Wikipedia moves to bar ADL, claiming reliability concerns on Israel and antisemitim

Wikipedia’s editors have voted to declare the Anti-Defamation League “generally unreliable” on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, adding it to a list of banned and partially banned sources.

An overwhelming majority of editors involved in the debate about the ADL also voted to deem the organization unreliable on the topic of antisemitism, its core focus. A formal declaration on that count is expected next.

The decision about Israel-related citations, made last week, means that one of the most prominent and longstanding Jewish advocacy groups in the United States — and one historically seen as the leading US authority on antisemitism — is now grouped together with the National Inquirer, Newsmax, and Occupy Democrats as a source of propaganda or misinformation in the eyes of the online encyclopedia.

Moreover, in a near consensus, dozens of Wikipedia editors involved in the discussion said they believe the ADL should not be cited for factual information on antisemitism as well because it acts primarily as a pro-Israel organization and tends to label what they consider legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

“ADL no longer appears to adhere to a serious, mainstream and intellectually cogent definition of antisemitism, but has instead given into the shameless politicization of the very subject that it was originally esteemed for being reliable on,” wrote an editor known as Iskandar323, whose request for a discussion about the ADL ultimately led to the ban.

Wikipedia’s Anti-Israel Editors Unmasked
Group launches effort to combat anti-Israel bias on internet’s largest encyclopedia.
Adam Kredo, November 20, 2019.
...Already, the Israel Group has listed the details of the top five editors it deems leaders of the anti-Israel effort.
The number one anti-Israel leader, according to the Israel Group, is an Australian computer scientist named Brendan McKay.
“Brendan McKay, who goes by the Wikipedia username ‘Zero0000,’ is the Godfather, the unofficial leader of the entire cabal of anti-Israel Wikipedia editors,” the Israel Group wrote in a post about McKay. “Although he is not the most prolific or skilled editor among them, one thing separates him from the others: he’s a Wikipedia administrator. This means that he has vast powers that regular editors don’t have, such as the ability to block and ban regular editors and to delete edits and articles from the historical record. Moreover, administrators are greatly respected, so when they accuse general editors of editing with a pro-Israel point of view—as McKay repeatedly does—other administrators side with him, often blocking or banning pro-Israel editors.”
The Israel Group goes on to list as its second leading anti-Israel editor another Australian named Peter Nicholas Dale.
Dale “is undoubtedly the most prolific and proficient of the bunch,” according to the Israel Group. “He is an erudite, skilled blowhard who employs his expert Wikipedia editing proficiency to derail and obfuscate discussions.”...
https://freebeacon.com/issues/wikipedias-anti-israel-editors-unmasked/

The Israel Group Launches Battle to Expose Anti-Israel Wikipedia Editors
By David Israel - 23 Heshvan 5780 – November 21, 2019.

The Israel Group, a nonprofit whose mission is “to cripple the boycott (BDS) movement against at Israel,” is waging war against Wikipedia, or, rather, against Wikipedia editors with a clear bias against the Jewish State.

Founded by Jack Saltzberg, an old war-horse in the fight to defend Israel’s reputation (he also served in an IDF anti-terrorist unit), The Israel Group has warned that “a cabal of virulently anti-Israel anonymous editors is responsible for decimating virtually the entire pro-Israel editing community. Volunteer ‘administrators’ (with lifetime positions), responsible for overseeing the editing process of Wikipedia, have not only allowed anti-Israel editors freedom to take over Wikipedia, they have participated by blocking and banning predominantly Jewish and pro-Israel editors.”

Saltzberg said on his group’s website that they have been working for many years, “under the radar,” on “Wiki-Israel,” which will be launched in January 2020, and fight against “Wikipedia’s anti-Semitic bias against Israel.”

The initiative features a website that shows “how anti-Israel editors smear Israel—both subtly and overtly—across hundreds of articles, and how the pro-Israel community can stop it.”

As part of its initiative, The Israel Group outed the five worst anti-Israel Wikipedia editors, who have been “active for more than a decade totaling more than 325,000 Wikipedia edits, with the majority targeting Israel.” Here they are:

1. An anti-Israel Wikipedia editor who goes by the username Zero0000. His real name, according to TIG, is Brendan McKay, a math scientist at the Australian National University. McKay is the unofficial leader of the entire cabal of anti-Israel Wikipedia editors, TIG claims. A Wikipedia administrator, he has the ability to block and ban regular editors and to delete edits and articles from the record.

