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Mediation points at Battle of Jenin

Hi there, could you move or copy your main points down to the new mediation heading? I don't want to edit your talk. Best, LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 02:13, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Negev Bedouins

Please clarify, at Negev Bedouins, what do you mean by "nationality", as distinct from "citizenship?" Also, what else do you think should be added to the article? Thanks. LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 19:42, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Israeli law provides for 1st-class citizenship with "nationality" and 2nd-class citizenship without. The latter are (largely but not exclusively) excluded from the 93% of "national land" that is (or was until recently?) administered by the JNF. It's explained fairly well in this 1990 article.

The WP article is apparently written to make the Bedouin appear to be "a problem", though whether it's in order to justify their treatment or exclude them from bettering themselves is not clear. Check for what the article says about crime and ask yourself who would write like this of, say, African-Americans. But I've again been blocked for identifying racism - practicing it is perfectly proper but commenting on it is a real no-no. PR 23:12, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Have you taken a look recently? The article definitely does discuss the fact that Bedouin have been barred from 90% of their former lands. It's not administered by the JNF - 15% of it is JNF land, 60% under the jurisdication of the IDF; The JNF has de facto handed over its lands to the military so altogether, the military controls 8% of the Negev, which is 60% of the country. So as close to a military occupation as you can get. As far as the crime section goes, I know it is very controversial. However, in an article about African Americans, one cannot, if you think about it, mention the incarceration issue without first bringing up crime stats. In other words, this section may seem objectionable, but it can also lead us to the next stage - asking why there is this crime problem -- i.e. lack of any employment options or grazing lands. It also can lead us to ask why the Bedouin are being criminalized. An article on the Bedouin should deal with these issues. Unfortunately, there isn't much scholarship dealing with the criminalization of the Bedoiun, partially, perhaps, because examining this issue would mean admitting there is a crime problem to begin with. On another note, I have basically re-written most of the article in the past few days - it still needs filling-in and nuance, but the main issues have now been raised; I agree that the army/JNF control over the Negev needs to be better highlighted; also a section on demolitions and land confisctaion is necessary - I haven 't inserted it because I don't have access to a good timeline of demolitions - I'll check the RCUV but I don;t think they have one online. However, this last section, in depth, would be better placed in Unrecognized Villages, which seriously need re-writing now that I have copied most of the history section into the Negev Bedouins article. I could use some help editing it down, if you're willing to work with me on this (since I can't see the forest for the trees anymore, after working late into the night several nights in a row). LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 17:47, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

If you were to initialise your e-mail (I think you have to tick two boxes at the bottom, as well as jump some other hurdles), we could probably work on some more material. But I think you're making a mistake over the crime business, apart from anything else, you cannot discuss it since it doesn't appear in the literature. (Perhaps mention the special police? I knew nothing about that side of things). Even in the bigger African American article, it's only mentioned in passing with "Persistent social, economic and political issues for many African Americans include inadequate health care access and delivery; institutional racism and discrimination in housing, education, policing, criminal justice and employment; crime, poverty and substance abuse." Note that African Americans have a vast incarceration problem and it's very well documented, and yet I don't see any mention of it in their article. They might even be entitled to object if there was an WP:UNDUE on it. PR 18:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Something else .... the killers of two of the British people shot dead in Gaza (Tom Hurndall and James Miller) were Bedouin. The only one of these ever prosecuted was Tom's killer, al-Heib, sentenced to eight years in prison in 2005. James' killer is said to have been First Lieutenant Haib from the Bedouin Desert Reconnaissance Battalion, commanding a unit. The UK is theoretically trying to extradite him to stand trial, but it took 3 years to get to that point, which was 2 years ago. PR 18:33, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll read this later. But I need to note here, in case you had the wrong impression - I did not add the crime section (though I think some kind of reference is relevant). While I agree with you on almost everything, at the moment i am also feeling like nothing will please you. I am a big BIG believer in self-criticism (which as an Israeli I do every day on wikipedia) and in acknowledging weak spots (which can only strengthen one's argument if one simply admits the point and then makes clear that this does not in any way deflect the responsibility of the other side to address human rights violations). I will read the rest of your above comments more closely later.LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 21:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I've had a second or two to look this over. Maybe I misunderstood your tone? Let me know. As far as Tom's killer, yes, I was aware of that - the story is similar to the heavy (yet not so heavy) reprimand of the Druze and Bedouin police involved in some of the October 2000 killings. Why not mention it in the article under "army service?" could be charged with original research, but maybe there's a citation that can be referenced - why not give it a shot. Also, I just took a look at African Americans. It's a nice positive entry overall. However, it says nothing about the fact that, 1. Slavery has been abolished except for those who commit crimes, and 2. over half of the black male population is incarcerated. thus it neatly avoids one of the most central controversies hush-hushed and brushed under the carpet of our time.LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 21:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm just funny on the crime business, I suspect African American society is much more badly affected by it than are the Bedouin (particularly from the rate of imprisonment). But it's not up to me to comment.

