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Comparing Arab-Israeli matters to WWII.

The comparison between "undereported" events and "Vad yashem accounts of the Holocaust" is quite offensive and lacks basic sensitivity.[1] The same goes for misrepresenting Israeli officials with fake/out-of-context quotes (Note: Weissglass says nothing about food) and soapboxing about genocide, "military power out to be a lachrymose victim", et al. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 02:06, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

• Dov Weissglass:'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,' Source:Conrad Urquhart, 'Gaza on brink of implosion as aid cut-off starts to bite,' The Guardian 15 Apr 2006 (the remark was made in February 2006)
  • I don't even know what this talk section is about, having not looked, but I saw this quote and remembered this. Zero^talk 08:30, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah, wikileaks and US cdablegrams corroborating Weissglass's policy. Nothing new, of course, but these basic materials without newspaper spin, clarify the point. Thanks Zero.Nishidani (talk) 10:27, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Israeli officials have confirmed to Embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.

As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to econoffs on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge

• Genocide/Holocaust analogy was made by Matan Vilnai.'"The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," .' 'Israeli minister warns of Palestinian 'holocaust,' The Guardian 29 February 2008.
• 'lachrymose,' was an allusion to a famous complaint by Salo Wittmayer Baron:'“it is time to break with the lachrymose theory of pre-Revolutionary woe, and to adopt a view more in accord with historic truth”,' given a neat exposition by David Engel in hisHistorians of the Jews and the Holocaust, Stanford University Press, 2010 p.56.
• Yad Vashem's foundation stone was set just after the massacre of Deir Yassin and rises close to that village (1,400 metres away if I remember correctly) whose destruction precipitated the nakba, and on which, somewhat ironically, the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center stands. A curator of the museum who happened to mention this fact was sacked. Do you think I should be deplored for remembering what I read? Cf. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Trauma: A Social Theory, Wiley 2012 p.120.

In short, editors in this area should familiarize themselves with the topic (any brief allusion to the real history of this area is habitually dismissed as 'soapboxing' ). Lack of knowledge of both history and who said what means that the obvious seems surprising, if not a travesty of the (lack of) knowledge one might possess. So kindly drop it. I'm busy. Nishidani (talk) 10:48, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

@Nishidani:

• The Hebrew meaning of 'shoah' (not 'The Shoah') is disaster, not 'genocide' -- so you can retract that word and future use of Matan Vilnai (or Ovadyah Yosef, for that matter).
• Itamar Shapira, a self-described "ex-Jew" which you mistakenly call "A curator" (he was a tour guide) was indeed fired. Isn't that a big enough clue?

I don't know why you think it pertinent to mention him and the Deir Yassin massacre. Do you believe soapboxing justifies earlier soapboxing? Your comments are long and philosophical. Quotes by "anti-Zionist rabbis" and "ex-Jews" that take things out of context and have little historical accuracy. Promoting political or ideological struggle, e.g. "Just as the Nazi final assault",[2] is prohibited. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 12:41, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes. The article on The Holocaust here reads>:

The biblical word shoah (שואה; also transliterated sho'ah and shoa), meaning "calamity", became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s, especially in Europe and Israel.[19] Shoah is preferred by some Jews for several reasons, including the theologically offensive nature of the word "holocaust", '

'Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai went as far as threatening a "shoah,"the Hebrew word for holocaust or disaster. The word is generally used to refer to the Nazi Holocaust,'

That Vilnai backtracked and tried to cover up what everyone who heard him understood by the term with the limp excuse that when he personally uses the word 'shoah' he doesn't think of the meaning attached to it in Hebrew and by all Jews, and Westerners, but meant it to refer to a 'disaster'. It's like saying that when you use the word 'apple' no thoughht of the fruit crosses your mind, but only an image of New York or Microsoft's competitor. Sure, yeah. Yawn.

Look at the context. You want to remove a source that details a series of Israeli massacres from oral memories of the survivors.

Itamar Shapira exercised his right to remark on a feature in the landscape: -as you recall the holocaust, recall that next door there existed a village where over 100 Palestinians were murdered-. He would make an excellent wikipedian editor, but recalling both versions of a country's history, Jewish and Palestinian, is evidently good enough warrant over there for getting fired. You don't understand that. People raised on free speech, democratic principles do.

The tendency of editors to find excuses for any remark or fact deleterious to one side's image, while editing vigorously to showcase everything negative about the other side, is why this area of wikipedia is worked in continual violation of the obligation to assure neutrality, whatever one's private opinions.Nishidani (talk) 13:40, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

The article on The Holocaust says rightly that the word "Shoa" translation is "calamity". Usually, people refer to the Holocaust the use the term "Hashoa" ( The Holaucaust) or "Shoat yehudei Romania" (Romanian Jews Holocaust), so it seems that MarciulionisHOF is right. Ykantor (talk) 14:13, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Not to comment on the substance of your discussion here, I would point out that it is doubtful that Vilnai was referring to the Holocaust in his use of the word "Shoa". In modern Hebrew, the word "Hashoa" (with the definite article) universally refers to the Holocaust; but without the definite article, it is often used as a general term for catastrophe. See, for example, this quote by Yair Lapid:

"מה שקורה בארץ עכשיו לא פחות משואה אנשים נאלצים לעבוד בשלוש עבודות רק כדי לשלם שכירות"

(translation: What is happening in Israel now is no less than a shoa' - people have to work three jobs just to pay rent.)

--Ravpapa (talk) 14:40, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Rav. I'm aware of the distinction between'shoa/hashoa, which Ykantor points up. The problem is, um, hermeneutic. I was taught to read, and write, with attention to the resonance of words. Freudian 'lapses' didn't begin with psychoanalysis. All of classical and Talmudic exegesis accepts as an interpretative truism that the full range of meanings given a word is relevant to the interpretation of the content. Consider the verbal and cultural context I wrote out below (in response to the premise that somehow these numerous reports of wild statements by senior figures in Israel are, one by one, just 'misunderstandings').

Many sources say you are both wrong. 'shoah'/'ha-shoah' is an equivocation.Both Ynet/Reuters, commenting:'"Holocaust"(shoah) is a term rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi genocide during World War Two. Many Israelis are loathe to countenance using the word to describe other contemporary events.' and Haaretz are Israeli newspapers that took his comment, as did many other Jewish sources, as utterly distasteful because it evoked the Holocaust. Language works that way. When the town council of Or Yehuda posted a sign outside the cityduring the recent gaza War telling its local boys serving in the IDF:

• Residents of Or Yehuda are with you!
• Pound (kansu) their Mom so you can return safely to yours.

The word 'pound' means 'fuck/bang' in hebrew slang, and can't avoid that connotation, even if the jerk who thought it up comes back and justifies the phrasing by arguing that 'bang' means (just as bad) 'bomb the shit out of them'. When Professor Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University said that raping Palestinian women was a deterrant to terrorism, though adding that is wasn't meant to be advice to soldiers or, yesterday, his colleague emeritus professor Hillel Weiss called for the annihilation of the Palestinians, saying it is inevitable and won't constitute 'genocide' since that applies to a people, which the Palestinians are not, you don't as an editor equivocate, or run to the defense of whoever said what, as if it were impossible, uniquely for some eminent israelis, among them rabbis Dov Lior, Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Congregation Etz Chaim in Atlanta, to consider the murder of innocents or genocide itself as an option. If Moshe Feiglin calls for the extermination not only of Hamas but anyone who supports it, and bundling the rest of Gazans into camps where they will await relocation abroad, with a subsidy so Israel can build a nice commercial tourist industry for itself in Gaza(a move supported by Rabbi Ben Packer here), or if Yochanan Gordon calls for genocide, and Ayelet Shaked, a Knesset member groomed as potential prime ministerial material on the eve of the murder of Abu Khdeir, and before the war broke out wrote 'in wars the enemy is usually an entire people, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure. Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”', then it is unwise to pretend, on every occasion that there is a (foreign) misunderstanding, that genocide wasn't invoked, or murder of innocents justified.

Update: 'In the post, written Friday and titled “Dealing with Savages,” Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck offers suggestions that range from destroying whole Palestinian towns to uprooting the Dome of the Rock.“There is a war for the land of Israel that is being waged, and the Arabs who dwell in the land of Israel are the enemy in that war and must be vanquished,” Pruzansky writes. . .Pruzansky refers to “the Arab-Muslim animals that span the globe chopping, hacking and merrily decapitating,” and then writes, “At a certain point, the unrestrained behavior of unruly animals becomes the fault of the zookeeper, not the animals.”' Ben Sales, 'New Jersey Rabbi Steven Pruzansky Spews 'Savage' Hate in Blog Post,' The Forward 24 November 2014.

The point Ykantor is that as editors, we are obliged to find the facts, and report them, whatever the consequences, and it is disappointing to observe the large influx of editors now who seem to edit defensively or aggressively to promote an official agenda that appears to read: 'we are incapable of evil, malice, wrongdoing. These are properties associated with the other side.' No one is exempt from evil, and even the devil has, by late report, some good features. Nishidani (talk) 15:39, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Wider review

Nishidani I'm having trouble getting past these repeated 'genocide' assertions, as well as the matter of allusions between Arab-Israeli matters and WWII. I am posting for wider review on WP:AE. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 20:29, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

They are not 'generic assertions'. They are links to documents in the public domain. I am not to blame if so many people consistently make these remarks.

Could I counsel you, in your own interests to withdraw that? You came to my page, with a sense of offense over our disagreement at Rafah massacre. The implicit request above was that I clarify what I meant in remarks you took to be injurious. I did so by documenting the kinds of sources that lay in my mind as I wrote those remarks. This was necessary because your misprision appears to come from a lack of familiarity with the facts. You silenbtly passed over my corrections, and challenged a thing or two. I went to the trouble to illustrate in depth the issue as I saw it, which is an editorial problem: namely, learning, whatever one's POV, to know the subject sufficiently thoroughly that you are not discountenanced by anything that might, in an edit, show the unseemly side of an issue. We are under an obligation to see all sides of these realities, not to muckrake for one side, and defend to the last comma the bona fides of the other. Please note that almost nothing of what I know of these things has influenced my editing. I read a lot of trash like the above, but do not rush to cram wiki pages with damning evidence. Unfortunately this is not the case with many new editors.

You now use this to report me for a sanction. Now, jumping at that to report what was a time-consuming act of courtesy to clear up something that appearted to bother you as if I had said something indictable, looks as though from the outset you were on a 'fishing expedition.' I'm willing to believe that this contretemps is just typical of a certain newbie naivity, and not gamesmanship. Others may think otherwise, but perhaps you should familiarize yourself with WP:Boomerang and calculate whether your interests are served by making such a complaint.Nishidani (talk) 21:50, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

The same comparison

in description of your revert:

• "In all wars, children have fought. They did so in the Warsaw ghetto"

I am not sure that Wikipedia is the right place for such comparisons. --Igorp_lj (talk) 22:21, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

I must admit (as I said in Russian to you the other day) that I am completely perplexed by recent trends here. In several pages, a notable number of editors have swept in, all intent on making an IDF talking point stick: Hamas uses children as human shields (translation= we aren't to blame for the 557 killed in bombing runs), Hamas uses children in war translation= we aren't to blame for the 557 killed in bombing runs), Hamas uses civilian structures, mosques, schools, and charities to store weapons (translation= we aren't to blame for the destruction of several hundred social centres, mosques and schools). Well, obviously the pages must register these claims, for that is what RS report. When I simply edited in several sources, from Israeli and Jewish commentators, which compare this talking point with the fact that in 1947-1948 Jews in their fight for independence used schools, synagogues and kindergartens and all sorts of civilian institutions to stash weapons, and therefore that this claim (true or untrue) about Hamas is also a fact about Israel's foundational history, shocking if Hamas does it, glorious if Israel did it, the edit is immediately reverted, and several editors complain that I (not Uri Avnery, Gideon Levy, Richard Silverstein et al.,) am making offensive analogies!? The analogy, sir, is in the sources.

Today WarKoSign wanted to fuss the casualty page with a dubious source suggesting Hamas used children in several instances. I personally don't find that claim absurd: it's quite possible youths in Gaza have helped their fathers, brothers, relatives in fighting. After all, this, as I documented in detail (Military use of children) is what happened in Europe in 1939-1945, and Jewish youths in Poland such as among the Bielski partisans and in many other places valiently fought against those who plotted their extermination. My objection was to the poor source, and to WP:Undue. The lead there is minimal, and plunking the 'Hamas are contemptuous of children's lives' meme on every page, when it is amply covered on the main articles, suggests to me POV-extremism gone amuck. Nishidani (talk) 22:49, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

I am afraid that there is something wrong in your understanding of current Arab-Israeli reality when you trying to apply today the WW2 framework to this new, not black & white, reality. May be the reason is that same Avnery, whom you call the "one of the greatest Israelis of our time" (:), that same Levi, and others such your sources are not the most respected men in Israel. Their point of view here, if not marginal, but isn't shared by more than few percents of society.

Did you try to read some other authors? --Igorp_lj (talk) 00:08, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Science, culture, philosophy, art, everything that makes us civilized, comes from the 'few percents of society' (the same is true of everything that makes us barbarous). The premise in your remark is that an idea is sound if a majority underwrites it.57% of American believe in the existence of Satan; 77% believe aliens have visited earth; 46% believe God created man on the 23 October 4004 BC. The only corrective to the general impression one gets from mainstream newspapers that mankind is insane is to read New Scientist sedulousy from cover to cover each week.Nishidani (talk) 10:30, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Nishidani, observing this farcical interaction reminded me of this quote from Molly Scott Cato:

Perhaps most important of all, real education is not always an enjoyable experience. Genuine education is emancipatory and revolutionary, which may be a reason why conservatives distrust it. The good educator challenges the student's world-view and this cannot always be a comfortable experience. You know you are teaching successfully when you see a furrow begin to appear on the youthful skin of your students’ foreheads. This connotes the performance of ‘thinking’, an activity that has been increasingly rare in universities since the advent of the market. (Universities of Transition, Red Pepper, March 2011.)

You seem to be doing a good job of producing "furrows" (metaphorical or real) on your interlocutors' brows! And, as MSC points out, the increasing corporate control of university education might (partly) explain why it seems that so few people nowadays are intellectually equipped to see through the framing of issues presented in mainstream sources. --NSH001 (talk) 06:55, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps I should just ignore these requests on my talkpage. The human mind is wired so that synaptic maps are formed by associational leaps. Analogy is the natural mode for reducing randomness in the infinite, potentially chaotic linkage of ideas or impressions. It is also the affective template for the roots of ethics in a sense of empathy for the other. Ideology is a system for creating mental buffers or circuit-breaks that hamper the formation of analogies: it is a system for cementing in-group identity by erasing analogy's tendency to cross taxonomic borders, as per the ritual exclamation one was taught to recite inwardly as a child on witnessing calamity befall a stranger:'There, but for the grace, of God, go I.' In ideologically-suffused worlds, this reflex is not only deprecated, it is engineered discursively so that it does not even arise as a possibility. A Roman in Gaul or among the Picts, Cortez in Tenochtitlan were perhaps just illustrating 'nature, red in tooth and claw'. Modernity provides elaborate doctrinal justifications that serve a Han immigrant in Lhasa,a Zionist settler in Hebron, a pioneer rancher on Apache land, a Boer in Transvaal, a Brazilian logger in Amazonia, the squattocracy of Queensland, . . Well, I hope that this can close an unfortunate interlude. I don't have much time these days to edit, let alone explain them to people who are not interested in listening. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 10:27, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Historically children often participated in conflict, and often died as a result. If the article reports deaths of underage militants as something out of the ordinary, then their participation in the fighting must also be represented as something out of the ordinary. If there is nothing unusual in their involvement in fighting, then the number of children dying (513) is notable only for being relatively low - 23% of the causalities vs 44% of general Gaza population.“WarKosign” 11:06, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

I think you miss the point. The fact that some children may have participated in the conflict is, contrary to the way all Israelocentric sources frame it, not anomalous. In Germany WW2, 20% of the civilians who died were children, in Gaza 23% of the casualties were children.20% reminds me of the percentage of German youth fighting in the Battle of Remagen Bridge, 200 I think out of 1,200, made famous but not featuring in the famous The Bridge at Remagen film, all will recall for Robert Redford's panic-sedative 'Hail Marys' as he paddled under fire to the other bank.

This doesn't mean that in the case of Gaza, a high percentage of those children died in combat. The numerous and graphically recalled accounts of families of 10-27 bombed to smithereens is evidence to the contrary. Your persistence in trying to lard articles with ill-sourced trivia (using a fringe private think tank's agenda-driven propaganda claim that several children of 513 killed were killed while in proximity to, or abetting combatants) suggesting a nexus between the high number of children killed, and juvenile militancy, is agenda driven, and indifferent to what is required of wikipedians. Please don't write any more on this topic on this page. Do want you are minded to do on these articles, but personally I find all of this cool discussion of how many of half a thousand children killed in 51 one days deserved what they got appalling. Nishidani (talk) 12:35, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

I suppose the difference between "ill-sourced trivia" and "integral part of the debate" is whether the statement promotes your agenda or hinders it. Nobody belittles the number of children - but the nature and reason of their deaths have to be attributed properly. Some of the reported children participated in fighting, some of them were in fact adult militants, some were killed by Hamas's own rockets, some were "urged" to stay at homes, and some were killed by the IDF. Not stating these facts in the article misleads the reader into thinking that IDF killed more than it in fact did. I'm sure that after all the validations are complete there will still remain enough children killed by IDF to satisfy any Israel hater. “WarKosign” 13:18, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Your editing strikes me as a mimeograph of official IDF or government window-dressing, and utterly predictable, as are your comments. I'm familiar with them because I read press briefings. So it is quite pointless trying to converse rationally here, esp. since any disagreement is implicitly (here explicitly) understood to be symptomatic of 'Israel-haters', of whom, in this 'logic' the President of Israel itself is one, judging from the fact that he said recently precisely the sort of thing detected by a few editors as enmity here. People who think in these terms don't think: they represents official talking-points 'to win the minds and hearts' of the 'majority'. So, do me a courtesy and stay off this page.Nishidani (talk) 13:29, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Sorry I wasted both of our times. As my usual experience with you, I did not get a response to the essence but a flood of obscure references to unimportant points. You repeatedly accused editors of serving hasbara, yet you follow Hamas's manual almost point-for-point. I will try to suppress my urge to open this page in the future, even if I see other editors making comments here. “WarKosign” 14:28, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Bathetic Parthian shot, because amnesial. When Hamas defines itself as I have done, calling it 'stupid, terroristic, murderous, and intoxicated by an instrumental indulgence of suffering,' still on this page, you may come back and say that I 'follow Hamas's manuel almost point-by-point,' only in the sense that they would be admitting to copying my remark for some future reference text.

