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Some reflections

Events point to Israel’s strategy of emptying the north of Gaza of its Palestinian population, with both the massive bombardment that has damaged at least 222,000 residential units, . . .Everything that gave me hope that when violence reaches an unconscionable point and excessive violations of human rights are committed, Israel will be made to stop, is shattered now. I used to have faith that we would be protected by international humanitarian law, or by an outcry from the Israeli public against the excesses of their government – yet at this point I see no hope in either. Nor does it seem that there is hope that Israel will wake up from the delusion that war and violence against the Palestinians and its unassailable military strength will give it peace and security. This leaves us Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories vulnerable and with serious danger for our lives and our future presence in this land.

This article is the best I've read, succint, to the point. Of course as a founder of Al Haq, Shehadah must be dismissed as a terrorist, since Israel regards that and any other Palestinian rights organization as a front for terrorism.Nishidani (talk) 14:39, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

We believe we are on the right side of history and that we are the stones of the valley. Despite the immensity of the challenges we face, people here do not give up.

If anyone is wondering where the Palestinian Gandhis are, the answer is that they are kidnapped and taken to unknown locations where they are being tortured, sitting in military and administrative detention in Israeli prisons, killed in cold blood on the way home from school, dying of treatable wounds in destroyed hospitals, buried under the rubble of vengeance in Gaza. Despite this, there are many who will continue to grow up in Palestine’s long-standing culture of resistance.

This is a powerful piece of testimony by an American-Jewish Israeli of what just one pacifist family suffered relentlessly through 13 years of her personal relationship with them, and in particular with Ahed Tamimi , now imprisoned for incitement to terrorism either because she totally blew her cool with an hysterical outburst commending the Hamas murders on the 7th of October before erasing the twitter post or because the usual suspects hacked her account and faked the said post to trap her with a rap and a long jail sentence. The details are on Ahed Tamimi's wiki page, but Ramer's concluding remarks underwrite what the whole historic record attests, and particularly the extreaordinary stoicism of that people under engineered conditions of willed immiseration.Nishidani (talk) 17:07, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

'If anyone is wondering where the Palestinian Gandhis are, the answer is that they are kidnapped and taken to unknown locations where they are being tortured, sitting in military and administrative detention in Israeli prisons, killed in cold blood on the way home from school, dying of treatable wounds in destroyed hospitals, buried under the rubble of vengeance in Gaza. Despite this, there are many who will continue to grow up in Palestine’s long-standing culture of resistance.The fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinian people have remained steadfast for so long is a miracle of the human spirit. Extensive anti-Palestinian propaganda perpetuated by Israel and racist mainstream media coverage for decades should not rob humanity of knowing about some of the greatest activists in modern history.'

In 1900 the Christian population of Palestine was more than double that of the Jewish population (now 1.9%. from that historic 10%) One of its oldest communities survived in Gaza, under Hamas's protection (it had been threatened by Islamic Jihad). That too has come under assault, with the strike on the grounds of the Church of Saint Porphyrius, where the Gaza Triad no doubt worshipped.Nishidani (talk) 15:09, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Your list provides informative and thoughtful insights. BTW, did you get a chance to read the article from Oct. 27 by Max Blumenthal, saying there is high probability that many (perhaps even most) of the Israeli civilians (as well as Israeli soldiers) killed on October 7 were killed by so-called 'friendly' fire? It is not my intention to minimize, belittle or trivialize the proven fact that Palestinians killed many Israeli civilians on October 7, but it appears likely the Israeli military has also killed many Israeli civilians (and soldiers) on that day. Your thoughts? Ijon Tichy (talk) 11:47, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
What is remarkable about all these articles (only 1 is RS)
is that they (a) draw directly on numerous reports in the Israeli press that however (b) like these articles themselves, are ignored by the Western mainstream press. So you have a paradox: Israel's press is 'freer' than its Western counterparts in reporting on the conflict, but its political elites (including the IDF) allow themselves a far more restricted set of options than would normally be the case in deliberations on critical situations in Western countries.
Why destroy an entire landscape when the enemy is underground? There is a very simple technological weakness in Hamas's tunnel-system. It needs large numbers of audible generators, detectable by sensors, to induct and circulate fresh air. Any network could be 'neutralized' by destroying the generators, giving those inside the option of surrender or asphixiation.(Trying to think in strictly military terms, as though I were an IDF commander) Nishidani (talk) 17:55, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

More remarkable statements

Nishidani (talk) 23:05, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Palestinians play a crucial role in the Israeli health system: we comprise 30 percent of the doctors, 30 percent of the nurses, and some 40 percent of the pharmacists, and all of us are being watched these days. The health system has adopted a McCarthyist witch-hunt approach toward all Palestinians. There are many cases of intimidation and persecution against medical personnel: according to civil society coalitions monitoring political persecution at workplaces since the war began, some 20 percent of the reported cases are of medical teams.This is not entirely new. We were always asked to come and do our job, play a crucial role in the health system, but keep our feelings and political views at home. Now, though, things are much worse.Medical personnel are being accused of supporting terror for liking a social media post, or for showing any sympathy with Palestinian pain or suffering. We cannot engage in any intellectual or moral conversation about the war. We are expected to condemn Hamas and join the patriotic Israeli military frenzy, while silently watching our Jewish colleagues cheer for the destruction of hospitals, the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians, and the tightening of the blockade.'Ghousoon Bisharat, 'A Palestinian physician in Israel wrestles with her duty in the war: Lina Qasem-Hassan was due to join a medical delegation to Gaza,' +972 magazine 16 November 2023

Honourable men (once upon a time)

After the war, we heard that the first target usually seen by the pilots in the enclosed waterway was the Canberra. By chance, she was painted white, which was taken by the attackers to mean that she was a hospital ship. Without exception, the Argentinian pilots were honourable men, and not one attacked what they thought was a sanctuary for the injured.' Sharkey Ward,Sea Harrier over the Falklands, Cassell (1992) 2000 p.273.

Et cetera

Useful source for some project on the laundremat linguistics of constantly endeavouring to spin out as antisemitic virtually the whole vocabulary used to describe Israel and thereby, by rendering the topic ineffable, make criticism impossible unless the words and concepts have received a prior seal of official approval by the interested party.Nishidani (talk) 11:24, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Interview with Max Blumenthal, posted on 17 Nov 2023. He summarizes his article above, and provides additional insights and analysis, not only on the events of Oct. 7-8 but also on more recent military, political, social and cultural trends in Gaza, Israel, the US and Western Europe.
(As a Jewish Israeli-American who has many good [as well as some bad] childhood memories of growing up in Israel and still has a small number of dear family and friends in beautiful Israel, I personally found the part about the increasingly insane, increasingly ethnocidal/ genocidal indoctrination and incitement inside Israeli Jewish society to be particularly disturbing. But this is not surprising, in light of the fact that Israel is an apartheid state, a settler-colonial state.) Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:30, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
I have many wonderful memories of my time in Israel, and also of the Golan Heights, the Sinai, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. When enjoying a day off (I chose to work three shifts, from 3.30 am to 7 pm), I hitchhiked and invariably was picked up and given a free ride by taxi-drivers from Gaza, which I visited after talking my way past border guards who insisted I'd risk being murdered by terrorists. My father had been stationed in Gaza in WW2, and left a letter describing his pleasant evenings there).
Over the last few decades, I've come to the conclusion that Israel is caught up in an historical and structural logic, following on from the racial premises of Zionism, which militates against any resolution of its internal contradictions. Forget (in the sense of thinking they are part of the problem) about Palestinians: history has long wiped its arse on them. The problem is essentially what the internal, downspiralling dynamics of its limited options creates for the 'diaspora'. Zionism arose as an aggressive challenge to Jewish diaspora civilization. It took several decades of colonial accomplishments and intensive diplomatic and emotional pressuring to get Jewish communities throughout the world to anneal their vision of Jewishness, in all of its varieties, with the model Israel produced, a muscular, nationalist concept of the 'new Jew'. For readers of Josephus, all this is not 'new'. Rabbinical wisdom drew a lesson from the latter, which has now been forgotten in the tragic euphoria of successive, superficially successful wars. This latest episode, in a world where the mainstream media narrative no longer holds water because everyone, esp. the young, can access alternative media or the work of people like Blumenthal, will tend to give rise to exasperations which Israel and its commentariat will exploit to spin as a 'new' new antisemitism. No doubt antisemitism will indeed be strengthened - most cannot distinguish 'Jews' from Israel precisely because Zionism has insisted on their interchangeability. One can read Zionism, like Christianity, as a 'Jewish' heresy. The latter generated antisemitism, and Zionism itself may paradoxically, in one of those deep ironies beloved of history, produce a similar result for different reasons. But that will not relieve Jews in the diaspora of the difficult choices it must now make - retention of its assimilative humanism which has been the glory of its haskalah heritage, or endorsement, no ifs or buts, of a fierce ethnonationalism as the logic of history drives Israel even further down the path of maximalism. Best wishes 21:37, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Nishidani (talk)

Retired Major-General Giora Eiland:

The way to win the war faster and at a lower cost for us requires a system collapse on the other side and not the mere killing of more Hamas fighters. The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers. And no, this is not about cruelty for cruelty’s sake since we don’t support the suffering of the other side as an end but as a means.

The whole article is worth reading for a clue as to the kind of mentality that one often notes among the upper echelons of the IDF.Nishidani (talk) 17:50, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be.

That is almost identical in tone and content to the drift of Himmler's speech addressing troops who had just mown down about 150 Jews near Minsk in 1941.Nishidani (talk) 18:04, 21 November 2023 (UTC)


In Berlin, the city senate is considering pulling funding for the Oyun cultural centre in the German capital’s Neukölln district, after the centre’s directors reportedly refused to cancel a peace vigil by a leftwing Jewish group.

I.e.German hypervigilance against a recrudescence of antisemitism as part of its programmatic if clichéd Vergangenheitsbewältigung has now ironically morphed into a vigilante punishing of Jews who are critical of Israel.Nishidani (talk) 21:08, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Breaking News Scoop

Hamas operatives are also trained to fire on IDF soldiers when they see them' Yaakov Lappin, 'Some 10 out of 24 Hamas battalions ‘significantly damaged’,' Jewish News Syndicate 20 November 2023

It's reported than despite the vast IDF bulldozing and uprooting of Gazan agriculture, a patch of strawberries was found by a group of invasive settlers, so the compromised land of the Philistines can once more offer fertile prospects as a promised land for settlers Nishidani (talk) 06:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Cutting off foreskins as a military tactic

Taking a leaf out of battle descriptions of the Israelites against the Philistines in the Bible, the Israeli minister for Telecommunications Shlomo Karhi has apparently called for the circumcision of captured Hamas fighters.(Oren Ziv , Yotam Ronen, Carrying the pain of loss on October 7, these families are pleading for peace, +972 magazine 22 November 2023 Nishidani (talk) 09:02, 23 November 2023 (UTC))

I don't know the common practice in Gaza, but most Muslim men are circumcised though it isn't compulsory. Zerotalk 12:27, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I was going to say ... pretty empty, if fucked-up threat ... Iskandar323 (talk) 13:11, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
Yes, of course, we all should know Muslims generally undergo circumcision. That was the point of citing this trash - the unbelievable obtusity of the ignorant who have a voice in shaping perceptions of this war. The 'Philistine' of the 'piece' is the fool who wrote that. See below for another bite from the tsunami of appalling crassness flooding the airwaves.Nishidani (talk) 11:28, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Forget Sumud. It's been trumped by 'Zionist stoicism'

Yafa Adar is home.The sub-humans around her are already lying deep underground, their house has probably been turned into rubble by the army of the state of Israel. That’s Jewish, Israeli power.(Yosef Israeli a reporter for Channel 13 cited Canaan Yidor, Israelis celebrate the return of hostage Yaffa Adar, 85, whose stoicism ‘embodies Zionism’, The Times of Israel 25 November 2023 )

It is natural that in a tragedy we connect and respond more instinctively to the fate of those whom we (may) know. Yaffa Adar was originally reported to be from Kfar Aza, where I once worked. I wondered whether I had known her during my stay, while deeply moved by the photo of her in a Hamas jeep being carted off to Gaza as a hostage. The photo of her resigned, apparent ease (almost 'well, I'd better get used to this new episode in my life') will figure as one of the iconic snapshots of the Israeli side of this war. I was really chuffed up to see her safe and sound, while naturally thinking that 10,000 plus 'sub-human' Gaza women and children would not survive to tell their side of the story. Hence the obscenity of the remark above. There are few things, readingwise, more nauseating that reading the infantile outpourings of an extremely jejune nationalism.Nishidani (talk) 11:18, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Zionism – An Ideology for the Self-Loathing (27 October 2023). by Roger Harris for CounterPunch. "Yet growing numbers of us [American Jews] still embrace our ancestral identity and, especially in light of current events, wholly renounce its self-loathing antithesis of Zionism. What the Nazis failed to achieve – the obliteration of European Jewish culture – the Zionists are carrying forward. We have a word for that in Yiddish. It’s a shanda, a scandalous embarrassment and shame." Ijon Tichy (talk) 20:39, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps a cost-benefit analysis would suggest we shouldn't help 'Pally' kids

  • I’m exasperated by people whose hearts bleed for only one side, or who say about the toll on the other: “It’s tragic, but ….” No “buts.” Unless you believe in human rights for Jews and for Palestinians, you don’t actually believe in human rights.Likewise, Palestinians deserve a country, freedom and dignity — and they shouldn’t be subjected to collective punishment. We’ve reached a searing milestone: In just five weeks of war, half of 1 percent of Gaza’s population has been killed. To put it in perspective, that’s more than the share of the American population that was killed in all of World War II — over the course of four years. Nicholas Kristoff,'What We Get Wrong About Israel and Gaza,' New York Times 15 November 2023
  • Most editors won't have time to read the several good book-length studies of Hamas. But an excellent early study of its dynamics is available on jstor and should be required reading, as a cautionary prophylaxis against swallowing holus-bolus the Hamas=terrorism-and-nothing-else meme that is an article of faith in mainstream reportage, and the default staple of nearly all Israeli newspapers. I refer to Menachem Klein, Hamas in Power, Middle East Journal , Summer 2007, Vol. 61, No. 3 , pp. 442-459 Nishidani (talk) 21:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

The Salah al-Din Trail of Tears or something like that will probably be written some years down the track, when testimonies from masses of survivors of the trek involving over a million individuals are cross-checked. The killing of several dozen local reporters has made the collection of evidence extremely difficult, the systemic bias of giving intense coverage to Jewish victims of Hamas's outrage while only referring to the obvious death march in generic allusions to an abstract mass's plight in a line or two. Some of Hajjaj's material consists of rumours, but the hallucinating experiences of people like the lad with the smashed leg look typical and not unlikely for at least several thousands.Nishidani (talk) 07:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the saying, 'scum always rises to the surface' is invariably true, but the bags here do appear to follow the rule. Thanks. Nishidani (talk) 06:02, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Yesterday, Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor Arieh King tweeted a photo of over a hundred naked Palestinians who were kidnapped by the Israeli military in Gaza, handcuffed, and sitting in the sand, guarded by Israeli soldiers. King wrote that “The IDF is exterminating the Nazi Muslims in Gaza” and that “we must up the tempo”. “If it were up to me,” he added, “I would bring 4 D9’s [bulldozers], place them behind the sandy hills and give an order to bury all those hundreds of Nazis alive. They are not human beings and not even human animals, they are subhuman and that is how they should be treated,” King said. He ended by repeating Netanyahu’s biblical Amalek genocidal reference: “Eradicate the memory of the Amalek, we will not forget.” Jonathan Ofir, 'I used to think the term ’Judeo-Nazis’ was excessive. I don’t any longer,' Mondoweiss 8 December 2023

Nothing of this surprises me. What does is the moral cowardice of the communities who stand by. Nishidani (talk) 00:13, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

There are several reasons for the moral cowardice of the wealthy western nations (especially the US, Western Europe, Canada, Australia etc). At least two reasons come to mind: (a) The tremendous power of the pro-Israel lobbies in these countries, and (b) There are very large fossil fuel reserves near the coast of Gaza, and the US strongly prefers that these reserves would be under Israeli control and not under Palestinian control, because if they're in Palestinian hands the Palestinians then could sell (most of) the fossil fuels to China, whereas if these resources are in Israeli hands, the US government could exert enormously powerful pressure on the Israeli gov't to refrain from selling them to China.
Over the last 15 years or so, the US has been gradually shifting its foreign policy (for the US, its 'foreign' policy has always been practically indistinguishable from being a key component of its overall long-horizon economic policy) to focusing on trying to 'compete' with China i.e. to weaken/ hurt/ cripple the Chinese economy as much as possible. This is true for all US administrations regardless of political party affiliation, including both Democunt as well as Republicunt, starting in the last couple of years of the Bush Jr administration and continuing with the administrations of Obama, Trump and now Biden. The numbers don't lie, and the economic numbers are basically almost all that has ever mattered to US (and Chinese, Western European, etc) decision makers. Up until recent years, US GDP was by far the largest on the planet, but in the last few decades China's GDP has been growing faster than the US's and has recently surpassed the US: today China's GDP (PPP) is roughly about $33 Trillion, while US GDP (PPP) is about $27 trillion. That is, from the POV of US decision makers, their top priority, by far, is how to slow - and preferably reverse - the fact that the US has in recent years lost its undisputed global economic dominance to China.
See this, among several other articles and books published in recent years about the geopolitical implications of the vast oil and natural gas reserves near the Gaza shoreline. Ijon Tichy (talk) 19:23, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Well, I think that is a piece of wishful thinking. It is simply wrong-headed to assert that 'Settler colonial states have a terminal shelf life. Israel is no exception'. The 'new' world is dominated by successful settler colonial states that have withstood the usury of time, and indeed thrived, and Israel will be no exception. Of course this latest triumph of Zionism rubbishes the moral force of both the haskalah tradition and the Holocaust, but they too are past their use-by date.Nishidani (talk) 01:18, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
None of which is reported abroad. That Gaza is one huge whore, deserving of genocidal rape by missiles carrying the signatures of young Israeli women, is all over Israeli social media, as are euphoric chants by children, rabbinical students and entertainers in army camps mocking the destruction of Palestinian women and children. It's all there, and invisible to readers. Words fail one.Nishidani (talk) 13:10, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
That the NYTs article is a pretentious exercise in pseudo-journalism is self-evident, but I don't think Max B is at his best there. That challenge is not meticulous but somewhat offhandish. MB was showing signs of fatigue. Does an amputated breast maintain its shape so that it can be thrown around and juggled like a ball, as was claimed? That is now a meme, and I've yet to see anyone stop to think about it. Only in Picasso's imagination, one would think. I made the 850 mile train trip to Madrid in late 1981 just to catch the inaugural showing in that country of Guernica. There has been a Guernica every day since 7 Oct. The past has no more resonance.Nishidani (talk) 04:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Whenever I hear the babble of nonsense with which politicians dress up the horrors of war, I am once more that seven-year-old child, shocked, bewildered and deeply shamed.' Richard Flanagan Question 7, 2023 p.64.

Thanks, N. I noted in particular

the United States is a liberal democracy that is filled with intellectuals, newspaper editors, policymakers, pundits, and scholars who routinely proclaim their deep commitment to protecting human rights around the world. They tend to be highly vocal when countries commit war crimes, especially if the United States or any of its allies are involved. In the case of Israel’s genocide, however, most of the human rights mavens in the liberal mainstream have said little about Israel’s savage actions in Gaza or the genocidal rhetoric of its leaders. Hopefully, they will explain their disturbing silence at some point. Regardless, history will not be kind to them, as they said hardly a word while their country was complicit in a horrible crime, perpetrated right out in the open for all to see.

Application Instituting Proceedings regarding Israel's genocide lodged by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. pp.59-67 provide clear verbal evidence of genocidal intent by Israel's leaders.Nishidani (talk) 01:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
This explained the anomalies in the attacks that I noted within the first two days, if the hypothesis of a rift within Hamas between the political and military wings, which led to a radical change in the battle orders by Sinyar et al., in the last three hours to include attacks on civilians, proves to be correct. Note that the rape, mutilation etc charges that were used to orchestrate Israel's case for retributive genocide against this collective of 'animals' are eerily reminiscent of, almost a replica of the testimonies about the Israeli assault on Palestinians at the Massacre of Deir Yassin in 48. Nishidani (talk) 01:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Jewish Scholars vs. Jewish Donors on Antisemitism (22 January 2024). By Peter Beinart for The Beinart Notebook. "... But there’s another divide, I think, kind of hidden divide, inside the American Jewish community that is often overlooked, that gets described in the language of antisemitism. And that’s a kind of a divide around class between different elements in the Jewish community that have different views about Israel and that are in different positions in terms of class. And I want to try to give an example of how this is playing itself out."
Well if Friedman and his likes are now going mainstream with vermin tropes for the adversarial 'Other' (Theodor Adorno has a good early analysis of insect metaphors for despised ethnic groups, in The Authoritarian Personality (1951) - it was a serious element in antisemitic caricatures, vide Kafka for the most egregious example) I guess I'd better make a wiki page on the history of this variety of subhuman stereotype as it has developed in Israeli discourse on Palestinians.Nishidani (talk) 01:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Good idea. Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:35, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
Not quite news to me. An insider privy to these things told me a good while back that the Gazan fields' resources were already being pilfered from by some lateral intrusions. Nishidani (talk) 23:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
With regard to this item, scruple demands that I ask myself whether or not this young man might have been murdered by a Palestinian militant, in retaliation for acting as an Israeli messenger. Unlikely, but one never knows. All one has learnt from this war is that Israeli culture has never absorbed any moral lesson from the holocaust, except that moral sentiments are trash, a dangerous weakness in one's chutzpah armour or amour-propre. The real sum of the Palestinian dead has now reached roughly 38,000. Nishidani (talk) 22:26, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Israeli necropolitics and the pursuit of health justice in Palestine (Received 30 December 2023, Accepted 2 January 2024). Layth Hanbali, Edwin Jit Leung Kwong, Amy Neilson, James Smith, Sali Hafez, Rasha Khoury. BMJ Global Health, a prestigious peer reviewed academic journal. This particular paper is probably more of an editorial, it was not commissioned for external review but was internally peer reviewed. Some key sections:
"The horrific scale of Israel’s latest attacks validates the concerns and calls raised in our editorial: namely that Israel’s ongoing military violence in Gaza is an extension of the longstanding, systemic violence intrinsic to the Israeli state’s colonisation and occupation of Palestine. Connections can be clearly traced between the exploitation and dispossession of people, land and resources that defined European colonial violence, ongoing neocolonial exploitation worldwide, and every aspect of Israel’s settler colonial violence in Palestine today. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to actions that expose and challenge sites of exploitative and extractive power and violence. People’s health, lives and freedoms are at risk…
"Attempts to dehistoricise and decontextualise the present encourage us to ignore the many ways in which the Israeli state dictates both life and death for the Palestinian people, either through the fast violence of aerial bombardments, or what Berlant referred to as ‘slow death’: visible in the progressive dispossession of Palestinians who are crammed into ever-shrinking spaces, the denial of life-sustaining necessities and services, the destruction of livelihoods, repeated physical assaults and disablement, mass incarceration, extensive restrictions on movement (including to seek healthcare), and now ethnic cleansing in Gaza executed by mustering Palestinians through a dystopian grid of ever-shifting, supposedly ‘safe zones…
"The recognition of the systematic nature of this violence, and the pervasiveness of Israeli state control over almost every aspect of the everyday lives of Palestinians, made the philosopher Achille Mbembé declare that: ‘The most accomplished form of necropower is the contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine’. It is the power to dictate the terms of life and death, and ultimately who lives and who dies. Repeatedly framing Palestinian violence as a provocation and Israeli violence as a response is a product of ignorance to the necropower exercised by the Israeli state. Necropower and necropolitics are enabled in places that Achille Mbembé termed ‘death-worlds’, where ‘vast populations are subjected to conditions of life’ that enable a precarious form of survival in perpetual proximity to death. Within this world, there is gross indifference to Palestinian suffering and extreme obfuscation of the horrors of Israeli necropolitics.
"Executive Summary
"Overall
"The ongoing Israel-Gaza war has heavily affected civilians in both the Gaza Strip and Israel. Residents of Gaza are now mostly displaced from their homes and living in overcrowded conditions with insufficient access to water, sanitation and food, and health services have been considerably disrupted. So, to inform humanitarian and other decision-makers working on the Gaza crisis, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University have initiated a project to estimate the potential public health impact of the crisis under different future trajectories of its evolution. The first set of projections covers a six-month period from 7 February to 6 August 2024. The projections will be periodically updated until May 2024. The projections are not predictions of what will happen in Gaza but provide a range of projections of what could happen under three distinct scenarios: 1) an immediate permanent ceasefire; 2) status quo (a continuation of conditions experienced from October 2023 till mid-January); and 3) a further escalation of the conflict.
"The projections are based on a range of publicly available data from the current and past Gaza crises, data from similar crises, and peer-reviewed published research into excess death estimates and take into account the limitations and biases of different data sources. Where data is limited or unavailable, the projections draw on consultations with experts. These projections are designed to help humanitarian organisations, governments, and other actors plan their response to the crisis and take sound, evidence-based decisions. Ultimately, the hope is that they will make some contribution to saving lives.
"Over the next six months we project that, in the absence of epidemics, 6,550 excess deaths would occur under the ceasefire scenario, climbing to 58,260 under the status quo scenario and 74,290 under the escalation scenario. Over the same period and with the occurrence of epidemics, our projections rise to 11,580, 66,720, and 85,750, respectively. All projections feature 95% uncertainty intervals as shown in the Summary Table below.
"Under the ceasefire scenario, the projections suggest that infectious diseases would be the main cause of excess deaths, with 1,520 total infectious disease excess deaths without epidemics and 6,550 including epidemics. Traumatic injuries followed by infectious diseases would be the main causes of excess deaths in both the status quo (53,450 traumatic injuries; 2,120 total infectious disease excess deaths without epidemics and 10,590 including epidemics) and escalation scenarios (68,650 traumatic injuries; 2,720 total infectious disease excess deaths without epidemics and 14,180 including epidemics).
"Our projections indicate that even in the best-case ceasefire scenario, thousands of excess deaths would continue to occur, mainly due to the time it would take to improve water, sanitation and shelter conditions, reduce malnutrition, and restore functioning healthcare services in Gaza. While the total number of estimated excess deaths from maternal and neonatal causes are relatively small (100-330 excess deaths), every loss of a mother has severe consequences for family health and wellbeing. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) were the primary cause of death in Gaza in 2022, and the conflict has aggravated these conditions (1,680-2,680 excess deaths) via heavily disrupted specialised health services and impeded access to treatment and medications.
  • thanks. I wouldn't have otherwise caught that, which is clinically scientific and ventures rational scenarios, all of which translate into a statement that Israeli and American decision-makers are now familiar with the likely lethal consequences of the three options available. Sara Roy, with Jean-Pierre Filiu and Finkelstein the 3 world authorities on the Strip, spoke a year ago, before oCT 7 of Israel's longterm planned catastrophe'.Nishidani (talk) 23:33, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Shielding (the) US Public From Israeli Reports of Friendly Fire on October 7 (23 February 2024). Bryce Greene, in Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. "... Indeed, IDF responsibility for Israeli deaths has been a repeated topic of discussion in the Israeli press, accompanied by demands for investigations. But the most US readers have gotten from their own press about the issue is a dismissive piece from the Washington Post about October 7 “truthers.” ... How many Israeli civilians were actually killed by Hamas, and how many by Israel? Was the Al Aqsa Flood a terrorist attack designed to kill as many civilians as possible? These are important questions that have yet to be conclusively and independently answered, but the Washington Post seems to want to dissuade people from even asking them. In evoking the specter of Holocaust denial, Dwoskin and the Post are not defending the truth, but attempting to protect readers from it." Ijon Tichy (talk) 19:38, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
Were the four main Hamas leaders in Gaza endowed with an intelligent grasp of the wider forces of the modern international order, they would offer to place themselves in the hands of the ICJ to be put on trial in the Hague for crimes against humanity, a position Hamas outlined some years ago as their readiness to be prosecuted abroad were such a trial to allow similar measures against Israeli leaders. Since the measure they took in attacking Israel foreseeably enabled the genocide of their own people underway, a cost they must have calculated, they should in theory accept that this kind of personal commitment to their own symbolic 'martyrdom' in a court of law is the one step that could sway world opinion to insist that Israel stop the war. Unfortunately, this won't happen. Nishidani (talk) 00:37, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
I read quite a few years ago that 15% of American kids go to bed feeling hungry, something that I recall to mind while reading Israeli debates on whether or not children under 4 (but not over that age limit) should be provided with food currently. Ralph Nadar has now made the point more cogently.

Why is Congress preparing to appropriate over $14 billion to Israel in military and other aid without any public hearings and without any demonstrated fiscal need by Israel, a prosperous economic, technological and military superpower with a social safety net superior to that of the U.S.? USDA just reported over 44 million Americans struggled with hunger in 2022. Ralph Nader, What the Mass Media Needs to Cover Re: Israel/Gaza Conflict CounterPunch 26 February 2024

Yes, Hunger in the United States is a serious problem. Other major socio-economic problems include (but are not limited to) Homelessness in the United States, serious Crime in the United States (including gun violence), the largest known prison population in the world, the fact that annually tens of thousands of families declare bankruptcy because they are unable to pay their exorbitant medical bills, a relatively weak social safety net, a government with legislative and executive branches that for many decades have been to a very large extent captured by wealthy special interests/ Inverted totalitarianism, as well as other serious socio-economic ills.
Thanks for the article by Ralph Nader, it is informative and thought-provoking. Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
Like Chalmers Johnson - one of the most thoughtful and insightful thinkers on US imperialism - said many years ago (slightly paraphrasing from my rusty memory): Don't read the New York Times to find out the truth, read the New York Times to find out the lies. (I don't think this is invariably true, but it is frequently true.) Ijon Tichy (talk) 21:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
I've already read both. I said from the outset that the horrendous massacre of several hundred civilians in one day would be spun in spectacularly lurid terms, when the mere facts were sufficient to freeze one's blood. Some years down the line, the actual facts and statistics, and contexts of each tragedy or act of violence will finally emerge. But the template of cooked babies, stabbed children, bayoneted vaginas, slashed-off breasts etc.etc.etc., has predictably won the day and will remain functional for the time frame that is important, the war, both on the ground, and in the media. The 130 odd hostages are prime time news: the 7000 Palestinians who languish in prisons, 3,000 alone seized from their families after 7 Oct as bartering material in future negotations, -tortured and uncharged, are in Palestinian terms, hostages, seized predominantly for political reasons, but the semantic distinction between 'hostage' and 'arrested suspect' means there too, the battle of misrepresentation has been won. All of these reports and counter-reports conjure up for me an image of a frigate armed with 40 36-pounder long guns engaging with a dhow defending itself with a handful of jezails. Nishidani (talk) 19:43, 17 March 2024 (UTC)


  • Establishment Papers Fell Short in Coverage of Genocide Charges (21 March 2024). Lara-Nour Walton, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). "Establishment media in the US were slow to cover South Africa’s “epochal intervention” in the ICJ—initially providing the public with thin to no reporting on the case. While the quantity of coverage did eventually increase, it skewed pro-Israel, even after the court in January found it “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and ordered Tel Aviv to comply with international law."
That's better than a lot of the things that he's written in the past (not citable because it is self-published), and quite powerful, simply because he sticks to the factual details, which being appalling, are worth more than a lot of emotional outbursts. Another item today illustrates the point.

The number of trucks crossing into Gaza rose slightly to about 190 a day – less than half the peacetime daily total. Israeli inspectors were still turning back 20 to 25 each day, NBC News reported, citing an Egyptian aid official, on grounds as arbitrary as the wooden pallets bearing the food not being exactly the right dimensions. Israel has banned Unrwa, the main UN relief agency in the region, from using the crossing.' Julian Borger, Toby Helm, Lorenzo Tondo, Quique Kierszenbaum Israel alone? Allies’ fears grow over conduct – and legality – of war in Gaza The Guardian 31 March 2024

Banning UNWRA as well, which has the only large organization on the ground with a proven distribution network, has suicidal consequences, just as the emergence of clan gangs taking over the control of the little food airdropped because Israel shoots to kill the local police who traditionally maintained order on the grounds that they are employed by Hamas and therefore terrorists (not in international law) is a recipé for even more violence, inside the world of the starving survivors itself. Nishidani (talk) 17:19, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
  • Israeli propagandist behind Hamas ‘mass rape’ narrative exposed as grifter, fraud (25 March 2024). The Grayzone.   "Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the Israeli lawyer at the center of the campaign accusing Hamas of systematic sexual violence on October 7, now stands accused by Israeli media of scamming donors and spreading misinformation. The allegations appeared just days after Elkayam-Levy received the prestigious Israel Prize."
  • UN Tells Israel: Cease Fire; NYT Says: If You Want (4 April 2024). Dave Lindorff, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).   "The editorial boards of the nation’s major media organizations must have been frantic last week.   Used to reporting on US foreign policy, wars and arms exports so as to portray the United States as a benevolent, law-abiding and democracy-defending nation, they were confronted on March 25 with a real challenge dealing with Israel and Gaza. No sooner did the Biden administration, for the first time, abstain and thus allow passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution that was not just critical of Israel, but demanded a ceasefire in Gaza, than US officials began declaring that the resolution that they allowed to pass was really meaningless.   It was “nonbinding,” they said.   The New York Times (3/25/24) reported that US’s UN Ambassdor “Thomas-Greenfield called the resolution ‘nonbinding’” —- and let no one contradict her.   That was enough for the New York Times (3/25/24), which produced the most one-sided report on the decision."
  • Israel's toxic legacy: White phosphorus bombs on south Lebanon (25 March 2024). Justin Salhani for Al Jazeera.   " ... Driving out civilians, burning down their agricultural lands, poisoning their soil and water, destroying their homes, dropping cluster munitions, and paralysing the local economy are part of what they say are efforts to make south Lebanon uninhabitable today, tomorrow and long into the future.   “The target is to create a wasteland in the south,” Baalbaki said.   “It’s to break the link between the people and their ties to the ground, their nature, their trees. The target is to tell them that this is an inhospitable area and to leave it.”" Ijon Tichy (talk) 22:31, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
Alas, this (nothing new in terms of prisoner treatment) is only the tip of the iceberg. I can't and wouldn't read tweets on principle. Here, there is nothing 'chirpy' to be tweeted about.Nishidani (talk) 13:19, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
I respect your decision to refrain from reading tweets on principle. Would you care to share which principle you are alluding to? In the past, I have seen some people objecting to the format/ style of tweets because of the 280 character limitation on the length of each individual tweet. But this limitation has been increased last year to 4,000 characters. Many world-class scholars and investigative reporters tweet extensively and frequently including essay-length tweets, e.g. Norman Finkelstein, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Jonathan Cook, and thousands of others in many important topics/ subjects (including but certainly not limited to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).
For example, here is a recent insightful essay by Norman Finkelstein, posted on twitter (last I checked, this essay was unavailable on Finkelstein's personal blog on Substack): ISRAEL’S MORAL DILEMMA (April 5, 2024). Regards, Ijon Tichy (talk) 15:33, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Okay, one more proof I'm an ignarunt effwit. For years the computer I worked on could never visualise any link to a twitter site, and I was amazed on clicking on the link in this revarnished computer, that I could access NF's post there. But the principle will still obtain. I've never had a smartphone, nor a Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account because my observation on those who do is that, generally, they spend an inordinate amount of time on browsing those media, and, at this burntout end of a smokey life, I value time: every day must be free, unconstrained by disturbances or distractions, of being sucked up into the blogosphere. Working wikipedia for a few hours is trying enough. I find even simple sentences, my own included (when, rarely, they emerge as just simple statements) question-begging so I prefer to spend my time foraging in books or jstor article on any number of topics. That said, I'm glad to have read NK's note there: I think those of us who have closely followed the several wars, know that the Kitchen Car incident was old hat, unique only in that it drew exclamations and outrage, whereas scores of such incidents of the type (a) a misile collapses an apartment block (b) survivors, with neighbours' help, emerge dazed and (c) ambulances arrive and (d) the ambulances are shot up, are so commonplace (as he illustrates from 2014 - I still recall those two) that it is only remarkable that (other than Finkelstein's 2017 book) there seems to be no scholarly interest in connecting the dots, and writing a comprehensive analysis of such 'incidents' over the last 18 years to elicit the military logic behind it. Certainly this war abounds in such cases. Hegel wrote that 'die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug'. The owl in this case probably flies no more, exhausted by the futility of causing a late flap after each war, only to see the identical tragedy and the identical abuses, identical bullshitting memes of self-exculpation, renew themselves regardless Nishidani (talk) 21:17, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Recognition by Norway, Ireland and Spain

was met by just one 'argument', showing a video of hostages:'Israel’s foreign ministry said it would reprimand the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian ambassadors and show them a video of female hostages being held in captivity by Hamas..'Rory Carroll and Sam Jones, Ireland, Spain and Norway to recognise Palestinian state The Guardian 22 May 2024-05-22

Perhaps the ambassadors should reciprocally show the Foreign Ministry the following video. Nishidani (talk) 13:49, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Netanyahu's criticism of the ICC was not fully translated into English, but truncated, breaking off apparently to avoid the following words, a biblical quotation which, in Jonathan Ofir's reconstruction, express a desire to exterminate the 'Amalekites/Palestinians'. Ofir may be wrong in his very close, precise construal of the censored passage and its contextual resonance, Netzah Israel lo yeshaker (נצח ישראל לא ישקר: 'the Eternal One of Israel shall not lie'.1 Samuel 15:29) of course, but the exegesis strikes this reader as cogent. See Jonathan Ofir, Netanyahu’s response to the ICC invokes another genocidal biblical reference, Mondoweiss 21 May 2024

Consensual convention for leads on settlements

Hi, can you direct me to the discussion about this convention?Eladkarmel (talk) 08:51, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Ask Nableezy. This point has been made several times over the years when that formulation has been removed, and Nableezy has the details at his fingertips, while I, at this late age, still have my fingertip elsewhere, and decaying memory hasn't the force to pull it out. Nishidani (talk) 08:54, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
@Nableezy can you please direct me? (@Nishidani I hope it's okay for me to use your talk page for this) Eladkarmel (talk) 09:05, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
WP:Legality of Israeli settlements. nableezy - 13:15, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for filling my memory blank.Nishidani (talk) 13:36, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Religion

The wording in your edit summary was excellent. I'm adding that to my "How To Say Difficult Things" list. Joyous! Noise! 14:14, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. It was just an allusion to William James's view that any individual's religion is essentially private. To call someone a 'Christian', 'Jew', 'Buddhist', 'Muslim' begs too many questions to be an intelligible attribute, however much this linguistic, ergo conceptual, caution is abused in our sorry times. Regards.Nishidani (talk) 14:22, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Hope you're OK.

