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Statements by Peteet

wikieditor made the following erasure, with an accompanying edit summary:-

(Undid revision 1008660251 by Selfstudier (talk) This is disturbingly wrong, do not characterize the views of a broad swath of parties with this summary by a biased source

The text and source removed was this.

The analogy is strongly disavowed by the state of Israel and its supporters, who claim Israel's uniqueness exempts it from comparisons. Peteet, Julie (Winter 2016). "The Work of Comparison: Israel/Palestine and Apartheid". Anthropological Quarterly. 89 (1): 247–281. doi:10.1353/anq.2016.0015. JSTOR 43955521. S2CID 147128703.

That edit summary fits no description of a policy-based action. It is not a content dispute. In context it is outrageous because on the Palestinian enclaves page, Levivich has long insisted Peteet is an excellent source.

  • (a) Wikieditor erases it because in his personal judgment, Peteet, our expert, 'disturbingly' erred in her judgement. Wikieditor believes his judgement of the 'facts' is superior to that of an informed area expert.
  • (b) In his view, she 'characterized the 'the views of a broad swathe of parties' in summary fashion. Again, he doesn't name the parties. Peteet broadly names them as 'supporters'. He is challenging the RS without any policy warrant out of subjective dislike.
  • (c) He says the source is 'biased'. That is questionable but the assertion shows a total indifference to policy. Per WP:NPOV (balancing viewpoints) and WP:BIASED, Peteet is peer reviewed, an expert in the field, and indeed argues that apartheid and bantustans analogies do not make a perfect fit, i.e., adopts to some limited extent the POV she otherwise criticizes as Israel's.Nishidani (talk) 15:07, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Reverting that one too. Editors cant just say a reliable source is "disturbingly wrong", because that is in fact disturbingly wrong. nableezy - 15:28, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
I also disagree with the revert. @Wikieditor19920: it'd be more productive if you could provide an alternative source/wording if you have an issue with the existing version. Regardless of your opinion of Peteet (I've previously expressed my view that Peteet's a very good source), there's no question that it's superior in terms of relevance and authority to a (dead link) PDF guide for religious holidays. Jr8825 • Talk 16:17, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
A statement like this by Peteet requires attribution. Peteet is an opinionated source and must be treated according to WP:PARTISAN, especially with a sweeping statement like this. Oh, and this comment header violates WP:TPG, and I'm revising it so it's neither a pointed attack nor opinionated statement. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 16:49, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
That is not how any of this works. A peer-reviewed journal article is not "opinionated" just because a Wikipedia editor says so. It is a reliable source, and can be used to cite facts as facts. You cannot simply remove scholarship because you dislike what they say. Full stop. WP:SCHOLARSHIP is clear on this, and no amount of pointing to a section discussing other types of sources (like politicians or activists or opinion writers) changes that. You do not get to just say I dont like this source so it is biased. nableezy - 16:52, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Biased sources are a thing, and this statement is her opinion, not a fact. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 16:55, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Of course there are. biased sources Like op-eds, or politicians speaking, or activists writing on their blog. This is however an academic writing in the area of her academic expertise in one of the most respected journals on the planet. That is WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Please read that link. Thanks in advance. You do no get to dismiss the factual statements by experts in the field as her opinion. That is not how this works. The output of scholars is what we base this place on, not the opinions of Wikipedia editors. And without a source disputing Peteet, her reporting is unchallenged and can be cited without attribution. WP:RS is fairly clear on this. nableezy - 17:00, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Nableezy This is completely false. Per, WP:RS and WP:PARTISAN. any source can be partisan, including academic sources, and academic sources contain statements of opinion as well as fact. This is a statement of opinion and one by, yes, a biased source with sharp opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:27, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
The logical extension of Nableezy's position is that a single academic source can never require attribution, regardless of whether it is a statement of opinion, conflicts with other academics, or any other circumstances. A strongly worded misstatement of policy is still a misstatement of policy. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:30, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Very much no. Read WP:SOURCETYPES. See how it separates "Scholarship", "News organizations" and then later "biased or opinionated sources". See where it says Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses. When a scholar says something is a fact and that is published in a peer-reviewed journal that is the output of their scholarship, not something that can be dismissed by some random person on the internet as "just her opinion". If youd like to challenge the source then by all means, RSN is thataway. I think youll find the same unanimous agreement against your idiosyncratic views as last time. And no, please dont mistake my logic for your illogic. If there are reliable sources that dispute a source then that raises a NPOV issue. You however have not brought any source that disputes Peteet. You merely say you dispute it. Sorry, but that doesnt really count for anything. nableezy - 17:35, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Material should be attributed in-text where sources disagree. Example: Robbie Sabel has written on this issue and the notion that "Israel is exempt from comparison" because it is exceptional is entirely missing and directly contradicted by his piece. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:40, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Um where in that source does he disagree with Peteet? Where does he say anything about a claim of exceptionalism at all? nableezy - 17:42, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
He rejects the analogy on other grounds, which is why Peteet's sweeping summary of the views of an entire side of the spectrum are not representative of all scholarship on the matter, and require attribution. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:44, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Um ok, did we say that exceptionalism is the only reason why supporters of Israel reject the comparison? Did you even read Peteet? nableezy - 17:51, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Also, for the record, Jewish Political Studies Review does not appear to be peer-reviewed and is published by a partisan think tank (JCPA). nableezy - 17:56, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Nableezy, "peer reviewed" is a meaningless distinction in this context. Sabel is an opponent of the apartheid analogy and is a reliable source in that regard. Peteet is a proponent of the apartheid analogy describing the views of opponents of the apartheid analogy. She is not a more reliable source for summarizing the opinions of the opponents than the opponents themselves. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 18:24, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

You are again directly contradicting our policies here. We use reliable secondary sources where possible. And she is not what makes the source reliable, though that factors in to it. The fact that it was published by a peer-reviewed journal is what makes it reliable for statements of fact. Wtf does "peer reviewed" is a meaningless distinction in this context mean? Have you read WP:SCHOLARSHIP? Ive asked you to several times now. And peer-review is what separates pseudo-academia (JCPA publications) from actual scholarship. nableezy - 19:23, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
If you believe you have contradictory material, find a way to edit it in.Selfstudier (talk) 18:41, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
@Selfstudier:, see the source above. Material should be attributed in-text where sources disagree.. The issues is not whether to put the contradictory material in the article, though it should be. It has to do with the complaint about why the sentence you added, which was practically dripping with sarcasm (encyclopedic tone is another issue), requires attribution. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 18:45, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
It doesnt disagree though. You havent shown where it disputes anything about that line. And the tone was pretty much straight from the source, you not liking it does not make it biased or dripping with sarcasm. nableezy - 19:21, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
@Nableezy: The snobbish notion that anything non-peer reviewed isn't reliable is false, and meaningless in this context. Again, because clearly this isn't getting through: Julie Peteet's article is a summary of ideas that are not her own, and we have a reliable source that represents that actual viewpoint. Further, she, as an author, is a biased source because she explicitly criticizes those ideas. The article I cited represents the views of critics of the analogy noted in the article, on grounds entirely at odds with Julie Peteet's assertions. Attribution is necessary and I'm glad that was added—however, we shouldn't even be relying on her for this analysis. Her views can be presented as the response to the critics of the apartheid analogy by proponents of it, but to simply present her view as the authoritative definition of what critics of the apartheid analogy state is irresponsible and violates NPOV. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:06, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
I did not say anything not peer-reviewed is not reliable. Please stop lying about what I do and do not say. Thanks. Again, because this clearly isn't getting through. You alone think that one of the best sources in the article should not be used. There is a solid consensus against that incredibly silly position. I no longer intend engage in this WP:IDHT filibuster you think you can pull here. There is a consensus against your position. Cool with me. nableezy - 17:17, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
You are repeatedly claiming "peer-reviewed" and drawing a distinction between non-PR articles as if its relevant here, and that's where your mistake is. Not only did you misconstrue what I said about my position, you misconstrued what I said about your position, and then accused me of lying. Bravo. I'll be really brief with this: I don't believe and haven't said Peteet is unusable period. I said she is not an ideal source for this context, i.e. to describe the position of critics of the analogy. You know who is? Critics of the analogy. The best source for side A's views will typically be side A, same for side B. This is a very simple line of logic that is apparently being lost here. Even though Jr8825 probably disagrees with me as a general matter, I am willing to bet that they can at least understand and acknowledge this more nuanced argument, even if they see things differently. And Nableezy, no one should really be depending on your your claims of "consensus." In my opinion, this assessment is completely arbitrary and dependent on what side you're arguing. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:49, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Im not claiming anything. Read WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Peer-reviewed journal articles are considered reliable. The end. What you wrote is The snobbish notion that anything non-peer reviewed isn't reliable is false. I never said that. So yes, lying. I dont actually care what you think Peteet is usable for here. There is a wide consensus that this piece is usable for exactly what it is used for. Your stone-walling isnt going to change that. And no, primary sources are not the best sources possible. We prefer secondary sources. We dont cite the critical view to critics. We cite it to people covering the critics. You again fail to understand these very basic things about how we write articles. You again fail to understand that peer-review is not a claim I am making, it is a criteria that matters when assessing the reliability of a source. And Peteet writing in AQ is a reliable secondary source. I dont care if you understand these things, I really dont. But there is a consensus for using Peteet, and you can question that all you like. The person arguing by himself against four people is saying what is consensus is "arbitrary" lol. What a shocking development. There is unanimous opposition to your view here. So if you want to try to remove it from the lead do that and see what happens. Because there is indeed a consensus for the use of that source here, and editing against that consensus will result in a report. I also dont care if you feel the need to get the last word in here. nableezy - 18:41, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Here we go again. Caught out, the same tactics of attritional chat. The first thing is that all editors know that what you did in the es exceeded the limits of what editors can do with high quality sources. They cannot be excised or rejected because in an editor's personal view they are incorrect or biased. You're experienced, you must know this, but you went ahead with the revert on spurious grounds.

She (a) stated a fact, which no one familiar with the topic could disagree with, even you: 'The analogy is strongly disavowed by the state of Israel and its supporters'. Precisely this point was in the text before I edited, only I gave it a stronger source.

Therefore you should not have excised that indisputable fact, since you agree it is true.

She added (b) a synthetic judgement from her familiarity with the literature:'who claim Israel's uniqueness exempts it from comparisons'.

If you disliked (b) you should have added attribution 'according to Julie Peteet'. No, you just cancelled the text, wittingly disagreeing with both User:Jr8825 and User:Levivich, people who generally support your approach, or find nothing sufficiently troublesome about it (rather to the contrary) worth commenting on. They rightly commended it much earlier as a reliable source. You read their comments, and ignored them, preferring your own dismissive 'take'. (Have you even read it? We have no evidence so far you are familiar with it.)

Even if you oppose (b) you must do so ignoring an extensive literature on Israeli Exceptionalism. Here's just a very brief list from my own files (exceptionalist claims is something I have a professional interest in). This has been intensely studied over the quarter century.

Vol. 35, No. 5 (Sep., 2006), pp.449-453('The issue of balance and even-handedness will plague Palestinian studies for a long time to come. As long as the Israeli narrative and Israeli exceptionalism reign unchallenged, we will continue to witness a flood of books and articles discussing this or the other aspect of the 'conflict' with varying degrees of even-handedness and balance. The real issues central to the understanding of (and resolution to the 'conflict' such as the nature of Israeli security and polity, will continue to evade us' pp.452-453) A year later it became the core theme of a book by Alam,i.e.

After which it became sufficiently commonplace for Peteet in 2016 to make her call on the general state of the art. cf.

There that's about a hundred pages of text and a book-length study on that specific point. Either read the sources or kindly spare editors the drudgery of basic instruction.Nishidani (talk) 18:54, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

I have nothing against attribution per se, in fact I often prefer it even when it isn't strictly necessary. But I want to see that actual contradictory material edited into the article first and then we will see about attribution. Or we might find additional sourcing in support of what Peteet says, that's another possibility. Just to keep the record straight, I put the material back in, I didn't put it in to begin with. I really don't approve of removing properly sourced material without a good reason and it was done twice!Selfstudier (talk) 19:03, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
The point is, by careless unwiki meddling with text, several people have wasted respectively an hour or two. My personal view is that this is deliberate, to obfuscate things or deter serious encyclopedic coverage.Nishidani (talk) 19:11, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Nishidani, you waste everyone's time, including your own I imagine, with these long diatribes. It might be worth considering keeping your points concise. A helpful start would be addressing the specific policy points I raised. And Israeli Exceptionalism is not an article, that was a pretty odd blue link. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 19:24, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Look up the meaning of the word 'diatribe' which you are using pleonastically. It is distinct from 'analysis'. I analysed what you did. And, be kind enough to refrain from using the word 'concision'. You are all over the place. I have been sparse by comparison. Nota bene. You personalize this, and avoid actually facing the evidence given.Nishidani (talk) 19:28, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Nishidani, I removed the content because it was unacceptable in its current form. Perhaps I should've improved it before removing it, but, to be frank, there were so many problems with both tone/attribution that I needed a moment to consider how I would reinsert it back into the article. I now believe re-insertion would be acceptable, but it requires attribution. Preferably not in the lead. If you're interested in addressing that narrrow issue, I'd be thrilled to hear your feedback. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 19:37, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
No, don't prevaricate. That you abused wiki best practice is obvious. Secondly, your apparent problem (assuming WP:AGF, more or less), - why you screw up like that - is that you persist in not distinguishing your gut feelings about this or that source, with the objective nature of the source. Let me parse this:

I removed the content because it was unacceptable in its current form

This is phrased as a statement of fact.'it was unacceptable in its current form.'
That is not a statement of fact, it is a claim, reflecting your feelings. It means, operatively for you' it was unacceptable in its current form. You didn't ask yourself why, if it was objectively 'unacceptable' an editor tweaked it to make it closer to the source than my paraphrase. Now that that same editor, User:Jr8825, told you just a few hours back (see above) your revert was wrong, ill-judged, and if you query it, then you need a source. I.e. you just can't harangue the page more tuo. At this point, you ignored his advice, reaffirmed your adventitious opinion as though it represented an objective reality. This means, as has been documented now several times, you don't listen, nor take on board advice, and you won't admnit to errors. And the rest of the nonsense is, likewise, incoherent.
You state now:'it requires attribution. Preferably not in the lead.'
I.e. you failed to note that the point made by the text prior to my edit was retained by me, with a better source, which replaced a dead link.
You still ignore User:Jr8825's point, who 'there's no question that it's superior in terms of relevance and authority to a (dead link) PDF guide for religious holidays'. They found it okay for the lead, no substantial change being caused to the lead text, and so have others. So, it's one to four, and you still want to broker a compromise. By the way, I've handled this kind of ultramontane take-no-scalps cunctatorial obstructionism for 14 years in the I/P area. If it's designed to wear people out, it won't work. People like me just get their Irish up, dig their heels in even further, because not to, is to allow incompetence to reign undisturbed. Nishidani (talk) 21:41, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
I don't even believe Peteet should be in the lead in the footnote you just added. Reliable sources are available to characterize the views of the opponents, and Julie Peteet as a proponent of the analogy should not be our chief source to describe the views of the opposing "party." Wikieditor19920 (talk) 03:12, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Peteet is a fine source, for the lead and anywhere else. Denigrating her as simply a party of a dispute, and not an academic writing in the area of her expertise in a peer-reviewed journal goes against our policy on reliable sources. nableezy - 04:12, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
And honestly, I dont really see the need to continue arguing this. There are 5 people in this section, 4 of them agree that Peteet is a fine source. Theres a word for that I think, but if you want to challenge the usage of Peteet feel free. nableezy - 04:31, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
@Wikieditor19920: the truth of the matter is that Peteet belongs in the article because the Anthropological Quarterly is a rigorous, peer-reviewed journal. From reading above, is it fair to say you've now changed your view and agree that Peteet should stay with attribution (as in the current revision)? (Even if you consider her biased, it's a case WP:VNT). @Nishidani: to be fair to Wikieditor he did provide a source as I suggested, (although it's not an equal source, as has already been pointed out & I discuss below). Also, the argument that everyone, even the most qualified peer-reviewed scholars, inevitably has their own personal biases/positions, has merits that are worth acknowledging too (I've raised this point previously), within reason. Being forced to attribute a view so widely held that the only sources which disagree are WP:FRINGE would be false balance – but as this is a high threshold to meet preferring attribution usually can't go amiss.
@Wikieditor19920: The Jewish Political Studies Review simply doesn't have an equal reputation to a long-standing publication like the Anthropological Quarterly. I brought the JPSR up in a previous discussion as a potential primary source to demonstrate the view of defenders of current Israeli policy. It portrays itself as scholarly, but we need to be cautious in our handling of it as its political connections mean we shouldn't treat it as a third-party source like Peteet. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which publishes the JPSR, is headed by Dore Gold, an ally of Netanyahu, and partly funded by Sheldon Adelson, a major political donor. (And a little bit of common sense reinforces this caution – the think tank's current homepage features a video arguing that Israel isn't "occupying" the West Bank, so it's pretty obviously a biased source). Even if you personally considered Peteet to be equally biased, she's writing in a publication that's independent and well-regarded, so you'd be compelled by our policies to treat her favourably over a source like JPSR (there may be scope for using the JPSR as a primary source, but that's about it given its connection to the subject). Jr8825 • Talk 07:58, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
@Jr8825: As I explained earlier, "peer-reviewed" in this context is not especially relevant. I'm not clear what you mean by Peteet being a "third-party source." If that is a synonym for "objective," that is untrue. She is a proponent of the Israeli-apartheid comparison. She previously wrote Israel and South Africa are settler colonial states and societies once supported by imperial Britain, constituted by immigrants, and animated by ideologies of separation and exclusivism that resulted in indigenous displacement and dispossession. See her writings here. She is not the most reliable source to represent the views of the opposing side. You seem to observe in on bias in the JPSR -- and this actually is fine. But in this context, all the JPSR is being proposed for is to illustrate the views of the opposing side. For that, JPSR/the cited author is reliable. Would I say it's reliable in every context? Perhaps not. But to gloss over this distinction is to misunderstand how we assess bias and handle NPOV. We do not place certain scholars on a pedestal because we like what they have to say, and we should not be describing the views of each sides in a debate from a single ideological source. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 15:44, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
You didnt explain, you asserted, an assertion rejected explicitly now by two editors. A pseudo-academic journal is not a reliable source. A peer-reviewed one is. Peteet is indeed a third party source. You seem to think that because an academic finds negative things about a subject they study that means they no longer are a third party to that subject. Thats just silly. You cant just dismiss sources because the author has, in their academic work, written things you dislike. That is a complete non-starter. Peteet is a reliable source, Anthropological Quarterly is a reliable source, and what she writes in that publication can be cited as fact absent other reliable sources disputing it. A JCPA publication is not that. Again, I dont really see the need to belabor this point, there is one person arguing against four on it. Seems to me like a solid consensus for Peteet as a reliable source for this factual statement. nableezy - 16:08, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
You are repeating everything you just said about the "peer reviewed" distinction and use of terms like "pseudo-academic journal." Peteet's writings indicate a position in an academic debate, so her bias will obviously be present in academic articles. If you can move past simply repeating labels like "academic and "peer-reviewed" you'd better be able to understand the more nuanced argument here. A JCPA publication from this author is a more reliable summary of the views of critics of the apartheid analogy than is Peteet, who is not a "third-party source" but a commentator and participant in the pro/anti apartheid analogy debate. You are also in no position to declare what has consensus and what doesn't. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 20:02, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Peteet's writings indicate a position in an academic debate, I think this is a valid assertion to make, even in the absence of academic sources explicitly saying this. However, at the end of the day due weight isn't about balancing the facts or the arguments as we see them, it's about balancing the reliable, highly-trustworthy sources. @Wikieditor19920: this comes down to WP:VNT. You might disagree with Peteet's conclusions, but she's an expert in the field writing in a top quality publication. The JCPA is funded by and connected to figures in Israeli politics. It's demonstrably not an WP:IS. It can be used carefully but is not equal to an independent source (you can personally believe it's a more reliable summary of the views of critics of the apartheid analogy than is Peteet, but, for the purposes of building an encyclopedia, it's not). Point to evidence that Peteet's work is funded by Palestinian groups and I'll re-evaluate my view of her as a third-party source (third-party = independent, no need to stick it in inverted commas). Like Nishidani, there are parts of Peteet's analysis which I personally disagree with (almost certainly they're different from the parts to which Nishidani objects), but as an independent (not: impartial), scholarly secondary source we both agree her attributed analysis is the "ideal source" for describing what opponents of the apartheid analogy say, at least compared to a non-independent, clearly partisan organisation such as the JCPA. From what I've read so far, I do think there's a tendency to overstate the degree to which the sources support the apartheid analogy (or, more precisely, to understate the limitations & problematic elements of such a comparison that some sources acknowledge), I also think there's a tendency to artificially separate the term 'bantustans' from the analogy (I think their connection is implicitly implied even when it isn't explicitly laid out, and I haven't seen any sources specifically arguing the terms are disconnected). However, this is personal impression based mostly on skim-reading sources as they've been brought up. I haven't sat down and worked methodically through multiple sources, teasing out where existing paraphrase may be inaccurate or introducing loaded terms. If and when I have the time to do this, I'll discover if your concerns about an alternative position in an academic debate are actually borne out. Jr8825 • Talk 21:22, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Jr8825 I'm glad you appreciate some of the points I made. There's just one aspect I want to clarify. First, I am not expressing my disagreement with Petet. Nor am I saying that, in general, Peteet's published work is unreliable source. Nor would I say that the source I provided was unbiased. However, in the context of what we're discussing, this doesn't matter. An author's statements can be held as reliable to indicate what their opinion is, even if those statements aren't generally reliable. So the fact that JCPA and the author of the article I cited are connected to Israeli politics do not detract from whatsoever the value of this source in representing the counterarguments from said groups to the apartheid analogy. For that, it is reliable -- more so than Peteet, who is ideologically opposed to those viewpoints. Her attempts to summarize the counterpoints are susceptible to bias because of that. Think of it this way: Who would you rather summarize your arguments, you, or me? If it was me summarizing your arguments, and if I disagree with you, would you say i'm the most reliable source for Jr8825's arguments? Or is Jr8825 the most reliable source for Jr8825's arguments? If we were to include my summary of your arguments, wouldn't you want it to be attributed, i.e., "according to Wikieditor," rather than stated as fact? These are nuanced arguments and I think we're at risk of talking over each other. I just hope you recognize that 1) I appreciate your points and 2) I'm making a slightly more nuanced argument here that is not a comment on the validity of any viewpoint, only the best way to use sources to represent the views of two sides in a very contentious real-world debate. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 21:34, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