What Hamas is, is was the rebels of Judea were from the insurrection against Rome, down to Bar Kochba, led often by sicarii. Their cause was legitimate, even noble, their tactics stupid. Perhaps the same can be said of Hamas: they found themselves adopting at one point Israel's model for statehood (assassination, terrorism, massacres and suffering as a horrendous spectre (holocaust) that will appeal to the world's conscience etc.,) as their own, because PLO politics proved only productive of Quislings.

Israel and Hamas are just mirrors of each other. There is one difference I admire in the latter, a prejudice I admit to. Courage, fearlessness, something a strategist would not identify as typical of most who have served in the IDF these last decades. One Parthian shot for another is the proper way to end this. This is not a forum for such opinions, but a place to work out how to edit. So that's it.Nishidani (talk) 15:05, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

If I may add an opinion here, I really don't understand the obsession some have with this conflict. Supporters and haters of any side both need to relax. To put things in perspective: much more Syrians were killed in the last few years than Israelis and Palestinians, combined, were ever killed by each other. Ever. Simply absurd, and that's just one example. There are way more urgent things and conflicts happening in the world than the Israeli-Arab one. Yuvn86 (talk) 12:35, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

This is a meme. 'the obsession some have' was identified as that of John Kerry by Moshe Ya'alon, who is no longer persona grata in Washington after remarking that Kerry was '“inexplicably obsessive” and “messianic” in his efforts to coax Israelis and Palestinians into a peace agreement'. If the Secretary of State of a country that is Israel's strongest ally is regarded with contempt for desiring a peaceful settlement of the I/P conflict, the reverberations of this will be picked up by editors, who duly refer the quite normal 'obsession' with achieving peace to the relevant articles. Nishidani (talk) 12:34, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Yuvn86, I answered your question on my user page. Dr. R.R. Pickles (talk) 21:37, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Clarification motion

A case (Shakespeare authorship question) in which you were involved has been modified by motion which changed the wording of the discretionary sanctions section to clarify that the scope applies to pages, not just articles. For the arbitration committee --S Philbrick(Talk) 19:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Plot Spoiler. Evidence

• How is this relevant? And why do you continue to use non-RS like Richard Silverstein's blog?

This edit summary is (a) accompanied by no comment on the talk page.

(b) It is answered by the article itself, which uses blogs 14 times, most of them being pro-war Israeli sources, and including several references to the idf.blog, which, by the record, has less reliability than Richard Silverstein.

(c) Challenging Richard Silverstein as not RS (to be demonstrated) for his own widely read opinions is silly but

(d) the edit summary is a pretext, because Plot Spoiler reverted not only my reference to Silverstein, but also to Uri Avnery (former Knesset member, writer and distinguished commentator) and Gideon Levy (a highly notable Israeli journalist), the last of whom was writing for Haaretz, a mainstream Israeli newspaper. That Uri Avnery posted his comments on Counterpunch is neither here nor there. His views are quoted for what he thinks, not what Counterpunch proposes.

As to the relevance, the page has made intensive efforts to showcase Israel's thesis, all over the world press, that there is something unusual in Hamas having weapons in schools, mosques, hospitals, kindergartens etc. We have given numerous sources stating this thesis. Per WP:NPOV it is perfectly fair to present the opposite opinion, one indeed widely known in Israel, i.e., that the IDF rhetoric contradicts the history of the IDF, since in its early manifestations as the Palmach/Haganah, in a similar struggle for independence, it used all of these civilian facilities to hide its weaponry from the British.

The edit therefore was more than legitimate. It is obligatory, and Plot Spoiler's revert is in line with his long history of reverting me, and many others, on pretextual grounds (WP:RS) which (as in his simultaneous elision of Haaretz) are belied by what he he actually does, which is rather explained by WP:IDONTLIKEIT.Nishidani (talk) 19:15, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

(2) same revert preempting ongoing talk page discussion in which he doesn't participate 2 November 2014. The object is R Silverstein's blog, 'not RS', whilst it is RS for Silverwstein's own opinion, which is cited as evidence of one of several similar views, and therefore perfectly acceptable in that context, to illustrate a viewpoint. Nishidani (talk) 15:01, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Plot Spoiler immediately rereverted (2nd revert) with this edit summary:'Actually it's not on the talk page right now, and more tendentious nonsense from you.'

The time stamp is 15:09, 2 November 2014

The page referred to is 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict

The talk page section which was opened up earlier today 02:42, (12 and a half hours earlier) by User:Knightmare72589, and which four editors, Knightmare, WarKoSign, JDiala, and myself had offered a discussion.

So, Plot Spoiler's 'it's not on the talk page right now' is counterfactual, i.e. flies in the face of the evidence he was directed to review. So much for 'tendentious nonsense'.Nishidani (talk) 15:48, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

What you never read in the mainstream Western press. Links

David Sheen’s Bundestag presentation Alomost every single point was mentioned in passing in most sources, but in isolation, and often en passant. Nishidani (talk) 18:26, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Youre far from being in line with reality with that statement. Sheen's hazzling partner Blumenthal has been elected by the Wiesenthal center among 2013 top antisemites for their gibberish, since log they got all the global coverage they deserve. Same for the current incident in the Reichstag, which was not as violent as the shootings in Ottawa but of similar symbolic importance. The two, on the anniversary of the Nazi pogrom night, tried to hazzle linkspartei leader Gysi, a Jewish member of the Reichstag within the spell mile of the parliament. Thats been enough to have those guys expelled there for a lifetime. "Toiletgate" got all the coverage as deserved, but it would be sort of fringy to believe anyone in the mainstream takes those morons for serious, even within ex-communist linkspartei that sort of behavior is unheard of. Serten (talk) 18:45, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Like so many people who form opinions quicker than Bob Mundan can draw his pistol, you have no knowledge of the people or the subject, and indeed from the timestamp it is clear that you hadn't taken the trouble to read the link, since you replied within 19 minutes, whilst Sheen's speech to the Bundestag committee lasts 25 minutes. And of that 19 minutes you spent at least several googling the usual blogs that associate criticism of anything israeli with anti-Semitism. The Wiesnthal list is a farce, and Blumenthal, had you listened to the related Russell Tribunal on the Gaza War speeches, was proud to be included in it, along with several other distinguished Jews whose humanity is not compromised by an 'ethics' which draws judgements based on the ethnic identity of the subject. If Sheen and Blumental are anti-Semites, so is Mads Gilbert (BBC HARDtalk - Dr Mads Gilbert - Doctor and Activist) (who is anchored in the practical realities, not in your blogospheres of kibitzing nitwits), and, for that matter, myself. Still, as a philologist, I register the fact here that anti-Semitism now also refers to anyone who has empathy for the dispossessed, doesn't look at the ethnicity of a person before expressing sympathy for his plight, and is not blinded by ideologies of ethnic exceptionalism. But, this is pointless. Go away.Nishidani (talk) 19:48, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd add to that that Serten should check his facts better, especially when writing about living people. Sheen, for example, hasn't, as far as I can make out, featured on any Wiesenthal Center list, but particularly not on its 2013 "top-10 list of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs". Gregor Gysi's "paternal grandmother was Jewish, as was one of his maternal great-grandfathers", which doesn't make him, at least in standard usage, but particularly not halachically, a Jew or Jewish.     ←   ZScarpia   20:36, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Sheen NEVER spoke and never will speak to any Bundestag comittee, God forbade. He was invited by two extremist fringe members of the already extremist Linkspartei, Gysi - which is no practising jew but intelligent enough to count as one - tried his best to get the morons excluded from the premises but could hinder them getting access to the MoPs bureaus. Blumenthal made it on the Wiesenthal list. (UTC) The spiegel covered the issue online, the claim about not maing it into the mainstream press is ridiculous.Serten 02:40, 14 November 2014

'God forbade.' The past tense indicates that, in your view, God had a direct hand in denying to an Israeli the right to address the Bundestag! Germans apparently are as deeply informed of the situation in Palestine as they were of the Holocaust while it was underway. Gottes Wege sind unergründlich. Nishidani (talk) 10:22, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

First you claim Toiletgate is not in the main press, in reality its covered broadly. even the NZZ has an article about it. Now you claim Gysi, about whom the pogromers ran around, has no jewish background but the two progromers are discriminated against. Gosh. Shimon Peres has spoken in the Bundestag, he was invited and it was an honor to have him there. The two morons won't and ain't. Serten 14:31, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

While I appreciate your assiduous attempts to document your textual illiteracy, incapacity to construe English prose and make the correct inferences, I'm quite busy, no golden lad but still sprightly, cleaning my chimneys this afternoon, and I prefer to accompany the household routine by reciting memorable poems, not ruminating on the hack jobbery of non-thinkers. Thanks. As I said, go away.Nishidani (talk) 14:54, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

barnstar

		The Special Barnstar
		for working to keep POINTY articles off WP DocumentError (talk) 12:09, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

(this will have to do until they make an Anti-Zionism barnstar)

How can I repay that? By a trivial secret. One of the major frustrations of my life is that I never learnt to read Ferdowsi's Shahnameh in the original. I'll die thinking I missed something of great importance for this lacuna in my education.Nishidani (talk) 12:30, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi!

RE: "Occupied": to be honest I wasn't aware of the discussion regarding the "occupied" portion of "occupied territories", but that is a lot of discussion on a lot of different threads. I am not disputing that 200 kilos of olives are months of subsistence for a family in that economy -- but:

a) I don't recall using the term "petty", to the best of my knowledge

b) I am referring to the term "reportedly". If the settlers stole the olives then they did, but if they didn't then they didn't. If we don't know if/who/when the olives were stolen then that should be clarified.

c) I also added the why tag because it is not explained why "the IDF ordered Palestinian farmers in Kafr Qaddum villagers in the Qalqilya Governorate to leave their properties"

Thanks anyway for your civilized response. I know that this topic can bring out the worst in people. Please correct as you see fit as per BOLD. Quis separabit? 17:14, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I would give you a barnstar but I don't know how. I am rather ignorant about the technical side of things, i.e. a Luddite. Quis separabit? 17:14, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I used the term "reportedly" as a sop to editors who often complain when my sources are OCHA or 'pro'-Palestinian. It's no skin off my nose. I don't know the facts, few do, and, having to read a mother-lode of newsprint, I doubt whether most of our RS are written by people who "know the facts". It often takes me, in my private work, a decade or two to ascertain with the assurance I desire, that something reported in a source is verifiably true. In this instance, the UN report I used is at variance with the PLO official report made on the day, 3 bags becomes 200 kilos (I assist yearly monks in picking their olives so 65 kilos per bag made sense), one individual becomes several, etc. My explanation on your page is WP:OR, a private reflection one often has to make to figure out why source dissonance is so frequent, and as often, I cannot judge the truth of the matter. No one knows why the IDF ordered the farmers to leave their property, since their access to it, as per the regulative norm governing these things, is that they may put foot on their land near settlements only two or three days a year, and they had the permission here. The fact that Kedumim settlers quickly exploited the situation may be coincidence, grasping at the opportunity given by the result of the IDF order, or informally coordinated, since there is much tacit collaboration between the IDF (which has a rising settler component) and settlers. God/destinty works in mysterious ways, the cliché runs: I've always found human behavior more mysterious than the god hypothesized by monotheistic theologies. Ours is not to reason "why", ours is but to transcribe and sigh. In Hebron, houses in Shuhada street are invaded by settlers, who often are accompanied by IDF regulars in their invasions of private property. Sources simply don't tell one what one would wish to know, so as editors we have to resign ourselves to the puzzling incompleteness of articles, ours and the newspaper sources we use. Regards.Nishidani (talk) 18:04, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Earthing

I still do not understand what "earthing" is in regards to not committing suicide. Can you explain to me, one to one. I admit I am a dunce. Quis separabit? 17:42, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

The men of that particular suburb of East Jerusalem are noted electricians,- they are responsible for wiring up a large part of Jerusalem, east and west. Evidently their jargon draws off their trade. In everyday Islam, one standard measure (as opposed to classical Islam which took on board Greek humoural theory) for ridding oneself of madness/deep depression/homicidal-autocidal feelings is the recitation of specific suras or prayer at a mosque. The devout have a "raisen" on their foreheads (zebibah) from frequently bowing and touching the mosque's pavement with their brows. Presumably this is what the men of that district alluded to: since they imagine that a mind is like an electrical circuit, and when its discharges go haywire (abnormal mental states) then, just as Franklin's lightening rod discharged dangerous atmospheric lightening strikes by earthing the charge to the ground, so praying in Muslim fashion, with one's head touching the earth, would function similarly to 'earth' the tensions building up in a person.Nishidani (talk) 18:09, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

(In the earthing article, one reads: 'People use an earthing system mainly for these applications:To protect a structure from lightning strike, directing the lightning through the earthing system and into the ground rod rather than passing through the structure.' That is more or less what I was alluding to, but if we have a better wiki link, perhaps we should change it.Nishidani (talk) 18:09, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Interesting. Quis separabit? 18:26, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Interesting anthropologically, indeed, but of course counter-intuitive. It means one only kills in cold blood, which is not of course true.Nishidani (talk) 18:45, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I thought "murder" meant in cold blood, whereas "killing" is far more varied. Quis separabit? 19:02, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I was just going to strike my comment out as fatuously obtuse in its ethnocentrism, while somewhat ashamedly pondering over it and thinking it frivolous at the dinner table. What I as a Westerner might construe as 'counter-intuitive' might, in a different, in this case, micro-culture like that, be eminently reasonable as an explanation of why suicide is to be excluded. As for 'murder'/'killing', my impression is that the former is a legal definition applied to taking someone's life, whereas the latter is generic for the same thing. Did Max Schur kill or murder Sigmund Freud? Many Christians would say he murdered him, making a sectarian-theological and legal judgement. Idem for Koga Hiroyasu's beheading of Mishima Yukio, which, like killing one's wounded companion in Britain's Afghan wars, was, in terms of military culture, an act of pity, though forbidden in law. How does one define Herschel Grynszpan's killing of Ernst von Rath? Legally, it's murder, though the Holocaust was round the corner. The Nazis called it symptomatic of a vast Jewish terrorist conspiracy, just as newspapers habitually call these days any murder with some profound political grievance behind it 'terror'. There is a cultural and technical bias in our use and application of these terms. Murder is distinguished from manslaughter in that in the former there is malice aforethought. I guess as distinct from assassinations which, if made by a state, putatively are not driven by malice, but are cold-blooded liquidations of perceived enemies of that state, though to an outside eye, quite primitive notions of vengeance typical of frontier wars or feuds would be seen to be compact of many such acts. The Israeli indictment against the soldier who furtively changed his ammo case, and shot dead, first Nadim Nuwara, and then apparently, after an hour shot dead Odeh Salameh in the Beitunia killings cites the soldier for manslaughter, not, as murder, though it is difficult to see how, in the space of an hour one can sight up and shoot two individuals without premeditative enmity of the kind usually defining murder charges. We call them killings, but, had the subject been an Israeli, the newspapers would have reported them as murders. Thanks for raising these issues, and cleaning up my sloppy oversights. Now, to this evening's movie, hopefully a comedy. Regards Nishidani (talk) 20:01, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Work notes

• 'some 48,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in the Occupied Territory since 1967.'

Jeff Halper (Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions(ICAHD), 'Israel sows despair and senseless violence,' Mondoweiss November 19, 2014

• '"We must make it absolutely clear that anti-Semitism is a sin. One of the reasons I'm here is to remind the Christian world that our roots are in Judaism. In every Christian, there is a Jew; and you can't be a true Christian if you don't recognize your Jewish roots. I don't mean Judaism in the ethnic, origin, sense, but from the religious aspect. . .In conversations with other religious figures, he likes to tell a tale about a group of anti-Semitic priests who were sitting together in a room and badmouthing the Jews, with a picture of Jesus and Mary hanging on the wall above their heads. "And then, suddenly," Pope Francis says, "Jesus steps out of the picture and says, 'Mom, let's go, they don’t like us here either." ' Henrique Cymerman, 'It's hard to build peace; but living without peace is an absolute nightmare' Ynet 28 November 2014.

There's something nice about finding one's views on a tricky subject endorsed by the Pope. Perhaps because in every Western pagan, there is a Christian, and ergo, a Jew, culturally, which is all that counts, even if I'm more comfortable with Athens ca.450 B.C.E., before monotheisms got a toehold on philosophy.Nishidani (talk) 12:15, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

WP=:NOTFORUM violation, no.2

• 27 November 'Cricketer Phillip Hughes dies two days after being hit by ball during match,' The Guardian 27 November
• 29 November 'Cricket umpire dies after being hit with ball in Ashdod,' Ynet 29 November 2014.
• 30 November Shabak Agent in Belgium Falsely Accuses Pakistani of Terrorism, Family Deported Tikun Olam.

Terrible poor taste to speak of a Hat trick. The third was more of a bat trick. It was definitely not cricket.Nishidani (talk) 20:22, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Caution-2014-12-01

Regarding to your "(Russian immigrants were raised in an imperial dictatorship..." (without any smile) as well as for the following your edit's description "Sure, but from a PA perspective, inviting an Israeli investigation is pointless. They only investigate Arab crimes against settlers" - I just have to remind you about the wp:NOTFORUM & wp:NPOV rules. --Igorp_lj (talk) 00:07, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

(Your friendly neighbourhood stalking Zionist) There may be a grain of wisdom there N. I believe it was meant kindly. Irondome (talk) 01:36, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. It might look like a personal attack, but, it was intended as a sociological message, straight out of a remark by Ernest Gellner, tinctured by memories of reading Richard Pipes's Russia Under the Old Regime (disastrously for my education, the Peregrine reprint of 1977 lacks pp.239-270), to alert several editors why I find their approach perplexing. If I find the travails of 'liberal Zionism' understandable in terms of the peculiarities of American history, I find the confusions of Israel's revarnished, neo-post-Zionist rhetoric illustrative of the impact of a new constituency, that of the ex-Soviet immigration (everyone knows that the demographic urgency to fill that 'empty land' brought unintended (if obvious to the sociological mind) consequences: the Mizrachi inflow undercut the confident Ashkenazi faith in their enduring primacy by electing the marginal world of Herut to Likud ascendency, just as the Soviet influx altered the parameters by the emergence of Yisrael Beiteinu. It is remarkable that Arutz Sheva has more Russian readers than those who peruse its Hebrew version. I learned Russian from very astute exiles who gave me a wonderful education in how to parse a Marxist literary critique of Lermontov or Pushkin to shovel out the regime rhetoric (a palliative to censors) from what Brodsky would call the 'nitty-gritty' of the kernel, which, contrariwise, addressed the realities. Because of this, I expect people, perhaps unfairly, of that background to thresh out the difference between the chaff of ideology (which Zionism, like any nationalism is), from the substance of facts. Igorp's edit, which I responded to, was not necessary. My original edit gave the bare bones of what happened. His edit added an 'explanation' (how can Israel investigate a crime if it is not allowed on the scene?) That is a defensive adjunct. It elicited my second compensative edit (a fact: 90% of Palestinian complaints to the occupation authorities are shelved; specifically, settlers are almost never indicted for observed crimes for 'lack of evidence', and of 10 mosque arson cases since 2011, none have ever come to an indictment or conviction). It's a pity to me to observe that the culture that produced Osip Mandelshtam, Joseph Brodsky, Boris Pasternak and Vasily Grossman is less influential among contemporaries than Ayn Rant, just as one is disappointed to see how Mizrachi culture's standing is tainted by the recent lyrics of Amir Benayoun, better known now than the music of Berakhah Zephira which so moved Einstein to remember his Jewish roots in 1930. Okay, I admit it: I'm a fossil, with the musky redolence of that collapsed world that once, when it heard the word 'Russian', didn't think of politics, but of a great tradition of humanism where, even under Soviet rule, a first edition of Yevgeny Yevtushenko or Andrei Voznesensky would be sold out on day one, and run through numerous editions within a year, till everyone in Moscow and the provinces had their major verses off by heart, and no longer needed a printed copy, something that was unheard of in the sanctimoniously cultured West. Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 11:14, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but your answer (as usual) has little to do with my questions.

