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.

Michael Sfard indeed has spoken of Hebrew being mobilized to lend itself to the national emergency of occupying Palestine, and denying the Palestinians the liberty to be themselves. They are passive subjects of an activist language that wraps them about in bureaucratic euphemisms.

'It has been tasked with providing a soothing, anesthetizing name for the entire project of suffocation, for the blanket system of theft we have imposed on those we occupy . . Thus extrajudicial executions have become “targeted assassinations”. Torture has been dubbed “moderate physical pressure”. Expulsion to Gaza has been renamed “assigning a place of residence”. The theft of privately owned land has become “declaring the land state-owned”. Collective punishment is “leveraging civilians”; and collective punishment by blockade is a “siege,” “closure” or “separation".'

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). According to Yossi Sarid, the process, illustrated further by Knesset proposals to eliminate Arabic as one of Israel's official languages, constitutes a form of ethnocide.

(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

Things to be done/Notes to self (or what pieces are left of that hypothetical entity)

• Huldra trans Talk:Bardala‎
• Huldra trans Talk:Nisf Jubeil
• Sabah as per promise to Doug Weller
• Abu Iyad as per promise to Al Ameer
• The Ashkenazi Jews/Khazarian origins theory
• Werner Muensterberger
• 中里介山 and also his 大菩薩峠, which have no wiki article. ('to call him Dickensian would be utterly inadequate, to call Dickens "Kaizanian" would be to flatter him greatly' William E. Naff, The Kiso Road: The Life and Times of Shimazaki Tōson, University of Hawai'i Press, 2011 p.4.) Nishidani (talk) 21:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

(2)'To call Dickens "Kaizanian" would be an over-statement of his considerable gift for for creating memorable characters, while to call Kaizan "Dickensian" would be a seriously misleading understatement. This richness became all the more impressive when set against the national drive towards human standardization.' ibid. p.430

To be kept close to the bottom of this page because I forget the agenda as time scurries on Nishidani (talk) 21:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

• • e.g.<ref="Horowitz" /> Nishidani (talk) 17:20, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Note

Yonatan Mendel, Diary, London Review of Books, Vol. 37 No. 6 -19 March, 6 March 2015.

Palestinian population statistics Pro memoria

here,

Notice of Admin noticeboard discussion

This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.84.1.2 (talk)

Children

• New report: Palestinian children in Israeli military detention experience violence, coerced confessions (14 April 2016), Middle East Monitor.

• Ex-Abu Ghraib Interrogator: Israelis Trained U.S. to Use "Palestinian Chair" Torture Device

Ijon Tichy (talk) 16:12, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

I.e.Brad Parker et al.,'No Way To Treat a Child: Palestinian Children in the Israeli Military Detention System,' Defense for Children International April 2016. This is evidently an anti-Semitic smear. Firstly Israel has a unique conviction rate, 99% of the indicted, which shows it only detains the guilty. (b) The guilty are a chronic plague in that area, they swarm everywhere, which is why the system has had to convict 700,000 Palestinians. That's over 10% of the population, which means you have an exceptionally high incidence of criminality among those folks. (c) Thirdly, these are not children. Of this spurious report's so-called evidence only one child in 429 cited as witnesses, was detained in an Israeli prison from 2012-2015. The rest were 12 or over, i.e., adults. 1 in 429 is statistically meaningless. It's just one slip-up in Anat Berko's proposed law. 'Shit happens', and this was a minor skidmark.(d) This is war, not a matter, therefore, of prissy human rights fussing. But even in war, civilized nations, meaning those where a lot of English is spoken, there are rules, and these things fall strictly within the remit of Military Order 1651 (e) Brad Parker is an 'Advocacy Officer, and advocacy for a cause means he's biased, and his work probably indictable as incitement. (f) all parents need do is have the mukhtar conduct a whip-around, preferably by getting the muezzin to hand over his prayer broadcast system (and give the landscape some peace:we've had to close down 59 calls to prayer at Hebron this last month to allow the settlers at Kiryat Arba an uninterrupted clear audio reception of Arutz Sheva) and pony up the US$2,580 fine for stone-throwing, which is what most of this juvenile criminal element that survives rubber-coated steel bullets and toxic inhalation of suffocation gases is caught for. From a more general philosophic perspective informed by a deeper knowledge of the region's history, these folks should thank their neighbours that they are (for the moment) still alive. As Edward Luttwak, a distinguished historian, put it in an erudite letter to the Times Literary Supplement (19 February 2016 p.6) while expressing admiration for the restraint Israel had exercised in its so called assault on Gaza, in killing just 551 children,and permanently disabling only 1,000 of the 3,374 wounded kids,'if a Palestinian state had been established in 1947 or any other time, by now it would have machine-gunned many more Palestinians than the Israelis have every killed.' They're getting kid-glove treatment compared to what history would have dealt out to them had they ruled themselves, and should be grateful for the restraint. An Amora like Simeon bar Yochai must be writhing in his grave at our restraint in these unfortunate circumstances (Talmud Sofrim 15:10). Come to think of it, in this earthquake-prone zone, something ought to be done to calm things down. Nishidani (talk) 17:17, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Great analysis Nish, very insightful. Captures the brutality, viciousness, criminality, insanity and massive hypocrisy of the colonialists.

Does WP have an article along the lines of Imprisonment and torture in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? If not, it may be a good idea to start such an article, using, among many other sources, the two sources I included above, and the sources in your comment above, and high-quality analysis from additional reliable sources, hopefully as high in quality as the quality of the insights/ analysis in your comment.

Ijon Tichy (talk) 13:50, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. The problem in the I/P area is not making more new articles, but improving the existing ones, which cover most things, more extensively (and of course my own views and analysis would have no place there). What really worries me is the amount of known facts and material generally existing, that never even gets into reliable secondary sources, or at least in those I examine to see if the topic is handled. In any case, we're into spring, and I intend to enjoy it. Apart from a few remaining duties, I'm thinking of taking a leaf out of your commonsensical book, and mucking about more in the non-wiki world. This was impressed on me the other day when I noted the kaleidoscopic imbrication at one focal point of my gaze of a colour mosaic of a thrush, a bee and an admiral butterfly all crossing the same point more or less simultaneously from different directions, only at different depths within the garden. See those things often enough, and reading ought to take a back seat. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 14:08, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Enjoyed reading your description of the bird, bee and butterfly. I have been enjoying the wildlife around here. And some of the cherry trees around here are already bearing delicious fruit.

You have been doing great work on WP. Keep up the good work.

• If Not Now, When? Young Jews Refuse to Stay Silent on the Occupation This Passover

• A quick tour of water and the Arab-Israeli conflict. From 2003, but appears to still be relevant today. Written by Franklin C. Spinney

Ijon Tichy (talk) 04:21, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

I've followed Frank Spinney's articles for several years, since he retired (if only because he did a sensible think and played Ulysses round the Mediterrean in a small yacht, a very sane thing to do). A lot of ex-CIA folks say interesting things afterwards! Thanks also for the other. I'll offer in exchange these all too brief remarks by a fine writer Michael Chabon, recorded at Hebron, where he had the same reaction more or less as did Mario Vargas Llosa (see Tel Rumeida page)- Naomi Zeveloff Q&A 'Michael Chabon Talks Occupation, Injustice and Literature After Visit to West Bank,' The Forward April 24, 2016. Best Nishidani (talk) 20:03, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

I guess you've caught 'Varoufakis and Chomsky,', but if not, it's here. I particularly liked the former's definition of modern economics as 'a religion with equations'.Nishidani (talk) 12:32, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, modern economics is mostly pseudo-science. It is almost entirely a cover, a fig-leaf, a Kashrut certificate, for the global kleptocratic looting of the global public wealth to create private riches.

You may be interested in this: Musician Roger Waters and a documentary film director discuss their documentary on Israel's Hasbarah efforts. (See the right-hand-side panel for all three parts of the conversation.) Ijon Tichy (talk) 19:59, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

IjonTichyIjonTichy The above is a disturbing post. Classic anti-semitic tropes populate the wording.I am sorry Nish, but I have been reflecting on the above for over 24 hours, and I must protest. Simon Irondome (talk) 02:19, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

No need to apologize, Simon. I'm logging in late from another computer as my own is being reengineered to rid it of the totalitarian intrusive claws of a self-installed Windows10 update which, despite my 95% successful attempt to get rid of it, still persists in little tricks to get me back on (their) updated ('date' means anus in Australian dialect) side. As to Tichy's post, I didn't see it in context, as antisemitic, unless the kashrut certificate is taken to signal that the kleptocracy has Jewish connections. An idiom like that would come naturally to someone like T who grew up, I assume, in Israel. We all have differently sensitized noses for these things, and even here in writing 'noses' I immediately realized that my choice of 'noses' could easily lend itself to a negative construal ('And the Lord said unto Moses...') implying an antisemitic mindset. Language is a death trap to the best of us (suffice it to follow the debate between Christopher Ricks and Julius re T S Eliot's antisemitism) However, when I wrote it, I had in mind Bloch's beautiful words on the task of an historian being that of have an acute ability to scent his prey and track it down. If 'kleptocracy', well that is almost the default word to describe post-Soviet Russia, and kleptocratic is fairly objective for describing the way the multi-trillion dollar private debt crashes in 2008 onwards were transferred to the public debit ledger, most recently in the absolutely hallucinating case of Greece, which has been utterly bankrupted for generations by 'loans' that are actually rerouted back to Germany and France etc.etc. To think, everytime a kleptocratic 'rort' of these epochal kinds is duly noted that the Protocols are in the background of the annotator's thinking, is dangerous

In short, saying that 'modern economics is a figleaf or whatever for 'the global kleptocratic looting of the global public wealth to create private riches, ' seems to me both empirical and well-grounded theoretically (Michael Hudson, Piketty etc.). Most people don't think that way.There's nothing 'Jewish' about it: indeed, it is merely a late extension in terms of financial 'engineering' of the logic that impelled very unJewish empires like those of Great Britain and the United States to extract wealth from the rest of the world - this occurred formatively when Jews were still excluded from the said establishments.

Antisemitism can be very subtle, but diagnosing its pathologies is getting very difficult perhaps because it is now thrown around (I exclude yourself from this: you have proven consistently lynx-eyed in your discriminations here) so endlessly, not a little abetted by the narrative obsession in so many Israeli and diaspora newspapers of trying to highlight some ostensible 'Jewish' angle in anything from people in the news, Mickey Mouse, falafel, to Superman, comic books, beauty contests, gay society, whatever - I take this all as a sign of the negative effect of diaspora traditions- an unfamiliarity with what it is like to be a nationalist, nationalism being organically natural in a new state like Israel to create a common identity, since the diaspora experience was basically one of being on the receiving end of other nationalists-this made Jews great exponents of universal human rights) The sum effect is that anytime anything comes up for discussion a constituency is been unwittingly attuned to construe it ethnically, and read it for any potential political innuendoes or susurrations from the old whispering echo chambers that 'lie' in all historically mindful readers' minds. This worries me a lot.And I have always taken Tichy's exchanges as a reflection of similar concerns by someone 'on the inside'. Best Nishidani (talk) 14:01, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

As all can see, I have removed words from the original posting which are dramatic and unnecessary. I have forgotten how to strike out comments, and I have to be out in a bit to the bank to pay off some of my creditors in a somewhat painful monthly ritual. (Oh the irony, based on some of the above) so I cannot trawl through endless guides on how to do it. The diffs are there for all to see. The post is unfortunately worded at first sight, and not in character with the editor who made them, the many positive contributions here of which I am aware of. I almost never use such a line, as you are well aware Nish, and others who "know my style". You have more than adequately summed up my concerns in your above post. Your friend and colleague, Simon. Irondome (talk) 14:32, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Dear Irondome, am I correct in assuming you do not read Hebrew? Or, if you do, that you don't spend much time reading Hebrew-language mass media, including e.g. Israeli online newspapers and magazines, Israeli online TV and radio, Israeli videos on YouTube, books written by Israeli authors, etc? Because, as Nishidani tried to explain above, the term 'Providing a Kashrut Certificate' is commonly used in Israel as a general expression to denote 'bestowing legitimacy upon.' The term is used often (or at least not rarely) by average people in the street as well as by writers, journalists etc in a wide variety of contexts that have nothing to do with any religion.

(Of course, there is nothing wrong with not reading Hebrew, and Hebrew language skills are not a requirement, nor do I believe that they should ever be a formal requirement, for editing WP in the I-P area.)

In other words:

• The vast majority of Christian economists, in the history of economics as well as today, worked or work to provide a cover, a fig-leaf, a Kashrut certificate, a Halal certificate, to bestow legitimacy on the global kleptocratic looting of the global public wealth to create private riches. A relatively small (but perhaps non-trivial) minority of brave, courageous Christian economists worked or work today to strongly oppose this looting.
• The vast majority of Muslim economists, in the history of economics as well as today, worked or work to provide a cover, a fig-leaf, a Kashrut certificate, a Halal certificate, to bestow legitimacy on the global kleptocratic looting of the global public wealth to create private riches. A relatively small (but perhaps non-trivial) minority of courageous, brave Muslim economists worked or work today to strongly oppose this looting.
• The vast majority of Jewish economists, in the history of economics as well as today, worked or work to provide a cover, a fig-leaf, a Kashrut certificate, a Halal certificate, to bestow legitimacy on the global kleptocratic looting of the global public wealth to create private riches. A relatively small (but perhaps non-trivial) minority of brave, courageous Jewish economists worked or work today to strongly oppose this looting.
• The same applies to all other major religions in the history of humanity. In other words, providing a fig-leaf/ cover is independent of religion.
• Of course the picture is even more complicated. I am not blaming the vast majority of economists for the severe historical and current problems with the global socio-economic system. Economists are just people like you and me, just trying to survive and thrive and feed and house and clothe themselves and their families. And it is not only the economists who are providing cover for the global theft of the public wealth, it is practically every person who has ever lived or who lives now: the prevailing global socio-economic system is embedded deeply inside all of us, and we are all both victims as well as perpetrators, of the global system.

You may also be interested in watching this scene from Network (film). In my view, it's the most important scene in an excellent film that has many important scenes. In fact I strongly recommend renting and watching the entire film.

Best regards, and continued enjoyment and happiness in life (hope you are enjoying watching the exciting UEFA football, although I wish Iceland would have won it all ...), Ijon Tichy (talk) 23:49, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Your words are appreciated IjonTichyIjonTichy. I freely admit to overreacting to your well-meant comment. I was feeling thin skinned that day. It happens. I find your comments very interesting. I am only beginning to study Hebrew, so I fear I could barely struggle through the simplest paragraph at the moment. Shame on me, but give it a year, and I may be able to understand the nuances of simpler newspaper articles and the like. My ambition is to read an Amoz Oz novel in the original. Then I will understand. I hope all is well with you and yours. Hopefully we can discuss your points further very soon. Nish is a patient host so hopefully we can expound further. With all good wishes, Simon. Irondome (talk) 01:02, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Simon, no offense taken. I fully realize your intentions are pure and honorable. And I admire your aim to learn Hebrew - it is not an easy language to learn at any age, especially not at a later stage in life. When we immigrated to Israel many decades ago, I was only 5 years old and I learned to read and write Hebrew relatively quickly, my older siblings had a somewhat harder time learning to read and write the language although they eventually mastered it, and my parents had a very difficult time learning the language, although they eventually learned it well enough to understand most of what they were reading. My parents attended an Ulpan, which helped. Best wishes to you and yours, Ijon Tichy (talk) 00:25, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

There are some languages which, if we don't learn them, leave part of our potential selfs unread, to our loss. I've always felt that way with Hebrew. I could hitchhike round Israel, and even the Gaza Strip with a grasp of the idiomatic basics a half a century ago, but since then, when I have time, reserve it for parsing the Tanakh. I really should pull my finger out and do that extraordinary idiom's claim on me more justice. I helped a sister-in-law several years older than myself, with it a decade ago, and now her daily practice leaves me ashamed (joyfully). Pity that her being only Jewish on her father's side makes her, despite these valiant efforts in poverty, not formally (as opposed to informally) accepted as one of the tribe. So, S, do apply yourself. These moments of our day, stressed or otherwise, take on a different tincture of light when we recite to ourselves verses and words that take us out of mean time into a different universe. Best to both of you.Nishidani (talk) 08:04, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Ijon. This is stuff we've known for 13 years (parallel universes of modern information - the engineered moodosphere via the press vs. the ground, and underlying political calculations), but I've never seen it so meticulously documented as it is here. If you haven't see it, Jeffrey St. Clair How the Iraq War Was Sold CounterPunch July 8, 2016.Nishidani (talk) 15:25, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

I would also recommend Eliot Weinberger, 'They could have picked...,' The London Review of Books, Vol. 38 No. 15 28 July 2016. It's a useful wake-up corrective for those of us who focus so intensely on Israel's problems, to be reminded that the Glicks and Qarims are small beer compared to the 'mainstream' lunacy in the Empire's 'Christian' heartland whose greatest pathologists are, perhaps coincidentally but nonetheless, Jewish, like the doyen of them all, Noam Chomsky. The diff is that that tradition has the language of Mein Kampf too close at home not to escape its resonance in the rhetoric of these little, for the moment, avatars of Hitlerism. Why is it in this harsh climate, my small orchard and vegetable plots promise abundance, apart from the perfume? RegardsNishidani (talk) 16:51, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the links to the articles. Indeed, these articles are informative, and frightening, and humorous all at the same time in that they expose the insanity of human so-called "society".

You may be interested in the following:

• The New European Fascists, by Chris Hedges. "Poland offers a frightening example of the right-wing populism sweeping through many nations. Neoliberalism is wrecking economies, creating rage among the working class, devastating cultural institutions and eroding liberal democracy across Europe and in the United States." (And, may I add, in Israel, in the occupied West Bank, in Egypt, in many Arab countries, and in fact in many countries around the globe ...)
• Why many poor white people have voted for Trump. Interview with J. D. Vance, a book author. Vance is a Yale Law School graduate who grew up in the poverty of Appalachia. Offers good insights.
• Ur Fascism, by Umberto Eco in the NY Review of Books. From 1995 but still very relevant today.

Ijon Tichy (talk) 00:14, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Bit late getting back to this. I actually missed it, with intervening edits being made by others. Thanks for the links, esp. Umberto Eco. I discovered I have a trace of the Ur-Fascist - 1/14th of me corresponds to no.11, since I often imagine that it would be useful, when dying, to use the inevitability for some useful end. Talking of fascists, I see Philippe Sands, has just reviewed the evidence for Bliar in A Grand and Disastrous Deceit, LRB Vol. 38 No. 15,28 July 2016 pp.9-11. buried inside there's a good joke of the Iron Lady having dinner with her aides. They enter a restaurant, and the waiter asks her:

Waitress: ‘Would you like to order, Sir?’

Thatcher: ‘Yes, I will have a steak.’

Waitress: ‘How’d you like it?’

Thatcher: ‘Raw please.’

Waitress: ‘And what about the vegetables?’

Thatcher: ‘Oh, they’ll have the same as me.’

That pretty much sums up modern politicians. A megalomaniac surrounded by brownnosers. There's one exception. Elizabeth Wilmshurst.Nishidani (talk) 15:21, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

This joke comes from an episode, some thirty years ago, of the much-missed Spitting Image. [1] RolandR (talk) 19:10, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Roland. The fact that The Simpsons anticipated Trump's victory, and the Putin connection, 16 years ago, together with this vignette, is proof of the old rule of thumb. If you want to understand the world, read comics or watch the best comedians, or parodists of genius. They are almost invariably way ahead of the commentariat by several years. The reason for that is that, like reality itself, they are not bound by rules of 'common sense'. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 20:10, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Roland, thanks. I was not aware of Spitting Image. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I enjoyed very much watching the Spitting Image Election Special 1987. Absolutely brilliant satire/ parody, adhering to the highest production values in writing, directing, craftsmanship, etc. And still highly relevant today, for example the most-recent bread-and-circuses affair in my neck of the woods. Best, Ijon Tichy (talk) 19:17, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

I highly recommend The Onion. I've enjoyed reading their twitter feed every day over the last 6 years, they do a great job satirizing and parodying many key aspects of human society. Ijon Tichy (talk) 18:15, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Loved the joke involving the Iron Lady.

