Talk:Hamas–UNRWA Holocaust dispute

Recent edits by RexBrynen

The edits contain statements and innuendo that are not backed up by reliable sources, or are not supported by the cited sources. This is how things actually happened according to all the cited sources:

1. Hamas thought that UNRWA intended to add the Holocaust to its curriculum, and criticized UNRWA for it.
2. UNRWA responded by saying that it did not intend to add the Holocaust to its curriculum.
3. UNRWA was criticized by various observers for saying that it did not intend to add the Holocaust to its curriculum.

The main effect of the recent edits is to create the impression throughout the article that #2 later turned out not to be the case, and/or that the criticism in #3 referred to actual events as opposed to statements. But neither of these ideas supported by any of the sources. True, there was one disputed quote by the Wiesenthal Center, but this quote was never mentioned in the article, and the criticism of UNRWA mentioned in the article was not based on it. There has never been any dispute over the quotes on which the criticism was based and which are included in this article.

There are additional issues, such as the sentence on the period of Israeli occupation which does not cite a source.

Best, Jalapenos do exist (talk) 00:58, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Since I have not received a response, despite leaving a message on user:RexBrynen's talk page, and despite the fact that in the meantime minor supplementary edits have been made to this article from an IP apparently operated by user:RexBrynen, I am going to revert to the stable version and then restore whatever content can be restored from the edits that accords with WP:V. Jalapenos do exist (talk) 22:50, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'm done. This is a summary of the main elements of RexBrynen's edits and what I did with them:

1. Statement regarding declared UNRWA plans to include the Holocaust in its curriculum: I restored it, but moved it to the "aftermath" section, because the plans were stated in October 2009, after the period this article focuses on.
2. Statement that The Holocaust was not taught in West Bank and Gaza schools when Israel controlled these areas: I did not restore this because no source was provided.
3. Statements that the reports of UNRWA denial that it would teach the Holocaust were inaccurate: I did not restore this because it was not supported by the cited source and is evidently false. There was a disputed quote (see below), but there were several quotes in reliable sources that were never disputed. The disputed quote played no part in the affair, at least no part that was ever recorded in this article.
4. Deletion of non-disputed reports of UNRWA denial that it would teach the Holocaust: I did not restore this deletion (meaning I kept the reports), because it was unwarranted and an obvious attempt to shore up the previous statement through selective omission of material.
5. Statement regarding the Simon Wiesenthal Center attribution and UNRWA denial: I restored it and fixed it for accuracy.
6. Summary of criticism of UNRWA in the Palestine Information Center: I restored this despite the source being unreliable, because it is reliable for its own opinions and those of its writers.
7. Statement regarding a UNRWA Holocaust exhibit tour for students: I did not restore this because the sources, a blog by academician Rex Brynen and the aforementioned Palestine Information Center, do not seem reliable.

Jalapenos do exist (talk) 00:19, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning up an imperfect edit. I've restored some of the changes, however, with additional information and/or clearer text:

• I have included a rewritten version of the 2010 UNRWA student visit to the Holocaust exhibit in NY, which is supported by references to the press and blog coverage, plus a link to a video documenting the visit. Note that the video link was among the sources found on the supporting blog page, so far from the PRRN blog being "unreliable" it was fully accurate.

• Israel did not include Holocaust education in the Palestinian curriculum from 1967 and 1994, but rather used censored versions of the Egyptian and Jordanian curriculum (which, in turn, was what was largely used by UNRWA). Certainly no one has ever claimed that there was prior Holocaust education in the Palestinian territories. I've restored this edit, since without it one cannot judge the degree to which UNRWA's introduction of the issue was innovative and controversial (in turn, essential to contextualizing the story).

• I've added a November 2010 Ging interview confirming that UNRWA went ahead with its plans to address the Holocaust in its human rights education.

• In response to the point made above: "Statements that the reports of UNRWA denial that it would teach the Holocaust were inaccurate: I did not restore this because it was not supported by the cited source and is evidently false." In fact, as the November 2010 Ging interview implicitly indicates, the reports were inaccurate in that UNRWA both planned to, and ultimately did, introduce the Holocaust into some of its human rights course. (In other words, while the reporters might have correctly interviewed UNRWA officials, those officials were themselves mistaken.) While the early UNRWA quotes are important to understand some of the subsequent reaction, it is important that a reader understand that they were early, and ultimately unreliable, reports from local UN officials.

