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Talk:Israel/Archive 86

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Atrocious editing

In my experience almost all wiki articles on ancient Middle Eastern history are unreadable. They are hopelessly patched up of ideological clichés, mediocre sources or reliance on primary sources that must never be quoted for facts. This is an intensely read article, and all of its remarks in this regard are errant and arrant selective POV pushing. Take the following:-

Jewish–Roman wars, ending in wide-scale destruction, expulsions, genocide, and enslavement of masses of Jewish captives. An estimated 1,356,460 Jews were killed as a result of the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE)[84] during which Jerusalem was besieged and sacked, and the Second Temple destroyed.[85][86] A few decades later, the Kitos War (115–117) led to the death of more than 200,000 Jews,[87] and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136) resulted in the death of 580,000 Jewish soldiers.

Nishidani (talk) 17:19, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Source 84 is rubbish, and contrafactual. It is, at sight, sheerly incredible and yet has survived the scrutiny of thousands of readers. Where on earth could one possibly find sure historical evidence, down to the last man or child, that the number (I know the chap adds up stuff from Josephus, who notoriously, not unlike many ancient historians, grossly inflated his statistics) was 1,356,460? Or take the 580,000 soldiers dead sourced to Karen Armstrong's book on Jerusalem. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of ancient history knows that cannot be right. And in fact, the donkey who added that added no link to the page, which if consulted would tell you that Armstrong is quoting Dio Cassius, the same who gives you the figures of roughly half a million Roman citizens killed all over the Mediterranean in 117 by Jewish insurgents. Again, crap figures typical of ancient rhetoric, like Josephus's figures cited all over wiklipedia. Crap because 580,000 adult men in uniform would mean Palestine had roughly 2,500,000 million Jews in 132, when the carrying weight agriculturally could not exceed 1,500,000, which would include a substantial Samaritan and pagan population. I don't think this is just incompetent. It's ideological. All these pages should have a general caveat lector heading to warn readers they are being blindsided by bullshitters. Nishidani (talk) 20:18, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Jerusalem, the largest city in the Second Temple period, is believed to have reached a peak population of 200,000 people (prior to 70 AD), and the Bar Kokhba figure looks more like a reflection of the upper limit of the estimated change in total pop (same source) before and after Hadrian's rule, all demographics included and all causes of population decline included. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:40, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
So that's one count of 'woah, that's a big number - where did all that pop come from', and one count of 'no way is that a count of just soldier deaths in war'. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:42, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
The usual calculation, based on the Roman legion numbers for the Bar Kochba war of 50,000, is that the Jewish revolt numbered some tens of thousands, but far less than that known Roman figure. The Dio Cassius expansion by an order of 10 is not untypical of classical historians, and a similar imaginative multiplication by an order of 10 has often been suspected in Josephus's rubbery figures. It's funny how editors love Josephus's numbers, and never read his account, which devastatingly blames the revolters, groups of Judaean Jews, and gives a picture not of 'Jews' but of sectarian forces among them riven by clannish, sectarian, religious and gang rivalries and manias. That sits uneasily with the 'Jews' as an undifferentiated collective of victims, as in Zionist cant. Of course, Josephus was a Roman brownnoser, who thought that taking their side would help his fellow Jews in the Empire, understandably, and perhaps his tactic saved Jews, since they fared for a century or so better than Christianizing Jews. The diaspora majority kept well out of it. The destruction was, of course, massive, but not an anti-Judaic genocide, since those who perpetrated it never acted against Jewish populations elsewhere in the Roman empire, and even at times came to their defense when they were assaulted by judeophobic Greeks and the like in places like Antioch. Nishidani (talk) 22:05, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
There seems to be some inconsistency in how Cassius Dio's figure is interpreted on different pages. while this page states that "... the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136) resulted in the death of 580,000 Jewish soldiers", the page for the Bar-Kokhba Revolt states in various places that "...According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews perished in the war and many more died of hunger and disease..." and the translation given in that page doesn't mention the word soldiers. similarly, Bar Kokhba's own page doesn't state they're all soldiers, the page for Tisha B'av cites a really confusing figure of 500,000 cvilians... regardless of what figure we end up using, this one is cited fairly inconsistently, and that should probably be addressed Totalstgamer (talk) 09:13, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
The answer is that one should not cite these figures from ancient historians, or primary documents. One must cite only those figures when they are discussed in secondary scholarly sources which specifically analyse these ancient claims, something editors here are extremely reluctant to do, apparently, despite it being advised by our RS policies. Scholarship itself widely varies in evaluating such statistics. To note one example I read recently, even in the premodern demography of Palestine you get wild swings: Nablus had been 8,000 and 20-25,000 in the mid-18th century, depending on which authority you examine, and the variation leads editors often to pick and choose according to whether their POV pushes for low estimates consonant with the 'Zionist' theory of a 'land without a people' or for the contrary view, that it was reasonable well-peopled, and therefore did not require an infusion of immigrants to make it viable.Nishidani (talk) 11:16, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Also can you change? The ethnic groups for 2021: 73.9%jews 21.1% Arabs 5% others Tamar274 (talk) 06:28, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

That is important. Unfortunately, I can't do that unless a precise cite is offered. Perhaps Firefangled Feathers, who has responded to your earlier suggestions, can look into it. Certainly, these things should be regularly undated. Thanks Nishidani (talk) 11:16, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

occupied

Replace "held" to "occupied", which is correct.

