Talk:Shaar HaNegev school bus attack
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No, they're not actually supported by the cited sources
[edit]"The fact that the Russian-made Kornet is a laser-guided weapon indicated that the school bus was intentionally targeted" is cited to an article that says "The attack on the school bus appeared to have been intentional, given that the missile was laser-guided." See the difference?
"Israel responded with airstrikes on terror cells and smuggling tunnels" is cited to an article that says nothing about terror cells or smuggling tunnels, but does say that they responded with an attack that killed five people and wounded a child.
I can't find Omar al-Ghoul's supposed response in any real sources, only in unreliable partisan publications. This is a WP:BLP issue; you can't claim things about living people that aren't backed up by reliable sources!
You can't just make stuff up. Find sources that say these things. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:56, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
- No, I don't see the difference. The text in the article accurately renders the substance of the cited source.
- You're right; in transferring material I had written in another article to this one, I mixed up the sources, and the source that was cited did not support the statement. I fixed the problem.
- The cited source, CBN News, is reliable.
- Since we disagree on whether "it did" is an accurate paraphrase of "it appeared to have done," why don't we just use the latter?
- Would you like to add back the information from the article that was originally cited? Might as well, and one-sentence paras are frowned upon anyway.
- I disagree, and it's looking like RSN will as well.
- -- Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:33, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
- That's not what we disagree on. We disagree on whether "X indicated that Y is true" is an accurate paraphrase of "Y appeared to be true, given X". It's plain that it is.
- No, because the the information in question is that unnamed people made a claim that was later superseded by identifiable observers; such info has little value for an encyclopedia article.
- Doesn't look that way to me, and your position is incompatible with WP:RS; the point is irrelevant anyway because the quote is taken from MEMRI, which is (also) an RS.
- Jalapenos do exist (talk) 22:32, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
- If the two really are equivalent, why are you displaying such resistance to the replacement of your wording with the article's wording? After all, if they mean the same thing, one phrasing is as good as another, right?
- Can you show me where this was discredited?
- On the contrary, the past few discussions about MEMRI appear to have established only that it can't be discarded on sight, rather than that it is reliable. This is a statement about a living person; we are held to higher sourcing standards. If the guy made a public statement of this kind, why are partisan advocacy groups the only ones who picked it up?
- -- Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:28, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
- Groan. I never had any problem with the article's wording. I had a problem with your wording, which did not accurately reflect the article's.
- I didn't say it was discredited. I said it was superseded--by, among others, the Ynet article currently cited on the spot and the Haaretz article cited in the lead.
- It's not common for English-language media to translate and report statements made in Arabic on Palestinian Authority television. Why? Probably because that would require a lot of work. But we as an encyclopedia should try to describe the internal Palestinian reaction to events like these as best we can, and use whatever information from reliables sources we can get.
- Jalapenos do exist (talk) 09:04, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
- Shall we use the article's wording, then? I'm obviously aware that my wording was also a paraphrase of the article's wording, but you reacted with hostility to my initial suggestion that we just use the article's wording, so the confusion seems understandable.
- That's not how it works. If the story isn't actually contradicted by later sources or otherwise unreliable, you don't get to discard it.
- Who's asking for English-language media? Find it in Arabic-language media! Maybe someone at a WikiProject can help you if you don't speak Arabic. Until then, these partisan sources are not acceptable for claims about living people.
- -- Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:36, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
- If you want, go for it. But don't blame me if someone accuses you of violating copyright by using the same words as the source.
- I "get to" replace outdated statements by unnamed sources with newer information from named sources. In fact, it's my responsibility as an editor to do so. It's yours, too.
- Per your suggestion, I'm citing the original video of the statement in Arabic, along with the English translation of Palestinian Media Watch (not MEMRI as I said earlier). PMW's translations are used in academic papers.
- Jalapenos do exist (talk) 22:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
- Which is why you again reverted it, of course. How honest and upstanding of you.
