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The West Bank/Judea and Samaria Problem

Personal work section notes. I get headaches and am as slow as a wet week, in dragging up diffs, and even have a geezer's trouble in following these arguments all over several pages, so I can't really make an adequate case. So I'll have to make my contribution in the next few days, according to the fashion I normally work after, when I did work, in the real world. Reflecting from principles, through to the problem, the evidence and conclusions. Apologies to anyone reading this. It's written to help myself get some order into this chat, not to guide others.

• An editorial split between those in favour of using 'Judea & Samaria' to designate (a) parts of, or (b) all, or (c) all of the West Bank and parts of Israel, and those who oppose the usage, except on those specific pages devoted to (i) Samaria (ii) Judea (iii) the administrative territory known in Israel as 'Judea & Samaria'.

• The 'Judea and Samaria' school holds that (a) these are geographical and historical designations predating the West Bank (b) used in a variety of sources published in Israel and abroad to denote the territory, or parts of it, known as the West Bank (c) and that opposition to the employment of these words in wiki constitutes an 'ethnic-based discrimination' against both Israeli and Jewish people.(d) specifically, that MeteorMaker, Pedrito and myself have conducted a campaign to denigrate or deprecate Jewish terms in the I/P area, a kind of ethnic cleansing of nomenclature, in a way that lends substance to fears our position is motivated by, well let's call a spade a spade, anti-semitism.

• The 'West Bank' school asserts that (a) these terms have an intrinsic denotative vagueness because they refer to different geophysical, administrative and political terrains depending on historical period, and that to use the terms of the territorially bounded and defined area known internationally as the West Bank creates cognitive dissonance (b) that these terms, as documented, were used under the British Mandate, then dropped for 'West Bank', which has remained to this day the default term of neutral usage internationally and in international law and diplomacy (c) that, after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, in 1967, the terms 'Judea & Samaria' were pushed onto the political agenda by an extremist settler group, Gush Emunim, then adopted by the Likud government in 1977, and imposed by government decree on the Israeli mass media, which suppressed the international term, West Bank (d) that, as documented, the terms 'Judea and Samaria' have a potent ideological charge as appropriative nomenclature, renaming Palestinian land presently occupied, annexed or expropriated illegally by Israel (ICJ judgement 2004), over which Israel has no sovereignty, where Israel is establishing illegal settlements at least half of which on land with private Palestinian title, and with its own Arabic toponyms, and erasing the traditional native nomenclature by creating a neo-biblical toponomy (d) that reliable secondary sources explicitly define the term as partisan, even in contemporary Hebrew and Israeli usage (e) that the evidence for usage overwhelmingly documents the prevalence of 'West Bank' (northern, southern) in neutral sources, whose neutrality is affirmed also by the very sources that otherwise employ the words 'Samaria and Judea' adduced by the former school, (f) that if explicitly attested partisan Israeli toponymy and administrative nomenclature is allowed on non-Israeli territory, then by WP:NPOV criteria, automatically this would mean the corresponding Palestinian toponymy and nomenclature, often covering the same areas, would have to be introduced (g)that in this whole debate, the West Bankers have not even represented the Palestinian side, which is absent, invisible, while the Israeli side is being treated as though its national naming were on terms of parity and neutrality with international usage (h) that wiki criteria, WP:NPOV, WP:Undue, WP:RS, WP:NCGN etc. require that neutral terminology, particularly as evidenced by the overwhelming majority of reliable sources, be employed. (i) If we are to allow Israeli terminology to be generally employed in denoting territory over which Israel exercises no sovereignty, but is simply, in law, an occupying belligerent, a very dangerous precedent, with widespread consequences for articles where ethnic conflicts exist, would be created.

(ii)Note on language, naming as an appropriative act of possession and dominion.

'According to the aboriginal theory, the ancestor first called out his own name; and this gave rise to the most sacred and secret couplet or couplets of his song. The he 'named' (tneuka) the place where he had originated, the trees or rocks growing near his home, the animals sporting about nearby, any strangers that came to visit him, and so forth. He gave names to all of these, and thereby gained the power of calling them by their names; this enabled him to control them and to bind them to his will.'

Wa’-yitser’ Yĕhôwāh’ (Adonai) ĕlôhīm’ min-hā'ădāmāh’ kol-‘ha’yath’ ha’-sādeh’ wĕ'ēth kol-ôph ha’-shāma’yim wa’-yāvē ‘ el-hā'ādām’ li-r'ôth mah-yiqrā-lô’ wĕ-kôl ăsher yiqrā-lô’ hā'-ādām‘ ne’pfesh ‘ha’yāh’ hû shĕmô. (20) Wa’- yiqrā’ hā'-ādām‘ shēmôth….

‘And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20. And Adam gave names.. .'

Wa-‘allama ādama l-asmā’a kullahā,

'And He taught Adam the names, all of them.’ Qu’ran 2:31.

In Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon, the narrator Cherrycoke recounts, against the huge backdrop of seismic shifts in the political and scientific world of that time, the story of the eponymous figures who have undertaken to draw a scientific map of the wilderness and terrain between Pennsylvania and Maryland:

‘what we were doing out in that Country together was brave, scientifick beyond my understanding and ultimately meaningless, - we were putting a line straight through the heart of the Wilderness, eight yards wide and due west, in order to separate two Proprietorships, granted when the World was yet feudal and but eight years later to be nullified by the War for Independence.”

Late in the novel, the Chinaman of the piece remarks:

‘To rule forever, . .it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call . . Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,- to create thus a Distinction betwixt’em. –’tis the first stroke.-All else will follow as if predestin’d, into War and Devastation.’

The dispute here in wiki, like the historical reality it refers to, has its ‘Bad History’. In the novel, the apparently empirical task of defining boundaries is found unwittingly implicated in the later travails of American history, with its exceptionalism, erasure of native peoples, of possible alternative worlds, of Frostian paths never taken. American innocence and pragmatic realism, in the innocuous work of two surveyors, is swept up in the torment of power: cartographic principles embody an Enlightenment’s reach into the unknown, while, applied, to the ends of order and control, they inadvertently engender violent confusion and disarray. What is the ‘right line’ to take on nomenclature, when history’s line demarcating Israel and the West Bank was drawn by war, then the West Bank was occupied in the aftermath of war, and the world of Israeli settlers begins to redraw the map? One thing that happens is that the complexities have drawn editors into a minor war, as Pynchonesque as it is Pythonesque. There is one difference: most the cartographers say one thing, and Israel, the controlling power, asserts a different terminology. So what’s in a name?

Before the world was tribalized and invested by the collateral damage or fall-out from the Tower of Babel, God assigned to the mythical forefather of all, ‘man’ or Adam, the faculty to name the world, though God himself had exercised this right in naming the light (or) day (yom) and the darkness (hôshek) night(layĕlāh) (Gen.1.5) There was only one name for each thing, and in later European thought the primordial language employed in this taxonomy was to be called ‘the Adamic vernacular’. The thesis was that the pristine jargon employed by Adam, being pre-Babelic, represented the true name for every object: every thing had a proper name intrinsic to its nature. The Greeks, as we see in Plato’s Cratylus, were much prepossessed by the philosophical crux of the correctness of names (ὀρθότης τῶν ὀνομάτων): did names have an intrinsic relation to, or represent, things, or was the link arbitrary.. The Confucian school’s doctrine of the Rectification of names (zhèngmíng: 正名). In the Bible itself the Hebrew text is full of the magic of words, of the power of words themselves to alter reality, a belief testified to in Isaiah:

'So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.'

Modernity, especially after Ferdinand Saussure (1916), has opted, correctly, for the latter position, and disposed of the magical force of naming. But nationalism, another product of modernity, reintroduced it, via the backdoor, in a new sense. Naming was an act of assertive territorial control, of defining ethnic rights over land, especially as Anthony Smith argues, ethnie are defined also by attachment to a specific geophysical reality, the ‘homeland’ that defines in good part their identity ). Since national identities are a political construct, the inculcation of a uniform language, and the use of its lexicon to define or redefine the landscape, are crucial instruments in forging a national sense of common tradition. Nationalism demanded toponymic unison, and linguistic conformity.

John Gaddis, glossing James Scott’s recent book on North Dakota roads and maps, remarks on maps that they reflect

‘what states try to do to those portions of the earth’s surface they hope to control, and to the people who live upon them. For it’s only by making territories and societies legible – by which he means measurable and hence manipulable – that governments can impose and maintain their authority. “These state simplifications,” he writes, are “like abridged maps.” They don’t replicate what’s actually there, but “when allied with state power, (they) enable much of the reality they (depict) to be remade.”

The idea of a nation as a territorial unit speaking one language over that territory is a parlously modern ideology, one engineered by nation-builders into a plausible if specious semblance of commonsense. As Massimo d’Azeglio is said to have remarked at the dawn of the Italian Risorgimento, ‘we have made Italy: our task now is to make Italians’, 95% of whom could neither read, write and nor often even speak ‘Italian’.

Imperialism, venturing into terra incognita to appropriate foreign land and incorporate it into an empire, went side by side with nationalism, which was a form of internal colonization over, and homogenization of, the disparate cultures that made up an historically defined territory. For the natives, their indigenous naming is ‘essentially a process of asserting ownership and control of place and landscape’

Daphne Kutzner, in her analysis of the role of Empire in classic children’s fiction, looks at the question from the perspective of the intrusive Empire and its refraction of imperial renaming as reflected in popular books, notes that

‘Naming a place gives the namer power over it, or at least the illusion of power and control. Colonial powers literally transform a landscape once they rename it and begin reshaping it.’

Terra incognita is the foreigner’s name for an ostensibly empty landscape which, had they taken the trouble to learn the local languages, would have revealed itself to be replete from every rocky nook to crannied gulley with ancient toponyms. The tendency was one of erasure, and, as with introduced fauna and flora , the landscape was consistently remade as it was renamed to familiarize the alien by rendering it recognizable, a variation on the landscape settlers came from. The new mapping, as often as not, represent as much the settler’s mentality, as the queerly new features of the foreign landscape under toponymic domestication.

Australia is somewhat the extraordinary exception, and broke with the gusto for imperial nomenclature. There, following the pattern set by the earlier land surveyor Thomas Mitchell and his assistant Philip Elliott that “the natives can furnish you with names for every flat and almost every hill” (1828), native names were adopted in a standarized English form for both euphony and their characteristic relation to the landscape, and indeed a resolution was passed as early as 1884 which established the priority of native names in international usage.

Often imperialism and nationalism go hand in hand. Napoleon’s troops, in 1796, could hardly communicate with each other, such were the grammatical, semantic and syntactical rifts between the various provincial patois at the time. By 1814, Napoleon had formed a European empire, and millions of provincials spoke the one, uniform language of the French state’s army. When two nations, or ethnie, occupy the same territory, the historical victor’s toponymic choices, dictated by the victor’s native language, and as articulated in bureaucratic documents and maps, usually determines what names are to be used. However, the presence of two distinct ethnie on the same national soil creates fissiparous tensions in nomenclature. Speaking of French and British conflict in Canada over areas, Susan Drummond, remarks that, 'Symbolic appropriation of a territory is a critical index of control’, and notes that, as late as 1962, the Québec cartographer Brochu, invoked the political dimension of place names as important, in the conflict with the majoritarian English heritage of Canada over the naming of the northern Inuit lands.