I can also tell you that:

• Degree of your radical estimates' of "Russian" Jews and their integration in Israel is inversely proportional to your understanding of their life in the former Soviet Union and Israel (1990 ++). Actually, this is true for many Western liberals, idealizing "proletariat", "oppressed nations", etc, abstracting from the negative consequences of their errors. But you can read about them in the Useful Idiot article. However, they do consider themselves as the the main democratizers and feel entitled to distribute derogatory evaluation for those who do not share their opinion :) By the way, I'm afraid that Lev Kopelev would turn over in his grave if he knew that his prize was awarded to Uri Avnery. :(
• Your words are very similar to such Gideon Levy's Haaretz blood libel:

"A million immigrants from Russia, a third of them non-Jews, some of whom were also found to have a degree of alcohol and crime in their blood, were not a problem. Tens of thousands of Africans are the ultimate threat."

and others like him, whom you often regard as RS,..

But again ... WP isn't a place for such your personal assessments, there is a lot of other sites for. I agree to find another Internet's desk and continue the conversation there, but in the meantime I'd propose you to comply with above mentioned WP:NOTFORUM Rule in your future posts here.

Regarding to the Alexa's statistics : as I showed in Talk:Silent_Intifada#Arutz Sheva, its data raise many questions, including the lack of data for non Israeli visitors.

Your interpretation of your "Sure, but from a PA perspective, inviting an Israeli investigation is pointless. They only investigate Arab crimes against settlers" edit's description may cause only a sad smile. But about it - later. --Igorp_lj (talk) 01:18, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

• I think that edit could be resolved. "Chiam Levinson claims in a H article..." and allow the short section to stand. This would make it clear that this was one jouno's opinion in Israel's equivalent of the Guardian. It would take off the slightly misleading "authoritative" edge that I think you object to here. I understand that. Regards Irondome (talk) 01:44, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

• Always thoughtful and challenging. Your post is appreciated. The colleague known as Irondome (talk) 02:37, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I would like to discuss the points you make in more depth, when you, and indeed I, have the time. I am basically a Labor Zionist, a sucker for the wonderful 20's and 30's Boy meets tractor type domestically produced films, so heavily borrowed stylistically from the contempory Soviet school of film. I totally agree with your point regarding the intensely rich Russian Humanist/Artistic heritage, which many early Zionists regarded as a cultural and philosophical touchstone, a unique product of a glorious fusion of the Russian and Jewish identity reflected in the gifted individuals whom you mention in your post. This remarkable period created the Kibbutzim movement, and the true beginnings of the essentially Socialist, communal Israel which was stymied in the 70s and 80s, curiously at about the same period when Thatcherism destroyed the huge gains made by the post-1945 welfare state consensus in the U.K, which has had such toxic effects on this society. This Israeli "Thatcherism" also crippled (for some tragic decades) any attempts for an early 2 state solution, which may have been achieved by the 80s. But I am optimistic due to Israeli historical socio-political patterns. Arguably Israel was the only truly successful Socialist state in the world in it's first 3 decades, coupling a radical political synthesis of State Socialism and Anarcho-Syndicalism with a unique freedom in the arena of public and media discourse, both intellectual and popular. I suspect you rather approve of those aspects of early Israeli socio-political development, and you have often remarked favourably on the almost unprecedented and unfettered self-criticism in current Israeli media discourse. When the 2 state solution eventually is achieved (as it will) then these aspects will enjoy a resurgence. A nation which has such a pure and almost masochistically democractic inner dialogue, conducted within the Hebrew media in all its forms, has a foundation of intellectual and humanistic granite, which testify to many of the original left Zionist traits still being in place and ripe for a renaissance of thought and deed. I remain optimistic of a socially aware, radically open Israel which regains the admiration of progressive Western socialism and humanism, as it did prior to 67 as a remarkable experiment. It is a disaster that Ottoman oppression inhibited any similar sentiments of socialism and humanism, blended with a sense of nationalism developing in I/P's Islamic leadership cadres which may have dovetailed with early Zionism. (If you are aware of similar movements that developed, I would be interested to hear) Excuse my ill-formed initial impressions, which I will refine. I hope I am welcome on your page by the way. Yours aye Irondome (talk) 03:23, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I largely agree with that (though I am not optimistic as you are), historically, because it is the Israel I knew when I worked there. I must have a coffee to get my post-prandial neurons stirring, but will reply in duke horse. And of course stimulating interlocutors like yourself are always welcome here, it hardly need be said. Cheers for the mo'. Nishidani (talk) 13:23, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) A horse belonging to the Duke University Equestrian Team? Bishonen | talk 13:42, 2 December 2014 (UTC).

Nope, though topologically not far off, if temporally askew. John Wayne's nickname has inflected some dialect jokes, and this was a common misprint, when not intended, in letters back in the 1940s (so it must exude a rather jaded air, easily lost on someone with the youthful moniker of 美少年). As I said earlier above, one problem with my attempts at being comical is that I have to footnote everything. Shades of Mark Pattison in Middlemarch! Nishidani (talk) 13:51, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

[Dubiously.] From Old Horse jalda? Huh. Bishonen | talk 17:44, 2 December 2014 (UTC).

Very good! Just a slight correction: Old Horsa:)Nishidani (talk) 18:05, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Decisions in politics are, overwhelmingly, when not grounded in ideological obsessions or moral self-inflation (Tony Blair's person decision to trample on what the best legal and academic (Arabist) advice in 2003's invasion of Iraq told him) based on hard numbers calculations, nothing else. Psephologically, there is no basis for optimism. Demographically, the situation overrules confidence for similar reasons: the three constitutive blocks of any viable majority - the religious vote, the Russian immigrant vote, the Mizrachi constituency, all respectively have very rich traditions, but have no roots in the kind of enculturated enlightenment thinking which is required to sustain the institutional fabric of democracy.* Gellner said Russia missed out on the (a) separation of church and state (b) the Protestant reformation (c) the Enlightenment, and all 3 factors predisposed the state to autocratic imperio-religious/slavoiphilic-ethnic thinking. In Israel (a) is deeply problematical (b) is true in the economic sense, (1) in that ethical principles do not conflict with, but rather enhance rationality in the productive sphere, but (ii) not true in so far as ultra-orthodoxy trumps reformist Judaism, tending towards a kind of fundamentalism that is, unlike Protestantism, collectivist and messianic rather than individualistic; (c) the haskalah tradition in Judaism has, after the Holocaust and 1967 and the occupation, dwindled into a fringe of outraged anti-Zionism which liberal Zionism, itself fading as it got compromised with the neo-conservative politics of the U.S,, disowns. The outside world can do little with all this: the battle is essentially between 'Tel Aviv' and 'Jerusalem', but either way, all of these things are swept up in a much larger discourse, in which empires vie for resource dominance and the imposition of a fast-buck-return 'rationality' which will, if it hasn't already, dissolve the old nation-state as a civil and civic construction and replace it with the politics of the jungle. As to Islamicism, this is a trivial thing: in the last decade the West has picked off, isolated or dismantled the three Arab states, Iraq, Syria, and Ghedaffi's Libya, which were secular, two of them protective of significant Christian minorities, and had a relatively high standard of living (repellant dictatorships, but so are our regional allies in the Arab world). The states that best embody its worst traits, are solid allies of the Western states, despite their largesse to terrorists, while the non-state actors that use it, together with a commitment to social justice and technocratic training (Hezbollah), are dismissed as terrorists and nothing else. Israel is now a key military power in geopolitics, and 'Palestine' is a third-worldish rump-state, a congeries of district statelets or bantustans, with no hand to bid, and nothing to offer in return for recognition. The purpose of Zionism was to create a space where Jews didn't need to think in terms of 'us/them', but could grow up, raise a family, work and live out their lives without looking over their shoulder, sniffing a pogrom in the air, or hearing those at times intermittent yet chronic anti-Semitic innuendoes even in the finest democracies, not only as one shopped or worked in a factory, but in Yale or Oxford, etc. over casual conversations or between the lines of print: i.e. some place on earth where they could finally be normal people without an identity problem invented by amicably inimical 'others' thrust on them every other day by the ingrained recourse to a millennial toxic prejudice. I don't see Zionism as having solved that effectively. It created an urbane milieu where this dream is now largely realizable, but in an area where a 'they' now penetrates the headlines even more obtrusively, to disturb the equanimity of normalcy, and the 'they' won't go away. It is, to an outside eye like mine, the paradox or irony of the project - the dream to create the normalcy most humanity takes for granted has its nightmarish underside in which the enfranchised minority tormented by prejudice is now a majority threatened by its own ineludible minority of neighbours, who for several decades haven't been allowed the same right, i.e., to live normal lives free of the pressure of demonization. Until that enfranchisement towards the secure sense, even in the unconscious, of normalcy comes to terms with the hidden cost of Zionism, the disenfranchisement of Palestinians aspiring to precisely the same thing, there is no solution. Sometimes an apology can do wonders. This is a very scrappy reflection, digited while listening to a relative's woes over the phone, so, my apologies.Nishidani (talk) 16:25, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

• A parallel is with the way American politics have been radically changed by the impact of the formative evangelical Baptist cast of Texan politics, which came to ascendency within the Republican Party in the late 70s. The only outside hope this might suffer a sea-change is with the gradual Hispanic expansion in the South, which has, at least culturally and in terms of religious values, diametrically opposed values.Nishidani (talk) 17:27, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

• Not "scrappy", but excellent. Having one's current political thoughts given such an insightful scrutiny is deeply refreshing, and oddly reassuring..strange. I do hope the relative is now, or soon will be, woe free. Yours till the horses come home. The curly fossil known as Irondome (talk) 20:14, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

A beer for you!

A toast to you for the regular abuse you continue to put up with on your user talk page here. John Carter (talk) 15:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Duly/dewly quaffed with virtual virtuosity, i.e. quicker than Bob Hawke's 2 pints in 11.5 though I had some mathematical problems in figuring out the seconds required to skull just a pint!Nishidani (talk) 21:13, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi,

Firstly, I would like to thank you for your excellent analysis on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Death of Netanel Arami. Secondly, could I suggest that you asked to have your user-page permanently protected? Some admin did that to my user-page (I guess they got tired of "cleaning up" after young J.): that "lock-symbol" in the upper right-hand corner tells you that the page is protected. It would mean that no-one would be able to post as a new IP, whenever they felt like it. Cheers, Huldra (talk) 20:52, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

• Oh! Well! Me too: I appreciate the solid review on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Death of Netanel Arami, and apparently Secret did too. Yes, admins can have a hard time with AfDs sometimes, esp. if there's a lot of sources which look valid. Thanks again. Drmies (talk) 00:15, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Ah, Goya and Gentileschi! I have a plainsindian's diffidence about photography, but on the birth of my best friend's daughter, I did pick the cutie up and dangled her outstretched limbs before my gaping jaws for a 'snap', since the father was a great painter and was working at the time in a citationalist mode, and appreciated the joke. Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 21:13, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Semi

I've semi'd this page for a week, Nishidani, and blocked the open proxy. Let me know if you don't want it. Bishonen | talk 00:52, 4 December 2014 (UTC). Thanks Bish, Do, as always, as you see fit. It might just relieve a lot of admins of noxiously recurrent sadsackery if you took the extreme measure mentioned here, so that none but registered editors can edit the page. It's your call.Nishidani (talk) 21:13, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Croatian tobacco for rollies

Please email me if you have some surplus supplies. I am prepared to swap a small photograph of Ernest Borgnine and my last 12 oz tin of Somerfield Chicken Stew The sell-by date is 2006. (Ignore that. I had one last year of the same vintage. Excellent) Yours in a Holmesian fug of tobacco smoke. Irondome (talk) 02:43, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Sure. Email me any address and I'll send you some in due course. I smoked the first consignment, but this new batch is very light on the lungs, so I have less recourse to it, not enough asphalt and gravel in it.Nishidani (talk) 21:13, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

More beer!

I can really believe that the, um, persistence of certain IP's around here might make it reasonable to have more than one. John Carter (talk) 00:57, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

The Nishidani brain, although far from delicate, is a fine instrument, and like all fine instruments, needs some lubrication from time to time. So enjoy the beer, my ancient old friend, but don't get too sozzled – we still need you in working order. Meanwhile, have a laugh at the insult file. Regards, NSH002 (talk) 10:51, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

I grew up in a pub and don't know what 'too sozzled means:, except that, like emphysema, it seems to be used a lot at the clan's funerals as some pseudo-explanation for why some of us cark it earlier than expected.Nishidani (talk) 21:13, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. People working in what underwriters call "the retail liquor trade" are one of the worst risks for life insurance – much worse than, for example, North Sea oil divers. Regards --NSH002 (talk) 09:48, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Gva'ot

Hi, I'm trying to understand why you reverted my edit. Yariv Openheimer and Peace Now fall under Israeli reactions, NYT belongs under international. Israeli media itself does not react, it reports reactions, and the statement attributed to it is already reported above, which is why I preserved the ref about. Please leave more informative edit summaries, "source" is rather meaningless considering I did not actually remove anything. Poliocretes (talk) 09:28, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

my proper edit summary is on the talk page. The one you saw arose because I am using a dinky provisory computer which hits the edit button by its own before I have managed to write out the reason for the edit. At least that is what occurred there. Nishidani (talk) 18:05, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Do you have any idea

who's behind the editor using proxies to attack you, me, etc? Dougweller (talk) 06:42, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

It's a very sad LTA but DENY is best. YGM. Johnuniq (talk) 07:10, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Dougweller: Yeah, sad case, Huldra (talk) 22:39, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I never even notice these assaults on this page. I switch on of a morn and note a lot of messages up for examination, and the dutiful work of attentive admins erasing it all. In any case, it's not something I think or care about or look into. I've been off the net since the 2nd, with computer problems, which means I have actually done some serious work at last. Thanks to everyone for their remarks and assistance during my absence/absinthe (John Carter would say)Nishidani (talk) 21:13, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Yup, links to news articles about violence and hatred directed against Jews is so terrible that it needs to be deleted from the page history. More proof of Wikipedia's anti-Jewish agenda... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.205.61.61 (talk) 08:54, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim: A musical path to peace vs 'Scream Nishidani (talk) 15:42, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Formal mediation has been requested

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Personal attack

I feel compelled to warn you against personal attacks, for your calling a wikipedia editor a jihadi here. (Best wishes for the new year). --Epeefleche (talk) 21:21, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Wow! I'd never thought of that. Hey, just for fun, why not cite me at the WP:AGF wikiquette board for a sanction using that diff to argue that I failed to assume good faith on my part by insulting myself as a jihadi? I'm sure there's a few literalists around here who, to defend me, would willingly sanction me. Stranger things have happened. (Of course, I'd come to my own defence with a super-clever chessmaster rhetorical move, like, um, 'jihadi' is an Arabic term derived from the Greek text of the Igeret haYakov.

Of course, best wishes for the coming year, to you and yours. Mine if I manage to survive the food and drink tsunami will be occasioned by a rereading of Auden's New Year Letter, which is uncannily prescient for our times as well.Nishidani (talk) 21:43, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Good thought! Epeefleche (talk) 21:52, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Measuring up

If you feel like a change, how about casting a skeptical eye over the "Rendition of Old Japanese units of length" table at WP:Articles for deletion/UKline? Please do not waste much time on it, but it would be good to know if "yabiki" in the table is valid or a blunder (see the comment under the table). The background is that a very enthusiastic but challenged new editor has created a lot of stubs on units based on a book which contains tables like the one shown. The editor extracts factoids from these to create articles (if really wanted, there is an overview here). I'm curious to know if yabiki is a valid unit; it is not mentioned at Japanese units of measurement#Length. Johnuniq (talk) 23:28, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Biki in yabiki is clearly an Australian unit of measure,that has strayed north. It refers to the mean length of a Guest's teddybear biscuit manufactured by Arnott's, made for children between the age or 3-5. When I was a guest downunder in the 1960s, I often heard it used as an incentive to get kiddies to eat their porridge at the breakfast table. They were promised one if they managed to get that slush down, and sure enough, once their dials were cleaned of that mushy goo, Dad or Mum would smile and hand them one, saying:'Here's ya biki."

