Wikipedia graciously stops calling Palestinian actor Adam Bakri "Israeli" - kind of

[rnu]

Adam Bakri (T-H-L) is an actor. Wikipedia gave his nationality as "Israeli, Palestinian" in the infobox. Bakri is Palestinian. So he went to BLPN to ask for a correction, i.e. changing it to "Palestinian".
After some discussion it was decided to remove his nationality from the infobox entirely. The underlying assumption seems to be that Bakri is Israeli whether he likes it or not and therefore the best Wikipedia can do to accommodate him is to remove the information. The requested correction seems not to be an option.
The opening sentence still says

Adam Bakri (Arabic: آدم بكري; born May 15, 1988) is an Israeli-born Palestinian actor.

"Israeli-born Palestinian" is linked to Palestinian citizens of Israel (T-H-L).



Edit: Looks like he tried on the article's talk page first. With the expected result.

Edit: Corrected article link.

[Starship Enterprise]

if he wants wikipedia to lie about his citizenship then that's a personal problem

[rnu]

if he wants wikipedia to lie about his citizenship then that's a personal problem

He asked for a change to the Nationality (T-H-L) field, not the Citizenship (T-H-L) field.

[Starship Enterprise]

He asked for a change to the Nationality (T-H-L) field, not the Citizenship (T-H-L) field

The opening sentence still says

Adam Bakri (Arabic: آدم بكري; born May 15, 1988) is an Israeli-born Palestinian actor.

"Israeli-born Palestinian" is linked to Palestinian citizens of Israel (T-H-L).

good. then this isn't a problem

[FelinaLavandula]

“Israeli-born Palestinian” goes against MoS unless his Israeli citizenship is important in any way, which it seems not to be. I want to say “either change it to Palestinian or take it out”, but we know they’re just going to take it out lol.

[FelinaLavandula]

Never mind, just reviewed the talk page. Wikipedians using their classic BLP-subject tact over there…

[rnu]

Nableezy has now made the change:

Adam Bakri (Arabic: آدم بكري; born May 15, 1988) is a Palestinian actor who was born in Jaffa, Israel.

"Palestinian" links to Palestinian citizens of Israel (T-H-L).

[Elinruby]

Nableezy has now made the change:

Adam Bakri (Arabic: آدم بكري; born May 15, 1988) is a Palestinian actor who was born in Jaffa, Israel.

"Palestinian" links to Palestinian citizens of Israel (T-H-L).

[rnu]

Hemiauchenia changed the first sentence to just:

Adam Bakri (Arabic: آدم بكري; born May 15, 1988) is a Palestinian actor.

Instead he added the following to the biography section:

Bakri was born in Jaffa, Israel.[2][3] Bakri is a Palestinian citizen of Israel.[4]

[Hemiauchenia]

Hemiauchenia changed the first sentence to just:

Adam Bakri (Arabic: آدم بكري; born May 15, 1988) is a Palestinian actor.

Instead he added the following to the biography section:

Bakri was born in Jaffa, Israel.[2][3] Bakri is a Palestinian citizen of Israel.[4]

I don't get what your point is? Do you not think that him having Israeli citizenship, something that the vast majority of Palestinians do not have, is not relevant in to his biography? I removed it from his infobox, which is what he was most concerned about.

EDIT: The NPR reference I cited literally calls him "Palestinian citizen of Israel Alex Bakri" https://www.npr.org/2023/02/03/11539380 ... s-israelis

[Zoll]

Hemiauchenia changed the first sentence to just:

Adam Bakri (Arabic: آدم بكري; born May 15, 1988) is a Palestinian actor.

Instead he added the following to the biography section:

Bakri was born in Jaffa, Israel.[2][3] Bakri is a Palestinian citizen of Israel.[4]

I don't get what your point is? Do you not think that him having Israeli citizenship, something that the vast majority of Palestinians do not have, is not relevant in to his biography? I removed it from his infobox, which is what he was most concerned about.

EDIT: The NPR reference I cited literally calls him "Palestinian citizen of Israel Alex Bakri" https://www.npr.org/2023/02/03/11539380 ... s-israelis

Wouldn't Israeli Arab be the correct term? Since Palestinians in Israel are called Israeli Arabs. Or is the term Arab to controversial to use for Palestinians?

[nableezy]

Hemiauchenia changed the first sentence to just:

Adam Bakri (Arabic: آدم بكري; born May 15, 1988) is a Palestinian actor.

