User talk:HG1/workshop/Clarify Jenin editing battle

Personal attacks (withdrawn)

Mediator User:HG has suggested we should each strike out any personal attacks we've been guilty of in the TalkPage of this article. I have taken the opportunity to comply and hopefully speed the succesful completion of this exercise. PalestineRemembered 15:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Responses to HG's proposals

1. I broadly agree with all of your bullet points. With regards to the present dispute I found especially valuable your points that (a) HRW and AI implicitly acknowledge that it is not their place to adjudicate criminal charges; and (b) we need to present this implicit caveat carefully, and prima facie is too specific and technical an idiom to ascribe to a source that didn't use it. I think this line of thinking is a breakthrough, and that these two points carry between them everything we'll need to resolve the local dispute between Tewfik and me (and our respective seconds).
2. I agree that HRW and AI should be named, instead of referring to them generically as "major human rights organizations." I think that with (a) and (b) from above in mind, however, it is not necessary to present their findings separately. Indeed to do so would suggest a bright line of distinction between their respective findings, which is unsupported. The primary sources themselves don't support this distinction (as we've all seen, HRW casually and unpredictably alternates between the two formulations); and no secondary source I know of has ever noted or commented on this distinction. Finally, the whole thrust of your point above – that the role of HROs is to gather evidence and assess responsibility, not to decide criminal guilt in a legal sense – is to obviate the distinction between "findings" and "evidence" in the reports of HROs in the first place.
3. "Allege evidence" is idiomatically unnatural and weaselly to my ears. One gathers and presents evidence, thereby making allegations.
4. Hence, bearing #2 and #3 in mind: while I think ... HRW did say that Israel "committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, some amounting prima facie to war crimes," while Amnesty International similarly alleged evidence that Israel had committed war crimes is acceptable, I think HRW and AI found evidence that Israel had committed war crimes (or alternately, HRW and AI alleged that Israel had committed war crimes, and called for a formal legal investigation) is more direct and concise, and doesn't invite readers to scurry through the semantic maze we've all scurried through, a semantic maze with shifting walls and no cheese in the middle.--G-Dett 14:08, 24 October 2007 (UTC)