Wikipedia/Hasbara

Credit to peoplesvoicefor this graphic

Wikipedia is a wonderful idea, brilliantly implemented, but it was always bound to have weaknesses as regards hot topics. Enough biased editors would always be able to skew articles on any particular topic - and nationalist topics are the worst affected. One can find all kinds of head-to-head disputes over, say, small countries in Eastern Europe, where there is lots of news badly covered by professional journalists and hence easily distorted.

In one area, the problem is much more serious, covering far more articles than any other, and that is the Israel-Palestinian topic. Basically, Wikipedia was holed below the waterline as soon as editors such as Jayjg became firm personal friends of Jimbo Wales and set about writing history the way they wanted it to be. Jayjg was eventually told to knock it off, but only after most articles within the topic were heavily contaminated by the activities of him and his numerous cronies, great and small. Towards the end of 2010, one can still see a few very high-quality editors left and a huge amount of the most utter dross, editors who should, in very many cases, have been identified and stopped within days of their first appearance.

The content of this page is intended to demonstrate the bias within Wikipedia brought about, ultimately, by the selective promotion of Zionists such as Jayjg to all administrative roles.

Some of this page is a collection of evidence of the organisation (and funding) behind this manipulation.

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.

Articles under threat of deletion

Before concluding that weeding out is a normal enough activity in any collection, and that it must have been carried out according to some recognised procedure and policy, observe another article that has mountains of strong references:

• Israel and the Apartheid analogy is an article that has survived nine attempts to delete, seven in an almost continuous battering through 2006/7. "Keep" on August 21, 2010, "no consensus" on June 9, 2008, "none" on 3 September 3, 2007, "speedy keep (non-admin closure)" on 26 June 2007, "no consensus" on 19 April 2007 and "keep" on March 29, 2007. Also "no consensus" on August 8, 2006, "speedy keep" on July 15, 2006 and "no consensus" on May 29, 2006. Needless to say, this wastes an enormous amount of time and provided unlimited opportunities for unpunished personal attacks. Please take a copy of the contents of this article now for the day when the deletionists succeed.

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.

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. The point at issue was whether articles should use "Judea and Samaria" (prefered useage of Israeli settlers and their ideological supporters) or "West Bank" the prefered useage of almost everyone else. Evidence presented 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 Zionist and member of the upper circles at WP) from Israel/Palestine articles.
• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Israeli settlements June 2010. An attempt to preserve neutrality and use primarily the internationally accepted wording "Israeli settlement" (rather than Israeli town/village) for Jewish building on Palestinian land won a vote of editors by 25 to 9. However, the extremist minority (even within Israel) was privileged by a declaration that the consensus reached was non-binding.

Both of these cases concern naming conventions, which should be relatively easy to arbitrate over. The much bigger problem, and one we're similarly expected to believe cannot be arbitrated for, is the exclusion of good sources and the inclusion of poor ones. With a constant supply of new and obviously biased editors, and savage enforcement for "edit-warring" and other offences (sometimes invented) against non-Zionists, it is no surprise many articles adhere so strongly to the Israeli narrative.

Historical period chosen to favor Zionist narrative

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.

Strong preference for Zionist sources

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 groups once labelled terrorists by the Israelis themselves, are quoted as if they were historians while the views of modern-day propagandists are similarly treated as if they were neutral observers.

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

Articles like the following demonstrate the hypocrisy with which deletion is applied, when much more valuable and significant work is often lost.

• Pallywood - an article seeking to give legitimacy to an Islamophobic canard. The word itself is of negligible significance in reliable sources and has reasonably been described as an "ethnic slur". Unsuccessfully nominated for deletion here, a second attempt here ended in an administrator saying it needed to be renamed, which has not been done.
• Jewish Internet Defense Force, a FaceBook group. Nominated for deletion here, here and here. Wikipedia publicises and gives credibility to an "attack" group that puts POV into Wikipedia articles.
• Arabs for Israel - what appears to be one woman and her blog gets two entire Wikipedia articles, that one and this. Her writing and speaking on her departure from Islam and her personal views on Israel can at best be no more than interesting. Meanwhile, real scholars of the Middle East, researching and publishing on affairs that greatly improve our understanding of issues, get no such adulatory over-attention. (Please correct me at "Discussion" via the tab at the top if I've missed anything).

It is necessary to mention that in a few cases non-Zionists have sought to delete Zionist-narrative articles on various grounds, usually of racism, here "Racism in the Palestinian territories" is nominated on the grounds of irredeemably bad-writing.

