Talk:2014 Gaza War/Archive 10

Archive 5

←

Archive 8

Archive 9

Archive 10

Archive 11

Archive 12

→

Archive 15

Time to start consensual rewriting to get the flab of POV battles out of the prose.

A day after the Israeli teens were buried, a Palestinian teenager was kidnapped and murdered. Three suspects confessed to the murder and admitted that it was done in revenge for the killing of the three Israeli teenagers. The killing sparked riots among Israel's Arab population throughout the country. The Israeli government condemned the murder.[145][146] Three main suspects were brought to trial. The main suspect, Yoseph Ben David said in the entrance hall, "I am the messiah." [147][148]

This is all in the linked articles, and like much of the rest of the text must be précised. Mot of the flab is either repetitive, undue or trying to attenuate something for some POV. It should read something like.

After their burial, an anti-Arab riot broke out, and a Palestinian teenager was killed in revenge. His killing sparked Arab rioting. Israeli police rounded up three suspects and charged them with his murder.

Similar excisions, while remaining true to the essential points, should be done throughout. This section may be exploited to suggest similar remedies for sections and paragraphs of this ghastly article.Nishidani (talk) 21:10, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

You made some factual modifications while de-flabbing:

• What anti-Arab riots ? Where did they come from ?
• Who killed the teenagers ? Form your summary one can understand that Israeli government ordered killing the teenager in revenge.
• The murder was condemned and the suspected murderers were brought to justice. In your summary whoever murdered in revenge, possibly by an order, seems to live happily ever after.

The bit with the main suspect claiming to be the messiah can be dropped. Either he is insane or prepares to plead insanity, in either case it's of low relevance. WarKosign (talk) 21:29, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

• • I made no factual modifications. The text must give the bare bones of what the links amply explain. The essential facts are there, not the rhetoric.
  • For anti-Arab riots see Kidnapping and murder of Mohammed Abu KhdeirNishidani (talk) 21:49, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
  • The paragraph above that mentions who killed the three, and I am not making a précis of that, but the section quoted. We don't write for paranoids. It is obvious from 'suspects' and charged with his murder that Israel arrested the alleged culprits.
  • The suspects are charged. They have not been (yet) 'brought to justice'. 'Condemnations' are stuffing.

All of that is in the linked articles. This is background, not a repetition of the linked articles we synthesize, and obsessing about clearing Hamas or Israel's name by mentioning condemnations is just POV flab.Nishidani (talk) 21:49, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

The background section, like everything else, has a lot of flab. Unfortunately, it is hard to get the flab out without someone or the other thinking that you have left out some important detail which should be given its due. I made this same point here, which is why condensation is quite hard. To be honest, I have not tried a lot, but it needs to be done. Kingsindian (talk) 22:10, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I've given the above example as a test. I don't think any important detail is overlooked. If one or two are, editors will note it, and adjustments made. But really, once a text is relatively stable, crafting a précis is far less difficult that the kind of my-tripe-to-counter-your tripe prose composition that makes most of these articles's use by date short. Editors committed to working here should understand that much of their patriotic dedication goes down the tube in time, unless it is firmly grounded in qualitative editing standards, sound sourcing principles and strict neutrality.Nishidani (talk) 22:55, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. The messiah part can be removed. I don't think there is much chance of misreading the passage to say that the Israeli govt. killed the teenager in revenge. The following sentence makes clear that three suspects have been charged. Since nobody has yet been convicted, the passive voice "Palestinian teenager was killed" is appropriate. "Condemnation" is not important to include here. Anyone wanting to see details can consult the other article. Kingsindian (talk) 23:09, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I still don't see any anti-Arab riots. I do see lots of rioting by the Arabs. Can you please give a quote that I'm missing ?

After the burial of the 3 israeli youths, anti-Arab riots broke out in Jerusalem.

Mohammad Khdeir's death in turn sparked Arab rioting.

The passage I précised lack this elementary balancing, leaving out the fact that Israeli groups rioted after the funeral. I added it, because one shouldn't drop information uncomfortable to one POV while highlighting information uncomfortable to another. The balance thus achieved is NPOV.

I was relying on memory of the period which I thought would have survived the POV-censorship of editors since it was so well sourced, but such reliance on wiki's retention rate is a bad thing because it used to be mentioned on the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers page, day 19, but has been removed. It is mentioned on the Kidnapping and murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir('On the day of the funeral, Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu called for vengeance on his Twitter account.[24][25][26][27] Hundreds of Israelis rampaged through Jerusalem yelling "Death to Arabs", endeavoured to assault passers-by, who had to be extricated by police') page (the Netanyahu call for venegance on Twitter, if I recall correctly, is a distortion, and if so needs to be adjusted however)Nishidani (talk) 11:40, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

The source says there was an anti-Arab demonstration "with 2 attempts to attack nearby Arabs". Surely the attempts were unsuccessful, or it would say "attacks on nearby Arabs". This event falls short by far from being a full-blown riot. Do you have anything except your POV to justify writing "anti-Arab riots broke out" ? I understand that "After their burial, anti-Arab demonstrations broke out" does not have the same punch, but it is what the source says. WarKosign (talk) 12:09, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Try and be a bit more incisive. The sum of your remarks is that you want 'anti-Arab riots broke out' changed to 'an anti-Arab riot broke out' (which I prefer to 'rampage' which is how the Times of London described it). A protest march conducting during the funerals at Illit Modi'in, degenerated into clashes with police by an anti-Arab mob involving Meir Kahane supports, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Beitar Jerusalem soccer thugs, numbering from 400-700 that for hours blocked central Jerusalem, and Ramat Shlomo as shouts for revenge and death to Arabs and physical assaults lead to the arrest of 47 Israelis involved in a baker's dozen of incidents, involving hunting Arabs to beat them up. Of course had Palestinians done this it would be a 'riot' to be suppressed with immediate recourse to tear-gas and rubber bullets and live fire, and beating the shit out of handcuffed kids like Tariq Khdeir as happened two days later at the Shuafat 'riots', sorry 'attempts to attack' Israeli police. But since the subjects are Israeli, we are to say 'attempts to attack'. Sure I have a POV, but it's not evident in that draft. You are straining too minutely on the suspicion I'm playing some game here, I gather.

I was exempting much of what I know happened or was reported on that day. I.e., not only was Jerusalem a dangerous place for Arabs but the several other things took placeite as an Israeli response on the day of the funeral, not the rioting in Jerusalem only but also the upswing of outburst on Israeli social media of hate messages, callings for incitement to kill Arabs, the 34 strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza the night after the discovery of the bodies into the morning of the funeral, using Stuart Greer's televised coverage of the day, which, despite its emotionalism, gave the key elements (later reedited (Nick Logan, Mourning, military strikes after Israeli teens found dead Global News 1 July 2014) in the print version to back off from what was obvious, by citing official government denials of what he had said:

‘United in grief and anger Israelis came together . .Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu vowed Hamas will pay a heavy price . .Their bodies were discovered on Monday, after the biggest Israeli ground operation nearly in a decade. Israel’s revenge came swiftly with fighters pounding dozens of Hamas targetss overnight in Gaza and the West Bank. .The family homes of the men suspected of killing the teens were blown up, . . and Israeli troops shot dead a Paletinian man who allegedly threw a grenade (i.e. a not too bright cchap with a bag of eggs for breakfast) at them as they tried to arrest a militant. In response militants fired rockets into Israel from Gaza. Right wing religious activists in Jerusalem are going further, chanting ‘death to Arabs’. They’re calling on the Israeli army to launch and offensive to crush Hamas ('Tensions arise in Israel following murder of teens,' Global News 1 July 2014).Nishidani (talk) 16:13, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

So we are down to a single "riot". You did a very thorough job convincing me that there were protests with racist calls against Arabs that could perhaps break into full blown riots, but the police managed to contain. I asked for a reliable and preferably neutral source for the claim that there were anti-Arab riots. If there is no such source, your opinion and original research, as well written as they are, are of little value here.

