Talk:Balad al-Sheikh

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Confusion[edit]

There are two Moslem cemeteries in the area of Nesher. One on the slopes of Mountain Carmel – it was Balad ash-Sheikh cemetery. In this cemetery Sheikh Abdullah as-Sahli grave is situated. The other is in the south-east in Zebulun valley. This cemetery was built in 1934 by Haifa Waqf in Nesher for Haifa Muslims residents. In this cemetery Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was buried in 1935 because he was resident of Haifa. This cemetery was closed for burial in 1930s Hanay (talk) 11:12, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for distinguishing between the two. Could you clarify that in the article (with sources of course) if hasn't been already. --Al Ameer son (talk) 22:15, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You asked for citation for the sentence "Balad al-Sheikh cemetery on Mount Carmel" Balad al Sheikh is an old village. The cemetry where Izz ad-Din al-Qassam is barried was built in 1934 (there is a source in the article), the only other Moslem cemetery is the one on the slops of the mount. You can see it clearly in the picture (by the way I took all the pictures of the grave an the houses that you can see in commonse). I dont know if there is a book telling about this cemetery. I think that becouse the new cemetery is famous, writers made mistakes.
another metter is the sentece: The Jezreel Valley railway line passed about 0.5 kilometers (0 mi) east of the village. This is not accurate, it is more north than east. you can see in maps.
North-east would be best (based on a 1940s map). Zerotalk 04:14, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
there a citation from Walid Khalidi book:" Many of the Arab houses and shops are still standing and are occupied by the settlement's inhabitants. The cemetery is visible and is in a state of neglect." I do not have the book, I dont know to which cemetery he refer to. but there where not many Arabs houses still standing in 1992 only few. Today there are only 4 . In 2 of them there are synagogues, in another there is a bank , in only 1 there is a family. I want to add this information to the article but I can not give outside source. Hanay (talk) 09:23, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Arab-Jewish confrontations[edit]

The section is useful because it gives us more background to the 1948 War, however, many parts of it are clearly bias. Also some of it might not be explicitly bias, but definitely irrelevant and indirectly biased. The way it reads currently sound like constant bashing of the Arab residents. The whole passage on bus shootings (with no apparent casualties) should not be included in the article in its current state and I think most editors who read it would agree that this simply irrelevant information:

  • Additional attacks on Jewish buses occurred from July to October 1938.[11] On July 13, 1938, two buses were shot; one of them was set on fire.[12] On July, 24 1938, 30 shots were fired at two buses.[13] On August, 10 1938, two bombs were thrown at a Jewish bus.[14] On October 3, 1938 three Jewish buses were fired and a bomb was thrown.[15]
  • On May 21 1936, a Jewish bus was shot when it was passing the village[8]
  • On March 4, 1939, three armed Arabs fired at a Jewish bus.

The words "terrorist gang" has to be changed per NPOV. We should write "militants" instead and identify them if we can.

There should clarification in this sentence: On April 18, 1939, a wide military and police search was conducted in Balad ash-Sheikh looking for the suspects of the murders in Haifa. A large number of Arabs were interrogated and ten were arrested What murders in Haifa? There's no background in the section. The word "murders" should also be changed to "killings".

Finally (I think), why was the new police station built at the "expense" of the village?

