for people who write encyclopaedic articles.

It seems discourteous to me to get involved in an activity, but fail to listen to what is being said. Do you lack the attention span? Maybe you need a Wikibreak?

When I address something, I do so comprehensively, and using the fullness of the English language as far as I'm able.

However, here is a fast food version:

People from different cultures need to be related to with more awareness
Important information on which article is based needs to be presented early
All bits of knowledge within a concept are related and need to be seen as such
If the job description is spelled out by the employer no one cares what Wikipedia consensus is on the said job description, it is what it is
Compare apples with apples, not pears with pineapples
Evidence is based on data, and method used to perform data analysis counts for a lot Koakhtzvigad (talk) 06:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I pointed out the 1RR because you have violated it: this edit and this edit are the same reversion within 24hr. Your comments on overlinking for the benefit of non-English readers are silly because they could apply to any article, and because there are other language Wikipedias, and besides your links are incorrect for the text as I pointed out. The consensus was that SRs are tasked as investigators by the UN, and that they're not the only UN investigators who have used the apartheid label, please see the last talk archive. Your source counts are inaccurate - they appear to be based in casual comments by editors here on the talk page - and that level of detail is excessive for the opening sentence anyway. Ryan Paddy (talk) 05:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

No, you were scoring a point by alluding to my guilt by association with the 1RR.

Other WEikipedias do not have same level of attention, content, or oversight as English version, and you know it.

How were my links incorrect?

Consensus can not determine what the individuals are tasked with, only the tasking authority can.

I don't know what other investigators made comments, but those two particular individuals in the role of Special Rapporteurs are not investigators.

There are following mentions:

International Coordinating Network on Palestine - boycott oriented
B'Tselem - human rights (lists all staff)
Amnesty International - human rights, but general (reports unsigned and incomplete)
Human Rights Watch - human rights, general (no claims of apartheid in Israel)
The Abraham Fund Initiatives - co-operation
Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel - "Adalah officials, in conjunction with radical Palestinian NGO Al-Haq, wrote and edited large portions of a May 2009 pseudo-academic study that refers to “a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.” The report delegitimizes Israeli self-defense measures as “inhumane act[s] of apartheid...perpetrated in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another.”[10] Sounds familiar? "The ICSPCA defines the crime of apartheid as "inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group ... over another racial group ... and systematically oppressing them."" which is a direct quote from Article II of the Convention
Association for Civil Rights in Israel - human rights (legal support, lists staff by name)

To me that means two, but maybe our methodology of counting is different Koakhtzvigad (talk) 07:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Ryan, I took your advice on opening sentences should be brief and simply worded.

The introduction in general should reflect the structure and content of the article, and not be a part of it. However, since at this time we lack consensus on what the article is about (though it seems clear from most sources I have so far covered, about 30), I would propose that the article be divided as follows, with a view of future split into separate articles if there is consensus. The below approach is chronological.

The article needs to be divided into three sections:

Israel's analogy to South African apartheid
Sociology of Palestinian apartheid
Israel's analogy to apartheid as a crime

Also, the current introduction contains about 10% of all references in the article! This is both unusual, and unconventional in Wikipedia unless the article is 'struggling' for notability and editors hope to 'anchor' it through volume rather than substance.

I would therefore propose that where appropriate the references be moved from the introduction to the article content Koakhtzvigad (talk) 06:00, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

PS. and I just realised the article is 177 kilobytes long! Koakhtzvigad (talk) 06:04, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not opposed in general to the idea of dividing the article into sections regarding the crime (which already has a section), and the analogy to SA apartheid. That approach may help with clarity. However, there are also other possible ways the article could be divided up, and it could take some careful weighing-up and discussion to reach consensus on an approach. Ryan Paddy (talk) 21:21, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

POV

It seems as though this article is little more than a very biased POV piece that attempts to portray Israel in a negative light. Perhaps this ought to be merged with Criticism of Israel to achieve a more balanced perspective, as this article on its own violates Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Though evidently there is substantial backing behind this analogy, its applicability still contested, and therefore should be treated as such. Arielkoiman (talk) 22:09, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

This has been proposed several times in the past in an attempt to bury the article, but has thankfully never garnered much consensus. This is pretty much dead on arrival; many prominent people have made the comparisons for Israeli actions to that of South African apartheid, it is a valid topic that deserves treatment in an encyclopedia. Tarc (talk) 23:05, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if it can be found valid - it is, after all, a matter of opinion. You don't see people writing their personal manifestos on Wikipedia, and unfortunately, this is precisely what the article does. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the content of this article, it is pretty much an undeniable fact that it's in violation of NPOV. Arielkoiman (talk) 03:17, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

No, it isn't; you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what NPOV is and what the purpose is of an encyclopedia. Just because the Wikipedia has an article regarding the apartheid analogy does not mean that it is necessarily true. Read the top part of WP:V there, which is "verifiability, not truth". Tarc (talk) 03:46, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Hm, I suppose you're right. The article does abide by non-judgmental language, being very objective about the criticisms presented herein. A long tirade, although properly constructed. Arielkoiman (talk) 10:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

You might say the article is a description of some well-sourced tirades (both for and against the apartheid label), as opposed to the article being a tirade itself. Ryan Paddy (talk) 04:05, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I've just heard enough tirades on the matter to be concerned when I learned of a full-on article about it. Arielkoiman (talk) 10:16, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

As it stands, unfortunately, the article is itself largely a tirade. That remains a problem. That is why it remains in the "Start" class after years of tinkering around the edges. I am afraid that Arielkoiman has accepted the "non-judgmental" claims for it of Tarc and Ryan Paddy much too readily. As structured, the article is a very strange one. It is little more than a listing and compendium of citations to and quotes of propaganda slanders with only sharply truncated rebuttals allowed in the 'Criticisms of the Apartheid Analogy" section. This imbalance is quite marked. Claims of "verifiability, not truth," and NPOV skirt the actual issues.

The weight of the article is its own form of advocacy, as is the differential treatment of sources. Many effective and significant citations have simply been removed from the "Criticisms" section over just the past few months, leaving it a skeleton of what it could have been. One instance is the substantial quote from John Strawson, professor of international law at the University of East London, arguing that Zionism is not racism nor Israel an apartheid state, which had previously headed up this section for over a year, and which was long enough to allow him actually to give his reasons for these assessments - simply removed. So the "Criticisms" section does not present fairly or fully the arguments of those making those criticisms. Aside from the Lede, three-fourths of the article and over 10,000 words, is given over to citations of largely repetitious attacks, many of them without any significant new substance or any specific substance at all, mere opinions that all together could have been summarized readily in a sentence or two, with only one-fourth of the article allowed for rebuttals (and many of those allowed into the article are edited down to banal travesties of the actual sources with their significant new substance omitted).

In all fairness, and in recognition of how apparently necessary it is for this encyclopedia to have such information for readers, I would suggest similar articles collecting verifiable quotes and citations on slurs made by every people and nation against their enemies' "racism" and "oppression," articles anthologizing religious groups' slurs against the crimes against humanity of other religious groups (such an article on Islam would be very topical), articles giving verifiable quotes from reliable "European" sources on African racism and oppression, and vice versa, etc. All of these are notable topics, and there is a lot of material on them. Of course, some might demur, saying this would make the encyclopedia a compendium of bigotry. But there would be so much to learn, for interested readers! And if the refutations of each bigotry were included in banalized form, and kept to a fourth or so of the article, NPOV could be claimed. Tempered (talk) 01:36, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

John Strawson's quote is still in there, or where you referring to another by him? See the 2nd quote to the right in Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy#Differences_in_motivations. u n☯mi 03:30, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

By George, and even by Unomi, you are right. I missed it. Certainly the very long quote has been removed from the text itself, but now a small portion of it is in the sidebar. Thanks for pointing that out. But the wider statement remains valid; the Criticisms section is not only very abbreviated, but it is being constantly further pruned, bit by bit, or reworded tendentiously to weaken the citations, while the Proponents section expands. Several authorities cited in the South Africa subsection are gone, and the same remains true of most other subsections.Tempered (talk) 08:53, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the merge tag. The topic clearly merits its own article, per WP:NOTABLE, and is too long to be merged into Criticism of Israel anyway. There is no basis in policy for suggesting the merge. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 20:09, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

This article is entirely POV. Should be shortened and merged with Criticism of Israel. The accusation is provably false, quite easily. It has no purpose other than to document false accusations against Israel from Israel's enemies. If this merits it's own article there should be an article about Apartheid committed by Arabs against Israelis as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.155.111.25 (talk) 19:57, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

John Dugard article

This article doesn't mention Israel, and therefore can not support the sentence to which it is appended Koakhtzvigad (talk) 05:30, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind the 1RR rule on these articles, Koakhtzvigad. As I understand it, only one modification of any kind a day is permitted.Tempered (talk) 06:55, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me? 1RR means reverting. I am not reverting anyone. Moreover, I am stating why I have edited this or that explicitly in talk and not in edit summaryKoakhtzvigad (talk) 10:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

1RR refers, as I understand it, to any modification at all of the main article. Certainly any modification of previous text constitutes a revert. Change even of just one word might qualify as well. There are certain exceptions to the general restriction. I would check on that before proceeding further. Providing an explanation of the revert, however, does not change the basic issue. For more information on this, check WP:1RR and WP:3RR. Definitions of "revert" are provided there.Tempered (talk) 12:23, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Its absolute bonkers. If revert=edit, of anything, then there can be almost 0 editing if anyone at any time chooses to revert, as happened just now with Unomi‎. And editing doesn't work in word-at-a-time. This means that 'controversial' subjects will eventually fall to whoever lasts out longer, and not to quality editing. So, while I think of myself capable of substantially improving articles that badly need it, I will do nothing, and write articles that will get perhaps 10 visits a year because at least there I am unhindered from doing real writing. Way to go Wikipedia!

I can see that I will get too frustrated by participating in editing an article where initiative and high standards are a liability. This is a highly unacceptable article. Anyone reading it will not learn anything since it is even structured as a partisan argument and not something that informs. If anyone decides that I am welcome editing here without the 1RR restrictions, but of course in consensus, please contact me. Meanwhile I have more satisfying things to do, like sleep.Koakhtzvigad (talk) 13:04, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I and many other readers learn a great deal from the article; who has made the apartheid analogy, why they have made such an analogy, and why there are many who reject the analogy. Whether the analogy itself is necessarily true or not is not a concern or a goal of this article. If you or anyone else reads this and says "wow, Israel really does practice apartheid!" or "wow, those people who made that analogy are a bunch of wrong-headed, antisemites", then that is a specific confirmation bias that you are bringing into the article. An encyclopedia informs, it does not conclude. I realize that it is one of the most difficult concepts for new users to grasp, but verifiability, not truth is critically important to becoming a good editor.[User:Tarc|Tarc]] (talk) 14:17, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I take it then that, if only to be consistent and because you are genuinely interested in learning about the who and why issues, you strongly endorse the proposed contribution I have put forward (given at the top of the page) which gives a needed historical background and context to the rise and application of the "apartheid" terminology to the Jewish state of Israel, and identifies some of the ideological agendas and groups involved. Your support is appreciated. Otherwise, as you will no doubt have regretted before this, there is no historical context or background given at all, an obvious omission.Tempered (talk) 01:52, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Which proposal would that be, the one that tries to tie those who have made the analogy to Nazis and racists and such? I think I'll decline a ride on your Spin Cycle, thanks. Tarc (talk) 14:15, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, then, Tarc, I am sorry that, as you have made perfectly clear, you are not interested in learning more about the subject. Evidently this is true no matter how scholarly the authors and publications and mainstream and authoritative the sources that reveal those historical agendas and contexts you deny (which, in any case, are blatantly evident even from the placards and chants at many Palestine-Solidarity rallies and comments in web discussion groups). For how can you "learn" anything if you repudiate that there is actually another side and a serious opposing case to be made? The only "learning" left could only be related to what confirms your own preconceptions and biases. You clearly have not even bothered to read the sources cited nor to take their evidence seriously; you just dismiss them out of hand, sight unseen. Only thus can the one-sided article as it stands be defended and criticisms be ignored. However, Wikipedia is dedicated to a wider and less partisan readership, and this should be acknowledged and supported. I invite you to some real learning, by reading especially the historical background sources cited in my proposed contribution. You will see that there is a serious case to be made, I assure you.Tempered (talk) 05:23, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I can assure you that I am quite interested in knowing more about the subject, but your "OMG RACIST!" angle is a non-starter. I hope that clears things up. Tarc (talk) 14:15, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Self refutation.Tempered (talk) 01:07, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Rejection of tinfoil/fringe theories, is more like it. Tarc (talk) 18:33, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Read the sources before you speak of what you don't know. Very obviously, and to quote your own words, you have "a specific confirmation bias that you are bringing into the article. An encyclopedia informs, it does not conclude. I realize that it is one of the most difficult concepts for new users to grasp, but verifiability, not truth is critically important to becoming a good editor." It would appear that as defined by you, you are not yet a "good editor." I would suggest that you become one by taking the "criticisms" citations seriously, including those in my proposed contribution. You might learn something new.Tempered (talk) 22:49, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

@ Koakhtzvigad and Tempered, lets stop this nonsense. The source is "Dugard, John. "Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967" refers directly to Israel, in fact it uses the name.

It says in part "The international community has identified three regimes as inimical to human rights – colonialism, apartheid and foreign occupation. Israel is clearly in military occupation of the OPT. At the same time elements of the occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law. What are the legal consequences of a regime of prolonged occupation with features of colonialism and apartheid for the occupied people, the occupying Power and third States? It is suggested that this question might appropriately be put to the International Court of Justice for a further advisory opinion." Templar98 (talk) 09:54, 17 January 2011 (UTC)struck comments of banned user.--brew crewer (yada, yada) 05:23, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Since when is John Dugard an expert on colonialism or military occupations? He is barely able to make statements about his chosen profession of a lawyer.

Just so we understand this correctly:

Colonialism involves occupation of territory not forming a part of the territory at any time settled by colonizing entity. Is this true of Israel? No.
Military occupation requires garrisoning of the territory following defeat of its defending forces, with the intention of deriving economic benefit from use of its natural resources or labour. In general it requires at least one combat soldier per 100 inhabitants. Is this true? No.
Apartheid is under current discussion here, and having already said much, I will not elaborate further until editors reach consensus on other issues that would allow the improvement of the article to proceed further. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 10:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

You opened this section with a statement that the John Dugard article didn't mention Israel. It does. Then you told Tarc to "read the sources before you speak of what you don't know" and it's obvious you're the one who doesn't know. Sorry if that reads as a personal attack, it's not intended to do so, only to make it clear that, at least at this moment in time, you're filling the talk-page with statements of fact and opinion that nobody need feel require them to bother with. I think I'll decline a ride on your Spin Cycle, thanks. Templar98 (talk) 12:55, 17 January 2011 (UTC) _{- banned user}

Literal, self-refuting nonsense has certainly been shown in this topic section, as both Koakhtzvigad and I have shown pretty conclusively, and it also abounds in this entire Talk page, I'll agree with that, although naturally where it is located may be a matter of debate depending on where one stands.Tempered (talk) 12:36, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't follow most of the above discussion, most of which appears to be off-topic. Would Koakhtzvigad like to refactor comments about Dugard in line with BLP policy? If what is at issue is whether a report by a UN special rapporteur is reliable for this article, the answer is "of course", unless there are very good contrary reasons indeed. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to ask for clarification on anything you don't follow.

I haven't quite got to Mr special rapporteur Dugard yet, but I can give you a quick summary.

He has been in the job for years. He has written several reports. He is quoted five times in the entire article, including onces as being a notable person. However, this doesn't count since, if called as a witness, he will stand in the dock just like any other non-notable person.
I proceed in the order of Mr Dugard being cited in the article:

In a 2007 report,...John Dugard stated that "elements of the Israeli occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law" and suggested that the "legal consequences of a prolonged occupation with features of colonialism and apartheid" be put to the International Court of Justice.[34] - to which I replied (above) that military occupations is not his specialty, and moreover is not part of how the crime of apartheid is defined by the above mentioned court. As Haiti proved many times, military occupation can be highly beneficial to the population. I think Somalis would have loved to be occupied by someone with some idea what a functioning state should be like. Neither is Israel a coloniser, as it says in WP article "In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state.", and Israel NEVER had political control in WB&GS. What is more, colonialism is not against international law despite UN GA resolutions. [For the record - 'International law recognizes the principle of self-determination' and 'like sovereignty', it is a 'legal principle.', not a crime] However, IF it was, than the Ottoman Empire was a colonial power that was in the region for almost 500 years. Before it, the colonising power was the Arabian Islamic Army, and before then the Greek Byzantine Roman Empire that replaced the Roman colonial occupation. The British mandate was administered by the Colonial Office! I wonder if this is in Mr Dugard's report? So, in any case, how does one occupy a little bit, i.e. by elements? This is why I said that Mr Dugard is not an expert on military operations and should keep to what he knows best.