Again, in another familiar example, Alfonso Pérez-Agote notes that Spain has its Basque Autonomous region, Euskadi. But the original force of that name covers an area beyond the administrative and territorial units of Spain, and Basque nationalists evoke its symbolic territory, comprising also the Basque area of Navarre in France. Euskadi has, on one level, within Spanish administrative discourse, a ‘territorial political objectification’, and on another level, in Basque nationalism, a ‘non-administratively objectified’ territory extending into a neighbouring country.. The analogy with Israeli and Palestinian nationalism is close. In Israeli discourse, Israel or Eretz Israel can denote Israel and its outriding West Bank, while Palestine, which is the favoured term of West Bank Arabs for the land they inhabit, also can refer to the whole neighbouring territory of Israel as well.

The anomaly, in comparative terms, is that history has settled the question, whatever local separatist nationalisms, revanchist or irredentist, may claim, except for such places as ‘Palestine’. For there, while Israel is a constituted state, it emerged the victor, manu militari in a conflict that gave it control over a contiguous land, but has no recognized legal right, since that land is defined as and ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory. Acts of unilateral annexation, the extension of administrative structures, settlements, toponymic remapping, and widescale expropriation of land in Palestinian title, is not only not recognized, but judged ‘illegal’ by the highest international bodies of law. All major encyclopedias (Encyclopædia Britannica, Encarta etc.,), except Wiki, maintain a strict neutrality, and, in recognition of the fraught difficulties, adopt the neutral toponymic convention of ‘(northern/southern) West Bank’ in order to avoid lending their prestige to the partisan politics of the parties in this regional conflict.

(iii)The specific instance of Palestine and the West Bank

When the British wrested control over Palestine from the Ottomans in the First World War, and established themselves there to administer the region, Selwyn Troen notes that, 'naming also became part of the contest for asserting control over Palestine'.. As early as 1920 two Zionists advising the British Mandatory authority on everything regarding the assignment of Hebrew names, fought hard for the restoration of Hebraic toponymy, and when, with such places as Nablus, or indeed 'Palestine' itself, were given non-Hebrew names, they protested at the designations as evidence of discrimination against Jews. The point is made by the Israeli historian and cartographer Meron Benvenisti:-

'When the Geographical Committee for Names, which operated under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society (the only body authorized to assign names throughout the British Empire, decided to call the Mandatory geopolitical entity “Palestine” and the city whose biblical name was Shechem, “Nablus” these Jewish advisers saw this as an act of anti-Jewish discrimination, and a searing defeat for Zionism.'

One pauses to reflect. We are being accused here of 'anti-Jewish/Israeli discrimination' for refusing to insert Israeli toponyms into the West Bank. Nothing is said of the logic of this POV-pushing, i.e. that a Palestinian reader might well regard a Wiki endorsement of suc h foreign nomenclature as a 'searing defeat', and adduce it as proof of 'anti-Palestinian discrimination' both by Zionist editors, and Misplaced Pages itself.

Since Zionism took root, and especially since Israel was founded, the making of a people, living in a defined territorial unit and speaking one language, has followed the universal pattern of modernity. The landscape, full of Arabic words, had to be renamed, often according to Biblical terminology, but, more often, by the invention of Biblical-sounding names. To do this, a good part of the 10,000 odd Arabic toponyms collected by Herbert Kitchener, T. E. Lawrence and others in surveying that part of the Middle East had to be cancelled, and replaced with Israeli/Hebrew terms, to remake the landscape and its topographic songlines resonate with historical depth. Hebrew is a ‘sacred tongue’ (Leshon HaQodesh:לשון הקודש), the Bible describes the conquest of Eretz Yisrael, and the dispossession of its indigenous peoples, who were not part of the chosen: the pattern is repeated in modern times, down to the renaming. The revival of Hebrew, with its potent shibboleths, understandably exercises a powerful hold over the new culture of the country.

The problem is, as Steven Runciman pointed out in the mid-sixties, that the part assigned to Israel by the UN deliberation of 1947 was the western, non-Biblical part, whilst the part assigned to a future Palestinian state, what we now call the West Bank, is precisely the area most infused with Biblical associations cherished by the Jewish people, with sites and names redolent of the founding myths and realities of their ancient forefathers. Israelis, in their secular land, mostly dwell where the Philistines dwelt. The Palestinians dwell where the ancient Jewish tribes once settled. The tensions simmer between the secular Israel, which thrives in its new Mediterranean world, and the religiously-identified Israel that aspires to return to a geophysical space where origins and the present, the sacred nomenclature of the Bible and the modern world of Jewish life, might at least, once more overlap, in an ‘Adamic’ harmony congruent with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

(iv)The Negev Precedent With the foundation of Israel, and in the aftermath of the 1948 war, the vast Negev and part of the Arava were captured, and Ben Gurion duly established a Negev Names Committee to ‘hebraize’ the landscape’s features, its mountains, valleys and springs. The area already had a rich Arab toponymy, and some on the committee thought these terms might be preserved as a ‘democratic gesture towards the Arab population of the new state.’ It was not to be. The nomadic Bedouin who dwelt throughout the area were rounded up and expelled by force. They had terms for everything, but with their uprooting and displacement, Benvenisti notes, ‘an entire world, as portrayed in their toponomastic traditions, died.' Ben Gurion wrote to the committee setting forth his view that:-

We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state. Just as we do not recognize the Arabs’ political proprietorship of the land, so also we do not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names.

Political pressure and ‘the influence of patriotic arguments’ prevailed over those who, like S.Yeibin, thought the erasure of Arab names, many of which might preserve an archaic Hebrew origin. Yeibin thought this a disaster:-

‘With a clap of the hand they were wiping out an entire cultural heritage that must certainly conceal within it elements of the Israeli-Jewish heritage as well. The researchers did indeed endeavour to identify all those names that had a link to ancient Hebrew ones in an attempt “to redeem, as far as possible, names from the days of yore.” <

Any Arabic toponym in short only interested the topographers in so far as it might provide a clue to reconstructing the hypothetical Hebraic original that might lie behind it. This consideration, however, often created a mess of concocted pseudo-traditional names. The hebraization of such Arabic toponyms did not restore the historic past, but invented a mythical landscape, resonant with traditionalist associations, that had, however, no roots in Jewish tradition. The most striking geologic formation in the Negev, Wadi Rumman was rewritten as if that word disguised an ancient Hebrew Ram ('elevated'), whereas the Arabic term it was calqued from actually meant 'Pomegranate Arroyo', for example.

Reflecting on Benvenisti’s account in his larger study of language conflict in the Middle east, the Palestinian expatriate scholar Yasir Suleiman makes remarks that,

’By assigning Hebrew names anew to places on the map, the committee was therefore ‘redeeming’ these places from the corrupt and ‘alien’ Arabic names that they have acquired over the centuries’

and likens this process of linguistic erasure of Arabic and the reconstitution of Hebrew metaphorically to the nakba:-

‘The cartographic cleansing of the Negev map of Arabic place names and their replacement by Hebrew names is an enactment of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their homeland’

The record is therefore one of a linguistic cleansing of Palestine of any trace of its long Arabic history, and, as we shall see, an attempt to remodel Arabic usage in the territories Israel conquered and controls, to conform with Hebrew. Toponyms can only retain some semblance of an Arabic form, if that form is suspected to camouflage, in turn, an original Hebraic name. Adapting the reborn Hebrew language to the alien realities of the Palestinian landscape, the obvious problem was that the nomenclature for much of the flora and fauna, not to speak of the landscape itself, was infused with the very language, Arabic, a revarnished Hebrew had to compete with. As early as 1910 Jacob Fichman, a member of the Language Council, stated that Hebrew:

‘will not digest the new names of plants, especially those which have been taken from the Arabic language’ and that these borrowed names ‘will always be like atrophied limbs’ for ‘despite the fact that the Arabic language is our sister language in the family of Semitic languages, it has no foundation in our |psyche ’

Hebrew was thus to be programmatically sealed off from Arabic, to prevent atrophisation, and cultivate purism by means of a fake Biblical antiquarianism. Theodor Adorno, writing in the melancholic aftermath of the Holocaust on the effects of cultural purism, once remarked on the purging of foreign words from German undertaken by nationalists intent restoring an ideal of cultural authenticity. He saw this as part of the pathology of nationalism in Germany. Foreign words were treated as if they were 'the Jews of language' (Fremdwörter sind die Juden der Sprache). In expunging the landscape and the human world of Palestine of its Arabic language, of landscape and culture, Zionism likewise treated Arabic as German or French linguistic purists treated loan-words in their own languages, or, later, actual Jews in their midst, as foreign bodies to be expelled, or expunged if a proper 'foundation for an authentically Jewish psyche' were to be successfully engineered. One would call this ironic, were it not so tragically melancholic in its unintended resonances.

(v)The West Bank. History and Naming The relationship between demographic displacement and the loss of one's landscape through the erasure of its traditional placenames in Palestine has been remarked on by Paul Diehl.

‘The exclusive attachment to territory is reflected in the naming and renaming of places and locations in accordance with the historic and religious sites associated with the dominant political group. Not only did the outflow of Palestinian refugees bring about a change in the Jewish-Arab demographic rations, it brought about the replacement of an Arab-Palestinian landscape with a Jewish-Israeli landscape. The names of abandoned villages disappeared from the map and were replaced with alternative Hebrew names . . Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank have taken on biblical names associated with the specific sites as a means of expressing the Jewish priority in these places and the exclusive nature of the territorial attachment. Modern Israeli and Palestinian maps of Israel/Palestine possess the same outer borders, but the semantic content of the name is completely different.. The means by which new landscapes are created to replace or obliterate former landscapes is a good example of the way in which metaphysical and symbolic attachment to territory is translated into concrete realities on the ground.’

In 1950, when King Abdullah, of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, unilaterally annexed the territory he had conquered in 1948, he changed the name of his country to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which incorporated the remaining fragment of Palestine as aḍ-Ḍiffä l-Ġarbīyä, or 'the West Bank' of that kingdom. The usage is still current in German (Westjordanland). Though only Britain recognized his annexation, the word itself found ready acceptance in, and was not, 'forced on', the international community, as Binyamin Netanyahu argued.

In 1967, Israel conquered what the world knew as ‘The West Bank’, the Biblical heartland, and a decree calling it ‘Judea and Samaria’ was issued by the Israeli military on December 17 that year with the explicit definition that it would be identical in meaning for all purposes to the West Bank region to replace the interim terms 'Occupied Territories' (ha-shetahim ha-kevushim), and ‘the Administered Territories’ (ha-shetahim ha-muhzakim) in use since the immediate aftermath of the June war. The term 'Judea and Samaria' however was rarely used until Likud took power. The Labour Government never enacted a settlement policy, though Gush Emunim, an extremist settler ground with a fundamentalist ideology, pressed settlement, and propagated the terminology ‘Judea and Samaria’. When the Likud party, the maximalist, expansionist party with strong ties to both religious and ultra-Zionist groups and traditions, was elected in 1977, it imposed Samaria and Judea as the vox propria in modern Hebrew on the mass media, expressly forbidding the use of the international term West Bank. Notably, the government's imposing of these terms on Israeli usage was seen as a prerequisite for an envisioned settlement policy, since accepting the terms would predispose the public to accepting the policy.

Gideon Aran describes the achievement:

‘The importance of changing names in the process of conquering territory is well known. Assimilation of the name “Judea and Samaria” in normal and official language, as well as in jargon, attests to G(ush)E(numin)’s political and cultural achievements.'

The Camp David Accords negotiations of and the final agreement, in 1979, only underline how great was the linguistic rift between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's position and the American government intent on brokering an agreement.