I wish to address these NPOV and relevance concerns promptly if nobody else will. I don't want to decimate the section, but it really needs to be cleaned up. --Al Ameer son (talk) 23:23, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I really do not understand your claims. I brought source for the information. You write that the information is bias, on what sources you base your claim? Please read the sources. About the picture: the text was copied from the American Library of Congress see http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/matpc.18606/
About the police station: please read the article. It is mention there. The decision to built it on the "expense" of the village was made by the British District Commissioner Mr. Baily.Hanay (talk) 10:08, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have to use sources for my claims of POV; we establish that bias exists by simply reading the information. The section contains several irrelevant details of every attack on Jewish buses by Arabs near the village which according to your sources led to no casualties. Since attacks apparently occurred frequently, we could write "Several attacks on Jewish passenger buses by Arabs near Balad al-Sheikh occurred between 1936-38, although no casualties were reported." Or something of that nature. We should also mention the fact that these attacks occurred during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine to give some context because as of now it reads like Arabs just started assaulting Jews randomly for no reason. Not saying they were justified, but we have to be fair and give a little background as to why they attacked.
As for the picture, we can't simply "copy" word-for-word what the LoC's caption is because of WP:Plagiarism. Also who the US Govt. designates as terrorists is their opinion. On Wikipedia we avoid using the particular word "terrorist". See WP:TERRORIST.
Thank you for trying to clarify about the police station, but you didn't really answer my question. I wanted to know what the sentence meant by "expense". Did the construction of the station come from the village's funds or did the villagers oppose its construction? Anyway for this particular issue, I'll read the source you provided and try to find out for myself. --Al Ameer son (talk) 23:14, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please read also this article dated the same day, that say that under the collective punishment ordinance a punitive post has been imposed on the village. Hanay (talk) 15:24, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
After more than two years, this is still not cleaned up, so I have added an "Unbalanced" template.
Somebody has gone through Palestine Post for the 1930s, and have added every attack on Jews they have found to the article. Of course, PP was not a neutral source in the first place, and secondly, no-one has gone through Arab/Palestinian sources the same way. This gives a very unbalanced article (..and a rather messy one, too.) Cheers, Huldra (talk) 19:35, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Selim I or Selim II[edit]

There is some text from Khalidi: "The town is named after Sheikh Abdullah as-Sahli, a renowned Sufi, who was granted the taxes collected from the village by Sultan Salim II." I have a different version: "The al-Sahlis were the oldest ashraf (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) family in Haifa. The founder of the family, sheikh Suhayl, lived in Balad al-Shaykh during the time of Sultan Selim I (1517). He was considered a walliyy, that is, a holy man, and had been given as waqf dhurri (family endowment) the villages of Balad al-Shaykh and Rushmiya, near Haifa, by the sultan." (Mahmoud Yazbak, The Arabs in Haifa: From Majority to Minority, Processes of Change (1870-1948), Israel Affairs, Volume 9, Issue 1 & 2, 2003, Pages 121 - 148. [1] It could be that both stories are true, but it seems more likely that they are versions of the same story. Yazbak is a specialist in the subject (at Haifa University) so I'm inclined to favor his version. What do you think? Zerotalk 04:45, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In this book Yazbak cites original sources for this information, so I propose to use it in replacement of the existing text. Zerotalk 04:49, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nice catch Zero. Agreed that Yazbak is a better source for this information. Go ahead and make the edit. Tiamuttalk 07:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sources for late 1947 attack[edit]

Some problems with the paragraph on 1947–1948: (1) One cannot call someone "controversial" just like that. It needs at least a source and a reason for including it. (2) I don't believe Robin Miller's "Research guide" is a reliable source by Wikipedia standards. The sources he cites should be consulted independently. (3) We mention that Miller cites Wilson and Khalidi for the "14 killed" version, but Khalidi actually says "more than 60". I have Wilson's book somewhere but can't find it at the moment. The figure of 14 comes only from Wilson's book, which gives no source for it. (4) The source given for Yitzhaqi is a translation of a newspaper story. Here is the relevant part of the translation:

In the evening of January 30-31, 1947 a mixed force of the First Battalion of Palmach and the 'Carmel' Brigade under the command of Haim Avinoam attacked the village of Balad al-Shaikh (now Tel Hanan). In this operation more than sixty of the enemy, most of them non-combatants, were killed in their houses. According to a report written by the commander of the operation, 'the units silenced the heavy firing by their own heavy firing. The attacking units then entered the village and started operating inside the houses, and, because of the heavy firing in the rooms, it was impossible to avoid hitting women and children also.' (See The Book of the Palmach, p. 55).

So it really does say "Jan 30–31", which is a problem for us since it is clearly a mistake but we can't tell whose mistake (Yitzhaqi, Yediot reporter, or translator). Apart from the bad date, it is not correct to call this a different account. Actually it agrees with Khalidi and is expanded on in Morris's book (which is the best source available). Also note that the translation does not use the nonsensical "Palmach and Haganah" that appears in our report of it. Zerotalk 23:22, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Recent revert[edit]

I´m really tempted to just rv this, using just "rvv".

