Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Israel–Kenya relations


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. Consensus is clear in that the topic meets notability requirements. Many of the arguments for deletion are weak, and seem to have been cast without prior research. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 01:25, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Israel–Kenya relations

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

No evidence of notability, no matter of these bilateral relations are minor not as Operation Entebbe in 1976 from neighboring Uganda. ApprenticeFan talk  contribs 02:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.  —Cdogsimmons (talk) 02:29, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete most of the coverage is multilateral. . there was a bombing of an Israeli owned hotel in 2002 but the event in itself says little for actual bilateral relations. besides this "cooperation agreement" in 1989 not much evidence of ongoing relations. LibStar (talk) 02:32, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep evidence exists that this is more than merely a multilateral sort of relationship. Consider this source: .  This copy is currently at the Israel Foreign Ministry website, but it was originally published in an independent publication and is quite an indepth personal analysis of Israeli involvement in Kenya in the form of developmental aid.  this page, which is actual Israeli government page, so may lack independence, but it clearly shows a close relationship between Israel and Nairobi beyond the fact that their officials may bump into each other at the U.N.  These are countries with clear ties.  The article is a stub, but I have found enough here and at other hits at a relevent google search that this is unlike many of the random "X-Y relations" articles in that this one really does have enough source material to pass WP:N inclusion criteria easily.  If you take the same search to google news you find more stuff, including this article picked up by the Associated press, and this article from the Chicago Sun-Times.  These are high-level meetings, the last one was an organized summit between the heads of state of the two nations.  I appreciate that the article was a stub, and did not link these sources, but per WP:DELETE, one could at least do due dilligence and do a google search before ariving at the conclusion that the article should be deleted.  I have often voted for deletion on many of these articles where the relations appear to not be notable.  This one, however, clearly is based on about 2 minutes of google searching. --Jayron32. talk . contribs  03:02, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:GOOGLEHITS is not a measure of notability. the 2 articles you reference are just like any 2 ministers of different countries meeting...also there is not evidence of ongoing relations, if the best you can find is 20 years ago it doesn't say much for actual relations. In fact the Chicago Sun article you cite says Kenya denied that a meeting had taken place, so we can't even verify the meeting even took place! LibStar (talk) 03:21, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Those were random examples from the Google News search. Did you read WP:GOOGLEHITS?  The number of googlehits is, of course, irrelevent.  However, using google to find sources is a Good Idea.  Fine, if those two didn't strike your fancy, how about this and this both about Kenya's reaction to Israel's raid on neighboring Uganda (Operation Entebbe).  Plus, you conveniently ignore the first several sources I provided.  And again, if those two are not good enough, here's another one from June 2008 and an unrelated one from December 2007 and one from 1988 and here's a recent one from earlier this year.  I'm not even putting all of them here, there's more than enough in the relevent Google News search if you actually open and read the articles rather than just counting the hits. Look, I appreciate you wanting to get the "bad" international relations articles out of Wikipedia; its a noble cause, but this just isn't one of them!  --Jayron32. talk . contribs  03:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Jayron's evidence is strong enough--in fact, it is extremerly strong, and provides yet another reason why WP:BEFORE should be required. If he could do it, so could the nominator. DGG (talk) 03:11, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep I think AfD on this article is a little premature, although it is currently a stub it has the potential to grow beyond that based on the information that is currently available and hopefully will eventually turn into a meaningful encyclopedic article. Rcurtis5 (talk) 05:24, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete Seems like Israel wants say that they have had talks, but Kenya won't even admit they did. I suspect that establishing a good relationship with Israel would be tough for Kenya, given that anywhere from 10-20% of their population is Muslim. Their reaction to the raid is totally irrelevant to my mind. If you found actual agreements that were actually signed, I'd be willing to revisit my !vote. Niteshift36 (talk) 06:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, try these, see if they meet your needs. This article describes a specific signed pact whereby Israel provided agricultural and military support to Kenya in 1989. Here is a different article about the same agreement Couple this with this more recent article which describes a personal account of the effects of development aid by Israel spent in Kenya or this Israeli government webpage which describes the relationship, and notes many specific instances of bilateral agreements, cooperation, and development aid.  The lead picture in that article is a state visit of the Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi, in which he met personally with then Israeli prime minister Yitzchak Rabin.  Heads of state and government holding state visits for each other seems to me to be evidence of direct, notable relationship.  There's another picture in the article of Golda Meir visiting Nairobi.  --Jayron32. talk . contribs  12:31, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Once Jayron32's links are inculcated into the article, I'm sure it'll be notable. --Roaring Siren (talk) 09:42, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Kenya-related deletion discussions.  -- TexasAndroid (talk) 12:11, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Israel-related deletion discussions.  -- TexasAndroid (talk) 12:11, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. I don't care much about these "bilateral relations" articles and I don't know if we need them at all, but the notability of this subject is guaranteed anyway. It is noteworthy that at least twice Israelis have been target of a terrorist attack in Kenya: the 1980 Norfolk Hotel blast as well as the 2002 Mombasa attacks. Julius Sahara (talk) 16:45, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Verifiable and notable topic, just needs to be worked on. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:31, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. All the info you added was on Uganda-Israel relations. Did you get confused, or am I missing something? Yilloslime T C  21:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete The topics of articles included in Wikipedia must be notable and the subject of this one fails WP:NOTE. An article about a small part of something does not make the greater whole notable, notability is not inherited in that manner.  This is a basic principle of notability here at Wikipedia.  Some of the editors appear to be confusing notability of a topic with verifiabilty of facts in an article. Drawn Some (talk) 01:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Um, I don't understand this comment. Notability is about there existing significant, independent, and reliable source material.  Since I found a few dozen of these sources, could you perhaps clarify how these specific source do not make the subject notable?  --Jayron32. talk . contribs  02:48, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I am not following this one at all, can someone explain it to me? It says "a small part of something does not make the greater whole notable, notability is not inherited in that manner". Is the argument that someone has to write a book and title it "Israel–Kenya relations" for the topic to be notable. Why is it that the same people always vote delete, no matter how strong the evidence is? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:53, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep As per Rcurtis5 AdamD123 (talk) 02:52, 9 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Many, many links to independent 3rd party news sources discussing various aspects of the relations between these two countries were not hard to find at all. I found the following in about 2 minutes with google news: Obvious room for improvement. Claims that the subject matter is not notable have been addressed.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 03:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I would also like to criticize the Keep voters, running the search is easy. I know we are all busy, but the hard part is adding the info and references to the article itself. If we don't the article will just get nominated again in a month. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:56, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it really wouldn't, or at least shouldn't, since notability is not about article content. If it were, we'd have several million other notable stub articles which would be up here.  --Jayron32. talk . contribs  12:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually he has a good point. These articles are being nominated for deletion because they are not currently in a state that demonstrates notability. Even though the Afd should be a determination of what the article could become, too often it is only a reflection of what the article is at the moment. I would like to applaud RAN '58s excellent, excellent work improving these articles to a point where that notability is demonstrated. I agree that it is a shame that we spend so much time agonizing over whether to keep these articles when our time would be better spent improving them. But, again, you are right. We are all busy.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 15:07, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * See WP:BEFORE. It is the responsibility of the person nominating the article to perform the due dilligence to determine if deltion is a good idea.  Stubs have never been a pretence for deletion.  If people are so concerned about deletion discussions taking up too much time, don't nominate articles for deletion that should not be.  --Jayron32. talk . contribs  18:33, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure, keep talking about WP:BEFORE and completely ignore the responsibility an author should have to write an article to standards and source it adequately. We'd have half as many AfD's as we do if authors would exercise a little personal responsibility and do it right before posting the article to live space instead of doing a half-assed job and then hoping someone else will do the grunt work for them. Niteshift36 (talk) 06:13, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * What's wrong with that? If you do half the job you have to do the rest too? That doesn't sound like a collaborative wiki encyclopedia to me. --Apoc2400 (talk) 22:12, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Collaboration implies that there is some work from both parties. The entire article was originally "Israel-Kenya relations are foreign relations between Israel and Kenya. Both countries established diplomatic relations in December 1963. Israel has an embassy in Nairobi. Kenya has an embassy in Tel Aviv." That's it. One sentence defining the obvious. 