On 01/25/04 at 07:05 AM, Robert <rkscience100(a)yahoo.com> said:
Martin Harper (MyRedDice) is again censoring the
article,
"Palestinian views of the peace process". Instead of
deleting the entire article, Martin Harper has deleted most of the
(verfied) facts and quotes, leaving a skeleton article with vietually no
content!
Robert is once again trying to shift the parameters of debate from the
validity and representation of Palestinian viewpoints within the discourse
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to that of "censorship", which is,
plainly and simply, a canard.
This specific problem was already discussed in detail
a few weeks ago.
It was decided that [...]
Nothing was "decided" a few weeks ago. Jimbo expressed his opinion on the
subject, as is his right. Given his position within this community, his
point of view naturally carries substantial weight but by no means
represents a definitive and binding judgement.
One may not delete verified historical
facts and quotes simply because it makes them
uncomfortable. You cannot push your political agenda by
deletin facts that are inconvenient.
The issue is not whether these quotes are verifable or not but simply the
fact -- as I have pointed out here before -- that taken out of context --
as they were here -- they are misleading. Given Israel's overwhelming
military and economic power, such nationalistic saber-rattling on the part
of Arafat and others can only be considered pathetic bluster, and most
charitably can be seen as a shameless effort to distract his Palestinian
listeners from the fact that he sold out their future for short-term
personal gain. Since you don't seem to be interested in adding the missing
context to this article (no surprise there), Martin is entirely correct
and should be applauded for removing this material which otherwise serves
as nothing more than crass anti-Palestine propaganda and is a blemish on
the image of neutrality we trying to achieve in this project.
V.