Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Milhemet Mitzvah

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep. See for ex. Chaim Zimmerman's "The Prohibition of Abandoning Land in Eretz-Yisrael", Nativ, Vol. 7, March 2005. El_C 02:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Milhemet Mitzvah

Milhemet Mitzvah (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Stebbins 08:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. Non-technical, rarely used term. Michaelas10 (Talk) 13:37, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I suggest this was added because the term might reasonably be expected to find use in the near future, the way things unfortunately seem to be going. But it needs more support than this. There is surely a significant rabbinical literature which could be sourced an summarized. DGG 05:05, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Keep, but provide reliable sources. Specifically, the references to the original Jewish text. Otherwise, people will use this to make statements that are outright false. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zzmonty (talk • contribs)
• Rewrite. The article as it stands is not acceptable, does not cite sources and it's not written in prose but it's a collection of lists. -- dockingman^talk 06:15, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow. Zzmonty has completely rewritten the article. Although my initial reason for AfDing this article is no longer true, I agree with Dockingman that it is still unacceptable. Almost none of the information is cited or given context, and the opening paragraph is an obvious WP:NPOV violation. Stebbins 08:01, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached
 Please add new discussions below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 10:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

• Keep if reliable sources provided YamSan 23:53, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletions.   ⇒ bsnowball  13:54, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
• Wait for sources identifying notability. Also, if kept, the article needs to be accurate. While Judaism has nothing like the Islamic concept of Jihad and the original article engaged in POV original research by claiming this, the current edition is also inaccurate by claiming that all the wars referred to in Rambam's Mishneh Torah under this category were purely defensive. It is not clear to me the concept is as unnotable as claimed, although the burden is and should be on the editors writing the article. For example, the Modern attempts to revive the Sanhedrin article notes that the current Sanhedrin-revival-attempt has claimed expansive powers for itself including a claim that historically only a Sanhedrin had power to declare war in a Jewish state and that it and not the Israeli civil government is the sole legitimate successor to those powers. It has issued a series of "rulings" on contemporary circumstances, developing a variety of interpretations of the Jewish law of war, including an attempt to develop an interplay between classical Jewish law and modern concepts such as international treaties. In doing so, it has opined extensively on the concept of milchemet mitzvah, for which it has developed a particularly expansionist interpretation. Here are just a couple of examples from a large and emerging body of recent work. It states in its "Declaration Concerning the Disengagement from Gaza" that "The commandment to 'inherit and dwell' (Deut. 12:29) in the Land of Israel is obligatory upon every Israeli government. In this regard Israel is commanded by G-d to conquer the entire expanse of the Land of Israel within its Biblical boundaries, including the Gaza strip." See e.g.[1]. It provides another interpretation of Maimonides' Milchemet Mitzvah ("obligatory war") concept here: [2] ~--Shirahadasha 18:24, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
• Changed vote to Keep. When I nominated this article for AfD, it contained two sentences and had no evidence of notability. Now I think it is clear that the article ought to be kept, although it is still in need of drastic cleanup. Stebbins 23:39, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Delete as it stands now (a list of quotes) it shouldn't be in wikipedia, but wikisource etc. but also is there a problem with lack of context, these injunctions don't apply to the current era do they? (not rhetorical q)  ⇒ bsnowball  16:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.