- It's kind of hilarious that you're claiming I'm the one removing sourced information, as you blithely remove statements cited to an actual reliable news source. If there was no retraction and the story was never contradicted, it stands. Moreover, contrary to your false claim that you're replacing outdated information with newer information from named sources, you're actually favoring an older article from a more biased paper that doesn't name its source. At least be honest about what you're doing, man!
- Please have the translation checked by an Arabic-speaking editor here. (There is probably a WikiProject that could help you.) Again, an anti-Palestinian partisan group is not a good source for information on a Palestinian politician. BLP doesn't stop applying just because the LP is Palestinian, or because you really want it to stop applying. If the broadcast really says what PMW claims it says, you should have no qualms about having it checked by someone else.
- -- Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:10, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
I changed the "indicated"to "appeared to", to more closely follow the source. CBN is fine as a source, and the recent rsn did not say otherwise - it had just your opinion and another one from a heavily involved editor on this page. Rym torch (talk) 18:05, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- OhioStandard commented there before beginning to edit this page, and you're also forgetting the other editor who commented. However, as I've said, we can avoid the whole debate over whether CBN is reliable simply by asking an Arabic-speaking user to confirm that Palestinian Media Watch's translation is accurate. Would you like to ask the relevant WikiProject for help? Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:12, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
- Whether the quote is accurate or not, IMO it shouldn't be in the article, least of all the lead, firstly because the source is partisan and secondly because the individual concerned is a mid-level official who is not known to have been speaking in an official capacity. I can't help but think there should be a quote available from a more prominent individual and from a better source.
- Regardless, I am continuing with my rewrite of this article, which I expect to have finished in the next day or two. Quite frankly though, I am pessimistic about this article's chances of promotion at DYK given the number of disputes that have already broken out over its content. Gatoclass (talk) 09:38, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
- ( I've moved the following comment here from another section as being more relevant to this one. - OhioStandard. )
- I speak Arabic and the translation is accurate —Preceding unsigned comment added by EscEscEsc (talk • contribs) 16:24, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well, congratulations on your first edit, then, and thanks for your assistance. I notice you also restored the disputed passage, along with some categories, and reinstated some other disputed content. That was a pretty sophisticated edit, and it's pretty unusual for a new user to jump in to a hotly contested conflict like that, besides. May I ask how you came to be interested in this dispute, and whether you've edited here previously? – OhioStandard (talk) 17:47, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I'll just mention that I asked for translation help re the disputed passage 20 minutes prior to your post here, on another user's talk page. That leads me to wonder whether you had his page "watchlisted", and noticed that ... Oh, presumably not, since I see you created your account 17 minutes after I posted there. Hmm. So how did this dispute come to your attention? – OhioStandard (talk) 18:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- @Roscelese: Even if the editor I asked for language assistance confirms our new friend's opinion of the video clip on the Palestinian Media Watch web site is correct, I'd still be extremely skeptical about whether it can or should be used. The fidelity of the translation is by no means the only issue that matters. Specifically, we only see what the advocacy group Palwatch wants us to see; the 77-second segment is obviously clipped from a longer interview, and it even has a discontinuity in the middle, a cutout, at around 33 seconds.
- After seeing the amazing gymnastics with the truth that James O'Keefe was able to "accomplish" with his selective editing of the NPR and ACORN videos, I'd say we shouldn't trust any video clip at all that's been edited by so "highly motivated" an advocacy organization, to put it reasonably politely. We have no way to tell what else was said just previous to the parts we see, or just after, we have no idea what questions the speaker was responding to, and we don't even know which segment of the two excerpts comprised in the 77 seconds came first. I'm not much inclined to trust a presentation of two fragments stitched together by any such advocacy group where we're given only what they want us to see. Nor should other editors do so.