Talking about units of length, it's sparrowfart here and I must go abhout my morning business of shaking the 'yard' at the porcelain. (Have a good NY Johnno) Nishidani (talk) 07:33, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Yikes, too much Christmas spirit, I suspect. Happy Shaking! Johnuniq (talk) 08:35, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy Christmas

almost everyone.Nishidani (talk) 20:23, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Cops standing over a beaten Santa Claus. Wonderful iconic image - it would be intersting to see how much use it might get. John Carter (talk) 20:29, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

As iconic as a a film or photo of Claire Anastas's gift shop at Rachel's Tomb, i.e., zero.Nishidani (talk) 20:45, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Christmas presents are best given on the 25th.Nishidani (talk) 18:58, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Palestinian children receive Christmas "gifts" from the Israeli military (in Hebrew). English Translation.   IjonTichy (talk) 17:54, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I can't read the word 'gift' without thinking in German, but realities are complex. In a season people extol for good will, it would be inappropriate not to draw attention to things like this. Nishidani (talk) 21:51, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

11-year-old-girl-seriously-hurt-from-firebomb-thrown-at-car-in-West-Bank. Veldaloe (talk) 08:50, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Terror lurking in a Christmas tree? Israel tries to ban non-Jewish celebrations, by Jonathan Cook on December 24, 2012. IjonTichy (talk) 20:59, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Those illegal colonists have forgotten WW 2, now they are the new Nazis in the world and run so called «Israel». This Anti-christ «Israel's» policy is a lot worse than racism, it's ethnic cleansing and a genocidal war. Even most stupid person in the world can see that they don't want to leave a place to the native Palestinian to live on their own Holly Land PALESTINE. Zionists are Nazis. Israel runs by racist people so they come out as racist and they have racist policies. This is why it is a cancer state. Wake up people, same people, same ideology, different name. The reason why Hitler made Nuremberg Laws is to stop the jewish racists from discriminating everyone, see how Gaza is just an upsized concentration camp. Keep up the great work! Lord Pierpont (talk) 07:39, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Gaza Strip

Your addition of editorial comment to the lede of the Gaza Strip article on 25 December was reverted by another editor. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:19, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy New Year Nishidani!

Happy New Year!

Nishidani,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:20, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2015}} to user talk pages.

Global account

Hi Nishidani! As a Steward I'm involved in the upcoming unification of all accounts organized by the Wikimedia Foundation (see m:Single User Login finalisation announcement). By looking at your account, I realized that you don't have a global account yet. In order to secure your name, I recommend you to create such account on your own by submitting your password on Special:MergeAccount and unifying your local accounts. If you have any problems with doing that or further questions, please don't hesitate to ping me with {{ping|DerHexer}}. Cheers, —DerHexer (Talk) 14:17, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

@DerHexer:.(a) what is a global account? I edit from one place, on one computer, with one name, on Wikipedia, not on any allied projects. I could read up on this, of course, but I avoid technical literature because it lacks musicality and avoids metaphor. If you can convince me of its necessity (spin me an ἀγωγή in the magical, not in the Spartan sense, that is), of course, I might change my mind.Nishidani (talk) 15:45, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Metaphors, uhm … a global account is like a master key for all countries around the world. If you prefer to stay home, just stay at your enwiki house. But if you want to get outta there and take pictures, you may need a key for your commonswiki house. Some time ago you got one (and according to Special:CentralAuth/Nishidani you most likely got one there and on other wikis) but now you have to search for it in order to enter it and login. Soon after you've taken your pictures, you want to show them to folks around the world and have to travel to their wikis. But you don't want to do that anonymously but assign your efforts to your account. Ofc, you could ask for visa and a new key to these countries, but if you already had a master key, you could just cross the border and would be recognized. And even if you come back home, (soon) people can contact you in their homewiki countries and you would be notified at home without having to get the mail in their respective country-wikis. If you decided to watch some or their activities at the time when you've been there, you could even check your mails at home in your watchlist. In any case, till April 2015 your home owner will change your current key into a master key no matter what you do. But he might not know all of your former local keys but mix them up. That's why he recommends you to collect your local keys by entering your respective passwords on Special:MergeAccount and change them into a master key, your global account. You would still be able to solely work at home but could more easily get outta there, do some stuff and stay in touch with the outside. Convinced? ;-) Cheers, —DerHexer (Talk) 16:09, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

That's very lucid - it's nice relief from Thucydides, though his description of the siege of Sphacteria which I reread this afternoon was, as ancient memory reminded me, itself uncommonly straightforward. I've only wandered off to those other sites once or twice on occasion, and invented some password without registering which one, so cannot remember. I don't take photographs, have no camera nor cellphone, don't communicate with other editors, except very rarely. This is my only point of contact with the market (I'm sure you'll recognize Wo die Einsamkeit aufhört, da beginnt der Markt). What little I do here is in deference to the fact I'm 'part of the maine' though prefer to be an island with limnited portage elsewhere! Thanks anyway, and my very best wishes for the New Year.Nishidani (talk) 18:58, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

A global account is important, if not for you, then for the rest of us. We don't want the confusion of wondering whether someone called Nishidani and editing at, say, Wiktionary is you. DerHexer has some tricks for people who haven't tracked their passwords, but you can fix a couple yourself. You might try visiting it:User talk:Nishidani and seeing if you can log on there. If you can't, you can go to it:Special:PasswordReset and enter "Nishidani" while leaving the email address blank. Clicking "Reset Password" will then send an email with a temporary password to whatever email address you entered years ago. If you receive that email, you have to do what it says for the temporary password to work. DerHexer would have to explain what happens after that, but I think you can visit Special:MergeAccount and do stuff there to confirm that you control at least the enwiki and itwiki accounts. Johnuniq (talk) 23:06, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I think I've done a few edits to the German, French, Japanese and Italian pages, but that is history. Renewing my accounts there, one-offers, would be wasting people's time and 'mainspace'. It's best to let all that nugatory (a word redolent with fond memories, like 'pinguid': my Latin teacher didn't expect us to know 'nugae' and 'pinguis' has reflexes in English, at least in our early adolescence, and I was promoted from being a suspected hoodlum to studious eccentric when I piped up and gave these as examples) crap a miss and allow those accounts to die a natural death, lapsing into, uh,'desuetude' or, more colloquially 'abeyance'. Is that okay with the system? Nishidani (talk) 11:42, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

A good 2015 to you and yours!

I hope it is happy and productive. I always enjoy our often sadly all-too-brief exchanges. Yours with walnut topping! Irondome (talk) 01:28, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't aspire to happiness, since I was born with (nicknamed 'Smiley' for my first three years -i.e. until I began to take full cognizance of things) that defect of grace, and have experienced an exceptional abundance of that rare feeling. I tend to hope every new year will begin with it some flash of common decency on the horizon, coruscating into a brighter spring and summer of, if not incandescent justice,( I'm a realist) then generosity, magnanimity and compassion. A Syrian refugee on the MS Norman Atlantic, credited with shepherding for several hours two children and a woman to safety as the ship went up in a fetid conflagration, was asked if they were Syrian: he replied: 'They were people'. As to productivity, that is a variable of the weather, though the close lopping of fruit trees two years ago promises a goodly windfall, and the last tomato off my vines was picked, resisting the chill, on the last day of December.

All the very best to you and yours for this coming year, Irondome.Nishidani (talk) 13:32, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

You are aware by now that I "suffer" from strange bursts of optimism. Odd, as for some years I was ironically named "smiler" by some of my associates. My worldview is bleak, I am personally anxiety-ridden and riddled with a sharp awareness of my deep flaws, which must be that nasty human condition thing I have heard reference to. I inject large dosages of optimism into the bloodstream of my "self", much like cocaine. And like cocaine it's effects are short lived (so I have read on the substance) and demand increasingly large dosages to achieve the same effect. I understand you perfectly, Nishidani. Peace Irondome (talk) 23:39, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Caution-2015-01-06

Unfortunately, in December, I was too lazy to copy such a warning to your Talk page too. It was after your selective choice of sources and the same selective, only confirming your point of view - quotng, from already existing sources. See HAMAS: "are Nishidani's last edis - NPOV ?".

Today, when you choose from the source only accusations against Bennett, omitting any refutation of these charges in the same article (diff), it seems me close (sorry, but :(...) to some kind of falsification.
I have to remind you again that the selective choice & quoting is a violation of the rules of NPOV. --Igorp_lj (talk) 17:21, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I think you are well-meaning but this is silly. I can't do everything you and others may want - this is a collegial workplace where we each contribute and, collectively, build articles. No one is expected to figure all the angles. Specifically,when I look at most pages, I see that most editors do little, or rather, put in bits of stuff they note or like, without reading the page. What was remarkable about the page in question, which I went to edit in the article on Bennett and that incident after reading about it in The Times of Israel this morning, cited in your diff, is that, reading it before editing I noted it cited Fisk minimally, ignoring most of what he said, which is a far more horrendous account of what actually happened and the mechanical nonsense spun out by the IDF in justification. Please note I could have added dramatic accounts of bits and pieces of over a hundred bodies being picked up in body bags, of bits of kids' bodies stuck on burnt trees etc. It's there. And the text before my edit was mainly concerned to contextualize the reasons (justifications) for why Israel fired on a UN compound, and accidentally killed 106 people. I fixed that, and then added Bennett.

You complain that I was obliged to add, what you now, in garbled English (please correct it) added (getting there of course by pure chance, not following me around)

Indirect Drucker's evidence denied then Deputy of Bennett, who called them "Vanity of vanities, nonsense, a pile of bullsh*t", Haaretz daily's defense analyst Amos Harel and others . . (verb?).

I think facts are important. I laugh at the way we have reactions sections, listing the usual spokesperson claptrap of shock at some I/P news report. No one reads that crap because it is predictable and meaningless. Just as no one is interested if Bennett, in reaction, brushed off the story by mixing an inane allusion to the preacher's exclamation" הֲבֵ֤להֲבָלִים֙ " in the Book of Ecclesiastes with the manure pats one finds in a cow paddock. By all means, exercise your right to add such outbursts. I myself am waiting for serious details of Bennett's role in the incident, which may or may not emerge, i.e., field reports.

If you are worried about partial or partisan editing on that page and numerous other I/P articles, there are hundreds of editors you should worry about, not just me. Look at editors like Baatarsaikan whose silly edit to the page show she is clearly are unfamiliar with Robert Fisk, an historian with a book that goes into great detail on that incident and period, who was on the spot when the massacre occurred above him on the hills, and interviewed everyone in the UN and Fijian high command, and the survivors, that very day, within hours, and for weeks and months afterwards. As for the rest, this place is packed with lazy editors who are ignorant of everything but the concept of POV, and can't read anything except to figure out if the enemy is insulting them in this or that edit. A new year augury is that you avoid temptations to fit the mould of that type, the partisan wikipedian who only edits in terms of what she or he thinks is the potential political fallout of any one else's contributions.Nishidani (talk) 18:00, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

p.s. please don't use 'refute' for 'dismiss'. Bennett 'dismissed' the report by brushing it off as a heap of shit, and laughably by using a biblical phrase 'vanity of vanities' that is meaningless in context, a sputter of evocative terms resonant of Weltschmerz, wholly inapplicable to the situation. 'Refutation' refers to a logical and factual rebuttal of, or reply to, a charge or accusation. I note several editors recently consistently ignore this simple but crucial distinction.Nishidani (talk) 18:25, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Speaking of Fisk, this is a good, if somewhat emotive example of why some people like him and myself regard this part of our discursive universe as utterly contaminated by topsy-turvy 'logic'. Nothing makes sense in what is passed off, daily, as commonsense. But you're under no obligation of course to read it.Nishidani (talk) 18:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

So many words, instead of simple: "Sorry (keyword), it was not my best editing". :(

Unlike you I am not going to evaluate who of us is "sillier". :) As for Fisk, we can and should discuss whether he is RS in this case, but not here. I only say that you may have a same as his desire to accuse Israel in something yet, but we are not in a class of fisking, but in Wiki-pedia, and are obliged to give accurate information. The same is true with your re-directs to (valid?) accusations against other editors.

Here we discuss your edit only, so I remind what you did include in the article, and what - omitted:

• "According to Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker reported that Bennett's radio call for support was "hysterical" and contributed to the outcome that ensued."

versus

• "Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker citing an anonimous "senior army figure" reported that Bennett's radio call for support was "hysterical" and contributed to the outcome that ensued. Bennett’s deputy during the operation called Drucker’s charges as “Vanity of vanities, nonsense, a pile of bullsh*t”. Bennet's position was also defended by other officers involved in the incident and Haaretz daily's defense analyst Amos Harel. Amiram Levin, who headed the Northern Command during the operation, said that Bennett “... demonstrated level-headedness and did not panic”.

IMHO, it was better not to include anything about this Drucker's pre-election dirty trick, and to give a complete picture, if to include. Otherwise - it's not a fair edit. Sorry. --Igorp_lj (talk) 23:40, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

This is a content dispute, presented as a behavioural problem. I don't take seriously anyone who passes over without comment the work of numerous abusive or blatantly censorious/POV-pushing editors where, and just follows me about to find something in my own edits to which they take exception as a lapse from Wikipedia's highest standards. he fact that Naftali Bennett is rumoured to have been involved in communications that led to the massacre is relevant, both to his biography and the Qana massacre page. ps. I notice that you never reply to the substance of my replies, and when I do to you, in detail, you simply suggest that it was WP:TLDR. Whatever, this is a content dispute, not a behavioural problem. My only behavioural problem here is that I waste time better spent on other projects, by editing this farcical area.Nishidani (talk) 10:57, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad that you decided to add not one side info to the article after such my edits.

But I have to mention the next case of your "selective quoting" as well as what I see as not NPOV editing. See the corresponding "NPOV" topic.

Can you explain / specify what were you meaning writing :

• "I notice that you never reply to the substance of my replies, and when I do to you, in detail, you simply suggest that it was WP:TLDR" above ?

By the way, IMHO just your answers are as min [WP:TL]. Are you doing so specifically? :) --Igorp_lj (talk) 00:22, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

ありがと

「愚公山を移す」、西田にさん。心 (talk) 05:09, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Stop your WP:BIASED, WP:NVOP editing

In your edit here, you took an objective sentence and edited it into an apologetic one, based on a WP:RS that is also WP:BIASED. There are 5 sources for that sentence but you forced your WP:NPOV. You are welcome to report me, this example is indisputable for the way you edit and contribute. I would love an administrator to look closer at your work. Ashtul (talk) 09:27, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

So RS are biased. So you can't spell NPOV. So you can't distinguish one diff from another. So you believe that I am forcing my policy of neutrality ('forced your WP:NPOV') on you and Wikipedia!! So you invite me to waste my time reporting you, so . .yaawwn. Please study Wikipedia's relevant policies, desist from following me around to pages you have never edited and which I do regularly (WP:Hound), and please desist from blotting this work page with inane complaints that only illustrate a certain haste and incompetence. Thank you. Nishidani (talk) 12:05, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

List of Ashtul's mechanical and falsely motivated reverts of edits I make.

• (1)edit 638038015 by Nish. WP:OR. defensive interpretation not supported by WP:RS

The well-known fact is all over RS, as my revert showed. Rather than request enlightenment with a tag, he just erased my edit at sight.

• (2)I wrote: 'Israel sought to justify the blockade as necessary to limit' taking out the word 'legal'. This was reverted by Ashtul.

Your wording is biased. Israel doesn't need to justify anything!

The source says: Israel has sought to justify its broad restrictions by citing security concerns.’

The word ‘legal’ I cancelled is not in Borgon magazine:

nor in the BBC report;

nor in Middle east Monitor:’ "Security concerns" is an elastic term which sometimes refers to valid concerns; a UN report in 2011 found that the naval blockade was legal, but that this should be viewed separately to the restriction of goods overland,’ which means that the blockade itself overland was not regarded as ‘legal’;

Nor in The Jerusalem Post which refers to

• (a)3 Israelis detained for violating a ‘lawful order’ not to enter Gaza, and has nothing to do with the legality of the blockade;
• (b) a statement that Binyamin Netanyahu claimed the IDF operation to enforce the blockade on the Gaza Strip was in keeping with international law,’ which is a political lie representing a prime ministerial assertion, and refers to the operation by the IDF, not the blockade.
• (3) In July 2011, the UN’s Palmer Commission published a report on the IDF’s interception in May 2010 of the Turkish protest flotilla, and ruled that Israel’s security blockade on Gaza “is both legal and appropriate.”; This is a dead link and in any case not RS. It is a false claim to boot.

The wording 'legal and appropriate' for the blockade nowhere occurs in the Palmer report, which distinguished a naval from a land blockade (p.39)Nishidani (talk) 13:08, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Section70 Palmer report.

At this juncture, a word of clarification is necessary. The naval blockade is often discussed in tandem with the Israeli restrictions on the land crossings to Gaza. However,in the Panel’s view, these are in fact two distinct concepts which require different treatment and analysis. First, we note that the land crossings policy has been in place since long before the naval blockade was instituted. In particular, the tightening of border controls between Gaza and Israel came about after the take-over of Hamas in Gaza in June 2007. On the other hand, the naval blockade was imposed more than a year later, in January 2009. Second, Israel has always kept its policies on the land crossings separate from the naval blockade. The land restrictions have fluctuated in intensity over time but the naval blockade has not been altered since its imposition. Third, the naval blockade as a distinct legal measure was imposed primarily to enable a legally sound basis for Israel to exert control over ships attempting to reach Gaza with weapons and related goods. This was in reaction to certain incidents when vessels had reached Gaza via sea. We therefore treat the naval blockade as separate and distinct from the controls at the land crossings. This is not to overlook that there may be potential overlaps in the effects of the naval blockade and the land crossings policy. They will be addressed when appropriate. Likewise, the restrictions on the land crossings to Gaza are part of the context of our investigation, and our recommendations in Chapter 6 address the situation there. But the legal elements of the naval blockade are analyzed on their own.'Palmer report Nishidani (talk) 15:14, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

• (3)clearing wrong tags by BOT. Another deceitful edit summary. I put the tags in because the prose devised by Ashtul has no resonance in the citations given.Nishidani (talk) 16:40, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

1. You added a source later. Your initial edit had no RS.

2. The main point of edit wasn't the word 'legal but rather 'sought to justify' instead of 'maintains'. Clear NPOV.

3. The edit was signed by a BOT not Nish. The source is at the end of the paragraph.

Ashtul (talk) 18:51, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

To repeat. You have little if any knowledge of the subjects of these pages. You turn up frequently on pages I edit. If you see an edit whose veracity you doubt, ask the editor for a reference or post a note on the article, requesting a verifiable source. Given your incompetence, due I suppose to utter inexperience, about editing, don't keep causing trouble by ignoring customary ways of improving pages. Your answer is further proof you don't read what an editor like myself notes, and you can't distinguish. I.e., that the edit I made requesting sources is not signed by a BOT but me, and though I provide proof you still insist it was a BOT, because, for fuck's sake, you did not look at the diff I provided, but at a later diff by a BOT, as a maintenance tag, which has nothing to do with this issue, and was vandalistic because you must not remove tags without good reason, and you had none. If you can't see what any 5 year old can sight at a glance then, please visit an optometrist or some cognitive specialist. Otherwise, don't edit Wikipedia. Please go away.Nishidani (talk) 19:37, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

A quick question

After raising a question in the talk page and if there is no reply, how long should I wait for a reply before making a change? Thanks, Ashtul (talk) 22:08, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I wait a week, taking into account the strong possibility that, over such a brief period, many editors travel, are away from their workplace or home, as I was.Nishidani (talk) 10:53, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Warning

Please stop editing your WP:COI into article where they do not belong. Adding the following passages to Carmel, Har Hebron is a clear violation of WP guidelines.

