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Eyewitness testimony

It occurs to me, on reading the article, that most of the so-called 'eyewitness testimonies' are nothing of the kind - at best, they'd be eyewitness reports of what the aftermath appeared to be; at worst, they're inexpert speculation based on what the witnesses saw. To take Dr Engel's testimony as an example, he didn't turn up on the scene until significantly after the events; he clearly can't be an eyewitness to them. At most, he's a witness to the debris of the battle/massacre. This distinction is vitally important, and isn't made in any way in the article.

FWIW, the eyewitness testimonies also seem to contradict each other in many ways. The Irgun perspective seems to have been given remarkably little space/priority, too.

Examples of seeming contradictions:

Mohammed Jaber, a village boy, observed the guerillas break in, drive everybody outside, put them against the wall and shoot them.

-v-

Dr. Alfred Engel's eyewitness account (11th April): In the houses there were dead, in all about a hundred men, women and children.

-v-

Mordechai Gihon's account from the 9th: I estimated that there were four pits full of bodies, and in each pit there were 20 bodies, and several tens more in the quarry.

As an aside, I'm not sure the 107 minimum figure is in any way accurate or reliable - it's supposed to be a count of the number of dead following the entire incident - and the article seems quite clear that there were many killed in the fighting before the massacre began.

J-o-s-h hi, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thanks for trying to improve the article. It seems that you edited the beginning of the article so as no to say explicitly that a massacre indeed happened. It is true that a certain group denies that there ever was a massacre, but it seems that this is a very small group. The massacre is practically universally acknowledged, including within Israel. Therefore to preserve neutrality, it is best if this view is described at the end of the article rather than at it's beginning. Gady 03:06, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I don't think there's any doubt that there is some truth behind the story, but exactly what that truth is should surely be up to the reader to decide? Pejorative terms like 'massacre' are hardly NPOV. It is indisputable that there was an incident known as the DY Massacre; it is disputed as to exactly what took place. (I'm not going to change it back again without discussion, but I've noticed the same trend in various places on Wikipedia.)
I'm coming at this from a NPOV in that I've been trying to find out what actually happened. I don't think the article helped in any way; there has been deliberate obfuscation of the issue for so many years by so many different parties with conflicting political agendae that the actual truth is now undiscoverable. As such, I don't think it's possible to do a NPOV of this in any way other than to report all the various allegations and counter-allegations relating to the DYM. It's certainly not NPOV for the authors to be making judgements as to which statements are more believable. Reporting that almost everybody (including me, just to make that clear ;) believes that there was a massacre is objective fact. Reporting that the evidence shows there was a massacre is a subjective judgement.
Have you any comments on the eyewitness issue? Also, on further reading it occurs to me that there is clearly something missing from the part about the attack - no reasons are given as to why it took place, afaics.
I think it might be of benefit to start again from the beginning with a list of the indisputable facts of the issue. Josh
I am not sure I understand you objection: is the article unclear or is it unconvincing? Gady 21:50, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It's not only unclear, it's also not NPOV. It shouldn't need to be 'convincing' because it ought to be stating nothing more than the facts of the case, rather than someone's moral judgement of them.
To clarify, the article doesn't present a coherent account of the incident and fails to present the basic facts in a clear enough manner to allow the reader to use their own judgement. It's a bit of a mess, really.
I made several points above that you seem to have skipped over; they were the important bit, really. I don't find it surprising that an article about an issue this convoluted would be a little hard to follow, but there just doesn't seem to be any logic or forethought that's gone into it at all. It reads like someone's slapped together a bunch of quotes that supported their view and then someone else has edited it to try and make it more neutral, but has only elided, rather than added. Josh
First of all, there's no need to let the indentation slide away. Standard practice here is that a reply-to-reply is in the same height as the original text. Now to the article. You are claiming simultaneously that the article is unclear and POV. These claims should be separated very carefully. If you have ideas how to make the article clearer or more structured we might want to discuss them first, it will be easier and more satisfying.
The reasons I skipped over your eyewitness comments was that it was not clear to me how they relate to improving the article. Please reformulate these comments as suggestions to the article, and then I will be happy to discuss them. Gady 19:17, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
OK, I can agree with you on the indentation issue ;)
I'm suggesting that the lack of clarity is the major issue. There are some minor POV issues, but I think they'd come out with a re-write. (I don't think it's so much a POV issue as simply that it lacks balance.) Whether it's 'the incident known as the DYM' or 'the DYM' is a pretty minor difference - one of tone more than anything else - and a relatively unimportant one. To clarify what I wrote above, I get the impression that someone with a clear POV has had a good stab at doing NPOV but been unable to keep all their personal bias out of it. Much more importantly, though, the article looks like it's been edited so many times that it's lost cohesion. I think the only way to rectify that is to start from scratch - possibly utilising major chunks of the text, but starting with a clean slate.
As far as the 'eyewitness testimonies' go, at the very least it's imperative that those which are clearly not any such thing shouldn't be labelled as such. On top of that, I'm not sure how to reconcile the many contradictions between them - I believe they can't be, but the lack of corroboration between the witness statements is significant.
To address the issue of what should actually be done, I'd suggest that we could use this page to have a go at creating a new article to replace the old one. If we started by listing the basic, indisputable facts, and then listing the various different embelishments to the tale, it might be clearer. Josh 21:33 (GMT) 7 Nov 2004
I would suggest not to use this page for this purpose. Create a new page, for example Deir Yassin massacre/New version, and edit there. People will be able to comment on your work on Talk:Deir Yassin massacre/New version. When you are done, the text can be copied (and even the histories can be merged, if necessary).
I would highly suggest that you make every effort to separate POV and structure issues. This will make your version much more acceptable to people. If your POV issues are, as you say, quite small, you can address them after you address the structure issues.
As for the eyewitnesses, they report what they have seen with their own eyes, hence they are eyewitnesses. The fact that they contain contradictions is obvious: in a typical hit-and-run accident, eyewitnesses will disagree on the color and the make of the car. Such is human nature. On the other hand, there are too many of them. It might be worth while to take only representative eyewitness testimonies, and move the rest to a different page, perhaps "Eyewitness testimonies from the Deir Yassin massacre" or something like it. Gady 22:11, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I get the impression that you're telling me to go ahead and put my money where my mouth is :) I've no problem with that, but I wasn't sure quite what the etiquette was. You seem to be taking an interest in this page and I don't want to step on your toes. Josh 022208112004GMT
Basically yes. The etiquette says that large changes should be discussed before hand. The usual way is actually not to use a temporary page, but because the changes you suggest are currently a little vague, a demonstration would make the discussion much more effective. Gady 04:02, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think Josh's points are well taken, and a temporary page to sort out the problems with this article is an excellent idea. Jayjg 15:57, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Oh dear, I look terrible now. I am still interested in working on this, but I haven't had a lot of time recently. Josh 211226112004GMT

Sid Zion, again

I've exercised the following sentence from the text:

His testimony has lately been challenged by Sid Zion of the Zionist Organisation of America and other right-wing Jewish organisations.

(regarding Meir Pa'il's testimony). Meir Pa'il was a general and one of the most respected Israeli public figures. His personal integrity is beyond doubt. Sid Zion is an American right wing nobody. These people would say any old thing if they thought that it is congruent with their twisted view of what's in Israel's interests. If they care so much about us, why don't they take their noses out of our business? In short, this sentence gives a false impression as if there is some controversy about Meir Pa'il. There is none. Gadykozma 09:56, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You wanted some evidence...

“Paradoxically, the Jews say about 250 out of 400 village inhabitants [were killed], while Arab survivors say only 110 of 1,000.”38 A study by Bir Zeit University, based on discussions with each family from the village, arrived at a figure of 107 Arab civilians dead and 12 wounded, in addition to 13 "fighters," evidence that the number of dead was smaller than claimed and that the village did have troops based there." Sharif Kanaana and Nihad Zitawi, "Deir Yassin," Monograph No. 4, Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project, (Bir Zeit: Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, 1987), p. 55.


Contrary to claims from Arab propagandists at the time and some since, no evidence has ever been produced that any women were raped. On the contrary, every villager ever interviewed has denied these allegations. Like many of the claims, this was a deliberate propaganda ploy, but one that backfired. Hazam Nusseibi, who worked for the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1948, admitted being told by Hussein Khalidi, a Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate the atrocity claims. Abu Mahmud, a Deir Yassin resident in 1948 told Khalidi "there was no rape," but Khalidi replied, "We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews." Nusseibeh told the BBC 50 years later, "This was our biggest mistake. We did not realize how our people would react. As soon as they heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin, Palestinians fled in terror." 45"Israel and the Arabs: The 50 Year Conflict," BBC.

According to Irgun leader Menachem Begin, the assault was carried out by 100 members of that organization; other authors say it was as many as 132 men from both groups. Begin stated that a small open truck fitted with a loudspeaker was driven to the entrance of the village before the attack and broadcast a warning to civilians to evacuate the area, which many did. Most writers say the warning was never issued because the truck with the loudspeaker rolled into a ditch before it could broadcast the warning. One of the fighters said, the ditch was filled in and the truck continued on to the village. "One of us called out on the loudspeaker in Arabic, telling the inhabitants to put down their weapons and flee. I don't know if they heard, and I know these appeals had no effect."

Contrary to revisionist histories that the town was filled with peaceful innocents, residents and foreign troops opened fire on the attackers. One fighter described his experience:

My unit stormed and passed the first row of houses. I was among the first to enter the village. There were a few other guys with me, each encouraging the other to advance. At the top of the street I saw a man in khaki clothing running ahead. I thought he was one of ours. I ran after him and told him, "advance to that house." Suddenly he turned around, aimed his rifle and shot. He was an Iraqi soldier. I was hit in the foot.

The battle was ferocious and took several hours. The Irgun suffered 41 casualties, including four dead.

Surprisingly, after the “massacre,” the Irgun escorted a representative of the Red Cross through the town and held a press conference. The New York Times' subsequent description of the battle was essentially the same as Begin's. The Times said more than 200 Arabs were killed, 40 captured and 70 women and children were released. No hint of a massacre appeared in the report.

At least some of the women who were killed became targets because of men who tried to disguise themselves as women. The Irgun commander reported, for example, that the attackers "found men dressed as women and therefore they began to shoot at women who did not hasten to go down to the place designated for gathering the prisoners." Another story was told by a member of the Haganah who overheard a group of Arabs from Deir Yassin who said "the Jews found out that Arab warriors had disguised themselves as women. The Jews searched the women too. One of the people being checked realized he had been caught, took out a pistol and shot the Jewish commander. His friends, crazed with anger, shot in all directions and killed the Arabs in the area."

And so on, and so on... Mike23

So you have learned how to do copy and paste. Congratulations! Please come back when you have read the original sources cited by this article and so have the basis to make an informed report on it. Here's just one morsel for you: you copied "Surprisingly, after the “massacre,” the Irgun escorted a representative of the Red Cross through the town and held a press conference." Perhaps if you knew that the Red Cross representative wrote "All I could think of was the SS troops I had seen in Athens" you would start to realise that there is a little more to the story than you realise. --Zero 11:52, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Zero, please refrain from personal attacks just because somone diagrees with you. The man is offering support for his viewpoint, what was your purpose in including the Red Cross quote, which is ironically much more sensational and much less useful than Mike's quote. Please if you decide to contribute to a controversial subject and want your opinions to be listened to at least pretend to be neutral- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg

From the source book "Oh Jerusalem": There contrary to what Mike23 says, there were Arab women who claimed they were raped and the British officer in charge of the inquiry was of the opinion that those women were saying the truth. From the same source: The Irgun had received weapons to help attck Qastel (or Castel) but used those weapons to attack Deir Yassin, instead as was a "soft target". (same source). The officer in comand of the Hagganah detachement that arrived at Deir Yassin after the fight ended stopped (forbidd) the young soldiers under his command to enter the village because the brutality and the view of the ravaged bodies was overwelming. (same source). The same Hagganah commander ordered his second in-command to disarm the Irgun fighters (did not happened) (same source) The Hagannah commander forced the Irgun members to clean the village and said face to face to the Irgun commander the insult "pig". (same source). The book "Oh Jerusalem" seams to be a very serious research and has hundreds of first hand testimonies (edited in 1971 in Europe). Detail: The presence of the Red Cross official was allowed because one of the Irgun fighters tought he was eternally in debt with the Red Cross official in question, because he had saved his life in Europe during the war.(same source). I hope i was of any help. Many of the facts I stated (from the source Oh Jerusalem") were not yet mentioned in this article. I apologize for my terrible English. 

  Peace.

How many were killed?

The article header says At least 107 Palestinian civilians were killed. Some sources report many more deaths, but their accuracy has been disputed. The body of the article has a long discussion of death numbers, which includes the statement It can now be said with certainty that the death toll did not exceed 120. These statements need to be reconciled. Jayjg 17:02, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

120 is larger than 107 (take my word for it, I'm a mathematician). But seriously, I don't see here any contradiction. The article goes into great length to dispute these other sources so it can finally make that certain claim. Gadykozma 17:23, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Well, if it fully refutes that, then the summary claim should list the conclusion of the debate, not the start of it. Also, the number given in Israeli massacres article (sorry, the actual name escapes me at the moment) is 100-110. These should all be reconciled; I propose the number be given as 107-120 in all three places. Jayjg 17:29, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
In this I agree with Jagj, the number most commonly accepted is around 107-120, we will never know for sure, it may also have been a bit higher, but survivers testimonies, and the evidence show the number in that range somewhere (not all the bodies were recovered). The exhaustive Birzeit study showed that. The numbers were exagerated by both sides, but the flight of refugees because of the Deir Yassin story is very real. Even Begin, the former terrorist, admitted it was worth a division or more I believe.
As far as I know I do not think there were any rapes, no real accounts, it may have been covered up or been hushed up due to shame, but unlikely? Again who knows? A small number of children and adults survived the attacks.
We do know for sure there was quite a bit of widespread looting, and theft of jewellery from dead bodies (cutting rings off, etc.) It is eneough the homes became the property of new Jewish immigrants. The ground was still warm Joseph 21:22, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

The most widely-cited death count was 254 until recently, now we have a number floated that is 107-120 or so. But the lead to this article uses the term "scores," I wonder will that be changed to "dozens" in time for the 60th anniversary of the massacre -- or might the new term be Deir Yassin "Incident" by then? Plus we also have attempts to count the dead as, at least partially, combatants. If a man raises his hand to stop the murder of his family maybe that makes him a combatant, right? So perhaps "dozens" is too high when applied to civilians? Incremental revisionism is widespread on Wikipedia, I have no strong feelings on this article but there are many who do, and it seems their perseverance will eventually win out in an edit war, I am interested in how Wikipedia will deal with this type of challenge.RomaC 08:49, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The 107-120 figure was given by a Bir-Zeit research, hardly a body with motive to practice "Incremental revisionism" regarding this subject, so your cynicism is quite out place. And many accounts refer to a very bitter battle being fought, very different from the "raising their hand to stop the murder" picture you try to paint. It was more like 'raising their hand to fire a machine-gun'. You also ignore the fact that Arab irregular fighters (mostly Iraqis) often used the village as a base to attack Jewish convoys (although the villagers themselves resented this for the very reason that it exposed them to Jewish attacks).
As for Joseph - when you say "We do know for sure there was quite a bit of widespread looting" - who exactly is "we"? And how exactly do "we" know this? Please present sources that back this claim.
-Sangil 19:47, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
107 is probably the correct figure. 240 was the figure promoted by the IZL and LHI themselves. It was reported by the BBC and the New York Times reported 254 shortly after. About a fifth of the victims were executed after the fighting in a nearby quarry. All of the reasons you give for the killings apply to the Kfar Etzion massacre. For an overview see Gelber, Yoav (2006). Palestine 1948. Appendix II: Propaganda as History: What Happened at Deir Yassin? (pp. 306-318). Sussex Academic Publishers. ISBN 1845190750. --Ian Pitchford 20:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
The Kfar Etzion Massacre was carried out against a military camp, far outside any possible new Israel, but determined to obstruct the creation of an Arab state regardless. It was quite wrong that they were murdered - but they'd already decided to lay down their lives if it would help the cause of Israel.
That's hugely different from Deir Yassin, which was well inside the new Arab state - but remained friendly and indeed supportive of its Jewish neighbours. Not only that, but from Meir Pail's account [1], Deir Yassin was attacked because it was peaceful and would be easy. This wasn't a battle between opposing forces, this was an atrocity perpetrated for the sake of it (the only dispute is whether they actually intended to carry out a massacre, or just carry out ethnic cleansing). I'm not sure whether the deniers have stopped claiming that Deir Yassin was strategic or not. Perhaps they have, now we at last have some ancient maps to prove their claims false.
PalestineRemembered 18:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
To describe the attack on Deir Yassin as a "bitter battle" is a travesty. The initial attack was non-soldiers trying to make a name for themselves with a victory against the near-defenseless. It failed, despite being there being nothing but a few householders opposing it. A detachment of Palmach arrived and over-ran the place with not a single injury to themselves. Then the irregulars came back and slaughtered the inhabitants.
PalestineRemembered 18:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

NPOV tag

(the following paragraph was posted as a reply to the one above, but it really started a new discussion so I retrospectively added a headline and reduced the indentation. Gady 16:13, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC))

So what are the source for 120 deaths? And why should we trust the research of Palestinian university its certainly partisan source. So i am adding back the NPOV. Also how we know they were all civillians and there was no armed man inside the village?

The research conducted by the university was well documented. I don't know where to get it, but I believe the information is all available. The university found out there were much less victims than originally thought, even though for propaganda purposes it would of course be better if there were more. Also 1987 was a different time, much less tense than today.

In short, for the purpose of the NPOV-ity of the article, what is important is to represent all opinions fairly. There is a small minority that claims that no massacre ever existed — their views are described under Deir Yassin massacre#Modern debate. Are you claiming that the article does not describe their opinions in a fair way? Or that there is another group which specifically rejects only the university study — presumably in this case they would need to accept previous numbers which were much higher?

Finally, just to let you know, the {{NPOV}} tag should be put on the article only if a reasonable attempt to solve the dispute on the talk page failed. Gadykozma 21:47, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)


There was no reply so I removed it. Gadykozma 16:47, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
First of all this article based on research conducted by one of sides in this incident so how can we trust that research?
Second Academic research is not ultimate truth. For example there is Academic researches that denies holocaust it doesn't make them true
Third provide link to this research. So we can at least check it out.

I am restoring the NPOV

I removed the quote you added because it already appeared in the article, several sections above, with attribution. As for the {{NPOV}} tag, please be more responsive in the future. You can't slap a tag that says there is a dispute and then disappear for two weeks. As for the research of the university, I have no clue, but Benny Moris' book should be in any reasonable academic library and would definitely contain a reference. Gadykozma 17:42, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I give up

Ok, let it be full of lies and misinformation, you will only hurt yourselves.

Everyone with sense, reason, and ther ability to research knows the truth. It is a shame this view has been taken, and it is akin to saying the Holocaust did not happen. I suppose those Arab homes the Jewish people live in in Deir Yassin were not Arab either, is that so too!

In any case, as others much wiser have said, it is a waste of time. Fill the content of the Wikipedia with non-sensical meanings, and vain attempts to hide facts, They will come out one day, when they do a deep shame should fill us all for all the innocent lives lost.

I feel sorry for the maligned truth on these pages. I guess if that is what the pro-Zionist supporters were after by blocking every entry I make then you got your wish. What a shame. There is no NPOV view or truth on any of these pages dealing with the Arab/Israeli conflict, and especially in respect to Palestinians Joseph 00:15, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Irgun, Etzel IZL

Let's decide on one of them and standardize the article. I prefer (in this order) IZL, Etzel, Irgun. What do other people prefer? Gadykozma 13:40, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Irgun is the most commonly used name in English, and this is English Wikipedia... Jayjg 17:44, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, I changed it to Irgun in the few relevant places. Gadykozma 01:44, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Question of Translation or Meaning

Ok, the truck with the mortar in the story near the end of the battle that comes from the Haganah; it says it fires "tree shoots". Is this a reference to "tree bursts"? The article seems to be talking about setting the mortars to explode above the building to kill snipers--this is best termed an "air burst".

Unfortunately, it seems the guy who wrote this, BL, has left Wikipedia on May. Therefore the only way to verify is to check the book referred to. My guess is that it should be "three shots"... Gadykozma 00:47, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that the article is pro-zionist. I just came here to read more or less what happened. I don't expect casualty figures or every report drawn from one book to be literally accurate. Just as you said, if you are too critical of the 'perspective' of wiki authors then it will descend into the same kind of political speech and bland, noncommital recitations that is popular in the American media.

Message sent to me

A wikipedian sent this message to me after I made a comment on the votes for deletion page, in everyone's interest I have copied it here:-

See http://www.etzel.org.il/english/ac17.htm, http://www.zoa.org/pubs/DeirYassin.htm, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/deir_yassin.html, http://www.freeman.org/m_online/may98/bedein.htm, http://www.theraphi.com/da/april/18.html and of course stage five in http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/deir_yassin.html. While the loss of non-combatants is regrettable in any war, the fact that the Arabs deliberately hid among civilians, opened fire from within civilian crowds and pretended to be dead and then ambushed Irgun solders (foreshadowing present day events) places the blame for the non-combatant casualites squarely on Arab fighters, not the Irgun. Indeed, a truck with a loudspeaker was deployed to warn Arab civilians of the coming attack (thereby forgoing the advantage of surprise). Irgun fighers were given strict orders to not harm the elderly, woman and children, and took any Arab who surrended prisoner, as opposed to the Arabs who would execute anyone who surrendered to their forces. Arab eyewitnessess claim that there was no massacre, and that the majority of Arab non-combantants were serving in a support role to the Arab forces, and thereby legimate targets. Many Arabs openly admit that the so-called "Deir Yassing" massacre was used as a tool to support invading Arab armies, and not represenation of true fact. I sincerely hope that you will look deeper into this issue, and come to realize that in every war their are innoccents harmed, but in this case everything was done that could reasonably minimize this unforunate occurrence.

Regards,

MSTCrow 15:32, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

Too long

This page can be reduced to probably four paragraphs like a normal encyclopedia entry. It is longer than the page on the Taiping Rebellion, China's civil war that killed 20 million people! The minute details are for further study elsewhere. An entry should contain: 1) who what when where, 2) significance of massacre/atrocity reports in the time period, 3) fact that most conventional history reports event as a massacre, 4) that a few challenge it, alleging certain things (x,y,z), 5) it remains subject of factual and political debate. The end. The details can be hashed out numerous places and are.


-- Anon, but knowledgable on subject

It has been stated that the opening paragraphs are really all one needs for the article; I wonder how others feel. Jayjg (talk) 16:00, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I totally disagree. This proves that the Taiping Rebellion article is too short, not that this article is too long. One of Wikipedia's great strengths is its ability to treat obscure topics in detail; its weakness, in fact, tends to be the articles on broader topics, which fit less easily into any one person's expertise. - Mustafaa 16:43, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, it's in desperate need of cleanup, particularly the footnotes which are formatted in the most obnoxious way imaginable. Jayjg (talk) 16:52, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The non-footnotes, you mean! I actually find them kind of convenient, but I agree that a standard footnote layout would be more aesthetically pleasing, if marginally harder to follow. - Mustafaa 17:02, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)


There does not need to be a Deir Yassin article AND a Deir Yassin Massacre article separately. At least the opening paragraph should say why the village is of interest, not the details of its location. The opening can give a summary of the reason for interest - a famous massacre reproted there -- and the basics, and report that the massacre allegation is challenged in some circles (IMO dishonestly and ridiclously but that need not be added). The rest of the article can be detailed by persons who want to write, amend, and reamend the massacre debate and details.

-- Anon but familiar


And someone keeps eradicating the Hebrew transliteration, even though it common appears (try Google) and was used and is used in Hebrew language literature and records on the subject and in translations of them. Stop it. What the village name is today does not mean there is no Hebrew transliteration of the former name.

The village had no Hebrew name, this transliteration is of a mispronunciation common among Hebrew speakers. This would be like putting "Betah Tiqoua" as a transliteration of Petah-Tikva.--Doron 06:40, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is written in Hebrew in books and literature at the time and commonly transliterated that way -- see Begin's memoirs, do a google search. If you want to add a note to that effect, do it. The fact is that researching Deir Yassin is aided by noting that it often appears transliterated from the Hebrew as Dir Yassin. It may be a mistake, it doesnt matter, that's how it appears, and often odes in the literature on Deir Yassin; an encyclopedia aids researchers to find thngs, many things are listed as Dir Yassin, including a former Israeli punk rock band. The name Jonah for example is transliterated from Hebrew many ways but also via Greek as Jonas and that fact should be noted, if one is researching Bible references, one should note the common way it appears and in older English Bibles (particularly Catholic ones)and refrences to it you will find "JOnas". Deir Yassin DOES have a commonly appearing Hebrew transliterated name "Dir Yassin" (Google it, darn it!) in the same way there is a bad English transliteration "Deir Yassin" rather than the more accurate "Dayr Yasin". Given that much primary and secondary literature is in Hebrew and or transliterated from it, it should be noted. TO say the town doesn't have a Hebrew name is like saying Moscow doesnt have an English name. Yes, it does: Moscow. It is transliterated Moskva and is such in Russian. But in English it's Moscow. In Hebrww, an important language for researching Deir Yassin it appears often as Dir Yassin, even if mispronounced it is what it is.

Stop changing it.

-- Anon, but familiar

For handling alternative spellings, wikipedia uses redirects, so what you should have done is create redirects (such as [2] and [3]). Moscow and Deir Yassin are English names, "Dir Yassin" is a misspelling by the translator (I don't suppose the Hebrew original was written with vowels?).--Doron 12:28, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

______________ The redirects are useful, but does not give a useful explanation for the origin of the commonly appearing Dir Yassin. Mistakes in transliteration is how MOST foreign terms get popularized. Even mistransliterations, eg Jehovah is a mistransliteration of Yahweh consonants and later Adonai vowels, Paris is not Pah RISS but Pah reeee, but we pronounce as we read it. It is important to note the origin of Dir Yassin as anyone researching it in a book or online should look for that spelling; this tells why.

Deir Yassin is not an English name, it is a transliteration (and a poor one) from Arabic but it is the standard because it was the official British one. Dir Yassin is the standard roman transliteration from Hebrew. It should be noted as such. And not merely redirected.

I'm fine with your last edit.--Doron 23:59, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Civilians and POV

The article claims "between approximately 107 and 120 Palestinian Arab civilians were killed" how do we know that all of who was killed was civilians there is various reports that there was indeed some Arab fighters in the village. Also the whole article based on Partisan research of Palestinian university how can we trust and such controversial figures like Morris.I think it should be labeled with POV tag.

Arguments about precise numbers of killed

This is pathetic. Most Jews/Israelis accept this massacre took place (even Ben Gurion was appalled and later tried to kill Begin, who led Irgun. See Altalena). Does it really matter that much if 107 or 120 were murdered? We will never have the precise figure, so the article should simply state that fact, have some varying evidence, and that's it. I could quite easily call into question some of the above posters' impartiality given complaints about the trustworthiness of Palestinian academia - or can I call into question all statements and statistics provided on Palestinian groups and actions by all Jewish groups and organisations? No, thought not. Leave you politics and prejudice at the door. 86.15.169.220 12:56, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Arab or Palestinian?

The article says Palestinian when they are killed and Arab when they are doing the killing. Am I missing something, can someone clarify?

To my mind either Palestinian should not be used (as it meant Jewish person in the Mandate at the time) or it should be used consistently (for clarity to modern readers).

Anyone have any thoughts or additional information?

