Talk:Zeitoun killings/Archive 1

Archive 1

The page name (Z. tragedy/attack/other?)

Gretings, Falastine fee Qalby! If you still haven't decided on a page name, here are some points for your consideration: Upon what source(s) are you basing the page name? Is there an expression that's come into use that particularly relates to the events described, and is it an English-language translation of what was originally in Arabic? In any event, please document the basis for the page name, indicate the source language (with romanized transliteration or transcription if necessary), plus variant names and alternative translations if any. It would be particularly helpful, for readers following accounts cited from local and foreign media (print/electronic/broadcast) sources, to know if there are several names—and if so, their significance. -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:28, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Greetings. Thanks for your suggestion! Like many of the notable events of this conflict and the conflict itself, the Zeitoun attacks hasn't been given a title/expression. But I am still looking through sources and trying to find a more better descriptive commonly-used name. The phrase "Zeitoun incident" has been used on Wikipedia to refer to just the Samouni clan killings, but reading through the news articles on what happened in Zeitoun, I have found that news agencies have not just singled out the Samouni story but included details on what happened to the entire district of Zeitoun over a course of days. So I think Zeitoun incident is not a good title because it implies that there was one incident. Zeitoun tragedy is just my name for it, I don't plan to place in as its title or in the article. Zeitoun attacks is more NPOV. But I will definitely follow your advice because I know the title will be an issue after I have added the article to the mainspace and of course I want to prevent an edit war.-Falastine fee Qalby (talk) 18:34, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I have come across several labels of what took place in Zeitoun including killings, atrocities, massacre, attacks, and incidents. Incident is the one I cme across most often with the sources that I have used, so I am okay with keeping the article with its current title "Zeitoun Incident" though that could change with the addition of sources. --Falastine fee Qalby (talk) 20:59, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

If the majority of sources cite "incident" then we should keep the name which is also neutral. --Al Ameer son (talk) 21:03, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Second perspective

I've been trying to figure out how credible the Goldstone report is and there's so much conflicting information. Sigh. I came across this particular wiki entry after seeing a link here: http://www.goldstonereport.org/case-study/samouni-clan-zeitoun So I'm still pretty confused. Barnetto (talk) 23:08, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

In the direct response to the Goldstone report, I've just added the following: "Researcher of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, colonel (res.) Halevi claims that an examination of freely accessible Palestinian sources show that at least three members of the al-Samouni family were affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad group; Tawfiq al-Samouni, who was killed on January 5, was supposedly a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative. Moreover, he suggests that the official Palestinian Islamic Jihad version of the occurences on the day of the incident indicate that its fighters had been operating in the area against IDF. Based on the evidences, he suggests that it is plausible civilians were caught in the fighting." --Sceptic from Ashdod ^(talk) 15:42, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

That website is a pro-Israel advocacy site so obviously it presents information from that perspective. Most if not all of the sources listed at http://www.goldstonereport.org/about-us are not regarded as reliable sources for factual information by wikipedia. If you are intending to edit the article please use reliable sources and be sure to read Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Palestine-Israel_articles#Discretionary_sanctions so that you are aware of the sanctions in place on all articles related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Thanks. Sean.hoyland - talk 06:13, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I can't access the reports. Halevy and one blogger are cited for their private research linking Zeitoun casualties' names to Islamic Jihad websites. Well, any one who reads how much confusion has been caused to counter-terrorism agencies with Arab names is instinctively wary of that kind of stuff, esp. if it ain't official. If there is some substance to Halevy's matching "data" I would expect that it would then turn up in official Israeli reports. Otherwise it is a marginal POV, and comes under WP:Undue for the lead, certainly.Nishidani (talk) 14:27, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

References

Claims about Hamas operation

The claims about Hamas should ascribed to the sources.i.e IDF says... and Saimuni famaly members says... Neither Nishidani nor Luke edits are good I can't fix it because of 1RR.--Shrike (talk) 11:29, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't report people so if you think there is something wrong with my edit, feel free to change it. But please note, as per my page, that what Luke did was a series of poor edits, and one, the one I actively fixed according to sources, was a fabrication. What I wrote instead is as per source, almost verbatim, and with attribution, and therefore why it is a 'bad edit' is utterly obscure to me. Of course, the other option is to complain at AN/I. Feel free to do so. If I have to be suspended for fixing patent bullshit as per WP:IAR, I won't really mind.Nishidani (talk) 13:42, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Your OR charge is wrong. This is what you removed...

