Talk:Ma'alot massacre

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This was the work of Arafat's PLO faction. To think...people actually mourned and shed tears when he died. If Osama Bin Laden died, would anyone feel remorse?

Contents 1 Names of children 2 NPOV? 3 Mode of children's deceasing 4 Sources 5 Provenance of students 6 Poisoning the well 7 WHy names? 8 DFLP view on massacre

[edit] Names of children

It seems to be the new Wikipedia standard around here; see Operation Days of Penitence Fatalities, for example. Jayjg 22:37, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You are justified in reverting my edit, then. However, I still believe that content adds nothing to the article. Deletionist 22:43, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, I didn't create it, I just moved it from an article in which it definitely didn't belong, the Ma'alot article. Jayjg 22:49, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV?

I have removed some of the extreme bias from this article. Can we not just stick to the facts and leave the interpretation to others?

1/ The PLO is an umbrella name for a group of quite separate entities. It did not control this group, and to link it to Arafat is simply POV. Yes, put it in, but mark it clearly as Israeli POV, not as a neutral statement. 2/ Do not repeatedly describe fighters in an asymmetric war as "terrorists". In the days before Ma'alot, Israel used phosphorus bombs against refugee camps. By using a more neutral word we don't pass judgment. By all means quote someone calling them "terrorists". It would not be wrong to include a quote from an official statement. I presume one was made. 3/ The facts of the killings are not known. The commandos stormed the school and the children died. That's what's known. Some on the Palestinian side claim the commandos were responsible for at least some of the deaths. We should not represent either side's view, just what is actually known.

I appeal to those who have a bias on this issue to take note of these points and consider them before mindlessly reverting this piece or any other connected with this whole issue. Yes, of course, the other side is worse than your side. Yes, of course, they are evil and you are good. But Wikipedia is not a good place for judgments. Just the facts, ma'am.Dr Zen 03:28, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Mode of children's deceasing

No one knows how the children died. Saying that they "were killed" implies strongly that someone did it on purpose. Saying that they "died" does not make any judgment. Please discuss this here before making edits. By the way, "affiliate to" is good English. It has more of a sense of subordinacy than "affiliate with". You'd think you would prefer it, jayjg.Dr Zen 23:21, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The children were killed by someone; they didn't die of natural causes or old age. Affiliate with is a vastly more common usage. I prefer good English and NPOV. And your suggesting that I bring my objections to Talk: first is rather baffling, considering you didn't bother to do so yourself before making far larger changes, including changing "killed" to "died". Jayjg 23:47, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Affiliate with might be more common where you are but not in the UK. In keeping with Wikipedia policy, I used the usage I am familiar with. I left a note on the talk page about why I had made changes. As is usual for a POV-pushing edit warrior, you didn't bother. You made a snide comment in the edit summary. No one knows how the children died, only that they died. I am removing the implication that they were purposely killed. Perhaps the commandos' stray bullets did for them. Perhaps the militants killed them. Source it or leave it.Dr Zen 00:32, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't read it as stating that they were purposely killed by the Palestinians. They were killed, and it could've been by the Palestinians, whether accidentally or deliberately, and it could've been by the Israelis. Using 'killed' doesn't imply a conclusion either way. Ambi 02:06, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fine. "Died" is impeccably neutral. "Killed" implies someone else was responsible. Compare "he died in a car crash" with "he was killed in a car crash". No one knows how the children died. But if you don't think so (regardless that you do not address my point or argue it in the same terms), then I'm outnumbered and the POV pusher will once again win the day. A fine service is done for the neutrality of Wikipedia.Dr Zen 02:15, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

First of all, "killed in a car crash" gets over 40,000 Google hits, just barely under the almost 43,000 that "died in a car crash" gets; also, "killed in a car accident" gets over 90,000 Google hits as compared to over 67,000 for "died in a car accident". Second, someone was responsible; they were killed, though the article doesn't lay the blame for the killings on anyone. Maybe it was a Mossad conspiracy; most killings these days are ascribed to them in certain quarters. Regardless, they were killed. If you're concerned about POV warriors I urge you to go to any article describing the number of Palestinians who have been killed in the current conflict, and change the word "killed" to "died". Then see how long it takes before your changes are reverted and you are described as a "Zionist bigot" who is trying to "whitewash Israeli crimes." I don't outnumber you, and I'm working for accuracy and NPOV here - I haven't objected to most of your edits, even the grammatically questionable ones (by the way, "affiliated with" gets over 5 million Google hits, "affiliated to" gets 734,000), and your protestations of NPOV are suspect given your one-sided application of that "NPOV" here and elsewhere. Jayjg 17:32, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I believe your edit history speaks for itself, Jayjg. I stumbled on this page purely by random. If I stumble on a list of Palestinians killed in the current conflict and see POV, I'll be sure to fix it. I don't take sides. I am working for NPOV. I try to implement the policy rather than use it as a means to attack others.

