Talk:Israel–Hamas war

Requested move 15 October 2023

Template:RM protected

2023 Israel–Hamas war → 2023 Gaza–Israel war – This page should move back to a descriptive title both consistent with the WP:NCE guidelines and consistent, per WP:CONSISTENT, with Wikipedia's huge existing body of content on the Gaza–Israel conflict. In the rapidly evolving news, both "Gaza–Israel" (e.g. [1], [2], [3]) and "Israel–Hamas" are clearly extant variants. In this context it is reasonable for Wikipedia to refer back to its own naming policies, such as WP:NCE and WP:CONSISTENT, in making a choice. Speaking to WP:NCE, the guidelines call for the title to be composed of "when, where, what", and, in line with this, "Gaza–Israel" is a "where", while, by contrast, "Israel–Hamas" is not a "where" at all, but a hybridized "place–participant", and so lacks internal consistency, let alone functional adherence to WP:NCE. In terms of the naming discussion that brought us here, it is worth noting that in that discussion there was a considerable voting preference for "Gaza–Israel", but the RM went in a different direction that was less consistent with WP:NCE or consistent, per WP:CONSISTENT, with Wikipedia's existing content on the topic - unlike the prior title of "October 2023 Gaza–Israel conflict", which was consistent. There was also a second, snow-closed RM that presented no new arguments and was snow-closed for the obvious reason that it was one-sided in its proposed "where"/geography. See my vote below for further considerations excluded here for brevity. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:00, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support: Comment: Beyond the consistency points raised above, another point that was inadequately incorporated into the closure of the previous successful RM is that the use of "Hamas" alone in the title is, from an encyclopedic perspective, simply inaccurate and imprecise. Whatever the news headlines state, the actual description of events in the news makes plain that the incursion into Israel was undertaken by multiple militant groups, including the PIJ (another major group), and possibly others, so "Hamas" alone is simply not accurate, let alone precise. Another problem with the reference to just "Hamas" in the title is the way in which it lends credence to the simplistic and mildly propagandistic characterization of all Gaza as "Hamas". This is an issue that has only grown as the conflict has progressed and clearly all of Gaza has become embroiled in it; it is now clearly not just Hamas that is feeling the brunt of this conflict on the Palestinian side, but all of Gaza, by virtue of the transparent and roundly acknowledged collective punishment that is currently at work in Gaza. To continue to use only "Hamas" in the title of this page is to pander to the Israeli-US-Western narrative that this is still some sort of targeted and rational military operation that has not drawn 2 million people into its crosshairs. Note that the child article October 2023 Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip does not refer to a "blockade of Hamas", or the "Hamas Strip", because this is not the scope, and these are not the terms. The notion that this war is limited to "Hamas" and has not broadened to all of Gaza at this point seems frankly silly, and again, headlines aside, simple unencyclopedic. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:00, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  is it allowed for the person who suggested to support his own nomination? i mean nominating it counts as a support vote and you don't have to write it again Abo Yemen✉ 15:09, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  WP:RMCOMMENT says not to do this for RM's. It is customary in other types of discussion where nominations are required to be neutral. SilverLocust 💬 23:40, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  I struck the "support" and changed it to "comment". Let me know if anyone oppose what I did. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 02:34, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support - Israel is bombarding Gaza, it is preparing to launch a ground invasion of Gaza, Israel has cut off the electricity and water supply to Gaza, half of the population of Gaza has been displaced, over 2,000 non-Hamas civilians of Gaza have been killed. This framing of Israel is only at war with Hamas is as POV as you can get, it is pushing the Israeli propaganda line that they are only targeting Hamas. Nearly every descriptive title for a war has the territories. eg Russo-Ukrainian War, or 2006 Lebanon War, or ... . nableezy - 15:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  As far as the claim that no source worth noting uses Israel-Gaza War, ahem. nableezy - 18:35, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  Please note that international media is referring to the war as the Israel-Hamas war.

  Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, CNBC, Al Jazeera, NBC... etc.

  https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-news-hamas-war-10-17-23/index.html

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/photos-israel-hamas-war/

  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna120978

  https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/18/israel-hamas-war-gaza-live-updates-latest-news.html

  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/17/israel-hamas-war-live-anger-after-israeli-strike-kills-500-in-hospital

  I have included mainly English language sources since we are dealing with an English language article. Homerethegreat (talk) 13:06, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  The WaPo link you linked to is entitled "In photos: Scenes from the Israel-Gaza war." Also, just look at WaPo's front page, www.washingtonpost.com, and you see it's called "Israel-Gaza war" at the top. Same at WaPo's live update page.

  Al Jazeera also calls it "Israel-Gaza war" at the top of their homepage, www.aljazeera.com. It's still "Israel-Gaza war" for the top navlinks on their live update page, but the title of their live update page is "Israel-Hamas war". At best, Al Jazeera uses both (although I still give the nav link more weight than the headline, when it comes to common name and recognizability).

  NBC and CNBC are the same company, they should only count once.

  CNN, WaPo, Al Jazeera, NBC and many others, have been linked to, discussed, and categorized in depth here already. I agree with you that more int'l media use Israel-Hamas than Israel-Gaza (and I posted links showing that in my vote below), but these links you've linked don't all say what you said they say, and it's important that editors are very careful and accurate in representing sources in this topic area, so that other editors don't have to waste time fact-checking links. Levivich (talk) 16:43, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Ding. Also, while I disagree with your vote, I agree there is more usage of Israel-Hamas. But I dont think that usage is so much more that it makes it the common name, I think both names are commonly used. And when there is not a single common name we are obliged to consider neutrality as well as commonality. And here I think the balance of those two ends on the side of Israel-Gaza. nableezy - 17:00, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  ...and while I disagree with your vote, I agree that both names are commonly used, and as we both know (but maybe not all the editors voting here know), it's not just about what "the most common name is," there are other aspects of WP:CRITERIA than just recognizability (the common name), a point that WP:COMMONNAME makes in some detail in its opening paragraphs ("Editors should also consider all five of the criteria for article titles outlined above."). So even if one or the other were "the" common name, that would not be dispositive, and I think pretty much everyone can agree that int'l media are using both names -- indeed, as we've seen in some of these links, some outlets literally put both names on the same page.

  BTW preemptive hats off to whomever closes this discussion :-) Levivich (talk) 17:35, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. WP:NPOV phrasing. Israel is a political entity. Hamas is the political entity governing the Gaza Strip. Loksmythe (talk) 15:11, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

• No, the Israeli government is a political entity, Israel is a country. Hamas is the government of territory known as Gaza. You dont have IDF-Hamas war either, your argument here is nonsensical. nableezy - 15:12, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  I almost brought up that IDF–Hamas would be the like-for-like equivalent, but dropped it, again for brevity. But yes, Israel is a territory, like Gaza, the IDF, like Hamas, is doing the fighting. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:56, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support It is high time. Hamas is just one of the groups fighting. It is true that it rules Gaza. But Israel's problem is originally with the Palestinians as a whole because of the political impasse. Most Palestinians killed are not affiliated with Hamas.--Dl.thinker (talk) 15:20, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support. It was completely wrong for the article to be called the "Israel-Hamas war" in the first place. It's not just Hamas fighting Israel and that is abundantly clear, especially now that Israel is making incursions into Gaza, a place in which not every single man, woman, and child is a fighter for Hamas. HadesTTW (he/him • talk) 16:02, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support — Per what nableezy and Iskandar323 said. FunLater (talk) 16:12, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support: Israel is the country, not the government in charge of the country that is fighting the war. The Russia-Ukraine war for example is not Putin-Zelensky war. RPI2026F1 (talk) 16:56, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Reliable sources are overwhelming that this is a war between Israel and Hamas. I would favor "Hamas-Israel War" (reversing the order), due to the nature of how it began, however for the purposes of this discussion I support leaving the title alone. Coretheapple (talk) 16:59, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, per WP:COMMONNAME. Searching for news articles from the past hour I find 19 articles using "Israel-Hamas war" or similar, including the New York Times, The Guardian, and Vanity Fair. For "Israel-Gaza war" or similar I find just four, and none from any sources worth noting.

At the moment, this descriptive title is also the WP:COMMONNAME, and I'm not seeing any sufficiently strong justifications for ignoring the common name. BilledMammal (talk) 17:19, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support: Normally we put 2023 Israel–Palestine war, but the title 2023 Israel–Hamas war is not appropriate compared to 2023 Israel–Gaza war. --Fayçal.09 (talk) 17:34, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose due to the common name argument listed above. KD0710 (talk) 17:38, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support per comments above. —Stewpot 17:43, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Per BilledMammal - The term "Israel-Hamas war" is more frequently used in recent news articles, as evidenced by 19 articles from top tier, reputable sources like the New York Times, The Guardian, and Vanity Fair. In contrast, the term "Israel-Gaza war" appears in only four articles from less notable sources. Given this, the term "Israel-Hamas war" not only serves as a descriptive title but also aligns with our policy and I see no compelling reasons to deviate from using the common name at this time. Marokwitz (talk) 17:48, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support I find the "geographical argument" persuasive and it is in line with our previous namings. It is a bit rich to imply by article title that the war is solely with Hamas at the same time as killing thousands of Palestinian Gazans along with the extensive destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure. Selfstudier (talk) 18:04, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per my comments on the aforementioned snow-closed RM, which for reference I quote below:

[Oppose] on two accounts: that (1) throughout the course of events Hamas is the primary actor in the majority of attacks, with other militant groups playing a supportive role, and (2) Hamas being the only belligerent named as the enemy belligerent in most sources' descriptions of the Israeli declaration of war, e.g. [4] [5]. This would not be the first military conflict on Wikipedia after only the two major parties of several involved (e.g. Russo-Georgian War not including unrecognised states South Ossetia or Abkhazia, or the Iran-Iraq War not including the variety of militant groups of various nationalities), and it would not be unreasonable to follow that convention rather than incorrectly imply that, for example, Palestinian Islamic Jihad had anywhere near as much authority or influence over the attacks as Hamas.

The argument applies in the exact same way for the exact same reasons now, among which are arguments for its consistency with other wars named in a similar manner. A "geographical" descriptor identifying Gaza has its own issues: a Lebanese and Syrian front is also active and there are ongoing events in the West Bank. And above all that, there is BilledMammal's WP:COMMONNAME argument above, which serves as an ideal tiebreaker for all of the descriptive titles on offer which, by necessity, all fail to completely describe the war. Benjitheijneb (talk) 18:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per BilledMammal. Pg 6475 ^TM 18:14, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support as supporters' comments are more convincing.--Ameen Akbar (talk) 18:16, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. A new move request every day? The three cherry-picked sources cited by the proposer not withstanding, the majority of reliable sources use "Israel-Hamas", i.e., WP:COMMONNAME applies. In addition to the sources mentioned by BilledMammal, there's also AlJazeera, CNN, CNBC, Reuters, NBC, NPR, WSJ, Foreign Policy. WP:CRITERIA for article titles says that the five characteristics are goals, not rules. Consistency with other article titles takes a back seat to common name (recognizability), naturalness, precision, and concision. Space4Time3Continuum2x (cowabunga) 18:33, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support as Hamas gets less and less focus on the war, with the attacks primarily targeting Gaza. Hansen Sebastian^Talk 19:01, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support Aside from it being a weird mix of actor and place, the original title may have made sense initially, but Israel is now bombing and preparing to invade Gaza- not Hamas.. Zellfire999 (talk) 20:00, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Comment, this might not be very helpful, but i do not think either one is necessarily an better or worse. the status quo appears to me to be just as good as this suggested move.Iljhgtn (talk) 20:25, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Israel and Hamas are at war. Israel is not at war with Gaza. Major English language newspapers call it the "Israel-Hamas" war.—Finell 21:33, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME as the vast majority of sources are referring to it as the Israel Gaza war in order to distinguish this separate, declared, war from the conflict at large. This is far simpler for both editors and users. Also, there is the technical matter of Gaza as an entity; I do not support any change but if there was one I would think it should be some form of 2023 Israel War in Gaza. Lenny Marks (talk) 22:52, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support For same reasons as other supporters above. VSatire (talk) 23:24, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Let's follow reliable sources, see WP:COMMONNAME. Infinity Knight (talk)
• Oppose Israel is at war with the terrorist organization, not the strip of land the terrorist organization is de facto in charge of. Reliable sources seem to characterize it as Israel-Hamas, so WP:COMMONNAME applies. Zaathras (talk) 23:43, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  Reliable sources also refer to it as Israel-Gaza War. Example Washington Post, BBC, ABC (Australia), The Times (UK), The Times of Israel (!) nableezy - 00:04, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Strongly support. As said earlier, the war is mainly centered in and around Gaza, and “hamas” is not the only war party, all palestinian resistance factions and paramilitaries are in this war. The current title neither specify where the war is exactly and ignores all other major palestinian paramilitary groups in this war. I don’t see why it should be any different or exceptional from 2014 Gaza War Stephan rostie (talk) 00:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Move to Israel–Hamas war, which already redirects here, per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:COMMONNAME. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:47, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, per WP:COMMONNAME. Also, "Israel-Gaza" would be misleading because the war is already happening in a number of other areas, such as North of Israel, West Bank, etc. - see 2023_Israel–Hamas_war#Outside_Israel_and_the_Gaza_Strip. My very best wishes (talk) 01:29, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  If you mean the exchanges with Hezbollah in the north then yes, that is another reason why "Hamas" is ridiculous in the title, since again, it's scope is far broader. But it is centred on Gaza. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:28, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. The involvement of other Palestinian factions is trivial and opportunistic, and the war is taking place now because Hamas chose to launch an aggressive campaign of genocidal antisemitic butchery. Cullen328 (talk) 01:51, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Cullen328: I would suggest that the involvement of Palestinian Islamic Jihad is not trivial at all. This is a group that Israel is almost as equally fixated on as Hamas - all of the incursions into Jenin in the past year or so have been to root out the PIJ. It's grossly simplistic to ignore all of this in a descriptive title, in addition to being patently imprecise. As one editor quizzed earlier, how is this different from an other Gaza war in terms of its actors? The answer is, it's not. Hamas is always a large component of any engagement between Israel and militant groups in Gaza, but not a single one of the previous Gaza war titles go down this pigeonholing route. It's inconsistent. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:34, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose as per WP:COMMONNAME. The war has been called by various media outlets such as CNN, Reuters, Axios, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, etc. as the "Israel-Hamas war". --WellThisIsTheReaper ^Grim 03:22, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per Cullen. Andre🚐 03:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose for now per WP:COMMONNAME. The common name might change in the future, as the role of other Palestinian groups becomes clearer. I'd also note that the word 'Israel' in the title does not refer to the place in which the fighting is occurring, but to one of the polities engaged in hostilities. Riposte97 (talk) 03:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose for now per common name, which was evaluated in the last discussion and hasn't changed (see my comment in the last move request). I'll just bring up another source which was never brought up before in this discussion or the last: Le Monde, a major newspaper of record, which uses "Israel-Hamas" too. Also, we want people to see this article, and recognizability and naturalness are WP:CRITERIA too (The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for); look at which search term is most-used to refer to this conflict: Google Trends; people search for "Israel-Hamas" 10-times more than they search for "Gaza-Israel". I also disagree with the consistency argument; that's a high priority for articles that are part of a series (e.g. "Accession of Turkey to the EU", "Accession of Serbia to the EU"), but is a lower priority for articles that are merely about topics of the same nature; WP:NCE, brought up above, also says to priorise the common name. DFlhb (talk) 08:15, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose The war as stated is not against Gaza but against Hamas. In similar context, when the US fought ISIS in Syria, it fought ISIS not Syria. Furthermore Hamas operates in other locations, not just Gaza. Israel is fighting Hamas mostly in Gaza but also in other locations. Therefore it seems that the name Israel-Hamas war is most fitting. It also appears to be the name used most in the media, by the Guardian, New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN and more. I'll include a few links for proof.

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-conflict

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-news-hamas-war-10-16-23/index.html Homerethegreat (talk) 08:19, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support per Nableezy and Iskandar323. Skitash (talk) 10:09, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Gaza City is about to be wiped off the map; regardless of what Israel claims, this is not just a war against Hamas. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 12:01, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support per above Idiosincrático (talk) 12:37, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support, the WP:COMMONNAME is pure propaganda and just straight up false as outlined above. At some point we have to recognize that and go with the encyclopedic name. 2023 Israel-Gaza war would be better though. At some point we also have to consider 2023 Israel–Palestine war/2023 Palestine–Israel war as there have been killings of Palestinians in the West Bank by the IDF. eduardog3000 (talk) 13:42, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

References

@WillowCity's comment below is also really good. I'm backing it up as an EC user. eduardog3000 (talk) 17:01, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Just noting that I have removed that comment per WP:ARBECR, along with all the other ones. Levivich (talk) 17:22, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

The comment in question. I completely agree with it:

The WP:COMMONNAME argument is a red herring. The actual policy provides:

"...Neutrality is also considered; see § Neutrality in article titles, below. Article titles should be neither vulgar (unless unavoidable) nor pedantic. When there are multiple names for a subject, all of which are fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others."

Per the above, "Israel-Gaza War" is in common use. The current name has problems as outlined above. The current title is also pedantic, being based on the formalistic argument that "well, Israel says it's at war with Hamas". eduardog3000 (talk) 18:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Worth noting that sources that have switched to using Gaza instead of Hamas are all using the form Israel-Gaza, not Gaza-Israel, so 2023 Israel-Gaza war. eduardog3000 (talk) 17:11, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support per the comments made by Iskandar323 - Amtoastintolerant (talk) 13:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose: Happy with the current title per various reasons given above by other users.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 14:34, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose The current title is preferred by a broad spectrum of English-language sources – Aljazeera, NYT, Guardian, Financial Times, South China Morning Post. --Andreas JN466 14:39, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose this war is no longer in Gaza. Hamas militants can be found in other places other than Gaza Abo Yemen✉ 15:07, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Per the OP, is in line with WP:NCE guidelines and consistent, per WP:CONSISTENT, with WP large body of content on the Gaza–Israel conflict. Also, from a WP:COMMONSENSE perspective, most of the non-Israeli deaths are of Gaza residents, and Israel is apparently about to "invade" Gaza and has requested that half the population of Gaza leave Gaza. Aszx5000 (talk) 15:54, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose "Gaza-Israel" because it seems nobody uses that... it's "Israel-Hamas" or "Israel-Gaza," but never "Gaza-Israel," at least not that I've seen (including the links in the OP), unless I've missed something. I hope the closer pays attention to the number of editors who are supporting "Gaza-Israel war" while pointing to sources that say "Israel-Gaza war"...

  Oppose "Israel-Gaza war" because "Israel-Hamas" seems to be the more common name as compared with "Israel-Gaza," although that might change in the future: "Israel-Hamas" in AP, Reuters, NYT, WSJ, CNN, Independent, Guardian, Times of India, The Hindu, Japan Times, News.com.au; "Israel-Gaza" in BBC, WaPo, Times (UK), Al Jazeera; some like South China Morning Post use both (example, example). Based on this, "Israel-Hamas." I'd change my mind if/when the RS change the name. Levivich (talk) 17:13, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose: a vote was held on this topic a few days ago and was almost unanimously opposed. Great Mercian (talk) 17:28, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support as the war is increasingly shifting from just a Hamas attack and Israel response to a full-on confrontation between Israel and Gaza forces, including Hamas. The reality of an invasion of Gaza is shifting the focus of the war on a Gaza-Israel conflict. Paul Vaurie (talk) 17:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support title change to: "2023 Gaza-Israel war"

The war is not exclusively limited to fighting between Israel and Hamas. Israeli state is fighting multiple Palestinian factions. There are also skirmishes with Hezbollah in the Lebanese border.

Also see the article Hamas government of October 2016: "The Hamas government of October 2016 is a faction of the Palestinian government based in Gaza and is effectively the third Hamas dominated government in the Gaza Strip.."

The Israeli state is waging a war against the government of Gaza. Multiple Palestinian armed groups are fighting alongside Hamas. Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 17:41, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose for now. As others have said, most sources currently use "Israel-Hamas war." It's also the phrase that currently receives the most search traffic. In general, we follow what the sources say. And particularly for current events like this, it's not terribly important to get this article's name exactly "right." An accepted name for the conflict will develop eventually outside of Wikipedia, at which point the name for the article will be obvious. For now, we can call it what most other people are calling it. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 20:34, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose The current war is with Gaza-ruling Hamas rather than Gaza itself which does not have its own regular army. Israel itself announced Hamas as the specific target, with the aim to avoid or minimize casualties among Gazan civilians. Brandmeister^talk 20:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Reliable sources state that Israel formally declared war on Hamas, not on other Palestinian militant groups.

Merlin^sorca 22:06, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support per Stephan rostie. Salvabl (talk) 00:13, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support per Iskandar323, nableezy, Selfstudier, Zellfire999, Stephan rostie and Shadowwarrior8. Daask (talk) 00:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Not only is Gaza an inaccurate description of the area. The conflict is extends to other areas, including the cyber domain and information warfare. The title is more accurate to say Israel-Hamas as it does currently. ~

.

Aeonx (talk) 03:11, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support: Obviously DFLP and PFLP are not Hamas. They're communist parties. It is completely unacceptable to confuse the communist with islamic. ——🦝 The Interaccoonale ^{Will be the raccoon race} _{(talk・contribs)} 04:32, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support. It seems that both "Israel-Gaza war" and "Israel-Hamas war" are both common names for the conflict. Sources that use "Israel-Gaza" include BBC News[6], Washington Post[7], The Hindu[8], ABC News[9], Foreign Policy (magazine)[10], NDTV[11], reuters[12], Medicines Sans Frontiers[13], CP24[14], France24[15], United Nations[16]. Source that use "Gaza war" include Reuters[17], CNN[18], Council on Foreign Relations[19], Financial Times[20], Vox[21], Le Monde Diplomatique[22]. So clearly, having "Gaza" (as opposed to "Hamas") in the title is consistent with WP:COMMONNAME. The additional benefit of the proposed title is that it is WP:CONSISTENT with Israel-Gaza conflict etc, which is something that "Israel-Hamas war" is not.VR _talk 07:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  WaPo did switch, but several outlets you mention are still using "Israel-Hamas": Foreign Policy magazine[23], Financial Times[24], and Vox[25]

  However, I found another site that uses "Israel-Gaza", Stratfor[26] DFlhb (talk) 13:04, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  Reuters uses "Israel-Hamas war" as their topic section, not "Gaza-Israel war".

  Same for the Hindu. You're characterizing that as "Gaza" when it uses "Hamas." Go to TheHindu.com and just look at their front page. The story you linked to isn't by TheHindu, it's by news agencies republished on TheHindu's website (that's why the byline is "agencies").

  It's not really fair to pick out one article that uses one phrasing and then claim the entire publication uses that phrasing based on what that one article says--especially when the one article is a reprint. Look at the topic headings -- the links on the home page -- to see how a publication describes a topic. You've miscategorized a bunch of the sources there. Levivich (talk) 14:16, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  The CNN story you linked, which you say uses "Gaza war", has the headline "Israel is at war with Hamas"

  I'm not going to go through any more of your examples. I think you need to clean that up as your links don't seem to say what you say they say. Levivich (talk) 14:20, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Sources that use the term "Israel-Hamas War" include CNN, AP News, CNBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Vox, Euro News, NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The New York Times, Reuters, The Times of India, Time Magazine, The Hindu, BBC News, and others. This is clearly a common name used for this conflict, and it should stay unless someone can demonstrate that "Israel-Gaza War" is significantly more common. Cortador (talk)

Cortador: FYI, Al Jazeera has switched and is calling it "Israel-Gaza war" on its banner and front page, while the BBC has been using it for a while. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:22, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

No, they haven't. That one article may use the term "Israel-Gaza War", but the news category says "Israel-Hamas War" right there. Cortador (talk) 07:29, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. A few outlets referring to it differently are insufficient to overrule the majority. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 11:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. The war is blatantly between Israel and Hamas. Gaza is only involved because that's Hamas's base of operations. Gaza is not a state which is at war with Israel. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:47, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Necrothesp: Neither is Hamas a state. Nor is it alone in this fight. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:01, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  I didn't say it was a state. But it is an organisation that is clearly at war with Israel. Gaza is not. Gaza has merely been dragged into the conflict by its rulers whether it likes it or not. Gaza has not attacked Israel and Israel's stated policy is only to fight Hamas, not Gaza. Which is why the WP:COMMONNAME is the current title. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose WP:COMMONNAME and also a bit of WP:NPOV. I believe the current title is most descriptive and neutral. Flalf^Talk 13:04, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Israel is listed as a belligerent in the conflict, Gaza is not. - RockinJack18 15:34, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support per rationale of Iskandar323 and Nableezy, and multiple supporting commenters above. A. Randomdude0000 (talk) 16:44, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Current title is clear, supported by sources. It seems to me that even if the terms are used at a roughly even rate in the high-quality sources, the current title is the most specific. Neutrality^talk 19:47, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose I would not expect to find the article at Israel-Gaza because the Gaza Strip is not governed by a group named "Gaza". PuppyMonkey (talk) 20:15, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support For same reasons as other supporters above, especially because the entire population of Gaza is undergoing that. Sinucep (talk) 22:00, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Since no one common name appears to have become overwhelmingly established (prominent reliable sources using either construction), we defer to WP:NCEVENTS—specifically WP:NCWWW (In the majority of cases, the title of the article should contain the following three descriptors: When the incident happened.[2023] Where the incident happened.[Gaza and Israel (alphabetically)] What happened.[war])—as well as WP:MILNAME (If there is no common name, the name should be a descriptive geographic term such as "battle of X").

The main geographic areas involved are also uncontrovertible. It is generally agreed that there was an incursion by militants into Israel and IDF forces are responding in Gaza in kind.

Whereas, names of belligerents are less helpful in article titles for conflicts due to their number (there are SIX militant groups fighting on one side in this war), any uncertainty of responsibility (which may develop) and ontological difficulties (e.g. Israel, IDF and Shin Bett, Netanyahu, the Netanyahu/Israeli government).

Llew Mawr (talk) 22:57, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose AP, ABC, CBS, CNN, and NYT call it Israel-Hamas war. I know BBC and WP are using Gaza-Israel war, but more reliable sources are using the other. Unless this changes I say stick with the current title. However, as a compromise what about the opening section say Israel-Hamas War or/also called the Gaza-Israel War?3Kingdoms (talk) 00:37, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose—Almost all sources I find refer to it as the "Israel-Hamas" conflict or some variant thereof, despite what is described above. A Google search validates my point. Nikolaih^☎️📖 00:44, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support Most news media channels call it the Israel-Gaza War. The belligerents not only involve the Hamas but also many other terrorist organisations. Also those saying why shouldn't it be Israel-Palestine War, its because similar to how you call a war fought by the ROC as XYZ-Taiwan not XYZ-China War as ROC only controls Taiwan, Hamas only controls Gaza, not entire Palestine, besides most countries doesn't recognise Hamas as the official Palestinian authority. PadFoot2008 (talk) 01:13, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose War is not just being fought in the Gaza Strip GRALISTAIR (talk) 01:50, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support per convincing arguments made by other supporters as this seems to be increasingly a war against Gaza, not just Hamas. OpenScience709 (talk) 12:29, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, please note that Israel and Hamas are the main warring parties. It would be inaccurate to call the war Israel-Gaza war since Hamas and its allies have operated against Israel from regions outside of Gaza (specifically Lebanon).

