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Hi Nableezy, I removed the prod from Maher Udda. Al Jazeera reported that he was one of the founders of Hamas and I'd say that shows a longer relevance than just one event.--TM 21:51, 2 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Al Jazeera didnt report that, they reported that the Israeli military described Udda as one of Hamas's founders. nableezy - 21:59, 2 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Nableezy. I noticed you took strong exception to aspects of WGFinley's conduct at AE recently, as did Gatoclass. I posted a comment to Gatoclass' talk (permalink) that might help you better understand WGFinley's motivation. Cheers,  – OhioStandard (talk) 08:45, 4 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I think that, given the diffs ([1] and [2]), WGFinley's statement, "I don't see what he did on Mount Hermon other than to point out there's a ski resort there and added a travel guide as source for information on that," is ridiculous. I also thought that it was a bit rich that WGFinley criticised Nableezy's tone, given his own, which comes across as condescending, self-regarding and self-opinionated to me. If WGFinley's intention is to reduce disruption in the I-P part of the project, I think that his methods will be self-defeating.     ←   ZScarpia   17:24, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is what pissed me off. That he either had not even looked at the diffs or was purposely distorting their content. He has refused, repeatedly, to justify that comment, a comment that is plainly false, so much so that I think anybody who stands by that comment is incompetent and has no business coming near an encyclopedia, much less purporting to administer it. nableezy - 17:42, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It appears as if Benny Morris is using IDF sources here. Would I be correct? -asad (talk) 18:15, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if Nab has the book, I do. Morris, like the best historians, writes much of his histories from archival primary sources, and in these cases uses IDF archives. If there is some doubt as to the reliability of the IDF intelligence reports, one just adds 'according to an IDF report' etc., as I think is done lower down on that page. Nishidani (talk) 18:18, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I guess you can see where I am getting at, that it seems like an obvious thing for the IDF to say. My 86-year-old grandmother is from Qannir, she said she remembers seeing Jewish armies approaching the town at which point they were ordering them to leave. My grandmother is an old woman, but she doesn't embellish nor does she forget things. The other day I was pulling up pictures of Qannir from Palestine Remembered and she could see a 70-something-year-old picture and not only identify the person in the photo, but who they there were married to, who their children married, if they were living in Tulkarm or in Jordan, or even in "Ch"far rumman. Interestingly enough, none of the residents of Qannir fled to Lebanon. -asad (talk) 18:30, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Just on a point of syntax: 'they were ordering' could be interpreted,I think wrongly, as referring to some mukhtars (Morris's Arabs higher up), and not to 'the Jewish armies'(armed forces). Morris is scrupulous, and honest with his material, and his POV is something any historian is entitled to, but you don't need to be a genius to see where the overwhelming reliance on IDF and Israeli archives leads (him and the reader). I hope you have recorded and are recording in usable form all of your relatives' memories. The failure to comprehensively get all oral records into print, and studied by scholars, is one reason why the truth of the matter is buried under a heap of eminently good histories which, alas, tell basically one version of a multiple history. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 19:18, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's exactly what I was thinking. I remember the Imperial War Museum had a project to do this in the UK for WWII. The father of someone I used work with apparently spent much of his war carpet bombing Germany and somehow managed to not get shot down/crash. He never said a word about it to his family. The IWM sent a young researcher to record an interview with him and it was the first (at last) time he spoke about it. He spoke for hours. It struck me as quite an important and worthwhile project. I'm curious whether anyone has done it for 1948 in Palestine. Sean.hoyland - talk 19:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That would be very interesting to have. Oh gosh how I could improve so many of the Palestinian town articles with the countless war stories I have heard from relatives and family friends. I think there is a better documentary record of the Palestinian who fled in 1967. I learned from my father a while back, that the residents of Anabta either fled to Jordan or, on my fathers situation, camped out under the olive trees in the hill-tops close to Deir Sharaf, probably the land which has now become Shavei Shomron. But of course, that doesn't meet the guidelines of WP:RS. -asad (talk) 19:44, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Asad, just get it down, filmed, digitalized, and tell everyone of your background to do the same. Aref al-Aref did a comprehensive, oral-narrative based book, on the nakba in the midlate 5Os. One of the ironies of this work in Arabic was that it radically lowered the figures given in Israeli and Western sources for the massacre at Deir Yassin, from 250 odd to 110-120, by making a tally of names mentioned in the accounts given to him by survivors, and Sharif Kan'ana in turn got it down to 107 by using the same technique. So people's memories, however dismissed by Morris, can prove superior to defective, if comprehensive sources (as I know. I have a mass murderer in our family's history, whose historical repute is untarnished by the facts we were told as children, as an admonition against violence, about his doings in the 1840s. Descendants of the survivors still feel uneasy in our company, even though we are willing to confirm their story, which historians have no documentary evidence of). Better still, in the pursuit of Palestinian truths, it redimensioned an act of infamy attributed to its enemy. Nishidani (talk) 19:49, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The challenge is that the vast majority of English sources rely, almost exclusively, on Israeli archives. We can use Arabic sources, but finding them is much more difficult. But it is a fact that the sources we use are generally Israeli writers using Israeli records for the history of a people dispossessed of their land, possessions, and livelihood by Israelis. Which is one of the reasons I giggle every time one of these "editors" claims that Wikipedia is biased against Israel. nableezy - 20:07, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I must say, however, that Israeli historians have often done a better job than their Palestinian colleagues to contrast the Tacitean idea that history is written by the victors. It's just that their research hardly inflects the national myths of Zionism, which is the strong discourse Western impressions feed off. Therefore, the failure by the Arabic/Palestinian intelligentzia to make a concerted effort to get these archival, oral, historical details out