Instead he added the following to the biography section:

Bakri was born in Jaffa, Israel.[2][3] Bakri is a Palestinian citizen of Israel.[4]

I don't get what your point is? Do you not think that him having Israeli citizenship, something that the vast majority of Palestinians do not have, is not relevant in to his biography? I removed it from his infobox, which is what he was most concerned about.

EDIT: The NPR reference I cited literally calls him "Palestinian citizen of Israel Alex Bakri" https://www.npr.org/2023/02/03/11539380 ... s-israelis

Wouldn't Israeli Arab be the correct term? Since Palestinians in Israel are called Israeli Arabs. Or is the term Arab to controversial to use for Palestinians?

That’s a term the overwhelming majority reject.

[Zoll]

Hemiauchenia changed the first sentence to just:

Adam Bakri (Arabic: آدم بكري; born May 15, 1988) is a Palestinian actor.

Instead he added the following to the biography section:

Bakri was born in Jaffa, Israel.[2][3] Bakri is a Palestinian citizen of Israel.[4]

I don't get what your point is? Do you not think that him having Israeli citizenship, something that the vast majority of Palestinians do not have, is not relevant in to his biography? I removed it from his infobox, which is what he was most concerned about.

EDIT: The NPR reference I cited literally calls him "Palestinian citizen of Israel Alex Bakri" https://www.npr.org/2023/02/03/11539380 ... s-israelis

Wouldn't Israeli Arab be the correct term? Since Palestinians in Israel are called Israeli Arabs. Or is the term Arab to controversial to use for Palestinians?

That’s a term the overwhelming majority reject.

Arab citizens of Israel (T-H-L) but there is also Palestinian citizens of Israel (T-H-L)

[rnu]

Hemiauchenia changed the first sentence to just:

Adam Bakri (Arabic: آدم بكري; born May 15, 1988) is a Palestinian actor.

Instead he added the following to the biography section:

Bakri was born in Jaffa, Israel.[2][3] Bakri is a Palestinian citizen of Israel.[4]

I don't get what your point is? Do you not think that him having Israeli citizenship, something that the vast majority of Palestinians do not have, is not relevant in to his biography? I removed it from his infobox, which is what he was most concerned about.

EDIT: The NPR reference I cited literally calls him "Palestinian citizen of Israel Alex Bakri" https://www.npr.org/2023/02/03/11539380 ... s-israelis

Maybe it is encyclopedically relevant. But to me it seems unnecessary.

Edit: I just saw your new version. I think it is a significant improvement:

Bakri was born in Jaffa, Israel, to a Palestinian family.[2][3] Bakri has Israeli citizenship.[4]

[Kraken]

I've managed to find a reliable source saying explicitly that he's an Israeli citizen [19], so I've added that to the "Early life" section. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:45, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

No, what you have is a source describing him as a "Palestinian citizen of Israel" (who lives in Germany), and I think we can all appreciate why that particular form of words is being used (and if not, read the source).

It seems obvious to me that Wikipedia must either describe them as a "Palestinian citizen of Israel" and ideally add context to it to make it clear they do not in any way identify as an Isreali if that (as it seems) has been given to a source elsewhere, or it should omit all mention of citizenship as potentially harmful.

[nableezy]

For the record, the npr article is about an Alex Bakri, not Adam. A better source for Adam's views on identity would be this profile in GQ Middle East.

[Kraken]

Palestinians have suffered an ongoing Nakba – catastrophe – for over 75 years, enduring immeasurable hardships. Under occupation, and amidst ethnic cleansing, checkpoints, evictions, polluted water, and the suffocating weight of life in open-air prisons, we still rise. Yet, beyond these physical and emotional challenges, we face a global expectation to adapt to the suppressive order of our oppressor — “Be quiet, accept your suffering, and help us continue it or else!” I am also constantly pressured to conform to an organised mission of hiding an immense part of my truth, my story, my pain, and the pain of my people. This is the cruellest form of oppression that Palestinians have to go through.

Are you or are you not an Israeli citizen? If you are an Israeli citizen, then it should be kept in the infobox, if you aren't it should be removed. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:09, 2 February 2024 (UTC

[Hemiauchenia]

I literally removed the info from the infobox after writing the comment, you can stop bashing me for it.

Also Nableezy correctly pointed out that the NPR article was about Alex Bakri, a completely different actor, which was a careless error on my part. I can't find a source explicitly calling Adam an Israeli citizen (though he almost certainly is, given his father's citizenship), so I see no problem with omitting it. The current version of the article with it absent is fine.

