Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 13

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Contents

Duplicated information

There are several duplicated information in the body of the article. We should remove one of them to reduce the size of the article.

  1. Position on armed struggle and suicide attacks and Targeting policy
  2. The beginning of Position on the United States with Accusations of Bombings, terrorism and kidnappings

Please add other cases to this list.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 06:15, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes. I would recommend that the shorter of the two in both cases be deleted. --GHcool 06:32, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Instead of removing the shorter one I prefer to move and merge less relevant part in the more relevant part. I mean in the first case we can remove this
the most notable of which were the April 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in which 63 people were killed[65] and the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing in which 241 American military personnel were killed[65] Hezbollah has denied involvement in the latter attack.[66] According to researcher Robert A. Pape, "from 1982 to 1986, Hezbollah conducted 36 suicide terrorist attacks involving a total of 41 attackers against American, French, and Israeli political and military targets in Lebanon ... Altogether, these attacks killed 659 people, most of who were off-duty soldiers in no position to defend themselves, such as the 241 U.S. Marine who were killed as they slept." [67].
In the second case we can merge one of them in the other. --Sa.vakilian(t-c) 06:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I like that idea. Welcome back, Sa.vakilian. --GHcool 06:44, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Concerns with the cited manifesto

I'm concerned with the citations being made using the version of the manifesto currently cited in the article. The currently cited manifesto carries a note at the bottom:

"This paragraph did not appear in the original translation published by the Jerusalem Quarterly. It is possible that this ommision is due to the fact that the source (al-Safir) for the translation did not include this text, which appears in the original Hizballah Program. The original Program was published on 16 February 1985. The organization's spokesman, Sheikh Ibrahim al-Amin read the Program at the al-Ouzai Mosque in west Beirut and afterwards it was published as an open letter "to all the Opressed in Lebanon and the World". It should be emphasised that none of Hizballah's web sites have published the full text of the organization's program, and they prefer to publish the 1996 electoraral program which was intended for the specific propoganda campaign before the Lebanese Parliamentary elections in 1996."

If true that they didn't publish versions of this program after 1996, that should be noted. Did Hezbollah change their goals? Also, it's worth noting that this version of the manifesto is being put out by a pro-Israel advocacy organization. I would prefer if we can find a version of this manifesto from a reliable source and replace the current one. In the meantime, I don't think we should be citing specific phrases[1][2] from the passage that wasn't printed in the original copy. ← George [talk] 11:25, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, at least the fact that "The necessity for the destruction of Israel" paragraph was only used in the orginal manifesto should be mentioned. Let's not forget that other specific phrases from the Open Letter recently added (by me) are NOT in that questionable paragraph:
the Ayatollah Khomeini as the leader whose "orders we obey," called on Christians to "open your hearts to our call" and "embrace Islam", explained [that Israel is] ... "the vanguard of the United States in our Islamic world." --BoogaLouie 15:36, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
I believe the mention of Israel as "the vanguard of the United States in our Islamic world" is from the same paragraph, which is why I mentioned it.
[3] Youre right my mistake. --BoogaLouie 22:31, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Also, I'm hoping we can find a reliable source to cite when mentioning that this paragraph was only used in the original manifesto. I'm not saying that the website's assertion is wrong by any means, just that we need a better, non-biased source to cite for both the paragraph itself, as well as the fact that it wasn't published after the original (and was possibly modified in 1996). ← George [talk] 22:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
I haven't found the manifesto in another source on the web. It is supposed to be in this book:
August Richard Norton, Amal and the Shi'a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon Austin, University of Texas Press, 1987, p.176-87.
It will take me a while to get it. --BoogaLouie 22:31, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Please pay attention to line 99 of the Revision as of 03:45, 20 June 2007. You can see It also includes complete destruction of the state of Israel.<The Hizballah Program"> but now it is substituted with a long sentences. Its 1985 manifesto reportedly states "our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no ceasefire, and no peace agreements ..."<The Hizballah Program">. I'd rather revert it.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 05:05, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Furthermore do we need long quotation from manifesto. The length of this article has reached 100 kb. Can't we move quotations like our military apparatus is not separate from our overall social fabric. Each of us is a fighting soldier. ... each of us takes up his assignment in the fight in accordance with the injunctions of the Law, and ... under the tutelage of the Commanding Jurist. ... This is why whatever touches or strikes the Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines and elsewhere reverberates throughout the whole Muslim umma of which we are an integral part. to the subarticle to reduce the length of the article.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 04:57, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Merging Background

