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Personal work section notes. I get headaches and am as slow as a wet week, in dragging up diffs, and even have a geezer's trouble in following these arguments all over several pages, so I can't really make an adequate case. So I'll have to make my contribution in the next few days, according to the fashion I normally work after, when I did work, in the real world. Reflecting from principles, through to the problem, the evidence and conclusions. Apologies to anyone reading this. It's written to help myself get some order into this chat, not to guide others.
(ii)Note on language, naming as an appropriative act of possession and dominion.
'According to the aboriginal theory, the ancestor first called out his own name; and this gave rise to the most sacred and secret couplet or couplets of his song. The he 'named' (tneuka) the place where he had originated, the trees or rocks growing near his home, the animals sporting about nearby, any strangers that came to visit him, and so forth. He gave names to all of these, and thereby gained the power of calling them by their names; this enabled him to control them and to bind them to his will.'[1]
Wa’-yitser’ Yĕhôwāh’ (Adonai) ĕlôhīm’ min-hā'ădāmāh’ kol-‘ha’yath’ ha’-sādeh’ wĕ'ēth kol-ôph ha’-shāma’yim wa’-yāvē ‘ el-hā'ādām’ li-r'ôth mah-yiqrā-lô’ wĕ-kôl ăsher yiqrā-lô’ hā'-ādām‘ ne’pfesh ‘ha’yāh’ hû shĕmô. (20) Wa’- yiqrā’ hā'-ādām‘ shēmôth….
‘And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20. And Adam gave names.. .' [2]
Wa-‘allama ādama l-asmā’a kullahā,
In Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon, the narrator Cherrycoke recounts, against the huge backdrop of seismic shifts in the political and scientific world of that time, the story of the eponymous figures who have undertaken to draw a scientific map of the wilderness and terrain between Pennsylvania and Maryland:
‘what we were doing out in that Country together was brave, scientifick beyond my understanding and ultimately meaningless, - we were putting a line straight through the heart of the Wilderness, eight yards wide and due west, in order to separate two Proprietorships, granted when the World was yet feudal and but eight years later to be nullified by the War for Independence.”
Late in the novel, the Chinaman of the piece remarks:
‘To rule forever, . .it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call . . Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,- to create thus a Distinction betwixt’em. –’tis the first stroke.-All else will follow as if predestin’d, into War and Devastation.’ [4]
The dispute here in wiki, like the historical reality it refers to, has its ‘Bad History’. In the novel, the apparently empirical task of defining boundaries is found unwittingly implicated in the later travails of American history, with its exceptionalism, erasure of native peoples, of possible alternative worlds, of Frostian paths never taken. American innocence and pragmatic realism, in the innocuous work of two surveyors, is swept up in the torment of power: cartographic principles embody an Enlightenment’s reach into the unknown, while, applied, to the ends of order and control, they inadvertently engender violent confusion and disarray. What is the ‘right line’ to take on nomenclature, when history’s line demarcating Israel and the West Bank was drawn by war, then the West Bank was occupied in the aftermath of war, and the world of Israeli settlers begins to redraw the map? One thing that happens is that the complexities have drawn editors into a minor war, as Pynchonesque as it is Pythonesque. There is one difference: most the cartographers say one thing, and Israel, the controlling power, asserts a different terminology. So what’s in a name?
Before the world was tribalized and invested by the collateral damage or fall-out from the Tower of Babel, God assigned to the mythical forefather of all, ‘man’ or Adam, the faculty to name the world, though God himself had exercised this right in naming the light (or) day (yom) and the darkness (hôshek) night(layĕlāh) (Gen.1.5) There was only one name for each thing, and in later European thought the primordial language employed in this taxonomy was to be called ‘the Adamic vernacular’[5]. The thesis was that the pristine jargon employed by Adam, being pre-Babelic, represented the true name for every object: every thing had a proper name intrinsic to its nature. The Greeks, as we see in Plato’s Cratylus, were much prepossessed by the philosophical crux of the correctness of names (ὀρθότης τῶν ὀνομάτων): did names have an intrinsic relation to, or represent, things, or was the link arbitrary.[6]. The Confucian school’s doctrine of the Rectification of names (zhèngmíng: 正名). In the Bible itself the Hebrew text is full of the magic of words, of the power of words themselves to alter reality, a belief testified to in Isaiah:
'So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.'[7]
Modernity, especially after Ferdinand Saussure (1916), has opted, correctly, for the latter position, and disposed of the magical force of naming. But nationalism, another product of modernity, reintroduced it, via the backdoor, in a new sense. Naming was an act of assertive territorial control, of defining ethnic rights over land, especially as Anthony Smith argues, ethnie are defined also by attachment to a specific geophysical reality, the ‘homeland’ that defines in good part their identity [8]). Since national identities are a political construct, the inculcation of a uniform language, and the use of its lexicon to define or redefine the landscape, are crucial instruments in forging a national sense of common tradition. Nationalism demanded toponymic unison, and linguistic conformity.
John Gaddis, glossing James Scott’s recent book on North Dakota roads and maps, remarks on maps that they reflect
‘what states try to do to those portions of the earth’s surface they hope to control, and to the people who live upon them. For it’s only by making territories and societies legible – by which he means measurable and hence manipulable – that governments can impose and maintain their authority. “These state simplifications,” he writes, are “like abridged maps.” They don’t replicate what’s actually there, but “when allied with state power, (they) enable much of the reality they (depict) to be remade.” [9]
The idea of a nation as a territorial unit speaking one language over that territory is a parlously modern ideology, one engineered by nation-builders into a plausible if specious semblance of commonsense. As Massimo d’Azeglio is said to have remarked at the dawn of the Italian Risorgimento, ‘we have made Italy: our task now is to make Italians’[10], 95% of whom could neither read, write and nor often even speak ‘Italian’.