I'm a bit worried, having just seen your edit summary. "Hospitalised"? Hope it's nothing serious. --NSH001 (talk) 17:12, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Just old age making its first knock on the door of a body that's been obscenely fit for 73 years. Vertigo. Collapsed on the kitchen floor while bending to feed my cat, and couldn't get up for a while, as I vomited. As my head spun at this new experience, I made some tests: 14x18 =252, recited a poem flawlessly, so I knew it wasn't cognitive, which was the only worry. A neighbour summoned an ambulance, and they gave me a thorough checkup, scans, blood analysis, cognitive tests, heart - and concluded it was probably either benign paroxysmal positional vertigo or labyrinthitis, to be checked out with an otolaryngologist and neurologist, which I'll do. I learnt two things: my local hospital is very efficient and thorough, and (b) back on my feet, having reengineered my instinctive body movements to a slower measure (everyone complains I walk too fast etc.) I seem to be able to do what interests me,-other than reading - household tasks, gardening, etc. In any case, something like that was long overdue, and a salutary reminder to use time well, rather than kill it. Thanks for the inquiry, mate, but, for the mo', all's well, as I hope things are your way.Nishidani (talk) 18:56, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
This happened to me about 2.5 years ago. I woke up in the morning, got out of bed and walked towards the bathroom when suddenly I collapsed on the floor (fortunately I did not vomit). I managed to crawl back to bed and proceeded to describe the symptoms to my physician over the phone. He immediately diagnosed it as BPPV and emailed to me links to YouTube videos containing exercises for BPPV (the vids are easy to find on YouTube). I did the exercises and they helped to significantly alleviate some of the worst symptoms, but did not entirely eliminate all symptoms. The problem appeared to go away on its own after about 2 days and I was completely symptom-free for about a week until the BPPV reappeared (although the symptoms were somewhat milder this time compared to the first time), again I did the exercises and this time almost all the symptoms disappeared after about only 1 day. About one week later the BPPV reared its ugly head again although this time the symptoms were even slightly less pronounced than the previous time. Fortunately this was the last time I experienced BPPV or any type of vertigo.
In my case the BPPV may have occurred due to, or was exacerbated by, my habit of laying on my back in bed and reading for many hours in a row. I think keeping my head in this position for several consecutive hours may have caused some kind of disturbance with the fluids in my ear canal.
Wishing you a quick and full recovery. My cat sends his love to his granpa Nishidani and to your cat. Ijon Tichy (talk) 20:56, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
Thanks IjonT. That is both very useful and consoling. A friend in Seattle gave me similar advice. I never read for more than an hour in bed, preferring an upright chair. I'll wait for the full consultancy with the local otolaryngologist before using any of the available methods, while observing myself these next few days. I went to the pub and resumed drinking, knocking down a pint to see if grog affected my walk back. Not at all, fortunately! Cat the pat spooneristically with a frisk of a soft mitten for your purring kitten. Damn it, this last runic run suggests I may have some cognitive disturbance after all :) Nishidani (talk) 22:24, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
Nishi, sounds like you need to be careful in situations where you may need to change the orientation of your head, but overall your approach seems sensible. I hope the docs will be able to give you a definite diagnosis, which will help put your mind at rest. That wasn't the case with my father's last illness, where the medics (in Scotland) were unable to come up with a convincing explanation of his symptoms, and within 4 months he was dead.
Good that you don't need to travel very far to the hospital. Here, for many years, there has been a tendency to concentrate medical facilities into a smaller number of much larger hospitals. Has the advantage of "efficiency" looking at it from the hospital's POV, but outsourcing part of the cost – in time and money – to the patients, which of course gets ignored in the official reckoning. To get to the big hospital takes between 20 mins (by taxi at 3a.m.) and 100 mins (also by taxi, but during the day with 5 sets of road works along the way, and a traffic jam at every one); the main alternative is the train, which takes about an hour, including a 20-min walk at the other end (slightly longer if you're wearing a catheter). Bus is also possible, but they're slow and I just don't like them. I've become an expert on all the different ways of getting to the hospital! Next month I have a prostate-op follow-up appointment at a nearer hospital (which used to be quite good, but most of its beds have now been transferred to the main hospital). Only a ten-minute train ride away, plus some walking. The consultant has to travel there from the main hospital, so at least they're making a token effort to help reduce the hassle for patients. There is also a small local hospital, most of its beds have also been transferred, I think the only beds left are the maternity ward. There is a nurse-led unit for treating minor injuries, they have always done a superb job whenever I've needed help there. Better than the other hospitals, despite the relative lack of resources. Very impressed by the sister who runs it, highly competent medically. I once expressed some sympathy for the nurses' demand for more pay, she seemed shocked that she should be paid more money, what she wanted was more staff and more resouces (and less bureaucracy) so that she could give a better service. --NSH001 (talk) 06:53, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
Were your father's symptoms like those I experienced? If so, then of course, something other than the condition's names could be there, e.g. Menière's disease. I don't apply to myself the urgent inquisitiveness, however, that this or that particular problem of textual interpretation tends to stir, being somewhat detached and fatalistic about the 'end thing'. On the floor, as i underwent the first dizzy spell, the verses I recited to test if my mnemonic faculty was functioning were Hilaire Belloc's The World's a Stage:-

The world's a stage. The trifling entrance fee
Is paid (by proxy) to the registrar.
The Orchestra is very loud and free
But plays no music in particular.

They do not print a programme, that I know.
The cast is large. There isn't any plot.
The acting of the piece is far below
The very worst of modernistic rot.

The only part about it I enjoy
Is what was called in English the Foray.
There will I stand apart awhile and toy
With thought, and set my cigarette alight;
And then — without returning to the play
On with my coat and out into the night.

These verses (not quite a poem, there's too much of an tacit, perhaps inadvertent narcissistic dismissal of the wonder of life, and of the pleasure of fellowship in it to qualify as poetry, but they nonetheless) capture a strong sense of fastidious unease in the world as it is shaping up, at least for a bloke of my years. Must have breakfast, but will get back to you re hospitals (and mny best auguries for the up-and-coming surgery, pal) Nishidani (talk) 08:04, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
In answer to your question about my father, no, his symtoms were nothing at all like yours. I have a suspicion they might have been connected to a recent flu jab, but there is no way of proving or disproving that hypothesis. But ever since then I have eschewed the annual offer of a flu jab, and in that time (more than 25 years) I have had only a couple of minor colds, over with in 2 or three days. The hospital appointment is only a small query arising from the routine blood tests they do every 6 months for patients on blood pressure meds. I don't think it's anything serious, but we shall see. If surgery were involved, nowadays the only place they can do it is the main hospital. --NSH001 (talk) 10:38, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
I was surprised by how the local hospital responded. The Meloni government, constituted, save for two competent technicians, by dolts, dullards and ideological dingbats, is of course a disgrace: and is adopting the Republican line that health care should be privatised in order to reduce the ballooning national debt which they are vigorously adding to (only apparently a paradox). 4 million Italians have given up trying to get medical care because of the long waiting procedures (in place to incentivize people to go to expensive private clinics), and in response, with that impeccable stupidity of the new class of incompetents running the show, have cut outlays from 6.7 to 6.1% for the next two years. As in England, the only reason why you can still get appropriate care is that health care workers are, on average, morally a big cut above everyone else in society - they really work hard, despite being grossly underpaid (whenever I see, as one can't avoid seeing, celebrity articles or flashy news about the doings or 'trials' of billionaires, I think of nurses and ward workers). With half an hour an ambulance came, I had a first examination at home, then was whisked down to the hospital a few minutes away, waited just an hour, and given a thorough check-up. They didn't even ask me for my residence permit and health card, and, diagnosis made with advice to go through my local doctor for two further examinations, I walked out without paying a brass razoo (which I'd be quite happy to do, apart from being a taxpayer in a country where fiscal evasion is massive). When I had a checkup for a smoker's cough in Australia, my own country, last summer, it cost me $400 (again, happily paid, but one notes the difference). It's not that one wants a free ride. It is simply a matter of a very obvious principle. If a society in its rhetoric talks about 'community', 'rights', 'democratic values', that is all hollow if, in this fundamental sector, whether you can get adequate treatment or not for an illness depends on your ability to pay your own way, then obviously the concept of citizenship is a mirage: your survival or death, in a 'community', is directly correlated with your wealth/poverty, class/existence itself is indexed to personal assets.* Universal health care was guaranteed when Western nations were relatively poor. The massive inflation of national wealth has seen, at the same time, the dismantlement of that basic institution of existential security. But enough of this blather. Work.Nishidani (talk) 09:14, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
  • It is the same weird mathematics of the latest Rafah bombing. Two hamas commanders were 'taken out'. Since the death toll was 45, that means 43 - mostly the children and women in those blasted tents - were acceptable 'collateral damage'. Which means that concept of proportionality in war in Israel operational terms now defines the acceptable level of killing bystanders to hit the enemy, as 95.55%. That may explain why the Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto in the present Meloni government suddenly and unexpectedly attacked the behaviour of Israel this morning as 'unacceptable', stating his impression further (a position that has always been of one my own two core concerns) that by its actions 'Israel is spreading hatred, rooting hatred that will involve their children and grandchildren', i.e. complicit in feeding antisemitism. Nishidani (talk) 09:29, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

So they finally begin to notice

what happens every other week, and has so for almost 4 decades. Not a 'brief massacre' but a long-term one. Nishidani (talk) 16:45, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

e.g. The Western media haven't ever carried images, until today (hence the outrage over what is otherwise an absolutely facet of life there), if on maginal sites, such as this (a headless child victim of one more precision strike), which Gazans have directly witnessed over the last 18 years with hundreds of children. Nishidani (talk) 22:23, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

West Bank up for sale:)

Nettanel Slyomovics, Trump Is Desperate for Miriam Adelson's Cash. Her Condition: West Bank Annexation Haaretz 3 June 2024. The prospective buyer is Miriam Adelson. Nishidani (talk) 13:34, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Not to pop in here without good cause, but does that mean that we need additional caution for anything by Israel Hayom that affects Trump? FortunateSons (talk) 14:54, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Since Israel Hayom was developed by Adelson specifically in order to (a) support Netanyahu as a personal favour (b) undermine the economic viability of 'mainstream' Israeli newspapers by its free distribution policy, it is not a reliable source for anything, certainly not for wikipedia. I personally regard Electronic Intifada as offering at times important and usable sources, but exercise self-restraint, deferring to the consensus not to use it (and not even trying to challenge that consensus), though it is regularly indisputably more insightful (per John Mearsheimer) than tabloid hack outlets like Israel Hayom, or for that matter Arutz Sheva. All the more reason to desist from trying to legitimize the latter two as sources.Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
I can’t find a RS for a relationship between an and b (only people claiming it), but we should definitely use high-quality sources wherever possible, and all 3 named in the article are to be generally avoided IMO (to the best of my current knowledge).
I thank you for the additional reasons not to use the latter two, though my almost non-existent Hebrew would probably be the immediate problem if I were to attempt that. FortunateSons (talk) 16:12, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
The connection between (a) and (b) is well known, and though I wouldn't force the point by an edit (WP:OR) it is obvious from lining up any number of quotes from numerous sources on IH's origins.

(b)Nir Hefetz key state’s witness in Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial testified Tuesday that the former prime minister actively pushed for the establishment of a free tabloid in order to blunt Israel’s biggest-selling newspaper, which he considered hostile to him.

(a)Adelson was willing to invest large sums of money into IH without any guarantee of a return on that investment, which allowed him to create a product of sufficient quality that people on all sides would be willing to consume. He also invested in a successful distribution strategy, placing IH in train stations and other central areas throughout the country.In just four years, IH became the most circulated newspaper in Israel. That’s stunning.

A primary principle in my tertiary education came from a scholar who, while appreciating my detailed genealogies of where this bad idea or that bad idea came from (not recognised as such, but emerging as such only when you tracked the origin down), asked me:'Have you every looked into who pays for the proliferation of these ideas?,' an abrupt realism that traditional proverbial wisdom summed up in the line:'he who pays the piper calls the tune'. Perhaps a formula more adequate to recent times would be 'he who pays for the paper calls the (looney) tune'. I don't use wikipedia's RS criteria for informing my own views. I tend to respect opinions which, beyond the impressiveness of the informed scholarship that must be indispensable, come from people who have nothing to gain personally from espousing them. To the contrary.Nishidani (talk) 16:39, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
The link for b leads to a picture for me, but while I agree that it’s OR, I would say that your claim is very plausible.
Speaking only for myself as a person and not necessarily an editor, I personally consider for-profit and privately owned media to not be inherently less reliable (including by the very wealthy, though that may be my own political and social bias bleeding into it).
Nevertheless, I think we share an appreciation for those who create media without the expectation of material or immaterial benefit - especially including the sharing of opinions that may even be harmful to the greater causes which one subscribes to.
Thank you for sharing that story, it has definitely been a good reminder to be cautious when it comes to media consumption and use. FortunateSons (talk) 17:06, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
It's a bigger historically deeper divide than media. The larger issue is best summed up briefly, if one hasn't the time to go into the respective fields of scholarship, in this discussion between John Mearsheimer and Steven Pinker. I grew up thinking like Pinker (before I read his books), but 6 decades has me siding with Mearsheimer. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 17:14, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the recommendation! I’m avoiding my studies anyway, so it might as well be productive. Sincerly, FortunateSons (talk) 17:26, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Filiu 1994

Hi, in this edit you use {{sfn|Filiu|1994|p=66}}. Is it meant to be 2012 like the other Filius? DuncanHill (talk) 10:54, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Duncan, once more you're spot on.Nishidani (talk) 11:19, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Hostages released, and hostages taken

Jeffrey St. Clair Snatch-and-Grab Israeli Style: Disappearing into the Gulag CounterPunch 7 June 2024. Of the latter, far more widespread, almost nothing gets into the mainstream press. Systemic bias. Nishidani (talk) 21:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

الأقصى

If you have the time, do you want to help me build on the Al Aqsa story in Far-right politics in Israel? You seem to know more of the history than I do. (Not sure why I did arabic subject, change it if you like). MWQs (talk) 00:36, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

My apologies for this delay in responding. I made a mental note to do so, and then forgot to. Unfortunately I have 19 books opened on my work desk at the moment, mostly on a topic that has nothing to do with the I/P area. I've bookmarked the page indicated, and, will look in from time to time, as time allows. Cheers

I don't know which page this should be added to

The carbon cost of rebuilding Gaza will be greater than the annual greenhouse gas emissions generated individually by 135 countries, exacerbating the global climate emergency on top of the unprecedented death toll, new research reveals. Reconstructing the estimated 200,000 apartment buildings, schools, universities, hospitals, mosques, bakeries, water and sewage plants damaged and destroyed by Israel in the first four months of the war on Gaza will generate as much as 60m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e), according to new analysis by researchers in the UK and US. This is on a par with the total 2022 emissions generated by countries such as Portugal and Sweden – and more than twice the annual emissions of Afghanistan.' Nina Lakhani 'Revealed: the carbon cost of rebuilding Gaza after months of Israeli bombing,' The Guardian 6 June 2024

Nishidani (talk) 11:21, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Wonder what the carbon cost of the bombing was? Selfstudier (talk) 11:31, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Good point, though we are still in the present tense ('was'). Once Israel achieves what Curtis LeMay only dreamt of doing but was not permitted to carry it through in Vietnam, i.e. bombing it back to the stone age, this war will probably distinguish itself for breaking all the records of warfare over scores of statistical firsts like that. Anthony Doerr's description of the bombing of Saint-Malo in his All the Light We Cannot See provides a useful prompt for imagining what it must be, every day over the last 8 months, actually surviving the onslaught. As one point he imagines military observers looking on to the smoke, 'As though they are nobleman in grandstands viewing fortess warfare in the years of the Crusaders' (pp.201-202). As a reader in foreign comfort, one thinks of the moral cost of onlooking, recalling, in my case, Leontius in revulsion trying to avert his prurient gaze from looking into a pit of a mass of executed people, yet succumbing, shamefully (Republic Bk.IV 440a). 'Gazing into Gaza' will almost certainly be the title of some future book on how the bystanding world handles this persisting panorama of the unspeakable. Nishidani (talk) 11:59, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
I can't work out of they've started on the West Bank? The reports are all rather strangely worded. MWQs (talk) 00:41, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
More than 75,000 tons of explosive during the first two hundred days, more than the total dropped on three of the most-bombed cities during WWII- London, Dresden and Hamburg. Selfstudier (talk) 11:36, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Arguably the most bombed city was Hiroshima, but it got just one bomb. MWQs (talk) 00:39, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
I worry the reaction will be "therefore we shouldn't rebuild it"? (i hope it's OK to interject?) MWQs (talk) 00:43, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Go figure

(a)At the end of 2008, there were some 233,700 Holocaust survivors in Israel. The number of survivors is decreasing and the projection for 2015 is 143,900 survivors and for 2025, approximately 46,900 survivors. Jenny Brodsky, Assaf Sharon, Yaron King, Shmuel Be'er, Yitschak Shnoor, Holocaust Survivors in Israel: Population Estimates, Demographic, Health and Social Characteristics, and Needs Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute February 2010

(b)“Many Holocaust survivors were hit particularly hard by the Hamas attacks, whether through the loss of their homes, support systems in the form of care,” a German finance ministry spokeswoman said. Each of the 113,000 Jewish survivors in Israel will receive the $236 as a one-off payment, according to the nonprofit Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) – a Jewish umbrella organization that seeks damages for Holocaust survivors and which worked with the German government on the scheme.' Nadine Schmidt Germany to give Holocaust survivors $236 payout to help them cope with October 7 attacks CNN 12 April 2024

The discrepancy between the projected figure for Israeli Holocaust survivors of 46,900 for 2025 and the actual 113,000 number given for them for 2024 is remarkable. Either the statisticians screwed up massively or there's something rubbery about the Claims Conference data, something which past experience with that authority lends little confidence in. Nishidani (talk) 08:29, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it. Looks very suspicious. The statisticians didn't "screwed up" just the estimate has a huge error margin on it. They might hang been overly pessimistic.
  • They arrive as well as die. In 2022, and probably even 2014 onwards, there was a surge of people arriving from Ukraine and Russia, some of whom might have been Holocaust survivors. For a lot of Jewish Russians in particular Israel was the only or far easiest option to get out.
  • Or it could be an increase in life expectancy within Israel. expecting more than 3/4 to die from 2008 to 2023 seems very pessimistic, but they're currently at least 79, if they were born as the camps were liberated, so it would be right at the edge and a small change in life expectancy would change numbers a lot. (most places had a life expectancy Drop in 2020s, but Israel was one of the first with the vaccine)
I think the first figure is the dubious one. At a guess, it looks like a pessimistic estimate that assumed no immigration and no life expectancy increase, which isn't realistic, but makes for a more shocking news story.
MWQs (talk) 01:11, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

The Diaspora Jew

Just saw you doing some editing of that section. If you're drilling deep into this, To Build and Be Built (written by a cousin I'm very fond of) might be of interest to you. [1]Dan Murphy (talk) 18:26, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Dan for directing me to Eric Zakim, To Build and Be Built:Landscape, Literature, and the Construction of Zionist Identity, University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN 978-0-812-23903-4 2006 which looks indeed very interesting. It naturally attracts me because of the poetics, though I tend to approach Zionist identity in different terms. I'll look into it slowly, when time allows. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 20:14, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I thought it was beautifully written (last time I talked to him he said he was working on Israel's Stalag Fiction craze of the 50s and 60s and what that might say about identity.)Dan Murphy (talk) 20:45, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Identity's one of the trickiest things. I've tended since adolescence to think Jewish identity, when not purely personal or private as it frequently happened to be, was a mix between the pressure of external stereotypes and a defensive resistance among many Jews that took many forms. A Zionist identity is structurally antithetical to diaspora Jewishness, exerting an immense heft of stereotyping pressure on the latter, which I hope is sufficiently self-confident to, as in the past, resist being (re)manufactured according to the dejudaizing blueprint of its internal adversary.Nishidani (talk) 21:11, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Let me put it this way. Historically, there are two vectors in identity, robust versus antagonist. The difference lies in the approach to the 'Other'. The robustness of Jewish diasporic identity consisted in its inclusion of the 'other' into that sense of self; Zionism repudiating this, tried to exorcise the 'other' which consisted of three elements: the 'feminine', 'weakling' diasporic tradition, with its contextual outrider, European culture in its Enlightenment dispensation, and, thirdly, the indigenous 'other', the Palestinian world, with which no contact was made, therefore evaporating it from any congruent presence in the new horizon. This asserted autonomy of self-definition accounts for its antagonistic character, and why it lines up so neatly with experiments in nationalistic identity-forging characteristic of European countries from the 19th to the mid 20th century (now back to haunt us). Well, on second thought, I'll have to sleep on that (which means I'll be having some nightmares in a few hours, I guess). Nishidani (talk) 21:44, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Take a breath and knock it off

About the time you start picking at its/it's, especially when 3/4 of the comment is about it, you know you're stepping into unproductive discussion. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:23, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

There was no discussion. I posed a question, with a detailed set of reasons. No discussion ensued. Rather, brief one liners, some inventing nonsense (such that adding 'allege' implies I want the whole article rewritten. Sheer nonsense. I then suggested a background overview be read. Neither of the respondents read it. They apparently looked at the title of the article, its author, and that was enough to form an opinion. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and there are two ways to construct it. (a) Read widely or (b) weed widely. The first is time-consuming but ensures familiarity with the topic, a fundamental premise for encyclopedias. The second is to master the rule system and use it to reject everything that falls outside the stringent confines of optimal RS. The advantage of mastering the second is that you do not need to read anything. You just find reasons not to read a good deal. So yes, the discussion wasn't productive. I laid an egg and it was left undigested, while dismissive comments on its quality and taste briefly followed. It's never unproductive to remind people that contributing to the composition of good encyclopedic prose is premised on at least a very basic literacy, even if one doesn't want to read round much. All tea in a tempest, as a Bostonian might have said some centuries ago.Nishidani (talk) 13:03, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Pa ---- pa-pa

story · music · places

Thank you for brightening our day Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:14, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Today is "the day" for James Joyce, also for Bach's fourth chorale cantata (and why does it come before the third?) - the new pics have a mammal I had to look up. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Gerda. Joyce's Bloomsday I always remember. It stands as the most winning portrait of a Jew in an assimilated normalcy that I know of. An anecdote. One Saturday morning over the breakfast table, I was grumbling to my closest mate, who had stayed the night with us, about the way, every time I tried to buy a copy of Ulysses, I was rebuffed, all over the city, on the grounds I was underage, at 16, and the book was reserved, under the counter when in stock, for adults only. 'Bloody silly. Any perve'd need a water bag, a cut lunch, and a pair of binoculars to wade through the bulk of the book and get to the juicy bits in the brothel scene, as far as I've heard, and probably be pissed off by the small returns on the effort expended'.
My father, an otherwise politically conservative man, who had a very elaborate ceremony for making a pot of tea, was fiddling with the pot at the stove and clearly must have eavesdropped on our curse-ridden railing at the cultural backwater we lived in. Weeks passed and then, one day, coming home, he handed me a premature present for my forthcoming birthday, wrapped of course. I ripped off the wrapping and there it was 'Ulysses', signed 'Pop' with a cartoon of my father's smiling face (he was, like his brother and mine, an excellent cartoonist) on the inside cover. 'Oh, Jeezus, Dad. . . !' I was lost for words. Fathers were shy in those days, but he just smiled, and went off to the pub for a snorter. It remains my most precious belonging.Nishidani (talk) 20:29, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
thank you for sharing, made my day! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:52, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
New pics of food and flowers come with the story of Noye's Fludde (premiered on 18 June), written by Brian Boulton. I nominated Éric Tappy because he died, and it needs support today! I nominated another women for GA in the Women in Green June run, - review welcome, and more noms planned. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:47, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
There may be some slight issue speaking of Tamara Milashkina's 'colourful voice', which emerges as an attempt to synthesize the source, which speaks of a voice whose beauty, natural tonality, lent colour to songs. Perhaps the editor was thinking of coloratura, which refers to textual ornamentation rather than the vocal qualities of a performer. I think they mean the distinctive 'timbre' of her voice. Perhaps I'm too finicky, but 'colourful' in my experience of English is used mostly of characters, particularly those who charm and stand out by the vivacity of their manners and exuberance of behaviour. Hope this is not a vexatious niggle.Nishidani (talk) 15:42, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the careful language analysis, - always learning. In German one could say "farbenreiches Timbre", but probably not in English. The source goes into great detail, speaking about her mezzo-like middle range, and different descriptions such as "creamy". I was looking for a summary, always afraid to be too close to a source. Feel free to edit as you think will be understood that her voice had many aspects to it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:37, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
This is a good example of faux amis - terms that interlingually look identical but in their respective Sprachfelder bear quite different connotations. Offhand "farbenreiches Timbre" would suggest 'the tonal richness of her vocal range'. I should know, but don't. My closest aunt was a soprano, a former fiancée and my best friend's wife (at la Scala in Milan) also. I do know enough to appreciate that there is quite a large vocabulary of specialized terms to capture these things, as with wine-tasting, and that outsiders like me should step warily. Dunno. Think I'm being overpicky. Most readers will probably not overhear the nuance I noted (though colourful is pejorative in 'colourful language' meaning abusive or offensive speech, as opposed the the positive admiration attached to its use in 'colourful character'), and perhaps it's simplest to just leave it thus.Nishidani (talk) 19:50, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

At last some good news

Afghanistan whupped Downunderland in cricket. While walking in a Roman park a month ago, I caught the unusual sight of some Asians playing cricket and pipped in when observing how one bowler was allowed to toss, rather than bowl, the ball with a bent arm. An action one 100 times more blatant than anything ever imputed to Ian Meckiff or the inimitable and often unplayable Eddie Gilbert. I asked if they were Indian, Bangladeshi or Pakistanis. Nope. 'Afghanis', almost certainly clandestine immigrants. Congratulating them on beating the patrol boats and armies of a dozen repulsive countries to sneak into Italy and struggle to get themselves a decent life, I thought I could give a tip or two on fast and spin bowling by trying my arm out in both styles. 'Sure'. I was then comprehensively dispatched by the batter to the boundary on each occasion. That was just a crumpled geezer trying to be helpful and making a fool of himself while getting a laugh, though they did compliment me for managing to run 20 yards in before I delivered a reasonably fast ball. Now it is really stirring to see the national team thrash Australia. As I told the lads that day: 'the only known return on our world's macabre and lethal investment of $1 trillion dollars in bombing the living daylights over their country, was that in the meantime they managed to get a cricket team on its legs.' Something finally to celebrate and perhaps finally make the Taliban wake up to an enthusiasm their tellybrand spit-the-dummy fundamentalism can't control. Nishidani (talk) 05:15, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

On the 'riot'/ 'protest' distinction in IP reportage

I noted a week or so ago the chronic ethnic bias in the disparity in descriptions of Israel and Palestinian demonstrations. Compare now An Israel demonstration against the war, in which clashes took place due to police violence was called throughout a ‘protest’. When ‘riot police’ barged into and disrupted the funeral procession for Shireen Abu Akleh, the official police report stated it was a ‘riot’. The difference between the two otherwise well-behaved events was that in one, an Israeli flag was waved, ion the other Palestinian flags were flown. Nishidani (talk) 05:35, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

In case you didn't know

You're in media:[2]. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:34, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

At the top of a few notes, jotted down about myself for some hypothetical future kid among my siblings' descendants who might have some curiosity about obscure, distant figures in the family genealogical tree, one of the headquotes is:

‘a faint streak on the surface of the tossing world of Samsāra’. H.W. Bailey, cited from a private letter in A. Toynbee, A Study of History, OUP, vol.10, (1954) 1963 p.16 n.2.

This fleck you link to made me smile, as I reflected that the 'faint streak' might begin to look like what you see on a slightly (or unsightly) soiled pair of underpants.:)Nishidani (talk) 08:59, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites, you too. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:41, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
Just for the record the source alluded to is Rob Eshman, ‘Does anybody question the NAACP?’: The ADL head thinks Wikipedia is biased. Is he right? The Forward 24 June 2024
It's a good piece of balanced journalism as one would expect from The Forward, and it's rather a nice, rather flattering compliment, to think that in being smeared as anti-Israeli, I am explicitly likened to the sort of people who write for Jewish Currents.Nishidani (talk) 12:33, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
One point. In paraphrasing Rhododendrites's views, the following text occurs:(The set of wiki editing protoclls in place) '‘mitigates against bias.’ I haven't googled but that idiom is probably more than acceptable in American usage, though to an Anglified ear, using a transitive verb like 'mitigate' absolutely, with a following 'against', niggles at any fastidious feel for the mother-tongue. I guess it kicked into customary usage by the assonantal proximity of 'mitigate' to 'militate' (intransitive), as in 'militate against'. But when we have a huge range of synonyms for the deliciously Latinate 'mitigate' (alleviate, attenuate, moderate, diminish, reduce, lighten, sap, etc.etc.,) the idiomatic variation seems pointless.Nishidani (talk) 12:45, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

'Another editor, Nishidani, who argued for labeling the ADL as being “generally unreliable” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, displays numerous pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel quotes on their information page.' Nishidani (talk) 12:52, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Peter Beinart the other day, in his substack, (What if Americans Saw Palestinian and Jewish Israeli Lives as Equal? Beinart Notebook 24 June 2024) drew attention to a Facebook exchange between Mehdi Hasan debating Dean Phillips, calling it 'extraordinary' and 'remarkable' because it set into stark relief something almost wholly absent from mainstream American discussions on the I/P conflict.Nishidani (talk) 12:59, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

What was the gravamen of Hasan's contention? An appeal to respect the need to be coherent when one makes any (factual, moral or political) judgment where the relations of two subjects are under discussion.

  • Hasan asked:'Was it fair to kill 270+ Palestinians to free 4 Jewish hostages.'
Phillips admitted it was horrifying but it was a cost to be paid to liberate Jewish people seized and brutalized by Hamas.
  • Hasan then asked an hypothetical correlative:' Would it be fair for a Palestinian militia to kill 200 Israelis to free say 4 of the (1,200) Palestinian men detained by Israel at the now infamous torture centre at Sde Teiman near Gaza, where some innocent men were not only electrocuted but also mechanically sodomised?'
Phillips denied that, by initially expressing his disbelief that Jews/Israelis could do any such thing, but the authority of the New York Times undercut his scepticism, and he was therefore left in speechless perplexity.Nishidani (talk) 13:08, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

What Hasan did wasn't 'remarkable' or 'extraordinary'. It was simply a matter of endeavouring to reset arguments over these incidents, issues, topics, on a logical, propositional basis, rather than to allow them to be swept up in goalpost shifting, discursive waffling. I.e. the principles used to justify an Israeli action must apply,mutatis mutandis, to Palestinian actions. If one doesn't in practice underwrite a universal principle in making judgments of this kind, but rather appeals to 'exceptional' circumstances for one's particular ethnic group, while tacitly endorsing universal moral criteria when the 'other' is judged, then most of the arguments will be meaningless, and their resolution achieved only through the exercise of power, physical or discursive. That is the problem the ADL has: its programmatic defense of groups subjected to prejudice is pinioned on universal values, on the idea of an underlying equality between all groups which, if violated, should be sanctioned. But it almost never* applies that criterion to the IP conflict Nishidani (talk) 13:28, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

  • 'whether one wears a keffiyah or a kippah, the traditional Jewish headcovering, “if you make death threats against other people, that should be called out”.' In this Jonathan Greenblatt accepts universal principles. In practice, the organization as it operates under his leadership fails to apply them.Nishidani (talk) 13:31, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Fix your own errors

Re: this. I was fixing a no-target error. You had his forename marked as his surname, and his surname as his forename, so {{sfn|McCann|2023}} couldn't call it. There are other no-target errors in the article, I'll try to remember you resent having them fixed. DuncanHill (talk) 17:16, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

My apology. I was so fixated on writing the article that I misread what you did.
| last = Joe | first =McCann was corrected to | first = Joe | last =McCann. I noting the inversion of the last-first order, I missed the fact that your correction fixed the mislocation of personal and family names. All I noted that the way you did that inverted the last-first order which is customary in my articles. Normally I don't even control your corrections, because they are always perfect. Perhaps why seeing the order inversion, I presumed in haste that nothing else was wrong. Regards Nishidani (talk) 19:00, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
You still need to fix "Baroud 2010" and "RB". DuncanHill (talk) 20:02, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
I usually leave that to a bot a friend of mine runs through text when I have something substantial up. It corrects everything, and indeed was partially designed also to cope with the messes, and mechanically fix the potholes I habitually leave, out of sheer incapacity and technical insouciance, when I've driven through all the sources and built some road of minimal understanding of a topic. So don't worry about it. On past experience, the bot will kick in within a day or two, unless she's indisposed for a few days.Nishidani (talk) 20:24, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

thanks

darwin bless you my child (note both he and yahweh posit being fruitful and multiplying as the measure of success). thought you might get a kick out of a poem by flea scribner

the wikipedia backroom

almost soviet

in its labyrinthine byzantinanity Potholehotline (talk) 21:01, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

June 2024

Hello Nishidani. Please define "barely qualified". As far as I know, editors reaching EC status are completely legitimate ARBPIA editors, and this kind of commentary scares away new, good editors. Anyway, there's an ongoing discussion at the articles' talk page, and recent edits, as well as ongoing discussions, clearly show there is no consensus for adding it until new consensus is formed. I think you should revert yourself. 916crdshn (talk) 11:54, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

You have 725 edits. It is not about editors negotiating against the overwhelming thrust of reliable sources by the most qualified specialists in the field that 'colonization' was the default term for Zionism's project in Palestine. We defer to experts. We are not experts.Nishidani (talk) 12:12, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia implemented the 500/30 rule to keep vandals and sockpuppets out of this topic area. If this isn't a clear case of gaming, and as long as they adhere to ARBPIA rules, they should be allowed to edit freely here. I'll repeat myself: with the use of terms like "barely qualified" and similar remarks, you're discouraging good editors who appear to act in good faith and rely on Wikipedia policies to support their statements. Many of the editors you label as "unqualified" have actually been active for several years. I'm tagging @ScottishFinnishRadish to see what they think about this situation. 916crdshn (talk) 12:23, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
This is primarily a content dispute that you are pretty transparently trying to turn into something else. Selfstudier (talk) 12:26, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
This isn't a content dispute, it's a recurring behavioral issue I've been witnessing from my hospital bed for long enough now. Time and again, across numerous IP articles, I see experienced editors forcing content changes without consensus and bullying those who rightly point out the lack of consensus and revert accordingly, calling them "unqualified editors" and then cluttering their talk pages with unverified allegations (see User talk:ABHammad#Enough already). I’ve seen this on articles about Zionism, Israel, the Genocide of Indigenous Peoples, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and so on. This topic area desperately needs new editors, but you drive them away with your aggressive language and disregard for consensus. 916crdshn (talk) 12:42, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
You haven't been an editor for long enough to say "long enough". Nor do you have any evidence for you drive them away with your aggressive language and disregard for consensus. You have a case, then make it at the appropriate venue, else....? Selfstudier (talk) 12:47, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Nishidani. In this topic area it is a demonstrable fact that we are plagued with waves of new editors that as soon as they pass 500, start making POV type edits in the topic area and continue to do so until whatever number of them end up being tbanned. Where are the long time editors? And I would likely have reverted it if Nishidani hadn't, because this alleged consensus does not exist. Selfstudier (talk) 12:13, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
It's not enough to ratchet up the minimal number of edits required to qualify. On a complex topic, one needs to show at least an above elementary grasp of the topic under construction. Those who challenge the academic consensus there have evidently no familiarity with the topic. I have, out of scruple, documented now where the consensus lies, namely in the declared intentions not only of Herzl, but of Zeev Jabotinsky, Franz Oppenheimer, Arthur Ruppin - the foremost theorizer of Zionist violence, a leading economist of Zionism, and the man who played the central role in implementing what he himself called 'colonization on the ground -and others, all outstanding figures of this formative period. It is a waste of serious editing time to frig around contesting the obvious. Nishidani (talk) 12:23, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
@Selfstudier:, exactly, this alleged consensus really doesn't exist. There is a significant group of editors who strongly oppose the use of "colonization," which was added to this article through edit warring, forcing others to acquiesce instead of achieving genuine consensus. I see at least five editors who oppose this addition, yet you continue to push it and blame others for edit warring. @Nishidani:, without even getting to the content in question, it's clear from the policy that the addition of "colonization" was imposed through force. Nishidani should apologize and self-revert. 916crdshn (talk) 12:27, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
You have it exactly backwards. And content discussions are for the talk page not here. Selfstudier (talk) 12:31, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
You haven't read what I wrote, or if you have, haven't understood it. Editors don't write wikipedia off the top of their heads. they are not entitled to group together and overthrow the historical rtecord out of personal distaste. That I have even to write this is proof that the objectors don't understand how wikipedia composition works, which is reflected generally in the paucity of their edits so far. They are obliged to read widely in the appropriate sources, and to faithfully paraphrase what those sources report, without tinkering with the primary and secondary evidence out of distaste for a term. The 'significant group of editors' are newbies with little real experience here. The pushing comes from that quarter, and it is a push against what all early Zionists explicitly state. They knew what they were doing, and if editors refuse to look at the evidence, whatever else they opine will reflect a (stubborn) nescience before the factual record. If there was a consensus of editors that the earth is flat, it would reflect nothing more than their ignorance. Nishidani (talk) 12:36, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
You make valid points, but so do the others in their counterarguments. That's why we have discussions, and are supposed to reach consensus. The issue here is the aggressive language used consistently by certain veteran editors who forcibly push their own views regardless of consensus, dismiss newer editors as "newbies," ignore their arguments, and then inundate their user pages with accusations. 916crdshn (talk) 13:28, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Please don't edit this page. The value of editors in this encyclopedia lies not in their capacity to fill threads with discussions and opinions, but to produce technical evidence from specialist sources, preferably of a high order, that ascertain the factual lie of the land on any topic. If you have a grievance against me, and assume I'm a bully, don't fish for a responsive fight for your accusations here. Nishidani (talk) 13:34, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
This starts to look like WP:HARASSMENT- Selfstudier (talk) 13:36, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Nothing so serious. One must exercise patience here, though several editors suddenly showing up to express a grievance (over what seems to be the way historiography questions the core dogmas of a faith one was raised in) over the same talk pages is notable.