Request for Sanity

User Zero0000 repeatedly deletes my edits to this page, to include this page: http://www.hirhome.com/israel/deir-yassin.htm along with the already existing "Webpage opposing the massacre theses" in a sepearte heading in the external links section titled "Those Opposing the Massacre Thesis." The existence of those that oppose the theory that there was a massacre should not be a secret, and since the actual piece is well documented and draws on a lot of verifiable data, I do not understand what reason he has, other than he simply disagrees with the conclusion, to constantly be deleting this link. Help? Ryan4 14:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

User Ryan4 has been going around Wikipedia adding links to all the articles of amateur historian and propagandist Francisco Gil-White (who in real life is a psychologist). Either Ryan4 is actually Francisco Gil-White himself (he denies it) or he is a clone of Francisco Gil-White. The nature of Francisco Gil-White's site is essentially that of a private blog. He has collected his articles all together, given the collection a lovely name "Historical and Investigative Research", and now he wants to use Wikipedia to crank up his hit rate. That is not a role that Wikipedia is intended to play. As for the Deir Yassin article itself, it is a rant. There is no new evidence, no original thinking, nothing that provides anything at all which is not already better provided in the links we have already. If you want to read a proper account of the case against the massacre that we are supposedly keeping secret, read the article of Sid Zion. --Zero 15:53, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

For someone who is supposed to be a moderator, you seem incredibly incapable of moderating in a level headed, dispassionate manner. You have repeatedly accused me of being someone I am not, you throw around the terms 'amateur' and 'propagandist' along with 'blog' like blanket accusations that prove some kind of defect of character or lack of credible views / corroborated facts. I have noticed many links on wikipedia to alternative media sources that promote a theory or viewpoint other than the official line (especially to The Emperor's New Clothes) and thus the criteria for addding external links seems to me not that they agree 100% with the accepted viewpoint but that they contain factual documentation that can be verified. All the articles on both HIR and TENC, both of which are at least partly the work of Gil-White, are written so as to ensure that any claim is both footnoted and supported by at least one source. Most of these sources are the mainstream western press. 'Blogs' and 'rants' in my mind are 'opinion' that have nothing to do with footnoted sources. 'Propaganda' are documents spread by people with political agendas (usually supporting the status quo) that contain claims either purposely misleading or downright false, again, with no emphasis whatsoever on factual accuracy or reliance on reliable sources. I can only assume that you are either using these words because you have not actually read the articles, or because you find the conclusions threatening to your point of view and wish to slander anyone who tries to have them read by others. Will no one end this moderator's ovbious vendetta against a perfectly legitimate alternate theory of events? Ryan4 20:05, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a moderator, I'm an administrator. That gives me some additional capabilities but I don't normally use them in articles where I'm involved as an editor. And, yes, I have read a number of the articles of Francisco Gil-White including the Deir Yassin article. I know propagandistic rants when I see them, having seen very many. --Zero 01:19, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I would be interested in finding out exactly what the criteria are for becoming an administrator. I would hope that it would be a relatively open process, but that those chosen would have a calm disposition, a good writing style, a grasp of many topics and a scientific outlook. It seems you lack at least the latter. You claim that Gil-White is an 'amateur', yet aren't we all here at wikipedia? Shouldn't the point of an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit be that information does not flow, as it used to, from up on high, but is accessible to and provided by we, the people? The only criteria for including information or analysis, given this egalitarian position, should therefore be that the information is verifiable, and that the analysis is done in a rigorous, scientific way. That is to say - provide documentation, and provide a hypothesis that best fits that data. It should not matter whether the person providing that hypothsis is white, black, or, heaven forbid, a professor of psychology. Rather than resorting to ad hominem attacks, I would very much appreciate it if you could give at least one instance where Gil-White has made a factual mistake, or has made a claim that is not backed up. If you cannot, then I do not see what reason, other than a personal vendetta, you could possibly have for constantly checking the page and deleting the link I put there. Are there no other administrators that can play some kind of mediating role in this? Ryan4 03:11, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Dear Ryan4- please fix the link you have provided (unless it's just me who can't open it, in which case ignore this), so we can all see for ourselves what this is all about.
Dear Zero- PLEASE avoid using insulting remarks, which IMHO have no place here. The Deir Yassin article has more propaganda than Pravda, yet I don't think getting personal will do anyone much good. For the sake of us who are relatively new here- If you think that the afore-mentioned link is a load of **** (which it may well be, I don't know) -then give the *reasons*, rather than your personal opinion of the author.
Happy St. Patricks! -Sangil 09:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, most of us are amateurs, but we don't publish our own research here. That is forbidden. We report on the work of the professionals who have published their research in the standard fashion, and we cite them. As for your own effort, I can't see why I should be bothered with it but anyway finding errors of fact or unsupported claims is a triviality.
  • "A terrorist deliberately targets innocent civilians. Did the Irgun? No. Quite the contrary.". -- Such as when they set off a bomb in the Arab market of Haifa (July 25, 1938) killing 39 Arabs who were unlucky enough to be there. Apparently you don't know basic facts about the Irgun, but you want us to link to your article on it.
  • "The name Palestine was revived after the fall of the Ottoman Empire" -- In fact the name was in use for almost the whole period since Roman times, including during the Ottoman empire as you can find documented by Porath and others. Apparently you don't know basic facts about "Palestine" either.
  • "[8] The Jordanian daily newspaper Al Urdun, April 9, 1953." -- If you were a real historian and you were publishing in a serious place instead of just on your own web page, it would be regarded as serious misconduct to directly cite a primary source that you did not examine yourself.

--Zero 10:25, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Ryan4, if you don't log in we can all see where you are connected from. Another amazing coincidence that you are at the same institution as Francisco Gil-White, don't you think? --Zero 13:59, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I have never heard of any use of the term 'Palestine' since Roman times until the British Mandate. I am most curious to examine the reference given by this 'Porath' you mention, or any other reference you may be aware of. Any chance you can direct me to it?
-Sangil 21:24, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

removal of lebenese stamp

I don't think the stamp really belongs in the article. I mean, really what does it show that is relavent to the article? roughly the location of Deir Yassin I guess, but anything else?- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 10:48, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This stamp is too emotional. Christophe Greffe 18:02, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

The article is biased

Robin Hood 1212 13:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

do you have any examples of this bias?

Don't take info from the IDF

This makes the article pro-Israeli. Robin Hood 1212 13:43, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Nonsense. The article cites numerous sources, both Israeli and non-israeli. Isarig 14:03, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


Total Rewrite

I've rewritten the entire article and have renamed it to Battle of Deir Yassin, as it holds all the characteristics of a battle, and the title is a small part of the events themselves. The "massacre" will be a subcategory in the article. I've made sure that everything is sourced and uses many of the quotes already available within the article, but also gives them context and is cohesive enough to show a strict timeline of events, instead of a collection of quotes. Of course, there are things that can be expanded upon, for example the last two sections, and the source numbers are out of order but correspond correctly. I any case, I don't think they should be ordered until the article settles down enough, and I am sure that somebody will add other information very shortly.

Guy Montag 23:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Just a few random comments about the article as is stands now ( Unrelated to the name question; that is a separate issue):

  • as the article is now: it is difficult to know where to start... "everything is sourced" is used an excuse for including every self-serving statements there is from the perpetrators. The result is that if we are to believe this article, then the inhabitants of Deir Yassin must either have been complete idiots or totally suicidal. How else can one explain that they several times refused help from Arab militants, and then went on to attack Jews/Zionist, who were much better armed than they? Obviously, they wanted to die/be expelled...
  • just take a word like "claim" versus "report": use the search and find on the article and find who "claims", and who "reports". Like the sentence: "They (=people from Deir Yassin) are shooting at passing cars" is reported, but it is "a villager who claims that" she saw her mother and brother being shot.
  • Also: a "battle", but only 4 killed on the attackers side? More people have been killed from "friendly fire" than that.
  • very basic information which is missing from the article is:
    • an estimate of number of inhabitants of the village, (according to Deir Yassin it had 610 inhabitants in 1945, how was it in -48?)
    • an estimate of the number of attackers of the village. (First attack force was 132 Lehi/Irgun men, but how many were the "sizeable Palmach unit"?)
    • Also missing: of the dead villagers: How many were male? How many were women? Children?
  • ( Unrelated to the name issue: ) Why quote Abba Eban? Did he have any new or "inside information" on the issue?
  • in the "Deir Yassin's Importance to Jewish Forces"-section: the following apologies for breaking the peace pact makes absolutely no sense to me: "The pact was not recognized by the Haganah Command and was temporary in nature. For example, Abu Gosh also concluded a local peace pact, but was subsequently quietly barracked by Haganah forces because it overlooked a strategic position over a site planned for a military airport." Firstly, from what I understand it was not the Haganah Command (I assume they refer to a central command?) that broke the pact. The article states that it was the regional leadership who both made the pact and then broke it. The second sentence does not exemplify what it is supposed to exemplify. It is not breaking a pact if both parts of the pact agrees that (parts of) the pact is no longer valid. The Abu Gosh example is therefore simply quite irrelevant. (The Nazareth example is far more relevant: the city surrendered on the written condition that all civilians were allowed to stay. A day later they were ordered expelled (by General Laskov, who had co-signed the very agreement the day before.))
  • in the "Accounts of Battle and Aftermath" section: according to Uri Milstein, the reports on Deir Yassin that spurred the Palestinians into exile were "mostly fabricated or exaggerated by various elements on the Jewish side." (in: "No deportation, Evacuations", Hadashot, 1 January 1988.) Milsteins work is quoted extensively in the article, but this is for some reason missing..... Did I hear the word "cherry-picking"?
  • in the "Allegations of Mutilations and Rape"-section: I do not have the main books with me just now, so I´m quoting from memory; but all the eye-witness accounts that I have heard/read from the Arab side strongly underlined that there were no rapes committed. So the "Allegations of Mutilations and Rape" gives a wrong impression. (I think most will get the impression that these allegations came from the Arab side.) Actually, in the article now it looks as if the only allegations of rape comes from Lehi men (against IZL). (This would fit well with Millsteins view).
  • as to what the Arab broadcast said at the time: anybody with any knowledge of the socalled "broadcast controversy" (i.e about alleged broadcast on various Arab radio stations in 1948 urging the Palestinians to flee) knows that some supporters of Israel have a proven record of falsifying history. (I´m sorry, but there is simply no more diplomatic way of putting this. Please read e.g. Chapter 3, "Broadcasts", in "Blaming the victim" before you protest.) Allegations of what Arab broadcast said/did not say should be treated as such: allegations. (Printed newspaper reports is, ofcourse uncontroversial...well, mostly!: [4].)
  • And quoting a Nusseibeh on a Husseini, is, well, it seems like, well, perhaps like quoting Lehi men on IZL? (Actually, I frankly do not know much about the internal relationship between Lehi/IZL/Palmack. But the hostility between the Nusseibeh and the Husseini clans is famous). And in spite of the headline: where are the allegations of mutilation? What were claimed is the killing at point-blank range: and a sentence like "many were shot at close range, consistent with door-to-door fighting" could just as well have been: "many were shot at close range, consistent with being slaughtered."
  • that people "accepted" an order, or "accepted" the Geneva convention, does not mean that they followed it!

...and I haven´t even mentioned the sources of the massacre you have cut out/do not mention...That is a whole separate chapter. Regards, Huldra 16:42, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

well, I see that nobody has responded to this. If I do not get any answers (to e.g. to the apologies for breaking the peace pact in the "Deir Yassin's Importance to Jewish Forces"-section ..I will remove them as irrelevant. Regards, Huldra 04:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Battle???

Strongly suggest article title be reverted to "Deir Yassin Massacre" as that is the generally accepted term. Substituting "battle" frankly smacks of historical revisionism, in the perjoritive sense. Now this is a SAD ('sides are drawn') situation so it helps to remember Wiki is an encyclopedia and the event being addressed is already known by a certain name -- as tellingly posted elsewhere on this page, a Google search for
   "Battle of Deir Yassin" yields 103 results
   "Deir Yassin massacre" yields 27,200 results
People, be reasonable, our responsibility here is to respect and reflect the reality of the world we live in whether we agree with it or not.RomaC 07:18, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


Now Zionists want to cover up their crimes. They r Deir Yasin-deniers. :) Robin Hood 1212 03:16, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Do you actually have something constructive to add or was that it? Guy Montag 04:22, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

This event is known almost universally as the "Deir Yassin massacre" and so the move is not legitimate, just as a move from "Kfar Etzion massacre" to "Battle of Kfar Etzion" would not be legitimate. I will leave you to move the article back. --Ian Pitchford 07:55, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


These events have nothing to do with each other. In Kfar Etzion, most of the people where killed after the battle, in Deir Yassin, they were killed during heavy house to house fighting.Guy Montag 18:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

If this goes to mediation or arbitration the article will be restored to its original location at "Deir Yassin massacre". It'll save everyone a lot of trouble and annoyance if you move it now. Then we can discuss the content. --Ian Pitchford 20:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


Why don't you request a peer review if you are so sure. This is a neutral name for a battle that happened. A massacre is a premeditated mass murder of civilians. No evidence shows that there were killings of groups of people after the battle was over. The content is intrinsically tied to the name. Guy Montag 21:04, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

You're wrong about killings after the battle - but you've deleted the section and source confirming this from your version. I'm sure this was accidental. Basically, it doesn't matter what you or I or other Wikipedia editors think this event should be called. It is in fact known universally in the literature as the "Deir Yassin massacre" as a simple Google search or Google Book search will verify. Please move the article back or let me know if you would rather refer the issue for mediation or arbitration. --Ian Pitchford 07:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


Obviously I didn't include every quote available in the previous article, and deleted information that was vague, didn't have any context or were general statements of the pov of some eye witnesses after the fact of the battle. I didn't order the references for the pure fact that other information will undoubtably be included into the article, and I didn't follow any pretenses that what I wrote will either end the discussion or is so comprehensive that other sources need not be introduced. What I did is organize a cohesive string of events and bundled them with modern historical breakthroughs.

Historical evidence and studies that delve into the time period have found out new information regarding the battle, that refute earlier descriptions of "massacres". I've done enough research through secondary sources and historical documents that confirm such a view. Finally, please don't make argumentum ad google arguments, instead introduce facts that contradict my sources. Guy Montag 19:49, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

So, in your view this material you've deleted from the article, taken from a 2006 publication by Yoav Gelber, a noted Israeli historian (who is generally considered to be on the right), is "vague", "didn't have any context" or was "general"?
Although the Irgun and Lehi claimed subsequently that foreign combatants were present in the village all contemporary and later Arab testimonies, including those of the refugees themselves, as well as SHAI's Arab sources, confirm that the villagers were the only combatants present. Menachem Begin claimed in his memoirs that Iraqi troops were present in Deir Yassin, but these were in fact stationed in Ain Karim (Gelber, 2006, p. 311).


Your renaming of this article and deletion of reliable scholarly sources is a violation of the terms of your probation. Please move this article back to "Deir Yassin massacre" and then we can set about restoring the sources. --Ian Pitchford 22:04, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Why only Arab "massacres" r called "massacres" but Zionist ones r covered-up? Robin Hood 1212 21:32, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

You can of course dismiss it as argumentum ad google, but googeling for
"Battle of Deir Yassin" gives about 92 hits today, while it gave about 82 yesterday.
"Deir Yassin massacre" gives about 31 500 hits (same yesterday)
Oh, and: Deir Yassin-deniers gives about 828 hits ;-D Regards, Huldra 04:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

You are arguing that although it is a fallacious argument the numbers supposedly speak for themselves. The thing is, they do not and are inflated. Many of those 31 thousand are simply a part of an ungoing discussion of "there was a massacre" and "there wasn't a massacre," with both sides using the same terminology. Hence the fallaciousness of the google argument as the 31000 number includes the arguments of both sides and has nothing to do with the name. Interestingly enough, over time the numbers in google will even out. 92 today, 2000 in a couple of months. Give it a year and you will be complaining about argumentum ad google. Guy Montag 05:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

And y don't u call me an anti-Semite too and say that the massacre was a myth like all Zionists do? Those ppl r trying to portray themselves as victims, they even deny that Palestinians ever existed. I wonder who they r fighting in the WB and GS. Robin Hood 1212 04:51, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

The 1948 war began on May 15, the massacre occured in April

Robin Hood 1212 21:35, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

There are different phases of the 1948 war. Operation Nachson marks the beginning of the second phase. Guy Montag 22:34, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The vote on moving

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was corrupted vote due to votestaking. The move to Battle of Deir Yassin was unilateral, and can be challenged, as was done by this poll. It failed to recieve a consensus as the vote was effectively split 15-15 (12 back to original name, three to a different name). However, the voting was corrupted due to vote staking by Guy Montag in a late stage of the poll, see [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], all who opposed. The situation before the votestaking was that there was consensus for the move back. As such, I am going to move it back. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 03:03, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

Battle of Deir Yassin → Deir Yassin Massacre – Rationale: In scientific literature, Hebrew, etc know as the Deir Yassin Massacre … -- Kim van der Linde at venus 15:01, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

If we are to have the title truly reflect the content, why not "Battle of Guy Montag," as he is the principle in an article marked chiefly by a fierce fight to whitewash history. I usually don't get involved in this sort of thing but am very disappointed to see how SAD (sides are drawn) articles degenerate into POV wars.
Further, editors below were voting on a proposal which meant to euphemise a general usage term, Montag saw the vote going against the initiative, so declared the deadline extended. Suddenly, a host of "Oppose" votes began appearing. Survey the Talk Pages of these voters, they indicate a definite pro-Israeli bent. Special interest blocks and cabals are not what Wiki should be about -- the event in question has an established name, it is not for Wiki to change it, no matter our personal feelings. RomaC 09:36, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

It would seem to me that there were two phases. A battle of close combat and house to house fighting, which almost certainly involved the deaths of some civlians, then in the aftermath, the execution of prisoners. Similar things happened in the battle of stalingrad, and it is not called 'the stalingrad massacre'. No one contests that arab and israeli forces were engaged in combat in the village. The execution of prisoners could be called a massacre though, and could possibly have a seperate page. I favor leaving the article titled how it is as a more accurate description of a conflict with two sides armed and fighting. --Irongaard 18:59, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Clarification

Even with Montag recruiting people to vote whom he knows agree with his POV (and, as far as I know, no one doing the same in the opposite direction) the best he can get is something near a tie. Which leads to the question: why are we voting on whether to move the article back? Since Montag started this by whitewashing the article (deleting sourced information he didn't like) then moving the article without consensus, unless he has an overwhelming majority that the article should have been moved, I think we should go back to the status quo ante bellum -- put the article where it goes, and see if Montag can get overwhelming support for moving it here. Otherwise we reward his childish behavior. -Rjyanco 12:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[NB: Firefox was clipping the bottom of this page when I edited it, and Opera is changing some characters to & codes; sorry. -Rjyanco 12:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)]

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

CommentFor now that is irrelevent as you are using argumentum ad google. The only way to determine the name of an article is through its content, and when the content is not clear cut, it is best to use an npov title. Guy Montag 23:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Conclusion Well, it's been five days and the yeas outnumber the nays by 2:1.Homey 05:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC) Let's give this another 36 hours. Homey 05:27, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Oppose - both sides agree that it was a battle that turned into something more/worse. But nobody is asserting that the purpose of the attack was to kill people. Contrast this with Kfar Etzion massacre, in which people were killed after they surrendered, or Sabra and Shatila massacre where the "militia" went in with the express purpose of killing people. --Leifern 18:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean, nobody is asserting the purpose of the attack was to kill (innocent) people? Haven't you read that Lehi and other groups which participated in the attack are on record as having spoken about the desirability of a mass killing that would spread fear through the Palestinian Arab community?

Apart from which, a massacre is still a massacre whether it's premeditated or not. Gatoclass 18:34, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment Actually, if you've read the article, Gator, you've would have seen that it was raised during the planning stages that fighters and any civilians who didn't leave should be executed, but the commanders of both sides completely rejected the idea. Ra'anan later received approval from Irgun command in Jerusalem to inflate deaths from the battle for propaganda purposes. Guy Montag 04:16, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

It might not hurt to actually read the article and the sources; historians agree now that Lehi's bravado was a propaganda stunt aimed at scaring the Arabs. A massacre is, of course, a massacre, but attempts to call this event as such rest on a rather shaky basis. Pecher Talk 19:02, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
disciplinary action? So everytime an editor disagrees with you he should be disciplined? What kind of talk is that? Isarig 21:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I oppose the move, but disciplinary action is kinda harsh. --Leifern 21:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
The person responsible for the move is on probation for exactly this type of POV rearrangement of articles. --Ian Pitchford 03:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The article supports the conclusion that it was a battle during which civilians died, and the article also includes the arguments and evidence for and against the "massacre" theory, starting right in the first sentence. That is a fair approach. Whether there should be a compromise on "incident" can be determined if and when this POV proposal is rejected. 6SJ7 23:50, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose As per simple convention that articles perjorative terms should be restricted to the terms themselves. This article is not about the term, but about the battle/massacre, and as such, should not be titled in a deliberately inflammatory manner. Bibigon 02:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Comment. The article should conform to conventional usage. In addition to the extreme POV title change the deletion of scholarly sources is a very serious matter. --Ian Pitchford 02:58, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Was that directed at me? I don't believe I've ever edited this article. I certainly haven't deleted scholarly sources... Bibigon 04:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Please stop sabre rattling and assume good faith. If you feel that relevent information was left out you have every right to add it in, but please don't assume anything. I've added as much detail to the subject as I could and other editors have every right to add contextual information. Guy Montag 04:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Oppose as per Leifern. --DLandTALK 04:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose battle is less POV and just as plausible. Violently object to nom for introducing yet another political squabble into WP. Go edit articles on which you don't feel so strongly. - CrazyRussian talk/email 04:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose because the word "Battle" is in keeping with WP:NPOV whereas "Massacre" is a judgment of what happened when the Irgun, which was never shy about touting its doings such as the King David Hotel bombing or reprisal attacks (List of Irgun attacks during the 1930s in response to the Arabs' Great Uprising), has given an entirely different story, see below Talk:Battle of Deir Yassin#The Irgun's side of the story. Indeed, in the article below it's touted as an "Affair" but to call it a "massacre" while overlooking its context where many other real massacres of Jews were taking place is unfair and makes no sense. IZAK 05:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC):
  • Oppose even though I am very sympathetic to the idea that Wikipedia should use commonly-used names; I think "Battle of Deir Yassin" is a better name for an article about the totality of the event, which, was much more than a massacre, if there was a massacre at all.Anomalocaris 05:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose While I am not so sure about using "Battle of Deir Yassin", it is surely more neutral than "Massacre", plus this article refers to a wider set of events than what even the exponents of the "Massacre" refer to.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 05:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose per IZAK. --tickle me 13:03, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Support: Calling this incident a battle is both sad and disgusting. It is possible to support the State of Israel and, at the same time, acknowledge the incidents where Israeli policy and action has been reprehensible. As one user stated above, a massacre is a massacre regardless of which parties are involved. Peace in the Middle East. --(Mingus ah um 20:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC))
  • Oppose. Regardless of Google and apparently popular terminology, this Wikipedia must maintain NPOV. Given that the existence of a massacre at all is in rather serious question here, naming the article that violates said principle. Nysin 00:11, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Almost all sources agree that arabs were shooting at israelis and israelis were shooting at arabs. That's a battle, not a massacre. A compromise would be renaming it the Deir Yassin Incident, which would be somewhat unconventional, but NPOV. We could put a bit in beginning explaining that some sources use massacre and others use battle.
  • Support - Okay, since this poll may shortly close, I'm going to support the renaming of the article. Though I'd like to peruse the literature pertaining to it in more detail, my impression is that this is generally regarded as a massacre by reputable sources. And let's face it, who would know or care about "the battle of Deir Yassin" if not for its association with a notorious massacre?
  • ```Support``` - Anything else would be a sad joke, yet utterly predictable. Deuterium 10:34, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
The Yishuv itself condemned the massacre at the time, as did the Haganah leadership I believe, so if the Israeli leadership itself accepted its status as a crime, why shouldn't Wiki? Gatoclass 06:12, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

The thing is that it is absolutely not the case. 81% of the historical books don't have sources or cite secondary sources that don't have sources. Milstein is the most comprehensive composer of information, and he didn't call it a massacre.

The Israeli leadership did not accept its status as a crime as seen that the entire condemnation was used as a political motivated jab. It recanted and apologized years later. Guy Montag 18:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

The Irgun's side of the story

Reproduced in full below. Thank you. IZAK 05:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Official version from the Irgun at etzel.org.il

The day after the UN resolution of November 29, 1947, seven Jews were killed, including four passengers on a bus attacked by Arabs on the road to Jerusalem. The acts of hostility grew more frequent, and in December 1947, 184 Jews were killed throughout the country. In January 1948, the situation was particularly difficult. On February 1, a car bomb exploded in Hasolel Street (present-day Hahavatzelet Street) near the Palestine Post building. Three weeks later there was another catastrophe in Jerusalem. Three booby-trapped trucks positioned in Ben-Yehuda Street exploded, destroying four large buildings, killing 50 and injuring more than 100. On March 11, a car bomb exploded in the courtyard of the Jewish Agency building, killing 12 people, injuring 44, and causing great damage.

Arab acts of hostility had reached their peak by March, moreover, Arabs now controlled all the inter-urban routes. The road to Jerusalem was blocked, settlements in the Galilee and the Negev were also cut off and daily attacks were perpetrated on convoys. In the four months since the UN resolution, some 850 Jews had been killed throughout the country, most of them in Jerusalem or on the road to the city.

Operation Nachshon was launched on April 6, 1948, with the aim of opening up the road to Jerusalem. The village of Deir Yassin was included on the list of Arab villages to be occupied as part of that operation. Indeed, while fierce fighting was going on at Kastel, Arab reinforcements flooded onto the battlefield through Deir Yassin, which helped to drive back the Jewish occupying force.

When the Haganah command learned of the plan of the Irgun and Lehi to conquer Deir Yassin, David Shaltiel, Haganah Commander in Jerusalem, asked them to coordinate the timing of the operation with the scheduled renewed assault on Kastel. He despatched identical letters to Mordechai Raanan (Irgun Commander in Jerusalem) and Yehoshua Zetler (Lehi Commander in Jerusalem), in which he gave their operation his approval:

To: Shapira (code-name of Zetler)

From: District Commander

I have learned that you intend to carry out an operation against Deir Yassin. I would like to call your attention to the fact that the conquest and continued occupation of Deir Yassin is one of the stages in our overall plan. I have no objection to your carrying out the operation on condition that you are capable of holding on to it. If you are incapable of doing so, I caution you against blowing up the village, since this will lead to the flight of the inhabitants and subsequent occupation of the ruins and the abandoned homes by enemy forces. This will make things difficult rather than contributing to the general campaign, and reoccupation of the site will entail heavy casualties for our men. An additional argument I would like to cite is that if enemy forces are drawn to the place, this will disrupt the plan to establish an aerodrome there.

On April 2, 1948, the inhabitants of Deir Yassin began sniping at the Jewish Quarters of Bet Hakerem and Yefe Nof. According to reports by the Shai (Haganah Intelligence), fortifications were being constructed in the village and a large quantity of arms being stockpiled. Several days before the attack on Deir Yassin, the presence of foreign fighters was reported, including Iraqi soldiers and irregular forces. An Arab research study conducted at Bir Zeit University (near Ramallah) relates that the men of Deir Yassin took an active part in violent acts against Jewish targets and that many of the men of the village fought in the battle for Kastel, together with Abd-el-Kadr el-Husseini. The report also stated that trenches had been dug at the entry to the village, and that more than 100 men had been trained and equipped with rifles and Bren guns. A local guard force had been set up and 40 inhabitants guarded the village every night. (Knaana Sherif, The Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948 - Deir Yassin. Bir Zeit University, Documentation and Research Department 1987).

GOING INTO BATTLE

On Thursday, April 8, about 70 Irgun fighters assembled at the Etz Hayim base (at the entrance to Jerusalem). This was the first time that so large a number of underground fighters had gathered openly, without fear of British policemen or soldiers. The atmosphere was optimistic - after four months of attack, retaliation was finally in sight. The fact that two underground movements were acting together enhanced the sense of security and solidarity, and the password chosen was 'Fighting Solidarity' (Ahdut Lohemet).

