Talk:Martin Schulz/Archives/2020/June

"Germany exists only in order to ensure..."

That quote was removed with the argument "Sourceless claim on comments of Israeli relations, related article does not show statement nor does any other article by any other news site" diff. I checked, not true, it's from an article in Haaretz which appears to be a solid source. I updated the URL for the ref[1] and put the quote back diff, since it's one of Schultz's opinions that has drawn quite a bit of attention after it was published. Any opinions here about that quote? Is it irrelevant? Should it go? Yintan  01:05, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

There is a tendency among editors preoccupied with Israel and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to make any article on mainstream European and American politicians unduly focused on the subject's views and statements on Israel. The alleged quote is very extreme and is only sourced to indirect hearsay, an op-ed by a far-left politician belonging to Hadash (a far-left fringe party formed from the Communist party). That's not a good source. We don't know for certain that Schulz said what the far-left politician alleged, or that he worded it in such an extreme way. Certainly Schulz has said no such thing in public. The claim has not been picked up by any reliable sources, and is only mentioned on a few far-right forums.

Currently the section on his views on Israel is longer than the sections on his views on the vastly, vastly more important countries Russia and the US! And it mainly discusses internal Israeli bickering over a speech where he criticized one small aspect of the Israeli occupation related to water resources, a pretty standard, uncontroversial, unspectacular statement which any mainstream European politician would agree with. The main story here is the walk out by a few members of a far-right party, and the whole issue only merits a single sentence in this biography. It's an exceedingly minor non-story in Europe and mainly something Israeli politicians bickered over for a few days in 2014. --Tataral (talk) 04:30, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Religious beliefs or otherwise

The subject of the article was categorized under German agnostics, which (according to BLPCAT) would require the case to be made in the article (self-identification and relevance), with reliable sources. It doesn't appear to be discussed in the article (with or without sources), so I am removing the category (at least for the time being). There do seem to be some (currently uncited) sources that state or imply that he is still a member of the Catholic Church (having attended a Catholic school) and that the Church continues to play an important part in his life, but that he has said (in interviews with religious publications) that he is "not a very religious person" or has lost his belief. I am not very happy with the sources that I was able to find so far. I suppose relevance could be inferred from his involvement in the debate about religious discrimination (crucifixes in Bavarian schools), so I suppose that should also be mentioned (with reliable sources), if his religious beliefs are discussed. --Boson (talk) 09:43, 20 March 2017 (UTC)