On the question of "affiliate to/with", might I direct you to the Webster's definition here, which you will note gives both affiliate to and affiliate with, although it connotes them differently from how I do (as I said, I'm English). I don't use Webster's but you can be certain that I prefer it as an authority on what's "questionable" in "grammar" to a popularity contest on google. Had I disputed that there were two usages, you might have a point, but I did not. What I did say is that I write UK English. Had you done your experiment on pages from the UK, you would have seen different results. Dr Zen 06:06, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's interesting that after making ad hominem comments to me on other pages you stumbled on this page out of the 400,000 Wikipedia pages "purely by random". The best way of not attacking others is to actually not attack them. Jayjg 10:57, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I just did a quick copy-edit of the page and have a question: The article says there are conflicting reports regarding how the children died. I can only find reports saying the Arabs detonated their grenades and shot the children. Does anyone know where the other reports can be found? They should probably be added as references. Slim 19:54, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

The BBC source you give says that the children died in the gunfight. It does not say the children were killed by the militants. The Wall Street Journal article is hardly unbiased. It's written by the vice PM of Israel! He's a leading light in Likud. Did you look through the site you linked to it on? I hope you don't think that that is in anyway an objective source of information! The web is crowded with blogs and reprints of the article you cite, which can all be sourced back to relatively few places, but sources from nearer the time are harder to find. What you describe as "reports" are far from it. This guy points out that those who remember the actual happenings remember the kids' dying in the rescue mission. Not too much in the way of eyewitness accounts either, for obvious reasons. You have to decide. Do you simply print what the deputy PM of Israel says as fact, or do you print what is known?

My belief is that encyclopaedias should print as facts the facts, so far as they are known, and not what one side or the other states the facts to be. Where the facts are not known, we should not say anything. When we print opinions, they should be clearly marked as such. Linking to the opinion of a hardcore Zionist such as Olmert as though he were writing an objective news report for the WSJ is not in my view meeting those standards. Your belief may differ. That is up to you. I accept that different editors have different goals for Wikipedia. Dr Zen 02:08, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cut out the ad hominem insinuations. The article currently states: "Reports vary as to the exact circumstances of the killings. In English, that means we (a) know of reports that say X happened; and (b know of reports that say Y happened. But I can only find reports that say X happened. I am therefore asking what the sentence "Reports vary as to the exact circumstances of the killings" refers to. The BBC report saying the children died in the gunfight does not say X or Y. It says nothing about how the children died. "In the gunfight" could mean anything. If we are going to say reports vary, we should link to the varying reports. I did not see the relevance of the Fourth International article you linked to. Quote from it if there is something relevant in there. Slim 03:05, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

I did not make an "ad hominem insinuation". I stated directly that your link did not in my view meet the standards I set out. I assume you placed it in good faith. Instead of attacking me for pointing out its inadequacy as it stands, you might acknowledge that it needs fixing. Stating that you link to a "Wall Street Journal article about the massacre" implies that you are linking to reportage. You are not. Reports do vary. Many "reports" say that the terrorists murdered the children. This is because most "reports" quote the same sources -- the same sources that insist, absent any evidence at all, that Arafat "ordered" the killings. Many other reports, generally those from news sources, state that they died or were killed, but give no details. The one you link to says they died in the gunfight. As you note, it could mean anything. Another, that I cited, says that the rescuers killed them. Is this not variance? I am failing to see your problem exactly. Are you saying that we should report what Olmert says as fact simply because less, erm, involved sources do not interpret the facts, which are thin?Dr Zen 03:25, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Certain terrorist coups, such as the raids and massacres of children at the towns Kiryat Shemona and Maalot show that the training has been horrifyingly successful. The PLO has neglected no aspect of training..." [2]. P.S. Constantly implying that your goals for Wikipedia are NPOV, while other editors have different goals for Wikipedia, is both false and ad hominem. Jayjg 03:30, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I fail to see what your comment was directed towards. Is it a thesis of some kind?

