Talk:Operation Shoter

Bias

I have added this tag, partly on the basis of the discussion here ...this article needs to get the Palestinian perspective, too. At present it is about 100% Israeli perspective. (Yeah, I *will* try to work on it, but I will surely not have the time for the next day ...or three. Or five.) Regards, Huldra (talk) 03:57, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Huldra! I am not yet finished working on this article, but am fairly certain that there are no Arab sources discussing the actual battle, only the aftermath, which is already written in a clearly pro-Arab tone. The section needs work anyway, but don't forget that the article is primarily about the operation (i.e. military history), not the flight of the refugees from the little triangle. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 12:33, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

P.S. In that it was not clear from the above post, I am also requesting a list of specific concerns and suggestions. The mere fact that the article relies mostly on Israeli sources is not a reason to call it biased, since indeed most Israel-related article are based on Israeli sources. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 00:36, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

That is a good point. As I´ve said; I will try to work more on this article, but I would like to update some of main villages which were attacked first (I am more or less done with Ayn Ghazal, but eg. Ijzim needs serious expansion.) Just one little note about bias: as I have added to the Ayn Ghazal; the "outside" supervisors of the Second truce found that the villagers *had not* violated it...while IDF had. Now, that is not *quite* the impression we get from reading this article today, is it? I also think the 14 July statement from Ben-Gurion about the "little triangle"-villages is extremely revealing.(now in the Ayn Ghazal-article), Regards, Huldra (talk) 00:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

According to Morris (2008), p. 298: "Sniping at traffic continued after the start of the Second Truce, and the villages refused to desist or surrender." According to your own standard, this should replace the contradictory content from 2004. Although, IMO, they are not contradictory at all—with all due respect to the UN mission, it is clear that they made a lot of mistakes in their assessments, and one of them is that the Arabs had not violated the truce. Moreover, the article does not explicitly say that they violated the truce, we are letting the reader decide for themselves, based on the facts reported by reliable secondary sources. There doesn't seem to be any bias there, as all sources agree that sniping from the villages continued, and road blocks were set up. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 01:35, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

When you refer to Morris (2008), I assume you refer to his book "1948, The first Arab-Israeli War". I have just received it, and have not had the time to read the whole "opus". But one thing is seems clear to me: it deals much more with the "foreign" troops, ie. the actions of the Jordanians, Egyptians, etc. The "local", or "internal" issues are treated in a shorter manner; (understandably, as that was something he treated at depth in the 2004-book.) Ein Ghazal is only mentioned on two places, p.296 & 298; the whole Operation Shoter gets less than a page; as it did not involve foreign troops. And nothing there is not also mentioned in the 2004-book. And the "sniper"-incident has no reference. And, most of all; the "smoking-gun" statement from Ben-Gurion is also mentioned in the 2008-book. This is just a very quick "preliminary" look; as I said: I would like to elaborate the history on some of the villages, (especially Ijzim) --before I return to this article, Regards, Huldra (talk) 03:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I am not disputing Morris's 2004 book, I am simply saying that there is no problem with the article. There are ample sources that state that the Arabs violated the truce, if you're interested. In fact, every single source I introduced to the article so far talked about this in one way or another. However, I am still waiting to hear from you why you believe the article is biased, and any specific suggestions you have for removing this bias. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 21:09, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I would like to record my respect for both of you. The industry, depth of knowledge, and high standards you display are my benchmarks. I must also apologies for my own mistakes and indiscretions.

I have mixed feelings about the neutrality tag. Firstly you will know what a thrill it is to return to something you started and find someone has expanded your entry beyond recognition. I want to believe that this work was done in good faith and with an open mind. The fact that all the sources are Israeli doesn’t rule out neutrality. But there are problems.

The most offensive is the sentence claiming that refugees *lied about their origins* in the last paragraph. I would like to see more evidence and perhaps, if we are labelling liars, quote Shertock lying to the United Nations when he claimed that no aircraft were used in the attack.

There is too much emphasis on the threat these villages caused to the Haifa/Tel Aviv road without any suggestion that the villages where surrounded by Israeli forces and cut off from all assistance.

There are estimates of the number of defenders: one company or 800 highly-trained and disciplined soldiers. But no total for the number of attackers. 5 companies are mentioned plus a number of military police. That could be anywhere between 300 and 1000 men. *Highly trained…etc*.