Raanan, Commander of the Irgun in Jerusalem, opened the meeting and explained that the conquest of Deir Yassin had both military and political objectives. From the military viewpoint, the aim was not only to liberate the western quarters of Jerusalem from the threat of Deir Yassin, but finally to seize the initiative. It was essential to move from defence to attack and to transfer the fighting to enemy territory. The conquest would also raise the morale of the Jewish population of Jerusalem and restore their self-confidence.

Politically speaking, it would represent a change of approach and constitute a turning point in the war: no further retaliation operations, but from that point on conquest with the aim of holding on to an area. The Jewish people and the entire world would realize that the Jews were not going to give up Jerusalem and, if necessary, would take it by force. (It will be recalled that, according to the UN resolution, Jerusalem was to come under international rule). Raanan added that since the operation was an act of conquest and not of reprisal, the fighters had to avoid inflicting needless injury on Arabs. In particular, he cautioned against harming old people, women and children. Moreover, any Arab who surrendered, including combatants, was to be taken prisoner and not harmed in any way.

In order to prevent unnecessary casualties, it had been decided that the strike force would be preceded by an armored car equipped with a loudspeaker, which would enter the village ahead of the troops. The villagers would be informed that the village was surrounded by Irgun and Lehi fighters, and would be exhorted to leave for Ein Karem or to surrender. They would also be informed that the road to Ein Karem was open and safe.

At 2 a.m. the Irgun fighters, commanded by Ben-Zion Cohen (Giora), were driven from the Etz Hayim base to Bet Hakerem. The force moved into the wadi (riverbed), where the squads split up, each squad climbing up the terraced slope to its allotted field of action.

The Lehi unit assembled at Givat Shaul and proceeded from there towards the target. Some of the force advanced behind the armored car which was proceeding along the path towards the center of the village.

Close to 4:45 am, the village guards spotted suspicious movements. One of them called out in Arabic: 'Mahmoud'; an Irgun fighter, mishearing the cry, thought that someone had shouted the password 'Ahdut' (Solidarity) and responded with the second half of the password in Hebrew: 'Lohemet'. The Arabs opened fire and shooting commenced from all sides.

The armored car advanced along the path and, on reaching the outskirts of the village, encountered a trench and was forced to come to a halt. The loudspeaker was switched on and the message was read out. Heavy fire was directed at the armored car from the adjacent houses and the fighters trapped inside had to be rescued. Injuries were reported, and a first-aid unit set out from Givat Shaul towards the armored car.

The other units began their attack, but Arab resistance was strong, and every house became an armed fortress. Fierce fighting was conducted from house to house. Many of the attackers were injured in the first onslaught, including a number of commanders who had been advancing ahead of their units.

After the center of the village had been occupied, all the wounded were concentrated in one of the courtyards and ways were sought to evacuate them. It turned out that the road to Givat Shaul was impassable because of gunfire from the mukhtar's (local leader) house, which stood on a hilltop overlooking the area.

Since the fighting was taking place in a built-up area, the pace was slow, and both sides suffered heavy losses. In order to silence the source of gunfire, the fighters were forced to use hand-grenades, and in some cases even to blow up houses. There was firing from all sides and half the attackers were put out of action. On top of this, the remaining fighters suffered a shortage of ammunition.

A report on the course of the battle was transmitted by courier to headquarters at Givat Shaul. When word started coming in about the number of casualties and ammunition shortage, several Lehi people went to the Schneller camp and asked a Palmach unit to come to the attackers aid. After receiving the consent of the brigade HQ, the Palmach troops set out in an armored car, equipped with a machine-gun and a two-inch mortar. On arrival in the village, they fired several shells and machine-gun rounds at the mukhtar's house. At that very moment, without prior co-ordination with the Palmach, Yosef Avni charged and captured the mukhtar's house. With the mukhtar's house occupied, firing ceased and the occupation of the village was completed.

When the fighting was over, it was discovered that hundreds of villagers had retreated to Ein Karem, taking advantage of the fact that the road was open. Those who remained in the village surrendered and were taken prisoner. The prisoners, mostly women and children, were loaded onto trucks and taken to East Jerusalem, where they were handed over to their Arab brethren.

Deir Yassin - The Village After the Attack

Word of the occupation of Deir Yassin spread through the city, and was viewed positively by the Jews of Jerusalem. Not only could the Jewish residents of the western quarters now breath freely, but they felt proud to have finally taken the initiative. The capture of the village marked the completion of the breakthrough of Operation Nachshon, and instilled new hope in the hearts of Jerusalemites. The slogan 'Ahdut Lohemet', which had grabbed the attention of the Jewish community in Jerusalem, reflected the turning point in the response to Arab aggression. In the days that followed, crowds flocked to the Etz Hayim base to express their solidarity with the Irgun fighters.

FACTS AND COMMENTARIES

So much has been written and said about what happened at Deir Yassin that the battle waged on the morning of April 9 has become known as the 'Deir Yassin Massacre'. It is important to analyze the events and to distinguish between fact and fiction.

Massacre means the killing of defenceless people. The 1929 slaughter of the Jews of Hebron by Arabs in the middle of the night was a massacre. When Arab workers at the Haifa refinieries assailed their Jewish co-workers in February 1948, murdering more than 40 of them, a massacre can be said to have taken place. In both cases, the killings were premeditated. The brutal murder of settlers at Kfar Etzion by Arab Legion soldiers in May 1948, after the defenders had surrendered and were defenceless, was also a massacre.

But Deir Yassin?

Firstly, strict orders were given in advance to the fighters not to harm the elderly, women and children. It was also stated explicitly that any Arab who surrendered was to be taken prisoner.

Secondly, an unprecedented action took place at Deir Yassin - a loudspeaker was installed on an armored car to inform the population that the road to Ein Karem was open and safe, and that whoever left the village would not be harmed. The strike force was actually prepared to forfeit the surprise element of battle in order to issue these instructions and thus to prevent Arab civilian casualty.

The Arabs do not deny the use of a loudspeaker; indeed, an Arab League publication entitled "Israeli Aggression" states, inter alia:

"On the night of April 9, 1948, the peaceful Arab village of Deir Yassin was surprised by a loudspeaker, which called on the population to evacuate it immediately."

Thirdly, it is universally agreed that there was bitter fighting at Deir Yassin. More than 100 Arab fighters were well equipped and had large amounts of ammunition. The Arabs occupied fortified positions in stone buildings, while the attackers were exposed to enemy fire. The fierce gunfire directed from the houses forced the attackers to charge, throw grenades and, in several cases, to blow up houses. As a consequence, women and children were among the dead.

According to all the documents and testimonies, it is clear today that fewer than one hundred Arabs were killed at Deir Yassin, and not the 240 as published. Moreover, this was the first instance in the War of Independence where battle had taken place in a built-up area, and such fighting typically claims numerous victims. For the same reason, the number of Irgun and Lehi members injured by Arab fire was 35% of the force (5 dead and 35 wounded).

All the Arab casualties were killed in the course of the fighting. Villagers - men, women and children - who surrendered, were taken prisoner and came to no harm. When the firing ceased, they were transported by truck to East Jerusalem and handed over to their Arab brethren.

The Deir Yassin affair had a strong impact on the course of the War of Independence; the battle was summed up as follows in the "History of the War of Independence", prepared by the History Division of the IDF General Staff:

The Deir Yassin affair was publicized throughout the world as the 'Deir Yassin Massacre', causing great harm to the reputation of the Yishuv. All the Arab propaganda channels disseminated the story at the time, and continue to do so to the present day. But the battle indubitably served to expedite the collapse of the Arab hinterland in the period which followed. More than the deed itself, this was achieved by the publicity it received from Arab spokesmen. They wanted to demonstrate to their people the savagery of the Jews and to instill in them a spirit of religious fervor. In fact, however, they intimidated and alarmed them. They themselves now admit their mistake.

Hazen Nusseibeh, an editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service's Arabic news in 1948, was interviewed for the BBC television series "Israel and the Arabs: the 50-year conflict." He describes an encounter with Deir Yassin survivors and Palestinian leaders, including Hussein Khalidi, the secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

"I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story," recalled Nusseibeh, now living in Amman. He said, "We must make the most of this". So we wrote a press release stating that at Deir Yassin children were murdered, pregnant women were raped. All sorts of atrocities."

A Deir Yassin survivor, identified as Abu Mahmud, said the villagers protested at the time.

"We said, 'there was no rape.' Khalidi said, 'We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews'."


In an arlicle "Deir Yassin a casualty of guns and propaganda", by Paul Holmes (Reuters) (http://www.metimes.com/issue98-16/reg/deir.html) he interviewing Mohammed Radwan, who was a resident of Deir Yassi in 1948, and fought for several hours before ruing out of bullets.

"I know when I speak that God is up there and God knows the truth and God will not forgive the liars", said Radwan, who puts the number of villagers killed at 93, listed in his own handwriting. "There were no rapes. It's all lies. There were no pregnant women who were slit open. It was propaganda that... Arabs put out so Arab the armies would invade" he said. "They ended up expelling people from all of Palestine on the rumor of Deir Yassin."

In the book "War Without End", by Anton La Guardia (Thomas Dunne Books, N.Y. 2000) we find the following: "Just before Israel's 50th anniversary celebration, I went to Deir Yassin with Ayish Zeidan, known as Haj Ayish, who had lived in the village as a teenager.

'We heard shooting. My mother did not want us to look out of the window. I fled with my sister, but my mother and my other sisters could not make it. They hid in the cellar for four days and then ran away.'

He said he never believed that more than 110 people had died at Deir Yassin, and accused Arab leaders of exaggerating the atrocities.

'There had been no rape', he said. 'The Arab radio at the time talked of women being killed and raped, but this is not true. I believe that most of those who were killed were among the fighters and the women and children who helped the fighters.'"

Comments:

Discussion

Add any additional comments

Comment - it would seem rather pointless to rename this page "Deir Yassin massacre" when in fact almost none of the article deals with evidence of the massacre itself. The page would need to be extensively revised, with the massacre covered in much greater detail, for the title to be appropriate to the contents.

Whether the facts of the matter would support such a change, I'm not in a position to say as it's a long time since I read about this incident and I'd have to assure myself that its status as a massacre has been widely accepted by appropriate sources. My impression from past reading is that that is the case, but I'd want to confirm it to my satisfaction first. Gatoclass 05:39, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment It was considered a massacre by some polemecists before new evidence and interviews came out between the years of 1987-1997. The new information point to the fact that there was no clear cut defined massacre, but a complex set of deaths during a battle mixed with much hype and progaganda to inflate caulties for war and morale purposes. All the sources check out. Times have changed, new historical evidence has been found, interviews have been given and texts, contexts and backgrounds have been researched, and they are all listed in the article.

  • Just because the hebrew version has not caught up to this version does not make the hebrew version superior or more factual.
  • Everything written in this article is sourced. The flow of the sources simply do not support the evidence of a massacre. Other editors are free to add factual evidence supporting mass killing of unarmed civilians after the end of the battle. If no such evidence exists, or if this evidence is not compelling enough the article should stay right here.
  • The name of the article is intrinsically tied to the content of the article, and the article simply doesn't support such a clear cut name.
  • Allegations of a massacre are listed in the introduction.

Guy Montag 07:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment Either this article has to be renamed and expanded (as noted above, there is hardly anything about the massacre itself in the article) OR: a new article will be created, called the "Deir Yassin massacre". (I will later try to post a more detailed survey about what is lacking in this article, irregardless of name of article.) Also, according to Massacre: in Guatemala, the definition is: "A massacre shall be considered the execution of five or more people, in the same place, as part of the same operation and whose victims were in an indefensible state." And: "In Colombia, the term is applied to the murder of half a dozen or more at one time." Nowhere does it say that the killings have to take place after or outside a battle in order for it to be defined as a massacre. And does anybody seriously deny that at least 5 or 6 people in "an indefensible state" were killed at Deir Yassin? Or is there another "value scale" when it comes to Arabs? See also Munich Olympics massacre= 12 killed (+5 Black September members), Ma'alot massacre =21 killed, Passover massacre=30 killed. If this stay as it is (or is moved to the Deir Yassin incident, will the Munich Olympics massacre then become the Munich Olympics incident? Regards, Huldra 19:17, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment-According to that definition, any battle in a populated area is a massacre because civilians will undoubtably be killed. It must have strictual context or it simply becomes a polemical term used by one side against another. The definition of a massacre is when and why the victims were killed. Were they civilians killed accidently and without premedition during a battle or with premeditated orders during a cessation of hostilities or simply during an absense of hostilities? If there was no organization to their killing then it can't be catagorized as a massacre. Finally, all the examples you listed unequivecally fit the definition of a massacre because all targetted were non combatant civilians (some were sleeping children, others wedding goers) in peace time, hence I neither understand your reason nor see any compelling reason why you should support it out of some erreneously applied and unwarranted moral equivelence. Guy Montag 21:27, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Your "definition" of "massacre" is pure OR. Please quote some other than User:Guy Montag. (Btw, User:Huldra completely disagree with User:Guy Montag on his def. of "massacre", (e.g about the need to be "planned"), but that is really completely uninteresting.) Regards, Huldra 16:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and as such, it documents. It does not rewrite history, nor does it try to alter names of events. At least that is the ideal. As in this case, it is know under the Deir Yassin massacre, and as such, wikipedia should use that. If the insights in this have changed, well, it will start changing in the scholary literature, and we can start changing it when it has changed. Until that time, it should stay under Deir Yassin massacre. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 00:56, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment- I did not rewrite anything. Everything is from reputable sources. I simply updated the article with modern sources that were not appropriately used in the previous article. Who determines the scholarly literature? Google? I have written an article using historical sources, many of which were already present in the previous article and others that have only come out recently. If other editors believe that the article is missing information, by all means add some yourself, but the article in its current stage does not support the clear cut propogation of a massacre. If other editors actually have something to add to the article that brings up such information, then there would be a point to this discussion. As of now, I have chosen an npov title for a battle that happened between Arab irregulars and the IZL-Lehi paramilitary units within the village of Deir Yassin. hence, I urge everyone who believes that this article is incomplete to add their own sourced information, instead of sticking to obsolete titles and debunked sources. Guy Montag 02:20, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Your sources are not so "modern" Guy. They are mostly from a 1987 study by an Israeli university, and Uri Milstein's 1991 book. Benny Morris' book "Righteous Victims" is much more recent and his conclusions scarcely get a mention here.
What is more to the point though, is just how one-sided this article is. The story is told almost entirely from the Israeli POV, with numerous quotes from Israelis. Claims regarding the massacre itself are mostly confined to a single paragraph, which is then followed by several more sections of "counterclaims" and other material casting doubt on the massacre. Where Palestinians are quoted, they are mostly quoted when their comments support the Israeli case, such as the denials of rape.
I went back and looked at this page from a year ago and the article looked to be much more balanced then, with more quotes supporting the existence of the massacre, including from the Zionist leadership at the time, which itself condemned it. I think regardless of what this page ends up being called, it needs at the very least to have some balance restored. Gatoclass 04:58, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

No offense, but the previous article was a chaotic mishmash of out of context quotes, badly constructed sentences [some of which I wrote :)] and simply false information that after I did some research, made me question how they could even have gotten there. Take for example the Yiftach quote. In the previous article it had absolutely no context, and many other quotes that only discuss the pov of people who visited the area after the battle. Benny Morris doesn't actually use recent information, just rehashed claims by Catling and others, all debunked. But once again, you are free to add any information you believe will conform to npov. I never claimed that this article is complete, just that it is meticulously sourced and an improvement on the previous article. So far, I haven't seen any edits by others. Once again, instead of moving this article, I urge everyone to start editing it and when all the information is applied to come back here and discuss moving it, but not before. Guy Montag 08:04, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't intend to endorse the previous version, as I didn't in fact read it all, but just had a quick browse through it and noticed a lot of quotes about the massacre itself have gone missing in the current version.
My essential point is that the article as it stands is told almost entirely from the Israeli POV, or from the POV that there was no massacre. And I have my doubts that this is an accurate reflection of how this event is currently viewed by reputable sources. Because ultimately it's not about what you or I think, but what such sources have to say about the event that the article should reflect. Gatoclass 11:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Comment. Maybe this has already been fixed, but I disagree that the article is unbalanced. I think it would be beneficial if we add Morris' quote from RV that DY became such a legend because all sides benefitted from the hype. I'll try to dig it up if no one beats me to it. ←Humus sapiens ну? 09:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment Zionists always try to cover-up their crimes. Robin Hood 1212 16:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

File:Brokenrecord.jpg
I, Guy Montag, hereby award Robinhood the broken record barnstar for his tiredless efforts to expose "zionists who always cover up their crimes." in the Battle of Deir Yassin discussion page. Keep up the good work.


Conclusion: Well, it's been five days and the yeas outnumber the nays 2:1. Homey 05:18, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, its been three days and the vote started after a period of quiet when no discussion took place. I would give it another week. Guy Montag 05:22, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


Let's settle on four. The vote started on 8 July, it's now the 12th. We'll give it another 36 hours. Homey 05:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia works by consensus, not by voting. 2:1 is most certainly not a consensus. Pecher Talk 19:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
This page is listed at WP:RM, which gives normally 5 days, but is backlogged (and I am the main cleaner there at the moment).-- Kim van der Linde at venus 20:20, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Question. For the sake of process, should the "main cleaner" performing moves be proposing moves, and voting and commenting on them? Looks like a possible conflict of interest here. HGB 00:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

Media query related to this article, and to the dispute over the name of this article

Hi, I'm a journalist writing a story on how contentious topics in the Middle East are dealt with on Wikipedia. I stopped by the Deir Yassin article to see how Wikipedia handles it, and I see that here on the talk page you're in the middle of resolving a pretty fundamental issue...what to call the article! If anyone is willing to discuss Wikipedia's Middle East articles with me, please e-mail me with the "e-mail this user" function on my userpage. Thanks! Krinkle99 22:00, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Would you care to clarify a bit more, which newspaper for example? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 01:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree, this kinda sounds like some kind of spam.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 03:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
It's not spam. I'm honestly writing a story on Wikipedia's collaborative editing process, and would genuinely like to speak with anyone with experience editing Middle East-related articles. Regards, Krinkle99 13:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Sure, I accept that, but without a bit more information, I am not going to help out. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 13:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I e-mailed you, Kim, and if anyone else would like information about the story I'm doing, feel free to e-mail me. Krinkle99 14:49, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


Voting closed

Well, I think a clear consensus has been reached. Time to end the voting and get on with improving the actual article. Guy Montag 00:09, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I will do that later this evening. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 01:48, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
LOL, do you mean you're sufficiently univolved and impartial to close the vote? That's the joke of the day! Pecher Talk 21:06, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Completely Unwarranted Closing of the Vote

Kim,

You have completely corrupted the result of the vote to your own baised agenda.

Guy Montag 04:37, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

No, votestaking does that. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 04:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
So, a person can propose a move, and then when result turns out negatively, she can use the administrative powers that she happens to possess to cancel the vote? The person who makes the motion gets to decide when "corruption" has occurred? I have read that "Wikipedia is not a democracy", but whoever came up with that saying, I don't they meant that Wikipedia is a Soviet-style dictatorship. And I don't think it is, at the top, but a few of the lower-level apparatchiks don't appear to have gotten the memo. 6SJ7 05:05, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Kim, your actions here are completely unacceptable. You started this vote, so any claim from you that the vote didn't have legitimacy in the first place has absolutely no validity. Furthermore, even before the alleged corruption, there was no consensus for the move. It got to about 2:1 for the move at it's peak, which is below the standard generally used for consensus. So we have a vote which you initiated, which implies that you aknowledge the validity of the vote. That vote fails to achieve consensus for a move initially, so it is kept open as a result. The lack of consensus for a move becomes even clearer, so you then close it claiming corruption of the process? Then you somehow declare victory for the side which you support? How exactly does that work?
As you surely know, process matters on Wikipedia. Your actions here are completely out of process, and that is why I reverted your move. The fact that you are currently involved in an ArbComm case about an out of process move makes your actions here even more curious to me. Could you please explain your reasoning?
In the future, please try and build consensus for controversial edits, rather than unilaterally making edits which you know are not going to be acceptable to other editors. Bibigon 05:22, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Rrrrrrrrrigh. Now, could you please point out to us where Guy Montag -or anybody else, for that matter- build consensus for the move to "Battle of Deir Yassin" in the first place? Thank you. Regards, Huldra 06:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Guy Montag's behaviour is not the issue here. He may have also acted improperly; I don't know. It's not relevant to this particular move. This issue has since come to a vote, initiated by KimvdLinde, and the result was "No consensus" for the move back. If Kim's contention was that Guy Montag acted out of process, then she should have dealt with as such. She did not, instead choosing to start a poll, presumably indicating that she would try and build consensus for the move back. What was the purpose of the poll otherwise? If there was consensus, then Kim was going to move back, and if there wasn't consensus, then Kim has shown us that she was going to move back anyways. Why did we go through a process which apparently had no hope of ending with anything but KimvdLinde moving the article back? Bibigon 06:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Firstly: I cannot see that your allegation of going "through a process which apparently had no hope of ending with anything but KimvdLinde moving the article back" is correct. As I have tried to point out: *IF* the vote had showed a consensus for *not* moving the article back; then I cannot imagine that Kim would have moved the article. So to say (directly/indirectly) that the poll did not matter is simply incorrect, IMO. Secondly: I think you are both wrong...and right.... on the question of whether Guy Montag's behaviour is at issue here...clearly, we would not have been in this mess if he had not started it...on the other hand: he is now banned, so its time to move on (and undo the mess...). Thirdly: The article as it appears now is extremely one-sided, partly because information, (with proper sources), have been taken out of the article. Eg here: [14], the edit-line falsly claim that the inf. is reinserted elsewhere, but parts of the inf. was NEVER reinserted. Now, nowhere in the article is there any information about the theft of jewelry and money from the prisoners by the IZL and LHI men. (btw; to my knowledge it is uncontested that such theft took place, but you certainly cannot learn that from WP.) Also: events in the article which appear uncontested (like the shooting from the village at the beginning of the day) are in fact quite contested. (there are witnesses who say it never took place). I just haven´t bothered to add it, when I see that properly sourced information is removed -with false explanations- from the article. Regards, Huldra 07:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Responding only to the name issue, not the NPOV issues, since they are seperate... Votes such as the one Kim started have one of two results. Either a consensus exists for a change, or it doesn't. The nature of the lack of consensus is relevant to the action undertaken. If consensus exists, then the action is taken. If a consensus does not exist, be it through a mixed situation, or through a consensus opposed, then the result is identical, a lack of a move. Kim started a poll. The result of the poll was that a lack of consensus existed for a move. She undertook a move anyways. If she started a poll where her intention was to make a move unless a consensus existed against her, then she similarly acted improperly, because Wikipedia requires consensus to make edits, not a lack of consensus opposed to those edits.
Regarding Guy Montag's banned status, that is irrelevant to the validity of his move, and to the validity of Kim's move back. His move was either proper, or it wasn't. The fact that he is currently banned does not affect the propriety of his actions. It certainly doesn't affect the propriety of Kim's actions. Bibigon 08:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
First: regarding Guy Montag's banned status; I agree with you that the propriety of Kim's actions is not affected by Guy Montag's status. But I just do not understand your statement about "The fact that he is currently banned does not affect the propriety of his actions."...He was banned from this article because of his actions here, and then you argue this ban say nothing about "the propriety" of those actions?? My argument is obvious: do people get banned for for edits which have nothing unpropriety about them? I would have thought that the answer is "no" (at least if you do not contest the ban.)
Secondly: not answering the NPOV issues: that is the problem: nobody does. Anywhere. Look at my questions/comments under Talk:Battle_of_Deir_Yassin#Total_Rewrite. The whole article is now manipulated to reflect the "Battle.." version of the story. Even such a simple (and, to my knowledge, uncontested) statement like "The IZL and Lehi officers agreed to expel the inhabitants of Deir Yassin" has been cencored out of the article!
Finally, to the "real" issue: to me it seems like you are turning the whole argument on it´s head. Or do you actually believe that somebody who is in favour of moving Battle of Deir Yassin to Deir Yassin Massacre would not also be against moving Deir Yassin Massacre to Battle of Deir Yassin in the first place?? To me it looks as if your whole argument hinges on that those two moves are different, i.e. people will have different preferance w.r.t the title depending on whether you start with the "Battle.." version, or whether you start with the "Massacre.." version. I am of the opinion that when people have a preferance on one of the titles, A or B, then they will have that preferance, irregardless of whether the poll is about moving A ->B, or if it is about moving B->A. Do you disagree? And if that preferance is static for any one editor, then the result shows that there was no concensus for the move to the "Battle" version in the first place. (The story would of course have been completely different if GM actually had gotten consensus for his move in the first place. But he didn´t! And that is the whole point!) Regards, Huldra 10:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Kim, you both started the poll requesting the move from Battle to Massacre and then without consensus implemented the move you requested. Beyond the process issues 6SJ7 and Bibigon have described, you seem to have acted in a contradictory manner: the only viable argument aired so far to revert without consensus is that the preceeding move from massacre to battle was out-of-process. If one doesn't claim that, no other basis for such a revert has been presented here, and what you did then was not justified, and should not have occurred. If one does claim that the preceeding move was out-of-process, then you began the poll either in confusion, ignorance, or farcically: either you were or were not aware you harbored intentions to move the article back regardless of the poll results (otherwise, you acted without consensus, as others have pointed out). If you were, then it was a farce throughout, and borders on violating WP:POINT. Nysin 06:36, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Since when does a no consensus vote to move something back, (regardless of your groundless claim at votestaking) is considered to be a reason to move it back to the other name? The whole point of the vote was to decide whether to move it or not. You have overstepped the line here. Guy Montag 05:08, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

(Guy, what "consensus" did you seek before moving the article to "Battle of Deir Yassin" in the first place?).
My two cents on this issue - I am opposed to the holding of these "consensus" polls on controversial pages in any case. They should only be held when absolutely necessary, as a last resort, and even then their results should not necessarily be regarded as definitive. It's too easy for one party or the other to engage in a quiet bit of meatpuppetry on polls to get the result they desire.
More importantly, I think these polls tend to violate the guideline that Wiki is not an experiment in democracy. I quote: Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy or any other political system. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting. In difficult cases, straw polls may be conducted to help determine consensus, but are to be used with caution and not to be treated as binding votes.
The important thing to remember is that NPOV trumps consensus. It's NPOV we should be striving for, not some bogus consensus achieved by any particular cabal of POV editors.
To put it another way, I'd prefer to see issues resolved by discussion, commonsense and goodwill, rather than by resort to straw polls which can never be any guarantee of NPOV. Gatoclass 10:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't need consensus on moving the article. It hadn't been edited in months, a dead talk page, and needed incredible improvements and was stuck in a bad format. I worked to improve it and moved it with a rewrite per wikipedia encouraging editors to be bold. The name of the article reflected the content and was simply an npov way of describing a highly contentious topic instead of accepting the pov of one side. Instead of editing the topic, and inserting relevent data, an abusive administrator started a poll and when she didn't get her way she used her powers to push through her own agenda. As far as I see it, there is no cabal, but there is a flagrant violation of due process. Guy Montag 16:32, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't say there was a cabal, the point I was making is that the poll process is open to abuse - especially on topics where people have a significant emotional involvement.
As to your comments about the flaws on the page, it appears your edits were not considered appropriate as you now find yourself banned from further editing of this article. Perhaps it would have been more productive to discuss your proposed title change on the talk page first? Gatoclass 17:29, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

My ban is related to Kim having an axe to grind with editors who hold pro Israeli views, and not the content of the page. The closest thing I heard for my ban was "disruption" by placing a humorous barnstar on this talk page. Finally, there was no one to discuss the topic with. The article wasn't edited for months and all discussion was dead. When Ian finally began a discussion with me it was over content, and I consistently told him to insert whatever content he believes was left out. In the middle of this conversation, kim initiated a vote, and all discussion about content ended or was lost in the ton of other edits.

Through out, I have stated a simple thing, if you disagree with the content, edit the page neutrally and cite your sources.

