Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Lance6wins/Evidence

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Evidence against Lance6Wins according to Zero

This case was brought to the Arbitration Committee by Viajero, who is apparently away until the end of August. The following brief summary was prepared by Zero. Note that a comprehensive list would be at least twice as long and require an exhorbitant amount of time to compile.

Timeline for this person:

  OneVoice: Dec 2003 to Feb 2004
  209.135.35.83 and 69.138.236.221: Jan 2004 to the present
  Lance6Wins: 26 July 2004 to the present

In the following we have used the abbreviation "L6W".

Despite his long time on Wikipedia, this user has not learned the basics of NPOV and continues to insert blatantly propagandistic material. In fact, it is clear that L6W regards himself as being on a mission to see that Wikipedia reflects his own political viewpoint. Almost all his edits are to that end. As to what his viewpoint is, one might call it "pro-Israeli" but it is in fact well to the right of the average opinion of the Israeli public. It is hard to find any non-trivial edits that he has made that do not serve this purpose.

L6W's style is particularly infuriating and wasteful of other peoples' time. Usually he inserts some highly POV material, then when someone else edits or removes it, he reverts. Even if the material is disproven immediately on the talk page, he often keeps reverting stubbornly without regard to what has been said.

Random examples:

Proposals for a Palestinian state Supposed "impediment for a Palestinian state": Insistence by the Palestinians of unrestricted access across the border to Israeli hospitals, schools, universities, seaports, airports, and employment. (In fact no such insistence was ever made by any Palestinian negotiator, it is entirely invention.)
Proposals for a Palestinian state Continued deleting the geographic location of the West Bank aquifer since it is uncomfortable to him. He didn't question the facts, just deleted incessantly.
Elon Peace Plan (A plan of the Israeli right-wing for expelling Arabs from the West Bank to enable an Israeli annexation without losing a Jewish majority. This is L6W's personal position.) L6W incessantly copied material directly from the official web site and would not allow any other material.
Population transfer This page was essentially taken over by L6W for several months in order to prove that population transfers work. (See the previous item for motivation.)
Daniel Pipes Repeatedly added scads of adulation from Pipes' own web page using such NPOV language as "unaware and unsuspecting global public".
Palestinian Authority - where to start?
Benny Morris Added his own commentary plus a bizarre reference to an entirely different person then endless reverted to them.
International Solidarity Movement Repeatedly added or re-added a quote attributed to an entirely different organization.
Islam Insisted on inserting nonsense about honor killing; see section of Talk:Islam headed "WikiMoron Insists on Bringing Up "Honor Killing".
Noam Chomsky Kept inserting quotations chosen out of context in an attempt to prove some point they did not prove.

Examples of distortions of sources:

