User talk:PalestineRemembered/Archives/2008/July

Allegations of apartheid deletion notification

Some time ago, you participated in a deletion discussion concerning Allegations of Chinese apartheid. I thought you might like to know that the parent article, Allegations of apartheid, was recently nominated for deletion. Given that many of the issues that have been raised are essentially the same as those on the article on which you commented earlier, you may have a view on whether Allegations of apartheid should be kept or deleted. If you wish to contribute to the discussion, please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allegations of apartheid (fifth nomination). -- ChrisO (talk) 17:42, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Mediation points at Battle of Jenin

Hi there, could you move or copy your main points down to the new mediation heading? I don't want to edit your talk. Best, LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 02:13, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Negev Bedouins

Please clarify, at Negev Bedouins, what do you mean by "nationality", as distinct from "citizenship?" Also, what else do you think should be added to the article? Thanks. LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 19:42, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Israeli law provides for 1st-class citizenship with "nationality" and 2nd-class citizenship without. The latter are (largely but not exclusively) excluded from the 93% of "national land" that is (or was until recently?) administered by the JNF. It's explained fairly well in this 1990 article.

The WP article is apparently written to make the Bedouin appear to be "a problem", though whether it's in order to justify their treatment or exclude them from bettering themselves is not clear. Check for what the article says about crime and ask yourself who would write like this of, say, African-Americans. But I've again been blocked for identifying racism - practicing it is perfectly proper but commenting on it is a real no-no. PR^talk 23:12, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Have you taken a look recently? The article definitely does discuss the fact that Bedouin have been barred from 90% of their former lands. It's not administered by the JNF - 15% of it is JNF land, 60% under the jurisdication of the IDF; The JNF has de facto handed over its lands to the military so altogether, the military controls 8% of the Negev, which is 60% of the country. So as close to a military occupation as you can get. As far as the crime section goes, I know it is very controversial. However, in an article about African Americans, one cannot, if you think about it, mention the incarceration issue without first bringing up crime stats. In other words, this section may seem objectionable, but it can also lead us to the next stage - asking why there is this crime problem -- i.e. lack of any employment options or grazing lands. It also can lead us to ask why the Bedouin are being criminalized. An article on the Bedouin should deal with these issues. Unfortunately, there isn't much scholarship dealing with the criminalization of the Bedoiun, partially, perhaps, because examining this issue would mean admitting there is a crime problem to begin with. On another note, I have basically re-written most of the article in the past few days - it still needs filling-in and nuance, but the main issues have now been raised; I agree that the army/JNF control over the Negev needs to be better highlighted; also a section on demolitions and land confisctaion is necessary - I haven 't inserted it because I don't have access to a good timeline of demolitions - I'll check the RCUV but I don;t think they have one online. However, this last section, in depth, would be better placed in Unrecognized Villages, which seriously need re-writing now that I have copied most of the history section into the Negev Bedouins article. I could use some help editing it down, if you're willing to work with me on this (since I can't see the forest for the trees anymore, after working late into the night several nights in a row). LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 17:47, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

If you were to initialise your e-mail (I think you have to tick two boxes at the bottom, as well as jump some other hurdles), we could probably work on some more material. But I think you're making a mistake over the crime business, apart from anything else, you cannot discuss it since it doesn't appear in the literature. (Perhaps mention the special police? I knew nothing about that side of things). Even in the bigger African American article, it's only mentioned in passing with "Persistent social, economic and political issues for many African Americans include inadequate health care access and delivery; institutional racism and discrimination in housing, education, policing, criminal justice and employment; crime, poverty and substance abuse." Note that African Americans have a vast incarceration problem and it's very well documented, and yet I don't see any mention of it in their article. They might even be entitled to object if there was an WP:UNDUE on it. PR^talk 18:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Something else .... the killers of two of the British people shot dead in Gaza (Tom Hurndall and James Miller) were Bedouin. The only one of these ever prosecuted was Tom's killer, al-Heib, sentenced to eight years in prison in 2005. James' killer is said to have been First Lieutenant Haib from the Bedouin Desert Reconnaissance Battalion, commanding a unit. The UK is theoretically trying to extradite him to stand trial, but it took 3 years to get to that point, which was 2 years ago. PR^talk 18:33, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll read this later. But I need to note here, in case you had the wrong impression - I did not add the crime section (though I think some kind of reference is relevant). While I agree with you on almost everything, at the moment i am also feeling like nothing will please you. I am a big BIG believer in self-criticism (which as an Israeli I do every day on wikipedia) and in acknowledging weak spots (which can only strengthen one's argument if one simply admits the point and then makes clear that this does not in any way deflect the responsibility of the other side to address human rights violations). I will read the rest of your above comments more closely later.LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 21:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I've had a second or two to look this over. Maybe I misunderstood your tone? Let me know. As far as Tom's killer, yes, I was aware of that - the story is similar to the heavy (yet not so heavy) reprimand of the Druze and Bedouin police involved in some of the October 2000 killings. Why not mention it in the article under "army service?" could be charged with original research, but maybe there's a citation that can be referenced - why not give it a shot. Also, I just took a look at African Americans. It's a nice positive entry overall. However, it says nothing about the fact that, 1. Slavery has been abolished except for those who commit crimes, and 2. over half of the black male population is incarcerated. thus it neatly avoids one of the most central controversies hush-hushed and brushed under the carpet of our time.LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 21:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm just funny on the crime business, I suspect African American society is much more badly affected by it than are the Bedouin (particularly from the rate of imprisonment). But it's not up to me to comment.

