Talk:Shuafat

refugee camp

This page is about the neighborhood of Shuafat, which is not the same as the refugee camp, which has a different status entirely. I believe the material on the refugee camp should be placed either in a separate section of the article, or in an article by itself. --Gilabrand (talk) 19:16, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that's possible actually, given that the two are often discussed in tandem. See this for example Indeed, depending on who is using Shuafat, it refers to an area of varying size, made up of a number of smaller villages as well. We have to look at more sources before arbitrarily deleting information that seems to be associated with just the camp. Please restore it until we can decide how to cover the refugee issue. We can always farm it out to an article on the refugee camp (should we decide it is in fact separate from Shuafat village or town) later. Thanks. Tiamut^talk 19:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

There's also this source which indicates that Shuafat refugee camp was declared to be part of the Jerusalem municipality in December of 1988 by the Civil Administration. Shuafat is also considered part of the Jerusalem municipality by Israel. It seems strange to parse out the refugee camp info from this article. Where is the divide between the two exactly? Tiamut^talk 19:48, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Also Btselem refers to "Shuafat refugee camp" and "Shuafat" as though they were one in the same, placing them both inside Jerusalem along with part of the neighbouring town of Anata which is separated from the rest of Anata by the separation barrier. Tiamut^talk 19:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I know that there is confusion between the two, but they are not the same - The refugee camp doesn't receive services from the Jerusalem municipality but from UNWRA. The camp was created by King Hussein of Jordan, who moved the population there in 1966 (see the article linked to the bottom of the Shuafat page). The Palestinian Authority may one day take control of it, but in the meantime, UNWRA is supposedly in charge, and apparently not doing a very good job. The article states that Shuafat is a Palestinian Arab town annexed to Jerusalem, but the refugee camp doesn't fit that description. So maybe the article should have a separate section devoted to the camp and the goings on there which explains this. Here is the perfect opportunity to develop an article that clarifies a situation which is muddled in people's minds.--Gilabrand (talk) 20:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. It could be compared to the articles on Rafah camp and Deir al-Balah camp. Obviously this is a slightly different situation but I believe the separation of the town and its camp should apply here as well. --Al Ameer son (talk) 20:53, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but I disagree. At least for the time being. I don't understand how we can separate the two, when the sources indicate that they are in fact connected and that both are located in the Jerusalem municpality according to Israel. I would prefer to continue developing the article referring to both, and then if the distinction is indeed made clearly by a source (which to date, has not been the case) we can farm out the material on the refugee camp at that point. Right now, what's being proposed is throwing out any information just on the refugee camp without any clear understanding of where it is or whether the other sources here are discussing the camp or the town (since both are referred to simply as Shuafat by many of the sources cited).

So, could someone please restore the material deleted as a good faith step? Thanks. Tiamut^talk 19:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Deletions and change to sentence

Canadian Monkey, you made an edit deleting a study on the effects of violence on children in Shuafat, with an edit summary that it wasn't notable. I think that's debatable and would like to see the information restored, given that it's cited to source that specializes on the effects of violence on children. You also changed the text regarding Jordan and Israel's occupations of Shuafat so that there is "parity", but your change is factually incorrect since Jordan never annexed Shuafat. Might I propose the following wording instead:

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Shuafat was occupied by Jordan who administered the West Bank and East Jerusalem until the 1967 Six-Day War when those areas were occupied by Israel. Shuafat was subsequently annexed by Israel into the municipal area of Jerusalem. Residents of Shuafat were offered Israeli citizenship, but most refused it, considering themselves to be illegally occupied, though many accepted permanent residency status instead.

Tiamut^talk 19:19, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean by "Jordan never annexed Shuafat". Transjordan annexed all the territory of the former British Mandate it occupied in 1950. Was Shuafat excluded from that annexation?

As to the deletion of the comments regarding the study, the comment I deleted was "Studies exploring the impact on children and youth in Shuafat at this time found...". The source cited for this actually talks about a single anecdote, not even a study, let alone multiple studies, whose focus is not Shuafat. It says "At MEND we have worked with several front line schools in the Ramallah and Bethlehem areas, e.g.in the Kalandia, Amari and Aida refugee camps and in Tekoa and Beit Jala, and have found very high levels of stress and fear. In one school I visited, quite near the beginning of the violence (in Shuafat refugee camp, which was under attack from settlers), when a group of teenage children..." It is misleading to describe this as "Studies exploring the impact on children and youth in Shuafat". Shuafat is mentioned in a parenthetical comment, as an anecdote. As such, this offhand mention is not notable enough for an article about Shuafat. Another issue is the claim that Shuafat was attacked by settlers. If this indeed happened, it needs to be sourced to a reputable source, such as a news report, not to an parenthetical comment in an article about a different topic which mentions the alleged attack in 6 words. Canadian Monkey (talk) 03:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Canadian Monkey. Thanks for responding. I was unaware that Jordan had annexed the West Bank but after doing a little reading, I agree that the term can be used with reference to Jordan. It would have been nice if you had provided a source to save me some time and embarassment, but no matter.

Regarding the information about students in Shuafat having difficulties concentrating and the reference to the attack by settlers, I think it should be included. The source is a reliable, expert source on the problems faced by youth in conflict zones, so he's not speaking outside of his area of expertise. I don't think the reference to the drawings made by children in Shuafat is "anecdotal", it's part of his findings from his stay in the region. I'd be happy to look for other sources attesting to settler attacks, but the information doesn't seem to be irrelevant to this article at all. It speaks to the conditions of life in the camp and town. Tiamut^talk 00:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry - I certainly didn't mean to cause you any embarrassment, or to waste your time. I'd have gladly provided you with a reference had you asked for one, I just assumed it was a pretty well knwon fact, which is mentioned quite prominently in our articles about Jordan and the West Bank.

