User talk:Nishidani

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The West Bank/Judea and Samaria Problem

Personal work section notes. I get headaches and am as slow as a wet week, in dragging up diffs, and even have a geezer's trouble in following these arguments all over several pages, so I can't really make an adequate case. So I'll have to make my contribution in the next few days, according to the fashion I normally work after, when I did work, in the real world. Reflecting from principles, through to the problem, the evidence and conclusions. Apologies to anyone reading this. It's written to help myself get some order into this chat, not to guide others.

• An editorial split between those in favour of using 'Judea & Samaria' to designate (a) parts of, or (b) all, or (c) all of the West Bank and parts of Israel, and those who oppose the usage, except on those specific pages devoted to (i) Samaria (ii) Judea (iii) the administrative territory known in Israel as 'Judea & Samaria'.

• The 'Judea and Samaria' school holds that (a) these are geographical and historical designations predating the West Bank (b) used in a variety of sources published in Israel and abroad to denote the territory, or parts of it, known as the West Bank (c) and that opposition to the employment of these words in wiki constitutes an 'ethnic-based discrimination' against both Israeli and Jewish people.(d) specifically, that MeteorMaker, Pedrito and myself have conducted a campaign to denigrate or deprecate Jewish terms in the I/P area, a kind of ethnic cleansing of nomenclature, in a way that lends substance to fears our position is motivated by, well let's call a spade a spade, anti-semitism.

• The 'West Bank' school asserts that (a) these terms have an intrinsic denotative vagueness because they refer to different geophysical, administrative and political terrains depending on historical period, and that to use the terms of the territorially bounded and defined area known internationally as the West Bank creates cognitive dissonance (b) that these terms, as documented, were used under the British Mandate, then dropped for 'West Bank', which has remained to this day the default term of neutral usage internationally and in international law and diplomacy (c) that, after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, in 1967, the terms 'Judea & Samaria' were pushed onto the political agenda by an extremist settler group, Gush Emunim, then adopted by the Likud government in 1977, and imposed by government decree on the Israeli mass media, which suppressed the international term, West Bank (d) that, as documented, the terms 'Judea and Samaria' have a potent ideological charge as appropriative nomenclature, renaming Palestinian land presently occupied, annexed or expropriated illegally by Israel (ICJ judgement 2004), over which Israel has no sovereignty, where Israel is establishing illegal settlements at least half of which on land with private Palestinian title, and with its own Arabic toponyms, and erasing the traditional native nomenclature by creating a neo-biblical toponomy (d) that reliable secondary sources explicitly define the term as partisan, even in contemporary Hebrew and Israeli usage (e) that the evidence for usage overwhelmingly documents the prevalence of 'West Bank' (northern, southern) in neutral sources, whose neutrality is affirmed also by the very sources that otherwise employ the words 'Samaria and Judea' adduced by the former school, (f) that if explicitly attested partisan Israeli toponymy and administrative nomenclature is allowed on non-Israeli territory, then by WP:NPOV criteria, automatically this would mean the corresponding Palestinian toponymy and nomenclature, often covering the same areas, would have to be introduced (g)that in this whole debate, the West Bankers have not even represented the Palestinian side, which is absent, invisible, while the Israeli side is being treated as though its national naming were on terms of parity and neutrality with international usage (h) that wiki criteria, WP:NPOV, WP:Undue, WP:RS, WP:NCGN etc. require that neutral terminology, particularly as evidenced by the overwhelming majority of reliable sources, be employed. (i) If we are to allow Israeli terminology to be generally employed in denoting territory over which Israel exercises no sovereignty, but is simply, in law, an occupying belligerent, a very dangerous precedent, with widespread consequences for articles where ethnic conflicts exist, would be created.

(ii)Note on language, naming as an appropriative act of possession and dominion.

'According to the aboriginal theory, the ancestor first called out his own name; and this gave rise to the most sacred and secret couplet or couplets of his song. The he 'named' (tneuka) the place where he had originated, the trees or rocks growing near his home, the animals sporting about nearby, any strangers that came to visit him, and so forth. He gave names to all of these, and thereby gained the power of calling them by their names; this enabled him to control them and to bind them to his will.'

Wa’-yitser’ Yĕhôwāh’ (Adonai) ĕlôhīm’ min-hā'ădāmāh’ kol-‘ha’yath’ ha’-sādeh’ wĕ'ēth kol-ôph ha’-shāma’yim wa’-yāvē ‘ el-hā'ādām’ li-r'ôth mah-yiqrā-lô’ wĕ-kôl ăsher yiqrā-lô’ hā'-ādām‘ ne’pfesh ‘ha’yāh’ hû shĕmô. (20) Wa’- yiqrā’ hā'-ādām‘ shēmôth….

‘And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20. And Adam gave names.. .'

Wa-‘allama ādama l-asmā’a kullahā,

'And He taught Adam the names, all of them.’ Qu’ran 2:31.

In Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon, the narrator Cherrycoke recounts, against the huge backdrop of seismic shifts in the political and scientific world of that time, the story of the eponymous figures who have undertaken to draw a scientific map of the wilderness and terrain between Pennsylvania and Maryland:

‘what we were doing out in that Country together was brave, scientifick beyond my understanding and ultimately meaningless, - we were putting a line straight through the heart of the Wilderness, eight yards wide and due west, in order to separate two Proprietorships, granted when the World was yet feudal and but eight years later to be nullified by the War for Independence.”

Late in the novel, the Chinaman of the piece remarks:

‘To rule forever, . .it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call . . Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,- to create thus a Distinction betwixt’em. –’tis the first stroke.-All else will follow as if predestin’d, into War and Devastation.’

The dispute here in wiki, like the historical reality it refers to, has its ‘Bad History’. In the novel, the apparently empirical task of defining boundaries is found unwittingly implicated in the later travails of American history, with its exceptionalism, erasure of native peoples, of possible alternative worlds, of Frostian paths never taken. American innocence and pragmatic realism, in the innocuous work of two surveyors, is swept up in the torment of power: cartographic principles embody an Enlightenment’s reach into the unknown, while, applied, to the ends of order and control, they inadvertently engender violent confusion and disarray. What is the ‘right line’ to take on nomenclature, when history’s line demarcating Israel and the West Bank was drawn by war, then the West Bank was occupied in the aftermath of war, and the world of Israeli settlers begins to redraw the map? One thing that happens is that the complexities have drawn editors into a minor war, as Pynchonesque as it is Pythonesque. There is one difference: most the cartographers say one thing, and Israel, the controlling power, asserts a different terminology. So what’s in a name?

Before the world was tribalized and invested by the collateral damage or fall-out from the Tower of Babel, God assigned to the mythical forefather of all, ‘man’ or Adam, the faculty to name the world, though God himself had exercised this right in naming the light (or) day (yom) and the darkness (hôshek) night(layĕlāh) (Gen.1.5) There was only one name for each thing, and in later European thought the primordial language employed in this taxonomy was to be called ‘the Adamic vernacular’. The thesis was that the pristine jargon employed by Adam, being pre-Babelic, represented the true name for every object: every thing had a proper name intrinsic to its nature. The Greeks, as we see in Plato’s Cratylus, were much prepossessed by the philosophical crux of the correctness of names (ὀρθότης τῶν ὀνομάτων): did names have an intrinsic relation to, or represent, things, or was the link arbitrary.. The Confucian school’s doctrine of the Rectification of names (zhèngmíng: 正名). In the Bible itself the Hebrew text is full of the magic of words, of the power of words themselves to alter reality, a belief testified to in Isaiah:

'So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.'

Modernity, especially after Ferdinand Saussure (1916), has opted, correctly, for the latter position, and disposed of the magical force of naming. But nationalism, another product of modernity, reintroduced it, via the backdoor, in a new sense. Naming was an act of assertive territorial control, of defining ethnic rights over land, especially as Anthony Smith argues, ethnie are defined also by attachment to a specific geophysical reality, the ‘homeland’ that defines in good part their identity ). Since national identities are a political construct, the inculcation of a uniform language, and the use of its lexicon to define or redefine the landscape, are crucial instruments in forging a national sense of common tradition. Nationalism demanded toponymic unison, and linguistic conformity.

John Gaddis, glossing James Scott’s recent book on North Dakota roads and maps, remarks on maps that they reflect

‘what states try to do to those portions of the earth’s surface they hope to control, and to the people who live upon them. For it’s only by making territories and societies legible – by which he means measurable and hence manipulable – that governments can impose and maintain their authority. “These state simplifications,” he writes, are “like abridged maps.” They don’t replicate what’s actually there, but “when allied with state power, (they) enable much of the reality they (depict) to be remade.”

