Talk:Sabra and Shatila massacre/Archive 4

Some Points and Questions to Ponder
1. The shooting of the Israeli ambassador in London was not, in itself, the "stated reason" for Israel's invasion. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. In the 11 months between the July 1981 Habib cease-fire and the June 1982 invasion, Israel recorded hundreds of terrorist attacks originating from PLO-controlled areas of southern Lebanon.

2. A "Phalangist militia numbering 1,500 was assembled."

Why then were only 150 sent into the camps? Why hold back 90% of the force? (I recall that reinforcements were necessary. Why? Were they readily available?)

3. These sentences in the article drip of POV:

"For two nights, from nightfall untill late into the night the Israeli military fired illuminating flares above the camps to assist the militia in their massacres"

"For the next 36 hours, the Phalangists massacred the inhabitants of the refugee camps with the assistance of the Israeli military."

"an Israeli tank crew saw several men, women and children being led to a stadium where they were to be interrogated or executed."

As if the IDF knowingly and premeditatedly was planning a massacre, a tank crew even knowing why some people were taken to a stadium.

4. "part of the camps that the phalangists controlled (they did not controll the entire camp-area)" [In this discussion page]

How can it be that after "two nights" or "36 hours" the entire camp was not under Phalangist control?

5. What was the population of the camps? How is it that in "36 hours" of alleged premeditated massacre, only hundreds (or even a few thousand) people were killed? Again, if this was the intent, why only send in 10% of the Phalangist force?

6. I think the reference to Damour is important for context. So is inclusion of the 1985 massacres at Shatila and Burj el Barajneh. (I believe Shatila was destroyed and never rebuilt.)

7. Lastly, I commend the effort to ascertain the number of dead, but two words of caution.

First, it is not atypical in such situations that many of those who are initially reported as "missing" turn up - alive. Needless to say, there is a high level of commotion and confusion. People are separated and a husband may report his wife missing even as the wife reports the husband missing.

Second, I recall (and believe that the Lebanese Police report states) that only a small number of dead were women and children, with a larger number being foreign PLO fighters.

(unsigned, but this is from Morley Harper)


 * I'm not going to try to reply to all of the above, especially because I am headed to bed right now, but a few immediate responses:


 * On your point 5: Given the report that many of the dead were tortured before being killed, the length of time involved seems pretty much on the mark.
 * It seems to me that, on the general history of countries investigating themselves, that we can reasonably assume that the Kahan Commission report places a "lower bound" on what occurred. Similarly, Al-Ahram ' s reporting seems to me like a reasonable "upper bound", though I'd be open to suggestions of a different source for this purpose. I suppose one could argue that as the semi-official voice of the Egyptian government Al-Ahram might sometimes have reasons to go easy on Israel. Still, in a case like this, I doubt it. -- ~

Regarding point 4. This camp-area consists of two parts, Sabra in the north and Shatila further south. South of Shatila there is a more open area. A fairly wide and open road marks the southern part om the camp. In the north Sabra blends into the streets om West-Beirut. During the massacre, for instance on friday, it was fairly easy to enter into the northern parts of Sabra. On friday the northern outskirts was not controlled by the Phalange. The situation on the southern outskirt of Shatila was quite different. The road ouside Shatila was desserted, but any phalangist (or for that matter IDF-soldiers in the area) could stop people from entering or leaving.

As far as I understand the phalangists entered the camps from the south. They were gathered at the airport which is also south of Shatila, but further in from the coast. They then probably moved up in a northerly direction as far as they reached during the time they spent in the camp. It is a densly populated area with lot of narrow side streets from the main street going south-norht. To control and clear up such an area therefore takes time and explains why they not controlled the entire camp-area - even after 36 hours.

~ John E08.57 okt 28. (gmt)

Info and links

 * The Cause for Invasion
 * "The goal was to remake the political landscape—to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organization and install a right-wing Christian Lebanese leader prepared to sign a peace deal with Israel. But Operation Peace for Galilee ended in failure."


 * "Israel launched operation "Peace for Galilee" and invaded Lebanon in 1982 in what was sold to the Israeli public as a bid to drive the Palestine Liberation Organization back from the northern border. Sharon went on to drive the PLO out of Lebanon and to try to install a more friendly regime there. ... The Israelis stayed, and their effort to install a new regime ended in disaster."


 * The Invasion was planned
 * "When, in early June 1982, terrorists of the Abu Nidal organization, a PLO splinter group, badly wounded the Israeli ambassador in London during an assassination attempt, Israel seized the pretext for launching its long-planned offensive."


 * The Invasion was opposed by the US and the UN:
 * See "U.N. Security Council Resolution 509"
 * "On June 6, President Reagan, in France to meet with the G-7 Heads of Government at the Versailles Economic Summit, dispatched Habib to Israel to try to restore the cease-fire. That same day the United States joined a unanimous U.N. Security Council Resolution demanding that Israel withdraw from Lebanon and that the border cease-fire be observed by all parties."


 * Other details:
 * "September 15, 1982: Ariel Sharon arrives in Beirut to personally direct the IDF campaign ... The IDF launches sporadic shellfire at Sabra and Shatila."


 * "September 15, 1982: An Israeli divisional intelligence officer, providing an update briefing on the situation in the camps, reports to the Chief of Staff: "It seems there are no terrorists there, in the camp; Sabra camp is empty." (Kahan Commission Final Report, p. 24).


 * "Two Israeli paratroopers tell correspondent Michael Gerti: On Thursday evening, as darkness fell, Palestinian women from Shatila arrived at the post and hysterically told us that the Phalangists were shooting their children and putting the men in trucks. I reported this to my commander, but all he said was: 'It is okay, do not worry.' My order was to tell the women to go back home. However, many women, and entire families as well, ran away from the camps to the north. I went back and repeated my report over and over. Each time, however, the answer was the same: "It is okay."...It was possible to stop the massacre in Shatila, even on Thursday; had they acted on what we reported to our commander. (Ha'aretz, September 23, 1982)."

HistoryBuffEr 05:25, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

"Terrorists"
Why aren't the 'militia' correctly labeled as terrorists? Or does that term only refer to Muslims? (anon 12 July 2005)
 * You will notice that the only times the word "terrorist" appears in the article are in quotations. Wikipedia usually avoids this word, except where attribution of the accusation (because it almost always is an accusation) is clear. But I would agree that balance would dictate that if a quotation from an appropriate source describes the militia as "terrorists", it should be included in the article.
 * Ironically, the word "terrorist" is rarely used with reference to such well-organized groups, and when you get to the level of national armies, it is hardly used at all, though they are certainly as capable of terror as anyone else. This is part of why it is usually a word to avoid. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:54, July 12, 2005 (UTC)


 * True. Serbian militia at sebrenica are rarely labeled as terrorists, so does US behaviour in central America in the 80's. I think that the term is always used for small clandestine group. Some morally reprenhesible actions are not labeled terrorist as long as the group is not clandestine. This is unfortunate but it's a fact. Another example: syrian shelling on east beirut during the 80's are never called terrorist because it's open. But the car bombs that were most probably ordered by Syria through proxies are systematically referred to as terrorist.--equitor 17:03, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Hobeika's fiancée raped?
I was working on the biography on Elie Hobeika and I found this interesting story that I did not heard of previously. It says that Hobeika fiancé was raped and killed in Damour. Fisk says that it happened in 75 but other sources on the internet say it's in 76, during damour's massacre. Other sources say that Hobeika lost some of his relatives in Damur. Does somebody know anything about this?