I remember that we made this part a pressure release valve for the lead when this article was extremely controversial and there was edit war in every case(Talk:Hezbollah/Archive lead#Introduction). But ow disagreements has settled down so I propose merging it in the other sections to reduce the size of the article.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 06:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

  1. The beginning of the Introduction with Social services
  2. Some part of Introduction with Background.

Again: Category:Islamist terrorism

As you can see in Talk:Hezbollah/Archive_10#Category:Islamist_terrorism there wasn't any consensus to add this article to the category so I remove it until we reach consensus.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 06:48, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

If this is up for discussion again, then I fully support the inclusion of this category. Perhaps a new consensus can be formed in favor of the category. --GHcool 17:58, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I still disagree with having this category. "A Category:Organisations that are believed to be terrorists by the U.S,UK,Western Europe and Bob would perhaps be silly, but more accurate" I find still to be valid. mceder (u t c) 19:57, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
this is a matter of definition. A terrorist organization is one that targets innocant civilians, something Hezbollah clearly does. Yahel Guhan 05:23, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
And many people disagree with you, or agree with you but believe we should use the category on the Israel, United States and Denmark pages. mceder (u t c) 08:04, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Israel, US, and Denmark are not targeting innocant civilians, nor are they islamic, nor are they organizations. They are countries. Do you see the category on the Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, or Syria articles? Yahel Guhan 08:29, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Israel is certainly targetting innocent civilians, they are illegally occupying territories that do not belong to them, they are buldozing homes of people who have lived there for generations to build settlements. That violates even the most basic internatonal laws. Quite apart from the question if Israel has a right to hold on to the territories, the Geneva conventions clearly state that you cannot build on occupied territories unless you annex that territory. Israel, of course, will not annex the West Bank, as that would mean that the all the Palestinians would formally become Israeli citizens... Count Iblis 13:44, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
no, Israel is targeting terrorists; so called "innocant" civilians just happen to get in the way of that. Yahel Guhan 23:35, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I reverted the category "Islamic Terrorism", as none of the alledged terror attacks have any religious motives. If Hezbollah were an organization like Al Qa'ida in Iraq targetting Sunnis in Lebanon, then that would clearly fall under Islamic terrorism. But to say that Islamic terrorism is merely terrorism carried out by an organization that is also Islamic is nonsensical. I mean, then you could make categories for Jewish terrorism and list terror attacks against the British by Zionists. You could say that because Mc Veigh was a Christian, the attack in Oklahoma was an example of "Christian terrorism". Completely nonsensical, i.m.o., unless the religion was really the primary motivation. If McVeigh's primary reason really was religion, then that designation would make much more sense, and it would then not sound all that stupid anymore to call it that way. Count Iblis 13:44, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Hezbollah is an islamist organization. Their goal is to turn Lebanon into an Islamic state, which is done through terrorism.[4] Thus they are an islamist terrorist organziation. If McVeigh's goal was to turn the U.S. into a Christian state, or if Christianity was his motive, it would be an example of christian terrorism. But since that wasn't his goal in his acts of terror, he is just a terrorist wothout religous motives. Same thing with your so-called "zionist terrorism." Religion was not a motive nor was it a goal. As further evidence that Hezbollah' motivations are Islam, read their manifisto: "We are the sons of the ummah (Muslim community) - the party of God (Hizb Allah) the vanguard of which was made victorious by God in Iran." Yahel Guhan 23:35, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Please don't retrieve the old discussion. Just say your idea about this issue.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 15:36, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Due to the fact that Hezbollah is in Category:Organizations designated as terrorist and there is just six country designated it as terrorist organization I oppose adding Hezbollah in Category:Islamist terrorism.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 15:44, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree completely. Saying that others call Hezbollah as terrorist is much more NPOV than saying Hezbollah is terrorist.Bless sins 23:45, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Not every country has to make a stance. A category shows association. Since there is association between islamist terrorism and Hezbollah, the category belongs. Besides, dispite the heavy amount of evidence claiming they are terrorists, is there any evidence denying this fact? Yahel Guhan 23:50, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Its a question of NPOV. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. We have already accounted for allegations of terrorism against Hezbollah. The category is quite unnecessary and POV.Bless sins 23:55, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
You haven't provided any reliable sources that present the arguement that it isn't a terrorist organization. Plenty have been provided to say it is. Because there is at least a relationship between terrorism and Hezbollah, the category belongs. Yahel Guhan 02:11, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
According to the article, most of the Arab and Muslim worlds don't consider Hezbollah as "terrorist".Bless sins 17:46, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
and that is all who don't. thus it is a minority view. Yahel Guhan 18:14, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

