"Thanks for Bethlehem work
Hi I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for your efforts in copyediting the Bethlehem article. I'm trying to improve it for GA status,per it being the Collaboration of the Week for Wikipedia:WikiProject Palestine. Al Ameer son (talk) 

[edit] Award for your great photographic work
  The da Vinci Barnstar 
This award is given to User:Gilabrand in recognition of all your imaginative and original photographs related to topics about Israel and Judaism, as can be seen on your user page. In particular, I was impressed by how many of these photographs enhance so many articles about people, places and things in Israel. Mazal Tov and may you be blessed to continue contributing to Wikipedia in this productive fashion for a long time to come. See Wikipedia:Barnstars: ""The da Vinci Barnstar may be awarded to anyone who has enhanced Wikipedia through their technical work..."" and you most certainly deserve it. Sincerely, IZAK (talk)  

Thank you, Izak, for that very heartwarming award. That someone has noticed my contributions and sees them as noteworthy makes all the hard work worthwhile.Gilabrand (talk)  
Hi Gila: Yes, you make beautiful art and I appreciate it as I am sure many others do. Best wishes, IZAK (talk)  
Hi Gila: It's agood idea to have page for awards and barnstars, like so: User:Gilabrand/Awards and barnstars which you can place at the tope of this talk page where others can see it or on your main user page if you wish. Thanks again, IZAK (talk)  

[edit] Armenian Genocide
Peres' denial of the genocide should be noted in this article, failing to do so makes it more of a hagiography than a biography. His shortcomings must also be mentioned in addition to his feats like winning the noble prize. Do you think it'd fit better in political views? In anycase it must, and will, be mentioned somewhere. How about adding this in his political views segment:

Peres' foreign policy outlook is markedly realist. For example, to placate Turkey, the only significant Muslim country in the region that is friendly towards Israel, Peres has explicity denied the Armenian genocide, which caused an uproar among genocide scholars.(citation) E10ddie (talk) 

Peres made these statements in 2001, when he was foreign minister. Clearly, he was caving in to Turkish pressure. Israel has very few friends and cannot afford to lose them, so basically it is not free to take the position that would seem to mesh with its outlook and history, which is to recognize that the Armenians were murdered en mass. Now he is president, an honorary position, not a political one, and his ""views,"" whatever they may have been back then, are worth about as much as mine are. I have no problem with mentioning this ""view"" in the section on his political outlook, but a separate section on this one utterance gives it undue importance and distorts the picture. Gilabrand (talk)  

[edit] sumac opening sentence
I don't know what the right wording is, but do you see the problem with ""Sumac (also Rhus) is a genus of approximately 250 species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae""? First of all, there is no reason to italicize Sumac. Secondly, it is not accurate to say ""Sumac is a genus"" because there is no genus called Sumac (but there is one called Rhus).

I may be too steeped in botanical jargon to easily come up with something which is natural to non-plant-people. But we need to figure out something which (a) works whether people get to this page as Sumac or Rhus (currently, the latter is a redirect to the former; policy would have it the other way around), and (b) doesn't mix up scientific names versus common names in a confusing way. Kingdon (talk) 

I am not a botanist and my reason for reading the article was because of the spice, which is used all over the Middle East. I was surprised that the spice didn't rate a mention in the lead. Sumac needs to be the first word in keeping with Wikipedia norms, and the same as the title of the article (i.e., not plural). How about: ""Sumac refers to a variety of shrubs or small trees of the genus Rhus, as well as the purplish spice that is produced from its dried, crushed berries Gilabrand (talk)  
Looks like Richard New Forest (talk · contribs) has solved it for us (I'm happy with his wording). As for ""first word"", Wikipedia policy isn't quite that strict (""earliest natural point in the prose"" at Wikipedia:Lead section#Bold title and I don't know whether a plural fits under ""slightly different form"" or not). Anyway, enough