The idea of a nation as a territorial unit speaking one language over that territory is a parlously modern ideology, one engineered by nation-builders into a plausible if specious semblance of commonsense. As Massimo d’Azeglio is said to have remarked at the dawn of the Italian Risorgimento, ‘we have made Italy: our task now is to make Italians’, 95% of whom could neither read, write and nor often even speak ‘Italian’.

Imperialism, venturing into terra incognita to appropriate foreign land and incorporate it into an empire, went side by side with nationalism, which was a form of internal colonization over, and homogenization of, the disparate cultures that made up an historically defined territory. For the natives, their indigenous naming is ‘essentially a process of asserting ownership and control of place and landscape’

Daphne Kutzner, in her analysis of the role of Empire in classic children’s fiction, looks at the question from the perspective of the intrusive Empire and its refraction of imperial renaming as reflected in popular books, notes that

‘Naming a place gives the namer power over it, or at least the illusion of power and control. Colonial powers literally transform a landscape once they rename it and begin reshaping it.’

Terra incognita is the foreigner’s name for an ostensibly empty landscape which, had they taken the trouble to learn the local languages, would have revealed itself to be replete from every rocky nook to crannied gulley with ancient toponyms. The tendency was one of erasure, and, as with introduced fauna and flora , the landscape was consistently remade as it was renamed to familiarize the alien by rendering it recognizable, a variation on the landscape settlers came from. The new mapping, as often as not, represent as much the settler’s mentality, as the queerly new features of the foreign landscape under toponymic domestication.

Australia is somewhat the extraordinary exception, and broke with the gusto for imperial nomenclature. There, following the pattern set by the earlier land surveyor Thomas Mitchell and his assistant Philip Elliott that “the natives can furnish you with names for every flat and almost every hill” (1828), native names were adopted in a standarized English form for both euphony and their characteristic relation to the landscape, and indeed a resolution was passed as early as 1884 which established the priority of native names in international usage.

Often imperialism and nationalism go hand in hand. Napoleon’s troops, in 1796, could hardly communicate with each other, such were the grammatical, semantic and syntactical rifts between the various provincial patois at the time. By 1814, Napoleon had formed a European empire, and millions of provincials spoke the one, uniform language of the French state’s army. When two nations, or ethnie, occupy the same territory, the historical victor’s toponymic choices, dictated by the victor’s native language, and as articulated in bureaucratic documents and maps, usually determines what names are to be used. However, the presence of two distinct ethnie on the same national soil creates fissiparous tensions in nomenclature. Speaking of French and British conflict in Canada over areas, Susan Drummond, remarks that, 'Symbolic appropriation of a territory is a critical index of control’, and notes that, as late as 1962, the Québec cartographer Brochu, invoked the political dimension of place names as important, in the conflict with the majoritarian English heritage of Canada over the naming of the northern Inuit lands.

Again, in another familiar example, Alfonso Pérez-Agote notes that Spain has its Basque Autonomous region, Euskadi. But the original force of that name covers an area beyond the administrative and territorial units of Spain, and Basque nationalists evoke its symbolic territory, comprising also the Basque area of Navarre in France. Euskadi has, on one level, within Spanish administrative discourse, a ‘territorial political objectification’, and on another level, in Basque nationalism, a ‘non-administratively objectified’ territory extending into a neighbouring country.. The analogy with Israeli and Palestinian nationalism is close. In Israeli discourse, Israel or Eretz Israel can denote Israel and its outriding West Bank, while Palestine, which is the favoured term of West Bank Arabs for the land they inhabit, also can refer to the whole neighbouring territory of Israel as well.

The anomaly, in comparative terms, is that history has settled the question, whatever local separatist nationalisms, revanchist or irredentist, may claim, except for such places as ‘Palestine’. For there, while Israel is a constituted state, it emerged the victor, manu militari in a conflict that gave it control over a contiguous land, but has no recognized legal right, since that land is defined as and ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory. Acts of unilateral annexation, the extension of administrative structures, settlements, toponymic remapping, and widescale expropriation of land in Palestinian title, is not only not recognized, but judged ‘illegal’ by the highest international bodies of law. All major encyclopedias (Encyclopædia Britannica, Encarta etc.,), except Wiki, maintain a strict neutrality, and, in recognition of the fraught difficulties, adopt the neutral toponymic convention of ‘(northern/southern) West Bank’ in order to avoid lending their prestige to the partisan politics of the parties in this regional conflict.

(iii)The specific instance of Palestine and the West Bank

When the British wrested control over Palestine from the Ottomans in the First World War, and established themselves there to administer the region, Selwyn Troen notes that, 'naming also became part of the contest for asserting control over Palestine'.. As early as 1920 two Zionists advising the British Mandatory authority on everything regarding the assignment of Hebrew names, fought hard for the restoration of Hebraic toponymy, and when, with such places as Nablus, or indeed 'Palestine' itself, were given non-Hebrew names, they protested at the designations as evidence of discrimination against Jews. The point is made by the Israeli historian and cartographer Meron Benvenisti:-

'When the Geographical Committee for Names, which operated under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society (the only body authorized to assign names throughout the British Empire, decided to call the Mandatory geopolitical entity “Palestine” and the city whose biblical name was Shechem, “Nablus” these Jewish advisers saw this as an act of anti-Jewish discrimination, and a searing defeat for Zionism.'

One pauses to reflect. We are being accused here of 'anti-Jewish/Israeli discrimination' for refusing to insert Israeli toponyms into the West Bank. Nothing is said of the logic of this POV-pushing, i.e. that a Palestinian reader might well regard a Wiki endorsement of suc h foreign nomenclature as a 'searing defeat', and adduce it as proof of 'anti-Palestinian discrimination' both by Zionist editors, and Wikipedia itself.

Since Zionism took root, and especially since Israel was founded, the making of a people, living in a defined territorial unit and speaking one language, has followed the universal pattern of modernity. The landscape, full of Arabic words, had to be renamed, often according to Biblical terminology, but, more often, by the invention of Biblical-sounding names. To do this, a good part of the 10,000 odd Arabic toponyms collected by Herbert Kitchener, T. E. Lawrence and others in surveying that part of the Middle East had to be cancelled, and replaced with Israeli/Hebrew terms, to remake the landscape and its topographic songlines resonate with historical depth. Hebrew is a ‘sacred tongue’ (Leshon HaQodesh:לשון הקודש), the Bible describes the conquest of Eretz Yisrael, and the dispossession of its indigenous peoples, who were not part of the chosen: the pattern is repeated in modern times, down to the renaming. The revival of Hebrew, with its potent shibboleths, understandably exercises a powerful hold over the new culture of the country.

The problem is, as Steven Runciman pointed out in the mid-sixties, that the part assigned to Israel by the UN deliberation of 1947 was the western, non-Biblical part, whilst the part assigned to a future Palestinian state, what we now call the West Bank, is precisely the area most infused with Biblical associations cherished by the Jewish people, with sites and names redolent of the founding myths and realities of their ancient forefathers. Israelis, in their secular land, mostly dwell where the Philistines dwelt. The Palestinians dwell where the ancient Jewish tribes once settled. The tensions simmer between the secular Israel, which thrives in its new Mediterranean world, and the religiously-identified Israel that aspires to return to a geophysical space where origins and the present, the sacred nomenclature of the Bible and the modern world of Jewish life, might at least, once more overlap, in an ‘Adamic’ harmony congruent with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

(iv)The Negev Precedent With the foundation of Israel, and in the aftermath of the 1948 war, the vast Negev and part of the Arava were captured, and Ben Gurion duly established a Negev Names Committee to ‘hebraize’ the landscape’s features, its mountains, valleys and springs. The area already had a rich Arab toponymy, and some on the committee thought these terms might be preserved as a ‘democratic gesture towards the Arab population of the new state.’ It was not to be. The nomadic Bedouin who dwelt throughout the area were rounded up and expelled by force. They had terms for everything, but with their uprooting and displacement, Benvenisti notes, ‘an entire world, as portrayed in their toponomastic traditions, died.' Ben Gurion wrote to the committee setting forth his view that:-

We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state. Just as we do not recognize the Arabs’ political proprietorship of the land, so also we do not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names.

Political pressure and ‘the influence of patriotic arguments’ prevailed over those who, like S.Yeibin, thought the erasure of Arab names, many of which might preserve an archaic Hebrew origin. Yeibin thought this a disaster:-

‘With a clap of the hand they were wiping out an entire cultural heritage that must certainly conceal within it elements of the Israeli-Jewish heritage as well. The researchers did indeed endeavour to identify all those names that had a link to ancient Hebrew ones in an attempt “to redeem, as far as possible, names from the days of yore.” <

Any Arabic toponym in short only interested the topographers in so far as it might provide a clue to reconstructing the hypothetical Hebraic original that might lie behind it. This consideration, however, often created a mess of concocted pseudo-traditional names. The hebraization of such Arabic toponyms did not restore the historic past, but invented a mythical landscape, resonant with traditionalist associations, that had, however, no roots in Jewish tradition. The most striking geologic formation in the Negev, Wadi Rumman was rewritten as if that word disguised an ancient Hebrew Ram ('elevated'), whereas the Arabic term it was calqued from actually meant 'Pomegranate Arroyo', for example.

