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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep. This article presents a list of events dispassionately; it represents an attempt to convey controversial (but obviously highly encyclopedic) information with reasonable economy. The selection criteria for the list are problematic, as only the actions of one group are represented; this is not necessarily, however, a NPOV violation. While the article title for any "List of non-military individuals killed by Israeli forces during the Second Intifada" (my feeble attempt at neutrality) is obviously another point of friction, such a list would convey equally encyclopedic information. Such lists might be linked to each other to provide a full view of the conflict. The division of casualties by group-affiliation in a conflict is not arbitrary, though it is sure to be contentious what to call these groups in a conflict of this kind. It is a neutral (though very sad) fact that Palestinians and Israelis have killed each other. Division of the casualties by partisanship is permitted for reason of economy. If Wikipedia somehow systemically fails to portray events held to be crucial by one group, that is a question beyond the scope of one AfD, and requires a "centralized discussion", RfC, or the like. Xoloz 13:57, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of attacks committed during the Second Intifada[edit]

List of attacks committed during the Second Intifada (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

"The criteria used for this list: deliberate attacks against civilians in which ten people or more have been killed." These are arbitrary criteria and thus original research; furthermore, the criteria have been carefully designed to apply to only one side of the conflict. I'm sure Palestinians would say that suicide bombings are not "attacks against civilians" because Israel is heavily militarized with universal conscription, but that Israeli operations against them are. Furthermore, the standard is not actually being applied - the real standard is obviously "major attacks against Israelis". As evidence, note that the "Megiddo junction massacre" is listed sourced to an Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs site which explains that most of those killed were soldiers. The article was previously nominated as part of a mass nom along with lists of attacks by specific groups such as Hamas, etc. There's nothing inherently wrong with those articles because they list attacks of a specific group, and are honest about it. This article was recently moved from List of massacres committed during the al-Aqsa Intifada, an even more clearly POV title; now it's just a better disguised POV fork. Eleland 13:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete: Firstly, this article is construed so as to exclude deaths of one side of a conflict, by means of its definition of "massacre", which must be "accidental". IDF automatically presents its thousands of Palestinian civilian victims as accidental, and do not conform to this arbitrary definition. An airstrike on populated areas has the necessary element of foresight to constitute intention and murder under most legal systems - it is thus legally equivalent to a suicide bombing. The effect is equivalent to an article called List of Massacres committe by Serbs in the Bosnian war. Secondly, an perhaps more importantly, an article listing Israeli massacres was deleted as POV [[1]], so this one whould be aswell.

--Burgas00 14:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete per nom as the criteria are arbitrary. --Agamemnon2 15:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Eleland, saying the criteria for the list are arbitrary isn't a reason for deletion, if the criteria were open I get the impression you'd be saying it should be deleted because it didn't have clear criteria. Of course these suicide attacks against civilians are, well, exactly that. The fact that Hamas et al thinks Israeli women and kids are legitimate targets is because they're terrorists who target civilians. This article isn't original research, all these attacks happened and can be referenced by any number of sources. There are, in short, no good reasons for deletion here. If you want to write another article about Palestinians killed in the conflict, go ahead, but that's got nothing to do with this one. Nick mallory 14:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment: Such an article was created an deleted in an AFD... See: [[2]], --Burgas00 18:13, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment Are you arguing that Israeli attacks are not "deliberate", or not "against civilians"? Eleland 15:06, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or Merge back - Listing these events under Second Intifada, is synthesis, unless the synthesis is cited from a reliable source Corpx 15:32, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep There is nothing wrong with this article that editing couldn't fix. Since this is 8-9 kilobytes long, if the "ten or more" criteria for the list were eliminated, the list could easily be lengthened. The list would not be arbitrary because it deals with killings in a specified place and time period. Want coverage of Palestinian deaths? Insert coverage of Palestinian deaths in this article. Nothing says you can't split the list into sections for "Attacks with 10 or more victims" and "Other attacks". You'd probably also want to split the list up into Palestinian victims and Israeli victims. All can be done without deleting. Noroton 22:09, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per previous discussions (AfD2, AfD1). This was previously at "massacres" instead of "terrorist attacks", neither of which are limited to one side. That is, it isn't Wikipedia's job to enforce a false parity just because no intentional mass-killings of one side have been documented. TewfikTalk 09:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I'm open to suggestions about the title, but this information clearly belongs in