  • Firstly; several good sources which I had introduced were removed (Palmer-link for name, all the 1922 census-data, lots of 1945 data)
  • Secondly, it introduced lots of dead linked sources, which were cherry-picked in the first way. Just one example: note 22, refers to a (dead-linked) article named "6 Arabes killed in Haifa, December, 12, 1947"...but here, in the article, the summary of that is " On December 8, 1947, residents of Balad ash-Sheikh killed 2 Jews driving near the village"(!!)

Oh, I get it: Arab lives don´t count. Huldra (talk) 21:34, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you make a major edit, removing some 9,000 characters, you could have broke it up in smaller parts. I only have a problem with the removal of sourced information regarding several attacks on Jews, and feel bad about having to revert many other good things you did on this article.
By the way, I think you should really explain to us here why you decided to remove most of those. It raises a bit of a POV suspicion. Your pointed comment above raises the same suspicion. Debresser (talk) 06:58, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly, If you looked at actual text-count (try DYK-test if you have it installed) the new version have "5354 characters (903 words) "readable prose size"", while the old version had "6739 characters (1159 words) "readable prose size"". The reason why it looks like so much is because of those dead-linked urls which I removed are extremely long, typically looking like this: http://www.jpress.org.il/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin_TAU.asp?From=Search&Key=PLS/1939/05/28/1/Ar00101.xml&CollName=Palestine_1930_1939&DOCID=152458&PageLabelPrint=1&Skin=%54%41%55%48%65&enter=%74%72%75%65&Publication=%50%4c%53&AppName=%32&Hs=%61%64%76%61%6e%63%65%64&AW=%31%32%39%39%36%39%39%38%39%35%39%35%33&sPublication=%50%4c%53&tauLanguage=&sScopeID=%41%6c%6c&sSorting=%49%73%73%75%65%44%61%74%65%49%44%2c%61%73%63&sQuery=%4d%6f%72%64%65%63%68%61%69%20%53%68%65%63%68%74%6d%61%6e&rEntityType=&sSearchInAll=%66%61%6c%73%65&ViewMode=HTML
Secondly, did you read what I wrote above, at all? These links are DEAD. And have been marked as such since last year. You normally don´t have to explain why you remove something which is based on a DEAD LINK. Especially, as I explain above, what was on Wikipedia did not seem to have much of a base in these links to begin with....how do you explain that an article with the head-line "6 Arabes killed in Haifa" get turned into "On December 8, 1947, residents of Balad ash-Sheikh killed 2 Jews driving near the village"? Please explain that, before you revert again. Huldra (talk) 09:52, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The website doesn't work with links, that is why it appeared as though they were dead. I have restored the information with improved refs. Debresser (talk) 14:14, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ok, thanks, at least for not removing the "good" sources which I inserted. I spend a heck of a long time finding those sources, (you cannot just "google" for them, as virtually every writer spelled the names of these villages differently)...it is *extremely* frustrating to see someone removing them so easily.
  • Secondly; presently references 14, 15,16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22: are all either red-linked, or links to pages saying nothing. I will not remove them now, as you have said you will work on it.
  • From all the sources I have read: in total, far more Arab civilians than Jewish civilians were killed there. The present article gives more room to Jewish victims, however. Hence: I will restore the "Unbalanced"-template, Huldra (talk) 19:13, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your consideration.
