Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Children in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎. There is clearly no appetite for deletion here, and several editors have convincingly demonstrated that there is material in RS that pertains to this general topic. One of the main arguments to merge is convincingly rebutted by the issue of size. The concern about POV had much more agreement, but there wasn't similar agreement that the POV issues would by fixed by merging. I suggest that participants accept the existence of an article on the general topic, and explore solving specific POV issues (including via partial merges, if needed) via talk page discussion. FWIW, after a brief read it was clear to me that some pieces of the article had NPOV issues, but if there is an overall POV to the article it isn't obvious to me what that is. Vanamonde (Talk) 12:24, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Children in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict[edit]

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Children in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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POV fork of Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Note that other wars also don't have "children in... x" articles. The choice of topic dooms this article to be a POV fork, because a country that is very rich can afford to not send its children to war (e.g. by using drones) or when they do they can afford advanced weaponry and armor. Both sides rely on indoctrination (religious or not) to keep the conflict going for yet another generation, but only for one side this is mentioned in the article. I've removed this photo from the article. Polygnotus (talk) 14:39, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment How is this a POV fork? There is far more material here on the topic than there is in the alleged parent. The rest of this nomination reads like a political speech, what are the policy reasons for deletion? Selfstudier (talk) 15:16, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You don't think its a bit weird to have a photo from the IDF that shows Palestinian children with cancer on a ski trip in an article about "Children in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict"? This kinda stuff would get reverted in milliseconds on the main article. Its just one example, there are many examples of POV in the article. Polygnotus (talk) 15:27, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
NPOV problems are not a reason to delete. Selfstudier (talk) 15:42, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Both content and articles get deleted for being POV all the time. Polygnotus (talk) 15:52, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Two editors already cannot agree which is the parent article, because there isn't one. Selfstudier (talk) 16:00, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is more than one. This is not uncommon for POV forks (or so I'm told). Polygnotus (talk) 16:34, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Palestinian child cancer patients on a ski trip organized by Israeli soldiers
  • Merge - “Other stuff doesn’t exist” has never been a good argument at AFD. The article is well sourced and potentially viable as a topic. However, I do have concerns about the Neutrality of the article as it currently exists. While AFD is not for article clean up, I think it best to merge it back to the parent article (where it will get more eyes) and improve its flaws… then, perhaps, split it off again. Blueboar (talk) 15:19, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Multi-merge and split: [EC] I don't agree the article will be necessarily a POV fork. (It is already a topic area that is in a state of constant POV chaos, the removal of one photo says little -- I removed another shortly after it was posted for similar reasons -- at least this article is not WP:OWNed the way so many others in this topic are.) However, it is currently an unspecific jumble of topics only related by being in the same multigenerational conflict -- everything from child terrorists to child war victims to propaganda to child welfare and education in the respective states.
The content should instead be merged into the main article and appropriate sub-articles (Textbooks in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Category:War crimes in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (which is an absolute mess if you want to find something in need of TNT) and others apparently not categorized or that need to be created regarding welfare and education in the Israeli state), and parallel articles such as child soldiers and terrorists. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:21, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To this point, on article splits with nonspecific titles, see my suggestion for the only appropriate image lead for "Children in X conflict". On the other hand, for a properly scoped fork of longstanding conflict, see for example Child soldiers in Sri Lanka, Healthcare in the State of Palestine vs Healthcare in Israel (could be improved certainly), Education in Afghanistan, etc. "Children" on the other hand is not a specific policy topic from which to split a geopolitics article. SamuelRiv (talk) 16:15, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The image I'm referring to is nonfree, but it's the one in Think of the children § Lovejoy's Law. I bothered with the meme to make it clear that I am mocking the title and scope of this article. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:19, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and work to improve it. The OP's main argument is fallacious. We don't have "Children in the X war" articles because that wasn't a focus of RS coverage. For example, there are not many RS about children in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. But children victims in Gaza have certainly been a focus of RS coverage in this case. For good reason, in my opinion (I'm disclosing that I'm not "neutral" about this war.). NightHeron (talk) 16:45, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That is clearly untrue. Look at the sources used in the article. It doesn't pass WP:GNG. Sure there are news articles about specific incidents that involve children, sources that include a portion about children, and sources that talk about Palestinian children. But where are the sources that are about this specific topic (children on both sides of this particular war)? Also, there *are* RS that discuss children during WW2. Polygnotus (talk) 16:59, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In that case its probably best to get rid of it. Polygnotus (talk) 18:37, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Iskandar323: If you do a WP:BEFORE you'll find that these links are NOT about the topic of the article:
1) A meta-analysis of studies. The studies focus on one of the sides.
2) The Impact of Conflict on Children - The Palestinian Experience
3) The article examines the political socialization of young Jewish-Israeli children
4) In this paper we analyze the impact of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on child labor and school attendance of Palestinian children in the West Bank
5) "updated review of research". Again, the studies focus on one of the sides.
6) The studies focus on one of the sides.
7) That's just google scholar.
