Since the people who built and prayed in that Byzantine-era synagogue undoubtedly regarded themselves as living in the Land of Israel,” this is a highly political edit. It is probably best resolved by renaming the section to “Synagogues in the Land of Israel.” But this editor was less interested in geography than in removing evidence of ancient Jewish life in Israel from Wikipedia.
I say this because his previous edit was on a page entitled Oldest synagogues in Israel. When he happened on the page, it looked like this. The editor removed two synagogues, the one at Gamla and the one at Qumran, both of which were part of the ancient Kingdom of Israel and predate the destruction of the Temple in the year 70.
Following the editor’s tracks, we see him on the Qumran page on August 13, changing the phrase ”Israeli kibbutz of Kalia” to ”Israeli settlement and kibbutz of Kalia.” Kibbutz Kalya was built in 1929, destroyed in 1948 by Jordanian forces, and rebuilt in 1968. It is not a settlement.
This editor’s justification of removing two synagogues from a Wikipedia article is that “This article is about the “Oldest synagogues in Israel”, so therfor [sic] synagogues in the Palestinian territories and in Syria shouldn’t be in this article.” The reference is to ancient Gamla, which is not in Syria, it is in the Golan. More to the point, when these ancient synagogues were built, both Qumran and Gamla were part of an the ancient Kingdom of Israel, a Roman client. The article should be renamed “Oldest synagogues in the Land of Israel.” But that does not excuse the editor’s highly political vandalism.
All of the articles discussed in this article are in dire need of improvement. There is a lot of scope for new editors to improve Wikipedia.
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Just an FYI, Kalya is actually a settlement as it is located beyond the Green Line. This POV doesn’t bode well for neutral editing.
This is not a neutral change: ”Israeli kibbutz of Kalia” to ”Israeli settlement and kibbutz of Kalia.” Note the dehumanization of people because of where they live. This is not a neutral edit and I am glad that Wikibias has drawn attention to it. There is an attempt by a fairly large number of editors to put these kinds of changes in place throughout Wikipedia. It is just exactly wrong.
How is calling it a settlement dehumanising? In case, of course, you share the international opinion that settlers know full well that they are living in an illegal settlement. It is not wrong at all. On the other hand, to deny it is a settlement is wrong.
Those who don’t understand this will not. Perhaps the Wikipedian Ashleykennedy3 illustrates my point at this forum some time back.
The exact words were:
“Squatter are legitimate military targets. Under military orders makes them legitimate targets. All invaders are legitimate military targets. Not only legitimate but it is binding on the occupied to resist the occupier.”
Thank you for that. I suspect that a shocking number of Wikipedia editors have written justifications of terrorism, violence and murder on the site. I hope that you will track down and share more such statements with us here.