Talk:Lebanese Civil War: Difference between revisions

Belligerents

That section of the taxobox is a bit hard to crack, where should Amal and Hezbollah be, for example? What about the Lebanese army, the Americans, the Soviets, and the Christians that weren't allied to the Phalangists? Should there be a third combatants row? Due to the complexity of the war, we should have something like this, but it is just a bit hard to implement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_Yugoslav_Wars FunkMonk (talk) 15:03, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Infighting in East Beirut

This section,especially the paragraph on Syrias October 13th operation, reaks of bias, conspiracy theory, and is poorly written. Someone needs to fix this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.47.64.68 (talk) 01:48, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

So no Israel involvement

I stumbled into the Category:Lebanese Civil War (1975 to 1990), and I am glad that no Israel article is there. Yes for Palestine Liberation Organization, Syrian Social Nationalist Party. But no Israel. No Sabra and Shatila, no 1982 invasion by Israel. Glad that's not related. What a mess it would have been. -DePiep (talk) 22:17, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Opinionated Statement in Legacy

The following statement under Legacy appears opinionated rather than factual:

"The country never recovered to its pre-war status due to extremely corrupt governments headed by puppet leaders of the Syrian Regime such as Rafic Hariri bent on growing their own fortunes rather than working for Lebanon's interests, the kind of which persist to this day even after Syrian withdrawal, and inflation has never ceased growing since the end of the war."

Kurzweil4 (talk) 15:20, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Original research and POV edits.

User:Ronda2001 has just been blocked for 48n hours for edit-warring and sockpuppetry on this article. Several of this editor's edits were reverted in the past few days. However, a large batch of edits from September remains, including unsourced assertions and allegations that Arafat intended to mount a coup in Lebanon, and that the victims of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre were not Palestinians. Much serious work will be needed to correct the damage resulting from this biased editor's intervention. RolandR (talk) 12:01, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Copyedit required

Could someone who knows about the subject have a look at the paragraph beginning "In August 1990, the Lebanese Parliament" under Infighting in East Beirut please. AWB has changed "didn't" to "did not", but the rest of the sentence doesn't make sense, and I can't see what it's supposed to be saying (I admit to knowing absolutely nothing about this subject). —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 18:27, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

It's badly written, yes, but the events themselves are so confusing that it wouldn't make sense even if it had been written by "Simple Wikipedia" editors. FunkMonk (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

File:Flag of the Amal Movement.svg Nominated for Deletion

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File:Hezbollah flag.jpg Nominated for Deletion

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Insignificant groups

There is absolutely no reason to add marginal Kurdish and Armenian groups to the infobox. They had so little influence that most sources don't even mention them. I have therefore removed them. FunkMonk (talk) 08:13, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Agree, maybe we can mention those in the text, but theose are redundant in the box.Greyshark09 (talk) 16:33, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Too black and white on sectarian issues

The militias section focuses too much on sectarian divisions, even though Christians fought Christians, Muslims fought Muslims, Palestinians fought Palestinians, etc. The important division is the one between the Lebanese Front and the Lebanese National Movement, and later Jammoul. There is almost no mention of the division along political lines, Leftist, Fascist, so on. FunkMonk (talk) 08:54, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