(Un-indent) Categories does not elaborate. Used in this way, they turn into Wikipedia opinions. This is bad. Saying that some consider Hezbollah terrorist, then stating who they are is good (we do this in the article). Smacking a TERRORIST sign on it, without further explanation, is bad. Categories are very useful, but look up all the debates on the word and the use of the word terrorist and you will see that it is hard to find consensus. It is safe to say that using the Category:Shiite organizations is appropriate regardless of where you are from - it is appropriate and undisputed. mceder (u t c) 17:31, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:CAT states the following as the rules to adding categories:

bQuestions to ask to determine whether it is appropriate to add an article to a category: If the category does not already exist, is it possible to write a few paragraphs or more on the subject of the category, explaining it? If you go to the article from the category, will it be obvious why the article was put in the category? Is the category subject prominently discussed in the article? Does the category fit into the overall category system? Categories that don't fit are often deleted. To familiarize yourself with the types of categories that routinely get deleted read Wikipedia:Overcategorization.

Question 1 is irrelevant. Question 2, the answer is a clear yes. There are enough reliable sources to make it clear why this article is in that category. It is no minority view that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. Question 3, the answer is yes; it does fit into the overall categorization system. Yahel Guhan 18:14, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

It is already a part of Category:Organizations designated as terrorist, which is simply an NPOV categorization of designated terrorist organizations. Category:Islamist terrorism is unnecessary and borders on a point-making exercise, as it makes the declarative that Hezbollah is an Islamic terrorist organization. That is precisely what we should be avoiding here. Tarc 14:17, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Yahel - You say "It is no minority view that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization". I worked myself on this section in the article. There are a lot of other countries in the world who either does not have a list of who they consider terrorists, or they do and left Hezbollah of it. I could only find support for a handfull of countries who states they are terrorists. I lived in the U.S for many years and I do know that in the surroundings I was at, most people either did not know who Hezbollah was, or thought they were part of Al-Quaida. We can safely(?) assume that a majority in Israel considers them terrorists? But we are fart short of a worldview that Hezbollah are terrorists. mceder (u t c) 20:25, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
If the opinion of "a lot of other countries in the world" or "a worldview" opinion were the criteria, we would add to the evolution article. We don't because the Wikipedia is written with facts taken from informed and educated sources, not "the masses." --GHcool 00:04, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I was responding to Yahels statement that assumed a majority believes Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. I was not discussing criteria for WP:V. I know Wikipedia is written with facts from sources, and that the point is Verifiability and not Truth. mceder (u t c) 05:48, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Pick any definition of terrorism you want and I can find reliable sources to verify that Hezbollah practices (or at least practiced) terrorism under that definition. --GHcool 05:55, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
No, that's okay. I really do not think it will lead towards something productive. mceder (u t c) 11:12, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Are you admitting your argument is a weak one or are you not accepting the challenge of the argument? Forfeit and you retain the respect of your peers, but lose your preferred status of the article. Discontinue the conversation and you retain the preferred status of the article, but lose the respect of your peers. If I were you, I would choose to forfeit because the respect of my peers is more important to me than this or any other article. We await your decision. --GHcool 19:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
This is getting silly. Dude, this is not a duel. I could give a flip about what you consider the respect of your peers, I am here to work on articles. The majority of work I have done with this article is very very dull reference work, formatting and applying templates. If you disagree with me on this category, I am happy. I would even recommend that you go ahead and add the category back in the article - you seem certain on your case, you state you can produce reliable sources for it - then go for it! "We await your decision"! mceder (u t c) 20:43, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I've added the category. Thank you for your support. You might not care about the respect of your peers, but perhaps you can find some satisfaction in knowing that you have my respect. --GHcool 22:29, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
And I have removed it. Category:Organizations designated as terrorist sufficiently and neutrally covers the fact that some consider the organization to be terrorist in nature. Tarc 13:15, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I haven't been following this discussion lately. I just want to repeat one point I made some time ago, namely that there hasn't been a single terror attack that has been proven to be perpetrated by Hezbollah. All we have are allegations of attacks like in Argentina. Also attacks on military targets by Hezbollah have been labeled terrorist attacks by Israel and the US. The case of Hezbollah is thus a bit different than the case of, say, Hamas where it is clear that the group has committed terror attacks. Count Iblis 02:48, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

