Talk:Habis Majali

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This article is nothing but a glowing, triumphalistic eulogy to Mr Habis al-Majali. It makes countless claims which are not sustained by any references! I have included a few "citation needed" tags but it is not enough. I feel the whole article has to be re-written - or at least heavily edited - in order to present a more balance view.

Since I do not have time to undertake such a project it should at least be labelled as a disputed article..

For example the attempted Syrian invasion of Jordan in September 1970 (in the sub-section "In the Stability of Jordan) was not repulsed by Majalis himself but by the Israeli air-force which threatened the Syrians (although it did not actually bomb them) and forced them to withdraw.

This happened during a civil war, by the way, so Majalis was not "crushing a revolt" and the Palestinian were subsequently massacred in what became known as Black September. All these facts are omitted from the article.

Avel2 18:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

This article is absolutely insane. No one ever captured Ariel Sharon. He was badly wounded, but walked off the battlefield. In 1948, this guy was just a flunky for British officers. Scott Adler 02:12, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is a eulogy, as it's directly copied from the Guardian's obituary. Doesn't mean it's all false though. Lawrence Joffe is hardly someone with a lack of knowledge and is certainly not biased - the same can't be said for other people on this discussion page. 62.255.248.225 (talk) 10:20, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

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POV and uncited material

Please do not add non-neutral commentary, and uncited (or poorly cited) material. As per WP guidelines, any such material can be deleted immediately. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 12:44, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@Onel5969: Please take a moment to actually view what you reverted. Makeandtoss (talk) 12:44, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Makeandtoss - I did when I went through the article and deleted all POV and poorly cited material. Please do not add anything back which reeks like "considered to be Jordan's greatest military commander", or the only citation is from an interview with the article subject (that's primary sourcing and a no-no), or is completely uncited.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 12:47, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@Onel5969: Again, check what you reverted because I added proper citations and rewrote it to improve its style. Makeandtoss (talk) 12:49, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Makeandtoss - I did, and you still included POV, poorly cited (you can't use the stuff he says he did without any secondary corroborating sources). Further, you include material which is unsupported by the underlying source, e.g. "Majali's command of a single Jordanian attack on Israel in the Syrian Golan Heights had impressed Israeli generals...", and then include a quote which does not refer to Majali specifically, or a single attack. Similarly, you state that he resigned after losing the West Bank in 1967, and that he was forced to cede control of the army to Egypt, but neither assertion is unsupported by the citation. I could go on and on. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:01, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@Onel5969: Yes of course you did that in less than a minute. What primary source exactly? There's not a single interview referenced in the article. They are all obituaries published in 2001.

On the 1973 war the New York Times quote attributes the "success" to him: "In the Arab-Israeli war in 1973, he commanded Jordanian troops. An American military historian, a retired Army colonel, Trevor N. Dupuy, wrote later that the Israelis had been impressed by Jordanian tactical performance, evidencing higher professional standards than the Syrians or the Iraqis in one attack, although the attack failed to gain ground."

On resigning after the Six Day War I meant to put the Guardian reference instead of the New York Times one.

I am expecting that you self-revert and contribute to improving whatever is wrong with my edits, instead of wholly removing them. Makeandtoss (talk) 13:08, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

No, I am not going to do your work for you. I've stated the issues, you continue to disregard WP policy and procedures. If you want the material included, you fix it. If you want help, than feel free to ask for it, but your lack of AGF above makes me very hesitant. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:19, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@Onel5969: You are an experienced editor. I do not understand your actions here. You mentioned three issues and I pointed out to how they are not actually issues. You want to continue reverting and refuse to discuss? AGF states: "Unless there is clear evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it." You clearly reverted within one minute; that is not enough time for you to review my edits. And now you are clearly not acting in good faith by refusing to discuss my edits. Can we act like grown-ups and get back again to fixing this article? And that starts with a self-revert because this article is under the Template:ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement, which prevents me from reverting you twice during 24 hours. Makeandtoss (talk) 13:39, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I'm done discussing this with you. The fact that you don't feel that a minute is enough time to see the gross inaccuracies in your edits is your problem, not mine. It is a clear indication of your failure to AGF, which you have only expounded upon in your above comment. Your explanations are not satisfactory and don't deal with the issues. You have wrong attributions (which you've admitted), you make assumptions about article content (which, I grant you I understand why you made them, but that still doesn't make them correct), you reinserted POV crap, you reinserted info whose only attribution is from the article's subject himself (hence primary). One point you are correct on, I didn't see the Arbcom notice. However, the edit of yours I reverted was itself in violation of that notice. So on that basis, I'll self-revert, but using your own logic, that means that you should self-revert as well. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:48, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I made one wrong attribution and I was going to fix it as soon as the content was back on the article. One wrong attribution in a paragraph does not mean you can remove six other paragraphs. Reinserted POV crap? The article says "considered to be one of Jordan's greatest military commander", a perfectly sourced claim available in the Telegraph obituary. Obituaries are WP:SECONDARY sources. They fulfil the criteria: "A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources." Again if you are done discussing with me, you should refrain from editing the article.Makeandtoss (talk) 14:06, 29 November 2018 (UTC)