Talk:Amin al-Husseini/Archive 11

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Background

After World War I, high expectations were held by Arabs throughout the Middle East for the establishment of national independence, on the basis of assurances they thought had been made in 1915 in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence. Similar hopes were entertained by the Jews, who had been promised a national homeland in Palestine, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

In seeing this removed, I wondered whether all wiki biographies systemnatically exclude context and background, and only mention the bare sequence of events of the person. To be checked. To my mind, knowing that both sides thought promises were made that were to be honoured, is important for understanding al-Husayni and his opponents.Nishidani (talk) 22:33, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

al-Husayni and Arafat; not good enough

Even if the source is to be accepted, which is still quite dubious, we're dealing with "Arafat's mother was the daughter of the mufti's first cousin" ? That is getting to be about as distant and tenuous a connection as Barack Obama's relations to Dick Cheney. Per WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE, this is once again being snipped. Tarc (talk) 01:09, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The source states that Arafat met the Mufti at a family gathering, after which the Mufti became Arafat's mentor. In a society that stresses extended family relations, being the daughter of someone's cousin is a big deal. It is very relevant to point out that the two were related and that Arafat's well-documented adulation for the Mufti is possibly a family matter. You are engaged in reductio ad absurdum here: Obama is in now way shape or form related to Cheney but Arafat and al-Husayni, according to sources that only you claim are dubious, were blood relatives. — A lizard (talk) 04:31, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Lizard,
We all know that the equation : Palestinians => Arafat => Mufti => antisemite requires the link between Arafat and the Mufti. (you wrote : The Mufti's lineage in the modern Pal. movement matters).
Instead of fighting for such a childish pov, as Dalin who fights for the clashes of civilisation, you should take care to the fact wp is a project to develop a free encyclopaedia.
No equation is being made. A scholarly source (regardless of what you think of the scholar, his book was published by a major publisher with high editorial standards and peer-reviewed by other historians; it is a work of scholarship) states that Arafat is a distant relative of the Mufti and that the Mufti was Arafat's mentor after meeting him at a family gathering. Readers can, and may, make such an equation in their minds if they want to but merely stating a documented scholarly fact is in no way, shape, or form damaging to Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia, in fact it's exactly what a Wikipedia article is supposed to have in it.
I do agree that if Tarc or anyone else who wants to cover up the Mufti's and Arafat's Nazi lineage has access to a definitive source of academic, peer-reviewed scholarship by a non-fringe publisher (i.e., one that would be recognized as legitimate outside the Middle East) that says that through exhaustive research, it has been determined that the Mufti and Arafat were in no way shape or form related to one-another, then it should be cited. A subsection should be in turn added to the article with a header such as Allegations of Relations to Arafat, explicitly detailing this research and its source. Until then, the information should remain in the article.
Merely stating relevant information in an article does not impugn the article as a whole. Relevant information should never be removed from an article. Information about the biography of a dead person attesting to his lineage is always relevant. If the article about Jimmy Carter can mention his semi-famous, buffoonish brother, then an article about the Mufti can mention his distantly-related militant nephew. — A lizard (talk) 21:06, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Any relative of importance should be mentioned.
Muslim world cant recognize israel until palestinian state with jerusalem as its capitcal, duh! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Coveredmann (talk • contribs) 21:53, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Tarc,
There is no other solution to get out this issue than to find wp:rs sources of higher values that would correct this "mistake" of Dalin (cough, cough). I am sure it is done in Philip Mattar or Zvi Elpeleg biographies of the Mufti but I don't have access to these sources. They will of course be of higher values than Dalin's work given he defends the thesis of the "class of civilisation" (and this fact would defend his pov) and due to the fact he is not a specialist of Mufti's life, as both others are.
Idith Zertal, is already quoted in the article and explain the mecanism I refered here above, with the mecanism of Mufti demonization and development of Arafat threat and links to Nazis... I will bring the information.
Ceedjee (talk) 08:45, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
I think from memory the phrase 'a poor and distant cousin' occurs in one of Rubin's works. As Ceedjee notes, this 'fixing Arafat'-by-pointing-up-blood ties-with-the-pro-Nazi-mufti' is a commonplace in the earlier literature. Dalin by the way was eliminated as a poor quality source, since texts cited from him were, when examined, shown to be in themselves very poorly sourced. He's a minor historian in a not particularly notable University. His mentor was not the mufti but a pious uncle in Egypt. This is about the Mufti. There's nothing wrong with briefly noting Arafat was a 'poor and distant relative'. But that's about it.Nishidani (talk) 09:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


Going beyond the genealogical connection between Arafat and the Mufti is required and in no small part defines the politics of the the PLO and the tone of Palestinian nationalism. The mufti's presidency of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) provided Arafat with a road for advancement as well as influence in ME politics. Arafat attended many of the AHC meetings in Cairo and he became the Mufti's lieutenant in the movement.

