It appears that this request for arbitration concerning the use of POV geographical terms for disputed territory in the Israel/Palestine area will be accepted. If G-Dett's statement is correct, and I believe that it is, I think she'll be making a strong case in her evidence section that at least some of the pro-Israel POV-pushers are acting in bad faith. It appears to me that the pro-Israel editors will try to focus on labeling MeteorMaker as the Bozo.

If G-Dett makes her case, and I believe she will, I hope that ArbCom will put their foot down and hand out some topic bans, if not more severe sanctions if necessary. Although I'm sure that not all of the pro-Palestinian editors are blameless, the continuous, arrogant POV pushing by the pro-Israel editors, including one in particular who is still enjoys high-level admin privileges for some reason, is greatly damaging to Wikipedia's credibility and I hope something finally gets done about it.

Very interesting. Typically, Jayjg has not yet deigned to respond. FT2's comments seem remarkably sane, but he may yet warm to the subject.

The very idea of a topic-ban on Jayjg on Middle-East political matters boggles the mind. Is there anything else he knows about? Can one imagine him writing about a tenth of the subjects that encyclopedists like Neutrality or EveryKing or even Charles Matthews have handled? I think the following would happen to him:



There would be nothing left but ash.

I doubt that anyone who edits Wikipedia is completely free of bias, including me, but those that knowingly pursue an agenda, especially admins, I believe should be kicked out of their areas of interest as soon as their agendas are discovered, and that includes participation in the article talk pages. I can't think of anything more insidious than Wikipedia admins pushing POV, i.e. using Wikipedia for propaganda purposes, especially admins with checkuser and oversight privileges.

In the past, ArbCom hasn't done very well at dealing with POV-pushing "established" editors or admins. Remember the first Rawat case where the committee praised Jossi for his "use of restraint"? Good grief. Hopefully, times have changed.

A hopeful sign that things have changed is the recent ScienceApologist (SA) case. I understand that some here support SA's efforts to keep fringe-science advocates from pushing their pet theories in Wikipedia. I, however, thought that he should have been more willing to compromise. The Committee apparently felt the same way.

Jayjg's M.O., which I believe he will use in this case, is to go radio-silent, refusing to comment on or provide "evidence" in the RFAR, while furiously lobbying behind the scenes, through the ArbCom mailing list and other channels.

I think the odds of Jayjg being topic-banned, despite his obvious partisan position on the subject, are slim and none. Or should I say, SlimVirgin and none. It would not surprise me if Slim weighs in to carry water for J.

Jay's meatpuppets, notably IronDuke (T-C-L-K-R-D) will, as usual, proxy for him, both in the RFAR and on articles.

I look very much forward to seeing how this case progresses. Does anyone known btw why NYB and FayssalF recused?

Me neither.

I don't know why anybody bothers to even follow these arbcom cases. Nothing will change over there, ever.

*me adds reply about the conflict of ArbCom case on Palestine-Israel conflict and the Wikipedia Hasbara Fellowship*

I remember people speculated Jayjg has now been socking instead of just using meatpuppets. Are any socks of him known yet?

I think it is hard to dismiss the fact that Israel has taken more control of the West Bank. The Likud party has even stated that it intend not to allow Arabs into the seized West Bank settlements. Some pro-Israel wikipedians might have attempted to preemptively call those West Bank areas in such a Israel-specific manner.

Those who are against the Likud movement choice of words most likely are being called "anti-semitic," since the pro-Israel group will argue about self-determination. The name-calling is probably much worse than that and undoubtedly for much more vague reasons.

There is much news about the Gaza war being taken online. In such shadow of events, it also cannot be easily dismissed that those Wikipedia pages about the West Bank are part of the conflict being taken online.

As pointed out in an earlier thread, Hasbara is less about the truth and is more out to win public opinion. A preemptive tactic could be seen as complicit with WP:V if it has public support -- even if sources state the truth otherwise. That probability of complicity is high unless WP:V is rewritten to be more distinct.

Whatever decision made about this case is going to reverberate and be a re-beaten path for time to come, as some earlier cases have shown to exist. Given the current adminship and how they are strongly corner-stoned on the current version of WP:V, these wikipedians will try to say they are uninvolved but in reality they are very well involved even if they aren't pro-Israel, as there is unacknowledged shared ideology in the shades of WP:V.