Imperialism, venturing into terra incognita to appropriate foreign land and incorporate it into an empire, went side by side with nationalism, which was a form of internal colonization over, and homogenization of, the disparate cultures that made up an historically defined territory. For the natives, their indigenous naming is ‘essentially a process of asserting ownership and control of place and landscape’[11]
Daphne Kutzner, in her analysis of the role of Empire in classic children’s fiction, looks at the question from the perspective of the intrusive Empire and its refraction of imperial renaming as reflected in popular books, notes that
‘Naming a place gives the namer power over it, or at least the illusion of power and control. Colonial powers literally transform a landscape once they rename it and begin reshaping it.’ [12]
Terra incognita is the foreigner’s name for an ostensibly empty landscape which, had they taken the trouble to learn the local languages, would have revealed itself to be replete from every rocky nook to crannied gulley with ancient toponyms. The tendency was one of erasure, and, as with introduced fauna and flora [13], the landscape was consistently remade as it was renamed to familiarize the alien by rendering it recognizable, a variation on the landscape settlers came from. The new mapping, as often as not, represent as much the settler’s mentality, as the queerly new features of the foreign landscape under toponymic domestication.[14]
Australia is somewhat the extraordinary exception, and broke with the gusto for imperial nomenclature. There, following the pattern set by the earlier land surveyor Thomas Mitchell and his assistant Philip Elliott that “the natives can furnish you with names for every flat and almost every hill” (1828), native names were adopted in a standarized English form for both euphony and their characteristic relation to the landscape, and indeed a resolution was passed as early as 1884 which established the priority of native names in international usage.[15]
Often imperialism and nationalism go hand in hand. Napoleon’s troops, in 1796, could hardly communicate with each other, such were the grammatical, semantic and syntactical rifts between the various provincial patois at the time. By 1814, Napoleon had formed a European empire, and millions of provincials spoke the one, uniform language of the French state’s army. When two nations, or ethnie, occupy the same territory, the historical victor’s toponymic choices, dictated by the victor’s native language, and as articulated in bureaucratic documents and maps, usually determines what names are to be used. However, the presence of two distinct ethnie on the same national soil creates fissiparous tensions in nomenclature. Speaking of French and British conflict in Canada over areas, Susan Drummond, remarks that, 'Symbolic appropriation of a territory is a critical index of control’, and notes that, as late as 1962, the Québec cartographer Brochu, invoked the political dimension of place names as important, in the conflict with the majoritarian English heritage of Canada over the naming of the northern Inuit lands. [16]
Again, in another familiar example, Alfonso Pérez-Agote notes that Spain has its Basque Autonomous region, Euskadi. But the original force of that name covers an area beyond the administrative and territorial units of Spain, and Basque nationalists evoke its symbolic territory, comprising also the Basque area of Navarre in France. Euskadi has, on one level, within Spanish administrative discourse, a ‘territorial political objectification’, and on another level, in Basque nationalism, a ‘non-administratively objectified’ territory extending into a neighbouring country.[17]. The analogy with Israeli and Palestinian nationalism is close. In Israeli discourse, Israel or Eretz Israel can denote Israel and its outriding West Bank, while Palestine, which is the favoured term of West Bank Arabs for the land they inhabit, also can refer to the whole neighbouring territory of Israel as well.
The anomaly, in comparative terms, is that history has settled the question, whatever local separatist nationalisms, revanchist or irredentist, may claim, except for such places as ‘Palestine’. For there, while Israel is a constituted state, it emerged the victor, manu militari in a conflict that gave it control over a contiguous land, but has no recognized legal right, since that land is defined as and ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory. Acts of unilateral annexation, the extension of administrative structures, settlements, toponymic remapping, and widescale expropriation of land in Palestinian title, is not only not recognized, but judged ‘illegal’ by the highest international bodies of law. All major encyclopedias (Encyclopædia Britannica, Encarta etc.,), except Wiki, maintain a strict neutrality, and, in recognition of the fraught difficulties, adopt the neutral toponymic convention of ‘(northern/southern) West Bank’ in order to avoid lending their prestige to the partisan politics of the parties in this regional conflict.
(iii)The specific instance of Palestine and the West Bank
When the British wrested control over Palestine from the Ottomans in the First World War, and established themselves there to administer the region, Selwyn Troen notes that, 'naming also became part of the contest for asserting control over Palestine'.[18]. As early as 1920 two Zionists advising the British Mandatory authority on everything regarding the assignment of Hebrew names, fought hard for the restoration of Hebraic toponymy, and when, with such places as Nablus, or indeed 'Palestine' itself, were given non-Hebrew names, they protested at the designations as evidence of discrimination against Jews. The point is made by the Israeli historian and cartographer Meron Benvenisti:-
'When the Geographical Committee for Names, which operated under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society (the only body authorized to assign names throughout the British Empire, decided to call the Mandatory geopolitical entity “Palestine” and the city whose biblical name was Shechem, “Nablus” these Jewish advisers saw this as an act of anti-Jewish discrimination, and a searing defeat for Zionism.'[19]
One pauses to reflect. We are being accused here of 'anti-Jewish/Israeli discrimination' for refusing to insert Israeli toponyms into the West Bank. Nothing is said of the logic of this POV-pushing, i.e. that a Palestinian reader might well regard a Wiki endorsement of suc h foreign nomenclature as a 'searing defeat', and adduce it as proof of 'anti-Palestinian discrimination' both by Zionist editors, and Wikipedia itself.
Since Zionism took root, and especially since Israel was founded, the making of a people, living in a defined territorial unit and speaking one language, has followed the universal pattern of modernity. The landscape, full of Arabic words, had to be renamed, often according to Biblical terminology, but, more often, by the invention of Biblical-sounding names. To do this, a good part of the 10,000 odd Arabic toponyms collected by Herbert Kitchener, T. E. Lawrence and others in surveying that part of the Middle East had to be cancelled, and replaced with Israeli/Hebrew terms, to remake the landscape and its topographic songlines [20] resonate with historical depth. Hebrew is a ‘sacred tongue’ (Leshon HaQodesh:לשון הקודש), the Bible describes the conquest of Eretz Yisrael, and the dispossession of its indigenous peoples, who were not part of the chosen: the pattern is repeated in modern times, down to the renaming. The revival of Hebrew, with its potent shibboleths, understandably exercises a powerful hold over the new culture of the country.