Reflecting on Benvenisti’s account in his larger study of language conflict in the Middle east, the Palestinian expatriate scholar Yasir Suleiman makes remarks that,

’By assigning Hebrew names anew to places on the map, the committee was therefore ‘redeeming’ these places from the corrupt and ‘alien’ Arabic names that they have acquired over the centuries’

and likens this process of linguistic erasure of Arabic and the reconstitution of Hebrew metaphorically to the nakba:-

‘The cartographic cleansing of the Negev map of Arabic place names and their replacement by Hebrew names is an enactment of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their homeland’

The record is therefore one of a linguistic cleansing of Palestine of any trace of its long Arabic history, and, as we shall see, an attempt to remodel Arabic usage in the territories Israel conquered and controls, to conform with Hebrew. Toponyms can only retain some semblance of an Arabic form, if that form is suspected to camouflage, in turn, an original Hebraic name. Adapting the reborn Hebrew language to the alien realities of the Palestinian landscape, the obvious problem was that the nomenclature for much of the flora and fauna, not to speak of the landscape itself, was infused with the very language, Arabic, a revarnished Hebrew had to compete with. As early as 1910 Jacob Fichman, a member of the Language Council, stated that Hebrew:

‘will not digest the new names of plants, especially those which have been taken from the Arabic language’ and that these borrowed names ‘will always be like atrophied limbs’ for ‘despite the fact that the Arabic language is our sister language in the family of Semitic languages, it has no foundation in our |psyche ’

Hebrew was thus to be programmatically sealed off from Arabic, to prevent atrophisation, and cultivate purism by means of a fake Biblical antiquarianism. Theodor Adorno, writing in the melancholic aftermath of the Holocaust on the effects of cultural purism, once remarked on the purging of foreign words from German undertaken by nationalists intent restoring an ideal of cultural authenticity. He saw this as part of the pathology of nationalism in Germany. Foreign words were treated as if they were 'the Jews of language' (Fremdwörter sind die Juden der Sprache). In expunging the landscape and the human world of Palestine of its Arabic language, of landscape and culture, Zionism likewise treated Arabic as German or French linguistic purists treated loan-words in their own languages, or, later, actual Jews in their midst, as foreign bodies to be expelled, or expunged if a proper 'foundation for an authentically Jewish psyche' were to be successfully engineered. One would call this ironic, were it not so tragically melancholic in its unintended resonances.

(v)The West Bank. History and Naming The relationship between demographic displacement and the loss of one's landscape through the erasure of its traditional placenames in Palestine has been remarked on by Paul Diehl.

‘The exclusive attachment to territory is reflected in the naming and renaming of places and locations in accordance with the historic and religious sites associated with the dominant political group. Not only did the outflow of Palestinian refugees bring about a change in the Jewish-Arab demographic rations, it brought about the replacement of an Arab-Palestinian landscape with a Jewish-Israeli landscape. The names of abandoned villages disappeared from the map and were replaced with alternative Hebrew names . . Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank have taken on biblical names associated with the specific sites as a means of expressing the Jewish priority in these places and the exclusive nature of the territorial attachment. Modern Israeli and Palestinian maps of Israel/Palestine possess the same outer borders, but the semantic content of the name is completely different.. The means by which new landscapes are created to replace or obliterate former landscapes is a good example of the way in which metaphysical and symbolic attachment to territory is translated into concrete realities on the ground.’

In 1950, when King Abdullah, of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, unilaterally annexed the territory he had conquered in 1948, he changed the name of his country to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which incorporated the remaining fragment of Palestine as aḍ-Ḍiffä l-Ġarbīyä, or 'the West Bank' of that kingdom. The usage is still current in German (Westjordanland). Though only Britain recognized his annexation, the word itself found ready acceptance in, and was not, 'forced on', the international community, as Binyamin Netanyahu argued.

In 1967, Israel conquered what the world knew as ‘The West Bank’, the Biblical heartland, and a decree calling it ‘Judea and Samaria’ was issued by the Israeli military on December 17 that year with the explicit definition that it would be identical in meaning for all purposes to the West Bank region to replace the interim terms 'Occupied Territories' (ha-shetahim ha-kevushim), and ‘the Administered Territories’ (ha-shetahim ha-muhzakim) in use since the immediate aftermath of the June war. The term 'Judea and Samaria' however was rarely used until Likud took power. The Labour Government never enacted a settlement policy, though Gush Emunim, an extremist settler ground with a fundamentalist ideology, pressed settlement, and propagated the terminology ‘Judea and Samaria’. When the Likud party, the maximalist, expansionist party with strong ties to both religious and ultra-Zionist groups and traditions, was elected in 1977, it imposed Samaria and Judea as the vox propria in modern Hebrew on the mass media, expressly forbidding the use of the international term West Bank. Notably, the government's imposing of these terms on Israeli usage was seen as a prerequisite for an envisioned settlement policy, since accepting the terms would predispose the public to accepting the policy.

Gideon Aran describes the achievement:

‘The importance of changing names in the process of conquering territory is well known. Assimilation of the name “Judea and Samaria” in normal and official language, as well as in jargon, attests to G(ush)E(numin)’s political and cultural achievements.'

The Camp David Accords negotiations of and the final agreement, in 1979, only underline how great was the linguistic rift between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's position and the American government intent on brokering an agreement.

‘Begin consistently proved to be the most extreme member of his delegation, insisting on seemingly innocent terms such as “autonomy” as opposed to “self rule,” on the labelling of the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” in the Hebrew text, and on the use of the phrase “undivided Jerusalem.'

A huge amount of wrangling between the American negotiators and Begin revolved around this term.

‘for what must have been the tenth time, he (Begin) objected to the term West Bank, giving a lesson to the president on the geographic and historical appropriateness of the term and the importance of using the words Judea and Samaria.’

Begin refused to back down from his ‘rock-hard’ intransigence on using ‘Judea and Samaria’ and at the Camp David signing ceremony, (March 26,1979) several interpretive notes were required to be added as annexes to the basic documents, one specifically dealing with the West Bank, which President Carter annotated with his own hand with the words:

‘I have been informed that the expression ‘West Bank’ is understood by the Government of Israel to mean ‘Judea and Samaria’.

An ambitious programme of colonising settlement, toponomastic Hebraisation and cultural Judaization was undertaken, and indigenous Palestinians were shifted off their land, in a repetition of the Negev programme, which forms the precedent. The programme took wing especially after the unprovokedinvasion of Lebanon in 1982, whose key political objectives included ousting the refugee Palestinian resistance in the para-state on Israel’s northern flank from Lebanon, where the PLO projected a 'state in waiting' image that threatened Israel’s plans for long-term control over the West Bank. The war was, the head of the IDF said at the time, ‘part of the struggle over the Land of Israel. It aimed to further the isolation of Palestinians on the West Bank by depriving them of close support, halt the rise to political respectability of the PLO, which embodied Palestinian nationalist aspirations, and deprive that body of its claims to be a political partner in the peace process for Israel’s normalization of its relations with the outside world. One calculation, a minority view entertained by both Ariel Sharon and Raphael Eytan, however, was that, expelled from Lebanon, the PLO would be forced to return to Jordan, topple king Hussein, and establish a Palestinian state there to satisfy Palestinian national ambitions that Israel would thwart on the West Bank.

Changing the realities of occupied territory by the manipulation of language, Hebrew, Arabic, and in controllable sources like the global Wikipedia, became a programmatic goal. The settlers were in fact 'colonists' in the old sense, but Israeli English usage has here prevailed in the politics of the culture wars to determine how the international community perceives the dynamics of that area. The corresponding Hebrew usage is complex (see Israeli Settlements), but continuity with the biblical setlement of Eretz Yisrael is evoked by referring to Jewish settlers as mitnahalim. The root *n-h-l directly evokes a passage in the Book of Numbers where each tribe is assigned its portion on entering Canaan, or the Land of Israel, particularly as ' in the pledge by the tribes of Gad and Reuben that they will fight on the west side of the Jordan river to help the other tribes take possession of their assigned portions' Settlers, qua, mitnahalim are not colonizing anybody's land, in this usage: they are simply taking up their 'assigned portions' as those were marked out by God to the Chosen People.

