The Wikipedia Flood's Latest Claim: An Invasion by Pro-Israel Automatons

Beware of the pro-Israel automatons

Back in August I described how Wikipedia's highest tribunal, its "Arbitration Committee," had begun to consider if it would deal with infighting in the "Israel-Palestine" topic area. With great reluctance, it decided in November to begin a case. 

The Wikipedia Flood—the Hamasniks and antisemites who control articles on everything related to Israel—is of course anxious to turn the proceedings in its favor. They have done so largely through three tactics:

1. They deflect through meaningless charts and tables designed to "quantify" that your lying eyes deceive you, that vast stretches of Wikipedia haven't become systematically slanted against Israel. This can be an effective tactic, because Wikipedia editors are often nerds, easily swayed by charts and statistics.

2. They've claimed that "sockpuppeting" by pro-Israel people is the real problem, even though this crude tactic is easily caught and has no lasting impact on the articles.  

Meaningless 'data' is a Flood favorite

3. Lastly we have the Flood's latest gambit. They are contending that the problem is you. Yes you, the reader of this blog and other critical coverage of Wikipedia's anti-Israel bias! If that is, you are a Wikipedia editor. In which case you should be drummed out of the site, based purely on edits that maybe, possibly, align with external criticism of Wikipedia.

There is a lot of criticism of Wikipedia on multiple websites, such as the largely anti-Israel "Wikipediocracy," which has entire sections aimed at influencing content, but that doesn't bother them. 

The Flood is claiming that the very act of reading the coverage that has come out in recent months about how dreadful Wikipedia has become—including this blog, Aaron Bandler's fine articles the Pirate Wires piece by Ashley Rindsberg, and reams of other coverage—turns you into a mindless automaton carrying out "tasks," even if you've been editing Wikipedia for years and are a reasonably sentient human being.  

Don't believe me. Just look at what they've written.

In a "workshop" page associated with the Arbcom case, Wikipedia Flood regular "Sean.Hoyland" (who is not a party to the case despite his years of hammering away at hundreds of articles) pursued that theme at length in several posts, including this one:

I don't know whether "editing influenced by outside suggestions" is prohibited or allowed. There are a lot of external actors trying to exert an influence over Wikipedia content every day. They are not part of the community, and they are not sanctionable. Should editors be allowed to participate in those campaigns/influence operations by executing the tasks they assign? To me it makes no difference whether the editor agrees or disagrees with the objective of the task or whether that external party's view is consistent or inconsistent with Wikipedia's policy. It's about whether there is a firewall between what happens on wiki and what happens off-wiki. 

Note what I've put in boldface. Coverage is spun as "tasks" that, if "executed," contaminate Wikipedia like a computer virus that requires a "firewall." 

By this logic, the existence of outside news coverage  and criticism of Wikipedia is the problem, not the contents of that coverage and criticism.

How do we know that a Wikipedia editor has been programmed into a robot, carrying out the commands of nefarious forces? Sean.Hoyland sets forth the criteria as follows:

What you can observe is the external 'change x to y' task, whether it was actioned, and the parties involved. You can then ask questions about the nature of the source that created the task and the objective of the task e.g. is the source a supporter of an organization that carries out acts of mass violence against civilians like ISIS, the Assad regime, the Israeli military, Hamas' military wing, the Russian military, and is the objective consistent with the [Wikipedia] Universal Code of Conduct that prohibits "systematically manipulating content to favour specific interpretations of facts or points of view". For me, it is not about what current policy says. Current policy doesn't work. It's about making sure bad actors who shouldn't be anywhere near Wikipedia content have zero impact on content.

As spun by Sean.Hoyland, criticism of Wikipedia's anti-Israel slant becomes, again, a "task," and coverage favoring Israeli military is put on a par with ISIS, the Assad regime, Hamas and Putin. That, he claims, falls afoul of Wikipedia's "universal code of conduct," so therefore such people (meaning you, by reading this blog) are "bad actors" who "shouldn't be anywhere near Wikipedia content" and must "have zero impact on content."