As a primary source, Jr8825 is not the best source for the arguments of Jr8825 – a reliable secondary source discussing, summarising and contextualising Jr8825's arguments is better. Jr8825 • Talk 21:39, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Also, Peteet is attributed in the current revision – where is the problem with the current revision? Jr8825 • Talk 21:45, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
I think that attribution is fine, but Peteet's statement should be left in the body rather than the lead. And again, I don't consider Peteet to be a reliable secondary source on this issue because of my statement's above (I think she can be treated as a primary source for how proponents of the analogy view the arguments of the opponents -- not a secondary source for what the arguments of the opponents are). Wikieditor19920 (talk) 21:50, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
We all say she is a reliable secondary source on this issue. And no, she is not a primary source for proponents of an analogy. You arent going to be able to twist a peer-reviewed journal article in to the personal opinions of an involved party. It simply will not happen. You might think you can filibuster your position in to the article, but believe me on this, I am inordinately stubborn when it comes to core Wikipedia policy. Peteet's article in AQ is not that of an academic advancing a position in an academic dispute. She is very specifically covering the comparison. Have you read the article? I have a pdf of it I'd be happy to send you. It is probably the very best source for this article, over all the crap that it is in it from this person called this thing apartheid and on and on and on. It is an article specifically focused on the comparison itself, its history, why it is used, whether it is useful. It is, and of this there is literally no room for dispute, a reliable secondary source on the topic of comparisons of Israel to Apartheid South Africa. You can disagree with it, you can bring other sources that challenge the things she puts forth. Other reliable sources that is. But you will not be able to transform this article in to the personal opinion of an involved party. Full stop. nableezy - 22:51, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
I am inordinately stubborn I'll certainly take your word on that. @Nableezy:, rather than butt heads until the end of time, how about this: I will accept the attribution as a compromise. That was added shortly after I objected to the material, and it's current form is acceptable to me. As long as other uses of Peteet, as far as describing the pro-Israeli side of the debate, are attributed, then I don't have any further objections. If they aren't, then I will request attribution. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 23:23, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate your acting in the role of an arbiter/referee, but even that role cannot exempt one from, from time to time, calling foul, particularly when fouling is repeated with impunity. You ask me to take wikieditor’s points seriously. Here’s the latest point.

Peteet as a proponent of the analogy should not be our chief source to describe the views of the opposing "party." Wikieditor19920 (talk) 03:12, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Well, that is just the nth proof that Wikieditor not only has not read Peteet, unlike you and the rest of us, but even skims or ignores the fact that her arguments against the Bantustan analogy, duly given in the synopsis above, have no impact, or simply drop from memory. Her whole argument disproves the idea she is proposing that the analogy is valid. Wikieditor was documented as saying he reads the talk page not the sources. Here he is haranguing us about his contrafactual beliefs about what a strong source supposedly concludes without even reading the source. That’s once more an instance of wikieditor's incorrigible practice of talking on and on about things they don't trouble themselves to grasp, the behavioural flaw of WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT

'Nishidani, I removed the content because it was unacceptable in its current form.'Wikieditor19920 (talk) 19:37, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

That is an example of a semantically incoherent sentence and a failure to follow the edits after his own. Its current form (now) is not the text they objected to. You cannot use the imperfect ‘was’ with the present tense implied in the adjective ‘current’. How can one argue with someone unfamiliar with the simplest implications of English?

the argument that everyone, even the most qualified peer-reviewed scholars, inevitably has their own personal biases/positions, has merits that are worth acknowledging tooJr8825 • Talk 07:58, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

That is stated by Peteet and certainly acknowledged by myself (it is obvious). I’ve always affirmed that no knowledge in the humanities is free from bias (in the sense used sportively, the ‘bias’ of the ball anyone bowls). Elementary epistemology tells us that. What editors should understand is that disciplined knowledge carries a meta-introspectiveness regarding bias in its hermeneutics and methodology that has to be taken into account. Peteet’s paper (I think she is wrong empirically in two conclusions, but I’m just an editor) exempolifies this awareness. She makes explicit that anyone (it applies here) on this topic will support a position of dfisavowel or support for the analogy based on their personal positions in this area regarding the realities described.

The recurrent problem here is policy compliance, not manipulation, and the careful reading of sources. Most of the talk runs out with an assertive carelessness about both of these key elements.Nishidani (talk) 09:44, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Nishidani, policy compliance is indeed a problem here. You've demonstrated no ability to follow basic talk page decorum or even attempt to comprehend policy arguments that aren't 100% in line with your thinking on the subject. I'd suggest you step back, but I'm sure you'll just follow up with another 3000+ character screed. Just know that AE will be sought as a remedy if you keep insulting other editors. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 16:58, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
"attempt to comprehend" ... "insulting other editors". Sheesh. nableezy - 17:17, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Not "can't comprehend," "won't comprehend." Specifically, when I point out that there exists bias in the source used, Nishidani seems to acknowledge that bias exists in most sources on this subject (something I certainly don't refute in the source I provided), but then suggests my pointing it out with regard to Peteet is indicative of my incompetence because she is somehow above bias. How does one reconcile these two points? Wikieditor19920 (talk) 19:45, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Nishidani seems to acknowledge that bias exists in most sources on this subject

Look. Set a goal for yourself, to try and construe at least once every blue moon what other editors actually state. I didn't 'seem' to 'acknowledge' something. I restated a fact of humanistic methodology every tertiary level student knows about. I did not say it existz in 'most' sources. I said in all sources. I didn't restrict it to this topic. I made clear it applies to any humanistic subject, history, sociology, phlebotomy, whatever. You come here with a bias, as do I, and anyone else. As anyone must accept here however, a serious academic source with a metacritical approach to a discourse like this one will be almost invariably more informed of the realities, more aware of the biases than most of us anonymous editors who spook wiki articles. If I wanted to get at Peteet, I'd disgrace myself just throwing out a claim of bias, rather than citing three texts from the 1990s which make most of her points. That would show that my criticism of bias is, well, biased, but sufficiently grounded in familiarity with the topic to make an informed comment. Lesson no.10 Nishidani (talk) 19:54, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
Yes, everybody has a bias in some way or shape or form. No, that does not mean that a rock solid reliable source suddenly is not because you object to a person's academic writings. Fairly simple concept for most of us to understand. nableezy - 23:16, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Wikieditor, there is unanimous agreement here that Peteet is a reliable secondary source on the analogy, both its critics and its proponents. That edit is obscene. Ill raise the other problems in another section. nableezy - 21:24, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Wikieditor I think you are way ott now, backtracking might be a good idea.Selfstudier (talk) 22:32, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
Nableezy These endless rants and attacks are becoming pathetic. For all of the bluster and insults, the above has not presented one good reason why Julie Peteet should be considered the best available source to summarize the views of her ideological opponents other than jumping up and down claiming "consensus," which there is not, and "she's reliable," a conclusion reached by willful ignorance of her obvious bias against the view she purports to describe. The notion that Julie Peteet who is a 1) proponent of the Israel-Apartheid analogy, [1], 2) supports boycotting Israeli academic institutions [2], and 3) is generally a critic of Israel is the best available source to describe the views of ideological opponents is completely farcical and non-compliant with NPOV. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 22:27, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Your view has been rejected by every other editor here. The good reason has been made, over and over. That you are playing the I didn't hear that game doesnt change that. Per WP:SCHOLARSHIP, a peer-reviewed article in a respected journal by an established expert in the field directly on the topic is a reliable source. Per WP:RS such a source is considered the best quality source available. Your disliking the content of that source or the author of it has literally no impact here. If you would like to engage a wider audience then NPOV/N or RS/N, depending on what youd like to argue, can be a place for you to try to do that. But as it stands, there are four of us who recognize the very obvious fact that Peteet's paper is a reliable secondary source on the analogy, its proponents and its detractors. Your personal feelings about her scholarship are just one in a long list of things that matter to you but not to Wikipedia. There very much is a consensus for retaining that source here, with four people supporting the obvious and one person pathetically jumping up and down screaming no no no. Edit against that consensus again and watch what happens. nableezy - 22:41, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Nableezy, it's a straightforward question and it has nothing to do with "personal" views and it is not answered by conclusory statements over "consensus," which are false, or "she's reliable."

1) Do you believe Julie Peteet has taken a position on the issue of the Israel-Apartheid analogy? The answer is yes. 2) Has Julie Peteet taken positions on the Israel-Palestine debate generally? Also, yes. 3) Do her positions on these matters make her the most reliable, leadworthy source to cite on the views of her ideological opponents? Per WP:PARTISAN, the answer is a clear no. The evidence for 1) and 2) is in the sources above. You called this clear and evidence-supported assertion a disgrace without disputing any of the provided cites. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 22:49, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

We are not in the business of judging the political leanings of scholars here. You are not an established expert in the field. You are not a source that can challenge such an expert in the field. Again, every single person who has commented here has agreed that Peteet is reliable and that the source belongs. If you would like to challenge that further you can try at RS/N. As it stands, there is a very clear consensus for retaining that paper. If you edit against that consensus again I will report it. I have no intention to continue debating somebody who refuses to get the point. We have a consensus here, and attempts to edit-war around it will be greeted with an AE report. nableezy - 22:52, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Again, you refuse to answer the question and apparently misunderstand our role as editors. WP:RS and WP:PARTISAN do not only allow considering bias and how it relates to reliability, they require it. As for Julie Peteet's positions on these issues and her potential bias, we don't need to speculate. All it requires is reference to her publicly stated positions. Sources that are "reliable" in one context may not be in others. That's also policy, so repeatedly claiming she is "reliable" and then threatening AE is not an answer. She may be reliable in most instances, but when it comes to describing the views of the other side in a debate, she is not among the most reliable, or even a source we should prefer.
The other aspects of your response, 1) refusing to address the issue at hand, 2) falsely claiming consensus, and 3) threatening an AE report are utterly unresponsive to these concerns. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 22:57, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Lol, refuse to answer the question and misunderstand our roles. Ive answered your questions repeatedly. Your refusal to listen is disruptive and I am under no obligation to continue playing that game. That an academic reaches a conclusion on a topic they study does not make it so they are somehow not a reliable source. And HELLO, she says she finds very important distinctions between Israel and Apartheid South Africa. You could, oh I dont know, actually read the paper. You could try to educate yourself on the topic instead of making endless inane arguments. But yet, he persists. Again, there is a clear consensus on this topic. Edit against that consensus and see what happens. You have options available to you if you think this local consensus is wrong. You can bring this up at RS/N or NPOV/N if you feel either of those things are relevant here. The available options do not include continuing to engage in filibuster tactics or to edit-war against that consensus. And yes, you can edit-war by making one revert a week. Edit against the consensus of this page again and I promise you I will file a report. You can ask whatever questions you like, I however refuse to engage in games that are counter to our policies and basic common sense. And before you say there is no consensus, one person is arguing against, by either talk page comment or article edit, four here. nableezy - 23:04, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
You, Nishidani, and Selfstudier repeatedly migrate to new discussions to support the same position. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think the discussion would benefit from broader input. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 23:15, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Um, Ive been editing this article for ten years prior to you creating this account. Nishidani for longer. No, its not a coincidence, we've had this page on our watchlists for over a decade. And youre not including User:Jr8825 in the editors who have explicitly supported this as a reliable source. Who have tried to get through to you the very simple concept that you dont get to reject an academic paper in a top quality journal because you dislike the academic. But you refuse to get that point. If youd like to get broader input feel free. I dont think youre going to find many people accepting the idea that an article specifically focused on an anthropological comparison in the most respected journal in the field of anthropology is not a reliable source for that comparison. But you are of course welcome to try. nableezy - 23:19, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

crime of apartheid section

That section is about the specific applicability of the crime of apartheid, criminalized in the Rome Statute. It is not about "legal commentary", it is about whether or not that specific statute applies and the views about that. nableezy - 21:26, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

it is about whether or not that specific statute applies and the views about that. This is an exercise we call legal analysis or commentary, a subheader implying a "crime" is absolutely non-compliant with POV. We should be striving for headings as neutral as possible and yet in every instance, the subheaders either toe the line or cross it into POV territory. This is one of the more obvious examples of a subheader that needs to be reworked. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 01:06, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
No, the subheading says crime because it is about the crime of apartheid, not about the analogy to South African Apartheid. Thats the difference between little a and capital A apartheid. That isnt POV, it is a heading title that gives an overview of what is covered in that section. nableezy - 01:14, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
The subheading implies a "crime has been committed," yet the section consists of legal commentary about the specific issue and why some scholars believe there may be some form of a statutory violation. Wikipedia does not play judge and hand out convictions, we describe the debate, and legal commentary describes the debate. Crime takes a position on it. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 01:23, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
No it does not. It says that this section is going to cover the actual legal crime of apartheid. Not asserting anybody is guilty of it. Crime does not take a position on it, it clarifies what the section is. Given that is the long standing consensus version, youll need a new consensus to change it. nableezy - 02:05, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Your understanding of consensus is flawed. "Long standing consensus version" is not always "consensus." Material can be assumed to have consensus until it's challenged, and then the WP:ONUS is on you to establish consensus to maintain the challenged material. What's being challenged here is titling a section "Crime of apartheid," which implies a crime took place and that the section serves to document that crime. That's exactly what this section is not because there is no unanimous agreement among reliable sources that's the case. What the section does present is legal and academic analysis between a legal precept and the relevant situation under discussion. The article is about the "apartheid analogy." So "Legal analysis" obvious discussions legal implications, whereas "Crime of apartheid" implies something definitive. If you refuse to acknowledge how this heading communicates that, as opposed to a more neutral and non-declarative heading, that's a problem. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 05:04, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
The section title does not by itself implicate Israel, the title covers what is discussed in the section. If you were arguing that the opposition case is insufficiently covered in the section that might have some merit. Onus is not a license to go around removing or altering material just because you don't like it and long standing material is presumed OK absent a good reason for changing it, which you do not appear to have.Selfstudier (talk) 12:47, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I fail to see how ONUS allows for you to make a disputed change and demand that it be retained. I can just as easily say the ONUS is on you for including a claim that the section is about "legal analysis". And yes, material that has stood for literally years and years before you made the unfortunate discovery of Wikipedia does indeed have consensus. You will need a new consensus to change it, and trying to force your view in isnt going to work. Please see WP:NOCON: In discussions of proposals to add, modify or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit. However, for contentious matters related to living people, a lack of consensus often results in the removal of the contentious matter, regardless of whether the proposal was to add, modify or remove it. Guess who made the "bold" edit? Guess what the version of the article was prior to the edit? Hmmmm. nableezy - 13:42, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