June 2024 (2)

You are edit warring against consensus. I kindly ask you to self-revert, or be reported for edit warring and disruptive editing. Icebear244 (talk) 15:17, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

I will certainly revert if you can show why the consensus you speak of is not for retention of that text. By all means tell me why 7 reverters represent the consensus, and 11 for retention are the minority. I was perplexed by your obscure assertion because it falsified the numbers on the edit history page, inverting them. Of course, being rule observant here, I will revert if you can show me I was the one that miscalculated.Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
And secondly if your revert was neutral, you must explain why the multiple reverters over the last month, all among the 7, did not catch your attention, earn a warning, and were not reported. You have picked on the one person who over that period did just one revert, adding substantial new sources to justify it, until you forced me to revert a second time because your edit summary falsified the math.Nishidani (talk) 15:25, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
As an experienced user, you must be aware that Wikipedia consensus isn't solely determined by numbers. You and other editors are forcibly restoring the same disputed content again and again despite strong opposition on both the edit history and on the talk page. Despite an ongoing discussion, you've repeatedly reverted to your preferred version disruptively. "You have picked on the one person who over that period did just one revert". Now, you aren't. This is your second revert on this page within two days, and you were already requested to undo your edit yesterday. Please revert your changes now or be subject to reporting. Icebear244 (talk) 15:32, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Please see your talk page, for the record I would also have reverted the edit. Selfstudier (talk) 15:44, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm talking with @Nishidani right now. Icebear244 (talk) 15:48, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
And I am talking to you, you want a private chat with Nishidani, send him a mail. Selfstudier (talk) 15:50, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Indeed, consensus is not determined by numbers, but by cogency of arguments, esp. those grounded in thorough source checking and the use of high wuality RS, in theory. If you look at the talk page, from this section onward almost all the evidence from books comes from not just one side, because Levivich is not identiable as a partisan one way or another), but from editors who take their positions in terms of the weight of reliable sources, which were ignored by the reverters. The second section is mainly argufying against, without any hard evidence given. On the talk page, a discussion is underway, and so far inconclusive.
Look. Since you stepped out of left field and reverted the page to the minority position in the edit history, you sided with the minority with the highest record for multiple' reversions over the last month as the consensus version. That's how I saw your intervention. Not a neutral third opinion, but simply one more revert to a minority position. If you wait a few minutes, I will provide you with a complete diff history of the reverters in that minority since early June. Nishidani (talk) 16:14, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
When a discussion remains inconclusive, it is not within your purview to unilaterally decide its outcome. Persisting in doing so, while labeling those who oppose your views as 'unqualified,' is frankly detrimental to our goals here. Despite being given the opportunity yesterday and again today to self-revert until consensus is reached, you have chosen to continue advocating for the disputed version. Regrettably, you have left me with no alternative. Icebear244 (talk) 16:55, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Start an RFC to contest the current roughly 2 to 1 consensus, else...Selfstudier (talk) 16:59, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Hang on. You asked me to revert, and I asked you to clarify. You simply repeated that there was a 'consensus' for the text you restored, and when I asked for evidence, providing my own to the contrary, you didn't give a meaningful reply. So I asked you to wait, while I showed you the evidence for habitual reverters on that page. As I started to do this, you posted the complaint at AE against me. That is discourteous. But having an evening drink in the pub is more important at the moment. I may look at it later. Nishidani (talk) 17:02, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
You have been given many chances to self-revert (over the past two days), but instead, you continue to debate. Despite agreeing that consensus isn't based on votes, you continue to focus on numbers [3] and unjustly dismiss those who oppose you as lacking sufficient edits or experience (which is incorrect). [4] [5] You leave me with no other choice. Enjoy your evening drink. Icebear244 (talk) 17:22, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
There is no evidence, apart from the diligent Vegan, that editors there are willing or able to come forth with the only evidence that counts here: RS that challenge the fact that for a half a century, colonialization (colonise, colonies etc) was the virtual default term in Zionist discourse. I don't take anyone's word for it that they know a topic until they can provide evidence that they have read widely in the area. For your information, this term was dropped in the 1950s because in its international relations, Israel's diplomacy cultivated strong relationships with precisely those African countries which had just thrown off the shackles of colonialism to achieve their independence. So, quite rationally, the language of Zionism discarded the negative implications of how it had defined its own purpose, and adopted, quite often the newly minuted language of national liberation movements. This is all known. What the seven editors I mentioned argue is simply a revarnished updated rhetoric which repudiates the terminology of Israel's Zionist roots. But historical usage should not be reritten in Orwellian fashion by binning what was the line of yesterday and rewriting the past to accord with recent political changes of the rhetoric.Nishidani (talk) 21:55, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Revert what many times. Did something escape me. Links please.Nishidani (talk) 18:51, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

On method. Why one should be abstemious in making articles out of breaking news reports.

Example. Killing of Abir Aramin Nishidani (talk) 19:58, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

The core facts were simple, and were confirmed by the Israeli court decision that compensated the family. A 10 year old girl preparing for her math exam, dropped into a store in 'Anata to buy some candy. As she emerged from the shop, a jeep of Border guards unexpectedly burst into the town and that street. She began to run away in fear. Some boys threw stones, and the jeep fired back, and one of their rubber bullets smashed into the back of her head. She took two days to die, because the bureaucratic obstacles (roadblocks) placed in the family's way, to get her promptly to Hadassah hospital where equipment existed to relieve the pressure of blood clots on her brain, took that long to be disentangled. We have a summary in Colum McCann's masterly reconstruction of her (in Apeirogon), and the parallel Israeli child Smadar Elhanan, of how this was reported. I will transcribe just how the first's death was reported.Nishidani (talk) 20:06, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

The newspaper reports said (a) that a ten-year old child had died in hospital after an incident in the West Bank. . .(b)The army released an official statement denying any involvement. (c) A TV segment said that rumours of an incursion were spurious. Later there weree reports of (d) rioting in protest against the Separation Barrier being built through the school playground. Another report said that (e)the girl had been seen at the school gates holding a stone. (f) She was killed by a rock to the back of her head from nearby rioters. (g) She was shot by the Palestinian Authority forces. (h)She was epileptic, (i) she smashed her head when she fell. (j)She implicated herself by running away from the jeep. (k)She was found to have stones in her pocket. (l) She picked up a shock grenade which had exploded in her hands. (m) She was buying sweets. (n) She threwe her arms in the air to surrender. (o) She was walking defiantly away. (p) She had been mistreated in a Palestinian hospital. (q) She was airlifted immediately to the Hadassah where she had been given priority care. (r)The Muslim parents had refused to get help from a Jewish doctor. (s) She had no ID. (t) Reports of an illegal incursion were categorically untrue. (u)The girls had been throwing stones, (v) it was caught on closed-circuit television from the school gates. (w)Her father was an active ranking member of Fatah. (x) The teacher in her school was a known Hamas activist. (y) No such Border Police operations were logged that morning. (z)The delay in the ambulance absolutely did not hasten her death and was directly linked to the riots on the ground.' (pp.68-69)

Of this flood of coverage whose main points exhaust the alphabet only (a) and (m) are correct, the rest was fabricated bullshit that gives every impression of being planted to obscure the simple facts, or draw a picture so confusing any fragment of truth would be lost in the messy disinformatsia.

Editors should draw a lesson from this. Most of our articles on such events, and wars, are patched up by waves of breaking news, much of which reflects a practice of partisan distortion, or just authorities responsible covering their arses. I could transcribe a similar if far briefer lesson from the summary of Smadar's death and how it was reported, with similar dissonances from what was later ascertained with careful analysis. It is not peculiar to the IP world, but is by now entrenched, if to a less blatant degree, everywhere.Nishidani (talk) 20:27, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Your 14 June 2024‎ edit to the "Be'eri massacre" page

The justification you gave that "WP:OR. One cannot cite one statement and infer it applies to several people." is not applicable. What Emily Hand's father said when he heard that she was killed in Be'eri (before it turned out that she was actually kidnapped and not killed) is only one of many examples. Search for it yourself, don't take my word for it.

There are many interviews with Israeli women who say they prefer dying to being raped. It is well documented that Hamas strategy and orders on October 7 was to intentionally sow that kind of fear. Annette Maon (talk) 05:44, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Why are you posting this here? We have the article talk page. In any case the passage I took our read:

There is at least one media interview indicating some residents strongly held the attitude that being killed was preferable to being taken hostage, including for their own children

Is technically WP:OR and editorializing. It prefaces one interview, and makes an inference from it which extends 'Anthony's' point of view to other residents (implicitly in Be'eri).
It is furthermore, garbled grammatically.'prefer being killed. . .including for their own children'.
You justify the OR by cross-referring what 'Anthony' said to the spontaneous outburst of Emily Hand's father, Thomas, when he was wrongly informed his little daughter's body had been found (i.e. that she hadn't been taken hostage), Anthony declared that he would have killed his own children rather than have them taken hostage. Thomas Hand said that he was overcome by relief to find that Emily had been killed (by Hamas) rather than taken hostage. It is one thing to assert one would kill one's children to avoid their being captured, and another for a father to assuage his profound grief over his daughter's reported death by the thought that it was better to be killed by Hamas straight out, than spend perhaps years as a hostage in captivity in Gaza.
My point stands. Given the confusing flurry to conflicted reports over this tragedy, we should avoid the temptation to editorialize or generalize, and stick to the factual record, and certainly not preface reports with personal opinions, as did the editor of the remark I excised.Nishidani (talk) 09:19, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Your experience in the IP area is limited (603 edits in eight years). To work there fficiently, one must learn to exercise particular scruples over issues of NPOV, editorializing and OR. And one should not personalize edit disputes by addressing someone's talk page, as if they were the problem, but by sticking to the relevant talk page of the articles in question.Nishidani (talk) 09:24, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
To what degree do the multiple murderous onslaughts by Hamas on 7 October (I am reflecting to myself) qualitatively differ, morally and otherwise, from the multiple murderous onslaughts in Gaza, every day, for the past 270 days since then, the latest of which is the following, bringing the minimum death toll there to at least 50,000 plus (38,295 ascertained+10-20,000 missing believed dead)? Lorenzo Tondo, A game of football, a boom, then scattered bodies: video shows moment of Israeli strike on Gaza school The Guardian 10 July 2024 Nishidani (talk) 17:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

On the AE I/P issue. A reflection in response to ScottishFinnishRadish (you are under no obligation to read this per TLDR

I'm just dropping a passage that came to mind the other day while reading the complaint. It sums up what most worries me about so many of these IP AE summonses. I'll translate it tomorrow. These things seem pedantic, but they help me at least to concentrate, esp. after I've slept on them. To anticipate. The point of this particular quote is that one can make a very good argument, as Karl Popper did, that the work in question is the fountainhead of totalitarianism. The more we succumb to the temptation to legislate and regulate, down to the smallest capillary sphere of human behaviour, and enforce these intrusive, proliferating rules by punitive prescriptions, the greater the risk to democracy.

ἐάν τις ἀσεβῇ λόγοις εἴτ᾽ ἔργοις, ὁ παρατυγχάνων ἀμυνέτω σημαίνων πρὸς ἄρχοντας, τῶν δὲ ἀρχόντων οἱ πρῶτοι πυθόμενοι πρὸς τὸ περὶ τούτων ἀποδεδειγμένον κρίνειν δικαστήριον εἰσαγαγόντων κατὰ τοὺς νόμους: ἐὰν δέ τις ἀκούσασα ἀρχὴ μὴ δρᾷ ταῦτα, αὐτὴ ἀσεβείας ὑπόδικος γιγνέσθω τῷ ἐθέλοντι τιμωρεῖν ὑπὲρ τῶν νόμων. Plato, The Laws 907d-e. Nishidani (talk) 23:35, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

  • We’re all here to write an encyclopedia, that aspires ideally to use the finest high quality RS to inform its comprehensive coverage to every significant element of human civilization and history any reader anywhere may access at zero cost.The intuition that grounded it must pass as one of the most ingeniously creative innovations in history itself. A global democracy of learning self-constituted by a variable collective of anonymous volunteers from every imaginable background the world over.
  • Given the conflictual nature of knowledge itself, always provisory, and the strong currents of personal bias, national interests, and ideologies, enculturated world-views or formal systems of belief as they may be, the undertaking challenges credibility, a credibility continually dented as we reach past 6 and a half million articles.
  • This has been achieved by creating a virtual culture of its own, replete with self-regulating mechanisms that (a) are designed to ensure the probity of the knowledge contributed and (b) ensure the integrity of its modus operandi. The recruitment and retention of editors is fundamental to this end, and thus we have an array of formal rules which are crafted to allowing new participants to feel welcome in signing on to this formidable task. A certain, in my view, responsiveness to woke concerns to ensure every editor is 'comfortable' has been accommodated.
  • As two decades pass, these regulations, adapted and honed through administrative oversight of malpractices, have developed an impressively detailed body of wikilaw It is, nonetheless, so complex in its contextual intricacies, that things can still derail the practical functioning of our individual and collective endeavours.
  • This last point is thrown into egregious relief in those areas where both national interests and personal attachments to a cause and very powerful. Identitarian values are everywhere on the rise, all attached to rhetorics of grievance, resentment and exclusion (and many of those things are not mere expressions of rhetoric), and this can aggravate, as much as it broadens the range of, clashing perspectives that articles must cover.
  • History, notoriously for its most experienced practitioners, is however intrinsically discomforting. As the quote on my main page states:

“The historian’s task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly.” Tony Judt, cited by William Grimes, ‘Tony Judt, Chronicler of History, Is Dead at 62,’ New York Times 7 August 2010

  • There is nothing comfortable, by nature, in the I/P reality we have to describe. It is profoundly discomforting to everyone, from whatever side. As the most intensively studied yet chronically intractable conflict in modern times it naturally attracts and stirs passionate partisanship by those who are part of it, and fascinates by the challenge it poses to gain mastery of its historical intricacies in order to describe it. The tensions in editing have long been such that 3 ARBCOM resolutions have been successively taken and finessed to try and guarantee that the spillover from the actual conflict does not flood the editing environment of IP article composition itself. While these measures have had quite positive effects (socking which infested the area has been reduced notably by the 500/30 rule), it would be self-deceptive to believe that more intensive regulatory steps will incrementally act to elide the problems instinct in the area itself, so that it will become an editing environment as serene as that dealing with the field of ornithology or classical literature and the like.
  • Bref, attempts to ask ARBCOM continually to 'fix' it, again and again, won't change this tragic reality of the conflict, let alone the tensions among editors vying to narrate it in all of its intricate forms. The idea of clearing the house and starting afresh with new editors under even more draconian principles that prioritize an ever more minutely regulating behavioural galateo as the determinative principle for participating is seductive, but more expressive of frustration than of a practicable proposal for instaurating a viable, remedial system freed of these problems.
  • There is a law in systems analysis that states that the greater the complexity of a structure, the greater its exposure to the risks of collapse. There is also the common observation that the more one piles on rules, the greater the astuteness of specialists in any number of fields in devising technical dodges. (Much of taxation law corroborates this. The US tax code runs to 6,871 pages (basic) to 75,000 if you take in guidelines etc. The sum of taxes avoided by US billionaires in 2024 is $150 billion according to the IRA) This is the point made by Plato's grandiose last book which sought to heal the ongoing travails of democracy by legislating a system of such reticular surveillance and punitiveness, that a perfect world would emerge.
  • He's talking about impiety, so to make my point, I'll replace that word ảσεβεία (impiety) with impoliteness (I can’t think of any ancient Greek abstract word that exactly fits this concept but δυσγένεια 'low-bred meanness would be close). This is the result:-

If anyone behaves impolitely in word or deed, whoever encounters them will defend the law (forbidding impoliteness) by informing the authorities. The first magistrates so alerted shall arraign the person in accordance with what the law stipulates, and failure to do so will make the official himself in question liable to a charge of impoliteness that may be laid by anyone who desires to exact vengeance on behalf of the law.

  • The history of countries which adopted this kind of intricate 're-engineering' of man to conform to a perfect model of what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung represents the extreme face of this imposed 'political correctness'. A reader will take this as a hyperbolic form of analogy, and to some degree it is. Wikipedia's rules are extremely intricate, non-invasive of personal beliefs, but what can and cannot be said in the I/P world has over the last decades been widely legislated under the guise of a battle to tamp down antisemitism, and criticism of Israel, and this, rather than the sober scholarship on both these issues, has a notable incidence on the way many editors argue and interact on I/P talk pages.
  • Since I don't read AE/ANI etc discussions, I can only generalize from my own experience of being reported. And that is, for some time, calling for sanctions on ever more flimsy evidence seems to be easier than it used to be, and the core of such reports concerns a putative failure to conform to the wiki code for civility. Uncivil behaviour is not arguing at length, and reverting, without significant RS evidence to support your view. It is not reverting out of left field while ignoring the talk page. It is not refusing to acknowledge the weight of evidence. 'Incivility' is just saying something, even one phrase, which offends or can be construed to offend another person's self-esteem, sensitivity or right to feel comfortable as an editor.
  • Every editor has a block log, and every edit (thank the tetragrammaton or his human avatar Mr Wales) is scrupulously conserved on servers. When a report is made, the ancient history of an editor's behaviour, as it has been crystallized at AE/ANI, is summed up in that log. In recent reports,a single diff is enough to draw the administrator's attention to a possible issue, while the weight of evidence is pegged on citing the block log. No one, I think checks to verify how each verdict in a blocklog was reached. A decision was made, and it represents some community judgment that has force as an ascertained fact. Several notes on the block log constitute a profile of the frailties of any indicted editor, as confirmed in the past, and these are often used to amplify what is barely discernible in the otherwise paltry evidence of a contemporary complaint. That is how this weaponization is developing: exploiting the most rigorous reading of 'civility' I'll take apart the way Icebear244 uses it.
  • The complaint is two diffs, with no 1R infraction, or any careless language other than an allusion to the group of 7's scarce familiarity with the topic and the IP area.
  • The real thrust comes from citing 5 previous sanctions corroborating the theory that I am a congenital harasser given to personal attacks.
  • (1) Drsmoo’s 2024 case against my using one phrase as evidence I was a Hitler-mouthing antisemite. That insulting claim was turned down, but the closing editor reminded me not to use 'inflammatory language'. The term used is not intrinsically infammatory, but is, unknown to me, regarded as such in certain circles because apparently it is also used by antisemitic guttersnipes on social forums, of which I have no knowledge.
  • (2) Consists of citing the fact that five years earlier in 2019 Sandstein had permabanned me from AE for calling Icewhiz’s views ‘extremist’, without providing evidence.’) True.
But, Sandstein was wrong. because I did in that thread provide very strong evidence for making that judgment, with a diff that shows Icewhiz affirming that Bezalel Smotrich (see here) and [Rehavam Ze'evi] (see here) have opposed the occupation throughout their careers.
  • That statement was blatantly false, and patently ludicrous in its boldly contrafactual nature, because the whole world knows that these two extremists vigorously militate(d) against Palestinians' right to their land, and advocated thorough settlement of it.
  • If an admin is unfamiliar with the full story of the names mentioned in a diff, the parsing of the language of the diff being the only evidence to be considered, then misreading them will all too easily lead to false conclusions, as it did there.
  • I’m sure Sandstein read that diff with his due diligence. But he apparently did not go beyond reading it by doing the further legwork to familiarize himself with the public statements of those two, nor with the real anti-occupation figures Icewhiz described as on the fringes of the Israeli radical left. .I.e. David Dean Shulman, Baruch Kimmerling, Zeev Sternhell, Ronit Lentin, Yehuda Elkana, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Avraham Burg, Uri Avnery. Apart from Lentin, they are all (click and see) Zionist centrists, men of moderation. If Icewhiz could have made such an extreme caricature in branding moderate scholars as on 'the fringes of the Israeli radical left', that judgment strongly suggests that it came from someone whose judgment confounds Zionist liberals of high distinction and moderate politics with fringe extremism on the grounds they are critical of their government's abuses against Palestinians.
  • And it was unquestionably extremist to assert that people who promote(d) full scale settlement of the WB and call for the expulsion of millions of Palestinians are ‘against the occupation’. They were or are publicly famous for being against the Palestinian occupation of their own lands.
  • I remember thinking something like, it must be exhausting being an admin. He doesn't know the topic, but just evaluates diffs at face value. I didn't appeal the judgment, as always, on principle.
  • (3) Cites Sir Joseph’s complaint in 2017 which consists of just one diff of me reverting the plaintiff, who maintained that an incident of 4 israelis throwing a stun grenade into two Palestinian women’s apartment in Petah Tikva to drive them out of the suburb did not qualify as an I/P related news item! My explanation of improper unmotivated teamtagging was deemed not convincing because the teamtaggers had consensus. Apparently, I learnt, 1R had been qualified to add that "Editors are required to obtain consensus through discussion before restoring a reverted edit". So, and this is reasonable, I was given a 24 hour block (it was noted I hadn’t been blocked for 4 years, i.e. since 2013).
  • I've never complained or taken the trouble to clarify these elements in my notorious blocklog. Wikipedia is an immensely complex organism, and individuals whingeing about what they see as screwups and injustices waste everyone's time, including their own. The principle should be mostly, 'wear it' as just an unfortunate error and sit out the penalty.
  • I've been loose-tongued several times in 18 years, but these cases don't illustrate it. On my block log (4, from 2013) and (5, from 2009) register blocks for incivility when all that happened on each occasion was a private joke among wikifriends, and were immediately overturned. (3, from 2017) is a one day block for reverting against a consensus that throwing stun grenades inside a Palestinian home in Israel was not an I/P issue. (2) is a permaban from AE based on an admin's judgment that I gave no proof to an assertion of extremism, when I thought I had. (1, from 2024) consists of a case based on a single diff, where I was accused of being a Hitler-type antisemite, a case dismissed, with a warning to be more careful about the use of language which had led the plaitiff to make that otherwise wild inference.
  • No admin can be expected to have at their fingertips the inside story of every element in a blocklog. Fuckups, like the above, are inevitable. And we just have to put up with them because there is no remedy. And ultimately, in the big picture, irrelevant to what we should be doing, i.e. reading books and articles, and adding essential information to wikipedia.Nishidani (talk) 20:49, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
You're quite right. I TLDR'ed after the first few points. What on earth is the point of getting annoyed by editors on Wikipedia? Especially when you know some of them value their country right or wrong far more than they do Wikipedia and think they will serve it by doing you down? Haven't you seen the cartoons On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog or Duty calls? NadVolum (talk) 10:15, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
Well, I haven't kicked the lifetime habit of reading 100-200 pages a day on average, so I am constantly tickled by surprise to see complaints about reading something that may require as long as five minutes of concentration (newspaper article now supply a reading time-length to readers who like rabbits like racing against the clock of personal time consumption). I know that the digital world loves clips, snippets, takeaways, abstracts (most of the quotes in our complex genetics papers appear to be excerpted from two paragraphs in the abstracts), sound bites, and that man's Attention span is shortening, except in the case of playing online games for several hours a day. Unfortunately I had my tertiary education under men who could recite by heart large stretches of Homer (just as my traditionalist uncle knew the whole of the German original of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason by rote; who could, offhand in a class improvise a lecture on Heian dress codes providing one with a dozen archaic terms that supplemented the one old word for a garment in a given text; who could, when I was puzzled by a simple Greek grammar book's entry on negatives, reply:'Yes, the text is flawed. That problem was clarified by so and so (perhaps Denniston?) in an article in Classical Quarterly in 1948; who could sit down and decipher cryptic Sino-Japanese private banking documents when bewildered Japanese scholars flew down to ask him for help etc.etc. These were not exceptional people: they drank beer, played cricket, watched football and told jokes like the rest of us. They were just bright men and women passionate about the subject they had mastered and had been raised in a world where extended concentration was not only a prerequisite for teaching at a tertiary level, but a form of existential pleasure.
Can an encyclopedia be composed by speed readers clipping googled 'info' rather than spending an hour or two on just scrutinizing the available information to make just one edit on a marginal page? Perhaps. The ancillary devices of A1 etc., can be programmed to read, sift, digest and compose an article on anything in five minutes or less, and people like me will join the dinosaurs, while lingering the while as croaking (in both senses) fossils in nascituro. In the meantime, if I am smeared as a congenital bully as part of the ephemeral flow of gossip, I am not too prepossessed with some urgent need to defend myself before others (even if obliged to do so here) but from scruple I prefer to delve into all of the details that are lost to a history of behaviour in diffs (short attention span stuff potentially) to reassess the merits as impersonally as I can, and set the record straight at least for myself. None of us can understand ourselves completely (the traps of amour-propre are infinite), let alone others. But what others say about oneself can, at times, jolt one's complacent self-regard positively. Hence the archaeology above, when doubts arise. The Persian poet Rumi once wrote:Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I have begun to change myself. There, I answered your TLDR beef with another pastiche of similar unreadability. But, I retain some rights to do so, on my own page. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 12:45, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
And, my friend, if I cared a rat's rectum about some misbegotten idea that writing for wikipedia would secure me recognition and credit, I wouldn't have happily spent 18 years volunteering to work for this encyclopedia anonymously. I would have written several books and been paid for it, and junketed around with paid-up conferencing. I simply figured that the global re-public doesn't read scholarship, that academic works are lucky to sell 500 copies a year and are mainly perused by fellow specialists in any given field, and that therefore helping to bridge the yawning gap between the general communities of the world and the small, intense enclaves of cutting edge scholarship was a stimulating way to spend retirement, which had the collateral benefit of learning more for my own self-instruction.Nishidani (talk) 13:20, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
I did read this, although it is long enough that I can't guarantee I'll pass the quiz. My original plan was to let things lie, but with the AtG imbroglio so topical right now I figured I'd stop in and share a bit of my thinking about this.
You're on a similar path as those charted out by many editors before you, e.g. Eric Corbett, BrownHairedGirl, and AndyTheGrump. You clearly understand that your manner and communication style can rub people the wrong way and create unnecessary conflict. It's obvious to everyone who's spent more than a moment or two on Wikipedia that there is no clear line on civility, and a lot of disagreement in how sub-par communication, personal attacks, uncivil comments, and whatever other categories you might slot shit into should be handled.
A problem arises once the ball gets rolling. Even if, as you maintain above, only one of the earlier sanctions were warranted some part of the community agreed that they were. When the behavior keeps recurring it creates a feedback loop of drama, which is itself disruptive. It draws people in to comment and makes what should have been in your case a short trip to AE with the filer taken care of into a many-days-long slog of arguing. As the ball keeps rolling more and more people get exasperated with the drama it causes, and even though your individual "violations" aren't severe, a larger and larger group starts wondering why you won't just knock it off and save everyone the trouble.
This is why there is a 1.5 tomats discussion at ANI about AtG and Lb right now, and so many calls for sanctions, up to and including indefs/cbans. No one has argued that AtG's positions are incorrect, but they just want them to knock it off. What eventually happens is either there gets to be a large enough group who is irked about something or the dice come up bad for you at a trip to a noticeboard. Then the community spends more dozens of editor hours dinking around about some shit that never should have gotten to that point.
My intention with most of my AE actions and arguments is to:
  • Stop troublesome behavior before it becomes something that needs an indefinite remedy
  • Prevent enormous spiraling drama fests that waste everyone's time by addressing issues before they reach that point
Obviously things don't always work out that way and, despite what I tell my wife, I'm not perfect. What I don't want to see is a 40,000 word ANI report that ends up with you CBANNED because you yet again got a bit uncouth, snippy, grumpy, or just had a bad day and went a little further than you normally would. That's a recurring theme here on Wikipedia, and it would be great if it didn't happen.
As for the Arbcom thing, that's to look at the larger issues that AE isn't equipped to handle. Multi-party disputes, sock farms, off-wiki coordination, and the like. That, with the fact that all of the reports on established editors involve long-term patterns and other long-term editors means that it should really be looked at in a larger scale than AE provides. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 17:49, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
It's extremely rare for me to have a general interest in wiki, to be familiar with all of the forums for general discussion, and with ANI/AE cases other than those I have been dragged into. I see some mention of off-wiki sites etc., (WPO's meaning escapes me) generating huge discussion. I have never read them. I am amazed at the people who have the energy and time to familiarize themselves with these things, a familiarity which is certainly needed by the relevant admins and experts, but which, since I am incapable of getting enthusiastic about reading up on such topics, I have a close to total ignorance. I can recognize two of the three names you mention, Eric Corbett, BrownHairedGirl, and AndyTheGrump, namely, the last two, but that is only name recognition - though I have several times seen ATG's work by casually editing the same page. Not more. I marvel at the ability of so many editors to use the large range of software to find patterns in editors' behaviour. I don't know how it works: if I am forced to cite diffs from years back, just fishing up several takes four or five hours, by a combination of memory, and then hunting up a page's edit history. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever who Eric Corbett is or what his edit record is, and what he was banned for, and can't even recall ever seeing an edit by BrownHairedGirl. So these allusions only tell me there is an assumption I am a full participant in a broad wikipedia community where everyone more or less follows the ups and downs of policy and all notable editors who get into trouble. I realize that I work in a very small area, writing articles on subjects that catch my whimsy, mostly alone, or otherwise, keeping a close eye on the I/P articles. But that's it. I don't even study policy - and can only admire exchanges by experts on these obscure things when I note Nableezy, Levivich, yourself and others raising them on the pages I've bookmarked. I'll leave it at that: otherwise I'd let myself launch into another TLDR screed that would implicitly steal up on your own time and interests, whingeing for attention, something I find repugnant. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 21:58, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
TLDR mark 2. Finally, judgment on wikipedia tends to get more subjective the more intricately complex the rules become, and this is particularly true of the increasingly cited 'civility' clauses. I won't argue formally against the, to me curious, impression that I do have a bullying, battleground mentality streak that, you suggest, now borders on turning a snowball into a running streak towards an avalanche. I'll just give an anecdote, more readable if less, to many minds, less convincing. There are many cultures, each with its own code, and I'll compare just one other to our wikiworld's modus vivendi (or morendi).
Of the several distinct groups who, together or at different times, gather for morning coffee, at the bar where I breakfast, the largest consists of a retired priest, Don A., and several to ten of his elderly parishioners. Several of them are his childhood friends. They are poor, and he generously pays for their daily cups of coffee when they sit and bat the breeze.
I always read there, but occasionally rest my eyes, and cock an ear to their nearby banter. Several months ago, there was some light joshing about a new entry, quite well-off, paying for at least a round (No. She insisted the priest keep paying). I reflected, and, after some minutes, got up, went inside the bar, and paid for the priest and his guests, telling the bar maid to keep my gesture anonymous. Priests' pensions are not substantial.
Well, as I keep learning, word always gets out in small worlds like a town quarter. Every day since then when I drop in and sit at my table, I'm greeted by all and sundry or some nod comes my way from occasional blowins. One of the group offers the priest assistance as a chauffeur, and drives him home each time. He is vociferously religious, to the point of even remonstrating with the old priest on points of doctrine, about which he knows nothing. A bit annoying, but his rants are tolerated, as is proper.He often mentioned that he'd been taken up in the arms of Christ and cuddled six years ago, a transformative fantasy which drives him towards an intolerant anger with the way the world lapses from the 'Church'.
Some months afterwards, word got to me that the day before, he'd treated the woman of the bar, and her barmaids, with extreme rudeness in an outburst, upsetting them and, it emerged, this was becoming a problem. A week down the line, I happened to be nearby when he started to harangue the group about the horrible sexual temptations the mere existence of women caused. As I got up to leave, I stopped, tapped him on the shoulder, and said:'Like most intemporate fanatics, you don't know much about religion. Go and read John, chapter 8, if you have the Gospels at home, which I doubt, and think over what Jesus said about women sentenced to delapidation. You're not a Catholic but a brow-beating Pharisee.' Well, he exploded in a fulminating rage. I heard him out, turned, and said, Go and get fucked, you dopey prick. You're a sanctimonious hypocrite. He was stunned into silence, humiliated. I could hear a murmur of agreement with my peremptory judgment - the group could never allow itself out of friendship and respect for the priest (though he on occasion has dropped a 'get fucked' phrase in his more secular moments), to speak like that - as I strode off.
The next day, I made up my mind, not to retract, but to apologize for the harshness of my words. The same group was there. he had his back to me as I walked over to my table. The priest nodded my way, greeting me by my first name. I touched the ranter's shoulder, who jumped when he caught my gaze, and said, 'I'm sorry about yesterday. Whether my intemperance was deserved or not is one thing. But humiliating someone, rather than taking them aside for a private word, was unfair.' We have been, since that moment, on very good terms and he doesn't rant as often, at least when I'm around, though he won't change, nor will I. I'd say I've broken my usual silence at the bar three times in several years, to make some vehement point. (On another occasion against a loud-mouthed but very decent drunkard I'd befriended who then used our familiarity to interrupt and dominate conversations I was having with one or two other groups, etc. The others thanked me, and my tipsy acquaintance became more careful, and a real friend, accepted as such by the group he had annoyed)
In wikipedia's distinctive culture, those three incidents could be noted over time, in a file, and be reported, when the opportunity presented itself, in order to request my ostracism as a congenitally uncivil person with a bullying disruptive attitude that intimidates other editors. Nothing off the particular circumstances, their rarity and exceptionality, would be relevant. A long discussion would erupt citing the words used in the three cases, and whatever judgment of exculpation, dismissal or of temporary suspension was registered on each occasion, the log would underline them as a behavioural pattern. Every report, however frivolous, would fall under the shadow of that exiguous complaint list. The obverse reality, most of the editing story - the 99% of one's work of laborious discussion conducted with source-richness and flat logical arguments, would disappear as irrelevant, not a significant pattern compared to the one detected in the rare exceptions. The way opportunism jumps at 'civility' to question my bona fides or underwrite the thesis that I am a '(inter) net negative' is, I think, evident. Regards Nishidani (talk) 16:11, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

To close this, I see I overlooked just one further part of my block log mentioned by Red-tailed hawk. Here's what happened.

The page was Zeitoun killings, where the IDF confined the Samouni family in their home and subsequently blew it up with missiles, killing 48 family members.

The source said the IDF had struck an area from which Hamas militants were firing, and witnesses said those rockets were launched a mile away from the homestead. A team of editors insisted on retaining 'in the vicinity' and erasing 'a mile away' in order apparently to have the IDF spokesman's version (we were reacting to a Hamas threat from that home's vicinity) prevail. I broke 1R and was duly reported. I immediately admitted that indeed I had violated IR, inadvertently, and would either self-suspend for a month or accept any sanction admins thought appropriate. What I couldn't do was avoid a sanction by restoring the source-falsifying edit. That would mean to get myself off I would be ready to restore false information to a wiki page. So justly, I was suspended for a month. No one was insulted. There was no incivility. The diff shows I had edit-warred on one page in 2012, admitted as much, and accepted without protest the sanction due. If that can be construed as proof of some congenital 'battleground mentality' characteristic of 18 years, well. . . Nishidani (talk) 21:21, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

a liittle crabby, that's the summary Selfstudier (talk) 21:43, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
My Aussie ear tells me I should scratch my knackerbag then:) or drop in on a chancre mechanic for a check-up downbelow, or downundies.:) Seriously, 'crabby' is spot-on. (Tryptofish) now suggest that 'snottiness'/the quality of being 'annoyingly or spitefully unpleasant(MW).' fits my attitude to editors who disagree with me). I would add 'crabbed' as well, for the earful of constipated elucubration I at times toss at editors. I sometimes wish I could write as I think, in the old dialect of Strine, which is extremely colourful in its comic hyperbole and brio for larriken chiakking/sledging all in the spirit of bonhomie. Unfortunately, only bogans speak or understand it now (I favour their company when I go to Australia), so I have to do daily exercises in pruning my tongue, and brownnosing the OED to write out something that is neither offensive nor risqué but addresses some point or other in a rationale idiom.Nishidani (talk) 22:18, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
  • bogans are 'uncouth' but they are not 'lower class' as I see dictionaries assert. Most I know, being tradesmen (tradies), are millionaires, but refuse to bang on tone as though they had made it into the middle class. The sort of blokes who, if a mate's short, pull out a wad and offer to patch up the short-fall by an interest free loan of $10,000 bucks.Nishidani (talk) 22:23, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Taxing Israeli Palestinians to pay for the genocide of their kin.