2. Nishidani is “undoubtedly the most prolific and proficient of the bunch,” according to TIG, which claims “he is an erudite, skilled blowhard who employs his expert Wikipedia editing proficiency to derail and obfuscate discussions, limiting most ability to add even miniscule factual content positive toward Israel.” Out of Nishidani’s more than 60,000 Wikipedia edits, not one is even slightly pro-Israel, NIG says.

3. Nableezy is the Hamas faction of Wikipedia. According to TIG, Nableezy is the most vile, dedicated, and ruthless anti-Israel editor, who is almost singularly responsible for getting nearly 60 Jewish and pro-Israel editors blocked or banned from editing Wikipedia, usually through subversive methods and working in collusion with Wikipedia’s administrators.

4. Huldra, believed to be a woman, keeps a low profile as she assists the cadre of anti-Israel editors, says TIG, however, she is slowly and dangerously undermining the factual history of Israel on Wikipedia. Huldra is responsible for enacting the 30/500 policy, limiting visitors from editing anywhere in the Arab-Israeli topic area unless they have gained 30 days and 500 edits on Wikipedia.

5. Mshabazz, a.k.a. Malik Shabazz, has written on Wikipedia that he is Jewish, but as a former administrator has joined the anti-Israel side in every major (and minor) discussion regarding the Arab-Israel conflict, TIG says. He was removed from his administrator’s position for using racist and anti-Semitic trope....
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/media/the-israel-group-launches-battle-to-expose-anti-israel-wikipedia-editors/2019/11/21/

How Hamas supporters are influencing Wikipedia : r/Destiny.

Apr 20, 2024.

How Hamas supporters are influencing Wikipedia.
Politics.
Introduction.
Since 7/10 there have been cadres of ultra-pro-Palestine editors on Wikipedia who have been singularly focused on painting Israel as the evil aggressor. Certain prominent editors with more than 100,000 edits to Wikipedia openly support Hamas.

Euro-Med Monitor’s disinformation campaign.
These pro-Palestine Wikipedia editors know that if they go too far towards the pro-Palestine side in one instance, then there may be sanctions against them. Instead, what they do is they delegitimize reliable sources and promote pro-Palestine opinion sources. For example, in the page for the Israel-Hamas war, they cite the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) to falsely claim that 90% of casualties were civilians. On the surface, the Euro-Med Monitor looks like a generic human rights organization however, the Euro-Med Monitor has actually been a significant source of pro-Hamas propaganda on social media. In fact, it is owned by a man named Ramy Abdu, who is a literal Hamas lobbyist. His Wikipedia page seems awfully one-sided. Why is that? Well, a prominent contributor to both his article and the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor article is Wikipedia user Anassjerjawi. Guess who is also named Anass Jerjawi? The Chief Operating Officer of Euro-Med. Other prominent contributors to Euro-Med’s Wikipedia page are Maha Hussaini and Nesma Jaber, both contributors at the Qatari-funded Middle East Eye newspaper. There are also 8 other unknown Wikipedia editors who have edited Euro-Med’s page with pro-Palestine edits, some of whom have edited other pro-Palestine and human rights-related Wikipedia articles. Why is this so pervasive? The answer is that Euro-Med actually has a program in which they get 40 Palestinian university students to edit English and Italian Wikipedia every year.

How Palestine supporters influence Wikipedia.
The situation with Euro-Med is just one particularly egregious example, but the ways in which Palestine supporters influence Wikipedia are generally much more subtle. For example, Elie Wiesel’s article previously claimed that “Following his death, Wiesel was criticized by some for his perceived silence on certain Israeli government policies with regards to the Palestinians.” The source for this is an OPINION article from Mondoweiss, an explicitly pro-Hamas website. The only people criticizing Wiesel here is the **author of the opinion piece.** Using this same logic, I could cite a Stormfront Forum post and say “Wiesel was criticized by some for being a Jew.” Another example is the article for Ramy Abdu, the founder of Euro-Med and a Hamas lobbyist, it says that he is a “human rights advocate.” The citation for this is an article that **Abdu himself wrote.** This clearly violates Wikipedia’s guidelines about self-published sources. By this logic, I could make a Wikipedia article and cite a website I just made that says that I am human rights advocate.