Militants were launching rockets into Israel from the area, and Hamas was known to conduct operations in the vicinity

This is a paraphrase of the New York Times article which reads...

Samouni family members did not deny that Hamas militants operated in the area. A family member said there was no active Hamas resistance in the immediate vicinity, although militants were firing rockets at Israel a little more than a mile away.

So a Samouni family member said that militants were firing rockets from a mile away, which is in "the area." I said that Hamas was known to conduct operations in the area because they say so in that newspaper article. You can dispute it as a source, but not take to task my proper citation of it. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 21:43, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Unless you learn to construe English correctly, it is pointless your trying to edit in here.

• 'although militants were firing rockets at Israel a little more than a mile away' is not attributable grammatically to the Samouni family. It appears to be the writer's own comment. Even if margins for equivocation exist, you cannot assume it to mean what you took it to mean.
• 'a little more than a mile away' cannot be construed as 'in the vicinity of the Samouni house in Zeitoun'.
• That 'Hamas militants operated' in the area is indefinite. Since Hamas is the government, and its members are all defined as militants by the IDF, its members, police, government officials 'operate' in the area, which is part of the Gaza Strip where Hamas was democratically elected to govern.
• To 'operate in an area' does not, unless the nature of the work is clarified, automatically read 'conduct (military) operations in the area.
• To say that 'a Samouni family member did not deny' something, cannot be translated as saying 'a Samouni family member affirmed that Hamas militants operated in the area'.
• The tense 'operate' is what is called a frequentative present.
• What you did was WP:SYNTH, constructing what you think to be the facts out of five remarks about Hamas, none of which individually, nor even together, support your synthesis that 'Militants were launching rockets into Israel from the area, and Hamas was known to conduct operations in the vicinity
• that synthesis patently flies in the face of, indeed contradicts, the direct testimony of the people whose clan and houses were hit, i.e. 'A family member said there was no active Hamas resistance in the immediate vicinity'. Your spin directly contradicts the source. Since you have problems with the English language, please exercise the utmost care in making further assertions or edits that, when examined against the sources, are not intelligible to native speakers. Nishidani (talk) 22:16, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The statement "Militants were launching rockets into Israel from the area, and Hamas was known to conduct operations in the vicinity" was sourced to this NYT article which states:

"Samouni family members did not deny that Hamas militants operated in the area. A family member said there was no active Hamas resistance in the immediate vicinity, although militants were firing rockets at Israel a little more than a mile away."

This was reduced by your revert to "A Samouni family member said there was no active Hamas resistance in the immediate vicinity."

You expunged the Samouni family's acknowledgment that, "Hamas militants operated in the area". You removed reference to "militants were firing rockets at Israel a little more than a mile away". This was not an accurate summation of the source, and while the previous version could have been improved, your own edit was distinctly lacking.
Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork 22:59, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Reread WP:SYNTH, WP:OR. I expunged nothing. Rather than eliminate the source used to make Luke's claim, I read it to find something in it which approximated to the content of his claim in his edit summary: 'things don't happen in a vacuum'. Review my page: unfortunately Luke has problems with construing English, and it shows in the way he synthesizing his sentence from the source to make it say or imply what it does not say. Secondly, he did so not having read the Goldstone report, which has been around almost 3 years. It's not definitive, nothing ever is, but if you edit an article you should inform yourself of the state of the art of our knowledge before doing so. Since you appear not to have read it, I will repaste here my analysis of where his synthesis went wrong, with some additions because people here seem to be at loose ends with English grammar, and want sentences mean, might mean, or don't mean in any source.

Taghreed El-Khodary, For Arab Clan, Days of Agony in a Cross-Fire, at New York Times, 9 January 2009, was cited for the following passage in the lead:

Militants were launching rockets into Israel from the area, and Hamas was known to conduct operations in the vicinity.

