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Israel Start‑class Low‑importance

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• Leilani Farha, ‘Bringing Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Home: Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem and Israel,’ in Isfahan Merali, Valerie Oosterveld (eds.), 'Giving Meaning to Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights',University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, pp160-179

-Text:Building permits are impossible to obtain. ‘the only way a Palestinian can receive a building permit is if the applicant can prove sole ownership of or title to the plot of land on which he or she wishes to build or renovate. As the Israeli government knows, this is practically impossible because when Israel occupied what is now East Jerusalem, 80 percent of the land was privately owned by Arabs but only one-third had been formally surveyed and registered by the Jordanian government. Since 1967 no land registration for Palestinians has been permitted' p.162

-In the notes (n.3 p.254) she refers us to the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements, HS/C/14/2/Add.1 at 7 (1992), “Housing Requirements of the Palestinians,” which states: “The military occupation and colonial policy of the occupying power which is aimed at the Judaization of the land had extremely adverse effects on the Palestinian housing sector.”

The lead currently says that "UN officials have charged that Israel's actions are tantamount to apartheid and ethnic cleansing." The body of the article cites two UN special rapporteurs—Richard Falk and his predecessor, John Dugard—as having made the charge. One cannot cite two instance of such statements and create the sort of blanket statement the lead currently contains. If two U.S. Congressmen say "taxes are too high", that shouldn't be written, unqualified, that "U.S. Congressmen say that taxes are too high", because it ascribes the stance of two Congressmen to the hundreds of members of Congress. The same is true here. I tried to resolve this by changing the text to reflect that this was the stated opinion of two UN officials, with the edit summary "Two officials at the UN do not constitute the UN. If more UN officials than Falk & Dugard make the claim, then this can be rethought", but Adamrce reverted, stating that "Officials mean officials, they don't give personal opinions". I didn't mention anything about whether or not the stance was a personal opinion, just that it's unfair to ascribe the stance to thousands of officials at the UN, based solely on the statements of two of them. If there are sources that state that this charge is more widespread, please provide them. In the meantime, I'm going to go with a much similar edit of just inserting the word "Two" at the beginning of the sentence, as only two examples are cited in the body. ← George ^talk 08:09, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If two congressmen sign a statement to some effect, newspapers do in fact say that "Congressmen say X" since it doesn't mean that all congressmen say so, just that more than one does. I think that "UN officials" is better than "At least two UN officials" which isn't encyclopedic language. Thoughts? --Dailycare (talk) 14:42, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a further comment, here is a source according to which the president of the General Assembly has also charged that Israeli actions on the West Bank (which includes East Jerusalem) amount to apartheid. --Dailycare (talk) 15:23, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, if two congressmen say something, no newspaper worth the paper it's printed on would say "Congressmen say X" as a blanket statement, they would say "Congressmen X and Y say Z". Your source is a good one, and I'd encourage you to include Brockmann's statement in the body of the article. I've changed the lead to say "Several UN officials" instead of "Two UN officials". ← George ^talk 06:48, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it was solved before my visit, lol. Seems good to me, as we don't need to count statements; as I have more too :p ~ AdvertAdam ^talk 07:54, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm OK with the "several" wording. However I don't agree on the point concerning "congressmen", here for example is an example of the usage that I refer to above. Of course, the NYT may not win prizes for high-class journalism but at least it's worth the paper it's printed on. --Dailycare (talk) 15:36, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Article titles are a special case, as they're intentionally short and act as dramatic hooks to draw the reader's attention. The lead of that article clearly starts out talking about a single Congressman, "A member of the House Judiciary Committee", and never lumps all Congressmen together. Though if all are happy with the term "several" then the point is moot. I'm fine with whichever qualifier best describes the number of UN officials hold this view—a couple, several, a few, a handful, many, etc. ← George ^talk 18:24, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The term judaization is defined as the process of cultural assimilation to Judaism and the imbuing with Jewish principles, and its unorthodox pejorative employment throughout the article to refer to a forced attempt to stamp Judaism on an area is hardly encyclopedic; it is charged with an underlying implication that infringes NPOV and is redolent of antisemitic undertones. I shall endeavor to replace this term with alternative expressions. Ankh.Morpork 14:34, 1 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Read the archives, where this was discussed at extreme length, and do not 'endeavour to replace the term' attested widely in RS no one questions, 'with alternative expressions'.Nishidani (talk) 15:08, 1 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This whole article is totally biased. According to the lede, the issue of whether there is a process such as "Judaization of Jerusalem" at all is debated, but then most of the article consists of efforts to prove that such a thing exists, with lots of tendentious quotes from highly partisan sources. As it is, this doesn't work. There needs to be far more balance. Benwing (talk) 19:53, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do you know of any sources discussing the topic from other points of view that are currently not included in the article? Can you recommend any? Isn't it possible that this is an actual policy and there is more criticism of it than support?