The following is interesting: Green Party of Canada Challenges Israeli Apartheid. "Green Party shadow cabinet member Dimitri Lascaris says the passage of the resolution in support of BDS could embolden other Canadian parties to take on the occupation." Also discusses a second, separate resolution by the Green Party, regarding the Jewish National Fund (JNF). --Ijon Tichy (talk) 03:58, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

An interesting article: The Cold War Is Over. Best, Ijon Tichy (talk) 19:10, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes indeed. I can't think of many other populations, save modern Palestinians, who have been comprehensively fucked over by history as have the Russians. I'm sure they must have a word as evocative as sumud, but can't think of one. Mind you I'm losing touch and have been boozing and shoving the snout into the feeding trough for several hours in a farmlet built on top of a Roman villa. Best Nishidani (talk) 22:16, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Glad you are enjoying life. Keep up the merriment. Ijon Tichy (talk) 00:42, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Opinion: Russia is now top wheat exporter, proving sanctions won’t work, by Amotz Asa-El. By the way, the author has a Hebrew name, are you familiar with his work? Ijon Tichy (talk) 18:11, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

I"ve seen his works several times. He literally write in every single news paper/website he can. I never really understood what is his political agenda (didn't read too much of his articles) but it seems he is in the Israeli center-left side. He was the main editor of the Jerusalem Post, which is a mostly right-wing newspaper, but he was there ten years ago and at that time I could barely read so I don't know how was JP then. Anyway his articles usually full of historical references and examples instead of straight forward comments on spesific current events. He seems like one of the "good guys".--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:31, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

(ec.) Thanks Stav. On the button, and informative as often. No, not familiar with him, IJ. I never take note of names like that, Hebrew or Arabic, except when the argument is specifically focused on the I/P area, the only place where often it can often assume a potential background relevance. It sounds like the forecasts given the Russian economy back in 1914: in fact perhaps the key factor deciding Germany for war were calculations that unless the rapidly industrializing neighbor to its East were destroyed, it would, given the developmental indexes, outproduce Germany in 2 decades. One point. We get a lot of eastern grain that is contaminated, even radioactive, through southern Italian ports. I once read in the 1990s that 16% of the Russian landscape was toxically affected. Indeed, I joined a programme to take in for several months a year children from the areas affected by the Chernobyl fallout. We had to feed them a special diet for 3 months,to rid them of the poison they absorbed from eating produce from local farms. Our child got on well with me, except for one dispute over which he was passionate - the superiority of a Lada to a Ferrari, but had nightmares suggesting he believed my wife was part of a plot to steal him from his mother. Jeezus. Didn't work out, but he went back with enough currency sewn into his trousers to tide them over for a year or so.Nishidani (talk) 18:43, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Imperialism and Class in the Arab World. Published in Monthly Review by Max Ajl, a friend of Vittorio Arrigoni. -- Ijon Tichy (talk) 15:41, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Very good review, because it invites at least two rereadings (not that it's hard to read - I grew up with that style of analysis, just covers so many complex issues). I'll keep my eye out for Max Ajl's work, so thanks for the tip. Nishidani (talk) 19:10, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Sorry to hear about the passing of your cat. I'm the proud daddy of two small dogs which I love dearly, and you have my sympathies. How do you feel about your cat?

Here are some articles that I think you may find interesting:

• Israel and Academic Freedom: a Closed Book, published in CounterPunch Sept. 30, 2016
• Elon Musk unveils plan to colonise Mars, Sept 27, 2016
• Excellent, in-depth analysis and criticism of humanity's plans to colonize the cosmos, published in Monthly Review in 2010, still highly relevant today. And an additional article by the same authors from 2008, again still as relevant today as it was 8 years ago.

Best, Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:24, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Not quite my cat. I have only one, 17 years old, with Alzheimer's and a massive Garfieldian appetite but a local woman, somewhat aspergeristic, used to buy creatures to cater to her daughter's whims, keep them in the house, then throw them out after a week. Evicted baby turtles and kittens ended up in our gardens, so I looked after them, reluctantly. 'Pirate' was a famished strayling who insisted on pouncing in to put on the nosebag when food was placed outside for the other two. Aggressive of necessity, ferocious, it eventually was tamed, and just as, after 1 year, I managed to stroke it, and it stopped hunting and just slept around the gardens till breakfast or dinner. I should have read the behavioural change and taken it to the vet, but it was quietly dying, I now see. We found it under a shrub while gardening, scenting the stench of death. It joins another 12 animals in a cemetery near my vegetable patch. I'm not an ailurophile. I remember, on reading the great Vladimir Georgiev 's Introduction to the History of the Indo-European languages in 1981, stopping in my mental tracks at p.232 at seeing him gloss the Etruscan word krankru as 'cat'. Very odd, I thought. Cats didn't exist in Italy at that time. Indeed, as anyone of his stature should have known, the Latin word feles from which we derive 'feline' actually refers to species like the polecat or weasel, which Romans kept as housepets. Indeed A.E. Housman once wrote a witheringly funny review lambasting a German scholar for reading the line, illic caelureos . .(venerantur) at Juvenal's Satires 15.7:'there (in Egypt) the heavenly ones are worshipped'. That was the received manuscript reading but had long been emended to aeluros ('There cats . . are worshipped'). Since there was no native name for the foreign cat Juvenal took the term from Greek αἴλουρος, and monks, unfortunately the text never fell before the eyes of the anonymous Irish monk who wrote the exquisite Pangur Bán, transcribing the text throughout the ages altered the strange word by conjecturing it was a corruption of the more familiar 'caeruleus' (the bluish ones, the sky creatures, gods)

The one kitten I took into the house, when I found its gravid mother shivering in the snow at Christmas, and gave it sanctuary as it went into labour, has been raised as a dog. My first impulse was to shut the door, and leave it to its own resources, but my conscience and wife prevailed. The former because I was raised where cats were disliked, so much so that I once, aged 7,witnessed a gang of kids failing to drown a batch of kittens in a laundry tub: they struggled hard, clawing the water. So they took them outside and smashed them against the wall. A buried memory, of grief, came to remind me I was obliged to make amends, even though I hadn’t been involved. All silent bystanders to evil must work it through, make recompense in the future.

Thanks for the links. I actually follow Elon Musk's work regularly, the cars and transit system are highly intelligent: going to Mars is stupid. As a pub-crawler told me in 1969 while watching the moon-landing: 'if they'd spent that money making life on earth decent, . . ' I replied along the lines,'Theology, and it's a theological project, has a longer hold on our imagination than humanism, and now we’re seeing its secular reincarnation’. Pat the pups for me.Nishidani (talk) 20:00, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

"We have not approached the time when we may speak to each other, but in the mornings sometimes I have heard, echoing far off, the sound of a trumpet. It is apparent that nations cannot exist for us. They are the playthings of children, such toys as children break from boredom and weariness. The branch of a tree is my country. My freedom sleeps in a mulberry bush. My country is in the shivering legs of a little lost dog." Sherwood Anderson, A New Testament (1927)

By the way, both my pups are rescue dogs. They are sending their love to their uncle Nishidani. Ijon Tichy (talk) 05:00, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• Israel and Academic Freedom: a Closed Book
• U.S. Admits Israel Is Building Permanent Apartheid Regime — Weeks After Giving It $38 Billion
• New Discovery About Persians in Ancient Japan Generates Excitement

--Ijon Tichy (talk) 16:33, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that one, I haven't been following the Japanese papers recently (by the way, some of the world's foremost experts on the North Eastern tribes of Australia and their languages are Japanese, god bless'em). Newspapers need sensations, I guess, but the fact that Sassanids were in Japan has been known for a century in scholarship at least, and was duly noted in the Nihon Shoki (720). Mind you, it's very important confirmation. We underestimate in our popular imagination how integrated trading was in antiquity: Egyptian lapis lazuli from the Pamir or Afghanistan region found i9ts way to pre-dynastic Egypt. China got their amber through Roman intermediaries. The Tarim mummies and Tocharians attest to viable I.E. speaking linkages. Christopher Beckwith's Empires of the Silk Road, steps out at times on a limb, but it's as good a guide as any to the Eurasian globailization in pre-globalized times. Thanks.(Tell the rescue pups to practice retrieving granpa Nish from the morasses he gets himself into!)Nishidani (talk) 19:10, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, including the links. It's all very interesting.

What are your thoughts on this: We May Never Truly Fathom Other Cultures (7 Oct 2016)

The pups are saying hello to granpa Nish. Ijon Tichy (talk) 20:21, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

(Wagging my tales in return:)) Generally I think that is odd. Terentius’s line in one of his plays, Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,’Being a man myself, I regard nothing human to be beyond my understanding.' Bi/trilingualism was very common at the historical crossroads, and among tribal societies all over the world, even markedly different in moeurs, so that many 'primitives' could grasp societies that were otherwise profoundly different from the one they lived in. One could write a book that wariness of strangers, while natural, only took on its plenitude of incomprehension when accelerated wealth accrual led to elite isolates which, once their power and the reach of their centripetal imagination consolidated over centuries to become an aristocratic sense of cosmic privilege, lost all purchase on the countervailing instinct of sympathy.

Montaigne on reading all of those Spanish reports, extracted a fundamental conclusion which one can find in Book 1, No 31 of the Essays, generally takes the line that our own customs are, seen in reverse perspective, just as weird, bizarre and aleatory as those which the Christians deplored among 'savages'. We deplored their rites of cannibalism, while going to church every day to dine on the body of God, in the communion service, etc. What makes civilized violence (from the Aztecs to us) so much more incomprehensible is that it doesn’t consist in just killing your enemies pellmell, as in a tribal fight. No. It is justified by a whole series of rationales, racial, strategic, theological (the Book of Joshua is foundational). We develop a metaphysics of murder, and give it legal cover by erudite distinctions about just wars, extrajudicial killings, turning a blind eye to genocides caused to people by the collateral damage of our own vibrant economic system's developmental impetus or 'civilising mission' (the French colonial army killed a third of Algeria's population from 1830 to 1880). We maxim-gunned 10,000-15,000 tribesman in an hour or two at Omdurman, for the loss of two score men; a few years later von Trotha wiped out up to 100,000 Herero tribesman and, as if that wasn't enough, Roger Casement, whether reporting on South America or the Congo, exposed the industrial and imperial genocides underway, as King 11 Leopold (just take a look at that fatuous photo and compare the man inside the party costume to the photo portrait of Sitting Bull. ) to entertained European royalty while his men killed at a minimum 1,000,000 Congolese, etc,etc,. I guess WW1 was a relief to the third world - for a brief interim, the mass murders stopped abroad as the whites decimated each other. I can understand murder at the elementary level: it’s massacres for a sophisticated reason which are odd. Not the massacres themselves, but the self-delusional mechanisms people who engage in great civilization's mass killings to provide a warrant or charter for what they are doing (I disagree with Jared Diamond's recent middle class book on this). If you read Steven Runciman’s Crusades, and then read Prescott’s account of the Conquests in Mexico and Peru, the ‘incomprehension that anthropologist feels for Aztecs is not a mater of a psychocultural divide, it’s just that he hasn’t familiarized himself with history, and Western history, or the obvious fact that there’s a little Nazi infant hidden even in the most civilized person, ready to morph given the ‘right’ circumstances.

I was much taken by Marvin Harris’s books, esp. Cannibals and Kings when it first came out, and his cultural Marxist theory applied to cannibalism. Have a look at what he says of the Aztecs pp.99ff.He makes the point that ‘The Jews, Christians, the Moslems, the Hindus, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Roman all went to war to please their gods’(p.107) and provides ecological constraint rationales for things like Central American cannibalism.

You guessed it. No decent film on the television tonight! Cheers pal, and give the pups an extra pat (not a cow pat! what a dreadful thought). (As kids, our first ammunition was cow pats, fresh crap crusted slightly under the sun, which you could scoop up and smash into the other gangkids' faces. We'd come home, happy, covered in shit, greeted by my pharmacist mother's smile- She thought roughing it up, exposing one's self to bacterial filth, was part of a good education, and wasn't far wrong, despite the pong). Nishidani (talk) 21:23, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Calmécac had it survived the Spaniards or been taken over by the Jesuits, might have vied with Morocco’s Al Quaraouiyine as the oldest university of the world (forgot to copy and paste this last bit). Nishidani (talk) 21:47, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree. Deeply understanding other cultures is sometimes hard, but not impossibly hard. One can understand cultures, that may appear at first as extremely foreign to one's own culture, if one is willing and able to spend considerable amount of time on carefully studying high-quality sources, learning the language(s) of the foreign culture, and, if possible, traveling extensively within the foreign countries and spending considerable time living and striking roots (at least for a year or more) in the foreign lands.

Arabic translators did far more than just preserve Greek philosophy (4 Nov 2016), by Peter Adamson in Aeon Magazine. -- Ijon Tichy (talk) 18:03, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I like to think of it this way: every one of the 10,000 historical cultures was or is a form of human possibility and constraint. It follows that absorption in any other culture than one's own can open doors that are locked if one remains monocultural. Great civilizations run on a paradox; they are promiscuous by the eclecticism intrinsic to imperial overreach - since they must absorb a manifold of distinct regional cultural realities, yet tend to orthodoxy when the politics of power at the centre feels threatened by the centrifugal vectors of the accommodated diversities. It's not however that one finds something out there not available to one's own sociocultural backdrop: Lévi-Strauss in his Mythologiques essentially concluded that the devices of 'savage thought' were still with us, not overcome by progress, but simply reformulated. The imbrication of social and cultural categories with natural taxonomies is constant - we just think we have gotten beyond the apparent oneiric randomness of primitive thought because we have a technology that beguiles us into believing we are cognitive creatures that have made some quantum leap out of the historical past. Reading ethnography, one is constantly struck by the wild blindness of explorers: they die where natives thrive, they cannot read the landscape for the telltale signs of how to survive in it, signs that are meticulously archived in the ecology of native lore. Burke and Wills hauled 20 tons of equipment across central Australia, with food stocks calculated to last 2 years, and died of starvation, in an area where the Yandruwandha were living intelligently off the desert's recondite riches. The stupid bastards just didn't do the obvious things, like earning good will, learning the languages, changing their diet, etc. The !Kung-San of the Kalahari classify over a hundred insect species, and found close to 20 edible, while others have medicinal functions, and where early travelers saw a desert void of food, their native taxonomy closely classified several hundred plants, each with its ethnobotanical uses, all of course encoded in a different discursive form than what we are accustomed to think in terms of. I was going to write about the failed follow-through of Hellenism's philosophical impact on the Palestinian Talmud, as opposed to the Bavli, then Maimonides's failure, reflecting a broader Islamic missed opportunity, to take Aristotle's syllogistic system on board (monocultures etc) and got distracted, probably because I've had a long day's reading and need to rest up with some film. Thanks for the link and have a good weekend. Cheers. Nishidani (talk) 20:47, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the insights.

When you get a chance, I'll be interested to read your thoughts about the failed follow-through of Hellenism's impact on the Palestinian Talmud.

Additionally, your thoughts on the following? Leonard Cohen Sang About Our Love Affair With Death and Destruction (14 November 2016). A short video tribute to Cohen's work over the last 5 decades. "The brooding singer-songwriter tried to humanize society's darkest wishes, and lamented its inability to ever be at peace." The Real News (4:29 minutes)

Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:24, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

50 years ago I read a comment by Moses Hadas raising the hypothesis of a decisive influence of certain Platonic texts like the (otherwise) draconian Laws. He had in mind the minute regimentation of every element in one's life according to an established tradition set down by philosophers/sages. Given that rabbinical literature took on board some 3,000 loanwords from classical languages, it still strikes me as odd that so little is done to try and reconstruct the lost historical hinterland, esp. in the ascendency of Hellenism over the world where at least the Palestinian Talmud developed. Some have argued that there are traces there of a syllogistic modus operandi, not evidenced in the Bavli,for this very reason, but that had failed to gain much traction. Abrahamic religions of course are systems of advanced irrationality whose function is to detribalize the Neolithic world by making its spiritual heritage more amenable to communities living within the powerful jurisdiction and statist universalism of empires. So it's particularly interesting to see how they cope with propositional logic, which, since Pythagoras, has raised the problem of the truth status of axioms. All three had creative skirmishes with the Greek tradition: Christianity tried to meld the two, and we have theology under pontifical and synodic authority; the Islamic world had a major moment of creative contact, evinced by the Muʿtazila only to suffer, devastatingly at least in terms of science, from a failure of nerve. Judaism, having, aside from the probable Khazar experiment,a role of minoritarian subordination to secular authority, just withdrew into an cognitive enclave where the chain of tradition trumped logical curiosity, though it retained an indirect contact with it through familiarity with Arabic translations of Greek works (e.g. Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, etc). The results more or less, from a classical angle, in the case of doctrinal Judaism, are more or less as Israel Shahak set forth. Despite the tragical nature of the necessity to dispossess and destroy another people in order to reenter history in the most imbecilic form of normalcy, it is fascinating to observe the utterly dysfunctional δυσκρασὶα (the inexorable discrepancy between ingredients forced to assume a form of amalgamation) between a modernist project pinioned on secular rationality, and an identitarian value base drawing on an ethics that is devoid of any purchase on logical principles. But, it's late here, and the ghosts of the antipodes are murmuring discontent over this whiteman's distraction. . .

As for Leonard Cohen, he's never been on my radar: I read several poems in the 60s that seemed pretty much in line with a lot of bad work of that period. Several songs remain in memory, but, again, so do a thousand others from that golden age. I guess I'll have to review my prejudices by getting some time to relisten to part of his corpus on youtube.Nishidani (talk) 20:44, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. Very insightful, as always. I am still in the process of reading and re-reading your comment and trying to understand all the very interesting nuances, issues, complexities and insights. I will comment further in the future.

Your comment motivated me to read the WP article on Israel Shahak. (I was not previously aware of the work of this wonderful, amazing human being, thanks for bringing his work to my attention.) I don't know when is the last time you may have read the WP article, but I've read it for the first time, and to me, it reads mostly (although not entirely) as an WP:Attack page on Shahak and his work. I looked briefly at the history page, and it appears that several editors whom the community has recently determined to be highly disruptive or otherwise very problematic (e.g. the blocked sockpuppet Epson Salts and several other civil POV pushers) have basically turned the article into (largely, although not entirely) a piece of crap. I don't have the time to work on the article to bring it into compliance with WP policies, I am wondering if you, or anybody who reads this comment, may hopefully have the time, motivation and inclination to improve the article to make it adhere to NPOV (and other policies), because in its current form, this article is a disgrace to WP.

Thanks for sharing some of your perspectives on Leonard Cohen. Your ideas are thought-provoking.

On a somewhat different topic, I highly recommend these two recent, insightful interviews with economist/ historian Michael Hudson: Part 1 and part 2.

Last but not least, the puppies send their love to their grandpa Nishidani. Ijon Tichy (talk) 14:21, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Off to Germany again, and rushing to get a few notes into a backlog of stubs I have material for but haven' had much time to work on. I tried to edit the Shahak article into some semblance of neutrality some years ago but was hindered by an admin at that time distinguished for his brilliant wikilawyering on behalf of the cause. Shahak was an exceptionally insightful and erudite man. Our User:RolandR knew him personally and can attest to his humanity. You can download both his books from the net, even though unfortunately some copies are on anti-Semitic sites, but that will tell you nothing in itself. I recommend a close reading of them: to me they read like a version of Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, a formative book for me as a youth, with Plato being replaced by rabbinical tradition. There was nothing new here: what Shahak did regarding the ghetto mentality of the arbitrators of the rabbinical chain of tradition has been done hundreds of times by scholars working on the irrationality of Christianity. One should be careful here: it is one thing to make a metacritique of a specific cultural code or intellectual tradition, another to dismiss its varied members as all implicated in a delusional system of collective scotoma. Marx, it is only slowing emerging, had a prescient intuition into the core end logic of capitalism, and found many eminent, deeply humane acolytes. Attempts to legislate his worldview into a political programme where, were, predictably (as he himself foresaw in 1854,) a disaster. That is true of all the Abrahamic (and other) religions: it's a paradox of humanistic, as opposed to scientific thought, that genuine wisdom and profound readings of human nature came bubble up from thinkers whose overall weltanschauung is irrational. One sees that studying the anthropology of 'primitive' tribes - it's a good exercise to absorb the ethnography of a 'backward' people sufficiently to assimilate their basic rules, and then walk round any city streets and gaze into the faces, minds ands manners of our fellow citizens, and suddenly twig how bizarre we are, how random and contingent our ostensible metropolitan 'rationality' is. One can learn from that rabbi or this imam, or Pope Francesco, or the present Dalai Lama, things that a hyper-rationalist or scientist knows nothing of, though from a higher perspectival angle, science, and the rules of logical method, must rule our better wits, with religion, and much philosophy deriving from it, merely a camouflaged echo of an ancient ghost-dance (there's a great book on this by Weston La Barre).

