User talk:Levivich

"consistently non-neutral editing"

Quoting from AndreJustAndre evidence:

See , . Levivich considers Alam, a non-expert economist, and law school deans reliable sources on Zionism and history of democracy respectively, despite not being historians of Middle East, Zionism, Judaism, Arab World, the Arab-Israeli Conflict (or American history in the parallel conversation). Yet, he rejects the use of similarly but reverse-polarized activist academic author Dershowitz out of hand with the statement, "Oh hell no."

This is a misrepresentation of both the sources and me. The reason Alam is potentially a WP:BESTSOURCE for Zionism and Dershowitz is not is because Alam meets the objective criteria and Dershowitz does not: Dershowitz has never written an overview of Zionism--he's written about Israel and about the conflict, but those are not the same thing as Zionism. Alam has written an overview of Zionism. I explained how Alam met the criteria in this comment where I also said I didn't care if he was included or excluded, as long as we consistently apply an objective criteria. Nobody actually proposed any works by Dershowitz, likely because he has no works about Zionism. (Also, economists can be subject-matter experts on Zionism because Zionism is, depending on who you ask, either colonization or colonialism, and those are topics studied by economists. Economists are not the same as US constitutional law scholars.) Alam addresses this directly in his book ("Why is an ecnomist writing a book on the geopolitics of Zionism?"), which I quoted and linked to in the aforementioned comment.

More broadly, nobody can possibly read the relevant discussion at Talk:Zionism/Archive 27#Best sources and conclude that it is an example of "non-neutral editing." It is the exact opposite. I am consistent in applying the same WP:BESTSOURCES approach in this topic area and every topic I edit. For examples, see Talk:Nakba#Core sources and Talk:Israel/Archive 94#Lead: 1947-1949.

In the second diff , I was asked "show me the historians that say America wasn't democratic or pluralistic at all until 1965" and I linked two RS written by legal scholars (not historians) that said exactly that. This is not non-neutral, this is the straightforward application of WP:V and WP:RS. I don't even understand why this diff is here.

anyone who cites Karsh must be a sock (Levivich)

I didn't say exactly that (I said "probably," not "must"), and my full statement provides context necessary to understand my meaning:

There just aren't that many people in the world who would dedicate so much time to having Wikipedia question whether, e.g., Palestinians are indigenous to Palestine, or whether they were really expelled, or talk about a "Jewish right of return", or as is happening now, questioning whether displacement of Arabs was an inherent part of Zionism. In AP2, dog whistles like these are very commonly known--everyone knows who they're talking to once someone talks about "reverse racism" or "replacement" or "woke agenda." But in PIA5, people just aren't as familiar with the basic facts, so they don't recognize when someone is talking crazy talk. But if you know the dogwhistles, you can easily spot the socks. In short, anyone expressing views to the right of Benny Morris is almost certainly one of these long-time Wikipedia sockmaster/puppet/whatever (e.g., if they want to cite Karsh, they're probably a sock).

Read Efraim Karsh#Reception to understand whether or not he has a reputation for fact checking and accuracy as required by WP:RS. I stand by the statement, that far-right views are an indication of sockpuppetry in this topic area. (And I wrote an essay about the use of poor sources in POV-pushing: WP:BYTHEIRSOURCES.)

But even if you don't agree with that opinion of mine, it doesn't mean I'm engaging in non-neutral editing by expressing that opinion, and it was expressed at WP:SPI, not at an article talk page or other content discussion. I did not disrupt anything by expressing that opinion. I don't believe I've ever removed Karsh from any article or reverted anyone who added Karsh or voted against including Karsh in any discussion or reported anyone to any noticeboard simply for citing Karsh.

Removed sources clearly about Zionism because they "focus on Israel."

Again, this is a misrepresentation. I did not remove any sources from any article; the link is to a talk page discussion where I suggested removing sources from the WP:BESTSOURCES list. And it was the correct thing to do, because as I said, sources that focus on Israel are not the WP:BESTSOURCES for Zionism, because Israel is not the same thing as Zionism (it's an overlap). I said: As this Wikipedia article is an overview of Zionism, I think it should be modeled based on sources that are also overviews of Zionism -- and not sources that focus on something else, like on Israel, Palestine, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is the correct application of WP:BESTSOURCES. This is not non-neutral editing, it's the opposite, it's following WP:NPOV.