Rashid Khalidi has remarked how the Israeli authorities themselves try to engineer the way Palestinians think in Arabic by tampering with that language's natural idiom in the Arabic broadcasts they authorize. Over Israeli Arabic channels, one does not hear Jerusalem referred to, as it is customarily in Arabic, and by Palestinians, as Bayt al-Maqdis ('The House of Sanctity') or Al Quds al-Sharif ('The Noble Holy Place'). Arabic usage as sanctioned by Israel speaks rather of Urshalim ('Jerusalem') or Urshalim/al-Quds ('Jerusalem Al-Quds'). The purpose is to diffuse a variety of Arabic names for places that are calques on the Hebrew terms chosen for the area..

This goes right through the bureaucratic language, a form of linguistic colonization that reinforces the physical occupation of the west Bank by cultural re-engineering. A new travel permit was imposed on the colonized Palestinians in the West Bank in 2002, and required of any of them wishing to travel in that area. This was issued, printed and released by Israeli authorities who call it in Arabic Tasrih tanaqul khas fi al-hawajiz al-dakhiliyya fi mantaqat yahuda wa al-samara. ('Special Travel Permit for the Internal Checkpioints in the Area of Judea and Samaria.'). Here, Palestinians who must travel in the West Bank, for them 'Filastin', are required to obtain a document which requires that area to be referred to by the settler term, 'Judea and Samaria'. It is this form of Arabic which they are expected to use in negotiating their way with Israeli authorities through checkpoints. But West Bank Palestinians simply abbreviate it and refer to their tasrih dakhili (Checkpoint permit), , thereby eluding the settler term imposed on them.

A proposal is now being made to apply the principle of Hebraization, as of 2009, even to those places within Israel which the world designates by traditional toponyms, such as Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) Nazareth (Natzrat) and Jaffa (Yafo).

(vi) Analysis of Ynhockey's suggestions

‘Mapmaking was one of the specialized intellectual weapons by which power could be gained, administered, given legitimacy and codified’

'Mapmaking is not, however, solely an instrument of war; it is an activity of supreme political significance – a means of providing a basis for the mapmaker’s claims and for his social and symbolic values, while cloaking them in a guise of “scientific objectivity.” Maps are generally judged in terms of their “accuracy”, that is, the degree to which they succeed in reflecting and depicting the morphological landscape and its “man-made” covering But maps portray a fictitious reality that differs from other sorts of printed matter only in form.'

After 1967 ‘Cartographers . .had many options, which tended to reveal their political proclivities. Those who were sympathetic to Israel labelled the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Sinai as “administered territories” and used the phrase “Judea and Samaria” for Jordan’s former West Bank. They also included all of Jerusalem within Israeli territory,. Mapmakers who were ideologically neutral generally referred to “occupied territory” and maintained the term “West Bank”. . . In the post-1993 period a Palestinian Authority has been established in the West Bank and Gaza, yet there is no actual independent state of Palestine. Most international maps have stayed with the terms “West Bank” and “Gaza” but maps published by the Palestinian Authority describe these areas as “Palestine.” Furthermore, Palestinian Authority maps usually leave out Israel and assign its territory to “Palestine,” with the added designation that it is “occupied territory.”Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, Harvey Sicherman, The power of projections: : how maps reflect global politics and history, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006 pp.37-8

We are dealing with a defined territory and its naming. User:Ynhockey would make tidy distinctions, define the bound geographical territory (CIA Factbook) as just a political reality, and use Judea and Samaria for all other contexts. In his own work on Wiki, much of it admirable, we find many maps. Examine the following map he authored and uploaded, and which is employed on the Battle of Karameh

The central colour, a washed acquamarine tint, allows one to highlight the field of movement in the battle, and blurs the neat territorial division between the West Bank, and Jordan. But note that, in a wholly unnecessary manner, Israel is stamped in large bold characters and made to overlay the West Bank, which is placed diminutively in parentheses. Willy-nilly, the impression is that the West Bank is some territorial hypothesis or province within Israel. Whether Ynhockey meant to give the reader this impression or not is immaterial. Maps, as one source already quoted noted, reflect the cognitive bias of the mapmaker as much as an interpretation of a landscape, and here the bias is that the West Bank is under Israel, behind Israeli lines, a subset of that state. It is a fine example of what many cartographers and historians of cartography argue: the making of maps, and toponymic nomenclature in them, serves several purposes, to clarify, as here, a battle landscape, for example, but also to impose or assert power, or claims, or blur facts. Objectively, User:Ynhockey has loaded wiki with a map that cogs our perceptions, tilting them to an annexationist assumption. Indeed, unlike the Israeli government so far, his map actually looks like it has the West Bank annexed.

Further reading:- Mark Monmonier, No Dig, No Fly, No Go. How maps restrict and control, University of Chicago Press 2010

Historical revisionism

I was reviewing the "Revision history of Historical revisionism", and I see you added an empty heading for "French Revolution".[1] Should there be any content for that section? If not I'll delete it.   Will Beback  talk  21:14, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it was one of the most hotly debated subjects in late 20th. history, after Alfred Cobban kicked off the debate and François Furet took it up, and had widespread political repercussions in the culture wars of the period, which still haven't ended. I put the heading it because I was surprised that such an obvious example had been ignored by editors. By all means expunge it if you think it is also my duty to work there. I guess we'll just have to wait until someone, with more time and generosity on their hands in this place than I have, comes along and restates the obvious, puts the same heading back while taking the trouble to fill it out. I'm effectively retired.Nishidani (talk) 21:50, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

When Wikipedia first started it was considered acceptable to include empty headings to show where added content was needed, rather like red links. The community has gradually turned against empty headings and red links, perhaps a sign of the project's maturity. As for that article, I don't think the list is intended to be a comprehensive list of every era that's been the subject of revision. They're just examples. While the French Revolution would make a fine example, it's not mandatory. So I'll go ahead and delete the heading, though I'll look forward to seeing a section on it if anyone ever wants to write one. Enjoy your retirement and thanks for your contributions.   Will Beback  talk  22:05, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Fine by me. Perhaps a note on the talk page to the effect that one editor noted this omission would remind passersby that this fits the bill. Actually the page lacks quite a large number of notable instances of revisionism, and looks very sketchy. There are p'lenty of examples from the orient. Japanese historiography has many examples of revisionism, from the Japanification of Confucianism in the Tokugawa period, known as kogaku (古學) down to the revision of the eurocentric standard model of WW11,(which ironically was influenced by Charles Beard's interpretation) most notably associated with Hayashi Fusao (1964) though Ueyama Shunpei and others had beaten him to the gun, or rather beaten his drum before he became the bandleader. Cheers, and (sottovoce I would appreciate it if you ignored the principle regarding the Barasana page. I'll do it one day, if the headings remain!) Nishidani (talk) 22:11, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I added a note to the talk page. And I'll pretend I never heard of Barasana.   Will Beback  talk  22:22, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

ah!

The quality of mercy is not strain'd

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the Plaice beneath.!!!Nishidani (talk) 08:38, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

(The appropriate riposte from Measure for Measure would be, of course)

He who the sword of Heaven will bear

Should be as holy as severe.Nishidani (talk) 09:15, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Your talk page

Hi Nishidani. You may like to read WP:TPG and consider moving the above content, which does not appear to be pat of a conversation, to a user sub page that you a re free to create for this purpose. --Kudpung (talk) 01:19, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I have been considering taking this to MfD for a little bit. It says that it is for you so it might be better in MSWord. You will not be adding it to an article due to the restrictions. It also borders on sopaboxing and WP:UP#POLEMIC. I am sure you understand that there is some controversial info in there or it wouldn't have citations. I'm also not sure if you can even respond to this with your topic ban so you might want to ask for clarification over at AE. Any slip ups will look extra bad since you have already been borderline a couple times and have recently been commenting on conversations regarding the topic area.Cptnono (talk) 01:52, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

It was my response to an Arbcom discussion, written over one and a half years ago, to help that discussion, and was my talk on the issue under examination, before my ban. It has lain there, under dozens of visiting administrative eyes, for 18 months, and no one, until today, has ever thought it worthy of comment, or taken exception to the fact that I hadn't archived it in sequence along with the rest of my talk. The function of wikipedia is to write articles, not badger people over nugatory aspects of their pages.

Did I say 'nugatory'? I guess my text for Tanakh meditation today will be fascinatio nugacitatis obscurat bona (Wisdom of Solomon, chapter 4, verse 12), which the King James version tends to mislead us about ('the bewitching of naughtiness doth obscure things that are honest'). The Septuagint has βασκανία γὰρ φαυλότητος ἀμαυροῖ τὰ καλά, which I would hazard to translate with a Platonizing ear as 'the malign bewitchery of mean judgement dims our sight of what is good'. Aldous Huxley has Eustace Barnack, the learned epicurean wastrel, translate the term as 'The magic of triviality-the being spellbound by mere footling' (Time Must Have a Stop, Chatto & Windus, London 1945 p.129), which is one of those happy examples of felicitous misprision of the meaning of another language that enhances understanding, while misrepresenting the original. nugae are trifles, in Latin. Nugacity in English is 'trifling behaviour or talk'.