Guy Montag 20:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


The initial renaming on July 29 ("massacre" to "battle") was committed without any attempt to solicit opinions, support or consensus, so isn't it backward that we should vote to move back an article that was moved improperly in the first place? RomaC 15:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Everyone can move an article and there are no rules against unileteral moves. This particular poll was about whether to move it back, and there was no consensus on moving it back so it stays as Battle of Deir Yassin. Guy Montag 16:32, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Everyone can move an article and there are no rules against unileteral moves.
Well then I guess there was nothing to stop Kim moving it back when her proposal failed to achieve a consensus, was there? Gatoclass 17:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes there is, its called the voting process. Anyone can move an article, but when it is submitted on requested moves it has to go through a consensus process. It did not reach consensus and by moving it, disregarding the vote breaks the rules. As it says,

"Discussion to find consensus is encouraged for page moves requested on this page. Requested moves may be implemented if there is a Wikipedia community consensus (generally 60% or more) supporting the moving of an article after five (5) days under discussion on the talk page of the article to be moved, or earlier at the discretion of an administrator."

So Kim is on very thin grounds here. She is already involved in an arbcom process relating to Israeli apartheid because she broke her role as a mediator and sided with users in the discussion who claim her views, and she has done the same here. Clear abuse of powers. Guy Montag 19:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Forgive me, but your argument sounds very much as if you believe that others need to establish consensus before making controversial edits, but you do not.RomaC 01:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

They could have moved it also, but instead they started a vote, and that has procedure with it. I didn't initiate any vote, I wanted a discussion and a peer review.

Guy Montag 18:23, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

On page moving.

The GNU Free Documentation License needs to preserve a history of modifications to a document, in this case this article. I just reverted a cut and paste page move. Sadly, the page move to Battle of Deir Yassin could've been cleanly reverted. Sadly, now the page really can't be moved to Deir Yassin massacre without an administrator to intervene. (Likely from Wikipedia:Requested moves) Again, please don't try to move pages by cutting and pasting text. We loose the valuable editing history. Kevin_b_er 07:01, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

it is sad wikipedia gives space to Arab propaganda proven false

The invention of this massacare is one of the highlights of Arab lies in order to attack Jews publicly and to maintain their fictional rights on the state of Israel. Wikipedia shouldn't give any even slight residue of entry to support their propaganda which is exploited as further excuse by terrorists. Very sad. Amoruso 18:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Well said! SoCalJustice 20:07, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia's policy on naming conflicts

I think this is the type of situation that Wikipedia:Naming conflict (originally developed by Ed Poor and myself) was written to resolve. The guideline states that "Wikipedians should not seek to determine who is "right" or "wrong", nor to attempt to impose a particular name for POV reasons. They should instead follow the procedure below to determine common usage on an objective basis." It sets out three key principles, the most important of which is "The most common use of a name takes precedence."

Note that the issue of POV naming is specifically excluded from consideration by the guideline - if a subject is particularly contentious, there will almost always be someone who disagrees with the article title. The guideline sets out the use of objective criteria, such as frequency of use, and discourages the use of subjective criteria, such as political acceptability.

The name "Battle of Deir Yassin" seems to be virtually unknown (only 81 Google hits) while "Deir Yassin massacre" seems to be much more widely used (21,100 Google hits - Wikipedia entries excluded in both cases). Using a novel term for a well-known historical incident seems to me to be a classic example of impermissible original research ("defining new terms"). We should use established and recognisable terms, not create new terms of our own. -- ChrisO 23:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The naming here both breaches the Naming Conventions and the Most Common Name rule in the Manual of Style. The only issue for me is Wikipedia rules. They are clear. Deir Yassin massacre is the name required. It is rather annoying when having set Wikipedia-wide policy we then allow individual pages to declare themselves independent republics and make up their own names that run against NC and MoS rules. The farce of off-the-wall makey-up Wikipedia namings strikes again, here. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 23:20, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree entirely. The problem is, how do we resolve this, since the proponents are blatantly ignoring policy to pursue their own POV agendas? I've posted a note at WP:AN#What to do if a move poll is determined by partisan reasons?. If you have any suggestions for where we go from here, please add them to the discussion! -- ChrisO 23:36, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
ChrisO, that was almost a valid point. Almost. The problem however is that this article is not about the Deir Yassin Massacre. It is about the Battle of Deir Yassin, and about the allegations of a massacre. Were this article about the Deir Yassin Masscre, and there was another faction asking that it be called say, the Deir Yassin Slaughter, or some other synonym, then you'd be absolutely correct. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. The dispute isn't centered around what to call this, but what the article is about in the first place. Good thinking however. Bibigon 04:50, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I have to call an end to the shenanagins here. The article I wrote is not specifically about the alleged massacre, but about the battle with the allegations of mass killings as a subarticle. For example, Tiananmen Square massacre is redirected to Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 precicely because there is more to the events than the Chinese killing students.Unless every mainstream historian agrees the Lehi marched in without fighting to Deir Yassin, rounded up all the civilians and shot them, then I consider this to be a valid name because people from both sides were in a state of "Armed fighting; combat" It isn't that difficult to understand that I am simply adding context.

Guy Montag 00:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This article is an account of a battle, not a massacre. Battle naming conventions were established to deal with names of battles (eg Bull Run/Manassas), not whether they were battles or skirmishes or whatever else. --Jumbo 04:01, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The article is an account of an engagement at Deir Yassin. The problem that we face is that almost nobody calls that engagement a "battle", any more than they call the engagement at Srebrenica in July 1995 a "battle". Wikipedia policy compels us to use the most common name, not invent our own. -- ChrisO 07:05, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Chris, your comparison to Srebrenica Massacre is less than ideal because there doesn't appear to be any real debate in that case about whether a massacre took place or not. The ICTY ruled on it, and in general, it does not appear to be disputed. In this case, the dispute over whetehr it was a massacre is real, current, and lively. There has been no "official" finding of it being a massacre, nobody with the standing of the ICTY has ruled on the matter. If you want an article on "Deir Yassin Massacre", then that's fine, as long as that article describes the term "Deir Yassin Massacre", not the events of the battle and alleged of massacre. The google search is a good proxy to determine if a term is common enough to warrant an entry. I think "Deir Yassin Massacre" probably passes that threshold. However, this article is not about the term. It is about the event itself.
As an aside, arguments based around simply referencing other Wikipedia articles are generally quite weak and do not hold much water. The addage of "two wrongs don't make a right" is the simple reason why. Wikipedia is currently a work in progress, and as such, there is no reason to believe that the Srebrenica Massacre article is in particularly good shape(And in fact it's not. Almost none of the text is sourced, and there entire article is essentially one giant WP:NOR violation it seems. That article is in very bad shape...) The fact that another article may exibit the same flaw(which in this particular case is not what's going on) doesn't mean that we should ignore how Wikipedia should be structured, and instead focus on how it is structured. Many articles, especially the disputed ones which are most likely to be referenced as comps to this case, are in pretty bad shape regarding Wikipedia rules.
Finally, the other problem with this method of argumentation is that it is subject to other examples on Wikipedia suggesting a different "precedent." For example, the Battle of Jenin article; the term "Jenin Massacre" is four times more common than "Battle of Jenin." In that article, the determination was reached that because the evidence of a massacre was so weak, and in fact, the UN had issued a finding that there was no evidence of a massacre, that the article should be called "Battle of Jenin" instead of the more common, but far less NPOV term. Not that the Battle of Jenin article makes me right either, just that there are other examples supporting a name like "Battle of Deir Yassin." Bibigon 07:47, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
"Battle of Jenin" gets 5 results from Google Books, "Jenin Massacre" gets 10 results, but it is worth noting that at least four of those are denials of the term. Hardly as conclusive as the search below. - FrancisTyers · 12:08, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Well?

So, when is this page going to be moved back? -- Dissident (Talk) 03:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

When a consensus is reached that it should be moved back. Isarig 04:51, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
That's disingenuous as there never was a consensus to move it here in the first place. I'm seriously thinking about starting a RfAr over this. -- Dissident (Talk) 05:11, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Please do if you feel it is appropriate. However, your RfAr would probably be rejected on two counts. First, there have probably not been adequate steps taken towards other forms of dispute resolution yet, such as a mediation request, at least not that I'm aware of. Second, RfArs are used to determine if users have acted inappropriately. They are not to settle content disputes such as what the name of an article should be. While it seems likely that Kim would be reprimanded by a RfAr should it be accepted, I don't see what purpose that would serve at this point. However, if you feel it is appropriate, then please do so. Bibigon 06:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The issue of consensus is actually not entirely relevant to this situation. In particular, I quote WP:CON: "It is assumed that editors working toward consensus are pursuing a consensus that is consistent with Wikipedia's basic policies and principles - especially the neutral point of view (NPOV). At times, a group of editors may be able to, through persistence, numbers, and organization, overwhelm well-meaning editors and generate widespread support among the editors of a given article for a version of the article that is inaccurate, libelous, or not neutral, e.g. giving undue weight to a specific point of view. This is not a consensus." This is exactly what has happened in this case; the current article name violates multiple fundamental policies, including WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. No consensus can override basic policies - they're non-negotiable and not dependent on voting.
I certainly think mediation could be appropriate, though I note that it requires the participants to be acting in good faith. I propose instead to do a short exercise in identifying and inviting agreement on a set of principles applicable to this article, a little similar to the way that the Arbitration Committee's workshops operate. I'll put this at Talk:Battle of Deir Yassin/Workshop later on today. -- ChrisO 07:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I fail to see how the article title is a violation of WP:NPOV. Is there a WP:COMMON SENSE policy in existence? Regardless of what one side or another calls the encounter, clearly it was a battle between armed forces acting under military command and not a massacre in any realistic sense, of which history provides a lamentable plenitude of examples to draw upon for comparison. --Jumbo 08:19, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Please consult the materials referenced under the "Wikipedia's policy on naming conflicts" section above. Wikipedians are editors not historians, if you try thinking that way it may help. Editors do their best when disinterested, hardly the environment here and I would imagine that is why there is so much frustration evident on this page! RomaC 08:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I read the materials, but with respect, that does not refer to the naming of conflicts, but naming conflicts. The engagement was clearly a battle, being a conventional armed conflict between two military forces over a geographical feature. This article describes that battle. Similarities to undoubted massacres are few and disputed. Referring to a battle as a massacre, especially in the context of a half century of propaganda is POV in the extreme. I suggest that there be two articles, one describing the battle and the other the deaths of civilians which formed a part of the events as well as the various claims by both sides. --Jumbo 10:20, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Move closure

User:KimvdLinde submitted her move closure for review at the administrators' noticeboard. She was criticized for closing a move she was involved in rather than having an uninvolved admin do it. I am an uninvolved admin with some experience in move requests and no axe to grind in Middle East issues. I've spent some time reviewing this case and discussing it with other admins at WP:ANI#Battle of Deir Yassin/Deir Yassin massacre: move poll closure review requested. Here is my closure analysis.

The article was created at Deir Yassin massacre on 4 August 2002. It remained there until 29 June 2006 when User:Guy Montag moved it. There was clearly no consensus for the move at the time and a subsequent poll failed to gain consensus for the new title, despite selective soliciting of votes by Guy. Thus, I'm moving the article back to its original title. This is a procedural administrative action, I'm not very well informed on the issue itself and I don't feel confident in making a material judgment on the best title. You should feel free to continue discussion and try to reach a rough consensus on the best title. Haukur 09:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The vote was not a referendum on the new name, but to whether to move it back to Deir Yassin Massacre. It received no consensus on that vote, not what kim made up to get her way. Guy Montag 20:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

So if Kim had instead posed the question "Do you support Guy Montag's renaming of the article" there would you have then accepted that the lack of consensus means your move should be reversed? I doubt it. You are arguing a technicality - the article had the same name for four years, you unilaterally renamed it without any support and there is no conensus for your name change. Homey 20:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Keep you doubts and theoretics to yourself along with the twisted interpertation of the flagrant violation of Kim's admin powers. And in fact you are wrong, there is no consensus to move it back, not on me moving the article, something there are no rules against. Guy Montag 22:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The fact that the article persisted for four years with a blatantly inaccurate and POV name is a black mark against Wikipedia, not a mark in favor of maintaining that name. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 21:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
So the question I have now pertains to something that ChrisO quoted above from WP:CON: "It is assumed that editors working toward consensus are pursuing a consensus that is consistent with Wikipedia's basic policies and principles - especially the neutral point of view (NPOV). At times, a group of editors may be able to, through persistence, numbers, and organization, overwhelm well-meaning editors and generate widespread support among the editors of a given article for a version of the article that is inaccurate, libelous, or not neutral, e.g. giving undue weight to a specific point of view. This is not a consensus."
I believe the current name massacre is a clear case of this, hitting the trifecta of being inaccurate, libelous, and not neutral. Given that the article not about about the massacre, but about the battle and the massacre, the curren version is inaccurate. Given that that the title asserts the existence of a massacre which is heavily disputed, it is libelous. And given that only one POV believes it was a massacre, it is a neutrality violation. I feel fairly confident that this article violates these principles.
ChrisO, since you are the one who quoted this section, presumably implying that if an editor sees that occuring, they can ignore a lack of consensus, could you suggest to me a course of action consistent with that quotation and that belief? Bibigon 11:37, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be any dispute that the engagement was a battle in the conventional sense of military forces in conflict. The dispute is over what to call the article. --Jumbo 11:44, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Bibi, don't worry, I'll do that later today in an open workshop where we can work through the policies involved. It'll be at Talk:Deir Yassin massacre/Workshop - I'll post here when I've got the thing started. -- ChrisO 13:00, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

This isn't about "a number of editors", this is about the most common name in the English language. Google books says that is "Deir Yassin massacre" by quite a wide margin. Indeed I'd never heard of the "Battle of Deir Yassin" until this farcial move war. The name is not libellous, that is absurd. If you are saying the name is not neutral because it doesn't conform to your POV then that is also irrelevant. As for inaccurate, well I can't comment but I suspect that considering there are 152 books results, many from reputable publishers that you are wrong on this count as well. - FrancisTyers · 12:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

And 19 for the alternate spelling "Dir Yassin". The "Battle of D[e]ir Yassin" has one hit a piece for each spelling. - FrancisTyers · 12:03, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I hadn't heard of this incident until today, but browsing through the results on Google Books, it seems that calling it a massacre was a propaganda campaign, one with important results, as a great number of Palestinians fled their homes in panic, with results we see continuing to this day. --Jumbo 12:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Do you have a cite for that? Wikipedia can only exist to reflect and summarise sources. If you believe this is propoganda, then publish your theory, have it accepted by scholars, and then independent editors can summarise that change on Wikipedia. Until then your opinion must remain your opinion, and Wikipedia must reflect current scholarship. Hiding Talk 12:22, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, cites on Google Books are easily obtained:
...and a great many more. --Jumbo 12:52, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Deir Yassin massacre#Accounts_of_battle_and_aftermath cites several sources stating such things as "I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published, and so that Arabs would panic", as well as a subsection depecting counter-claims. Whilst the article doesn't necessarily have sources already cited which support without OR the term "propaganda", they support what might be plausibly meant by propaganda. Nysin 12:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The issue of whether or not it's a "propaganda name" isn't actually relevant to deciding where the article should go - I'll explain this further in an open workshop on the issues which I'll open later today. -- ChrisO 13:00, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue. My whole point is it's not about the most common name in the English language. Why? Because that's to decide what to call an article on a given subject. What I'm getting at is that this article isn't about the Deir Yassin Massacre, it's about the Battle Of Deir Yassin and the allegations of a massacre. There was a battle, right? And there was possibly a massacre. This article is about both the battle and the alleged massacre, not just about the massacre. That's why searching Google is a poorly thought out idea. They are two different subjects, and the fact that Deir Yassin Massacre is more common has no bearing on what this article should be called. Naming conventions are for deciding between Deir Yassin Massacre or Massacre of Deir Yassin or something, not for deducing what the article is about in the first place. That's why it is inaccurate. It simply does not describe the what the article is about. Google searching here is somewhat akin to making the claim that the article on the Pacific War should be renamed "Pearl Harbor" because "Pearl Harbor" has more Google hits. Well, yes, it does have more hits, and it's a more common term, and Pearl Harbor was part of the Pacific War, but at the same time, it's still not what the article is about. It just isn't. The alleged massacre was only a part of the battle. It wasn't the whole battle. I'm not opposed to having an article on the Deir Yassin Massacre, but if you read the text of the article, this isn't it.
It is not neutral because it does not conform to WP:NPOV. It's not my point of view -- my point of view is irrelevant, as you rightly pointed out. It's the point of view of those sources who dispute there was a massacre. The title currently gives only the POV of those alleging it was a massacre. That's the substance of the NPOV policy. Giving all relevant points of view. The current title only gives one point of view. Clear? Bibigon 12:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Both titles give only one POV, and the fact that there was a military engagement with fire exchanged on both sides doesn't preclude describing the incident as a massacre (compare Srebrenica massacre). The question is which title should be selected and on what grounds. This is an issue which has come up before in other articles (Republic of Macedonia and Sea of Japan are very good cases in point), and it's addressed explicitly in Wikipedia:Naming conflict. I'll discuss it further in the workshop on this article that I'll be starting tonight. -- ChrisO 12:56, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm wondering how you could implicitly describe Srebenica as a battle. There doesn't seem to be any significant view that it was anything other than a massacre. OTOH, this incident clearly was a battle, and the term massacre was used afterwards for propaganda purposes, describing the civilian deaths which occurred during (and possibly after) the battle itself. You are trying to lump the battle and the massacre into one event. --Jumbo 13:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
My point is simply that a battle doesn't ordinarily involve a massacre, but a massacre does often involve a battle (generally the victors taking revenge on the defeated). The mere fact that fighting occurs before or during a massacre doesn't automatically mean that the term "battle" should be preferred to "massacre". -- ChrisO 13:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm saying that the battle is one event, the massacre another. Certainly there is a relationship between them, but you can't say that they are the same thing. This article, for instance, concerns the battle, and the massacre is a section of the article, an important part, to be sure, but hardly the whole thing. You do see what I'm getting at, don't you? --Jumbo 13:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I never made the claim that "Battle of Deir Yassin" doesn't also suffer from a NPOV issue. I was pointing out that "Deir Yassin Massacre" certainly does. I also believe however that "Battle" is significantly less POV than "Massacre." It's quite possible however that neither one is acceptable.
Also, if you insist on comparing this to other articles(which as I mentioned above, is not a particularly solid form of evidence on Wiki), then could you please also mention why the Battle of Jenin 2002 page is called a battle, not a massacre, when the "massacre" title has more google hits. I believe that case is far more comperable to this than the Srebrenica massacre case, due to the fact that the Srebrenica massacre article does not describe a battle and a possible massacre. It just describes a massacre. The Battle of Jenin is much more similar to Deir Yassin, as both are about battles, and alleged massacres. Bibigon 13:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Google Books gives 31200 for "Pacific War" and 4960 for "Pearl Harbour". The Armenian Genocide is hotly disputed as a "propaganda term", we still have the article at that instead of "Ottoman Armenian relocations because it is the most common name in the English language. - FrancisTyers · 12:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
My apologies for using the English spelling there. 149000 for Pearl Harbor, 465000 for Pacific War. - FrancisTyers · 13:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I searched the words "Deir Yassin" on both the BBCNews.com website and the NY Times website. The phrase "massacre at Deir Yassin" is very common. "Battle of Deir Yassin" is so far non-existent. On any page where "Deir Yassin" is mentioned, the word "massacre" also frequently appears; far more often than the word 'battle' does. It is not POV to title the article using the phrase that is in common usage. It IS POV to attempt to protect a side in this conflict by cesoring the usage of a word associated with what happened at Deir Yassin. [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23]
massacre of Arabs by Jewish extremists in Deir Yassin [24] His Excellency... 15:54, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The Armenian Genocide may be disputed, but it is not only the common name for the event, but a genocide as a matter of historical fact. Anomalocaris 20:44, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Who says it wasn't a massacre?

Actually, I'm still waiting for someone to post a definitive statement from a reputable source claiming that there was no massacre. I've had the opportunity to do a little more reading about this matter lately and it appears to me the only argument is about the scale and enormity of the massacre, not about whether one took place.

For example, Meir Pail, Commander of the Haganah SOU, gave eyewitness testimony that "I saw twenty to twenty-five men stood up by the wall of the quarry and shot". How can you argue with eyewitness testimony from a Jewish commander?

Pail also testified that he saw women and children shot in their own homes. Gatoclass 16:22, 18 July 2006 (UTC)



Gator,

You are grasping at straws here. First of all, Pail was a militant left wing anti Irgunist and later member of the fringe left wing Moked faction in the Communist Party. He had as much reason to libel the Irgun as the Arab forces. Secondly, no on remembers seeing him anywhere during the battle. In contrast to Pa'il's claim of a dramatic confrontation between himself the IZL and Lehi men, the veterans of the battle interviewed by Milstein, including Yehoshua Zettler, Mordechai Ra'anan, Moshe Barzili, Yehuda Lapidot, Patchia Zalvensky, and Moshe Idelstein, all said that Pa'il was not at Deir Yassin and that it was inconceivable he could have been there without their knowledge. Nor is there any evidence from Haganah sources indicating that Pa'il was present; the statements given by David Shaltiel, Zalman Meret, Zion Eldad, and Yeshurun Schiff do not mention Pa'il by name or by either of his code names, "Avraham" and "Ram." The Haganah's Moshe Eren and Mordechai Gihon, who were at Deir Yassin and who knew Pa'il personally at the time, said they did not see him there. Yehoshua Arieli, who supervised the burials, stated that he did not see Pa'il there. Shlomo Havilov, the Haganah's commander for western Jerusalem, who spent the night of April 9 in Givat Shaul, stated: "I did not see Meir Pa'il there. I knew him well. If he had been there I would remember him." Milstein, p.274 (interviews with Yehoshua Zettler, Mordechai Ra'anan, Moshe Barzili, Yehuda Lapidot, Patchia Zalivensky, Moshe Idelstein, Moshe Eren, Shlomo Havilov, Yehoshua Arieli); Testimonies of David Shaltiel, Zalman Meret, Zion Eldad, and Yeshurun Schiff, MZ.

I actually did research before I wrote the article, so your miraculous breakthroughs are long known and disredited or at least suspicious enough to warrant debate.

Guy Montag 21:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

You describe Pail as a "militant...anti-Irgunist" but given that Irgun was widely regarded as a terrorist group, even amongst its fellow Zionists, that seems to me to be more of a recommendation than a criticism. However, I notice that you seem to be quite prepared to give credence to statements by Irgun and Lehi operatives who were actually accused of the massacre, whilst at the same time denigrating Pail's testimony. A slight double standard there, don't you think? Gatoclass 23:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

It was regarded as a terrorist group by the British and it was ideologically opposed to militant socialist organizations, one of which was the Labour Zionists. But many other Zionists, such as the General Zionists, regarded them as freedom fighters, and although the Labour Zionists dominated the Yishuv, General Zionists were in the majority.

Anyways, there was cooperation between both groups during the 1948 War, despite their previous competition. Some ideological individuals were habitually set against the Irgun, Pail, who was one of those militant leftists, was in a unit aimed at combatting "dissidents" before the war, and anything he has to say has to be filtered through the fact that throughout his career he opposed the two groups, his account is widely contradictory to everyone present, and everyone, including his Haganah commanders deny seeing him during the battle. I am simply following the policy of not citing fringe unreliable sources. A militant "anti dissident" who has every motivation to libel and who can't verify his testimony qualifies as a fringe source.

Read the article.

Guy Montag 23:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Part of the reason he "can't verify his testimony", of course, is because the photographic record he took of the victims was impounded by the Yishuv and has not seen the light of day since, 60 years after the event.

Oh, and I notice you didn't respond to my comments about your reliance on testimony from the very men who were accused of committing the massacre. Gatoclass 03:29, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Gator,

1.) There were Haganah men present, there were Lehi and IZL men present. I used all the information available to construct a picture of the events: Palestinian villagers, Haganah sources, IZL and Lehi interviews conducted by milstein and others. Do you actually have corraborating evidence from people who were there to claim a massacre or just a collection of random officials who were present afterwards and constructed their own ideas of events based on their prejudices and preconceived notions?

2)."The enormity of the massacre"? You are using preconceived circular arguments. There was a battle where civilians died. It is up to you to actually prove that civilians or prisoners were executed. If you cannot provide irreputable evidence, than there is enough doubt for an alternative more probable explanation: that it was simply a battle between Arab irregulars and Zionist militias that had civilians caught it a crossfire. The article lists several such instances. For example, the homes acting as fortified bunkers, the 40 town guards stationed every night in the village, the Iraqi soldiers, the Arab reinforcements that came from Motza and Ein Kerem. The fighters who dressed as women to blend in as non combatants, and snipers who shot from civilian houses. These urban tactics are repeated in urban guerrilla tactics throughout history.

I don't know why you so frantically insist on bringing up an unqualified source, he can't corroborate any of his statemets, especially since they wildly contradict everyone who was present and his Haganah commanders.

Mordechai Ra'anan, the IZL commander in Deir Yassin, first used the figure 254 that stuck with the press. In an interview years later, Ra'anan was asked how he arrived at that number, which he gave to the media a few hours after the battle. He replied:

On that day I did not know, could not have known, how many Arabs had been killed. No one counted the bodies. People estimated that 100 or 150 people were killed. I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published, and so that the Arabs would panic not only in Jerusalem but across the country, and this goal was accomplished. Reporters, journalists, researchers and historians treat it as if it were an established fact requiring no investigation, and nobody bothered to check what the true figure was. Milstein, pp.268-269 interview with Mordechai Ra'anan

Pa'il said that his report to Galili described "the massacre of 250 people." (Milstein, p.269 (Testimony of Meir Pa'il)). David Cohen, Pa'il's commander in Haganah intelligence, later recalled that Pa'il had used the number 254 in his report on the battle. "This number seemed to us exaggerated, and we asked him how he arrived at it," Cohen said. "Pa'il replied, 'I didn't count them all, but there is a report straight from the horse's mouth'," referring to Ra'anan. Writing in Yediot Ahronot in 1972, Pa'il repeated the claim that 254 were killed.[25] The fact that Pa'il used the false Ra'anan figure, and that he apparently admitted to Cohen that he himself did not count the bodies, raises further questions as to how close Pa'il was to the scene, and the reliability of his claims about what occurred. His testimony says that he saw Lehi and IZL men slaughtering men and women while they slept. Needless to say, the notion that the Arab residents would have been sleeping in the midst of a huge battle hardly seems plausible. It is also difficult to understand how Pa'il could have seen the "slaughtering" without actually being present inside the houses.

As for the identity of the photographer, Pa'il has consistently refused to name him, saying he "is fearful."[26] Pa'il claimed that the photographer took "36 pictures, some during the battle, some after."[27] according to Pa'il, he submitted the photos, together with a report he compiled about the event, to his Haganah superior, Yisrael Galili, and they are presently stored as classified material in the Israel Defense Forces Archives. Galili later confirmed that he received a report and photographs from Pa'il, but could not recall precisely what was in the report or what the photos showed.[28] Pa'il's claim that some of the photos revealed an actual massacre in progress has been disputed by the IDF Archives, which, while not releasing the report or the photographs, has said that the photographs show dead bodies, without any way of knowing how or when they were killed.[29]

  • ^ Milstein, p.273 (interview with David Cohen, 18 July 1987). Pa'il used the figure in Yediot Ahronot, 20 April 1972. But in 1989, he wrote that in his report to Galili, "the number of those murdered was not mentioned at all, since we did not then know the number." (Uri Milstein, "The Speech Which Was Not Given" [Hebrew], Ha'aretz, 10 March 1989, p. 15.)
  • ^ Pa'il quoted in Yerach Tal, "There Was No Massacre There" [Hebrew], Ha'aretz, 8 September 1991, pp.2-3.
  • ^ Ha'aretz, 8 September 1991; Miberg, op.cit.
  • ^ Ha'aretz, 8 September 1991; Miberg, op.cit.
  • ^ Milstein, p.275.

