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 merge‎ to Attacks on schools during the Israeli invasion of Gaza. asilvering (talk) 02:56, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Shadia Abu Ghazala School massacre (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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WP:GNG and WP:NOTNEWS This was covered by a couple of RS the week it happened, nothing in the 15 months since: [1]. As an alternative to deletion it may be notable enough for a mention in Attacks on schools during the Israeli invasion of Gaza -- Bob drobbs (talk) 17:48, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2025 March 24. —^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 18:06, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Crime, Military, Israel, and Palestine. Shellwood (talk) 18:08, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 18:38, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 19:14, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Support merge with Attacks on schools during the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Article (when we remove the long quotations) is a stub and would fit nicely into the list referenced. Squatch347 (talk) 20:02, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Snow keep, that it hasn't had any recent press, is, IMO due to the relentless steam of new massacres, and not that this isn't notable. Huldra (talk) 20:48, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, it does. What else would we base event notability off of? PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:45, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Huh? 15+ civilians dead, massacred, shouldn't disappear down the memory hole, just because new massacres are committed. That would actually be rewarding the perpetuators for committing more massacres, Huldra (talk) 21:02, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't know if either The New Arab or Euro-med Monitor can be treated as non-biased RS for Israel/Palestine information. Al Jazeera is listed as "generally biased" on I/P per the list of perennial sources, but still they may be more credible than these two other sources. Al Jazeera initially reported "at least seven bodies"[2], but in a later mention of the incident describes it as "several were killed".[3]

  Whether this article is kept or merged it also needs to be fixed to reflect the best sources, or the consensus of reliable sources, not just using whichever source has the highest number. Bob drobbs (talk) 21:52, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree we should use the best sourced possible, and possibly later sources (the first estimates can often be inaccurate). I confess I only looked at what the infobox said, not each of the sources in the article, Huldra (talk) 22:01, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Snow keep The massacre reportedly happened in early December, and began receiving sustained, specific and detailed coverage in separate outlets over time from December 13 to late December including in RS like Reuters and Al Jazeera, and then subsequent coverage in 2024, clearly establishing notability per WP:GNG and WP:DUE. Moreover, these reports were detailed investigative reports, not short news announcements, so WP:NOTNEWS does not apply. This is also why there is significant WP:DUE content on the page sourced to RS that would all be removed if it were to be merged into another article. This is clearly not a justified deletion request, and I am not sure why it has even been suggested. Here are the sources published about it including those not included on the page showing sustained, specific and detailed coverage:

Al Jazeera (13 December 2023)

The New Arab (13 December 2023)

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (13 December 2023)

The Daily Telegraph (14 December 2023)

Reuters (18 December 2023)

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (25 December 2023)

ICHR (26 December 2023)

Lemkin Institute (29 December 2024)

Al Jazeera (26 December 2023)

Al Jazeera (24 January 2024)

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (1 May 2024) Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 21:07, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the text from the 2024 Al Jazeera article regarding this "massacre". I think this reference actually helps not hurts make the case that this incident is not notable enough that it needs it's own article:

=> "In December 2023, several were killed in attacks on Shadia Abu Ghazala School."[4]

-- Bob drobbs (talk) 04:10, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You omitted that it links back to its earlier report in that sentence where it calls it a massacre and describes what happened in great detail. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 04:59, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to Attacks on schools during the Israeli invasion of Gaza or delete. That a massacre happened does not make it notable. Less than a month of coverage is not enough for WP:LASTING in WP:NEVENT. The sources from January and May are passing mentions. A lot of massacres happen all across the world, many are not notable. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:44, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"That a massacre happened does not make it notable", whaw, just whaw, just try arguing that for some of the massacres that happened on Oct. 7th....Huldra (talk) 20:21, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Snow keep - for reasons explained by @Huldra and @Raskolnikov.Rev. It received detailed RS coverage and definitely meets WP:NOTABILITY standards. Events like this typically receive coverage close to when they happen. Notability is established by coverage in RS on the specific events, not continued detailed coverage for the entire time after the event up to the present. By that standard all the pages we have of attacks on Israelis or in literally any other context that received coverage close to when they happened, much less so than in this case, and then never again (such as all of these ones) would also have to be deleted. I assume we'll soon be seeing @Bob drobbs and @PARAKANYAA's deletion requests on those, which incidentally I would also oppose as they did receive specific coverage in some RS when they happened. (How would we assess when continuing coverage can stop for something to still be notable? At what point do we submit an AfD for 9/11, or Battle of Marathon?) Smallangryplanet (talk) 09:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"By that standard all the pages we have of attacks on Israelis or in literally any other context that received coverage close to when they happened, much less so than in this case, and then never again (such as all of these ones) would also have to be deleted" Yes! People in this topic area on both the Palestinian and Israeli end constantly ignore WP:NEVENT. That is a problem, and any case without continued coverage we should not have a standalone article. Every source here is WP:PRIMARY as news reporting of an incident without much else. We need secondary sources which do not exist.