See WP:CCC and WP:DRNC. Crime of apartheid is a declarative statement that a crime has been committed, not a header describing an ongoing debate. WP:STRUCTURE. The fact that it has existed in the article for some time unnoticed does not in any way make it less problematic and non-compliant with WP:NPOV. The default here should be the most neutral heading possible. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 23:35, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Yes, if it changes cool. But no, it is not a declarative statement. You cant just declare that. The section is titled crime of apartheid cus hello the article it is talking about is crime of apartheid. There is literally no POV expressed in saying this section discusses the crime of apartheid and Israel. It does not say anything about guilt. Youre just making that up. nableezy - 00:37, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

The heading implies a crime occurred. NPOV requires picking up on these subtleties and implications, which you apparently cannot or refuse to do (or you know very well what it implies, and are shoving it back into the article regardless). Wikieditor19920 (talk) 01:35, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

No it does not. It does not imply anything besides that what is being discussed in it is related to the crime of apartheid. Again, youre just making that up. Much like you made up "Israel-proper" implies colonialism lol. These things are pulled out of thin air and based on absolutely nothing. The section is titled "crime of apartheid" because our article on the "crime of apartheid" is titled "crime of apartheid. This is beyond silly. nableezy - 01:39, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Lead

The writing in the lead is over-filled with adjectives and wordy, particularly the second paragraph describing the views of critics of the analogy, while the paragraph describing the views of proponents of the analogy is much more crisp and concise. This warrants some revisiting. Words like "strongly" should be removed from the second paragraph and the sentences should be shortened. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 06:53, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

You are confusing adjective and adverb. The only adjectives, apart from obligatory epithets like 'second-class'(citizens), 'Israeli(settlements), 'separate' (roads) etc., are (a)the comparative of 'cheap' ('cheaper' labour), (b) 'inaccurate' and (c) 'discriminatory.' The adverbs you confuse with adjectives, by contrast, are eight:'strongly'; 'actually', 'morally,' 'heavily,' 'explicitly,' 'implicitly,' 'widely,' and 'internationally,' six of which are there in contexts defining Israel's opposition to the analogy.
Before (re)proposing something like a rewriting of a lead, editors would do well to familiarize themselves with the elementary distinctions in word classes.
Then, one should always 'suggest' or 'propose' rather than use a peremptory stylistic form implying irrevocable judgment, like should ('should be removed'). 'strongly', for the record, is a far less emotive term than Peteet's adverb 'avidly' ('surprisingly, the comparison is avidly disavowed by the Israeli state and its supporters.') Nishidani (talk) 13:39, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
You are right about the adverb/adjective mix-up, and you also picked up on what I was referring to. I would like to see less emotive language and shorter sentences in the second paragraph. Trimming down the adverbs and replacing it with a short, dry description of the opposing position would be preferable, I think, to what's in the article now, which is not terrible but not great. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 23:28, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
There is nothing 'emotive' in para 2. Shorter sentences are simply matters of punctuation.Nishidani (talk) 09:05, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
Shorter sentences are a matter of less words. Nableezy, you described some of my edits as creating sentences that were "halting." Here is one example of my changes:
  • Israel and its supporters reject the comparison, and a number of scholars dispute the accuracy of the comparison.

to

  • A number of scholars reject the comparison.
This is Writing 101. Where is the reason to state that something is "disputed" twice in the same sentence? Usually it's best to confine a single idea to a single sentence. There is absolutely no reason to restate the same idea twice in the same sentence. I also find it confounding that only the "proponent" positions are described in extensive detail, whereas the opposing positions are mostly written with wordy and non-descriptive sentences. Nor is there any clear structure in the lead between the placement of "proponent" and "opponent" positions. It seems mostly like a summary of the "proponent" position, with the "opposing" position sandwiched in between, and for which one of the only two sources provided is actually that of the proponent side. This is not only problematic from a basic writing standpoint, it is non-compliant with NPOV. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 22:07, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
Fixed the one identified issue. You can keep complaining about a scholarly source and calling it a proponent, but it isnt, it is a scholarly source on the topic. As far as weight, the lead, and the article, reflect the balance of sources, not the false equivalence your edits presented. nableezy - 23:46, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Move from awkward title?

Didn't this article used to be called something like "Allegations of Israeli-Palestinian apartheid" many years ago? I would prefer that title and just want to throw the idea out to see if anyone has better ideas or sensical objections for why the current title is better, if any, before formally requesting it. It looks like there are at least eight requested moves in the archives, probably more. I don't feel like trying to summarize them all but maybe someone experienced can more easily than I can; I should at least mention they are there. 2601:647:4D00:2C40:78F7:C325:C135:5529 (talk) 18:40, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I think it probably is called this because many sources refer to the comparison as an analogy. Of course these sources are typically referring to a comparison with SA apartheid which causes confusion because there is also the crime of apartheid in general and then it is not a question of comparison but qualification. Still, I think trying to change it at this point is not going to be worth the trouble, there would likely be a lot of resistance.Selfstudier (talk) 19:42, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
Agreed. I think the current title represents an uneasy but stable compromise between those who argue the analogy is spot on, and those who think it's offensive nonsense and want the whole page deleted. I suggest leaving the naming question well alone, as it doesn't seem to have generated controversy of late.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:37, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

For the benefit of those who might not be native speakers of English, "allegedly," is a compromise between accused and shown, so a second level makes the entire article seem comically biased towards Israelis. 2601:647:4D00:2C40:789E:C71D:CD99:C38E (talk) 13:22, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

POV editing

Besides the basic violation of WP:ALLEGE, can somebody explain why the specific parts that resemble apartheid south africa was removed? I see somebody thinks Proponents of the analogy say that "a system of control" exists in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, ..., resemble some aspects of the South African apartheid regime, and that elements of Israel's occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid is proper writing. No genius, if one were to include the word "that" prior to resemble it would be proper grammar, but without that it is not an actual sentence. There really should be a basic understanding of English to edit these pages. I cant revert this latest tendentious edit right now, but will later if nobody else gets to it first. nableezy - 17:21, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I didn't see this before analyzing the actual article changes. The items are necessary to the lead, and they are duly expanded on below. So lead summary style. The lack of attention to the niceties of grammar is, from my editing experience today, becoming quite frequent. I have modified the lead to balance the paragraph lengths, cover the items of the analogy briefly, and relocate the some debatre for and against stuff in a distinct paragraph.Nishidani (talk) 18:03, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Questions

A. Why does this opener have no refutations such as https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/opinion/why-israel-is-nothing-like-apartheid-south-africa.html "critics say the idea erases Arabs inside Israel, demonize the state, and erase the history of Apartheid South Africa". Also, the nation state bill being controversial should be in its own section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:A1C0:6D40:F832:5D94:E296:9A19 (talk) 03:29, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

But it does. The second paragraph is entirely about the criticism, and notes "Critics of the analogy argue that the comparison is factually and morally inaccurate and intended to delegitimize Israel itself". RolandR (talk) 09:35, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

International Criminal Court jurisdiction determination?

Are you following the International Criminal Court jurisdiction determination story? I do not plan to edit the article but want to ask the experienced editors here how they plan to include it. 2601:647:4D00:2C40:430:C568:DDAB:5A11 (talk) 01:57, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

That is not relevant at the moment (for the analogy). There is International Criminal Court investigation in Palestine article.Selfstudier (talk) 11:59, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
It is included now following the HRW report calling for ICC investigation.Selfstudier (talk) 11:26, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Use of Julie Peteet

Julie Peteet is a scholar on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Julie Peteet is cited in paragraph #2 of the lead. The citation reads: Julie Peteet, 2016 p.249 also argues that that there is an Israeli narrative of exceptionalism which works to 'exempt' it from such comparisons. Should this remain in the article? Wikieditor19920 (talk) 23:22, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Please use the labeled sections accordingly (votes, discussion, and other commentary).

Votes (Please keep your votes concise.)

  • No Julie Peteet is a WP:BIASED source on the debate surrounding the Israel-apartheid analogy. The thrust of her work is that she is a proponent of the analogy and she has taken other partisan positions. She is currently used as a citation to describe the views of her ideological opponents. In a dual-sided debate, the most reliable sources on either side are scholarship that may represent that particular point of view. Opponents in any debate are inclined to misrepresent the positions of the other side, and her summary that critics of the analogy rest only on "Israeli exceptionalism" does not jive with available sources on the topic from the other side of the debate. Julie Peteet is a valuable cite for the article generally, but this specific usage is questionable. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 23:22, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
I'll also just add a point of agreement with some "Yes" votes, who claim that "personal feelings" or "personal dislike" of Peteet's conclusions shouldn't be a factor. I absolutely agree, and the same applies for a personal preference or agreement for Peteet's work, ideas, or conclusions. The notion that bias may exist is an objective assessment usually indicated by whether the author has sharp views on the issues in question. This is why it is concerning that we are using a source to describe the views of their ideological opponents, as opposed to a source representing those particular views, with the flimsy excuse that it is "reliable," a sweeping statement that glosses over this problem. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 15:19, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes and obviously so. The source at issue here is Peteet, Julie (2016), "The Work of Comparison: Israel/Palestine and Apartheid", Anthropological Quarterly, 89 (1): 247–281. Now, looking at WP:SCHOLARSHIP it is so obviously clear that this is a reliable source that I honestly am not sure how this is even in question. Peteet is a professor of anthropology at the University of Louisville, chair of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, author of Space and Mobility in Palestine and Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps published by University of Pennsylvania Press and Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement published by Columbia University Press, author of a number of peer-reviewed works that have been widely cited. She is an established expert in the field. Anthropological Quarterly is a widely respected peer-reviewed journal published by a university press. The specific article in question is not, as claimed above, one of an involved party of a dispute, it is a study of the analogy, the reasons supporters use to make it, the reasons opponents use to refute them. It is unquestionably a reliable source. And RS/N could have confirmed that if it had been used, but oh well. So we have an established expert in the field writing a peer-reviewed article in a widely respected journal. WP:RS is clear on this. This source is undoubtedly reliable and undoubtedly properly used in this article for this material. Disliking what scholarship says is not cause for removing scholarship in an encyclopedia article. To be more blunt than I probably should be, in my honest opinion, any user saying no here is waving a giant WP:NOTHERE flag and should be shown the door as their purposes and Wikipedia's are fundamentally at odds. nableezy - 00:17, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. This is no-brainer. A relevant attributed statement from a qualified academic in a peer-reviewed journal can't be discarded just because an editor thinks that the statement or the academic is biased. Peteet has an established record of research on the use of words in the conflict. Zerotalk 02:53, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes – an academic source from a reputable peer-reviewed journal, it's an ideal source for a topic like this. Per WP:BIASED, a personal belief that the source is biased is not grounds to exclude it (reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective). Even though Peteet's an expert with a strong reputation, I think it's good practice to attribute expert sources in a subject area like this, as is currently done with the Peteet source. Jr8825 • Talk 12:44, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes per reasons provided by editors above. Idealigic (talk) 13:25, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • No As she not neutral observer we cannot use her source to discuss he political opponents --Shrike (talk) 13:32, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • 'Yes. This is getting ridiculously pathetic. Everytime a large consensus con firms the obvious, we have one editor grasping as bureaucratic straws by resorting to an RfC to try to overthrow that consensus. No passing editor can be expected to have the sitzfleisch or patience of Job to read diligently through the tediously repetitive discussion that ended in a 4/1 verdict that Peteet is undoubtedly a first-rate source.Nishidani (talk) 13:38, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. Julie Peteet writing explicitly on this issue in Anthropological Quarterly is quite obviously a reliable source. And, in the absence of any reliable source describing her or her research as "biased", editors here are not competent to make such an assertion. Indeed, to do so is arguably a breach of WP:BLP. RolandR (talk) 15:32, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes per reasons provided above. She is a reliable and established expert in this field, publishing in a reliable and established academic journal. Also, the presence of bias doesn't automatically make a source unusable. As per the same WP:BIAS that was quoted in the OP's vote, "However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject." On a more general note, I'm curious as to how this article would even work if every source with a shred of bias were to be taken out, seeing how it's an article that deals with a controversy between two opposing opinions. PraiseVivec (talk) 15:52, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, obviously, a Professor of Anthropology writing in a peer-reviewed journal; seriously: I would question the judgement of anyone who does not find that WP:RS, Huldra (talk) 23:34, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, reliable source, correctly attributed and relevant to the topic of the article. The fact she is a proponent of the analogy surely makes her an excellent source when describing the arguments for it. Boynamedsue (talk) 20:50, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes - clearly reliable - GizzyCatBella🍁 21:09, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Qualified Yes -- Proposed revision to sentence to give reader the POV of Peteet: Julie Peteet, an American academic who has written on how "Palestinians comprehend, experience, narrate, and respond to Israeli settler-colonialism", 2016 p.249 also argues that that there is an Israeli narrative of exceptionalism which works to 'exempt' it from such comparisons. (quote is from here) (NOTE: Editor is a volunteer for the WP:Feedback Request Service which randomly selects volunteers to give feedback to WP:RfC) --Louis P. Boog (talk) 15:38, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, Peteet is an expert on the subject, published in a peer-reviewed journal; neither is what she saying particularly exceptional or fringe. The argument that she is WP:BIASED to the point of unusability merely because she has expressed an opinion on the topic is absurd and could be used to disqualify any academic who takes a position on anything - by that logic no sources could ever be cited to support anything at all, no matter how high-quality, because by weighing in they would immediately disqualify themselves. --Aquillion (talk) 13:06, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

A source may be reliable in some contexts but not others. WP:PARTISAN is one example one. By reference to Julie Peteet's own public statements and writings, she is 1) largely a proponent of the Israel-apartheid analogy, 2) a proponent of boycott efforts against Israel, and 3) a proponent of boycotting Israeli academic institutions, to which many of the critics of the analogy belong. Placing emphasis on her academic credentials and other typical WP:RS qualities while ignoring this crucial context and suggesting she is the best available source to summarize the views of her ideological opponents makes absolutely no sense and is completely inconsistent with WP:NPOV and WP:RS. Again, simply declaring Julie Peteet is a reliable source is a shallow argument. It misses these nuanced arguments and the specific context in which she is being used here. I do not object to the use of Peteet generally, but her usage here in the lead, as the only source for views of critics of the analogy, is absolutely inappropriate, even with attribution. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 01:33, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

This is WP:SCHOLARSHIP, not an op-ed by some politician. This is the work product of an expert in the field of anthropology writing in a well respected peer-reviewed journal on that topic. Your disliking of her conclusions, in an article subject to peer-review by other experts in the field, does not make her a partisan, it does not make her an involved party, it does not make her unreliable for the statements that she makes. And beyond that, WP:PARTISAN simply does not allow for removing a source on the basis that you dislike the authors conclusions. This specific article has been cited in a number of other peer-reviewed journal articles. It is the work of a scholar writing in her area of expertise. And a random person on the internet's (you) personal politics should not factor into how Wikipedia treats that, as a reliable source, at all. nableezy - 01:45, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Nothing about WP:PARTISAN sets any limit on what sources we are supposed to evaluate for bias. Just like it has nothing to do with you dislik(ing) the authors conclusions, another WP:PA that shows a complete inability to stay on track or understand the relevant policy. The views of Side A in a debate should not solely be characterized by Side B in that debate, regardless of the forum that debate is taking place in (academic articles, etc). Again, the RfC is not asking whether or not Peteet should be used anywhere in the article, but if it is appropriately to use her as the sole source, or even a source, for characterizing the views of those with whom she disagrees. The answer is clearly, IMO, no. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 01:57, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
My answer is about the use of this peer reviewed journal article by an expert in the field of anthropology specifically focused on the comparisons of Israel and South African Apartheid and on the arguments made in support and against those comparisons for this specific statement. And, for the tenth time, the article doesnt even say the comparisons to Apartheid are totally valid, she finds important distinctions, so this make believe about her being used as a source for her ideological opponents is in addition to being irrelevant is unsubstantiated. It is, one more time, WP:SCHOLARSHIP, not the personal opinion of some random partisan. It is the work product of an expert in the field, writing in a paper subject to the rigors of peer-review by other experts in the field. It is unquestionably reliable in this context. A random Wikipedia editor doesnt get to challenge actual scholarship based on their feelings. It is honestly insane to me that this is even allowed. nableezy - 02:04, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
What's not allowed are endless WP:PAs and total disregard for civility/decorum etc. Differing opinions are allowed, including those coming from editors who properly understand that bias in any source can limit its usability in some contexts and not others. Perhaps you are so enamored with Peteet and her wisdom that you think we should use them in any possible way, but to use her as the primary source for the position of her opponents is ludicrous. That you cannot grasp this basic logical proposition, or refuse to, doesn't mean other editors are required to do the same. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 02:46, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
You think my calling you a random Wikipedia editor is a personal attack? And then follow that up with you cannot grasp this basic logical proposition? Jesus christ. And for the love of anything you hold dear, Peteet is not a primary source. This is not that difficult a concept. No more replies please, would rather not see you bludgeon another discussion to death. nableezy - 03:54, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Stop saying things that are false and then we're done. 1) your assertions about personal views, personal feelings are clear WP:PAs. Do not comment on what you presume to be another editors views to be. 2) I clearly was not calling her a WP:PRIMARYSOURCE, I said she was the primary source for the "supporters" line in the lead of the article, i.e. the sole or only source. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 05:23, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
WP:ANI is thataway if you think so. WP:BLUDGEON is going to be my only response to you for the duration of this RFC. nableezy - 05:32, 1 March 2021 (UTC) 05:32, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Disliking what scholarship says is not cause for removing scholarship in an encyclopedia article. This is yet another laughable statement that misses the point entirely. Again, all WP:RS are to be evaluated in context. WP:PARTISAN specifically requires we account for viewpoints. An adequate response would address these points, not gloss over them by calling names and restating journal names. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 01:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