The problem is, as Steven Runciman pointed out in the mid-sixties, that the part assigned to Israel by the UN deliberation of 1947 was the western, non-Biblical part, whilst the part assigned to a future Palestinian state, what we now call the West Bank, is precisely the area most infused with Biblical associations cherished by the Jewish people, with sites and names redolent of the founding myths and realities of their ancient forefathers. Israelis, in their secular land, mostly dwell where the Philistines dwelt. The Palestinians dwell where the ancient Jewish tribes once settled. The tensions simmer between the secular Israel, which thrives in its new Mediterranean world, and the religiously-identified Israel that aspires to return to a geophysical space where origins and the present, the sacred nomenclature of the Bible and the modern world of Jewish life, might at least, once more overlap, in an ‘Adamic’ harmony congruent with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
(iv)The Negev Precedent With the foundation of Israel, and in the aftermath of the 1948 war, the vast Negev and part of the Arava were captured, and Ben Gurion duly established a Negev Names Committee to ‘hebraize’ the landscape’s features, its mountains, valleys and springs. The area already had a rich Arab toponymy, and some on the committee thought these terms might be preserved as a ‘democratic gesture towards the Arab population of the new state.’ It was not to be. The nomadic Bedouin who dwelt throughout the area were rounded up and expelled by force. They had terms for everything, but with their uprooting and displacement, Benvenisti notes, ‘an entire world, as portrayed in their toponomastic traditions, died.' [21] Ben Gurion wrote to the committee setting forth his view that:-
We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state. Just as we do not recognize the Arabs’ political proprietorship of the land, so also we do not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names.[22][23]
Political pressure and ‘the influence of patriotic arguments’ prevailed over those who, like S.Yeibin, thought the erasure of Arab names, many of which might preserve an archaic Hebrew origin. Yeibin thought this a disaster:-
‘With a clap of the hand they were wiping out an entire cultural heritage that must certainly conceal within it elements of the Israeli-Jewish heritage as well. The researchers did indeed endeavour to identify all those names that had a link to ancient Hebrew ones in an attempt “to redeem, as far as possible, names from the days of yore.” [24]<
Any Arabic toponym in short only interested the topographers in so far as it might provide a clue to reconstructing the hypothetical Hebraic original that might lie behind it. This consideration, however, often created a mess of concocted pseudo-traditional names. The hebraization of such Arabic toponyms did not restore the historic past, but invented a mythical landscape, resonant with traditionalist associations, that had, however, no roots in Jewish tradition. The most striking geologic formation in the Negev, Wadi Rumman was rewritten as if that word disguised an ancient Hebrew Ram ('elevated'), whereas the Arabic term it was calqued from actually meant 'Pomegranate Arroyo', for example.[25]
Reflecting on Benvenisti’s account in his larger study of language conflict in the Middle east, the Palestinian expatriate scholar Yasir Suleiman makes remarks that,
’By assigning Hebrew names anew to places on the map, the committee was therefore ‘redeeming’ these places from the corrupt and ‘alien’ Arabic names that they have acquired over the centuries’
and likens this process of linguistic erasure of Arabic and the reconstitution of Hebrew metaphorically to the nakba:-
‘The cartographic cleansing of the Negev map of Arabic place names and their replacement by Hebrew names is an enactment of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their homeland’ [26]
The record is therefore one of a linguistic cleansing of Palestine of any trace of its long Arabic history, and, as we shall see, an attempt to remodel Arabic usage in the territories Israel conquered and controls, to conform with Hebrew. Toponyms can only retain some semblance of an Arabic form, if that form is suspected to camouflage, in turn, an original Hebraic name. Adapting the reborn Hebrew[27] language to the alien realities of the Palestinian landscape, the obvious problem was that the nomenclature for much of the flora and fauna, not to speak of the landscape itself, was infused with the very language, Arabic, a revarnished Hebrew had to compete with. As early as 1910 Jacob Fichman, a member of the Language Council, stated that Hebrew:
‘will not digest the new names of plants, especially those which have been taken from the Arabic language’ and that these borrowed names ‘will always be like atrophied limbs’ for ‘despite the fact that the Arabic language is our sister language in the family of Semitic languages, it has no foundation in our |psyche ’[28]
Hebrew was thus to be programmatically sealed off from Arabic, to prevent atrophisation, and cultivate purism by means of a fake Biblical antiquarianism. Theodor Adorno, writing in the melancholic aftermath of the Holocaust on the effects of cultural purism, once remarked on the purging of foreign words from German undertaken by nationalists intent restoring an ideal of cultural authenticity. He saw this as part of the pathology of nationalism in Germany. Foreign words were treated as if they were 'the Jews of language' (Fremdwörter sind die Juden der Sprache)[29]. In expunging the landscape and the human world of Palestine of its Arabic language, of landscape and culture, Zionism likewise treated Arabic as German or French linguistic purists treated loan-words in their own languages, or, later, actual Jews in their midst, as foreign bodies to be expelled, or expunged if a proper 'foundation for an authentically Jewish psyche' were to be successfully engineered. One would call this ironic, were it not so tragically melancholic in its unintended resonances.
(v)The West Bank. History and Naming The relationship between demographic displacement and the loss of one's landscape through the erasure of its traditional placenames in Palestine has been remarked on by Paul Diehl.
‘The exclusive attachment to territory is reflected in the naming and renaming of places and locations in accordance with the historic and religious sites associated with the dominant political group. Not only did the outflow of Palestinian refugees bring about a change in the Jewish-Arab demographic rations, it brought about the replacement of an Arab-Palestinian landscape with a Jewish-Israeli landscape. The names of abandoned villages disappeared from the map and were replaced with alternative Hebrew names . . Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank have taken on biblical names associated with the specific sites as a means of expressing the Jewish priority in these places and the exclusive nature of the territorial attachment. Modern Israeli and Palestinian maps of Israel/Palestine possess the same outer borders, but the semantic content of the name is completely different.. The means by which new landscapes are created to replace or obliterate former landscapes is a good example of the way in which metaphysical and symbolic attachment to territory is translated into concrete realities on the ground.’ [30]
In 1950, when King Abdullah, of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, unilaterally annexed the territory he had conquered in 1948, he changed the name of his country to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which incorporated the remaining fragment of Palestine as aḍ-Ḍiffä l-Ġarbīyä, or 'the West Bank' of that kingdom. The usage is still current in German (Westjordanland). Though only Britain recognized his annexation, the word itself found ready acceptance in, and was not, 'forced on', the international community, as Binyamin Netanyahu argued. [31]
In 1967, Israel conquered what the world knew as ‘The West Bank’, the Biblical heartland, and a decree calling it ‘Judea and Samaria’ was issued by the Israeli military on December 17 that year with the explicit definition that it would be identical in meaning for all purposes to the West Bank region[32] to replace the interim terms 'Occupied Territories' (ha-shetahim ha-kevushim), and ‘the Administered Territories’ (ha-shetahim ha-muhzakim) in use since the immediate aftermath of the June war.[33] The term 'Judea and Samaria' however was rarely used until Likud took power[34]. The Labour Government never enacted a settlement policy, though Gush Emunim, an extremist settler ground with a fundamentalist ideology, pressed settlement, and propagated the terminology ‘Judea and Samaria’. When the Likud party, the maximalist, expansionist party with strong ties to both religious and ultra-Zionist groups and traditions, was elected in 1977, it imposed Samaria and Judea as the vox propria in modern Hebrew on the mass media, expressly forbidding the use of the international term West Bank[35][36]. Notably, the government's imposing of these terms on Israeli usage was seen as a prerequisite for an envisioned settlement policy, since accepting the terms would predispose the public to accepting the policy.[37]
Gideon Aran describes the achievement:
‘The importance of changing names in the process of conquering territory is well known. Assimilation of the name “Judea and Samaria” in normal and official language, as well as in jargon, attests to G(ush)E(numin)’s political and cultural achievements.' [38]
The Camp David Accords negotiations of and the final agreement, in 1979, only underline how great was the linguistic rift between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's position and the American government intent on brokering an agreement.