  • The government is also attempting to cut the very budgets dedicated to the development of Palestinian citizens. The war is estimated to have cost Israel nearly $60 billion in the first three months — an expense so extreme that the Moody’s rating agency recently downgraded Israel’s credit rating.In an effort to minimize further economic damage, Israel has increased its deficit and is pushing major budget cuts through parliament. These include cuts across the board, but the board isn’t flat. Reductions to funding directed to Palestinian citizens are slated to be three times higher than the rest — 15 percent compared with 5 percent. Through these budget cuts the Palestinians in Israel are effectively paying a disproportionate cost of the war against fellow Palestinians. Raghad Jaraisy and Ofer Dagan, A Special Anguish Among Palestinian Citizens of Israel New York Times 23 February 2024

Your kind of read

This piece is an interesting conceptual voyage that immediate got me thinking of your learned self. I suspect it is likely to contain something of interest for most people in its currents. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks indeed for that excellent essay link,Iskander. I speedread it given circs butwill have to eventually print it out to make a more comprehensive study of it.CheersNishidani (talk) 02:45, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
I've often mentioned over the years the sense of deja vu this particular conflict invariably induces in someone like myself,coming from an Irish background. I now see Mark Levene has set forth the striking analogies in his'Words matter, lives matter more' in Journal of Genocide Research. Sorry I can't provide you with a link from this laptop which does not seem to allow me to copy and paste. It's not coincidental that the Irgun learnt from the IRA, the only difference being the Irgun were the colonial invaders whereas the IRA, like Hamas, were indigenousNishidani (talk) 13:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC).
Didier Fassin,The Rhetoric of Denial: Contribution to an Archive of the Debate about Mass Violence in Gaza, Journal of Genocide Research, (5 February 2024) referring to the German genocide of the Herero, analyses its three stages, and argues for a similar three phases in the Israeli genocide/ethnocide of the Palestinian people.Nishidani (talk) 12:41, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Despite the shared diasporic experience, there was one important difference. The Jews developed their communal life around the synagogue, and the attendant privileging of abstemious scholarship as the primrose path to survival in partibus infidelium. The Irish expatriate communities pinioned their fellowship around the institution of the pub where mastery in yarning and inventing improbable stories, given that no on felt there was much point in remembering the grief of dispossession, helped one's rise on the social ladder,(until one felloff it, pissed as a newt).Nishidani (talk) 08:07, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
Despite trying desperately hard to retire, much like Finkelstein, you've been dragged back into the fray haven't you? Part inability to keep one's eyes off the news with all the historical echoes bouncing around the brain, and part, presumably, that slightly addictive element that Wikipedia has to it for certain personalities when they espy errancy. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:57, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
Mentioning some minor kibitzer like me in the same breath as Finkelstein only diminishes the latter while grotesquely inflating myself. I don't actually follow the 'news' since there is little that is new in the recurring recitation of the same memes about this conflict - it is newsworthy if an Israeli is taken hostage or killed, and each gets massive personalised coverage: it is not newsworthy if day after day children and youths, so far 116 individual cases, are shot dead by Israeli snipers from a safe distance in the West Bank. Apparently the several thousand WB Palestinians whose families have seen the disappearance into the holding pens of the IDF's carceral system of administrative detention, don't experience the kind of noteworthy grief the families of those taken hostage in Gaza undergo, though in essence we are dealing with the same issue - holding a people hostage. Fortunately, the net does allow one to go beyond this skewing travesty with all its racist assumptions about significant human beings, versus those troublesome others. That is why students, who have no yet been socialized into the cognitivce status quo because they are adept at exploring topic far more broadly that their parents who just absorb mainstreamlined news, are one of the few bodies exhibiting residual signs of life in a deadening and deadly, lethally deadly world. And, in its own distinctive manner, wikipedia's design, and its, until now at least, relative immunity to lobbied or sentimental selectiveness of the facts, has a role of honour, and if helping it is taxing, it is a tithing of our increasingly short time well worth paying-Nishidani (talk) 08:21, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
The books are beginning to drop. [6] Iskandar323 (talk) 04:59, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip-off. I'll order the original Enzo Traverso, Gaza davanti alla storia, Laterza, from the superefficient girls at my local newsagent's, and should have it within days. But I have a dozen novels loaned to me by a friend on the fictional Neapolitan detective Ricciardi, excellent cop stories set in Naples under fascism written by Maurizio de Giovanni (perhaps taking a leaf out of Philip Kerr's masterly novels about a German detective, Bernie Gunther under Nazism) - I got hooked by reading a minor masterpiece - All Souls' Day, not translated unfortunately. So won't have time to tackle it till early August. Yes, I would expect that there is something of the beginnings of a paradigm shift, long in the works, but now precipitating, caused by the snowball effect of legal events, the insanity in Gaza/Israel, and the internal crisis in Zionism crystallising under Netanyahu's administration. It will take years to work itself into the mainstream, as scholarship always does, however. I've had reservations about one or two of Traverso's articles in the past, which is normal - that is what serious reading is about- but this looks stimulating. Grazie Nishidani (talk) 08:16, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

RIP

  • Hind Rajab, age 6. On the 29 January, 2024, 7 members of a family, Hind's four cousins and her aunt and uncle, were warned by an Israeli alert to evacuate before further bombing of their once affluent Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood. To get round a collapsed high-rise, they had to drive north first to exit the area before moving south. Their Kia Picanto encountered Merkava tanks. Some time later, Hind's 15 year old cousin Layan Hamada rang the Palestinian Red Crescent, saying that apart from herself and Hind, all other members of the family had been shot dead, and pleaded for help. They were near a tank. Her voice cuts off, and, for 6 seconds on the audio a total of 64 gunshots can be heard, a volume compatible with an M4 assault rifle or a Merkava FN MAG machine gun. The surviving girl, Hind, managed to keep contact by phone. An ambulance was dispatched. Two weeks later, the ambulance and the bodies of its two medics wre found next to the Kia Picanto, which had been riddled by 355 bullets. Hind's body was also found. On the ambulance audio tape, at 6pm, just as they communicate that they had finally sighted the car (50 metres away), an explosion is heard, and they too were blown up. Hind's father hadn't formed part of the evacuees. He was killed in June. A study by Forensic Architecture suggests that the tank which fired must have been located within a distance of 13–23 metres from the Kia Picanto. The ambulance itself was probable struck by a High Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose-Tracer round. (The Killing of Hind Rajab, Forensic Architecture 21 June 2024; Vijay Prashad, 'The Unbelievable Stories About the Children of Gaza,' CounterPunch 5 July 2024)
  • Elisha Ben Kimon,Palestinian convert to Judaism fatally shot in West Bank Ynet 21 March 2024 Nishidani (talk) 13:51, 21 March 2024 (UTC) The grandfather, Eid al Zaitoun, had saved 25 Jews from the 1929 Hebron massacre. The grandson converted to Judaism, and was shot to death by IDF soldiers at a Gush Etzion busstop after a knife was found in his baggage.Nishidani (talk) 13:57, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

The point is, that on-the-spot judgment of intent to kill (against all the probabilities) warranting the child's murder. The ICJ is to deliberate on whether Israel has an intent to commit the genocide (or whether it is just an unintended consequence of the war) which, by any reckoning, is taking place. The massive evidence will be equivocated and pettifogged to death to deny the charge, because intent is hard to prove legally, as opposed to it being easy to establish when a child lights a firecracker in the vicinity of IDF troops.Nishidani (talk) 13:34, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Neil. For 9 months, as I watch the videos of those streets and their straggling, pingponged people, I can't help focusing on the donkeys, heads bowed, pulling carts, and I feel rather like those Africans who were shown a film by a foreign instructor on how to avoid unsanitary conditions, stagnant water etc. In the follow-up questionnaire, asked to describe their impressions (i.e. what had they learnt), they all leapt up and cried:'The chickens!!' (which the Western medicos and film crew hadn't even realized had been fleetingly captured in the film. Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy 1962 p.41) I'm rather embarrassed by this, looking beyond the human tragedy, at the lowest on the rung, toiling on scraps without a murmurn under the inhumane orchestra of bombs dropped by cool technicians doing their day's job, and then going home to enjoy the beaches at Tel Aviv. I'm tempted to write something like that poem about it, but the task beats me.Nishidani (talk) 12:03, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Germany's Betätigungsverbot and banning of free speech re Palestine

  • The growing frequency of Germany police crackdowns on any form of manifesting solidarity for, or even publicly discussing, the issues of Israel's treatment of Palestinians suggests there might be an article covering this recent phenomenon. Slavoj Žižek described with exasperation the state of the German crackdown by saying that one is almost at risk of being arrested there if you repeat statements critical of Israeli policies made by the former heads of Shin Bet, 1.03 minutes into the youtube presentation of Deluge: Gaza and Israel From Crisis to Catastrophe'.The chapter by Colter Louwerse apparently contained a detail archival reconstruction of the diplomatic prelude to Operation Cast Lead (Hamas had in this interpretation, consistently sought a return to the status quo ante ceasefire (which Israel had broken) It should become when available a resource for the background on that article. On Dec 27, 11:30 in a fews minutes Israel dropped 100 tons of bombs on Gaza killing 300 people. He compares that to 7 October.Nishidani (talk) 16:59, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
  • (2) The situation is even more drastic in Israel, as we learn with greater detail, thanks also to a courageous letter cowritten by our fellow wikipedian Shira Klein in Haaretz (Shira Klein and Lior Sternfeld, Students Are at the Forefront of Israeli McCarthyism (Instead of taking on the role of resistance, rebellion,and challenging conventions – as students do in other countries – in Israel, the students are leading the censorship enterprise Haaretz 17 April 2024)

The two cases, together with several notable instances of extreme pressure in the US academies to break with tradition and muzzle dissent over what is being permitted in Gaza, suggest that we need an article on the phenomenon, something along the lines of "(Neo-)McCarthyism in the Hamas Israel war", enabled I believe by the toxic influence of the soi-disant International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition (a political construct) on the political imagination these last decades in its parlous subtextual conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism/criticism of Israel's human rights record.Nishidani (talk) 15:32, 19 April 2024 (UTC) On the conflation or distinction there was an interesting clash between Paolo Mieli, one of Italy's foremost popular historians, and the art historian Tomaso Montanari on La7. Mieli could not imagine that anti-Zionism might not be antisemitic as opposed to Montanari who vigorously defended the necessity of distinguishing the two. Mieli narrowly defined anti-Zionism as a denial of the right of Jews to national self-determination, a recourse to the default language.*(note) Anti-Zionism (as opposed to anti-Israelism, which is inherently antisemitic) in the broad acceptance arguably consists in a critique of Zionism as an ideology which in practice denies the rights of Palestinians to self-determination and a state of their own.Nishidani (talk) 15:33, 19 April 2024 (UTC) *note. On this meme see Peter Beinart'a sensible deconstruction, There Is No Right to a State Jewish Currents 27 January 2021.

What is the likely international response to warrants being issued? Israel and its supporters will react furiously. Most consequentially, the US Republican party will pursue sanctions against members of the ICC. Such sanctions were imposed by the Trump administration, and a group of a dozen Republican senators wrote a letter to Khan earlier this month warning his office: “Target Israel and we will target you.” Julian Borger, 'Will the ICC approve arrest warrants for Israel and Hamas leaders?,' The Guardian 20 May 2024

Another example of the most extraordinary things being reported without an eyebrow raised, or eliciting a storm of controversy. The letter in question was apparently sent some three weeks ago without a stir, and I for one never noted any coverage, until today as his decision was rendered public. A political party is making a direct public threat to the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan that he will be directly sanctioned by a state if he performs his duties as a prosecutor without fear or favour.Nishidani (talk) 16:37, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

It is also expected that Israel will encourage US Republicans to reimpose sanctions on ICC officials, and urge ICC-signatory allies to pressure the court into preventing warrants from being issued.' Bethan McKernan, Israel calls on ‘civilised nations’ to boycott ICC arrest warrants against its leaders The Guardian 21 May 2024.

I.e. Another undisguised public admission, the politicization of the rule of law, that it is now legitimate to form a pressure group/lobby for the purpose of threatening or impeding one of the highest independent judicial bodies in the 'civilised' world from carrying out its functions in terms of what international law stipulates, regardless of the fallout.Nishidani (talk) 16:48, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Since revoked after wave of outrage.
The most lucid voice in the panicky shouting over the ICC's arrest warrant case for both Israeli and Hamas leaders.Kenneth Roth, 'Why is the West defending Israel after the ICC’s request for Netanyahu’s arrest warrant?,' The Guardian 21 May 2024
See now Chip Gibbons,US surveillance of pro-Palestinian speech has a direct line to McCarthyism The Guardian 22 May 2024 Nishidani (talk) 09:05, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Now that we have massive evidence of (a) the breaking of the First Amendment clause re free speech with (b) massive clampdowns on student protests (c) the arrest or forced resignation of academics and others in the US and Israeli for expressing their views (d) the extension of these practices to Europe (e) the close of Al Jazeera in Gaza/Israel and the seizure of Associated Press equipment allowing a glimpse of the actual war, and (e) mainstream documentation of the heavy financial threats of defunding of universities or political campaigns which express criticism of Israel an article along the lines of Censorship in the 2023-2024 Israeli-Gaza War seems almost obligatory, if it doesn't already exist. Nishidani (talk) 16:31, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

This does not strictly fall within the parameters of clamping down on dissent. Rather, the obverse: coopting Gazans as 'collaborators', by threatening them with certain death if they do not comply, by directly informing the Hamas authorities that they have, for whatever reason, putatively, been forced to 'spy' for Israel (you can be denied treatment for cancer etc., which often requires permission to enter Israel, unless you reply to Israeli requests for information about your neighbours etc.) Nishidani (talk) 14:03, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

  • “The wave of anti-Israel feeling that is engulfing large numbers of people in the Western world has emerged not merely from the Gaza war, with its unbearable civilian casualties and now mass starvation. What that wave reflects, more profoundly, is the justified disgust with the ongoing occupation, its seemingly eternal and ever more brutal continuation, and the policies of massive theft and apartheid that are its very essence.” David Shulman, Israel: The Way Out, New York Review of Books May 9, 2024

  • This however would fall within the ambit of the article suggested, i.e.

In 2023, the Israeli military censor barred the publication of 613 articles by media outlets in Israel, setting a new record for the period since . .2011. The censor also redacted parts of a further 2,703 articles, representing the highest figure since 2014. In all, the military prevented information from being made public an average of nine times a day. . . These regulations allow the censor to fully or partially redact articles submitted to it, as well as those already published without its review. No other self-proclaimed “Western democracy” operates a similar institution. . . media outlets are prohibited from revealing the censor’s interference — by marking where an article has been redacted, for instance — which leaves most of its activity in the shadows.' Haggai Matar, Israeli military censor bans highest number of articles in over a decade +972 magazine 20 May 2024

Thanks to Haaretz we now have a specific example of what the military censor redacts in those thousands of articles. This is what they were permitted to print of the scandalous case of arbitrary detention of Bassem Tamimi:Jonathan Pollak, Israel's Cause for Detention: ████ ██ █████ Haaretz 29 May 2024.
  • So would this, a report on the punitive self-reflection 'assignments' students at New York University are expected to do for being morally upset to the point of protest that 46,000 people have been killed (36,000+10,000 missing) and over 80,000 injured in Gaza.

The assignments include a five- to six-page “reflection paper” to be written by students in a specified font, with prompts like “what have you done or need still to do to make things right?” Students are asked to list “who was affected by the incident” that led to the disciplinary action, including “society as a whole” and “property.” Other student protesters are being required to complete modules in a 49-page "Ethos Integrity Series" that seeks to teach them about “moral reasoning” and “ethical decision-making.” They must rank a list of 42 values, including patriotism, family, and security and safety, in order of importance to them. . . Students are also directed to read the Wikipedia page for the Bible’s Ten Commandments and watch the “Lisa Gets An A” episode from “The Simpsons,” in which Lisa cheats on an exam. NYU spokesperson John Beckman did not answer specific questions about the assignments but said in a statement: “Reflecting on the consequences of your actions is a vital lesson, which is why educational assignments in student discipline cases are common throughout higher education. These kinds of sanctions, which ask students to think about the impact of the choices they're making, are often in lieu of suspension.”Matt Katz, [7] Gothamist 15 May 2024

Beckman and his ilk are too young to recall the Red Guards' 'struggle (批鬭 pīdòu ) sessions', of which this assignment remedy is a distant, individualistic descendant, where people were hauled in to engage in a public confession of their thought crimes and behavioural deviations, as expressed in dissent from Maoism. The fact that a wiki biblical article is cited as a 'must read' piece for student ethics should be mentioned in the appropriate wiki article on mentions of this encyclopedia in the news, wherever it is. Nishidani (talk) 11:53, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

I.e. if you are not loyal to Israel, you may not represent the United States, but

I.e.It is antisemitic to suggest American Jewish citizens (AIPAC members above for example) might be more loyal to Israel than to the United States. Nishidani (talk) 22:46, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

  • (1) Reports of a Mossad chief's direct personal threats to the former ICC prosecutor to get her to drop investigations perhaps also enter into a future article on the silencing of protests. Fatou Bensouda, and her family was reportedly directed threatened by the then Mossad director Yossi Cohen in an attempt to dissuade her from opening war crime inquiries against Israel. (Harry Davies,Revealed: Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry The Guardian 28 May 2024:'According to accounts shared with ICC officials, he is alleged to have told her: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family. . .The Mossad also took a keen interest in Bensouda’s family members and obtained transcripts of secret recordings of her husband, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation. Israeli officials then attempted to use the material to discredit the prosecutor. . .According to legal experts and former ICC officials, efforts by the Mossad to threaten or put pressure on Bensouda could amount to offences against the administration of justice under article 70 of the Rome statute, the treaty that established the court.'

The original investigative source is Yuval Abraham and Meron Rapoport, Surveillance and interference: Israel’s covert war on the ICC exposed +972 magazine 28 May 2024

I look forward to Israel or the US Republicans having a crack at Khan under the next UK government. That will end well for everybody... Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:58, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
Is there anything to look forward to in this grotty little world where even doing one's job can result in punitive sanctions? Certainly, in terms of the higher comedy of farce, US Republicans taking over the UK government itself would make those like me, nostalgic for Monty Python episodes, tickle with delight, whether or not they snooked a cock or two at Khan or tried to kick his can.:)Nishidani (talk) 14:09, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
  • (This under manipulation of government research conclusions to assert they state what the experts writing them deny is the case)

Julian Borger, state department report absolving Israel on Gaza aid is false, says ex-official The Guardian 30 May 2024 According to Stacy Gilbert, senior civil military adviser in the state department’s bureau of population, refugees and migration (one of 9 State Department officials who have resigned in protest against Biden’s policies, and who had resigned her post), the state department report earlier this month absolving Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza was “patently false” and went against the consensus of department’s experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week. . . Even more controversially, the report said the state department did not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance” in Gaza. It was a high-stakes judgment because under a clause in the Foreign Assistance Act, the US would be obliged to cut arms sales and security assistance to any country found to have blocked delivery of US aid. Gilbert, a 20-year veteran of the state department who has worked in several war zones, said that report’s conclusion went against the overwhelming view of state department experts who were consulted on the report.'Nishidani (talk) 20:36, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

In other words, she is saying the Biden administration lied about its own internal conclusions in order to continue to break the law stipulating that countries which block humanitarian aid cannot be the beneficiaries of US arms sales. Nishidani (talk) 20:41, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
The article is Rabea Eghbariah, The Ongoing Nakba: Toward a Legal Framework for Palestine N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change vol.48, 2024
Eghbariah is a Harvard doctoral candidate. I personally don't think the article passes muster for a law journal where one expects technical analysis, but that is not the point.Nishidani (talk) 16:49, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Book burning, which we associate with Nazi Germany, is a form of control by cancelling the founts of historic memory. Ergo this might be included.

    Recently, Israeli soldiers set ablaze the remaining parts of the al-Aqsa University’s library in Gaza City and photographed themselves sitting in front of the burning books. Similarly, an Israeli soldier recently filmed himself walking through the ruins of al-Azhar University, mocking scholasticide and rejoicing in the occupation’s destruction of the university. “We’re starting a new semester,” he said, adding: “It’ll start never.”Chandni Desai, 'Israel has destroyed or damaged 80% of schools in Gaza. This is scholasticide,' The Guardian 8 June 2024 Nishidani (talk) 12:00, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

On the other hand, the censorship is apparently a left-wing protocols like conspiracy. See

But the group became part of what writer Ben Weingarten has aptly named the censorship industrial complex. That describes an effort in which a sinister combination of Internet and social-media companies, left-wing nonprofit groups and the Biden administration sought to shut down conservatives who dissented from a wide range of policies. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court passed on an opportunity to stop this blatant violation of the free-speech rights of citizens this week in a case that may serve as a green light for future efforts by the Biden administration and its Silicon Valley oligarch allies.'Jonathan S. Tobin, Censorship stand comes back to bite the ADL on Wikipedia Jewish News Syndicate 26 June 2024

I.e. I must imagine an alternative scenario in US history, with Trump winning the Presidential elections on a platform which included an oath stating that Afro-Americans, and anyone with a green card, must affirm White America's right to exist.
A demand for civil rights and equality for Palestinians in Greater Israel has been successfully spun as a denial of the right of Israel to persist (as a segregating, ethnocratic state). Nishidani (talk) 07:14, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

US Academia and the Censoring of an Anti-Zionist Professor CounterPunch 19 July 2024 Nishidani (talk) 20:25, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

  • A law limiting academic freedom of speech has just passed its first reading in the Knesset

the country’s national union of students . . lobbied for the law, including spending 500,000 shekels (more than $136,000, £105,000) on a billboard campaign to promote it nationwide. The ads prompted the Haaretz newspaper to warn in an editorial that the country’s “illiberal students need a lesson in democracy”. . . Of the 30 university chapters of the union, two-thirds supported the campaign. . . In Israel, criticism of the war in Gaza is already restricted and penalised, even for Jewish citizens. A teacher who was charged with treason and spent four days in solitary confinement after posting concerns about civilian deaths in Gaza, has described it as “a time of witch-hunts”.Emma Graham-Harrison, Matan Cohen, Draft Israeli law to limit academic speech labelled ‘McCarthyite’ The Guardian 21 July 2024

This is the best and brightest of the younger generation in Israel.Nishidani (talk) 20:16, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

@Nishidani, while I likely disagree with your evaluation, I think I have one for your list (with step by step context, so not just a quick report):
Thanks for the update. Much appreciated. In short, whereas anyone on the precedent in Mannheim, can shout From the river to the sea and not violate the German criminal code, on this precedent anyone in Berlin who shouts the same slogan can be fined €600 for criminally denying Israel's right to exist, referring to the same legal code. So it's a matter of a six hour drive that determines whether one can exercise free speech or not in Germany. Another example of the increasing subjectivity of the application of law, depending on where and who makes the judgment, Of course if you are a Zionist, you can shout the Likud version of the slogan "From the Jordan to the sea, Israel shall be free (of Palestinians and their statist pretensions)" and no criminal charges will be laid against you anywhere in the world for denying the right of Palestinians to have a state. So criminality now is taking on a distinction where the ethnic background of a speaker will determine whether they have a right to free speech or not. Nishidani (talk) 12:26, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
You’re very welcome!
A few minor details: it’s context-dependent in both areas and as Germany doesn’t have case law in the same way that many anglophone countries do, decisions by the same local court can vary. I would assume that someone’s catholic grandma who is just really concerned about Palestinian kids would be fine in both cities, and some college kid wearing a “Hamas did nothing wrong” or “Globalise the intifada” shirt might have a bad time no matter where they are.
Regarding the Likud analogy, while de facto advocating against a Palestinian state is unlikely to get you arrested, the specific laws used in this case aren’t based on any specific ethnicity, and instead target conduct. In practice, one’s mileage may vary.
Lastly (and this is definitely pedantic) the fine is based on income, and while denying the right for Palestinians to have a state might get one killed in some countries if you do it publicly enough, prosecution is indeed unlikely.
PS: your JVL link is dead for me.
don't listen to law students for legal advice, it’s quite possible that I’m wrong FortunateSons (talk) 13:35, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
I hope I've fixed the link. If you mean in Arab states saying Palestinians don't have a right to a state might get you killed, the point is that Israelis/Jews anywhere can recite exactly the same slogan, changing Palestine for Israel, and face no legal risks in the rest of the world, ergo the disparity reflects ethnic priorization in rights claims. That is where the obtusity of Germany's law, with its attempt to compensate for an historical sense of guilt for the Holocaust, goes overboard, - Palestinians have no responsibility for Europe's genocidal antisemitism -relying as well on a total ignorance of the history of both versions. The Likud version predates the formation of Hamas; Hamas has no copyright on a slogan that circulated in the PLO and now in the PA; and any assertion that the slogan defends the 7 October atrocities is just inane politicking for discursive control. In any case, I think you might be interested as a law student in reading something from Neil Gorsuch (David French, 'Neil Gorsuch Has a Few Thoughts About America Today,' New York Times 4 August 2024 - if you can't get a copy I can email it), whom I follow despite my antipathy to the US Supreme Court, because he is a maverick with a mind of his own. Essentially his view is that the pullulation of laws, bylaws, etc.etc., leads to a totaliizing invasiveness of people's lives if they have the misfortune of being entangled in the system/cistern. Most irrational court decisions can be won on appeal, as the Berlin one might be, but it means either you have to crowdfund to cover high, indeed extravagant legal expenses, difficult, or get a bank loan or mortgage your house. In Italy effective impunity exists for the wealthy/powerful given its extraordinary proliferation of laws (designed by politicians to get elbow room against suits against them) because anyone with pockets deep enough to hire a string of capable lawyers for a decade or two will eventually win by prescription or some technical fine point (failure to deliver an obscure document to some tribunal within the designated time limits etc.) And Italy, like Israel, has much to tell us about the probable future nature of former democratic states. I don't think you can outlaw antisemitism out of sight. It just goes underground. Like Chomsky and Finkelstein, I believe free speech include the right of fuckwits to have their names publicly associated with hate, the better to know them. Nishidani (talk) 14:15, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
The link works now, thanks. Archive today seems to be temporarily out of service, but I’ll try for it later or report back.
That may be true, but Israelis might have a hard time entering some of those countries at all. And even if loudly advocating against a Jewish state might get you arrested in Berlin, advocating against a Palestinian state in Tehran, Beirut or Baghdad might have more significant consequences. Of course, those aren’t the places one would consider the pinnacle of free speech, but I would argue that the treatment of Zionists by Antizionist countries tends to be worse than the treatment of Antizionists in Zionist countries.
While German law does attempt to compensate for the holocaust (an, in my opinion, worthy pursuit and decent execution, though I understand the objection) in a way that may at times disadvantage certain activists more than it should, it’s also probably significant to acknowledge that - at least subjectively - many of the pro-Palestinian activists seem to have been cursed with an acute lack of decorum and tact, as well as the seeming inability to differentiate between fights worthy or unworthy of being picked. Many of them either seem to be unwilling or unable to acknowledge how the average German will view them, or simply so stuck in a “leftist-student-activist” bubble that they don’t care. It makes life easy for people on my side, but as someone who does hope that there will come a time in the not-so-distant future when Palestinians will have their own state (even if I will likely disagree with them about what the borders and rights ought to be), I have been bitterly disappointed by the quality of western advocates for Palestine (except on the “ground level”, those were great).
Regarding law and wealth, I’m inclined to agree. As someone who grew up with nice cutlery, the acute awareness of what sort of advantages it provided, including in the legal world, ironically allowed me to talk myself into a scholarship I’m not sure I deserve. However, it is my slightly jaded opinion that a difference in access to justice is almost insurmountable outside of a utopia, as much as I would like it to be.
I must have missed the Italian problem; I’m aware of the political mess, but what is wrong with the courts?
I understand the idea that hateful rhetoric should simply be freely attached to one's name instead of persecuted, and find the idea, for reasons I’m not allowed to elaborate on, rather charming. Having said that, I have yet to significantly disagree with the way hate speech is prosecuted in Germany, which I would argue shows that we’re doing pretty well. FortunateSons (talk) 14:55, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Why, whenever one thinks of an issue of general principles or modern institutions, one should draw in as contrary examples Iran. Baghdad or Beirut, effectively failed states (in good part also because of the geopolitical interests that have afflicted them) is beyond me. As someone who lives within a world of traditional democracies, it is the principles that have informed those specific countries, and on which they pride themselves as emblematic of their modernity and civilisation, which attract my attention.
  • I don't allow my intense focus on my own backyard, in short, to get distracted by gossip about the shenanigans in the backyards of distant neighbours. Ah! gotcha, you might lawyerly note, then why the interest in the I/P conflict? Well because it affects the institutional structures and the ideal principles undergirding civil life, of many modern democratic states, and therefore I have a natural personal interest in it. Whaddya mean, I imagine you asking:).
  • When AIPAC throws huge amounts of money to unset Democratic party politicians like Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman (or Republicans like John Hostettler), or local pro-Israeli community groups (many lawyers) get news presenters (Antoinette Lattouf, David Velasco) or a nurse (Hesen Jabr) fired or militant pro-Israeli groups intervene to destroy academics (Steven Salaita, Norman Finkelstein) from getting tenure, or, as in Germany stops philosophers like Nancy Fraser, Jewish to boot, as it were from lecturing on their soil, or regrets having awarded Masha Gessen, Jewish to boot the Hannah Arendt Prize and hands it over informally, away from public sight; or bars entry to Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British-Palestinian surgeon with great experience in operating in Gaza to prevent him speaking at a conference; or some 300 people in Canada felt compelled to seek advice over threats or suspensions from their workplaces as schools for their views, I see a pattern already present in Israel, where a high school history teacher, Meir Baruchin, was fired (he won a legal appeal) for criticizing the IDF, where Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was suspended from her post as in the Faculty of Law at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and subsequently arrested by the police for her views; well, I won't go through the whole list of 60+ people in my file on this, but the point should be clear.
  • Namely, lobbying to restrict what may or may not be said with regard to Israel's treatment of Palestinians, and, as with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's patently stupid Working definition of antisemitism in its Orwellian insidiousness, actively pressuring states to legislate restrictions on free speech (successively in Germany) threatens to sap one of the foundational principles of Western modernity and civilization, by confusing one's right to think for oneself and express one's views with criminal assaults on public security and order.
  • I am, in theory, directly affected by these practices because they potentially threaten a natural, if arduously gained, liberty to speak out without undergoing sanctions by a state. To be educated in my generation meant having George Orwell's seminal essays at armslength, and the world looks like its wiping its arse on them, out of some misbegotten belief that the Holocaust creates an Ausnahmezustand) for Israel, where international law cannot be applied without stirring an odour of antisemitic suspicion.
  • Half of my intellectual formation came from reading German thinkers (Marx, Nietzsche, Boas, Mannheim, Elias, Hobsbawm, Stern, Steiner, Simmel, Cassirer, Kafka, Freud, Adorno, Arendt, Gay, Klemperer, Fraenkel, Mosse etc., to note but a few incisive for my formative late adolescent and university years, whose acuity of general analysis came out of their ability to rethink antisemitism as something suggestive of a far greater pathology in Western societies themselves, and not dwell obsessively on their Jewish identity, but on the nature, conditions and crises of man under the stress of modernity. All i see now is an infantile 'return of the repressed' nationalism they all sought to outthink, and, conspicuously here, the explosive coalescence of two neuroses, Germany's malaise with its past, and Israel's, to me, expropriation of Jewishness, a magnificent diasporic and global heritage, in the service of getting a few more miles of land on that wretched patch of territory. (I mention Nietzsche anomalously among all those writers of Jewish descent because fortunately, at an impressionable age, I read works (in English) like Jenseits von Gut und Böse and delighted in the way he tore the guts out of German nationalism while expressing deep admiration for Jews, of course within the discursive limits of the relevant prose of his age.Cf.Jenseits von Gut und Böse sections 244,250f., in particular).
  • My apologies for this divagation. Don't waste your invaluable time as a student with a bright future in responding. I have no expectations of influencing anybody. I do hope that a bibliographic list of thinkers and writers whose work affected me deeply might prove, over time, stimulating, even in any number of directions I haven't thought about. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 17:05, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
    You’re getting (at least a partial) response, but I have attempted to alleviate my writers block with editing, and having failed that, will try to power through one of the driest and least meaningful bits of social media regulation in existence (exaggerating only slightly). I have only written about 4K characters today, and was really going for at least 6k, despite my poor mood and acutely developing flu. However, the poorly maintained train that I have to take home from the library is a great opportunity for contemplating and discussion. FortunateSons (talk) 17:41, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
    Sorting by points, else this will get chaotic:
    • I agree, just wanted to make a point on principle.
    • I must admit, while I disagree with the conclusions that led to the outcome, my obvious ethnic and ideological connection (and reading this book on a Spanish (or Italian, I’m not sure) beach when I must have been no older than 12) seem thoroughly unimpressive in comparison.
    • what are you doing, trying to make me feel bad about my very minor anti-Bowman slacktivism? ;) While I’m sure we disagree about the validity of targeting almost anyone who finds their way into the gaze of what one may consider the Eye of sauron, I strongly believe that there is one target where we both are directly in lockstep: [1] Having said that, I’m aware of many of those that have experienced personal consequences for their views, and (as with any termination for political reasons) would make the argument for a definitely totally serious case-by-case approach: it’s good if they are on the other side, and bad if they are on my side. I think such personal consequences always range from “not nearly enough” to “generally proportional” to “cruel and unusual”, and we would likely agree on some and deeply disagree on others.
    • nice, our first proper disagreement. I have no desire to relitigate the ADL discussion (an experience I had with half a dozen people in my life, where the consensus seemed to be against the view you hold :)) Having said that, it is my personal opinion that while working definition isn’t perfect, I’m unaware of anyone being harmed by the one example that wouldn’t have also been equally affected by 3D or any of the other definitions. It’s like an argument about racism: if you have to rely on “it requires prejudice and power”, I would argue that the person took a bad turn a while ago. On the other hand, I am partial to the argument (made in some paper, though no clue which one) that it insufficiently encompasses the opposition to all states as a concept. I’m unaware of a direct relationship between IHRA and the German laws, could you point me in that direction?
    • See the argument above, but I doubt we’ll find much except an agreement to disagree there. But on a human level, I get the fear. I just admit that while I did my best to read Orwell, I had mixed reviews on the books, and have forgotten about most of the content (I guess there is a joke in there somewhere)
    • I’m impressed with the accuracy of the blue links, you’re only two above the ideal number, and both of those did help. I also disagree with the assessment (except mostly on the settlements, though fighting about a pointless hill is not a pastime exclusive to Israelis). I’m a lot more concerned about the rising right in response to immigration, considering they (unlike, unfortunately, some of my Queer and/or female and/or Jewish friends and loved ones) are highly likely to never have made any negative experience with the people who have come to live where we do. Instead of any of the rational arguments against immigration (too many of which I must object to, if based on nothing but my (Neo-) liberal worldview), they seem to be driven by a fear of the unknown, despite making no effort to get to know it.
    • I will return to the list if I ever find the time, and if I don’t, I would still insist that the conversation was quite stimulating. Considering how meh writing is going (apparently slight emotional turmoil, heat and illness are bad for one’s concentration??), I would add an asterisk to bright (don’t tell my scholarship), I would say that this was a nice distraction from both the writing and the business on my talk page (but please don’t engage)
    FortunateSons (talk) 19:34, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Best wishes for a quick recovery, then.If you read Exodus at age 12, you were more precocious than myself. At that age my interests in fiction were limited to reading Biggles novels and Billy Bunter stories, which were a far greater improvement, I thought at the time, on the frightening fictions of the Bible they crammed down our throats:) Nishidani (talk) 21:38, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you very much. In my defence, I somewhat stagnated since, and my mom made me (gifted me the book). FortunateSons (talk) 21:53, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

For many German leaders bent on preventing the spread of antisemitism, the objections rendered by courts and legal observers in favour of free speech seem only to be evidence that better laws are needed. The most troubling among them is almost certainly a draft resolution being debated in the Bundestag. If passed, it would enact a wide range of measures that critics fear would have a broadly chilling effect on speech in Germany, including a provision that would require anyone seeking federal funding to submit to a background check conducted by Germany’s domestic intelligence service. The bill enjoys broad support across the political spectrum. . . It is hard to think that repressed mourning for Hitler is widespread in Germany today, but it’s equally hard to escape the conclusion that there is still some kind of widespread psychic distortion in place when it comes to questions of Jews and Jewish life. Hence the absurdity of the German police arresting Jewish activists and prohibiting a demonstration by a leftwing Jewish group out of a supposed concern for Jewish welfare.Nishidani (talk) 09:41, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

  • The following by Peter Beinart is not strictly about limitations on free speech but would still qualify for a general topic article on constraints on what can be said (in the U.S. political world) due to purely electoral or geostrategic priorities that overrule any coherent policy based on the general principles of law.

When it comes to Israel, Ms. Harris should simply say that she’ll enforce the law.The law in question has been on the books for more than a decade. It prohibits the United States from assisting any unit of a foreign security force that commits “gross violations” of human rights. Aid can be reinstated if the foreign country adequately punishes the perpetrators. Passed by Congress in 1997, it bears the name of former Senator Patrick Leahy — and it has been applied hundreds of times — including reportedly against U.S. allies like Colombia and Mexico. But it has never been applied to Israel, the country that over the past eight decades has received more U.S. aid, by far, than any other. That’s not because the Israel Defense Forces don’t commit serious abuses. “There are literally dozens of Israeli security force units that have committed gross violations of human rights” and should thus be ineligible for U.S. aid, a former State Department official, Charles Blaha, told ProPublica in May.Peter Beinart,'Harris Can Change Biden’s Policy on Israel Just by Upholding the Law,' New York Times 18 August 2024

We are now finally getting an overview of this curious German wave of repression of free speech with regard to Israel

Notice of Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a report involving you at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement regarding a possible violation of an Arbitration Committee decision. The thread is Nishidani. Thank you.

Ethnic definition of malice. example

According to the The Jerusalem Post, a preliminary investigation found IDF instructions to soldiers in Shuja'iyya/Shejaia were to open-fire on any man of fighting age who approached them. Following an investigation, the IDF stated the killings were preventable, but disciplinary actions were not needed since there was "no malice" on the part of the soldiers Killing of Alon Shamriz, Yotam Haim, and Samer Talalka.

I.e. there is no 'malice' in shooting at any Palestinian in Gaza from 18-65 on sight, when they are in your vicinity (i.e., whenever you move into their neighbourhood). Nishidani (talk) 06:57, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

July music

story · music · places

My story today is - because of the anniversary of the premiere OTD in 1782 - about Die Entführung aus dem Serail, opera by Mozart, while yesterday's was - because of the TFA - about Les contes d'Hoffmann, opera by Offenbach, - so 3 times Mozart if you click on "music" ;) -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:29, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Today's story is about a photographer who took iconic pictures, especially View from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Manhattan, 9/11, yesterday's was a great mezzo, and on Thursday we watched a sublime ballerina. If that's not enough my talk offers chamber music from two amazing concerts. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:46, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt My apologies for not thanking you for this. Making myself a hamburger with fiery peppers, and some of my first crop of tomatoes a half an hour ago, I remembered to apologize, and the meal's ingredients suggested I link you, in my usual larrikenish fashion, to this. Um, I think this might get me into trouble with Firefangledfeathers and a possible suggestion to Arbcom that I be referred to some wiki doctors' forum for a psychiatric referrel and assessment of whether or not my mind is a 'strange place':)
Thank you, and no apology ever needed ;) - The linked music is lovely. Minds will remain strange places. I came to share - after you inspired us with memories of not visiting Notre-Dame - a bit from my life. Look at music today: three music-making women there, - a sad record. The Main page also has a Mozart symphony I love, and my story was connected not only to Max Reger's death in 1916, remembered in 2016, but also the death of a friend who - and we around him - knew he was dying when he listened to the concert which was his last time leaving home, and music from Reger's Requiem was played for his funeral three months later. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:46, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
The anecdote about your dear friend and Reger's requiem, sent me back to listening in 1975 to a recording of Dinu Lipatti's last concert at Besançon in late 1950, when though dying for months, he struggled out to play to a hall as a mark of respect for the booked and packed audience. He played magnificently but, having broached another of Chopin's waltzes (Op.34 No.1), he broke off, and walked off the stage, feeling too exhausted to continue. After a brief pause, he came back and concluded by playing Bach's Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring. . . .of course, you will be familiar with the story . .I'd better stop, because I'm thinking of other similar performances, of singing wonderfully as the performer is dying: Kathleen Ferrier's toughness in going on to sing (was it?) two arias from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice after her left thigh broke up while she ws on stage (as a result of the radiation treatment she was undergoing). . . .ah, damn it, now I'm thinking of Andrea Parodi's last concert (as he also was dying of cancer ) when he sang to his wife the exquisitely beautiful elegiac Sardinian love song Non potho reposare. My wife was of Sardinian origin . . . Better stop. Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 19:45, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, and no I didn't know the Lipatti story, nor Ferrier's. I just nominated her for TFA, two years ago, and this year it worked. I wondered if inviting the friend and his wife to the concert was a good idea, but then thought that they of all people might find it meaningful. But when I noticed them in the audience before it began I had some trouble managing all the stone steps up to the organ balcony that the composer had used in what he had called his "Sturm- und Trankzeit". It was meaningful for all, in the end. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:23, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
This is for your tireless contributions related to Arab-Israeli conflict. Pachu Kannan (talk) 08:39, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. 'tireless'. Hmmm. Perhaps, but only in the sense that I'm probably close to having worked off all four tyres on this mental jalopy of a brain, having chucked too many Uwies while jollying the gearstick as I zoomed along the mindbending labyrinths of this topic. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 08:56, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

ITN recognition for ICJ case on Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories

On 20 July 2024, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article ICJ case on Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, which you updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Stephen 09:19, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Asking for a friend

Hello @Nishidani, I have an unusual question. A friend (as in actually a friend, I didn’t have much luck with the randomly assigned topics) is writing her Bachelor’s thesis on a legal fragment of the current iteration of the I/P conflict, and is unsure where to start the historical part (and secondarily, the relevant historical weight).