While Sean.Hoyland clearly has no problem with Wikipedia criticism sites in general, only the ones that expose the Wikipedia Flood, his position, if adopted, would make all Wikipedia criticism sites off-limits to Wikipedia editors. This has resulted in some pushback on the anti-Israel Wikipediocracy website.

I should point out here that Sean.Hoyland is a veteran anti-Israel operative whose activities were documented as far back as 2019 and has been mentioned in this blog several times, mainly for producing the meaningless "data" and charts I mentioned above.

That's the Wikipedia Flood's Arbcom game plan. True, this "coverage=tasks" gambit is a sign of desperation, an indication of how much they hate, loathe and despise outside attention to their exploits, but don't underestimate them. They are sophisticated and, I believe, professional operatives who do this for a living.

Their claims may seem phantasmagorical or simply idiotic, but remember that they do a superb job of getting their way, and there's no reason Arbcom won't be swayed by their smorgasbord of deflection, bogus "data" and lies. 

After all, some Arbcom members use their real names. Would you want to antagonize pro-Hamas editors, whose supporters and sponsors can only be surmised, if they knew who you were? 

All one can say with certainty is that even if Arbcom wants to curb the Flood, which is far from certain, it would be an uneven situation. They are overworked, often non-anonymous volunteers facing off against anonymous propagandists. It's no contest. In such a situation the determined, singleminded operatives will always get their way. 

How Wikipedia Weaponizes Antisemitism—Against Jews

'Weaponization of Antisemitism' as created by the veteran anti-Israel operative 'Onceinawhile'

In this blog I've documented how antisemites weaponize Jew-hate in the pages of Wikipedia, turning "encyclopedia articles" into anti-Israel and often antisemitic screeds. But did you know that Wikipedia has an article devoted to how antisemitism is weaponized?

Of course, this being Wikipedia, the article does not detail how antisemitism is weaponized against Jews by the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, but rather by Jews against nice people who aren't antisemites. 

The article, titled "Weaponization of antisemitism," was created last Dec. 31 by the veteran anti-Israel propagandist "Onceinawhile." The article was initially illustrated with a cartoon by Carlos Latuff, notorious for employing "classic antisemitic tropes." 

That was, of course, the point of the article—to exonerate Jew-haters like Latuff, by pointing out that those antisemitic tropes he uses aren't antisemitic tropes at all, but rather "criticism of Israel."  

The article, which now looks like this, has since jettisoned its Latuff cartoon, but the polemical point remains. The lead paragraph of the article currently reads as follows:

The exploitation of accusations of antisemitism, especially to counter anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel,^[1] may be described as weaponization of antisemitism, instrumentalization of antisemitism, or playing the antisemitism card.^[2] Bad-faith accusations against Israel's critics have been called a form of smear tactics.^[3] Some writers have compared them to playing the race card.^[4][5]

The article goes on in that vein, with sourcing that relies heavily on anti-Zionist writers like Noam Chomsky and anti-Israel screeds with titles like "Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom," and "Enforcing Silence: Academic Freedom, Palestine and the Criticism of Israel."  

There are of course, no articles on Wikipedia with titles like "Weaponization of Islamophobia" or "Weaponization of racism."  

"Onceinawhile," the author of the article, has been around for 14 years and is one of the most prolific anti-Israel editors on Wikipedia. Long before pro-Hamas propagandist descended on Wikipedia en masse after Oct. 7, 2023, "Onceinawhile" was gaining recognition for his agenda, which is to minimize, justify and erase antisemitism. 

He was listed as the "No. 5 Anti-Israel Editor" by "Israel Group" researchers in 2019, when he was singled out for downplaying the severity of antisemitic pogroms: "Onceinawhile is one of the primary participants in systematically removing 'pogrom' from Wikipedia and replacing it with other terms, usually 'riots.'"

British investigative journalist David Collier described Onceinawhile's tactics back in December 2020, in the article  "Exclusive - Project Wiki - how Wikipedia is breeding an army of antisemites." 