The philosophical connection between the two is tighter than blood. The mufti's son-in-law, Muheideen al Husseini stated Haj Amin felt that Arafat would be the right leader for the Palestinian nation after him. He thought he could carry the responsibility" (Wallach, Arafat (Seacaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1997) of leadership and continue the ongoing fight with Israel.

That the mufti was his mentor is undeniable. Arafat succeeded al-Husseini as a leader of the Palestine National Movement in 1969. Arafat merely continued the Nazi legacy of the mufti. This point though, is minute. Are we trying to prove that there was a continuous nazified dynasty from Hitler to the mufti to Arafat? At the very least we can designate the beginning of Palestinian nationality, their founding father, as heavily influenced by the extreme Nazi hatred of Jews and generalized European antisemitism that syncretized with his islamic-based hatred of Jews. Jaytee1818 (talk) 04:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

cite error in the article

Haven't been able to track it down yet, if anyone has a better eye for these sorts of things, dive right in. :) Tarc (talk) 19:50, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Censorship

Please do not edit war over this article. If you cannot agree among yourselves about the inclusion of the disputed lines, you should take it to dispute resolution rather than tag-teaming and reverting each other. I've temporarily protected the article for a short period to put an end to the edit war. Please take the time to discuss the issue on the talk page, rather than fighting over it. I've posted some policy pointers above for guidance, and I'm happy to offer advice here, but it's up to you to sort this out amicably. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:02, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Pure censorship. Bravo! Marktunstill (talk) 21:47, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
No, it's not censorship at all - it's only for a few days, and it'll give everyone a chance to discuss the issue without fighting over it. I'll post some questions below to get things started. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:06, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Censorship is not defined by reference to a period of time.Marktunstill (talk) 22:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Censorship isn't defined by the denial of your favored material, either. Tarc (talk) 00:27, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Argumentative and irrelevant, Tarc: somewhat akin to your absurd attempt to silence editors via your spurious application for an investigation. Marktunstill (talk) 00:45, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
I did not attempt to silence anyone. What I did was present evidence to support the appearance of your usage of 2 accounts to circumvent WP:3RR. I welcome users of all ideological persuasions to contribute here, as long as they follow the policies and guidelines. Now, can we get back to discussing the article? Tarc (talk) 04:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
  • There is no "ideological persuasion" here but I take it that you definitely have an axe to grind which is not compatible with NPOV. If you wish to pursue an ideology, I would recommend (yes, that phrase) that you go elsewhere because Wikipedia is not the right place for you.Marktunstill (talk) 17:04, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Result

Lord Melchett

Apologies for bringing up something so uncontentious. Could somebody fix that link (second sentence of Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni#Aftermath)? I think Alfred_Mond,_1st_Baron_Melchett is the person in question, but, well, you can guess where it's pointing currently :-) shellac (talk) 11:43, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll correct that - otherwise people might think Flossie was involved somehow. ;-) -- ChrisO (talk) 00:54, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Questions for the editors

Following on from my comments above, I think it would be useful to resolve some outstanding issues. The onus is on those wishing to include the "homosexuality" material to demonstrate that it meets the requirements of Wikipedia's policies, but I would hope that everyone who has some knowledge of this individual's history could contribute to this discussion. There are really two main issues that need to be resolved:

1) Is Icon of Evil a reliable source?

  • A "reliable source" is a "third-party published source with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" (per WP:V#Reliable sources). Could the editors who want to include this material explain why they consider that Icon of Evil meets these criteria?

2) If it is a reliable source, should the "homosexuality" material be included?

  • Do any other sources tackle the "homosexuality" issue?
  • What do reliable mainstream sources (such as historians who've documented or discussed this issue) say about it?
  • What is the relevance of the "homosexuality" claim to the biography of this individual? Did it play any role in his life, or is this something that was only claimed after his death? Who made the claim and why (if it was his political enemies, the answer is obvious).

I'm sure there are other questions that could be asked, but these will do for starters - let's see what answers people can come up with. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:55, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

  • There is one more point, which is procedural. This talk page is flagged with the following advice.

'This is a controversial topic that may be under dispute. Please discuss substantial changes here before making them, making sure to supply full citations when adding information, and consider tagging or removing uncited/unciteable information.'

