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
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 03:55:24PM +0200, elian wrote:
Hello,
<discussion of perceived pro-Israeli bias on pages about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict snipped>
The problem is that most of the people who know a lot about the issue are strongly partisan one way or the other, and that on the wikipedia most of the people are strongly pro-Israeli. As much as they *try* to be NPOV about things, it's understandably very hard to do on issues close to your heart, particularly when you don't have people forcefully and *knowledgably* putting dissenting views.
I think you find that if you try and edit these pages for extra balance, you find yourself trying to justify this with people who have spent a lot more time studying the issue, even if it is only one side of it, and consequently it's very hard to win an argument on the topic. Additionally, most of us *know* we don't know enough about the issues to be able to justify editing them. On other topics, such as, say, computer related topics, I have enough confidence in my own knowledge to argue with people about issues. I suspect this problem applies to many of the more prolific Wikipedia contributors.
I can't see these articles improving until we have more contributors with genuine expertise and a broader set of perspectives on the issue.
This is not to demean the people who have worked on these articles - I believe you have all tried your best in good faith. However, I also honestly believe that they are not NPOV at this stage.
This really seems like a better discussion for the /Talk pages, but it's probably worth discussing a bit on the list, too. Obviously, the Israeli/Palestinian situation is one of the most important stories of our time, one for which our encyclopedia ought to provide a solid background. But equally obviously, it is a topic of great complexity and passion that makes NPOV difficult to achieve.
I think that elian's approach is exactly the right one. I, too, have avoided certain topics where I was unsure that I could strike the right balanced tone.
In this case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict I have a few opinions (against suicide/homicide bombings against civilians, against mistreatment of any kind again Palestinians, the need for love and flexibility on both sides to reach genuine longterm settlement), but don't know enough of the complex history to write much about the factual background.
elian wrote:
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".
Is it generally uncontroversial that the Irgun killed more than 100 civilians? If so, then I see no reason for the "supposed to have killed them" formulation. The word "murder" should be used, in many contexts, but it should be used cautiously, I think.
I'm sure we could have two weeks discussion of just what makes for a murder versus other descriptions! I wouldn't want to open that can of worms unless absolutely necessary, so just understand me to be saying that such judgments can be difficult and controversial, and that sometimes the arguments could be avoided through careful word choices to avoid the controversial conclusions.
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?
I think so, but perhaps it should be bolstered by estimates of the percentage of Palestinian refugees who were born elsewhere, etc.
We might say (and I am making these numbers up, and perhaps valid numbers are not available) that 80% of the Palestinian refugees are children or grandchilden of people who lived in the area before the creation of the state of Israel, and 15% are people from other countries with cultural/familial ties that go back further than that, and 5% are people who have intermarried into the Palestinian population.
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".
Could we not here simply describe the uncontroversial facts, without any _judgment_ as to the status of the property in question? It might be difficult to word properly, but it seems possible to me.
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?
I think the right answer to this is: whenever there is controversy, we do neither. It is not up to wikipedia to judge the controversial moral issues of our day, but to present information agreeable to all reasonable parties in a controversy so that both feel that a neutral observer will have sufficient data to come to the right conclusion.
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"?
Would simply fleshing out the details of what Palestinians regard as the 'unsatisfactory situation' be enough here?
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?
Yes, it does.
On the other hand, stepping a bit more into the controversy than I like, I would say that most Americans are puzzled about the differences between Palestinians and other people with grievances around the world. Why didn't we see suicide bombings and terror campaigns by the victims of South African apartheid? Why didn't we see suicide bombing campaigns by Jews in WWII Germany? Why didn't we see suicide bombings against British rule in India?
It does seem relevant to examine what things, beyond the raw fact of grievances, led to this reaction. Part of this must be cultural and religious (Islamic martyrdom). And part of it is likely due to differences in strategy and tactics on the part of Israelis?
Where is the "arguing for the enemy" that the NPOV-policy demands?
Dig in and do it! It would be much apppreciated, especially since (a) you seem to know a lot about it and (b) you have a sensitivity to the demands of NPOV.