[Starship Enterprise]

Palestinians have suffered an ongoing Nakba – catastrophe – for over 75 years, enduring immeasurable hardships. Under occupation, and amidst ethnic cleansing, checkpoints, evictions, polluted water, and the suffocating weight of life in open-air prisons, we still rise. Yet, beyond these physical and emotional challenges, we face a global expectation to adapt to the suppressive order of our oppressor — “Be quiet, accept your suffering, and help us continue it or else!” I am also constantly pressured to conform to an organised mission of hiding an immense part of my truth, my story, my pain, and the pain of my people. This is the cruellest form of oppression that Palestinians have to go through.

Are you or are you not an Israeli citizen? If you are an Israeli citizen, then it should be kept in the infobox, if you aren't it should be removed. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:09, 2 February 2024 (UTC

yeah we should remove anything that hurts people's feelings. what a great way to run an encyclopedia. crybabies that want to moralize are killing wikipedia faster than vandals and rogue admins

[Kraken]

I literally removed the info from the infobox after writing the comment, you can stop bashing me for it.

Also Nableezy correctly pointed out that the NPR article was about Alex Bakri, a completely different actor, which was a careless error on my part. I can't find a source explicitly calling Adam an Israeli citizen (though he almost certainly is, given his father's citizenship), so I see no problem with omitting it. The current version of the article with it absent is fine.

That's more than a careless error.

I'm not sure why you want credit for removing it from an infobox when you later re-added it to the main body of the article.

Palestinians have suffered an ongoing Nakba – catastrophe – for over 75 years, enduring immeasurable hardships. Under occupation, and amidst ethnic cleansing, checkpoints, evictions, polluted water, and the suffocating weight of life in open-air prisons, we still rise. Yet, beyond these physical and emotional challenges, we face a global expectation to adapt to the suppressive order of our oppressor — “Be quiet, accept your suffering, and help us continue it or else!” I am also constantly pressured to conform to an organised mission of hiding an immense part of my truth, my story, my pain, and the pain of my people. This is the cruellest form of oppression that Palestinians have to go through.

Are you or are you not an Israeli citizen? If you are an Israeli citizen, then it should be kept in the infobox, if you aren't it should be removed. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:09, 2 February 2024 (UTC

yeah we should remove anything that hurts people's feelings. what a great way to run an encyclopedia. crybabies that want to moralize are killing wikipedia faster than vandals and rogue admins

Wikipedia should remove anything that has the capacity to cause deep emotional pain that is wholly disproportionate to any potential value retaining the information has.

I see this all the time on Wikipedia. Editors who robotically parrot the idea that they can include something if it is reliably sourced. This is of course only the starting point. You must then consider whether the information is incorrect, harmful or irrelevant. This is (or I guess was) why they were called "editors" rather than "random internet disphits aged ? to dead".

What makes this incident so much worse, is that there was already extensive debate on the talk page which showed quite clearly what the potential issues are.

There is extensive sourcing to enable Wikipedia editors to give a full, fair and dignified treatment of this matter of identity in his biography. It's an undeniable fact that he was born, raised and educated in Isreal. Just as it is undeniable he is at great pains to say he is Palestinian, and why. And if there has been no pushback in the Isreal media and nobody else is claiming he's a liar, and if for very good reasons he perhaps doesn't want to go into details about what he might think about the way the conflict should be resolved, if he even has a view, then that is all she wrote. It should be what Wikipedia writes as his "biography", of which matters of identity are a key part.

What he has got, for his trouble of interacting with the random disphits of Wikipedia, is a worthless "biography" which tells no lies except massive lies by omission. By simply giving the sparse facts they can source, devoid of any of the context they can also source, it currently gives the warped impression he perhaps owes the state of Isreal something and is maybe even being quite the asshole by refusing to admit he is an Isreali citizen (rather than saying he is but also that he wishes he wasn't, if that is even what he believes). But to ignore his view entirely, is deeply negligent.

As always, he can't sue Wikipedia to obtain fair treatment, nor can he do anything to compel these disphits to do the right thing. It works against, him trying to be vocal yet subtle in how he uses his voice and his privelage. Wikipedia cannot handle subtlety, nuance.

It is beyond the reach of even experienced Wikipedia "editors", clearly.

[nableezy]

That's more than a careless error.

nah, it’s just a careless error and he owned it, what else do you want?

[Kraken]

That's more than a careless error.

nah, it’s just a careless error and he owned it, what else do you want?

Careless is misplacing your keys.

Careless is not attributing a citizenship to a person on the world's most visible website (which we already know is read by border guards!) at any time, but especially not when you already knew you were dealing with a sensitive situation.

You could perhaps even go as far as saying this was probably casual/systemic racism in action. I feel bad for not noticing it myself, and this is a little watched out of the way internet forum. I was perhaps ironically too trusting that a Wikipedia editor saying "I found a reliable source" in the midst of an issue they were already involved with, was being careful not to make a bad situation worse out of mere haste.

