Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/West Bank - Judea and Samaria/Evidence

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide. Do not use links in headings.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Links to the relevant talk pages
Judea (archive)

Samaria (archive)

Samaria

Judea and Samaria (archive)

Judea and Samaria

West Bank

Judea

Israeli settlement (archive 6)

Israeli settlement (archive 7)

Israeli settlement (archive 8)

Israeli settlement (archive 9)

Israeli settlement

Discussion of sources

Suggested merge of Category:Judea and Samaria

"West Bank" is the most commonly used term in the English-speaking world
Please see Naming conventions (use English), the relevant guideline for naming of articles.


 * The CIA refers to it as "West Bank".
 * - just as another example.
 * - A site that explicitly states that, "[Judea and Samaria] are currently called the "West Bank", a name created by Jordan after the War of Independence in 1948 when Arab armies overran Judea and Samaria. Despite the fact that virtually the entire world rejected Jordan's annexation, and even after Israel drove the occupiers back across the river in the 1967 Six Day War, the phrase "West Bank" has stuck, and is used to the near total exclusion of any other."
 * While Google hits aren't always an accurate indicator of proper usage in a particular language, this can be considered an exception. A search of "West Bank" brings 19 million results; A search of "Judea Samaria Yesha" brings 5.6 million - which, while significant, is proof that West Bank is the more widely used term.

Judea and Samaria are politicised non-standard terms
This is just a re-cap of the longer discussion, arguments and sources on Talk:Israeli settlement. The main arguments are: 46 sources for the Pro argument were originally compiled by User:Jayjg and are listed here. User:Jayjg argues that Judea and Samaria are modern toponyms since they are used in a multitude of English-language international sources.
 * Pro Judea and Samaria: The terms are used by a number of academic and non-academic sources within and outside of Israel (for sources from both sides see Talk:Samaria/Discussion of sources).
 * Contra Judea and Samaria: Judea and Samaria are not well-defined geographic entities and are not commonly used. Of the sources supplied by the Pro side, all are either Israeli or Partisan, many use the terms northern/southern West Bank interchangeably or even the term West Bank predominantly. Furthermore, none of the sources state that Judea and Samaria are standard or wide-spread terminology whereas numerous sources state the opposite, namely that it is local, partisan and political terminology and therefore violates WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE and WP:NCGN and should not be used on Wikipedia.

User:MeteorMaker and User:Nishidani then looked into the sources one by one, in detail (here) and concluded that: The last point is especially important, since it reduces User:Jayjg's argument to WP:SYNTH.User:MeteorMaker then set out to prove the Contra argument, compiling 80 sources that state explicitly that "Judea" and "Samaria" are either partisan, political or non-standard terms for the West Bank (here).
 * In most sources the terms "Judea" and "Samaria" are used explicitly to describe "Settler language",
 * In most sources the term "West Bank" is used more often than "Judea" or "Samaria",
 * In many sources, the terms "Judea" and "Samaria" are used in a historical context (e.g. terms used in the British Mandatory period up to 1948),
 * None of the sources explicitly claim that "Judea" and "Samaria" are common toponyms.

In summary: User:Jayjg collected a number of sources to prove the Pro argument. User:MeteorMaker and User:Nishidani showed that almost every source provided by User:Jayjg did not prove the Pro argument. User:MeteorMaker then went the extra mile and proved the Contra argument with a number of sources that have not been contested. So not only has the Pro argument been proven false, the Contra argument was proven correct.

WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT by NoCal100 on multiple articles
In this section, I wanted to focus on the disruptive behaviour of both and, but seeing as many other editors have written at great length about Jayjg, I will focus only on NoCal100, who, although being a major player in the edit-warring on this topic, has been conspicuously absent from the discussion.

While not having been a major participant in the discussions at Talk:Israeli settlement, User:NoCal100 was one of the original participants and followed the debate. As this exchange shows, he/she was well aware of the debate, its outcome and the arguments and sources involved.

Despite the conclusions reached on Israeli settlement (i.e. the terms Judea and Samaria being relegated to a terminology sub-section), User:NoCal100 has repeatedly battled for their inclusion in other articles. Some of the more prominent examples, with their justifications, are:
 * (diff) Ma'ale Shomron ‎(undo edit made with incomprehensible edit summary)‎ This is a bogus argument/summary, as the previous edits show that User:NoCal100 knew exactly what the arguments were. This edit was made February 17, 2009, well after the discussions on Talk:Israeli settlement.
 * (diff) Mevo Dotan (Samaria is the specific geographic region) Re-hash of the argument that "Samaria" is more specific than "northern West Bank". This had been shot-down in the debate since Samaria is not a well-defined geographical region here.
 * (diff) Barkan ‎ (more specific geographic designation) Same argument as above.
 * (diff) Mount Hebron (there's a reference, read it.) The argument, discussed ad nauseum on Talk:Israeli settlement, that a single source using the term is enough to make it a default, which flies in the face of WP:NCGN.
 * (diff) Elkana ‎ (more precise) Again, the argument that somehow, Samaria is a well-defined geographical entity.
 * (diff) Aryeh Eldad ‎(the discussion you point to ended with Samria still being used in that article) Complete mis-characterisation of the result on Israeli settlement: the terms Judea and Samaria are used in a terminology and a historical section, in the former case with a specific caveat that it is politicised.
 * (diff) Ya'akov Katz (politician born 1951) ‎(what is the international body that "recognizes" goegraphical names?) Arguing that there is no such thing as an "internationally recognised" name, not quite WP:NCGN.
 * (diff) Ya'akov Katz (politician born 1951) ‎(restore - keeping both Wb & Samaria, per recent discussion at WP:AE) The discussion on WP:AE (here, regarding User:NoCal100's hounding of myself and other editors) concluded no such thing.

These edits are all prime examples of wilful WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. User:NoCal100 uses a wide range of ever-changing arguments which on several different articles not directly related to the issue. This per se has all the makings of edit-warring over several articles.
 * had either already been shot-down in the main discussion on Talk:Israeli settlement (e.g. single sources, more precise nomenclature),
 * or are patently false (e.g. false consensus).

The first natural reflex would be to assume good faith, yet there are several indications that User:NoCal100 knew exactly what he/she was doing:
 * User:NoCal100 was well aware of the discussions on Talk:Israeli settlement, as he/she was involved therein (here) and had been reminded of the outcome thereof (e.g. here),
 * User:NoCal100 is well aware of the standards regarding WP:NOR and WP:SYNTH, since he/she used the exact same argument as the opponents of the Judea and Samaria terminology to shoot-down a source on the article Zionist Entity. In a very similar exchange regarding the use of the term "Israel" by Al-Jazeera (here), User:NoCal100 is quite explicit, stating:
 * As has been pointed out to you time and again, the above is WP:SYNTH, which is not allowed on this project. In order to include something along those lines, you need to find a reliable sources that says it, explicitly. If the Weekly Standard article said something like "the word "Israel" is standard usage on al-Jazeera, who do not use "Zionist entity" " - it would be Ok to include it. But for Kauffner to deduce it, is original research. The cherry picking I am reffering to is taking one line out of a long article that discusses how Arab textbooks AVOID using Israel, in order to push the opposite POV. NoCal100 (talk) 02:46, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The highlighting is my own (for yet another recent example, see here). This is User:NoCal100 selectively applying rules to suit his/her position in a debate.

Hence, no WP:AGF. User:NoCal100 knew the debate, knew it was lost and accepted his/her opponents arguments well enough to use them in another article when it suited his/her needs. This is deliberate, bad-faith edit-warring and should be sanctioned and/or avoided in future by imposing appropriate restrictions.

Cheers,  pedrito  -  talk  - 20.03.2009 08:43

West Bank is the standard, common and neutral term
I am not clear that ArbCom will necessarily want to make a ruling on this specific point, but it lies at the root of the dispute - this is indisputably the case in modern international usage, as opposed to "Judea" or "Samaria" or some combination of those terms. Equally it is not in dispute that the latter are used from time to time, in certain contexts, usually to express some sort of Israeli claim to the land in question (a claim rejected of course in international law). However in WP articles we should clearly use the standard prevalent terminology in most instances, while noting elsewhere if necessary - in the appropriate place - that there are alternative terms. This isn't really a serious content dispute at all, and what has been going on is on a par with people edit warring flat earthism into various pages.

Statistics

"West Bank" vs "Samaria" in mainstream media sources, such that the search would catch any use of Samaria, whether as part of the phrase "Judea and Samaria" or on its own. This includes a high proportion of results for totally different Samarias, as well as those instances where the media are simply reporting and explaining others' use of the terms, rather than endorsing them -


 * BBC News - less than 40 for Samaria, more than 1,000 for West Bank


 * CNN - 39 for Samaria, 4,684 for West Bank

An unscientific trawl through the indexes in about 20 mainstream published books on Middle East affairs (by authors including British, American and Israeli journalists and academics) reveals "West Bank" had about 1,000 entries, and "Judea" and/or "Samaria" had 2 or 3.

Analysis of the terminology

We also have clear statements, in authoritative and reliable sources, which explain that Judea and/or Samaria is minority use, partisan terminology, with biblical origins. Media sources, even English-language Israeli ones, feel they have to explain the terms on the occasion when they are reporting others using them. No sources have come to light that rebut this point. A quick sample (there are many more) -


 * Haaretz - he said ".... Judea and Samaria," using the Biblical name for the West Bank, here.


 * Ynet - Judea and Samaria are the Biblical names for the areas comprising the West Bank, here. This also makes clear that when the terms are used individually, they are taken to refer to the southern and northern parts of the West Bank respectively.


 * Alan Dowty - Hawks used the historic Jewish designation - "Judea and Samaria" - for the occupied territories, here

Much more comprehensive work has been done on this by User:MeteorMaker and others, and can be found here.

Analogy with Northern Ireland

When I - and I suspect most English speakers - see "Samaria" and/or "Judea" being used in respect of the West Bank, it jumps out in exactly the same way as when I see either "Ulster", or alternatively, "the six counties" being used as alternatives to Northern Ireland. It's very loaded language, being employed to make a political point - and WP should be avoiding its unqualified use in the substantive narrative of articles. A similar, but perhaps less controversial point can be made in respect of Mercia vs Midlands, where an ancient and obscure terminology (which nonetheless pops up from time to time) is pitted against a modern, standard one.

The way to deal with these things is to have a terminology section in the main article, as here or indeed here, but then to use the standard terminology in all related pages, which then of course link back to the main article - not by shoe-horning partisan terminology into the lead of multiple articles. If anyone was going around inserting claims that Derry, Loughinisland etc are cities/towns in "the six counties", they would quite rightly be swiftly dealt with. Anyone who attempted to claim that Birmingham or Dudley are places "in Mercia" would just be looked at rather oddly.

Edit warring and NPOV across mutiple pages
The dispute has spread to a large number of pages, most notably to those for Israeli settlements in the region, eg Mevo Dotan to take but one example, where the first sentence of the article needs of course to state where the settlement in question is. Editors have tried to insist that WP use "Judea" and/or "Samaria" in articles either in place of or alongside "West Bank". This has led to edit warring, a febrile atmosphere and accusations of wiki-hounding etc. It's also taken up a lot of time and effort which might better be employed elsewhere, and editors, myself included, have received short blocks or editing restrictions. I'm not providing detailed evidence or diffs here, partly since I don't see the need to go over all this again - I don't think anyone denies there's a problem, the issue is surely how to move forward from here and ensure we have stable pages, and perhaps more importantly, accurate and neutrally-worded articles. While expressions of frustration may be obvious to anyone reviewing the situation, what may be less immediately obvious is the talk page obfuscation and more subtle disruptive tactics being employed by some of those on the other "side" of this debate, despite the overwhelming evidence that has painstakingly been assembled over what one would have thought was a fairly obvious point.

What I'm hoping is that we get an assertion of some sort that in all pages, the standard terms and descriptions alone should be used in most instances (with due weight and explanation being given to alternatives, at the appropriate point), and that sanctions await any editor who comes along to interfere with that, on whatever page; and also perhaps a push towards agreeing a broader naming convention of some sort, which can then be enforced across all relevant pages.

