User talk:Nishidani/Archive 22

Archive 15

←

Archive 20

Archive 21

Archive 22

Archive 23

Archive 24

Archive 25

City of David

Dear Nishidani! In your edit to City of David you converted 'identified' to 'claimed'. Please read WP:CLAIM my friend, implying whether or not that is true is not desired where a neutral account might preclude such an endorsement. 217.57.142.125 (talk) 23:16, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

An English lesson. 'to identify' in these contexts means to establish a fact. Mazar did not establish a fact but asserted a hypothetical identity between a part of a site and a Biblical location. This means she made a 'claim' that the two were identical. It is, as experts in the field argue, a 'claim' embedded in, to them, faulty analogies.

the highly critical assessment put forth by Tel Aviv archeologists against the work of Prof. Eilat Mazar, who excavated at the site between 2005 and 2008. Mazar concluded that aStructure and Large Stone Structure which they found was some sort of royal palace, very possibly King David’s, and this claim is promoted by the City of David. Not long after, several Tel Aviv archeologists, including Prof. Israel Finkelstein, lambasted Mazar in a rejoinder to her published findings for her reliance on the Bible in making her assessment of the palace. “The Biblical text dominates this field operation, not archaeology,” the article accuses. “Had it not been for Mazar’s literal reading of the Biblical text, she never would have dated the remains to the 10th century BCE with such confidence.” The authors of the article suggested that Mazar took very broad creative license with her reconstruction of the palace, utilizing a type of Bible-centered archeological practice that had fallen out of popularity in the late 20th century, but had, as they deemed, “reemerged with all its attributes in the City of David.” Dafna Laskin, Shake-up at City of David,' Jerusalem Post 14 April 2013.Nishidani (talk) 10:37, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

This

[1]

I.e.A politician is someone who recognizes a fact a century later than those who experienced it.Nishidani (talk) 20:03, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Pithy. Better late than never.--Monochrome_Monitor 12:34, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

We are talking about, having the ability to exploit a strong friendship with Turkey and Azerbaijan, or insteed having the honour of officially recognizing the holocuast of a small hated state in the caucasus which is also Putin's little friend....--Bolter21 (talk to me) 10:58, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Regardless of the fact that every student in Israel learn about the Armenian genocide, and that in our world facts who do not serve your interest are not facts.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 10:59, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

In this world of ours, meaning all of us, ascertaining the facts is the first move. As you say, interests govern the selection. But all facts, irrespective of who produces them, are liked bevelled jewels: they take on different appearances and meanings depending on the angles, and the light refracted on them. Nishidani (talk) 09:59, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Violations?

I did not violate anything. I have edited no article related to the I/P conflict. And Bolter asked me to comment on that discussion. At this point I cannot help but think you have it out for me.--Monochrome_Monitor 01:17, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

No one has it in for you Georgia. But commenting in a I/P related AfD and commenting on Khazars are mild slips. Please control temptation to get involved in these areas for the specified time as agreed. I would like to see you editing in other areas. You seem to come to a grinding halt during these incidents, in terms of your editing activity. Simon. Irondome (talk) 01:44, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Look, I'm rarely harsh in the real world. I get on with everybody, even with difficult people like myself. You are hugely out of your depth, and are making a psychomachia with me on a topic you have only a grazing acquaintance with. You do this, apparently, because you take your encounters with me in editing as an opportunity to assert your right to an identity. For a year now, every time I read your challenges, I keep mumbling to myself:

'Oh God, here we go. She's trying to drag me into a wiki stage fight along the lines of Hegel's dialectic of Herr und Knecht in the Phenomenology. She takes me for a Herr, and wants to do battle to extract some Anerkenntnis from me.' That is the fundamental basis for Transference theory.

You won't understand the allusion, even if you google it, because it takes a very long time to absorb that subtle theory, but that's how I read all this crap, of being forced into a feudal mode of conflict by a 19 year old, and compelled to adopt a role as combatant in order to be exhausted into saying: 'Gee whiz. You're bright. You have taught me a thing or two. Well done!' Your language everywhere betrays this competitive urge to demand 'recognition' as an expert on whatever you edit or write about. E.g.

'I wish you could accept that I'm not inferior to you.'

'That's disrespectful.'

'You're clearly the misinformed one.'

'Here my hostility is directed towards onceinawhile, not you.'

You keep making mistakes, backtracking when corrected, waving huge absurd generalizations that are easily disposed of, coming back, 'clarifying', then counter-attacking by misapprehending what I suggested, and building a humongous thread of further assertions, which are full of sheer dumb-ignorant statements, and if corrected, you leap at some statement in the correction you can challenge, and then controvert it, usually with a string of equally dubious know-all generalizations that require amendment or correction, simply, it strikes me, to achieve this weird desire for a self-confirmed sense of 'parity', if not convince yourself that you've given the old guy his come-uppance. It's a pathetic soap-opera you're writing and I refuse to play a part in it. I've been hammering away at one central point for over a year. Scholarship teaches one to be wary of certainties. You persist in saying you know where the truth lies. I correct errors: you assert that you have mastered these topics in a few weeks and have decided who's right, and who's wrong. I'm deeply embarrassed every time you keep repeating the pattern. I've read about the Hittites for a half a century, sometimes in extreme detail, and you came at me with a 'lesson' that suggests I haven't understood what any browser of one article in a newspaper touching on them might grub up. That is a fantastic faux pas, or it means:'Nishidani, you're bluffing and I'm calling you with all of the depth of my couple of hours of desultory study in hand'(That would belong to a farcical scenario, of two conmen playing poker each with busted 'hands') The last one?

the Amorites were not a canaanite people (note: pontifical obiter dictum style. Conclusion: she doesn't know the literature)

'There is at this time no practical distinction to be made between indigenous Canaanites and migrating Amorites, since "Canaanite" culture is, in fact, only originating and beginning to take on its distinctive character with the gradual and successive Amorite migrations. That is, Amorite culture becomes Canaanite culture since there does not seem to have been a distinct indigenous West Semitic culture in Canaan before its infusion by Amorites. Indeed, the precursors of the Amorites in Canaan do not seem to have been Semitic, let alone West Semitic.' Phyllis Saretta,Asiatics in Middle Kingdom Egypt: Perceptions and Reality, Bloomsbury 2016 p.12. Cf. Genesis, 15:19-21; Joshua 7:7)

I studied the topic area here very intensely at your age, under academic supervision. I would be won over to a thesis, brandish it in a conversation only to find, or be told, that I'd missed another article which blew that one out of the water. My mentors would gradually inculcate into me a point to be found in a classic work of that time from Denys Page in his History and the Homeric Iliad,(1959 p.106)

Here is a boxing-ring in which none but the fully trained philologist is likely to remain standing for more than a round or two. The layman may occupy a ringside seat; but unfortunately there is no knockout, and it is doubtful whether the onlooker is competent to decide who has won.(I have devoted much time and trouble to this matter, and give here a summary judgement on the apparent facts)

You won't take that on board. You give the impression of suffering from an unsufferable juvenile arrogance, of wanting to box like a flapper with a retired pugilist who admits only that in his time, he never got beyond a bantam level, but has followed the heavyweight fights at ringside for half a century, and finds skittish imitations of Mohammad Ali by neophytes laughable. This is Sunday, I've better things to do.Nishidani (talk) 09:13, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Note: This a throwback I kept on record while things were cooling down. Don't get too mad about this as it was written weeks ago, I just wanted it on the record because I don't want you to think I conceded my point.
I'm actually very familiar with psychoanalytic theory, both from my own amateur research and a Psychology class I took a few months ago. I never said Amorites are not Canaanites because they have different cultures. I didn't include them because of their origins (the syrian desert), history (predating "canaanites" proper by a millennia), and language. ("Canaanite" is a linguistic grouping of which amorite is not a part by all conservative definitions. We don't have enough knowledge of their language to judge whether they spoke an archaic dialect of northwest semitic rather than a direct proto-language of Aramaic or Canaanite. A similar problem is posed with Ugaritic, also occasionally speculated to be Canaanite.) Regardless even if you consider them Canaanites and their culture Canaanite (as the Bible does), this does not contradict my point that Canaanite culture was generally homogenous in the MBA. [2] It's funny because you say that I make false statements and then backtrack to "clarify" - when that's exactly what you do. You find one thing I've written, say "you're wrong", when I prove it you say something like "the entire time I was saying that generalizations are bad". Forgive me for my "zero inability" - why couldn't you have said that initially? "Ethnicity is a sociocultural construct which archaeologists cannot reconstruct based on pots alone - the process of ethnogenesois occurs over a period of time and its catalysts cannot be relegated to a specific event?" That would have been very reasonable. But instead you said that I have no idea what I'm talking about. That's another thing- instead of defending your own words you belittle mine. You say "what about the Hittites?" I say that "the Hittites of the Bronze Age are different from the Neo-Hittites of the Iron Age", you say "everyone knows that, stop lecturing me, I studied Hittite philology before you were born". Hittite philology obviously didn't help you to remember that the Hittites of the Bible did not speak Hittite. There are clashes of opinion in everything and yet even your sources arrive at a conclusion - which incidentally never contradicts my initial testimony. I gave my opinion and supported it with facts and scholars interpretation of facts. You think they are "generalizations of tidbits" but they are not- and that gets to the heart of contention between us - you degrade my knowledge to the back of a cereal box while acquiring yours through decades of solemn introspection and study. Well your studies of Ancient Canaan did not leave you prepared to date her polities to the proper millenia. If I am a neophyte, what does that make you? (that last part was a rhetorical device, but it seems mean now, and I hope you aren't upset by it.) --Monochrome_Monitor 12:39, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

To repeat, I have seen no trace in a year and a half that you have anything but a smattering of the subjects you edit. I see everywhere a desire to venture into editing that will invite challenges, and conflict. You have an immense presumption to know far more than the scholars who write on these topics, who at least have the modesty to admit that the past consists of theoretical constructs, not a flourishing of certitudes. You have no familiarity with psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis consists of, before it regards others, a rigorous monitoring of one's proper frailties, of one's contaminated subjectivity, as one thinks, reads, writes or speaks. What bores me stiff is the endless prospect of a quite simple example of a Wiederholungszwang,, where the edit conflicts are mere pretexts. Everything above is a disordered mess, some of it hilarious ('Hittite philology obviously didn't help you to remember that the Hittites of the Bible did not speak Hittite'). I say this without enmity, or being upset, or 'mad' at you. Good luck. Nishidani (talk) 15:45, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Exactly my point. If I am so ignorant about this subject, and you are wrong about Canaanite culture in the MBA (you clearly are), you are guilty of the same. I articulated myself quite clearly. You cited your knowledge of hittite philology as evidence of your familiarity with the Hittites, I said the Hittites in the Bible, the ones in Canaan, didn't speak Hittite. Do you contest that? Saying "I took Hittite philology" in this context is rather like an Egyptologist claiming intimate knowledge of modern Egyptian culture because they can read hieroglyphics. --Monochrome_Monitor 01:41, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

you are wrong about Canaanite culture in the MBA (you clearly are)

We haven't discussed 'Canaanite culture in the MBA' a huge topic. You made some silly specific generalizations, and I challenged them.

I said the Hittites in the Bible, the ones in Canaan, didn't speak Hittite.

That made me laugh, and I said so. It's a dopey remark for several reasons. Construe again and try to see what assumptions, there are several, are embedded in it. I don't believe that you cannot see, if you actually learn to break down a sentence into its propositional forms, why it is stupid. I see that you now add the ones in Canaan, vastly changing the implications. But it is still an empty sentences. A hint, 'the Hittites in the Iliad, the ones in Troy, didn't speak Hittite'. A second hint, the ascribed Hittites in the Bible are located in that narrative in time frames that encompass more than a millennium. Well, I've almost done your homework for you.Nishidani (talk) 06:52, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

This entire conversation started when you contested my statement that Canaanites were not culturally diversified in the Middle Bronze Age and their ethnogenesis came about during/after the Bronze Age Collapse. That's not a silly generalization, it's a fact, which I have proven. You were wrong and are wrong. Your comparison to the Iliad is also farcical. The Iliad is a book written by a man who was compiling and reworking oral history of pre-collapse Greece. Much like the Bible's account of Judges, it's a "golden age" romanticized by early Iron Age authors.In contrast the Bible was a contemporary witness to the Syro-Hittites, also called in the Hebrew Bible (Hamathites) for their capital Hamath, after the Aramean neo-hittite kingdom in Hama, Syria. In our entire conversation you haven't given me an inkling of a clue that you, who refers to the cultures of mythical peoples as proof of your argument, have any idea what you're talking about.You are wrong, you know you are wrong, further disputation is simply a way of defending your ego. Any trivial points you could make in response to this will not change the fact that you were wrong,and you will never admit to being wrong, so further discussion isn't worth my time.--Monochrome_Monitor 13:10, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

'The Iliad is a book written by a man who was compiling and reworking oral history of pre-collapse Greece.'

Keep it up. I do need the respite of comedy from the rather intricate translation I'm editing at the moment. If I'd written that in my preliminary MA thesis on the Odyssey, I'd have been kicked in the arse. The same goes for the rest. When you are hired to tutor post-graduates on the history of the ancient Near Middle East, let me know.Nishidani (talk) 15:17, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Again you take one thing I say into question, leaving behind the fundamental fact that you were wrong. I was thinking of the Trojan Epic Cycle, which would have been a better comparison. The comparison to the Illiad is actually more ridiculous, you should be flattered that I assumed from you a more rational argument. I wish I found your intransigence as humorous as you find my impertinence. You were wrong about Canaanites in the Middle Bronze Age. Now leave me alone.--Monochrome_Monitor 01:18, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

wikipedia link in article

Shouldnt be there, we cant use wikipedia as a source, and it looks bad with the way the linking works. nableezy - 20:32, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

I did not use Wikipedia as a source. Karsh did in writing, in what was a patent example of attacking McKay, the wikipedian in question, in the following words:

In other words, rather than upload Azzam’s original threat to Wikipedia (or to any other publication for that matter) as falsely claimed by Segev, Mr. McKay, who on September 22, 2010 informed fellow Wikipedia discussants of having obtained a copy of the original interview in which the threat was made, failed to share his important discovery with the general public so as to keep Arab genocidal designs on the nascent Jewish state under wraps.

When I noticed that page, bookmarked because I edited it substantially several months ago, under assault by the usual suspect, I read the relevant documentation, and came across Karsh's comment above.

Since Karsh in his attack on McKay specifies the precise edit McKay made on wikipedia, I simply linked it. That is not in violation of any rule I know: we constantly use links to clarify for readers what the article or writing is alluding to. The fact that the allusion is to McKay's edit on that date on Wikipedia obliges one, esp. since Karsh is attacking McKay, from whom via Barnett he got the original data he then claimed to have uncovered, to provide the reader with the link. Of course, I'm notoriously ignorant about the niceties of wiki pettifogging, but I'd be surprised if providing the link to what McKay stated on Wikipedia, as given by Karsh implicitly in his citation of the date McKay made that edit, means I used Wikipedia as a source. I didn't:Karsh did.Nishidani (talk) 22:39, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Im saying the prose as a text should not contain a link to a Wikipedia diff. Beyond that we shouldnt have plain links in the article at all. nableezy - 23:22, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Is there a specific policy saying what to do when an outside source cites a wiki diff, i.e. that the diff cannot be linked unless it is linked in the external text? This is important: Karsh said McKay was covering up something (a preposterous suggestion since he freely shared his find with Karsh's own collaborator) whereas the diff he alluded to shows that McKay announced that providing the details would take some time (anyone who knows his style knows that he can take a few years over one edit, and occasionally forgets to do some he promised to do, as we have seen in a recent instance) Nishidani (talk) 23:30, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

In any case, Zero can remove it, if it is in violation of some rule. I'd reckon however that a third party discussion would be merited on a dicey thing like this. Does a wikipedian, himself a world-ranking scholar, when attacked by a scholarly source, have no right to be defended on his own wiki bio by having the link provided from Wikipedia which the hostile source explicitly named? Nishidani (talk) 23:38, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 24 August

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Temple Mount page, your edit caused a cite error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:22, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Content disputes and WP:STATUSQUO.

All editors are expected to follow WP:STATUSQUO when there is a content dispute. You will also notice that, in fact, I was the last editor to comment on the article's talk page so your recent comments are completely false. You simply restored the disputed content a few days later without attempting any further discussion. Afterwriting (talk) 08:33, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

It is not a content dispute, but a dispute arising from your discontent, obviously. Don't cite policies like WP:STATUSQUO without reading them, because your successive reverting broke the first rule stated there:

If you see a good-faith edit which you feel does not improve the article, make a good faith effort to reword instead of reverting it.

You made no effort to reword the information.

Secondly, the status quo of the article is that for exactly a month, the material which I entered, and then improved to meet your objection by even more extensive additions of RS on Florensky and anti-Semitism, has been stable on that article for exactly a month until an IP reverted it. You failed to make any significant answer on the talk page, and therefore you are edit-warring without an adequate policy basis to justify this personal removalism. I'll be taking this to an appropriate board shortly, on advice, and rest assured it is 100% certain that the material will be restored.Nishidani (talk) 08:47, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Black Sunday, 1937

I have not looked closely at this article, but it looks like you have created it as a response to the other article, to prove a point about the silliness; and don't believe it should exist independently. If this is the case, I suggest putting it in your sandbox or in your own userspace instead of main Wikipedia article space. That will prove the point just as well, instead of contributing to the pollution. You can put up a {{db-author}} at the top of the article for it to be speedily deleted. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 13:45, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Actually, reading Gregory's article reminded me of what really happened to be a major turning point in that same period, one we don't have an article on. All the historical sources note this, precisely, to be a major Wende in policy, since the Irgun began to challenge official policy by systematic resort to terrorism to counter Arab terrorism, and this had an immediate effect on the growth of more clandestine wings of the Jewish military forces. All I needed to do was consult my personal notes, most of which I don't use, and write it up. Of course, it has a remonstrative function as well, but, examine it closely. The articles on this period are grossly defective, and to add that information to any of them would be rather arduous, since they all ignore substantive research of the kind I marshaled. My major objection to what Gregory is doing is that it is (a) bone-lazy (b) suppresses all historical context to promote a POV (c) is a cheap quicko way of ratcheting up one's article-created score. The article I wrote up is none of the above: it is written from long detailed notes in a chronological background for personal use, touched up with recent scholarship, and that's the only reason it took me a few hours.Nishidani (talk) 13:57, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

But, on reflection, you have point, in terms of parity of treatment. I don't think this is a case of speedy deletion. But I would approve of you putting a deletion note on it, as with Gregory's article, so that this issue can be discussed. If I delete my own work, it would look odd, since the 90% likelihood is that Gregory's 2 articles on that period will survive. I am not a masochist. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 14:01, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Firstly, as I said, I have not looked at the article itself closely; perhaps it's merited, perhaps it's not. My main point is that, for use in the AfD discussion, one can make the point by simply keeping it in your userspace (or mine - I have kept a copy here). The speedy deletion I suggested is just a technical fix to achieve this end - the author of the page can always speedily delete the article, no questions asked. If the AfD survives deletion or you believe that this subject deserves an article, you can always recreate it. It should ideally have more political context about the Arab revolt. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 14:14, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, my only reservation is that making it inaccessible means that the usual glance-and-vote-keep crowd will have no parameter to compare what one objects to, with an example of how one might or should write such articles. Still, I prefer to be guided by editors of proven neutrality in this, and therefore accept your suggestion. You can delete it (I don't know personally how to wipe out the page) and conserve if you like a COPY in your sandbox version, and use it as you think fit. As for the lacunae in background, that is a formal consequence of trying to source that specific incident to sources that mention it, and those I have (re-)examined don't expand. It can be done of course. If Gregory's article is kept, as is obvious, then I leave it to you to dispose of Black Sunday as you see fit, even if that means total deletion. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 14:22, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I have added a {{gb-author}} tag at the top of the article. As I said, I have kept a copy in my userspace: I'll replace the link at the AfD with the copy. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 14:28, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Um, I think you said I wished it to be speedily deleted, I didn't. I listened to your argument, and deferred to your opinion that the SD should be posted. Not to niggle, but just for the record.Nishidani (talk) 15:45, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I was about to decline the speedy as too many other editors, when someone else removed the speedy. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 22:02, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

@Nishidani, Ronhjones, and IjonTichyIjonTichy: To Nishidani: I am not an admin, so I cannot directly implement your suggestion: You can delete it (I don't know personally how to wipe out the page) and conserve if you like a COPY in your sandbox version, and use it as you think fit. The speedy deletion tag I added was to effect this precise outcome: if the author of a page puts the tag {{gb-author}} at the top of the page, it is deleted using criterion WP:G7. Since then, things have gotten a bit muddled, because a few other people have also edited the page. However, WP:G7 allows some wiggle room: If requested in good faith and provided that the only substantial content of the page was added by its author. The only substantial content is indeed added by Nishidani - the rest is just nitpicking. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 00:27, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Both you and I and several others have been rigorously opposed to creating the kind of articles that abuse Wikipedia by providing nothing except a POV groan of weeping for one ethnic group, which E.M-Gregory, for one, specializes in. I, like anyone else, could write three a day for a year at least and proudly wear the badge of kudos as some really whiz article creator, while pushing a Palestinian POV. I've always refrained. I did test this principle once, Zion Square assault was the result. I expected it to be voted for deletion by the same people who crowded articles on Israeli victims up for deletion with keep votes. Well, it turned out, despite hostilities, to not come up for deletion, because the incident drew wide and lengthy commentary in the press for some months (WP:NOTABILITY).