  Furthermore, Israel is not at war with the Palestinian Authority. Both Israel and the PA have not declared war against each other. Israel clearly stated its fight is against Hamas and not against the PA. Since the population of Gaza is represented in international forums by the PA and since the PA is considered the legal representative of the Palestinian people; I concur that the name ought to remain Israel-Hamas war. Homerethegreat (talk) 13:02, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Pretty odd claim that Gaza is represented by the PA. Hamas resoundingly won the popular vote in Gaza in the 2006 election. The Fatah-led PA has little to no voice in the territory these days. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:23, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Legally Gaza belongs to the State of Palestine represented by the PA. Now of course the de-facto reality is very different, but the point is the international community recognizes Gaza as belonging to the PA government in the West Bank. 3Kingdoms (talk) 14:41, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  This is a duplicate vote; I have struck the vote but not the comment. Levivich (talk) 15:28, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose AP, ABC, CBS, CNN, and NYT call it Israel-Hamas and most major sources use this term. Additionally, "Gaza-Israel war" is inaccurate since Gaza (part of the Palestinian Authority, de jure) is a territory and not an entity. The war is taking place in Gaza, but Gaza is not a combatant, so the nomenclature doesn't make sense. There is no "Gaza army". Eccekevin (talk) 16:45, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, and suggest speedy close This is a snow close because this issue has already been discussed extensively and decided. A decision was made largely on the basis of WP:COMMONNAME. As others have pointed out and as the last discussion pointed out, the current title is more frequently used. If an administrator was to overrule the prior decision despite insufficient material change in circumstances, the precedent this would be setting is that any editor who disagrees with a move decision should simply re-suggest the change a week later. Especially for a topic like this one where the same argument can cycle endlessly without finality of decisions, this would be a harmful precedent to set. Please snow close. Flip^andFlopped ツ 17:44, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• Note That by my tally the current vote total is 42 in opposition to 31 in support. Feel free to correct if I am slightly off. Flip^andFlopped ツ 17:54, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  isn't that supposed to be enough votes? Abo Yemen✉ 18:35, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Requested moves are not votes and generally stay open for at least seven days unless there is an overwhelming consensus. Elli (talk | contribs) 20:04, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  ohhhh okay now it makes sense Abo Yemen✉ 17:01, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support -- Abbasi786786 (talk) 22:56, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support - The Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a major faction which also participated in the invasion of Israel (as well as the PFLP), and even took 30+ israeli soldiers/civilians captive. RamHez (talk) 05:55, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support as per Iskandar323 comments. WikiEditor1234567123 (talk) 10:15, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support - Hamas is not the sole anti-Israel participant of this conflict. Ratipok (talk) 12:42, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose most of the media reporting is this is a conflict between Israel and Hamas. I would support if the overwhelming number of sources name it between Israel and Gaza despite my personal beliefs because Wikipedia is about what reliable sources say not what I think or believe. Most support votes are trying push something that that is presented as fact, there are more than just Hamas participants, but again, Wikipedia isn't about known facts per se, it is about what reliable sources say about a subject. Everything else is simply WP:OR. --ARoseWolf 12:58, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support - “Hamas-Israel” is like saying “Nazi-Allied War”. Neutrality requires we call wars by their geographic names, not by the names of their leading parties, unless you want to refer to the 1861 war as “Republican-Slavers War” (the Civil War, when the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln in the North defeated the South that wanted slavery). This is a war between Israel and Gaza. XavierItzm (talk) 14:46, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  "Neutrality requires we call wars by their geographic names" is easily disproven. The most obvious example, of course, is 1948 Arab–Israeli War, but other examples include French and Indian War (not fought in India!), Ashanti–Fante War, Spanish–Taíno War of San Juan–Borikén, Trịnh–Nguyễn War, Savoyard–Waldensian wars,Volta-Bani War, Zhili–Anhui War, First Zhili–Fengtian War, and Second Zhili–Fengtian War, among others. Levivich (talk) 16:12, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Ha ha! Guy actually said the French and Indian war, fought between the Indians and the French, was not fought in India. So enlightening! (and utterly irrelevant to this thread).
  Seriously now, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War is not named for the government parties (“Nazi-Allied War”, “Republican-Slavers War”, or indeed "Hamas-Israel War”-style) but for the belligerents: the Arabs vs the Israelies.
  Likewise the Ashanti–Fante War, Spanish–Taíno War of San Juan–Borikén, Volta-Bani War, Zhili–Anhui War, First Zhili–Fengtian War, and Second Zhili–Fengtian War: zero of those examples use the name of a government party as an article title, which would be ridiculous. XavierItzm (talk) 02:00, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  At the strictest definition of "government party", there are a few examples such as the Mau Mau rebellion.

  Once we get a little looser with the definition - and I think it is reasonable to do so we have examples like Muslim–Quraysh War and First_Jewish–Roman_War - not to mention the dozens of wars that have the name of Chinese dynasty (functionally equivalent to a political party) in it. This title isn't unprecedented - and even if it was, the fact that it is used by reliable sources allows it to be precedent-setting. BilledMammal (talk) 05:15, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  There are dozens of wars named after various Chinese dynasty's. We then have First Jewish–Roman War,

  Mau Mau rebellion is not an appropriate comparator: that’s the description of a party which revolted against an established government, not a war between geographic entities, like the Gaza-Israel war.
  And the First_Jewish–Roman_War is aptly named: a religious group within Judæa which revolted against the established government. Observe that the Christians of Jerusalem, not being part of the insurrection, escaped to Pella and so have their very own Wiki article! The war, therefore, was not a Roman-Judean war at all, but a Jewish-Roman war proper.
  In sum, relevant examples are the Nazi-USA war and the Republican Party vs. Confederate States of America war, which are incorrect names because political parties are not international belligerents, and so we instead say, as we must, Germany vs Allies war, and USA vs Confederate war. XavierItzm (talk) 05:59, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  The Republican Party did not have its own army and was the internationally recognized leader of the United States. Hamas is not. 3Kingdoms (talk) 15:44, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per Flipandflopped. Jon Ace ^{T C} 16:59, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
• Strongly support Whatever the future name might be, I am strongly disturbed from the actual article's name – normally we would name the war's initiator on first position. As I know it was not Israel who started the war. Matthiasb (talk) 17:11, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Not true. All wars between India and Pakistan are called "India Pakistan war of <insert year of war>", though most were begun by Pakistan. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 18:10, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Not only that, but it's odd to support a move to "Gaza-Israel War" on the grounds of "normally we would name the war's initiator on first position," because by that logic, "Gaza-Israel War" would imply that Gaza started this war. I take it, though, based on this reasoning, that Matthiasb opposes "Israel-Gaza War" for the same reason as "Israel-Hamas War." Levivich (talk) 18:31, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Hamas is a better pick for the name as the commenters above have said. Swordman97 ^{talk to me} 18:58, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support. In addition to what IndianWikiFreak noted above (Hamas is de facto the government of Gaza), the Israelis are fighting a lot of militant organizations in the de facto independent enclave besides Hamas like Islamic Jihad. This title seems more accurate and intuitive on top of fitting the rest of our articles in the so-called "Gaza-Israel conflict."--Nihlus1 (talk) 19:46, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

  Just noting I removed IndianWikiFreak's vote and comment per WP:ARBECR. Levivich (talk) 15:30, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose: Unfortunately, I think that this discussion may actually be a bit premature. The majority of current sources out of the United States continuously use Israel-Hamas War per the AP Stylebook which guides the majority of major news organizations within the United States to maintain uniformity in reporting. Other editors here have argued that, logically, Hamas and other military factions are fighting against Israel. While true, Hamas is clearly the major military force in the conflict and is the easiest for readers to recognize alongside the current media reports. The Gaza Strip is also considered controlled by Israel by many world governments and organizations. I would also posit that it wouldn't be fair or prudent to label the conflict the Israel-Gaza War at this juncture and in these constantly changing circumstances. Scorch (talk | ctrb) 00:46, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support. regardless of how it started, Israel has been bombing Gaza and is preparing to invade it. M.Bitton (talk) 00:55, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Parallel and superior to the current construction which had me expecting it should read 2023 Likud–Hamas war — RVJ (talk) 04:43, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose: per WP:COMMONNAME most (if not all) reliable sources call this worse between Hamas and Israel. Hamas is operating outside of Gaza as well so it would be incorrect according to RS. Grahaml35 (talk) 04:55, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support as the current title is simply not NPOV. Allegedly all previous IDF bombing sessions in Gaza were just to fight Hamas, and yet: Gaza War (2008–2009), 2014 Gaza war etc. etc. See no reason why this one should be any different. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 07:46, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support per rationale of Iskandar323 and Nableezy. Lightburst (talk) 17:34, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support There are enough reliable sources for the proposed title, making it a common name per WP:COMMONNAME. The proposed title is also WP:CONSISTENT with Israel-Gaza conflict. --Mhhossein ^talk 18:28, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. The current title meets WP:COMMONNAME. It is too soon to change the name based on what may or may not be happening with other groups/geographies.
• Strong Support Israel-Hamas has been a biased title for a while now, as it's obvious that Israel's initiatives involved more than just taking out Hamas. Jingle38 (talk) 21:54, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose The war isn't solely taking place in Gaza... It would be incorrect to rename a page to something that is not accurate. Israel is bombing Gaza, but there's also fighting on the Israel/Lebanon border, and in the West Bank. —  dainomite   23:43, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  By that logic Hamas is inaccurate. nableezy - 23:45, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  You are correct. I also didn't say the current name was accurate. However we're here to discuss moving it to 2023 Gaza–Israel war. —  dainomite   02:02, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Although I personally prefer "2023 Gaza–Israel war", policies dictate that Wikipedia should use the name most commonly used by independent English-language RS in their most recent articles. While a handful of sources use both "Israel-Hamas" and "Israel-Gaza", it is clear that "Israel-Hamas" wins out by far. Arguments involving the contexts and details of this event are not relevant.

Israel-Hamas: CNBC, CNN, Associated Press, Sky News, Axios, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The New York Times, NBC News, CBS News, KPBS, Al-Jazeera, Council on Foreign Relations, Bloomberg, European Council on Foreign Relations, BBC, Foreign Policy, Center for Strategic & International Studies, Politico, Financial Times, Hindustan Times, The Economic Times, The Hindu, Time Magazine, Le Monde, CBC, Reuters, Euronews, Vox, Deutsche Welle, New York Magazine, NPR, Chatham House, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, ABC News, Yahoo! News, The Times of Israel, The Economist, The Hill, Haaretz, Boston Globe

Israel-Gaza: Al-Jazeera, Washington Post, BBC News, The Independent, The New York Times, CNN, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, South China Morning Post, ABC (Australia), Reuters, Sky News, Forward, Al-Arabiya, The Times

StellarHalo (talk) 10:04, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Commenting that the names of the main sections covering this conflict on The New York Times and Reuters seem to call it “Israel-Hamas War” and

“Israel and Hamas at War”. Justanotherguy54 (talk) 02:24, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if the selection being mostly Western affects the balance. Middle East Eye referred to it as the "Israel-Gaza war" before switching to the "Israel-Palestine war" to include atrocities in the West Bank, a move also partly done by Al-Jazeera. Doctors Without Borders, Al-Arabiya, Zawya, the Kuwait Times, and The Daily Tribune of Bahrain refer to it as the "Israel-Gaza war."

Some of the sources you cited for using "Israel-Hamas" seem to also use "Israel-Gaza," upon a quick search, as well (e.g., Foreign Policy, New York Times, CNN, AP).

Either way, we should go with the name that is more common rather than the one we may think is more correct. 4kbw9Df3Tw (talk) 02:40, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose A review of all of the justifications from both sides shows two trends. Those who support the change feels that the proposed title is more appropriate - based mostly their own opinion. Those who oppose the change reviewed the reliable sources on this issue and shows that the current title is in greater usage amongst the reliable sources on this topic, as compared to the alternative title. In my view, those who oppose the change has the better argument, one that draws stronger support from wiki policies and hence, my "oppose" vote. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 16:46, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per AP Stylebook (via undecisive WaPo piece): "For the time being, it can be called the latest war between Israel and Hamas, the latest Israel-Hamas war or simply the Israel-Hamas war if the context makes clear that the reference is not to a previous war. Do not use terms such as Israel-Palestinian war or Gaza war. ... A formal name ... as of now does not exist." Hameltion (talk | contribs) 18:10, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Don’t have much to add beyond what all other oppose votes have stated. Agree with the 4(and more) directly above me, especially Hameltion.

Justanotherguy54 (talk) 02:16, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support, and strongly at that. More neutral in my view. There are good sources supporting both arguments (mine is BBC) but Israel is currently attacking Gaza. That is what is happening now. It would be weird and politically one sided if we said Russian was attacking Zelenskyy's army, or the war in Afghanistan was not that but was the war against the Taliban. It is fundamental wikipedia try to remain neutral in my view. Yours ever, --Czar Brodie (talk) 05:51, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  It would be weird and politically one sided if we said Russian was attacking Zelenskyy's army I think it is important to note that Hamas is Russia in this situation; they attacked Israel and committed horrific crimes, and now Israel is responding to ensure that such an event can never happen again. This leads me to my main point; Gaza didn't attack Israel, Hamas did - and further Israel isn't targetting Gaza, it's targetting Hamas. BilledMammal (talk) 06:44, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  @BilledMammal Maybe, maybe not, Israel looks to me like it is attacking Gaza, looking for the culprits, but never the less attacking the city. we could argue all day if Hamas is the military division of Gaza, or who commits more crimes in a war, but all I am arguing is for neutrality, not of us but for Wikipedia. Your rebuttal made me think you were not neutral in this, hell who isn't, is is a war, and has violence that is difficult to comprehend or not condemn. But Wikipedia should be a cold reference in my view. I think that is important. Czar Brodie (talk) 07:08, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Czar Brodie On this same logic, is "Gaza-Israel" really neutral either? A critic might say that framing the conflict over a specific piece of land erases the political and ethnic dimensions of the conflict. That calling it a war between Gaza and Israel frames it as a war over a small strip of land, as opposed to an ethnically motivated, nationalistic war against a people (that is, Israel seeking to ethnically cleanse Palestinians everywhere including in the West Bank, or from the other perspective, Hamas seeking to eliminate Israelis everywhere).

  I am not trying to argue about whether either of the above characterizations is "correct" or not. My point is, there will always be a dispute that a title of this kind is either over-inclusive or under-inclusive, or that it is named in a leading way. That's why we need to go with the most commonly used name; that's the whole point of the common name policy. -- Flip^andFlopped ツ 17:34, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Flipandflopped interesting points and on on some level you have a point. Of course true neutrality is is probably impossible, but in my view though we should strive for it. Curiously I come to different conclusions from your argument; by stripping the political and ethnic dimensions of the conflict (in the title) is a neutral approach in my view. Most aggressors and defenders in a conflict claim the conflict is morally justified on grounds that they are not attacking/defending against the citizens but some part of the regime. i.e. Putin claims he is liberating Ukraine from the fascist Zelenskyy government, Ukraine probablyclaime it is Putin invading anf not the Russian people. America claimed it was in Afghanistan to liberate the people from the Taliban it was not attacking Afghanistan etc. There may or may not be truth in these allegations, I'm sure there are many sources that argue the points one way or another. But it would be silly in my view to determine the truth by the number of sources. We have sources that are good that point both ways. So the best path is a neutral one in my view. So strip the political and ethnic dimensions of the conflict or any other issues/reasons and just refer to the nations involved. The title is important in my view, it dictates the view of the article, so I think it is paramount the title is neutral. Yours ever, Czar Brodie (talk) 18:53, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose, per WP:COMMONNAME, per BilledMammal and others. While I am sympathetic to the argument that de facto, it is Gaza generally, not Hamas and its allies that is on the receiving end of the 'punishment' at present, it is not Gaza that attacked Israel, nor is Gaza in any real sense an 'active' participant in this present conflict. I'm afraid I find the "Israel isn't targetting Gaza" arguments absurd, the practical difference of outcome is zero. You can't bomb or shell only the Hamas members in a building, nor know who is in it when you attack it. The 'specific' and NPOV arguments cut both ways IMO, but Israel is listed as a belligerent in the conflict, Gaza is not. I think those readers who wish to do so will understand that Gazan civilians, not Hamas members are going to be the main victims of the current phase of the conflict, however we name the article. Pincrete (talk) 07:34, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per most of the reasoning given by users above. If it or a different name actually becomes the common name in the near future we can update it at that time. BogLogs (talk) 12:34, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support - (1) Those citing COMMONNAME for calling this war "Israel–Hamas war" have forgotten that COMMONNAME is not the only criteria for naming articles. The proper naming convention is WP:NCWWW. The naming convention requires the use of "When the incident happened. Where the incident happened. What happened." HAMAS is not "Where the incident happened." Hamas is not a place. The place is Gaza. (2) Outside of the naming convention for events, the most relevant naming convention is WP:CRITERIA, which calls for "Recognizability", "Naturalness", "Precision", "Concision", AND "Consistency". The title "2023 Israel–Hamas war" lacks CONSISTENCY. It would be perhaps the only title of an article about a war that hyphenates a state entity with an organization or faction. This title is inconsistent with all the following articles, many of which were also mostly conflicts with Hamas, or another single resistance group such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or sometimes a group of organizations, including Hamas. Nonetheless, the articles are titled after Gaza:
  1. Gaza–Israel conflict
  2. 2006 Gaza–Israel conflict
  3. March 2010 Israel–Gaza clashes
  4. March 2012 Gaza–Israel clashes
  5. 2014 Gaza War
     1. Media coverage of the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict
     2. International reactions to the 2014 Gaza War
     3. Timeline of the 2014 Gaza War
  6. 2018–2019 Gaza border protests
  7. November 2018 Gaza–Israel clashes
  8. May 2019 Gaza–Israel clashes
  9. November 2019 Gaza–Israel clashes
  10. 2022 Gaza–Israel clashes
  11. May 2023 Gaza–Israel clashes

For consistency and because the appeals to COMMONNAME are not in keeping with our conventions for titles of events this soon after the beginning of the event, the page should be retitled 2023 Gaza–Israel war. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 13:08, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Comment @Coffeeandcrumbs Having made this policy argument five days ago, I note that no one has argued why WP:IAR applies here or otherwise made a counterargument supporting the status quo. In fact, almost no one on either side has referenced policy at all.

Llew Mawr (talk) 17:56, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. While I understand the consistency argument, Israel has made it clear this war is against Hamas. I would go with what a majority of our WP:RS are calling it. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:54, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Extremely violent execution video in the body section

There is an extremely violent execution .webm file from the body section. During the video, a civilian is shot in the head by Hamas. Subsequently a large blood pool is seen emerging from the victims body. Such extreme content should not be included. Ecrusized (talk) 20:38, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I already reverted your edit per WP:NOTCENSORED. "Attempting to ensure that articles and images will be acceptable to all readers, or will adhere to general social or religious norms, is incompatible with the purposes of an encyclopedia." FunLater (talk) 20:43, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Also there is WP:OM, and that says that the only reason for including any image in any article is "to increase readers' understanding of the article's subject matter". I am not sure if having graphic content is in line with this. Awesome Aasim 22:16, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

This is just not born out in standard Wikipedia practice. The article for 9/11, for instance, has footage of the plane crashing. I beleive showing readers the actual event that happened does a much better job of imparting information than words do, particularly in a case like this where there will be strong efforts from both sides to selectivly edit and word things in a way favorable to thier own point of view. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 23:00, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lenny Marks It is ridiculous to compare footage of planes crashing into a building (or, as in this article, a building blowing up) to someone being executed and bleeding out in the street and another person being bayoneted. Your belief that "showing the real event" is beneficial to the reader does not overcome Wikipedia's image content policy. Moreover, the video in question is taken from an unsourced reddit post, so it is not clear that this is Hamas, that this actually happened where it is claimed to have happened, or that this actually happened when it is claimed to have happened. This is not a NOTCENSORED issue. It is a WP:IMGCONTENT, WP:GRATUITOUS, and MOS:OMIMG issue.

From MOS:OMIMG: Wikipedia is not censored: its mission is to present information, including information which some may find offensive. However, a potentially offensive image—one that would be considered vulgar or obscene by typical Wikipedia readers—should be included only if it is treated in an encyclopedic manner i.e. only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available. A dubiously sourced snuff film is not encyclopedic. lethargilistic (talk) 23:16, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

If the argument is about authenticity and sourcing, that is another matter. Of course if it cannot be verified it should not be included (offensive or not). My point is that the seeing exactly how an attack was carried out has obvious informative and encyclopedic value, particularly in a conflict which is complicated and confusing for many. Trying to create levels of offensiveness (i.e. Bombing, plane into building, murder with a gun) is not really relovant. If the video has encyclopedic value, which I believe it does, then it doesn't matter if it is "5" offensive or "10" offensive. The verifiability of the content is an entirely separate issue. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 23:55, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

"My point is that the seeing exactly how an attack was carried out has obvious informative and encyclopedic value" - No it doesn't. The most obvious example is illustrating an anatomy article where censoring would compromise the informative purpose of an encyclopedia. Uncensored doesn't mean an image can't be removed: The article already has too many shellshock images. More maps and informative images you would see in an encylopedia would be an overall improovement. Ben Azura (talk) 05:38, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lenny Marks We'll deal with verifiability separately, then. What, exactly, does CCTV footage of a murder inform a reader about how the (overall) attack was carried out? You say it is obvious, but what does it clarify about this, in your words, confusing situation? lethargilistic (talk) 00:47, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lethargilistic So I think you made a few assumtions there. The first is that the image has to show to how the "overall" attack occurred. There is nothing to say that it can't serve to provide the specific details of how an attack was carried out. Additionally, you seem to assume that media must clarify something ambiguous to be used. WP:IMGCONTENT states clearly:

The purpose of an image is to increase readers' understanding of the article's subject matter, usually by directly depicting people, things, activities, and concepts described in the article
— wp:IMGCONTENT

So the video can be encyclopedic simply by illustrating a fuller picture of the article content. By your own acknowledgment this article contains many media depicting airstrikes. I presume that you do not wish for these to be removed as well? I believe that those videos are encyclopedic for the same reason, as they provide the reader with a fuller picture/understanding of the events described. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 01:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:PLA is also applicable, specifically that content on Wikimedia projects should be presented to readers in such a way as to respect their expectations of what any page or feature might contain (from wmf:Resolution:Controversial content). I think whether the video should be on Wikipedia is better suited for an FFD discussion or Commons Deletion Request, rather than here. Wait there already is one at Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Hamas_terrorists_kill_civilians_in_Kibbutz_Mefalsim,_2023.webm. But I don't see how the media being described can't accurately be described in words alone without crossing WP:SYNTH. Awesome Aasim 03:05, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

"The purpose of an image is to increase readers' understanding of the article's subject matter, usually by directly depicting people, things, activities, and concepts described in the article" - Wikipedia:Image use policy

This is a video which purports to DIRECTLY depict people (hamas militants) doing things (killing israeli civilians) as described in the article. It's relevant.

"Wikipedia is not censored, and explicit or even shocking pictures may serve an encyclopedic purpose, but editors should take care not to use such images simply to bring attention to an article." - Wikipedia:Image use policy

Are we claiming here that this is being used to bring attention to an article? I don't see how you can make that argument. What is the argument for removing it exactly? If the argument is "but these actions are already described in the text", then why have pictures at all on wikipedia? Why have videos? This is literally the purpose of them. Chuckstablers (talk) 02:49, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lenny Marks: [Reply edit-conflicted with above comment front Chuckstablers] I would theoretically be in favor of removing the airstrike footage, frankly. However, airstrike footage is normalized by the media. Therefore, I don't think it's disqualified by the part of WP:IMGCONTENT about reader expectations.

Yours is a good argument based on that guideline. To articulate where I think we are actually disagreeing, I reviewed WP:NOTCENSORED again and I think this recenters to why I think this article should be removed: Discussion of potentially objectionable content should usually focus not on its potential offensiveness but on whether it is an appropriate image, text, or link. Beyond that, "being objectionable" is generally not sufficient grounds for the removal of content. If we turn to MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE, we see the picture captioned This image of a helicopter over the Sydney Opera House shows neither adequately. My problem with the image is not that it depicts a military action, really.

My first problem, with regard to appropriateness, is that it does not clearly show the activity of the fighters. The person is shot from offscreen and bleeds out in the foreground, fighters come across the field in the background, and then the other person is attacked with the bayonet almost out of frame. Im not sure if we would disagree here, necessarily. Even if, as a general matter, footage of Hamas fighting is relevant and encyclopedic, unclear or sufficiently inappropriate depictions would still be kept out.

Second, I think that what this picture does show adequately is not suitable for Wikipedia even under WP:NOTCENSORED. In my view, at least part of the video is WP:GRATUITOUS:

Images containing offensive material that is extraneous, unnecessary, irrelevant, or gratuitous are not preferred over non-offensive ones in the name of opposing censorship.

Offensive material should be used only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available.

The man being stabbed does not appear especially clearly, so I'm more concerned about the man bleeding out in the foreground. We disagree as to whether depiction of death is encyclopedically valuable in principle, but I think we should be asking whether depicting this man bleeding out is unnecessary, irrelevant, or gratuitous. Regarding the broad conflict, it is unnecessary to show someone bleeding out like this. Regarding the desire to depict Hamas fighters in action as an activity under the war's umbrella, it is irrelevant and draws the focus away from the Hamas fighters' depiction. And showing a dead person's blood slowly seep into the stones is gratuitous. It is far in excess of what a reader would expect to find on Wikipedia, even under an article about a war. Moreover, I think it's extremely disrespectful to the dead person to immortalize their death so clearly on Wikipedia, however besides the point that may be regarding policy.

I contend that this video is sufficiently out of bounds that it should overcome WP:NOTCENSORED on its own, but the alternative suggested by that policy and WP:GRATUITOUS is to find a video that is a more suitable alternative if we want to show Hamas's (or Israel's) ground fighting. Another option would be an image of fighters. (And if the purpose of the image does happen to be depicting death specifically, perhaps there is a CC-licensed image of ZAKA handling bodybags available.)

I think we could find consensus on an alternative image that shows a military action by Hamas and does not show someone bleeding out like that. That compromise would satisfy your belief that showing a military action by Hamas is beneficial to the article and my belief that these specific deaths are not appropriate depictions of the action and are beyond what should be tolerated under WP:NOTCENSORED. Thoughts? lethargilistic (talk) 03:02, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lethargilistic Well I'm glad we now (mostly) agree on the policy :) While I understand and appreciate your point of view, to some extent I think that this just comes down to a simple difference of opinion which may be irreconcilable. I think that the footage is both relevant and uniquely so. That is to say, I don't think replacing it with general footage of "Hamas ground fighting" would be as informative unless it is also of one of the similar Kibbutz attacks. I think that there is an element of the type of attack that was carried out that was unique to this round of fighting and is relevant to the article and to the developments.