There's an old saying, of a mother watching a cadet parade: 'Everyone is out of step but my Johnnie'. I've never seen an+d editor repeatedly insist that everyone but themselves has misinterpreted policy and the sources.Nishidani (talk) 13:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
@Jr8825: I would suggest you not pick up Nableezy's bad habit of speculating about or attributing judgments to editor's "personal beliefs." She has publicly expressed a position on the issue. Acting as if the potential for bias has zero grounds is either uninformed or willfully ignorant, and then remarking on editor's "personal" views takes it into WP:PA territory. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 14:54, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
@Wikieditor19920: you are reading a criticism/attack into my comment where there is none, not least because I wasn't addressing anyone specifically. All I was saying is that an editor's belief that a source is biased (having an "inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group") in the absence of a secondary source arguing this is inevitably a personal judgement/assessment, and per our policies, this individual assessment is not grounds to remove a source. I doubt anyone disputes that Peteet is highly critical of Israel's policies in the occupied territories, but that does not make her work published in RS less valid here. Jr8825 • Talk 15:40, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
Jr8825, I appreciate the clarification, but if you don't want to be misread, you shouldn't be mentioning any "editor's "personal" views. You also fundamentally misunderstand WP:PARTISAN and the arguments being made here. Editors are indeed allowed and required to assess bias. There are countless threads at WP:RSN where certain sources were deemed to be of limited reliability in some contexts because of perceived bias as a matter of editorial consensus. I suggest you read up on those before remarking on, and dismissing, what you describe as editor's "personal views." We don't need a "secondary source" to do what WP:PARTISAN and WP:RS explicitly require us to do. Second, the argument here is not and never was that Peteet is generally unreliable. It's that she should not be considered a preferred source for describing the views of her ideological opponents, since anyone doing so in a debate is liable to misrepresent, even if only slightly, the views of their opponents for rhetorical advantage. Her statement that Israeli rejections of the analogy rests only on notions of Israel being "special" does not jive with other available sources on the subject from the opposing view and reeks of strawmanning. So again, I appreciate the clarification, and you don't need to agree with me for us to be cordial, but don't dismiss these arguments as "personal." Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:05, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
That isnt her statement, please stop making things up. nableezy - 17:16, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
That's exactly what the summary reads, I'll quote it in full: Julie Peteet, 2016 p.249 also argues that that there is an Israeli narrative of exceptionalism which works to 'exempt' it from such comparisons.. So either go correct it, or check the source again. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:22, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
Where does that say the only reason supporters of Israel reject the comparison is a narrative of exceptionalism. It says there is that narrative. Not that all arguments are based on it. nableezy - 17:34, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) "you shouldn't be mentioning any "editor's "personal" views": I didn't mention and wasn't referring to any specific editor's personal views in my comment above, as I just clarified. The decisions taken at RSN are not individual/personal because they are based on a consensus of multiple editors' judgements, as you pointed out – it's an entirely different situation. I'm not arguing that editors shouldn't assess bias, of course it should be taken into account. However, I strongly disagree with your assertion that I "fundamentally misunderstand" BIASED/PARTISAN (the section of RS I originally quoted in my !vote above), which explicitly states that an individual assessment of bias isn't grounds in itself to remove a source. The precise wording (with my emphasis) is: "When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources ... Bias may make in-text attribution appropriate". We're not talking about an activist publisher like Pluto Press here (not that Pluto doesn't publish good sources), we're discussing a source which clearly meets the requirements for RS: it's a subject matter expert's work in a long-established, peer-reviewed academic journal. As I stated in my original comment, as the source is now (appropriately) attributed I fail to see any policy objection to including it in the article. Jr8825 • Talk 17:29, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
Sorry, "fundamentally misunderstand" perhaps isn't the most diplomatic way to put it. Nonetheless, you seem to acknowledge that editors are allowed to assess for bias. Yes, consensus can determine bias exists in a source. A secondary source does not need to conclude bias. That other source may itself be susceptible to bias, so that's where editors come in to determine it. Consensus is formed by a multitude of editors expressing their views. By you suggesting these are "personal views" and adopting the language of Nableezy/Nishidani, big mistake, you are suggesting the arguments are basically WP:IDONTLIKEIT, which is false. You also keep restating that "reliable" means reliable in all contexts, and I frankly don't know how to address this except to point out it's a misunderstanding of how WP:RS works. Finally, don't say you "fail to see any policy objection" -- the policy objection here is clearly stated. Just say you don't agree with it. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:45, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
"I fail to see" = an expression of my viewpoint, nothing more. Jr8825 • Talk 18:47, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
Well it is basically WP:IDONTLIKEIT, with a sprinkling of WP:IDHT and a spoonful of WP:BLUDGEON. nableezy - 18:08, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
Are we baking a cake? Wikieditor19920 (talk) 18:55, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
  • (1:5 days ago) Peteet as a proponent of the analogy should not be our chief source to describe the views of the opposing "party." Wikieditor19920 (talk) 03:12, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
  • (2)'She is a proponent of the Israeli-apartheid comparison Wikieditor19920 (talk) 15:44, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Fact check.'Well, that is just the nth proof that Wikieditor not only has not read Peteet, unlike you and the rest of us, but even skims or ignores the fact that her arguments (are) against the Bantustan analogy, duly given in the synopsis above, have no impact, or simply drop from memory. . . the behavioural flaw of WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT Nishidani (talk) 09:44, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Wikieditor’s response to this factual description of Peteet’s paper and his misunderstanding of it, is to claim I don’t understand policy, I should step back, stop insulting him, else AE. I.e. threats. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 16:58, 25 February 2021 (UTC).
  • (3)The notion that Julie Peteet who is a 1) proponent of the Israel-Apartheid analogy, [1) supports boycotting Israeli academic institutions [2=the link is to a resolution where Peteet’s name does not appear). Wikieditor19920 (talk) 22:27, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Note 1 links to Peteet's which denies the adequacy of the Bantustan analogy. I.e. wikieditor persists, despite being notified of his error, in mischaracterizing her views.
Note 2 links to an Anthropological Society resolution on boycotting Israeli academe. No where does Peteet's name appear.
  • (4) 'Julie Peteet is a WP:BIASED source on the debate surrounding the Israel-apartheid analogy. The thrust of her work is that she is a proponent of the analogy. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 23:22, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
  • (5) 'By reference to Julie Peteet's own public statements and writings, she is 1) largely a proponent of the Israel-apartheid analogy, 2) a proponent of boycott efforts against Israel, and 3) a proponent of boycotting Israeli academic institutions, to which many of the critics of the analogy belong. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 01:33, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
I.e. this is a palmary case of WP:Bludgeon, WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT. A deliberate refusal to (a)read a source (b) amend a mistaken view once it is pointed out (c) and a repetitive hammering of the same remarks throughout these threads. Where, as repeatedly, there is a single editor characteristically distorting evidence and arguments, refusing to listen to their interlocutors on the page, and indulging in repetitive rants, there is sufficient warrant to ignore their presence, since they are ignoring both other editors' points and the sources themselves. Nishidani (talk) 15:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Julie Peteet in her work "beyond compare" describes the distinctions between Apartheid South Africa and the current situation in Israel as largely superficial. She asserts that the analogy is largely accurate. To suggest that she opposes the analogy is preposterous; she is clearly an advocate for it and makes repeated use of this rhetorical device in her work. From "Beyond Compare:"

The international community, or at least the precincts of it that call the shots, also continues to view the apartheid-like practices of Israel in the Occupied Territories through the prism of security. The US harshly rejected the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice against the wall in East Jerusalem and the West Bank (and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, then on the presidential campaign trail, hastened to concur, lest anyone find partisan daylight between him and Bush on this score). The US sees the wall as a legitimate means of deterring Palestinian attacks on Israel, a defense it extends to checkpoints, restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement, home demolitions, extrajudicial executions and other violations of international law. Most dramatically, the US, with the tacit backing of European and Arab allies, has eagerly enforced the years-long siege on Gaza and acquiesced in several Israeli assaults upon the territory, including the egregious Operation Cast Lead over the winter of 2008-2009. The international community appears to see no contradiction between its simultaneous support for a “viable Palestinian state” and the physical and virtual amputation of Gaza from the Palestinian body politic. The siege of Gaza is an apartheid measure, if ever there was one.

To characterize her and her writings as opposed to the apartheid analogy is questionable. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 21:10, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

(Sigh, take a deep breath, write).
It is not a question of whether she is opposed or in favour of such an analogy. There is nothing problematical in either making such a comparison, or in drawing a distinction, as does Peteet here and elsewhere, between the two.
  • The normal courtesy, to provide for other editors the precise source details and a link, is, once more, missing. I.e.
  • Julie Peteet, Beyond Compare, Middle East Report, Winter, 2009, No. 253 (Winter, 2009), pp. 16-25
  • Note the date, 2009. We are using her considered summation of her research in 2016, seven years later.
  • It is wholly irrelevant what Peteet's personal views are, as several editors have noted, and which you ignore.
  • The older source has little if anything which is not in the paper we are considering: the analogy is raised, and its defects outlined. Labour practices differ (pp.22ff)

The Israeli system of rule over Palestinians can be credibly described, and to some extent analyzed, as something akin to apartheid as it was practiced in South Africa until 1994. But as a framework for activism and advocacy, the language of apartheid is heavily freighted with history, to wit, its indelible association with one particular historical experience. The international community eventually rejected and sanctioned apartheid in South Africa, whereas it has been difficult to mobilize international support for Palestinian rights. Apartheid South Africa had little external support comparable to Israel's and defenders of its ideology and practices were precious few...Another critical difference is that the UN and the inter national community gave South African apartheid the cold shoulder; the world body and other nations (except, again, Israel) refused to recognize the bantustans as independent political entities. In Israel-Palestine, there is a long history of warm world support for the concepts of territorial partition and ethno-religious separation

No one would deny that hafrada (separation) policies bear comparison to apartheid (separation) practices. The problem in theory is whether the similarities are sufficiently substantial to warrant the imbrication of analogy, or whether they, while overlapping in several regards, evince sufficient differences in kind to deny the congruency, or heuristic utility, of the analogy.
To draw an analogy between South Africa's Bantustans and the West Bank/Gaza enclaves is not immoral, forced, intrinsically biased, partisan, political. The similarities are detailed, and comparativist historians, anthropologists, sociologists draw those similarities - in Israel (Oren Yiftachel and scores of others) and abroad. It is not the fault of analysts that such similarities exist: it would be a serious fault were they not to note them. The major point she makes is that what the world branded as repulsive in SA and therefore warranting a boycott, it accepts as a fair outcome in Israel/Palestine. This too is obvious, and no cause for scandal.Nishidani (talk) 21:50, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
The first half of your comment patently misrepresents Peteet's views on the matter, not only in her body of work but in the very text you cited. She is clearly a proponent of the analogy — your assessment that this is somehow only a natural conclusion, without recognizing the ongoing real-word dispute on this matter, raises questions about your editorial judgment.
The second half of your comment is transparent POV-pushing and WP:FORUM-like commentary. Your analysis of why she is correct and, again, why the comparison "makes sense" is utterly and completely irrelevant to this discussion. The other condescending statements peppered in are equally irrelevant. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 01:30, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

She is clearly a proponent of the analogy.

That is the sixth time you quote your own disproven claim, in the face of four editors.
To quote Ronald Reagan in his second presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980,There you go again. 'Nuf sed.'Nishidani (talk) 09:26, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
Nishidani, you blindly argue that she disassociates herself with the analogy even as you quote paragraphs and her works where she praises and promotes it. You justify this by arguing that the analogy, in your personal view, makes sense and should be uncontroversial. I also suggest you actually read the arguments by those you perceive as supporting your every word, because Peteet being opposed to the analogy is not what editors are saying. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 17:11, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I also suggest you actually read the arguments

Teachen grandpa to suck eggs.Nishidani (talk) 17:55, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
You nailed the dynamic. I'm going to end by saying 1) it's obvious the consensus is to keep the citation 2) my only suggestion is to add additional arguments via cite to that sentence to provide broader context. IMO that mitigates the issue with using Peteet as the only source for that position. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 18:55, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
In general bringing alternative/contradictory citations is usually better than trying to cancel existing rs. I haven't commented in that RFC, do you object if I close it?Selfstudier (talk) 13:28, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
An aunt once said, 'teach grannie to suck eggs and you'll end up with goog on your dial'Nishidani (talk) 22:50, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

The RFC doesn't really need to be closed, the result is clear cut and there is only a possible residual question dependant on anyone bringing sufficient contrary rs to the picture.Selfstudier (talk) 11:40, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Suggested addition

There is currently no reference in this article to a fairly relevant development in the form of a report released in 2017 by a UN agency, the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-report-idUSKBN16M2IN Jabambridge (talk) 11:38, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

You are right, I am thinking how to do that, the difficulty is that it was deUN'ed, to coin a phrase. However, the report is "out there"/available and mentioned in rs, so it is a question of how to include it, precisely.Selfstudier (talk) 11:43, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
There, I added it.Selfstudier (talk) 14:17, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Possible page move

The debate has shifted and it is no longer just a matter of analogy. Two recent reports are alleging the crime of Apartheid as defined by the Apartheid convention, for which SA apartheid is an example but not the definition. So at a minimum the title should say allegation rather than analogy. There is also a case for a maximalist approach as the only thing missing now is a definitive UN statement and there was one of those (ESCWA) in 2017, kicked into touch by the UN at the time but still extant nonetheless while the CERD investigation is ongoing.Selfstudier (talk) 12:06, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

True, but what would it be?
  • Apartheid in Israel: although it's not only in the Israel state but also in the West Bank and Gaza.
  • Apartheid by Israel
  • Israel and Apartheid
  • Israeli Apartheid

-- Maudslay II (talk) 12:27, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Human Rights Watch, long critisized for anti-Israeli bias, is not a final arbiter of who is and who is not committing acts of apartheid, so no, there is no basis for an article name change. Their opinion is relevant enough to note in the article, if attributed. Zaathras (talk) 01:26, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
And some critisize it for pro-Israel bias. So what? HRW is the number one human rights organization in the world. And it's not only HRW who said that. For example, you have Israeli B'tselem, Israeli Yesh Din, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Palestinian Al-Haq... This is not a simple "analogy" -- Maudslay II (talk) 06:47, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
Agreed. To say that Israel has only been accused of apartheid as an "analogy" is at this point just whitewashing. Human Rights Watch (or B'Tselem, etc. for that matter) isn't merely using apartheid as an analogy, it's alleging they committed the crime of apartheid – not something that it is "akin" to. I'd support a move (and probably a rewriting of the lead). ‑‑Volteer1 (talk)
Is it better to start a RM so we don't repeat the discussion over and over? -- Maudslay II (talk) 10:05, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
I think it is useful to have some prior discussion and see where that leads, there isn't any hurry to do anything and the article could do with a bit of sprucing up in the interim.Selfstudier (talk) 10:13, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Other options to consider for a name:

Those are... overly specific, to say the least. I think I would support something like Israel and apartheid, though I'd be open to other suggestions. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 07:44, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

no Disagree. NGOs do not have the authority do declare any state an apartheid state. We need, at the very least, an statement from the UN's security council. Not all UN organs have the same importance. (The ESCWA is comprised almost entirely by Islamic countries, declared enemies of Israel, and many of those countries are dictatorships that enforce actual apartheid policies towards their female population; and commit genocide towards their LGBT population; etc. So I would take their report with a grain of salt) - Daveout(talk) 15:30, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

You have fundamentally missed the point entirely here. You do not need to believe that because NGOs have accused Israel of the crime of apartheid that that makes it so, this article describes what people have accused Israel of, we don't take sides in disputes in wikivoice. The "analogy" this article was originally describing was an accusation, too. Now, after all those years have passed, this article documents accusations of the crime of apartheid, as well accusations of apartheid more loosely as an analogy (to South Africa, mainly). We never stated in wikivoice that either of these accusations are true, it's just that while both of the accusations are in this article the title no longer makes any sense. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 15:41, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
Sorry I wasn't clear. I was mostly responding to ppl who are suggesting titles like "Israeli Apartheid" or "Zionist Apartheid" as if it were a fact and not an accusation. I do prefer the title as it now stands bc in many cases people simply compare Israel (or some of its policies) to the apartheid; this is different from acussing Israel of being an apartheid. There's a difference of stress. - Daveout(talk) 16:09, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 3 May 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved – I'm withdrawing this because it's clear this is snowing in the oppose direction. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 21:21, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Israel and the apartheid analogy → Israel and apartheid – As per the discussion above, this article no longer merely documents comparisons that have made between apartheid and the practises of Israel, it now also documents accusations that Israel has committed the crime of apartheid, particularly the most recent accusation by Human Rights Watch. The title no longer makes sense when the article is documenting both accusations of apartheid as an analogy and as a crime against humanity, so it should be changed to reflect that. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 03:38, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose The current title is neutral enough the proposed title imply that there is apartheid in Israel.I might be OK with Israel and the apartheid accusations --Shrike (talk) 05:30, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Maybe Accusations of apartheid in Israel would be better way of phrasing the above suggestion? But again, that's not what this article is exclusively about, it also documents criticisms people have made regarding apartheid as an analogy. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 05:55, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose Ridiculous proposal. Not to mention that this article is highly biased. The accusation of apartheid are flimsy and farfetched as always, and they do not come from any minimally authoritative organization like the UNSC. NGOs not rarely engage in unethical practices and unreliable investigations, HRW is no different. (example). Yes, the proposed title implies that the apartheid in israel is real. - Daveout(talk) 05:52, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

  • Oppose NGOs, esp. one with a history of a certain bias, are not arbiters of what is or is not a crime of apartheid. They get a footnote in this and related artcles regarding their 2021 statement, and that is that. Zaathras (talk) 12:35, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose Per NPOV, mainstream sources and common sense. Most serious studies classify Israel as a flawed democracy. There is no racial segregation and all citizens have equal rights, regardless of race, religion and ethnicity. Sure, plenty of left-wing NGOs and individuals accuse Israel of apartheid for political reasons, because they oppose the occupation but don't see any other way to pressure Israelis to relinquish their partial control of the West Bank without the threat of a binational state (which neither Palestinians nor Israelis want, by the way). B'Tselem admitted this was their "biggest scary weapon", which they released in January of this year. But it's all there is and will be: an accusation or analogy that makes most people yawn. Not an established fact and it would be against Wikipedia policy to pretend this is the case.--SoaringLL (talk) 00:03, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Comment I don't have any fixed view as to the title other than that it should reflect the article content which the current title does not. Historically, the article mainly referred to the analogy with South Africa as regards Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territory. Now, due to more recent developments, the article is covering in addition the crime of apartheid which is not a question of analogy but of qualification via the Apartheid convention. The alleged crime is under investigation by CERD and has as well been reported to the ICC as a potential war crime.Selfstudier (talk) 17:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

