Talk:Susya

Regavim per the Washington Post

That remark, which I have included, is a particularly fatuous assertion, a plant by Regavim by the looks of it, just as the banned editor who troubled this article for some months seemed to be editing-in Regavim material. A village whose traditional dwelling structures within the ancient ruins are no longer allowed to be used, whose caves were blown up or cemented up, whose other shacks were destroyed several times, whose every application for permits to establish more modern facilities was denied or ignored, whose access to water was shut off, whose electricity connections were cut, whose residents were hounded out at gunpoint for 20 years, obviously can never have streets, or houses, on the very land that they have legal title to from Ottoman times. That Washington Post article is so contrafactual and farcical it shouldn't even be cited, but I've left the essence in. Nishidani (talk) 21:11, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

"Early Islamic period" (synagogue and mosque): is there no consensus on dates?

We have three paragraphs, each with its own source, and each implying a different chronology (and other diverging details) for the apparition of the mosque in the atrium of, or even inside, the synagogue, which was either still in use, or already abandoned. If archaeologists haven't reached a consensus, then this manner of presentation is a virtue, not a mistake, but haven't they? If that's indeed so, it would greatly help to have it stated explicitly.

Under "Crusader/Ayyubid period" we even have a confusing line about a niche on the northern (??!!) wall of the synagogue-turned-mosque being used as a mihrab, "according to local tradition". Really? One cannot argue with traditions, but the northern wall faces Jerusalem if anything, not Mecca. Arminden (talk) 15:13, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Recalling the edit I think I made for that, I must admit that my reading up of accounts that afternoon suffered perplexity: the result was that I simply used the epithet I found there. it's too far back for me to remember the precise details. I'm really time-pressed but if you can't with your access to I'm sure a larger range of sources fix it, I'll try and pull my finger out and review the sources.Nishidani (talk) 16:01, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Like often, Magness has the answers: The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine, Volume 1, p. 100 (play around a bit if Ggl Books refuses access at first). The two archaeologists disagreed on the sequence of events, so we can adopt that from a good source. There you have the N wall as well, in its context. I'll deal with it, don't worry. Arminden (talk) 16:39, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Encyclopedia vs newspaper

This article is yet another clear case of non-encyclopedic approach. There are facts (literary sources and archaeology for the past, modern era and contemporary sources of every kind for the recent and current developments), and there are other types of motivation. The Arabs came in the 7th c. from Arabia, the Jews in the 20th from elsewhere, but the former get to stay in the HISTORY section, while the latter are banned to another one, about a settlement qualified consistently, from the hatnote onwards, as "illegal". An encyclopedia must by definition take the longue durée approach, and leave qualifications out of titles and cross-references such as hatnotes, and put them inside the articles. History is written in time. Of course Jewish Susya is illegal under int'l law, but not under Israeli law; Israeli law shouldn't apply there, but that's a DISCUSSION, not a title or fact for a hatnote. But more than anything, the Crusader casale, the 20th c. Arab village, the Bedouin settlement, and the modern Jewish settlement, are all as much part of the HISTORY of the place as are the ancient Jewish and later Arab (7th-12th c.) towns/villages.

The only ENCYCLOPEDIC approach is to present them all in a concise manner here, and for large subjects place a redirect to a dedicated, expanded article ("main"). The current goiter weighing down the article and dealing with the I/P conflict is out of any proportion. The fact that it largely overlaps with the history section and had a factually wrong heading ("Modern era", rather than "Conflict") clearly marks it as an added, faultily attached transplant from elsewhere. The principle of PROPORTIONALITY is essential in any editorial work, and here it's been totally thrown overboard. Again, I'm NOT disagreeing with the importance of the I/P conflict, with the disgusting events taking place there being of wide interest, I'm strictly talking about editorial work on an allegedly encyclopedic article written for users of every kind and focus. That's my beef. Arminden (talk) 16:04, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Suggest splitting article

Considering the above ("encyclopedia vs newspaper"), there should be

1. one main article, about Susya as a site of intermittent habitation (4th-13th/15th c.; 19th-21st c.), including everything in a proportionate manner.
2. one article about ancient Susya, focusing on the Roman to Mamluk periods.
3. one article about the modern period, 19th-21st c., with 3 sections (expanded or not into 3 separate articles):
   1. modern Arab Susya, 19th-21st c.
   2. modern Jewish Susya, 1982 and ongoing.
   3. the conflict since 1967 or whenever.