Poof! there goes the conspiracy theories.

Guy Montag 17:24, 19 July 2006 (UTC)




Actually, part of the answer can be found here at the pre-rewrite article under Modern debate:
In 1969, the Israeli Foreign Ministry published a pamphlet “Background Notes on Current Themes: Deir Yassin” in English denying that there had been a massacre at Deir Yassin, and calling the story "part of a package of fairy tales, for export and home consumption". The pamphlet led to a series of derivative articles giving the same message, especially in America. Menachem Begin's Herut party disseminated a Hebrew translation in Israel, causing a widespread but largely non-public debate within the Israeli establishment. Several former leaders of the Hagannah demanded that the pamphlet be withdrawn on account of its inaccuracy, but the Foreign Ministry explained that "While our intention and desire is to maintain accuracy in our information, we sometimes are forced to deviate from this principle when we have no choice or alternative means to rebuff a propaganda assault or Arab psychological warfare." Yitzhak Levi, the 1948 leader of Hagannah Intelligence, wrote to Begin: "On behalf of the truth and the purity of arms of the Jewish soldier in the War of Independence, I see it as my duty to warn you against continuing to spread this untrue version about what happened in Deir Yassin to the Israeli public. Otherwise there will be no avoiding raising the matter publicly and you will be responsible." Eventually, the Foreign Ministry agreed to stop distributing the pamphet, but it remains the source of many popular accounts.
(Information from Morris 2005, pp80-85)
The most detailed account of what happened at Deir Yassin was published by Israeli military historian Uri Milstein. Milstein describes many examples of atrocities committed by the Irgun and Lehi forces, and agrees that most of the dead were “old people, women and children. Only a modest number were young men classifiable as fighters.” However, Milstein concluded that most of these events occurred while the fighting was in progress, rather than afterwards. He doubts that Meir Pa'il was present early enough to see everything he claims to have seen (which Pa'il hotly denies). Finally he is reluctant to call it a "massacre", claiming that such occurrences are typical of war and that the Haganah did similar things on many occasions, even if not on such a scale.
This also provides a single link to one book of Milstein who is reluctant to call it a "massacre". This same book seems to be the main source of the rewrite. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 17:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
"Reluctant to call it a massacre" is a long way from an outright denial. In fact, it appears that Milstein himself acknowledges that atrocities took place.
I've suspected for some time that Montag has been selectively quoting Milstein, and this would seem to confirm that. Gatoclass 17:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

You haven't done any research on this article and you, who quoted a descredited communist who wasn't even at the battle and whose doubts as a credible source are clear, have the gall to accuse me of selective quoting? Outrageous! Most of the information was already in the previous article. Milstein is the most eminent source on the battle, and he doesn't call it a massacre but an engagment between opposing forces with civilian losses. Guy Montag 22:26, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes I have. And my research is ongoing. But I haven't caught up with Milstein yet.
However, you have yet to post a quote from Milstein where he denies a massacre took place. And according to the piece Kim reposted, Milstein describes many examples of atrocities committed by the Irgun and Lehi forces, and agrees that most of the dead were “old people, women and children. So it sounds to me like Milstein acknowledges that atrocities took place. The fact that he is apparently squeamish about labelling them collectively as a massacre is neither here nor there. Plenty of other reputable sources have done it for him. Gatoclass 22:49, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Milstien doesn't deny that civilians died, he disputes the term massacre. Finally, that quote about old people women and children is completely out of context and uncited. Civilians died, but there is no discreption of which of his colossal volumes this synopsis is quoted. We need to find the context for that sentence, so I am gonna make (another) trip to the local central library and dig them out. Until then, your analysis is pure speculation. Guy Montag 00:00, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The Irgun, who history says perpetrated the massacre, of course, say it wasn't. Neither does User:Guy Montag who his user page identifies as an Irgun sympathiser. In the same way, a Stalinist would probably try to rename Katyn massacre to Battle of Katyn Forest. Homey 17:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Now you are simply poisoning the well. Argue based on the article's merits not on your personal view of me.

As always, your argument is completely fallacious. The Katyn massacre is proven, while this battle is contentious. Secondly, Katyn Massacre is as historically accurate as Kafr Qasim massacre of which I was an editor. I don't deny clear cut cases, nor will I support a narrow non contextual view of Deir Yassin.

This debate is similiar to the one that happened long ago about changing Tiananmen Square massacre to Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and I suggest you visit that discussion.

Guy Montag 22:26, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, neither the Irgun nor Guy Montag qualify as reputable sources under Wiki policy. So their opinion isn't relevant. Gatoclass 17:30, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Milstein's opinions are, and I am quoting him when he calls it an engagement between two opposing forces with civilian casualties. Even Morris calls his account as definitive.

Milistien's work will most likely turn out to be the definitive military history of the 1948 war...No one is likely to surpass the sheer breadth, depth, and scope of this work...Israeli military history has now been pulled up to a new, higher and refreshing plane." (Morris, "'Pre-History' vs. 'History', Jerusalem Post, 9 May 1989, p.40). Guy Montag 22:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

And neither do you, Kim, or Homey, or me for that matter. I don't think the facts are under much dispute; the issue is rather what would be the most precise term for this event. By calling it "massacre" we are making it equivalent to other events that were qualitatively worse, by any reasonable standard. To the extent that we aim for precision in titles, we need to take care to use terms that are meaningful and not prone to hyperbole. --Leifern 19:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the most precise term is not what policy calls for - the standard is the most used and best established term (i.e. the principle of least surprise operates). I'll post more on this shortly. -- ChrisO 19:52, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
NPOV reigns supreme, because it's a policy. It is not NPOV to refer to it as a "massacre." --Leifern 20:04, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

It is NPOV to describe it as a massacre if that's how the reputable sources describe it. That's what you don't seem to get. It's not for you to substitute your own preferred word or description because you don't happen to like how the reputable sources refer to it. Gatoclass 20:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

No, because words have meanings. A massacre is in fact, a particular type of event. The fact that people often refer to the event as a massacre doesn't mean that "reputable sources" have established once and for all that it was a massacre. This, by the way, is getting to be fairly typical in the edit wars related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. A certain phrase enters into common usage, as a euphemism or outright demonization. It gets thrown around by people who simple accept the premise for the use of the term without knowing the facts. Then others insist on keeping the term in spite of the facts, simply because it has been used before. We can use the term "massacre" if it is beyond dispute that it was in fact and primarily a massacre. Otherwise, it's POV, and that would be a kind word. Libel would be more apt. --Leifern 22:31, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Gatoclass is correct; it's stated explicitly in WP:NCON. Key quotes:
Wikipedia's technical and practical requirements mean that one particular name must be used as the definitive name of an article. If the particular name has negative connotations for a party, the decision can be controversial; some may perceive the choice as being one that promotes a POV with which they disagree.
Wikipedians should not seek to determine who is "right" or "wrong", nor to attempt to impose a particular name for POV reasons. They should instead follow the procedure below to determine common usage on an objective basis. By doing this, ideally, we can choose a name in a systematic manner without having to involve ourselves in a political dispute.
Do not invent names as a means of compromising between opposing POVs. Wikipedia describes current usage but cannot prescribe a particular usage or invent new names.
Bear in mind that Wikipedia is descriptive, not prescriptive. We cannot declare what a name should be, only what it is.
This has been a settled guideline for some time and it's worked well in dealing with other disputes over conflicting names; I don't think this article presents any issues that we've not seen and dealt before. WP:NPOV and WP:NOR require us to use established majority-use terms on the basis of the principle of least surprise, not to invent new terms which can't be traced to reliable sources. In fact, defining new terms is specifically prohibited in WP:NOR. I'll explain further in the forthcoming workshop page. -- ChrisO 22:38, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
As I've pointed out, you're referring to a guideline; NPOV is a policy. And it's not just a matter of perception that "massacre" is biased - whether it was a massacre or not is in fact disputed. Well, maybe we should find out what term is most often used in Israel. I'm going to speculate that it isn't "Deir Yassin massacre." --Leifern 22:47, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The guideline is about how to implement the policy. Where the choice is effectively between rival POVs, NPOV dictates that we decide the issue in a way that doesn't depend on our own POV. WP:NCON provides an objective method that takes personal POV out of the issue. Your POV that the issue is one of "libel" and someone else's POV that it's one of "revisionism" are personal POVs, and we simply can't decide article names on the basis of subjective personal preferences. Hence the objective methodology of WP:NCON. -- ChrisO 23:05, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

whether it was a massacre or not is in fact disputed - Leifern

Which brings me back to my original question. What reputable source has disputed that a massacre took place? I'm still waiting for an answer to that. Gatoclass 23:10, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Milstein's opinions are, and I am quoting him when he calls it an engagement between two opposing forces with civilian casualties. - Guy Montag
I don't care what Milstein calls it. What I asked you is if he specifically denies or disputes that a massacre took place. If not, on what basis are you disputing it? Gatoclass 23:30, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

He disputes calling the events a massacre, and I am quoting his works. That is perfectly clear. Guy Montag 23:54, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, you haven't quoted him yet. Please quote the part where he disputes a massacre took place. Gatoclass 23:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

This is just playing with words, asking to prove a negative. I refer you to the Santa Claus article. Few people believe that there actually is a deity along those lines, but nobody doubts the existence of the Santa Claus myth.
I think we should have an article describing the very real event that was a battle at a certain date and time between two military forces. That's a battle by definition and nobody disputes that it occurred. We should also have a different article on the massacre, which has a good deal of support, even if the figures are somewhat rubbery. Even if no civilians were actually massacred (the extreme case), there is still the very real belief that they were, a belief which helped spur thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes. That in itself deserves an article, just as Santa Claus does.
Personally, I'm not game to say whether there was or wasn't a massacre. The sources in support and opposition make various claims and we should remember that both sides were fighting a war of propaganda on the public stage. Undoubtedly civilians died during the battle, but whether they were men dressed up as women clutching grenades or they were pregnant women bayoneted in the belly, I really don't know. Probably somewhere in between.
I suggest that dividing the article into two - one for the military engagement and another for the probable massacre of civilians - would solve the naming dispute which has arisen here. --Jumbo 01:29, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

This is just playing with words, asking to prove a negative.

No, I'm not asking anyone to prove a negative.

The statement has been made that the massacre has been disputed by reputable sources. Now if you make that claim, you should be able to back it up with appropriate quotes. That is not asking to prove a negative. It's a perfectly reasonable request to make. If you make a claim, the onus is upon you to provide evidence to back it up. In this particular case, I'm still waiting to see some. Gatoclass 03:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

There is an entire section in the article about the atrocities being ordered to be made up by Arab propagandists. Resd the article. On the other side, Dr. Hussein Khalidi, the secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered Hazen Nusseibeh, an editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service, to claim that children were "murdered, [and that] pregnant women were raped; all sorts of atrocities."32

There are dozen such quotes in the article. Guy Montag 20:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Jumbo,

I think it was men in women's clothing pretending to be pregnant that got stabbed, but only halfway :).

The reality is that there are no independent eye witness accounts that can corraborate a massacre. Guy Montag 02:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

A bit distasteful don't you think? And I think you mean corroborate. - FrancisTyers · 12:29, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Right. Guy Montag 20:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Jumbo's proposal

I'm not making the clim that the deaths of civilians wasn't a massacre. I'm pointing out that if a historian fails to say that it isn't a massacre, that doesn't not mean that it is one, by some sort of default. But this is just playing with words.

I have proposed what seems to me to be a common sense solution to the dispute - divide the existing article into two:

  1. Describe the military situation and engagement as a battle for control of territory, a part of the ongoing war, and
  2. Describe the deaths of civilians and the consequent propaganda campaigns as a massacre.

I am not comfortable with the current situation, where what is clearly an article mostly about a conventional battle is labelled as a massacre. Surely we can separate the two events with appropriate linking so as to present an accurate picture?

Or is this some sort of ego thing, where many of the editors involved in this article are so wedded to their opinions that compromise is the same as personal defeat? --Jumbo 04:53, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

"The battle of Deir Yassin" as a separate article would fail to qualify for Wikipedia:Notability in my view. But more importantly, since the planning and lead-up, including the battle, is all relevant to the understanding of what followed, then there is no point in treating them separately, since the content of the "battle" article really needs to be included in the content of the "massacre" article anyway. Gatoclass 05:39, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! Would you like to comment on my proposed solution to this dispute, please? --Jumbo 06:03, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I thought I just did! Gatoclass 06:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, let me be more direct and ask if you think it would work as a solution to the dispute. --Jumbo 06:21, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
No I don't. Gatoclass 06:41, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Do you have a reason for this? Seems to me that it would satisfy all sides, except for hardline ideologues. Do you think a compromise of some sort would work, or are you happy with the current situation? --Jumbo 07:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I already gave my reasons. It's superfluous to have two separate articles, since the content of any "battle of Deir Yassin" page would need to be included in the "Deir Yassin massacre" page in order to put the massacre in proper context.
And yes, I'm happy with the current situation, to just have the whole thing under "Deir Yassin massacre" which is the commonly employed name for this incident as ChrisO explained. Gatoclass 08:19, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
We currently have an article mostly about a battle. The article is labeled as a massacre when the actual civilian deaths form a secondary part of the article. This is, in fact, the exact reverse of your ideal situation as described above, where the massacre part of the article would occupy centre stage and a few sentences about the actual battle would put it into context. Do you see the difficulty I have in understanding your position? --Jumbo 08:30, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Not to speak for Gatoclass, but it appears he addresses that point below. Nysin 08:34, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
(after edit conflict) With the "unbalanced" tag? No, he's talking solely about the debate over the massacre, not about the relative proportions of the article given over to the two events. --Jumbo 08:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I'm talking about both. Gatoclass 10:37, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, quite :)

As I was about to say - yes, I do see the difficulty, and I saw it (and mentioned it on this page) quite some time ago.

My solution to this problem has already been outlined in the section below. There is not enough material in the article on the massacre itself. The article has become unbalanced. The focus of the article needs to be on the massacre, not on the preamble to it or what one particular side had to say about it.

If you go back a year or so to earlier versions of this article, I think you'll find they are more focused on the actual topic. Gatoclass 08:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The article was turned into an article about the actual battle and moved to a more descriptive title. Your solution is to add more POV material about the massacre so as to justify the article's restored title. Is that a reasonable summary? --Jumbo 08:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
To add more POV material? Hardly!
The point is that while this is supposed to be an article about a massacre, accounts of the massacre itself are brief and lacking in detail, while on the other hand plenty of space is given to accounts that refute the idea of a massacre - most of them, it seems, from members of Irgun and Lehi - the very people who were accused of perpetrating the massacre.
In other words, the account given is already biased and POV, which is something that needs to be rectified. Gatoclass 09:04, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
By adding material which is, by definition, POV. NPOV doesn't mean we are totally neutral in everything we say, it means that we take a balanced approach. Don't let me stop you from adding more material if it is truly encyclopaedic. However, I note that you are agreeing with me - your proposed solution is to keep the article as it is, title and everything, and add more pro-massacre views. I don't see that this is going to work with all editors who have contributed to the article. In fact I suggest that it is a recipe for continuing the dispute. --Jumbo 09:52, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
You are entitled to your opinion. But I'm afraid your "solution" would only start a whole new swag of disputes, to add to the existing ones. Gatoclass 10:37, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
You intrigue me. So you don't think that dividing the article into two, one for the battle and one for the massacre would solve the dispute over naming? How do you come to this extraordinary conclusion? --Jumbo 10:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I have been through much of this before. But for your benefit I'll try again:

(a) Because such an article would be pointless. Nobody cares about the "battle of Deir Yassin". The only reason the "battle of Deir Yassin" matters at all is because it's part of the context for the massacre of Deir Yassin. The battle was nothing more than a skirmish between an untrained Zionist rabble and a bunch of Arab villagers. There were literally hundreds of such engagements in the the Israeli war for independence. Who is going to want to read about this one?

(b) Because it would only be duplicating content in the "massacre" article itself;

(c) Because it sounds to me like you've been unable to reconcile yourself to the fact that this article has been renamed, and so you want to find a way to resurrect your preferred name;

(d) Because it sounds to me very much like what you want to do is create a POV fork.

(e) Because it is going to create a whole new swag of arguments that we really don't need at this time. Gatoclass 11:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

You've mentioned (e) a couple of times. It's a logical fallacy. Nysin 11:10, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
And what if the fear is justified? Gatoclass 11:14, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
What if? It's still a logical fallacy, and thus not a valid justification for an action. Nysin 11:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
It may be a "logical fallacy", but that doesn't mean it's wrong! Gatoclass 11:50, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
(c) and (d) rather strongly resemble an ad hominem and a strawman (other fallacies). Nysin 11:28, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Lots of statements can be interpreted as ad hominems, if you're determined to find them. For example, I could interpret your suggestion that I am engaging in ad hominems to be itself an ad hominem, but I'm in a generous mood.
As for the straw man, I don't see that at all. I'm simply stating my opinion. It sounds like a proposal for a POV fork. Now Jumbo may not intend it that way, but I suspect that's what it will quickly become. Gatoclass 11:50, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the POV fork, fair enough. And, no, my statement about ad hominems addressed only the statements you've made publicly here. One of your statements, however, was that "Because it sounds to me like you've been unable to reconcile yourself to the fact that this article has been renamed, and so ...". That addresses not Jumbo's argument, but Jumbo himself, which characterizes the ad hominem. Nysin 11:55, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Given the amount of material available on the "battle of Deir Yassin", (b) shouldn't be an issue: a massacre article could just link to the battle article for background and provide a brief (one or two-paragraph) summary. (I'm going to refrain from commenting on (a) at the moment, as it involves more subjective issues). Nysin 11:31, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Gatoclass, you didn't answer my question. Which makes me think you agree with me, because after all it is just common sense. Having one article for the battle and one for the massacre would solve the naming dispute.
I don't think that there would be any disputes over the battle itself - the facts seem straightforward enough. The question of whether it is notable is another matter, but that could be answered by those who know more about the various battles of the war. So your (a) is not a problem.
The massacre article doesn't need a lot of information about the battle. Just enough to put it into context. Link to the battle article for more details. That gets rid of your (b).
Your (c) is spot on. What I am unable to accept is that we have an article mainly about a battle which is called a massacre, when the massacre itself is only a secondary part of the article. We have the tail wagging the dog. I'd prefer to see the material on the battle correctly labelled.
Your (d) is just silly. I think that the massacre is by far the more interesting event and it deserves an article to itself.
Your (e) doesn't hold water. What new disputes would crop up? The massacre is the contentious part; we're always going to have lively debate over that. Dividing the article into two correctly titled articles would solve the naming dispute, so we'd be clear of that. It would be a step forward. --Jumbo 11:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Addition of Unbalanced notice

I've added an unbalanced notice to the page as I believe that evidence in support of a massacre is underrepresented and too much emphasis is laid on the opposing POV. Gatoclass 00:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. --(Mingus ah um 00:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC))
Thirded. - FrancisTyers · 01:21, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Absolute dissent - the sources from both sides agree, and as it turns out the initial casualty estimates from the Jewish side were considerably higher than those the Bir Zeit study turned out. --Leifern 20:16, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I am not saying that it is balanced or unbalanced, but the very fact that the article is titled “Massacre” gives, in and of itself, a distinct leaning towards the fact that it was a massacre, and may need more to counterbalance it in the article. Now, if it was titled “Battle”, it would lean the other way, and I'd be more likely to agree with you. If we try a nuetral title like “Allegations of…”, that would just be silly. So the way it is now, I think it may make sense to need more anti-massacre weight just to balance the big, bold title up top—but, of course, that is just my opinion. -- Avi 01:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

This debate isn't over

I cannot agree to keep the name massacre when it focuses on a narrow controversial and unverifiable pov claim by one side. We need to find an npov name, and if anyone thinks that they can first ignore the results of a no consensus vote and then fall back into lethargy because they got their way, they got another thing coming. The subject is controversial, the name is a narrow pov. Like the Tiananmen Square Massacre that was moved because there was more to the story than Chinese killing students, this name focuses on a narrow event and predetemined outcome. I believe that battle is the most neutral term because it doesn't presuppose any claims and lists allegations in various parts of the article. The claims and the events warrant enough controversy and the evidence is so contradictory that a name change is completely warranted. A battle simple lists a factual military engagement between two opposing forces and describes the allegations and stories of both sides.

Guy Montag 18:32, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to ask you a question, then. Can you find a reliable source that uses the term "Battle of Deir Yassin"? -- ChrisO 18:43, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

It is by default a battle. When two opposing forces meet at a specific geographic area, and one fights for the control of that area while the other defends, it is called a battle. The battle for Deir Yassin was a part of the Haganahcompaign during the Siege of Jerusalem. Abba Eban, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Menachem Begin and Milstien have called it a battle, and the events in the article describe a battle. A battle with a small b. The allegations of prisoner and civilian executions are what have been labelled a massacre, but those claims are contradictory. It is our job to put the events in context. The only thing that we are sure about is that a battle happened, the alleged massacre offers enough contradictory evidence that it would be violating wikipedia policy to presuppose that the events happened precisely as one side describes it, and naming an entire battle after a dubiously described allegation is simply misleading the readers.

I know exactly where Lehi and IZL came from. I know their attack patterns, their strategy, and I have their and the Haganah's account of when it started who was where, how many militiamen were wounded or killed. I know where the Arab forces were positioned, I know the disposition of their forces (40 men = a group of Iraqi soldiers), I know their positions, (fortified houses) and I know where their reinforcements were coming from (Motza and Ein Kerem). All of this information is factually listed in the article. How do you suppose to factually claim that a massacre happened when all the evidence is contradictory and vague, with people coming in after the fact, with the only person who claims to have seen anything been unable to verify what he claims and everyone, including his superiors claiming he simply wasn't there? What about the villagers who deny atrocities? What about the Arab official from the Higher Arab comittee being ordered to make up propaganda stories, and using the same propaganda numbers as the IZL commanders? What about the wildly contradictory accounts of the dead, some as low as 80? Look, if you have such murkey evidence it simply isn't logical to name it after an alleged event, but on what the context of that event was, and the context was a battle. It doesn't mean that the battle article would not have these allegations listed there, and the name battle doesn't presuppose (unlike the word massacre), that there was no massacre.

How many people know the Tiananmen Square Massacre? Millions probably, because it is a popular media term ingrained in our minds. But there are various different names and none of them are used as the official title, but a simple factual detached title is used instead. Everyone agrees that there were protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, so it is named as such, while the details are described inside the article of the shootings. Everyone agrees that a battle took place at Deir Yassin, so it is time to describe it with a factual and detached name.

At the least it should "Allegations of a massacre at Deir Yassin". I am partial to battle of Deir Yassin (with a small b).

Guy Montag 20:10, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Guy, I have seen this suggested before but do not know what happened to it, what about "Deir Yassin incident" with a lower-case "i" for incident? I am sure some people wouldn't like it, but it seems like a reasonable compromise to me. Has there been a poll on that previously? 6SJ7 18:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I now see above that "incident" had some significant support, although it was not actually one of the options. I even mentioned it myself. I wonder whether it would attract a consensus if given a fair change. 6SJ7 19:01, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Guy, you still haven't answered my question: Can you find a reliable source that uses the term "Battle of Deir Yassin"? If the affair was "by default" a battle then somebody must use that term, surely? -- ChrisO 19:02, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

It's better but also innacurate. It was part of an ongoing compaign for Jerusalem and the battle was connected others in the area, so its not a singular accurance.

Guy Montag 20:10, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

There is a difference between this case and that of Tiananmen Square Massacre. In the Tiananmen case, everyone agrees that the protests themselves were historically significant (even aside from the massacre). Whereas for Deir Yassin, the battle had no major significance. We most likely wouldn't have an article about the "battle" were it not for the allegations of a massacre. Still "incident" seems like a reasonable compromise which I would support if necessary. JoshuaZ 20:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The battle had major significance, as it relates to the Palestinian Exodus and the battle for Jerusalem. As long as it doesn't have the word massacre in the title, I will reluctantly support it. Guy Montag 20:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd vote for "Incident" as a neutral term for a single article on both events, with links from Battle and Massacre. The battle part is probably not that notable. The forces involved are very small. The massacre part is the interesting bit, and I make the point that, like Santa Claus we may have an article about the myth of the massacre, even if no massacre actually occurred. My feeling is that more shots have been fired over the propaganda than were ever directed at civilians during or after the battle. However, the massacre itself helped to get the Palestinians out of their homes and into the refugee camps where they remained, despite promises that Israel would be swept into the sea and they could return home. It's shaped Middle-Eastern politics for five decades now, so it's not something we can ignore. Even if there wasn't an actual massacre, it's the myth that's important. --Jumbo 23:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

First of all, Guy, I asked you to provide some quotations from Milstein (or any other reputable source) that either denies or disputes that a massacre took place. You still haven't done that. Until you do, I'm afraid there is NO support for your claim that even one reputable source disputes the existence of the massacre.
Secondly, I note that one of the sources on which you've based your rewrite is the 1987 study by Bir Zeit University. Presumably this study is part of what you were referring to when you said to me earlier on this page that "It was considered a massacre by some polemecists before new evidence and interviews came out between the years of 1987-1997. The new information points to the fact that there was no clear cut defined massacre..."
And yet according to an earlier version of this page, the Bir Zeit University study itself concluded that Deir Yassin was (I quote): "a massacre the likes of which history has rarely known".
This from one of your own primary sources, upon which you have based your claim that "there was no clearcut massacre"!
Mind explaining this discrepancy to me? Gatoclass 01:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure, the researchers inserted their own opinion into the study, even though their own claims don't support a massacre. Their personal opinionated outburst stands alone from their research.

Finally, I no longer know what it is you want from me. I have showed you that in the article itself, there is considerable evidence to the contradictory statements of everyone involved. You can't agree to use the terms of one side when there is som much overwhelming evidence that contradicts other evidence. In such a case wiki standards call for a name outside either pov to take its place, as was the case with Tiananmen Square Massacre. Hence I am proposing a simply detached factual name that is not attached to the pov of either side. For example, "Conquest of Deir Yassin" "battle at Deir Yassin" or even "Deir Yassin Incident". That way we can describe the events and the names used by both sides without having it slant to either side in a true npov fashion. Lets use something called overlapping consensus. We don't have to agree on the details, just the rote stuff. We agree that there was an military engagement at Deir Yassin, what happened during this engagement should be left to the article not the name.