‘Begin consistently proved to be the most extreme member of his delegation, insisting on seemingly innocent terms such as “autonomy” as opposed to “self rule,” on the labelling of the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” in the Hebrew text, and on the use of the phrase “undivided Jerusalem.'

A huge amount of wrangling between the American negotiators and Begin revolved around this term.

‘for what must have been the tenth time, he (Begin) objected to the term West Bank, giving a lesson to the president on the geographic and historical appropriateness of the term and the importance of using the words Judea and Samaria.’

Begin refused to back down from his ‘rock-hard’ intransigence on using ‘Judea and Samaria’ and at the Camp David signing ceremony, (March 26,1979) several interpretive notes were required to be added as annexes to the basic documents, one specifically dealing with the West Bank, which President Carter annotated with his own hand with the words:

‘I have been informed that the expression ‘West Bank’ is understood by the Government of Israel to mean ‘Judea and Samaria’.

An ambitious programme of colonising settlement, toponomastic Hebraisation and cultural Judaization was undertaken, and indigenous Palestinians were shifted off their land, in a repetition of the Negev programme, which forms the precedent. The programme took wing especially after the unprovokedinvasion of Lebanon in 1982, whose key political objectives included ousting the refugee Palestinian resistance in the para-state on Israel’s northern flank from Lebanon, where the PLO projected a 'state in waiting' image that threatened Israel’s plans for long-term control over the West Bank. The war was, the head of the IDF said at the time, ‘part of the struggle over the Land of Israel. It aimed to further the isolation of Palestinians on the West Bank by depriving them of close support, halt the rise to political respectability of the PLO, which embodied Palestinian nationalist aspirations, and deprive that body of its claims to be a political partner in the peace process for Israel’s normalization of its relations with the outside world. One calculation, a minority view entertained by both Ariel Sharon and Raphael Eytan, however, was that, expelled from Lebanon, the PLO would be forced to return to Jordan, topple king Hussein, and establish a Palestinian state there to satisfy Palestinian national ambitions that Israel would thwart on the West Bank.

Changing the realities of occupied territory by the manipulation of language, Hebrew, Arabic, and in controllable sources like the global Misplaced Pages, became a programmatic goal. The settlers were in fact 'colonists' in the old sense, but Israeli English usage has here prevailed in the politics of the culture wars to determine how the international community perceives the dynamics of that area. The corresponding Hebrew usage is complex (see Israeli settlements), but continuity with the biblical setlement of Eretz Yisrael is evoked by referring to Jewish settlers as mitnahalim. The root *n-h-l directly evokes a passage in the Book of Numbers where each tribe is assigned its portion on entering Canaan, or the Land of Israel, particularly as ' in the pledge by the tribes of Gad and Reuben that they will fight on the west side of the Jordan river to help the other tribes take possession of their assigned portions' Settlers, qua, mitnahalim are not colonizing anybody's land, in this usage: they are simply taking up their 'assigned portions' as those were marked out by God to the Chosen People.

Rashid Khalidi has remarked how the Israeli authorities themselves try to engineer the way Palestinians think in Arabic by tampering with that language's natural idiom in the Arabic broadcasts they authorize. Over Israeli Arabic channels, one does not hear Jerusalem referred to, as it is customarily in Arabic, and by Palestinians, as Bayt al-Maqdis ('The House of Sanctity') or Al Quds al-Sharif ('The Noble Holy Place'). Arabic usage as sanctioned by Israel speaks rather of Urshalim ('Jerusalem') or Urshalim/al-Quds ('Jerusalem Al-Quds'). The purpose is to diffuse a variety of Arabic names for places that are calques on the Hebrew terms chosen for the area..

This goes right through the bureaucratic language, a form of linguistic colonization that reinforces the physical occupation of the west Bank by cultural re-engineering. A new travel permit was imposed on the colonized Palestinians in the West Bank in 2002, and required of any of them wishing to travel in that area. This was issued, printed and released by Israeli authorities who call it in Arabic Tasrih tanaqul khas fi al-hawajiz al-dakhiliyya fi mantaqat yahuda wa al-samara. ('Special Travel Permit for the Internal Checkpioints in the Area of Judea and Samaria.'). Here, Palestinians who must travel in the West Bank, for them 'Filastin', are required to obtain a document which requires that area to be referred to by the settler term, 'Judea and Samaria'. It is this form of Arabic which they are expected to use in negotiating their way with Israeli authorities through checkpoints. But West Bank Palestinians simply abbreviate it and refer to their tasrih dakhili (Checkpoint permit), , thereby eluding the settler term imposed on them.

Michael Sfard indeed has spoken of Hebrew being mobilized to lend itself to the national emergency of occupying Palestine, and denying the Palestinians the liberty to be themselves. They are passive subjects of an activist language that wraps them about in bureaucratic euphemisms.

'It has been tasked with providing a soothing, anesthetizing name for the entire project of suffocation, for the blanket system of theft we have imposed on those we occupy . . Thus extrajudicial executions have become “targeted assassinations”. Torture has been dubbed “moderate physical pressure”. Expulsion to Gaza has been renamed “assigning a place of residence”. The theft of privately owned land has become “declaring the land state-owned”. Collective punishment is “leveraging civilians”; and collective punishment by blockade is a “siege,” “closure” or “separation".'

A proposal is now being made to apply the principle of Hebraization, as of 2009, even to those places within Israel which the world designates by traditional toponyms, such as Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) Nazareth (Natzrat) and Jaffa (Yafo). According to Yossi Sarid, the process, illustrated further by Knesset proposals to eliminate Arabic as one of Israel's official languages, constitutes a form of ethnocide.

(vi) Analysis of Ynhockey's suggestions

‘Mapmaking was one of the specialized intellectual weapons by which power could be gained, administered, given legitimacy and codified’

'Mapmaking is not, however, solely an instrument of war; it is an activity of supreme political significance – a means of providing a basis for the mapmaker’s claims and for his social and symbolic values, while cloaking them in a guise of “scientific objectivity.” Maps are generally judged in terms of their “accuracy”, that is, the degree to which they succeed in reflecting and depicting the morphological landscape and its “man-made” covering But maps portray a fictitious reality that differs from other sorts of printed matter only in form.'

After 1967 ‘Cartographers . .had many options, which tended to reveal their political proclivities. Those who were sympathetic to Israel labelled the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Sinai as “administered territories” and used the phrase “Judea and Samaria” for Jordan’s former West Bank. They also included all of Jerusalem within Israeli territory,. Mapmakers who were ideologically neutral generally referred to “occupied territory” and maintained the term “West Bank”. . . In the post-1993 period a Palestinian Authority has been established in the West Bank and Gaza, yet there is no actual independent state of Palestine. Most international maps have stayed with the terms “West Bank” and “Gaza” but maps published by the Palestinian Authority describe these areas as “Palestine.” Furthermore, Palestinian Authority maps usually leave out Israel and assign its territory to “Palestine,” with the added designation that it is “occupied territory.”Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, Harvey Sicherman, The power of projections: : how maps reflect global politics and history, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006 pp.37-8

We are dealing with a defined territory and its naming. User:Ynhockey would make tidy distinctions, define the bound geographical territory (CIA Factbook) as just a political reality, and use Judea and Samaria for all other contexts. In his own work on Wiki, much of it admirable, we find many maps. Examine the following map he authored and uploaded, and which is employed on the Battle of Karameh

The central colour, a washed acquamarine tint, allows one to highlight the field of movement in the battle, and blurs the neat territorial division between the West Bank, and Jordan. But note that, in a wholly unnecessary manner, Israel is stamped in large bold characters and made to overlay the West Bank, which is placed diminutively in parentheses. Willy-nilly, the impression is that the West Bank is some territorial hypothesis or province within Israel. Whether Ynhockey meant to give the reader this impression or not is immaterial. Maps, as one source already quoted noted, reflect the cognitive bias of the mapmaker as much as an interpretation of a landscape, and here the bias is that the West Bank is under Israel, behind Israeli lines, a subset of that state. It is a fine example of what many cartographers and historians of cartography argue: the making of maps, and toponymic nomenclature in them, serves several purposes, to clarify, as here, a battle landscape, for example, but also to impose or assert power, or claims, or blur facts. Objectively, User:Ynhockey has loaded wiki with a map that cogs our perceptions, tilting them to an annexationist assumption. Indeed, unlike the Israeli government so far, his map actually looks like it has the West Bank annexed.