I kept the story unchanged in the article, but I would like some data on it to be sure. --equitor 16:55, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Why not TWO entries?
There are two opposing views here, that of Noam Chomsky and his supporters who follow the "Israeli-devil" theory, and everyone else.

Why not two entries, one the follows the theory of Israel is devil, that all evil in the world stems from Zionist plot, and the other that doesn't?

By the way, did the Kahan Commission know about Hobeika's treachery? Just a question.

''Treachery is alleged on the basis of Robert Hatem's book (the book can be read on the internet). Also, Alain Mernargues says that on the 14th of September (the day Bachir died) a group of Israeli inspectors who were in charge of training Bachir's security came to Beirut. Menahem Navot, a high ranking mossad officer was with them on the same plane. The instructors were told by Hobeika's men to go away and 'never come back' (BTW Hobeika was the head of LF security and was managing Gemayel's personal security). Navot tried to reason the guys but Bachir died a few moments later (I think the instructors were still arguing with Hobeika's men). Menargues got the story directly from Navot but I don't know if it does mean anything. This prompted consipiracy theories in Beirut saying that Hobeika knew about the killing and was afraid that the Israelis would later blame him for their instructors deaths (blaming being an eupemism for assassination). Alain Menargues book is the most authoritative book I ever read on the 82 invasion as he know a lot of person on all sides and is a very respected journalist - unfortunately the book is not translated in english. I can compare him only to Charles Enderlin. He also asserted that the first unit to enter Sabra and Chatila on D-day was an Israeli commando unit : according to Menargues the commando's role was to enforce the coverfew and 'terminate' PLO activist, not massacring the population. The last element is the fact that Hobeika was Syria's protégé from 85 to 99. This was strange as Hobeika was extremely unpopular with christians (because he became pro-syrian) and muslims (because of the massacre) and had no popular basis. Concerning the Kahan commission, I don't think that they knew any of this at the time, except Navot's story, but I don't think it was enough to link Hobeika in 1982.'' --equitor 13:01, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

Friday would have been the 17th, no?
"On Friday, September 16, while the camps still were sealed off&hellip;" was recently changed to "On Friday, September 18, while the camps still were sealed off&hellip;" In fact, I believe, Friday would have been the 17th. But I have no idea whether this actually happened on Friday. Someone who has more actively worked on these materials should probably sort this out. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:43, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

TIME libel trial 82-84
I added detail. Libel trial focused on the secret meeting, not an accusation that he was responsible for massacre event. The linked articles also contain detail of some other charges Sharon made including alleged TIME's bias against jews and israel. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.29.229.254 (talk • contribs).

Ext. Links
"Sabra and Chatila Massacres After 19 years, The Truth at Last?" By Robert Fisk, The Independent, November 28, 2001.

Section on Media Coverage, starting again
Again, my questions:

1) Is it NPOV to assign the job of analyzing media coverage of the massacre to Bernard Lewis?

2) If the statement is true, then why is our presentation of the massacre so categorically at odds with that of "most reports"?

3) If the statement is false (as I think it demonstrably is), then why are we quoting it as established fact?

4) Why are we quoting one scholar-pundit's opinion about a controversial matter as established fact in the first place?

The article on Hamas provides an illuminating contrast. There, the consensus of "most reports" forms the basis and starting-point for the lede. That indeed seems to be the usual procedure for Wikipedia articles on contentious issues. In this article, however, the consensus of "most reports" is corrected for by Wikipedians, and then handed over to a single partisan pundit for analysis and rebuttal. What gives?--G-Dett 02:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think it is clear that in "Most reports focused on the Israelis and usually failed to mention the Lebanese Maronite militias"  while the first statement is arguably and probably true  (Israel has always gotten more coverage than Maronite militias), the second statement is unsupported OR, quite unlikely - use common sense - (and it is  contrary to my own recollections FWIW) - & almost certainly false. So at least, it should be removed. Probably Chomsky or Said might be used to balance Lewis on these issues.4.234.15.135 04:35, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * If one wants a lefty for balance, Robert Fisk would be better than Chomsky or Said on this issue; although Chomsky did write a serious and influential critique of the Kahan report, Fisk's Pity the Nation is perhaps the canonical account of the Lebanese civil war. But we hardly need another analyst, lefty or not, to refute Lewis on this point.  The New York Times coverage from then-Beirut correspondent Thomas Friedman (one of the first and most influential Western journalists in the camps after the massacres, whose work set the tone and framing for mainstream coverage of the event) would suffice to make nonsense of Lewis' crazy claim, which we have assimilitated and presented as neutral fact.


 * In fact, what Friedman's reports and "most reports" subsequent to his did was simply describe the event: the Israeli sealing off of the camps; the 2-day slaughter conducted day and night by Phalangists, with illumination provided by Israeli soldiers sending flares into the sky; the communications throughout between Israeli commanders and Phalangist soldiers; the grim aftermath. The vast majority of sources since 1982, both journalistic and scholarly, have accepted some degree of Israeli complicity in the Phalangist massacre while debating the meaning of the two most cited phrases from the Kahan report: "indirect responsibility" and "personal responsibility."  Our article, on the other hand, avoids and/or tries to correct for the bias that Wikipedians perceive in this overwhelming scholarly and journalistic consensus, and then creates a special section for the partisan pundit (and scholar, but not of Lebanon much less of the Palestinian refugee diaspora) Bernard Lewis to misrepresent and dismiss the very sources our article has theretofore studiously avoided.  This tendentious analysis constitutes the whole of our section on "media coverage"; there are not only no opposing voices, but also no other voices period, and not a single expert on the Lebanese civil war or the Palestinian refugee camps is cited.  A pretty grave betrayal of WP:NPOV, all told.--G-Dett 15:31, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Does Lewis actually make this claim - that most reports didn't even mention the Maronites? (I assume this is what you are calling the crazy claim).  It is not clear from what we have that he did, which is why I called it OR. If he actually did (I hope not) it is a fringe view, an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, so still shouldn't be here. I agree that arguments against Israeli complicity (or worse) are rather tenuous (and not widely accepted, not in Israel in particular) - they would have had to be blind and deaf to not see what was happening under their noses. 4.234.15.45 17:12, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a good question. The possibility that it was just out-and-out OR, not to mention wildly inaccurate OR, hadn't occurred to me; it seemed too outlandish even for a page as plagued by bias as this one.  If it is OR, that will certainly make getting rid of it easier.  Bernard Lewis is a serious scholar (though an obviously biased pundit); what I assumed happened was that he made a rhetorical statement (something along the lines of "all you hear about is Israel, nobody's talking about the Phalangists") from which we dropped both the rhetorical context and the quotation marks in order to present as fact.  Does anybody know where the sentence in question came from?  I'll put in a fact tag for now, but some serious work is needed here.--G-Dett 18:50, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Recent changes
While going through Recent Changes, I noted an anon had changed a lot of content on this page. While some of it appears to be vandalism, I believe part of it may be of some use to the article.


 * The IP's last edit gave this version - this
 * The original version was - this.