Wikipedia. I also agree with Tewfik's point that we shouldn't create balance when there is one. --Leifern 13:50, 30 August 2007 (UTC) comment: In the intifada twice as many Palestinians were killed as Israelis, a good number of them civilians. You are talking about "creating" balance? :-)--Burgas00 21:32, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • keep Eleland's proposal is rank with POV. The incredibly weak, and arguably malicious, defense that the Israelis murdered were not civilians cannot be reasonably applied to the Dolphinarium massacre (13 of the 21 victims were not yet 18 years old) nor to the Sbarro restaurant massacre (7 of the 15 victims weren't yet 18 years old) nor to any of the other ones on this list because they were all attacks in public places (often where children are present) against non-combatants such as pizza restaurants, amusement parks, buses, and a Passover celebration. Those that were contemporarily in the army (or reserves) were probably not even in uniform, and even if they were, they would not be counted as a "military casualty." I doubt that a attack against civilians in a public place in Syria (which has similar universal conscription laws) would get be considered "military targets" as Eleland implies for attacks against Israeli civilians. --GHcool 06:19, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please distinguish correctly between my own POV and POV which I have correctly attributed to others. In the specific case which I mentioned, the soldiers were uniformed reservists traveling to a military base, on a civilian bus route which served that military base. It is clear that Israel has also used aerial rockets and bombs to attack "militants" in public places where children are often present, for instance the attack on Salah Shehadeh's apartment building which killed at least 12 people, mostly civilians, including children. Furthermore, individual soldiers and settlers often kill one or two people at a time with no pretense of it being "collateral damage" - this happens practically every day - but the article's standard has been set to exclude these attacks even though they add up to thousands. It's only in very exceptional cases like that of Iman al-Hams, where a TV crew captured the incident, that the world notices. Eleland 17:11, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Eleland is wrong when he/she equivacates between the targeting of civilians in civilian areas such as amusement parks and pizza places to targeting terrorist infrastructure which is often, purposefully, in civilian areas. He/she is also wrong when he/she claims that people in the West Bank kill each other "practically every day." --GHcool 20:19, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Eleland is male and prefers to be addressed in the second person. I have not equated pizzeria bombings aimed at civilians to airstrikes on apartment buildings aimed at militants with the certain knowledge that many civillians will die; they are not exactly the same, although they are very similar. In any case, making this call ourselves, as the article does, is POV and original research. And according to B'Tselem, 660 Palestinians were killed in 2006; unless the number of persons killed per incident follows a drastically unusual statistical distribution, that means that Palestinians are being killed several times a week. Eleland 00:59, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Eleland's opinion is noted. It is also noted that he thinks that I am addressing him, when I am actually addressing the Wikipedia community. Since we don't see eye to eye on this issue, I don't feel it is worth my effort to convince him that I am right; therefore, I concentrate my efforts on the Wikipedia public. It is troubling to think that Eleland feels the need to turn this into a personal argument between two editors; it reveals a lack of confidence that his position is the correct one. Here's hoping that the Wikipedia content guideline triumph over WP:SOAPBOX. --GHcool 05:40, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Eleland's proposals are "rank with POV," "incredibly weak," and "arguably malicious," Eleland is "not worth convincing," Eleland's positions "reveal a lack of confidence," Eleland is soapboxing. And yet somehow Eleland, who has patiently clarified his positions, confined his asides to a single reminder that he is male, and not said a word about GHCool, is somehow the one who "feels the need to turn this into a personal argument between two editors," troubling the innocent GHCool.