User:GHcool/Views

Views on Israel

I find that Wikipedia editors are a largely moderate bunch trying to find and publicize verifiable truth. However, there are some bad apples in every bunch who are trying to disseminate disinformation about Israel on talk pages and within articles. Those bad apples rarely succeed since Wikipedia is built on consensus and consensus is built on evidence from reliable sources. Rather than stand idlely by or commit the same logical fallacies committed by the people who are abusing this website, I prefer systematically debunking disinformation in a form inspired by two popular books on the subject: Alan M. Dershowitz's The Case for Israel and Mitchell G. Bard's Myths and Facts.

One way that fair-minded Wikipedia editors could help is by not getting emotionally involved in an argument with an anti-Semitic, anti-verifiability, or intellectually dishonest Wikipedia editor and engaged in revert wars. They should have simply let the evidence speak for themselves and argue in favor of the evidence. Do not not stoop to their level. As calmly as you can, disect their accusations and point out where their arguments fail without resorting to the using the same logical fallacies your opponents use. Lastly, remember that not all criticisms of Israeli policy are anti-Semetic or necessarily wrong. Have enough courage to treat a true claim with respect, even if you do not agree with the claimer's conclusion. And keep informed on Israel and read about her history.

I recieved the following e-mail from Mitchell G. Bard on January 20, 2007: Thanks for your kind words and suggestions. You are quite right about Wikipedia and it is very important people like you monitor what's being posted there. I've heard of some problems from time to time."

What are the origins of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Ignorance about the origins of the Palestinian problem is perhaps the most common reason for Israel's critics to be so critical. The following is a summary of the historical narrative as I understand it. Feel free to disagree with me, but be prepared to produce solid evidence from reliable sources or else I will not be swayed.

To the best of my understanding, most of the present-day Palestinian refugees are decendents of Arabs (mostly Muslims) who lived in the area that is now known as Israel. These Arabs were mostly peasant agriculturalists, called felaheen, with an economy and sense of land ownership based largely on collective farming. Their identity as "Palestinians" was negligible. They thought of themselves as part of the larger Arab people or part of the smaller village they lived in. The Jewish Zionists started emigrating to Palestine en masse after waves of anti-Semitism in Russia in the early 20th century, during which time the wealthier Jews legally bought land from the ruling Ottoman Turks and gave jobs to fellow Jews. The felaheen could not compete with the capitalistic system of land ownership that the Jews were using to their own advantage. By the time of the British Mandate, the economic disparities between the two populations in Mandate Palestine was perceived to be so large that lower class Arabs frequently started riots against both Jews and Arabs in the upper classes. It was here, according to the New Historians, that a specific Palestinian Arab identity became developed and adopted by the Palestinian leaders at the time, specifically by Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

In 1947, the U.N. partitioned the country into two states: one Jewish, one Arab. The Arabs rejected the Partition Plan while the Jews accepted. A civil war between the two populations broke out in Palestine before the British left, and then a larger, international war against Israel by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq broke out in 1948 directly following David Ben Gurion declaration of the independence of the State of Israel. The two results of the Israeli War of Independence is the present-day State of Israel and the present-day Palestinian refugee problem.

Are the Palestinians a "people?"

I ordinarily don't write on this page about things that don't directly concern Israel, but I'm making an exception here because of a month-long debate on Talk:Palestinian people during July-August 2007 that resulted in no consensus. The debate is between a large group of people who believe that the Palestinian people article should be renamed "Palestinians" and a smaller group of people who believe that "Palestinian people" is the better title. The editors in favor of "Palestinians" as the title argue that the Palestinians are not an ethnic or racial people in the same way that the Romani people or Japanese people are and have only been in existence for 90 years by the most liberal of reliable estimates, but closer to 40-60 years by most historians' estimates. The editors in favor of "Palestinian people" as the title argue that the Palestinians are a people in the sense that they are "a group of people," meaning more than one person that shares something in common.

Because nobody denies that the Palestinians are "a group of people," it is difficult for me to understand why certain editors are so determined to keep a title that includes a confusing and impercise term that breaks Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words, Wikipedia:Original research, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. "Palestinians" is clearly the most common term used by the media and by academia to describe what is being described in the article. Its the title that virtually everyone is comfortable with. It doesn't deny the legitimacy of the Palestinian identity, the Palestinian right to statehood, or the plight of the Palestinian refugees. All it does is clarify a potential misinterpretation of the facts. The argument for a title change is extremely strong.