I would like to request all editors looking over this page to have a look at these edits and see if theres anything worth keeping from there.

regards, xC | ☎  18:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Numbers
An anon made some additions to the numbers section a while ago, which I don't think were entirely helpful. Benwing and I did some work there a couple years ago - see section 29: claims of 2750 deaths, and it had survived basically unchanged for 2 years. The problem is that the Lebanese account is not reliable enough to be put in the introduction, which should only have solid info. As I explained, in talk section 5 above, the problem is that the number of women and children - 35 is impossibly low, as Al-hout's book has several photographs of the victims that show more than that number of women and children. I think Schiff and Ya'ari may cast some doubt on this estimate for the same reason. The list of nations of origin has no cite, and conflicts with the Lebanese vs. Palestinian estimate given below which I got from Helena Cobban's PLO book, following Thomas Friedman (She had lived and worked in the camps until a couple months before the massacre, so I think her & Friedman's judgment is weighty.) It strikes me as very unlikely, unlike the reasonable Palestinian + Lebanese estimate for a Palestinian camp in Lebanon, from which PLO fighters had departed. So I removed it. I left the stuff about the civil war in, and moved the 35 number to the appropriate place, although it perhaps could use more explanation.John Z 09:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

"No idea of what was going on inside"
In the intro there is the sentence "[...] although the Israeli military personnel who were there stated that they had no idea of what was going on inside". The sentence stroke me as I was reading the article after listening to a radio transmission which indicated into a different direction (German radio SWF2). Of course, the latter might be biased; I can't say. Also, the article contradicts itself by saying later "However, the Commission recorded that Israeli military personnel were aware that a massacre was in progress without taking serious steps to stop it". This is part of the controversy section, but probably cannot be considered a lie, right? Therefore, I think the sentence should be dropped unless there are clarifying sources for this. (Actually – but this is my personal opinion – this sentence should be dropped unless there is an "objective" source: Simply having somebody from the personnel stating he/she/they had no idea constitutes a possibly biased view and therefore should go into the section on controversy.) -- hbf 19:27, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * So any objections to changing the affected sentence to "The camps were externally surrounded by Israeli Defence Forces throughout the incident; the degree to which the Israeli military was involved in the incident is a matter of controversy (see below)."? -- hbf 11:37, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * No objections. That edit will be an obvious improvement.--G-Dett 16:37, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

"Paraphrase" of Lewis
Any editor who paraphrases "almost failed to mention" as "usually failed to mention" should probably be kept on a short leash when it comes to source materials. Even if the difference between the two were only one of degree, this would be unacceptable. All the worse when the difference is categorical. To say that reports "usually failed to mention" the Maronite militias is an empirical observation, a statement of fact – which just happens to be completely false. (The fact that it's utterly false isn't really Lewis' fault, since he never said it.) To say that reports "almost failed to mention" the militias, on the other hand, is a rhetorical statement; Lewis believes that reports were too hard on the Israelis. Lewis can take solace in this article, which tries to rectify things by throwing NPOV (as well as the overwhelming majority of RS's) to the dogs, sticking hard and fast to the official Israeli version of events.

The larger question here, and I've raised it before but received no answer, is why this article gives Lewis such a platform to kvetch about how the world sees the Sabra and Shatila massacres and how unfair it all is. Lewis is a renowned though controversial historian of the Middle East. But he has no expertise about Lebanon or the Lebanese civil war, and certainly not about the Palestinian diaspora. Nor is he a renowned scholar and analyst of the media and its institutional biases, the way someone like Noam Chomsky is. He's here in this article partly in the capacity of political partisan, and partly in the capacity of a scholar of antisemitism (Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice is the book we're quoting from). But this isn't an article about antisemitism. It's an article about an infamous massacre of Palestinians. Let's use better sources. A word or two from Lewis-as-pundit may be appropriate, but the present interpolation of him is in gross violation of WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE.--G-Dett 16:43, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It's worth pointing out that these are passing remarks from Lewis on Sabra and Shatila; the quoted material is all there is on the massacres in the entire book. Well, almost all: the editor who inserted it managed to leave out the following:"What is significant about the media response to the events in Sabra and Shatila is not that they received so much attention; that is normal where Israelis or other Jews are involved. Nor is it particularly significant that this attention seems so disproportionate when compared with the treatment of other crimes in other places.  The Israelis – rightly – are judged by standards different from those applied to authoritarian governments, which in any case do not permit foreign news services to monitor their activities.   The condemnation of the Israeli role was well founded, and many Israelis, and finally the Israeli authorities, joined in it."
 * So the opening paragraph of the section covering the "Controversy regarding Israel's role in the massacre", is given over to passing comments in a book about antisemitism by Bernard Lewis, a pro-Israel partisan with no special expertise or research interest in Lebanon, the Lebanese civil war, or the Sabra-Shatila massacres. Excised from the quoted material, however, are the portions where Lewis acknowledges that "condemnation of the Israeli role was well founded."  Instead the POV-pushing Wikipedian focuses on Lewis' literary-critical take on the "language" of some reports ("the frequent usage of language evocative of the Nazis," etc.).  In lieu of actually paraphrasing Lewis' argument and attributing it to him (i.e., something along the lines of Middle East historian Bernard Lewis contends that press coverage of the massacres emphasized the Israeli role and downplayed the Lebanese Christian role), the Wikipedian invents a ludicrous and demonstrably false argument (that "most reports...usually failed to mention the Lebanese Maronite militias"), presents it as uncontroversial fact in the lead-up to the Lewis quote, and then when called on it says it's a "paraphrase" of Lewis.  This sort of thing inspires neither confidence nor trust.  I wish it were an anomaly – but sadly, looking at the rest of the article, that appears not to be the case.--G-Dett 19:16, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia editor

I totally agree. The extensive quoting in the "Controversy regarding Israel's role in the massacre" completely unbalances the article, and is clear POV. Also, the introductory paragraph is simply contradicting the earlier part of the article, and is also wrong, stating the highest estimate is 2000, and also stating that this is a "Palestinian" estimate. This is frankly idiotic. I would not consider myself qualified to edit this article, as i am fairly partisan on this issue, but I would like to encourage anybody to clean up this section. -anon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.118.113.164 (talk) 20:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Lack of bias in "events" section
The "Events" section states several controversial views of what happened as fact, which make it seem like Israel was aware of the massacre the whole time, but ignored it. I've flagged it as un-neutral.


 * Israeli troops WERE aware of the massacre the whole time. That          is indisputable truth, as shown by sources. -Anon  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.118.113.164 (talk) 20:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Said Hammami
I would appreciate it if anyone who thinks his assassination is relevant to this topic or the 1982 war would explain here or on my talk page, though I may not be able to reply for some time as I will be travelling. There are deficiencies in Wikipedia on the runup and causes of this war, but this doesn't seem to be one of them. I changed the earlier wording because the Argov assassination was not precisely or wholly the "casus belli" for the war. Israel took it as an occasion for bombing PLO positions in Lebanon (and knew from the beginning that it was Abu Nidal), and the local PLO leaders (in Arafat's absence) took that as an occasion for the first rocket strikes in nearly a year, which were the immediate prequel to the invasion.John Z 22:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Nazisrael?
Are there any pictures of those badges? I can't seem to find one.