With regard to the students reference, there are actually 2 issues here: (1) was Shuafat attacked by settlers, and (2) is the reference to Shuafat in your source which is about a group working to protect children notable enough for inclusion in this article. With regards to the first question, it is certainly possible that settlers attacked Shuafat (we have plenty of references to attack by Hebron settlers on their neighbors, for example), and if they did, it would certainly be relevant to the article - but we need to source such a claim to a reliable source (such as a newspaper article) that explicitly describes such an attack. The off-hand mention of such an alleged attack in a non-historical article about different subject matter is not enough. By way of analogy, it would be ok to write, in a manner similar to your edit, that "During the Second Intifada, terrorists from the Shuafat refugee camp attacked and murdered Israelis and then fled back to the refugee camp", and source it to this or this news report, but it would not be appropriate to make that claim and source it (hypothetically) to an article in the journal of RENEWABLE ENERGY, which mentioned a type of soil found near the north entrance to Shuafat (where Palestinian terrorists murdered Israelis). As to the second question, I don't think there's any doubt that Shuafat is part of what the MEND group describes as "front line schools", and that students in such schools may suffer from the conditions described. But the study (to the extent there even was such a study) is not about Shuafat, but about children in front line schools. The article does not describe "the conditions of life in the camp and town" - it describes children with conflict-induced stress, and mentions a school in Shuafat as one example, among many. It is inappropriate to highlight this non-notable anecdote about Shuafat. Are we going to include a similar line in the article about Tekoa? In the Kalandia article, too? and the Beit Jala one, too? If Wikipedia has an article about war-induced stress syndromes, we might mention this MEND group there, but not in every article about every locality in which the group members visited. Canadian Monkey (talk) 04:12, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Image

is there a better image we can use for this article? the current one is badly underexposed, and you can hardly make out anything from it. Canadian Monkey (talk) 05:06, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what happened to the picture, but it wasn't this dark before (which might sound stupid), I deleted it and I will upload a better version of it, but please discuss before just deleting it, deleting things then discussing why you deleted them is usless, since it can be readded, infact, up till now I had no clue why you deleted it, so I kept adding it. shaqip (talk) 11:57am, June 09, 2008 —Preceding comment was added at 08:54, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what you're on about. You are responding to a note I put on this talk page nearly 4 months ago, explaining what is wrong with the picture, and asking for a new one. I didn't remove it, but waited for people to provide a better picture, or respond explaining why this one is good. Once a better picture was provided, I removed the old one, and clearly explained why I was doing so. Please take a little more care in the future, to read both edit summaries as well as talk page discussions, and then you won't find yourself with "no clue why" things happen Canadian Monkey (talk)`

colonia

Roman colony rather than Jewish settlement? Many of the Roman troops in the area were "local recruits/enforced service"....Ashley kennedy3 (talk) 17:25, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The baths were not ritual baths just normal Roman Baths, and new papers are not exactly good references for archaeological details.Ashley kennedy3 (talk) 19:12, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Template

It is improper to put the 'Palestinian Municipality' ttmeplate here. Shu'afat is, like it or not, administered as a neighborhood of Jerusalem, not as a village council, and it is not a part of the 'Jerusalem Governate' of the PLO, just liek Ma'ale Edomim, which resides in that territoy, is not part of the governate. I have no problem with the other information provided (the name in Arabic, location, etc.. - please find another way to include that info. Canadian Monkey (talk) 21:32, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Hussein and renovation

I am removing the following sentence from the article "Hussein intended to renovate the Jewish Quarter, but the plan became obsolete when Israel conquered the western part of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.[8]". The sentence is inappropriate for multiple reasons. First, it is simply incorrect - Israel captured the Western part of Jerusalem in 1948, not 1967. Second, it presents an opinion by a single journalist as fact. Third, it quite drasticly changes the meaning of what that journalist claims, through the ommission of a single word. The source claims the King planned to rennovate the Jewish Quarter as an ARAB quarter, but that key word was ommitted. Fourth, it is written in a POV way, which implies that Israel's conquest in 1967 is at fault for the quarter not being renovated, while not mentioning that the reason it needed renovation was that it was deliberately destroyed by the Jordanians themselves, and glossing over the fact that the King had nearly 20 years to renovate, if that was really his plan, before the Israeli conquest. But most importantly, I'm removing this as it has absolutely no relation to Shuafat. Canadian Monkey (talk) 17:21, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Source (Bedein)

Jordan had Arab renovation in mind for the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem at the time. Little did the Jordanian king realize that his "Project Removal" to Shuafat would allow the IDF to enter an abandoned Jewish Quarter in 1967.

deleted paraphrase

'Hussein intended to renovate the Jewish Quarter, but the plan became obsolete when Israel conquered the western part of Jerusalem in the Six Day War'.

proper paraphrase.

Hussein had planned an Arab renovation of the now emptied Jewish Quarter. The plan became obsolete when Israel conquered the eastern part of Jerusalem in the Six Day War'.

You've made huge mountains out of a minuscule molehill, i.e. that in transcribing Bedein, the wiki editor (myself? perhaps?) made a slip and wrote 'western' for Bedein's 'eastern'. You are blaming the source for an editor's easily correctible slip.

Whatever the king's motives, which you speculate about, but which are not in the source, the passage is necessary and must be restored since it explains why those people came to Shuafat's refugee camp. Eliding this key sentence creates a mystery. Apart from eliminating Bedein as a source for the prior passage, which is straight from him, and, now without that note, looks like verbatimj plagiarism of an unacknowledged source. To do this is highly irresponsible Nishidani (talk) 19:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

(2) A reliable source for the removal of the Ashkelon squatters fromm the old Jewish quarter to Shuafat in 1966 is Meron Benvenisti, Ziad Abu-Zayed, Danny Rubinstein, The West Bank Handbook: A Political Lexicon, Westview Press, 1986 p.189

This could be put into the passage preceding the erased section.Nishidani (talk) 16:48, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I have not huge mountains out of a minuscule molehill - I have removed a problematic sentence, and described 5 different ways in which it was problematic, of which, the mistake of writing "Western " for "Eastern" is but the most trivial. If you would like to re-insert the information, please make sure that the other 4 concerns I have raised are also addressed. If you are concerend about 'verbatimj plagiarism'[sic] - do not insert such plagiarism in the future. Canadian Monkey (talk) 16:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Pardon, but what is the point of wasting people's time with this gamesmanship, after having seriously disturbed the text, which required only one minuscule change 'eastern' for 'western' to dissolve the hyperactive qualms about imagined problems in the text prior to your deletion. As noted, I'm 'concerend' (sic) about an act of plagiarism that resulted because of a thoughtless deletion of the whole passage, with its crucial source note. Your reply therefore only adds confusion, since evidently you just didn’t do the necessary legwork. Once more, I'll have to do it for someone. Having to fight futile and badly motivated edits like this is one reason why serious people give up work on I/P articles in wiki. The effect of your edit was to elide important information, wreck the sourcing of the text, and give a strong Israeli POV tilt to the section.