  • Oppose the current proposal. I understand the issue with the current title that Selfstudier expresses, and I don't have a strong preference for keeping the existing name. The question I'm concerned about is whether it could be inferred that by entitling an article "Israel and apartheid", we're saying in wikivoice that Israel has a relationship to/is perpetrating apartheid (rather than as an attributed statement). I think this concern would be irrelevant if there was wider use of the term, but although its usage appears to be growing it's still mostly limited to groups and individuals campaigning on the issue, or comparisons by academics specialising in the field; this could obviously change in the future. There's a similar discussion occurring at Uyghur genocide; there, a consensus was previously found for maintaining that article's name on the basis that it's the WP:COMMONNAME for the human rights abuses being carried out, and the current RfC is about whether the article should open by saying "The Uyghur Genocide is..." as this would be defining the events as genocide in wikivoice (I'm against this). COMMONNAME obviously doesn't apply here at the current time (people generally refer to the West Bank as "occupied" rather than being under "apartheid"). Things are also complicated by the fact that this article is explicitly about a notable criticism (critique/allegation/accusation etc.), rather than factual events by themselves (which are covered in Israeli-occupied territories, and to a lesser extent Human rights in Israel, Racism in Israel#Racism against Arab citizens by Israeli Jews etc.), and I think expressing this in the article title is helpful. I think I'd be in favour of renaming the article to something along the lines of "Israel and allegations of apartheid", but I'd like to see more discussion on this first to evaluate the arguments that others put forward. Jr8825 • Talk 19:11, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose per Shrike and all the others. Sir Joseph (talk) 21:01, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The opening line

Was brutal, grammar-wise. If someone has better ideas, feel free, but please don't just blindly revert to a grammatically-bad version. Zaathras (talk) 21:51, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

I reverted for the reasons given in the edit summary (and the grammar is fine).Selfstudier (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
Sigh...knee-jerk response... "Israel and the apartheid analogy is criticism of the Israeli government charging that Israel has practiced apartheid against Palestinians..." is grammatically-torturous, and would make any high school English teacher cry. Work on something better, then, rather than just slapping the undo button. Zaathras (talk) 03:36, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't think that change was a clear improvement @Zaathras:, particularly as the new piped link made it unclear where it was directing readers to (MOS:PIPEDLINK). I think the biggest problem grammatically is restating the awkward title, which looks to me like WP:BOLDITIS/MOS:REDUNDANCY. The problem is that there isn't an obvious way to fix this without completely reworking the sentence, and even then it's difficult. Jr8825 • Talk 04:48, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
The primary problem thing that should rub any English-speaker the wrong way is the double-drop of Israeli/Israel, i.e. a criticism of the Israeli government charging that Israel) in a single sentence. Looking a ways back to 2019, the opener was The Israeli apartheid analogy compares Israel's treatment of Palestinians to South Africa's treatment of non-whites during its apartheid era within the context of the crime of apartheid, which flowed quite nicely. Is the restating of the article title a requirement? Zaathras (talk) 22:16, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
I dont think thats a problem and I am a native English speaker. I think the problem is in trying to include the title of the article in the opening line. Something Like Israeli actions in the occupied territories and in Israel have resulted in comparisons to South African Apartheid and in accusations that Israel has committed the crime of apartheid.' would be better imo. nableezy - 22:21, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
I am an unrubbed native English speaker as well. Normally we do set off with the article title absent a good reason for not doing so. I'm fine with what Nableezy proposed if that will put this to bed. I'm also fine with just leaving it alone.Selfstudier (talk) 22:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

I actually quite like the old version that Zaathras has dug up, I agree that it reads far more clearly and think it could be a good basis for a new sentence if adjusted. What about this variant:

  • Israel's treatment of Palestinians, particularly in its occupation of the West Bank, has been compared to South Africa's treatment of non-whites during its apartheid era within the context of the crime of apartheid in international law.

some alternative wordings:

  • {{xt|Israel's treatment of Palestinians, particularly in the occupied West Bank, has been compared to [[South Africa's treatment of non-whites during its apartheid era. In recent years, this comparison has increasingly been made within the context of the crime of apartheid in international law.}}
  • Israel's treatment of Palestinians has been compared to South Africa's treatment of non-whites during its apartheid era within the context of international law and the crime of apartheid.

Superseded by proposals below

Where specifically do you think this wording falls short, Selfstudier & Nableezy? Is there some combination/adjustment to these that you'd be happy with? Jr8825 • Talk 23:10, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

One thing this does drop is the link to Criticism of the Israeli government, but I think it may be a worthwhile trade-off in order to avoid restating the title. It could instead be linked to with a tweak to the current third sentence (beginning "Proponents of the analogy..."), or with a reworked second sentence. Jr8825 • Talk 23:17, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
Getting rid of Criticism of the Israeli government is great, I never liked it. Otoh, I really don't want to debate this relatively minor point for ever and a day.Selfstudier (talk) 23:24, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
Thinking a bit more about it, I doubt there'd be a consensus for removing it. What about the following options:

Jr8825 • Talk 23:28, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

@Shrike: courtesy ping, as I know you'll have a view on this likely differing from others here. I believe the above is an accurate and neutral opening statement, and it addresses the current MOS:REDUNDANCY – what's your view? Jr8825 • Talk 23:33, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
OK, bowing out, whatever Nableezy is happy with, I am happy with and if he is unhappy, so am I. And the article title still needs changing.Selfstudier (talk) 23:36, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
  1. 1 looks alright. Zaathras (talk) 02:26, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 25 May 2021

I would like to undo the last edit (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy&diff=prev&oldid=1024882746) which added too much information.

In the article itself (and also in many other places on the web) it was criticized by others as well, so why is the need to single out only one of the critics (Itay Milner) and state his title? Either we state every critic's title or of none of them.

Thanks. Damnboiiiii (talk) 12:59, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Not sure I understand, Kontorevich has a wiklink for his criticism, but Itay Milner does not so needs more description else people won't know how to assess the value of the criticism. Is there some other criticism (in the article, the web is irrelevant) that has not been attributed? Selfstudier (talk) 13:21, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes, there are other critics of the report, listed in the same article, which either need to be added specifically just like Itay Milner, or be treated collectively as *critics*:
1) Israel: "Israel adamantly rejects the term, saying the restrictions it imposes in Gaza and the West Bank are temporary measures needed for security."
2) Alon Pinkas: "Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York, rejects the term. “Occupation, yes. Apartheid, absolutely not.” "
3) Rabbi Rick Jacobs: "Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Union for Reform Judaism, which estimates its reach at more than 1.5 million people in 850 congregations across North America, says the situation in the West Bank and Gaza is a “moral blight” and an “occupation,” but not apartheid."
4) Another addition I think should be added (that can be viewed as self-criticism, but is a worthy addition none the less), is B'Tselem's own quote from the same article: “We are not saying that the degree of discrimination that a Palestinian has to endure is the same if one is a citizen of the state of Israel or if one is besieged in Gaza,". Which means they think the level of "apartheidness" is lower inside Israel proper.
Thanks Damnboiiiii (talk) 14:26, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
I still don't understand, all the critics have been attributed ("Israel" is just generic so doesn't need anything).Selfstudier (talk) 14:30, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
Not all critics have been attributed: #2 + #3 from my previous reply are not attributed. Damnboiiiii (talk) 14:45, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't agree. I'm going to let someone else deal with this because I don't have more time to go back and forth explaining what attribution means.Selfstudier (talk) 14:55, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit extended-protected}} template. Run n Fly (talk) 18:28, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Suggested edit to 'Jewish State' bill section

Current version reads "The bill would also allow the establishment of segregated towns in which residency would be restricted by religion or nationality — which has been compared to the 1950 Group Areas Act which established apartheid in South Africa."

In reality, that was in an original draft, it was not passed as law. Instead, it should read:

"In its original form, the bill would have allowed the establishment of segregated towns in which residency would be restricted by religion or nationality — which has been compared to the 1950 Group Areas Act which established apartheid in South Africa. In effect, this was ratified to: "The state sees developing Jewish communities a national value, and will act to encourage, promote, and establish them".

This is based on a related article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Nation-State_of_the_Jewish_People#Legislation_history--Posef770 (talk) 22:25, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Period Missing

There is a period missing in this document, however I can not edit it because of the lock. If you wish to find the missing period, just search for the phrase "treated differently then other countries". It occurs at the end of this phrase.

Thank you for the hard work Wikipedia editors. :)

12.12.201.234 (talk) 23:07, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

 Fixed – thanks for the catch. Jr8825 • Talk 00:44, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Removal of counter argument?

Err the has legitimacy of this article has totally disappeared, as I see the entire side arguing against the analogy has been removed (since the time I last checked this article). There was even a paragraph in the first section stating what critics believe. This has disappeared. Is this a joke - are the admins sleeping? Or was this done deliberately? Durdyfiv1 (talk) 13:46, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

No idea what this is about. Be more specific please.Selfstudier (talk) 15:38, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Well now I've glimpsed through the article, I can see that this isn't necessarily the case, perhaps some of the format was edited. But what I also see is that there is next to nothing by way of sources brought arguing against the analogy.

Most editors also appear heavily biased, as some of their edits are made in favour of Palestine and against Israel. Durdyfiv1 (talk) 22:02, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

I've also noticed that some of the editors appear to like editing articles relating to Jews - (they'll obviously come at me controverting this.) So forgive me if I see there is an agenda here. In fact, this entire article slopes heavily to one side. Durdyfiv1 (talk) 22:14, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Try to be more constructive. All editors are biased, one way or the other. What we need to fix is not editors' personal opinions but the article itself. Locate the most problematic spots in the article and propose a change. If as you say a counter-argument is missing somewhere, find a good source that supports that counter argument and propose the addition/change. “WarKosign” 04:54, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

I see you are generally supportive of Israel. Why isn't NGO Monitor included as a source? Do they 'fail to meet RS'? While other editors claim that HRW are pro-Israel? Please. Since you are supportive of Israel, you know the sources as well as I do. Durdyfiv1 (talk) 04:48, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

I am not saying there are 'problematic spots' of the article, unless you can say that a whole article leaning towards one can be considered a problematic spot. Take a look at the responses and note how many pro-'apartheid' claims there are, contrasted with how little anti-'apartheid' claims exist. Durdyfiv1 (talk) 04:53, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

For every argument claiming something constitutes 'apartheid', there are thousands of Israelis or 'Zionists' who would repudiate the premise. Why are they not mentioned? Durdyfiv1 (talk) 05:02, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Also a general question to the editors: is there any way to edit comments once they've been written? I wrote these hastily, as this detail was irritating me; therefore my sentences may not be perfect. But you get the idea. Durdyfiv1 (talk) 10:30, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Mischaracterization of activists' accusations as comparisons

In the article, it states "Other prominent South African anti-apartheid activists have used apartheid comparisons to criticize the occupation of the West Bank, and particularly the construction of the separation barrier. These include Farid Esack, a writer who is currently William Henry Bloomberg Visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School,[192] Ronnie Kasrils,[193] Winnie Madikizela-Mandela,[194] Denis Goldberg,[195] and Arun Ghandhi [196]"

But if we examine the quotes of Madikizela-Mandela "Apartheid Israel can be defeated, just as apartheid in South Africa was defeated" and Arun Gandhi's quote "[...] This is Apartheid." It's clear that this is not a mere comparison. They are directly calling Israel apartheid.

Reporting on Denis Goldberg Haaretz claims: ' "You don't need to be like South Africa to be an apartheid state, there is a definition in international law through the UNESCO declaration on apartheid," he said. Apartheid exists, he said, in states that enforce laws and policies that discriminate between people on the basis of race or religion, and this holds true in Israel proper as well as in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. "

So it's very problematic that the article then claims that he is making a mere comparison. LevBenYahmed (talk)

The analogy is there, embedded, and you can draw it out in terms of a syllogism with a moment's effort.
  • (a)South Africa introduced the term 'apartheid' to describe its division in terms of race.
  • (b)The term was generalized from that historical instance to describe any state separation in terms of race/religion.
  • (c) It is entailed that if Israeli policies, within its state or in the territory occupied, impose separatist policies in terms of Muslims/Palestinians, then Israel belongs to the category of states defined in (b)
  • (d) so the direct analogy with SA (a/c) is not necessary. The indirect analogy is because (b) was formulated on the example of (a).
The technical point is, discussing the analogy's appropriateness or not in terms of strict analogy or difference between the situations in Israel and SA is only part of a broader argument: as defined in law, 'apartheid' forms a category of which SA (a) and Israel (c) are instances, differing as do all items that fall within a general category where they form subsets of a class. All one need do logically is to reorder (b) against historical chronology in terms of the logical major proposition, which the subsets (a) and (c) illustrate, each in their own way and with respective differences, like all elements in a class. Nishidani (talk) 10:30, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
What you are trying to do? yes, you can expend effort to dig and extract an analogy allegedly embedded inside an accusation. But in the case of Denis, he explicitly stated that such a comparison is not needed. He himself said he is referring to the crime of apartheid under international law. What benefit is there to misreport what he is saying and take the extra interpretation step of "the crime of apartheid is modeled after SA, therefore all accusations contain analogies to SA". Regardless of the validity of such interpretation, what does the loss of precision bring us? I understand that an analogy carries less of a negative connotation than an accusation (and carries less of a call to judicial and legal action) therefore it may be beneficial, to the pro-Israeli commentator, to minimize and whitewash an accusation as an analogy. But to you the neutral Wikipedia editor and to the interested reader isn't it better to neutrally state and call things what they are? Even if the interpretation is valid, "All squares are rectangles" doesn't mean that we shouldn't call a square a square. You say you need a moment's effort to draw the analogy, I say you need 0 effort for the accusation. It's already written down. LevBenYahmed (talk)
We have the crime, SA being an instance of it and according to several sources, Israel being another. And separately we have the analogy with SA ie an accusation by way of a comparison. I don't think this is confusing at all. By the way, the two editors here are not known for their pro-Israel position. Personally, I support the rights of both but think that the rights of one side are more consistently denied than those of the other. By all means, we can try to improve the article in the usual way, sources being the principal method.Selfstudier (talk) 14:04, 17 June 2021 (UTC)


First, I didn't say that the editors have a pro-Israel position, I actually said neutral. I merely pointed out that confusing an accusation with an analogy is beneficial to the pro-Israeli with loss of precision to other parties. Therefore in interest of neutrality, accusations should be called accusations and comparisons should be called comparisons. I agree that sources should be the principal method. I agree that there are 2 categories:
  • A - People who are calling/ accusing Israel of being apartheid (defacto or De jure).
  • B - people who are comparing Israel with apartheid or using "apartheid comparisons to criticize the occupation of the West Bank". "accusation by way of a comparison" to use your own words.
currently, the article claims that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Denis Goldberg, and Arun Ghandhi fall in category B. They actually belong to category A. for Ghandhi and Mandela this is demonstrated by the quotes that the article is currently using [196] and [194]. for Denis Goldberg I provided a quote where he clearly states his position being in category A. And even goes further and claims that being like (so comparing to) SA is not needed. LevBenYahmed (talk) 15:12, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
Are they then referring to the crime itself? (ie as defined in the Apartheid Convention) Or are they referring to the SA analogy? Those are the only two choices. Your *A must be one of them. It seems to me that it is the second one although I haven't looked closely, certainly Mandela would be doing that, at a guess.Selfstudier (talk) 15:32, 17 June 2021 (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy
Mandela said, "Apartheid Israel can be defeated, just as apartheid in South Africa was defeated". It's clear that she thinks that Israel **is** not **is like** apartheid. same for Ghandhi, his quote literally includes "This is Apartheid". That's clearly in A. They are calling Israel Apartheid not comparing Israel to Apartheid. For these two I want "used apartheid comparisons to criticize the occupation" changed to "called Israel an Apartheid state" LevBenYahmed (talk) 18:00, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
as for Denis he literally says "You don't need to be like South Africa to be an apartheid state, there is a definition in international law through the UNESCO declaration on apartheid" and "Apartheid exists, in states that enforce laws and policies that discriminate between people on the basis of race or religion, and this holds true in Israel proper as well as in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip." from the Haaretz article quoted above.How can you read this and then say he is in the second one? This is not a rhetorical question I'm genuinely asking about your thought process? LevBenYahmed (talk) 18:00, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
I go by the ICC definition for the crime (Rome statute), the earlier versions did not have the same force. See Apartheid (crime). So yes, an accusation is being made of "the crime" but an earlier (unprosecutable?) version of it.Selfstudier (talk) 18:50, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
so you agree that he is making an accusation of a crime (although possibly an unprosecutable one?). How does that imply that it's more precise to say he is simply making a comparison to criticize as the article currently states? I don't follow the logical step. Wouldn't you agree that "he accused Israel of apartheid based on UNESCO's definition" or "he called Israel an apartheid state" are more accurate and precise descriptions of his position? Especially in light of this quote:'"There is no doubt in my mind that Israel is an apartheid state," Goldberg told the gathering' from the same Haaretz article. LevBenYahmed (talk) 21:03, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
I am not here to have a debate with you and WP is not a forum. If you want to make some change in the article then there is a procedure for doing that, the edit request.Selfstudier (talk) 21:13, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
My impression is what I am doing now is requesting the article to be edited to more accurately portray the position of the above-mentioned activists. I even suggested possible phrasings. I'm sorry if that was not clear or I should have been more formal in stating that. I would appreciate your guidance. LevBenYahmed (talk) 21:29, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
WP:EDITREQUEST (there is an example of its use further up this page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy#Extended-confirmed-protected_edit_request_on_25_May_2021 Selfstudier (talk) 21:39, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
LevBenYahmed. With all due respect the distinction you draw is reminiscent of Tibetan rtsod pa style debates, or for a closer analogy, pilpul, where verbal equivocations are often prioritized over the logical or propositional status of the respective arguments. Nishidani (talk) 19:02, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Why not mention that ESCWA is Arab?