‘Begin consistently proved to be the most extreme member of his delegation, insisting on seemingly innocent terms such as “autonomy” as opposed to “self rule,” on the labelling of the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” in the Hebrew text, and on the use of the phrase “undivided Jerusalem.'[39]
A huge amount of wrangling between the American negotiators and Begin revolved around this term.
‘for what must have been the tenth time, he (Begin) objected to the term West Bank, giving a lesson to the president on the geographic and historical appropriateness of the term and the importance of using the words Judea and Samaria.’ [40]
Begin refused to back down from his ‘rock-hard’ intransigence on using ‘Judea and Samaria’ and at the Camp David signing ceremony, (March 26,1979) several interpretive notes were required to be added as annexes to the basic documents, one specifically dealing with the West Bank, which President Carter annotated with his own hand with the words:
‘I have been informed that the expression ‘West Bank’ is understood by the Government of Israel to mean ‘Judea and Samaria’. [41]
An ambitious programme of colonising settlement, toponomastic Hebraisation and cultural Judaization was undertaken, and indigenous Palestinians were shifted off their land, in a repetition of the Negev programme, which forms the precedent. The programme took wing especially after the unprovoked[42]invasion of Lebanon in 1982, whose key political objectives included ousting the refugee Palestinian resistance in the para-state[43] on Israel’s northern flank from Lebanon, where the PLO projected a 'state in waiting' image that threatened Israel’s plans for long-term control over the West Bank. The war was, the head of the IDF said at the time, ‘part of the struggle over the Land of Israel[44]. It aimed to further the isolation of Palestinians on the West Bank by depriving them of close support, halt the rise to political respectability of the PLO, which embodied Palestinian nationalist aspirations, and deprive that body of its claims to be a political partner in the peace process for Israel’s normalization of its relations with the outside world. [45] One calculation, a minority view entertained by both Ariel Sharon and Raphael Eytan, however, was that, expelled from Lebanon, the PLO would be forced to return to Jordan, topple king Hussein, and establish a Palestinian state there to satisfy Palestinian national ambitions that Israel would thwart on the West Bank. [46]
Changing the realities of occupied territory by the manipulation of language, Hebrew, Arabic, and in controllable sources like the global Wikipedia, became a programmatic goal. The settlers were in fact 'colonists' in the old sense, but Israeli English usage has here prevailed in the politics of the culture wars to determine how the international community perceives the dynamics of that area. The corresponding Hebrew usage is complex (see Israeli settlements), but continuity with the biblical setlement of Eretz Yisrael is evoked by referring to Jewish settlers as mitnahalim. The root *n-h-l directly evokes a passage in the Book of Numbers[47] where each tribe is assigned its portion on entering Canaan, or the Land of Israel, particularly as ' in the pledge by the tribes of Gad and Reuben that they will fight on the west side of the Jordan river to help the other tribes take possession of their assigned portions'[48] Settlers, qua, mitnahalim are not colonizing anybody's land, in this usage: they are simply taking up their 'assigned portions' as those were marked out by God to the Chosen People.
Rashid Khalidi has remarked how the Israeli authorities themselves try to engineer the way Palestinians think in Arabic by tampering with that language's natural idiom in the Arabic broadcasts they authorize. Over Israeli Arabic channels, one does not hear Jerusalem referred to, as it is customarily in Arabic, and by Palestinians, as Bayt al-Maqdis ('The House of Sanctity') or Al Quds al-Sharif ('The Noble Holy Place'). Arabic usage as sanctioned by Israel speaks rather of Urshalim ('Jerusalem') or Urshalim/al-Quds ('Jerusalem Al-Quds'). The purpose is to diffuse a variety of Arabic names for places that are calques on the Hebrew terms chosen for the area.[49].
This goes right through the bureaucratic language, a form of linguistic colonization that reinforces the physical occupation of the west Bank by cultural re-engineering. A new travel permit was imposed on the colonized Palestinians in the West Bank in 2002, and required of any of them wishing to travel in that area. This was issued, printed and released by Israeli authorities who call it in Arabic Tasrih tanaqul khas fi al-hawajiz al-dakhiliyya fi mantaqat yahuda wa al-samara. ('Special Travel Permit for the Internal Checkpioints in the Area of Judea and Samaria.'). Here, Palestinians who must travel in the West Bank, for them 'Filastin', are required to obtain a document which requires that area to be referred to by the settler term, 'Judea and Samaria'. It is this form of Arabic which they are expected to use in negotiating their way with Israeli authorities through checkpoints. But West Bank Palestinians simply abbreviate it and refer to their tasrih dakhili (Checkpoint permit), [50], thereby eluding the settler term imposed on them.
Michael Sfard indeed has spoken of Hebrew being mobilized to lend itself to the national emergency of occupying Palestine, and denying the Palestinians the liberty to be themselves. They are passive subjects of an activist language that wraps them about in bureaucratic euphemisms.