It's true some groups went divided - like Maronites and Muslims (Shias - Hizbullah vs. Amal and various Sunni groups), but sectarianism played a key role in the conflict. We can see it even today, when Sunnis and Alawites clash in Tripoli. In the middle east sectarianism is probably coming above any other definition. Still, however, this article indeed needs much overwrite.Greyshark09 (talk) 16:36, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Of course it played a key role, but that's not the point. I'mpointing out that internal divisions are glossed over. Also, the intro makes it seem as if the war was somehow caused by Palestinians, when in fact there had long before been problems between the Muslim half of the country and the Maronite dominated government. Much like we see in Syria now. FunkMonk (talk) 05:07, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the above, but more than that, this page is not just simplistic in the way it presents the events, but downright inaccurate. The participants involved are recounted somewhat accurately, but the manner in which they were involved, their now well known intentions and the relevant antecedents are omitted in the fashion of propaganda. Noam Chomsky's "The Fateful Triangle," Norman Finkelstein's "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict" and Ilan Pappe's "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" all give thorough accounts of the relevant information and come to conclusions radically different from those arrived at by whomever provided the information for this page. I don't mean to offend, but the view presented here is so detached from reality that it seems likely that the whole page would need to be demolished and begun anew for the record to be accurately described. However, there is much deception and fabrication surrounding Israel's role in the Middle East, and many people believe that this version of history is accurate, so effectively propagandised have they been. As a result, there's unlikely to be a simple consensus on the matter, even after the clear facts adduced by the likes of Chomsky, Finkelstein and Pappe, whose conclusions are necessarily obvious and contrary to the consensus view in the U.S.; though not from the consensus view in much the rest of the world. For that reason, too, it seems best to dissolve this page and start fresh after the different views and facts have been reviewed, otherwise this page is as much a tool of propaganda as the people who composed it. But so as not to just criticise without evidence, let me mention a few examples of fraudulence. The idea that the PLO incited the Israeli invasion is false, given that it is now abundantly clear from Israeli journalists and Israeli government and Knesset records that the plans to invade Lebanon were prearranged in 1981. Sharon openly admitted this much, which is also captured by the record, though suppressed in the mainstream U.S. media. Further, Israel conducted provocationary attacks against Palestinians from July 1981, in blatant violation of the cease-fire which was in effect, despite which the PLO and Palestinians generally did not react for many months. And even when they did, they first responded by firing rockets which inflicted no casualties and was understood by everyone involved as only a warning demonstration, which, it should be mentioned, was in reaction to large-scale bombing raids against refugee camps and innocent Palestinian civilians, not to mention the constant attacks against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories. Not yet achieving the required pretext for the invasion it had already devised, the Israeli state continued and escalated its torment towards the Palestinians and the PLO, eventually succeeding in provoking a response in the form, I believe, of a terror attack against a bus of Israelis which killed 27 innocents. This was rightly condemned. But the issue is that Israel was not condemned for any of its blatant aggression against the Palestinians, which was suppressed in the U.S., though it was known in Israel. Due to this, the American public was easily led to believe that the Palestinians had violated the cease-fire, not the Israelis, guaranteeing they would offer no resistance to Israel's war of aggression. Incidentally, Israel, supported by the U.S., deceived the American people, fabricating the ludicrous pretext that it was the victim of unprovoked terror, and engineering a justification for war with the Lebanese, the Palestinians and the PLO in southern Lebanon. These crucial events were rarely mentioned in the U.S., if mentioned at all, and are virtually suppressed from the scholarship on the subject which seeks to support Israel; rather blindly, I might add. This reality was also absent from this page, among many other glaring facts, like the scale of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians and Lebanese, both through direct war casualties (which this page grossly misrepresents) and by despicable treatment of prisoners, many of whom were arrested on scant or undisclosed grounds and treated inhumanely, including public and private humiliation and torture unto death. Again, the scale of the inaccuracy leads me to conclude that the page isn't easily salvageable, and that it would be better to remove it entirely and begin again from scratch. However, as I said, this is a complex issue with many contradictions, not least of all those arising from the fact that Israel, as a client state of the U.S., is given preferential treatment with regard to the manner in which it chooses to behave, being allowed to do almost anything it wants, so long as the U.S. deems it acceptable. This is because the U.S. commands veto power in the UN, enabling it to block undesirable resolutions, while it simultaneously has overwhelming power in the military domain; so much so, in fact, that no country or likely coalition of countries on earth is capable of challenging its supremacy. Thus it follows that whatever Israel wants to do, that the U.S. deems acceptable, takes place and is neatly covered up by propaganda systems in the U.S. That, however, is an entirely different, though related, matter, which is meticulously examined by Chomsky throughout a long and perhaps unparalleled career, in case the claim seems outlandish and one wants to check its validity. So, then, it seems appropriate, given the genuine situation at hand, that this page be overhauled and redone to allow the legitimate facts to be presented. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MJWS (talk • contribs) 10:56, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Lebanese National Movement members