What is U.N. Resolution 242?

Ignorance about the content and interpretation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 is perhaps the second most common reason for Israel's critics to be so critical. The text of the resolution can be read on Wikipedia.

To the best of my understanding, Israel's achieved a major victory in the Six-Day War in which they gained control over the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. These were then and still remain Israel's most valuable bargaining chips in the peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Resolution 242 calls for Israel to withdraw "from territories" (the English version of the resolution was the one voted upon) in return for "[T]ermination of all claims or states of belligerency." It also calls for " just settlement of the refugee problem." The resolution clearly implies a negotiation process as opposed to a "you do your part first and I'll follow" kind of a process. That means that Israel will not withdraw from territories and then just hope that the Arab nations will terminate their state of belligerency; similarly, one should not expect the Arab nations to simply end their state of belligerency and Israel will withdraw from territories immediately in return. What it does mean is that the two sides of the conflict should come together and sort out their differences in a peaceful, diplomatic setting such as in the successful Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. The resolution was an accepted by Israel not long after it was passed by the United Nations, but was rejected by the Arab nations at the time and remains so in many of the more radical Arab organizations such as Hamas.

Is Israel an apartheid state?

When one searches Wikipedia, apartheid redirects to History of South Africa in the Apartheid era. This is correct because there is no such thing as an apartheid outside of South Africa between 1948 and 1993. That's what the term means and that is the only appropriate context the term can be used in. The same can be said about terms such as Nazism. There are some highly outspoken critics of Israel who accuse it of being a Nazi state. Aside from the ludicrous idea that Israeli brutality against Palestinians is even close to the Nazis' brutality against Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other "undesirables," the adjective "Nazi" doesn't apply to Israel for the same reason "apartheid" doesn't. These terms do not apply to anything other than the specific contexts in history they refer specifically to.

Having said that, a fair comparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa could not reasonably be made given the facts on the ground in both 21st century Israel and the history of apartheid South Africa. The apartheid system of government in South Africa were marked by the following:

• Segregation - In apartheid South Africa, black citizens could only run businesses in designated areas and were considered migrant workers in their own country. In Israel, Arab citizens can and do run their own businesses wherever they want.
• Forced relocation - There were several incidents of forced relocation of black citizens of apartheid South Africa from their homes to other designated places. There has not been a similar forced relocation of Arabs in Israel since 1948, and those Arabs were not Israeli citizens.
• Unequal rights - In apartheid South Africa, black citizens did not have the same rights and freedoms enjoyed by white citizens such as voting, freedom of movement, employment opportunity, etc. In Israel, Arab and Jewish citizens enjoy the same rights (except in the case of the Law of Return, but that's not the issue advocates of the Israeli apartheid epithet are concerned about).

Accusations vs. Reality

Below I have compiled the accusations I have debunked on various talk pages:

Is Zionism a racist ideology?

Main page: User:GHcool/Opinions on Zionism

Was the goal of the first Jewish immigrants to disposes the Palestinian Arabs of land through armed force?

Accusations

• "The Zionist plan (well documented) to ethnically cleanse the natives is by definition 'terrorism.'" - Found on Talk:Zionism#terrorism_and_violence. 9 February 2007.
• "The [Jewish] immigrants arrived [in Palestine] and armed themselves in order to seize every home, business and farm in Palestine and many miles in all directions. ... It took them 65 years to grow enough to carry off the first stage, 20 years to grow enough for the second stage, and a further 40 years to realise they're in the soup." - Found on Talk:Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 20:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC).
• "Some of the [Jewish] immigrants [to Palestine], from as early as 1881/82 were set on armed dispossession of the [Arab] Palestinians. ... Shortly after the Balfour Declaration, their threatening intentions became very obvious, and in 1920, despite still only being 10% of the population, they practically seized control." - Found on Talk:Zionism. 22:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC).