Starting the article with "Susya is a Palestinian village" is grossly misleading and deeply POV, just by strictly considering the very content of the article. I'm not arguing from a political or ideological pov, just factually. Arminden (talk) 16:22, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

It was a Palestinian village until the settlers and the government evicted them illegally from the core, which still, according to our best sources, has Palestinian title. They still hang in there, a remnant but it, unlike 480 odd Israel bulldozed, for wehich we are obliuged to use the past tense, is still in existence. Nishidani (talk) 16:36, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

"just factually" -- like, facts on the ground, nu? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:37, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Wrong. Half of the article covers the C4-7 ancient town, with a continuation as a village between C7-13 (or 15). Then came over half a millennium of abandonment. The ancient part has nothing to do with the C19-21 village. Two different topics. After the fall of the Roman Empire, in every provincial theatre there were people living among the ruins and building kilns where they burned statues and other marble to produce lime. Is that continuity? Maybe, and certainly more than here, where there was a habitation gap of between 600-700 years. In the Middle Ages, some of the ruined ancient temples and theatres from among uninhabited ruin fields were turned into castles. Continuity? Most definitely not. Same here. Nomo, don't knee-jerkedly put words into my mouth and thoughts into my mind which don't belong there, rather than making the intellectual effort to understand what I'm talking about. The lead should reflect the content of the article; here it doesn't. Arminden (talk) 16:53, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I'll talk about our differences on what is 'factual' on my page. But bref factual does not refer to facts on the ground. Possession is 9 parts of the law? An intruder occupies my house, or part of it. That is a fact. He then uses violence to kick me out of the house itself. That is a fact. He then remodels the house. That is a fact. As are facts the theft of my property, my being forced to live in the basement, and all the rest. I'll get back to this in detail, but unfortunately, there is a brilliant sunset over the Alban Hills, that obliges me morally to walk out and enjoy it, and of course knock a beer at my bar as we watch the last glimmers of its embers on the horizon, the basic priority of my late life these days. My uncle, a distinguished logician, was once asked when aged 7 what he aspired to become when he grew up. 'An inspector of sunsets,' was his reply. I honour the family tradition in my own sunset years. A dopo.Nishidani (talk) 16:47, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Enjoy, and I wish I could join. For when you come back: please read carefully what I wrote. It contains nothing that goes against what you write, and it doesn't touch in any way on the whole I/P topic; rather: why does an article that deals to a significant degree with a non-related settlement from the remote past, start with the words "Susya is a Palestinian village"? Yes, there absolutely should be an article about the Palestinian village of Khirbet Susiya; but the ancient town & village don't belong under this line. That's my "fact". On a very different planet than yours. Btw, it also helps disentangle the conflict from things you don't like to see thrown into the mix, like building up claims from historical arguments from the very, VERY remote past. Here, I'm playing now both parts. Salute! Arminden (talk) 17:07, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

In general, the history of the village belongs in the page of the village. Or we would have an article on ancient Damascus, or ancient Jerusalem. We don't, we just include the history of those cities in the articles on them. Is a Palestinian village is accurate, with the tense. And that village has an ancient history. nableezy - 18:27, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem with a split, is that that has already occurred. I didn't agree with that proposal, which was pushed by a sock. You could say I have an ideological dislike of splits like this in the topic area, if only because convivial heterogeneity is the basis of modern civilization and its societies. Israel/Palestine are split refractions of a highly diversified yet intertwined set of historical, cultural and religious realities, each with amazing depth. Unlike the general drift of modernity, the logic has been separatist both in Zionism's narrative and on wikipedia, to thresh out Jewish/Muslim/Christian/ traditions, with a general bias towards prioritizing the first.

