Wikipedia/Hasbara

Credit to peoplesvoicefor this graphic

Anecdotes and suspicions about Zionist influence in the ongoing Wikipedia project appeared almost from its inception. They became commonplace following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and especially in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead in 2009, when solid evidence of deliberate and well-funded Wikipedia-centred activities on behalf of Zionist Israel started to appear.

This page outlines concrete evidence of such bias. There is evidence of 'Hasbara' orchestration and funding for editing and authoring activity from Israel itself.

Worthy articles preserved by Wikispooks

Articles deleted from Wikipedia

• 2001 Israeli Nerve Gas Attacks Based on the evidence of multiple witnesses, there is good reason to believe that something unusual happened in February and March of 2001 in at least 8 locations in the Gaza strip and the West Bank. A number of foreign observers were killed in the months that followed.

In many cases such as this, editors start good articles on important subjects at Wikipedia and immediate action is taken to delete them. The deletion attempt (AfD in Wikipedia parlance) forces the editor to defend his creation, making it difficult to concentrate and make any improvements, while other editors never get the chance to contribute.

Unlike most of Wikipedia, the contents of these articles is rendered inaccessible. As a result, rather few of these attempts have been preserved and it is particularly important to save such material and share it with others here.

Criticism articles white-washed

• 2001 Israeli art scam & spying concerns. This scam is now relatively famous and may be widespread but in 2000 and 2001 it was only being operated by young Israelis in the US and their methods caused a spying scare. This article survived a deletion attempt but only in a white-washed form, it has been re-written up as if neither the Israeli connection nor the suspicions of spying were significant. Another feature here is that (perhaps in order to poison the discussion atmosphere) the article was wilfully vandalised by a very experienced editor who escaped all censure.

This example demonstrates how good articles full of useful information are systematically edited to remove material from reputable sources (if it does not suit the Zionist aims) and add information from other, often dubious sources. No matter what the topic, the Israeli version must come first and there are constant problems trying to maintain neutral tone and avoid weasel words.

A particular problem is the complete erasure of any mention of pre-1948 existence almost anywhere in articles. Some 400 towns and villages with histories going back 2000 years have practically vanished, at least from articles devoted to their modern day location.

Any Arab or Arab-friendly source is liable to be dubbed a "hate-site" while far worse sources, sometimes with obvious conflict of interest (even settlers themselves) are freely used. Known terrorist groups, provided they're Zionists, receive laudatory mention. A number of obvious Israeli propagandists, even from these groups, are quoted as if they were historians while the views of modern-day propagandists are similarly treated as if they were neutral observers.

Other Hasbara tricks

Policies implemented to advantage Zionism

• Arbitration Committee refuses to defend the Wikipedia naming convention. This May 2009 affair probably marks the end of Wikipedia making any attempt to be even-handed. It concerned whether articles should use "Judea and Samaria" (prefered useage of Israeli settlers and their ideological supporters) or "West Bank". Evidence included some 80 secondary/tertiary sources saying that "Judea and Samaria" are historical or partisan terms and no more than 6 bona fide examples of non-historical and non-partisan use and (without going into detail, but for fairly obvious reasons) the latter does not amount to evidence. Nevertheless, the Arbitration Committee (or ArbCom) refused to make a ruling on encyclopedia policy instead handing out a banning order on 5 of the "West Bank"-supporting editors and 4 of the "Judea and Samaria" editors (two of the latter later found to be sock-puppets of a banned user). The only gain for accuracy of articles was the final exclusion of Jayjg, a notorious ex member of ArbCom, but the loss included almost the last of the scholarly non-Zionists Nishidani, MeteorMaker and G-Dett.
• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Israeli settlements June 2010. An extremist minority (recognised as such even within Israel) was privileged by a single administrator when an attempt to preserve neutrality and use only the internationally accepted wording "Israeli settlement" wins the vote by 25 to 9, but is declared non-binding. These Requests for Comment are a regular feature of Wikipedia but it was a surprise to see disillusioned editors even attempting to operate policy in an neutral fashion as regards Israel-Palestine.