The introduction of WP:FRINGE material, and its sudden support by several editors with no record of editing this page, with little concern for debate, and a shared insistence on reverting to that text in the face of editors who have long worked the page and know its troubled history, flew in the face of the advice to discuss and achieve consensus before making substantial changes. This is a substantial change because the specialized scholarship on the man and his age does not take this rumour as significant. For there is no evidence for it, no proof any of the three was homosexual, no proof that the appointment was the result of a homosexual cabal. The page has been, mainly, cleaned of the bad sourcing which afflicted it two years ago. One of the sources elided was an early paper by Dalin, full of errors, hosted by an antiSemitic site. Rothmann is not an academic, and has mediocre credentials. Neither Dalin nor Rothmann are qualified scholars in the area. The tagteaming insistence, against all requests to discuss it fully, on what is nothing more than a marginal period rumour by Zionist opponents of the mufti, broke the rule. Given its extreme fringe status, nothing like that should ever be ventured without obtaining consensus on talk. The edit-war arose only for this reason.
More importantly, my own concern as a long-term editor is that, if this sloppy piece of polemical-partisan history is to be permitted as a source, then a precedent is established for using Dalin and Rothmann's book to source many other parts of the article on Husayni's life. Since Husayni's life and times have a large specialized literature by mainstream scholars of the history of Palestine, Zionism, Israel and the Middle East, much of it critical of him, I not only fail to see why a book that is not regarded as a significant contribution, one written by amateurish outsiders, should find a home here. Allow it one, and one opens up a can of worms, in which the collective labour of serious scholars will be subject potentially to endless quibbling about Dalin and Rothmann's extreme fringe interpretations.Nishidani (talk) 10:51, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
I have not edited this article and/or talk page before, and am here following the discussion at WP:RSN#Refocusing the discussion. I have not read the book in question, so I don't know what it says. I'd appreciate it if someone could fill me in on it.
In short, I suggested that the homosexuality claim be treated as an exceptional claim and would have to be attributed to the book's authors, as per WP:REDFLAG. ChrisO replied that it would violate WP:UNDUE. How much weight are we talking about? If it's just one sentence in a full section, I'm not sure it's undue. If the homosexuality claim is correct, then I think it is relevant. -- Nudve (talk) 09:22, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Hrm, are you sure? I'm not seeing anything in redflag that states that an exceptional claim should be attributed to the book's authors. What I see is "...if such sources are not available, the material should not be included". As for undue, IMO this squarely falls on bullet #3 of Wales' quotation on that page, "an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority".
I'd also like to note, in the wake of Tanbycroft's unfortunate forum-shopping, that keeping this material of the article is not in any way homophobic driven or derived. If anything, it is the manner in which the book's author framed the allegations of homosexuality in the manner of a smear or an attack, as if being gay is a bad thing. Tarc (talk) 13:49, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
The thing is, from what I gather, that we are not sure of the source's quality. This is why it might be best to attribute it (WP:ASF may also be relevant). It's a very recent study, so it's safe to assume it hasn't been much cited yet, but why are we certain it is shared only by "an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority"? -- Nudve (talk) 15:24, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Well, that is the crux of these discussions, here and elsewhere; the quality of the source. Opinions given at RSN has been somewhat against it, whole the opinions at the Fringe board have been decidedly against it so far. Also, I believe that these authors are the only ones to put forth this claim about homosexuality, at least that we have seen so far. One of the questions posed to the pro-inclusionists here was if any other sources have made this claim. Tarc (talk) 20:18, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
I cannot speak for others. But I think little evidence, if any, has been given that this qualifies as even a mediocre source. Evidence that it is nopt in conformity with several principles required by wiki abounds. We are asked optimally to seek the very best sources. Very fine biographies of al-Husayni, and the eras of his life, abound. They are all written by highly respected scholars. Many of these books are critical of him. The question therefore is. Why turn to a book, one of whose authors is a radio show talk host, the other an historian with no background in Middle Eastern studies, to document a fringe theory, in itself, extraordinary which is based on an almost forgotten rumour of the 2Os by his antagonists, and which no academic biographer of al-Husayni and his world has thought worth mentioning over recent decades?Nishidani (talk) 15:55, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
As to the 'relevance of homosexuality', well, there are areas where the homintern approach is relevant, as with Blunt and co. I'm still waiting for someone to tell us what sources indicate Richmond, Storr and al-Husayni were homosexual in the first place. If they were, it might be worth adding. I've no problems with that. Nothing says married men can't be homosexual. Sometimes homosexuality plays as important a role in people's lives and identities as does their heterosexuality in heterosexuals' lives.Nishidani (talk) 16:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
The fact is: the appointment was controversial and surrounded by rumours. Nishidani, tending to homophobia, refuses even to allow the fact that the rumours existed to be mentioned. No one is saying that the mufti was queer but poor old Nishidani is afraid even of the mention of the rumours that Samuel was nobbled. Alas, the rumours existed and are relevant to the mufti's story: true or false, the rumours must have been intensely disagreeable to the mufti and are a reflection of some opponents' opinion of how he got the appointment and how Samuel was swayed. When the censor has unlocked the article, we should also mention that the mufti appears not to have sued in defamation, in contrast to his opponent Winston Churchill when accused of homosexuality. Some information about the mufti's family life would be welcome and would shed light on how a high ranking middle eastern refugee family coped with exile and moved to Berlin in the mid 20th century.Marktunstill (talk) 17:16, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
We have so far, in lieu of evidence from reliable sources, some wikihounding, what looks like tagteaming, forum-shopping, use of fringe sources, and now personal suggestions I 'tend to homophobia', all from those who push this edit. None of these things conforms to what wiki expects of its editors. I won't complain. Never do. I might add that both you and Tandycroft use 'nobble' which is British slang, at least in the way you two use it. I still see no substantive refutations of the evidence and arguments given. If you can't do better, I suggest you go and edit Pope Paul VI's wiki bio, and see if you can get Roger Peyrefitte's salacious rumour he was homosexual onto the page. We have only his word for it, second hand, since he said in his Propos secrets (Paris 1977) pp.240ff., that someone in what he called the 'Black aristocracy' of the Vatican assured him of the 'fact'. This forms a perfect analogy with the al-Husayni gossip, only it could be better sourced, since we know who started the rumour, even if the fact remains that it is just a rumour, and not born out by his biographers, who can't find a trace to substantiate this, and other rumours circulating in Italy (i.e. that Hugh Montgomery was his lover) except when they deal with Peyrefitte's scandal-mongering.
p.s. Give me a reliable source for your notion that the rumour, which only emerged decades later in print, was published in Zionist sources in the 1920s, and that it was customary in the Sharia legal system to 'sue for defamation', esp- for unpublished rumours. Perhaps it was. I always like to learn. I dislike being bored by gossip-mongering: it's never quite as intriguing as the byzantine facts of the world. Nishidani (talk) 18:09, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Another useless diatribe from Nish who uses "Zionist" rather too often for comfort: what's the pope got to do with this? Palestine as a British mandate allowed defamation suits; no publication is required for slander suits. Byzantine takes a capital 'B'. I am using an Australian term: nobble. Get a grip mate.Marktunstill (talk) 21:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
(a)'Zionist' was the standard term used by Jewish people at the time to refer to those amongst their ranks who subscribed to the project of returning to Zion in Herzl's sense. Read any dictionary, if you are too lazy to be familiar with Walter Laqueur's A HIstory of Zionism, or David Vital's brilliant trilogy on the subject, entitled, precisely 'Zionism'.
(b)Consult your dictionary on the word 'diatribe'. Your use of it conforms, as a description of my remarks, to the meaning in classical Greek, not to the way it is used in English
(c) 'nobble' is for the O.E.D. (2nd ed.1989, vol X p.449 col.1) 'slang' (for Merriam-Webster 'British slang') and all examples, save one, there are of British usage. British usage went to the colonies.
In the sense you both use it, the only possible example in the OED that might have fitted this meaning, from Australian usage, is from a passage in Jack Fingleton's description in Four Chukkas to Australia (1960), describing a cricket match. However there it is used in inverted commas, and the context suggests the meaning is 'to reduce the efficiency of a person by some means'. Fingleton was an Australian sportswriter. If he uses it in inverted commas, it means that he is signposting to his reader a use of the word that they might not be familiar with.
Indeed, the Australian National Dictionary, in fact does not register 'nobble' as a word current in idiomatic, distinctively Australian usage. It only gives us 'nobbler', with the verb understood in the following senses.