Guy Montag 03:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

"The likes of which history has rarely known?" And these people consider themselves historians? --Leifern 01:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
It seems their bona fides were good enough for Guy to use them as a source for claims that the Arabs were well prepared for attack and well armed, and that the number killed on the Arab side was no more than 120. But their clearcut confirmation that a massacre took place was apparently not worth citing. And you don't find anything amiss with that? Gatoclass 02:18, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Do we have a source for this "a massacre the likes of which history has rarely known" quote? Even accepting the most inflated claims, this would seem to be quite low on the scale of atrocities. World War 2, only a few years previous, produced a large number of massacres with death counts ranging into the thousands. See the list of massacres here. I'd like to see this quote in context, as it may possibly be ironic. --Jumbo 02:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I told you what the source was. It's from an earlier version of the DY page. You can find an extended quote from the study here[[30]], under the section heading "Number of dead, wounded and prisoners". Gatoclass 05:18, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. As a matter of courtesy, asking someone to wade through an article that has been extensivley modified with no better guide than that it was from "an earlier version" is hardly helpful. Do you know if the study is available on-line? As I note above, such as statement invites ridicule, and it would be useful to determine the context in which it was made. --Jumbo 05:33, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
No, I don't know whether it's available online. I should probably do a search because I'd quite like to read it myself (assuming it's not too long).
However, the quote on the Wiki page clearly refers to a "massacre" a couple of times in the body of the text, so whether or not the original statement was in context, it seems clear they accepted that a massacre took place. Gatoclass 05:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
My difficulty with the quote is that if it is taken at face value it puts any other statement by the same author(s) into doubt. How can we possibly rely on sources which are so obviously hyperbolic? In fact, it seems quite clear that the descriptions from both sides are full of hyperbole, propaganda and deceit. Finding facts that are not in dispute is difficult, with the exception that both sides sought to inflate the civilian casualties well beyond what might normally be expected in an assault on a defended village. --Jumbo 06:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
As I've posted below, I just realized Birzeit is a Palestinian uni, I had assumed it was Israeli.
Although technically my initial comments might be seen as justifiable, I think perhaps this is one instance where a little discretion might be in order. Let's face it, the likes of which history has rarely known is hyperbolic. Gatoclass 07:48, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

They had to temper their sober research with some hyperbolic propaganda. They needed to qualify their dissapointing findings that there was little evidence for a massacre with such statements so as not to lose credibility in the Arab world. I've seen this happen in many scientific fields. Sometimes scientists erase scientific findings if they contradict current research even if they calculated everything correctly so they aren't shunned by their community. But whatever. Guy Montag 03:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

It hardly lends credibility to their work. In fact this whole affair is full of people on both sides making wild claims. I reckon the only reason it's labelled a massacre is because stories of savage atrocities have longer legs than statements of sober denial. However, the story of the massacre had a profound effect on the Middle East, resonating down to the current day, so it is a story that needs telling in Wikipedia. --Jumbo 03:38, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I see, the conclusions they arrived at which you approve of are the result of "sober research" while those that you don't are examples of "hyperbolic propaganda".
Unfortunately, you don't get to decide for yourself which conclusions from a reliable source are valid and which are not, and to construct an argument accordingly. That is what is known on Wiki as original research.
For your benefit, I'll quote part of the policy (with appropriate emphasis) here:
Original research is a term used on Wikipedia to refer to material placed into articles by Wikipedia editors that has not been previously published by a reliable source. It includes unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, and ideas; or any new interpretation, analysis, or synthesis of published data, statements, concepts, or arguments that appears to advance a position or, in the words of Wikipedia's co-founder Jimbo Wales, would amount to a "novel narrative or historical interpretation."
The longer you are unable to come up with quotes from a reliable source that clearly deny or dispute the existence of a massacre, the more your rewrite, based upon this very premise, looks like a blatant example of the above. Not that your rewrite appears to be in any way representative of prevailing professional opinion to begin with.
Apart from which, I think it's quite evident from this episode to what extent you are prepared to cherry pick from sources to construct a case. It clearly raises questions about the accuracy with which you have represented the conclusions of other sources you have made use of in your rewrite. Gatoclass 05:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Edit: I've just discovered that Birzeit is a Palestinian university. I had mistakenly assumed it was an Israeli uni. In that case I think I can accept that Birzeit's characterization of the DY episode as a massacre may not be entirely reliable, given that it is probably still a highly charged topic for Palestinians. Therefore I will withdraw the comment about cherry picking, at least in regards to this source.
However, I stand by my comment about original research until I see something to make me change my mind. Gatoclass 07:32, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Gatoclass, why would a Palestinian university be a less reliable source than a foreign university for material regarding Palestine? Would you discount a US university as a reliable source for information about Pearl Harbour, or a Russian university for information about the October Revolution? Please think this one through. Palmiro | Talk 13:18, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Let me put it this way. The Palestinians are a society under enormous stress, whose very existence as a people is under challenge. In such circumstances, historical narratives can acquire tremendous importance in reinforcing a sense of national and cultural identity. The massacre of Deir Yassin is, I think it fair to say, part of the Palestinian folk narrative - a cultural shibboleth, that must make it a highly sensitive issue in Palestinian society.
This is not to suggest that Birzeit does not qualify as a reputable source, or that its reference to DY as a massacre is not valid. I'm simply conceding that it's perhaps not indefensible for an editor to exercise a little discretion in regards to the amount of weight he chooses to put on statements from various reliable sources. For that reason, I decided to withdraw my comment to Montag that he appeared to be "cherry picking". Gatoclass 20:48, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

A better characterization would be to ask if he trusts North Korean universities on the history of the Korean War. Of course, I am embellishing and not trying to equate one with the other, but authoritarian societies tend to stifle their research with what is considered politically correct. For example, Turkey and the Armenian Genocide etc. They made a clearly hyperbolic opinion because a factual analysis of history will clearly show that calling Dier Yassin the greatest massacre in history is ludicrous bombast. That is why I look at their research and not their qualifying statements to be accepted in their society.

Guy Montag 17:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the Irgun organization wants to whitewash the event and the Deir Yassin survivors' organization want to make it look as bad as possible. What is striking if you read the accounts is that they are very consistent. Setting aside the rather fantastic subjective conclusion the Bir Zeit authors made, the cold facts they present are pretty similar to those others have presented. --Leifern 17:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Guy, it's not a matter of "trust". Please go and read WP:V if you haven't already. The very first line of that policy says: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. It goes on: "Verifiability" in this context does not mean that editors are expected to verify whether, for example, the contents of a New York Times article are true. In fact, editors are strongly discouraged from conducting this kind of research, because original research may not be published in Wikipedia. Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources, regardless of whether individual editors view that material as true or false.
That doesn't mean that we're under any obligation to give an equivalent status to conflicting viewpoints. WP:NPOV#Undue weight: NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Thus, if the "massacre happened" viewpoint is in the majority, that should be reflected in the article. Again, this is where the editors of this article need to do some research to discover which viewpoint predominates. Editors are specifically not allowed to make judgments on the basis of a personal belief that a particular claim is true. See WP:NPOV#A simple formulation: assert [undisputed] facts, including facts about opinions — but don't assert opinions [a piece of information about which there is some dispute]. -- ChrisO 19:02, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that's the point Chris. This is the problem with Montag's rewrite. All the sources I have seen describe the event as a massacre, and yet Montag has constructed his edit in such a way as to lay all the emphasis upon the interpretation that it was not a massacre but something else. And at the same time, interpretations which put an alternative POV have been either sidelined or eliminated altogether from the picture. Gatoclass 21:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I think you guys are utterly confused about these issues. The word "massacre" is not an arbitrary term. It is has a rather precise meaning for a particular kind of atrocity. It encompasses such events as lining unarmed Armenians up by the hundreds and killing them one by one by putting an axe in their heads; riding into Native American villages and killing women and children with sabres; going into Muslim villages in Bosnia to bus away men to kill them in the woods; walling off cities in Iraq killing everyone inside them and leveling the whole city. To call the events in Deir Yassin a "massacre" is not an affront to Jews or Israelis - it's an affront to all the victims of such events as I've just described. Which isn't to excuse any murders that took place in Deir Yassin; but to suggest that these horrifying excesses rise to the level that the examples above show is morally reprehensible. Just because popular culture has caught on to "massacre" doesn't make it true, or accurate. Your argument that "massacre" is the right term rests solely on the notion that it's the most common term, as if the word didn't mean anything in specific on its own. --Leifern 03:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Just because popular culture has caught on to "massacre" doesn't make it true, or accurate.
Quite correct. But it's not "popular culture" that describes Deir Yassin as a massacre - it's a host of reputable sources. (And I'm STILL waiting for someone to supply a quote from just one reputable source disputing that a massacre took place).
Furthermore, as Chris has stated, it's not truth which is the criterion on which Wiki articles are based but verifiability. It's not what you or I think the truth might be, but how reputable sources have described the event in question. And it appears the majority of reputable sources have indeed referred to this event as a massacre. Gatoclass 03:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

How will we verify these sources? Francis did a search vs Battle of Jenin and Jenin Massacre and found the massacre used more often even in academic literature, yet a massacre didn't occur. What criteria will we use? Guy Montag 16:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Not a good metric. At a glance, many of the mentioned were either in inverted commas, or were specifically used in reference to "what X group of people called it". In other words, in many cases, "Jenin massacre" was not used as a descriptive term of reference to the event, but rather as an example of what people have called it. Deir Yassin massacre on the other hand is used as a descriptive term of reference to the event. - FrancisTyers · 17:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Reminder of fundamental policies

I'd like to remind people of four key points, based on our three most important and non-negotiable policies:

1) Wikipedia:No original research specifically prohibits editors from defining new terms in articles (see WP:NOR#What is excluded?). There are no exceptions to this rule. You are simply not permitted to invent a new term because you believe that an existing established term is POV.

2) Wikipedia:Verifiablity specifically requires editors to rely on reliable sources. Any name for this article must be based on the terms and facts used by our sources, not our own personal views on the accuracy of those sources. To quote: One of the keys to writing good encyclopedia articles is to understand that they must refer only to facts, assertions, theories, ideas, claims, opinions, and arguments that have already been published by reputable publishers. Defining novel terms is a very clear breach of the principle of verifiability.

3) WP:V also specifically prohibits editors from deciding content issues on the basis of "truth": Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources, regardless of whether individual editors view that material as true or false. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is thus verifiability, not truth.. This sounds counter-intuitive, but the rationale is sound - see WP:V#Verifiability, not truth. Arguments such as "we can't have title X because it's untrue" are expressly ruled out of bounds by this policy.

4) WP:NPOV does not require absolute neutrality in an article, with all viewpoints treated equally. WP:NPOV#Undue weight states: NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each ... Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties. This applies not only to article text, but to images, external links, categories, and all other material as well.. This is perhaps the most important point of all, and I urge everyone involved in this debate to read and think about what WP:NPOV#Undue weight says.

In short, whatever title is selected for the article, it must (a) reflect majority usage; (b) be verifiable (based on existing published sources) and (c) be based on reliable sources (i.e. what term do the majority of reliable sources use?). The issue of whether the title is "true" or "false", "accurate" or "inaccurate", is specifically ruled out of bounds by our policies: We report what other reliable sources have published, whether or not we regard the material as accurate (WP:NOR#Primary and secondary sources).

The proponents of the various alternative titles need to establish whether their preferred terms are in fact widely used, or indeed used at all, and if they are used by reliable sources. Please go and do some research, find some sources and post them here so that we can have some concrete evidence on which to proceed. -- ChrisO 23:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

ChrisO, I believe you misunderstand what is being said here. To sum up quickly:
1. Were this article about the (alleged) Deir Yassin Massacre, that would be a more appropriate title than "Battle of Deir Yassin".
2. Given that this article not about the (alleged) Deir Yassin Massacre, but about the battle and other events which occured during the battle, including the alleged massacre, the current title is unacceptable, simply because it is inaccurate. You want to have an article titled "Deir Yassin Massacre", be my guest. This isn't that article. Bibigon 06:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the onus is on you to demonstrate that reliable sources make a distinction between the alleged battle and the alleged massacre. Do reliable sources consider them to be two discrete historical events, or do they treat them as one single event described by a single term? Do they even use the term "battle" to describe the events and does the term "Battle of Deir Yassin" have any reputable proponents? You need to base this on reliable and verifiable sources, not your own interpretation, so I urge you to go and do some research to find out how the sources treat the events in question. -- ChrisO 08:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Finding reliable sources could be a bit tricky. I think we'd chuck out all of the sources as having deep-seated POV issues if they were editors. About the only area they all agree on are that the Israelis kicked the Arabs out of the village. The facts of the battle seem straightforward and beyond any major dispute. The descriptions of the massacre are smoke in the wind. --Jumbo 09:11, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with your interpretation of where the burden of proof lies. The burden of proof in this regard is with you. If you can show me that reliable sources consistently treat the battle and the massacre as one and the same, then I'll happily cede this particular point to you. Thus far however, you have not presented such evidence. Bibigon 19:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, let me rephrase it: both sides need to cite evidence that the Deir Yassin affair is considered either as a single event or as two discrete events. I'm not going to get into researching content for either side in this discussion - it's not something I want to get involved in. I'm simply standing here in the middle pointing out to all parties what they need to do to make this article neutral, reliably sourced and verifiable. -- ChrisO 19:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, that's a joke. You're not some neutral party, nor some uninvolved party here. Saying you're just standing in the middle is a misrepresentation of the situation and of your behaviour on this issue to date.
Additionally, you are mistaken in your understanding of the standards of evidence needed. Both sides do not need to cite evidence, quite the contrary. The burden of proof lies with those making the affirmative statement. The claim has been made that the battle and the massacre are the same thing, and thus "Deir Yassin Massacre" is the more relevant title. That claim needs to be supported. Demanding proof that the two were discrete events is silly, as that is akin to demanding proof that the the U.S. civil war and the Gettysburg Address were not the same thing. If the two were, then there would be many sources saying "The U.S. Civil War is the same thing as the Gettysburg Address." If the two were not the same thing however, then you would not find sources saying that, as a list of things the Civil War is not the same thing as is quite long. Again, the burden of proof lies on the side of those making the affirmative statement. Unless it can be shown that what this article describes is what is meant by the "Deir Yassin Massacre," then there is no reason to believe they are the same thing.Bibigon 21:15, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Of course they are the same thing. Both sides agree that 120 Arabs were killed, one side says that they (or the overwhelming majority) were killed in battle, the other that they (or the overwhelming majority) were killed in a massacre. They are not two discreet historical events. They are one and the same event, with two different interpretations. Gatoclass 21:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

There was a battle. In the conventional sense of two military forces engaging in armed conflict. The facts of the matter are straightforward. Calling it a massacre is just wrong, because it wasn't. The Israelis didn't stroll into the village against little or no opposition, shooting unarmed civilians as they went.
Certain events during and possibly after the battle may be (and were) interpreted as a massacre, but realistically, they are two discrete events. Calling the battle a massacre doesn't make it so. The DY massacre is more of a view, a myth, a legend, and it is jarring to see the facts of the battle being named after the propaganda of the massacre. Fort Pillow seems to be a reasonable parallel. --Jumbo 22:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
There was a battle, that either did, or did not, degenerate into a massacre, depending on who's telling the story. There are not two discrete events. One event, with different interpretations.
The problem is, only one of those interpretations is adequately represented in the article - in spite of the fact that the preponderance of sources appear to endorse the other. Gatoclass 22:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

You completely free and in fact encouraged to add new information. This of course doesn't mean that we should leave the definition of events up to the name of the title. Since we now agree that there was a battle that did or did not degenerate into a massacre, why do you still insist on calling this article the Deir Yassin massacre and not the battle of Deir Yassin? Lets explain the opposing stories in the content, and not the title.

Guy Montag 23:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

ChrisO has already explained why - because Deir Yassin massacre is the most common name. Virtually nobody refers to this event as the "battle of Deir Yassin". Also because the majority of reputable sources appear to endorse the view that a massacre took place. Gatoclass 01:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Can you point me to the sources say that the common usage of Deir Yassin Massacre refers to all the events described in this article, and not merely to the alleged massacre? I'm quite serious. That issue is sort of a dealbreaker for me, as I'm simply not convinced at this point that calling this article Deir Yassin Massacre is any more appropriate that calling the Civil War the Gettysburg Address. Bibigon 03:44, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm certainly not aware of any sources which refer to the battle independently of the massacre, if that's what you mean. Gatoclass 03:53, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
That may be because the battle isn't particularly notable. But we now have an article about a battle that is called a massacre. Our readers will look at this and say, this isn't a massacre, it's a battle with allegations of massacre. --Jumbo 05:35, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Precedent questions for ChrisO

ChrisO, you have previously indicated a fondness for argument by precedent, in attempting to explain why you believe this article should be titled "Deir Yassin Massacre." While I think this reasoning is generally flawed in the first place, I'd like to indulge it, and expand upon it to better understand your claims. Could you please point to some high quality Wikipedia articles which follow a similar naming convention as this one? My specific conditions:

1. High quality articles which show signs of having most serious issues fully fleshed out already. Articles such as the Srebrenica massacre article do not qualify, because that article is currently a hodgepodge of OR and NPOV issues. That signals to me that perhaps the fact that that article is titled a "Massacre" isn't particularly strong evidence that good Wikipedia articles should follow similar naming conventions. Please take a look at the text of that article itself if you would like to dispute this disqualification.
2. Articles describing events for which the more common name includes the word "massacre."
3. Articles which describe a possible massacre, but the existence of the massacre is disputed.
4. Articles describing events which were not limited solely to mass killings.

You have indicated a belief that precedent is on your side here. I challenge that claim, and I would like you to support it with evidence. To kick things off, I'll throw out the Battle of Jenin 2002 article and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 article. Both of which meet all four of the above requirements, and neither one of which uses the more common, but more controvertial "massacre" name. So what I'd like from you:

1. Please explain why the two articles above are poor examples of precedent to use in this case.
2. Please give some examples of your own which you believe meet all four of the conditions I set above, but which use the "massacre" name. Bibigon 06:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Khojaly massacre (existence disputed by Armenians) [during a war] + Armenian genocide (existence disputed by the vast majority of Turks) + Pontian Greek Genocide (existence disputed by the vast majority of Turks) [during a war] + Kfar Etzion massacre (disputed by some I believe) [during a war] + Massacre of the Innocents (disputed) + Chenogne massacre (disputed) [during a war] + Bleiburg massacre (disputed) + (during a war). Your Jenin example doesn't count as I've mentioned above, a substantial amount of reputable sources don't use any of the more commonly found google'd names.

"Battle of Jenin" gets 5 results from Google Books, "Jenin Massacre" gets 10 results, but it is worth noting that at least four of those are denials of the term. Hardly as conclusive as the search below. - FrancisTyers · 12:08, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

- FrancisTyers · 21:35, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

1. Khojaly massacre has no mention in the article of anyone disputing it. You claims as to who disputes it are not in the article. If the article is lacking those disputes, then the article fails on my first requirement, of being a high quality article.
Did you read past the first paragraph? "According to the Armenian side, tens of defenders of the town, and some civilians, less than 15, died in fighting for the town, and not massacred as Azerbaijanis and international observers [2] [3] claim. " - FrancisTyers · 22:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I did, I was scanning for a section called "Massacre disputed" or something along those lines, which would indicate that there was a serious dispute about whether it occured or not. I didn't see that, and I believed that if it were disputed, there would be a section on it. Fair enough, this qualifies. Bibigon 22:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
2. Armenian genocide does not use the word "massacre" in the title. I would like as direct comps as possible please.
3. Pontian Greek Genocide does not use the word "massacre" in the title.
4. Kfar Etzion massacre has no mention in the article of anyone disputing it.
"Glubb Pasha later denied that there had been a massacre at all." - FrancisTyers · 22:10, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
This however certainly does not qualify. In addition to the only mention of a dispute being from one of the soldiers involved, the article is of generally poor quality. Glubb Pasha's dispute claim is unsourced, as is most of the article itself. The article is written more like an essay("When the hopelessness of their position became undeniable") than an encyclopedia article. This is more certainly poor precedent. Bibigon 22:21, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
5. "Battle of Jenin" is less common in both a google search and a Google Books search. "Jenin Massacre" has 18 Google Books hits, while "Battle of Jenin" has 6. That some of the "Jenin Massacre" hits are disputing the existence of a massacre is irrelvant for determing the dominance of the term itself. They are using that term to refer to the events which took place there. Bibigon 22:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Having read your dispute about Srebrenica massacre, I don't agree. I think the article is fairly comprehensive and neutral. It has organisational problems, and problems with sourcing and prose. But no problems of neutrality from what I can see. - FrancisTyers · 21:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
First off, I never restricted it to being a neutrality issue. I suggested that we only use high quality articles in the first place. Second, the article does have severe neutrality issues. Lines such as "Also notable was Dutch UN soldiers' cowardice" do not inspire confidence in the neutrality of the article. Issues such as that suggest that the article has not been dealt with properly yet, and that the name itself may come under a POV dispute as the article begins being more seriously edited. It is a low quality article due to the unsourced nature of it, which means we probably shouldn't use it as a point of good precedent. Bibigon 22:00, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I rewrote that line about 15 minutes ago. - FrancisTyers · 22:10, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that. That the article currently has a NPOV warning, and blatantly POV statements like that were removed a mere 15 minutes ago however is a pretty good sign that it's not a high quality article yet, and should be used as precedent for what a good article without NPOV issues looks like. Bibigon 22:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
User:Guy Montag just added that. - FrancisTyers · 22:10, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, what's your point? Blatantly POV terms are still actively being removed from the article. This is an example of a good article that the Deir Yassin article should model itself after? There is a NPOV dispute, and that dispute appears to be lively at this point. Bibigon 22:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Incidentally, the Massacre of the Innocents is a good example. It describes a massacre, but seemingly without evidence and is probably disputed. It isn't at "Alleged massacre of the Innocents", although I'm not sure if it fits '4'. - FrancisTyers · 21:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
This has no mention of the massacre being disputed. Bibigon 22:02, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Haha. - FrancisTyers · 22:05, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

So anyway, thats at least four examples. - FrancisTyers · 22:11, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I grant one of those. The rest do not qualify, and you still haven't explained Tiananmen Square or Jenin to my satisfaction. Bibigon 22:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

How about Bleiburg massacre? See towards the bottom. - FrancisTyers · 22:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Not a high quality article. There are a great many unsourced statements, and it is generally bordering on OR. ("it is generally accepted that the vast portion of violent deaths were the result of executions that lasted at least two weeks after the cessation of hostilities." -- No source cited.) Bibigon 22:47, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Regarding "Jenin massacre", Google scholar gives 22 for "Battle of Jenin" and 23 for "Jenin massacre" (hardly conclusive), in comparison, it gives 0 hits for "Battle of Dier Yassin" and 51 hits for "Dier Yassin massacre". Google books gives 5 hits for "Battle of Jenin" and 18 hits for "Jenin massacre" (I underreported before), comparatively, 152 hits for "Dier Yassin massacre", compared with 1 hit for "Battle of Dier Yassin".

We can say that, in scholarly works, "Battle of Jenin" and "Jenin massacre" are equally favoured. In scholarly works, "Battle of Deir Yassin" is not used, while "Deir Yassin massacre" is used frequently. In literature, "Battle of Jenin" is used, but not as frequently as "Jenin massacre", while "Battle of Deir Yassin" is used only one time out of a total of 153. In terms of magnitude of naming conflict the cases are not comparable. - FrancisTyers · 22:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Of the total, 99.35% books published with "Deir Yassin massacre" and 0.65% with "Battle of Deir Yassin". Compare of the total, 21% of books published use "Battle of Jenin" and 78% use "Jenin massacre". In some circumstances, 78% isn't a consensus, in the overwhelming majority of circumstances, 99.35% is consensus. - FrancisTyers · 22:45, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

This is a good point, but ChrisO's standards seemed limited to which was the more common name. Why is 22% sufficient in the case of Jenin? What makes that fundamentally different other than numbers?
Additionally, you haven't dealt with the Tiananmen issue either. 9 hits for "Tiananmen Square protests of 1989" vs. 1620 for "Tiananmen Square Massacre." 99.44% for the massacre title there. Bibigon 22:52, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Try searching without "of 1989". - FrancisTyers · 22:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Google scholar "Tiananmen square protests" (101), "Tiananmen square massacre" (635) — Google books "Tiananmen square protests" (213), "Tiananmen square massacre" (1620) Still doesn't nearly reach the levels I have previously quoted. - FrancisTyers · 22:58, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Tianamen square does not fit your own criteria, it was not during a battle. Furthermore, I don't see where it is explicitly denied. The Chinese government figures are substantially lower, but is it denied that it was a massacre? - FrancisTyers · 22:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

What? I didn't say it had to be during a battle. I said the events had to be not limited to mass killings. The Chinese government refers to it as "Political Turmoil between Spring and Summer of 1989" instead of as a massacre and disputes the number killed. Bibigon 22:58, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

How about Chenogne massacre? Sourced, seemingly NPOV. - FrancisTyers · 22:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect, Bibigon, you've misunderstood what I was saying. I'm not appealing to precedent at all - I'm citing the plain requirements of Wikipedia policies. If other articles don't fully apply those policies, that's no reason for this article to make the same mistake. Let's focus on getting this article right and worry about other articles later. -- ChrisO 22:56, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The other shoe drops. After several times appealing to precedent in the case of the Srebrenica massacre, you appear to have now (rightly) changed your mind about the validity of arguments of this style. I heartily agree, if other articles don't apply those policies, then there's no reason for this article to make the same mistake. I withdraw my request, as my whole point was that argument by precedent was a poor line of logical thought. A point you did not respond to earlier, and that's why I brought it up again. Please keep this in mind the next time you want to invoke Srebrenica to push your POV here. Bibigon 23:02, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
What a convienient point to withdraw your request ;) - FrancisTyers · 23:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
If you'd read what I wrote earlier about the entire idea of precedent based arguments, it should't surprise you at all. My whole point was that they were flawed forms of debate on Wikpedia. Bibigon 03:37, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Nonsense. I invoked Srebrenica on two occasions. Neither was to use the article as a precedent but to point out that some of the assumptions being made in this discussion weren't very sound. First, I said: "The fact that there was a military engagement with fire exchanged on both sides doesn't preclude describing the incident as a massacre (compare Srebrenica massacre)." Second, I said: "The problem that we face is that almost nobody calls that engagement a "battle", any more than they call the engagement at Srebrenica in July 1995 a "battle"." The point I'm making in both cases is that if there's general agreement to describe a military engagement as a massacre, that's what we should reflect. The mere fact that the massacre was intertwined with an armed engagement doesn't automatically compel us to describe the incident as a "battle", as I think Guy was trying to suggest. We use the terminology of the majority of our reliable sources, leaving it to the experts, whether or not we think their choice is right. -- ChrisO 23:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
That's the very definition of a precedent based argument. You were using the Srebrenica incident as evidence that Wikipedia calls other military engagements massacres. Either way however, as long as we're in agreement that Srebrenica being called a massacre on Wiki has no relevance to this article, I'm quite content to let this issue go. Bibigon 03:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't want my name choice to be interperted as a prejudiced toward one side. That I why I used a purely factual term of two opposing sides clashing over a geographical area (commonly referred to as a battle) and leave the controveries to the content. Leaving the name massacre clearly implies that that is what happened.

Guy Montag 00:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

What are the reliable sources in this case?

Question, what would be the reliable sources we could base this article on? Most quotes seem to come from The War of Independence Vol. IV:Out of Crisis came Decision from Uri Milstein. In the old June 7 version, I found also:

  • Benny Morris, The Historiography of Deir Yassin, Journal of Israeli History, vol. 24, no. 1 (2005) 79-107.
  • Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" (Cambridge University Press, 1987)

and the follow up to that

  • Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem revisited" 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Are these ok sources, and which others need to be added? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 20:56, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Morris is a legitimate source, certainly. He's an expert on this period in Israel's history. Gatoclass 21:33, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

He is a legitimate source, but he bows to Milstein's eminance in regards to military history and the battle of Deir Yassin, as I've quoted earlier. Guy Montag 23:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Your Morris quote demonstrates no such thing. Here's the quote again: "Milstein's work will most likely turn out to be the definitive military history of the 1948 war...No one is likely to surpass the sheer breadth, depth, and scope of this work...Israeli military history has now been pulled up to a new, higher and refreshing plane." (Morris, "'Pre-History' vs. 'History', Jerusalem Post, 9 May 1989.
It's Milstein's work on the '48 war as a whole that Morris describes as "most likely...definitive", not the DY massacre specifically.
More importantly, this quote is very old, dating back to 1989, long before Morris himself published works on the '48 war that are themselves regarded as definitive. Gatoclass 23:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I think I will keep our semantic dispute and discussion to the article and not this paragraph. That would be as fruitless as having a discussion on the interpertation of biblical passages. The fact is that Milstein is the most important and eminent historian of Israeli military history, and Israeli military history included Deir Yassin, of which Milstein wrote an exhaustive account. Morris is certainly reputable, and I'll leave it at that.

