This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Jonathan Pollard article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
Parts of this page are related to the Arab–Israeli conflict, a restricted topic. You are not an extended-confirmed user, so you must not edit or discuss this topic anywhere on Wikipedia except to make an edit request. (Additional details are in the message box just below this one.)
Administrators may disregard the above message.
You are seeing this because of the limitations of {{If extended confirmed}} and {{If administrator}}. You can hide this message box by adding the following to a new line of your common.css page:
.ECR-edit-request-warning{display:none;}
Warning: active arbitration remedies
The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. Parts of this article relate to the Arab–Israeli conflict, which is a contentious topic. Furthermore, the following rules apply when editing the parts of the page related to the contentious topic:
You must be logged-in and extended-confirmed to edit or discuss this topic on any page (except for making edit requests, provided they are not disruptive)
You may not make more than 1 revert within 24 hours on any edits related to this topic
All participants in formal discussions (RfCs, RMs, etc) within the area of conflict are urged to keep their comments concise, and are limited to 1,000 words per discussion. Citations and quotations (whether from sources, Wikipedia articles, Wikipedia discussions, or elsewhere) do not count toward the word limit.
If it is unclear which parts of the page are related to this contentious topic, the content in question should be marked within the wiki text by an invisible comment. If no comment is present, please ask an administrator for assistance. If in doubt it is better to assume that the content is covered.
Further information
The exceptions to the extended confirmed restriction are:
Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace only to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided they are not disruptive.
Non-extended-confirmed editors may not create new articles, but administrators may exercise discretion when deciding how to enforce this remedy on article creations. Deletion of new articles created by non-extended-confirmed editors is permitted but not required.
With respect to the WP:1RR restriction:
Clear vandalism of whatever origin may be reverted without restriction. Also, reverts made solely to enforce the extended confirmed restriction are not considered edit warring.
Editors who violate this restriction may be blocked by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offence.
If you are unsure if your edit is appropriate, discuss it here on this talk page first. When in doubt, don't revert!
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Israel, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Israel on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.IsraelWikipedia:WikiProject IsraelTemplate:WikiProject IsraelIsrael-related
Jonathan Pollard is within the scope of WikiProject Espionage, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of espionage, intelligence, and related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page, or contribute to the discussion.EspionageWikipedia:WikiProject EspionageTemplate:WikiProject EspionageEspionage
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Crime and Criminal Biography articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Crime and Criminal BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyCrime-related
As of the date/time of this talk-page edit the first paragraph of this article begins "Jonathan Jay Pollard (born August 7, 1954) is a former intelligence analyst for the US government. In 1984, Pollard sold numerous closely guarded state secrets, including the National Security Agency's ten-volume manual on how the U.S. gathers its signal intelligence, and disclosed the names of thousands of people who had cooperated with U.S. intelligence agencies". The omission is glaring. Presumably if Person A sells something, then there is some greater-than-50-50 chance that another party was the Buyer of what Person A sold. To whom did Pollard sell these secrets? To whom did he sell out the U.S.'s helpers? The ground? The sky? Birds chirping in trees? In-between "Pollard sold" and "numerous closely guarded state secrets", text is missing and it can't be for any legitimate reason. If the missing text is ", to Israel", then the deletion exists so that the reader will, by default, assume that Pollard betrayed the U.S.A. to the Soviets, and will regard Pollard in a more negative light than if the reader learns that Pollard betrayed the U.S.A. to a staunch U.S.A. ally. If, on the other hand, the missing text is something like "variously, to Israel, to the Soviets, and possibly to other countries" then the text has been deleted for the purpose of showing Pollard in a BETTER light, i.e. to avoid dislodging a reader's belief that Pollard cooperated ONLY with staunch U.S.A. ally Israel and had benign motives. I don't know what the missing text should be because I don't know all the facts. (If I knew all the facts, would I be reading on-line encyclopedias?) But either way, text is missing, either to make Pollard look worse or to make him look better. It is "spin". Pollard sold something. That means he sold it TO someone. Yet Wikipedia doesn't say (in the quoted beginning of this article) TO WHOM he sold, and, worse, thinks nobody's going to notice that Wikipedia has omitted the "to whom". (Another possible nefarious reason to omit the "to whom", if indeed (I don't know) the missing "to whom" is Israel, is to avoid showing ISRAEL in a negative light by allowing the reader to hold onto their default assumption that the missing "to whom" is the Soviets. But again, that would still be a lie by omission.)2600:1700:6759:B000:511D:59D7:1BE7:EAEF (talk) 02:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)Christopher Lawrence Simpson[reply]