Whoever invented the term 'Nazisrael' should be shot. I fully support the prosecution of Sharon for his role in this massacre, but to call Israelis Nazis is offensive and ignorant. There are plenty of pseudo-fascists in the Knesset, but I highly doubt any of them are Nazis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.33.66.202 (talk) 23:28, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Massaker
I want to hear an explanation as to why this documentary must be considered a reliable source for this article. Beit Or 19:32, 19 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The way that the information is attributed, directly quoted and identified from a single source, to a large degree negates the needs for a slew of reliable sources. If the statement was just "Israel participated in the massacre", then of course there would be a need for numerous reliable sources. However, this is specifically stating that "In the film Massaker, six former soldiers stated that Israel participated in the massacre" (paraphrased), which is a far less contentious statement, and requires few sources to confirm it (as the film itself can be easily verified). If your question is whether or not this film actually exists, that can be easily verified from articles and film reviews such as this one or this one, and its IMDB entry here. Hope that helps. ← George [ talk  ] 19:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * However, for NPV we would then need to add something along the line sof "However, this statement is contradicted by other sources".--Bedivere (talk) 21:33, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Bernard Lewis
Maybe he was a bit baised? He is Jewish. Shouldnt we get better references and info than that? Theres bound to be plenty... ΤΕΡΡΑΣΙΔΙΩΣ (Ταλκ ) 19:47, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Couldn't that be construed by some people as a bit racist? Or are you arguing that by the same token we shouldn't accept sources who are Arabs or Muslims?--Bedivere (talk) 22:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that he's a bit biased, not because he's Jewish, but he has advanced some contentious arguments. I think total reliance on his quotes in the media and public relations page is misleading.Dynamo152 (talk) 21:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Nevertheless, he's a respected source and should be given due weight.--Bedivere (talk) 09:07, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Robert Fisk and Israel complacency
First off, I'm adding a citation needed tag to the paragraph which states that Israel's complacency in the massacre is questionable and I'm citing the recount of award-winning journalist Robert Fisk, who claims that Israeli officers had overseen the incident from a safe distance, refusing to take any action.... and there's another section in which it is stated that Mr. Fisk happened to drop by Lebanon after the massacre was over; this claim is not true, as he was living in Lebanon at the time....I will cite the sources in my edit

Cheers, Ahm2307 (talk) 11:33, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Read the article for the detail and citations; the lede is just a summary. As for Fisk, he's just one opinion, and his political biases are well-known. Also, please don't use youtube videos as sources. Thanks. Jayjg (talk) 02:13, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with youtube videos as sources? 08:20, 30 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.201.229.136 (talk)
 * Anyone can upload anything to Youtube. You might as well cite a Wikipedia article.--Bedivere (talk) 09:07, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Media and Public Reaction
Bernard Lewis doesn't strike me as an especially unbiased source on this, and the entire section seems focused on blaming the media and an overreacting public for assigning too much blame on Israel. Badly needs balancing. Also a little curious about why the "Israel's Role" header above that has no content. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.111.6.71 (talk) 18:16, 31 January 2009 (UTC) I would agree with that. 97.91.188.124 (talk) 14:10, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

"Indirect responsibility" is not the same as "perpetrators"
Bearing "indirect responsibility" is not the same as being a "perpetrator" of a massacre. Please use the fields of the infobox for their intended purpose. Jayjg (talk) 05:21, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Revenge?
Qarantina, Damour, Tel Az-zataar occurred immediately after each other. (January 18, 1976, January 20, 1976, and August 1976 after a siege that started in June). But Sabra and Shatila? The claims that these were revenge are tenuous, and rely on complicated explanations. This is the reason why the sources I have removed have been either marginal, or extremely pro-Israel. Jd2718 (talk) 23:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I have corrected the reference and dropped the Damour claim. I think it is more accurate as it stands, acknowledging the history. It certainly was a "revenge" attack but not for Damour specifically. The history is made a bit clearer in the Bachir Gemayel article, as well as the Kahan report. Hope this is better. Tundrabuggy (talk) 06:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that is a much fairer edit. Thank you. Jd2718 (talk) 11:33, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

NYTimes Thomas Friedman is known to be often very critical of Israel and if he ties it as a REVENGE for Damour it sounds very objective. - That 'Shahid' source is clearly a loner POV push. - It is very important, Hobeika's own personal tragedy at Damour to understand his motives. - The 'follow up' boasting by Falangists about the Christian Arab massacre at Sabra is highly important. - The 'mysterious' assassination of Elie Hobeika that no one more than him knew that Israel had no hand in it should be noted as well. Malindas (talk) 22:40, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Outcry not only internationally but also locally in Israel
The largest protest march in the world against the Lebanon war and this massacre emanated from Israelis in Israel and not "internationally". The article intro has to reflect this and not downplay the domestic Israeli protest as it did. Counterboint (talk) 17:38, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Bernard Lewis, especially as the sole authority, has no standing and is wildly POV
Many observers would note that Bernard Lewis' justification of the Sabra and Shatila massacre constitutes the logical fallacy of *tu quoque* (you're another). This logic ("Johnny does it!") is at the ethical level of the 14 year old boy and adult criminal: both imagine that the wrongs, real or fancied, of other people, along with victim status, makes everything permissible, including enabling a genocidal massacre by controlling access to the massacre, providing the lighting, and watching dully like spectators at a premiere of Schindler's List.

Bernard Lewis is not competent to speak as an authority on the contemporary Middle East, since he's a historian who specialized, before the media started to pay him as an Israeli shill, in the history of Turkey.

I don't have the time or the patience anymore with wikipedia (a tax fraud and scam) to correct this bullshit, but other editors need to make this section NPOV. Start with Edward Said.

Edward G. Nilges

--62.56.69.104 (talk) 20:55, 13 October 2009 (UTC) I agree the Bernard Lewis part is too long for what is worth in this article. That part tries to de-intensify the fact that a masssacre did happen and under the approval of Israeli forces. The views of Bernard Lewis should be referenced for anyone wishing to read more but not mentioned solely and as extensively as here. Do not forget that a coin has two sides.

Source please
"Israeli soldiers surrounding the camps turned back Palestinians fleeing the camps, as filmed by a Visnews cameraman" I looked around and did not find it anywhere -beside sites that quotes from wiki(there should be a film around as the sentence claims) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.126.9.186 (talk) 11:33, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Genocide / Abstentions
On December 16, 1982, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide.[23] Paragraph 2, which "resolved that the massacre was an act of genocide", was adopted by ninety-eight votes to nineteen, with twenty-three abstentions: All Western democracies abstained from voting.

Except I can think of more than 23 Western Democracies. Perhaps it would be of more use saying x y & z abstained from voting. Hrcolyer (talk) 14:31, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This bit is solved now, I hope, with new internet links etcetera.--Corriebertus (talk) 19:34, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

One very basic question
Habib Shartouni and Bashir are both Maronite Christians, and Bashir headed the Phalange party whose major supporters were Maronite Christians. And the Christian Phalangists committed the massacre against Palestinian(predominantly Muslim) refugees. I think the article would be a lot better off if a few lines were included in the opening paragraph as to why the revenge act was particularly against the Palestinian refugees. As someone not very knowing about the Middle Eastern politics, I could not understand this central point even after reading through the whole article. Naw66 (talk) 04:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Sources 12, 40, & 41 (perhaps others)
Are documentaries, especially ones that include no direct video or audio of a given claim, acceptable as encyclopedic "sources?"

Love him or hate him, no one disputes that Michael Moore makes documentaries. Imagine accepting any conclusion offered in a Michael Moore documentary as an encyclopedic source. Or from a Rush Limbaugh documentary, if he produced one. Anyone else see a problem there?