'It has been tasked with providing a soothing, anesthetizing name for the entire project of suffocation, for the blanket system of theft we have imposed on those we occupy . . Thus extrajudicial executions have become “targeted assassinations”. Torture has been dubbed “moderate physical pressure”. Expulsion to Gaza has been renamed “assigning a place of residence”. The theft of privately owned land has become “declaring the land state-owned”. Collective punishment is “leveraging civilians”; and collective punishment by blockade is a “siege,” “closure” or “separation".'[51]
A proposal is now being made to apply the principle of Hebraization, as of 2009, even to those places within Israel which the world designates by traditional toponyms, such as Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) Nazareth (Natzrat) and Jaffa (Yafo).[52][53] According to Yossi Sarid, the process, illustrated further by Knesset proposals to eliminate Arabic as one of Israel's official languages, constitutes a form of ethnocide.[54]
(vi) Analysis of Ynhockey's suggestions
‘Mapmaking was one of the specialized intellectual weapons by which power could be gained, administered, given legitimacy and codified’ [55]
'Mapmaking is not, however, solely an instrument of war; it is an activity of supreme political significance – a means of providing a basis for the mapmaker’s claims and for his social and symbolic values, while cloaking them in a guise of “scientific objectivity.” Maps are generally judged in terms of their “accuracy”, that is, the degree to which they succeed in reflecting and depicting the morphological landscape and its “man-made” covering But maps portray a fictitious reality that differs from other sorts of printed matter only in form.'[56]
After 1967 ‘Cartographers . .had many options, which tended to reveal their political proclivities. Those who were sympathetic to Israel labelled the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Sinai as “administered territories” and used the phrase “Judea and Samaria” for Jordan’s former West Bank. They also included all of Jerusalem within Israeli territory,. Mapmakers who were ideologically neutral generally referred to “occupied territory” and maintained the term “West Bank”. . . In the post-1993 period a Palestinian Authority has been established in the West Bank and Gaza, yet there is no actual independent state of Palestine. Most international maps have stayed with the terms “West Bank” and “Gaza” but maps published by the Palestinian Authority describe these areas as “Palestine.” Furthermore, Palestinian Authority maps usually leave out Israel and assign its territory to “Palestine,” with the added designation that it is “occupied territory.”Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, Harvey Sicherman, The power of projections: : how maps reflect global politics and history, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006 pp.37-8
We are dealing with a defined territory and its naming. User:Ynhockey would make tidy distinctions, define the bound geographical territory (CIA Factbook) as just a political reality, and use Judea and Samaria for all other contexts. In his own work on Wiki, much of it admirable, we find many maps. Examine the following map he authored and uploaded, and which is employed on the Battle of Karameh
The central colour, a washed acquamarine tint, allows one to highlight the field of movement in the battle, and blurs the neat territorial division between the West Bank, and Jordan. But note that, in a wholly unnecessary manner, Israel is stamped in large bold characters and made to overlay the West Bank, which is placed diminutively in parentheses. Willy-nilly, the impression is that the West Bank is some territorial hypothesis or province within Israel. Whether Ynhockey meant to give the reader this impression or not is immaterial. Maps, as one source already quoted noted, reflect the cognitive bias of the mapmaker as much as an interpretation of a landscape, and here the bias is that the West Bank is under Israel, behind Israeli lines, a subset of that state. It is a fine example of what many cartographers and historians of cartography argue: the making of maps, and toponymic nomenclature in them, serves several purposes, to clarify, as here, a battle landscape, for example, but also to impose or assert power, or claims, or blur facts. Objectively, User:Ynhockey has loaded wiki with a map that cogs our perceptions, tilting them to an annexationist assumption. Indeed, unlike the Israeli government so far, his map actually looks like it has the West Bank annexed.
Further reading:-
trust you have had a good christmas- have a good new year as well! JarrahTree 00:17, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
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A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Zion Square assault is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zion Square assault until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Icewhiz (talk) 15:26, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
I can really tell where wikipedia is at when I go to the Mick Jagger and Jimi Hendrix categories to find that neither have a parent category or anything at all on their talk pages (no designated projects) - its all just low hanging fruit that people nibble at - the real issues abound like a damned 1882 tsunami from krakatoa - untouched and unmanaged - and enough to ingrain a sense of optimism that.... JarrahTree 10:28, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
So, on I went. I think I never saw
Is this of interest? Cheers, Huldra (talk) 21:40, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Hi Nishidani, let's talk. Maybe if you and I can come to agree, it will help everyone else agree? I know you like threaded, so I will sign every paragraph. :-) Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
1. 160k or 200k or 300k is not enough to cover this topic. At least ten times as much text is needed to really do it justice. Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
2. The difference between one long article or ten smaller articles is the difference between baking one big loaf and baking ten smaller loafs: either way, it's the same amount of bread. Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
3. Our most important readers are the youth, for whom Wikipedia is the first stop, who know the least about this conflict, and whose minds will be heavily influenced by the first thing they read about it. Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
4. The average millennial does not have the attention span to read a book, nor a novella, nor a long article. 150k or 300k of reading is not going to happen, never mind ten times as much. Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
5. There is no point in writing something unless it will be read. Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
6. We should offer the child or novice reader an article that (a) they will actually read, (b) they will understand, and (c) will give them a correct, neutral, sufficiently-complete explanation of the occupation. Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
7. We should offer the curious or advanced reader further information about the topic. We should provide as much (accurate, neutral, well-sourced, etc.) information as we can, organized in such a way to make it as easy to understand as possible (i.e., to ensure it will be read). Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
8. Ergo, we should have (a) an overview article that a child can read and understand, and (b) a series of in-depth sub-articles offering further understanding to those who are willing and able to read more. Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
9. Ergo, we should spin off. Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
10. Ergo, we should start working together on how to spin off, rather than spend any more time fighting about whether to spin off. Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
This is my train of thought. It seems to me that we both want the same thing, so I haven't understood thus far why you disagree with me (and so strongly). I'm watching your talk page and looking forward to your reply. Best, Levivich? ! 00:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
In regards to diff, please WP:DISCLOSE any COI and/or WP:PAID editing performed in relation to said commision.Icewhiz (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
That he said he had been commissioned for a prestigious encyclopedia should have been a hint it was not Wikipedia. nableezy - 20:58, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
Following our discussion, I would be interested in working with you to improve that article, maybe even bring it up to Good Article standard - you do write excellent articles and with your classical background I can imagine you would be able to make insightful contributions to it.
I will have access to better sources in a few weeks, and have been intending to improve the article when I get them, but having an experienced editor on board would result in a better article and also provide an excellent opportunity to improve my ability to contribute to Wikipedia - and of course I would defer to your greater experience and education on any matters that we disagree on. -- NoCOBOL (talk) 09:38, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
The work is believed to have been written in Alexandria, perhaps having been started when Ptolemy ordered the body of Alexander brought to Egypt, and finished between 309 and 301 BC. This dating is backed by the writings of several ancient historians, in particular through the works of the same Ptolemy, who it appears corrected Cleitarchus and whose works have been dated to the late fourth century
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Israeli occupation of the West Bank is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Israeli occupation of the West Bank until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.
Hi,
Here are the articles I tagged for merger. Some of them may be ethnicities that share a common language, but some of them are probably duplicates, e.g. alt names. Since you know the literature, would you mind reviewing them, and removing the 'merge' templates from the ones that shouldn't be merged?