Curious about whether or not within Israel, are the various parties in the heat of disagreement about policy always accusing each other of being anti-semitic and being self-hating Jews? Or is this just an American thing?

In disagreement with each other where it is not seen as anti-semitic then the term "anti-Zionist" has been used. It is against Israeli law to be anti-semitic. Such law makes those that aren't 100% pro-Israel to be labeled as anti-semitic, so you can guess that there is a peer pressure, by the existence of such law, to never be caught not being pro-Israel (criminally). To avoid being seen as a criminal, it may lead some to accuse others as being anti-semitic by any means in order to show they follow the law. The U.S. Constitution's Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion is often not respected by those that hold that Israeli law above US law, but that disrespect is aimed at individuals. Such individuals that are American have no such peer pressure since there is no equivalent US law, but under accusation these Americans find out what it means when other Americans have said, "they hate us for our Freedoms."

For opposite reasons, if that makes any sense.
Integrity and self-awareness are the common thread.

That's what I thought. Good on them, that's very respectable.

From the Likud Party's charter:

Most notably, in regards to the ArbCom case:


And more:



And more:




Read more:
http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm

Just as I thought would happen, G-Dett and others are taking Jayjg and the other pro-Israel POV pushers to the cleaners. So much so, that one of them has exited the debate.

Unless Jayjg and his buddies can come up with some credible defense, I expect to see him and at least one or two others getting some topic bans.

I'd given this some thought over the past few days.

First, I see no problem with using the term "Palestine" to mean the area which includes Israel as well as the West Bank and Gaza - it's the only term we have. The notion floated in Arbitration, that to use "Palestine" to include Israel would be unacceptably biased, is a straw man.

The West Bank is the current standard term for the entirety of the territories between Israel and Jordan; to replace it with "Judea and Samaria" is indeed reminiscent of settler rhetoric.

However, the use of Judea and Samaria on their own to designate (respectively) subregions of the West Bank is no more biased than the use of "Palestine" to mean the whole region. Something like "the northern West Bank region of Samaria" is descriptive and informative.

Characterizing them as "biblical terms", as has been uncritically accepted here, is wildly wrong. These are Latin toponyms - none of the Bible was written in Latin - used during the Roman Empire long after the books of the Tanakh (in which the Romans didn't believe anyhow) were written. Judea was the name of a Roman province before it was merged with what is now Gaza and changed to Syria Palaestina after the suppression of the Jewish revolt. Even in Hebrew, where their forms are quite different, they had no sacred connotation, but were associated with the ethnic groups which lived there (and whose descendants still do.)

Weren't these terms in use as recently as the British mandate? Are there Arabic terms for these subregions besides calques of "Northern/Southern West Bank?" Has anyone bothered to find out?

Agreed. Jayjg has too much support. Too much rot inside.

Jay could call the sun "Moon" if he desired, and get someone to make it stick.

Jayjg did WTC.

PS: This is not about any group, this is just about Jayjg.

At most it gets rid of Jay's little sock monkeys that get called on to do the real brunt of the dirty work, many of which have already fallen away, such as Urthogie, Zeq, and Humus sapiens. Hopefully this case will notch a few more.

Sooner or later, the King will have no Subjects.

At last! Peace in our time!

Ouch.

By the way, it looks like Jaakobou has been designated as the goon for this case.

Amazing, simply beyond belief.

G-Dett must have some kind of supernatural Jew-proof flame barrier.
Perhaps she's got an overcoat made of pork chops?

And just who the hell is Nickhh (T-C-L-K-R-D) ? He spends a lot of time
complaining about edit warring (when he isn't making threats anyway).
Look at his contributions page for some real fun. He likes to get into it
with Jaakobou, IronDuke and Elonka.
And he's been accused of being a "Hezbollah operative"....

There is no evidence that any of these characters is Jewish. We can reliably conclude from their opinions that they are Zionists, and there is no known Zionist repellent except perhaps the Torah.

Somebody inform Likud, in that case. I suspect it may come as a shock to some of them.