'Also nobler. [f. nobble, v., either in the sense ‘to drug or lame (a horse)’ or ‘to strike (esp. on the head or ‘nob’): see OED(S v. 1 and 3.] A measure of spirits; the glass in which this is served.'

Australians overwhelmingly used 'nobble' in the primary English sense of tampering with horses. The word isn't registered in G.A. Wilkes, A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, Fontana/Collins 1978 either.
(d)It looks like you have had a 'nobbler' too many before writing.
(e)Byzantine in standard prose is normally capitalized, but the O.E.D. shows that it is acceptable to use the lower case (2 examples, one from 'The Economist'). But at least here, thanks for the reminder. I do prefer the technically more correct forms.
(f) The perfect analogy from the Pope came to mind because Dalin wrote a defence of one of the Popes, which I've read (it has a dreadful chapter, chapter 6, on Husseini as the obverse of Pope Pius XII).
(g)Defamation cases involve civil law. English common law was introduced only in so far as the evolving Palestine legal system, based on the Ottoman laws as they stood until 1914, had lacunae that had to be filled. In Ottoman law, provisions existed for physical damages to the person, but not for possible mental anguish, as in defamation suits. Defamation in customary law, still applied in the courts, was restricted to offenses to the prophet Mohammad (Robert H.Eisenman, Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel: A History of the Survival of Tanzimat and Sharī'a in the British Mandate and the Jewish State, Brill, 1978, esp. p.114 ). I think the Defamation laws were only passed during WW2. I may be wrong, but again, where are your sources, rather than your obiter dicta?
But generally, you're wasting our time with distracting trivialities. Evidence, please, not sniping.Nishidani (talk) 22:35, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
  • No m8, you're wasting our time! But re the mufti: you seem to be suggesting that there was a gap in the Ottoman law re defamation which English law (which is principally concerned with damage to reputation, not mental anguish) would have filled; fine. Suits for defamation go way back before WW2 and the action was available to the mufti; he seems not to have sued at a time when people sued for much less (see Hulton v. Jones, 1910).Marktunstill (talk) 23:57, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Answer the question. Provide sources. Don't editorialize about what a person from another culture might know, think or should have done in historical circumstances where the laws were different from those you are vaguely familiar with.Nishidani (talk) 09:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