Were launching rockets into Israel from the area. The imperfective in narrative context means that at the time of the strike on the Samouni compound, Hamas militants were firing rockets into Israel from that area (as his edit summary says, 'the strike didn't happen in a vacumn', implying it just hit the family instead of these fictive militants who'd just fired into Israel nearby). His statement synthesizes (a) and (e) below

• (a) 'the ground invasion began on Jan. 3, part of the offensive against Hamas that Israel says is intended to stop the firing of rockets into southern Israel.'
• (b) ' A military spokeswoman, Maj. Avital Leibovich, said Monday that the army had “no intention of harming civilians.” Hamas, which governs Gaza, “cynically uses” civilians for cover by operating in their midst, she said.' (irrelevant)
• (c) ' In the case of the United Nations school, Israel has said that Hamas militants were firing mortars from a location near the school.' (irrelevant)
• (d) 'The Zeitoun neighborhood is strategically located and is known to have many supporters of Hamas.(irrelevant)
• (e) 'Samouni family members did not deny that Hamas militants operated in the area. A family member said there was no active Hamas resistance in the immediate vicinity, although militants were firing rockets at Israel a little more than a mile away.

With (e) there is no way a reader can determine whether the ' although' introduces Taghreed El-Khodary or Isabelle Kershner's additions, or whether it paraphrases something said by the Samouni interviewee, though in terms of good prose style, it strongly suggests the former.

That Samouni's family said Hamas operated in the area is likewise indeterminate and cannot be used. I didn't use it because neither you, nor I, can determine with absolute certainty whether it is a generic comment about Hamas there, or a contextualised admission that on the day Hamas was operative there, which is how Luke wilfully twists it.The evidence is, however, that, since the statement is immediately followed by 'A family member said there was no active Hamas resistance in the immediate vicinity,' the testimony and its witness are saying no Hamas operations were underway at the time of the strike. This happens to be what the Goldstone report concluded.

This is elementary grammar, which, unfortunately, Luke has problems with. I don't mind gungho editors, but if they come to wiki without a thorough knowledge of how the English language works in sources, they are only going to provoke futile challenges to the obvious, and waste people's time. Nishidani (talk) 12:47, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying that if a family member said there was Hamas in the area, that sentence is hearsay and inadmissible? Then, when a family member says there was no Hamas, that is "evidence" and "testimony." Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 16:16, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Of course Hamas was in the area. Hamas is the duly elected government of the Gaza Strip. One of the primary obligations of any government is to have its officials, police, offices and schools on the territory it administers. Nishidani (talk) 16:29, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Listen, Lady Macbeth, that NYT spot is not going out. It's clearly talking about militants. Are you saying Hamas was operating a rocket-firing school? Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 18:02, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

General problems

Understandably much of this was written from articles in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. Much there can be retained. However the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict or Goldstone Report gives the results of an investigation several months later which, together with the IDF reports recently, should form the basis for the narrative of events. In the early sources there are conflicting figures, whereas the UN report gives names, details about time etc. The choice therefore is to keep everything as it is, and add that report. Or write the narrative of the unfolding of events at Zeitoun according to what is an official investigative report, supplemented by what journalists on the spot say. I'm for the latter solution. It's, narrative-wise, far less confusing.Nishidani (talk) 14:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Luke. You are screwing up the page again. You have just edited in:

'According to Haaretz, the IDF delayed rescue services from reaching some of the casualties for three days of the incident.'

By attribution to Haaretz, you are endeavouring to subjectivize facts established by investigations done over months in the area.

The facts concerning this arein the the Official UN report, which was done by all sorts of cross examination of witnesses, government records and interviews. To cite but one specific passage:-