1. T.G.H.Strehlow, Songs of Central Australia,Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1971 p.126; cited by Barry Hill, Broken Song: T.G.H.Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession, Knopf, 2002 pp.436f.
2. Genesis, ch.2, verses 19-20, with apologies for my transcription
3. For a fascinating study on both the figure of Adam in Islamic tradition, and on commentaries on this particular text specifically, see M.J.Kister, ‘Ādam: A Study of Some Legends in Tafsīr and Hadīt Literature,’ in Joel L. Kraemer (ed.) Israel Oriental Studies, Volume XIII, BRILL, 1993 pp.112-174, p.140
4. Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, Jonathan Cape, London 1997, pp.8,615
5. George Steiner, After Babel, Oxford University Press 1975 p.58
6. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,, vol.1, tr.Ralph Manheim, Yale UP 1955 pp.119ff.,p.122
7. Isaiah 5:11. For this and other passages, see S.J.Tambiah ’s 1968 Malinowsky lecture, "The Magical Power of Words," (the ancient Egyptians, the Semites and Sumerians all believed that “the world and its objects were created by the word of God; and the Greek doctrine of logos postulated that the soul or essence of things resided in their names (pp.182-3). My attention was drawn to this particular essay by Tambiah by Brian Vickers, Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, 1984 p.96
8. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1986 passim
9. John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, Oxford University Press US, 2004, p.131
10. Abbiamo fatto l'Italia. Ora si tratta di fare gli Italiani
11. Regis Stella, Imagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject, University Of Hawaiʻi Press, 2007 p.169 gives many Papuan examples. Compare his remark elsewhere in the same book, ‘In indigenous cultures . .(t)he most important means of taking control of the landscape is by naming, Naming provides the equivalent of a title deed, imbues power and identity to that which is named, gives the named place a presence, confers a reality, and allows it to be known.’ Ibid pp. 40-41
12. M. Daphne Kutzer, Empire's Children:Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Children's Books, Routledge, 2000 p.120
13. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986
14. ‘Maps are a kind of language, or social product which act as mediators between an inner mental world and an outer physical world. But they are, perhaps first and foremost, guides to the mind-set which produced them. They are, in this sense, less a representation of part of the earth’s surface than a representation of the system of cognitive mapping which produced them,’ N.Penn, “Mapping the Cape: John Barrow and the First British Occupation of the Colony, 1794-1803.” in Pretexts 4 (2) Summer 1993, pp.20-43 p.23
15. John Atchison, ‘Naming Outback Australia,’ in Actes du XVI Congrès international des sciences onomastiques, Québec, Université Laval, 16-22 August 1987, Presses Université Laval, 1987 : pp.151-162 p.154-5
16. Susan Gay Drummond, Incorporating the Familiar, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1997 p.32 .
17. Alfonso Pérez-Agote, The Social Roots of Basque Nationalism, University of Nevada Press, 2006 p.xx
18. Selwyn Ilan Troen, Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement, Yale University Press, 2003 p.152
19. Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape:The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, tr. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, University of California Press, 2000 pp.12-13 cf.'Suffused with the sense that “it is impossible for a present-day Hebrew map not to identify by name the places of Hebrew settlement mentioned in the Bible and in post-biblical Hebrew literature,” they set about identifying these sites and putting them on “Hebrew maps,” which they placed opposite the official Mandatory maps.’
20. Cf.Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, Jonathan Cape, London 1987
21. Benvenisti, ibid, p.19
22. Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, op.cit.p.14. The Arabic names were also found ‘morose’ and ‘offensive’ . As one member put it: ‘Many of the names are offensive in their gloomy and morose meanings, which reflect the powerlessness of the nomads and their self-denigration in the face of the harshness of nature’ (ibid.p.17). On the committee see also his memoir, Meron Benvenisti, Son of the Cypresses: Memories, Reflections, and Regrets from a Political Life, tr. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, University of California Press, 2007 p.72.
23. Amar Dahamshe Off the linguistic map. Are Arab place names derived from Hebrew? in Haaretz 30.06.10
24. Benvenisti, ibid. p.17, p.18
25. ‘The name of the Ramon Crater, for example, perhaps the most dramatic geological formation in the Negev, “is derived from the Hebrew adjective ram (meaning elevated), “states an Israeli guidebook. The fact that its name in Arabic was Wadi Rumman (Pomegranate Arroyo), . . was not considered worthy of mention’ Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, ibid. p.19
26. Yasir Suleiman, A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East, Cambridge University Press, 2004 p.161, p.162.
27. cf.Shalom Spiegel, Hebrew Reborn,, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia 1930, Meridian Book reprint 1962. Shalom Spiegel was Sam Spiegel's more distinguished and erudite brother.
28. Yasir Suleiman, A War of Words, ibid p.140
29. Theodor Adorno, Minima moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben (1951), in Rolf Tiedemann (ed.) Gesammelte Schriften, Bd.4, Suhrkamp, 1980 p.123
30. Paul Francis Diehl, A Road Map to War, Vanderbilt University Press, 1999, pp.15-16.
31. 'The term West Bank was forced onto the international lexicon only after Jordan conquered the territory in 1948'. Binyamin Netanyahu, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations, Warner Books, (1993) 2000 p.20. Netanyahu's dislike of the term (and his faulty memory for dates), is mirrored by the Palestinian poet, Mourid Barghouti, evidence if ever of the neutrality of the term: cf.‘I did not realize what it meant to be a refugee until I became one myself. When the Israeli army occupied Deir Ghassanah and the whole eastern part of Palestine in 1967, the news bulletins began to speak of the occupation of the Israeli defense forces of the West Bank. The pollution of language is no more obvious than when concocting this term: West Bank. West of what? Bank of what? The reference here is to the west bank of the River Jordan, not to historical Palestine. If the reference were to Palestine they would have used the term eastern parts of Palestine. The west bank of the river is a geographical location, not a country, not a homeland. The battle for language becomes the battle for the land. The destruction of one leads to the destruction of the other. When Palestine disappears as a word, it disappears as a state, as a country and as a homeland. The name of Palestine itself had to vanish. . .The Israeli leaders, practicing their conviction that the whole land of Palestine belongs to them would concretize the myth and give my country yet another biblical name: Judea and Samaria, and give our villages and towns and cities Hebrew names. But call it the West Bank or call its Judea and Samaria, the fact remains that these territories are occupied. No problem! The Israeli governments, whether right or left or a combination of both, would simply drop the term occupied and say the Territories! Brilliant! I am a Palestinian, but my homeland is the Territories! What is happening here? By a single word they redefine an entire nation and delete history.’ Mourid Barghouti, 'The Servants of War and their Language', in International parliament of Writers, Autodafe, Seven Stories Press, 2003 pp.139-147 pp140-1
32. Emma Playfair, International Law and the Administration of Occupied Territories: Two Decades of Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Oxford University Press, 1992 p. 41.
33. Ran HaCohen, 'Influence of the Middle East Peace Process on the Hebrew Language' (1992), reprinted in Michael G. Clyne (ed.), Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning, Walter de Gruyter, 1997, pp.385-414, p.397.
34. Shlomo Gazit, Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories, Routledge, 2003 p. 162
35. 'The terms “occupied territory” or “West Bank” were forbidden in news reports.'Ian S. Lustick, 'The Riddle of Nationalism: The Dialectic of Religion and Nationalism in the Middle East', Logos, Vol.1, No.3, Summer 2002 pp.18-44, p. 39
36. 'Begin was happy to castigate the media and the intelligentsia for their views, real and imaginary, and their use of politically incorrect language. Israeli television was now instructed to use “Judea and Samaria’ for the administered territories, annexation became ‘incorporation’ and the Green Line suddenly disappeared from maps of Israel and the West Bank'. Colin Shindler, A History of Modern Israel, Cambridge University Press, 2008 p.174
37. 'The successful gaining of the popular acceptance of these terms was a prelude to gaining popular acceptance of the government’s settlement policies'.Myron J. Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions: Cultural Change and Political Conflict, Transaction Publishers, 1991. p. 10.
38. Gideon Aran, 'Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism: The Block of the Faithful in Israel (Gush Enumin),', in American Academy of Arts and Sciences, University of Chicago Press, 1994 pp.265-344, p.291, p.337
39. Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: a critical analysis of Israel's security & foreign policy, University of Michigan Press, 2006 p.441
40. William B. Quandt, Peace process: American diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1967, Brookings Institution Press, 2001, rev.ed.2001 p.130
41. William B.Quandt, Peace process, ibid. p.134. This was then accompanied by a formal note to Begin (September 22,1978), it which it was registered that ‘(A) In each paragraph of the Agreed Framework Document the expressions “Palestinians” or “Palestinian People” are being and will be construed and understood by you as “Palestinian Arabs”. (B)In each paragraph in which the expression “West Bank” appears, it is being, and will be, understood by the Government of Israel as Judea and Samaria.’ William B. Quandt, Camp David: peacemaking and politics, Brookings Institution Press, 1986 p.387
42. Howard Jones, Crucible of Power: A History of U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1897,Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd.ed. 2001 p.469
43. Rex Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival: The PLO in Lebanon, Westview Press, Boulder, 1990 p.2
44. James Ron, Frontiers and ghettos: state violence in Serbia and Israel, University of California Press, 2003 p.180. Decoded, the statement means, 'invading Lebanon secures the West Bank for Israel and thus achieves the Biblical borders set forth more or less in the Tanakh's account of the early kingdoms'
45. Eric J. Schmertz, Natalie Datlof, Alexej Ugrinsky, President Reagan and the world, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997 p.44.
46. See Uri Bar-Joseph, Israel's National Security Towards the 21st Century, Routledge, 2001 p.185
47. Numbers, 32:18
48. David C. Jacobson, Does David still play before you? Israeli poetry and the Bible, Wayne State University Press, 1997 p.50
49. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The construction of modern national consciousness, Columbia University Press, 1998 p.14
50. Nigel Craig Parsons,The Politics of the Palestinian Authority: From Oslo to Al-Aqsa, Routledge, 2005 p.299
51. Michael Sfard, Occupation double-speak,' at Haaretz, 12 June 2012.
52. Jonathan Cook, Israeli Road Signs, Counterpunch 17-19, July 2009
53. Nir Hasson, Give Arab train stations Hebrew names, says Israeli linguist, Haaretz 28/12/2009
54. Yossi Sarid 'Israel is not killing the Palestinian people - it's killing their culture,' Haaretz 3 Octobr 2014
55. John Brian Harley, David Woodward, The History of Cartography: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, Humana Press, 1987 p.506, cited Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, ibid.p.13
56. Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape, ibid. p.13

Further reading:-

• Mark Monmonier, No Dig, No Fly, No Go. How maps restrict and control, University of Chicago Press 2010

Things to be done/Notes to self (or what pieces are left of that hypothetical entity)

• Huldra trans Talk:Bardala‎
• Huldra trans Talk:Nisf Jubeil
• Sabah as per promise to Doug Weller
• Abu Iyad as per promise to Al Ameer
• The Ashkenazi Jews/Khazarian origins theory
• Werner Muensterberger
• 中里介山 and also his 大菩薩峠, which have no wiki article. ('to call him Dickensian would be utterly inadequate, to call Dickens "Kaizanian" would be to flatter him greatly' William E. Naff, The Kiso Road: The Life and Times of Shimazaki Tōson, University of Hawai'i Press, 2011 p.4.) Nishidani (talk) 21:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

(2)'To call Dickens "Kaizanian" would be an over-statement of his considerable gift for for creating memorable characters, while to call Kaizan "Dickensian" would be a seriously misleading understatement. This richness became all the more impressive when set against the national drive towards human standardization.' ibid. p.430

To be kept close to the bottom of this page because I forget the agenda as time scurries on Nishidani (talk) 21:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

• • e.g.<ref="Horowitz" /> Nishidani (talk) 17:20, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Note

Yonatan Mendel, Diary, London Review of Books, Vol. 37 No. 6 -19 March, 6 March 2015.

Palestinian population statistics Pro memoria

here,

Notice of Admin noticeboard discussion

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Yo Ho Ho

Doug Weller talk is wishing you Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:WereSpielChequers/Dec16a}} to your friends' talk pages.

Aboriginal source page per Huldra's shining example

I think I need to muster up the fundamental early sources on the Aborigines, very much along the lines of my inspirer for this series. I'll begin to drop some bibliographical notes here, so they can be transferred to a new page, as she does.

There are two assumptions on future work once the several hundred outline articles are completed

• (1)All articles deal with the country where each aboriginal tribe lived, listing contemporary townships and cities etc. Eventually each town and city article in Misplaced Pages should have a link indicating the tribe(s) that inhabited the zone before white colonization. At the moment, most articles begin with white settlement, ignoring the pre-existing groups.
• (2)These articles are being written according to the relatively modern scholarly notices. However, once the list is complete, then each article should be reviewed according to the 19th century historical sources listed below, which are extensive and detailed yet difficult to use because they mention landscape, and customs, without identifying the tribes by name. Once we know from the articles who lived where, reading the classics accounts becomes simpler, in that we can immediately twig which tribe or tribal group is being spoken of.
• (3) It follows that each article should have in a History section RS citations of the first settlers, where they set up stations and cattle runs, even if the tribe is not specified. Thios is perfectly legitimate background, and not a WP:RS infraction. Often the early pioneer chronicles will mention the 'natives' or 'tribes' without identifying them, but the lack of a specific tribal name does not translate into passing over in silence their presence on those terrains. This is particularly exigent for articles on tribes for whom little information survives, since they died of introduced disease or massacres. Their articles can easily be thickened by using regional histories of the occupiers who took over their territory. Examples are the Bungandidj and Meintangk: the earliest forays indicate widespread smallpox marks, but few people. The archaeological evidence is turning up, to the contrary, evidence of dense populations until settlement.

I expect doing these two things is beyong my scope and span, but by setting up a comprehensive reading list and leaving it here, stray editors and odd bods may just be able to click read, and harvest information from these sources without making tiresome net searches on their own.