Collier pointed out that Onceinawhile:

• Edited the Wiki page on the murderous 1945 anti-Jewish riots in Egypt by adding a single sentence – that the Prime Minister of Egypt blamed the Zionists for provoking the attacks.
• Tried and failed to have the page on the expulsion of Egyptian Jews deleted.
• Edited the page on ‘refugees’. This was an interesting edit. The section on Jewish refugees (which this user edited) is all about how politicised the argument is, how Israel wanted the refugees and the possibility of Zionist false flag attacks. The section immediately above it is all about Palestinian refugees – there is no mention of politicisation and the focus is almost exclusively (and errantly) on forced expulsion. The page was eventually cleaned up – but the insertion about politicisation stuck and is visible on other Wiki Jewish refugee pages (see here).
• Created the page about Ben Gurion’s letter to his son in 1937. The page was weighted to imply that Ben Gurion had stated his intention to expel the Arabs. Placing the original page alongside the current version highlights the problem of correcting bias – whilst individual attempts can be made over time to clean up the entry – the pillar of the page, the very bias with which it was created, remains intact. 

More recently, Onceinawhile was featured in Ashley Rindsberg's Pirate Wires investigation, which described how he was among the most productive anti-Israel editors, frequently acting in collaboration with a hard core of other anti-Israel operatives: 

 As of time of publication, Nableezy and Onceinawhile have co-edited 1,418 articles. Nableezy and Iskandar323 1,429 co-edited articles. Onceinawhile and Zero0000 have co-edited 2,119 articles. Zero000 and Nableezy have co-edited 1,754 articles. Onceinawhile and Iskandar323 have 1,594 co-edited. Huldra and Onceinawhile have co-edited articles 2,493 times. Nableezy and Huldra have co-edited 1,764 times.

At the time he probed Onceinawhile four years ago, Collier pointed out that he "has made over 32000 edits on Wikipedia. The mistake would be in thinking this is an exceptional case."

The edit count is now over 50,000, and Onceinawhile has not been impeded one bit by Wikipedia's vaunted processes, which claim to promote a "neutral point of view" that does not exist in articles relating to Jews and Israel.

Indeed, in August 2024, "Onceinawhile" created a Wikipedia article titled "Masada myth," describing how a well-documented historical event, the Siege of Masada, is a lot of hooey dreamed up by those horrible Israelis to justify their illegitimate state.

It goes without saying that "Onceinawhile" is not a party to the Arbitration Committee proceedings that were recently commenced to examine the "Palestine-Israel" subject area.

Wikipedia's Highest Court Timidly Confronts the Anti-Israel Mob

 

The rape denier 'Huldra' is not a party to the 'arbcom' case

In August I described how Wikipedia's so-called "Arbitration Committee," the website's highest tribunal, had begun considering if it would deal with the Wikipedia Flood. At the time I was downbeat.

In my blog item, I opined that while action against the Flood was possible, it was "more likely either nothing meaningful will happen, or the outcome will be a net positive for the 'Wikipedia Flood' of pro-Hamas editors, who are accustomed to gaming the system for their own ends."

So far my initial view has been borne out. While there was a positive development, it is far less than meets the eye.

The positive development is that last week, arbcom took action against editors involved in the effort by anti-Israel operatives to coordinate their actions offsite. 

That's good news. The bad news is that they did so because they had to, and what they did was limited and grudging.  

Back in August I broke the story of the "Tech for Palestine" offsite propaganda effort, and followed up with this blog item describing how the pro-Hamas crew covered its tracks. 

Arbcom had to take action, but not because of my blog. Blogs can be ignored, but news articles are another matter. Tech for Palestine was a centerpiece of Ashley Rindsberg's excellent article in Pirate Wires. That and the constant stream of articles in Jewish Journal by Aaron Bandler, who has been on the Wikipedia bias story for months, prodded arbcom to act on this blatant violation of Wikipedia rules. 

Their action was limited and ineffectual. 

A grand total of one editor was kicked off the site. That was "Ïvana," who was the "resident expert" in charge of the propagandizing effort.