Pro-Zionist articles get admin protection

• Operation Defensive Shield amongst many egregious faults, the Israeli narrative that the atrocity was a response to suicide bombs has been allowed or made to dominate. Started by a Zionist, see the first attempt to introduce a neutral tone here.
• Gaza War - the Israeli narrative is allowed to dominate eg "the war resulted in a tactical battlefield success for Israel and represented a significant tactical defeat for Hamas" with no mention of the much more important strategic consequences. Started by a Zionist, see here.
• Gaza Flotilla Raid - Israeli narrative dominates. Unbelievably, after 10,000+ edits, there is not now a single mention of the valuable Israeli raid on flotilla - review of media sources report collecting all the eye-witness testimony, while there are 8 references to "Israel Navy commandos: Gaza flotilla activists tried to lynch us".

In most Israel-Palestine articles, good material will have been aggressively edited out and poor material introduced. A particular problem is any editing that mentions the pre-Israel population of named locations. At Wikipedia, the refugees simply never existed in what is now Israel.

Outright Hasbara articles

• Pallywood - an article seeking to give legitimacy to an Islamophobic canard, the word itself is of negligible significance in any of the reliable sources. Twice nominated for deletion here and here - slated for re-naming but that has not happened.
• Jewish Internet Defense Force Nominated for deletion here, here and here.

While not very common in Wikipedia, articles like this demonstrate the hypocrisy of deleting far more significant work.

Uncontrolled personal attacks

The survival of articles so obviously trivial as Pallywood and Jewish Internet Defense Force is a measure of the pervasive chill felt by editors due to uncontrolled personal attacks.

Obvious pro-Zionist editor bias

• Time-wasting discussions take up the time of expert editors as non-experts refuse to cooperate to build articles, abide by the principles of Wikipedia or learn anything from what's presented.

Wikipedia treats any suspicion of racism aimed at Jews or Israelis (the terms used interchangeably in most cases) extremely harshly. False accusations of such racism abound, with often serious consequences for quite innocent editors but none for the accusers. Outward shows of pro-Paletinian partisanship are rare, in a few cases they have been treated as excuses for offensive personal comments. In a few cases, offensive racist baiting of (the very few) non-Israeli editors from the Middle East has been tolerated even over the protests of third-parties.

In the meantime, Zionist editors happily decorate their Home Pages with factually dubious defenses of their views, sometimes sinking to the really offensive. There is a picture of a D9 bulldozer (similar to the one under which Rachel Corrie died) with "this machine saved many lives" shown by one editor in apparent good-standing. Two of the very worst examples of really discredited pro-Israel books are shown as "Favourites" on the Home Page of another user.

Known attempts to introduce bias

• CAMERA's Wikilobby and the Boston Globe, April 2008. "Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America" is caught attempting to create administrators who will keep "Israel-related entries on Wikipedia from becoming tainted by anti-Israel editors". See here for an example of the fight-back to defend using such a favourite source and deny what had just been discovered. The listing here identifies articles liable to show bias from just this one source.
• Zionist propaganda body seeks volunteers to distort Wikipedia input on Middle East - thepeoplesvoice.org - 26 November 2009
• Israeli settlers expand campaign to manipulate entries on Wikipedia - IMEC 18 August 2010
• Wikipedia editing courses launched by Zionist groups - The Guardian 18 August 2010.

Despite accusations made at the time of the CAMERA affair, there seems to be no evidence (or indeed reason to suspect) that there has been unwarranted cooperation or collusion or organisation amongst Wikipedia editors tending to be critical of Israel.

External links

• Wikipedia Review This web-site is/was somewhat resented by the Wikipedia community but is not branded as an attack site and editors in good standing sometimes contributed. Once important, WR is now slow-moving but retains considerable historical interest. Some scandal (Essjay affair) some documentation of particularly abusive editors. No discussion of Israel-Palestine or abusive Zionist admins permitted, all replaced with a notice "Moved to the appropriate page, click here" and a dead link.