The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XX (October 2007)
The October 2007 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.
Hello. I have decided to start a poll to get a better idea of what the consensus is on the hezbollah article. The poll is on the Hezbollah articles talk page. Thought you might want to know so you could include yourself in it. Cheers!--I wish you a happy Veterans Day22:20, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
RfC
Very nice RfC – succinct, restrained, etc. Not my chief strengths as a writer – good thing you wrote it and not me :). I think we don't write Wikipedia articles to a valid case is missing a word, probably 'prove'. But I don't want to presume to edit it...--G-Dett23:11, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Presume, presume, presume away. Although it's ironic that I come off as the more restrained of us two, since usually I get the opposite impression :-) <eleland/talkedits>23:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Saw a recent post with possibly more heat than might be necessary/fair, see my talk page, which has recently gone from red to blue. When I get my reply together, we can watch what happens. Hope we are talking the same RfC; I only have one. And, I just saw the subject of the item immediately below this, which interests me no end., Eh.CasualObserver'48 (talk) 12:13, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some questions
Eleland, I don't mean to bother you, but I'm not sure if you have seen what I have been entering on the CAMERA page, but I have some questions that I'd appreciate if you could answer. Could you please go there and respond? David Sher18:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Re: Mike Sokolowiski (or, however it's spelt)
Good call on that revert. On first glance, the addition of a seemingly random name by an anonymous editor who'd never touched the article before looked an awful lot like vandalism. I reverted sort of as a knee-jerk response. I am glad that you reverted me. A reference, though, would help. Cheers! ---RepublicanJacobiteThe'FortyFive'17:18, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed you were active in adding to the Yamashita’s gold article. That article is now protected and limited to discussion only. Please drop back by and leave a comment, if inclined. Jim (talk) 01:55, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks
Hi Eleland, thanks for reverting a spammed attack on my talk page.
Likewise thanks for your message (re. particle accelerators) just now on dealing with vandalism. I will try reverting at the first promising opportunity. I am puzzled though in that the latest revert by ClueBot looks almost the same as the pre-25 October article, but its length is about the same as after I added my stuff (about 10 KB). Is this a vandal's trick to obscure the trouble spot? I know I can use the diff function to find the latest intact version. Also, does one report an unregistered vandal just by their IP address? Thanks again! Wwheaton (talk) 20:27, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I don't quite see the point of merging a 27kB article into another one of 144kB size. The opposite is true. We should be creating new articles. See also WP:SIZE. —Viriditas | Talk03:11, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Haaretz article states that the victims were returning from services, suggesting that the term "worshiper" had been correctly applied.
The individuals were attacked when not engaged in combat; hence the individuals were "military personnel" but not "combatants."
It fails to parallel the pro-Israel example in length and style.
It used improper Wikipedia markup, causing the bottom half of the page to disappear.
Thank you again for your time and effort. I apologize for taking your time. If you don't mind, I would greatly appreciate another example. I can understand, however, if after rejecting the first edit that you would mind. I hope that you do not take the reversion personally. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 02:30, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the courteous note. Some thoughts:
First, it's a pretty dubious comparison between Electronic Intifadah and Arutz Sheva. EI's honcho Ali Abunimah regularly appears as a commentary source or TV interviewee, and has published op-eds in very reliable newspapers including the Financial Times, Jerusalem Post, and even the Wall Street Journal (!). EI's second man, Nigel Parry, has also been quoted in the Chicago Tribune, Philly Enquirer, The Nation and elsewhere. The director of A7's website, Hillel Fendel, has by contrast not so much as one-line quoted in any English-language publication on Google News. AFAIK, we judge the reliability of a source chiefly by which other sources cite it, and how. In any case, EI was only referenced for a quotation from Ha'aretz which was also mirrored by two (admittedly weak) internet sites. It could be replaced with the original citation, if I can dig it up, or with similar statements made in sources more to your taste.
The Ha'aretz article states that "the Islamic Jihad fire was not directed at worshippers but at the security forces escorting them". I can't for the life of me figure out how you determine that calling them "worshippers" was inaccurate based on the Ha'aretz article which states that the victims were not worshippers, but the security forces escorting them. The Jerusalem Post (later syndicated by AP) ran an article which began, "The "all clear" sounded over the Israeli soldiers' radios, meaning Jewish worshippers were safely home after Sabbath prayers in the downtown Tomb of the Patriarchs, when shots rang out from an olive grove..." (my bold)
On combatant status; I know of no definition of "combatant" which considers armed soldiers in a conflict zone to be "non-combatants" until they start shooting at somebody. Combatant has a specific meaning in the law of war, and that's what I had in mind when using the term. We could equally state "all of the victims were soldiers or paramilitary police and security guards", I guess. Although it's a strange request, given that Amos Harel in Ha'aretz made it very clear that "Those killed Friday were killed in combat. All of the victims were armed fighters, who were more or less trained."