But other pro-Hamas editors involved in the offsite effort were merely "topic banned." This kind of "canvassing" flies in the face of Wikipedia rules, totally perverting the site's ethos by rigging the game, and pro-Israel editors involved in such efforts in the past have been sitebanned. But the pro-Hamas editors, by contrast, were treated with kid gloves.

Even worse: arbcom has, so far at least, omitted from the case some of the most vicious anti-Israel editors. 

Among the non-parties is the longtime, trash-talking pro-Hamas activist Nishidani and the creepy antisemite Huldra, notorious for her disgusting claim that 10/7 rape victim Na'ama Levy, photographed with blood on her crotch, was "having a period." 

Huldra was never even given as much as a wrist slap for that depraved comment. Nor is anything likely to happen to this editor because she is not even a party to the proceedings.

If any action is taken against the few pro-Hamas editors listed as parties, it is likely to be "balanced' in cowardly fashion by action against innocent editors who have sought to curb their influence.

I may be proven wrong, but wagering on another triumph by the Wikipedia Flood is always a safe bet.

UPDATE: Nishidani was added as a party. But the rape denier Huldra? Nope.

When It Comes to anti-Zionist Poison, Wikipedia is 'The Encyclopedia NOBODY Can Edit'

 

Don't you dare remove that foul lie from the Wikipedia Zionism article.

It's not a revelation to point out that when it comes to Zionism, Wikipedia is as chilly as a Mt. Everest base camp. But it's actually worse than most people realize. Worse than even I realized, and I broke the story of how the Wikipedia Zionism article had been turned into anti-Zionist propaganda by the "Wikipedia Flood" of Israel-hating editors.

On Sept. 13, an administrator added to the article a "hidden note" decreeing that a sloppily worded, poorly sourced nugget of anti-Zionist propaganda—Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible—was henceforth baked into the first paragraph of the article.  

That sentence, which accuses Israel's founders of ethnic cleansing in Wikipedia's voice, unattributed, is there to stay. And if you don't like it you can pound sand or, even less productively, you can argue it out on the "talk" page of the article, which is tightly controlled by anti-Zionist editors.

The wording of that untouchable sentence has been widely derided as making a mockery of history. 

In his excellent Jewish Journal article on the Zionism article, journalist Aaron Bandler pointed out that this sentence was described as "false" by Middle East historian Asaf Romirowsky, who heads Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the Association for Study in the Middle East and North Africa. 

And in my blog item I pointed out:

The sourcing of that and other anti-Zionist statements includes a long roster of anti-Zionists. The sourcing of the statement cited above include anti-Israel extremists such as Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, infamous for his support of terrorism, all quoted at length in a footnote. 

Prof. Romirowsky elaborated in the Jewish Journal article that before Israel was established, “the Jewish community was willing to accept whatever proposal was offered to them, even the desolate land itself, just the idea of having a homeland.”

Pretty bad, huh? Well don't try to fix it. When it comes to articles in what Wikipedia calls the "Palestine-Israel area," editors must have 500 edits and at least thirty days under their belts before they can edit. But not even that helps when it comes to that false statement. As a practical matter, for that sentence Wikipedia is the "encyclopedia nobody can edit." 

The "hidden note" in the lead of the Zionism article

In an action that received little attention outside Wikipedia, on Sept. 13, a volunteer administrator, ScottishFinnishRadish, inserted a "hidden note," invisible to the public but viewable by editors seeking to edit the article, essentially acknowledging the Wikipedia Flood's ownership of that passage. 

His (or her?) hidden note reads:

The following text is the result of consensus on the talk page. Changes to the text have been challenged and any further edits to the sentence should be discussed on the talk page and consensus obtained to change. 

Since "consensus" is the Holy Grail of Wikipedia, anyone trying to change it without "talking it out" on the stacked-deck "talk page" will find that, at a minimum, he or she is wasting his or her time, and risks getting tossed out of Wikipedia or otherwise flogged. 

That was precisely the fate of an editor who raised the issue on the "talk page" a few days ago. He is being shot down in flames, and the "hidden note" has of course been cited. Like all discussions in this topic area, this one is going on and on and on.