Guy Montag 23:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

And Morris, in his turn, is regarded as a leading expert on the subject of the Palestinian exodus of '47-'48, in which Deir Yassin obviously played a vitally important part. Gatoclass 00:07, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Is it correct that much new information was made public during the 80's and 90's, and as such, that Milstien does not cover all currently available material? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 00:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. But I do know that in Morris' 2004 revised edition of his book, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, he accused the Israeli military of committing numerous massacres in the 1948 war. Deir Yassin, he believes, was part of a wider pattern, designed to expel Arabs from the nascent Israeli state. From Wiki's Benny Morris page:
In the 2004 book; The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, he changes his perspective, and places the major responsibility for the creation of Palestinian refugees on Jewish military groups. According to Morris, these groups massacred far more Palestinians than has been known earlier. He also writes that expelling Palestinians was a goal that was shared with main Jewish leaders at the time. Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, gave orders to destroy Palestinian villages in 1948, according to the Israeli politician Aharon Cohen. In this 2004 version, Morris underlines that Jewish leaders, also before Israel was created, wanted as few Arabs/Palestinian in the areas they were conquering as possible. They wanted for demographic reasons as many Palestinians to flee as possible. Gatoclass 01:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Just a quick note: this is a crucial observation (and I don´t say this only because I wrote the above ;-D [31])..... the difference between his first and second version have been noted by many, as has his reluctance to draw the obvious conclusions in the first version of the book. See also the start of Talk:Benny Morris. Regards, Huldra 04:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
BTW, in reply to your question I did a quick search of the net which indicates that Morris' book was indeed based at least in part on newly declassified material. Gatoclass 03:44, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I suspected that already, which suggests that Morris has actually a better total view than Milstein in that case, just because he had access to the new declasified material. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 03:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Apart from which, we still don't actually know exactly what Milstein had to say about it. At least, I don't. We only have the handful of quotes that GM has provided, and they are not directly from Milstein himself but from eyewitness testimonies apparently quoted in Milstein.
Unfortunately, I don't think my local library has a copy of Milstein so my only option is to buy one - and it's a pretty expensive tome. Gatoclass 04:00, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
The university library has all of them, I checked that already, so that should not be a problem. But it would be nice when the editors who claim that it should be battle would provide some sources. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 04:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I've returned Milsteins tomes to the local library. I will get them as soon as I can. Guy Montag 16:47, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Milstein page numbers

Question, are the Milstein page numbers based on the English version? If so, which edition? Or the Hebrew version? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 00:54, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

It is based on the English transation. I just wanted to mention that there are four volumes, and all of them have been updated with just as much declassified information as Morris. His last version was published in 1999. Guy Montag 16:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, than the page numbers are out of order, as in the 1998 (©)/1999 (actual publication) version, the chapter about Deir Yassin is between 343 and 396. Maybe we should start fixing that first, and in that context, is there objection against changing the footnotes to refs, so that the actuall reference is with the actual text? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 17:20, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Could you rephrase that please?

Guy Montag 19:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The text numbers for the Milstein book in the article are generally running in the 200's, while the book (1999 edition), which I have laying here next to me, shows that the chapter about Deir Yassin is between page 343 and 396. As such, the article does not match with the actuall page numbers in the book.
Related to that, the footnote system works fine, although I think it would be nice to have the actuall reference directly with the quote, and for that reason, I would prefer the <ref></ref> system, but that is just my preference. I do not mind to make all the needed changes for that if there is no objection against using the ref system, but I will not do it until there is clarity about that. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 19:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I would have no problem with updating the pages as long as it doesn't bring the quotes into confusion. I would also like to wait until we get as much information into this article as possible before we try to organize the footnotes. It is a pain to constantly recount the numbers when new sources are inserted. That is why I didn't organize the footnotes by numerical order in the first place.

Guy Montag 20:43, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I would change evenything at once.
BTW, some of the quotes that you have inserted are not matching with the 1999 edition of the book, which together with the faulty page numbers suggest to me that you have actually used this website's translation http://www.ariga.com/peacewatch/dy/umilst.htm -- Kim van der Linde at venus 21:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Name debate - Another angle

So I've done some perusal of the literate surrounding this incident, and I've noticed that even more common than the name of the incident being the Deir Yassin Massacre is the incident being called simply Deir Yassin. I'm not sure what to make of this, but as far as the most common name for this incident, this appears to outstrip even the the "massacre" title. Just throwing that out there, as I'm not really sure this means for the name of the article. Bibigon 03:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Not surprising really, I've noticed the same with regard to the massacres at Srebrenica and My Lai. Remember all the recent headlines calling the killings at Haditha "Iraq's My Lai"? It's just people being lazy, IMO... -- ChrisO 07:38, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

What is a massacre?

The burden should be on those who want to characterize an event in the worst possible way that this characterization is accurate. The term "massacre" as it is intended to be part of a title, can not be arbitrary - it tells the reader from the very outset that a massacre occurred.

These are the definitions of the term "massacre," as a noun:

  • The act or an instance of killing a large number of humans indiscriminately and cruelly. (American Heritage Dictionary)
  • the savage and excessive killing of many people (WordNet ® 2.0)
  • the unnecessary, indiscriminate killing of a number of human beings, as in barbarous warfare or persecution, or for revenge or plunder (Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary)

For the term "massacre" to apply, at least two conditions must be met:

  1. The manner of the killings - they have to be "savage," "unnecessary," "indiscriminate," "cruel," or "barbarous."
  2. Many people must have been killed

There are, of course, other killings that are heinous without being massacres. Murder would be one of them.

The problem, of course, is that these two criteria rely on subjective judgment. Just what makes a killing cruel, or savage? And what is the threshold for many?

One thing is clear with Deir Yassin: there was a battle, with a number of battle casualties on both sides that clearly do not count toward a massacre. It is also clear that the Irgun and Stern forces deliberately allowed a number of villagers to leave, unharmed. It also seems clear that the total number of Arabs killed is less than 120, and that the majority of these were battle dead, including those non-combatants who were killed in the fog of battle.

I can see that we at Wikipedia should not determine whether the number of dead, and the manner in which they died, qualifies this as a "massacre." But there is no evidence that any of the cited sources goes through the exercise of deciding whether the events pass the threshold of qualifying as a "massacre." They have either accepted the term as common usage, or as a premise for their discussion.

One test would be to find a comparable event - a battle for a village, where the attackers gave advance warning, got engaged in heavy fighting and sustained heavy casualties, and something less than about 60 were killed under disputed circumstances - and see whether this is termed a "massacre."

If you look at other "massacres" in Wikipedia, either the circumstances of the deaths or the numbers is different from this one, and usually both. There have undoubtedly been many cases of battles that went out of control, with tragic consequences, in various wars, but these are not typically called "massacres," even if they involve murder. --Leifern 11:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

It is not up to us to define what a massacre is, but to look what verifiable reliable sources dealing with Deir Yassin have to say about it. What do authors such as Milstein and Morris say about this? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 12:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
This only works if these authors have explicitly addressed the issue of whether "massacre" is the right term. If they use the term for the sake of convenience or common usage, we are no closer to an answer. What is clear, though, is that an accusation - which the word "massacre" clearly is - needs some level of substantiation before it can be considered NPOV. --Leifern 12:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
So, the questions becomes, what do the verifiable reliable sources dealing with Deir Yassin and whether or not there is a massacre have to say about it. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 13:32, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

For the term to apply, it should be the term that is most widely applied. Otherwise, "St. Valentines' Day Incident" -- RomaC 02:17, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether there was a massacre or not. The "event" or "incident" is known as the "Deir Yassin massacre" and so the article should have that title. Disputes over the claim that a massacre took place can be explained in an NPOV fashion in the body of the article. To my knowledge, however, there is no serious dispute over the fact that hand grenades were thrown into civilian dwellings, killing tha families within, nor over the fact that around 25 villagers were executed after the fighting ended. --Ian Pitchford 21:16, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

NPOV and OR

I would like to have the opinion of the various editors on whether they think (and why) this articles in its current form is written in NPOV (especially with regard to undue weight), and whether they think this articles is free of original research. About the latter, I find it curious that at places, there are only quotes of witnesses, and I fail to find the conclusions by authors like Milstein and Morris dealing with the topic on this, which I would expect to find. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 12:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Copyvio

Oh the joy, some of this article is copyvio from [32] and [33]. - FrancisTyers · 23:29, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, Guy Montag is banned from this page, I'm just searching around to find the right template :) - FrancisTyers · 00:05, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I have a good word-level diff tool and identified the following sections as the copied parts:
Excerpt 1: On April 2 to April 4, 1948 Friday and Saturday nights, gunfire from the Deir Yassin area raked the adjacent Jewish neighborhoods of Beit Hakerem and Bayit Vegan from the direction of Deir Yassin, Ein Kerem, as well as from the direction of Quloniya.4 On Sunday, April 4, commander Shaltiel received an urgent message from the intelligence officer of the Haganah's Etzioni division: "There's a gathering in Deir Yassin. Armed men left [from Deir Yassin] in the direction of [the nearby town of] lower Motza, northwest of Givat Shaul. They are shooting at passing cars."26 That same day, the deputy commander of the Haganah's Beit Horon brigade, Michael Hapt reported to Shaltiel: "A [Jewish] passenger car from Motza was attacked near the flour mill, below Deir Yassin, and is stopped there. There is rifle fire upon it. You too send an armoured vehicle with weapons. There is concern that the road is cut off."25
An armoured vehicle carrying Lehi fighters was also attacked at the same spot that day. A Haganah intelligence officer who described the incident to his superiors reported that according to Lehi officer David Gottlieb, those of his men who disembarked from their vehicle to return fire said that the attackers appeared to be Arab soldiers rather than local villagers 57. A telegram from Michael Hapt, of the Haganah's Beit Horon brigade, to the Haganah command, at 5:00 P.M. that day, urged: "In order to prevent [an attack] on lower Motza, cutting off the road to Jerusalem, and capture of position south of Tzova, Deir Yassin must be captured."27
Excerpt 2: The most comprehensive study was commissioned by Birzeit University, whose researchers tracked down the surviving Arab eyewitnesses to the attack and interviewed them. Their findings report that "for the most part, we have gathered the information in this monograph during the months of February-May 1985 from Deir Yassin natives living in the Ramallah region, who were extremely cooperative," listing by name twelve former Deir Yassin residents whom they had interviewed concerning the battle. The study continued: "The [historical] sources which discuss the Deir Yassin massacre unanimously agree that number of victims ranges between 250-254; however, when we examined the names which appear in the various sources, we became absolutely convinced that the number of those killed does not exceed 120, and that the [Irgun-Lehi] exaggerated the numbers in order to frighten Palestinian residents into leaving their villages and cities without resistance.". A list of 107 people killed and twelve wounded was given.49
Hope that helps. --Ben Houston 00:27, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I haven't dealt with copyvios before but I commented out the two offending sections and removed the copyvio tag. That seems like the logical way to handle this. --Ben Houston 00:33, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the exact diffs. It isn't appropriate to remove the tag out of process. If you would like to continue working on the article, please follow the procedure described and copy the non-copyvio material into a subpage and edit that. I've reverted you for this reason, the tag is quite explicit about process. :) - FrancisTyers · 00:38, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Instead of blowing this thing out of proportion, just credit the ZOA for a portion of the report and rewrite the information. The secondary sources are still sources.

Guy Montag

First of all, thanks for realising that this is a copyright violation. Secondly, if you would like to rewrite the page avoiding copyright violations, please wait until your ban is revoked and then work on the temporary page. - FrancisTyers · 01:11, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't admit to anything. It is impossible to write the article if the secondary sources of the report, the newspaper clippings the milstein quotes, the reports from the IDF cannot be quoted. Those things aren't copywritten, they are primary sources that anyone can use to write an article. It would be impossible to write the article if I cannot quote facts such as firings from the area of Deir Yassin and their timeline. No matter how you write it, the timeline and the manner of responses from the people involved will be the same. No matter how you write it, Michael Hapt will still be a member of the Haganah's Beit Horon brigade, and will still have written to to the Haganah command, at 5:00 P.M. urging them that : "In order to prevent [an attack] on lower Motza, cutting off the road to Jerusalem, and capture of position south of Tzova, Deir Yassin must be captured." This is just a factual restatement of a timeline.

Guy Montag 01:18, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

They were not quoted. Are you now denying that this is a copyright violation? - FrancisTyers · 01:26, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
FrancisTyers, it is not appropriate to delete a large article many have worked and stressed over because one individual inserted three paragraphs of copyrighted material. The tag and process you are currently engaged in is for when the whole or majority of the article is a copyviolation -- which is not the case here. When only relatively minor sections are copyright violations one should just remove them and move on. To force everyone involved in this contentious article to stop and start over is not correct and is a large waste of time -- if what you are doing was official policy, the inserting small bits of copyvio into contentious articles to force their complete rewrite would become a great troll technique. I believe you are mistaken in the way you are handling this. --Ben Houston 01:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the outcome will be appropriate. Guy has informed me that he will be requesting permission to use the copyrighted text. When we have that permission we can go back to business as usual. I may have been a bit heavy-handed, but I think copyright violation is important. As regards to your suggestion of "troll technique", this was not an attempt by an outsider to "game" the article, it was a genuine copyright violation that sat there for over twenty days is slightly concerning. Besides, there is nothing stopping you from copying the non-copyvio text into the subpage. It recommends a re-write, it doesn't require it. - FrancisTyers · 01:46, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Francis's action was correct. A copyright violation is a very serious matter. Entire articles are blanked on occasion because of them. They could severely damage the reputation of Wikipedia and place the individual responsible before the courts. In fact Montag is very lucky he was not banned not merely from this article but from Wikipedia for such an act. Any copyvios are, and will continue to be, immediately deleted on sight. In the past, that resulted in a 48K article being reduced to just one line. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 02:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I've sent the email, now we wait.

Guy Montag 02:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Surely the issue is not whether or not GM gets permission to use this text *now*. The issue is that he used the text without first enquiring about its copyright status, or whether or not he could use it.
In my opinion, that would surely be sufficient cause for banning him from this page - particularly since he was already on probation.
Not only that, but it seems to me a ban from just one page for a violation of this sort is extremely mild. Shouldn't such a misuse of Wiki be cause for further action? Gatoclass 02:38, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes. Retrospective permission does not remove the fact that a breach occurred. Users who breached copyright in the past have been blocked from Wikipedia, not just from one article. Nor is the issue how many breaches. Any breach of copyright is a serious matter. Not alone might they potentially refuse to allow its use following what legally was its theft the first time. They could also sue the person responsible. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 02:44, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


Discussion of how best to deal with copyright violation should not distract us from the fact that we now have a big ol' copyright tag in place of an article on Deir Yassin. I came here to learn. If there is anything I can do to get the article back up ASAP I will do it. Deal with the 'offending parties' separately. Right now this alleged copyright issue looks to me like an attempt to suppress information. This is definitely not right. I suggest you put the non-copyrighted portions back up immediately. I got here from the Wikipedia front page blurb on the anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel, as I am sure many others might be also right about now, and I want to read the article on Deir Yassin WITHOUT having to figure out how to access it in the page history. I just hate censorship under ANY pretext, and this action reeks of censorship.Amity150 06:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


Okay, I checked Wikipedia's guidelines on copyright violations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#If_you_find_a_copyright_infringement "If some of the content of a page really is an infringement, then the infringing content should be removed, and a note to that effect should be made on the talk page, along with the original source. If the author's permission is obtained later, the text can be restored.

If all of the content of a page is a suspected copyright infringement, then the page should be listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems and the content of the page replaced by the standard notice which you can find there. If, after a week, the page still appears to be a copyright infringement, then it may be deleted following the procedures on the votes page."

These guidelines do not include the suppression of the entire page, but just removal of the questionable material until permission can be obtained. Therefore I am reverting the page. I will attempt to eliminate the portions which are alleged to be copyright violations. If I am wrong, please YOURSELVES eliminate the possible copyright violations, but do NOT suppress the entire article. This is America, for Pete's sake. Amity150 06:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

If you know al the copyright violations at the page, go ahead, but I have found already copyrighted material from three different websites, and at at least 14 places. And I am just half way the article checking. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 06:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I suggest removing those sections individually as you find them, then. Amity150 06:18, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted to the last version before the censorship. Now the burden is on you to prove what sections are copyright violations. As you find instances, delete them from the body of the article. Please do not delete the rest of the article. Amity150 06:27, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Since you're so keen to have the page restored while the copyright issues are being sorted out, I have done the obvious thing and restored the version of the article that existed before GM did his rewrite. That way Wiki does not risk having copyvio material up in the meantime. Gatoclass 06:39, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

On the face of it (having just got here and not being familiar with the history of this article) that sounds fair enough. Thank you. Amity150 06:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I am now at 18 copyvio's from 5 websites, and that is for the first three main headers. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 07:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Reverting is clearly right in that case - it looks like Guy's version is riddled with copyvios. However, copyvio or not, Guy did put in a fair amount of effort to ensure that his POV was represented. We should ensure that the article does at least present both sides of the issue. -- ChrisO 07:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
The version prior to GM's, which I have restored, already does so. It's certainly one heck of a lot more balanced than Guy's version, which was by and large a rehash of the ZOA's article.
Undue weight is also an issue here. According to the ZOA's own testimony, of 170 books they reviewed which dealt with the Deir Yassin massacre, a mere 8 of them dispute that a massacre took place. And the ZOA's main source for refuting the massacre is Milstein, who doesn't actually say that a massacre didn't take place.
In other words, the view that disputes the massacre is already very much a fringe view, if indeed it exists at all (the ZOA presents not a single source disputing it). In which case I see little reason to give this hypothetical dissenting view any space at all. A best, a brief summation or passing reference is all it merits. Gatoclass 08:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Would the ZOA article be a reliable source? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 08:35, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Of course not. It's a partisan political lobby group. Gatoclass 08:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
WP:RS doesn't rule out the use of such sources: "Partisan political and religious (or anti-religious) sources should be treated with caution, although political bias is not in itself a reason not to use a source." (WP:RS#Partisan websites) -- ChrisO 08:53, 22 July 2006
A partisan source like the ZOA can at best only scrape in as a reliable source, and its opinions should be treated accordingly. Gatoclass 09:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
It should be treated with caution, certainly, and particularly if its views represent a fringe view (WP:NPOV#Undue weight applies). -- ChrisO 09:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to unban guy despite my better judgement per SV's request. Having said that, I don't feel particularly strongly about the content of the article, merely the title, which I think should reflect common and academic usage. - FrancisTyers · 12:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Now I'm confused. Did GM plagiarize or didn't he? I took it from what Francis and Ben Houston said earlier that he had clearly engaged in plagiarism, can someone confirm whether he did or not? Gatoclass 22:29, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
It's plain that he did, but Francis unblocked GM based on objections from another administrator. This shouldn't be taken by anyone (much less GM himself) as a demonstration of innocence - it's not. -- ChrisO 23:28, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
From what SlimVirgin said on FT's talk page, GM only seems to have borrowed eyewitness quotes from various websites. If that's all he did, I wouldn't regard that as plagiarism, since such quotes are in the public domain. If he borrowed original text however, that would be plagiarism, but I've yet to see any evidence he did that. Gatoclass 00:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I am working on a word document, and I am not done yet with all the copyvio's, and it is curently 13 pages long, 18 sections, from at least 4 diffferent websites. I still have to deal with one section. After that, I will further document the biases in the articles, using the books/articles from Milstein and Morris (I am also going to put the general line of the article against the Zionist denial articles http://www.deiryassin.org/denierspr-980309-99.html and http://groups.msn.com/Mishpocha/deiryassin.msnw (they are roughly equivalent), and compare that with the two historias actually have to tell about (if someone wants to help with doing that comparision, I would be really thankful). When I am done, I will make the doocument available at my website for wikipedia people. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 01:15, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I have decided that after it was clear that the article is literally loaded with copyvio's, I only will show the evidence for the first three section, and that can be found here: http://www.kimvdlinde.com/wikipedia/Deir_Yassin_Copyright_violation.doc The remaining two sections are done in part, and could be good or bad with regard to the number of copyvio's. What is clear is that the copyvio's are from various websites, and in part from pre Guy Montag, although all new insertions that I found originate from him. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 02:51, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

That would appear to settle the issue. Multiple examples of plagiarism there. I should think that would be enough at the very least to justify a ban from this article, and probably a wider ban of some sort - especially considering he was already on probation when he did this. Gatoclass 03:48, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I do not support copyright violations, but your self-righteousness is distasteful. Got off your ill-gotten high horse and work on the article. --Leifern 04:12, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Thankyou for the gratuitous ad homs. I'll add them to my collection :)
Nothing to do with self-righteousness. I obviously didn't like GM's rewrite from the outset, but what prevented me from just reverting was the fact that I felt he'd worked very hard and done a lot of research, and that therefore his efforts, even if I considered them to be POV, deserved some measure of respect.
Having since found that he's simply lifted a bunch of stuff from different websites, and massaged it a little to give it an appearance of originality, I feel, quite frankly, like I've been played for a fool. And I'm not very happy about it. Hence my desire to see him appropriately dealt with. We have all, after all, wasted a considerable amount of time discussing his changes to the article, only to find out they are plagiarized. I mean, look at all the time Kim has wasted going to the library to get Milstein, checking his rewrite for diffs, etc. You may think that is a trivial issue but I don't.
Apart from which, of course, plagiarism is a serious matter, and deserves to be treated as such. Not that I'm going to recommend anything in particular, I'll leave that up to experienced admins. But certainly, I think it merits more than just a ban from one page, particularly since he's still serving time for his last offence. Gatoclass 07:11, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I've been processing copyright violations and got to this page. As far as I can tell the copyrighted material has now been removed/paraphrased. If anyone disagrees or knows any differently please let me know. Thanks Mark83 18:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Chapter 16, section 12. The Massacre (page 376 Milstein)

Milstein starts this section with: The story of the Dier-Yassin massacre is now part of the heritage of both Arabs and Jews. Indeed, it cannot be denied: most of those killed at Deir-Yassin were old people, woman and children. Only a modest number were young men classifiable as fighters. This, despite of the resolution adopted at the ETZEL-LEHI command session to vote down a proposal to kill civilians, and despite the calls over the loudspeakers for the Arabs to clear ouyt the village when thye attack began. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 08:33, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Could you convert the article to use a standard reference format, the current format makes the article look worse than it actually is. - FrancisTyers · 15:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I started already. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 15:23, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Change "References" to "Notes" and "Literature" to "References", put "Notes" above "References", then change the following text in the notes section.

"Sources quoted by author and year only can be find in full above under Literature." -> "Sources quoted by author and year only can be found in full below under References."

I'm not doing it as I don't want to edit the page for content. - FrancisTyers · 15:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Kim has completely misquoted Milstein

I am reading Righetous Victims by Benny Morris. On Page 208 of the 2001 version there is a bookmark (#208).

This is what he says about Milstein's analysis of Dier Yassin as Milstein writes in his book p. 273-76. Morris Verbatum.


Milstien quotes at length from most of the massacre and rape reports but casts doubt on their veracity. In general, he denies that there were any "massacres." Families were indeed slaughtered, he says, but mostly during Jewish attacks on Arab villages om the first half of 1948;similiar brutal conquests were carried out by Haganah and Palmach, but Dier Yassin was subsequently 'elevated' by the Yishuv's leadership to the status of a unique massacre and publisized because of the antipathy toward IZL in order to focus blame for various atrocities committed during the war on the IZL and LHI and to divert blame away from the Haganah; he argues. (277-280 milstein) Ben-Gurion andf the left-wing Mapai party deliberately exploited Deir Yassin to prevent the conclusion of a political power sharing agreement with the Revisionists, which was then being debated in Tel Aviv.

So I would like to once again review the name of this article, as two historians disagree on its interpertation and most importantly its content, because now it follows the same horrible pattern denying the IZL-Lehi story.

Guy Montag 22:31, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

You are wrong to say that Morris says Milstein denied a massacre took place. What Morris said is that Milstein in general denies massacres took place. It does not say that Milstein specifically denies a massacre took place at DY, or that he argues that no massacres took place during the war. Also, Morris states that Milstein argues the Yishuv elevated DY to the status of a unique massacre, the keyword being unique. So again this does not demonstrate a Milstein denial.
But even if you were right that Milstein denies the DY massacre, for which you have provided no definitive evidence, it would still make him very much in the minority of scholars, as the ZOA article itself concedes. Gatoclass 22:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I will get the book, so that I can see the analysis for myself. BTW, Morris is quite clear about it in Birth and the article that I have. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 01:21, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I have requested the book, it is currently lended out. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 01:23, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Milstein in his study does seem to lower the number of massacres, but also concludes that there were massacres (just a lower number). As for DY, he concludes that the DY massacre has been 'elevated', with purpose to incite the Arabs with fear, so that they would flee. Hence the inflated numbers of the 250 range figures etc. The usage of the massacre for other purposes and the increased numbers that came with that does not imply that there was not a massacre, just that it was smaller than previously thought, which is in line with other researchers. The main source for the reduction in estimates comes from the Bir Zeit University study, who list 107 names. Maybe we have to find that list, add it to Wikisource.
This is what Milstein says during an interview in 1992:
"I maintain that even before the establishment of the State, each battle ended with a massacre. . . [The] War of Independence was the dirtiest of them all . . . The idea behind a massacre is to inflict a shock on the enemy, to paralyze the enemy. In the War of Independence everybody massacred everybody, but most of the action happened between Jews and Palestinians. . . The education in the Yishuv at that time had it that the Arabs would do anything to kill us and therefore we had to massacre them. A substantial part of the Jewish public was convinced that the most cherished wish of say, a nine-year old Arab child, was to exterminate us. This belief bordered on paranoia."
Professor Uri Milstein, quoted in Ha'ir, "Not Only Deir Yassin" 6 May 1992 (article by Guy Erlich, translation Elias Davidsson)
I do not think that Milstein misquotes himself. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 04:30, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Truce

The version of this morning is ridiculous. The first few paragraphs are now about what the Arab population did to warrant the massacre! Imagine if someone wrote the story of the Holocaust that way! We would all be justly outraged.

It is time to stop this until you can get some help with POV issues. The former article was quite balanced, it seemed to me.

Sorry, I forgot earlier to sign, so am doing so now. Amity150 15:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Revamping the article

I think we should start to think about how to go from here with the article. I have Milstein and Morris in the house (and will have till at least november, handy to have 'faculty' permissions in the library). I am not done reading with every aspect, but I think this gives the option to really make it a very nice NPOV article, dealing with the main stream ideas, as well as ading the critisim and related aspects to it. One things that I think is really missing is the usage of this massacre as a propaganda tool in the war, which came with the exageration etc. Any ideas what else should be added? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 01:21, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Which Morris book do you have? Birth? Does that have a detailed description of the massacre? Just curious.
I've been loosely considering a total rewrite of the article myself, but since the reversion of Guy's rewrite, I no longer feel such a compelling need to do so. The current version is at least passable in my view, though I'm sure it could use some improvement.
BTW In regards to the propaganda role, I've always assumed DY played a significant part in the Palestinian exodus, but some reading I did on the net yesterday suggested that aspect may also be exaggerated. Gatoclass 01:48, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
But in regards to your question about what else should be added, I think it's rather comical that in the current version Lehi and Irgun are described as "armed factions" and "nationalist irregulars". These are weasel words. Irgun and Lehi were both terrorist organizations, by any definition of the term. Irgun in particular had planned and executed numerous attacks deliberately targeting civilians. So I think a few words about the background of these organizations would not be inappropriate. The reader needs to understand what kind of people were engaged in this attack, and what sort of record they had. Gatoclass 01:59, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I have Birth revisited, and the 2005 article. It deals at various places with Deir Yassin, and the massacre, and I have to read still more of it. I probably can get pretty much any other book that might be interesting, but I do get the impression that Milstein and Morris are the two major historians that have worked on this. I am close to asking the whole article to be deleted, and start anew from there, as the old version also contains copyvio's, but I have not checked them in enough detail. The major problem that I have with the current version is that it is more a collection of quotes and alike, and not a good flowing article. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 04:21, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it could certainly be a lot better. As I said I've thought about a rewrite myself, but since you've pretty much taken the lead here, and you have access to material that I don't, I'm happy to leave it to you if you want to have a go. Finding the time and commitment to do a total rewrite of an article is always something of an issue for me anyway. Gatoclass 07:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Dier Yassin massacre ArbCom case

I have filed a ArbCom case against Guy Montag for the violation of his probation, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Dier_Yassin. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 14:08, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Of course you did - he disagrees with you. It wasn't enough that you, as a party to the debate, had him banned from the article? --Leifern 18:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
If I was wrong, it will show in the ArbCom case. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 19:13, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Get a life and mind your own arbcom case. I am tired of these abusive anti Israeli administrators hiding behind a cloak neutrality. I am not going to participate in your baseless case.