According to Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times Carmel is

'a lovely green oasis that looks like an American suburb. It has lush gardens, kids riding bikes and air-conditioned homes. It also has a gleaming, electrified poultry barn that it runs as a business.' Beyond its barbed wire fencing, the Bedouins of Umm al-Kheir in shanties are denied connection to the electricity grid, barns for their livestock and toilets, and all attempts to build permanent dwellings are demolished. Elad Orian, an Israeli human rights activist, noted that the chickens of Carmel's poultry farm get more electricity and water than the Palestinian Bedouin nearby.

Hammerman writes as follows:

Right next to the stately country homes - complete with air-conditioning, drip-irrigation gardens and goldfish ponds - a few extended families including old men, old women and infants live in dwellings made of tin, cloth and plastic siding, though there are a few cinder-block structures, too. They tread on broken, barren ground. They have no running water. They are not connected to the power grid that lights up every settlement and outpost in this remote region. They have no access road.

If you insist on continuing in this line of editing I won't have any other option but to report you.

Ashtul (talk) 14:44, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Go ahead and see where it gets you. It will be noted that both those sources deal extensively with Carmel, Har Hebron, and that is why they are cited there. You could only arrive at that page by, as elsewhere, tracking my edits. This harassment (WP:Hound), cognitive failure (WP:COI?) is duly noted. Don't post on this page. Piss off. Nishidani (talk) 16:02, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Norman Finkelstein

Interviews with Finkelstein on The Real News.   IjonTichy (talk) 06:57, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, saw it last night, and look forward to the next installments. NF looked tired, but as precise as ever. It really is a disgrace, such a fine intellect, and a beautiful moral fibre, being ground down by a fucking obtuse bunch of brainless cunts in his community's commentariat. Even the Palestinians have it in for him at times. Not much space in this disenlightened world of money-grubbing, land-grabbing, ideology-spouting, Tanakh/bible/Quran-bashing arseholes for someone who thinks thinking cogently and and acting coherently on larger principles obligatory. Have a good New Year, mindful that most won't of course, which is no reason to not embrace an augury.Nishidani (talk) 14:20, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Good year to you too. Best, IjonTichy (talk) 17:54, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Two new episodes, illuminating, have since been published on the same network.2/4 and 3/4 and 4/4 Nishidani (talk) 11:17, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Eight interviews posted to date, out of a total of eight. IjonTichy (talk) 03:38, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

A wonderful series, and the 7th particularly, with that very rare but logically acute dismissal of talk about Zionism (it's human rights, forget doctrine), and, in particularly, his defense of Israel's right as a state to claim good cause for maintaining its Jewish character, was original as it was admirable. I haven't thought it through, but it shows how thoroughly undoctrinaire he is, and, if you will, how strong, despite all appearances and polemics, his sense of his (Jewish) roots beats, something so personal he rightly denies it voice in order to protect it from the contamination of public discourse. Deeply moving, and shaming to the communities who hold him in exile. Thanks for the tip-off. Nishidani (talk) 16:40, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

AE matter

Nish, You have to add this line to your complaint:

;Sanction or remedy to be enforced: [[Wikipedia:ARBPIA]] - 1RR

That is what Sandstein keeps asking for. Zero^talk 23:48, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, right. I keep complaining about editors not understanding editing policy, but I know nothing of these (to me detestable) reporting procedures. It took me an hour and a half just to write out that report. I'm stupid. Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 10:39, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

DEATH TO ARABS! FREE THE JEWISH HOMELAND OF JUDAH AND SHOMRON FRÓM ILLEGAL ÁRAB OCCUPATION!

DEATH TO ARABS! FREE THE JEWISH HOMELAND OF JUDAH AND SHOMRON FRÓM ILLEGAL ÁRAB OCCUPATION!

Just for the attention of the good guardians who watch this page, and protect it, presumably the same source sent me two emails, one signed 'Brigsjedieefefgewfg', with the heading,'I will rape your wife and make her suffer greatly before I kill her' early today, and slipped past the mechanisms that block abuse of wikimail by sending the messages to 'nishidanisscum@hmamail.com'. I think the person who makes these death/murder threats to myself and a few others in the I/P area regularly is known. If anyone wishes to pursue this, I can send on a copy. Nishidani (talk) 09:49, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

DEATH TO ARABS! FREE THE JEWISH HOMELAND OF JUDAH AND SHOMRON FRÓM ILLEGAL ÁRAB OCCUPATION!

DEATH TO ARABS! FREE THE JEWISH HOMELAND OF JUDAH AND SHOMRON FRÓM ILLEGAL ÁRAB OCCUPATION!

Neither 'from' nor 'Arab' have accents in English, and this offends my sense that interlocutors should understand the elementary rules of orthography. I am informed that bolding a text is a visual device to get over the idea of shouting. Well, shout yourself a beer,a Taybeh might be just the ticket to clarify the mind, if you have one.Nishidani (talk) 06:40, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

== DEATH TO ARABS! FREE THE JEWISH HOMELAND OF JUDAH AND SHOMRON FRÓM ILLEGAL ÁRAB OCCUPATION!

DEATH TO ARABS! FREE THE JEWISH HOMELAND OF JUDAH AND SHOMRON FRÓM ILLEGAL ÁRAB OCCUPATION!

DEATH TO ARABS! FREE THE JEWISH HOMELAND OF JUDAH AND SHOMRON FRÓM ILLEGAL ÁRAB OCCUPATION!

A philosophical dictum says hysteria repeats itself. Mull it over as you sip.Nishidani (talk) 06:46, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

.22 bullets

Probably this ought to be mentioned on one of those pages I don't like to edit. Note the link to an audio recording of the IDF commander assuring a group of settlers that his guys are using live ammo and getting lots of hits. My old man had a .22 rifle for shooting rabbits but one day a rabbit looked him right in the eye and he put the rifle away for ever. Zero^talk 06:53, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Coincidence. I read that yesterday while adding material from B'tselem to the Susya page. Probably one needs a separate page on the thing I've been noting over several years, and its in the old intifada reports: the use of a team of 2, spotter and sniper, in clashes ( the point of departure for such an article would be this). One picks out the target, usually a youth who looks like a leader, and then the other shoots him, often (as here) after a provocation is staged. Your father's reaction was mine, when we shot an owl once. I was only 13. Never touched a gun for personal use (aside from cadet training until I was expelled as a pacifist after getting the best record in target firing with a .303!), or trusted groups, after that.Nishidani (talk) 07:54, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

BY the way, why Arutz Sheva should not be considered a reliable source. Compare this account in the Times of Israel (mainstream more or less), (Stuart Winer, 'Two settlers arrested for shooting Palestinians,' The Times of Israel 20 January 2015)with the version (Ido Ben-Porat, Ari Yashar, "Scandal" as Samaria Guards Arrested Instead of Arab Terrorists,' Arutz Sheva 20 January 20155) in the settler organ. While the latter does indeed provide many details one would like to use, its overall reportage states as 'facts' what are the versions given by the settlers whom the police indictment now states faked the whole scene. Because they confuse evidently falsified stories with facts, the evidently real details (precise locations of shepherd, one of the settler gunman is part of an elite IDF unit) cannot be used. (Nishidani (talk) 10:50, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

The Arab rock throwing terrorists caption is awesome in that A7 article. At least have a picture with a throwable rock. nableezy - 20:27, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Not for an article but, cripes, such is one man's war against terrorism

Lisa Goldman, How Bibi Tried To Make Paris All About Him The Forward 12 January 2015

For those who haven’t been following the story, Netanyahu crashed the national solidarity event despite President Hollande’s explicit request that he stay at home. Then, after the VIP reception at the Elysee Palace, cameras for a local media outlet caught him elbowing aside a female French minister as he tried to jump the queue for the bus that would transport the group to the starting point of the march. Finding himself relegated to the second row at the march itself, he shoved aside the the president of Mali and inserted himself in the front row, one down from Hollande himself and within eyesight of Angela Merkel.Nishidani (talk) 20:11, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I liked especially the last bit, how he "marched with world leaders"...and then he Crops Out PA President Abbas From Photo Released Of World Leaders At Paris Rally when tweeting the picture. Noted. Huldra (talk) 20:32, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, dear. I always thought politicians were supposed to be sharp, cunning, cluey, devious calculators and manipulators, but, this and the earlier stuff suggests this is not the case. Such patent, easily exposed, crassness means, that he hasn't the foggiest notion of how others view him. He's Mario-magician'd Congress, but no one else. What are Auden's lines?

Here great magicians, caught in their own spell,

Long for a natural climate as they sigh

Beware of magic to the passer-by. Nishidani (talk) 21:24, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Paris: Little and Big Monsters:   "Glen Ford and Paul Jay discuss the march against terrorism in Paris and the participation of leaders of countries who have committed and encouraged various forms of terrorism and war crimes." The Real News

"Circus of Hypocrisy": Jeremy Scahill on How World Leaders at Paris March Oppose Press Freedom. Democracy Now!

IjonTichy (talk) 21:39, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Yeah, double-think, and loads of hypocrisy. Under Berlusconi's Bulgarian edict, top journalists like Enzo Biagi were expelled from the national RAI network. Over the years, brilliant comics like Daniele Luttazzi, Corrado Guzzanti and Sabina Guzzanti, Michele Santoro, all experienced career problems after political pressure was waged on networks, to name but a few. Vauro Senesi contemporary Italy's most proficous and genial vignettista was likewise punished for revealing ahead of time the trumpery of trhe pseudo-reconstruction of Aquila after the great earthquake, and got into hot water for mocking Fiamma Nirenstein who pretends to be 'objective' about Palestinians while having a house in occupied territory, when she joined Berlusconi's party, crammed with fascists with a tradition of defending Mussolini and his racial laws (Vauro was eloquently defended by the wonderful Yiddish theatreman, singer and thinker,Moni Ovadia . All fired, shifted, told to piss off. Nishidani (talk) 19:57, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

'The reproduction by Charlie of the caricatures published in the Danish magazine seemed to me appalling. Already, in 2006, I had perceived as pure provocation the drawing of Mohammed decked in a turban in the form of a bomb. This is not so much a caricature against Islamists as a stupid conflation of Islam with Terror; it’s on a par with identifying Judaism with money!. It has been affirmed that Charlie, impartially, lays into all religions, but this is a lie. Certainly, it mocks Christians, and, sometimes, Jews. However, neither the Danish magazine, nor Charlie would permit themselves (fortunately) to publish a caricature presenting the prophet Moses, with kippah and ritual fringes, in the guise of a wily money-lender, hovering on a shlomostoppedstreet corner.'Shlomo Sand, A Fetid Wind of Racism Hovers Over Europe, Counterpunch 18-20 January 2015.Nishidani (talk) 18:51, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Netanyahu's Elbowed Presence in Paris. Shir Hever: "Netanyahu responded to the terror attack in Paris by calling on French Jews to emigrate to Israel. Netanyahu's statement is a clear attack on France. This is a vote of non-confidence in France's ability to protect its own citizens. And it's also contributing to the very dangerous and worrisome rise of anti-Semitism or anti-Semitic ideas, which is when people associate everything Jewish with everything that represents the state of Israel." IjonTichy (talk) 07:34, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

It's election time in Israel, and new evangelical fundamentalist Republican party majorities hold Congress and the Senate. I'm sure the fellow knows all the flak that would fly in Europe, but Eurabia is not his constituency, and the feisty banana-republican thumb-in-your-eyes circus act was intended for the only two state actors who have an impact. Politically, his egregious vulgarity and offensiveness was quite 'rational.'Nishidani (talk) 09:34, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Good analysis and insights by Max Blumenthal.   IjonTichy (talk) 04:47, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Wie geschickt sich Abbas an Merkel ranschleicht :) --Igorp_lj (talk) 10:13, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I missed that. Of course (a) the Bild is a dumb tabloid, which is underlined by the introductory lie to the piece:

Deutlich zu sehen ist es auf den Fotos bei Palästinenserpräsident Mahmud Abbas (79), der sich und seine Fatah-Bewegung nie deutlich von der terroristischen Hamas distanziert hat.

This is a contrafactual hasbara meme, so Bild merely served as a witless pipeline for the Israel Foreign Office.

It ignores the fact that France invited neither Netanyahu nor Abbas. When Netanyahu insisted on being present, France duly, per diplomatic NPOV, invited Abbas. Neither was designated to march in the forefront.

Netanyahu elbowed out a French minister to get on the bus, elbowed his way to be in the front line, (Abbas was in the third row, and appears to have (been) moved up after Netanyahu made his move.

Still, thanks. The slow achievement of parity by Abbas when Netanyahu tried to disrupt and take over the parade was missed by the sources I'd seen. Nishidani (talk) 13:08, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Max Blumenthal says: "Netanyahu's politics, just as they align with those of the Tea Party in the U.S., are of a part of the far-right parties in Europe, the party of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, the National Front of Marine Le Pen in France, the Swedish Democrats in Sweden, who are simultaneously anti-Semitic and pro-Israel. All of these parties align on the issue of Islamophobia. And Netanyahu's Israel, to them, represents a Fort Apache on the front lines of the clash of civilizations.   So Netanyahu, by his or through his arrival in France, is aiming to undermine French liberalism, to undermine small-r French republicanism, and to advance the hopes of these anti-E.U. far-right parties, which are now completely aligned behind a Likud-run Israel. Netanyahu's presence, everywhere he goes, is deeply divisive. He represents Israel as the ethnocratic apartheid state it is. And his natural allies are those who support Israel for that reason and because they would like to advance those same values in their own countries."   IjonTichy (talk) 16:00, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

"hasbara meme", "Blumenthal says", ...

- Guys, do you really take all this nonsense seriously? :) --Igorp_lj (talk) 21:04, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm still thinking over what Blumenthal argues. Not convinced, but then again, I take a lot of time to form an opinion, and when I do, I can explain it. I don't hyperventilate. 'Hasbara meme' . You may have a point. The phrase may be a tautology, and redundantly pleonastic. Nishidani (talk) 21:12, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I love your irony

What is "unresponsive assertiveness"? CSWP1 (talk) 06:49, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Arbitration/Requests filing

Nishidani, a request for Arbitration was just filed. I hope you will understand this isn't in anyway a retaliation but rather using a tool I wasn't aware of before. Direct link Ashtul (talk) 11:35, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Today

is Holocaust Memorial Day. Rather sad that Wikipedia should be marred by editors who haven't a clue what real anti-semitism is. Regards, NSH002 (talk) 12:52, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, N. Actually, I thought of that immediately (I'd had a good talk with one of our local Moroccan street-vendors on this while out shopping this morning), but thought it best not to mention the coincidence.Nishidani (talk) 12:57, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

NSH002, I agree with your assessment, regretfully. (Recommended reading: ‘You Have a Mother’, describing Lola Mozes’ experiences as a child in Nazi camps. By Chris Hedges.)

Nish, what do your local Moroccan street-vendors sell? When I was a child growing up in Israel, two out of my three very best friends were Moroccan. Whenever I visited my friends at their homes, their moms always ascertained I was well-fed with copious amounts of delicious Moroccan food. (And when they visited me, my mom provided Persian, or Afghani, Lebanese or Syrian dishes.) Decades later, I still love Middle Eastern food. How about you? Best, IjonTichy (talk) 17:43, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Lucky man. The Moroccans I know are in haberdashery, though one, flogging cheap books from the estates of deceased Americans, once sold me a copy of a Ist edition of Salman Rushie's Satanic Verses for a few dollars, laughing cheekily with a jokey mock horror as he handed it to me. As to Yusuf, whom after Hebdo several passers-by gave a hard time to with insults about Islam (he reads the Qur'an in those long hours he sits outside as economically stressed Italians pass by him these days without buying anything), he called on the authority of a leading theologian at Al Azhar to attack Sahih al-Bukhari for attributing as Islamic the hadith associated with Abdullah ibn Umar, who imputed to Muhammad the "The Jews will fight with you, and you will be given victory over them so that a stone will say, 'O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me; kill him!' " That of course is all over the internet (unlike what the likes of Mordechai Eliyahu state, or, speaking of trees and killing, his son Shmuel Eliyahu said). My friend was visibly disgusted at the thought of this hadith.

Once while I was searching for beer during Ramadan in Bethlehem, the old Palestinian gentleman who found me several bottles late one night, while plying me with huge bunches of grapes from his vineyard, divagated in exquisite, poetic detail on a dish he prepares for guests, made in a special oven, and lamented that I was departing the next day, for he would liked to treat me to it. I was in a group on a schedule, otherwise I would have cancelled my flight to take up his offer, in exchange for a suitable gift.

Unfortunately, I have otherwise little acquaintance with Levantine food: my wife is a reknowned cook who can whip up dishes for most guests from the Far East to Europe and South America that leave them languorously saturated with and delighted at her inimitable Italian touch to their home fare. The only Jewish dish she makes is Carciofi alla giudia. All this just means that, though I'm a spoiled man in the kitchen, surprises from the Maghreb to the Levant still lie out there to be discovered, tasted and devoured. If we all met each other and sat down to dine in each other's kitchens, as I'm sure User:Cptnono would concur, none of this tragedy would have occurred or keep repeating itself in the first place. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 20:38, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Would love to agree (my kitchen is small so I tend to invite folks over to the local bar). So Ashtul was kind of a dick (I had hoped it was due to newness) but i tried to get him to be cool. You could return the favor by asking Supreme Deliciousness to knock it off. He has been around for awhile but somehow has escaped any issues due to the minor poking and prodding. He needs someone to be cool since it that sort of shenanigans that starts trouble. All I know is that I am seriously going to start smoking in the next couple of months because beer just makes me cranky. *all is calm... Super Bowl weekend**all is calm... Super Bowl weekend**all is calm... Super Bowl weekend**all is calm... Super Bowl weekend*Cptnono (talk) 06:23, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Historical mystery

Can any one with an eye on this page provide a time frame or details on the incident, which gave rise to a popular Palmach song in the 1940s, described by Tom Segev, Eye of the Beholder / Yasser Arafat revisited Haaretz 11 October, 2002? I refer to the punitive castration of a suspected Arab rapist by two Yishuv operatives who later went on to enjoy distinguished careers, Yohai Bin-Nun and Amos Horev. Thanks in anticipation Nishidani (talk) 14:47, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Morris, Birth..Revisited, p 127: "In 1946 three men from Sheikh Muwannis had raped a Jewish girl. Parallel to Mandate court proceedings, the Haganah had shot and wounded one of the attackers and then kidnapped and castrated one of the others (and then deposited him in a hospital)". But these details seem different. Zero^talk 23:28, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much. As Segev's notes, there's a book ca 2002 which deals with this. This example is evidently later, putting into practice the lesson taught to Palmach operatives. The first is on suspicion of rape, without trial. The effect on this on later Arab flight in 1948: the Beit Shean district incident apparently had a huge impact and seems to date to late 30s or early 40s. It throws some light on Bar Ilan professor Mordechai Kedar's statement during the Gaza war last year, I think. I.e. figuring out what 'deterrence' works with 'Arabs' and applying it. Nishidani (talk) 09:04, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

• Max Blumenthal, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, Nation Books, 2014 p.313, taking a hint from the above, but using implicitly some other source, says castration of the enemy, which was taught in the Palmach, was more widespread than this solitary notice would suggest.Nishidani (talk) 18:11, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Yonatan Mendel, 'Re-Arabizing the De-Arabized: The Mista'aravim Unit of the Palmach,' in Ziad Elmarsafy, Anna Bernard, David Attwell (eds.) Debating Orientalism, Palgrave/Macmillan pp.94-115.