What makes all this even more Orwellian is that the hidden note was not the work of one of the anonymous anti-Israel operatives of what I call the "Wikipedia Flood," who work 24/7, successfully, to turn Wikipedia into an anti-Israel propaganda machine.

Ironically ScottishFinnishRadish is actually one of the better administrators willing to venture into this topic area, and is unpopular with some of the very worst Flood editors for failing to do their bidding to their satisfaction. As far as Wikipedia administrators go, he is one of the "good guys."  

But his job is to enforce the rules, and ScottishFinnishRadish knows perfectly well that on Wikipedia, the Flood calls the shots.

Postscript: Note the comment that came in concerning SFR after I posted this. The commenter makes a good point. I may have been too charitable in calling them "one of the 'good guys.'"

A Timely Study Emerges as Wikipedia Weighs 'Israel/Palestine'

 

I've been offline for a while, neglecting this blog, and during my absence a number of things have happened.

Two very important ones are related:

1. Wikipedia's highest tribunal, its "arbitration committee" or "Arbcom," has  voted to open a "case" to consider complaints that anti-Israel and sometimes antisemitic editors have bullied their way into dominating a vast swath of articles on Israel and the Gaza war. The "case" will commence on November 30th.

2. Just as the Arbcom case is about to commence, Canadian researchers have released an impressively thorough study quantifying the behavior of anti-Israel editors. 

A National Post article on the study, by its authors, can be found here. Their analysis "reveals alarming patterns of bias that can cascade through the digital information ecosystem, infecting everything from search engine results to academic citations to social media posts and even AI training data."

I wrote about the arbcom case when it first commenced back in August, and updated several times. As I've described, it began promisingly, with postings by several respected editors pointing out the pattern of anti-Israel "ownership" of articles, much of it (as I revealed in this blog), coordinated offsite in violation of Wikipedia rules.

What I call the "Wikipedia Flood" of pro-Hamas editors fought fiercely against Arbcom's taking up the case, gaslighting and producing reams of verbiage and meaningless "data" to prove that the blatant anti-Israel propaganda in the artcles, and the misconduct that produced it, is just a figment of everyone's imagination.

The phony "data" they generated was crucial, as arbcom often takes a nerdy approach and is swayed by "data," no matter how bogus.

The arbcom case drew outside attention as it dragged on for months, especially articles by Aaron Bandler in Jewish Journal, which raised the stakes and made it harder for arbcom to just sweep it all under the rug. 

Revelations about outside coordination, by this blog and Ashley Rindsberg in Piratewire, made it still harder.

In voting to go ahead with the case, the arb "Moneytrees" specifically pointed to the canvassing:

I also want to look at offsite behavior and canvassing, which has been chronic for a while and been difficult to address with our current processes. The scope should be an examination of how to address these offsite issues, and how we can empower admins to act on them.

And now comes this latest development, the Canadian study, just as the case is about to begin.

The study was conducted by Neil Seeman, a Senior Fellow at Massey College. the University of Toronto, and Jeff Ballabon, Senior Counsel for International and Government Affairs at the American Center for Law and Justice. These are serious researchers, which Wikipedia usually hold in higher esteem than journalists. 

In their National Post article, they wrote:

We conducted a comprehensive analysis of Wikipedia’s structural bias, using as our case study the page about South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Our findings unearthed patterns of systematic bias that can shape and contort public understanding of critical global issues.

Through a detailed examination of over 1,000 page revisions, we identified several key mechanisms through which bias can enter and metastasize inside Wikipedia.

Our analysis identified 27 highly active editors who contributed significantly to the page. These weren’t hobbyist contributors — they averaged over 200,000 edits across Wikipedia, suggesting they’re highly experienced editors with considerable influence over content. The bias expression analysis identified patterns of anti-Israel bias among power-user editors, highlighting how personal viewpoints can seep into supposedly neutral content.