[nableezy]

Careless is misplacing your keys.

Careless is not attributing a citizenship to a person on the world's most visible website (which we already know is read by border guards!) at any time, but especially not when you already knew you were dealing with a sensitive situation.

You could perhaps even go as far as saying this was probably casual/systemic racism in action. I feel bad for not noticing it myself, and this is a little watched out of the way internet forum. I was perhaps ironically too trusting that a Wikipedia editor saying "I found a reliable source" in the midst of an issue they were already involved with, was being careful not to make a bad situation worse out of mere haste.

He almost certainly is an Israeli citizen unless he gained some other citizenship and renounced his Israeli citizenship. Is it important to his biography to include? No, I dont think so, his potentially having an Israeli passport has nothing to do with why he is well known and the only context I would think it should be included is through his outright rejection of an Israeli identity. But mistaking Alex for Adam is careless, not malicious. And since I think I have a pretty solid record of supporting Palestinian rights, including the right to determine their own identity, eg here and here or any other number of places, I dont think I can reasonably be said to excuse casual/systemic racism in action, and I re-state the very obvious fact that mistaking Alex Bakri for Adam Bakri is just a careless mistake and not done with any maliciousness. And because of that, it would be better, imo, to accept somebody's taking responsibility for their carelessness rather than berate them and question their motives for it. But thats just me.

[Kraken]

He almost certainly is an Israeli citizen unless he gained some other citizenship and renounced his Israeli citizenship.

Almost certainly is a huge leap given the guy lives in New York and sees Isreal as an oppressor of the Palestinian nation.

But mistaking Alex for Adam is careless, not malicious.

----

I re-state the very obvious fact that mistaking Alex Bakri for Adam Bakri is just a careless mistake and not done with any maliciousness.

There are more potential explanations than just careless or malicious. There is no malice in going so quickly you miss the coincidence here. But in context, it's way more than careless. It's negligent.

And because of that, it would be better, imo, to accept somebody's taking responsibility for their carelessness rather than berate them and question their motives for it. But thats just me.

I have no confidence the mistake wouldn't be repeated because there probably isn't any real understanding here.

I don't think the guy has any idea that in its current form, even after he removed his error, having a Wikipedia biography that merely states the fact they are a Palestinian actor from a Palestinian family who was born, raised and educated in Isreal, and leaves it at that, is deeply irresponsible.

And this is what happens after there are already multiple sources on the talk page, all because the subject has raised a stink about their own biography multiple times, and literally quotes the chapter and verse of the BLP policy in some misguided hope Wikipedia editors care about doing no harm.

This is Wikipedia in a nutshell. The guy says he is Palestinian. Tells Wikipedia multiple times. Provides sources. Doesn't lose his cool even though it seems like some random a-hole is deliberately citing an archived version of a source.

And yet the Wikipedians still work strangely hard to somehow disprove it, right down to this guy not just finding the wrong source, but then not adding what the source actually says anyway.

I raised it as an issue because I thought it was bizarre to see, on an official Wikipedia noticeboard dedicated to BLP issues, someone reducing this matter to a simple proposition. "Are you or are you not an Israeli citizen?".

What the hell is he doing even asking? Was he going to keep the citizenship claim in there on the say so of someone who hasn't even proven they are the subject?

We saw what they did, and now we can see why they did it. What their focus was. And that this approach, this blind following of the RS factoid dogma, allowed him to resolve this problem with enough apparent haste they didn't even realise their mistake.

I can't speak to what was going on in their mind, but this is not a game. Care is not optional.

This man has absolutely no say in how Wikipedia portrays him, and for some messed up reason, Wikipedia editors often take an almost perverse glee in having that power.

With great power.....

[FelinaLavandula]

Anyone in this thread smoke weed?

[Hemiauchenia]

Anyone in this thread smoke weed?

No, but I was once offered a spliff at a party while I was at university. I declined because I exist on the verge of instanity anyway and I didn't want to risk getting drug-induced psychosis.

[C&B]

Anyone in this thread smoke weed?

No, but I was once offered a spliff at a party while I was at university. I declined because I exist on the verge of instanity anyway and I didn't want to risk getting drug-induced psychosis.

Without making light of the rest of the comment: was instanity a typo, or just the best compound word created in recent years?! "Modern life is rubbish", etc

[TheWordsmith]

Anyone in this thread smoke weed?

[Zoloft]

Back to the topic, please.

And, the topic has been beaten to death. Might be time to move on soon.