A permit and closure system was introduced in 1990. John Dugard has said these laws "resemble, but in severity go far beyond, apartheid's pass system".[89] - But, he failed to be sufficiently persuasive on the subject of resemble, or in what way they go far beyond. For example he forgot to mention that while the pass laws in SA predate SA independence from BE, it took 19 years for Israelis to re-impose them after 1972 in the face of increasing terrorism. He also forgot that in SA "Any white person, even a child, could ask a black African to produce his or her pass." (from WP article, you too can read!) while in Israel only security personnel authorized to do so can request it. And how do they go far beyond? In Israel there is no law that says an Arab resident of West Bank working in Israel can't hold a position higher than an Israeli working in same company. Probably Mr Dugard has been living in Geneva for too long, and forgot?

John Dugard described the situation in the West Bank as "an apartheid regime ... worse than the one that existed in South Africa."[175] - the full quote from Ha'aretz is "...Prof. John Dugard,[cut out title]... has written in a report to the UN General Assembly that there is "an apartheid regime" in the territories "worse than the one that existed in South Africa." As an example, Dugard points to the roads only open to settlers, from which Palestinians are banned." - That is, from the report we know that Mr Dugard can tell if there is an apartheid in Israel better than the ICC investigators (ICC investigates these crimes, and not ICJ as he suggested in above citation, an international lawyer would know which court to go to), which in civil matters would put him in contempt of court (IF there was a case). BUT, having established singlehandedly there is apartheid, from this ENTIRE REPORT he could give only one example worth quoting, "the roads only open to settlers, from which Palestinians are banned." What Mr Dugard failed to mention is that there is a reason for that, called terrorism (terrorism is also an international crime don't you know!). Not just some abstract terrorism where people get blown up by a suicide bomber, so they don't actually get to be terrorised unless they are maimed in the process, but the sort of terrorism where the car with a family in it has its tires shot out, and then the occupants are sprayed with automatic weapons at close range while they cower, and then the arriving security, often relatives can read proclamations written with their blood finger-paint style on the car. Admittedly I don't know if even ANC stooped to something like that towards white farmers. BE THAT AS IT MAY, there is a legal precedent for taking measures to protect oneself against any crime. The Israeli Government however didn't really have a choice because they were unable to find anyone accountable for these acts of terrorism since the self-proclaimed PLO (now State of Palestine) was a recognised international terrorist group. So when Mr Dugard was doing another degree in Cambridge, he would have been aware of the Res. 2675 (XXV) Basic Principles for the Protection of Civilian Populations in Armed Conflicts (9 December 1970), reprinted in Schindler and Toman, Laws of Armed Conflicts 203 31, 32, 76, 77, 78, 80, 87, 90, 91, right?

In 2007, ~~in advance of~~ a report from the United Nations Human Rights Council, Dugard wrote that "Israel's laws and practices in the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories] certainly resemble aspects of apartheid." Referring to Israel's actions in the occupied West Bank, he wrote, "Can it seriously be denied that the purpose [...] is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them? Israel denies that this is its intention or purpose. But such an intention or purpose may be inferred from the actions described in this report."[141][176] - It would be nice to hear which of Israel's laws resemble apartheid. Of course neither Jews nor Palestinians are races. What I find fascinating is that here we have a lawyer choosing to infer from actions an "intention and purpose" for a crime yet to be proven rather than state these actions that have so far failed to convince ICC investigators (in the Investigator role) to commence investigations. Law is after all based on proving guilt through evidence, not inference thereof.

From the above I would say that either mention of Mr Dugard needs to be removed from the article per WP:BLP - Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion., or far better substantiated based on perhaps his little-seen reports. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 11:57, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

~~The nonsense I'm seeing is statements such as that there is no occupation. Even Israel doesn't deny that. Templar98 (talk) 12:55, 17 January 2011 (UTC)~~struck comments of banned user.--brew crewer (yada, yada) 05:23, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Israel does deny de jure (in law) that the area of Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, is "occupied territory," much less "occupied Palestine." Those territories are not under "Occupation" for many reasons, historical (there never was an autonomous sovereign state of "Palestine" that could be "occupied," and Israel won that territory legitimately in a war of self-defense, against states then governing there de facto but not de jure all of which have subsequently relinquished their claim to that land), legal (proper legal sovereignty, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the temporary custodial mandate bestowed on Britain by the League of Nations, did not exist; local Arabs rejected the UN resolution establishing a "Palestine" state next to a Jewish state in 1947; UN Resolution 242 is worded to allow for adjustments arrived at through a proper peace treaty with the contesting parties, so borders cannot be asserted prior to such a treaty, and any "Palestine" state that emerges would be a new one with those borders) and actual (i.e., all Palestinian towns and villages are presently governed solely by the P.A., with its own military, police and other standard administrative services). That many in the U.N. tend to hold otherwise, reflecting the voting weight of authoritarian states and their common front with the 57 Islamic Conference countries (Israel being only one small state), still does not make it so even in terms of U.N. legal precedents. The only foundation for claims that Israel "occupies Palestine" is political, not legal. On this, see the long and detailed legal analysis by Avinoam Sharon, "Why is Israel's Presence in the Territories Still Called "Occupation"?" JCPA Global Law Forum, July 14, 2009, accessible at: http://www.globallawforum.org/ViewPublication.aspx?ArticleId=101, and by David M. Phillips, "The Illegal-Settlements Myth," Commentary Magazine, December 2009, accessible at: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-illegal-settlements-myth-15295. These are far from the only such articles, but are just the first to hand. Suffice to say that Israel does not consider the territories "occupied," but merely "disputed." By the way, the U.S. does not officially hold that the territories are "occupied," contrary to the statements of some. As a party to UN Resolution 242, the US is aware of the issues involved. To assume that they are "occupied" would be to predetermine the borders and the results of peace agreements that have not yet been signed. The very terminology is prejudicial to Israel.Tempered (talk) 05:34, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

referencing volume

why do sentences in the introduction need 5-8 references? isn't one sufficient? Koakhtzvigad (talk) 10:02, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

If the points already appear in the body of the text, and the WP:LEDE is only a summary, they may not need any inline citations at all. Itsmejudith (talk)

With a controversial subject such as this, statements in the article are often challenged and sources are often requested. People especially challenge the lead content, because it's the first thing they read. So it pays to have references for all statements in the lead. However, where possible a couple of the best references against a statement is preferable to a pile of references. Ryan Paddy (talk) 21:12, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

So again, if a reference is challengeable in its own right, having others does not make it a more reliable source. Is it not sufficient to have a single reliable, and therefore unchallengeable reference than five that are used to support each other more so than the text? Koakhtzvigad (talk) 10:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The best solution is probably to group the references together, that way the reader and future editors retain access to an array of sources. See WP:CLUTTER for solutions to having all those numbers. u n☯mi 11:05, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no move. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 08:41, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Israel and the apartheid analogy → Israeli apartheid — More accurate and neutral title. --J4\/4 <talk> 16:29, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

Oppose - the current title seems more NPOV than the proposed one. After all there are two POVs and "analogy" is more NPOV than the "statement as fact" as proposed. Alinor (talk) 20:27, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Oppose There isn't sufficient agreement among the best reliable sources that Israeli policy & practice amounts to apartheid to warrant a title for this article that strongly implies the existence of "Israeli apartheid". The current title has issues of scope, but they are not as severe as the suggested title's issue of mis-representing the agreement among the sources. Ryan Paddy (talk) 21:08, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Oppose - "More accurate and neutral" if that is the point-of-view that you personally believe in, sure. But we're not here to advance what editors believe to be true, we're here to reflect what is verifiable and supported by reliable sources. Tarc (talk) 18:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Oppose - Since by association the title is pre-judicial to Israel being found guilty of the crime of apartheid. In this it is the LEAST "accurate and neutral" title possible Koakhtzvigad (talk) 15:12, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Oppose per the Orwellian definition of "neutral" in the nomination. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 09:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

Again? Really? u n☯mi 21:05, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

When this whole fraught issue of the article name went to mediation last year, my first preference was for the title "Israeli apartheid". That was not the preferred outcome; as the mediator noted "This mediation progressed to a strong but incomplete consensus (14 participants supporting, 2 against, 6 offering no comment) to change the name of the article to Israel and Apartheid, with the inclusion of a disambiguation line to clear up any misconceptions that might arise from that title. At least two editors did not agree with this consensus, and further attempts at discussion seem unlikely to reach a more complete consensus on the matter. Given the strong opinions evidenced in this mediation, I recommend that the participants consider taking the issue to formal mediation or arbitration for a more authoritative solution than is possible in informal mediation." In line with this finding, I strongly recommend abandoning the above survey, since whatever the outcome this is bound to be challenged in another six months, and proceeding to the recommended formal mediation or arbitration. Although I have a strong preference for some titles over others, I have an even stronger preference for somehow calling a halt to this seemingly endless stream of deletion and name change proposals, which are becoming extremely disruptive, despite the good intentions (which I do not question) of the proposer. RolandR (talk) 15:42, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more. u n☯mi 23:26, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

What more "neutral and accurate" title would replace the present one? Without knowing that, it is very hard to choose either pro or con. The present title is better than at least most but not all of the alternatives I have seen (neither "Israeli apartheid" nor "Israel and Apartheid" seem at all "neutral" or satisfactory to me). I tend to think, besides, that the main problem is not the name itself, but the article as a whole. It seems to exist "primarily to disparage its subject" and as such is automatically in the category of articles worthy of deletion (WP:ATTACK), even if what replaces it is a stub that will require complete reworking of the subject. But I do not think that, after practically yearly attempts to delete the article in the past, such a move would bear any fruit now, so I do not push it here.Tempered (talk) 04:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

As I pointed out before, until editors acknowledge that the article is about applying a legally defined crime to a sovereign state, they are not going to get a quality article here. IF the editors manage to agree that the article is about a legally defined crime, THEN they will be able to compose a quality article. AT THIS STAGE, the subject of the article is ALLEGATIONS OF the crime of apartheid made against Israel. Changing a title will do NOTHING to improve the content of the article. However, renaming it to Allegations of apartheid in Israel would at least describe the issue as a current affair.

If I was writing this article, I would have planned it somewhat differently so the subject would be clear and obvious to the reader.

The suggestion here Israel and the apartheid analogy → Israeli apartheid is pre-judicial in the extreme, prejudicial means "announcing the verdict before the court has deliberated the evidence". This is done by placing the name of the accused next to the last word that would be said in the verdict, regardless of all the evidence, or lack there of, or arguments for the defense.

However, its a bad article and editors are seemingly happy with poor quality, instead bickering over the title Koakhtzvigad (talk) 07:40, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

As has been pointed out and as the article bears out, it is about more than just the Crime of apartheid. If you wish you could probably start Crime of Apartheid and Israel and write it accordingly. As for potential renames, please do look through the previous mediation attempt concerning it. u n☯mi 09:05, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

And I have asked before, IF the article "is about more than just the Crime of apartheid", why is this more not reflected in the title? Koakhtzvigad (talk) 10:48, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The very reason that Israel and apartheid was chosen as a title last round of mediation was because it was less and not more. It is ironic that prior to the previous rename discussion, material pertaining to the Crime of apartheid was sought removed from the article as it did not present an analogy, yet from the very same title you want to retain only material pertaining to Crime of apartheid. u n☯mi 11:54, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The title covers several possible forms of the discussion. Unfortunately, it leaves out that "apartheid" means "separate development" and this is mentioned nowhere in the article, maybe I should put it in - would you object? Templar98 (talk) 11:43, 17 January 2011 (UTC)struck comments of banned user.--brew crewer (yada, yada) 05:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Unomi - I have no idea what was covered in last "round of discussion" or taken out of the article. Analogy is not more, but a logical tool that allows comparative analysis of:

a) How things were done in an x-number of other countries for establishing normative state & society behaviour data prior to 1948
b) How things were done in South Africa that failed to match above data during apartheid
c) How the behaviour of South Africa (state & society) was illegal in international law
- c1) Popular commentary based on comparison of a) vs b) (notability does ≠ morality)
- c2) New international law designed to prevent recurrence of b)
d) How things are done in an x-number of other countries for comparative data subsequent to c2)
e) How things are done in Israel based on c2)
- c3) Popular opinion making comparison between A. e) and c2), or B. e) and b), or C. e) and d)

The options in c3) are more, with A. being apartheid Koakhtzvigad (talk) 12:53, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't respond to that even if it were properly formatted, which it is not. It's not as if you're bothering to answer entirely sensible and simply questions of the kind I've addressed to you. Templar98 (talk) 12:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)struck comments of banned user.--brew crewer (yada, yada) 05:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The "more" is all the material that is not part of a formal allegation of crime under international law. Most of it seems to contain an analogy of some kind. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

"an analogy of some kind"? It seems to me this is part of the conundrum Koakhtzvigad (talk) 09:57, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

What is wrong with "Israel and Allegations of Apartheid" as an article title? This would cover the legal side as well as the propaganda side. In legal matters, a person who is accused of a crime and is being tried in court for it can only be described as the "alleged" perpetrator; only after conviction can the term "alleged" be dropped. There has been no legal conviction against Israel for any "crime of apartheid," and allegations concerning this are merely allegations. Non-specific generalizing and overtly demonizing propaganda claims are also "allegations," however loosely and metaphorically phrased. So the article could deal with specific alleged "crimes of apartheid" in one part, giving a careful legal analysis including of course counter-evidence as would be appropriate, and propaganda metaphorical claims in another, with a section following it offering a critique of such propaganda and its motivations. (The parade of personalities invoking the loose terminology can be covered in a few sentences, not thousands of words.) That would make a feasible article.Tempered (talk) 04:25, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It's worth reading through the recent mediation on the title, where a number of editors expressed reasonable concerns about the suitability of the word "allegation" in this title. In general, that mediation has been the best discussion I've seen during the several year I've followed this article, in terms of discussing pros and cons of arguments with consideration to policy. Ryan Paddy (talk) 08:05, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree; and it is lamentable that the recommendation of the mediator has still not been carried out. RolandR (talk) 10:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

There was a problem with that mediation, the result!

Title Israel and Apartheid assumes there is apartheid found to have been in practice in Israel by juxtaposition of the two words, and their linking with the and. In fact, this is untrue.

However, if this title was allowed, than anyone can start articles such as United Kingdom and Apartheid, and trust me sources will be found as good as those seen in this article. Many countries around the World will qualify.