While none of the researchers' findings will come as a surprise to readers of this blog and the other coverage, their work dovetails neatly what I've been documenting sinch March, and what Aaron and Ashley have written about.

Their findings concerning editor behavior are significant because, remember, Arbcom's jurisdiction is confined entirely to that realm:

What’s particularly remarkable is these biases contradict the spirit of a “wiki” — an ethos of bottom-up collaboration and respect expressed toward all its volunteer editors. These biases include: elite theory bias, that is, a preference for academic sources over grassroots knowledge; high-contributor frequency bias (disproportionate influence of frequent editors); citation gaming (strategic use of citations to push particular viewpoints); temporal bias (over-representation of recent events or perspectives); institutional capture systematic bias (from organized editing groups); language complexity bias (use of complex language to obscure bias); and source selectivity bias (selective choice of sources to support particular views).

So there it is, all laid out. The arbcom case won't commence until the end of November, so you can bet that the Wikipedia Flood--and their sponsors and backers--will be minutely examining the Canadian study to rip it to shreds and extract as much blood as they can from the editors who have sought to counter them.

The Flood is tightly organized offsite, experienced and well-established onsite. They've achieved their objective since 10/7, spreading poison, turning Wikipedia into a propaganda website, and there's no reason to believe they won't win again, study or no study.

Why? Because Wikipedia belongs to them.

Wikipedia needs to be starved of money and discredited. This new study will go a long way toward achieving the latter objective. 

Wikipedia Decrees: Israel Has No Right to Exist

 

Existence? Not for Israel, not on Wikipedia 

One of the cliches of the Arab-Israel conflict is that the "good guys" and the "bad guys" roughly line up over the question: "Does Israel have a right to exist?"

Only the most violent rogue states and antisemitic terrorist groups says it does not.

Wikipedia says it does not.

That emerged recently in one of Wikipedia's numerous administrative boards. An administrator named "ScottishFinnishRadish," known usually as "SFR," sought advice from other admins as to whether a user should be sanctioned over that issue.

The user, "Nableezy," is a veteran anti-Israel editor who I've mentioned in several previous blog items. He contended on an article discussion page that Wikipedia cannot say that Israel has a right to exist (see above) in its own voice. That's just a "claim." 

SFR wrote:

I've opened this report to get input from other administrators about the diffs above that say Wikipedia cannot presuppose[s] Israel has a right to exist and that it is something that should not be put in wikivoice. This is a diff showing the content at issue.

In as much as any nation has a right to exist, I think the very least we're looking at a WP:FRINGE viewpoint being used to argue content and against a provided source. I know that I've blocked editors for similar comments on both the existence of Palestine and Israel. I am interested in what other administrators think about these diffs. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 18:54, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

What followed was what usually happens when anti-Israel editors are brought up on charges. Members of the "Wikipedia Flood" of anti-Israel editors, and their allies, piled on. 

Of course Israel has no right to exist! No country does, they argued, so therefore Wikipedia cannot say in its own voice that Israel has a right to exist. Even raising the issue is wrong!

Nableezy won the dispute without much effort.

SFR succumbed, withdrawing his query with a humiliating apology to Nableezy.

You really have to savor the double standard at work here.

Wikipedia editors have ruled multiple times that Israel can be raked over the coals in Wikipedia's own voice.

Wikipedia says in its own voice that Israel is an apartheid state.

Wikipedia says in its own voice that Israel commits genocide in Gaza.

Massacres? Of course. There's an entire Wikipedia category of massacres committed by those dastardly Israelis.

All in Wikipedia's voice.

But you daren't say, in Wikipedia's voice, that those genocidal, apartheid-committing massacre-perpetrators have a right to a state of their own. That's disputed. That has to be attributed. It's very much in doubt 

And after reading the way Israel, its people and history are described in thousands of articles by Wikipedia's anti-Israel editors--who dominate the articles on Israel and Jews--you might feel the same way if you approached the subject cold.

You might be persuaded to support Hamas yourself. 

Or worse.