On an aside, if this information is notable surely there is more than one source (or rather more than one source that don't just use each other as sources). Shot info (talk) 01:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

"a guided tour of Auschwitz"?. This is from the Italian article on our boy (buggered or not): Il vice di Adolf Eichmann, Dieter Wisliceny testimoniò durante il processo per crimini di guerra del 1946 che ... «Il Muftī fu uno dei propugnatori dello sterminio sistematico del giudaismo europeo e fu un collaboratore e consigliere di Eichmann e di Himmler nella realizzazione di questo piano... Fu uno dei migliori amici di Eichmann e lo incitò costantemente ad accelerare le misure dello sterminio. Ho sentito dirgli che, accompagnato da Eichmann, aveva visitato in in incognito le camere a gas di Auschwitz».

In case you don 't read Italian: Eichmann's "vice" testified in 1946 that the Mufti was a proponent of the extermination of European Jewry, a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in carrying out this plan, one of Eichmann's best friends, who urged him to hurry up with the extermination. And, says Wisliceny, he heard the Mufti say that he had paid a visit incognito the the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

He certainly showed publicly that he knew by 1944 that upwards of five million Jews had been killed, when he spoke of a world population of 11 million, when it had been 17 million in 1939.

I would like to add that the appeal to authority is never persuasive. Would it work in Physics? Why then in history? And that whoever calls R. Khalidi a scholar is not to be trusted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.108.119.148 (talk) 01:11, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Well then don't trust me, as I inform you that Dieter Wisliceny's testimony at Nuremberg regarding the Mufti is generally regarded by historians even hostile to the man, to be wholly unreliable. It is still harvested by POV pushers because it's sexy for the Husayni(PLO)Palestinian nationalists = Nazis equationists. Since you nread Italian, I suggest you read the two relevant volumes by Renzo Felice which deal extensively with the Mufti's movements between Italy and Germany.Nishidani (talk) 08:03, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I won't trust you, as you command. I guess I'd better not trust wikipedia at all on this subject, since the German version says: "Dieter Wisliceny, der Stellvertreter Adolf Eichmanns, äußerte bereits 1944 die Überzeugung, dass der Mufti eine bedeutende Rolle bei der Ermordung der europäischen Juden spielte. Husseini habe mehreren Nazigrößen, unter ihnen Hitler, Ribbentrop und Himmler, ihre Ausrottung empfohlen. Als einer der besten Freunde Eichmanns soll der Mufti, nach Wisliceny, der dieses auch in den Nürnberger Prozessen wiederholte, sogar das KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau besucht und die dortigen Gaskammern besichtigt haben. Für Husseini habe die „Endlösung“ die Lösung der Probleme in Palästina dargestellt." (Prima facie, I would be loathe to "trust" a Nazi; but I would also be loathe to trust any "scholarship" allied to a self-proclaimed anti-Semitic movement with direct echoes of the Nazi era.)
I didn't 'command' you not to trust me. You said anyone who thought Khalidi a scholar is not to be trusted. I think he is a scholar, ergo, you implied you wouldn't trust me. As to Dieter Wisliceny, write a complaint to Rafael Medoff or any number of scholars who have thrown doubts over his testimony re Amin. Better still, work on the German version. It's disinformative throughout, and needs a good deal of attention, as indeed does our article here, but not on this issue.Nishidani (talk) 22:51, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
How pretensious. The testimony may be unreliable, but that doesn't justify not even mentioning it (it's not like allowing hear-say evidence in a court of law). You can say, "X said such-and-such, though his testimony is widely regarded as unreliable." What has been done here is to suppress information. Who cares if he saw the gas chambers in person or not? He publicly applauded the holocaust and wanted to have one in his own backyard. How endearing; and how noble his spiritual heirs! You, of course, being an historian, are objective and would never try to tilt the evidence for political purposes -- like R.K., whom you so admire. Futueris, ergo es?
Um, yes, that is exactly why such material will not be mentioned, because of its unreliability. Spend some more time around the Wikipedia, and you may pick up on some of the more basic policies such as WP:RS, and so on. Tarc (talk) 13:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
(No, thanks, I won't.) Let's suppose: It is a fact that X said this; and it is a fact that historians argue over it. Their arguing over it is not a reason not to mention it. Honest scholars mention opposing positions. This article seems tilted, and it's not surprising.


The Trial of Adolph Eichmann; Judgement. ""156. This is the place to add a few words about the Accused's personal contact with the Mufti, Hajj Amin al- Husseini.