Just now however something interesting occurred to me. IF this article was titled Baraq Obama and analogy of pedophilia, it would be immediately deleted per WP:BLP. As it happens, Israel is a legal personality in international law, and any unsourced claims of a crime committed by this legal person would, or should, from legal point of view, also come under the same WP:BLP policy. Israel is also a personal name of the founder of the state, and can be said to be defaming his memory also. Because this constitutes public defamation of a person and a cultural identity on par with Muslim protests of defaming Muhammad, this would lead to WP:RFO for the article. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 12:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Don't talk rot. The state of Israel is not a living person, and could not sue for libel even if the allegations were false. RolandR (talk) 13:15, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. Rot. See WP:BLPGROUP for what Wikipedia policy is on the issue. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

States are people now? I've seen many stretches of credulity on this talk page over the years by those who seek to gut this article by any means possible, but that really is a new low. Tarc (talk) 16:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Discussion on split

This is my attempt to activate a proper discussion, as opposed to a round in circles bicker, about whether we should split this article, as suggested above into 1) an article about specific discussion of whether Israel may be guilty in law of the crime of apartheid, entitled perhaps Crime of apartheid and Israel and 2) an article about looser policy discussion that slips in the word "apartheid" and/or comparison with South Africa; that article could perhaps keep the present title. Please present thoughts and arguments under the headings below. It is a straw poll, and an attempt to structure discussion, not even really a !vote. Looking forward to reading a range of contributions, especially if they are brief, to the point, assume good faith and avoid ad-hominems. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

In a near edit conflict I posted above a three-way split Koakhtzvigad (talk) 12:57, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I have already offered a view of the matter, with a preferred article title, directly above this subsection, in the post dated 04:25, 18 January 2011: keep the article under the better name of Israel and Allegations of Apartheid, but redesign it into two sections as described in that post.Tempered (talk) 05:45, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree with split on lines suggested here

Don't agree with split on lines suggested here

Neutral/other proposals

Neutral I don't have a strong opinion on this split, but would like to point out that according to dictionary.com, "analogy" can mean simply a comparison or "a form of reasoning in which one thing is inferred to be similar to another thing in a certain respect". So, when reading the present title broadly, the "Israel and the Crime of Apartheid" material would fall in-scope of the current title since they examine whether Israel's policies are similar to what's described in the convention. One option would be to move to "Israel and apartheid analogies" or "Israel and apartheid comparisons". Cheers, --Dailycare (talk) 21:14, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Neutral At the moment I think it's best to have the material in a single article because 1) it's closely related and often part of the same public discourse and covered in the same sources, and 2) the legal aspect appears to be covered in less depth and in fewer sources, which makes it questionable whether it's especially notable in its own right. However, I'm !voting neutral on this because I could be talked into supporting the split if the sources and arguments presented are adequate. The major argument in favour of splitting the article is that the resulting legal article would probably be very focussed in terms of subject matter so it would be easier to achieve a high quality article, and the reduction in scope of the remaining "analogy" article might make it easier to structure. I'll be ignoring any arguments for a split based on the current title of the article (because the title should follow the scope of the notable content, not vice versa). Ryan Paddy (talk) 23:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

My latest edit

I removed a part from the "Political rights, voting and representation, judiciary" section, which was subsequently reverted back into existance. I removed the part-

"He noted that Israel is one of the few countries in the Middle East where Arab women can vote*. In contrast to the non-Israeli Arab world, Arab women in Israel enjoy the same status as men**, and have the right to vote and to be elected to public office*. Muslim women, according to Sayyed, are in fact are more liberated in Israel than in any Muslim country, since Israeli law prohibits polygamy***, child marriage***, and female sexual mutilation***."

because I did not think it was relevant to apartheid as it was about *comparing various political systems, **gender equality, and ***culture. Please leave a comment, Passionless (talk) 22:54, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

An analogy is already a comparative term, Passionless. That is what "analogy" means. The apartheid analogy can only be applied to non-South African states as a comparative analogy between political systems, and indeed the real point and meaning content of its usage is that the political system described as "apartheid" is stigmatized and even delegitimized in comparison to other systems in much the same way as saying it was "Nazistic" would do. So it requires "comparing various political systems" already, and as extended (illegitimately in my opinion) to non-racial matters such as "gender equality" and "culture" it remains comparative and demonizing. So the section you reverted should stay in the article: given the nature of "apartheid analogy" usage, comparative from the start, it is perfectly legitimate to include material that indicates that women in Israel are far more liberated and equally treated than in any Muslim or Middle Eastern country, countries not the subject of "anti-apartheid" campaigns, and that in fact Israeli women's legal and social status in general is like that of women in other Western liberal democracies.Tempered (talk) 04:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

So you're saying apartheid isn't just racial discrimination but anything and everything South African during SA's apartheid period? Would it not be possible to call every nation an apartheid state as no one has perfect gender equality yet just like SA, how many nations are not democracies, or how many states enjoy soccer/football just like the South Africans did during apartheid? -Don't get mad, I'm not serious. Anyways, I thought apartheid was simply a type of racial discrimination which SA and Israel have/had/alledgely have. Passionless (talk) 05:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Please re-read my post (and earlier posts too), and you will see that I too criticise the propaganda extension of the word "apartheid" to stigmatize anything at all, whether racial or not, including gender discrimination or inequalities, "religious apartheid," and the like, ad absurdum. However, the fact is that this is how the word is used by those who find it handy in propaganda fora. A proper article on allegations of apartheid in Israel would take care to define the word precisely, not broadly, so it indicates the chief and defining traits of South African apartheid. Only then can a comparison with other states be meaningful. To apply this to the current discussion: the main article does use the broad usage, for example calling "racial discrimination" even such things as the roads to Israeli communities in the West Bank that are closed to Palestinians but open to Israeli Arab citizens of the same race as Palestinians, or the security fence that has brought the terrorist murder of Israelis to a halt. These are illegitimate usages, but the article uses them, so responses to these usages of the sort you reverted must be allowed too.Tempered (talk) 05:56, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

We here not to define what "apartheid" means and what is the context in our eyes only RS can do it and define it.--Shrike (talk) 08:33, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Quite so, and that is why presenting a counter-argument against these wild accusations is also legitimate and appropriate in this article. Such a counter-argument remains on topic.Tempered (talk) 11:08, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

So anyone who can put up a website can re-define the word apartheid, great...how about we just use Wicktionary's definition - "

The policy of racial separation used in South Africa from 1948 to 1990.
By extension, any similar policy of racial separation." Passionless (talk) 09:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Not anyone as not any site could constitute WP:RS.Please read wikipedia policies .Especially WP:OR because it is what you trying to do.Shrike (talk) 13:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The source in reference is a pitifully done website-some text with a poor background, wrote by a non-notable person. Anyways, we do need to get a definition so that we can people stop from adding this unrelated information for the purpose of watering down the content because they oppose the general concept of Israel being an apartheid state. Passionless (talk) 03:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "we do need to get a definition"? There is one! Why do you think 'some people' are trying to get the ICC to receive submissions to initiate investigation? This article, as I have pointed out before, is in aid of commencing criminal court proceedings. If apartheid was not a crime, I doubt very much it would get the same level of 'public noise' from certain quarters. However, it seems to me that some editors in Wikipedia resist using the definition of the crime to base tis article on for political reasons Koakhtzvigad (talk) 09:03, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Please clarify what you are saying. "This article is in aid of commencing criminal court proceedings" (my italics). How can that be? Are you really saying that Wikipedia only has this article because some editors are using it to encourage external parties to take out international legal procedings against the State of Israel? Are you including all editors on this article, apart from yourself, in that? That would be the biggest assumption of bad faith that has ever been made here. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

What I am saying is that if apartheid was not a recognised international crime, no one would make allegations against Israel, or call for court investigation. However, because it is a crime in international law, it seem that some notable persons, and some "human rights" groups collect every conceivable allegation against Israel to, as they say in America, try and make the crime 'stick'.

To me it seems self-evident that the article was in the past edited with just such an agenda, and my perusal of the flimsy content and poor sourcing suggests I'm right at this. The reluctance, nay opposition, to including actual description of the crime's legal definition in the article so the collected 'evidence' can be compared to it (i.e. to find it analogous) supports the politicized nature of editing.

Do you oppose including the legal definition of the apartheid in the article? Koakhtzvigad (talk) 22:39, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Alright so there is a clear definition in the opening paragraph of Crime of apartheid. Now can I re-delete areas of this article which are not related to the defined apartheid-

"committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime."

Things that deal with comparing culture, gender equality, and political systems can be removed from this article because they are obviously unrelated to apartheid, right?? Passionless (talk) 22:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me for the benefit of the reader the entire criminal definition needs to be reproduced in the article, and not just wklinked, including point fashion as is here Koakhtzvigad (talk) 23:41, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The points you linked to are about all crimes against humanity. I think it would be better to add the points a-f given in this section as they outline the crime of apartheid very well. Passionless (talk) 00:31, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

You are addressing the basic problem I have with the article - lack of definition.

As far as I'm concerned apartheid is defined in international criminal law, and the relevant law needs to be fully presented to the reader. A wikilink may be sufficient where the term is a passing reference, but when it is one of three concepts in the title, it seems to me a section fully and explicitly devoted to it is a must Koakhtzvigad (talk) 09:08, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Alright, well, since I don't like, and am no good at, making major changes to articles-especially since I haven't read most of this article-could you please add the definition from this section, and other related changes. Than we can slim down the article to only sources which do not misuse the word apartheid. You have my support, thanks, Passionless -Talk 11:16, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

You explicitly do not have my support; and such editing behaviour would not be compliant with policy. As has been noted countless times above, this article is not only about "the crime of apartheid"; it is about the use of the term apartheid, in many different contexts, to describe the policies and practices of the state of Israel and the Zionist movement. It is not our business to determine what is "misuse" of the term, nor to exclude sources because they do not use it in a manner we approve. We should simply record the fact that some reliable sources use the term in this way, while others contest this usage. RolandR (talk) 11:33, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

@Koakhtzvigad. Do you understand the distinction I make between "specific allegations" and non-specific allegations? A politician makes a speech and says "The President of Ruritania is guilty of genocide and we demand that he immediately be arrested and prosecuted". That is a specific allegation. Genocide is defined as a crime in international law, and if the case is indeed prosecuted the court will refer to that definition. On the other hand, a writer might say "file sharing amounts to genocide of recording artists". It would be a statement in bad taste, a stupid exaggeration. But the sentence is comprehensible. There is a legal definition of "genocide" and there is a dictionary definition that helps us make sense of the looser, sloppy usage. Same with the term "apartheid"; there is a legal definition and a wider dictionary definition. You seem to want this article to refer only to the legal definition of "apartheid". I don't think that we can move this article towards NPOV on that basis. Perhaps we could if we split the article. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:46, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Don't you think that adding file piracy-which someone labelled apartheid-to this page would bring down the quality of the article and confuse the entire issue? How would we split it, would it be the original article plus "Israel and the misuse of the word apartheid"? Passionless -Talk 22:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

RolandR, Itsmejudith, how do you define apartheid? Koakhtzvigad (talk) 05:01, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't need to. I just need to show that a cited source uses the term in this context; adding my own definition would be original research. RolandR (talk) 08:29, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

A definition of apartheid-NOT created by us, therefore not OR- is needed so that we can draw a line on what this article pertains to. The Chinese civilization, the PRC, and the ROC, are all very different articles, but writers misuse the word China everyday, so we weed through the sources, and those sources that may be all about China, yet are not relevant to the article are all thrown out. This process needs to exist here as well so that sources who have misused the word apartheid are not allowed to taint this page with irrelevant information. Passionless -Talk 08:45, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Again I disagree. It really isn't our task to determine whether or not sources "misuse the word apartheid"; we simply record that they do use it. It is up to the readers to decide for themselves whether or not they agree with this usage. RolandR (talk) 11:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Not only are there no rules against weeding out unrelated articles, it would be neglegant not to take out unrelated articles. It IS our task to determine whether the sources relate to our article or not. Passionless -Talk 12:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Jumping in here, I'd say that's it's up to the sources to decide how to employ the term, not us. Particularly so in this article, where the title already implies that various degrees of similarity (to the convention and South Africa) may be covered. --Dailycare (talk) 11:14, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

RolandR, you are playing a word game. However, there are only three words in the title we need to worry about: Israel, apartheid and analogy. There is no context. The article either deals with the subject/s as stated in the title, or not. Currently it does not. I explained why. The definition of a crime was arrived at by determining what occurred in South Africa. There is therefore no point in comparing Israel to South Africa. Apartheid is now a crime that any state can be accused of without the need to compare to the precedent by which it came into being. If we follow your logic, legally speaking, every murder would have to be compared to every other murder on record to identify how they are similar before anyone can be charged, or not. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 13:04, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I think we're almost at the point where you're taken before WP:ANI or similar for serious WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT style of tendentious disruption. Once again, hopefully for the final time...many notable people have compared Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to how South Africa treated blacks under apartheid. Many have renounced the allegations, The subject is notable and encyclopedia-worthy because many reliable sources have covered the subject matter in-depth and over a long period of time. The existence of the article does not prove or assert or conclude that Israel's actions are apartheid-like, only that the criticism that it is is notable. Tarc (talk) 13:27, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

By the title, this article should be about israel and the crime of apartheid, not israel and the crime of being like south africa was. This article and it's editors are not on one track, but are on many tracks, trying to create different articles on one page because there is nowhere in the article to tell them that this should be about the crime of apartheid, and that articles which speak of apartheid but not the crime of apartheid should not be used here as APARTHEID DOES NOT EQUAL THE CRIME OF APARTHEID, or does a page called "Israel and the crime of apatheid" need to be created? Passionless -Talk 18:52, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

No. The title is about parallels being drawn between Israel and South Africa under apartheid, as the title suggests. As to whether the parallels are valid, and whether the actions of the Israeli state constitute a crime, there are clearly differing opinions. We are not reporting the analogy as fact, and nor are we attempting to asses its validity. All we should reporting is the fact that the issue has been raised in notable places, and has been vigourously debated. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:00, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Than I guess I had better go create the far overdue page on Israel and the crime of apartheid. Passionless -Talk 19:43, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

You're already at that page. Tarc (talk) 14:13, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Regarding revert of lede changes

On my talk page I was asked to detail further my rationale for this revert. My revert was of this edit which I felt had a number of issues and reflected a departure from the instructions in WP:LEAD.

WP:LEAD states "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and summarize the most important points—including any notable controversies." as such the removal of the breadth of comment on the situation seems to remove important indication of "why the subject is interesting or notable".
I would also say that the proposed change to the first sentence is somewhat hard to parse: "There is a lack of consensus on whether the State of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is an analogy of apartheid comparable to that of South Africa's treatment of non-whites during its apartheid era, or to the crime of apartheid definition recognised since 1973 as a crime against humanity." this is at once redundant and unpleasant prose - that there is lack of consensus is given by the fact that there are people opposing the moniker, also the set isn't given - consensus among whom? u n☯mi 14:54, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Unomi, quite frankly I don't care about your feelings.

It was pointed out to me there is another Wikilingo term, WP:BRD|Bold, Revert, Discuss.

Given this article is subject to 1RR, the above should therefore be Bold, Discuss, Revert. I think I did my part by being bold.

Your reverts have now led to this being another of Wikipedia's average articles: badly conceived, badly written, using bad sources, fairly unreadable, partisan, and NOT BEING IMPROVED. In other words its ****.

And now to respond to your BELATED discussion (based on shoot first ask questions later philosophy?)

The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article. - Since as I pointed out the article is ****, the current 'lead' (no, the English for it is introduction) is also ****. In any case, I changed only the first three sentences of the said **** to reflect the discussion with Ryan.

It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and summarize the most important points—including any notable controversies. - yes, that was IN THE PROCESS of being discussed

the removal of the breadth of comment on the situation seems to remove important indication of "why the subject is interesting or notable". - do you want the civil or the uncivil reply to this? However, I dispute this assertion, though you FAILED to engage in discussion so not much point now, is there? I see that you are a programmer, and having worked with programmers before I realised that its probably a part of your personality (oooo, getting personal here, go look for some excuse to trump up a block) of failing to communicate, and instead of editing, merely MAKING USE OF THE APPLICATION to change version

this is at once redundant and unpleasant prose - that there is lack of consensus is given by the fact that there are people opposing the moniker, also the set isn't given - consensus among whom? - did you actually read what you wrote? The sentence can't be redundant because its the FIRST SENTENCE! Thats in the case you mean its superfluous. Perhaps you mean it is needlessly wordy? Maybe you wanted to say this BEFORE you used you mouse? As for unpleasant prose, this is an altogether unpleasant subject. Perhaps you expected Pushkin or Tennyson? There is no 'given' for someone that has JUST STARTED READING. They don't know there is opposition to the idea that Israel is an apartheid state, do they? That is what they are reading the article for. Do you know what 'moniker' means?

Consensus referred at once to the commentators on the subject, and those editing the article. There is no consensus on what the article should be about, or haven't you been READING TALK? :However, having pushed me off the 'stage', it is all yours. I look forward to seeing your voluminous editing to improve this article from **** to something better.Koakhtzvigad (talk) 02:37, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps I hurt your feelings with my comment, if so, that wasn't my intention. I assume that by **** you mean shit, wikipedia is not censored and barring using it for personal attacks saying "shit" will not have deleterious effects on your ability to edit here. Familiarity with our policies in general will however make your stay much more pleasant, as such I will link you to a number of policy pages for your edification.

Please read WP:LEAD, as it seems that you are working under a number of misconceptions in that respect.

The lede does not 'define' the topic, the lede merely summarizes the content, as such it is the very last thing to be edited when changes are made to an article. Change the body of the article first, then change the lede to reflect the new reality.

Please read WP:BRD, and see that it is indeed 1. Bold, 2. Revert, 3. Discuss. For the manner in which discussions should take place you may want to refer to WP:CONSENSUS.

