On 01/25/04 at 07:05 AM, Robert rkscience100@yahoo.com said:
Martin Harper (MyRedDice) is again censoring the article, "Palestinian views of the peace process". Instead of deleting the entire article, Martin Harper has deleted most of the (verfied) facts and quotes, leaving a skeleton article with vietually no content!
Robert is once again trying to shift the parameters of debate from the validity and representation of Palestinian viewpoints within the discourse of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to that of "censorship", which is, plainly and simply, a canard.
This specific problem was already discussed in detail a few weeks ago. It was decided that [...]
Nothing was "decided" a few weeks ago. Jimbo expressed his opinion on the subject, as is his right. Given his position within this community, his point of view naturally carries substantial weight but by no means represents a definitive and binding judgement.
One may not delete verified historical facts and quotes simply because it makes them uncomfortable. You cannot push your political agenda by deletin facts that are inconvenient.
The issue is not whether these quotes are verifable or not but simply the fact -- as I have pointed out here before -- that taken out of context -- as they were here -- they are misleading. Given Israel's overwhelming military and economic power, such nationalistic saber-rattling on the part of Arafat and others can only be considered pathetic bluster, and most charitably can be seen as a shameless effort to distract his Palestinian listeners from the fact that he sold out their future for short-term personal gain. Since you don't seem to be interested in adding the missing context to this article (no surprise there), Martin is entirely correct and should be applauded for removing this material which otherwise serves as nothing more than crass anti-Palestine propaganda and is a blemish on the image of neutrality we trying to achieve in this project.
V.