Jewish, Jewish, Everywhere, & not a drop to drink
Thursday, August 05, 2004
What is "Israel-Palestine"? A debate.
(Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License if you use the following. Thank you.)
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Israel-Palestine
Simshalom says: There is no "Palestine" officially yet
Simshalom says: Gilgamesh, you have just made this up on the spur of the moment it seems, or as a result of some mis-informed thinking verily. Look, NPOV on Wikipedia is all good and well and a "means to an end" but it it is NOT "an end in itself" when it becomes a tool for making up MYTHOLOGICAL and illusionary notions and "constructs" that do not exist in the real world. As of July 2004 there is no such country called "Palestine", whereas there has been an Israel officially since 1947 when Israel accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan and all the Arabs, including those in what was then known as the British Mandate of Palestine in Palestine, rejected it (because they wanted to kill and/or "throw into the sea" all of the "Yahoods") hence depriving themselves of a chance to have a state of their own. The Jews on the other hand were happy to get their share, and it was a pretty small one, and then went ahead with the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14, 1948. So please do not confuse the facts with wishful thinking. IZAK 10:42, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Gilgamesh says: It's not wishful thinking. It has less to do with history and everything to do with modern usage. It is a real term used by real people in real functions. Israel-Palestine as a word exists and is used, completely regardless of what past or modern politics are. It is a dispassionate term that makes no endorsements, condemnations nor concessions, and treats the political positions as equal, regardless of what those positions are or how respectable they might be. It really has no connection with the passions of either side, but is all about neutrality. - Gilgamesh 10:57, 23 July 2004 (UTC) Note that Google has 382000 page results for "Israel-Palestine". See: (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&safe=active&q=Israel%2DPalestine) You can't censor a phenomenon of terminology like that. The term itself does not endorse Palestine, nor even Israel. It just leaves the issue open without taking a stance. That's why it's so often used by peace groups and neutral speech. - Gilgamesh 11:09, 23 July 2004 (UTC)
Simshalom says: You know, to live in an academic bubble is one thing, but when that bubble is blind to the threats to the lives of the Israeli Jewish people, it's quite another matter, which is something you fail to grasp when you say things like: "Israel-Palestine as a word exists and is used, completely regardless of what past or modern politics are. It is a dispassionate term that makes no endorsements, condemnations nor concessions, and treats the political positions as equal, regardless of what those positions are or how respectable they might be." Are you not aware of the Arab Palestininian's own Palestinian National Covenant which calls for Israel's DEMISE: "...Articles 15, 19, 20, 22, and 23 of the Covenant explicitly deny Israel's right to exist. Articles 1-6, 8, 11-14, 16-18, 21, 24-26, 28 and 29 implicitly deny the State of Israel's right to exist. These articles claim that Palestinian Arabs have the sole right to all of the land. Articles 7, 9 and 10 call all Arabs to support an armed struggle against the State of Israel. Articles 27 and 30 indirectly call for violence. A total of 30 of the 33 articles in the Covenant effectively deny Israel's right to exist..." These are very serious matters, and Google may have whatever terms repeated on its search engines zillions of times, it still does NOT "neutralize" the open threats by the PLO against Israel.IZAK 06:10, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Gilgamesh says: You would think a certain person would realize this by now... I appreciate the politics involved. And there hasn't been a single Palestinian leader who I've been comfortable with either. Intifadas do not enact any positive change. That's my POV. But a sense of threat is irrelevant when writing Wikipedia articles — they convey scientifically factual information and the existence of social trends, and are written in a neutral, dispassionate, even robotic manner. In order to keep NPOV well-balanced, I must not nor ever let my editorial content be slanted by any sentiment nor political side. In the real world, I have emotions. But on Wikipedia, I a repository of information; I am, as much as I can be, a cold calculating computer, seeing only raw information and intentionally blinded to the politics of any side, even to sides close to my interests. And you should be too. The passions of the heart can get any Wikipedia user in trouble if they're not careful. One can easily challenge a notion of truth, and that's largely what impassioned debates are all about, and private message boards and blogs can be useful for that; but Wikipedia is a place of academic fact. Everyone has their individual core beliefs, to which they are entitled to, and are not necessarily right or wrong because they are belief rather than fact. But in a place of secular science and academics, as what Wikipedia is, one must practice an emulated skepticism in that nothing is a case unless it is proven. As far as we users are concerned, nothing exists — there is no God, there is no truth, there is no good, there is no evil, there is no Israel, there is no Palestine, there is no sun, there is no moon, there is no earth, there is no life, there is no death, unless such things are founded and corroborated in the coldest most precise calculations of the secular