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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of massacres committed during the Al-Aqsa Intifada

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This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was keep. Eugene van der Pijll 19:37, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

List of massacres committed during the Al-Aqsa Intifada[edit]

I know there was a VfD for this one already, but that was more than a year ago, and I think it needs to be reconsidered. This article is some of the most blatant POV I’ve seen yet on Wikipedia. Even the American mainstream media, which has a definite pro-Israel bias, does not refer to suicide bombings as massacres. “Massacre” is a very emotive word, and does not fit with the mission of being informative. A list like this should simply be called what it is – a “list of major suicide-bombings against Israel since 2000.” The page was designed to give readers the impressions that Israel has been victim of repeated “massacres,” while killings of Palestinians are left out. The Israel human rights group BtSelem, however, reports that more than three times more Palestinians have been killed by Israelis during this period than Israelis killed by Palestinians [1]. The authors of this page claim that it wasn’t designed just for killings where the victims were Israelis, but the wording was cleverly designed to exclude any actions by the Israeli government, since of course it will always deny that any of their actions intentionally targeted civilians. So therefore none of them will ever appear on this list. So anyway, unless this article is dramatically changed, so as to remove the word “massacre” and either include violence against Palestinians or be clearly labeled as “violence against Israelis,” then it deserves to be deleted as POV propaganda. Blackcats 08:07, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

