Talk:Ma'alot massacre

message: It seems to be the new Wikipedia standard around here; see Operation Days of Penitence Fatalities, for example. Jayjg 22:37, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You are justified in reverting my edit, then. However, I still believe that content adds nothing to the article. Deletionist 22:43, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I didn't create it, I just moved it from an article in which it definitely didn't belong, the Ma'alot article. Jayjg 22:49, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Names of children 

message: I have removed some of the extreme bias from this article. Can we not just stick to the facts and leave the interpretation to others?
1/ The PLO is an umbrella name for a group of quite separate entities. It did not control this group, and to link it to Arafat is simply POV. Yes, put it in, but mark it clearly as Israeli POV, not as a neutral statement.
2/ Do not repeatedly describe fighters in an asymmetric war as "terrorists". In the days before Ma'alot, Israel used phosphorus bombs against refugee camps. By using a more neutral word we don't pass judgment. By all means quote someone calling them "terrorists". It would not be wrong to include a quote from an official statement. I presume one was made.
3/ The facts of the killings are not known. The commandos stormed the school and the children died. That's what's known. Some on the Palestinian side claim the commandos were responsible for at least some of the deaths. We should not represent either side's view, just what is actually known.
I appeal to those who have a bias on this issue to take note of these points and consider them before mindlessly reverting this piece or any other connected with this whole issue. Yes, of course, the other side is worse than your side. Yes, of course, they are evil and you are good. But Wikipedia is not a good place for judgments. Just the facts, ma'am.Dr Zen 03:28, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV?

message: As a resident of Ma'alot and someone who wrote about this incident on my Blog site https://mydailykvetch.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-massacre-in-maalot.html and the Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-massacre-in-maalot/. I used profession journalistic standards to relay the truth. I realize that there are those who claim predjudice, bias and worse but I wish to state that I wrote only the truth based on first hand testimony of witnesses- survivors and rescuers.
To oh so blithely and naively to state "No one knows how the children died" is an effront to reality and the truth!!! It is also a blatant LIE as I relay below there were survivors and witnesses like Eli Amar who speaks about how the terrorist acted in cold-blood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXNIOckENGA.03:50, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: The children were killed (murdered) by someone; they didn't die of natural causes or old age.  Affiliate with is a vastly more common usage.  I prefer good English and NPOV.  And your suggesting that I bring my objections to Talk: first is rather baffling, considering you didn't bother to do so yourself before making far larger changes, including changing "killed" to "died". Jayjg 23:47, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Affiliate with might be more common where you are but not in the UK. In keeping with Wikipedia policy, I used the usage I am familiar with. I left a note on the talk page about why I had made changes. As is usual for a POV-pushing edit warrior, you didn't bother. You made a snide comment in the edit summary. No one knows how the children died, only that they died. I am removing the implication that they were purposely killed. Perhaps the commandos' stray bullets did for them. Perhaps the militants killed them. Source it or leave it.Dr Zen 00:32, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't read it as stating that they were purposely killed by the Palestinians. They were killed, and it could've been by the Palestinians, whether accidentally or deliberately, and it could've been by the Israelis. Using 'killed' doesn't imply a conclusion either way. Ambi 02:06, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Fine. "Died" is impeccably neutral. "Killed" implies someone else was responsible. Compare "he died in a car crash" with "he was killed in a car crash". No one knows how the children died. But if you don't think so (regardless that you do not address my point or argue it in the same terms), then I'm outnumbered and the POV pusher will once again win the day. A fine service is done for the neutrality of Wikipedia.Dr Zen 02:15, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: First of all, "killed in a car crash" gets over 40,000 Google hits, just barely under the almost 43,000 that "died in a car crash" gets; also, "killed in a car accident" gets over 90,000 Google hits as compared to over 67,000 for "died in a car accident".  Second, someone was responsible; they were killed, though the article doesn't lay the blame for the killings on anyone.  Maybe it was a Mossad conspiracy; most killings these days are ascribed to them in certain quarters.  Regardless, they were killed.  If you're concerned about POV warriors I urge you to go to any article describing the number of Palestinians who have been killed in the current conflict, and change the word "killed" to "died".  Then see how long it takes before your changes are reverted and you are described as a "Zionist bigot" who is trying to "whitewash Israeli crimes."  I don't outnumber you, and I'm working for accuracy and NPOV here - I haven't objected to most of your edits, even the grammatically questionable ones (by the way, "affiliated with" gets over 5 million Google hits, "affiliated to" gets 734,000), and your protestations of NPOV are suspect given your one-sided application of that "NPOV" here and elsewhere. Jayjg 17:32, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: It's interesting that after making ad hominem comments to me on other pages you stumbled on this page out of the 400,000 Wikipedia pages "purely by random". The best way of not attacking others is to actually not attack them. Jayjg 10:57, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Mode of children's deceasing

message: Noam Chomsky says that the students kidnapped at Ma'alot were teenaged members of Gadna. Is he right? Simply stating that they were "students" rather implies that they were just members of the school who happened to be there. Of course, I'm not saying that their being part of a "paramilitary organisation" (especially when what we are talking about is something like Army cadets, if I understand correctly) makes them a legitimate target for military action -- Chomsky agrees that kidnapping them was a criminal act, which it was -- but if it is true it should be included. Dr Zen 03:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Provenance of students  

message: What's the point of including names in this article? Unless we include names of Palestinian and Iraqi casualties as well. Names have no place in an encyclopedia.
:Which Palestinian and Iraqi casualties in the Ma'alot massacre are you referring to?  As for names, there appear to be entire articles about Palestinian children who are notable only for having died in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:  Jayjg (talk) 14:45, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Names should always be included when known, whether of perpertrators or victims, of any encyclopaedic article Sherurcij (talk) (bounties) 02:30, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: WHy names?