As an aside, I think I disagree with your take on the Sydney Opera house picture in that I think the policy there is designed to guard against images that do not properly depict the thing that makes them relevant (in that picture, a helicopter or the building). In our case, I think that the video shows unambiguously the attack that occurred and also the broader type of attack that was carried out in the opening phase and is described in the article. I do not think that that is diminished by a knife that is partially out of frame or an unideal camera angle, but I suppose I would be open to some of the CCTV footage from the other Kibbutz attacks, as they might also accomplish this goal. Yet I digress as this is really usurped by our more fundamental disagreement. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 03:27, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lethargilistic I just wanted to follow up two parts of our previous discussion. Your (correct me if I'm wrong) main objection was that you thought part of the video was GRATUITOUS enough to overcome NOTCENSORED. I have since researched the practice in a lot of other articles and found there to be a general trend to include such material such as at Abu Ghraib abuse and Einsatzgruppen. Does this alter your perspective at all, or do you feel that a)This video is different or b)They got it wrong?

Also, have you made any progress in identifying a possible less graphic replacement? I think that that would honestly be the least contentious way to resole this?

Thanks, Lenny Marks (talk) 19:01, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lenny Marks I think it's pretty easy to distinguish them for the purposes of WP:GRATUITOUS, but you'll forgive me if this is not based in policy quoting because (not directing this frustration at you) I have a life outside of this video and I did not anticipate this dispute blowing up like this.

Firstly, they're images, not videos. If I could wave a magic wand, I would remove the video from 9/11. Readers can watch footage of people dying elsewhere. And the flowing of the blood in particular makes it disturbing, as I talked about before. Secondly, the point of documenting those topics is at least in part that those events are so excessively violent that people regularly do not believe occurred. People die in wars all the time, and I do not align with the view expressed in this thread that that this death's brutality was educational because of its excessive brutality. There's nothing notable about any one person dying in a war. If they had gone further and defiled the corpse, it would not be more notable or educational. Third, I understand the reasoning behind looking to mass murder events for a comparison, but I think the person's death here is more comparable to an assassination or (perhaps counter-intuitively) a suicide. I know you don't think the camera angle here is a particular issue, but I do, and the killing is center-stage in this video and arguably its subject. There is no footage of the deaths in Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Suicide of Ronnie McNutt, or Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém despite the footage of those events literally being the complete subject of the article. (And in McNutt's and Lem's cases, the footage is the reason it's notable at all.) Nor should there be.

No matter the textual interpretations we get into, the fact is that your position is an aberrant one as far as Wikipedia norms go. If you take this beyond this thread, the policy is more likely to change than this sort of video becoming more accepted/common.

No, I have not yet begun looking through footage to find a suitable alternative. I am a law student and booked solid. I'll point out that I did not remove the video when I joined this, so this isn't me trying to worm out of our compromise. I'm busy. (If the resolution of this is to remove it, I'm not going to replace it myself, tho.) lethargilistic (talk) 20:04, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! I appreciate your thoroughness and civility. It can be difficult, especially in contentious articles such as this one. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 20:51, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Chuckstablers: I think I've clarified my position well enough in my last reply to Lenny, so check that out. Remember that WP:NOTCENSORED is, by its own text, not categorical and the various other guidelines we've been discussing have things to say about its limits. lethargilistic (talk) 03:10, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I get more where you're coming from, and I appreciate the concern. It is a bit over the top. My issue is that it displays, in a short video format, the type of thing that happened in so many of these massacres against civilians. Civilians running away from militants who chased them down and killed them. This was not combat, this was not an engagement, it was a massacre. The brutality, which is unprecedented, helps explain the way the conflict has evolved (to a degree). Portraying that adds value to the article.

With that out of way, I can agree that it's over the top. "Offensive material should be used only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available." What equally suitable alternative would you have in mind to replace it with that achieves that purpose? Displaying the nature of the thing that actually happened here, which I think is kind of important here. Just like it's important to display the blood stained kitchen in the image below (that is a very effective way to show that militants entered their homes and murdered civilians). Chuckstablers (talk) 03:41, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, the photo should go too (though it is a much less problematic and pressing issue); both pieces of media are indecorous to our purely educational purposes here. To frame the policy considerations here in the terms you raise above, we don't need the video to illustrate that militants went around killing people in the streets, just as we don't need the photo to demonstrate that they went into homes to kill civilians: both facts are easily, efficiently, cogently, and completely imparted to the reader by simple textual descriptions.

And the key word there is "facts"; the media in question do not add factual information that cannot be fully depicted by text alone. They add emotive emphasis and subtext, which makes the content potentially powerful and possessed of significant social value if presented in the right forum (news media, editorial media, social media), but such emotional and visceral emphasis does not tonally serve a significant enough encyclopedic priority to even begin to offset the immense potential (or indeed, certainty) of harm that will result from keeping the video in the article, where it is likely to be stumbled upon by countless people merely looking for an encyclopedic summary of events.

And all that is putting aside the numerous other policies this content violates. By my tally, the video (at least) clearly violates WP:OM, WP:BLP, WP:NFC, WP:IUP, WP:VERIFIABLE, WP:DUE, and at the moment WP:ONUS as well, insofar as it was re-added before there was consensus to do so, in violation of WP:BRD. That's a pretty impressive list of core policies we'd have to turn a blind eye to here to keep the video, for essentially no factual/encyclopedic context added that prose cannot satisfy. This is just not the place for this content. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 04:59, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Your argument that they have to "add factual information that cannot be fully depicted by text alone" is not in the image policy, and if applied equally would essentially result in 90% of the images on this wiki being removed. I have to strongly disagree with you on that one. See the image policy: "The purpose of an image is to increase readers' understanding of the article's subject matter, usually by directly depicting people, things, activities, and concepts described in the article". That does not read "the purpose of an image is to add factual information that cannot be described by text alone". Those are very different things. Chuckstablers (talk) 08:32, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I think you're missing an important nuance of that language, though you are by no means the first person, and it is largely down to an issue with the ambiguity in the phrasing in the policy itself: just because an image exists and "directly depicts" a subject does not mean that we are meant to conclude that it also satisfies the condition that it "increases the reader's understanding of the article's subject matter" as a per se matter. Those are conjunctive predicates, not a predicate and a result.

An example to clarify the distinction: this image of a carcinoma is the lead image of our skin cancer article. It both depicts an aspect of the subject matter of the article and can be reasonably expected to increase the reader's understanding of that aspect, since a) the average reader will not be aware of what such a mass looks like and b) purely textual descriptions are unlikely to impart all of the features of such a growth with substantial clarity in the reader's mental imagery. By stark contrast, the video here does not enhance any description in the article, because pretty much any reader can intuitively conceptualize what is involved when we describe that the militants roamed these communities shooting people. The reader is going to know what guns are, what it means to be shot, and what death is. Factually, no empirical information is added by the video as an illustrative feature. In terms of anything other than an emotional element, events can be perfectly competently captured by words here, with pretty much zero lose of accuracy and detail in terms of information imparted.

Now, mind you, that description matches a great number of images on this project; not every image has such specific educational value as that of a clinical photo of a medical phenomena, of course, and we tolerate large numbers of these images with very indirect and minimal informative/educational value. This is in part because the "cost" of including such images is generally very minor, so even trivial demonstrative benefits are enough to justify many such images.

Such is not the case here though: there are massive policy problems with this video and significant real world harms (again, not potential, but pretty much certain) that will arise from including it, and on top of all of that, it really does nothing that a couple of well-crafted sentences can't accomplish. The cost-benefit is all wrong here, which is part of how this video fails community expectations on such content. And that includes IUP: it is by no means the only policy which leverages for removal here, nor indeed even in the top four major policies that require this content to be removed. But it is yet another guideline that converges on the same conclusion all the same, if all of its requirements are applied in full. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 09:59, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Snow Rise, I hear what your saying but I really don't think it accurately reflects WP:IMGCONTENT. You are right to say that "just because an image exists and 'directly depicts' a subject does not mean that we are meant to conclude that it also satisfies the condition that it 'increases the reader's understanding of the article's subject matter'". Where I think you are making a jump is concluding that since it does not impart new factual information that is not in the text (which, by the way, it does) that it also does not increase the reader's understanding. This project and this article itself are full of media that are there not strictly to give new information but to enhance the picture of the information contained in the text and there is certainly not consensus for your interpretation of that policy to suggest that that is not good enough. Would you suggest that we should also remove all off the images here of airstrikes (which is a huge percentage)?

I think that the airstrike images are valuable and I think this footage is valuable as well. Not only does it shows the readers this particular attack, but it also provides understanding of the kind of attacks that were carried out throughout Israel and are emblematic of start of this particular war. It is an example of a type of action that was unprecedented until this round of fighting and helps explain how the war has developed. I certainly think that this is sufficient to "increase[s] the reader's understanding of the article's subject matter" per wp:IMGCONTENT.

Once the media has encyclopedic value, it does not matter if it is graphic.

Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive‍—‌even exceedingly so. Attempting to ensure that articles and images will be acceptable to all readers, or will adhere to general social or religious norms, is incompatible with the purposes of an encyclopedia.
— WP:CENSOR

Lenny Marks (talk) 12:19, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Chuckstablers I agree with strongly your position above. I think that if we could find a less graphic video to show one of/the various kibbutz massacres it would be more appropriate, but in lieu of that I think there is good reason to include this video. Lenny Marks (talk) 12:35, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to find a more typical video (which this one might be, for all I know), instead of one deliberately selected for making killing people seem as non-violent as possible? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

why include a less violent video?that reasoning is flawed. wikipedia is a not a censored encyclopedia. its absolutely educational video.it teaches readers about the extent of what humans can do to other humans in cold blood.it teaches the difference between a professional moral army and a millitant group with no code of conduct. Codenamephoenix (talk) 20:12, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia’s not censored, period. RodRabelo7 (talk) 23:20, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

FYI, there is a parallel discussion on Wikipedia Commons as to whether the video should be deleted. lethargilistic (talk) 23:35, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

This CCTV footage was verified by multiple WP:RS as authentic. and also WP:NOTCENSORED."Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive‍—‌even exceedingly so. Attempting to ensure that articles and images will be acceptable to all readers, or will adhere to general social or religious norms, is incompatible with the purposes of an encyclopedia." Codenamephoenix (talk) 00:23, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Codenamephoenix It has not been verified. It is cited to a reddit post. Post a verifying source from an RS. lethargilistic (talk) 00:32, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

an example is wall street journal news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZBTXaclQV0&ab_channel=WSJNews Codenamephoenix (talk) 00:42, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Codenamephoenix The footage is not included in that video and you know it. lethargilistic (talk) 00:48, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

i agree the exact footage which is used in the body is not included that link.my bad for prematurely posting it. if no concensus to keep the video is reached maybe another video can be used in its place(altough the current clip used in body looks genuine enough) for eg https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/toi-original/caught-on-cam-how-hamas-ruthless-terrorism-spares-no-innocents-in-its-wake/videoshow/104349952.cms Codenamephoenix (talk) 00:58, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep it. It's important. 2601:40:C481:A940:D4FB:3B05:7C51:3B7F (talk) 08:10, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

The poll is below if you are trying to !vote -- Lenny Marks (talk) 17:33, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

'''Keep'''. Per Wikipedia:Gore . Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive‍—‌even exceedingly so. It is not censored. Marokwitz (talk) 10:31, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Marokwitz The poll is below if you are trying to !vote Lenny Marks (talk) 17:32, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Where is this anyways? 𝒞𝑜𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓇 𝒢𝑜𝑜𝒹𝓂𝒶𝓃 (talk) 17:25, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@CooperGoodman The video was removed for now due to this discussion. It can be found on Commons here. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 17:39, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I believe that it should probably not have been removed, but I can see why it was, as it could potentially be traumatizing to a younger viewer like me. 𝒞𝑜𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓇 𝒢𝑜𝑜𝒹𝓂𝒶𝓃 (talk) 17:52, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I understand that concern, but this is an article about a terror attack and a war and, unfortunately, many people have been killed. By longstanding policy, Wikipedia is not censored and by policy, graphicness alone is not a reason to remove a video. It must also lack an encyclopedic purpose. (See wp:GRATUITOUS). Lenny Marks (talk) 17:59, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

So do you oppose or support the removal of the video? I oppose the removal of it but don't know where I can express my opinion. 𝒞𝑜𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓇 𝒢𝑜𝑜𝒹𝓂𝒶𝓃 (talk) 20:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@𝒞𝑜𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓇 𝒢𝑜𝑜𝒹𝓂𝒶𝓃 If you scroll down on this discussion there is a poll where you can vote Support or Oppose removal and put a sentence or two explaining yourself. Personally, I oppose the video's removal -- Lenny Marks (talk) 20:33, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

If you wish not to see such graphic photos or videos but want to read the article then see Help: Options to hide an image. It will help on the coding on hiding certain images. Cwater1 (talk) 18:30, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Support - I agree that it is a WP:GRATUITOUS issue, and that while it is relevant to the article, it is not irreplaceable. Offensive Material shouldn't be on Wikipedia just for the sake of it. SteelerFan1933 (talk) 04:14, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

@SteelerFan1933. If it's replacable could you provide us with a sufficient replacement? The people opposing removal do not want the image "because" it's offensive. It has been clearly put in the discussion that many feel that a video of the unprecedented kind of attack that occured on October 7, and the way in which civilians were targeted, adds to the reader's understanding of the topic. If you have a less graphic video that accomplishes this please, by all means, provide it. I (and I believe many others) would support a less graphic alternative if we had one. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 20:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lenny Marks

I would support the same video but with the killing cut out. (E.G. The video cuts before the trigger is pulled). SteelerFan1933 (talk) 17:44, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

This is clearly incredibly inappropriate content for a generalist encyclopedia article, nevermind the dubious sourcing (though this is in itself cause for removal). It's not that this content is merely "objectionable", in thin-skinned, weak-stomached, moralistic, or value judgment terms: this content is likely to be be deeply traumatic for many of our readers, especially (but very far from exclusively) those directly impacted by these events. To say nothing of the questions regarding the privacy and dignity of the individuals shown being violently murdered in the video (and in one case bludgeoned/hacked up). I can't imagine a more profound BLP violation than showing a person's last instant of life and the mutilation of their body with very little compelling argument for how this actually advances the abstract, encyclopedic understanding of the topic or the content of the article in a way that prose would not suffice to convey.

The mere fact that we do not censor ideas in our content in no way means that we check all respect, decorum, social responsibility, or concern for the possible impacts on our readers at the door, in exchange for some robotic moneky-see, monkey-share mentality for such media. What would you say to the family of one of these people if they saw that this content was up here for the entire world to see? "Oh, sorry, we needed to see exactly how your husband's body crumpled as everything he was or ever would be was stolen from him in an instant. Oh gee, terribly sorry that five million people watched your daughter's head beaten to a pulp with a cudgel. We needed to see it in order to understand that real people died here!" We are WP:NOTNEWS: we provide high-level, abstract summaries of our subject matter. We don't have a mandate to create a compelling representation of the real human costs of these events; that's what primary and secondary sources are for. This kind of imagery is not necessary to our educational purposes and it deeply violates principles of least astonishment that could easily cause significant real world harm to a non-trivial portion of our readers, while simultaneously shredding our protections of the privacy of non-notable persons.

Those (mostly relatively newer, I think) editors reflexively citing WP:NOTCENSORED might want to stop to ask themselves why they don't see more such content elsewhere on en.wikipedia, despite no shortage of articles on massacres that have footage out there. It's because we have other policies which expressly and specifically limit that principle, including WP:OM and our image use policies. Which actually allow for the restriction of media with much lower concerns than those involved here. Further, this is hardly the first time the community has had to face such an issue, and the general consensus is that media needs to have more than shock value in terms of informative quality. There's also the fact that this almost certainly violates our non free content policy. There's just so many reasons this video cannot stay. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 03:09, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Well said @Snow Rise! Not censored means that an image being offensive or having shock value is rarely a good reason to be included or removed. BTW I already put a request to blacklist the media for now on the bad image list due to its potential for vandalism and disruptive additions. Awesome Aasim 03:21, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Good call: I also left a notice of this discussion at WP:VPN to help speed along discussion and action here, since I think there are concerns for harm that justify a rapid response. I almost took the matter to AN to see if an admin was willing to revdel on some of the grounds discussed above, but ultimately decided that was not the ideal route, as I didn't want to unintentionally give the impression that there are behavioural issues here: everyone here is clearly contributing in good faith, regardless of the fact that some of the arguments are emphatically not sustainable under policy or (imo) good sense. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 03:39, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Fair points. I never even noticed the second part with the beating to death, only the first with the man being shot on mobile (was under the impression there was some blurring there, but no, there's not, and it's in HD, so yeah, no). Apologies for arguing for it's inclusion in light of that; That's brutal, horrific and goes well above any lines that would warrant it's inclusion.

That being said; I'd still say there should be some replacement in image form for it regarding the killings at "Kibbutzum" (Mefalsim, which is what the link in kibbutzim in "as well as in kibbutzim around the Gaza Strip" should be changed to), given that we have an image displaying the blood stained kitchen of a family in another kibbutz described in the text of the article. We're describing militants driving around in SUV's gunning down civilians, while you don't have to show the graphic part as discussed there's nothing wrong showing the whole "militants driving around in pickup trucks in fatigues" thing.

I'd also have to push back against the BLP violation claim? That's a bit of a stretch. By that logic you basically can't show any photos of any human being, and that's not what that policy is about (I just re-read it)? There's plenty of valid reasons to object to it's inclusion. I bring this up because I don't want a BLP objection from you to replacing it with images of militants as previously discussed. Chuckstablers (talk) 04:42, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm sure there must be content out there that would satisfy the value of presenting the brazenness and brutality of the attacks that is still well short of depicting the actual massacre of random civilians--although it may take some time to find a free-license option (as noted above, that's another issue with this media). In other words, there must be a satisfactory medium here.

As to the BLP issue, I don't think it's a stretch. I'm the first person to push back against that policy being talismanatically invoked, believe me, but the entire purpose of the policy is to protect the privacy and dignity of inherently non-notable individuals, and I can't see how it is not imputed in the context of a decision which puts a depiction of their brutal, dehumanizing ends directly into the article for all the world to see. Other institutions (journalistic in particular) might make a value judgment that the social benefit of animating reactions in their audience outweigh that intrusion, but I don't think we can make that same argument here, since the factual depth (our own focus) added to the article is so minimal, compared against the likely harms. It's not the single biggest policy reason for removing the video, but it's a pretty compelling reason in and of itself, imo. But for the record, you won't hear objections of the BLP variety from me with regard to representing the militants generally (or even all their acts of violence). It's just that this particular video raises particularly strong concerns in this area. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 05:17, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I completely agree with you. This is potentially, slightly traumatizing material that adds nearly no benefit to the article, along with violating several community expectations and Wikipedia guidelines. I think this video should be replaced by something less graphic. Jon.yb093 (talk) 11:10, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Jon.yb093 Which Wikipedia guideline does it violate? Can you be specific? I appreciate that the material is graphic but that on it's own does not disqualify it per wp:CENSOR. I agree that if we found less graphic footage that also depicted a kibbutz massacre then that footage would be preferable, until we do I think that there is strong reason to keep the footage we have as it clearly depits a tupe of attack that was unprecedented and carried out en mass at the start of the war, and it enhances reader's understanding of the conflict. Lenny Marks (talk) 12:25, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Snow Rise, I appreciate your concern, but I'd like to say that people won't develop PTSD from this video. When it's not you or your own (close) loved ones under threat, the DSM-5 requires "Witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others". A video of a stranger being murdered may be "deeply upsetting" and or "extremely distressing", but it isn't traumatizing. (See also Therapy speak, which I recently wrote.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Hey WAID, it's nice to see you. I appreciate your perspective as well, but if I can be blunt without giving offense, a short quote from the DSM does not much alleviate concerns in this area. The concern is not for PTSD in particular; "trauma" is an idiomatic catch-all term for a much broader spectrum of biopsychological phenomena that impute a variety of harms. Here my major concern is for readers who have recently had their lives touched upon by the violence, as well as those who may not have observed it first hand, but may have suffered personal loss connected to it.

And then there's another another major vulnerable category: children generally. Children absolutely could be deeply traumatized by viewing such content (you'll have to trust me on this, but my work and field of inquiry puts me in a position to be well informed on childhood traumas). And indeed, this concern is one reason why violent content has been an ongoing contentious issue on the project whenever it has come up. I've avoided completely avoided broaching this big wrinkle of the situation here thus far because I was concerned about triggering certain voices to double down on reflexively citing WP:NOTCENSORED, as there's a few editors here under the mistaken belief that CENSOR is a much more absolute principle on this project than it actually is--the reality is that it's anything but. And with so many other compelling policy violations, risks of harm, and other practical reasons to not allow this media to be added to this article, I didn't see the point in raising an issue that might draw an outsized reaction.

But yes, children read our articles. Lots of children. And the way we structure our content should always take that into account. Now it goes without saying that we have major, major constraints that sometimes mean we cannot accommodate protecting children in every context. But when a video of lives being snuffed out adds precisely zero explanatory value to the article that cannot be accomplished with prose, the possibility of children seeing their first murder absolutely becomes a situation where the huge potential for traumatic exposure massively outweighs the countervailing considerations. That has in fact been a major concern anytime the subject of especially violent content has been discussed on the project, and I don't doubt that it was also a major factor in the WMF's adoption of the principle of least astonishment standard.

To the maximum extent possible without substantially compromising our educational purposes with regard to the rest of our readers, we want children to benefit from this site. That's less likely to happen if parents can't be confident that their child won't see their first death/murder/someone's face bashed in, simply because they were reading a high traffic article on a current event that they wanted to know more about. Likewise, juvenile educational institutions would be very likely to reconsider open access to this project if such content were to start to proliferate on the encyclopedia. There's also the very real possibility of landing the project in hot water with regulators in a variety jurisdictions, including especially the European Union, with the new Digital Services Act. This law concerns itself, among various other subject matter, with violent content and child welfare on large online platforms, and the DSA administrators have already designated Wikipedia as one of the 18 sites that it per se applies to. And there have been indicators in the last few days that they are looking to aggressively enforce these rules (which were promulgated last year but just went into effect) with regard to the current Israeli-Palestine conflict.

But we shouldn't need that extra threat of headache / inviting state oversight of the project in order to decide that the cost-benefit calculus is off the charts in the red if we include this video. The mere fact that we would inevitably be sharing a "faces of death" equivalent video with a non-trivial number of children, just to add something that doesn't demonstrate a single act (or any detail identified by any editor in this discussion) that couldn't be easily, fully, and accurately described in prose really ought to be enough.

Our outrage and desire to expose the savagery of men who would murder innocents is an understandable impulse stretching out from our humanity. But here it has to take a backseat to the numerous and compelling considerations arguing against adding content that adds only emotive subtext, violates the privacy and dignity of the depicted in their final horrific, agonized, and dehumanizing moments, and shoves that imagery in front of many readers who aren't seeking it and can reasonably be expected to be harmed by it. Especially considering that such motivations to expose such evil to the light of day, natural as they are, are not particularly well-aligned with the purposes of this particular project (said purpose being to provide a high-level, relatively dispassionate summary of the events in question). There are other places to accomplish the goal of sharing the brutality of these attacks with the world.

Nor do you have to be especially young or sensitive to be negatively impacted by that video, especially if you had a loved one killed in the attacks or one held captive at this very moment. Or, you know, you just happen to be Jewish. All of which includes people who might reasonably take an interest in this article. So, I'm standing by my assessment of the potential for traumatizing significant portions of our readers, some of whom may not have the capacity to appreciate the consequences of hitting that play button. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 22:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Children absolutely could be deeply traumatized by viewing such content Then parents shouldn't allow their children on Wikipedia (much less the Internet as a whole) unsupervised. That's why editors have written advice for parents on how to manage Wikipedia for children. This argument is one, which, taken to its absurd conclusion, would cause Wikipedia to have to be shut down. Somewhere, somehow, some kid might find something and be "traumatized". when a video of lives being snuffed out adds precisely zero explanatory value to the article that cannot be accomplished with prose Here's another reductive argument. There's a reason that we use and rely on images on Wikipedia. People are visual learners and images of pogroms and executions of Jews are far more impactful at an immediate glance than 10,000 words of text going into the Holocaust. I think that's the reason why you didn't even attempt to answer what was the content difference between this video and the image of the execution of a Jew during WWII below or Lenny Marks's rebuttal of your point elsewhere. I don't doubt that such an image would be distressing for a very young child. That's why as a parent/guardian you should guide your children when exposing them to the bad parts of history. There's also the very real possibility of landing the project in hot water with regulators in a variety jurisdictions, including especially the European Union, with the new Digital Services Act. That sounds like you're flirting with legal threats to me. Plenty of countries outright censor and block access to Wikipedia already. You sound like you're either not aware of that or are trying to get editors to self-censor down to the lowest common denominator—again: a shutting down of the project. You also amusingly sound as though you're not aware of all the other much more graphic content on this encyclopedia or in Commons. This video is hardly a unique landmark in Wikimedia. -- Veggies (talk) 23:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

"This argument is one, which, taken to its absurd conclusion, would cause Wikipedia to have to be shut down. Somewhere, somehow, some kid might find something and be 'traumatized'.

No...not "something": the violent, sadistic murder of two people and the frenzied mutilation of a corpse. We're not talking about some speculative span of possible content here. This is not a philosophical debate about possibilities or a slippery slope scenario. We're debating the appropriateness of a very specific, concrete piece of content, and it's pretty much as absolutely bad is anything could be in respect to the potential for harm to our readers and invasion of the privacy and dignity of the subject,

"Here's another reductive argument."

I don't find it particularly reductive. Indeed, I (and others) have attempted a significant number of times to get a more substantive definition of what "information" that is relayed in this video that is not already perfectly well imparted in the prose already (or easily could be). For the most part, the few responses to this inquiry have a decidedly begging the question quality to them, with vague "well it illustrates how the attacks unfolded" language repeated ad nauseum, but without any indication that there is so much as a single fact (I mean one small thing, even) that the video is necessary to communicate that isn't ably done with prose.

In fact, the closest anyone has gotten to an actual, meaningful answer to that question was an editor who (and I think this is the honest and understandable answer at the heart of the support for this video) that the video demonstrates the barbarity and cold-bloodedness of the attackers....and then they immediately went on to opine about how it illustrates the difference between a restrained, honourable "professional army", versus the irredeemably malignant and animalistic "militants"; i.e. a not-at-all subtle comparison of the IDF and Hamas. They said the quiet (if somewhat understandable) part out loud: this is seemingly at least partly about showing how evil Hamas are, for at least some of the minority of editors who want to include this grossly gratuitous video.

And even for those of us who might be inclined to agree, on a personal level, to this reading of the video as an unambiguous demonstration of sociopathy, that's still just too subjective and emotional a subtext to use to justify this image, considering its potential harm to our readers, and its profound BLP implications. To say nothing of the facts that, again, it's not WP:Verified and isn't available under an established free-use license, and so can't be used on en.Wikipedia regardless...

"I think that's the reason why you didn't even attempt to answer what was the content difference between this video and the image of the execution of a Jew during WWII below or Lenny Marks's rebuttal of your point elsewhere."