I gave my advice, but nobody is free of bias. Would you mind giving a second opinion, as you have a significantly better grasp on the older history? FortunateSons (talk) 20:23, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

A hundred years ago or three thousand years ago? Good luck with that! I'd have chosen a less fraught topic. NadVolum (talk) 20:41, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
We don’t get to choose, and if we did, I would have chosen hers, mine is worse.
Yeah, that’s about the issue she‘s having, which I hope Nishidani can help with (if possible, through mail). FortunateSons (talk) 21:28, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Sorry for the late reply. We're having a Notte Bianca in my district, and since life after Covid seems to be returning to the streetscape, I accepted an impromptu invitation by an elderly engineering friend to eat out, have a few drinks and observe the milling passers-by for sign of resurrection.
a BA thesis has no need to strike new ground. Rather it (used to at least) functions to give an indication of the student's capacity to survey, digest and summarise the existing best scholarship on whatever topic is chosen. Managing that well qualifies one to go onto a master's, and then doctorate where greater margins open up to do really interesting and often original research.
I'm not quite sure what 'legal fragment' may refer to.
The first principle is not to get lost or overwhelmed by biting off too large a chunk of a subject matter.
The historical part (I would think that alone would be sufficient for a BA thesis) should begin with the Balfour Declaration. If so, then the quickest overview that would allow your friend to take in, in a few hours, the scope of such a research topic, would be:-
If this looks worthwhile, then it is not difficult to discover books on the topic, for and against. Regards and my auguries for your friend's BA and thesis, whatever the topic. Nishidani (talk) 21:48, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
No apologies are needed, I consider your response to be rather fast, particularly considering the question. I hope that you enjoyed the Notte Bianca and the company, both sound lovely; personally, I regret missing out on the Parisian version last year due to my scheduling, and do have plans to cross it off my bucket list eventually.
I’m deeply grateful for the detailed recommendations, well wishes and the excellent advice and will forward both (to be read once it’s no longer 1 am), as well as utilise the general part for my thesis, and hopefully future academic work, considering I was definitely not about to take a bite too large to chew.
In retrospect, I noticed that my question was poorly phrased, leading to me taking the liberty of sending you a message through the Wikipedia mail. I generally try to avoid this avenue of communication but would like to protect my friend’s privacy (even if a Bachelor‘s thesis is rarely published at our university), and apologise for this method of communication. FortunateSons (talk) 23:25, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
No need to apologize, though perhaps I should since, rushing, I wrote 'enderly' for 'elderly', which, now that I reread this morning what I dashed off late last night with a large plate of baccalà and Spaghetti alle vongole doused by several beers. more on my deliciously distracted mind than stomach, may either be more evidence for incipient senility, or my chronic, mostly off-line, habit of punning. It's not a bad neologism for 'elderly' which some might think has an edge of juvenile condescension for the aged, a community I myself belong to, with its diurnal reflections on a sense of an ending. On the otherhand, it may be just Anthony Burgess playing up in my unconscious - some echo from Edenville of his portrait over four novels of his semi autobiographical Enderby.
I see from your email that the project is quite different from the one suggested here, so I'll, unfortunately only briefly, answer there. A first thesis is a stepping stone, so it is always important to choose the right stream where to place it, in order to safely leap to the other side where a larger life, and a thicker jungle await the adventurer. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 07:54, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
There is no need to apologise either, particularly considering food, drink, time and my personal preference for punny jokes.
I envy you for the food and admit to being mostly unfamiliar with the literary references, something I should probably remedy at some point.
No comment on the ‘benefits’ and ‘drawbacks’ of age (mostly due to a lack of personal experience), though I must admit that youth being wasted on the young is an idea that - despite my personal opposition- does seem to be less unconvincing than I used to believe it to be.
I appreciate the kind words, and am eagerly awaiting your message! FortunateSons (talk) 08:44, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Take all the time in the world getting there (old age), no hurry! I had the benefit of reading in mid-adolescence Babette Deutsch's translation of Yevgeniy Onegin, much criticized often on solid grounds. But one couplet stuck in my mind, as a sort of manual of instruction to curb the natural, and necessary excesses of my younger years.

Youth's fervor is its own excuse
For ravings that it may induce.

I often recall these lines when rereading some TLDR remark some dispute in here drives me to writing. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 08:53, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I will do my best, though I do feel that my studies are rapidly accelerating that process - which probably isn’t a good sign.
My childhood nanny tried to impress a love for Pushkin and the Russian language onto me, and while she did not fully succeed with either, I do like the quote and will add the book (probably as an audiobook in modern Russian, which is a sin of its own) to my ever growing list of media to consume. FortunateSons (talk) 09:32, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Well here's the quote in Russian, since you think it memorable:
Простим горячке юных лет
И юный жар и юный бред. (Евгеній Онѣгинъ,2:15,ll.13-14).
Pushkin filched them, as all first rate poets do, from a second-rate writer (Claude Joseph Dorat), and with his usual magical touch or touché, made them memorable. Dorat had written ..les tendres erreurs,/Et le délire du bel âge) I'll take some time to email you, since there seems to be a plot round here to kill me with kindness, by repeated invites to lunch and dinner, and protests that I never eat lunch, esp. on Sunday, were of no avail.Nishidani (talk) 13:09, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the quote. I always find it funny how much the word use and subjective implications vary between languages, and admire the skill of those doing such translations.
Oh, such horrors, how will you survive?? You have my full understanding, enjoy the time with your friends :) FortunateSons (talk) 17:39, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Sources on Zionism

I'm still working on putting together a list of sources to use for a re-write of Zionism. Here is what I have so far:

  • Gorny- Zionism and the Arabs
  • Flapan- Zionism and the Palestinians
  • Avineri- The Making of Modern Zionism
  • Penslar- Zionism: an emotional state
  • Khalidi- Palestinian Identity
  • Rabkin- A Threat from Within
  • Shafir- Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • Yadgar- Sovereign Jews
  • Sternhell- The founding myths of Israel
  • Finkelstein- Image and Reality
  • Masalha- The Zionist Bible
  • Masalha- The Palestine Nakba
  • Goldberg- To the Promised Land
  • Shapira- Land and Power
  • Shimoni- The Zionist Ideology
  • Finkelstein- Image and Reality
  • Almog- Zionism and the Arabs

If you could add to this list that would be very appreciated. DMH223344 (talk) 16:00, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I could but I won't, out of consideration for what you are undertaking. You already have an embarras de richesses. It is very refreshing to see editors sedulous in the comprehensivenes of their source studies, with a readiness to master both a difficult article's overview and the intricate details of its many facets. The sources are endless because they are tantamount to the history of Israel. As a working method, I find that restricting oneself to five core books to make a preliminary outline is a safeguard against getting lost in details and byways. Once that is done, one can then sweep more broadly to build on, and add flesh and muscle to the skeleton. But that just shows my own working preference.Best regards. I'll of course follow your work keenly and assist where possible.Nishidani (talk) 16:28, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
It is indeed a lot of content. I was mostly looking for additional sources to make sure I am not missing some crucial pieces that might not be represented here (a lot of the sources are quite old, and others are quite recent and specific). I'm sure once I put together a draft, many people will come in bringing their own favorite source, so I would like to at least be aware of them early on. DMH223344 (talk) 17:15, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Okay. Have a look at (because it is out of the circuits of the Anglophone world)
I have a lot of reservations about several of Walter Laqueur's works but I do recall him remarking that Zionism had completed its mission in 1948. With statehood it was no longer relevant. After 1967, with the iron logic of sociology, it enters into the phase of its self-deconstruction via overreach/hubris, as I think Laqueur eventually intuited (again,from memory) Despite its age you might find something of value in his
I wrote a section on zionist ideology/beliefs: User:DMH223344/sandbox-zionism-beliefs. If you have some time to leave some comments, it would of course be very much appreciated. I do think this still needs a lot of work, but I will take a break from it for a bit to look at other aspects of the article (specifically, putting together an outline for the History section).
I thought this would be the most difficult section to write, and once the details are established then writing the history section should be "easier" in the sense that we would have at least said what Zionism is. Describing what Zionists did and experienced should be more straightforward I believe.
I did not get a chance to get the Dieckoff book from the library yet, but will do so soon. I also want to give some time to the Laqueur references. DMH223344 (talk) 03:03, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
I'll keep an eye on it. It's a hard topic to write because ideology sits uneasily with what is essentially a faith-based religious set of anything-will-do-if-it-sounds-like-a-plausible-reason set ofpractices, based on a very hard-nosed and highly pragmatic reading of political opportunities and influence networking. That's of course just how I read it. Because of its thinness and the fragility of its arguments. Zionist 'ideology' in so far as it exists effectively means it can't win any debate grounded both in the historical record and logico-evidential argumentation. Ultimately, as Ben-Gurion famously argued, ' It's not important what the world says about Israel. It's not important what they say about us anywhere else.' I.e., external (non-Jewish) criticisms are water off a duck's back since we will do what we think any situation we find ourselves in requires, and fuck the rest.' An ideologist in the classic sense, of someone bound by a complex set of fundamental principles with not much wriggle room to tweak the doctrines significantly, is perhaps alien to this system. This has been a source of enormous strength (and is only suffering a crisis because, as is natural, the deeper the internal contradictions consequent on its historical desire for an ethnic state in all of Palestine, the greater the temptation for a real classic ideological movement (messianic settler Zionism) to rise to the challenge by making a bit for power by resorting to a rigid orthodoxy). That's just my own impression of course, and of no use to you. Your work is excellent, and by all means consider that we write things for the long term, and haste is no ally. Best regardsNishidani (talk) 09:18, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. This was a difficult topic for me to start to engage with since I'd previously been almost entirely uninterested; I think it was Joel Beinin who said something to the effect of "it doesn't matter what zionists say, it matters what they do."
To be clear, I did not write this entire section, I lifted entirely the section on "Ethnic unity and descent from Biblical Jews" from the current article.
I strongly agree that we have no need to rush. DMH223344 (talk) 14:06, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
One point I struggled with, but having read your comment I might change my mind, is whether to bring in a discussion about post 48 zionism. At the moment I haven't attempted that at all, but I think I will (especially since many sources do in fact discuss post 48 zionism). DMH223344 (talk) 14:12, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
I skimmed the preface to Lacqueur's book--I'm somehow still shocked to see antisemitic sentiment in the writing of the zionist historians (him, shimoni and avineri (and at this point I'm sure there are many others) all embrace the idea of "parasitic life" of the diaspora jew). DMH223344 (talk) 14:19, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
It was very widespread from the very outset, as I tried to sketch in Herzl's Mauschel and Zionist antisemitism and Zionism, Race and genetics (the proper title editwarred out). Because class is now discarded, and is replaced by ethnicism, all of the discomfort settled assimilated Jews felt for the masses of Ostjuden, though abundant, is underestimated or neglected, creating a certain methodological incoherence: if a non-Jewish figure rubbishes them, he is an antisemite(true). If a Jew expresses scorn, he is no such thing. Someday I expect an historian will look at that notable aspect in Zionism of dumping these poor Jews outside Europe ( Pinhas Felix Rosenblüth's defining Palestine as a big "institute for the fumigation of (all) Jewish vermin", together with weeding out physically weak Jews for aliyah, and advising them to fuck off to America (a lucky break for the United States nonetheless, a fluid goldmine of talent, ambition and hardwork). It's not really surprising, though.'Race' is always there, hidden or politely redressed and wherever race or ethnicity form a predominate concern, one will get a cultural corollary of contempt for outsiders along side the vainglory of a cultivated sense of uniqueness. In internal terms, however, the patching over of differences (still marked) in Israel appears to go hand in hand with a ratcheting up of antipathy for any or all outgroups, per the old dictum, that the best solder of values in divided communities is shared fear or hatred of any enemy or bogey of an enemy as that is variously conjured up by the usual suspects. If Palestinians hadn't existed, they would have had to be invented to fulfill the role of a parlous 'other' in forming an Israeli identity. CheersNishidani (talk) 15:40, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
ps. be careful about 'lifting material' from other articles, except, as I understand you are probably doing, to fill a gap which, so far, you don't have much material on. Most of our articles on biblical themes are painful to read, as ropelets of current scholarship try to hold down the quivering Gulliveresque mass of memes that languish there.Nishidani (talk) 15:52, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
@DMH223344, Nish, et al., FYI: Bibliography of the Arab–Israeli conflict#Zionism. Levivich (talk) 17:04, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks indeed Lev for all of that work.Nishidani (talk) 19:43, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
wow thanks, ill spend some time to go through them at some point not too long from now. is there any guidance on what the inclusion/exclusion criteria might be for this list? DMH223344 (talk) 23:19, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Much of it was already there before I started expanded it; I don't know what the criteria was (if any) for inclusion. I've been adding scholarly works from mainstream academic publishers (e.g. Springer, Routledge, T&F, university presses, etc.), mostly from the past five years, that have words like "Israel," "Palestine," "Zionism," "Nakba" in the title -- not a very scientific approach, admittedly. Later I plan to look through other published bibliographies (e.g. Oxford's) to add anything missing. Please feel free to add/edit it! Levivich (talk) 02:31, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Being a bit of a duffer lately, any addition I might have time to make might end up in the wrong category (everytime I use the word 'wrong' I think of Arthur Caldwell, who made a racist slur against Chinese in opposing their immigration by saying 'Two Wongs don't make a White'), so if I bungle the section, shift it to a more appropriate one.Nishidani (talk) 10:08, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, it's much appreciated! Levivich (talk) 12:50, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
A very first draft of the history section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DMH223344/sandbox-zionism-history#
@Levivich if you have the time I would appreciate any feedback either of you have. DMH223344 (talk) 17:01, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping, it might be a few days before I have a chance, but I'll give it a read. Levivich (talk) 19:18, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. Bookmarked and will definitely look through in as soon as I have some time. Well done, in the meantime. Nishidani (talk) 19:36, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
thank you! (btw, "disproportionate" is avineri's word choice, not mine. I agree with your change). DMH223344 (talk) 21:27, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Do either of you know of any sources which argue that the occupation of the west bank and gaza strip is not colonial? It seems to me to be a fringe viewpoint, if it even exists in academia. More common seems to be to accept that 67 is the "turning point" at which the IDF is no longer true to it's name (avi shlaim's words). DMH223344 (talk) 15:11, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
I could not find anything arguing that 1967 was not a colonial endeavor.
I've written a draft of a section on Zionism and colonialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DMH223344/sandbox-zionism-historiography
It's not an interesting topic to write about (or to read in my opinion), but I think I've covered the main points and arguments. I've tried to do it in a way that isnt just "___ says ___. But __ says ___" repeatedly.
I think I will just write one more section then call my rewrite "complete": historiography of the nakba. And also need to incorporate the feedback you all gave me already.
A rewrite of "support for zionism" and "anti-zionism" still seems worthwhile, but I really want to move on to something different for now. I may just write a paragraph on each and then call it done.
Thanks to both of you @Nishidani and @Levivich. DMH223344 (talk) 16:50, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
My apologies for overlooking to reply to your message yesterday. I can't answer satisfactorily because I away from my librry and main computer and just frig round on an very slow dinky laptop created sometime between now and the extinction of the dinosaurs. I'll try to look into this when I get back home in October, providing the flood damage which, I hear from friends, ripped down a garden wall isn't too large to require all of my time rebuilding it. Cheers and yes, one does well to vary one's commitments and you've done a fine piece of work so far. One should write with a view to the long term, without a sense of obligation or haste, esp. for wikipedia.Nishidani (talk) 16:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Thank you! and I hope you're able to get some help with those repairs. Something about writing/reading on an old slow laptop just seems to fit well with french aesthetic--but that's probably just me. (assuming your trip is to france from the gorgonzola reference yesterday) DMH223344 (talk) 17:04, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
You've really done yeoman's work here, thank you! I don't blame you at all for wanting to move on to something else, I burn out much sooner, and I'm impressed with how much you've written. Like Nish, it may be a while until I have some time to read through it all, but I'd encourage you to publish if and when you think it's ready, don't let us hold you up in any way. Thanks again for doing all this work! Levivich (talk) 17:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! Maybe you can help me in terms of figuring out how to execute the publication. I'm guessing if I just swap it out with my rewrite I'll have to deal with some furious editors. If I instead propose it as a draft, I'd guess we'd never get to the point where it's ready to publish.
On other pages what I've done is swap in one paragraph at a time over an extended period and wait for reactions, but I dont think that would work here, since 90% of the history section content just doesnt belong. DMH223344 (talk) 17:11, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
I was hoping you wouldn't ask me because I was thinking about that, too, and I thought, "yeah I have no idea how this happens." I'm thinking out loud here, but maybe do it all at once, but in chunks that are easily-revertable, and then hope that only some and not all of it gets reverted? Because you're right, if you do it in one edit, it'll certainly be reverted, and if you propose it on the talk page, we'll be debating it until the end of time. Maybe going section by section will encourage a partial rather than full revert? Levivich (talk) 17:16, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
...and you might be right about "extended period," but maybe a shorter period but not all in one day, like do it over the course of a few days or a week, maybe starting with the least-controversial parts and going up from there (I know that certain parts would have to be kept together or else it wouldn't make sense, so you can only break it down into so many chunks). Levivich (talk) 17:18, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
@Nishidani had a story about a similar page (but about shakespear? apparently there's reason to edit war there too) where they proposed a rewrite which was accepted because no one else took the time to draft any other rewrite (I believe this scheme was imposed by an admin though). Maybe something similar can happen here? If that turns out to not be an option, ill do the slow swap thing. DMH223344 (talk) 17:26, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
That was the Shakespeare Authorship Question. I've taken on several articles which languished in a slough of conflicted despondency and in all of them, nearly always the snag consisted of edit-warring just over one or two lines, so that the whole topic was neglected The articles got snagged by editors who allowed themselves to be caught up in a tedious edit-warring of just a line or two of text – in the case of the Khazars, did conversion occur (consensus yes) and was it intrinsically anti-Semitic to discuss a possible Khazar-Ashkenazi linkage (no); in the case of Maltese dog, was our modern breed identical with or different to the classical pooch of that name (different) etc. It is extraordinary how much editorial attention seizes on excuses to bog down an article in minutiae while disregarding the article overall. We had this recently with ‘colonization’. In any case, I think you should notify the talk page that comments are now welcome, in bulleted form, on your draft page. Examine these point by point to evaluate their merits and see if they require alterations (without getting into a debate). After a week of examining suggestions, and perhaps tweaking here and there, so to the article and redo it slowly para by para, asking the talk page for some patience to allow you a free hand (I’ve asked that several times on controversial articles and editors have always displayed an amenity in refraining from changes until they have seen the result) as you post the lot, while accepting to address comments as they arise there. You could add that comments which provide high quality sourcing supplementary to what you use will be particularly welcome.
What you are doing is an important exercise others should take as a model for how to edit wiki at the best level of commitment. Far too much IP editing is obsessed with tweaks which ignore the overall page, and often show scarce mastery of the topic and its literature overall. Thanks for all of this work. Best wishes Nishidani (talk) 21:21, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
great plan, thanks. DMH223344 (talk) 21:42, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Note to self

Um, $900,000,000 divided by 4 equals, ah, yep, lessee now. It cost $225 million to expel one illegal immigrant. Megan Specia U.K. Deportation Plan Cost $900 Million. Only Four People Left. The New York Times 22 July 2024 Nishidani (talk) 01:33, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

One of the world's foremost historians Niall Ferguson dismisses the Hamas-run Gaza Health Authority figures on casualties, trusting that what his friends in the IDF tell him is correct, that civilians deaths are proportionate. 7 October was the iranian octopus extending its tentacles. There will be no Palestinian state, and the fault is Palestinian. Israel will have to destroy Hezbollah in a further war (i.e. repeat 1982's carpet bombing of Lebanon) before peace is achieved between Israel and the Arab world. This the influential assessment of 'a covert Marxist'. It is notable because he has far more 'authority' than the usual mainstream sources, even if he knows nothing about the topic's historical and contemporary specialist literature, apparently, preferring private conversations with the elite establishments in the relevant countries.Nishidani (talk) 17:33, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
This is being hailed as prophetic. The Matzpen declaration of 22 September 1967

"Our right to defend ourselves from extermination does not give us the right to oppress others. Occupation entails foreign rule. Foreign rule entails resistance. Resistance entails repression. Repression entails terror and counter-terror. The victims of terror are mostly innocent people. Holding on to the occupied territories will turn us into a nation of murderers and murder victims. Let us get out of the occupied territories immediately."Hilo Glazer, 'What the Veterans of a Legendary Israeli anti-Zionist Group Feel Now,' Haaretz19 July 2024

This analysis was almost identical to that made by the orthodox rabbi and scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz at that time: a kind of analytical unio oppositorum, where deep piety and atheistic Marxism coalesced in a moment of shared judgment and prescience.Nishidani (talk) 20:50, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Schlezinger reiterated his indifference, saying the only problem is that torture isn't part of official Israeli policy. "First of all, they deserve it. Second, it's a great form of revenge and can serve as a deterrent for us," he stated.' Etan Nechin, To See Israel's Moral Deterioration Since October 7, Just Turn on Your Television Haaretz 9 August 2024 Nishidani (talk) 22:07, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

  • The Israel Police recently recommended shelving the case against Rabbi Eliyahu Mali of the Shirat Moshe Yeshiva in Jaffa for remarks made in March in which he said Jewish religious law requires the killing of the entire population of the Gaza Strip, including babies and the elderly. '"Today's terrorists are the children of the prior [military] operation that left them alive. The women are essentially the ones who are producing the terrorists," he said, adding that when someone comes to kill you, you should be quick to kill them. "It's not only the 14- or 16-year-old boy, the 20- or 30-year-old man who takes up a weapon against you but also the future generation. There's really no difference".' Chen Maanit, Israeli Police Recommend Closing Case Against Yeshiva Head Who Said All Gazans Should Be Killed Haaretz 18 June 2024
  • 'We shouldn’t be surprised at Sde Temein.'

“Although intercourse with a female gentile is very grave, it was permitted during wartime … out of consideration for the soldiers’ difficulties, . .And since our concern is the success of the collective in the war, the Torah permitted [soldiers] to satisfy the evil urge under the conditions it stipulated for the sake of the collective’s success.” (We shouldn’t be surprised at Sde Temein. The Chief Rabbi of the IDF Eyal Krim was appointed to his role as shepherd of the IDF despite being on record as saying rape of non-Jews, in certain circumstances, was ok:' Eyal Karim, chief rabbi of the IDF.IDF taps chief rabbi who once seemed to permit wartime rape The Times of Israel 12 July 2024

COI notice

If you want to complain about my behaviour then take it to WP:ANI, and your friend too. DuncanHill (talk) 22:05, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Oh fachrissake! (this comes straight after another weird complaint that I make personal slights) What on earth are you talking about? I questioned the necessity of templating a page which restated what Nableezy had stated 4 years ago on the same page. Which friend (Nableezy, Lustick . . .? Sensitivities! Jeezus! I did not complain about your behaviour. In any case, this is the second time (where I putatively resent having my slips fixed) when you have, uncomprehendingly to me, taken exception to my words on this page. Save yourself the trouble and kindly desist from dropping such remarks on this page. Nishidani (talk) 22:08, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
(several e/c) The other case was when you undid my correction of your mistake with an incorrect edit summary. I will not refrain from issuing valid COI notices. DuncanHill (talk) 22:21, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
Oh. You missed my express gratitude for your work correcting my errors expressed here, right on this page, before your first angry remonstration over the outrage of my mere questioning one of your, mostly useful, corrections. So, thanks for the laugh. I read that, I hope last post plunked here, as the sort of thing that might merit a prestigious Profile in Courage Award (per 'I will not refrain. . . .'). I find hyperthermia over trivial disputes, one of the most melancholic things observable in wikiculture, ultimately narcotic, because I value self-awareness and by physical constitution am inert to the allure of stupefacients (even cocaine, once snorted to please a girlfriend, had no effect). Now kindly go away.Nishidani (talk) 06:06, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Don't feed the troll

They are just bludgeoning the topic because they desperately feel that Jimbo's talk page could attract some more favorable attention. I don't want to fathom why Jimbo allows the topic to stay alive while not responding to them. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 21:41, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I made brief comments, unlike many there. Mr Wales is perfectly entitled to allow wikipedians to air their grumps there. he doesn't have to read his own page. Tolerance is a fundamental liberal virtue, and implies no assent one way or another.Nishidani (talk) 21:52, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Using the word 'liberalism' reminded me of a relevant passage in Peter Beinart's The Crisis of Zionism (2012)

'Ethically, the ADL and AJC are caught between the liberalism that defined organized American Jewish life before 1967 and the tribalism that has dominated it since. The result is schizophrenia. .. (The ADL's) Foxman has eloquently condemned anti-Muslim bigotry. But, in 2010, when that bigotry ran wild during the debate over a plan to build a Muslim community center near the site of the World Trade Center, he concluded that the religious freedom of Muslims must bow to the sensitivities of anti-Muslim bigots.’ pp.46-47 Nishidani (talk) 21:56, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I couldn't resist, but this ages like... -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 02:03, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Very good. I'm glad to see the art of irony is not only admired but put into practice on wikipedia. All we need to recivilize this place is to expand the margins of tolerance, already squeezed out to a miserable borehole, as people are invited to weaponize real or instrumentally imagined sensitivities and petty resentments when sourced arguments fail.Nishidani (talk) 06:29, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikiproject

Hi, I see you've contributed a lot to Epic of King Gesar, would you be interested in a taskforce on oral tradition? Kowal2701 (talk) 10:11, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

I did a lot of research on that, with a thesis, requiring a lot of comparative study on the techniques and roots of epic narratives (and, with the Gesar epic, a particular love of Tibetan culture), on the Odyssey and shamanism when I was young. So I knew the area of interest, and have many books on the topic, up to 1975. But that familiarity with the topic is now highly dated. I won't have much time, given the 24/7 requirements of following the Paris Olympics, but, if this proceeds, then by all means drop me a note if the project grazes things that you might think, from the above, that I have a reasonable knowledge of. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 10:22, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
the project page is Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthropology/Oral tradition taskforce, maybe watch it for a short while to see if any discussions pique your interest? Kowal2701 (talk) 11:57, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Bookmarked- But I have far too much on my plate to actively participate, as apart from keeping an eye on the pages. Regards Nishidani (talk) 12:04, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
That's okay, no worries Kowal2701 (talk) 12:06, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

July 2024

Please stop attacking other editors, as you did on Majdal Shams attack. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Comment on content, not on other contributors or people. In this discussion, you’re accusing an editor of POV-pushing because they Wikilink the article Druze in Israel in relation to Druze in the Golan heights. However, the scope of that article covers the Druze in the Golan heights.

Worse, in my view, you are doing this by misrepresenting their edit. You’re claiming that the displayed text was “Druze in Israel town”, when it was in fact “Druze town”.

Please remember that WP:CIVIL is a policy, and that article talk pages are not the correct place to raise conduct concerns. BilledMammal (talk) 13:58, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

I did not attack editors. I commented on the content, which consisted of a legal falsification. You followed up by appearing to say the text I challenged could stand, (Druze in the Golan Heights? Israeli Druze in the Golan Heights?) and I asked you not to second that kind of editing. It was a request. Nishidani (talk) 14:01, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Your section is titled "POV pushing", and you say ABHammad’s revert is particularly POV-charged. You’re accusing ABHammad of POV pushing, which is an aspersion - one that you justified by misrepresenting their edit.
This is attacking editors, and I ask you withdraw it. BilledMammal (talk) 14:13, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
I am getting sick and tired of editors, this must the fifth time this year, scouring my contributions to find some piddling evidence to take me to AE. If you are saying that no editor should correct another when the latter falsifies a text blatantly - there is not a flyspeck of doubt that to state, as they did in their link, that the Druze in the occupied Golan heights town of Majdal Shams are Druze in Israel is 'POV-pushing'. POV pushing consists, as you know, in this case, of using wikipedia to put across an opinion that happens to coincide with a nationalistic viewpoint, as though it were a fact. And the method used, creating a link identifying the Golan Druze as Druze in Israel did exactly that. It is not a content dispute, since the Druze in question are not in Israel. You disagree, fine. But the text was falsified, and the falsification mirrors an Israeli national POV, which was used to replace an objective legal definition of that area. ABHammad's case at AE is still under adjudication, and this revert of his doesn't help. NB that I am virtually the only editor in this area who rigorously avoids recourse to any form of sanction in wikipedia forums when these abuses crop up. I use the talk page, exhaustively. I didn't complain about your templating an experienced editor either, though it is again, poor practice, and somewhat intimidatory in appearance. Why did you head this lament July 2024 by the way. Is this going to be a monthly thing? Don't answer. Just desist from this niggling. Nishidani (talk) 15:44, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
The article that most comprehensively covers the Druze in the Golan Heights is Druze in Israel. You might see it as POV-pushing, but it is reasonable to see it as linking to the article that provides the most information for the reader.
I don't want to take you to AE, because when you are being civil you're an excellent editor. The issue is that you are often not civil, and this is yet another example of that - and a particularly concerning one, because you misrepresented their edit, claiming that they added On 27 July 2024, an explosive projectile hit the Druze in Israel town of Majdal Shams in the northern Golan Heights, when what they added was On 27 July 2024, an explosive projectile hit the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the northern Golan Heights.
Your own evidence confirms my point about falsification 'an explosive projectile hit the Druze in Israel|Druze town.' Perhaps someone else can point out to you that Druze on the Golan Heights are not in Israel, as the link insinuates, and many of them have Syrian citizenship. The missile hit Syrian territory, and killed mercilessly Syrian Druze. How you think I 'misrepresent' the edit is beyond my powers of comprehension.Nishidani (talk) 19:37, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
You misrepresent it most significantly in this comment, where you misquote them as having said "Druze in Israel town", when they actually said "Druze town".
You also misrepresent it in your earlier comment, when you say they state that it is in Israel, when all they do is wikilink an article.
All I’m asking is that you correct these misrepresentations - and hopefully, also avoid personalising disputes in the future. BilledMammal (talk) 22:59, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
@BilledMammal: Adding a POV wikilink is also considered POV pushing, and we have a policy against that – it's called WP:DUE – which explicitly applies not only to article text but to images, wikilinks, external links, categories, templates, and all other material as well. You might like to acquaint yourself with it. — kashmīrī TALK 12:00, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm asking that when you contribute to article talks pages you focus on the content, and not the editors - and if you do need to comment on the editors, you do so on their talk pages or the appropriate noticeboard. This isn't difficult to do, and it would make the topic area a more pleasant area to edit in while also saving you from having to deal with editors complaining to you about this.
I would like to drop this now, regardless of whether you correct the issue or not, and hope you keep it in mind in the future, but because you've misrepresented ABHammad's edit I don't think that is appropriate. Can you at least correct that aspect?

Why did you head this lament July 2024 by the way. Is this going to be a monthly thing?

Because Twinkle automatically applies that heading when a warning is issued. Regarding the template, I follow WP:TTR. BilledMammal (talk) 16:46, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Nope. Wikipedia is not a reliable source, as you know, and one cannot cite the primitive to middling articles we have as evidence of anything. The rest is rubbish. We're all grown up here, adults. I focus massively on content, and don't need to be lectured on it as if in 97,000 edits and a 1,000+articles I have been focused on random passers-by who edit them, rather than the content. I probably am the major content contributor in this area, in an area where most contributions are monitoring and tweaks. It is not 'pleasant' to edit tragedies, but anyone with an historical sense who does so should do so with detachment, and zero tolerance of messing with history.Nishidani (talk) 19:19, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Ashkenazi Jewish Intelligence AFD

If the Ashkenazi Jewish Intelligence article survives its AFD, are you committed to improving that article and making it better sourced? I haven't voted yet either way in the AFD, because while that clearly is a notable topic, I also think the article in its current state is not worth preserving. But if I could know for sure that you'll improve it, I might vote for keep. 2A02:FE1:7191:F500:1D68:AEEA:EBA5:D751 (talk) 01:58, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm really astonished that editors could ever think that topic doesn't deserve an article. It may be true that, as gutted, it isn't worth preserving. but that only begs the question as to why this earlier version was disembowelled?. And sows a suspicion that any effort to do or redo the article on scientific lines will, despite the time spent, end up being editwarred out of existence.
Since the votes are overwhelmingly for deletion, I decided not to waste my time improving it. To do that means sitting down, reading nothing else, and writing it up at one stretch for several hours, with a sense that one has a clock ticking nearby, a kind of temporal gun at one's head. Articles should be written also for the personal pleasure of doing them. If this survives by some freak, I'll revise it from top to bottom, but probably first offline (and then plunk the result down as a single edit), and not immediately. Certainly not while viewing the Olympics is a priority. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 05:56, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
As I said in my comment in the AFD, the reason most of the content about this topic keeps being removed appears to be that other users aren't willing to follow WP:SOURCEGOODFAITH. Some of the recent comments in the AFD support that analysis. Elisha'o'Mine recently made a similar complaint about excluding the journal Intelligence. [8] Another example of an evidently high-quality source being removed as a non-RS, just a few days ago, was this edit. [9]
@Elisha'o'Mine: Can you offer any suggestions about how to address this issue of WP:SOURCEGOODFAITH? It has affected many separate articles and sources, so it can't be resolved on a single article's talk page. 2A02:FE1:7191:F500:1D68:AEEA:EBA5:D751 (talk) 08:51, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
I know virtually nothing about wiki policies, and avoid discussions of them like the plague. Like many, I obtained a tertiary degree, in a discipline that required (a) mastery of primary sources in another language (b) the best secondary source commentaries and interpretations then (c) paraphrasing (a) in terms of (b) so that (d) one could produce an overview of the given topic (and we had to do that three times a year, with papers that ran to 5,000 words or so, at least in my case). So, when I cam to wiki, I proceeded to implement this commonsensical but standard scholarly approach. I can see the reasons why we have so many intricate policy discussions because we are a very mixed community that, quite fairly and properly, must cater to all backgrounds, and develop its own culture to mediate and negotiate disagreements. A lot of them, though, reflect either unfamiliarity with a fairly straightforward mode of writing things up, or POV/politically correct sensibilities of pronounced sharpness.
So I can provide no advice here, except to note that theories that rub up against either common ethical perceptions of equality, or which, in terms of the consensus of a scientific discipline, don't get that much traction or are viewed as contentious, methodologically or otherwise, tend to start alarm bells ringing and panic attacks that destroy coverage itself. I once termed what I did professionally as 'morology' the study of stupid statements made by notable scholars - and I think the best way to counter ideas that challenge a general consensus is to analyse them coolly and provide the public readership with a guide to the concepts and their reception. When I did this with the travailed Khazar hypothesis, an unbelievable amount of contentious deletions, challenges, etc., arose wanting to rid wikipedia of the very possibility of covering it. Fortunately, after long 'battles' eventually I wrote Khazars (and the essential core of Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry) to a fair GA level, but it took months to obtain an understanding that I wasn't a true believer in the idea the Ashkenazi derived from Khazaria, or that my sheer curiosity was somehow an anti-Zionist dodge, to the contrary. Since Koerstler's book came out I have remained sceptical. The idea has a fascinating history that merited close study.
At this stage in my wikilife I don't want to work in articles entangled mercilessly in hostilities and revert battles. If the air clears, I'd be delighted, however, to chip in.Nishidani (talk) 09:51, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
I notice you've begun working to improve the article's sourcing. Thanks for putting effort into that. But I'll need to see whether improving the article proves to be possible before I can decide how to vote. There will likely be a lot of attempts to remove sources and content from this article, like there were in the article's past version, and that seems to have begun happening again already.
As you decide how to handle that issue, I suggest reading my comment here, along with the external discussion I linked to in the first sentence of that comment. For the reasons I explained there, on this and similar topics there is a tension between the view that is held by a majority of Wikipedia editors, and the view presented in the majority of secondary sources. Wikipedia editors have actively discouraged the systematic examination of secondary literature that was done there. Unless someone can find a way to resolve that contradiction, it will be necessary to choose between rewriting the article in a manner consistent with the majority of the secondary literature, as required by WP:NPOV, or in a manner consistent with internal Wikipedia consensus. 2A02:FE1:7191:F500:1D68:AEEA:EBA5:D751 (talk) 20:43, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, the usual ideological nervousness forming a stumbling block. If even an addition to a bibliography can lead to erasures, an addition that is cited in numerous secondary sources, then I've no desire to waste my time there in editwarring and endless talk page divagations, esp. among editors who show no interest in the topic other than as ostensible allo-POV monitors. I can imagine that if I paraphrased the following passage from a reputable book, the majority of editors you mention would go bezirk.

Piffer (2015) published another study using molecular genetic data in a different way to reach the same conclusion about genes contributing to between-group differences in intelligence. He used data about how frequently particular alleles appear in different racial and ethnic groups throughout the world and discovered that populations that have high average numbers of alleles associated with increased intelligence did indeed have high average 1Qs. Piffer (2019) later replicated this study. However, it is important to recognize that these two studies investigate a tiny handful of alleles that could contribute to intelligence differences. Even if Piffer’s (2015,2019) studies are correct and all the alleles have a causal impact on IQ (both uncertain prospects at this time), the total impact on those alleles is still to small to explain any non.trivial amount of the IQ gap between racial groups.

Piffer’s studies, though, examine averages across human populations. Individual-level data would be more conclusive. A recent study (Dunkel, Woodley of menie, Pallesen, & Kirkegaard, 2019) suggests that the same genes that may cause individual differences in intelligence may also cause average group differences in intelligence. The researchers calculated polygenic scores of intelligence for Americans descended from European Jews (the ethnic group that has the highest average IQ in the world) and Americans descended from non-Jewish Europeans. The results showed that the European Jewish group had more alleles (on average) associated with higher IQ than the comparison group. Although the comparison did not involve different racial groups, it is important because European Jews spent several hundred years genetically isolated from their Christian neighbors, whioch could create unique genetic characteristics compared to other Europeans (Cochrane et al., 2006, Cochran & Harpending, 2009). Therefore, this study provided circumstantial evidence that genes can be implicated in some between-group differences in average IQ.(Russell T. Warne, In the Know:Debunking 35 Myths about Human Intelligence, Cambridge University Press 2020 ISBN 978-1-108-60221-1 p. p.275.)

