Talk:Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2004

I protest this page. Even the Hebrew Wikipedia would not put up anything like this. But I am not surprised, and here I am going to be harsh. All you people are doing is promoting a philosophy of victimology, harping on the Jew as the victim, whether it is in the Timeline of Jewish history, the History of Anti-Semitism, Anti-Semitism, or several dozen other articles of that nature. Is that the basis of your Jewish identity--I'm Jewish cuz everyone kicks the shit out of me? Is this whole attitude the basis of what appears to be a "they did it to us, so we can do it to them" kind of attitude you have toward others, such as, but not only, the Palestinians? Does it really promote or foster a true sense of pride in Jewish heritage and culture. As a professional Jewish educator and an Israeli citizen, I can say whole-heartedly that I am disgusted with the kind of agenda you are promoting on pages like this. It has nothing to do with me or the truly proud Jews I know. Danny 00:09, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If there are inaccuracies of fact, let's fix them. Israel is certainly not defined by victimhood...its success against Arab armies over decades precludes that definition.

I am removing the factual accuracy clause, till someone points out an inaccuracy. OneVoice 04:46, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Echoing Danny's sentiments, I believe that presenting this information in this way without context, that is to say, without a meaningful account of this historical forces at work behind these desperate acts, of the occupation of the Palestinian lands and the crippling of the Palestinian economy, at the lack of autonomy and self-determination among the Palestinian people, is a shameless exercise in propaganda, and as such as no place in this encyclopedia. -- Viajero 17:36, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Viajero, many of the incidents, listed on the Terrorism against Israel in 2004 page, are suicide bombings of people commuting to work on buses, eating with their family in restraunts, or other every day activities by everyday people. Context for these events could have two purposes: one would be to place the events within a series of contemporaneous events, another reason would be to explain or justify the murder of innocents. This second behavior was recently described by Nobel Peace Prize laureate David Trimble as the "great curse" of our time — human rights organizations use context to justify the unjustifiable. This does not diminish the suffering of Palestinians; their plight is horrible indeed. Their plight does not justify a single suicide bombing or other murder of innocents, much less a sustained, deliberate campaign of such atrocities. It is not possible to present such acts neutrally. A simple recitation of the facts is the least condemnatory presentation possible.

Test your conception of the matter. Consider Jews engaged in suicide bombings in Germany for a period of three years after World War II. Context would in any way diminish the moral reprehensibility of such atrocities. OneVoice 02:40, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Viajero...that may well be true....hence a NPOV marker may well be appropriate. No moral person could have a neutral point of view regarding these acts of terrorism. A factual accuracy marker should be based on the page containing factual errors. please point out any factual errors that you find. OneVoice 22:40, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The accuracy of an article may be a cause for concern if:

It contains a lot of unlikely information, without providing references. ( does not apply...all items are taken from events reported by multiple sources.)
It contains information which is particularly difficult to verify. (does not apply...same consideration.)
In, for example, a long list, some errors have been found, suggesting that the list as a whole may need further checking. (does not apply. not a single inaccuracy has been identified.)
It has been written (or edited) by a user who is known to write inaccurately on the topic. (does not apply. a number of poeple have added to the article.)

OneVoice 22:54, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This article can be fixed if 1) it lists all Israeli-Palestinian violence in the conflict, 2) it avoids the use of the word "terrorism". I will do so. The new name is: "Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 2004". BL 17:54, Feb 3, 2004 (UTC)

Title of the Article

I am freezing the title of the article as Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 2004. There is a redirect from Terrorism against Israel in 2004. --Uncle Ed 20:19, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

FWIW, I don't think we should have any of this. Wikipedia isn't a primary source document, it's an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias should not be in the habit of making 50-page timelines chronicling each time two people were shot in a conflict, as it is unlikely we can produce such a timeline that is actually accurate and keeps up to date with the latest scholarship (generally we just grab stuff from news article and never revisit it, and certainly don't do any formal studies). We should list major attacks, especially ones that have political influence (like some of the major suicide bombings that have led to cancellations of summits), and summarize the others. --Delirium 03:24, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)

