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Revision as of 04:01, 27 May 2010

Talk page exists.

Your editing history?

Obviously you are an experienced editor. Given the questionable and prejudicial nature of some of your edits, I have to wonder if you have edited here previously and been banned? CarolMooreDC (talk) 02:44, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I find it terribly unfortunate that you introduce yourself to a complete stranger with a strident and venomous accusation of bad faith. Is that your typical mode of social operation? I certainly hope not.

No, I am not a previously banned user or even an experienced editor; I'm simply someone who's had enough experience with markup languages -- HTML, XML, several different wiki formats etc. -- and has installed enough MediaWiki installations on various machines (including, half a year ago, on the MacBook laptop I'm writing this from) to be able to pick up the formatting in a flash. Not yet perfectly -- I have some tune-up to do on the references on the Atzmon page -- but not bad for a newbie.

Thanks for asking. Have a nice day! RT-LAMP (talk) 03:50, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

non-WP:RS-sources

Please do not ever introduce material from non-WP:RS-sources, like the opinion of David Duke, into a WP:BLP-article like the Gilad Atzmon-article. Or into any article, other than the subject himself. If you do that again, I will report you and ask to have you topic-banned. Have a nice day. Huldra (talk) 16:52, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

You have badly misunderstood the situation. Discussion moved to Talk:Gilad Atzmon RT-LAMP (talk) 17:03, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

May 2010

Please do not attack other editors, as you did at Talk:Gilad Atzmon. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz /_Stalk 04:05, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

"Maybe you should suggest that to him" is a personal attack? !?!? Maybe I'm not the one who needs advice on keeping cool. RT-LAMP (talk) 04:12, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Suggesting that Carol knows Atzmon or is associated with him is a personal attack. — Malik Shabazz /_Stalk 04:14, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

A look at WP:NPA shows what looks to me like a rather significant gulf between what it calls a personal attack and what you do. Nevertheless, I have apologized to Carol for unintentionally suggesting she's associated with such a creepy creature as Atzmon. RT-LAMP (talk) 15:58, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

SPA concerns

Hi. I appreciate your edits to Gilad Atzmon and your comments on Talk:Gilad Atzmon. I would like to see less conflict on the article and more harmonious editing, so everything you can do in that regard would be helpful. One thing that worries me is that it looks like your account was created simply to edit the Atzmon article. Whether true or not, it might help if you join a WikiProject and get some experience working on other types of articles, such as articles about Israel, Jewish biographies, Jewish culture, etc. Let me know if I can point you in the right direction. Viriditas (talk) 21:07, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Viriditas. I hope this 'thank you' makes your task at least slightly less thankless: thank you for spending time on the Atzmon issue. Let me explain my position on the GA article so that you don't have to reverse engineer it from my edits.

I do not think anti-Zionism and antisemitism are the same thing. However, there are cases -- rare, but they exist -- where someone is simultaneously Jewish, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic. Maybe the obvious example is the late Bobby Fischer in later life, when he was off his rocker and fulminating about Zionist conspiracies. Another example is a Holocaust denier who writes under the name Israel Shamir. There aren't many in this category, but there are some. And there is a substantial and WP:RS-backed opinion that Gilad Atzmon is one of them, that at some point in the last decade he crossed the line from anti-Zionism into antisemitism. This opinion comes from both leading UK Zionists and from leading UK anti-Zionists, from leftists and from rightists, from Jews and from non-Jews. And it is also my position, and not a position I take lightly or without considerable study of the specifics of Atzmon's writings and of the history of antisemitic discourse.

It's not WP's place to come down on one or the other side of the fence on whether Atzmon's an antisemite. However, the controversy is real and substantial, backed by WP:RS and it needs to be given enough space to be aired, not in its every last detail, but with enough room to accurately reflect the breadth of its substance. I believe that the article, as it stands now, does that. I do not try to deny those I disagree with enough room to make their case. I do not object to giving Atzmon's replies to the accusations. I do however object to any effort to sanitize the controversy away as if it doesn't exist or can best be treated in only a dozen words or is merely ignorable disinfo from Atzmon's political enemies. Such a result would be a victory of WP:Wikilawyering over WP:NPOV.

I spell this out up front because I feel my position has been mischaracterized considerably by other editors. I do not want the article to become an attack page, I do not want it to become a list of every criticism of Atzmon ever aired, I do not want it to become a smear job; I just want it to treat the antisemitism controversy in a fair, NPOV way. I understand that by focusing on one topic I take a credibility hit, one I hope that I make up for by the strength of my argument.

Let me repeat: It's not WP's place to come down on one or the other side of the fence on whether Atzmon's an antisemite. Neither is it WP's place to ignore or efface a real and substantial controversy simply because one editor has very, very strong opinions about it. It might be a helpful exercise to find out whether the other editors you're communicating with agree, so that we can proceed from common ground. RT-LAMP (talk) 21:51, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

From a biographical POV, I would like to know more about his experience as a paramedic during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as that seems to have contributed to his current state of mind. Good sources that analyze (and criticize) his published works would also work. A good, neutral article could take a section like "Allegations of antisemitism" and merge it inline into the appropriate sections so that it doesn't stand alone or apart from the things it criticizes or observes. Also, based on Atzmon's own published works, I don't think it is unreasonable to conclude that Atzmon is antisemitic, anti-Zionist, and at the end of the day, anti-Jewish. Viriditas (talk) 22:19, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply! I am not certain the autobiographical approach would make the most sense as a logical approach to the antisemitism issue; Atzmon is a polemicist, but the essays that raise the most ruckus are the least autobiographical and most "theoretical." It is not his novels that are getting the reaction, but his widely distributed polemical essays, which find a home not only on anti-Zionist sites but antisemitic ones as well (Stormfront, David Irving, David Duke, etc.) The "allegations" section is meant as a demonstration of the various threads of classically antisemitic discourse Atzmon has absorbed and regurgitated, sometimes in "anti-Zionist" form and sometimes not, into these polemics: deicide, Holocaust denial, the world-control myth. None of these topics are anything but tangentially tied to Beirut or other biographical moments of Atzmon's life, but they do have a solid pedigree in the darkest moments of Jewish history. In fact, about a week ago I explicitly broke the section out by antisemitic thread, but was reverted. (Not complaining.)

So the case could be made that the "Allegations" section actually belongs as a subsection of "Writings" since that it is the writings that prompted the allegations. The problem here is that the "Writings" section is more about his largely ignored novels, not his widely distributed polemics. RT-LAMP (talk) 22:47, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind that a biographical approach is not only needed, it's essential to the structure and composition of an encyclopedia article about a musician and author like Atzmon. I encourage you to pursue an analysis and critique of Atzmon's writing within the paradigm of Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines. Per this approach, it is not necessary to separate allegations about his views in his published work from a critique of his work. The more embedded the criticism, the less likely we will have POV disputes. It might help to familiarize yourself with the encyclopedic style. If I can point you to any policies and guidelines which will make this easier for you, let me know. One thing that might help is to review both WP:NPOV and WP:BLP. Feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions. Viriditas (talk) 04:00, 27 May 2010 (UTC)