Ever since reading the excellent monograph by Ted Swedenberg Memories of Revolt, I've been struck by how marginalized the Palestinian narrative of those years of insurgency is in the standard historical works. It shows over all of our articles, and this is understandable because the serious historiography has, as far as I know, still not done adequate wide-ranging archival research on the massive damage caused by a combination of Imperial dithering and ferocious counter-insurgency interim measures on the cause of Palestinian nationalism (5,032 dead,14,760 wounded p.xxi, not quite as in our article; an infrastructure destroyed, the majority disarmed, tens of thousands of families with memories of torture or humiliation, and huge social dislocation etc.). It set the pattern for all later 'management' of the Palestinians, 1947-1948, and for 1967 onwards. So that has been a long term project of mine, hampered only by the fact that for any text on the details in the field of what actually occurred among Palestinians, you have dozens of general and detailed discussions of the politics or terrorism of the dispute, which is no hope. I keep making notes.

It was only natural that, seeing Gregory's shift in focus from creating dozens of makeshift stubs on contemporary Jewish victims, most promoted, to the deep past that I should rethink this, and roll up the sleeves to illustrate how this kind of article should be done, and how, by contrast, dangerous it is to keep on, as he does, decontextualizing events and just registering a incident of murder or bloodshed by Palestinians as if it occurred in a total historical vacuum. Anyone can see that, except the drift-in voters who look at the snippet, and say keep.

What I did was not directed simply at showing up the silliness, dangerous silliness of this POV pushing. It was a step in the direction of making articles for that period sufficiently comprehensive to allow a fair weighing of the relevant facts within historical perspective. I have a deep regard for your rigour and neutrality. I have listened and said, 'go ahead' with whatever measure you propose regarding my article. But, as a reader of Kafka, I still think, in this case, let me use an hyperbole, that, when an execution's in the air, one should take care to not collaborate in one's own immolation. My position is, if you want that article erased because its composition seems to you to arise from an improper motivation (a premise I don't share but can understand) regardless of any judgment of its merits, then the best I can do to meet you half way is not to oppose your suggestion, if you want it enacted. But I can't help you out in its removal. Perhaps, as I said, you should just put it up for deletion, and see how the debate determines its existence. At least that way, rather than proving to be a bone of contention between the two of us, one can accept the outcome, whatever it will be. I'm sorry this has worried you.Nishidani (talk) 13:02, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

As I said in the beginning: I have not looked at the article closely. If you think it is a valid topic, I do not want to speedily delete it. Both I and EMG seem to have read your initial comment at AfD in a certain way: I as a demonstration of reductio ad absurdum and EMG as hypocrisy. But it seems that was not the case at all, since you clarify that you already had notes on this incident earlier, which you got motivated to turn into an article after reading the crap currently at AfD. Anyway, I'll drop the idea of deletion for now: it has created too much needless confusion. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 13:16, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

By the way, KI, have you considered administership? I'm sure the record would show that you have what it takes for a rapid promotion, if so desired, to that role. Nishidani (talk) 13:26, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Not really, I am temperamentally unsuited for any work which requires any degree of responsibility. I can bloviate with the best of them, but am really prone to procrastination, inconsistency and a tendency to not follow through on things. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 13:41, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

The classic English modest self-putdown gambit then. Okay. If those are your qualifications, consider a job in Whitehall, politics, or a high echelon posting to the EU in Brussels.:) Nishidani (talk) 13:53, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

No, no - it's not modesty. My mother can confirm all of the adjectives I used above :P. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 14:02, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Even better, in the sense that I can now confidently challenge you to a chess match, assured that your superiority in tactics will wane as you become inconsistent and fail to follow through on a looming checkmate.Nishidani (talk) 14:11, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

WP:ARCA

You are involved in a recently-filed request for clarification or amendment from the Arbitration Committee. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#SECTIONTITLE and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the Wikipedia:Arbitration guide may be of use.

Thanks, Debresser (talk) 13:03, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

In our exchanges over this, I've cited several scholarly works on the Israelites and Samaritans, which appear to make you uncomfortable. Rather than nag the arb bone, why not just go to the library and read them? I'm sure studying the textual differences and histories of transmission of the Samarian Israelitic Pentateuch and the Masoretic text of the same will prove far more rewarding for you than wasting time on squabbling.Nishidani (talk) 20:44, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

The request has been archived at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests#Amendment request: Debresser (August 2016). For the Arbitration Committee, Miniapolis 13:19, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Genocides in history

Hi, just checking - your edit to the above in August says that the population of 3 million was reduced by 500,000 to 1,000,000 - the arithmetic is not correct. Can you check, I have to log off now for work? Regards Denisarona (talk) 09:52, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Denis.

Is this the one?

I quoted 2 separate sections. 3 million by 500,000 to 1,000,000 p.364-5 and the citation itself comes from nine pages further into the chapter, p.374. I did note that there was a variance to be worked out. His end date is 1875 while the statistical data comes from a report several years later, no doubt with better data, and the intervening mass murders, factored in. I made a mental note to follow up, but haven’t yet. In any case, we just transcribe sources, and can’t make our own calculations to fix them, unless our arithmetic is confirmed by a secondary source.Nishidani (talk) 10:57, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I understand, but the quoted section is obviously incorrect and so should it be used in an encyclopedia? Regards Denisarona (talk) 15:52, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

There was nothing wrong with the figures, but with the equivocation arising from my grammar. 'from . . to' referred to the numbers decimated, and 1 million' was not intended to mean from 3 million to 1 million. The best estimate there is that 875,000 were murdered out of an estimated 3 million people. I've fixed the grammar, thanks to your note, and it should be clear now. Looking round, I see all articles on wiki relating to that period of Algeria's history are a fucking disgrace. I don't have much time, but intense work on them is desperately required. Regards Nishidani (talk) 16:01, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

A pie for you!

Thank you and Enjoy!! Denisarona (talk) 17:11, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Denis. I particularly enjoyed the choice of appropriate food, even if many might think that I edit as if I were Jack Torrance on furlough and deserve this. My father called me 'pieface, puddenhead, piccolo poo' when I was in nappies. Regards. Nishidani (talk) 17:40, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Can Palestinians migrate from the West Bank?

Hey Nish. It is quite a random question without any connection to Wikipedia. Can Palestinians living in the West Bank move away to other countries and never return or Israel wouldn't allow it?--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:46, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Bit late getting back on this. I was up in Umbria all afternoon till the wee hours, doing some serious drinking and eating at a marriage in an old abbey converted into a hotel, though I threw in the towel at 2 am, whereas you were still pounding the keys within reach of a bottle or two till 5 am, I gather. At my age, a bottle of red wine (to ease the Argentinian Angus beef down the oesophagus) and of white (to make the fish on the menu more comfortable in their journey down the same route), followed up by 2 gin and tonics, a small glass of rum, 3 glasses of prosecco, and two snorts of Sambuca, tends to get me drowsy. Ah! for the good old days, at your age, of bending the elbow through till dawn, and then getting up at 8 for a glass of beer to clear one's hangover! Still, mine was intercepted by the pleasant light of the full moon hanging over us as we barreled down back south through the velvetine landscape, quilted with an equally inebriating but less toxic form of 'moonshine'.

If you mean formal migration, just doing what I have done, or you can do, I.e. up stakes and move, via formal established channels, migration to another country, like any other citizen of our respective countries, it is generally very difficult. There are several reasons for that, lack of universal state recognition, the peculiarity of the travel documents one has, Israeli control of all border exit and the judgments made there on your personal, family and clan profile (you may succeed in having all the formal paperwork in order but be turned back for 'security' reasons, which in practice means, not 'rewarding' you, even if your net absence would be considered as helpful for Israel's emptying policy.) One can see that with the refusal to allow Fulbright Scholarship Winners in the Gaza Strips to leave the place, except when very tough bargaining pressure occurs). That's not quite emigration, but it's usual, given the difficulties, to use 'study/work abroad' as a front/excuse to get a better life elsewhere. The easiest places are a number of countries in South America, like Venezuela where, if you arrive on a regular flight, you're admitted automatically and can then do the paperwork to get residency there. The same applies for Muslim countries in South east Asia: if you think living in the jungle in Irian Jaya has better prospects than in Nablus, you can get there without too much redtape. There's always the sneaky option: make yourself a public nuisance as a pacifist, and you may be lucky enough to get deported for 'insurgency' and then enjoy life in Europe, or the US as happened with Mubarak Awad and a few others. If you take the West Bank as including Jerusalem, then all temporary visits to other countries for study etc., translate into the permanent revocation of your right of return, since under Israeli law any Arab in Jerusalem is by definition an 'immigrant' whose right to stay there is subject to discretionary renewals of a residency permit that technically is treated as a pro-tem visa. Like everything else there (over the border), 'law', 'regulations' , abstract theory about what is doable is one thing, the bureaucratic realities of migration another, complicated by the fact that most migrants go for economic reasons, with the assurance that obtaining residency or citizenship in another country doesn't immediately translate into almost certainly losing one's right to return 'home', or visit relatives, etc. This is not quite adequate, but it was a general query. The short answer is, technically, they can.Nishidani (talk) 10:44, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Many thanks.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 11:32, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Query

Hi Nish,

I have just read this Query. Let me check in details but if I just trust my memory I would say that the first time Arabs used bombs was in February 1948 and they achieved this with the help of British deserters ( see Ben Yehuda Street bombings ).

Anyway I have to check into details, starting by Morris's book.

Pluto2012 (talk) 10:43, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Prends ton temps. Rien ne presse.Nishidani (talk) 11:16, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi again,

I have the French version of Morris, Victimes.

p.223, he writes that if it may well be possible that Arabs had learnt from Jews the principle of bombing attacks, like Abdullah Tal wrote, Fawzi al-Kutub, artificer from the al-Husseini's leart his art from the Nazis. He then refers to 3 attacks by Arabs:

• 1st February: the one performed against Palestine Post by 1 Arab with the support of 2 deserters ( 1 dead )
• 22nd February: the Ben Yehuda Street market attack with 3 trucks full of explosives...

I am not 100 % sure to understand the reason of your questionning but it is clear that the first who performed such attacks on a large scale is the Irgun and that the Arabs just copied or were inspired from them and it is quite logical that they were taught the techniques by their allies, the German during WW2.

During the period there were numerous bombing attacks by the way. The first that I found during the civil war, dates back December 12 1947 (explosion of a car) that made 20 deaths among Arabs and is reported by Efraim Karsh.

Pluto2012 (talk) 11:01, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

That was quick. This arose at Black Sunday, 1937. In commenting on the crowd-killing bombing tactic used by the Irgun in 1938 (and dozens of times thereafter) Morris said the Arabs soon imitated the tactic in (Mandatory) Palestine (and then in Israel later). I though it odd to use 'soon' in the sense of 10 years later, and wondered if, in any source, there was evidence this kind of strategy had actually been adopted by Arabs soon after 1938 in the normal sense of that word. Your result confirms my own memory, in any case. Thanks, as ever, Pluto.(Had Morris been impeccably neutral he would have written eventually) .Nishidani (talk) 11:16, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I understand your point of view and I agree.

If we ask him he would tell us that 10 years is 'soon' in 100 years of history.

But that would be bad faith.

It took a whole war and 3 years of Jewish insurgency and several bombing attacks again for the Arabs to use the same methods as IZL and LHI. Pluto2012 (talk) 15:35, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes. It's all history of course, and with time, one can look with a cold eye. There's no need to spin things, which is the proper preserve of the present. Just as an aside, I think one of the most interesting things for an historian for that period would be to take as a single frame of analysis April 1936-1947, focusing on the insurgencies, and their effects on the respective societies in terms of military preparedness, ignoring the rhetoric, and just looking at villages control regulations, development of paramilitaries (not only the Irgun and Lehi on which too much emphasis is placed -but also Special Night Squads, Jewish Supernumerary Police,Notrim,Jewish Settlement Police but, use of terrorism, the effects of induction into and training with the Allies in WW2, in short the mere mechanics of the determining factors in historical development. The revolt destroyed whatever organized command structure existed or the basis for its eventual emergence, and disarmed the Palestinians while it saw the sectorial consolidation of a half a dozen military formations on the other side. Laurens is not particularly good on this aspect, though he does make a very incisive comment on its long term effects at Vol.2 p.92. The real Wende that determined the aftermath is to be sought in 1936-1939 not in 47/8, which, in hindsight, was a pretty obvious outcome, in my view. Best regards.Nishidani (talk) 17:00, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Citation tools

Just FYI, there are a couple of really useful citation tools. One makes a Wikipedia citation based on a Google Books reference and the other based on a DOI reference. Links to both of them are on my userpage as well. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 15:22, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Jeezus, so that's how everyone did it? 10 years of wondering where on the markup window people get the template and there you go. I'l l try to use it but I'm rather hardened in my bad habits (hhmm. thinking of which, must clean up that whisky spill on the floor, empty the ashtray before my wife sees it, - might have to email Clive James for a loan of his car hub, etc.) Cheers. Nishidani (talk) 15:38, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Don't bother! Your manually formatted citations are fine, well formatted and consistent, making them easy to visually parse, and thus a vast improvement over long, horizontally formatted templates (presently a toxic pestilential infection that has spread all over Wikipedia - see the ongoing discussions on my talk page.) There is nothing in Wiki policy that says citations have to be templated. --NSH001 (talk) 10:57, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I've some blame for the practice you rightly denounce since I once used that kind of space consuming template on a few articles. Alert me if your future proposal gets under discussion. It would be a major improvement.Nishidani (talk) 11:38, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

No need to blame yourself for anything. Just to be clear, there are compelling reasons to use templated citations: 1/ consistent format 2/ enables "link rot" to be automatically fixed (the bots are doing a good job on this problem, and getting better all the time (much credit is due to Green Cardamom for his bot) ) 3/ flag errors (for example they flagged one case where I had typed "206" for a date that should have read "2006") 4/ enables lists of citations to be automatically sorted into order by author, etc. (my wonder-script does this) 5/ enables Wikipedia to pass metadata to third-party applications (see WP:COINS). So, in general, I'm in favour of using cite templates, but subject to certain conditions, including keeping them out of the wikitext body of articles if at all possible, and never, ever, using the horizontal format. Good examples of how cite templates should be used are at Muhammad Najati Sidqi and Khazars (articles you've worked on).

I'm advising you to stick to using manual citations because, in addition to the reasons stated above, and despite the advantages of cite templates, a well-formatted manual citation is better than a badly-templated citation (hard to believe the amount of crap I see in cite templates - vital info like date or author missing, or values assigned to the wrong parameter, or assigned twice to the same parameter) and much easier to read than a horizontally-formatted cite template. You can safely leave it to other editors to template your cites in those cases where it is appropriate, for example the two I've just mentioned.

--NSH001 (talk) 07:31, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure if you have used the tools I gave above, but I have never seen a badly formed citation using the tools. Indeed, I don't see how a manual citation could have a lower error rate than an automatic tool which is based solely off the URL or DOI. There are also other tools which help in editing citation templates in general. I use WP:PROVEIT. Of course, any tool can be used badly. Whatever works for you, stick to that. Or experiment if you like. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 08:53, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

'any tool can be used badly.' That has the uncanny ring of what my father told me over 60 years ago! Since 'tool' also had a vulgar meaning, I took it as paternal ad-vice to be careful of how one handled or refrained from handling, one's 'tackle', and left the rest to the boffins, as is the case here.Nishidani (talk) 09:34, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Buy the whey,(:)Quaker Oats, etc. Bad pun) N. given our mutual interest in non-violence, I read the following today:

The potential impact of the Druze campaign on the Palestinians was not lost on the Israelis. Several Palestinian activists and Americans working in the occupied territories noted that Israeli military officials devoted much more time to examining possible uses of nonviolence by the Palestinians than did the Palestinians themselves. The Israelis began actively developing means to reduce the potential impact of nonviolent struggle for the Palestinians through legal strictures drastically curtailing the ability to organize and through harsh repression of any militant nonviolent action. Political demonstrations by Palestinians were outlawed at the beginning of the occupation in 1967. Soon after the Golani strike, the Israeli military governor of the West Bank forbade demonstrations by Israelis in the occupied territories as well. This order was meant to nip in the bud a series of demonstrations by various Israeli peace and human rights groups against Jewish settlement in the West Bank. It is telling that the military governor also forced an American organization to change the job description of one of its workers in the West Bank to eliminate “nonviolence education”. Clearly the Israelis perceived nonviolent action as a threat to their ability to maintain control over the Palestinians.' R.Scott Kennedy, ‘Non Cooperation in the Golan Heights: A Case of Non-Violent Resistance.’ In M. Stephan (ed.) Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization, and Governance in the Middle East, Springer, 2009 pp.119-130 p.127

The last line is Kennedy's own view of course, but it is curious that on two occasions in the 1980s, Israel acted preemptively to expel Palestinian Gandhian activists from the West Bank on state security grounds, something incomprehensible were there not some substance to his allegation that handling terrorism is easier than coping with pacifism.Nishidani (talk) 12:30, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the thanks above re: link rot bot but the real credit goes to User:InternetArchiveBot, my bot is ancillary cleanup. Re: templates I found a good system that combines auto with manual and that is AutoHotKey. Basically I type the letters "refz" and they are replaced by a full empty reference ready to be filled in. The AutoHotKey recipe:

;Wikipedia ref hotkeys
;Cite web
::refz::
Md := A_DD ; remove leading zero-pad
Md += 0
SendInput <ref>{{}{{}cite web |url= |title= |work= |author= |date= |accessdate=%A_MMMM% %Md%, %A_YYYY%{}}{}}</ref>
return

I have other ones for cite book, journal etc.. (actually in this case the "z" is "w" but I can't type those 4-letters without a citation template popping into my edit window). -- GreenC 12:55, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

FYI

Somebody re-opened an old discussion in which you took part, and you are therefore cordially invited to partake in the discussion at Category_talk:People_of_Jewish_descent#Middle_East_category_Rfc. Debresser (talk) 13:24, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Dovid. It's refreshing to me personally to recall that our views on this coincide precisely, in an area where far too many editors don't think, but make reflex political judgments. Our histories, personal and otherwise, are only coincidentally about politics. I'm reminded of an anecdote, which can't be told out of delicacy but which testifies to his extraordinary human stature and integrity, which I heard some weeks ago regarding Elio Toaff.Nishidani (talk) 15:09, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

WP:AE notification

Please be aware that I posted at WP:AE regarding your behavior at Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, also in light of my previous experience with you at Mahmoud Abbas. Debresser (talk) 22:23, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Yinon Plan

Hello. I"ve read most of the article about the Yinon Plan and I"ve missed the sentence "He then proceeds to analyze the weaknesses of Arab countries...concluding that Israel should aim to bring about the fragmentation of the Arab world into a mosaic of ethnic and confessional groupings."

From what I understood before, the article he wrote, was some sort of a confession, that Israel is working to achieve the goals he describes, and that he created a conspiracy theory based on what he learned as a member of Israel's foreign ministry, in order to somehow prove to the world what sad Americans who think their government is funding ISIS in order to advocate the Greater Israel project, are trying to prove to me on youtube comments.

Then I"ve read an article by Matzpen (not my everyday source of press or information) from 1983, where they say that Yinon's articles talk about what he thinks Israel should do, and that he is advocating the Balkanization of the Middle East, and not cautioning the world against it. Of course my early interpretation is full of contradictions and I should"ve read the article more seriously in order to understand that, but I think the article indeed doesn't mention enough the fact this is a plan made by a journalist and not a conspiracy theory and I think the best place to do it is in the lead.

Another problem I saw in the article is the very last sentence, where Michel Chossudovsky is described as a Canadian economist, while in reality, not only an economist from Canada, but also a person whose platfrom critisized as a "rife with anti-Jewish conspiracy theory and Holocaust denial", so I think it should be mentioned somehow in a far, unSYNTHy way.

Since this is a review made by someone who didn't completely read the article, I decided to tell you this personally rather than to state that in the talkpage.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:53, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Bolter. You don't need to pre-advise me you might edit any page I edit, though I appreciate it. I had a busy weekend and not much time save the few hours I spent on that to run through the material a superficial glance turned up. That Matzpen article should be used. I've no doubt that this kind of stuff feeds into conspiracy theories, but as usual, I'm more interested in how things get constructed, less so in all the youtube/internet yabber that then spins stuff to the world, which listens more to second or third hand gossip, rather than looking at the original texts and competent analysis of them. I just prefer to stick with how scholars or area specialists reliably published say. As to Michel Chossudovsky, well, I didn't go into that, because when I read that he is tenured at the University of Ottawa and Jewish, I thought the rest about his hosting 'anti-Jewish conspiracy theory and Holocaust denial' required a lot more research than I can spend on it, to see if this is accurate, rather than just the usual characterization. Universities usually get rid of crackpots like that. By all means, add more stuff. I hope we can keep the sourcing quality high, that's all.Nishidani (talk) 21:03, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I give you my review instead of changing the article myself becuase at the moument I don't feel like contributing to this article for various reasons, including absolute ignorance on the topic as well as an automatic bias, much worse than my regular Israeli-citizen-bias. But I"ll look at that Matzpen article to see if it has some value for the article (simply the first result on google). Adding Hebrew sources is something I always enjoy doing, for the challenge of translating it.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:20, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

You can always ask Roland R to check translations. Anyone who knows they're biased, isn't quite biased, so don't worry about that. It's people who are biased without being aware of it that are the problem.Nishidani (talk) 21:36, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

By the way, happy new year! (I think it's 5777 now).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 23:29, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I used to drop on some editors's pages my greetings for Rosh HaShanah when the occasion fell due, but stopped because I twigged that, coming from me, some might be annoyed or take offense, given the usual rumours about me. So I'm delighted that you dropped this note, giving me a chance to wish you and your family the very best for the upcoming year. You're a credit to them, your country and Wikipedia, lad.Methusaleh (talk) 07:34, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Leaf

Nish, Leaf is a gorgeous article that appears to require lotsa work. I don't have the time to work on it. I donno whether you may have the time or the motivation to improve it. Best, Ijon Tichy (talk) 03:19, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Usually when a coincidence occurs, as here, I drop everything and examine the connection, and brush up on both of the elements present in the coalescence of random events or associations. I was writing a short note the yesterday on the clash between Glaucus and Diomedes in Book 6 of the Iliad, with its memorable metaphor beginning

οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.

φύλλα τὰ μέν τ᾽ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει,

which Alexander Pope memorably (for my generation) translated:

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,ìì

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground.

and which is the point of departure for the far superior, unspeakably elegiac miracle of Tithonus penned by Tennyson.

