Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 10

message: The first section of this page is "# 1 95% of terrorists are musilm". There's no content to go along with that section and no cited source, so it seems like it's some lame attempt at vandalism. I haven't removed the section because I wanted to raise the issue. Maybe topics such as these should have a small degree of moderation?
:I don't see any such quote.  --GHcool 17:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism? 

message: Fox News on January 1, 2007 had a report on the al-Mahdi Scouts, a youth wing of the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The really interesting thing is, outwardly, they look very much like traditional Scouts, with the normal uniforms (light and medium blue, white, yellow and purple for different groups) and badges and all. The flags being flown from cars and along the roadside showed the emblem, again a traditional fleur-de-lis, whose petals are left-to-right green/white/red, and in the top center of which is a hand with an out-turned palm, possibly the Hand of Fatima, and supported on left and right by single scimitars. Can anyone support/document this? In itself it would be a most interesting article. Chris 07:19, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: al-Mahdi Scouts

message: I removed Category:Cleanup from August 2006. Please pay attention to the article and especially the links. If you find it need to clean up, then put it in the category again. --Sa.vakilian 03:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Clean Up

message: I think we should improve this category. I suggest to merge Category:Wars of Hezbollah with Category:Battles involving Hezbollah. Also Category:Secretaries-general of Hezbollah has few articles to become a category and we can make Category:members of Hezbollah instead. There are some articles in Category:Hezbollah which doesn't relate in it like Kurdish Revolutionary Hezbollah.--Sa.vakilian 04:36, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  --GHcool 05:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please wait until User:Kirill Lokshin tell us his idea. He is involved in this issue. I put a comment for him.--Sa.vakilian 15:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't particularly care one way or the other, frankly. Kirill Lokshin 17:22, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: <nowiki>[[Category:Hezbollah]]</nowiki>

message: Someone recently added a numbered and bulleted list under the "Position on use of armed strength to achieve aims" heading that is unsourced and has the air of Original Research.  Does anyone agree? If nobody responds to this in one week, I will delete the list.  --GHcool 20:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I found some of those points in official documents of Hezbollah but I don't have enough time to work on it. Could you please do it on the basis of Statement of purpose , Hizbullah: Views and Concepts and A Voice of Resistance: the Point of View of Hizballah --Sa.vakilian 04:01, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Hezbollah operates based on the following ..." 

message: Someone has reinseted the "This article is becoming very long" tag.  I've trimmed the article quite a bit to try to accomodate.  If anyone has an issue about the things I trimmed, feel free to talk about it here or to reinsert it.  Also, if anybody has any other ideas about things that can be trimmed, this would be the place to talk about it.  --GHcool 22:45, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I put that tag but I don't have enough time to help with it. I'll return next mounth and try to improve it.--Sa.vakilian 10:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I returned. I have reverted some of your editions. . I think we should discuss about them.--Sa.vakilian 17:25, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too long 

message: Could you please verify guys if this ref link is working? It is a blank page. I removed this ref as nothing is mentioned about the "destruction of Israel" there. -- Szvest - Wiki me up ® 12:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The ICT link is a blank page for me also. This has happened before with ICT links.. mceder (u t c) 15:46, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We can move them to sub-articles depend on their issues.--Sa.vakilian 15:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I moved or deleted about 10 external links but it didn't have any effect on the length of the article and it's 95kb.--Sa.vakilian 06:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Destruction of Israel references

message: I copied a summary of the lead of 2006–2007 Lebanese anti-government revolt in Hezbollah#Political activities because of current events. I'll move it to Hezbollah political activities when the situation become calm.--Sa.vakilian 03:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 2006–2007 Lebanese anti-government revolt

message: I think we don't need to write everything in the lead. Thus I move Hezbollah's goals to the ideology and leave a summary in the lead.--Sa.vakilian 07:50, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Terrorism is not as prominant as it should be in the lead.  If Hezbollah was only a political party, it would not be in the news that much.  Terrorists should be in the first paragraph.Reapor2 16:12, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that such a change would equate to redeveloping a POV-pushing war within the article. --Kukini 20:29, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Long lead