Nuzzle the pups. Best Nishidani (talk) 15:31, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

ps. that ostensible disproof by Immanuel Jakobovits is of course a spectacular lie: the situation generally was as Shahak said it was, regardless of the incident. One can ascertain this very simply, by googling the relevant topic. Unfortunately, at least at that time I edited, there seemed to be no RS connecting the ban with the Shahak incident, and a lot of malicious recycling of the pseudo-rebuttal.Nishidani (talk) 15:42, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

I've lived in Jerusalem for a number of years, and yes, you are right, the situation was, generally, as Shahak described it. Ijon Tichy (talk) 18:15, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Does Chinese Civilization Come From Ancient Egypt?, Foreign Policy (magazine). "A new study has energized a century-long debate at the heart of China's national identity." Ijon Tichy (talk) 18:15, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

The only interesting datum there is Sun Weidong's note that the chemical composition of ancient Chinese bronzes resembles that of Egyptian bronzes. The rest is pretty weird. In ancient cultures metal-working was a closely guarded secret, and figures with mastery of it were regarded as shamanic, men of power and dangerous, so diffusion wasn't rapid unless the craftsmen migrated, or were captured, and sent elsewhere. There was an Indo-European element in western China, and one theory,very minoritarian, holds that the Shang were not speakers of a Sinic language, as were the later Zhou. But the idea of a Hyksos link looks wild. Strange things do happen, though. The 'isolated' aaboriginal peoples of northern Australia were bartering trepan they fished for goods with sailors for the north and it ended up in the fish markets of imperial China. In any case, controversies that wash every idea about the past in the lyes of nationalism are not worth following. I'll try a thought experiment tonight, and mentally transmit two juicy vitaminized biscuits to your pups. If they don't end up in there, put it down to the waning powers of their senescent grandpa. Have a great festive season. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 13:05, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh, and, following up on Leonard Cohen, I found his line:'Everyone knows the war is over/Everyone knows the good guys lost' instantly memorable (particularly in the aftermath of the victory (if predictable, as I argued with some US friends much to their disbelief, or rather conviction I was just being geriatrically contrarian, not only in terms of Murphy's law) of that wanker with the dopey haircut.Nishidani (talk) 13:10, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Greetings Nish. I liked the brief (4:30 min) analysis of Leonard Cohen's work. Cohen was right, the losers on both sides of practically every war in the last 12,000 years of human history are well known in advance even before the war begins: it's mostly the bottom 90% [in income and wealth] of the population on all sides, while the top 1% smile all the way to the bank. I am not an expert in poetry and you may be right and Cohen may have been a mediocre poet, but he was right about the fact that the vast majority of the global human population is (and has almost always been) basically completely, thoroughly fucked and will likely remain fucked for many more years and decades. Human so-called 'society' is completely insane and has been so for the last 12,000 years. On the other hand we are also completely sane and rational at the same time. (I am slowly discovering that almost all great, complex, multi-layered truths in life are a paradox. Often, both the very complex thing/ topic/ item/ issue and its exact opposite are true and correct at the same time, at least to some degree ...) We can't even bring ourselves to talk about - and more importantly, make big decisions and commitments about - the big problems that are slowly but steadily destroying our lives - e.g. gross human overpopulation, massive overconsumption, enormous inequality/ inequity, Intensive animal farming, global warming/ environmental destruction/ loss of biodiversity, and much more ... At the same time, life is still beautiful and offers many good and enjoyable things e.g. love, friendship, enjoyable work, pursuit of beauty, art, science, pursuit of novel physical, emotional and intellectual adventure/ exploration/ knowledge, pursuit of excellence, and many more pleasurable and enjoyable and deeply satisfying relationships and activities ... In short, life is a piece of excrement and a piece of paradise, and everything in-between, all at the same time ...

Wishing you and yours good health and continued happiness. And keep up the good work on Wikipedia.

The pups received the biscuits and quickly wolfed them down and licked their lips afterwards. They asked me to relay a big thank-you to grandpa Nish. (I dressed them in their Santa Claus outfits and took them to the giant park nearby on both Saturday and Sunday, to the delight of many small children [and a few adults too] ...)

Joyful tidings, Ijon Tichy (talk) 15:11, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

It's a pretty modern thing to think of the poor being the victims of war while the elite profit and survive. Ever since homo sapiens insipiens has ruled the roost, at least down to WW1 and even 2, war was thought excellent for character-forming and a practical way to master the more intricate details of how to muster and therefore master the masses, even if the cost was substantial. A significant part of the ruling elite's rising generation of young men were mowed down in WW1. George Bush Jr.,'s family got things 'right', you funnel Nazi funds to safe havens, and pull strings so that your sons don't serve, but that only signifies something new.

I guess I'm a poetry rigorist. Apart from Shakespeare and a few others, most of the best poets are lucky, as Auden said, to ratchet up a score of poems that will outlive the ages. If you look at wonderful songs for their verbal poetry, many are total duds, though Christopher Ricks has made a great case for Dylan as a poet. Music's metrical baton can tap dull words into memorably orchestrated lyric. I read Cohen's lyrics in print, before listening to them, and that put me off, ,but I realize this was unfair, a prejudice. Sung, they exude a different, moving resonance to what they look like on the printed page. I recite stuff in the shower every morning, just to wake up by refreshing my mind with lyrics, and today sang von Eichendorff's "Mondnacht"

Es war, als hätt' der Himmel

Die Erde still geküßt,

Daß sie im Blütenschimmer

Von ihm nun träumen müßt'.

Die Luft ging durch die Felder,

Die Ähren wogten sacht,

Es rauschten leis die Wälder,

So sternklar war die Nacht.

Und meine Seele spannte

Weit ihre Flügel aus,

Flog durch die stillen Lande,

Als flöge sie nach Haus.

I learnt it as a boy because a German classmate who was, on casual acquaintance, a pretty normal happy-go-lucky 'petty bourgeois', stopped me one day and asked me what I got out of reading. he was puzzled by my anomalous presence in a college for drop-outs (I'd been expelled from an expensive college for subverting their culture and ruining their Catholic value system . I'd spend most time in class reading books and ignoring the teachers). Over a coffee we had a chat, I mentioned poetry, and he finally twigged. 'yeah I know what you mean. My granddad taught me this poem (then recited) and I think the last four lines the most breathlessly beautiful thing I've ever known.' In fact it was the only poem he knew, he was intent on a career in business. Nothing wrong with that, but if one does, one should recall how Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot handled it: diligent paperwork by day, and then, strolling home, down to lights out, the inner world where things make real, i.e. perplexing sense.

This utterly took me by surprise and rid me of whatever supercilious sense of being different might have lurked in me, Whatever stupidity the daily tsunami of global and provincial nonsense throws one's way, such things remind us of the reclusive adamantine potential for refinement in mankind, resonant in lyric, music, acts of empathy, courage, philosophical intuitions, scientific intelligence. It's not an elite thing: that kid's remark showed it's there, deep down, waiting to thrum if the right person can get past our mental messiness and touch the deeper chords. One story of Osip Mandelstam's final days in the gulag has him cared for by thugs, who were enchanted as, dying, he recited fables and poems for them. Today stacking timber that had just been culled from a distant wood and offloaded at my place, I noted these ants, wandering about dazed along the logs. Obviously clueless as to what had happened to their environment, thrown out of kilter from their daily round on the forest floor. I thought, spontaneously:焚き物にだれずに迷う森の蟻 (takimono ni/darezu ni mayou/mori no ari), i.e. 'On the firewood/unflaggingly, their way lost, they stray (perplexed)/the forest ants') Not much chop as a haiku, but more or less, we are the ants, much as you say, in a stripped and bulldozed woodland.

I'm meandering, which is natural enough, given the afternoon of hard 'yakka'. Delighted by the vignette of the santa pups. My family prevailed on me the other night to dress up as Santa Claus because a 3 year old niece, hugely bright, was convinced someone really would knock on the door and bring in presents. I did so, cushions on the stomach, a flowing beard, and, sneaking out back, banged on the door, and chuffed and huffed in with a tired limp, gasping from fatigue, handed over a bag of goodies, and then collapsed, sprawling, on a couch. She really was taken in, 'Oh poor Santa. He's so tired'. So I snored for 10 seconds, and then jumped up:' Must be off, all those kiddies in Africa are waiting for me too. An easier leg to do: no bloody soot or chimneys', and off I trundled.

Best regards and auguries for a good new year, even after the deadshit hits the fan on 20 Jan. Nishidani (talk) 16:59, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the beautiful poem, and for your comments. Your words are inspiring and encouraging.

Wishing you a full and quick recovery.

The pups send their love to Grandpa Nishidani. One of them is sleeping in my lap right now, the other is sleeping at my feet. Ijon Tichy (talk) 00:08, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Nish, how are you? I hope you are doing well. Best, Ijon Tichy (talk) 17:11, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I've been inactive. Diagnosed as suffering from herpes. The medico said it hurts like a dog's bite, but, having been bitten that way, I never felt much pain, and don't now. Once in Paris, coming out of a restaurant, I saw a beautiful Alsatian and bent down to have a chat with it. It jumped at me and snapped at my face, its spittle on my cheek. I stayed steady, didn't retreat, but just kept murmuring dogtalk to it. It quietened down immediately, wagged its tail, and allowed itself to be patted. Which reminds me, give the pups a St Valentine's caress (or chocolate) from gramps! Cheers, IT! And thanks for the note, as always.Nishidani (talk) 18:03, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Wishing you a quick and full recovery. Indeed, the pups and I are enjoying Valentine's day. The pups are sending their affections to their grandpa Nish. Ijon Tichy (talk) 00:27, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Ditto here. John Carter (talk) 14:59, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

FYI

You can go back to older articles in Ma'an, by going to the different pages of the governorates.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 17:04, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

And for the map (relieving Huldra from the notifications), I have failed myself and couldn't get the map done before being too tired to continue, so here's a snap of the workplace [2]. If you have any notes it"ll be nice (and I"ll add the names later).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:45, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

For Chrissake, it was bad enough to ask others to do work I should have done, let alone to hear you worked away at it to exhaustion. Drop it for the time being, take it easy. There's nothing urgent. The first map you did on Huldra's page was close to perfect, so just leave it at that. Thanks Stav. Nishidani (talk) 09:32, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

As I said, I really have nothing better to do and it was true for the last four days. Here's the completed map: . I assumed I should include the island in their territory because it was written in the Djagaraga lead section.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 15:44, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Sorry to be late in getting back. My time has been sequestered all day. The last map is splendid. That's really fine. I must get time to pull my socks up and do some work on the articles that, as you noted, require more imput in the I/P sector. It's just that, working on something really stimulating makes me put that stuff off, since it's only actuarial duty and not informative. No one reads it either. But still, it must be done. Thanks a lot Stav. Enjoy a break, certainly from my pestering. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 20:00, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

BTW, if you want people to read the new articles, you should try for WP:DYK when I had an article on DYK I got over a few hundred hits during that time period. 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 20:10, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that's not a bad idea, but I just haven't got much time to get distracted with DYK procedures, since I've got it into my head to do from 300-500 of these articles, overhauling the whole area. It's pretty scandalous that wiki has virtually zilch of the rich ethnographic harvest over the last century on that erased history. You look at numerous town articles, like one I read yesterday on Coen and find out that their history begins with a European, 1623, Jan Carstensz, and then jumps two and a half centuries till gold was discovered. Not a hint that the Kaantyu and Wik-Munkan tribes lived there and left extensive ceremonial sites of totemic stone lines, or ant-bed sacred sites used for complex increase rituals, and intricate papers exist sifting the last murmurs of those tribesmen speaking distinctive complex languages , papers that endeeavour to claw back some lineaments of their obliterated cosmologies. I don't care if the articles aren't read. I do care to see that those victims of genocide are memorialized encyclopedically. I'll probably never finish it, but it must be done, eventually.Nishidani (talk) 20:54, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

And the Zionist me looked at the map of the peninsula and asked myself "why don't the Australians prop up a port city there?".--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:48, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

See Sahul Shelf. Don't want to despoil you of an illusion, but you're not a Zionist: you're an Israeli with a neo-liberal outlook someone confused with Reagan-Thatcherism, caught up as is natural in a doctrinal system that forms part of Israeli national life, but probably an historical impediment to 'normalization'. As to the 'port city there', that is exactly what was attempted, first at Albany Island, then Somerset, and by various entrepreneurs and multinationals, American, English, Chinese, Japanese, etc. The logic was - there's huge wealth there, let's develop it. I guess you are aware that the creation of a Jewish state in north Western Australia was an option on the boards back in the 30s. Australians tried to barge in with a cotton-industry and, predictably, turned part of the Kimberley wetlands into a dustbowl in 10 years. By the way, there's a fascinating chap Howard Goldenberg who's been interviewed about his experiences up north, here a list of the interviews here, or the quick one here. Well worth listening to.Nishidani (talk) 11:55, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't see how being a neo-liberal (which I wouldn't completely identify as) interferes with being a Zionist, which is more of a nationalist identity rather than an economic one. The fact I support liberal ideas and do not feel racist toward Arabs, doesn't mean I want to live in a binational state or worse. I support the most democratic option of a Jewish state. If the Arabs were smart, they would follow the Druze and be our "dogs" for 50 years, until they would be strong enoguh politically to hold the Jews in the balls, but instead they choose to sit in the opposition, doing nothing and receive only 50% of the votes from the Arabs. I am confident that this scenario will never happen, becuase the Arab parties are Islamist/Communist/Nationalistic and very corrupt.

And I always say, that the best way to save the Jews, was to bring them to Israel, because the US is not an option, because many Jews were marxist, while most of the Jews would not leave everything behind and move to Unganda, Austrialia, Alaska or Madagascar. If you could gather a couple thousand Jews, infused with nationalism to Israel, they would fastly establish a community that would appeal to the rest, and that's how it grew. Now we are seeing the American Jews being less Jews and more American and they do non-Jewish things, like voting for politically-correct-establishment-allies-corrupted-warmongers like Hillary Clinton.

In other words, I prefer to give the authority to people of my own kind, and not live as guests in a different country, so if we fuck up, at least we can take responsibility for it. Having no other choices is sometimes better than having multiple choices.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 13:38, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

(Plot spoiler. The following stinks of condescension)Well, you're very young, and like vast generalizations, that by their nature cannot be debated. All ideologies, and Zionism is just one little ethnonationalistic variation, tragicomical in its anachronism, give those who grow up within them an infinite series of pat responses that are all utterly predictable. The one certain consequence is that a nationalist, qua nationalist, has nothing to say, because he must yield authority to a form of public discourse that takes precedence over experience, or imposes its interpretations prescriptively over how anything is to be experienced. I've had variations of this conversation with Soviet-or Chinese-area Communists, Hungarian or Ukrainian patriots, Japanese and Korean nationalists, Italian fascists, neocon economists, rednecks, American grand strategists, etc. The language looks different in each case, but if you boil any stretch of it down to a propositional content, it reveals the same closed structure, absolutely impermeable to reality- They're all very eloquent on the big picture: once the conversation is steered to details, personal experience, the intricate complexities of specific historical moments, they get uncomfortable. If I told you that

I prefer to give the authority to people of my own kind, and not live as guests in a different country

translates into

I defer to authority according to the ethnicity of the person wielding it. If the ethnicity is the same as mine, it has more traction on me than it would were it exercised in exactly the same manner by someone whose ethnicity differs from mine.

(in very practical wiki terms you give the lie to this because you do not assign automatically more intrinsic merit to a 'pro-Israeli' editor's POV than that of his or her adversary in an edit dispute, but try to evaluate the merits of various proposals rationally)

This is a tribal attitude.Of course, we're all free to embrace whatever set of values we prefer. But neoliberalism is diametrically opposed to tribalism: its fundamental premise is that the individual is a rational agent best positioned to determine his own choices, and that any collectivist interference in or hindrance to that individualist ethic disrupts the natural optimal allocation of resources in a way detrimental to both the individual's pursuit of happiness and his society's overall wellbeing. The whole project of liberalism is hostile to tribalism (communitarian values, redistributive justice, governmental intervention), which is regarded as a key drag on economic rationality. Like all ideologies, Zionism reckons it can reconcile both, and pragmatically, this works out as Matthew 6:3.'doing acts of charity, do not let your left hand know what your right does'.Nishidani (talk) 15:11, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

As a citizen of the State of Tel Aviv, I am well aware of the tribalism and "anachronism" of my views. While I think "anachronistic" is a way of saying "I don't like your notion, but I will criticize it for being outdated", I do accept the idea of tribalism, just like I support the idea of eating - I am a human, and that's what human do. "People of my own kind" do not translated to "Jews", people of my own kind translates to "allies", i.e. most people who have lived in this country for the last 68 years. I won't oppose the notion of a Druze or even Muslim Prime Minister, as long as he is not an: Islamist, Communist or Nationalist (Arab nationalist). All of those three groups, which form the Arab parties in Israel, are hostile to all I believe and not only hostile but also foreign. "My own kind" are the "sane majority" which excludes: radical-left, radical-right, Halachic, islamist, anti-Zionist and ultra-nationalist, these are the people I deem foreign and/or hostile to my ideal state. Marxists, of any shape and form, whether they are "Democratic Socialist" or "Progressive(=Regressive) Left" are not welcome. People who put nationalism as first priority, or people who reject the non-Kosher democracy are not welcome. People who think that you should not defy Israel's construction rules, unless you build on Arab property should be removed from the government. People who get angry at the police for not stopping honor killings, but on the same time refuse to cooperate with the police are not welcome. People who sympthize with the Palestinian cause and/or want a binational state and/or Pales. right of return, are welcome to move to Gaza and live under Hamas. People who shut "the Arabs are cancer and we don't make peace with cancer...everyone who said [population transfer]..is not Jewish, is not Democratic - Jewish Blood on their hands!" should be tortured by the Shin Bet. All of these groups are welcome to be a minority in my country, but I will not submit to them, and those groups, who are a minority in Israel, tend to be the majority in many other countries.

My agenda is not the agenda found in Germany, France or the United States, and I do not want to be a minority in those countries. My agenda can only be found among most of the Israelis and some of the world's Jews. In other words, the Jewish state, which still has a majority of "my own kind" and is still democratic, has the best potential to care about my interests, becuase my interests are shared by most of the people here, with all the disagreements, wars and shitty politicians and I wish to conserve that and not submit my life to the Halacha or to a broken Cosmopolitan world, which is a ticking self-destruction bomb that refuses to look at reality in the eyes.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 16:12, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

And as I said before, I do not think I am a neo-liberal.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 16:13, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Just to clear up a misperception. When I said anachronism, I was referring to Tony Judt's essay. Of course it upset the chattering classes, but it is an exemplary, if obvious, application of historical analysis and sociological reasoning, something regarded with distaste in Zionist discourse.Nishidani (talk) 17:36, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

"A state for Jews" and "A state where Jews have privilages" are two versions of the same thing, but the writter decided to use the latter to define the concept of a "Jewish State".

The Arabs are not constitutionally second class citizens (I"ve read Adala's list of laws, total bullshit), they are de-facto second class citizens, because the tools of Israeli democracy stand in front of their face, but Arabs were never a democratic people. It seems hundreds of years separate us from Arab democracy, which is today synonymous with Authoritarian–Marxism or Theocratical–Islamism, which are usually the outcome of democratic projects in the Arab world.

The writer is ultra-biased: he completely mislead the reader by very good manipulative tactics. For example, he shows three options in a dilemma: To leave and dismantle the settlements; To annex the territories; To cleanse the country of Arabs. He explains the problem of the second option, saying it will create a clash between "Jewish" and "Democratic". He explains the problem with the third option, saying it is "fascist", but he does not explain the problem with the first option. The ignorant reader clearly understands from the lack of criticism of the first option, that it is the only option, and he would never guess the reason why Israeli withdrawal can't be done so simply, is because Israel doesn't want to create the world's largest terrorist base, while startig a civil war at home.

Speaking about fascists, the manipulative writer uses the revisionist past of the Herut movement, which he deems as fascist, to try and construct an thesis that explains the Likud party is actually fascist. As far as I know, the Herut movement was not fascist. It was nationalistic, but not fascist and its later ideological father was the first with with the balls to make peace, and with Israel's biggest enemy at the time, Egypt. The movement under Bibi also accepted democracy and continued to implement the Oslo Accords dispite them opposing it in the previous Knesset, which is more than what Marwan Bargouti or Hamas will ever offer with the death of the Dictator.

The next point the writer makes in order to convince us the Likud is fascist, is that Ehud Barak supports the assasination of "Paletsinian politicians". He asserts that assasinating Palestinians is "political assasination", but the Palestinians are not a state, and their politicians are actively involved in terrorism against Israel (or if you want, "resistance"), including Arafat, Abbas and the rest. Is assasinating Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi "political assasination"? What about assasinating fascists? Look at the politicians the Palestinians assasinated: Abdullah I of Jordan, Wasfi al-Tal and Rehavam Ze'evi. The avarage Palestinian leader is worse than Meir Kahane in his terrorist, but if his assasination is a "fascist made-political assasination", then the assasination of Kahane as well as Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane, Meir's son, was made by fascists. So can we please go on and talk about assasinating "fascists"?

The writer talks about Sharon and Olmert as "bad guys", but Sharon was the one who disengaged from Gaza, while Olmert created the Realignment plan and was the closest ever to reaching an agreement in the Annapolis Conference, which was the main cuase why he is now in jail. So this article is anachronistic. It doesn't matter who sits at Israel's cabinet, the condescending writers, looking at the Jews with double standard, will always find a way to delegimize them.

Another way of seeing this writer doesn't really represent reality is the way he says "There are indeed Arab radicals who will not rest until every Jew is pushed into the Mediterranean, but they represent no strategic threat to Israel" yet Hamas was elected in 2006. Everyone who observed the Palestinian community with honesty since 1920 knows the reality did not change. Recently discovered Benny Morris agrees with that notion, which was surprising. The Second Intifada is all the proof needed.

Later the writer adopts the Benjamin Netanyahu Doctrine: Frighten them with Nukes. Yeah, Israel has nukes, and? What does that prove to you? That Israel is North Korea? They are the strong and the Falastinyyun are the weak, cause in the 50s Israel created nukes, long before Israel occupied the West Bank or Gaza. Give me one good reason for Israel to destroy its nuclear monopoly.

And the writer blames Israel's North Korea-like behavior to the world's loss of faith in the US which supports it, but the reason why the world is loosing faith in the US, especially in 2003 was because of this. Also, Russia and Qatar do a fairly good job at spreading anti-Western agenda worldwide. But NO, the Jews are to blame. We also killed the dinosaurs apparently.