Bad compromises

Some editors on that "side" have suggested in pushing for the regular use of Judea and Samaria, they are merely being reasonable, and asking for the fair representation of all possible terminology on each occasion; that they are not asking for the exclusion of the phrase West Bank, just that the secondary terms are used as well, eg "Nablus is a town in Samaria, in the northern West Bank". By contrast those asking for the relegation of Judea/Samaria are painted as dogmatic, unwilling to compromise, engaged in censorship etc. While superficially attractive as an argument and as a solution, in reality it fails for several reasons: -


 * WP:UNDUE requires that all points of view are given their due weight, relative to that in the real world - not that they are all given equal weight and used alongside each other at every opportunity. Each time we refer to Ronald Reagan on pages, we don't say "Ronald Reagan, the Gipper", in order to placate those who might prefer to call him by the latter (nick)name. Equally we wouldn't describe each of Birmingham, Dudley, Coventry etc as being "in Mercia, in the Midlands"
 * It is clumsy and repetitive. Translated, it reads "Nablus is a town in the north of the West Bank, in the northern West Bank".
 * If we were going to go down this road, we would incorporate every alternative naming system, including that of the Palestinian POV (for balance), so - "Nablus is a town in Samaria, the northern West Bank, northeastern Palestine, northern Cisjordan".
 * No one is saying the terms Judea and Samaria should not appear at all in WP, or not be explained or not even have their own pages (as they currently do). The point is that they should be noted only in the appropriate place, which acknowledges that they are not the standard terminology nor simply equivalent NPOV alternatives to it. We don't "compromise" with flat earth-ism, or meet it half-way, by saying whenever the opportunity arises that the Earth is kind of cigar-shaped, or that it is both a spheroid and flat simultaneously.

There are also related disputes which crop up over various pages from time to time, eg over whether Israeli settlements are indeed "settlements" or "cities", or whether the West Bank and Gaza are "occupied" or "disputed" territories, whether geographical features in the West Bank or the Golan Heights are "in Israel" or not, etc etc. --Nickhh (talk) 18:57, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Jay systematically ignores excellent sources or dismisses them on phony grounds
1. Jay reverts MeteorMaker for referring to Samaria (per mainstream reference works) as a term used for the "historic" mountainous northern part of the West Bank, then again to remove the words "what is today known as the West Bank" (supported by Encarta, "the area now known as the West Bank"), describing the sourced and relevant qualifier as "meaningless words", then again and again reverting the sourced material throughout early November. When MeteorMaker provides a link to Britannica defining Samaria as "Central region, ancient Palestine...It corresponds roughly to the northern portion of the modern West Bank territory," Jay dismisses this as, of all things, "original research" (!) and reverts to remove the sourced material again. When MeteorMaker adds another statement sourced to Ian Lustick and directly supported by the Columbia Encyclopedia entry, Jay reverts it as "soapboxing." MeteorMaker points out that the material is supported by Columbia and Britannica; Jay reverts with a witticism but no comment on the support from two of the top three mainstream encyclopedias.  Jay continues to revert through mid-November, now falsely claiming a "consensus" from Israeli settlement, and then begins playing the "administrative district" shell game (described below).

2. Faced with a deluge of sources saying things like this – Use of the terms Judaea and Samaria, the biblical names for the West Bank, also makes a political statement about Israel’s claims over those lands. When Menachem Begin became Prime Minister in 1977, he insisted that the government news media (radio and television) use these terms; when the Labor party against took power in 1992, the broadcast authorities went back to using the more neutral term of 'the territories'. (Gadi Wolfsfeld, Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East, Cambridge University Press, 1997) – Jay's tactic for not recognizing them (and thereby maintaining that their conclusions are "MeteorMaker's theory") is to say that they are all "referring to the administrative district" (Judea and Samaria District), rather than the geographic terms. (long diff, uses the line twice) (long diff, uses the line six times)    (long diff, uses the line three times)   In the vast majority of cases this is a spurious distinction: when discussing the ideological valence of the disputed terms, most of the sources make no distinction between official use for the name of an administrative district and colloquial use for the northern and southern West Bank among religious zealots. More importantly, in most cases the context is very clearly biblical-geographical and not "administrative," e.g.: "The mountains of Judea are first named in the Book of Joshua... The hill country north and west of Jerusalem has been known as Samaria since the days of King Jeroboam…even after Israel drove the occupiers back across the river in the 1967 Six Day War, the phrase 'West Bank' has stuck, and is used to the near total exclusion of any other." Jay specifically denies that this source is about the “geographic term.”

3. Proof that Jay knows he's inventing and exploiting a spurious distinction: he uses the "administrative district" line to dismiss a language column by William Safire in the New York Times (Safire said Israeli politicians preferred the "biblical terms...invoking Hebrew origins" for political purposes, but lost that "terminological battle" to the term "West Bank"), and then turns on a dime to present as relevant a relatively unknown language columnist for a Jewish weekly that cites that same Safire piece explicitly, rebutting Safire on exactly the same terminological question. When I challenge Jay on this point, he responds by simply repasting, almost verbatim, on the same page, the same 300+ word talk-page post I'd just challenged.

Jay also presents as relevant sources that – unlike the sources he's falsely dismissed – are actually talking about the administrative district. Explicitly. For example this source talking about government financing of “Jewish councils in Judea, Samaria and Gaza at a cost of $8 million," or this source discussing " the administered areas of Samaria-Judea," which Jay has presented right here on this evidence page (seventh-to-last diff in his evidence section).  There's only one possible conclusion: the "administrative district" line is a shell game: any source he wants he'll say is talking about geographical place names, while any source he doesn't want he'll say is talking about an administrative district – regardless of what they're actually talking about.

Jay plays shell games with historical usage
Jay introduces works of contemporary scholarship referring to the historical district of Samaria as evidence of the term’s current applicability. Jay defends these sources with variations of the following sentence (adjusting the publication date accordingly): "Clearly published in 2006, not historical usage." (long diff; variations of line used multiple times.) This is analogous to saying current scholarship about “Constantinople” supports the use of that name for present-day Istanbul in Wikipedia’s neutral voice.

Summing up: according to Jay, references to a historical district are relevant to contemporary usage, while references to a contemporary district (see previous section) are not.

Jay cynically misuses and misrepresents WP:NOR
1. When content Jay opposes is indisputably well-sourced, he shifts attention to casual formulations from talk-page discussion, edit summaries, etc., and applies a strict interpretation of WP:NOR to them, as if they were the proposed content. Hence when MeteorMaker, in defending well-sourced content about "what is today the West Bank," says casually on the talk page that "Samaria and the West Bank are different-epoch names for the same area," Jay then starts demanding sources for that verbal formulation: "different epoch names for the same area." MeteorMaker goes back to his excellent encyclopedia references (Britannica: "central region, ancient Palestine... it was bounded by Galilee to the north, Judaea to the south, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and the Jordan River to the east. It corresponds roughly to the northern portion of the modern West Bank territory"; Encarta: "in the area now known as the West Bank"; etc.). Jay then notes that these sources don't say, quote, "Samaria and the West Bank are different-epoch names for the same area," unquote, as MeteorMaker had done in his casual comment on the talk page, and on the basis of that red herring Jay declares victory in the whole dispute: 'I note that not one of your sources says "Samaria and the West Bank" are "different-epoch names for the same area." Thanks for proving my point.'

Jay brings WP:NOR to bear on stray comments instead of disputed content in order not only to muddy the waters regarding what is actually disputed, but also to shift the burden of proof perpetually onto his opponent, and make that burden of proof impossibly and arbitrarily high.

2. Jay presents this article – which uses the term “West Bank” consistently (seven times) throughout its body, but is titled “Last Stand in Samaria” to evoke the threats of right-wing settlers (described in the article) to engage in a Stalingrad-style showdown with the Israeli government over unauthorized outposts in the West Bank – as an example of “Samaria”’s widespread use and acceptability.

This is perverse. Any competent, literate reading of the article will conclude exactly the opposite. All Jay will say on the matter is that "the article uses the term Samaria," period ; any further discussion, he says, is "original research." This is absolute nonsense, and it's important to realize here that Jay is not only misrepresenting the source, but also seriously misrepresenting policy. WP:NOR does not forbid editors from using their critical faculties and reading-comprehension skills to make judgments about the usability, relevance, and meaning of sources on talk pages; if it did, writing from sources would be impossible, or would result in a metastasizing quote-farm free-for-all. WP:NOR simply prohibits making or implying interpretive judgments in the articles themselves. With this spurious application of WP:NOR to talk-page discussion of sources, Jay entitles himself to simply dismiss as "original research" any other editor's understanding of source material – no matter how cogently expressed (or in this case, irrefutable and self-evident) that understanding is. Even as an admin, checkuser, and former Arbcom member, you cannot simply opt out of critical debate regarding sources – but this is precisely what Jay does, waving WP:NOR around as if it were a personal talisman, rather than a community policy – in every single instance where he is opposed.

I'll put his another way. Jay has presented a number of illegitimate interpretations of sources in this dispute; indeed much of my evidence has been taken up with highlighting and dismantling those. But the problem is not that interpretation of sources is forbidden, or that his interpretations (that a given source, for example, is "about the administrative district, not the geographic term") constitute "original research." The problem is simply that his interpretations are intellectually indefensible, and have been repeatedly exposed as such. Samaria's last stand, indeed.

Jay systematically, falsely, and in manifestly bad faith, accuses MeteorMaker of "discriminating against sources based on alleged ethnicity"
Jay begins saying that MeteorMaker's "attempts to discriminate against sources based on their alleged ethnic or national origin is [sic] distasteful and inappropriate" (repeated three times in that diff); “Wikipedia does not discriminate against sources based on alleged ethnicity or national origin, and it's distasteful to suggest it should" ; etc., thus debuting his now-shopworn meme that MeteorMaker is a bigot:  (repeated five times in that diff)         (bigot meme repeated twice in that diff). Others then begin picking up Jay's ethnic-discrimination meme and attacking MeteorMaker. 

MeteorMaker in fact has not once "discriminated against sources based on their alleged ethnic or national origin,” any more than he’s discriminated against sources for being historians writing about historical districts. He’s simply contested Jay’s personal conclusions about what primary-source evidence shows.  It’s worth remembering here that Wikipedia discourages the kind of primary-source-based arguments Jay’s making here precisely because editors and readers will have different interpretations of primary-source evidence.  Jay’s incessant allegations that MeteorMaker has “dismissed” sources and is a bigot are wholly fraudulent, trumped up in a spirit of breathtaking cynicism, dishonesty, and contempt for the intelligence of the Wikipedia community.--G-Dett (talk) 20:02, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Term usage
I have come across this debate a few times on different articles and invested some time answering questions and providing evidence as asked.

The main concerns I have are: 1) Efforts by some users to remove all references to the term Judea and to the term Samaria - it is sometimes the best term 2) Efforts to delegitimize Israeli or Jewish sources - these provide many legitimate POVs that should under NPOV be included. They should also be given appropriate weight as one form of local usage. 3) In the case of things geographically related to, for example, Samaria, saying "Nothern West Bank" is not as accurate (i.e. specific)

To clarrify point three in more detail: The Bush fires we have had recently in Australia were for a while described as being in "Southern Australia". It took a few days and heavy efforts by government spokes people and local media because the world started refering to them as the "Victorian Bush fires". Victoria is in "Southern Australia" geographically, but given they only affect one state (i.e. Victoria) not saying so, and as a result not giving proper weight to what the state government or state emergency services say... is highly problmatic. I think there is a parallel here.

The West Bank used to be a neutral term, but today it is a political term not purely a geographic one. This goes back to the Hamas military take over of Gaza in mid 2007. It created a political unit "the West Bank". Sources talking about usage would need to be written after this even (I'd say during 2008 to give the change time to show up) to be current.

Oboler (talk) 06:54, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

General comment
This is not so much a content issue, as one regarding editorial criteria for articles related to the West Bank/Judea and Samaria area, potentially several hundreds. Using strictly the criterion set forth in WP:RS, the overwhelming majority of quality academic texts make a lucid distinction between West Bank as the neutral, international default term for the area as opposed to Judea/Samaria, which (a) means an area commensurate with the West Bank (b) or an Israeli administrative area within the West Bank, and bears strong religious-nationist connotations of an irredentist kind.

To reduce the prospect of further fruitless conflict and endless wikilawyering or stonewalling against the consensus of sources, and to ensure an intelligent editing atmosphere, the ‘West Bankers’ requested arbitration. The ‘Judea/Samaria school’ opposed it, saying there were many more venues to be explored over the months, if not indeed years ahead, before we should avail ourselves of a last recourse to Arbcom. Arcom has accepted, without prejudice to either party’s claims, to hear the case.