The whole history of modern Palestine is conflictual, of disentanglement on the one hand, and, inextricable imbrication (sorry, but I'm writing this in an ad break, and must hurry to get back to see how many Josey Wales manages to kill shortly: I tote these things up. It helps me see such films to the end) on the other. Susya is an outstanding example of the inextricable. As Shulman who knows the area intimately, states Palestinian Susya took in the area of the synagogue and surrounding ruins. It has a recorded history of Palestinians 'on top of those ruins' going back almost 2 centuries. What we have is a single site, Palestinian by title, whose community has been whittled out off the symbolic, for Jews, centre, and displaced a few hundred yards, on the periphery but still on its, historical Susya's land. I know your intentions are utterly opposed to the clown, Settleman/Astul and several other socks, two of NoCal. Topical isolation is reasonable, but in context, isolating the synagogue and the deep past, and the nearby Jewish settlement, and Palestinian Susya breaks up what is a complex historical set of interactions into separate compartments, rather than, as we have, unifying them because all this takes place within one kilometer of territory, all known as Susya.

Your Colisseum analogy set me thinking. (I once inadvertently caused a German woman to faint there. I was taking a childhood mate, now classics Professor, round it, and, unaware of others, as we reached the area overlooking the centre, I said. 'Auschwitz began here.' I heard the woman gasp, turned round and realized a group of German tourists had overheard me. They were all embarrassed. Another gaffe in a long record). You're right: one wants to mainly get to architectural details, only about 20% of the article deals with martyrdoms. Personally I think it could do with significant expansion, however. For example, we all know the story of Masada. I vaguely recall that Symmachus said 29 Saxons lads frogmarched from their homeland to be served up as gladiatorial meat to a bored Roman audience, killed each other the night before rather than kill each other for their conquerors' entertainment the next day. The text regarded their behavior as very bad form. A little more descriptive detail of the gore, and the noted enjoyment of seeing people being murdered en masse, would be appropriate to the Colisseum. People who go there need that agonizing reality now invisible, and not in the standard tour guides, foremost in their minds as they otherwise enjoy the architecture and think of Ben Hur or Russell Crowe).

We often split long articles: this one is 10,000 words, more or less the ideal length. so it is not bloated. The article of course needs a lot of reorganizing, and trimming and a terser treatment of the sadism. But that requires delicacy, not a butcher's knife )as I'm sure you'll agree). And it can be done, if the article can finally be edited in good faith, without the socks, and partisan irritableness which mar its history and create some of the excesses you complain of.Nishidani (talk) 21:53, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I thought I was quite clear, even offered a bulleted list: I'm not in favour of separating the different "ethnic narratives", a) I'm all for one comprehensive and balanced general article, but with additional, dedicated ones with an expanded treatment of the more voluminous issues; b) the ancient Jewish and Arab periods belong together because there is some form of either overlapping continuity or at least immediate succession. Not so after the abandonment of the Mamluk period. Comparing with Damascus or Jerusalem is irrelevant for both aforementioned reasons - I never suggested separate articles, just EXTENSIONS in order to avoid single sections bulging out disproportionately, and because neither of those two places have century-long settlement discontinuities. So no comparison between apples and oranges please. The settlement belongs in here as much as the forcibly evacuated Arab village because it exists, not because it's legitimate or otherwise. Nobody would think of eliminating Boer towns from South Africa articles, or the Han Chinese presence from Tibet, etc., etc. And the by now former Arab village is a fact of history (apart from the fact that it might re-emerge in some form one day). 10,000 words is what we have now, when well over 1/3 consists of references and bibliography, as if we had the entire Britannica here, and half of the rest is about the conflict (as are most of the references). That's the very meaning of a hydrocephalous or otherwise malformed article with disproportionate outgrowths. To take it to an unneeded extreme, stretching it ad absurdum: one can and should have nice articles with pretty pictures on the very old cities of Dachau and Oświęcim, of course mentioning the Nazi time, and then branching off into separate articles about the concentration/extermination camps. I checked after writing this, and of course that's what's been done there, too. The discussion about a terser treatment of the sadism - yes or no, how else, etc. - can be continued on the conflict page. I do insist that what we have now is ridiculous and wrong.