Reality

The claim that the goal of the Jewish immigrants to Palestine was to dispossess the Palestinian Arabs since the 1880s is simply fallacious and the alleged two-stage plan for domination of the land amounts to a bogus conspiracy theory. The Russian immigrants of the First Aliyah escaping oppression from the czar and settling in the Galilee could not possibly have imagined the events of 1948 and certainly not the events of 1967! The Zionists had not even collectively agreed upon which region of the planet to focus their dreams of Jewish statehood until 1905 (Uganda was still an option before that time). As far as I know, the Jewish population of Palestine had no arms to speak of until at least 1920 (when the Haganah was established), and even those arms were not nearly enough to "seize control" as a certain Wikipedia editor alleges. History is not done by taking an event and saying that all events that occurred before it must have been part of a brilliant conspiracy to lead to that event. This is a logical fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc.

It is also not surprising that about a month before a certain other Wikipedia editor's claim of a Zionist organized ethnic cleansing campaign, he/she openly suggested that the infamous forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a falsehood created and promoted to cause maximum damage to Jews worldwide, is true.[1] He also addressed Jews as "MF's" (short for "mother fuckers").[2]

Has Israel ever committed anything that could be described as a genocide?

Accusations

• "The founders of Israel aspired to seizing the southern part of Lebanon and ethnically cleansing the Muslim inhabitants. They did this for years before Israel was established, and it's important we recognise that fact." - Found on Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. 20:49, 17 October 2006 (UTC). PalestineRemembered later edited this statement to read: "the fact that Israel (and it's founding fathers before 1948) intended to seize and ethnically cleanse the Muslim south of Lebanon is historical fact."
• "[W]hat the Zionist regime did in the early 1900s when it landed on the shores of Palestine [was massacre] Palestinians by the thousand [sic]." - Found on Talk:Hezbollah/Archive_terrorist_allegations#Terrorist_organization_III. 00:37, 19 November 2006 (UTC).
• "No matter how much support you are able to get for the killing of Arabs by misleading the public, that will not change the fact that murder is murder and genocide is genocide." - Found on Talk:Zionism#First_Sentence_is_POV. December 2006. Not surprisingly, 71.135.36.250 was later discovered to be a sockpuppet for Pco.
• "[Zionists] are provably [sic] a lot nastier and more dangerous than anything we've seen since 1945." - Found on User_talk:Viscious81/Archive_2#Why_no_mention_of_terrorist_attacks_on_Jews.3F. 23:27, 29 December 2006 (UTC).

Reality

The Random House Webster's College Dictionary defines "genocide" as "the deliberate and systematic exterminization of a national, racial, political, or cultural group" (emphasis added). The word genocide has been used accurately to describe what happened in Armenia during the 1910s, Europe during the 1940s, Rwanda during the 1990s, and Darfur today. The term has also been used inaccurately and with malicious intent to twist the facts about the reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This may burst the bubble of anti-Israel propogandists, but Israel does not impliment forced labor of Arabs (as the Turks did to the Armenians and the Nazis did to Jews), send Arabs to concentration camps (as the Nazis did to the Jews), permit military roundups and execution of Arabs without due process of law (as the Nazis, Turks, and the Hutus of Rwanda did and the Janjaweed currently are doing in the Darfur region of Sudan), or any other action that could be described as the "systematic exterminization" of Arabs or Palestinians based solely on their "national, racial, political, or cultural" background.

As for the claim of an alleged massacre by "the Zionist regime ... in the early 1900s," there is no reference to any such massacre in any history book or encyclopedia I have encountered. Such a massacre could not have taken place anyway because before 1948, there was nothing in existence that could be accurately labeled "the Zionist regime" no matter how liberally one defines either term. It is not surprising that on the day after Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened a conference encouraging Holocaust denial, the person who made that ridiculous claim said that Ahmadinejad "is not anti-semitic [sic]"[3] It appears that the editor who made that claim has been infinately blocked by an admin because the username is "is a derogatory word ... in Urdu."[4]

Is Jerusalem the capital of Israel?

