Wikipedia’s Antisemitism

Wikipedia’s co-founder, Jimmy Wales, has declared that an entry on his crowd-sourcing online encyclopedia site is so egregiously anti-Israel that it “fails to meet our high standards and needs immediate attention.” Despite his alarm, over a week has gone by without any change.

Wikipedia operates much like a traditional encyclopedia, providing detailed information about a dizzying array of facts. Its genius lies in allowing virtually anyone to create or edit an entry, add and hone information, and provide new sources in the form of copious footnotes.  According to Wikipedia itself, the site currently features over 7 million entries, and that number is expanding rapidly, by about 15,000 each month.  Wikipedia’s own guidelines demand that content be “neutral” and present both sides of contentious arguments.

Though adding to the site is open to anyone, Wikipedia editors like Wales can freeze certain pages if they believe they are being abused, contain falsehoods, or contain abusive language.  In freezing his entry on the so-called “Gaza genocide,” Wales noted it is a “particularly egregious example” of slander masquerading as fact and “requires immediate correction.”

The “Gaza genocide” article begins by declaring that the “Gaza genocide is the ongoing, intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel….”  It hews closely to the UN’s definition of genocide, falsely alleging that Israel is engaging in each and every action categorized as genocide by the UN.

With nearly 500 footnotes – many from highly biased sources such as Al Jazeera and BBC Arabic, which a recent report found parroted Hamas propaganda – the entry is a tsunami of misinformation and hate.  Filled with inaccuracies (for example, falsely asserting “Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip began in 1967” without noting that Israel pulled out of Gaza - abandoning homes, communities, Jewish-owned farms, even uprooting Jewish burial grounds - in 2005), the entry is filled with slanderous claims that have been widely debunked (for instance that 70% of casualties in Gaza were civilians). The entry notes the widespread destruction of hospitals in Gaza, but nowhere says that Hamas battalions operated with impunity within them.  It contains salacious claims that Israeli soldiers tortured and murdered civilians - including babies - with sadistic abandon - and cites Hamas (or news outlets that platform Hamas) as its “sources.”

This slanderous entry remains unchanged. Worse, Wikipedia’s “Gaza genocide” entry is just one of many troubling examples of entries that spread false and harmful slanders about Jews and Israel.  A recent Anti-Defamation League (ADL) report found this is no accident: a group of over two dozen hostile editors seems to be engaging in coordinated efforts to make Wikipedia a place that is hostile to Israel and Jews and spreads hatred and lies about the Jewish state.

Group of 30 Anti-Israel Editors

“ADL has found clear evidence that a group of at least 30 editors circumvent Wikipedia’s policies in concert to introduce antisemitic narratives, anti-Israel bias, and misleading information,” the ADL found in a landmark 2025 report.  Examining editor activity over the past ten years, the ADL found that the 30 anti-Israel editors who are working in concert are more than twice as likely as other volunteer editors to alter Wikipedia entries, and are 18 times more likely to talk to each other in Wikipedia editorial forums than other groups of editors.

“The editors appeared to coordinate to change pages related to Israel, Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, downplaying Palestinian antisemitism, violence, and calls to destroy Israel while foregrounding criticism of Israel.”  ADL researchers found that these “bad-faith editors” increased their activity following Hamas’ deadly October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, including: “The systematic removal of citations to reputable sources and tandem voting (in discussion forums of Wikipedia editors) to keep content critical of Israel but remove coverage of Palestinian violence and terrorism.”

The ADL found examples on Wikipedia’s Arabic-language version of “biased and extremist content”, including pro-Hamas content.

Iranian and Irish Anti-Israel Fanatics

These findings echo an earlier warning by tech writer Ashley Rindsberg, who noted in 2024 that two distinct groups of Wikipedia editors seemed determined to insert anti-Israel, pro-Hamas and pro-Iranian content throughout Wikipedia’s platform.  He puts the number of bad-faith actors at Wikipedia even higher, at about 40 total.

The first group of anti-Israel editors vandalizing Wikipedia’s Israel and Jewish related entries appears to be Iranian.  (Wikipedia editors use pseudonyms, though several of these one-word pseudonyms appear to be Iranian names).  In early 2024, they were joined by a second, Irish-led group of editors.  This second effort was led by Paul Biggar, an Irish tech executive who founded “Tech For Palestine” (TFP), a hard-core advocacy group dedicated to anti-Zionism, three months after Hamas’ October 7 attack.

TFP recruited Wikipedia editors on the Discord messaging system.  “In the channel, two group leaders, Samira and Samer, coordinated with other members to mass edit a number of (Israel-related) articles.  The effort included recruiting volunteers, processing them through formal orientation, troubleshooting issues, and holding remote office hours to problem solve and ideate.  The channel’s welcome message posed a revealing question: ‘Why Wikipedia?  It is a widely accessed resource, and its content influences public perception.”  TFP’s main point person for Wikipedia edits is a long-time Wikipedia contributor who goes by Ivana, and whose banner on Discord features a red triangle, used since October 7, 2023 as a symbol of Hamas.