He had an excellent precedent for doing so, since undoubtedly Huxley's fluency in 16-17th century mystical writings would have drawn his attention to the vulgate Latin expression via the mention of the word in Blaise Pascal's 'Pensées', who excerpted the phrase fascinatio nugacitatis from the Bible, and glossed it with the following words: 'Afin que la passion ne nuise point, faisons come s'il n'y avait que huit jours de vie.' (Pascal, Pensées, ed. Ch-M. des Granges, Classiques Garnier, Paris 1964, p.131). Bref, 'to avoid our being harmed by passion, let us act as though we only had eight (more)days to live'. Pascal, twigging also to the erotic nuance implicit in fascinatio evidently took nugacitas as a spendthrift dillydallying in those paltry ephemera of everyday life that charm us, as they distract us from an awareness that time is of the essence since we're shortly to croak it.

'Nugae' are trifles, and 'nugacitas', a late Latin derivation often construed as equivalent to malitia ('meanness of disposition': it was employed in this sense rather injuriously against one of the greatest textual critics of all time, Scaliger, whom a by now forgotten adversary, Eugene Francois Lintilhac, dismissed for what he thought was the trifling meanness and mediocre judgement of a man (hominis nugacitas et mediocre iudicium) given so pertinaciously to exact philological hair-splitting. Fascinatio in turn comes from fascinum which has two senses (a) bewitchment (b) penis. This rather cockamamie combination comes from an old custom that attributed to the membrum virile certain apotropaic powers if wielded the right way. Which reminds me of an apposite citation from a song in Roman dialect as sung by Gigi Proietti, 'nun me romp'er cazzo'. And yes, Cptono, I am 'borderline' in the psychiatric sense undoubtedly, because I am bored stiff with the endless niggling, which crosses the line from collaborative editing to enter the no man's land of relentless quibbling by the praetorian guards of policy, not to improve texts, but simply to make life uncomfortable for those whose presence on the encyclopedia one dislikes. If you dislike my talk, don't bookmark the page. Nishidani (talk) 09:46, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

A reason that the material is there is that one of the editors involved in the West Bank v Judea and Samaria case, finding it well-written and a good summary of issues involved, specifically asked Nishidani to leave it on his talk page after the case ended. I too would like it left. Nishidani, rather than see the material deleted, I would prefer to copy it to a user page of mine.     ←   ZScarpia   14:38, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I fail to see what the fuss is about. I do admire immensely the extraordinary lengths people will go to to forage through the obscure thickets of wiki policy to find some prickly piece of minutiae on which they might hang their antipathy for an editor, while pretending that one has, in fossicking and ferreting out the musty quillets of doctrine for technical leverage on a trumped up charge of abuse, merely the interests of the encyclopedia at heart. It completely goes over their heads that the experience of wikipedia is one of entering a democracy of knowledge, where the young can brush up against ideas, techniques of analysis, theories and work methods, and acquire by the acquaintence a will to cherish learning. It is not the content of that essay that is important. It is rather the fact that it leaves a trace of the kind of background study, analysis and elaboration an editor committed to the project should learn to engage in, if he wishes to approach articles with an informed passion for comprehensiveness. Many do this better than me, many are far better as editors than I, but I think that a minor monument to my own belief in what preparation to work in depth on articles requires.

I write many of my comments as essays, footnoted etc. Most eventually are archived. There is nothing polemical there. I doubt many read it. But it is clear from the incipit that it was written to clarify my understanding of the historical background behind the Arbcom dispute. Cptono is asking for retroactive punishment, for the deletion of the whole page, which happens to be where people visit to talk enquire, or challenge me. This is my talk page. I suppose the next move is to request that my archives themselves be blanked. One fragment of my work here has been retained from the past. It hasn't been worked on since my ban. No one, and quite a few people who dislike my editing have the page earmarked, and never thought I was engaged in some subversive personal manipulation of wikipedia. Ian Pitchford graciously thanked me and copied it. Of course you can have a copy. Had I been selfish, I would simply have got it published in a journal, where it could be cited as a source. But I don't see any technical reason or existential urgency, other that the obvious motivation of the fellow who objects to it here, to hide it. My own home version is much longer, and more detailed. It is objected, again, that it serves no purpose, and will never be used, on wikipedia. I don't know where this extraordinary chairvoyant certitude comes from. I don't think it material whether it has immediate utility or not. It's a snapshot of what I did before I got (unaccountably, but rules are rules) perma-banned. I've always thought of it fondly, if perhaps pretentiously, as a private gift to a public venue. Now I'm being smacked with an innuendo, and a wholly arbitrary act of intolerance. If the system can be finagled this way for what I regard as mischievous ends, to get at someone, then I'll draw the lesson that this place privileges manipulative gaming over the commitments of civic intelligence. I'm trying to do a difficult job with care and civility and keep getting suggestions I be topic banned: now it's from Shakespeare as per Kudpung because I simply complained that one editor was effectively stopping me from editing a page. It's worse than Kafka at times in here. At this rate, I'll have to brush up on the ethnology and linguistics of some obscure tribe no one knows about, as a save haven from this endless push to narrow and narrow the areas I am permitted to work in. If it goes, I go. Nishidani (talk) 15:48, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:TLDR - --Kudpung (talk) 16:26, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. That underlines my point. If my remarks above strike you, as they will strike 99% of any passing readers, as WP:TLDR, then imagine how few people, if any (to date I know of only two in almost 2 years), would take the trouble to read the opening section of this talk page to which objection is taken. On a rough calculation it is 7 times longer, and impressionable youth raised in the virtual world of the Internet cannot be expected to be corrupted by a personal reflection of such tedious length. So shall we let sleeping dawgs lie, or dog slipping louts like myself? :) Nishidani (talk) 16:47, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Poor Kudpung! But I'm glad that he's not ashamed to admit that he finds reading 27 lines a bit too much to manage.     ←   ZScarpia   22:36, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Now now. He's an excellent wikipedian with a redoubtable record than makes my own contributions here look mean. I can fully understand why some smart-alecky traits of mine piss him off. They piss me off at times. I wish I could be more succinct. But I don't have time to revise, and I feel obliged to explain why I hold this or that view, on edits, on an article's background. To the precisian it may well look like flab, not trimmed towards the simple purpose of adding to an encyclopedia.Nishidani (talk) 06:36, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

FYI

I thought you might be interested in looking at any material you can find relating to Ignatius of Antioch's letter to the Philadelphians, that is, if you can find anything about a subject that obscure. John Carter (talk) 23:07, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Also, although I don't know if he mentioned anything about any possible pre-Christian groups, Marcel Simon's Verus Israel says something to the effect that there may have been an "Ebionite" group within every then-extant Jewish group. By the way, please do not take this as any form of pressure; I know you have other things you are actively engaged in. This is primarily because my own memory tends to leak like a sieve over time, and I don't think I would be able to remember it myself, so I'm crowding up your talk page with my occasional thoughts as they occur to me. Now I have to put out the fire in my hair which comes from thinking too hard, dammit. John Carter (talk) 21:44, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm only hanging round like a bad smell to fulfil some prior obligations, contracted earlier this year, i.e. assist Tom Reedy in fixing the Shakespeare Authorship Question related pages, which have a vexed history of getting nowhere, and this, with you. I'll be abroad for some months shortly, but will do my best to help as time and resources allow. I don't feel 'pressured' except by advancing years, which don't make me comfortable with slow cunctator tactics, and the fact that I can't contribute as much as I would like. Best Nishidani (talk) 09:52, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Ebionites 2 Mediation

Greetings!

I have agreed to mediate the Ebionites 2 case. I'm requesting that all parties start with opening statements, instructions are at the top of the page. Thanks for agreeing to go to mediation, I'm hopeful we can get this resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. Don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or issues. --WGFinley (talk) 01:02, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Class dismissed

It seems that everybody but the instructor knew that the classes were this weekend, so they've been put off until the 6th. I've got an errand or two to run and then I plan on spending the day trying to get the SAQ done, or at least enough so that it resembles a complete article. Tom Reedy (talk) 15:22, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

No excuses then, pal, just like I aint got nun neither. We gotta wirk our butts off, till fagged out, we're flagged out or FA'd up. Sad SAQs, indeed, myne gude manne. A line from Milton comes to mind.

Eyeless in ****, at the mill with slaves,

Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke!