Accusations

• "East Jerusalem is occupied by Israel [and, therefore, Jerusalem ought not to be called the capital of Israel]" - Found on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration/Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 18:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC).
• "Jerusalem's situation is unique, and too complex for [the] dictionary [definition of the word 'capital'] to handle [and therefore, Jerusalem ought not to be called the capital of Israel]." - Found on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration/Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 18:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC).
• "The mainstream sources (media and encyclopedias) do not state that Jerusalem is the capital of Irael [sic] [and therefore, Jerusalem ought not to be called the capital of Israel]." - Found on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration/Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 18:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC). Imad marie made a similar statement here even after this claim had been exposed as a falsehood.
• "Most of the world countries (if not all) do not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and choose not to locate their embassies in it [and therefore, Jerusalem ought not to be called the capital of Israel]." - Found on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration/Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 18:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC).
• "[T]he fact that Okedem can't bring a source to show that a nation's capital can be located by fiat on territory not belonging to that nation [gives weight toward the position that Jerusalem isn't the capital of Israel]." - Found on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration/Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 19:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC).

Reality

Jerusalem was the capital of Israel since 1948. It remains the capital today. The fact that Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 war has as much to do with Jerusalem's status as capital as Israel's capture of the Golan Heights or the Sinai or the Gaza Strip. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel despite any injustices Israel may or may not have committed against Palestinians. Furthermore, capitals don't require foreign embassies to be located within their borders. Capitals also don't require igloos to be located within their borders. A logically equivalent argument may be that Jerusalem isn't the capital of Israel because Jerusalem has no igloos. For these reasons, the arguments above suffer from non sequiturs, negative proofs, and even a couple of false premises.

The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East is incredibly succinct on Jerusalem's status: "[Jerusalem is the c]apital of the State of Israel though not recognized as such by most of the international community" (491). This is the first sentence of the encyclopedia's entry under "Jerusalem." Other reference books that explicitly denote Jerusalem as the capital of Israel include The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2007 (p. 785), The Statesman's Yearbook (2005 ed., p. 939), TIME Almanac 2005 with Information Please (p. 797), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (p. 285), The World Book Encyclopedia (Vol. 11, p. 94a), Atlas of World Geography (Rand McNally: 2000, p. 44), and Britanica Online Encyclopedia. Many of the above state that most countries' embassies are in Tel Aviv, but most of them simply identify the capital of Israel as Jerusalem just as they identify the capital of the United States as Washington, D.C.

Although Jerusalem's situation is unique, it is not so complex that we would have to censor facts. It is important to get the meaning of words right. This is what dictionary definitions are for. If a thing satisfies all of the requirements entailed in the definition of a word, then that word must be applied to that thing. As I said above, Jerusalem's complexities are such that it may be necessary to explain some of the more subtle details.

Is Israel to blame for the fact that there isn't peace today?

Accusations

• "While most people have accepted Israel's right to occupy land in Palestine, the most vocal critics of Zionism base their criticism on Israel's failure to comply with the United Nations Resolution 242 ... that was mutually agreed upon in 1968 to divide the land equitably and return land to Palestinians that had been taken during the recent war and was being occupied by the State of Israel at that time." - Found on Talk:Zionism/archive10#Modern_Zionism_.28in_progress.29. 20:40, 17 December 2006 (UTC).
• "I strongly disagree that [Norman G.] Finkelstein's view [of why the 2000 Camp David Summit failed] are a minority.[sic] They are the same as the overwhelming majority of legal experts, probably even Israeli ones." - Found on Talk:2000_Camp_David_Summit#Norman_Finkelstein. 18:32, 26 April 2007 (UTC).
• "The issue of Israeli settlements is an obstacle to achieving peace, just as the issue of Palestinian refugees is, just as Israel's security from terror is. Let me put it this way: if the settlements didn't exist/Palestinians didn't care about them (ie they weren't an obstacle to be overcome) then peace would be a step closer." - Found on Talk:Israeli-Palestinian_conflict/Archive_8#Major_Issues. 09:38, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Reality

Israel has not failed "to comply with United Nations Resolution 242," which encouraged the principle of land for peace in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel accepted the resolution while the PLO rejected it; not "mutually agreed upon" (read any reliable book on the Arab-Israeli conflict and you'll find the same information). The Oslo Accords are the perfect example of both Israel and the PLO trying to abide by Resolution 242, and achieving some important milestones, but ultimately failing due mostly to the continuation of anti-Semitic indoctrination of Palestinian youths, the illegal arming of Palestinians not involved in law enforcement, and, of course, Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians even though Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority explicitly promised to halt all three. It is important to remember that Resolution 242 does not call for Israeli withdrawl from territories (or "the territories") before the Palestinians uphold their end of the bargain.