Whenever I think of leaves, I think of passages in Gerard Manley Hopkins' like his description of a hazel leaves,'broad paddles tightly necked and drawn up on to their stem.'

Unfortunately, though the linked page was stimulating reading, I don't have time. The third coincidence was that yesterday I noted that aphids are hoeing in to the black Tuscan cabbage leaves, from the plants I put in my vegetable patch a few days ago -a vegetable that makes my stomach riot with gluttonous pangs, so I'll have to make up a litre of dissolved Marseille soap with garlic parings and paint the leaves that survived the first assault if I'm not to die of starvation this winter. All this means less wiki work, which of course is an excuse, but true nonetheless! Nishidani (talk) 11:13, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Arbitration Enforcement request closed

An Arbitration Enforcement case[3] in which you participated has been closed with the following result:

All parties are cautioned that further breaches in civility occurring after this date in the PIA topic area will be be met with swift action at a lower threshold than has traditionally been the case. Parties are urged to spend some time reflecting inwardly on their own conduct, and whether it is truly appropriate for an online encyclopedia. No further action is taken at this time. The parties are advised to chill. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 13:56, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Personal request

As a personal request, could you please give me an approximate translation of this text? Debresser (talk) 11:00, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

The unity of the Palestinian people
and the unity of the nation is the main (not sure about this line)
strategy for the liberation of Palestine

Something like that--Bolter21 (talk to me) 11:13, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. That is clear enough. Debresser (talk) 11:47, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I was at Sunday lunch, a thing which in my scale of values assumes greater importance that the primordial event that created this nook of the cosmic universe. In any case, the link doesn't open, whatever the language. Nishidani (talk) 13:38, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

وحدة الشعب الفلسطيني
ووحدة الأمة من اهم النقاط
الاستراتيجية التحرر فلسطين

--Bolter21 (talk to me) 13:59, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm refreshed to see you are comfortable with Arabic, beyond the 5 words I think are part of basic IDF training over there. My father had some very entertaining stories about speaking several phrases in Arabic in Cairo during WW2: too 'ripe' to mention here.Nishidani (talk) 14:12, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I would be glad to know Arabic, but I don't. Debresser (talk) 14:36, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

It was compulsary in my school, so I have a very good base. Also the words "Palestinian", "Liberation" and "Unity" are words I already recognize because they apear often (they apear in the names of political parties and terrorist organizations), while the word "strategy" is, literally "astrategia". The rest needed google translate.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 15:33, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

As Hungarians say, and they ought to know:Ahány nyelvet beszélsz, annyi ember vagy, which can be translated as either 'the more languages you speak, the more of a man you are', or 'you are as many persons as the languages you speak'. My compliments.Nishidani (talk) 16:38, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing that proverb with us. Debresser (talk) 18:32, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Nathan Thrall article in NYRB on Obama and Palestine

See this. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 10:30, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually I read that some days ago, and, I think, no, I recall dropping a note on someone's page, or perhaps I forgot to, to check it out. I'm very impressed by Thrall's work: deeply analytical, an historian's mind with the long term overview wholly detached from the hysteria of reportage, since he looks at the fundamental structures of events with a cold realist eye. I think he is right- I've always considered the problem politically impossible for the Palestinians at least,-if they want justice- and most reportage ditheringly optimistic froth, when not either ideologically blind or foxily mendacious. The only logical step to avert this would be to dismantle the pseudo-state they have, hand over the keys, and sit it out, sumud, in short. But that runs against the nature of things. The important thing is to cut the waffle, in any case, and get the factual record straight, in informed context, as indeed Thrall consistently does.Nishidani (talk) 10:49, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

I think I heard Norman Finkelstein once say that the period just after Oslo and before the talks in 2000 was intended to produce a collaborator class interested in the "good life" in Ramallah, so that they can sell out their country. There's now an industry of NGOs and governmental entities which is just perpetuating the situation. There's nothing really happening politically. Hamas is isolated and the PA is a nullity, whose main purpose is to keep a lid on politics through torture and suppressing dissent. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 11:07, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

The Oslo Accords were read with prescience for what they would work out to really be, precisely in that way widely among the Palestinian diaspora, as a sop thrown to a potential quisling caste, which would lap it up. Rather harsh, but in hindsight . . Said comes to mind. History never forecloses on the future of course,(to think so is to fall into the teleological fallacy which is so thoroughly embedded in Zionist narratives) but it didn't help that the ablest people within the PLO, and this goes for Hamas as well, were systematically picked off in numerous targeted assassinations. Had the British applied that policy to the Irgun/Lehi insurgency in Mandatory Japan, which formed the model for Palestinian extremism, one would probably have had a different outcome. Of course, the irony is that there is one part of the land that could rightfully claim to have all the requirements of a Palestinian state, untrammeled by settler blocs, territorial disputes, intricate bureaucratic negotiations with an adversary, etc., of the kind that have doomed the West Bank experiment. That is the Gaza Strip: it has access to the sea, fertile soil, an ingenious, hard-working population, offshore gas and fishing resources etc. Water will run out there in 2020, of course, and the hope is for mass emigration and internal collapse. One of the great rifts with the PA, is that the latter, having some formal authority, was willing to hand over the gas reserves to outsiders, for the usual paybacks. Technically it has everything the West Bank lacks. Finkelstein said that when anything mechanical fucks up at his University in Turkey, they call for a Palestinian refugee from Gaza who, raised amidst an endlessly bombed out infrastructure, can repair anything. Nishidani (talk) 12:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

See this. There are some in the Israeli coalition that want to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and take over full control. But the Prime Minister and the Defense Minster, and “certainly the military and intelligence community”, want to keep the PA. There is still intelligence sharing on radicals, but when Israel asks them to arrest the radicals they identify, they refuse, and ask the Israelis to do it, and then protest the arrests. But this is all part of a scenario of cooperation. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 23:31, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

jesus christ

Oddly enough, that persistent obfuscation is just enticing me to spend more time on it. nableezy - 18:41, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Taking the Lord's name in vain, again, you jihadi raghead! Yep, it is unbelievable. It's like the good old days, before all those people were banned. Mind you, look on the positive side. I think if anyone us ends up in Abu Ghraib or its outremer simulacra, we'll be well prepared to pass the stress tests! Nishidani (talk) 18:51, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

This dude is seriously arguing that oddly analogous means not analogous. What in the actual fuck is going on here. nableezy - 18:56, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Just ignore it. It's bad faith niggling., The evidence is overwhelming. We're obliged to thoroughly master the topic in question, muster the evidence, paraphrase it fairly, and provide rational grounds for the edit. We're not obliged to engage in pettifogging wars of attrition that have no other purpose, it I might make a reasonable conjecture, than to tie up serious editors in knots not of their making.Nishidani (talk) 19:12, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Nish, I would suggest to try and avoid "Just ignore it. It's bad faith niggling" statements, you"ve recently had an AE because of it and it is a waste of time. Also, it is "Thou shalt not carry the name of Lord in vain", i.e. do not sin, while carrying the name of God. A good variant is "do not kill civilians while shouting "allahu akbar". There is no "Hebrew Bibile", there is "Best Bible". Get rekt Goyim and your crappy translations.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 01:15, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

One of the first things in mastering English literature, secular literature even, once consisted in reading closely the King James Version of the Bible (as one must, in studying German, read Luther's version) because all writers great and small had much of it by heart, and it affected the rhythm of their prose and their choice of idiom. The form I cited is proverbial in English and comes from the KJV:'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain". Pope John XX111, according to Roman popular anecdote, was once walking in the Sistine, and heard workmen blaspheming heartily when something fucked up, and gently told them:'gentlemen. The Roman dialect is full of words you can use to express wrath. There's no need to take the Lord's name, or that of his mother, in vain.' Of course, yelling Allahu akhbar while killing the innocent is obscene, indeed a contravention of specific Qur'anic injunctions, just as Colonel Ofer Winter's use of Biblical incitement ("History has chosen us to spearhead the fighting (against) the terrorist ‘Gazan’ enemy which abuses, blasphemes and curses the God of Israel’s (defense) forces,”) when it was just a matter of putting boots on the ground and killing 1,500 civilians. We live in verbally toxic times, lad, and purity of language, meaning precise, historically understood idiom is one prophylactic against it, as is a bit of comedy. Several years ago, when Nab was under intense verbal crossfire, mocking his background, I dropped a note one his page calling him a 'jihadi raghead' or 'sandnigger', the term of abuse frequent among American soldiers for Iraqis trying to defend their homeland. Someone unfamiliar with our convention, of roughly mocking each other by using terms that, in the mouth of a hostile witness, look abusive, but between us, are intended the other way, reverted it as though it were an attack, missing the irony, and I was close to being reported for attacking him. My permaban came in part from diffs (here and here using the kind of hyperbolic remonstration typical of 'buddy talk' (the editor was a British serviceman who'd blown his cool and was close to being banned, by his almost 'suicidal' persistence in counterattacking other editors) that were comical and informed by affection for a person I was trying to help stay on Wikipedia. That too, was misread: everyone, except one admin, read it in the right spirit. As to 'bad faith niggling', that is as dry and objective a description of what is going on on some pages as I can manage. And my message to Nab was, 'ignore it', just as I ignore, and have replied in good faith for some months to, two people I am dead certain are sockpuppets.Still, I appreciate you dropping a note here on things like this.Thanks Nishidani (talk) 07:20, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

NPOVN

No idea what happened there. Had to have been a misclick from my watchlist since AFAIK, I haven't been on NPOVN (on purpose) for at least a week. Sorry about all that. TimothyJosephWood 14:55, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks for the note, cheers.Nishidani (talk) 14:59, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Note on missing author(s) and editor(s)

Long citations that have neither of the above cannot use the usual | ref = harv - obvious really, but still a proctalgia. So you need to invent a link between the long cite and the short-form refs, and to make sure it's consistent between both. In the long cite you can do this using | ref = {{harvid|blah|blah}} instead, and then make sure the short form uses the same blah|blah.

Worth studying this diff for an example of how to do it (look for "harvid"). I also suggest checking for consistency by clicking on each of the blue-linked short cites. If it doesn't take you to the correct long cite, then you've probably misspelled one of the two (quite a few of those in the same diff).

Cheers, and good luck on your journey through the intricacies of wiki markup!

--NSH001 (talk) 09:21, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that's very helpful. Thanks also for the link to proctalgia which makes perfect sense in classical Greek, but the extra details while refurbish my exhausted vocabulary on the topic will be very handy. (I 'assist' an elderly relative of high academic distinction who telephones every day and dilates in minute detail on his problems with 'air' and 'evacuation'. I take the call to stop my wife, the object of his queries for remedies, from throwing up. Quite often I neck the phone and listen and comment soberly to the ritual 'airing' of senescent discontents while editing, and that, apart from my own decaying brain cells, accounts for many a hurried orthographic or formatting slip).Nishidani (talk) 09:40, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

your opinion is needed

Hi brother. We have talked with each other before. I want you to contribute is discussion here please. I explained my point of view but because i cant speak english in good manner the reverted my edit here althogh it is correct. And some one delete my message from his talk page see here. Regards and sorry if you are bussy and i annoy you--مصعب (talk) 15:07, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't know whether I should get involved. I don't like cats in these types of articles, since they are a cheap way of trying to classify highly ambiguous themes. Number has a technical objection, and though I disagree often with him, he knows more about this than I do, so I have to defer to it. I think much that is classified as 'Palestinian terrorism' is better described as political violence (quite a bit not so). I regard personally the IDF as a often as not behaving like a state-terrorist organization, but not for that reason do I try to alter cats etc, or alter articles with that POV, because sources simply don't accept that view. The only way through this fog is to dedicate one's energies to writing the full history of events with due regard to the scholarship, and neutrally, (even if that means leaving out the obvious) wherever that leads.Sorry I can't help.Nishidani (talk) 19:24, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Extensive rewrite at History of Japan

Can you check Rjensen's recent edits at History of Japan? He's made quite an extensive rewrite all of a sudden, including dropping the "Geographical background" section entirely and changing a bunch of date ranges (such as for the Jōmon period), which I remember were a source of particular contention last year. Curly "the jerk" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:56, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

• It gets worse and worse the more I look at it. Do a before-and-after of "Paleolithic and Jōmon period" (before, after) Curly "the jerk" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:35, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

those were accidental deletions that I have restored. Sorry about that! I have not worked on pre 1500 sections. Rjensen (talk) 20:14, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, go easy. This is a problematical article. it shouldn't be as long as one uses a high bar for RS, namely the latest results in each field in the vast world of Japanese studies. One good way is to point out what might strike one as inadequate on the talk page before making extensive changes. Nishidani (talk) 20:24, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

.I agree. i was NOT trying to add anything new. I accidentally discarded whole sections on the early periods. what I was trying to do was restore solid text that got deleted en masse and I think I restored an old version. ...what happened is thaton 04, 15 August 2015‎ CurtisNaito simply chopped the article in half --he discarded 59,000 bytes with no commentary or discussion!. That was the disaster i was trying to fix without adding anything new. Rjensen (talk) 20:31, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, I don't know how long you've followed this and related articles but basically CN and another editor made a war of attrition to exhaust everyone, replacing good sourcing by bad, and generally fucking up the articles with nationalist POV pushing. I don't like to interfere when serious editors, and you have excellent credentials, hop in to fix the damage wrought and improve the articles. I'm just a Sad Sack with the slops bucket basically, since I don't have much time to fix these things myself. If I can be of assistance just drop me, or a few other walking wounded from the long war, a note, and I'm sure you'll find a spirit of cooperation. The only thing to be careful about here is sources: one needs a winnow and yandy to thresh out the tares even in otherwise respectable RS, when it comes to details at least. Cheers 20:48, 17 October 2016 (UTC)Nishidani (talk)

Rjensen: CurtisNaito and TH1980 have been topic-banned from editing Japan-related articles over the kinds of things they did to the History of Japan and other articles. There are pages and pages of discussion on the article talk page (and at ANI) over these issues, which came to an end only recently, so hopefully you'll understand why some of us might get paranoid when confronted with yet another unannounced, extensive rewrite. Also, keep in mind that there are aspects of Japanese history that are subject to contentious dispute (see the talk page archives for some examples). Curly "the jerk" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:20, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

I can understand the anxiety. My apology: I goofed and cut large sections at the start of the article. I should have noticed but I & didn't spot it because I'm not much interested in the pre 1500 history & skipped over it. :( Rjensen (talk) 00:18, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

list of violent incidents

Have you noticed a rise in the anti-Israeli attacks? There are more reports on stone throwing and injuries. Only today there were four separate incident, three with human casualties.

The problem is I cringe everytime I read Ma'an, so I cant practically use it as a source. If I will add the incidents it will make the list unbalanced and negelecting it will make certain weeks completely unbalanced (in the sense that there are incidents missing).

So in a nutshall, please return to updating the list (there was an alleged+denied baby killing I forgot to add, maybe its a goos start, if you will see this message within the next 15 hours).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 23:16, 18 October 2016 (UTC) Bolter21 (talk to me) 23:16, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Don't worry about Ma'an. I'll handle that side. If you could, just keep your ear to the ground for the Israeli reports and add everything you see. The only problem with Ma'an for me is that it tends to drop from view articles dated more than 8 days ago meaning when I get round to catching up, I can't cover those days. I've a backlog to fill: Iave been travelling and haven't found the time. I'll get round to it. Nishidani (talk) 06:56, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Hi Nishidani, I just wanted to let you know that I have added the "autopatrolled" permission to your account, as you have created numerous, valid articles. This feature will have no effect on your editing, and is simply intended to reduce the workload on new page patrollers. For more information on the patroller right, see Wikipedia:Autopatrolled. Feel free to leave me a message if you have any questions. Happy editing! ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:48, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

There are no words

Nick, on how to express my thanks for your nomination. One of my greatest wishes is that we could spend a few days together, drinking the good stuff, me scrounging your best quality rolling tobacco, and talking. A lot of time in your garden, quietly observing the simple but beautiful things. Let's do it before we peg out. Seriously. On another subject. What news from the recovering region after the quake? I hope all is well with you and yours. Your friend Simon. Irondome (talk) 02:32, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Earthquake

Hope you and your loved ones are not directly affected by the earthquake. --- Ijon Tichy (talk) 01:06, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm used to them because I lived in Tokyo and the second story rooms I had wobbled quite regularly, not only when I came home from a night's drinking. So I woke, looked at the chandelier in the bedroom to check the strength, and then went back immediately to sleep. My wife was with friends, woke as the house shook, the washing machine's door burst open, the apartment shook, and reshook, so she had a worrying night. Folks from my area were up there in a flash to provide emergency care. Italians are good in tragedy: a 12 year old girl died, throwing herself over her 4 year old sister to save her: the latter was pulled out of the rubble 17 hours later. A local builder, Tonino, rushed to his bulldozer when it struck, and managed to save dozens by rapid work until he suffered a heart attack. Restaurants all over Italy are offering spaghetti all'amatriciana, the dish created by transhumant pastoralists from the village most affected, razed to the ground, and an euro or two of the take is then sent to the authorities to help the reconstruction. So we have to eat out more often.Nishidani (talk) 07:09, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Nick, I had no idea you were so close to the tragedy and had personally witnessed such selfless acts. Apart from the most important loss, that of human life, ancient structures which had survived human strife have been swept away, by the arbitary shudder of a tectonic plate. I am saddened by the irreplacable human loss, but glad that you and yours are ok. Si. Irondome (talk) 13:52, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Si. A local friend who got there quickly said that, although used to emergency work, helping out as corpses came in to be hosed down, in all sorts of rigor mortis postures, and then refrigerated, so that the process of identification could proceed as quickly as possible, got to her and she had to leave after 2 sleepless days of hectic work. It may seem to be inhuman to allow one's eyes to stray from that dimension, but I admit on such occasions, - they're regular here - that my thoughts go out immediately to other, inarticulate, beings caught up in this natural Guernica type event. 7 dogs trained to dig through rubble when they scented the presence of bodies, keeled over dead from exhaustion. Roughly 11,000 cows, and double that number of sheep, more fortunate that the 30 crushed in a collapsed barn in Amatrice, are wandering about fodderless, facing a murderous winter. I used to think that opening up immigration from the third world to the Apennines, a million or so in those beautiful but tough mountain villages and farms, was a solution to the generational drift to the cities - a good part of the economy up there already relies on Bulgarian, Indian, Albanian, Kosavaran, Rumanian and Moroccan families settled there (and a notable number of the dead were 'foreign') - but that would look distinctly Machiavellian now. What nature does, in any case, is relatively leniently intermittent compared to the daily man-wrought havoc in places like Syria et al. In some sense one can live with earthquakes. Nishidani (talk) 14:32, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Nish, I hope you are doing OK in the aftermath of the new earthquakes. -- Best, Ijon Tichy (talk) 16:11, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Same here. When you haven´t been editing for 3-4 days, I get worried..... Best wishes, Huldra (talk) 23:51, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Given the fact Nish stopped editing on the 24th, after making 250 edits in 17 days, and that the earthquake occured two days later on the 26th, I assume nothing happened and he has taken a Wikibreak. He has been less active already a week before the 19th, supposedly traveling.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:04, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

After several days of being bolted to bed under a neo-Benthamite regime of Foucaultian surveillance, of nagging and needling, a moment of freedom, as the women go to market and pharmacy, trusting I am sunk in sleep and can do no damage in their absence. I only have this computer, and must get up and meander through corridors to access it. Nothing serious, just sick 'technically', but I have read a monograph on the Torres Strait islanders and will do some articles on them when back on my feet shortly. The earthquakes were impressive: my bedroom chandelier swayed a few inches for over a minute, twice within an hour, reminding me of great times in Tokyo. Thanks all, Simon below also, for kind thoughts.Nishidani (talk) 08:40, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Hamas EU discussion

I opened a thread on the NPOV noticeboard to get more feedback re our discussion on the EU litigation content. Drsmoo (talk) 01:21, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

FYI

You can go back to older articles in Ma'an, by going to the different pages of the governorates.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 17:04, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

And for the map (relieving Huldra from the notifications), I have failed myself and couldn't get the map done before being too tired to continue, so here's a snap of the workplace [4]. If you have any notes it"ll be nice (and I"ll add the names later).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:45, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

For Chrissake, it was bad enough to ask others to do work I should have done, let alone to hear you worked away at it to exhaustion. Drop it for the time being, take it easy. There's nothing urgent. The first map you did on Huldra's page was close to perfect, so just leave it at that. Thanks Stav. Nishidani (talk) 09:32, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

As I said, I really have nothing better to do and it was true for the last four days. Here's the completed map: . I assumed I should include the island in their territory because it was written in the Djagaraga lead section.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 15:44, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Sorry to be late in getting back. My time has been sequestered all day. The last map is splendid. That's really fine. I must get time to pull my socks up and do some work on the articles that, as you noted, require more imput in the I/P sector. It's just that, working on something really stimulating makes me put that stuff off, since it's only actuarial duty and not informative. No one reads it either. But still, it must be done. Thanks a lot Stav. Enjoy a break, certainly from my pestering. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 20:00, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

BTW, if you want people to read the new articles, you should try for WP:DYK when I had an article on DYK I got over a few hundred hits during that time period. 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 20:10, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that's not a bad idea, but I just haven't got much time to get distracted with DYK procedures, since I've got it into my head to do from 300-500 of these articles, overhauling the whole area. It's pretty scandalous that wiki has virtually zilch of the rich ethnographic harvest over the last century on that erased history. You look at numerous town articles, like one I read yesterday on Coen and find out that their history begins with a European, 1623, Jan Carstensz, and then jumps two and a half centuries till gold was discovered. Not a hint that the Kaantyu and Wik-Munkan tribes lived there and left extensive ceremonial sites of totemic stone lines, or ant-bed sacred sites used for complex increase rituals, and intricate papers exist sifting the last murmurs of those tribesmen speaking distinctive complex languages , papers that endeeavour to claw back some lineaments of their obliterated cosmologies. I don't care if the articles aren't read. I do care to see that those victims of genocide are memorialized encyclopedically. I'll probably never finish it, but it must be done, eventually.Nishidani (talk) 20:54, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

And the Zionist me looked at the map of the peninsula and asked myself "why don't the Australians prop up a port city there?".--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:48, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

See Sahul Shelf. Don't want to despoil you of an illusion, but you're not a Zionist: you're an Israeli with a neo-liberal outlook someone confused with Reagan-Thatcherism, caught up as is natural in a doctrinal system that forms part of Israeli national life, but probably an historical impediment to 'normalization'. As to the 'port city there', that is exactly what was attempted, first at Albany Island, then Somerset, and by various entrepreneurs and multinationals, American, English, Chinese, Japanese, etc. The logic was - there's huge wealth there, let's develop it. I guess you are aware that the creation of a Jewish state in north Western Australia was an option on the boards back in the 30s. Australians tried to barge in with a cotton-industry and, predictably, turned part of the Kimberley wetlands into a dustbowl in 10 years. By the way, there's a fascinating chap Howard Goldenberg who's been interviewed about his experiences up north, here a list of the interviews here, or the quick one here. Well worth listening to.Nishidani (talk) 11:55, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't see how being a neo-liberal (which I wouldn't completely identify as) interferes with being a Zionist, which is more of a nationalist identity rather than an economic one. The fact I support liberal ideas and do not feel racist toward Arabs, doesn't mean I want to live in a binational state or worse. I support the most democratic option of a Jewish state. If the Arabs were smart, they would follow the Druze and be our "dogs" for 50 years, until they would be strong enoguh politically to hold the Jews in the balls, but instead they choose to sit in the opposition, doing nothing and receive only 50% of the votes from the Arabs. I am confident that this scenario will never happen, becuase the Arab parties are Islamist/Communist/Nationalistic and very corrupt.

