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

Limits of the Shakespeare Topic Ban

Hi Nishidani,

I've posted a proposal related to this issue over at Tom Reedy's talk page here. I know you're off somewhere more likely to have tea with Stanley than a Doubleshot at Starbucks—if you'll forgive the somewhat random similie—so I've no expectation of active participation or a speedy response; but would appreciate your opinion on the matter when it's convenient for you. Thanks, --Xover (talk) 08:24, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Is everything alright?

Hello! You've been very quiet recently. How are you? Is everything alright?     ←   ZScarpia   21:59, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Requesting input

Please be so good as to indicate at Talk:Ebionites whether you believe the template I had recently restored should be kept in place or not. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 21:04, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Greetings Nishidani-san. I read on the talk page of the Ebionites article that you may return to editing in late-February or early March. I am looking forward to working with you to resolve this mess, particularly regarding Eisenman. I have gone through "Jewish-Christianity Reconsidered" by Jackson-McCabe et al., and I'm working my way through Skarsaune and Hvalvik. I will try my best to review Eisenman's magnum opus "The New Testament Code" by the end of February. Best regards. Ovadyah (talk) 18:18, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Language

How's your German? nableezy - 02:55, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Pedantic natives might call it, my German, measly, but whatever. I'm in a pretty weird place for applying myself to anything, and communicating it, but, sure, mail it to me. Cheers Nab, and I'm sorry to see you're still active on wikipedia. Arbitration here is really disfunctional.Nishidani (talk) 04:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Right? Whats wrong with these people, I should have been banned years ago. Shouldnt be too much for you, but Id like to translate this German article. Ive started here with a google translate. I see youre still involved in some problems over yonder (thats about as Shakespearean as I get), but if you get bored I think this could be a decent way to waste a few days. Wont get to Steiner level, but could be a decent article. nableezy - 04:16, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi,

Hope you are ok? I was just thinking, in view of this [1], perhaps you could apply for the same? Miss you! :) Cheers, Huldra (talk) 18:59, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. A similar from myself petition would be futile, and would only cause embarrassment for all, since I haven't fulfilled the key condition for redemption, writing articles to GA or FA status, and am unlikely to do so. Nishidani (talk) 22:19, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, correct me if I´m wrong, but writing articles to GA or FA status was not a precondition, was it? Though Remedy 11 imply that is the most secure way. I though "their ability to work constructively with other editors" came first :) Cheers, and take care, Huldra (talk) 22:26, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is possible to demonstrate one can work well with other editors, since that kind of judgement is one others would make, not the interested party. One can express a willingness to work well with others. Only others can certify that this is the case. As usual, I'm hamstrung by my understanding of what words are supposed to mean.Nishidani (talk) 23:27, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, in case you've forgotten, you did assist in getting Norman Finkelstein to GA status. Anyway, good to see you haven't shuffled off the Shakespearean coil yet. I was quite amused to see this: "But Anderson did not just use it, he had it talking, gabbling away, a ball with verbal diarrhoea." --NSH001 (talk) 22:50, 7 January 2011 (UTC) P.S. Huldra, nice to see you back as well.

Well done to the Poms, the Aussies were done like a bushman's dinner, and deserved a thorough thrashing.

Of course I'd like to have my rights to edit the I/P area restored. I thought my major infraction over 3 years there (check my real record against anyone's) was gross WP:TLDR violations, as I tried to use talk pages to get across a wider commitment to informed historical knowledge. I haven't the real time to do what is asked of me, getting the SAQ alone close to FA status has been a singleminded pursuit, involving absurd amounts of work (as opposed to research, which I accept as enjoyable) to get commas in the right place. Still, I am in no hurry. If that gets to FA status, I suppose I should, pro forma, request a reconsideration, but I'm more minded to leave wikipedia altogether, than chance being caught up in that added burden to one's voluntary public activities. Cheers to you all, and thanks for the kind comments.Nishidani (talk) 23:04, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

gah! The cricket was depressing..yes. Nish you've helped me several times working up stuff, so it all counts. :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:53, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Carry on without me