The Text as I found it:-

'After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Shuafat was occupied by Jordan, which annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem until the 1967 Six-Day War. The Shuafat refugee camp was established in 1966 by King Hussein.[8]. In the aftermath of the Six Day war, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were occupied by Israel. The town of Shuafat and the refugee camp were subsequently annexed by Israel into the municipal area of Jerusalem.[1][9] Residents of Shuafat were offered Israeli citizenship, but most refused it, considering themselves to be illegally occupied, though many accepted permanent residency status instead.[1]

Hussein is mentioned as someone who built Shuafat refugee camp. There is no explanation or context as to why. We are referred by note to a source, David Bedein’s ‘Why is the Shuafat Refugee Camp Seething?’

That source says:-

It would seem that some 5,500 Palestinian Arab refugees live in the Shuafat camp. 3,000 are children. They are descended from Arabs who in 1948 left what is now the Ashkelon region, and were initially settled in the hovels of the burnt out Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, from where they were abruptly relocated by King Hussein to Shuafat in 1966. Jordan had Arab renovation in mind for the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem at the time. Little did the Jordanian king realize that his "Project Removal" to Shuafat would allow the IDF to enter an abandoned Jewish Quarter in 1967.

I therefore added the following combined citation of source language and then paraphrase, of the part, most germane to explaining where those refugees came from, and why Hussein moved them.

The Shuafat refugee camp was established in 1966 by King Hussein, to house Arab refugees originally from Ashkelon who had settled in the hovels of the burnt out Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Hussein intended to renovate the Jewish Quarter, but the plan became obsolete when Israel conquered the western part of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.[8]. In the aftermath of the Six Day war, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were occupied by Israel.

There is no 'speculation' of King Hussein's motives in my edit, simply a stylistic change of 'Hussein' for 'Jordan'. What kings direct be done, in monarchical regimes, if one must gloss the self-evident, is what the countries do, as the 'USA decided' means, variously, the President or Congress. To insinuate I was speculating is thus wantonly provocative.

The first part, bolded, is verbatim from Bedein’s text. I kept his words to make sure that the force of those emotive words ‘hovels’ and ‘burnt out’, of significance to Jewish memory, was fully retained. The second part, italicized, is my paraphrase, not verbatim, of Bedein’s remarks.

What did your edit do?

Instead of correcting the obvious lapsus calami of ‘western’, with the proper ‘eastern’, you seem to have used this slip as a pretext for eliding the whole passage, thus restoring to the original POV its inexplicable omission of the key words in Bedein’s text that explain why the refugees ended up in Shuafat, and what Hussein intended to do with the old Jewish Quarter, i.e. renovate it in Arab style.

Instead of correcting a slip by a fellow editor, you exploited the slip to restore a distinct POV (by silencing a crucial part of the Shuafat refugee story).

Thirdly, and most damagingly, in removing the text, 'Hussein intended to renovate the Jewish Quarter, but the plan became obsolete when Israel conquered the western part of Jerusalem in the Six Day War', .'

you removed the reference to Bedein, on which that whole text, including that which you left in, is based.

The result was the following.

The Shuafat refugee camp was established in 1966 by King Hussein, to house Arab refugees originally from Ashkelon who had settled in the hovels of the burnt out Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. In the aftermath of the Six Day war, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were occupied by Israel. The town of Shuafat and the refugee camp were subsequently annexed by Israel into the municipal area of Jerusalem.

As the text thus stood, monkeyed about in this careless way, the whole section I now bold, which comes from Bedein, lacks a footnote, and is now sourced to (a) Kershner, footnote 1, and an article by Amnon Meranda on Ynet (footnote 8). Kershner nowhere speaks of what King Hussein did. Amnon Meranda’s article should not even be there since all it has to say about Shuafat is:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday questioned the annexation of Palestinian neighborhoods to the capital after the Six Day War. "Was it necessary to determine that the Shuafat refugee camp, Arab el-Suwahara and Walaja were also part of Jerusalem?’

.

Meranda’s article is about Rehavam Ze'evi, the man who pushed throughout his career for the immiseration of 3 million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to a point where despair would facilitate ‘transfer’ out of the West Bank and Gaza to ‘Arab’ countries. It leaves the reader puzzling why in studying Shuafat, he should be directed to parliamentary remarks commemorating the assassination of this member of the Knesset? ( POV games, stacking the text with redirects to ‘Palestinian terrorism’ when all one wants to know is how Palestinian refugees ended up in Shuafat?).

The use I made of of Bedein becomes ‘plagiarism’ (since the original acknowledgement of where the words came from has been erased). The sin of plagiarism, sir, does not mean using several words or phrases from a source. It means using those words from the source without acknowledgement. That is why your edit precipitated an issue of plagiarism, not present in my version, for it removed the source, Bedein, and left his remarks attributed to Kershner and Meranda, who say absolutely nothing like what is retained from Bedein's text.

Take more care to understand what you are editing before you jump in. Carelessness of this order only wastes time and looks obstructive. Articles are not built by running amuck to mess them up by deletions that replace clarity with obscurity, generating absurd threads because one refuses to read closely, and substituting precisely positioned relevant footnotes with others belonging to other texts or articles. Thank you.

For the record. No one has even troubled to correct the mistaken transcription of Isabel Kershner as Isabel Kerhsner. The source referring us to Rehavam Ze'evi is maliciously besides the point and should be immediately deleted for its irrelevance Nishidani (talk) 20:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't intend to get into a pedantic line-by-line argument with someone who assumes bad faith, and insults me personally. I've raised 5 issues with regards to that statement - if you wish to re-introduce that piece of information, make sure you do so in a manner that addresses all five issues. Canadian Monkey (talk) 21:41, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

What has WP:AGF to do with it? People make bad edits (I slipped up on 'western'). You made a very poor edit based on wild misprisions of several things, which I duly analysed. I showed you left the sourcing in disarray, and your grounds for removal were both spurious and POV-tilted. Now you refuse to reply, but insist once more I reply to several remarks that are based on your original misapprehensions. So you are in no position to offer advice, esp. since you are unwilling to to accept mine.