message: I could shorten this article about 7kb by making new article and moving some part of it to Funding of Hezbollah. I hope it doesn't annoy anybody.--Sa.vakilian 06:27, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, that was good.  Thanks.  --GHcool 20:53, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

text: A long-waited action. Thanks sa.vakilian. -- Szvest - Wiki me up ® 20:33, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Great achievement

message: We have two different texts. Which one should we put in the lead?
The organization's world view was first published in its political platform in February 1985, as follows:
* The solution to Lebanon's problems is the establishment of an Islamic republic as only this type of regime can secure justice and equality for all of Lebanon's citizen's.
* The Hizbullah organization views as an important goal the fight against 'western imperialism' and its eradication from Lebanon. The group strives for complete American and French withdrawal from Lebanon, including all their institutions.
* The conflict with Israel is viewed as a central concern. This is not only limited to the IDF presence in Lebanon. Rather, the complete destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of Islamic rule over Jerusalem is an expressed goal. 
The Hezbollah political program consisted in three points:
* to expel American, French and their allies from the territory of Lebanon. Please note that Italians were no mentioned as they were the only peace-keeping force accepted by Lebanese and Hezbollah for historical reasons. In this view, the location of Rome and the mediation of the Italian government was agreed for the peace talks happening in these days.
* to bring to justice the extremist militias that committed atrocities against muslim and christians (namely the Christians Maronites extremists that caused the Sabra and Shatila massacre)
* to allow to all of Lebanese children to choose for their own lifestyle and for the self determination of a suitable government, possibly through an Islamic government as only an Islamic government might be able to stop all the attempts of imperialist forces (namely Israel and USA) to invade the territory of Lebanon. --Sa.vakilian 15:35, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the first one is better.  --GHcool 18:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are other documents which Hezbollah has published in Almashreq. What's your idea about them.--Sa.vakilian 18:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article should treat Hezbollah as a moving target, critics of Hezbollah are keen to cite aspects of Hezbollah which have decreased in importance since its inception. Certainly Nasrallah and the current "leadership" have taken the organisation is a differing direct to that of the original leadership and Hezbollah has, at least in my view, become more of a "natioanl resistance movement" than when it was focused on the goal of an islamic state. Also it support has become less focused within the Shi'a population. Therefore the treatment of official statements by Hezbollah should place more weight on recent statements than those from its early days. -- Tompsci 00:44, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Hezbollah's political program vs. idealogy