When I read RS with an excellent publishing venue by recognized experts, I don't purse my lips like a gudgeon and take the juicy bite because something there might tickle my fancy (to mix metaphors) or react with horror because it might upset some opinion I've long entertained. I just register it, and make some mental notes (in the above I noted a possible Utah-Mormon connection tacitly present in several of these positive evaluations, which might bias the author though no secondary source I'm familiar with makes that possibility present) while accepting that the source passes muster. I follow various trails, and read things like D. Piffer, A review of intelligence GWAS hits: their relationship to country IQ and the issue of spatial autocorrelation, Intelligence Volume 53, November–December 2015, pp 43-50, Curtis S. Dunkel, Michael A. Woodley of Menie, Jonatan Pallesen, Emil O. W. Kirkegaard, Polygenic scores mediate the Jewish phenotypic advantage in educational attainment and cognitive ability compared with Catholics and Lutherans, Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences vol.13, issue 4, pp. 366–375 etc.etc. And while I do these exercises in thematic spoor scouring, I imagine that too many editors editors are just hanging around like birds of prey over articles and talk pages to spare themselves enough time to actually chase up a subject down to its obscurest byways. That would mean a lot of reading. if you read alot you have less time to edit articles, which seems to be a sexy pastime (all present company excepted).
So, as has often been the case in the past, I've decided to write the article in wiki style without posting it, just for my own illumination, which is one of the primary reasons that drive me to contribute to wiki, a venue for extended autodidacticism. It'll go into a file. Who knows, if I still stick round like a stale fart, and see the temperature in this room has lowered, and the anxieties diminished, I might add it some years down the track. I have enough bickering in the IP area for my daily nonsense quota without getting dragged into that censorious parlour. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 21:40, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
And just in case there is any ambiguity read into my citation from Warne about some hidden POV I might be suspected of entertaining, I’ll dump here my comment at the relevant page. I actually giggled to myself when I spotted the naivity of Warne, with all of his qualifications, under the impress of Cambridge University Press, taking questionable research, published in RS, so uncritically. Nishidani (talk) 04:05, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
The article is dead in the water, and the short version is a laughingstock, and remains so because editors, instead of diving into the full scholarly history on this topic, keep flensing it to its skeletal caricature of an article. I simply noted in that bibliography how a future article, radically rewriting this nonsense, should be sourced (only a small sample). With the atmosphere surrounding this topic, evidently any work on actually rewriting the page for wikipedia would be pointless.
I find it very comical to see that knee-jerk approaches to what would have been a Sander Gilman-(I have cited him as authoritative in many articles long before encountering this one, and subscribe to virtually everything he writes) type analysis of the fringe or minority 'researchers'(most have academic credentials, some like Davide Piffer even had a research position, apparently at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and get their ideas into peer-reviewed journals and even highly praised books like Warne's (see my page) who meddle with borderline theories of ethno-racial differences can't get past an editorial consensus hostile to even naming these people on wikipedia. In my own view these ideas are rubbish, but influential rubbish (built, nb, on a core of results on allele distributions among populations that emerged from a scientific methodology but whose interpretation, and generalizations from them, is extremely complex, as often such things are in evolutionary population studies) and should be taken apart as such, just as a couple of us did with numerous articles on the trash pseudo-scholarship surrounding Shakespeare's identity, despite the biliousness of editors who subscribe to that nonsense. So, all the anxieties about exploring this nonsense are totally dislocated from that curiosity with weird stereotypes (in this case about Ashkenazi, often promoted by some notable Ashkenazi themselves) which the equanimity of deep scholarship handles with ease (for which Sander Gilman is our palmary guide). I'm done here, in both senses. Nishidani (talk) 03:53, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Archaeology in the IP area today

Does this pass the smell test?

Hey, I hope you are well. It appears pretty plausible to me, but it’s a BLP, and I might be missing something.

The wrap about Bisan Owda FortunateSons (talk) 13:10, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

G'day. I'm fine though, as I watch Carlos Alcaraz showing signs of wilting under a revitalized Djokevic's play at the Paris Olympics, somewhat disgruntled myself moodwise. Nothing against Djokevic, but the old ought to leave some space for the young, though it's fair that the latter must earn their way up by the same hard yakka their elders applied themselves to.
So a pro-Israeli lobby with the comical name Creative Community for Peace, associated with the deplorably mendacious StandWithUs (apparently to secure tax-free status), cites a certain Eitan Fischberger as reported in TheWrap, an entertainment news outlet well known for the ‘toxic’ environment in which its many disgruntled employees work, for a possibly damaging innuendo about Miss Owda.
Fischberger apparently came across or dug up' some traces in the record suggesting that Bisan Owda, who keeps having to shift around the Gaza Strip as her home, and then areas where she flees to, are sequentially bombed, in the past may have had some links to George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which down to 2004 had engaged in a number of suicide bombings, a practice later disowned (the presumed association with the Murder of Rina Shnerb was extracted under extreme torture). The PFLP is a ‘terrorist’ organization for the USA and some other Western countries, and therefore an award for her reportage from under the bombs would be sanctioning a terrorist. Go figure how all of the dots here are connected.
The guilt by association with the PFLP recycles the technique used to try and destroy Khalida Jarrar. The point of all this is character-assassination, and the source for it is Fischberger who reports from his comfortable digs in Jerusalem on the terrorist connections of a young bomb-dodging Gaza lass who risks ending up on the list of 113, so far, mainly Palestinian journalists killed by IDF strikes in the Gaza Strip since October. (I always do this mental background work as I read news articles: imagine the lifestyle of the journalist reporting, and the life(less) styles the former write about) As Owda huddles in the rubble, after managing to fork out the inflated fees charged there to recharge her Iphone and reconnect to the internet, some folks in LA have gone ballistic at the idea that her reportage from a war zone (it lacks 'context and nuance', hahaha!) was being given some recognition, ergo indirect empathy with the victims of a Palestinian tragedy in which roughly 140,000 people have been killed or wounded so far. Good grief. Leave the pseudo-journalistic 'terrorist' to scurry about anonymously like a hunted rat. It's none of our business to scrape up some inkling of what's happening there.
I'm prejudiced in this, since I admire George Habash. Admiration has nothing to do with approval of the PFLP's past history. It is a matter of grasping the extraordinary predicament highly intelligent men like him found themselves in, within a factional world riddled by personal corruption and opportunism (Fatah, but the same could be said for many mainstream Israeli and Western politicians).
In short, while I find this order of gossip, as I do all gossip, tasteless, and feel all this stinks, and I don't think the source is good, if better sources come forth stating that Creative Community for Peace called for her Peabody Award to be recinded because of her alleged past connection with the PFLP, then that probably should be acceptable. (I don't think getting interested in that kind of 'news' very healthy for the project because it all reflects image battles conducted for political ends and narrative dominance on the internet, not significant historical data). Cheers Nishidani (talk) 14:43, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I'll cut to the chase. Since there are several highly reliable sources that affirm prominent Palestinians (Refaat Alareer, Adnan al-Bursh, Ismail al-Ghoul etc.etc.) were targeted because they were considered close to Hamas (mostly crap), the mere fact that a bruited connection to PFLP can be made out for Bisan Owda qualifies her immediately as targetable, since Israel holds that organization as in part responsible for 7 October. This places editors somewhat in a predicament, BLP-wise, since publicizing even by correct reportage, such an insinuation makes space for a casus necandi(grounds for killing). The insinuation is on the internet, but whether it should be reported on a wiki bio, given such a possibility, requires more expertise in BLP than I can boast of.Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I think this is the most convincing argument, and also the one that made me hesitate enough to instead prefer waiting for a few days or weeks instead of adding it today.
Regardless of my own wholly unqualified legal opinion on where the line between „mere“ propaganda and the engagement in hostilities is to be drawn, I’m rather hesitant to place information that I would plausibly consider legal justification for the targeting of a person barely older than some of my friends to be something done without at least a second of hesitation. Having said that, the information is out and covered by RS, and I don’t believe that an Israeli strike cell is likely to read her English-language Wikipedia article but miss the news source, even ignoring the practical question of it being a mistake, whether or not it’s a crime (whoever one attributes this quote too). FortunateSons (talk) 10:03, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
As always, I appreciate the thoughtful response.
My condolences for Alcaraz‘s loss, but I’m sure the young will have the chance to beat the old guard another day.
I understand your dislike for that sort of „news“ (even if I am one of the people advocating for its inclusion) and don’t love some of the ties of that org either, even if the same or worse could be said about organisations on the other side.
I empathise with the plight of Palestinians in general and of Bisan specifically (not least of all because an acquaintance/friend of mine has chosen her as an avenue of „unbiased“ information, despite my recommendation to the contrary).
No matter one’s opinion on the Rina case, their participation in the Oct. 7 attack doesn’t seem to be disputed (based on the wiki page, I don’t speak any Arabic). I think you can guess that we end up on opposite sides of the discussion and its practical results when it comes to the PFLP and those that choose to align themselves with the organisation. In the same way, we are likely rooting for opposite sides of the book I’m currently reading too. I intellectually, even if not emotionally, understand your position, and hope that you can say the same.
Having said that, and based on the information provided, I would still consider the source reliable (in line with its perennial sources listing), and will likely cite it with attribution, despite your plausible ethical objection brought forward. However, I wouldn’t at all be offended if you choose to revert me for it :) FortunateSons (talk) 09:47, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
No. If people ask me for advice on an article, I don't follow them around to revert them if they disagree with my counsel. As to Bergman's book, it is a very important, if rather too 'sexy' a work, documenting many of the 2,700 murders/targeted assassinations the state of Israel has carried out since just before its foundation onwards. The precedent this world record sets is that Israel should never complain if any other state murders any of its citizens on the grounds that whatever they do is a threat to their security. The number of course is far larger, since murdering protestors who pose no threat to your life or limbs, being snipered at from a safe distance of 80-400 metres would make that minimal statistic skyrocket. In my view it means again that Israel has adopted the principle of Ausnahmezustand elaborated by a Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, whereby extralegal measures are justified in a state of emergency. Since Israel will always live in a state of emergency, for structural reasons, the lesson is one must get used to killing as a natural exercise of an existential Staatsräson, no matter who wins the elections. Nishidani (talk) 22:19, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
I appreciate the perspective, and thank you for the time and the wise thoughts, even when I (respectfully) disagree with the assessment.
I know, I did pick it because it was „sexy“, but I was more than done with dull, particularly considering I’m committing the cardinal sin of reading it as a PDF on my smartphone during my daily commute, a hazardous task due to my generations famously short attention spans. On a lighter note, is the weather bearable down there? Here, it barely gets over thirty, but the reports for most of the Mediterranean look bad.
I would argue that the Americans (and likely the Soviets/Russians) have almost certainly exceeded the Israeli record on targeted killings (though not per capita), particularly considering that both are rather likely to be a lot less transparent about the actual numbers than Israel is (not necessarily due to any ethical distinctions, just structural ones). However, neither of those is likely to win a „most ethical state“ award in the near future, so…
Regarding the hypocrisy of states - I’m inclined to agree with the logic but disagree with the outcome. Otherwise, Palestine and Lebanon would have no right to complain about their soldiers (or honestly civilians) being blown up by Israel, based on de-facto representative armed bodies doing it to Israelis before.
Murder (implying unlawful) is an almost pointless category when discussing actions taken by a state against what can plausibly be described as combatants, though that again is a pedantic distinction. The innocent people dying during protests (both violent and non-violent), are a tragedy neither side is taking any serious steps to avoid, but definitely one where Israel is doing maddeningly little to fix a perfectly solvable problem.
I’m not educated enough on the concept to disagree beyond a gut feeling, but will add it to my seemingly never-ending to-be-read-list. As always, thank you.
Do you really believe that there won’t be peace/a two-state solution within our lifetime? I feel like once this round of fighting ends, few people will have an appetite for more. FortunateSons (talk) 23:31, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
I made it clear from the beginning of editing the I/P area (almost two decades ago) that I believe it pointless to edit under the assumption that setting the record straight will have the slightest impact on soi-disant peace talks or the resolution of what is, by its nature, politically intractable (for Israel - there is no possibility any coalition would ever have the numbers to assent to withdrawing from the West Bank). As to Italy, yes, it's very hot: the desertification of .the south, its Africanization, is proceeding, as was long predictable, at the rate of 12 kms per annum. But I at least live in a forested niche that is always cooled by a air currents running along the partially walled landscape, so that the house and its gardens are always pleasantly fresh. A basement apartment defies any heat wave. I'm lucky in my original choice. Everyone else every evening complains of the swelter.
Ernest Gellner once asked me why I chose to live in Italy. I replied that since the early 80s I had a strong impression the postwar world's miracle was ending (an intuition seemingly corroborated two decades later by the thesis of Thomas Piketty), and that we, denizens of the peaceful aftermath of empire, were sleepwalking into a dangerous structural revolution of drift towards chaos for which more developed countries were ill-prepared. 'Progress' in the naively optimistic sense, as 'change for the better', was a dead letter. In that sense, Italy was relatively safer from the temptations of recrudescent ideologies and the politics of resentment. Gellner, who'd got out of Europe on the eve of the Holocaust, and who had a villa in Imperia, nodded understandingly.
Functional modern nations (Italy has always been a failed state in the classic sense) would have little in their cultural DNA to cope with the inevitable disruptions of what had been taken to be the normal state of life, with its slow ameliorative progress. Italy has coped with fuckups for 2,000 years by drawing on a kind of self-defeating but momentarily effective, grabbag of complex flexible work-around solutions that tend to give one a momentary respite. They are in good part instinctive existential bricoleurs who, comparatively, don't tend to vent their frustrations in violence. Even Mussolini despaired of ever re-engineering the country to some semblance of institutional coherence and efficiency. A good number of fascists in my area hid Jews, or tipped them off, or secreted in their gardens valuables the affected families confided to their care and returned them after the war). That is not to underestimate the evil of the regime, and its satrap-bootlicking followers. It's a country I disliked at first (aged 19), but grew to admire and prefer over any other for its traditional decencies. Having said all that, mentally I am taking apart every affirmation I've made as reflexive challenges to what are feelings kick in. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 01:36, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
I understand that view, and believe that you may be right, though I would place the blame for the inability to find a reasonable compromise (even if it had to be that atrocious thing Trump considers a peace plan) firmly on both sides, owing to both sides (misguided) belief that further fighting will have any benefit worth the price being paid by innocents on both sides. While it may be idealistic, and my goal is to build an encyclopedia, I do have a likely naive hope that an agreement on a set of facts may in some way - even if marginally - aid the finding of a compromise, that, if not reasonable, is at least tolerable for all sides. I’m sorry to hear about the heat and desertification, and am glad you found a good escape, even if partially by coincidence. I’m not enjoying my time in the significantly milder German heat (or, one might argue, became spoiled by the air conditioning installed in my childhood home during my teens), despite us rarely getting over 30 degrees. My best friend is considering moving to a colder place, and I’m tempted to follow her for the climate alone, though I will feel differently in the fall.
That’s a fascinating argument for Italy, and one I must admit to never have considered. I have put - or more accurately, am putting - a significant amount of thought into the question of where I want to live, having likely excluded Israel and the US despite my love for both cultures (which might be a hot take here, considering how different both are), and with the exceptions of escape plans (or hopes?) to New Zealand if our local problem makes the northern hemisphere unliveable, I’m genuinely unsure. I have spent little more than a month in Italy during my life (in total, split across a few excellent beaches, Rome andVenice), and found the people, culture and cuisine to be amazing, but while I have strong plans to visit more in the future, must admit that I didn’t ‘vibe‘ with it in the same way I have with France and Austria, though that could simply be the cultural proximity.
Nevertheless, your description of the culture seems rather charming to me (even excluding the hope that if push came to shove, the people might buy me a bit of additional time, however unlikely and arguably irrational that scenario is). Perhaps I should give the country a proper chance as a place to settle down…
Was Italy that different from where you came from? Was the initial dislike just culture shock, or a more specific objection?
As always, I thank you for the fascinating read. FortunateSons (talk) 19:47, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
No. There is no parity. Israel is a nuclear power, with over 600 aircraft, among the most advanced missile delivery systems in the world, which have offloaded by now somewhere like 70,000 tons of bombs on Gazans, whereas Hamas has piddling Qassam rockets that have no guidance systems and cause little damage, most hitting desert areas. (Hamas has had the rocket and mortar capacity to obliterate the kibbutzim on its borders for a decade. It never exercised that option). Israel's pro-capita GNP is about $56,000 vs Palestinians' $3,700 (in Gaza $800. There is a book by Sara Roy arguing that Israel, certainly in the Gaza Strip, has planned its 'dedevelopment' since 1967). All four uprisings by Palestinians started as popular peaceful strikes, and were put down with extreme repressive violence first by Great Britain and then by Israel (Thrall) All conflict there is a foregone conclusion even before it starts. Israel is backed to the hilt, financially and militarily by a superpower. Palestinians who manage to secure arms generally have AK-47s, knives and slingshots. Negotiations between midgets and giants will not find the former kindly patted on the head, with their Hobbit farmlands restored. As Nathan Thrall has perceptively concluded, the only way peace can come about is if the world imposes it. For Israel has nothing to win, being a great military power with extensive settlements, and the Palestinians have little to gain from any peace the U.S. and Israel would broker. I met a Palestinian businessman by sheer serendipity or chance in a restaurant yesterday. His family was land-rich and were expelled from Haifa at gunpoint in 1948. They could have pocketed a few million dollars were he to sign over their historic landholdings, now technically alienated 'enemy property'. On principle, they didn't, and won't. Very few people, esp. in Israel and the U.S. have any understanding of how profound that sense of rootedness in their homeland remains, and their readiness to put up with impossible conditions at whatever cost just to remain who they are. It is not some theological abstraction of homecoming to them, but the taste of the soil, its air, its groves, even its ingenious poverty.
Italy. More hunger shock. The only cultures that have ever 'shocked' me are Anglophone places like the U.S., England and Australia. I left my wallet in my luggage, which arrived 10 days later, so I had to survive on just one piece of pizza a day after breakfast in a prepaid hotel. No English people understood me because I spoke rapidly in pure Australian dialect, so I had to take on a reading course in New Testament Greek (I'd already studied classical Greek for a year so that was tedious) just to sit next to a PhD graduate from Cambridge to pick up his accent, and learn to speak with what, when I returned, my relatives called a 'plum in the mouth' (posh). I lived in Italy but only left my room for an evening walk and piece of pizza, or a quarter loaf of bread with mortadella, the rest of the time I spent reading for 14 hours a day in classical Greek, French and German, apart from reading Dante and Cavalcanti in Italian. So i had no contact with the country at all. All I noted was young couples getting engaged in mid adolescence, strolling happily down the street, and then 19-20 year old couples, now married, pushing a pram with exhausted looks on their faces. When, as some distraction from my studies, I first went into a bookshop in Perugia and purchased Che Guevara's book on Guerrilla warfare and an annotated copy of the Bhagavad Gita, - the cost meant I had to forego eating for a day - the communist bookseller asked me if I needed to see a doctor. I decided I was cut out to be a Tibetan Buddhist and, after some months in Kfar Aza, was heading for Nepal when a death in the family prompted me to return home, where I completed my classics degree, thankfully.Nishidani (talk) 20:29, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
That story is moving, and quite sad. While I consider his choice to be unwise, I also can’t say with confidence that I would make a different one under equal circumstances. However, if for no reason other than the Israel nuclear program, they cannot be effectively coerced by force, the probability of sufficient political pressure is low, and the Palestinians (insofar as polling can be indicative of such a thing) do not seem to be willing to take a deal „bad enough“ for Israel to accept it, and Israel does not seem to be willing to make an offer good enough to entice the Palestinians. Even just the Jerusalem problem will be a permanent obstacle to peace, and there is nothing (except my personal pet theory) that other countries could offer Israel to give up on the strategic (or „strategic“, depending on who you ask) parts of the occupied territories, even ignoring the facts on the grounds created by the people in the settlements, who can neither be forcefully removed nor forcefully placed into a Palestinian state. In other words: I hope you are wrong, and I fear you are right.
Regarding Italy: I must admit, whenever I read your stories, I feel like I’m squandering my youth (and also like my generation is rather soft compared to yours). Except for dodging old Greek, no regrets there. I was tortured with Latin for half a decade, and my displeasure with the alternative (French) was likely been minute compared to old Greek, despite having to admit that I seem to be missing out on some amazing literature due to my regrettable dislike of dead languages. To read them seems to provide an insight quite literally lost in translation.
Considering I can’t keep my British and my American spelling in line, I would say a posh accent isn’t the worst thing in the world. The lost wallet must have felt like a kick in the gut, while it must have been 40 or so years ago, I do really feel sorry for you, it surely was highly unpleasant.
On an off-color note, I’m personally always shocked by such couples; I can barely keep myself appropriately fed, and just had tea and chocolate for dinner (to be fair, my illness has taken out both my sense of smell and appetite at once, but still).
If you have spent time in Kfar Aza, I do hope that the people you know there are ok. FortunateSons (talk) 21:14, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
I knew many good people there but never kept up correspondence. It was the first thing I checked and rechecked on Oct.7. I believe several older people I must have known died, and many young people. Just as I believe most of the kids inside Gaza who engaged with me as I walked round Gaza (getting past Israeli border guards who told me I risked being murdered), offering me marujuana, and when knocked back, Turkish coffee and sweets in a bar run by a dear and gentle old man, are probably dead or maimed. Some kibbutzniks may have been upset that I emptied the box of free prophylactics in their pharmacy to make balloons for a party. Only one was annoyed by my walking around with a keffiyah and a borrowed Scottish kilt:) Don't take my personal stories as sorrowful. When Alitalia found out I had no money, they gave me a gift of 15,000 lire (160 euros adjusted for inflation), and I had a secret thrill at the challenge of getting by on that for perhaps a month. It was great fun. As my relatives said of me, I seemed to like slumming it. My earliest drawing, aged 4, was a self-portrait of a swaggie with a caption telling my father I was going to hit the road:) Nishidani (talk) 21:43, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
You have my deepest condolences, for both groups. War is hell.
I must admit, that story is representative of just about everything I know and like about Israelis ;)
I‘m glad you took it well. Perhaps it’s my own peculiarity (and privilege), but I’m glad it was a pleasant rather than an unpleasant story for you. Considering my worst stories with food are primarily living off chocolate cookies smuggled into the accommodation at a two-week „educational“ summer camp in England (for no more than five days, caused by my stomach and taste buds disagreeing with the food served, before the revolt of my peers got us edible food) and not eating anything in Paris for a day while walking no less than 20.000 steps after getting a table for one on a restaurant I wanted to absolutely try, only for them to „lose“ (not like my young face and German accent) my reservation, and everything else having closed on account of it being a holiday, it could truly just be me being way too soft. You don’t still happen to have the drawing? I can’t imagine how a child would draw that. :) FortunateSons (talk) 22:03, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Well, don't get me started on English cooking. After all, I live in Italy which sets the benchmark. My sister conserved the drawing and gave it to me some years ago. Drawing ran in the family: my father began as a professional draftsman, his brother, my uncle, was a commercial artist with a brief stint at the Disney studios before he was arrested and repatriated after joining the US army to avoid starving, and then going AWOL. My brother is an accomplished artist: some years ago he did a wall-size reproduction of Banksy's Flower Thrower on commission and picked up another to reproduce a Monet both covering a whole wall. His drawings when he was six never depicted trees: he drew distinct species like stringybarks, messmates and river redgums. My brother still insists, too generously, I was as competent as he turned out to be, but I never kept it up, after I topped the class in drawing at 10 (as a new boy to the college) and the lad I wanted to make friends with, who customarily won all the prizes at school, broke down crying. Since then I only did one drawing, a portrait of my wife asleep in an armchair just after we married. I'm writing these anecdotes on the slim hope that they may distract you from your distressing symptoms.Nishidani (talk) 23:15, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Agreed, I have never been disappointed by Italian Food. That’s an incredibly sweet story (except the hunger an repatriation), and must admit that having enough income to commission good art is at least part of my motivation to get a high-paying job. Perhaps you should try drawing again? There must be something in your area that is worthy of being drawn, if you aren’t looking to do people?
I really appreciate it, thank you! However, as my fever flipped into a burning headache, I can’t quite provide a response of equal quality. FortunateSons (talk) 09:30, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Sources issue has fixed itself: NYT FortunateSons (talk) 10:24, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks indeed, FS. I would have missed that. I hope you are getting over your recent health problems, and can enjoy what remains of the summer. Cheers. Nishidani (talk) 10:32, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. Still somewhat sick, and in the last throws of my thesis, and have to shorten it, so I’ll have to „kill my darlings“, so to speak. Looks like the weather somewhat cooled down around you, so I hope you can enjoy the lovely weather and aren’t stuck inside like I am! FortunateSons (talk) 10:37, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Well, console yourself that sicknesses at a young age, if handled with the right psychological approach, can be an unexpected source for discovering one's creativity or simply one's self (which is just as important). Alberto Moravia, Isaac Newton and Marcel Proust immediately come to mind, and of course you will remember how Thomas Mann made his Nobel-orientated career by playing endless variations, from Buddenbrooks to Dr.Faustus on the (pseudo-) correlation between sickness and mental acuity. I told that to my nephew (13) while he was recovering in Marseilles from an urgent heart operation they could only perform there and he perked up from his post-operative depression, associated with the fear he would never be able to play football like the rest of his mates, and almost beat me at chess the next day. I've lived inside my 80 sq.metre personal library for 35 years, and have never felt stuck 'inside'. I'd had enough experiences by my late thirties around the world to last me a lifetime. Enough was enough. You're still young, so I advise you to knock around and enjoy the great outdoors, wherever. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 11:42, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you very much for the advice and recommendations. I think some decent food, not running around while having a fever, and sleep will let me get rid of the illness asap, once such things are again available (as in, tomorrow). While my weeks spent ill (of a rather nasty COVID-Infection and maybe some other Virus too? According to my doc, some of the symptoms are weird?) was not what I was looking for during a thesis, it’s a true first world problem compared to actual surgery. Did everything go well for your nephew?
I turned down a rather fun trip, another one didn’t work out due to my schedule, and a potential third one fell through due to the end of the associated relationship. However, I will try my best to at least make it outside semi-regularly, if for no reason than to avoid death due to lack of Vitamin D and water my plants ;) FortunateSons (talk) 11:30, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
I hope you don’t mind me responding here, but at least I am going beyond the specific arguments of BLP policy here, and I don’t want to have that discussion be longer than it needs to be. That’s an interesting argument, and a photo I wasn’t aware of, which, while not strictly relevant on a policy basis, does definitely provide an interesting basis for discussion. Sources broadly consider it to be plausible but unproven (with a wide range on that spectrum), but it seems pretty clear that it’s a) her in the pictures, b) she is wearing a uniform, but not armed and c) speaking for or on behalf of the org, with neither of those facts appearing to be clearly disputed. As such, whichever phrasing one selects, the inclusion of the broadly covered content is due, even if I empathise with your disgust about the motives of it’s distribution.
NotForum below
For me, the only thing about Obama that this picture tells me is that he should have had better taste in dinner guests, but considering the images existing with his successor, I’m not inclined to care much.
Regarding the question of age (and status), I agree, Bisan Owda was younger than I am now when those were taken, and (ignoring the rumors about her background and the whole mess with her fundraiser) it’s indeed in no way a damning indication that she has ever been part of one of the armed groups during her affiliation with the PFLP. In fact, one could argue that even if her reasons were not legitimate, they are nevertheless understandable on a human level. Nevertheless, as far as the primary sourcing goes (I don’t speak Arabic, but based on your plethora of skills, you probably do?), I’m not seeing much indication that the images contain anything widely diverging from what the “influencer” and the org are claiming. Am I missing something? FortunateSons (talk) 13:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Well I'd prefer dinner with Ali Abunimah, Edward Said or Rashid Khalidi anytime. At least with them I'd learn something. I'd sit down at table even with someone whom all the world screamed was a terrorist, also because I'm not the sort of person to boast that Wenn ich Terrorist höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning, the original with "Kultur" instead of "Terrorist" wrongly attributed to Göring et al. Indeed, the first thing that came to mind on reading your remarks was a Trinitarian friend confiding to me over two decades ago that he was trying to get a permit to visit and spend some time in Gaza with Islamic imams in order to find some bridging for a dialogue between his faith and theirs. I gave him one of my two books on Arabic grammar with of course a long conversation about the difficulties and the background, political and religious, of the area.
I'm afraid with that remark you've hit my tolerance highbar. At least unlike Obama who every Tuesday morning over his eight years in office would pick a name from a list of 'terrorist' suspects and order that someone was to be assassinated by a drone anywhere from Afghanistan to Yemen and Syria (quite a few caused massive civilian casualties, as he well knew), they would find themselves incapable of murder, for whatever reason. Murder is a core elements in Israel's approach to Palestinians, witness this just two months ago, a case where it was minutely analysed and documented by B'tselem. So what you are telling me is that if I visit an Israeli friend (and I have such an invite, reciprocating my own hospitality earlier) and see a photo in his living room of him during his military service, I should think of him as either a murderer or conniving in an organization that regularly murders innocents? Indeed that I should take a snapshot and defame him on social media?
I have a photo of myself and a friend, arms round each other's shoulders, dating back to 1975. When the Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War, he told me he was dropping his well-paid scholarship to go back to his country - they desperately needed technicians like him. So he left a life of expatriate comfort to help his fellow countrymen. He informed his embassy which welcomed his return and, on arriving at Phnom Penh, he was executed with a shot to the head just as he got off the plane. Were that precious memento of our brief friendship and his all too brief life, to circulate, no doubt some comfortable upper-class professionals with a hectic publicitarian cause to press, would pull strings to create some public furor by using it to prove I was a friend of the Khmer Rouge (and perhaps even ergo, pro-Hamas).
This whole story about Bisan Owda stinks to high heaven. It is drenched with the muck of snooty eurocentric contempt for desperate dirt-poor but bright kids trying to find a reason to explain why for every week of their 25 years, they and their community have been relentlessly bombed, shot at, starved and even denied the chance of exposing themselves to the outside world's best scholarship by having their Fulbrightscholarships aborted by Israel. I guess you just, if you are young, don't know much about how our world (mal)functions, and how endemically malicious these personalizing battles to gain public sympathy by shitting on an adversary get. Nishidani (talk) 14:59, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
My genuine apologies for any comments that caused offense, I didn’t mean to. Even though I (in a way that would likely offend the sensibilities of the professors I learned under) hold a relatively hardline legal view on the permissibility of targeted killings and other uses of force by states, I consider much of what is done by both Israelis and Americans (not to even speak of the Russians etc.) to be both morally abhorrent and almost indisputably unlawful, including the heartbreaking video above. I was quite young during the Obama years, so perhaps I am holding onto a naivety or nostalgia I should reexamine, but he is the first US president that I remember, and his successor was less than inspiring. While he gets credit for cutting down on many of the grossest abuses by the CIA, the drone war is definitely a dark part of his presidency. Just the same way, while I’m willing to give Israel a lot of good faith and the facts are often much more complicated than reported by international media, many of the restrictions imposed on Palestinians, from their education to cookies, lack any just reason, and can often only be explained by a mix of incompetence and cruelty.
Regarding both the dinner and your friend: no, to the best of my knowledge, none of the three were ‘terrorists’, and neither is your friend. My dislike of their views is just that, a dislike, of no greater (and at least partially lesser) intensity than I hold for much of the German (or for that matter, Israeli) right wing and their academics. I (despite my interest in political discourse) think that there are views not worthy of being accepted for discourse in polite society, which -in a “snooty eurocentric contempt” towards illiberal ideology - include a wide range of perspectives, among them just about everything even close to Kach (political party) and the Jewish defence league, as well many of the settler organizations pretending to care about the interest of Jews. If your friend (which I am deeply certain he isn’t) is a member of any of those, he would be just as worthy of condemnation as anyone affiliated with the PFLP, social media and all. Of course, such distinctions are always incredibly difficult to make, and somewhat personal: I personally have no such objections to advocacy for a bi-national state (in the abstract, some of the more practical advocates seem to be misguided at best), or non-violent civil disobedience against settlements, even if I consider both ideas to be unwise. Regarding your Trinitarian friend, and despite considering myself to be committed to an agnostic view trending towards atheism, I have deep admiration for the willingness to have such dialogue in the face of everything. Did the permit work out? Depending on the phase of the conflict, those are almost impossible to get, as far as I recall, even for such worthy pursuits.
My deepest condolences for the loss of your friend, may his memory be for a blessing. I’m pretty sure that this is the right version in English To be murdered simply for doing the right thing is horrible. Just my 0.02$, but while I deeply disagree with much of what you likely believe, I would bet lots of money that you hold no love for Hamas, and would bet that the same applies to any other of the pro-Palestinians armed groups, and definitely those that targeted civilians now or in the past. I could be wrong, of course, but I’m dead certain that I’m not. Going beyond that, there was a recent discussion that suggested you would be worthy of becoming an admin, a charge that you rebuffed. While you obviously shouldn’t use your tools in this topic area, and while I disagree with some of the conduct you have displayed in the past (mostly cherrypicked from reports, where one is pushed into judging a colleague for 20 of ~ 100.000 edits), I think many of the other areas would greatly benefit from an admin with your willingness to learn, understand and argue complex topics.
Oh, and sorry for the wall of text, and my sincerest apologies if this is breaking the law of holes, but I did want to try explaining myself. FortunateSons (talk) 16:16, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
There is never any need to apologize in serious dialogue. Apology should be reserved for what one does, not what one thinks. Even when insults fly, perhaps esp. when they take wing, a close ear can catch at something missed, yet essential, that was present tacitly, whose suppression unconsciously or through the exercise of discretion, impoverishes some as yet unarticulated beef or bone of contention, factual or personal (and this goes for both parties to a dialogue).
Being critical, even hypercritical, does not translate into blame (as so often is the case in the way people read into exchanges something that offends their values, to the point that they will not listen to the gravamen of a theoretical argument and its data, but only assume a defensive rationale to justify their inner commitments). Was it Daniel Boyarin, a Zionist who clashed dialogically with one of the people you would dislike dining with (Edmund Said), who said that his own later acquired anti-Zionism did not consist of blaming? I want to grasp what it is in Israeli society/culture that makes so many pitiless before the extreme grief touching their non-Jewish occupied neighbours. I want to know what it is in Gaza or the West Bank that drives idealistic youth (a small number statistically, but significant in their impact) to embrace suicide to kill Israelis. Allowing the blame-game to get the upper hand, taking sides, means that, essentially, one chooses to ignore, in each case, the structural problem, the irritating grain in the oyster shells of their respective worlds.
The task is to understand - and that applies, here to Israel as it does to Hamas, to state (e.g. things like this have been documented for decades) and non-state terrorism. I won't explore that here, It's too complex and would probably require me to explain what I took from my Catholic upbringing (Luke 23:34) before I became an 'indifferentist' (to reply to your note re agnosticism/atheism). By that I mean that I have no position on the so-called ultimate questions because they are, to me, meaningless. You cannot take a position if the terms of the debate defy definition. One is allocated 70 odd years and living that span alertly as a continual hic et nunc, with its dense daily quilt of thoughts and feelings, is more than enough, and not to be wasted by mulling tediously over pointlessly unknowable queries.
As to the regulation of hate speech, I'm very wary. Too many people who advocate it in practice get fired, like the recently deceased Phil Donahue (here. He was fired and Fox News took his place. That's before your generation) It's too subjective and invariably ends up violating the fundamental norm that a valid law should exemplify some universal principle, and not be tailored to target specific groups of people (In Germany, one could chant the Likud version of from the Jordan to the sea with impunity, but not the Palestinian version of the same slogan). We have here a racist airhead general Roberto Vannacci who spouts that stuff, -promotes separating the disabled from 'normal' schoolchildren, and if Paola Egonu played a decisive role in getting the country Olympic gold, sneers that her physical features are not 'Italian' enough. He can get away with that and, in doing so, got close to 200,000 notes. The problem is rather that, when these people are interviewed, or air their opinions, journalists seem to lack the acumen to embarrass them and make them look like the fools they are. Well in any case, this is far too complex a matter to discuss briefly and it's almost 3am here, and I still have some reading to do and a film to watch (probably Three Came Home). Cheers Nishidani (talk) 00:38, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I must disagree with you there, even if not about content, definitely about the outcome: while one should indeed not apologize for their thoughts and beliefs, the manner and style with which they are expressed are - in my humble opinion - a question of skill and competence, and if one acts with less tact than they should, an apology can be the proper thing to do. My thoughts may have been what “hit [your] tolerance highbar”, but the expression sure didn’t help.
I agree about the criticism in the abstract, but in practice, if one negatively evaluates what a person perceives to be a significant part of their identity, it’s rather hard to perceive it as anything but blame. In my experience, each side often perceives the explanations and acknowledgment of the other side's motives as a justification for their action, which is a non-starter for any valuable debate.
I understand (pun intended) what you mean, though I’m unable to provide an answer good enough to be worthy of writing down. If I had to guess, much of the recent harshness has been caused by four factors: the seeming hopelessness of a peaceful resolution, the connected idea that there is no possible satisfactory outcome, the trauma on both sides and the ever-larger separation between those groups. In the early days, much of the unnecessary cruelty seemed to emanate from the fringes of each group, but it has spread like a rot into the collective hearts of both groups. Then again, the same could have been set about most neighboring countries in 19th-century Europe, and we now mostly get along well.
Regarding the use of ones time, and at the risk of being subjected to media criticism thorough enough to be printed in a newspaper of record, have you watched Fauda? I mostly liked it, and it got decent reviews from people on both sides of the (German, so perhaps worthy of more than a grain of salt) ideological divide, which is a plus in my book. It’s fiction, of course, but I still enjoyed watching it (though I’m a sucker for The Expanse and early seasons of House of Cards too, so perhaps I just have generic taste).
Regarding hate speech laws, I feel obligated to passionately disagree in both content and evaluation. It is my legal opinion (which, as a law student, is worth nothing) that neither the Palestinian version nor the Likud version is always sanctionable and that any advocacy for a forceful slaughter of either group is likely to get one into legal trouble. In practice, of course, advocating for a status quo that requires a law degree or thorough reading to understand as potentially unlawful is less likely to be sanctioned by the average police officer than a teenager with a green headband yelling about the forceful dissolution of the only Jewish state. While there is always discourse on the fringes, it is my opinion that laws that punish those who publicly insult individuals or incite hatred against people for the place of their birth, their identity, the color of their skin or the gender of the person they love, are necessary for a polite society where promptly responding to what is in effect stochastic terrorism with force is strongly discouraged for good reason. No disagreement on the journalists, and I hope both the reading and the movie were interesting. Sincerely, FortunateSons (talk) 20:14, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Following the link, Fauda seems to be trash. I only use television to watch films that interest me. If you really want to know what is going on there is only one book to read:Apeirogon, and Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story. The contrast is between the utter normalcy of Israeli Jewish lives -raising family, trips abroad, restaurants, beaches, university, only occasionally inflected by news of 'terrorism' over there, and the maddening 'intricate machinery' (Avishai Margalit) under military occupation which for 57 years has made West Bank Palestinian lives a routine of exacerbated frustration in even the most normal tasks of 'getting a life'.Nishidani (talk) 22:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
That’s a shame, I liked it. Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll add it to my list. FortunateSons (talk) 22:59, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
To answer the initial question, Creative Community for Peace has no expertise on Owda or the PFLP, and their unsubstantiated smear would, if put into the article on her, be removed per BLP. nableezy - 16:51, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
I disagree with that. Creative Community for Peace likely has the necessary expertise to comment on media broadly, and RS take them seriously, as they have here:[1][2]. In addition, there has been additional coverage by lesser sources, which, while not proving significance, does indicate it [3][4]apologies for linking that garbage, but they actually got a NATAS response, which for me indicates something about the general state of US media. With 2 or 3 standalone articles in RS, it’s due for an attributed mention at the very least, particularly with photo evidence. FortunateSons (talk) 20:00, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Your first source attributes it to a "pro-Israeli activist", your second is indeed garbage. If you were to put in rumor about a living person, attributed or not, it would be removed. If you restore it you would be violating WP:BLPREQUESTRESTORE and would be brought to AE for violating the BLP arbitration case. For Creative Community for Peace being taken seriously, you provide a garbage source (Algemeiner) and an opinion piece by Seth Mandel. Again, there is no evidence for the claim that Creative Community for Peace has any expertise in Owda or the PFLP and if you were to attempt to cite them to include an unsubstantiated smear against her you would be reverted. nableezy - 20:51, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Thankfully, I can state facts, not rumors, considering that „advocate against Emmy nomination, citing ties (based on photo)“ are all facts, not rumours, and, to the best of my knowledge, also not seriously disputed by any of the parties involved. You should (by now) also know that I don’t edit war, but I don’t mind the warning and notice, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Actually, Algemeiner is a RS and cited by others, despite obviously having some bias and, considering an acquaintance failed to pressure them into running what I can only describe as a hitpiece, have pretty good editorial policies. Together with the original source, there is RS coverage supporting the allegation as credible, and claim for the removal of her nomination is due. The other piece is indeed WP:RSEDITORIAL (at least I think, maybe it’s poorly styled news), but it’s also an indication for it being due, at least in my eyes. The other two sources are meh (with the former being technically reliable but just bad, and the second being bad and unreliable). However, 2 RS + 1 High-quality editorial are enough for a talk page discussion, which I will start by making a bold edit for inclusion (which, just for posterity, is permitted by policy) once I’m rid of my infection and my deadline. I invite you to participate in or start the discussion. FortunateSons (talk) 21:28, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Generally, the past IP record, while not wholly dismissing the Algeiner, does consider its material of poor quality in its all too predictable POV warring.Nishidani (talk) 23:19, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Can something different be said of any right-leaning or right-wing Jewish source? I’m genuinely asking, it seems like the same objection is levelled towards any source with that POV, regardless of their de-facto reliability for facts. FortunateSons (talk) 09:32, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
What’s a Jewish source? nableezy - 10:50, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
In this context (as in, referring to news) a „community-oriented“ newspaper (or similar), by implication though not necessarily primarily for people in the diaspora. For the purposes of this question, List of Jewish newspapers is probably a decent indicator, even if the article is less than great. FortunateSons (talk) 11:05, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Algemeiner may be a good source on the Hasidic community in Brooklyn, but on the IP conflict it is trash. If Jewish source includes things like ToI then that’s a perfectly acceptable source. JPost closer to the edge. Ynet is fine. None of those strike me as particularly "liberal" in the Israeli usage, ie portraying Palestinians as human beings deserving of fundamental human rights. nableezy - 11:10, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Would you say that any of the right-leaning diaspora sources are reliable for I/P? FortunateSons (talk) 11:15, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
I don’t know why we would cite groups with no reporters or insight into what they are reporting. It’s like people citing a times of India article for an attack in Gaza. You do that because you can’t find a real source that knows what it’s talking about for the claim, so you use some crap source to pretend like you have a reliable source for whatever it is you want in the article. nableezy - 11:31, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
International reporting, by professional news with their own fact-checking, can be reliable even without people on the ground. By that logic, we should stop using AJ if Israel is successful with severing their ties with Gaza and the West Bank, a view I’m reasonably confident you would object too. If Times of India is reliable and are reporting information without the information being disputed by a comparable or better source, I see no reason to exclude them for not having reporters on the ground FortunateSons (talk) 11:39, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
I said no reporting or insight. It’s some random person in Brooklyn talking about things they have no idea about. And it’s only used because real sources don’t support what you want to put in an article. Anyway, I’ve answered your questions, if you’d like to try putting in a blp violation you can do that. It’ll be reverted though. nableezy - 12:42, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
The Wrap is a real source for this purpose, I’m just also showing that it’s relevant elsewhere, and an US award given by an organisation headquartered in the city makes it at least indirectly locally relevant, something a professional sources with no other significant issues outside an alleged I/P problem can probably report without issue, as long as the only relevant evidence required is photos, as they are here. FortunateSons (talk) 15:02, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Edit: just as an off-topic note, but The Times of Israel is centre according to Wiki and left of centre according to the (not necessarily reliable) MBFC, same with Ynet (with not comment on the wiki page and left-leaning here, and The Jerusalem Post is the only clearly right-leaning one on your list (MBFC) FortunateSons (talk) 11:33, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
lol nableezy - 12:43, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Good luck with that. nableezy - 03:05, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
'RIght' and 'left' don't have much meaning, certainly in these contexts. A rightwing party can be antisemitic and yet be a strong supporter of Israel (and be politically acceptable to its PM). Ynet, and Jerusalem Post publish a lot of tripe (I read this laughable crap on Ynet this morning) ToL cannot help writing articles based on IDF handouts. The basic line of division is between journalists who take considerations of general human rights into consideration, and journalists who pitch their comments to a particular ethnic community or readers who support such a community. Between journalists who write with a lynx-eyed focus on the full record, and those who just erase much of that record as uncomfortable for their readership.Nishidani (talk) 12:15, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Of course, there is a variety in integrity between media sources unrelated to political leaning, and even generally reliable news occasionally publish crap. However, if parts of the mainstream political spectrum are not represented by RS, it is a reason for concern IMO. FortunateSons (talk) 14:55, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

