Jimbo,
Danny appealed to the list on Friday because of RK's belligerence ("bullying") over the "Peace Views" article.
Cleverly, RK immediately shifted the terms of the debate from the underlying issues (how Palestinian POVs should be represented in WP) to one of "censorship".
You fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
Last fall, it was obvious to Danny, Zero, and me (and perhaps others) that the article in the original form (it has since been made less awful thanks to the good offices of Martin and others) was a ludicrous and transparent attempt to smuggle an anti-Palestinian editorial into Wikipedia. To those of us with any understanding of the issues (and I am by no means an expert) it wasn't a remotely meaningful representation of the Palestine position. In fact, the article was a canard. It implicitly cast Israel as the victim of apparent Palestinian duplicity with regard to the "peace process", which is of course inane; Israel is the occupying force in the Occupied Territories, it has a huge, well-equipped army, the backing of the USA, and between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. The Palestinians have zilch; the rest of the Arab world has basically abandoned them to their fate. The point is not whether those quotes of Arafat and others were "true" or "accurate" or whatever but they are essentially irreverent taken outside of the historical context and geopolitical reality of the current Palestinian situation.
Let me draw an analogy: imagine someone submits -- just for the sake of argument -- an article on "Cuban views of the conflict between Cuba and the USA". It frames the issue as a debate between hardliners and compromise-seekers, noting that Fidel calls for the destruction of the USA in Spanish speeches and calls for reaching a compromise in English. The Cubans destroy the USA? What a joke! Such a comment or collection of comments -- if it were possible to take seriously -- would only be meaningful if presented in the context of Caribbean history and Cuba's internal political discourse.
Now, back to the "Peace views" article. That you had a different reaction to the article I can only attribute to the fact that coverage of the Middle East in the American media is pretty bad these days, and it is nearly a fulltime occupation to keep well-informed. That's ok. But why couldn't you trust the opinion of a Danny, an Israeli citizen who could have explained to you that in Israel -- where the debate is more open and frank than in the US -- mainstream opinion would regard such an article as a bad joke, and that framing the debate in such as way is characteristic of the marginal fringe of the ultra-Zionist Right in Israel and their rather more numerous brethren in the USA, of whom RK is a prime example. How could you possible perceive Danny has having an agenda in his handling of this and fail to see RK's rabid Zionist zealotry reflected in practically every edit he makes on the Middle East, something patently obvious to anyone who has edited an article on the topic here. Correspondingly, how could you POSSIBLY accuse Danny of being bullying, when likewise those of us who have worked with him found him unceasingly well-informed, modest, and non-confrontational???
To repeat, the issue is not one of censoring the point of view of Arafat et al but presenting the issues in an intellectually honest manner, something that users like Danny, Zero, 172, Adam Carr, and others repeatedly demonstrate they are capable of doing, despite their own particular ideological leanings, and something that Robert is congenitally incapable of doing, whether it is Middle Eastern topics or alternative medicine, an area where he shows exactly the same kind of blind fanaticism and the bullying tactics that Danny denounced on Friday. You wrote:
RK has worked to present the varying views of the Palestinians, and people who don't like the result just delete it instead of work to improve it.
Not true. It was perceived as shoddy work; it has nothing to do with censorship. Why should the onus be on us to include "bad" material in our articles? RK didn't take the trouble to integrate the quotes in a responsible way in a description of the peace process; he offered them in isolation as a blatant editorial position. We followed the existing -- admittedly imperfect -- system to vote to delete the material rather than use it.
In closing, it is good that you involve yourself in these disputes, but unless you are intimately involved in the day-to-day editing process, interacting with other editors, and acquainting yourself with the issues, you run the risk -- as you have just done -- of making things worse.
V.