Strikes against Hamas in Gaza - what do they have to do with these "riots" ? Social media messages - let's call it "virtual online riots" ? How many victims or property damage did they cause ? WarKosign (talk) 17:17, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Let me introduce you to WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT.I.e. in replying you ignored I had adjusted the text to ariot. (b) the rest is nonsense, because it fails to understand the point made. This is known as the attritional technique, endeavouring to wear editors out by not seizing, as good editors learn to do, the gist of the difference and finding solutions.Nishidani (talk) 19:00, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the introduction. I do not think WP:HEAR is applicable here. It speaks about an editor refusing to accept the community's consensus. With all due respect you are not the community and your opinions are not the consensus. Kingsindian is the only other editor who participated in this discussion and while he agreed with your version in general he did not express an opinion whether or not there is evidence for anti-Arab riots. I asked for one simple quote proving there the protests were full-blown riots as you propose to write in the article. Instead you are writing in very numerous words that there were anti-Arab protests that did not end in violence. WarKosign (talk) 19:19, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I can live with your version if it says "anti-Arab protests". Once the murderers are sentenced it should also be added. WarKosign (talk) 19:23, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Brought to justice - you are correct, they are 'being brought to justice' but I don't know how to write it concisely enough so perhaps it can be added later once (if) they are in jail as "murdered by <name> who was later sentenced to X years in jail" WarKosign (talk) 10:33, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Regardless of the argument above, I think the work must be limited on a section-by-section, paragraph-by-paragraph basis, more or less as we did in in the lead. I suggest to begin with the background. Peeking at the Hebrew version of the article, the background there is split into military and political, with military background being split into (following operation pillar of defence, kidnapping of teenagers are operation brother's keeper, targeted assassinations and increased rocket fire after June 27th) and political background is split to (raise of El-Sisi to power, Hamas's financial crisis). I am not saying that this division should necessarily be followed, but some sort of division of the background would help simplify it. WarKosign (talk) 12:29, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Forget it. If I have to waste an hour arguing over 'riots' vs 'a riot', it's not worth the candle. Well done. Let's keep the wretched patchwork.Nishidani (talk) 16:13, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

@WarKosign: I think the issue is that while condensing, Nishidani had introduced one more element which was not present in the original (anti-Arab riot). You seem to agree that the rest of the stuff is ok. As to calling it a "riot" vs "demonstration" or "protests". It seems to me that "riot" is appropriate, and "protests" is far too weak. It involved assaulting passers-by and police and resulted in 40+ arrests on charge of "public disorder, attempted assault of Arab minors, assaulting police officers, and property damage". The Telegraph described it as a "rampage". The social media mentions are just auxiliary, describing the atmosphere, not directly describing a riot. Kingsindian (talk) 20:54, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

@Kingsindian: Thanks, these two sources convince me the protest was violent enough to reasonably call it a riot.WarKosign (talk) 21:10, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I have put the paragraph in the article, together with some references from the other article. Kingsindian (talk) 21:31, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Rosenfeld/Donnison

@TheTimesAreAChanging: Regarding your edit. If Rosenfeld denied the quote, that denial should be included, instead of removing the statement. Donnison has stood by his original report. It is hardly unusual for people to backtrack after saying something to the press. Kingsindian (talk) 17:12, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

It's old, undue, and covered fully in the article on the kidnappings. That section doesn't even include the subsequent Hamas claim of responsibility, or Meshaal's statement that the killings were justified acts of resistance.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:50, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Certainly not. The comments were well-covered and again, if they were denied later, that should be included instead of removing it. Secondly, there were no "Hamas claim", as it was one high-ranking member who did take responsibility, which you know. --IRISZOOM (talk) 06:51, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@TheTimesAreAChanging: You may have a point with your new reasoning that it is undue ("old" doesn't make too much sense to me -- is a couple of months really old?). As for the Hamas claim of responsibility, it used to be in the "immediate events" section, but was moved to the "Timeline" section because of chronological reasons. See this discussion. I am open to including just a summary of the stuff, and leaving the rest of the stuff to the kidnapping article. However, it needs to be done properly; the "immediate events" section is very long and should be treated as a whole. See also this section, where a bit of condensation was agreed upon Talk:2014_Israel–Gaza_conflict#Time_to_start_consensual_rewriting_to_get_the_flab_of_POV_battles_out_of_the_prose.. Kingsindian (talk) 07:20, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Meanwhile I've added the denial by Rosenfeld.WarKosign (talk) 07:31, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Later developments in the case of the three Israeli teens

In diff, pieces of information were re-copied into the "Immediate events" section. I re-moved them because, as I noted in my edit summary, they are repeated word-for-exact-word in the section they belong to chronologically, the "Operation Timeline" section.
The obvious counter-thought (obvious to me even though no-one's vocalized it yet) is: well, perhaps those pieces of information should be removed from the "Operation Timeline", so that they can be in the "Immediate events" section. One issue with that is, as you can see from the edit where I initially removed all duplicated content, there were more developments in the case than just al-Arouri's and Meshal's comments — there were enough developments that they represent a large parenthetical interruption to the chronological flow of the article if sorted 'topically'.
What is the best thing to do? Sort the info chronologically? Or try to extract and group the Three Teens case developments together 'topically'? -sche (talk) 03:28, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

There is a separate article on the kidnapping. I think it should be mentioned chronologically in the timeline whenever it is important to the conflict, each time linking to the main article. No need to repeat all the details in this article, only the bare bones fact that they were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas militants, and if relevant, the claims of it being by hamas/non-hamas and with/without the knowledge of the leaders.WarKosign (talk) 06:12, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Reduplication on the same page is of course unacceptable and should be removed. This reminds me of another thing, the fact that often things have been either copied or removed and plunked or shifted to special subpages, and this then can become an argument for reducing the reduplication by eliding the copied part from the original page. The best solution in the latter case is a précis of whatever has been copied onto another page. Mere overlap just indicates one page copied from another, the timeline copied from here often as not, without copyediting, to make a bad pun. The time-line article is a POV farce, but performed its function well. Having gone through editing practices in three of these wars, there is a troubling tendency for POV-editors to keep hiving off content into specialised subpages, to gut the master page of significant or crucial content, while relegating details to other pages that have a lower viewer frequency. This looks, I'm afraid, almost designed, and therefore requires considerable acumen to avoid the point of such editing. That kind of thing has happened here. The general article should give a comprehensive overview of 'lead-up to hostilities' (b) main events (c) thematic elements like the various key accusations by both sides (d) casualties (e) wrap up of end.Nishidani (talk) 10:47, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Splitting off is normal, however, when content is split off, there should be a neutral summary of the part which is split off. I have tried to do this in some sections, like the UNRWA shelter shelling, tunnels, reactions, and timeline (the timeline section needs much more work). My idea is to keep the lead section as a summary in the main article using transclusion. The lead for the kidnapping article is much too long to be included in full here, though, so it needs to be summarized. Kingsindian (talk) 11:58, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Images in the article

I would like to clean up the images through the article.

• Infobox - there were two images, now there is a collage, which is simply 4 pre-existing images mashed together. Can someone think of a kind of a single image that could represent the conflict ? If not, the minimum number is 2, one per side. Do we really need all 4 in the collage ? If the answer is yes, They should be images not used elsewhere in the article.
• Background - background talks mostly about the violation of the previous ceasefire. On one side there is the blockade of gaza, with the map that represents it (own work, based on OCHA reports). There is no image representing rocket fire from Gaza during this time in this section. Perhaps some image of rocket shards or damaged houses ? I'm sure there are IDF-released images, is there a more neutral source ?
• Immediate events - seems ok, 2 images of events during Operation Brother's keeper
• Operation timeline - 2 images from each side. There are 2 maps of Gaza: one of launch sides (by IDF) and one of attacked locations in Gaza. On one hand it makes sense to have two maps near each other. On the other hand I think the map of launch sides belongs in the alleged human shields, "use of civilian infrastructures". If it's agreed that I move it there I will put another image of damage in Israel instead.
• Impact on residents - 3 images for Gaza vs 2 for Israel, 1 of the 3 is another map of damaged sites in Gaza. I suggest moving this map up instead the one in the timeline since it shows the whole Gaza strip and not only a part of it.

Image of the wounded girl's caption is very long - is her story notable ? Is it important that she was injured in her uncle's house? The fact that Israel is treating her in Jerusalem is somewhat notable, but I don't think it belongs in the caption.

• Reactions - ok, 2 equivalent pictures, same order as the text
• Alleged violations - at the moment only one violation has an image, destruction of homes has a picture of people standing under an excavator, with the caption saying they are retrieving the dead during a ceasefire. Do we want a single image for each violations ? If not, how do we pick which ones get images ? I can think of the following images for violations

• Civilian deaths - plenty of images of the dead or the wounded. How graphical and explicit should it be ?

• Warning prior to the attacks - there probably exist be IDF-released images of the papers that IDF dropped on Gaza before attacks.

