`Thanks for Bethlehem work Hi I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for your efforts in copyediting the Bethlehem article. I'm trying to improve it for GA status,per it being the Collaboration of the Week for Wikipedia:WikiProject Palestine. Al Ameer son (talk)          [edit] Award for your great photographic work   The da Vinci Barnstar  This award is given to User:Gilabrand in recognition of all your imaginative and original photographs related to topics about Israel and Judaism, as can be seen on your user page. In particular, I was impressed by how many of these photographs enhance so many articles about people, places and things in Israel. Mazal Tov and may you be blessed to continue contributing to Wikipedia in this productive fashion for a long time to come. See Wikipedia:Barnstars: ``The da Vinci Barnstar may be awarded to anyone who has enhanced Wikipedia through their technical work...`` and you most certainly deserve it. Sincerely, IZAK (talk)    Thank you, Izak, for that very heartwarming award. That someone has noticed my contributions and sees them as noteworthy makes all the hard work worthwhile.Gilabrand (talk)   Hi Gila: Yes, you make beautiful art and I appreciate it as I am sure many others do. Best wishes, IZAK (talk)   Hi Gila: It's agood idea to have page for awards and barnstars, like so: User:Gilabrand/Awards and barnstars which you can place at the tope of this talk page where others can see it or on your main user page if you wish. Thanks again, IZAK (talk)    [edit] Armenian Genocide Peres' denial of the genocide should be noted in this article, failing to do so makes it more of a hagiography than a biography. His shortcomings must also be mentioned in addition to his feats like winning the noble prize. Do you think it'd fit better in political views? In anycase it must, and will, be mentioned somewhere. How about adding this in his political views segment:  Peres' foreign policy outlook is markedly realist. For example, to placate Turkey, the only significant Muslim country in the region that is friendly towards Israel, Peres has explicity denied the Armenian genocide, which caused an uproar among genocide scholars.(citation) E10ddie (talk)   Peres made these statements in 2001, when he was foreign minister. Clearly, he was caving in to Turkish pressure. Israel has very few friends and cannot afford to lose them, so basically it is not free to take the position that would seem to mesh with its outlook and history, which is to recognize that the Armenians were murdered en mass. Now he is president, an honorary position, not a political one, and his ``views,`` whatever they may have been back then, are worth about as much as mine are. I have no problem with mentioning this ``view`` in the section on his political outlook, but a separate section on this one utterance gives it undue importance and distorts the picture. Gilabrand (talk)    [edit] sumac opening sentence I don't know what the right wording is, but do you see the problem with ``Sumac (also Rhus) is a genus of approximately 250 species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae``? First of all, there is no reason to italicize Sumac. Secondly, it is not accurate to say ``Sumac is a genus`` because there is no genus called Sumac (but there is one called Rhus).  I may be too steeped in botanical jargon to easily come up with something which is natural to non-plant-people. But we need to figure out something which (a) works whether people get to this page as Sumac or Rhus (currently, the latter is a redirect to the former; policy would have it the other way around), and (b) doesn't mix up scientific names versus common names in a confusing way. Kingdon (talk)   I am not a botanist and my reason for reading the article was because of the spice, which is used all over the Middle East. I was surprised that the spice didn't rate a mention in the lead. Sumac needs to be the first word in keeping with Wikipedia norms, and the same as the title of the article (i.e., not plural). How about: ``Sumac refers to a variety of shrubs or small trees of the genus Rhus, as well as the purplish spice that is produced from its dried, crushed berries Gilabrand (talk)   Looks like Richard New Forest (talk · contribs) has solved it for us (I'm happy with his wording). As for ``first word``, Wikipedia policy isn't quite that strict (``earliest natural point in the prose`` at Wikipedia:Lead section#Bold title and I don't know whether a plural fits under ``slightly different form`` or not). Anyway, enough wikilawyering. As for why the spice wasn't at the start, the plant is very common in North America in the wild, roadsides, gardens, etc, but the spice is pretty much unheard of. So giving it greater prominence is probably good (although I suspect whatever we do will look slightly strange to some audience). One last comment: Firefox has a hard time editing big pages, so it would be convenient if you archived it, for example by enabling one of the bots on that page. Kingdon (talk)   Oh no, all that archiving business is way too complicated for me! Is there a simple way to do it, while saving the Barnstars, for instance, in a visible place?Gilabrand (talk)    [edit] Tu Bishvat Since I'm an editor of this article, I'm bringing in a third-pary administrator to take a look at this. I want to make it clear that my difficulty here isn't with the content you added, it's with the content you removed. As I see it, by removing all mention of the contemporary role of Tu Bishvat as a cutoff date for purposes of Orlah you (a) completely removed all content on, including mention of the very existence of, a very significat viewpoint that you happen to disagree with (this is my primary concern). In addition, you (b) rewrite the article from your own point of view when there are muliple points of view which qualify for representation under Wikipedia policies. The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia explained why it called Orthodox Judaism ``ancient Judaism`` (because it regarded it as a viewpoint with no contemporary relevance which would soon disappear); contemporary Orthodox Jews don't take very well to having their contemporary practices mischaracterized as being only ancient history. P.S. This is also the first time anyone's called me a ``black-hatter``. Best, Shirahadasha (talk)   Sorry if you don't like my editing of the article. You are welcome to add sections that you think are relevant, but on the whole, it was badly written and organized, and overly verbose. I did not call YOU a black-hatter. The comment about Tu Bishvat customs being an inventions of Zionist heretics spurred that response. It seemed to me that you made all the revisions in response to this one person's inane comment. Respecting sensibilities of anti-Zionists is fine, but not if it turns an article about a holiday into a mishmash that nobody else but yeshiva-educated people can understand (which happens to be incredibly widespread on Wikipedia)Gilabrand (talk) .   [edit] Music of Israel Thank you for your many excellent edits of Music of Israel. They have definitely sharpened up the article.  I do, however, take issue, with your excision of the words of ``Eliphelet``. You are wrong in your comment that it is not any more notable than ``a million others``. On the contrary, the song has been the subject of quite a bit of discussion and even opposition, and epitomizes the melancholy, almost pacifistic, tendency of some Israeli war songs.  I respect your opinion, so I am consulting with you before restoring it. Ravpapa (talk)   Hi Ravpapa, thanks for that. About Eliphelet, my reason for removing the lyrics is not that I have anything against the song, but that the translation into English is very poor and those particular verses don't seem to convey the sentiments you are talking about. Rather than being pacifistic, my sense, from these lyrics, is that he is kind of a pathetic, wimpy creature, and in the context of this article, I thought it was weird. But of course, that's only my opinion and I could be wrong. The article itself has become quite interesting, by the way. Gilabrand (talk)    [edit] Gilo Hello, I saw your edit on the Pisgat Ze'ev article and was wondering if you might be able to help me with a similar edit being made by the same person on the Gilo article, as I'm not sure what the right way to do things here is. Thank you. Robert —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.181.125.218 (talk)   Just wondering why you reverted my edit on the page on Gilo. You removed many usefull additions including the discourse on the contetious legal issues as well as replaced new sources with old partisan sources and removed any mention of the rest of the worlds view and stance that it is an Israeli Settlement. Are we only allowed to tell one side of the story? Hardly sounds NPOV to me. Colourinthemeaning (talk)   I did not remove sources, but moved them to the bottom until they can be properly incorporated. There is more to a neighborhood (any neighborhood) than politics. Undue weight was being given here to that. The article definitely needs further work, but at the moment, I think I have introduced a som