No....I didn't respond to either of you because a) I was busy with other matters off-project when you both commented. I happen to be a very busy person in my professional, home, and volunteer lived who, apropos of nothing, has a member of the household just out of the hospital and has had about seven hours of sleep in the last three days... I don't contribute on your schedule and I'm not compelled to answer every comment you think I should. And b) I've said as much as anyone in this thread, if not more, and there comes a point at which you need to stop responding to every comment, especially if you perceive the discussion to be going in circles. And the fact of the matter is, you haven't given me the impression of someone who is open to having their mind changed on any of this, so I did not feel highly motivated to respond to you in particular. I actually have several paragraphs of a response to Lenny's post, which I found polite and cogent, if not terribly compelling, but by the time I found the time to finish it, WAID had pinged me on another aspect of the discussion which I felt was more fruitful ground for discussion, so I made a choice. I'm sorry that you felt that your point demanded a response: I didn't.

That said, if it's that important to you to have a response, here's just a partial list of the reasons that comparing The Last Jew in Vinnitsa to this video constitutes a non-sequitor and a false analogy:

1) One is a historical image depicting a, yes, unfathomably heinous act, but also one from which we are temporally distant. The other depicts a recent massacre which has traumatized countless people who could be impacted by how we approach the presentation of this subject, including many who may take a special interest in this article.

2) the video depicts the deaths of people who were until very recently alive, meaning they are covered by our BLP guidelines. The image does not.

3) The image is WP:verified, as all disputed content on this encyclopedia must be. The video is not.

4) The image is free-use content, as all media used in this encyclopedia must be. The video is not.

5) The image in question is WP:notable in its own right as an encylopedic subject and covered by robust discussion in reliable sources. The video is not.

6) I'm quite sure from your previous comments that you won't find this compelling, but it actually pulls some weight with me as someone who comes from a cognitive science/biopsych background: the image, horrific though it undeniably is, does not actually depict the completion of the act of murder. The human brain processes a high-fidelity, real-time representation of a violent act in motion differently from an illustration implying that act. It just does.

Now you and I might actually agree that as an abstract, rational matter, the difference is arbitrary and the result of a cognitive bias, not a logical analysis of any substantial difference in the levels of brutality between the two acts. But for a vulnerable person stumbling upon that image (say a child for example, or someone whose loved one was murdered in one of these attacks), it actually makes all the difference in the world in terms of the harm done. You may not agree with that, but good news: you can still take your pick from numbers 1-5.

"That sounds like you're flirting with legal threats to me."

I clearly am not or anything that even remotely looks like it. I didn't threaten to take legal action. I pointed out the very real possibility of consequences for this project's interests if we start including depictions of close-up murder in our current event articles, which is perfectly valid and appropriate subject matter for a policy discussion. That is neither a bad faith action nor anywhere in the same universe as [[WP:NLT]--and if you can't tell the difference, you really, really, really' need to re-read that policy.

And if I'm blunt, at this point your behaviour here towards all your rhetorical opposition is getting increasingly WP:BATTLEGROUND, acid-toned, inclined towards unjustified WP:ASPERSIONS, and verging on WP:DISRUPTIVE . We all managed to get through this very loaded discussion perfectly politely until you joined the discourse, with your sarcasm and no-holds-barred mentality. Ever since consensus shifted strongly away from support for your perspective, you keep trying to chill, curtail, or define the focus and manner of other users' !votes and responses, in ways you just are not permitted to on this project--all of it wrapped it in hostile, derogatory tone. It appears you haven't been a super heavy contributor in recent years, but if you've been on the project since 2007, you should really know better--and regardless, you should drop this course of action immediately: it isn't doing the appeal of your arguments any favours and if you keep it up, your conduct is likely to end up scrutinized at ANI or AE. Which won't help consensus here in any way. You don't have to like the outcome or the arguments of the majority / emerging consensus, but the snideness is patently unhelpful to your position and to the rest of us.

"You also amusingly sound as though you're not aware of all the other much more graphic content on this encyclopedia or in Commons. This video is hardly a unique landmark in Wikimedia."

Well, you're both very right and very wrong about that. You're wrong in that I guarantee you that you can't find a video in an article depicting two people being shot and hacked to death. You're right in that the situation is not unique and the reason you can't find such a video or anything even particularly close to it is that every time someone has tried to force encyclopedia across that line, the community has rejected it. Please don't expect further direct engagement from me here. Beyond that fact that I don't think engaging with you would be particularly productive, I think I've more than said my piece in this discussion in general. I nevertheless hope you have a pleasant rest of your day, however. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 02:49, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Snow Rise: I see you didn't even attempt to address the very valid point that parents should not let their kids have unmonitored access to Wikipedia, much less the internet as a whole. In fact, you pretty much dropped the "think-of-the-children!" argument in this last reply. There's a reason Wikipedia has and has had for a long time a content disclaimer which reads Wikipedia contains many different images and videos, some of which are considered objectionable or offensive by some readers. For example, some articles contain graphical depictions of violence, human anatomy, or sexual acts. and Wikipedia may contain triggers for people with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Indeed, I (and others) have attempted a significant number of times to get a more substantive definition of what "information" that is relayed in this video"

The same "information" that, say, The video of the killing of Kelly Thomas provides to understanding what happened to him. The same "information" that the photos of the lynchings of Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels provide in understanding the brutality they went through. The same "information" that a photo of a child victim of the 1929 Hebron massacre adds to the understanding of that event to readers. The same "information" that images of the casualties of war bombings add to their articles. War and violence produce harrowing images. Harrowing images are, often, graphic, but necessary to include in articles in order to further the reader's understanding of what occurred—especially if we recognize that most readers are not going to do a detailed poring through from title to citations of all the text. They will skim, jump to sections that interest them, and pause to look at images. Humans are very much vision-oriented. A perfectly cited text-only Wikipedia article on the Holocaust would not be as moving as one with images, harrowing that they may be.

it's profound BLP implications

There are no serious BLP implications. Nowhere in this video are any of the victims named. Hell, the video blurs the face of the most prominent victim, making recognition extremely difficult by anyone. Also, even if this victim was recognizable, they aren't portrayed "in a false or disparaging light".

To say nothing of the facts that, again, it's not WP:Verified

Verified how, exactly? Are you claiming that it isn't Kibbutz Mefalsim or that this didn't actually take place as it shows? It's likely that the IDF released this video, which then filtered down to Reddit, and finally to here. Someone with a better understanding of Israeli freedom of information or beaurocracy could probably find the original press release for the video.

and isn't available under an established free-use license

Who says it isn't? It's on Commons under a PD-CCTV license. I'm a little unfamiliar with that license, but it's false to say it isn't actually available under that license.

No....I didn't respond to either of you because a) I was busy with ...... I'm sorry that you felt that your point demanded a response: I didn't.

If your time is so short and your sleep deprivation is so bad, you should probably spend less time writing paragraphs about it and more time responding substantively (after a full night's rest). The fact of the matter is: Lenny made a counterargument at ~08:00 on 16 October which you didn't respond to (despite having "many paragraphs" at the ready) even though you replied to others. Again, you should probably go sleep if you're that admittedly short on time rather than making long, drawn-out "think-of-the-children!" pleadings that I find quite unconvincing.

One is a historical image depicting a, yes, unfathomably heinous act, but also one from which we are temporally distant. The other depicts a recent massacre which has traumatized countless people who could be impacted by how we approach the presentation of this subject, including many who may take a special interest in this article.

The former is an argument of time, not whether or not the content is encyclopedic or too graphic. The latter is more special pleading about how somebody might find this video and consider it offensive. Again, I find it quite unconvincing. I've covered 1 through 4 of your list already.

5) The image in question is WP:notable in its own right as an encylopedic subject and covered by robust discussion in reliable sources. This video is not.

Again, that's rather the point of this discussion, isn't it? If things that haven't been discussed about whether they are notable in their own right, then new images to Wikipedia can never be notable in their own right because they haven't been discussed yet.

I pointed out the very real possibility of consequences for this project's interests if we start including depictions of close-up murder in our current event articles

Legal ramifications to Wikipedia over our edits are not something to discuss or bring up in article-space. If you really feel like including the video in Wikipedia or Commons is a violation of some law, you should contact the Wikipedia legal team or start a discussion at an admin noticeboard. Regular editors are not qualified to make legal judgements for Wikipedia.

You're wrong in that I guarantee you that you can't find a video in an article depicting two people being shot and hacked to death. You're right in that the situation is not unique and the reason you can't find such a video or anything even particularly close to it is that every time someone has tried to force encyclopedia across that line, the community has rejected it.

You sure about that? Because I don't think you know what you're talking about. -- Veggies (talk) 04:52, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Shit's Crazy bro, I may be making a whole ass youtube video on how you can find fuckin gore on wikipedia 𝒞𝑜𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓇 𝒢𝑜𝑜𝒹𝓂𝒶𝓃 (talk) 20:44, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

UPD: You can find VERY GORY VIDEOS ON WIKIPEDIA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ricardo_Alfonso_Cerna_committing_suicide_in_California,_December_2003.ogv 𝒞𝑜𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓇 𝒢𝑜𝑜𝒹𝓂𝒶𝓃 (talk) 21:03, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@CooperGoodman: That video is not used on Wikipedia. You can see that in the "file usage" section. That image exists on Wikimedia Commons, which is a file repository and does not have the same rules as Wikipedia. That link is valid for Wikipedia's API for convenience (and IIRC Wikipedia once did store files locally), but it is irrelevant to Wikipedia. lethargilistic (talk) 10:25, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lethargilistic:That's not exactly true. That video was used on Wikipedia, but the corresponding article was deleted for reasons unrelated to the video itself. Graphic imagery is absolutely used in articles. -- Veggies (talk) 16:01, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@Veggies:Thanks for the catch and clarification. Nobody here has ever said that graphic images never appear in Wikipedia articles. lethargilistic (talk) 18:23, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

To respond to the verifiability part alone because I've said my piece on the rest (and images like your Vinnitsaexample) elsewhere: WP:VERIFY's opening sentence defines verifiability: verifiability means other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source. That is, the issue of verifiability is not an abstract "did this factually happen?" question that can be answered by "someone could theoretically go through IDF releases and find it." The limited question is whether this is cited to a reliable source, and it simply isn't. It's from reddit. Moreover, it could even (theoretically) be footage of Hamas attacking a kibbutz last year with the current date superimposed and it would not belong in the article as it was not part of this conflict. I have seen video debunkings in the last several days where IDF violence with no timestamp has been attributed to Hamas. (Again, this is applying policy, not an argument that it didn't take place or wasn't Hamas or whatever.) We don't know what this is because the video has not been connected to a WP:RS. The WP:ONUS is on the person who wants to include the footage to provide that RS. Until one has been provided, it is not verified.

Believe me, that policy does not particularly bring me joy. It means that Wikipedia is not about the literal truth. It occasionally reproduces information that I know to factually be untrue, but it is "verified" because it was reported in the New York Times. How does a person get the literal truth into a reliable source to correct the record and Wikipedia? Wikipedia does not (perhaps cannot) provide a great answer.

In any case, Verifiability means giving a Reliable Source for the video, not "it probably filtered down to reddit and we might be able to find it." WP:V, unlike NOTCENSORED, is categorical and absolute. If someone who wants the image in cannot provide an RS, the video is out of the article and the rest of this discussion is merely theoretical. lethargilistic (talk) 12:09, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Snow Rise, does "idiomatic" mean "the definition some people use on social media"? A modern linguist wouldn't call that (or any understandable use of any word) wrong, but I'm looking at the DSM-5, under the heading of "Posttraumatic Stress Disorder for Children 6 Years and Younger", pages 272–273, where I find the words "Witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others, especially primary caregivers.  Note:  Witnessing does not include events that are witnessed only in electronic media, television, movies, or pictures" (emphasis added).

IMO children can "absolutely" be terrified, upset, and distressed, and they can absolutely have a biopsychological Stress response, but it appears that the DSM does not call watching a distressing video trauma, no matter how horrified the viewer is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:56, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, we have the right to not watch the video and move on. Wikipedia can contain disclaimers. There are options to hide certain content. Cwater1 (talk) 15:41, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The Last Jew in Vinnitsa

Can anyone explain to me the content difference between The Last Jew in Vinnitsa and this CCTV footage, because I can't see it. -- Veggies (talk) 13:12, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

For starters that is a still image clearly showing the victim still alive and no insides spewing out and is a publicly available artefact in its own right. And as much as corpses are never eye candy, the circumstances in which they were captured (esp. Black and White) make them slightly more stomachable for users. In the context of the Holocaust (which is generally agreed to be a genocidal operation) that photo also serves its purpose to educate.

as for the video, yes that blood is way too WP:GRATUITOUS and the way editors have been reacting to this has indicated that it has not been as educative as it was expected to in an encyclopedic article now that some editors seem to be using this as none other than political football to call editors they hate as either anti-Semites or Western lackeys. (See every discussion we had relating to NPOV) Borgenland (talk) 15:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Borgenland This is, I believe a total misreading of WP:GRATUITOUS, which's simple point in that the graphic nature of content should not be a reason to include or not include any material. It is not a comment on subjective levels of graphicness.

"Wikipedia editors should not remove material solely because it may be offensive, unpleasant, or unsuitable for some readers. However, this does not mean that Wikipedia should include material simply because it is offensive"
— wp:GRATUITOUS

I'm sorry, but nothing in there states that becuse you think pictures are more offensive in color than in black in white that they should not be excluded. The policy goes on to state:

"Per the Wikipedia:Image use policy, the only reason for including any image in any article is "to increase readers' understanding of the article's subject matter"."
— wp:GRATUITOUS

In conclusion: Editors have made strong arguments as to why this image enhancies the understanind of the article topic. You are free to dispute that, but you are not supported by GRATUITOUS in saying it should be removed because other massacres are shown in black and white. Lenny Marks (talk) 16:07, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

And since WP:OTHERSTUFF exists has been invoked might as well we included Jihadi John videos in this discussion? Borgenland (talk) 15:32, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

This is really sad . 😢😢😢 MrBeastRapper (talk) 15:34, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

What "insides spewing out"? You mean blood? There's plenty of images of blood and wounds on Wikipedia. If you mean the person being bayonetted at the very end, it's obvious what's happening, but there's no graphic "insides spewing out" like you're asserting. I guarantee that if this video was desaturated to black and white, you would still oppose its inclusion, so let's throw that argument out as frivolous. Images of the Holocaust are "stomachable" for you only because the images have become part of the historical canon and have been widely shared and discussed and you live in the era of HD video where an older photograph isn't as shocking to you as motion video. That's simply an argument of medium, not content. Why wouldn't this video serve an educational purpose? It's CCTV, so it certainly wasn't framed to capture this specific event, unlike the Vinnitsa photo. And this is a major event in regional, if not world history—much like all the wars in the Middle East. You need to cite what part of WP:GRATUITOUS you think this falls under. I've read the guideline and can't find where this meets any Wikipedia definition of gratuitousness. As for "the way editors have been reacting to this", that's irrelevant to a rational discussion about policies and image use. It's certainly educational, regardless of a few editors' emotional reactions. I haven't called anyone any names and I'm fully in favor of including this video (as I would be a copyright-free video of Israeli settlers running down, killing, and bayonetting Palestinians). As for Jihadi John, his videos are edited to be blatant ISIS propaganda so would obviously be less neutral than CCTV footage, but, yes, if they were copyright-free, I'd be fine including them in an ISIS or Jihadi John article. -- Veggies (talk) 15:58, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Veggies Since you don't want discussion down there, I'll answer you up here. Regarding the police brutality video, I think the main distinction is that the subject matter of that article is whether the police officers' conduct constitutes murder, and hence a video showing their precise actions (apparently cited by the prosecutor as grounds for bringing charges) is highly relevant. In the case under discussion here, it would seem incontrovertible that the civilians were brutally murdered. Regarding the copyright issue, I would say that if the blood-gushing and head-dropping motions are relevant to an enhanced understanding of the incident, we could theoretically create a model animation depicting Daniel Pearl's beheading. Would you support inclusion of such an animation in the article, since it would show what the copyrighted videos show, without violating copyright? I am trying to test your logic here.--Orgullomoore (talk) 03:16, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Orgullomoore I don't think that there needs to be real ambiguity (such as in the police brutality video) in order to justify an image. I think it's clear per wp:IMGCONTENT that an image can be used to enhance readers understandings of what is in the text. This is especially true here where the image represents not just this particular attack but is illustrating an unprecedented type of attack that occurred many times on October 7. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 13:34, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Lenny Marks: I am not persuaded by this reasoning. Setting aside copyright issues for the purposes of this argument, if your reasoning is correct, then our article on sexual assault should have a video of a person being sexually assaulted (preferably, in all the various ways--groping, male-on-female penetration, female-on-male penetration, male-on-male, sodomization via objects, etc.), the article on revenge porn (setting aside BLP issues for the sake of argument) should include an actual revenge porn video and the victim experiencing extreme shame and ridicule as a result, the beheading video article should have a beheading video (if copyright is an issue, then a visual animation model), the article on crushing videos should include a video of a cat being crushed (the article currently contains a video of a kiwi fruit being crushed), the article on exsanguination should show someone bleeding out, the various school shooting videos should show and so on and so forth. Applying your reasoning, all of these videos should be as graphic and sharp as possible so as to enhance the reader's understanding of the type of pain and anguish experienced by the subject. I think this reasoning would lead to a situation that is simply distasteful. This is an argumentum ad absurdum that I am presenting here. I think it is simply not true that a person needs to watch immense suffering in order to understand that immense suffering occurred. I think a person who looks up the October 7 attacks is not wanting to see the attacks, but rather learn about the attacks. Certainly, learning can be aided by images, but there is a point at which the shock and obscenity of some of the images detract from the learning. I am not confident that I can articulate where that point is, but I am confident in saying that the examples I have described (and the video under discussion here) are beyond that point. And thus is the nature of obscenity generally: an extremely subjective and nebulous concept that evades definition but not recognition. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's words in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio are by now a cliché, probably for this very reason: The most famous opinion from Jacobellis, however, was Justice Potter Stewart's concurrence, stating that the Constitution protected all obscenity except "hard-core pornography". He wrote, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." (from the article).-- Orgullomoore (talk) 15:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Orgullomoore I was not making a blanket statement that all graphic images should be used in every article. I was merely pointing out that their are good reasons to include here. I understand the argument your trying to make but I don't really think it's analogous. Obiously, neither one of us is interested in going through each of those instances on their merits to see why the media wasn't included. Equally, though, I could list many articles that do have graphic and extremely disturbing media, such as: Abu Ghraib abuse (actual torture), Einsatzgruppen (mass murder), and 9/11 (planes and buildings exploding). Ultimately, it comes down to the individual topic and the level of understanding, fact, or context drived from the images. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 16:21, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Cut to the chase: Should the violent video be removed from the article?

• Support as proposer, per reasons by Snow Rise and above. Awesome Aasim 15:02, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Absolutely not STRONG oppose per reasons already given (and those tellingly not given by the opposition). -- Veggies (talk) 15:28, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Addendum - If this is for !voting, it should just be for !voting, not for hashing out yet another section to make the same arguments. Go make/retort arguments above. -- Veggies (talk) 19:55, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose I have carefully read and considered the reasons for an against. Ultimately I do not think it should be removed because words do not convey the savage casual violence against unarmed and innocent civilians shown in the clip. WCM_email 15:39, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose I have been carefully following the discussion and beleive there is definitely encyclopedic value to satisfy wp:IMGCONTENT. The arguments against inclusion would also apply to a huge swath of material on this article and other well regarded articles on this project. No better alternative has been proposed. --Lenny Marks (talk) 16:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose I agree with Veggies. While the video is indeed graphic, there is precedent for using graphic media, and I have a better understanding of the atrocities committed by Hamas having watched this video. IshChasidecha (talk) 17:14, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Remove I have seen multiple videos of the conflict that show dead and wounded people on both sides. This particular video is one of the most gruesome ones out there. If I were someone who had not seen any gore or murder footage before, watching this execution video on Wikipedia would deeply disturb me. Ecrusized (talk) 17:17, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• SNOW support. Look, let's just for the moment put aside the WP:OM issues, the BLP concerns, the substantial potential for causing traumatic responses in our readers, the WMFs principle of reader expectation rule, the likely knock on effects of Wikipedia hosting such content that could lead to the article as a whole reaching less eyes, and any other perennial issues that come up with such material. And by the way, this is a good place to say that I'm very impressed with everyone for keeping the tone polite and even-keeled all through the discussion so far, despite clearly strong feelings on the editorial considerations and the highly contentious nature of the article: it's very nice to see and speaks well to priorities, good faith, and level-headedness of those commenting.

Now, all that said, even putting those substantial editorial and harm concerns aside, this content just isn't going to stay, longterm: if nothing else, it violates WP:V and none free content policies. Both of which are pretty much never abrogated in circumstances like these, ultimately. We can't confirm the provenance of the video and we don't have an appropriate license for it. For those reasons alone, it has to go. The other concerns represent important and heavy editorial issues and I think it's a valuable thing to have that discussion in parallel--and indeed I think we should continue to have that discussion simply on the principle that we might be looking at other similar media in the future, that is licensed properly. But those are simply additional reasons to consider removing the video, whereas verifiability and NFC are buck-stops-here concerns that there aren't any viable arguments to get around. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 17:28, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Remove - There is now a video of a trench in Gaza where Palestinian bodies are being buried in a mass grave because the morgues are full and the population forced to leave. Will we end up with competing videos? We are here to dispassionately document, not to push for one side. O3000, Ret. (talk) 17:51, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support: Is this really a question? Yes, we should remove snuff films. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:55, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  I agree it shouldn't be a question; material should not be included solely because it is offensive, nor should it be removed solely because it is offensive. But grossly offensive and traumatic material universally crosses the line and is out of scope of Wikipedia; especially when less offensive alternatives exist. WP:BLP also applies, specifically "the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment". This might also be a good application of WP:IAR, but consensus gets muddied in discussions like this. The straw !poll will help a bit with assessing consensus. Awesome Aasim 02:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  Videos showing someone being hurt badly or even murdered shouldn't be in the article. While Wikipedia don't censor things, this is too extreme in my opinion. Context clues without looking, snuff films sound like the film is violent. Cwater1 (talk) 18:35, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Awsome Aasim You say that "grossly offensive and traumatic material universally crosses the line and is out of scope of Wikipedia". This is simply untrue and not in line with standard practice of articles covering large traumatic events. (see Einzatsgruppen, Abu Ghraib abuse, 9/11.) --Lenny Marks (talk) 19:01, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Cwater1 It may be too extreme in your opinion, but I do not think that is the cuttoff for inclusion in Wikipedia policy. Graphicness is neither a reason to include or exclude material, encyclopedic value is. If there were too equally illustrative videos and one was less graphic, it would obviously be the better choice. But since that is not the case, it is not policy to remove the video because someone thinks it is too far. --Lenny Marks (talk) 19:01, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I can agree with you. As long as it is legal, then it can stay. We don't have disclaimer warning saying, "it may be disturbing to some." It is implied in the WP:Content disclaimer that Wikipedia can contain something graphic. Cwater1 (talk) 19:09, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Cwater1 Thanks. I appreciate that this is intense material but this is an intense topic. Will you be changing your poll response? Lenny Marks (talk) 19:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lenny Marks I strike out the comment. <s> I put a new reply saying keep video. Cwater1 (talk) 23:45, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Cwater1 I dont see your new reply, is it possible you forgot to add it to the poll? Lenny Marks (talk) 19:52, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support - Reasons described in the above thread. Broadly agree with Snow Rise. lethargilistic (talk) 17:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Remove - Senseless snuff film amounting to propaganda that serves no encyclopedic cause. eduardog3000 (talk) 19:08, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Keep. As far as I know there is no auto-play on Wikipedia, so every reader can make their own decision whether to watch it. Alaexis_¿question? 20:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support citing Snow Rise. Borgenland (talk) 20:07, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support Didn't know Wikipedia has turned into a gore site now. Yekshemesh (talk) 21:28, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support removal per Snow Rise. This has clearly been chosen specifically because it is WP:GRATUITOUS. It is possible to present comprehensive encyclopedic coverage of an armed attack without showing videos of people being killed. Even so, BLP issues (which applies to both the living and recently deceased) should make it overwhelmingly clear that removal is the correct answer. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:08, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support removal I have refrained from watching the video based solely on what has been said about it here. I saw the Daniel Pearl beheading video, many years ago, and it disturbed me for a long time. Same thing goes for some of the Islamic State beheading incidents and James Foley (journalist) videos circa 2014. It's worth noting, by the way, that the Daniel Pearl, beheading video, Islamic State beheading incidents, and James Foley (journalist) articles all lack beheading videos. Images (especially videos) are very powerful in conveying things that words cannot, and the grotesque character of the attacks help explain the forceful reaction and unprecedented unity of the Israelis. It is not the same to say, "Innocent civilians were chased down and shot at close range" as to show a video of an innocent civilian being chased down and shot at close range. But my opinions is that we should leave it to the Wikipedia reader to google that for themselves if that's what they want to experience.--Orgullomoore (talk) 02:01, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
  • @Orgullomoore: This isn't the place for a discussion, but since you didn't contribute in the greater discussion above, I'll have to retort here. Daniel Pearl et al. videos are copyrighted and wouldn't fall within fair-use. This one is evidently not and doesn't have to meet that strict requirement. The article Killing of Kelly Thomas contains CCTV footage of his killing by police officers (with audio). The video is copyright-free, graphic, and was included in the article. Shocking, right? -- Veggies (talk) 02:40, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Remove per SnowRise. Andre🚐 02:38, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  •Remove: Don't see the justification on including something that goes to THAT level of violence. I can see a justification somewhat for some violent or graphic videos/images, but someone literally gets their brains blown out in HD and someone gets stabbed to death and beaten to death (after being shot I believe). All in one video. It's brutal, and on balance I can't justify including it for all the reasons discussed above. It doesn't add enough to justify it's inclusion (given it WILL reduce viewership, and probably traumatize several people, it's pretty damn bad). Text with images that don't involve depictions of murder suffice. Chuckstablers (talk) 02:50, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• I would oppose most of the pro-removal arguments as Wikipedia is not censored and the video serves to illustrate some of the violence of the events for the reader. This article is about inherently violent events, so the inclusion of violent/distressing images is certainly due. However, we do not seem to have a good source verifying this particular video at present and the video should be removed unless/until we do. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 02:47, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  Oppose removal - I see no compelling reason to deviate from policy. Riposte97 (talk) 03:53, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose removal - WIkipedia is NOT censored, period. This is by far not the most graphic video out of the conflict, and the suggestions by some that less violent videos be used as a replacement are egregious and against policy. Our goal is to depict incidents as they occurred, not depict what we think might be pleasing to the eye of the reader. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 11:23, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support Removal - There are far more illustrative videos we could use. Frankly it's not even a good video and does not much of anything to the reader's understanding compared to, for example, video of the paragliders, the invasion itself, or rocket fire. EvergreenFir (talk) 17:42, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  What are some other videos that we can use? 🤔🤔 I have no clue! MrBeastRapper (talk) 17:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  • Huh? How would a video of a paraglider (if you could even find a copyright-free one) be "more illustrative" to educating readers about this war than this video. And you didn't explain why it "does not much of anything to the reader's understanding"—whatever that means. -- Veggies (talk) 17:59, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
  • This response being right below mine and repeating the same incorrect idea about far more subtle "suitable" videos is quite ironic.
    See WP:GRATUITOUS (incorrectly cited by many who want a removal) :- Wikipedia editors should not remove material solely because it may be offensive, unpleasant, or unsuitable for some readers. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 18:10, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

    On the flip side, this does not mean that Wikipedia should include material simply because it is offensive, nor does it mean that offensive content is exempted from regular inclusion guidelines. This is what most of the support comments have been arguing - that issues like WP:BLP and wmf:Resolution:Controversial content also greatly apply here. We don't (or at least shouldn't) keep offensive material unless if it adds value to the encyclopedia; I don't believe this clip does that. Its sole purpose is to offend, not to educate, and we are not LiveLeak or Daily Mail or New York Post (or any news agency for that matter that aims to be sensationalist) and there isn't significant cultural significance in this CCTV that merits keeping this, unlike The Falling Man which conveyed a powerful message after 9/11. Awesome Aasim 23:14, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

    The argument that the video is only intended to offend should not have arisen given the discussions above. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 16:21, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

    I agree with the fact that we shouldn't remove an image or video just because it is graphic. There is that disclaimer on top of the talk page saying that there are options to hide such content. Cwater1 (talk) 22:41, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

  Precisely. Media's sole purpose here is to enhance the encyclopedia. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:45, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

*Support - Sounds too graphic. Who would want to watch a bloody scene. Not I. I am aware Wikipedia isn't censored and there are ways to hide certain images and videos. Cwater1 (talk) 18:44, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. Per Wikipedia:Gore . Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive‍—‌even exceedingly so. It is not censored. Marokwitz (talk) 18:51, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Keep - Just because a video or image is graphic don't mean we remove it. Visitors don't have to watch the video of they don't want to. That's why we got the ability to hide graphic content, see Help: Options to hide an image.