August music

story · music · places

Today I have three "musicians" on the Main page, one is also the topic of my story, like 22 July but with interview and the music to be played today -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:09, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks indeed for those links, Gerda, particularly the reminder that Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony premiered on this day in 1942. It was uncannily in elegiac harmony with the point made in an earlier exchange where examples (Dinu Lipatti, Kathleen Ferrier etc.,) were cited who performed divinely in public while literally dying on their feet. One can hardly grasp the force of spirit which the members of the Leningrad orchestra who played it must have mustered to give their audience, many of whom were themselves dying of starvation, an evening of music. Three of the players died, I believe, while rehearsing. 'Starvation' naturally makes me think of Gaza, and of Daniel Barenboim's visit there in 2011 ( see his remarks on what, retrospectively, was a kiddie's battle compared to what is happening now), I imagine many of those young people in his audience are now dead, or bedraggled nomads across a bombed-out landscape, much as the audience that listened to the Shostakovich premiere became in 1942 some months afterwards. Musicians should govern the world (musicians of language, poets, absolutely not, despite or because of Mark Twain's dictum that:'History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.' Nishidani (talk) 20:05, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
While watching the Serbia vs. US basketball semifinal, my attention drifted away to recalling a Yiddish song appropriate to Gaza. Though written several years earlier, it was often sung in the Warsaw ghetto. I.e. Mordechai Gebirtig ‘s Es brent The best version I know of is Moni Ovadia’s performance before Liliana Segre back in 2016. There are different versions but the core is:-

Es brent, briderlekh, es brent.
Undzer orem shtetl, nebekh, brent!
Beyze vintn irgazon,
Brekhn, brenen un tseblozn,
Un ir shteyt un kukt,
Azoy zikh, mit farleygte hent.
Oy, ir shteyt un kukt
Azoy zikh, vi undzer shtetl brent.

Which I think is fairly comprehensible for a German ear (But if anyone else is peeking: 'It is burning, brothers, it is burning/Our poor little town, a pity, burns!/Furious winds blow/Breaking, burning and scattering,/And you stand around/With folded arms./O, you stand and look/While our town burns.') Nishidani (talk) 20:48, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. Too often the only way out seems to be singing. The symphony premiere was my story last year. Planned or not, the composer's Piano Quintet is on DYK today. (If planned it was cleverly planned.) I want to expand the Cello Concero in today's story now. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:49, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
On 13 August, Bach's cantata was 300 years old, and the image one. The cantata is an extrordinary piece, using the chorale's text and famous melody more than others in the cycle. It's nice to have not only a recent death, but also this "birthday" on the Main page. And a rainbow in my places. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:04, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Now playing in my library. By coincidence, on 13 August 2024, it was announced that a scheduled piano performance by Jayson Gillham with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra was cancelled after Gillham dedicated a prior performance to Palestinian journalists slain in Gaza.(Emily Wind, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra cancels pianist’s performance after dedication to journalists killed in Gaza The Guardian 13 August 2024) Nishidani (talk) 14:13, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
What kind of world is it where a dedication to victims gets you this? - I decided (a while ago, when we lost RexxS) to not follow any invitation to arbitration should one come. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:53, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
I didn't know about RexxS so thanks for the link. It's quite insane that, per below, I am being invited to appear, what is it, for the fourth time this year to retry essentially the same complaint, one this time not only about me, but everyone I edit with. It's a case of quadruple jeopardy. And all because admins couldn't make straightforward call about a newbie's (shabby) editing. It is commonsense that if an admin or two cannot determine a simple case by taking one of three straightforward options (a) guilty as charged (b) innocent (c) case dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence, then passing the buck or kicking the case upstairs with a multiplier of 18 is a recipé for chaos. And, when chaos breaks out, only a child would imagine that the outcome will be coherent. All of this because a new arbitrative thesis came out of the works: i.e., all reverts, regardless of context, have the same status behaviourally. Meaning, if a newby makes a revert saying Hebron is in Israel (as one did recently) and I revert that as contrafactual, my edit and the other are both examples of edit-warring, and if my revert is restored when another newby backs up the first editor, then both I and the person familiar with the facts are tagteaming. Sigh Nishidani (talk) 15:08, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, sigh, and therefore don't go. RexxS left before the case even started, and is a happy man. But I miss him. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:05, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
With a tinge of that narcissism which tries to invest one's ageing, I reflected that I still had to accomplish 1,820 edits before earning a natural right to retirement, rather than being fired by a kick up the coit, at the 100,000 mark. I calculated I might try to do that by 1 November, but it looks like I'll have to get my mental runners on for the final dash before the axe falls, if I can manage to have that to my credit (or discredit depending on one's point of view.):) Cheers Gerda.Nishidani (talk) 16:12, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
You did enough to earn high credit, - no need to count ;) - I guess it's tough to see the work in danger, though, - I can see that. Working mostly in niches, I didn't have that problem. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:24, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
I looked at the requested thing: it's called clarification and amendment, not a case, so no ax in sight, - enjoy editing! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:24, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Well, you're clearly an optimist. My antennae quivered quite differently over the last several months, especially ever since that extraordinary concession to an outside lobby to allow a spokesman to attack me (and then others) was granted by Arbcom. This latest effusion of hysteria from an editor I've never seen before in this area, suggesting all I/P editors should be 'nuked' for creating 'absurd levels of incivility, condescension, POV-pushing, bludgeoning, edit-warring, hypocrisy, and virtually every other type of WP:BATTLEGROUND editing humanly possible, from a core group of editors that perennially show up to scream at each other in every discussion; there's a level of toxicity that just makes me want to ignore the area entirely, ' tells me otherwise. You cannot contest any single editor's good faith. If you do you are rightly sanctioned. But you can conjure up a pathetic stereotype of a covey of a dozen editors and blast them as scumbags and not be challenged in terms of a violations of WP:AGF. Now, I have just one more novel to enjoy by tomorrow to complete my reading of the series of 16 detective stories of Inspector Ricciardi's doings set in fascist Italy. Reading good prose driving a story with narrative brio is the perfect anodyne for what working here demands one put up with. Cheers Gerda. Nishidani (talk) 23:17, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Though I'm very tempted to write an essay on WP:Bludgeon which, when invoked unendingly, is consistently misread. It is ' where someone attempts to force their point of view through a very high number of comments, such as contradicting every viewpoint that is different from their own. Typically, this means making the same argument over and over and to different people in the same discussion or across related discussions.' What seems to have happened is a WP:TLDR mentality has now been enculturated where people whose cognitive abilities are apparently affected by growing up with smart phones wriggle impatiently if twitterish sound bytes are replaced by extended analyses. My essay would argue that the Socrates elenchus which runs through all of Plato's dialogues to lay the groundwork for the discursive traditions of Western civilization is now so dysfunctional, that readers commonly consider anything over a few hundreds words, however informed by relevant source citations and a logical parsing of one's interlocutor's opinions, is 'bludgeoning', 'condescension', 'incivility', an impertinent demand that one actually spend time thinking closely on a topic and its sources, 'screaming' (!!!!). I guess we need AI because the thinking drills inculcated in a tertiary degree are now, if exercised, thought 'toxic', and need to be replaced by software that does our thinking for us. Gawd'elpus.Nishidani (talk) 23:26, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Anodyne is a new word for me, thank you, I think I understood right from the context. Eleven years ago I suggested something simple (on arbitration, imagine): two comments max by any editor in a discussion. They turned it against only me as a restriction, and I discovered: it's a blessing. - Looking at the peaceful valley pictured under "places" might also work as anodyne ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:23, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
Today's story is about a stage director, - watch Aida, so tender so cruel. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:26, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! Aida was the first opera I heard as a boy.Nishidani (talk) 22:30, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Not sure if this is relevant to you

But it goes part of the way toward explaining why I was quick to revert that particular IP: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Fq90. Wishing you the best, Generalrelative (talk) 15:09, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. To clarify. In the area where I have worked most for almost 2 decades, experience told me from quite early that half of the editors I collaborate with are socks, 99% of whom disagree with me. In some periods, over months, these (to me) obvious sock accounts (and SPA tagteaming groups) constitute up to 80% of the editors one has to deal with on a number of pages.
Until there is evidence that proves that my intuitions, Sprachgefühl, etc., are correct, by checkuser proof following a report, I like many others work under the obligation of WP:AGF, even when the obvious should be staring anyone, admins included, in the face. This has often meant laboriously answering, on multiple pages, one or another editor's comments and reverts, in measured detail for months. What one knows from experience is not enough. Admin-guaranteed proof is required to ensure all editors are protected.
That holds true of the present case. I leave that kind of investigation to capable experts, it is outside the range of my interests. My interests lie exclusively in looking at a piece of text, from whoever, and examining its tenability as encyclopedic. Were one to work in any one field to revert an editor's contribution, simply because one's instincts tell one there is more than an odour of suspicion that one's interlocutor has Been (There) Here Before, the subjective judgment would constantly disrupt the creation of serious content. Nishidani (talk) 16:13, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
For the record, I picked up in an Osaka bookshop and first read material on this topic when chancing across Darlington, Cyril D. (1969). The Evolution of Man and Society. George Allen and Unwin. pp. 183–186. ISBN 978-0-045-75011-5. in December 1975. In the succeeding 49 years of reading, I have never come across convincing evidence that biology has the upper hand in the formation of civilizations or human populations. But I am not unnerved by any argument that has cropped up from time to time asserting the primacy of genetics. I look at the science, and, if its technicalities are beyond me, correspond with friends having that expertise. And if I find it worth writing about, I treat these moments in intellectual history as narratives whose claims, nature and standing in science and history merit clear full neutral exposition. That is what readers need in an age of endless spin, fake narratives and endemic attempts, be they wokeish or wankish (the rightwing version of wokism), to control or dominate what may or may not be said in the public domain about anything 'controversial'. Corralling discourse of any kind is something that disconcerts me, from whatever quarter, politically correct or otherwise. Nishidani (talk) 16:31, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for this very thoughtful response. I do appreciate it, and I broadly agree with most of what you have to say. The real sticking point in the R&I topic area, as I see it, is that it is possible for editors to disagree as to where to draw the line between "corralling discourse" for ideological/emotional reasons and simply insisting upon good scientific methodological standards. A great example is this recent paper which I've been adding to articles where the R&I consensus has been challenged. Note that the paper argues that methodological considerations alone should be sufficient to keep most racial hereditarian literature from being published in respectable journals, even where ethical concerns also come into play. It's a pretty good summary, I think, of the way responsible scientists and historians of science view this issue. But when these points get raised in talk space, it's seldom long before someone dismisses them as driven by ideology or emotion. Another good statement is this letter, co-signed by e.g. Agustín Fuentes and Jonathan M. Marks.
Btw, while I'm not a frequent contributor to Palestine/Israel articles, I've long seen you as a voice of reason and just remarkably knowledgeable in that area. You're clearly a deep thinker and a careful reader. So I take your words to heart, even if I may come out the other side disagreeing from time to time. Best, Generalrelative (talk) 19:35, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
That's very kind of you (and by the way for their own sanity I always advise editors to try to avoid the time-sink that is the IP area, unless they have some idealism, a masochistic streak and too much unused time on their hands). Just a short reply for now since I've been nudging the booze all evening while listening to a rock concert in our piazza, the best pagan way to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption:)
We differ only in this. I include science itself in one of the objects of a sociology of knowledge, even while considering that scientific methodology yields better results generally than most other fields of thought because it imposes more constraints on our innate subjectivity. A lot of science in the past turned out to be pseudo-scientific (psychoanalysis, which I still esteem for the way it profoundly enhanced modes of reading what we hear or read in human discourse generally, and, arguably, Skinner's nutty Behaviorism, but one can learn much by studying them historically. If one was raised in a world where in the 60s onwards, one learnt to think in terms of Kuhnian paradigm shifts, White’s metahistories, Foucault’s era-anchored epistemic grids etc.etc., one learn to take on an obligation, both intellectual and moral, to grasp that even the best knowledge we have is inflected by interests, historical, cultural, economic and ideological, and therefore, as we work within any one paradigm, functional, productive, cogent as it may be, that we must keep an eye on its exclusionary complacencies. I'll add a clarifying note on what I mean concretely here when I shake off my hangover and the cognitive disruptions of a trip down a musical memory lane tomorrow.Nishidani (talk) 22:07, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
David Brooks finally wrote a good column, and one indirectly related to our article. You’re Only as Smart as Your Emotions New York Times 15 August 2024. As I read it I thought: Why do the emotions one feels in watching the War of the Worlds not vibrate within the very fibre of our human sensibilities when viewing daily for over 9 months an identical reality, which has nothing of the fictional, over the landscape of the Gaza Strip. My apologies for mentioning this. No comment needed.Nishidani (talk) 22:31, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Arbitration notice

You are involved in a recently filed request for clarification or amendment from the Arbitration Committee. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Amendment request: Referral from the Artibration Enforcement noticeboard regarding behavior in Palestine-Israel articles and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the Wikipedia:Arbitration guide may be of use.

Thanks,

— Red-tailed hawk (nest) 18:17, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification. I don't consider myself 'involved' however. At this point in my wiki career, I am only interested in writing articles. if someone wants to express a grievance about me, well, they are exercising their natural right. But I am way past being able to stir myself for the nth time to justify my existence here.Nishidani (talk) 21:49, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
I would only add that the following comment, prejudging the whole outcome, comes from one of the referring administrators. Since no one appears to find it exceptional from an admin, I will construe it.
this is a sprawling case where basically all of the regulars in the topic area have worked together to create a hostile battleground that AE hasn't been able to resolve. Not because of a lack of authority, but because of the complexity of the case combined with the standard unblockables problem. theleekycauldron
Red-tailed hawk. You listed 18 names, of which PeleYoetz (registered 9 May 2024, with 1,048 edits), ABHammad (registered 20 September 2022 with 1,504 edits) and האופה ( registered on 24 October 2023, with 1,752 edits) are the only non long-term editors who appear on it. All three were cited as problematical in the reports supplied at AE by Levivich.
Bref. All the regulars refer to the 15 other editors. (b) in Leeky Cauldron's judgment it is this 15 who have 'coordinated their actions to circumvent the normal process of consensus'(worked together) with the intention (grammatically that is what to (a purposive abbreviation of 'in order to') means in that sentence) to create 'a place to hold grudges, import personal conflicts, carry on ideological battles, or nurture prejudice, hatred, or fear. In other words, all regular editors are collectively devoid of good faith. The problem is not with the three new editors at all, who are marginal to the real issue.
If that wild and abusive premise is shared among admins (at least one other appears to embrace it by placing all reverts on the same level), the outcome is obvious. Unable to deal discretely with individual cases about new editors' behaviour, the end solution is to wipe the slate clean of everyone else who had the misfortune to comment on those reports. All that tells me is that, unlike the editors who contribute to that difficult area, a number of admins feel despair to the point of being tempted to embrace the apocalyptic 'Muoia Sansone con tutti i Filistei'/Fuck the lot of them. Bring the whole house down. And that means administration has effectively resigned itself to chaos and divested itself of its responsibility to judge issues case by case. Nishidani (talk) 12:54, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Abdel Nasser Sarhan

Do you think Killing of Abdel Nasser Sarhan would be a valid article? VR (Please ping on reply) 04:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

No. I'm opposed to individual articles on murders (a lot exist for murders of Israelis by Palestinians of course but that practice should not be mirrored in some understandable but flawed pursuit of 'balance'). We have of course illustrations of the principle exceptio probat regulam -Iman Darweesh Al Hams, Khalil al-Mughrabi, Muhammad al-Durrah, Faris Odeh, murders by sniper fire of Nadim Nuwara and Mohammad Salameh, the execution of Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in Hebron and Abir Aramin, They are all instances of murders which have had an aftermath as controversies, court cases, or as symbols of the IDF's chronic use of lethal practices against the civilian population. What happened to Sarhan is a weekly occurrence: one walks outside, going about one's business, and is shot dead because some Israeli 'anti-terror' operation is underway and the person, in this case a Palestinian police officer strolling out to go to work after breakfast, happens to put purportedly the incursion's operatives at risk, so has to be executed.
The problem is that Palestinian instances run into several hundreds, and one cannot write that number of stubs, apart from considerations of WP:Memorial and tacitly using these tragedies in an image projection war in the battle of victimization in the public arena. Wikipedia rightly tries to avoid that as feeding into a threat of the politicization of the encyclopedia. Then again, would one include incidents like the recent one back on 1 June when Ashraf Walid Hmaidat and Mohammad al-Beitar were shot dead at Aqbat Jabr refugee camp by Israeli snipers 50 yards away because they held stones in their hand? In IDF logic they posed a threat, and therefore could be legitimately executed as potential stone-throwers. (In both cases they were shot in the back however)
Given that as of June this year, 129 Palestinian children have been murdered in the West Bank since October 7, one could write an article overview on the specifics of these cases (a subset of the 2,334 minors killed by the IDF in the last 2 decades), but it is already covered in Children in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
The most prominent cases which do get articles are those where the murder committed was caught on video. In that sense Sarhan's killing is unequivocal. There's a lot of that [10], here, here etc.etc.etc. But 99% of these incidents never get more than one or two articles at most, and then events move on. Sarhan's is not an exception. Ultimately, it is far more important for our encyclopedic ends to write, following the secondary literature, overviews that look at various kinds of practice like this, rather than lose oneself writing up every instance one reads about. Our purpose here must be to look for secondary literature that allows us to grasp the logic of such phenomena. Sorry for the scattered response. One has to follow these stories to keep informed, but it is deeply nauseating.Nishidani (talk) 10:15, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Thinking this over at a coffee shop while breakfasting, I think one possible article could cover the numerous cases where, caught out via videos etc., for executing people who pose no threat, the IDF usually announces it will conduct an 'investigation'. In about 1 in a 100 cases the case goes to trial where the assassins are either absolved (indeed promoted, as in the shocking case of the fate of Iman Al Hams), dismissed from their units (The Israeli undercover night drill where a few Palestinians thought burglers were stealing into their homes and two were shot, one dead. The IDF murderer wasn't punished, just dismissed), are given alight disciplinary punishment, or a prison sentence of from 2 to 9 months (often reduced by amnesty). There is a considerable secondary literature on the impunity of IDF soldiers who do kill for no justifiable reason - hundreds of cases, and this will inform part of the deliberations at the ICJ. The IDF and impunity?Nishidani (talk) 13:09, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
And by serendipity as if to prompt drafting such an article, out comes Jonathan Ofir's article on the latest Israel Institute of National Security Studies poll, the troubling details of which were understandably omitted from its English site:

Better referencing inbound (hopefully)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Sub-referencing (think SFN without the template). Selfstudier (talk) 13:03, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

My mind turns off immediately at the sight of technical instructions. If any device malfunctions at home, I fix it by fiddling empirically. That's usually quicker. When I had my first computer, it came along with a 700 page manual. I read the first page, was disgusted by the prose style, threw it over my shoulder, clicked the computer on and figured out the basics I need in two hours. That is one of the reasons many local friends, all technically adept most of whose conversation is about plumbing, carpenteering, computers, drains, washing machines, antennae etc.etc., call me an 'Australopithecus', a view underscored by the fact I walk round the cobbled and asphalted streets barefooted a lot of the time in summer. So if you can kindly tell me in two lines why sfn as I use it can be simplified even further, I'd be happy to take some amphetemines so I can concentrate sufficiently to parse it.Nishidani (talk) 13:16, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Heh. A major reason you (and I) like sfn is because you can use the same ref multiple times, just change the page number. Doing that with ordinary refs is a pain but this new effort may change that, it's only at testing stage so need not worry about it for now but potentially a good thing, do away with all those harv/script thingys. Selfstudier (talk) 14:19, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Are these articles, all created after 7 October, controlled by the domineering pro-Palestinian mafia

rumoured endlessly to control the IP area and harass anyone rash enough to try to edit in this topic matrix? I have explained on Nableezy's page how to provide an empirical basis to prove or deconstruct this tiresomely reiterated rumour-mongering. All of these perfectly legitimate articles were created in the IP area after 7 October 2023. They have been edited by hundreds of wikipedians, not a handful. It is important someone technically capable try this because the rumour is being repeated in order to get Arbcom to devote huge time and administrative resources to what, at least to myself, is a fictional claim that since 7 October the IP area has been inf(l)ected with a form of harassment by a thuggish bludgeoning uncivil and 'screaming' bevy of longterm editors, all intent on monopolizing wiki as an anti-Israeli attack zone. Bullshit for me, until proven wrong, empirically.

Nishidani (talk) 14:52, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Your request

See User:BilledMammal/New ARBPIA articles

I don't know how useful it is; is there additional information that you want? BilledMammal (talk) 10:50, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Well done, (so far). It's a preliminary highly abstract analysis (and has quite a few articles listed whose data would have no bearing on IP conflict theories, e.g. Anthrenus loebli, El-Jai cave etc.) but doesn't give us any indication of the evidence we are looking for - individual IP editors' participation in the listed articles. The ARCA deliberations are based on a very subjective viewpoint that several share, that the area is dominated by a small throng of abusive longterm editors, precisely the paranoid spin placed on it by websites cheering on purging wiki of 'fanatical pro-Hamas editors' like Nableezy and myself. As we all know, this kind of supposition, once, if accepted, will degenerate into Arbcom taking Red-tailed hawk's list (whose very shortness prejudicates the whole issue) and looking at their 'behaviour' - understood as comments that can be interpreted as 'inappropriate' according to a dozen policies (WP:BRIE, WP:Bludgeon, WP:Civil, WP:AGF, WP:HOUND,Don't bite the newbies. More minute scrutiny of remarks, more rules and subrules about how any remark might be interpreted, that make it look reasonable to spin them as proof of some congenital animosity or bias. In the last case against me, Red-tailed hawk, an apparently involved IP editor/admin I now gather, even appeared to suggest that a mathematically-based remark of mine about 'barely qualified editors' was uncivil, ignoring the math. When I cited the math, the reply buttressing that admin's impression of my putative incivility simply consisted of citing my block leg record from 2007 to 2019. In scientific methodology, one is not supposed to prove a specific proposition by reaching for 'evidence' external to that proposition, esp. when it has been shown to be inadequate. That only indicates a reluctance to change one's views in the face of an alternative explanation that makes those views questionable.
That is why, in this infinitely more complex case proposal, I called for some technical system that would show up any pattern, even if it exists, the one about the hypothetical IP Pro-Palestinian lobby, or its putative Israeli counterpart, to replace the erratic, subjectivist, evidence-selective argufying and claims that pass for proof so far. We have the technical tools, and they are consistently ignored in favouring of batting the breeze. Nishidani (talk) 13:14, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

2024-08 zionist antisemitism

Hello,

I just ran into your article Herzl's Mauschel and Zionist antisemitism, which at first look seems impressive. About the idea that the Jews who do not support zionism are «bad» Jews: FYI Pierre-André Taguieff coined the term «alterjuif» (or «alter-juif»). See

Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 11:17, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks (Long time no see! and nice to catch up with you once more). I hope that your initial impression isn't dinted overly by an eventual rereading. That article scratches the surface of identity issues that go far deeper of course, but which, as far as my reading goes, will take perhaps another generation before they yield fresher and wider perspectives. A minor point. It wasn't Taguieff who coined the concept of alterjuif. He himself actually attributes the neologism to Muriel Darmon and Shmuel Trigano (Pierre-André Taguieff,Une France antijuive? Regards sur la nouvelle configuration Judéophobe: Antisionisme, Propalestinisme, Islamisme,) CNRS Éditions 2015 p.202.)
I've just got up after reading all night till 8 am (not on wiki matters) so might reserve time later for a reflection or two on this kind of polemical analysis. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 12:44, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the correction. I have not yet read this article by Taguieff. Could it be It that you know this term «alterjuif» more than me? Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 15:08, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
I live a few months every year in France so I try to keep tabs on things there. I recently finished reading the 14 volume Inspector Ricciardi novel series by Maurizio de Giovanni, a nice distraction with which to pass the hottest month of the year. It's set in fascist Italy, rather in the way Philip Kerr's great Bernie Gunther detective novels are mostly set in Nazi Germany. One of its fine touches was revealing that the protagonist Ricciardi's father-in-law's parents were Jewish. That emerges only towards the end when the story turns to events following the Italian racial laws (vol.13 Caminito Einaudi 2022 p.134) The point for me was that the assimilation of many people of Jewish descent was so thorough that their personal background had no relevance or interest to the society (Naples) they grew up and lived and worked in. Until the wizards of hate kicked in, that element in one's background was no one's business but one's own. The primary identity was that of a Neapolitan retailer running his shop, raising his family. This corresponds with how Australian Jews I grew up with or were taught by lived. Now, as in the late 30s, one cannot have that particular element in one's background without immense claims being laid on one qua Jew, not so much by the reemergence of antisemitism (which is generally of relatively small account in the West compared to historic antisemitism down to 1945, in my view) as by the entailment of the, as it were, 'Israeli question' into 'Jewish identity', so one is pressured to add that political equation into one's sense of self.
That by way of preface to the French intellectual currents about recrudescent judeophobia, anti-semitism, etc., where, as in Germany, England and the United States, an impressive barrage of books and articles reposition their respective Jewish communities in a plight of politicised fear because their lives are made out to be in peril whenever Israel comes in for criticism for its human rights record. Taguieff is a better read that the unreadable mullock of hysterical mush written by authoritative figures like Kenneth L. Marcus et al., but he cannot detach his thinking from the particular hasbara gridwork, by thinking of these issues in generalized sociological terms. That is, by thinking of antisemitism not as a unique phenomenon, but rather as one of the 'accelerated grimaces' of a more general pathology of modernity, the programmatic and doctrinal hostility to the 'Other' which flowed out of the project of nationalism itself. In the classic formulation attributed to Massimo d'Azeglio as the nascent unified Italy began to stand on its feet, 'we've made Italy: now our job is to create italians' (L'Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani), meaning the political elites had to engineer an identity which didn't exist naturally, and impose it, via univesal education, mass media and other means, on a highly variegated population in order to get them frogmarched into the new industrial estates. And the best way to achieve a semblance of internal unity is to inculcate a sense of national difference and distinctiveness setting one apart from the rest of humanity, typically by a racial classification which, in the 19th-20th centuries, meant in the polymorphous and miscegenated microcultures of European societies, that there was an 'authentic' or 'pure' Idealtypus contrasting with those 'extraneous' alien elements, such as Jews, or Gypsies, or Hungarians, Roumanians, Muslims in 'the wrong place', who were to be extruded across borders in order to, if I may misquote Mallarmé, donner un sens plus pur aux é(mot)ions de la tribu. An adversary, real or imaginary, is necessarity to reinforce an identity that otherwise would be fragile, labile.
By a curious ironical paradox, the homogenizing logic of industrial modernity meant that, despite its formal project of 'transforming peasants into factory workers' (per Ernest Gellner), it just recreated a different form of tribalism to the traditional one it imagined it was erasing (a dialektische Aufhebung in Hegelian terms). We all, from our comfortable perches in provisory* democracies, mock the Nazi process of Gleichschaltung, and rightly so, but in doing so remain relatively unaware of the totalizing thrust, along parallel lines, implicit in our otherwise liberal societies, as we see in the extraordinary intensity of concern to reinvent national consensuses, in one form or another (wokism vs Alt-right, by privileging diametrically opposed symbolic orders of identity. This is all coming home to roost now, and the I/P case, as it is discussed in the technical literature, and banalized into adversative clichés by the mass media, is a remarkably good thermometer for taking the pulse of our times. Oops, Jeezus, I've let my thoughts get the better of me. I must go out and have my evening sundowner session. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 16:18, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Barnstar of Diplomacy
You deserve this. ViolanteMD (talk) 12:00, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
A bit premature, given this rumour-mongering I am uncivil, which is an antonym of diplomatic. I checked your page. My best friend, other than my brother, was diagnosed schizophrenic, until Cesare Musatti dismissed his 'condition' as just a perfectly viable state of mind, even though not often considered compatible with the accepted notions of 'normalcy'. Musatti's point was that theories cannot colonize reality, when experience will, as in that case, show that they simply fail to grasp anomalies as a variable in human behaviour we must learn to tolerate or live with. The patient, relieved of his 'diagnosis', went on to become a wonderful father, raising a brilliant daughter, until his death some 13 years ago. What I learnt in any case in arguing with him for 30 years was that things like the boyscout/Sunday school book of manners increasingly emphasized on wikipedia as a sine qua non for editing an encyclopedia is itself a very peculiar malady, placing as it does manners over matter. etiquette over erudition, the artifices of amenability over the adventurousness of curiosity, niceness over knowledge itself, as though the latter were a product of the former. Societies require 'good breeding' but they don't survive creatively by virtue of some impeccable ability to say the right thing at the right time in the right place. To the contrary. Historically, most vanguards were considered vulgar. Nishidani (talk) 12:19, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Re Editing Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment

Addendum(b) Nishidani (talk) 13:44, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

My remarks are 'haunted'(hyperbole) by the serious flaws in the 2009 Arbitration case. The gravamen was very simple: should the default term for Cisjordan be 'West Bank' or 'Judea and Samaria'. A classic 'content dispute'. Well yes, but the two alternative terms, their origin, development and use in RS were explored, and the results unequivocal (before Arbitration took the case). 'West Bank' had been the default term in Western sources for 60 years, almost universal.

'Judea and Samaria' was a right-wing Likud party usage since the 1970s, and was becoming the default Israeli term by 2009, after the ascendency of that party to government in Israel. So editors insisting on the latter were trying to make out a nationalist term should be the default English term, against the overwhelming evidence of sources. Unable due to unfamiliarity with these complex bureaucratic procedures to explain this, I resorted to writing an extended essay on the whole history of the terminology, and the strong ideological thrust of the so-called 'alternative' term being proposed for the term current in almost all Western sources.

Rather than take this fact into account, the parties were judged by evidence of 'edit-warring' and civility alone. Behavioural issues like WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT, Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing, Refusing to accept the overwhelming evidence of RS etc., were ignored. The result was that 5 editors identified as supporting the default Western usage (they were tacitly taken to be 'pro-Pal' POV pushers)were permabanned (User:Pedrito, User:MeteorMaker, User:Nickhh, User:G-Dett, User:Nishidani).

Just two (well three but everyone on the ground knew that User:Canadian Monkey was a sock of User:NoCal) arguing for the Israelification of standard Western terminology were equally sanctioned.

The outcomes?

(a)6 weeks later, the use of 'West Bank' was voted as the default term by a majority of 16 to 1.

(b) Objectively, a NoCal sockmaster with scores of throw-away accounts, and still present on wikipedia, managed by his provocations to rid the IP area of 5 editors at the expense of one supporting his own nationalist POV. Socking is far more disruptively effective than laborious nose-to-the-grindstone editing on wikipedia. Nishidani (talk) 13:58, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Terrorist attacks

Is there any reason not to describe the Be'eri massacre as a terrorist attack? aps (talk) 05:20, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Address the relevant talkpage, and editors will tell you about the reservations we have about that term on wiki even when it may be appropriate. I have to catch a train and a plane in 45 minutes.Nishidani (talk) 05:35, 4 September 2024 (UTC).
Will do so. Safe travels! aps (talk) 06:02, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

September music

story · music · places

Today's story has 3 composers, I couldn't decide for the one on the Main page or the one who didn't make it on his bicentenary, so took both, and the pic has a third. Listen if you have a bit of time. The music, played by the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra in Germany in April 2022, impressed me. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:22, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Recommended reading today: Frye Fire, by sadly missed Vami_IV. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:27, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Today is Schoenberg's 150th birthday! On display, portrayed by Egon Schiele, with music from Moses und Aron, and with two DYK hooks, one from 2010 and another from 2014; the latter, about his 40th birthday, appeared on his 140th birthday, which made me happy then and now again. - See places for a stunning sunrise, on the day Bruckner's 200th birthday was celebrated (just a few days late). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:19, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks

[11] - thanks, noted. My very best wishes (talk) 20:10, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate that and apologize if I sounded a little harsh. It's just that I tend to get a little restless when I see memes circulating, that many readers in good faith take at their face value, because they appear to be well-documented. regards Nishidani (talk) 22:37, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
For my own records more than anything else. The following from this morning confirms trhat in IDF thinking killing two innocents while targeting someone they define as a Hamas militant is legitimate. Not according to the 'rules' of war.