Anyone should feel free to restore the text you deleted, with its footnote to Bedeid, with the slight variation I crafted (adding 'Arab' renovation, and correcting 'eastern' for 'western'), since nothing you have said since is germane to wiki criteria on NPOV and proper editorial practice. Thank you Nishidani (talk) 07:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Jordanian annexation

The attempt at annexation of the west bank by Jordan is a fine legal nicety. The Israeli government position is that no annexation took place and the Jordan unilaterally incorporated the west bank into Jordanian territory. If those editors who wish to place that Jordan did annex the West Bank then they will be saying that the Geneva conventions apply to the West Bank. The Israeli government's position is that the Geneva conventions do not apply as the West Bank was not previously sovereign territory....Ashley kennedy3 (talk) 10:58, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Technically, whatever Israel or Jordan did or do historically, does not change the fact that under Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, 'the law of occupation continues to apply even if the annexation was legally effective. Even if an occupant asserts a reasonable – albeit contested – claim for sovereignty, it is not allowed to use its effective control to have its claim prevail.’ Eyal Benvvenisti, The International Law of Occupation, Princeton UP, Princeton New Jersey 2004 p.113.

I don't know how often this has to be repeated. But Israel's unilateral actions, like Jordan's, do not constitute sovereign control or possession in international law, and therefore all towns and areas under Israel's post-1967 jurisdiction or occupation on the West Bank cannot be defined as being within Israel.Nishidani (talk) 13:24, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not up to Wikipedia to judge who does or doesn't own the town. Instead, if there is a dispute, we should dispassionately report on all significant POVs. What are the significant POVs here? What does Israel say? What does Jordan say? What does the UN say? What are agreed-upon facts by all parties? How about changing it to "is a village" instead of "is an Arab village" or "is a Palestinian village", and then later in the article more detail can be given about the various positions, with appropriate weight. Possibly something like "is a village inhabited by Palestinians" or "is a village inhabited predominantly by Arabs", if those are facts that can be supported by reliable sources, might be the sorts of things we could say without contradicting any of the signifiant POVs in this situation. Surely all parties (e.g. Israel) would agree that the statement "is a village" is accurate. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 18:04, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Coppertwig. I still don't understand why you fail to simply check either version against the source, Kershner. It's elementary. A line must reflect the source, and the source supports my edit, against that of the vandal. I do not expect the other two editors to move on this, but you have a record of some independence here, and I place the following for your reconsideration regarding the anonymous I/P tagteam edit in the lead I properly contested, but which none of you do. If you want the story behind why the edit I support is by far the more correct one, given the source in Kershner, see my page, slightly polemical, but I am rather disappointed that in so simple an edit, reasonable men cannot forego the temptation to do nothing, and allow an undefended travesty of a source to prevail over a precise construal of that source.Nishidani (talk) 13:35, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Note (a) On Shuafat.

Anonymous I/P editor 24.62.27.63 restored an edit made three months earlier. Namely,

‘Shuafat is an Arab town within the borders of Israel as part of north-eastern Jerusalem' here

(1)I reverted on the 16th of October back to

'Shuafat is a Palestinian town within the de facto borders of Israel as part of north-eastern Jerusalem'.

My edit explained: 'reverted ideology’. Why? 7 experienced editors including strongly ‘pro-Israeli’ editors like User:Canadian Monkey, had found since July nothing wrong with the original edit by Ashleykennedy, which conformed to the reference note 1 to Kershner. (I’d noted way back that her name is misspelled, in the footnote directed to colleagues. While all are prepossessed by possible POVs, no one will change this, one more proof that POV hunting predominates over serious editing.) Kershner wrote:

‘the latest such finds is a narrow strip of antiquity that runs down the middle of a main road through what is now Shuafat, a Palestinian neighborhood in north Jerusalem. . . . touching on one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the ownership of the city that the Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital. . . The government expanded the city limits to take in outlying Palestinian villages like Shuafat, and annexed them. The Palestinians were offered Israeli citizenship, but considering themselves illegally occupied, most refused, choosing permanent residency . . most of the world do not recognize the annexation of East Jerusalem and other areas occupied in the 1967 war.’

The edit therefore ignored the source and was ideological. The reference supports Ashley Kennedy’s nuanced version ('Palestinian' 'de facto'), as several editors for thre months did not question. That 'Palestinian' for 'Arab' is by now the vox propria does not have to be argued on several hundred pages, repetitively. 'Arab' could be anyone from Saudi Arabia to Morocco. It has been also accepted that Israel never annexed that land, and that the borders (which are not in international law determined unilaterally) are provisory de facto borders. Many articles accept this.

(2) Within another half hour, my revert was reverted in turn by a new anonymous IP editor, and I immediately reverted it with the explanation ‘Undid.The border is not recognized. Hence de facto’

(3)Only on the third revert in what was now a tagteam operation by again 24.62.27.63 did I explain my revert back by remarking on vandalism, ‘Rv vandalism’.

(4) The anonymous IP editor 24.62.27.63 reverted my restoration back again the next day, and, after a half a day has passed without any other traditional editor intervening to restore the damage, I cancelled his revert, explaining the edit as Revert ideological vandalism'.

(5)Three days later his anonymous companion 64.119.142.118 restored the ideological POV-driven edit and, within an hour, I restored the consensual edit speaking of Rt vandalism of an ideological kind'.