The Oslo peace process culminated in the Camp David and Taba Summit in 2000-2001 with Arafat leading the negotiating team for the Palestinian side, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak leading the negotiating team for the Israeli side, and U.S. President Bill Clinton leading a team of American mediators. The summits yielded few if any positive results; in fact, the Second Intifada began only days after the Camp David summit failed. Nearly all of the American diplomats present at the summit including Bill Clinton and Dennis Ross agree that Arafat was to blame for the failure of the Camp David and Taba summits to achieve a lasting peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It goes without saying that most Israelis at the summit, including Ehud Barak and Shlomo Ben-Ami, agree with Clinton and Ross's assessment. The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East, a peer-reviewed historical reference book covering the entire region, clearly states, "In the weeks following the summit, most of the criticism for its failure was leveled at Arafat" (Eran, 145). Not "some of the criticism," but "most of the criticism" meaning that a majority of critics blamed Arafat. Even editorials critical of Israel admit that "[o]ne thing nearly all pundits seem to agree on is that Yasser Arafat's rejection of the land-for-peace offer made by Ehud Barak at Camp David in the summer of 2000 was indefensible."[5][6] Norman G. Finkelstein, the notoriuous anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist pseudo-scholar who was recently denied tenure by DePaul University, claims that the Palestinians were making "all the concessions at Camp David" and that Israel is to blame for Yassir Arafat's rejection of the peace offer. This is clearly the minority view, not the majority view.

As for the Israeli settlements, in the opinion of many, many intelligent and informed people, the Israeli settlements are not an "obstacle" to peace. These people cite the proposed dismantling of 63 settlements as part of the Palestinian sovereignty over 97% of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip in exchange for peace in the Camp David 2000 Summit. Yasir Arafat rejected this deal.[7] Therefore, according to the logic of the argument, Israeli settlements must not be a significant obstacle to peace because Israel was willing to dismantle them in exchange for peace and the Palestinians rejected this offer. If Israel had offered to nullify all Palestinian parking tickets in exchange for peace, Arafat would have had the same response: rejection of the deal because Palestinian parking tickets are not an obstacle to peace. Of course, this metaphor is tongue-in-cheek because Israeli settlements is a significant factor in Israeli-Palestinian relations while Palestinian parking tickets are not (and not even administered by Israel since the early 1990s). Its also possible that Arafat rejected the deal for other reasons, but the issue of the Israeli settlements was clearly not the reason the Camp David and Taba summits failed. The second argument against describing the settlements as "obstacles to peace" is the 2005 unilateral Gaza disengagement. The logic was that if the settlements were an "obstacle to peace," and because the maintainance of the settlements are costly and problematic for Israel, it would be best for all sides if Israel would remove this obstacle with the hope that doing so will foster trust on the Palestinian side and with the world that Israel is a reasonable partner for peace. The disengagement was carried out like chemotherapy in a cancer patient: bravely going forward with a process that hurts as much as it is intended to heal without any guarantees that this process will cure the problem. Unfortunately, the disengagement did not cure the problem. Palestinians in general (and Hamas in particular) interpreted the disengagement as a victory made possible through terrorism. As of this writing, more than 1,200 Qassam rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into civilian areas of Israel proper. These shellings began before the disengagement and became more frequent after the disengagement. Therefore, it is plain to see that the presence or non-presence of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip (and one can infer the West Bank as well) is nothing more than a contentious factor in Israeli-Palestinian relations unrelated to a final, lasting peace.

Was the 2006 Lebanon War a just war?

Main page: User:GHcool/Opinions on the 2006 Lebanon War

Are official Israeli sources reliable?