message: I put "Also as reciprocal to Israeli crimes and retaliation for Israel's occupation of Lebanese territory. " but somebody removed it. Whether we like it or not,  Hezbollah justifies its operation in this way. Maybe my rhetoric was POV but I can refer to Hezbollah's official documents and independent sources which support this claim. On the other this information in contrast with another POV information in intro "According to the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base and the BBC, "[f]or many years, Hezbollah was synonymous with terror, suicide bombings and kidnappings.[18][10] Hezbollah is reputed to have been among the first Islamic resistance groups to use tactical suicide bombing against foreign soldiers in the Middle East.[19] Hezbollah's acts have included multiple kidnappings,[20][21][22][23] murders,[24][25][26] hijackings,[26] and bombings."--Sa.vakilian 06:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Sa.vakilian. I don't remember who removed it, but I wasn't sure what this sentence said (still not entirely sure to be honest). I think it has some English problems. First, I think it's a fragment sentence – it either needs something at the end saying what also happened, or it needs something before it saying what happened with one reason, and then the also would be an additional reason. Second, the use of the term reciprocal is a bit odd. I'm not 100% sure if it's wrong, but I don't think the word is commonly used like this. Maybe something like "In response to Israel's occupation of Lebanese territory, Hezbollah did/said/urged such and such", or "Hezbollah did something in response to Israeli crimes and the occupation of Lebanese territory", etc. The way this sentence is worded I had no idea what it was saying, so I didn't object to its removal. — George Saliba [talk] 06:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: User:Gcool removed it.Definitly your English is better than mine and I'd rather you edit that paragraph. But I insist on maintaining that part in the intro.--Sa.vakilian 06:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to try to take a look at this section. See if you can further explain the statement you want to see inserted, cause I'm really not 100% sure what it is saying. Cheers. — George Saliba [talk] 06:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Yes, I removed that and I stand by that edit.  I think I made my reasons for it clear in the my edit summary (reprinted here): "incomplete sentence unsourced by the footnotes please do not reinsert that statement unless sources can be found for it and it can be written as a complete sentence." I did not know that Sa.vakilian was the person that added this to the article.  Had I known, I would not have been as harsh about pointing out that it was an incomplete sentence.  Aside from the incomplete sentence, the sources Sa.vakilian cites are about Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, but they do not make any mention of a Hezbollah argument of "reciprocity." --GHcool 07:12, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm guessing Sa.vikilian is thinking of the following:From the first source — Hizballah political leaders have consistently and publicly asserted that the guerrillas have a right to retaliate militarily against Israeli civilians in reprisal for Lebanese civilian deaths caused by Israeli military forces. At the beginning of Operation Grapes of Wrath, Hizballah's secretary-general, al-Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, promised residents of northern Israel that reprisals would be forthcoming: "What concerns us is that when our civilians are touched your civilians will be touched, too, no matter what consequences they talk about. Yesterday our civilians were the target of aggression, a clear and flagrant aggression. We will respond to the aggression and will bombard the settlements in northern Palestine."From the second source — Hizballah has a similar red line: if the IDF or the SLA attack civilians in the south, then Hizballah would feel justified to retaliate by striking at civilian targets inside Israel. ... Hizballah's deputy secretary-general, Sheikh Na'im Qasem, threatened in April 1995 that "whenever te Israeli enemy shells and harms civilians in our villages, we will shell northern Palestine and the Israeli settlements."The third source isn't working for me at the moment. I'm not sure that these match exactly the wording he chose though, but I also couldn't decipher that completely, so shrug. :) — George Saliba [talk] 07:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Update: Third link now works for me. This reference seems to have no relation whatsoever to this statement though. — George Saliba [talk] 07:29, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I added the third source because it includes the statistics of causalties.--Sa.vakilian 12:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

text: POV of Hezbollah: Statement of purpose, Hizbullah: Views and Concepts and A Voice of Resistance: the Point of View of Hizballah--Sa.vakilian 11:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Hmmm.  I didn't see that part of the first and second sources when I skimmed the articles.  I appologize to Sa.vakilian for removing the entire sentence, but if you re-include it in the article, please do the following: (1) make sure that it is a complete sentence, (2) make sure that it says that this is Hezbollah's argument for the justification of their acts of violence, and (3) make reference to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon without accusing Israel of criminal activity.  --GHcool 17:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Take out the word "also" and it would be fine with me.  (The reason is because it sounds better in English without the "also.") --GHcool 19:29, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Although reasonable people agree with the main thrust of your argument, we have an obligation on Wikipedia to keep the article NPOV and keep the talk pages free from discussing our own opinions on the issue rather than the article.  --GHcool 20:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: POV check:Hezbollah's justification

message: I guess there is enough information about this issue in the lead and intro. So we can move Hezbollah#Designation as a terrorist organization and Hezbollah#Non Governmental Organizations to a new article and shorten this article . Do you agree with me.--Sa.vakilian 17:19, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree.  These two sections are essential to even a basic understanding of Hezbollah.  --GHcool 18:56, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Just because a nation (or even many nations) doesn't officially list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization does not mean that they are not one.  --GHcool 05:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Its listed as Wikiproject Lebanon for the same reason that Japanese Red Army is listed as Wikiproject Japan.  --GHcool 18:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

text: The six nations that consider it a terrorist organzation are already listed in the fourth paragraph of the introduction. — George Saliba [talk] 19:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