RexBrynen (talk) 04:30, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

This is better, but you've reintroduced some problems, which I will deal with later if you don't. The Wikipedia community has developed an extensive system of policies and guidelines to help build an encyclopedia. One pillar of Wikipedia is the verifiability policy, which says that material must be attributed to reliable, published sources. The statements that the Holocaust wasn't taught during Israeli occupation and that UNRWA contested the Ma'an quote are, as of now, not attributed to any source. You appear to be an expert on aspects of Middle East politics, and Wikipedia encourages expert contribution, but your contributions still have to be attributed to reliable, published sources. They can be your own publications, but see the conflict of interest guidelines to avoid potential problems.

"Reliable source" is a quasi-technical Wikipedia term defined in the reliable source guideline. When I said that your blog does not seem to be a reliable source, I meant only that it does not seem to to meet the criteria laid out in this guideline (because the disclaimer indicates there is no editorial oversight), not that there's anything inherently suspicious about it. Attributing material to a video published by a reliable source is fine, as long as the video supports the material, of course.

As for what UNRWA was planning at the time the dispute erupted, Gaza chief Ging indisputably said that "it would exceed UNRWA's mandate to write texts about the Holocaust" and Director of Education Al-Hemdeyat indisputably said "as far as I know, the [new] curriculum doesn't include anything about the Holocaust. Both were high level officials and exactly the people you would expect to know about what was in the new curriculum. I find implausible your inference from Ging's later statement that UNRWA had actually planned at the time to include the Holocaust in the new curriculum. Also, note that the American criticism of UNRWA focused on how UNRWA publicly responded to the crisis, so the insinuation that the criticism relied on inaccurate reports would be unjustified even if it could be shown that UNRWA privately planned at the time to include the Holocaust in its new curriculum. As for what UNRWA ultimately did, I still don't see a source saying that it ended up including the Holocaust in its curriculum; and the pro-Islamist opinion piece from 2010, which says that such-and-such elements have been trying to introduce it, indicates that UNRWA had not introduced it by then. Best, Jalapenos do exist (talk) 13:17, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. There only seem to be three issues remaining:

1) The status of prior education on the Holocaust in WBG schools. The problem here is that highlighting the holocaust isn't taught in PA schools (true, and verified by a press report) and that it also wasn't taught previously when those schools were Israeli controlled (equally true, but not reported in press accounts) creates a misleading contextualization of UNRWA's efforts. In other words, what is striking is not that UNRWA has been cautious on the issue--it has been, for obvious reasons (including death threats and shootings against Agency personnel)--but that it is the first actor to undertake the effort at all. In other words, its rather like writing about the Apollo 11 mission without mention it was the first manned moon landing. I'll try an alternative formulation which perhaps addresses both of our concerns--see what you think.

2) Ging's statement "t would exceed UNRWA's mandate to write texts about the Holocaust" was and is true--there is no text per se about the Holocaust. Rather, it is addressed in the broader context of teaching about the evolution of human rights norms. Al-Hemdeyat's statement was wrong, and indeed is contradicted by a unnamed UN source who is quoted as saying "the lessons had been under consideration for the 2009-10 human rights course." Indeed, the story broke in the first place precisely because Hamas got wind of efforts to address the Holocaust in the new curriculum--without this effort by UNRWA, there never would have been an issue in the first place. We subsequently have Ging confirming plans to introduce discussion of the Holocaust in his October 2009 interview, and then confirming that UNRWA now teaches about the Holocaust in his November 2010 interview ("We teach the children about the history of the human rights movement. We grounded our program in the universal declaration of human rights, which is borne out of the horrors of the Second World War. So we teach the children the horrors of the war, including the Holocaust. We are also teaching the kids about the unanimously adopted resolution on Holocaust remembrance, which is a 2005 UN resolution proposed by the state of Israel adopted in the General Assembly”).

3) I'll drop the reference to UNRWA objecting to Maan's quotes. They were (among other things), but it isn't clear from the UNRWA statement (and not all that important).

18:44, 23 December 2010 (UTC)RexBrynen (talk)