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List of residences of Joseph Haydn

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delete Mein Kampf
This article exists primarily for one sentence. As it appeared in the original version of the article, "[Mein Kampf] became a bestseller in the Palestinian territories." That sentence, introduced by a user since blocked indefinitely from editing the Wikipedia, has been the subject of an ongoing edit war since the article was created.

The sentence is untrue.

Without that sentence, and the other numerous insinuations of Nazi sympathies among Arab speakers, there is no substance to this article. The very few notable facts should be included in the articles on Mein Kampf, Arab Nationalism or Nazi relations with the Arab world.

Regarding the accuracy of the claim that Mein Kampf has been a bestseller in the Palestinian territories, that claim arises from an AFP report in 2001, that in August 1999 one bookseller in Ramallah reported that he had sold less than 40 copies of the book, making it number 6 in the bestselling list in his store for that month. That report was picked up and inflated by newspapers and Israeli government spokesmen, until it became canon. The fact is, however, that there is no orderly tracking of bestsellers in the West Bank or in the Arab world at large, such as there is in European countries (though there is a move afoot to create one, see http://arablit.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/what-should-an-arabic-bestseller-list-look-like/). There are some reasonably good, if qualitative, estimates of bestselling books in Arab countries. See, for example, this list of bestselling titles at the Cairo book fair last year. 20 books are listed. Mein Kampf is not among them. Brightbooks, a British distributor of Arabic books, publishes this list of about 60 Arabic bestsellers. Mein Kampf is not there. Shokeir, a bookseller in Egypt, lists 20 bestselling titles. Again, Mein Kampf is not there.

Since there is no organized tracking of book sales in the Arab world, any statement that Mein Kampf is a bestseller is perforce conjecture. It is, moreover, conjecture completely unsupported by evidence.

The claim that Mein Kampf is a bestseller in the Arab countries is a lie, cooked up by propagandists, and repeated again and again until it has become a truth.

In conclusion, I should say that there will be no consensus for deletion of this article in the usual sense. There will be numerous editors who will argue vigorously that the Arabic translation of Mein Kampf deserves an article (and perhaps also the Turkish, Urdu, Spanish and English translations, all of which have at one time been reported to be bestsellers). But rightminded editors who do not want to see Wikipedia turned into the servant of propagandists will be universally in favor of deletion. As a precedent, I refer administrators to the deletion discussion on Israeli Nerve Gas Attacks, another attempt at slander (in this case by the other side), which was deleted despite vigorous opposition.

Ravpapa (talk) 05:08, 8 November 2011 (UTC)