User:GHcool

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About Me
This user lives in or hails from Los Angeles.
en This user is a native speaker of English.
BA This user has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Film.
A This user is an adult.
This user enjoys film.
A, B, and C This user prefers the serial comma.
This user participates in
WikiProject Israel.
WikiProject Films This user is a member of WikiProject Films.
This user thinks that registration should be required to edit articles.

I am a Los Angeles, California native working in the film industry with eight years of filmmaking experience in various fields of production. I have a degree in Cinema and Television Arts from California State University, Northridge where I have researched and written various film criticisms and historical analyses. I also have an interest in Israel-related topics.


Contents

[edit] Wikipedia contributions

I contributed substantially to the following articles. Articles marked with an "A" mean that, to the best of my understanding, they represent a reasonably complete picture of the issue. Articles marked with a "B" are incomplete and I encourage other Wikipidians to add or delete any information necessary.

[edit] Film production

Favorite source: The Filmmaker's Handbook by Steven Ascher and Edward Pincus

[edit] Specific films

Favorite source: The Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

[edit] Israel

Favorite source: The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East edited by Avraham Sela.

[edit] Miss Nelson

[edit] Views on Israel

I find that Wikipedians are a largely moderate bunch trying to find and publicize truth. However, there are some bad apples in every bunch who are trying to disseminate disinformation about Israel on talk pages and within articles. Rather than stand idlely by or commit the same straw man or ad hominem logical fallacies committed by the people who are abusing this website, I prefer systematically debunking disinformation inspired by Alan M. Dershowitz's book, The Case for Israel.

One way that fair-minded Wikipedians could help is by not getting emotionally involved in an argument with an anti-Semitic or anti-truth Wikipedian. Remember that most of these people are just ignorant beyond reason and that you must not stoop to their level. As calmly as you can, disect their accusations without resorting to their straw man and ad hominem tactics. Remember that the truth is its own defense. Lastly, remember that not all criticisms of Israeli policy are anti-Semetic or necessarily wrong. Have enough courage to treat a true claim with respect, even if you do not agree with the claimer's conclusion. And keep informed on Israel and read about her history.

[edit] What are the origins of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Ignorance about the origins of the Palestinian problem is perhaps the most common reason for Israel's critics to be so critical. The following is a summary of the historical narrative as I understand it. Feel free to disagree with me, but be prepared to produce solid evidence from reliable sources or else I will not be swayed.

To the best of my understanding, most of the present-day Palestinian refugees are decendents of Arabs (mostly Muslims) who lived in the area that is now known as Israel. These Arabs were mostly peasant agriculturalists, called felaheen, with an economy and sense of land ownership based largely on collective farming. The Jewish Zionists started emigrating to Palestine en masse after waves of anti-Semitism in Russia in the early 20th century, during which time the wealthier Jews legally bought land from the ruling Ottoman Turks and gave jobs to fellow Jews. The felaheen could not compete with the capitalistic system of economics and land ownership that the Jews were using to their benefit. By the time of the British Mandate, the economic disparities between Palestinians was perceived to be so large that riots against both Jews and Arabs in the upper classes started to become common. In 1947, the U.N. partitioned the country into two states: one Jewish, one Arab. The Arabs rejected the Partition Plan while the Jews accepted. In 1948, David Ben Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel and all hell broke loose. The two results of the Israeli War of Independence is the present-day State of Israel and the present-day Palestinian refugee problem.

[edit] Accusations vs. Reality

Below I have compiled the accusations I have debunked on various talk pages:

[edit] Are official Israeli sources reliable?

[edit] Accusations
  • "I believe the integrity of the encyclopedia is severely compromised by references to Israeli government web-sites. ... Israeli government web-sites should come with a 'health-warning'." - PalestineRemembered. Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. October 2006.
  • "This claim that Hezbollah targets civilians is a deranged Zionist POV which flagrantly violates Wikipedia's NPOV policy." - Jacob Peters. Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. October 2006.
  • "The IDF are the ones who are dishonest by claiming that every male killed in Lebanon was a member of Hezbollah." - Carbonate. Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. 00:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Reality

If Wikipedia did not quote the Israeli government on the issue of Hezbollah, the integrity of the encyclopedia would be severely compromised. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and army is as reliable as any other country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs or army. The Al Qaeda article cites the foreign affairs offices of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada without any challenge to the reliability (or "worthiness") of those nations' foreign affairs office. Because Israel is a democracy and has a greater degree of freedom of the press than any other nation facing similar circumstances reguarding its security, much of what the IDF and the government claim can be easily verified by independent research. Critics of Israel could easily do their own research into official Israeli claims rather than flat-out condemning them all as "unreliable."

As for the claim that Hezbollah does not purposefully target Israeli civilian areas, there are countless sources documenting the opposite.