Overviews

• Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names (PDF). Australian National University Press. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Barwick, Diane E. (1984). McBryde, Isabel (ed.). "Mapping the past: an atlas of Victorian clans 1835-1904". Aboriginal History. 8 (2): 100–131. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Bibliography in chronological order

• King, Philip Parker (1827). Narrative of a survey of the intertropical and western coasts of Australia performed between the years 1818 and 1822 (PDF). Vol. 1. London: John Murray (publisher). {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Napier, Charles James (1835). Colonization, Particularly in Southern Australia: With Some Remarks on Small Farms and Over Population (PDF). T. & W. Boone. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ogle, Nathniel (1839). Western Australia: A manual to that Settlement or its Dependencies (PDF). London: James Fraser. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Grey, George (1841). Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North West and Western Australia. Vol. Volume 1. T. and W. Boone. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Eyre, Edward John (1845). Journals of expeditions of discovery into central Australia, and overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound, in the years 1840-1 (PDF). Vol. Volume 1. London: T. and W. Boone. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Eyre, Edward John (1845). Journals of expeditions of discovery into central Australia, and overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound, in the years 1840-1 (PDF). Vol. Volume 2. London: T. and W. Boone. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Angas, George French (1847). Savage life and scenes in Australia and New Zealand: being an artist's impressions of countries and people at the Antipodes (PDF). Vol. 1, 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Morgan, John (1852). The Life and Adventures of William Buckley: Thirty-two Years a Wanderer among the Aborigines of the then unexplored country round Port Phillip, now the Province of Victoria (PDF). Hobart: Archibald Macdougall. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• McGillivray, John (1852). Narrative of the voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, commanded by the late Captain Owen Stanley during the years 1846-50, including discoveries and surveys in New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago, etc : to which is added Mr. E.B. Kennedy's expedition for the exploration of the Cape York Peninsula (PDF). London: T. & W. Boone. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lang, Gideon S. (1865). The Aborigines of Australia (PDF). Melbourne: Wilson & Mackinnon. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bunce, Daniel (1859). Language of the aborigines of the Colony of Victoria and other Australian districts: with parallel translations and familiar specimens in dialogue, as a guide to aboriginal protectors and others engaged in ameliorating their condition (PDF). Geelong: T. Brown. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lang, J. D. (1861). Queensland, Australia; a highly eligible field for emigration, and the future cotton-field of Great Britain: with a disquisition on the origin, manners, and customs of the aborigines (PDF). London: E. Stanford. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Jessop, William Rowlestone Henry (1962). Flindersland and Sturtland; or, The Inside and Outside of Australia (PDF). London: R. Clay, Son, and Taylor for Richard Bentley. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Howitt, William (1865). The History of Discovery in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand: From the earliest times TO the present day (PDF). London: Longman Green & Co. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Beveridge, Peter (1865) . "A few notes on the dialects, habits, customs and mythology of the Lower Murray aborigines". Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria. 6. Melbourne: 19–74. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bennett, Samuel (1867). The History of Australian Discovery and Colonisation (PDF). Sydney: Hanson a nd Bennett. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Oldfield, Augustus (1865) . "On the aborigines of Australia". Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London. 3: 215–298. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Smyth, Robert Brough (1878). The Aborigines of Victoria: with notes relating to the habits of the natives of other parts of Australia and Tasmania (PDF). Vol. Volume 1. Melbourne: J. Ferres, gov't printer. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Taplin, George (1879). Folklore, manners, customs and languages of the South Australian aborigines (PDF). Adelaide: E Spiller, Acting Government Printer. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Fison, Lorimer; Howitt, Alfred William (1880). Kamilaroi and Kurnai (PDF). Melbourne: G Robinson. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Dawson, James (1881). Australian Aborigines: The Languages and Customs of Several Tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Australia (PDF). Melbourne: George Robertson. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Beveridge, Peter (1883). "Of the aborigines inhabiting the great lacustrine and Riverine depression of the Lower Murray". Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales. 17. Melbourne: 19–74. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Palmer, Edward; Howitt, A. W. (1884). "Notes on Some Australian Tribes". Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 13: 276–347. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Curr, Edward Micklethwaite (1886). Curr, Edward Micklethwaite (ed.). The Australian race: its origin, languages, customs, place of landing in Australia and the routes by which it spread itself over the continent (PDF). Vol. 1. Melbourne: J. Ferres. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Curr, Edward Micklethwaite (1886). Curr, Edward Micklethwaite (ed.). The Australian race: its origin, languages, customs, place of landing in Australia and the routes by which it spread itself over the continent (PDF). Vol. 2. Melbourne: J. Ferres. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Curr, Edward Micklethwaite (1887). Curr, Edward Micklethwaite (ed.). The Australian race: its origin, languages, customs, place of landing in Australia and the routes by which it spread itself over the continent (PDF). Vol. 3. Melbourne: J. Ferres. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Favenc, Ernest (1888). The history of Australian exploration from 1788 to 1888 (PDF). Sydney: Turner & Henderson. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Howitt, Alfred William (1889). "On the organisation of Australian tribes". Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria. 1 (2): 96–137. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Beveridge, Peter (1889). The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina (PDF). Melbourne. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

This is a reprint of 1883, but more legible online

• Threlkeld, Lancelot Edward (1892). Fraser, John (ed.). An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal, the people of Awaba, or lake Macquarie (near Newcastle, New South Wales) being an account of their language, traditions, and customs (PDF). Sydney: C. Potter, Govt. Printer. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Meston, Archibald (1895). Geographic History of Queensland. Dedicated to the Queensland People (PDF). Queensland Government Printer. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Roth, W. E. (1897). Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines (PDF). Brisbane: Edmund Gregory, Government Printer. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Worsnop, Thomas (1897). The prehistoric arts, manufacturers, works, weapons, etc., of the aborigines of Australia (PDF). Adelaide: C.E. Bristow, Government Printer. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bride, Thomas Francis, ed. (1898). Letters from Victorian Pioneers (PDF). Melbourne: Robert S Brain Government Printer. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mathews, R. H. (January 1898). "Initiation ceremonies of Australian tribes.Appendix Nguttan initiation ceremony". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 37 (157). Melbourne: 54–73. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mathew, John (1899). Eaglehawk and Crow; a study of the Australian aborigines including an inquiry into their origin and a survey of Australian languages (PDF). London: Nutt. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Spencer, Sir Baldwin; Gillen, Francis J. (1899). Native tribes of Central Australia (PDF). Macmillan Publishers. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mathews, R. H. (1904). "Ethnological notes on the Aboriginal tribes of New South Wales and Victoria". Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales. 38 (Part I): 203–381. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Howitt, Alfred William (1904). The native tribes of south-east Australia (PDF). Macmillan. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Spencer, Sir Baldwin; Gillen, Francis J. (1904). Northern Tribes of Central Australia (PDF). Macmillan Publishers. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gribble, J. B. (1987) . Dark deeds in a sunny land: or Blacks and whites in North-West Australia. ECU Publications. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Eylmann, Erhard (1908). Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien (PDF). Berlin: D.Reimer. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mathew, John (1910). Two representative tribes of Queensland with an inquiry concerning the origin of the Australian race (PDF). London: T. Fisher Unwin. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Spencer, Baldwin (1914). Native tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia (PDF). London: Macmillan Publishers. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lyndall Ryan, (ed.) Colonial Frontier: Massacres in Eastern Australia 1788-1872 University of Newcastle, with timeline here and statistical analysis of the 172 massacres in 84 years here, 3139 aborigines as opposed to 72 colonists. Nishidani (talk) 21:04, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Nomination of Meir Ettinger for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Meir Ettinger is suitable for inclusion in Misplaced Pages according to Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

some reading

I dont know if you are familiar with these?

• http://www.nyungah.org.au/susannah/owlstonereport.pdf

• Ogle, Nathniel (1839). Western Australia: A manual to that Settlement or its Dependencies. London: James Fraser.

Cheers, Huldra (talk) 23:58, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks indeed. Setting that main course on my oogling menu today means you have helped me rid my thoughts of the image plaguing them since I woke up this morning: I was at a restaurant last night where the conversation dwelt in meticulous detail on an almost lost recipe for Pappardelle alla lepre, pappardelle stewed in hare sauce, which a male nurse (also a hunter) picked up by patiently eliciting the arcana from a dying cook, aged 92, from the Marches, who was otherwise on the edge of taking the recipe to the grave 20 years ago. It takes 3 days to prepare, and cooked once a year by the nurse, who has promised to pass on a succulent portion of the result this coming Sunday. We have salvage linguistics in Australian anthropology, and salvage cooking in the infinitely deep world of Italian culinary arts, and I really needed something like the above two works to get my mind focused back on my present priority! Cheers. Nishidani (talk) 07:28, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

A wee present for you

... to lift your spirits after the nightmare of the AfD getting into the Bundestag, and in thanks for your tireless work on anything that really matters on Misplaced Pages.

• Daiqing Tana - Ongmanibamai on YouTube

--NSH001 (talk) 11:05, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks,N. Exquisite. As these racist scumbags shoot up and shoot off like toxic mushrooms, one can only tune out of their yawping noise by tuning in to the likes of Daiqing Tana, or as song like Wiyathul by the late deeply lamented Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, to realize, if proof were needed, how little those xenophobic bastards know of the aesthetic dimensions of the non-hegemonic world. I haven't done much these last few days- busy navvying for a friend's farmhouse.Nishidani (talk) 13:15, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

The annoying topic of "State of Palestine"

Hello Nish. Came back from 25 days in Jericho. I've checked a few dozen Palestinian IDs, all say "citizen of the Palestinian Authority" in Hebrew and Arabic, with the Palestinian Authority emblem on the back (with "al-Sulta al-Falastiniyya", not "Dawlat Falastin"). Some of the Palestinians gave me their driving license, which said in Hebrew and Arabic "Ministry of Transportation - Palestinian Authority". I've checked a handfull of Palestinian Passports in the checkpost before the Allenby Bridge, all said "Palestinian Authority". I've seured workers in Aqbat Jaber and we met with Palestinian policemen, whose tags said "al-Sulta al-Falastiniyya". I've seen a big sign on the southern entrance to Jericho, whit information about a construction project, sponsered by the "Palestinian Authority". My platoon commandor was part of the convoy of Abu Mazen on his way to Jordan, which was described by a Palestinian representitive as the "President of the Palestinian Authority". In other words, I've spent 25 days in the State of Palestine, and I saw no sign of it existing in any way. Any opinion? (other than probably showing sorrow about me doing the job you spend a effort opposing).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 11:12, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Stav. very interesting. In other words, the state doesn't exist, but has citizens: the non-existent state does what all states do, issuing licenses, passports, and running standard state institutions like a police force, health and educational services and infrastructure and these multiple exercises of state rights are recognized as legitimate by Israel (I don't think you lads are told to impound that material, as an earlier generation was told to rip down on sight any Palestinian flag), and foreign states, 136 of which formally recognize statehood. No. I don't have feelings of sorrow. When I went to Israel to work on a kibbutz, I was asked in the tel Aviv office where I'd like to spend my time. I said: 'Anywhere, near borders, that is regarded as dangerous will be fine' and, after a laugh, they posted me to one such area. I wanted to put my antiwar principles under strain, potentially of hostilities, to see whether they were real, or just a cover for cowardice. One man did try to kill me, but he was a psychotic foreigner, neither Israeli nor Palestinian and I handled the threat well, without panicking.

You are under a national obligation to do military service (I preferred a jail sentence, but Socrates would have served even if he disagreed), so the point is to do the job well, without enmity, by the book, which it appears, unsurprisingly, you do. I have no expectations that the experience will substantially alter your views. I only worry that you are in an unpredictable warzone, where even the best of intentions can misfire and endanger you, and others. It is a very difficult situation, so keep on your toes, observe everything closely, and keep safe. My only advice is to try and wrench 10 or 20 minutes each night writing down the bare bones of your daily experiences, without cluttering it with emotions, and, perhaps, to read Thucydides. The world is increasingly hysterical and one opportunity your service can offer, unintentionally, is to cultivate close detached observation, not only of the 'enemy' but of your fellows, and yourself, when everything you might face demands the opposite. Above all, take care, lad.Nishidani (talk) 11:56, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

This is a different argument, you say that the "Palestinian Authority" is, in fact, the Palestinian State. I won't fully disagree, as the PA does act more as a state rather than an autonomy as some in the right like to define it. But the "State of Palestine", as an entity, and not a general term, is not the "Palestinian State" that the PA is.