Only at this late point, was a sensible proposal to actually analyse the issue in fresh conceptual terms forthcoming from the Judea/Samaria side, with User:Ynhockey’s recent proposal. He sidesteps completely, as does User:Ravpapa, the WP:RS criterion, which overwhelmingly supports the use of West Bank. Refreshingly, he introduces a gambit that recasts the whole dispute in apparently new terms that ostensibly promise to offer a framework for resolving the disputes in terms of a conceptual distinction between (a) political (b) administrative and (c) geographical uses. Though he deplores Arbcom’s acceptance of the case, his late clarification is consequential on that decision, and provides early evidence of a change in atmosphere resulting fromn Arbcom's decision to review, indicating a positive willingness to reach out for a conceptual framework for guidelines that, if WP:RS is not enough, might reduce conflict by providing clear working distinctions for a large variety of contexts. I might add that User:Ynhockey has not been conspicuous on the pages where chronic wikilawyering has flourished. However, the cruces are many, which I will deal with presently. For the moment, User:Ynhockey suggests replacing WP:RS guidelines that have governed the assessment of textual proprieties so far, with analytical criteria from a 15 volume Israeli gazetteer published in Israel. Gazetteers generally provide detailed information and indispensable facts, but the terms of definition of a national gazetteer printed by the Occupying or Belligerent power of the West Bank, which has extended settlements and unilateral administrative and territorial structures into the contested area, are open to serious questions over reliability. The shift is salutary in refocusing our efforts. But in so shifting the goalposts, we have a proposal that would discard recourse to abundant international sources, in favour of consulting one source representing an Israeli taxonomy, when Israel itself is a party to the dispute, precisely, over territorial definitions. I should like to comment on this aspect. Nishidani (talk) 16:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Jayjg
I find User:Jayjg’s use of the rule book completely erratic, except if one reads it as a strategy for excising unwelcome material, and including material he likes, according to his personal impression of what is good or bad for Israel’s image. There is no attempt at cogency of interpretation, or coherence of application, or respect for encyclopedicity. I have numerous memories of the bewildering volte-faces in his method. But this will have to do to illustrate the principle, and the perplexity of colleagues. If asked, I could provide several other instances of this strategic rule-bending.

At Israeli Settlement, he removed  a quotation by a distinguished academic Avishai Margalit in The New York Review of Books (WP:RS on two counts) reviewing a book acclaimed  by a senior editor at Slate as one of the best books of the year (2007), written by a front-ranking world expert on Indian and Dravidian languages, an Israeli professor, fluent in Hebrew and Arabic, with a professional interest also in Islam in India,  with years as a peace activist on the West Bank, namely David Shulman, whose study of settlers on the West Bank was published by the University of Chicago Press, He then proceded to challenge it, saying [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Israeli_settlement&diff=next&oldid=191565663 who's Shulman? His book's just one of any number of sources, and nothing to do with human rights in the territories], when this happens to be the theme of the book, stressed by the reviewer. He never checked. He just bracketed ‘David Shulman’ and found there was no wiki article on him at the time, concluded he was non-notable, and just a nondescript ‘peace activist’. No amount of intensive elucidation 1, 2 3 4 of who Avishai Margalit is, who Shulman is, why the University of Chicago Press, the New York Review of Books were guarantors of the high quality of the source, or why the claim is not exceptional would make him change his mind or moderate his refusal. Informed of who Shulman was, he dismissed him, despite his field experience on the West Bank and expertise in Arabic, because [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Israeli_settlement&diff=next&oldid=192066494 as an expert in Tamil, he could not be quoted for on settler psychology, his judgement was an ‘extraordinary claim’ requiring an extraordinary source and thus ‘This lengthy, pejorative quote from a non-expert is about as blatant a violation of WP:V and WP:UNDUE as I’ve seen in a long time. ‘] He just kept reiterating a scholar of Tamil is not a reliable source on Israeli settler psychology All of which is interesting, but ignores the fact I was not quoting Shulman, but one of Israel’s most distinguished professors of philosopher, Avishai Margalit, in the NYRB, who confirms Shulman’s analysis by drawing on his own experience, and the view of other distinguished Israeli sources, with the group of settlers about whom, according to Jayjg, Shulman the student of Tamil (actually a dozen Indian languages) is writing about. He concludes by twisting my remarks about ‘bad faith’ in editors removing this material by saying that [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Israeli_settlement&diff=next&oldid=192066494 I am admitting that this is how I myself edit Wikipedia. He commends me for this ‘confession’ and ‘based on your new self-awareness, request that you desist from doing so in the future’]. The argument ran to three archives. Several days later, I complain of his lack of response, and point out a glaring contradiction in his attitude to sources.

On the Israel Shahak page, which Jayjg has monitored with hostile eyes, and edited with malicious joy since its virtual inception five years ago, and cannot be written because of his wikilawyering, we have a rack of smears, most of which are extraordinary claims about Shahak, a Chemistry professor at Tel Aviv University who wrote several books on Jewish fundamentalism, from the perspective of a Popperian secularist. Jayjg dislikes the man and his works intensely. He defends quotes from Werner Cohn, a retired sociologist with no knowledge of rabbinical thought, about Shahak’s putative anti-Semitism. Shulman, the linguist fluent in Hebrew and Arabic cannot be cited, even through a prestigious tertiary source (Margalit) on settler psychology, though he has worked in the West Bank on these conflicts for years as a notable peace activist. It’s just an extraordinary smear by a nondescript student of Tamil. Werner Cohn, though unfamiliar with rabbinical thought and from an unrelated academic field, can be cited for reviewing Shahak’s analysis of rabbinical Judaism. The point is underlined by G-Dett in her familiar, eloquently acerbic comment. Jayjg's commitment to WP:RS is such that at the same time he was holding the Shulman quote hostage from Israeli Settlement, he was defending a quote from an execrably poor agenda-driven source,  FrontPage Magazine  to the Shahak article, not from a psychologist or expert on philosophy, or Shahak, or rabbinical thought, saying that Shahak was ‘a disturbed mind who made a career out of recycling Nazi propaganda about Jews and Judaism’, which is a lie. G-Dett points out the contradiction in method, taking place, note, contemporaneously (Febr 2008) while he worked on two different articles.


 * "According to Jay, you need a PhD in psychology in order to say something general about society's 'violent, sociopathic elements,' or something specific about 'destructive individuals' in the Israeli settlement enterprise – even if the source is a highly acclaimed book put out by University of Chicago Press. But to diagnose a celebrated writer and critic of Israel as having a 'disturbed mind,' all you need to be is some gasbag interviewed by David Horowitz's online tabloid. 'The material seems well and reliably enough sourced,' Jay assures us."

This is the way he works in the I/P area. Poor sources are RS if the person smeared is a critic of Israel. High quality sources are rejected by endless wikilawyering if they are critical of Israel. I have no intention of citing him for suspension. But someone up there should address this extremely erratic gaming behaviour with some strong words in his direction.

The equivocation re "Judea and Samaria" vs. "Judea" & "Samaria"
"'Much of the discussion has centered around Judea and Samaria, but I don't think there is actually much difference of opinion with regards to that term - it is the name of an administrative district utilized by Israel to govern the territories it captured in 1967, territories which are commonly referred to as the West Bank,' User:Canadian Monkey below"

Actually, this furphy, or rather linguistic smudging by conflation, to blur two distinct ideas, has been repeated endlessly, and has now returned to haunt these pages. The article's lead itself is absolutely clear that 'Judea and Samaria' has two distinct meanings:


 * "(a)'Judea and Samaria . . . is the official Israeli term roughly corresponding to the territory usually known outside Israel as the West Bank.'"


 * "(b)'The term 'Judea and Samaria' is also employed specifically as a collective reference to the Israeli settlements in that area, historically and presently, especially by Jewish settlers and their supporters.'"

In (a) 'Judea and Samaria' refers to an area commensurate with the West Bank. In (b) it refers to those areas within the West Bank where Jewish settlements have been established (and,being less than half of the West Bank, under the 'Judea and Samaria' administration).

'Judea and Samaria' should never be used in one sense, while implying the other. This is the gravamen of the 'West Banker' argument, and what endless equivocation by the 'Judea and Samaria' school blurs. The game is to make the 'Judea and Samaria = West Bank' equation ride on the tails of the 'Judea and Samaria = that part of the West Bank settled and administered by Israel' equation. Nishidani (talk) 11:42, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Reply to Jaakobou's snippet of evidence added at this late date
I won't interpret what you did, Jaakobou, but it makes me regret my words in your defence in this Arbitration. That diff is an ironic paraphrase, in Palestinian terms, of the remark you made here. In other words, when you expressed a wish to have Israeli history sourced to books or sources more reliable than Al-Jazeera, an excellent point, I translated this into the other side of the equation, asking you and others to accept the same principle in edits on Palestinian history, i.e. no Israeli newspapers or news channels. It's called par condicio, i.e., in plainman's speech, 'what is good for the goose is good for the gander.' Since you present this ironic-serious corollary on its own, your diff makes it look like I have it in exclusively for Israeli newspaper sources (the bigotry meme). To the contrary, it reflects my repeated request that articles not be built by using newspapers, television sources, websites, government or progovernment activist sites. You have made the innocuous look malicious, and that is deeply unfair. I'm used to it, and it doesn't matter, I suppose, much, at this point. But I wish to set the record straight before my probable lifelong furlough.Nishidani (talk) 17:45, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Canadian Monkey
As I wrote in my statement upon the request for arbitration in this case, I don't believe ArbCom should be involved in resolving content disputes, which this surely is. Since the committee decided to take this on, I believe the main focus should be on the behavioral issues exhibited, and not on the content dispute. Accordingly, I will provide some limited evidence which relates to the dispute, and focus on the behavioral issues.

"Judea and Samaria" vs. "Judea" & "Samaria"
Much of the discussion has centered around Judea and Samaria, but I don't think there is actually much difference of opinion with regards to that term - it is the name of an administrative district utilized by Israel to govern the territories it captured in 1967, territories which are commonly referred to as the West bank. In most Wikipedia articles we should, and do, use that term ("West bank"), and not "Judea and Samaria". The exceptions are the articles about the administrative district itself - Judea and Samaria, and in articles describing the local government structure of the Israeli communities in those areas (e.g.: the infobox of the Ariel (city) article correctly describes it as belonging to the district of "Judea and Samaria Area"). Since I have yet to see any editor argue otherwise, evidence focusing on which is more common, WB or J&S (e.g: all of the evidence by Master&Expert, most of the evidence by Pedrito) is beside the point. As User:Ynhockey points out, "Samaria" and "Judea", as geographical/topographical entities, are a different matter, and this content dispute arose from an effort by certain editors to remove any reference to these terms from Wikipedia

Sources using "Samaria" and/or "Judea" as geographical entities
The distinction between Judea and Samaria (a geo-political term) and "Judea" or "Samaria" as geographical terms is clear in many reliable sources:
 * The world Book encyclopedia, 2007 Editions, Vol 10 (Letter I), under the entry for Israel, lists several maps. On p.483, it features a map labeled 'Political Map' - which outlines the area of the West Bank, and labels it, as we should, "West Bank. However, on the very next page (p.484), it presents a map labeled "Terrain Map", of Israel which prominently displays 'Samaria' and 'Judea', and correctly shows Samaria as extending westward, outside the West Bank, and into Israel. Further, on p. 482 it explicitly states "Israel has 4 major land regions. They are ...(2) the Judea-Galilean heights..."
 * The Encyclopedia Britannica, presents a map, labeled "Israel: geographical features", which also prominently displays 'Hills of Judaea", and which also correctly shows this region as extending South and West, beyond the borders of the West Bank, into Israel
 * Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary, p. 536 presents a map (similar to this one) which prominently displays "JUDAEA" for the area in question, and which again, correctly shows this region as extending south, beyond the borders of the West Bank, into Israel
 * This map, produced by the CIA, clearly labels the area as "SAMARIA", and its counterpart labels the Southern region "JUDAEA"

User:MeteorMaker has extensively edit warred
Beginning as early as April 2008, MeteorMaker has been repeatedly warned and sanctioned due to his extensive edit warring on this topic. (Listing only warnings & sanctions by administrators) None of these warnings and sanctions seemed to have helped, and the latest ban by Elonka was repeatedly violated by User:MeteorMaker, to the point where even his ardent supporters found it necessary to give him some cautionary words
 * warned about removing references to Judea/Samaria
 * warned about disruptive editing on Samaria
 * 3RR Warning
 * Blocked for edit warring on West Bank
 * Another gentle warning about Samaria editing
 * Civility warning
 * Another 3RR warning
 * Yet another edit warring warning
 * Topic ban

G-Dett's unhealthy fixation on Jayjg has significantly worsened the dispute
Perhaps because I almost never edit I-P related articles, I rarely run into User:G-Dett or User:Jayjg. I first became aware of G-Dett’s editing in November, when I noticed her attacking Jayjg, and eventually blocked her for doing so. This was her third block for insulting Jayjg. I didn’t see much of her in the following months, but when I saw this case, I started reading the discussion pages of the related articles, and looking at G-Dett’s editing history, and came to the conclusion that a significant part of the deterioration of the discussion there could be attributed to what I can only describe as G-Dett’s unhealthy fixation on Jayjg. Here is a summary of much of G-Dett’s editing since her second block for insulting Jayjg:


 * After a Wikibreak of 3 weeks, G-Dett’s first edits on Wikipedia are to oppose and revert Jayjg on the Anti-Zionism article, an article G-Dett has never edited before.


