Wikis are unsuitable for anything contentious. Wikis are the solution to the problem of crowdsourcing objective facts, what makes them great is that anyone can add a few (even very obscure) ones; on anything contentious there are way too many, not too few, people wanting to write about them, making the wiki a solution to a nonexistent problem. This news story is yet another example of this.
… and hardly anything is more contentious than Israel/Palestine, which is why wikis work least well for articles on that.
Israel Palestine isn’t contentious when discussing the fact that Israel is genocidal. It is universally agreed by genocide scholars and frankly anyone who has seen what Israel is doing to Palestinians (if one believes Palestinians are people that is).
The only thing that is contentious is that Israel and its supporters don’t like it when people state facts about them.
the German legal scholar Stefan Talmon told Süddeutsche Zeitung that Israel was not committing genocide in Gaza, but conceded that Israel had committed war crimes.[356] International law professor Sabine Swoboda also argued that although Israel may have broken international law, it had not committed genocide because its intent was not genocidal.[357] In January 2024, lawyer Eugene Kontorovich called the genocide allegations “absolutely absurd” and a “farce”, and called for Israel to immediately end its acceptance of the ICJ’s jurisdiction in response to South Africa’s case.[358] In an August 2024 op-ed in the New York Daily News, lawyer Eli Rosenbaum wrote that Israel’s actions in Gaza are not genocidal
The article has of course other voices as well.
The article also cites people with „danger of genocide“ or war crimes. Neither of which is actually genocide.
frankly anyone who has seen what Israel is doing
For something to qualify as genocide, the special intent „dolus specialis“ is a key requirement. Killing people is not sufficient.
For something to qualify as genocide, the special intent „dolus specialis“ is a key requirement. Killing people is not sufficient.
You can look up South Africa’s case at the ICJ for instances of said intent. That North Gaza starvation/extermination plan on its own qualifies as genocidal intent.
An issue is that Amnesty International and Ireland expanded the definition of genocide for the case of Gaza specifically.
People defending Israel are claiming that; why are you stating it as fact?
I am generally very sympathetic to the Palestinians and think the immediate root cause of the present situation is the fact that Israel has been blockading Gaza for more than a decade, not allowing movement in or out of it, which I do not think can be justified by anything. I regularly read the blog I linked to above (yes, I consciously read things I don’t agree with), its author would probably say that the immediate root cause is something Hamas did in October of 2023. Difficult to say how to “neutrally” present that, right?
The response to your link would be: Are Palestinians allowed to use those hospitals in any significant numbers?
This guy also considers the second intifada to be a genocidal campaign (lol what???) so they’re too detached from reality to be taken seriously either way.
To commmit a genocide, one needs motive, opportunity and the means to carry out the crime. Hamas has repeatedly stated that killing all the Jews is an objective of theirs. But objectively, they have neither opportunity nor means. Israel, in particular the ruling Likud Party, has satisfied all three preconditions, though.
Hamas has repeatedly stated that killing all the Jews is an objective of theirs.
They haven’t though. They consider the destruction of Israel an objective of theirs, but at least as of 2017 they officially don’t want the extermination of Jews.
There’s a problem when pro-Palestinian editors start adding terms like “apartheid regime” and “settler colonialism“ which don’t have a formal academic definition. Then the other side can fairly claim they’re pushing personal opinions.
It’s tough to maintain academic detachment when writing about an ongoing genocide.
A Gauteng government official, Velaphi Khumalo, stated on Facebook “White people in South Africa deserve to be hacked and killed like Jews. [You] have the same venom. Look at Palestine. [You] must be [burnt] alive and skinned and your [offspring] used as garden fertiliser”. A complaint was lodged at the Human Rights Commission, and a charge of crimen injuria was laid at the Equality Court. In October 2018, he was found guilty of hate speech by the court, for which he was ordered to issue an apology.
And:
After 76-year-old white professor Cobus Naude was murdered in 2018, black senior SANDF officer Major M.V. Mohlala posted a comment on Facebook in reaction to Naude’s murder, stating “It is your turn now, white people… [he] should have had his eyes and tongue cut out so that the faces of his attackers would be the last thing he sees”
These are prominent community members calling for overt violence against the white minority, and they merely get a slap on the wrist.
It’s not just white minorities:
In 2015, Phumlani Mfeka, a KwaZulu-Natal businessman and the spokesman for the radical Mazibuye African Forum, tweeted “A good Indian is a dead Indian”. He published a letter in the city press claiming that South Africans of Indian origin have no right to citizenship or property in South Africa. Mfeka also claimed there is a “ticking time bomb of a deadly confrontation” between Africans and Indians in KwaZulu-Natal. The South African court barred him from making anti-Indian remarks in November 2015.
There’s also racism directly against Jewish people:
In 2009, South Africa’s deputy foreign minister, Fatima Hajaig, claimed that “Jewish money controls America and most Western countries.” Her comments prompted criticism by Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and a reported “dressing down” by President Kgalema Motlanthe.>She subsequently apologized on two occasions for her remarks.
In 2013, ANC Western Cape leader Marius Fransman claimed 98% of land and property owners in Cape Town are “white” and “Jewish.” The allegation turned out to be false.
So I really don’t trust a country’s statements on racism when there’s such systemic racism throughout the community and government. They are hardly an authority and certainly don’t have the moral high ground.
