Talk:Hezbollah/Archive 14

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[edit] Removal of Dennis Ross text for strange reason

Shamir1 removed

“ In a 2004 article, Dennis Ross, the Middle East envoy under the first Bush and Clinton administrations, was cited as saying that Hezbollah's resistance to the Israeli occupation, unlike its past activities aimed at Western targets, is not terrorism and that the US included Hezbollah on its list of terrorist groups for Hezbollah's past activities, not for its ongoing resistance to Israel.[1] ”

with the edit summary "misrep of source, in addition the editorial cites a source which cites a source which cites Christopher Ross responsible for that position". But the source [1] says,

“ Dennis Ross, the Middle East envoy under the first Bush and Clinton administrations, has stated that Hezbollah's resistance to the Israeli occupation, unlike its past activities aimed at Western targets, is not terrorism. ”

And in a footnote to that statement,

“ Ross stated in the daily as-Safir that the US included Hezbollah on its list of terrorist groups for Hezbollah's past activities, not for its ongoing resistance to Israel. ”

So what gives?? <eleland/talkedits> 18:37, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Update: Here is the article by Prof. Sami G. Hajjar of the U.S. Army War College." (pdf) (hosted on a .mil no less!), saying "Likewise, Former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross stated that Hizballah’s resistance to Israeli occupation is not terrorism, but that past acts of terrorism that the party engaged in is why it is included on the U.S. terrorism list. He noted the important social activities of the party in several regions of Lebanon. See “Ross: The Resistance of Hizballah Is Not Terrorism,” Beirut As Safir (Arabic Internet Edition), March 23, 2002." Who is Christopher Ross, and what was Shamir talking about!? <eleland/talkedits> 18:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)


(moved from Eleland's talk)

Regarding your revert of the Hezbollah article, besides the fact that I am already skeptical of a tertiary source that is an editorial and does not use quotations, the cited source cites this source. And that source cites this, which says that Christopher Ross made those comments. :::--Shamir1 19:39, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Wow, where to begin here? The NYBooks piece cites Hajjar, who cites "Beirut As Safir"'s Arabic web-page. The fact that some random, non-reliable "ArabicNews.com" says something kind of similar but not the same is totally irrelevant, and it's very difficult to take that objection as being meant seriously. Hajjar, an expert on the subject, cited as-Safir. Some other site put up a garbled version of the story, and that means that the as-Safir citation must be wrong!? This objection is so strange and tenuous that it's difficult to believe it is meant seriously. <eleland/talkedits> 19:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

The NYBooks source accurately quotes the Hajjar source (which is available at Google Books), but I'm still a little skeptical that the Hajjar source accurately quotes the as-Safir source because I don't think that Dennis Ross would ever say that Hezbollah's targetting of Israeli civilians does not amount to terrorism. Unfortunately, I do not know how to read Arabic and so I cannot check the as-Safir website myself. Could someone who knows Arabic find the article cited in Hajjar's book: "Ross: The Resistance of Hizballah Is Not Terrorism," March 23, 2002? --GHcool 23:24, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Can I get a clarification? I understand you're skeptical, and I too would like to see the original source. But I'd like us to agree that this is no basis for removing the information, since it is being cited by a credible source - a director of Mideast studies at the US Army War College. <eleland/talkedits> 23:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure how much clearer I can be. I'd like to get somebody to read and verify that the Hajjar source accurately quotes the as-Safir source. I don't have more to say than that. --GHcool 00:30, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
Right, I understand you there. I just wanted to be sure that nobody is going to remove this information again saying that the source is insufficient, or something. The information should be improved, not removed. <eleland/talkedits> 00:38, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyedit

A request has been made for this article to be copyedited by the League of Copyeditors. The progress of its reviewers is recorded below. The League is always in need of editors with a good grasp of English to review articles. Visit the Project page if you are interested in helping.
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Copyedited by Unimaginative Username – 07:40, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Please consider WP:SIZE. It's not an absolute rule, but perhaps some material should be split into separate articles. In addition to being more attractive to more readers, a more concise article reduces the amount of discussion needed to achieve consensus, especially on controversial topics as this one is. Unimaginative Username 06:07, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review

Do you agree with nominating the article in Wikipedia:Peer review. I think this article is going to be an FA article.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 16:19, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, once the "Ideology" section is trimmed. --GHcool 17:48, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
I think it may have problems at the moment on the point of it being stable. But this is recent, and hopefully consensus will be built. Once that is resolved, and the Ideology section is trimmed I would say lets do it. mceder (u t c) 17:40, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
It won't be a FA until we resolve the categorization issues. Yahel Guhan 18:15, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Dear Yahel, I guess you misunderstood. I didn't say I want to nominate this article as FA article. Peer review is what I meant. In this process some other wikipedians including you can explain their ideas about this article.Then we can improve the article on the basis of their ideas. Of course stability isn't one of the criteria for peer reviewing.--Sa.vakilian(t-c) 04:34, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I've nominated this article for peer review in last week. But just it has received suggestions which were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program. Please be bold and write your ideas and suggestions here.--Seyyed(t-c) 03:00, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagreements

In some cases I'm not satisfied with the suggestions and we should discuss about them.