I would like you to put the year of this event. Mawer10 (talk) 15:01, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I was going to do the second one but looks like editing is on hold here, at least I can't edit the page. Selfstudier (talk) 16:56, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
Fully protected for a week due to edit-warring in the lead. nableezy - 17:05, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
Ah, OK. Explains that. Selfstudier (talk) 17:08, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
That 'disputed' is a default adjective in this area, often as here improperly used to signal contentiousness when you have a dissenting opinion opposed to a nigh unanimous, and technical legal, definition. It should here, as often elsewhere, be used with a qualifier:'is disputed by Israel..'Nishidani (talk) 10:28, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Why full protection?

I saw this has been fully protected. What was the reasoning? 𝕸𝖗 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕿𝖚𝖗𝖙𝖑𝖊|🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦|☎️|📄 15:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Revision history says Edit warring / content dispute. I assume it's because of the topic above this one, there's been a recent edit dispute over how much info on stats to put on Israels opening summary things such as HDI, life expectancy, etc. MonsieurCanuck (talk) 16:12, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
Over amount of STATS? Not the Israel-Palestine controversy conflict thingamajingy? Wow. This might go to WP:LAME. 𝕸𝖗 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕿𝖚𝖗𝖙𝖑𝖊|🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦|☎️|📄 23:04, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Locked article problem blocking obvious corrections of serious errors

I've mentioned that the genocide passage is seriously flawed, and the figure given is palpably a fiction or fantasy. This is the story behind that fabrication of data. Part of the passage runs:

ending in wide-scale destruction, expulsions, genocide, and enslavement of masses of Jewish captives. An estimated 1,356,460 Jews were killed as a result of the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE)

The source for this tripe is give as |last1=Wolfe |title=From Habiru to Hebrews and Other Essays |date=2011 |page=65

Robert Wolfe has no known competence in the topic and his screed is self-published via a vanity press (something the editor who added this crap cleverly ignored from his citation, i.e. Mill City Press.

I haven't checked Wolfe - one has to read far too much rubbish as it is - but I'll make a reasonable guess that he probably got that figure out of Richard Francis Burton’s late nioneteenth century antisemitic text The Jew, The Gypsy and El Islam. (1898) Familiarity with that will tell one that Burton himself used as his source a book written in 1707. Jacques Basnage's L'Histoire et la Religion des Juifs, depuis Jesus-Christ jusqu'à present, Rotterdam, Chez Reinier Leers, 1707

In sum, a section on Jewish history is cited from a pseuds' corner vanity press scribbler, who siphoned his datum from an anti-Semitic book, which itself drew on a scholarly work representing the state of the art re Josephus's account around 1707, 300 years ago.

This is the kind of googling shenanigans by incompetent editors one sees all over these ancient history articles, and is a disgrace.Nishidani (talk) 20:34, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

That section of the para must be erased,- for it contains palpable bullshit - and, consensually, a substitute text provided without the usual lachrymose exceptionalist broadbrush exaggerations, using any number of core scholarly works for that event.Nishidani (talk) 20:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
the estimate seems oddly specific given how long since the event occurred, I agree with removal. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:59, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
It is not the date of the war that is problematic here. We have an article on Demographic history of Palestine (region) and it notes disputes about the extend of the region's population in the 1st century.:

Edit request

Can you please add that it’s has the second highest HDI in Asia and highest standard of living in the Middle East. Tamar274 (talk) 16:33, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Hot tip: try and get 500 edits in (somewhere else than here) and you will be able to edit the article yourself. Selfstudier (talk) 16:54, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

But this is fact Tamar274 (talk) 16:57, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I never said it wasn't. Just that you should try and avoid your account turning into an SPA. Selfstudier (talk) 17:00, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

So are you adding it? Tamar274 (talk) 17:15, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

The article already says "Israel is considered the most advanced country in Western Asia and the Middle East in economic and industrial development." nableezy - 17:46, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Not in the lead Tamar274 (talk) 18:36, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Lots of things are not in the lead.Selfstudier (talk) 18:37, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
Its not going in the lead. nableezy - 18:44, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes but i think it’s important information Tamar274 (talk) 21:26, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Selfstudier (talk) 21:27, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Why not put it in the lead? This is very important in my opinion and it is not that long. Tamar274 (talk) 21:38, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, you know what they say about opinions. Selfstudier (talk) 21:42, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Don’t you think it’s important information to put in the lead? Also not too long . Tamar274 (talk) 21:45, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I think that is your opinion. (Of your 95 edits, 65 are on this page btw.) Selfstudier (talk) 21:49, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

But this is important information why won’t you put it in? Tamar274 (talk) 14:45, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

In South Korea for example it’s mentioned Tamar274 (talk) 14:45, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Time to give up asking, I think? Selfstudier (talk) 15:33, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

“The template Contains special characters is being considered for merging. “ is it supposed to be there? Because it’s not part of the attic Tamar274 (talk) 01:37, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

“The template Contains special characters is being considered for merging. “ is it supposed to be there? Because it’s not part of the article Tamar274 (talk) 01:37, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Article Tamar274 (talk) 01:37, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Edit request

“ The template Contains special characters is being considered for merging. ›“ I think it should be removed … because. There is no connection to the article. Tamar274 (talk) 08:13, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Why is it there? Tamar274 (talk) 14:31, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

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