Here's something that might interest you from Israel Finkelstein, "The Bible Unearthed", p117/118 ... the two components of Middle Eastern society - farmers and pastoral nomads - have always maintained an interdependent economic relationship, even if there was sometimes tension between the two groups. Nomads need the marketplaces of settled villages in order to obtain grain and other agricultural products, while farmers are dependent on the nomads for a regular supply of meat, dairy products, and hides.

However, the two sides of the exchange are not entirely equal: villagers can rely on their own produce for survival, while pastoral nomads cannot exist entirely on the products of their herds. They need grain to supplement and balance their high-fat diet of meat and milk. As long as there are villagers to trade with, the nomads can continue to concentrate on animal husbandry. But when grain cannot be obtained in exchange for animal products, the pastoral nomads are forced to produce it for themselves.

And that is apparently what caused the sudden wave of highland settlement. In Late Bronze Age Canaan, in particular, the existence of large populations of pastoral nomads in the highlands and desert fringes was possible only as long as the Canaanite city-states and villages could produce an adequate grain surplus to trade. This was the situation during three centuries of Egyptian rule over Canaan. But when that political system collapsed in the twelfth century BCE, its economic networks ceased functioning. It is reasonable to assume that the villagers of Canaan were forced to concentrate on local subsistence and no longer produced a significant surplus of grain over and above what they needed for themselves. Thus the highland and desert-fringe pastoralists had to adapt to the new conditions and produce their own grain. Soon, the requirements of farming would cause a reduction in the range of seasonal migrations. Flocks would then have to be reduced as the period of migrations grew shorter, and with more and more effort invested in agriculture, a permanent shift to sedentarization occurred.

The process that we describe here is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. PR 22:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Very, very, interesting, and the larger point is more relevant to my current research than you could guess! Thanks very much for bringing my attention to this. (How much of it is your paraphrase, and how much is a direct quote?)LamaLoLeshLa (talk) 18:39, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

None of it is paraphrased, which is why I wish you would enable your e-mail! I'd guess you were a bit like me, participate here in order to learn and share. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, "The Bible Unearthed" 2001, p116/117 ... a dramatic difference can be seen in the bones collected at the few sites in the highlands that continued to be occupied in the periods between the major settlement waves. (PR says - this is Iron Age 1, 1150-900BCE, the Egyptian influence and trading has failed again. These pastoralists, uniquely in the region, are not eating pig). The number of cattle is minimal, but there is an exceptionally large proportion of sheep and goats: This is similar to the composition of herds among bedouin groups. For pastoralists who engage in only marginal seasonal agriculture and spend much of the year seeking fresh pastureland, heavy, slow-moving cattle are a burden. They cannot move as fast and as far as sheep and goats. Thus in the periods of intense highland settlement, more people were engaged in farming; in the crisis years, people practiced sheep and goat herding.