Nishidani, my medical situation requires that I withdraw at least temporarily. I apologize for any misspellings, as I can barely read this. Please carry on in my place and try to provide some balance between opposing points of view. Sorry we got into it over reliable sources. I will try to return if I can in a few weeks. Best regards. Ovadyah (talk) 22:30, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Etymology help

Hi Nishidani, hope you are keeping well. You may recall helping Casliber and I with etymology at the Boletus edulis article last year, I was hoping you might be able to provide assistance with some more etymology. The word in question is Psilocybe (in the article Psilocybe semilanceata, although several other articles could use the clarficiation as well), which (apparently) derives from the Greek for psilos (ψιλος) ("bald") and kubê (κυβη) ("head"). Casliber is able to source Psilos to Liddel and Scott's (1980) A Greek-English Lexicon, but cannot find reference to "kube/cybe"... would you be able to confirm this is correct and provide a reliable source I could use in the article? Sasata (talk) 15:12, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

If κυβη is classical Greek for 'head' it's news to me, but then there's no end of what remains to be learnt. in classical greek the concept of a human head was denoted by a variety of words like kephale, kara, koruphe, -kranos, etc., and the 'head of a plant' (but perhaps not the pileus of a 'mukes' or mushroom) was called the kephalaion. Psilos means 'bald' of a human head, certainly, but of surfaces generally 'smooth', 'bare', etc, which is what one would expect here. Hoffman cracked a lot of acid, perhaps he was on it when he coined this. However this is just off the top of my head. I am travelling and away from my library, where I could check this out. It would help if one could retrieve the paper where Hoffman describes psilocybin and presents his etymology, since from a google glance it all seems to go back to that. Unless help from other quarters is forthcoming, I'll look into it by mid Feb. I think I also owe Casliber something on Betelgeuse. Cheers chaps, sorry to be momentarily as useless as tits on a bull.Nishidani (talk) 07:04, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

The request was for some japanese material on Betelgeuse :) - Sadalsuud (talk · contribs) and I would be insanely grateful as the cultural stuff is a bit of an achillese here on that one, otherwise a mighty article and nearing FAC. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:37, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

PS: the use of cybe predates hoffman - he got the chemical from the genus, and there are other early genera - Inocybe (1863), Hygrocybe, Calocybe, Conocybe and Clitocybe - the culprit would appear to be Elias Magnus Fries (?)

Thanks Nishidani, we had a chat over at Cas's page which helped me remember I had access to OED online, and the etymology is now sourced. Sasata (talk) 05:56, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

...except now I am curious - where the hell κυβη comes from...? from κυβος "cube"? I wish I had a byzantine lexicon... :/ Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:46, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Request for Arbitration

You are involved in a recently-filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Shakespeare authorship question and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Requests for Arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Thanks, and if you are aware of any other parties who might be usefully added, please list them etc. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:45, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Shakespeare authorship question opened

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Shakespeare authorship question/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Shakespeare authorship question/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, AGK [•] 15:13, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Conflict of interest noticeboard

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:COIN#Ebionites regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Ovadyah (talk) 21:58, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Nishidani, as an active editor on the Ebionites article, and a frequent participant in the ongoing content disputes (and hopefully the pending mediation), I thought you might like to be aware of this filing. Thank you. Ovadyah (talk) 22:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

A suggestion has been made on Jayjg's talk page to resume mediation with Jayjg stepping in as the mediator. I agree, and I would prefer that he step in as the formal mediator, since we have already given our initial statements. I think we can resolve this impasse if we focus on the task rather than the editors involved. Can you work with that? Cheers. Ovadyah (talk) 03:29, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Fixes