Documentaries are vastly more subject to market forces than purely scholarly and journalistic work. Even ostensibly journalistic documentaries (e.g., from Al Jazeera, MSNBC, the BBC, or Fox News) are far less likely to have been made seeking strict objectivity or balanced accounting of an event. Unlike news media's purely journalistic efforts -- and even they fail with some frequency in regard to objectivity and balance -- they have no responsibility to do so.

It occurs that the above inquiry applies to Wikipedia as a whole. But with heated, controversial issues such as the subject here, perhaps it's a matter worth considering per-article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pause2Reflect (talk • contribs) 07:11, 11 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Depending on the source of a documentary, it may or may not be a good source, unless the citation is to support a statement that references the documentary. For example, sources 40 and 41 are cited in statements that explicitly discuss the corresponding documentaries; that's a good use. Source 12 is a BBC documentary, and I would lean towards journalistic documentaries being viable as sources in most cases. They're not as good as articles that have been reviewed by multiple editors perhaps, but they're at least on par with op ed pieces by notable sources. ← George [ talk  ] 07:29, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

challenging the genocide status of this massacre
In section 'Controversies - Genocide status', the paragraph relating to Leo Kuper is wrongly placed, because mr Kuper does not challenge that genocide status. He seems unhappy with certain events, but since he does not challenge this U.N. conclusion, his remarks do not fit in this section. I give that whole paragraph here below; perhaps someone wants to place it somewhere in Wikipedia on a proper place.

''Citing Sabra and Shatila as an example, Leo Kuper notes the reluctance of the United Nations to respond or take action in actual cases of genocide for most egregious violators, but its willingness to charge "certain vilified states, and notably Israel", with genocide. In his view:'' "This availability of a scapegoat state in the UN restores members with a record of murderous violence against their subjects a self-righteous sense of moral purpose as principled members of 'the community of nations'... Estimates of the numbers killed in the Sabra-Shatila massacres range from about four hundred to eight hundred - a minor catastrophe in the contemporary statistics of mass murder. Yet a carefully planned UN campaign found Israel guilty of genocide, without reference to the role of the Phalangists in perpetrating the massacres on their own initiative. The procedures were unique in the annals of the United Nations. " --Corriebertus (talk) 19:42, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I've constructed a new article, also useful for the above-mentioned comment from Leo Kuper. The new article is: Sourness in non-Israeli citizens after criticism on Israeli politics.--Corriebertus (talk) 21:03, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

"Bernard Lewis, who is Jewish"...
For the time being, one man with a certain, though perhaps also disputed, reputation as scholar, wants to inform the public that media attention was predominantly ‘demonizing Israelis’. We don’t have to decide whether Lewis is right, we only have to decide whether his opinion is authoritative enough to be denoted in Wikipedia. I personally think, Lewis has enough fame to put down that opinion of his in this article, shortly. I consider it not relevant, and rather suggestive, to denote there also that Lewis might be Jewish. So I removed those three words. It would suggest that ‘a Jew’ can’t have an unbiased, reliable opinion on matters concerning the state of Israel. That would be an infamizing treatment by Wiki of a scholar of repute. If that suggestion is not the reason to denote that Lewis would be ‘Jewish’, than what is the relevance to denote that?--Corberto (talk) 19:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

"Perpetrators"
Why should the infobox not include the information that the massacre was carried out while the camp was surrounded by Israeli troops who allowed the Phalangists to enter the camp and slaughter its residents? Why should the fact that an Israeli commission found Israel to be "indirectly responsible" and Ariel Sharon to be "personally responsible" for the massacre not be included in the infobox?  nableezy  - 16:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I added a source for that, I don t know why it was reverted. I ll add it again. may be the deleter will explain why in the discussion page. --Helmoony (talk) 16:56, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

do you know the definition of belligerent? what you described in the above comment does not match. 174.112.83.21 (talk) 17:06, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi, How are you ? Ok let s talk. Please do not revert because the last reviewed version (I mean by a reviewer) included Israel as a belligerent. I added a source. Can you please give us a source that says that Israel is not a belligerent ? I added a source for the participation of Israel (MacBride, Seán; A. K. Asmal, B. Bercusson, R. A. Falk, G. de la Pradelle, S. Wild (1983). Israel in Lebanon: The Report of International Commission to enquire into reported violations of International Law by Israel during its invasion of the Lebanon. London: Ithaca Press. pp. 191–2. ISBN 0-903729-96-2.). --Helmoony (talk) 17:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * stop making up your own rules. so typical... read WP:BRD. you made a bold edit, it was reverted, now it's up for discussion. you have no consensus for this radical change. i do not have to find a source that proves israel is NOT a belligerent. the onus is on you to find one that says otherwise. this is absolute nonsense. 174.112.83.21 (talk) 17:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC).
 * Thanks for the information, here is my source (MacBride, Seán; A. K. Asmal, B. Bercusson, R. A. Falk, G. de la Pradelle, S. Wild (1983). Israel in Lebanon: The Report of International Commission to enquire into reported violations of International Law by Israel during its invasion of the Lebanon. London: Ithaca Press. pp. 191–2. ISBN 0-903729-96-2.). --Helmoony (talk) 17:28, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * your source does not say israel is a belligerent 174.112.83.21 (talk) 17:31, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * can you read this  and this from an Israeli commisiion  in the book . thks ;) --Helmoony (talk) 17:38, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * i have read the report before, and i have read it now again. like i said, it does not say israel is a belligerent. i suggest you look up the definition of belligerent to clear up your confusion. 174.112.83.21 (talk) 17:48, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You read the report? OK! nice, so, let s talk in order to enhance the article. The report says that . Now let s search for the definition of Belligerent. I give the choice to find a source, by this way we ll use the same definition. Take your time. --Helmoony (talk) 18:38, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * what is your definition of belligerent? if you have one that suggests "indirectly responsible" is enough then i am interested to see it. 174.112.83.21 (talk) 19:10, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * First of all, excuse my English, but try to read anyway :). I can see several pros and cons here. The question is not if Israel is a "belligerent", but "perpetrator" (see the infobox doc) in this case. Pro: "indirect responsibility" feels a bit like "perpetration". Con "indirect" may be too weak for inclusion in the infobox. More formal con: the infobox is of civilian attack, it's not supposed to refer armed forces. I'd like to see more people express their opinions here before we decide. --Super.zhid (talk) 19:31, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * <    country that is engaged in war; member of the military of a warring nation    > in babylon  and Israel is engaged in the massacre (MacBride, Seán; A. K. Asmal, B. Bercusson, R. A. Falk, G. de la Pradelle, S. Wild (1983). Israel in Lebanon: The Report of International Commission to enquire into reported violations of International Law by Israel during its invasion of the Lebanon. London: Ithaca Press. pp. 191–2. ISBN 0-903729-96-2.)  BECAUSE it s indirectly responsible . --Helmoony (talk) 19:37, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * yes, this shows that israel was a belligerent in the lebanon war. not in the event discussed in this article. 174.112.83.21 (talk) 21:23, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The version right now of this article has:
 * "[On] September 15 [...] IDF tanks began shelling the camps. ."
 * If that's true (ie. if that ref is valid -- there's no online link to it) then IDF was, even if just for that reason alone, a belligerent.  Wikiscient  (talk) 03:48, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * no, because this was before the event which according to the article started on september 16. the quote you linked is giving background info. israel was a belligerent in the lebanon war, not in this event. 174.112.83.21 (talk) 04:42, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * No matter how you want to look at it, IDF was a belligerent in this action if they shelled the camps prior to the armed incursion into them. They were militarily in control of access into and out of the camps at the time of the armed incursion into the camps that immediately followed IDF shelling of the camps.  IDF was a belligerent.
 * Look, it's just a word. It seems the right word.  What is most important to you here?  What really matters?  I think the other editors concerned with this issue just want to (correctly) say that Israel was "involved" in this action.  They seem to have valid citations for their edits.  They are not saying, for example, that IDF soldiers themselves carried out the attacks on civilians in this case (at least, assuming that's not what they were aiming at when they shelled).  If IDF really just had nothing militarily to do with this at all, I would support your proposal to avoid using the word "belligerent" to describe IDF in this case.  But they did, and so I don't.
 * Please try to give this point some reasoned consideration, and then continue with your constructive contributions to the article. Thanks!  Wikiscient  (talk) 05:31, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I support Wikiscient in this argument. ValenShephard (talk) 05:40, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * here is an other source that says  . I think that surrounding a camp, and letting Militiamen enter it and massacre civilians let us say that Israel is a belligerent. And here is an other source source that says that <The MacBride Commission of Enquiry established that: “After the quelling of such Muslim resistance as there was on 15 September, Israel became an occupying power in West Beirut. Israel must be designated the occupying power from 15 September until its eventual withdrawal from that section of the city” (Sabra and Chatila are situated in West Beirut).82 According to the Kahan Report: “If the territory of West Beirut may be viewed at the time of the events as occupied territory … then it is the duty of the occupier, according to the rules of usual and customary international law, to do all it can to ensure the public’s well-being and security”.83 There is consequently a prima facie case to be made that the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps were under the authority of the Israeli army when the massacres occurred from the 16-18 September 1982.> (then click on One-click download; Page 52). I don t wanna say that Israel has killed civilians, at least in this case, but just that Israel is a belligerent. --Helmoony (talk) 05:48, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