Are such dramatic fluctuations common? In the Middle East, people have always had the know-how to rapidly change from village life to animal husbandry-or back from pastoralism to settled agriculture-according to evolving political, economic, or even climatic conditions. Many groups throughout the region have been able to shift their lifestyle according to the best interest of the moment, and the avenue connecting village life and pastoral nomadism has always been a two-way street. Anthropological studies of settlement history in Jordan, southwestern Syria, and the middle Euphrates valley in the nineteenth and early twentieth century show just that. Increasingly heavy taxation and the threat of conscription into the Ottoman army were among the factors that drove countless village families to abandon their houses in the agricultural regions and disappear into the desert. There they engaged in animal husbandry, which has always been a more resilient, if less comfortable, way of life.

An opposite process operates in times when security and economic conditions improve: Sedentary communities are founded or joined by former nomads, who take on a specialized role in a two-part, or dimorphic, society. One segment of this society specializes in agriculture while the other continues the traditional herding of sheep and goats. PR 20:21, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Blocked

You came on here today and made a number of edits. Your three article edits were reverts . You also labelled a couple of these as vandalism, when it was clearly just an edit war. You've also popped over to a mediators talk page and basically called a group of editors extremists. Sorry, but this is disruptive editing, something whcih you've been warned many times in the past for hence why I've blocked you for 48 hours. Ryan Postlethwaite 22:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it's worth recording that I'm under a voluntary 1RR (not hard for me to do - I've repeatedly told people I'm not interested in edit-warring and it was rare I ever went to a 2RR). Sometimes I think there's a contest to block me on the most specious grounds possible.

And it's worth recording that two of the edits I made were most certainly the correction of vandalism - including re-introducing the entire "list" content of a "listing" article which had stood largely unchanged since 2005. There was a detailed explanation on it's provenance in Talk from User:Doron - an editor we've sadly lost (but whose opinion I more often accepted than agreed with).

The real question is why are you harassing me instead of protecting articles from characters like this "You are behaving bizzar latley. Is there a problem here!?" That particular editor has joyfully turned to edit-warring my change, while he wastes the time of a scholar. (Another editor whose opinion I probably respect rather than agree with).

And someone needs to protest in the last case where the small number of real scholars we have remaining are mindlessly obstructed by, as best I can tell in this case, simple racism. Couldn't you do something useful? PR 18:15, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

FYI

I've started a discussion about your overall behaviour which can be found here. Please feel free to comment. Ryan Postlethwaite 00:08, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Ryan may know what is going on but he did not state it in the community ban proposal. Until he does, I oppose community ban. (I would not support a ban based on the reason "he is bad, believe me".) Please do not interpret this as support for your edits. I have not looked at them. If you disagree, I would encourage you to provide an accurate summary of what is going on.

If it is a matter of your edits remembering Palestine, then that is not a valid reason for banning. If it is because the edits are based on unreliable sources to the point that it becomes damaging to Misplaced Pages, then I cannot support this.

If there is someone reasonable for you to say, I will listen. I am Presumptive (talk) 06:56, 2 August 2008 (UTC) but I do not intentionally act presumptively.

I could say a great deal, but I will restrict myself to just three things:

• This "He's been through numerous mentors trying to curb his behaviour" is a grave distortion - I've had up to 4 mentors, each was harassed from their position, apparently because they couldn't find anything seriously wrong. The drumbeat against me only surfaced a few times, see this, this, and this.
• Mentoring was imposed for the only generally agreed fault I've ever been guilty of, an over-aggressive demand that an editor declare or deny a "Conflict of Interest".
• Single Purpose Accounts like this are to the written policy and the name I'm using was also found to be perfectly acceptable. PR 07:42, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Should I defend my actual editing conduct too? None of the 10 or so "disciplinaries" on me find any evidence of "cheating", the deliberate distortion of articles. ("Cheating" is the major/only? reason people have been barred from the I-P topic in the past). I'm not an edit-warrior and have never been one (so why keep bringing it up?). You'll find no examples of tendentious contributions to TalkPages, not even any examples of me persisting for very long. There are no examples of me hounding people on their TalkPages. Bizarre though it may seem, many/most of the "content" allegations against me turn out to be changes I've wanted and made which have stuck. I make some reverts claiming vandalism, almost all editors would agree with most of them. I struggle constantly to use only high-quality sources, many of them being books I have access too. That last example alone differentiates me sharply from many other editors in the topic where I'm a legitimate single purpose account. PR 08:52, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Whatever the outcome, your frustrations are understandable. They are, however, what allow you to slip up, or be set up. There is a large volume of informal intuitive understanding of these processes that one must keep, under secure control, in one's heart and mind if one is to be productive here. Frustrations, if one is going to work on wiki, are counter-productive, and, on my understanding of events over the past year, you are 'targeted'. But at the same time, you have collaborated thoroughly with the targeters, by playing the desired game. Step off that boardgame, the rules are stacked in a number's game, though it is not a 'conspiracy'. And when you do return, return without animus or resentment. I shouldn't be here, because I have formally left editing wiki. But I will not deny myself the rare right to comment. Some vague hope that the prejudice in favour of priggish rules to protect wimpish sensitivities will yield in strength so that the issues of content, quality, performance in the services of what Moreschi calls 'encyclopedicity' eventually tilts over to allow intelligent impartial editing to prevail over the Amorusos and Shevashaloshes of this province. Ultimately, mastery of relevant quality sources will prevail. Work in the interim towards that, and forget the personalities. Regards Nishidani (talk) 20:03, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Pure condescension from a pseud in Polonius's corner but

I'm breaking my rule again, but this is not editing, which I deeply enjoy, and therefore . . . Twenty years ago I spent a week arguing night and day with a friend on the proposition 'If I am hit by a thrown stone, no matter whoever threw it, I am to blame'. My friend lives in terms of this principle of absolute responsibility. I think that, philosophically, I won the argument, i.e., that it is simply not operationally true, though psychoanalytically there is a deep truth hidden there, in that we are by nurture and nature, driven to be complicit in the world's woes while, on a conscious plane, deploring them and disavowing our personal responsibility. Still I accept that it is a useful moral myth, worth adopting. The advice my anecdote is intended to proffer is, I hope, evident. Never allow situations to arise in which you feel you are the victim. You do, read by others, appear to seek out situations in which you are personally challenged. You will find an inexhaustible number of people ready to exploit an heroic frailty of this order. If you have an inkling, however well founded, that this is how you feel, then you'll have to work it off. Bringing it into your edits is precisely what those who would rid wiki of your presence desire. If these situations recur and you play by the standard rules, then you are indeed complicit. Use occasions, where that possiility is being prompted by provocative edits, to examine your conscience, rather than indulge in (an otherwise justifiable) sense of outrage. In a certain sense, we also construct our grievances, and when one reads a vignette like, to name one of many, 'Tagar and the Teepee Family (in Henryk Broder’s ‘A Jew in the New Germany’ 2003 pp.122-129, from memory), one should murmur, if one reads deeply, 'I too can see myself in this', though the story invites, on one plane, the reader to view those it describes as bizarre. Take a break, reflect on your conviction of certainty, which is a dangerous thing to have, use your extensive knowledge frugally, to enrich the texts, not to bait those who bait you, and, please, lastly, try an experiment. Find two figures within Judaism or Jewry, and Palestinian culture who have yet to earn themselves the page due to them, research them, and write the two bios up with care, contemporaneously. For Palestine I suggest Yitzak Shami, the Hebronite writer. Not to convince those who hunt for you scalp to lay off. But overfocusing on I/P conflicts, and not on many other dimensions that are less conflictual, is balm to the self, or, if you will, the soul. Best wishes. It is summer, enjoy it. Apologies for the paternalism, and goodbye for now Nishidani (talk) 18:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

