Greater than two dozen Wikipedia editors allegedly colluded in a years-long scheme to inject anti-Israel language on matters associated to the Israeli-Palestinian battle, the Anti-Defamation League claimed in a bombshell report launched Tuesday.
The rogue editors, a minimum of 30 of them, flooded one of many world’s hottest websites with “antisemitic narratives, anti-Israel bias, and misleading information,” in accordance with the report by the ADL’s Middle for Tech and Society.
The alleged bias additionally prolonged to pervasive “pro-Hamas perspectives” throughout Arabic-language Wikipedia content material, the report claimed.
Wikipedia didn’t instantly reply to The Submit’s request for remark.
The battle between the main human rights group within the US and the non-profit group heated up final yr when Wiki editors declared the ADL an “unreliable source of information” concerning the Israel-Gaza battle, in accordance with the Washington Submit.
In January, Wikipedia’s arbitration board took disciplinary motion towards six “suspicious editors,” banning them from enhancing sure matters for attempting to bully or intimidate different volunteer editors into ensuring web page adjustments, the ADL stated on the time.
The nonprofit’s newest report claims alleged anti-Israel editors deleted references to antisemitism and cleaned up pages on Hamas in a years-long marketing campaign, ramping up the rogue edits because the terror group’s Oct. 7 bloodbath in Israel.
In a single occasion, an NPR report a few younger Palestinian flying a kite with a swastika on it was deleted from a Wikipedia web page about Gaza protests, in accordance with the report.
Conspiring editors deleted experiences of sexual violence by Hamas from Wikipedia content material, whereas others systematically eliminated references to terrorist violence from pages on Hamas, the report stated.
In one other instance, edits to the Wikipedia web page for Samir Kuntar – a Lebanese-Palestinian Liberation Entrance member who participated within the lethal in Nahariy, Israel in 1979 – eliminated his homicide conviction on terrorism fees.
Media protection of terrorists calling for the destruction of Israel was deleted from a Wiki web page on Palestinian political violence, the ADL added.
In the primary Wikipedia entry on Hamas, a sentence indicating that many governments, together with the US, designate it as a terrorist group was demoted from the highest of the story, in accordance with the report.
As an alternative, the lead part of the web page focuses on Hamas’ function as a political, social and army group that promotes “Palestinian nationalism in an Islamic context.”
In the meantime, edits to the primary Zionism web page since 2022 have negatively reframed Israel’s founding, the ADL argued.
“Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible,” the Wikipedia web page stated.
Information going again to 2002, when the primary of the “bad-faith editors” joined the location, recorded greater than 1 million edits on about 10,000 articles linked to the Israeli-Palestinian battle, the ADL stated.
The ADL is looking on search engines like google like Google and Bing to deprioritize Wikipedia pages in outcomes.
The report additionally calls for Wikipedia create a program with consultants on Israel and revisit its insurance policies on harassment, bias and sourcing requirements.
Bloomberg beforehand reported that tensions are brewing at Wikipedia over the battle in Gaza as volunteer editors have launched “edit wars” to control the slant of pages.