I have no idea why these diffs are here. They don't show any non-neutral editing and no explanation is given.

Yes, I reverted some changes, and posted on the talk page explaining why (Talk:Zionism/Archive 31#Back to Dec 4 version). I stand by the revert and the explanation; nobody has explained what was wrong with it. It is not non-neutral editing, it is reverting non-neutral editing, and following WP:BRD.

Discussion

Feedback welcome. I'm particularly interested in whether anyone can identify any NPOV violations in the diffs that I may have missed. Also, any suggestions for being less verbose? Is the tone dickish? Another question: should I try to prove the opposite, showing that I am consistently neutral by following the same "forward editing/WP:BESTSOURCES" approach every time, in and outside this topic area? I included a couple links as examples of that, but could include much more about the great lengths I go to in order to achieve NPOV (those of you who've edited with me know what I'm talking about). But then I worry that this is already too long without getting into proving the opposite. Thanks in advance for any advice! Levivich (talk) 16:53, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

(I wasn't hatching your user talk, I just saw the notification go by that multiple sections had archived.) I agree with you, I think you were the least of the problems there. But as I'm sure you're aware it's always tricky when you get into the area of "I'm appealing because it was an incorrect assessment". Which puts you between a rock and a hard place. Valereee (talk) 16:58, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for responding, whether you're watching or not :-) Yeah I know an appeal on the merits (meaning: the decision was wrong) is an uphill battle. But if you can't appeal on the merits, then you have no appeal rights at all. Arbcom has to have the function of reviewing its past decisions for error. (And it also needs to explain how edits violate policy. Simply asserting it without explanation can't be enough.) It's a hill I want to climb, and maybe even die on. No editor should be between this rock and hard place. But because it's so difficult, I'm soliciting feedback to try and make it as strong (and yet succinct) as possible. Levivich (talk) 17:04, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

that wasn't a typo; hatching as in 'sitting on it waiting for something to happen' :) Valereee (talk) 17:21, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

Oh! That went right over my head 😂 Levivich (talk) 17:30, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

If just trying to be helpful here can be read as a Tban violation (I dunno. I have just the minimum concentration span when required to read policies, and usually ask experts to clarify stuff like that for me), then revert this. Contesting a ban almost always requires a kind of formal apology or recognition one was at fault, and failure to do so translates as evidence for turning down the appeal. There is another option. Ask if there are any non-involved editors from both (perceived) sides of this field who would be prepared to consider putting their heads together to ask arbcom to allow you to re-edit in this area, as a net good for the project. I say this because, while flabbergasted by the grounds given for my own Tban at ARBPIA1, I duly left the area, and indeed desisted generally from any continued engagement with the project. In principle, from the outset, I made it clear that I refuse to challenge sanctions. Out of the blue, without notification, two editors from opposing sides asked arbcom to allow my return, and the latter body concurred. That way, no one was required to cringe or step back, or agonize. I'm sure many editors in good standing who might not agree with the apparent POV speciously attributed to you (in my view) do recognize nonetheless that you have exceptional talents that would be a net gain to this (sorry) place. Good luck.Nishidani (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks but I care more about correcting the finding of fact than about being able to edit in the topic area. I'm more worried about receiving a Congressional subpoena or being picked up by ICE (actual concerns these days, if you can believe it) than I am about which articles I can edit on Wikipedia. Levivich (talk) 13:38, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

If I'm welcome here: As an editor who does not agree with the apparent POV speciously attributed to you, I would be very comfortable following @Nishidani's suggestion, if you showed a few months (as in 3, not 12) of productive and civil mainspace edits. Considering the comment made by Tamzin combined with the recent warning, I think that appealing the sanction in the manner you are planning to do now is needlessly risky. I know you stated below that you are not interested in doing that at this time, but for what it's worth, this is a standing offer.

Unrelated to that, I would be very supportive of you asking for the public ban to be changed to incivility only, as long as any request to remove the tban in the near or far future (at least informally) considers that alleged pattern of editing. I would suggest you do so primarily based on editor safety, rather than the merits, but that's your decision to make. FortunateSons (talk) 10:18, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Since you ping me, I'd just note that 'editor safety', while now ensconced with haemarroidal irritability in wikipedian administrative jargon, is ill-defined and as often as not an utterly subjective notion, and certainly seems to bear no functional relevance to the task required of contributors, i.e. to compose articles that summarize the best available opinions and scholarship on any topic. To insist that the essential recruitment and retention of editors is founded on a keen attention to their 'comfort' and 'safety', and privilege those values over what actually produces content, those individuals who actually pay attention to the quaiity of articles by doing the hard grind of RS mastery, risks turning this place into a whingeing nursery for anyone who wants, above all, to feel at home in a virtual 'community'. The most cogent expression of that danger can be found in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty.

Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual thinkers,there is also in the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual, both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation: and as the tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strcngthen society, and diminish the power of the individual, this encroaclnnont is not one of the evils which tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary, to grow more and more formidable. The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power; and as the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of moral conviction can bo raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase.John Stuart Mill, On Liberty John W. Parker & Son, London 1859 pp.29-30

Having said and noted that, I go away assured that this kind of analysis, from the best of thinkers about how societies either grow or decline will have zero impact in here because wikipedia has developed its own closed and somewhat closeted reflections through an arbitrary compromise of congestive opinions and the lobbying cries of those who feel afflicted and want a comfy home, and thinks blindly it knows better in riding 'herd' by the stockwhip of corralling conformity, all in the name of enlightenment. So one must sigh recalling a different book about how 'the deglutition of irony' is 'the most balsamic for wounds in the whole moral pharmacopoeia.'(George Meredith, The Egoist (1879) Penguin Books 1968 p.565.)Nishidani (talk) 13:00, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I largely agree with you, particularly when it comes to the fact that the line between comfort and safety is often intentionally or unintentionally blurred, often by those who focus on Wikipedia as a community instead of a collaborative project. Nevertheless, the continued existence of the project relies on our ability to ensure the existence of a collaborative and non-caustic environment, which, in my mind, is an excellent reason to reject the sort of "Being right is everything" approach followed by some of our grumpier regulars.

In this case, however, the following concern was expressed below:

Normally I wouldn't be so worried about Congress investigating Wikipedia, but these are not normal times. Rümeysa Öztürk was detained merely for writing an op-ed critical of Israel in a school newspaper. Even US citizens are not safe. There's a non-zero chance of ICE showing up at my door. I figure the chances are low, but it used be zero. So I don't care if they keep me TBANed for incivility, as long as it's not for non-neutrality, because that has all these alarming real world consequences. Before I fight my own government about this in the real world, a fight that could start any day now, I'm going to try and follow on-wiki processes to have the incorrect finding of fact overturned. At least then I can tell my government that I'm not spreading lies about Israel on Wikipedia. The really important thing isn't that I get to edit this topic area or that topic area, it's that this website doesn't officially brand me as having spread lies about Israel on Wikipedia.

I don't think that any actual harm is particularly likely, but if a cosmetic change can bring a relatively significant reduction of a serious risk, I think ArbCom should take it, even if the "only" benefit would be reducing the concern for him. FortunateSons (talk) 13:44, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I can't speak to that of course. But anyone can draw their own conclusions about the vast glaring pettiness of rules governing the minutiae of wiki-politically correct discourse on feeling 'comfortable' as one edits intrinsically discomforting articles as opposed to the reality of feeling safe in the world out there where, say, 80% of the population feels unsafe. That safety is a real concern. The safety we talk about in wiki is a wanker's paradise for whingeing, has rarely any relationship to any existential reality, and constitutes a serious obstacle to serious hard work (because one is obliged to mentally keep peeping over one's shoulder rather than concentrating on the text). Here it's a matter of de minimis curat lex more inexōrābilī. That is sheer javertism. This sort of reflection tells me I either should take the dog for a walk or go to the toilet.Nishidani (talk) 15:11, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Privately, for my own intellectual and moral interests, I am examining forms of aggression in the early Platonic dialogues. Now aggression is omnipresent in human discourse. Even in the conduct of an abstract, otherwise amiable debate, one can tease out various types of aggro simmering between exchanges. To waylay an innocent bystander in an Attic street and seduce him in the most playful manner to justify his opinions, and thereby expose how his perceptions of himself, and his ideas, are illogical to the point of absurdity, can be caricatured as antagonistically uncivil. Nowadays one would calls this passive aggression, and though hardly truculent, it eventually gets to Callicles. Had wiki existed then, and had Gorgias become an article, Callicles, exasperated by Socrates's arguments, would have perhaps added a complaint of feeling unsafe or demeaned to the Athenian wiki board, in parallel to the suit made by Meletus and co against Socrates, which eventually earned him a death sentence, as certainly the Attic wikibored would have banished him into silence.