PR, you are innocent of the charge, as 'framed'. But you have been asked by this community (I am not a community man, but signing on here means accepting that community's rules) to be mentored. Whatever the reasons, four have given up. Avi may have been harsh, but he has a point. Jaakobou may have had far more industrious mentors that you have had, I do not know. I would probably differ profoundly with Jaakobou on almost everything, but I simply must note here that, when you were brought under review here, the Jaakobou of the past did not comment. Jaakobou behaved impeccably by examining the diffs, and saying there was simply nothing there to warrant the request for a community ban, and he did this in defence of a person for whom he may well have an antipathy. This is not an inquest into ulterior motives. It is a matter of judging people by their actual online behaviour, and that intervention is something you should have learnt from. I don't think you realize sufficiently how what you may write bounces off other minds. You sound, often, aggrieved or triumphant ethically, and this (while, as a person who on most political issues would appear an extremist, (I do believe our everyday world is insane and literally totalitarian) I share your perspective) has absolutely no utility to securing NPOV articles on I/P pages. You simply cannot see things coming. In the past I have been able, on more than one occasion, to intuit a disaster looking you in the face, from a trend in editing, and sigh 'Oh, dear, here we go . .' and sure enough, you stepped up and got whupped. Why? Because you appear to be so giddily assured astride your moral high horse (I saddle up on an absurd leviathan of a hobby horse in privately thinking of Palestinians and their shocking historical plight, but I have had to dismount when editing to the text, because one must write with the head, antennae rigged for full reception, not with the heart, if one is to establish a strong neutral text) that you forget the point of editing, which is to get text that is impeccably sourced, and faithful to the facts. You are managing to do that rarely now, because you are so (understandably) disconcerted by what you see in your adversaries edits. Don't then think of your adversaries, think of the article. There is a vast amount of good information that simply is not here because many readers don't read in libraries, but get their info off the net. It is information that cannot be challenged with impunity, because it comes from the best university presses, from authoritative academics who are not necessarily Finkelsteins, Chomskies or Shahaks (men I hold in the highest esteem). Since you do research and read, I ask myself why you keep coming back over the same ground. Perhaps I miss much. I don't track people.

That is why I wish to broach the idea, which I only alluded to last night, of you offering to take a rest off Misplaced Pages to review your commitment to it. For over the past several months, all you have had is a life at the terminal with wikitrouts slapping out of the screen, and little satisfaction in seeing material you have influencing the shaping of an article. One has to be creative in these circumstances. I tried to set some example by withdrawing with a self-imposed sanction. You have done nothing to merit a sanction, and I think those who pressed the suit against you were grievously, perhaps maliciously, in error. But even if the suit closes in your favour, the problem of that hostility which feeds off a style you have of kibitzing, remains, and above all, you, of whom the community required a mentor, no longer have the confidence of the fourth, and last. Phil Knight, a very good admin, who says little, is wholly neutral, and warrants respect, mentioned three months, notwithstanding the thin evidence. Why not simply, as in chess (much of wiki arbitration is a virtual version of three-dimensional chess), make a sacrifice gambit. Something like that would clear the air, give you time to work, as Tiamut, Eleland, perhaps myself, and others have decided to do, off-line, away from wiki, so that, in the future one will return, perhaps rarely, to make edits whose quality simply jumps over the usual pettifogging arguments, but in particular, by working that way, one saves most of that time (which is most of the time, negotiating exhaustively on minor points on talk pages, without having an effect on a text?). You have been patient with my presumptuously paternalistic intrusions, and I hope you do not read this as in anyway endorsing the bad treatment you have had on many (nota bene, not on all) occasions in the past. It is just that, as I said last night, by nature, even if I am innocent, I tend to blame my lack of anticipative foresight if I find myself, without wishing to be there, up shit creek in a barbed wire canoo. I should conclude nonetheless that you are perfectly in your rights to dismiss this as improper, given that, objectively, you appear to have been subjected, in this instance, to a kind of barratry. But the danger at the edges, to nurture that sense of injustice, should not blind you to the long-term issue, of being a highly useful, perhaps even in time, authoritative editor in wiki, which is what all should aspire to. Regards Nishidani (talk) 19:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that WP is an important project that deserves our support and patience and cooperation. However, it's plainly gone wrong, with even real scholars (I don't count myself) hounded by illiterates. One of our dearly esteemed fellows claims to be well informed on Rudolf Kastner, and told us he's mostly written the article on his accuser. Needless to say, the article trivialises the guy personally (calling him "an amateur journalist and stamp-collector") and undermines the crucial work he did (at a minimum, proving that Kastner had protected a Nazi jew-killer from prosecution). If you think that WP is strong enough to bite the bullet and cure itself of such a cancer, then I'll stand aside to let it do so. PR 19:56, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

