User:Ceedjee~enwiki/Archive december 2008

Your travels on wikipedia or on the Internet led you to this user page. Welcome !

I came across a page where a user explained for the reader the potential bias that might affect his edits. I found the idea interesting, and thus think the passing reader of this page might profit from knowing my own potential biases.

As far as I see it, the kind of bias that might potentially affect my editing judgements is influenced by the following factors :

• My Western cultural background : an important bias certainly, one that concerns most wikipedians.
• My scientific formation (as an engineer in physics in a small company).
• A family circle where literature is esteemed.
• A Cartesian frame of mind.
• Atheism, something however that I am not disposed to promote as if it were a new religion :-). I am very critical of what I would call, for want of a better name, athegrism. This is a neologism that refers to something which strikes me as very real nowadays. Top be precise, I am not just an agnostic. Paradoxically, I am not critical of religion in itself. It is simply that I am opposed to any linkage between the temporal and spiritual spheres(laicity).
• My political vision : It would take me too long to describe this in all of its complexity, but, in brief, I have difficulties in recognizing myself in any of the standard categories. Let us say that I feel closer to the right, but, at the same time, am neither on the liberal right-wing nor the conservative right-wing.
• My take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Judaism (see below).

My potential biases about this subject are :

• a higher empathy for Jewish culture and history than for Arab or Islamic culture.
• a higher empathy for Zionism than for Arab and Palestinian nationalisms.
• a categorical rejection of antisemitism; a rejection of any form of racism as a rule and rejection of racism towards Arabs and/or Muslims ie Islamophobia.

I have a range of opinions on these topics but I do not think it proper to expatiate on one's personal opinions in wikipedia, even on a user page.

Main contributor to 6 featured articles on the French wikipedia :

• Protagonists of the 1948 Palestine War - which has no equivalent on wp:en
• fr:Guerre civile de 1947-1948 en Palestine mandataire that has been translated here in 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine but that requires some more work to reach form standards.
• fr:Guerre israélo-arabe de 1948-1949 whose equivalent here is 1948 Arab-Israeli War
• fr:Massacre de Qibya whose equivalent here is Qibya massacre.
• fr:Émeutes de Jérusalem de 1920 whose equivalent here is 1920 Palestine riots
• fr:Bataille de Latroun (1948) currently under translation to Battle of Latrun

• Bard, Mitchell, Myths & Facts : a Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, AICE, 2001.
• Chomsky, Noam, Israël, Palestine, États-Unis' : le triangle fatidique, écosociété, 2006, ISBN 2923165195.
• Dray, Joss et Sieffert, Denis, La guerre israélienne de l'information. Désinformation et fausses symétries dans le conflit israélo-palestinien, Le Découverte, 2002, ISBN 2707138398.
• Finkelstein, Norman, Image and reality of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, 2003, ISBN 9781859844427
• Gelber, Yoav, Palestine 1948, Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 2006, ISBN 1845190750
• Gresh, Alain, Israël, Palestine. Vérites sur un conflit, fayard, 2007, ISBN 9782213634647
• Haïk, Daniel, Sharon. Un destin inachevé, l'Archipel, 2006, ISBN 2841877701.
• Karsh, Efraim, The Arab-Israeli Conflit - The Palestine War 1948, Osprey Publishing, 2002, ISBN 1841763721
• Katz, Samuel, Battleground : Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, Taylor Productions, 2002, ISBN 0929098135.
• Lapierre, Dominique et Collins, Larry, O Jérusalem, Robert Laffont, 1971, ISBN 2266106988
• Laurens, Henry, Paix et guerre au Moyen-Orient, Armand Colin, Paris, 2005, ISBN 2200269773
• Laqueur, Walter, A History of Zionism, Schocken Books, 2003, ISBN 0850211497.
• Levine Daniel, The Birth of the Irgun Zvai Leumi - A Jewish Liberation Movement, Gefen Publishing house, 1991, ISBN 9652290718.
• Ministère des Affaires étrangères d'Israël, Division de l'Information, Réalités d'Israël, Jérusalem, 1987
• Morris, Benny, The Birth Of The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2003, ISBN 0521009677
• Morris, Benny, Victimes, Histoire revisitée du conflit arabo-sioniste, Editions complexe, 2003, ISBN 2870279388
• Morris, Benny & Black, Ian, Israel's Secret Wars : A History of Israel's Intelligence Services, Grove Press, 1991, ISBN 0802132864
• Morris, Benny, 1948, Yale University Press, 2008.
  
• Pappé, Ilan, La guerre de 1948 en Palestine, La fabrique éditions, 2000, ISBN 226404036X
• Pappé, Ilan, The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications Limited, 2007, ISBN 9781851685554
• Masalha, Nur, Expulsion of the Palestinians, Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992, ISBN 0887282423
• Oz, Amos, In the Land of Israel, First Harvest Edition, 1992, ISBN 0156481146
• Oz, Amos, Comment guérir un fanatique, Gallimard, 2003, ISBN 2070776751
• Perlman, Moshe, Mufti of Jerusalem : Haj Amin el Husseini, a Father of Jihad, Pavillon Press, 2006, ISBN 1414506988
• Razoux, Pierre, Tsahal, nouvelle histoire de l’armée israélienne, Perrin, 2006, ISBN 226202328X
• Rogan, Eugène et Shlaim Avi, 1948 : la guerre de Palestine. Derrière le mythe..., Cambridge University Press' 2001 (version anglaise), Ed. Autrement, 2002 (version française), ISBN 2746702401.
• Rosenzweig, Luc, Ariel Sharon, Perrin, 2006, ISBN 2262042111.
• Sachar, Howard, A History of Israel. From the Rise of Zionism to our Time, Knopf, 3ème édition, 2007, ISBN 9780375711329.
• Segev, Tom, 1949, The First Israelis, Owl Book, 1986, ISBN 0805058966
• Segev, Tom, 1967, Denoël, 2007, ISBN 9782207258477
• Segev, Tom, One Palestine, Complete, First Holt Paperbacks Editions, 2001, ISBN 9780805065879.
• Sharon, Ariel, Entretiens intimes avec Uri Dan, Michel Lafon, 2006, 2749904595.
• Vidal, Dominique, Comment Israël expulsa les Palestiniens (1947-1949), Editions de l'Atelier, 2007, ISBN 9782708239661
• Zertal, Idith, Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 0521850967

The continuous edit wars on the English Wikipedia on some topics make me think only two solutions are reasonable to reach the aim of the project :

• whether to forbid some editors lacking know-how and scholarship on topics to contribute to the encyclopaedia
• or to move to Citizendium

I have an open mind on any issue :-) Ceedjee 16:17, 19 March 2006 (UTC)