• Keep/re-add/oppose but wait – alternatives may be better – Ignoring the biased file name and possible copyright and verifiability issues, this video shows Hamas's attacks much better than the other image used in the article. I would prefer a less violent example (such as an image), but only if it showcases the attacks in a similar way to this video. I don't think we should readd it until the copyright issue (see the comment) is addressed. 19:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose removal - Honestly, even with the violent nature, it should not be removed, (just my personal opinion)𝒞𝑜𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓇 𝒢𝑜𝑜𝒹𝓂𝒶𝓃 — Preceding undated comment added 20:28, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose removal I strike out my original comment. I agree with @Lenny Marks. Cwater1 (talk) 22:36, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion (killing video)

Is there now enough of a consensus to remove the video? 10 votes to 5 looks pretty strong to me. The footage has not been in the article for very long (only maybe a day or two), so I don't think that "implicit consensus" counts for anything. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:10, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

First of all, nobody is voting here. This isn't a democracy. Second, the discussion has only been active for less than thirty-ish hours. A bit quick to be making snap (ahem, "executive") decisions on such a contentious issue. Third, consensus is not about mathematical ratios of poll results. If if you were at the right time to close a discussion (much less knowledgeable about how to do so), your rationale needs to be more than "10 > 5". You should probably read what closing a discussion requires. I suppose I should be gobsmacked that an editor with almost 45K edits isn't aware of these fundamental guidelines and procedures, but very little surprises me anymore. -- Veggies (talk) 01:35, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

So how long is this discussion supposed to run for? A week? A month? You've been here since 2005, long enough to understand the concept of consensus and WP:ONUS. It's incredibly rare in AFD discussions for instance, for a 2:1 vote to be overturned, and you've provided no evidence that the arguments for removal are not policy-based. The results of this discussion show that so far there is no consensus to include the video and therefore it should be removed, per ONUS The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. You also apparently know that the copyright status of this video is unclear, but voted keep on Commons anyway [27], so maybe it's too much to expect a coherent argument from you. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:43, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

So how long is this discussion supposed to run for? A week? A month? As long as necessary. We might even choose to go to WP:RFD if arguments become intractable to get a broader opinion. A far less graphic but far more heated discussion took years (and many archived pages) to resolve. There was a template long ago called Linkimage (also dealing with graphic or "offensive" images on Wikipedia) which was nominated for deletion three separate times over the course of over a year before it was finally (and rightly) deleted. So, what's the rush? I'm fully aware of ONUS. you've provided no evidence that the arguments for removal are not policy-based I can't quote the entire discussion in a reply. The arguments are in the main discussion section above. Those who oppose removal (myself included) have made counterarguments to the pro-removal editors which are strongly policy-based and at least two of us have yet to read a response. You, again, are relying on mathematical ratios to further your points. maybe it's too much to expect a coherent argument from you As for the deletion discussion on Commons, I didn't come up with PD-CCTV and I don't have a strong legal understanding of the inherent basis behind that public domain justification, so I'm fully in favor of keeping the video if it's truly copyright-free, but I'm unsure whether it is. But, again, I didn't come up with that template on Commons. I have to defer to the more knowledgeable people who did. It's perfectly "coherent" to say 'I think this is fine content-wise, but I'm unsure about the copyright status.' -- Veggies (talk) 02:21, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

We've all remained civil up until this point, let's try to continue that trend. Chuckstablers (talk) 02:23, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

The whole point of the !votes are to make it easier to assess consensus especially when discussions gets muddied like this. Because the original question was about what to do with the media the straw !polls serve to make assessing consensus easier. Awesome Aasim 02:31, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Except two things: 1) Many people who cast a !vote didn't contribute to the larger discussion and/or didn't cite applicable policies, either making incendiary statements "snuff film" "gore site" etc. or just saying "per [another user]" and 2) not everyone who contributed to the discussion contributed to the poll. -- Veggies (talk) 02:53, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I havent voted and dont intend to, but ONUS applies to inclusion of content, and with the straw poll as it is now I think it is fair to say that at the very least there is no consensus for inclusion so it should be out. You, Veggies, should self-revert unless and until there is a consensus for inclusion. nableezy - 02:32, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

That's actually a good point. I'll do it now. -- Veggies (talk) 02:44, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

That being the case, I feel obliged to offer my opinion in support of @Veggies. Images and video media are included in articles to help illustrate a point to the reader. The video in question unequivocally helps to illustrate what occurred during Operation Al-Asqa Flood.

Most of the arguments against inclusion implicitly rely on a moral assertion that people should not see certain things, due to vaguely-invoked and unquantifiable harm. Despite claims to the contrary, these arguments are motivated by the same censorious impulse as most moves to restrict content on Wikipedia, and can be dismissed for similar reasons.

We have a policy (WP:NOTCENSORED), and we should apply it. Riposte97 (talk) 04:06, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

As Mr Obama was fond of saying, dont boo, vote. nableezy - 04:55, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

This is an important point. The guidelines on closure state clearly that consensus is to be found through the arguments (consistent with policy) made by responsible Wikipedians. Not just a head count of people who were not involved in the discussion at all, polling with an argument that flatly contradicts policy. I would suggest that when the time comes that we seek an outside party at Requests for closure. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 11:45, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Per WP:Offensive material: Images containing offensive material that is extraneous, unnecessary, irrelevant, or gratuitous are not preferred over non-offensive ones in the name of opposing censorship (emphasis mine). Simply arguing "Wikipedia is not censored" or "we need to show how brutal/savage/gratuitous it was" is not enough to meet the requirement for inclusion. There's some irony in people making those arguments and then saying that exclusion violates policy. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 13:58, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Right, consensus is still a thing. For the record I haven't commented up to now or watched the video. Selfstudier (talk) 14:04, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien Per WP:Offensive material: Images containing offensive material that is extraneous, unnecessary, irrelevant, or gratuitous are not preferred over non-offensive ones in the name of opposing censorship (emphasis mine). wp:GRATUITOUS is not an inclusion criterion it is a policy which states that graphicness is not a reason for inclusion or exclusion, and that less graphic options should be used when possible. The people arguing that the video can't be excluded for graphicness are not precisly correct, but they are correct barring an alternative with the same encyclopedic value. Simply saying that the video is offensive is not a reason for to remove it. GRATUITOUS goes on to say Rather, the choice of images should be judged by the normal policies for content inclusion. The inclusion requirements for images are clear:

The purpose of an image is to increase readers' understanding of the article's subject matter, usually by directly depicting people, things, activities, and concepts described in the article.
— wp:IMGCONTENT

-- Lenny Marks (talk) 15:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir. Could you provide some of the more illustrative videos you think there are? There are several people in this discussion that have agreed that they would be open to changing to a less graphic video that also displayed the attacks on civilians. If you could provide it would go a long way towards reaching consensus. --Lenny Marks (talk) 17:48, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Videos and Creative Commons is not my forte, but here's what I found that I think would be acceptable for Wikipedia:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtMkm7XidLo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlVgqsQC83A
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HgXk_mz_8E
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g3ewJZXdsg
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yqrXWzZhTw
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o67EYVdfgzo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nlwbWhQaMw

EvergreenFir (talk) 18:24, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, I will look through these Lenny Marks (talk) 18:26, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

A few more:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmHydKv0_Do
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kC1J4W5sd4

EvergreenFir (talk) 18:26, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm not impressed.

The first is a twelve-hour stream of talking-heads. If a CNN or Fox News twelve-hour stream were free-use, I don't see what it would add to the article if included in-line. Maybe as an external link, this is valuable. Also: it has commercials which I have serious doubts about whether they are actually free-use.

The second is drone footage of an excavator moving rubble. Given how many rubble photos we already have in the article, I don't see what this adds of any value. More importantly, however, Kanal13 is a copyright-washing account. (see [28] vs [29]). NowThis News has a live stream of Trump at a courthouse and Kanal13 straight-up snipped their footage and uploaded it as their own CC content. No way we can trust any of these videos you have of them as being actually copyright-free. That disqualifies the third, fourth, sixth, eighth, and ninth of your videos. As an administrator, I expect you to be aware of copyright washing, so, as I said above, I should probably be gobsmacked at your careless citation of these shady channels, but very little surprises me anymore.

The fifth is a little bit better, but it's a compilation of videos from various sources as well as just "breaking-news"-style talking heads. Not worthless, but not any better at describing the horror of the initial Hamas attack than the video we're discussing.

The seventh is sensationalist rapid-fire jump-cutting with ostentatious music. Did you not watch it? Even if the channel actually had the right to use all those clips (and I'm skeptical that it does), it's editing is way too NPOV. -- Veggies (talk) 19:16, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I had the sound off, so I did not know about the music. I am making a good faith effort. EvergreenFir (talk) 19:41, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir Thank you for your efforts. I appreciate your work but I share many of the concerns listed above. Most notably, we haven't found a video that shows the unprecedented type of attacks that were carried out and that shows the careful and thorough targeting of civilians that occurred. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 19:49, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lenny Marks is correct. @EvergreenFir has made an effort, as have I, but I don't believe other videos are as good as the one under discussion. I think we should try to gain consensus for re-addition, seeing as the video was removed during the vote above (and the conversation seems to have moved past it). Riposte97 (talk) 09:12, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose/Keep per WP:GORE. Hansen Sebastian^Talk 04:32, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Question 2: Should the video be blacklisted from the English Wikipedia?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

• Support as proposer, per reasons by Snow Rise and above. Awesome Aasim 15:02, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Support also per reasons by Snow Rise and above. Borgenland (talk) 15:15, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• Wrong venue, blacklisting is discussed at MediaWiki talk:Bad image list when it becomes necessary due to disruptive use of the image/media. —Kusma (talk) 15:20, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Kusma Would I need to start an RfC to get global consensus to blacklist the image? Awesome Aasim 18:23, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  Put an 18 + symbol on the video , so people know not to watch it. MrBeastRapper (talk) 18:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  @MrBeastRapper I would agree, but we have WP:NODISCLAIMERS. Awesome Aasim 18:35, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Awesome Aasim, just go to the Bad image talk page when there is evidence that the video is being used disruptively or against consensus. It seems sufficient for the moment to debate here whether it should be included. —Kusma (talk) 18:31, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Wrong venue as explained above -- Veggies (talk) 15:28, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• (No &) Wrong venue per @Kusma (talk) --Lenny Marks (talk) 16:19, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
• (No &) wrong venue per Kusma. Thryduulf (talk) 20:18, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Add more details about HAMAS war crimes in the war crimes section

I do not think that this page is biased or anything, but I just think that there should be more detailing of HAMAS war crimes in the according section. More than half of the section is about Israeli war crimes, and I do not think that that should be removed, but it just seems disproportionate. It would be nice and would provide a less biased view to the reader if there was more info on the Palestinian war crimes. RealNuclearFish (talk) 19:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I guess part of the issue is that there's not much else to say about them. I'd agree that maybe we could expand on it a bit. The issue is that the TYPE of war crimes committed were fairly limited, and the depth of analysis by reliable sources on it was less than Israeli war crimes (which require more legal analysis and application of international law).

For example, chasing down civilians in pick-up trucks, shooting them in the head, and stabbing/beating them to death is obviously a war crime. I don't really know what else should be said there; maybe cite specifically what international laws are being broken? But even that would be kind of unnecessary; it's OBVIOUSLY bad to chase down civilians and kill them. The issue at this point is really that these war crimes occurred in a couple of days, whereas the Israeli ones have been happening for longer at this point. The SCALE or number of people killed in war crimes might be comparable, but there's just more to talk about when it comes to Israeli ones.

I do agree it presents a bit of a false balance, though. I don't know what the solution really would be. We can't just arbitrarily remove war crimes that Israel committed to make the lengths the same. We also can't just arbitrarily pad out the section for Hamas's war crimes. Suggestions? Chuckstablers (talk) 19:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

There isnt much more to say is the point, Hamas's violations of international law in targeting civilians and taking civilian hostages are documented, as are accusations against it for the use of rockets that cannot discriminate between military and civilian targets. But thats the end of the story there, and while rockets continue and that can be noted the coverage of the ongoing Israeli strikes and siege and the war crimes involved have become more and more widely covered and discussed. If Israel is accused of even more war crimes that section will grow. If Hamas is accused of more war crimes, then that too will be covered. nableezy - 21:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

The issue at hand stems from contrasting accusations of war crimes. In one case, there are allegations of war crimes, such as the controversial 'white phosphorus' incident, where sources were misrepresented (see the earlier discussion about this where it was shown that the reliable source cited was misrepresented, resulting in a change in the section). Just now, for instance, it was claimed that Israel used 'white phosphorus on a children's hospital' based on an unreliable source, the Egyptian Times, quoting the Gaza government. However, despite this allegedly occurring on October 13th, reliable sources on white phosphorus use make no mention of this potentially severe war crime, even when published two days later. Despite this, we're stating that this happened in wiki voice?

This inconsistency is the crux of the issue. While reliable sources reporting IDF statements on decapitated babies were insufficient to make a claim in 'wiki voice' regarding Israel, in the case of Palestine, it seems acceptable to assert in 'wiki voice' that Israel bombed a children's hospital with white phosphorus. This assertion is made despite the absence of reliable sources supporting it, with the only reliable sources available (from human rights watch for example) not saying a word about this despite being published 2 days after the alleged use of white phosphorous on a childrens hospital. The unreliable source reporting on this in any case is just citing the statements of the palestinian health authority in gaza, part of the government that is a belligerent in this conflict. But when a reliable source reports the statements of the IDF, also a belligerent in this conflict, that's not enough to say in wiki voice that babies were decapitated. Which I agree with. It's this double standard that is why we have an NPOV tag, and why it's probably not going away anytime soon unless this changes. Chuckstablers (talk) 22:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

If a source is misrepresented it should be fixed. If a source is attributing something to the Ministry of Health in Gaza then so to should we. I dont see how that is the case with the war crime section though. Everything there is from third party sources. nableezy - 22:23, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

It specifically said, in wiki voice, that a childrens hospital was evacuated following an attack by a white phosphorous projectile. It didn't attribute it at all to who actually said it; part of the government of Gaza. We would've needed a reliable source stating it, and it's pretty obvious propaganda. Israel is striking childrens hospitals with white phosphorous now? The source cited claimed 70 people, mainly children were killed. And nobody reported on that apart from a paper owned by the government of Egypt (with spelling mistakes and clear alignment with the egyptian governments take)? That's the issue. That this kind of stuff is being added and would stay unless someone fights it is why we have an NPOV tag. Chuckstablers (talk) 22:37, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

That was in a subsection that I did not notice, I fixed it. And put the CNN source that reports on it. nableezy - 22:39, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

All we have is a claim by the palestinian government in Gaza about it's use. The cartoon villian levels of evil are mirrored in the decapitated babies claim. We also had reliable sources REPORTING on what the IDF had said about that. We are not including that in the Palestinian war crimes section. My issue is that we are reporting on things that are only sourced from the government of gaza. There's a double standard there, that's the issue. If the decapitated babies thing doesn't go in palestinian war crimes, why do claims sourced solely from a belligerent in the conflict belong in the Israeli war crimes section? When there's no evidence it happened other than they said it did. Because again; that's all the CNN source says. Chuckstablers (talk) 22:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Especially when we have reliable sources that would've confirmed it had it happened given that they reported on it's use when nobody was alleged to have died, and didn't report on it's use when 70 people allegedly children died. Because we have three reliable sources earlier on in the section that notably don't mention it despite being published after it was initially reported. Chuckstablers (talk) 22:49, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Um the article says Israeli forces reclaimed Kfar Aza and began collecting the dead, finding the bodies of victims mutilated, with women and babies beheaded and burnt in their homes. That is based on Israeli government reports. nableezy - 22:53, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

No problem with the Kfar Aza part. Israel kinda did a PR offensive, Bucha massacre style there. Loads of independent reporters went there, checking things out and talking to the rescue workers. So we can tell in wiki voice what these reporters reckon they saw and attributing what the rescue folks are saying since those are associated with the Israeli government, right? Going into all the gory details of how those brave folks caused these little ones to pass on might not be super necessary, I reckon." Infinity Knight (talk) 00:47, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

What independent reporter said that they found babies beheaded? Because all the sources say that is from an IDF soldier telling an i24 reporter that. nableezy - 01:21, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

You know, I'm not entirely sure. I'd kinda expect to hear that info from the rescue workers, but you know what, there were tons of TV crews out there, check it out. This might be a good kick-off point; you'll find some solid sources there. It's just a thought on how we might handle the Kfar Aza stuff, delving into the nitty-gritty of how those brave souls caused those little ones to meet their maker ain't all that necessary, I'd say. Infinity Knight (talk) 01:43, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, Im not going to watch hours of video to look for a source that Im pretty sure doesnt even exist. If you find one youre welcome to bring it. nableezy - 02:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm just trying to assist, but when you say "a source that Im pretty sure doesnt even exist" does that mean you want to get rid of all the Kfar Aza content? Infinity Knight (talk) 02:30, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

If the source is not reliable for a claim, new sources must be found or it must go. That is policy. O3000, Ret. (talk) 11:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the primary reliable source for bodies condition, independent of the Israeli government, would be Yossi Landau, regional head of ZAKA, which according to their page ZAKA prefer to call the organization and their work Chesed shel Emet (חסד של אמת‎ – lit. 'Kindness of truth'), because they are dedicated to ensuring that the bodies of Jewish victims are buried according to Halakha, Jewish law. After acts of terrorism, ZAKA volunteers also collect the bodies and body parts of non-Jews, including suicide bombers, for return to their families. The phrase Chesed shel Emet refers to doing "kindness" for the benefit of the deceased, which is considered to be "true kindness", because the (deceased) beneficiaries of the kindness cannot return the kindness. he's talking about what's happening in other villages too, and because of his position, he probably has the answer to your question. There's that i24 source, which seems pretty reliable to me, and also a Reuters source that doesn't dive into as much detail. I wouldn't be shocked if he's given more interviews to reliable sources. Infinity Knight (talk) 16:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

We can't just arbitrarily remove war crimes that Israel committed to make the lengths the same. We can, however, be more concise; there are a lot of quotes in the section that merely restate what has already been said - we can and should remove those, as they don't add anything to the article but do cause it to violate WP:BALASP. BilledMammal (talk) 02:16, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

You have, once again, merely asserted the balance of sources is not followed, and you have, once again, provided no evidence for that assertion. Repeating the same false statement does not make it more true. nableezy - 02:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

And you've asserted that they are being followed. But lets try to get some evidence. I searched Google news for Israel Hamas war "war crimes" and opened the first 20 articles:

1. Wall Street Journal: The Siege of Hamas Is No War Crime
2. The Conversation: How the ‘laws of war’ apply to the conflict between Israel and Hamas
3. Time: Atrocities Seeks Extreme Reaction. Don’t Give Hamas What It Wants
4. Reuters: What war crimes laws apply to the Israel-Palestinian conflict?
5. Sydney Morning Herald: A war crime is still a war crime, even in retaliation
6. Al Jazeera: Israel-Hamas war updates: Iran tells Israel to stop before ‘it’s too late’
7. Times of Israel: Hamas actions are war crimes, could constitute genocide – international law experts
8. Washington Post: Have war crimes been committed in Israel and Gaza?
9. The Guardian: Israel-Hamas war live: latest news and live updates
10. Asia Times: No winners so far in Hamas-Israel PR war
11. SBS: Which war crime laws apply to the Israel-Hamas conflict?
12. Financial Times: Rules of war: international law and the Israel-Hamas conflict
13. The Guardian: Progressive Democrats bring resolution calling for ceasefire in Israel-Hamas war
14. Atlantic Council: Hamas’s actions are war crimes. Israel should not respond with further war crimes.
15. Associated Press: Experts say Hamas and Israel are committing war crimes in their fight
16. Amnesty International: Israel: Palestinian armed groups must be held accountable for deliberate civilian killings, abductions and indiscriminate attacks
17. The Strategist: The spiral of violence that led to Hamas
18. The Nation: We Must Not Let the Truth Become a Casualty of This War
19. DW: Are war crimes being committed in Israel-Hamas conflict?
20. NDTV: Explained: What Are War Crimes And Are Israel And Hamas Committing Them?

These results are biased, as most of the war crimes against Israel were committed over a week ago and Google News preferences recent results, but they're still a reasonable estimate. Reviewing them I find that the coverage given to the actions of Hamas and the actions of Israel is roughly equal, although the wording is different - sources are consistently unequivocal that Hamas has committed war crimes, but they are not consistently so about Israel.

As such, to comply with WP:BALASP we should provide roughly equal prominence; at the moment we have 510 words for the actions of Hamas, compared to 1024 for the actions of Israel. Either we need to expand the former, or shrink the latter; I suspect the best option is to do both, by adding quotes to the former and removing quotes from the latter. BilledMammal (talk) 02:46, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

There is no planet in which you counting 20 google news results makes it so your estimate of sources is accurate. For example, HRW or the WHO or any UN agency for that matter is not in your list. Google news is not the only reliable source repository. Hell your first result is an op ed. And your second result, despite the dishonest sources aren’t unequivocal about Israeli violations flat out says the siege is illegal. You can ignore what you want to, but I don’t need to, and I’ll make sure coverage of Israeli actions is consistent with the sources and push back on any attempt to wave over them because a user doesn’t like the amount of coverage given to them. nableezy - 05:13, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

You asked for evidence, and I provided it; A random sampling of sources is the best way that we will be able to get an estimate of the depth of coverage we need to provide to comply with WP:BALASP, and I can't currently think of a better way to obtain that random sampling than something along the lines of "first 20 google news results from a fair search query".

And your second result, despite the dishonest sources aren’t unequivocal about Israeli violations flat out says the siege is illegal What I said is that they aren't consistently unequivocal. BilledMammal (talk) 06:02, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Nableezy perhaps provide an analysis of your own if you wish to dispute these findings? I, for one, consider the cold blooded murder of civilians in broad daylight, happily celebrated, to be a far more important event than a unconfirmed report that someone used white phosphorous artillery (which is legal, by the way). Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 11:33, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, those are war crimes. We say so. So is the intentional starving of 2.2 million people. So are indiscriminate attacks and disproportionate attacks. The idea that Hamas is bad so we cant say Israel did anything bad either is both stupid and in violation of our policies. And the sources quoted above do not back uo BilledMammal's view, because the amount of space is not based on which crime is less disputed, its based on which is discussed in reliable sources more often. And every single one of them discusses Israeli war crimes, with some giving arguments they are not. But if you are under the impression that your personal outrage meter is what determines Wikipedia content you are wrong. nableezy - 11:53, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

And the sources quoted above do not back uo BilledMammal's view, because the amount of space is not based on which crime is less disputed, its based on which is discussed in reliable sources more often. That's what I said? BilledMammal (talk) 22:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

But they all devote significant amount of space to Israeli war crimes, and they continue to do so. Lets take another look at google news results for "war crimes" israel gaza

1. AJE: US weapons used in Israeli ‘war crimes’: Expert - Biden is expected to request approval for $10bn in weapons for Israel during a national address tonight, as the White House continues its “extraordinary effort” to bolster support for Israel, says Josh Ruebner, an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University’s Justice and Peace programme.
2. AJE “Targeting churches and their institutions, along with the shelters they provide to protect innocent citizens, especially children and women who have lost their homes due to Israeli airstrikes on residential areas over the past 13 days, constitutes a war crime that cannot be ignored,” the patriarchate said in a statement.
3. HRW Hamas, Islamic Jihad: Holding Hostages is a War Crime
4. Op-ed in Guardian by Prof Lyla Mehta (Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex) and Dr Alan Nicol (Researcher in international water policy) Cutting off water to Gaza is a war crime
5. The Intercept - Israel has invoked that right in its assault on Gaza, which has already killed more than 4,200 Palestinians and displaced more than 1 million. But collective punishment — including measures like Israel’s blockade on fuel, food, and electricity into the occupied territory — and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians constitute war crimes under international law. A number of legal experts have argued the actions may also amount to crimes against humanity and genocide, as defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention. On Thursday, a panel of U.N. experts issued a separate statement that condemned the bombings of schools and hospitals in Gaza as crimes against humanity and warned that there is a risk the crimes might escalate to genocide.
6. AP: Hamas and Israel have both been accused of breaking international law during their latest conflict, and the United Nations says it is collecting evidence of war crimes by all sides.
7. WaPo: Well, the Hamas attack is clearly a crime against humanity, meaning a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population. Taking hostages is also a war crime. It’s also possibly genocide because Hamas has the intention to destroy Israelis. ... The problem is that the response from Israel … it’s complicated. Just the blockade of Gaza — just that — could be genocide under Article 2(c) of the Genocide Convention, meaning they are creating conditions to destroy a group. ... You have to discriminate. Israel cannot pretend it’s just destroying Hamas because in the meantime it is killing masses of civilians. That is a crime for a crime. ... These are war crimes, possibly a crime against humanity. And then there’s the starvation in Gaza, also possibly a genocide.
8. CFR: Mostly focused on Hamas's war crimes, cautions Israel against pursuing some of the policies it has enacted as potential war crimes
9. Jacobin: only in headline
10. UN: condemns Hamas war crimes, condemns siege and withholding water
11. Reuters: same quote on Patriarch on leveling the church as AJE above
12. NPR: discusses both

The evidence does not show that war crimes by Hamas have received more attention in reliable sources, in fact as time has continued forward from October 7, the ongoing accusations that Israel has committed and is committing war crimes grows to be a larger and larger proportion of the coverage of war crimes. nableezy - 13:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't use "israel gaza" in the search; it's Hamas/PIJ/etc committing the war crimes, not Gaza.