(6) At this point, as Ashley Kennedy and I, both customary editors there, were editing, User:NoCal100 steps in to post a severe warning over my page on reverting the tagteamers’ abuse as ‘vandalism’. The tone of voice was that of an administrator, not of a mere editor like myself here. Several things were wrong. He was wikistalking. Secondly he warned me against edit-warring, without saying anything on the pages of the two anonymous I/P editors who were certainly edit-warring in a tagteam effort to restore a non-consensual and false statement that did not reflect the source. Third, I’d explained twice the reasons why the anonymous tagteam revert was false, the two editors did not reply but persisted. I therefore branded their combined effort ‘ideological vandalism’. Fourthly, I'd spoken of vandalism thrice not four times. Fifth, he tried to make this out to be a content dispute by (a) ignoring that seven editors had never challenged AK’s edit for three months (b) ignoring that the source quoted for the controversial sentence supports AK’s edit, and does not support the tagteam anonymous IPs’ edit, Since he aimed his dart only at me, and had obviously ignored an examination of the content of Kershner’s note, this was further evidence that he had me in his sights, and not the need to write to that page to NPOV standards.Nishidani (talk) 13:36, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

External Links

User:PalestineRemembered, putting aside your bad faith accusation, you are referred to Wikipedia:EL#Links normally to be avoided, point 13: "the link should be directly related to the subject of the article.". The EL you provided, beside being from a partisan source of questionable reliability and notability, does not mention Shuafat even once. As such, it is clearly not "directly related to the subject of the article". Please don't add it again. NoCal100 (talk) 17:50, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the link doesn't seem to mention Shuafat, and therefore with the information I have at the moment it doesn't seem appropriate to include it. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 17:59, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

It is not merely "highly appropriate" but "absolutely necessary" to provide a link to an explanation, from an unimpeachable source, of why it is that Palestinian homes (in Shuafat, as elsewhere) are being demolished because "they were built without permits". (Other links and other terms can be used - Google provides 275 hits for "Shuafat" + "pogrom"). Furthermore, whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular case, it's clear I'm being wiki-stalked from one article to another in order to revert my edits. PR^talk 20:35, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

You're dead wrong PR. Unless Shuafat is specifically mentioned, you shouldn't use it. This is basic, the A of the abecedarian guide to wiki editing.Nishidani (talk) 20:43, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

By your logic, PR, we would have to include scientific articles talking about oxygen, because there must be oxygen in the air in that village or people wouldn't be able to breathe. Oxygen is clearly very important to the lives of those people, therefore it must be relevant, according to your logic. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:32, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Nishidani and Coppertwig - you are both, of course, quite right. I trust you approve of what I've done now. PR^talk 17:37, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

What you have done now is even worse - it is original research. You have introduced into article space a claim from a partisan source of questionable reliability and notability, which does not mention Shu'afat at all, or order to push the unsupported POV that in the particular case of a demolition of illegal structures in Shu'afat mentioned in the article, permits for legal construction were impossible to obtain. Please don't do this again. NoCal100 (talk) 19:07, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

No OR involved. The question of building permits is hugely controversial - they were introduced into the article as explanation of the demolitions (but with no citation whatsoever). I've provided NPOV with citation that "building permits" is cover for discrimination based on ethnicity - if the word of Rabbis is not good enough for you, numerous other observers say the same thing. PR^talk 21:34, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

NoCal100, what Pr remarks is known by everyone in Israeli. Even blind Freddy and his dog know that. Yet I suspect what you are suggesting is that there is some doubt about the systematic denial of building permits to Palestinians, in the Jerusalem area and throughgout the West Bank. There are so many reliable sources that say this, Israeli, Western, UN, that it is not original research, it is a truism. Indeed it hardly needs a source. It is a fact of life there. The only leg to stand on here, if you don't want the truism here, is to note that 'we have no specific source that refers to this nigh universal Israeli restriction on easing difficulties for obtaining building permits for Palestinians regarding Shuafat,' (b) any claim in Wiki can be challenged by calling for a specific reliable source (c) PR hasn't got one. This objection is legitimate, in fact it keeps everyone honest, while stopping a great deal of the realities of the place from being described in Wiki, and in that sense is deeply 'pretextual. One must be honest on this. The rules function to keep the text verifiable and clear of WP:OR. They can be used, by asking that truisms be documented, to stop full coverage of those realities. Were we in an encyclopedia governed exclusively by intelligent and informed good will, this problem would not arise. Nishidani (talk) 22:23, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

PR. At the time of the demolitions, the Jerusalem City Council had calculated that there could be built in the Shuafat Refugee Camp some 1,300 potential units without disturbing the 28 Arab/72 Jewish demographic proportions planning for East Jerusalem to secure its undividable future Jewish character. Yet no building permit had been granted for any of these 1,300 units. It was policy. That is why Palestinians built upwards. They can't get permits, even for building on their own land. So the anonymous I/P who has just reversed your edit is malicious, but you are culpable, because you simply don't look for the information in the right place. It's there, look for it, or just move on.Nishidani (talk) 23:20, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

The IP is not just malicious, he's reverted in an unreferenced "12 of the structures razed were empty, and 2 had families living in them" that is almost certainly untrue. I'd call that vandalism. PR^talk 12:37, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

for once, I am in agreement with you - "12 of the structures razed were empty, and 2 had families living in them" was indeed unreferenced. I'll fix that shortly with a proper ref to The Independent, and correct the statement according to what The Independent says. NoCal100 (talk) 15:15, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Now I'm really puzzled. You complained that the claim that the structures were empty was unreferenced. I added a reference for that claim (and slightly corrected the claim to match what was said in the source) from a well known reliable source. You removed that information without any explanation, replaced it with the unsourced claim that the family thought they had permission to build, and agian introduced a claim from a non-notable, partisan source which does not even mention Shuafat, which two editors beside me have already told you is innapropriate. Do you have any explantion for this? NoCal100 (talk) 18:11, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I removed the "structures were empty" because it was already covered by "14 homes under construction". We can mention the two families left totally homeless by this action if you wish, but only if we wanted to be ultra-sensitive to their catastrophe, I can't see any real advantage.

The "lack of permits" introduced by Olmert (and already in the article when I first edited it on 25th Oct) cannot be left hanging when it's discriminatory government policy not to give permits. (As Nishidani says, this is well known - I'm choosing to quote Israeli Rabbis simply because they present it better than most sources). Olmert claiming that the buildings were on "green/public land" etc is something I've added in fairness to him.

But the other statemnt "The families acknowledged they do not own the land they built on" cannot be left hanging either, we can't imply they were stealing it. The exact circumstances are not clear, it could be they were renting/planning to rent it from the religious (Waqf?) authorities.

