Jimbo,
Danny appealed to the list on Friday because of RK's belligerence
("bullying") over the "Peace Views" article.
Cleverly, RK immediately shifted the terms of the debate from the
underlying issues (how Palestinian POVs should be represented in WP) to
one of "censorship".
You fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
Last fall, it was obvious to Danny, Zero, and me (and perhaps others) that
the article in the original form (it has since been made less awful thanks
to the good offices of Martin and others) was a ludicrous and transparent
attempt to smuggle an anti-Palestinian editorial into Wikipedia. To those
of us with any understanding of the issues (and I am by no means an
expert) it wasn't a remotely meaningful representation of the Palestine
position. In fact, the article was a canard. It implicitly cast Israel as
the victim of apparent Palestinian duplicity with regard to the "peace
process", which is of course inane; Israel is the occupying force in the
Occupied Territories, it has a huge, well-equipped army, the backing of
the USA, and between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. The Palestinians have
zilch; the rest of the Arab world has basically abandoned them to their
fate. The point is not whether those quotes of Arafat and others were
"true" or "accurate" or whatever but they are essentially irreverent
taken
outside of the historical context and geopolitical reality of the current
Palestinian situation.
Let me draw an analogy: imagine someone submits -- just for the sake of
argument -- an article on "Cuban views of the conflict between Cuba and
the USA". It frames the issue as a debate between hardliners and
compromise-seekers, noting that Fidel calls for the destruction of the USA
in Spanish speeches and calls for reaching a compromise in English. The
Cubans destroy the USA? What a joke! Such
a comment or collection of comments -- if it were possible to take
seriously -- would only be meaningful if presented in the context of
Caribbean history and Cuba's internal political discourse.
Now, back to the "Peace views" article. That you had a different reaction
to the article I can only attribute to the fact that coverage of the
Middle East in the American media is pretty bad these days, and it is
nearly a fulltime occupation to keep well-informed. That's ok. But why
couldn't you trust the opinion of a Danny, an Israeli citizen who could
have explained to you that in Israel -- where the debate is more open and
frank than in the US -- mainstream opinion would regard such an article as
a bad joke, and that framing the debate in such as way is characteristic
of the marginal fringe of the ultra-Zionist Right in Israel and their
rather more numerous brethren in the USA, of whom RK is a prime example.
How could you possible perceive Danny has having an agenda in his handling
of this and fail to see RK's rabid Zionist zealotry reflected in
practically every edit he makes on the Middle East, something patently
obvious to anyone who has edited an article on the topic here.
Correspondingly, how could you POSSIBLY accuse Danny of being bullying,
when likewise those of us who have worked with him found him unceasingly
well-informed, modest, and non-confrontational???
To repeat, the issue is not one of censoring the point of view of Arafat
et al but presenting the issues in an intellectually honest manner,
something that users like Danny, Zero, 172, Adam Carr, and others
repeatedly demonstrate they are capable of doing, despite their own
particular ideological leanings, and something that Robert is congenitally
incapable of doing, whether it is Middle Eastern topics or alternative
medicine, an area where he shows exactly the same kind of blind fanaticism
and the bullying tactics that Danny denounced on Friday. You wrote:
RK has worked to present the varying
views of the Palestinians, and people who don't like the result just
delete it instead of work to improve it.
Not true. It was perceived as shoddy work; it has nothing to do with
censorship. Why should the onus be on us to include "bad" material in our
articles? RK didn't take the trouble to integrate the quotes in a
responsible way in a description of the peace process; he offered them in
isolation as a blatant editorial position. We followed the existing --
admittedly imperfect -- system to vote to delete the material rather than
use it.
In closing, it is good that you involve yourself in these
disputes, but unless you are intimately involved in the day-to-day editing
process, interacting with other editors, and acquainting yourself with the
issues, you run the risk -- as you have just done -- of making things
worse.
V.