Dispatches From the Wikipedia Battlefield

In response to the torrent of tips and suggestions I've been getting from readers, including Wikipedia users, I'm commencing a live blog, "dispatches from the Wikipedia battlefield," describing articles and internal organs that are under assault by the "Wikipedia flood" of anti-Israel and sometimes pro-Hamas and antisemitic editors.

These will consist of links and brief descriptions. Updates will appear at the top.  Suggestions should be sent to me via Twitter DMs or email. 

November 9

 

A brave and possibly suicidal Wikipedia editor, "BilledMammal," has petitioned the site's "Arbitration Committee" to do something as appealing to them as swallowing rusty nails. 

This optimistic person wants the lassitude-addicted arbs to take up offsite coordination of pro-Hamas editing, which I wrote about here and in a follow-up post, and which Ashley Rindsberg examined in his Piratewires article.

The Flood is of course outeaged! Why this request is itself a violation of Wikipedia rules, which they clutch tightly to their bosons. Et cetra.

The arbs are not going to examine a thing, of course, except maybe, at most, drop-kicking BilledMammal out of Wikipedia. He hasn't done anything wrong but they'll think of something. 

Follow the charade here.

November 5

Anti-Israel editors, horrified by the very existence of the Wikipedia and Antisemitism article, have gone offsite to dox its creator. They are doing so on "Wikipediocracy," a Wikipedia-focused message board where Flood members are active. The doxing effort began in a public area but moved into a private forum, where the sleuths are batting around the possible identity of the culprit.

Wikipediocracy likes to think of itself as an "investigative" website, and they've created a puffy article on themselves on Wikipedia. But its members are mainly focused on settling old scores and, as in this case, targeting pro-Israel editors. 

November 4

An article on Wikipedia and Antisemitism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_and_antisemitism has sent the Wikipedia Flood into hysterics. Delete it! Delete it! Merge it! The article has multiple issues! Don't expect it to last long.

November 3

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FClarification_and_Amendment&diff=1255134766&oldid=1254649211

The empire strikes back.

The "resident expert" of the Discord offsite anti-Israel coordination effort, "Ïvana," rants and raves and deflects in response to Scharb, while "Sean.hoyland," the Wikipedia Flood Chief Meaningless Numbers-Cruncher, offers up "data" in support of his comrades.

November 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment#Amendment_request:_Palestine-Israel_articles_(AE_referral)

Arbcom continues to consider whether it will take up a complaint against pro-Hamas editors. This has resulted in a torrent of word-salad filibusters, meaningless "data" and gaslighting from the editors involved and their allies. At the current time they're one vote away from taking the case.

But there have been some gems amid the rubble. Recently one editor, "Scharb," has posted a detailed statement concerning the offsite coordination of pro-Hamas editing, which I wrote about here and in a follow-up post, and which Ashley Rindsberg thoroughly explored in his Piratewires article.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment#Statement_by_Scharb 

permalink https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FClarification_and_Amendment&diff=1254649211&oldid=1254590332

Arbcom is anxious to steer clear of the so-called "Israel/Palestine" subject area, knowing full well that pro-Hamas propagandists will bombard them with an avalanche of bullshit. By raising the offsite coordination of editing, "Scharb" has made it harder for them to shirk their duty. Stay tuned.

How Wikipedia Erases Arab Terrorism

The Wikipedia article on Black September does not describe it as a terrorist group

According to Wikipedia, Black September, the notorious terrorist group that kidnapped, tortured and slaughtered Israeli athletes at the 1972 is not a terrorist group.

Hamas, the bus-bombers and butchers of 10/7, is not a terrorist group as far as Wikipedia is concerned.

But Irgun, the Jewish pre-state paramilitary group? Now, that's a terrorist group.

The following is a guest blog exploring how Wikipedia's pro-Hamas editors have ensured that articles on terrorist groups never actually say that they are terrorist groups—except when they are Jews.

*                               *                               *

Since the early days of Wikipedia, millions of words have been written to debate whether a person or organization is correctly described as a terrorist. 

The only source of authority is the Wikipedia Manual of Style whose Word to Watch policy advises against using the word "terrorism" or "terrorist" in an article "unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject, in which case use in-text attribution." 