It seems as if in every case, it's me producing fresh references and better/more accurate/more balanced re-writes into the article, whereas you've followed me here to revert all the work I'm doing. PR^talk 19:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

what is crystal clear here is that you removed a sourced statement that said "no one was living in the structures at the time" (which contradicts your claim on the talk page that 'two families left totally homeless by this action") with no explanation, and replaced it with several statements that are unsourced, and one statement from a source which 3 different editors have told you is unacceptable for use in this article. Don't do it again. NoCal100 (talk) 21:38, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, the available documentation has material to double the size of the article, which should distinguish, in a distinct section, Shuafat RC from Shuafat. I watch on, bemused by the fact that one or two teeny edits are fought over, and no one seems to bve going through the footnotes to harvest the abundance of material unused, and write a proper article on the two parts of Shuafat and Shuafat RC. Proof if any that it is not articles that interest I/P editors, but the politics of monitoring existing articles. Quite a disgrace, on all sides.Nishidani (talk) 14:02, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree there's a lot more really good work to be done, including separation of the Shuafat refugee camp. I simply came across a paragraph that appeared to be written to defame people who'd lost their homes in one of the pogroms here (273 google-hits on Shuafat + pogrom, 90% directly relevant?). Even my first attempt was a worthwhile improvement and the latest is quite good. PR^talk 19:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

If your method of research consists of using search engines to query 'Palestine topic+pogrom' and all imaginable variations then you are going to come up with junk, and have understandable trouble editing. Someone can call me on WP:CIVILITY or WP:AGF or WP:SOAP on this, but PR, that is a ****ing moronic approach to contributing to Wikipedia. I may be a Marxistoid anarchist of the old school, far more to the left than what you appear to be, but I'm an empiricist, and hate intensely ideologically-fixated approaches fueling fact- or data-hunts to sustain what might otherwise be a moral sentiment, because that is precisely what makes religions or reformist ideologies fail in their mission to transform moral instincts into ethical values. In other words, you're being extremely dumb. You haven't a leg to stand on against a few posters on the other side (and I am not speaking specifically of this page) who may do this, but are far more subtle than you appear to be in this regard. If you want to know about, say, house demolitions or building restrictions in Shuafat, to cite one of a million things to know and help these pages, you punch into the search machine 'Shuafat/Palestinian villages/etc.+demolitions/building restrictions'. If you want to be really serious, then you go to your local library, and get by inter-library loan, a book like Ami S.Cheshin, Bill Hutman, Avi Melamed, Separate and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem, Harvard University Press, 2001, read it, and use the details in it, on everything from the famous water-supply bingle between UNRWA, the Palestinians and the Israeli water autrhority to the inside battles between Teddy Kollek and the Government over development of building projects for East Jerusalem after the Basic Law was passed. Norman Finkelstein, or Chomsky didn't get anywhere by ranting moral positions: they went to texts, newspapers and checked, detail by detail, reportage on specific incidents, acts of state, etc., and then showed how deeply unreliable the mainstream coverage was. They didn't run amuck with cheap propaganda battles dealing in slogans, or use words like 'pogrom', for instance, for dispossession. Read up on Kishinev, or Petliura's work in Byelorussia and the Ukraine, or Pol Pot, or Stalin, or the ongoing tragedies in Dafur or Angola (5 million dead over a decade in systematic large-scale pogroms constituting a holocaust the world is indifferent to) and then for Chrissake shut up with this sort of violent excess of language. The Palestinians have been robbed, expropriated, driven off their lands, caged up in what David Shulman calls the 'infernal machine' of bureaucratic obstructionism and incremental existential hemming under military occupation, subject to massacres pour encourager les autres, and a pogrom or several in their tragic history, but not for that do we have a right to cheapen potent words like 'pogrom' (gangs of racist thugs running amok in towns slaughtering men, womnen and children by the dozens, as occurred in Hebron or Safed in 1929 or in several 'heroic' assaults by the Israeli army in 1948 on villages like Al-Dawayima in the Judean hills) or 'genocide' or 'holocaust' by flinging them at every case of abuse, as you have apparently done here in trying to associate the desperate realities of Shuafat with a 'pogrom'. Each side can't see the concrete injuustices because the rhetoric of grievance overwhelms the simple documentation of facts. Our job here is to write to the facts, and leave it to readers of whatever persuasion to draw their owns conclusions. But the first conclusion we should hope our readers to draw is, 'the guys that did this page worked to NPOV and in doing so, give us a better picture than most mainstream journalistic sources.'Nishidani (talk) 21:40, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I haven't read all of this discussion, but I think one of the links PR provided did mention Shuafat specifically. (the 2nd of two links added in one edit) ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 23:30, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

PR only added one link - to the non-notable and irrelevant "Rabbis for Human Rights" FAQ page. That link does not mention Shuafat at all. In a couple of his edits, he also modified an existing ref, which does mention Shuafat (the LA Times article), but that has been in the article for quite a while. NoCal100 (talk) 00:02, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

@NishidaniThe whole article is laced with POV, with three nasty and prejudicial elements just in this one paragraph.

It's implied that the families were attempting to steal the land - which doesn't seem to be true.

Then it's implied that most of the buildings were empty anyway as if maybe they'd been erected for some purpose other than housing.

Then it's implied that the demolition was administrative, the families had failed to follow the necessary procedure. The "Palestinians claim it is impossible" are weasel-words, making them look like illiterates and/or undesirables. I don't know the best way to lead the reader forwards with background information on the otherwise astonishing business about the permits, but RHR are a thoroughly respectable source, easily acceptable to RS. If you want to help, at least provide an alternative suggestion that gets the same point across in an NPOV fashion!

Your cautionary note on the use of the Google test is noted, however, that's not the basis on which my additions were made, they were just a double-check of general opinion. Ehud Olmert used an inflammatory word last month refering to the near-by Qabaliya, though he was talking about attacks not demolitions. I've not gone that way. Other Israelis use the same word about demolitions.