There is a hole paragraph that describe the assumed role of Israel in the massacre. I think that no misunderstanding will happen when we add Israel in the infobox as a belligerent (and not perpetrators as you may observe in the infobox). Its implication is well-explained here. We just need to add a source or may be two for Israel in the infobox. --Helmoony (talk) 06:01, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think 174.112.83.21's point is clear: Israel can't be listed as belligerent as it's forces were not involved in direct fighting/killing. From other side, Israeli involvement is a central fact of this story and shall be mentioned in the lead an in the infobox. I wish the infobox had other fields, but it's not. Shall we alter the infobox or search for another? --Super.zhid (talk) 07:37, 28 August 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, I don't really see a better infobox at Category:History and events infobox templates.
 * So, the question is: can IDF be listed on the "perps:" line in Template:Infobox civilian attack?
 * Valid entries for that line are described as "Those responsible for the attack". The example given is for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing for which the "perps:" line reads: "Islamist terrorists, notably Ramzi Yousef".  Ramzi Yousef is believed to have physically helped assemble the bomb, and to have then delivered it by truck to the target (before fleeing to Pakistan).  Clearly a perp.
 * Now, did IDF really fly Kataeb Party militia into the camps on IDF aircraft before Kataeb Party militia committed the massacre? So it seems.  And shelled the camps beforehand to boot.  Did IDF do so with the deliberate intention of causing indiscriminate civilian casualties?  One would seem to need that intentionality to be a "perp" (eg. Ramzi Yousef had it).  Certainly IDF does not take responsibility for having deliberately planned to have a massacre occur.  Nevertheless, it is IDF's duty as a highly trained and professional military force to avoid civilian casualties when at all possible.  They were clearly "negligent" in that duty, at the very least, here.  Recklessly so.  Actual people actually died as a result.  IDF was instrumental in making that happen, whether they "meant" it to or not.  That makes IDF a "perp" for the purposes of this infobox as applied to this article, imo.
 * Please by all means continue canvassing other opinions (see eg. WP:RFC) as you work out what is best for this article according to wikipedia's purpose and guiding principles. Good luck all around!   Wikiscient  (talk) 08:46, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

85.65.99.40 edits
Hi, There are edits that are made by 85.65.99.40 that in the the edit summary says (these are edits that improve the bad English in this article) but in fact are deletes of major sourced informations that help us to understand the massacre.The IP is ready for a war edits. we do really need the point of view of admin. I used BRD to make the last revert, and I invite any one to join the discussion. Here is the famous grammar correction. --Helmoony (talk) 18:15, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Some of the IPs changes are not bad. However, their refusal to discuss them is unacceptable. --ElComandanteChe (talk) 22:08, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi, I think it is wrong to blanket revert these contributions, most of which seems positive. I'm selectively re-adding some of the non controversial and well sourced material. Marokwitz (talk) 09:33, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I added back some of the better contributions. I also tagged a number problematic sentences which should be discussed. Please let me know if you have any comments. Marokwitz (talk) 09:46, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
 * As a general comment, there seems to be a lot of unsourced material that is either lacking a ref and/or a non-POV voice. Often both.  And some of it could easily attract a dubious tag.  I would suggest that especially when an article might contain contentious material, sourcing is helpful and unsourced contentious statements are unhelpful.--Epeefleche (talk) 13:07, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

responsible or involved
Probably we have to use the term used in the report which is Israel is responsible. --Helmoony (talk) 01:28, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Media and Public Reactions
There are a number of problems with this section. First of all, the title of the section is extremely misleading, as the section discusses neither media nor public reactions, just the reaction of Bernard Lewis. The second problem is that there is not a single citation in the section. I have added citation needed tags, and would appreciate if someone could find where these statements came from. If nothing more can be found, I think it would be more accurate to remove the entire section altogether, as it is presenting only one viewpoint; a truer section name should be "Bernard Lewis' reaction" and that is not acceptable.

dynam001 10:00, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Referenced text commented out; could be (partially) reincluded elsewhere
I've commented out the following paragraph from the "Events" section:
 * The massacre is regarded as a reprisal for the Damour massacre by Palestinians a few years earlier, which personally impacted Elie Hobeika . The view of the Sabra and Shatila killing as a revenge for the Damour massacre was asserted by the prominent writer Samir Khalaf , by New York Times writer Thomas Friedman , and by author B. Gabriel who wrote that "Palestinian militiamen started the killings in 1976, long before the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres. Beit Mellat, Deir Achache, Damour." In the Damour massacre, Yasser Arafat's PLO killed nearly 600 Christians. The Damour massacre, however, had been a response to the Karantina massacre, which had taken place earlier in 1976. In the Karantina massacre, Phalangists killed an estimated 1500 Muslims.

If this, or parts of it, belongs in the article, they clearly are not part of the "Events." I would submit that the "Background" section adequately includes the events of 1975-76 in context. Jd2718 (talk) 19:57, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Source does not implicate Syria in Hobeika's assassination
I will be removing a line, cited to the Jerusalem Center for Political Affairs, that suggests Syria may have been behind Hobeika's assassination. The cite in our article is a part of a sentence, and makes a stronger claim than the reference.