However, even using your sources, the distribution is as follows:

• Approximately 3500 words covering both
• Approximately 4000 words covering Hamas
• Approximately 3500 words covering Israel

This does include the entirety of the problematic Jacobin article, despite it continuing to blame Israel for the hospital explosion, but does not include any words from the Intercept article, as I did not have access to it. For articles reporting about events generally, I only counted the paragraphs that were discussing war crimes, broadly construed.

This reinforces my previous statement, that the two have received approximately equal coverage in reliable source, and thus we should give them equal coverage in our article in order to comply with WP:BALASP.

Given your comments (But they all devote significant amount of space to Israeli war crimes, and they continue to do so., The evidence does not show that war crimes by Hamas have received more attention in reliable sources), I am wondering if you have misunderstood my position; I'm not saying that Hamas has received more coverage, I'm saying that it has received equal coverage, and thus to comply with BALASP we need to provide equal coverage to each in our article - something we are unfortunately not currently doing, with 703 words for Hamas and 1238 for Israel. BilledMammal (talk) 14:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

The BALASP argument is not at all persuasive, the whole idea of word counts needing to be the same is nonsense. We go by the sources, editors bring non repetitive sources and it ends up where it ends up. Selfstudier (talk) 14:36, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Word counts is how we determine, within our own coverage, how much weight we have given an aspect relative to other aspects - and from there, whether we have given the correct relative weighting in line with BALASP. BilledMammal (talk) 15:05, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Uhuh, the weight we give is determined by the sources...duh. As I said below, I am not particularly fond of what amount to lists of war crimes, if that is going to be the way it works then Israel will come out with lots more words simply because it has committed a lot more crimes, even the argument that the initial attack was awful now pales when you look at the number of dead in Gaza. Genocide is now being openly spoken about when it was at least in part, taboo, before. Selfstudier (talk) 15:32, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Uhuh, the weight we give is determined by the sources...duh. I agree. And assessing the sources, we see they give equal weight to each topic. It doesn't matter whether we believe Israel has committed a lot more crimes or not - it doesn't even matter if that belief is true - all that matters how much coverage reliable sources provide. BilledMammal (talk) 15:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I submit that any conceivable article on war crimes by Hamas, PIJ, or random Gazan will include the word "gaza" in the article. Making your first point about search terms completely moot. Second, that is not what BALASP means. It means opposing viewpoints need to be given the same prominence in our articles as they get in the sources. But Israel committed war crimes is not the opposing viewpoint to Hamas committed war crimes. The arguments for and against the accusations are the opposing view points. All of that is a part of WP:BALANCE, which opens with Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence in reliable sources. However, when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both points of view and work for balance. You are treating different parts of similar topics as though they are opposing viewpoints, and they are not. And the proof of that is that the very same people are saying Hamas committed and is committing war crimes are also saying Israel has committed and is committing war crimes. The idea that the section covering war crimes by Hamas has to be balanced by war crimes committed by Israel, or vice versa, is completely divorced from our policy. Those two things are not competing viewpoints, they are not things that are balanced against one another. nableezy - 14:38, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

It's not just that it will exclude results; because we are only sampling the results and not doing a complete review we also need to be careful how our search causes results to be prioritized. Part of how search algorithms work is term proximity; documents where the provided terms are closer together are ranked higher than documents where they are further apart.

Because Gaza is where Israel is committing the actions, we expect all three of the terms - "war crimes", "Israel", and "Gaza" - to be in close proximity when discussing Israeli actions. However, because it isn't directly involved in actions committed by Hamas, we would only expect "war crimes" and "Israel" to be in close proximity for those.

Thus, the results provided are biased; discussion of Israeli actions are prioritized relative to Hamas. Meanwhile "war crimes", "Israel", and "Hamas" are less biased, because even when discussing Israeli actions we would expect "Hamas" to be in close proximity as the nominal target of those actions.

Those two things are not competing viewpoints, they are not things that are balanced against one another.

The basis for my position isn't that they are competing viewpoints. BALASP says An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject.

If these aspects are given weight equal to each other in the body of reliable, published material on the subject, then as part of treating these aspects with a weight proportional to its treatment we need to give these aspects equal weight in our coverage. BilledMammal (talk) 15:02, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

One more time, a. it is not true they are given equal weight in the sources, b. that isnt relevant as these are not competing viewpoints. BALASP is about balancing competing viewpoints. These are not competing viewpoints. There are full length papers on specific Israeli orders and how they are war crimes here. You would say "thats one source" and it is balanced by another source that has a paragraph about Hamas war crimes. Im sorry, but that is not how the math works here, and the idea that you can say we should not cover this topic as much as we do because there is not as much to say in this other related but not equivalent topic is not grounded in our policy. If you are of the belief that war crimes by Israel is a "minor aspect" then you can hold that belief, but the article doesnt have to follow it. nableezy - 15:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

it is not true they are given equal weight in the sources On what basis do you say this? Every piece of evidence so far - even the evidence you presented - has said that they are.

There are full length papers on specific Israeli orders and how they are war crimes here. You would say "thats one source" and it is balanced by another source that has a paragraph about Hamas war crimes. That's the exact opposite of what I said; I counted the words in order to address that. For example, I included every single word from the Jacobin source.

BALASP is about balancing competing viewpoints That isn't accurate; BALASP is about balancing aspects. At no point does it even mention viewpoints, let alone competing viewpoints. Consider the example of an entrepreneur who has been arrested; BALASP tells us how much coverage to give their arrest compared to their business ventures, even though they aren't competing viewpoints.

If you are of the belief that war crimes by Israel is a "minor aspect" then you can hold that belief As I've said repeatedly, I am of the belief that it is an aspect equal in weight to the aspect of the war crimes by Hamas. I'm not sure where you are getting the impression that I consider it a minor aspect - unless you consider the war crimes by Hamas to be a minor aspect? BilledMammal (talk) 15:19, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Those aspects are not opposing, and as such they are not balancing one another. Where I got the impression on "minor aspect" is that you quoted An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. None of these are minor aspects. As far as how is it not true? We have 2000+ word count articles devoted to specific Israeli orders. Now lets look at a reliable expert source, Amnesty International. There articles on Israel and the Occupied Territories can be found here. Of the results since October 7, we have as follows (excluding a couple calling on European countries to safeguard the right to protest):

1. Damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza focused nearly entirely on Israeli war crimes
2. Israel/OPT: Appalling Gaza “evacuation order” must be rescinded by Israel immediately focused nearly entirely on Israeli war crimes
3. Israel/OPT: Israel must lift illegal and inhumane blockade on Gaza as power plant runs out of fuel focused nearly entirely on Israeli war crimes
4. Israel: Palestinian armed groups must be held accountable for deliberate civilian killings, abductions and indiscriminate attacks focused nearly entirely on Palestinian group war crimes, slightly more background given of Israeli war crimes than in the above gives to Palestinian ones
5. Israel/OPT: Civilians on both sides paying the price of unprecedented escalation in hostilities between Israel and Gaza as death toll mounts Discusses both

So how is it that sources are giving equal attention? Even if that mattered. nableezy - 15:30, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

BALASP doesn't qualify what it applies to, such as by saying ...treat each opposing aspect with a weight proportional...; it just says ...treat each aspect with a weight proportional.... Consider the entrepreneur example; if reliable sources gave equal weight to their arrest and their business ventures, but we gave twice as much weight to their arrest, then we would be in violation of BALASP despite the aspects not being opposing.

Further, I would argue that makes sense; our article would be biased against the entrepreneur if we gave disproportionate weight to their arrest, just as our article is biased against Israel because it gives disproportionate weight to Israel's actions.

So how is it that sources are giving equal attention? Because a single source is not representative, particularly when the single source is selected rather than randomly chosen. Even a group of selected sources would be problematic - we need a fair way to select a representative group of sources, and that fair way is not for you or for I to manually select the sample. BilledMammal (talk) 15:39, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I’m not manually selecting anything, we can do that with any expert source on international humanitarian law you like. News articles are considerably worse sources than views by established experts. nableezy - 15:53, 20 October 2023 (UTC) 15:53, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Sources like Amnesty are sources we can and should use, but there is no basis in policy to consider them considerably better than sources like the BBC, Reuters, or the New York Times - indeed, my reading of their RSP ratings suggest we prefer those three to Amnesty.

We can and should consider academic sources more reliable, but they aren't going to start coming out in any significant numbers for months at best. BilledMammal (talk) 16:00, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Amnesty International is an advocacy group that has a particular mandate and often does good work but certainly has certain biases (towards the issues it advocates) and is hardly a particularly "established expert." Rlendog (talk) 16:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes they are biased against war crimes. See the RSN discussion for how highly regarded the community thinks of them. Of course there is a basis to consider experts in a field more reliable than news reports. Amnesty's reports are frequently cited in scholarly literature, scholarship treats them as experts in the field as well. nableezy - 17:50, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

The problem here is that this initially started out straightforwardly and then both sides have taken to competitive editing so as to make the other side look bad and their side look less bad. The high point is that both sides are likely guilty of war crimes, there is no dispute about that and that is what is in the lead.

Now the body, we can go for more detail and then it is just a question of reporting what sources say, quotes ought not be necessary (usually). I dislike this split between the sides, instead of making what amounts to lists of war crimes, better would be prose combining both in a sensible way, articles like the WSJ/ToI/time above are unlikely to be helpful in that whereas the FT, Amnesty, AP, WAPO articles covering both, probably would be (judging by the headlines). Selfstudier (talk) 12:03, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

No, both arent "likely" guilty. One side has been accused of war crimes (Israel).

The other side has not only absolutely committed war crimes, but proudly declared it themselves. (Hamas)

Our response cannot be a simple "both bad", it draws a false equivalence. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 13:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Agree with Selfstudier. We are not here to make judgement calls. Let's just document from reliable sources. O3000, Ret. (talk) 13:27, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

That doesnt disagree with what I said. If you are contesting my reading of the sources as for the extent of guilt, please explain in more detail. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 13:42, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Just go with the sources else it is just a personal opinion. Selfstudier (talk) 13:56, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with us making any assessments of our own. And I do not know that there is a false equivalence in treating both sides in the same manner. I certainly do not believe in doing a simplistic Google search. I'm not even certain at what time period we begin. "ABABABABABAB". Does A follow B or vide-versa. Both sides always say the other side started going back one incident. Like two quarreling siblings. Nor do I know the sides. Is Israel fighting Hamas, Palestinians, or Gaza? Sure looks like they are fighting all Palestinians to me. But, that's just a personal observation. Until we have documentation of the long view in RS, let us be careful about drawing any conclusions. O3000, Ret. (talk) 13:58, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

We make assessments of our own based on the sources, it is absolutely necessary. See WP:SUMMARY. And treating both sides similar is a fine argument, but it does not follow that their crimes, which are represented differently in RS, should also be treated similarly. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 14:04, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

"A war crime is a war crime" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/hamas-attack-israel-us-opinion-divided Selfstudier (talk) 14:09, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• I did not read this discussion (tl;dr, sorry), but I agree with the initial suggestion by RealNuclearFish. The extremely bloated Israel section seems to be highly problematic to me. Consider "Forced evacuation" as an example. So, it would be better for these civilians to stay and die? Removing civilians from war zones is a good thing. That was done during all wars, e.g. by Ukrainian authorities during the Russo-Ukrainuan war. This is not a war crime. Starting war in Gaza might be, but it was not Israel who started this war. But whatever. My very best wishes (talk) 18:18, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  Not enough bloat yet, "Amnesty International said it had documented five “unlawful Israeli attacks” using testimony from survivors and eyewitnesses, analysis of satellite imagery and verified photos and videos. Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general, said the research "points to damning evidence of war crimes in Israel’s bombing campaign that must be urgently investigated." per NYT (and the report is at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire-families-in-gaza/). Selfstudier (talk) 18:26, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  If you can get past the paywall, there is a lengthy discussion of the laws of war related to forced displacement in Gaza at: [30] O3000, Ret. (talk) 18:31, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  You are providing personal opinion, not reliably sourced material. You are objecting that actually knowledgeable sources disagree with your unsourced assertions. Reliable sources on the topic of international law say the order to evacuate amounts to forced removal and is a war crime. You say it is not. Guess which view should be in the article? The International Committee of the Red Cross or User:My very best wishes? nableezy - 19:31, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Update article to reflect evidence of rape by Palestinian militant groups and move from unverified "claims" under disinformation section to War Crimes section

• What I think should be changed: The entire section called "Claims of sexual violence by Hamas" needs to be rewritten and moved to the section of "War crimes by Palestinian militant groups":

- Replace header with "Sexual violence and rape".
- Remove all lines starting with and following "As of October 11..." with "On October 14, evidence of multiple cases rape were reported by the Israeli military forensics."

• Why it should be changed: Because it is not accurate, and is written citing information available as of October 11. New information has come out that requires changing the "claims" section, as it is no longer relevant in essence.
• References supporting the possible change (format using the "cite" button):

eyal (talk) 00:40, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

All that says is Israel has said this, it also says no evidence was presented. It is attributing this to "a reserve warrant officer". We can update with the information sure, but saying the narrative voice this as fact is still not supported by independent sources. nableezy - 01:26, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, this reasoning seems to be inconsistent with the way facts are established using other references in the article. For example, the article uses references that cite various Palestinian government bodies to report the number of dead, e.g.:

- https://palinfo.com/news/2023/10/16/854881/ cites the "government media office"

- https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/10/14/Israeli-strikes-on-Gaza-kill-324-including-126-children-in-past-24-hours-Ministry cites the Palestinian Health Ministry

- https://palinfo.com/news/2023/10/13/854160/ cites Palestinian Health Ministry

Even directly under the corresponding section of "War crimes by the Israel Government, Medical neutrality", the claims that Israel deliberately targeted medical vehicles use e.g. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/12/war-crime-gaza-medics-say-israel-targeting-ambulances-health-facilities, which cites the medics themselves and again the Palestinian Health Ministry. No "independent" source was required to add these accusations of deliberate targeted attack directly under the Israeli war crime section and not under a separate "Claims" section as is done for the rape accusations.

I think in all of these cases, we understandably won't wait until a more "independent" body actively verifies the reports. For consistency, we should apply the same standard everywhere, including in the cases related to this edit request. eyal (talk) 02:20, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

We use the equivalent Israeli sources for dead and missing as well. But for claims that arent being accepted as fact by third party sources we attribute it as they do. See for example the material on al-Durrah Children's Hospital being hit by white phosphorous, we attribute that to the MoH of Gaza. The hitting of ambulances and hospitals has been reported by independent sources like the WHO and news agencies. And it does not say deliberately targeted. What it says is there are reports of that, not saying as a fact it happened. nableezy - 02:25, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

All of this makes sense to me, and I'm saying that we should apply the same standard for the rape accusations relevant to this edit request as described above, i.e. move them from the "Claims of..." section directly into the war crimes by Palestinian militant group section. In addition, we should make clear that this evidence was reported by the Israeli military forensics. I'll update the edit request to add this wording. eyal (talk) 02:45, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

The entire current contention seems to hinge on the fact we don't know the name(s) of any of the victims. There are multiple eyewitness accounts, an Israeli military-forensic attestation, a video from a hostage-taking that may have indicated it, and of course that war rape is practically a general fact of war. Almost all of the reports skeptical of the claims were published before the forensic report. I have to wonder where the line on moving it to the war crimes section is. I've mainly been focused on keeping it from being labeled "disinformation", that is, emphasizing the difference between unconfirmed reports and disinformation. But I have to wonder just how unconfirmed it really is by this point. VintageVernacular (talk) 03:55, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

This edit request was made in part because we already concretely know where the line is: it's been set by the writing of the current war crimes section (as discussed above). I only argued above that we should apply that line everywhere. eyal (talk) 04:36, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

There is clearly a double standard in the war crimes section. We're relying on what a belligerent is reporting in one side, and the other when it comes to rape/other awful things, we're NOT including them because it was "only" reported by a belligerent? Chuckstablers (talk) 15:21, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

There may be some problems with the war crime section due to competitive editing but this is only going to make that situation worse. There is another discussion about the war crime section which may eventually resolve this issue as well.Selfstudier (talk) 13:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I think I just saw it, for reference it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:2023_Israel–Hamas_war#Add_more_details_about_HAMAS_war_crimes_in_the_war_crimes_section. Disagree that it would make the situation worse. At most, it would make the situation more balanced, which is not worse. eyal (talk) 13:37, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

In your opinion, in mine it is just trying to make one side look less bad compared with the other. If it were just down to me, I would do away with the separate "lists" and only include external independent reliable sourcing covering both sides that calls or attributes an expert calling something a war crime. Selfstudier (talk) 13:44, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I think that your proposal could be a better outcome overall, but until that edit is complete (it's a re-write of multiple sections) I think we should at least move the contents of the "Military forensic report" (odd heading) section away from "unconfirmed reports" and to the war crimes section. There are plenty of equally "unconfirmed reports" in the war crimes section as well, so this move would just concentrate everything under the same heading, which improves WP:STRUCTURE. I don't believe it makes sense to delay making this incremental improvement until a "grand rewrite" is completed. eyal (talk) 15:14, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• As written right now, we can not title this section "Disinformation" because none of that is disinformation, but rather just unverified and controversial claims. Some of that may be true, a lot maybe not true, but that might be clear only after independent investigations. And even after that, it might be not ultimately clear, but remain a controversy with claims and counterclaims by all sides. My very best wishes (talk) 15:51, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
•  Note: I'm marking the edit request template as answered as purely a procedural matter and to remove it from the queue. The requested edit meets more than 1 exclusionary criteria. —Sirdog (talk) 08:03, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Hi, where can I find the list of exclusionary criteria?

  My understanding is that this edit request hasn't been addressed so far purely because those with edit privilege aren't willing to make these changes. The discussion so far clearly shows that this edit request aligns with wikipedia's editing policies to make the article stronger, so I'm forced to assume that this edit request hasn't been addressed for a different reason. This seems like a bizarre yet systematic problem in controversial articles. Curious what is the procedure in this situation? eyal (talk) 17:09, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for reaching out. Per WP:EDITXY, edit requests must either be for uncontroversial improvements to an article or adjustments which possess clear and present consensus prior to it being requested. Based on my cursory reading of the discussion above, it's my present understanding there isn't a clear consensus for what exactly to implement at this time (another requirement is the request must present the exact prose desired to be inserted, where, and with the relevant sources to support it). So, I marked it as answered as a procedural matter so those browsing the queue of requested edits will only see edits which are immediately actionable.

  If there is a clear and present consensus to do something as of now, the request can be re-opened with an explanation of what the consensus is, the desired changes in the form of change X to Y or similar, and the relevant sources to accompany the edit (if applicable). Alternatively, once the consensus develops, anyone with sufficient permissions can simply enact it without bothering to use the edit request process for it. —Sirdog (talk) 22:50, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

References

Babies beheaded?

Looking through some of the archives, there doesn't seem to be a consensus on the accusations of baby beheadings. I have, however, seen several mentions of making sure all such atrocities are very well sourced. The baby beheading is also a section in the "Unconfirmed Reports" section, should we remove the beheading mentions in the "Timeline" and "War Crimes" sections? Porg656 (talk) 19:52, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

The Israeli military has not confirmed that this happened. There are several cites in the article. But it appears they have all originated with one I24 reporter's claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary resources. We have one poor source. This requires removal O3000, Ret. (talk) 20:00, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

How accurate is this statement? (currently in the war crimes section, under the massacres by Palestinian militant groups:

"The victims included babies and children, and the many were immolated, dismembered, and beheaded."

It is stating it in wiki voice. If the consensus is that it's not adequately sourced, it may need to be modified. entropyandvodka | talk 06:08, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

I noted in the sections "10 October" and "Massacres, hostage taking, and allegations of genocide" that the reports of beheaded babies have not been independently confirmed. A later third sections already stated that, and the second section already had a source stating that the reports have not been independently verified. Cortador (talk) 07:50, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

At this point in time, the IDF and their forensic teams do maintain that beheadings of children and infants took place. The "40 beheaded babies" claim though, in particular, was the distortion of what seems to have been the overall amount of people who were at that time claimed to have been decapitated. A distortion which seems to have originated among journalists, especially the October 10th i24 report, and a French television correspondent. VintageVernacular (talk) 14:21, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

There's been extensive discussion at the specific Kfar Aza massacre talkpage. I think there's more to it than just I24 account, but the origins of the claims should be clearly attributed. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:04, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the primary reliable source for bodies condition, independent of the Israeli government, would be Yossi Landau, regional head of ZAKA, which according to their page ZAKA prefer to call the organization and their work Chesed shel Emet (חסד של אמת‎ – lit. 'Kindness of truth'), because they are dedicated to ensuring that the bodies of Jewish victims are buried according to Halakha, Jewish law. After acts of terrorism, ZAKA volunteers also collect the bodies and body parts of non-Jews, including suicide bombers, for return to their families. The phrase Chesed shel Emet refers to doing "kindness" for the benefit of the deceased, which is considered to be "true kindness", because the (deceased) beneficiaries of the kindness cannot return the kindness. he's talking about what's happening in other villages too, and because of his position, he probably has the answer to your question. There's that i24 source, which seems pretty reliable to me, and also a Reuters source that doesn't dive into as much detail. I wouldn't be shocked if he's given more interviews to reliable sources. copied from another section Infinity Knight (talk) 20:14, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but I do not find that self-serving quote useful. O3000, Ret. (talk) 20:16, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, if he has, were are those interviews? Cortador (talk) 07:35, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

There are two interviews provided above. There are a bunch of Yossi Landau's (ZAKA) interviews in written form here. The top one in the search results is from France 24, where Landau recalled, after entering the first home and finding a dead woman, "Her stomach was ripped open, a baby was there, still connected with the cord, and stabbed." The Zaka volunteer said he saw multiple civilians, including around 20 children, who had their hands tied behind their backs before being shot and torched. "We saw some victims positioned that they were sexually abused," he added. It is interesting to see if the beheading claim could be connected to Landau. My understanding is that the IDF says "Hamas decapitated babies", but they are not going to provide photographic evidence, because it is "disrespectful for the dead". Due to the right to privacy of the victims and their surviving relatives, I reckon. The condition of the bodies is outside of my field of interest. I am just talking about approaches on how to report about it in a reliable way. Infinity Knight (talk) 10:28, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

The ZAKA interviews have already been shown to be open to abuse and misinformation propagation - what we really need here are some Coroner's reports, but I understand that this rather crucial evidential step might have been avoided for the sake of privacy and other reasons. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:58, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

I listened to the IDF spokesperson you linked to. The lengthy discussion was about the hospital bombing. It was interesting in that he kept saying you cannot take the word of either side in a war, but complained that the media was believing Hamas. He made one reference to beheadings relevant to this complaint. But I didn't hear him claim there were beheadings. I didn't hear the beheading question asked or answered. When the reporter explained it was difficult for the media to report from the field, he admitted that journalists have been killed by Israeli airstrikes. O3000, Ret. (talk) 11:09, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Updated the IDF link to more relevant one. ZAKA should be credited for their work. If you have sources suggesting that ZAKA might be susceptible to abuse or spreading misinformation, please share those sources. I'm just pointing out that Landau and his team meticulously handled all of the human remains, whether Israeli or Palestinian, inside Israel, as part of their religious mission, and they have the complete picture. Infinity Knight (talk) 11:17, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

They're a primary source, they aren't coroners, they're certainly traumatized, and, as it stands, no one seems willing to provide evidence to corroborate. We can quote quotes, weighted for their prevalence in sources, but beyond that, we're still far from the facts. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:37, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

According to the BBC, "Zaka's responsibility is to gather all the remains of the deceased, including their blood." When secondary reliable sources quote ZAKA, it indicates their trustworthiness. Per Wikipedia guidelines, primary sources should be credited appropriately, so we should handle ZAKA in accordance with Wikipedia's standards. Infinity Knight (talk) 11:53, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

It indicates that reliable sources think the quotes are of interest to their readers, and it grants weight here; it does not convey 'trustworthiness'. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:02, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

So we agree on the issue of relevance. Given that these individuals regularly handle human remains as part of their work, calling them "certainly traumatized" might be stretching it. Do we have any sources that indicate ZAKA could be at risk of being misused or spreading false information in the aftermath of the Hamas attack? Infinity Knight (talk) 12:22, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Lots of false claims were initially spread by less than stellar sources, some using excerpts of ZAKA testimonies, probably out of context - that's what I mean. It's a moot point now, since there are reliable sources covering this conflict, and concerns regarding reliability have given way to those of weight. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:30, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Totally get your point about all the false claims flying around. Thanks for diving into this topic. Infinity Knight (talk) 13:53, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

The BBC quotes Yacoub Zechariah, a ZAKA volunteer and deputy mayor of Bnei Brak. Zechariah reported seeing bodies of children with severe injuries and burns. Some of the deceased children appeared to have been decapitated, although the exact circumstances were not clear. I reckon we could use this source to clear things up, attributing it to Zechariah. Infinity Knight (talk) 15:46, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

The man you're naming can't be trusted for his neutrality as you yourself mentioned that he is also a political figure what we need is an independent neutral source, only sources such as 'UN', 'Red Cross', 'hospital officials' or known neutral NGO can be trusted. Balaj Khan (talk) 23:22, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Based on the existing sources within the article, there is a substantial amount of evidence, including photographs that have been shared with the international pressUS State Secretary. Additionally, several individuals in Israel, who are not affiliated with the government and include public figures, have been engaged in the processing of the bodies, providing further confirmation of these claims. Moreover, a number of international figures have attested to witnessing evidence of decapitations.