Accusations

• "I believe the integrity of the encyclopedia is severely compromised by references to Israeli government web-sites. ... Israeli government web-sites should come with a 'health-warning'." - Found on Talk:Hezbollah/Archive_8#NPOV_is_severely_compromised_by_references_to_Israeli_government_web-sites. October 2006.
• "This claim that Hezbollah targets civilians is a deranged Zionist POV which flagrantly violates Wikipedia's NPOV policy." - Found on Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. October 2006.
• "The IDF are the ones who are dishonest by claiming that every male killed in Lebanon was a member of Hezbollah." - Carbonate. Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. 00:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC).
• "[Y]ou know that doesn't count." - The user who said this was addressing me and referring to a Haaretz interview with the former Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. Talk:Dolphinarium massacre. 17:06, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
• "So when are we going to start blocking the [Wikipedia] editors who insist on citing ... the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, etc etc?" - Found on User talk:PalestineRemembered. 02:02, 27 May 2008 (UTC).
• "Let's get serious: I propose we trade off dubious sources on both sides and publically swear off them. I'll trade Ilan Pappe against Efraim Karsh, and Palestine Remembered against the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs." - Found on Talk:Siege of Jerusalem. 11:58, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Reality

If Wikipedia did not quote the Israeli government on the issue of terrorism, the integrity of the encyclopedia would be severely compromised. Israeli government organizations, army, and elected officials are as reliable as any other country's government organizations, army, or elected officials. The Al Qaeda article cites the foreign affairs offices of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada without any challenge to the reliability of those nations' foreign affairs office. Because Israel is a democracy and has a greater degree of freedom of the press than any other nation facing similar circumstances reguarding its security, much of what the IDF and the government claim can be easily verified by independent research. Critics of Israel could easily do their own research into official Israeli claims rather than flat-out condemning them all as "unreliable."

As for the claim that Hezbollah does not purposefully target Israeli civilian areas, there are countless sources documenting the opposite.

Further information: Targeting of civilian areas in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict

I was in Haifa (Israel's third largest city) in the summer of 2006 and saw the aftermath of Hezbollah's wrath with my own eyes. As for the claim that Israel distorts collateral damage statistics, I challenge anyone to find definitive proof from a reliable source of a claim by any IDF or any Israeli government official or publication stating that "every male killed in Lebanon was a member of Hezbollah."

Are Israeli historians as evil as Holocaust deniers?

Accusations

• "We seem to have quotations in [the Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus article] from 'historians' even less credible than David Irvine [sic]." -- Found on Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus. 18:29, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• "We quote Joseph Schechtman in [the 'Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus'] article saying 'Until ... May 15, 1948, no quarter whatsoever had ever been given to a Jew who fell into Arab hands. I'm confident (and User:GHcool has never denied) that that clip, alone, is worse than anything ever seen from David Irving."' - Found on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles/Workshop. 16:38, 14 January 2008 (UTC).
• "I'd be surprised if David Duke is as bad (either on grounds of hate or grounds of 'gross historical fabrication') than two sources we seem to use a lot, Joseph Schechtman and Shmuel Katz." - Found on Talk:Jewish lobby. 16:51, 28 January 2008 (UTC).
• "'[E]vidence' from this organisation [the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America] [sic] (known for the same faults as David Irving, fabrication and hatred) is still being pushed in articles because of its utility to POV-pushers." - Found on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. 08:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC).
• "[The Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus] article [includes] discredited propaganda by Joseph Schechtman (if he's a historian then he's much worse than David Irving)." - Found on Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus. 16:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC).
• "Compared with [Israeli historian Joseph] Schechtman, David Irving looks relatively sober." - Found on Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus. 8:03, 4 February 2009 (UTC).
• "[Joseph] Schechtman in particular was been [sic] exposed as a fraud very much more blatant [sic] than David Irving." - Found on User talk:GHcool. 15:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC).
• "CAMERA [the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America] breaches the same policies as does David Irving, hate-speech and falsification of sources." - Found on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. 10:24, 15 February 2009 (UTC).

Reality

David Irving is the notorious English Holocaust denier and pseudo-historian who was exposed as a fraud and a racist in a court of law. He associates with neo-Nazis and served a prison sentence in Austria. In 2007, The Guardian reported that Irving said, "The Jews are the architects of their own misfortune, but that is the short version A-Z. Between A-Z there are then 24 other characters in intervening steps."[8] This is incomparably worse than anything I am aware of that Israeli historians Joseph Schechtman and Shmuel Katz have ever said. David Duke is an American Holocaust denier and former Ku Klux Klan leader. Not a single reasonable person takes Irving or Duke seriously as academics, historians, or even as responsible human beings. The research of Joseph B. Schechtman and Shmuel Katz are controversial, but no reasonable person would claim that they were exposed as frauds and racists in a court of law, nor do they actively fight for race-supremacy and xenophobia. The comparison between the Israeli historians and these racists is embarrassingly falsifiable at best and offensive and disgusting at worst. Being a professional, habitual racist is worse than being a professional historian.