8) incarceration of Palestinian children.
Polygnotus (talk) 18:30, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, so two sides, which makes one whole, so no NPOV issue. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:33, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The POVFORK is a NPOV issue. And a BEFORE search clearly shows that the article topic does not meet WP:GNG. Polygnotus (talk) 18:34, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. Selfstudier (talk) 18:36, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Being right isn't how this works; the issue is that there appears to be no obvious cause for deletion, merging, or anything else here. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:38, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Except the fact we are dealing with a WP:POVFORK that does not meet WP:GNG Polygnotus (talk) 18:39, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You can keep repeating that but it doesn't improve the argument any. Selfstudier (talk) 18:40, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge individual sections with corresponding existing articles. The main problem with this agglomeration of unrelated topics with the theme of "children" isn't POV, but WP:SYNTH. The provided sources do not link the use of child soldiers with, say, child victims among civilians, and rightly so. The connection made in this article is an artifact created by the WP author.
That said, the article does suffer from an NPOV issue, albeit not the usual one. The choice of 18 as the threshold age for the term "child" reflects a specific POV. The Islamic Jihad and Hamas have both said that they consider children of 16 to be adults, as does Israel in the occupied territories. By us labelling 16- and 17 year olds as "children", we are forcing our Westernized PoV on events where participants consider these people to be adults. To the credit of the article, it does mention this discrepancy in the "Legal issues" section, but plum ignores the issue in the rest of the article. The statistics quoted would be dramatically different if the term "child" was defined as under 16. I don't believe there is a clean way to resolve this problem without splitting the article into separate, topic-based pages, which we need to do anyway to resolve the SYNTH issue. Owen× ☎ 18:57, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Won't the parts suffer from the same criticism you are making of the whole? Selfstudier (talk) 19:04, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why would they? WP:SYNTH opens with the instruction, Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source. Once we've separated the material that was improperly combined by the article, it will no longer suffer from SYNTH. The POV issues can then be fixed per section. Owen× ☎ 19:19, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If the POV issues can be fixed in the parts, then they can be fixed in the whole. That leaves the SYNTH (original research) assertion but with sources like Children as Victims and Activists in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict (Book Chapter), as well as those above, I don't see that assertion as convincing, at any rate not sufficiently convincing that some judicious editing of the article won't fix. Selfstudier (talk) 19:29, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That is just a chapter of a book with that title. The book is actually called: "National and International Civilian Protection Strategies in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"... And the WP:OR/WP:SYNTH issues can't be fixed without at least splitting the article in two parts. Polygnotus (talk) 19:36, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Plenty more if one actually looks, Children in Palestine and Israel continue to suffer as international law is routinely ignored, splitting into two parts is something you just made up.Selfstudier (talk) 19:39, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Imagine if we find a source that actually is about the topic of the article, after ~310 attempts, that still does not fix the WP:SYNTH/WP:OR (whatever you wanna call it) and WP:POV problems. Polygnotus (talk) 19:44, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Selfstudier: the Conversation article you linked to specifically talks about children as victims of military violence. Not a word about child soldiers or children being used as suicide bombers. This further supports what SamuelRiv, Polygnotus, Blueboar and I have been saying about the need to split this article. Owen× ☎ 19:48, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure you can somewhere find a book that talks about the challenges children face in Israel/Palestine holistically. It would just be either a young adult motivational/inspirational/guide book, or else a teachers or parents manual. Not the kind of reference for positing that "children in X" form a coherent topic for the purposes of an encyclopedia article. It's not worth trying to make up some objective lawyery RS argument here though -- it's just how to do expository (i.e. encyclopedic) writing. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:01, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just a technical nitpick: the hodgepodge of unrelated children-related topics into a "Children of X" article isn't SYNTH, it's a MOS issue of article titles and organization. While an example like this isn't spelled out in the rulebook (it's sorta alluded to in WP:PRECISE and WP:REORGANIZE), it shouldn't have to be since this is a pretty straightforward mess. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you're right, SamuelRiv. Either way, I think we both agree on what the solution is. Owen× ☎ 19:30, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Then the solution is to clean up the mess, btw, if your views hold sway, are y'all going to do the work? Y'know, splitting it up and parking the parts wherever, cleaning up? Probably not, right? Selfstudier (talk) 19:42, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is an AfD. Merge has always been a viable consensus option in such discussions. Don't you think it would be a bad form to start merging the article while the AfD is ongoing, for less than a day even? SamuelRiv (talk) 19:48, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:TNT Polygnotus (talk)
