[WikiEN-l] Diffs and sources

Thu Aug 12 03:11:39 UTC 2004

The problem with Jayjg continues. Here is one of many diffs
were Jayjg falsely accuses "Reform leaders" as viewing
Orthodox Jews as being 9/11 like terrorists who destroyed
the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Relationship_between_segments_of_Judaism&diff=4921473&oldid=4921460

Yet they never said this. As this next few links will show,
this was not the position of the "Reform leadership", but
instead came from now-proven misquotes of Rabbi Uri Regev. 
The newspaper editor who first wrote about Regev's words
was publicly forced to retract her claims. Columbia
University Journalism School Professor Ari Goldman called
the original story, which misrepresented Rabbi Regev,
“irresponsible journalism” and that it violated several
basic principles of journalism regarding quoting people.

Note that Regev has made quotes explicitly denying the
beliefs incorrectly attributed to him. Similarly, the
leadership of Reform Judaism disavows any such beliefs.
(And having full access to their rabbinic journals and
websites, I can verify this.)

Thus, Jayjg has no source for his claim; he refuses to
insert actual quotes from the Reform leadership and instead
Jayjg is copying the claims from one Avi Shafran. Here are
the links which prove Jayjg's position is false:

Editor admits manufacturing Uri Regev's anti-haredi quotes

http://www.jewishsf.com/bk011130/us19.shtml

Paper ‘Clarifies’ Reform Leader’s Remarks Cleveland Jewish
News editor acknowledges that Israeli rabbi never compared
haredim with Islamic terrorists

http://www.jewishweek.org/news/newscontent.php3?artid=5379

Unfortunately, Jayjg is not letting facts get in his way.
He is intent on painting Reform Jews as viewing Orthodox
Jews as terrorists and murderers. Jayjg is repeating the
claims of Avi Shafran. Shafran is obviously not a good
primary source for the beliefs of Reform Judaism, as (A) he
is not a Reform Jew, and (B) he has publicly stated that
Reform rabbis deserve to be killed for their heresy. (See
previous messages for quotes and source.)

Let me give an analogy: There are people who hate George W.
Bush, and who think that he wants to kill all Muslims, and
that George W. Bush deserves to die.  (They are wrong, but
whatever).  The point is that we do not quote such people
when we want to accurately represent George W. Bush's
views. Rather, we quote and summarize George W. Bush and
his official spokespeople.  (And of course, we quote and
summarize the views of groups that disagree with him.) 

We never quote the views of those people who hate George W.
Bush, and present them AS IF they were Bush's own views! 
That is intellectually dishonest; it is fraud. However,
that is precisely the problem with some of Jayjg's edits in
recent days. This is unfortunate, because until recently
Jayjg has been a valuble contributor. I got along fine with
him on many other articles, and we never reverted each
other's edits.

Until a few days ago, I never saw Jayjg make false claims,
but now he is going on a tear. He is doing the same thing
in regards to other people and groups, which I can document
if you wish. The point is that something on his side has
changed, and I don't know what, or why.  But we cannot
allow people to insert false information bordering on libel
into our articles. 

Robert (RK)

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