If I understand it correctly, there is no more Palestinian presence at the site of the former village, which makes the lead totally wrong: the article deals a) with a site and its very long and compartimentalised history, and b) regarding the current situation, there is just a former Palestinian village one can write about. Also, as far as I understand, the village and then the Bedouin settlement were among the ruins, which are not part of the Israeli settlement, but now part of the archaeological park. The more aggressive and sadistic among the settlers do attack Palestinians who wish to enter the archaeological site, but they don't live there. So we have ancient history; a former, forcibly and illegally depopulated Arab village; a Jewish settlement, illegal under international law, with some boorishly and sometimes criminally acting fanatics; and an archaeological park. These are the elements. I don't see how the article can be defined as dealing with "Susya, a Palestinian village". Even apart from all I said about it being historically much more: Chelm is not a shtetl (anymore), Tiberias/Tabariya is not an Arab town (anymore), Constantinople is gone and Istanbul is alive, Christian Serbian Kosovo Polje is Albanian Muslim Kosova, and so forth. That none of that is accepted de jure or otherwise by the losing side, and that over sooner or longer things might change, is neither here nor there: it all can be mentioned, but doesn't turn back the wheel. Does it make me happy? No. Does this matter? No. That's why I insist: stick to the facts. Arminden (talk) 01:53, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

I dont think there is any reason to split on the basis of additional, dedicated ones with an expanded treatment of the more voluminous issues until we hit some WP:SIZE limits. By all means, expand each section until we get to that point. Dont think we need to preemptively split it though. nableezy - 02:20, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Two "bad" news for you, dear Nableezy:

1. The village already HAS its own article, Khirbet Susya, which btw is a Hebrew-inspired misspelling of Kh. Susiyeh or -iya.
2. The settlement also already HAS its own article, Susya, Har Hevron.
3. The name of this article therefore - only relates to the settlement.

Another set of ignored facts. Reality has its way of ignoring those who ignore it. There is a need to organise this jungle, and I have offered a good, logical scheme. And a more realistic one than an ideal, fully rewritten and temperate text as suggested by Nishidani (with all due respect, unless he wishes to write it).

So all we need is declutter this page, cut the repetitions re. village and settlement, and allow the archaeology its own, separate page. Here - a bit of all of that, in proportion.

Alternatively, delete the village article and settlement article and move over whatever material is only there and not here. And kerp the whole thing balanced. Willing and ready? Respect if you say yes.

The standard practice here is to describe a specific township/village/settlement in terms of the history of the site. Several hundred articles do that. In 2015 a sock acting for Regavim didn't split the article. He copied and pasted material as a prelude to his proposal to ethnically cleanse the site so that a Jewish Susya was separated from the Palestinian Susya. Almost all of the material in those pseudo-articles copies, paraphrases, reduplicates what this master article had and retains.

You say the place is uninhabited by Palestinians. Well, it is not, at least as of September 2021 papers still speak of Palestinians as resident there. The Israeli Susya borrowed the name but lies a full kilometer from the specific core of what was the historic Palestinian Susya. The 17 Susya Palestinian families have been forced at gunpoint to move a few hundred yards from the centre of their lands which is reserved for Jewish visitors, though of a day they can still wander through their ancestor's former dwelling sites.