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).
I agree with this, but caution that there are ways to get into trouble here. Sometimes the Israeli government or Hamas leaders may be right to raise a denial, in which case we have to acknowledge that, as well.
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.
I agree with this, except -- it is not correct for wikipedia to take the side of international law as put forward by the U.N. -- the U.N. can be (and often is, in my opinion) wrong about right and wrong.
On the other hand, violation of a U.N. resolution is the violation of a U.N. resolution. That's a fact that people could agree about, whether they think the violation is acceptable or not.
greetings and sorry for the horrible english,
Horrible English? I thought it was perfect.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
This really seems like a better discussion for the /Talk pages, but it's probably worth discussing a bit on the list, too.
The unfortunate difficulty with doing this on the Talk pages is that the issue covers such a broad collection of articles that putting it on one would leave it unread by all who didn't visit that particular page, but have concerned themselves with a different aspect of the problem.
Ec
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com writes:
This really seems like a better discussion for the /Talk pages, but it's probably worth discussing a bit on the list, too.
I think neither the talk pages are adequate for such a general discussion (they are already much too long to keep track) nor the list is the right place. It may seem strange, but maybe the best solution (if there are enough people who want to share in the NPOV-ing project) would be an extra mailing-list for these disputes.
I didn't intend to start a direct discussion of the examples from my posting, but anyway some answers....
Is it generally uncontroversial that the Irgun killed more than 100 civilians? If so, then I see no reason for the "supposed to have killed them" formulation. The word "murder" should be used, in many contexts, but it should be used cautiously, I think.
I changed this already by reducing the number of "supposed" 340 victims to the number approved by the International Red Cross.
I'm sure we could have two weeks discussion of just what makes for a murder versus other descriptions! I wouldn't want to open that can of worms unless absolutely necessary, so just understand me to be saying that such judgments can be difficult and controversial, and that sometimes the arguments could be avoided through careful word choices to avoid the controversial conclusions.
ACK. This should be general policy.
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?
I think so, but perhaps it should be bolstered by estimates of the percentage of Palestinian refugees who were born elsewhere, etc.
We might say (and I am making these numbers up, and perhaps valid numbers are not available) that 80% of the Palestinian refugees are children or grandchilden of people who lived in the area before the creation of the state of Israel, and 15% are people from other countries with cultural/familial ties that go back further than that, and 5% are people who have intermarried into the Palestinian population.
First, the sentence in questions is not about the descendants, but the actual refugees. De facto, the sentence above the cited is a complaint of the Israelis that also people were counted who immigrated from 1946-48.
If someone could say how many of the 700 000 did that? If they are no significant number I would leave this out.
Could we not here simply describe the uncontroversial facts, without any _judgment_ as to the status of the property in question? It might be difficult to word properly, but it seems possible to me.
Yes. Could a native speaker try this? Find out, what was actually done and formulate it properly?
I think the right answer to this is: whenever there is controversy, we do neither. It is not up to wikipedia to judge the controversial moral issues of our day, but to present information agreeable to all reasonable parties in a controversy so that both feel that a neutral observer will have sufficient data to come to the right conclusion.
as it is written in the NPOV-policy ;-)
"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"?
Would simply fleshing out the details of what Palestinians regard as the 'unsatisfactory situation' be enough here?
Yes, but it would maybe better placed in an article of its own, since this could be very long.
On the other hand, stepping a bit more into the controversy than I like, I would say that most Americans are puzzled about the differences between Palestinians and other people with grievances around the world. Why didn't we see suicide bombings and terror campaigns by the victims of South African apartheid? Why didn't we see suicide bombing campaigns by Jews in WWII Germany? Why didn't we see suicide bombings against British rule in India?