The unit involved in executin the Haganah's order when the man was convicted by the Haganah in absentia, was the Ha-Shaḥar unit, which however delegated, on receiving permission, the task to mista'aravim, Jewish Arabs. The song 'We castrated you, Mohammed' celebrating the event, was written by Haim Hefer.Nishidani (talk) 18:21, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

On the other hand, the Mandatory army's Highland Light Infantry once arrested 4 Haganah operatives near St Stephen's Gate and handed them over to an Arab crowd which then castrated the four (February 12, 1948). John Bowyer Bell Terror Out of Zion, Transaction Publishers (1996) 2008 p.269.

Reminders of who I am (ironic)

Some reminders of who I am. (Edit summary) Undid revision 665464574 by Nishidani (talk) Reverted vandalism genocidal anti-Semitic propagandist Nishidani who is hired by Hamas to spread Pallywood lies about Jews Nishidani (talk) 12:59, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Extraordinary people

Worth a wikibio like Ezra Nawi or under a theme: Palestinians who have returned to cave-dwelling, i.e. the folks in the South Hebron Hills, and Silwan. Most make aliyah with huge subsidies. The locals survive even after their own possessions are stolen.

• Abdul Fatah Abed Rabbo
• Oakland Ross, 'The caveman's day in court,' Toronto Star 12 April 2009
• Adrian Blomfeld,'Cave-dwelling Palestinian farmers facing eviction from homes,' The Telegraph 13 May 2012
• Tasneem Nashrulla , Family Lives In A Cave After Their House In Jerusalem Is Demolished,' BuzzFeed 27 August 2013.
• Harriet Sherwood, of the occupation: growing up in Palestine,' The Guardian 8 February 2014.Nishidani (talk) 18:09, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Comic Relief

It may be time to take a quick break from battling the various POV-pushers and Hasbarah propagandists, and read this well-written satire of 9/11 conspiracy theories from The Onion. I laughed hard when reading this, I hope you do too. Warm regards, IjonTichy (talk) 17:30, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Laughed again ... IjonTichy (talk) 08:39, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

U.S. gunman kills three young Muslims

U.S. gunman kills three young Muslims, Reuters. --IjonTichy (talk) 17:40, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Chris Johnson, One dead and three injured in Copenhagen 'terrorist attack', The Guardian, 14 February 2015. Nishidani (talk) 11:00, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

American Sniper (film)

I think you may find the critical commentary on the film American Sniper very interesting. The commentary includes analysis of the political, historical, social, cultural, philosophical, moral, ethical, religious, racial, ethnic and other aspects of society. I started the article, but don't have the time to combine or interweave the rich - both deep and broad - set of sources (including e.g. Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Max Blumenthal and many other scholars and investigative journalists, and I'm hopeful additional scholars e.g. Norman Finklestein may express their views in the near future too) into a more 'coherent' story. (Fahrenheit 9/11 controversies is an example of a more coherent article.) It would be great if you applied your considerable talents to improve the article. You may enjoy it.

Here is a helpful comment from the talk page of the article on the film: "One good way to condense the text would be to group individual critiques under similar themes, rather than chop up criticism into two sentence "paragraphs" that read like a play-by-play of every person's view, and become somewhat overwhelming to read. Something more balanced and easier to read might go "A number of critics cited inaccuracies or distortions in the film. For example, Joe Smith stated "..." Similarly, Sue Smith wrote "..."". The next paragraph might read "Reception from Arab and Islamic-majority countries was (harsh/mixed) [Cite relevent examples]" This is how an encyclopedia should read, and it takes a bit more editorial finesse than quote after quote, but it is better writing. --Animalparty-- (talk) 20:12, 28 January 2015 (UTC) "

Warm regards, IjonTichy (talk) 04:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Most of those are soundbite judgements, for and against. Of course, one could compile a list of such reviews succinctly excerpted for the outright thumbs-up/-down reactions by competent movie critics, as is being done. I did much of such a compilation for that trashy piece of filmic fantasy by Emmerich, Anonymous (film), but I don't think this is informative. Or let us say, you need reviews by critics who do frame analysis, historico-sociological contextualization, and do so within the logic of, say Eastwood's career parabola (for example, there is more than an inkling of a Wende, a readjustment of focus, starting from Unforgiven, A Perfect World and The Bridges of Madison County through to Letters from Iwo Jima Invictus and Gran Torino, that seems, at least to judge from some reviews I've read, to be undone in American Sniper. The key there is to see how he deals with 'empathy for the other' (zilch in the Dirty Harry series) and the emergence of self-awareness in the to-be-admired protagonist/broken hero, the shift from the heroic to the tragic. I usually wait a few years to read or watch anything new, but expect it would, in its genre, have a hard time rivaling the Enemy at the Gates film on Vasily Zaytsev. Zaytsev snipered to defend his homeland against barbarian invaders, but the backdrop is larger. Chris Kyle was a professional killer in a barbaric army of invaders. Nishidani (talk) 11:16, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated. By the way I also generally wait at least a year to watch new films, more typically several years or even decades. Regards, IjonTichy (talk) 17:15, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Apropos, see Max Alvarez, 'A Short History of Sniper Cinema,' Counterpunch Jan 30-Feb 1, 2015. He appears to have missed the old classic Sergeant York (film) about Alvin C. York's WW1 exploits.Nishidani (talk) 17:06, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for Information.   Among the many criticisms of the political/ historical/ social/ ethical aspects of American Sniper (film), one of the most brilliantly insightful, and most frightening and disturbing, is the commentary by Janet Weil: Gunman As Hero, Children As Targets, Iraq As Backdrop: A Review of ‘American Sniper’, published at Antiwar.com.

Among other things, Weil refers to the documentary film Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. The full documentary (50 min) can be viewed here.

Regards, IjonTichy (talk) 04:48, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

• The Trauma Hero: From Wilfred Owen to “Redeployment” and “American Sniper”, by Roy Scranton, a former US soldier in Viet-raq, Los Angeles Review of Books. The author is finishing a PhD in English at Princeton, where he is working on a book about the politics of trauma in American war literature
• Archive of articles by Roy Scranton at NYTimes.com on some of his experiences as a US soldier in Viet-raq
• Joseph E.Lowndes, '“American Sniper,” Clint Eastwood and White Fear', Counterpunch

Let’s start with Clint Eastwood himself, who says that American Sniper was meant to criticize war. “The biggest antiwar statement any film” can make is to show, he said, “the fact of what [war] does to the family and the people who have to go back into civilian life like Chris Kyle did.” There are two Eastwoods in the popular imagination – the celebrant of violence in the Sergio Leone “spaghetti westerns” and the Dirty Harry movies; and the lamenter of violence in films such as Unforgiven and Gran Torino. But as American Sniper demonstrates, those two modes are not so far apart. Eastwood does here what he has done repeatedly in his career – resolves his hero’s ambivalence, psychic pain, and sense of structural powerlessness through masculine honor, sacrifice, and vulnerability (often played out on a highly racialized landscape).

Which was my original point, though he picked up what I forgot The Outlaw Josey Wales, which goes back to mark the Wende earlier (1976) than I did, and where the ambiguity, and its resolution is perhaps better exemplified by the figure played by John Vernon than by Eastwood perhaps.Nishidani (talk) 12:23, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, when I originally read the paragraph you quoted above, your words sprang into my mind ... Regards, IjonTichy (talk) 16:56, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I happened to catch The Hurt Locker on the boobtube the other night. That is a masterly piece of film in the genre against which to measure this Eastwood reel.Nishidani (talk) 10:57, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

The Hurt Locker and American Sniper are similar in the sense (a) both were successful financially (although the latter much more so than the former), and (b) both received a very large number of positive reviews. but the two films are very different in the sense that Sniper received a much larger number of negative reviews of the historical/ political/ social (HPS) aspects of the film than Locker. For example, for a partial listing of the negative reviews of the HPS aspects of Sniper, see this section of the article talk page.

Did you get a chance to watch Lord of War and War, Inc.? I highly recommend these two films. They are both highly intelligent, deeply insightful, thought provoking, and entertaining. I've read extensively over the last 10 years about the complex, challenging issues analyzed in these films, and both of these films offer highly accurate, truthful, penetrating, revealing, sophisticated, nuanced historical/ political/ social commentary. (Which partially explains why both films received poor reviews from mainstream film critics.) The films are not documentaries, they are officially works of fiction, but in reality they are (to a large extent) documentaries well-disguised as mass entertainment (otherwise they could not be sufficiently funded, as well-made war movies generally require relatively high budgets). Both offer many documentary-like elements of the highest quality. By the way you may want to check the Wikiquote entries on both films to get a taste for the high level of intelligence and brutal intellectual honesty offered by these films. Take good care, IjonTichy (talk) 00:17, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I've seen Lord of War, despite disliking Nicolas Cage, and have yet to see War, Inc, despite having a high regard for John Cusack. If there is a defect in the former, it is (to make a variation on the point re the antithetic tensions in Eastwood's films) that (a) the horror of arms-running is embodied by a marginal criminal, whereas it is how official states function, as is admitted only in the postscript to the film and (b) the lesson Yuri voices as the sum of the wisdom he acquired in supplying dictators with weapons of massacre, 'Never go to war, especially with yourself' is contradicted by his own life, which is split, except for two moments, between the realized fantasy of an American dream world laundered of violence, and the brutalizing reality of the violent world he exploits to finance his other life. He's a liminal maverick, but everything he does is what the respectable world of state 'actors' do on a day by day basis, as part of their job, which no one takes exception to. Suffice it to see the massive, lunatic contradictions in the real life behavior of a mainstream figure depicted by Tom Hanks in (Charlie Wilson's War). Still, it's some time since I saw the film, and, as I said, I don't like Cage as an actor.

Vladimir Propp argued that humanity had but 5 plotlines in its fabulatory repertoire, which is probably richer than the story-lines of people or of history in the real world. Generally the rare grim tales in the Grimm brothers' yarns don't translate well for a mass audience, and fail box office success, and the obvious reason, to cite Ibsen, is that we're more comfortable existentially with the blandishment of lies, or as the Old Possum said in Burnt Norton: 'Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality.' We know everything to the point of having at arm's reach a certain predictive grasp of the consequences of our repeated national and international follies, but it is only to be expected that it has little or almost no impact on reality.Nishidani (talk) 11:31, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your insights Nish. Your keen observations of Lord don't diminish my very high regard for the film (and I don't feel that was your intention at all). All your observations are insightful and thought provoking. I agree with your analysis. You mentioned you saw Lord some years ago, maybe if you will watch it again you may develop additional perspectives. If I would have watched all these films 10 years ago I probably would have rated Sniper very highly and Lord and War Inc very poorly. It is only because I've educated myself extensively over the last 10 years about the financial interests behind war (and more importantly and more generally about the role of financial interests in larger society from ancient human history to date) that I was in a position to develop a full and deep appreciation for the brutal intellectual honesty of films such as Lord and War Inc, both of which I've watched for the first time in 2013.

By the way Lord was successful at the box office, although nowhere near the level of the financial success of Sniper. Andrew Niccol, the writer and director of Lord, [also the writer (but not the director) of The Truman Show, another great film in my view] appears to have made several compromises in the script of Lord which in my view did not detract from the film and probably helped the film to (at least modestly) succeed at the box office. Without crafting Lord with an eye towards financial success Niccol would have faced enormous roadblocks to obtain funding for his future filmmaking efforts, e.g. Good Kill (which I've not yet seen --- did you get a chance to catch it yet?). And I loved the Yuri speech near the end of Lord where he informs the idealistic Interpol agent Jack Valentine that the state 'actors' are much larger criminals than Yuri himself and that the state is certain to intervene on Yuri's behalf.

By the way in my view other great anti-war films include, but are certainly not limited to, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as well as High Noon, and of course many films by Charlie Chaplin, including but not limited to The Great Dictator. IjonTichy (talk) 19:36, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, there's an ad break from listening to Luttwak discuss Libya, so I haven't time to add my list. (Some wars are 'good', you know, i.e.necessary. The Holocaust wouldn't have occurred if more Jews acted (then, rather than applying the doctrine against harmless Palestinians now) in WW2 like the Bielski brothers. Have you seen La grande guerra. I suppose it wouldn't go over well in translation, there's so much local dialect, regional mindsets, etc., in it. Extremely powerful ending. Train of Life,The 25th Hour, The Last Valley, Zulu) (saw that with my father, who gave me through the film a detailed run-down of the history of Zulu chieftains by name, which his father transmitted to him in turn, since he had fought in the Boer War: a fine study in courage, by both sides, even if the Brits were imperial arseholes), and yes, (I liked the character portraits of the British soldiers, esp the one played by Attenborough) in Guns at Batasi 'Nite (no, I wasn't being critical of the Cage film, really. But his speech in the end sounding to me like a pretext, and therefore an example of instrumental self-justification. Put it this way- what the film is trying to say is: the 'American dream' is built on foreign nightmares, whether it's Yuri the maverick or the State Department doesn't really matter. Back to the debate.Nishidani (talk) 21:25, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I will definitely look into the films you linked to.

By pure coincidence, I've read the Hebrew translation of The Good Soldier Švejk about one short year before I was drafted into the Israeli military. Without a doubt one of the top 3 antiwar books I've read in my lifetime. Decades later, I smile when I remember the pure joy I felt reading that book. From the first page of the book I sensed this was a special, extremely well-crafted story, and I remember trying to limit my reading of the book to only a few paragraphs every day over a period of weeks, in an effort to prolong the pleasure as much as possible. And when I finished reading the book I immediately read it again from cover to cover. I experienced the same joy very recently, in 2011-2, when I read Catch-22 for the first time in my life -- not only the best antiwar book I've ever read, but the very best book in any genre I've ever read. Best, IjonTichy (talk) 00:18, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Švejk would be even better in Yiddish, I would reckon. I thought immediately of Catch-22 just as I switched off the computer, and also Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, which is up there with the greatest American novels. Since you mentioned finance and violence, the latter is particularly apposite. There is a long speech in there by General Cummings, designed to show that (despite 'us' being on the good side) the directive elite of the Western powers, esp. corporate America, are as fascist as their enemies. Quite a premonitory statement for the period. I can't find the chapter or page numbers as my worn copy is stored elsewhere, but I recommend it, if you haven't read it (Uri Avnery's In the Fields of Philistia must be a fascinating read, though I haven't seen it yet). I was raised listening to people talking about their Boer and WW1 memories - they glossed life in the trenches more or less along the lines of Wilfred Owen's poem, or Frederick Manning's The Middle Parts of Fortune, Robert Graves's Good-Bye to All That and Frank Richard's Old Soldiers Never Die. There's a huge number of very good books and films (Gallipoli is another: my paternal grandfather was there), now that you mention it. I suppose it's just entertainment now: since, if the consumers of these realistic fictions took their reading or viewing of these things to heart, the world would be a different place. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 09:28, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. Full text of the book on WikiSource and Well-made 10-min film on YouTube.

Allegory of the Cave by Plato. Well-made 3-min film on YouTube.

IjonTichy (talk) 19:40, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Manifestations of Apartheid Israel (May 2015). "Shir Hever, economist at the Alternative Information Center, says segregation begins five seconds after disembarking in Israel and there is blatant racism of various kinds isolating Arabs." May 27, 2015, The Real News

Palestinian workers article

You put quite a lot of info in the Barkan page which made me realize there probably should be an article or at least a section somewhere about it the can be linked. Maybe here?

I probably not going to WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT but going into length in each Industrial Park article seems to me to be unproductive and make the article harder to read. Any thoughts? Ashtul (talk) 22:28, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

The Barkan Industrial Park article, like most wiki articles, was a primitive stub. An article should (1) be comprehensive, 40-70,000kb) (2) exhibit the same formatting for sources, (3) be divided thematically into sections, etc. Articles that are well organized and drafted aren't hard to read. If readers desire a snippet view or snapshot in 15 seconds, they don't consult an encyclopedia, they click on google. Nishidani (talk) 09:41, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

AE request

I think we both agree the paragraph eliminated was insignificant and was returned by you only due to the massive rollback you have done to other changes you disagreed with. The material was redundant after your massive build of the article not to mention Beitar Illit isn't CS anymore which makes it false.

I have also explained why the Karmei Tzur revert was justified (not to mention not 1RR) as Nableezy removed the content to which the photo was related. Ashtul (talk) 20:37, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

It wasn't justified. If you see the AE report comment just posted, you were breaking a rule which says that one can count as a revert a revert just outside the 24 hour limit. You don't just sit and watch the clock, and revert on expiry. You are supposed in the meantime to address your colleagues and come to an understanding. I will not participate in the AE dispute, but these three edits, though as you say, technically two of them outside of the 24 hr limit, game that rule. You reverted Zero partially, and reverted Nableezy, and waited for the third revert.

Ist revert 17:37, 22 February 2015 ES: removed unimportant events of specif protests and an event of stone throwing. WP:NOTNEWS with no WP:LASTING effect, Reverts the prior edit by User:Zero0000

Those wiki policies don't apply, by the way.

17:37, 22 February 2015 2nd revert. ES remove pic according to previous edit)

18:35, 23 February 2015 3rd revert ES (deleted pic related to content eliminated by Nableezy).

The third falls just outside the 24 hour period, but looks like gaming. See the policy at AE as explained by EvergreenFir.

This of course is arguable and I won't introduce it at AE, nor participate there. One your first report you got off as a first timer, promising to be more careful. The second time, I, and I have an extreme reluctance to report anyone, reported you out of sheer exasperation at the amount of empty arguing your, to me, unawareness of policy and practice was causing. You got, rightly, a light sanction. HJMitchell rightly gave you an opportunity to come back to the topic, and you have caused again a flutter in the dovecotes soon after. Whatever happens, let's keep out of each other's way. You seem a personable chap, and no hard feelings. But too much speed and passion here makes for a short wiki life. You won't save Israel, or your family in Ofra, from some dire threat by your work here, no more than I will save the idea of a Palestinian state by my work on the representation of their realities and history. The facts, all the facts, are what readers require, not POVs. Good luck. Whatever, please take a break. Most experienced editors and admins do, for their own sanity. Nishidani (talk) 20:57, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I have asked Nableezy to comment on the Karmei Tzur revert so I will wait for it. The picture is clearly related to the passage he agreed on elimination.

