[WikiEN-l] Another Israeli apartheid RFD

[M. Queen]

I'm very disappointed by the new Israeli apartheid AFD at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Allegations_of_Israeli_apartheid

Whether we like it or not "Israeli apartheid" is a concept that is discussed
and debated in scholarly books and articles and within Israeli society
itself. However, it is a disagreeable concept and it's understandable that
people who support Israel would want to rubbish it and delete it.

It will be a sad day for wikipedia if the article is deleted, however. We
have articles on many contestable concepts but our task is not to censor but
to make sure the articles are well written, balanced, NPOV and sourced.

There is a systemic bias in WIkipedia on certain subjects. The Middle East
is one of them because there are more fluent English speaking Israelis and
Jews than there are fluent English speaking Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims.
As a result, we have more editors who are pro-Isreal than pro-Palestianian
and more admins who are on one side of the question. This is probably biased
in the other way on the Arabic wikipedia and probably relatively balanced on
other language wikipedias but in English it's a problem that we have to come
to grips with if we are to maintain our neutrality and our credibility.