[WikiEN-l] False cries of censorship in State of Israel article

Tue Aug 5 21:04:58 UTC 2003

>I'm going to be a bit firm here, but I want to push for a more
>peaceful way of interacting that's more likely to lead to productive
>solutions.  Both RK and Jtdirl are valued contributors in their own
>right.
>
>Robert, I really think you should moderate your tone, because I
>think that doing so will make your comments more effective.
>
>Robert wrote:
> > For reasons I do not understand, Jtdirl is being dishonest
> > about my work on Wikipedia.
>
>It would be better to say "For reasons I do not understand, it seems
>that Jtdirl has misperceived that nature of my work on Wikipedia."
>
>'misperceived' leaves open the question of a moral judgment: was it
>deliberate?  Was it an oversight?  Was it stupidity?  Was it
>forgetfulness?
>
>'seems' leaves open the possibility that with further discussion, it
>may turn out that you were wrong.  'seems' has you only expressing
>your current understanding of the situation, as opposed to a formal
>and final judgment.
>
>Making a moral judgment in a case like this is likely to turn people
>off.  And, really, it runs a very strong risk of being _not true at
>all_.  It strikes me as more likely that jtdirl is mistaken, rather
>than actively dishonest.  Or that you are mistaken.
>
> > "rv yet more RK censorship. Does he ever stop? Does he have
> > a clue what NPOV means?"
>
>I would also recommend jtdirl to avoid such terms as 'censorship' and
>'does he have a clue'?  These are inflammatory and likely to give rise
>to hard feelings rather than productive co-operation.
>
>Better would be 'rv RK.  RK, I'm unconvinced that your edit here is
>NPOV, can we chat on the talk page to reach a compromise?'
>
>--Jimbo

The problem was that an important line lost in an edit had been reinstated 
by me in a carefully worded NPOV manner. The issue was being discussed on 
the talk page. As he regularly does, RK swept in and deleted the paragraph 
including my line without discussion, announcing with his usual 
infallibility that it had previously been discussed, without comment on the 
talk page. This is his regular behaviour on this and related pages. If he 
doesn't approve he denounces it as  "anti-semite" or "pro-Arab" and deletes 
it on sight. As Fred Bauder pointed out, the page is rather too POV in its 
pro-Israeli contents. Any attempts to so much as mention that there is any 
problem fall foul of RK.

The line I had added in related the fact that Israel, which was created as a 
typical 'nation-state', suffers from the same problem that exists or has 
existed in Ireland, Poland, Germany and some other names, namely that the 
'state' (the civil governmental entity) and the 'nation' (a shared sense of 
culture, identity, heritage, idenfication etc) are not coterminus. Normally 
they are. Where they are not, and the state governs only part of the nation, 
or a territory larger than the nation - the case in Israel - problems arise 
over how does one deal those who do see themselves as part of the nation but 
aren't included in the state, or, and this is Israel's problem, those within 
the state who don't define themselves as part of the nation, in Israel's 
case the Palestinians. The Oslo Accord proposed one solution; those places 
in what is now Israel where there is a different sense of national identity 
and sense of nationhood, are given their own right of self-government, in 
effect their own 'nation-state'.  The sentence was not perscriptive (there 
are articles on the detail of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute) merely 
descriptive and NPOV, a basic political science analysis of the theorectical 
basis of the modern problem (as to the original problem, claims of Israel 
'displacing' Palestine; no-one seriously suggests displacing Israel, which 
has a clear and unambiguous right to exist, a right which must be 
acknowledged in any solution.)

I called RK's behaviour censorship because I have to say that it how it 
looks. On the Israel page and on many others, RK seems to spend most of his 
time removing other people's work, calling it POV (ie not his POV which he 
thinks is NPOV), anti-semitic and pro-Arab, ie not pro-Israeli enough for 
his own liking. I can understand the sensitivity of the Jewish people, given 
all they have experienced in terms of rascism and bigotry. Some pro-Israeli 
contributors have been excessively protective. (One on the talk page regards 
everyone in Israel as part of what he called the "Jewish nation", which he 
equates with Israel.  That would come as a surprise to Palestinians, who 
most definitely do not regard themselves as part of the Israeli nation, much 
less a Jewish one.

But RK goes way overboard (as shown by his disgraceful treatment of 
Anthere), removing what he does not like and calling everyone who disagrees 
with him anti-semitic. By his actions he damages the very cause he fights 
for, reducing the charge of anti-semitism from a serious charge to a term of 
abuse, while keeping out from 'his' pages anything that might seriously 
offer intellectual insight, as opposed to a pro-Israeli slant. Wiki will 
suffer, and the cause for which RK so passionately believes will suffer, by 
RK's self-righteous suffication of debate.

JT

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