Can you explain which quotes are tendentious? Wich sources in your virw are unreliable or given undue weight?

You need to be more specific and constructive in your critique so that we can work on finding a solution. Tiamut^talk 19:59, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Also, would you mind explaining here why you have twice deleted important background info from that section? Tiamut^talk 20:02, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A quick google search for the title and author of one source brought up a living link [1]. Did you even try to find it? Tiamut^talk 20:08, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) (second edit conflict!) Tiamut -- you managed to write more quickly than I did.

Also, as to the section I deleted, here are the reasons:

1. The link is broken; it's behind a password. (Sorry, no I didn't, but that isn't the main issue.)
2. It's from a totally partisan source.
3. It makes claims about an "international community", which is not a neutral term (see the WP page, which makes it clear that this term itself cannot be neutral)
4. It makes claims like "Israeli and Palestinian organizations" as if this represents a consensus, when quoting only two organizations (B'Tselem and ICAHD) that represent just about the most extreme far-left positions you can find in Israel, along with one other organization (the old UN Committee on Human Rights), which is (a) not Palestinian, (b) no longer in existence, (c) utterly discredited (that's why it was replaced, although the new one is rapidly discrediting itself, too). If I attempted to represent "Muslim consensus" by quoting people like Irshad Manji, would you accept this?
5. Most basically, there's already tons of criticism down below. What you claim as "background info" looks to me like unnecessarily partisan criticism that doesn't belong in a "background" section. It's completely obvious from the article that there's lots of criticism. Given the conflicts over everything I/P related, the less partisanism we have in WP, the better.

The whole section "Defining Judaization" consists of quotes from partisan anti-Israel sources and casually makes a lot of questionable or simply false assertions. For example, the section casually refers to "Israeli settlements" in East Jerusalem to refer to what are alternatively simply known as Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem -- i.e. there is a great deal of debate over whether Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem are in any way similar to what are often termed "settlements" elsewhere. If you look closely, you will find that it is largely anti-Israel sources making this claim; pro-Israel sources naturally don't, and sources that try scrupulously to be neutral (e.g. the NY Times) are extremely careful never to use "settlements" unattributed when describing these neighborhoods. Also, there is a quote from Valerie Zink that talks of "disenfranchisement" of Palestinians, which is a lie. Israel offered citizenship to Arab inhabitants of East Jerusalem, and any inhabitant who accepted this would be able to vote. If an Arab inhabitant refused citizenship, I don't see how anyone can neutrally claim that Israel "disenfranchised" them -- does any country in the world allow non-citizens to vote? Can you name one other place in the world where such an argument about "disenfranchisement" is made?