And I always say, that the best way to save the Jews, was to bring them to Israel, because the US is not an option, because many Jews were marxist, while most of the Jews would not leave everything behind and move to Unganda, Austrialia, Alaska or Madagascar. If you could gather a couple thousand Jews, infused with nationalism to Israel, they would fastly establish a community that would appeal to the rest, and that's how it grew. Now we are seeing the American Jews being less Jews and more American and they do non-Jewish things, like voting for politically-correct-establishment-allies-corrupted-warmongers like Hillary Clinton.

In other words, I prefer to give the authority to people of my own kind, and not live as guests in a different country, so if we fuck up, at least we can take responsibility for it. Having no other choices is sometimes better than having multiple choices.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 13:38, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

(Plot spoiler. The following stinks of condescension)Well, you're very young, and like vast generalizations, that by their nature cannot be debated. All ideologies, and Zionism is just one little ethnonationalistic variation, tragicomical in its anachronism, give those who grow up within them an infinite series of pat responses that are all utterly predictable. The one certain consequence is that a nationalist, qua nationalist, has nothing to say, because he must yield authority to a form of public discourse that takes precedence over experience, or imposes its interpretations prescriptively over how anything is to be experienced. I've had variations of this conversation with Soviet-or Chinese-area Communists, Hungarian or Ukrainian patriots, Japanese and Korean nationalists, Italian fascists, neocon economists, rednecks, American grand strategists, etc. The language looks different in each case, but if you boil any stretch of it down to a propositional content, it reveals the same closed structure, absolutely impermeable to reality- They're all very eloquent on the big picture: once the conversation is steered to details, personal experience, the intricate complexities of specific historical moments, they get uncomfortable. If I told you that

I prefer to give the authority to people of my own kind, and not live as guests in a different country

translates into

I defer to authority according to the ethnicity of the person wielding it. If the ethnicity is the same as mine, it has more traction on me than it would were it exercised in exactly the same manner by someone whose ethnicity differs from mine.

(in very practical wiki terms you give the lie to this because you do not assign automatically more intrinsic merit to a 'pro-Israeli' editor's POV than that of his or her adversary in an edit dispute, but try to evaluate the merits of various proposals rationally)

This is a tribal attitude.Of course, we're all free to embrace whatever set of values we prefer. But neoliberalism is diametrically opposed to tribalism: its fundamental premise is that the individual is a rational agent best positioned to determine his own choices, and that any collectivist interference in or hindrance to that individualist ethic disrupts the natural optimal allocation of resources in a way detrimental to both the individual's pursuit of happiness and his society's overall wellbeing. The whole project of liberalism is hostile to tribalism (communitarian values, redistributive justice, governmental intervention), which is regarded as a key drag on economic rationality. Like all ideologies, Zionism reckons it can reconcile both, and pragmatically, this works out as Matthew 6:3.'doing acts of charity, do not let your left hand know what your right does'.Nishidani (talk) 15:11, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

As a citizen of the State of Tel Aviv, I am well aware of the tribalism and "anachronism" of my views. While I think "anachronistic" is a way of saying "I don't like your notion, but I will criticize it for being outdated", I do accept the idea of tribalism, just like I support the idea of eating - I am a human, and that's what human do. "People of my own kind" do not translated to "Jews", people of my own kind translates to "allies", i.e. most people who have lived in this country for the last 68 years. I won't oppose the notion of a Druze or even Muslim Prime Minister, as long as he is not an: Islamist, Communist or Nationalist (Arab nationalist). All of those three groups, which form the Arab parties in Israel, are hostile to all I believe and not only hostile but also foreign. "My own kind" are the "sane majority" which excludes: radical-left, radical-right, Halachic, islamist, anti-Zionist and ultra-nationalist, these are the people I deem foreign and/or hostile to my ideal state. Marxists, of any shape and form, whether they are "Democratic Socialist" or "Progressive(=Regressive) Left" are not welcome. People who put nationalism as first priority, or people who reject the non-Kosher democracy are not welcome. People who think that you should not defy Israel's construction rules, unless you build on Arab property should be removed from the government. People who get angry at the police for not stopping honor killings, but on the same time refuse to cooperate with the police are not welcome. People who sympthize with the Palestinian cause and/or want a binational state and/or Pales. right of return, are welcome to move to Gaza and live under Hamas. People who shut "the Arabs are cancer and we don't make peace with cancer...everyone who said [population transfer]..is not Jewish, is not Democratic - Jewish Blood on their hands!" should be tortured by the Shin Bet. All of these groups are welcome to be a minority in my country, but I will not submit to them, and those groups, who are a minority in Israel, tend to be the majority in many other countries.

My agenda is not the agenda found in Germany, France or the United States, and I do not want to be a minority in those countries. My agenda can only be found among most of the Israelis and some of the world's Jews. In other words, the Jewish state, which still has a majority of "my own kind" and is still democratic, has the best potential to care about my interests, becuase my interests are shared by most of the people here, with all the disagreements, wars and shitty politicians and I wish to conserve that and not submit my life to the Halacha or to a broken Cosmopolitan world, which is a ticking self-destruction bomb that refuses to look at reality in the eyes.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 16:12, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

And as I said before, I do not think I am a neo-liberal.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 16:13, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Just to clear up a misperception. When I said anachronism, I was referring to Tony Judt's essay. Of course it upset the chattering classes, but it is an exemplary, if obvious, application of historical analysis and sociological reasoning, something regarded with distaste in Zionist discourse.Nishidani (talk) 17:36, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

"A state for Jews" and "A state where Jews have privilages" are two versions of the same thing, but the writter decided to use the latter to define the concept of a "Jewish State".

The Arabs are not constitutionally second class citizens (I"ve read Adala's list of laws, total bullshit), they are de-facto second class citizens, because the tools of Israeli democracy stand in front of their face, but Arabs were never a democratic people. It seems hundreds of years separate us from Arab democracy, which is today synonymous with Authoritarian–Marxism or Theocratical–Islamism, which are usually the outcome of democratic projects in the Arab world.

The writer is ultra-biased: he completely mislead the reader by very good manipulative tactics. For example, he shows three options in a dilemma: To leave and dismantle the settlements; To annex the territories; To cleanse the country of Arabs. He explains the problem of the second option, saying it will create a clash between "Jewish" and "Democratic". He explains the problem with the third option, saying it is "fascist", but he does not explain the problem with the first option. The ignorant reader clearly understands from the lack of criticism of the first option, that it is the only option, and he would never guess the reason why Israeli withdrawal can't be done so simply, is because Israel doesn't want to create the world's largest terrorist base, while startig a civil war at home.

Speaking about fascists, the manipulative writer uses the revisionist past of the Herut movement, which he deems as fascist, to try and construct an thesis that explains the Likud party is actually fascist. As far as I know, the Herut movement was not fascist. It was nationalistic, but not fascist and its later ideological father was the first with with the balls to make peace, and with Israel's biggest enemy at the time, Egypt. The movement under Bibi also accepted democracy and continued to implement the Oslo Accords dispite them opposing it in the previous Knesset, which is more than what Marwan Bargouti or Hamas will ever offer with the death of the Dictator.

The next point the writer makes in order to convince us the Likud is fascist, is that Ehud Barak supports the assasination of "Paletsinian politicians". He asserts that assasinating Palestinians is "political assasination", but the Palestinians are not a state, and their politicians are actively involved in terrorism against Israel (or if you want, "resistance"), including Arafat, Abbas and the rest. Is assasinating Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi "political assasination"? What about assasinating fascists? Look at the politicians the Palestinians assasinated: Abdullah I of Jordan, Wasfi al-Tal and Rehavam Ze'evi. The avarage Palestinian leader is worse than Meir Kahane in his terrorist, but if his assasination is a "fascist made-political assasination", then the assasination of Kahane as well as Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane, Meir's son, was made by fascists. So can we please go on and talk about assasinating "fascists"?

The writer talks about Sharon and Olmert as "bad guys", but Sharon was the one who disengaged from Gaza, while Olmert created the Realignment plan and was the closest ever to reaching an agreement in the Annapolis Conference, which was the main cuase why he is now in jail. So this article is anachronistic. It doesn't matter who sits at Israel's cabinet, the condescending writers, looking at the Jews with double standard, will always find a way to delegimize them.

Another way of seeing this writer doesn't really represent reality is the way he says "There are indeed Arab radicals who will not rest until every Jew is pushed into the Mediterranean, but they represent no strategic threat to Israel" yet Hamas was elected in 2006. Everyone who observed the Palestinian community with honesty since 1920 knows the reality did not change. Recently discovered Benny Morris agrees with that notion, which was surprising. The Second Intifada is all the proof needed.

Later the writer adopts the Benjamin Netanyahu Doctrine: Frighten them with Nukes. Yeah, Israel has nukes, and? What does that prove to you? That Israel is North Korea? They are the strong and the Falastinyyun are the weak, cause in the 50s Israel created nukes, long before Israel occupied the West Bank or Gaza. Give me one good reason for Israel to destroy its nuclear monopoly.

And the writer blames Israel's North Korea-like behavior to the world's loss of faith in the US which supports it, but the reason why the world is loosing faith in the US, especially in 2003 was because of this. Also, Russia and Qatar do a fairly good job at spreading anti-Western agenda worldwide. But NO, the Jews are to blame. We also killed the dinosaurs apparently.

Reaching only half of the aritcle, I really have no interest in continuing to read, it"ll probably be the same things I hear all day. Frankly, most of this article's ideas can be found in comments made by actual anti-semites all accross the internet, which shows exactly the only outcome of this article: to arm ignorants with "rational" arguments to justify their love for roasted Jews. It reminds me of the shameless arguments made by Adolf H... Sorry, by Ilan Pepe, which is amazingly worse than Gideon Levy. (And I really don't mind comparing Pepe to the Furher, he has done the same with me).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:57, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I reread this, and your update. It's all very primitive. I've read 3 books and numerous essays by Tony Judt. You haven't, but have a huge set of opinions about what he studied in profound depth for several decades on the strength of an unfinished glimpse at one article he wrote. As to the bold off-the-cuff adolescent generalizations, like 'Arabs were never a democratic people,' well, a jejune reader of Israel Shahak's books might slip into the temptation of replacing Arabs with 'Jews' above, since Shahak's argument is that the whole emphasis of Jewish religious tradition is theocratic, ethnocentric and anti-democratic. But to do so would be to commit the same error you make, identifying a cultural essence from one thread of tradition and sticking it as a destiny on people ethnically related to it - which is typical of what dyed-in-the-bull nationalists always do. Like it or not, Islamic civilization for 1,300 years has adorned with magnificent architecture and splendid poetry, to speak of just a few things, everywhere from India to Morocco, Sicily and Spain, and any heir to that civilization can feel profoundly in debt to the way that tradition inflected the world, not to speak of the fact that it was the only place Jewish communities thrived for over a millennium free of the lethal hatred and anti-Semitism which the West inflicted on Jews (I know, dhimmitude: yawn). One of my most moving experiences was waking at dawn in Beit Sahour to a muezzin's call over Bethlehem. Israel is now suppressing this inimitable part of the historic landscape of its nook in the Middle East by banning that, too, as 'noise pollution'. I'll copy a passage I once wrote out based on a memoir by a NYT journalist:'A devoutly Christian ancestor of Anthony Shadid, to cite one unforgettable example, lived in a Greek Orthodox village, Marjayoun just north of Palestine, side by side with a small but devout Sunni minority, and on occasion the fellow would ascend the minaret and do the muezzin a favour by sharing the burden and singing out over the town the prayers of his Muslim neighbours. His voice was famous for its sweet, powerful euphony, and the gesture, lending his gift to the faith of a minority, secured a conviviality we can no longer imagine.' This is called tolerance, and it is what is fast disappearing from our collective landscape-Nishidani (talk) 16:12, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I guess you're not interested in getting a tertiary education?Nishidani (talk) 19:51, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I still wonder what would make you assert that. Though maybe I"ll find a better path as a real-estate gambler.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:06, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Because all the above reminds me of myself at 17, before I acquired one of several educations that made me think for myself, rather than being the quickest kid in the schoolyard with a Time magazine or Times of London mastery of every topic. And I seriously thought that I'd do better hitchhiking around the world while washing dishes or herding sheep or whatever was needed for a feed, than absorbing a tertiary educationNishidani (talk) 20:13, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Seems like you never lived in Israel. If you don't go get tertiary education here, unless you are one of a thousand, you would be considered a failiure. We are Jews, what do you think we do? We even have a term called "Khamor Meduplam" which means "a Diplomed Ass". So yes, obviously I am planning to get tertiary education, after I"ll finish occupying Palestinians. I was thinking about taking a history course in a collage before the army, advised by my cousin who now learn criminology, which would not give me a degree (obviously) but would give me a diplome and points for a future degree, but they said I can't do the course until I will be assigned to a spesific role in the army, which had yet to happen and the deadline was reached (with your spesific role you also get your actual enlistment date). After the army I might learn history or law.. I don't know yet and I have some time to think about it.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:50, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I lived and worked in Israel when most Israelis around me had no tertiary degree, and the level of secondary education was lower than it was in the West Bank and Gaza. A tertiary education's neither here nor there: it's useful only for (a) securing a job, which means it really isn't educational, or (b) if you study under a first rate mind or two, in which case, you get an education. Probably (a) is better because it pays bills and makes one feel comfortable, unlike (b) which only gives a return on capital investment after a decade or two.Nishidani (talk) 21:16, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

^Friendly reminder I don't live in Israel but the State of Tel Aviv.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:18, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, and its capital is TAU.Nishidani (talk) 21:22, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Young Bolter21 is very sharp. Evening lads. Irondome (talk) 21:25, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

'Jagged' rather than 'sharp'. 'Sharp' implies 'honed', Simon. If you showed the above obiter d. to a history prof on day one of your sophomore course, you'd walk out of college with a leaky freckle, and it would have nothing to do with politics.Nishidani (talk) 21:31, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Jagged as a broken guinness bottle ready for battle on a saturday night. Irondome (talk) 21:36, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I was exactly Bolter's age when I had a 6 footer, 30 year old drunken hooligan thrust a jagged beer bottle against my throat, threatening to slit it if I moved, and thus forcing me to watch two of his drunken hulking mates beat the shit out of my elder brother simply because he tried to intervene to stop a fight. He had a dislocated jaw, a face completely out of shape. How to hide that from parents? We got up at dawn, went to the beach, and came back saying he'd been hit in the face by a fast surfboard riding a tall comber. It worked.Nishidani (talk) 22:16, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

It's about time to stop the drunken terrorism. It seems the President of the Phillipines is gonna prevent incidents like you had, by killing you instead.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:25, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

So.. what are you doing in Italy, given the fact you were in Japan in the past? I believed you are American/British. If you care to answer.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:21, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

I was in a lot of countries in the past. I'm of Irish descent, mainly. I retired to Italy because it (a) was the cheapest place (b) with half of the artistic patrimony of the world in its little peninsula, within walking or hitchhiking distance (c) they were the only people at the time devoid of nationalistic feelings in the political sense (d) it was a failed nation-state with all of the wisdom of 2,500 years of coping with power elites and surviving their folly (e) where your average Tom, Dick or Harry (Tizio, Caio o Sempronio) had a greater capacity to think for himself, rather than have someone on the radio, or television or in parliament do his thinking for him, as was the case in 'advanced' Anglophone countries and oriental developmental states (f) it has the best food and cuisine in the world, and you can eat as well in a neighbour's house or at home for a few dollars as a millionaire might forking out a few hundred dollars at the Tour d'Argent, (g) it had no pretensions to being anything other than a decent society for anybody who was patient enough to figure out how to get by in the midst of the endless shenanigans of the system. Nothing is taken for granted, which is what the usual idiots in the 'developed world' are socialized to do. Nishidani (talk) 14:27, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

An efficiant human being.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 15:35, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

November's response

Orientalism aside, the first democratic project that worked in the Middle East was in Tunisia, and no one knows if it will last. The Jews established one state and so far, it is still democratic and despite the talks of a Left-Right civil war, it is also stable. The only country in Israel's proximity that can claim the same is maybe Saudi Arabia, but it is the mother of the police states. I am not a big fan of Islamic civilization, and it is not discrminiation, I just didn't find my self reading a lot about the periods between the fall of Rome and the renaissance. I am also not a big fan of the music, oddly I love Baroque and Northeast Asian throat singing, with some love of several Japanese folk songs. I am also not a big fan of their architecture, or architecture in general. And I also don't like Algebra. And "Israel" didn't ban the Mosque's speakers, nor did it even reach a vote in the Knesset. And it doesn't matter if you see it as "beautifull", the speakers did not exist in the days of Muhammad and they are annoying to those who live in their proximity. The hills of Samaria are also beautiful, will we stay in the settlements because of this? As for tolerance, I was subjected to my Orthodox uncle's rules when I visited my grandmother, and I grew to despise Rabbanic Orthodox Judaism. A year ago I realised that I can't take Meretz's approach of condamning Jewish rabbis, while calling for tolorance for Muslims. Speaking of Muslims, I wonder if Palestinians just displaced 1,600 Israelis by burning their rightfull land.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:05, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't take any national genius to establish a small state under multipolar international great power protection, funded by $150 billion dollars from just one source, with watertight guarantees for massive military assistance whenever you get into some difficulty, and friends in the right places virtually everywhere where the key decisions are made. The Palestinians are friendless, treated like shit, from the Ottomans onward, and even have trouble gathering in their olive harvest. We have a another shared interest. I've seen a fair bit of bad behavior, I've even been, or had, close friends threatened, by aboriginal people heirs to ancient angers against the new foreign immigrant majority in their countries. Fortunately, I had exceptionally gifted parents re ethnic sensitivities whose understanding of the hidden shame of 'white' history in Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand was quietly impressed on me from childhood - the lesson was one inimitably versified by Auden

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

That's a great poem to familiarize yourself with, at a certain age. I recite it quite often when walking long miles through big cities.