    • What do you think should be done with Deir Yassin massacre? It also has that very emotive word "massacre" in the title, which "does not fit with the mission of being informative". Should it be moved to a less emotive title, or simply deleted as per this article? Jayjg (talk) 15:34, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Blackats' argument wasn't made based on naming conventions, but rather on the claim that the word "massacre" was "emotive" and therefore the article should be deleted. By the way, how would your Google test work for "Passover massacre", which gets 8,060 hits, vs. Wikipedia's article Netanya suicide attack, which gets 223 hits, most of them Wikipedia mirrors? Jayjg (talk) 20:58, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Of the Google hits for "Passover Massacre," only 3,610 even mention "Netanya" [2]. 10,900 mention "suicide bombing" in conjuction with "Netanya" without even mentioning the word "massacre" [3]. 3390 mention "suicide attack" in conjunction with "Netanya," again without the word "massacre" mentioned [4]. So there's no clear case for calling any incident in Netanya "the Passover Massacre." Blackcats 22:11, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete - Propaganda. --Irishpunktom\talk 10:41, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep - it's quite irrelevant that the list doesn't mention Palestinian casualties - nothing prevents creation of a similar list on numbers of Palestinians killed in specific Israeli actions - and putting a "See also" linking to it on the bottom of this page. I agree that "massacre" is a loaded word, but most of these events involved the deaths of 20+ people, so the title is not misleading... no objection to substituting "suicide bombings" for massacres. -- BD2412 talk 14:00, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)
  • Delete I don't think we should encourage the creation of POV forks as BD2412 seems to be advocation. See all of the debates going on about articles realing to the conflict in Cyprus. --Xcali 14:22, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, all lists are POV forks to some extent. Does the List of serial killers by country diminish mass murders (who kill equal numbers but in a shorter time) by not including them, because the authors of that article are concerned with one particular type of multiple killer? Does the List of war crimes diminish the deaths that happen as a result of non-war related genocide, or airplane crashes, or industrial accidents? We could have one giant "List of all events in which more than 10 people died at one time", but that would be mush, so we divide things up into neat categories that are bounded by identifiable markers. That's why lists of which people in country X (or conflict X) were killed by circumstance Y are legitimate. -- BD2412 talk 17:05, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)
  • Substitute "Suicide bombings" for "massacres", to help avoid POV forking. --Scimitar 14:43, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. You don't delete an article because you don't like the title, and the article can certainly included actions deliberately targetting Palestinian civilians, or as Scimitar suggests, the title can be changed to "Suicide bombings etc.". Jayjg (talk) 15:19, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Per reasons stated above. MathKnight 15:25, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete unless moved or the article is changed. "Deliberately targetting civilians" is not a qualifier any normal person would apply to the word massacre. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:06, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)
  • Keep Feel free to have an edit war moving the name around, but don't delete this useful information. Ashibaka (tock) 16:13, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep but rename... I agree with the suicide bomber issue... massacre seems to be an over-statement in this case and should be against Israel as Israel has fought back... Sasquatch′↔Talk↔Contributions 23:39, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete POV fork. JamesBurns 23:54, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete You are all assholes. --GoFuckYourselves 03:04, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep this organized and true record of how Israelis (both Jews and innocent Arabs) were killed in cold blood during this time period. IZAK 03:40, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Highly POVYuber(talk) 03:43, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • keep Almog 04:09, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep I mean, massacre is emotive, but it's accurate; it's the event that's emotive, not the word. Suicide bombing could mean somebody who blows only his own self up in protest, much as the Buddhist self-immolations during the Vietnam war, and that's not what these events are. Perhaps "mass murders" might be preferable? "Killings of civilians"? "bombings of noncombatants"? Gzuckier 04:31, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, as per Gzuckier. Ambi 05:02, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, this is not an encyclopedia article. RickK 05:14, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, unbalanced. JFW | T@lk 06:47, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep - although I would prefer to change the title. Both "massacre" and "Al-Aqsa Intifada" are loaded terms. If precedence is any kind of principle here at WP, deleting this would require us deleting a bunch of other lists. --Leifern 10:05, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
  • Rename If this is a list of suicide bomb attacks then that is what it should say. Massacre is a loaded term, even if more than 10 people die and we should be careful of using it anywhere especially as here without any discussion of the facts of the incidents.old joe 11:03, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, they could be investigated to see if they fit the description. I would assume that something which without warning deliberately kills, say, ten unarmed civilians going about their daily business would generally be described as a massacre, any effort to pretty it up would be adding a POV; sometimes things speak for themselves. Compare to the constant campaign to delete quotes from Ann Coulter from her wikipage because they make her look bad and thus are POV. We could put a comment in for each whether it was suicide bomb or more personal methodology if we're dubious about calling a suicide bombing a massacre. I don't know if ten is the accepted threshold for a massacre or not. Gzuckier 16:16, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • keep--Neria 16:43, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Having myself created List of Algerian massacres of the 1990s, I certainly won't suggest that this page should be deleted simply for referring to events as massacres. The term "massacre" is an appropriate description for killings of large numbers of civilians at once, and I would consider it an accurate description of at least some of the events linked. However, 10 is probably too low a threshold (I used 50 myself), and Blackcats is certainly right to highlight the weasel wording that allows massacres by Israel to be kept out of the list. Keep and cleanup. - Mustafaa 17:16, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, unless we decide that "massacare" is an inherently POV term, in which case other articles should be deleted or renamed as well (such as List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war) The wording was not "cleverly designed" by the authours of this page (that would be me. Thanks for the compliment, BTW). Rather, it was lifted directly (including the number "10") from Talk:List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, where it was presented by User:BL (which is the author of that article, I believe). -- uriber 17:19, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, at best, the call for VfD is a reason to rename the article, not to eliminate it. (I don't have a problem renaming it) Saswann 13:52, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, but clean up, monitor closely for POV, use Mustafaa's "massacre" threshhold, and if the title is believed to be "POV", the proper way to deal with that is by discussing a MOVE on the article's TALK page, not by nominating the article for VfD. Tomer TALK 00:42, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep - this article is useful, but just as Mustafaa mentioned, it needs some cleaning up.--Gramaic 08:08, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep and use consistent definition of "massacre" throughout WP. ←Humus sapiens←Talk 10:04, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Ridiculous to suggest that it's a massacre when Jews kill Arabs, but not vice versa. If "Massacre" is POV it's POV across the board- including the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, etc.--Briangotts 15:48, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.
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