Further information: Targeting of civilian areas in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict

I was in Haifa (Israel's third largest city) this summer and saw the aftermath of Hezbollah's wrath with my own eyes. As for the claim that Israel distorts collateral damage statistics, I challenge anyone to find definative proof from a reliable source of a claim by any IDF or any Israeli government official or publication stating that "every male killed in Lebanon was a member of Hezbollah."

[edit] Other accusations and responses

  • The Accusation: "The founders of Israel aspired to seizing the southern part of Lebanon and ethnically cleansing the Muslim inhabitants. They did this for years before Israel was established, and it's important we recognise that fact." - PalestineRemembered. Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. 20:49, 17 October 2006 (UTC). PalestineRemembered later edited this statement to read: "the fact that Israel (and it's founding fathers before 1948) intended to seize and ethnically cleanse the Muslim south of Lebanon is historical fact, amply justified just by the clips I've posted here" referring to a speech given by David Ben-Gurion in the 1930s. The Reality: I am not aware of any such aspirations in 1948. I don't doubt that Ben-Gurion could have said something to that effect, but even if he did, the inclusion of the quotation in the article on Hezbollah in that mannor is purposefully devious, manipulative, and appologetic toward Hezbollah. Furthermore, I see no mention in Ben-Gurion's quote of a desire for ethnic cleansing. It is at best a distorted exaggeration of a propogandistic speech made more than 30 years before the existance of Hezbollah.
  • The Accusation: "Is there any explanation as to how Hezbollah can target civilians when in fact the vast majority of those killed Israeli colonists in July-August 2006 were military thugs?" - Jacob Peters. Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. October 2006. The Reality: No, there is no explanation because the question is an unfair one and implies the truth of an outright lie. If I were to ask, "Is there any explanation as to how Michael Jackson invented a time machine?" people would not know how to answer such a question and I would probably look rather foolish for even proposing that it happened.
  • The Accusation: "You all seem to be forgetting that 'northern Israel' was in fact part of the Arab state in the comically unfair 1947 UN Partition. If Hizballah wants to, they can fire rockets on what is rightful Palestinian territory under Zionist occupation." Jacob Peters. Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. 20 October 2006. The Reality: Much of northern Israel, including Haifa, were part of the proposed Jewish state in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. This did not stop Hezbollah, a Lebanese organization unrelated to the Palestinian problem historically and certainly unrelated to the 1948 War of Independence, from bombing those cities. Furthermore, the north is not "Palestinian territory under Zionist occupation," but rather an annexed part of Israel since 1948 (37 years before the founding of Hezbollah).
  • The Accusation: "Hezbollah does not have the capability to deliberately target civilian areas. They have no air force. Their WWII-era Russian rockets are hopelessly primitive. Due to the extremely low civilian death toll inflicted by bombs fired by Hezbollah, it is dishonest to claim that Hezbollah deliberately targets civilian areas." Jacob Peters. Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. 02:01, 22 October 2006 (UTC) The Reality: "Your conclusion does not follow from your premise, even if your premise was true. You need to study logical reasoning." Isarig. Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 8. 04:40, 22 October 2006 (UTC). To expand upon Isarig's response, I'd like to rephrase Jacob Peters's argument in logical form: (1) Hezbollah has "no air force." (2) Hezbollah's "rockets are hopelessly primative." (3) The Israeli "civilian death toll inflicted by bombs" was "extremely low." Therefore, (4), Hezbollah does not and/or cannot target civilian areas within Israel. Now, let's look at each claim. Claim #1 and #2 are both true. Claim #3 is poorly defined. Do the "bombs" refer to katyusha rockets? What civilian death toll would be considered "extremely low?" And, as Isarig already stated, even if all three claims are true (and one can argue that they are), why would #4, the conclusion, necessarily follow? If anything, the opposite conclusion would follow from Claim #3 alone: Hezbollah does and can target civilian areas within Israel. Furthermore, Jacob Peters's conclusion contradicts his earlier statement that "If Hizballah wants to, they can fire rockets on what is rightful Palestinian territory under Zionist occupation." A more detailed analysis of that statement can be found above. Sadly, Hezbollah terrorism is not the only undisputable fact that Jacob Peters denies. Jacob Peters has spent signficant energy on Talk:Joseph Stalin trying to proove that the brutal leader of the USSR was not such a bad guy after all: "Calling an immensely popular government leader like Stalin a dictator is a blatant violation of NPOV policy. There is no basis to the claim that Stalin was a dictator." (Talk:Joseph_Stalin#POV_Introduction). It is also unsurprising to find that Jacob Peters has been blocked from Wikipedia no less than 6 times (as of December 13, 2006).[1] In short, because of the fact that Jacob Peter has a very limited knowledge of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, has an even more limited ability to argue logically and convincingly, and because he does not seem capable of making basic moral distinctions when it comes to world history, it is my opinion that he should no longer be taken seriously on topics pertaining to Hezbollah (that is, if he ever was taken seriously to begin with).
  • The Accusation: "Israeli soldiers defaced and destroyed private property just to spite the Lebanese people." - Carbonate. Talk:Hezbollah#Pie_chart_by_Carbonate_&_Liftarn. 00:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC). The Reality: If Carbonate had even glanced at the targeting of civilian areas in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict article, he would not say such things. Israeli Vice Prime Minister Eli Yishai stated the Israeli objective in the war as clearly as anybody has: "If one has to choose between hurting the Israeli home front or the Lebanese home front, I prefer that the Lebanese get hurt. It hurts me to see civilians hurt by our air force, but there is no choice. We cannot be bleeding hearts while our citizens are being hurt. If Lebanese citizens pay the price, they will rise up against Hezbollah."[2] To be sure, Lebanese bystanders were the greatest victims of this war, but the fact that they did not rise up against Hezbollah is not necessarily Israel's fault. This is a different argument altogether with at least two valid POVs, but this is far removed from the issue Carbonate is interested in, perhaps because this issue implies guilt on Hezbollah, something unfathomable in Carbonate's world-view.
  • The Accusation: "Israel lost soilders because they are poor fighters compared to Hezbollah." - Carbonate. Talk:Hezbollah#Pie_chart_by_Carbonate_&_Liftarn. 00:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC). The Reality: Hassan Nasrallah and his supporters made similar claims after the end of the war. The rest of the world did not. The fact that Carbonate seems to unconditionally accept and agree with Nasrallah's "assessment" of the war speaks volumes. Why did Hezbollah allow the IDF to destroy much of Lebanon if they were fighting on behalf of the Lebanese, as some Wikipedians seem to imply, and if they are better fighters than the IDF? And why is Nasrallah still in hiding while Ehud Olmert appears in public on a daily basis without fear? Certainly the IDF made many grave mistakes during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, but no reasonable person would claim that they are a weaker army than Hezbollah, for if they were, Israel would now be a Muslim state.
  • The Accusation: "[W]hat the Zionist regime did in the early 1900s when it landed on the shores of Palestine [was massacre] Palestinians by the thousand [sic]." - Haramzadi. Talk:Hezbollah#Terrorist_organization_III. 00:37, 19 November 2006 (UTC). The Realtiy: There is no reference to any such massacre in any history book or encyclopedia I have encountered. Such a massacre could not have taken place anyway because before 1948, there was nothing in existence that could be accurately labeled "the Zionist regime" no matter how liberally one defines either term. I challenge anyone to find a reliable source stating that any Zionist, Zionist institution, or even any Jewish institution was responsible for anything that could be described as a "massacre by the thousands" that took place "in the early 1900s" (i.e. the first twenty or so years of the twentieth century). It is not surprising that on the day after Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened a conference encouraging Holocaust denial, Haramzadi said that Ahmadinejad "is not anti-semitic [sic]" (Talk:Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad#Category:Anti-Semitic_people. 12 December 2006).
  • The Accusation: "I am sorry about this stupid question, but why do zionists keep on quoting this most unprofessional writer who have been repeatedly proved to plaigiarise many of his writings? He is an unreliable, hardly objective let alone scholarly in his writings." - 213.244.124.20. Talk:Palestine:_Peace_Not_Apartheid#Dershowitz_commentary. 5 December 2006. The Reality: Yes, Mr. Unregistered, you should be "sorry about this stupid question." It is not really a question at all, but an insult to a prominant commentator on this issue that is extremely careful with his sources (as proven by Harvard University's exoneration of any and all plagiarism accusations). Your charge that he is "hardly objective let alone scholarly in his writings" apply as much to Jimmy Carter as they do to Alan Dershowitz.
  • The Accusation: "With Israeli President Olmert's [sic] approval rating below 20% due to his strict Zionist policies toward separating all Jews from all Muslims, one must assume that the majority of Israel's citizens are not Zionist." - Pco. Zionism. 13 December 2006. User:Jpgordon was correct in reverting this edit for "either WP:NPOV or WP:NOR."[3] The Reality: As a member of WikiProject Israel, Pco implicitly agreed to abide by the project's stated "Goals" which clearly state that members should "[c]reate and maintain fair and unbiased information on Israel." The accusation above was written not in a Talk Page (where it would have just been considered rude and provocative), but in the actual article on Zionism, where it is unacceptable for the reasons mentioned by Jpgordon. There are many factors for Olmert's low approval rate within Israel, but that "separating all Jews from all Muslims" is one of those factors is extremely dubious because Olmert is anything but a hardliner. In fact, Olmert and his liberal/centrist Kadima Party won an election in 2006 against Benjamin Netanyahu and his conservative Likud Party. The notion that the Olmert government believes in "separating all Jews from all Muslims" is a purposely devious, selective, and twisted perception of the Israel's unilateral disengagement plan that crosses POV and OR lines. By this logic, Likud would have been Pco's party of choice in the 2006 Israeli election because a major part of its platform was against the Gaza disengagement! I hope that as a member of WikiProject Israel, Pco will conduct him/herself more respectfully of in the future.
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