In that new table, Hezbollah and Amal are listed as members of the movement. How come? Those alliances were mainly secular, I've never read they were part of them, but yes, sometimes they fought alongside them and so on. FunkMonk (talk) 00:10, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Requested move 2012

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved Mike Cline (talk) 14:32, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

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Lebanese Civil War → Lebanese civil war –user Radartoothth cut/pasted article and talk page to the lowercase version of civil war (matching Libyan civil war and Syrian civil war) User FunkMunk undid, stating that it should go through formal move process to retain history. (I undid the Talk page cut/paste). I see that it is American Civil War and English Civil War… I figured I would at least get the discussion started. I see no real reason why some should be capitalized, and some shouldn't be. I will be changing the lowercase Lebanese civil war back to redirect for now, so there doesn't end up with content fork.--VikÞor | Talk 06:05, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose I don't see a reason for using lower case instead of upper case. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 09:14, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
  • comment (sorry for leaving at the top). How would you feel about moving Libyan and Syrian civil wars to the caps versions of the titles? (Libyan Civil War, Syrian Civil War)?--VikÞor | Talk 18:04, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Comment you'd need to open new discussions on those at their respective talk pages. AFAIR, they've both been discussed before. Since the Syrian one has been certified by the ICRC, such a rename may be in order. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 10:16, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose The status quo for the Libyan and Syrian Civil Wars is an embarrassment and largely the result of pedantry. Look over List of civil wars and you'll see an overwhelming preference for capitalization. At any rate, just search the term and you'll see mixed usage. There's no reason to change. --BDD (talk) 14:21, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose Slavic-style capitalisation for English Wikipedia. The term is clearly a proper name and should be spelt as such. —  AjaxSmack  21:15, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Title capitalization

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move. Cúchullain ^t/c 14:39, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

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Lebanese Civil War → Lebanese civil war – Virtually all reliable sources don't capitalize "civil war". The title should be changed to "Lebanese civil war". Sources:[1] [2] [3] [4][5] [6] [7] [8]. This is the same reason why Libyan civil war and Syrian civil war are decapitalized. --FutureTrillionaire (talk) 00:09, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

• Should be standardised, and it seems lowercase is the norm. FunkMonk (talk) 00:23, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
• Per others, if the majority of reliable sources describe a civil war in Lebanon, not THE Lebanese Civil War, then the name should be lower case, not upper case. Jeancey (talk) 07:11, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
• Including me, it looks Unanimous then. Sopher99 (talk) 08:37, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
• Agree per everyone. EkoGraf (talk) 16:23, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support, obviously. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 18:11, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per previous RM. I stand by my comments there; this is a proper noun. --BDD (talk) 23:21, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
  • @BDD: According to what source is this a proper noun? I've provided 8 sources that show that it is not, and I can provide many more.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 23:24, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Your sources show an uncapitalized form; they don't say "Lebanese Civil War" isn't a proper noun, any more than I could write Bill gates and make his name into a common noun. --BDD (talk) 23:27, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

You need to provide a reliable source that uses the term with "civil war" capitalized, in order to provide evidence that it is a proper noun. So far, I could not find a single reliable source that does that.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 23:36, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

And without sources showing "Bill gates", your point is pretty empty. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 23:35, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