It has been proved to us that the Mufti, too, aimed at the implementation of the Final Solution, viz., the extermination of European Jewry, and there is no doubt that, had Hitler succeeded in conquering Palestine, the Jewish population of Palestine as well would have been subject to total extermination, with the support of the Mufti.""

Does the above not deserve to be quoted in the article?

Just for the record I'm restoring a deleted piece of phrasing
No, thanks, I won't. Too many ecfututi.
One editor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/87.103.86.2 should not erase what another editor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/93.108.14.24(aka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/93.108.119.148 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/93.108.112.75) writes, particularly when both happen to be anonymous SPA newbies, contributing their first edits to Wikipedia on the same day, on the same subject, with the same POV. There is nothing wrong with the Catullan ecfututi, though the earlier Futueris, ergo es is clumsy in its less than smart-alecky ambiguity.Nishidani (talk) 18:42, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Where is the ambiguity?
Translate it, as you understand it. . .
But there's no need, if you read Latin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.54.18.21 (talk) 19:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
If you have an ear for Latin, you will appreciate the ambiguity. Of course, you are welcome not to trust me on this, if you believe my Latin is as fluent as Rashid Khalidi's.Nishidani (talk) 21:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
And welcome 77.54.18.21 to this fascinating cénacle of anonymous I/P newbies prepossessed in their first edits by the intricacies of reading both Latin and the primary sources on the Eichmann trial regarding Mohammad Amin al-Husayni.Nishidani (talk) 21:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
You brought up the Latin, including a word which I deleted, and referred to an "ambiguity". I was not interested in discussing Latin (though perhaps I would be, if my interlocutor were the celebrated Latinist R.K.). Please restrain your flair for pedantry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.108.18.225 (talk) 22:22, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
You threw in two recondite pieces of Latin, I commented. Now you complain because you can't understand a simple point in Latin grammar. You would have twigged immediately had you realized what 3rd conjugation Latin verbs (of which futuere is one) share with deponent verbs, rendering the 2nd person singular passive ambiguous, eheu.Nishidani (talk) 11:58, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

"Of course, you are welcome not to trust me on this, if you believe my Latin is as fluent as Rashid Khalidi's." If this sentence of yours is not illogical (I take it there is a mistake), what does it mean? And why do you harp so on R. Khalidi? How would I know if he knows Latin or not? But you seem to know, which shows you know a bit about him, at least. But my question is: why have you tried to redirect a discussion of the article, and especially of Might Mufti's relations with the Nazis and role in the Holocaust, and bend it to items as utterly trivial as R. K's knowledge of Latin (I take it he, like you, would wonder about the tense of futueris). And whence your need to show you recognize ecfututi as Catullan? When I wrote those Latin words (one of which I deleted and you dragged back) it was a jocular reference to the bugged (or unbugged) Mufti (ah, those handsome, tall, blond-haired blue-eyed Nazi sado-masochists, what an eye (and -) opener it must have been for the Mufti). And you, without getting the point (let alone any ambiguities that might have been intended beyond the temporal question), saw fit to comment on the phrases, approving ecfututi but frowning on futueris, ergo es?. At that point I asked you where the ambiguity was, of which you disapproved, as not up to your own high standards of wit. The question here is not who knows Latin better, it's whether this allegedly butt-fucked reptile was not in fact brought up in the Nuremberg Trials and again at the Eichmann trial; and the answer is obviously, Yes, he sure was. But the editors prefer to play this down, avoiding key words from the Final Judgement in the Eichmann case. So then, Mr Philologist, what standard of honesty do you adhere to, and why, when you systematically intervene to pluck warts out of such a pretty face?