 * G-Dett follows Jayjg to Second intifada, an article she has last edited over a year before, to oppose Jayjg there (e.g. ,) and insult Jayjg on the Discussion page. I eventually block G-Dett for her insults.
 * After her block expires, G-Dett opposes Jayjg at Second Intifada for 3 weeks, then follows Jayjg to Israeli settlement to oppose Jayjg there.(e.g. ) – this is the point at which she extends her dispute with Jayjg to the “Judea”/”Samaria”/”West Bank” issue.


 * G-Dett follows Jayjg to West Bank, an article she has never edited before, to oppose Jayjg there after he opens up a Discussion page section (e.g., ). At one point G-Dett is forced by Elonka to re-factor insulting comments directed at Jayjg.


 * G-Dett follows Jayjg to Talk:Samaria/Discussion_of_sources, where she makes multiple comments opposing Jayjg (e.g. ) and insulting Jayjg (e.g "Given your track record of serious, false accusations of this kind, you should tread lightly").


 * G-Dett shows up at Samaria (disambiguation), an article she has never edited before, and where Jayjg is involved in part of the lengthy content dispute, to revert Jayjg multiple times (e.g. )


 * G-Dett shows up at Judea and Samaria, an article she has never edited before, to revert Jayjg


 * G-Dett shows up at an WP:AN/I discussion regarding an article Jayjg is editing, and makes multiple comments opposing Jayjg (e.g. )


 * G-Dett follows Jayjg to a WP:BLP/N discussion he opens on an article which she doesn't edit, where she again accuses and opposes Jayjg: (e.g.)


 * G-Dett focuses on other matters for a couple of days, then after a two day Wikibreak, again follows Jayjg to WP:BLP/N to insult Jayjg, and to Israeli settlement to revert him

As can be seen from her edit history, G-Dett spends the majority of her time on Wikipedia opposing Jayjg. Other editors have noted this fact, as recently as last month, for example, "User:G-Dett has made a wikipedia editing career out of compulsive and habitual WP:HOUNDing of User:Jayjg. One would be hard pressed to find even a dozen article she has edited which were NOT articles that she had followed Jayjg to, in order to revert him." G-Dett has denied doing so - for example, in this diatribe about Jayjg. However, her claims do not appear to be factual: There are over 7,000 articles in Wikiprojects Israel and Palestine, and thousands more related articles. Jayjg only edits a small number of I-P related articles at any time, and G-Dett an even smaller number - yet she inevitably shows up at very small number he has recently edited, or where he has a dispute with another editor. As an example, in examining her editing since December, for the following periods essentially *all* of her edits were either about Jayjg or opposing him:


 * Dec 4-Dec 18, 2009


 * Dec 23, 2008-Jan 2, 2009


 * Jan 14-19, 2009


 * Jan 28-Feb 3, 2009


 * Feb 9-13, 2009


 * Feb 22-26, 2009

Her contributions to the case here show more of the same unhealthy fixation on Jayjg. In my view, her edits and comments significantly worsened the disputes in this case, and made it more difficult for any compromises to be achieved.—Sandahl (talk) 04:57, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

"West Bank" is policy-compliant, "Judea" and "Samaria" are not
"When a widely accepted English name, in a modern context, exists for a place, we should use it. [...] A name can be considered as widely accepted if a neutral and reliable source states: "X is the name most often used for this entity." (WP:NCGN)


 * This long discussion has generated dozens of precisely such sources for "West Bank". Not one source has been put forward that says either "Judea" or "Samaria", alone or in combination, is the name most often used. On the contrary, many explicitly state that these terms are only used in Israel and not by the rest of the world. The terms thus violate WP:NCGN.


 * J&S have conclusively been shown to be tiny minority terms, through statistics and quotes from reliable sources. Using the terms in Wikipedia's neutral voice would thus violate WP:UNDUE.


 * J&S have conclusively been shown to be in modern use by only one side in the I/P conflict, and never by the other side or neutral sources . Using the terms would thus violate WP:NPOV. By contrast, "West Bank" is in predominant use by both sides, as well as by all neutral sources.

The number of sources for the position that the terms "Judea" and "Samaria" are 1) historical and 2) Israel-specific is now so great that the opposing position must be seen as extraordinary, and thus requires extraordinary evidence.

Many editors, not least in this ArbCom case, have voiced their personal opinion that the terms are indeed widespread — but when asked for sources, the result has typically been nil. My impression is that this has come as a genuine surprise for these editors, who probably sincerely thought the terms are commonly used.

Some editors have acted disruptively to hide this fact
Several editors have now spent up to six frustrating months, time that could have been used for productive editing, in a bizarro upside-down reality where direct quotes from academic works, encyclopedias and scores of other reliable sources routinely and flippantly get dismissed as "self-serving WP:OR", "WP:SYNTH", "a disproven theory" and "anecdotal evidence"        — while original conclusions drawn from a handful of primary sources are passed off as "conclusive proof", helped by liberal amounts of WP:IDHT and system gaming. The case against "Samaria" and "Judea" being modern, widespread, neutral terms is solid to say the least, yet a small group of editors, including one longtime admin, has managed to disrupt policy-compliant consensus-building and stonewalled every attempt to adopt international standard terminology consistently on WP. This has triggered extensive edit wars.

Case in point: These changes (bolded) were suggested in the lead of Samaria: "Samaria [...] is a term used for the mountainous northern part of what is today the West Bank. The combined term Judea and Samaria is used in Israel to refer to the West Bank as a whole" These and similar quotes from academic and encyclopedic sources were referred to as support: These sources were rejected by Jayjg with "quote them saying it". 
 * ""Samaria, West Bank. The central region of ancient Palestine and its capital, now called Sabasṭiyah."" (Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names)
 * "Samaria ,central region, ancient Palestine. [...] It corresponds roughly to the northern portion of the modern West Bank territory." (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia)
 * "The [West Bank] territory, excluding East Jerusalem, is also known within Israel by its biblical names, Judaea and Samaria." (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Links to the relevant talk pages:           

System gaming

 * Persistent stonewalling (manifests itself mainly in forms that are difficult to show in diffs, so it's more rewarding to read the actual talkpages, but here are a few examples:)



(Jayjg) (CM) (Jayjg) (NoCal) (Jayjg) (Brewcrewer) (CM) (CM) Rampant throughout the entire dispute. A particularly lucid example can be seen on this page, where Jayjg consistently refuses to respond to or acknowledge G-Dett's arguments and explicitly says, four times, that he sees "no response". Here and here he admits to not reading her comments. (Jayjg) (CM, Jaak) (CM) (in edit summary) (Oboler) (NoCal) (NoCal) (CM) (last point) (CM) CM (NoCal) (NoCal) (Jayjg) (Jayjg) (Jayjg) (NoCal) (Jayjg) (Jayjg) (Jayjg) (Jayjg) (Jayjg) (Jayjg) (Jayjg) (CM] (points 27, 28, 35, 39, 44, 45)  (Jayjg)  (Jayjg)  (point 5) (Jayjg) In order to retain a mention of Samaria in the Israeli settlement article, Jayjg found 8 refs that all say certain settlements are in "Samaria". However, the refs Jayjg chose are a minuscule fraction of the total number of sources that were available to him, and the overwhelming majority use "West Bank". Jayjg's cites were selected for one purpose only, to prop up the word "Samaria" in the article, in the safe knowledge that refs are more difficult to remove than regular text.  (Jayjg) (discussed here) (Oboler) Removing other users' comments (Jaakobou), breaking all links to the evidence page (line 444) (Jayjg), creating new sections with the exact same title as existing RfC's. (Jayjg)
 * WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT:
 * Misleading or false accusations in order to cause or extend bans of other editors:
 * Rejection of sources on spurious grounds:
 * Misrepresentation of sources:
 * Cherry-picking partisan refs
 * Misleading edit summaries:
 * Minor disruptions:

Incivility
False accusations: "MeteorMaker, we get it, you're not so much a fan of the Jews." (74.85.6.194)
 * Of anti-Semitism and ethnic discrimination:

Background: The J+S side has rejected the position that J+S are Israel-specific terms. In order to prove that, they have provided ostensibly non-Israeli sources that use these terms. The majority of these sources have however been found to be Israeli and thus not relevant as evidence. When this has been pointed out, the J+S side has responded with these highly improper accusations. The fact that they do it repeatedly and persistently despite several warnings is aggravating.

(Jayjg)

(Jayjg) (Jayjg) (first section) (Jayjg) (Jayjg) (CM) (Amoruso) (Amoruso) (CM) (Jaak) (Jaak)

Jayjg and Jaakobou are the main culprits here. Ironically, in almost one year of discussion, only one user has tried to cast doubt on a source's reliability purely because it's Jewish/Zionist. The other of these two editors was recently cautioned against rejecting input from fellow editors on ethnic grounds.

(NoCal, Jayjg) (in edit summary) (Jayjg) (in edit summary) (Jayjg) (Jayjg) (8 Jayjg cases, collected by User:Nishidani)
 * Of Wikihounding:
 * Of having deliberately asserted false information:

Wikihounding:

Self-admitted by Jayjg here and here.

Other examples where the hounding editor had no previous article edits and reverted within 8 hours:

Jayjg:   

User:NoCal100: (collected by User:Pedrito)        

User:Canadian Monkey:         

Timeline of dispute
Section moved to its author's section with no opinion on the neutrality or accuracy. Section not counted against word limit because it was at Arbitrator request.--Tznkai (talk) 17:58, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Timeline of dispute as requested by User:Roger Davies


 * On 6 April 2008, User:MeteorMaker (henceforth MM) appended a usage note to the Judea article: "The term "Judea" is controversial; see usage note at Judea_and_Samaria". . It was removed by User:Jayjg two days later.


 * On 9 April, MM posted a new section on Talk:Judea, arguing for the need of a usage note. It was determined that the article deals with ancient Judea and not the modern area. MM then suggested this fact be reflected in the article's choice of tense, and argued that other articles on historical regions (eg Prussia) consistently use the past tense. The suggestion was met with allegations of politicizing the article and requests to prove that the term is not used any more. MM responded that negatives cannot be proven, and countered with a request to provide evidence for the claim that the term is in current use outside Israel and thus compliant with WP:NCGN. The one-week discussion that followed went nowhere.


 * On 16 April, MM added a factual accuracy dispute tag and started a new Talk section. In it, several editors (User:Jaakobou, Jayjg, User:Canadian Monkey (henceforth CM), and User:Amoruso) supplied sources to support the position that the term "Judea" is in current use outside Israel, consisting of 26 verifiable examples of usage of the term. It was conclusively shown that of these 26, at least 17 had been written by Israelis or people affiliated with the Israeli government. This finding was never contested, but drew heavy criticism from other editors, who regarded the rejection of the sources as motivated by their being Jewish, and also maintained that the nationality of sources is determined by the nationality of the publisher, not of the original author. Of the remaining sources, none was found to be an unequivocal example of a non-Israeli using the term as anything else than a historical toponym, or (most importantly) state that the term is used anywhere else than in Israel. The sources thus fell short of showing that the term fulfills WP:NCGN's requirements. This did not resolve the dispute however.


 * Over the months, the discussion gradually expanded to other related articles (Samaria 31 October, Judea and Samaria 6 November, West Bank 14 December, Israeli settlement 15 December, Mount Hebron and other minor articles during January and February) and came to involve several more editors, but the basic disagreements remained the same. Small edit wars on these and related articles flared up in November and December.


 * On November''', encyclopedic sources were presented that explicitly state that "Samaria" is a historical term and that its modern usage is peculiar to Israel. This did not resolve the dispute, and the edit wars intensified.


 * As a consequence, Samaria was protected on 15 November. User:Elonka began watching over the dispute on |on 5 December. On her suggestion, RfCs were tried, first on 9 December by MM and then 26 December by JayJG, but little was achieved.


 * On 21 November, Jayjg added 8 refs to a mention of "Samaria" in Israeli settlement. Other editors rejected the refs as cherrypicked and partisan, being mostly quotes by Israeli or Zionist authors. The other side maintained that the actual sources were not the Israeli or Zionist authors but the British, American and Australian publishers. A lengthy edit war ensued.


 * This and other evidence that had been accumulated by both sides was collected on 11 december by Elonka on this page. Evidence supplied by both sides has been added over the months since and currently, there exists 80 secondary/tertiary-source refs for the "J+S are historical/partisan terms" side, while the opposite position has only refs to primary sources, 5-6 of which are uncontested as bona fide examples of non-historical/non-partisan use. This has still not resolved the dispute.


 * On 14 February, MM received a ban on reverting Samaria-related articles. On 15 February, Elonka admitted the ban was based on a misunderstanding and it was lifted on March 1. A request by CM to extend the ban was turned down on 24 February. On 17 February, user:Nickhh was 3RR-blocked over a minor edit war while user:NoCal100 was warned.