Redundant and superfluous are the same in this instance. Again, I meant no offence when I characterized your edit as "unpleasant prose" - I think however that if you reread what you had written with a clear mind you will agree that it is less than clear what is meant by it. "There is a lack of consensus on whether the State of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is an analogy of apartheid comparable to that of South Africa's treatment of non-whites during its apartheid era, or to the crime of apartheid definition recognised since 1973 as a crime against humanity." One reading would be that the choice is between one or the other - which I surmise is hardly your intention. Reading the lead in full renders it clear that there is no 'world view' on the matter - why state the obvious? When talking of consensus (in articles) the set becomes important, that is why you will always see it followed by something like "among legal scholars", "medical experts", "climate scientists", etc. As for the consensus among editors - it should not be directly stated in the article, but follow from the text itself. Best, u n☯mi 03:17, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

What sort of "experts" are we talking about here? Koakhtzvigad (talk) 10:39, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967" are probably the best sources. After all, the UN rescinded Resolution 181 in May 1948 just before the declaration of Independence of Israel, putting the area back under their own control. I'm not aware that's ever been lifted, the job-post certainly hasn't disappeared. Richard Falk was appointed to a six-year term in 2008. Falk replaced South African professor John Dugard, an expert on apartheid who'd served seven years. Templar98 (talk) 10:50, 17 January 2011 (UTC)struck comments of banned user.--brew crewer (yada, yada) 05:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

To answer Koakhtzvigad, Richard Falk, the current "Special Rapporteur" on which the U.N. Human Rights Council depends for regular reports on Palestinian claims and complaints about Israel, has recently had his bizarre and extremist outlook fully exposed. He has, for example, frequently pushed the idea that 9/11 was an atrocity hoax set up by the U.S. government, and not by al-Qaeda at all, and as a result has just this past week been strongly condemned by the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself, by the U.S. government, and by media worldwide. He may well be forced to step down; he is discredited and his opinions are clearly worth very little. See http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1285603&ct=9085419&notoc=1 The U.N. tragicomedy continues. By the way, the UN never rescinded Resolution 181, which laid out the boundaries of the two states for two peoples that legitimated the establishment of the State of Israel. That is pure invention.Tempered (talk) 04:09, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Marriage law section

There is detail in our section here that isn't in the actual article Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law. I propose migrating all the description of the law and most of the commentary on it to the latter article, leaving here just those comments that describe the law as relating to apartheid/racism/discrimination. What do people think? Itsmejudith (talk)

I've just read the section, and I don't think that's a good idea. The section does start with background information introducing the law, but it does so by focusing on criticism of the law for being discriminatory. There's little irrelevant "fat" in the description, it's all on topic for this article. So, 1) this section does a reasonable job of walking the reader through the subject in flowing prose, which isn't always achieved in this article 2) it does so using material and sources that focus on discrimination, in keeping with the subject of this article, and 3) that constant focus on whether the law is discriminatory might be inappropriate on the article about the law. Ryan Paddy (talk) 23:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

propose eliminating the lists of names

I propose eliminating the lists of names of supporters and opponents of this analogy. (I'm not talking about the prose sections where we quote from different people or explain their viewpoint in detail, just the lists of names and titles). These don't really add much to the article, since they don't explain why these individuals feel the way they do. As the article explains, there are many nuances to this analogy. Some people believe Israel is an apartheid state, other people believe Israel is not an apartheid state but practices policies in the Palestinian territories that resemble apartheid, etc. When we just list people's names we don't get any of this nuance - and we run the risk of committing OR by lumping together people who might consider themselves in complete disagreement. Further, the lists are completely superfluous. We already deal with a TON of different people in prose and the rest are probably not that crucial. GabrielF (talk) 02:13, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree, with the proviso that there are probably several notable people in each list that need to be mentioned in the body of the text. The whole 'list' structure seems to be based on the dubious premise that the number of (notable) people who 'agree' with something is more significant than what their opinions actually are. The issue is clearly a lot more nuanced than any crude headcount could ever suggest. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:24, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I see where your coming from, but I feel many of thiese people/organizations are critical, yet if we were to give a quote fom each one the page would be quite large and be even more filled with opinions on the what the situation is in Israel rather than what actually is going on in Israel. So, I propose we make the list hideable, to save room on page, yet it would still be a valueable resources for people to find even more opinions given by notable people on the subject by following the references. Passionless -Talk 04:04, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I seem to remember that hideable lists are discouraged in articles. More to the point though, either these peoples opinions are notable, in which case we should indicate what they are, or they aren't, in which case we can manage without them entirely. We can't list everyone who's ever expressed an opinion on the matter, and many of those listed don't on the face of it seem to be notable in relation to the article topic - they are presumably included because (a) they've expressed an opinion, and (b) they are notable for other reasons - not really very good grounds for inclusion on a list. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:11, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Well we could move both hidden lists to the end of the article, though I think it would look fine hidden where they are. Passionless -Talk 04:34, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I think at this point it would be best to wait for input from others. AndyTheGrump (talk)

This whole issue reminds me of Project Steve. Listing the names of supporters or opponents of something is a tactic of advocates rather than serious scholars. Scholars shouldn't be deciding questions based on how many famous people are on each side, but on the merits of the arguments. GabrielF (talk) 04:41, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I support your proposal wholeheartedly. Many are also mentioned in the text. Numbers in themselves mean very little, even if compiling a list of witnesses since they provide little encyclopǣdic know;ledge on the subject. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 05:25, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

The lists of people pro and con should go. They are contrary to WP:EMBED, which says that prose is preferable to lists. But more importantly they are contrary to WP:NPOV which says articles should address significant views. It's the significant views in reliable sources that are the content, the people who happen to hold those views is secondary and can be expressed in prose. Hiding the lists is no solution, they should be removed. However, we have to be careful to ensure that each item that is removed still has appropriate representation in the article. Some sources may not warrent a mention, and some may already be covered. But the others, the ones that should be covered because they're significant views in reliable sources, but currently aren't covered elsewhere in the article, need to be added to the prose text of the article. Ryan Paddy (talk) 08:39, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the lists can be deleted, with the proviso that AndyTheGrump mentions above that we should make sure that the information content of the article doesn't decrease overall. Views should be inserted in the text if some persons are currently only mentioned in lists.--Dailycare (talk) 11:12, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

As everyone seems to be in agreement on this, I've started this process by removing one supporter and one critic from the lists, here. Some things to note:

I think taking this slowly is a good idea, as we need to assess each item.
We need to make sure that if the view expressed is significant and described in a reliable source, it should be covered elsewhere in the article in prose. If there is disagreement on an item, we can discuss it here in talk.
Be careful when removing reference tags. If a ref tag has a name and other tags are using that name, then the content of the tag needs to be moved. See my edit for an example where the content of the ref named "UriDavis" had to be moved to another instance of that ref.

It may be fastest to first remove all the people whose views are already described elsewhere in the article, and then move onto the harder ones where a decision has to be made afterwards. Ryan Paddy (talk) 08:55, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

This sounds like a good approach. I suggest that we remove Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley. They don't seem to be proponents of this analogy so much as scholars who are interested in studying it. For example, here are two quotes from their article:

Although Israel and apartheid South Africa are often equated as "colonial settler societies," we argue that the differences outweigh the similarities. (Pg. 19)

The Apartheid analogy is mainly employed to mobilize people and motivate action. The moral comparison, however, yields little insights into specific circumstances that have to be evaluated in their own right. Even commentators who diagnose Israel's human rights abuses realize this. (Pg. 24)

Article is at: link GabrielF (talk) 18:57, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to remove John Mearsheimer as well. His argument seems to be that apartheid in Israel is likely if the country doesn't change its course, which is different than what others listed as supporters say.

"He [Mearsheimer] hypothesized that the most likely result of the current conflict will be an apartheid state in Israel in which the Arab population will be denied full political rights. He said he believes this will be "similar to white-rule in apartheid Africa." [11] GabrielF (talk) 19:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Please note that we are removing people from the lists because we don't want lists and the people's views are already covered elsewhere in the article if appropriate. We are not removing them because they are not "pro" or "con", which is the reason you've given. In the case of Adam and Moodley, their views are already covered elsewhere in the article so your edit fits with the current process, but the particular reason you've given for removing them is a separate concern that we're not addressing here. We don't want to get into discussions here about who is really pro or con, that's would needlessly complicate the relatively simple administrative task of removing the lists. Ryan Paddy (talk) 20:53, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough, we can save those issues for a separate discussion. GabrielF (talk) 22:04, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Am carrying on with this. At my slow rate I'll be done by mid-2012, so feel free to join in. Ryan Paddy (talk) 01:48, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I've now finished removing all the easy items that are covered elsewhere, unreferenced, etc. Next comes removing the other more involved items. I'm going to approach these one at a time, so that I can give my reasoning for each item in the edit comments. I've had a close read of WP:1RR, and my understanding is that I can make as many of these edits per day as I have time for, as they don't appear to qualify as "reverts" because no-one else has recently edited this content in the article. However, if anyone has an issue with any of my coming edits to remove items from the list, I invite them to revert the edit in question and then we can discuss it here. I will not be getting into edit wars over this, and I encourage others not to either. Just revert me, we'll reach an agreement here, and then we'll implement whatever we agree on. If anyone else wants to join me in removing items from the lists, with appropriate related edits to other parts of the article and reasoning given, then please do so. Ryan Paddy (talk) 23:14, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

FW De Klerk should be in the list of those who oppose

He says: "I think comparisons are odious. I think it’s dangerous." "Odious" is defined by Merriam Webster as "arousing or deserving hatred or repugnance : hateful <an odious crime> <a false and odious comparison>.

Now yes he continues on:

"It’s not a direct parallel, but there are some parallels to be drawn. Why did the old vision of so many separate states in South Africa fail? Because the whites wanted to keep too much land for themselves. Why will it fail, if it fails in Israel and Palestine? Because Palestine is maybe not offered an attractive enough geographical area to say 'this is the country of Palestine.

Consider the definition of odious. If you use that definition, FW De Klerk is saying "I think comparisons (of Israel/Palestine to apartheid South Africa) are (arousing or deserving hatred or repugnance : hateful). Thats a pretty strong statement, especially when you see Merriam Webster's example sentence for odious as <a false and odious comparison> The last part is only a hypothetical, because he said "why WILL (future tense) IF (hypothetical, hasn't happened) it fails in Israel and Palestine."

I move to have FW De Klerk to opponents of the analogy.Tallicfan20 (talk) 05:40, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Instead of looking up "odious" in Merriam Webster, maybe you should look up "original research" at Wikipedia. There are at least two editors who think de Klerk's statement was not clearly opposed to the analogy. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 05:49, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

sorry, but odious only has one clear and concise definition.Tallicfan20 (talk) 05:56, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I know what odious means, thank you. I also know the plain meaning of "It's not a direct parallel, but there are some parallels to be drawn." That has only one clear and concise meaning: There are some parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa. As I wrote, de Klerk's statement—taken in its entirety—is not clearly opposed to the analogy. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 06:06, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Malik, it is not clear he fully disagrees with the analogy. The source only provides a quick statement in support of neither side. You also misquoted him, he said "I think *all* comparisons are odious"-this may mean he thinks comparing two things in general is odious. Also, if you go to 4:23 you will see F.W. de Klerk compare his SA apartheid to present day I/P. Passionless -Talk 07:00, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with Malik. It appears from what is said above that De Klerk explicitly disapproves of applying the apartheid terminology as such to Israel and its policies to the Palestinians, but thinks that there are "some parallels." Now which ones would he be thinking of? That both are inhabited by human beings? That is a parallel. That both have conflict between two peoples? That is a parallel. That both are attacked by people trying to delegitimize one of the parties to the conflict, by using the "apartheid analogy"? That too is a parallel. But none of this goes to the substance of what apartheid is. Merely saying that there are parallels says very little. Certainly it does not say enough to justify including De Klerk in the "Proponents of the Apartheid Analogy" ranks. Passionless says "it is not clear he fully disagrees with the analogy ... the source only provides a quick statement in support of neither side." If this is so, he does not belong in the "Proponents" side either, and ought not to be listed in either side. For Passionless, anyone not totally repudiating any possible application of the apartheid analogy is a supporter of that analogy, even if that possible application really does not relate to apartheid as such. (Similar "criteria" on behalf of the defense of Israel would swell this article into a multi-volumed book.) This sort of loose thinking tends to destroy any coherent meaning to the apartheid analogy at all, and to suggest that mere wishful thinking and bias is the governing standard in it. Perhaps there need to be better and clearer criteria for including anyone in any side.Tempered (talk) 04:28, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

His full quote seems to place him among those who think Israel may be in danger of getting itself into an apartheid-like situation. He says "Why did the old vision of so many separate states in South Africa fail? Because the whites wanted to keep too much land for themselves. Why will it fail, if it fails in Israel and Palestine? Because Palestine is maybe not offered an attractive enough geographical area to say 'this is the country of Palestine.'". So he's talking about apartheid/separation at the geopolitical level, not at the personal level (separate bathrooms etc). He's comparing the Bantustans of South African to lands that the Palestinians may be allowed to have for a future state, and saying that if such land-allotments fails it will be because those lands may be insufficient. This puts him among those who regard Israeli apartheid as a speculative possibility, rather than a definite reality. There are a number of such sources in the article, but unfortunately the current structure of the article forces us to shoehorn them into either the "pro" or "con" camps. Ryan Paddy (talk) 21:25, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

The idea that demographic pressures will force Israel into a situation where they can choose to be either a Jewish state or a democratic state, but not both, is fairly common amongst Israeli thinkers. I think that when we quote Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert, that's the position they are taking - and I think that non-Israelis like Zbignew Brezinski or John Meersheimer would make the same argument. In fact, IIRC the point of Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid was not that Israel is currently an apartheid state, but that it faces a choice between peace or apartheid in the near future.

Lumping people like Ehud Barak in with activists who believe that current Israeli policy constitutes apartheid is very problematic. Instead of one support section, we should break it up into two, namely: proponents of the idea that Israel is currently an apartheid state and proponents of the idea that Israel is likely to become an apartheid state in the future. This is a far more relevant means of sectioning that the occupation or nationality of the proponents. GabrielF (talk) 22:10, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Sectioning the article based on broad categories of opinion regarding the analogy seems like a good idea. The current categories of only "pro" and "con" are too crude to represent the subtle varieties of opinion on this subject. I agree that a good first step would be to separate the sources who are speculating that Israel is at risk of apartheid into their own top-level section, as that perspective is glaringly different to both the perspective that Israel already has apartheid-like aspects, and the perspective that Israel does not resemble apartheid and is in no danger of resembling apartheid. It can then be left up to the discretion of the reader whether a source that says that Israel is in danger of apartheid is agreeing with the apartheid label or criticising it. Ryan Paddy (talk) 22:36, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Sounds sensible. However, things might get complicated when we get to specifics. There are some who think that a two-state solution is per se "apartheid" -- e.g., Omar Barghouti, for one, and with him many others on the Palestinian side who repudiate a two-state peace deal. These argue that any "separation" at all equates to "apartheid" (according to them the word simply means "separation," i.e., separation of any kind, even into two separate states). So we hear a lot about the so-called "apartheid Wall," for example. Then there are others who think that a one-state solution is per se "apartheid" or at least "apartheid"-like, and that would include some of the Israeli politicians who are trying so hard to promote a two-state solution and to discredit any other option. So this proposed section should have distinct sub-sections for the two different sorts of polemic. What is perfectly clear from all this, however, is that the "apartheid" charge has no objective substance, since it has been made to mean one thing and its opposite. Like many metaphors, it is very cloudy. It also follows from this that there is nothing in the real world that Israel could do to avoid this charge by its enemies: it is not susceptible to refutation because it has no fixed objective content.Tempered (talk) 04:12, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Will think about your on-subject first point. As for the rest: article talk pages are for discussion of changes to the article, so please stop wasting people's time with your soapboxing of personal opinions. Ryan Paddy (talk) 09:01, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh oh, I wasted your time. A split second running the eye through a sentence. Sorry. The citations of Wikipedia policy show how keen you are to deal solely with substantive issues, and that is all to the good. Now will you in turn please follow your own admonitions, stop wasting people's and my time and respond one way or another to the request I put to you over two weeks ago actually requesting constructive criticism and discussion specifically related to substantive "changes to the article"? See the last entry under the sub-section "Version 2: First paragraph," part of the section at the top of this Talk page entitled "New version of proposed contribution." Two weeks plus is really a waste of our time. By the way, responses from any other editors to this request are also welcome. I invite specific comments and constructive criticism. Thanks.Tempered (talk) 02:05, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone object to the idea of a new top-level section dealing with those sources who state that Israel is at risk of apartheid, as opposed to saying that it is currently implementing apartheid? As Tempered points out there may be some variation in the reasoning that each source uses to reach this conclusion, but that could be addressed using sub-sections. Ryan Paddy (talk) 21:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

New version of proposed contribution

As part of the process of attaining an agreed text, and given that there will also be a suggested version from Ryan Paddy, I would like to present the results of my own further research on the issues raised in my original proposed contribution. That contribution attempted two chief things: 1, it focussed on "delegitimization" as a chief motivation for those advocating the "apartheid analogy," and 2, it sought to give a brief historical background to this sort of advocacy and the current "Israel Apartheid" campaign. The determined and often merely obstructionist rejection of consensus over the past several months has enabled me to pursue the research further on both these topics, and leads to the following much improved version. It raises many important and basic new points highly relevant to the topics, and they cannot all be summarized even partly in a single paragraph; moreover, these points are distinct and important enough in themselves, and generally come from such impeccable and leading political, diplomatic, and academic sources, both non-Jewish and Jewish, that they deserve the allocation of several paragraphs without any fear of giving "undue weight" to their viewpoints. They do considerably advance the case offered in the main article under "Differences in Motivations." I offer them here, with the hope that they might be helpful also to Ryan Paddy and he might want to draw upon them for his own suggested version.