• Support - with one condition (hopefully) that the current conflict spillover from Syria would not deteriorate into another civil war.Greyshark09 (talk) 17:09, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. Nothing has changed since the previous RM. This is a proper name and, like those of almost all similar wars in this list, should be capitalized. —  AjaxSmack  03:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Please provide evidence that this term is a proper name. Don't just assume it.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 03:49, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
    • It is used with a definite rather than an indefinite article just like the others in the list of civil wars. If "Lebanese Civil War" is not the name of the war, what is it? Or are you arguing the war does not have a specific name? This source from the article uses "civil war" in lowercase as a descriptive and "Lebanese Civil War" as the name of the war. —  AjaxSmack  04:06, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
      • Yes, I'm trying to show that the war does not have a formal name. You provided only one source that capitalizes the "civil war", and per WP:RSN, that source isn't a good one.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 12:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
        • I pulled the source from the article. Here are some more: [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] —  AjaxSmack  02:21, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
          • The first source seems reliable, but most of the rest are hardly professional. At least one of them uses the term to refer to the 1958 Lebanon crisis. Most professional sources use lower case: [19] [20] [21]--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 02:40, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
            • I'm not sure what you mean by "professional sources". The sources are secondary source books with authors from a host of backgrounds published by major publishers including Oxford, Cambridge, and Perseus as well as a couple of US gov't publications: in short, Wikipedia's preferred sources (see WP:SECONDARY). I actually disagree about the relative reliability of the first one—it is a tertiary source rather than a secondary one (see WP:TERTIARY)—but for settling issues of titles it has its use. I also disagree that journal articles and conference papers such as the examples you gave are superior. The editorial oversight of these is often laxer. —  AjaxSmack  03:11, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
              • By professional I mean academic. Anybody can publish a book and call it a "secondary source" --FutureTrillionaire (talk) 03:15, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
                • True. And anybody can publish a conference paper and call it one, too. Wikipedia gives no special quarter to academics. Note WP:RS about reliable sources and WP:NOTJOURNAL (#7 & 8) about Wikipedia being a general reference work, not an academic one. —  AjaxSmack  20:16, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

• What is the difference,but a lot of civil war articles didn't had a capitalize c So I Support the proposal .— Preceding unsigned comment added by Alhanuty (talk • contribs)
• Oppose – I'm wary about applying Wikipedia convention to events that happened before Wikipedia existed. --Article editor (talk) 08:39, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

List of militias in the Lebanese civil war

I split off a huge section from here, and placed it at: List of militias in the Lebanese civil war. No reason for it to take up space here. FunkMonk (talk) 17:40, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Syria and Arab Deterrence Force

Syria was part of the Arab Deterrent Force which was requested by the Arab League to enter Lebanon in 1976, so no, Syria does not belong on the left side of by name, it's already on the right as ADF. FunkMonk (talk) 23:26, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

this is from david gilmours 'Lebanon fractured country' - the Syrian military intervention began on 1 june and within a few days there were 12,000 Syrian troops in the country advancing along two fronts ..' are you going to scrub this out the infobox?the sight of Syria trying to eliminate the PLO, brought almost unanimous criticism from the other states. On 6 june the ARab foreign ministers meeting in cairo called for the removal of the Syrian troops and their substitution by a mixed Arab force. - accuracy is important I hope you agree and no ideological and ba'thist chicanery and re-ordering of history Sayerslle (talk) 23:53, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, if then, I salute you. I can certainly admit when I'm wrong, and if you are actually reading up on these issues I'm just happy, because then we can have an actual discussion, not just usual lame accusations. FunkMonk (talk) 00:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

great. and I salute you for going on and on about 'twitter rebels' because at first I had no idea what you were alluding to, but now I find twitter is the best way to follow politics and it has, incidentally, given me an insight into the mind of yer average pro-Assad ist. its 'hectic' in there. Sayerslle (talk) 00:04, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

That was only directed at Sopher. Half of what's written on Twitter is just unreliable hyperbole. Assad has been pronounced dead there about a dozen times now. And the English language accounts are much more unreliable than the Arabic ones. FunkMonk (talk) 00:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

the English language @brown moses and @michaelweiss , for example, seem reliable to me, and they lead you to good articles anyhow, - whereas pro-Assad types like @brown noser and @navsteva and @snarwani deal in personal abuse mainly and yes,, I am off topic so will stop Sayerslle (talk) 00:28, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

You'd be better off Google translating actual Arabic opposition and government sites than following some guys who sit at home interpreting grainy videos. FunkMonk (talk) 01:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

FunkMonk should perform his edit, if he is confident enough about this information, FunkMonk, you got any source though? Bladesmulti (talk) 03:19, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