I am struggeling to spend 10-20 minutes for exercising, reading (books or newspaper) and sometimes, even sleeping and eating. So far I didn't really had any serious confrontations with the "enemy". The Palestinians of the Jordan Valley are quite calm and when we meet them in checkpoints (Allemby or at the exit from the West Bank on the south) it is usually accompanied with a smile and sometimes a laugh. The occasional Taxi drivers from East Jerusalem already know us and shake our hands in the morning, while the Palestinian workers from Ramallah, Hebron and Jericho sit with us for a cup of coffee and greet us as they renovate a millitary camp, from which raids on Jericho will be sent. The only time we saw a major confrontation was when we arrested someone for a crinimal offense (wouldn't elaborate as I don't know if I am allowed to) and his family refused to let go (not knowing that he will probably go back home tommorow, as most of the Palestinians we arrest). One extremely odd expiriance I've had, was seeing three Palestinians being arrested and brought to our base, blindfolded with their hands tied, after they accidently flew a drone above our base. An hour after they were arrested, I saw my half Bedouin, half Galilee-an Muslim company commandor sits with those three, with their hands and eyes free, as they show him their BMW car and let him take it for a ride around the base and even take a picture of him with it. Even though I knew that my expiriances will be much different than what is expressed by the media (the Israeli, Palestinian and international ones), I have to say I didn't expect so many cynical and absurd expriances and in such a short period of time.

Hopefully I'll have time to expand some articles about the Jordan Valley in the future.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 14:11, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Nothing absurd there: it's the normal side of any longterm occupation on a quiet front. Australians collectively in the colonial period shot an estimated 20,000 indigenous people but generally most people 'got on' and most settlers didn't engage in it. They just kept mum, or murmured it wasn't nice, but then the logic of history meant that they would die out anyway. A man like Paul Foelsche could command 'nigger hunts' and wipe out a dozen here and there and, next week, camp with some and ask them if they could supply him with words for his lists of their vocabulary. Some of the worst massacres were by the Australian native police, under of course white commanders, just as some of the most vicious behavior in the IDF search and arrest missions is undertaken by Druze. It's a standard colonial policy. Men could have Sunday shooting parties to knock off a tribe, while keeping some blacks to work for them.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I didn't identify the PNA with the State of Palestine. The PNA is a quisling government. Palestinians suffer a double occupation in my view: by the PNA (and perhaps Hamas) and by Israel. As I said much earlier somewhere, the State of Palestine is a quarkish entity, there and not there depending on terms of definition but recognized by too many foreign states. The concept of God is nonsensical of course, but a disturbing proportion of mankind accept it, as a metaphysical reality, and act, behave, perform service and think as though it were existent. Nishidani (talk) 15:02, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

I just noted that Interpol has accepted the State of Palestine.Nishidani (talk) 15:26, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Just an afterthought,B. The evidence you cite re PNA documents doesn't reflect the 'state' of the 'State of Palestine' question. It reflects a negotiated outcome between the occupying power and the occupied authority as to what form of notation is acceptable to the former, Israel, and what the latter is willing to go along with faute de mieux. On internal or diplomatic documents, and discourses before an international institution, the PNA appears to refer to itself as the representative of the State of Palestine, for there, Israel cannot pose a veto, as it can on documents circulating (which require its approval) in the West Bank. I would expect that were the PNA to issue documents for those travelling through Israeli checkpoints that contained 'State of Palestine' it would translate into holdups, rejection of passage etc. So the 'evidence' is neither here nor there, for Israel, in every forum in the world, and today at the Interpol conference in Beijing, vigorously protested the use of State of Palestine. To no effect, fortunately. The farce you see in documentation reflects not reality (whatever that may be) but force majeure, for it would imperil Israel's geopolitical interests to have Palestine universally recognized as a state, starting with immense legal complications. And that is the way it will almost inevitably stay, regardless of diplomatic realities.Nishidani (talk) 16:55, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

If the Palestinians will elect Marwan Bargouti as a president, he would still not be a president, until he will be released from the Israeli jail and the State of Palestine will not be a state until it will be released from Israeli occupation, even if the world will vote in favour of its existence. I accept the PA as an entity which is a state within a millitary occupation on a territory under occupation. But the concept of a "State of Palestine", the member of the UN, is not acceptable as a location in which there are cities and academies.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:50, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

the State of Palestine will not be a state until it will be released from Israeli occupation, even if the world will vote in favour of its existence.

That sums it up nicely. In your understanding, Israel, uniquely among the community of nations, has the right of veto as to what constitutes a state, in this case Palestine. No nation on earth, in international law, has a right of veto to invalidate what 99.9% of the states of the world recognize. It can state its view, and wipe its arse on all formal deliberations by the world community that contradict its intransigence, but no one would give a flying fuck, other than laugh. You admit that Israel is an occupying power, and assert, above, that it is occupying something that doesn't exist. Reflect again. I'm familiar with all these paradoxes: Zionism was a secular movement by atheists which laid a claim to entitlement over another country on the basis of a divine writ concerning a promised land which, however, the foundational atheists knew to be a pious fiction, etc. Nishidani (talk) 19:30, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

We occupay a land and a people, as in, they are not our citizens, yet we rule over them, and the territory is under the direct rule of our millitary and not the government. And we believe (and know for fact) that regardless of mythology, we were here and this is our homeland. If there was no sign of Jewish presence in the region or any other mention to Jews in Israel outside of the biblie, today you won't have any atheist nationalists like me.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 20:24, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

As I've said a million times, the state of Israel is uncontestably legitimate. But the nucleus of your statement 'We were here' is analytically and historically meaningless. In laymen's language, crap. You were born in Israel. Israel is a state 80% composed of historically recent immigrants and their offspring, period (like Australia, America, Canada etc). The only thing that connects that variegated multitude with the land is a religious doctrine formulated in Babylon by a small clerisy, around 6 centuries BCE, descending from exiles from Judea, which formed the nucleus of Judaism, defining incidentally 'pure Jews' like themselves (see Ezra/Nehemiah) from a 'rabble' ( Am ha'aretz) who nonetheless were ethnically identical to them, and had stayed on the land while the aristocracy languished in Babylon. Use 'we' as some transhistorical entity which has maintained its essence, you step outside of religion, and enter into a form of ideology based on the notion of 'race', now euphemistically reframed as genetic continuity. 'We' means, here, that Yitzhak Shamir and Israel Shahak, or Norman Finkelstein and Menachem Begin, or Albert Einstein and Dov Lior, all share some secret essence that is deeper than anything that might bind the first 3 to their peer communities. If you believe that you'll believe anything

There is no genetic continuity proven between Jews in general and the Jews located, aside from everywhere from the Maghreb to Iran in antiquity, in ancient Israel, anymore than Italians are ancient Romans or Greeks Hellenes, or the English Britanni. Mind you, in real estate terms, it's a buyable idea. It's nice to be able to hail from Brooklyn, from Ashkenazi families that go back hundreds of year in the USA, discover you are a Jew above all else, and therefore entitled via aliyah to kick Abdul out of Shuhada street in Hebron because a Sephardi who did aliyah in the 1800s from Iraq was force out of his home after the slaughter in 1929, and you want his house at zero cost.

I looked on my ancestors' farmland in Carrick-on-Suir some years ago, and a local farmer hailed me at a distance, mistaking me for a local identity, saying I was his spitting image. It turned out, funnily enough, that the local identity had the same name as my ancestors who fled after being dispossessed by the English. He wanted me to meet up with the fellow. I wasn't interested. Perhaps I should check the net and see if anyone else will join me in an armed invasion to take back what was, um, 'ours', meaning all of the 70 million people who can trace some link to the Ireland from which one of their forefathers was evicted at gunpoint or by the duress of state-organized famine. Nishidani (talk) 21:02, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

As Im sure you know, Dublin was founded my MYYYYYYY ancestors.....them damn sqatting Dubliners can just wait, I will be back with our navy and kick them out one day.....(Seriously, Ive never been to Ireland, but I hear that many of countrymen invade Ireland every summer.....mostly its pubs..... I even know a couple who have bought a 2nd home there...and apparently they are quite welcome, too! That might have something to do with only taking what is for sale, and paying for it. Huldra (talk) 21:23, 27 September 2017 (UTC))

Good grief. True, you have prior right. My father always said that we weren't authentic O'Cuinns but rather descended from a medieval Norman family, Duquesne. He also said however that nothing the Irish say about themselves is reliable, since their, sorry, 'our' penchant for letting fantasy get the better of the facts was unrivalled. If Ireland, then the West Coast, in September. Magnificent food is not the least of it. Nishidani (talk) 21:53, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Sound tempting! I have just watched "Lords & Ladles"...Huldra (talk) 22:22, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Sounds like someone been drinking too much of the Pally Kool-Aid. Your ignorance is astounding. The Norse invaded and colonized Ireland. They were never native. The Irish are the natives. The Arabs invaded and colonized Israel. They were never native. Jews are the natives. Just because the Arabs built the Dock of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque doesn't mean the Temple Mount is theirs. It will forever be Jewish and only Jewish, and we will one day take it back and slaughter the Islamic occupiers and rebuild the temple. I yearn for the day when Mecca is destroyed and a Jewish synagogue built in its place and Muslims banned from praying there. And Norway will soon be an Islamic country full of dhimmis subservient to Muslim overlords. Ireland has always been a puny and irrelevant anti-Semitic country and will remain that way. But it too is losing its culture and morality like Norway and has a homosexual Indian foreigner prime minister; what a joke. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.59.225.102 (talk) 11:46, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I always enjoy being told by quarter-baked drongos who've sucked on, and been suckered by the milk of infantile myths since they were in nappies, and have never been succoured by imbibing any serious nourishment ex fonte, that I am ignorant. I take such things as a Socratic compliment. Out of the mouth of boobs.Nishidani (talk) 11:53, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Allah vs God per WP:NPOV

apropos this, which of course was immediately reverted.

I think it obvious that there is something wrong in consistently referring to 'Allah', when, with regard to the other non-Christian monotheism, Judaism, one does not refer to 'YHWH' or Jehovah/Yahweh. This is a systemic bias.

'god-fearing Jew' (234,000 results)

'god-fearing Arab' (9,210 results)

Textually one has good authority for 'those that feared Yahweh' but Western tradition has abandoned it. God is God (whatever the deep differences are between the two conceptions) in Christian-Jewish dialogue. We still insist, however, on a distinction between 'Allah' and 'God', whereas Allah is the standard Arabic for God, used by all Arabic-speaking Christians. This should be brought up, as a policy-point that is, as far as I know, unclarified.Nishidani (talk) 12:31, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

I doubt whether others would find this interesting.