In reality, "Arabization of Jerusalem" has clearly been practiced at many times by many authorities, e.g. by the Ottoman Empire, by the British, by the Jordanians, etc. -- often times in a much more extreme and violent way than anything Israel has done (e.g. outright forbidding Jewish emigration, blowing up Jewish synagogues, forbidding Jews from visiting their holy sites, etc.). And quite a lot of people, Palestinians and otherwise, are now explicitly advocating for "de-Judaizing" Jerusalem by forcibly removing the Jewish population of parts of Jerusalem that may end up under Palestinian control. But somehow we don't have an article on any of this. In reality, I think the only real way to make this article neutral is to change it to make it a general discussion of various attempts by various governments to change the ethnic dynamics of Jerusalem. Otherwise, in its focus purely on Israeli actions, it just looks like yet another example of Israel-bashing -- esp. when it prominently features people like Richard Falk and Israel Shahak, who are (to the say the least) extremely controversial, and both known for various incidents of anti-Semitism.

(There are other issues but this is enough for now.) Benwing (talk) 20:44, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

BTW if you write a long response to this I probably won't be able to respond till tomorrow. This doesn't mean I'm ignoring you but simply that I don't have enormous amounts of time to devote to WP.

Benwing (talk) 20:57, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think the ban on Jews put in place by the Ottomans is mentioned in the Background section, and mentioning it there does make sense, IMO, as background info to the current Judaization efforts. As to removing the settlers from Gilo etc. I think that's just common sense. They knew from the get-go the settlements are illegal, so they can't now invoke some kind of residency to justify remaining. It's a basic principle of law that a party can't draw a valid claim from an illegal act. Of course, the Palestinians may allow they to remain, but that's already going beside the point here. Cheers, --Dailycare (talk) 10:48, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Benwing, I appreciate your long response. However, it fails to answer the most important of requests, which was for sources that you feel articulate the positions you have outlined that can be used to achieve NPOV. All sources on this topic are going to partisan and that does not affect their reliability. If you feel that the nformation included from highly partisan sources should be attributed, I have no problem with that. Alternatively, othr sources saying the same thing can be provided so that attribution is rendered unnecessary.

From the sources I have reviewed, it seems the majority position is that efforts to Judaize Jerusalem, particularly with regard to occupied East Jerusalem, are viewed with disfavour due to the legal international principls governing the conduct of occupying powers. If there is a significant dispute over this, finding sources that say so should be easy. Please provide them so that we can begin to consider how to introduce balance here. Starting by Removing what is already there is not a solution in my opinion, and does little to achieve NPOV which is about representing all significant viewpoints. Tiamut^talk

Sorry for the delay. Tiamut, I do appreciate your attempts at finding consensus. Nishidani's behavior is more frustrating -- he simply reverted my changes, ignoring the commentary and reasons I gave. I do think it's possible to find consensus on I/P issues -- if people genuinely try to find it rather than engaging in a "battleground" mentality. In this case, an alternative to just reverting would have been to put the info back but take out or tone down the most partisan parts, since that's what I was most objecting to. (To preempt the expected response of "the onus is on you to do such things" -- that's precisely the mentality I'm objecting to. It takes a lot of time to contribute well-thought-out changes and write non-inflammatory talk responses, and I'd expect cooperation from people of different perspectives, rather than a zero-sum mentality. Yes, you might be able to "win" a "war of attrition" and get "your POV" to stick if you "slog it out" enough -- but will WP benefit? Or simply the one willing to fight the longest and hardest?)

My main reason for contributing to I/P issues at all is to reduce the bias that I often see, especially attempts to use UN criticisms (which are highly biased, as I'm sure you are aware) as "moral gospel", and uses of highly partisan sources. People like Israel Shahak, Richard Falk, Israel Shamir, Alexander Cockburn, Ken Livingstone, George Galloway and various others are virulently anti-Israel and have at various points strayed into anti-Semitic territory. Quoting them does Wikipedia no favors, especially since there are so many people writing about every last little aspect of Israeli behavior. I'm not interested in edit-warring (and I simply don't have the time to do so!). Benwing (talk) 04:04, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]