scientific method. Social phenomena (such as thought pattern, vocabulary and terminology including "Israel-Palestine") can be described, and published books can be said to exist, and their contents described, but we cannot assert any opinion to be fact unless it is proven so beyond any doubt. This is the foundation of science, and Wikipedia is a place of collecting and documenting this science. All that said, the science as used here need not negate ones own personal beliefs, because I think even science is incomplete in answering an individual's personal spiritual questions. And social phenomena such as these can also be described if they are attested, without endorsement nor condemnation. But Wikipedia is not the place to solve spiritual confusion, because it is not a place to proselytize, because proselytizing would elevate one opinion or another, and that is not a neutral point of view, because an unneutral point of view is unscientific, and thus unfit for Wikipedia. I hope you can appreciate all this, because these are the conditions under which I work on Wikipedia as well as under which I debate subjects in Wikipedia talk pages. If you cannot appreciate these conditions, then I have nothing more to say to you until you do. Leave your passions at the door, and have a pleasant day. - Gilgamesh 10:27, 26 July 2004 (UTC)
Simshalom says:When talking about Israel and Jews or Arabs and Palestine and their histories, we cannot use methods of science only, as they are not much help alone. History relies on primary documents and eye-witness testimonies, of which there are plenty in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The complex contradictory human factor is unavoidably always present, you cannot wish it away like a wish over a fountain. I appreciate very much your intense passionate sincerity about the ideology or metaphysical significance of what NPOV is or is not, but as I read and re-read what you have just written I must caution you that there is a very clear distinction between pure science and science fiction when you say things like: "As far as we users are concerned, nothing exists — there is no God, there is no truth, there is no good, there is no evil, there is no Israel, there is no Palestine, there is no sun, there is no moon, there is no earth, there is no life, there is no death, unless such things are founded and corroborated in the coldest most precise calculations of the secular scientific method." I am not sure if you appreciate what the functions and limitations of the "scientific method" are and of controversies concerning it. For example, the liberal arts, social sciences, humanities and religion cannot and should NOT be measured by the same methods one measures in pure mathematics, chemistry, physics and biology. The latter, because it touches on issues of life is also complex. Geography is physical, but the human beings on the Earth are more complex than that. In some ways they can be "measured" and in other ways they cannot be measured or subjected to "scientific method". They tried that in the former USSR but all that was, was a guise to dupe people into accepting "scientific" Marxism-Leninism. Hitler's scientists produced proofs that Germans were a Master race based on perversions of the scientific method, so spare me the hocus-pocus about the holy grail of the "scientific method". By all means use it, but with healthy amounts of "scepticism", because what you are describing is that to be on Wikipedia one must "swear allegiance", almost like an oath or "party membership" in bizarre sounding premises, the way you describe them, as an "infallible" litmus test, when the very "test" has been proven to fail many times over when it over-reaches itself. In human affairs there are complex non-measurable human realities and factors such as morality and values for example, about which science and its methods can tell us nothing. Also remember, there is a great difference between the use of mere science, and "scientism" which is "belief in science" as in a "religion" which is just plain old "idol worship" dressed in the garb of Pseudoscience according to many people out there. IZAK 04:02, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Gilgamesh says: I think you misunderstood what I said. I am a deeply religious person, and have a great deal many opinions and passions. And in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and I think everyone has a right to live anywhere in that land, though I find myself leaning more towards the Jewish side because of closer personal affiliation, though I have compassion for those among the Palestinian civilians who are peaceful and non-political. It's been hard to have any sympathy for Yassir Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, etc., or anyone else who especially denies Israelite history in the Holy Land or particularly at the Temple Mount. Anyway, I think this practice is not about actually personally believing absolute skepticism, but merely practicing it in the scientific field, simply because it is one of the rigid rules of the scientific method that lends it empirical legitimacy. Personally, I think it quite scientific to balance the human issues involved and try to be more sensitive about the concerns, at least in the aspect of presentation, but without sacrificing the crucial information involved, and without changing the impact of the message (i.e. no POV sugar-coating). I'm largely scientific perhaps because I am autistic, and that makes me sterilely methodical by nature, but that doesn't mean I'm insensitive to the concerns of others, at least not intentionally. By all means, we should strike a social balance in this article. - Gilgamesh 05:05, 28 July 2004 (UTC)
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