 * On 25 February 2009, user:Pedrito submitted the request for this case to ArbComm. On 1 March, it was accepted. MeteorMaker (talk) 16:04, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Ban evasion by User:MeteorMaker
On February 14, 2009, User:MeteorMaker was placed on Arbcom sanction of 90 days length from removing reference related content from Samaria/Judea related articles by User:Elonka. On top of this, they were advised to "let other editors make the actual edit." when Samaria-related information in an article needs to be changed.

User:MeteorMaker responded by arguing the sanction and by performing a revert on User:Jayjg, removing referenced material. User:Elonka responded to the argument with a slight change to her phrasing but also made note this sanction to be "extremely lenient" as well as clarify to MeteorMaker both the purpose of the sanction and that it is still in effect; i.e. User:MeteorMaker was warned to avoid counter-provocative "rapid-fire" behavior until such time as the ban is lifted.

Good faith in MeteorMaker aside, on February 23, 2009, they had ignored their arguments on the main Samaria-related articles and made a controversial switch on terminology at a side article. User:Canadian Monkey filed an WP:AE complaint on it citing the edit as a ban violation. User:MeteorMaker then falsely claimed that their sanction was removed, citing the rephrase (and wikibreak) as the alleged sign that Elonka removed the ban.

When the sanction was finally lifted, upon MeteorMaker's request, the person lifting it noted that MeteorMaker was misrepresenting the facts.

Aggressive behavior by User:MeteorMaker and User:Pedrito
This case been marred by extremely aggressive responses to evidence and statements about editors:


 * Following evidence presentation, User:MeteorMaker demanded I either strike through my notes or "clarify" them. After trying to calm down the situation, MeteorMaker thanked me for allegedly admitting to lying about them on purpose in my evidence statement.


 * After I asked G-Dett to avoid making her notes personalized and directed to singular third parties, User:Pedrito jumped in with a "cut the holier-than-thou crap" response. I am certainly not perfect but "crap" seems like an unfair assessment of the comment I was making.


 * A week after my initial note to Arbcom of the aggressive behavior issues (the above notes), User:MeteorMaker responded to another evidence with accusations of a "willful attempt to mislead other editors".

Conflict spillover
The conflict has clearly spilled over to the ArbCom case itself, as even here, some editors are not conducting themselves as they should, which may be indicative of behavior issues on controversial articles. All of these editors were blocked or warned for civility in the past:
 * Posts by G-Dett:
 * "Ynhockey, you should be ashamed of yourself." - 11:44, 19 March 2009
 * "we'd need some gesture or evidence of intellectual seriousness from the other side" - 05:25, 20 March 2009
 * "Brewcrewer's impish observations and non sequiturs" - 17:43, 15 March 2009
 * Post by Nickhh:
 * "genuine lack of comprehension or deliberate obfuscation and filibustering. Take your pick." - 23:33, 19 March 2009
 * Post by Nishidani:
 * "Can we therefore agree in principle that no Israeli or Israeli connected news-source should ever be used for any information regarding the history of the Palestinian people? It would do wonders for the articles."

Note regarding User:Cla68 evidence
User:Cla68 mentioned "hounding" but the given sample is two years old and has nothing to do with wiki-hounding. The example event had no hounding in it but it did include a clear WP:3RR violation, and "anon" reverts by someone who got away with some foul play.

Wiki-hounding content relevant for the current case is listed here though.

Evidence presented by User:Tundrabuggy
User:Master&Expert's first link is inaccessible to me, but the 2nd ( Looklex) is not an reliable source, and the article is written by a student. On his map (you must click through to see it) arbitrary lines are assigned, and the whole referred to as "Palestine."

When User:G-Dett talks about the "Lying about the what" and the "misrepresenting of the when," he either misunderstands the argument or simply doesn't have sufficient background. There is indeed a geographical term "Samaria", as well as a geographical term "Judea". Sometimes the terms are used together, sometimes apart. User:Canadian Monkey has provided maps that show clearly that each is a part of the "West Bank", thus using these term(s) gives a reader more information and more specific information, than the wider, more generalised term "West Bank." When a source says that the names "evoke" the Biblical, or refers to their names as "ancient," this does not imply the usage itself is ancient, but refers that those areas have been so named since Biblical and ancient times. To me this diff given by G-Dett as evidence of so-called "misrepresentation by User:Jayjg" is in fact  evidence that G-Dett does not seem to understand this concept. While the names no longer refer to the ancient nations of Judea or Samaria, the region is still so-named and understood world-wide.

Further, User:MeteorMaker and others are simply wrong when they say that "reliable sources began avoiding it...in 1948." In fact, it was the common (and only) usage up until and after the '67 war. If one does a search at Unispal one discovers that -- looking up the "Samaria" reference by date, it was used consistently by UN in documents starting in 1936, and on to 1937 ,1938 ,1947,1948,1949,1950,1961 ,1964,1970. Around 1968 Palestinian Arabs began a political campaign to deprecate the terms, saying  "What is more important is the fact that there is a vicious attempt, as shown by the Mayor, to achieve strategic advantage by dividing the Arab people of the southern part of the west bank from the people of the northern part. They have already given the two parts the names of Samaria and Judea." and asserting  "In addition, in order to dispel any doubts, the Israel authorities are proceeding to rename the occupied areas with Biblical names, such as "Samaria" and "Judea", in order to 'Zionize' those regions."  It was clearly untrue that there was any re-naming as these areas had always  been called by the ancient names, and the references to Samaria and Judea were present in League of Nations documents presented to the UN as early as 1936 & '37  In fact, UN authorities consistently referred to Judea and Samaria as such -- in 1948, in 1951, in 1961, etc.

Looking closely at the two quotes from 1968, one notices that neither Arab speaker has capitalized "west bank," but refers to it as a simple region, as opposed to a proper name. The first clear reference to "West Bank" as a proper name is not until a 1969 UN document -- a memorandum by Arab lawyers by the Permanent Representative to Jordan.

"Judea" and "Samaria" were and still are in common parlance. Samaria, for example, is on recent maps, is a real place with real roads, with a real university, Ariel University Center of Samaria  "Ariel University Center of Samaria is the largest of its kind and one of the fastest-growing academic institutions in the country, with 8,500 students, representing the full spectrum of Israeli society: Jew & Arab, secular & observant, new immigrant & veteran Israeli." The Judean region, hills and lowlands are really real as well   a magnet for travel  for Jews, Christians, and history/archeology buffs worldwide and known for its wineries.

When editors use legitimate, acceptable, and modern RS to refer to "Judea and Samaria" or each separately, very real and readily understood places, why would that not be perfectly acceptable at Wikipedia? We do not "test" our sources and reject them as Jewish, Israeli-related, or "originally published in Israel;" anymore that we test them for as Arab, Muslim or Palestine-related. The only test is reliability. There does seem to be two sides here. One that wants to use "West Bank" to the exclusion of the Israeli "Judea and Samaria" throughout WP, and the other one that wants to use "Judea" and/or "Samaria" together with "West Bank." Wikipedia articles ought not be cleansed of the Israeli or Jewish perspective or name, even if it is not the most popular term, as the age-old terms for this area are still very much in use, as has been demonstrated. It seems to me to be a matter of not censoring one view, or insisting on always qualifying it; but using it propitiously, in the proper places,  with accurate and reliable references.

Difficulty of discussions with MeteorMaker
Discussions with MeteorMaker on this topic are typically difficult, and often involve his repeating the same arguments, despite their rejection by other editors. For example,
 * Here he insists that an English language source can only be used on Hebrew Wikipedia, because it is Israeli. Note he uses WP:NCGN as his authority, despite the guideline's clearly stating "This page describes conventions for determining the names of Wikipedia articles on places" (emphasis mine). This is also an example of MeteorMaker's continually repeating the same arguments, despite their repudiation by others: a couple of months earlier, MeteorMaker cited the same guideline for the same purpose, User:Elonka told him "WP:NCGN is targeted more towards article titles, and not internal text."
 * In another discussion, he insisted that the two tables and  are "the exact same one", despite the former having data in it from years after the latter had been published.

Inappropriate editing by MeteorMaker
At times Meteormaker's edits went further than simple removal of the terms he disliked: Here and here, for example, he not only removes the term, but the 8 citations directly supporting its use in that specific context. Later, he leaves the citations, but removes the terminology they support!

Further evidence of the recentism of "West Bank" as a place name
This link to Google News Archive for "West Bank" between 1948-1967 demonstrates that prior to 1967 the term was not used as a place-name, rather as a geographical part of Jordan. Note while headlines are of course capitalized, in most cases the body of the article refers to "the west bank of the Jordan River". The term is used to refer to "Jordan," and the Israeli-Arab conflict. The usage that one side wishes us to adopt as neutral, has only recently come into currency, especially with the current apparent "default" understanding that "West Bank" means "Palestine." It is acceptable to acknowledge that this has happened to a large extent; but to insist on purging "Judea" &/or "Samaria" as currently used and understood terms is not to be neutral, but to take a position in a political language war going on not only in Wikipedia, but throughout the internet. See also this link to "Samaria" for the same time-period. Clearly understood internationally, then as now.

Evidence presented by User:Jayjg
There are too many diffs (263).  hmwith  τ   10:48, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Anyone reading this case might get the impression that "pro-Israel," or "Jewish," or "Zionist" editors have been systematically removing the term "West Bank," and replacing it with "Judea"/"Samaria". I am not aware of any editors who have done that.

Rather, various editors have been combing through Wikipedia to remove/deprecate the terms "Judea"/"Samaria" from articles where they already existed. These attempts have met with resistance from at least 16 editors besides me. What I'm hoping for from this arbitration is a way forward that will help us achieve a reasonable compromise on terminology, one that respects Wikipedia's policies.

Meteormaker and Pedrito's campaign
User:MeteorMaker first began his campaign to remove/deprecate the terms "Judea" and "Samaria" on April 6, 2008. By July he had done so in 34 articles: MeteorMaker took a break from Wikipedia from July 8 to October 22, and the conflict disappeared. After his return he expanded the conflict to an additional 35 articles: or 69 in total.

MeteorMaker was well aware of the controversial nature of these removals. He had been advised by three different administrators that it was a bad idea for him to be doing this: by Ynhockey in April 2008, by Coren in November 2008, and in February 2009, Elonka banned him for 90 days from making Samaria-related reverts, and admonished him for that behavior.

Until MeteorMaker's ban, User:Pedrito had only been intermittently involved in the conflict. Soon after, Pedrito adopted MeteorMaker's crusade: In all, Pedrito deleted the terms from 57 articles.

In many cases, these actions ignited/re-ignited edit wars. For example, here MeteorMaker, Pedrito, and 4 other editors war over the terms, stretching back to April 2008, while here MeteorMaker, Pedrito and 3 different editors war over the terms, here Pedrito edit-wars alone against 3 editors. Numerous other edit-wars were ignited by this behavior: (e.g.)

Unlike those who disagreed with them, MeteorMaker ([) and Pedrito removed wording that used both terminologies.

MeteorMaker and Pedrito removed/deprecated the term in 116 articles. No other editors disputed the terms over such a wide variety of articles: the closest I am aware of is User:Tkalisky, who reverted Pedrito on 12 articles.

Meteormaker's rationales
Meteormaker's most typical edit summaries were "Terminology modernized" or "Terminology updated," and the edits often marked as "minor" even after months of disagreements about these changes (e.g. ). This was in line with persistent attempts to deprecate the term wherever it could not be excised completely - to insist that it was not a term used today. Thus Meteormaker's and G-Dett's definition of Samaria as a "Biblical name"/"Biblical term"/"Biblical" (e.g. ), or "ancient region" (e.g., ) despite MeteorMaker stating weeks earlier, several times, that it was the name of the "British Mandatory administration district." - the British Mandate was neither "biblical" nor "ancient."

The claim that the terms are "biblical" is partly true, but it is a partial truth that misleads more than it enlightens: "Bethlehem" and "Lebanon" are also "biblical" terms &mdash; and modern designators too. In addition, it's true that more recently one "side" in the conflict has tended to prefer the traditional, longstanding designations, rather than the newer "West Bank." In this, the terms do not differ hugely from, say, "Derry" vs. "Londonderry," or "Republic of China" vs. "Taiwan." I note in the latter case that the Wikipedia article uses the terminology of the political entity in charge of the territory (the Republic of China), not the more common English designator "Taiwan," despite the fact that the Republic of China is not recognized as legitimate by the U.N.

Reliable sources dismissed
On the Talk: page discussions it was shown that, contrary to Meteormaker's assertions, there were many examples of modern English language sources using the terms, but MeteorMaker and his supporters disqualified almost all sources that contradicted their claims. They rejected out of hand any Israeli sources; the fact that the official Israeli government designation for the region was "Judea and Samaria" was apparently meaningless, and any English language sources published in Israel that used the terms were not, MeteorMaker claimed, valid indicators of their use in English.