The attempts of PRCS and ICRC to rescue the civilians in the al- Samouni area PRCS had made its first attempt to evacuate the injured from the al-Samouni area on 4 January 2009 around 4 p.m. after receiving a call from the family of Ateya al-Samouni. PRCS had called ICRC, asking it to coordinate its entry into the area with the Israeli armed forces. A PRCS ambulance from al-Quds hospital managed to reach the al-Samouni area. The ambulance had turned west off Salah ad-Din Street when, at one of the first houses in the area, Israeli soldiers on the ground and on the roof of one of the houses directed their guns at it and ordered it to stop. The driver and the nurse were ordered to get out of the vehicle, raise their hands, take off their clothes and lie on the ground. Israeli soldiers then searched them and the vehicle for 5 to 10 minutes. Having found nothing, the soldiers ordered the ambulance team to return to Gaza City,in spite of their pleas to be allowed to pick up some wounded. In his statement to the Mission,the ambulance driver recalled seeing women and children huddling under the staircase in ahouse, but not being allowed to take them with him. As soon as the first evacuees from the al-Samouni family arrived in Gaza City on 5 January, PRCS and ICRC requested permission from the Israeli armed forces to go into the al-Samouni neighbourhood to evacuate the wounded. These requests were denied. On 6 January around 6.45 p.m., one ICRC car and four PRCS ambulances drove towards the al-Samouni area in spite of the lack of coordination with the Israeli armed forces, but were not allowed to enter the area and evacuate the wounded. On 7 January 2009, the Israeli armed forces finally authorized ICRC and PRCS to go to the al-Samouni area during the “temporary ceasefire” declared from 1 to 4 p.m. on that day. Three PRCS ambulances, an ICRC car and another car used to transport bodies drove down Salah ad-Din Street from Gaza City until, 1.5 km north of the al-Samouni area, they found it closed by sand mounds. ICRC tried to coordinate with the Israeli armed forces to have the road opened, but they refused and asked the ambulance staff to walk the remaining 1.5 km'. Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,pp.203-4.

In short because you won't take this seriously and do your homework, you are playing the attribution game when official sources, not one Haaretz writer, happen to give quite precise details on what occurred, not what they think might have occurred. I know you want to celebrate your recent proxy triumph, but do it elsewhere, outside of the I/P area.Nishidani (talk) 22:32, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

You need to stop assuming the Goldstone Report is God's Word on the conflict. To quote the Goldstone Report wiki, "Critics of the report claimed that it contained methodological failings, legal and factual errors, and falsehoods, and devoted insufficient attention to the allegations that Hamas was deliberately operating in heavily populated areas of Gaza."

The UNHRC sponsored the report. They are probably the most biased international organization in the UN umbrella. Besides Goldstone's retraction, many Western nations reject the report. So it can be used as a source for quotations and such, but not to recontruct events factually. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 04:23, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Shaq Attack

There is no need to mention "12-year old Ishaq Samouni, who bled for two days before he died on Wednesday." Do not confuse Ishaq Samouni with Shaquille O'Neal, they are different people.

Newspapers mention people and anecdotes like this to give it a personal touch. Encyclopedias only mention notable stuff. Right? Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 15:46, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

It is common practice in Wikipedia articles that focus on individual incidents of violence in the I-P conflict to follow the sources and provide details of the some or all of the victims. This an approach I have observed and like many other people have followed in articles that deal with attacks by Palestinian militants. Sean.hoyland - talk 16:00, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Okay, though no "bled for two days." The only way an RS could make that claim is if there was a doctor there to observe his bleeding, which there obviously wasn't, for two days. But I'll concede that his mention is noteworthy in the narrative. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 16:22, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

OR isn't relevant. It's a report of what Ahmed al-Samouni said about his brother. It should either be attributed to the survivor or left as it is, as an unattributed statement of fact like the New York Times reported it. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:09, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, that was very mild, relative to many of the reports. And, no, encyclopaedias don't "only mention notable stuff". Our notability policies apply to whether we have an article on a particular topic at all, and explicitly state that there's no expectation each individual statement or event reported in the context of that article must itself be independently notable.  – OhioStandard (talk) 20:28, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Witness account

I will live it here if some one want too use it. [1]--Shrike (talk) 18:24, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

It's an op-ed. But, sure, no doubt Gaza was intact. So let's see, 1,008 building shelled, divided by three weeks ... well, that's only around 50 buildings per day, most of them destroyed. And the kill ratio was only 100:1. What's the big deal? It's reports like this that give the Jpost its sterling reputation. Speaking of hasbara, did anyone else notice the newspaper's conference of April 29th in NYC, which it entitled, Fighting for the Zionist Dream? Or Editor in Chief Steve Linde's "Fighting for Zionism" editorial to recruit people to it? Or that he wrote,

We believe it’s time to fight back – with the powerful weapon of words – and explain to the world why Zionism is still a just cause, that our democratic state is the antithesis of apartheid, and how our stellar “Start-Up Nation” should be shining brightly as “a light unto the nations.”