Reaching only half of the aritcle, I really have no interest in continuing to read, it"ll probably be the same things I hear all day. Frankly, most of this article's ideas can be found in comments made by actual anti-semites all accross the internet, which shows exactly the only outcome of this article: to arm ignorants with "rational" arguments to justify their love for roasted Jews. It reminds me of the shameless arguments made by Adolf H... Sorry, by Ilan Pepe, which is amazingly worse than Gideon Levy. (And I really don't mind comparing Pepe to the Furher, he has done the same with me).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:57, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I reread this, and your update. It's all very primitive. I've read 3 books and numerous essays by Tony Judt. You haven't, but have a huge set of opinions about what he studied in profound depth for several decades on the strength of an unfinished glimpse at one article he wrote. As to the bold off-the-cuff adolescent generalizations, like 'Arabs were never a democratic people,' well, a jejune reader of Israel Shahak's books might slip into the temptation of replacing Arabs with 'Jews' above, since Shahak's argument is that the whole emphasis of Jewish religious tradition is theocratic, ethnocentric and anti-democratic. But to do so would be to commit the same error you make, identifying a cultural essence from one thread of tradition and sticking it as a destiny on people ethnically related to it - which is typical of what dyed-in-the-bull nationalists always do. Like it or not, Islamic civilization for 1,300 years has adorned with magnificent architecture and splendid poetry, to speak of just a few things, everywhere from India to Morocco, Sicily and Spain, and any heir to that civilization can feel profoundly in debt to the way that tradition inflected the world, not to speak of the fact that it was the only place Jewish communities thrived for over a millennium free of the lethal hatred and anti-Semitism which the West inflicted on Jews (I know, dhimmitude: yawn). One of my most moving experiences was waking at dawn in Beit Sahour to a muezzin's call over Bethlehem. Israel is now suppressing this inimitable part of the historic landscape of its nook in the Middle East by banning that, too, as 'noise pollution'. I'll copy a passage I once wrote out based on a memoir by a NYT journalist:'A devoutly Christian ancestor of Anthony Shadid, to cite one unforgettable example, lived in a Greek Orthodox village, Marjayoun just north of Palestine, side by side with a small but devout Sunni minority, and on occasion the fellow would ascend the minaret and do the muezzin a favour by sharing the burden and singing out over the town the prayers of his Muslim neighbours. His voice was famous for its sweet, powerful euphony, and the gesture, lending his gift to the faith of a minority, secured a conviviality we can no longer imagine.' This is called tolerance, and it is what is fast disappearing from our collective landscape-Nishidani (talk) 16:12, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I guess you're not interested in getting a tertiary education?Nishidani (talk) 19:51, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I still wonder what would make you assert that. Though maybe I"ll find a better path as a real-estate gambler.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:06, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Because all the above reminds me of myself at 17, before I acquired one of several educations that made me think for myself, rather than being the quickest kid in the schoolyard with a Time magazine or Times of London mastery of every topic. And I seriously thought that I'd do better hitchhiking around the world while washing dishes or herding sheep or whatever was needed for a feed, than absorbing a tertiary educationNishidani (talk) 20:13, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Seems like you never lived in Israel. If you don't go get tertiary education here, unless you are one of a thousand, you would be considered a failiure. We are Jews, what do you think we do? We even have a term called "Khamor Meduplam" which means "a Diplomed Ass". So yes, obviously I am planning to get tertiary education, after I"ll finish occupying Palestinians. I was thinking about taking a history course in a collage before the army, advised by my cousin who now learn criminology, which would not give me a degree (obviously) but would give me a diplome and points for a future degree, but they said I can't do the course until I will be assigned to a spesific role in the army, which had yet to happen and the deadline was reached (with your spesific role you also get your actual enlistment date). After the army I might learn history or law.. I don't know yet and I have some time to think about it.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:50, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I lived and worked in Israel when most Israelis around me had no tertiary degree, and the level of secondary education was lower than it was in the West Bank and Gaza. A tertiary education's neither here nor there: it's useful only for (a) securing a job, which means it really isn't educational, or (b) if you study under a first rate mind or two, in which case, you get an education. Probably (a) is better because it pays bills and makes one feel comfortable, unlike (b) which only gives a return on capital investment after a decade or two.Nishidani (talk) 21:16, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

^Friendly reminder I don't live in Israel but the State of Tel Aviv.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:18, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, and its capital is TAU.Nishidani (talk) 21:22, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Young Bolter21 is very sharp. Evening lads. Irondome (talk) 21:25, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

'Jagged' rather than 'sharp'. 'Sharp' implies 'honed', Simon. If you showed the above obiter d. to a history prof on day one of your sophomore course, you'd walk out of college with a leaky freckle, and it would have nothing to do with politics.Nishidani (talk) 21:31, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Jagged as a broken guinness bottle ready for battle on a saturday night. Irondome (talk) 21:36, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I was exactly Bolter's age when I had a 6 footer, 30 year old drunken hooligan thrust a jagged beer bottle against my throat, threatening to slit it if I moved, and thus forcing me to watch two of his drunken hulking mates beat the shit out of my elder brother simply because he tried to intervene to stop a fight. He had a dislocated jaw, a face completely out of shape. How to hide that from parents? We got up at dawn, went to the beach, and came back saying he'd been hit in the face by a fast surfboard riding a tall comber. It worked.Nishidani (talk) 22:16, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

It's about time to stop the drunken terrorism. It seems the President of the Phillipines is gonna prevent incidents like you had, by killing you instead.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:25, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

So.. what are you doing in Italy, given the fact you were in Japan in the past? I believed you are American/British. If you care to answer.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:21, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

I was in a lot of countries in the past. I'm of Irish descent, mainly. I retired to Italy because it (a) was the cheapest place (b) with half of the artistic patrimony of the world in its little peninsula, within walking or hitchhiking distance (c) they were the only people at the time devoid of nationalistic feelings in the political sense (d) it was a failed nation-state with all of the wisdom of 2,500 years of coping with power elites and surviving their folly (e) where your average Tom, Dick or Harry (Tizio, Caio o Sempronio) had a greater capacity to think for himself, rather than have someone on the radio, or television or in parliament do his thinking for him, as was the case in 'advanced' Anglophone countries and oriental developmental states (f) it has the best food and cuisine in the world, and you can eat as well in a neighbour's house or at home for a few dollars as a millionaire might forking out a few hundred dollars at the Tour d'Argent, (g) it had no pretensions to being anything other than a decent society for anybody who was patient enough to figure out how to get by in the midst of the endless shenanigans of the system. Nothing is taken for granted, which is what the usual idiots in the 'developed world' are socialized to do. Nishidani (talk) 14:27, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

An efficiant human being.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 15:35, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

November's response

Orientalism aside, the first democratic project that worked in the Middle East was in Tunisia, and no one knows if it will last. The Jews established one state and so far, it is still democratic and despite the talks of a Left-Right civil war, it is also stable. The only country in Israel's proximity that can claim the same is maybe Saudi Arabia, but it is the mother of the police states. I am not a big fan of Islamic civilization, and it is not discrminiation, I just didn't find my self reading a lot about the periods between the fall of Rome and the renaissance. I am also not a big fan of the music, oddly I love Baroque and Northeast Asian throat singing, with some love of several Japanese folk songs. I am also not a big fan of their architecture, or architecture in general. And I also don't like Algebra. And "Israel" didn't ban the Mosque's speakers, nor did it even reach a vote in the Knesset. And it doesn't matter if you see it as "beautifull", the speakers did not exist in the days of Muhammad and they are annoying to those who live in their proximity. The hills of Samaria are also beautiful, will we stay in the settlements because of this? As for tolerance, I was subjected to my Orthodox uncle's rules when I visited my grandmother, and I grew to despise Rabbanic Orthodox Judaism. A year ago I realised that I can't take Meretz's approach of condamning Jewish rabbis, while calling for tolorance for Muslims. Speaking of Muslims, I wonder if Palestinians just displaced 1,600 Israelis by burning their rightfull land.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:05, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't take any national genius to establish a small state under multipolar international great power protection, funded by $150 billion dollars from just one source, with watertight guarantees for massive military assistance whenever you get into some difficulty, and friends in the right places virtually everywhere where the key decisions are made. The Palestinians are friendless, treated like shit, from the Ottomans onward, and even have trouble gathering in their olive harvest. We have a another shared interest. I've seen a fair bit of bad behavior, I've even been, or had, close friends threatened, by aboriginal people heirs to ancient angers against the new foreign immigrant majority in their countries. Fortunately, I had exceptionally gifted parents re ethnic sensitivities whose understanding of the hidden shame of 'white' history in Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand was quietly impressed on me from childhood - the lesson was one inimitably versified by Auden

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

That's a great poem to familiarize yourself with, at a certain age. I recite it quite often when walking long miles through big cities.

I was a great fan of Tuvan throat singing after listening to it in a link in a Scientific American article years ago. Every now and then I seek out new performances, but have been disappointed over the last two years. All you get is a sinocentric or nationalist imitation because it is commercially highly popular. But I can still feel the deep chill-thrill of the counterpointed rumbling imitative of mountain waters in the SA article. Like a thousand wonderful things it took 10,000 years to work out, and on, it will go down the tube or end up as a piece of junk in the world's infinite trashheap of memorabilia.ps. Samaria was not part of the Judaic world as that is imagined today. It was a very distinct culture, Samaritan, pagan, and Judaic, but no one's exclusive landscape. I must rush to see van Damme do some massive damage after getting the shit beaten out of him. Somehow doses of the neanderthal negative make my mornings, by abreaction, more lucid. Cheers lad, and take care nowNishidani (talk) 21:38, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I didn't really compare Israel to Palestine, I compared Israel to the entire Arab world. And in your description of Israel's inception you forgot the fact we are talking about mostly 40 years of migration and refuge, that established a complex society, built from people of different cultures and traditions and a stable nation was created, which is still democratic. I don't know many simmilar cases. And the US funding can be cancelled. We receive money from the US in order to buy weapons from the US, but if we were less of a Likudnic Banana Republic, we might"ve created our own weapons, but drastic moves and Israel are two things that don't appear in the same sentence usually. And the funny part about throat singing, is that it opened me to Death Metal.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:07, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

The error is in comparing one nation to a whole civilization. I hope your dislike of Algebra (the modern world arguably began when Descartes reformulated traditional algebra by applying it to the dimension of geometry) doesn't extend to set theory? Nations/states are members of a larger category (think of the difference between hypernym and hyponym by analogy), that of civilizations. There are innumerable books on every nation of the type (America and the world, China and the world, India and the world, and though curious to browse through, they are formulated meaninglessly, since the operative presupposition, comparing one entity in a category to all the other entities in that category, as if the latter constituted a valid object of contrast with the former, is conceptually flawed. It's confounding genus and species, in short, like writing of one sub variety of Felidae like the Chinese mountain cat and arguing about its differences with the rest of the whole genus, bundling up panthers, lynxes, pumas etc. into a contrastive taxonomy. Or to use the analogy from semantics, treating as an intelligible set for contrast, a colour like yellow with all the other shades in the set of 'colour'. Israel is one nation of 200, an offshoot of the family of Western states (subset: colonial enterprise states), whereas the 'Arab world' you refer to is a supranational category, treated as though it were a subset of itself. The error is endemic, even in academia, but commonplace in popular newspaper and opinion, but makes no sense. The premise underlying it is 'exceptionalism', and virtually all books that make this category/subset confusion do so with the assumption that the chosen nation, the US/China/Russia/or in this case 'Israel' is somehow ontologically different from the collective set of nations/ or indeed the general run of all nations in the world. Nation states can be compared structurally, like tribes can me, but you can't compare with heuristic profit one nation state or tribe with all other states/tribes. An anthropologist would get nowhere trying to outline the nature of say the Barasana by using as a contrast Mesoamerican civilization. I have a heavy day of birthday partying and the monstrous pressure of an Italian Sunday dinner ahead and must do some wiki work to justify this excursus in non-wiki pontification. Keep well.Nishidani (talk) 09:07, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

My "Arab thesis" is based mostly on observing 2016s Arab society, as well as reading some articles and talking to no more than ten Arab people in the last 2 years. Surely it can't be applied to the entire Arab world (And I am one of those who refuse to connect my Algerian heritage to "Mizrah". I am "Maghrebi", not "Mizrahi", though I also have Lebanese heritage), and surely it is far from being any close to an academic level, but I still believe in it. The main problem is terminology, and in English I tend to struggle in logically explaining things. While both the speaker and the listener are confident the message is clear, a later look will reveal that the way I explained something was actually wrong. I"ll let it be my excuse for now. As for terminology, I always struggle with "ethnicity", "nationality", "culture" etc. Israeli textbooks, Wikipedia and scholars all say different things. I grew to like the term "mentality". From my observation, it seems that most of the Arab nations are incapable of accepting supreme national authority when it is not oppressing them. You sometimes have to ask, "why is there more crime in the Arab parts of Israel?" Is it soley because they are mostly low class? I think that the lack of cooperation with the police is a major contributer, but another strong factor, is the fact that Arabs don't always make "peace with the establishment". While I think following the law is "moral", they don't always. I remember doing dozens of shifts with a medic called "Muhi" (Muhammad), who is an established Arab man, with wife and chilren, who lives in central Tel Aviv after moving from the Galilee. I had many conversations with him about life, and I saw a difference between the mentality he has in compare to the Jewish medics as well as what I have at home and in school. The things that matter to the avarage Tel Avivian are being intelectual and thinking about a career, while Muhi, as well as the other Arab medics in Magen David Adom cared less about how they"ll make their money, but more about what they will do with the money. Also in their work as medics there was a difference. The Jewish medics talked a lot about doing things properly, following protocols and going by the book, while the Arab medics did everything, as long as it worked. They all did their job successfully, but not "by the book". It has its pros and cons. For example, one of the Arab medics taught me shortcuts in tasks such as preparing an oxygen mask, working the bed and operating in the hospital. Surely when we made CPRs the Arabs followed the protocols and worked by the book, I don't think I need to explain why. The cons of this mentality, is that most of the ambulances were usually messy, and the medics did things I personally can't do, like eating while driving a patient to hospital, or leaving bags of gauzes and sticks used for glucometers. I was able to connect this mentallity to the mentallity interprated from the news coming from Syria and Iraq. I don't like the saying "they are simple people", becuase it will be wrong. They are simple in the eyes of those who live by values originated in Europe, but the Arab people simple have a different mentallity. You can say all about them, but in the reality test, you"ll see that eventually, the Arab man will first fight for his hamula, and his religion, before he will fight for you. Exceptions do exist, Egypt for example, which has expirianced some degree of independence since the 19th century. You can also see Syrians infused with Syrian nationalism, who die fighting for Assad, but you also see the rebels and the rest of the loyalists, who die for the tribe they affiliate themselves with. It can also be seen among the Palestinians, especially in 1948.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 10:50, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

A lot of interesting ancedotes there. I know what you mean: people who live in fucked up states, or in states where they are marginalized as second-raters, have a natural tendency to develop empirical life skills the elite don't think professional. Italy is full of people exactly like the Arabs you describe: nothing's done by the book, because if you do, more often than not, the system will fuck you up, so you play things by ear and learn to think contextually, according to immediate needs. We had a magnificent surgeon at a local hospital for some decades, until it was found out he was the son of a butcher, who forged his qualifications because he couldn't afford a degree. Nothing 'Arab' about that. Put any 'Arab' of talent into a functional society that accepts him, and you'll see him or her qualify and behave along with the best, as any visit to a hospital in England, or the US and you will note no difference in professionalism ethnically. Same in gaza. Those mediocos and ambulance sataff there have been described in detail by many foreign colleagues, and are regarded as miracle-workers in a chronic disaster area where no resources demands ingenuity not according to the book. It's a survival mentality born of systemic insecurity, as opposed to a technical mentality standard among people who are fully integrated into a functional social system. As to crime, the name case is made against American blacks, or Australian aborigines. One day you should read Ernest Gellner's Muslim Society. And now, social obligations require me to don the dominical nose-bag for some hours.Nishidani (talk) 11:14, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

My British-cultured Sephardi grandfather used to annoy his Italian sister-in-law by saying "the Italians are the Arabs of Europe".--Bolter21 (talk to me) 11:31, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

It's a compliment: the Egyptians are the Neapolitans of the Arab world, in that sense. It's one reason why, in military missions, the Italians rarely have the problems gung-ho ideologically primitive states like the US and Israel have. Send them anywhere and they know how to fit in. Lebanon's quiet also because the UN sent in Italian contingents, who know how to make themselves accepted, as they do in Herat Province. When no outsider could step into al-Qaeda held territory, Italians ran their base hospitals there under the direction of a man who deserves a Nobel prize several times over, Gino Strada, head of Emergency. I'm glad to have adopted Italy: anywhere I travel, all I need to do to figure out a problem in any country is to ask some local Italian, and they sort everything out. They save 1,000-2,000 people, Africans, Arabs, you name it, every day in the Mediterranean, bringing them into their ports where they obtain provisional security, unlike 26 of the 28 states in the EU that get hysterical about 'foreigners', 'Arabs' etc. An illegal Senegalese immigrant with no papers dropped down in the streets of Naples, and was ferried to an emergency ward nearby. He had no identification, but the problem emerged that he needed expensive heart surgery. The administration faxed the Health Ministry for instructions and were duly informed that it was the state's obligation to provide health care to anyone requiring it, regardless of circumstances. He had the operation at Italy's expense. They are in this sense one of the few civilized countries in the world (Of course there are political movements here too that are outraged and want to be xenophobic - perhaps they will win out, but in the meantime, this tradition of 'mediterranean' values, not Nordic racist efficiency and cost-benefit analysis, prevails).Nishidani (talk) 15:23, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

In any case with all the Sephardic, Maghrebi, French etc. mixtures in your background Stav, you are primarily everything from that multiplex of cultures, histories and backgrounds, plus, of course, your unique self. That kind of identity is more complex than any petty formal documentation about what state claims for you. Jewish heritage should not be reduced to some 'Israeli' boiler-plate or mononational melting pot: Israel's heritage should be expanded by recognizing the plethora of identities always available to the far-flung cosmopolitan fraternities and sororities of 'Jews'. Nishidani (talk) 15:32, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

The positive traits that you have attributed to Italians can also be attributed to practically all humans everywhere on the planet, today and throughout the history of human civilization. This includes, but is not limited to, Israeli Jews, Israeli non-Jews, Palestinians, Arabs, etc., as well-as non-Mediterranean Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc... People are fundamentally good. We generally prefer to help each other and build each other and develop each other. We are built to instinctively feel we are all brothers and sisters, basically, and to feel deep enjoyment when we do good deeds for each other without expecting any payment (financial or otherwise) in return. Ijon Tichy (talk) 14:22, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

The reason to why this approach will never work is exactly the reason why this approach is wrong. Humans are not fundementaly good. We are creatures who murder and genocide. You can either face it, or not think about it, but trying to change that will end in the consumption of your values by some other one's values, who are strong. I once saw a post saying that there is an uninevitable cycle, in which harsh times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create harsh times. We are heading towards harsh times in the West, when all of our theories and values will crumble in front of our faces. One of the things I see is the emergence of the mockingly nicknamed Social Justice Warriors, which is a broad term that today defines the 21st century's Identity politics such as Third and Fourth-wave feminism, Black Lives Matter as well as broken versions of Progressivism and excessive Political correctness. All of these movements are have parallels to Marxism, in the way they are a loud minority of the population that demands the entire society to submit to their values and should you not, you are a "mysoginist", "rape-apologist", "anti-woman", "racist", "fascist", "regressive", "islamophobe", "homophobe", "transphobe". In the US in particular, they might condamn you for being a "white heterosexual male" and if you don't submit to their values, they will claim you don't understand what does it means to be "poor", "discriminated" or "hated" because you are a "white heterosexual male". It is not a coincidence that many of those movements are accosiated with Cultural Marxism.

The outcome of those movements will be the end of western civilization, as the western values that held it togather will crumble and it will be consumed by madness and stupidty, which are the traits found in Radical-Left and Radical-Right. If you go by the path of Social Justice Warriorism, you will either end up with a failing society, caused by all of the non-issues raised by the SJW, or else you will cause the Far-Right Wing to rise and destroy the society in a different way.

When either of the scenarios will happen, the people who thought humans are fundementaly good, will realise the huge amount of bad humans that were created by the current reality. Just look at the protests in response to Donald Trump's election.

In Israel and Palestine we kill as part of a conflict, because we are having a harsh time. In the US they are in the "good time" period, and their humane instinct made them search for conflict, and they found it in attacking Trump or Hillary supporters. The same somewhat happened in Israel. In the 90s we had quite a good time, while the Palestinians had a bad time, causing them to start the intifada. The developments in Israel, caused by the fact we were no longer threatened by Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria have led to the explosion of the conflict with the Palestinians, as a Prime Minister was murdered and the peace attempt failed, leading to the Second Intifada and the wars in Gaza.

One period of good time was the preset to the death of thousands. It was once said that the best way to destroy Israel is to make peace with it.