It may well be true that there are only Arab countries in some group, but it is not relevant absent a reliable source connecting the topic. Just posting a membership list is a pretty blatant OR violation, as well as an edit warring one. nableezy - 12:21, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I was just about to come here and make the same point. A sentence has been added with no attempt to explain why it is relevant. In fact, the entire paragraph is unsatisfactory, with no explanation of what the ESCWA is nor what the report states. RolandR (talk) 13:05, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
It is relevant because this article is about a dispute between jews and arabs, is it not?. This is an 100% arab organ within the UN that is proposing something that the rest of the UN rejects; so it tells me that there might be some conflict of interest in their resolution. I've seen editors associating sources with the american jewish congress without any problem before. The double standards and bias here is just cartoonish. - Daveout(talk) 16:28, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
Also, that line is almost a verbatim transcription of what is stated in Escwa's official website. There's no OR. - Daveout(talk) 16:30, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
The article is not about a Jewish-Arab dispute. The article focuses on Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and the question of whether or not Israel's separation practices constitute apartheid, or something like apartheid, or not. It is not concerned with clarifying the Christian/Western/Caucasian/Jewish/Muslim /Arab etc.,sources for each and every statement. One doesn't write before citing the ADF or AIPAC, 'A Jewish/Israeli interest lobby' for the same reason.Nishidani (talk) 17:11, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
I have added a secondary source that connects both topics. --Shrike (talk) 17:16, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Content Restructuring Suggestion

Currently, arguments from proponents and opponents of the analogy are documented by certain groups of people (e.g. under the headers government responses and comments by South Africans). I think it would be a major improvement to the article if it was restructured in a format that groups arguments by proponents and opponents, instead of their classification, under two headers such as arguments in support of the analogy and arguments against the analogy. This is strictly about formatting and representation, not about the content itself of the Wikipedia article. 85.64.76.29 (talk) 01:13, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't disagree with this suggestion. There is also the issue of it these days it being relatively less of an analogy (in particular to the South Africa case) and more of an allegation (of the crime rather than any particular instance of the crime).Selfstudier (talk) 09:58, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
If you're saying that the article should be renamed to "Allegations of apartheid by Israel" or something similar - I agree. “WarKosign” 10:27, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
Yes, the current title of the article was fitting originally, in that it dated back to 2006, but this was before any of the assertions of the term (including the initial 2007 UN report), here presented under the 'opinions on applicability' section, were voiced. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:06, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
Just an additional point I deem relevant and significant - there is a major leaning in the opening of this article to the 'pro'-apartheid viewpoint. There is an entire paragraph on 'proponents', but nothing by way of a counter from 'opponents'. It doesn't read fairly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:F84E:D300:287F:8E14:2FEA:DC4C (talk) 10:26, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 4 December 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. Veterans of the encyclopaedia will remember the myriad battles that were fought over this article alone, including nearly a dozen AfDs and two arbitration cases. The current title is a compromise that has weathered the test of time, and the article space has calmed down since its original move to the regular baseline we come to expect of P/I articles. For that reason, I’m very loath to reopen those old wounds by moving the article anywhere based on a nearly even split of ten editors. A move would require both an increased amount of participation and a direction towards moving or not so, and after two weeks, I do not believe either will happen if it was kept open another week. Sceptre (talk) 12:24, 19 December 2021 (UTC)


Israel and the apartheid analogy → Israeli apartheid allegation – This title better reflects the article content, which is the about the claim, allegation, or accusation that Israel is committing apartheid against the Palestinian population (whether as defined under international law, or in relation to the treatment of Black South Africans under apartheid). I would also support any variation on the proposed title, such as "Accusations of Israeli apartheid" etc. The current article title isn't much used outside of Wikipedia. (t · c) buidhe 21:03, 4 December 2021 (UTC)— Relisting. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 04:38, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Other titles for consideration:
Personally I think the article would benefit from being split into two. One focused on the weaker and more subjective elements of apartheid in Israel-proper, and one focused on the clear and objective elements of apartheid in the areas under Israeli military occupation. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:59, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose, for the reasons mentioned above. For some time now, I've favoured Debates concerning Israel and apartheid (or some variation of the same) as the article title. "Allegations" would be a step backward. CJCurrie (talk) 22:31, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment Let me first agree with the sentiment expressed by proposer, the current title is not adequate. I think allegation is generally understood to mean unproven, which begs the question, what would constitute proof? Lots of erm/hum/hah when this is asked. Reports from leading NGOs are denied as proof, expert opinion ditto. Some will say something from the UN but we kinda had that already and look what happened. There's another version wending its way through the system and I suspect we will see a similar thing, or reliance on a veto, whatever. In such circumstances it will forever remain an unproven allegation. We all know about WP:CLAIM. Since there is some evidence rather than no evidence, accusation(s) is better. Or perhaps there is some phrasing that avoids this altogether, I need to think a bit. The more recent reports are considering "the Palestinian population" as being both those within as well as without Israel proper. Perhaps we ought somehow to get "Palestinians" into the title? 23:09, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. Good idea. This article is about allegation of apartheid made by individuals and organizations and their rebuttal by other individuals and organizations. Contrary to claims by editors above, there is no "proof" of these claims, hence the term allegation. In fact, the word "allegation" (or "claim" or other similar terms) is widely used when claims of apartheid are discussed by anyone but most radical anti-Israeli sources: [3] [4] [5] “WarKosign” 23:52, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose - not allegations, more like accusations of the commission of a war crime. The most radical of anti-Israeli sources? Human Rights Watch (covered by NYT, AP as accusations, not mere allegations). Israel and the crime of apartheid is the best option here, would remove all the extraneous and generally unimportant "analogies" and focus on the core topic, the accusations and rebuttals that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. nableezy - 00:09, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Indeed, HRW is an example of a radical anti-Israel/antisemitic source. “WarKosign” 13:57, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
lol. nableezy - 14:01, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Ran Greenstein is an Israeli-born academic, currently Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Witwatersrand. He has wtitten widely about the similarities, and specific differences, of systematic discrimination in South Africa and Israel, including a chapter on Israel, the Apartheid Analogy and the Labor Question in the book Apartheid Israel: The Politics of an Analogy[6] by Jon Soske and Sean Jacobs (Haymarket Books, 2015). RolandR (talk) 15:32, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Support The focus of the article really is about "allegations" after all, made by a host of the usual suspects in the world. Zaathras (talk) 14:18, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
    Along with denials of said "allegations" by all the usual suspects on the other side (the US/Israel, mainly), Kontorovich etcetera .Selfstudier (talk) 14:22, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose As noted above, this analogy is the explicit subject of academic research and writing. This is not a perfect title, but was reached many years ago as one that both supporters and opponents of the analogy could live with. It is not helpful to rake this up again and try to undermine a hard-won compromise/consensus. RolandR (talk) 15:37, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Support I needed to refresh my exact understanding of the definition of "allegation" in order to come to a decision on supporting this move or opposing it. In the end, I think the move is fair and supported by that definition. As stated here in Merriam-Webster: Definition of allegation
1: the act of alleging something
2: a positive assertion especially of misconduct i.e. Some former colleagues have made serious allegations against him.
Based on this understanding, I Support the move of this article to be renamed as "Israeli apartheid allegation"
Thank you. ♥Th78blue (They/Them/Their • talk)♥ 17:04, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Jacques De Maio is not the 'head of the International Committee of the Red Cross'

Under the section 'Crime of apartheid and Israel', subsection 'Additional views', it states: 'In 2017, Jacques De Maio, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, rejected the claim that there is apartheid in Israel'.

Jacques De Maio is not the 'head of the International Committee of the Red Cross'[1]. He is or was head of just one of more than a hundred the ICRC's delegations and missions to countries around the world, specifically, the delegation to Israel and the Occupied Territories. As can be seen in the organisation chart referenced below, there are multiple levels of seniority above that of ICRC delegation head in the ICRC[2].

As for including his opinion in the article, you might as well quote a flat-Earther - his unsupported throw-away opinion is thoroughly refuted by hundreds of pages of research by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia[3], B'Tselem[4], Human Rights Watch[5] and others that have concluded Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.

References:

1: https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4953648,00.html

2: https://www.icrc.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/121_icrc-annual-report-organizational-chart_2020.pdf

3: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/201703_UN_ESCWA-israeli-practices-palestinian-people-apartheid-occupation-english.pdf

4: https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202101_this_is_apartheid_eng.pdf

5: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2021/04/israel_palestine0421_web_0.pdf

MathewMunro (talk) 13:13, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

OK I fixed that, the opinion is attributed to him so not an official position of the ICRC. He left in 2018.Selfstudier (talk) 15:50, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Addition request: AOC calling Israel an Apartheid state

I think the article should mention that AOC called Israel an apartheid state. AOC is prominent and influential US congresswomen and the incident was covered by international media.(aljazeera,independent,timesofisrael..) and some claim that may have Helped Remove Taboo on Calling Israel an Apartheid State. LevBenYahmed (talk)

No. We already have quite a bit of trivia that should be weeded out. I.e.

In 2018 the Chilean commune of Valdivia declared itself "Free of Israeli Apartheid" (Spanish: Libre de Apartheid Israelí).[216][217] According to the mayor of Valdivia Omar Sabat this mean the municipality would "restrain from purchasing any services from companies related to the Israeli apartheid".[216][218] The municipal decree was declared unconstitutional by the Comptroller General of Chile in December 2018

That is scraping the barrel, just as citing the views of politicians who state their individual views but do not represent them in an official capacity, is using prominent names to make a case, a vice characteristic of many of these I/P articles. We don't want lists of everyone who said this or that apropos the question. This should primarily be an analytical article, outlining the technical reasons why the analogy is affirmed or disavowed.Nishidani (talk) 08:52, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
I have also removed the following as barrel-scraping, and it is in a section in any case about state views, not those of municipal figures.

In March 2011, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford said that he would not allow city funding for the 2011 Toronto Pride Parade if organizers allowed the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) to march again that year. "Taxpayers dollars should not go toward funding hate speech," Ford said.[1] However, in April 2011, the city manager reported to the city's executive committee that the use of the phrase 'Israeli apartheid' does not violate the city's anti-discrimination policy, nor does it constitute discrimination under the Canadian Criminal Code or the Ontario Human Rights Code.[2]

In June 2012, the Toronto city council voted to condemn the phrase :Israeli apartheid", as part of a resolution recognizing the gay Pride Toronto parade as a "significant cultural event that strongly promotes the ideals of tolerance and diversity". The resolution said it slams the term Israel Apartheid for undermining the values of Pride and diminishing "the suffering experienced by individuals during the apartheid regime in South Africa".[3]Nishidani (talk) 09:01, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

  1. ^ Toronto mayor lays down Pride parade law Archived 17 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ^ City manager releases report on 'Israeli apartheid' Archived 7 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ Peat, Don; Chief, City Hall Bureau (8 June 2012). "Council votes to condemn use of term 'Israeli apartheid'". Toronto Sun.
I disagree with your opinion, I think It's indeed important to examine the technical merits of the issue but since it's a political one, it's also important to examine the degree of support/refusal it has received and to document responses to it. As this article already is doing. This is, in my opinion, a standard widespread practice in articles about political issues (inside and outside of Wikipedia) including those about I/S as you have correctly noted yourself. Also, the statement is relevant to the issue of the article, has an important impact on discussions of the issue as highlighted by the cited sources, and knowledge of it helps the reader be more informed. LevBenYahmed (talk)
I also disagree with your removals and I think the facts you want to hide are helpful to the readers. In addition to the above-mentioned arguments, they also help document actions of activists for and against the issue. Thereby adding real-world/historical context. LevBenYahmed (talk)
Nishidani is right, the removed/not included is small beer compared to something like HRW or Btselem calling it out. When the signal to noise ratio starts to improve (ie the big guns start saying it) then there is a case for inclusion but not just now.Selfstudier (talk) 11:26, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
why is AOC not counted among the big guns. She is one of the most influential women of color in active politics? LevBenYahmed (talk) 12:21, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
the removed material was already there and have been there for years persumably because the editor that added it and the countless editors that left it there saw it a big enough beer. Isn't the onus then on the remover to prove it's small beer? and to seek consensus before going ahead and doing it? LevBenYahmed (talk) 12:21, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
The WP:ONUS is on those seeking inclusion, provided that the material has been removed with a valid reason in this case, the reason being give is that it is WP:UNDUE, a reason I agree with (AOC is just another politician, there are a lot of them and you can find plenty Israel defenders there as well). Let's wait and see if other editors chime in.Selfstudier (talk) 12:49, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
I fail to see how Omar Sabat and his municipal decree would be trivia. Dentren | Talk 21:03, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
I think Norman Finkelstein is a more worthy inclusion, and Ilan Pappé & Noam Chomsky deserve more than a footnote. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MathewMunro (talk • contribs) 13:56, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
The article is not meant to be a list of individuals who called Israel an apartheid state or indeed a list of all those denying that. If the entire senate or congress passed a vote saying that, that's different.Selfstudier (talk) 14:17, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
The people I mentioned are not merely leaders or celebrities who called Israel an apartheid state. They've experts on Israel's crimes against humanity. And they've spent a lifetime writing books, articles and giving speeches about it that have been viewed by millions. MathewMunro (talk) 09:36, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
Well, I would put people like Falk at the top of the list, he has repeated it in 2021, he's mentioned. I don't agree that just one of the people you mention saying it is particularly significant. I have not looked myself, if you were able to find a single suitable source mentioning several such luminaries as referring to it (as part of a growing trend or growing numbers, something of that sort) that could probably go in.Selfstudier (talk) 09:54, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

The article's title should be changed.

It has been proven beyond a doubt that it is not an "analogy", on the contrary, it is a FACT. MathewMunro (talk) 09:43, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

It is still an analogy because lots of people still make the analogy. I agree that today more and more make the accusation. You may well say it is a fact and I might well agree with you but that's not what counts, we need a sufficient number of reliable sources calling it that and relatively less reliable sources denying it before we can say it is a fact, something like the illegality of Israeli settlements and even there we still must mention that Israel disputes it, hah. Anyway we just had an RFC on the title change and it is not happening just yet.Selfstudier (talk) 09:50, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
The only FACT is that some people make this claim/analogy. Unlike indisputable scientifict facts ("Earth's sky appears blue under normal lighting conditions"), choosing a value-laden term to describe things that people do is only a matter of opinion. It's not different from media companies calling copyright violations "theft": they are making a flawed analogy in order to make a point. “WarKosign” 11:23, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
It is an ascertained fact that in the territory on the West Bank it occupies, Israel practices apartheid, and that, obvious for decades, is now widely recognized even in the mainstream, though the residual taboo on the use of the word hangs over many discussions. What's the word mean? It was a name 'given by the international community in two international conventions, to a situation ..in which in order to maintain control by a group of people of one ethnic/national origin over another ethnic/national group, the government maintains a dual system of laws in a single geographic area.' The title stays as it is for other reasons, among which is the fact that while discrimination on ethnic lines does take place in Israel proper, those special advantages, fiscal and otherwise, do not translate into what we normally understand by the apartheid analogy, which therefore is cogent stricto sensu only for what Israel does beyond its recognized borders, with its West Bank settlements. The title overlooks this ambiguity, and the topical literature is divided between (a)those who posit Israel itself is an apartheid state, which is strongly disputed, and those who argue far less controversially, that outside its legitimate borders, it promotes apartheid. The title implies the former, which is not a 'fact' while also covering the latter (which is a fact). One can keep the title and its ambiguity, or reframe it by splitting the content into two articles that separate Israel proper, where though ethnocracy is inscribed into law, Palestinian rights as full citizens are recognize technically (you don't have separate toilets for Jewish and Palestinians in Israel, rigorously monitored etc.), and the matter which covers Israel as a colonial power practicing apartheid. I think it best to just to keep the title, and allow the article itself to make this obvious distinction.Nishidani (talk) 14:21, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for sharing your and Yehudit Karp's opinions. Surely there are better places for them. “WarKosign” 19:50, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
If we were to apply the same standards elsewhere, we would have still been talking about the global warming "theory" when over 97% of climate scientists argued that it was already proven beyond a doubt. There's a mountain of evidence that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. In 2017 the UN ESCWA issued a 74-page report that was taken down as a result of political interference but was never refuted - https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/201703_UN_ESCWA-israeli-practices-palestinian-people-apartheid-occupation-english.pdf. In January 2021, B'Tselem issued an 8-page statement as to why Israel is an apartheid state - https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202101_this_is_apartheid_eng.pdf. In April 2021, Human Rights Watch authored a 224-page report detailing Israel's apartheid https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2021/04/israel_palestine0421_web_0.pdf. And just recently, Amnesty International issued two statements totalling nearly 7000 words in length explaining why Israel is indeed an apartheid state - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/ & https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2022/02/qa-israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-cruel-system-of-domination-and-crime-against-humanity/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by MathewMunro (talk • contribs) 06:51, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
If it turns out that the UN endorses the findings at any point, I will put the article up for a name change myself. I still don't see that as critical for the time being given that the US still continues to deny the fact. It will be much harder for them to continue to do so if a UN agency (or perhaps the ICC) endorses the conclusions. In any case people will draw their own conclusions.Selfstudier (talk) 10:39, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Amnesty report undue weight of ADL view

I have tagged the excessive quotation (about a third of the entire section) from the not directly involved ADL. Suggest that the editor who added this find a way to shorten it or else explain why it is DUE.Selfstudier (talk) 10:33, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Tweaked it a little. Is it ok now? - Daveout(talk) 11:17, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Yes except that now between Israel, the US and the ADL there is too much weight being given to the opposition, I expect the simplest thing will be to expand the Amnesty report content as balance. And why is it at all relevant that there are 22 sovereign Arab states? Selfstudier (talk) 11:35, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
I see no problem in detailing the report a little more. The USDS is the one who actually drawn attention to the fact that Israel is the only existing tiny Jewish State; so I though it would be informative to mention the number of existing Arab states for comparison. After all, we're an encyclopedia. We should make relevant information handy whenever possible. For information sake. - Daveout(talk) 11:52, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Are you going to explicate the religion/ethnicity of all states or is it just Arab states that you have a thing about? Selfstudier (talk) 11:59, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Sometimes gross simplifications are desired for educational purposes (as we see in Arab–Israeli conflict). Of course, the region now called Israel isn't completely or inherently Jewish; the same goes for "Arab countries" or any other country. - Daveout(talk) 12:11, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Since we appear to agree that it does in fact have little or no relevance, would you mind removing it please? Selfstudier (talk) 12:13, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
In the human scope of things I don't think it's relevant. But since these groups of people are at war with which other there may be a contextual relevance? (as I exemplified, there's an "Israelis Vs Arabs" article). Let's wait for more input for a little while, if there's no support from anybody else I'll remove it. - Daveout(talk) 12:27, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
I tagged it for relevance. I also removed the Easter egg wikilink for double standards both because its an Easter egg and because we don't wikilink things in quotations.Selfstudier (talk) 12:42, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Israel is the only existing tiny Jewish State (vs 22 Arab states)

This is a useless meme, by now utterly tralatician. It is the regional superpower, has treaties with Jordan, Egypt and several Gulf states, and enjoys the resolute projection of the US dominus and the European bloc. All of its regional potential adversary states are a shambles. The cliché only survives in popular hasbara handouts and has zero encyclopedic value.Nishidani (talk) 12:53, 2 February 2022 (UTC).

