Talk:Haifa Oil Refinery massacre

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Hi Zcaky, I'll pick up here where I left off ;-) I changed back the first sentence for reasons of grammar; I included the cooperation in the next line. Cheers, Tewfik^Talk 02:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

On the strength of Ian's Times reference, I've changed the dead back to 41. Tewfik^Talk 06:57, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The Palestine Post reported 39, and continued to report 39 for at least 2 months afterwards. For example on Feb 20, 1948 it summarised the report of a Jewish commission of enquiry on the incident; it repeatedly gives the death toll as 39. I guess that the difference between 39 and 41 might be some people who died of their injuries at some later date, but unless the Times explains where they got the 41 from I think we should take the PP as more authoritative. In addition, Morris, Righteous Victims (and also Birth..Revisted), and Milstein, History of Israel's War of Independence, Vol II, both say 39. I think this is enough evidence to adopt 39 in the article. --Zero^talk 13:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Ian said that both 31 December 1947 and 2 January 1948 stories in the Times record 41. Perhaps you can take this up with him directly, but it seems that if two more died after the fact, then those reports are a reliable indication of that. Tewfik^Talk 17:03, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

If the Times actually says "two more died later of their injuries", then that can be accepted, but if they just say "41 were killed" without explaining why they don't agree with the common count, then that isn't enough. Newspapers make mistakes all the time. The Palestine Post gave 39 almost every time they mentioned the incident over the next two months, and more importantly the Jewish Agency enquiry report says 39. That enquiry result by itself is more authoritative than the newspaper reports. Milstein cites the 39 figure to a Haganah internal report on the event. --Zero^talk 00:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The sources in the region and the scholarly sources are more authoritative but perhaps we can just refer to the figure of 41 and its sources to inform readers and to prevent a recurrence of this debate. --Ian Pitchford 07:43, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

In such cases, on fr, we chose to write : "(...) between 39 and 41 (...)" Alithien 08:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

References

Lead sentence

The massacre really involves the first 6 Arabs, the 41/39 Jews and the later 70 (or couple dozen according to some sources) of Arabs. Can the lead be amended to take into account that many were the victims of the massacre, it was not just one ethnic group that suffered? --Abnn 06:18, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Also I notice that the actual events were more involved as described here http://www.mideastweb.org/refriots.htm then the article current details. Thus this article could be expanded to capture the richness of the history at some point. --Abnn 06:18, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Terrible - no context

I heard about what happened at the Haifa Oil Refinery from my mother's uncle, who was working there the day the Irgun detonated the explosives outside the refinery that killed Arabs from the town of Balad al-Shaykh, who would line up outside in the hope of finding work. He told me about how the Arab workers inside the refinery exploded with rage, grabbing whatever they could their hands on to attack the British and Jewish managers who had better positions and earned more money while the native Arab population had to make to with the slop work. He himself had no stomach for blood and locked himself in a room with two other guys from Nazareth until the hubbub died down. Anyway, I wish he had written a book on the subject so that I could use it as a source here. I'll try to find other such sources though, because the article as currently written is confused. Tiamut^talk 17:28, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Massacre? Reliable sources?

Are they any reliable sources that call this a "massacre"? Normally, I would not mind, but recently at Balad al-Shayk massacre, editors insisted on changing the title to Balad al-Shaykh raid since, even though it involved the deaths of innocent civilians, sources explicitly calling it a massacre were few and far between. On what basis is this attack being characterized as such? Tiamut^talk 14:28, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, pp.405 says the Palestian Arab committed two big massacres during the 1948 War and cite this as one of them. Ceedjee (talk) 14:06, 22 February 2009 (UTC)