West of Lake Mackay to about Longitude 126°E;north toward a native place named Manggai which is tentatively identified as in the Stansmore Range. Manjildjara say their country begins at Ngila, an unidentified place several days walk east of Liburu (Libral on maps, Canning Stock Route Well 37). South to about 23°30'S latitude. A group of them supposedly suffering from the effects of drought were officially removed in April 1964 from ['Pundudjaba (Jupiter Well; 126°43'E x 22°50'S) to Papunya Station. Their name was first heard in the west as Ilda in 1953, again in 1956 from a Pintubi man at Haast Bluff and directly from a tribesman in 1964]
Good catch.
On Hardey River south of Rocklea; southeast along upper Ashburton River from Turee Creek upstream to Kunderong Range and Angelo River; south only a short distance from the main Ashburton River channel to the north of Mount Vernon Station. Enmity with the Ngarlawangga prevented them from visiting Tunnel Creek.
Tindale defines them as separate, and as one can see from the bolded part, in the good ol' days, both groups were at odds, and clearly had boundaries beyond which incursion by either would lead to war.
Better still, they have to be kept separate.
, or rather, unresolvable. While the Walgalu are traditionally attested there, as well as the Ngunawal, there are highly politicized claims and counter-claims to a tertium quid, namely the 'Ngambri' based on the suggestion such a group, and their ethnonym, lie behind the name for Australia's capital, Canberra. As one can see from the Ngambri page, it is all either WP:OR or modern political infighting by those descendants who make this claim, and those who dismiss it. To jam the Ngambri mess into the Walgalu page would only submerge the solid data of the latter, and be an eyesore. I think the sensible thing is to keep them separated.
In some cases, it may be that two ethnicities are confused in one of the articles, so they shouldn't be merged but part of one should be moved to the other.
I've only reviewed the articles linked from the regional templates, and only half of those. But I've come across quite a few ethno articles that aren't linked from the regional templates.
I've probably also missed some that don't have corresponding language articles. It's when I add the ethno name to the language info box that I sometimes notice that I'm repeating a name. — kwami (talk) 21:20, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
According to Norman Tindale, the Kokowara had some 1,800 square miles (4,700 km2) of tribal land on the Normanby River, extending south from Lakefield to Laura and the Laura River.[1] Their central camping area was at a place called Daidan on the Deighton River.[2]
In Norman Tindale's estimation, the Laia had 2,100 square miles (5,400 km2) of territory, ranging over the area to the north of the Palmer River, and east as far as the Great Dividing Range. Their western limits lay around the headwaters of the Alice River.[1]
On that evidence, they can't be merged.
Norman Tindale estimated that the Wiknantjara's tribal lands were about 300 square miles (780 km2) in the area between the mouths of the Holroyd River.[1]
However Kugu Nganhcara has no entry, except as an alternative name for the former. This is a very good catch. Kugu Nganhcara (Kugu-Nganychara,known also by the exonym Wik Ngenycharra) are associated with the area whose northern bounds are around the Kendall River and southwards around Moonkan Creek.(von Sturmer 1978:p.169,181) whereas the term used by Tindale Wiknantjara if looked at geophysically refers to an area of a subgroup, the Kugu-Ugbanh in the northern-centre of this area. (John Richard von Sturmer, The Wik Economy, Territoriality and Totemism in Western Cape York Peninsula, North Queensland, PhD University of Queensland 1978.p.37) Contextually then, Tindale’s Wiknantjara is an example of ethnographic synecdoche, they being the Kugu-Ugbank dialect speakers of the broader Kugu-Nganychara. Of course these are highly probable inferences. My problem, as usual, is to locate a source that states the obvious, to avoid WP:OR. On this evidence clearing the wik nantjara has to be merged into Kugu NganhcaraNishidani (talk) 11:31, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
I was tempted to agree here. Indeed I tried a merge, but it's more complex thasn appears.The problem is that as it stands Gunwinggu is referenced to ethnography that dealt only with one of the six Bininj Gunwok groups. Norman Tindale's mapping seems to refer predominantly to the Kunwinjku /Gunwinggu, and speakers of that dialect were the dominant informants of Ronald Berndt and his wife Catherine Berndt. Elsewhere we have several pages with an ethnos, say Yugambeh people, and a separate page on one of their constitutive groups, the Kombumerri (a difficulty there is that the present self-identifiers want to simplify into one people numerous groups on a dialect chain often treated differently in the old ethnography), or, better still, the Noongar, a collective term now for 14/15 dialect groups, each of which has a page because the ethnography treated them as differentiated. I'll have to think more.Nishidani (talk) 17:51, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
Sounds good. You know the sources, so whatever you think best.
I can't find Tjurabalan or Ngurrara on AIATSIS. I assume that means they don't speak distinct languages, but still it would be nice to list them as speakers of the appropriate language. Any ideas? — kwami (talk) 02:44, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
I've gone through all the templates now. Now for List of Indigenous Australian group names. I've restored your deleted articles as redirects to their alt name. Amijangal, for example, was on the main list, and turned into a red link once it was deleted,, I don't know if there were any rd's to that name, but if so they might've been deleted too because they no longer pointed to anything. Generally, a rd is a better option that deleting the article, unless it's actually wrong (typo etc.). — kwami (talk) 05:34, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
Should Kareldi be split?
Please don't just delete the duplicate articles! When you had Baranha deleted, that left Barna people stranded. Before long, a bot would've come by and deleted 'Barna people' as well, and all of the many articles that linked to it would've been left with red links. In general, if someone has put in time creating redirects for synonyms and a bot deletes them all because their target was deleted rather than merged, they probably aren't going to be recreated again any time soon. — kwami (talk) 20:28, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
I moved Jupangati to Wimaranga before I realized that this might be a conflation on AUSTLANG rather than a synonym. Please revert my edits if I was wrong, and I'll move the article back (or perhaps to 'Yuupngati' or something). — kwami (talk) 20:28, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
If you don't know how to leave a redirect when you merge an article, just leave a line saying 'article to be merged with X' or something, rather than blanking it, and let me know, and I'll fix it up. Maybe that's why your articles have been getting deleted. If you were the only author, people figure you're not hurting anyone and delete the article after you blank it. — kwami (talk) 20:45, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
According to AIATSIS (articles D30, D71 for Kullilli/Galali and L25, L68 for Wankumara, there are two groups of each, one on the Bulloo River and one on the Wilson River. The descriptions of their languages and speculation about the direction of migration make it sound as though these are synonyms, that there is a Bulloo River Kalali/Wongkumara and a Wilson River Kalali/Wongkumara. — kwami (talk) 21:52, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
(I've been treating them as two peoples speaking close languages/dialects that both moved from one region to the other.)
