Talk:Intifada

Deletion log

• talk on temple mount incident moved to Talk:Al-Aqsa Intifada. Martin
• talk on the meaning of "anti-Zionism" moved to Talk:Anti-Zionism. Martin

---

Please bear in mind that much of the above is nonsense. For a more balanced view of the legitimate Palestinian resistance to thirty five years of occupation, check out: www.electronicintifada.org or www.jmcc.org

Whoever put this, for obvious reasons this is not encyclopedia stuff. Either add your claims (in an orderly fashion) to the article or don't make them at all. Also, citing Palestinian sources as 'balanced' would be a bit odd, to my point of view. --Uriyan

Stating that "citing Palestinian sources as 'balanced' would be a bit odd, to my point of view", is itself a bit odd, to my point of view. GrahamN 16 June '02

For most other groups and nationalities, that would be true. But not in this case. The Palestinian Authority and Palestinian media sources have a reputation for lying and anti-Semitism, so its hard to take their claims seriously without independent cooberation. For instance, they spent a week screaming to the world, claiming that Israelies murdered 5000 civilians in Jenin. It then turned out that no massacre took place at all; in the entire mini-war less than five dozen people were killed, most of whom were combatants. The Palestinians then held mock funerals with live people pretending to be dead, only to be unmasked when one of the "corpses" got up and walked away! This kind of dishonesty has been going on for years, and many people in the West just won't believe their propaganda anymore. RK

Oh dear. I completely disagree. Do you think that Israelis don't issue propaganda, that they don't lie and trade in their own hate-speech against the Palestinians? Your naïveté is touching. GrahamN 17 June '02

Just because you think that the Israelis are not always honest does not make it Ok for the Palestinians to make massive lies about casualites, etc. Two wrongs do not make a right, especially when we are trying to use facts to write an encyclopaedia article. RK

Surely an encyclopaedia article should try to see it from all sides, even sides the author doesn't personally agree with. Uriyan's comment above, and indeed the article itself, both seem to me to have a strong pro-Israeli bias. GrahamN 16 June '02

Again we must ask, how so? This article is a work in progress and constructive criticism is appreciated. However my experience is that whenever anyone tries to add what they term "balance", it often is pro-Palestinian propaganda, and sometimes veers off into anti-Semitism and apologetics for homicide bombings. That is why some of us are wary. RK

To somebody who is fervently convinced they are right, any opposing opinion will seem to be wrong-headed. I think you should try to take a step back and disengage your emotions. I hope you are able to make the distinction between anti-Semitism, which is obviously completely abhorrent and unacceptable, and anti-Zionism, which is a perfectly legitimate moral and political stance. The Intifada is a struggle against Zionism, not against Jews. I am not saying that no Palestinian participating in the Intifada is an anti-Semite. That would be absurd. Clearly many Palestinians are horribly anti-Semitic, just as many Americans are horribly prejudiced against people of African descent, and many Israelis are horribly prejudiced against Arabs. But the fact that some of a person's compatriots are bigots doesn't mean their own opinions must be discounted. There are many moderate Palestinians who are anti-Zionist but not racist. I believe these people’s perspective on the conflict is entirely valid, and should be represented in this article. GrahamN 17 June '02

www.jmcc.org is new to me, although a from very quick glance it appears sober enough. www.electronicintifada.org , however, I know to be an excellent site, and I urge you to peruse it in the interests of balance. The site seems to me to go out of its way to be fair, far more than you would reasonably expect from Palestinians, given all that they have suffered and are suffering at the hands of the Israelis. I've only discovered Wikipedia today (what a terrific idea it is!), so I'm not entirely comfortable with barging in and making wholesale changes just yet. If I find time, I'd like attempt to draft a more neutral article, showing the thing from both sides. Would the normal thing be to post it here in Talk, first, for others to comment on, or should I follow the advice to be "bold" and destroy all the hard work Uriyan has put into this well written (if biased) original, at a stroke? GrahamN 16 June 02 (I didn't post the first comment, by the way)

Under no circumstances should anyone completely rewrite any subject entire entry by themselves. This is a community project. Complete rewrites are used only in cases of vandalism, plagarism, lunacy, slander, etc, but not when we disagree with an article's tone or direction. RK

(cutting in) I disagree - be bold in updating pages, in line with editing policy. If an article needs a complete rewrite, do it. It's unusual, because normally it's more productive to edit and refactor existing content, but it has worked in the past. Martin

Thank you for this advice, which sounds very sensible. On reflection, I find the idea of a complete re-write too daunting, anyway. GrahamN 17 June '02

Uriyan didn't write this entire article; others contributed as well. RK

I gained the impression that the article was principally Uriyan's work by examining its history, but looking at it again I now see that I may have been mistaken. What does "conversion script" mean? Does it mean all the history of the article before that has been deleted? GrahamN 17 June '02

If you have a subtantial change to make, that's fine. First mention it here, and back it up with your rationale and sources. This is the way all of our articles are improved. RK

I don't have much free time at the moment, but never fear – I shall return in a few weeks with proposed amendments, and I'll be only too pleased to provide back-up rationale and sources! I like to think I have a very open mind, so it is quite possible you may convince me to change my opinions. I look forward to some interesting discussions.  :-) GrahamN 17 June '02

---

However, these statement can only be understood in a relevant context. It is well known that both sides, Israelis and Palestinians, were preparing for the worst in the form of violent conflict.

What is the sentence above supposed to mean? --Uri

---

I really don't want to get involved in this stuff.. but this comment caught my eye on Recent changes: "GrahamN (It is POV to insist on referring to the Israeli military as "defence forces".) " Um. Depends. If it's as 'the Israeli Defense Forces', then you're just using their name. If it's uncapitalized or incomplete, then you've got a valid point. See "People's Republic of China", "People's Democratic Republic of Korea", any number of dictators that take the title of "President"... when it's the name, you use it whether you think it's utter lies or not. -- Jake 17:57, 2003 Sep 12 (UTC)

POV?

Isn't stating that occupation is 'unjust' POV? Anyway, should Intifada be capitalized or not? Capitalization should at least be consistant. --Yuval