Yossi Gurvitz An Atheist in the Yeshiva: The education of Yossi Zvi Gurvitz Mondoweiss

September 29, 2017

I enjoyed it because he found in classical Greece an exit ramp, to mix metaphors, from the ideological straitjacket of Judeo-Christian thought.Nishidani (talk) 07:49, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Nishidani - it's not the same. Muslims use Allah when speaking in English (partly due to Muslims using Arabic, and only Arabic, for prayer and for the Quran) - e.g. - (see 0:45, 2:00), or (0:45 for instance), or (1:10 for instance). Jews, in contrast, do not use the proper Hebrew name for god in Hebrew, let along English - it avoided both when speaking (if reading a section with the proper name, it is replaced - typically with Adonai (mylord) and when writing (for instance, with a single ה, or alternatively with a euphemism). One uses euphemisms. In English - most Jews will say God (and if not (rarely these days) - a different euphemism). In fact, avoiding the proper name has reached the point when some English speaking Jews write G-d (, as well as other shortcuts) and not god as a carryover from the Hebrew practice. The google bias is there due to completely different speech and writing patterns. I suspect that if Jews didn't have the custom to avoid the proper name - we probably would seem more proper name uses in reference to Jews - as it is something no practicing Jew (and many non-practicing Jews) would say or use. When referring to other religions (e.g. Buddhism) - we do use the proper names of figures in their religions, as they do use them.Icewhiz (talk) 12:53, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

It's best not to seek information on the popular sites, like the ones you link to. You only get disinformation, in the sense that anyone who tries to improve their knowledge of Judaism (or any other religion) via such sources only gets trapped in modern ethnonationalist collectivist clichés that iron out all of the variations and dissonance in the respective traditions. I expect Arabic-speaking Jews would have had no problem in reciting the Shema Yisrael in Arabic, using 'Allah' as a replacement for 'Adonai Eloheinu'. Jews translated the Tanakh into Arabic precisely for this reason, because it was the primary language of their eastern communities. Perhaps you might like to check Saadia Gaon's tafsir to see how he handled such issues.

Where did you get the idea Arabs only use Allah when speaking other languages? My local Moroccan and Egyptian tradesmen say 'Dio',and I have often heard or read Arabs saying 'God' in English, as I have heard Jewish people say 'God', without thinking they are somehow thinking as Christians. Navid Kermani 's Gott ist schön: Das ästhetische Erleben des Koran, came out 6 years ago and no jihadi has, to my knowledge, taken offense. Same with Zahid Aziz, Introduction à l'Islam, (2012)

'Dieu est Rahim ce qui signifie qu'Il est Miséricordieux,.' p.17

Rabbis likewise have no trouble saying God/Dieu/Dio/ when referring to the tetragrammaton: Neil Gillman,The Jewish Approach to God: A Brief Introduction for Christians,2003 etc.Nishidani (talk) 14:09, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Some Muslim may use God in English - but many use Allah. Arabic-speaking Jews may have used Allah (though this was complicated by use of Judeo-Arabic languages, Judaeo-Spanish, as well as Aramaic language by some communities) - I don't not know off hand (though wouldn't have used this for Shema Yisrael - which would've been said in Hebrew even by lay people (as the least common denominator Hebrew prayer - just as the Shahada and Takbir would be something just about any Muslim would say in Arabic), but in day to day or in more esoteric instances - perhaps). Note it was permissible according to some for Jews to pray in a mosque, whereas praying in a Church is considered to be a "big problem" (due to the trinity and icons). however no practicing Jew uses the tetragrammaton (any most non-practicing as well) - this is avoided - thus a Jew (Rabbanim included) in English will always use god or some other replacement - in fact the most common use of the tetragrammaton in English seems to be by Jehovah's Witnesses which is Christian (or derived as per POV).Icewhiz (talk) 14:34, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

The Mishna allows prayers like the Shema Yisrael to be said in any language, and it was so prayed in Arabic, since most Jews in Arabic-speaking lands did not know Hebrew, as most Jews in the Mediterranean 2000 years ago spoke and read only Greek, and prayed in that language as often as not.Nishidani (talk) 14:45, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

ps. it's best not to bold some sentence that contains a cliché, the implication being your interlocutor doesn't know the ABC of such things. Entering a church is, in the general orthodox tradition, forbidden, not because of the Trinity. Halakhic rulings are fuzzy, but the general rule goes back to the old interdiction against Jews entering a city where any structure containing idols had been raised. Of course, most Jews couldn't give a fuck for such nonsense, since curiosity about art, architecture, history and human culture etc trump the stupidity of bigots in the clerisy of any faith. Nishidani (talk) 14:58, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

And no one could of course pronounce the tetragrammaton anywasy since no one knows how it was to be properly pronounced. You can't speak a word you can't pronounce.Nishidani (talk) 15:04, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Allowed, yes (contrast this with Islam's exclusive use of Arabic, of course most Christian branches are much more language permissive) - however most communities prayed in Hebrew - and the Shema in particular would be something most community members would've been able to say in Hebrew - even if they knew little else. So yes - possibly said also in Arabic - making the use of Allah in the Shema more prevalent (rarely used) than the use of the tetragrammaton (in the past 2000 or so years - since the advent of Rabbinic Judaism - never used). The point I'm trying to make - is that Jews (in the past 2000+ years) never use the proper name - and typically use the language equivalent god (as long as it isn't an idol...) in whatever language they are speaking. And yes - pronunciation of the tetragrammaton is to a large extent lost (though possible to reconstruct) - since it has been suppressed by Jews for 2000+ years - this is an effect of Jewish use, not the cause.

Regarding churches - yes... it is complex.... Alot of blood bad between Jews and Christians (heck - the Christian bread & wine "thing" caused various Jewish prohbitions)... And needless to say much of the finest art and architecture in Europe is in masterpiece churches.Icewhiz (talk) 15:06, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Generalizations are either high-order syntheses of a complex cluster of facts cautiously made in order not to violate any detail in the secondary order under summary, or they are just impressions, opinions, etc. It's not proven that most Jewish communities prayed in Hebrew, and the reason is simple. You are taking the word 'Jew' as having an inclusive valency which defies the huge variations of Jewish traditions. Your premise, for example above, is gender-biased: while Ashkenazi Jewish men who prayed in a synagogue would use Hebrew, their wives and daughters in Europe would pray in Yiddish, from such sources as the Seyder Tkhines. That means one half of the community did not pray in Hebrew.Nishidani (talk) 15:35, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

We might argue on the length of time the respective genders spent praying vs. possibly more productive pursuits, however neither gender uttered (in the vast majority of cases - halachik dissenters might've) the tetragrammaton in whatever language they were praying.Icewhiz (talk) 15:50, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

That's not a reasoned reply, it is persisting in an opinion in the face of an obvious fact that exposed the premise of the generalization you used, and its lack of historical pertinence. The tetragrammaton is a furphy in the argument I proposed. Judaism, like all religions, changed its opinion after several centuries, and decided not to pronounce God's name in Hebrew (or rather you could no longer hear the High Priest shout it 10 times from the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur). It was a word that could be only said on one day at one place in the world, and with the destruction of the Temple, its justifying context was lost.

You appear to have forgotten the starting point: This is an English encyclopedia, which must be global and neutral. The concept of God shared by the 3 monotheisms, all genetically related, is denoted by a different term in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic etc., but in English we say 'God'. No one writes, the YHWH of the Jews, or the theos of the Christians, but there is a tendency to differentiate the Arab word as denoting a different concept. Westerners allow that the standard English term, 'god' (or dieu, dio, Бог (as in bok(er tov), Gott, etc.) according to cultural context, can be used for the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic deity, despite the fact that each of these religions describe key aspects of that entity in decidedly different ways. It is therefore reasonable to suggest that a residue of the millennial old hostility to Islam subsists in our (lazy wikipedian) persistence in allowing 'God' to cover both the Jewish texts, and the Christian texts, but reserve for Arabic texts the indigenous term, implying it is qualitatively different. It is not: a large part of the Qu'ran comes straight out of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Christian and Jewish concepts of God are as alien to each other as the Islamic notion might be to either, yet we treat the Jewish and Christian texts re God as referring essentially to the same metaphysical reality. It's pure prejudice, racist at the core.Nishidani (talk) 16:23, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	nice article, Khalil Beidas. ORES says it is GA, so you could push it through the process if you wanted a green badge. cheers. Leetotherear (talk) 19:34, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

That's very decent of you. Of the Palestinian bios I did, however, Muhammad Najati Sidqi is my favourite. As for GA, well, I don't have that much time to get involved in any wiki formal applications/processes. The important thing is not formal approval, but simply doing the kind of job GA asks us to strive towards achieving. My old man, who had a fair array of medals on his chest when marching in commemoration of his mates who didn't make it through the war, always felt uncomfortable about what he called 'fruit salad'. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 20:03, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Cheers on behalf of ZF for your superb comments. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:13, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Have you thought about creating an infobox for the Australian aborigines?

I think these articles lack an infobox. First I figured out it will be good to have a map on the upper-right side of the page, with a pin on the location of the tribe, but I realised that it would also make sense to have an infobox.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 08:15, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Sorry I find it offensive most names for anything about Australian indigenous people - we stopped the usage of the term natives since the 1950s I think JarrahTree 08:20, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Forgot how to spell aborigines, so used the word natives. Aparently its offensive. Oh well.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 10:21, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

I think people are far too touchy about names, while (Jarrah excepted of course) relatively uninformed about the real history of aboriginal/native peoples (the world over). If I had time I would go through every city, town and patch of terrain about which we have articles, and note there the tribe(s) which originally inhabited the area. As the Australian city/town articles stand, only about 1 in a 100 mentions who lived in the area before the coming of whites, and the history sections start with the colonist(s) who founded the modern site. I find that offensive.

Apropos 'aborigines'. I happened to be in Australia during the Whitlam years, and remember vividly Whitlam's handing over land back to the original owners at Wave Hill. On checking his speech, I see he mentioned in sequence, Australians, black Australians, Aboriginal Australians, and specifically Vincent Lingiari's Gurindji people. The iconic gesture at least is recorded here. I'm sure the run of John Howards and, what's the fellow's name, that Jesuit-educated twit who has a name, and had a behavior, reminiscent of Abbott and Costello?, no doubt all used some voguish politically correct term, but in their acts they were throwbacks to the racist world of Australia as an imperial colonial outpost, comfortable with its progressive pride in the necessary genocide of the foundational century.

Once you get into politically correct usage, it's not that you have a certified stability in naming, or that prejudice just disappears. As to Aboriginal, it is, to anyone with a Latinate feel for English, deeply complimentary, meaning 'there from the pristine beginnings of time'. Of course if an indigenous Australian dislikes being called an 'aborigine', then only a prick would insist on the term. The last time I was out there, a western Australian aborigine, who looked like he had not a tincture of 'white' blood in him, self-identified as both 'aboriginal', and as a member of a specific Westralian tribe, but insisted he was more than that, since his paternal grandfather had been Scottish, and he was equally proud of that lineage. Indeed, his primary cultural identification was with the Greek Argonauts, about which he knew a lot. Bolter himself is 'Israeli', 'Jewish' but has a fascinating mixture of French, Sephardim, Ashkenazi etc.etc., family links, unless I am mistaken, and each has a place in his cosmopolitan identity formation.

In English, ethnic slurs are typically formed by abbreviation into monosyllables or disyllables: Aborigines is neutral, 'abos' is racist; Palestinian is neutral, 'Pally' is a put-down: 'Polish', 'Italian', 'Greek', 'Arab', 'Chinese', 'Japanese', 'Jewish' neutral,' 'Polack,Ity, Dago, Wop (Worthy Oriental Gentleman), Chink, Jap/Nip, 'Jew' etc., all potentially or really offensive. My father, as usual, gave me a hint as to handle this: avoid the generic. He befriended some American soldiers, looking a bit lost and lonesome, sitting outside the Moana hotel on Waikiki beach back in the early 60s and asked them where in the States they came from. One said, 'well sir, we're actually of Indian origin'. 'Oh, really?' Dad replied, 'which nation?' They were amazed by this: all their lives they had been identified as 'American Indians', a term which they used but only in deference to white prejudice, and here was an utter stranger asking them if they were Iroquois, Cherokee, Sioux, Paiute,Chocktaw, Kiowa, Navaho etc. They were Navaho.