The problem with that "description of the process" is that is almost impossible to make it NPOV. Someone has to select which attacks are spectacular or important enough to be worthy of mention. Wikipedians can't do it so instead we have to rely on newspapers selection which seldom is very NPOV. That way the description would unfairly favourably depict the Israeli side because suicide bombings generate much more media coverage than house demolitions. Now obviously it is a lot of work to catalogise every time a Palestinian killed an Israeli or vice versa but atleast it's doable. BL 03:38, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)

Excellent points here. A couple of comments:

Delirium - I feel that Wikipedia is actually in an excellent position for grabbing and cross-checking information of all biases from a variety of sources. Sure it leads to some passionate reversals if not outright vandalism, but it is probably worth the trouble if we can at least keep a reasonably accurate tally of which people died, when, and where (and with which degree of confirmation by independent sources). Surely that is not choosing sides, although I believe and hope that will help give at least a few people pause before judging the other side, whichever that happens to be. These are real people running the risk of becoming just casualty numbers. I would rather not let that happen.

BL - so you feel that the media preference for suicidal attempts over house demolitions may hurt Israel's image? Maybe that is true, but I don't think it is clearly the case at all. Suicidal warfare may be seen as either the misguided efforts of fanatical people or the desperate acts of those who have no better course of action available. It sort of balances out - and if you disagree, I see no reason why the house demolitions couldn't be explicitly detailed as well. Maybe even given their own article, if there isn't one yet.

I would love to hear more of your thoughts in this matter. -- Luis Dantas 15:05, Feb 5 2004 (UCT)

I think we should mention things like house demolitions, but in a way that summarizes the information, like "Israel demolished twenty-seven houses belonging to families of suspected suicide bombers in the latter half of 2003" (number made up). If there are twenty-seven entries in a timeline saying "Israel demolished one house", that's pretty useless—it's more likely to have errors, and harder to read. The same goes for something like "twenty-two Israeli settlers were shot between August and December 2003" (again, made up number), not a list of every single time one of them was shot. Such a mind-numbingly boring chronicle is the place of a primary source, not Wikipedia. You'll note we don't, in any of the WW2 articles, have 300 pages on one battle chronicling every single infantry maneuver and every single company that took casualties in that maneuver—because that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Instead we summarize the battle at a high level, and mention specific incidents that are well-known. Same should go here. --Delirium 09:52, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

Delirium, if this is your position, why are you added incidents to the very list that you say should not be in wikipedia? OneVoice 01:55, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I must revert the last edit - again. Notice that the sources for BL info are broken links to a website of the Palestinian Authority (for example [1]- very non reliable source of POV. As I said before - if you want to create a logbook for the intifada, do it in a new article rather than trashing someone else works. MathKnight 18:50, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Are you claiming the Palestinian Authority is an unreliable source of information? If so, you will have to back up your charges with well-documented proof. The links are working just fine. -- Viajero 19:48, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The link I copied to here doesn't work. Here is an example:

January 28: Israeli forces killed 13 Palestinians and wounded dozen others during an invasion of the Alzaytoun area south of Gaza City. [2]

But according to Reuters only 8 people were killed, 5 of them were armed members of the Islamic Jihad (what BL fails to note). Here is your proof. I'm also suspect that he listed other events were militants (and not innocent civilians) were killed. MathKnight 20:59, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Secondly, this page is dedicated to Israeli terror victims. Instead of creating a new article he insists on trashing this one. I think we should set policy on this one, I'm seek of reverting back BL sabotages. MathKnight 20:59, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"this page is dedicated to Israeli terror victims" -- I'm sorry but I don't understand why you believe this to be so. Surely an article entitled Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 2004 should not just be about violence committed against Israelis. That would hardly be NPOV. Maybe I've misunderstood what you mean. -- Ams80 21:58, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The orginal title was Terrorism against Israelis. MathKnight 23:22, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Quite the opposite, Luis Dantas. I know the medias preference for suicide bombings over murder by other means, for example missiles, tank shells and rubber bullets does hurt the Palestinian cause. Therefore I completely agree with you. That's why I changed the title in the first place. BL 22:28, Feb 5, 2004 (UTC)

