h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think they should have a place, at least at this Universal Guide.

Sorry, I forgot to add the URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A459650

As far as I can see, this entry was written by Researcher 158058
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/U158058) who managed to write the entry on their homespace and is presumed to be on some excessive lunch break. If that's an alias of you (or if you are willing to take over working at it) then you should copy the contents into a new A-number entry.

Notes after a short review : some typos to be corrected, and IMHO the entry is somewhat biased towards the palestinians.

This A-number entry seems to be the internal copy of the personal space (U...) which is automatically generated by h2g2; at least there are the same conversations on both pages. Like Bossel, I would recommend to create a new article, as a personal space could never be an edited entry.

Apart from the typos I would think it's a good article worth being edited. I'm not too sure about the bias thing, since most of the entry is about facts, which as far as I know are correct. As I first read the title in PR, I feared sort of a propaganda article which it is definitely not. Other opinions?

This entry is quite bias, I must say...
Israel wasn't "created"- it got it's independence on 1948 from the UN.
Rabin was the Priminister, not the President.
The "peace process" shouldn't be written inside "s.
A big debate still goes on around the "plan of parting", who was suggested to the Palastinians before the independence of Israel, and to which, unfortunately, they refused.
You must mention chairman Arrafat, as a main character in the PLO organization.
You must make it more neutral, because currently- it's not.

Lady Elly
Scout

It is not as biased as it could have been. I would agree that Arrafat should be mentioned, and the fact that the PLO is (was?) a terrorist organisation. However I would say that Israel was created (it wasn't there, then it was there - it was created) and it gives an idea that there was more to it than just the UN handing out a piece of paper. The Diaspora could be discussed in greater depth, and I would like to hear about 'The Plan of Parting'. Just my £0.02, until later....
BCNU - Crescent

The idea of a Home for all Jews of the world didn't begin in 1948, and some people here would say Israel never stopped existing even through the Babilon Exile... I'm quite left winged, so I find no point in those arguments, but Jews HAVE been living year a long time before it was declared as Israel, first under the Othoman Empire, then under the British Mandate.
I don't know if it's referred to as "The Plan of Parting", that's just literal translation from Hebrew, but basically, the Britts, I believe, wanted to devide Palestine into 2 parts- 1 for the Palastinians, the other for the Jews. The Palastinians considered the proposition as offending, and abandoned it. I'm sure they regret it now...
And PLO was, and still is, a terrorists organization...
So are the Hamas, Hizballah, The Muslim Brothers, The Fatakh, The Islamic Jihad and many others.

This article is not biased, it is just verry wildly inaccurate.

1. A rough timeline:

5th Century BC - The Jewish 2nd temple is destroyed and the jews are deported from Israel (called "Kenaan" then).

Year 70AC - Another deportation, this one more thurral and lasted longer. (This one was by the Romans)

7th Century AC - The first muslem EVER was born (Muhammad) and Islam is created.

So you see, the land was jewish Long before muslems existed!

2. The origin of the name "Palestinian"
Palestinians are called so after the biblical Philistines. The Biblical Philistines were originated in european islands in the medeterenian sea. The people who are called Palestinians today are originated in Asia - Saudi Arabia.

People were called Palestinians if the lived in the reigion of Palestine. All the Jewish that lived there were called Palestinians as well. My girlfriend's grandfather has Palestinian written in his ID card.
The Arab Palestinians just kept the name after Israel was declared or created or however you want to call it, whilst the Jews became Israeli.

3. The "Creation" of Israel:
A certain amount of Jews always stayed in Israel, and a lot tried to get to Israel but were prevented from doing so by the Othoman
(Turkish empire of the time) and later by the british.

After WW2 and the holocaust, it was decided to give the Israelies a home (this was done by the "Parting Plan" or whatever it was called in English).

The Jewish were glad to get what they were offered - a bit over a third of the area of Israel nowdays. These areas had verry little Arab population.

The Arabs did not agree with this and started a war which is called by the Israeli people "The Independance War". In this war 4 countries tried to destroy the newly created Israel, but were defeated and the Israelies concured in this war a lot of land.

I won't go through all the wars, but they were all similiar, the Arab countries around Israel came to destroy Israel, and Israel won, concuring land in the proccess.

4. Palestinians and Arabs in and out of Israel.
Israel is well over 150 times smaller then the state of New York.
There are over 30 Arab coutries covering a lot of Asia and some of Africa. Israel is near the border between Asia and Africa (Used to be on the border, but we returned that part to Egipt in the peace proccess with them which is working out OK).