I'm sorry to be using the web on this particular topic, and I defer on all points to real experts such as yourself. But as an editor coming along and correcting problems, I'm only doing the same as any other main-stream editor. PR^talk 09:23, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I can say this for you, you don't whinge when I hit out at you, sometimes unjustly. My point is, though 90% of the layout and wording of I/P pages looks sloppy and tendentious, (and our colleagues on the other side may well concur from their perspective), whaddya supposed to do? If your house is delapidated, do you sit down and weep, whimpering 'Ah strewth! Hell's bells! Dammit! Stuff my luck! A pile a flaming rubble! I've no roof over my head! Oi! Eheu! Alack! Alas!' etc.,, for several years, as you glance up at the broken sills, the collapsed roof, the wrecked wall or shattered glass, as the case may be? No. (Well some people did this for thousands of years over the Western Wall, but they eventually got to wrest it back). What you do is get up off your arse, grab a brick, then another, then another, stack'em, clear the rubble. Use shovel and trowel to clear it, foot by foot, and rebuild. If you want to adopt the Palestinian cause, take a note out of their book. Look up sumud. The IDF bulldozes your house, settlers rip out your olive trees? You get up the next day, roll up your sleeves, and restart planting and building. I know of some people who have built their houses several times, on their own land, because the first one was knocked down as a potential ‘sniper’s hideout’ or security risk near a squatters' settlement on expropriated land. They couldn’t get a permit to rebuilt, but just rebuilt, what the heck. The government/military authorities, come back with a court order, the bulldozers come in, and wreck their work. They don’t give up. It’s their land. They don’t, mostly, do what an American would do, get a rifle and shoot the next trespasser. They pull themselves together, and grub up some semblance of shelter from the ruins, and a survival pittance from new olive trees.

If you're reasonable fast, you can fix up masonry to get shelter from the detritus in a day or so, even mend a door frame or two, to fit out a shanty with a decent entrance. Permit me to say that your approach has this fundamental flaw, as per Boris Pasternak 's exquisite variation on the theme of Hamlet:

Я один, все тонет в фарисействе.

Жизнь прожить - не поле перейти.

You should, if you want to stay in here as a productive editor, recite this every morning. I.e.

Ya odin, fsyo tonyet v' Fariseistvye.

Zhizn' prozhit' - ne polye pereiti.

Everything flounders in Pharisaism, I’m on my own

To go through life is not to cross a field.

(Getting through life, (nuance: squandering one’s life’s in getting by) is not as simple as walking across a field)

You invest an immense amount of time, work hard, and get almost zero results. Why? You whinge too much, wring your hands in despair. If Palestinians had that attitude, they'd all be in Jordan or Syria, permanently). Don't use that wry irony about my 'expertise'. You know I'm not. I've just got bloodclotted mud in my bog-Irish veins, and what chessplayers call Sitzfleisch, a metaphorically fat arse for sitting through tough matches without budging. It's a fairly common trait in here, and I recommend any diet that toughens one's mental glutei along these lines. Nishidani (talk) 10:12, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

My standards are, of course, a lot lower than yours. As a result it's not obvious to me that a full 90% of the Israel-Palestine articles are badly written. However, there's clearly a huge problem - and it's further complicated by the kind of blatant POV insertions/wording I've listed above.

The real problem is that in one sense, I'm too much like you - refusing to behave as badly, with so little respect for articles as what we're seeing. PR^talk 12:08, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Well I'll just watch on, amused that those who have come here to monitor the article and the behaviour of a few of us, are silent on the controversial and persistent tag-team revert that occurred, again, yesterday. In my book, silence is assent.Nishidani (talk) 12:20, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

At what point do we conclude (and what evidence do we need before saying) "editors who make really pointed ethno-specific changes are racists who need exposing"? PR^talk 12:31, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

PR, is that an admission on your part? Jayjg ^(talk) 03:27, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Don't be generic, or brandish POV-flags, it's flagging the obvious. How many on-article edits have you done this morning?Nishidani (talk) 12:40, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Nwt807-01

I removed "settlement in the area of Jerusalem after the city fell in 70 CE. The main indication that the settlement was a Jewish one is the assemblage of stone vessels found there. Such vessels, for food storage and serving, were only used by Jews because they were believed not to transmit impurity. Archaeologists believe stone basins discovered at the site were used to hold ashes from the destroyed Temple." because when it comes to archaeology using quotes from newspaper articles as references is inappropriate. One needs to use articles published in peer-reviewed journals or reputable published books; especially when the subject at hand is so contentious such as this one. Moreover, The two newspaper articles sited here even contradict one another. One says the dig director is Debbi Sklar-Parnes (Parnes is misspelled as Parnas in the newspaper article) and "While the settlement is believed to be Jewish, she added that she could not be certain since no remains of ritual baths were discovered." The other newspaper article says the dig director is Rachel Bar-Nathan and that "Several of the excavated private dwellings contained a mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath." Also, the text I inserted was inserted only after I made sure that the two censuses sited (the 1596 census and the 1931 census) do indeed state what I wrote. Nwt807-01 (talk) 20:10, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Good evening, trusting Zero and Sean I reverted once more his edit but I don't understand why he is still allowed to roam free! Hope&Act3! (talk) 17:41, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I left him a message. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:43, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I saw it and that's why I didn't initiate anything more 'stringent' like may be a warning to begin with? Have it your way, Hope&Act3! (talk) 18:10, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Dubious

Hi, I tagged the statement that "The place was known to the Canaanites [...] as Dersophath, attributed to Palestine: A Guide by Mariam Shahin as needing more sourcing. The statement seems highly unlikely since excepting Phoenician and Hebrew, Canaanite language documents are almost nonexistent. Perhaps there is a better source for the claim? Aslbsl (talk) 01:21, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Muaska -> Shuafat camps

Two issues about these two camps.

• Some sources speak of "squatters" in Muaska camp. That is actually correct but one should get it straight: in addition to the refugees from multiple places who lived there, there were lots of other people living there too (Plascov says 2/3 in one time period and 1/2 in another). This was one reason for the poor conditions and why the UN wanted to move the refugees somewhere else. Only refugees were moved to Shuafat camp.
• I believe it was 500 families and not 500 people who were moved to Shuafat camp, but I lost the source with that information. Can anyone help? I have a figure of 4923 refugees in Muaska camp in 1954, which would slightly match 500 families if the families were large and not all of them were moved.