I asked you to comment on the one on Community settlement (Israel). Please do. Thanks, Ashtul (talk) 21:22, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry. I must catch my evening movie, and in any case, comments of that order are irrelevant for an AE dispute, since they are content disputes. Admins don't read them, and look dourly at editors who clutter the page with extenuating arguments over content disputes. Another point you should hasten to learn.Nishidani (talk) 21:26, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Enjoy the movie!

In other words, no it wasn't important, there is no content dispute and it didn't represent WP:WAR. Just admit your massive rollback returned content that I removed justifiably as it was WP:USI, WP:INACCURATE and redundant. This will save us both some time. Ashtul (talk) 21:49, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Consider an answer a favor to a fellow WP editor. Ashtul (talk) 22:21, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Consider what I've been telling you for some months. Your mode of editing, based on unfamiliarity with rules and practices, has reduced my wiki productivity by about 50%. Some might think that itself a useful contribution :) But my interest her is in creating or building articles, not passing part of my demented old age argufying the obvious.Nishidani (talk) 08:25, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Hiya, Nishidani, I made a small correction to your section header at AE. Hope you don't mind. -Starke Hathaway (talk) 17:40, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

gaza strip

It's been almost a week since I requested assistance on the article talk page and nobody except you has responded to my desperate cry for help. This proposed content is important and would help improve the article. You appear to be the last resort to improve the concision of the proposed content, and post the content to the article. I'm far too busy in real life to work on this. Thanks for all your great work over many years helping build the encyclopedia. Warm regards, IjonTichy (talk) 16:29, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Since I did that one edit I've been away two days in Germany. I'll try to work on it, of course. Very few editors in the I/P article add notable content to articles if it is not breaking news. Significant work is done slowly, over time. Festina lente is the motto! CheersNishidani (talk) 16:47, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Death of Binyamin Meisner

Actually I agree with the devil's advocate argument you put forth in this discussion. Instead of deleting articles on prominent Israeli deaths, I think we should be writing articles about any Palestinian deaths with significant, persistent coverage. After all, we are here to curate the sum of all human knowledge... Deryck C. 14:02, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. One could write of course dozens of such articles, given the volume of information out there covering also the latter. I think however, they should go into lists. I may be wrong. What is true (if one looks contextually into the I/P area around 2012), is that bevies of Israeli death/murder articles were being written by a handful of editors whom I could name, who were intent on creating a slanted view of the overall realities. I thought about this, and decided not to mirror the POV pushing by creating parallel Palestinian articles. One could easily "win" by the sheer numbers of well-reported Palestinian deaths of course, but the practice, of exploiting "small" tragedies for political ends, is execrable.Nishidani (talk) 14:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't really think one can "win a POV push" by writing many articles because readership per article decreases exponentially as the depth of such subtopic forks increases. Actually, if they think they're "winning", we may have just successfully diverted everybody's energy from edit disputes to curating niche articles that their "opponents" won't bother reading... Deryck C. 17:10, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Very good point. Perhaps I was thinking too much along the lines of 小洞不补，大洞吃苦. It's perhaps selfish of me. Most of these articles are poorly constructed, and when I see them confirmed, I think: 'Cripes. More work'. At Death of Yehuda Shoham, it was like this and required a extensive additions here, here, here, and here, to cite just my contributions, in order to be contextualized and achieve a level of comprehensive coverage. I would drop my opposition if editors were more scrupulous in covering what all sources report, rather than cherrypicking to focus on the creation of a "lachrymose" sense of unilateral victimization. That is a vice both Palestinian and Israeli articles of this kind both tend to exhibit.感谢您的帮助和鼓励，祝好Nishidani (talk) 17:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

For future reference

Igorp_lj 'your willing (sic) to equate Israel with Nazis.'

I don't mind being smeared really. Insults are like yoyos, they come back to whoever reels them out. I do object to anyone who cannot construe a simple set of statements about sources without making wild inferencesd about the putative motives of those who cited those sources. It's rather like a kibitzer observing a dissection of a suicide, and blaming the pathologist for his incisionsNishidani (talk) 18:00, 6 March 2015 (UTC).

(not answering on your next personal attack)

I'd simply remind what was my reason to write (more full quote): "we're already talking about such "comparisons" and your willing to equate Israel with Nazis. Now you do the same thing (as well as using & reverting Ewawer here)..."

See

• "The same comparison" subtopic from Comparing Arab-Israeli matters to WWII in your Talk archive, opened after such your expressions as

"In all wars, children have fought. They did so in the Warsaw ghetto"

At the moment: you haven't answered on my arguments in the Talk you mentioned above. So I think it'll be interesting for you the following new subtopic there: "IMHO, both Khawaja's & LeVine's articles aren't RS" because both they made false use of the source(/s?) mentioned in their articles". --Igorp_lj (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Anyone familiar with my archives will probably think (even if they regard me as a ratbag and thorough scoundrel) that I am willing to go to any length, even waste time, explaining in detail anything I have written which is obscure or which might give, on the surfaced, a disconcerting impression.

I've answered. I have decided not to exercise this obligatory courtesy with you generally because it is pointless, given that (a) you don't appear to understand English sufficiently (b) your interactions with me are, to me, incoherent, (c) your understanding of policy defective (d) you seem to have an unhealthy obsession with my desultory presence around here.

You are hermeneutically 'illiterate' with regard to English prose because you assert something which, apart from being obscenely offensive - 'Nishidani' equates Israel with Nazis'- is false, and for which you have no evidence. The error is the simplest in the book of elementary logic:

• A cites Clinton for saying: It's the economy, stupid
• A therefore believes someone (mentioned by Bill Clinton) is stupid.

Nope. A recorded what Bill Clinton is reported to have said. Reporting a fact does not mean, esp. for a wikipedian editor, believing the substance of that report.

It is a reportable offense to make such personal inferences and smear another editor. I don't report it because I am convinced that you believe this, and you believe it because you can't accurately construe what I write. Nishidani (talk) 11:14, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

• "I've answered" - see my reply about your answer's "correctness". :(

I'd propose you do not concentrate on "your next personal attacks" ( a), b), etc.), but on specific subjects of NPOV wiki-edits. --Igorp_lj (talk) 12:02, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Igorp. Don't write here further. Go away. It would be comical were it not painful to see the confusion. You attack me personally, I reply, and you take my reply as a second attack. Experienced people call this 'shit-stirring'. I may be a shit, but stir as you may, I refuse to be stirred. It's all much doodoo about nothing, unless the purpose is just, as they say, 'to wind' Nishidani up until he blows his top and lets slip something reportable. It's a wonderful day here. Time to prune the fruit trees.Nishidani (talk) 14:02, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I do not repeate your "Go away", only remind you "Nolite judicare et non judicabimine"...

It's not me who opens this topic unstead of to answer at original place. So let's continue there if needed. --Igorp_lj (talk) 23:19, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The future passive indicative of Latin verbs is not the easiest thing to memorize, so I won't correct your mistake there. But I do think it rather odd that in your choice of adage you treat me as several persons. I don't sock myself, except to mangle my bones with hefty left hooks into some semblance of life on rising of a morning.Nishidani (talk) 08:48, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

• Cohn, Marjorie (4 March 2015). Netanyahu, Censored Voices, and the False Narrative of Israeli Self-Defense. "One [Israeli] soldier likens evacuating Arab villages to what the Nazis did to Jews in Europe. As a soldier watched an Arab man being taken from his home, the soldier states, "I had an abysmal feeling that I was evil."" Monthly Review Magazine.
• Landau, Eidan (8 March 2015). Rwanda and Israeli Weapons: the conspiracy of silence. On the Israeli involvement in the Rwandan Genocide. On Eidan Landau's blog. --- IjonTichy (talk) 01:41, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

I read Majorie Cohen's account when it first came out in Counterpunch. Nothing surprising, those things happen in all wars, except of course for the lone voice who made that comparison (as a number of Israeli soldiers have regularly testified since the foundation of the state, about the analogy). It's a good thing the tapes are now available, in any case.

I know people who were there during the Rwandan genocide, the seeds of which were laid long before Israel was created. Israel, unlike a lot of countries that could have done more, sent a field hospital to Goma at the time, didn't it? Cheers Nishidani (talk) 17:50, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Battle of Shuja'iyya

Hi. Thanx for ur input on the article. But how are Democracy Now, Brasil247 and Press TV not WP:RS? If you had said only Press TV i could have sort of understood. But why Democracy Now and Brasil247? I don't see any problem with these two. Thnx. Also if you could look at the talk page of the aricle, i have proposed a name change. Sohebbasharat (talk) 14:56, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

The point is to use sources that won't invite challenges, as those three might (and did). As to Brazil247, it's best, except where indispensable, to use English language sources.Nishidani (talk) 10:30, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

DemocracyNow is a respectable site, IMHO. I should not be worried about citing it just bcz someone does not like it. That someone should prove why it is not RS. ANyway, thanks for your input. Sohebbasharat (talk) 11:38, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

My view is that high RS standards are required for Palestinian material, while generous scope is granted articles on the other reality. While this practice discrepancy is unfair, I tend to think that accepting a higher bar for P improves the reliability of that side of the equation. Of course, Democracy Now, like Mondoweiss, is far more insightful and intelligent than a lot of other sites (Algemeiner, Arutz Sheva etc.etc.) but I would suggest that if you are challenged, don't edit war to get it back, make your case, and only restore it if you get a consensus. I find that searching harder, rather than arguing, is more expeditious and productive. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 11:51, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I dont edit war ever. I try to follow the consensus always. But i feel there is some inherent bias here. So, if one quotes haaretz/CNN (in something which is proIsrael), its considered alright and not unbiased. But if one quotes some source which is sort of pro Palestinian POV, everyone assumes that the source is unreliable. Sohebbasharat (talk) 14:28, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Fine. By the way, I peeked at your page. Very disappointing about Alonso. Nishidani (talk) 14:50, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

p.s. There's nothing wrong with being pro-Israel. Generally Haaretz covers both sides of the scene, but it is true that Ynet, The Times of Israel, the New York Times skew things one way. All sources are 'biased' of course, Israeli/Palestinian. It is true that there is a Wp:systemic bias in Western coverage due to the widespread tendency of lazy journalists to avoid taking cognizance of scholarship in Israel and the diaspora, perhaps because they make certain career calculations (this is true the world over however). The facts are mostly there: one just has to be patient to forage for them.Nishidani (talk) 14:54, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, you are right, 100%. Whats disappointing about Alonso? You mean accident/not racing in Melbourne? Thanx for your advice and input, btw. Its rare to find calm/cool people on Wiki, many editors are out to prove a point, it seems :-) It was nice talking to you. Have a good day. Where are you from? If you dont mind me prying. Your page doesnt say much. Sohebbasharat (talk) 16:30, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

The Melbourne memory lapse and its consequences. As to where I am from, I suspect from my mother's womb. Everything after that, the whereabouts of growing up, studying and living, is just circumstantial, since I don't have any specific 'national' identiy, though I do live in Italy at the moment.Nishidani (talk) 17:08, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, the memory lapse (Retrograde amnesia) is pretty normal after a concussion. Shouldnt be much of a worry. The media coverage by McLaren was bad though. You sound very poetic. Lol. Good to talk to you. Have a good time. Sohebbasharat (talk) 20:29, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Hamad al-Hasanat

The Arabic wiki has a biography on this co-founder of Hamas, though in Western languages, it appears sources are extremely rare, which is odd, given his role in creating a major political organization. If anyone can help with sources, I will write a stub. Hamad al-Hasanat

• Ramzy Baroud, 'The Secret History of My Geography Teacher,' Counterpunch 13-15 March 2015.
• 'Senior Hamas founder dies at age 80,' Middle East Monitor 3 March 2015
• Zaki Chehab, Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs and Spies, I.B.Tauris, 2007 pp.24ff,
• Sara Roy, Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector,Princeton University Press, 2013 pp.24ff.
• Khaled Hroub, Hamas, The Other Press 2009 pp.12ff.(Not mentioned among founders)

Nishidani (talk) 18:14, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Islam and antisemitism

Please see the talk page. I have responded. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RebSmith (talk • contribs) 19:39, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Matthew 2

FYI our edits on Matthew 2 have been deleted from the Palestine article. I don't feel particularly strongly as it does jar a little at that location.

I have added much of the same content at [3].

Oncenawhile (talk) 15:05, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

I saw that. I will revert it while scaling it back. The prior section uses 'the term' three times at least, and is somewhat vague for that reason, and this begged for correction. I don't think the exodus parallel quote is needed. But since we deal in extensor with the land of Philustiem in the Septuagint, it is appropriate to mention eretz israsel/ge Israeli in New Testament. That's a fair compromise, toi avoid throwing the toddler out with the barfwater?Nishidani (talk) 15:30, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Nishidani, how about we add the whole discussion as an "endnote", using Template:efn-lr? The article has a few of these now, which i think work quite well. That way we wouldn't need to scale it back. For instance, I think the exodus piece is important because it communicates the point that "the term" was almost certainly not a contemporary geographical term in Matthew's time. Oncenawhile (talk) 16:41, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Fine by me. You've done such a fine job on this, go ahead. I'll have a look tomorrow for the prose angle I mentioned, as I think that passage is not quite clear. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 18:17, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

An interesting article on this topic: [4]. See the section "In that case, what is the origin of the term “Land of Israel” as the homeland of the Hebrews?"

Oncenawhile (talk) 21:46, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Be constructive.

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to blank out or remove portions of page content, templates, or other materials from Wikipedia, as you did at Islam and antisemitism, you may be blocked from editing. Thank you.Bkalafut (talk) 17:44, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Blocked by whom, and for reforming a patent piece of hate junk? Learn to edit the page using decent sources, which are lacking, not just revert. I gave you an example of how this is to be done in the lead.Nishidani (talk) 18:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

This is a curious defensive tactic, swinging your fists about POV and being upset about reversions while engaging in reversions to enforce WP:FRINGE POV. You cannot chase people off of pages on WP who are making constructive contributions. Kindly cease.Bkalafut (talk) 18:19, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

constructive contributions? reading that made me put Clint Eastwood's dictum into the past tense. LOL, as youngsters say. Nothing defensive, unless 'defense' means the defense of scholarly quality. You are restoring 'stuff' that, evidently, neither you nor RebSmith know anything about. I'll give you one obvious example.

(a)^{[Quran 4:157]} And their (Jews) saying, "Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah ."

That comes from an Islamophobic airhead's website, by the looks of it, though it is prefaced by 4 sources, two of which do not contain it, and therefore its incorporation here is a selective WP:SYNTH job.

What did the islamophobic Pamela Geller do with this ostensibly derogatory remark? Well, she clipped out the succeeding verses:-

(b)‘But they killed him not, nor crucified him; but it was made to appear to them. For of a surety they killed him not. Nay, God raised him up unto Himself.’

Now, any scholar of the subject knows that (a) it reports, reliably or not, that Jews in Arabia could be heard fessing up to deicide, (which is actually something Christians kept raising for 2,000 years, as an excuse for pogroms and genocide) and that (b) The text of the Qur'an denies the Jews were in fact guilty of deicide. In Islam therefore, the Christian charge is denied, and the lethal deicide accusation defused. There is a considerable literature on this: the Bavli (at Sanjhedrin 43a) reports a tradition that Jewish Christians were stoned and hung by other Jews, including Yeshu (Martinus C. de Boer, Johannine Perspectives on the Death of Jesus,Peeters Publishers, 1996 pp.61-62), so the Qur'an's registering one such Jewish mention of a Jewish tradition is not intrinsically derogatory.

So pull your finger out, and stop reverting back a mother-lode of primary research culled from stupid sources you clearly have not read, let alone famuiliarized yourself with the relevant scholarship

• Andrew G. Bostom is an M.D. not a scholar of Islam, and fails WP:RS. The article cites his book, without providing pagination, hence it fails verification. (well, it does have these verses, integrally, on pages 457,641, but you went ahead without knowing whether this was so or not)
• Robert Spencer is not WP:RS. His book is cited again without pagination. He happens not to have mentioned this passage.
• That passage is not cited in the Jewish virtual library text either (Islam:References to Jews in the Koran).
• So we get to another Islamophobe, the notoriously thick-agendadriven Pamela Geller. She mentions it, and that's probably where our page picked it up. And she, as I showed, ripped it out of its natural textual context.

You haven't edited the page. You don't know the subject. You have reverted consistently, without talk page discussion, you are restoring material potentially injurious to NPOV, and now you want to complain to admins about my POV-pushing. Yawn,...To cite one of the greatest Jews in the literary imagination, the only sensible reaction to what you and the other chap are doing there is Pprrpffrrppffff.Nishidani (talk) 20:24, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Notice of Edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. The thread is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:Nishidani reported by User:Bkalafut. Thank you. Bkalafut (talk) 18:16, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Goodbye. Thanks for reporting yourself and the other chap, whom you contacted.Nishidani (talk) 20:29, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

New York Times Again

Overnight, an editor correctly reverted an edit I made at Har Homa, for clicking the link, he found that it did not provide the information I culled from the article the day before, which was more or less this:

“It was a way of stopping Bethlehem from moving toward Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said of his approval of Har Homa, against US wishes, in 1997. . His acknowledgment that Har Homa was intended to disrupt Palestinian development between Bethlehem and Jerusalem

It could be I got confused, but I don't conjure up edits regardless of sources. Checking, it would appear that the initial report I used was changed or Orwelled down the memory hole, disinvalidating the edit itself. So, since I had a visual image of the NYT page still in mind,

• (a) I googled:'har homa+Netanyahu+bethlehem+hamastan.'
• (b) This produced:

Netanyahu Says No Palestinian State if He Is Re-elected ...Mr. Netanyahu stood next to maps of Har Homa, one from 1997 that showed its empty ... “It was a way of stopping Bethlehem from moving toward Jerusalem,” Mr. Netanyahu said of his ... Netanyahu Warns of New 'Hamastan'

• (c)But clicking on (b) yields up no such text.
• (d)The Times of Israel has much of what I wrote, mentions the New York Times report, but, as one would expect, twists it to erase what the original source says. It is no longer what Netanyahu recalled as his purpose in 1997, but the motive for 'further construction' in 2015.
• (e) Slate magazine also carried the substance of Rudoren's article in a version by Ben Mathis-Lilley.
• (f) I eventually found Rudoren's article carried (dated 17 March) from the New York Times, in the Boston Globe ('Netanyahu says no Palestinian state if he is reelected.')