The assessment varies by case, but less than a month is not enough for anything. We do not get to ignore WP:NEVENT because people in this topic area constantly do. PARAKANYAA (talk) 18:40, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There tends to be a lull in coverage after a few months which is why it tends to be awkward to AfD after a month or so, but it has been more than a full year where in most cases we can adequately address what we are going to get and there is simply not enough here. PARAKANYAA (talk) 18:47, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to Attacks on schools during the Israeli invasion of Gaza per PARAKANYAA. It is correct that all the sources to date are primary, and that we need secondary sources for purposes of WP:GNG. There is, in fact, a mention in a secondary source:

• Saif, Atef Abu (5 March 2024). Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide. Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-1684-8.

However there are only two sentences (see Day 71) that basically say 8 bodies were found there. That is not WP:SIGCOV. The event is a significant one in the context of the war, but we don't have enough to write an article about it. It needs to be placed in its context and discussed in an article that can do it justice, and we have a good article to do that. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:10, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

None of the sources are WP:PRIMARY, they are all WP:SECONDARY, written by investigative journalists and human rights investigators in reliable sources: "A secondary source provides thought and reflection based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources."

It is odd to describe investigative reports in reliable sources like Reuters and Al Jazeera as primary. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 05:08, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is the encyclopaedia anyone can edit, so the study of historiography is not required. It is common enough for people to be confused on this issue, but let's be clear: a permanently notable article about an event such as this massacre is a historical account. We are recounting the history of the war and aggression. We are doing history here. But we are not historians. We are writing an encyclopaedia. Historians write the secondary sources, collating the primary sources that are their bread and butter, and producing a synthesis of those sources for the completion of their project. It is the synthesis that is the secondary source. That is the analysis we are looking for - the secondary source from which our tertiary encyclopaedic article can be written. No secondary sources mean no encyclopaedic article can be written (yet).

For more on this from Wikipedia's policy point of view, have a read of WP:PRIMARYNEWS. These are not secondary sources, and yes, they are very close to an event. Let's look at just one. You mention Reuters. The account is here [5] Have a read of it. It says (my emphasis):

GAZA, Dec 18 (Reuters) - When the Israeli soldiers entered the Gaza school where Yousef Khalil was sleeping near his family, they began shooting indiscriminately, killing nine people including children, he said, pointing to bullet-pocked, bloodstained walls.

His account, which Israel's military says it is looking into, comes after the killing of three hostages escaping Hamas in Gaza raised new questions over Israel's rules of engagement in a war that has proven unusually deadly for civilians

Do you see how this is reporting of eyewitness accounts? That the reporters are on the ground, speaking to people, doing what reporters do: reporting? This is what the text books on historiography call a discursive primary source. News reporting is a discursive primary source. See:

Discursive primary sources include other people’s accounts of what happened, such as reports of meetings, handbooks, guides, diaries, pamphlets, newspaper articles, sermons and literary and artistic sources.^[1]: 69.

Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:19, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I do agree with @Sirfurboy re the (lack of a) number of secondary sources sufficient for a stand-alone article. If we can agree to keep the designation of massacre per the cited RS and retain a significant amount of the information from said sources by making a new section for "massacres" where this would fit well, I would back a merger. What do you think, @Huldra @Raskolnikov.Rev @Lf8u2 ? Smallangryplanet (talk) 16:58, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to Attacks on schools during the Israeli invasion of Gaza. WP:News article, does not have the lasting secondary coverage required to meet notability on its own. Interesting that we have the usual suspects weighing in because this article supports their political narrative and the classic misunderstanding that journalism is somehow a secondary source. Usually it's just one or the other. The immediate "snow keep" votes are probably the most transparent POV pushing I've seen since the end of ARBPIA5. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 03:32, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - There is extensive and detailed coverage of this event in reliable sources over an extended period. The volume of information is significant enough that merging it with a general article would necessitate the removal of a substantial amount of well-sourced content. Speaking of transparant POV pushing and advancing one's political narrative since the end of ARBPIA5, @Smallangryplanet pointed out several of numerous existing articles that rely almost exclusively on one or two sources published immediately after the event, containing minimal information. However, those engaging in WP:CASTINGASPERSIONS have not initiated any deletion requests for such articles, and we can infer how they might vote if such requests were proposed. Lf8u2 (talk) 05:09, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I've now tagged all the articles mentioned that rely only on news reports. Although reliance on the existence of other pages to argue this one should be kept is WP:OTHERSTUFF. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:36, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I've done you one better and nominated a couple of the more egregious ones for deletion. That'll have to do until tbans are eventually imposed on people who keep creating these articles to score political points, and page creation bans are imposed on people who keep creating articles based on news coverage. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:40, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Putting those other articles up for deletion seems super fair. And I don't know if anyone noticed but this particular article was created by someone who was banned for being a sock puppet[6]. I found that out when I tried to notify them of the proposed deletion. Bob drobbs (talk) 20:50, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I believe all of these fit the same standard we have applied here for deletion, so tags or noms for deletion would be appropriate there too:

Smallangryplanet (talk) 17:10, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Quite. I would like to see some consistency. IF (and that's a bit IF) we could agree, on say a a min. number of dead? Many of those in the above list have far fewer dead than this massacre. Huldra (talk) 22:00, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep the article is properly sourced and the event seems notable. Looks like it was also the subject of investigations and covered for a while after it happened. Paprikaiser (talk) 21:09, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong keep As others have pointed out there has been sustained coverage of the event by reliable sources indicating that it is indeed notable. Furthermore, it has been 2 years since the massacre, so obviously news articles aren't going to be written on it nowadays. We should add a mention of the massacre with a summary on the main article as well.

Genabab (talk) 13:58, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it's been two years and it's only been written about in news articles, then how is there sustained coverage? By definition, sustained would mean it kept being written about after it left the news. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 01:21, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting. This is not a SNOW situation so please stop declaring it one. There are quite a few editors arguing for a Merge so a quick closure is not in the cards.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:40, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge lack of SIGCOV in secondary sources, only passing mentions per PARAKANYAA et al. Newspaper articles reporting the event as news are primary sources per Sirfurboy. While other articles like this one exist, they should cease to be stand-alones, not be used as an excuse for this to remain a stand-alone. Closetside (talk) 02:53, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge. (1) Sadly, this is news, but had no lasting effect. I don't mean to be cruel, but if seven children were killed in a shooting in the United States, it would be Monday. (2) The most cogent criticisms of Wikipedia are that we're biased against Jews and Women. We don't need this article at time of existential crisis. Bearian (talk) 16:09, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: sources seem sufficient for the event to meet the general requirements for notability of events on the English Wikipedia: "if they have widespread (national or international) impact and were very widely covered in diverse sources, especially if also re-analyzed afterwards." (especially, not necessarily, and that might come only in time). Any of the numerous articles prove that the event had widespread international impact, and it was obviously covered in diverse sources. -Mushy Yank. 00:25, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to Attacks on schools during Israeli invasion of Gaza. Seems like it has some coverage, but is limited. Ramos1990 (talk)
• Merge massacres are obviously horrendous, but a massacre happening and being reported in the press immediately after the facts is not by itself a significant grounds for notability in the context of a war where thousands are tragically dying every day. It would need enduring coverage, but for the most part only has attracted passing mentions, and so it does not pass WP:LASTING, and therefore isn't suitable for its own article. Certainly, though, the content and information about what happened can be merged back into the list article. Flip^andFlopped ツ 01:44, 8 April 2025 (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.