Bethlehem: Claiming to be using "direct quotes": Most famously, the Church of the Nativity was used as a refugee by Palestinian gunmen. Over 100 gunmen remained in the Church till negotitions resulted in their removal from the Church and its compound at which time the Israel Defense Forces were asked to come into the site and remove 40 explosive devices set by the gunmen. [1] In fact CNN didn't say they were all gunmen, nor that the "explosive devices" were "set". (They weren't and they weren't.) This could be interpretted as sloppiness except that L6W's "errors" are always in the same direction. This cost A LOT of time to correct.
Palestinian refugee: Claiming to be quoting a book of Morris: Of these 750,000 refugees, 12% or 90,000 refugees resettled within Israel by 1953. In fact, Morris wrote "30,000-90,000". See the tantrum he threw on the talk page when I caught him.
Talk:History of Palestine: History of Palestine A book of Morris (Israel's Border Wars, p29) has the following: "Some Israeli officials, trying to explain the persistence of the infiltration phenomenon during the 1950s, linked it to the bedouin life-style and to the urbanization and pauperization that had drawn or pushed thousands of rural Arabs to Palestine's burgeoning towns during Ottoman and British Mandate rule. Perhaps as many as 200,000 Arabs had moved, between 1930 and 1945, from the desert to the prospering coastal areas of Palestine and Lebanon. Israel's relative prosperity continued to exert a magnetic power. (para) But the majority of observers looked to more specific and recent causes. ..." On the basis of this, L6W made the following insertion: Significant immigration to the area occurred before 1948, Jews from Europe and approximately 200,000 Arabs from the desert which comprised 12% of the Arab population. Note the following distortions: (1) "Palestine and Lebanon" became just "Palestine"; (2) "perhaps as many as 200,000" became "approximately 200,000"; (3) "from the desert to the prospering coastal areas" became "to the area [that is, to Palestine]...from the desert", ignoring the fact that a large part of the desert is inside Palestine; (4) Morris does not accept this 1950s theory, as can be seen from the last sentence quoted above and the fact that he never returns to it in his book. He is just mentioning an unusual claim in passing.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East: An UNRWA document said "an incident in which an ambulance drivers life was threatened by armed men who demanded that he transport them, along with their wounded comrade, to hospital". L6W's report of this (reverted endlessly) was "UNRWA admitted that its ambulances are used to transport "armed fighters" against UNRWA policy".
Oslo Accords: Made the claim "the May 2004 survey found that 80% of all Israelis hold that the Israel Defense Forces have succeeded in dealing with the Al-Aqsa Intifada militarily." citing a Hebrew document [2]. However, no such statistic appears in the document. To see this is so without needing to read Hebrew, see the English summary of the document at [3].
Refusal to serve in the Israeli military He repeatedly inserted a claim that Hamas had increased attacks due to a letter written by some Israeli reserve pilots. He claimed this appeared in a new book by two journalists. However, rather than being information from a book, it is a translation by a pirate radio station well known for its distortions (Arutz Sheva, see below) of an ephemeral TV interview. This is willful deception.

Other examples of anti-social behavior:

Thomas Hurndall He quoted INN (see below) as saying that the soldier who shot Hurndall had been found guilty. This was obviously impossible because it was only the same day as he had been charged and countless real news agencies reported the story correctly. An enormous effort was required before he desisted.
Refusal to serve in the Israeli military He quoted INN (see below) that some general had said refusal decreased by 80% when only the number of convictions had decreased by 80%. All other news agencies which reported it did so correctly. Not even detailed recitation of the general's statement was sufficient to make him desist in reverting to his version. In response to L6W's reply on this page (below), note that he is just quoting INN again. Decent news sources such as Haaretz quoted Regev directly and gave the actual numbers from which the 80% can be computed. Those numbers are in the article.
Israeli West Bank barrier There was a long debate about whether the picture should show a wall or a fence (both exist in reality). This was amicably resolved by agreeing to show both. OnceVoice then added just the fence picture with the false claim (edit summary) that it was what had been decided.
Tali Hatuel He inserted claim from INN (see below) that the killing had been filmed. When the veracity of this claim (made uniquely by INN) was questioned he started to insert other claims about the filming of other killings and claiming those as proof of this one. Afaik, he has not given up on this one.
Peace Now See the battle with Woggly, where L6W kept making a claim that required 1983 to be before 1969.
Amin al-Husayni He endlessly deleted the NPOV dispute tag despite the fact that the article was obviously in dispute and its talk page gave many examles of factual dispute. This was the first time that I blocked him. At this point he was using anon IPs only. Early June, 2004.

Note: INN is a euphemism for "Arutz Sheva", a pirate radio station run by right-wing Israelis that broadcasts into Israel from a ship because they are banned from broadcasting on land. More information on Arutz Sheva is in this mail message. Arutz Sheva is famous for the unreliability of its reports.