We can argue all day, if I am right or wrong when I say we shoudl acknowlege it as an inevitable fact, but only time will judge.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 16:30, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry to have to make this annotation, B, but nothing you wrote would be interpreted in any other way by the classical theorists of the state, liberals mostly, than as a somewhat garbled rehash of Fascist rhetoric. This is one area where I have extensive competence regarding the literature on the 20s and 30s in several states. It only shows you read a lot of internet talk in this putatively post-ideological world, stuff filtered down from Breitbart.com per Steve Bannon, or Ayn Rand websites (might rules the world: the chattering classes are wimps), to give it an 'improving' name. They key is that, in a world of complex geopolitical, financial and social upheavals, you target a small number of 'leftist' cultural 'whingers' as the cause of our contemporary blindness, when, for all the attention they get in a certain vein of the media, that have zero impact, on society, on politics, on general opinion. We saw this in the 1920s,30s, with societies in distress raging about cosmopolitanism (Jews and broadscale thinkers, who had little impact, and in the so-called Culture wars of the 1980s-90s, all intensely boring) I might add that you make an error in saying 'we' in the West. Israel is not a Western society, at least yet, though it is true that Western societies might succumb to the temptation of becoming more like Israel, i.e., abolishing 200 years of political history, social engineering and thought in order to refurbish themselves in an updated version of the old authoritarian pre-enfranchised societies of the 1800s. If so, anti-Semitism will revive as anti-Islamism, and perform exactly the same function that anti-Semitism did in the reactionary strata, elitist and popular, down to the 1930s. And lastly, Identity politics is what Israel, and its claim on the diaspora has been about, with almost unparalleled, intensity for its national mindset, since the late 1960s, compared to which the movements you name are piddling. Nishidani (talk) 17:40, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I sometimes consider Israel as West and sometimes not, but one thing is sure, in Israel we share more values with the West than most countries in the world, even though the opinions, mentallity and culture are differnet. So in this context I would regard Israel as western. And while you make this annotation about this comment I made on the Left, I havent even started talking about the Right. I"ll remind you that while the source of "blindness" in Europe comes from the leftist governments, in Israel it actually comes from the Right Wing government. Sadly the Left in Israel has succumbed to the Right, and suddenly the Labour Party defines it self as "centirst" becuase they don't want to sound "Leftist". The Labour Party, which used to fight for separation of state and religion, suddenly tries to convince religious people that they are on their side. The outcome is that the only real Leftist party is Merertz, which I personally hate, as they are too Far-Left for me. A simmilar things happens in Germany. The Left controls the country, and condamns all right wing parties as being too nationalistic and.. the N word. The right wing parties succumb to the Left generaliztion and the outcome is that the only parties that remain a real alternative to the Left are the Far-Right wing parties. In Israel the situation is different than in Germany, becuase in Israel we did not have anything equivelent to the Migrant Crisis and in Israel elections are on political tribalism and not on policy since 2009, but there are parallels. It was tempting to say I am Right-Wing, becasue of my opposition to the Left (and not "centre-left"), but I can't identify with most of the things represanted by the Right, in Israel and in the world. I am one of those people who will argue with anyone, and I would think it is an addiction unless I found out that there are people with whom I actually agree almost on anything. When I argue with you Nishidiani, or with IjonTichy, I say things that are "somewhat garbled rehash of Fascist rhetoric", when I argue with Right-Wing people, I am suddenly a "blind leftist".

I assumed while writing, but forgot to explain it, that you would understand from my comment that I support the state of war and the idea of "strong men", but I don't. I just think it is inevitable and we are not here to prevent it, but here to limit and supress it as much as we can. I don't think that an all-out-war with the Palestinians is something that can be prevented, it will happen in the future. And if not, one day, in the next century, more or less, Israel will collapse, just like every other state in the world. When we determine the policy today, we also determine the setting for the future, and a Third World War, or a massive economic criris, or overcorruption might happen, but we have the tools to delay it and go around it, to move towards the next threat. Every step in the right direction, gurantees another century of prosperity to the society. I think that the developments in the US are a step in the wrong direction, when the society deals with non-issues, like the sex of the President or his colour. I also think that legalizing Amona is a step in the wrong direction as well as the appointment of Miri Regev as the Minister of Culture and Sport.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:11, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Nothing's inevitable: to think so is to assume god's prescience. Whatever the big picture, one does, every day, in the smallest of routines, affect it, by one's exercise of choice, one's manner with others,etc. I have a darker picture than you of the future, I can afford to, since I won't be there. It's hard enough for anyone raised in the 'good' period of the post-war era not to, having seen what societies can do when they go through the washer, end up comprehending evil, and work to the common good, which means allocative democracy, not market plutocracy as we have now. The fantasy of an all-out-war with the Palestinians is just that. There is zero interest in that among Palestinians, except as a coffee set-piece of exasperative mouthing off. Israel gets hysterical about Hamas, which in 2014 threw back, mostly into the desert a massive 40 tons of explosive on 4,000 'missiles' (read fizzle rockets and mortars) while Israel unleashed 20,000 tons. That is the scale of the disparity, the 'existential threat'. It's all Saderot cinema, really, this panicky apocalypse. What Israel appears to find totally relentlessly disgusting about Palestinians is that they can take that, and more, for several decades, and still not fuck off. You can't get their 'respect' and submission as a people. There society is so thoroughly penetrated by your services that dossiers exist, and informants supply information, on virtually every household. Nothing can happen there without someone hearing of it. If such a thing happened, it would do so only because Israel decided to adopt some pretext to finish the issue and clean out the West Bank, as it thought of doing by negotiating with Egypt to expel the Gazans into the Sinai recently Nishidani (talk) 18:39, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I think we"ve got to the point where I start not agreeing with myself, something I hate to admit, which means I talked too much without thinking with myself. Anyway, I"d like to remain on one point, of the all-out-war between Israel and the Palestinians. I stay on Israel's side obviously, and comdamn the Palestine just like every "good boy" would do, but seeing the developments with the Jewish Home party as well as the shiting of the Likud from the original Right wing policies to the Religious Zionism policies, I am sure that one of the main reasons why peace will not come is the fundementalism of the Religious Zionists movement in Israel. Seeing how they treat Amona, a crappy illegal outpost of caravans on private Palestinian land, I can't imagine what will happen when they will force the evacuation of Kiryat Arba, a settlement of more than 5,000 people which has 3,800 years of Jewish connection (whether you believe in Abraham or not, and I don't). In 2008 the evacuation might have happened, but in 2016 it surely can't, after Cast Lead, Protective Edge, the Silent Intifada and the Intifada of Individuals, the Israeli society is too loaded to support the Two-State Solution. The change is not in the number of seats in the parliament, but in the de facto power. The Left in Israel is crumbling and if a new Kadima won't apear in the next two years, it might be too late, because Naftalie Bennet is holding the furher in the balls and most certainly return to his power of more than 10 seats as he had in 2013. Israel is today ruled by the Religious Right wing, what we in the Left like to call "a minority of fanatics". I am able to blame the Palestinians for that, but most of all I blame the Left, and after seeing all of my friends and family supporting the Left in 2006, 2009 and 2013, a year ago I have withdrew my ancestral support.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:43, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I've never understood what 'leftist' means in most societies. Americans call them 'liberals', liberals are right-wingers in England and Australia. I see a lot of perceptive decent Israelis but no party that could be called 'leftist' in the old sense. Zionism was basically socialism+colonialism - go figure how that works out in terms of gauche/droit! a Not that that matters. Even a murderous fascist prick like Sharon could withdraw from Gaza.

3,800 years of Jewish connection (Kiryat Arba). Just a small thing, but I keep seeing that 3,800-4,000 figure arise all over the Israeli press, or from your PM and various mouthpieces. I mean, really, everyone can do elementary math. 2000+800 means 2,800. Why tack on the extra millennium, back so far when Jews didn't exist? The Jewish presence in Hebron (I basically wrote the article) goes back to the 8th century. Then after 2 centuries, with the exile, it became an Edomite/Arab territory basically, and stayed that way. Whatever Jews remained there or settled there, were never more than a handful of families, esp. over the last 5 centuries when it was repopulated. Most of those families are disgusted with the Yanky mob who made claims fore repossession in their name, one even transferred his property title to the Hebron municipality in 1974. Kiryat Arba had zero religious significance. Nishidani (talk) 18:13, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

To me the damn "mount" with the germy wall, full of Haredi cells and letters containing plagues and emberassing wishes has no significance. I would be happy if we would just take a D9 and raze the entire mount, regardless of which stone is claimed by which religion. The 3,800 years of Jewish connection, is based on the biblical story, call it a tradition. While I care more about the sacrafice of the residents of people, the fact that Kiryat Arba is the wannabe Jewish Hebron is also important, and people will not accept its dismantlement.

Speant three days in the West Bank, I even had the oppertunity to take a picture of Ramallah from Psagot.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:39, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

The Palestinians did not accept the expropriation of 50,000-80,000 houses and properties they owned in Israel in 1948. All West Jerusalem was Arab property. In every peace negotiation Israel has accepted in principle (though the US and EU would pay) that compensation is due to the Palestinians for the 'dislocation' caused by Israel's foundation. Jews had 6% of the property/land in Palestine in 1947, the UN plan gave them sovereignty over 56% and a few months of war they got 78%. 'Not enough! More, more! cheap. All you need is to scream 'terrorism!' Arabs! existential threat!!,' shoot a bit, and you get another 100 sq.kilometres of property on the real estate market at a pittance, ready to be given to immigrants .The infrastructure at Kiryat Arba is an obvious recompense: but it is not important. No one objects to that, really. It's the 800 religious dingbats and racists inside Hebron proper that should be expelled from the West Bank, so that the city can resume its normal life, and 30,000 Arabs return to the central market area.Of course, this won't happen.Nishidani (talk) 11:31, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Ready to be given to immigrants? The apartment prices rose in 80% since 2008 becuase the Israel Land Administration does not release the +90% of Israel they own. Seriously now, the Palestinians had nothing to say in the expropriation of their houses. The residents of Kiryat Arba are going to make sure there will be pools of blood before anyone will try to first evacuate them. And yet there is no connection between the events of 1948 and the event of a peace agreement between Israel and the PLO. What you said reminded me of the argument made by the return plan of the Palestine Land Society, which gives the only existing plan (I know of) that actually describes the Palestinian return. According to them, the decendents of refugees from the Gaza Strip will be populated in the northern part of the Negev. How? By kicking all 140,000 "rural Jews" and settling the million + Palestinians in the rural areas. What is their excuse? "They had no right to be there in the first place". Norman Finkelstein once said about the BDS that they think they are very smart, when they say they want to turn Israel into a binational state, end the occupation and allow the right of return, but when they go outside and meet with Israelis who say "what about us?" they have nothing to say, and thus it is a cult. You can't say that "Kiryat Arba" has no significance and dance with historical records and create analogies with the events of 1948, trying to create a moral thesis. What matters is not the morallity of the actions, but their implication. You cannot go to Kiryat Arba with D9s, history books and moral arguments and expect thing to go well. Those people don't care about your opinion, this is their home, whether you think they deserve it or not, and I have no sympathy to the residents of Kiryat Arba, which is the Neve Shalom of the Far-Right wing (by the way wouldn't it be hillarious if the country will decide to give Neve Shalom to the Palestinians in a peace deal?). The residents of Kiryat Arba and Hebron are the fascists of Israel, but they are there, and when the time will come to evacuate them, you won't be able to tell them "it is for peace" or "yeah uh, the Palestinians also made concessions in 1948". You are going to face your (my) own people and fight them. Is an Israeli civil conflict more moral to you than the end of the occupation? Just like what is written in my userpage, I care the most about the right of people to live in dignitiy and bring children, and I should add that I also care about the children, I don't care about morallity or human rights as long as they prevent these two basic functions of human beings. So far the democratic tribalism works and if we (both nations) had different leaders, it might have been better for the Palestinians even without an end to the occupation, at least like it was back in the 70s and early 80s.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 13:40, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Dunam by dunam is the only logic here. In 1878, on the eve of the first pogroms that awoke Zionism, 95% of Palestine was Muslim-Christian. By the time of the Balfour Declaration, Jews were still less than 10%. Technically, the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations declared Mandatory powers were to oversee those countries until independence was achieved. This was, singularly, to be denied to the Palestinians. By 1947, the Jews were 30-32%, and the Partition Plan gave, uniquely, this 30% sovereignty over 56% of the land, of which they owned a scarce 6% of. It was thoroughly rational for all the Arab countries to reject this Great Power proposal as a form of violent expropriation of rights and territories, and to see it as (a) anti-Semitic (b) colonialist. It was anti-Semitic because, having exterminated 5,3 million Jews, Europe washed its hands of blame, and set up a system incentivating the transfer of its surviving Jews beyond its frontiers, to the Middle East where the notion of genocide, despite all the gung-ho rhetorical manipulations of the historical record, Jews had never suffered the kind of ontological theological odium and social massacres they were exposed to in their Western diaspora (b) demanding that the Palestinians pay the blood price for Western genocide.So in 1948, war broke out between Israel and Palestinians, with a fiction of 5/6 Arab armies invading. Well, the war was just on 2 fronts: Israel no more respected the Partition Plan than did its enemies, though Pasha Glubb fought fundamentally to defend the territory assigned to Palestinians, while Egypt fought from the south. Israel won 78& of the land, and expelled or expedited the ethnic purge of 700,000 Palestinians. 13,000 disappeared, presumed dead in the conflict. In 1967 told by the best informed services in the West that in the eventuality of war, Israel would conquer all fronts within 6-10 days, Israel chose war, and ended up with 100%+the Golan Heights, which was, as we know, more or less the basic game plan, minus Lebanon south of the Litani. The Palestinians are 6 million, the Jews are 6 million. The choice is obvious: one can trash rhetorical feelings of 'guilt' i.e., Ari Shavit's 'dark secret at the heart of Zionism' and simply address the simple question. Is it in Israel's long-term interests retain all of the excuses, playing on ambiguities for not acting unilaterally to impose peace by allowing that the country has legally 78% of a land it had no legal title to originally, or is it worth while keeping up the façade of wanting a deal, while nabbing incrementally or strangling most of the 6-million thick 22% where Palestinians live?Nishidani (talk) 16:14, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

And what if the Jews gave up the vast Negev Desert? David Ben-Gurion was one of the only people who wanted to maintain the Negev, many other Jewish leaders didn't mind that Transjordan will take the Negev despite the fact it was part of the Jewish State, becuase they didn't want to fight Transjordan. If UNSCOP decided to give the Negev Desert to the Palestinians would you be pleased? And what reason would be to respect a partion plan that can't happen? The Arabs refused and declared a war, the Jews didn't have to sit and think "let's do it moral", they had to fight to determine the future. And for as for the Likud trapping the 4~ million Palestinians in the 22%, the credit can go to the Second Intifada.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 17:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

It's not a matter of asking 'the Jews' by which you mean Israel's political parties, to give up any part of Israel, or to rake over the past, esp. when the past is so controversial (you have a weird, to me, understanding of why the Second Intifada broke out - it broke out because the Oslo Accords set 1998 as the date whereby a permanent settlement of outstanding issues was to be resolved based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Nothing happened. Netanyahu would not budge at the time - he, like his father, never believed in the idea that eretz Israel was negotiable, not an inch.

It's simply a matter of deciding if appetite to land has a limit. The Palestinians have never had a say in anything in their land since 1917. The British, the French, the US, the Great powers, the Jewish Agency, decide. Palestinians have had to accept what is decided by outsiders. When George Bush was president, I think in 2006, one memoirs recounts that in the White House as some policy initiative for peace was being mulled over, 6 advisors, including Dennis Ross, sat agonizing at the table. All 6 were Jewish - policy was decided without even one outside or independent voice being allowed to give input. They were all, Americans, of course, but the policy reflected the profound attachment to Israel of the advisory body, uncontroverted by any input from the other side.

The failure to understand why giving immigrants a lockdown on 56% of the land when they owned 6% of it, and were 3/10ths of the population, was unacceptable to Arabs, - it would be unacceptable to any negotiating party in any similar conflict because the minority settlers were given an outsized portion of territory with respect to their numbers- that is the problem. If you had an apartment block, most of which was owned and lived in by your kin, and were told that, by a certain date, they would be renting half of it from the 30% minority, to whom majority title had been handed over by a foreign authority, neither you nor any other rational actor would accept that force majeure. You'd fight, like any reasonable person looking at their interests, to retain the traditional rights of inheritance. The Palestinians weren't trapped by Likud in 22%, they were trapped there in 1967, long before Likud's grip on power.

You can't have it both ways: be raised on Jewish victim stories of the valiant if doomed struggle by zealots to redeem Judea from Roman imperialism, from 70 down to Bar-Kochba, and then adopt the Roman Imperial perspective in discussing Palestinian resistance today to the loss of their homeland by an imperial, colonial power they regard with some reason as an intruder. You can't be reared on stories of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, as a profound historic injury to your ancestors 2,600/2000 years ago, and then find totally beserk the same attitude among Palestinians fearing for the loss of Al-Aqsa. The essence of Zionism is to sustain itself by a myth of a past injury, which is to be redeemed, while denying Palestinians a right to exactly the same order of feelings, a sense of a past and ongoing displacement, dispossession and loss of everything they have had because a superior immigrant power, albeit one now legitimately entrenched in an unalienable part of former Palestinian land, appears to want everything, from East Jerusalem to the waters of the Samarian-Judean hills.

My mind works by analogy and equality: the whole Palestinian cause against Israel is identical to that of the Jews pitted against the Romans. A Zionist education treats this analogy, precise down to minute details, as a taboo: Bar-Kochba dug tunnels to fight a guerilla war against the Dacian/Greeks/Macedonians etc., who all shared the one identity (Romans) and youth read of the war rooting for the lost cause of the local population (as I did as a boy). Then dropping the history book, they open a page of Ynet, The Times of Israel, and read of a native population of zealots and sicarii, Hamas, digging tunnels against an army constituted by descendents of an aliyah population of Maghrebi, Russians, Ethiopians, Poles, French, Yemenis, etc.etc., and are shocked at the madness and vileness of the indigenes fighting them. 'terrorists!' 'Islamic fanatics'. Well, that's exactly how Roman literature describes participants in the Jewish uprising - murderous, god/Torah-intoxicated religious fanatics. It's crazy. Nishidani (talk) 18:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

The Palsestinians wanted all of the land, and while they have the right to demand, it is worthless to portray the Palestinians' decision to go to war as a decision followed by discontent by the partition plan's map. No map would keep them content The Palestinians repeated the same rhetoric until the very day of the vote in the UN: "The line of separation will be no other than a line of fire and blood", as said by Jamal Husseini to the Palestine Committee 5 days before the vote. The Arab League also opposed any kind of partition, even a confederation of small cantons. They opposed every compromise, and this approach leads to devastation. The same approach is now used by the Far-Right wing in Israel and so far it led to the assasination of Rabin, the killings of 29 Muslim worshipers and a wave of brainwashed millenials which will receive the right to vote in a few years. On the Palestinian side it led to more campagins against Israel as well as Jordan and Lebanon, all ended in disaster for the Palestinians. The first time the Palestinians faced a real success was when they were willing to compromise, in 1993.

The Palestinians did not accept the plan not becuase they wanted the colonialists out. The Palestinians didn't accept the plan becuase they wanted to rule and the colonialists were a target. Obviously they weren't expected to accept the Jewish precense, but it is hard to say that until 1947 the Jewish presence was negative. The "Palestinians" in that context are the Arab Higher Committee and the Husseini bloc. They wanted to rule. It is no secret that many Arab men were more indifferent to the partition, prefering to join Transjordan's Arab kingdom, but I am not going to believe that most of the fellaheen cared more than what their leaders could make them. The peasents (I don't know if this word is an insult or not) supported the Islamic leadership of the mufti and followed him because they were simple people, like the voters of Shas, but most of all they cared about their income, which they believed will improve once they will have their own state, as preached to them since the 19th century and the days of WWI and the Great Arab Revolt. The Arab people care first about their families, then their clan/hamula and only then their national or religious affiliation. If the Nashashibis handled the situation, there might"ve been no Nakba and even better, if the Arabs accepted the partition plan, today there was no Jewish state but instead, the Husseinis took the power and started a war, which will turn out is one of the most embarrassing defeats in history, caused mostly by arrogance

But again, I don't think those analogies, as well as the Bar Kohva one (and as I"ve been told, Bar Kohva is exactly the example of a bigoted idiot who brought devastation on his people) will serve me while dismantling Kiryat Arba. To you it is justice, standing from the side, and I would also want to see justice in many other places in the world, but to me, the dismantlment of Kiryat Arba is not justice, it is to sever the foot while the entire leg is already contaminated and I don't have access to a bondage or antibiotics.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 19:29, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

It's pointless. Your ears and eyes are thoroughly drenched in the stories told among Israelis, in Israel. There is nothing above that shows any independent thinking about these historical circumstances. Indeed, I wouldn't expect this to be the case. You said you begin to disagree with yourself, often. I can remember when, two years older than you, according to third parties, I was said to have made a 'dazzling' reply to an American woman, regarding the Middle East, who had criticized the Jews slightly. I spoke at speed for an hour. A friend complimented me. Back in my room, I thought to myself: 'Really. The lady hadn't read Newsweek and Time Magazine recently and I have, and it all sticks in my memory, and I just recited what I'd read, and have impressed bystanders because they hadn't either, didn't realize I was mouthing with accurate recall a series of second hand opinions. But fuck it: I've never been there' (I decided to go that evening) Well, in disagreeing with you, I am disagreeing with myself as I once tended to 'think', at your age. No condescension. And no implication an old man like myself knows better, or that you will change your mind in time. The only advantage I have is a half century of reading, and being able to see, in an argument like this, if my interlocutor has stepped out of the standard paradigm, or not. Stepping out of it can lead in all sorts of directions, and it would be improbable if you ambled, once out of the magic circle of memes, my way. But I do hope that you find your own distinctive voice: it's very hard in any circumstances, esp. in any intense discursive climate. Nishidani (talk) 19:49, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

