Talk:2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange

Merge
Perhaps Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev should be merged into this article? -- Nudve (talk) 08:33, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Nah, best keep them seperate --Lsdjfhkjsb (talk) 08:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * No, some sentences there and the whole article here. Flayer (talk) 10:01, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think merging to the 2006 Lebanon War is the best course, unless this article gets more detailed than a single paragraph. ← George [ talk  ] 19:58, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with George. Presuming that this article won't be expanded past one or two paragraphs, it seems perfectly alright to just merge the contents to 2006 Lebanon War. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 20:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Samir Kuntar - terrorist
Samir Kuntar is a terrorist recognized by several countries. He illegaly entered Israel, and butchered an entire family to death, including a little 4 year old girl. By no means should he be described as a "militant" or "peace activist". - A terrorist he is, and on wikipedia, a terrorist he must remain. --Lsdjfhkjsb (talk) 09:10, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Please review WP:TERRORIST. -- Nudve (talk) 09:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * He's constantly reffered to as a terrorist on his own wikipedia page. Why should you do any differently here?--Lsdjfhkjsb (talk) 09:25, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm, doesn't look like it's used there anymore. Regardless, it's still a word to avoid, per Wikipedia policy, and shouldn't be used "constantly" on that article either. ← George [ talk  ] 09:47, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Not in this case. Flayer (talk) 10:02, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * "'In line with the Wikipedia Neutral Point of View policy, the words 'Extremist', 'Terrorist' and 'Freedom fighter' should be avoided unless there is a verifiable citation indicating who is calling a person or group by one of those names in the standard Wikipedia format of 'X says Y'. In an article the words should be avoided in the unqualified 'narrative voice' of the article. As alternatives, consider less value-laden words such as insurgent, paramilitary, or partisan.'"
 * If you want to add that X calls him a terrorist, where X is a person or group, then by all means go ahead. Got more sources? Even better. Just be careful not to cross the line into using the narrative voice when doing so, as that violates policy. ← George [ talk  ] 10:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * "Convicted murderer of innocent child" sounds better? Flayer (talk) 10:13, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As usual, pushing the non-neutral, unsourced wording incited someone to change it to "freedom fighter," an even less neutral wording than yours. Apparently this is a recent event, so it looks like emotions are running high, which is the only reason I can see for so many violations of policy being tossed around so quickly. And yes, "convicted murderer" is much better than terrorist, as it is accurate without violating WP:WTA. The wording "innocent child" implies a personal POV, however. If you want to put "convicted murdered of a four-year-old girl," that's fine with me. ← George [ talk  ] 11:03, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Samir Kuntar is definitely a terrorist. What other act encompasses virulent anti-semitism, hatred of Israel, and bludgeoning innocent 4 year old girls to death with the butt of your pistol?. . hmm --124.190.244.83 (talk) 11:05, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't understand how editors have zero interest in following Wikipedia policy, and instead just inject their own points of view. I'll assume that this is just an artifact of this being a current event, and people, especially those close to the event, lose their ability to reason in the heat of the moment, so I'll revisit these articles in a few days and clean them up. Was Hitler a bad person? Sure. Does Wikipedia's article say that Hitler was a bad person? No, because that injects a certain point of view, which is a violation of policy. State what they did, and let the reader draw their own conclusions. If the evidence for what you intend to convey is strong enough, people will draw the same conclusion you do. Stating these things explicitly only makes your claim look weakr, as if there is a lack of evidence to actually support it. Also, for the record, NO, anti-semitism, hatred of Israel, and killing a 4-year-old girl, while condemnable and despicable, do not necessarily make someone a terrorist. He could be a terrorist, but your "argument" is fundamentally flawed. ← George [ talk  ] 11:23, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I would like to refer something what you said: [quote]Also, for the record, NO, anti-semitism, hatred of Israel, and killing a 4-year-old girl, while condemnable and despicable, do not necessarily make someone a terrorist. He could be a terrorist, but your "argument" is fundamentally flawed. [/quote]He killed her as act of terrorism. He didn't kill the child because he is sick or she owns him the money. Smacking child head for politics reasons is act of terrorism ! He entered Israel as terrorist so he should be recognized as such! --CONFIQ (talk) 17:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Calling him a terrorist (even if he is) is POV, because there are many which don't consider him a terrorist, this is against WP policies and the word should not be used. The Honorable Kermanshahi (talk) 13:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. The term is clearly subjective. It's best to label Kuntar as a "PLF militant and convicted murderer". Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 17:35, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Article is one-sided in favor of Israeli view
This article is very one-sided. The "reactions" paragraph only mentions what many of the western media who have clearly chosen to narrate the story the Israeli Foreign Ministry released. Most eastern news articles do not recognize him as the criminal he is portrayed as in western media. For example, Samir Kuntar himself has never admitted to killing either the girl or her father. He says they were shot by Israeli soldiers, who were shooting everything that made a movement. His testimony is available on the Guardian website. Noaccess2k (talk) 09:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed, all the "Reactions" were from American or Israeli papers, and none from any other countries. Furthermore the whole section occupies most of the article, extending the article too much. Serious POV issue here too. I will try to find other sources of reactions to add neutrality. Hamster X (talk) 10:50, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Regarding recent editing history
"Rami R" has repeatedly reverted the article to previous versions when edits where promulgated which added perspective to the swap. The first time he reverted the article he cited OR and POV, neither of which was the case: the edits were referenced. The second time he again cites POV which is incorrect. The article has a stunning bias, libeling Samir Kuntar for a crime he denies. Referenced edits noting this fact and noting the obvious impartiality of a foreign military court (whose records are in this case are sealed) add perspective to an article previously claiming essentially that he was guilty and a monster, and that impugned the reception he received in the Arab world. Exemplary in this regard are statements included in the swap such as: "Mona Charen wrote: 'What can you say about a people who welcome a child murderer as a hero?'". This is both libelous and one-sided. If Kuntar's alleged guilt warrants ANY discussion--if it was ever relevant to the article--then there is no reason why sources that dispute it should be censored from giving their own context for the swap, one that incidentally considers racist fulminations like the ones that previously went unchallenged in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.204.151.224 (talk • contribs) 09:36, 1 December 2008