L6W's purpose is seen most clearly by the great effort he has put into the inherently-POV pages like Terrorism against Israel in 2001 (and similarly for other years) and Partial list of Palestinian terrorist acts. These are like a pet project for him. As I wrote above, NPOV is the very last objective that L6W has in mind. An attempt by a few people to balance these lists by changing the name, for example to Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 2004, has failed because L6W and one or two others (notably MathKnight) have a single-mindedness of purpose that is not matched by any pro-Palestinian contributors. The committee might like to try finding a single insertion of L6W in these pages that shows Israel in a bad light. L6W simply does not consider that the NPOV rule applies to him.

Personal statement of Zero: Since Dec 2003, approximately 30% of my editing time in Wikipedia has been spent repairing the damage done by L6W. Something must be done about it. --Zero 05:23, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Zero responds to Current Events July 23

Brief reply from Zero: Haaretz revises stories during the day using the same URL. In this case the retraction of the first version of the story appeared as a paragraph on http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/455715.html. Later that day, that paragraph disappeared. This has been explained repeatedly, but L6W appears unwilling or incapable of understanding. The committee should compare the importance of the issue (whether it was a rocket or a bomb) to the vast amount that L6W has written on it, in the Talk page, on the mailing list, and now here. This is a good example of what it is like with L6W around. I think he has some obsessive disorder. --Zero 00:03, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Additional notes from Ambi

Regarding 209.135.35.83

I'd also like to point the AC to his contributions as 209.135.35.83 (particularly the spree on 22 July), which is what got me involved here. After a couple of weeks spent mediating consensus between diametrically opposed parties on United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, agreement had finally been reached, and the article had been unprotected. Along came L6W, and began reverting the article to a previous, disputed version. Repeated attempts to dialog with him failed, and he simply kept reverting. Finally, the article was reprotected. Being unable to edit the UNRWA article, he then moved on, attempting to restart edit wars on Tali Hatuel, Daniel Pipes, Benny Morris and Peace Now - all in the space of about fifteen minutes. Finally, he was blocked. I have seen little in his behaviour since to convince me that he has changed his stripes. Ambi 07:12, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Regarding Tali Hatuel

I can't speak for the rest, but look at Tali Hatuel. No one denies that the Palestinian groups have filmed attacks before, but no one suggests they filmed the murder of Hatuel and her family. L6W makes the inclination that this was the case, by slipping in this otherwise-irrelevant factoid. I happen to agree with much of his opinions (and disagree with much of Zero's), but this is another example of L6W's less-than-neutral editing. Ambi 21:42, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Zero0000 and Current Events of July 23

Zero please confine your edits to your statments. As you have stated in the past, please do not intermix comments. You can place your responses in a section entitled responses. I have done that for you with your response regarding Current Events July 23. Thank you.

Current Events July 23

On July 23, a teenage Arab was killed by gunfire in Beit Hanoun, a built up area in the Northern section of the Gaza Strip. The incident was reported in multiple news sources, including (NYT), (BBC), (INN), [(HaAretz), (AFP). The event was first reported in Current Events as follows:

Palestinian terrorists of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades an armed branch of Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, murder Hassan Al- Za'nin, 15 years old, and shoot several members of his family, when the family refuses to allow the terrorists to use their property as a Qassam rocket launch site. (NYT) [4]

Using the common definition of murder as listed in wikipedia...to kill without legal sanction.

Zero0000 changed to report to read:

An 18-year-old Palestinian boy, Hassan Zaanin, is shot dead in Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip when he and his familiy attempt to stop Palestinian gunmen from planting an anti-tank explosive outside their house. (Haaretz) [5]

Zero0000 claims that his HaAretz citation is a correction of the earlier story and that the URLs are identical. He complains of HaAretz using one URL for multiple reports in Talk:Current Events:

Later in the day the Haaretz article was replaced by another at the same URL (they do that often, I sure wish they wouldn't) and the earlier incident was missing entirely.

Yet you can compare the two URLs and see that they are clearly different:

Zero0000's: http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/455715.html
earlier: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/455377.html (HaAretz) see section towards bottom of report entitled: PA teen killed by Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades

(In all fairness to Zero0000 the Gulf Daily reported the story closer to the version of events that Zero0000 prefers.