• Destruction of homes - sure there are destroyed and damaged houses. Best find one that can be proved to be destroyed intentionally and not as collateral damage while attacking something else.
• Shelling of UNWRA schools - there was an image of an UNWRA school as it was used for shelter. Perhaps there is an image of the holes that are "consistent with shelling" ?
• Infrastructure - is there anything related to infrastructure ? A line of people waiting to receive water rations ?
• Attack on journalists - don't think there is anything to show
• Human shields by Israel - there is a single alleged case, with an image of the note that he supposedly wrote while in IDF's prison. Probably not in public domain.
• Killing of collaborators - there are images in the news of militants aiming at hooded people, probably not public domain
• Use of civilian structures for military purposes - the rocket launch site map from above
• Medical facilities and personnel - the ruined ambulance from the collage. We can't know if it was used for military purposes and its caption does not make any claim. The section says that it is illegal to attack an ambulance unless it's used for military purposes, so I think the image demonstrates both cases.
• Urging or forcing civilians to stay in their homes - there is an image of people sanding on the roof that IDF released.
• Rocket attacks on Israeli civilians - something that displays the damages, again ? I think this and destruction of homes above can be skipped.
• Militant use of UN facilities - don't think there are public domain images at the moment. If UN or IDF releases something we make consider it. Hamas will surely not release anything of the kind.
• Intimidation of journalists - ditto

• Military weaponry and techniques - seems ok to me: 3 images, one of rocket ranges (gaza) one of a howitzer (IDF) one of a soldier looking on a tunnel (both)

Please respond to my consideration, if there is agreement or apathy I will being cleaning it up. WarKosign (talk) 21:28, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Re the infobox images: I thought the two images that were there before were sufficient, and better because they didn't duplicate images which were (and belonged) elsewhere in the article, so no complaints from me if you switch it back from 4 to 2.

It's redundant to have both File:Israeli Strikes on North Gaza.jpg and File:Unosat-gaza.png in the article, and File:Israeli Strikes on North Gaza.jpg is a better map than File:Unosat-gaza.png (the former shows more of the territory of Gaza, the latter only shows less and is frankly harder to look over and make sense of). I would replace File:Unosat-gaza.png with File:Israeli Strikes on North Gaza.jpg. I think this is something you are proposing to do, along with moving the other map (the Israeli map of launch sites in Gaza)?

Would it be useful to have an image gallery (probably at the bottom of the article)? A lot of the images that have been removed from the article over the past few weeks have been removed with edit summaries indicating desire for numerical equality of "Israeli pictures" and "Palestinian pictures", rather than disagreement with the relevance or helpfulness of the images. A gallery would seem well-suited to showing things like how geographically spread-out the damage to Israeli infrastructure was and how severe the damage to Gazan infrastructure was, and could possibly also contain pictures of various Gazan and Israeli weapons (or possibly the gallery of that could go in the 'military weaponry' section). -sche (talk) 22:54, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Oppose all changes DocumentError (talk) 00:07, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Points:

• In the infobox: there should be 2 images, as before. I don't know who changed it to 4. They're not representative either. 2 of them are in Israel, one is an Israeli weapon, and one is in Gaza.
• The background section:agree that there can be a picture about rocket attacks. There can be pictures of truce violations by either side. The closure picture is a separate background. I don't know of any free chart/picture describing truce violations.
• The UNOSAT image is describing the damage in Khuzaa area, which was one of the major areas of conflict. It is a large picture, so the thumbnail is hard to see. But it can be seen quite well by clicking on the image. The inset on the top-left shows a zoomed in version. I also plan to add one of Shujaiyya, also another major conflict area.
• The disparity of 3 vs 2 in the impact section is already discussed elsewhere. As I noted, NPOV does not imply that there be same number of images everywhere. Given the differing impact on the two sides, it is not at all undue to have 3 images for the Palestinian side. The 3 images all are illustrating important things mentioned in the text. The UN image is obviously relevant. The Beit Hanoun picture is illustrating the statement that 70% of the housing stock is gone and it is uninhabitable. The third picture is about number of children affected, the subject of the last paragraph. I can put up a different picture for that if needed, and move the picture of Shayma to the casualties section.
• Agree that the caption of the picture of Shayma is too long. Someone added that she was being treated in Israel for some reason. She is being treated in East Jerusalem. And I agree that wherever she is treated is irrelevant. Kingsindian (talk) 01:36, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
• I do not support putting the IDF map of rocket launch sites in the "use of civilian structures for military purposes" section. Firstly, it is one-sided. Secondly, it does not say anything about all the launches being from near civilian structures. Kingsindian (talk) 02:00, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

You can argue whether or not east Jerusalem should belong to Israel or not, but at this point it does. So if she is treated in a hospital in east Jerusalem, she is treated in an Israeli hospital. WarKosign (talk) 10:35, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

If we insist on keeping the identity of the hospital in the caption, then we should identify it by name, not place. In other words, it should be noted that Shayma is being treated at the Sisters of St. Joseph Hospital, not "an [unnamed] hospital in East Jerusalem." DocumentError (talk) 16:32, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

— Let me sum up what I think should be agreed, so we can apply at least some of the changes:

• Lead - Replace the collage with two images representing both sides. For now same images that we had before: Ruined Kware home and Iron dome firing. Could there be something better ? Maybe no lead picture at all ?
• Background - add an image of rocket shards or property damage caused by rockets fired during the 2012 truce. There are such images from IDF, I'll try to find a more neutral source.
• Shayma picture - replace the caption with "Shaymaa al-Masri, five years old, wounded in bombing on July 9"
• Gallery at the end - sounds like a good idea to me, maybe it's the place to have more pictures of ruined houses in Gaza. Here the number of pictures can be more proportional to the damage.

A suggestion for a less agreed upon item:

• Use of civilian facilities - there are IDF released maps such as this that specifically show launches very near civilian infrastructures.

WarKosign (talk) 11:11, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Oppose the inclusion of the above IDF map. Labeling buildings as weapons caches without any visible evidence is not sufficient to be included. I am unconvinced about the other IDF map too, which is purporting to show sites of rocket launches. Even with attribution, it might not be good enough. Kingsindian (talk) 16:22, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Do you have evidence that any other map or image is accurate ? There are many red dots on the maps that show damage to Gaza. How do you know each dot really represents a damaged house ? If indeed there are inaccuracies in these maps, surely someone would pop up and publish a report that discredits the other side. WarKosign (talk) 18:47, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

There is a fundamental distinction between sources by either side and third party sources. The UN map is based on satellite data. Moreover, the IDF map of rocket launches has size of red dots too big, they basically cover the whole of Gaza. Kingsindian (talk) 18:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

The IDF released a bunch of live feed videos as well as details maps to back up their claims. It is not wiki-editors' place to try and argue against the inclusion of these. IDF sample 1, sample 2, a crowd-pleaser. There is also plenty of support from external sources that these maps are nor fabricated out of thin air.AFP sample. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MarciulionisHOF (talk • contribs) 14:56, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Why is "Gaza Strip" listed as the belligerent in the infobox?

The "Gaza Strip" is where the war took place, but why list it as a combatant? Rockets were not fired by the "Gaza Strip"; the "Gaza Strip" did not build tunnels to infiltrate Israel. Only Hamas and the other militant groups should be listed as the belligerents. See for example War in Afghanistan Spud770 (talk) 15:20, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Same can said about Israel being listed as a belligerent: Israel did not decide to begin an operation, Israel's government did. Israel did not fire, IDF soldiers did. By definition, "belligerent is an individual, group, country, or other entity that acts in a hostile manner, such as engaging in combat". Gaza strip is neither a group nor a country but it is some kind of entity. Alternatives aren't very good either:

• List Hamas and the rest of the militant groups - the list would be long, and may miss some militants
• PNA - the west bank arguably did not participate in the conflict, so not all of PNA was involved.

Can you offer another belligerent? WarKosign (talk) 18:55, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

"Palestinian groups" can be stated and there are several of them listed already. --IRISZOOM (talk) 07:13, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@WarKosign Israel is represented by a national defense force, so it is fair to use "Israel" as belligerent, just like any other country at war, and many media sources have done so (hence the term "Israeli air strikes,"etc.), in contrast to the Gaza Strip, which is not represented by a single national force. Hence it should not be named as belligerent. I would suggest deleting "Gaza Strip" and leaving the list of other militant groups. There's nothing wrong with that list. See War in Afghanistan (2001-present) (link fixed) Spud770 (talk) 15:46, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@Spud770: I do not have a strong opinion, I only wrote a possible reason. Try making a change and see if it's reverted, or let's see if there are more opinions. WarKosign (talk) 16:00, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

"Israeli forces had deliberately killed 296 children in Gaza"

In IP added {{Verify credibility}} to each of the citations which are currently being used to support this statement, including the citation of ynet. It's my understanding that the credibility of ynet is generally accepted — however, the full text of the cited ynet article is "At least 296 Palestinian children and teenagers have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of Israel's offensive against the Palestinian Hamas movement on July 8, UNICEF announced Saturday. 'Children account for 30% of civilian casualties,' said UNICEF." That does not support the claim that Israel deliberately targeted the children, or even the weaker claim that Monica Awad said Israel deliberately targeted the children, so I changed the template to {{Not in source}}. Let discussion commence about whether or not any of the citations, or the wording of the paragraph, should be changed... -sche (talk) 17:06, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