The unveering pursuit of a truth-value, as determined by objective criteria (propositional logic or the given factual realities), will attract a certain kind of mind that will tend to ignore or dismiss all of the circumstantial elements at play in a debate, by insisting on the priority to be accorded evidence over one's interlocutor's sensibility. And this is targeted by our rules: we don't want that kind of person here because potentially others, without that drive, feel 'unsafe'. But, in that regard, are the ends of encyclopedic knowledge improved by banishment of any type whose language can be combed over for its lack of niceness, and, as a corollary, is there a 'net benefit to the project' by retaining only editors who exude, or act carefully to give an impression of exuding, a nice manner in talking back, esp. in the endemic WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT mode of passive aggression? If the latter how much liberty is allowed for them to sweetly persist in Max Black's humbug or Harry Frankfurt's bullshit. Talking of 'net' benefits, an idiom that makes me guffaw when used in these agony dramas over trivia, a net may capture the erratic butterfly, but nature is impoverished thereby, and there is no net benefit other than the egoism of pinning mortified beauty on one's wall.Nishidani (talk) 16:10, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

That has given me a lot to think and read about, thank you. FortunateSons (talk) 11:25, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you (yes, you're welcome here). RL has kept me busy lately but I'll write more later. (Love On Liberty!) Levivich (talk) 13:39, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

I would consider shortening the section on SPI and Karsh considerably and -- rather than citing an en.wp page which cites fora (in addition to scholarly sources) -- consider citing the sources directly:

André criticizes my statement at SPI that anyone wanting to cite Karsh is "probably a sock". I based this statement on Karsh's reputation as an unreliable source:

"Karsh resembles nothing so much as those Holocaust-denying historians who ignore all evidence and common sense in order to press an ideological point." Benny Morris, "Refabricating 1948"

"[H]owever likely readers are to be impressed by the intensity of Karsh's pristine faith in Zionism, they are sure to be stunned by the malevolence of his writing and confused by the erratic, sloppy nature of his analysis. Errors, inconsistencies and over-interpretation there may be in some of the new Israeli histories, but nothing in them can match the howlers, contradictions and distortions contained in this volume." Ian Lustick, "Israeli History: Who is Fabricating What?"

maybe add a similar quote from el-Sayed el-Aswad, "Rethinking the Middle East"

I have never removed Karsh sourcing from mainspace or engaged in debate about using him as a source; my comment was related only to sock-hunting at SPI so it is hard to see what it disrupts.

HIH. I'll look at this some more, but tracking down the Wiley/T&F sources already took a while. :) -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 18:23, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, super helpful! Levivich (talk) 13:38, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

• Re: I care more about correcting the finding of fact than about being able to edit in the topic area. With that as the goal, you may no longer be quite as much between the rock and the hard place? It's still tricky. You're asking people -- people I assume to be well-intentioned -- to reconsider and maybe change their stance. That's not easy for anyone, and when you're in a position of authority that people question often, a seige mentality can creep in even for the most well-intentioned people. But if you aren't actually asking that the tban be lifted because of it, maybe? The problem of course is that A leads to B. If the finding of fact is questioned, then the resulting tban is. I mean, you could argue, "I don't want to work in the topic area, I just don't want to have to worry about inadvertently approaching it too closely." Which for me is always the trap with a tban. Valereee (talk) 18:31, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

  Yeah, exactly, I was planning to ask them to reconsider the FoF even if they don't change the remedy. (Usually it's the opposite: reconsider the remedy, not the FoF; hence the uphill climb.) I can disprove "non-neutral" and "inconsistent," but I can't really disprove "uncivil" because that's so subjective; if they view saying editors should read sources before talking about sources as uncivil, there is no way to objectively disprove that viewpoint. If they end up deciding to keep the TBAN anyway, fine, as long as the FoF doesn't falsely accuse me of NPOV violations.

  Anyway, I plan on only asking them to lift the TBAN for one article, because if I were to edit in the topic area, I would only be interested in editing one article (the main I-P conflict one), and I figure the best way to prove that I'm not the problem, and to show everyone else who and what is the problem, is for me to apply the "forwards editing" approach to the parent article while others watch in real time and see who shows up and what they (and I) say and do. Levivich (talk) 15:19, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi Levivich,

Your best bet for getting the TBAN overturned—regardless of what you, me or others think about the merits of placing of the TBAN in the first place—is to put in some significant content work in topics outside of the TBAN.