- Some of you don't buy that? Give me leave to selectively quote you from your posts here, just as I see fit, and to keep others from seeing the context of those quotes. I have no doubt at all that I could present an absolutely convincing picture of you as a saint, a devil, or anywhere in between that would serve my purpose. – OhioStandard (talk) 18:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- I agree with what you said about video editing; that's a good point. Now that I look at the whole thing, there's no indication that anything the fellow says is in reference to this attack as opposed to another attack; even the translation puts "school" in brackets ("[school] bus"). It's also an interview or talk show as opposed to an official statement (our UN/Israeli/American/etc. quotes are all official statements), which should also give us pause even if absolutely nothing else is sketchy about the video or translation. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:10, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well, Nableezy says the translation isn't bad, although ( if I understand correctly ) the speaker refers to the bus "which was not completely destroyed", rather than the Palwatch rendering of, "wasn't that badly damaged". Since these are relative terms, I wonder what the preceding question was? Was the speaker comparing, say a house or houses in Gaza that were completely destroyed, to the bus? We'll never know, of course, since the apparently (?) hour-long show isn't available for us to review. Again, we're seeing only what Palwatch thinks will be favorable to Israel.
- And if you want to really put your video forensics hat on, you might notice that after the editing/continuity break at 33 seconds, the interviewee has had time to put on his glasses, and the rotating clock in the background seems to show about two minutes later. He could have said anything in the interim, including that he condemned that attack on the bus. We simply don't know what he said. Also take a look at what happens after the format changes to show two separate video feeds. When the guest starts talking about all the aggression of Israel being focused on Gaza, all the "bloodshed, war and violence", the Palestinian Authority only puts up images of a single five centimetre hole in the ground in front of someone's entirely intact house, along with some unidentified guy in street clothes walking around with a lowered rifle that no one seems alarmed by?
- This, followed by a pleasant street scene, and then an ambulance driving up to a hospital is the "best" the PA can do? No images of any victims? No blood? No damaged buildings? How do you kill 19 people and wound 45 with no damage to buildings? Not even some shocking file footage? No grief-stricken or angry faces in sight? It seems incongruous, coming from a TV station that Israel says constantly shows "incitement" images. But who knows whether what's presented in those 77 seconds is an accurate representation of the original? That's the problem in a nutshell: Who knows? – OhioStandard (talk) 03:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Title?
[edit]The title seems POV. I don't see any news sources referring to the attack as "Hamas School Bus Attack". Also the title is ambiguous, and should be changed to "Hamas attack against bus", because Hamas has stated that it did not know that school-children were on the bus, on a road which was traveled by the Israeli military. This change seems required by the NPOV policy. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:41, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
- How about Hamas attack against bus, which was a school bus, but Hamas claims they did not know it carried school-children at the time?--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 14:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
- I suggested "Hamas attack against bus". Israeli-bus attack by Hamas would err on the side of NPOV, while alternatively School-bus attack by Hamas would comply with the MOS.
- Would you please address the issue that the title of this article does not seem to be established by reliable sources? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:26, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
"Hamas attack on school bus" or "school-bus attack by Hamas" would be ok, and remove any ambiguity Rym torch (talk) 20:27, 2 May 2011 (UTC)- The current title is ideal. It does not indicate any position on what Hamas knew, merely on what the vehicle was, so there is no POV problem. Hamas bus attack or the like would fail to communicate to the reader the topic of the article, as Hamas has carried out dozens of attacks on buses. Jalapenos do exist (talk) 21:35, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
- The current title consists of 4 nouns, which may be acceptable German but is not English. "Hamas attack on school bus" seems to be the best title. Would somebody try to establish what most reliable news sources call the event? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:15, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
- The current title is ideal. It does not indicate any position on what Hamas knew, merely on what the vehicle was, so there is no POV problem. Hamas bus attack or the like would fail to communicate to the reader the topic of the article, as Hamas has carried out dozens of attacks on buses. Jalapenos do exist (talk) 21:35, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
Move to "Hamas attack on school bus"?