This article was created in 2004, good luck with that.Selfstudier (talk) 19:49, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Articles on this topic enjoy massive editor participation. But in the unlikely event that no one else does the split/merge job, then yes, I'll be happy to jump in and do the work. I'd also love it if you, Selfstudier, helped with the mergers, seeing as you have ample experience editing articles on this topic, and can probably do a better job than I could with this one. There's really no need to be adversarial about this. We both want the content to stay here, we just need to find a better spot for it. Owen× ☎ 20:14, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If the goal is to make something better then I'm down of course. I don't know how to split/merge but I can take a critical look at the result. Polygnotus (talk) 20:27, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I have listened to the arguments and find them wanting. The idea that an article with a 20 year history suddenly becomes a deletion candidate is entirely ridiculous. If over time, the article has lost focus, presumably due to random additions not strictly speaking within scope, then the remedy is to undo that, not start ripping up an otherwise perfectly good article.Selfstudier (talk) 22:06, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Literally all articles are candidates for merging or deletion. The problem isn't just that the article "lost focus". The problem is more fundamental than that. Polygnotus (talk) 22:10, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep -- This is an encyclopaedic topic with clear and persistent sourcing. The article needs cleanup, but WP:DINC. Easily meets WP:GNG on all points. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 20:18, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. This is a POV fork with serious neutrality issues. Coretheapple (talk) 19:04, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Iskandar323. Eladkarmel (talk) 16:48, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This is very clearly a WP:NOTABLE topic with a lot of coverage, and the scope is broad enough where WP:NPOV issues can be addressed through standard editing. Deleting this article outright is completely unnecessary. I also agree with the WP:DINC argument. XTheBedrockX (talk) 22:05, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep. Due to the significant media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there are already articles about some very specific sub-topics of the conflict, for example: school airstrikes in the 2023 Israel-Hamas war, attacks on health facilities during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, etc. Moreover, saying that other wars don't have an article about the affected children misses the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't just a war, it's something much wider and children are being affected also when there is no active war at all, for example by Administrative detentions. The topic of children being affected from the conflict, is heavily discussed as well, some examples: [1][2][3][4]. Moreover, this article presents the topic in a very neutral way, discussing the affected children in both sides. HilbertSpaceExplorer (talk) 13:35, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@HilbertSpaceExplorer: School airstrikes in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war is, of course, also a WP:POVFORK and should also be deleted for that reason. If you click on those 4 links you see that none of them are about the topic of the article (children in the conflict as a whole, in both Israel and Palestina, since the beginning of the conflict till now). They are about Gazan children. Based on your choice of links I am surprised that you vote keep; do you really want Wikipedia to keep an article that by its choice of topic is automatically biased against Palestinians and pro-Israeli? Polygnotus (talk) 14:59, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you believe School airstrikes in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war is a WP:POVFORK that's completely fine, as right now we discuss another article. I mentioned those 2 articles, to emphasize the fact, that creating articles that discuss specific aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a common thing, and that claim by itself doesn't justify deletion. I agree that theoretically, this article could have been merged into other articles, but that's not making it a WP:POVFORK. This article's topic is mentioned in researches, for example:[5], [6]. I can't see why this article is biased against Palestinian children - I find it balanced, and that's one of the reasons I !voted keep. HilbertSpaceExplorer (talk) 09:01, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, The WordsmithTalk to me 21:28, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep - "Other wars also don't have children in x articles" isn't a very policy-based argument. The article clearly has citations to numerous reliable sources, with sources documenting actions by both sides of the conflict. There is more than enough material specifically covering how children are affected by and used in the conflict to justify its own article. While legitimate concerns may be raised on whether the article is NPOV, as well as about the quality of the article, there is nothing that can't be addressed by rewriting the article, the nom's NPOV concerns alone are not sufficient reason for deletion. Take for example the argument 'Both sides rely on indoctrination (religious or not) to keep the conflict going for yet another generation, but only for one side this is mentioned in the article.' If you really believe indoctrination by one side wasn't covered by the article, just go look up reliable sources documenting said indoctrination and cite them in the article. Also if you think the article doesn't talk enough about children who are victims of the conflict, you could easily add that in - there's no shortage of reliable sources covering that.Combustible Vulpex (talk) 12:47, 20 December 2023 (UTC) Not extended-confirmed as required by Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel articles. Daniel (talk) 04:48, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Neutrality issues should be addressed, rather than serving as a reason to remove articles. Suitskvarts (talk) 10:42, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I don't think it is credible to call an article that has existed since 2004, has been edited 1619 times by 445 different users and has 261 incoming links from article space a POVFORK. POVFORKs are normally made by individuals or very small groups of people and are either stomped on quickly or fly under the radar for a while before being detected and dealt with. This is not an under the radar article! Sure, people have had concerns about its neutrality since 2004, and those need to be addressed, but wiping the whole subject out and pretending that it doesn't exist is not a way towards neutrality, or anything else of value. I'm neutral to mildly sympathetic towards a merge but I don't think this AfD is the best place to choose that. It would be better to keep this and then let somebody put together a coherent merge proposal and then to discuss that separately. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:49, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep an article with this title. I do not know if the current text is NPOV, but that's not what XFD is for. Andre🚐 21:09, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Per Andre. Tooncool64 (talk) 02:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC) Not extended-confirmed as required by Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel articles. Daniel (talk) 04:48, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per above. बिनोद थारू (talk) 16:10, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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