Many of the early Zionists were of the leftist-vaguely-atheistic Jewish sort, ala Einstein. But Irsael has its share of the "G-d Gave Us The Land, And Here's His Title Deed With Glowing Signature If You Don't Believe It" types.

Okay, leave out the glowing signature. Provinance of "deed" is in question. God's Office was contacted for this segment, but has not returned calls in time for our deadline.

Well, hell, being accused of terrorist complicity is just a rite of passage for some of us.

G-dett appears to be a front runner for next year's "Cojones de latón" award.

Wikipedia has a Zionist/Israeli bias controlled by a Zionist Israeli clique? Is this news?

Biased articles are ten a penny here. Take, for instance Sabeel, a liberal Christian group of liberation theologians pledged to stand with Arab Christians for non-violent Justice in Palestine and Israel, and opposed to Zionism (whether Jewish or Christian). The article is a hatchet job, stringing together negative comments from a bunch of Zionists, many of them utterly ill-informed or unnotable.

And who'd want to be a Messianic Jewish Wikipedian? That article might as well be redirected to [[evil]].

Ot take this

"Jerusalem is the capital[iii] of Israel and its largest city[2] in both population and area,[3] with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of 125.1 square kilometres (48.3 sq mi) if disputed East Jerusalem is included."

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel? I mean not according to the UN, or most Western states, but let's not mention that until paragraph nine. "Disputed East Jerusalem"? - you mean illegally occupied territory? This designation is disputed ONLY by Israel, but let's not mention that.

"In the wake of United Nations Security Council Resolution 478 (passed in 1980), most foreign embassies moved out of Jerusalem, although some countries, such as the United States, still own land in the city and pledge to return their embassies once political agreements warrant the move.[16]"

Why is the "although" justified? Of course, if there is a solution and an agreement about capitals then other nations will recognise it. It does not take away from 478.

Nope. The clique, which includes a former member of the arbcom with checkuser powers etc., has heretofore been unassailable. What is newsworthy is that the clique is apparently now being assailed.


Absolutely.

Early Zionists were secular, but Jewish Zionist adopted a strong religious position... Torah vs. Talmud... so people didn't choose to be leftist in the event.

A reminder about secular Zionist:
http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Zionism



EU has taken Hezbollah off their "terrorist" list in the last few days. Pro-Israel groups are in a uproar over it and further claimed the Brits have been taken over by Islamic extremist.

Jayjg has presented some evidence, responded to on the talk page. He also seems to have gotten some more help in trying to label MeteorMaker as the bozo, as I predicted would happen.

I would call JayJG's "evidence" more framing, and trying to save his sorry ass. I think nothing will stand when people have dismantled it.

And they are effectively dismantling it.

I like it. We don't call it the Battle of Volgograd, do we? Not a difficult point to understand.

That's typical Jay. He waits till the first storm blows over, then hammers his
opponent with a mountain of half-assed "evidence". In this case, all the small
edits to articles, changing "Judea and Samaria" to "West Bank".

Plus support from his usual butt-snorkels. JoshuaZ, as usual, spews ad-hominem
arguments that mean little or nothing.

Of course the bastard lied. He's done it before.

It's a little different this time, they're not getting the usual automatic approvals
and the usual falling-to-the-knees obeisance.

Can't remember that last RFA that had so much, um, filler.

I couldn't help but think of Wikipedia today when I read the letter of resignation by Chas Freeman, a highly intelligent and capable public servant who quit rather than face endless slander by the Neocons and the Likudniks. He was appointed, and confirmed, to be the head of the National Intelligence Council.
Sound familiar?

And this humorous comment brings to mind some of the better people who have bailed from Wikipedia:

I just added that Freeman quote to the Israel Lobby article. I'm interested in seeing how long it stays. After adding the quote, I checked the article's history and saw that Jayjg had edited it within the past month.

Yeah, sounds like vintage Milton Roe. I think I've been labeled as an anti-Semite for it. But as has been pointed out, that's just a right of passage for political truth-sayers in America.

Now where's my photo of Obama in a kippah?

This looks pretty damning.

Mackan really outdid himself with that evidence section. It looks to me like CJCurrie should weigh in with his own experiences dealing with Jayjg.

By the way, it lasted about three hours.

