Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Israeli apartheid (phrase)


 * Comments
 * Israeli Newspaper Haaretz on notability of term
 * Apartheid misses the point By Meron Benvenisti
 * Legality is in the eye of the beholder By Moshe Gorali
 * -- Bwithh 06:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I took the liberty to fix the titles of the articles. Note that both condemn this propaganda epithet, and please stop soapboxing here. ←Humus sapiens ну? 06:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Reply Humus sapiens, please don't hijack my edits and present a false impression of my intentions and the content of the articles . Those were direct quotations from the articles - hence the quotation marks, not "made up headlines" (isn't obvious that lengthy sentences are not headlines?). You're the one who is soapboxing by hijacking edits. I'm merely showing the notability of the term in the media. Yes, the first quotation is from an article criticizes/condemns the term while acknowledging that it is being widely used. The second article actually criticizes Israeli euphemisms. Here is the paragraph before the excerpt I originally used:"To handle the settlement controversy politically, legally and ethically, Israel has developed a unique word-laundering system. To avoid the value judgment connoted by "occupied territories" or "liberated territories," Israel invented the term "administered territories."]. The article then points out Israeli alternative phrases for "apartheid" as more examples of what the Israeli writer is calling "word-laundering". But the key thing is that both Haaretz articles cite the term as widely accepted, not whether they are for or against. My point is the notability of the phrase, not whether the term is wrong or right. And here is my original comment before it was hijacked, for the record:
 * Israeli Newspaper Haaretz on notability of term
 * "The use of the term apartheid and the comparison between Israel and South Africa under minority white rule are taking over public discourse."
 * "To describe a situation where two populations, in this case one Jewish and the other Arab, share the same territory but are governed by two separate legal systems, the international community customarily uses the term "apartheid."" Bwithh 06:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Gush Shalom : "An Eskimo in Bantustan" Uri Avnery, January 24, 2004 (in total, 180 articles in Gush Shalom in English concerning the term "apartheid"
 * 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban: here NGO Monitor explains
 * Al Jazeera
 * and "traitor" Mordechai Vanunu here
 * The term is common enough... But maybe something like Israel and human rights would be more appropriate? Tazmaniacs 10:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Note I have reformatted the above so that it won't have its own top-level section BigDT 11:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I've moved the above comments from the voting page to the talk page, which is where extended discussions belong. Pecher Talk 12:24, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

A little research and comment on Google searches
As some others have said during the course of this discussion (either on the article's talk page or here, or both) there is too much reliance on Google searches to "prove" the notability of a term. Google hits may be indicative of something, but I am not sure what, and the other question is, where do you draw the line? How many Google hits are "meaningful"? Just as a little experiment, I decided to plug various terms followed by "apartheid" into Google and see what happens. All of the phrases I put in were in quotation marks, for example "israeli apartheid," "islamic apartheid," etc. (I think the absence of quotation marks is what results in statements on the main AfD page that a certain search revealed millions of hits.)

Please be assured that by "testing" any particular term I did not mean a slur against that group, religion, or whatever. I just typed what popped into my head. So don't anybody be offended. It's just a little experiment.

Here are the results, which are grouped together in what seems like some logical order and in numerical order within the groups:


 * "israeli apartheid"         247,000
 * "american apartheid"         84,700  (note, "u.s. apartheid" got 2,250)
 * "arab apartheid"                334
 * "palestinian apartheid"         270
 * "indian apartheid"              117
 * "serbian apartheid"              37
 * "chinese apartheid"              23
 * "russian apartheid"               5
 * "bosnian apartheid"               1


 * "jewish apartheid"            2,010
 * "islamic apartheid"             735   (note, "muslim apartheid" got 458)
 * "christian apartheid"            24

And here is one I was surprised by because I thought I was making it up, but obviously I wasn't:


 * "sexual apartheid"            17,100   (apparently most refer to bias based on sexual orientation)

Now, what does all of this prove? I am not suggesting it proves anything, other than that you can find just about anything on the Web. So, where do you draw the line? "American apartheid" sure does get a lot of hits, so why isn't there a Wikipedia article about it? (At least, I did not find one.) I am not suggesting that there should be such an article, but does that mean that there is some "magic number" between 247,000 and 84,700? Or, does it mean that 247,000 hits, by themselves, do not justify a separate article? (Somewhere a lightbulb turns on of its own volition.)