IMO it's enough of misrepresentation to be reverted on the spot as vandalism before further edits make the revert difficult. If there is anything new and relevant in the source quoted, it can be added to the relevant sections. WarKosign (talk) 17:35, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Ynet indeed doesn't say the killing was intentional. For the other two sources - this is what they say. Anyone knows what el-balad is ? Middleeastmonitor looks British and openly pro-palestinian, how reliable is it ? I do not see this claim reported on major and supposedly neutral sites, nor on UNICEF.org WarKosign (talk) 17:45, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Misleading citation of sources should be considered immediately revertible, as per WarKoSign. Most of our sources are pro-Israel (Ynet, Times of Israel, Haaretz (70% of articles), New York Times, etc.etc., so having a pro-Palestinian bias is not in itself troublesome, but MEM should not be used for facts. Commonsense tells one that no one can have knowledge of such a phenomenon, i.e 296 Palestinians killed by a deliberate desire to kill them qua children and therefore that should not be in the text. It is well known that children, teenagers are killed regularly by the IDF in ground actions, but in these cases the totals are known (West Bank demonstrations and the Gaza border infringement (children being shot because they enter the no-go zone to get chicory etc. 300-600 yards from Israel's border) instances because the shootings occur, are verified as soldiers shooting kids dead, instance by instance, and then analysed. In intense bombings, this kind of detail, as instanced in the figure, cannot be ascertained and is therefore propaganda.Nishidani (talk) 17:58, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with your common sense, however wouldn't omitting "intentionally" be a misrepresentation of the source ? The claim is not that IDF killed the children intentionally but that Monica Awad said so. If she indeed said so I would expect it to appear on the UNICEF site. So far it was only on tweeter, facebook and many pro-Palestinian sites that I do not know reliability of. Maybe it would be correct to add "Pro-Palestinian sites reported that ..." WarKosign (talk) 18:19, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Nishidani, really? New York Times pro-Israel? lol! You must be kidding. Haaretz is an Israeli newspaper... not very popular in Israel, precisely because it's considered pro-Palestinian. What matters is not if a newspaper is generally 'anti' or 'pro' something, but if it's reliable and serious when giving information. I just wanted to clarify that. Of course the paragraph needs to be changed, because it states that Israel "kills children deliberately" which – besides of being ridiculous and false – is not supported even by those POV sources. Furthermore, there's evidence to support the contrary: Israel tries to avoid harming Palestinian children (I know, even so civilians die in every war, it sucks). For example, watch this video. Let me put this in clear words: apparently IAF had its target in reach. It was an armed terrorist whose goal was to attack Israelis. Right before the strike, this coward entered a yard full of children. There was a missile heading towards the terrorist. But because of his proximity to the kids, the Israelis immediately aborted the strike. This is killing children intentionally, right?

Although it springs to mind a people who does have a long history of killing children deliberately, bombing schools and hospitals, cutting babies throats and the Maalot massacre amongst MANY others while inciting child martyrdom, using children as front line troops (and those baby-killers are considered "heroes" by their own kind)... I better stop here.--Wlglunight93 (talk) 18:36, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Human shields!! Baby-killers!! You, as opposed to WarKosign, don't seem to understand the distinction I made. In any case, it is pointless talking to someone who edits wikipedia with the POV that a whole population ('a people who does (read 'do') have a long history of killing people deliberately') is characterized by a zest for killing babies. My remark spoke of a practice common in IDF operations (5-7% of all armies are stocked by natural born killers, and this is known. It's just some armies, not the IDF apparently, take legal precautions against them abusing their desire to kill): most Israelis are either appalled by, or flip the page as just too uncomfortable, over reportage like this, which is a weekly event, and has been so since the Ist intifada.Nishidani (talk) 19:52, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

(after e/c) If we can't find evidence Awad actually said what the Palestinian sites allegedly attribute to her (comments above have called into question whether or not there even are sites attributing what our article does to Awad), perhaps we should just reduce the wording to only that bit which is supported by the citations we are sure of the reliability of (Ynet and Haaretz). Otherwise, we have to add a qualifier like WarKosign suggests... and then we have something that boils down to "According to a few pro-Palestinian sources, one spokesperson for one organization said Israeli had deliberately done X", which is pretty wp:undue, IMO.
The relevant portion of the Haaretz article is: "At least 296 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the operation began until 11 A.M. on Saturday, about 30% of the operation's fatalities, AFP cites UNICEF as stating. Of these, 187 are boys and 109 are girls, with at least 203 under the age of 12, Unicef says. (Haaretz) [...] According to the Palestinian health ministry, the death toll in the Israeli operation currently stands at 1,624, including 315 children [...]" Hence we could say:
UNICEF reported that between 8 July and 2 August, at least 296 Palestinian children died due to Israeli action, and that 30% of civilian casualties were children; the [Palestinian/Gazan] Health Ministry reported that 315 children died due to Israeli action.^{[ynet] [haaretz]}
At that point, we could just move/merge the info to the section on casualties. -sche (talk) 18:48, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

@Wlglunight93:, Nishidani thinks anything or anyone that isn't explicitly pro-Palestinian is pro-Israel. Haaretz is infact, a leftist Israeli newspaper that regularly criticizes Israeli policy, although not in the same way as an explicitly pro-Palestinian site like Electronic Intifada does (you probably understand what I mean) . Ynet is left-leaning, and is generally pretty well balanced. JPost is center-right, and unlike Haaretz which focuses on domestic policy, etc, JPost focuses more on foreign policy. Even JPost is starting to become more to the center (originally, JPost was pretty leftist). They've started to phase out using words like terrorists and started using words like militants. Knightmare72589 (talk) 18:59, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I grew up when the word 'left' and 'right' had a meaning, but for three decades they've lost that distinction. Papers are either blind or not, nationalist or not. I find quite a few 'conservative' sources more 'leftist' than the so called left. So let's drop the simplified stereotypes.Nishidani (talk) 19:52, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

~300 children sounds reasonable (as in matches the data, not that it's reasonable to kill intentionally), considering that 33% of Gaza population is children under 15. It actually matches the IDF claim that about half of the casualties are militants. WarKosign (talk) 19:07, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I had flagged this problem about a month ago, saying that I could not find the original interview by Monica Awad to Al Jazeera saying that Israel had deliberately killed 250+ children. All I could find was that is that overall 250+ children had died. Someone added ElBalad as source and removed my dubious or better source needed tag. As far as I can see, El Balad is just repeating Middle East Monitor. Someone then added Ynet etc. without checking what it said. Kingsindian (talk) 19:14, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

• I've trimmed the paragraph to only the part that is supported by the citations. Should it stay where it is (in the "Alleged violations" section) or be moved to the "Casualties" section? -sche (talk) 19:31, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Does any of the sources say anything about crimes or IHL violations ? If not, this is not an alleged violation, so this information doesn't belong there. As for casualties - this is certainly casualties data, but it has been superseded by higher numbers later on. WarKosign (talk) 20:27, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

TL;DL. Comment: Haaretz is known for propagating Israel-bashing plot-lines (occasionally, with terrible/no fact checking: Gideon Levy is commonly mentioned). It is nick-named al-Balad, which is an Arabic translation of the Hebrew name. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 21:08, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Important question: does the article say how many children died while digging the tunnels? "At least 160". Also, how do we treat this type of source? MarciulionisHOF (talk) 21:20, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Someone put a line about that into the article at one point, but it was removed after discussion concluded that it was highly irrelevant and wp:undue. It is already present in both of the places it might actually belong, namely the two articles on the tunnels themselves (Gaza Strip smuggling tunnels and Palestinian tunnel warfare in the Gaza Strip); it does not belong in this article, which is about a specific conflict. -sche (talk) 01:13, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

@-sche:, Did the Israelis not say they targeted tunnel destruction in this operation? MarciulionisHOF (talk) 09:00, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

"On 17 July, the operation was expanded to a ground invasion with the stated aim of destroying Gaza's tunnel system". Existence of the tunnels and their destruction is highly relevant to this article. How exactly they came to be is not. In the IHL violations sections only the violations that occured during the conflict are listed. If you can show that the children were digging the tunnels during the conflict, then it's relevant. Otherwise it belongs in an article discussing the tunnels or in an article discussing Hamas's abuse of the Palestinian people. WarKosign (talk) 09:17, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Wait. So Israel destroying tunnels and other weapons is 'first-paragraph important', but how the Palestinians were fabricating them can't be mentioned?? Not even in the Background section?? (small correction: some say "abuse" and "virgin sacrifice", others say "resistance" and "liberate Palestine from the Zionist entity"[1] -- I'm not one to impose one view over another on Wikipedia. Both views have citations.) On topic -- I'm sure some people also want to know details about Iron Dome. e.g. how fucking expensive those rockets are... well, I hear costs went down a bit lately. Anyways --- this information IS relevant. At least the basic core information that any Wiki-reader would be interested in without reading a whole other article. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 09:52, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

People may want to know more about the Iron Dome or the attack tunnels, and this is exactly why these articles exist and this article links to them. Both provide estimates for the cost and the number of children sacrificed to create them. WarKosign (talk) 10:57, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Core information from both articles should be mentioned here as well. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 19:33, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