So no. The article can be reorganized, but the simplest solution here is to remerge the two pseudo-articles back here, and make one continuous narrative of the site, with all of its complications. We would still be in the optimal article size boundaries (around 10,000 words) by re-including the two stubs. Since the 2 other articles have almost nothing original, not here, that is the elegant solution. We don't need to create a precedent for the settler ideological narrative and activist pressure to thresh anything Jewish from Palestinian. Nishidani (talk) 08:33, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Nishi, 2015? Kidding me? So for 6 years users are left wondering what's what and nobody cared? That's precisely why I'm talking of facts and reality, in every regard: people "who care so much" left this indescribable mess untouched for 6 years? Good to hear that the 17 families are not fully displaced. So there's some form of a leftover hamlet nearby, which is part of the mix. They probably did move to Yatta or elsewhere and are still tending to fields they could keep. Or maybe they're still living there. I didn't bother to read the conflict-related part because it's a) huge, and b) just one of a long list of such places, each of them a sad story, and Wiki articles don't have the power to change anything. Press articles and diplomatic correspondence hardly do.

This changes nothing. In 6 years the user, me included, avoided this triple mess. That's what matters, the rest is shouting no pasaran while Franco is getting old in his palace. Detached from reality and misleading, a diservice to the user.

Put the 17-family fact in the lead, say how many they used to be, why the number dropped, and cut all the rest (from the lead). Which I've seen done in so many other places post-factum. You can't wag the dog by its tail, certainly not with Wiki. Let's look up Crimea, the Transnistrian Republic, Nagorno Karabakh, whatever you please and learn how it's done. De facto vs de jure. Or you end up with a Wiki Dreamland of the Final Justice.

I want to be able to click on Susiya and find the facts about

• the ancient site, now an archaeoligical park
• the Palestinian village/hamlet
• the Jewish settlement

and not three useless, messy articles I can't use to understand the place, unstructured, detached from reality, misspelled from the title down, and attempting to compete with another medium, the press. Arminden (talk) 10:01, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Typical "I'll stand my ground and reality be damned" attitude: editors caring for justice kept on updating factlets to the list of settler brutal misdeeds in this article, but firmly refused to touch "the evil realm" of the settler-written, other 2 articles? "What I don't acknowledge doesn't exist. Amen." That's imitating the 3 monkeys. Or 1984. Rewrite reality until it fits my concept. I won't ever call this smart. Arminden (talk) 10:08, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

There is a marked disparity between this last post (B) and your first post (A). 'Hysteron-proteron, i.e.

I want to be able to click on Susiya and find the facts about (a) the ancient site, now an archaeological park (b)the Palestinian village/hamlet (c) the Jewish settlement

What you want here (B) is to disconnect Palestinians from the area Jews have appropriated, so that visitors who, like you, come to look up the site, can get

• information on the ancient Jewish settlement undisturbed by mere details about the intense violence surrounding the creation of the lovely buildings and synagogue that attest to Jewish tradition's enduring heritage in the land of Israel.
• An article where all that violent trash about Israel's abuse of its own laws, and the numerous settler thugs in contiguous Jewish settlements (where one can purchase lovely cheese and sip local wine) beating up Palestinian and driving them from their home on that site can be dumped to titivate the need of Palestinians and grief-wankers, assorted hand-wringing pro-Palestinian activists to get angry. They'll be happy. 'We' don't need to take cognizance of that aspect in the serious encyclopedic, archaeological and historic background article, so 'we' too are comfy.
• A nice article about the modern Jewish Susya with, no doubt, a glancing note there that it lies on land belonging to a Palestinian family, but mainly concerned with its its religious values, varied immigrant background, tourist facilities, neat village and swimming poor etc.etc.

In other words a disconnect to shield the eyes, basically, of tourist who come to marvel at Israel's Jewish achievements past and present without the unnerving murmur of blood shed to establish the modern reality.

That is what you are stating in your last note. In your incipit, heading this thread, you design something more amenably complex.

1. (1) main article, about Susya as a site of intermittent habitation (4th-13th/15th c.; 19th-21st c.), including everything in a proportionate manner.
2. (2) article about ancient Susya, focusing on the Roman to Mamluk periods.
3. (3) article about the modern period, 19th-21st c., with 3 sections (expanded or not into 3 separate articles):
   1. modern Arab Susya, 19th-21st c.
   2. modern Jewish Susya, 1982 and ongoing.
   3. the conflict since 1967 or whenever.