Maybe Wikipedia should not aspire to be a reflection of the informational chaos of the Web, but rather an oasis from it. (Hey, that was pretty good, can I copyright that? Not if I post it here, I guess.  Oh well.)   6SJ7 00:30, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe because Israeli apartheid is around 3x more than American apartheid. Also, note that people use Google Test in addition to the Scholarly Article-test and notable person test. Desmond Tutu, presumably a first hand experiencer of apartheid has used the phrase. I think he would konw about apartheid. Copysan 01:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * No argument that Tutu knows about apartheid, but (with all due respect) what does he really know about Israel? Elizmr 01:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

To 6SJ7: see Global Apartheid, Sexual Apartheid and other Apartheids. Homey 01:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link. I find the author's introductory paragraphs interesting and correct, and his conclusion laughable.  What he is saying is, the use of this phrase is intellectually lazy except when he thinks it is applicable.  And then, by denigrating the use of the phrase for any purpose other than what he wants to use it for, his use of it as an epithet becomes that much more powerful.  I think a similar attitude went into the creation of the article we are talking about on this page.  Fortunately, some people can see through things like that.  6SJ7 03:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * "Dirty Jew"+ produces 57,700. Desperately need an article. ←Humus sapiens ну? 03:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I got a little curious on this number, so I decided to investigate. So, "Clean Jew" only produces 437 results, giving a ratio as large as 132. One could conclude that Jews have a bad reputation for hygiene, but Arabs have even worse, with a ratio of 13000/40=325. For comparison, Germans have 27200/578 = 47, Russians 13200/311 = 42, and the Japanese beat them all with an astonishing ratio of 15400/9720 = 1.6. It should however be noted that "clean japanese" + porn returned as many as 10500 hits.


 * The bottomline is, google test comparison is good, but it can not be used as a substitute for actual thinking. -- H eptor  talk 14:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Strong Keep
Strong keep: Serendipity (clicking the random article link) brought me to this article. Reading through it, I can't see any justification for it's deletion. The neutral point of view is admirabily adhered to, not least because the first line of the article concedes that the term "Israeli Apartheid" is contoversial to some. As for those who claim the article is original research; this is not so. Many scholarly articles by Zionists, Jews, Arabs or neither exist online and in print.

It is perhaps inevitable that any article on the Arab-Israeli politics will attract controversy. But what is important is that we do not react to the clamouring of one group or another - down this route lies the dangers of revisionism and the erosion of Wikipedia as a valuable source.

Wikipedia has rules. Let's simply stick to them.


 * Shouldn't this vote (by 82.37.180.176, added 12:26, 31 May 2006) be on the voting page? I did not want to move it out of concern that it was moved here for some reason I do not know about.  I was considering putting all of the "Google" discussions (which at this point is virtually this entire talk page) under one heading but then found this in the middle of everything and it doesn't seem to belong here.  Obviously I disagree with the vote but if it is a valid vote it should be counted.  If someone moves it, please feel free to remove this comment.  6SJ7 18:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The Google Barometer
Actually, if you take the quotes off from around "Israeli Apartheid" you end up with not 247,000 hits, but 6.5 million! Damning indeed! However, if we use the Google Barometer to determine relevancy for receiving a unique Wikipedia entry, then perhaps those advocating for the inclusion of an offensive political slogan as a legitimate encyclopedia entry might help create postings for the following high-hit-value phrases:

Arab Terrorist: 21,000,000 hits on Google Muslim Slavery: 8,600,000 hits on Google Islamic Fascism: 4,270,000 hits on Google

While this Google hit argument is presenting phrases that hit well beyond the million mark, it should also be noted that the phrase Arafat Homosexuality gets 144,000 hits on Google, and Jewish Obesity passes the million mark at 1,360,000 hits.

The question for Wikipedia is clear: Do your organizational principles have meaning or will you become nothing more than an Internet bulletin board that will allow vulgar polemisists to leverage your reputation for their own narrow political ends?