I implemented the fix to the lead section of the Ebionites article that you suggested on the talk page. Feel free to improve it as you see fit. I restored the Greek Ebiwnaioi to the lead section because that is the term the patristic fathers actually used, beginning with Irenaeus, to refer the followers of a heretical sect founded by Ebion. Cheers. Ovadyah (talk) 18:22, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I am compiling a file off-wiki of all your suggestions regarding Eisenman. I intend to address the problems of method you identified in various forums. However, it may take a few weeks to complete the task. I want to address both volumes of Eisenman's work, "James the Brother of Jesus" and "The New Testament Code", together as one huge corpus of knowledge as he intended. The problem with Eisenman remaining at odds with the radiocarbon and paleographic dating is that it tends to obscure everything else he contributed. Cheers. Ovadyah (talk) 18:35, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello, Nishidani. You have new messages at Ovadyah's talk page.
Message added 21:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Arbcom submission here, since it is far too long, and I am far too exhausted to waste my last weeks on vacation reading thousands of diffs

Background My I/P permaban proves for some I am an inveterate edit warrior [2],[3], [4], [5], [6], [7], and [8]). Warshy's enmity here and here is inexplicable. Our only prior contact was briefly on the Baruch Spinoza page, here. SamuelTheGhost speaks of my 'hostility' inferred from a brief exchange here, here and here, likewise inexplicable. I owe an explanation as to my involvement, clearly.

After the ban I was in two minds whether to continue. I did a few quick articles Franz Baermann Steiner, Taboo and Barasana, but kept reading the flow. I caught sight of this exasperated comment while reading this. Curious, I checked the relevant discussion. Long familiar with Kathman's work, I added a late strong comment here and here. This led to an accusation, perhaps understandable, of stalking. I went to the SAQ page, on Feb.14, and, as is my wont, first checked how it is sourced. Only some 40 of the 230 footnotes met WP:RS standards for WP:fringe articles. The text was an unreadable hodge-podge. I did 26 short individual edits often tweaks on phrasing, rewriting to neutrality, grammatical fixes or corrections of vague unsourced evidence with RS ([9], [10], [11], [12] and [13]) and was then blanket reverted by Smatprt who regarded all these edits as 'major changes' requiring consensus. He was in turn reverted by Old Moonraker who welcomed a fresh vision. My impression, reviewing the archives, was that editors adhering to wiki protocols on WP:RS and WP:Fringe were encountering a deep problem with WP:OWN, WP:IDONTLIKEIT, stonewalling on far too many minor edits by a partisan passionately convinced of his fringe beliefs, who however privileged WP:CONSENSUS and WP:AGF in a way that corralled the article into an endless sequence of dithering and meaningless negotiation. He struck me as either not construing English well or 'fraudulently' pretending not to understand it, though saying that was improper. Evidence for topic banning me for policy violations, frustration, intemperance, certainly exists from that period. See Smatprt's complaint here in March, though many of his summaries for the diffs are questionable I certainly blew my top here, esp. here exasperated by the failure, after writing up a full afternoon's checking over a dozen sources in classical texts and secondary sources, to make him understand that the WP:OR violation he was restoring was nonsense, and, even if in fringe sources, best ignored.

However in making the same accusation in October here, where he writes that abuse by Nishidani been going on non-stop for almost a year, Smatprt ignored the intervening record. From April to October, we had almost no interactions except for August 19 ([14]), when Smatprt tried to insert the Oxfordian theory onto a page dealing with Shakespeare's Plays, which cover only mainstream scholarship, and on 21, when I stepped in to defend him when he was attacked by a sockpuppet. See [15], and [16]

Writing the new SAQ article. At precisely this early point in March User:ScienceApologist stepped in and issued a merge directive, advising us to create a sandbox article to work out an alternative version, merging several articles into one, a decision I partially dissented from. Tom Reedy then created this sandbox. A month later (April 26), dissatisfied, Smatprt hived off a second page with a fork, creating Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft2 for us to work on, while he reverted the first page to the state it was in before Tom and I edited it, reserving it for his version. Since then, no significant interaction between the two parties took place, until his ban and the Arbcom deliberation. Tom posted on his page Ncmvocalist's counsel, which I believe the subsequent record will show we have hewed closely to. True, we no longer had the frustration of negotiating everything word by word, but finally had an opportunity to work vigorously towards the drafting of an acceptable article.