(<-)Not being as eloquent as others, I will spare you copying in my long talks with Nishdani, but for what it is worth, I agree with Nishdani that you have significant potential, but that it gets lost in your particular style and the concomitant drama it entails. A break from P/I articles and a return which demonstrates the willingness to work with all editors will go a long way in helping your interactions with others, the state of the I/P articles, and the project as a whole. -- Avi (talk) 20:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

PR, I was tempted to say that writing these things has caused me some grief, because, and I repeat this before Avi, I do think that here you have been wronged, somewhat disgracefully. However, in being tempted to say this, I realize that I am causing you grief, because I suggested that, in a sense, you accede freely, by a symbolic gesture, to withdrawing for a time precisely in one instance where I think you happen to have just cause. I think WP, especially in articles where nationalisms clash, is in perpetual, Heraclitean flux, which means that most work on these articles is unstable, and therefore a waste of effort. Only work of such quality that its merits as a closely researched and comprehensive contribution are sufficient to commend tactful response and collaborative improvement here and there warrants consideration. To do this requires some of the virtues James Joyce asked of artists in the dénouement of his Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. I do not wish to exaggerate. We are humble millers at the grindstone, when not bullshit artists. I have said elsewhere several things about how some tests might improve the writing of these articles. Competitive pages on the same subject, each written by one side, to see which page best meets NPOV conditions. It won't occur. So one thinks of other options. Silence, deeper study, drafting a page with a meticulous review of the evidences so far available on the existing wiki pages, adjusted with what library research tells us, etc. Working in silence, with oneself, means the only relevant conflict is with one's self and the conflicting evidence before one. A Norman Finkelstein, a Chomsky, etc., can afford to push for a strong interpretation. I basically agree with their work, particularly Chomsky whose works most Israeli wikipedians unfortunately know only by hearsay. But in accepting to work in Misplaced Pages, I had to suspend that intellectual sympathy, because encyclopedias are NPOV, not strongly argued points of view. I think you (but then again who doesn't) confuse at times these two dimensions, one's personal sympathies which can be solidly grounded in the finest scholarship, and what an encyclopedia asks for, 'both sides' (even the side whose version one may dissent with strongly) fairly represented. You are as far as I am concerned, completely at liberty to choose to ignore my advice, and if you do, I will not think for a minute that, in doing so, you are doing anything more than exercising a just sense that nothing so far, regarding your very recent behaviour, should require you to renounce the pleasure of continuing to edit. My concern, and I think Avi shares this, is that it is not improbable, however this one plays out, that if one or two more incidents do occur (whatever again their merits) the temptation by the community will be, and these things are rather irrational despite the due process, to hand out a permanent ban. It is that possibility which troubles me, not the present fiasco.

I think a fine editor like G-Dett might well dissent from my advice, and would have some substantial reasons for suggesting you do otherwise. I would ask you to ask G-Dett for a a review of things via email. I would ask Avi for a little patience, another day or two at most, for PR to get more imput, and reflect on what proposal (s)he might consider making. I should, as a matter of principle, have givemn you notice of the fact that I have discussed this off the ANI page with Avi, at his and my own page.