So the Editor in Chief declares his intention to use his newspaper to "Fight for Zionism", and the paper holds a conference under that banner. Yes, do let's all trust them as a truthful, unbiased source, by all means.  – OhioStandard (talk) 21:19, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

You seem to be staging a little conference of your own. Kindly tone it down.Ankh.Morpork 20:23, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

JPOST is WP:RS if you have doubts take it to WP:RSN.Yes its op-ed but its reliable for view of the author and it significant enough as it published in major newspaper--Shrike (talk) 09:05, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani made a good point before about how we shouldn't rely on newspaper accounts for a narrative. They often rush to print. The Goldstone and Israeli reports, if quoted, could be the bulk of it. Luke 19 Verse 27 (talk) 20:13, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Verify

What is the claim that "Due to the three-hour time limit, the Red Cross were not able to collect the dead" based on?Ankh.Morpork 20:36, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Glad to be working on this with you. It's the New York Times, cited as the "arabclan" named ref, currently. I explained that in my edit summary, but probably should have pinged you on your talk, or perhaps posted here, to say so. I didn't want to place the ref immediately after the "Red Cross - three hours" sentence, because doing so would have interrupted the "scope" of refs attached to subsequent sentences, if you understand me. So I placed it at the end of the paragraph, instead, to avoid breaking the continuity of subsequent refs.  – OhioStandard (talk) 21:48, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Quote relevant sentence please.Ankh.Morpork 21:51, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Here are the relevant passages. The paragraph break indicated below occurs in the original:

It was 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday when help finally came, half an hour before the end of a three-hour pause in the fighting ordered that day by Israel to allow humanitarian aid and rescue workers to enter Gaza.

Antoine Grand, the head of Red Cross operations in the Gaza Strip, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that the first rescue team on Wednesday had to leave the dead and take out only the wounded, “horrible as that seems,” because they had only limited time and only four ambulances.

Btw, you'd not object, I suppose, to the unwikilinking (abominable word) of the very well known publications like the New York Times and Newsweek? Now that we seem to naming our sources explicitly in the body of the article, the publication names stand out like neon lights, to me.  – OhioStandard (talk) 22:05, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

NYT no problem, the Daily Beast usually cites opinion pieces so attribution may be required.Ankh.Morpork 22:13, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I hadn't thought of actually removing any of the "according to x media source" statements inline, just unwikilinking some of the cited sources. The impression I get from the Daily Beast website is that it's reproducing an article that first appeared in the print edition of Newsweek, but I couldn't find an online edition of Newsweek to be sure ... I'll try to check some of the proprietary "clipping" databases I have access to on that point later. I agree, though, that if we continue to mention The Daily Beast in the body of the article by way of attribution, that we should wikilink at least the first instance of it, since it's not a "household word". Dumb not to name the whole "merged" corporation just "Newsweek", imo, but I suppose vanity won out.  – OhioStandard (talk) 22:38, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

NPOV

( This section begun by AnkhMorpork as notification of having added a POV tag to the article at 21:49, 7 May 2012 − Ohiostandard )( This solecistic sentence was constructed by Ohio after exhorting me to be more mindful of typos. Thanks. - A.M )

Article reiterates accusations in a POV manner. e.g In the lead, "According to Haaretz, the IDF delayed rescue services from reaching some of the casualties for three days of the incident", without mentioning the Israeli POV. Nor does the source state that Isr "delayed" the rescue services. Article cites Breaking the Silence without mentioning its criticisms. Uncited claims include, "None of the media reports describe family members as having offered any resistance to the activities of the Israeli military."Ankh.Morpork 21:57, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Can we speak candidly together about the access to medical care issue, to try to come to some mutual understanding about what happened? Or do we have to wikilawyer at each other to avoid talk-page accusations of "that's original research!" Almost all the sources mention the restriction on access to care for the wounded; what is it that you'd like to have the article say about that, that it doesn't already say?

The only mention I've seen of any rationale for refusing ambulance access was the notion, mentioned afaik in just one article, from Haaretz, that they could be used to kidnap Israeli soldiers. But the same article says "the Red Cross and the Red Crescent were unable to coordinate with the IDF the approach of ambulances to the area."