Examining these news sources (NYT, BBC, AFP, INN, HaAretz),

All agree that the child was killed and a number of his family members wounded.
3 of 5 report 15 or 16 years old....only AFP says 18 (BBC says teenager which includes both 15 and 16)
3 of 5 report the shooters as members of al-Aqsa, the others say militants, which include al-Aqsa
3 of 5 report a missile or Qassan rocket (which target civilians in southern Israel). NYT does not state. APF says road-side bomb (which target soldiers in the Gaza Strip)

The HaAretz article that Zero0000 prefers does not even mention the boy being killed. It is dated 26 July and covers more recent events.

A more recent verision of the report in Current Events runs as follows:

Palestinian terrorists of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades an armed branch of Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, murder 16-year-old Palestinian Hassan Al-Za'nin and shoot several members of his family, when the family refuses to allow the terrorists to use the Al-Za'nin property as a Qassam rocket launch site. (INN) (NYT) (HaAretz)(BBC)

After repeated deletions/reversion by Zero0000 the report now reads:

An 18-year-old Palestinian, Hassan Zaanin, is shot dead in Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip when he and his familiy attempt to stop Palestinian gunmen from planting an anti-tank explosive outside their house. (Haaretz) (BBC)

Zero0000 has characterized reporting this incident and others as "Arab-bashing" (See section of Talk:Current Events entitled: "23 July story about Beit Hanun death" and "Non "Arab Bashing" News (Zero0000's term)". Whether or not it is Arab bashing depends upon your point of view. A family refuses to allow people to use their property as a site for launching attacks (by a preponderance of the news reports) using rockets or missiles. The attackers kill and wound numerous members of the family. The family is to be commmended that they sought to prevent the lawlessness from occuring on their property.

Herein lies the difference of attitude. Zero0000 excises, with the help of Viajero, items that are critical of or might reflect poorly upon Arabs or Islam. Similar behaviour can be seen on the Palestinian Authority page, where Zero0000 has repeated removed documented items under the headings: "Failure to Protect Holy Sites", "Failure to suppress lawlessness" and "Descent into Chaos".

Response to Zero's counter-claim regarding Current Events July 23

Zero writes above: "Haaretz revises stories during the day using the same URL. In this case the retraction of the first version of the story appeared as a paragraph on http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/455715.html. Later that day, that paragraph disappeared."

The paragraph is indeed missing from the artcile that Zero cites. Clearly, this is a retraction of the "the retraction of the first version"...which is in turn a confirmation of the first version of the article.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East

UNRWA ambulances are used by armed Arab as transport during gunfights with Israeli soldiers. A prominent example occurred during Operation Rainbow in which a Reuters personnel filmed the practice. It was alleged that the ambulances were used to remove bodily remains of Israeli soldiers as well. Peter Hansen, Director-General of UNRWA denies that the ambulances were used to transport body parts of Israeli soldiers. [6]. Peter Hansen further states that it issued a statement on May 13, 2004 demanding that the neutrality of its ambulances be respected in response to an incident in which armed men demanded transport from an ambulance driver. UNRWA policy forbids the transport of armed men in its ambulances, but does not demand its drivers enforce the policy if it means placing their lives at risk.

Summary: film evidence of ambulances being used as transport for armed men, denial of transport of body parts, demand that neutrality of ambulances be respected (not used as transport armed men); statement of policy forbidding use of ambulances as transport for armed men; statement that the policy need not be enforced under threat of "lives at risk".

Clearly the UNRWA ambulances were used as transport for armed men and Peter Hansen is stating this is against policy, but there is nothing that can be done about it when the armed men threaten the lives of the drivers.

Tali Hatuel

The dispute revolves around the filming of the attack as reported:

The terrorists videotaped the children as they bled to death. This has become a common practice of Palestinian terrorist groups. The New York Times has reported the practice of filming attacks on Israelis on both 12 May and 13 May, 2004 "The militant Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility for the shooting and said they would release footage of the attack." New York Times and "Hamas said in a statement...it had film of the attack..."Reuters

Zero denies the above reports by the New York Times and Reuters.