Over the following 5 months Smatprt managed a mere 90 edits, many minor tweaks, to his version, leaving the old article essentially intact. My impression therefore was that, without an adversarial context, he seemed incapable of working on articles. Over the same period Tom and I did 1,439 edits (923,464), virtually in sequence, one draft being reviewed by the other, and this involved a thorough ground-up revision, surveying all old and new sources, with only 7.5% minor edits, and this was promoted to be the default Shakespeare Authorship Question wikipage on the 7th of October. I think this is the key evidence for the difference in approach to what editing wikipedia is about. Spending years hanging about contentious pages, tinkering, talking, querying, behaving impeccably but always hairsplitting or grabbing them by the scruff and undertaking to drive them towards a quality which wikipedian peer-review will find acceptable.

I then addressed, logically, the contiguous pages, one of which was supposed to have been merged with SAQ, namely the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship but which could not be merged without creating numerous technical problems. I also began editing the Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford page. Every attempt to touch the former met with blanking by Smatprt [17])([18])([19]). I explained the technical reasons for my edits i.e. his reverts were restoring patent errors Smatprt simply blanket reverted again, arguing I was editwarring, and said his reasons for this are that I am an POV warrior, and he will not answer anything I might note. My request to AN/I to have my editing rights restored to the page inadvertently led to Smatprt's I year suspension. I did not initially call for any such action against him. It seemed less controversial to do the de Vere page, which is straight biography, but whichsuffered from extremely bad sourcing despite the fact we have two RS biographies, by Bernard Ward (1928) and Alan Nelson (2003), the latter Berkeley's emeritus Elizabethan scholar is ranked the foremost modern academic authority on de Vere. In 60 sourcing notes, Nelson's book was cited, for trivia, 3 times, while much of the rest was sourced to non Rs or webpages. Smatprt had attacked Nelson's RS credibility earlier here, justifying his refusal by reference to reviews on an Amazon book website, written by members of the deVerean coterie.

Nina Green, who came back to the article protested my edits for replacing footnotes to her private website with sourcing from Alan Nelson and Daphne Pearson, two peer-reviewed orthodox scholars. She maintained the use of her site had been approved by wikipedia and replacing them with standard RS, as I did, was vandalism. Her challenging of Nelson has been constant. For this reason, I asked for her own academic credentials, and peer-reviewed publications in the field. A private researcher, without any academic background in the appropriate historical and linguistic disciplines, cannot hold an RS like Nelson to ransom by arguing for his or her superior personal knowledge of the subject, and deriding the scholar. Despite her numerous accusations, unsupported by evidence, that I engaged in defamatory diatribes against her, my discussions on the deVere page were courteous, notwithstanding my reservations, esp. after her early comment here, suggesting it would be wikipedia's loss if we ignored using her own transcriptions from primary documents for the life of deVere, and simply relied on books by peer-reviewed scholars of the Elizabethan period.

Nina has repeatedly charged that describing the fringe theory as a 'mania' or 'cranky' is proof both my and Tom's edits are biased, and that we should recuse ([20]) ([21]) ([22]) ([23]). Nina repeats this fully aware that these are the very terms the doyen of Shakespeare biographers, Samuel Schoenbaum, used[24] to characterize the sceptical position. From Arthur Quiller-Couch's introduction to the Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's works,<see note below*> (1920) through Schoenbaum to Kenneth Muir ('Baconians, Derbyites and the rest of the lunatic fringe'), it has been customary within Shakespearean scholarship for ranking scholars like Brian Vickers to speak of a a 'delusion' or 'perverse enthusiasm' when reviewing works of a 'curious psychological phenomenon'. For Stephen Greenblatt it is all a 'wildly implausible' fiction, notable not for the hypothesis but that 'a small but vocal cohort passionately believe in it'. Even for a very cautious scholar like the Jesuit expert on Shakespeare's background Peter Milward, it is 'lunatic fringe'. My third and fourth edit to the page was to cite precisely this language from Schoenbaum.