I was a great fan of Tuvan throat singing after listening to it in a link in a Scientific American article years ago. Every now and then I seek out new performances, but have been disappointed over the last two years. All you get is a sinocentric or nationalist imitation because it is commercially highly popular. But I can still feel the deep chill-thrill of the counterpointed rumbling imitative of mountain waters in the SA article. Like a thousand wonderful things it took 10,000 years to work out, and on, it will go down the tube or end up as a piece of junk in the world's infinite trashheap of memorabilia.ps. Samaria was not part of the Judaic world as that is imagined today. It was a very distinct culture, Samaritan, pagan, and Judaic, but no one's exclusive landscape. I must rush to see van Damme do some massive damage after getting the shit beaten out of him. Somehow doses of the neanderthal negative make my mornings, by abreaction, more lucid. Cheers lad, and take care nowNishidani (talk) 21:38, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I didn't really compare Israel to Palestine, I compared Israel to the entire Arab world. And in your description of Israel's inception you forgot the fact we are talking about mostly 40 years of migration and refuge, that established a complex society, built from people of different cultures and traditions and a stable nation was created, which is still democratic. I don't know many simmilar cases. And the US funding can be cancelled. We receive money from the US in order to buy weapons from the US, but if we were less of a Likudnic Banana Republic, we might"ve created our own weapons, but drastic moves and Israel are two things that don't appear in the same sentence usually. And the funny part about throat singing, is that it opened me to Death Metal.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:07, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

The error is in comparing one nation to a whole civilization. I hope your dislike of Algebra (the modern world arguably began when Descartes reformulated traditional algebra by applying it to the dimension of geometry) doesn't extend to set theory? Nations/states are members of a larger category (think of the difference between hypernym and hyponym by analogy), that of civilizations. There are innumerable books on every nation of the type (America and the world, China and the world, India and the world, and though curious to browse through, they are formulated meaninglessly, since the operative presupposition, comparing one entity in a category to all the other entities in that category, as if the latter constituted a valid object of contrast with the former, is conceptually flawed. It's confounding genus and species, in short, like writing of one sub variety of Felidae like the Chinese mountain cat and arguing about its differences with the rest of the whole genus, bundling up panthers, lynxes, pumas etc. into a contrastive taxonomy. Or to use the analogy from semantics, treating as an intelligible set for contrast, a colour like yellow with all the other shades in the set of 'colour'. Israel is one nation of 200, an offshoot of the family of Western states (subset: colonial enterprise states), whereas the 'Arab world' you refer to is a supranational category, treated as though it were a subset of itself. The error is endemic, even in academia, but commonplace in popular newspaper and opinion, but makes no sense. The premise underlying it is 'exceptionalism', and virtually all books that make this category/subset confusion do so with the assumption that the chosen nation, the US/China/Russia/or in this case 'Israel' is somehow ontologically different from the collective set of nations/ or indeed the general run of all nations in the world. Nation states can be compared structurally, like tribes can me, but you can't compare with heuristic profit one nation state or tribe with all other states/tribes. An anthropologist would get nowhere trying to outline the nature of say the Barasana by using as a contrast Mesoamerican civilization. I have a heavy day of birthday partying and the monstrous pressure of an Italian Sunday dinner ahead and must do some wiki work to justify this excursus in non-wiki pontification. Keep well.Nishidani (talk) 09:07, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

My "Arab thesis" is based mostly on observing 2016s Arab society, as well as reading some articles and talking to no more than ten Arab people in the last 2 years. Surely it can't be applied to the entire Arab world (And I am one of those who refuse to connect my Algerian heritage to "Mizrah". I am "Maghrebi", not "Mizrahi", though I also have Lebanese heritage), and surely it is far from being any close to an academic level, but I still believe in it. The main problem is terminology, and in English I tend to struggle in logically explaining things. While both the speaker and the listener are confident the message is clear, a later look will reveal that the way I explained something was actually wrong. I"ll let it be my excuse for now. As for terminology, I always struggle with "ethnicity", "nationality", "culture" etc. Israeli textbooks, Wikipedia and scholars all say different things. I grew to like the term "mentality". From my observation, it seems that most of the Arab nations are incapable of accepting supreme national authority when it is not oppressing them. You sometimes have to ask, "why is there more crime in the Arab parts of Israel?" Is it soley because they are mostly low class? I think that the lack of cooperation with the police is a major contributer, but another strong factor, is the fact that Arabs don't always make "peace with the establishment". While I think following the law is "moral", they don't always. I remember doing dozens of shifts with a medic called "Muhi" (Muhammad), who is an established Arab man, with wife and chilren, who lives in central Tel Aviv after moving from the Galilee. I had many conversations with him about life, and I saw a difference between the mentality he has in compare to the Jewish medics as well as what I have at home and in school. The things that matter to the avarage Tel Avivian are being intelectual and thinking about a career, while Muhi, as well as the other Arab medics in Magen David Adom cared less about how they"ll make their money, but more about what they will do with the money. Also in their work as medics there was a difference. The Jewish medics talked a lot about doing things properly, following protocols and going by the book, while the Arab medics did everything, as long as it worked. They all did their job successfully, but not "by the book". It has its pros and cons. For example, one of the Arab medics taught me shortcuts in tasks such as preparing an oxygen mask, working the bed and operating in the hospital. Surely when we made CPRs the Arabs followed the protocols and worked by the book, I don't think I need to explain why. The cons of this mentality, is that most of the ambulances were usually messy, and the medics did things I personally can't do, like eating while driving a patient to hospital, or leaving bags of gauzes and sticks used for glucometers. I was able to connect this mentallity to the mentallity interprated from the news coming from Syria and Iraq. I don't like the saying "they are simple people", becuase it will be wrong. They are simple in the eyes of those who live by values originated in Europe, but the Arab people simple have a different mentallity. You can say all about them, but in the reality test, you"ll see that eventually, the Arab man will first fight for his hamula, and his religion, before he will fight for you. Exceptions do exist, Egypt for example, which has expirianced some degree of independence since the 19th century. You can also see Syrians infused with Syrian nationalism, who die fighting for Assad, but you also see the rebels and the rest of the loyalists, who die for the tribe they affiliate themselves with. It can also be seen among the Palestinians, especially in 1948.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 10:50, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

A lot of interesting ancedotes there. I know what you mean: people who live in fucked up states, or in states where they are marginalized as second-raters, have a natural tendency to develop empirical life skills the elite don't think professional. Italy is full of people exactly like the Arabs you describe: nothing's done by the book, because if you do, more often than not, the system will fuck you up, so you play things by ear and learn to think contextually, according to immediate needs. We had a magnificent surgeon at a local hospital for some decades, until it was found out he was the son of a butcher, who forged his qualifications because he couldn't afford a degree. Nothing 'Arab' about that. Put any 'Arab' of talent into a functional society that accepts him, and you'll see him or her qualify and behave along with the best, as any visit to a hospital in England, or the US and you will note no difference in professionalism ethnically. Same in gaza. Those mediocos and ambulance sataff there have been described in detail by many foreign colleagues, and are regarded as miracle-workers in a chronic disaster area where no resources demands ingenuity not according to the book. It's a survival mentality born of systemic insecurity, as opposed to a technical mentality standard among people who are fully integrated into a functional social system. As to crime, the name case is made against American blacks, or Australian aborigines. One day you should read Ernest Gellner's Muslim Society. And now, social obligations require me to don the dominical nose-bag for some hours.Nishidani (talk) 11:14, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

My British-cultured Sephardi grandfather used to annoy his Italian sister-in-law by saying "the Italians are the Arabs of Europe".--Bolter21 (talk to me) 11:31, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

It's a compliment: the Egyptians are the Neapolitans of the Arab world, in that sense. It's one reason why, in military missions, the Italians rarely have the problems gung-ho ideologically primitive states like the US and Israel have. Send them anywhere and they know how to fit in. Lebanon's quiet also because the UN sent in Italian contingents, who know how to make themselves accepted, as they do in Herat Province. When no outsider could step into al-Qaeda held territory, Italians ran their base hospitals there under the direction of a man who deserves a Nobel prize several times over, Gino Strada, head of Emergency. I'm glad to have adopted Italy: anywhere I travel, all I need to do to figure out a problem in any country is to ask some local Italian, and they sort everything out. They save 1,000-2,000 people, Africans, Arabs, you name it, every day in the Mediterranean, bringing them into their ports where they obtain provisional security, unlike 26 of the 28 states in the EU that get hysterical about 'foreigners', 'Arabs' etc. An illegal Senegalese immigrant with no papers dropped down in the streets of Naples, and was ferried to an emergency ward nearby. He had no identification, but the problem emerged that he needed expensive heart surgery. The administration faxed the Health Ministry for instructions and were duly informed that it was the state's obligation to provide health care to anyone requiring it, regardless of circumstances. He had the operation at Italy's expense. They are in this sense one of the few civilized countries in the world (Of course there are political movements here too that are outraged and want to be xenophobic - perhaps they will win out, but in the meantime, this tradition of 'mediterranean' values, not Nordic racist efficiency and cost-benefit analysis, prevails).Nishidani (talk) 15:23, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

In any case with all the Sephardic, Maghrebi, French etc. mixtures in your background Stav, you are primarily everything from that multiplex of cultures, histories and backgrounds, plus, of course, your unique self. That kind of identity is more complex than any petty formal documentation about what state claims for you. Jewish heritage should not be reduced to some 'Israeli' boiler-plate or mononational melting pot: Israel's heritage should be expanded by recognizing the plethora of identities always available to the far-flung cosmopolitan fraternities and sororities of 'Jews'. Nishidani (talk) 15:32, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

The positive traits that you have attributed to Italians can also be attributed to practically all humans everywhere on the planet, today and throughout the history of human civilization. This includes, but is not limited to, Israeli Jews, Israeli non-Jews, Palestinians, Arabs, etc., as well-as non-Mediterranean Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc... People are fundamentally good. We generally prefer to help each other and build each other and develop each other. We are built to instinctively feel we are all brothers and sisters, basically, and to feel deep enjoyment when we do good deeds for each other without expecting any payment (financial or otherwise) in return. Ijon Tichy (talk) 14:22, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

The reason to why this approach will never work is exactly the reason why this approach is wrong. Humans are not fundementaly good. We are creatures who murder and genocide. You can either face it, or not think about it, but trying to change that will end in the consumption of your values by some other one's values, who are strong. I once saw a post saying that there is an uninevitable cycle, in which harsh times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create harsh times. We are heading towards harsh times in the West, when all of our theories and values will crumble in front of our faces. One of the things I see is the emergence of the mockingly nicknamed Social Justice Warriors, which is a broad term that today defines the 21st century's Identity politics such as Third and Fourth-wave feminism, Black Lives Matter as well as broken versions of Progressivism and excessive Political correctness. All of these movements are have parallels to Marxism, in the way they are a loud minority of the population that demands the entire society to submit to their values and should you not, you are a "mysoginist", "rape-apologist", "anti-woman", "racist", "fascist", "regressive", "islamophobe", "homophobe", "transphobe". In the US in particular, they might condamn you for being a "white heterosexual male" and if you don't submit to their values, they will claim you don't understand what does it means to be "poor", "discriminated" or "hated" because you are a "white heterosexual male". It is not a coincidence that many of those movements are accosiated with Cultural Marxism.

The outcome of those movements will be the end of western civilization, as the western values that held it togather will crumble and it will be consumed by madness and stupidty, which are the traits found in Radical-Left and Radical-Right. If you go by the path of Social Justice Warriorism, you will either end up with a failing society, caused by all of the non-issues raised by the SJW, or else you will cause the Far-Right Wing to rise and destroy the society in a different way.

When either of the scenarios will happen, the people who thought humans are fundementaly good, will realise the huge amount of bad humans that were created by the current reality. Just look at the protests in response to Donald Trump's election.

In Israel and Palestine we kill as part of a conflict, because we are having a harsh time. In the US they are in the "good time" period, and their humane instinct made them search for conflict, and they found it in attacking Trump or Hillary supporters. The same somewhat happened in Israel. In the 90s we had quite a good time, while the Palestinians had a bad time, causing them to start the intifada. The developments in Israel, caused by the fact we were no longer threatened by Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria have led to the explosion of the conflict with the Palestinians, as a Prime Minister was murdered and the peace attempt failed, leading to the Second Intifada and the wars in Gaza.

One period of good time was the preset to the death of thousands. It was once said that the best way to destroy Israel is to make peace with it.

We can argue all day, if I am right or wrong when I say we shoudl acknowlege it as an inevitable fact, but only time will judge.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 16:30, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry to have to make this annotation, B, but nothing you wrote would be interpreted in any other way by the classical theorists of the state, liberals mostly, than as a somewhat garbled rehash of Fascist rhetoric. This is one area where I have extensive competence regarding the literature on the 20s and 30s in several states. It only shows you read a lot of internet talk in this putatively post-ideological world, stuff filtered down from Breitbart.com per Steve Bannon, or Ayn Rand websites (might rules the world: the chattering classes are wimps), to give it an 'improving' name. They key is that, in a world of complex geopolitical, financial and social upheavals, you target a small number of 'leftist' cultural 'whingers' as the cause of our contemporary blindness, when, for all the attention they get in a certain vein of the media, that have zero impact, on society, on politics, on general opinion. We saw this in the 1920s,30s, with societies in distress raging about cosmopolitanism (Jews and broadscale thinkers, who had little impact, and in the so-called Culture wars of the 1980s-90s, all intensely boring) I might add that you make an error in saying 'we' in the West. Israel is not a Western society, at least yet, though it is true that Western societies might succumb to the temptation of becoming more like Israel, i.e., abolishing 200 years of political history, social engineering and thought in order to refurbish themselves in an updated version of the old authoritarian pre-enfranchised societies of the 1800s. If so, anti-Semitism will revive as anti-Islamism, and perform exactly the same function that anti-Semitism did in the reactionary strata, elitist and popular, down to the 1930s. And lastly, Identity politics is what Israel, and its claim on the diaspora has been about, with almost unparalleled, intensity for its national mindset, since the late 1960s, compared to which the movements you name are piddling. Nishidani (talk) 17:40, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I sometimes consider Israel as West and sometimes not, but one thing is sure, in Israel we share more values with the West than most countries in the world, even though the opinions, mentallity and culture are differnet. So in this context I would regard Israel as western. And while you make this annotation about this comment I made on the Left, I havent even started talking about the Right. I"ll remind you that while the source of "blindness" in Europe comes from the leftist governments, in Israel it actually comes from the Right Wing government. Sadly the Left in Israel has succumbed to the Right, and suddenly the Labour Party defines it self as "centirst" becuase they don't want to sound "Leftist". The Labour Party, which used to fight for separation of state and religion, suddenly tries to convince religious people that they are on their side. The outcome is that the only real Leftist party is Merertz, which I personally hate, as they are too Far-Left for me. A simmilar things happens in Germany. The Left controls the country, and condamns all right wing parties as being too nationalistic and.. the N word. The right wing parties succumb to the Left generaliztion and the outcome is that the only parties that remain a real alternative to the Left are the Far-Right wing parties. In Israel the situation is different than in Germany, becuase in Israel we did not have anything equivelent to the Migrant Crisis and in Israel elections are on political tribalism and not on policy since 2009, but there are parallels. It was tempting to say I am Right-Wing, becasue of my opposition to the Left (and not "centre-left"), but I can't identify with most of the things represanted by the Right, in Israel and in the world. I am one of those people who will argue with anyone, and I would think it is an addiction unless I found out that there are people with whom I actually agree almost on anything. When I argue with you Nishidiani, or with IjonTichy, I say things that are "somewhat garbled rehash of Fascist rhetoric", when I argue with Right-Wing people, I am suddenly a "blind leftist".

I assumed while writing, but forgot to explain it, that you would understand from my comment that I support the state of war and the idea of "strong men", but I don't. I just think it is inevitable and we are not here to prevent it, but here to limit and supress it as much as we can. I don't think that an all-out-war with the Palestinians is something that can be prevented, it will happen in the future. And if not, one day, in the next century, more or less, Israel will collapse, just like every other state in the world. When we determine the policy today, we also determine the setting for the future, and a Third World War, or a massive economic criris, or overcorruption might happen, but we have the tools to delay it and go around it, to move towards the next threat. Every step in the right direction, gurantees another century of prosperity to the society. I think that the developments in the US are a step in the wrong direction, when the society deals with non-issues, like the sex of the President or his colour. I also think that legalizing Amona is a step in the wrong direction as well as the appointment of Miri Regev as the Minister of Culture and Sport.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:11, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Nothing's inevitable: to think so is to assume god's prescience. Whatever the big picture, one does, every day, in the smallest of routines, affect it, by one's exercise of choice, one's manner with others,etc. I have a darker picture than you of the future, I can afford to, since I won't be there. It's hard enough for anyone raised in the 'good' period of the post-war era not to, having seen what societies can do when they go through the washer, end up comprehending evil, and work to the common good, which means allocative democracy, not market plutocracy as we have now. The fantasy of an all-out-war with the Palestinians is just that. There is zero interest in that among Palestinians, except as a coffee set-piece of exasperative mouthing off. Israel gets hysterical about Hamas, which in 2014 threw back, mostly into the desert a massive 40 tons of explosive on 4,000 'missiles' (read fizzle rockets and mortars) while Israel unleashed 20,000 tons. That is the scale of the disparity, the 'existential threat'. It's all Saderot cinema, really, this panicky apocalypse. What Israel appears to find totally relentlessly disgusting about Palestinians is that they can take that, and more, for several decades, and still not fuck off. You can't get their 'respect' and submission as a people. There society is so thoroughly penetrated by your services that dossiers exist, and informants supply information, on virtually every household. Nothing can happen there without someone hearing of it. If such a thing happened, it would do so only because Israel decided to adopt some pretext to finish the issue and clean out the West Bank, as it thought of doing by negotiating with Egypt to expel the Gazans into the Sinai recently Nishidani (talk) 18:39, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I think we"ve got to the point where I start not agreeing with myself, something I hate to admit, which means I talked too much without thinking with myself. Anyway, I"d like to remain on one point, of the all-out-war between Israel and the Palestinians. I stay on Israel's side obviously, and comdamn the Palestine just like every "good boy" would do, but seeing the developments with the Jewish Home party as well as the shiting of the Likud from the original Right wing policies to the Religious Zionism policies, I am sure that one of the main reasons why peace will not come is the fundementalism of the Religious Zionists movement in Israel. Seeing how they treat Amona, a crappy illegal outpost of caravans on private Palestinian land, I can't imagine what will happen when they will force the evacuation of Kiryat Arba, a settlement of more than 5,000 people which has 3,800 years of Jewish connection (whether you believe in Abraham or not, and I don't). In 2008 the evacuation might have happened, but in 2016 it surely can't, after Cast Lead, Protective Edge, the Silent Intifada and the Intifada of Individuals, the Israeli society is too loaded to support the Two-State Solution. The change is not in the number of seats in the parliament, but in the de facto power. The Left in Israel is crumbling and if a new Kadima won't apear in the next two years, it might be too late, because Naftalie Bennet is holding the furher in the balls and most certainly return to his power of more than 10 seats as he had in 2013. Israel is today ruled by the Religious Right wing, what we in the Left like to call "a minority of fanatics". I am able to blame the Palestinians for that, but most of all I blame the Left, and after seeing all of my friends and family supporting the Left in 2006, 2009 and 2013, a year ago I have withdrew my ancestral support.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:43, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I've never understood what 'leftist' means in most societies. Americans call them 'liberals', liberals are right-wingers in England and Australia. I see a lot of perceptive decent Israelis but no party that could be called 'leftist' in the old sense. Zionism was basically socialism+colonialism - go figure how that works out in terms of gauche/droit! a Not that that matters. Even a murderous fascist prick like Sharon could withdraw from Gaza.

3,800 years of Jewish connection (Kiryat Arba). Just a small thing, but I keep seeing that 3,800-4,000 figure arise all over the Israeli press, or from your PM and various mouthpieces. I mean, really, everyone can do elementary math. 2000+800 means 2,800. Why tack on the extra millennium, back so far when Jews didn't exist? The Jewish presence in Hebron (I basically wrote the article) goes back to the 8th century. Then after 2 centuries, with the exile, it became an Edomite/Arab territory basically, and stayed that way. Whatever Jews remained there or settled there, were never more than a handful of families, esp. over the last 5 centuries when it was repopulated. Most of those families are disgusted with the Yanky mob who made claims fore repossession in their name, one even transferred his property title to the Hebron municipality in 1974. Kiryat Arba had zero religious significance. Nishidani (talk) 18:13, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

To me the damn "mount" with the germy wall, full of Haredi cells and letters containing plagues and emberassing wishes has no significance. I would be happy if we would just take a D9 and raze the entire mount, regardless of which stone is claimed by which religion. The 3,800 years of Jewish connection, is based on the biblical story, call it a tradition. While I care more about the sacrafice of the residents of people, the fact that Kiryat Arba is the wannabe Jewish Hebron is also important, and people will not accept its dismantlement.

Speant three days in the West Bank, I even had the oppertunity to take a picture of Ramallah from Psagot.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:39, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

The Palestinians did not accept the expropriation of 50,000-80,000 houses and properties they owned in Israel in 1948. All West Jerusalem was Arab property. In every peace negotiation Israel has accepted in principle (though the US and EU would pay) that compensation is due to the Palestinians for the 'dislocation' caused by Israel's foundation. Jews had 6% of the property/land in Palestine in 1947, the UN plan gave them sovereignty over 56% and a few months of war they got 78%. 'Not enough! More, more! cheap. All you need is to scream 'terrorism!' Arabs! existential threat!!,' shoot a bit, and you get another 100 sq.kilometres of property on the real estate market at a pittance, ready to be given to immigrants .The infrastructure at Kiryat Arba is an obvious recompense: but it is not important. No one objects to that, really. It's the 800 religious dingbats and racists inside Hebron proper that should be expelled from the West Bank, so that the city can resume its normal life, and 30,000 Arabs return to the central market area.Of course, this won't happen.Nishidani (talk) 11:31, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Ready to be given to immigrants? The apartment prices rose in 80% since 2008 becuase the Israel Land Administration does not release the +90% of Israel they own. Seriously now, the Palestinians had nothing to say in the expropriation of their houses. The residents of Kiryat Arba are going to make sure there will be pools of blood before anyone will try to first evacuate them. And yet there is no connection between the events of 1948 and the event of a peace agreement between Israel and the PLO. What you said reminded me of the argument made by the return plan of the Palestine Land Society, which gives the only existing plan (I know of) that actually describes the Palestinian return. According to them, the decendents of refugees from the Gaza Strip will be populated in the northern part of the Negev. How? By kicking all 140,000 "rural Jews" and settling the million + Palestinians in the rural areas. What is their excuse? "They had no right to be there in the first place". Norman Finkelstein once said about the BDS that they think they are very smart, when they say they want to turn Israel into a binational state, end the occupation and allow the right of return, but when they go outside and meet with Israelis who say "what about us?" they have nothing to say, and thus it is a cult. You can't say that "Kiryat Arba" has no significance and dance with historical records and create analogies with the events of 1948, trying to create a moral thesis. What matters is not the morallity of the actions, but their implication. You cannot go to Kiryat Arba with D9s, history books and moral arguments and expect thing to go well. Those people don't care about your opinion, this is their home, whether you think they deserve it or not, and I have no sympathy to the residents of Kiryat Arba, which is the Neve Shalom of the Far-Right wing (by the way wouldn't it be hillarious if the country will decide to give Neve Shalom to the Palestinians in a peace deal?). The residents of Kiryat Arba and Hebron are the fascists of Israel, but they are there, and when the time will come to evacuate them, you won't be able to tell them "it is for peace" or "yeah uh, the Palestinians also made concessions in 1948". You are going to face your (my) own people and fight them. Is an Israeli civil conflict more moral to you than the end of the occupation? Just like what is written in my userpage, I care the most about the right of people to live in dignitiy and bring children, and I should add that I also care about the children, I don't care about morallity or human rights as long as they prevent these two basic functions of human beings. So far the democratic tribalism works and if we (both nations) had different leaders, it might have been better for the Palestinians even without an end to the occupation, at least like it was back in the 70s and early 80s.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 13:40, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Dunam by dunam is the only logic here. In 1878, on the eve of the first pogroms that awoke Zionism, 95% of Palestine was Muslim-Christian. By the time of the Balfour Declaration, Jews were still less than 10%. Technically, the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations declared Mandatory powers were to oversee those countries until independence was achieved. This was, singularly, to be denied to the Palestinians. By 1947, the Jews were 30-32%, and the Partition Plan gave, uniquely, this 30% sovereignty over 56% of the land, of which they owned a scarce 6% of. It was thoroughly rational for all the Arab countries to reject this Great Power proposal as a form of violent expropriation of rights and territories, and to see it as (a) anti-Semitic (b) colonialist. It was anti-Semitic because, having exterminated 5,3 million Jews, Europe washed its hands of blame, and set up a system incentivating the transfer of its surviving Jews beyond its frontiers, to the Middle East where the notion of genocide, despite all the gung-ho rhetorical manipulations of the historical record, Jews had never suffered the kind of ontological theological odium and social massacres they were exposed to in their Western diaspora (b) demanding that the Palestinians pay the blood price for Western genocide.So in 1948, war broke out between Israel and Palestinians, with a fiction of 5/6 Arab armies invading. Well, the war was just on 2 fronts: Israel no more respected the Partition Plan than did its enemies, though Pasha Glubb fought fundamentally to defend the territory assigned to Palestinians, while Egypt fought from the south. Israel won 78& of the land, and expelled or expedited the ethnic purge of 700,000 Palestinians. 13,000 disappeared, presumed dead in the conflict. In 1967 told by the best informed services in the West that in the eventuality of war, Israel would conquer all fronts within 6-10 days, Israel chose war, and ended up with 100%+the Golan Heights, which was, as we know, more or less the basic game plan, minus Lebanon south of the Litani. The Palestinians are 6 million, the Jews are 6 million. The choice is obvious: one can trash rhetorical feelings of 'guilt' i.e., Ari Shavit's 'dark secret at the heart of Zionism' and simply address the simple question. Is it in Israel's long-term interests retain all of the excuses, playing on ambiguities for not acting unilaterally to impose peace by allowing that the country has legally 78% of a land it had no legal title to originally, or is it worth while keeping up the façade of wanting a deal, while nabbing incrementally or strangling most of the 6-million thick 22% where Palestinians live?Nishidani (talk) 16:14, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

And what if the Jews gave up the vast Negev Desert? David Ben-Gurion was one of the only people who wanted to maintain the Negev, many other Jewish leaders didn't mind that Transjordan will take the Negev despite the fact it was part of the Jewish State, becuase they didn't want to fight Transjordan. If UNSCOP decided to give the Negev Desert to the Palestinians would you be pleased? And what reason would be to respect a partion plan that can't happen? The Arabs refused and declared a war, the Jews didn't have to sit and think "let's do it moral", they had to fight to determine the future. And for as for the Likud trapping the 4~ million Palestinians in the 22%, the credit can go to the Second Intifada.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 17:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

It's not a matter of asking 'the Jews' by which you mean Israel's political parties, to give up any part of Israel, or to rake over the past, esp. when the past is so controversial (you have a weird, to me, understanding of why the Second Intifada broke out - it broke out because the Oslo Accords set 1998 as the date whereby a permanent settlement of outstanding issues was to be resolved based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Nothing happened. Netanyahu would not budge at the time - he, like his father, never believed in the idea that eretz Israel was negotiable, not an inch.