Zero^talk 12:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I rewrote the section based on Benvenisti and Paskov. These sources agree pretty well, though neither has the "500". Some comments on what I took out: I don't know what is to be cited to Beyond the Wall, Ir Amim Report, January 2007 and Doson, Nandita and Sabbah, Abdul Wahad (editors) Stories from our Mothers (2010), pp.18-19 that is not better served by the new sources. But I don't have Doson and Sabbah, so feel free to re-add it. The other thing I removed is "According to David Bedein, Jordan intended to renovate the Jewish Quarter, but the plan became obsolete in the wake of the Six Day War in 1967.[1]" The source says "had in mind", much weaker than "intended", but anyway Benvenisti tells this story in more detail. In 1963 a Jordanian newspaper mentioned a suggestion by the municipality planning advisor to develop the Jewish Quarter. The Israeli government complained that it would be a violation of the Armistice agreement, then the Jordanian government denied that the newspaper report was correct. It could go in, but I thought it was not clearly on the subject of the article. Zero^talk 11:55, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Biblical times , + possible synagogue

User:Zero0000 and User:Nishidani: I see some rather questionable sources here, LaMar C. Berrett, for one. And has someone some updated information on the 1991 dig?

Also, when I use google-translate on Guerin, I get 150 inhabitants. However, Pringle have translated the same passage (from p. 395) as: This village, situated on an elevated plateau from which one can make out perfectly the cupolas and minarets of Jerusalem, counts 500 inhabitants. The houses are for the most part fairly old and vaulted internally. Is it google or is it Pringle who are wrong?? Cheers, Huldra (talk) 18:05, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Pringle slipped up.'Cent cinquante habitants' =150 denizens.Nishidani (talk) 20:32, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

LaMar Berrett is not RS, and in any case is only in the bibliography, so it can be removed instanter.Nishidani (talk) 20:40, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

• • Pringle:0 Google: 1. Ok, I´ll remove Berrett, (he is in the article, but without page-number). There are a few others, which I still have not pinned down: Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, The Cambridge History of Judaism: The late Roman-Rabbinic period, William David Davies, Louis Finkelstein, Steven T. Katz, The ancient synagogue from its origins to 200 A.D.: Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, Birger Olsson, (all without page-numbers: grrr) Huldra (talk) 20:51, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Btw, this also shows how vital it is to go to the original source....Cheers, Huldra (talk) 21:15, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I expanded two of the sources (including Runesson and "The ancient synagogue") about the alleged synagogue with quotations. Zero^talk 00:25, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol 4, p177, says "Although other sites have been suggested, the veracity of the identification of the ruins there as synagogues has been seriously questioned (for example, Jericho, northern Jerusalem, and Shuafat)." I took it out as the two specialist works are more specific and stronger. But I don't mind. Zero^talk 00:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. The text should be changed to reflect later doubts. The same with the part based on the Haaretz and Kershner article: I don´t like archeology based on newspaper-sources and speculation, but if we have them, then at least we should include the doubts that are in the source. Cheers, Huldra (talk) 21:20, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Second Temple Period

I noted this section heading while reading the AN/1 report today. The section heading strikes me as inappropriate for two reasons.

• The Second Temple Period is (a) far too vague and (b) not appropriate to this article since (b) the only evidence for the section consists of a skerrick of a discounted hypothesis linking one site in Shuafat to a synogogic structure.
• There is a problem in using Second Temple for a chronology of this type for synagogues were attested abroad, not within Judea proper, for the periods we correlate with the Second Temple within Israelitic history.
• Looking at History of Palestine and History of Israel, one may observe that there is a consensus to refer to the post biblical period in terms of dynastic reigns. Thus for the former we have: 1 Achaemenid Empire period Hellenic period; 2. Restoration of regional self-governance; 3 Roman Period, and for the latter: (1) Babylonian, Persian, Ptolemaic and Seleucid rule; 2 Hasmonean dynasty; (3) Roman rule. probably the second either requires a renaming along the lines of 'Post-Biblical' or 'Pre-Roman'. Suggestions? Nishidani (talk) 19:08, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I see you're back, Nishidani, from your self-imposed exile. Unfortunately, as one of your first new projects, you choose to clash with me. Again.

"Second Temple Period" is very clearly defined, nl. "The Second Temple period in Jewish history lasted between 530 BCE and 70 CE", so #1 is BS. I don't understand #2. What you perceive as a consensus based on a whole of 2 (!) articles, is apparently not a consensus, as this article testifies!

Calling it the "Roman Era" was in either case in either case simply incorrect. I see no reason to prefer any alternative to the present formula, although I agree it does not matter much. I, however, have great problems with the POV attempts of editors to remove all mention of things Jewish from articles as much as possible. I think it is fitting that a section describing a building of Jewish origin (this is specifically mention even in the source that rejects it being a synagogue) should be name in reference to something Jewish. Debresser (talk) 20:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

False edit summary

Debresser. Correct me if I am wrong. You changed the text sourced to Rachel Hachlili, writing.

The source does not say "no longer", just states a different opinion in your edit summary.

• You preferred her to be paraphrased as saying:'Others do not consider the structure to have been a synagogue.'

• Your edit summary is a falsification of the source and introduces a misleading idea.

• Rachel Hachlili Ancient Synagogues - Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, BRILL, 2013 p.39 writes

‘On identified the room as a synagogue, this claim is no longer accepted and the building complex is no longer identified as a synagogue..'

i.e. she uses the words you deny she used twice. You read them, and then denied they existed in your edit summary to alter the substance of what was reported. This is a patent manipulation of a source.

After the denial Hachlili used the words I used, you altered the meaning. Her language summarizes the state of the art of archaeology (Current research) in 2008,19 years after the initial report. 'Others' is no substitute for 'is no longer accepted' which, in scholarly English flags that the thesis has been consensually and universally rejected by the competent community. So please revert yourself. She states exactly what I stated she said.Nishidani (talk) 20:10, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh, cut down the rhetoric, please: "falsification", "patent manipulation". Go read WP:DRAMA, and be quiet for a while! By the way, did you notice I made another edit to that section afterwards, which resolves your objection? Debresser (talk) 20:25, 12 July 2017 (UTC)