The article's title should be changed

Apartheid is a crime under international law. People have accused Israel of violating this law. Therefore talking about an apartheid "analogy" is misleading. --Eldomtom2 (talk) 17:22, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

This is discussed above and there was a recent RFC about renaming the article. In any case, the analogy is still made by many, even though in recent times the crime itself has become a more important topic of discussion.Selfstudier (talk) 18:05, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Reactions

At the 2021 Israel-Palestine crisis, it was decided to hive off all the so called uninvolved country reactions to a separate page, International reactions to the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis. Now an editor has added the UK and Germany, both uninvolved and against the apartheid designation. That means we can add all the reactions of uninvolved countries that approve of the designation? Selfstudier (talk) 16:33, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

If those countries reacted to report and approved it then I think yes. In my opinion we should remove NGOs and organizations that not uninvolved to the report and stay only with state actors Shrike (talk) 16:46, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
You want to remove the involved and include the uninvolved? Lol. The opposite of what was requested (not by me) at the 2021 Israel Palestine article, very amusing, Shrike.Selfstudier (talk) 17:03, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
I meant those uninvolved like ADL,HRW and others --Shrike (talk) 17:06, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
So Amnesty is uninvolved, right? :) Selfstudier (talk) 17:11, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Reactions' section are generally useless, unless you like to shift them to a main page, where they can sit quietly for the curiosity of the bored who like to chase up such trivia. They are not encyclopedic, unless the 'reactions' have consequences. This, because the reactions are invariably predictable, and political, coming down to a list of the good guys who support, and the bad guys who don't or vice versa. Yawn. Reactions are important when the actors in the story rebut, confute, challenge the ideas and assertions of, say, in this case, the arguments marshalled by Amnesty. And several commentators, not least of them Gideon Levy, have noted that, so far, the reactions of horror are just that, sharp outrage that, at best, screams 'antisemitism' while sedulously refraining from showing why several features deemed characteristic of the Israel-SA apartheid analogy are untrue, misleading or distortions. That, i.e. empirical and logical rebuttal, is the only type of reaction that counts for an encyclopedic project. So I suggest eliminating the hype/horror tripe by the usual suspects and casting round for informed arguments against or in favour of the Amnesty report. Nishidani (talk) 17:37, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Not a peep out of the NYT, bit unusual that, hope its well argued when something does finally appear.Selfstudier (talk) 18:08, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I dont think you need to look at this article as a series of responses Shrike, so much as you look at it as a series of stances. It doesnt really matter what the US or whoever says about any one report, what matters is that the US and these other states say that the charge is false. I still think this article needs to be restructured and renamed to Israel and the crime of apartheid, and most of the content at this point is not about an analogy at all so it doesnt even need much work to do so, and present the positions of the various parties and noted commentators in some sort of structured order. And yes that includes the positions of the US, and whatever other government. But this current set up of back and forth about this report and that report makes for a terrible article. Have a section for the groups and parties who say Israel is committing this act and why they say so, have another section Israeli responses, another on Palestinian responses, and finally another for other state and supranational organizations. Not AI made this statement, and then these groups responded to it. HRW made this statement, and these groups responded to it. nableezy - 19:00, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, now that we have these reports in hand, it ought to be possible to arrange the article in that fashion. In regards to the name change, my suggestion would be to wait till the June report of the Permanent United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Israel Palestine conflict (possibly sooner), when there is a reasonable possibility that the term is going to get picked up by the UN.Selfstudier (talk) 19:22, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Inappropriate References

Larar Berman writes an article in an Israeli newspaper making reference to an unnamed spokesperson in the Commonwealth Office of the UK and suddenly the UK (as a whole) rejects the article? This reference is either fake or off the record. Either way its validity fails the test and certainly doesn't reflect the views of the UK as a whole. HuttonIT (talk) 10:12, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

It is a bit odd, the CO/unnamed person. Here we have the Department for International Trade unnamed person also dancing around the issue. Truss was in Israel at the time plugging a trade deal so that might explain why the top is keeping its head down. Selfstudier (talk) 10:56, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
Some time has passed now without any attributed or official comment/statement from the UK (unlike the German case), the only reporting we have is from Israeli sources recycled from the original ToI report saying "We do not agree with the use of this terminology," I have reworked the content with the original Reuters report re Germany which does not need attribution and attributed ToI for the UK comments. Selfstudier (talk) 12:32, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
How do you know it was recycled they may got it from the same source but they not recycled from the tol Shrike (talk) 17:03, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
I don't with 100% certainty, the evidence is strong though. The speaker is unnamed, there is no press statement anywhere nor news of any interview for the press, which would be the normal thing. ToI says ""We do not agree with the use of this terminology," a spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office told The Times of Israel." which suggests one-on-one discussion (by telephone?). If you google this phrase, it comes up with many Israeli sources all saying ..told The Times of Israel.Selfstudier (talk) 18:15, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
This shouldn't even be discussed. Anonymous, informal, not identifiably cleared etc. It obviously cannot be used to describe some British reaction. Since everyone privately in modern Western governments knows what apartheid is mum's the best policy, i.e., the less said the better. No one wants to be dragged into a situation of being faced with a question-and-answer issue at a press conference. So if it hasn't been by now, then it's time to dump it.Nishidani (talk) 20:36, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Suggested article split

Propose we separate out the South Africa material (the analogy with) into a separate article Israel and the apartheid analogy with South Africa, leave the current title as is for time being even though it will be about the crime following the split. Thoughts? Selfstudier (talk) 12:42, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Please explain why do we need a split? Shrike (talk) 12:45, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Because a) It's two different scopes and b) It will be easier to carry out Nableezy suggested article restructuring. Selfstudier (talk) 12:47, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
I'm unsure what the two scopes you're considering are... as far as I can tell this article is just about one topic.  — Amakuru (talk) 14:54, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Discussion of the crime does not involve an analogy (with SA apartheid) which is why people keep asking for the title to be changed. Personally, I am in no particular hurry to do so.Selfstudier (talk) 15:02, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Yes, this would be a practical move. Discussing the crime of apartheid under international law while simultaneously mentioning comparisons with South African apartheid is both confusing and misleading. The accusations by human rights organisations do not draw open South African parallels, but upon the body of international law, while the South African comparisons pertain little to the current situation. The conflation of the two in this article has now passed into the misleading as it falsely implies some sort of framework of intellectual continuity between the two. Iskandar323 (talk) 22:11, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

New York Times

Philip Weiss on the NYTs' cover-up of the Amnesty Report, Mondoweiss 24 March 2022. Notable I think. Nishidani (talk) 14:36, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

An opinion piece in an antisemitic site criticizing NYT for not covering an antisemitic report in sufficient detail? Not surprising and really not noteworthy. “WarKosign” 15:14, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
Series of unsubstantiated opinions and violations of WP:NOTFORUM. Kindly dont do that. nableezy - 16:08, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
Please don't accuse other users of policy violation while they did nothing wrong such statements can be construed as violation of WP:NPA Shrike (talk) 16:42, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
They violated WP:NOTFORUM by espousing personal opinions on both the website and the report. And run that line back to yourself, thanks. ~~
And it was implied quite clearly that WarKoSign regards Philip Weiss as an antisemite. Apart from the fatuity, that is a NPA attack on a living person.Nishidani (talk) 16:32, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Here's The American Prospect commenting on NYT being MIA "Every group under the sun reacted, but there was no story in the Times." Notable but not in this article unless we put it in additional views...NYT (no view).Selfstudier (talk) 15:32, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
I think it worth mentioning under the NYTs coverage of Goldstone's report, or, since there is now a consensus by all major human rights groups that Israel does practice apartheid (yeah, sure, they're all antisemitic in the sense of that word that one calls a spade a spade, unless one is conceptually speyed), perhaps in a media coverage section. It is after all quite an exceptional thing for a mainstream newspaper of that standing to do: refuse on ideological grounds to cover news every other major venue covered.Nishidani (talk) 16:25, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
WP:UNDUE clearly no major news outlet is discussing also doesn't belong to this article at all Shrike (talk) 16:44, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
The NYT has incidentally finally mentioned the report, albeit indirectly (and with nothing to link back to), by means of the story about the UN rapporteur. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:31, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

current edit-tiff

I dont have too strong an opinion (besides being happy to see Ravpapa show up in my watchlist), but this definitely should be discussed here and not in edit-summaries. I think that all personal opinions by unqualified people should be chopped out of this and every other article, but that isnt where we are now so I can understand wanting to include that personal opinion being moved in and out. I do think long-standing content carries an assumption of having consensus for inclusion already, so Id personally recommend it be restored until a discussion finds otherwise. I think this article should be renamed to focus on the crime of apartheid and not on some analogy, but again that isnt where we are with the article. nableezy - 02:14, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

posted before I saw nableezy's comment: I regret reverting to remove the Ian Buruma opinion piece, as I didn't realize how long-standing the article content summarizing it was. That said, I do think keeping it is a clear NPOV violation. Sure, we can use it as attributed opinion, but why this one? As it's from 2002, the piece is unable to comment on 20 years of changes in the Palestinian situation. There have been hundreds of opinion pieces published since then that comment on this article's subject. Just looking at The Guardian, and just from the first two pages of search results, we have a 2021 editorial, McGreal in 2021, Hagai El-Ad in 2021, Michael Sfard in 2021, and Ronnie Kasrils in 2019. All those authors deserve greater weight than Buruma.
With no dearth of high-quality non-opinion sources, I am likely to oppose the inclusion of most opinion pieces without a very good reason, like demonstrable weight afforded by coverage in secondary sources. Perhaps Hagi El-Ad, as B'tselem's report was covered widely, or the Guardian editorial? Even those I'm on the fence about. But Buruma's a clear no. Pings for @Buidhe, Ravpapa, and WarKosign, who added/removed this content. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:36, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
Exactly, remove all unqualified opinion which this clearly is. (t · c) buidhe 03:12, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
Buidhe, your talk page indicates that you're aware of DS in I/P area, so you must be aware that your repeated edits against long-standing consensus constitute edit warring. Kindly self-revert to restore the long-standing stable version of the article. If there is eventually a consensus to remove it - it will be removed, and it there isn't - your edit warring won't change the result anyway. “WarKosign” 05:49, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
Likewise reverting due to some supposed consensus that isnt actual evident anywhere on this talk page is not an answer to the challenges brought forth. Do you have any reason to support inclusion besides "long-standing stable version"? Because that isnt actually a reason. And claiming there has been no justification when there have been explicit challenges based on WP:UNDUE is likewise tendentious. nableezy - 05:53, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, it's an ancient opinion piece and a poor source. Challenged opinion pieces should clearly be removed short of a consensus forming for their reinstatement. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:14, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

I suppose that, as someone who touched off this discussion, I ought to comment. But the truth is I don't have a very strong opinion about this one way or another. Actually, I think that this, and all articles that have been the subject of protracted edit wars and endless ideological discussions for years represent the failure of the collaborative editing model on which Wikipedia is built. They will never be objective, and, worse, they will never be coherent. This article is certainly a case in point. I think there should be a measure of tendentiousness for articles, and when an article passes a certain point, it should simply be deleted with an apology:

"The editors were unable to reach consensus about the content of this article. It has been deleted to avoid distortion and bias. We apologize and advise readers to seek elsewhere for information in this topic."

Ravpapa (talk) 07:45, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Too pessimistic. It is obvious that, by the nature of the anonymous editing process, articles tend to be established by successive patches of tidbits by people whose POVs clash, and who tend to seek to balance what they see as a partisan page. Over time this produces ungainliness. Note that para 2 of the lead (I've remarked on this before) showcases pro-Israeli rebuffs of the charge, with just one end line with the counter POV, and then the latter is showcased in the final 4th paragraph (nicely separated to prioritize the Israeli disavowel). Para 2's anti-analogy argument is reduplicative, while para 4's expansion of the last line in para 2, is also awkward. Clearly a master editor (Slim Virgin did this on one or two articles) is needed at some point to take such articles by the scruff, weed out the newspaper trivia and opinionizing, reorganize the presentation so we don't get the stacking effect of who is pro/ who contra, and privilege the serious research data base, where retrospective insight trumps breaking news . Above all such an editor would sharply divide the article into (a)accusations that Israel's internal social system is apartheid-like and (b)Israel's West Bank settlement policy is apartheid-like. Secondly, both sections would require historicizing. It's no use quoting stuff from 1998 or 2002, when change is constant.
Buruma, an historian with a strong feel for nationalist cant, is an eminently good source. But quoting what he said in 2002 looks thin, because since then his views have altered. The only function of such quotes is name dropping for a POV. A serious rewrite would subordinate such temporal viewpoints for an historical overview, and then assess the most recent scholarly or specialist literature in a synthesis. That would give us a punchy article half this size. But one cannot do this, because people only revisit pages to tinker, revert, or plug in stuff. Comprehensive rewriting is a very time consuming rare commodity in this dumbphone-alertive world of intensive info-ephemera.
Nonetheless, Rav, the page, in comparison with mainstream news venues, does a fairly good job despite its defects. I live in Italy where criticism of Israel is taboo, where the Holocaust narrative dominates for two weeks every year, where no occasion is lost to highlight Jewish suffering, where all reportage from Jerusalem is either a promo for tourism or a report on those dreadful Arab terrorists. We get more coverage, invariably positive, of Israel than we do of France, Spain, Germany or any other EU country. The explanation, of course, is obvious: it is the USA/British model of 'normalization'. Of the 7 channels I have some intimacy with, only 1 (RAI3) allows a measure of background on the Palestinian situation: we get 3 minutes on Saturday or Sunday morning at 12 midnight or thereabouts That is the way the missing POV of the mainstream evening news's partisanship is 'balanced'. Nishidani (talk) 11:44, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

A 2002 (the added qualifications start in 2003?) op-ed doesn't add much, if anything, to the current debate, although it might have been worth something at the time, I don't see any reason to keep this in, it won't survive the eventual article redo anyway. Selfstudier (talk) 12:20, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

More additions needed + reliable sources on Apartheid existence

The below facts and events are ignored, I think these must be added. Also, as many suggested, the name of this page is lame. The so-called "analogy" is a very minor aspect, we're talking about a proven crime against humanity called out by many western scholars and international bodies. Editors: Have some conscience, please.

UN resolution and Commission call for submissions

  • [CoIOPT The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory]
    • [Resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council on 27 May 2021] English version
      • Human Rights Council decided to “urgently establish an ongoing, independent, international commission of inquiry to investigate, in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up and since 13 April 2021”. The resolution further requested the commission of inquiry to “investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity”.
  • The International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School and Addameer Prisoner Support confirm Isreal Apartheid crimes extended even to Westbank Joint Submission to the CoIOPT - United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry
      • "The submission finds that Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank are in breach of the prohibition of apartheid and amount to the crime of apartheid under international law."
      • "In response to a call for submissions from the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association​, in partnership with the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, contributed a joint submission analyzing whether the legal regime enforced by Israel in the occupied West Bank violates the prohibition of apartheid under international law.  The submission outlines discriminatory laws, policies, and practices enforced by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank, which create a dual legal system that systematically discriminates against Palestinians and suppresses their civil and political rights."

Please sign your contributions. The Permanent United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Israel Palestine conflict is presently collecting responses prior to a first report in June, the Harvard/Adameer is one of those submissions. It's early days yet and we need to wait for third party RS. Other things are underway as well and it is likely better to await substantive developments rather than reacting to every report/submission etcetera. Same thing with the name, agree it is lame, I still think it is better to wait for a bit (as I said up the page).Selfstudier (talk) 19:49, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I see no reason to wait @Selfstudier:, HRW, Amnesty International and UNHRC are all reliable organizations, and their reports on every human rights violation around the world has been taken as fact in other Wikipedia articles; except this one, which attempts to dilute the apartheid crime through the article's title "analogy". It should be renamed into Apartheid in Israel. Makeandtoss (talk) 14:04, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
You understand that there will be opposition, perhaps take a look at the outcome of the straightforward Talk:Israel and the apartheid analogy/Archive 42#Requested move 4 December 2021. Propose it by all means but an endorsement from a UN body would make the argument far stronger imo. Selfstudier (talk) 14:19, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
I expect it will get moved to Israeli apartheid at some point (not "Apartheid in Israel" as it is practiced outside Israel—eg. in the West Bank) assuming a political solution to the conflict isn't found in the next few years. However, we probably can't get a consensus for the move right now. (t · c) buidhe 21:46, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
What do you think the burden of evidence for this is? Obviously it's more or less the full gamut of major international and Israeli human rights organizations that have now pitched in, alongside the UN special rapporteur for Palestine, but I can't see this designation rising to the level of a UN vote ... what further recognition do you think is required? Iskandar323 (talk) 09:30, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Two ongoing possibilities, first is Permanent United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Israel Palestine conflict whose first report should be in June and second the CERD committee. A UN body would be sufficient imo, not necessarily a UN vote. Selfstudier (talk) 09:50, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Cheshin comments on family reunification

Shrike has restored these comments [7] As far as I can tell based on the cited source, the comments don't have anything to do with apartheid and seem even less relevant now that the Israeli government made the law permanent for demographic purposes, see the Al Jazeera article[8] (t · c) buidhe 06:13, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

It seems a tad unrelated, and also nonsensical. Who are these 'enemy nationals'? As far as I am aware, Israel is not at war with anyone except Syria. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:53, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Israel is not at war with Syria, but has been at war with Palestine and the Palestinian people for 70+ years. RolandR (talk) 07:47, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Israel is at war with Syria, because they never signed a peace treaty. And no, Israel is not at war with Palestine, because it's an occupied client state of Israel, with the Palestinian Authority operating with a form of limited autonomy only where it doesn't interfere with Israel's security arrangements. If Israel formally declared war on the Palestinian people that's news to me. But as far as I am aware, it is still disbursing collected import taxes to the PA. Sounds like a strange arrangement to have while at war. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:25, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
According to the Ministry of Justice lawyers, arguing before the Israeli Supreme Court, Israel is at war with Palestine:

Behind the security argument there lurks, of course, a demographic demon. The Arabs now constitute about 20% of Israel’s citizens. If the country were to be swamped by a flood of Arab brides and bridegrooms, this percentage might rise to – God forbid! – 22%. How would the “Jewish State” look then?