Why you keep ruining other's articles? MathKnight 23:22, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Articles on Wikipedia don't belong to anyone. Anyone can submit an article but at the same time anyone can edit it -- that is the way the system works, for better or for worse. -- Viajero 10:50, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Because the system enables vandelism is doesn't mean vandelism is an appropiate behaivor, a specially when articles are "hijacked" and their orginal content is twisted. MathKnight 16:31, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

StarOfDavid/MathKnight, what exactly defines you as the victim here? BL did not vandalize the article. You did. Luis Dantas 16:34, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You keep not listeninh. The orginal article was named Terrorism against Israel but BL changed the title as he himself admited:

That's why I changed the title in the first place. BL 22:28, Feb 5, 2004 (UTC)

So who was the vandelizer? MathKnight 16:47, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Chill. Nobody has vandalized anything. Vandalism is scrawling "POOP POOP POOPETY POOP" or something like that in the middle of the article; nobody has done anything of the sort. What BL did, and MathKnight disliked, was change a one-sided martyrology into a somewhat more neutral and dispassionate recounting of the violence on both sides of the conflict. If you want to dispute that, then dispute it, but don't call it vandalism; explain why you think there should be one page devoted exclusively to violence against Israelis and another devoted to violence against Palestinians. Since each episode of violence is all too often carried out in revenge for a previous attack (and this applies to both sides), I think it makes sense to present them together, rather than in separate articles. Anyway, start discussing; calling each other "vandals" and "cyber-terrorists" is not going to help create a worthy article. --No-One Jones (talk) 17:06, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What User:BL did was to lump together without distinction acts that are legally and morally sanctioned (the killing of terrorists) with those are universally recognized throughout the civilized world as morally reprehensible and illegal (the wanton murder of innocents). It is a one side martyrology because only one side engages in such acts (with the exception of Baruch Goldstein). Only one side incalcates a mythos of suicide bombing in its youth, via television, radio, print, and the naming of soccer teams. This is why "there should be one page devoted exclusively to violence against Israelis and another devoted to violence against Palestinians". Violence is such a nice, neutral word...does not carry any moral content...violence caused the deaths of more than 3000 people on September 11th, they were all victims of violence, the people in the towers and the airplanes and the 19 Arabs that murdered them. OneVoice 18:45, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

OneVoice, I just want to make sure I understand your position: are you saying that every Palestinian Israel kills is a terrorist? -- Viajero 19:20, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Many Palestinians that are killed by Israeli forces are specifically, individually targeted either for terrorist activities that there are currently engaged in or terrorist activities that they have prevoiusly committed. At times, not always, additional Palestinians are killed. These additional deaths are horrible. They are additional, unintended consequences. These intended and unintended deaths are fundamentally distinct from acts that indescrimately target either individuals (e.g. shooting attacks on vehicles) or groups (e.g. suicide bombings of bus travellers). To group together the first actions (individually targeted killings) with wanton murder is reprehensible.

A distinct group of Palestinians killed includes young males attempting to break into settlements at night, perhaps for the purpose of theft, are at times shot due a policy of shooting at people breaking in as a result of previous instanaces of such breakins leading to murder.

Another group is young males climbing upon military vehicles or attacking military personnel with stones, firebombs and other items of various lethality. OneVoice 01:12, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't specifically disagree, but I don't see what's wrong with putting them all in one article. We can simply describe all the violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict neutrally and let the reader decide which violence they find unfortunate but justified, and which they find unacceptable and abhorrent. It's just a timeline after all; we should also have a real, non-timeline and less-detailed, description of this violence somewhere else, in prose paragraphs. --Delirium 02:41, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

Can writers be neutral?