I checked in here on Dec 23, saw the work of 6 intense months under crossfire from old and new POV warriors, and, much to my wife's discontent, have, where computer access is possible, tried to assist in assuring that the gains made are not destroyed. I am by nature irritated by dithering, and here dithering was the modus scribendi of the earlier SAQ article. I'm effectively done with editing it, since several very experienced FA-canny editors have now joined to move it along. Perhaps a permaban here also would be a blessing in disguise.Nishidani (talk) 05:31, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

note* (An example of the kind of thing often encountered in high quality RS which both Tom and I agree is not proper to the encyclopedia. '"It has been computed that of the lunatics at present under ward or at large in the British Isles, a good third suffer from religious mania, a fifth from a delusion that they belong to the Royal Family, while another fifth believe either that they are Shakespeare, or that they are the friends or relatives or champions of somebody else, whose clothes and reputation ‘that Stratford clown’ managed to steal; or, anyhow, from touching up the Authorised Version to practising as a veterinary surgeon".' (Quiller-Couch 1920 intro to Cambridge ed. of Shakespeare's Works)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Shakespeare authorship question closed

An arbitration case regarding the Shakespeare authorship question has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

1. Standard discretionary sanctions are enacted for all articles related to the Shakespeare authorship question;
2. NinaGreen (talk · contribs) is banned from Wikipedia for a period of one year;
3. NinaGreen is topic-banned indefinitely from editing any article relating (broadly construed) to the Shakespeare authorship question, William Shakespeare, or Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford;
4. The Arbitration Committee endorses the community sanction imposed on Smatprt (talk · contribs). Thus, Smatprt remains topic-banned from editing articles relating to William Shakespeare, broadly construed, for one year from November 3, 2010.

For the Arbitration Committee, AGK [•] 20:53, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The finer points of grammar

Hi Nish,

Regarding your edits: 1, 2, 3.

In the case of “became” vs. “came to be”, became as the past tense of the verb to become, here describes a process (and implicitly the result of that process). Came to be, on the other hand, to me, connotes either divine intervention (it smacks of the phraseology of the old testament; or possibly of a fable: And so it came to be, that the young prince found his fame at last.) or pure happenstance (think “happened to be”). It also has a tone more suited—again in my opinion—to a narrative style rather than an encyclopedia. I don't think either can be said to be objectively wrong, but the latter is rather jarring to me.

You are of course correct that my use of “suggestions” should have been singular. A rather embarrassing oversight. However, the gist of the change was to conform the clause with the tense used elsewhere in the paragraph. The preceding sentences use “was” rather a lot, and your version suddenly switches to “are” (and the following “from” rather than “in” is also a giveaway). I would suggest “… there were no suggestions in this period …” or “… there was no suggestion in this period …”, and I'm of not particularly strong opinion about which it is (at most I could say that the former retains the connotation of plurality, which you may or may not find salient in the context).

And finally, regarding “Bacon and his merry men” (pardon), I think you've essentially just reverted my change back to the original. You comment that the sentences now are “smoother reading”, to which I reply that this is indeed so, and hence why it needed to be broken up: to read less smoothly. The sentence is far too long, and attempts to cram far too much information into a single sentence, and the only remedy is to break it up. This can either be done by splitting it into two sentences, each with a manageable amount of work to perform, or by introducing some more obvious subdivision for the reader to reference: in effect a parenthetical, except, in this case, without using actual parenthesis. The thing is a beast, and I would wish no man to wrestle with it needlessly. Incidentally, the choice of “in order to” rather than “whose purpose was” is to both use simpler and more straightforward language, and to avoid inviting the reader to wonder what, then, the purpose of the “advanced political and philosophical system” would be (something we don't have the room to go into). With the former phrasing the new system becomes, cognitively, a goal in itself and the reader does not go looking for purposes in the last part of the sentence.

