User:Elian/NPOV

Hello,

When I discovered Wikipedia I was really fascinated and decided to join the project. One of my first selfimposed limitations before I even knew about the NPOV-policy, however, was not to write about the Israeli-palestinian conflict because I consider myself as biased (having friends who are palestinian refugees).

So far no problem, I worked happily on the German wikipedia (wrote articles about the hebrew language and alphabet, and a lot of philosophy stuff) until someone started to translate the articles about this conflict from the english wikipedia. Then I had a look at these articles and I must say (as many others did, too - see the talk pages):

They don't feel NPOV at all. It's quite difficult to find out why these articles don't feel NPOV. On the surface everything seems to comply with the wikipedia standards. Particular views are labelled as such, there is no obvious propaganda of neither side and though, a very bad feeling remains for me, when I read these articles. This mail is an attempt to sort this out. I know it is almost impossible to write objective about this conflict even if you try hard. It's not the intention of this mail to propose an euphemization of terrorist attacks or suicide bombings, but a plead to treat the victims on both sides of this conflict in a fair way in wikipedia.

First, I see a problem with a lot of little formulations. There were so many formulations which hurt: more than 100 killed civilians, women and children constituted the deir yassin "incident" - see edit history of "Irgun", where the Irgun was "supposed to have killed them". I am sure the deads would not consider their murder as "supposedly".

Or "Palestinians claim that the bulk of Palestinian refugees had been inhabitants of Palestine for many generations": doesn't this obvious, totally trivial fact, recognized by the UNO, earn a formulation as a fact, not a claim?

Other things, on the contrary, seem to be facts: "The infiltration, which was usually carried out at night by desperate people, terrorized the Jewish civilians, some of whom lived in former Arab areas. Moreover, while most of the infiltrators didn't come with the intention to kill, many of them did steal property." (Palestinian_infiltration) There is no question that this "stolen property" may have been one year earlier the rightful property of the "infiltrator" before disseized by Israeli law, no, "they steal property".

It's a real question which definition of law applies in the wikipedia: is it the positive law, set by the victorious party in a conflict? Or do we adhere to some internationally defined standards of human rights and international law?

My last example is the part about the origin of suicide bombings in "Terrorism against Israel": First comes a view attributed to some Israelis and Americans that propaganda in palestinian schoolbooks incites terrorism. It is followed by a view attributed to Palestinians "that the homicide bombings are forgiveable and understandable effects of the unsatisfactory situation in which Palestinians live, and that it is the only way to achieve the results they desire." followed by "In contrast, Israelis and Americans point out that millions of people live in similar and worse conditions all over the world, yet these people never resort to waves of homicide bombings."

Okay, the thing with the schoolbooks should be clear for the interested reader, but what the hell is the "unsatisfactory situation"?

The goal of an encyclopedia should not be to justify terrorism, but it is definitely one of its goals to describe accurately what the source of this terrorism is. There are enough studies around the world who show that children growing up in an atmosphere of violence (for example african child soldiers) tend later to attempt to resolve conflicts in a violent way. Doesn't the experience of children seeing their parents beaten, their family home blown up and living under curfews or in permament danger of being shot accidentally when leaving the house merit a mention as possible influence of palestinian terrorism beside the schoolbook debate?

I don't want to go deeper into details, instead I want to point out another problem of non neutral point of view formulation. Regarding only how much space is dedicated to which aspect of an article, the articles about the israeli-palestinian conflict show a strong tendency towards the following behaviour:

Palestinian_exodus: 521 chars of facts 5648 chars "Responsibility of the Arab side for the exodus" 435 "Israeli violence, and threats of such"

Palestinian_refugee: 295 chars of facts 229 chars of palestinian claims 1990 chars "Objections which have been raised by Israel" starting with a denial that palestinians exist at all.

Where is the "arguing for the enemy" that the NPOV-policy demands?

That's the last point of my long posting: people who don't consider themself neutral and objective enough because they are either party in the conflict or strongly biased towards one side should ask themselves seriously if they are able to give a fair account of these things and if they deem themselves not able, refrain from editing. I have serious doubts that for example someone who calls Palestinians "those dratted Arabs" (see Palestinian_territories discussion page) can be considered neutral enough.

Instead, I'd like to call on all people who are not part of the conflict, especially on the historians (because they should be used to present events in a neutral way) to wage an effort to neutralize these articles. This is not always done by inserting "claims" and "supposed", but internationally recognized facts should be presented as such (even if the Israeli government or the Hamas leaders refuse to acknowledge them).

Israel's existence is a fact and denials of this should be treated in wikipedia equally to holocaust denial.

But human rights violation are human rights violations, even if the state Israel says, destroying of palestinian houses is lawful, because a terrorist lived in it. (see B'tselem discussion page) For the terrorist's little three-year-old sister, who is then forced to live on the street, it _is_ a human rights violation and according to the international declaration of human rights it is, too.

Anything else is a verbal attack and a mockery of the victims of this conflict on both sides which doesn't become the neutral wikipedia well.

If someone can't understand why this is troubling me so, I can explain this with an analogy if desired. (I don't do now because this mail is already long enough)