The treatment of footnotes is always a problem in such matters. I have tried in earlier versions to include the footnotes as indented material; this breaks up the text too much, and would especially do so in this case, where there are 60 footnotes. I have taken care to support every statement with cited sources in footnotes, generally at the end of paragraphs but often after every sentence. So I have collected the footnotes as endnotes below the text, and to save space have put them one after another without line breaks. I have also tried to follow what appears to be general Wikipedia style for footnotes, which is to give a separate footnote for each cited source. In general, I have only included several sources in a single footnote when the sources comment on each other.

Here is the contribution:

Many other critics of the apartheid analogy have considered "delegitimization" to be a key motivation behind the "apartheid" and "racist" accusations, stigmatizing and demonizing Israel through the consistent application of double standards. As these critics argue, such accusations differ from ordinary criticisms of particular flaws, such as we find in and about any other country, by their essentializing and generalizing demonization of Israel and Zionism per se, to justify rejection and elimination of the Jewish state as such.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]10][11][12][13][13a]

The double standards are evidenced, it is said, in a perfectionist invocation of universal principles used solely to delegitimize Israel: it is argued that they are used to condemn Israel alone amongst all nations for social practices and flaws that are similar to and no worse than those found in all countries including liberal democracies. As a number of commentators have said, none of these standards are used to accuse the P.A. itself nor neighbouring states of what the critics say are the much worse racism and/or "apartheid"-like practices there, nor to advocate boycotts, ostracism or delegitimization of them.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20]

According to the analytical philosopher Bernard Harrison, close linguistic analysis reveals deeper philosophical and logical problems and even frequent self-contradictions inherent in such delegitimization discourse, and in the use of racism and apartheid charges against Israel, particularly when proclaimed from what he terms "messianic liberalism" left and secular relativist standpoints. What he sees as the indiscriminate rhetoric, logical incoherence and moral confusion of this discourse arise in part from the many sometimes self-contradictory sources and interests involved and often uncritically merged together, ranging from secular relativism to absolutistic Islamism, and from historical indebtedness to "fascist" antisemitic propaganda both of the far right and far left (Harrison defines "fascist" as including both the Nazi and the Soviet Communist totalitarian systems).[21]

Some leading authorities on modern history, the history of the Middle East and the history of antisemitism, concur that the language demonizing and delegitimizing Zionism as "racist" and "oppressive" predates the establishment of the State of Israel, and had sources in non-Palestinian antisemitic movements. The Nazi propaganda to this effect, its meshing with Islamist anti-Jewish traditions and modern outrage at any part of "the Muslim world" being ruled by non-Muslims, and its resultant impact on Palestinian nationalist ideology and practice even before the establishment of the State of Israel, is discussed in a number of publications by specialists in German history and the Middle East.[22][23][24][25][26[27][27][28][29][29a][30][30a]

Bat Ye'or, a specialist in the history of Muslim-Jewish relations, sees the Islamic role as central: the Palestinian and general Muslim emphasis on such accusations as "apartheid" is according to her part of a wider campaign by them to delegitimize the Jewish state: that this is a larger pattern is notably shown, she says, in their denial that there are any Jewish holy sites anywhere in the Holy Land (including on the Temple Mount itself).[30b]

But another important source, according to scholars of the history of the Soviet Union, of the history of antisemitism, and the modern history of the Jews, was Russian antisemitism of the Tsarist period, which was taken up and continued in the Soviet Union as "anti-Zionism," often equating it with Nazism and by the 1960s with apartheid South Africa, as one of the regime's main ideological enemies within the U.S.S.R.[31][32][33][34]

Two U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. during the 1970s and 80s, Daniel Patrick Moyniham (Ambassador during 1975-1976) and Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (Ambassador from 1981 to 1985) have recounted and analyzed in similar ways the process by which the Soviet Union used the "apartheid" accusation against Israel in the United Nations and the wider international arena from 1967 on through the 1980s as a key part of a wider global attempt to legitimize Soviet client groups like the PLO as "national liberation movements," while delegitimizing self-defense against them by anti-Soviet "colonialist," "imperialist" and "racist" states that were liberal democracies or allied to the Western democracies.[35][36] Thus, they say, the delegitimization of Israel served wider Soviet geo-political goals against the Western democracies, of which Israel is one. The equation of Zionism to apartheid and racism, in a resolution by the U.N. General Assembly in 1975 was a major triumph in that U.N. campaign, involving the Soviet bloc and client states, the Arab bloc, the Islamic Conference, and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), although the Western liberal democratic bloc voted overwhelmingly against it.[37][38][39][40][41]

Palestinian and other anti-Zionist sources made central use of such language for decades.[42][43][43a] However, after the fall of the Soviet Union and subsequent rescinding of the "Zionism Is Racism" resolution by the U.N. General Assembly in 1991, this equation was discredited in most quarters for almost a decade. But following the collapse of the Camp David peace talks in 2000, some Palestinian leaders, such as Edward Said, a leading Palestinian intellectual, and Diana Buttu, then legal advisor to the Fatah Council, began to advocate renewal of the accusation, using the "racism" theme and apartheid analogy as part of what Said suggested should be a "mass campaign" in the West to gain support for replacing Israel with a single "bi-national" state.[44]

According to some commentators, the first full expression of this renewed mass campaign appeared at the UN’s World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001.[45] At that Conference, as described by critics, Zionism was equated again with "racism," "apartheid South Africa" and even "Nazism," Jews felt intimidated by the hatred around them, and particularly in the parallel conference of NGO groups, those supporting Israel were shouted down, physically assaulted and driven from the Conference altogether, leading to the withdrawal of a number of Western states from the proceedings or from the follow-up "Durham II" conference.[46][47][48]

Anne Bayefsky, a Canadian political scientist specializing in international law and human rights, considers the delegitimization of Israel pursued at Durban to be part of a current campaign to legitimize Islamist and leftist terrorism as justifiable "popular resistance," not just against Israel but against liberal democracies and Western societies generally.[49][50]

The use of the apartheid analogy to delegitimize Israel has been a chief focus and justification for the global BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaign pursued since 2004. Omar Barghouti, the Palestinian founder and coordinator of the global BDS campaign, elaborated at length and explicitly on the delegitimization motivation in an interview published in December 2007 having the title: "No to the apartheid 2 state solution: Omar Barghouti: 'No State has the Right to Exist as a Racist State."[51] He strongly criticises Palestinian leaders who support a two-state solution as betraying the Palestinian cause.[52][53] However, some PLO and Fatah Council leaders state that they have the same goal, just different tactics, for they say they have never recognized the legitimacy of Israel nor its right to exist.[54][55][56][57][58][59] Some prominent Palestinian BDS leaders use not only the "apartheid" analogy but that of the Nazis, and have explicitly endorsed terrorism as a legitimate method as part of their overall goal to eliminate Israel.[60]