Jon Haber


 * I can't agree with you more. Pecher Talk 07:27, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but phrases need to have quotes around them becuase otherwise, they wouldn't be phrases! What you are presenting is simple word association. You might benefit from this link. It gives you the definition of a phrase. Please don't mischaracterize the debate. In addition, of course Arab and terrorist will be mentioned on the same web page in many articles, including legit news ones. Same goes for Musilm and slavery due to the fundamentalist's notorious treatment of women. Same will go for Islamic and Fascism. If you include the quotes around them, to make them phrases, you get: 153,000 for "Arab Terrorist", 1,710 for "Muslim Slavery", and 107,000 for "Islamic Fascism". Also note that we have an article on Islamofascism. Also note that the supporters don't ONLY go by the Google test, but the supporters also cite people like Desmond Tutu and various Israeli and Jewish magazines. Polemic phrase or not, it is still a notable phrase that is being used by both sides. Although one is using it pejoratively, and the other is attempting to undermine the phrase and remove its meaning. The question for YOU, Mr. Haber, is clear: Are you willing to let a phrase be discussed in a NPOV manner on Wikipedia, or would you rather suppress all knowledge of polemical phrases and hope to God that the world is a happy go lucky place? Copysan 09:47, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Copysan: The problem is that once and again Wikipedia has propven it is unable to enforce it's own WP:NPOV Policy. If it was there was an honset discussion on the terminology:


 * Who uses it ?
 * In what context ?
 * To promote what ?
 * what jsutifications they use to coin this ?
 * why are those justifications far from the truth ?
 * where they use it ? (on which web sites, demos etc..)

Instead, the existence of an "israeli parthide" is taken fro granted and there is a discussion betwen those who say it is so and it is not so. This is what wikipedia should be according to WP:Not Zeq 10:25, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * POV is fixed by changing an article, not by deleting it, unless it is so slanted towards the POV side it is inherently unfixable. The article is there, it just needs some knowledgeable editors to fix the issues. If an article is POV, and there is nobody willing to de-POV it, then slap a POV tag on it, and wait. NPOV requires the actions of many to dilute the actions of a few which may skew the article. The solution is not to delete because deletion removes all mention of the subject. I believe that some mention, even if it is biased, is better than no mention at all. Your questions are missing from the article? I see them all in there. Copysan 11:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * You are welcome to try and fix the article based on WP:NPOV this will only lead to endless edit war. almost no article on such subject in wikipedia is NPOV. some articles settle on a very biased description that most editors cling too cause any change open up the edit war again. (don't confuse that with NPOV ) Zeq 13:22, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The point of the initial comment in this section is that you can always generate zillions of Google hits for almost every conceivable two-word combination, but that's not a reason to create Wikipedia articles on such two-word combinations. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and using it to discuss a couple of words rather social and natural phenomena smacks of soapboxing and undermines the reputation of the entire project. Pecher Talk 13:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't understand your point here. Without quote marks you are indeed generating zillions of hits for two word combinations.  But, as was already noted the phrase itself, the actually meaningful search, occurs much more than similar phrases.  In addition, the article includes specific, and fairly notable, references to its use.  i.e. evidence that it is more than just 'a couple of words' and is infact a social phenomenon (in terms of being a phrase that is widely used, with political intent).  One might be tempted to conclude that the soapboxing is better represented by objecting to the discussion of a political phrase because of disagreements with that phrase's use/intent, i.e. a political, not an encyclopaedic objection --Coroebus 13:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: Google Barometer
I had feared that my use of Google search terms designed to maximize hit rates would be too obvious as a rhetorical device to make my original point on the "prominence" of the use of the phrase "Israel Apartheid" vs. other equally offensive terms. As it turns out, this device was too subtle for some.

If you are looking for a way to understand the origin and frequent use of this phrase, these Wikipedia entries on the propaganda technique of "Transfer" are more relevant than anything else that's been posted on this subject to date:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_%28propaganda%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analysis

The question on the table is whether Wikipedia a forum for propagandists on all sides of the Arab-Israeli issue (and other controversial political issues) or the online information source it claims to represent. The reason "Israel Apartheid" has made an appearance is not because it has reached a level of significance that now requires Wiki-encyclopedia-zation. It's because a group of partisans wish to leverage the reputation Wikipedia has built up over many years and many trials and put it behind their own narrow political interests, consequences for the Wikipedia movement be damned.