[edit]Proposed Move: Rename the article "Hamas attack on school bus"
- Reasoning, as above. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:54, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
- How about "Hamas anti-tank missile attack, 7 April 2011"? Hamas says they did not know it was a school bus, but the type of missile is undisputed and discussed in the article. betsythedevine (talk) 22:14, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
- The attack hit a school-bus, and there seems to be agreement that the target's being a school bus is the key to notability/notoriety. Hamas has not disputed that the target was a school bus in fact. Thus, I think that the proposed title is fairly NPOV. Further, hasn't Hamas used this anti-tank missile on other Israeli targets? If so, then your suggested alternative title would not distinguish this attack from others. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:21, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
- Hi guys. I don't know if you saw the section below, where questions have been raised about the scope of the article and options for new names are being discussed. Your thoughts on that discussion would be appreciated. Tiamuttalk 19:36, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
- The attack hit a school-bus, and there seems to be agreement that the target's being a school bus is the key to notability/notoriety. Hamas has not disputed that the target was a school bus in fact. Thus, I think that the proposed title is fairly NPOV. Further, hasn't Hamas used this anti-tank missile on other Israeli targets? If so, then your suggested alternative title would not distinguish this attack from others. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:21, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Aftermath
[edit]I added a lot of material that I originally wrote for List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2011. A good thing to add further would be a macro analysis of the ramifications of the violence in the aftermath. I've seen several sources talk about the large number of senior Hamas militants killed, the damage to Hamas' operational capabilities that this caused, and the connection between this and Hamas' demand for a cease-fire, which Israel agreed to. I doubt if I'll have time to do this myself. Jalapenos do exist (talk) 21:13, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
- The material would seem to belong there rather than here. Most of the news reports on subsequent attacks don't even mention the bus attack, much less link them; it's inappropriate to draw these connections yourself. WP:NOTNEWS is also a factor as a lot of these reports are one or two lines long. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:19, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
- Almost all - if not all - the cited articles mention the bus attack. Another aspect that I forgot to mention would be the positions of the various Palestinian militant groups on the cease fire throughout the process. I've already started on this (see April 8), but there's more to do. Jalapenos do exist (talk) 07:59, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Firstly, that's not true; secondly, even the ones that mention it, as I said, don't link them, rather mentioning the bus attack as something that had happened a few days earlier without drawing a connection. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:36, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Almost all - if not all - the cited articles mention the bus attack. Another aspect that I forgot to mention would be the positions of the various Palestinian militant groups on the cease fire throughout the process. I've already started on this (see April 8), but there's more to do. Jalapenos do exist (talk) 07:59, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Let's try that consensus thing
[edit]I've reverted to the 16:24 1 May 2011 (UTC) version saved by Roscelese. It excludes the disputed quotation attributed by Palestinian Media Watch's translation and Christian Broadcasting Network to Omar al-Ghoul. Roscelese has repeatedly requested a mainstream, non-advocacy source or translation for that, and suggested ways to resolve the disupte several times, none of which have been taken up.
The version reverted to also excludes Jalapenos' restructuring of the article into a day-by-day narrative that appears to have been introduced to focus on a rocket-by-rocket account. That's certainly undue weight, given that we have no corresponding account available for each munitions firing by Israel in the 20 discrete raids (air strikes, and artilliary fire from tanks and ships) that Israel perpetrated on Gaza.
The reversion also removes extremely cherry-picked synth. Take a look, for example at the following, with emphasis added in both:
Despite the announcement by Gazan terror organizations of a unilateral ceasefire at 11 pm the previous night, Palestinians fired at least 24 mortar shells and 6 rockets at Israel, causing serious damage to a factory and to chicken coops.1 [A bunch of different militant groups] all claimed responsibility for various attacks.2
Gee, as Jalapenos presents it, those treacherous Gazan "terror organizations" were really evil for breaking the cease-fire they had put in place, weren't they? But his version somehow fails to disclose that:
A ceasefire was announced by Hamas at 11 p.m. on Thursday, but overnight Israeli forces bombed several locations, killing five militants, and sparking a new wave of projectile fire. "Groups in Gaza committed themselves to respecting the Palestinian consensus and halting rocket attacks, but the Zionist aggressor has ruined everything by attacking and killing civilians -- women, children and old people," Hamas interior ministry spokesman Ihab al-Ghussein said.2
This second verbatim content was in the same news source that Jalapenos cited, indicated as "2" in both of the above callout boxes. It presents a badly distorted impression to have excluded it.