As an infobox, you're right, Stav, but for the moment it's a matter of priorities to get the basic bibliography in place with links, and an outline of the ethnographic details -language, country, history, etc-. The two biggest gaps are in formats to get across the kinship structures in tabulated form, and maps showing their relative place among the historic tribes of every region. But those are big undertakings and beyond my abilities.Nishidani (talk) 16:08, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Anyone interested in brilliant oratory might like to listen to Pearson's commemoration of Gough Whitlam here, particularly 15 minutes into the talk.Nishidani (talk) 19:14, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Let me second the suggestion for an infobox. You can peruse Misplaced Pages:List of infoboxes and choose one that looks easy to adapt, then some infobox editor can adapt it for you. I think the main things to insert are the tribe name and a map with a location pin, but you will think of others. Note that fields are automatically omitted if no value is given, so fields for which only some tribes have a known value are fine to include. Zero 01:08, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

I think people are missing the point here - nishidani cannot even project tag or categorise much - as an editor is far more interested in the content - boxes are hardly the thing to be coming to this talk page - probably the last... mind you the missive about the about the transient nature of labels is worthy of a close read as to its perspicacity - and as he says the issues here are beyond his capacity to fix here on wp en JarrahTree 03:01, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Compromise?

Of course, I don't own any pages I create: I've never removed the info boxes that I find, and have only edited them down when they appear to hijack the article, i.e. stuff in all of Tindale's alternative names and the like. They should be summary, short and sweet. If anyone can think up a minimal template along the lines Zero suggests, and plunks it here, then I'll duly add it to at least the last 200 or so articles I have to write up (yeah, I'm a lazy ****, botting off other people's good will, apart from the fact one pushes on with a certain fatigue, after spending days up olive trees picking the crop for oil presses). The coordinates are the easiest problem, since they exist for every tribe (whether reliable or not is another thing, because often Tindale's determinations have been questioned), and are readily available by examining the searchable on-line copy's alphabetical list of his magnum opus, or magnum o'piss as I believe his critics in Australia might call it.Nishidani (talk) 08:44, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

makes me think of basils great eureka moment about the darwin grass people in 'the sick who do not speak' - he loved telling the story how camp at wallaby cross missed and the subsequent paper solve it... displacement and divergence - thats the style I say - JarrahTree 11:37, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

E.g.Peter Sutton,Native Title in Australia: An Ethnographic Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2004 pp.46ff. isbn 978-1-139-44949-6, but for the moment can't find the right article for it.Nishidani (talk) 12:16, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Ngadadjara

Hello Nishidani,

I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Ngadadjara for deletion in response to your request.

If you didn't intend to make such a request and don't want the article to be deleted, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions.

Xx236 (talk) 14:18, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

trying to mke sense

Just off hand. Can you help me stop going off my 'nana'?

haha im in the tree anyway, and its not a grandmother or banana tree either... no need to worry..

In view of the range of names that do not even appear to be related in some articles about people, languages etc -

I think a fear about any principle at risk - is unfounded - the possible usage of redirects/cross ref'g and clear correlation of the corroborating information (as ex-plained to me on my talk page) is not committing and offence or issue. Adequate referencing and low level personal doubt exhibited does not constitute anything untoward imho. Please go ahead JarrahTree 07:26, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, will do. Fuck but these are hard to do, in the sense that Tindale refers you to sources, so you read them and can't find anything except a name. Kaberry's 1935 article names but doesn't distinguish much between the Arnga, Yeidji, Wilawila etc., but is full of detail assuming the data all applies to the several tribes. The editor here is stymied from adding the rich material because it is not specified which tribe any datum relates to. Idem Stuart's The Land of Opportunity (1923) full of details but never mentions a tribe by name, though you know from the geography it must be the Kambure etc., here and the Yeidji there. It means one dutifully examines 100-200 pages per diem, only to squeeze out a few drops because the rules of editing don't allow inferences. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 08:37, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Dispute on Lead Section of Im Tirtzu

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Manus Regional Processing Centre

Re your edit. and summary

"What happened to the lead. No trace of the intense criticism aroused by these lager conditions, and bureaucratic-political obtusity."

- Nothing happened to the lead.There was never anything there about "intense criticism" because they had not been added to the body text. Maybe you could add a relevant paragraphs/s?
- What do you men by "who wrote this ? some foreign offi toeing the official template language?"

• What is a "foreign offi"?
  

- Page also needs more updating as AFAIK all persons have been removed from the Centre, and that isn't mentioned either at the moment. Regards, 220 of 01:25, 28 November 2017

I'll get round to it if no one else does. The article strikes an outside observer who reads up on the topic as (a) written straight out of government papers: the jargon used is only found in bureaucratese (b) and totally ignores the intense criticism over the years aimed at the way the government handled the issue. 'Some foreign office bureaucratic'. The body of the article needs to build up a criticism section, you're quite right. Sources abound, and those who wrote the paper fell short of their job in omitting to mention to obvious.Nishidani (talk) 11:46, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

I did do these edits. 220 of 06:43, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that work, I'll review it and add more material as time and health allows. Regards. Nishidani (talk) 12:15, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

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A beer for you!

I can't really imagine working extensively with Israel-Palesteinian related topics. 辛苦您了！ Alex Shih (talk) 04:01, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

謝謝.我出生在一家酒吧! And don't even think of it. There are better nightmares. As to being tired, there's an easy remedy for that - rereading Endō Shūsaku's 海と毒薬, which, among so many grisly things, has a stimulating exploration of the concept of fatigue (疲れ) in all of its nuances. Thinking about a concept which has personal ramifications often cures the state of mind that suffers from its effects. Cheers, Alex. Nishidani (talk) 13:08, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Enjoy your much deserved beer!....for some reason, editing in the IP area made me think of Flash mobs...Take this: I logged on one day, getting several pings from a talk page.... It turned out I had been discussed on he.wp, one lady there had apparently mistakenly assumed that I was the writer of the Khirba article...and immediately two other editors ping me...without even doing a simple check of the history of that article. If they had, they would have seen that I had never even edited the damn article!

Now, that one editor made a mistake, is one thing, but two other parroting the same mistake, without even a rudimentary check?? I mean, much as I respect, say, you, or Zero0000, I would never just copy what you are saying without doing any checking! (No offence meant!) ...you are both human, and humans do mistakes. Ah, well... enjoy your beer! (I prefer wine, myself...) Cheers, Huldra (talk) 21:34, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Kokata

Just wondering – I notice we already have an article Kokatha Mula. Are these the same as Kokata? --NSH001 (talk) 08:31, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Yep. So I guess I'll have to delete my more recent stub, which I was gunna woik on taday.Nishidani (talk) 09:45, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

On second thought, the one source on that page doesn't mention 'mula', The only variation is Kokata, which is universally attested in the older literature, and Kokatha - how the descendents spell it now. So even if I deleted my page and put the information there, that Kokatha Mula article would require a change of title, even more laborious. Nishidani (talk) 13:37, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

And things are getting tougher on the home-run or last leg. For some confounded reason, some glitch means that I can no longer read pages at Google Books. The page comes up as grey, and does not allow me to search elsewhere in the same book. Perhaps they've twigged to the fact I've been ransacking and rummaging like a pirate through tens of thousands of pages without so much as a thank you note.Nishidani (talk) 16:21, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

If it helps, I often find that Amazon will let me see more pages than google books. Are you using the Italian version of google, which is probably what you're getting by default? So you could also try google.com or the UK version of google. In any case, I actually find Amazon easier to use than Google. I wouldn't put a URL to Amazon in a book cite, though, as some people object to it as link to a "commercial site", which I find a strange argument, given that Google is also a commercial site. I'll ponder the name a bit further, but I think I'll wind up simply redirecting Kokatha Mula to Kokata for now (quick and easy to do). --NSH001 (talk) 18:20, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

It appears to be a serious glitch. Every google page comes up a blank grey, though the page no is indicated that I got there. I did withdraw from google books to stop them making my stuff searchable. Amazon still allow this, using versions bootlegged by a major international publishing house, which refuses to even pay me my copyright dues. 'Vengeance is mine', saith the Lord of digital creation ! I find Amazon less searchable, quite anal in fact and I only use it if the precise page number is not given for text in google scholar. In that regard, Amazon will always yield up the precise pagination for quoted text. Damn it. It really hampers my side of our project. It means 100-150 tribes mightn't nhave their pages done after exacting checks on the academic sources at Google Books. I used to be able to read 50-100 pages, even if the usable data extracted was just a few lines, for most tribes. Zilch from here on in.Nishidani (talk) 20:31, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Can you give a few examples where you're having this problem? I've just looked at a few random examples on google, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem to have changed (hard to be sure though, as google has only ever given a partial view, unless the source is public domain). I do get some blank pages where it says "loading" at the top, but they do eventually load. I don't see any greyed-out pages. Perhaps if you're editing on an old and slow computer, that might be the cause? Even if google books is fucked, all is not lost, as you've still got access to public-domain sites for older books and JSTOR for journals and (some) books. Must be annoying if someone is not paying you your copyright/royalty fees. I thought the penalties could be quite severe for violating copyright? --NSH001 (talk) 21:51, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

It's a slow, old computer. I've put up hundreds of links to pages on those 430+ tribal articles, and a random clicking shows none are now visible, even if one waits a half an hour. The same things are happening with my downloads from biodiversity for old anthropological texts. They email you an email address which you click ona and download into the relevant file. Well, for 2 days, the email arrives, I click on it, and it won't load, so no more downloading from that rich site either, though one can read the texts on-line. So it is a general state of the computer. I have a nephew who's an expert in quantum mechanics, whom I should see in the festive period. I'll try to get him to fix whatever it is. My pet companion for 20 years, while I was taking my wife to Rome for some medical texts, plopped down in her usual waiting spot, a pothole from which she could wait for our return. She died there some minutes before we got back. No bones were broken, so it can't have been a car. I've just buried her. A string of bad luck.Nishidani (talk) 20:01, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Might be time to consider getting a new computer? Though you'll probably have to put up with Windows 10, unless you can get a geek nephew/friend to get hold of a copy of Windows 7 and install it on top of Windows 10 for you. I have 2 laptops on my desk, the older one is Windows 7, which I refused to allow to upgrade itself to Windows 10 (turned out to be the right decision), but the newer one is Windows 10 (OK once you get used to it, but I'm not a big fan). They're cheap enough nowadays that I prefer to have two machines in case one fails. So sorry to hear of your loss, hope she wasn't in any pain – and that your wife's health turns out OK. --NSH001 (talk) 22:38, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, I'm a tinkerer, and used old TVs and fridges that have lasted three decades. I remember some time ago that there was a reset programme that enabled one to set back the computer's system a week or so, and, using it, resolved some glitches. I'll try that first, then using my uncle's MAC to see if I can download the stuff on a pen and transfer it here, or see if a computer technician can reboot it with just windows7, and, if all that doesn't work get the nephew in. I never hurry over these things.Nishidani (talk) 12:09, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

WP:AE

Please be aware that I reported your edit warring and inferior editing at WP:AE. Debresser (talk) 17:05, 3 January 2018 (UTC)