On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 4:35 PM, Yann Forget <yannfo@gmail.com> wrote:

These are famous and valuable pictures, including two featured
pictures on the Hebrew Wikipedia.

Lots of famous pictures are copyrighted. They can't be hosted on Commons just because they're famous.

These files have already been
deleted and restored 3 times.

That would be because you undeleted them without taking them to Deletion Review. And now you are taking the discussion to yet another inappropriate forum. Why are you opposed to using Deletion Review?

When the URAA issue was not convincing
enough, a new reson for deletion was advanced: that publication
details were not given. Anyone with 2 bits of common sense can
understand that these famous pictures were published soon after they
were taken. There is no reasonable doubt about that. In addition,
publication is not a requirement for being in the public domain in
Israel.

Images on Commons must be public domain in both the source country and the US. The images are definitely copyrighted in the US. The question is whether they are copyrighted due to following US formalities or due to the URAA. Without details about how they were published, it is impossible to determine which is the case.

After I restored these images, I was threatem by LGA, who is a
delete-only account:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/User_problems#User:Yann
There, more contributors argue on this issue.

By asking absurb requirements about publication details, these
contributors threaten the project as a whole. If insisting, it will
lead people to upload pictures like these locally instead of Commons.
Then the idea of a central repository for all Wikimedia projects is
gone.

Deleting copyrighted images from Commons doesn't "threaten the project as a whole". If you want to argue that they should be kept on the URAA technicality, you should present a case at Deletion Review, preferably with some evidence to support your case. Wheel warring over a small handful of images does more to damage the project (by eroding trust good will between participants) than deleting these images does.

I realize it is frustrating having to deal with the United States' absurd copyright laws, but unfortunately, those are the laws we are stuck with for the time being. Even if these files are ultimately kept on Commons, they will still be vulnerable to deletion by complaint of the copyright owner (presumably the government of Israel), regardless of which circumstances they are copyrighted under. You might argue that the government of Israel would never assert its US copyright over the images, but there is no way we can be sure of that. Personally, I don't really care if we keep the images or not, but we have deletion discussion forums for a reason. Commons operates by consensus, not by unilateral force of will. In the future I hope you will choose to utilize those forums rather than acting out-of-process.

Cheers,

Ryan Kaldari