In any case, I am focussing my energies on getting through a copy-editing run of the rest of the article, rather than going back over these bits. Not least because I expect Tom will be back from his little WikiBreak soon, and chomping at the bit, impatient to finally get this thing to FAC. And as I am inexcusably tardy, owing to a bout with the flu, in my long promised application of polish to your crowning jewels, I do not wish to needlessly delay this progress. In other words, I would appreciate it if you could take a look at the sentences in question and see if you can find a way to address my concerns as outline above. --Xover (talk) 23:16, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm too familiar with your work not to tiptoe round any changes you make. The only problem I have is with 'became regarded'. A brief google shows it is acceptable English, to my surprise. For I was certain I had never come across it in my reading or hearing life. I am wrong since I've read William James, who however in his The Principles of Psychology (vl.2 p.186) has:

'But the felt object's size is the more constant size, just as the felt object is, on the whole, the more interesting and important object; and so the retinal sensations become regarded as its signs.'

and in Jack Lindsay's translation of Apuleius, in the intro. one reads:

'Such demons are therefore evil spirits and should not be used by good men as intermediaries between themselves and the gods. The fact that Apuleius like the thaumaturge Apollonius had become regarded as a magician to be set up against Christ', The Golden Ass,p.26

So both a highly literate American and Australian used it, and thus the usage went under my radar.

It is however not a grammatical form I would ever use, and my instincts bridled against it. But my preferences are idiosyncratic, so I will restore your version (unless that hasn't been done).

(2) the awkward coterie bit is unmanageable simply because introducing Spenser constrains the sentence into being ungainly. The two central elements are Bacon the leader, and Raleigh the main writer. Elide Spenser and rewriting smoothly shouldn't be difficult.Nishidani (talk) 10:37, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Xover, you make some good points above. But I have to voice my agreement with Nishidani that "came to be regarded" is more idiomatic. At least that is my gut feeling as well, and, Nishidani, I couldn't imagine why you reverted your change, nor could I fathom what William James or somebody named Lindsay could have to do with it. I searched a long time on the SAQ talk page for a discussion of this change but found nothing. So I finally decided to ask you here, and now I see that it is this talk page you were referring to. I love William James; but in this context, I'll side with the "Sprachgefühl" of Nishidani. --Alan W (talk) 12:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Jack Lindsay won his guernsey in classics, with a first class degree (Jack Lindsay, Life Rarely Tells: An Autobiography in Three Volumes, Penguin, 1982 p.220), under a Scot, (and the Scottish reknown for intellectual rigour is confirmed by their contribution to classical philology) namely John Lundie Michie, who had himself earned a double first at Trinity College Cambridge in the Classical Tripos. That, more than anything else, convinced me that the usage was acceptable in non-American English, as well as the fact that William James's mastery of nuanced prose was as refined as that of his brother. I must confess, though, I am somewhat relieved, Alan, by your own confirmation of my instincts. I thought 'become regarded' was a solecism, until my research. I still would never use that construction became regarded as, especially. But English lessons never end. My own Sprachgefühl must have here reflected a certain provincialism with regrd to the more recondite corners of my mother tongue. Perhaps others might chip in on this curiosity of idiomatic usage.Nishidani (talk) 15:53, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, as you can readily see, there is no particular reason why my proclivity in this should have preferment. It's a minor point, and neither is actually wrong, so I explain my reasoning but leave the choice entirely up to you. Since Alan's inclination agrees with yours, I suggest that is likely to be the best course. --Xover (talk) 19:31, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll put it to a vote on a page more read than this! (Whatever the outcome I wonder if 'becoming regarded' is not an unwitting miscalque ('werden/become') on some German prototype like als . . .angesehen werden/als . . . betrachtet werden? James ploughed through large vols of German. I can foresee at least a decade of my reading haunted by this phrase!)Nishidani (talk) 00:01, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

This conversation has turned out rather interesting and amusing. Yes, Xover, I agree, neither expression violates any rules of English grammar. Which one prefers is a matter of personal instinct. I'll be interested to hear the results of any voting on whatever page you post this question on, Nishidani. Very interesting thought, too, that James might somehow have been influenced by German linguistic constructions. I know only a very little German, but enough to see what you're saying.