The lead section from the article on the tunnels is transcluded. I guess the same can be done with the Iron Dome. Do you have anything else in mind ?WarKosign (talk) 19:37, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

PCHR footnote in casualties section

@Tritomex: In your edit you have added the PCHR footnote about militants. This is already present in the above section "Methodology". Kingsindian (talk) 13:21, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

This issue was already discussed on talk page and as a result of that discussion and due to the fact that this issue does not fall to simple methodological problem, the footnote was placed bellow the table. --Tritomex (talk) 13:35, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

The same statement should not be duplicated of course, the question is where better to put it. Since the comment is on one of the sources of casualties data, maybe we can put the note in a new column in the table ? There is a comments on methodology of almost every source. Perhaps, it would be best to turn the table 90 degrees and have a column for each source instead of a row, then if the comment row is too long it won't be a problem because all the short and numeric data will be above it and easily accessible. WarKosign (talk) 13:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

What discussion? And what result? The methodology of all people involved is reported in one place, why does PCHR deserve its own footnote? Kingsindian (talk) 13:48, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

We discussed this [2] I suggested that the PCHR unusual count of civilians, should be presented in infobox. You were against. As a result of discussion EkoGraf made a compromise, by placing this footnote bellow the table, where it stood until recently. No objections were raised for weeks--Tritomex (talk) 13:58, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I know we discussed this. That discussion was whether to place it in the infobox. The compromise at that point was correct, because the methodology of the rest of the sources was not present in the article. This is why I wrote the methodology section, discussing all the claims. If you look at the AP report (used by Ynet and Wash post), all of them are discussed together. Kingsindian (talk) 14:05, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Rephrasing what is currently in the methodology section:

• The Gaza Health Ministry uses a broad definition of civilians, applying the term to anyone who has not been claimed by one of the armed groups as a member.
• UN (OCHA) takes the Gaza Health Ministry count as preliminary and conduct their own investigations using other sources including, for example, names of alleged fighters released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and notices by armed groups in Gaza claiming someone as a member.
• The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights stated that they require at least two sources and count on their local ties to determine if someone was a combatant or civilian.
• PCHR counts militants who at the time of their death were not effectively participating in combat as civilians.
• Israel stated it uses its own intelligence reports to determine combatant deaths.
• ITIC (not currently in methodology, should be paraphrased and added): "The examinations carried out by the Information Center are based on the names on the Palestinian Health Ministry’s lists, despite the reliability problems and deficiencies found in them. From these lists we have removed duplicate names and have added a number of terrorist operatives who do not appear on them"

WarKosign (talk) 14:06, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

This proposal looks acceptable to me, although I am not sure that this needs a separate section. if yes, than such section must also cover affiliations of each sources in order to get objective view. For example ITIC has been associated with IDF, while Gaza health ministry with Hamas. Another question, already discussed is that PCHR way of counting civilians is not just methodological and demographic issue. Third, any table must include Palestinian casualties killed by Hamas in specific subsection's as this casualties are not mentioned currently.--Tritomex (talk) 14:17, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

What proposal? WarKosign just put the section in list form. I don't see what the difference is. As mentioned in the methodology section, the collaborators are perhaps included in some counts, and not included in others. Kingsindian (talk) 14:25, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I do not see the need for this already to huge article, which will likely be even longer to have a specific section for statistical issues regarding methodology of counting casualties. Maybe this footnotes bellow the table will be enough. --Tritomex (talk) 14:42, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I meant to include the 6 listed items in the table itself rotating it by 90 degrees, something like this (replacing 'example' with proper numbers):

	Gaza Health Ministry	OCHA	Al Mezan Center for Human Rights	PCHR	ITIC	IDF
Total number of casualties	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example
Civilians	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example
Militants	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example
Unknown	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example	Example
Date
Note	uses a broad definition of civilians, applying the term to anyone who has not been claimed by one of the armed groups as a member	takes the Gaza Health Ministry count as preliminary and conduct their own investigations using other sources including, for example, names of alleged fighters released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and notices by armed groups in Gaza claiming someone as a member	require at least two sources and count on their local ties to determine if someone was a combatant or civilian	counts militants who at the time of their death were not effectively participating in combat as civilians	TBD	uses its own intelligence reports to determine combatant deaths

This is much more effective and shorter option to dealing with this issues. I support the changes, and in order to advance this I made a self revert regarding PCHR.--Tritomex (talk) 15:00, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@WarKosign: I don't see the value of putting it into the table. Secondly, the statement "takes Gaza Health Ministry count as preliminary" is applicable not only to UN, but to all other human rights orgs. All of them take it as preliminary and conduct their own investigations. Thirdly, the methodologies and figures of all Gaza Health Ministry, UN and human rights orgs are mostly the same, and their figures are also likely to be almost the same, a point noted in the section. Fourthly, the issue of collaborators, for which there are differences between orgs. Fifth, what about the statistics of adult males etc.? All of these issues are discussed in the section in prose form. These kinds of things are not easy to get into list form. Counting casualties in war is complex, and one cannot always give a simple answer like the one you propose above. There are many other much longer sections in the article which can be shortened first. Kingsindian (talk) 15:05, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@Kingsindian:

1. This way it's easy to correlate the comment regarding methodology with the numbers. In the current article you have to scroll several times if you want to see how each methodology affects the numbers.
2. These are the methodology comments extracted from the current article. Perhaps they need to be modified, I didn't look into that (yet).
3. If several comments end up the same, cells can be merged. If two sources end up identical, they can be merged leaving both names in the top row.
4. The idea is to include information that is different for (almost) every source in a table while leaving common information such as executions and demographics above/under the table

This table isn't simple, but I think it is better than what we currently have. Other sections need attention too, this is not a reason not to improve this one. WarKosign (talk) 15:35, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I am afraid I cannot support converting the prose into this form. This is too ugly in my opinion (subjective of course) and misses out crucial points, which I mentioned above, while not saving much space. Kingsindian (talk) 15:38, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

This idea seems much more effective. We dont need to broaden this article with section devoted solely to methodology, statistics or technical issues. Important details from that section can be added here. Also I did not see that the creation of methodology section was discussed, or received consensus. Maybe I am wrong, in that case my apology. --Tritomex (talk) 15:44, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@Tritomex: You are not wrong. There was no discussion on creation of methodology section. I just went ahead and did it. Half the stuff was already present but unorganized. And half of it was stuff I added. There was one line about PCHR (which we were discussing earlier) and statistics about number of males etc. but nothing about how UN or Al Mezan or Israel collects data. Some stuff about collaborators and other stuff was added later by WarKosign. Kingsindian (talk) 16:15, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Let's see what other people think. As an alternative I can suggest putting the methodology comments into a table separate from the main casualties table with numbers.

@Kingsindian: you made an edit to the section discussing casualties of executions, failing rockets and natural deaths. Your edit is not wrong as far as I can see, but the result is that it says "human groups say the number includes victims of executions. .... human groups say the number does not include victims of executions". The source for the second statement is Haaretz and it's behind a pay wall, so I can't check it. If it is correct I would like to rephrase it as "some groups say A, while the others say B", and if it's wrong just remove the second part. WarKosign (talk) 16:28, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Here is the full quote. "The names of the executed were not publicized, and in order to spare their families the embarrassment, their bodies were brought to hospitals and added to others who had been killed by Israeli bombing. Human rights group members observed that these people were shot at close range and thus did not include them in the count of casualties of Israeli bombing." You can check the whole article in google's cache here. There is no contradiction. The first sentence is talking about the Gaza Health Ministry count, and the second about human rights groups count. The first sentence also does not mean that all collaborators/victims of domestic violence etc. are counted, it just means that some may be counted. Kingsindian (talk) 16:35, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Well, I agree with WarKosign, it was a bit hard to parse as it was. I've tried to clarify the last sentence a bit. -sche (talk) 16:52, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