Quite logical. 'If you believe my knowledge of Latin is close to zero (as is Rashid Khalidi's), you are welcome not to trust me when I say your Latin quip is ambiguous. If I have to construe simple English for you, God help us if we are to tiff on the niceties of a foreign language. I've clued you in above, since you are so ****-retentive about showing what you know and do not know in writing Latin.
Tarc answered your query. You quoted in extenso a primary source, the minutes of the summation of the Eichmann trial. That kind of thing must be filtered through a secondary source (b) Secondary sources, mindful of the fact that Eichmann's trial was contextualized in Israel's relations with Palestinians and neighbouring Arab countries, tend to dismiss that conclusion because (i) getting at al-Husayni was a means of getting at Palestinians (ii)Wisliceny's evidence is regarded cum grano salis. An Israeli court is not the final tribunal on al-Husayni. That is for historians of high calibre and competence to judge.
Finally, your language, be it Latinate or English, shows a tendency to homosexualize al-Husayni, ('allegedly butt-fucked reptile'),i.e., you are an anonymous newby taking up the thread started by that other evanescent duo of POV-'poofter pushers' above, and, in your view, therefore vilify him for this alleged sodomical character, insinuating now that this accounted for his infatuation with those 'blond-haired blue-eyed Nazi sado-masochists' (I'm confused at this allusion to Salon Kitty's Helmut Berger. Hitler was a dumpy little black-haired runt with a patchy womb-broom, semi-circumcized by a dog that savaged him, whose major sexual orientation seems to have been, if we believe rumours, coprophagic). If you were script-assistent to Mel Brooks, all this might be useful: I'd even give you a hand, sorry, chuck some cubes from my 'verbal chandeliers' your way. But you are commenting on, and suggesting material for, wikipedia, not wickedpaedia.
I pasted back what you removed because this little interlude is a reprise of the behaviour of the tag-teamers who were outed as such recently (Markunstil and co). If you have serious suggestions to make, make them. And, homosexuality is as normal a condition as heterosexuality. Homosexuals were among the first to diagnose much of the enthuisiasm among youth for Nazism as grounded in a homosexual aflatus in heterosexuals who hated homosexuality ('bad faith'). But this is not the place for such divagations.Nishidani (talk) 11:58, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
You are wrong on every point. And you have now shown your flag. (I'm sorry I don't get your Hollywood references, or whatever they are.). You are not a historian, you are a disorter of history with a political program, selectively offering absurd quotes (e.g., B. Lewis: "I doubt they needed the Mufti's help") to suppress or downplay relevant information. I noticed above you fall back on the line "X doesn't teach at a good school". What an absurd and disgusting criterion. Finally, in Catullus we find only "latera ecfututa" (6.13) referring to (exhausted) male sexual prowess , not to pathic homosexuality. Pathic homosexuality can also be figurative. And with an intellectual figure like yours, you must be a prime target. In ancient Latin "futuere" (in the active) takes a male subject (if the verb is passive, the subject can be a woman [J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabuluary], so there is no ambiguity in futueris, ergo es?. Which was a question, remember. If there was any ambiguity, it was not grammatical: Is it by doing the bidding of your masters that you feel you truly exist and are? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.103.73.121 (talk) 13:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
You said I quoted in extenso (but it was just a few lines, what is this merda latina) from the "summation" of the Eichmann trial. Summation is when a lawyer summarizes the case, before any judgment has been reached. I quoted from the Final Judgment which says what the Court found to be true. You dismiss that judgment as unreliable. But even if some (or many) historians do not accept that part of the Judgment as reliable, they should cite it and then discuss conflicting evaluations of it (laws of physics are not accepted by acclamation). Thanks to your ranting I checked he page on Khalidi and found that an amazing effort has been made to keep out any criticism of his work. So we protect Khalidi against the criticisms of (e.g.) Efraim Karsh, and the Mufti against the findings of the Eichmann tribunal. Who are "we" exactly? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.103.73.121 (talk) 14:08, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
I'll reply, hysteron proteron.
(A)in extenso. Your original edit, before you wiped most of it out, excerpted the following from the trial records:-

'The Trial of Adolph Eichmann; Judgement. ""156. This is the place to add a few words about the Accused's personal contact with the Mufti, Hajj Amin al- Husseini.It has been proved to us that the Mufti, too, aimed at the implementation of the Final Solution, viz., the extermination of European Jewry, and there is no doubt that, had Hitler succeeded in conquering Palestine, the Jewish population of Palestine as well would have been subject to total extermination, with the support of the Mufti.

Memoranda sent by the Mufti to the German Foreign Ministry, Ribbentrop (T/1260, T/1261), and to the satellite governments of Romania and Bulgaria (T/1263, T/1264), have been submitted to us, containing the insistent demand that all Jewish immigration into Palestine be prevented.

In the memorandum to the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, dated 6 May 1943 (T/1263, p. 3), it says:

I take the liberty of drawing your attention to the fact that it would be indeed appropriate and advantageous if the Jews were to be prevented from emigrating from your country, and if they were sent to a place where they would be placed under strict control, as for example Poland.

It is unnecessary to make any comment upon the phrase "strict control," when the subject under reference is Polish Jewry in the year 1943."