Netanyahu on Monday also visited Har Homa, a Jerusalem neighborhood where construction on land Israel captured in the 1967 war ignited international outrage. Netanyahu said he had authorized that construction during his first term to block Palestinians from expanding Bethlehem and to prevent a “Hamastan” from sprouting in the hills nearby.Netanyahu stood next to maps of Har Homa, one from 1997 that showed its empty hillsides, and one showing its roughly 4,000 apartments today. A further 2,000 are under construction or planned.“It was a way of stopping Bethlehem from moving toward Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said of his approval of Har Homa, against US wishes, in 1997. “It stops the continuation of the Palestinians. I saw the potential was really great.”

• (g)Her article gives precisely the content I cited in my original edit. Unless I am mistaken, Rudoren gave an initial report with this content, which disappears therafter though it survives partially in a video clip which however does not contain precisely that language, attached to the reformulated article. Either Rudoren distorted her source, which is possible, and rewrote the piece, or her original report was correct but deemed unpalatable for the NYTs readership. If the former, the fact is that other newspapers still carry the original version under her name. Nishidani (talk) 10:15, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Benevolent Big Brother, in the form of web.archive.org, is watching [5] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sean.hoyland (talk • contribs) 16:39, 17 March 2015‎ (UTC)

get yo acting like you can sneak in here nableezy - 22:50, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Just passing through to see whether the Wikimedia Foundation is still willfully empowering and engaging psychopaths and indoctrinated fools to build an encyclopedia.

Personal disclosure. While psychopathic, I've yet to see any cheque from the Foundation for the work I do here. They haven't 'engaged', (as opposed to, 'enraged' me), though working here gives a chap a sore 'ring'. Dunno Y unless it means I'm a fool: but I lack indoctrination, as opposed to documentation. I don't quite need the former. I spent a large part of my childhood getting used to pushing shit uphill with slippy fingers, and that's the key to it all.:) Best regards. Nishidani (talk) 19:57, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

What were you looking for, change? I swear, the smartest people can be all sorts of dumb.

A change of life. As to the last hypothesis, now that's something to look for as one follows the doings of Terry Tao. I prefer the formulation, the dumbest people on earth can be all sorts of clever (Bushed, Blare, Netanyahoo, Berluscrony, Tony Abbott(-and-Costello), Steppenwolf Harper, Al-Farter Sissy . . .For more historical depth, consult backcopies of Debrett's.

Jeez, I wish I wasn't net-illiterate, and could unscramble these mysteries like the brightest round here. Fanks, chief.Nishidani (talk) 16:47, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Reuters wrote this:

"I thought we had to protect the southern gateway to Jerusalem by building here," Netanyahu said, with a construction site behind the podium as his backdrop. "There was huge objection, because this neighborhood is in a location which prevents the Palestinian (territorial) contiguity."

You can also compare news diffs here. --IRISZOOM (talk) 17:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

New York Times did something similar today, as can be seen at Yousef Munayyer's tweet. --IRISZOOM (talk) 22:04, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 23 March

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 2000 Ramallah lynching page, your edit caused a broken reference name (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) 00:24, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Y fixed. --NSH002 (talk) 16:49, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Shudda dunnit meself. Sorry, and thanks.Nishidani (talk) 16:51, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Reference errors on 2 April

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 Cremisan Valley page, your edit caused a broken reference name (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) 00:38, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, you learn something new every day

Hmm, you wouldn't expect a single extra quotation mark to make such a difference, but the wiki parser does do some things differently within ref tags.

I always enjoy a good puzzle, as I did those in Kasner & Newman's book, Mathematics and the Imagination, when I was in hospital for three months at the age of 10 because an incompetent locum doctor couldn't diagnose a textbook case of appendicitis. Our usual GP wouldn't have made that mistake.

Thanks for the challenge. --NSH002 (talk) 18:32, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Kenji draft

Hey Nishidani, sorry to bother you with this again, but recent developments have made me worried that if I go to all the trouble of completely rewriting the article and radically increasing its coverage of the stuff Icuc2 said I should, when I try to overlay the draft on the article I will immediately be reverted and forced to discuss each individual point for weeks on end as I have up to this point on the relatively tiny matter of whether "Kokuchukai" and "nationalism" should be mentioned in the lead.

Do you also think I should just give up and make "piecemeal" edits? I took your editing my redraft as a blessing on the project, especially in the light of your previous talk page posts, but was I wrong to read it this way? I have reverted my own removal of the Kokuchukai name-drop in the lead of my redraft in the hopes that there are no other problems. Pending discussion of course: your own comments on this issue were unclear so I don't think there is any "consensus" on whether Kokuchukai should be name-checked in the lead one way or the other.

But...

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:07, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Strike while the iron is hot and just do your revision according to your own lights. If you have any trouble, notify me. In any case when you are through is the time for other editors to make constructive comments, but I'm fairly sure that if you do get through your revision it will be more comprehensive than what we have and can rapidly be inserted as an updated replacement. Editors can then add modifications, or suggest rearrangements. Don't let yourself get distracted by endless talk: stick to the article. I'll review it top to bottom when you're done with it. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 12:12, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't see any problem in mentioning his brief affiliation with Tanaka Chigaku's Kokuchukai in the lead, shorn of adjectives. That can be discussed in the appropriate section. From my examination of the record it is a minor part of the story (so far). One must be fearless in these things.Nishidani (talk) 12:14, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Request for input

I see you have had previous interactions with the editor Hijiri88, apparently including specifically the article on Emperor Jimmu. I have very serious questions regarding his basic competence and his regular abuse of policies and guidelines, and have started a discussion at WP:ANI#Ongoing gross incivility of Hijiri88. Anything you might be able to present regarding his behavior and ability to deal with criticism, be it positive or negative, would be welcome. John Carter (talk) 18:13, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I'll certainly look into it, John. I get on well with Hijiri, as I do with yourself. Miyazawa Kenji was critical of 'narrow nationalism' while Tanaka Chigaku's movement was close to ultra-rightist, so the point is delicate. Miyazawa doesn't, from my recalled reading, strike me as politically nationalist in Chigaku's sense. I'm busy tonight, but will look further into the complaints and page tomorrow, if possible. Cheers. Nishidani (talk) 18:49, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

The issue probably isn't so much "nationalism," narrow or broad, but more about behavior. Of course, if you have any reference sources on the subject, they would be more than welcome. I just a bit earlier today finished the Guide to Reference sublist on the History of Asia and there seem to be about 8 or 9 at this point, because the GtR is pretty much current, recent biographical encyclopedias on Japan, which, between them and any other reference type sources, would probably provide the best indicators of content of the biography, provided we take into account the obvious biases implicit in biographies of poets, or authors, or political activists, in reference works dealing with those more specialized topics. Some of them, and maybe others available through Resource Exchange on perhaps the Koku-whatever-the-hell-it-is group might be among the most useful. One particular point of interest in the biography is that it states the subject had been turned down by the Koku group earlier, before he became a street preacher or whatever it was. It might be interesting to see when he first approached them, particularly how quickly after his alleged conversion, and if they are known what reasons he supplied for choosing that particular group, which, from what I understand, probably has the weakest ties to the Lotus Sutra of all the Nichiren groups. Anyway, just a few opinions. John Carter (talk) 18:57, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I dislike Nichiren, and groups affiliated to it. Buddhism is another matter. One of my teachers was a Buddhist, with a deep affection for the Lotus Sutra, perhaps because he had seen WW2 and was an intelligence agent. But I think Miyazawa's life and work can't be tainted by association: many things affect affiliation, and I can't see any evidence (to the contrary) that this side of the Nichiren tradition, it was nationalistic from the start, was what drew him to it. In any case I've made some observations on the page. Cheers, John, and thanks for the notification. He's a very interesting writer. Nishidani (talk) 14:14, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

If Miyazawa were available in a really good translation, I probably would try to read him. I unfortunately tend to think that a lot would be lost in translation. He seems to be one of the comparatively rare writers who are acquainted with both science and religion, and try to in a sense bridge the gap between those two fields, and such writers tend to have some of the more interesting things to say in general.

Oh, and FWIW, I think I've gotten at least a few new reference source articles related to the topic. If you wanted to drop me an e-mail, I could forward them, and the other ones from RX, to you. I can try to search the various databanks of newspapers and journals this week as well, although I honestly tend to doubt that there is likely to be much information related to his biography anyway which wouldn't be available through other sources already. John Carter (talk) 17:47, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

He is available actually in translation.

• Kenji Miyazawa,Night of the Milky Way Railway, trans.Sarah M.Strong M.E. Sharpe, 1991
• Kenji Miyazawa,Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa, tr. John Bester, Kodansha International, 1997
• Miyazawa Kenji, Ten Japanese Stories for Children, tr.P.A. George Northern Book Centre, 2005

Thanks for the offer, but, in the next few weeks, as time allows, I'll be looking at his Japanese works, and works on him in Japanese, John. I'm interested in his possible influences on Murakami Haruki, all of whose works I've read, and I hadn't until this week, made the connection. It can't be a coincidence that the 15 vol. collected works came out in 1973, just before Murakami started writing. If you can get hold of Sarah Strong's translation, it will certainly give you an inkling. Cheers, and, thanks again for drawing my attention to this.Nishidani (talk) 19:14, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Actually, at least one of those translations got an award for the quality of the translation as well, according to the godawful mess of articles I've been downloading today. There are, actually, a frighteningly large number of sources relating to the subject and his works on NewsBank and ProQuest, and, so far as I can tell, JSTOR as well. I haven't downloaded the mess of articles and reviews on JSTOR completely yet, but his influences seem to extend a bit further into Thoreau (influencing him, obviously, not the other way around), and the beat writers as well. John Carter (talk) 16:59, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Curtis's still at it

Hey, our mutual friend is still at it, only this time when I tried to revert his insertion of dubiously-sourced OR he took me straight to the admin board. The content problem is already fixed (not by CurtisNaito, of course), but he appears to still be asking for some form of sanction against me. You wanna try talking some sense into him again? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:04, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

The fact that two POV pushing, but worse still, utterly incompetent editors joined in to tempt you to break the 3R rule is no excuse for breaking it. Your position is worsened by a tendency to harangue, even if you do so with meticulous attention to problems of sourcing. What's worse. The talk pages give a lot of substantial links and scholarship to the contested issue. No edit went ahead, I gather, for several months, with none of the squabblers troubling to add Nakanishi, Miller et al.'s known views on Yamanoue no Okura's continental origins or connections to add the theory to the page. This is exactly what happened at Miyazawa Kenji: bucket loads of argufying on the talk page, and no significant editing to improve a mediocre article. One simply must learn to enjoy editing articles, which means avoiding the traps set by donkeys. You need more detachment. I suggest you take a voluntary break, apologize for the error, and trust more in the fact that a stupid edit up on a page for a few days is not going to imperil the world. If that were true, most of Wikipedia spells doom for humanity. Don't think angrily about editors you consider stupid. Those who are have to live with themselves, which is a terrible, somewhat tragically unfortunate destiny, deserving tacit pity rather than antagonistic opposition.Nishidani (talk) 10:49, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Hellow

I'm just want to ask how are you¿. Regards---1339861mzb (talk) 06:32, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I won't be eudaemonic until the numerous problems with exigent folks are solved here, and I can have some time to myself, and finally plant my gardens. The soil's been turned twice in a month, and lies there, bare and beckoning for seed, under a warm sun, as one rushes out to buy someone something urgently telephoned for, or console the neurasthenic quibbles of the hyperaged. On the other hand, one glows within to see one's 16 year old cat, given for moribund by winter, basking on the raked clean soil, or squirming with delight as it tumbles back and forth to flag to me that I might stop a while and tickle her to ease a slight itchiness, with a backscratch. The vet said her mouth ulcers were incurable: we found, by experiment, a diet that has her thriving. Hope you too are well. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 07:19, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Re Pity

I cannot hide my deep depression Nish. Do you have a link to the NYT article you mentioned on my TP? I would appreciate it if you could dig it out. Kind regards Simon. Irondome (talk) 00:38, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Little help

Believe it or not, Curtis has actually started an ANI thread asking for me to TBANned for supposedly engaging in "battleground" behaviour. Even though said battleground behaviour consists of pointing out the blatantly obvious fact that he has been misreading/misrepresenting sources, something you yourself have pointed out too. The thread is TLDR but several users who don't like me for other reasons have already voiced their support without actually reading the discussion. Little help convincing the community/admin corps that he is the one who needs a TBAN? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:27, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

CurtisNaito needs to be banned from edits related to pre-1868 Japanese history

You have said it several times and I have too; as of this edit I have officially had enough. I think given the massive time-wasting fusterclucks on Talk:Soga–Mononobe conflict, Talk:Emperor Jimmu, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Korean influence on Japanese culture and the accompanying talk page with the obvious WP:COMPETENCE and WP:IDHT issues that show no signs of improving, we have a pretty good case for a TBAN, if not a block. User:Sturmgewehr88 would probably agree as well.

Problem is I have a history of poor ANI formatting, which has also resulted in a currently-ongoing fustercluck that I'd rather see closed before opening a thread on Curtis. It's especially intimidating trying to explain to the ANI crowd that another user has been misrepresenting sources on 7th-century Japan -- how would they know, and what diffs would I use? Just show them the size in bytes of the talk page and explain that 90% of it is Curtis simply not getting it (with one or two particularly egregious diffs like [6])?

Any advice?

(And sorry again for constantly dragging you into this bullshit. Believe me, it annoys me as much as you.)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:37, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Just don't reply to him. WP:AGF when applied to the obtuse, just translates into WP:TLDR, esp. at boards where behavior is argued to be problematical. Unless one can limit one's evidence and exposition to a large no of diffs showing poor judgement, and a shot paragraph, and refrain from any further argument, any calls for sanctions will be ignored. He appears to be a passive-aggressive, staying calm while making edits or comments that are stupid. So, just edit, and ignore him.Nishidani (talk) 19:17, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Do you wanna field this one or will I? Or should we just ignore it?

Also, fyi, I opened a subthread to TBAN Curtis from pre-Heian Japanese history.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:06, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

I hope you don't get upset that I said both of you deserve sanctions. I can see why you get upset, but one cannot edit Wikipedia unless one has a certain serenity, even in the face of extremely silly editing. Most of these articles require editing, not debate, and engaging overly with, or taking seriously, incompetent editors is soul-destroying. I'd suggest you offer to take a break. I would also suggest you refrain from adding more to these threads, and let the complaint take its course, with external editors' input. If one loves a subject, and reads extensively, one learns to ignore nonsense, and to spend one's time more productively. Think about it.Nishidani (talk) 15:13, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Another potential CIR issue?

Hey Nishidani, sorry to bother you again, but could you help me keep an eye on this? The user's understanding of NOR and V seems to be at least as poor as that other user's, and I just don't have the energy to be called "repulsive" and get told I should be de facto site-banned every time I try to explain NOR. Your skin seems to be thicker than mine. I'd ask for an IBAN, but I'm done with ANI for the foreseeable future, and apparently IBANs are physically unenforceable... Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:58, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

I think you need a rest. The problem was nugatory and undeserving of adjectives or anxiety.Nishidani (talk) 08:37, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

The state of knowledge, sigh (reliable sources etc.)

Itay Blumental, '3,000-year-old artifacts from Egypt rule of Canaan found in Negev cave,'

Artefacts were used by the tribe of Judah, the only tribe of Israel not to be exiled to Babylon in the late Bronze Age and the Iron Age. (circa 1,500 BCE) and the Iron Age (1,000 BCE)

Fascinating. The Babylonian exile took place 900-400 years after the artefacts were made, artefacts which (a) are Egyptian in motifs and style and yet (b) bear witness to Judahite cultural patterns a thousand/500 years later. Great. Nishidani (talk) 10:56, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Nish can you please explain/ interpret this further. I think I know what this means but am not sure.

By the way I think you'll be interested in viewing the New Interviews with Norman Finkelstein, May 2015

IjonTichy (talk) 17:18, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

The writer knows nothing of the subject (a) The way it is phrased the Babylonian captivity extended from the late Bronze Age (which ended 1,200 ca). The Babylonian captivity starts around 597, which is, the late Iron Age. (b)The tribe of Judah was exiled to Babylon. (c)What has the tribe of Judah to do with artefacts which the article states were dated from 1,500-1,000 BCE?, a period before we have any historic notice of that tribe. Did they inherit them, dig them up for re-use?, and if so, what significance would that have. No more than if a Spartan used ornaments from a Mycenaean tomb? It's hogwash in short, explicable only as another endless attempt to make ethnic connections history (so far) doesn't permit. Thanks for the link to Norman. I'll examine it presently.Nishidani (talk) 18:45, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Shurat HaDin

I added lots of content to Shurat HaDin in Feb. and again today, can you help in trimming it and improving its concision. (By the way I highly recommend watching both interviews with Michael Ratner on The Real News, linked in the article on Shurat HaDin.) Thanks. IjonTichy (talk) 17:09, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Dinner's on the table and I had to rush. I'll get back to a second review. Tighter synthesis, and indirect narrative is best. If you think I've wieded the paruing axe too mightily, drop a note in the meantime. Nishidani (talk) 17:58, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your contributions to the article. I hope you enjoyed your dinner. Did you get a chance to work on your fruit trees and pet your cat? One of my puppies is sleeping in my lap as I type this. Enjoy your weekend, IjonTichy (talk) 21:22, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Bit too busy these days to do more than a preliminary revision. Remind me in duke course to look over it again. I always enjoy meals, though I don't know why one always has to eat them unless to acknowledge the genius of cooks/wives, who take so much care to prepare them. My cat's called the labourer's foreman. All that will galvanize it out of gerontocratic somnolence is the noise of me with a mower, a saw, clippers, or a hoe, at which she will appear out of hiding, and curl up within a few feet, and watch. I was raised to kill them on sight, and taking it, and a few others, in, began as the penitence of maturity. I now like them, except when they kill lizards, geckoes, snakes or robins and the like. I've had to landscape sections of my gardens to make them impenetrable to cats, and safe for reptiles. Well, the cat's ensconced, like William James's cat, in the library asleep near Plato, so I can finally sneak off, and get some further, nighttime reading done. Very best (thanks for those additions) Nishidani (talk) 21:55, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Caution-2015-05-27

Unfortunately, I have nothing to add to what is already written in the subject: Talk:Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 2015#As boorish as false (:)
--Igorp_lj (talk) 23:48, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

'Unfortunately, I have nothing to add'. That's a relief. Nishidani (talk) 07:10, 27 May 2015 (UTC)