Don't give up just yet. If there's one Reliable Sourceâ„¢ that will make Wikipediots prostrate themselves in in a attitude of abject propitiation, it's the Wall Street Journal.

I already readded it using the WSJ source. It was the second item in the Google search after I noticed the revert, took me all of about 1 minute to replace it in the article.

My question is, why didn't GHCool try to find a better source for the quote rather than just revert it? Another thing, since the quote was from an open letter by Freeman, the source doesn't matter, because the letter is verifiable in and of itself. I used a political blog as a source for an open letter by a whistleblower in an article, and it was accepted at the FA forum because the letter itself was really the source, not the blog. So, GHCool was not being very helpful in his actions. Why?

Completely unrelatedly...

User:GHCool makes interesting reading. As do the user's contributions, and this page User:GHcool/Views. I'd also point you to this edit for another example of quote removal. There is a discussion on the talk page: Talk:Israel_lobby_in_the_United_States#Long_blockquotes_in_references that may have some bearing as well.

Actually, I agree with his removing that long block quote. It was too long. Although, on second thought, it might have been more helpful if he had tried to shorten it instead of removing it altogether.

Why? Umm, if you don't want to do a thing, or want to do a thing, one reason's as good as another. Is why.

GHcool's an Ashkenazi Jew living in LA and a member of Wikiproject Israel, according to his userpage. He's going to be about as able to have a dispassionate political viewpoint on the subject of the Israel lobby as our friend Klein/Jeruselem21.

GHcool's Kabbal Kount is 20. Which is getting up there (though I expected better, given his background).

Articles edited by SlimVirgin, Jayjg, Jpgordon, and GHcool:

#1 Zionist_political_violence - edited by 4 of 4 users
#2 Zionism - edited by 4 of 4 users
#3 Yasser_Arafat - edited by 4 of 4 users
#4 September_11_attacks - edited by 4 of 4 users
#5 Self-hating_Jew - edited by 4 of 4 users
#6 Palestinian_refugee - edited by 4 of 4 users
#7 Palestinian_people - edited by 4 of 4 users
#8 Norman_Finkelstein - edited by 4 of 4 users
#9 Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni - edited by 4 of 4 users
#10 Jerusalem - edited by 4 of 4 users
#11 Israel,_Palestinians,_and_the_United_Nations - edited by 4 of 4 users
#12 Israel - edited by 4 of 4 users
#13 Holocaust_denial - edited by 4 of 4 users
#14 Hamas - edited by 4 of 4 users
#15 David_Irving - edited by 4 of 4 users
#16 David_Duke - edited by 4 of 4 users
#17 Benny_Morris - edited by 4 of 4 users
#18 Arab–Israeli_conflict - edited by 4 of 4 users
#19 Antisemitism - edited by 4 of 4 users
#20 Anti-Zionism - edited by 4 of 4 users

If we leave Jpgordon off, we get an impressive 58 articles. Pretty much a smorgasbord of Israeli lobby topics.