As I understand that, these organisations wanted to coordinate in advance with the IDF about where they'd be going, and when. It also seems quite clear to me that the IDF had the area very well controlled: Mounds on the access road, surrounded by tanks, drones overhead, and helicopters and jets operating in the area. You can brush me off about this by saying "original research! original research!", if you like, but I find it hard to accept the idea that any vehicle, ambulances included, could have gone anywhere or approached anyone without very explicit local control by Israeli forces. Do you disagree?

Glad to discuss the other issues with you, too, but perhaps best to take one at a time.  – OhioStandard (talk) 22:30, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Try the WSJ which states, "Israel says it cooperated with medics during the war, but battlefield conditions sometimes made it impossible to grant them access" Ankh.Morpork 22:42, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'd seen that. I didn't include it because the next sentence seemed to me to show it was intended as a general statement, rather than one specific to Zeitoun. The two sentences together say, Israel says it cooperated with medics during the war, but battlefield conditions sometimes made it impossible to grant them access. The Israel Defense Force says it won't address specific criticism until it finishes 'post-operational investigations, in which allegations will be checked.'.

Besides that - and this is just one chap talking to another, now, to try to come to some agreement about the facts - it's my impression that it's probably not really the best characterisation to call what was going on in the area surrounding the group of Samouni houses "battlefield conditions". The only source I've seen that says anything about any resistance from Gazan's is the JCPA, and the only support it offers for that assertion, at least in the English-language version, is a broken link to a site called saraya.ps. Testimony from soldiers that Haaretz interviewed directly also seems to say there wasn't a lot going: "The soldiers soon understood that they were not actually confronting the dangerous Hamas resistance for which they had been prepared on the eve of the attack." ( That's from the this news story, already in use in our article. ) The notion is reinforced by the fact that there were no reports of any wounded soldiers on the Israeli side, at least not any that I've seen.

I'm not saying it's impossible that there was some resistance in the area, but if there was, it doesn't appear to have approached what could be best be described as "battlefield conditions". Certainly whatever conditions actually existed on the ground wouldn't have stopped the IDF from allowing an ambulance in for one of their own people, assuming they couldn't medevac by helicopter for some reason.

You noticed I did include language about the brigade commander's rationale for refusing ambulance access, though, yes? If we can find anything specific to the Samouni clan's housing area that's exculpatory re Israeli troops evident refusal to allow ambulance access, I'd be glad to see it included... If there were some way we could work in the general "we cooperated with medics during the war" statement by the IDF that would make it clear that it isn't denying what is said to have happened in Zeitoun, I think that could work. But then I suppose we'd have to include statements from the Red Cross and other orgs saying they didn't around Zeitoun, too. Do you have an idea how we could structure something that would work to do so?  – OhioStandard (talk) 23:44, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Read the very first word of the WSJ article, stare me in the eyes, and say, "This information does not deal with Zeitoun".Ankh.Morpork 23:57, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Seeing as this article offers capacious space for the clamouring of the various 'eyewitnesses' and their unique perspectives on the slavering Israeli fiendishness, I think we can politely ask them to budge up a little and make some space for an Israeli to provide his POV as to the provision of medical care.Ankh.Morpork 00:11, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Look, you're going to hurt my feelings with such talk. Seriously, though, we've been operating in a reasonably collegial way here so far, so no more talk like "look me in the eye", if you please, as if I were trying to get by with something here, and would therefore be ashamed to look you in the eye. Please don't assume bad faith, in other words, until you hear me insult your mother or girlfriend or religion or whatever. You're very greatly mistaken if you think I want this article to skew or misrepresent the facts, or put undue weight on any of them.

But the facts are very grim; you know that. Infants, kids, women, the elderly. The IDF rolled into this hamlet and flattened something like 27 buildings, all but two. One they kept as an outpost, the other they left for the villagers to shelter in, after killing a few apparently unarmed people. ( Soldier's reports confirmed the allegation that people were shot at close range. ) Then the house the IDF left to the villagers gets hit with shells that blow it to hell. I suspect that was unintentional, due to a mistake in interpreting drone camera images, but the guys in the war room should have asked the guys in the immediate vicinity what was going on before calling in those strikes.