But let's assume that this distortion was unintentional, for the sake of trying to move forward. The larger issue here is that very sweeping changes like those I've now reverted can only succeed in so contentious an article by consensus.
So please let's take this in smaller, more manageable increments, and see if we can agree here on an article that we can all accept as a reasonably NPOV presentation of the facts. Otherwise the whole childish battlefield thing that plagues most of the I/P area will inevitably take hold here, too, and that would just be a waste of time for all of us. Thanks, – OhioStandard (talk) 12:20, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
( Comment: I moved a short post by EscEscEsc that was made here re translation accuracy to this section, as being more relevant to its subject. - Ohiostandard )
- Your blanket removal of a huge amount of sourced material is hard to understand in a way that's consistent with a good-faith attitude towards building the article. If you think there's info missing, what you should do is add that info, not remove other info. I think a bullet point list of Israeli retaliatory air strikes would be an excellent addition to the article. Go ahead and do it. As for the contrast between the Palestinian unilaterally declared ceasefire and their subsequent attacks, I believe that's how the cited source phrased it; and rightly so, because continuing attacks after a unilateral ceasefire is surprising, even if the other side ignored it. But this is a pretty small detail. Jalapenos do exist (talk) 21:32, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- As I mentioned above, any list of subsequent strikes - Israeli or Palestinian - would have to be cited to sources that connect those attacks to this attack. Otherwise it's just padding the article with non-notable individual events that happened to take place around the same time. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- And I answered you above. I agree with Ohiostandard that Israeli retaliatory air strikes during the spate of violence sparked by the school bus attack should be individually listed, but I disagree with the bizarre tactic of removing other information until someone else adds the information you want. Jalapenos do exist (talk) 22:23, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Based on recent editing of this article that removed neutral, sourced information that reflected badly on Israel, with false edit summaries, I sympathize with the desire to remove all discussion of subsequent attacks until a balanced draft is achieved on the talk page. This is not your coatrack for every attack on Israel in a particular week in April. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:33, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
- Of course I didn't say that Israeli air strikes should be individually listed; that's what Jalapenos said, and it's directly opposed to what I said. I said that his day-by-day structure gives undue weight to his rocket-by-rocket narrative when there's no corresponding account available for each individual piece of ordnance fired by Israel at Gaza. Jalapenos' change also makes it hard to see the overwhelming disparity in casualties, something that should be in lead, anyway, and not just as the silly "19 Hamas militants and two civilians" B.S. from Haaretz, either. The 45 wounded also needs to be disclosed in the lead, and compared to the death and injury count in Israel.
- Re complaints about what Jalapenos calls a "blanket removal of sourced material", my reversion was the only reasonable way to deal with his having put up a wall of POV content. It's not sourced material I object to, but cherry-picking sources for anything that makes Israel look good and Gaza look bad that I object to. ( See callout boxes above, for just a single example.) I'd be happy to leave every single source currently in the article in-place, if he'd agree that it's okay for me instead of him to pull material from them that supports only one side of the conflict.
- Roscelese is right that we need to draft a version we can all stomach here, on talk. If that's not possible, then the only other recourse would be to first stub the article, restricting the stub to only the immediate event in the most absolutely bland, non-sensational language we can find, and then give each "side" some finite number of words to say about the context, i.e. about the "before" and "after" attacks. Something like four or five brief sentences for each "side", with no more than, say, the same number of discrete cites, i.e. one per sentence, on average. Otherwise we'll just descend into the same slough of despond that every other I/P article lives in eternally. I really don't want to spend my time on Wikipedia there, do you, Jalapenos, or does anyone else? – OhioStandard (talk) 01:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Let's try that consensus thing, v 2.0
[edit]Despite the serious disputes that we were all trying to sort here, on talk, and despite an explicit request that we try to use the consensus process in good faith to resolve those disputes, we've had a drive-by sock and then, a drive-by rewrite. User TheCuriousGnome went off and created a parallel mainspace article, here, and then transferred it to our current article in what amounted to a major rewrite.