The Accusation: "there hasn't been a single terror attack that has been proven to be perpetrated by Hezbollah." - Count Iblis. 02:48, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
The Reality: The 2006 Lebanon War started on July 12, 2006, when Hezbollah terrorists on Lebanese soil launched Katyusha rockets at Israeli civilian border towns, killing eight Israeli soldiers and wounding five Israeli civilians. Click here for the international condemnation Hezbollah received for deliberately targetting Israeli civilians and Israeli civilian areas despite their notable absense of military infrastructure. I urge Count Iblis not to write lies anymore that are so easy to prove their falsehood. --GHcool 04:51, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Attacking civilian targets falls under the category of using excessive force, war crimes etc. not terrorism. E.g., I have yet to read a single history book that says that the bombing of Dresden was an act of terrorism. Also, ICBMs were aimed at Soviet and US cities until about 1990. However, I cannot find a single source that says that WWIII would have been an act of terrorism. Count Iblis 13:29, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Islam and antisemitism

Bless sins, please explain why you removed this cat. Yahel Guhan 02:12, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

You misunderstood. Some countries consider Hezbollah as a terrorist organization while some others don't do so. Even some others especially Mulim countries recognized it as a liberation movement and there are reliable source for all of these position in the article. Now we should decide in which category put it and it depends on our consensus. At present four wikipedians oppose adding Category:Islamist terrorism while two other support this idea. So there isn't any consensus. Please be patint and don't push your POV.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 02:35, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't see why this is controversial. Hezbollah's self-stated purpose is to destroy Israel. It stirs up hatred of Judaism, Jews, and those who associate with them. It has no problem attacking civilians or using them as shields or pawns. Its modus operandi is to create fear. Can you justify all this? Frotz 07:45, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
The category is controversial, no doubt. See the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_March_12#Category:Islam_and_antisemitism. mceder (u t c) 17:24, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Hezbollah's self-stated purpose is to destroy Israel. It stirs up hatred of Judaism, Jews, and those who associate with them. Thus we've put Hezbollah in Category:Islam and antisemitism and Category:Anti-Zionism. But the other claims are controversial. --Sa.vakilian(t-c) 17:31, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
While Hezbollah certainly qualifies the "Islamic" part, it needs to be explained how it qualifies the "antisemitic" part. Please note that Hezbollah denies discriminating or stirring hatred against Jews, and claims to distinguish between Israel and Jews.Bless sins 17:46, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Wanting Israel wiped off the map is antisemitic. read their position on Jews and judaism- that should clarify its stance on antisemitism. Yahel Guhan 18:14, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
I disagree. They just want a one a state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question. There is nothing anti-semitic about that. Count Iblis 02:37, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Where the palestinians rule with islamic law, and the jews are subjugated. A very antisemitic idealology. Yahel Guhan 17:53, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Trimming

This article is currently 101 kb long. I some trims here and there would probably help. I propose the following could be trimmed:

  • The "History" section and "Background" section seem a little redundant. I propose deleting the "History" section and adding a link to the History of Hezbollah article in the "Background" section.
  • The entire "Ideology" section can and should be merged with the article titled Hezbollah Ideology. A short summary of and a link to that article should be included here.
  • The paragraph about the Netherlands' history of classification of Hezbollah as a terrorist group. ("In the past, the Netherlands had only considered ...")
  • I've also made minor trims to various sections that I don't think anybody will object to, most of which are redundant with the information preceding it.