That is quoting in extenso.
(B)You started out trying a variation on Descartes's Cogito, ergo sum, with 'futueris, ergo es' ('You're being screwed, therefore you are?'/'you'll be fucked, therefore you are?'etc.). Contextually this was addressed to me, but you hastened to cover your tracks by clarifying in a second moment that you intended it for the Mufti, until you reconsidered and decided that I should also be 'queeried' about my own putative frecklepunching prospects ('Pathic homosexuality can also be figurative. And with an intellectual figure like yours, you must be a prime target.'). You called me an historian ('You, of course, being an historian'), and then changed your mind and decided I wasn't ('You are not a historian, you are a disorter (sic) of history with a political program'). You tried to dismiss the equivocation in your Latin until I hinted that the phrase can be a present indicative or a future, then, after a quick consultation with J.N.Adam's, The Latin Sexual Vocabularly (not 'Vocabuluary') (1982:pp.118-122) fudged what you found there (the passive implied, another ambiguity, a female subject, whereas the Mufti and myself are male), flaunted your familiarity with the text only to accuse me of merda latina, for using the perfectly acceptable Latinism in extenso while you yourself use maladroitly an Italian phrase that smacks of defective Latinitas.
So generally, you're all over the place like the proverbial mad woman's excrement, could be hauled before admin for making inflammatory innuendoes about my sex, which of course I won't do, since I think administrative protests about WP:civil a bad, unmanly or juvenile habit round here and am still laughing at the idea that I could be a prime target for a 'pathic homosexual', which is a contradiction in terms. I suggest therefore that there's little point to all this, and we drop the matter.Nishidani (talk) 17:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
The quote would be extensive in the version I cut and which you retrieved. It was brief in the version I left. Ironically calling you a historian and then saying straight out that you are not is no contradiction. I never said futuere in the passive was used only about pathics; I said it could also be used in the passive of women (which implies it can be used of men). I did not fudge what is in Adams. And I meant the expression futueris figuratively; but a figurative meaning depends on the existence of a literal one. Apply it to whom you like, how you like. That you should feel a need to show you know that the present and future passive of third conjugation verbs like futuere are distinguished in the second person singular only by the quantity of the e (and the accentuation) is pedantic and superfluous. "You will be f****d, therefore you are" hardly makes sense in context. You began this sublime discussion of Latinitas with your "less than smart-alecky ambiguity" comment. So, yes, let's drop it. Back to the subject: the Schwantiz article on the Mufti and the Nazis, cited in your new draft of a section of the article (footnote 54?), says much more than you let on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.54.33.85 (talk) 18:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC) I checked this article a few days ago to find out more about the Mufti. I have found out that there are editing wars in articles regarding Palestinians, whether the Mufti or R. Khalidi. Your page suggests that you are sympathetic to the Palestinians, which is fine (so am I), but in scholarship that sort of allegiance has no place. So perhaps we could agree that what matters is the truth, insofar as it can be ascertained by evidence and argument, and that efforts to deflect or suppress (or sanitize) damning evidence -- and legitimate criticism of scholars' work -- should not be permitted.

Back to the subject: the Schwantiz article on the Mufti and the Nazis, cited in your new draft of a section of the article (footnote 54?), says much more than you let on.

Wikipedia has nothing to do with truth, but with verifiability from reliable, quality sources. Damning evidence is suppressed all over I/P articles. Try to edit any significant Israeli figure with a shady past, and you'll get a very quick lesson in the principles of 'sanitizing'.
Actually Schwanitz's books and articles provide much illumination on many aspects of the period. I vaguely recall myself entering this for reference. I have edited the first half of the page. I can hardly be 'not letting on' what an article says when I have not got round to using it. The second half is a compost heap of disordered material, poorly assembled, of varying quality. I haven't got round to editing it myself. Feel free to go ahead. But keep in mind that the article, half written to some semblance of wiki standards, is already 25% over the average wiki page limit.
Actually, I have kept damning information off this page that tells in al-Husayni's favour, with regard to the wall incident. I've never tried to put into here a picture of Herzl's face rising over Al-Aqsa, in the postcard that was printed from the Yiddish article in New York in the early 20s, and did much, circulating in Jerusalem, to upset Moslems and give some reality to their fears Zionism aspired to take their sacred sites from them. I have three academic sources for that. But, unlike many, I am not a provocateur, jumping at anything which might make the other side look bad, and pushing it everywhere with tenacious alacrity. Nishidani (talk) 22:08, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Nishidani, these postcards and your interpretation of them have nothing to do with al-Husseini. You must stop disrupting talk pages by ranting on political issues. Beit Or 13:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
I beg your pardon? 'Rant', 'disruptive' behaviour? In referring to 3 technical books on al-Husayni and the period? What's the point of this? I'd say 'refactor' only the admonition to do so, and the word, make me giggle.Nishidani (talk) 16:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

As someone who has stumbled onto this page... wow... it seems like endless rant after endless rant--just as Beit Or states. Are they any moderators out there who can evaluate Nishidani's many many comments for correctness and appropriateness including four-letter words. This is an important topic, and Wikipedia's ability to treat it now appears to be irrevocably undermined by this embarrassing, non-academic years-long exchange. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.28.52.189 (talk) 12:52, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Check the word 'rant' in the OED. It is duly noted that quite a lot of people just trip over and through the infinite web, to warp in and stumble onto this page, and are shocked by the same 'rant' from one Nishidani, and raise the same cries of alarm, all in delicious anonymity. The aleatory visit, the anonymous outcry of moral offense - it has become a formulaic mode, what the great Curtius called a 'topos'. But I don't think it will make the manuals of rhetorical gambits. None edit.Nishidani (talk) 13:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Since this whole "Icon of Evil" brouhaha was precipitated by a bad-faith editor and his sock-puppets, we can probably just mark this section closed/resloved and move on. Tarc (talk) 14:30, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
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