 * read WP:SPS: a blog is a blog, and can be used as a source for almost nothing.
 * The supposed existence of POV in the article is not an excuse to add POV of your own.
 * "libeling Samir Kuntar for a crime he denies" -libeling? Kuntar has been found guilty of murder, and that is exactly how he is treated in the article ("convicted murderer").
 * Details of Kuntar's trial are not needed for context. There is no doubt that Kuntar took part in a paramilitary operation in Israel, and that he was found guilty of murder. That's all that's needed for context.
 * Even if we accept your source, the edits still contain OR. Examples from your edit:
 * "ubiquitous racist coverage of Kuntar in the Western press" - source?
 * "a claim that has not been verified" - the claim is in the source. it is your OR that it is not verified.
 * "but no evidence is cited for this claim" - same thing.
 *  Rami R  19:31, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:04, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I came by accident to this article, and was amazed to find an unbelievable level of POV, even for an article on the Israeli-Arab conflict. I then noticed that there had been a previous attempt to raise this POV issue and that you had recently removed a notice, with a perfectly valid reason.
 * This issue is, imho, concentrated in the Media reactions section, with content basically put in the article pretty shortly after the events themselves by a user now blocked indefinitely . The "reactions" quoted not only cover mostly a side event (a welcoming ceremony for one of the prisoners released) to the subject of the article (the 2008 prisoner exchange), they are all from Israeli or North-American columnists expressing a similar agenda. Quite frankly, the media section looks like a report on the current Syrian crisis that would only contain abstracts from Russian newspapers, if you see what I mean. While I do believe that NPOV is not just the juxtaposition of a number of different opinions, I think it must not be too hard to find different "media reactions" bringing a different light to these events. I also notice that an Israeli source with a different voice that was added to the article by another user was then removed at a later date.
 * I have then placed a POV notice for this section only, and if no better solution is proposed here, I suggest to remove this problematic content altogether. As Wikipedia is not news, these newspaper abstracts may have had a meaning in the immediate vicinity of the events that they have now lost anyway, besides the POV issue. Place Clichy (talk) 22:58, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

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