While it's undeniable that the evidence may appear somewhat exaggerated, I am uncertain as to why, after a thorough review of the available sources, these references are still categorized as "Unconfirmed" within the article. Infinity Knight (talk) 10:59, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

From WP:RS "Please keep in mind that any exceptional claim would require exceptional sources, and this is policy." O3000, Ret. (talk) 18:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

The entire attack seemed cartoonish. We should be diligent in assigning the information. For example, EFE mentions "first-hand witnesses" and the word "unconfirmed" is not what I encountered in the sources I've examined. Infinity Knight (talk) 14:01, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I read that three times. Where does it say babies were beheaded? Unless there were soldiers who were babies. There still is no evidence. O3000, Ret. (talk) 14:08, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

See "First-hand witnesses" section

Reserve Col. Golan Vach discovered decapitated children in Kibbutz Beeri near Gaza, suspecting non-rocket causes. A ZAKA team member reported numerous child casualties, including decapitated and burned infants and severe violence cases. Plentiful excellent sources exist, so there's no concern regarding the reliability policy, but caution is vital. Infinity Knight (talk) 14:24, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The reservist, who I would not accept as a source anyhow, said he found one baby with its head cut off, not multiple. Babies bones are made partially or entirely of soft, flexible cartilage. You would expect damage to a baby to be more severe to even a young child. And children are not babies. These are very poor sources for a dramatic claim that babies were decapitated by Hamas. Perhaps they were. If there is eventually actual evidence, it belongs. Not now. O3000, Ret. (talk) 16:33, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

This discussion still ongoing? Thought we established ages ago that there is nothing credible backing this up, at best unconfirmed. Selfstudier (talk) 16:41, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

EFE or BBC did not use "unconfirmed" word. Infinity Knight (talk) 17:14, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

How many times do I have to reread the same articles over and over just to discover they do not claim that babies were decapitated? I just responded to the EFE article. I don't see this in the BBC article. Isn't it enough that they are dead without this unsupported claim? Enough. O3000, Ret. (talk) 17:30, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

According to this report by ABC, "a senior Israeli officer said to a small group of journalists, saying such images existed but would not be shown" before "screening of an hour-long reel cobbled together from Hamas helmet cam, mobile phone video, surveillance video, dashboard camera video and victims' livestreams". I had heard about the decapitation by garden hoe elsewhere and, when googling for it, found the ABC report. We say killed civilians. That doesn't cover the alleged atrocities committed by the attackers (including against children and old people), alleged because the Israeli military hasn't released the footage from the captured Hamas Go-Pros. Reuters: "Blinken, who flew into Tel Aviv earlier on Thursday, told reporters he was shown photographs and videos of a baby riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded and young people burned alive in their cars or hideaways." Space4Time3Continuum2x (cowabunga) 18:32, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with inclusion of attributed atrocities. I just don't think we should include facts not in evidence, like beheaded babies. I think there are plenty of atrocities in this war that are documented. O3000, Ret. (talk) 19:20, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't really think it matters if the babies were decapitated or not, what does really matter, and what does not appear to disputed, is that children were deliberately killed in the kibbutz attacks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:26, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Two things are important: 1.) Minors were killed. 2.) Wikipedia follows its WP:V policy. O3000, Ret. (talk) 19:49, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Regrettably, Israelis have reported more than just "Minors killed." I was mistaken in thinking that Israelis shared photographic evidence with the international press; it seems they shared it exclusively with the US administration through Blinken. The importance of verifiability is clear, and we should rely on credible sources to avoid the spread of misinformation. Upon reviewing the available sources in the Media -> Decapitated section, it's evident that CNN did not receive photographic evidence from the Israeli or US administration, and they couldn't find such evidence online, despite their efforts. While NBC mentioned "Unverified reports of ‘40 babies beheaded" and viral posts, we haven't discussed those, so using NBC' denial in the context of this section is inappropriate. The government of Israel later posted photos of dead babies that they said were killed in the attack. The Jerusalem Post stated that these images confirmed that babies were decapitated,[687] while NBC News stated that no photographic evidence that babies were decapitated was provided.[194] for instance should be revised to align more accurately with the sources. All our sources discuss what the IDF and ZAKA have stated, citing specific individuals and public figures, rather than relying on viral internet rumors. Additionally, there is a disjointed section titled "Evaluations since 14 October", where more "forensic" eyewitnesses are identified. So we have a substantial list of named individuals who seem to be primary witnesses, as reported by credible sources like BBC and EFE in terms of policies related to reliability and verifiability. The bottom line is that Israelis maintain their claims, see Jerusalem mayor deputy interview to Hindustan Times, even after the publications by CNN and NBC, although they do not provide photographic evidence. JP, if considered a reliables source, verified the photos. Therefore, I propose that we review the scattered sources related to this event, remove outdated information, fix NBC/CNN misuse and consolidate them to provide a coherent picture. It also appears that the "Media reports" section in the article might not be the most suitable place to discuss this topic. We should remain impartial and quote the relevant sources in a clear and coherent manner. Infinity Knight (talk) 07:03, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I'll try to keep this brief and not too 'grisly', but I have difficulty imagining what photographic evidence could exist. Is it obvious in a photo how a small body damaged/dismembered/decapitated by explosive force or flying shrapnel resulting from explosion has had a body part so damaged? Especially with an interval of hours or days before recovery. Is it really obvious, even to an expert looking at a photo that the damage was caused by a hand held sharp instrument rather than red-hot flying metal or glass? Pincrete (talk) 17:00, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Frankly, I'd rather be beheaded than burned to death. The problems with using beheaded in this article is that it fails WP:V and that it has become an ISIS trope. O3000, Ret. (talk) 18:49, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Comparing Hamas and ISIS is not a new topic of discussion. In places like Indonesia, scholars research subjects like: Islamist Ideology and Its Effect on the Global Conflict: Comparative Study between Hamas and ISIS. Infinity Knight (talk) 19:33, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

That source says: However, from the aspect of rigidity doctrine and strategy of the movement, both groups are much different. ISIS is an ultra-radical group hostile to all other communities and brutally attacked the community of which he considered infidels. While Hamas has a more soft ideology and commit acts of violence in the context of resistance against Israeli colonialism. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:59, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Here is another recent scholar source comparing Hamas, ISIS and other names we all know Reflecting on International Terrorism after the Hamas Attacks on Israel Further, the designation of Hamas as a terrorist entity and its legitimacy will likely be reconsidered internationally. Infinity Knight (talk) 20:11, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Photos Thus Far -- Balanced and Concise?

• The fighting
• Video of Gaza building being bombed

• The direct effect of the war in Israel
• 
  Blood in Israeli kibbutz
• 
  Satellite image of fires after Hamas attack
• 
  Israeli rubble #1
• 
  Body bags in Israel
• 
  Israeli rubble #2

• The direct effect of the war in Gaza
• 
  Gaza building being bombed
• Gaza rubble #1
  Gaza rubble #1
• 
  Gaza rubble #2
• 
  Gaza rubble #3
• 
  Gaza rubble #4
• 
  Palestinian wounded child #1
• 
  Palestinian wounded child #2
• 
  Palestinian bodybags
• 
  Palestinian ambulance destroyed #1
• 
  Crying Palestinian

• Israeli relief efforts
• 
  Israeli kidnapped posters
• 
  Israeli relief supplies #1

• Pro-Israel rallies and memorials
• 
  Pro-Israel memorial #1
• 
  Pro-Israel rally #1

• Pro-Palestine rallies and memorials
• 
  Pro-Palestine rally #1

• Politicians
• 
  Netanyahu #1
• Biden #1
• 
  Herzog #1
• 
  US-Saudi Arabia #1
• 
  Russia-Iran #1

These are the photos we have in the article thus far. I would say there's very little in terms of fighting and far too much redundancy when it comes to Palestinian direct effects. How many photos of rubble, wounded kids, and wrecked ambulances on one side can you have before it becomes unintentionally NPOV? Also, do we need so many photos of pro-whatever rallies and politicians? I'm dubious. What are everyone's thoughts? -- Veggies (talk) 20:24, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I honestly had the same concern that there was some real redundancy with the photos of direct effects in Gaza. It's just difficult, because due to the electricity and internet blackout, the only images from Gaza have all come from the same day, even though the immediate and direct fighting has occurred in it for more than a week now. Definitely curious to hear others thoughts too though. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 20:51, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. How many more photos of rubble do we need exactly? Whereas a lot of editors seemed to be against including photos of bloody kitchens/destroyed Israeli towns. That being said; there's objectively been more deaths in Gaza now. So maybe fair enough. Chuckstablers (talk) 00:43, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Telling you all that some editor mass restored/reverted some pictures under a misleading edit summary that also wiped off info. Borgenland (talk) 17:05, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I just got through fixing it and I gave the user a warning. Thank you. -- Veggies (talk) 17:33, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

@Veggies I think you did a really good with trimming the photos, but I do think adding an additional one in the Healthcare section in the Humanitarian Situation would be really helpful. It's a long section (due to the sheer extent of the humanitarian "catastrophe"), but as a result, so much text with only one image is really hard on the eyes. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 00:43, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Updated the photos above to reflect the state of the article at 17:29, 21 October 2023 (UTC). -- Veggies (talk) 17:29, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Jewish diaspora

I think it's wise if this section is split up into two subsections — with one subsection on Jewish support for Israel and one on support for Palestine. The current section starts out with the pro Israel events and then goes to just some celebrities bernie sanders, so that I think creates a bias that the Jewish diaspora is by and large for Israel. I likewise didn't see any explicit discussion here on the role of the Jewish diaspora as *groups* who support Palestine AND attended the protests AND locked the White House and surrounded various US congress/senator offices (like Pelosi's). Hovsepig (talk) 09:18, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Protests on the 2023 Israel–Hamas war also likely needs sub-dividing. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:45, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Support for this. I think a summary of pro-Palestine responses from the Jewish diaspora is a good idea. XTheBedrockX (talk) 15:06, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

And? (Tbh I'm just commenting here because I fear the archiving bot) Hovsepig (talk) 21:38, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

See my comment below on deleted Jewish diaspora reactions in updated "Reaction: Arab world" Talk section. The article's Reaction section seems unbalanced now. JJMM (talk) 04:29, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Please add Chicago Stabbing Incident in "Outside the conflict zone"

The unfortunate incident of Stabbing of an Palestinaian-American boy which has ikipedia Article as Killing of Wadea Al-Fayoume should be included in 2023_Israel–Hamas_war#Outside_the_conflict_zone section as there are mentions of 2023 Alexandria shooting and Arras school stabbing already. Thanks. SwapanZameen (talk) 15:20, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

It’s already there. Borgenland (talk) 15:31, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Can somebdoy also add the shooting that killed 2 people in brussels? AtypicalPhantom (talk) 16:01, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Please provide a reliable source that links the 2023 Brussels shooting to the 2023 Israel-Hamas war. Pmokeefe (talk) 19:25, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I mean, is it coincidental that an Islamic terror attack was committed on the "day of rage" announced by Hamas? Anyway, I found this BBC source that claims that they cannot exclude the possibility that the attack was related to the war. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67131128 . We can add that it is suspected to be related at the very least. AtypicalPhantom (talk) 01:01, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Reactions: Arab world

The source for this section is an article by the economist. https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/10/18/the-arab-world-thinks-differently-about-this-war

Why not mention the protests in Cairo, Morocco and Jordan? This section seems to imply that the Arab world isn't on the ground protesting for Gaza

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/middleeast/gaza-hospital-blast-middle-east-protests-intl-hnk/index.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/18/gaza-hospital-al-ahli-al-arabi-blast-explosion-protests-demonstrations-middle-east

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-biden/card/watch-protests-spread-across-middle-east-after-gaza-hospital-blast-dvOOAmOKxJhh50zRy4dI Drsmartypants(Smarty M.D) (talk) 16:35, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

There are actually a several sources for the section, majority yes are from the Economist. It does currently state that there are protests for the Palestinians: "There have been numerous rallies in support of the Palestinians...", but it also says that feelings are complicated in places like Egypt and Lebanon where they don't want a spill over from the war, they don't want more refugees and they don't want more instability particularly after the Arab spring. What I'd like to avoid is how the section was written before where it was simply a list of: country x said y, and country p said q but country u said q as well and there were protests in countries j, h and k. Because prose like that add little of real substance. We should be writing this article for how these events will be viewed as relevant in 10 years time. I'm not sure if in 10 years anyone will care about whether or not there was a protest in Tunis or Dhaka. Rather, what truly is significant about the current events? Alcibiades979 (talk) 17:04, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

To answer your last question, well certainly the remark by Knesset member Meirav Ben-Ari on Monday in Parliament that “the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves.” Jonathan Ofir, Israeli politician: “The children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves” Mondoweiss 18 October 2023Nishidani (talk) 22:42, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

I was referring more to the significance through the lens of the Arab World reaction. Alcibiades979 (talk) 06:09, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

"The Arab world" meaning governments and talk show hosts or the Arab people who constantly stand with the Palestinians? Drsmartypants(Smarty M.D) (talk) 08:43, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

• Leans in* Mr.President, the Egyptians are in Tahrir

These protests are important to document from a historical point of view. Drsmartypants(Smarty M.D) (talk) 16:38, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

See comments below in updated "Reaction: Arab world" Talk section. JJMM (talk) 04:22, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Timeline

I think it would be easier if we put the timeline of events, for example [31] and move it to Timeline of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, since this would make the article easier to read and other similar wars like Russian invasion of Ukraine and World War II did something similar like what I am requesting.`~HelpingWorld~` ^(👽🛸) 18:36, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree. The entire Timeline section can be just removed and moved to that page. It doesn't seem like this page's timeline section isn't even updated anymore from the last two days of events (October 18 19) Hovsepig (talk) 21:40, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Why is this still not done? The entire "Events" and "Outside main conflict zone" sections should be directly moved to the Timeline of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war article where it belongs. There's no reason to have these duplicate sections at all. And why would they even be in separate sections, if they're both lists of "events"? The "Outside main conflict zone" should have been a sub-section of "Events". GMRE (talk) 13:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Trimming the article's excesses

As noted above, the article could use some shortening if possible, most especially if there's anything extraneous. A good place to start would be the "Reactions" section. I've added a banner at the top of this talk page (under the "Other talk page banners" shell) which measures the length of each section in the article, and currently it shows that the "Reactions" section is quite long. At a glance, the details in the "Jewish diaspora" and "Palestinian diaspora" sub-sections are two of perhaps lesser importance. VintageVernacular (talk) 20:16, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good. I went ahead and trimmed the Economic Impact section that added essentially nothing. Seems reasonable to axe the Diaspora reactions. I'd also add another thing to do is that in these current events articles there's a tendency to add article after article and summarize the article so it starts to read like a series of headlines. It's a pain to do but going through and trying to reduce quotes and summarize can also trim a lot of unwanted fat. Look at the Historical Context section, this should be straight forward because it can use real secondary sources instead of newspapers, but it's just a long list of quotes from random people for FIVE paragraphs. What's particularly baffling is that it's followed by a "Background" section. We could probably just delete the entire Historical Context section and anything it has worth keeping can be added to Background. Alcibiades979 (talk) 06:01, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

If the war is going to be a long one, the Russian invasion of Ukraine series of articles could serve as some inspiration for restructuring. They break the timeline up into multiple articles of their own. I'm not saying this should be done yet, but thinking ahead this may be necessary. VintageVernacular (talk) 22:56, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Why is this still not done? The entire "Events" and "Outside main conflict zone" sections should be directly moved to the Timeline of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war article where it belongs. There's no reason to have these duplicate sections at all. And why would they even be in separate sections, if they're both lists of "events"? The "Outside main conflict zone" should have been a sub-section of "Events". GMRE (talk) 13:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Background vs. Historical Context (and deleting Historical Context)

All the pertinent information in Historical Context is covered in Background, only better and more concisely. Historical Context is five enormous paragraphs and they're not well written: For History we should have published and peer reviewed sources so that we can write clear and concise information in wiki voice. Historical Context is five huge paragraphs of quotes and according tos. If there's anything worth salvaging from it, let's add it to Background then delete the Historical Context section. As is the article is way too long, it seems like this is a low hanging fruit for clearing it up. Alcibiades979 (talk) 06:06, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree. This article is gigantic and this is a plan to start reducing the size. KD0710 (talk) 08:13, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. It was initially inserted incongruously in the Analysis section so I moved it nearer to the Background so that others could see what could be salvaged if it came to this. Borgenland (talk) 08:19, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

@Borgenland was there a talk page discussion about recreating it and inserting it in the humanitarian situation section? I couldn't find anything but noticed someone did this. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 14:31, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

It is a misleading title though. As User:Alcibiades979 mentioned it sounds like a more concise version of the background and an unnecessary duplication. The last thing we need is someone to make a historical context of every section in this article from casualties to war crimes citing its insertion into the humanitarian context. Borgenland (talk) 14:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Right? Like what does a section talking about "a 2020 U.S. State Department report said Iran funnels roughly $100 million a year to Hamas" have to do with the humanitarian situation in Gaza during this war? CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 14:55, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Looks like it was done here [32] by Timeshifter with the edit summary of "per talk." Where was the talk discussion to move it into the humanitarian section? CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 14:58, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

It is truly ridiculous that the inline comment mentioned by the restorer is defeated by the content inserted in this "humanitarian"-only section. I'd have more respect for this edit if it were moved into the casualties or the war crimes section. Borgenland (talk) 15:00, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Should I ring them in here? Borgenland (talk) 15:01, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think so. I don't agree with this edit. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 15:05, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@Timeshifter please address these concerns stated above. Borgenland (talk) 15:35, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

. See #All info on living conditions in Gaza before the war has been removed

--Timeshifter (talk) 20:18, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

war plan

Outline of the war plan to change the situation in Gaza. Commentary by Ron Ben Yishai.

https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/skvr6rcbt שמי (2023) (talk) 07:40, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Israeli officials just clarified their plans: [33],[34]. However vague, there are certain key points. For example,

1. We are in the first phase, in which a military campaign is taking place with [airstrikes] and later with a [ground] maneuver with the purpose of destroying operatives and damaging infrastructure in order to defeat and destroy Hamas,” A ground maneuver [in Gaza]. Meaning the ground operation.
2. He says the objectives include eliminating the Hamas terror group by destroying its military and governmental capabilities, and completely removing any responsibility Israel has over Gaza by creating a new “security regime” in the Strip. "completely removing any responsibility Israel has over Gaza", that's the key. here is my understanding: perhaps this will be a no man's land after the operation, but this will not be a responsibility of Israel. My very best wishes (talk) 16:59, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

   Rather vague. It looks like Israel plans to create a no man's land 1-3 kilometers wide along the Israeli-Gaza border, within Gaza, where the IDF can enter but not Palestinians. Presumably whatever is there will be leveled. Which is to say effectively annexing more land. It also appears that Israel will install a new government to rule Gaza. But, that's my reading and could very well be incorrect. Anyhow, I don't see adding this until it is better understood. O3000, Ret. (talk) 17:18, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

   I already made a section, Israeli war aims. Selfstudier (talk) 17:18, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

   That should be placed in the "Reactions" section. Should it not? NesserWiki (talk) 20:08, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

This is definitely not "Reactions", I moved it to another section. The reality will probably be very much different from their plans. My very best wishes (talk) 03:23, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Remove Lions' Den from belligerents

Remove the Lions' Den from the belligerents section in the infobox.

References fail verification that this organization is a belligerent in this war. References only claim that the group announced a mobilization and publicly called for its supporters to attack, particularly "lone wolves."

If attacks in the West Bank have been attributed by reliable sources to the group, or if reliable sources report the group has claimed responsibility for attacks, please add these references to the article or make an extended-confirmed-edit request to do so. Assuming that the group is responsible for unclaimed attacks in the West Bank simply by virtue of its call for attacks is WP:SYNTH

Also, remove the group from the note that is currently labeled [l], which begins "The list of groups included..."

SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 16:49, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Afaik, Lions' Den is a WB grouping and not involved, at least not directly. Selfstudier (talk) 17:33, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Didn't Lion's Den openly and officially declare war on Israel -- that is, according to Lion's Den, Lion's Den is a belligerent in this war. I guess that doesn't necessarily mean they are WP:DUE for inclusion; I'm finding very little RS about Lion's Den's declaration/statement/whatever, but there's MEMO, ISW, and Roya News (don't know much about their reliability). IMO, issuing a formal call to arms makes you a belligerent, doesn't it? Levivich (talk) 19:43, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

But is it this war? It's not Gaza and not Hamas although the group may contain some Hamas supporters/members. The call to arms is a likely response to all the recent arrests, raids and settler violence. There are other similar groups in the WB, Jenin Brigade springs to mind. Selfstudier (talk) 20:33, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Barring any source saying that Lions' Den partisans have actually fought Israel in this conflict, I agree with others here that they should not be included as cobelligerent. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 01:13, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

 Note: I'm marking the edit request template as answered as purely a procedural matter and to remove it from the queue. Ongoing discussion as to whether to implement the edit, and how, disqualifies it. —Sirdog (talk) 08:06, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Removed, there is no reliable source info for this. Selfstudier (talk) 12:07, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with the removal. Levivich (talk) 13:02, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Selfstudier, @Levivich, @Compassionate727: thank you for your comments helping to reach a consensus to have the group removed as a belligerent. Now that this change has been made, would somebody mind removing the name of the Lions' Den from note [L], which reads: The list of groups included Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Lions' Den.

Thank you again! SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 23:11, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

All info on living conditions in Gaza before the war has been removed

See diff. The removal of the "Historical context" section was based on a very short discussion between 3 editors. Removing the work of many editors. The overall premise of shortening the article was, and is, a good idea. Return the Context section. At least the parts having to do with Gaza itself and the people who live there.

I suggest moving the huge section called "Regional and global effects" elsewhere. The idiocy of world politics (in my opinion) is much less important than the facts on the ground before, during, and after this war.

Here is the Historical context section (collapsed) just before it was removed:

Extended content

Main article: Israeli–Palestinian conflict Further information: Arab–Israeli conflict, Israeli-occupied territories, and Blockade of the Gaza Strip Israeli and Palestinian deaths preceding the war. Most were civilians. Rocket attacks fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip, 2001-2021 In 2005, Israel withdrew its troops and citizens from the Gaza Strip, aiming to lessen its direct control over the area. However, in 2007, Hamas seized control of Gaza by force, escalating tensions. Israel imposed a blockade, while Hamas tunneled under the border wall to launch cross-border attacks and fired rockets into Israeli territory. This led to multiple conflicts, escalating into multiple outright wars, wreaking havoc on civilians from both sides, and a preponderance of Palestinian deaths. Despite the violence, Israeli leadership found this arrangement manageable, relying on the Iron Dome rocket defense system for defense and utilizing targeted strikes, euphemistically dubbed "mowing the grass," to keep Hamas in check, aiming to minimize the militant threat to a tolerable extent. American political scientist Stephen M. Walt said Palestinians feel they have no choice but to resist in response to Israel's decades long oppressive treatment of Palestinians, even though they acknowledge attacking civilians is wrong and the methods Hamas has chosen are illegitimate. The Hindu wrote that the Israeli occupation was "the longest in modern history" and created a "fuming volcano". The Associated Press wrote that Palestinians are "in despair over a never-ending occupation in the West Bank and suffocating blockade of Gaza". ABC News reported the August 2023 UNRWA figures for Gaza of 81% of people living below the poverty level, and 63% being food insecure and dependent on international assistance. ABC News also reported the UN OCHAoPt numbers of roughly 6,400 Palestinians and 300 Israelis killed in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2008 through September 2023, before this war. Roger Cohen wrote that the increasing Israeli control over millions of Palestinians "incubated bloodshed". Prior to the attack, Saudi Arabia had warned Israel of an "explosion" as a result of the continued occupation, Egypt had warned of a catastrophe unless there was political progress, and similar warnings were given by Palestinian Authority officials. Less than two months before the attacks, King Abdullah II of Jordan lamented that Palestinians have "no civil rights; no freedom of mobility". Cohen wrote that many Israelis assumed the Palestinian question had become a nonissue, and it had disappeared from the global agenda. Simon Tisdall pointed to the uptick in Israeli–Palestinian violence in 2023 as portending war, and claimed that Benjamin Netanyahu refused to negotiate the peace process, adding fuel to the fire, and that the rights of Palestinians were ignored. Yousef Munayyer wrote that the Biden administration had ignored the Palestinian issue. As late as 29 September, Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Advisor, proclaimed that "the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades." Iranian officials publicly boasted for years about their role in arming militants in Gaza, and a 2020 U.S. State Department report said Iran funnels roughly $100 million a year to Hamas. At a White House news conference on 12 October, Sullivan said Iran was "complicit" in the attacks, but the U.S. could not confirm whether Iran knew about the attack in advance or helped coordinate it. According to an analysis in The Independent, the blockade on Gaza created hopelessness among Palestinians, which was exploited by Hamas, convincing young Palestinian men that violence was the only solution. Daoud Kuttab writes that Palestinian attempts to solve the conflict via negotiations or non-violent boycotts have been fruitless. For The Times of Israel, Tal Schneider wrote: "For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group. The idea was to prevent Abbas—or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority's West Bank government—from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state." Hamas said its attack was in response to the blockade on Gaza, continued settlements, Israeli settler violence, and restrictions on movement between Israel and Gaza. Following the attack, American counterterrorism analyst Bruce Hoffman pointed to the 1988 Hamas Charter, alleging that Hamas had always had "genocidal" intentions and that it had no intentions for "moderation, restraint, negotiation, and the building of pathways to peace". Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University and a former Israeli military intelligence officer, argued that the attacks were "part of the long-term vision of Hamas to eradicate Israel" and that "Hamas is not ready at all to give up on the jihad". Many of the Israeli kibbutz residents among the dead or missing were peace activists. References

There are many more authoritative articles on the terrible living conditions in Gaza before the war. Many from the UN. For example:

• https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1125712

--Timeshifter (talk) 18:08, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Support restoration, essential background info. Selfstudier (talk) 18:27, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Maybe focus it more clearly to a section titled: "Prewar conditions in Gaza". The huge section called "Regional and global effects" can be moved (most of it) to make room. Move it, and add link here:

Template: 2023 Israel–Hamas war

--Timeshifter (talk) 18:35, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Agree, should be restored. Andreas JN466 21:36, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Could it be made more concise then added to the Background Section? Because background is essentially what we're talking about here. Also what would be great would be getting rid of all the quotes and putting a trimmed down version in to Wiki voice. If you look at the Background Section of a comparable article such as 2006 Lebanon War it gives a good example of what I think we should be aiming for. I mean Hamas took over in 2007 which should be when the blockade began, so there's no need to use newspapers. And what's to say? "The Palestine Israel issues dates back to the end of British occupation, but the particular difficulties in Gaza date to the election of Hamas, a group whose founding charter declared the need for a global jihad to destroy Israel. Since then Israel and Egypt have imposed a partial blockade on the Gaza strip which has created wide spread poverty, destitution and salaries that are a quarter of what they are in the west bank." It would also be worth going through the Background Section as it currently stands and identifying what you feel is present in Historical Context that is missing because when I read the current Background Section, I feel it does a pretty good job covering the bases. Alcibiades979 (talk) 19:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Slightly naughty to make such changes after such a brief exchange. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:46, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Comment. See: 2023 Israel–Hamas war#Humanitarian situation and its first subsection for Gaza. One would think its many subsections would be covering the terrible living conditions in Gaza before the war. But it barely mentions it. If the terrible living conditions after the war merits this large of a section, then "Prewar conditions in Gaza" merits the measly 5 paragraphs allotted to it. As I said, other sections in the article are far less important, and need to be shortened and spun off into more articles. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:23, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

"Historical context" section returned, but as the first section of 2023 Israel–Hamas war#Humanitarian situation.

See diff of my 2 edits.

--Timeshifter (talk) 12:25, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@Timeshifter There's a lot of stuff that should be branched or deleted. But beyond that I would make one point about the presentation of the antebellum living situation. Obviously Gaza would be a pretty miserable place to live in. But Hamas predates the blockade by two decades. Ie Hamas was not created by the blockade. But it goes beyond that, Hamas was and is categorically against a two state solution, when Fatah and the PLO were doing the Oslo accords Hamas did a series of bombings in Israel to sap the Israeli pro-peace movement. So it wasn't the blockade or any of the living situation in the run up that created Hamas. I'm also not saying that Israel is blameless, but what I am saying is that Hamas has its own agency, which it has routinely used against peace, against Israel and against the Palestinians and has been a major driving force in the creation of the antebellum Gaza strip and the current situation and that agency has created been one of the driving forces in forging the current situation, it is not a product of it. Alcibiades979 (talk) 15:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

• If this is about current section "Historical context", then I think it should be removed as partly a duplicate content and partly just a collection of personal opinions by various commenters. My very best wishes (talk) 03:46, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Should the Yemen "missile incident" be mentioned on this page

According to reports, the United States Navy shot down some missiles allegedly fired by Houthis in Yemen. Apparently, it is believed that Israel was the primary target. Should this incident be mentioned in this page?