Are Nunukul and Moondjan synonyms? If not, 'Moondjan' should be removed from the article and I need to tag the redirect for deletion. — kwami (talk) 08:52, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
Okay, I think I'm just about done. I'll watch this page for a while, but you might need to drop me a line on my talk page if you want me to see something. — kwami (talk) 13:48, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for all you help, Nishidan, and hope you feel better soon. — kwami (talk) 00:45, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Your retired sign looks sick, and you self identify as sick as well - get better ! JarrahTree 01:15, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
I noticed this edit which links to usus. It that real? I wondered if it might be a pet idea of a couple of researchers somewhere. If the latter, I might revert the edit. Johnuniq (talk) 00:34, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Hi thank you for your help. I have added your to the DYK as one of main contributors to the article --Shrike (talk) 20:52, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
Hi,
I like your suggestion of an abbreviated synthesis. I'm not sure what your intended process is from here - whether you are soliciting improvements before changing the article, or going to make the change to the article to allow for tweaking afterwards, or just putting it out there and leaving it to someone else to change the article. So, I am not sure how to respond. Sorry: I'm quite new to Wiki. Jontel (talk) 10:34, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
On 13 March 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article The Jew Among Thorns, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the antisemitic tale "The Jew Among Thorns" was used to indoctrinate children in Nazi Germany? You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, ), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru (talk) 12:02, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
Somebody is just upset they lost a couple of arguments elsewhere and thinks that hounding is the way to seek vengeance on those terrible people who stand in his way. Wouldnt worry about it too much if I were you. Hope you are well. nableezy - 16:17, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
Wouldnt worry about it too much if I were you.
Think there should be an article Palestinian Population Registry? nableezy - 16:44, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
Re: Labour strategists leapt at this by then depicting Howard as a Dracula figure, swinging a hypnotic watch. I think you might say in the text who asserted this. Up to you. I don't think the #65 Delaney source link works. Jontel (talk) 12:44, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Frail memory. The only thing I got wrong and which needs tweaking is mistaking Widdecombe for a backbencher. It should of course be 'frontbencher'.Nishidani (talk) 12:56, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Just a thank you for your all round detailed encyclopedic additions and non-partisan clean up of these articles. I really appreciate your contributions. ~ BOD ~ TALK 20:11, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
I have reported you at WP:AE. Debresser (talk) 22:08, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
Look Debresser. It’s true I find your editing, whenever I happen to be on the same page, often utterly incomprehensible. I understand that you have some abiding problem with me personally, and I tolerate it, since I don’t, as you have repeatedly, take it up on administrative forums. My principle is that grown-ups should not avail themselves of sanctioning forums except as a last resort. So to clarify the danger you put yourself in I’ll post the evidence on your complaint here, where it can’t be used against you, but may serve to make you understand what the problem is (and it isn’t mine). This is vexatious, and using wikipedia as a battleground to prevail over editors one disagrees with on an edit, is frowned on.
I used the remonstrative or exclamative ‘for fuck’s sake’, not of you directly, but to express frustration at the following facts emerging from our interaction: I made an edit
The Torah set forth rules for dress that set Jews apart from the communities in which they lived, . . [1]
The source p.xv, immediately available by clicking on the link provided (to an authority on the topic) reads:
Jews dressed differently as God's outcasts. But Jews also dressed differently in premodern Europe because their rabbis understood any emulation of non-Jews as a violation of the divine Law ass revealed by God to Moses atop Mount Sinai. The Five Books of Moses, after all, together called the Torah, clearly specify that Jews must adhere to a particular dress code-modesty, for example, and fringes. The very structure of the cosmos demanded nothing less. Clothing, too, served as a "fence" that protected Jews from the profanities and pollutions of the non-Jewish societies in which they dwelled. From this angle, Jews dressed distinctively as God's elect.
You removed the source twice and put in a citation needed tag, first here.
The Torah set forth rules for dress that set Jews apart from the communities in which they lived,[citation needed]
I restored it and, in the edit summary, notified you that his cit needed tag was an error, since the sentence was sourced. Despite being told this that you’d had made an egregious blooper, you again reverted me, insisting against the evidence and my intervening gentle remonstration, that I had no sourced what is sourced. Either you refused to click on the source or you just didn't want that statement there, even if it is obviously true and sourced. Or because I made it, you find it objectionable. I don’t know, but this kind of irrationality is extremely frustrating. The least you could have done was to tweak the sentence and write:-
The Torah set forth rules for dress that, following later rabbinical tradition, were interpreted as setting Jews apart from the communities in which they lived. [1]
(a) Every religious Jew like yourself would instinctively know that, independent of the The Torah set forth rules for dress that, following later rabbinical tradition, were interpreted as setting Jews apart from the communities in which they lived. [1]secondary source, at Deuteronomy 22:5 (my apologies for citing from memory and writing Deut 2:5) , what Silverman stated is doctrinal and uncontroversial.
(b) You jumped at, not the gravamen of my defence of my edit’s propriety, but the fact that I dropped the ‘for fuck’s sake’ remonstratively, to vet opinions as to whether you had a fair chance of taking me to this board and getting me treated as an ‘outcast’ (I guess that means permabanned).
(c) I have an agreement to not comment on your page but, since you were repeatedly complaining that I was engaged in usually ‘badmouthing’ again, and insisting to others I be treated as an outcast, I asked you to desist defaming me and fix the error you made. You adamantly refuse to correct yourself. That is not ‘hounding’ . An editor attacked at length on another’s editor’s talk page surely has a right to protest (once).
(d) I went to extreme lengths (WP:TLDR) to analyse why this huge time consuming ruckus, not over the quality of my edit, but the fact that having it expunged despite the clear testimony of a source, I vented my frustration with an exclamation which I can recall you yourself using not infrequently (just as it is not as you put over a characteristic of my own work here to be foul-mouthted as you insinuate). Your ostensible outrage at me using once a term you yourself have used looked instrumental.
(e) When I suggested you were using double standards to slice out sourced material I added as ‘superfluous’ ,while protesting when Nomoskedasticity did the same with one of his edits you countered that I was poisoning the well. No. I was just pointing your judgement is not rule based, but subjective, depending on who makes the edit in question. If you do it, it’s okay. If someone else does it, not so. The same holds for exclamative 'fuck'. If you drop it, it's okay, if I happen to drop it, it's outrageous.