Another interesting thought is that James had as refined a command of nuanced English prose as his brother. Maybe you're right; but if so he generally declined to make use of all the nuances. I think that to him, his brother's English was a bit over-nuanced. But William certainly had a solid command of the language and could express whatever he wanted to very well. Now that you've brought up William James, I can hardly wait to resume a project of mine that has fallen by the wayside, that of reading much more of James, perhaps everything. I never did get through the full two volumes of the Principles of Psychology but that wasn't for lack of interest (I don't now recall why I put it aside). James in any case has always been a favorite of mine.

As for Jack Lindsay, that to me is the most amusing part of all this. As an American, I have only a faint notion of what all that about a guernsey is. To me that is either an island or a breed of cattle. Over the years I've read references to things like the classical Tripos and such at the Oxbridge universities, and I suppose they are some sort of honors won in highly prestigious competitions by upperclassmen, or something like that.

I should go now, especially since I'm recovering from some kind of viral infection that has thrown me off. (And I hope you're feeling better, Xover; I recall your mentioning having the flu.) And then I want to take a look at what the current state of the SAQ page is. I did want to do a read-through again, but I have held back since it seems that it has become a bit destabilized again. Regards, Alan W (talk) 02:03, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

To get a guernsey = receive an accolade, be awarded, obtain recognition. My own classics teacher loved the idiom. I've linked the other terms. I've had second thoughts on voting. An opinion is never worth a reason, and reasons are what interest me. A final thought. 'To come to be+past participle+as' is grammatical, in my mental world, whereas 'to become + past participle+as' (not adjective, as in Tom's 'naked') is idiomatic, in the sense that examples of the former structure are bountiful, whereas the 'become+past participle' construction is context/lexeme-restricted. Replaceing 'regarded' with 'considered', (become considered as, become thought of as etc.,) makes me feel stylistically awkward. Having googled this, however, I find there is: 'Amun became thought of as a fertility deity'! Not the sort of thing, however, to trouble our thoughts or distract our energies from the SAQ overhaul's key issues at this late point, though I confide my hopes in some further elucidation months and years down the track, especially if you get through the omnia opera of the great William! Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 12:51, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the glossing and elucidation of the above. I wouldn't be so involved in Wikipedia if I didn't love learning something new every day (as I enjoy sharing with others what I already know), especially in such congenial and sympathetic company. (This takes me back to the better part of my academic days, one of the briefer of my numerous careers.) I've started my read-through of the SAQ page, and I will do a bit more shortly (haven't looked in there yet today). Yes, we must talk more when I revisit my William James project. Regards, Alan W (talk) 04:07, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Confused

Didn't ArbCom know that your name cannot be mentioned in their presence without what an uninformed person would call a draconian restriction being handed to you? How are you not site-banned yet? I've missed quite a bit in the last few months, I just now read your latest encounter with the Supreme Council of the Armed, err I mean the High Court of Justice. How have they come to any conclusion other than you are the embodiment of all that is wrong with Wikipedia, and that justice may only be served with your indefinite block and the expunging of any words you have written on this site? Scandalous! nableezy - 00:50, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Which reminds me, Nab, I promised to get off my fat arse and help with a few articles, one on a German woman. Give me a nudge when you feel like returning, and I'll try to pull my finger out.Nishidani (talk) 12:57, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

No longer an option. During my absence some person apparently mistook the draft in my userspace as an attempt to somehow improve this "encyclopedia", and, rather than allow it to languish until either I got bored enough or you found the right mix of alcohol and swine that serves as the fuel for the infidel mind, that kind person completed the translation and moved it to the mainspace. Do you think "way to go asshole, thanks for stealing my thunder" would be an appropriate way to thank him? nableezy - 06:23, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

As long as the reference to thunder is clarified by 'from my thunderbox'. It's lunch over here so I'll eat some crackers with ham, washed down by a glass of port, while chanting Ya Qazzafi, Ya Qazzabi, as the news reports from down south flick over the boobtube. Seeya, raghead! Nishidani (talk) 12:00, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

request for input

I have recently filed a requewt for arbitration on the Ebionites article. Please feel free to add any comments you believe appropriate. John Carter (talk) 01:35, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Nishidani, I'm not sure if you realize it, but Newyorkbrad is expecting you to participate in the mediation, as one of the parties to arbitration. Thus, there would be no triangulation. If you are not really interested in contributing to the article as an active editor, and/or participating in mediation to resolve the content dispute, you might want to make your preferences known to Brad and the other arbitrators more clearly. It's just a suggestion of course. Alternatively, you could just change your status in the dispute to that of an uninvolved party like Llywrch. Cheers. Ovadyah (talk) 13:56, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Palkmary?