Other accusations and responses

• The Accusation: "You all seem to be forgetting that 'northern Israel' was in fact part of the Arab state in the comically unfair 1947 UN Partition. If Hizballah wants to, they can fire rockets on what is rightful Palestinian territory under Zionist occupation." Found on Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. 20 October 2006. The Reality: Much of northern Israel, including Haifa, were part of the proposed Jewish state in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. This did not stop Hezbollah, a Lebanese organization unrelated to the Palestinian problem historically and certainly unrelated to the 1948 War of Independence, from bombing those cities. Furthermore, the north is not "Palestinian territory under Zionist occupation," but rather an annexed part of Israel since 1948 (37 years before the founding of Hezbollah).
• The Accusation: "Israel lost soilders [sic] because they are poor fighters compared to Hezbollah." - Found on Talk:Hezbollah/Archive_8#Pie_chart_by_Carbonate. 00:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC). The Reality: Hassan Nasrallah and his supporters made similar claims after the end of the war. The rest of the world did not. Why did Hezbollah allow the IDF to destroy much of Lebanon if they were fighting on behalf of the Lebanese, as some Wikipedians seem to imply, and if they are better fighters than the IDF? And why is Nasrallah still in hiding while Ehud Olmert appears in public on a daily basis without fear? Certainly the IDF made many grave mistakes during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, but no reasonable person would claim that they are a weaker army than Hezbollah, for if they were, Israel would now be a Muslim state.
• The Accusation: "[A]dmins [on Wikipedia] do not allow any content which is against the state of Israel [sic]. There is no source which is good enought [sic], even the same sources they use to prove their points." - Found on Talk:Racism#Honesty_is_needed. 20:51, 8 February 2007 (UTC). The Reality: This claim is easily and embarrassingly falsifiable. I direct anyone who falsely claims that criticism of Israel is "not allowed" on Wikipedia to the articles about the Israel lobby in the United States or the targeting of civilian areas in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.
• The Accusation: "Israel is expelling those who dare to criticise it (eg Pappe)." - Found on Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus. 21:36, 7 October 2007 (UTC) The Reality: Israel is a free country with laws concerning freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press similar to the United States. Israeli politicians, editorialists, and reporters use this right every single day in their newspapers. Haaretz is especially well known for its criticism of Israeli policies, but Israel's other two leading newspapers (Yedioth Ahronoth and The Jerusalem Post) also criticize Israel virtually daily. All three of these newspapers are translated into English and are readily available on the Internet.[9][10][11] There is an organization in Israel called B'Tselem that is devoted to documenting and criticizing abuses by the Israeli government. Knesset ministers of the left and right wing regularly criticize Israel as strongly as Ilan Pappe ever did. None of the above have any fear of being deported or "expelled" from Israel. The standards for academic freedom are also similar to that of the United States as evidenced by the New Historians. The case of Ilan Pappe is a strange one, but it is a downright lie to say that he was "expelled" from Israel because of his controversial research. The truth is much less dramatic. Pappe supported a British academic boycott of Israeli academics in 2005. In response, the University of Haifa suggested (but did not force) that he apply the boycott to his own self since he is also an Israeli academic.[12] Two full years after that, Pappe voluntarily left Israel and took a position at the University of Exeter.[13] As far as I know, Pappe has never been arrested or tried for his views by Israeli authorities or the University of Haifa.
• The Accusation: "[W]anting to destroy or dismantle ... a [Jewish] state is not anti-Semitic." - Found on Talk:Hezbollah#Category:Islam_and_antisemitism. 14:55, 15 February 2008 (UTC). The Reality: Being in favor of the destruction of the State of Israel is anti-Semitic without a doubt. To call for the destruction of the state because of its Jewish character is anti-Semitic. It is, in essence and effect, a call to genocide. Hezbollah may not use the word "genocide," but its meaning is clear both in the Western world and in the Arab/Muslim world. To Hezbollah and other similar groups, a score must be settled with "the Jews."