Here's something that might interest you from Israel Finkelstein, "The Bible Unearthed", p117/118 ... the two components of Middle Eastern society - farmers and pastoral nomads - have always maintained an interdependent economic relationship, even if there was sometimes tension between the two groups. Nomads need the marketplaces of settled villages in order to obtain grain and other agricultural products, while farmers are dependent on the nomads for a regular supply of meat, dairy products, and hides.

However, the two sides of the exchange are not entirely equal: villagers can rely on their own produce for survival, while pastoral nomads cannot exist entirely on the products of their herds. They need grain to supplement and balance their high-fat diet of meat and milk. As long as there are villagers to trade with, the nomads can continue to concentrate on animal husbandry. But when grain cannot be obtained in exchange for animal products, the pastoral nomads are forced to produce it for themselves.

And that is apparently what caused the sudden wave of highland settlement. In Late Bronze Age Canaan, in particular, the existence of large populations of pastoral nomads in the highlands and desert fringes was possible only as long as the Canaanite city-states and villages could produce an adequate grain surplus to trade. This was the situation during three centuries of Egyptian rule over Canaan. But when that political system collapsed in the twelfth century BCE, its economic networks ceased functioning. It is reasonable to assume that the villagers of Canaan were forced to concentrate on local subsistence and no longer produced a significant surplus of grain over and above what they needed for themselves. Thus the highland and desert-fringe pastoralists had to adapt to the new conditions and produce their own grain. Soon, the requirements of farming would cause a reduction in the range of seasonal migrations. Flocks would then have to be reduced as the period of migrations grew shorter, and with more and more effort invested in agriculture, a permanent shift to sedentarization occurred.

The process that we describe here is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. PR^talk 22:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Very, very, interesting, and the larger point is more relevant to my current research than you could guess! Thanks very much for bringing my attention to this. (How much of it is your paraphrase, and how much is a direct quote?)LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 18:39, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

None of it is paraphrased, which is why I wish you would enable your e-mail! I'd guess you were a bit like me, participate here in order to learn and share. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, "The Bible Unearthed" 2001, p116/117 ... a dramatic difference can be seen in the bones collected at the few sites in the highlands that continued to be occupied in the periods between the major settlement waves. (PR says - this is Iron Age 1, 1150-900BCE, the Egyptian influence and trading has failed again. These pastoralists, uniquely in the region, are not eating pig). The number of cattle is minimal, but there is an exceptionally large proportion of sheep and goats: This is similar to the composition of herds among bedouin groups. For pastoralists who engage in only marginal seasonal agriculture and spend much of the year seeking fresh pastureland, heavy, slow-moving cattle are a burden. They cannot move as fast and as far as sheep and goats. Thus in the periods of intense highland settlement, more people were engaged in farming; in the crisis years, people practiced sheep and goat herding.

Are such dramatic fluctuations common? In the Middle East, people have always had the know-how to rapidly change from village life to animal husbandry-or back from pastoralism to settled agriculture-according to evolving political, economic, or even climatic conditions. Many groups throughout the region have been able to shift their lifestyle according to the best interest of the moment, and the avenue connecting village life and pastoral nomadism has always been a two-way street. Anthropological studies of settlement history in Jordan, southwestern Syria, and the middle Euphrates valley in the nineteenth and early twentieth century show just that. Increasingly heavy taxation and the threat of conscription into the Ottoman army were among the factors that drove countless village families to abandon their houses in the agricultural regions and disappear into the desert. There they engaged in animal husbandry, which has always been a more resilient, if less comfortable, way of life.

An opposite process operates in times when security and economic conditions improve: Sedentary communities are founded or joined by former nomads, who take on a specialized role in a two-part, or dimorphic, society. One segment of this society specializes in agriculture while the other continues the traditional herding of sheep and goats. PR^talk 20:21, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Blocked

You came on here today and made a number of edits. Your three article edits were reverts [1][2][3]. You also labelled a couple of these as vandalism, when it was clearly just an edit war. You've also popped over to a mediators talk page and basically called a group of editors extremists[4]. Sorry, but this is disruptive editing, something whcih you've been warned many times in the past for hence why I've blocked you for 48 hours. Ryan Postlethwaite 22:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it's worth recording that I'm under a voluntary 1RR (not hard for me to do - I've repeatedly told people I'm not interested in edit-warring and it was rare I ever went to a 2RR). Sometimes I think there's a contest to block me on the most specious grounds possible.

And it's worth recording that two of the edits I made were most certainly the correction of vandalism - including re-introducing the entire "list" content of a "listing" article which had stood largely unchanged since 2005. There was a detailed explanation on it's provenance in Talk from User:Doron - an editor we've sadly lost (but whose opinion I more often accepted than agreed with).

The real question is why are you harassing me instead of protecting articles from characters like this "You are behaving bizzar latley. Is there a problem here!?" That particular editor has joyfully turned to edit-warring my change, while he wastes the time of a scholar. (Another editor whose opinion I probably respect rather than agree with).

And someone needs to protest in the last case where the small number of real scholars we have remaining are mindlessly obstructed by, as best I can tell in this case, simple racism. Couldn't you do something useful? PR^talk 18:15, 29 July 2008 (UTC)