--G-Dett 23:44, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep But with a rewrite to include Israeli terrorist attacks on Arabs (e.g. Eden Natan-Zada's Shfaram attack) as the article is highly POV in its current form, "only attacks on Israelis by Palestinians will be classed as "Massacres"" being a blatant example (this will involve relaxing the minimum number of people killed criteria, but that is subjective POV anyway). Number 57 08:09, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • (edit conflict) That text was inserted by Burgas00 in an unacceptable WP:POINT violation, which I reverted as soon as I saw it. TewfikTalk 08:13, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • OK, glad to see that has gone - very naughty of Burgas00, especially when he is voting to delete - but the article does need what few Israeli attacks there have been adding. Number 57 08:16, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and delete then keep and delete before you keep or delete. You can even merge it with List of massacres commited by Israeli forces or you can just stop voting because it bothers wikipedia. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 09:54, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep I previously left a detailed comment, but it was removed. Look in the history. --EAEB 15:35, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • delete, unless it can be balanced The list is POV cherry-picking of attacks by Palestinians against Israeli Jews. Also, the lede and the list refer to each attack as a massacre, which is both untrue (see Massacre) and extreme POV. (Not even the individual articles that are Wikilinked use the term massacre!) The only alternative to deletion, in my opinion, is balance, like List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but I don't think such balance can be achieved with recent and on-going events. — Malik Shabazz (Talk | contribs) 18:13, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, or at least move to a title that can possibly be neutral. I suggest something like "List of attacks during the Second Intifada" (avoiding the terms "committed" and "terrorist") and covering attacks by both sides. Possibly "armed actions" instead of "attacks"? --FOo 18:45, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Every one of them is sourced. We don't balance one list of atrocities with another. We write an objective article about each. This list is objective, and the criteria clear. The political implications are another matter and discussed in the main article. That the facts may have for many people an obvious political implication one way or another is not the fault of the facts or a lack of NPOV. The title is objective. Justified or not, they are attacks, and I think "2nd Intifada" is a neutral term. DGG (talk) 08:04, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • comment - are we now allowed to use the word strong in afd's? Does it count for two, or multiplied by ten? Are 'strong' votes counted seperately? --Shuki 21:53, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per tewfik. --Shuki 21:55, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. In any asymmetrical conflict the nature of the atrocities carried out by the two sides will naturally be distinctive to each; this page represents a very obvious gerrymander calculated to produce a one-sided list. Tewfik and Leifern's defenses against this charge – i.e., that it's not for us to "create balance" – are cute but uncompelling. An equal and opposite gerrymander could easily be contrived, as everyone here knows: List of war crimes committed during the Second Intifada, List of violations of the Geneva conventions and international law during the Second Intifada, Forms of collective punishment during the Second Intifada, Illegal land confiscation during the Second Intifada and so on. I'm not a fan of WP:POINT-violations, so I won't go and create any of these propaganda articles to balance the propaganda article we're discussing, but we may rest absolutely assured that the various policy principles invoked here by partisan editors to justify this propaganda article would be summarily if selectively jettisoned were any of those articles to be created. Let's have a little candor here shall we.--G-Dett 22:06, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom and G-Dett. This information could be useful to an NPOV article on "Casualties during the Al-Aqsa/Second Intifada" where everyone killed as a result of an attack of any kind by either side can be listed and categorized. Perhaps, it might serve as a sobering experience that builds bridges in shared misery. Tiamut 22:32, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Burgas00 and Eleland have been making straw-man edits to the article. Mark Chovain 00:54, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yeah, that's what I did. I quoted the lede in its entirety and then changed it to fool people. Burgas00 made a change and was reverted with an insufficient and confusing edit summary, so I unreverted him. Why don't you go after whoever it was who moved this from "List of attacks" to "List of terrorist attacks"? Eleland 00:56, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - One-sided, unbalanced. If the article is to be kept, all casualties (from both sides) need to be listed.