...acts that are legally and morally sanctioned (the killing of terrorists) with those are universally recognized throughout the civilized world as morally rehensible and illegal (the wanton murder of innocents).

Each of us contributors (and this includes me) has his own opinion about what sorts of acts are morally sanctioned, and how we think laws regarding these acts ought to be interpreted. The hardest thing I've ever done at Wikipedia is to describe someone else's point of view (POV) without immediately saying "but of course he's wrong, as all good people know".

To step back and say that this group believes it is right and that group believes it is wrong is really difficult. So I'm proud to be part of a project which encourages us to do difficult writing.

This doesn't mean I'm giving up my beliefs. I'm not calling badness good, or goodness bad. But I can say that he thinks this way without compromising my integrity. --Uncle Ed 19:29, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes, we can relate the views of any individual, group of individuals or society. To do so is to report a fact regarding the people involved. There should not be anything too difficult about this even though it may be rather distasteful of an African-American to write about the predominant views of white Americans in much of the United States before the 1860-1865 war (and for some period of time thereafter, a century?, more?). To relate there views is not establishing a moral equivalence between different acts such as between between the murderer and the victim or between one act of violence (e.g. destruction of property) and another (e.g. murder). Establishing a moral equivalance, treating the acts in the same manner, is objectionable. There is a broad moral consensus on what is acceptable behavior and what is not. The death penalty is NOT agreed upon as acceptable or unacceptable. Murder is universally comdemned in civilized societies. OneVoice 01:12, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think we have reached the point where arbitrage is in order. I am not 100% sure that it was StarOfDavid/MathKnight making this last "update", but the vocabulary sure fits. Either way, it is probably best to decided formally whether it is best to have a general Violence page or a (IMO unfairly POV) "Terrorism victims" page, and leave a clear statement of that decision on the start of the article. Luis Dantas 00:45, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Time for a vote?

It seems that the issue is pretty clear-cut, and there's not a whole lot of room for compromise, so perhaps we should take a vote to gauge opinion on this issue?

If I'm not mistaken, the two positions are currently:

We should have one page containing a timeline of all types of violence on all sides.
We should have multiple, separate pages: one containing a timeline of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, one containing a timeline of Israeli military activities that resulted in Palestinian deaths, and so on.

Is that an accurate summary of both sides' viewpoints? --Delirium 09:38, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, yes it is. There is probably the issue of defining "terrorism" for the second option, which is one of the reasons why I choose the first. Luis Dantas 15:08, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Violence includes acts that result in wounded and property damage. Neither version of the article includes any violence other than deaths. Creating and maintaining a timeline of violence is probably beyond the abilities of Wikipedia. Terrorism is defined for us on the Terrorism page which includes the statement:

Acts of revolutionary or guerrilla warfare usually are not considered to constitute terrorism, unless the revolutionaries or guerrillas they deliberately and specifically select civilians as targets of violence in the pursuit of political or religious ends.

One can substitute militants for revolutionaries or guerrillas without doing violence to the quote above.

This page is one of 5 pages covering years of activity. All five should be treated similarly. This will require one group to review 5 years of newspaper articles to verify each occurance to be added, just as each occurance added to date has been based upon newspaper accounts. This work could be undertaken immediately.

The crux of the matter is that one group has created and maintained over a period of 5 years a series of pages recounting Palestinian terrorism that has resulted in Israeli deaths. The other group objects to such a page and seeks to include a partial (timewise) list of Palestinian deaths in the same page. Wikipedia could have all three pages: Israel deaths only, Palestinian deaths only, and a combined page. OneVoice 15:32, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Here is some detail on the non-fatal level of violence that could be recorded in Wikipedia, should we chose articles on violence rather than focusing on deaths:

rocks were thrown at vehicles near Eli Zahav
soldiers on guard duty fired at suspicious images near Kibbutz Nahal Oz
firebomb attacks against vehicles near Peduel
rock throwing attacks in Hawarah
undetonated warhead of a Kassam rocket found in Gan-Or
bus was hit by gunfire in the near the community of Shilo