• Delete: Racism in the Palestinian territories A quick check shows that the reference list (standing at 52 entries) of "Racism in the Palestinian territories" seems totally dominated by sources liable to make accusations, many of them on entirely ideological grounds (ie they have no obvious even-handed interest in "human rights"). For comparison, there are 112 references at Racism in Israel, at least 90% from similarly biased sources more likely to defend against accusations. (This Aug 2010 deletion attempt is a bit of a mystery, there seems no possibility of it succeeding).

Also present, though again perhaps not in great numbers, are articles that exclude discussion that typically make Zionists feel uncomforatable - here is an example:

• Anti-Zionism is an article that appears to de-legitimise the views of an enormous part of world-opinion which is supportive of Zionism (according to many or all of the usual definitions) but is critical of Israel in ways that could or have been described as anti-Israel. The article opens with "Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel". The word Israel appears often enough (143 times) while the word/phrases "anti Israel", "antiIsrael" and "anti-Israel" do not appear. As pointed out here, searches for the terms "Anti-Israel" and "Anti-Israel movements" are re-directed to anti-Zionism, tending to mislead the casual reader into supposing that all criticism of Israel is "denial of its right to exist".

Uncontrolled personal attacks

The survival of articles so obviously trivial as the Facebook group Jewish Internet Defense Force or actively offensive, such as Pallywood (immediately above) is a measure of the pervasive chill felt by editors due to uncontrolled personal attacks. Because all your contributions can be viewed, mud-slinging suffered at minor articles just draws unwelcome attention to more important articles one is trying to write or improve elsewhere. It sometimes seems as if Wiki-stalking is not a punishable offence when non-Zionists are the victims.

• Discussing Reliable Sources and MEMRI (a translation service operated by ex-military Israelis) draws a pointless imputation of bigotry from an administrator.

Time-wasting arguments against all sense

• Founding myths of Israel See what you think - this May 2010 discussion appears to be an example of time-wasting arguments being used to advantage hasbara - on a discussion concerning time-wasting arguments being used to advantage hasbara.

The complaining editor claims that one of the fundamental principles of the encyclopedia is ignored over what he calls the "Founding myths of Israel". In a number of cases, he believes there are articles that "recite well-known Zionist viewpoints in the neutral voice of the encyclopedia". He believes this effect is achieved by censoring even the works of Israeli authors Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Eugene Rogan, and Benny Morris from articles (we might take this to imply that the situation for non-Israeli authors is much worse again). The complaining editor quotes published Wikipedia policy as saying "articles should describe all significant views in accordance with their prominence, and fairly weight the authority accorded each view in the relevant scholarly community with the aim of providing neutral, encyclopedic coverage about the issues and the positions of all the interested parties".

The complaining editor produces evidence that these Israeli authors are indeed well respected authorities. The editor claims that edits incorporating their views (in many cases from books published by Routledge, Cambridge University, and MacMillan-Palgrave) are subject to "reverts and bizarre claims that the authors of the textbooks are misquoting sources, lying, promoting fringe theories that are out-of-the-mainstream, or have nothing new or interesting to say on the subject". The complaining editor wishes to see "a project where we can cite the material in my college-aged kid's Middle East Studies textbook"

It should be noted that the opposing editor in this case, making what might be seen as "time-wasting arguments" is a top Wikipedian, a "reviewer" and has completed a massive 34,000 edits. He may have completely escaped censure all this time except for quite an extreme incident of persistently describing an Islamic scholar as "that asshole" and a "bloodthirsty hatemongering racist" in breach of WP:BLP (ie policy on "Biographies of Living People"). The one editor coming to his support on that occasion is being strongly linked to off-wiki collusion here as I write, result not known.

The prolonged discussion brings up other alleged distortions in articles and, on this occasion, the time-waster (a very experienced editor, remember) ends his participation on this page with what can only be called a rant and an odd reference to what may be the complaining editor's real life. The page in question is intended for calm discussions on "collaboration" between editors of opposing view-points - what chance of this when editors of supposed "good-standing" can behave like this?

Obvious pro-Zionist editor bias

Wikipedia admins (some of them proudly Zionist) are extremely harsh on any suspicion of racism aimed at Jews or Israelis (the terms commonly treated as interchangable). This serves a double-purpose - when a particular phrase is used almost exclusively by Zionists (in some cases, not even that, the settler minority and their supporters not supported by most Israelis) then pointing this out can be used as an excuse for stopping sensible discussion with accusations of racism. "Poisoning the well" it is called at Wikipedia and it's easily recognised - partisan enforcement makes it just another weapon in the arsenal of Zionist editors against non-Zionist editors.

