Weaponizing Wikipedia against Israel

Wikipedia – the world’s fifth-leading website with 100 billion visits annually – is no longer a bastion of objectivity.

Investigative research now reveals how a secret network of anti-Israel activists is engaged in a massive “edit war” to nefariously insert anti-Israel propaganda throughout Wikipedia.

Although Wikipedia professes a strict neutral point of view, its open editing model – where anyone can voluntarily edit articles, often without even a login – makes the system vulnerable to manipulation and abuse.

Organized efforts such as “Tech for Palestine” and “Wikipedia Collaboration,” likely funded by Iran, are currently conspiring to hijack Wikipedia.

Working in small rotating groups to evade detection, these activists have made over 850,000 edits to Israel-related articles, demonizing Israel as a “colonial, apartheid, genocidal regime.”

Slowly and incrementally, these “minor edits” – often one word or sentence at a time – cumulatively account for the majority of content on key Wikipedia articles, distorting the narrative and turning Wikipedia’s information pipeline into a swamp of anti-Israel bias.

Systemic Bias

In thousands of Israel-related articles, Wikipedia's core value of “neutrality” is blatantly violated:

• The first sentence on Wikipedia's main Zionism page characterizes the Zionist movement, not as the return of the Jewish people to their 3,800-year-old indigenous homeland, but as “the colonization of a land outside of Europe… to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.”

• Wikipedia's main article on Hamas omits mention that Hamas’ 1988 charter calls for jihad and the destruction of Israel. The article even compares Hamas’ charter to Likud’s party platform.

• Wikipedia pages such as “Israeli Apartheid” turn spurious accusations into definitive facts. An article initially titled "Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” is now titled definitively: "Gaza Genocide.”

• Anti-Israel activists created a dedicated page comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, while erasing the genuine phenomenon of Nazism in Palestinian society and downplaying the Palestinian Mufti's alliance with Hitler.

• Wikipedia cites the words of Nadia Abu El Haj, a fringe Columbia professor and staunch anti-Zionist who questions whether Ashkenazi Zionists are even Jewish: "The Ashkenazi Jew is the most dubious Jew, the Jew whose historical and genealogical roots in ancient Palestine are most difficult to see and perhaps thus to believe."

Wikipedia’s bias includes silencing mainstream pro-Israel voices. Wikipedia banned the Anti-Defamation League as an “unreliable source” on anything related to Israel – while rating anti-Israel sources like Al Jazeera and Amnesty International as "reliable.”

Hijacking the System

Exposing this bias is crucial because, as the perceived “gold standard” of objectivity, Wikipedia is a key influencer of information pipelines:

• Wikipedia is the default result of routine info requests on Google, Alexa, Siri, etc.

• Students, educators, journalists and policy-makers often rely on Wikipedia as the starting point for research.

• Wikipedia’s billions of words are a key component of popular AI tools such as ChatGPT.

This "unprotected back door" is insidiously exploited by activists who manipulate Wikipedia to spread anti-Israel views as “established fact.”

To wit: Candice Owens supported an antisemitic claim that the Star of David is used in child sacrifice and black magic, by saying: “If it’s on Wikipedia... it’s an irreversible fact.”

More blatantly, activists have completely hijacked Wikipedia Arabic where every page – over a million articles – displays the Wikipedia logo wrapped in the Palestinian flag. Additionally, the top of every page features a black banner proclaiming “solidarity with the rights of the Palestinian people” and promoting blood libels against the Jewish people: “No to genocide in Gaza... no to killing civilians… no to targeting hospitals and schools...”

Screen capture of Wikipedia Arabic

Why It Matters

This struggle for the “digital narrative” is not merely a PR contest. Misinformation about Israel translates into negative sentiments toward Jews and a rise in antisemitism. Indeed, the Nazi genocide was made possible largely by their propaganda campaign to defame the Jews.

For Israel, the only country in the world whose right to exist is challenged, Wikipedia’s bias exacerbates that existential threat.

As Diana Buttu, former legal advisor to the PLO, remarked: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “a battle over language sometimes more than over anything else.”

This insidious drip, drip, drip – via thousands and thousands of edits – is difficult to detect and even more difficult to reverse. Yet without taking action to combat it, the bias (and its ramifications) will get incrementally worse. AI models will grow in power and scope, and as long as Wikipedia maintains a reputation for objectivity, it will continue to forge the basic narrative.

What to Do About It

On Wikipedia, another drop of history is rewritten every moment. To help reverse this trend:

• Use Wikipedia only as a reference point for primary sources. Research the sources and reach your own logical conclusion.

• Stay alert and consume information with a critical eye. Identify bias and filter it out.

• When you read something that sounds biased, compose your own version of the text in a more fair and balanced way. This is the difference between complaining and constructive criticism.

• If you see something amiss, share it. Make your voice heard. Freedom of information is guaranteed only to those who guard it.

By keeping this issue at the forefront, Wikipedia is put on notice that its credibility will not be taken for granted, and that information channels must not operate unchecked and unrestrained.

Otherwise, humanity could end up, outmaneuvered and manipulated, victims of this jihadi media war.