The goal of this element of the transfer propaganda effort is to be able to say: "Of course Israeli is an Apartheid state. Just look it up in Wikipedia!" Thus the work of thousands of people working millions of hours on research from all subjects A-Z becomes nothing more than a tool partisans use to lend legitimacy to a rhetorical attack that would never gain the same prominence if they simply put it on their own political web site.

I understand that you have a POV designation for such polemics, but for the average user who views Wikipedia as an encyclopedia rather than yet another online debate forum, you're running into a real problem. I've read many convincing criticisms and many eloquent defenses of the Wikipedia project, and I don't think there is any doubt that Wikipedia brings something to the table with regard to many areas of scholarship, giving experts in a wide variety of fields the ability to publish their high-quality work for all to see.

However, in areas regarding political controversy, it's not clear that Wikipedia has risen above the level of the old UseNet debate forums, with the added "benefit" of allowing people to delete and edit each others work. Someone pointed out how much effort it takes to keep entries on "Hamas" (and, I would expect most other entries on the Middle East conflict) sane. Perhaps you should consider taking these subjects out from under the general Wikipedia umbrella, placing them in a location that wears a prominent warning label, and admitting that the Wikipedia process – while working wonderfully on many subjects, is not useful when dealing with issues of political controversy beyond giving partisans one more place to practice their propaganda techniques.

The reputation of Wikipedia is too valuable to sacrifice on the alert of anti-Israel agitation. The choice is yours whether you want the entire project to be tainted by examples such as this one.

Jon Haber


 * They look it up on Wikipedia, then read a NPOV article, and they learn about the phrase, its origins and other pertinent information. Last I checked this is the point of Wikipedia. People can point to Wikipedia all they want, but they also need to understand that Wikipedia is a tertiary source, like all encyclopedias. They are only meant to be guides to information, not the end all and be all of information. The only thing political articles need is constant vigilance by parties on both sides and on no side. To push it off into some protected zone where only a few can edit smacks of elitism, raises possibility of POV, and will only serve to destroy the characteristic speed that part of what makes Wikipedia. In addition, I find it ironic that you argue for NPOV but only against "anti-Israel agitation". Maybe you haven't read the policy, but NPOV includes all notable viewpoints, including "anti-Israel agitation", anti-Palestinian "agitation", pro-Israel "agitation", anti-Israel "agitation", disinvolvement "agitation", among others. Copysan 17:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Very well said, Jon Haber. I have been thinking very similar thoughts recently, specifically that at this time in its life, the Wikipedia "philosophy" cannot really handle articles that are highly controversial, because it just turns into a war.  And you are correct about people using Wikipedia as an encyclopedia rather than a debate forum; regardless of whether they should be, they are.  Media attention has caused many people to think of Wikipedia as a valid source of information; hopefully people also pay attention to the media reports about Wikipedia being used to perpetrate hoaxes, but that does not even address situations like this article, which will get no media attention but nevertheless stand in the way of Wikipedia being a reputable encyclopedia.  The fact is that many non-controversial articles can be used for research if appropriate caution is used.  Just to pick two out of the air, Douglas Adams, which my son actually did use as a source for a paper for school after I looked at the article, and those on Adams' works, and found they were of "research quality", and Stump Merrill, an article I created (though not very well, and it has been much improved by others, with only one little bit of semi-vandalism along the way).  And even if not used for formal research, many of the articles are very interesting and can be used to expand one's knowledge.  As a history buff, one who generally knows about the broad sweep of history without knowing many of the details, I have learned a great deal of detail from Wikipedia... while always keeping in mind that if a particular historical subject is controversial, I may not be getting the true story.  It is the controversial articles that present the problem.  Wikipedia still needs to figure out how to deal with these, and one way may be not to deal with them at all, which would be a shame; or to deal with them by permitting POV forks as Wikinfo does, though that is not a great solution either.  What is clear is that, whether by its own actions or those of the media, or both, Wikipedia has been pushed out onto the stage of public attention, before it was "ready for its  close-up."  6SJ7 19:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)