Talk:Mishmeret

Ynhockey: can you please explain your revert?

Here is my motivation. The article is about Mishmeret, not Miska. There are three items related to Miska: 1) Mishmeret was founded near Miska; 2) Mishmeret was founded on the lands belonging to Miska; 3) Miska's residents were expelled in 1948.

(1) is quite related and hardly disputable. It was included in my edit.

(2) is related, but it is a politically-charged controversial issue. I still included it in my edit because I do not have contradicting sources, but I think it is problematic. Land-ownership issue, especially in the Arab-Israeli conflict, is much disputed. This land most probably changed hands quite frequently. A proper way to address it, I think, is to include a separate section "Land Dispute", and survey claims by Arab village residents, claims by Turk officials, claims by British officials (especially because British founded the new settlement), claims by Jewish agencies, claims by the State of Israel. Currently it is stated as a simple and widely recognized statement, which is misleading.

(3) is completely unrelated to Mishmeret, although definitely related to Miska.

In my edition I left valid (1) and problematic (2). I removed (3) due to the above reason. The reference to the article about Miska (included in my edit) provides further information to those interested in its history.

Would be glad for your comments, whether you agree or disagree, and what's the best to do for this article.

Akinoame (talk) 18:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Akoniame! The reason for the revert was simple and I believe it was explained in the edit summary—you can't just remove sources. If the reason for your removal is undue weight, then you could rephrase the paragraph as you did, but keep the source in place, since it's still relevant to the part of the sentence you did retain. —Ynhockey (Talk) 18:14, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for the explanation. So is it OK to just add sources (e.g., irrelevant ones), but not to remove them? Is importance of the source for the article content considered? E.g., I understand Khalidi is a crucial reference if you talk about "depopulation", but should they be referenced for mere statement that another Arab village was near or on the site of future Jewish settlement? Akinoame (talk) 18:54, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Of course, if a source is irrelevant to the content, or the content is completely irrelevant to the article, you can remove them. However, this does not seem to be the case here. Having a look at the original source would be helpful to see exactly what it says, but in general Khalidi's book on Palestinian villages usually says stuff like this. If anyone disputes this, they should come up with a source that does so (this is not out of the ordinary—Khalidi's assertions have been disputed before). —Ynhockey (Talk) 23:49, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree one can trace chain of relevance from Mishmeret to depopulation of Miska: Mishmeret -> near Miska -> Miska residents left/were expelled/killed/whatever happened during the war. So it's second-order relation. There are multiple relations like this: Mishmeret -> near Netanya -> Netanya has great beaches. Would it be good to add this fact? It has the same amount of relevance as depopulation of Miska.
 * I would understand if a direct relation between Mishmeret and depopulation of Miska was shown, e.g., it was build using remnants of Miska, etc.. Maybe there is such relationship, but it's not mentioned or cited. As it is stated now looks very strange: take any current city, find a city in the past which was nearby, write something about this no-longer-existing city.
 * If we maintain relevance of such facts, as you see the article starts to look not an article about Moshav, but about 1948 war. Maybe this is the spirit of Wikipedia, but I am not sure :)
 * Akinoame (talk) 03:41, 8 January 2011 (UTC)