• The Accusation: "Justice is not blind in practice over the arab [sic] citizens Israel had control over (including the cocupied [sic] territories), you must know this well." - Found on "Talk:Reductio ad Hitlerum." 08:42, 31 May 2008 (UTC). The Reality: Justice is blind in practice and in theory over the Arab citizens of Israel. Palestinian Arabs (i.e. the Arabs living in the disputed territories) are not covered under Israeli law because they are not Israeli citizens. Their legal body is the Palestinian National Authority. Even so, the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled on certain aspects of Israeli interaction into Palestinian life with incredible subtlety and has often made decisions that favor Palestinian rights over Israeli security concerns (see, for example, the Israeli Supreme Court Opinions on the West Bank Barrier).
• The Accusation: "I am sure you are also well aware that Hitler, before the war, was one of the main advocates of a state of Israel. ... There were in fact far more Zionists that collaberated [sic] with the Nazis than Arabs (at any rate as far as I am aware of in terms of important personages)." - 86.140.39.142. "Talk:Reductio ad Hitlerum." 08:42, 31 May 2008 (UTC). The Reality: This is a ridiculous statement if I ever heard one. Anybody with any knowledge of the history of the Holocaust, the history of the Middle East in the 20th century, or the biography of Adolph Hitler would know that this is a gross historical fabrication. For the some of the history of Arab-Nazi collaboration, please read the following articles: Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, Jews outside Europe under Nazi occupation, Farhud.
• The Accusation: "Almost nobody declared there'd been 'No massacre' [in Jenin in April 2002] (though the BBC wrongly said "UN says no massacre in Jenin"), but the atmosphere of intimidation meant that the western media dare not use those words again." - Found on "Talk:Media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict." 20:54, 17 June 2008 (UTC). The Reality: Not only did the BBC report that the UN said there was no evidence of a massacre in Jenin in April 2002, but the BBC also reported that a military adviser to Amnesty International said the same thing.[14] So did Human Rights Watch,[15] Colin Powell,[16] and Time.com.[17] In fact, almost the exact opposite of the claim is true; I just did a Google search for the terms "Jenin massacre" and found that 9 out of 10 sites on the first page of the search results say that the April 2002 event in Jenin can not reasonably be classified as a massacre (one site was just a list of hyperlinks to articles on other sites about the Battle of Jenin). The early misjudgment by much of the media in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Jenin by calling the event a "massacre" is an excellent example of the media's bias against Israel.
• The Accusation: "And there is much else that is severely POV [in the Palestinian right of return Wikipedia article], requiring a tag eg 'The causes and responsibilities of the exodus are a matter of controversy among historians and commentators of the conflict' - when there is no such controversy except amongst extremists. ... There is no controversy." - Found on Talk:Palestinian right of return. 06:19, 17 February 2009. The Reality: Avi Shlaim, hardly an extremist, would disagree with the claim that there is no controversy among historians. He wrote an excellent article on the scholarly debate that has gone on among Middle East historians since the 1980s on this topic titled "The War of the Israeli Historians." Shlaim is considered to be on the political left and even he accepts that there has been a controversy among historians. For a political right analysis (and acceptance) of the controversy, I recommend Efraim Karsh's article here. Its as plain as day and I can dig up dozens of more sources saying the same thing. The existence of a scholarly debate is also self evident from the contents of this Wikipedia article.
• The Accusation: "Destroying the Israeli State can mean to remove the current system that which only recognises Jewish citizens as having full rights and suffrage, and denying same to others who have dwelt within the current borders for generations." - Found on Talk:Universities and antisemitism. 03:38, 16 May 2009. The Reality: The post above shows a fundamental misunderstanding or ignorance of the Arab citizens of Israel. In Israel, Arab citizens enjoy the same rights and freedoms as Jewish citizens including the right to vote. There are several Arab political parties and even an Islamic fundamentalist political party in the Knesset (Israeli parliament). Legally, there is no difference between a Jew and a member of any other religion or race. The unequal rights claim is a canard.
• The Accusation: "[John J.] Mearsheimer and [Stephen] Walt have done an outstanding work [referring to their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy]." - Found on Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 July 13. 02:07, 17 July 2009. The Reality: The assertion that "Mearsheimer and Walt have done an outstanding work" is the minority opinion among foreign policy analysts, not the majority opinion by a long shot. The book has been debunked from top to bottom by virtually every single major figure who has read it.