  1. Hezbollah's Shi'a Islamic doctrine:
    There is written Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. But in this case we can't obey it. Because there are different interpretation of Shi'a Islamic doctrine and Hezbollah fallows Ayatollah Khomeini's interpretation. I think Shi'a Islamic doctrine is not clear heading.
Aye. I wondered if I perhaps jumped the gun on this one, after I renamed the heading. If it is as you say, and I have no doubt it is not, then we should change it back. mceder (u t c) 13:13, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
  1. References
    We need seperate part for references especially if we use books as reference like what has done in Islam. I disagree with GHcool's edition due to the fact that nobody looks for the references in Other links section.
  2. Removing some sections
    It's written in peer review Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long – consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per Wikipedia:Summary style. Therefor GHcool has removed some sections but we should discuss about it to achieve consensus.[2]
  1. Lebanese government positions on Hezbollah's disarmament
    This art is important. I prefer to improve and expand it. At present there are two political block in Lebanon's government which have different viewpoint about the issue. We should explain both of them.
  1. Intelligence capabilities
    I think we should merge this part into Hezbollah#Armed strength and make a new section Armed strength and Intelligence capabilities. Of course as I wrote in Todo template Armed strength is not clear. This part should be rewritten due to the fact that Hezbollah's armed strength isn't revealed and different sources have announced their estimations which contradict with each other.
  1. Accusations of war crimes
    This section contains duplicated information and I agree with removing it. The point is found in Background as well.--Seyyed(t-c) 04:25, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citations, again

It looks like we need to go through all references again, and replace links with the Cite templates. This is a potential FA failure point under criteria 2c. mceder (u t c) 13:31, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I think we should replace online source with print one wherever possible.--Seyyed(t-c) 15:02, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please spell "Hezbollah" consistently

In attempting to copy-edit this article, have noticed various spellings of the organization. It's often difficult to transliterate other alphabets (Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, etc.) into English, but if the article is entitled, "Hezbollah", then for consistency, it should be spelled that way throughout. Please keep this in mind when making edits! Thank you, Unimaginative Username 06:01, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Quick application of the "Hated Google Test" gives 7.7 million to Hezbollah and 1.4 million to Hizbollah, so there's pretty much consensus of the spelling in the English language. PRtalk 07:42, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
We should use Hezbollah(the title of the article) throughout this, but we should bring up the other spellings in the intro. The Osama Bin Laden article does that, and I do believe we should do that here. Cheers!--SJP 22:53, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

SJP, sounds like a good plan! Please do so if you can. I'm just here to copy-edit and have little personal knowledge of the topic, spellings, sources, etc. Thanks, Unimaginative Username 01:43, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay:) I will soon. Cheers!--SJP 11:35, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Decline in funding from Iran?

While copy-editing, noticed this statement: "The US estimates that Iran has been giving Hezbollah about US$60-100 million per year in financial assistance, but that assistance declined as other funding was secured, primarily from South America." However, the article that is cited appears to verify only the estimated $60-100 million, but not the portion of the statement about this figure declining as South American funding rose. I'm not going to change this, but if there is a source for the decline in Iranian funding, please provide; else, perhaps the South American funding should be mentioned without any connection to an Iranian reduction. Unimaginative Username 07:17, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I looked at Funding of Hezbollah, where the same statement is made, but with two references. The same as in the main article, plus a CNN article. The only reference to Hezbollah funding is this statement:

Barakat is co-owner of Galeria Page, one of Ciudad del Este's biggest shopping malls, which intelligence sources said they believe he has used as a front for raising funds and recruiting volunteers for Hezbollah.

I would not say this is conclusive that South American funding rose.......... I have also attempted to find online sources in this matter, but with no success. I have removed "but that assistance declined as other funding was secured, primarily from South America." until such reference can be located. mceder (u t c) 18:47, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good... thanks. Unimaginative Username (talk) 07:18, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Position of Russian Federation

Copy-edit is complete. The only other content issue I noted (besides the above) was that there is still a tag (challenge) in the section on Russia's position on Hezbollah. Would suggest that a consensus be reached there before FAR. Good luck with FA! Unimaginative Username 07:52, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I propose we delete this sentence since it doesn't really serve any purpose and is borderline original research. ---- GHcool (talk) 17:57, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I second the deletion. It is not very clear, and I am not quite sure what the piece is trying to say anymore. I am sure there was a point in there somewhere, sometime. mceder (u t c) 18:39, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

That was my impression, but having not done any research on this topic, only copy-editing it, I felt that the change should be made only by editors involved with this article. I agree with the two posts above, and do think it reads more clearly and flows better now. Regards, Unimaginative Username (talk) 07:21, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] For further copy-edit assistance...

In copy-editing this article, I've become rather interested in it and in its progress to FA. I'm at WP only intermittently, but if you feel that I could be of any further assistance in this area, please feel free to place a message on my talk page. Will respond when able. Peace, Unimaginative Username (talk) 05:18, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad that you're interested in this article. I suggest you help us with it before nominating for FA. This let you improve other articles. You see, due to the fact that it's not a calm article and now and then we have editorial war, it cause wiki-stress. --Seyyed(t-c) 11:52, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind comments. I have not done any research on this topic, and so cannot contribute as far as content. I meant that when you resolve the content issues and get it to a stable version with consensus, I would be happy to copy-edit again. As for helping with the wiki-stress of a controversial article, I am not an admin, and I am not sure that it would be proper to act as some sort of unofficial moderator. But as a copy-editor, I like to see all WP articles well-written, in a fair and balanced manner. If there is something specific I could do, let me know. Unimaginative Username (talk) 05:56, 19 November 2007 (UTC)