The matter came before the Supreme Court, The petitioners, Jews and Arabs, argued that this measure contradicts our Basic Laws (our substitute for a nonexistent constitution) which guarantee the equality of all citizens. The answer of the Ministry of Justice lawyers let the cat out of the bag. It asserts, for the first time, in unequivocal language, that:

“The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective.”

One should read this sentence several times to appreciate its full impact. This is not a phrase escaping from the mouth of a campaigning politician and disappearing with his breath, but a sentence written by cautious lawyers carefully weighing every letter. Uri Avnery, 'Israel's Most Revolting Law?' Counterpunch, 23 March 2009

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Nishidani (talk • contribs)
Whoever enters the country obviously poses a security questions (not only in Israel). Blaming this solely on demographics seems to be politically motivated (I'm referring to Al Jazeera). - Daveout(talk) 17:10, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
It is a weak paragraph for several reasons, not least that it fails verification. The opening portion of the quote is not a quote in the article and the paraphrasing skips out both critique and context. The material is from 2006, which is at this point fairly aged, and quite likely obsolete in the context of the subsequent law and present-day apartheid discussion. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:59, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 30 April 2022

Irwin Cotler was not Nelson Mandela's counsel or lawyer. Irwin Cotler's name is not on the Rivonia Court decision and Irwin Cotler was never mentioned in Mandela's biography. Irwin Cotler and/or his admirers are shamelessly trying to ride on Mandela's stellar reputation. Please change this error. Jimbenham (talk) 02:23, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

 Done. What matters for us is sourcing, and I checked that Mandela is not even mentioned in the source. So I removed the reference to Mandela. Others may argue whether or not Cotler deserves a mention. Zerotalk 03:51, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Iskandar323 removed the whole section, then Buidhe added a link from one side either we restore all of it or remove all of it. We cant stay with one link from one side. If no one will remove the link I think the best course of action is to restore all the links Shrike (talk) 16:27, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Just follow WP:EL. Shrike, I looked but couldn't find "not notable propaganda" as being a valid reason for not having a link. Selfstudier (talk) 16:43, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
Then lets restore all the links they all follow WP:EL Shrike (talk) 16:45, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
The Mondoweiss (a reliable source) documentary wasn't one of the links I removed - an action I stand by. I'm not sure if any of those previous links could be considered high quality information resources - many of them were simply links to various promotional campaign websites, and only the independent.co.uk even led to a reliable, secondary source. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:55, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
Per WP:RSP there is no consensus that mondoweiss a reliable source hence WP:ONUS for it was not met Shrike (talk) 19:02, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
At the same time, I believe Mondoweiss has been tried and tested multiple times, and absolutely no consensus has formed that it is in any way unreliable (despite the earnest efforts of Icewhiz & Co.). WP:ONUS is about verifiability and inclusion of content, not about reliability. However, even so, on the reliability front WP:ELMAYBE outlines how: "Sites that fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources" may potentially be "Links to be considered". Iskandar323 (talk) 19:52, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
There is no consensus that Mondoweiss is not a reliable source either. If one attributes, then that's fine. This being merely an external link, anyone following it automatically knows that it is Mondoweiss.Selfstudier (talk) 20:57, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Dead-end Articles

This is a dead-end article. Because there is no consensus on the content of the article, any structural or major editorial change becomes impossible. Suggestions for changes that an uninvolved observer might consider neutral and noncontroversial immediately grow into voluminous discussions, never actually ending but often leading to complaints of misconduct and calls for disciplinary action.

Since the article deals with a current subject, there is perforce a need to include new developments. These developments, however trivial, immediately get blown completely out of proportion, with editors from each side adding more and more citations, factoids and conjectures (all, of course, from "reliable sources") to support their own particular spin on events. As a result, the article places excessive emphasis on the vaguely relevant while burying the crux of the issue in mountains of rhetoric.

Of course, this is not the only article stuck in a dead end. The dynamic of dead-end editing is endemic, and is inherent in the collaborative, consensus-driven model of Wikipedia. There are entire families of articles at the dead end. These articles sully the name of Wikipedia and impinge on its reputation as a reliable and useful source of information.

What can be done about this? It is, in my mind, an issue of grave importance for the entire Wikipedia community. It is an issue that requires novel and bold approaches, and perhaps an alternative to collaborative editing. Is there a discussion of this problem anywhere on any of the community forums? Might the editors of this article be a motive force for some kind of change to help us back out of the dead end? --Ravpapa (talk) 05:02, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

I dont think there is a dead end, the answer is always try to engage more and more people. But can I ask that you be more specific? the article places excessive emphasis on the vaguely relevant while burying the crux of the issue in mountains of rhetoric. What is the vaguely relevant, and what specifically is the crux of the issue? nableezy - 05:13, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
  • crux of the issue : specific items that are presented as evidence of aparteid in Israeli state - Palestinian people relations, such as "restricted access to roads".
  • mountain of rhetoric is numerous statements of various pundits that either "israel is apartheid" or "israel is not apartheid", such as "Yesh Din found meets the definition of the crime of apartheid". And Knesset found that this is bullshit. So what?
  • Unless we operate with specific items, the article will grow endlessly and meaninglessly with growing number of speakers on both sides.
My suggestion is that the article structured as folloews: section "Background", section "Arguments" (there is a finite number of them) + Section "Voices": - simply a list of notable speakers with indications of their general positions, in simple words, without political babble: "YEs apartheid" / "No apartheid" / "Trying to see both sides" . And of course section "In popular culture" (Ha ha, only serious., I am pretty sure there are novels and films about which critics say that they describe the regime of apartheid. ) Loew Galitz (talk) 06:36, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Any talk of restructuring is somewhat secondary to the much broader topic raised on this thread of the potential need for a split. An analogy article versus a specific crime accusation article would be different creatures entirely and different structures would be needed to handle the information. Above you also miss any mention of 'evidence/examples', which is what pertain most directly to your: "crux of the issue : specific items that are presented as evidence of aparteid in Israeli state" - by "presented as", I think you mean "stated in reliable sources to be". Iskandar323 (talk) 07:50, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
The "crux" are contained in any number of our articles, Palestinian enclaves has the roads for example (a contiguity issue affecting freedom of movement). The various reports covering the crime are simply the accumulation of all these separate specifics at a meta level. Nableezy and I have suggested two different ways out of the "deadend" dilemma, create a new article for the crime and defend it at AfD if needs be or simply transfer the crime components of this article to the existing crime article as an interim step. If anyone has another useful idea, that can be considered of course. Selfstudier (talk) 11:18, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Splitting the article will not solve your "dead-end" problem. Instead of one dead-end article you will have two, with ever-growing lists of opinions of pundits. Loew Galitz (talk) 17:29, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
The article on the crime does not need "opinions of pundits". The article on the analogy is useless imo. nableezy - 17:32, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Agree on both points. (1) How you prevent opinions fro the article? All political controversive article have very sections "Reactions", which are nothing but opinions. Under the term "pundit" I put political commenters, state officials, organization spokespersons, tik-tok stars, etc. (2) if you think the article on analogy is useless, then why you are for split? Loew Galitz (talk) 17:43, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Im actually for creating a new article on the crime and deleting this one entirely. Or restructuring this to be just about the crime. I think you are always going to have some amount of he said she said in an article like this, but it should be required to have substantial sourcing to show that a specific view merits mention. Like the US view that the charge is completely false, that is widely covered and should be included. But we do not need random op-eds. Academic papers in peer-reviewed journals are of course not included in "he said she said". nableezy - 17:45, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
you also miss any mention of 'evidence/examples' - NO reason to mention: evidence/examples should be a part of the discussion of a "specific item". Loew Galitz (talk) 17:43, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
talk of restructuring is somewhat secondary - no it is not. As soon as you realize that the most encyclopedic part is specific items that are presented as evidence, you will also realize that most of them will go into both suggested articles: as items of comparison and as items of crime, i.e., it will be an unnecessary duplication of the content. Loew Galitz (talk) 17:43, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Not really. For example, the enclaves that Palestinians have been increasingly forced into through state-sponsored encroachment by settlers, zoning laws, etc. have been compared to the South African Apartheid creation of Bantustans. But such comparisons are irrelevant to apartheid as a crime, which is solely framed by legal criteria. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:22, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
There is no duplication now so there will not be any when split either, except possibly for the views of dissenters which tend to be the same regardless of which report it is and rarely address the detail anyway. The fact of the reports is in some ways more important than the precise detail within them. Selfstudier (talk) 18:23, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Little bit long, worth a look, Agnès Callamard elaborates and takes on the criticisms. As is said, pp 51 to 60 of the Amnesty report just lays it out. For balance, the completely reliable and totally predictable Jewish Chronicle getting hot under the collar about what Callamard said.Selfstudier (talk) 18:30, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Question

I want to preface my comment by making it clear that I have no dog in this fight. This is more of a question about Wikipedia and its policies. Does the proposer get to add a support vote? Seems redundant. Isn't the usual practice to explain the reason behind the proposal in the proposal statement? (PS: I am fairly new to Wikipedia and don't claim to be an expert in any way). Thank you! NebulaOblongata (talk) 07:55, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@NebulaOblongata: I moved your query to it's own section. Idk is the short answer, usually the opening statement for discussions is a neutral statement, RMs are excepted from this so I suppose RM's are understood to be an automatic support and don't need a specific support/oppose. Maybe it doesn't matter so much, an experienced closer is not going to have difficulty in sorting things out. If you haven't come across it, there is WP:TEAHOUSE for new users.Selfstudier (talk) 08:42, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
Teahouse looks nice. Thanks! NebulaOblongata (talk) 12:45, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Not only "Hafrada"

The page should mention that there are different teminologies regarding the barrier. While some rather calling it "seperation wall", Israeli officials prefer to use the term "security fence" instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amir Segev Sarusi (talk • contribs) 10:40, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Well perhaps we could use a better 'terminology' and 'analogy' about the 'nature' of Israel's 'occupied territories', an abstract neutered concept, as defined in Oxford dictionary; con·cen·tra·tion camp. /ˌkänsənˈtrāSHən ˈˌkamp/ "A place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities..." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.33.104.6 (talk) 10:54, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

A discussion on the scope of this article is needed

This article's scope seems to be primarily about various people making analogies to apartheid, and I feel like there needs to be a separate article about the actual system of apartheid itself now that many prominent human rights (HR) organizations have explicitly referred to Israel's HR violations as apartheid. The topic of Israeli apartheid has developed rapidly since 1 February 2022, in large part due to Amnesty International, one of the largest HR organizations in the world, declaring Israel to be guilty of apartheid. This article focuses too much on the analogy itself, and gives WP:UNDUE weight to various government officials talking about whether or not it is appropriate to call Israel apartheid in general, rather than a focus on the actual HR abuses that constitute apartheid according to the HR organizations. I don't think that Amnesty International's article (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/) written by human rights experts needs to be balanced with the Israeli foreign minister or some other non-scholarly government official essentially saying "nuh-uh". That's WP:UNDUE weight. Instead, WP:NPOV (specifically, WP:VOICE) requires fair and proportionate balance of views and focus on actual subject matter experts (HR organizations) and not simply what notable people think. I use the Uyghur genocide article as comparison, which is what I used as a template for writing the Israeli apartheid article (this is a link to my sandbox on what I think an Israeli apartheid article should look like). The Chinese government, which disagrees with the characterization of genocide, has its views in the article, but ultimately, the article itself focuses on the HR abuses documented in the sources and references. In the same way, an article about Israeli apartheid should focus on the actual HR abuses primarily, and give space for people who deny the human rights abuses, but the scope of the article should not be formatted as a kind of debate between human rights experts and the non-expert foreign ministers of various countries expressing their views. Note that it is called Uyghur genocide despite there being no consensus among WP:RS that the HR violations in China constitute a genocide. It is not called "China and the genocide analogy" with a focus on who and when people are comparing (or disagreeing with) the Chinese government's HR violations to genocide. In the same way, there needs to be an article that primarily focuses on Israel's HR violations that various HR groups have categorized as a system of apartheid. The reason for this is because Israel's HR violations collectively have the WP:COMMONNAME of apartheid, and this is something that simply did not exist way back in 2006 when this article was first created, which is over a decade prior to major HR organizations assigning the apartheid label.

For this reasons, I'm asking for a discussion on what needs to be done.

  • Option A: This article continues to exist, but has its scope narrowed exclusively to pre-2021 analogies to apartheid that predate major HR organization characterizations of Israeli HR abuses as apartheid, and a separate new article of Israeli apartheid focuses primarily on the HR violations that the HR organizations say constitute apartheid.
  • Option B: This article is moved to Israeli apartheid and its scope is altered accordingly to focus primarily on the HR abuses and not the opinions of various people on whether or not the HR abuses constitute apartheid.
  • Option C: Status quo.
  • Option D: Something else (please specify in your replies).

I'm looking forward to working with people on improvements to the coverage of Israeli apartheid on Wikipedia. --JasonMacker (talk) 20:26, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

  • Option B - but the target should be Israel and the crime of apartheid so that concerns that the title is claiming something are assuaged. But we do not need, nor have we ever needed, a repository of unqualified opinions on this or any other topic. This should focus on what serious sources say about whether or not, and how and why or how not or why not, Israel's actions constitute violations of the prohibition on the crime of apartheid. It wouldn't even need a radical refocusing, most of the article is already about that. Not about an analogy, a silly title that nearly all involved agreed was silly but was the only thing that could be relatively stable when this article was in fact mostly a repository of unqualified opinions. But that day has come and gone, and an abundance of serious sources discuss Israel actions as constituting acts of apartheid. And that should be the scope of this article. nableezy - 20:37, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Option B - also agree that the target should be Israel and the crime of apartheid, and the 'analogical' material that at the present largely involves comparisons to South African apartheid – which is related to but not the same as the 2002 Rome Statute crime of apartheid – should be split off into another narrowly focused, suitably named article about that specific comparison. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:54, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment If we take a look at the articles with the word apartheid in the title, we have (starting at the "top") Apartheid which is pretty much defined as South African apartheid although there is a small poorly sourced section at the bottom about the "crime". Then we have Apartheid (crime) which is obvious but it includes a list of countries under a heading "Accusations of apartheid by country"; of those countries, besides Israel, which have an associated main, there is Apartheid in South Africa which just redirects to Apartheid, Sudan and the apartheid analogy which redirects to War in Darfur#Allegations of apartheid and Saudi Arabia and the apartheid analogy which redirects to Human rights in Saudi Arabia along with a couple other (China, Qatar) linking out to HR titles and a few others less specific. Idk myself how many of these actually meet the crime definition.
  • SA is a proven case and the titles reflect that, all the others essentially go to HR articles of the country that is the alleged abuser but here we have apartheid + occupation, a special case. Until such time as a UN body/ICJ (or the ICC) puts its imprimatur on the allegation, I would rather go with what is easily demonstrable right now, taking all that HR stuff out of the Israel HR article into a new article with an appropriate title, rather than attempting to change the title here. If I was forced to pick one right now, I would go with Israel, Palestine, and Apartheid[9] Selfstudier (talk) 22:46, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment:I am only raising the discussion. I will not be !voting in this. It seemed premature for me to request an RFC. I would rather that someone more experienced than me make the determination as to whether an RFC is necessary.--JasonMacker (talk) 14:50, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

If people want to maintain the status quo with this title then I would say everything that is not analogy to South African Apartheid should be moved out of this article to one focused on the crime. nableezy - 23:06, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

That seems like a reasonable approach.Selfstudier (talk) 08:25, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
Actually, yes, I suppose that would be a more straightforward approach than moving the article only to then split analogy content back into a newly named analogy article. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:24, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
No agreement the scope of the article is not only about south Africa but about the allegation in general Shrike (talk) 09:35, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
I think we've shifted to 'accusation' at this point; 'allegation' carries the connotation of a lack of proof, when here, we clearly have entire dossiers of collated evidence. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:04, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes, "you think". Your opinion does not drive article content. Zaathras (talk) 13:05, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Option C: I see no reason for a change. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is real complex, so to understand the current situation, you have to learn history. The allegations of Apartheid are a distortion of reality, a tool used by one side to delegitimize the other; there's a good reason why some countries (mostly liberal democracies) reject it, while others (under the Arab League, OIC) promote it. Wikipedia should stay neutral, and avoid adopting one-sided terminology. I believe that a single article which describes the allegations from a balanced standpoint is more than enough. Tombah (talk) 12:54, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
    👍 Like Zaathras (talk) 13:05, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, "you think". Your opinion does not drive article content. I think you must have meant this as a reply to Tombah, who apparently believes that Amnesty, HRW and B'tselem are tools of the Palestinians. Or perhaps you only "like" opinions that you agree with :) Selfstudier (talk) 12:23, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
    Let me get this straight, when you agree with a UN agency you reject all other sources, following only theirs as in here, but when you disagree they are just agents of the Arab League? I got that right? nableezy - 14:29, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Yall arguing that the arguments that the UN, Amnesty International, HRW, B'tselem make are wrong. Thats fine for you to feel that, but it is a non-argument on Wikipedia. Whatever you feel about the accusations is not material that is to be discussed on Wikipedia or its talk pages. I dont give half a shit what anybody thinks about a tool used by one side to delegitimize the other, and the misuse of this page and others can reach a point of WP:DE if it continues. Discuss the content and the sources, not your feelings, because nobody cares about your feelings here. nableezy - 14:20, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Just because you don't like someone's opinion doesn't mean it is invalid, I'm afraid. Sorry the discussion above didn't go your way. Zaathras (talk) 23:21, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
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