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My answer was in response to the following question: Why won't Israel allow more aid into Gaza?

The exact reason given for the deletion was:

As explained in the comments, this answer is using cherry-picking to make one side in an ongoing conflict look worse than the other. I agree with the multiple flags and delete vote on this answer that it is propaganda.

I did not "make one side look worse than the other". In fact, I did not even write about the other side, as the question was about Israel, not Hamas, the people of Gaza or Palestinians en bloc (or whoever Philipp considers the other side in the conflict), and doing so would have been off topic. I also don't think citing outright genocidal remarks by top government officials amounts to propaganda.

Do answers to these questions also cherry-pick to make one side of a conflict (namely, Russia and Syria) look worse than the other, too?

Are there any strategic reasons that Russian authorities would allow indiscriminate killing of Ukrainian civilians?

Why would Assad use chemical weapons in the civil war as of 2018?

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    generally I think the answer should be copy-pasted into the question for those who can’t view deleted answers, but since is was deleted as rude&abusive idk. hopefully somebody who knows the rules can say what to do
    – Ekadh Singh - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Mar 5 at 14:36
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    What a stupid reason for deleting a question. What about if one side in a conflict is worse than another?
    – Ben Cohen
    Commented Mar 5 at 22:13
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    Why didn't Philipp delete this question because it is "cherry-picking to make one side in an ongoing conflict look worse than the other"?
    – Ben Cohen
    Commented Mar 5 at 22:14
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    @BenCohen If you beleive it’s similar you should flag it as rude&abusive, I guess
    – Ekadh Singh - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Mar 7 at 2:33
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    @EkadhSingh-ReinstateMonica, prior experience does not provide me with much confidence in that course of action.
    – Ben Cohen
    Commented Mar 9 at 14:46
  • Anything you want evidence of you will find. So my question to you is this: is it just as easy to "prove" that the Israeli govt/politicians care about civilian collateral damage in Gaza by doing a few google searches and posting a handful of links and quotes the way you did to "prove" the opposite? If so, your answer is unfairly cherry-picking. "Do answers to these questions also cherry-pick to make one side of a conflict" I didn't read them yet, but I'd be willing to bet that yes, they are likely also problematic. Happens all the time around here.
    – Jared Smith
    Commented Mar 13 at 14:33
  • @EkadhSingh-ReinstateMonica Tit-for-that doesn't lead anywhere. Flagging and then deleting answers as "spam or rude or abusive" when they clearly aren't is abusing the flag system.
    – Gaslight Deceive Subvert
    Commented Apr 16 at 18:27
  • @GaslightDeceiveSubvert where did you get "clearly aren't" from? I said if he thought the answers had the same problem as other answers that were deleted as rude and abusive, then he should flag them as rude&abusive because he believes they're rude&abusive.
    – Ekadh Singh - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Apr 28 at 23:04
  • @EkadhSingh-ReinstateMonica "Clearly aren't" comes from Phillip's comment: "this answer is using cherry-picking to make one side in an ongoing conflict look worse than the other" They don't think the answer is "spam or rude or abusive", yet they are deleting it as such. That is abusing the moderator privileges.
    – Gaslight Deceive Subvert
    Commented Apr 29 at 10:34

2 Answers 2

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This answer shouldn’t have been deleted (although it probably was biased, but i’m not too sure) because there have been answers with more questionable facts that make claims more questionable than what this answer made.

Additionally, this shouldn’t have been deleted because answers aren’t supposed to be deleted (especially as rude or abusive) if they’re somewhat incorrect (not saying this was, just that it was viewed as such).

Although I don’t think the answer should have been deleted, one change that could be made to improve the answer would be connecting the conclusion of your answer to the question (right now the implied connection: Israel doesn’t care about the civilians lives so not allowing the food through is easier than allowing the food and possibly other stuff through smuggling through) to make it more clear

Additionally, if most people disagree with my viewpoint that the answer should be undeleted, one way to possibly fix the answer would be to state that it’s a popular viewpoint, and providing evidence to support that. For example, prefacing the answer with

One popular viewpoint (insert link here) is that:

would most likely remove objections to it.

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Since you seem to be looking for a comparison with other answers (to the Russia Q), let me put it this way: while some of the answers there are strongly worded e.g. 'Russia is using terror' etc., none have gone to the lengths to cherry pick the (not so rare) nuclear threats on Russian TV to show that Russia intends to genocide people. (There is one answer that makes the connection in the opposite direction, that rough treatment of civilians is intended to show resolve in the nuclear standoff too.)

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  • OTOH I'd grant you that it's probably no worse than one of the pure denialism answers on the Assad question--sourced purely from Sputnik (= Russia Today) and the (antisemitic) Veterans Today for its main claims.
    – Make StackExchange GREAT 4ever
    Commented Mar 8 at 15:12
  • Update on the latter, that answer was mod-deleted now. FWTW, it had a +24/-16 score which somewhat compares to yours +29/-15.
    – Make StackExchange GREAT 4ever
    Commented Mar 10 at 8:09

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