He has deleted the following quotation and citation from the article:

The individuals, "including terrified toddlers, pinned to the ground for 20 minutes". [7].

Following this, Viajero protected Zero's version of the article (New York Times and Reuters citations deleted) on 20 May 2004.

Zero repeated his practice of deleting the above New York Times and Reuters citations. Once again Viajero protected the Zero's version of the article on 9 June 2004.

Regarding the filming of Tali Hatuel's murder

Ambi states that no one claims the murder was filmed. This is not correct. There were citations in the articles that this particular murder was filmed. Zero has removed those citations. Fortunately he does not appear to have the authority to edit the history of the article, and so those citations remain available in previous versions.

Refusal to serve in the Israeli military

Zero claims that "the conviction rate" decreased by 80%.

He IDF Chief of Personnel disagrees with Zero, stating explicitly: "80% decline in the number of draft dodgers and insubordinates". Nothing there about convictions.

IDF Chief of Personnel Major-General Gil Regev set the record straight. According to Regev, in 2003, there was an 80% decline in the number of draft dodgers and insubordinates among soldiers and officers.

Regev confirmed that during the past three years, coinciding with the Oslo War, there has been an increase in “political” insubordination but the overall numbers indicate a reduction in the number of soldiers and officers refusing to be inducted into the military or serve in the reserves.[8]

Zero, Viajero and OneVoice participated in an repeated edit/revert process over this information in February of 2004.

Refusal to serve in the Israeli military (new issue)

Two Israeli journalists, Amos Harel of Haaretz and a person from the Israel Broadcasting Agency, have written a book in Hebrew entitled (in translation) "The Seventh War". The book is based upon extensive interview with Hamas leaders and others. In the book the authors state that

It was the Israeli left and your peace camp that ultimately encouraged us to continue with our suicide attacks.

We tried, through our attacks, to create fragmentation and dissention within Israeli society, and the left-wing's reaction was proof that this was indeed the right approach. When we heard about the 'Pilots' Letter' [written and publicized last year by 27 Israel Air Force pilots who refused to take part in bombing missions against terrorist leaders in Arab towns], and the elite soldiers who refused to serve [in Judea, Samaria and Gaza], it strengthened those in our camp who promoted the idea of suicide bombers...[9]

Zero0000 has remove this twice, his only comment is shown below. 11:36, 13 Sep 2004 Zero0000 (rv. the next time you post Arutz Sheva crap I will block you.)

Followup September 20th 2004

Zero0000 has blocked Lance6Wins from Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Blocking policy is defined. It specifically states that unpopular opinions are not to be blocked.

===Unpopular opinions===

Blocking may not be used to prevent a user from posting unpopular opinions. A content dispute between users should be settled on the article's talk page or on their own user talk pages. If it cannot be resolved that way, there is a clearly defined dispute resolution procedure to resolve contentious issues. See Wikipedia:Dispute resolution for more.

Blocks such as those constitute Wikipedia:Administrators#Administrator abuse Abu Ala 20:14, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Daniel Pipes

Zero has repeated deleted that Pipes has been published in Foreign Affairs. He has also repeated deleted the following information:

=== September 11, 2001 ===

Four months before the attack on the twin towers, Pipes and Steven Emerson wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Al Qaeda was "planning new attacks on the US"; and that Iranian operatives "helped arrange advanced ... training for Al Qaeda personnel in Lebanon where they learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings."

The Boston Globe wrote that "If Pipes's admonitions had been heeded, there might never have been a 9/11." It was precisely after Sept. 11, 2001, that Pipes came fully into his own, explaining to a confused and deeply concerned country just who its enemy is and why. Insight on the News 15 April 2002.

The Boston Globe report was written by by Jeffrey Jacoby on 22 June 2003.