I am not excited by what you said. I was told that same thing by people on many different subjects, including opposing settlements, religion and consevatism. You don't know what I am told in Israel, a mere 1% of all of our discussion is much more than what the avarage Israeli in my area cares about. An Israeli observing this discussion will say that I stand silence as you bash the natural right of the Jewish people to Israel and Hebron, and that I let you say lies like "the Jews kicked the Arabs and had no right to the land". I was never taught to try and read about the Palestinian narrative and the newspaper I read the most is Ha'aretz, which is also the only newspaper that actually talks about history. In school my final grade in History was 7/10 which is garbage and in the test itself there was only one question out of 16 about the War of Independence. The narrative in Israel is not really taught. Today instead of teaching a narrative, they teach nothing, they want the public to be less connected to the past and remember only what they want them to remember: the Holocuast. None of my peers know about the Second Intifada which they lived through, the Six Day War or the Palestinian Authority. Most of my knowlege was from reading in English rather than in Hebrew and this is how I got to the English Wikipedia, because the Hebrew Wikipedia is uncredible and poor. Recently I started reading books, namely Independence Versus Nakba and The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (2004) which I am reading right now as well as two unrelated books I plan on reading this after I"ll finish with the Nakba (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, you probably read or heard about it, and another book about prehistoric Canaan). But I am not in a position to try and outsmart you with what I read yesterday, I simply respond to your comments with what's on my mind, I am confident enough to do that.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:33, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

You don't have to prove anything to me. You have a fine mind, and an intense curiosity, that was obvious from the beginning. If you want to understand Benny Morris's book the way it is never read, get a very good map, blow it up, and put all the dates of incidents in, with the reference grid the map of Israel as drawn by the Partition Plan. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 21:02, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

And, exploiting an add break in Denzel Washington's Man on Fire, thanks for ssuggesting I read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. His remarks re agriculture is not dissimilar to a lecture I gave last year.Nishidani (talk) 21:52, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Does any stalker here have unlimited wiki Jstor access

I will need quite a few articles from Jstor if I am to get through the creation of stubs or articles covering all aboriginal groups. I recall wiki gave editors who applied for it unlimited access to Jstor to this end, and would appreciate some indication as to how I can go about getting this material. Thanks Nishidani (talk) 14:12, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

There currently is a waitlist for JSTOR, you can check it out at Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library/Databases#General_research and selecting JSTOR and inserting your name for approval. If you look at the top of your watchlist, you should see a list of other items that are currently being offered that might work as well. 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 20:31, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Sir Joe. I realized this just after making this request and put my name down, as you can now see. Fingers crossed, now that I've pulled mine out to do my own work rather that batten on others' time and energy.Nishidani (talk) 20:48, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Have you looked into Open Edition? They have social sciences journals available. 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 20:49, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Just now, but I really need to focus on anthropology and linguistic specialist journals, and I can't see the major ones listed. I intended to be an anthropologist, but, like my other option, Icelandic, my first university didn't teach it. This is one way of retouching that old interest.Nishidani (talk) 20:59, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Same here, if I can go back in time and switch colleges and majors... 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 21:04, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Nishidani, while you're waiting, you can always post a request for specific articles at WP:REX. --NSH001 (talk) 21:39, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Note that one of the advantages of making requests at WP:REX is that you won't be imposing on any individual editor. Anyone who wants to can come along and answer your request there. --NSH001 (talk) 22:47, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

That indeed is an excellent suggestion, and staves off the incipient nightmare of guilt about imposing myself on just a few editors. I have an important article by Rodney Needham which looks necessary if I am to do the article stubs on Kaantyu people and Wikmunkan I've been thinking about the last week or so. I'll drop a request there now. Thanks. Nishidani (talk) 22:52, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Happy to ?email? any articles on JSTOR you need, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 21:46, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to request articles by email. I have immediate access to most of JSTOR and almost-immediate access to the rest. Zero^talk 21:51, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks indeed, chaps. I'm rather timid about this, because the scale of the project means that I'll be vexatiously voracious or rather exigent. I'll mull this over, and probably start badgering by email tomorrow, on the condition that anyone offering to assist take their time. I'm thinking in terms of a few articles a day for a year, which would be an outrageous burden on your time, so the more people who can assist the better. The condition I will impose on myself to put a measure of restraint on these calls is, to never ask for another article or two until I have paraphrased the contents of any prior one requested thoroughly on the given tribal article. Nishidani (talk) 21:59, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

If anyone has access to the Worldmark encyclopedia of ethnic groups or similar reference works which might cover the topics, they might be useful as well. I know that a lot of the references they use are in foreign languages, and in a lot of cases there isn't much in English about them, but it might be possible to go to resource exchange and ask for them anyway, maybe putting them on a cloud where someone who can read the language can offer a translation of what it says, John Carter (talk) 18:06, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Also, of course, you yourself could request that database, and any number of others, at Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library/Databases. I have a feeling with your history you would be approved rather easily. John Carter (talk) 23:25, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

There's a huge amount of material available just through Jstor, enough to cover the basics in the 400+articles I hope to set up, and I'd do best to restrict myself to that. Thanks John.Nishidani (talk) 14:56, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Agreed with John Carter, you should easily be able to get access. That said, you're also welcome to email me if you need any articles from JSTOR. I JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 04:04, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

You're asking for trouble!:) Several Jstor wikipedian accessors have been extremely helpful, and though I've applied for direct access, I'm just dumb enough to screw things up if I were given it - if it involves anything technical. And, I don't trust myself - I'd probably just eviscerate Jstor downloading all day, and use that as an excuse not to get up, off my arse, and actually read up, day by day, on specific tribes. Thanks for the offer, which I'll certainly abuse as moderately as my mania allows! Nishidani (talk) 14:56, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Right now, Jstor accounts are frozen apparently. I do from previous experience know that HighBeam, which I previously had a one-year free subscription to, includes more or less all the Thomson-Gale reference works, including a lot of sociological and regional ones, and god knows how many additional works, including a large number of magazine and journal articles. Some of the others will have a lot of material available as well. Even if the Jstor accounts are frozen right now, you would probably be able to get a good start on a lot of content on your own through one or more of those other subscriptions. I was surprised with the 30 or 40 works which came up searching for Tengri, on just that single database, for instance. John Carter (talk) 16:45, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Hamas EU discussion

I opened a thread on the NPOV noticeboard to get more feedback re our discussion on the EU litigation content. Drsmoo (talk) 01:21, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

There's something that might take two hours from your life

enjoy. As I said, I really can't do it, due to systemic bias and suspection.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 17:57, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Do what? No 'suspicion' surrounds your presence here, in any case. You have a strong bona fides all round, and if you want to do something, I'm sure you're not going to hit a wall of obtuse objections, as opposed to reasoned discussion. Best regards, lad.Nishidani (talk) 21:36, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

• Pakistais attackand Uri —> Pakistanis attacked Uri
• Pakistanis capture Badgam and serround Srinager's airport. Indians withdraw from Pattan to Shalateng. Gilgit serround Skardu and reach Gurais. —> surround
• Indians advace to Gurais —> Indians advance to Gurais
• etc, etc,
• User:Bolter21; sorry to say so, but you are even a worse speller than me...Huldra (talk) 21:45, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

As a child I thought of writing a history of the world, and got up a notebook and put in all dates of events, and births etc., that came my way. I dropped the habit when a new history teacher came, a Frenchman, who explained in a half hour's lesson the significant economic, social, cultural interconnections linking up everything from the Hanseatic league to the fall of Constantiniple and the Indian spice trade. I.e. facts are meaningless, unless contextualized within the dynamic forces that shape history. (I didn't quite kick the habit. I wrote a book on each element of the Mendeleev table. I learnt several years later, that most kids in the class were better employed learning to wank, which they picked up by figuring out a hint dropped by a priest about never touching velvet in your mother's sewing case. They were illumined, and I?, I was all wrapped up in writing up the history of Alluminium. In other words, Stav, on reading your page I recalled these personal failings from my personal dark ages and the dictum that relieved me later of those obsessions, i.e. Goethe's Das Höchste wäre, zu begreifen, daß alles Faktische schon Theorie ist.Nishidani (talk) 21:55, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Now, are you trying to make my work here seem useless? Well, I guess you are right, in a way. It still beats knitting, though....(as I'm an old lady... and not a young man....) Huldra (talk) 22:06, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

@Nish: I had some fear you won't understand, though you might've had and I am just a bad reader, but it is a list of all the violent incidents mentioned in Ma'an. I hardly read any of the articles, I only read the titles. I am not being suspected, I suspect instead. I can't trust Ma'an and everytime I try to add something from there I find myself searching for the incident in another source other than Ma'an because I simply can't trust this website. (And I consciously wrote "I can't trust this website" twice"). I have tried though, but I fail to spend less than 10 minutes on every incident (let alone the English barrier). I will just misinclude incidents.

@Huldra: That list wasn't intended to be shown to anyone, it is just a timeline of the changes in the map of the 1947 Indo-Pakistani war I was making and never got to finish.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:59, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

And I don't make lists of history anymore, I make maps out of them. Here's a recent example, try to find a typo here. And yes, there was the oil crisis and the loss of a thrid of the Israeli airforce and the Egyptians misleading to Syrians and the Soviets by only pushing a few kilometers deep and the Syrians failing at anything and an Israeli guy with a few tanks stopping an entire division of Syrian tanks etc. but that isn't the point, so don't be like my dad, and ask why didn't I write about these.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:05, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

User:Bolter21; you know, in large parts of the world, (including where I live) 18 years old have their thoughts on anything...but war. Yes, those videos are very cleverly done,.....and they make me extremely sad, Huldra (talk) 22:13, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking at wars, either in pictures or in reports makes me feel like visitng the safari. When I am shown videos Syrians in Aleppo, I don't really feel anything. The more upsetting things are Russian and Syrian propagandas denying the pictures. Sure when I see videos of "war" between some soldiers and thieves, and a just rule of law I feel a pinch due to the nationallity of the people involved but that's just because I am a racist scrub.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:21, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Plenty of 18-year-olds are involved in warfare throughout the world. It just that conscription is not universal in the West and western militaries have become politicized as fixtures of the right. You cannot have a large standing army in the West or anywhere else without young poorly payed 18-year-old privates.

Bolter21 I will tell you this. When you join the IDF don’t be too idealistic.Jonney2000 (talk) 00:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Could you elaborate? I had to figure out what exactly "idealistic" means (They didn't teach that in school, but at least I can name three reasons to the rise of the Nazis). So from the 4 minutes I invested in reading in my laggy phone, I can say that I am pretty materialistic ever since I learned chemistry in school and started telling people "yo you are just chemical and physical reactions moving atoms and when you eat you just resupply your body with more molecules" (it would sound more complicated if I wanted it to).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 01:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Stav, and sorry for missing what you thought was the main point. I looked at the whole site. You've given me food for thought, and I'll get back chewing over it during my 2 hourly breakfast excursion this morning.Nishidani (talk) 08:20, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I missed your objective intent, mainly because every day I have to read a few hundred pages of the several thousand downloaded from 19th century books on the Aborigines, of which, when it comes to editing, so far, I have only made one minor footnote. So I was rather tired. In any case, rather than ferret out your intention, I looked over the whole blog, for the 'style' of thinking.

You just meant:'I can't handle the Ma'an crap (No objection:It parallels perfectly my own sense for more than a decade that any luminary writing on behalf of Zionism in any number of a dozen news outlets or journals I read, switches off his brain, ratchets down his intelligence by a score or double that of points, and puts his mind into neutral, in order not to be neutral). It's needed for balance. Can't you continue to help out there, rather than, by your disappearance, implicitly delegate the whole work load for both sides to me?'

Well, I don't have that time any more, or the interest, but the sense of responsibility remains. On the other hand, you are not under an obligation to handle what I neglect or read Ma'an for data. If no one will do that, stiff shit for the Palestinian side. They should learn to look after their interests. I've been thinking I should just get the data downloaded from 'The Protection of Civilians' UN website and gave the overall picture for every two weeks.

As to the chemical bit, read Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, which captures beautifully the whole question, as it was in 1861 or so. At 16, I had read it, and was engaged in an intense argument over existentialism with a Catholic lad at his home. After some hours, at lunch, as the conversation persisted between the four schoolmates, the mother, a chemist, chipped in chirpily to her engineer husband (she was a lecturer in chemistry):'It's just their hormones, dear'. it was a classic put-down: ='your effervescent passion for philosophy is just a blind for otherwise unsatisfied adolescent chemical changes in your male bodies.' The obvious riposte:'And your materialistic reductionism, if applied to yourself, is a sign of middle class complacency, and, if you believed it, then you shouldn't have raised your children as Catholics, or go to mass, because doing so is just a form of 'spiritual indoctrination' in the metaphysics of a ghost dance that had exceeded its expired use-by date by at least half a millennium. Your materialism is a token of menopausal changes and mental laziness,' etc., something respect for friends forbade me from saying. (The boy in question ended up a derelict bum, having been starved of affection by his family's technocratic efficiency)

When I am shown videos (of) Syrians in Aleppo, I don't really feel anything. The more upsetting things are Russian and Syrian propagandas denying the pictures.

I don't see why you should be insouciant to one, and unhinged by the other. It's a b9it like Gilad Shalit. The world goes mediatically beserk for several years after one Israeli soldier is detained by the other side, hanging 'Save our soldier Ryan' tags on municipal buildings from Rome to New York, with nary a word of 6,000 'enemies' illegally detained by the occupying power he represented. Message: If you are an Israeli, you are significant. If you are a Palestinian, get fucked.

The world's media is invariably selective when it wants us to weep and have pictures of disaster tug at our heart strings. The repeated and systematic carpet-bombing of Gaza is just Aleppo, reduced to a few weeks or months, every few years. But the presentation emphasizes the necessity of this saturation bombing to allow the only 'civilized state' in the area to protect its citizens, very few of whom ever die, comparatively. For most of the world, the latter is just Sderot cinema, whereas with Aleppo, we are asked to turn on the lachrymal passions and spin a pitch for the civilians under ISIS as victims (which they are, of course). Such analogies are never precise, but drawing them does help one detach oneself from the media-induced acquired systole/diastole habit of being outraged by one tragedy, while feeling indifferent about some other.

My compliments re your precocious mastery of web design. Careful though: images, coloured pulsating ones especially, miss more than they capture, namely the details in Elie Podeh's 'The Jarring Mission and the Sadat Initiative' in his new book, pp.102ff., espo.pp.113ff (None of the detail there is, naturally, included in the Yom Kippur War article.Nishidani (talk) 12:11, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I sent you the Ma'an articles because I felt they have to be in the article, but as I said, for me it will be hard to add them, to the point it will take too much time for me to have an interest in continueing. Also the English barrier plays a lot here. I might have good English, but my work speed in English is between 25-50% of the speed I have in Hebrew, and I am already a slow reader, who always relayed on the privilage of time-extention in tests. I think the article should at least be completed, till the end of the year, which is not so far away.

Gilad Shalit is that one Israeli, Benjamin Netanyahu made me dislike. I don't hate the man, I hate the price they paid for him, to silence the people who synically used him to slam Netanyahu. I have no complaints about the fact there are two bodies of Israeli soldiers in Gaza, I don't expect Netanyahu to spend precious time to try and bring them back (and if it were my relative I might say the opposite), but Israelis do, and Netanyahu will eventually have to shut them up, if they will continue to mention it, especially before elections.

In Germany some 13(?) people died in the terrorist attack a few days ago, but the only reason I am upset, is becuase I heard an Israeli was killed and her husband is now treated, unconscious in Germany. I think about the family and their Hannukah. If I were a parent, I would probably be upset when I hear about dead children from both sides. One of the things that sadden me the most, is to see videos of Israeli airplanes being shot down, more than anything else. Strange me?

And your argument about Aleppo being Gaza 2.0, is my argument to people who think we should treat wounded Aleppo Syrians in Israel. "Treat the enemies?!" "Don't make that analogy, the attack on Gaza was justified!", what my co-workers told me today. Only my driving teacher said it right, we shouldn't preventing people "knocking" on our border, asking for medical treatment, but anything beyond, is cheap Israeli propaganda.

And lastly, my dad has poisoned my head with conspiracy theories about the October War.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 23:36, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

There's nothing strange about feeling some greater strength of feeling for news regarding one's compatriots. It's inscribed in all social systems, that you must relate more strongly to your 'family', real or symbolic, than to those outside of the 'fold' or 'pale'. To be 'normal' is to wear one's prejudices, though not 'on the sleeve', for then the tribalism becomes pathological. You get it most intensely in (a) sports generally, esp, football (b)the military, where buddy-consciousness is indoctrinated (c) terror or tragic incidents. In regard to the latter, almost every major terror attack this year has seen an Italian, normally a brilliant post-doctoral expatriate, killed, and, being in Italy it's there names I recall, Valeria Solesin in the November 2015 Paris attacks, Patricia Rizzo in the 2016 Brussels bombings Fabrizia di Lorenzo in the 2016 Berlin attack, 6 in the 2016 Nice attack, not to speak of the torture and murder by an Egyptian government death squad of Giulio Regeni. Fortunately, there has been no national hysteria, despite attempts by the lunatic right, to make ethnic/political capital out of this, and play the xenophobia card to earn a comfortable job in politics. I'm conforted by this,(as I said once - finishing my life in 'diaspora' from the countries I grew up in is a way of being independent of tribalism, i.e. behaving/thinking as one is statistically expected to behave/think) because it represents something I admire in the 'national temper' in my adopted country, though it is a dying code that probably won't survive the political madness on our horizon: I grew up among marginal refugee groups, and the only friendships I made at primary school, by choice, were Italians, Poles, and Dutch kids etc. I just didn't, for a complex set of reasons, have much empathy with my own 'kind'. All tragedies strike me in the same way, and I think I have slowly extinguished the Pavlovian reflexes that make me react to them by looking at the specific ethnic identity caught up in them. My wife just notified me that the Berlin murderer Anis Amro has been shot dead in Milan. All she said was:'pauvre fils' (povero figlio/poor kid). She was genuinely upset at his death, despite him being a mass murderer. I looked at the bulletins, and noted that, as soon as he was downed, the policeman who shot him (his mate had been wounded in the shoulder) tried a heart massage on the terrorist to keep him alive until an ambulance could get there (not the sort of thing one sees reviewing the Hebron videos, or in most other countries). This is a fucked up country, but such things make it more livable to me than being in a modern efficient state.

You shouldn't hate Shalid for the use his situation was put in politics. That wasn't his fault. I'l l try and catch up on the backlog on that article. You're quite right. What was begun should be finished. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 12:14, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Yo Ho Ho

Doug Weller talk is wishing you Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:WereSpielChequers/Dec16a}} to your friends' talk pages.

Ukrainian Jewish PM

Just letting you know you violated ARBPIA DS by restoring without consensus that the Ukrainian PM was Jewish. Please self-revert and discuss on the talk page. 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 15:31, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Editor of the Week seeking nominations (and a new facilitator)

The Editor of the Week initiative has been recognizing editors since 2013 for their hard work and dedication. Editing Wikipedia can be disheartening and tedious at times; the weekly Editor of the Week award lets its recipients know that their positive behaviour and collaborative spirit is appreciated. The response from the honorees has been enthusiastic and thankful.

The list of nominees is running short, and so new nominations are needed for consideration. Have you come across someone in your editing circle who deserves a pat on the back for improving article prose regularly, making it easier to understand? Or perhaps someone has stepped in to mediate a contentious dispute, and did an excellent job. Do you know someone who hasn't received many accolades and is deserving of greater renown? Is there an editor who does lots of little tasks well, such as cleaning up citations?

Please help us thank editors who display sustained patterns of excellence, working tirelessly in the background out of the spotlight, by submitting your nomination for Editor of the Week today!