It's simply a matter of deciding if appetite to land has a limit. The Palestinians have never had a say in anything in their land since 1917. The British, the French, the US, the Great powers, the Jewish Agency, decide. Palestinians have had to accept what is decided by outsiders. When George Bush was president, I think in 2006, one memoirs recounts that in the White House as some policy initiative for peace was being mulled over, 6 advisors, including Dennis Ross, sat agonizing at the table. All 6 were Jewish - policy was decided without even one outside or independent voice being allowed to give input. They were all, Americans, of course, but the policy reflected the profound attachment to Israel of the advisory body, uncontroverted by any input from the other side.

The failure to understand why giving immigrants a lockdown on 56% of the land when they owned 6% of it, and were 3/10ths of the population, was unacceptable to Arabs, - it would be unacceptable to any negotiating party in any similar conflict because the minority settlers were given an outsized portion of territory with respect to their numbers- that is the problem. If you had an apartment block, most of which was owned and lived in by your kin, and were told that, by a certain date, they would be renting half of it from the 30% minority, to whom majority title had been handed over by a foreign authority, neither you nor any other rational actor would accept that force majeure. You'd fight, like any reasonable person looking at their interests, to retain the traditional rights of inheritance. The Palestinians weren't trapped by Likud in 22%, they were trapped there in 1967, long before Likud's grip on power.

You can't have it both ways: be raised on Jewish victim stories of the valiant if doomed struggle by zealots to redeem Judea from Roman imperialism, from 70 down to Bar-Kochba, and then adopt the Roman Imperial perspective in discussing Palestinian resistance today to the loss of their homeland by an imperial, colonial power they regard with some reason as an intruder. You can't be reared on stories of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, as a profound historic injury to your ancestors 2,600/2000 years ago, and then find totally beserk the same attitude among Palestinians fearing for the loss of Al-Aqsa. The essence of Zionism is to sustain itself by a myth of a past injury, which is to be redeemed, while denying Palestinians a right to exactly the same order of feelings, a sense of a past and ongoing displacement, dispossession and loss of everything they have had because a superior immigrant power, albeit one now legitimately entrenched in an unalienable part of former Palestinian land, appears to want everything, from East Jerusalem to the waters of the Samarian-Judean hills.

My mind works by analogy and equality: the whole Palestinian cause against Israel is identical to that of the Jews pitted against the Romans. A Zionist education treats this analogy, precise down to minute details, as a taboo: Bar-Kochba dug tunnels to fight a guerilla war against the Dacian/Greeks/Macedonians etc., who all shared the one identity (Romans) and youth read of the war rooting for the lost cause of the local population (as I did as a boy). Then dropping the history book, they open a page of Ynet, The Times of Israel, and read of a native population of zealots and sicarii, Hamas, digging tunnels against an army constituted by descendents of an aliyah population of Maghrebi, Russians, Ethiopians, Poles, French, Yemenis, etc.etc., and are shocked at the madness and vileness of the indigenes fighting them. 'terrorists!' 'Islamic fanatics'. Well, that's exactly how Roman literature describes participants in the Jewish uprising - murderous, god/Torah-intoxicated religious fanatics. It's crazy. Nishidani (talk) 18:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

The Palsestinians wanted all of the land, and while they have the right to demand, it is worthless to portray the Palestinians' decision to go to war as a decision followed by discontent by the partition plan's map. No map would keep them content The Palestinians repeated the same rhetoric until the very day of the vote in the UN: "The line of separation will be no other than a line of fire and blood", as said by Jamal Husseini to the Palestine Committee 5 days before the vote. The Arab League also opposed any kind of partition, even a confederation of small cantons. They opposed every compromise, and this approach leads to devastation. The same approach is now used by the Far-Right wing in Israel and so far it led to the assasination of Rabin, the killings of 29 Muslim worshipers and a wave of brainwashed millenials which will receive the right to vote in a few years. On the Palestinian side it led to more campagins against Israel as well as Jordan and Lebanon, all ended in disaster for the Palestinians. The first time the Palestinians faced a real success was when they were willing to compromise, in 1993.

The Palestinians did not accept the plan not becuase they wanted the colonialists out. The Palestinians didn't accept the plan becuase they wanted to rule and the colonialists were a target. Obviously they weren't expected to accept the Jewish precense, but it is hard to say that until 1947 the Jewish presence was negative. The "Palestinians" in that context are the Arab Higher Committee and the Husseini bloc. They wanted to rule. It is no secret that many Arab men were more indifferent to the partition, prefering to join Transjordan's Arab kingdom, but I am not going to believe that most of the fellaheen cared more than what their leaders could make them. The peasents (I don't know if this word is an insult or not) supported the Islamic leadership of the mufti and followed him because they were simple people, like the voters of Shas, but most of all they cared about their income, which they believed will improve once they will have their own state, as preached to them since the 19th century and the days of WWI and the Great Arab Revolt. The Arab people care first about their families, then their clan/hamula and only then their national or religious affiliation. If the Nashashibis handled the situation, there might"ve been no Nakba and even better, if the Arabs accepted the partition plan, today there was no Jewish state but instead, the Husseinis took the power and started a war, which will turn out is one of the most embarrassing defeats in history, caused mostly by arrogance

But again, I don't think those analogies, as well as the Bar Kohva one (and as I"ve been told, Bar Kohva is exactly the example of a bigoted idiot who brought devastation on his people) will serve me while dismantling Kiryat Arba. To you it is justice, standing from the side, and I would also want to see justice in many other places in the world, but to me, the dismantlment of Kiryat Arba is not justice, it is to sever the foot while the entire leg is already contaminated and I don't have access to a bondage or antibiotics.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 19:29, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

It's pointless. Your ears and eyes are thoroughly drenched in the stories told among Israelis, in Israel. There is nothing above that shows any independent thinking about these historical circumstances. Indeed, I wouldn't expect this to be the case. You said you begin to disagree with yourself, often. I can remember when, two years older than you, according to third parties, I was said to have made a 'dazzling' reply to an American woman, regarding the Middle East, who had criticized the Jews slightly. I spoke at speed for an hour. A friend complimented me. Back in my room, I thought to myself: 'Really. The lady hadn't read Newsweek and Time Magazine recently and I have, and it all sticks in my memory, and I just recited what I'd read, and have impressed bystanders because they hadn't either, didn't realize I was mouthing with accurate recall a series of second hand opinions. But fuck it: I've never been there' (I decided to go that evening) Well, in disagreeing with you, I am disagreeing with myself as I once tended to 'think', at your age. No condescension. And no implication an old man like myself knows better, or that you will change your mind in time. The only advantage I have is a half century of reading, and being able to see, in an argument like this, if my interlocutor has stepped out of the standard paradigm, or not. Stepping out of it can lead in all sorts of directions, and it would be improbable if you ambled, once out of the magic circle of memes, my way. But I do hope that you find your own distinctive voice: it's very hard in any circumstances, esp. in any intense discursive climate. Nishidani (talk) 19:49, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

I am not excited by what you said. I was told that same thing by people on many different subjects, including opposing settlements, religion and consevatism. You don't know what I am told in Israel, a mere 1% of all of our discussion is much more than what the avarage Israeli in my area cares about. An Israeli observing this discussion will say that I stand silence as you bash the natural right of the Jewish people to Israel and Hebron, and that I let you say lies like "the Jews kicked the Arabs and had no right to the land". I was never taught to try and read about the Palestinian narrative and the newspaper I read the most is Ha'aretz, which is also the only newspaper that actually talks about history. In school my final grade in History was 7/10 which is garbage and in the test itself there was only one question out of 16 about the War of Independence. The narrative in Israel is not really taught. Today instead of teaching a narrative, they teach nothing, they want the public to be less connected to the past and remember only what they want them to remember: the Holocuast. None of my peers know about the Second Intifada which they lived through, the Six Day War or the Palestinian Authority. Most of my knowlege was from reading in English rather than in Hebrew and this is how I got to the English Wikipedia, because the Hebrew Wikipedia is uncredible and poor. Recently I started reading books, namely Independence Versus Nakba and The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (2004) which I am reading right now as well as two unrelated books I plan on reading this after I"ll finish with the Nakba (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, you probably read or heard about it, and another book about prehistoric Canaan). But I am not in a position to try and outsmart you with what I read yesterday, I simply respond to your comments with what's on my mind, I am confident enough to do that.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:33, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

You don't have to prove anything to me. You have a fine mind, and an intense curiosity, that was obvious from the beginning. If you want to understand Benny Morris's book the way it is never read, get a very good map, blow it up, and put all the dates of incidents in, with the reference grid the map of Israel as drawn by the Partition Plan. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 21:02, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

And, exploiting an add break in Denzel Washington's Man on Fire, thanks for ssuggesting I read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. His remarks re agriculture is not dissimilar to a lecture I gave last year.Nishidani (talk) 21:52, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Does any stalker here have unlimited wiki Jstor access

I will need quite a few articles from Jstor if I am to get through the creation of stubs or articles covering all aboriginal groups. I recall wiki gave editors who applied for it unlimited access to Jstor to this end, and would appreciate some indication as to how I can go about getting this material. Thanks Nishidani (talk) 14:12, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

There currently is a waitlist for JSTOR, you can check it out at Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library/Databases#General_research and selecting JSTOR and inserting your name for approval. If you look at the top of your watchlist, you should see a list of other items that are currently being offered that might work as well. 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 20:31, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Sir Joe. I realized this just after making this request and put my name down, as you can now see. Fingers crossed, now that I've pulled mine out to do my own work rather that batten on others' time and energy.Nishidani (talk) 20:48, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Have you looked into Open Edition? They have social sciences journals available. 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 20:49, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Just now, but I really need to focus on anthropology and linguistic specialist journals, and I can't see the major ones listed. I intended to be an anthropologist, but, like my other option, Icelandic, my first university didn't teach it. This is one way of retouching that old interest.Nishidani (talk) 20:59, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Same here, if I can go back in time and switch colleges and majors... 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 21:04, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Nishidani, while you're waiting, you can always post a request for specific articles at WP:REX. --NSH001 (talk) 21:39, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Note that one of the advantages of making requests at WP:REX is that you won't be imposing on any individual editor. Anyone who wants to can come along and answer your request there. --NSH001 (talk) 22:47, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

That indeed is an excellent suggestion, and staves off the incipient nightmare of guilt about imposing myself on just a few editors. I have an important article by Rodney Needham which looks necessary if I am to do the article stubs on Kaantyu people and Wikmunkan I've been thinking about the last week or so. I'll drop a request there now. Thanks. Nishidani (talk) 22:52, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Happy to ?email? any articles on JSTOR you need, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 21:46, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to request articles by email. I have immediate access to most of JSTOR and almost-immediate access to the rest. Zero^talk 21:51, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks indeed, chaps. I'm rather timid about this, because the scale of the project means that I'll be vexatiously voracious or rather exigent. I'll mull this over, and probably start badgering by email tomorrow, on the condition that anyone offering to assist take their time. I'm thinking in terms of a few articles a day for a year, which would be an outrageous burden on your time, so the more people who can assist the better. The condition I will impose on myself to put a measure of restraint on these calls is, to never ask for another article or two until I have paraphrased the contents of any prior one requested thoroughly on the given tribal article. Nishidani (talk) 21:59, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

If anyone has access to the Worldmark encyclopedia of ethnic groups or similar reference works which might cover the topics, they might be useful as well. I know that a lot of the references they use are in foreign languages, and in a lot of cases there isn't much in English about them, but it might be possible to go to resource exchange and ask for them anyway, maybe putting them on a cloud where someone who can read the language can offer a translation of what it says, John Carter (talk) 18:06, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Also, of course, you yourself could request that database, and any number of others, at Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/Databases. I have a feeling with your history you would be approved rather easily. John Carter (talk) 23:25, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

There's a huge amount of material available just through Jstor, enough to cover the basics in the 400+articles I hope to set up, and I'd do best to restrict myself to that. Thanks John.Nishidani (talk) 14:56, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Agreed with John Carter, you should easily be able to get access. That said, you're also welcome to email me if you need any articles from JSTOR. I JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 04:04, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

You're asking for trouble!:) Several Jstor wikipedian accessors have been extremely helpful, and though I've applied for direct access, I'm just dumb enough to screw things up if I were given it - if it involves anything technical. And, I don't trust myself - I'd probably just eviscerate Jstor downloading all day, and use that as an excuse not to get up, off my arse, and actually read up, day by day, on specific tribes. Thanks for the offer, which I'll certainly abuse as moderately as my mania allows! Nishidani (talk) 14:56, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Right now, Jstor accounts are frozen apparently. I do from previous experience know that HighBeam, which I previously had a one-year free subscription to, includes more or less all the Thomson-Gale reference works, including a lot of sociological and regional ones, and god knows how many additional works, including a large number of magazine and journal articles. Some of the others will have a lot of material available as well. Even if the Jstor accounts are frozen right now, you would probably be able to get a good start on a lot of content on your own through one or more of those other subscriptions. I was surprised with the 30 or 40 works which came up searching for Tengri, on just that single database, for instance. John Carter (talk) 16:45, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

There's something that might take two hours from your life

enjoy. As I said, I really can't do it, due to systemic bias and suspection.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 17:57, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Do what? No 'suspicion' surrounds your presence here, in any case. You have a strong bona fides all round, and if you want to do something, I'm sure you're not going to hit a wall of obtuse objections, as opposed to reasoned discussion. Best regards, lad.Nishidani (talk) 21:36, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

• Pakistais attackand Uri —> Pakistanis attacked Uri
• Pakistanis capture Badgam and serround Srinager's airport. Indians withdraw from Pattan to Shalateng. Gilgit serround Skardu and reach Gurais. —> surround
• Indians advace to Gurais —> Indians advance to Gurais
• etc, etc,
• User:Bolter21; sorry to say so, but you are even a worse speller than me...Huldra (talk) 21:45, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

As a child I thought of writing a history of the world, and got up a notebook and put in all dates of events, and births etc., that came my way. I dropped the habit when a new history teacher came, a Frenchman, who explained in a half hour's lesson the significant economic, social, cultural interconnections linking up everything from the Hanseatic league to the fall of Constantiniple and the Indian spice trade. I.e. facts are meaningless, unless contextualized within the dynamic forces that shape history. (I didn't quite kick the habit. I wrote a book on each element of the Mendeleev table. I learnt several years later, that most kids in the class were better employed learning to wank, which they picked up by figuring out a hint dropped by a priest about never touching velvet in your mother's sewing case. They were illumined, and I?, I was all wrapped up in writing up the history of Alluminium. In other words, Stav, on reading your page I recalled these personal failings from my personal dark ages and the dictum that relieved me later of those obsessions, i.e. Goethe's Das Höchste wäre, zu begreifen, daß alles Faktische schon Theorie ist.Nishidani (talk) 21:55, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Now, are you trying to make my work here seem useless? Well, I guess you are right, in a way. It still beats knitting, though....(as I'm an old lady... and not a young man....) Huldra (talk) 22:06, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

@Nish: I had some fear you won't understand, though you might've had and I am just a bad reader, but it is a list of all the violent incidents mentioned in Ma'an. I hardly read any of the articles, I only read the titles. I am not being suspected, I suspect instead. I can't trust Ma'an and everytime I try to add something from there I find myself searching for the incident in another source other than Ma'an because I simply can't trust this website. (And I consciously wrote "I can't trust this website" twice"). I have tried though, but I fail to spend less than 10 minutes on every incident (let alone the English barrier). I will just misinclude incidents.

@Huldra: That list wasn't intended to be shown to anyone, it is just a timeline of the changes in the map of the 1947 Indo-Pakistani war I was making and never got to finish.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:59, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

And I don't make lists of history anymore, I make maps out of them. Here's a recent example, try to find a typo here. And yes, there was the oil crisis and the loss of a thrid of the Israeli airforce and the Egyptians misleading to Syrians and the Soviets by only pushing a few kilometers deep and the Syrians failing at anything and an Israeli guy with a few tanks stopping an entire division of Syrian tanks etc. but that isn't the point, so don't be like my dad, and ask why didn't I write about these.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:05, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

User:Bolter21; you know, in large parts of the world, (including where I live) 18 years old have their thoughts on anything...but war. Yes, those videos are very cleverly done,.....and they make me extremely sad, Huldra (talk) 22:13, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking at wars, either in pictures or in reports makes me feel like visitng the safari. When I am shown videos Syrians in Aleppo, I don't really feel anything. The more upsetting things are Russian and Syrian propagandas denying the pictures. Sure when I see videos of "war" between some soldiers and thieves, and a just rule of law I feel a pinch due to the nationallity of the people involved but that's just because I am a racist scrub.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:21, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Plenty of 18-year-olds are involved in warfare throughout the world. It just that conscription is not universal in the West and western militaries have become politicized as fixtures of the right. You cannot have a large standing army in the West or anywhere else without young poorly payed 18-year-old privates.

Bolter21 I will tell you this. When you join the IDF don’t be too idealistic.Jonney2000 (talk) 00:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Could you elaborate? I had to figure out what exactly "idealistic" means (They didn't teach that in school, but at least I can name three reasons to the rise of the Nazis). So from the 4 minutes I invested in reading in my laggy phone, I can say that I am pretty materialistic ever since I learned chemistry in school and started telling people "yo you are just chemical and physical reactions moving atoms and when you eat you just resupply your body with more molecules" (it would sound more complicated if I wanted it to).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 01:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Stav, and sorry for missing what you thought was the main point. I looked at the whole site. You've given me food for thought, and I'll get back chewing over it during my 2 hourly breakfast excursion this morning.Nishidani (talk) 08:20, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I missed your objective intent, mainly because every day I have to read a few hundred pages of the several thousand downloaded from 19th century books on the Aborigines, of which, when it comes to editing, so far, I have only made one minor footnote. So I was rather tired. In any case, rather than ferret out your intention, I looked over the whole blog, for the 'style' of thinking.

You just meant:'I can't handle the Ma'an crap (No objection:It parallels perfectly my own sense for more than a decade that any luminary writing on behalf of Zionism in any number of a dozen news outlets or journals I read, switches off his brain, ratchets down his intelligence by a score or double that of points, and puts his mind into neutral, in order not to be neutral). It's needed for balance. Can't you continue to help out there, rather than, by your disappearance, implicitly delegate the whole work load for both sides to me?'

Well, I don't have that time any more, or the interest, but the sense of responsibility remains. On the other hand, you are not under an obligation to handle what I neglect or read Ma'an for data. If no one will do that, stiff shit for the Palestinian side. They should learn to look after their interests. I've been thinking I should just get the data downloaded from 'The Protection of Civilians' UN website and gave the overall picture for every two weeks.