He didn't provide a single edit summary for his changes, and at no time has he contributed to this talk page. Except for a couple of easily identified and unequivocally neutral/helpful parts, I've reverted his rewrite, which seemed very far from NPOV to me. I would again ask that all editors try to work out a consensus based version in genuine, good-faith collaboration, rather than undertaking wholesale unilateral rewrites that "move the goal posts" or "provide a discontinuous break from the basis on which the talk page efforts toward consensus had been proceeding", or however you want to say it. No one is going to "win" here by brute force methods, and it's just disruptive to try. I'm would guess that there are additional segments that can be usefully parsed from out of Gnome's rewrite, but like all the other content we've been discussing here, that, too, will "stick" in this article only by a process of good faith collaboration, negotiation, and consensus. – OhioStandard (talk) 12:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Update 1: I see that 14 minutes after I saved my second edit, at 12:46, 6 May 2011, in what I intended to be the sequence of edits with the purpose I described just above, TheCuriousGnome jumped in and started restoring the content I'd reverted, again without use of this talk page. He evidently saw my complaint about not using edit summaries in his previous rewrite, that I made just above, however, since he's now provided some for this most recent string of edits. – OhioStandard (talk) 13:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
Update 2: TheCuriousGnome appears to be allergic to talk page discussion, but I've now posted a request to his talk page, as well, asking that he participate in the process of collaboration and consensus here, rather than continuing to make or reinstate large-scale, undiscussed changes. – OhioStandard (talk) 14:11, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- The merge was done as part of the necessary step needed to be taken in order for the duplicate article 2011 Israeli school bus anti-tank missile attack to be deleted (I originally wasn't aware of the existence of this article) since a duplicate article on Wikipiedia can only be deleted after the content is merged.
- In retrospect, I agree with the user OhioStandard that it would have been better and more fair for the rest of the contributers of this article (whom find it difficult to go over all the changes made in a major change like that) if the content was merged into this article in smaller segments with many edit summaries that would explain each content addition or change.
- Because of this, the several latest additions I made to the article (I did not add all the content which was removed after my recent latest major merge was undone) are much smaller and I am adding explanations to all of my new addition. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 14:13, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
- Glad you showed up here on talk; thanks. I've noticed several of the changes you've made, and wanted to ask that you please stop referring to Hamas as "the [[Palestinian nationalism|Palestinian]] [[Islamist]] [[fundamentalist]] socio-political organisation [[Hamas]]".
- For one thing, that's just a lot to read before a proper name, and for another people who read an article about the Mideast already know what Hamas means. Or if they don't they can click on its name. I could just as easily add links before the name to "Government of Gaza" or whatever the correct article would be to identify the organization that way. But doing so wouldn't be any more appropriate, in my opinion. Thanks, – OhioStandard (talk) 12:11, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Scope of article, infoboxes, and naming for scope
[edit]Hi, all. I've been wondering about the "Infobox terrorist attack" that Gnome added a while ago, with its helpful map. It currently says "Fatalities: 1 child, Injuries: 1", as I write this. But the article has from early days included information about the escalating violence that resulted subsequent to the attack on the school bus and, more recently, information about the casualties that resulted from Israeli counterattacks has been added. Given that at least 19 residents of Gaza were killed by Israel, and at least 45 were wounded, this infobox, or at least its data, seems kind of outdated. Or maybe "incomplete" or "not the best fit for the purpose". If nothing else, it minimizes the importance of the deaths of those innocents among the Gazans who were just trying to go about their day, too, when the next moment their world exploded around them.
I wasn't aware of it until I examined the sources more closely, but Agence France-Presse reported via the Canadian National Post that the interval shortly following the bus attack was the deadliest 24 hours of violence in the Strip since the end of the Gaza war two years previously. I didn't really grasp the scope and importance of the events that followed the bus attack, relative to other violence in the region, before I saw that.