If I was in your position I'd be trying to bring articles in other CTOP areas, which you may be interested in, to WP:GA. Then when you go to appeal you'd be able to say 'hey look at these things I did here, here and here, in areas which are thought to be contentious topics and see how I improved the encyclopaedia in spite of the areas being contentious'. TarnishedPath^talk 10:31, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

I know that :-) I decided after PIA5 not to follow that well-worn path. I had already quit editing once, after WP:HJP. I resumed after the Gaza war started, figuring it was worth returning to help correct the vast amounts of misinformation on this website in the PIA topic area. I did my best "forwards editing" work ever, expanding Nakba, which was the most difficult topic I've ever edited when it comes to meeting NPOV. But I did a good job with it. My reward was to be labeled "consistently non-neutral" based on the set of diffs above (which only show consistently neutral editing).

So after PIA5, I decided I'm not going to edit anything in mainspace so long as literally any edit could be called "non-neutral" and I could be site banned for it. And that's exactly what's happened to Iskander, who had chosen the "edit productively elsewhere" approach. I'm glad I've been on "mainspace strike" and will continue to be on strike until that "non-neutral" label is overturned.

I couldn't give a damn about what areas I can or can't edit on Wikipedia, or whether I can edit Wikipedia at all. I have no burning desire to shape the world's understanding of the I-P conflict, and besides, LLM has overtaken Wikipedia now so editing isn't as impactful as it once was.

The real issue is this: within an hour of the vote to sanction me reaching a majority--before the case was even closed!--the President of the ADL issued a press release congratulating Arbcom on banning me and the others. A couple months later, two dozen Congressmen sent a letter to the WMF referring to the ADL and saying that arbcom's ban of me and the others was "a welcome first step." The US House opened an investigation and requested the WMF provide my IP address and other identifying information, as well as information about the Arbcom case. Then Tablet (magazine) published an article about PIA5 identifying me as the editor who first "seeded" anti-Israel information on Wikipedia and as a leader of a group of POV pushers (I won't link to it because it outs some other editors). Then Senator Ted Cruz sent a request for info to the WMF. So far the WMF hasn't released my IP and no Congressional subpoena has issued (AFAIK). I figure if the Democrats win in November this will be dropped, but until then it's tick-tock, tick-tock as I wait to see if a subpoena will issue--that's all Congress needs to identify me. (I can't believe I just wrote that sentence. What the hell has my life turned into? Thanks, Wikipedia!)

Normally I wouldn't be so worried about Congress investigating Wikipedia, but these are not normal times. Rümeysa Öztürk was detained merely for writing an op-ed critical of Israel in a school newspaper. Even US citizens are not safe. There's a non-zero chance of ICE showing up at my door. I figure the chances are low, but it used be zero.

So I don't care if they keep me TBANed for incivility, as long as it's not for non-neutrality, because that has all these alarming real world consequences. Before I fight my own government about this in the real world, a fight that could start any day now, I'm going to try and follow on-wiki processes to have the incorrect finding of fact overturned. At least then I can tell my government that I'm not spreading lies about Israel on Wikipedia. The really important thing isn't that I get to edit this topic area or that topic area, it's that this website doesn't officially brand me as having spread lies about Israel on Wikipedia. Levivich (talk) 15:06, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

As another "Gang of 40" editor who has been accused by the media of stepping into your place to push through a moratorium, I understand where you are comming from. TarnishedPath^talk 23:05, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

...and sorry TP if I came across there as lecturing you about things you already know damn well. I think the point you raised is one that a lot of other people might be thinking (thank you for raising it), so I wrote that explanation for the world at large rather than for you specifically. Also I'm sorry that you got linked with me in this way in the media, I know that wouldn't be your preference :-) Levivich (talk) 00:11, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I'd rather not have a target on my back, but it's nothing you could help. TarnishedPath^talk 00:16, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Ironically, I started list of people imprisoned for editing Wikipedia. In the unlikely chance I ever end up on it, all I ask is that you guys please have mercy when selecting the photo. Levivich (talk) 00:59, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Given that Iskandar323 was recently promoted to leader of the rebranded 'G40' group by that PW/npovmedia bloke, and they were quickly let go by ArbCom, maybe there is an equal opportunity employment law angle that could be argued e.g. the topic ban unfairly impacts your employment opportunities should you wish to apply for the G40 leader position. You could make some vague hand-waving not-quite-over-the-line legal threats citing federal law. Sean.hoyland (talk) 05:27, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