Source: https://news.yahoo.com/gma/us-navy-destroyer-red-sea-185700181.html Randomuser335S (talk) 21:43, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I added information about the USS Carney incident, but did not add the US or Houthis to the belligerents list. What is the threshold for inclusion? Ibadibam (talk) 21:46, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

There has been a number of reports of Iraqi PMU units deploying themselves to Lebanon and sable rattling about intervening in Gaza. However, any attempts at including them in the infoboxes get removed, as the accounts don't seem to have been fully authenticated yet.

I can't fully answer your question about inclusions about belligerents, but I'm guessing that they will be added if American troops or Houthis militiamen are directly engaged in combat. With that out of the way, it seems like this page should be renamed "Axis of Resistance-Israel War" soon. Every couple of days or so now, there appears to be a new report of an Iranian aligned militia like the Lebanese Hezbollah, several PMUs in Iraq, and now the Houthis of Yemen, interfering or threatening to intervene in this current war. Randomuser335S (talk) 04:12, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. To the best of my knowledge neither Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi, Syria, or Iran have even used the term Axis of Resistance. Hezbollah and Israel are just trading shots, and Iran is just mouthing off, not having (to date!) gotten directly involved. There shall be new nomenclature if and when. kencf0618 (talk) 17:34, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

You made many good points in your response. Something that I should clarify is that my "request" for this page to be renamed "Axis of Resistance-Israel War" was actually me trying to use a half joke to make an attempt at a commentary, which I apologize for doing an abysmal job of choreographing.

It seems like every other day, another Iranian backed militia throws its hat in the ring. Like there was the skirmishes on the Lebanese border and the Golan Heights with Hezbollah, the Iraqi PMUs saber rattling about intervening in Gaza and attacking American bases, and now the Yemeni Houthis allegedly launching missiles at Israel. If this pattern keeps escalating, how will it affect the nomenclature of this page? Randomuser335S (talk) 17:59, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

We don't know yet–which is the whole point. "The Vietnam War", "WWII", "WWI", and "The Civil War" have sundry other names, after all. And too, we're basically dealing with the Star Wars cantina scene here. Consider this analysis of the state of play: https://news.yahoo.com/us-navy-preparing-combat-ops-164255427.html kencf0618 (talk) 13:47, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Threshold for Infobox Inclusion

I’m not strong on including the USA in the infobox, but an argument can be made that since the U.S. has taken military action by shooting down missiles headed for Israel. Can we establish a consensus on what inclusion is appropriate for the infobox? KD0710 (talk) 22:06, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest the threshold would be direct and successful strikes - for example, if the US bombed Hezbollah militants we would add the US, and if the Houthi missiles had hit Israel we would add the Houthi's. BilledMammal (talk) 22:16, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Not yet. Israel was reportedly beyond the range of these missiles, we do not even know if it was the target. As about US engagement in this area, and especially in Syria, they have been involved all the time, but this is not a part of the war Israel-Hamas war. Yet. Some experts think that any mobilization of forces (such as bringing the aircraft carriers) is already a part of a war, but this is hardly a direct engagement at this point. My very best wishes (talk) 15:38, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Israel Frey

The "reactions in Israel" section should include a section on violence against anti-war Israelis like Israel Frey

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-15/ty-article/.premium/far-right-israelis-threaten-attack-journalist-who-dedicated-a-prayer-to-gaza-victims/0000018b-3434-d450-a3af-7d3ccb9d0000 Hovsepig (talk) 03:45, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps it has a place here, since the story has evolved, he was assaulted, and is now in hiding. However, this is most pertinent at Hate crimes related to the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:13, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I can understand moving it there too. But this article seems to lack any mention of anti-war activism by Israelis within Israel. I think that creates a false narrative that the Israeli population is united in being pro-war Hovsepig (talk) 18:44, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

There is currently not widespread reporting on anti-war Israelis from reliable sources. That will probably change in the near future. JJMM (talk) 01:52, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

In the context here, Haaretz is already a WP:RSP source ... Iskandar323 (talk) 05:23, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Casualties infobox

@Meeepmep: Why did you remove all casualties from the infobox? There hasn't been a dispute regarding them. The argument regarding Russia-Ukraine war is WP:OTHERSTUFF. There is actually a dispute regarding the casualties in that conflict, unlike here. Ecrusized (talk) 09:31, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

There was, Talk:2023_Israel–Hamas_war#Gaza_death_toll. Either way, I don't think it's helpful state dodgy casualty figures by Hamas and Israel as fact like that, especially when it's been so heavily weaponized. It's all in the lead anyways. Meeepmep (talk) 09:35, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

That is just a discussion between an user with 15 edits and yourself. One user already appears to have voiced his opposition. Hamas figures were used in the past conflicts. They are also cited by reliable sources such as Reuters. Ecrusized (talk) 09:41, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

To be fair, not their fault that no one else bothered to participate in that discussion apart from a new account. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 09:43, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

In certain ECP articles in the past, non-ECP accounts were prevented from participating in RfC's and move discussions. I don't know if that's the case here but given the controversial nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it might be. Ecrusized (talk) 09:49, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

AFAIK that is still true, but this wasnt an RFC nor a move discussion. This is a very trivial process compared to those, so just have a discussion about why it should be included. The onus lies on those asking for inclusion. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 10:00, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

The Reuters article you linked is a report on the release of the death toll by the Hamas-run ministry, it doesn't say anything about the veracity of the number. The parroting of Hamas figures by media has been criticized by the US State Department, and of course, it's been disputed by Israel. Figures released by the Health Ministry has already been directly challenged by US intelligence agencies Meeepmep (talk) 09:52, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

During the 2014 war, Hamas casualty figures were cited by the UN HRC[35]. The figures by Hamas are likely to be inflated, but should be around the true number more or less. As with all large conflict casualties, there can never be a perfect figure. Ecrusized (talk) 10:00, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

In the same conflict, Hamas claimed 70%[36] of the casualties were civilians, according to the UN investigation 65%[37] were. So the figures should be mostly accurate. Ecrusized (talk) 10:03, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I noticed there's a little disclaimer tucked away in the footnotes, but it was kind of hard to spot, even though I was on the lookout for it. In this whole mess, there's a huge gap between the numbers Hamas is putting out and what independent sources are saying.

For instance, according to Hamas, there were zero civilian casualties during their attack, which is clearly way off. And when it comes to that hospital explosion, the independent reports are all over the place.

Seems like the smart move would be to tag the numbers in the infobox clearly as "unconfirmed." Maybe we should even think about ditching the constantly changing scorecard in the infobox and instead talk about the numbers in the article body. We could do that until we've got some solid, independently verified sources for those figures. Infinity Knight (talk) 13:53, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

This needs further third party statements to back it up. Users in this discussion are saying they don't want Hamas figures in the article because.... "just because". However as stated above they have been considered reliable by UN up until now and there hasn't been anything to prove that this has changed in this conflict. Ecrusized (talk) 19:50, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Nobody is suggesting the removal of Hamas numbers from the article. However, it's a good idea to discuss them in the article body with careful attribution, considering independent sources like U.S. intelligence agencies mentioned above. The U.S. State Department criticized the media for accepting Hamas claims on the hospital blast without verification, and we're continuing to include those unconfirmed numbers in the infobox with a tiny "c" superscript. Infinity Knight (talk) 21:29, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure we shouldn't be putting too much stake in the U.S. State Department either at this present juncture and in this specific context. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:24, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree; the hospital blast shows that Hamas numbers might not be reliable. Andre🚐 05:32, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

There's a lot of quoting of US government sources going on here. The US is now very firmly party to this conflict: it is re-arming one side. We need independent sources. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:26, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider U.S. intelligence agencies independent sources in the context of this conflict, even though they are probably right about the hospital explosion casualties being inflated. When compared to UN figures in the past, Hamas figures were roughly the same, with a 5% margin of error. Ecrusized (talk) 08:06, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Recent AP: More than 4,100 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry run by Hamas. That includes a disputed number of people who died in a hospital explosion earlier this week. Infinity Knight (talk) 08:33, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

US isnt exactly a party per se, the have been providing aid to the Palestinians as well. Granted, they have picked a view supportive of Israel, but their reports are still the more neutral amongst sources. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 13:39, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

They are providing direct military aid to Israel amid an active conflict. That is support. Has the US given Hamas any military aid? I think not. This is nonsensical equivocation. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:24, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

We should be mindful of WP:FALSEBALANCE here. All figures released by belligerents are suspect, but the degree of distortion can be completely different, going to the reality denial territory in case of Hamas. The Economist interviewed one of Hamas's senior members, here is a quote

“ As for the 260 partygoers gunned down at a music festival, he says that was a “coincidence”; that they might have looked to their attackers like soldiers “resting” ”

Alaexis_¿question? 19:52, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that basically all claims by Hamas should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:00, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Agree -- that all claims from all military organizations and politicians be taken with a grain of salt. O3000, Ret. (talk) 20:12, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

No, that depends on specific military organization, specific politician (consider Donald Trump), and in general, on specific author and source. Are they known for fact checking and accuracy or promoting big lies? My very best wishes (talk) 21:09, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Do we cite Hamas for Israeli civilian casualties? If not I fail to see the relevance of your quote besides an attempt at poisoning the well. nableezy - 00:12, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

? They are just pointing out how unreasonably unreliable Hamas is regarding their version of events. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 18:00, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree, Hamas seems like it should be considered unreliable. Andre🚐 18:04, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

IDF and settlers bind, strip, beat, burn, urinate on 3 Palestinians in West Bank

Add this to the article:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-settlers-alleged-to-bind-strip-beat-burn-and-pee-on-palestinians-in-w-bank/ Chafique (talk) 11:29, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Image

Hi, @CarmenEsparzaAmoux:. Why did you revert this? KlayCax (talk) 15:05, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Hundreds of individual rights experts, and all the major international human rights bodies (Amnesty, HRW, UN, B'tselem), and even heads of state are describing Israel's actions as "war crimes." It neither makes sense nor is it appropriate to lead the section with a giant image of a single UN rapporteur. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 23:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

"Date" outside the conflict zone?

Is there a reason the subsections in "Outside the conflict zone" also have "outside the conflict zone" in their subheaders? It seems a bit redundant. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:47, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, one should remove "outside the conflict zone" from all these subheadings. But I am not sure that creating whole big section "Outside the conflict zone" was reasonable. There is no such thing as a narrowly localized conflict zone right now. The content of section "Outside the conflict zone" proves that the war is already much wider than just Gaza Strip. My very best wishes (talk) 16:26, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I fixed this. My very best wishes (talk) 03:30, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Bias image caption

The satellite image that shows fires in and around Gaza has the following caption: "Satellite view of widespread fires in Israel on 7 October 2023 when militants set fires, massacred civilians and took hostages at areas neighboring the Gaza Strip"

The bolded part seems unnecessary. While true, it's irrelevant to the picture shown and is not neutral wording. It needs to be removed Personisinsterest (talk) 19:06, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

 Done Infinity Knight (talk) 09:57, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Use of the word "Massacres" should probably be removed

I believe that the word massacre, while accurate in my opinion, violates WP:NPOV. Massacre has certain connotations and implies brutality, which is not neutral. I think this word should only be used if it is the most common name of an event, IE in the case of the Boston Massacre. If we are to be neutral about the events of this war, the phrase "Mass casualty incident" should probably be used instead. Di (they-them) (talk) 19:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

The term is used massively in reliable sources. WP:NOTCENSORED. Coretheapple (talk) 19:12, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

NOTCENSORED is not relevant to NPOV violations. NOTCENSORED refers to the censorship of potentially offensive information, it doesn't give Wikipedia free reign to take a certain viewpoint and use biased terminology. Di (they-them) (talk) 19:36, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Correct that NOTCENSORED is not valid here, but your reading of NPOV itself is incorrect. NPOV doesnt mean we should use "absolutely neutral" type words - It means that our article should accurately reflect the weight in sources. Since most call it massacre, its not wrong to call it a massacre.

"Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources." is the exact wordage if you want. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 20:05, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I'll concede the NOTCENSORED point as long as it is clear that "massacre" is an appropriate term to use due to the prevalence of that term in reliable soruces. Not to use would be a POV issue, very much like calling the Boston Massacre the Boston Incident. Interestingly I see that the latter may indeed by called the "Boston Incident" by some (note the redirect) but "Boston Massacre" is the most common usage. Coretheapple (talk) 21:01, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

It is accurate to describe a series of mass killings against noncombatant civilians during a military operation as a series of massacres. What you're engaging in is euphemism, not too unlike weasel words. VintageVernacular (talk) 07:24, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Its definitely not going to be changed to mass casualty incident. It would be a euphemism of our own innovation if we were to use it (but that is not going to happen). Ben Azura (talk) 14:30, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The mass murders of civilians at kibbutzim & a music festival easily fit the description of massacres & are described as such in many mainstream reliable sources. The Boston massacre had a death toll of five; Palestinian terrorists killed over a thousand civilians when they invaded Israel on 7 Oct. Mass casualty incident would be ridiculously vague & euphemistic. Would you describe 9/11, the 2008 Christmas massacres & the 14 October 2017 Mogadishu bombings as MCI? Jim 2 Michael (talk) 13:46, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that "mass casualty incident" is absurd. Coretheapple (talk) 15:14, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Reaction: Arab world

A sentence reads: "Despite strong evidence that the cause of the explosion was a faulty Palestinian missile, many regional governments rushed to condemn Israel for fear of arousing popular anger with the truth about the rocket’s origin."

The phrase "Despite strong evidence that the cause of the explosion was a faulty Palestinian missile" is a premature conclusion. The cause of the hospital explosion is under investigation, with reports still coming out. It also reads as opinionated.

[38]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/20/what-have-open-source-videos-revealed-about-the-gaza-hospital-explosion

[39]https://www.channel4.com/news/human-rights-investigators-raise-new-questions-on-gaza-hospital-explosion

Olgaman (talk) 23:41, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Addressed this concern. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 23:48, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

The "Arab world" section is well worded now. My perspective is that it could be either edited down more or better referenced with additional reliable sources, since there are too many citations all from The Economist. I have an additional concern: I just noticed that yesterday an editor deleted entire sections on reactions from the "Jewish diaspora" and "Palestinian diaspora", saying in the edit summaries that it was "As per talk page" and "Per talk on trimming" respectively. There is now a section for reactions from the "Arab world" (mostly Arab Muslim world), but no section about reactions from the Jewish diaspora to balance that out. Also, Palestinian diaspora voices were removed and should be included in "Arab world" section. See edits below to compare what the sections said before they were removed: JJMM (talk) 01:47, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• [40]https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war&diff=prev&oldid=1180918637
• [41]https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war&diff=prev&oldid=1180918704

Additional note: The Reactions section has the following subsections:

• Reactions in Israel
• Reactions in Gaza
• Reactions in the West Bank
• Military aid to Israel
• Arab world
• Iran
• Egypt
• International

JJMM (talk) 03:15, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The Arab world reaction is more focused on the geopolitical relations between the countries and less so twitter statements, so I'm not really sure if it needs balancing as such simply because that's not what it's really about. Also in regards to balancing, thing is that the Article is so long at this point I can't imagine anyone reading any of this who isn't a Wiki edittor. I mean just look at the quantity of entries above the Reaction section. Beyond that wiki recommends that we focus on what would be important in 10 years time and to avoid recentism. In this regard the reactions of the diaspora communities don't seem relevant in this article. I would say that the geopolitical machinations between Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia and how this effects those is something that has real long term impacts. The reaction of the Jewish community in Buenos Aires, less so. If anything I'd boil down the diaspora section then add the Israeli diaspora parts to the Israeli domestic reaction and the Palestinian one to the Palestinian section. Alcibiades979 (talk) 07:38, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

"Strong evidence" is a direct quote from The Economist. At this point I'd also say that "Strong evidence" is a bit of an understatement as AP, WSJ, Canada, France, CNN, the US and Israel, etc. etc. all say that it wasn't Israel. Also JJMM see here. Alcibiades979 (talk) 07:29, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Femi Fani-Kayode

The source provided in respect of Femi Fani-Kayode's comments seem suspicious due to the references to the New World Order conspiracy theory. Please check if the source is appropriate. --Minoa (talk) 07:34, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

That whole paragraph seems like fear-mongering garbage. I really wonder about the value in including every statement by some notable person who decided to give their uninformed opinion about how the latest war is totally going to escalate into World War 3. Anyway I've removed the part that was cited to Firstpost and the other source you mentioned. VintageVernacular (talk) 07:55, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@VintageVernacular: Thanks, in my opinion I would consider removing the WWIII speculation due to WP:CRYSTAL amongst other things. Something doesn't seem solid there. --Minoa (talk) 08:05, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and removed it. The Trump statement is something he's been saying since the Ukraine war began. The others were just random pundits... one was a hedge fund manager. Very due for inclusion... not.

The speculation on a regional spillover was more widely reported on, not to mention so plausible that it practically feels imminent, given the events of the last weeks. So I see no reason to remove that part. VintageVernacular (talk) 14:42, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Please stop making identical headings in this article

Per MOS:HEAD, section headings must be unique. Several users have repeatedly made identical headings in this article. Please stop. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:35, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

We've Reached the WP:Post‐expand include size limit

2 097 116/2 097 152 bytes

There are only 40 characters of wikitext left until templates start getting cut off. This article needs a split desperately. Ca ^{talk to me!} 15:04, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The "Reactions" section does not reference the main article, but there's already an article titled International reactions to the 2023 Israel–Hamas war so some renaming and a clarification of the scope are necessary. I plan to split "Regional and global effects" which seems like a straightforward improvement. Infinity Knight (talk) 16:09, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

 Done with Regional and global effects Infinity Knight (talk) 17:03, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Uhm, Infinity Knight, you volunteered to provide the summary, right? Space4Time3Continuum2x (cowabunga) 17:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The section was extracted, and the content related to the section's title was condensed, while attending to the quality improvement tags. Infinity Knight (talk) 17:37, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I significantly trimmed the "Emergency unity government" section as an immediate measure, hope that's fine. Movement of content to the Timeline of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war page might be wise too. I don't know what else. Anyway, what is the actual effect of hitting this limit? I just assumed "nothing good". VintageVernacular (talk) 16:19, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

War crimes might be due for its own article soon? CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 19:15, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Reading through the article, actually, there are other areas that should probably be edited down first. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 20:42, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

That's what I was thinking. Edward-Woodrow • talk 20:46, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ca, Infinity Knight, Space4Time3Continuum2x, VintageVernacular, and CarmenEsparzaAmoux: I've boldly split the war crimes section off into War crimes in the Israel-Hamas War (2023). Edward-Woodrow • talk 21:26, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:RSN note

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Are_Hamas_and_Gaza_ministry_numbers_reliable? Andre🚐 18:32, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Removing Ein HaShlosha banner

However that merge request is resolved, it will clearly not be merged into this article for reasons noted on the talk page there. It's disproportionate and unhelpful to readers to have that banner on top of this much more prominent article. – SJ + 19:47, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

"Outside main conflict zone" section

Is this turning into another Timeline of the war in Donbas (2014)? What is "outside main conflict zone"? Lesser conflict zones, other conflicts, or anything that happens anywhere and is tangentially related to the Israel-Hamas war, like demonstrations in London, stabbings in China and France? I removed the most obvious candidates for tangentially related/not germane but IMO much of that section should be deleted — no day-by-day collection of they/he/she said, a tank missile landing in Metulla (a what?) ... If and when the conflict widens we'll revisit in any case. Space4Time3Continuum2x (cowabunga) 21:07, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I completely agree, but with one clarification. Some related (per cited RS) warfare/violence in West Bank or at the Israel–Lebanon border would be relevant and arguably a part of this war. But such incidents should be included to the main section, i.e. the "Events". But something in London or China should be placed to "Reactions" or elsewere. My very best wishes (talk) 00:11, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Updated displacement numbers

As per this United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) article from the 21st, https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-14 a total of 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced, rather than the 1,000,000 sited in the article, from a source from the 15th. Hexifi (talk) 00:20, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

updating, ty. nableezy - 00:24, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Important note for editing "Casualties and losses"

When changing the numbers to more recent values, make sure to also change the notes that state things such as "Including 1,756 children and 967 women." If these numbers come from different times, it can give the reader a false perception of the percentages of these groups of the total deaths or injuries. Hexifi (talk) 02:08, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Talk:List of Islamist terrorist attacks#Should Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by Hamas included in the list of Islamist Terrorist attacks?

An editor has started an RfC asking "Should Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by Hamas be included in the List of Islamist terrorist attacks?" at Talk:List of Islamist terrorist attacks#Should Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by Hamas included in the list of Islamist Terrorist attacks?. Interested editors are invited to participate. TarnishedPath^talk 09:25, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Title should be Arab-Israeli war

In light of the initial assault involving multiple Palestinian factions, and recent engagements involving actors in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, this cannot be referred to as the current title. The term "Arab-Israeli conflict" is familiar to the English speaking reader, and is the proper term here. عبد المؤمن (talk) 10:03, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this can be argued to be the WP:COMMONNAME — Czello ^(music) 10:37, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I would go further, and say that I don't think the claim that this is an "Arab-Israeli conflict" is currently supported by the sources. However, it may be worth having a preliminary discussion on what to name the article if Hezbollah joins, so that we have a title ready to go and thus aren't lagging behind events. BilledMammal (talk) 10:47, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Agree with WP:COMMONNAME, and this situation is still some way short of the 1967 and 1973 wars, which involved a range of nation states going to war with Israel.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 11:03, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Agree that the proposed name is inappropriate. In the event of Hezbollah joining in earnest (which frankly I see has far from likely), I expect RSs will be finally forced to agree on a proper name pretty swiftly. Riposte97 (talk) 12:03, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Updated injury numbers for the West Bank

As per this United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) article from the 21st, https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-15 (specifically an attached PDF) a total of 1,653 Palestinians have been injured in the West Bank, rather than the 300 sited in the article, from a source from the 13th. (The same article has different numbers for many of the things, but no other ones the fall outside of a reasonable margin for error, as far as I'm aware) Hexifi (talk) 14:53, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

 Done --Jprg1966 ^(talk) 17:30, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Source content dispute

There is an ongoing content dispute between myself and Haskko about whether or not [this article] from CNN states Israel won the Battle of Sderot. I believe yes, as the article states, even in the small text below the video, “cleanup has begun after the Israel Defense Forces battled Hamas militants to regain control of the city and its police station.” Haskko believes no, as the article does not specifically state “victory”. Can other editors chime in on their opinions about it? This content dispute affects List of military engagements during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Battle of Sderot, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which are all sub-articles of this one and technically affects this article for content related to the town of Sderot. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 15:17, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello! I recently edited about the October 2023 Tulkarm incursion in the List of military engagements during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war page. After you provided the source in the page of the Battle of Sderot, I have no need to revert you. I just want to ask about where it says that it was an Israeli victory in the Tulkarm incursion. Thank you! 🙂 Haskko (talk) 15:25, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

No Israeli victory for that one. Thank you for pointing that out. The source only states Israeli withdrew from Tulkarm, not a true victory, so I updated the engagement list accordingly. Cheers! The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 15:30, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! Happy editing! 🙂 Haskko (talk) 15:34, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

1 kidnapped foreign

https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/mae-un-cetatean-roman-a-fost-rapit-de-hamas-si-luat-ostatic-in-gaza-2551015 romanian ManiLLa (talk) 17:02, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

 Done --Jprg1966 ^(talk) 17:25, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Decapitation

Yet another reference to decapitation has just been added, during discussion. There are now 18 references to decapitation/beheading despite the fact that the head of the Israeli National Center of Forensic Medicine, said "We also have bodies coming in without heads, but we can't definitely say it was from beheadings." Frankly, as this is a trope, the article appears to border on Islamophobia. O3000, Ret. (talk) 19:23, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

??? the article appears to border on Islamophobia This is such a bizarre accusation. There is no disputing that Hamas murdered civilian Israelis, including children, in cold blood during the initial attack. There is ample proof of this, such as the graphic photos of bodies recently released by The Media Line. Does it ultimately matter whether they were decapitated or not? Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:34, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

No, it does not matter at all how they were killed. That's my point. Why use the term eighteen (18) times, even when the head of the Israeli National Center of Forensic Medicine says this cannot be determined, if the manner of death does not ultimately matter, as you say? That's why gratuitously using a trope like beheaded eighteen (18) times makes the article appear to border on Islamophobia. O3000, Ret. (talk) 19:59, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Using ctrl + f, I found that variants of "decapitate" and "beheading" are used briefly in the 10 October subsection and then again (extensively) in its dedicated subsection under the "Media coverage" section. One could argue that the subsection on decapitations is given UNDUE weight (and the page is already massively too long as it is), but I don't see this topic being given pervasive coverage throughout the article. --Jprg1966 ^(talk) 20:33, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

It shouldn't be used at all since it cannot be determined according to Israel's own expert. It is a highly contentious term due to its actual use by ISIS in the past and the connection some people make between Muslims and beheadings. It fails WP:V and has no purpose other than to inflame. We certainly have plenty of other text about atrocities that are verifiable. There is much to document about this war that is verifiable and important without dwelling on a trope. O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:27, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Saudi Arabia does beheadings as part of its capital punishment regime. ISIS is known for making beheading videos, not just beheading specifically. As far as I am aware, Hamas has never produced an ISIS style beheading video. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:35, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Right. So why are we trying to connect Hamas to beheadings? Indeed, using the terms 18 times. O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:44, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Just like everything else in this article, the topic is included because it has been mentioned repeatedly in reliable sources. You seem to be hung up on the number of times the word "beheading" or "decapitation" is mentioned instead of focusing on the context of what's been written. Whether the subsection on beheadings is too long or given UNDUE weight is one thing, but to accuse editors of Islamophobia for arguing for some inclusion of the topic is not helpful. Many independent observers doubt Hamas's narrative of the al-Ahli Hospital incident, but we still mention it in this article because it was given significant media attention. --Jprg1966 ^(talk) 23:29, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

"Per the Gaza Health Ministry"

The Gaza Health Ministry is not an independent health organization or any kind of legitimate government branch. It's essentially just an office of Hamas, staffed by Hamas members (including its head). Our own page lists "Hamas authority" as its "parent agency." I feel like sourcing estimates from the Gaza Health Ministry in the infobox misleads people who don't know this (most Wikipedia readers are just looking for a general overview and are unlikely to go down source rabbit holes). Why the lair of obfuscation instead of being direct? Why not simply state "X killed [Hamas claim]" like so many other articles do concerning claims made by militant groups?--Nihlus1 (talk) 22:49, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Sure. Can't really trust anyone and most things should be attributed. If we believed in combatants and politicians, wed think we are winning in Vietnam. O3000, Ret. (talk) 23:09, 22 October 2023 (UTC)