So now we have the question of where we put the parentheses or brackets, if you follow me. We've collectively decided to include what one editor described in the article as "The immediate aftermath". So we appear to have put the "right" bracket at a point in time that ends when things quieted down after three days between Israel and Gaza. That seems okay, although it's somewhat artificial, of course, as is any attempt to isolate out cause and effect in so intractable and nearly continuous a conflict must necessarily be.
But what about the "left" bracket? Since Hamas says they fired at the bus in retaliation for the assassination ( or "targeted killing", if you prefer ) of three of their leaders just a few days previous, and since those killings interrupted a comparatively long period of relative calm, we certainly have grounds to position our "left" or "beginning" bracket there, instead. In that case, we'd need to find sources about those three killings - if there are any, given Gaza's dearth of resources to generate news coverage - and then rename our article to start with those killings.
In that case, the school bus attack would be the second incident in the chain of "tit-for-tat" violence our article would present, and it would be characterized as a response, albeit an utterly reprehensible one, to Israeli-initiated violence. I'm not trying to dismiss the culpability of either side, of course, but it often seems no more useful to me in I/P warfare to try to sort "who started it" - the "it" being the latest "round" of conflict - than it typically is in a marriage.
Anyway, as evil as it was to fire that laser-guided missile, the tragedy appears to me to be overshadowed by the number of innocent dead and wounded in Gaza. An innocent person who is killed doesn't care if he was killed "in retaliation" or in an unprovoked attack. And only God can properly sort what's retaliation and what's an initiating attack, anyway, I expect. That's probably why he (she? they?) is quoted as having said, "Revenge is mine", and not something to be claimed by humans.
Okay, enough theory. What do we do about (1) the infoboxes, and (2) the article name, given that what was originally and reasonably presented in our article as "the dog" turns out to be, without the least disrespect for the innocent dead intended, "the tail"? – OhioStandard (talk) 17:59, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- One option to consider for a new title is 2011 Gaza flare-up. A search for "Gaza flare-up" brings back a respectable 38,000+ hits. Tiamuttalk 19:04, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- I think Ohio makes some worthwhile point here. I would just point out that it's presumptuous in the first place to describe this as a "terrorist" attack, given Hamas' denial that the bus was deliberately targeted - unless one also defines attacks intended for military targets as "terrorist", which is debatable. But it's a good point about the shortcomings of the infobox, I'm not sure how to remedy that - maybe a new or different infobox is needed, which covers the casualties on both sides. Gatoclass (talk) 11:46, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
The Attack as Pictured in Hamas Propaganda
[edit]Hi. I want to add the following to the article: http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=12029 the videos in the article were also featured in the israeli channel 2 news.
I've already tried to add that content to the article with reference to the videos posted on youtube but it was deleted by Roscelese with the comment that I need a "real source". I now intent to add that content as a separate section with reference to the page on palwatch.org instead of the videos themselves. Also, the videos on that page have English subtitles built into them (which are a correct translation of the hebrew subtitles that were featured in the original video).
If anyone objects that this content be added please speak out now. If no one objects I will add it in 24h. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilius1987 (talk • contribs) 13:40, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
- An unreliable partisan source interpreting a primary source is not reliable. Do you have reliable sources which discuss this? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:27, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Requested move 3 September 2024
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![]() | It has been proposed in this section that Shaar HaNegev school bus attack be renamed and moved to Sha'ar HaNegev school bus attack. A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil. Please use {{subst:requested move}} . Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly. |
Shaar HaNegev school bus attack → Sha'ar HaNegev school bus attack – It is unclear why the title of this page does not spell "Shaar" as "Sha'ar" when the subject which this article's subject seems to be a related topic of, Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council, spells the word as "Sha'ar". (At first, this seemed potentially uncontroversial, but I opened up this request since the subject matter of this article is subject to "arbitration remedies".) Steel1943 (talk) 19:39, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
- Support as per nom. Lewisguile (talk) 16:37, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
- Support per nom, seems obvious FortunateSons (talk) 09:44, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
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