If all or most of the organizations take the Health Ministry's numbers as preliminary, we could state that at the top (in text), above the table. I think it will be possible to condense most of the long methodology section into the table in a manner like WarKosign suggests, and thus obtain the dual benefits of cutting out a lot of unnecessary verbiage and vertical space, and making it easier to look at the methodology of each group while looking at its figures. I made a mock-up of one possible tabular format here: [3]. Edit it or try out your own ideas in the sandbox. :) -sche (talk) 17:44, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@-sche: Regarding your edit, the table looks really ugly (in my opinion of course). Rotating the table has made the columns much narrower. Keep in mind that the "date updated" part will be removed eventually (it can probably be done already). The "notes" row is much bigger than anything else in the table. Putting sentences in narrow columns is urgh! Moreover, no space is saved, which was one of the main points made by others. I simply do not see the value in putting prose into a table. Are our readers' attention spans so limited that they can't read prose and look at a table separately? Kingsindian (talk) 17:50, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I (as an IP user) shortened it a bit. Maybe someone skilled with tables can make the notes row collapse-able ? WarKosign (talk) 18:10, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I think the table looks less ugly than the current version because the table is more übersichtlich (well-arranged and hence easy to look over), so we'll have to disagree on that point. After WarKosign's shortening of them, the longest of the entabulated sentences takes up only slightly more than 3.5 cm² on my screen.
Even if we think readers are all very good at holding multiple pieces of information in their minds while scrolling back and forth, up and down the article, why would we want to make them do that when we don't have to? Why split the relevant methodological into a different subsection and a different screen than the table? -sche (talk) 18:18, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@-sche: The point is that not all the information is provided in the table, so a reader will have to check the prose anyway. For example, Israel's column just says "intelligence reports". There is another sentence in the prose which states that they say that Hamas militants also include "reservists" who have civilian jobs. Also, collaborators is not addressed here, as well as other caveats, like Israel saying that rocket attacks are included in civilian casualties. You have added the statement in prose outside the table "UN/human rights groups take Gaza health ministry as preliminary and conduct their own investigations". This means that this crucial part is not present in the table. What is the point of putting half the information in prose and half in the table? Kingsindian (talk) 18:28, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

By the same logic, what's the point to have the table at all if not everything can fit in it ? WarKosign (talk) 18:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Table is there for raw numbers. My view is that all methodological issues should be in prose. Putting half of them in the table and half outside makes no sense. Kingsindian (talk) 18:57, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@Kingsindian: The majority of editors (3) here seems to favor the table/text combination without specific section for technical details as proposed by -sche, WarKosign and myself.--Tritomex (talk) 19:10, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I see that, however, being in the minority has never stopped me from arguing. :) I do not understand the "separate section" argument. The original argument for not having a separate section was that it is too long and the article itself is too long. The current version keeps all the content and is just as long, so I am not sure how that is relevant. However, I will not say any more, since I have already given all the arguments. Kingsindian (talk) 19:17, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

The tabular version removes about 500 bytes of excess verbiage, and about two paragraphs of vertical space on my computer (YMMV). Re "not all the information is provided in the table": the only information which is not in the table is either applicable to all or most of the figures and thus sensible to list in one place rather than in all columns of the table (this is the case with the paragraphs which begin "Current reports...", "Human rights groups and...", "Human rights groups say..."), or not applicable to any of the figures. This is the case with the paragraphs which begin "According to data provided by the Palestinian International Middle East Media Center...", "Palestinian President..." and "UNICEF...", which cite groups/people which are not cited in the table; it is also the case with "During the fighting between Israel and Gaza...", which points to an entirely different category of casualty data (viz. non-Gazan, non-Israeli). -sche (talk) 19:47, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Cat about Arab Winter

I can't see how this is connected to the Arab Winter. Any comments? --IRISZOOM (talk) 13:28, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

No idea. The term is pretty bad anyway. Kingsindian (talk) 15:12, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Not following the logic, I almost opened a section about it myself. Seeing others feel the same - I removed it. MarciulionisHOF (talk) 19:50, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Please stop edit warring

@Zaid almasri and Wlglunight93: Please, stop. It doesn't matter if the other person is edit-warring. Don't participate in it. Use the talk page, or report to noticeboard if things get out of hand. Kingsindian (talk) 10:53, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

@Kingsindian: I'm busy with other issues and I can't prosecute the editions. I would like to know what the edit waring is about?

I agree btw in the past people who changed wording of the article in middle of RFC where topic banned.--Shrike (talk) 11:14, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I asked Zaid_almasri here and here not to make the changes while the RfC is in progress. WarKosign (talk) 11:24, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Is it possible to use any of these pictures from B'Tselem in the article?

Pictures are here: [4] -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 21:31, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Many of them are already uploaded here. There was a suggestion to include a gallery at the bottom of the article. WarKosign (talk) 06:11, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, someone suggested it in one of the archives, and then I suggested it again recently, but have yet to get around to it because I am wary (and aware) that it will become a magnet to which people try to add every picture they can find. We have to be careful to avoid that, per Wikipedia's image use policy, which specifies that "Wikipedia is not an image repository[,] a gallery is not a tool to shoehorn images into an article, and a gallery consisting of an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should generally either be improved" or removed. I have started putting together a gallery in Talk:2014 Israel–Gaza conflict/Sandbox. Feel free to add to it. We should probably try to avoid having more than, say, 2 pictures of the same kind of thing from the same place/time (so e.g. we don't need all 10+ pictures of destroyed buildings in Beit Hanoun). -sche (talk) 22:14, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Sites from which the most stories are cited

Thanks to some parsing of this page I just did to find and remove duplicate references, I have this data and figured I'd share, in case it's of interest to anyone:
These are the websites from which the highest number of different stories are cited (these are not necessarily the websites which are cited most often / cited in support of the highest number of statements in the article):
timesofisrael.com (28 different stories from this site are cited); jpost.com (26); theguardian.com (17); haaretz.com (16); ynetnews.com (15); aljazeera.com including america.aljazeera.com (14); maannews.net (14); nytimes.com (8); reuters.com including uk.reuters (8); hrw.org (7); ochaopt.org (7); washingtonpost.com (7); bbc.com (6); cnn.com including edition.cnn.com (6); independent.co.uk (6); amnesty.org (5); btselem.org (5); news.yahoo.com (5); telegraph.co.uk (5); terrorism-info.org.il (5); dailymail.co.uk (4); jewishpress.com (4); smh.com.au (4); 972mag.com (3); abcnews.go.com (3); algemeiner (3); economist.com (3); huffingtonpost.com (3); icrc.org (3); idfblog.com (3); mfa.gov.il (3); nbcnews.com (3); middleeastmonitor.com (3). From all other sites, two or fewer stories were cited.
Also, an ?honorable? mention goes to youtube.com; 2 Youtube videos are cited.
-sche (talk) 08:59, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Nice. I wonder how the sources changed through time? Probably should not be a hard thing to write a tool for. Probably someone has already done so. Kingsindian (talk) 20:54, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, a month ago, as of 08:46, 8 August 2014, these were the websites from which the highest number (>2) of stories were cited:
timesofisrael.com (25); jpost.com (20); aljazeera.com and america.aljazeera.com (16); theguardian.com (16); haaretz (14); nytimes.com (12); ynetnews.com (12); maannews.net (10); bbc.com (7); independent.co.uk (7); reuters.com (7); washingtonpost.com (6); smh.com.au (5); amnesty.org (4, not counting duplicate explicit citations of the same story); cnn.com (4); aa.com (3); algemeiner (3); dailymail.co.uk (3); economist.com (3); forward.com (3); hrw.org (3); idfblog.com (3); jewishpress.com (3); jta.org (3); ochaopt.org (3); telegraph.co.uk (3). (Facebook.com was cited once.)
-sche (talk) 23:17, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

"Ways in which Hamas is bad"

I will remind people that the "Alleged violations of international humanitarian law" section is not the "Ways in which Hamas is bad" section. There are plenty of nefarious things which Hamas does, not all of which violate IHL. Some of them are just plain old corruption and domestic issues. And please keep in mind WP:BURDEN when you add stuff. You have to demonstrate some relevance. With that in mind, three edits come to mind. I will gently remind the user of the policy of WP:NPOV and WP:NOTADVOCATE.

• [5] The second paragraph is talking about police actions. Keeping people in house arrests, mistreating them etc. Moreover, the denial by Hamas is not included. Would you let this kind of allegation go unchallenged if it was leveled against Israel? Either it should be moved to the collaborator section and some link demonstrated, or it should be removed.
• [6] This is again talking about internal police actions. Is Hamas expected to release all prisoners from jail because Israel might bomb it? This is the logic being used. There is no proof presented that this sort of thing violates IHL. Again, Hamas denials are not included.
• I can't find the third edit, but it has to do with misuse of humanitarian aid by Hamas, giving it to their cronies. This is corruption, not violations of IHL, and nobody is claiming otherwise. Again, Hamas denials are not included. Kingsindian (talk) 04:55, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I moved the accusations of keeping Fatah members under house arrests into the "Forcing/urging civilians to stay in home" section because they are forcing (by shooting and breaking limbs) them to stay in homes, and it puts them at risk. "By doing this, Hamas was putting them under threat of being killed by retaliatory Israeli strikes". This source says "PCHR calls upon the two Palestinian governments in Gaza and Ramallah to stop such human rights violations and to ensure respect for the Basic Law and international human rights standards" - so it is an alleged IHL violation.

Misuse of humanitarian aid is at the bottom of the first diff. It does not seems to belong with alleged IHL violations, I'd move it to Impact on Gaza Residents, where "severe shortage of various categories of medicine, medical supplies, and fuel" is discussed.