Dangerous questions. So I have also to step a little bit more into the controversy and comment on this sentence I deliberately wrote nothing about. Honestly, I was deeply shocked by this sentence. So we live, you in the mostly peaceful and wealthy US, I in peaceful and wealthy Germany. I have never seen someone shot in reality, have you? I was never beaten by policemen - were you? Who are we to juge how one should react in an situation of poverty, political oppression and overwhelming injustice done to him? Who are we to jugde how the husband of Suha al-Schaer should react, who erred high pregnant half the night through the hills, barred the way to the hospital by the soldiers at the Israeli checkpoints, lost her child and fell into a Koma?
The American President Bush asked after September 11th "Why do they hate us?" You could possibly say, "they hate us because of arrogant sentences like this one." (together with the ongoing support of the USA and other first world countries for their oppression and anti-democratic rulers)
It does seem relevant to examine what things, beyond the raw fact of grievances, led to this reaction. Part of this must be cultural and religious (Islamic martyrdom). And part of it is likely due to differences in strategy and tactics on the part of Israelis?
*calming down* From a scientific point of view this would be rather interesting to know. Perhaps in a common effort of psychologues, political scientists and islam scientists of wikipedia there could be written a neutral article about it. Any volunteers? A general article about the origins of terrorism?
Where is the "arguing for the enemy" that the NPOV-policy demands?
Dig in and do it! It would be much apppreciated, especially since (a) you seem to know a lot about it and (b) you have a sensitivity to the demands of NPOV.
Seems, as the articles about the political systems of the european countries in the German wikipedia have to wait a bit :-(
greetings and sorry for the horrible english,
Horrible English? I thought it was perfect.
Thank you ;-) elian, still struggling with the english language
Anybody who wants to jump in and fix the Israeli-Palestinian pages could do much worse than having a look at
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/history/index.html
This is an overview of the background behind the conflict, by National Public Radio. In general, NPR seems to be pretty fair, somewhat in between (most of) the European media and (most of) the American media.
Axel
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com
On Fri, 2002-10-04 at 10:14, Jimmy Wales wrote:
On the other hand, stepping a bit more into the controversy than I like, I would say that most Americans are puzzled about the differences between Palestinians and other people with grievances around the world. Why didn't we see suicide bombings and terror campaigns by the victims of South African apartheid? Why didn't we see suicide bombing campaigns by Jews in WWII Germany? Why didn't we see suicide bombings against British rule in India?
(To jump into an off-topic debate, sorry...)
Just like to say - at first this seems an interesting point, but I think it's a bit misleading. The answer to the question Jimmy asks, in my opinion, is Islam ideology, which makes suicide bombing a good deal more attractive than most others I can think of right now.
However...the implications of the question he asks are nasty, and to do with the incorrect demonisation of suicide bombing. Sure, it's a thoroughly nasty thing to do, but in effect it's just one way of murdering people, often innocent people, and there's a hell of a lot more than one way to do that. And many of the other ways were used in all the conflicts Jimmy mentions above. The anti-apartheid campaign was frequently murderous and brutal on both sides; South African blacks may not have strapped bombs to themselves and blown people up, but they sure killed people. As, of course, did South African whites. Jews in WWII Germany were so absolutely and utterly powerless that they literally had *no possible way* to instigate any kind of significant retaliation, violent or otherwise, against their oppressors; had it been possible, i'm sure they would have done. And again there were no suicide bombings (as far as i'm aware, anyway) in the Indian struggle for independence, but there was certainly a hell of a lot of murder. Hindis killed Muslims, Muslims killed Hindis, Hindis and Muslims both killed English, and the English killed everyone else. A hell of a lot more people died during Partition than have died (or probably ever will) during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Suicide bombing is undeniably nasty, and has a strong impact on the Western psyche because it's completely foreign to it, but in the final analysis, someone who's been murdered is just as dead no matter how it happened. So I don't think focussing on the method is particularly profitable. Suicide bombing is one of very few effective strategies of murder available to Palestinians inclined to it, and one that their particular ideology supports, therefore it gets used; I don't see anything intrinsically *more* evil about it than, say, just getting a bunch of explosive and blowing the hell out of somewhere, a time-honoured tactic of all sides in all armed conflicts since the invention of explosives...in the end, it's just a different method of transport.