(1) and (3) overlap, since (1) includes the modern period (3)

(2) overlaps with (1) for two thirds of its themes.

I'm confused. By the way I appreciate a lot of the reorganizing you've done (not all). But my argument remains.

• 10,000 words is the suggested ideal length for an article, and all three articles essentially amount to that, since the two cleaved off articles repeat what we already have here.
• Susya is one site, though I have no problem in leaving the Susya, Har Hebron as a stand-alone second article. The site's history cannot be split - it goes against the standard, normative periodization of site history we use for virtually all village articles here.
• The split you propose is as tendentiously reduplicative as the Regavim meatpuppet's proposal, and doesn't solve the mess he created.
• So, practically, we should deal with the historic Susya, ancient, post-Second Temple/Byzantine/Islamic/Crusader/Mamluck/Ottoman/British Mandatory/Jordanian/Israel post67 division.Nishidani (talk) 13:46, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Serious misunderstanding. The settlers can stick their cheese somewhere. I want to get the information I need, when I need it. And the site of Kh. Susiya has some 3 different main topics. I don't need a goulash-type mix of the 3, nor does anyone who comes here or goes there - and that's what we currently have. The user can't be forced to read all of it together, because somebody wants to educate him & the world. When I research settler crime, I don't need ancient synagogues. When I research ancient synagogues, I don't need 19th c. transhumance or EU resolutions. And I'm doing both, as much as the next BDS activist. I can't put it simpler than that. We have 3 articles written out of rage and emotions, that's not useful and not needed. 2 of the articles you consider far below any acceptable level and basically superfluous, but they've been allowed to confuse the user untouched for 6 years. Wiki is worse off by having these 3 articles. Ideological incriminations and fighting have brought us here. I want that pushed out, by compartimentalising in a logical manner. But any attempt to de-ideologise can be misconstrued as ideological, which closes the vicious circle. Cutting the Gordian knot is the way out, in Wiki terms it's called BOLD. I've made a start, check the article. There is nothing more I have to add here on the abstract, theoretical level.

I never went back on my bullet list. That's my rough proposal, and I stick to it. Everything overlaps on some level, the skill is to structure it in a manner useful to the reader and to place concise notes about the overlaps, but without losing the focus. Damn, so much commonplace and waste of time. Why does anyone need this? And there we are, you've finally pigeonholed me, and all the wrong way.

I want to get the information I need, when I need it.

The problem is bolded. Readers have different expections, different tastes and distastes. All I do when I write articles like this is not to presume on an imagined universal reader who prefers this or that. I gather the sources, and write them up, leaving nothing out. Though I started with the Palestinian angle, reading up took me to the synagogue, and I put a lot of work into it, not only, as I said for Avi and Avruch whose voices I miss, but to impress the Palestine-focused reader till that point catered for, that Jews have a natural connection historically to that site. To repeat what I said above, we have perhaps two valid articles. The historical (not khirbet Susya) and the Susya, Har Hebron. That's enough, and the former should tell the comprehensive story of that site, precisely through the epochalization you wanted at Mount Hebron. Like it or not, contemporary history there has two basic constituencies, whatever the strength of apartheid engineering to create facts (on the ground) that winnow out Jewish/Palestinian territorially. The State Advocate for evicting Susyans from their entitled home, stated, when the judge in 2007 asked them where they would go if driven out, replied that he had no idea what would happen to those miskenim (unfortunates?). Well they should not be kicked off the page dedicated to the precise site where they have lived for 200 years. Partisan Wikipedia readers have to learn each other's story on the one page (NPOV). The overwhelming decider on names supports Susya, the synagogue plus Palestinian community's traditional site as an identical reality. Nishidani (talk) 16:57, 9 October 2021 (UTC)