There are two references to the number of villager killed but no mention of casualties amongst the attackers. In the wealth of sources there must be some record.

The lack of any reference to the extent of the demolition of buildings by Israeli military personnel after the completion of the operation is a serious omission. As is the silence on its consequence: none of the villagers ever returned to their homes.Padres Hana (talk) 15:26, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Padres Hana! Thank you for the warm comments, and I will address your concerns one by one:

1. The information about refugees lying about their origins comes from Yoav Gelber's new book, Independence vs. Nakba, a highly scholarly book by a well-known academic in the field. The book is mostly about how the war affected the Arab population of Palestine, and it mentions the little triangle several times. There is nothing that isn't already said in the article except this one factoid which I thought was fairly interesting and important. It certainly makes sense because, as Gelber says, the total population of the little triangle was well below 8,000.
2. If Sharett deliberately lied to the UN or another foreign body, and this is stated in reliable sources, it should of course be mentioned. It is also both interesting and important. This is not relevant to the previous point however.
3. Actually it is mentioned that the villages were cut off from the rest of the Arab forces: "Sniper fire from village militiamen effectively closed this road, but by the beginning of the truce they were completely cut off from other Arab forces." If you feel this is not enough, I am open to suggestions. Perhaps the sentence could be moved up and expanded upon to more clearly emphasize this point. I am planning to make a map (maybe more than one) for this article, which will also illustrate this point clearly.
4. You are right, but here is a problem: understand the makeup of the Israeli force requires understanding the basic structure of the IDF at the time, however, inserting such information here would be WP:SYNTH because it is not relevant to Operation Shoter and it doesn't say how many troops were in each company here. I can expand a bit more on the structure of the Israeli force from the Alexandroni book (again, no exact numbers), but I would not like to use that one source too much, it's already used for almost all of the military history information in the article. I don't know of any source that has the amount of attackers as a number, although if you find one, more power to you!
5. I believe it says somewhere how many casualties there were on the Israeli side. I will look into it.
6. I agree that there should be some mention of what happened with the three localities after the war, although the bulk of such information should go into Ijzim, Jaba' and Ayn Ghazal, not here. Other than Gelber's Independence vs. Nakba, I don't have any major sources on the subject of the Palestinian exodus, so maybe Huldra can fill in the gap.

In addition, please keep in mind two very important things:

1. The article is not finished yet, so in terms of content I'm sure it will get more information. However, this does not necessarily mean that imbalance currently exists in the article. The article is basically a combination of two very different subject areas—military history (the operation itself; why it was commissioned, who carried it out, how, where and when the force moved), and demographic history (the "human" side if you will). I believe that it is currently a good balance of both and most important, one subject area must not outweigh the other. On the one hand, the article is about a military operation, so it shouldn't be a WP:COATRACK and actually focus on the flight of the Arab population. On the other hand, the Arabs' flight was a significant consequence of the operation, and as such deserves a significant portion of the article to be dedicated to it.
2. The article is problematic because this particular operation is not covered in-depth in any of the sources that one can usually fall back on when researching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Israeli sources cover the operation little because it wasn't an important battle on the whole, and non-Israeli sources (which are sparse anyway, and usually not on the same level) usually cover only very specific aspects of the operation. Arab sources, as usual, are very hard to come by, and one reason might be because we don't speak Arabic. This past year I have been looking hard to acquire Arab sources on the war, whether translated to English or Hebrew, and have come up with some things, including the famous memoirs of Abdullah at-Tall, and a number of online documents. None mention Operation Shoter or the little triangle however.

—Ynhockey ^(Talk) 17:24, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Respite

Today I have adding as much as I could to the article, from the sources that I currently have or can acquire in the foreseeable future. I do not think the article is biased, and have addressed some of the relevant concerns about this already. I will therefore remove the tag if there are no further concerns. I understand that there is a lack of Arab sources in the articles, but this is due to a general sparsity of Arab sources on the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, not because of bias. I invite anyone who can procure relevant Arab sources to add information from them, or post relevant information here if they are primary sources or memoirs. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 00:08, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Air raids

What aircraft were used in the air raids? Padres Hana (talk) 21:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I am planning to add more information on the air raids from Avi Cohen's book History of the Air Force in the War for Independence after I finished with the Alexandroni book. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 23:46, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I have added the requested information. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 00:10, 9 December 2009 (UTC)