However, the rejections quickly widened beyond this scope: if an American or British publication used the terms, but the author was born in/connected with Israel, then it was again not an example of English-language use. For example, David Weisburd's Jewish Settler Violence, published by Penn State Press was dismissed because "...Weisburd is also an Israeli, which makes [him] unusable as evidence of outside-Israel use of the toponym." This despite the fact that Weisburd was, at the time of publication, a professor at the Graduate School of Criminal Justice of Rutgers University, with degrees only from American universities. Similarly, Miriam Shaviv, born and raised in Canada and a citizen of the U.K. was dismissed as writing for "foreign publications" when she wrote for Britain's The Jewish Chronicle.

If sources couldn't be dismissed as being "Israeli" in some way, then they were dismissed because they used "West Bank" more often, used "settler language" or an "allusion to the historical past", "paraphrased" Israelis, or were referring to "Mandatory usage" or the "pre-1967 period" (both eras in the 20th century, despite the insistence that the terminology was "ancient" or "biblical"). Sources were also dismissed if the author was, in MeteorMaker's estimation, an "ardent anti-Muslim," or an official in the Zionist Organization of America and therefore using "Zionist-approved terminology", or, in the case of Abraham D. Sofaer, because he had committed the "faux pas" of belonging to a Zionist organization in his youth. If all that didn't work, then sources could be dismissed because, according to MeteorMaker, the source "[could]n't be evaluated due to restricted content", or was a dead link (to partisan source), despite the actual quotations being provided. It became apparent that there was little point in providing sources that contradicted MeteorMaker's theories, because there was always some rationale by which they could be dismissed.

Coda
Despite all this, and even when applying all of MeteorMaker's conditions, there are still sources that use the terms, e.g.

And a final bit of irony: a number of editors have been trying to portray the "Samaria"/"Judea" terminology as Israeli-only, or Israeli/Zionist/Jewish. Yet in several of the articles in question, the terminology was first added by a Muslim Palestinian (and native English speaker) who identifies his origins as being from Palestine.

Evidence presented by User:JoshuaZ
Ok. I was trying to stay out of this RfAr, but it looks like that's not going to happen. Here's my primary evidence. More may follow.

Bad faith by User:MeteorMaker
On December 19, 2008 MeteorMaker argued that an Australian newspaper using the term "Samaria" could not be verified since the link was dead.. This is exactly counter to what is stated in WP:V which is explicit that sources do not need to be online. User:Jayjg responded to Meteor that he had provided the quote and confirmed the source, and suggested, in the face of apparent bad faith or inability to understand basic policy, that MeteorMaker drop by a library to validate the source himself. After a two week period, Meteor removed the link as well as the content, with the edit summary "Rm dead link (to partisan source)". This act was both against basic policy and apparently in bad faith. A Spanish translation of the original newspaper article was then found hosted on the web and was used as a substitute for the Australian citation. It included, however, a footnote text that was not part of the original article. MeteorMaker inserted his translation of the hosted version's footnote insisting, despite Jayjg's statement that he had quoted the original exactly as it was written, that the addition in the Spanish version "was in all likelihood in the Australian original as well." Jayjg pointed Meteor to a google cache to further confirm the content of the original and reminded him of the library option and User:Elonka confirmed Jayjg's assertion as well. Meteor disregarded the statement and asked Elonka to verify whether the original English article included the text Jayjg has just told him was not included.. This behavior shows an incredible lack of good faith on Meteor's part in apparently assuming that when in doubt Jayjg had lied about the source's content. Moreover, this sort of repeated attempt to remove the source appears to be an example of tendentious editing rather than a good faith attempt to build a neutral encyclopedia. Meteor's apparent inability to bother looking at a source himself doesn't speak well of him in any interpretation of these events.

Evidence presented by User:Mackan79
Evidence is too long (1700+) --Tznkai (talk) 18:18, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I see most of my thoughts in talk, and I should clarify I have not been involved in this disagreement about naming. If ArbCom may look at the issue of “Jayjg and critics,” however, I’ll address two points. 1.) Any evaluation of civility in this area needs a much better grasp of the interaction than has often been shown by intervening administrators, especially regarding the issues that are seen as uncivil on either “side.” 2.) Any valid claim of “hounding” should show that there is not a good-faith content dispute, all the more so when the editors are experienced and adversarial so that random passers-by can’t correct the resulting problems.

The civility gap
One good example of the civility gap in this area is the discussion Sandahl raises where she intervened to block G-Dett for this comment. I raised this at the time, but it helps to read the underlying discussion. There, Jayjg had disparaged and removed material sourced only to Haaretz because it was a “small circulation paper”; G-Dett criticized this under WP:RS. Jayjg repeated the argument,   but then repeatedly denied having made the argument G-Dett and others addressed.  Jayjg continued to spar without explanation, until eventually stating that his claim was only about WP:Undue (a distinction irrelevant to any of the responses). The above links show Jayjg beginning to exclaim “Beer!" in response to G-Dett numerous times, and for that matter removing material with a facetious-at-best claim of consensus. Nevertheless, when G-Dett then left this comment Sandahl intervened to block G-Dett for “personal attacks or harassment.”

One issue with the tone in this area, including G-Dett's, is that it can be difficult for passing admins to immediately see what is happening. A good bureaucrat may have ignored Jayjg’s comments, or taken them to dispute resolution. However, some editors avoid dispute resolution not to evade it, but because they think Wikipedia should work through open discussion, and bureaucratic solutions often don't work. This is why I hope ArbCom will look for the root of these problems.

Policy gaming
Jayjg’s policy gaming may take additional reading to see, usually before an outside administrator arrives. Thankfully the issues aren’t complex. Here is one absurd and fairly recent admonishment from Jayjg that I should not address editor conduct. In fact Jayjg’s repeated reversions, and the material he was inserting, were issues in themselves; see the two exhaustions of his three reverts I'd referred to here and here.

Examined closer, the incident shows several of these problems. First, on October 19, Jayjg reverts into place a problematic sentence here and here that he'd just added to the article. User:CJCurrie shortly notes that Jayjg has violated 3RR, and Jayjg leaves. However, a week later User:Malcolm Schosha replaces the same sentence without comment, and when I remove it, Jayjg returns with his one two three more reverts. His only attempt at discussion had been this question, addressed, with no attempt to engage the discussion. I then raise this as a problem, and Jayjg states, obviously without any pretense of justification, that I should restrict my comments to content. In sum: Jayjg reverts without discussion, the material was clearly problematic, but Jayjg responds that editors should not address conduct.

This is fairly typical, but it also leads to the question: does Jayjg follow his own rules? Well, no. So in another discussion on New Antisemitism, Jayjg then shows that of course he has no problem addressing conduct himself. That editor had suggested that another focus on content, so you'd think that Jayjg must agree. Instead Jayjg responds that “Describing edits you disagree with as ‘trolling’ is a serious issue,” and a policy violation, and in line with this seriousness that “This is not an issue to be swept under the rug.” Perhaps Jayjg had changed his mind? The test comes when the editor Jay had just defended twice calls another editor’s comments “crap”; presumably then this must also be a serious issue of civility. But no, it turns out Jayjg is right back to admonishing only the editor who mildly objects, complete with links to WP:NPA, bold type and all: “Csloat, Comment on content, not on the contributor.”

I'll clarify: noting incivility in some places but not others is unavoidable. What's unusual is to sharply admonish editors for comments that are not even mildly inappropriate, while doing exactly what one says shouldn't be done. Another statement inconsistent with his own reverting is seen here. Editors may rely on policy, or even ignore it, but they shouldn't be demanding compliance with policies that they ignore. Jayjg's response when I raised this is here.

Wiki-hounding
I see several editors here accuse others of hounding. I'd simply note why a policy that prevented editors from commenting on related pages would not be helpful: this wouldn't serve anything, and would only encourage editors who are stymied on one page to keep moving to others.

As a final point I can’t help but recall one of my initial attempts to discuss sources with Jayjg, before I was familiar with Wikipedia. I'd pointed out that equating “Anti-Judaism” with “Religious antisemitism” was, according to many sources, incorrect. Jay gave a number of responses, including as it happens to raise the religion of the authors. I eventually gave up, basically upon realizing I was wasting my time; Jayjg's apparent belief that I’d be dissuaded by a threat to equate the term with “Christian antisemitism” pretty much said it all. This was two years ago, but I raise it to suggest that long-term adversarial editors versus less interested or less experienced editors doesn't produce the cooperation or compromise that Wikipedia strives for. Flawed though their interactions are, experienced editors like Jayjg and G-Dett are much likelier to do so. In my view an environment where Jayjg was called to task for gaming -- and accordingly where no valid reasons would remain for repeatedly engaging him -- would be better; just so we don't step backward.

Patent stonewalling with sources that say "Judea and Samaria"
Moved from talk page.--Tznkai (talk) 18:12, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

For those wondering how far anyone really argues that sources which state "Judea and Samaria" should categorically be discounted when discussing either term by itself, let me suggest that point four in this discussion is necessary reading. Having just read through it myself I do not see how Jayjg's approach can be defended.

The source under discussion, in which Jayjg claims that the reference is only to the Israeli administrative district and not to the historical geographic terms, states as follows:


 * Naming is rarely innocent; choice of place names carries meanings, forwards claims. To those who would trade land for peace, this is the “West Bank.” The military authorities who administer these lands, for whom they are mainly a troublesome job, call them “the territories“. To the religious nationalist settlers they are Judea and Samaria (Yehudah and Shomron in Hebrew), the historical core of the ancient Jewish nation.’ Roger Friedland, Richard D. Hecht. To Rule Jerusalem, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 152.

Jayjg's claim is absurd from the start. Substantively speaking, the source openly states that the reference is to the "historical core of the ancient Jewish nation," not a modern administrative district. Grammatically, the source speaks of the "West Bank" in the singular ("it is"), while speaking of "Judea and Samaria" in the plural ("they are"). Logically, the passage discusses claims forwarded by "religious nationalist settlers," as specifically contrasted with military authorities (who according to our sources adopted the name of the administrative district); no mention is given of any official government designation.

How does Jayjg argue his position?

Jayjg begins, "Their interview with the rabbi is about the phrase 'Judea and Samaria', this issue is about the term 'Samaria'". Therefore, the source is irrelevant. MeteorMaker responds asking Jayjg to source his recurring claim that "Judea and Samaria" ≠ "Judea" and "Samaria." Jayjg responds by asking MeteorMaker to source his claim that a reference to "Samaria" is a reference to "the Israeli administrative district 'Judea and Samaria'".   MeteorMaker clarifies this is not his claim, but notes that another source speaks of "Judea and Samaria" in the plural.  Jayjg states, "If you're not claiming he's actually referring to 'Judea and Samaria' when he refers to 'Samaria', then stop bringing examples of 'Judea and Samaria' when he is talking simply about Samaria."  MeteorMaker again asks why Jay believes the source is referring to the name of the administrative district.  MeteorMaker also notes that the source's use of the English conjunction "and" in its translation of the terms clarifies that it is not speaking of the singular administrative district. Jayjg responds "Nice try at reversing the onus of proof again," and repeats his demand of MeteorMaker to prove that "Samaria" means "Judea and Samaria."

There it is: Jayjg's argument is indeed that the term Samaria, when spoken in conjunction with Judea, can never any longer refer to Samaria. He simply can't admit that this is his proposition, since that would both require him to prove it and would undercut his entire claim that MeteorMaker is the one promoting a theory ("I have no hypothesis, I'm just disproving yours.". So ask him to explain and he refuses.  Ask him to support it and he responds by ordering others not to disprove it, but to actively prove the nonsensical invented claim that "Samaria" is itself "Judea and Samaria."  Reminded that other sources discuss the terms in the plural, and reminded that the present source translates the terms independently, Jayjg simply ignores and goes back to the initial unsupported and contradicted presumption.

I will say that arguments like this are exactly why some editors have at times, lacking other options, attempted to shame Jayjg into a real dialogue. Regardless, please someone explain to me how this is not transparent stonewalling and wikilawyering on Jayjg's part. Mackan79 (talk) 11:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Some progress has been made
After I intervened at the Judea article a concensus seems to have been reached and the article has been stable for around a month. I believe the discussion we had shows a willingness to resolve this issue from a number of parties (Canadian Monkey, MeteorMaker and G-Dett, others remaining absent) and a possible solution to be used on other articles.