[1] The interaction of delegitimization, demonization, and double standards is analyzed at length, with bibliographical references, in "Building a Political Firewall Against Israel's Delegitimization: Conceptual Framework, Version A" The Reut Institute, March 2010, p. 11, et passim, http://www.reut-institute.org/data/uploads/PDFVer/20100310%20Delegitimacy%20Eng.pdf [2] Natan Sharansky sought to define how antisemitic criticism of Israel differs from legitimate criticisms such as those leveled against all other countries, in his "3D Test of Anti-Semitism: Demonization, Double Standards, Delegitimization," Jerusalem Political Studies Review, Vol. 16, nos. 3-4 (Fall 2004), available at: http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-sharansky-f04.htm, also see his "Antisemitism in 3D: How to differentiate legitimate criticism of Israel from the so-called new anti-Semitism," at: http://www.standwithus.com/pdfs/flyers/sharanskyAntisemitism.pdf [3] Dennis MacShane, et al., Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism, September 2006 (London: The Stationary Office, Ltd., 2006), a report made to the British Parliament to guide government policy, lists five ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel (p. 6; also see further discussion pp. 16ff.): "1. Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour; 2. Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation; 3. Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to charaterize Israel or Israelis; 4. Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis; 5. Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel." See http://www.antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/All-Party-Parliamentary-Inquiry-into-Antisemitism-REPORT.pdf This definition is repeated verbatim in the policy "Ottowa Protocol on Combating Antisemitism," November 11, 2010, by the Interparliamentary Committee on Combating Antisemitism, summarizing conclusions from a conference in Ottowa, Canada, of parliamentarians from 53 Western states. See http://www.antisem.org/archive/ottawa-protocol-on-combating-antisemitism/ [4] The demonizing delegitimization theme of "apartheid," and the use of double standards to support it, is discussed in Mark Silverberg, "The Delegitimization of Israel," March 7, 2010, http://www.analyst-network.com/article.php?art_id=3381 [5] Ben Cohen, "Boycotting Israel: The Ideological Foundations," September 2008, http://www.z-word.com/z-word-essays/boycotting-israel%253A-the-ideological-foundations.html (focusses particularly on ideological rationales for leftist anti-Zionist agitation, and links this to the Soviet Union's furious campaign in the U.N. following Israel's survival in the Six-Day War of 1967). [6] Robbie Sabel, "The Campaign to Delegitimize Israel with the False charge of Apartheid," at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2009 Global Law Forum, at: http://www.globallawforum.org/ViewPublication.aspx?ArticleId=110 [7] David Matas, Aftershock: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism (Toronto: The Dunburn Group, 2005), pp. 53-55. [8] Alan Dershowitz, The Case Against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace (New York: John Wiley, 2009), pp. 20-25, 28-29, 36, 44-48. [9] Brian Blondy, "Debunk of comparison between Israel, apartheid South Africa," Jerusalem Post, 07.19.10, at: http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=181845 [10] Gerald M. Steinberg, "BDS -- the New Anti-Jewish Boycott: Isolation as a tactic of Political Warfare," at http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=12449&pageid=16&pagename=Opinion [11] Michael Herzog, "The Phenomenon of Delegitimization in the Overall Context of Attitudes toward the Jewish People," http://jppi.org.il/uploads/herzog_delegitimation.pdf [12] Leslie Susser, "Tide of Delegitimization," May 2, 2010, at: http://www.jpost.com/JerusalemReport/Article.aspx?id=174328, after describing the delegitimization tactics of Israel's enemies, criticises the Israeli government for not doing anything about it: present initiatives are almost all grass-roots responses. [13] The article "Debunking the Apartheid Comparison," at: http://www.gfantisemitism.org/aboutus/Pages/DebunkingtheApartheidAnalogy.aspx#why%20the%20apartheid%20analogy%20is%20false, states: "Labeling Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state is a deliberate attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state itself. Criticism of Israel is legitimate. Attempting to describe its very existence as a crime against humanity, is not." [13a]Dennis Macshane, "'Kauft nicht bei Juden' will worsen the conflict," Jerusalem Post, 11.29.10, http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=197280. He highlights double standards and demonization in the apartheid analogy advocates, and says that invocation of apartheid accusations is per se delegitimization of Israel, indeed "it is hard to see how peace can be made with an Israel that so many seek to brand an 'apartheid state.'" [14] Barry Rubin, "The Hour of Hanging Judges: Demonizing Israel and Pretending It Is Ordinary Criticism," GLORIA Center, November 13, 2010, at: http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/11/hour-of-hanging-judges-demonizing [15] Gerald M. Steinberg, "The war on de-legitimization," Yediot Aharonot, August 12, 2010, at: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3935230,00.html [16] In terms of comparable practices in Palestinian society and elsewhere in the Middle East, and complaints about the double standards against Israel alone in this context, see Gil Troy, "The Double Double Standard," December 8, 2009, Jerusalem Post blog, at: http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/troy/entry/the_double_double_standard_posted [17] Martin Regg Cohn, "Not all apartheid is created equal," The Star, July 6, 2010 http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/832423--cohn-not-all-apartheid-is-created-equal [18] Khaled Abu Toameh, "What About The Arab Apartheid?" March 16, 2010, Hudson New York at http://www.hudson-ny.org/1111/what-about-the-arab-apartheid, on discrimination against Palestinians in Arab states, and "What About The Arab Apartheid? Part II," March 23, 2010, at http://www.hudson-ny.org/1120/what-about-the-arab-apartheid-part-ii; and the same author's, "Palestinians in the Arab World: Why the Silence?" July 20, 2010, at: http://www.hudson-ny.org/1422/palestinians-in-arab-world [19] Abraham H. Miller, "Enforced Misery: The PA and the Balata 'Refugee' Camp - Where are the Flotillas protesting the PA's version of apartheid?" Aug. 31, 2010, at:http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/enforced-misery-the-pa-and-the-balata-refugee-camp/?singlepage=true [20] Maurice Ostroff, "Ethnic Discrimination in Lebanon is not called Apartheid. Why?" Aug. 2010, at www.2nd-thoughts.org/id289.html [21] Bernard Harrison, The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel, and Liberal Opinion (Philosophy and the Global Context) (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). Among many other points, Harrison distinguishes between "social or distributive anti-Semitism," the sort visited upon individual Jews for no other reason than that they are Jewish, but which is generally not a serious threat, and "political anti-Semitism," which is directed at the Jewish community and group existence as such, which is a major threat to Jews and to the world. The "apartheid" and "racism" accusations, and similar demonizations and delegitimizations of Israel, are in the latter category. [22] See Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim (London: Hutchinson, 1969), pp. 52, 60, 272-96, etc., and Robert Wistrich, Hitler's Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), pp. 8-10, 154-73, 213-15, etc. [23] Matthias Kuentzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 (Telos Press, 2009). [24] Klaus Gensicke, Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis: Amin Al-husaini: the Berlin Years 1941-1945 (London: Mitchell Vallentine & Company, 2010). [25] Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine (London: Enigma Books, 2010). [26] Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) [27] For some of the consequences of such "delegitimization," as he terms it, and use of terms like "racism" and "apartheid," see Giulio Meotti, A New Shoa: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism (New York: Encounter Books, 2010). [28] On the direct transmission of Nazi propaganda techniques and slanders to the Arab and Palestinian leadership, see Joel S. Fishman, "The Big Lie and the Media War Against Israel: From Inversion of the Truth to Inversion of Reality," Jewish Political Studies Review, vol. 19, Nos. 1 & 2 (Spring 2007), at: http://www.danielpipes.org/rr/4465.php [29] On Islamist outrage at any part of the Middle East being governed by a non-Muslim state, and double standards and projection in their use of anti-Zionism discourse, also see the terminological analysis of Raymond Ibrahim, "Muslims Project Islam's Worst Traits Onto Israel and the Jews," November 17, 2010, http://www.hudson-ny.org/1673/muslims-project-on-israel-jews [29a]Julius Gould, "Impugning Israel's Legitimacy: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism," in: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in the Contemporary World, edited by Robert S. Wistrich (New York: New York University Press, 1990), pp. 178-194, esp. 188-91, and Yehuda Bauer, "Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism -- New and Old," ibid., pp. 195-207, esp. pp. 202-03 on the effect of Soviet propaganda since 1967, etc. [30] Robert S. Wistrich, "Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger," The American Jewish Committee, 2002, at: http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42D75369-D582-4380-8395-D25925B85EAF%7D/WistrichAntisemitism.pdf [30a]Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1986). [30b]Bat Ye'or, "Delegitimizing the Jewish State," Middle East Quarterly (Winter 2011): pp. 3-14, at: http://www.meforum.org/2813/delegitimizing-the-jewish-state [31] Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler's Apocalypse, op.cit., pp. 194-235 (deals with the Soviet use of "Jewish Nazism" "racism," "apartheid," and associated themes). [32] William Korey, Russian Antisemitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism; Russian Antisemitism, vol. 2, Studies in Antisemitism series (London: Routledge, 1995), cf. Chapters 3 ("Demonology of Zionism: International Dimension," pp. 30-45), 4 ("Zionism - 'The Greatest Evil on Earth'," pp. 46-59, and 9 ("Political Uses of the Demonology of Zionism," pp. 147-65). [33] Baruch A. Hazan, Soviet Propaganda, a Case Study of the Middle East Conflict (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1976). [34] Joel Fishman, "The Cold-War Origins of Contemporary Antisemitic Terminology," Jerusalem Viewpoints, No. 517, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2-16 May 2004, at: http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp517.htm [35] See Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. from 1981 to 1985), "How the PLO was legitimized," Commentary, July, 1989, pp. 21-28, http://www.aei.org/docLib/20030829_KirkpatrickPLO.pdf [36] Daniel Patrick Moyniham, A Dangerous Place (New York: Little Brown & Co., 1978). [37] See the detailed analyses by Kirkpatrick and Moyniham, cited just above. Compare Bernard Lewis, "The Anti-Zionist Resolution," Foreign Affairs (October 1976), reprinted as Chapter 28 of Lewis's From Babel to Dragomens: Interpreting the Middle East (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2004), pp. 274-83. [38] Yohanan Manor, "The 1975 "Zionism Is Racism" Resolution: The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of a Libel," May, 2010, No. 97 of Institute for Global Jewish Affairs Publications, at: http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID=0&IID=3670 (Manor documents the use in U.N. fora at this time of the "apartheid" analogy, and provides a breakdown of voting patterns on the resolution). [39] Ben Cohen, "Boycotting Israel: The Ideological Foundations," September 2008, at: http://www.z-word.com/z-word-essays/boycotting-israel%253A-the-ideological-foundations.html [40] Robbie Sabel, op.cit., p. 5. [41] Also see Gil Troy, "Fighting Zionism: Racism's big lie," Jerusalem Post blog, November 10, 2010, http://blogs.jpost.com/content/fighting-zionism-racisms-big-lie&newsletter=101118 [42] E.g., see the official declaration by the Fateh (PLO) movement in 1970, Fateh, "Towards a Democratic State in Palestine," reprinted in: Palestine: The Arab-Israeli Conflict, A Ramparts Press Reader, edited by Russell Stetler (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1972), pp. 205, 208. [43] Also see Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel (London: Mitchell Vallentine, 1973), passim. [43a]Raphael Israeli, "Anti-Jewish Attitudes in the Arabic Media, 1975-1981," in: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in the Contemporary World, edited by Robert S. Wistrich (New York: New York University Press, 1990), pp. 102-120, esp. pp. 105ff., and Antony Lerman, "Fictive Anti-Zionism: Third World, Arab and Muslim Variations," ibid., pp. 121-138, esp. pp. 127 & 135, etc. [44] Leon Hadar, "Two Peoples, Two States," January 19, 2010 issue of The American Conservative, at: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2004/jan/19/00012/; Hadar cites Edward Said, "The Only Alternative," reproduced March 03, 2001 on MediaMonitors.net - http://www.mediamonitors.net/edward9.html, where the "mass campaign" is urged, and an interview on October 28, 2002, with Diana Buttu, conducted by BitterLemons.org, entitled "Security for freedom," http://www.bitterlemons.org/previous/bl281002ed39.html. However, according to Hadar, even a single Palestinian state would not end "apartheid" accusations by those predisposed to make them. [45] Sobel, op. cit., p. 5 [46] For a more detailed and legally grounded account see Anne Bayefsky, "The UN World Conference Against Racism: A Racist Anti-Racism Conference," American Society of International Law: Proceedings, vol. 96 (2002), pp. 65ff. [47] Another such account is by Elihai Braun, "The UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, Durban, South Africa (August 31-September 8, 2001)" at: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/UN/durban1.html; "NGO Forum at Durban Conference 2001," at: http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/ngo_forum_at_durban_conference_. [48]On Durban II, see "Analyzing the Durban II Conference: Interview with Gerald Steinberg," April, 2010, Institute for Global Jewish Affairs, at: http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID=0&IID=3446&TTL=Analyzing_the_Durban_II_Conference [49] Anne F. Bayefsky, "Terrorism and Racism: The Aftermath of Durban," Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, No. 468, 16 December 2001, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, at: http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=2&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=442&PID=0&IID=1117&TTL=Terrorism_and_Racism:_The_Aftermath_of_Durban [50] Bayefsky's thesis is supported by the analysis by Eli Karmon, "International Terror and Antisemitism - Two Modern Day Curses: Is there a Connection?" February 16, 2007, International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, http://www.ict.org.il/Articles/tabid/66/Articlsid/239/currentpage/7/Default.aspx [51] http://www.voltairenet.org/article153536.html There, Barghouti also connects the BDS movement he leads with the "Right of Return" demand, according to which all Palestinians have a right to "return" and set up residence inside the State of Israel, which he makes clear would necessarily mean the end of the Jewish state and of Zionism. [52] Ibid. Also see Barghouti's opinion piece in The Guardian of August 12, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/12/besieging-israel-siege-palestinian-boycott [53] See criticisms of this delegitimization motivation by Ricki Hollander, "BDS, Academic/Cultural Boycott of Israel, and Omar Barghouti," February 24, 2010, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=51&x_article=1803; Juda Engelmayer, "Palestinians Using Academics and Liberal Ideals to Promote an Extremist Agenda," at http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=12443&pageid=&pagename; and Chris Dyszyski, "True Colours of the BDS Movement," 12 August 2010, at: http://www.justjournalism.com/media-analysis/view/viewpoint-true-colours-of-the-bds-movement. [54]Dore Gold, et al., "Have the Palestinians Abandoned a Negotiated Settlement?" Jerusalem Issue Brief, Vol. 1 no. 2, 6 September 2001, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, http://www.jcpa.org/art/brief1-2.ht [55] Khaled Abu Toameh, "Kaddoumi: PLO Charter was Never Changed," Jerusalem Post, 23 April 2004 [56] Khaled Abu Toameh, "'Fatah has never recognized Israel,'" Jerusalem Post, July 22, 2009, http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=149571 [57] Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, "Fatah Official: Our Goal has never been peace. Peace is a means: the goal is Palestine," July 12, 2009 http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1032 [58] Also see, for a historical overview, Efraim Karsh, "Who's Against a Two-State Solution?" Jewish Ideas Daily and Middle East Forum, July 20, 2010, http://www.meforum.org/2689/against_two_state_solution [59] The PLO Ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, has stated that the peace talks pursued by the Palestinian Authority also have delegitimization as their motivation and make use of the apartheid South African analogy to this end. According to an article in the Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, of September 9, 2010: "The PLO's representative in Lebanon, Ambassador Abdullah Abdullah, emphasized yesterday that the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, which have started in Washington, are not a goal, but rather another stage in the Palestinian struggle... He believes that Israel will not be dealt a knock-out defeat, but rather an accumulation of Palestinian achievements and struggles, as happened in South Africa, to isolate Israel, to tighten the noose on it, to threaten its legitimacy, and to present it as a rebellious, racist state." http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=3188 [60] G. Steinberg and J. Edelstein, "Turning the tables on BDS," Jerusalem Post Op-Ed, November 6, 2010 at: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=194275 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tempered (talk • contribs) 03:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Tempered, thanks for your new version. I'm not sure however, how we're supposed to engage in a discussion concerning this since this is a long section with 60 footnotes. If other users have a total of, say, 25 objections to this text are we then to go through them one by one? To begin with, you have in the text the same old Buttu and Said documents, presented as supporting views that charging Israel with perpetrating apartheid would be motivated by "delegitimization". This is probably not the only issue I want to bring up concerning this, since I haven't read any of the other sources as of yet. You may like to consult WP:TLDR if engaging in discussion concerning this proposition proves difficult. --Dailycare (talk) 10:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Tempered, I can tell you took this task seriously. Some notes:

As these critics point out, such accusations differ from ordinary criticisms of particular flaws, such as we find in and about any other country, by their essentializing and generalizing demonization of Israel and Zionism per se, to justify rejection and elimination of the Jewish state as such. "point out" assumes the truth of the rest of the statement, rather than attributing POV. This sentence could be rephrased to make clear it's an argument.
The double standards are evidenced in a perfectionist invocation of universal principles demanded solely of Israel: it is said that they are used to condemn Israel alone amongst all nations for social practices and flaws similar to and no worse than those found in all countries including liberal democracies Again frame as an argument put forward by a set of sources. As a point of fact, Western antiracist activists intensely concerned with "practices and flaws" of their own countries are frequent users of the analogy.
P.A. itself nor neighbouring states of the much worse racism and/or "apartheid"-like practices there This is not a self-evident statement, and must be bracketed with a phrase like "what they claim are much worse..."
Two ambassadors... sentence is just fine. The followup has similar issues (non-attribution) to earlier sentences.
In general, the Anne Bayefsky sentence is a good example of attributed POV specifically related to the analogy.

However, it seems you've veered deep, deep into essay-writing territory. This text amounts to a grand connection between Nazism, Islamism, Soviet Communism, Third World anticolonialism, and the accusation that Israel has racist, colonial, or apartheid practices. The point is to suggest that deluded and/or antisemitic views make this range of accusations. It may be fascinating to believe that, and it may contribute to Anti-Zionism#Anti-Zionism_and_antisemitism, but it doesn't clearly focus on the topic at hand.

Please, let people read about other issues on other pages, and reference those issues only when they are raised by critics of the analogy, and then by reference. To take one example, the "Nazism influenced Muslim antisemitism" argument does not come from anyone critiquing the analogy (footnotes 22-30). Ditto "Russian antisemitism of the Tsarist period". If the point is to say that, "Some analysts claim that the use by the USSR of the apartheid analogy is a product of a tradition of antisemitism," then just say that, and link to Antisemitism in the Soviet Union.--Carwil (talk) 14:05, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Carwil's sentiment here. You've put a lot of work in Tempered, but there are major issues of both style and substance. In terms of style this doesn't read in an encyclopedic fashion, rather it reads like a political essay that is attempting to convince readers of a thesis. As such, the writing style violates a number of Wikipedia policies such as WP:NOTSOAPBOX, WP:WORDS, and WP:NPOV. In terms of substance, as Carwil points out we must stick to sources directly relevant to the scope of the article. We must also present the content of sources in a manner that doesn't utilise original research or synthesis. Further, I would repeat my previous suggestion that given the wealth of academic reliable sources available on this subject we do not need to include advocacy sources that Wikipedia classes as questionable, as such sources are at the bottom of the hierarchy of preferred sources. I am, very slowly, attempting to put together a take on this subject. My draft will probably be much shorter, but I'll do my best to utilise material from your draft as appropriate. It's unlikely the two will resemble each other much, though. Ryan Paddy (talk) 22:01, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I thought this proposed contribution would upset some editors, since it puts such strong arguments by critics of the apartheid analogy regarding the motivations behind the advocacy of such accusations, which is precisely what makes it suitable for the "motivations" subsection. I am not therefore at all surprised that the editors here find it unpalatable and are basically calling for deletion of the whole thing out of hand. But I am surprised at the weakness of the objections. I would suggest to the editors who want to attack the contribution that they might want first actually to read the cited sources, before characterizing them as written by "the bottom of the hierarchy of preferred sources," declaring them irrelevant or as tendentiously described with evident POV in my text. They will no doubt be dismayed, when they actually read the sources, to discover that my text reports accurately, fairly and objectively on the views presented therein. I don't need to add anything to the views in these sources: they speak for themselves quite effectively. The only objection of any substance, it seems to me, is the suggestion that I change one or two terms to indicate that this is what the sources say rather than to imply that this is the "truth," e.g., replacing "points out" with "argues," etc. I had actually tried to do that, but missed one or two sentences. So this suggested modification is a fair stylistic request and I have now done that.

Some specific responses: the number of sources authored by academic scholars, in the 60 footnotes here, is very large and well exceeds in percentage and number those in any comparable paragraphs accepted into the "proponents" of the apartheid analogy, in the main article. So complaints that there are not enough academic sources indicate that the notes and cited sources have simply not been read nor the authors' own expertise sought for or recognized. We do not want to apply double standards to the "critics of the apartheid analogy" section that we have not applied to the "proponents" section, of course. E.g., amongst academics teaching presently or formerly at universities, or published authors with Ph.D.s, are some of the authors of the Reut Institute report (footnote 1) and of the Ottowa Protocols (2), Mark Silverberg (4), Robbie Sabel (6), David Matas (7), Alan Dershowitz (8), Gerald Steinberg (10, 15, and many other citations), Michael Herzog (11), Leslie Susser (12), Barry Rubin (13), Gil Troy (15), Abraham H. Miller (17), etc. -- the picture should be clear. The roster of academics continues similarly through the citations. They include Leon Hadar, by the way. Many of the sources are book-length studies written by academics, unusually for this main article. Weighty works by leading political and diplomatic figures are also cited. Very few mere bloggers are cited. However, let us be clear: there is nothing wrong with presenting opinion pieces on such a topic which involves strong opinions. That, too, is part of the evidence of critics of the apartheid analogy, and is freely resorted to in the "proponents" sections.

As for the accusation that this is an essay rather than an encyclopedia article, may I respectfully point out that any encyclopedia will hopefully feature articles that have a beginning, middle and end, and that make a coherent and logical argument not wholly summed up in any one of the sources cited but which sum up scholarship on the given topics -- without being original research themselves. This, in fact, is what encyclopedias are supposed to do. They do not consist largely of monotonous one-liners reiterating the same thing over and over again: X said Israel is an apartheid state, Y said Israel is an apartheid state if ..., Z said Israel might become an apartheid state when ..., etc., etc., etc. That means that the present "Israel and the Apartheid Analogy" is a very substandard encyclopedia article; in fact, at present, it does not make the grade at all. Have a look especially at genuinely excellent encyclopedia history articles, or history of ideas articles, to see this. My proposed contribution presents a historical account of the evolution and context of the apartheid analogy terminology in regard to the Jewish state. As a result, it must survey a number of thematic streams and trace their development. It does this. There is no historical background given elsewhere in the article to the development and employment of the apartheid analogy; my contribution offers this. It is therefore a needed addition to the article.

What keeps it from being a "soapbox" is that it is properly researched and does indeed report as fairly as possible (and I am amenable to suggestions regarding style to maintain neutrality) on some major criticisms of the apartheid analogy, profusely citing impeccable sources. There is no need to strain the sources to make a point. They make the points all by themselves. My paragraphs merely report on what those critics have actually said.