After The Tablet article which named me, and outed others, I briefly toyed with renaming my account to "Gang of 40 Commissar", but then decided this would attract more of the sort of attention that I don't want and that trying to be funny wasn't worth it. TarnishedPath^talk 05:41, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I should point out for the benefit of page stalkers that PW of course refers to the magazine 'Popular Welding' (former title 'Unpopular Welding'). Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:37, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Good God, Levivich. I'm so sorry. Valereee (talk) 13:02, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I cannot arrive at your interpretation of WP:BESTSOURCES by reading the policy. There is nothing in WP:BESTSOURCES that would imply that a reliable source about Israel that doesn't mention the word "Zionism" is unusable in the context of Zionism. This seems like a case of WP:UPPERCASE. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 17:13, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

I appreciate your questioning that, @SuperPianoMan9167, but WP:BESTSOURCES isn't about "usable", and "doesn't mention the word" isn't the standard. (Anyway, there are probably no sources about the state of Israel that do not mention the word "Zionism" (and vice versa) because the two are so closely linked.)

A WP:BESTSOURCES discussion, like the one at Talk:Zionism/Archive 27#Best sources, isn't about finding sources that are usable, it's about finding the best sources. To quote the second sentence of WP:BESTSOURCES, emphasis mine: When writing about a topic, basing content on the best respected and most authoritative reliable sources helps to prevent bias, undue weight, and other NPOV disagreements. So not every source that mentions the word "Zionism" is the best respected and most authoritative.

For any article, the WP:BESTSOURCES for that article are sources that are entirely devoted to the topic of the article. The best sources for Zionism are sources about Zionism, not about Israel (which is closely linked but not the same thing), not about the Arab–Israeli conflict or Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not about Palestinians, not about Judaism, etc. Similarly, the WP:BESTSOURCES about Israel are sources entirely about Israel, not sources about Zionism, or the conflict, or Judaism, etc.

This topic area has WP:BESTSOURCES for all of its subtopics, because it has been written about so much. If you look at Bibliography of the Arab–Israeli conflict, you can see that there are many, many sources listed in the section about the Arab-Israeli conflict, different sources in the section about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, different sources in the section about Israel, and different sources in the section about Zionism.

At the discussion at Talk:Zionism/Archive 27#Best sources, the objective criteria I proposed was (1) overviews of Zionism (2) published in the last 10 years (3) by subject-matter experts (4) by academic presses. Now if you look at those bibliographies, you can see that there are many, many sources written by experts published by academic presses in the last 10 years, about each of those topics: The Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Israel, and Zionism. But only the sources about Zionism (technically, only a subset of those sources) are overviews of Zionism. For Zionism, the best respected and most authoritative sources are going to be entirely about Zionism, not books about Israel or about the conflict, even though those sources will also discuss Zionism. That doesn't mean those sources can't be used (in fact, I've used them myself in some of my edits at Zionism), but it means they're not the best respected and most authoritative, aka the WP:BESTSOURCES. There are many, many sources, listed in that bibliography, that meet this criteria, meaning many sources entirely about Zionism. Over a dozen were identified in that talk page discussion. The point of the discussion wasn't to find sources that are "usable," it was to identify the best respected and most authoritative reliable sources in order to prevent bias, undue weight, and other NPOV disagreements, exactly as WP:BESTSOURCES instructs.

Does this explanation persuade you at all? Levivich (talk) 17:33, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes. Also, you have successfully knocked down my strawman. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 12:14, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

• Chiming in support as you're one of wikipedia's users who consistently puts very deep thought into both sources and policies.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 20:57, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

  Thanks, VR! Levivich (talk) 18:18, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  1. find quality sources
  2. read them
  3. try to be right
• Not bad principles for editing in my opinion, if i might state them that way. Too bad they done ya in. fiveby(zero) 18:37, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  FWIW, Levivich, "Being right is relevant" would probably be a better principle than "Being right is everything". IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 18:51, 4 March 2026 (UTC)