Rindsberg notes that these groups’ “efforts are remarkably successful.  Type ‘Zionism’ into Wikipedia’s search box and, aside from the main article on Zionism…the auto-fill returns: ‘Zionism as settler colonialism,’ ‘Zionism in the Age of Dictators’ (a book by a pro-Palestinian Trotskyite), ‘Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims,’ and ‘Racism in Israel.’  The aggregate effect of these efforts is a wholesale shift to the language of the Palestine-Israel topic online.”

Insidious Anti-Jewish and Anti-Israel Slanders

The result is that much of Wikipedia is now a cesspool of antisemitism and anti-Israel lies.  The examples are too numerous to count.  Here are just a few examples.

• Wikipedia now has an entry titled “Jewish Supremacy” which asserts it “is the belief that Jewish people are superior to non-Jews.”  (There are no comparable entries on “Arab Supremacy” or “Muslim Supremacy” - nor on Buddhist or Hindu Supremacy, despite widespread religious-based strife between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar and Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka and ongoing violence between Hindus and Muslims in India.)
• An entry on “Israeli Apartheid” falsely asserts that apartheid exists in Israel.
• The entry “Well poisoning” falsely states that Israel poisoned the wells of Arab communities during its 1948 War of Independence, and continues to do so today, echoing age-old antisemitic tropes that Jews poison the wells of non-Jews.
• An entry titled “Palestinian Genocide Accusation” falsely claims that “Since it’s foundation in 1948, Israel has been accused of carrying out genocide against Palestinians….”  (Shockingly, an entry detailing Hamas’ genocidal attack on October 7, 2023 has a more nuanced title: “Allegations of genocide in October 7 attacks.”)
• Wikipedia’s entry “Al Ahli Arab Hospital Explosion” describes the October 17, 2023 explosion in the hospital, which was found to be the fault of a faulty missile that Palestinian Islamic Jihad was trying to launch into Israel, and which caused heavy casualties.  Initial media reports around the world blamed Israel but subsequent analysis by American, British, Canadian, French, and Israeli intelligence services - and media analysis - found that the missile was fired from within Gaza. The entry falsely insinuates that Israel launched the missile, inaccurately claiming: “The cause of the explosion is contested.”
• One particularly active Wikipedia editor, who goes by Iskandar323, has changed Wikipedia’s entry on “Jews” to remove the “Land of Israel” from a description of how the Jewish people originated.  He also altered the article’s short summary, which appears on mobile versions.  Instead of calling Jews an “Ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant” to an “Ethnoreligious group and cultural community” with no mention of their origins in the Middle East.
• Iskandar323 has also removed descriptions of Hamas’ 1988 founding charter, which calls for the murder of all Jews across the globe as well as the annihilation of Israel, in at least four articles, including Wikipedia’s “Hamas” entry.  (Instead, the “Hamas” entry states “the 1988 Hamas charter was widely described as antisemitic,” without explaining why.)

“Swarming” Wikipedia

Anti-Israel editors can get away with making major changes to Wikipedia by making so many edits that the site’s few professional editors cannot keep up.  Rindsberg explains that to “expand his reach, Iskandar…goes on editing rampages….  Last August, he removed 22,000 characters from the article on Amnesty International that were critical of the organization, in one case wholesale deleting a 1,000-word long passage related to criticism of its stance on Israel.  On the ‘History of Israel’ article, Iskandar deleted a paragraph critical of the Iranian government; removed an account of 16th century Jewish immigration to Israel; excised a mention of the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem’s alliance with Hitler, and made dozens of similar edits - all in a matter of minutes.”

Iskandar isn’t the only editor to do this.  He (or she) and dozens of other editors coordinate their anti-Israel tactics, overwhelming Wikipedia’s ability to monitor its entries and ensure the vaunted neutrality that originally made Wikipedia a valuable site.

Spreading Harm

These myriad small, nearly undetectable, yet insidious changes leave us with a seriously degraded Wikipedia - and with antisemitism and anti-Zionism sentiment on the rise.

Wikipedia estimates that it has 500 million unique views each month.  It’s the first port of call for students, professionals, and casual browsers who want to look up items quickly and easily.  That’s what makes the present coordinated assault on Jews and Israel so dangerous.  With antisemitism at an all-time high across much of the world, we desperately need independent, neutral sources of real information to help us educate ourselves and others.  It’s incredibly tragic and dangerous that Wikipedia is being vandalized in this way.

Jimmy Wales is taking a sensible first step by freezing further editing of one inflammatory entry.  Yet his actions are merely a drop in the ocean.  With millions of entries on Wikipedia, and a dedicated force trying to insert anti-Jewish content, it will take a dedicated army of editors determined to uphold Wikipedia’s standards of neutrality and high-quality information to undo the damage.