The question is if that is correct? If there are many attacks on Jews, in which each time either nobody is killed, or a few people, and then one large attack on Arabs, it is only logical that the discussion of the many attacks will take up more space in the article than the one large attack on Arabs, regardless of the number of lives lost. That is still balanced. Debresser (talk) 06:11, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, presently references 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21 are unlinked refs to The Palestine Post, all about attacks on Jews. Firstly, I cannot see those refs, where do you find them?
Secondly, The Palestine Post was a Jewish/Zionist newspaper...off course they would be most interested in reporting attacks on Jews, and not the other way around. Now, if, say the archives of Filastin (newspaper) were online, we could search through them (if you read Arabic) and find all the attacks on Arabs. But it is *not* online. This makes this whole article terribly biased: it is like a court-case, where you let one party speak, and speak, while the other party is refused to say a word. This is simply not fair. Huldra (talk) 21:24, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Lol. Huldra, I have had my reservations about your behavior as an editor here, but this is ridiculous to the degree of not being serious.
In any case, you can search online archive of old newspapers at this link. As I said above, it is not possible to use direct links to the articles, unfortunately. Debresser (talk) 06:05, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the link; now I can look for that "6 Arabes killed in Haifa" which mysteriously turned into "On December 8, 1947, residents of Balad ash-Sheikh killed 2 Jews driving near the village"...and which even more mysteriously is now gone from the article.
It is also noted that my arguments about this being one-sided is met, not with counter-arguments, but with ad hominem. This article will stay one-sided, as long as only one side of the conflict is voiced. From what I have read of the times; it was typically "A attacks B attacks A attacks B attacks A"....etc. When you list *only* the attacks against one side, you create a lie. Quite simply. I suggest: Either we remove all the Palestine Post, -or, if you don´t agree: we take this to mediation, to get an "outsider" view of the issue. Huldra (talk) 20:49, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean with "mysterious"? Both the statement about 6 Arabs killed and the statement about 2 Jews killed were in the article and still are in the article. Did I miss something?
First of all, please note that I did not attack you ad hominem, contrary to your claim. I just said that your statement about the article being one-sided and the arguments behind it are so utterly skewed, that it is funny. It may be that as for myself, I blame that on a certain POV from your side. That is not something I care to go into. I leave it up to my fellow editors to review your edits both to articles and to discussions, and to reach a conclusion for themselves as to whether or not you are a POV editor and whether or not that is causing problems. Debresser (talk) 09:02, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you missed it. Note 22, which I referred to in my first post in this section, referring to this version of this article. Neither the sentence, ("On December 8, 1947, residents of Balad ash-Sheikh killed 2 Jews driving near the village") or the reference ("6 Arabes killed in Haifa, December, 12, 1947 The Palestine Post") are now in the article. (What *is* in the article is the report of an attack, with dead on both sides on the 30-31 December, 1947: not the same attack.)
Secondly: I have twice now asked you to address the issue of unequal sourcing; both times you respond with personalising the issue.....tackling the person, and not the ball. For a third time: how do you want to address the issue? Huldra (talk) 21:23, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  1. You're right. If it can wait till Sunday, I'll try to look up that reference and restore it if I can find it. Thanks for pointing this out.
  2. I don't agree there is an issue here. Sorry. Debresser (talk) 13:45, 5 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Robinson, and Petersen.[edit]