--GHcool 18:56, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Agree with all suggestions. Also note that the size of the article that counts(i.e excluding wiki markup, references, see alsos, lists etc etc) is about 90kb. The wordcount is right around 7,000 words. mceder (u t c) 19:53, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
OK. I will make the above changes over the weekend then. --GHcool 00:40, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Good idea. Now the article is 92kb. Please move whatever has been removed from this article to the sub-articles.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 16:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I just trimmed the "Ideology" section and merged the trimmed stuff with Hezbollah ideology. Hopefully you all will agree that I summarized the major points fairly. --GHcool 03:12, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

  1. I removed some quotations which were duplicated and added some more important information. This information may relate to political activities section. What's your idea? --Sa.vakilian(t-c) 04:18, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
  2. I also moved the last paragraph to Attacks on Israel--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 04:45, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I removed the "too long" template. The article has shortened recently and now it's 92 kb.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 05:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)


Can a good article about organization/group/country X not mention the assassination of its leader?

Sure, one can argue about the way it should be mentioned. But it is no option not to mention it at all. Especially in a case where the article about X devotes a lot of space to a conflict with Y in which (mostly accusations of) of attacks by X on Y are mentioned and a lot by Y-friendly sources are used to back that up. How on Earth can it be that in the article on X itself not a single sentence was devoted to the undisputed fact that Y killed the leader of X? Count Iblis 13:38, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

You lost me. Would you mind using real words and concepts instead of mathematical variables? --GHcool 16:33, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
No, I didn't lose you. You are claiming not to understand this point as an excuse for your POV editing. If you continue to edit this way, then the POV tag will have to be reinserted. An article about Hezbllah that cannot mention the assassination of its leader just because it is inconvenient for the agenda of some people. Ridiculous!
You can argue about where to mention it and how, but just to play games, change titles of sections so that it doesn't fit in that section anymore in order to delete it altoghether is POV editing as no effort is made to include this information.


I recognize that anyone here has his/her POV. So, we must carefully evaluate what is relevent information and what is not, how prominently we want to mention things, etc.. And there will always be some POV problems. The reason why I decided to argue for removal of the POV tag some time ago was not because all POV issues had been dealt with to my liking, but because there was a genuine effort on both sides to deal with these issues. But your recent behavior here is different.
I'm not saying that I never make similar POV mistakes, but I do want to remind that I was in favor of mentioning that Hamas is responsible for terror attacks in the Hamas article, I worked to find a compromize for a title in the Hamas article that now explicitely also mentions terrorism, in case of this article I did reach a compromize some time ago on a title of a section that now also mentions terrorism. Count Iblis 17:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Iblis's edits appear to be very well in-line with policy and common sense. Hezbollah and its leaders have been the target of terrorist-style carbombs, assassinations, etc. These should of course be mentioned. There is a related dispute over whether we can say "terrorism" or "terrorist" without attributing these as allegations or claims, which has at least the possibility of being substantive. But the bias being displayed against Israel-unfriendly information here is both infuriating and kind of amusing. For instance, here is someone reverting Iblis with the summary "rv. removial of sourced content" when that is actually what he's DOING, not what he's REVERTING. Sad and strange. <eleland/talkedits> 17:58, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I have reverted for the final time, because I think that every argument I have for my edit has now been mentioned by me so any further reversions by me would be tit for tat reversion = edit war. I think that it is up thethe people who have problems with the edit to start discussing this, perhaps coming up with some real objections and on proposals on dealing with those issues. But not mentioning this at all is, as also Eleland point out, not really an option. Count Iblis 18:13, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I think "Conflict against Israel" is a suitable section for this issue.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 06:01, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
You're a day late, Sa.vakilian. Some of the above arguments were good enough that I was persuaded to create a new section called "Bomb attacks on and kidnappings of Hezbollah targets" and place this information there. --GHcool 07:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

| :-))--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 02:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC)