Talk:Gabi Ashkenazi

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Contents 1 1990-1992 2 Holocaust survivor father? 3 Rating 4 Dividing into sections

[edit] 1990-1992

There seems to be a conflict between sources regarding the period in Ashkenazi's resume between 1990 and 1992. Haaretz says: "In 1990 Ashkenazi was appointed commander of a reserves division..." while Ynet says "In the early nineties he was appointed as commander of the northern command armored brigade." I don't think he would have been promoted from brigade commander to northern command intelligence chief and then moved back to brigade commander, so I suspect that his command was either the 36th Division (IDF) or the 91st Division (assuming that the 91st is armored. Could someone with better Hebrew please do some research to help clarify this? GabrielF 23:55, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I would agree, though unfortunately I can't read a word of Hebrew. There are likely to be more articles on him in the near future, so that should help clarify the situation. Joshdboz 16:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I just found an article from the Jerusalem Post [2]. Although they mistakenly say that he commanded the Golani Brigade in the 1982 lebanon war, it does say that he commanded an armored division before acting as IDF liasion in Lebanon.Joshdboz 15:30, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Check the official CV at the IDF English site [3] They should know what they are talking about. Cymruisrael 08:26, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Holocaust survivor father?

Although the sources say so, I removed this as very likely erroneous, for the pure reason that Bulgaria saved all its Jews in WWII from deportation to death camps. For details, see History of the Jews in Bulgaria and Dimitar Peshev. Journalists may assume that if he came from once Nazi-controlled Europe, he must have been a Holocaust survivor, but that's not the case here. Todor→Bozhinov 13:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Not surprisingly, I got reverted without anyone paying attention to this post... I wouldn't exactly deem newspapers as totally reliable sources, particularly when discussing such details which journalists often guess ("Aha, his father was from Bulgaria, that's in Europe, in Europe there was the Holocaust, so he must have survived it!"). Based on what I said above, I'd like some more detailed and reliable sources which explicitly discuss his father's Holocaust experience in order to have this bit in the article. Todor→Bozhinov 15:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I did read your post before I reverted. There are several reasons why your change is unacceptable. (1) You are removing sourced information (2) You are basing your change not on specific information about Gabi Ashkenazi's father, but on a deduction that because he came from Bulgaria he couldn't have been a Holocaust survivor. (3) This deduction is highly suspect. There are plenty of ways a Bulgarian could have been a victim of the Holocaust. He could have been living outside of Bulgaria during the war. He could have been a national of those parts of Greece or Yugoslavia that were occupied by Bulgaria during the war and he could have been deported by the Bulgarian government. (4) When the information is sourced, the onus is on you, not me to provide more detail.

No, Bulgaria did not deport its Jews. You may very well be justified in trying to defend your country from charges of guilt by association. However, unless you have specific information about Gabi Ashkenazi's father, this is not the place to make that argument. GabrielF 16:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I apologize then. I suppose it'll stay that way, although "Bulgarian Holocaust survivor" sounds like an oxymoron to me. If he were from Greece or Yugoslavia, he couldn't have been a Bulgarian Jew IMHO. Anyway, I'm cool with leaving it like that, although the "Holocaust survivor" bit is still highly dubious and very likely wrong. Obviously, I can't beat the media ;) Regards, Todor→Bozhinov 18:08, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

You may be right and the media may be wrong. Honestly, there's no way for either of us to know. For what its worth, I searched for Ashkenazi's from Bulgaria in Yad VaShem's database of holocaust victims and came up with 33 people. Many of them seem to have been born in Bulgaria and then moved to Yugoslavia where they died. [4] I know it sounds strange to refer to a Bulgarian holocaust survivor, but there were even Americans who were trapped in Europe during the war and ended up in concentration camps. GabrielF 19:08, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

That's true... there's no way we could know for now, so I'm OK with sticking to what the media say, at least it's somehow sourced (whether it's reliable is another question) :) Todor→Bozhinov 19:57, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for resolving this. I hadn't been aware of the conflict when I added that fact. Joshdboz 22:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rating

This has been rated as 'Start'. It needs split into sections, good references and valuable information to reach B-class. however, it is a good article start. GDon4t0 20:55, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dividing into sections

I've divided the article into sections as required by the manual of style. I've tried to put the section breaks in the most logical places, early life, soldier and brigade commander in Golani, commander and northern command staff officer, general staff officer, etc. These are abstractions (he wasn't always in northern command during that section) so I'm not 100% sure if this is the best way to do it so I'm curious if anyone objects or has a better idea. GabrielF 19:18, 26 February 2007 (UTC)