 * Original: Hobeika may have been interested in testifying in Belgium in order to clear his name with Lebanon's Christian community, which came to view him as a Syrian agent. Yet there were those, like Syria, that might have been concerned where Hobeika's testimony could lead. It is noteworthy that Hobeika was careful not to accuse Sharon. A Belgian senator, Vincent Van Quickenborne, who visited Hobeika just before his death, told Qatar's satellite television network al-Jazira on January 26, 2002, that Hobeika had specifically stated that he did not plan to identify Sharon as being responsible for Sabra and Shatilla (IMRA, January 27, 2002).


 * Our article: The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on the other hand suggests that rather Syria "might have been concerned where Hobeika’s testimony could lead".

The original drops the hint, but makes no claim. Even the "like Syria" draws back from the assertion that our article now makes. The original does not say "Syria might have been concerned..." The hint or insinuation (not a claim), is too weak to be worth including. Jd2718 (talk) 00:19, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Schabas / UN
Is there a reason to quote the UNGA abstentions in detail, while only referencing the (more numerous) "for" votes very briefly? Also, would it not be appropriate to note that Schabas advocates a restrive definition of genocide, by which e.g. Cambodia, Ukraine, former Yugoslavia do not qualify? (Maybe offtopic: I see where Schabas is coming from... but the analogy to Srebrenica seems extremely close, and the ICC has ruled that as a genocide, right...?) TiC (talk) 00:29, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

POV bias
It seems pretty biased.

It reports pretty extreme claims about Israel's involvement simply because someone published a claim.

For example, It claims that Sharon was directly involved. Sharon actually took the claim to court when he sued Time magazine and the info was found to be false in a court of law. (Time was only found not guilty of libel because while they were found to have published false allegations about Sharon, they were not found guilty of "malicious intent" in printing the falsehoods." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.248.28.151 (talk) 15:00, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Israel Involvement
Why do the first few lines of the lede mention the Phalangist groups as the only player when Israel is clearly one of the major players in the event?72.53.153.82 (talk) 21:09, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

g vs g
there seems to be some edit warring going on. gilabrand has made several edits, one at a time, with explanation, and guinsberg has blanked them and added to the brouhaha. perhaps each edit can be discussed here? most seem quite reasonable, but i think we should talk about it. Soosim (talk) 14:11, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Unsourced content
After a lengthy revision of this article, that included removal of unsourced material, copyediting, removal of overlinking, rephrasing for NPOV, removal of off-topic material and addition of new information - all stated in the edit summaries - two editors reversed all the edits. Since all this carefully thought-out work was erased, I have simply removed unsourced content, in keeping with "Wikipedia's verifiability guidelines require all information to be citable to sources." Of course, this has produced a poorly written mess, but I warmly invite the two editors who think they know better to step in and clean it up. Looking forward to their constructive contributions--Geewhiz (talk) 10:17, 15 November 2012 (UTC)


 * why edit when it is easier to revert? Soosim (talk) 11:23, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
 * WP:BRD is the recognized method of gaining consensus for article content. Gilibrand was reverted by Guinsberg, the next step is to discuss the changes, not simply to redo the changes without prior discussion. Dlv999 (talk) 11:27, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Blind removal of sourced content
Taking advantage that an editor has been banned from Wikipedia, users Marokwitz and Morpork are trying to remove disliked content even though, as anyone can see, much of it is properly sourced: 177.19.53.209 (talk) 19:21, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Blockable
Let's block IP -DePiep (talk) 00:37, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I've got another proposition: Let's not remove well-sourced content before even presenting reasons! 8tsunami7 (talk) 00:50, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * He socked, now blocked. -DePiep (talk) 10:25, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 21 February 2013
Should "Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia" be changed to Lebanese Catholic Phalangist militia"?

65.185.166.178 (talk) 18:30, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I am closing this edit request as since this is a question and not a specific request to edit the article. If anyone can answer the OP's question feel free to do so. &mdash; KuyaBriBri Talk 18:43, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

pruned paragraph
i'm not a regular: most of the following paragraph (and then some, -12,000 odd bytes) was removed by User:Gilabrand at 09:56, 15 November 2012‎ (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre&diff=523131652&oldid=523125030) from the 'Number of victims/UN condemnation' section (code pasted in from earlier version - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre&oldid=381030616 ) -

The voting record on section D of Resolution 37/123, which "resolves that the massacre was an act of genocide", was: yes: 123; no: 0; abstentions: 22; non-voting: 12. The abstentions were: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany (Federal Republic), Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, United Kingdom, U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Ivory Coast, Papua New Guinea, Barbados and Dominican Republic.

the rest of the section without the tally kind of implies, on my reading, that delegates were more concerned with the wording than the actual massacre, though the voting record paints a much clearer picture. the source is real - http://unbisnet.un.org:8080/ipac20/ipac.jsp?profile=voting&index=.VM&term=ares37123d#focus, and in fact "resolves that the massacre [at sabra and shatila] was an act of genocide - 108th plenary meeting, 16 december 1982" - http://daccess-ods.un.org/access.nsf/Get?Open&DS=A/RES/37/123&Lang=E (accessed via unbisnet), so i might just replace that paragraph soon - or perhaps just the tally; the abstainers may be of interest to some or may be TMI. 203.213.90.41 (talk) 18:24, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

ok, tally restored. might read better if it were blended into the preceding sentence. this article still needs a lot of attention. 203.213.90.41 (talk) 04:47, 16 March 2013 (UTC) edited for brevity 203.213.90.41 (talk) 08:53, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Mr. Sharon's involvement
I'm not trying to fudge the facts one way or another after his death, but in the NYT obituary that was just published, it says that, "The government established an official investigation of the massacre, led by Israel’s chief justice, Yitzhak Kahan. The investigating committee absolved Mr. Sharon of direct responsibility, but said he should have anticipated that sending enraged militiamen of the Phalange into Palestinian neighborhoods right after the assassination of the group’s leader amounted to an invitation to carnage. The committee recommended his resignation." This seems in direct contradiction with this Wikipedia page, which says, "Ariel Sharon, then Defense Minister, bore personal responsibility "for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge", forcing him to resign." Also, this is not written ambiguously at all but completely factually. --Bobjohnson111980 (talk) 01:26, 12 January 2014 (UTC) NYT??? Give me a fucking break!

Rename "massacre" to incident
The current name as it is appears to be devoid of common NPOV, I recommend that all references be named to "Sabra and Shatila incident" to prevent provocative and emotional wording from resurfacing on the encyclopedia. This is also consistent with WP:GUIDELINE and particularly WP:NPOV 108.247.158.130 (talk) 17:12, 15 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Please review the WP:POVNAMING section of the NPOV policy together with the associated WP:TITLE policy and explain how renaming the article would be consistent with those policies. You need to provide evidence to support your assertion.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 17:39, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 January 2014
The article has a factual error regarding Sean MacBride. In this article Sean MacBride is listed as "a former UN secretary general". Sean MacBride was never Secretary General of the UN. He was previously a High Commissioner for Namibia and Chairman of UNESCO.

173.25.248.109 (talk) 20:38, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for spotting that. I've rewritten it (see ).  Sean.hoyland  - talk 03:18, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Recent lead edits
Regarding this edit;

@User:Stonewaters - I think the main issue with the edits you are trying to put into the lead is that they are too detailed, and not appropriate for the lead. The lead is meant to be a general summary. It is definately not meant to contain bullet point lists.

Additionally, can you provide a source for "individually identified and killed by an Israeli unit called Sayeret Matkal" that has a viewable url?