As to the chemical bit, read Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, which captures beautifully the whole question, as it was in 1861 or so. At 16, I had read it, and was engaged in an intense argument over existentialism with a Catholic lad at his home. After some hours, at lunch, as the conversation persisted between the four schoolmates, the mother, a chemist, chipped in chirpily to her engineer husband (she was a lecturer in chemistry):'It's just their hormones, dear'. it was a classic put-down: ='your effervescent passion for philosophy is just a blind for otherwise unsatisfied adolescent chemical changes in your male bodies.' The obvious riposte:'And your materialistic reductionism, if applied to yourself, is a sign of middle class complacency, and, if you believed it, then you shouldn't have raised your children as Catholics, or go to mass, because doing so is just a form of 'spiritual indoctrination' in the metaphysics of a ghost dance that had exceeded its expired use-by date by at least half a millennium. Your materialism is a token of menopausal changes and mental laziness,' etc., something respect for friends forbade me from saying. (The boy in question ended up a derelict bum, having been starved of affection by his family's technocratic efficiency)

When I am shown videos (of) Syrians in Aleppo, I don't really feel anything. The more upsetting things are Russian and Syrian propagandas denying the pictures.

I don't see why you should be insouciant to one, and unhinged by the other. It's a b9it like Gilad Shalit. The world goes mediatically beserk for several years after one Israeli soldier is detained by the other side, hanging 'Save our soldier Ryan' tags on municipal buildings from Rome to New York, with nary a word of 6,000 'enemies' illegally detained by the occupying power he represented. Message: If you are an Israeli, you are significant. If you are a Palestinian, get fucked.

The world's media is invariably selective when it wants us to weep and have pictures of disaster tug at our heart strings. The repeated and systematic carpet-bombing of Gaza is just Aleppo, reduced to a few weeks or months, every few years. But the presentation emphasizes the necessity of this saturation bombing to allow the only 'civilized state' in the area to protect its citizens, very few of whom ever die, comparatively. For most of the world, the latter is just Sderot cinema, whereas with Aleppo, we are asked to turn on the lachrymal passions and spin a pitch for the civilians under ISIS as victims (which they are, of course). Such analogies are never precise, but drawing them does help one detach oneself from the media-induced acquired systole/diastole habit of being outraged by one tragedy, while feeling indifferent about some other.

My compliments re your precocious mastery of web design. Careful though: images, coloured pulsating ones especially, miss more than they capture, namely the details in Elie Podeh's 'The Jarring Mission and the Sadat Initiative' in his new book, pp.102ff., espo.pp.113ff (None of the detail there is, naturally, included in the Yom Kippur War article.Nishidani (talk) 12:11, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I sent you the Ma'an articles because I felt they have to be in the article, but as I said, for me it will be hard to add them, to the point it will take too much time for me to have an interest in continueing. Also the English barrier plays a lot here. I might have good English, but my work speed in English is between 25-50% of the speed I have in Hebrew, and I am already a slow reader, who always relayed on the privilage of time-extention in tests. I think the article should at least be completed, till the end of the year, which is not so far away.

Gilad Shalit is that one Israeli, Benjamin Netanyahu made me dislike. I don't hate the man, I hate the price they paid for him, to silence the people who synically used him to slam Netanyahu. I have no complaints about the fact there are two bodies of Israeli soldiers in Gaza, I don't expect Netanyahu to spend precious time to try and bring them back (and if it were my relative I might say the opposite), but Israelis do, and Netanyahu will eventually have to shut them up, if they will continue to mention it, especially before elections.

In Germany some 13(?) people died in the terrorist attack a few days ago, but the only reason I am upset, is becuase I heard an Israeli was killed and her husband is now treated, unconscious in Germany. I think about the family and their Hannukah. If I were a parent, I would probably be upset when I hear about dead children from both sides. One of the things that sadden me the most, is to see videos of Israeli airplanes being shot down, more than anything else. Strange me?

And your argument about Aleppo being Gaza 2.0, is my argument to people who think we should treat wounded Aleppo Syrians in Israel. "Treat the enemies?!" "Don't make that analogy, the attack on Gaza was justified!", what my co-workers told me today. Only my driving teacher said it right, we shouldn't preventing people "knocking" on our border, asking for medical treatment, but anything beyond, is cheap Israeli propaganda.

And lastly, my dad has poisoned my head with conspiracy theories about the October War.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 23:36, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

There's nothing strange about feeling some greater strength of feeling for news regarding one's compatriots. It's inscribed in all social systems, that you must relate more strongly to your 'family', real or symbolic, than to those outside of the 'fold' or 'pale'. To be 'normal' is to wear one's prejudices, though not 'on the sleeve', for then the tribalism becomes pathological. You get it most intensely in (a) sports generally, esp, football (b)the military, where buddy-consciousness is indoctrinated (c) terror or tragic incidents. In regard to the latter, almost every major terror attack this year has seen an Italian, normally a brilliant post-doctoral expatriate, killed, and, being in Italy it's there names I recall, Valeria Solesin in the November 2015 Paris attacks, Patricia Rizzo in the 2016 Brussels bombings Fabrizia di Lorenzo in the 2016 Berlin attack, 6 in the 2016 Nice attack, not to speak of the torture and murder by an Egyptian government death squad of Giulio Regeni. Fortunately, there has been no national hysteria, despite attempts by the lunatic right, to make ethnic/political capital out of this, and play the xenophobia card to earn a comfortable job in politics. I'm conforted by this,(as I said once - finishing my life in 'diaspora' from the countries I grew up in is a way of being independent of tribalism, i.e. behaving/thinking as one is statistically expected to behave/think) because it represents something I admire in the 'national temper' in my adopted country, though it is a dying code that probably won't survive the political madness on our horizon: I grew up among marginal refugee groups, and the only friendships I made at primary school, by choice, were Italians, Poles, and Dutch kids etc. I just didn't, for a complex set of reasons, have much empathy with my own 'kind'. All tragedies strike me in the same way, and I think I have slowly extinguished the Pavlovian reflexes that make me react to them by looking at the specific ethnic identity caught up in them. My wife just notified me that the Berlin murderer Anis Amro has been shot dead in Milan. All she said was:'pauvre fils' (povero figlio/poor kid). She was genuinely upset at his death, despite him being a mass murderer. I looked at the bulletins, and noted that, as soon as he was downed, the policeman who shot him (his mate had been wounded in the shoulder) tried a heart massage on the terrorist to keep him alive until an ambulance could get there (not the sort of thing one sees reviewing the Hebron videos, or in most other countries). This is a fucked up country, but such things make it more livable to me than being in a modern efficient state.

You shouldn't hate Shalid for the use his situation was put in politics. That wasn't his fault. I'l l try and catch up on the backlog on that article. You're quite right. What was begun should be finished. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 12:14, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Ukrainian Jewish PM

Just letting you know you violated ARBPIA DS by restoring without consensus that the Ukrainian PM was Jewish. Please self-revert and discuss on the talk page. 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 15:31, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Editor of the Week seeking nominations (and a new facilitator)

The Editor of the Week initiative has been recognizing editors since 2013 for their hard work and dedication. Editing Wikipedia can be disheartening and tedious at times; the weekly Editor of the Week award lets its recipients know that their positive behaviour and collaborative spirit is appreciated. The response from the honorees has been enthusiastic and thankful.

The list of nominees is running short, and so new nominations are needed for consideration. Have you come across someone in your editing circle who deserves a pat on the back for improving article prose regularly, making it easier to understand? Or perhaps someone has stepped in to mediate a contentious dispute, and did an excellent job. Do you know someone who hasn't received many accolades and is deserving of greater renown? Is there an editor who does lots of little tasks well, such as cleaning up citations?

Please help us thank editors who display sustained patterns of excellence, working tirelessly in the background out of the spotlight, by submitting your nomination for Editor of the Week today!

In addition, the WikiProject is seeking a new facilitator/coordinator to handle the logistics of the award. Please contact L235 if you are interested in helping with the logistics of running the award in any capacity. Remove your name from here to unsubscribe from further EotW-related messages. Thanks, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:19, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Warning on Personal Attacks

Consider this a warning to cease your personal attacks. Calling someone "foggybrained" and telling someone that they are unable to comprehend things certainly approach a personal attack if not violate it. I have had it with your attitude that you are the arbiter of what is correct and everyone else is merely a stupid person you graciously allow to edit Wikipedia. You need to stop being condescending to everyone and strive to edit in a fair and collaborative way. In addition, I do want to point out that your user page violates WP:POLEMIC and should be removed. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:50, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

oyf tsu shraybn geshikhte darf men hobn a kop un nisht keyn tukhes.Nishidani (talk) 11:29, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Writing a personal attack in a foreign language is still a personal attack. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 14:34, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Your idiosyncratic views on what violates WP:POLEMIC have been tested before. Your attitude that you are the arbiter of what violates WP:POLEMIC and that everyone else is merely a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer you graciously allow to edit Wikipedia is thankfully not one that carries any weight here. nableezy - 16:09, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I understand your viewpoint, but Wikipedia does not allow pages and pages as Nishidani has on his userspace. I don't understand how you can't see that it violates polemic. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 16:34, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Nope. nableezy - 17:55, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

If I noted for the record what I often observe, and complained before arbs, you wouldn't be here. You regularly turn up on obscure pages I edit and revert me, when I am merely maintaining order by reverting some IP, who removed stuff without a valid policy ground or talk page appearance. You do this regularly after 'losing' an argument on a talk page. you did it today. It is patently an attempt to 'get back' at an editor. It is infantile,beyond the obvious desire to be vexatious. Piss off, kindly. There is nothing offensive about my remark in yiddish. It's sound common sense, and if you can manage to understand try and take the advice proferred. If people ask me questions on this page, relevant to what Id do here, I answer them. Polemic has nothing to do with it. Nishidani (talk) 16:39, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Your userpage is polemic. Read up on what the policy is. I don't need to continue this. I warned you about attacking people and that is all. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 16:43, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Nope. nableezy - 17:55, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

To quote User:Kudpung, "....So without beating about the bush, what I do expect however is for them both to put {{Db-u1}} on their user pages at User:No More Mr Nice Guy/Quotes and Stuff and User:Nishidani very quickly - and I mean delete, not just selectively removing contetious material, otherwise I'll delete the pages myself per POLEMIC. They only exist in order to incite something and have no usefulness towards the building of this encyclopedia or the friendly collaboration of its editors." from: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive887#Advice_requested Sir Joseph ^(talk) 19:16, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

And on 11:51, 31 May 2015 the page was deleted as per that conversation, and Nishidani promptly recreated the page with all the polemics still intact. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 19:21, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

As is often the case, you do not know what you are talking about. You have no idea what was on Nishidani's page at the time of that comment (quotes from other users saying things that could be taken badly for example, and not simply quotes from published authors). And you have yet to give a single example of polemical content on it now. You disliking something does not make it "polemical". You pulled this same stupid shit with me. Boo hoo, somebody thinks something that I dont like. Grow up. nableezy - 20:20, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Nishidani's userpage is polemical. It does nothing to help Wikipedia, and is there merely to be pointy, to use a Wiki term. I am sorry that I think a Hezbollah userbox has no place on Wikipedia, I guess that is why I think driving a truck into a crowd of people doesn't deserve praise or having sweets handed out. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:22, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Ohhh, argument by assertion I see. Another fine example Sir Joseph, well done, well done. nableezy - 20:24, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

(e-c) It is open to question whether much of the material on most any editor's user page or in user space really helps the encyclopedia. And I have seen repeated comments from admins regarding comments made by editors who are subject to various sorts of topic bans that limited discussion in violation of the ban in user space might be overlooked. Most of the time, I have seen those comments from admins after having raised questions about those comments to them myself. I regret to say that engaging in what some others might see as being perhaps a tendentious form of discussion, possibly verging on harassment, in user space may well not win any friends either. I think the matter of Nishidani's user talk page has already been raised in the MfD discussion on it, and it was allowed to stay. That being the case, I think the only places where this sort of discussion is really appropriate is either at ANI or before ArbCom, although, like I said, based on what I've seen before regarding other editor's userspace comments, I wouldn't expect much at either location. John Carter (talk) 20:30, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Just for the record, it is my understanding that the MFD was on his talk page, not his user page. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:34, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

It was, but I don't know of anywhere in policy or guidelines where user space pages are differentiated, so it seems to me to be a case of a difference which makes no difference being no difference. John Carter (talk) 20:38, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

This is nonsensical. On the page dismissed as a violation of WP:Polemic, we have a number of quotes like the following:

欲以存亡繼絕, (淮南子, 卷二十一 要略 7a.)

That, Sir Joe, is from the Huainanzi where of Duke Huan of Qi it is said:

He wanted to maintain alive the moribund, and conserve whatever teetered on the verge of extinction.

If you like, when I edit pages on Tibetans, Aboriginal peoples, Palestinians etc., I am mindful of Duke Huán's exemplary precedent.

Again, I can't expect you to know what:

ἄγνοια γὰρ ἡ μὲν τῶν ἰσχυρῶν ἐχθρά τε καὶ αἰσχρά— βλαβερὰ γὰρ καὶ τοῖς πέλας αὐτή τε καὶ ὅσαι εἰκόνες αὐτῆς εἰσιν—(Φίληβος,49ξ)

means, but I have a right to expect that readers who don't know what on earth this is saying refrain from spluttering words like 'polemic' while calling for it to be removed. For it simply states:

self-ignorance accompanied by strength is not just disgraceful, it’s dangerous too:anyone who comes into contact with it, or anything like it, is threatened (tr. Robin Waterfield)

That can hardly apply to the issue of Israeli settlements. Theodor Meron immediately informed the Israeli government in 1967 that settlement in the belligerently occupied territories was out of the question: the law was explicit, any such settlement would contravene the Fourth Geneva Convention. A year later Moshe Dayan went ahead, admitting that,'settling Israelis in administered territory, as is known, contravenes international conventions, but there is nothing essentially new about that.' In other words, the Philebus is speaking about self-ignorance whereas the Israeli settlement project is consciously furthered in full lucid awareness that it is a 'flagrant violation' of Israel's legal obligations under international law.

Editing this area is very hard because the facts, the legal reality and the history are established, known, by everyone who reads beyond the tabloids or listens to more than soundbites. A huge paperwork tsunami nonetheless arose to split hairs, cavil, equivocate, throw sand in the eyes, blindside the critics, and puzzle the public. You can only get away with something of this order if you sow confusion, and most of our articles are minutely attentive to the pharisaical hasbara churned out to justify up front what is known to be carpetbagging behind doors. All over wiki I/P articles the pretense is maintained that there is some margin for disagreement, that interpretations of the one reality differ, that there are two POVs- Israel's ueberexceptionalist theory, vs the consensual opinion of every juridical body that has competence in international law - rather than a juxtaposition of the ascertained, universally endorsed legal situation as opposed to a nationalist fringe theory pushed wittingly by an occupying power intent on destroying the nation it occupies. I wouldn't therefore complain, Sir Joe. I don't raise a fuss at the structural distortions in so many of these articles: the weight of numbers determines content. I simply strive to clarify what is consistently, from ignorance or ideology or national interests, glossed over. Nishidani (talk) 14:27, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

If anyone have anything against some user, go to the appropirate noticeboard and take action. If you are not confident enough to do that, there is no point in exchanging accusations here.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 15:58, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Coatrack article with gross WEIGHT and NPOV problems?

Nadia Abu El Haj

Hey. You're more familiar with the topic than I so I figured I should ask your advice. I frankly was tempted to blank the entire latter half of the article, which is completely bizarre and unlike anything I've seen in our articles on other academics. I understand that some people have controversial political views, but I actually came across the page through Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Evidence-based, which was apparently a massive problem back in 07/08 with a sock-farm creating bogus coatrack articles on pro-Palestinian activists (along with at least one very poorly written article on a Hebrew Bible scholar who I've never heard of specifically being either pro- or anti-Palestinian, which is how I came across it).

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:56, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

It's WP:Undue probably, but shouldn't be removed, so much as pared down. A line or two for each critic or supporter. The only serious opinion there is Dever's. It's standard for anyone in this field to be targeted. I have a list at last check of about 42 academics of distinction who have been threatened with job loss etc for criticizing Israel's colonial policies. I've tried to balance that by opening a counter list for academic supporters of the Dershowitz brand who suffer similar career obstacles -it's still empty. If you are in the West Bank they shoot you, if you are in the West, they smear you. Any number of numbskulls are eager to pitch in. But, if you can't stand the fire in the kitchen, . . . In short, just trim it, making everyone's comments as succinct as that of Dever's. Secondly, this loudmouthed shouting in newspapers is unencyclopedic, but one can't erase it until it's replaceable with quality, focused criticism and you get that, iIf you have access to Jstor, by just looking at all the reviews of her works in the major academic journals. If you can get several reviews of each book, balanced for criticism pro and con, then under those circumstances you can chuck out the pseud's corner stuff.Nishidani (talk) 15:15, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

I see what you mean

[5]

If this is the level of IDHT one normally expects to encounter, I can see why you'd warn me away from IP. I just happened across a thread on WT:JEW immediately above one I had opened and gave the obvious response that was obvious, and as a result I have had to explain that ARBPIA3 applies to that Arab-Israeli conflict, not just "IP articles", three times and counting.

What a mess.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:26, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Again, you seem to be the one not hearing things. An article on Arabic Jews is not by itself part of the IP Conflict. Can some edits on that page be subject to sanctions, perhaps. But it is stupid to put entire pages under sanction. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 02:43, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, I must apologize to Nishidani for continuing this discussion on his talk page. I had no idea SJ was watching.

Second, it is not "an article [that is] by itself part of the IP Conflict" that is subject to the ARBPIA3 General Prohibition. It is all pages that could be reasonably taken as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. An IP who adds text about Jews being expelled from Arab states as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict is always violating this prohibition, regardless of whether you think the page itself should be placed under extended protection.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:50, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

IP Conflict is Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the page is not about the IP conflict, whether or not some edits can be construed as being part of the conflict. We should not be in the habit of locking off articles on the off chance there will be a dispute. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 02:52, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

For the umpteenth time, the ArbCom restriction is on articles related to the Arab-Israeli conlict, not just the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am not a fan of "locking off articles" myself, but ArbCom already did lock off that article back in 2015, and the specific IP edit you wanted to allow was itself an explicit violation of the restriction as it was about the Arab-Israeli conflict. If you want the page to be unlocked, you need to appeal the general prohibition, or request that it be amended to more narrowly address only specifically IP conflict articles. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:24, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Warrongo

Hi, I noticed that Waruŋu, an article you've created, duplicates Warrongo language and Warrongo people. There's some content in it that is missing from the language article, so I was wondering if you'd be interested in merging it? I think Waruŋu should then get redirected to the dab page at Warrongo. Cheers! – Uanfala (talk) 23:06, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Obviously a merge should occur since reduplication exists between Warrongo people and Waruŋu. Perhaps the simplest solution is the other way round. I've made Waruŋu fit the format I'm applying to all these article, with sections awaiting expansion. Warrongo people has only a definition, and nothing else. I'd prefer a redirect from Warrongo to Waruŋu. If you know how do do this technically, by all means go ahead.Cheers Nishidani (talk) 12:25, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I'll try to get Waruŋu and Warrongo people merged. The title of the merged article had probably better be Warrongo people – Waruŋu is ambiguous between the people and the language, so it's best if this redirects to the dab page at Warrongo, and the spelling Warrongo seems to be better – it's the one used in the language's practical orthography, it's in the title of Tsunoda's 2011 grammar and, if I remember correctly, it's preferred by the Warrongo themselves. – Uanfala (talk) 16:43, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Good'oh. Go ahead and Robert's a close relative. Thanks Nishidani (talk) 18:28, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

By the way, there are two outstanding simple gaps in all these articles. Unsatisfactory maps for each group. I have numerous sources downloaded which give maps and precise tribal borders, but don't have the foggiest notion as to how to convert them into wikimaps. And the skin system, which all tribes had and of which the naming evidence for hundreds exists (basically a 4 to 8 system) needs a standard template. I tried to roust one up with a little help from friends, (Kariera people)but it falls short quite a lot and downunder specialists in maps and designs are needed there. Perhaps one should notify the relevant Australian project board? Nishidani (talk) 18:33, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think there's any specific "wikimap" format and I guess there are different degrees of wiki-friendliness. The simplest solution, probably perfectly acceptable in this context, would be to just reproduce the maps as they have appeared in print (provided this is OK copyright-wise). Generally, you can ask for help with maps at Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop.

As for the skin templates, what do you imagine them to be like? – Uanfala (talk) 19:59, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

My Name

I've asked you three times to stop calling me Sir Joe. I do not like that name at all. If typing out the whole name is too difficult for you then you can call me SJ but not Sir Joe. I'd appreciate if you take note of this. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 23:53, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree, and I have seen that SJ has indeed asked you to stop. Please cut it out. Bishonen | talk 23:55, 21 January 2017 (UTC).

Okay. I'll use SJ. It does mean 'Jesuit', but, since you say it's fine, then it's SJ from now on. In exchange, I would ask SJ to drop the habit of fatuous plunking of threat notifications on this page as if I were a newbie. It's obviously minatory besides being puerile. But I don't whinge about it. Nishidani (talk) 11:01, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

"SJ" means "Sir Joseph". Bus stop (talk) 11:13, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

The meaning of SJ is given here :-) Pluto2012 (talk) 11:38, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

But this is the meaning of SJ on Wikipedia. Or, if you want to be pernickety, it's this, I suppose. Bishonen | talk 12:00, 22 January 2017 (UTC).

As someone whose User name embodies anonymity, I am considering including a set of fingerprints and identifying tattoos. Bus stop (talk) 12:16, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

(EC) I'm guessing that you'd prefer other editors not to abbreviate your username to BS?

