Wikipedia/Hasbara
Wikipedia was widely recognised as being heavily dominated and biased towards Israel even before evidence of deliberate and well-funded interference started to appear.
This content of this page concerns the bias within Wikipedia brought about, most probably, by the selective promotion of Zionists 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
In many cases, 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 preserve such material and share it with others here.
Criticism articles white-washed
- 2001 Israeli art scam & spying concerns - this particular case is perhaps notable because the article was wilfully vandalised by a very experienced editor who escaped all censure.
In other cases, good articles full of useful information are swamped by edits inserting weasel words and replacing good information with bad.
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) is privileged 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. Once a regular feature of Wikipedia, such battles are becoming uncommon as editors become disillusioned.
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 correct the bias here.
- Gaza War - Israeli narrative dominates eg "the war resulted in a tactical battlefield success for Israel and represented a significant tactical defeat for Hamas", 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 many cases, articles are started as white-washes of particular Zionist or Israeli actions and good material is aggressively editted out. There are so many of these that no attempt has been made to list them.
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.
External links
- 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
- CAMERA's Wikilobby scheme rumbled in April 2008. A blatant attempt to undermine all entries by creating biased administrators. Despite accusations, there is no reason to think anything like this, or indeed any significant collusion, has ever happened amongst non-Zionists.
- 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.