Furthermore, all the sources cited are very relevant to the subject. Any fair-minded reader will discover this for him- or herself. Almost all, as a matter of fact, specifically bring the "apartheid" terminology into the discussion, so their relevance to this article must be granted even by the most carping critic. In the case of the Nazis, of course, there was no apartheid South Africa then to give specificity to the Nazi claim that Zionism was a radically inhumane, racist and oppressive ideology (or rather, the Nazis vehemently supported apartheid-minded racists in South Africa at the time), even though as the citations discuss the Nazi propaganda techniques and accusations were directly influential on the later Arab Zionism=racism propaganda and use of the apartheid analogy -- the cited sources explicitly argue this in detail. In the case of the Soviet Union, the anti-Zionism theme, with full racism tropes, often took the form of "apartheid" terminology and claims by the sixties, and from there became a heavy emphasis that influenced Muslim and Arab anti-Zionism, as the cited sources again argue in extensive detail. One needs only to read them to discover this. (Carwil's suggestion that the sentences on this just be replaced by a brief reference and a link to the article Antisemitism in the Soviet Union may seem OK at first glance but I am afraid overlooks that the Wikipedia article in question is very general and short, and does not point out as the specifically cited sources do here that the "Zionism equals racism" theme widened to include the "apartheid" label by the 60s, and as such became the much-hyped focus of the Soviet campaign in the U.N. from the late 60s on to delegitimize Israel. The Wikipedia article actually does not discuss international repercussions of Soviet antisemitism, the "apartheid" theme, or the U.N. campaign against Israel at all. So the sentences and sources here cannot be replaced by the Wikipedia article link.) As for Muslim antisemitic use of the same themes and terms, the article cited by Wistrich gives full historical and contemporary context to the current Muslim/Arab campaign, and according to Ryan Paddy above "Lists the apartheid label as one means used by "Muslims" to delegitimise Israel." The later political use of the apartheid theme in the U.N., and in other international fora such as the "Anti-Racism" Durban conference, is all documented properly by the sources and described objectively in the text. As for the citation of Said and Buttu, that is succinct and perfectly neutral. They are not made to say anything that they did not say; in fact the reference is quite concise. Hadar is not discussed in the text, but is cited as the source: he did cite them to this effect, so that is objectively true. No further views are attributed either to Hadar or to Said and Buttu that they could possibly have repudiated. The Anne Beyefsky article actually says what is presented as its argument; there is no attributed POV in the text description. I hope that this covers the objections to date. Tempered (talk) 06:58, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

In terms of the use of poor sources in other parts of the article - I'm for removing such sources, especially where alternatives saying the same kind of thing are available. "Other parts of the article are crap" is not a good reason for adding more crap. In terms of the overall draft and our various points of disagreement about it, rather than trying to do some sort of point-by-point analysis of your draft, which would take us a long time, I think I'll try using it as a basis for a second draft and edit it down into what I think is an acceptable form, then we can discuss any differences you object to. This will also give me a closer familiarity with the sources with which to discuss them - because we've already found (with Hadar) that you read completely different things in sources than myself and some other editors. I will be removing all questionable and tangental sources from my version of the draft, and heavily redacting any wording that I find soapbox-like or problematic for style reasons. Ryan Paddy (talk) 18:51, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Your loaded language for the sources cited in my contribution, before you even look at them closely, betrays strong bias, Ryan Paddy. The sources are high quality, as I showed already -- you ignore that. And if you really object to "crap" sources employed by "proponents" in the main article, why have you not eliminated those sources or even challenged them specifically? However, let us proceed. I would also add to the first paragraph citations the very recent article by Dennis Macshane in the Jerusalem Post, "'Kauft nicht bei Juden' will worsen the conflict," 11.29.10, http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=197280. He highlights double standards and demonization in the apartheid analogy advocates, even says that invocation of apartheid accusations is per se delegitimization of Israel, indeed "it is hard to see how peace can be made with an Israel that so many seek to brand an 'apartheid state.'" Too right. Macshane, just to rub it in, is a non-Jewish secularist former British Labor MP who served as minister of state for Europe. Another "crap" source to add to the list.Tempered (talk) 23:25, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

A quick look at the sources used shows that many of them are blogs and/or extremist sources. Are they really relevant? // Liftarn (talk)

It was a very quick look. There are no extremist sources, other than the cited Hitler source and the Palestinian ones. The comment on blogs has already been answered. Just to remind all the editors on this Talk page, very few of whom seem to have grasped this: there is no requirement that the sources and text must agree with their POV to be "relevant." The Wikipedia requirement is that they report fairly on positions held by responsible and representative sources. That is what is "relevant." Tempered (talk) 01:30, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

When everyone else is failing to "grasp" something you find obvious, you might just be wrong, which is the case here. Where possible, it's desirable to write Wikipedia articles using only heavily-cited reputable scholarly sources and reputable journalism. As we have some sources that may be of that sort available, there is no need for the rest. Op-eds, blogs, activist groups, etc. are (with some exceptions) somewhere between "less preferred" and "unacceptable" depending on quality and context. Your draft presents statements followed by long lists of sources of varying quality. It's undesirable to provide so many sources for statements, it's a disservice to the reader for us as editors not to control the quality and number of sources. Instead, we should choose a couple of the most reliable and appropriate sources for any given statement and just use those. Ryan Paddy (talk) 03:29, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Ryan Paddy, "everyone else" editing on this page is obviously to one degree or another a proponent of the apartheid analogy, which itself is a very marginal view in Western democracies, held only by a minority. There are none commenting on my contribution who are critical of the analogy. Naturally they object to the views expressed by critics of the apartheid analogy reported on in my contribution, and do not want a cogent presentation of those views to appear in the main article. I take that for granted. So do not get carried away with your majority, Ryan Paddy. It means very little. As for the quality of the sources, well, let us postpone the pro and con on that. But I am confident all my sources would be found acceptable if matters went to formal mediation. Let's hope that we can agree with what you come up with. Tempered (talk) 22:00, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I should added above that Ryan Paddy seems to have missed the point of the comment he dissents from, in his haste to differ. My comment was about Wikipedia policy on NPOV. Even if everyone else on this page thinks it is right to block any sources and text that does not agree with their own pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist POV, and I am the only one here that grasps that this is wrong, it is still the case that it is wrong, Ryan Paddy. The overwhelming majority of a highly partisan and one-sided population is usually wrong, as history teaches us. So I again remind editors that such editorial attitudes are explicitly contrary to Wikipedia guidelines regarding articles preserving NPOV; editors ought not to make any modifications or reverts at all to Wikipedia articles until they grasp and internalize what Wikipedia policies are all about.Tempered (talk) 09:16, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

"Western democracies", of course, represent only a small minority of the world's population. And I don't think you are right about the reliability of the majority of your sources, either. RolandR (talk) 23:28, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The difference between Western democracies and other states, and the views held in them, is that the news and information in those other states is thoroughly controlled by authoritarian regimes unsympathetic to Western democracies per se, which of course includes Israel, so the monochromatic views of most people there cannot be taken as even remotely independent, objective or knowledgeable. A brief lesson for RolandR.Tempered (talk) 05:31, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

If there is an automatic bot operative on this page that archives sections that draw no additional postings after three weeks (as is generally the case here as elsewhere, I believe), I would like to suggest to the page manager/administrator that this section "New Version of Proposed Contribution" should be preserved from that archiving until discussion on this proposed contribution concludes with a consensus.Tempered (talk) 11:41, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I have changed the text slightly, added a few sentences, and also added a few more citations (those with an "a" or "b" by their citation number). I would also welcome comments on specific sources cited. Generalizations criticising them as a whole are easy to make since no justifications need be provided, but specific criticisms can be assessed and the nature of the actual sources discussed. I welcome such constructive criticisms. In their absence, and since this is such an active page and the topic has already engaged many editors, we can provisionally assume consent, according to WP:SILENCE. Tempered (talk) 23:11, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Version 2: First Paragraph

I'm making progress with a draft. I think it might be best to make paragraphs available as I go, to get an idea of whether it's worth continuing, because running quality control on Tempered's draft (especially the sources) is very time-consuming and I don't want to waste my time if this is going nowhere.

Some critics of the apartheid analogy state that it is intended to delegitimize and demonize Israel and Zionism, applying a higher standard of behaviour to the Jewish state than to other nations or to the Palestinian Authority in order to justify the boycotting, ostracism, or elimination of the State of Israel.[Cohen, Sabel, Matas, Dershowitz, perhaps others] Philosopher Bernard Harrison describes the apartheid label as "hyperbolic". He states that while there are reasonable grounds to criticize Israel for the establishment of settlements in the West Bank, or for the treatment of Christians and Muslim Arabs in Israel as "second class citizens", the apartheid comparison is a politically-motivated exaggeration of the situation in Israel intended to undermine its moral basis for existence. [Harrison] Historian Robert Wistrich has argued that the apartheid analogy and other claims of crimes against humanity by Israel are continuations of the historical vilification of Jews using accusations such as deicide, blood libel, and various Jewish conspiracies. He states that the apartheid label is similar propaganda to that used by Nazi Germany, except that it has now been taken up by the Muslim world. [Wistrich]

This paragraph incorporates content and sources from the first four paragraphs of Tempered's version, I haven't gotten to the rest yet. I don't make any claim that this draft is perfect, but I think it's an improvement in terms of a more encyclopedic style, keeping the content on topic, and avoiding original research. Ryan Paddy (talk) 23:44, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The force of the characterization of the logic of the use of the apartheid analogy in my version might be revisited. I do think that a few more of the best sources that I already cited for this opening sentence should be added. The phrasing about applying universal standards perfectionistically only to Israel is worth retaining: it highlights the double standards issue very clearly as being basic to the entire discussion, although your phrasing can be taken to imply this too. But anyway, the suggested phrasing also signifies that normal criticism is not the issue. Harrison himself makes the same point about perfectionism and the double standards difference between that and normal criticism. Furthermore, the reference to Harrison omits that the entire focus of his book is on the incoherent logic behind "apartheid" and similar charges, when scrutinized by an analytical philosopher. Is that not a worthy essential point to include? Otherwise his specific contribution is misunderstood and loses much of its weight. Also, how about a less "truth"-oriented phrasing, "may be," as in "He states that while there may be reasonable grounds for criticizing ..."? And perhaps a "among others" can be added as follows: "Historian Robert Wistrich, among others, has argued ..." (and then citing some of those others, at least in the notes, as given in my draft -- it is not just a view of Wistrich's, but has even more weight since it is also maintained by other experts in the field as my citations indicate). Otherwise, the proposed version seems OK, although I withhold final judgement until we see the whole thing. But this does begin to look possible.Tempered (talk) 05:56, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I'll consider your suggestions while I continue working on the draft. I think we're coming from the same place in seeing "delegitimisation" as a significant perspective on the apartheid label that should be presented in the article, per NPOV, and if we keep that common ground in mind we'll be okay. My text is likely to be less promotional and flamboyant about this perspective than you might prefer. However, I take this approach because that's how Wikipedia is written, not because I'm trying to suppress the perspective, so please do assume good faith if we disagree on some wording. It's my opinion that the text will actually be more compelling in its presentation of the sources if it's neutral in its tone rather than promotional. This is an encyclopedia, not an opinionated scholarly article, so readers don't want it to sound like it's trying to convince them of something. Regardless of whether we reach agreement on exact wording, once we have agreement on the broad thrust of the text and there's a consensus for its inclusion in the article, finer details of wording and citation can be worked out via the usual wiki editing process. Ryan Paddy (talk) 07:20, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

On "delegitimation", editors may be interested in an article, For Israel, 'delegitimization' is becoming an excuse by Akiva Eldar in Haaretz last week: "A look at the "guidebook" the Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs is offering Israelis at the exit gates from the country reinforces the suspicion that the inflation in the expression "delegitimization" (formerly called "anti-Semitism" ) is not a random lexical construction.... Israel is basking in the light of the delegitimization. It will not allow the inexhaustible tin of olive oil to be defiled by any hint of legitimization. It is much easier to give the world the finger when the whole of it is against you. If we say "delegitimization" enough times the public will believe there is no connection between what the gentiles say and what the Jews do." [12] RolandR (talk) 19:57, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Liberal democracy is alive and well in Israel, as just such rhetoric by Eldar in an Israeli newspaper, many of whose writers are extremist anti-Zionists, proves. Nothing comparable to it would be permitted in any Arab state, nor in the media of the P.A. either: it would be seen as dishonorable or even treasonous and the author would have a difficult time, shall we say. However, Eldar's argument cannot be taken seriously. It appears to be yet another version of the militantly anti-Zionist view that Israel and its friends have no right to defend it, in this case even just verbally in open debate, against its enemies. Any defense at all is supposedly per se sinister, immoral and arrogantly inhuman. Eldar thus contributes to the delegitimization of Israel. In fact, this provides an opportunity to add a few more important sources to our proposed contribution criticising delegitimization and demonization of Israel, this time statements by non-Israeli world leaders pointing out the serious dangers to the whole of Western society of such hate-incitement against Israel. I propose that this theme of the danger to Western society generally and to its fundamental values needs a separate mention and even paragraph in the revised contribution:

José Maria Aznar, Prime Minister of Spain between 1996 and 2004, asserted that "If Israel Goes Down, We All Go Down," as the title of his opinion piece in the London Times of June 17, 2010 put it. Israel, he said, is in the West's front line against extremism. He wrote: "For Western countries to side with those who question Israel’s legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel’s vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined." See: http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/article.php?c=48

Marcello Pera, President of the Italian Parliament from 2001 to 2006, put particular stress on this centrality in Judaism of human rights, making it the source and "Forefather" of Western values of human rights and democracy generally, so it is actually this heritage itself, and the future of liberal Western culture, that is being challenged by those apologists of fanaticism and authoritarianism or totalitarianism who delegitimize and deny the liberal democracy of Israel and who seek to legitimize hate-incitement and terrorist atrocies against it instead. "(A)ttacking Israel is tantamont to attacking Europe and the West." See: Marcello Pera's speech to the British Parliament, "Israel, our Forefather," available at: http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/article.php?c=63

Aznar, Pera, former Irish Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, former President of Peru Alejandro Toledo, and other world leaders have therefore created a coalition of Western politicians and powerful figures, almost all non-Jewish, entitled "Friends of Israel Initiative," to fight this defamation of Israel, as part of a fight for the preservation of the values of Western civilization itself. On this, see the Aznar citation above.

Another such group, made up of parliamentarians from over 50 countries, including all Western democracies, has also recently formed to fight what they have termed the antisemitic defamation of Israel. On this Interparliamentary Coalition for Combatting Antisemitism, see footnote 3 in the recently revised contribution above.

In his inaugural address to that Interparliamentary Conference in Ottowa this past November, Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, said: "(H)istory shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israeli mob tells us all too well if we listen to it, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are a threat to all of us. ... We have a solemn duty to defend the vulnerable, to challenge the aggressor, to protect and promote human rights, human dignity, at home and abroad. None of us really knows whether we would choose to do good, in the extreme circumstances of the Righteous. But we do know there are those today who would choose to do evil, if they are so permitted. Thus, we must use our freedom now, and confront them and their anti-Semitism at every turn." The speech is at: http://www.cjc.ca/2010/11/09/statement-by-the-prime-minister-of-canada-on-the-ottawa-conference-on-combating-anti-semitism/

Another recent statement by a major Western political leader critical of the delegitimizing and demonizing of Israel, is Tony Blair's "Delegitimization of Israel is affront to humanity," at http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=185860.

There are many more such statements, e.g., by American politicians, Australian political leaders, European and elsewhere, but these will do.Tempered (talk) 07:16, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see Akiva Eldar, or the people Tempered cites, making references to apartheid. --Dailycare (talk) 21:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

As the proposed contribution itself indicates, citing many sources, and as logic and the "apartheid" terminology itself shows, the "apartheid" analogy consists precisely of the accusation that the state is as such based on an "illegal," "criminal" and "racist" structure, thus is an outlaw regime and illegitimate. So the delegitimizing referred to by all the above parties necessarily includes the "apartheid" accusation, just as it includes the "Nazi" analogy, the "racist" analogy, the "colonialist" analogy, etc. All these are self-admittedly attempts to erase the moral and legal justification for the Jewish state. Moreover, as the contribution again shows, the anti-apartheid campaign against Israel has been used precisely by those groups who deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state, just as its original model was explicitly aimed at attacking the legitimacy of the South African state. "Apartheid" advocates even state explicitly that just as the South African regime was overthrown by the anti-apartheid campaign, so too they want to work toward the overthrow of the Zionist state -- and replace it with something else. This is, to take only one example of the several given in the proposed contribution, the explicit goal of the BDS campaign, as described by its global coordinator, Omar Barghouti. It is noteworthy that the Jewish state is the only state to be subject to such a campaign; if the apartheid analogy proponents used it against other states too, about which no delegitimization could be implied, then it would be easier to disclaim (against the open logic and context of the terminology) a delegitimizing motivation in the case of Israel. But they do not. So reference to these statements against delegitimizing Israel can be cited in this connection.Tempered (talk) 05:34, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe the state of this discussion is that RP is working on a text proposal. Let's discuss the text proposal once we see it, and keep these ruminations on other fora. --Dailycare (talk) 21:25, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

It looks like there will be a period of perhaps a couple of weeks when there will be few posts here, due to the usual seasonal and end-of-year activities. I will certainly be away for a few days myself. However, I will try to keep an eye on this space.Tempered (talk) 11:34, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

It is now much more than a month since Ryan Paddy undertook to present his preferred version of the proposed contribution, and all we have gotten is one short paragraph. Ryan, are you still working on this matter? Could you tell us when we will be likely to see your results? Or have you ceased your effort, in which case you should make this clear and we can go directly into formal mediation on the contribution I wrote up. Thanks.Tempered (talk) 00:55, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

It's likely that I'll finish it at some point. Hopefully, it will get shorter rather than longer in the finishing; it takes more effort to make something concise than to produce something rambling. As I've said from the start you are welcome to litigate whenever you want, I could use a laugh. Ryan Paddy (talk) 18:41, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Your surprisingly unconcealed and strong hostility shows, Ryan Paddy, and is not promising for the actual write-up. It suggests that there is little or no likelihood of your version doing justice to the sources whose views (as is evident from your comments here and on my Talk page) you are very hostile to, or describing them in a fair unbiased way. It also suggests some possible reasons for the tardiness and paucity of your actual contribution. I would have thought it was obvious that I was not threatening you with litigation, but simply indicating that I wanted to move on with this, and foreshadowed my logical next option should you not be making an alternative version. How could that threaten you? That option need not involve you at all. Nor is it litigation in itself, merely recourse to Wikipedia mediation help. Amazing.