All of these acts of violence occurred on February 8, 2004. These do not include violence in conjunction with military operations. This list is partial. Such a list will quickly become quite extensive. OneVoice 19:30, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Vote

I'm calling a vote then, since the various positions seem pretty well-established. Please list just your name here, and carry out arguments further below. --Delirium 22:16, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

Option 1: One timeline of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, containing all the violence by both sides.
1. Luis Dantas 23:12, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC) (although I do support Soul_kitch's suggestion too)

Option 2: Multiple, separate timelines. One of Palestinian terrorism against Israel; one of Israeli military action against Palestinians; and possibly others.

Option 3: Both 1 and 2—have one combined timeline as well as multiple separate timelines, presenting different views of the same information.
1. [Soul_kitch]

A separate vote:

Include only deaths in any or all of these lists.

Include both deaths and violence that did not result in deaths.
1. [Soul_kitch]

A person's effort in creating an article might be dedicated to a group or a cause, but Wikipedia's purpose is declared in a mission statement. Without getting tedious, the mission is to produce encyclopedic articles. The vote presents a false delima to me, because it presupposes the need for lists of victims, which might not be appropriate. Careful description of the types of violence, and of changes in the manner of violence would be much more informative to me than would be a list of victims names and vague circumstances surrounding their death. That seems more like raw material from which more analytic prose could develop. But lists of lists of lists have become part of the wiki landscape and need to be assimilated. For that reason, I voted for both seperate and combined lists. It makes it easiest for all involved to make maximum use of the information available in the format that best fits their interests, and best invites contributions to the encyclopedia. Soul kitch 23:00, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, "viajero" but Soul_kitch is a moniker used by a human with real concerns and real ideas, not by a "troll." The content of these comments is serious, pertains entirely to process and avoids altogether the subject of the controversy. Viajero might again choose to use this page to wage a campaign for preferred policies about identification of writers, but I encourage others here to repair the damage and restore my responses to a legitimate invitation to participate, protecting the page for its original purpose i.e. discussion of the best way to document West Mediteranian violence. My standing as a valid person can be assessed when whoever decides how much weight to give to one vote in an uncontrolled voting process. My purpose here is to respond to an invitation to participate, not to tamper with a voting process. If anyone declares my purpose to be otherwise, they are simply wrong and are doing me wrong by attempting to declare my motives. Now, back to the subject at hand, hopefully. Soul kitch 14:58, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Note, I have taken the liberty of moving user:Soul Kitch's comments to his Talk page and removed his votes from above as an anti-troll measure. -- Viajero 23:38, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There is an idea here that has not been stated and is not clear to me. As a hypothetical, if the vote results in a single combined page being created, what effect does this result have on the creation of new pages covering the same material that are not combined. Would such pages be deleted? Would all links to such pages be deleted? Would the content of such pages be changed to match the content of the single combined page? I do not understand what happens after this vote. Can someone clarify this for me please? OneVoice 03:17, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Viajero....did Soul kitch's vote? Did you remove another person's votes (in this case Soul kitch)? If so, on what basis? Will you be removing other people's votes in the future? Do you recognize a basis (the same basis?) by which other people can remove your vote? Please clarify. OneVoice 03:17, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There's a policy somewhere that you cannot register accounts solely to vote, and as far as I can tell, Soul_kitch's very first action on Wikipedia was to vote in this poll, which is suspicious, and suggests that it is an alternate account of an existing user. --Delirium 03:56, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)

OneVoice: from what I gather of Wikipedia's general policy and goals (and it just happens that I am new here, so I may well be quite mistaken) there _is_ no such policy set in advance. But it is only natural to catch such pages (in the hypothetical scenario you describe) as they are created, integrate their contents into the combined page and turn them into redirects. Logically the merged page will have an explanation early on to the effect that it was voted that it is best (for the purposes of Wikipedia at least) not to separate the content (if that turns out to be the final decision). So no, such pages would not be deleted, but instead they would point out to the merged contents. Neither would the links be deleted - they would point either to the merge or to a (short?) explanation that would itself link to the merged contents.