Nish, where on earth do you find these words? Once again you've stumped me. Thanks for your kind words (the ones I can understand), anyway. Regards, Alan W (talk) 03:16, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, wait, you meant to write "palmary acuity", didn't you? Even your typos stretch my mind. Regards, Alan W (talk) 05:06, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the further elucidation and the high compliment implied. Alas, as meager as my Latin and grounding in classical literature are, they are probably more than the supposedly higher education of most instills in these degenerate days. Perhaps a few participating in the SAQ article immediately grasped your intent (the level of intellect and erudition is astonishingly high there) but even there I wonder if many really comprehended you. It took me some grappling and pondering and groping through dictionaries, both on line and printed on old-fashioned paper, before a glimmer of light shone through the murk. Now I know! Regards, Alan W (talk) 02:57, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I can say, with a great degree of confidence, that I rarely understand even half of what Nishidani writes. :-) —Xover (talk) 06:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

To put other people under an obligation to understand what one writes would smack of intolerable presumption. People are obliged only to understand what they themselves write, or rather, to make sure what they write is understandable. Once out there, in the Whitmanesque republic of letters, it's anybody's business, and right, to take or ignore what is given as an option for one's leisurely perusal, and construe it by their own lights. I have a great deal of difficulty in reading many mainstream newspapers, like the NYTs. It's almost always wonderfully grammatical, but what is said doesn't make sense, except, to me, as a well-meaning endeavour by nice people to comfort other nice people in the illusion that the world is a nice place: if only everyone thought like us. Last night, I mulled at length over what one correspondent here wrote: 'material . .which supports the future of your illusion'. It's grammatical: I know what he intended to write (suggests there are little prospects for sustaining your illusion in the future), appreciate the allusive gesture to Freud, and yet shake my head at the idea material now can take off life-support for something in the future. The whole history of thought teaches one that illusions need no support, material or otherwise, to sustain themselves in the future. Like anaerobic bacteria, illusions that would die if permeable to the fresh air of thought manage to ensure their vitality by excluding from their metabolism the catalyzing oxygen that galvanizes most forms of life. I just wrote this to nudge both of you with a twittish piece of self-irony, and neither is obliged, as per my initial premise, to reread it, (the premise here being that someone will actually managed to get past the first sentence. Improbable.) :o) Nishidani (talk) 11:25, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I may be under no obligation to understand, but I comfort myself with the anaerobic illusion that I do. (Though I applaud your announcement of confidence above, Xover. :-) I just looked in at the FAC page, and I see that things are getting ugly once again. Fortunately, the two of you, as well as others who have much labor invested in SAQ, seem prepared to deal with what is happening, as it is apparently part of a long history, most of which was played out long before I arrived on the scene. Perhaps it is easy for me to say, standing somewhat out of range of the bombing, but I urge you to keep up your spirits by remembering the words of a great orator, "that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory .... it is in the nature and constitution of things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph." --Alan W (talk) 04:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Note to self. Must get Bishonen to rig up a cartoon of a triumphal chariot with the central figure having this face, a snap of Tom's dial as he copped abuse, burking and obloquy in the (infamous) Shakespeare wars! Which reminds me, the bibliography lacks a ref to the lecture Gene Tunney gave on Shakespeare at Yale University. Cheers, Alan!Nishidani (talk) 13:34, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that your reference to "burking" was far from accidental and its double meaning is a hint to me that you indeed picked up my allusion, even though the eponymous "Burke" was altogether another person. I should have expected no less. You are in fine form, as usual! Poor Tom, though. --Alan W (talk) 02:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Note to self

At last. I've waited four years for a call like this Nishidani (talk) 13:30, 4 March 2011 (UTC)