Sigh, I should have known by now not to trust Peterens sources: he gives Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 2, p. 124....but that is about "Sheik el Beled", literally the elder of the village, and the village being Taybeh, -Huldra (talk) 10:48, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

pr RS[edit]

pr Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_191#The_Palestine_Post, I will remove what is sourced only to "The Palestine Post", in a day or two. By what editors like DGG said: "They can if necessary be cited from there, preferably as quotations, including the form "Newspaper xy as quoted in A.N. Book pp. " (or, more often , "as quoted and translated". If they cannot be sourced to a scholarly book about the period; then this is cherry-picking, and out it goes. Huldra (talk) 22:42, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You will not remove sourced information. By the way, what happened, that you suddenly decide to come back to this issue? This was discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_191#The_Palestine_Post. As I said there: "In addition, Huldra should be warned that she should stop her attempts to rewrite history in favor of the Arab side of the PI conflict, and that Wikipedia is not a place for editors who want to do so." You'll find yourself at WP:ANI in no time if you remove sourced information without a special consensus. Debresser (talk) 11:58, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Then you can report me at once; I will remove it. All the "outside" voices on the RS noticeboard supported it. And I´m cleaning up the 48-villaged, district by district; recently it has been the Haifa-villages: therefore now. You didn´t seriously think that I had given up us any of the articles on these villages, did you? Huldra (talk) 22:55, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Now I catch you on a lie. Please re-read the opinion of Brad Dyer, who completely disagreed with your argument. As did I and Igorp-lj and StevenJ81. Two other authors, Aquillion and SageRad saw a problem with WP:UNDUE, which wasn't your original argument, and in any case is unfounded in the present state of this article. TFD said that newspapers are less than optimal sources for historical events. So a close analysis of that discussion show that actually NOBODY agreed with you, while 3 editors disgareed with you. Debresser (talk) 10:11, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I should report you for violation of WP:NPA for the above statement. Firstly, I made clear I counted the "outside" voices. As you yourself noted: "It is so funny how the usual editors have the usual opinions." Brad Dyer was until today blocked as a NoCal100-sock, StevenJ81 and Igorp-lj are also firmly more in "your camp" than in mine, (Just take a look at this recent affair, where StevenJ81 and Igorp-lj were firmly on "your" side.)
  • From the "outsiders" we had:
  • Aquillion: saw a problem with WP:UNDUE,
  • SageRad: saw a problem with WP:UNDUE, "That all sounds very bad, and wrong, but it's not the source that's the question. It's the apparently heavily biased behavior wanting to take over a page for their own point of view."
  • Arthur Rubin: noted out that WP:UNDUE is part of WP:NPOV
  • TFD: "While newspapers are reliable sources for news, they are poor secondary sources for historical events. Once historians have caught up with events, we should stop using contemporaneous news reporting." ....and historians have indeed caught up with pre-1948 stuff, ---> we should not include the newspapers for 1930s and 1940s stuff.
  • DGG: (who is an arb.com member) "These reliable sources, if in sufficient detail, would be expected to have citation of the newspapers used by the historians. They can if necessary be cited from there, preferably as quotations, including the form "Newspaper xy as quoted in A.N. Book pp. " (or, more often, "as quoted and translated" . The the quotation is representative and fair and not cherry-picking is the responsibility of the author of the book--we should use preferentially scholarly books that have been reviewed as fair or accepted as fair by all parties"
  • None of the above 5 "outsiders" disagreed with my suggestion that we removed the old Palestine Post-refs, IF they were not cited in any scholarly later book. NONE.
  • I agree with what DGG says here: if, say Morris, 2004, cited Palestine Post, then of course we could link to that. Huldra (talk) 22:06, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There was no WP:NPA that I see, but if you disagree, feel free to report me. If a person tells a lie, then pointing that out is not a personal attack. I suppose that is what you considered the "personal attack".
None of those 5 disagreed with your suggestion, but none agreed with you either. That is not consensus! You are not being serious here.
I already mentioned Aquillion and SageRad, and we understand their opinions in the same way. Arthur Rubin just made a comment, but did not express an opinion. TFD didn't say we shouldn't use the PP as a source, he just said it is not the preferred source, but without disqualifying it altogether. DGG agrees that the PP can be quoted. And then there are the editors who agree with me, whom you can not "disqualify" just because they happen to agree with me more often than they do with you! This is again not serious. In short, you don't have a foot to stand on. Debresser (talk) 11:04, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A comment about UNDUE - why is it DUE to write about every single Jewish attack that Morris describes on almost every village but not to mention Arabs attacks? Settleman (talk) 13:29, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? Settleman: below I added *all* the sources I found...frankly I don´t yet know if they are of Jewish attacks or Arab attacks (I haven´t looked at them yet: just added the pages I found in the registers), in any case: I intend to add both. And if you have a problem with the number of attacks from each side that he mentions, then I´m afraid you will have to take that up with Morris himself. As for Debresser; yes, DGG agrees that the PP can be quoted, IF it is used by a scholarly source, (say, Morris).....that is not quite the same as only saying "DGG agrees that the PP can be quoted." This article has been horribly tilted for years. And I am not satisfied with having {{Unbalanced}} on this article forever! If you don´t agree that the WP:RSN discussion was enough, I´m willing to bring this to WP:DRN. Do you agree to that? Huldra (talk) 21:41, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm saying is that people on RSN are probably unaware that attacks are mention on most of 'Arab towns and villages depopulated'. Therefore UNDUE is either irrelevant or information about Jewish attacks should be removed as well. There should be 1 standard. In my opinion, PP is RS for historical facts that weren't historical but current at the time it was published. Settleman (talk) 11:12, 26 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know precisely what Settleman tried to say with his last point, but even the opinion of TFD that newspapers are not preferred sources for history does not necessarily pertain to dry facts. Debresser (talk) 17:32, 26 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Adding sourses:[edit]

Just placing links to sources here, before major re-write, Huldra (talk) 23:36, 22 September 2015 (UTC):[reply]


  • Gelber, 2001, pp. 77, 102, 106


  • Davis, Rochelle (2011). Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-7313-3.
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