In Israel there are 2 main types of Arabs - the first are equal rights citisens (although they can't serve in the army, and every other Israely must go for 3 years [girls only 2 years]) the second are Palestinians. The difference is that Palestinians are people who fought against Israel, and Israeli Arabs are people who didn't.

All the palestinian refugees in other arab countries that want to come to Israel, are people that ran away in the wars and now (20 to 50 years later) want to return.

5. Current affairs:
You may notice horrible news photography of childrean being fought with and shot at. Some of them are true. But these children are fighting. Mostly with rocks, but also with guns and bombs. A few months back a child with a schoolbag rode his bycicle near an Israeli post and blew himself with the charge in his bag in order to kill the Israeli guards.

I can't understand how a mother sends her son to do such a thing, but this happened in the year 2000! and there are many stories like it.

Also the news reports are verry biased because of verry rich Arabs that invest in International media companies like CNN and others (I don't know if there are any in BBC, but my guess is that there are).

Anyway, this article is far from informative, it is influential and even that only a bit.

Yours,

Dancer (scout)
[email protected]

Hello everyone.
First I must say that I might be a bit bias myself, being a soldier in the IDF (Israel Defence Force).
Here are my comments about the entry and all the postings so far:

The entry mentions palentinians being very educated. This sounds ridiculous. They are poor people. Perhaps this includes also the jewish people that live in the territories that were conquerd by Israel in 1967.

The 1967 war was a defensive war from Israel's point of view. Israel kept the territory it had won over in the war so that such a war could not happen again. These areas give Israel a tactical advantege due to their geography.

The Intifada wasn't lead by women and children. They were put to the front by the men and the leaders, as they are today (I have seen it myself).

The entry says that the palestinians are poor because of the Israely control of resources. First I must say that Israel only controls everything that goes in and out of the PLO's teritory because there are terrorists getting into Israel and weapon getting into the PLO's teritory. And second, just last week a little bomb hit one of the palestinian leader's (Jibril Rajub) house, and his jacuzzi(!) was damaged, so you know where the real money goes...

The PLO is still a terror orgrnisation and it is recognized as such by many countries. The Fatah is an arm of the PLO. It's no secret.

The difference between Israely arabs, who are Israely civilians, and palestinians, who are not (i.e., they don't have the civilians right, like voting and suchlike), is that the Israely arabs are the people who stayed in Israel when it was "created" in 48. The palestinians ran out of Israel into the areas that Israel got hold of in 67.

If you don't know, the PLO is a Fascist organization. There is a hirerchy and everything. Palestinians who express their resistence to the organization are brutaly opressed, and their families also get hurt. They use the media (radio, televiosion, papers) to brainwash the masses against Israel, so they can have mothers telling their children to go ahead and blow themselves up with some Israelys, because they will be Shahids (saints) in heaven.

I wish I could tell you more about the PLO military abilities, but I'm afraid it's too classified for the net.

And for as a final note, I just want to say that the world will always be on the side of the weak rather than the side of the right.

A Perfectly Abnormal Guy

I never meant to arise a debate on such a touchy matter, not at h2g2. I don't know who wrote the entry, though noticed it was a bit old. Is this an impediment for its edition?

On the other hand, there can be found many entries about, for example, Ireland, without any mention about Gerry Adams or IRA, and some about Spain, my country, far much more biased or subjective than this one. How much truth do we need to consider that something is true? Are then personal points of view false? Do they contravene Home Rules?

In my oppinion, this entry is quite well balanced, unlike Dancer's posting, and it´s full of information few people bothers to collect. This is surely not all that can be said about Palestine or Israel or Middle West etc. but is not false nor malevolent nor propagandistic.

APSG, Dancer- I think we should wait for other, non Israeli comments, but I think we should throw away this inaccurate, offensive entry to the sin bin...
Let's just wait for awhile

Elly

"The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently innaccurate"

I think H2G2 is exactly the place that should provide space for a debate, views and information on the Isreali/Palestinian problems.

So I'd suggest a move to the writers workshop, rather than the sin bin!

Also, are there any palestinian researchers out there?

Z.

I too feel that an impartial article dealing with Palestine should be written and part of the Guide.

However, unless this article covers the whole history of this particular piece of the earth, bias is created just by choosing what date to start the history from.

A quick glance at my electronic Encyclopedia Britannica show somany interlocking entries on the entire modern Palestine situation that to cover all the issues here and cover them fairly would be a University project.

Being an American Jew, it seems only honest to say that there is no way I could hope to participate in such a project without there being questions of bias. Given the large part that Great Britain played in that arena after WWI it seems likely that protests could be lodged against a British writer as well.

Meanwhile for those who wish to better understand the controversy, I recommend the Encyclopedia Britanica articles on Palestine for what appears to be a reasonably fair and even handed treatment of all the major parties involved.