You'll know the line, but just in case my Alzheimer's is contagious, the asterisked bit can be restored by thinking of Aldous Huxley's novel, circa 1936, or Vergil's Aeneid, Book 1, line 120, first word.* I gotta be hyper-careful, udderwise the snoops will haul me up before sysops for a ban violation. Gambare! as they say in Tokyo.Nishidani (talk) 17:15, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

• Jeezus, Kerrist. I really am age'en fast. Make that line 119 third last word. A paragon of the sixth age's slippered pantaloon, al right!Nishidani (talk) 17:18, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

RfC

I don't want to get involved but I see there is an RfC here. I may make a comment, but would like to see some other input. Will you be commenting? hamiltonstone (talk) 22:47, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

An article that you have been involved in editing, Baconian theory has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments here . If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. hamiltonstone (talk) 05:00, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Voluntary topic ban while the RfC is ongoing

I have volunteered you as agreeable to being topic banned per my comments here. Upon thinking about it further, you are of course able to work on the draft noted in the RfC if you think any of the comments there should be incorporated. However, in the meantime, could you just try and not get into any edit wars or stuff. The other named two parties are also getting this message. Stay cool. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:14, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Cool as a cucumber. I think total abstention is the best remedy. I'm mum from here on in, until doomsday. Best regards and thanks for what is a very good proposal.Nishidani (talk) 21:51, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Shakespeare authorship

For what it's worth, both of the pages in question have User:Smatprt listed in the article history as the original author of those versions, and the talk pages list specific changes that they claim to have made themselves. I suppose it's possible that they merely copied and pasted someone else's work from somewhere else, but I'd have no way of determining that without seeing the older versions, as Smatprt does appear to be the primary author of the particular pages that I moved. Bearcat (talk) 21:27, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, uh, . .I can't make the sign of the cross, hold my breath, appeal to Job with a Jewish prayer for further patience, because I'm bound not to comment. But . .after 1200 sweated edits and several months, involved in reading, at a rough guess, 5000 pages of books and articles, to be told that the result is that the 'primary author' is someone else. . .Let's see, it's too late to wake the neighbours by playing the Malinconia movement in Beethoven's String Quartet, . . there's something my father called the idiot box in one of the rooms. . yes, I'll watch some TV and consider a suppository.Nishidani (talk) 21:35, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

No, those sedatives aren't working. I need something, a mix between seriotonin and dopamind, to block that neurotransmitter hyperactivity, conducive to paranoia, caused by a theory announcing that I've been working as a proxy for Shapiro, even before his book came out, and for the 3 months I worked before a copy got to my desk.Nishidani (talk) 21:57, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't doubt your sincerity — all I know is what I can see when I look at the pages themselves. If Smatprt merely copied and pasted your or someone else's work from other pages into brand new titles, then I'd be happy to merge the pages back into the original titles if you can tell me where they are. Bearcat (talk) 22:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry. No harm done. The shock's passed, the ticker less arythmic. And you guys have enough on your plate without me wasting time fixing trivia only because I twig some personal minor sense of honour suffered an obscure slight. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 22:28, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Just to let you know, Tom Reedy subsequently provided me with the original titles, so I've now redirected Smatprt's forks back to where they belong. And by the way, this kind of thing is part of an administrator's job description, so you needn't worry about "wasting time" by asking someone to fix something like this :-) Bearcat (talk) 23:52, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

irrespective of SAQ

I really am at a loss to understand your apparent hostility to me. Have I done something to offend you? SamuelTheGhost (talk) 22:21, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

The best answer to an incomprehensible query is a question. Have you ever read E. M. Forster's novel Howard's End?Nishidani (talk) 07:51, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I presume you mean "only connect", so I will do so a bit:

As far as I know our paths first crossed in February 2009, when you seemed happy with this contribution.

I got involved with the SAQ in July 2010 as a result of an invitation from Tom Reedy at User talk:SamuelTheGhost#Opinion requested.

My view on the SAQ is firmly Stratfordian and conventional, but I think that the SAQ in Wikipedia needs to be answered rather than avoided. I thought that this put me in a strong position to propose compromises. I did not edit the articles, but made a few remarks, not intended to be provocative in any way, on the talk pages. In particular in August I suggested an innocuous paragraph to which you reacted with quite disproportionate hostility. I'm still trying to work out why. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 14:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Howard's End is many things, but it is also a clever novel illustrating the principle of unintended consequences, which, as I check the flyleaf of my old copy, was my first impression. Everyone acts according to their native lights, most with a formal respect for the stern social manners of the Edwardian period, and yet, notwithstanding this finicking cleaving to 'good form', misunderstandings are rife, and even the finely tuned lyrical crescendo of a beautiful orchestrated engagement and marriage turns out to be, read retrospectively, a matter of facilis descensus Averno (Aeneid, Bk 6). A kind word put in on behalf of Leonard Bast leads to advice that has him lose his job, rather than retain it; an attempt to save his parlous descent into the shabby genteel leads to the destruction of a marriage; a show of tenderness for his plight leads to the heroine's sister, Helen, falling pregnant with an illegitimate child; an attempt by Helen to disvest herself of half of her money to help out Leonard falls flat, with the result her wealth is substantially increased; even Tibby, who never engages and exists as a sort of dead centre at the heart of a vibrant family, by an artless slip of the tongue, sets in train a domino effect that leads, by many indirections, Charles, Mr Wilcox's son, to kill Leonard Bast, who turned up simply to apologise for something he could hardly be blamed for. At a certain point the narrator intrudes:-

'They had nothing in common but the English language, and tried by its help to express what neither of them understood' (ch XXXIX, Penguin ed.1967 p.288)

A lean and slippered pantaloon like myself has to keep reminding himself that vanity lays siege to senescence, but I can't avoid the impression that commingling in this medium with people much younger than myself brings out evidence for some seismic rift between the tectonic plates of our respective generations. The kind of dialogue I am used to doesn't function, or is misheard, or read past to get the 'gist'. in participating in discussions, I feel certain I am speaking in my mother tongue, but equally certain that it's not the same idiom used by many of my interlocutors, even though the grammar and vocabulary is basically identical (except of course for words like 'disingenuous' which to my mind evokes Iago, and means 'fraudulent', 'maliciously deceptive' but here often appears as a synonym for 'naif/naive'. Even admins use it that way, and no one, with the OED in hand, takes them to court for a violation of WP:AGF.)

I think that sums up much of what passes for interactions and dialogue in wikipedia. Huge threads develop because listening closely, ear to the ground, is a lost art. Do so, and you are quickly hauled over the coals. We live in the discursive variety of Zygmunt Bauman's 'liquid society' and the most recent threads on SAQ themes illustrate with marvellous tedium Bauman's (actually Prospero's) logic: everything solid melts into thin air, as the hard world of facts, or structurally grounded argument, suffers effacement by the voracious tsunamis of opinion and emotion which pounce on its wake and overturn the fragile barque.

How 'hostility' can be construed from my words in our extremely intermittent exchanges defeats my understanding of the word. How 'disproportionate hostility' can be used of this equally bewilders me, esp. since 'hostility' in my vocabulary is intrinsically 'disproportionate' in such contexts. We may illude ourselves that we are, to use a beautiful phrase from Pär Lagerkvist's novel, 'guests of reality' (cf.Gäst hos verkligheten). We ain't. We're strangers in a virtual space, and misprisions of intentions, or misreading between the lines is the norm, because the social context of direct encounter, the facial tics, intonation of voice, and drift of innuendo beneath the slow current of patent argument, is lost to view, or inaudible. It is easy therefore to presume both amity and malice where there is neither. The word 'stranger' in Indo-European languages developed two senses, 'guest' and 'enemy', hospitality, and hostility (hence Mr. in Russian господин). We're strangers, and that can turn into one or another of the historical forms, though if hostility is the way taken, you'll find me on the other fork of Robert Frost's road. I may think my engagement in an exchange of views testimony to a hospitable readiness to listen, if only to then disagree. Someone else may take this as a proof of hostility. If you can construe, therefore, whatever words I used in a way that illuminates the hostility you detect there, then I will listen attentively and, if I think your grounds correspond to the evidence, willingly apologize. But on the strength of the diffs you provided, I have nothing to go on to express penitence. Nishidani (talk) 17:17, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your lengthy and amusing reply. I am flattered at your willingness to write at such length, which does mollify me somewhat. I will nevertheless revisit, let us hope for the last time, the interchange which offended me, in the hope that you will find my reaction at least comprehensible.

• I suggested the paragraph

  For over 150 years there have been readers of Shakespeare's works who could not believe that they were written by a man with "small Latin and less Greek", and who prefer to think that the real author must be a highly educated person or persons. Their ideas are discussed as the Shakespeare authorship question. The great majority of scholars have always accepted the substantial direct evidence for Shakespeare's authorship dating from 1623 and earlier.