Finally, nothing so drastic as a 'cancer' will intervene if you, or I, or anyone else withdraws for a while, or permanently, no more than, were Avi or Jaakobou to withdraw, articles would suddenly have Hamas-perspectives on rampage over the Jerusalem page. I don't believe in 'sides'. There are good and trustworthy editors on both sides, old and new ones are regularly recruited. Much is subjective, I have a fine working rapport with my virtual friend Ceedjee, but he annoys some others on 'my side' (ugh!), for example. We argued against and past each other quite vigorously at first, etc.etc. I'll stay on, against protests from my library's unread summer books and my wife, until this can seen through to a decent solution, in which your undoubted integrity comes out unblemished. Best wishes, and take your time Nishidani (talk) 22:27, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Re Avi

PR. I simply do not have the kind of omniscience required to give proper advice. You cite Avi's suggestion to you, and seize on Avi's use of the example of how he co-mentored, with Fayssal, Isarig. As I read it, Avi's suggestion bears absolutely none of the insinuation that you see in it. He is not comparing you to Isarig, who was an extremely disruptive editor. Avi, and mentoring is a great burdon on anyone's time, generously offered to take you under his wing. Until now, people have been saying '4 mentors' strike out, PR should have a permanent ban. Avi stepped in, and, modifying his earlier remarks subsequent to extensive discussions with, among others, me, but above all, after reflecting, it appears, on the evidence, he appears there to have withdraw his initial request for a 6-month site ban, and allowed you the chance to continue editing under 2 mentors. Now, given the atmosphere, that is an extraordinarily meritorious gesture. I.e. Avi could have pressed for (a)a ban, (b)a suspension for several months (c) your spontaneous withdrawal from IP for some months, and, instead he now says: 'Look, forget this case. The problem is basically, 'who mentors PR' now that Ryan has left? and, despite little time, a certain exhaustion, he has extended you hospitality by offering to spend some of his day helping you review the edits you like. The analogy with Isarig is not intended in any way to compare you to Isarig. The analogy was the nature of Isarig's dual mentorship. Isarig was a pro-Israeli editor, Avi being Jewish, had Isarig's confidence, while Fayssal, being Arab could offer advice and perspectives that Avi might miss, and yet would be important were Isarig to learn to understand both sides. Avi was therefore saying to you. Look, you've had a hard time getting mentors. I'll make a sacrifice of my time to help you. As a Jewish editor, those whom you regard as engaging with you, and your mentors, with a certain animosity, will have me to deal with. I am, ideologically, on that side, though I aspire to fairness and neutrality. At the same time, as with the Isarig case, if you accept my offer, you could then ask for someone with a perspective closer to your own, of wide experience, to collaborate with us both, as Fayssal did with me. The comparison, Dear PR, is over a situation requiring, optimally, dual mentorship with a Jewish person and a pro-Palestinian editor, both of whom are held in high regard for their intelligence, fairness, and experience. Avi has all of those qualities. You are at liberty, if you have grounded suspicions, to reject his generous offer (the other mentor is still hypothetical, until forthcoming), but it distresses me that you have misread what Avi said, to the detriment of the regard that is his due. To me, you appear to have snubbed a person who held out a hand to you, and, while I have argued strongly and with conviction that you have been victimized by a shabby piece of barratry, I have also said to you several times that you do, despite an intelligence that mugs up details and works hard to get good material, on occasion radically misunderstand at times the tone of what other people say to you. It is precisely this unfortunate reading through or over people (and not those necessarily hostile to you, who are easy to read) which gets you into trouble. As I said, this is what makes you an easy target. It is not the material you wish to edit in that has ever worried me. It is to the contrary the exhibition of hurt, of a sense of justice thwarted which you tend to express when you find your edits challenged by hostile, or tendentious coeditors. That is why I suggested you rest off for a few months, spontaneously, and just think this specific, and recurrent problem through. You are asked to edit quality material. You will encounter, like everyone, opposition. To edit requires patience, intelligence, and above all, an acquired mastery of that private world of idealistic outrage or patriotic amour-propre, which, if evidenced or influencing one's online approach, wrecks contributions because it is so, as youngsters say, in-your-face. These are private things better said on email. They are my purely subjective opinions, and I apologize for the frankness. Anyone looking at this and using it in the future should be warned that it is only on PR's page because I refuse to use email on ethical grounds, and yet have been requested to comment. PR if you think this unfair, please erase it immediately. Nishidani (talk) 14:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)