For those of you who have complaining about bias, please consider that in addition to the Israeli and the Palestininan people, it would seem necessary to consider the roles of the Lebanese, Jordanian, and Egyptian roles in this struggle and in the treatment of the Palestininan refugees as a bare minimum (and I do mean bare) before any such article could begin to be called fair. In addition, it seems plain to me, at least, that the UN, the US, the Turkish Empire, and Great Britain should also be included.

As far as a starting date for the current issues, I would suggest the rise of the Ottoman Empire with a nod to the Egyptian and Babylonian Empires and forward in lesser detail with particular attention to the various armies that went marching through that particular piece of geography.

I'm afraid though that unless a team of researchers takes this up there cannot be a definitive balanced article that mentions who happens to be living on any particular square foot of ground.

Maybe just a simple geographic survey? I didn't think so.

Barton

Workshop can be good, I got kind of upset last night...
And Ini- it's the Middle EAST!!!
Elly

Barton, well said. This is a difficult subject, especially when you take into consideration recent events. No matter who wrote an entry on Palestine, he/she would always be accused by the other side of being being biased. Thus said, I would recommend to actually withdraw the article from PR and have a university project instead.

As a side note, this PR thread proves again (I remember a case where an entry was edited which wasn't meant at all for the edited guide) that is rather problematic to recommend other researcher's entries, especially when the original author isn't on site for a while or quit h2g2 altogether. In this case, it would have been good to have his/her point of view in the discussion.

I don't want to enter into any argument here, as frankly this article is essentially factual and a lot of comments in this forum have been unjustified and unpleasant. I certainly don't think it should be sent to the sin bin, Elly, so just a few technical pointers:

I don't see why the Peace Process should be placed in inverted commas, or even in speech marks as it seems has been suggested here.
GuideML headers/subheaders would make the article much easier to read.
Several typos - "Paletine", "populour", etc.

I believe this should be a University project. It is a very large subject in itself and also offers the possibility of sparking off many other projects. This posting in itself could be used as a basis for a piece about the Palestinian people (history, everyday life, etc) and politics, economy, geography etc done separately.
As for bias: perhaps we could get a multi-ethnic team together to write the piece; and if they can't agree on overall wording we could include sections representing the viewpoints from each.
As stated before the Guide is not supposed to be "Accurate", and as "Reality" frequently fails to live up to "Truth" all we are left with is personal experience and opinion.
Peace to all. Stay cool and we'll get through this.

It's not factual and very cinical, Emily.
Trust me- my military service was spent near Ramallah, I know the inside stuff.
I'll ask to move it to workshop, but I won't have it edited THIS way!

Elly

It´s a good idea, Live Yogui, SchrEck Inc. also suggested the same. I´d like to start a project but my english is not very fluent, as you can see, it´d need a lot of corrections. Probably the best way to do it would be to add this conversation at some place, including the post hidden by moderators if they give it back to us; it also could be good to write two or three or as many different histories as involved points of view, each one starting from a different date if neccesary.

I wouldn't go that far and call it cynical, but I have to agree that there is a certain bias in that article. The Palestinians are described as the sweetest highly culturalized sheep tromented by the bad-bad Israelis. Not in a direct way, but after reading the entry, that's the message that comes across...

I do not think that this (i.e. the palestinians being a horde of poor innocent sheep) is true. I have not seen the so-called "occupied" areas personally, but from the news on tv and even from arabs I know, what I have is a completely different picture than the one presented here. Even my vanishing history-knowledge leads me to believe that a little more research and factuality could be useful...

Another reason why it should not belong to the edited guide:

After reading the article one might think:

"Palestinian piece of propaganda, cleverly disguised..."
"If these are palestinians, who are the people I see throwing stones and firing guns on tv?"
"What about sucide-attacks, car-bombs and pushing Israel into the Mediterranean?"

Or:

"Israelis are brutal ignorant marionettes of the west, poor poor palestinians"
"Israelis are being unfair against the poor yet highly culturallized civilization of Palestinians"

Either way, emotions come up. This should not happen after a factual entry. One might want to dispute facts or criticize statements. More like:

"I do not share the view of the article's author, what he wrote is not well researched, because this and that happened here and then"

"There is information missing here and there, because..."

OR

"The correct definition of a bar-mikveh is ..."

Anyway. That is not the kind of thought that rises from this article.

Just to end my contribution:
I do not think that the Israeli government (especially today) is innocent, I do not think that any government is innocent. I do not think that killing people (Jewish, Hindi, Indian etc...) is justifiable in any way. I do not think this article is good to go, because it makes people argument with emotions and not reason.

Shalom,

HELL