in comprehensive book form is also responsible, though understandable given the chaos of diasporas, disruption of life, relative smaller numbers, lack of influential diaspora support groups to fund research programmes etc, they had/have to cope with. The Gypsies are treated like shit all over Europe also because they don't have a written culture, which could have recorded via family records what happened to them during their Gypsy Shoah. That nakba is so little known, that the historical measure of the genocide they suffered can vary from 200,000 to 1,500,000. The margins for error of a people that prize writing, like the Jewish people, is miniscule (5,200,000-6,000,000) by comparison. And nothing will be known because the survivors are dying out. Nishidani (talk) 20:48, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In English they have certainly done a more comprehensive job, though I dont know if better is the word. Walid Khalidi is mentioned pretty much only on the articles of depopulated villages, and every once a while you'll see a cite to Nur Masalha or Sami Hadawi. But we dont use any Arabic sources. Part of that is due to the paucity of native speakers of Arabic and those who are familiar with the Arabic literature, and part of it is due to the fact that it is so much harder to locate a usable source on the web in Arabic as opposed to English or even Hebrew. The Arabs do have a written culture, and there are Arabic sources that can and should be used here. Compare the number of times an Israeli historian is cited on the 73 war article to how often an Arab historian is cited. And when a user even tries to use an Arabic source he gets put through the ringer, sometimes by the same users using Hebrew sources extensively. nableezy - 21:05, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nishidani, this book mentions the existence of at least 120 Palestinian village history books, written in Arabic of course. So at least something is being done. P.S. re Aref's book below, there are, as always, many possible transliterations, but it should end in al-Mafqud. Given the rudimentary level of my Arabic, I won't attempt to "correct" it on Aref's article. --NSH001 (talk) 22:27, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're correct about "Al-Mafqud" as the right transliteration and proper grammar in Arabic. This source seems to have a more correct title of the book, which has Jerusalem instead of Palestine in the title. I haven't found a scan of the cover that would help clarify. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ps. A favour. I just checked, before switching off, the Aref al-Aref page and think the reference to his major nakba book is poorly transliterated and should be Nakbat Filastin wa al-Firdaws Mafqud. If that's correct, could someone fix it. I made an inadvertent IR violation and am self-banned from article edits until early next month. Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 21:01, 8 December 2011 (UTC) (ec):::Thanks NSHmath. What I wrote can be read as a putdown. It isn't that, as much as a bystander's frustration. A huge amount of history is lost because the right questions, in the right idiom, are not placed with the elderly, who might talk if only prompted the right way. I always think of Ogotemelli, 16 years of ethnography, tribe studied, and then pure chance, the right question and the anthropologists realized they knew nothing until then, and a massive amount of lore hitherto hidden from them came to light just out of one man being asked the right questions. As to Aref's books, yes, I copy-pasted without checking and 'al' is obviously missing, my bad. Nakbat Filastin wal-firdaws al-mafqud. In any case, that's something for an Arabic speaker. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 23:07, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As Michael's note shows, there are several ways it is referred to Al Nakba/Nakhbat/Nakbat etc. Our text is in error, whatever the case. Trivia? Perhaps. But we should at least record what we see as problems.Nishidani (talk) 23:11, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I think that changing it to the new source is the best option so far because it seems like the most exact appearance of both Arabic and English transliteration. I'll do that and add the ref, if no one objects. --MichaelNetzer (talk) 23:16, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A few more sources supporting this title and transliteration: [3], [4], [5], [6].

The recent AE thread you opened against Cptnono has been closed. This is not an enforcement action, but the consensus was that you should be reminded to moderate your tone—I would parse that as meaning that it is better to let off your steam before you type comments than to let it off in heated comments and that you should be mindful that AE admins and the editors you disagree with are real people just as you are. Again, this is not an enforcement action, but you should consider this post to be the delivery of that reminder. Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:48, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please be aware that your recent edits at Nazareth do not reflect well on your sensitivity to the rules for the I/P area. There was recently an exchange of reverts at Irgun where a bunch of people (who often appear at AE) managed to edit once each so as not to break 1RR. While you often edit sensibly, it seems to me you may have lost your sense of balance, and you'll continue until admins finally have to do something. Recent discussions at noticeboards must have put you on notice that many people are questioning your edits. I have put full protection on the article for three days, hoping to forestall yet another time-consuming debate at WP:AE. EdJohnston (talk) 19:34, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ed, Im sorry that I reverted an additional time, but what has been happening at that article is bullshit. Hearfourmewesique, after making an obscene and absurd attack against me here in which he maliciously and falsely claims I supported using a source by someone advocating the destruction of all Jews, hounded me to two articles he had never edited to make mindless reverts, in one claiming that a statement cited to two reliable sources had no reliable source supporting it. A collection of editors has been attempting to force out of an article long standing reliably sourced text without anything resembling a consensus to do so. The sentence I restored has been literally unchanged for over a year. Yet users feel entitled to demand that their change remain while the issue is being discussed. Perhaps I should just ignore it, but I struggle to stand by as people twist the policies into supporting their goal of expunging any mention of the word Palestinian. nableezy - 19:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Nazareth article was quiet for a long time, and then a fuss was kicked up by someone's edit on December 10. While you might be considering that as a provocation, the editor concerned does not seem to be wild and crazy, nor is he a well-known partisan. Patience could be a virtue, even if it takes longer to get to a conclusion. You edited while an RfC was running so as to revert the very term being discussed in the RfC. I'm requesting that you take a voluntary one-month break from adding the word 'Palestinian' to any articles. EdJohnston (talk) 19:58, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]