--Kitrus 08:17, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Article is well sourced and notable. Should not be deleted for reasons amounting to the existence or non-existence of other articles per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Prester John -(Talk to the Hand) 08:46, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment I do hope my argument wasn't mistaken for an OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. My point in invoking hypothetical articles analogous to this one was not to say that we'd need those for balance, much less to say that because those don't exist this shouldn't, but rather to demonstrate what's wrong with this article to good-faith editors whose political views may be clouding their judgment, or who might indeed be unaware of the underlying politics in "lists" such as this.--G-Dett 16:25, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - The article sounds like a propaganda flyer, more than a Wikipedia article!--Skatewalk 15:40, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep it's a list, it has clear criteria, it's cited. In fact, it has the same criteria as List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The problem seems to be some editors think it makes Hamas, al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and Islamic Jihad "look bad". Killing civilians makes them look bad. <<-armon->> 07:23, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment You've got "look bad" in quotes, so that your strawman argument will look like it's been attributed. Nice touch. Yes, killing civilians makes Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the IDF look bad, whether the killing takes the form of low-budget acts of terrorism (suicide bomb packed with nails in a pizzeria) or spectacular war crimes with real production value (two-ton bomb dropped on a residential neighborhood, wiping out a family and declared a "great success"). What hasn't occurred to you, Armon, is that there are editors here who don't share your goal of buffing up the image of one side, but are more concerned about Wikipedia "looking bad" when we type up and pass out these propaganda flyers.--G-Dett 11:22, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war makes Jewish militias, Irgun, etc look bad, but thems the breaks. There are editors here, (i.e. you) who object to a cited list of facts because it lacks the necessary apologia about their tactics in asymmetrical conflict. I regard that as simply pov spin and an invalid reason to delete. I'll leave it to others to decide which makes WP look worse. <<-armon->> 21:37, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Armon. gidonb 09:49, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep, any lists like this are obviouly POV... however, they serve as a base for someone who wants to explore into one topic or the other with seriousness. if we were to apply a "Wikipedia looking bad due to propaganda flyers", we should also delete "list of villages depopulated in palestine" (or whatever the name of that page is). JaakobouChalk Talk 12:25, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Jaakobou, what about the deletion of this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_massacres_commited_by_Israeli_forces I have nothing against this article, as long as it is renamed and ensures that civilian casualties on both sides, (i.e. including Palestinians) are represented. I think we should all agree that this is the only acceptable compromise. --Burgas00 12:42, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

you ignored my point and raised a poorly copy-pasted article as an "improper example".. the similarities are smaller than the differences. please look at the list i've mentioned and let me know if you're willing to compromise and have it deleted. JaakobouChalk Talk 20:14, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per above. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 14:21, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Tewfik. 6SJ7 16:06, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and remove any caveats/disclaimers in the lead. A list of attacks is just that. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:27, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep with the note per Jossi, the article is well sourced and neutral POV: the attacks happened, and were notable to both those who took credit for them and those who were victimized by them. The fact that the one side may claim that victims were legitimate targets is irrelevant, if we find a source from the other that all woe that the Palestinians suffer is legitimate do we delete all mention of that too? Hardly. Carlossuarez46 05:21, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep just because a small vocal minority dislike the subject is not grounds for deletion. Kyaa the Catlord 15:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Nor was it put forth as such.--G-Dett 17:11, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, merge or rewrite adding attacks by IDF in which large numbers of Palestinian civilians were killed. Otherwise this remains a one sided political pamphlet unworthy of any encyclopedia. Kyaa, I didn't know you represented a "silent majority"! ;-) Peace.--Bursa444 16:40, 6 September 2007 (UTC) — Bursa444 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Keep and remove caveats/disclaimers in the lead per Jossi so that there is nothing keeping this article from representing civilian casualties on both sides of the conflict, just a straightforward list of attacks. --MPerel 19:21, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - per Tewfik, Armon, Jossi and Carlossuarez46. No valid reason for deletion. ←Humus sapiens ну? 21:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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