If you can find Hamas denials/responses - sure, let's add them.WarKosign (talk) 06:11, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I am glad that Electronic Intifada is now considered WP:RS. Just a joke, but you will notice the irony there. It is indeed WP:RS for this claim. The PCHR source is talking about domestic repression. It is talking about "international human rights" standards, not "international humanitarian law" which is totally different. If this needs to be added, there should be a separate section for "domestic repression" in the article. It goes without saying that if there is such a section, Israeli actions would also need to be included. As to Hamas denials, they are present in the same sources which are cited. Kingsindian (talk) 06:30, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

There were some other, pro-Israel sources that reported these violations, but I preferred to quote EI since you can't accuse it of being biased against Hamas. I would prefer a neutral source if I can find it. International human rights law "is closely related to, but distinct from international humanitarian law". Are you saying we should not list violations of IHR law ? Why one and not the other ? Perhaps the section title should be modified to cover both. WarKosign (talk) 07:02, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

As I said, the source is talking about "international human rights standards", not international humanitarian law. The two are completely different. The first means "international standards" of "human rights law". The second deals with armed conflict and so on. As I said, I am fine with including the latter, but it needs to be a separate section, let's include Israeli violations as well. We can start with the protests in the West Bank, but we can go much further. Kingsindian (talk) 07:36, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

As I wrote, I agree that they are different. If I understand correctly, International human rights law applies to relationship between individuals and their state, so I believe it's appropriate to apply it to Hamas which governs/runs/controls Gaza and claims legitimacy. The whole "Killing and shooting of Gazan civilians" section discusses alleged violations of this law by Hamas. As you argued before, Israel's control of protesters in the west bank is not policing (state's handling of its civilians) because of alleged occupation, so the IHL applies instead. Human rights law can only apply to Israel's treatment of its citizens - is there anything in this area you consider relevant to add ? Assuming that there isn't, Hamas's killing of Gazan civilians is the only paragraph dealing with the International human rights law, so instead of moving it to a different section I suggest just state it clearly in in the section that it deals with human rights law, and rename the top-level section "Alleged violation of international law" (without "humanitarian"). WarKosign (talk) 11:24, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

The whole section is dealing with violations of IHL. Changing the section heading to "human rights law" to incorporate stuff like this is a strange way of dealing with the topic: it should be a separate section. All govts. everywhere take advantage of conflict to commit human rights violations. If one wishes to include Hamas domestic repression, one can make a long list of violations in the West Bank during the conflict. The PLO has released a report detailing multiple problems. One can also include many many other things, like this inside Israel. It is easy to multiply examples. Kingsindian (talk) 11:51, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

As I wrote above, according to your own argument west bank may be examined by IHL, but not IHRL. I do not see any mention of 'violation' or 'humanitarian' in your first source, but surely you'll find something. The second quote discusses a violation of human rights of Israeli civilians, so it should be applicable (preferably backed up by a better source than this blog site). As for organization, I see two alternatives. This is what I think you are offering:

• Alleged violations of international humanitarian law

• By Israel

• (everything we currently have there)

• By Hamas

• (everything we currently have there, minus "Killing and shooting of Gazan civilians")

• Alleged violations of human rights law

• By Israel

• (new material on arrests of Israeli Arab protesters)

• By Hamas

• (content of "Killing and shooting of Gazan civilians")

This is what I'm offering:

• Alleged violations of international law

Modify the first paragraph to say "... might constitute war crimes, violations of international humanitarian law, or international human rights law.

• By Israel

• (everything we currently have there)
• (new material on arrests of Israeli Arab protesters, mentioning the human rights law)

• By Hamas

• (everything we currently have there, in "Killing and shooting of Gazan civilians" mention the human rights law)

I think my organization is easier to read, considering the two laws are quite similar; both deal with protecting civilian from states. The only difference is whether the protection is from their own or the other side, and use of human shields in IHL already blurs this distinction. WarKosign (talk) 12:43, 9 September 2014 (UTC) WarKosign (talk) 12:43, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

The laws are not similar. They are completely different, despite the similar sounding names. The whole section right now is about violations of IHL - the conduct of either side in the war. The domestic repression by Hamas (or Israel) is not unimportant, but they are of a totally different category. There is nothing to be gained by confusing the two. Why change the name of a section to include 1% instead of keeping it to 99% of the information and making a new section for the 1%? Kingsindian (talk) 13:00, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

If we are counting percentage of casualties (who are arguably victims of violations of IHL or IHRL), then Hamas executed and killed by failing rockets 160-180 people, which constitutes 11%-15% of civilian deaths and not 1% as you claim. We disagree on the best way to organize the data, so let's wait for more people to give their opinions. WarKosign (talk) 13:18, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Issues with lead

I have two issues with the lead:

1. The second paragraph of the lead says "The stated aim of the Israeli operation was to stop rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, which non-Hamas factions had begun following an Israeli crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank (sparked by the kidnapping and murder of 3 Israeli teenagers by Hamas members)"

What does 'Israeli crackdown' mean? This is rather ambiguous and lacks clarity, and I think it should be changed per WP:WTW. Furthermore, whether or not it was actually a "crackdown on Hamas" is, according to paragraph two sentence one of the 'immediate events' section of this article [7], an Israeli statement ("a large-scale crackdown of what it [ Israel ] called Hamas's terrorist infrastructure and personnel in the West Bank"). Therefore, as per WP:INTEXT, that statement ("an Israeli crackdown on Hamas") must be attributed to Israel rather than considered a neutral term. It is considered a neutral/factual term in the lead and not merely an assertion by the state of Israel. Therefore, it should be changed as per, again, WP:INTEXT.

The reason is that this gives the reader, from looking at the lead, the false impression that it was simply an Israeli crackdown on Hamas after the murder of the three teens. However, it was, as the "immediate events" section highlights, clearly more than that: several hundred Palestinians were arrested, ten Palestinians were killed, and several houses demolished, and there is no neutral evidence that it was merely a crackdown on Hamas. Amnesty international and the PA, for example, consider it to have been collective punishment [8], [9]. It was evidently more than a "crackdown on Hamas", according to these those two institutions. Why should Israel's word be taken for fact rather than theirs? NPOV issue.

Another issue is the statement that the murder of the 3 teenagers was done by Hamas. There is, again, (at least looking at the Wikipedia article on the murders) no definitive evidence that Hamas members did the killings. The perpetrators of the crime have not been found. It is unsolved. Again, WP:NPOV issue. Hamas members are suspects, yes, but it is, again, unsolved. Furthermore, this also gives the reader the false impression that, since Hamas members purportedly committed the crime, a "crackdown" on Hamas would be justified. However, there is no evidence that it was ordered by Hamas rather than an individual act by men who just happened to be members of Hamas. The lead fails to clarify these crucial points, resulting in a POV in favor of Israel.

2. Its formatting seems rather odd, and it presupposes that the reader already has some knowledge pertaining to the events that occurred.

For example, consider the first sentence of this article: "On 8 July 2014, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge (Hebrew: צוּק אֵיתָן, Tzuk Eitan, lit. "Strong Cliff"), in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip". Well, what does that mean? Was it a humanitarian operation? Was it a genocidal operation? Compare this to, say Operation Barbarossa, Operation Torch, Operation Desert Storm, all of which have superior leads, and are much more to the point and give a general, neutral summary as to what the article is about. Furthermore, the title of the article states that it is the "2014 Gaza conflict", yet the first sentence of that article doesn't use that term? The first paragraph more or less states that it was some sort of operation, without clarifying that it was an armed conflict, and during the next few weeks many people died. It failed to name the belligerents, the nature of the conflict, the purpose of the conflict, and even whether or not it was a conflict at all. That is insufficient and inadequate as a general, broad definition and introduction as to what happened. See WP:BEGINNING and WP:LEADPARAGRAPH for further clarification.

To get a better picture of what I'm trying to say, compare this article's opening paragraph: "On 8 July 2014, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge (Hebrew: צוּק אֵיתָן, Tzuk Eitan, lit. "Strong Cliff"), in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip. Thereafter, seven weeks of Israeli air strikes and Palestinian rocket attacks, in addition to shelling and fighting in the ground invasion and cross-border tunnel attacks, have left more than 2,100 people dead, most of them Palestinians"

to the much better lead on the 2008-2009 conflict: "The Gaza War, also known as Operation Cast Lead (מבצע עופרת יצוקה‎), was a three-week armed conflict in the Gaza Strip between Palestinian militants and Israel that began on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January 2009 in a unilateral ceasefire. At the time, it was also referred to in the Arab world as the Gaza Massacre (مجزرة غزة‎) and by Hamas as the Battle of al-Furqan (معركة الفرقان‎)." JDiala (talk) 23:35, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

1a. The term 'crackdown' is used by Palestinians as well. What do you propose to write in the lead instead ?

1b. Who kidnapped the teenagers and whether it was with or without the knowlege of Hamas leadership is discussed in the background. The lead only says 'by Hamas members', which is accepted by all sides today. At the time it was disputed, and this is discussed in the background.

2a. I do not think anyone would object to adding "military" to the operation description. Should not be a problem to mention belligerents same way as it is done in OCL. Do you propose to change anything else ?