My $0.02. I hope this isn't too inflammatory, if you consider it so and want to respond, please do so off-list to keep the temperature down...I also hope it maybe has something of use to these particular articles, but I'm probably wrong. :)
On Fri, 2002-10-04 at 10:14, Jimmy Wales wrote:
On the other hand, stepping a bit more into the controversy than I like, I would say that most Americans are puzzled about the differences between Palestinians and other people with grievances around the world. Why didn't we see suicide bombings and terror campaigns by the victims of South African apartheid? Why didn't we see suicide bombing campaigns by Jews in WWII Germany? Why didn't we see suicide bombings against British rule in India?
From: "Adam Williamson" aw280@cam.ac.uk (To jump into an off-topic debate, sorry...)
Just like to say - at first this seems an interesting point, but I think it's a bit misleading. The answer to the question Jimmy asks, in my opinion, is Islam ideology, which makes suicide bombing a good deal more attractive than most others I can think of right now.
However...the implications of the question he asks are nasty, and to do with the incorrect demonisation of suicide bombing. Sure, it's a thoroughly nasty thing to do, but in effect it's just one way of murdering people, often innocent people, and there's a hell of a lot more than one way to do that. And many of the other ways were used in all the conflicts Jimmy mentions above. The anti-apartheid campaign was frequently murderous and brutal on both sides; South African blacks may not have strapped bombs to themselves and blown people up, but they sure killed people. As, of course, did South African whites. ... (Truncated for
space.)
As a kid, I idolized the African National Congress. The ANC seemed to me to be heroes, much as the civil rights heroes I grew up celebrating. They were engaged in a fight against a system that was unquestionably wrong; they were fighting *for* a system of "blacks and whites together", an unquestionably just goal. I was awestruck when I finally got the chance to meet the members of an ANC delegation - the more so as the leader of the delegation was willing to sit and chat with a 13-year-old kid.
I don't remember most of that conversation. I *do* remember one statement, very clearly. Imagine it spoken with a smile and a tone of soft pride:
"... We killed fifty Boers."
I tell you, I grew up rather a lot in the next 60 seconds, in the process of wrapping my mind around this concept. These were my heroes, the side of Good and Right. Here was one of them, a woman only ten years or so older than I... Bragging. About. Killing. Fifty. People.
I was subsequently to learn much more about the ANC. I learned about the fifty years of nonviolent resistance, and the massacre at Suweto that proved to be the last straw. I couldn't blame anyone, after that, for wanting to fight any way they could when the opposition was proven willing to mow down unarmed people in the streets.
But I couldn't get that statement and that smile out of my mind. Try to understand this, if you will. The members of the ANC were still, largely, heroic to me. And I still am, as I was then, deeply opposed to killing. In realizing what conditions can exist to drive people so far, I was forced to change a lot of my other ideas, however. I still don't approve of killing. But ... I also cannot condemn these people, knowing their reasons.
Since then, the world has been - forgive the phrase - much less black and white to me.
And so, yes, I rather can understand what might drive Palestinians to take actions that I *still* consider abhorrent. There are some parallels with the situation of the Palestinians that (obviously) make some Israelis deeply uncomfortable. As with all comparisons, this one is not exact - merely analogous.
I can also understand the flip side of this, knowing what I do about the Holocaust. I can well understand what would drive people to a deep, driving determination to create for themselves at least one safe place in the world. I can believe that the actions taken toward that end are not just or justified, and I can argue they may well be counterproductive, but I can certainly *understand* what might drive Israelis to take such actions.
Perhaps if more of us took the approach that *both* sides have wronged each other... and indeed, both sides have sometimes turned on their own people... that these come out of understandable hurts and fears... "With malice toward none, with charity toward all..." at least we'd be taking a first step toward neutrality. We may still not agree on specific facts, justifications, or solutions, but at least it'd tone down the name-calling.
And in conclusion, if we need a good place to discuss "neutralizing" these pages, why not use meta? That seems to be one of the things meta is ideally adapted for, provided we can get everyone to participate in the same article rather than in 15+ of them. :)
-- April
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