In addition, the WikiProject is seeking a new facilitator/coordinator to handle the logistics of the award. Please contact L235 if you are interested in helping with the logistics of running the award in any capacity. Remove your name from here to unsubscribe from further EotW-related messages. Thanks, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:19, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

newish article

Could use a hand like yours.--TMCk (talk) 22:07, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry. Hospitalized for kidney stones. Can't edit for some days, perhaps weeks. Nishidani (talk) 16:12, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Yuck. That's painful. Good luck and best wishes then.--TMCk (talk) 22:04, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh gosh, poor Nishidani. Happened to me about 20-something years ago, in Scotland. The most excruciating pain I have ever experienced, much, much worse than the worst toothache. Fortunately over with in a few days (it was only a small stone, but big enough to make its presence felt). May have been caused by letting myself get dehydrated on long (several weeks at a time) cycle tours in (very hot) Spain. I read somewhere that drinking plenty of milk can help avoid them. Seems to have worked, as the problem has not recurred. Best wishes, NSH001 (talk) 09:34, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Doctors have told me I have a high tolerance of pain. I allow dentists to do dental work on me without an anaesthetic, etc. but, damn it, you're right. This kind of pain's in a different league. The remedy is 2 litres of water a day - imbibing the most tedious liquid on earth for a week or so, and if that doesn't work, surgery. Thanks N.Nishidani (talk) 10:23, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Appalling news, my sympathy. However, there are many interesting stories, which I'm sure you know, involving people urinating while standing on their head (upside-down). That was in the days when surgery involved butchers with infectious knives. This might be good time to recycle the adage may all your problems be little ones. Johnuniq (talk) 11:02, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hmm, 2litres/day doesn't sound like enough to me. And if you're drinking that much fluid, it should be isotonic, or you can add some electrolytes to the water. I'd recommend alcohol-free beer as a good isotonic drink (well, anything's better than water). Maybe see what the docs think. --NSH001 (talk) 11:08, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Hchlama Mehira--Bolter21 (talk to me) 01:34, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

The big day. A visit to the specialist, . .who has fallen sick himself and cancelled all appointments! Thanks for the kind sentiments and suggestions. Why urinate standing upside down? Johnuniq? That comparatively easy, compared to drinking a glass of wine upside down (which in the long run probably explains some of these later run-ins with kidney pains!)Nishidani (talk) 11:35, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Apparently the hope is that by standing upside down, gravity will move stones away from the entrance to the urethra before attempting to urinate. "Benjamin Franklin, as usual, outdid everyone. When stones blocked his urethral opening, he dislodged them by standing on his head and urinating upside down." [3] Good luck! Johnuniq (talk) 04:42, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

That's an odd way to interpret the laws of gravity. I've drunk beer and claret upside down for half a century on request (by folks who've heard the usual rumours) and the grog goes north, as, my head on the floor, I use one hand to pour the stuff into my mouth, from where it travels in the proper direction irrespective of physics, i.e. towards my stomach a foot further up in the direction of the ceiling.Nishidani (talk) 13:24, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Warning on Personal Attacks

Consider this a warning to cease your personal attacks. Calling someone "foggybrained" and telling someone that they are unable to comprehend things certainly approach a personal attack if not violate it. I have had it with your attitude that you are the arbiter of what is correct and everyone else is merely a stupid person you graciously allow to edit Wikipedia. You need to stop being condescending to everyone and strive to edit in a fair and collaborative way. In addition, I do want to point out that your user page violates WP:POLEMIC and should be removed. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:50, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

oyf tsu shraybn geshikhte darf men hobn a kop un nisht keyn tukhes.Nishidani (talk) 11:29, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Writing a personal attack in a foreign language is still a personal attack. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 14:34, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Your idiosyncratic views on what violates WP:POLEMIC have been tested before. Your attitude that you are the arbiter of what violates WP:POLEMIC and that everyone else is merely a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer you graciously allow to edit Wikipedia is thankfully not one that carries any weight here. nableezy - 16:09, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I understand your viewpoint, but Wikipedia does not allow pages and pages as Nishidani has on his userspace. I don't understand how you can't see that it violates polemic. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 16:34, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Nope. nableezy - 17:55, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

If I noted for the record what I often observe, and complained before arbs, you wouldn't be here. You regularly turn up on obscure pages I edit and revert me, when I am merely maintaining order by reverting some IP, who removed stuff without a valid policy ground or talk page appearance. You do this regularly after 'losing' an argument on a talk page. you did it today. It is patently an attempt to 'get back' at an editor. It is infantile,beyond the obvious desire to be vexatious. Piss off, kindly. There is nothing offensive about my remark in yiddish. It's sound common sense, and if you can manage to understand try and take the advice proferred. If people ask me questions on this page, relevant to what Id do here, I answer them. Polemic has nothing to do with it. Nishidani (talk) 16:39, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Your userpage is polemic. Read up on what the policy is. I don't need to continue this. I warned you about attacking people and that is all. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 16:43, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Nope. nableezy - 17:55, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

To quote User:Kudpung, "....So without beating about the bush, what I do expect however is for them both to put {{Db-u1}} on their user pages at User:No More Mr Nice Guy/Quotes and Stuff and User:Nishidani very quickly - and I mean delete, not just selectively removing contetious material, otherwise I'll delete the pages myself per POLEMIC. They only exist in order to incite something and have no usefulness towards the building of this encyclopedia or the friendly collaboration of its editors." from: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive887#Advice_requested Sir Joseph ^(talk) 19:16, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

And on 11:51, 31 May 2015 the page was deleted as per that conversation, and Nishidani promptly recreated the page with all the polemics still intact. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 19:21, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

As is often the case, you do not know what you are talking about. You have no idea what was on Nishidani's page at the time of that comment (quotes from other users saying things that could be taken badly for example, and not simply quotes from published authors). And you have yet to give a single example of polemical content on it now. You disliking something does not make it "polemical". You pulled this same stupid shit with me. Boo hoo, somebody thinks something that I dont like. Grow up. nableezy - 20:20, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Nishidani's userpage is polemical. It does nothing to help Wikipedia, and is there merely to be pointy, to use a Wiki term. I am sorry that I think a Hezbollah userbox has no place on Wikipedia, I guess that is why I think driving a truck into a crowd of people doesn't deserve praise or having sweets handed out. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:22, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Ohhh, argument by assertion I see. Another fine example Sir Joseph, well done, well done. nableezy - 20:24, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

(e-c) It is open to question whether much of the material on most any editor's user page or in user space really helps the encyclopedia. And I have seen repeated comments from admins regarding comments made by editors who are subject to various sorts of topic bans that limited discussion in violation of the ban in user space might be overlooked. Most of the time, I have seen those comments from admins after having raised questions about those comments to them myself. I regret to say that engaging in what some others might see as being perhaps a tendentious form of discussion, possibly verging on harassment, in user space may well not win any friends either. I think the matter of Nishidani's user talk page has already been raised in the MfD discussion on it, and it was allowed to stay. That being the case, I think the only places where this sort of discussion is really appropriate is either at ANI or before ArbCom, although, like I said, based on what I've seen before regarding other editor's userspace comments, I wouldn't expect much at either location. John Carter (talk) 20:30, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Just for the record, it is my understanding that the MFD was on his talk page, not his user page. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:34, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

It was, but I don't know of anywhere in policy or guidelines where user space pages are differentiated, so it seems to me to be a case of a difference which makes no difference being no difference. John Carter (talk) 20:38, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

This is nonsensical. On the page dismissed as a violation of WP:Polemic, we have a number of quotes like the following:

欲以存亡繼絕, (淮南子, 卷二十一 要略 7a.)

That, Sir Joe, is from the Huainanzi where of Duke Huan of Qi it is said:

He wanted to maintain alive the moribund, and conserve whatever teetered on the verge of extinction.

If you like, when I edit pages on Tibetans, Aboriginal peoples, Palestinians etc., I am mindful of Duke Huán's exemplary precedent.

Again, I can't expect you to know what:

ἄγνοια γὰρ ἡ μὲν τῶν ἰσχυρῶν ἐχθρά τε καὶ αἰσχρά— βλαβερὰ γὰρ καὶ τοῖς πέλας αὐτή τε καὶ ὅσαι εἰκόνες αὐτῆς εἰσιν—(Φίληβος,49ξ)

means, but I have a right to expect that readers who don't know what on earth this is saying refrain from spluttering words like 'polemic' while calling for it to be removed. For it simply states:

self-ignorance accompanied by strength is not just disgraceful, it’s dangerous too:anyone who comes into contact with it, or anything like it, is threatened (tr. Robin Waterfield)

That can hardly apply to the issue of Israeli settlements. Theodor Meron immediately informed the Israeli government in 1967 that settlement in the belligerently occupied territories was out of the question: the law was explicit, any such settlement would contravene the Fourth Geneva Convention. A year later Moshe Dayan went ahead, admitting that,'settling Israelis in administered territory, as is known, contravenes international conventions, but there is nothing essentially new about that.' In other words, the Philebus is speaking about self-ignorance whereas the Israeli settlement project is consciously furthered in full lucid awareness that it is a 'flagrant violation' of Israel's legal obligations under international law.

Editing this area is very hard because the facts, the legal reality and the history are established, known, by everyone who reads beyond the tabloids or listens to more than soundbites. A huge paperwork tsunami nonetheless arose to split hairs, cavil, equivocate, throw sand in the eyes, blindside the critics, and puzzle the public. You can only get away with something of this order if you sow confusion, and most of our articles are minutely attentive to the pharisaical hasbara churned out to justify up front what is known to be carpetbagging behind doors. All over wiki I/P articles the pretense is maintained that there is some margin for disagreement, that interpretations of the one reality differ, that there are two POVs- Israel's ueberexceptionalist theory, vs the consensual opinion of every juridical body that has competence in international law - rather than a juxtaposition of the ascertained, universally endorsed legal situation as opposed to a nationalist fringe theory pushed wittingly by an occupying power intent on destroying the nation it occupies. I wouldn't therefore complain, Sir Joe. I don't raise a fuss at the structural distortions in so many of these articles: the weight of numbers determines content. I simply strive to clarify what is consistently, from ignorance or ideology or national interests, glossed over. Nishidani (talk) 14:27, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

If anyone have anything against some user, go to the appropirate noticeboard and take action. If you are not confident enough to do that, there is no point in exchanging accusations here.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 15:58, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Coatrack article with gross WEIGHT and NPOV problems?

Nadia Abu El Haj

Hey. You're more familiar with the topic than I so I figured I should ask your advice. I frankly was tempted to blank the entire latter half of the article, which is completely bizarre and unlike anything I've seen in our articles on other academics. I understand that some people have controversial political views, but I actually came across the page through Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Evidence-based, which was apparently a massive problem back in 07/08 with a sock-farm creating bogus coatrack articles on pro-Palestinian activists (along with at least one very poorly written article on a Hebrew Bible scholar who I've never heard of specifically being either pro- or anti-Palestinian, which is how I came across it).

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:56, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

It's WP:Undue probably, but shouldn't be removed, so much as pared down. A line or two for each critic or supporter. The only serious opinion there is Dever's. It's standard for anyone in this field to be targeted. I have a list at last check of about 42 academics of distinction who have been threatened with job loss etc for criticizing Israel's colonial policies. I've tried to balance that by opening a counter list for academic supporters of the Dershowitz brand who suffer similar career obstacles -it's still empty. If you are in the West Bank they shoot you, if you are in the West, they smear you. Any number of numbskulls are eager to pitch in. But, if you can't stand the fire in the kitchen, . . . In short, just trim it, making everyone's comments as succinct as that of Dever's. Secondly, this loudmouthed shouting in newspapers is unencyclopedic, but one can't erase it until it's replaceable with quality, focused criticism and you get that, iIf you have access to Jstor, by just looking at all the reviews of her works in the major academic journals. If you can get several reviews of each book, balanced for criticism pro and con, then under those circumstances you can chuck out the pseud's corner stuff.Nishidani (talk) 15:15, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

I see what you mean

[4]

If this is the level of IDHT one normally expects to encounter, I can see why you'd warn me away from IP. I just happened across a thread on WT:JEW immediately above one I had opened and gave the obvious response that was obvious, and as a result I have had to explain that ARBPIA3 applies to that Arab-Israeli conflict, not just "IP articles", three times and counting.

What a mess.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:26, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Again, you seem to be the one not hearing things. An article on Arabic Jews is not by itself part of the IP Conflict. Can some edits on that page be subject to sanctions, perhaps. But it is stupid to put entire pages under sanction. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 02:43, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, I must apologize to Nishidani for continuing this discussion on his talk page. I had no idea SJ was watching.

Second, it is not "an article [that is] by itself part of the IP Conflict" that is subject to the ARBPIA3 General Prohibition. It is all pages that could be reasonably taken as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. An IP who adds text about Jews being expelled from Arab states as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict is always violating this prohibition, regardless of whether you think the page itself should be placed under extended protection.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:50, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

IP Conflict is Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the page is not about the IP conflict, whether or not some edits can be construed as being part of the conflict. We should not be in the habit of locking off articles on the off chance there will be a dispute. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 02:52, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

For the umpteenth time, the ArbCom restriction is on articles related to the Arab-Israeli conlict, not just the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am not a fan of "locking off articles" myself, but ArbCom already did lock off that article back in 2015, and the specific IP edit you wanted to allow was itself an explicit violation of the restriction as it was about the Arab-Israeli conflict. If you want the page to be unlocked, you need to appeal the general prohibition, or request that it be amended to more narrowly address only specifically IP conflict articles. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:24, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Warrongo

Hi, I noticed that Waruŋu, an article you've created, duplicates Warrongo language and Warrongo people. There's some content in it that is missing from the language article, so I was wondering if you'd be interested in merging it? I think Waruŋu should then get redirected to the dab page at Warrongo. Cheers! – Uanfala (talk) 23:06, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Obviously a merge should occur since reduplication exists between Warrongo people and Waruŋu. Perhaps the simplest solution is the other way round. I've made Waruŋu fit the format I'm applying to all these article, with sections awaiting expansion. Warrongo people has only a definition, and nothing else. I'd prefer a redirect from Warrongo to Waruŋu. If you know how do do this technically, by all means go ahead.Cheers Nishidani (talk) 12:25, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I'll try to get Waruŋu and Warrongo people merged. The title of the merged article had probably better be Warrongo people – Waruŋu is ambiguous between the people and the language, so it's best if this redirects to the dab page at Warrongo, and the spelling Warrongo seems to be better – it's the one used in the language's practical orthography, it's in the title of Tsunoda's 2011 grammar and, if I remember correctly, it's preferred by the Warrongo themselves. – Uanfala (talk) 16:43, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Good'oh. Go ahead and Robert's a close relative. Thanks Nishidani (talk) 18:28, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

By the way, there are two outstanding simple gaps in all these articles. Unsatisfactory maps for each group. I have numerous sources downloaded which give maps and precise tribal borders, but don't have the foggiest notion as to how to convert them into wikimaps. And the skin system, which all tribes had and of which the naming evidence for hundreds exists (basically a 4 to 8 system) needs a standard template. I tried to roust one up with a little help from friends, (Kariera people)but it falls short quite a lot and downunder specialists in maps and designs are needed there. Perhaps one should notify the relevant Australian project board? Nishidani (talk) 18:33, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think there's any specific "wikimap" format and I guess there are different degrees of wiki-friendliness. The simplest solution, probably perfectly acceptable in this context, would be to just reproduce the maps as they have appeared in print (provided this is OK copyright-wise). Generally, you can ask for help with maps at Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop.

As for the skin templates, what do you imagine them to be like? – Uanfala (talk) 19:59, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

My Name

I've asked you three times to stop calling me Sir Joe. I do not like that name at all. If typing out the whole name is too difficult for you then you can call me SJ but not Sir Joe. I'd appreciate if you take note of this. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 23:53, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree, and I have seen that SJ has indeed asked you to stop. Please cut it out. Bishonen | talk 23:55, 21 January 2017 (UTC).

Okay. I'll use SJ. It does mean 'Jesuit', but, since you say it's fine, then it's SJ from now on. In exchange, I would ask SJ to drop the habit of fatuous plunking of threat notifications on this page as if I were a newbie. It's obviously minatory besides being puerile. But I don't whinge about it. Nishidani (talk) 11:01, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

"SJ" means "Sir Joseph". Bus stop (talk) 11:13, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

The meaning of SJ is given here :-) Pluto2012 (talk) 11:38, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

But this is the meaning of SJ on Wikipedia. Or, if you want to be pernickety, it's this, I suppose. Bishonen | talk 12:00, 22 January 2017 (UTC).

As someone whose User name embodies anonymity, I am considering including a set of fingerprints and identifying tattoos. Bus stop (talk) 12:16, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

(EC) I'm guessing that you'd prefer other editors not to abbreviate your username to BS?

And while I'm here, I'd like to reassure Nishi that it's OK to continue referring to me as Scarpi and the editor who mispells my username as ZScrapia (intentionally or not rearranging the middle to spell 'crap') that he has my permission to continue.     ←   ZScarpia   18:56, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't see the point in abbreviating any editor's name, generally speaking. Why not just cut and paste their name as it actually appears on their User page? Bus stop (talk) 18:53, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I encourage all to abbrev my nick as they will. It embodies light pseudonymity, tho I do incl. an identifying fingerprint on my user:. While I'm here, hi Nish, hello Bish (who tbqh has the best wiki-alt of us all), and Bus stop: if you have to pause to c&p it really slows down the old wpm, which for some of us is the only staccato light in the grim endless fight against time's torture of all that is. – SJ + 13:37, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Ah, literacy at last: 'the grim endless fight against time's torture' (Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,. Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, etc I think of Prometheus's liver being slowly pecked for millennia, or the Negra espalda del tiempo..... ) RegardsNishidani (talk) 16:37, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes I realize that cutting and pasting takes time. And I don't think I am personally obsessed with "time's torture" although I may be deluding myself in that regard. I simply prefer the propriety of calling a person by the User name that they chose for themselves. Bus stop (talk) 16:00, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Small (actually big) question.

Do you really believe in the first sentence you put on your userpage? PKK and Chechnya cannot apply to this statement, made by a naturally biased person? I mean, I can't really sympathize with any of the other "reflections" (except for Uri Avnery simply explaining in the most basic way the reality? Oh and the non-English sentences), but the first one is very jarring (yea? you can say that? "jarring"?).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 00:42, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't 'believe' in any sentence containing a generalization. Belief implies a fixed perception that is refractory to evidence. Rather than 'jarring' (which implies dissonance, from what?) Ashrawi's statement is 'jolting', a provocation. I too can think of exceptions. The statement from the Philebus in Greek can be read in context scrolling on from here. You can analyse that in terms of the psychology of envy, of the sociology of class, or as an illustration of the problems of division of classes in logic etc. As for the rest, I've always thought of the I/P issue in terms of comparative sociology: there is, despite the massive hot air rhetoric all round, nothing unique there - it is a typical colonial story: the John Wayne vs Indians plot in the 'taming' of the wild West, as good many writers noted at the outset of Zionism's implementation. Reading many of the downloaded classics of early Queensland history recently, the language and approach to these terroristic 'natives' (200,000 vs a few thousand whites, who then overwhelmed the 'uncivilized indigenes' with immigration and gunpowder) only confirms my perception of the analogy. Only its nature as a colonial narrative is, rather distinctively, hidden from view because of the exceptionalist discourse surrounding so much to do with the long mythistorical traditions of the occupier, and the guilt of the West concerning its own lethal enmity for Jews. Nishidani (talk) 11:08, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I am always amazed by how much a negative action committed by someone of a white skin has a larger weight than a negative action committed somewhere far away by someone with darker skin. I too fall into this, with claims of "we have to be civilized" when I talk for over nine months about a soldier who executed the soon-to-be dead body of a terrorist, while there were, what? 250 attacks and attempted attacks by Palestinians since October 2015? The absolute majority with a clear racist and murderous character? The problem is that those who agree with me, that a negative action like colonialism or genocide committed by a white people is no worse than the ones committed by black, brown or pink people, are the undemocratic fascists or white-nationalists out there. So I have two options here, either go for euphemism and start saying "the Jews are not colonialists because colonialists searched for rich lands and the Jews settled on bad lands full of swamps and diseases, and they didn't try to speard their own culture on the people but rather inherit the modern and ancient culture of the land, and they came as indeginous and not as colonialists", or I can just say, "you pinning the word colonialism on the Jews doesn't make the Palestinians the absolute victims". Either way, I don't think colonialism justifies the Palestinians' reaction, just like I don't think Elor Azaria executing the man who stabbed his close friend for no real reason is justified. So not the Palestinians, nor Azaria, are angels hurt by the European colonialist Jews, or by the Ashkenazi leftist elite of Israel.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 14:52, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

250 attacks and attempted attacks by Palestinians since October 2015? The absolute majority with a clear racist and murderous character?

The absolute majority took place in a territory which Israel is colonizing, and which it does so in defiance of its obligations under international law, by land theft, shooting, raiding, gassing, and demolishing homes. In a Zionist perspective, all this is irrelevant. What is horrid for a Zionist is that a predictable minority of those who have been tormented for decades, stolen from, shot, arrested, gassed, or dispossessed of shelter, hit back violently. Scandalous? No. It's sociological physics of the most elementary kind. Nishidani (talk) 18:44, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, it's got nothing to do with 'white' vs 'black skin' or Jews vs Arabs. I am composing as I read through several thousand pages of old books on Queensland's history a time line of every attack, by aborigines on whites, and whites on aborigines, and I have so far more data on the former than the latter. It was estimated that 250 whites had been killed from 1840-1861. The 'savages' have far more incidents of killing in the archives than we have registers of whites killing blacks. But, we know that there were 200,000 aborigines in that territory by the time whites began to set up 'civilised' outposts, and within several decades these were decimated literally, down about 80-90%. Aborigines like Dundalli fought back and were branded as murderers or 'ìterrorists', and duly hung. So what were all of those 250 murders about? Over the last 3 decades, historians have managed to retrieve the obvious contexts: whites saw a rich territory full of development potential and just bulldozed in, driving or 'dispersing' the original inhabitants off their lands, where they had lived comfortably. The average height of the primitive natives' was 5 foot 10 to 6 feet, about 5 inches taller than the invaders: they were muscular, powerful specimens, but they only had spears against carbines.