And while I'm here, I'd like to reassure Nishi that it's OK to continue referring to me as Scarpi and the editor who mispells my username as ZScrapia (intentionally or not rearranging the middle to spell 'crap') that he has my permission to continue.     ←   ZScarpia   18:56, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't see the point in abbreviating any editor's name, generally speaking. Why not just cut and paste their name as it actually appears on their User page? Bus stop (talk) 18:53, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I encourage all to abbrev my nick as they will. It embodies light pseudonymity, tho I do incl. an identifying fingerprint on my user:. While I'm here, hi Nish, hello Bish (who tbqh has the best wiki-alt of us all), and Bus stop: if you have to pause to c&p it really slows down the old wpm, which for some of us is the only staccato light in the grim endless fight against time's torture of all that is. – SJ + 13:37, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Ah, literacy at last: 'the grim endless fight against time's torture' (Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,. Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, etc I think of Prometheus's liver being slowly pecked for millennia, or the Negra espalda del tiempo..... ) RegardsNishidani (talk) 16:37, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes I realize that cutting and pasting takes time. And I don't think I am personally obsessed with "time's torture" although I may be deluding myself in that regard. I simply prefer the propriety of calling a person by the User name that they chose for themselves. Bus stop (talk) 16:00, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Small (actually big) question.

Do you really believe in the first sentence you put on your userpage? PKK and Chechnya cannot apply to this statement, made by a naturally biased person? I mean, I can't really sympathize with any of the other "reflections" (except for Uri Avnery simply explaining in the most basic way the reality? Oh and the non-English sentences), but the first one is very jarring (yea? you can say that? "jarring"?).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:42, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't 'believe' in any sentence containing a generalization. Belief implies a fixed perception that is refractory to evidence. Rather than 'jarring' (which implies dissonance, from what?) Ashrawi's statement is 'jolting', a provocation. I too can think of exceptions. The statement from the Philebus in Greek can be read in context scrolling on from here. You can analyse that in terms of the psychology of envy, of the sociology of class, or as an illustration of the problems of division of classes in logic etc. As for the rest, I've always thought of the I/P issue in terms of comparative sociology: there is, despite the massive hot air rhetoric all round, nothing unique there - it is a typical colonial story: the John Wayne vs Indians plot in the 'taming' of the wild West, as good many writers noted at the outset of Zionism's implementation. Reading many of the downloaded classics of early Queensland history recently, the language and approach to these terroristic 'natives' (200,000 vs a few thousand whites, who then overwhelmed the 'uncivilized indigenes' with immigration and gunpowder) only confirms my perception of the analogy. Only its nature as a colonial narrative is, rather distinctively, hidden from view because of the exceptionalist discourse surrounding so much to do with the long mythistorical traditions of the occupier, and the guilt of the West concerning its own lethal enmity for Jews. Nishidani (talk) 11:08, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I am always amazed by how much a negative action committed by someone of a white skin has a larger weight than a negative action committed somewhere far away by someone with darker skin. I too fall into this, with claims of "we have to be civilized" when I talk for over nine months about a soldier who executed the soon-to-be dead body of a terrorist, while there were, what? 250 attacks and attempted attacks by Palestinians since October 2015? The absolute majority with a clear racist and murderous character? The problem is that those who agree with me, that a negative action like colonialism or genocide committed by a white people is no worse than the ones committed by black, brown or pink people, are the undemocratic fascists or white-nationalists out there. So I have two options here, either go for euphemism and start saying "the Jews are not colonialists because colonialists searched for rich lands and the Jews settled on bad lands full of swamps and diseases, and they didn't try to speard their own culture on the people but rather inherit the modern and ancient culture of the land, and they came as indeginous and not as colonialists", or I can just say, "you pinning the word colonialism on the Jews doesn't make the Palestinians the absolute victims". Either way, I don't think colonialism justifies the Palestinians' reaction, just like I don't think Elor Azaria executing the man who stabbed his close friend for no real reason is justified. So not the Palestinians, nor Azaria, are angels hurt by the European colonialist Jews, or by the Ashkenazi leftist elite of Israel.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 14:52, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

250 attacks and attempted attacks by Palestinians since October 2015? The absolute majority with a clear racist and murderous character?

The absolute majority took place in a territory which Israel is colonizing, and which it does so in defiance of its obligations under international law, by land theft, shooting, raiding, gassing, and demolishing homes. In a Zionist perspective, all this is irrelevant. What is horrid for a Zionist is that a predictable minority of those who have been tormented for decades, stolen from, shot, arrested, gassed, or dispossessed of shelter, hit back violently. Scandalous? No. It's sociological physics of the most elementary kind. Nishidani (talk) 18:44, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, it's got nothing to do with 'white' vs 'black skin' or Jews vs Arabs. I am composing as I read through several thousand pages of old books on Queensland's history a time line of every attack, by aborigines on whites, and whites on aborigines, and I have so far more data on the former than the latter. It was estimated that 250 whites had been killed from 1840-1861. The 'savages' have far more incidents of killing in the archives than we have registers of whites killing blacks. But, we know that there were 200,000 aborigines in that territory by the time whites began to set up 'civilised' outposts, and within several decades these were decimated literally, down about 80-90%. Aborigines like Dundalli fought back and were branded as murderers or 'ìterrorists', and duly hung. So what were all of those 250 murders about? Over the last 3 decades, historians have managed to retrieve the obvious contexts: whites saw a rich territory full of development potential and just bulldozed in, driving or 'dispersing' the original inhabitants off their lands, where they had lived comfortably. The average height of the primitive natives' was 5 foot 10 to 6 feet, about 5 inches taller than the invaders: they were muscular, powerful specimens, but they only had spears against carbines.

It's typical of all colonial mentalities, of which Zionism is just the most recent, and anachronistic example, to think that any opposition, even killing, by the indigenous peoples opposing their dispossession or destruction is proof of murderous manners, intolerance (even anti-Semitism). You get that in the frontier chronicles of the West, in Canada, in Algeria, all over Africa (the Herero people). Whites/Europeans have a right to land that is not utilized to its full modern productive capacity: if the indigenous people refuse to upgrade to industrious collaborators in 'modernity's project', they have to be displaced, overridden, pushed out. If you can cite for me one thing that, in the Zionist history of colonization, contradicts the general pattern of colonial enterprises the world over since the 1500s, I'd be surprised. It's totally 'normal' to dispossess people and, if they resist or hit back, call that form of lex talionis 'terrorism', 'barbarous'. Israel's foundation is absolutely in line with the overall pattern of modernization's destruction or systematic reduction to marginal life of 'primitives'. I like historians like Niall Ferguson because they are quite open-eyed and honest about this: modernity is achieved by dispossession, plunder and it is, in the long term, for the good of all, especially the blighted and benighted 'primitive' whose right to land is cancelled by the fact that he cannot monetize it as, in the modern world system, is must be. So it's not a 'Jewish' thing. The only 'anomaly' is that it really took shape after WW2, when, by general consent, the age of colonization was to end (save for the diehard French holdouts in Vietnam and Algeria). Tony Judt made this point eloquently: the anomaly is that 'Jews' happen in Israel to be undertaking a discredited anachronistic experiment precisely at the moment when the West, having achieved its own 'civilized' state of post-colonial complacency and having enough from the plunder of centuries to be able to live off its accumulated capital, started to mumble about the 'conscience' of civilization. Nishidani (talk) 18:11, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

And I didn't 'pin' the word 'colonialism' on Jews. The earliest Zionist writings use that term officially for the project (Jewish Colonization Association, the Colonial Bank, etc.etc.etc.) Nishidani (talk) 18:33, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Making analogies between the Palestinian Arabs and the Aboriginals in North America is flawed in my opinion. The Jews were not an Empire expanding, they were a collective relocating, and knowing their place for the most part, they shown much more respect to their enemies than the Western Europeans showed to the Natives in North America. The ethos of the 1948 war being a "David against Goliath war" is part of it. They didn't say "we defeated the savage and uncivilized Arabs", they created a story of them being small, weak, unmanned, unequiped and they managed to defeat the hordes of trained Arab armies. Only the opening of the state's archives in the 80s allowed for histories to realise the truth, that the Jews had the upper hand and their stories of "winning against the odds" were a consequence of their panic. Their ethos was not an ethos of the "civilized" beating the "savage", it was exactly the opposite, it was the small yishuv of refugees beating "five armies" and the majority of the population. Today I can assume that the Jews were really the more civilized majority, but that was not part of the Zionist ethos. One of the only arguments I have in defense of the settlements, is that they are not colonialists, not becuase of their actions, which are policies of land grabbing based on supremacy, but because of their leading ideology, which is very religious. You can call them colonialist as much as you want, go to someone from Beit El and he will tell you "Abraham our father' passed here, and Jacob our father was named "Yirael" here and all of Israel sat here and fasted until night and sent made sacrefices to God, when they entered the land under Joshua, and the Ark of the Covenant was here and Phinehas Ben Eliezer lived here and there was a terrible civil war here between the Tribe of Benjamin and the other tribes and here King Josiah destroyed the golden calf built by Jerobaam Ben Nevat. I don't believe these stories are fact, especially not the mythological ones, but that doesn't change the fact, those "colonialists" have possesed what they see as the source of their right to live there, as their ancesters did. After all, the nearby Beitin doesn't just happen to sound like Beit El, and even if not, it is not the first Arab village with a corrupted Jewish or Biblical name. Can a colonialist who massacred a group of Aboriginal claim his ancestors lived on that tribe's land? While the activity does amount to resemble colonialism, the ideology is completely different. Calling a Jew who moves from Poland to Jerusalem a "colonialist" is already crossing the line, of how much you can draw simmilarities between European colonialism and the Zionist enterprise. My grandparents from my father's side came here as refugees, while my mother came here to marry my father.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 19:08, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I didn't really want to get into this discussion (I realised early that you can spend 100% of your time here discussing the issues..., alas, time doing that is time not writing an encyclopaedia...) However, I must modify you about the truth only getting know when the archives opened in 80s/90s. At least the leadership knew very well. Eg., there was a famous survey (by the Israelis) taken just after the 48 war, showing the reasons why the Palestinian refugees left. That survey showed roughly the same percentages that modern scholarship has showed; that the majority left to escape the war, or were expelled, and just a tiny minority left "on Arab orders". (And this survey was then made classified material..) In spite of this, it was "official" Israeli policy for years to claim that the majority of the Palestinians left "on Arab orders". And the leadership knew this wasn't true. Btw, lying by Israeli officials was the reason why I started questioning my 100 % pro-Israeli upbringing..

As for the settlers; nearly all nations have at some time been bigger than they are now, say, Norwegian Vikings first settled and built Dublin, what if the Norwegian army/navy landed in Ireland, claiming it as part of the ancestral Norwegian land..... kicked the Irish out of a third of their land and treated them like dirt. Then went around saying "It is the Irish terrorist mentality which makes them hate us!! And their leaders -and their school books all makes us look bad! It the Irish who has to change their murderous ways!!"

Btw, an old friend of mine (who is 100% North European background, and doesn't have one drop of Middle Eastern blood in her) has had a looooong interest in Judaism, and a few years ago she converted. She can become a citizen of Israel any time she like, (No, she has no plans to become that, but still...), and travel to Israel as much as she like. While, say a Salman Abu Sitta is refused entry to the place he was born. Avi Shlaim used to say the Israel has been on a colonialist project since 1967, however, he has changed his mind, these day he agrees that the colonialist project started much earlier. Huldra (talk) 21:49, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

The Norwegian army invading Ireland is a severe violation of Irish sovereignty. Norway is miles away from Ireland, separated by sea. Beit El was promised to the Jews by the UK and this is one of the claims of those who support it.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:08, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

"Separated by sea??" I see you know zero about Viking culture; the sea was what connected them; it was very much a sea-faring people. And Beit El was not included in the Jewish state in the 1947 plan (the only plan which had official backing). So legally, Israel has as much right to Beit El as Norway has to Ireland, (or Shetland, or Iceland, or Greenland, etc) Huldra (talk) 22:27, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think I ever supported the settlements, legally or ideologically, I just commented on the comparrison.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:43, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I should have made a distinction. Herzl was an idiot, whose vision impelled a pseudo-solution to European racism by enticing dreamers to think that by dispossessing an Arab people in a colonial project the Jews could free themselves from prejudice. After WW2, this colonial fantasy bore with it such a weight of angst that the option seemed the only solution to many, but it let the West off the hook of their historical guilt by making Arabs pay the price of European dishumanity. The fault lies on the shoulders of the Western leaders who adopted this cynical strategy. Israel was created, and it assumed, whatever the tragedy, a rightful place among the nations, its legitimacy is inexpugnable. All that changed in 1967. There, the lucid minds and analysts foresaw the obvious evil, that Israel's hard won legitimacy would now be put in peril by Zionism's darker oneiric impulses, religiously atavistic, soaked in the dead weight of a huge mythic history begging for reclamation. It stepped beyond its achieved and legitimate confines, and began to aspire to a biblical state, wittingly treating the West Bank and Gaza as an opportunity for carpetbagging expansionism according to biblical fantasies. it did so in clear defiance of international law, of obligations it underwrote, cynically, contemptuously. It didn't take on the Palestinians: never a serious threat militarily. It took on concepts of restraint, democracy and the establishment of normalcy for Jews - the very real and persuasive reasons Herzl unrealistically dreamt of as the aim of Zionism - because an occupation of this order requires the permanent militarization of society, and the induction of its citizens in an experience of repression as a rite of passage, in a chronic unresolvable punitive destruction of another people to satisfy the megalomaniacal vanity seamlessly inscribed in what is, irreducibly, an archaic fiction woven by a sacerdotal class which wrote much of the novelistic content of the Bible as a solace for its own Babylonian exile. You don't need to be a psychologist to understand how destructive a model will be which takes as its blueprint for modernity a fiction concocted by ingenious religious fanatics 2,500 years ago, with its creation of a concept of pure descent, and the ethnoreligious sacrality of a patch of soil which bore no such burden of mythic value for most Jews from Iran to Spain in those distant times. The people in Beit El can rave on about the non-existent, utterly unhistorical Abrahams, Moses and Josephs walking through those very same terraced hills till the cows come home (to roost), but they are, mentally, like aborigines walking through their home terrain identifying each rock and crevasse as marks of the Rainbow Serpent in the dreamtime. The Aborigines know, now, that these were once functional legends: the colonialists of Beit El take it as the truth, or retain the functional value as an excuse for squatters to declare indigenous landowners intruders - and when you confuse fantasy with reality, no outside voice for a sane distinction between the infantile and analytical approach to the world can ever get a hearing. Nishidani (talk) 20:59, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

As for the personal side, there is no guilt or taint of 'colonialism' in emigrating to Israel or being an Israeli, anymore than one should feel guilty for being a Mexican of Spanish descent, or an American of Scottish origins etc. The colonial analogy refers to the West Bank and Gaza, and all those who persist in claiming it as part of Israel. Nishidani (talk) 21:09, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

The West Bank is part of Israel, the land of Israel. I remember being a kid, confusing the terms Eretz Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael (i.e. State). I see the rift between the understanding of secular, modernist people, like me, my family and my friends, who see "Israel" as the state, while the religious, fundementalist people, like my uncle's family, the right-wing bloc or the elder Mizrahi population see "Israel" as the land". That is the problem, that the Ben Gurionists like me prefer the state and the Menachem Beginists like my uncle prefer the land. While the left accepted the partition plan, giving a state for the Jews after 2000 years, the Revisionists saw it as "giving the Jews 60% of the 20% of land left from the land promised to us, "Auschwitz State"". Equating the idea of partition of Western Palestine to a Nazi death camp is the base of the world view that the right wing and the "neo-zionists" who settle the West Bank posses. The idea that a land with X people, belong to the Y people. This is seen in nationalist movements in Europe, and their copycats today, claiming "natural borders of Serbia", which are completely opposite to reality, when the Kosavars have no interest in being ruled by Orthodox Slavs. But I wouldn't call a settler movement to settle Kosovo with Serbs, a colonialist movement. Just like I tell people to take action against those they chose to call "Nazis", colonialism was outlawed by the UN, so what is the implication of you calling the Zionists colonialists? Should I feel white-guilt?--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:47, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

The West Bank is part of Israel, the land of Israel.

This confuses a secular concept the State of Israel with a religious concept of the Land of Israel. Modern states have boundaries, which determine the judicial reach of their laws, and their legitimacy. States that refuse to have boundaries are like ego identities that refuse to distinguish themselves from the world, they are either tendentially narcissistic or invasive.

Steven Runciman, taking up a point outlined by Arnold Toynbee a decade earlier, perceptively anticipated all of this when he drew an analogy between Zionism and the Crusades (Joshua Prawer,The Crusaders' Kingdom: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages, 1972), whose history he was the leading world authority at that time. He remarked to Uri Avnery that:

"Israel was founded in the land that once belonged to the Philistines, while the Palestinians, who got their name from the Philistines, live in the land that belonged to the ancient Kingdom of Israel."

In other words, Israel as constituted has no burden of ancient myth, its messianic expectations and its aching juggernaut of collective pressures from one of the many pasts we have: 'Israel' as religiously defined means redefining oneself as a cypher in a collective, of memory and blood-kin: you don't count - the historic community's legends, myths, traditions determine who you are, and, in political terms, this translates into megalomania, fantasy-mongering, irrationality and the incapacity to understand anything or anyone beyond the pale of one's cultural ghetto (i.e. the cancellation of 2,600 years of diaspora experience where being a Jew meant having at least 2 and probably several equally respectable identities).

As to guilt, that is not a notion that has any sense collectively, being in the modern Kantian sense a state of consciousness where the individual's sense of right is troubled by negative feelings for what are personal acts he himself committed or fantasied to have committed. It is a repulsive biblical idea that punishment for the sins of the fathers be visited on the sons down through the generations (Numbers 14:18). It's useful to have dissent within one's family, I wouldn't worry about it. The poorest wings of my family were and often remain hardnosed right wingers, and some persist that way the poorer they get, as the governments they elect strip them of entitlements they used to have. They blame foreigners, the 'left', etc.etc.etc. Familiarity with this meant I wasn't surprised by Trump, or by Netanyahu. We're not wired biologically to be middle class rational democratic ethical egalitarian people. We're animals whose 'reason' is basically directed towards instrumental cunning, unless by some historical freak of conjunctural circumstance, we find ourselves in a relatively civil quarter of the world. That was the lesson of Yugoslavia: overnight people who had been amicable, civilized, intelligent turned to cutting their good neighbours' throats because some moron realized you get more votes if you play on people's innate hatreds and intolerance.

No one ought to feel guilt, as opposed to shame perhaps, for what others, one's kin, humanity etc., does or did. Of course the achievements of civilization are being rapidly burnt as the world, in response to globalization, turns its back on modernity and chooses tribalism. Israel's 'anomaly' will, on the cards, become 'normal' as the world trumpifies itself. It's one of the refreshing consolations of my age to realize that fortunately, I won't be around long enough to see the long-term effects of this crap. Nishidani (talk) 10:30, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

In case you're wondering

The red question marks appearing in the Australian Aboriginies articles indicate a short-form ref trying to link to a full citation that doesn't exist. This is the work, of course, of the fabled precocious infant, who vomits on meals that don't suit her digestive system . I will try and fix any obvious ones, but at Djabugay for example my guess (without having looked at the sources) is that the corresponding long cites are missing from the "References" section. Unfortunately it isn't generally possible to fix them automatically, as there is no way of telling whether a long cite is missing, or whether a name is misspelled or a year mistyped. Anyway, I hope it helps. --NSH001 (talk) 23:44, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

No, thanks indeed. Anything that spots slips, esp as hugely misleading as those, needs a nod of thanks or several. Evidently in copying for speed a template for a book I confuse editions or different works at times. Should take more care. The content citations were correct only the book years were not! 'vomits on meals that don't suit her digestive system,' meaning that the precocious baby fixing these errors has an avatar in the Aboriginal rainbow serpent, who often ate children and then vomited them up;)Nishidani (talk) 09:36, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, sounds delicious. On Djabugay, with the help of my young assistant, I corrected the distinction between Dixon 2011a and Dixon 2011b; as far as I am aware this is the standard academic convention. Using "(a)", "(b)", etc in the author name is not a good idea, as it corrupts the metadata emitted by the template, and causes the work to sort in the wrong order in bibliographic listings.

It also looks odd that there are separate full citations for Dixon 2011a and 2011b, but only 2011b is cited anywhere. Regards, NSH001 (talk) 11:05, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Well it's a beauty if it can catch out so neatly citational errors so consistently, and those minutiae I have often lazily failed to spot. I think I've fixed the Dixon thing. I often add sources that deal with a topic but which I haven't yet time to add. The idea is that, if I tried to do every tribe, one by one, in a thorough manner before moving along to the next, I'd never finish. Setting up stubs also means that, once I have a few hundred of the main ones done, anything that comes up in my daily reading for the next few years can be immediately registered in a pre-existing article. Cheers and thanks. Nishidani (talk) 15:15, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

By the way there is a silly title to Gubbi Gubbi. Far too long. One doesn't add the geographical location to a people does oner? Nishidani (talk) 15:16, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

What title would you like? I see there's also a redirect from Kabi people. Suspect it might need some discussion first before moving it. But you're right, the title is silly, and should definitely be changed.

Understood re your strategy. I've started working systematically through the pages, and have put the number of cite errors found in the edit summary, so you know which ones to look at. Let me know about any articles you are working on, so we don't tread on each other's toes. --NSH001 (talk) 17:17, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I dunno anything about procedures, but it should be Gubbi Gubbi, with any redirect Kabi people/KabiKabi going to that. What's a chap to do, open some discussion somewhere, on the talk page?

IO really appreciate the help, N. No hurry of course.Nishidani (talk) 17:25, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Well Gubbi Gubbi is a redirect with >1 entry in its history, so it'll need some form of formal process to get it moved there. On the other hand, Gubbi Gubbi people is a redlink, so it could be moved there immediately, if you wish. --NSH001 (talk) 22:15, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

The quick solution, Gubbi Gubbi people. In Italy it's taken me five months of paperwork to get my bank to pay telephone bills automatically. I like to think of the real world beyond its borders, including this virtual one, somewhat more efficient:)Nishidani (talk) 11:05, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, that was easy. Italy sounds intriguing, maybe there are unexpected useful side-benefits to hopeless inefficiency? Over here it's almost impossible to arrange to pay one's bills in any way other than automatically. --NSH001 (talk) 11:51, 3 February 2017 (UTC)