• Tom Reedy immediately described this as "time-wasting promotion"
• You wrote "Name the small minority of scholars ..."
• I replied "I think you're nit-picking. Mathematically, 100% is still a great majority. I'd accept 'All accomplished historians and textual critics of the period who specialise in Shakespeare' instead."
• You came back with "... I'd like to see a source for 'Mathematically, 100% is still a great majority,' which makes no sense to me, since neither a mathematician nor a literary scholar with a refined sense of linguistic tact would write it. I take your rejoinder, and the proposed emendation, as an indication that you can't think of any ranking period scholar ..."
• This was the point at which I felt that reasoned argument was escaping from us. Whether a mathematician would describe 100% as a great majority is inessential to the main discussion, but your remark about it was just an insult to me. I phrased it that way simply because I'm reluctant to assert that the minority does not exist, on the general grounds that quot homines tot sententiae. But more importantly, instead of accepting my proposed emendation you wrote some 200 words stressing your view that the emendation was necessary, while effectively ignoring the fact that I had offered it. I would have liked, and would still like, to know whether you could accept the paragraph I orignally wrote, as amended. It seemed to me that you were trying to avoid that issue. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 22:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure you're familiar with Andersen's fable The Princess and the Pea? Nishidani (talk) 04:44, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay I'll give you the 'thick context' of what was going on

Where WP:RS show a variety of interpretations, there's room to manoeuvre over the appropriate wording. When they show rare agreement, margins for finessing are very much reduced. In the present case, we had the playwright William Niederkorn, whose articles have been promoted as key sources for the SAQ page, Now Niederkorn, in my personal view, is a poor source, but the New York Times is RS, so one accepts it, notwithstanding the fact that he is a committed Oxfordian, whose articles for that newspaper were so partisan, they frequently stirred up letters of protest from academics like James Shapiro, Stephen Greenblatt, Terry Ross and David Kathman.

The Oxfordian editors here are great advocates and supporters of material (as is their right) stemming from Niederkorn. As the lead was agonised over, a problem arose however - how to classify the statistical balance between the fringe and the mainstream in academia?

Well, the fringe has virtually no support, and indeed their own key witness, Niederkorn, conceded as much, in writing that, 'a vast majority of academics' support the mainstream view. So, given Niederkorn was a partisan Oxfordian source whose opinions were trumpeted as seminal for writing that page, I and a few others thought his remark must be unobjectionable. It was phrased, for once, in a way that concurred with the mainstream verdict. The mainstream has even stronger language:

• Stephen Greenblatt wrote of 'an overwhelming scholarly consensus'(NYT,Sept. 4, 2005);
• William Rubinstein, who proposes Sir Henry Neville as the author, is an academic historian and, despite his scepticism of the mainstream wrote, hard on Greenblatt's heels, 'renewed interest in who actually wrote Shakespeare has occurred in the teeth of adamant and virtually unanimous opposition from nearly all established scholars of Shakespeare, especially those in university literature departments, to whom any discussion of an alternative Author is generally considered to be prima facie evidence of insanity.' (The Social Affairs Unit, Oct 4.2005)
• David M. Bevington, Professor Emeritus at Chicago Uni, in his Shakespeare: the seven ages of human experience, Wiley-Blackwell, published the same year, wrote of the virtually unanimous opinion of academics that the late plays were written after de vere's 1604 death, and thus the works cannot be ascribed to him.
• Stanford's Alan Nelson had written the year before 'I do not know of a single professor of the 1,300-member Shakespeare Association of America who questions the identity of Shakespeare ... Among editors of Shakespeare in the major publishing houses, none that I know questions the authorship of the Shakespeare canon.' (Tennessee Law Review Symposium, 2004, p. 151)
• In the same symposium, his colleage D. Allen Carroll University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for thirty-five years, where the J. Douglas Bruce Chair in Literature at the University of Tennessee, and a period specialist also testified: "I am an academic, a member of what is called the 'Shakespeare Establishment', one of perhaps 20,000 in our land, professors mostly, who make their living, more or less, by teaching, reading, and writing about Shakespeare—and, some say, who participate in a dark conspiracy to suppress the truth about Shakespeare.... I have never met anyone in an academic position like mine, in the Establishment, who entertained the slightest doubt as to Shakespeare's authorship of the general body of plays attributed to him.' (Tennessee Law Review Symposium,2004, pp. 278–279)

So there was no disputing the point that in a large number of respectable and less respectable sources, establshmentarian and Oxfordian, academics and non academics that there is virtual unanimity, overwhelming consensus, a vast majority among scholars in this regard.

What to do? The softest version was Niederkorn's, the Oxfordian's own source.

No! Absolutely not!

The edit conflict arose because Oxfordian editors wanted this language toned down, vaguer, less 'devastating' for their position that this is not a 'fringe' non-academic theory, but rather a minority opinion within academia, which it is not. The harder the bargain you drove, the more likely it would be that that 'vast majority' would be whittled down so that leeway could be leveraged to give the covert impression that a small but significant dissenting opinion in academia existed. To hell with the ipsissima verba of so many sources. It was a question of 'negotiating a deal' with no card in hand.

'Vast' had to be expunged and replaced with something more delicately euphemistic, to satsfy the advocacy campaigners for the 'dignity' of the Oxfordian position.

At that point you stepped in, and suggested 'great', and felt 'insulted' by my simple straightforward question 'Name the minority of scholars'.

Actually, to feel insulted by this, which is a common feature of philosophical argument, is itself curious. Any term of the kind 'the majority of', used absolutely by a speaker, invites his interlocutor to ask what the implicit premise behind this phrase may be. All terms in discourse have meaning insofar as they 'signify' by virtue of their difference from the synonyms and antonyms that constitute the lexeme's Sprachfeld. To say something is 'hot' implies the 'not cold' among other things. To speak of 'the majority' elicits an implied 'minority' as the negative term. You find it a commonplace in the Platonic dialogues. What you find insulting is not, arguably, my remark, but my use of a standard turn in formal argumentation, that aims to bring out the hidden dimension of a premise. You call that perfectly normal procedure 'nitpicking'. This in a context where huge threads develop out of nothing, in an hallucinating world of endless niggling barter for discursive hegemony at whatever expense to what WP:RS sources actually say.

Since you were offering a compromise, it must have struck you, undoubtedly, as 'reasonable'. What it appeared to do to my ear was 'compromise' a compromise that already existed. One had let pass mentally the proposal of using 'virtual unanimity'/'overwhelming consensus', much stronger terms. And the somewhat vaguer, more muted 'vast majority' seemed to offer a mediated ground where both parties could agree since the source was Oxfordian. We went the distance.

But to further water down a suggested compromise, at that point, just seemed, well, tendentious. You answered with your mathematical analogy, 'Mathematically, 100% is still a great majority.'

When I read that, my mind went back several decades to a memory of a schoolmate, a promising mathematician. He almost always gave back papers to our teacher, a comically dour friar called 'Mumbles', that were so flawless they needed no marking or correction. The first time he did so, he was marked 97%. The boy, aged 11, like Dickens' Oliver Twist, stood up and asked naively: 'Sir, did I slip up somewhere? I can't see what the -3% means.' The friar grumbled with an authoritative dismissal: 'Only God is perfect, and you're not God'. A perfect score had two values, 100% for God, 97% for humans. 100% is a perfect unanimity, 97% a 'vast majority'; 80% a 'great majority'. It's a process, going on for years, of gaming RS by the continual watering down of mainstream scholarship, the invention of compromise language no where evinced in sources, coterminous with a consistent effort to boost the pretensions of a fringe viewpoint. In that context, your suggestion was weighed towards support for the Oxfordian mode of editing. In mediation, you said you were in substantial agreement with Smatprt's perception of the issues, (an that is perfectly respectable). There he said this deals with 'a notable minority viewpoint'. It is not a notable minority viewpoint in RS, (where, to put it politely, it is labelled as whacky): it may well be so on television. In the world of philosophy and of general argument, to say these things, in the manner I said them, is neither an 'insult' nor a sign of 'disproportionate hostility'. It is a sign of civil engagement with a stranger. Nishidani (talk) 13:43, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

ps.s there is an apparent assumption that Tom and I coordinate and tagteam and bully Smatprt or anyone else. Tom said, then I, Nishidani said, etc. I entered because I saw a note from Tom, who I didn't know from a bar of soap, never having edited where he edits, on some page expressing exasperation over the diffculties of editing there. I knew the topic, I hopped in, and looked over the page and its history. I saw seven or eight editors, Smatprt, Ssilvers, Asfamit, Schoenbaum, BenJonson, AlexPope, Bertaut, Softlavender etc., showing up, arguing from time to time, often just appearing to back Smatprt in voting proposals and then disappearing, and a smaller number defending the mainstream position. I naturally espouse the orthodox view because that is the only view sustainable by the available evidence. All dropped out very early on in the piece. That we were left in three to argue is none of our fault.Nishidani (talk) 13:43, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

As far as the Princess and the Pea is concerned, I'll bear it in mind to quote back at you when the occasion arises.