I’ll instead trust disinterested parties’ opinions on the matter, along with the relevant facts.
I took a really big shit the other day. Like, really BIG. We can call it the shit of the americas and anyone that disagrees would be making it a big hubbub.
Just because it was a president saying something stupid does not prevent it from being stupid.
Wikipedia was here before those dudes and will be here after them. They are small in the grad scale of things.
But it’s less unsuitable than any alternative avenue for contentious information (traditional news media, youtube/podcasts, social media, etc) - for the simple reason that wikipedia encourages citing sources, while every other platform discourages it.
Wikis are unsuitable for anything contentious. Wikis are the solution to the problem of crowdsourcing objective facts, what makes them great is that anyone can add a few (even very obscure) ones; on anything contentious there are way too many, not too few, people wanting to write about them, making the wiki a solution to a nonexistent problem. This news story is yet another example of this.
… and hardly anything is more contentious than Israel/Palestine, which is why wikis work least well for articles on that.
Israel Palestine isn’t contentious when discussing the fact that Israel is genocidal. It is universally agreed by genocide scholars and frankly anyone who has seen what Israel is doing to Palestinians (if one believes Palestinians are people that is).
The only thing that is contentious is that Israel and its supporters don’t like it when people state facts about them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide#International_law_scholars
The article has of course other voices as well.
The article also cites people with „danger of genocide“ or war crimes. Neither of which is actually genocide.
For something to qualify as genocide, the special intent „dolus specialis“ is a key requirement. Killing people is not sufficient.
An issue is that Amnesty International and Ireland expanded the definition of genocide for the case of Gaza specifically.
Regardless if it qualifies as genocide or not, the situation is terrible.
You can look up South Africa’s case at the ICJ for instances of said intent. That North Gaza starvation/extermination plan on its own qualifies as genocidal intent.
People defending Israel are claiming that; why are you stating it as fact?
Israel/Palestine is truly a conflict where no matter what argument you raise (on either side), there is a counterargument.
The argument against yours, for example, is here: https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2024/05/a-really-strange-genocide.html
I am generally very sympathetic to the Palestinians and think the immediate root cause of the present situation is the fact that Israel has been blockading Gaza for more than a decade, not allowing movement in or out of it, which I do not think can be justified by anything. I regularly read the blog I linked to above (yes, I consciously read things I don’t agree with), its author would probably say that the immediate root cause is something Hamas did in October of 2023. Difficult to say how to “neutrally” present that, right?
Being “neutral” doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone. Some people are wrong.
Just because a counterargument exists does not mean it is meaningful.
“Nuh-uh” is a counterargument. It’s just one relegated to grade school playgrounds and internet discussions.
The response to your link would be: Are Palestinians allowed to use those hospitals in any significant numbers?
This guy also considers the second intifada to be a genocidal campaign (lol what???) so they’re too detached from reality to be taken seriously either way.
To commmit a genocide, one needs motive, opportunity and the means to carry out the crime. Hamas has repeatedly stated that killing all the Jews is an objective of theirs. But objectively, they have neither opportunity nor means. Israel, in particular the ruling Likud Party, has satisfied all three preconditions, though.
They haven’t though. They consider the destruction of Israel an objective of theirs, but at least as of 2017 they officially don’t want the extermination of Jews.
There’s a problem when pro-Palestinian editors start adding terms like “apartheid regime” and “settler colonialism“ which don’t have a formal academic definition. Then the other side can fairly claim they’re pushing personal opinions.
It’s tough to maintain academic detachment when writing about an ongoing genocide.
Apartheid does have a definition, though.
Sure, but what is an “apartheid regime”?
I mean I know what it is, but can you cite reliable sources to meet Wikipedia’s standard under this sort of scrutiny? Sounds difficult.
Fine, then let’s rephrase it as “Israel subjects Palestinians to Apartheid”, which is just a fact and there’s really no way to get around it.
When South Africa calls it an apartheid, it’s probably an apartheid
Either that or posturing. South Africa has its fair share of skeletons in its closet.
It’s not a skeleton in their closet, they had an apartheid so are fully qualified to call other states apartheid.
What I’m saying is they swapped apartheid for a lot of racism and racially backed violence. Check out this Wikipedia article:
And:
These are prominent community members calling for overt violence against the white minority, and they merely get a slap on the wrist.
It’s not just white minorities:
There’s also racism directly against Jewish people:
So I really don’t trust a country’s statements on racism when there’s such systemic racism throughout the community and government. They are hardly an authority and certainly don’t have the moral high ground.
I’ll instead trust disinterested parties’ opinions on the matter, along with the relevant facts.
There’s currently a big hubbub going on in the Wikipedia Gulf of Mexico talk page about changing the name to Gulf of America.
I mean, for localized pages maybe. Probably best to stick it under the “dumb stupid politics” section, though.
That’s incredibly dumb.
I took a really big shit the other day. Like, really BIG. We can call it the shit of the americas and anyone that disagrees would be making it a big hubbub.
Just because it was a president saying something stupid does not prevent it from being stupid.
Wikipedia was here before those dudes and will be here after them. They are small in the grad scale of things.
But it’s less unsuitable than any alternative avenue for contentious information (traditional news media, youtube/podcasts, social media, etc) - for the simple reason that wikipedia encourages citing sources, while every other platform discourages it.
It’s also crap at screening sources for credibility.
citing sources such as … “traditional news media”, right?