Your point about paralleling the pro-Israel example is well-taken, now that I review and compare the two. A little less detail might be appropriate, although actually I would think another sentence or two on Jenin is a better way to balance things.
Sorry for forgetting to close the "ref" tag, mucking things up. It happens.
And finally, btw, your summary of the Jenin media reports is inaccurate in that it states "early media reports claimed that Israel killed hundreds", when in fact, no reports claimed this. Reports stated that Palestinian sources and other sources alleged hundreds of deaths, but never confirmed these allegations, and often took pains to make the uncertainty clear. Your second ref, the Times piece, very clearly states that the number of dead is unknown, and your first ref juxtaposes unconfirmed Israeli and Palestinian counts with a forensic expert's suggestion of "massacre" - which has no numerical value and cannot be interpreted as claims of "hundreds".
Electronic Intifada does not even pretend to be objective. It's partisan stance makes it an unreliable news source, and it can be cited only for the purpose of proving that Electronic Intifada said x,y, or z. The other two links were equally sketchy. Also note that op-eds are very different from news articles in that op-eds can be subjective.
"Twelve people were killed Friday night as Palestinian militants opened fire at a procession of settlers and security forces who were on the way back from Sabbath prayers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron."
Because of drafts and widespread membership in military or paramilitary organizations in the region, the distinction between a "combatant" (individual actively engaged in combat) and "military personnel," "militant," or "member of a military/paramilitary organization" is important.
Also note that, according to the Jerusalem Post, three of the victims were civilian members of the Emergency Response Team - Casualties of War. The Haaretz article seems to corroborate this; the names of these individuals are listed without a military rank.
Your points on the Pro-Israel example are well-taken. I have added more details and replaced the links. (BTW, early reports did claim that -- but not the early reports to which I originally linked).
Anyway, if I've attacked the example, it will definitely be attacked by others. Which means that a different example is necessary. Thank you for the discussion and for your understanding. Peace, Salaam, Shalom. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 08:06, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Right, EI is a partisan commentary source. That doesn't mean it fabricates quotes from Israeli newspapers and passes them off as fact. Ali Abunimah is treated as a respectable commentator in the English-language press, and I don't see how being a partisan makes him unreliable. Anyway, since I can see you object to EI, I'll use better sources for the factual information, such as the Salon.com piece which makes substantially the same point.
The Ha'aretz article makes it clear that the civilians killed were combatants who "set out with the emergency response squad to help with the fighting" and "managed to shoot at least one of the Islamic Jihad members." The JPost piece you linked states, "terrorists opened fire at a security forces safeguarding Jewish worshipers," and that the civilians killed will be buried with military honours, since they died fighting. There's a plethora of articles which make this clear; the other Ha'aretz piece, the JPost piece, the Washington Post piece called "Israel Storms Into Hebron After Attack; Army Reveals Ambush Didn't Kill Worshipers", the Salon.com piece, and so on. The attack was a full 15 minutes after the worshipers had returned home. The mayor of the Hebron settlement called it "a purely military event." The facts here are quite well-established.
I'm confused by your point about combatants, since the word does not mean "individual actively engaged in combat". B'Tselem, for example, correctly classes a Hamas militant asleep in his bed as a "combatant". But anyway it's irrelevant. As I've said, we can say "armed soldiers or paramilitaries", or some such, if there's some problem with "combatant". I don't understand why such a semantic quibble would exclude the entire entry.
I noticed you've updated the summary of Jenin, but it seems to have gotten more muddled, not less. Again, you've supported the statement, "early media reports claimed that Israel 'massacred' hundreds of Palestinian civilians" with a media report which does not say this; it simply features the claims of a Palestinian witness, noting they were "impossible to verify," and "questionable," and quoting an Israeli official calling it "science fiction". The ADL released a report intended to prove that the media rushed to report a massacre, but literally every source they quoted reported "allegations", "rumours" or "reports" of a massacre, without confirming them. They had to scrape the bottom of the barrel - free ethnic-community weeklies and such - before finding anybody who actually claimed a massacre, as opposed to reporting others' claims of massacre. Despite all of the accusatory rhetoric, I have yet to see a single piece from the Western media which reported a massacre of hundreds. They reported the allegations, and they framed the story to give unusual prominence to the allegations, but they never confirmed them, and almost without exception they took pains to note their non-verifiable nature. So I'm standing on this point: unless you can provide the dates, titles, and publication outlets of these "media reports" which claimed massacres, I'm going to have to object to including the claim. <eleland/talkedits> 18:29, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