(f) result? Nomoskedasticity gets reported, and here I get reported. This is a patent battleground mentality, using AE or ANI to rid wikipedia of editors whose content edits one disagrees with. In my case, you wrote the complaint out notwithstanding the express advice not to of fellow editors concerned you were on boomerang terrain, Icewhiz and Sir Joseph.
User:Nishidani, why do you think that Erich Brauer's remark on Jewish "blue colored" clothing being once a required dress-code in Yemen is misleading? After all, it is sourced. Please explain.Davidbena (talk) 21:23, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, Traditional Society in Transition: The Yemeni Jewish Experience, BRILL 2014 978-9-004-27291-0 p.7 I read this after after reading Einstein's admiring remark about Yemeni music by the way. If you have any queries, by all means drop me a note here. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 21:39, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
Jewsh life in the tribal areas –where the majority of Jews live in in more than twelve hundred small settlements, functioned primarily according to tribal patronage and other customary laws . .These laws ignored and did not enforce some of the shari’a regulations that discriminated against Jews. For example, in San’a and in towns where representatives of the central authorities resided, the houses of the Jewish quarter were built lower than those of the Muslims; in rural tribal districts the houses were not always differentiated in this way. The Jews usually kept their houses close to each other so that they could sustain communal life and observe the Sabbath and religious holidays. But frequently, in small villages, their homes were near their Muslim neighbors. So, too, the restrictions regarding mounts were not enforced in these areas, nor did the Jews differ much from Muslims in dress. Furthermore, in contrast to the demands of shari’a, Jews in the north and the northeast of Yemen even carried arms, as was customary in tribal life, and the tribesmen would teach them how to shoot rifles.’ Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, Traditional Society in Transition: The Yemeni Jewish Experience, BRILL 2014 978-9-004-27291-0 p.7
There were considerable variations of Jewish dress according to social class, age and geography. In the villages the dress of the Jews had more in common with that of their Muslim neighbours: regional differences in dress and custom (as well as in accent and dialect) were pronounced. Village Jews dressed in a much less elaborate ways than townspeople.(Brauer p.78ff). Tudor Parfitt, The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen, 1900-1950, BRILL 1996 isbn 978-9-004-10544-7 p.86 n.7
German ethnographer Erich Brauer (1895–1942) noted that in Yemen of his time, Jews were not allowed to wear clothing of any color besides blue.[1] Earlier, in Jacob Saphir's time (1859), they would wear outer garments that were "utterly black".[citation needed]
Instead of trousers, the Yemenite Jews (as well as Yemen's Arabs) carry a piece of cloth worn around the hip (loincloth), called maizar. The expression fūṭa, quoted by Sapir (Jacob Saphir), is used [for the same piece of clothing] by the Jews in Aden and partly also by Arabs from Yemen. The maizar consists of one piece of dark-blue cotton that is wound a few times around the waist and which is held up by a belt made of cloth material or leather. The maizar is allowed to reach down to the knees only. Today, the Yemenites will therefore wear [underwear made like unto] short-length trousers, called sirwāl, [instead of the traditional loincloth beneath their tunics]. A blue shirt that has a split that extends down to the waistline and that is closed at neck level is worn over the maizar. If the shirt is multicolored and striped, it is called tahṭāni, meaning, 'the lower.' If it is monochrome, it is called antari. Finally, the outer layer of clothing, worn over the maizar and antari, is a dark-blue cotton tunic (Arabic: gufṭān or kufṭān). The tunic is a coat-like garment that extends down to the knees which is fully open in the front and is closed with a single button in the neck. Over the tunic, the Jewish people were not allowed to wear a girdle.<ref>Brauer, Erich (1934). Ethnologie der Jemenitischen Juden. Vol. 7. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Kulturgeschichte Bibliothek, I. Reihe: Ethnologische bibliothek., p. 81
Using Erich Brauer's own description of the clothing worn by Yemen's Jews (from the book, "Ethnologie der jemenitischen Juden," p. 81, published in Heidelberg, 1934) we find the following account (translated from German):
"Instead of trousers, the Yemenite Jews (as well as Yemen's Arabs) carry a piece of cloth worn around the hip (loincloth), called maizar. The expression fūta, quoted by Sapir, is used [for the same piece of clothing] by the Jews in Aden and partly also by Arabs from Yemen. The maizar consists of one piece of dark-blue cotton that is wound a few times around the waist and which is held up by a belt made of cloth material or leather. The maizar is allowed to reach down to the knees only. Today, the Yemenites will therefore wear [underwear made like unto] short-length trousers, called sirwāl, [instead of the traditional loincloth beneath their tunics].
A blue shirt that has a split that extends down to the waistline and that is closed at neck level is worn over the maizar. If the shirt is multicolored and striped, it is called tahtāni, meaning, 'the lower.' If it is monochrome, it is called ‘antari. Finally, the outer layer of clothing, worn over the maizar and ‘antari, is a dark-blue cotton tunic (Ar. guftān or kuftān)*. The tunic is a coat-like garment that extends down to the knees, that is fully open in the front and is closed with a single button in the neck. Over the tunic, the Jewish people were not allowed to wear a girdle."
@Diannaa: Given the following summary of the above, what should occur? It looks an obvious problem to me but your advice to Davidbena would be more authoritative.
Johnuniq (talk) 00:36, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
The introductory paragraph prior to the quotation is too closely paraphrased from the blog post, so I have removed it. I have added a link to the blog to the citation and added the translator's name to the citation. It remains to be decided as to whether or not this blog is a reliable source - that's not my call to make. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 11:47, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
The following sanction now applies to you:
You are blocked for a week, and indefinitely banned from creating or making comments in WP:AE reports related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, except if you are the editor against whom enforcement is requested.
You have been sanctioned for the reasons provided in response to this arbitration enforcement request.
This sanction is imposed in my capacity as an uninvolved administrator under the authority of the Arbitration Committee's decision at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel articles#Final decision and, if applicable, the procedure described at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions. This sanction has been recorded in the log of sanctions. If the sanction includes a ban, please read the banning policy to ensure you understand what this means. If you do not comply with this sanction, you may be blocked for an extended period, by way of enforcement of this sanction—and you may also be made subject to further sanctions.
You may appeal this sanction using the process described here. I recommend that you use the arbitration enforcement appeals template if you wish to submit an appeal to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. You may also appeal directly to me (on my talk page), before or instead of appealing to the noticeboard. Even if you appeal this sanction, you remain bound by it until you are notified by an uninvolved administrator that the appeal has been successful. You are also free to contact me on my talk page if anything of the above is unclear to you. Sandstein 14:37, 14 April 2019 (UTC)