Thanks, NickCT (talk) 17:24, 1 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I have added a single sentence of information about an Israeli unit involved in a massacre, in an article about that massacre. Given that the article includes details of Hobeika's life, his gang's recruitment, the use of flares and the time of day, you cannot seriously argue that this is "too much detail".


 * If you don't like bullet points, you can remove them without deleting a single word of my sourced edit. Instead you chose to delete.


 * I have no internet source (and wikipedia policy doesnt require one). Please check Sources if you are not sure about my sources' validity: One is a university level reference work, the other is by a former News Director of Radio France Internationale.


 * Overall there is no justification in what you have said for your deletion of my sourced edit. Do you have any other explanations?


 * Stonewaters (talk) 19:42, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * re "I have no internet source" - Yeah. Well, I'm looking for sources and don't see any. That doesn't seem like a credible assertion. If it was true, I would imagine it would be easily verifiable.
 * re "you can remove them" - I can also revert your entire edit if I don't like it! :-)
 * How bout you remove em. Best, NickCT (talk) 20:43, 1 August 2013 (UTC)


 * You need to look at the sources I cite, that is why citations are left, so you can check them. You cannot revert entire edits because you don't like them. Reliable sources are the basis of wikipedia, not what you like. Stonewaters (talk) 21:01, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Mass deletion
‎Peleio Aquiles, you are the one removing well-sourced material, while also rephrasing a sourced sentence in a POV manner. You should at least self-revert your mass deletions rather than pretending you are restoring sourced material. If not, I will simply revert you tomorrow.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:23, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not pretending anything and what I did is not "mass deletion" - it's replacement of POV material with reliable sources. Before my latest edit, the Shlomo Argov edit did not even make sense - it couldn't, since the latter half of the paragraph that completed the first one was removed and replaced by something unrelated. What's more, all the material inserted by me today - about Israel's casus belli and the UN's commission's finding that Israel was responsible for the massacre - was there before my latest edits and only got removed, possibly by POV-motivated authors, this month or in Septmeber - not coincidentally, the month of the massacre's anniversary, when the entry's views would spike. In any case, you can see both edits were already there months ago. Both edits are well sourced and, after a cursory look at the editing history, it can be seen whoever removed them did not give an explanation for their actions. The casus belli edit has as a source [ http://www.amazon.com/Beware-Small-States-Lebanon-Battleground/dp/B00CVE0MUG David Hirst's book] about Lebanese history. The book was widely reviewed on mainstream media, and praised. It sits at the top of Wikipedia's reliable source chain. And even though this isn't required, the book is excerpted to show it supports the edit's content. In case anyone's in doubt, several other sources give support to Hirst's narrative. Remove it all you like - I, too, can revert you tomorrow again.Peleio Aquiles (talk) 23:39, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * That's not how consensus is formed. You are clearly acting in bad faith. The PLO and Israel's Lebanon War are excellent sources. If you continue to delete them with no explanation as to why, you must take them to RSN. I will also add PLO in Lebanon, which says plainly "From July 1981 to June 1982, under cover of the ceasefire, the PLO pursued its acts of terror against Israel, resulting in 26 deaths and and 264 injured." I am not in a similar bind, because I do not want to delete Hirst's book.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:50, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * So The PLO, Israel's Lebanon War, and PLO in Lebanon are unreliable, but a polemical attack on Christopher Hitchens and a newspaper editorial about Nidal are needed to source an uncontroversial fact no-one has disputed? Again, your behavior is extremely suspect.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:59, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * None of those two books are quoted - how am I supposed to know if, and to what extent, they dispute Hirst's book? The quote you do adduce, though horribly POV to be honest, in no way implies that was a casus belli for the invasion of Lebanon. As for the two other sources I added today, the book is peer reviewed and therefore is fit for Wikipedia. The editorial is syndicated in a mainstream source, The Independent, and has an extremely notable author when the subject is Israel, Palestine and Lebanon: Robert Fisk. It more than surpasses Wikipedia's notability standards. And I just added a third book about Israel's military history.Peleio Aquiles (talk) 00:07, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You may think that kind of drivel will distract others from the plain truth, but it will not. You have provided no explanation for your mass deletion. I do not care about the credentials of the book on Hitchens or any other source. Either take my sources to RSN when I restore them, or stop trying to mislead readers about the pristine peace and tranquility along the Israel-Lebanon border. It is not, by the way, my job to prove my sources say what they say--nor is "POV" a valid reason for deletion, as if Fisk is 100% neutral.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:25, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The closest the neutral we're going to get is Benny Morris. Let me quote him:
 * "The most immediate problem was the PLO's military infrastructure, which posed a standing threat to the security of northern Israeli settlements. The removal of this threat was to be the battle cry to rouse the Israeli cabinet and public, despite the fact that the PLO took great pains not to violate the agreement of July 1981. Indeed, subsequent Israeli propaganda notwithstanding, the border between July 1981 and June 1982 enjoyed a state of calm unprecedented since 1968. But Sharon and Begin had a broader objective: the destruction of the PLO and its ejection from Lebanon. Once the organization was crushed, they reasoned, Israel would have a far freer hand to determine the fate of the West Bank and Gaza Strip." He directly refutes your claim. Your source is most likely "Israeli propaganda", as it so happens. JDiala (talk) 14:35, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, User:JDiala. Tomorrow I'll re-insert the paragraph in its original sense and the material you have presented us will be quoted to represent a prominent Israeli academic POV. I can't do that now as another POV editor has reverted the properly sourced material yet again.Peleio Aquiles (talk) 10:05, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I advise bad editor, canvasser and sockpuppet user TheTimesAreAChanging not to remove properly sourced material inserted by a large number of editors just because the truth hurts your political sensibilities. Your will doesn't override that of everyone who has ever edited this entry. All the material you have desperately been trying to remove has been there before anything between you and me came up, and was inserted via legitimate and honest editing work. Respect the work of other editors and stop trolling the entry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peleio Aquiles (talk • contribs) 15:49, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Is the long background section necessary at all? There's the 1982 Lebanon War article after all. And it's actually POV if so many edits are about Israeli government's responsibility, when in the end it was a massacre done by Christian Lebanese on Muslims. Yuvn86 (talk) 22:14, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If you make one more false, unfounded, defamatory accusation that I have used sockpuppets to edit this page I will have no choice but to seek admin intervention. You have no idea what you are talking about--just as you have no idea what you are talking about when you attribute statements such as "years after the war" to books you never read, or seek to debunk PLO terrorism overseas by reference to the state of "relative" calm along the Lebanese border. When I say Wlglunight93 is likely responsible, I say that with confidence because he attempted to canvass me through email, and I refused. When you employed a sockpuppet, I filed an investigation, and you admitted wrongdoing. You can take the same action, but you cannot continue to attack me personally.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:18, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Edits to the lead
I have reverted these edits to the lead per WP:BRD:
 * edit1: WP:REDFLAG is applied inappropriately. The two sources cited are indeed WP:RS. If you believe that there is something wrong with them, take them to WP:RSN or get some other consensus.
 * edit2: The removal of IDF role in the events is improper. As mentioned in the lead, the MacBride commission held Israel responsible, and the Kahan commission held Israel "indirectly responsible". The area was under Israeli control, the Phalanges were military allies of Israel in this war, and Israel used flares for illumination, among many other points. Kingsindian &#9821;&#9818; 09:16, 30 June 2015 (UTC)