PS Perhaps you feel that stating that the students were murdered by the PLO despite the lack of any evidence that they were is, ahem, NPOV, but I believe that policy dictates that if you say so, you must say who says so. The Wall Street Journal does not say so, Ehud Olmert says so. Why object so strongly to my pointing that out? And I have not "implied" anything, Jayjg. I have said straight out that I believe you push a pro-Israeli POV on Wikipedia. Why do I believe that? Because you wish to put as a fact that the students were murdered by the PLO without recognising the provenance of the report that they were. The report is in fact the standpoint of the Israeli gov't. It may or may not be true. Dr Zen 03:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have not objected to pointing out that Ehud Olmert said it, I even linked to the article about him. However, he said it in the Wall Street Journal, why object so strongly to Slim's pointing that out? And please point out exactly where I have "pushed" the perspective that the students were murdered by the PLO. The PLO planned and executed the raid, and the students were killed. I have not stated that the PLO actually killed all of them. And by the way, Ehud Olmert is not the Israeli government. Jayjg 04:01, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Slim did not link to the WSJ article but I don't have a problem with saying that it's the WSJ article, because it is, obviously. Jayjg, I must point out that when you moved the article, it stated that the "terrorists" killed the students with grenades and firearms. You edited it again after moving it but did not fix that piece of POV. Only my fierce opposition to the POV version has got us to the far more neutral version that now exists and you have strenuously fought each change. Dr Zen 04:17, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If you had no problem saying it was a WSJ article, then why did you deliberately remove any reference to it as such? [3] And while I did move the article so that it followed the naming convention for Ma'alot, I didn't create it, and I didn't know exactly how they were killed, so I couldn't very well delete it, could I? That information was in the article since it was created a year ago by OneVoice, and not deleting stuff that I don't know to be false is hardly the same thing as "pushing" a perspective. As for my "strenuously" fighting each change, that's an outright falsehood. After your significant changes [4], I only objected to two small words, [5], both of which you were and still are wrong about, as my Googling above shows, yet I've left them there. Jayjg 04:43, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Provenance of students

Noam Chomsky says that the students kidnapped at Ma'alot were teenaged members of Gadna. Is he right? Simply stating that they were "students" rather implies that they were just members of the school who happened to be there. Of course, I'm not saying that their being part of a "paramilitary organisation" (especially when what we are talking about is something like Army cadets, if I understand correctly) makes them a legitimate target for military action -- Chomsky agrees that kidnapping them was a criminal act, which it was -- but if it is true it should be included. Dr Zen 03:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Poisoning the well

Sorry, but how is it poisoning the well to state that Olmert is the Israeli deputy PM? If you do not say that he is, he is just some guy with an opinion. This is not a news source, Jayjg. It is an opinion piece. It is right to say whose opinion it is. He has not had his opinion published in his capacity as a private citizen. He was not labelled as a Likud party man or anything like that, which would be PTW, but simply with his job title. If the comment were by Jack Straw, I would expect it to read "article by British foreign secretary Jack Straw" because unless you know that he's our foreign sec, the name means nothing. I'm reverting on that basis. If you will not accept this reasoning, and revert back to your masking of Olmert's position, then I will not contest the revert.Dr Zen 04:02, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the fact that he is deputy Prime Minister would make his opinion on this topic any different than if he were any other Israeli. More importantly, the link is right there, anyone can click on it. It is bad form to include a person's current political position beside every reference to him, as it becomes a logistical nightmare to maintain every article when the individual changes position. There's a reason we use links; in a few weeks or months he will no longer be Deputy Prime Minister, and we don't want to have to edit references to him in dozens of articles. Jayjg 04:34, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

He will always have been deputy PM when he wrote the article. I can understand why you do not wish the link to be as informative for the reader as it might be. I resent your suggesting it is "poisoning the well" though. The Wall Street Journal didn't just pick some guy off the street, did they?Dr Zen 04:48, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But he won't be deputy PM when people read this article. And please try to avoid ad hominem insinuations. Jayjg 04:53, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I am not insinuating anything. I am once more outright stating what I believe to be the case. In the Arafat article, SlimVirgin, to your acclamation, quoted some historian on the subject of Black September. He will not be a historian in 50 years, but you did not insist she remove the description of him as one. Why? Because the reason his opinion is included, apart from its coinciding with your own, is that he was a historian when he gave it. Mr Olmert's article was published *because* he is the deputy PM and we source it *because* of his position. We do not link to just anyone (although the links on the Arafat page are, well, let's just say, unpleasant -- I mean, for all that's holy, the Paul Revere Society!?!), and rightly so.Dr Zen 04:59, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"I can understand why you do not wish the link to be as informative for the reader as it might be." is clearly an insinuation. I'm tired of these kinds of comments, and your subsequent denials that you make them, and your constant claim that you are the only NPOV editor here, and that everyone else is (to use your term) a "POVista". Until you learn to use the Talk: pages in good faith, and stop making ad hominem comments and insinuations, I'm not going to subject myself to any more of your abuse. Jayjg 05:05, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You seem to be saying that, just because someone works for the Israeli government, he must both be a liar and know less about the matter than you do. Maybe you're right about the former. Who knows? But you're certainly wrong about the latter. As shitty a source as this man may be, he's a better source than YOU. Slim 05:10, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, Slim, maybe I wasn't clear. I have not actually said that Mr Olmert is a liar or that he knows less about anything than me. I do not know whether Mr Olmert is telling the truth about what happened. I do not know whether he even knows the truth.