I'll reply in a moment to your specific comments, but first I want to get one thing clear between us: I'd like you to know that I don't consider this an example of "slavering Israeli fiendishness". Time Magazine published an entire issue a number of years ago that consisted mostly of letters written home by American soldiers in Iraq, but which arrived at their homes after they'd been killed. I recall that one soldier wrote of how appalled and disgusted he was, when he first arrived, that when his unit went on patrol through the streets of Baghdad, his fellow soldiers shot everything that moved, immediately, without taking time to determine whether the person was a threat. He wrote, in the same letter, both that he initially vowed he'd never become like them, and that he eventally became exactly like them in that regard. Being in a war zone does indeed make one "trigger happy", as Haaretz reported soldiers had said. It's a perfectly natural response.

I've been writing at length like this because I've been hoping that doing so might prevent our interaction from devolving into the usual pissing contest that takes place over these articles. So far I'm not sure whether you're open to that, and I'd like to see some assurance that way. For example, could you stop tagging things "citation needed" so prolifically. There was the one we dealt with up above on this talk page, and it turns out that two others also were in the sources you tagged as "not in citation given". ( I'll get to those in the article shortly. ) Thanks,  – OhioStandard (talk) 02:09, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Right then. Re my view that the IDF statement above was a general policy statement about the Gaza War, rather than being a statement to specifically address concerns about how it operated in Zeitoun:

• "IDF officials refused to give details about the operation in Zeitoun"  ref name="symbol" global post

• "The Israel Defense Force says it won't address specific criticism until it finishes 'post-operational investigations, in which allegations will be checked."  ref name="medicsblocked" WSJ

• IDF "refuses to discuss individual charges in detail"  ref name="gazafamily" L.A. Times ("As a matter of policy, we do not target civilians ..." )

So do you see the same pattern here that I do? At least two other articles we're currently citing have the IDF saying the same thing, essentially: That they don't comment on a specific situations or allegations until they've investigated, but they don't do things like that, as a matter of policy, it's prohibited, etc. ( In one of the articles, published a month after, iirc, the IDF was still saying it'd never even been in Zeitoun. ) This "no comment on the specific allegations, but here's our overall policy" shouldn't be any big surprise; it's what every military representatives in a relatively democratic country says when accused of something. It's what they're trained to say. Any officer who gives an unauthorised statement to the press on a specific allegation of something that could become a war crimes trial would never be so dumb as to deviate from that. It'd end his career, most likely, if he did.

We shouldn't fight over whether the statement is intended as a specific response to the allegations about Zeitoun. If we can't agree, or come to a compromise we can both live with, we should ask for a third opinion, formally, I mean, from a neutral party at 3-Oh. Would you like to come up with a formulation of how we'd phrase that request together?  – OhioStandard (talk) 09:40, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

The entire reason for the NPOV tag seems to be the one sentence about "According to Haaretz, the IDF delayed rescue services from reaching some of the casualties for three days of the incident." But as far as I can see the Israelis have never even disputed this fact. In the numerous articles I have read on the subject they have only stated that they did the best they could. Given that the statement is attributed to Haaretz, what is the NPOV issue exactly? Poyani (talk) 13:30, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

False premise Ankh.Morpork 13:39, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Rapid-fire editing and tagging

AnkhMorpork added a bucket load of "citation needed" and "failed verification" tags to this article, as we were jointly editing it several hours ago, and as I said above ... well, here; it'll be simpler to just list the problems he introduced:

• 19:34, 7 May 2012 UTC (1 of 3) Failed verification tag added to the sentence "The IDF rejected all other requests to have medics tend to the injured" re the target of the "medicsblocked" named ref, viz., the Wall Street Journal article of 28 Jan 2009. But it is in the source; here are its first and second paragraphs, complete:

After Israeli troops drove into this village Jan. 4 and went door to door rousting residents, the family and neighbors of Ishaq Samouni, wounded by shrapnel, made more than 100 phone calls seeking aid for the injured, according to a Palestinian doctor.

Two medics arrived, but the Israelis turned them away, one medic says. Israel then rejected new requests by the medics to be let in, the Red Cross said. By the time it let them through, on a Wednesday, 12-year-old Ishaq was dead.  ( Jan 4 2009 = Sunday; and Jan 7th = Wednesday. Btw, the Red Cross also said it took )

• 19:34, 7 May 2012 UTC (2 of 3) Failed verification tag added to the sentence "Due to the three-hour time limit, the Red Cross were not able to collect the dead." But it is in the source; we've already dealt with this one in the "Verify" section above, though.