Evidence presented by User:Brewcrewer
I'm somewhat of a moderate in the Judea and Samaria ("J&S") area. I have admitted to the superiority of West Bank vs. J&S. My issue is the original research-like jump that editors have taken, claiming that West Bank vs. J&S is the same as  "northern West Bank" vs. Samaria and "southern West Bank" vs. Judea. As Google search results show, "Judea" and "Samaria" are also far more commonly used English terms than "southern West Bank" or "northern West Bank":
 * "Judea" - 2,960,000
 * "southern West Bank" - 40,300
 * "Samaria" - 3,220,000
 * "northern West Bank" - 120,000

My comments and offers to compromise were met with WP:IDONTHEARTHAT, WP:WIKILAWYERING, strawman arguments, stonewalling, and incivility.

Tendentious argumentation
User:MeteorMaker (MM) claims that not all the "Samaria" ghits can be used because some are referring to other things, like a small incorporated community in Indiana. I pointed out that other "Samarias" don't necessarily take away from the notability of the term because the fact that other things are named after the original Samaria enhances the notability of the current Samaria.


 * I repeatedly explained my point: ,
 * MM responds with: WP:IDONTHEARTHAT, WP:WIKILAWYERING, and general stonewalling.
 * MM strawman argument:
 * Strawman argument by Nishidani -

Misrepresentations by User:MeteorMaker
Initially states that editors "don't have to be worried about the expungment of J&S from WP because there is Category:Judea and Samaria. Yet weeks later argues for its removal:

User:G-Dett incivility
G-Dett is a chronically uncivil editor: see evidence in the ARBPIA case, to which she was a party:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles/Evidence More recently she has focused on insulting Jayjg, but felt free to insult me too:
 * calling my comment "very weird"
 * calling my comment "stupid"
 * tells me to "learn how to read"
 * "You're having grammar difficulties again"
 * "wasting everyone's time with nonsense"
 * " screwball misunderstanding" and "bankrupt piece of wikilawyering"

Offers to compromise and responses

 * Throughout the Israeli Settlement talk page, I have made clear my willingness to come to a solution/compromise.
 * CanadianMonkey willing to compromise:
 * Nishidani refusal to compromise:
 * G-Dett refusal to compromise:
 * MM refusal to compromise (calling a proposal to compromise a "joke" and "outrageous"):

Misinterpretation of International Herald Tribune (IHT) article
An IHT article mentions "The area of the West Bank, known as northern Samaria, was inhabited by the tribe of Menashe, one of the 10 tribes of Israel that were forced into exile". Under the plain meaning of the sentence, the writer was referring to contemporary times. When it was inhabited by the tribe of Menashe, it wasn't known as Samaria, it was Samaria (and in any event it was called "Shomron" at the time). Additionally, a writer of a simple small article in a daily newspaper would not make a historical fine-point distinction like "known as" when referring to historical events. Thus, that that the writer was referring to current times is obvious. This was explained at the talk page:


 * G-Dett, in a combination of WP:IDONTHEARTHAT and WP:LAWYER, misinterprets the article and resorts to making these grammar machinations to change the article:
 * MM wikilawyers to get around IHT article:

Evidence presented by User:Khoikhoi
I haven't been following this issue, but I did block G-Dett last year for personal attacks on Jayjg, and have looked through the evidence and related articles. It appears that it is a content dispute between approximately two dozen editors, but most prominently Brewcrewer, Canadian Monkey, Jayjg, and NoCal100 on one side, and G-Dett, Nishidani, Pedrito, and MeteorMaker on the other. For some reason much of the evidence has focused almost exclusively on Jayjg, and a significant amount of that is entirely unrelated to this case, instead trying to paint him as some sort of pernicious influence on Wikipedia. Regarding Jayjg's impact on Wikipedia, I note that he has written 4 Featured Articles, 5 Good articles, a number of DYKs, and is currently working on what appears to be another Featured Article. By contrast, as far as I can tell, G-Dett, Nishidani, Pedrito, and MeteorMaker have a combined total of 0 FAs and 0 GAs. In addition, it appears that the editing of the four of them is restricted almost exclusively to edit-warring on I-P related articles. Make of that what you will. Khoikhoi 05:02, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

G-Dett plays a positive role in forging compromises at difficult pages
G-Dett is persistent in the pursuit of consistency in the application of Wiki's policies, and fearless in challenging editors and admins of all POVs to engage in self-reflection when they put forward internally contradictory arguments or those that contravene Wiki policies.

I use G-Dett as a "reality check"-er when I feel my heels digging in and need an honest assessment of whether my position is line with our policies or is merely a function of my POV. I did so most recently at Hummus, where G-Dett's intervention (see here) quickly led to the adoption of a new consensus that put an end to edit-warring and a nearly month-long deadlock at that page. G-Dett was also instrumental in forging a compromise at Palestinian people years ago when "pro-Israeli" editors would not accept that Palestinians be described as a nation in the introduction, whereas "pro-Palestinian" editors found it important to include and unobjectionable. G-Dett proposed we use people instead, and convinced me, among others, to accept the new compromise. Without her, the argument may have raged for many months more.

While Jayjg was involved in the edit wars characterizing both disputes, he did not participate in any way in forging or endorsing the consensus at both. Thus while the record shows that G-Dett has been instrumental in forging consensus, Jayjg's interventions have often stalled that process, largely because of what comes off as a selective interpretation of policy to serve his own ends and the stonewalling of his interlocutors when they raise real issues with his arguments.

G-Dett's 'civility' blocks and the appearance of silencing legitimate dissent

 * First block by who cited this diff. (See related talk page section here). As much as I have tried to understand what is uncivil against Sami in that post, it escapes me. Perhaps things like this were part of why FM was de-sysopped?


 * Second and third blocks by (See this for the first one and for the second here. Note both of these blocks are related to a long-term issue whereby Jayjg has repeatedly smeared  as a holocaust denier (something he has yet to apologize for), just as he has smeared  as a bigot this time around, and yet WP:CIVIL is wielded by Khoikhoi only against G-Dett.


 * Fourth block placed by for this diff. Note that Jayjg is yelling "Beer!" before each of his comments throughout this conversation. Is this good faith collaboration? For calling him on this (I'm sorry, but it is) idiocy, G-Dett gets blocked. Related talk page section here.

There are administrators and editors who hold Jayjg in an esteem so high it has interfered with their ability to objectively assess his actions or those of the few who dare to challenge him to abide by policy like everyone else. Indeed, two of the three admins responsible for G-Dett civility blocks, appeared here to cast further aspersions on her character. I wonder if they are oblivious to the impression that their interventions have created? Because frankly, it seems as though G-Dett is being unfairly singled out and held to a much higher standard of civility than any of her interlocutors.

One final note, it should be pointed out that G-Dett, unlike Jayjg or myself, has no emotional bone in this game. As she explains here, "'I'm always bemused when I'm described as 'pro-Palestinian,' because I have virtually no Palestinian orientation whatsoever; I'm as Western, American, and even Israeli in my intellectual and educational background as can be, and my politics are dead-boring centrist. I just happen to have no patience for word games and Orwellian nonsense, and that's enough to make you 'pro-Palestinian' on Wikipedia.'"

People, including and especially Jayjg, might want to reflect on that for a while. Perhaps adopting a different approach would be in everyone's best interests.

Checkuser issues
Re: the proposal by Kirill to revoke Jayjg's functionary status and access to checkuser tools. There is some evidence to indicate that Jayjg may have used checkuser inappropriately in the past. See [] for example. This happened early on in my own Wikipedia career and I did nothing to challenge the decision, but it left me with a deeply unsettling feeling ever since, knowing that I could be summarily blocked by someone who disagreed with my personal POV seemingly without any form of effective recourse.

Admins as role models
Further, for those who keep insisting that functionaries and admins are not role models, I'd like to point them to CAMERA Wikilobby campaign emails which mentioned Jayjg by name as an admin to emulate. Note that I'm not implying Jayjg was involved in the CAMERA group. I'm only pointing out that some editors, especially "pro-Israel" editors do in fact look up to Jayjg and do point to his editing as an example of how to edit successfully at Wikipedia, so it is important that he conduct himself in a fashion compliant with our core policies. I noted this in my own evidence subpage at the last I-P arbcomm case which I never posted into the evidence section there directly. Unfortunately, despite many attempts by editors to list Jayjg as a party to that case, all such efforts were reverted (examples:, , ), and Jayjg was on an extended wikibreak that preceded and coincided with those arbcomm proceedings (and the previous Apartheid case as well), making those of us who wanted to present evidence against him think twice, lest we be considered die-hard partisans of the "out to get Jayjg" team.

Evidence presented by Cla68
Just a few quick points:


 * As KhoiKhoi mentions, Jayjg is the primary editor on a good number of articles. Speaking of which, Nagle nominated one of those articles for deletion last July.  On Nagle's userpage, it states that he is the creator of Nagle's algorithm.  About a day later, Jayjg added a "notability" tag to the Nagle's algorithm article (see  to judge for yourself how good faith this edit was).  Yes, Jayjg was an administrator, checkuser, and oversight admin when he did this.  In case anyone asks, I mention Jayjg's administrator status because, presumably, editors entrusted with admin privileges, especially checkuser and oversight, are expected to behave in a manner that is generally beyond reproach.


 * As the evidence further up on this page shows, the hounding of several editors by other editors involved in this dispute has been ongoing for some time now. Here, for example, Jaakobou accuses G-Dett of sockpuppeting with flimsy evidence that falls apart rather quickly.


 * The evidence indicates that Jayjg and several other editors may be working in conjunction in an attempt to control POV in certain articles. In the past, the Committee has stated that proving off-wiki coordination is extremely difficult.  Conclusive evidence exists, however, that shows that in the past Jayjg has used off-wiki coordination to help control article content:   .  Notice that when Jayjg was confronted in the past about problematic behavior, he refused to acknowledge the feedback or engage in any self-reflection: , . Cla68 (talk) 07:22, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:Slrubenstein
I have not been involved in this dispute, but I have read some of the workshop, evidence and related Talk: page.

A preliminary remark: for the record, I consider this a content dispute. In this regard I personally prefer to use the word "Palestine." But to the point of the content dispute, I recognize that names themselves express points of view; names are seldom neutral, especially when the thing named is a subject or object of political conflict. Moreover, I think the resolution of the dispute is clear: simply follow NPOV, first, by agreeing that there is no "neutral" view (in this case, there is no "neutral" name), and second, by agreeing that neutrality is achieved by including all significant views, which in this case would be (1) to make clear in the lead of any article that the area may be refered to as West Bank, Judea and Samaria, or Palestine, and (2) in the body to use whichever name is used by the source that is being used.

Okay: on the Talk: page there are a great number of unsavory personal attacks and obfuscations which may well indicate the kinds of issues that have plagued this dispute. I decided to analyze one specific comment.

MeteorMaker claimed, in response to User:Khoikhoi's evidence, that [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/West_Bank_-_Judea_and_Samaria/Evidence&diff=prev&oldid=277417721 While this dispute has been going on, neither Jayjg or anybody else involved has had time to devote to writing FA-quality articles. Jayjg's refusal to let WP reflect total source consensus has cost the project countless productive hours, and potentially several FAs.] As regards the first sentence, as noted in other evidence, the conflict began on April 6, 2008. In addition to the article Jayjg currently has up for FA status, he also had FAs promoted on August 6, 2008, October 13, 2008, and November 15, 2008. His GAs were promoted on August 8, 2008, September 12, 2008, December 19, 2008, December 20, 2008, and January 4, 2009. All of his DYKs were written during this period.

As regards MeteorMaker's second sentence, I note the almost exclusive focus on Jayjg, despite the fact that his and Pedrito's changes have been opposed by at least 16 editors. In addition, I note a claim that, had it not been for Jayjg's actions, then MeteorMaker, Nishidani, Pedrito, and G-Dett could have been busy writing FAs. Nishidani and G-Dett have been editors since May 2006, MeteorMaker since September 2006, and Pedrito since October 2006. Looking through their edit histories, I have seen no inclination on their part to write any FAs, GAs, or DYKs, not before this dispute started, nor during it. In fact, as Khoikhoi has noted, their edit histories indicate that they have devoted themselves almost exclusively to warring over I-P related articles.

Finally, regarding the peculiar focus of a number of editors here on Jayjg, I have two points to make:
 * 1) Many editors opposed MeteorMaker and Pedrito's campaign to remove or deprecate the terms "Judea" and "Samaria". Perhaps Jayjg is being singled out because he was the one that provided the most sources opposing that campaign, and I have seen many other excuses given for doing so, but what I think is more likely is that a set of editors with longstanding grudges aginst Jayjg are using this case as a venue to air them. User:Cla68 and User:Mackan79 have been particularly obvious in this.
 * 2) I am familiar with Jayjg's editing over several years. While we have not always agreed, we have been able to work together constructively. The descriptions of him here do not match any of my experiences, nor any version of reality that I am familiar with.

The root of the problem
MeteorMaker used the phrase "used outside Israel" to mean "written by non-Israelis".  Jayjg understood it to mean something different as he explains here  and as is evident here . Therefore the rejection of examples based on whether the authors were Israelis appeared arbitrary to Jayjg, who was offended; and when he expressed this, MeteorMaker was in turn offended.

