[WikiEN-l] Re: Bot for generating articles on cities in Israel

[Geoff Burling]

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Steve Vertigum wrote:
>
> >I think the point of the argument against is that
> >statistics from an apartheid state (regardless of how
> >much the US happens to sanction it currently) must be
> >treated as suspect.  UN statistics should be
> >better--ie, more NPOV--even if they are not as
> >"complete."

That may be the point you want to make, Steve, but it was not
the reason I asked the original poster to include the definitions
that the Israeli equivalent of a Census Bureau uses to define
"Jew", "Arab", "Christian", & other catagories.

Ethnicity (if I may use the term to apply to the process of
subdividing populations) is a messy business. And I'm not making
a snide reference to Neo-Nazis who hide the fact that they have
ancestors who were Jews or African-Americans; any time one
attempts to make a formal catagorization of subgroups in a
population, one will find exceptions. For example, there is a
group in Oklahoma known as "Black Cherokees", who are the
decendants of slaves owned by Cherokee Indians before the American
Civil War: they consider themselves Cherokees; Cherokees whose
ancestors were in America before 1492 consider them African-Americans.

I'll use myself as another example. My great-grandmother is said
to have been part American Indian. That part of my family were
New England whalers, & every time I look at her photograph, I have
to wonder if she had lied to her husband & children & she was
actually Polynesian. However my full name makes it appear that
I am as much of a WASP as anyone in the Bush family. (Even though
I prefer the term "Anglo-American", since my father's ancestors
were dirt farmers from the East Midlands.)

What I want in the article is an explanation how the Israeli
government determines these groups, & how people fall into them.
Do they self-report? Are they labelled at the time of birth or
nationalization? And what groups exist that an Israeli
citizen could be catagorized under?

Frankly, I'm coming from a US point of view that finds grouping
people by their belief offensive. I don't see the sense of declaring
someone a "Jew" a "Moslem" or a "Christian" if it's based on a
moment's response, when the responder could believably engage
immediately afterwards cruel sacrifices of kittens & puppies to
Cthulhu or similar inappropriate activites. However, knowing
something about the history of the state of Israel, I can
understand the reason behind these catagories, but I still wonder
at the legal definitions. (e.g., is one considered a Jew in
Israel on one's say-so, or do they have to present evidence
that one or more of their ancestors also prefessed this faith?
Is one allowed to state she/he is a Christian even if the rest of
her/his family is Jewish?)

The reasons for these catagories, how one is determined to fall
into them, etc. all belong to a NPOV article that discusses
ethnic groups in Israel. Just provide the facts, & the intelligent
reader will draw her/his own conclusions.
> >
> >The same could in many ways be said for the US as
> >well-- the US until very recently was more or less an
> >apartheid state, and still has lingering aspects of
> >this left over, in terms of its sociological/financial
> >barriers. Etc.  If this was the case today in the
> >US--as it was 1950--there would be every justification
> >for Wikipedians to look upon statistics coming out of
> >such a country's official machinery as smelly.
> >
> Oh geez... If you have some proof, let's see it.  Otherwise you're
> just spreading FUD. Almost every official statistic in Wikipedia
> has a political opponent or conspiracy theorist ready to challenge
> its validity; that's why we say "according to the Census Bureau"
> or whatever, so if somebody has some differing numbers, they
> can add those, citing the alternate source, rather than having an
> edit war.  In the case of Israel, there are plenty of reasons to
> challenge any UN numbers - and plenty of books doing just that, in
> great detail - so it's not neutral to simply declare that UN
> numbers must be better than Israeli numbers.
>
There are just as many politicians in the UN as there are in
Israel or the US; that is suitable grounds to treat any information
any of them critically. However, it has been shown time & again that
there are individuals in all 3 organizations who try to present data
in a fair & objective manner; that is suitable grounds not to
impeach their materials out of hand.

One point that is decisive for me in this matter is that one person
is doing the work to provide the material; he ought to be allowed
to choose the source of his material, as long as it is properly
attributed & explained. My request is about the ''explanation''.
If after all of that work, the contributors to Wikipedia find
that the source is unsatisfactory, then we have a basis to judge
a better source from.

I'm not interested in passing judgement until I see the evidence --
nor am I interested in seeing a judgement passed until the evidence
is presented completely.

Geoff