'The Israeli military says it takes steps to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and that at least a third of the Palestinian fatalities in Gaza are militants. It accuses Hamas of using Palestinian civilians as human shields, which Hamas denies.'Unrwa workers among estimated 18 killed in Israeli strike on Gaza school sheltering displaced,'The Guardian 12 September 204

There one sees that the rhetoric of 'human shields' is the pretext for killing indiscriminately. Nishidani (talk) 08:59, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
I do not know enough specifics here and more familiar with the war in Ukraine, but speaking on the wars in general... First, one can say whatever he wants about "the basic principles of international humanitarian law, especially protection of civilians", but a lot of civilians will die in every war, and it does not necessarily means committing genocide. In that regard, I think the US invasion of Iraq you noted was instructive. Yes, that invasion was definitely wrong. Unlike the operation by Israel in Gaza (which was triggered by the October 7 attack), USA clearly had no casus belli or any serious reason to invade, but they did, which resulted in even higher civilian to militant death ratio that for IDF in Gaza. But did they do it to exterminate Iraqi people? No, they just wanted to depose a murderous dictator. And as a personal opinion, I also think that the "civilians" versus "military" distinction is a little overblown. The death of every military person is usually a tragedy for his relatives, even if it was celebrated by the opposite side. And the civilians who support by their words and deeds an unjust war and murder are not innocent. My very best wishes (talk) 16:50, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
What triggered the present war was certainly the Hamas invasion. Israel was legally entitled to respond. But the nature of its response will be adjudicated by whether or not the principles, or lack of them, active in its tactical campaigns are consonant with the laws of proportionality. The best minds from a variety of disciplines appear to concur that what has occurred goes beyond all military or strategic reason and approaches to a possibility of genocidal consequences. I have my own interpretations for much of this, rooted in an approach based on the particular circumstances thought brought about the State of exception enjoyed by Israel, certainly since 1967, in which the normal universalist criteria by which democracies judge each other, are suspended. I must be brief. Apparently my hosts have poppedf a champagne bottle.
By the way the US did not undertake the Iraq war to depose Saddam Hussein. His fall was simply one in a larger set of geopolitical calculations. Russian analysts took it indeed as an initiative which, in the long term, was intended to undermine the soft belly of the former Soviet Union's southern flank, and some credit was given to this even by senior European analysts.Nishidani (talk) 18:36, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Well, I guess that was actually the goal of Hamas to incite the disproportional response by Israel, just as the goal of Al-Qaeda was to incite the disproportional response by USA (including the Iraq invasion). The Hamas and other Iran-supported organizations have inflicted a significant damage to Israel, much greater than the initial attack on October 7; they have a lot of internally displaced people; their international reputation suffered, etc. Just as the damage to the USA (from the Iraqi invasion, Afghanistan, ISIS, etc.) was thousands times grater than the damage directly from 911. This is a universal strategy of all terrorist/revolutionary organizations to win. It was spelled out already by theorists of Narodnaya Volya, such as Nechayev. By murdering Alexander the Liberator, they have changed the course of Russian history. I have no idea what will happen with the state of Israel, but at least right now they are fighting on multiple fronts, and there is no any end in sight. I can bet they will invade Lebanon. My very best wishes (talk) 20:57, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

The Hamas and other Iran-supported organizations have inflicted a significant damage to Israel, much greater than the initial attack on October 7

Of course historically Israel, like America almost always in a state of war since its inception, has never caused significant damage to anyone, Palestinians or its geopolitical neighbours, being a victim of Arab hostility.Nishidani (talk) 12:58, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Unlike Israel, who just fought for its own survival, US is indeed the most militarized country in the world, in terms of the gun ownership, and of course the wars which, unlike Israel, they conducted far away of their territory, at least lately. Should they play the role of the "world policemen", in alliance with NATO and other countries? I would say yes, because if they do not, then someone else will. My very best wishes (talk) 19:57, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
There are numerous problems with your assertions, which seem grounded in a sense that Israel and the United States respond to similar challenges in similar ways. Iraq was not occupied for 56 years by the US before the latter invaded, as the Palestinian territories have been.The US did not enable hundreds of settlements, destroy 55,000 family homes with bulldozers or arrest and detain for interrogation 1 million people before the invasion in Iraq. Some aspectS of similarity exist: the US supported the proto-Al Qaida mujahidden against the Russian-supported government of Afghanistan and supported Hussein in his attack on Iran, as Israel supported the rise of Hamas against the secular PLO, and for 10 years allowed Qatar to bankroll Hamas as late as 2023. The hot air of calling everyone and every group 'terrorist' who doesn't accept your own geopolitical designs is infantile. The latest almost hysterically comical example of this is the following.

Lazzarini pointed out three pieces of legislation going through the Israeli parliament: one to label Unrwa as a terrorist organisation, another to remove all immunities from Unrwa staff and a third to deny Unrwa access to buildings under Israel’s control. He said the draft bills were enjoying large support. Patrick Wintour Israel seeking to close down Unrwa, says agency’s chief after school bombing The Guardian 13 September 2024

If you prefer to espouse the Israelocentric POV that all the wars it has engaged in are wars of survival, you must do so by ignoring the literature. In the 'crisis' of 1967 the CIA correctly predicted that Israel would win within 6-10 days. In the 1982 Lebanese war a ceasefire had been in place for several months and a piddling army of PLO militants constituted no existential threat to Israel etc.etc. Israel is not an historic victim. It is a remarkable, indeed extraordinary success story of winning virtually every battle it has engaged in, which, one might suggest, is part of its core problem - the inability to negotiate compromises with its perceived enemies, preferring to resort habitually to the recourse of overwhelming military superiority because any viable political settlement with its internal and external neighbours would require it to yield land it is now settling and place constraints on its sense of historic entitlements.Nishidani (talk) 21:29, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. Yes, of course, Israel and the United States had different challenges and responded in different ways. With regard to relying on military force and refusing negotiate, I think many countries do just that. Some of the do save money on their army, but this is because they belong to powerful alliances. And even when they do negotiate, this is done at the expense of other countries. As about "terrorists" in UN, well, with Russia sitting in the Security Council and conducting genocide of Ukrainians, many people have very little respect to this organization, and who am I to judge them? The "settlements", yeh, I know some people who live there. Personally, I do not like any ethnocentric states, and would be for the one-state solution with equal rights for all people, but again, I do not live there, and this is not for me to decide. My very best wishes (talk) 02:23, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
History is an arena of power and opportunity, so a sceptical, even amoral, realism is the only sober approach to grasping its dynamics. The complications set in when one realizes that the agents of history, most certainly in recent decades at any rate, very rarely understand the collateral effects of their opportunistic decision-making. All too often they make what they consider ‘moral’ choices. Unlike the post-war generation of great politicians, they have a notoriously short attention-span and less than a sophomore’s familiarity with la longue durée’s complex mix of vectors and momentum of structural interest. Putin believed a week or so long ‘special operation’ would lead to a putsch that would oust Zelensky and enable the Ukraine to be ruled by the usual kleptocratic philorussian quisling government. Blair and Bush knew nothing of history, apart from the half hour that the former condescended to grant to experts who told him his private decision at George’s ranch to give the go-ahead to the invasion of Iraq would create a foreseeable set of disasters not least for the United States. The only clear beneficiaries, it was known, would be the two regional adversaries, Israel (Yinon Plan) and Iran. The same was true of Afghanistan: everyone with a serious grasp of the context, knew that ‘democratising’ that country would end in total failure. British military historians stated as much at the time. $2.3 trillion bucks ending up in either waste, the displacement of millions or the usual shysters’ Swiss bank accounts, as we return to the status quo ante. (By the way, the US bombed Afghanistan’s 650,000sq kms with 87,000 tons of bombs over two decades. Israel in the last 11 months has bombed the Gaza Strip’s 365 sq.km with more, close to some 90,000 tons of heavy ordinance by now.)
I put at risk an important wiki friendship some years back by disagreeing with the proposition that Russia’s invasion was simply a natural geostrategic response to Nato’s eastward expansion. For me Russia’s invasion paralleled Israel’s conquest of the West Bank: both aggressors trumpeted the rhetoric of taking back historic territory unjustly alienated from its rightful owners. But as a realist, given in particular the fact that the neoGrotian world is now in a shambles and on its last legs, I presume to know that rights will have nothing to do with the eventual outcomes: Russia will retain at least 20% of the land it ceded to the Ukraine in the 1990s, and Israel will retain control of 90% of the land of historic Palestine, having purchased a little over 6% legally, and relegate the descendants of the 95% of the original population to 165 bantustans on what is left over, barring miracles (the miracle would only occur in the unlikely event that diaspora pressure forced Israel to choose democracy over an apartheid ethnocracy, highly improbable). Whatever one’s sympathies, the dies are cast, and all that is left to the patient observer is to ensure that we get the facts right in the face of the enormous industries of complacent myth-making that attempt to capture their respective constituencies with emotive appeals to the abstract tapestries of rhetorics about ‘terrorism’, ‘democracy’, ‘antisemitism’, victimization of Holocaust survivors, ‘the fight against Nazism’, and the right of decent people to live in peace undisturbed by the eyesore of those 'animals' whose ghettoized presence in one's valley or on the other side of the landscape disrupts every settler's right to a decent, Western middleclass life and safety for their families in their stolen, well-watered oases etc.etc.Nishidani (talk) 13:48, 15 September 2024 (UTC)
I agree with most of it except the analogy between Russia and Israel. What Russia does is a classic imperial conquest. They just join all the occupied territories to their empire and consider Ukrainians subjects to them, even say they are ethnically Russians. They force them to take Russian passports and immediately take them to their army to use as a cannon fodder. Genghis Khan did the same. Israel does exactly the opposite because it wants to remain a Jewish state (hence the "Bantustans in the West Bank" and a lot more). More important, Israel arguably needed to occupy the territories (such as the Golan Heights) merely to exist, due to its very small size and aggressive neighbors. Can Israel return their citizens back to their North without fighting off Hezbollah at the Lebanon territory? Probably not. Russia, on the other hand, did not need to attack anyone to exist, at least in recent history, and it does not need to control more lands to exist. Overall, I think that Russia is a lot more like Iran, hence they created the alliance that is directed against Israel and Ukraine. My very best wishes (talk) 14:04, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
I've always sympathized with Ukrainians, ever since my local Ukrainian grocer, who was interested in getting me interested in his daughter, spluttered with grief to find out I was studying Russian at the university, and told me the story of his family (I soon detected that his odium for Russians had an antisemitic element, since he thought of communism as a Jewish conspiracy).
When I use an analogy, I am aware that they have only a limited heuristic value and must be handled with care for otherwise different contexts since realities never duplicate themselves ( I happen to be reading a wonderful analysis by Paul Valéry on what man can learn of himself by examining shells, - L'homme et la coquille in P.V, Variété V, Gallimard 1944 pp.11-37- not one of which resembles any other exactly). Russia failed the three preconditions for what we define as Western modernity -(a) failure to separate church and state (b)failure to enact a parallel Reformation within Orthodoxy (c) failure to take on board in any significant way the Enlightenment (just as it missed the Renaissance). This indirectly (it is not much studied, I gather) deeply inflected the formation of Zionism. That movement arose among assimiliated Western Jews but only took on significant force among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe (indeed, one reason behind 'Western' Zionism was to divert Ostjuden from settling in Europe proper).
A very large number of the most forceful figures in the early Zionist engagement with the Yishuv were of Eastern European origin (Ze'ev Jabotinsky (Ukraine),David Ben-Gurion ('Poland'), Chaim Weizmann (Belarus), Menachem Begin (Belarus), Yitzhak Shamir(Belarus), Avraham Stern (Poland),Pinhas Rutenberg (Ukraine),Golda Meir (Ukraine),Moshe Sharett (Ukraine), A. D. Gordon (Ukraine), Berl Katznelson (Belarus),Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (Latvia), Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (Vilna), Nahum Goldmann (Belarus) not to mention borderline Easterners like Arthur Ruppin whose formative years were in eastern Prussia (Poland) etc.etc. That is, they hailed from Russo-Slavonic, antisemitic milieu which was estranged from Western Europe culturally and politically.
We often think ethnically, of an Ashkenazi vs.Mizrachi/Sephardim divide, forgetting that the Ashkenazi elite themselves evinced a formidable cultural divide between East and West, and that while the assimilated Western Jews eventually mobilized to network politically and advance the Zionist project, its real drivers came from an Eastern European world which institutionally had no experience of democracy, liberalism, or individualist values. And, arguably, this formative 'Eastern' factor plays a not negligible role in the extreme hard-nosed, uncompromising, thrust to state formation and consolidation as Zionism realised its aims in Israel.
The wave of ex-Soviet/Russian emigration to Israel in recent decades now makes up for 20% of the population, of which a significant minority are not Jewish, reinforcing this historical culturally 'non-Western' component in that country (just as likewise, the 40% Mizrachi component came from an Arabic cultural milieu that had never undergone the three core inflections of modernity mentioned earlier).

arguably needed to occupy the territories (such as the Golan Heights) merely to exist, due to its very small size and aggressive neighbors.

It has long been pointed out that occupying contiguous territories like the West Bank, or the Golan Heights as a strategic necessity was shopworn by the 1970s when aerial/missile superiority dispensed with the need for the kind of tank warfare over lengthy stretches of terrain characteristic of an earlier period. The Golan Heights has no strategic, as opposed to economic value. If you familiarize yourself with early Zionism, it imagined an Israel far beyond the confines we have now, including Lebanon south of the Litani river, western Syria, Jordan, and parts of the Sinai. These ideas were nurtured without any thought of the fundamental needs for securing a state for the Jews. When one spèaks of Israel's right to live in peace within secure borders, one should try to imagine that every other neighbouring states have, more or less the same desire, Hezbollah not excluded. The problem always has been, how are those borders to be defined, by international law, or military showdown. The latter resort is a recipé for perpetual conflict.Nishidani (talk) 16:06, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Interesting. Yes, the Eastern Europe connection and the cultural influence were definitely a factor. As about living in peace with neighboring States, I do not think this is about the borders. The Hamas attacked in October (and Hezbollah followed at the North) not because they had a border dispute. Rather, this is really about the right of Israel to exist, at least in its present form. My very best wishes (talk) 20:45, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Israel's military ranks fourth or fifth in the world, and it enjoys very powerful alliances which ensure and guarantee its political permanence, something none of its perceived aversaries have. All its neighbours are failed or hopelessly inefficient states, incapable of constituting any threat to Israel's existence. This is a matter of simple military statistics: no state in the area beyond its borders could survive with a functional airforce or command centre more than 2 days were a general war to break out, and that is without Israel resorting to its nuclear arsenal. Hamas and Hezbollah as political movements cannot be destroyed (unless one resorts to genocide), but the territory they administer can be bombed back to the stone age without serious retaliation, for neither has the technological capacity to protect their own airspace where modern wars are won. The argument you make cannot explain why Israel has consistently refused to respond to Arab Peace Initiatives from 2002 onwards. Arguments of the form:'Israel has a right to exist'/'Jews have the right to self-determination' have natural logical corollaries, like 'Palestine has a right to exist'/Palestinians have a right to self-determination.' To affirm the first and deny the second only means that one accepts double-standards, a confession that one thinks Israel's claim is not underwritten by a general human principle (as its phrasing suggests) but rather by some peculiar state of exception to which Jews alone are entitled.Nishidani (talk) 22:26, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for discussion! My very best wishes (talk) 16:19, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Admittedly, I am not en expert, but I thought that Palestinian people have realized already their right for self-determination by creating their state, and it is internationally recognized by many countries. This is at the time when many other nations remain stateless. It is another matter that their state is currently dysfunctional or failed and in the state of war with Israel.

You are referring to symbolic recognition, mostly by countries that have or will have no say in the eventual, if ever, outcome of a fully de jure independent Palestinian state. The crux is quite simple: Israel occupies militarily, and via its military, administratively, all of the territory of historic Palestine (save for a tenuous scrap, pro-forma, under the authority of the Palestinian National Authority - which can't even fart without clearing the wind with Israel -, and Israel, like the real power broker here the United States, does not recognize Palestinian statehood. In theory, to obtain full statehood it would require a resolution by the United Nations Security Council, where Israel, via the United States has veto power. In theory, the prerequisite for such a motion would be a negotiated settlement between an occupying power that does not recognize the right of Palestinians to a state, and the occupied people who have no leverage, since they are totally disarmed, the internal forces available are an instrument for policing Palestinians in coordination with Israel and the United States, and have no control of their land. All they have is a power to put their signature on any document that would legalize everything done against them by settling outstanding issues with Israel, on the latter's terms. Think of Catch-22 or Kafka, whose literary remains are finally stored in Israel, without the slightest sense of irony.Think of Tiny Tim going blindfolded with one arm tied behind his back to play blind-man's bluff with George Foreman in the ring at Kinshasa, or Shrek trampling across a downsized Leisure Land while complaining of the pinpricks to his heels and the refusal of the scattering midgets to recognize his right to self-determination.Nishidani (talk) 17:45, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
No objections from me. This is an ethnic conflict. All of them are extremely ugly. I had some friends whose house was burned to the ground during such conflict in Abkhazia and who were lucky to escape). Actually, I am surprised they were able to sustain such conflict in Palestine for so long. This typically ends with one of the sides leaving the territory, the Flight of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians being one of the recent striking examples. While I am personally on the side of Armenians, there is little one can do here.My very best wishes (talk) 14:52, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the tragic ethnic cleaning of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh was repulsive, but it’s not quite analogous because the refugees had a mother-state to repair to. Palestinians have no such refuge - they have literally nowhere to go, except to crowded bantustans within 'greater Israel'- and, given the contempt with which they are viewed in the West’s political society, and the indifference of Arab countries to their chronic plight, they have no option but to bear the torture of dispossession and immiseration. A further difference is that, as Henry Laurens stated some months back, it is a ritual chant in every Western metropolis whenever Israel finds itself in conflict, that ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’, but, at the same time it is unthinkable (‘’impensable’’) for any Western politician to state publicly that Palestinians have the right to defend themselves. This, even as they are regularly, on average twice a week, murdered in the West Bank by the IDF and the settlers, as numerous videos over the past decades attest. It is not a ‘conflict’ in this sense, since a large percentage of the victims, of murder or dispossession, historically, have been unarmed. For this steadfast refusal to budge even at the point of a gun, and their standing their ground to throw stones at 'the world's most moral army' flush with telescope-sighted MI6s, knowing one of them will be picked off pour encourager les autres, they have my deepest admiration. Like them, I know that their cause is hopeless. That requires real intelligence and courage, an exceptional capacity for enduring outrages that bears comparison with the earlier history of the Jewish people.Nishidani (talk) 19:32, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, there is no justice in the world. But as a purely practical matter, will throwing the stones improve your life and lives of other people? And if it does not, why do it? Just to vent your hatred? Same can be said about any action by any side, including even personal conflicts between people. In that regard, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, for example, made right choice under the terrible circumstances. I also made right choice by emigrating to another country. Did Navalny make right choice by returning back to Russia after being poisoned by Novichok? No, he did not. These people also have a choice. They can refrain from throwing the stones, and they can do (or not do) a lot of other things, for as long as they are not in prison. No, I do not admire them at all. I am not saying that any military resistance is fruitless. No, it may be necessary, but only if it has a chance to succeed. But if you can not live in Gulag and can not fix it, then your only chance is to escape. That is what many people did. My very best wishes (talk) 22:29, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
I see your restored my comment. That's OK. I do think that stone trowing is just pathetic and dangerous. This is not anything exceptional. Consider another real life case. When a Russian column came close to a Ukrainian village in the beginning of the invasion, someone threw a bottle with a Molotov cocktail towards one of the machines. The column stopped and called in the aviation which raised the entire village to the ground. Was it a good idea to use the bottle and get a lot of your people killed? In contrast, using Javelins in an organized fashion around Kyiv was a operation with a chance to succeed, and it succeeded. But obviously, this not just about stone throwing. For example, the atrocities by Hamas (the de facto government of Gaza) on October 7 has discredited their cause and led to immense suffering of civilians in Gaza. By the same token, the attacks by Hezbollah on Israel leads to the suffering of Lebanese people. If someone robs you at a gun point, is not it a good idea just to give him your money? My very best wishes (talk) 14:10, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
The atrocities committed by Israel from the morning strike on 8 July 2014, and in the Great March of Return, on the other hand has not led to the discrediting of Zionism. As I stated, your suggested option that 5 million Palestinians relocate is not possible, because their expatriation and immigration elsewhere is acceptable to no nation, other than Israel. Be robbed, assaulted and turn the other cheek is sound advice, both Christian and rabbinical, but in early post-war Israel Holocaust survivors who made aliyah were excoriated sneeringly as sabon (soap), because the victims of that genocide did not fight back, or grasp the thrust of Moshe Dayan's eulogy for Ro'i Rothberg, which is more or less the 'moral' justification for everything that follows.Thanks for the feedback, but urgent issues are distracting me, like the increasingly frequent and successful inroad on important grammatical distinctions like that between the possessive pronouns its and the third person abbreviation it, as witness the following passage on the recent upsurge in Chinese runaway (潤學 rùnxué, lit 'moist (rùn) study', a great pun on the English word 'run(away)) emigrants:

'The phenomenon has become so widely discussed online that it has it’s own buzzword: runxue, or run philosophy, a coded term for emigration.' Amy Hawkins, A path towards freedom: the new route to Europe for desperate Chinese migrants The Guardian 25 September 2024

Philip Oltermann, Germans decry influence of English as ‘idiot’s apostrophe’ gets official approval The Guardian 7 October 2024. Though the Deppenapostroph (“idiot’s apostrophe” they complain of lends itself to the variety of error we have in English.)Nishidani (talk) 21:42, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Keep well. I remain mindful of the distress your being compelled into refugee life must cause. You made the right decision, having that option. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 09:53, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

(2) 'Gates ignores the fact that the United States has military bases and assets in more than 700 nations (sic), while China has one military base (in Djibouti) outside it’s zone of interest.' Melvin Goodman, 'Same Old Robert Gates: The Poster Child for US Militarization,' CounterPunch 30 September 2024.

your suggested option that 5 million Palestinians relocate. I never said that. Perhaps it is Jewish settlers who should relocate. mindful of the distress. No, that was actually a wonderful experience. Sure, some stress was inevitable, but I actually enjoyed it and had an interesting life. And this is exactly the point. Some people think that emigration or relocation is bad. No, it is not. From a biological perspective, this is an important adaptation, something I wish other people to try, and they do try it. Yes, this maybe more difficult for other people and depends on their age and other circumstances. I do agree that illegal immigration (as described in your link) is bad as a violation of the laws of the country you are trying to enter. But if someone is indeed running for his life or from a place like Gaza, I would certainly only try to help such people. My very best wishes (talk) 17:12, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
Sorry. That was how I read your argument that 'if you can not live in Gulag and can not fix it, then your only chance is to escape.' Gaza is frequently likened by serious scholars to a gulag or the world's largest open air prison. They cannot escape, and they are 2.2 million. Their confreres in the West Bank account for the other roughly 3 million, and they can't escape en masse by emigrating.
Well, I've lived in diaspora for 47 years, not as a refugee, but by choice, but I can understand your point. I grew up schooled in places where immigrants were omnipresent, one third of my own hometown, and they rose out of poverty to a good life within ten years or so. Those postwar conditions are no longer available, as the world closes its borders, and housing becomes prohibitive on low wages. If you are a Palestinian in Jerusalem and venture abroad for some time, perhaps to create a base for your future family's expatriation, you risk losing your residency via the bureaucratic jungle, and being denied a right of return or unification with your family. Having tertiary qualifications helps, except in Gaza: 7 graduates earned a Fulbright scholarship in 2008, but it was revoked under Israeli pressure, until an outcry overturned what is a pretty common form of harassment for even those who do manage to get some form of permission to leave. My views on Israel changed in 1981-2, first when, on my honeymoon, we stayed overnight in a dinky little outback Australian township, which only had two eateries, one Chinese, the other looking MIddle eastern. I chose the latter for a different culinary experience, and at the end of the meal, started a conversation with the owner. When I asked him about his original homecountry, he said:'Guess'. Since there was an Arabic sign there, I named every country from Morocco to Pakistan, from Turkey to Ethiopia, in sequence, as he nodded a negative. Finally, having exhausted my geographical memory's stores, I asked him straightout where? 'Palestine', the one country that hadn't registered, unlike Israel, with me. I felt ashamed. The sadness in those eyes, expelled from West Jerusalem at gunpoint in '48, remains with me to this day, a sense of losing a life in one of the world's great historic cities in exchange for an Aussie desert town, full of louts. (The other was the 1982 destruction of Lebanon, unprovoked, with 17,000 murdered for nothing).Nishidani (talk) 18:12, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
Yeh. This is not fair and will never be fair. This prolonged conflict strikes me as something unsustainable, leading to a lot of political instability. I have no idea how this is going to be resolved. Anything is possible. But it is likely that the things will become worse, and they are already worse... My very best wishes (talk) 16:37, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
I'd like to thank you, MVBW, for this conversation. A large part of our job here consists of reading news reports, and then making edits that are often read as supporting for ideological reasons some cause. An occasional exchange, where one is allowed to catch the personal side, allows one to get beyond the abstractions of such disagreements. This is true of the topic area itself, to see beyond the endless haranguing of positions, very much reflective of our newspaper sources, to the heart of things. I'd like to leave you with a translation of something I read just a few minutes ago, which bears on this:

The crude curiosity for biographical anecdote is a trait of our times, increased tenfold by the methods of a press and media addressing a public that knows less and less how to read.'Marguerite Yourcenar, Mishima ou la Vision du vide, cited Josyane Savigneau, Marguerite Yourcenar, Gallimard 1990 p.14.

To connect the dots there with what we do would only lead to a detour, so we can leave it at that. So thanks again, and to cite your monicker, best wishes. Nishidani (talk) 17:55, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Polygenic scores

Thanks for advocating the inclusion of the polygenic scores for educational attainment in the article about Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence my friend. Could you please also help us include them in the race and intelligence article? There is a discussion about it in the talk page called Piffer (2015) 186.168.137.39 (talk) 04:29, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Tom Burgis, Hannah Devlin, David Pegg, Jason Wilson ‘Race science’ group say they accessed sensitive UK health data The Guardian 17 October 2024 Nishidani (talk) 15:11, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Israeli apartheid and dispute resolution efforts

Hi. I'm preparing a presentation for the upcoming WikiConference North America about disputes and dispute resolution efforts. Thought I might use Israeli apartheid as an example of a highly disputed article. I'm contacting you because you are among the most active current editors there. Do you happen to know of any summaries or descriptions, in WP or otherwise, of the history of the disputes and dispute resolution efforts?

I'm also curious about your perspective on I-P dispute resolution efforts, especially in relation to the Israel apartheid article. What's your view of ARB sanctions, the role of WikiProjects (e.g., Palestine, Israel, WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration) or RfC and so on -- what has been effective or ineffective, worth trying, or examples of resolution progress?

Feel free to email me your response, if that would be better. Thanks very much, ProfGray (talk) 14:53, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't think I could be of much help. I must admit I have never read beyond the lead of any wiki page on policy, and of those very few. I pay very little attention to I/P dispute resolution, RfCs or the relevant wikiproject pages, which I don't even have bookmarked.As for Arbcom and the sanctions system, I pay attention when I'm dragged into them of course, 5 times over the last year. Generally, as I see it, the conflicts are between people who go to some trouble to read widely in the topic area, and people who are offended by scholarship or informed opinion, and will go to great lengths to argue on talk pages, or revert what they dislike, often captiously. The point was egregiously thrown into relief in the immense effort, by editors who knew nothing of the topic literature (see the AfD and the talk pages) to change the title of the article Zionism, race and genetics([hCite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_conceptions_of_Jewish_identity_in_Zionism here]. They were successful, i.e. the editors who didn't read the sources managed to strongarm by numbers a change of title by sheer attrition and the disattention of other editors who wandered in. From an administrative perspective, on the other hand, both sides were culpable of hammering their points of view: it didn't matter that one 'side' read several hundred pages, at least, of documentation, while the other side just kibitzed the paraphrases of the content on the talk page, quarrelling with, effectively, the scholarship.
As to Israel and apartheid, I disapproved of naming Israel an apartheid state for several years because (a) Israel is one thing - the discriminations there bear no close analogy with the former South Africa's (b) the hafrada/apartheid policies in the Palestinian territories do resemble SA's, designedly, as indeed was shown in the background history of Israel's bantustanization of what we euphemistically called the Palestinian enclaves, but those territories are not in Israel (c) but when B'tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International over a period of a year and a half (2021-2022) all unanimously dropped their decades-long opposition to the use of the term and put out three detailed reports underlining that Israel's practices were apartheid, then I approved of using it as our article does now. The reason was simple, the major authorities on human rights endorsed a view which I entertained privately but which hadn't for decades any substantive grounds in mainstream sourcing, being considered 'controversial'.
Of course I will stand corrected if my memory of this is not exact.
The most interesting thing in this area is the grey area where 'neutrality'(NPOV) overlaps, and often is asserted to be interchangeable with euphemization. No one seriously challenges the factual record, which is overwhelming in the exhaustiveness of its historic documentation. The disputes arise over how to state these matters without injury to the respective parties' preferred public representations of the violence, which operatively means Israel's(representations), since Israel devotes huge resources to this, unlike the PA,which besides being broke and on the take has fortunately no editors in here who would care to have their work associated with them.Nishidani (talk) 16:56, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Started a new article

Emilia Lanier theory of Shakespeare authorship, feel free to have opinions. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:11, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Haredi Judaism and Zionism

I am sorry to bother you, since the top of this page says you are semi-retired, but could you clarify where on Talk:Zionism there was "an intelligent proposal" to which you "partially addressed" in your recent edits there? See this diff here [[12]] I did not see any requests pertaining to this particular section of the Zionism article. DaringDonna (talk) 18:53, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Never a bother, but I'm afraid you have me by the short and curlies there. I still distinctly remember being prompted to change the text with two new sources a day or so after the issue of Hasidim/Haredim and Zionism was raised, seeing that a glance at the section told me it was inadequately written. I've done a quickj check and cannot find what remark prompted me to add those sources. It may be my senility at fault (hang on, I think it was some complaint about a put-down quote about the exiguousness of pro-Palestinian ultra-orthodox communities world wide, with mention of Dershowitz in it. If you google the talk page that would be the remark to look for. I'd do it myself but I've just started watching Malkovich in his recent film ', Complètement cramé!' because I have to restore the pen it was downloaded on to the friend who got me a copy). Cheers Nishidani (talk) 19:27, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
This is niggling me, and I finally found the stop button for the USB for the film or whatever it is. I suddenly remembered that someone mentioned Mira Fox's article in The Forward, which mentioned Dershowitz, and spoke of numbers of Neturei Karta, and this triggered me to reread the Zionism article and, in doing so, fix the most obvious problem. But that doesn't come up on the talk page of Zionism, so it must be on another article. Sorry for the bother this is causing you.Nishidani (talk) 20:07, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
Worked it out, so a happy ending like the film I just saw. The thread had been archived and is available at Neturei Karta & the ADL. The proposal was by Butterscotch Beluga Nishidani (talk) 22:21, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Statistics

Of a reliable kind are now coming in. Anyone feel free to add to this list - a data base for articles or an article I often think a purely statistical page would be more informative than our usual articles).

Nishidani (talk) 16:05, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Before Oct 7 10 members of the Salem clan had been killed in Israeli air strikes. After Oct 7 another 173 members were killed in few days in December. By spring 2024 the number had risen to 270. Of the few survivors Youssef Salem lives in Istanbul
  • On 7 October 2 Israeli babies were killed. To date, 701 Gazan infants (under 1 year old) have been killed in the Strip.soldiers ‘tiktoked’ war crimes: Filmmaker Richard Sanders on new Al Jazeera film. Interview with Peter Oborne.Middle East Eye
  1. ^ Jason Burke, Malak A Tantesh, One year on, Gazan families mourn their dead and question what future hold The Guardian 2 October 2024.

Good evening

Stop icon

Your recent editing history at Zionism shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war; read about how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you do not violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Steven1991 (talk) 21:18, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

User:Steven1991 890 edits. Account created on 14 February 2018. Copied from my long file (over 50 names) on stale or recently registered editors who suddenly pop up in the IP area, esp. since 7 October, mostly without ever addressing the talk page and with no record of any serious interest, other than POV pushing, in Wikipedia Nishidani (talk) 21:28, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
@Nishidani I'm going to add to this that the user has been engaging in mass edits that are clear NPOV violations on this page including a lot of NPOV in his comments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_antisemitic_incidents_in_the_United_States&action=history
This seems like extremely excessive editing for a single user who only reached 500 edits a few months ago and consistently clearing their talk page of warnings they recieve. What is the correct course of action for this? The reporting system in Wiki is very confusing. Galdrack (talk) 10:12, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
User:Galdrack 257 edits. Account created on 23 March 2020. I assume you post this with the best intentions but the pot can't call the kettle black. Neither of you should be editing any articles related broadly to the IP conflict. Steven1991 got away with it but one should not consider that a precedent. I don't think anyone should edit here without (a)1,500 edits elsewhere and (b) a demonstrated commitment to article improvement on some scale outside of the articles on conflicts. Don't take this badly, but the 'correct course of action' for the moment is somewhat simple: memorize the rule:i before e except after c. ('recieve' = 'receive'). Regards Nishidani (talk) 11:17, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
@Nishidani tbh I agree with you, I've been trying to avoid editing anything in the topic and frankly the broad nature of it (especially given online discourse) is so broad it's covering more topics than it really should leading to excessive edits. For what it's worth my opinion is that IP addresses should be limited to very few edits per day and month, and new accounts should be limited to few edits per day and month increasing the more edits performed too. It'd be healthier for the discussions since newer accounts could edit more topics clearly outside the bounds of the discussion while also being easier to monitor by more experienced users.
From what I've read here in the last while I figure you're pretty exhausted by it. Kind regards. Galdrack (talk) 22:05, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Richard Sanders on the 'first livestream genocide in history'. Gaza on soldiers' videos (over 2,500) on social media.

soldiers ‘tiktoked’ war crimes: Filmmaker Richard Sanders on new Al Jazeera film. Interview with Peter Oborne.Middle East Eye Nishidani (talk) 21:40, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Statistics.On 7 October 2 Israeli babies were killed. To date, 710 Gazan infants (under 1 year old) have been killed in the Strip.Nishidani (talk) 22:10, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Hope Against Hope

is the name of the first volume by Nadezhda Mandelstam of her life with, and the fate of, her husband Osip Mandelstam. I was sadly reminded of it while listening to Peter Beinart today, who concludes his remarks on this date with a reflection of what Noam Chomsky said over a half century ago concerning his intimate unease at 'performing' in the world's conversation during his activism against the Vietnam War and its irrationality and atrocities against another people.

'There is something wrong about ever engaging in a conversation which is premised on the idea that certain human beings are lesser than other human beings, and I hope somehow, I don’t know how, but somehow that in this year to come that we will move to a world in which that is no longer the norm of the way we think and talk in the United States and in the West and in Jewish communities because I think fundamentally it’s an affront, in my view, it is an affront to God and our human condition.’ Peter Beinart, The Beinart Notebook, 7 October 2024. (Beautifully said, sir.) Nishidani (talk) 17:18, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

story · music · places

beautifully said - Rohan de Saram, unbelievable story --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:19, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

I made Leif Segerstam my big story today. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

On the other hand

  • Israel is waging war, not merely in “self-defence” but, in the words of president Isaac Herzog, “to save western civilisation, to save the values of western civilisation”, a claim echoed by many of its supporters. And the destruction of Gaza, of its hospitals and universities, and the killing of 40,000 people? And the 2,000 people killed in Lebanon in a fortnight, and the fifth of its population displaced? Collateral damage en route to saving civilisation.' Kenan Malik,Israel is not ‘saving western civilisation’. Nor is Hamas leading ‘the resistance’ The Guardian 13 October 2024.

I.e. the Gaza genocide is just the most recent episode in which Western civilisation has been 'saved' by exterminating an indigenous people.Nishidani (talk) 13:36, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Beinart had interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates against the stupid boycott of his book because its presentation was accompanied (rightly so) by a Zionist intellectual. In that book, which is on the NYTs best seller list there is a similar sentiment to the one eloquently put forth by Beinart above. It runs

Through a fifty-year period stretching from 1970 to 2019, (Maha) Nassar found that less that 2 percent of all opinion pieces discussing Palestinians had Palestinian authors. The Washington Post ranked at a dismal 1 percent. The New Republic duiing this period did not pèublish a single piece on Palestine from the perspective of Palestinians.

I do not think that this is a conspiracy. But more important, I do not think it is a coincidence. An inhuman system demands inhumans, and so it produces them in stories, editorials, newscasts, movies, and television. Editors and writers like to think that they are not part of such subsystems, that they are independent, objective and arrive at their conclusions solely by dint of their reporting and research. But the Palestine I saw bore so little likeness to the stories I read, and so much resemblance to the systems I’ve known, that I am left believing that at least here, this objectivity is self-delusion. It’s not the facts of the stories are so wrong – though sometimes it is that- it is what is not said, the passive voice, the ceding of authority to military flacks, the elevation of factual complexity over self-evident morality . .[The result is] an effort to forge a story told solely by the colonizer, an effort that extends to the proscribing of boycotts by American states, the revocation of articles by journals, the dismissal of news anchors by skittish networks, the shooting of journalists by army snipers. Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message, Diversified Publishing, 2024 ISBN 979-8-217-01424-8 pp.222-223.

This is relevant not only to the list of articles above documenting the formal suppression of free speech regarding Palestine, but to a general issue of WP:Systemic bias, very rarely grasped, taken seriously or understood by third parties who adjudicate 'edit conflicts' and POV issues on wikipedia. The IP editorial culture developed over two decades has sought to overcome this by a rigorous insistance on top-tier RS sourcing, esp. academic works, where this mainstream bias is far less empowered. And the results are challenged by editors who constantly appeal to either newspapers, or general notions 'out there' about what they appear to consider to be a consensus about core facts of history. The on-wiki conflict is essentially about method, quality of evidence and nuancing precision vs broad nationalistic self-representations.Nishidani (talk) 22:48, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Iran and Israel

Trita Parsi on Iran, Hezbollah and Israel Trita Parsi, unlike 99% of the mainstream journalists and commentators whose writings we use on articles related to this nexus, actually knows Iranian political history intimately. Nishidani (talk) 20:47, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.Brocade River Poems (She/They) 01:42, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

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