• 19:34, 7 May 2012 UTC (3 of 3) "POV-statement" aka "neutrality disputed" tag added as follows "Disputing this claim,{{POV-statement}} Zeitoun residents point out that Hamas did not have much support in their area and that the residents are mostly supporters of Fatah" re the "symbol" named ref, viz. the Global Post article of 22 Jan 2009. But it is in the source, the word that justifies "disputing", is. The source says this:

Al-Arkan and the other neighbors say they are supporters of Fatah, the political rival to Hamas, and thus disputes the presumed Israeli justification for the destruction to not only his property, but hundreds of civilian homes, farms and businesses, especially in areas like Zeitoun, where Hamas had little support before the conflict.  ( Note it's possible the intervening sentence, "The IDF stated that their purpose was to besiege areas from where Hamas launched rockets, and that Zeitoun was one of these areas" was added subsequent to the preceding passage saying the area residents sympathised with Hamas." )

• 22:03, 7 May 2012 UTC Failed verification tag added the sentence "Zeitoun residents point out that Hamas did not have much support in their area and that the residents are mostly supporters of Fatah" re the target of the "symbol" named ref, viz., the Global Post article of 22 Jan 2009. But it is in the source, which says:

Al-Arkan and the other neighbors say they are supporters of Fatah, the political rival to Hamas, and thus disputes the presumed Israeli justification for the destruction to not only his property, but hundreds of civilian homes, farms and businesses, especially in areas like Zeitoun, where Hamas had little support before the conflict.  ( Abdel Al-Arkan is a Soumani neighbor. Note this statement and the one from the New York Times about the sympathies of the neighborhood disagree. )

• 22:20, 7 May 2012 UTC This was a re-write that presented two problems. First, the sentence supplied, viz. "The headof Red Cross operations in the Gaza Strip said the first rescue team could only take out only the wounded,and had to leave the dead, because they only had 4 ambulances and they had limited time" includes two "typo" errors. Maybe a sticky space bar, and time for a new keyboard? But spellcheck is a beautiful thing, and it's easy to activate from within one's browser - glad to explain how, for Firefox. Second, and more substantively, the result of AnkhMorpork's effort to attribute this, in-body, to a source yields a somewhat misrepresenting result, quite unintentionally, I'm sure. It says the inability to get bodies out was due to a lack of ambulances and limited time. But it's of course obvious that the fact documented in the following sentence, that ambulance workers had to walk over three Km to reach the injured was an equally important cause, or even more so. That would have been a 45-50 minute walk, one way, and probably considerably longer carrying their equipment in, and hauling the injured back out on a pushcart. They'd have time for just the one round trip that way, within in a three-hour window.

I'm not going to revert any of these tag placements or fix anything else I've documented above, partly because that could arguably put me over 1rr for this article, depending on which of the many definitions of "revert" one subscribes to. I'd appreciate it if AnkhMorpork would do so, though. I also need to say that it's taken me a quite a long while today to investigate all the tags he placed, and that's been very frustrating, since they were added in too much of a hurry, just carelessly. It's not my place to condescend, and I don't mean to do that; I've certainly made careless mistakes myself, and will surely make many again. But I value my time, and with all due respect, and as one peer speaking to another, I really don't want to see anything like this happen again, either.  – OhioStandard (talk) 06:51, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I just ain't feelin the chemistry. It ain't me dat doin' dem talkin', its dem sources. The source states, "Antoine Grand, the head of Red Cross operations in the Gaza Strip, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that the first rescue team on Wednesday had to leave the dead and take out only the wounded, “horrible as that seems,” because they had only limited time and only four ambulances." How am I misrepresenting this by writing "...because they only had 4 ambulances and they had limited time"? Most of the examples are NPOV violations, e.g source states, "Israel then rejected new requests by the medics"; article states, "The IDF rejected all other requests to have medics tend to the injured". I would like to clear this up and remove the the tags but I also have to be mindful of 1rr.Ankh.Morpork 09:57, 8 May 2012 (UTC)