It's typical of all colonial mentalities, of which Zionism is just the most recent, and anachronistic example, to think that any opposition, even killing, by the indigenous peoples opposing their dispossession or destruction is proof of murderous manners, intolerance (even anti-Semitism). You get that in the frontier chronicles of the West, in Canada, in Algeria, all over Africa (the Herero people). Whites/Europeans have a right to land that is not utilized to its full modern productive capacity: if the indigenous people refuse to upgrade to industrious collaborators in 'modernity's project', they have to be displaced, overridden, pushed out. If you can cite for me one thing that, in the Zionist history of colonization, contradicts the general pattern of colonial enterprises the world over since the 1500s, I'd be surprised. It's totally 'normal' to dispossess people and, if they resist or hit back, call that form of lex talionis 'terrorism', 'barbarous'. Israel's foundation is absolutely in line with the overall pattern of modernization's destruction or systematic reduction to marginal life of 'primitives'. I like historians like Niall Ferguson because they are quite open-eyed and honest about this: modernity is achieved by dispossession, plunder and it is, in the long term, for the good of all, especially the blighted and benighted 'primitive' whose right to land is cancelled by the fact that he cannot monetize it as, in the modern world system, is must be. So it's not a 'Jewish' thing. The only 'anomaly' is that it really took shape after WW2, when, by general consent, the age of colonization was to end (save for the diehard French holdouts in Vietnam and Algeria). Tony Judt made this point eloquently: the anomaly is that 'Jews' happen in Israel to be undertaking a discredited anachronistic experiment precisely at the moment when the West, having achieved its own 'civilized' state of post-colonial complacency and having enough from the plunder of centuries to be able to live off its accumulated capital, started to mumble about the 'conscience' of civilization. Nishidani (talk) 18:11, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

And I didn't 'pin' the word 'colonialism' on Jews. The earliest Zionist writings use that term officially for the project (Jewish Colonization Association, the Colonial Bank, etc.etc.etc.) Nishidani (talk) 18:33, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Making analogies between the Palestinian Arabs and the Aboriginals in North America is flawed in my opinion. The Jews were not an Empire expanding, they were a collective relocating, and knowing their place for the most part, they shown much more respect to their enemies than the Western Europeans showed to the Natives in North America. The ethos of the 1948 war being a "David against Goliath war" is part of it. They didn't say "we defeated the savage and uncivilized Arabs", they created a story of them being small, weak, unmanned, unequiped and they managed to defeat the hordes of trained Arab armies. Only the opening of the state's archives in the 80s allowed for histories to realise the truth, that the Jews had the upper hand and their stories of "winning against the odds" were a consequence of their panic. Their ethos was not an ethos of the "civilized" beating the "savage", it was exactly the opposite, it was the small yishuv of refugees beating "five armies" and the majority of the population. Today I can assume that the Jews were really the more civilized majority, but that was not part of the Zionist ethos. One of the only arguments I have in defense of the settlements, is that they are not colonialists, not becuase of their actions, which are policies of land grabbing based on supremacy, but because of their leading ideology, which is very religious. You can call them colonialist as much as you want, go to someone from Beit El and he will tell you "Abraham our father' passed here, and Jacob our father was named "Yirael" here and all of Israel sat here and fasted until night and sent made sacrefices to God, when they entered the land under Joshua, and the Ark of the Covenant was here and Phinehas Ben Eliezer lived here and there was a terrible civil war here between the Tribe of Benjamin and the other tribes and here King Josiah destroyed the golden calf built by Jerobaam Ben Nevat. I don't believe these stories are fact, especially not the mythological ones, but that doesn't change the fact, those "colonialists" have possesed what they see as the source of their right to live there, as their ancesters did. After all, the nearby Beitin doesn't just happen to sound like Beit El, and even if not, it is not the first Arab village with a corrupted Jewish or Biblical name. Can a colonialist who massacred a group of Aboriginal claim his ancestors lived on that tribe's land? While the activity does amount to resemble colonialism, the ideology is completely different. Calling a Jew who moves from Poland to Jerusalem a "colonialist" is already crossing the line, of how much you can draw simmilarities between European colonialism and the Zionist enterprise. My grandparents from my father's side came here as refugees, while my mother came here to marry my father.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 19:08, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I didn't really want to get into this discussion (I realised early that you can spend 100% of your time here discussing the issues..., alas, time doing that is time not writing an encyclopaedia...) However, I must modify you about the truth only getting know when the archives opened in 80s/90s. At least the leadership knew very well. Eg., there was a famous survey (by the Israelis) taken just after the 48 war, showing the reasons why the Palestinian refugees left. That survey showed roughly the same percentages that modern scholarship has showed; that the majority left to escape the war, or were expelled, and just a tiny minority left "on Arab orders". (And this survey was then made classified material..) In spite of this, it was "official" Israeli policy for years to claim that the majority of the Palestinians left "on Arab orders". And the leadership knew this wasn't true. Btw, lying by Israeli officials was the reason why I started questioning my 100 % pro-Israeli upbringing..

As for the settlers; nearly all nations have at some time been bigger than they are now, say, Norwegian Vikings first settled and built Dublin, what if the Norwegian army/navy landed in Ireland, claiming it as part of the ancestral Norwegian land..... kicked the Irish out of a third of their land and treated them like dirt. Then went around saying "It is the Irish terrorist mentality which makes them hate us!! And their leaders -and their school books all makes us look bad! It the Irish who has to change their murderous ways!!"

Btw, an old friend of mine (who is 100% North European background, and doesn't have one drop of Middle Eastern blood in her) has had a looooong interest in Judaism, and a few years ago she converted. She can become a citizen of Israel any time she like, (No, she has no plans to become that, but still...), and travel to Israel as much as she like. While, say a Salman Abu Sitta is refused entry to the place he was born. Avi Shlaim used to say the Israel has been on a colonialist project since 1967, however, he has changed his mind, these day he agrees that the colonialist project started much earlier. Huldra (talk) 21:49, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

The Norwegian army invading Ireland is a severe violation of Irish sovereignty. Norway is miles away from Ireland, separated by sea. Beit El was promised to the Jews by the UK and this is one of the claims of those who support it.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:08, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

"Separated by sea??" I see you know zero about Viking culture; the sea was what connected them; it was very much a sea-faring people. And Beit El was not included in the Jewish state in the 1947 plan (the only plan which had official backing). So legally, Israel has as much right to Beit El as Norway has to Ireland, (or Shetland, or Iceland, or Greenland, etc) Huldra (talk) 22:27, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think I ever supported the settlements, legally or ideologically, I just commented on the comparrison.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:43, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I should have made a distinction. Herzl was an idiot, whose vision impelled a pseudo-solution to European racism by enticing dreamers to think that by dispossessing an Arab people in a colonial project the Jews could free themselves from prejudice. After WW2, this colonial fantasy bore with it such a weight of angst that the option seemed the only solution to many, but it let the West off the hook of their historical guilt by making Arabs pay the price of European dishumanity. The fault lies on the shoulders of the Western leaders who adopted this cynical strategy. Israel was created, and it assumed, whatever the tragedy, a rightful place among the nations, its legitimacy is inexpugnable. All that changed in 1967. There, the lucid minds and analysts foresaw the obvious evil, that Israel's hard won legitimacy would now be put in peril by Zionism's darker oneiric impulses, religiously atavistic, soaked in the dead weight of a huge mythic history begging for reclamation. It stepped beyond its achieved and legitimate confines, and began to aspire to a biblical state, wittingly treating the West Bank and Gaza as an opportunity for carpetbagging expansionism according to biblical fantasies. it did so in clear defiance of international law, of obligations it underwrote, cynically, contemptuously. It didn't take on the Palestinians: never a serious threat militarily. It took on concepts of restraint, democracy and the establishment of normalcy for Jews - the very real and persuasive reasons Herzl unrealistically dreamt of as the aim of Zionism - because an occupation of this order requires the permanent militarization of society, and the induction of its citizens in an experience of repression as a rite of passage, in a chronic unresolvable punitive destruction of another people to satisfy the megalomaniacal vanity seamlessly inscribed in what is, irreducibly, an archaic fiction woven by a sacerdotal class which wrote much of the novelistic content of the Bible as a solace for its own Babylonian exile. You don't need to be a psychologist to understand how destructive a model will be which takes as its blueprint for modernity a fiction concocted by ingenious religious fanatics 2,500 years ago, with its creation of a concept of pure descent, and the ethnoreligious sacrality of a patch of soil which bore no such burden of mythic value for most Jews from Iran to Spain in those distant times. The people in Beit El can rave on about the non-existent, utterly unhistorical Abrahams, Moses and Josephs walking through those very same terraced hills till the cows come home (to roost), but they are, mentally, like aborigines walking through their home terrain identifying each rock and crevasse as marks of the Rainbow Serpent in the dreamtime. The Aborigines know, now, that these were once functional legends: the colonialists of Beit El take it as the truth, or retain the functional value as an excuse for squatters to declare indigenous landowners intruders - and when you confuse fantasy with reality, no outside voice for a sane distinction between the infantile and analytical approach to the world can ever get a hearing. Nishidani (talk) 20:59, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

As for the personal side, there is no guilt or taint of 'colonialism' in emigrating to Israel or being an Israeli, anymore than one should feel guilty for being a Mexican of Spanish descent, or an American of Scottish origins etc. The colonial analogy refers to the West Bank and Gaza, and all those who persist in claiming it as part of Israel. Nishidani (talk) 21:09, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

The West Bank is part of Israel, the land of Israel. I remember being a kid, confusing the terms Eretz Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael (i.e. State). I see the rift between the understanding of secular, modernist people, like me, my family and my friends, who see "Israel" as the state, while the religious, fundementalist people, like my uncle's family, the right-wing bloc or the elder Mizrahi population see "Israel" as the land". That is the problem, that the Ben Gurionists like me prefer the state and the Menachem Beginists like my uncle prefer the land. While the left accepted the partition plan, giving a state for the Jews after 2000 years, the Revisionists saw it as "giving the Jews 60% of the 20% of land left from the land promised to us, "Auschwitz State"". Equating the idea of partition of Western Palestine to a Nazi death camp is the base of the world view that the right wing and the "neo-zionists" who settle the West Bank posses. The idea that a land with X people, belong to the Y people. This is seen in nationalist movements in Europe, and their copycats today, claiming "natural borders of Serbia", which are completely opposite to reality, when the Kosavars have no interest in being ruled by Orthodox Slavs. But I wouldn't call a settler movement to settle Kosovo with Serbs, a colonialist movement. Just like I tell people to take action against those they chose to call "Nazis", colonialism was outlawed by the UN, so what is the implication of you calling the Zionists colonialists? Should I feel white-guilt?--Bolter21 (talk to me) 21:47, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

The West Bank is part of Israel, the land of Israel.

This confuses a secular concept the State of Israel with a religious concept of the Land of Israel. Modern states have boundaries, which determine the judicial reach of their laws, and their legitimacy. States that refuse to have boundaries are like ego identities that refuse to distinguish themselves from the world, they are either tendentially narcissistic or invasive.

Steven Runciman, taking up a point outlined by Arnold Toynbee a decade earlier, perceptively anticipated all of this when he drew an analogy between Zionism and the Crusades (Joshua Prawer,The Crusaders' Kingdom: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages, 1972), whose history he was the leading world authority at that time. He remarked to Uri Avnery that:

"Israel was founded in the land that once belonged to the Philistines, while the Palestinians, who got their name from the Philistines, live in the land that belonged to the ancient Kingdom of Israel."

In other words, Israel as constituted has no burden of ancient myth, its messianic expectations and its aching juggernaut of collective pressures from one of the many pasts we have: 'Israel' as religiously defined means redefining oneself as a cypher in a collective, of memory and blood-kin: you don't count - the historic community's legends, myths, traditions determine who you are, and, in political terms, this translates into megalomania, fantasy-mongering, irrationality and the incapacity to understand anything or anyone beyond the pale of one's cultural ghetto (i.e. the cancellation of 2,600 years of diaspora experience where being a Jew meant having at least 2 and probably several equally respectable identities).

As to guilt, that is not a notion that has any sense collectively, being in the modern Kantian sense a state of consciousness where the individual's sense of right is troubled by negative feelings for what are personal acts he himself committed or fantasied to have committed. It is a repulsive biblical idea that punishment for the sins of the fathers be visited on the sons down through the generations (Numbers 14:18). It's useful to have dissent within one's family, I wouldn't worry about it. The poorest wings of my family were and often remain hardnosed right wingers, and some persist that way the poorer they get, as the governments they elect strip them of entitlements they used to have. They blame foreigners, the 'left', etc.etc.etc. Familiarity with this meant I wasn't surprised by Trump, or by Netanyahu. We're not wired biologically to be middle class rational democratic ethical egalitarian people. We're animals whose 'reason' is basically directed towards instrumental cunning, unless by some historical freak of conjunctural circumstance, we find ourselves in a relatively civil quarter of the world. That was the lesson of Yugoslavia: overnight people who had been amicable, civilized, intelligent turned to cutting their good neighbours' throats because some moron realized you get more votes if you play on people's innate hatreds and intolerance.

No one ought to feel guilt, as opposed to shame perhaps, for what others, one's kin, humanity etc., does or did. Of course the achievements of civilization are being rapidly burnt as the world, in response to globalization, turns its back on modernity and chooses tribalism. Israel's 'anomaly' will, on the cards, become 'normal' as the world trumpifies itself. It's one of the refreshing consolations of my age to realize that fortunately, I won't be around long enough to see the long-term effects of this crap. Nishidani (talk) 10:30, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

In case you're wondering

The red question marks appearing in the Australian Aboriginies articles indicate a short-form ref trying to link to a full citation that doesn't exist. This is the work, of course, of the fabled precocious infant, who vomits on meals that don't suit her digestive system . I will try and fix any obvious ones, but at Djabugay for example my guess (without having looked at the sources) is that the corresponding long cites are missing from the "References" section. Unfortunately it isn't generally possible to fix them automatically, as there is no way of telling whether a long cite is missing, or whether a name is misspelled or a year mistyped. Anyway, I hope it helps. --NSH001 (talk) 23:44, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

No, thanks indeed. Anything that spots slips, esp as hugely misleading as those, needs a nod of thanks or several. Evidently in copying for speed a template for a book I confuse editions or different works at times. Should take more care. The content citations were correct only the book years were not! 'vomits on meals that don't suit her digestive system,' meaning that the precocious baby fixing these errors has an avatar in the Aboriginal rainbow serpent, who often ate children and then vomited them up;)Nishidani (talk) 09:36, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, sounds delicious. On Djabugay, with the help of my young assistant, I corrected the distinction between Dixon 2011a and Dixon 2011b; as far as I am aware this is the standard academic convention. Using "(a)", "(b)", etc in the author name is not a good idea, as it corrupts the metadata emitted by the template, and causes the work to sort in the wrong order in bibliographic listings.

It also looks odd that there are separate full citations for Dixon 2011a and 2011b, but only 2011b is cited anywhere. Regards, NSH001 (talk) 11:05, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Well it's a beauty if it can catch out so neatly citational errors so consistently, and those minutiae I have often lazily failed to spot. I think I've fixed the Dixon thing. I often add sources that deal with a topic but which I haven't yet time to add. The idea is that, if I tried to do every tribe, one by one, in a thorough manner before moving along to the next, I'd never finish. Setting up stubs also means that, once I have a few hundred of the main ones done, anything that comes up in my daily reading for the next few years can be immediately registered in a pre-existing article. Cheers and thanks. Nishidani (talk) 15:15, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

By the way there is a silly title to Gubbi Gubbi. Far too long. One doesn't add the geographical location to a people does oner? Nishidani (talk) 15:16, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

What title would you like? I see there's also a redirect from Kabi people. Suspect it might need some discussion first before moving it. But you're right, the title is silly, and should definitely be changed.

Understood re your strategy. I've started working systematically through the pages, and have put the number of cite errors found in the edit summary, so you know which ones to look at. Let me know about any articles you are working on, so we don't tread on each other's toes. --NSH001 (talk) 17:17, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I dunno anything about procedures, but it should be Gubbi Gubbi, with any redirect Kabi people/KabiKabi going to that. What's a chap to do, open some discussion somewhere, on the talk page?

IO really appreciate the help, N. No hurry of course.Nishidani (talk) 17:25, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Well Gubbi Gubbi is a redirect with >1 entry in its history, so it'll need some form of formal process to get it moved there. On the other hand, Gubbi Gubbi people is a redlink, so it could be moved there immediately, if you wish. --NSH001 (talk) 22:15, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

The quick solution, Gubbi Gubbi people. In Italy it's taken me five months of paperwork to get my bank to pay telephone bills automatically. I like to think of the real world beyond its borders, including this virtual one, somewhat more efficient:)Nishidani (talk) 11:05, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, that was easy. Italy sounds intriguing, maybe there are unexpected useful side-benefits to hopeless inefficiency? Over here it's almost impossible to arrange to pay one's bills in any way other than automatically. --NSH001 (talk) 11:51, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

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Jstor

Good luck with the new account. FWIW, as can be seen at ANI, in the first thread as we speak, there is a lot of controversy regarding the country of Ethiopia and its peoples. Right now Llywrch seems to be most involved, but I imagine that it could benefit from input of other highly qualified individuals as well, and I have to think you might be among the most qualified in general around here. And the sometimes confusing history of the Ethiopian Jews and Ethiopian Christians and other ethnic groups and the claim for the Ark of the Covenant might be of interest to you. John Carter (talk) 21:44, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Looks like I'll soon have an account, but am steadying myself to go on a reading diet. That access is a gargantuan temptation, and I must be careful not to succumb to an omnivorous gluttony. Right now, I'm up to the gills in antipodean ethnography - so much of it is there that I can't allow myself too much distraction. But it's nice to hear from you, John, and to see you are still enriching Wikipedia with your widespread uploada of encyclopedic material. Best wishes. Nishidani (talk) 18:08, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Please comment

Please comment at Talk:Kadesh_(Israel)#Proposal_to_Change_Name_of_Article. I posted this here for you, since you took part in an earlier discussion about this issue on that same talkpage. Debresser (talk) 18:07, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

1RR violation

Hi, firstly, you violated 1RR at the list, secondly you cast aspersions when you claim HOUND. That page is on my watchlist. I am giving you the courtesy to self-revert. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:53, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Also, while I wasn't hounding you at all in this case since the page was on my watchlist, you did explicitly give me permission to follow your edits, see here: User_talk:Nishidani/Archive_21#Khazar_theory_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry Sir Joseph ^(talk) 21:11, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

I see exactly one revert by Nishidani today. You have to be able to count past 1 to get to a 1RR violation. nableezy - 21:16, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Fine, I meant the other DS, not reinserting something that was reverted. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 21:20, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

... without first establishing consensus on the talkpage. Especially something that is POV, sourced to a POV source, and ill formatted. Nishidani, why can't you put spaces in the right places? Debresser (talk) 21:29, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

I actually think Sir Joseph and Debresser are correct here...and you can blame me for that. See User_talk:Huldra#Arbitration_motion_regarding_Palestine-Israel_articles. Since December, 2016: "In addition, editors are required to obtain consensus through discussion before restoring a reverted edit." (The two diffs: [5] [6]) But I see Bolter already reverted it, so it is a bit difficult for you to self revert.... Cheers, Huldra (talk) 23:58, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Just noticed this. I go on line late in the day recently. Why all this fuss? I note that Bolter21 broke the 1R rule on the very page SJ complains I did (but where I didn't) (Ist revert,2nd revert). This happened after SJ’s protest, before the intense scrutiny of you all, and I don't see any warning on his page. Of course, I personally ignore things like that. I don’t go to complain to Ed Johnston, or admins, or write up a draft of an AE indictment in my sandpit. But for those of you who reflexively indulge in Nishidani-reverts mostly on inane readings of policy (e.g. examine the completely farcical pretexts used to POV revert out long standing material I put back at Al-Dawayima massacre), i.e. via pretexts, as the RSN board agreed, I would suggest you be consistent.Nishidani (talk) 14:33, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Huldra. The way that interpretation plays out, anyone can revert anything and then demand an editor spend hours if not days trying to convince a team of automatic reverters that their objections are specious. The rule would mean policy precision is irrelevant, consensus trumps everything. Everyone who reads Israeli newspapers knows Palestinian stone throwers, even if they hurt no one can get from 18 months to 3 years prison. When Uri Avnery notes that an Israeli IDF soldier caught on film cold-bloodedly blowing the brains out of a wounded Palestinian, who had been neutralized 12 minutes earlier and lay bleeding slowly to death as folks walked around and chatted, received 18 months, and compared the sentences: 18 months for throwing an innocuous stone if you are Palestinian, 18 months for shooting a wounded man in the head if you are Israeli and he Palestinian, it is automatically erased. Uri Avnery is perhaps not RS!!!, Gush Shalom is perhaps not RS!! Let's revert and have Nishidani convince several of us for 10 days on this one as well (If the reverter was serious, he would have simply googled around and found a dozen sources which make the same comparison. This is revert-abuse, stalking to revert wherever possible one particular editor and sheer laziness, aside from POV pushing by suppressio veri.Nishidani (talk) 14:33, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, I did mention on the talk page that Bolter violated DS. And I didn't report you because I don't like reporting people for stupid stuff like that, and as you saw in my sandbox, the DS violation wasn't the main reason I was going to report you. It was for your behavior and comments towards me and anyone else you disagree with. And you shouldn't get too emotional about things, if you do, perhaps try to stay away from those areas that get you worked up. Focus away from Jews and switch to Australia. There's no need to get worked up over an online encyclopedia. And while I may sometimes feel your frustrations over the rules, after all, it's a numbers game and your side has the numbers which is why most IP articles are heavily biased, those are the rules. If you don't like it, go to ARBCOM and propose a change. In the future, I suggest you think twice about your edit summaries and how you interact with other editors. Your comments are not conducive to building a collaborative encyclopedia.Sir Joseph ^(talk) 14:38, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

You have an inordinate number of reverts of my edits. I'm a careful editor. I don't take this job lightly. You are gratuitously insinuating I 'get emotional' and 'worked up' in the 'area' and must 'focus away from Jews'. What in the fuck is that meant to imply? (it means, that you follow my edits and read them exclusively in the light of what you imagine they might entail for a 'Jewish' image in the world. Just to make you focus, if you can, I edit Palestinian pages. Jews have nothing to do with it. Nishidani (talk) 15

03, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Just to note, that Ashkenazi Jews has nothing to do with Israel/Palestine, but regardless, people get worked up over lots of areas. I stopped following many pages when I couldn't help getting worked up. We should all strive to try to edit in a nice manner, and edit summaries attacking people doesn't do that. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 15:15, 1 March 2017 (UTC)