[WikiEN-l] False cries of censorship in State of Israelarticle

Tue Aug 5 17:43:52 UTC 2003

>Fred wrote
>I have now looked at the Wikipedia article, "Israel". It is acceptable
>without editing for inclusion in Internet-Encyclopedia; that is, it is
>written from a sympathetic point of view, If you will compare the article,
>"People's Republic of China", which includes sharply negative information
>(Most of which I have insisted on including) you will see that the Israel
>article fails to achieve a neutral point of view.
>
Any attempt to add in /anything/ that is not pro-Israeli immediately leads 
to RK going ballistic and screaming anti-semitism. Even something as basic 
as mentioning that while Israel regards Jerusalem as its capital, most of 
the world refuses to accept that designation, led to screams of 'pro-Arab' 
and 'anti-semitism'. Note, it was not being said that Jerusalem was not 
Israel's capital. All that was being pointed out was that while 3 world 
states accept that designation, 100+ don't and regard the 1948 capital, Tel 
Aviv, as the capital, as a result basing their embassies and diplomatic 
missions there. That there is a dispute on the issue is 100% correct but the 
add in was /very/ careful not to agree with either side, and to list 
Jerusalem with an explanatory footnote. But even that drove RK and a few 
others ballistic.

The dispute on PROC was not over whether one could include negative 
information, just the manner in which it was being added in, which struck 
many people as being, probably unintentionally, POV. The issue was simply 
one of trying to reformat the add-in in an NPOV manner. On Israel, any 
attempt to be express anything other than a pro-Israel POV is blocked. 
Criticism of any sort is shunted off to daughter articles, leaving only a 
one-sided pro-Israel argument in the article. It is an outrageous betrayal 
of the many Jewish people who have been victims of anti-semitism for RK and 
others to call attempts to add some balance 'anti-semitism'. It is nothing 
of the sort but his insidious attempts to silence any balanced criticism is 
damaging wiki and the credibility of the articles RK thinks he is defending.

JT

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