Also, there would be no need to change their contents, since they would effectivelly be aliases of the merged page instead of having their own content. It stands to reason that occasionally someone would create some new page to cover the same sort of information (hopefully out of lack of knowledge about this vote), but that would be corrected easily by just transfering the content and creating a new redirect.

Redirects are fairly commonplace here at Wikipedia, but if you want an example, take a look at PDF, Sensitivity and Helena Blavatsky for a few variations on the idea.

Best, Luis Dantas 04:56, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A number of issues here:

I have asked an admin regarding a person that I suspect of having multiple accounts. Their response is that Wikipedia does not prohibit multiple accounts. One's right to vote seems to be limited by the number of accounts one is willing to create. This makes the concept of voting at Wikipedia problematic. Soul kitch may be an extreme example, or may be a "valid user".

I see this as something of a gray zone, to be sure, but hardly to such a troubling degree. For one thing, User:Soul_Kitch never even edited his own user page, so his validity as a user is suspect. Having multiple accounts is not forbidden, but using them to twist the voting totals is clearly fraudulent practice. Then again, we are practically on a first name basis here, so I can hardly see the problem. Luis Dantas

Who decides which votes count and which to not? It is easy to find places in Wikipedia that one can make minor edits as a "new user" and then vote. Wikipedia has a number of places where, for instance, one could search out acronyms and replace the first instance in each article with the full name followed by the acronym (standard practice in professional writing) and then vote. Who will decide which votes count? It should not be someone that is emmeshed in the issue such as User:Viajero in the current case.

IMO it will not really be an issue, but there is always the possibility of calling for external arbitration. Luis Dantas 14:29, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Redirects are not an issue at all. In the hypothetical case, we will delete or redirect any and all pages that are created that are partial lists?

I would like to think so, yes, unless they actually have some significant content of their own (e.g. they might detail some specific incident), in which case they would ideally lose redundant material (but keep their own content) and link to the merged article. I understand that you would rather not do things that way? May you please elaborate? Luis Dantas

One recommendation is to record all acts of violence in a combined list. This is of questionable practicality...wikipedians will be hard pressed do so. One person added the clearing of land for the fence as an act of violence, what of car theft from Israel to the PA, a thriving industry there. Such a list will be partial, both in terms of failing to record numerous events and in terms of bias. Let us try to do so for one week and see if we can maintain such a list.

Surely if people can't be troubled to report violent acts to the article it is an indication that they aren't all that moved by them. I am sure that article will fail to indicate people spanking their own children, but that is not really a problem. We are supposed to respect each other's texts and to have reasonable care about sources, not to become Amnesty International investigators or something. Car theft may or may not be violent, and such be included on the article when it _is_ violent and on an "as noticed" basis, just like all other occurrences. Luis Dantas

Basing a list, on acts that are clearly terrorism (such as suicide bombings) and acts that are not terrorism (such as firefights between armed groups) is easier and much less prone to disagreement regarding the individual entries.

Therefore, before a vote, there are a couple of points to clarify as well as the need to demonstrate that we can maintain a list of "violent acts" as opposed to a list of those killed. OneVoice 13:21, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Suicide bombings are _not_ clearly terrorism IMO. And many firefights between armed groups _are_. Non-suicidal bombings probably would be, but even then there would be significant room for argument. The definition of terrorism, as indicated by its article, is far less than crystal-clear and unanimous. And again, it we fail to record a violent act it can only be because it is not all that important (or perhaps not well-documented) after all. There is not much of a reason why we must try very hard to cover all stances. In fact, we have little choice in the matter - we rely on external sources anyway. I certainly am not there in the Middle East watching things first hand, at least. Luis Dantas 14:29, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)