2b. I always said the article name should be Operation Protective Edge since this is what this article is about. The lead should also provide alternative Arabic names if they were prominent enough. WarKosign (talk) 06:09, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

The word 'crackdown' was how Benny Gantz's words on 8th July were translated from moern Hebrew, and was thereafter taken up by all press agencies irrespective of their editorial slants.Nishidani (talk) 20:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

That people affiliated with Hamas killed the 3 is almost 100% certain. The text makes clear the difficulties of, as far as the evidence published goes, assuming what you say is 'implied'. The quality of the arguments from the two to Khalid Meshaal is weaker than the argument that the Kiryat Arba rabbis were responsible for both the Baruch Goldstein massacre and Rabin's assassination.

If there is an agreed on standard Arabic term for the present war, then it should be introduced into the lead after Protective Edge per NPOV.Nishidani (talk) 20:50, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I can't find the quote by Benny Gantz anywhere. I wonder what the Hebrew origin of the word 'crackdown' is. At most I see "hitting Hamas hard" and variations of it. WarKosign (talk) 06:36, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

"Allegations of use of civilian structures for military purposes" section

I have removed the ITIC-sourced list of people using stuff in mosques etc. There are multiple problems with that. Firstly, it is WP:PRIMARY. Secondly, it is way WP:UNDUE to list individual cases like this. Thirdly, these are statements made under "interrogations", and cannot be stated as fact. Fourthly, the section already includes the different claims of civilian structures being used etc.

Also, I don't know who moved one paragraph from this section to the "civilian deaths" section. I have moved it back. It is talking about this exact issue, not civilian deaths in general. Kingsindian (talk) 15:10, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

1. ITIC did not interrogate the militants itself, it is quoting Israel Security Agency (Shabak), so it is a secondary source.
2. I agree that there is too much details, let's discuss how it can be summarized properly. I did not want to include all the names of the militants, left them only so the sentences would be more readable.
3. These are the facts claimed by ITIC and/or Shabak and I thought the attribution was clear in the first sentence ("Interrogations of the arrested militants revealed that:").
4. The section contains generic claims, this section gave specific details. With mosque names and their uses. The last bullet actually belongs in "use of medical equipment"

I moved the paragraph. In it Amnesty International is making a claim regarding Israel killing civilians and there is nothing about Hamas using civilian structures. I think it fits better where I've put it. Why do you think otherwise ? WarKosign (talk) 19:17, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I will just answer the 2nd part here. The Amnesty international and HRW are talking about cases where civilian structures are targeted. Such targeting is fine if there is a) evidence of military involvement b) they are proportionate and observe the principle of distinction. It is this issue which is being discussed there. The USA today story quoting HRW talks about this specifically. Kingsindian (talk) 19:23, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Maybe the sources talk about civilian structures. We are discussing the paragraph. It says:

• disproportional attacks on civilians are prohibited
• israel's "relentless air assault ... flagrantly disregard[ed] civilian life and property"
• HRW says that israel did not present information that proves there was no violation
• HRW did not find valid military targets

I see how this paragraph is relevant to allegation of excessive force that killed civilians, because it is exactly what it says. What does it have to do with 1) civilian infrastructures and 2) alleged military use of thereof by Hamas ? WarKosign (talk) 10:32, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• I see that you have again added the ITIC source. First, please do not add stuff again while we are discussing. As to your points, see again WP:PRIMARY. It is not defined by the number of hops. ITIC has very close links with Israeli intelligence and there is nothing meaningful about them quoting Shabak. Find some mentions of this in the press or other sources and use those. It is also not legitimate to say that "Shabak interrogations revealed". This is a claim made by Israeli intelligence. One cannot use confessions made by prisoners directly.
• The USA today source (quoting HRW) is talking about human shields and cases where it is claimed that civilian structures is being used as military targets. The Amnesty International source is also talking about this. See section "What are the key obligations of the parties to the conflict during the hostilities under international humanitarian law?" Kingsindian (talk) 10:49, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Even if you are right and ITIC is a primary source, it is permitted per WP:PRIMARY, as long as it is used for straightforward and descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person. I believe that my paraphrasing meets this criteria. As for attribution - sure, let's try to make it as clear as possible. How about this:

"ITIC reported that interrogation of 150 arrested militants discovered several cases of militant use of civilian buildings. These included use of mosques for militant gatherings, training, storage of weapons, tunnel activities and military observations. According to ITIC, one militant said that he was instructed in case of successful abduction using a tunnel to take the victim to a kindergarten located near its opening."

"ITIC reported that the use of hospitals was often mentioned in interrogation of arrested militants. According to ITIC, one of them said that Hamas leaders are using hospitals for hiding. Their security wears police uniforms and operates the hospital admission desks. Another militant reportedly said that some civilians seeking medical attention were turned down by the security" WarKosign (talk) 12:30, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

It is not just a matter of attribution. Secondary sources are used to maintain some distance and establish notability. The fact that Israeli intelligence makes claims based on confessions and some entity very close to them repeats them does not make it notable. Since Israeli intelligence is widely quoted by Israeli media it should not be hard to find some source which quotes it. Use those, instead of quoting ITIC. I am sure some NYT report has either already, or will, come along regurgitating the claims. Finally, there are lots of caveats about interrogation and confessions (I don't need to spell them out here). Kingsindian (talk) 12:52, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Here you go, same report regurgitated to your satisfaction (?) Not NYT, but they have "times" in their name and are NY based.WarKosign (talk) 13:03, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

That is better, indeed, a perfect regurgitation. Use that. Kingsindian (talk) 13:23, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

This is somewhat better digested. Haaretz sounds less POV and provides a more useful summary. WarKosign (talk) 13:26, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Hamas did not execute 120 "collaborators"

"More than 120 youths were killed because they did not abide by the house arrest imposed on them," Abbas said. "This is in addition to the extra-judicial execution of 30-40 people during the Israeli assault."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 11:38, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/middle-east/42879-140907-abbas-threatens-to-break-up-unity-government "Speaking about the execution of 'collaborators' with Israel that Hamas committed in Gaza, Abbas added 'Hamas conducted atrocities during the war in Gaza, also at its end when it executed 120 people without trial because they breached the curfew placed on them.'" It doesn't say specifically that they were accused of being collaborators, but I think it is implied. What do you suggest to write in the article instead ? WarKosign (talk) 12:25, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

30-40 were executed for being collaborators. 120 were executed for violating the curfew.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 12:51, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

The reports significantly differ on whether 861 Fatah and 50 Hamas members, including 120 Fatah members killed by Hamas for not wanting to be human shields, died during Operation Protection Edge--or if those figures should be reversed.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 02:10, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Humanitarian aid

@Knightmare72589: Your edit is WP:OR. Wikipedia editors cannot interpret ICRC law. This needs to be done by a competent authority and reported by a WP:RS. Many of your edits are like this. See the section [[10]]. Kingsindian (talk) 17:14, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jq32.htm

"The discussion of the previous chapter clearly shows that the withholding of relief can constitute any of the three crimes considered [war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity], provided that their specific requirements are fulfilled."

It's the ICRC concluding that withholding/stealing humanitarian aid constitutes breaking international law, not me or the editors. Knightmare72589 (talk) 19:13, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

@Knightmare72589: Please read WP:SYNTH. What you're doing is a classic example. First source says A, second source says B, you conclude, therefore C. A single source has to talk about this. If WP editors could decide which laws apply in which situation, there would be no need for lawyers. Kingsindian— Kingsindian (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. (talk) 19:20, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I am sure some source will connect the dots soon. Until then the fact of stealing the aid can remain in the article, without connecting it to war crime. WarKosign— WarKosign (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. (talk) 21:43, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

@Knightmare72589: be aware that the two editors who have comments on your edit are Single-purpose accounts who do nothing but edit this page and attempt to shape it into a form that pleases them. Keep that in mind.Monopoly31121993 (talk) 19:25, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

@Monopoly31121993: Is it too much to ask that you read Wikipedia:Single-purpose_account#Whom_not_to_tag_.28SPA_tagging_guidelines.29? I frankly don't care if you tag me, but it will save your time for the future. Kingsindian (talk) 19:52, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

@Kingsindian: Well I can see that since yesterday you've started to edit other pages than those related to Israel and Gaza but otherwise that's about it.Monopoly31121993 (talk) 18:58, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

@Monopoly31121993: Perhaps you might like to take a look at the history of these pages: page1, page2, page3 for stuff before "yesterday". Also I suppose 2005 counts as before "yesterday", so here is the oldest 100 of my edits. As I said, I don't care if you tag me, but it will save everyone's time. Kingsindian (talk) 20:09, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Flags in the infobox

@Architect2014: Please see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Infoboxes. Flag icons should be avoided in the infobox. Kingsindian (talk) 00:11, 14 September 2014 (UTC)