[Wikipedia-l] NPOV and the israeli-palestinian conflict

[elian]

Hello,

When I discovered Wikipedia I was really fascinated and decided to join
the project. One of my first selfimposed limitations before I even knew
about the NPOV-policy, however, was not to write about the
Israeli-palestinian conflict because I consider myself as biased (having
friends who are palestinian refugees).

So far no problem, I worked happily on the German wikipedia (wrote
articles about the hebrew language and alphabet, and a lot of philosophy
stuff) until someone started to translate the articles about this conflict
from the english wikipedia. Then I had a look at these articles and I must
say (as many others did, too - see the talk pages):

They don't feel NPOV at all. It's quite difficult to find out why these
articles don't feel NPOV. On the surface everything seems to comply with
the wikipedia standards. Particular views are labelled as such, there is
no obvious propaganda of neither side and though, a very bad feeling
remains for me, when I read these articles. This mail is an attempt to
sort this out. I know it is almost impossible to write objective about
this conflict even if you try hard. It's not the intention of this mail to
propose an euphemization of terrorist attacks or suicide bombings, but a
plead to treat the victims on both sides of this conflict in a fair way in
wikipedia.

First, I see a problem with a lot of little formulations.  There were so
many formulations which hurt: more than 100 killed civilians, women and
children constituted the deir yassin "incident" - see edit history of
"Irgun", where the Irgun was "supposed to have killed them". I am sure the
deads would not consider their murder as "supposedly".

Or "Palestinians claim that the bulk of Palestinian refugees had been
inhabitants of Palestine for many generations": doesn't this obvious,
totally trivial fact, recognized by the UNO, earn a formulation as a fact,
not a claim?

Other things, on the contrary, seem to be facts: "The infiltration, which
was usually carried out at night by desperate people, terrorized the
Jewish civilians, some of whom lived in former Arab areas. Moreover, while
most of the infiltrators didn't come with the intention to kill, many of
them did steal property." (Palestinian_infiltration) There is no question
that this "stolen property" may have been one year earlier the rightful
property of the "infiltrator" before disseized by Israeli law, no, "they
steal property".

It's a real question which definition of law applies in the wikipedia: is
it the positive law, set by the victorious party in a conflict? Or do we
adhere to some internationally defined standards of human rights and
international law?

My last example is the part about the origin of suicide bombings in
"Terrorism against Israel": First comes a view attributed to some Israelis
and Americans that propaganda in palestinian schoolbooks incites
terrorism. It is followed by a view attributed to Palestinians "that the
homicide bombings are forgiveable and understandable effects of the
unsatisfactory situation in which Palestinians live, and that it is the
only way to achieve the results they desire." followed by "In contrast,
Israelis and Americans point out that millions of people live in similar
and worse conditions all over the world, yet these people never resort to
waves of homicide bombings."

Okay, the thing with the schoolbooks should be clear for the interested
reader, but what the hell is the "unsatisfactory situation"?

The goal of an encyclopedia should not be to justify terrorism, but it is
definitely one of its goals to describe accurately what the source of this
terrorism is. There are enough studies around the world who show that
children growing up in an atmosphere of violence (for example african
child soldiers) tend later to attempt to resolve conflicts in a violent
way. Doesn't the experience of children seeing their parents beaten, their
family home blown up and living under curfews or in permament danger of
being shot accidentally when leaving the house merit a mention as possible
influence of palestinian terrorism beside the schoolbook debate?

I don't want to go deeper into details, instead I want to point out
another problem of non neutral point of view formulation. Regarding only
how much space is dedicated to which aspect of an article, the articles
about the israeli-palestinian conflict show a strong tendency towards the
following behaviour:

Palestinian_exodus: 
521 chars of facts 
5648 chars "Responsibility of the Arab side for the exodus" 
435 "Israeli violence, and threats of such"

Palestinian_refugee: 
295 chars of facts 
229 chars of palestinian claims
1990 chars "Objections which have been raised by Israel" starting with a
denial that palestinians exist at all.

Where is the "arguing for the enemy" that the NPOV-policy demands?

That's the last point of my long posting: people who don't consider
themself neutral and objective enough because they are either party in the
conflict or strongly biased towards one side should ask themselves
seriously if they are able to give a fair account of these things and if
they deem themselves not able, refrain from editing.  I have serious
doubts that for example someone who calls Palestinians "those dratted
Arabs" (see Palestinian_territories discussion page) can be considered
neutral enough.

Instead, I'd like to call on all people who are not part of the conflict,
especially on the historians (because they should be used to present
events in a neutral way) to wage an effort to neutralize these
articles. This is not always done by inserting "claims" and "supposed",
but internationally recognized facts should be presented as such (even if
the Israeli government or the Hamas leaders refuse to acknowledge them).

Israel's existence is a fact and denials of this should be treated in
wikipedia equally to holocaust denial.

But human rights violation are human rights violations, even if the state
Israel says, destroying of palestinian houses is lawful, because a
terrorist lived in it. (see B'tselem discussion page) For the terrorist's
little three-year-old sister, who is then forced to live on the street, it
_is_ a human rights violation and according to the international
declaration of human rights it is, too.

Anything else is a verbal attack and a mockery of the victims of this
conflict on both sides which doesn't become the neutral wikipedia well.

If someone can't understand why this is troubling me so, I can explain
this with an analogy if desired. (I don't do now because this mail is
already long enough)

greetings and sorry for the horrible english,
elian