What I did say was that we cannot state as factual what Mr Olmert says happened. This is largely because a/ he was not present and b/ he doesn't "work for" the Israeli government but is in fact part of it. This doesn't make him a neutral observer or anything like it. I presume you feel that he is a better source than me on this or any other subject connected with it because he is an involved party. I rather tend to believe that this is what makes him a very poor source. As for me, putting your nastiness to one side, I have never claimed to have any knowledge of the events at Ma'alot at all. I have absolutely no opinion on what happened beyond that there was a kidnapping, which is well attested, a rescue attempt, ditto, and after that, there were many dead children.

All I am saying is that we should only state as facts, facts; and where we state someone's opinion, we should clearly mark it. Just as with your rather contentious claims about Black September and Fatah, in fact. You did not simply state that Black September was Fatah. You stated that someone had said so. This is in keeping with the Wikipedia policy and I have no problem at all with that approach.

If you had written "Israeli deputy PM Ehud Olmert, who was not present at the massacre, says that the militants used grenades and firearms to kill the students", we would not be having this discussion.

The issue with Olmert is in any case that Jayjg does not wish it to be noted that he was a prominent member of the Israeli gov't when he made the statement you link to (in fact, he is a hardline Zionist member of Likud, famous mostly for his strong opposition to a one-state solution -- neither of which disqualifies him from having an opinion, that is not what I'm saying). Dr Zen 06:07, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Olmert was a member of the Knesset at the time of the attack, and is therefore in a position to know what happened because he would have had access (or, at least, would have had greater access than we have) to reports from the military and from pathologists. That doesn't mean he's telling the truth, but it does make him the nearest thing to a primary source that we've been able to find. I have therefore added that he is dep. PM and was a member of the Knesset when the massacre occurred. Slim 06:34, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

You have a touching faith in the workings of gov't. I doubt he had any access at all to such reports, because ordinary MPs generally do not in any parliament, and in fact he never claims to. He was not, I think, a member of the gov't at the time anyway, so he would have received all his information on the floor and it would have been as good or as bad as you might expect from that source. Consequently, I don't think it matters that he was a member of the Knesset at the time but I don't think it hurts to point it out. As it happens, even had he been the defence minister at the time, he would not be a reliable source! He is an involved party, and as I explained, unless he is making claims about his own involvement in a matter, anything he says must be treated with suspicion. If Arafat or Abu Nidal had had anything to say about the massacre, I would not want that reported as fact either!Dr Zen 06:53, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You seem to misunderstand how historians and journalists use information. There are primary sources and secondary sources. Primary sources are always better. It doesn't matter how reliable they are, because the historian, journalist (or encylopedist) is often not in a position to judge reliability. The question is whether the person has any direct involvement in the topic. At the moment, people who were members of the Knesset at the time are the closest we have found to people who had direct involvement. I am not saying it is ideal. I am saying it is the best thing we have found so far. As for quoting Arafat or anyone directly involved in planning the attack, I certainly would quote them. Slim 07:06, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

I understand very well that historians and journalists are different things, and use information differently. It's because I often work as one of the latter that I take great care not to mistake opinions for facts. I also understand that an opinion does not become any closer to being a fact simply because the person who holds it is a partisan. Olmert is not even a secondary source, because he does not cite anyone involved, nor make reference to them. He simply gives his opinion. I accept that it has some validity. If we were discussing whose opinion was worth reporting, I would be agreeing with you. Being a member of parliament, for the reasons I laid out, does not necessarily make you any better informed about the operations of the government of the day than anyone else, let alone make you privy to the details of military operations. Yes, I would quote Arafat too. Please read what I actually wrote. I said I would not report Arafat's views as factual.Dr Zen 07:38, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How do historians and journalists use information differently? Slim 07:41, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Are you joking?Dr Zen 23:12, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, I am not joking. You made a statement that historians and journalists use information differently. I did not understand the statement. Therefore, I am asking you to explain it. Slim 00:17, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] WHy names?

What's the point of including names in this article? Unless we include names of Palestinian and Iraqi casualties as well. Names have no place in an encyclopedia.

Which Palestinian and Iraqi casualties in the Ma'alot massacre are you referring to? As for names, there appear to be entire articles about Palestinian children who are notable only for having died in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: [6] Jayjg ^(talk) 14:45, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Names should always be included when known, whether of perpertrators or victims, of any encyclopaedic article Sherurcij ^{(talk) (bounties)} 02:30, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DFLP view on massacre

There's an interesting discussion on the massacre in the film Matzpen in which a DFLP leader suggests that the team of members involved in the massacre were acting outside of the control of the DFLP. --Duncan 14:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

german wikipedia says, it was a retaliation for an israeli napalm/phosphorous attack on a Palestinian refugee camp.--85.127.18.133 22:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)