2 sentences telling us what the capital of each country was. Not a single source. Nothing. That isn't "collaboration". That is lazy and irresponsible. Niteshift36 (talk) 11:50, 14 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep The article meets WP:RS standards. This one of the Country X-Country Y pairings where notability is demonstrated. Pastor Theo (talk) 00:58, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. I'm a firm believer in the spirit, logic, and application of general notability guidelines--the idea that we need secondary, independent sources to write an an encyclopedia article on something, and at least some of those sources should address the topic directly and in detail. Without such sources, article writing becomes either an exercise in synthesis, or you end up with a collection of somewhat related facts with no context or interpretation to hold them together. And this is exactly what we have here--a collection of facts about interactions between Israel and Kenya and an attempt to synthesize them into a treatise on these country's relations. This is a noble academic exercise, but is not what wikipedia is for. The only source cited in the article that addresses the topic of Israel-Kenya relations in any depth or detail is the Israeli gov't website, which is not independent of the subject. None of the other cited sources discuss topic directly, with the possible exception of Glimpses of the Jews of Kenya which unfortunately I do not have access to. The word "relations" only appears 3 times in the book though, so I doubt it. Yilloslime T C  18:21, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The word "relations" isn't the key, the concept is. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:32, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "The concept" as defined by...Richard Arthur Norton? Because I don't really see independent sources discussing this concept you speak of. - Biruitorul Talk 02:48, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "International relations" as defined by Websters, Wikipedia and both countries at their websites. Or the US State Department at their website on the relations between the US and country X. All the same topics, and even sports. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:39, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * My point, which I thought was obvious, was that if Glimpses of the Jews of Kenya covered the topic of bilateral relations between Kenya and Israel in any kind of depth or detail, then the word "relations" would probably show more than 3 times in the book's 170 pages. Yes, there are synonyms for the concept of "bilateral relations between Kenya and Israel" that don't involve that word, but it's none the less reasonable to assume the word "relations" would appear a more than a few times in a treatment of the topic. Regardless, the burden is not me to prove that this book actually discusses the concept, but rather on any editor who might argue that the book establishes that the topic at hand is notable. (And lest I be accused of trying to set up a straw man, let me note that I don't actually see any editors explicitly making this argument. I only mentioned this book and my search for "relations" in my !vote to demonstrate that I had reviewed and carefully considered all the sources cited in the article.) Yilloslime T C  23:23, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Their relationship is clearly notable, as the Israelis themselves even state . They've assisted them in solar power projects and agricultural.   D r e a m Focus  20:26, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "... as the Israelis themselves even state" - there's the rub. You may wish to re-read WP:GNG, and the part about sources having to be "independent of the subject". The Israeli government cannot be used to validate the notability of its own relations. - Biruitorul Talk 02:48, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep - Israel has assisted in building Kenya among other things. --Shuki (talk) 22:55, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete No one here has shown any particular knowledge of relations between Israel and Kenya (I don't have any either). So all we have is some editors saying the news stories and government announcements that mention Israel and Kenya show the relations are notable, while other editors say those same articles do not establish notability. That's precisely why we have WP:GNG which requires some independent analysis that concludes the topic has general significance. If this were an article about some recent musical fashion, I wouldn't care. However, the "relations" articles are core encyclopedic content and articles such as this (even if expanded with the information mentioned above) will only ever be a synthesis of factoids with no "so what" exposition. There are some significant issues in some of the articles mentioned above; those issues should be part of articles about the events. None of the sources mentioned claim that Kenya is important to Israel, or that Israel is important to Kenya. Johnuniq (talk) 09:04, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You provide a link to: "Synthesis of published material that advances a position" (my emphasis added). Can you tell me what position is being advanced that isn't in the original material? Are we creating an imaginary relationship where none exists, by taking random articles that have the word "Kenya" and "Israel" in them and advancing the position that some relationship exists? I would say that when Israel has a webpage on its relationship to Kenya, we can assume that this is a real relationship. And it certainly doesn't make sense to add duplicate material to both country pages. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:32, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As per WP:GNG an encyclopedic article should be on a notable topic. The synthesis comes from listing the disparate facts (embassy, visit, rescue, etc) and claiming that therefore the topic is notable. The "History" section has a valuable clue: the first item is for 1903, and the second is for 1963 (the whole article is just a listing of Google hits). Johnuniq (talk) 08:54, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * What rules says all the facts have to come from one source? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:14, 14 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep—the topic is inherently encyclopedic, therefore the arguments of synthesis are irrelevant. There are many POVFORKs on Wikipedia that are created by linking tons of unrelated sources to create an imaginary topic or concept that does not exist. This, however, does not fit into that category and Israel–Kenya relations is, again, an inherently encyclopedic one. —Ynhockey (Talk) 21:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep without taking any look at the article or discussion. I remember the relations are important because of (1) Kenya's assistance in the Entebbe raid; and (2) the missile fired from Kenya at a plane containing Israeli passengers in (I think) 2002 or '03. Chutznik (talk) 19:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.