"Samaria" is not a synonym for "West Bank"
To delete "Samaria" because "West Bank" is more common is like ridding almost all Wikipedia articles of "New England", "Ottawa Valley" or "Western Canada" because "United States" and "Canada" are more common.

"The Glebe" is much rarer worldwide than "Ottawa"
"Ottawa", like "West Bank", is widely known. "The Glebe", like "Samaria", is meaningful locally, though perhaps vague. "The Glebe" has far fewer Google hits than Ottawa (357,000 versus 65,300,000); yet the articles Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church (Ottawa), St. Giles Presbyterian Church (Ottawa) and Glebe Community Centre describe them, colourfully, informatively and properly, as being in the Glebe neighbourhood. Reliable sources occasionally use "the Glebe" and "Samaria"; we can, too.

Nickhh made an analogy with "Dubya", but "Samaria" is a name with a long history, while "Dubya" is a recent, pejorative nickname. Nevertheless, don't comb Wikipedia changing "Dubya" to "George Bush", making "The Lee George Bush Mowen Show" etc.

Clarification

 * Clearing up misunderstandings: successes for everyone!


 * G-Dett originally stated, "Jay then starts demanding sources for exactly that verbal formulation" with 3 diffs, where Jayjg did not demand a specific verbal formulation. Jayjg later confirmed that he had not been insisting that the source had to use the exact same words.  G-Dett later refactored, striking out "exactly"  and later explained: apparently G-Dett's statement in evidence is not intended to assert that Jayjg was demanding a source containing a specific string of words.
 * MeteorMaker clarified that the quotation marks around "distasteful ethnic discrimination" were not intended to indicate an exact sequence of words.
 * MeteorMaker and Jayjg had been disputing over the phrase "not a modern toponym" . MeteorMaker has clarified this to "Samaria is not considered a modern toponym except in Israel", possibly clearing up a misunderstanding.
 * MeteorMaker used the phrase "West Bank" as a short-hand substitution for "Northern West Bank". Jayjg may not have understood this, or may have chosen to refuse to accept the use of such a short form, since blurring the distinction between the two tends to advance the position that the term "Samaria" is redundant.
 * Jayjg considers "Israeli" to be an ethnicity

Unwelcome statements about editors
It's best not to make remarks about editors unless factual, objective, neutrally stated and diff-ed.
 * Jayjg: "it is apparently impossible for you ... to do so."
 * Grace Note: "Egregious POV pusher"
 * MeteorMaker: "demonstrably false accusation"  (Here is the diff requested: )
 * Nishidani: " ... deliberately false and misleading information ... diff ... that this was what [username] himself was engaged in."  (We can't read minds. Please AGF. Unclear what diff is being specified by Nishidani. (this?Nishidani (talk) 23:07, 25 March 2009 (UTC))
 * G-Dett: "pro-Israel", "defensive crouch" (Scare quotes don't excuse labelling, in my opinion); "ubiquitous as the weather"  ; "repeatedly calling ... a liar and a bigot." "propaganda ploy"  "regards the policies, ... a set of pieces in a chess game to be mastered"
 * Scott MacDonald: "POV pushing", "articles distorted by him"
 * MeteorMaker: "deliberately assertion of false information in order to mislead" (quote without diff; no evidence for "deliberately") "This is one of Jayjg's more unorthodox positions: that the nationality of a writer changes with the nationality of the publisher."  (no evidence Jayjg said that)
 * G-Dett: "what Jay claimed they demonstrated, to wit, that the disputed terms were in wide use outside of Israel, and were widely accepted as neutral." (No evidence that he said that.) "lies" (discriminate can mean make distinctions between) "accused him sixteen times of being a liar, and a comparable number of times of being a bigot" "bad faith" "has in fact lied"  "extensive lying"
 * MeteorMaker: "...he claims, repeatedly, that I engage in "distasteful ethnic discrimination"" (With quotation marks. No evidence he used that exact phrase.) "By any definition of the word, [username] lied when he repeatedly accused me of "distasteful ethnic discrimination""  (No evidence of lying.  Assertion of direct quote. No evidence he said that.) "repeatedly accusing other users of ethnic discrimination"  (although no quotation marks that time, ironically in the same diff says "distorting what I say").
 * G-Dett: "tricked", "donning his Humpty Dumpty mask", "giant egg", "doesn't know what the idiomatic phrase 'what is today' means", "transgression", "shell game" , "editorial dishonesty"
 * G-Dett: "I understand that references to Stalinist/Orwellian political tyranny are simply a way for [username] to clear his throat (even if meaningful utterances don't always follow)" "systematic dishonesty"

Communication difficulties
There may be differences in style of communication – ultra-logical versus more intuitive – as well as differences in POV. Such differences can lead to frustrations on both sides.

A number of misunderstandings, as described here, seem to have occurred in the discussions leading up to this case.

The page Talk:Samaria/Discussion of sources is short on statements of what the editors are arguing about. Jayjg says "Again, I have no hypothesis, you do." yet I didn't see a statement by MeteorMaker as to what was being argued about. When having a debate, it's best to state clearly what is being debated. Another example: MeteorMaker said "All explicitly, unequivocally and undisputedly support one side" but did not specify (until I asked) the assertion or proposed action.

Complexities re MeteorMaker ban
Jayjg said MeteorMaker violated a previous agreement, but I think the agreement was only re the lead of the article. The banning admin admitted to a different error. 

Possible inconsistency by MeteorMaker
Re West Bank/Samaria, MeteorMaker seemed to insist on keeping the phrase "what is today", arguing it is not a pleonasm, but re Palestine deleted "what is currently called" , and "the area today referred to as" (edit summary "Tautology removed")
 * (MeteorMaker's refutation: )

Need to assume good faith

 * Come on! You can do it!


 * Jayjg says "deliberately". Able to mind-read?
 * Given a choice between assuming Jayjg considers "Israeli" an ethnicity and assuming good faith, MeteorMaker chooses the former.
 * Given a choice between assuming that Jayjg understood that "outside Israel" didn't mean place of publication and assuming good faith, MeteorMaker chooses the former. ("I assume ... " )
 * G-Dett: "fraudulent" "deliberate"
 * MeteorMaker: "not sincere"

Lack of carefulness with quotation marks
In spite of much discussion  about placing that very phrase in quotation marks, MeteorMaker again used quotation marks to mention a phrase which Jayjg didn't actually use. 
 * response by MeteorMaker

Conflict creation by User:Nishidani
I was planning to refrain from posting any evidence on the page, as I believed that this conflict could be resolved through less formal channels. It appears that I was wrong, and the problem is not a disagreement between the two sides, but a small number of editors. Especially, Nishidani seems to find a flaw in other editors' hard work and constructive edits (most recently mine), causing them to spend more time on needless arguments, and contribute less to the project.

Some editors in the Israel-related field may have noticed that recently I've been very busy doing maintenance edits for all Israeli localities, especially adding nikud (pronunciation marks), geographical coordinates and location maps which I created myself. It appears that Nishidani insists on finding conspiracy theories in my edits.
 * 1. Nishidani on pronunciation: You say you are adding pronunciation and pushpin maps to 'Israeli localities', and the first few are, indeed, in Israel, but Telem, Har Hebron is in the West Bank.
 * Just to clarify, 'first few' actually means the first several thousand, because we're talking about adding nikud to at least 3,000 different articles going by Hebrew alphabet, where the letter tav for Telem is the last letter.
 * 2. Nishidani on location maps: His response was to upload a map onto the Susya page (30/03/2009). Though his map image gives Susya as south of Hebron and, without words, within the boundaries of what an attentive reader knows to be the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank, as one runs the cursor over the map, a pop-up suggests to us the falsehood that 'Susya is located in Israel'.
 * Again, to clarify: I have added location maps to probably over 1,000 different articles before this one (and not 'in response' to anything, indeed I notified WP:ISRAEL about a related issue, where obviously missing infobox also missing that there's no location map). All of these maps say X is located in Israel, because of a minor technicality in the template, which I copied from the main one and didn't want to mess with too much. I have since fixed this error, but the automatic assumption of bad faith and the accusations are extremely worrying, as well as the attempt to politicize minor technical issues. For what it's worth, as of this writing, Nablus is also 'located in Israel' (I discouraged the use of this pushpin map for Palestinian localities a while ago, but it is used anyway, and was added by a Palestinian editor AFAIK).

-- Ynhockey (Talk) 22:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Update: Nishidani has apologized for the incident in #2, which is certainly a welcome step. However, the unnecessary conflict/drama creation seems to continue, even if Nishidani is possibly unaware of this himself. Recently I posted at WP:ANI about POVFORK creation by another user, an incident which did not involve Nishidani at all. Nishidani felt the need to comment on the issue, and while he is certainly not barred from doing so, Nishidani later clarified that the post was intended as a friendly note to the accused editor. It is therefore unclear why the post had to be at WP:ANI at all, and not on the user talk page, and why it has to be so long and dramatic. I am not sure that Nishidani realizes that any serious admin looking at the reports was forced to read this whole comment (a time they could spend writing articles!) only to realize in the end that it was an over-dramatic personal note. This is another example of an inappropriate ANI note (soapboxing), where Nishidani seems to be accusing the IDF of slaughter and running amok. In addition to that, Nishidani has engaged in wholly inappropriate soapboxing on the blocked user's page, including one offensive comment where he implicitly accuses all olim Wikipedians of ignorance (me being one of them, I guess), and some other accusations against Americans. I believe this comment to be borderline-racist (even if Nishidani didn't intend for it to be so), and certainly not necessary and creates drama on a page which at least one admin is currently monitoring because of the ANI. Talk pages on Wiki, which constitute almost 2/3 of Nishidani's edits, should be used to facilitate article improvements, not create conflicts. -- Ynhockey (Talk) 15:09, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Judea and Samaria is not even a mainstream Jewish or Zionist usage but a right-wing one
There is extensive material presented on problematic behaviour. However I think it needs clarifying that the terminology "Judea and Samaria" is not just a Zionist term but one used only by the right wing of Zionism. Using the search facilities of the oldest and most popular newspaper of Anglo-Jewry, the mainstream Jewish Chronicle reveals over 40 uses this year of "West Bank" to date this year.

Of the five references to "Judea" this year occurs in a piece satirising a far right group,  and  refer to the ancient Kingdom of Judea,  is an opinion piece by a Rabbi and  refers to an organisation name Young Judea. References to Samaria occur only in the first and fourth examples above.--Peter cohen (talk) 18:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Jayjg has been a party to multiple I/P arbitrations
has been a party to multiple arbitrations:
 * West Bank - Judea and Samaria (WBJS)
 * CharlotteWebb
 * Allegations_of_apartheid (eventually dismissed)
 * Israeli apartheid
 * Yuber
 * HistoryBuffEr and Jayjg (HBE & J)

Jayjg has been sanctioned in multiple I/P arbitrations
Jayjg has been sanctioned as a result of multiple arbitrations:
 * "reminded to avoid generating drama by making public proclamations of misbehavior before attempting private discussion and resolution of the issue" (CharlotteWebb)
 * "admonished not use [his] administrative tools without prior discussion and consensus, and to avoid using them so as to continue an editing dispute" (Israeli Apartheid)
 * "reminded to use mediation and other dispute resolution procedures sooner when conflicts occur" (Israeli Apartheid)
 * "reminded that edit-warring is harmful to Wikipedia's mission" (Yuber)
 * "advised to use Wikipedia's dispute resolution procedure in preference to attempting to control content through the use of reverts" (Y)
 * advised not to "remove any adequately referenced information from any article which relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" (HBE & J)
 * warned: "In the case of Jayjg, unblocking himself will be severely dealt with" (HBE & J)

Jayjg has avoided participation in the most recent arbitrations

 * WBJS: Jayjg is centrally involved. Jayjg submitted evidence on March 10, 2009, then made a minor edit and did not participate further in the arbitration - not on the evidence page, not on the workshop page. This contrasts sharply with the other parties to the arbitration. Further, he hasn't edited since April 8, 2009, almost 4 weeks ago.
 * Charlotte Webb: Jayjg was one of two central figures. Jayjg made no edits to the arbitration pages (though he may have privately communicated with the arbitrators). He stopped editing a month after the decision, and made no edits for 3 months, but there is no evidence that this hiatus is connected to the case, and the month gap between decision and break make this seem unlikely.
 * Allegations of Apartheid: Jayjg was central to this case, which was eventually dismissed. He made one statement (and revised it), a request to arbitrators not to accept the case, then disappeared from WP for three months, including the entire time the case remained active.

Jayjg participated in the earlier arbitrations.

Evidence presented by {your user name}
before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}
Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{Write your assertion here}
Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.