#1 Zionist_political_violence - edited by 3 of 3 users
#2 Zionism - edited by 3 of 3 users
#3 Yom_Kippur_War - edited by 3 of 3 users
#4 Yasser_Arafat - edited by 3 of 3 users
#5 Washington_Institute_for_Near_East_Policy - edited by 3 of 3 users
#6 United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_242 - edited by 3 of 3 users
#7 The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy - edited by 3 of 3 users
#8 Syria - edited by 3 of 3 users
#9 Suha_Arafat - edited by 3 of 3 users
#10 Steven_Emerson - edited by 3 of 3 users
#11 Six-Day_War - edited by 3 of 3 users
#12 September_11_attacks - edited by 3 of 3 users
#13 Self-hating_Jew - edited by 3 of 3 users
#14 Pallywood - edited by 3 of 3 users
#15 Palestinian_refugee - edited by 3 of 3 users
#16 Palestinian_political_violence - edited by 3 of 3 users
#17 Palestinian_people - edited by 3 of 3 users
#18 Palestine_Peace_Not_Apartheid - edited by 3 of 3 users
#19 Palestine_Liberation_Organization - edited by 3 of 3 users
#20 Norman_Finkelstein - edited by 3 of 3 users
#21 Monotheism - edited by 3 of 3 users
#22 Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni - edited by 3 of 3 users
#23 Mitchell_Bard - edited by 3 of 3 users
#24 Military_and_economic_aid_in_the_2006_Lebanon_War - edited by 3 of 3 users
#25 Media_coverage_of_the_Arab–Israeli_conflict - edited by 3 of 3 users
#26 Mary_Phagan_and_Leo_Frank - edited by 3 of 3 users
#27 Jimmy_Carter - edited by 3 of 3 users
#28 Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_lands - edited by 3 of 3 users
#29 Jerusalem - edited by 3 of 3 users
#30 Israeli_settlement - edited by 3 of 3 users
#31 Israel_lobby_in_the_United_States - edited by 3 of 3 users
#32 Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy - edited by 3 of 3 users
#33 Israel,_Palestinians,_and_the_United_Nations - edited by 3 of 3 users
#34 Israel - edited by 3 of 3 users
#35 Islamophobia - edited by 3 of 3 users
#36 Islamic_terrorism - edited by 3 of 3 users
#37 Islam_and_antisemitism - edited by 3 of 3 users
#38 International_Conference_to_Review_the_Global_Vision_of_the_Holocaust - edited by 3 of 3 users
#39 Ilan_Pappé - edited by 3 of 3 users
#40 HonestReporting - edited by 3 of 3 users
#41 Holocaust_denial - edited by 3 of 3 users
#42 Hezbollah - edited by 3 of 3 users
#43 Hamas - edited by 3 of 3 users
#44 Edward_Said - edited by 3 of 3 users
#45 Declaration_of_Independence_(Israel) - edited by 3 of 3 users
#46 David_Irving - edited by 3 of 3 users
#47 David_Duke - edited by 3 of 3 users
#48 Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky - edited by 3 of 3 users
#49 Bernard_Lewis - edited by 3 of 3 users
#50 Benny_Morris - edited by 3 of 3 users
#51 Arab–Israeli_conflict - edited by 3 of 3 users
#52 Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world - edited by 3 of 3 users
#53 Antisemitism - edited by 3 of 3 users
#54 Anti-Zionism - edited by 3 of 3 users
#55 Animal_rights_and_the_Holocaust - edited by 3 of 3 users
#56 Akbar_Hashemi_Rafsanjani - edited by 3 of 3 users
#57 1994_AMIA_bombing - edited by 3 of 3 users
#58 1948_Arab–Israeli_War - edited by 3 of 3 users



"Completely unrelatedly... "

That's good analysis. Bringing this back around to how this relates to this case, it seems that many, if not most, of the active Israeli history editors believe that POV editing is fine. IronDuke, who appears to be one of them, here and here seems to advocate POV editing as a good approach. He appeared taken aback when I reminded him that Wikipedia expects its editors to edit in a way that it appears that they're not taking a side. Perhaps some of the "pro-Palestinian" editors are just as bad, but so far, in this case, they're not looking half as mendacious and deceitful as Jayjg and his friends.

ID is also a big booster of the practice of using Wikipedia as a megaphone for defamation.

Sometimes non-POV editing is just about impossible. But there's a way around that, too. The disallowed "POV fork" only happens when a WP article doesn't reference and do a summary somewhere of the anti-view. But that's not hard to fix. Example: WP has an article on Medical Abortion, but it also has articles on Abortion debate and one each for Pro-life and Pro-choice. People of both stripes are allowed to go and put their best arguments there, and each side leaves the other more-or-less alone to do so. The same could happen in Middle East politics (and to some extend has, of course) but many of the zealots on both sides absolutely cannot stand to do it completely.

The weird thing about WP is that many "bias" problems have been solved already, in the way we do it with the formal advocate/trial/political system (where bias is acknowledged, taken for granted, and we simply move on to give everybody a say). When it comes to politics and religion (and the Middle heat is a hotbed of both, of course), WP breaks down under deletionists who really can't allow that.

I remember on the talk page for the "Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" article some editors were arguing over the true casualty count and trying to discredit each other's sources. I suggested that they just give all the opinions- (this person) says this many were killed, but (this person) says this many were killed. If I remember right, they ignored me and kept arguing. I guess they didn't want an NPOV presentation, they wanted their own POV to win.