False accusations of this kind of bias/racism against Israelis abound, with often serious consequences for quite innocent editors but eg here none for the accusers. (On that occasion the accuser was a fairly obvious, and previously-caught sock-puppet of a user in the CAMERA case but was still allowed to make over 2000 mostly prejudicial edits before ejection).

Outward shows of pro-Paletinian partisanship are rare and may be treated as reason for offensive personal comments. In a few cases, offensive racist baiting of (the rather 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" displayed on the Home Page of one editor who remains 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 editor in good standing.

Some of the most notorious editors have eventually been restricted but the damage they do in terms of driving away the honest is considerable. Other such editors, perhaps because they can afford (are funded?) to travel to Wiki-meets all over the world and engage other editors, seem beyond any meaningful sanctions.

Known attempts to organise editing

• CAMERA's Wikilobby and it's downfall is described in the Boston Globe, April 2008. The "Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America" was caught attempting to create administrators who will keep "Israel-related entries on Wikipedia from becoming tainted by anti-Israel editors".[1] The battle against hasbara from this source is by no means over - see here, part of the fight-back to defend using such a favourite source and deny the trickery attempted. See here for a typical (and entirely unwarranted) attack on the outside source that provided the evidence to expose CAMERA's tricks.
• Israel Foreign Ministry e-mailed helpers in January 2009 with a listing of talking points on the Gaza Massacre (or "Operation Cast Lead" as they want us to call it).
• The Israel Project’s 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY is a hasbara manual from Dr. Frank Luntz, April 2009. Full of gems such as "Persuadables won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Show Empathy for BOTH sides!"
• The Foreign Ministry presents: talkbackers in the service of the State, 5 July 2009. "Members of the new unit will work at the Ministry ("They will punch a card," says Shturman) and enjoy the full technical support of Tahila, the government’s ISP".
• 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 and Wikipedia editing courses launched by Zionist groups, The Guardian 18 August 2010. The unusual double-blocking here on 21st August 2010 may be linked, lots of links to Wikibias and other.

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. A close look at the listing here shows no evidence of weeding articles tainted, if not overwhelmed, with Zionist propaganda.

Hasbara since 1977 and earlier

The Wikipedia article on hasbara reminds us that Wikipedia is only the latest target, Israel has been funding these efforts for a long time. The WP article is misleadingly entitled "Public diplomacy (Israel)" but contains much interesting information on past efforts since 1977, when recently elected Likud Prime Minister (and famous fascist and ex-terrorist), Menachem Begin chose ex-terrorist Shmuel Katz to become "Adviser to the Prime Minister of Information Abroad". Katz had already earned the title "the father of hasbara in America" with the publication of "Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine in 1973". The book was then said to be "an encyclopedic source-book for those involved in Israel's hasbara (public relations) effort".

Hasbara successfully resisted

In June 2010, respected blogger Mondoweiss detailed these examples of hasbara successfully resisted. He says "One of the most striking trends following the flotilla attack has been how quickly Israeli hasbara has been exposed and discredited by internet journalists. Robert Mackey has a post on the Times Lede blog highlighting some examples today - Max Blumenthal's reporting on the doctored IDF audio of the attack and Noam Sheizaf's work on Turkish photos of the Mavi Marmara attack which contradict IDF claims. To these two I would add Lia Tarachansky and Blumenthal's work disproving the IDF's claim that the flotilla was linked to Al Qaeda, Jared Malsin's work confirming the doctored audio, and Ali Abunimah, who has been in the lead on many of these stories and lately has been reconstructuing the path of the Mavi Marmara to show it was actually fleeing at the time of the Israeli attack. All of this has appeared on the internet and are helping to shape the story, despite the Israeli Foreign Ministry's best efforts".

External links

• Hasbara Fellowships is an organization that sends students to Israel and trains them to be "effective pro-Israel activists on their campuses". Started in 2001 in New York in conjunction with the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They claim to have trained nearly 2,000 students on over 220 North American campuses. More details at the Wikipedia article linked.
• 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.
• Wikipedia editing courses launched by Zionist groups The Guardian 18 August 2010
• Wikipedia Watch Interesting critical information about Wikipedia
• WikiScanner A tool which consists of a publicly searchable database that links millions of anonymous edits on the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia to the organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on the owners of the associated block of IP addresses. It does not work on edits done using a user-name and so its usefulness is limited to attempts at anonymous editing and content production. It is a VERY useful forensic tool.

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