text: In your opinion, sure.  But since this place strives to be an encyclopedia and not a hot-air blog, then it does not belong in the intro.  Save the "terrorist orginization" stuff for the body of the article, phrased in terms of who considers it as such, and why. Tarc 02:53, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

text: The opinion of others is quite relevant; the Wikipedia does not exist as a soapbox for one particular point of view. Tarc 13:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Terrorist designation is not one that they have claimed- other groupos have claimed it. If they said they were, we could put it in the first paragraph. If they do not consider them as such and onlyy a very small minority of the world does, then they should not be listed as such. The fact that some nations veiw them as one does warrant attention, but that does not mean it's right. Many nations refer to the US as a terrorist nation as well- more then 6 even. Does that make them right?  WP does not exist to further the POV of individual nations.Cptjeff 22:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Designation as a terrorist organization

message: There are different statements about Hezbollah ideology on the basis of "The Hizballah Program""
I put some information which was chosen original text in the article. The Hizballah program
This is another version of this document
* Eradication of Western imperialism in Lebanon (including the Phalangists and excluding the Italians),The Italians were accepted as a peace-keeping force for historical reasons  	 
* Complete destruction of the state of Israel.
* Possible transformation of Lebanon's multi-confessional state into an Islamic state.
--Sa.vakilian 03:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I wrote to where the full text was posted previously to ask them if they have a live link.  I'll let eveyrone know if they answer.  Elizmr 03:35, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Ideology

message: What's your idea? This site is biased against Hezbollah and we can substitute it with more NPOV  sources. Although its information is correct, Using the words like Khomeinistic ideology and harsh rhetoric makes it POV. Please tell me your idea.--Sa.vakilian 18:13, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If Wikipedia did not quote the Israeli government on the issue of Hezbollah, the integrity of the encyclopedia would be severely compromised.  The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs may be POV, but it is as reliable as any other country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs or army.  Similarly, the Al Qaeda article cites the foreign affairs offices of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada without any challenge to the reliability or the POV of those nations' foreign affairs offices.  --GHcool 21:37, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I satisfied.--Sa.vakilian 04:03, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just a comment on this type of issue, as long as the source backs up the statement it is sourced for - they can be as POV as they want - i.e if the statement is about Israels, obviously biased, stance on Hezbollah - a reference to the biased/POV source is desirable. mceder (u t c) 12:05, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This happens to be true for this case, but not for all cases.  --GHcool 21:58, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

message: I suggest these two sections:Hezbollah#Position on use of armed strength to achieve aims and Hezbollah#Stance on what is a legitimate military target. What is your idea?Sa.vakilian(t-c)--17:36, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that's a good idea.  They are too seperate topics.  --GHcool 18:29, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge two sections

message: There is duplicated information in Hezbollah#Outside views of Hezbollah. I suggest to remove one of them. What is your idea?Sa.vakilian(t-c)--11:59, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Because I found that Hezbollah#Designation as a terrorist organization had been splited and some part of it written duplicated I merged it. I believe it becomes more readable. --Sa.vakilian(t-c) 18:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Duplicated information

message: Hi there! 
Some months ago the Iranian Deputy Foreign Secretary, Mehdi Mostafavi said in a TV-interview that the Hizbollah of Lebanon were part of the Iranian history and civilzation. This statement was not opposed by any Iranian socialogist or other researchers. What does this mean? Does it mean that We Iranian should consider them as Iranian citizens?? Could anyone explain that for Us? It's difficult and impossible for Me/Us to accept that statement made by a Islamic Republic of Iran. Thanx :=D
:This question is an appropriate one for a forum but it's not suitable for the talk page.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 04:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Iranian Issue: The Islamic Republic of Iran Issue?? 

message: I added "Fair use rationale" template in :Image:Raad-image1.jpg and :Image:Nasrallah on al-Manar television.jpg. Please check them and complete descriptions.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 10:31, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale