Talk:Battle of Ayta ash-Sha'b/Archives/2012/February

Edit

just going to chane the woding in the sentence "four soldiers were killed before noon on August 9 after an antitank missile fired by Hezbollah gunmen hit and destroyed an IDF tank in the village." To make it seem less POV

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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:54, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

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POV pushing

The article has been recently rewritten by User:Jokkmokks-Goran in a compete non-neutral POV style. Here is the original state of the article. Flayer (talk) 18:41, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

You have flagged the article for:

Its factual accuracy is disputed

Its use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines

Its neutrality is disputed

but you have not provided any grounds for this. I welcome any discussion about the article and ways to improve it. But if you are not interested in such a discussion I think you should remove the flaggings. Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 08:39, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Destructive activity

The previous version of the battle of Ayta was very short, incomplete, inaccurate and partly unsourced. Several of its few links - all of them news clippings from August 2006 - were dead.

I therefore made a major revision based what I have read about the battle, including books, military studies, interviews, etc written after the war. Most of the facts were based on Israeli English-language newspaper reports though a few were in Hebrew. I also included some Lebanese Arabic-language sources: newspaper articles or local authority web sites (connected to Hezbollah).

I included the fighting around the nearby villages of Qawzah and Dibil. Lebanese accounts clearly indicate that from their perspective it was really one battle, just as the battles of Maroun ar-Ras and Ainata were really part of the battle of Bint Jbeil. It would not surprise me if the missile that killed 9 paratroopers at Dibil on Aug. 9 was actually fired from Ayta. I did read one Lebanese account that made this claim (lost unfortunately). When the IDF pushed further north towards Rashaf, Hadatha and Yatar they evidently passed on to another Hezbollah regional command.

I don’t assume that I have made a final version of the article and welcome new contributions, additions in particular. A problem I faced was that most Lebanese accounts lack a clear timeline of the battle while most Israeli sources I’ve found are real time newspaper clippings focused primarily on the occurrences of Israeli fatalities. I would be most grateful if someone could direct me to a more detailed Israeli account of the battle itself. I can read Hebrew with a frequent use of a dictionary and am fluent in Arabic.

13 minutes after I submitted my new version a guy (or girl) calling himself “Flayer” (who apparently created the article back in 2006) deleted EVERYTHING I had written. Without a comment. I reverted the change, assuming it was done by a mistake. Not so.

I cannot understand how somebody can decide that every word of a major revision is so wrong that it must be deleted in its entirety. And this in less than 13 minutes!

I have no idea who “Flayer” is, but he clearly has a very strong agenda that is inappropriate to Wikipedia.

Then he changed tack - for a while.

He deleted the entire section with the names of the fatalities, both Lebanese and Israeli, under the pretext that Wikipedia is not a memorial site. The problem is that every Wikipedia article about terrorist acts in Israel contains such a list of names. I somehow doubt that “Flayer” will delete these lists as well. Apart from the general value of such information I believe that it helps us in pinpointing the number of casualties on both sides. Israel claims to have list of over 500 Hezbollah fighters killed in the war. Maybe someone with access to that list can add some names to the list. Assuming of course that the list actually exists.

[I have just realized that I had made a mistake in identifying Lt.(res.) Tzur Zarhi as a fatality of Aita ash-Sha’b – he was actually killed in Tal Nahas up in the north. I say in my defense that I was fooled by the old version of the article which claimed that five – other sources say four - soldiers died in Aita 13 Aug, 2006. Zarhi belonged to the Carmeli brigade that fought in Aita so I assumed that he was the fifth guy. I now know that only four died in this incident and I have deleted Zarhi and corrected the figures.]

Flayer also deleted an entire paragraph claiming it was POV and added dozens of , most of whom were entirely unnecessary. My article was very well provided by sources but if it needs any improvements in this regard I’ll be happy to provide them.

Then he flagged the article for:

• Its factual accuracy is disputed.
• Its use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines.
• Its neutrality is disputed.

without explaining any of the reasons for doing so.

Then he apparently had a change of heart and AGAIN deleted my ENTIRE contribution as well as the dispute flaggings.

So I have just reverted “Flayer’s” deletions and hope for some assistance if he persists. I am a reasonable guy and am willing to discuss and change the article. I must say that “Flayer’s” conduct is by far the worst I have come across on Wikipedia - so far, I’m quite new here.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 15:53, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Further sabotage

"Flayer", please stop your sabotage campaign.

You have AGAIN removed an entire section of the article containing the names of the fatalities of the battle. You have not even attempted to explain your action, except a reference to WP:NOTMEMORIAL which states: “Memorials. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements.”

This is clearly NOT applicable in this case. I have no personal relation, however remote, to any or the victims of this battle, Israeli or Lebanese. The article is definitely not a memorial. It is an article about an important battle in the 2006 Lebanon war and the list of fatalities is only a minor but important part of the article.

If you believe that lists of names of victims don’t belong to Wikipedia I think that you are facing an uphill battle. It is standard procedure in virtually EVERY article on terrorist acts in Israel. Just check through the incidents referred to in this List of Israeli civilian casualties in the Second Intifada. I have personally no problems with these lists. Quite the opposite. But I promise you that if you can convince the rest of the Wikipedia community that we should remove all these lists of names I will personally remove the list in the Ayta ash-Sha’b article as well.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 10:02, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Copyright violation?

I have uploaded an image to Wikimedia Commons. I copied an image from Wikimapia and added some labels. I'm no expert on copyrights issues but I assumed that this was OK. Is it? Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 11:21, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Information on Rajamin and Ramiya

I want to include more information on the fighting outside Ayta ash-Sha'b proper, especially in the small shiite village of Ramiya, close to the border, but I have seen very little information about it. There are general info about fighting there and about IDF conquering the place, but no details, maybe because IDF did not suffer any fatalities. I'm interested in any info, in English, Arabic or Hebrew.

I have read about a mysterious village or "town" where IDF really suffered some casualties (at least twice), called Rajmin, or Rajamin (in "Israeli" translitterations, so it could be Ghajamin or something similar). But I cannot find anything like that on any map. Supposedly 4 km from the border in the Western sector. Now Arkin writes: "Rajmin (see Ramiya)". Though Ramiya is much closer to the border. Could Rajmin be a locality in/near Ramiya? If so, it should be included in the narrative about the battle of Ayta. Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 22:56, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

A note on the number of casualties

Israeli casualties

I have counted 28 Israeli fatalities at Ayta ash-Sha'b and nearby Dibil. There may be one or two more as the Israeli account of their fatalities became less precise as the war progressed. In general I believe there is no reason to question the official Israeli number of fatalities. Somebody added "(IDF claim)" after the number but I find that unnecessary, since it isn't challenged by anybody.

The number of Israeli wounded is however a a much more tricky question. As far as I know there is no official Israeli number for this battle. More than 100 wounded are mentioned in the sources reported the article. The Winograd report says that 628 soldiers were wounded throughout the war (p. 353). Yet the daily summaries add up to 1244 wounded soldiers (p. 598-609). I'm not sure what explains this discrepancy. Almost a quarter (23%) of all Israeli fatalities of the war occurred at Ayta. Applying this proportion to the number of wounded would yield 145-288. Though this is just a guesstimate, or "Original Research". The Hezbollah estimate of around 200 casualties thus seem quite reasonable.

Lebanese casualties

According to the as-Safir article 11 named Hezbollah fighters died in the battle. (Two more were captured by IDF.) This account of the battle was based on interviews with Hezbollah commanders and fighters as well as local inhabitants. There is no published official Hezbollah figure of casualties for the battle. Other sources mentions 8 or 9 Ayta local inhabitants killed in the war and buried at the local cemetery. If we assume that 2 or 3 were from outside the town these accounts add up. We know that at least one was from Tayiba and one of the captured was from Beirut. One Ayta resident was also killed at another place in South Lebanon. If we assume that several dozens additional fighters were wounded Hezbollah suffered relatively heavy casualties in the battle.

According to all accounts the town was only defended by 100 (mainly local) fighters or less. Israel apparently claims that 40 Hezbollah fighters died in the battle, though I have not seen a first hand source. If we assume that the corresponding number of wounded would be much higher than that then the Hezbollah force defending the town would have been more or less exterminated. There is very little indication of that since Hezbollah managed to pull off 3 deadly attacks on Israeli forces in the last days of the battle, killing 17 IDF soldiers. It is also inconceivable that the IDF would not have succeeded in capturing the town after killing or wounding almost every defender. As far as we know IDF held positions inside Ayta but never permanently occupied important sections of the town where it could collect or count Hezbollah dead on the battlefield. If we assume that the majority of the additional 29 dead Hezbollah fighters were locals it is also highly unlikely that they were not buried with their comrades in the local cemetery. It is however conceivable that an additional number of Hezbollah non-local fighters were killed in nearby localities (Ramiya, Dibil, etc,) though we have no information about that.

I therefore conclude that the IDF claims on the number of killed most probably is incorrect and mainly reflect war time propaganda.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 09:54, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

You own WP:OR cant be part of the article please bring WP:RS to your claims.--Shrike (talk) 11:18, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you. That's why it's not in the article but on the discussion page to encourage others to improve the article.Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 12:08, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit

just going to chane the woding in the sentence "four soldiers were killed before noon on August 9 after an antitank missile fired by Hezbollah gunmen hit and destroyed an IDF tank in the village." To make it seem less POV

Fair use rationale for Image:Ayta.alshaab.jpg

Image:Ayta.alshaab.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 04:54, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

File:Hizbollah3.tif Nominated for speedy Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Hizbollah3.tif, has been nominated for speedy deletion at Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Copyright violations What should I do? Don't panic; deletions can take a little longer at Commons than they do on Wikipedia. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion (although please review Commons guidelines before doing so). The best way to contest this form of deletion is by posting on the image talk page. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. If the image has already been deleted you may want to try Commons Undeletion Request This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 22:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

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POV pushing

The article has been recently rewritten by User:Jokkmokks-Goran in a compete non-neutral POV style. Here is the original state of the article. Flayer (talk) 18:41, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

You have flagged the article for:

Its factual accuracy is disputed

Its use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines

Its neutrality is disputed

but you have not provided any grounds for this. I welcome any discussion about the article and ways to improve it. But if you are not interested in such a discussion I think you should remove the flaggings. Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 08:39, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Destructive activity

The previous version of the battle of Ayta was very short, incomplete, inaccurate and partly unsourced. Several of its few links - all of them news clippings from August 2006 - were dead.

I therefore made a major revision based what I have read about the battle, including books, military studies, interviews, etc written after the war. Most of the facts were based on Israeli English-language newspaper reports though a few were in Hebrew. I also included some Lebanese Arabic-language sources: newspaper articles or local authority web sites (connected to Hezbollah).

I included the fighting around the nearby villages of Qawzah and Dibil. Lebanese accounts clearly indicate that from their perspective it was really one battle, just as the battles of Maroun ar-Ras and Ainata were really part of the battle of Bint Jbeil. It would not surprise me if the missile that killed 9 paratroopers at Dibil on Aug. 9 was actually fired from Ayta. I did read one Lebanese account that made this claim (lost unfortunately). When the IDF pushed further north towards Rashaf, Hadatha and Yatar they evidently passed on to another Hezbollah regional command.

I don’t assume that I have made a final version of the article and welcome new contributions, additions in particular. A problem I faced was that most Lebanese accounts lack a clear timeline of the battle while most Israeli sources I’ve found are real time newspaper clippings focused primarily on the occurrences of Israeli fatalities. I would be most grateful if someone could direct me to a more detailed Israeli account of the battle itself. I can read Hebrew with a frequent use of a dictionary and am fluent in Arabic.

13 minutes after I submitted my new version a guy (or girl) calling himself “Flayer” (who apparently created the article back in 2006) deleted EVERYTHING I had written. Without a comment. I reverted the change, assuming it was done by a mistake. Not so.

I cannot understand how somebody can decide that every word of a major revision is so wrong that it must be deleted in its entirety. And this in less than 13 minutes!

I have no idea who “Flayer” is, but he clearly has a very strong agenda that is inappropriate to Wikipedia.

Then he changed tack - for a while.

He deleted the entire section with the names of the fatalities, both Lebanese and Israeli, under the pretext that Wikipedia is not a memorial site. The problem is that every Wikipedia article about terrorist acts in Israel contains such a list of names. I somehow doubt that “Flayer” will delete these lists as well. Apart from the general value of such information I believe that it helps us in pinpointing the number of casualties on both sides. Israel claims to have list of over 500 Hezbollah fighters killed in the war. Maybe someone with access to that list can add some names to the list. Assuming of course that the list actually exists.

[I have just realized that I had made a mistake in identifying Lt.(res.) Tzur Zarhi as a fatality of Aita ash-Sha’b – he was actually killed in Tal Nahas up in the north. I say in my defense that I was fooled by the old version of the article which claimed that five – other sources say four - soldiers died in Aita 13 Aug, 2006. Zarhi belonged to the Carmeli brigade that fought in Aita so I assumed that he was the fifth guy. I now know that only four died in this incident and I have deleted Zarhi and corrected the figures.]

Flayer also deleted an entire paragraph claiming it was POV and added dozens of , most of whom were entirely unnecessary. My article was very well provided by sources but if it needs any improvements in this regard I’ll be happy to provide them.

Then he flagged the article for:

• Its factual accuracy is disputed.
• Its use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines.
• Its neutrality is disputed.

without explaining any of the reasons for doing so.

Then he apparently had a change of heart and AGAIN deleted my ENTIRE contribution as well as the dispute flaggings.

So I have just reverted “Flayer’s” deletions and hope for some assistance if he persists. I am a reasonable guy and am willing to discuss and change the article. I must say that “Flayer’s” conduct is by far the worst I have come across on Wikipedia - so far, I’m quite new here.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 15:53, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Further sabotage

"Flayer", please stop your sabotage campaign.

You have AGAIN removed an entire section of the article containing the names of the fatalities of the battle. You have not even attempted to explain your action, except a reference to WP:NOTMEMORIAL which states: “Memorials. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements.”

This is clearly NOT applicable in this case. I have no personal relation, however remote, to any or the victims of this battle, Israeli or Lebanese. The article is definitely not a memorial. It is an article about an important battle in the 2006 Lebanon war and the list of fatalities is only a minor but important part of the article.

If you believe that lists of names of victims don’t belong to Wikipedia I think that you are facing an uphill battle. It is standard procedure in virtually EVERY article on terrorist acts in Israel. Just check through the incidents referred to in this List of Israeli civilian casualties in the Second Intifada. I have personally no problems with these lists. Quite the opposite. But I promise you that if you can convince the rest of the Wikipedia community that we should remove all these lists of names I will personally remove the list in the Ayta ash-Sha’b article as well.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 10:02, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Copyright violation?

I have uploaded an image to Wikimedia Commons. I copied an image from Wikimapia and added some labels. I'm no expert on copyrights issues but I assumed that this was OK. Is it? Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 11:21, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Information on Rajamin and Ramiya

I want to include more information on the fighting outside Ayta ash-Sha'b proper, especially in the small shiite village of Ramiya, close to the border, but I have seen very little information about it. There are general info about fighting there and about IDF conquering the place, but no details, maybe because IDF did not suffer any fatalities. I'm interested in any info, in English, Arabic or Hebrew.

I have read about a mysterious village or "town" where IDF really suffered some casualties (at least twice), called Rajmin, or Rajamin (in "Israeli" translitterations, so it could be Ghajamin or something similar). But I cannot find anything like that on any map. Supposedly 4 km from the border in the Western sector. Now Arkin writes: "Rajmin (see Ramiya)". Though Ramiya is much closer to the border. Could Rajmin be a locality in/near Ramiya? If so, it should be included in the narrative about the battle of Ayta. Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 22:56, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

A note on the number of casualties

Israeli casualties

I have counted 28 Israeli fatalities at Ayta ash-Sha'b and nearby Dibil. There may be one or two more as the Israeli account of their fatalities became less precise as the war progressed. In general I believe there is no reason to question the official Israeli number of fatalities. Somebody added "(IDF claim)" after the number but I find that unnecessary, since it isn't challenged by anybody.

The number of Israeli wounded is however a a much more tricky question. As far as I know there is no official Israeli number for this battle. More than 100 wounded are mentioned in the sources reported the article. The Winograd report says that 628 soldiers were wounded throughout the war (p. 353). Yet the daily summaries add up to 1244 wounded soldiers (p. 598-609). I'm not sure what explains this discrepancy. Almost a quarter (23%) of all Israeli fatalities of the war occurred at Ayta. Applying this proportion to the number of wounded would yield 145-288. Though this is just a guesstimate, or "Original Research". The Hezbollah estimate of around 200 casualties thus seem quite reasonable.

Lebanese casualties

According to the as-Safir article 11 named Hezbollah fighters died in the battle. (Two more were captured by IDF.) This account of the battle was based on interviews with Hezbollah commanders and fighters as well as local inhabitants. There is no published official Hezbollah figure of casualties for the battle. Other sources mentions 8 or 9 Ayta local inhabitants killed in the war and buried at the local cemetery. If we assume that 2 or 3 were from outside the town these accounts add up. We know that at least one was from Tayiba and one of the captured was from Beirut. One Ayta resident was also killed at another place in South Lebanon. If we assume that several dozens additional fighters were wounded Hezbollah suffered relatively heavy casualties in the battle.

According to all accounts the town was only defended by 100 (mainly local) fighters or less. Israel apparently claims that 40 Hezbollah fighters died in the battle, though I have not seen a first hand source. If we assume that the corresponding number of wounded would be much higher than that then the Hezbollah force defending the town would have been more or less exterminated. There is very little indication of that since Hezbollah managed to pull off 3 deadly attacks on Israeli forces in the last days of the battle, killing 17 IDF soldiers. It is also inconceivable that the IDF would not have succeeded in capturing the town after killing or wounding almost every defender. As far as we know IDF held positions inside Ayta but never permanently occupied important sections of the town where it could collect or count Hezbollah dead on the battlefield. If we assume that the majority of the additional 29 dead Hezbollah fighters were locals it is also highly unlikely that they were not buried with their comrades in the local cemetery. It is however conceivable that an additional number of Hezbollah non-local fighters were killed in nearby localities (Ramiya, Dibil, etc,) though we have no information about that.

I therefore conclude that the IDF claims on the number of killed most probably is incorrect and mainly reflect war time propaganda.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 09:54, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

You own WP:OR cant be part of the article please bring WP:RS to your claims.--Shrike (talk) 11:18, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you. That's why it's not in the article but on the discussion page to encourage others to improve the article.Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 12:08, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Poliocretes changes

User:Poliocretes recently made some changes to the article. Many of them were improvements but in general I think he was too strict in his editing principles. Every statement in an article does not have to be verified by a source, only verifiable. If you think an unsourced item needs a source please indicate that with . He took away a lot of easily sourced and uncontroversial facts.

• I prefer to indicate a commander’s position rather than his rank (or both). It is more interesting to know that Udi Adam was Chief of Northern Command rather than Lieutenant General.

• I think it is enough with abbreviations of military ranks. Use links if deemed necessary.

• I think it was a mistake to take away the explanatory note about Carmeli/188th. Carmeli brigade is the most commonly used name but 188th is its official name (it confused me). It is called Carmeli in this article and in all the sources. Incidentally it is called Carmeli in the Hebrew sister article as well.

• The air force accounted for a substantial number of Lebanese casualties and thus should be included in the box.

• The source of the 200 Israeli casualties was not the Hezbollah fighter but al-Jazeera’s reporter Abbas Nasir saying: “Around 200 – according to Hezbollah estimates – [IDF] dead and wounded have fallen here in this town”. Please check source before you remove things.

Arkin’s claim that IDF estimated 40 Hezbollah fatalities in the battle is equally unsourced. Should we remove that as well?

• The claim that the IDF unit hid in a garage in Dibil is supported by the as-Safir article which reads:

”After the battle [at the Dibil pool] the remaining members of the [IDF] force fled towards some houses in the town of Dibil and a large number of them entered a garage while being observed by members of the resistance unit. The unit waited until all had entered the garage and then fired a remote-controlled missile at it…”

So no reason to remove it.

• HRW reports reads “While the Salem family did not notice any firing from around their part of the village, they told us that some villagers had told them that “something was fired from the neighborhood” but Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm this.” (p. 171)

So its hearsay, unconfirmed by any other source. I have not found any other reports on Hezbollah presence in, fighting in (or firing from) Rumaysh, except rare Israeli artillery shelling.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 18:45, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

JG, wikipedia policy is very clear. Every statement has to be referenced. Not "verifiable", but referenced. You can't expect other people to do your work for you. If you put in a section that is not supported by the reference you've provided, you have no one but yourself to blame when it is challenged and even, yes, removed. As for the other points you've raised:

• Positions are important, of course, but not in the infobox. You'll see this is standard practice in battle articles.
• If you think abbreviations are better, I do not mind if you reinstate them.
• Carmeli brigade is most definitely not the most common name for 188, which is by far better known as "Barak". I was genuinely surprised to see it in use in the "34 Days" book, when it is so seldom used otherwise. Not only did I change it in the infobox, but it should also be replaced throughout the article. Nevertheless, if you wish for a note to connect 188 with Carmeli, feel free to add one.
• The box represents opposing forces, not who's responsible for more casualties. The numerical contribution of te Israeli Air Force to this battle is relatively small and as such does not belong in the article. Furthermore, an infobox that pits 100 Hezbullah fighter against the entire Israeli Air Force is a blatant case of NPOV. That's nice for propaganda purposes, but hardly reflects a nuanced approach to the subject.
• 200 dead and wounded - Again, your reference said "Hezbullah Fighter". Once again, don't expect other editors to do your work for you. Reference your edits properly, and they wouldn't get removed.
• Arkin claim - if it is unreferenced, feel absolutely free to remove it.
• Garage/Hid - And again: statements have to be referenced correctly. If you've taken a statement from a certain source, you have to specify so in the references!
• HRW - the statement said there were not Hizbullah in the area, representing it as an undisputed fact. That is disingenious, as that is not what the reference says. The report clearly states that local residents reported firing in the region, but that HRW were not able to confirm it. That's not the same as "there were no Hizbullah in the area", because at no point does the report express that unequivocal position.

Finally, I've got a question, JG. Are you a Hebrew speaker? Several of the references you've used in the article are in Hebrew, and quite often they don't quite say what the article suggests they say. A prime example is the statement "Israeli soldiers were shocked by the ferocity of the fire and some units stopped functioning" in which several soldiers somehow metamorphosed into "some units". There are also others, so are you using thes references as your source, or is there another? Poliocretes (talk) 22:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Listen, I think you made a net positive contribution to the article and I can live with each and everyone of your changes. None of them takes away anything essential in the article. My only point was that I believe that sometimes you were throwing the baby out with the bath water (such as the note on Carmeli/188th). I am not a native Hebrew speaker but I can read Hebrew - though I need a dictionary (Alcalay 1965...) from time to time.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 20:30, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Reliable sources

1) The Ehrlich study “Hezbollah's use of Lebanese civilians as human shields” is not a reliable independent third-party source but a semi-official Israeli publication. I think it is OK to use it as a source in Wikipedia if its status is clearly pointed out. Especially since it is mainly used to corroborate other more reliable sources.

The study is written by a retired senior Israeli officer, Dr. Reuven Erlich (Col. Ret.), presented in the study as “military intelligence veteran expert… who w[as] privileged to enjoy the cooperation of every potential source of information in Israel” and the study was foreworded by Efraim Halevy, a former head of the Israeli Mossad.

I quoted an explanatory footnote from the first page of the study, which reads:

“The study was supported by Military Intelligence, the Operations Division of the IDF General Staff, the IDF Spokesperson and the legal experts of the IDF and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

User:Brewcrewer removed this note as well changed the text and removed the military rank of the author, apparently in an attempt to conceal this fact. Ehrlich's study itself makes no such attempt.

2) User:Mikrobølgeovn has reintroduced Arkin’s unsourced claim of the IDF claim of 40 Hezbollah fatalities into and relegated the well-sourced figure of 11 to “Hezbollah claim”.

Simon Assaf (Socialist Worker) claimed (in August 2006) that 8 local fighters were killed while Nir Rosen (Mother Jones) wrote several months later that 9 locals were killed. Lebanese daily as-Safir wrote in 2007 that in total 11 named fighters were killed in the battle. Several of these individuals are also mentioned in other sources. Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth wrote that “around ten” locals were killed. So we have four different sources that largely concur on the number of Hezballah fatalities. As far as I know Hezballah has not published any statistics on their own casualties in this battle.

Neither has the IDF, as far as I know. I have not seen any official estimate. The only claim I have come across is the following sentence in Arkin’s study (page 89):

“Overall, the IDF lost seven soldiers in Aiyt a-Shab battles, and suffered 60 injuries, battling Hezbollah on the ground. It claimed to have killed 40 Hezbollah fighters.”

I included Arkin’s claim in the text because I believed that IDF’s version of the events is of interest even though it is not an independent reliable third-party source and the claim itself in all probability factually wrong. It is however problematic since it is not clear that IDF actually has made this claim.

Arkin normally has his facts covered by footnotes. This sentence however has no source and it is apparently incorrect, at least as far as the Israeli fatalities are concerned. In fact 28 IDF soldiers were killed in the battle of Ayta ash-Sha’b according to official Israeli sources. Even if we subtract the five killed in Khillat Warda (an olive grove between Ayta and the border) and the ten who were killed in the nearby village of Dibil we still have 13 who died in Ayta proper.

User:Poliocretes removed a Hezbollah claim of 200 IDF casualties because he believed the sources were to weak (see above). I believe that the same applies to this case. I therefore removed it from the infobox but kept it in the text.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 20:39, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Gal Hirsch page?

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/idf-takes-back-israeli-general-who-left-in-shame-after-war-with-hezbollah-1.412049?localLinksEnabled=false

Time to make his page? Hcobb (talk) 03:53, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

A Hezbollah victory?

I have been warned by an admin for a recent edit of this article when I changed the results “Hezbollah victory” to “Israel failed to occupy town”. The former formulation has repeatedly been introduced by anonymous editors without explanation. I still consider my preferred proposal to be both accurate and non-provocative. It is quite clear that the IDF was ordered to occupy Ayta, tried repeatedly to do so and failed each time. I have no military background but I would say that from a purely military point of view the battle was a draw. IDF failed to defeat Hezbollah and vice versa. Now given the enormous imbalance in both firepower and pure numbers between IDF and Hezbollah (two brigades against a company-sized unit) this can of course be regarded as quite an achievement for Hezbollah and an enormous failure for the IDF. The strategy of Hezbollah was not to hold on to territory but to bleed the IDF as much as possible and delay its advance. In this it was very successful in this battle (accounting for almost a quarter of all IDF fatalities in the war). The holding on to Ayta however was not essential to Hezbollah’s strategy and its success in this regard probably came to a surprise to its leaders. So while the occupation of Ayta by the IDF (with presumably even higher IDF casualties) would have changed the perception of IDF’s failure in this war it probably would not have changed Hezbollah’s perception of success.

To avoid further sanctions I will no longer actively oppose the “Hezbollah victory”. I hope however that the editor who makes any changes to this explains this carefully. I believe that - in this regard at least - I have some allies.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 08:01, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you on this one.But we shouldn't do WP:OR but rather we should stick what the WP:RS say.--Shrike (talk) 09:14, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

You said by yourself that Hezbollah not only succeeded in slowing the IDF but even stopped them to conquer the town until the war was over, by all rational thinking Sir, it was a Hezbollah Victory, just because of the fact that it wasn´t Hezbollahs primary intention to hold the town doesn´t change this fact in any way. Come on, that is something where there is no point to discuss about it at all.