Thank you for all the information about the context, _much of which I admit I didn't know. However, I was trying to discuss some very specific things, and your persistence in avoiding them actually only undermines my faith in the wider issues where I would otherwise be disposed to take your word for it. In particular

• The remark I considered an insult was "neither a mathematician nor a literary scholar with a refined sense of linguistic tact would write it", as I think was clear in what I wrote. A mathematician might well write it. I'm not sure what "a refined sense of linguistic tact" is, but it's clear you intended to be insulting. So your indignant paragraph on this subject falls flat.
• You persist in ignoring the fact that I quickly agreed to drop "great majority", and wrote "I'd accept 'All accomplished historians and textual critics of the period who specialise in Shakespeare' instead." In offering this I was deliberately using some of you own words, in order to make clear my wish to be co-operative. Yet you carry on at astonishing length attacking the form of words that I had effectively withdrawn, while continuing to ignore my request to consider my proposed paragraph, as amended. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 16:04, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Briefly, to your last, yes, I omitted that. Your second suggestion

'All accomplished historians and textual critics of the period who specialise in Shakespeare have always accepted the substantial direct evidence for Shakespeare's authorship dating from 1623 and earlier.'

was so obviously acceptable to me, I didn't mention it. For the problem there, check back, was to persuade over weeks, an editor or two, to get a change in one word. Your suggestion, even had I endorsed it, would have been slapped about with two or three s, given past practice. The problem there wasn't what I would accept. The problem was it would never have been accepted by the others with whom I was negotiating on one word. Hope that clarifies things. My father always said never let the sun go down without review of a dispute, and a handshake.Nishidani (talk) 20:40, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

You're dead wrong on maths, but I won't go on in Gaussian fashion about the periodicity of certain elliptic functions, except to note that the phrase lends itself to glossing this kind of exchange. Shakespeare in Othello speaks of

noble swelling spirits

That hold their honors in a wary distance,

The very elements of this warlike isle.

Though I subscribe to an honour code, it isn't a whit prickly or paperythin-skinned.

I'll close this with Howard's End, again.

'the fog pressed against the world like an excluded ghost' (Howard's End, ibid.p.63). Cheers Nishidani (talk) 16:51, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm really pleased to hear about your mathematical expertise. Perhaps you'd like to help me develop the work at User:SamuelTheGhost/Reversion towards the Mean, which was intended for the article Regression toward the mean but ruled out as being WP:OR. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 13:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

How, dear Samuel, can I work on Reversion towards the Mean, when I am deemed to betray characteristics that suggest I am already reverted to being mean?:) For the while, just take me as Diderot encountering Euler in the Court of Catherine the Great! CheersNishidani (talk) 13:18, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I just now saw this exchange, and since my name was taken I'd like to say to SG that my comment was not aimed specifically at his suggested edit, but the overall problem of inserting mentions of fringe theories in inappropriate articles in violation of Wikipedia guidelines. The innocuousness of the edit was irrelevant; the mere fact that you agreed with Smatprt on the appropriateness of the insertion was, and to my mind indicated your unfamiliarity with the long-standing issue, to which my comment was directed. Hopefully this will be resolved by the mediation, if it ever gets off the ground. A women pregnant for only one hour is as pregnant as one an hour away from giving birth, and if the mediation determines that a little violation of the editing principles is permitted, then the SAQ's hour will have come round at last. I don't think that's going to happen, but I admit I've been surprised and puzzled by the verdicts of many other courts besides those here. Tom Reedy (talk) 17:24, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a pity that your obsession with some Wikipedia guidelines has led you to violate others, such as WP:AGF.

It's odd that your apparent faith in mediation is accompanied by a statement of attitude which will guarantee that mediation will fail. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 12:51, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Clarify. In my experience people usually post such incomprehensible notes on other editors' pages to attract everyone's eye but that of the page user.Nishidani (talk) 13:19, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I wanted to be brief in order not to trespass too much on Nishidani's space, but since he asks me to clarify I will do so. I've also had a note from Paul Barlow on my talk page asking me to justify the WP:AGF point.

No problem of trespass. If there's are problems on pages where I edit, this is as good a place as any to raise them, particularly if the complaint relates to perceptions of behaviour.Nishidani (talk) 16:40, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

• I made a suggestion in Talk:Shakespeare's plays for a paragraph to be included in that article. Previously on that same page I had made it clear that "I personally see no reason to doubt that Shakespeare's works are correctly attributed in the folios". I suggested the paragraph solely because I thought, and still think, that it was a basis for a useful and sensible contribution. (I have since agreed at Nishidani's behest that "great majority" can be replaced by a better form of words.) Tom Reedy attacked it at once, using the words "promotion" and "promoter" in such as way as to cast doubt on the honesty of my own position. Now he says "The innocuousness of the edit was irrelevant; the mere fact that you agreed with Smatprt on the appropriateness of the insertion was ... " something or other. In fact I had not "agreed with Smatprt"; I suggested a different paragraph whch said very much less than his version. But I was, and still am, outraged by the suggestion that agreeing with Smatprt is not something which I am fully entitled to do.
• On the mediation issue, Tom is determined to resist the situation where "a little violation of the editing principles is permitted" as he would see it. He seems to have forgotten WP:IAR, WP:COMMON, and the whole meaning of the search for consensus. Mediation is about compromise. To insist in advance on the unconditional surrender of the other side is to make compromise impossible. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 15:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

This is the sentence with the word 'promotion' in it: "This type of time-wasting promotion and subsequent edit war has played itself out over many pages". This is the sentence with the word 'promoter' in it: "Since it is a fringe theory, then those policies and guidelines concerning their presentation apply. Until those are changed, I really don't see how any non-promoter of the SAQ can argue to the contrary." I can just about see that the second sentence might be read by you to imply that you are secretly a 'promoter' of the theory, but it's a bit of a stretch. One could just as easily accuse you of a failure to respect AGF by immediately assuming that's an attack, not an honest statement that Tom can't understand how any 'Statfordian', to concede the term, would think it reasonable to have such a paragraph in the article. As for the first sentence, it seems to be a reference to the general problem that Oxfordians promote their theories on many pages, and that the tiresome edit wars that ensue waste a lot of time that could be used more productively. I can't see how this statement can be viewed as a personal attack at all. As for agreeing with Smatprt, obviously you implicitly agreed with him that there should be a paragraph. That's what Tom disagreed with. Of course you may well take the view that his position is too hard-line, but there's no rule against his having a view that differs from yours, or you having a view that differs from his. Paul B (talk) 16:24, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

How do you reconcile WP:IAR and WP:Common with the fact that we are dealing with an article that comes under WP:Fringe, Samuel? The first would throw open the door to anyone intent on a systematic insouciance to policy, as we see with Nina Green's approach. The second relates to the consistent use of the faculty of practical judgement that the theory itself, to be described, congeals in its ardour for a vein of inferential speculation that rides roughshod over appeals to common sense. Nishidani (talk) 18:20, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to stop talking about Tom Reedy unless he himself enters the conversation.
As for "the theory itself congeals in its ardour for a vein of inferential speculation that rides roughshod over appeals to common sense", I am reminded of "His gentle spirit rolls In the melody of souls-- Which is pretty, but I don't know what it means", except that the latter is indeed prettier. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 19:34, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Another misprision. Tom and I have been editing rather intensely to get that sandbox article completed in compliance with an administrative request and certain due-by issues pending, and this morning dropped me a note today in apology saying he was on urgent business, and wouldn't be able to look in, but hoped to finish and tidy his side of things very late in the day. I gather it's not that he has not entered the conversation, but simply is out of town. I thought it proper, knowing he was absent, to make the remark I made, given circumstances meant he couldn't speak, as undoubtedly he will, on his own account. You see, if you read suspiciously, all sorts of odd impressions arise, that a little patience, and a reflection on alternative explanations from the real world would dispel. It's called WP:AGF.Nishidani (talk) 19:51, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I am astonished that such a simple statement of my intention should be interpreted as a "misprision". The statement "I'm going to stop talking about Tom Reedy unless he himself enters the conversation." was not intended to carry, and as far as I can see does not carry any implication as to the circumstances or his motives in not re-entering the conversation, but merely the observation that he hadn't. (Privately I put it down to good sense on his part.) You see, if you read suspiciously, all sorts of odd impressions arise, that a little patience, and a reflection on alternative explanations from the real world would dispel. It's called WP:AGF. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 21:02, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

You're playing silly games, and wasting time. I suggest, if this grievance over what was said several months ago still has you sleepless at nights, and leaves you liverish at perceived hostilities here, calling for clarification or vengeance or whatever, go to some administrative outlet to vent your relentless angst over the imagined slight. I'm busy reading, and haven't time for trivial niggling. Take it elsewhere.Nishidani (talk) 21:14, 30 October 2010 (UTC)