Double standards.
In 2013, the pro-Israel website “NGO Monitor” was banned from being used as a source on Wikipedia. Although I agree with NGO Monitor, it is clearly a biased source, and is not suitable for use on Wikipedia, an unbiased website. NGO Monitor’s Wikipedia page clearly states at the beginning that it is “pro-Israel.” When an organization such as the ADL is cited on a Wikipedia article related to Israel-Hamas, it is very frequently referred to as a “pro-Israel” group whenever it is cited in an article. On the other hand, when Euro-Med is cited in an article, it is simply listed as the “Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.” This is despite Euro-Med’s clear pro-Palestine bias.

Most people don’t go past the headline. When people hover over the page for Euro-Med, they see: “Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor is an independent, nonprofit organization for the protection of human rights.” Their immediate reaction is that Euro-Med is similar to an organization like Amnesty International. On the other hand, when people hover over the page for NGO Monitor, they see: “NGO Monitor (Non-governmental Organization Monitor) is a right-wing non-governmental organization based in Jerusalem that reports on international NGO activity from a pro-Israel perspective.” Their immediate reaction is that anything NGO Monitor says is unreliable.

**The two organizations are equally biased, but only one of them, NGO Monitor is clearly depicted as being biased. The other one, Euro-Med, is cited all across Wikipedia despite having never been cited by any credible mainstream news organization.**

How can this be fixed?
Therein lies the problem with Wikipedia. If 4 out of every 5 users editing an Israel-Palestine Wikipedia article is pro-Palestine, *of course* the articles will have a pro-Palestine slant. Wikipedia operates based on a consensus decision-making process, and pro-Palestine editors dominate the consensus. The only body that regulates the conduct of these users is the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, a largely unbiased group of editors that makes sure that editors stay within the consensus decision-making process. But when the consensus decision-making process is fundamentally corrupted, then the power of pro-Palestine editors can go unchecked. Simply put: there need to be more pro-Israel English Wikipedia editors.

Real-world impacts.
The impact of this is that an entire generation of internet users becomes subtly brainwashed by pro-Palestine propaganda. The situation is analogous to when Holocaust Deniers took over the Croatian Wikipedia, and controlled it from 2011 to 2020. This *can’t not* have had an effect on Croatian society. In 2020, the far-right ultranationalist Homeland Party won 11 seats in the Croatian parliament, and 2 days ago they won 14 seats. The rise of the Homeland Party can’t be directly attributed to the fascist takeover of Croatian Wikipedia - other far-right parties in Europe arose around the same time for a variety of factors. However, the fascist takeover almost certainly did poison the thinking of hundreds of thousands of young Croats who used Croatian Wikipedia every day.

I’m worried that a cabal of pro-Palestine Wikipedia editors will irreversibly and irreparably harm the public’s image of Israel. That is all.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/1c8dxii/how_hamas_supporters_are_influencing_wikipedia/?rdt=64252

Inside the war over Israel at Wikipedia
Behind the scenes, ideologically motivated actors are working to shape the knowledge shared on the world’s largest encyclopedia

By Gabby Deutch, June 26, 2024

After Wikipedia’s editors voted earlier this month to rate the Anti-Defamation League as an unreliable source on matters related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a group of online activists celebrated the news in a pro-Palestine channel on the messaging app Discord.

“A win for us,” wrote a user named Ivana. “Hopefully the Times of Israel comes next.”

“Great news. Well done you and others who have been working hard on this front,” a user named Samer_BHH wrote about the ban, which was first reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Their exchange, which took place in an online community dedicated to editing Wikipedia articles to better reflect a pro-Palestinian narrative, offers a glimpse at how ideologically motivated actors operate behind the scenes to shape the knowledge shared on Wikipedia, one of the most visited websites in the world.
https://jewishinsider.com/2024/06/wikipediai-israeli-palestinian-conflict-zionism-adl-encyclopedia/

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