message: There's an interesting discussion on the massacre in the film Matzpen in which a DFLP leader suggests that the team of members involved in the massacre were acting outside of the control of the DFLP. --Duncan 14:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: german wikipedia says, it was a retaliation for an israeli napalm/phosphorous attack on a Palestinian refugee camp.--85.127.18.133 22:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  DFLP view on massacre 

message: This article is, technically, against wiki rules, since, as also others have observed, it violates OR. No one has thought one should be too strict here. We have accorded the original drafter time to iron out the highly personal account. 
At the same time, you will note that it has a aftermath, which reads:-
The next day Israel bombed seven Palestinian refugee camps and villages in southern Lebanon. According to the IDF, the targets were offices and training bases used by the Popular Democratic Front. 27 people were killed and 138 injured.'
Incidents have aftermaths, they have contexts in earlier events. You would elide one of many elements in this early background. In inserting the remark from Said, no intent of justifying the terrorism that ensued at Ma'alot is intended.  You will note if you are familiar with most wiki pages on terroristic attacks on Palestinians, that much allowance is given to background. See Deit Yassin, Qibya to cite just two examples. That background is written usually with some care in order to place the specific incident in historical context without allowing the prior events to justify the massacre (though many POV-minded editors try to do just this). The Ma'alot terrorists came out of that immediate background. It does not justify their slaughter. What is good for other, more studied and edited pages on Wiki, is applied here. Challenge the language if you like, not the facts.Nishidani 16:29, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As a first step to good editing, kindly use more civil language. Someone having a disagrement with you is not "censoring" you, nor is he editing without "scruples". To the heart of the matter: Who is to say if this alleged attack that Said mentions is the appropriate context, vs. the long list of prior PLO terrorist attacks? (e.g Avivim school bus attacks or Kiryat Shmona massacre). By picking and choosing some specific act for the "context", while ignoring others, you are necessarily introducing a POV - namely, that the context in which this massacre is to be seen is that of a sort of response to an earleir attack, vs. being one terrorist attack in a long list of other terrorist attacks that had no such "justification". Nevertheless, if there is some respectable historian who makes the claim that the terrorists in this case acted in response to some Israeli attack, we may quote him. Said is not such a source. He is a partisan professor of Comparative Literature. We can not present the opinions of such non-expert partisans as if they were fact. Mr. Hicks The III 16:53, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As a first step towards good editing please note that remarking on an act of censorship does not in itself constitute 'uncivil' behaviour, but simply is a matter of calling a spade a spade. Who is to say? Said said it, he was an authority on the Palestinians and their history, of international stature, and therefore it is neither here nor there that you or I, nobodies editing this Wikipedia, think he should defer to our opinions, and shut up. The area where the terrorists hailed from had been bombed sequentially, according to Said, before that assault. That is not a 'justification', for the very simple reason that history is a concatenation of complex events, and what precedes another event is cited not to 'justify' the subsequent event, but simply to render its context. The argument you adduce about Said having been (not 'is', he died some years ago) a Professor of Literature and not a competent historian looks bad both on Wiki (where many non-professional historians are cited all over these articles) and on this page, which has no historical sources at all. Most historians by the way, especially on this area, have their 'partisan' positions, and having one is not material to editing these articles. One has only to be a reliable source, which Said, having being both Palestinian, Arabic speaking and a close writer on the history of his land, is. Finally, you and I are both 'non-expert partisans' (as is indeed the person who originally wrote the page).Nishidani 18:52, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  On censoring 

message: Noam Chomsky's assertion that "General Mordechai Gur was in favor of negotiating with the hostage-takers, but was overruled by Moshe Dayan" is wrong or incomplete.  Yehuda Ben-Meir writes that Dayan wanted to attack before Gur did, but rather than Dayan "overruling" Gur, Gur appealed to Golda Meir who agreed that the attack should be delayed.  Ami Pedahzur similarly writes that Dayan tried to convince Meir to endorse a military solution, but she only approved an attack after negotiations had broken down.Prezbo (talk) 01:32, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Noam Chomsky 

message: Gadna was responsible for numerous youth activities in Israel, from running 1-week pre-military orientation camps, through agricultural farms and field trips. This particular outing was a 3-day field trip, not a military exercise. The source used says so explicitly  - "According to Nissim Sitbon, whose daughter was slain, Ben-Lulu told him it was too late to cancel the Gadna outing because all arrangement had been made. Ben-Lulu, who has been in seclusion since enraged parents tried to attack him during mass funeral services last week, confirmed to a reporter today that Sitbon had indeed approached him May 14 with a plea to cancel the trip. " Changing it from "outing" and "trip" to military exercise is source falsification. They think it's all over (talk) 19:32, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree we should just stick to the reference. If people want to learn more about Gadna, they can click the wikilink. --Jethro B 00:16, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Gadna

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thread_title:  Copyright problem removed 

message: I changed it to "fighters", more unbiased. Although the word Arab also can be more specific. Or?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.23.163.232 (talk) 12:13, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arab terrorists? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The name of the (only) casualty "victim" from the Arab village of Fassuta was Hasibah  Shalala.  
Inside the back of the tender sat six of the Christian Arab women;  Fahimah Jiris 17, Sameeya Matar 22, Suaed Matar 16, Marta Huri 42,  Violet Dakwar 23 and Hasibah Shalala 27. Suad Jiris 20 and Aebleh Kasis 17 sat next to the Bedouin driver, Fain Saad 24 years old from the village of Arab Al Aramshe, in front. 
I am the source DINMDK (talk) 15:40, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 16:02, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 5 July 2017 

message: This should be mentioned within the article. 2003:DA:C72C:BF00:DD16:8E57:402A:B06E (talk) 22:28, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Left-wing terrorism