Zero prefers to enter this type of material into the article:

CAIR charges that Pipes is an anti-Islamic bigot, while Pipes in turn maintains that CAIR is an apologist for Islamic terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Links to CAIR's charges and Pipes' response to them are given below.

Campus Watch was immediately labeled a "McCarthyist blacklist"; and similar epithets, not only by the listed academics but by more than 100 others who demanded to be listed as well.

Neither statement contains any attribution.

Once again Zero's participated in an edit/revert sequence. Viajero then protected Zero's version of the article.

Peace Now

Zero0000 says "See the battle with Woggly, where L6W kept making a claim that required 1983 to be before 1969."

Perhaps this refers to the "Song of Peace" which was written in 1969 and adopted by Peace Now as its anthem, some time after 1983. Evidently, Zero0000, believes that an anthem must be written after the orgranization is founded, that adopting a pre-existing song as an anthem is not possible.

However, the real item of disagreement concerns the decline in support for Peace Now among the Israeli populace and the association of Peace Now with those that would demonize a significant section of Israeli society. That criticism of Peace Now has been incorporated into the page by others. (Woggly and MathKnight. Woggly is the person cited in the Zero0000 quote above.) The paragraphs are:

The movement (Peace Now) has been criticized for lacking realism given the absence of a corresponding movement on the Arab side of the conflict.

Ami Ayalon, former head of the Shin Bet and co-initiator of the National Census peace proposal (with professor Sari Nusseibeh), has criticized Peace Now for demonizing the Jewish settlers, thus encouraging hate towards settlers, and providing the general public reasons to dislike the peace camp.

Ayalon scorns Peace Now for failing to rally the masses in support of the Israeli Peace movement, although surveys indicate that the Israeli public supports a separation from the Palestinians and a peaceful solution. Ayalon explain that this because Peace Now and the left wing have shown alienation and a patronising attitude towards the general Israeli public, and that this attitude combined with increased terrorist activity over the past four years are to blame for Peace Now's current poor standing within the Israeli public, which feels the peace camp is not commited (enough) to stop Palestinian terrorism and protect Israel's interests.

Ayalon concluded that many settlements should indeed be disbanded, but the transfered settlers should be embraced and receive support - both financial and moral - from the state and the public, and not being treated as enemies.

More to come

This is all that I have time for at the moment. Lance6Wins 17:50, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Quote from Lance6Wins

In a message to Mirv, Lance6Wins said "I do try, attempt, or intend to misinform." [10]. I call this to the attention of the Arbitration Committee because the statement seems at least somewhat relevant to the questions here. I will not attempt to interpret whether this is a deliberate statement of purpose, a Freudian slip, or if the author mistakenly omitted a negation (such as "I do not..."). --Michael Snow 22:08, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Edits by User:209.135.35.83 on July 9, 2004 to Wikipedia:Protected page

Material added to Refusal to serve in the Israeli military by Lance6wins

This is the controverted edit which resulted in the blocking of Lance6win by Zero000: [11]. Other sources for the underlying material include Jewish Tribune, September 16, 2004, Blog danielpipes.org September 10, 2004 - An interview by Avi Yisacharov of Voice of Israel Radio on Channel One Television (Israel) is cited, the book itself, The Seventh War is "forthcoming" - Zionist Organization of America September 10, 2004 - Date of the television interview was September 9, 2004 - Blog Ongoing Jewish Commentary, and the source Lance6win used: Arutz Shiva, September 12, 2004.

Blocking by Zero000

Like you read it, yeah. The next I see you posting crap from Arutz Sheva, I will block you. That's a promise. --Zero 11:37, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) [12]

The book, The Seventh War is apparently in Hebrew and may not be published even now. The material is from a television interview. Fred Bauder 14:24, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

The original edit by 209.135.35.83 states that the added material is from the book itself and does not mention the television interview [13]. 209.135.35.83's next edit replaced ==Arab reactions== with ==Resulting increase in terrorism== [14]