What edit? FunkMonk (talk) 06:11, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I assume its a slip and means SAyerslle should perform his edit, if he is confident etc..' - I do believe there is a case for lining Assad Syria up on the left side in the infobox, with the year 1976 next to it because the Assad/Syrians in 1976 were aligned with Frangieh, - a nice touch I read in Helena Cobbans book 'the making of modern lebanon' - after the Arab league meeting, and the ARab peace keeping force decision to be at the disposal of president elect Elias Sarkis - "The Syrians painted many of the tanks they already had in Lebanon, including those trapped at the airport, in the white clours of the Arab peace keeping force. then they extricated their forces from the airport in this guise. With these hostages to fortune now withdrawn to safety, Syrian President Assad announced that his rtroops in Lebanon would no longer be at Sarkis's disposal, but rather at Frangiehs- Frangieh was participating openly in the leadership of the Maronitist Lebanese Front - - so Syria flag should be be on the left of the infobox also , with 1976 as date - as for your advice that i'd be better to translate Assad propaganda, that seems dubious to me - might as well say if I wanted to follow the battles in the pacific in WW2 i'd do well to translate the speeches of Tojo or listen to Japanese radio- that way i'd just get a lot of misinfornmation, it would be worth doing to get an insight into a fascist hive-mind but not access to other realities imo - and grainy videos?? - check this out towards the end , with the pro-Assad soldiers - crystal clear - New Yorker, 18 November 2013, [22] Sayerslle (talk) 16:06, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Patronizing and hyperbolic language in third intro paragraph

The phrase "by the end of the war, nearly every party had allied with and subsequently betrayed every other party at least once" is a needless exaggeration that alludes to the complicated nature of the conflict using statements not based on fact. This hyperbole, which is basically a metaphor, somewhat trivializes the changing of alliances and makes it look silly. That's not necessary, the Lebanese Civil War was a serious conflict.68.191.148.45 (talk) 06:09, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

The lead is supposed to be a summary, so it should not be too detailed or long. The statement is pretty much accurate. FunkMonk (talk) 08:36, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

The entire point of my criticism is that the statement is factually not accurate, it's an exaggeration for dramatic effect. Are you trying to use brevity in order to excuse this page's lack of professionalism? Did you write that sentence? Change it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.191.148.45 (talk) 17:19, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

In fact, because the sentence immediately preceding this one is "During the war, alliances shifted rapidly and unpredictably," you could probably just delete the hyperbolic passage for being both unprofessional and redundant. That should assuage your desire for brevity.68.191.148.45 (talk) 17:23, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Not sure who wrote it, but in any case, nothing keeps you from changing it yourself. FunkMonk (talk) 21:35, 6 November 2014

The source for this is as follows: "By the end of the war... nearly every party had allied with and subsequently betrayed every other party at least once." Woshinsky, Oliver. (2008). Explaining Politics: Culture, Institutions, and Political Behavior (p.41). New York: Routledge. You can find it on Google Books. This is my first wikipedia entry so please excuse me not updating it myself as I'm not sure how.--Formulaic78 (talk) 08:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

It may be true that this sentence was contained within a particular source. However, that doesn't make it right, even if there was valuable information contained in that source. The point is, ultimately, that this statement is needlessly condescending. The author had to qualify it with the term "nearly," showing that he was unable to legitimately posit the kind of broad generalization that he obviously wants the reader to walk away with. I think that any serious observer would say that this sentence is indefensible and doesn't belong in Wikipedia.07:21, 30 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.33.227.245 (talk)

Just an ordinary typo

Hi,

Zahleh Campaign, second para, second sentence ("Adjacent to the town's outskirts, the Bekaa valley, spanning the length of the Syrian borders.") no verb. While cool and Hemingwayesque, a verb more correct, neh?

T 88.89.219.147 (talk) 10:28, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

I had some trouble parsing the sentence but I changed it to "The Bekaa valley, which spans the length of the Syrian border, is adjacent to the town's outskirts." Let me know if you don't think that's what the author had in mind. --Cerebellum (talk) 00:01, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, thx, looks better now :) T 88.89.219.147 (talk) 02:03, 5 May 2016 (UTC)