You write, "It's likely" you will finish it. But it is not certain, according to you. And you add, "at some point." But you give no idea of when. I think we need something a bit better than that, Ryan. Please laugh if that tickles your funny bone. But after you sober up be so good as to supply a probable end-date.Tempered (talk) 05:15, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Perspectives, they're marvelous things. From my perspective, I'm generously (if very slowly) working to write up a point of view that doesn't particularly interest me. I'm not exactly writing for the opponent, because I'm not especially hostile to this perspective (I even think it has some merit), but my only motivation here is to help you add a significant perspective to the article, because I believe strongly in WP:NPOV. So from my perspective your snide comments, discussing me in the third person and referring to my efforts by saying "all we have gotten is one short paragraph" and making demands on me to provide an ETA are rude. Hence my terse but honest answer: I don't know if and when I'll finish it, and I don't care what you think or do about that. I mean to finish it, and I mean to do so to the best of my ability and without influence from my personal opinions on the matter (because that's my modus operandi, I love neutrality) but this piece of work is not a priority for me. You could of course have another go at it yourself. The real pity of this situation isn't my slowness at producing a careful and neutral version of your contribution, it's your inability or unwillingness to do so yourself. If you could take a step back, and attempt to write a more brief and non-promotional account of what the most reliable of your sources have to say, without adding any interpretation or spin of your own, a version that meets the approval of the other editors who've generously give their time here to assess your work to date, then you wouldn't need me to do it for you. Ryan Paddy (talk) 21:47, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Ryan Paddy, I am afraid that that is a non-answer. At least you are in fact doing something, "very slowly," as you admit, because as you say it has a low priority for you. "Very slowly" gives no time frame that I can make out. Will you be finished within this month? By the end of March? June? September? As for my version being unacceptable to editors here, that, I put it to you, has to do not with my version but with their own fixed and adamant bias which would be satisfied only with zero contributions dealing with these matters, as just recently indicated below in almost as many words by one of those editors in the section entitled "John Dugard article." As for the rest of your comments, perhaps they should be reconsidered by you. My version describes a very significant and massive amount of commentary and scholarship relating to the topic that has not been dealt with in the main article but which is highly pertinent to it, and describes them objectively and in accordance with Wikipedia guidelines. If any sentence is insufficiently objective, "careful and neutral," then it is open to any editor to suggest an alternative. Similarly with the sources. I again request you to give us a time-table. There is nothing rude in such a request, seeing that I have patiently waited for over a month already.Tempered (talk) 01:25, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Asking for a timeline isn't rude (I don't mind you asking, but the answer is "there isn't one"), but your demanding and entitled tone is. Your attitude is making me regret trying to help you. Your suggested text was rambling, full of original research and synthesis, and promotional in tone, but I sensed that there is a significant perspective buried in your unacceptable presentation of it, that should be present in the article per NPOV, which is why I offered to help. I never promised anything, certainly not a timeline, and I can't give one now, because this is a voluntary project and my contributions here are on a "can I be arsed with this?" basis. I was hoping we could cooperate on this piece of content, despite our differing perspectives, and it might lay a groundwork for future cooperation on this article. But your attitude is making the whole experience unpleasant, so that seems doubtful at present. You need to bear in mind that it's your own responsibility to produce text that other editors find acceptable, they are entirely entitled to reject your text (with good reasons provided) without going to the trouble of re-writing it for you. I'm not sure what your grand plan is in pissing off the one person who's actively trying to help you write content, as well as unfairly branding as "biased" all the other editors who are trying to help you understand what's wrong with your suggested text, unless perhaps you enjoy a sense of persecution. All I can suggest is that you should either 1) be quiet and hold your horses for a while, while I do my best to finish my suggestion, or 2) stop bugging me and do whatever you feel is necessary if you don't believe that I'll produce something of use to you. I genuinely don't have a timeline, so continuing to demand one is just silly. Ryan Paddy (talk) 03:04, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Rather than answering in kind, I will turn to more constructive areas. You say that there is "original research" in my proposed contribution. Could you point that out to me? Where is it? If it is there, I will modify it. You also claim that my version is "promotional," and needs rewording to be more neutral. Please give specifics. I have already made modifications to the style as suggested by Carwil (see his/her comments immediately following the text of the contribution, above) and am willing to make any others I am persuaded are needed. By the way, I should call attention to the fact that I have added some more sentences and a few more citations (with "a" or "b" added to their endnote number) to the proposed contribution itself, above. As far as I am concerned, my contribution is still viable as a text in the main article, but again I am willing to consider your alternative.Tempered (talk) 23:03, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Telling that not only is there nothing contributed further, Ryan Paddy, but also that despite all sorts of empty generalizations no specific criticisms have been offered by you regarding my contribution, in response to my invitation, even ten days later. It certainly begins to look like none will be given. The whole discussion of my proposed contribution, of course, began in August last year, and only obstructionism and stalling has kept it in the Talk page limbo that it has been in for so many months. Of course, even here on the Talk page it is read by all who bother to have a look at the Talk page after having read the main article. The contribution has already made a difference in terms of the information available to Wikipedia readers, and that is why I have been patient. However, I think that it is time to move on. So I turn to address other editors and welcome critiques of specific items by any one. Vague generalizations are meaningless, but specifics can be usefully discussed. Keep in mind that silence implies consensus.Tempered (talk) 11:09, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

As I've said all along, you're welcome to attempt to progress as you see fit (I doubt you'll have much luck unless you take a more critical view of your own writing, but there's nothing to stop you trying to write something that editors here will find appropriate to add to the article, or trying to take this to some formal or informal process - although I'm dubious that you'll be happy with the outcome). My slowness in attempting to help needn't be a barrier. I haven't had time for close reading and assessing of sources of late, so I've just been doing administrative edits rather than trying to progress my draft. Part of the reason that the process is slow is that it's hard to get motivated to wade through the screeds of low-quality sources you provided, weeding them out to leave the reliable sources, so if you could trim your source list down to the best sources that would be a good contribution. If you prefer, I can just post what I have (not a huge amount more than last time), and leave you to it. That may be the best option, as it seems like you're no longer assuming good faith in me, so it seems unlikely that our collaboration will bear fruit. Having said that, if I don't hear otherwise from you I'll continue working on my draft at my own pace. As for your original draft - the issues that other editors and I had with it were addressed at great length previously, and I see no benefit in rehashing them. In this case, silence indicates a lack of interest in repeating myself, especially as your response to constructive criticism is basically "my text is perfect, you're just biased." Ryan Paddy (talk) 21:24, 6 February 2011 (UTC) On second thought, I'll just post what I have now. Any further work on it can be done here on the talk page, if desired. I'll start a new section called "Delegitimization" for it. Ryan Paddy (talk) 23:21, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Although you say that the issues other editors and you raised were addressed at great length previously, this is not evident in the actual discussion above: there were very few specifics, just a lot of vague generalities. Requests for specific amendments to the text or references of the proposed contribution were only answered by Carwil, and I was responsive to them and made most of the suggested changes to the text to render it into a more neutral narrative. Otherwise, there were only expressions of editorial dismay at the dissent in the text and sources from apartheid accusations. A number of editors attacked all the sources, saying they were "extremist" or not reliable, etc., but the "extremism" was unspecified and in fact simply untrue (but even if true they were irrelevant, since our only concern here must be with accurate presentation of what significant and notable critics say), and the reliability of the sources was not challenged in any particular case. This includes your own generalizing reference to "crap" sources (content or specific sources unnamed), even though you had to admit that similar sorts of sources abounded elsewhere in the "proponents of the apartheid analogy" sections. So it was impossible to know just what precise items needed consideration. It is easy, if one does not like a text documenting any criticisms of the use of the apartheid analogy, to make vague and essentially lazy generalizations repudiating that text and its references, holus bolus, but these, perhaps quite purposely, do not move the discussion along. They are just emotive indications of one's ideological bias, without specific content that can be checked and tested. Similar comments apply to your response immediately above. Lots of negative generalizations about my proposed contribution, but nothing useful or specific. If you want to demonstrate lack of bias and genuine neutrality, then prove it with specifics rather than unhelpful and essentially empty dismissive phrases.Tempered (talk) 19:34, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Version 2: First and Second Paragraph

In response to your "second thought" (just above, 23:21, 6 February) I think a new section is not needed, since we already have a sub-section format for discussion of "version 2" as given above. It also splits the version 2 away from its previous entries, making checking versions against each other a chore. Moreover, your first paragraph, Ryan Paddy, is already in the sub-section immediately above. The only novelty is that you have added more detailed footnotes, although these are all taken from my original proposed contribution and could have merely been indicated, not reproduced in full, by using just the number of the original footnote, e.g., [12][32a] etc., without further text, to save space. Anyone interested in the cited source would be able to locate it in my original proposed contribution. I would suggest that you enter your two paragraphs just before this post, Ryan Paddy, and eliminate the "Delegitimization" section below.

In any case, the two paragraphs now presented by you, Ryan Paddy, at least give us something to discuss. That is a welcome development.

In regard to the first paragraph of version 2, I will make only a preliminary comment here. It is noticeable that there is no integration at all of the comments I made back on the second of December to it. It is given again entirely unchanged. If we are to arrive at consensus there must be some give and take. I will present a modified version of your paragraph one in coming days. The discussion of Bernard Harrison's book, in particular, raises questions. It does not reflect the logical and linguistic analysis angle he brings to the book as a professional philosopher, which is his especial contribution, and the way in which he explicitly shows that apartheid criticisms are unjustified and incoherent, and betray antisemitic traits, whether intentional or not. In fact, his analysis of what he calls an antisemitic "climate of opinion" on the left, to which even leftists who do not intend antisemitism contribute through their double standards, is one of the most significant points he makes. He emphasizes it and comes back to it frequently throughout his book. That point should be in our summary of his contribution to the discussion. It is directly relevant to the topic of the article and of criticisms of the apartheid analogy.

The second paragraph is not as polished as the first, as you acknowledge. It leaves out a lot. Above all, there is practically nothing on the historical background and evolution of the application of "apartheid" terminology to Israel, which is given in my original proposed contribution.

Some crucial examples follow. Although the accounts of U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Moynihan are mentioned in the text and footnotes, the historical setting and relevance is underplayed, and this is not satisfactory. There is no mention of the Soviet campaign to delegitimize Israel with the racism and apartheid accusations following the 1967 war Israel won, climaxing in the "Zionism = Racism" resolution of 1974. Yet Kirkpatrick and Moynihan specifically stress the global ramifications of this anti-democracies campaign, and show just what the wider agendas were that dictated the emphasis on "apartheid" and "racism" accusations in the international arena. For some critics of the apartheid analogy this is a crucial matter, if not the most crucial issue of all. To gloss it over or omit historical context from the text is not to do justice to the critics' views nor our task in a NPOV article. So simply by omission and commission the account is weakened. (To the citations made in my proposed contribution I would add the very detailed and extensive chapters by Robert Wistrich, "Chapter 13: Bigotry at the United Nations," dealing with a lot of the debate in the U.N. over the years, from the 40s on, and with numerous explicit references to the "apartheid" terminology, in A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010), pp. 465-493, also see pp. 494-6.)

Similarly, just to relegate the eruption of "apartheid" accusations at the Durban Racism conference to a footnote or two, but not to refer to it at all in the text, prevents readers from getting any satisfactory historical context for this sort of accusation. This goes beyond the excision of even the slightest reference to Hadar as a source for mentioning Edward Said's and Diana Buttu's call for an "apartheid" campaign in the West to isolate and delegitimize Israel (thus eliminating the references to Said and Buttu altogether, relevant and important though they are to the discussion). It wipes out any historical context at all, however well documented and justified. How can such a sweeping indifference to such relevant topics and sources be justified?

Further to this point, the treatment of the Nazi background to the application of a "racist apartheid" accusation against Israel is a very serious flaw. You write, "Historian Robert Wistrich has argued that the apartheid label is a continuation of the historical vilification of Jews using accusations such as deicide and blood libel, and that it is propaganda used by the Muslim world resembling that used against Jews by Nazi Germany." What is missing there? Simply the point that Wistrich argued. He even gave major emphasis to this point in his books and even in the cited article, which is that the propaganda used by the Muslim world did not just "resemble" that used against Jews by Nazi Germany, but that it was actually drawn from that used by the Nazis, under their direct influence. I also think some reference to the articles by Joel Fishman and Raymond Ibrahim on just this point (see my [28] and [29] citations), either in the text or at least in a footnote, would be appropriate. By the way, why is Wistrich's much more authoritatively detailed and documented book on this subject, which is cited in my proposed contribution, namely Hitler's Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), pp. 8-10, 154-73, 213-15, etc., (see my footnote citation [22]), not referenced? Only the article is given, which is much less satisfactory for anyone wanting to follow this subject up in any depth. And to this we should add Wistrich's discussion in his magnum opus, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010), chapter 20: "Hitler and the Mufti," pp. 662-683, and the subsequent chapters 21 through 24, pp. 684-829, giving very full and precise documentation of Nazi influences on Muslim anti-Zionism and the Palestinian movement up to the present day, including providing the sources for the accusations that Israel is itself a "racist" country.

In general, the indifference in this version to many authoritative and high-quality sources, including academic books and articles that make major contributions to our subject, is quite obvious. Tempered (talk) 19:32, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

In response to your decision, Ryan Paddy, to conclude your efforts at your own version, below, I want first to thank you for your efforts. Naturally, we will not agree on everything, but I believe my specific comments indicated that the general text was a good start and we can build on it. Your impression (as expressed below under the section heading "Delegitimization") that there is no prospect of useful dialogue on the text is wrong at least from my side, and your excuse for ceasing efforts to write up an alternative version is unpersuasive. However I am not surprised at that decision given the tone of our exchanges, and it may be for the best, in the light of your own adamant refusal to seek consensus with me or take any account whatsoever of my suggestions and comments for improvement of your version. It really does need balancing, and correction, as indicated just above. My main objection is not that it is light on detail, since I agree that a briefer version is necessary, but rather a more serious deficiency: it omits or slurs over some really essential points and phrases others incorrectly or tendentiously. However, thank you again, your contribution is useful as a first start at condensation of text, and I will not need to make too many modifications to it. A revised version will follow in due course. Meanwhile, with your permission I hope since you say I can make use of your proposed text, I will insert the second paragraph of your proposed text here:

"Historian Robert Wistrich has argued that the apartheid label is a continuation of the historical vilification of Jews using accusations such as deicide and blood libel, and that it is propaganda used by the Muslim world resembling that used against Jews by Nazi Germany.[18] Arguments have also been made that historical Russian antisemitism later manifested in the Soviet Union as accusations that Israel's policies resemble apartheid, a discourse that was designed to help Arab states allied to the USSR.[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] Anne Bayefsky, a Canadian political scientist specializing in international law and human rights, considers that delegitimization of Israel was pursued at Durban as part of a campaign to legitimize Islamist and leftist terrorism as justifiable "popular resistance," not just against Israel but against liberal democracies and Western societies generally.[27][28]"

I will modify as soon as I can get to it the footnote citation numbers in this text to fit the sources and the footnote numbers for them given in my original contribution. Any editors who have any comments on this version or its sources, please feel free to add your views. Tempered (talk) 01:35, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

^ ἀναλογία, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
^ analogy, Online Etymology Dictionary

[1] ἀναλογία, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library

[2] y, Online Etymology Dictionary

[1]

[2]