Guy Montag 19:39, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Please try and be civil, Guy. - FrancisTyers · 20:04, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Sources and Kim

Kim, there are disputes and discrepancies in everything you cite as facts. Morris is a biased source, and most of his writing has been debunked by real historians; and he has even retracted many of his points of view himself. "Mainly old people, etc," is completely misleading as it might lead a reader to believe that these could not have been combatants. The term "massacre" is, as previously mentioned, completely out of proportion and misleading. I am sorry you have such an unmitigated animus toward Israel, but facts are facts. --Leifern 18:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Why do you not show the reliable sources you base you statements on? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 18:52, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't consider Milstein and Morris reliable sources, so now we're at an impasse. Certainly the Irgun website has a different perspective. Just because you keep repeating "reliable sources" like a mantra, doesn't make the version you hope to be true, true. --Leifern 18:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
They are reliable sources according to Wikipedia criteria, and the Irgun website is not. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 19:03, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
No, they're not - they're reliable according to your prejudices.--Leifern 19:07, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I asked Guy if Morris was a reliable source, and he agreed it was indeed a reliable source, see above. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 19:15, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
But you're working to get Guy banned from Wikipedia, so you obviously don't credit his opinion much. Clearly, the number and composition of casualties is uncertain, so stating it as a fact runs counter to the sources themselves. --Leifern 19:22, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Leifern, if your view of "reliable sources" were generalized you would have no argument against an editor who wanted to delete published academic sources and rewrite current events in the region as the Hezbollah website characterizes them. Hardly a standard for Wikipedia to aim for. --Ian Pitchford 21:20, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I think you're misreading my point. I haven't advocated deleting any cited allegations, or facts, in this article, but I think they need to be properly qualified. As even a cursory read of this article and the cited sources will show, the actual events at Deir Yassin are subject to revision and debate to this day. Morris, Milstein, and even the researchers at Birzeit struggle to reconcile conflicting accounts and the relative scarcity of historial records. So it follows that characterizing the casualties as a matter of historical fact overstates the level of certainty. You may think that Irgun veterans are an unreliable source, but it is equally clear that Morris has - or at least had - an axe to grind by presenting the Israeli public with an alternative narrative. The interesting thing is that the accounts converge over time, so a read of the Irgun and DeirYassin.org accounts aren't as different as one would expect. As far as the composition of the casualties is concerned, this is confounded by allegations that men dressed up as women, women and children supported combatants, etc. Though the Irgun veterans' account can't be considered impartial, they are a source that should be cited, just as the Deiryassin.org account should be cited. As a side note, subsequent findings lend considerable support for Begin's account in The Revolt. Sometimes parties to an event give factual accounts for it. In fact, Hizballah derives much of its credibility in the Arab world for being more honest than most if not all Arab goverments. --Leifern 17:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
The basic facts really aren't disputed - see the summary by the right-wing Israeli historian Yoav Gelber in Palestine 1948 for example. --Ian Pitchford 09:56, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello. I was just here for a few minutes. I want to point out that it is not very wikipedian to claim that Yoav Gelber would be a right-wing historian. It doesn't mean anything and is only pejorative. A kind of "ad hominem" argument. Talking that way, Morris would extreme-right politician ? and Pappé ? Etc. But no matter. I go back ;-) Alithien 11:35, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
"I don't consider Milstein and Morris reliable sources, --Leifern 18:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)" I am not sure you can reach a fair compromise discussing that way. Alithien 11:38, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't have the page number but Gelber writes texto : that today all historians agree that there were around 110 victims. Alithien 11:41, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Gelber works with the right-wing Ariel Center for Policy Research. --Ian Pitchford 10:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

~::::::::::And ? What proven impact on his work of HISTORIAN ? Alithien 08:47, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Benny Mooris: Righetous Victims, Abba Eban, Menachem Begin

First: now, there is a quote from "Righetous Victims", p 208, at the end of the article. That quote is sourced to different eye-witnesses, including Mordechai Gihon and Yitzak Levy. I put the extended quote here: [34]. Would it not be better if we "liftet" the quotes by e.g Gihon out of the "Righetous Victims" part, and into his "eye-witness" account? -preferably sourced both to the original report (in IDFA) and where it is quoted. And the same for any other eye-witness accounts?

Also: Should we quote Abba Eban and Menachem Begin at all? None of them were present, so they are of no interest as eye-witnesses. And they are not historians, they are (Israeli) politicians, with their own agenda. They are, basically, only voicing their own opinion. They should possibly have a place in "the modern debate" section, but I cannot see that they have any place as sources for the event/incident/battle/massacre. Regards, Huldra 23:46, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you on the quotes and replacing them. That would be a good start. I would go further and in my opinion, we should eliminate as much as possible the many quotes from eyewitnesses, and try first to document the conclusions of what can be found in reliable sources. After that, we can see where a quote of an eye wutness account. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 23:41, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Ah well, just a quick note again: perhaps we should start from scratch with agreeing on which sources are reliable and should be quoted? I say this because I react to the extent of quoting of Eban and Begin. I simply do not see why they should be quoted ....(If I remember correctly; wasn´t it Eban who once said in the UN that Israel had "not expelled a single Arab"? ) Huldra 18:00, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Unofficial translation Milstein

There is an unofficial translation available from Milstein on the web here: http://www.ariga.com/peacewatch/dy/umilst.htm It is a read, but worth doing. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 03:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Use of "terrorist[s]"

The word terrorists should not be used in relation to Irgun, Hamas, Hezbollah, or any other militant group unless they expressly refer to themselves as terrorists, Wikipedia:Words to avoid. It could be said that "The British described the group as terrorist". But we can't label them terrorist outright. "Militant", and "Gunman/men" are better wordings. - FrancisTyers · 17:15, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Agree, Milstien calls them various things, militia, army of amatuers, etc... -- Kim van der Linde at venus 17:35, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, if this is the convention on Wiki I will drop use of the term, at least until I confirm whether or not you are correct. However, I still believe that something needs to be said about their activities prior to the attack on Deir Yassin. After all, there are reams of stuff in the article about the alleged prior history of the DY villagers, much of it highly contentious to say the least. Gatoclass 23:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I thinkthere is a lot in the article that coudl use a rewrite and a better sourcing, and I think there are various things that need to be added and expanded. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 23:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


Ref

Deir Yassin Remembered P Bennis - Middle East Report, 1998 - JSTOR [[35]] (journalists at the time and historians since differ on the exact number 120-254 of victims, but agree they were almost all children, women and old men)--Stone 16:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The Historiography of Deir Yassin Benny Morris The Journal of Israeli History Vol. 24, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 79–107 [[36]] Hav to read the 29 pages!--Stone 16:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Gelber writes that today all historian agree there were about 100 victims with a majority of children, women and old men. (ref : II - Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948, Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 2006, ISBN1845190750, pp311-312) Alithien 08:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

when will the title be changed ?

there's no basis in saying that this was a massacre. It's clear POV. It was a fight, and the commander of the Israeli unit was killed. Of course when fighters shoot from within civilian houses, people might die. But it's still not a massacre since it all took place during a fight (between armies that is). The title needs to be changed ASAP.

I've addred some other details to make the article a little less biased. Amoruso

At Deir Yassin, it was not exactly a fight between "armies". And it was not part of the Yishuv Nachson operation. But never mind. Most historians and people refer to this as the "Deir Yassin massacre". In a title we can only respect the Npov rule in using the "commonly used expression". Any other title would be push-pushing by comparison with the standard expression. Alithien 08:56, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
people relate to it as "Deir Yassin massacre" only in the context of the "false proven claim by the arabs.... of it being a massacre". It was a military fight and the facts are all there to see that the arabs made up this story for their own use. If one keeps this title , since it's a common name, then in the introduction one should mention that the name references to the claim and not for the actual event, which its facts are disputed.

as for google scholar, please ian pitchford, do not make false claims or lies. Amoruso 08:44, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Ian Pichford is CERTAINLY NOT a google scholar. At Deir Yassin, all historian agree there were a massacre. EG this one : [37] who is certainly not pro-palestinian biaised. Alithien 20:06, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Shmuel Katz

I would appreciate comments on whether a book written by the propaganda chief of one terrorist group (the Irgun) and distributed by another, the JDL qualifies as a reliable source. That book is Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine by Shmuel Katz. Ofira Seliktar writes:

Operating under the slogan "Never again" JDL supported the Greater Land of Israel, a policy which, in its view, mandated the expulsion of the Palestinians from the territories. To bolster its claims, the JDL distributed a book, Battleground: Facts and Fantasy in Palestine, penned by Shmuel Katz, the propaganda chief of the Irgun and a close friend of Begin. Katz contended that the Palestinians were recent arrivals in the land of Israel and did not deserve self-determination.
Katz, who became a leader in the Land of Israel Movement, a maximalist Israeli organization, helped to create in 1971 the Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI). AFSI's self-described goal was to persuade American Jews to reject the land-for-peace formula of Labour in favor of the peace-for-peace model favored by the Israeli right wing. AFSI, which initially functioned as a think tank, generated a large amount of material devoted to establishing Israel's legitimacy in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Sinai Desert... AFSI gained a higher profile in the Jewish community when a number of mainstream organizations such as AIPAC and NJCRAC decided to distribute its pamphlets, along with Katz's Battleground. (Seliktar, Ofira (2002). Divided We Stand: American Jews, Israel, and the Peace Process. Praeger/Greenwood. ISBN 0275974081, p. 39).

With reference to Joan Peters' use of Battleground in her discredited book From Time Immemorial, Norman Finkelstein comments:

..twenty-one [references] to Samuel Katz's Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, etc., etc., These 'sources' have the combined scholarly weight of a classic comic book. (Finkelstein, Norman (1995). Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Verso,. ISBN 1859843395, p. 219).

In view of the above I believe that anything 'sourced' to Battleground should be re-sourced to publications that satisfy WP:RS, WP:V and WP:NOT. Comments welcome. --Ian Pitchford 09:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)



Shmuel Katz is one of the most respected writers and historians and an expert on the Israeli Arab conflict.

The fact that Katz was in the Irgun, or the fact that he's on the right wing side of the map is of no consequence.

If Katz is not a good source, then all Benny Morris quotes should be deleted from wikipedia as well. Benny Morris is a notorious left wing analyst, who is involved in politics, and his works were also ruled as lies in the court of law. Yet Benny Morris is cited in wikipedia all the time.

Shmuel Katz however is a known biographer and historian. You can find his references in "google scholar" or anywhere else. He's a source in universites and schools around the world. The fact you don't like his research for political reason, although he cites all his references, for example you can see the same quote in Al Urdun newspaper, is simply your POV problem. Do not try to instigate lies.

Try to understand that your political views and the encylopedic value are two different things. You need to respect other opinions of established historians even if doesn't coincide with your political views.

Amoruso 09:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Katz has no relevant qualifications at all. Seliktar and Finkesltein do. Perhaps you'd like to see the article on the history of Israel re-written according to the works of Yasser Arafat? --Ian Pitchford 09:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Lies. he has moer qualifications than seliktar and finkesltein combined. Amoruso 09:23, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
here's a random editorial review on Shmuel Katz :

Editorial Reviews From Library Journal Historian and journalist Katz has written a lengthy and detailed life of Jabotinsky (1880-1940), an outstanding and controversial figure in the Zionist movement of the 1920s and 1930s. He was a leader of Revisionism, which opposed the policies of the mainstream Zionist group led by Chaim Weitzman and David Ben-Gurion, later to become president and prime minister, respectively, of the state of Israel. Jabotinsky was also a prolific journalist, novelist, poet, and linguist, and Katz treats these aspects of Jabotinsky's work fully. This attempt at completeness often obscures the main thrust of Jabotinsky's efforts?the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Although Katz avows a determination to be fair to Jabotinsky's contemporary critics and opponents, this is clearly the work of an ardent admirer. Recommended for academic libraries with large collections on Zionism and the state of Israel.?Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., CUNY Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1569800421/002-4808670-4079245?v=glance&n=283155

100% Very legitimate.

Amoruso 09:22, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Shmuel Katz was the Irgun's leading propagandist for many years, and quite a few historians described him as such. Material from Katz represents the Irgun point of view and so can only be used as giving the Irgun's point of view. Describing Katz as an independent source is quite wrong. In fact describing him as a historian is a bit of a stretch since he had no formal credentials as a historian. --Zerotalk 11:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Shmuel Katz's history in the irgun like explained is irrelevant. He's an established historian (and Doctor infact) (see editorial review above) with full credentials, and he's regarded as such around the world. He's not stating his opinion but simply bringing citations and references to the facts he's telling. Of course he has "baggage" and he has his own agenda. Just like all historians, history is told from the POV of the one who writes it. Benny Morris is a left wing historian, Shmuel Katz is a right wing historian. They're all historians. Amoruso 11:59, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Neither the article that you wrote about Katz, nor the biographical article your article links to, mentions any academic credentials. He is a writer and journalist who spend most of his life as a propagandist. I'm not just saying that he is biased, I'm saying that his job was propaganda, in the Irgun, in other groups, and even in his job working for Begin later on. Even the Irgun site admits that: "In 1977 was asked by the Prime Minister, Menahem Begin, to become his adviser on propaganda." [38]. Benny Morris, on the other hand has the very best academic credentials and even his enemies admit that. Another difference is that nearly every paper in academic journals on topics related to the Palestinian Exodus cite Morris, but Katz is never cited (except as an example of a propagandist). --Zerotalk 13:04, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Benny Morris is a propogandist for left-wing parties, and so is Ilan Pappe and other historians. Shmuel Katz has all the academic credentials and is a highly regarded scholar. every paper in academic journals on topics related to the Palestinian Exodus cite Shmuel Katz too. you can see many references in Google Scholar to the works of Shmuel Katz. The citations of Benny Morris on the other hand are only cited as example of a disputed research. Virtually any credible historian has refuted Morris work. See Efraim Karsh. On the other hand, the references of Shmuel Katz are reliable, accurate, un-deniable and have not been refuted. Amoruso 13:25, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Your claims are so non-factual that it is hard to imagine that you didn't just make them up. You owe us an apology for writing such nonsense. Katz is cited as a source on Jabotinsky and as a spokesman of the Irgun, Herut, Likud, and a few other political groups. Not even Karsh's book "The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948" cites his "historical research" (unless Google Books and Amazon are both lying to me). That's because Karsh wants to be respected by other historians. --Zerotalk 14:42, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Stop lying to meet your political ends. The facts are out there in the open. Use Google Scholar or any other program. Your comments make even less sense, considering Katz's book itself contains literally hundereds of refrences of other books. Like explained, Katz is an historian and is not speaking its opinion but rather citing evidence from so many sources, mostly arab in fact, that it's mind blowing. In fact, simply by using google alone, not goodle scholar, you can see the amount of scholars who use Katz book as an overall excellent book of reference. Amoruso 15:46, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Katz's book is listed in every list of Arab Israeli conflict listings.

http://www.mideastweb.org/isrzionbib.htm

http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/Library/MiddleEastbib.html

http://www.biggerbooks.com/book/0929093135

http://www.ivpl.org/Israel-Palestine.html

http://www.amazon.de/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1RJD10TTI568L/028-2190405-9816543?ie=UTF8&display=public&page=5

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0933503032/202-0643429-0782261?v=glance&n=266239

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0491002319/002-4808670-4079245?v=glance&n=283155

http://www.tomfolio.com/bookssub.asp?subid=4173&lo=1&page=5

www.upstartactivist.com/downloads/IsraelandPalestine.pdf


Bemused at the above, and a disinterested party, I searched Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Benny+Morris%22+history+israel Amongst the many, this from a critic of Benny Morris... "Since the publication in 1988 of "The Birth.." Benny Morris has come to be seen as the ultimate authority on the Palestinian exodus of 1948"[39] The outcome of this and similar (unproductive) attempts to track down Shmuel Katz' contributions seems unequivocal; as a historian Benny Morris may well be controversial but he is demonstrably widely respected and very widely cited. He is obviously a significant authority. For all I know Morris is completely unreliable and Katz 100% accurate. However, as a V RS there is no contest; Morris has it all and Katz pretty well nothing. Gleng 11:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Amongst Morris's academic colleagues there are those who think he is the king of the field and hate him, and those who think he is the king of the field and love him. Katz is not regarded as a member of the club at all. --Zerotalk 11:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

not true at all, as proven above. Amoruso 12:11, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Another disinterested party here, responding to the RfC. Some of the relevant info from WP:RS:

"Look out for false claims of authority. Advanced degrees give authority in the topic of the degree. Web sites that have numerous footnotes may be entirely unreliable. The first question to ask yourself is, "What are the credentials and expertise of the people taking responsibility for a website?" Anyone can post anything on the web.
Use sources who have postgraduate degrees or demonstrable published expertise in the field they are discussing. The more reputable ones are affiliated with academic institutions."

Here also is a good checklist to go through when determining whether a source is reliable: Evaluating Sources. Having laid out the "rules" from which my opinion is based, I would say that Katz is borderline unreliable. During a (admittedly brief) Google search on Katz, I was able to find no evidence that he has any sort of advanced degree which would help qualify him as an authoritative source. Simply having one's book within a list of books which treat a subject does not make one an authoritative source. He is a source of information on the subject, and for all I know everything he says is true. But I understand this dispute to be over the reliability of Katz as a source, and I see no evidence that he measures up. That said, I was unable to determine exactly how Katz is being used as a source in this article, aside from merely being listed as such. Which specific claims has he made which are present in the article? If his claims are disputable, that can be discussed either on this Talk page or, if relevant, within the article itself - with extensive citation, of course. If his claims are simply in line with a more authoritative source, then he need not be listed as a source (unless you need multiple sources for some reason). Good luck. Ogthor 23:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Katz has the degree and credentials from the university of Johannesburg. Katz is cited in "google scholar" and as mentioned above a highly reputable source in the area of Israeli Arab conflict and biographies of Jewish leaders. He conforms to the reliability of WP:RS with no doubt. As to his use here, nothing was taken (because of WP:POV pressures from editors) except for a couple of citations of witnesseses which are also used in other books. Amoruso 23:41, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

no massacre

It is sad to see that Wikipedia even allows the article to be named "massacre" because there is proof that there was no massacre there! For example

The Arab radio talked of women being killed and raped, but this is not true... I believe that most of those who were killed were among the fighters and the women and children who helped the fighters. The Arab leaders committed a big mistake. By exaggerating the atrocities they thought they would encourage people to fight back harder. Instead they created panic and people ran away.

these are the very words that a survivor said!

more proof:

the words of a top arab journalist to the Jerusalem Report:

'I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story,' recalled Nusseibeh. 'He said, "We must make the most of this." So we wrote a press release stating that at Deir Yassin children were murdered, pregnant women were raped. All sorts of atrocities.' "


I tried to edit the article for FACT but people kept changing it.

There you go- the proof is there! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gaddict (talk • contribs)

Some quotes are not sufficient to refute the extensive research of historians, you have to come up with better evidence. Preferable ones that fullfill WP:V and WP:RS. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 01:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
these quotes brought above by user:Gaddict are cited by historians, and fullfill WP:V and WP:RS as a secondary source atleast. Amoruso 02:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
No, quotemining is a form of original reasoning. What we need is the conclusions of those historians. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 03:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
well actually these quotes brought are already in the article. Amoruso 03:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, and the conclusions of the historians that there was indeed a massacre also. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 03:05, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
That's the conclusion of some historians, while many other believe there wasn't , and they bring some of these citations as evidence. There were attempts to censor these citations by certain editors, attempts that were partially succesful. Amoruso 03:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Than the question becomes, where are those MANY other historians you claim. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 03:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Dan Kurzman, Amos Perlmutter, Bowyer Bell, Uri Milstein, Sharif Kanaana, Nihad Zitawi, Yehoshua Gorodenchik, Shmuel Katz... Amoruso 03:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah right. Milstien, see quote above where is is very explicite about the massacre. Kanaana, see his report on the massacre. Katz, chief propagandist or the IZL, not WP:RS. You have to come with better series. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 03:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm afraid you're wrong on all 3 accounts. Both milstein and kanaana writings confirm there was no massacre. Katz , a historian cited by google scholar, and highly regarded, is 100% WP:RS . And all the other sources I mentioned are only a fragment who confirm this basic fact of history. Amoruso 03:56, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
So, you can provide the exact quote and page number of Milstiens book where Milstein concludes that therte was no massacre? Please, provide it to me. And please, indicate whether the pagenumber is based on the Hebrew version or the English translation. Thanks. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 13:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Indeed basically every historian in the world explains that there was no massacre. Of course women etc were killed. But they were killed because they were used in the battle as human shields and so on. I guess there's a disagreement over what a massacre means. Everybody agree that there was a battle. In the course of the battle, since the Arab soldiers shot from within the houses, non combatants or innocent lives died. This is a consensus throughout serious historians. The quotes brought depicting this are in line. Milstein doesn't deny "some aspects", he refutes the whole story. The identity of the dead is not related to the question of a massacre or not. the allegation that a massacre took place concerns the events after battle where there is only the account of Me’ir Pa’il. Not one historian has collaborated this. Milstein writes, on the battle itself, the use of women as human shields, disguising themselves as women and the confusion it caused. Kanaana (and also Nihad Zitawi), "Reinterpreting Deir Yassin," Bir Zeit University, (April 1998) talks about a much smaller number of dead, essentially proving they were killed during the fight since their number only cite 107 Arab civilians dead and 12 wounded, in addition to 13 "fighters," --> calculate the number of "civilians" in each house... for sure, since we have admisson there was fabrication from Khalidy and other leaders, it falls into place (for example the rape claims). In fact, Katz probably has the biggest number of dead of them all so I don't know why he's being attacked :) Generally, the Israeli sources have the bigger numbers. Eventually, the most detailed account of what happened was the BBC research which concluded there was no massacre and most poignantly brought Hazam Nusseibi, who worked for the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1948, who admitted being told by Hussein Khalidi, a Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate the atrocity claims. Zero's allegations are blatant lies. Gorodenchik of course denies the fabrication story of a massacre, but says that least some of the women who were killed became targets because of men who tried to disguise themselves as women. That's of course not a massacre. Amoruso 06:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for your extensive original research. Unless you come with quotes from those historians where they indeed conclude that there was no massacre ,which I have not found in Milstein's book, I think this discussion is pretty clear. There is no discussion about the around 100 civilians, and there is also no discussion about that it were mainly women, children and older people. If you like some others want to redifine massacre as something that happens only after a fight, that is original research as that is not the usuall usages, but the IZL usage of the term. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 14:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


Milstein denies some aspects of the usual story, but writes: "in fact, nobody denies: most of the dead in Deir Yassin were old men, women and children, and only a few of them were young men who could be classified as warriors" (The War of Independence Vol. IV, p273; translation by Ami Isseroff [40]). Amoruso is also incorrect to say that Bowyer Bell denies there was a massacre. Not only does he say there was a massacre, but he writes that some of the Irgun/Lehi people "privately admitted that men, women and children had been shot on sight" while denying rape and mutilation (Terror out of Zion, p296). If I recall correctly (?), Torn Country by Reid Banks also records such private admissions. As for Amos Perlmutter, one long article I have claims the opposite: "...Amos Perlmutter's sympathetic biography of Menachem Begin ("The Life and Times of Menahem Begin"). The author, in the chapter on Deir Yassin, which the author concedes was a massacre, cites Gorodenchik's testimony in the Jabotinsky archives as confirming that a massacre-–a general slaughter of Arab civilians—did indeed take place ("Dir Yassin" chapter)." (I can't confirm or deny this.) Then we have Gorodenchik, an Irgun member who was there and so not an independent source. Anyway, his hand-written testimony that still sits in the Jabotinsky Archives in Tel-Aviv says: "We had prisoners, and before the retreat we decided to liquidate them. We also liquidated the wounded, as anyway we could not give them first aid. In one place, about eighty Arab prisoners were killed after some of them had opened fire and killed one of the people who came to give them first aid. Arabs who dressed up as Arab women were also found, and so they started to shoot the women also who did not hurry to the area where the prisoners were concentrated." (Silver, p93) If that's a denial I wonder what an admission would sound like. Finally, Sharif Kanaana and Nihad Zitawi were the authors of the Bir Zeit study on Deir Yassin. Claiming that they deny there was a massacre is a blatant lie. Who is left on Amoruso's list? Ok, Dan Kurzman. His "Genesis 1948" was one of the earliest detailed accounts in English and he sure as hell does describe it as a massacre. Even the ZOA article says that. In summary, Amoruso's list of eight historians who support him crumbles down to one: the Irgun's chief propagandist Shmuel Katz. Enough said. --Zerotalk 05:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Disputed title

If it isn't obvious already...

Some editors have suggested that the title "Deir Yassin massacre" reflects an anti-Israel POV, that the events described in the article do not merit the term "massacre", and propose "Battle of Deir Yassin" as an alternate. Others claim that "Deir Yassin massacre" is a long-accepted term in English for the events in question, that the events do constitute a "massacre", and that changing the term nearly sixty years after the incident is the POV title, not the term under which the article has existed for quite a while.

At least one arbcom case is pending concerning the dispute.

I know rather little about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so I won't comment on the merits of either name. Consider this an administrative notice, to go along with the {{Disputed title}} tag placed on the article.

Now, if I might make one polite suggestion--it seems to me that the incidents described in this article are part of a larger Battle of Deir Yassin; perhaps the battle as a whole is worthy of an article in addition to this article (whatever title is given this article), rather than being created via a page move? A page move accompanied by a significent rewrite strikes me as similar as an out-of-process deletion coupled with a new article creation--in other words, a questionable maneuver. Of course, that may just leave folks with two articles to argue about.  :) Please note that this suggestion does not imply an endorsement of any particular article version whose subject is the Battle of Deir Yassin, just that the battle as a whole might be a useful separate topic.

--EngineerScotty 04:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Surely WP:NOR applies? This event is known as the "Deir Yassin massacre" and it was promoted as a masascre by its perpetrators at the time. It doesn't matter whether Wikipedia editors think it should be called something else. --Ian Pitchford 07:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
It can hardly be "anti-Israeli" to call it a massacre since the Zionist mainsteam called it a massacre right from the beginning and still do. It is only the Irgun and its ideological descendants that don't like it. --Zerotalk 10:27, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Again, I'm merely summarizing the dispute. I take no side in this instance (or rather, I'm abstaining from the debate); the above should not be taken as an attempt to legitimize or disparage either POV. --EngineerScotty 15:02, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

'Deir Yassin massacre' is fine with me. However, I also expect '1929 Palestine riots' to be called such and not to be called an 'incident'. If the community votes to turn the 1929 happenings into an 'incident', I will turn this page into 'Deir Yassin incident' also. --Daniel575 | (talk) 17:47, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

And the Glen Coe Incident.Gleng 14:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

In almost every single account of history the incident is called the Deir Yassin massacre, and the killing of 100-120 civilians definatley merits the title. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which gives information on events that have occured, and since this is an event that definatley occured and the widely accepted name for it is the Deir Yassin massacre, the name should not be changed --Amjra 01:00, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi. Take care 100-120 is the total number of victims. Not the number of people massacred. Alithien 19:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Just Curious: Did the Arab Siege of Jerusalem (1948) Happen?

This article is entirely removed from its context, the Arab Siege of Jerusalem. I am curious, does anyone believe that the siege didn't happen? Or that it shouldn't be mentioned? Please contact me and explain why.Scott Adler 03:56, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

To start with, "Arab Siege of Jerusalem" is not an acceptable name. There was a battle between Jewish and Arab forces for control of Jerusalem; we should not describe it from the viewpoint of one of the two sides. --Zerotalk 04:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. The water, food, and communication routes to the Jewish sectors of Jerusalem were specifically attacked. While the Arab sectors were attacked, they were not subject to the same conditions, and I would be quite surprised to see historians that take a different position. TewfikTalk 19:28, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
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