This means that people, organizations, and actions are not supposed to be described as terrorists or terrorism in "wiki-voice," but rather only with the source of the designation in the text (e.g. "The New York Times described the operation as 'terrorism'"). 

Although this policy is an absurd exercise in moral relativism, it is also frequently ignored when it comes to Israel and its enemies.   

Here is the starkest example: the opening sentences to the Wikipedia Articles on "Zionist Political Violence" and "Palestinian Political Violence:"   

Zionist Political Violence:
Zionist political violence refers to acts of violence or terrorism committed by Zionists in support of establishing and maintaining a Jewish state in Palestine. These actions have been carried out by individuals, paramilitary groups, and the Israeli government, from the early 20th century to the present day, as part of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Palestinian Political Violence: Palestinian political violence refers to actions carried out by Palestinians with the intent to achieve political objectives that can involve the use of force, some of which are considered acts of terrorism, and often carried out in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Common objectives of political violence by Palestinian groups, include self-determination in and sovereignty over all of Palestine (including seeking to replace Israel),[7][8] or the recognition of a Palestinian state inside the 1967 borders. This includes the objective of ending the Israeli occupation. More limited goals include the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and recognition of the Palestinian right of return.  

An attempt in April, 2023 to change the name of the article to "Palestinian Terrorism" was defeated in short order.   

This discrepancy is also apparent when comparing articles about Palestinian terrorist organizations to Israeli groups: The Ledes for the Wikipedia articles on Hamas, al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and even Black September use the same misleading formula to inform the reader that these are terrorist organizations and always at the very end of the Lede: "[Group] has been designated a terrorist organization by [Countries]." Nothing more.  

The article about Black September is particularly ironic: the Lede won’t call Black September a terrorist organization, but does immediately note that its attacks "led to the creation or specialization of permanent counter-terrorism forces in many European countries."   

Now let’s take a look at the Wikipedia article on the Irgun. Here are the first three paragraphs from the Lede:   

The Irgun (Hebrew: ארגון; full title: Hebrew: הארגון הצבאי הלאומי בארץ ישראל HaIrgun HaTzvaʾi Ha-Leumi b-Eretz Israel, lit. "The National Military Organization in the Land of Israel"), or Etzel (Hebrew: אצ״ל) (sometimes abbreviated IZL), was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandatory Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the older and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah (Hebrew: Hebrew: הגנה, Defence).[1] The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization or organization which carried out terrorist acts.[2][3][4][5  

The Irgun policy was based on what was then called Revisionist Zionism founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky.[6] Two of the operations for which the Irgun is best known are the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 and the Deir Yassin massacre that killed at least 107 Palestinian Arab villagers, including women and children, carried out together with Lehi on 9 April 1948. 

The organization committed acts of terrorism against Palestinian Arabs, as well as against the British authorities, who were regarded as illegal occupiers.[7] In particular the Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, British, and United States governments; in media such as The New York Times newspaper;[8][9] as well as by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry,[10][11] the 1946 Zionist Congress[12] and the Jewish Agency.[13] Albert Einstein, in a letter to The New York Times in 1948, compared Irgun and its successor Herut party to "Nazi and Fascist parties" and described it as a "terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization".[14] 

(Boldface added) The difference in emphasis could not be clearer. Fully half of the Lede about the Irgun is dedicated to connecting it to terrorism, compared to a mere sentence for any of Israel's enemies.   

Even a mild tempering of Israel's demonization cannot be tolerated. For about five years, the Lede to the Irgun artucle included the statement that "the Irgun went to considerable lengths to avoid harming civilians, such as issuing pre-attack warnings; according to Hoffman, Irgun leadership urged "targeting the physical manifestations of British rule while avoiding the deliberate infliction of bloodshed."

These were statements from scholarly works published by Bruce Hoffman and Max Abrahms, two respected academics who specialize in terrorism and provided a bit of balance to the Lede about the Irgun. They were removed by well-known anti-Israel editor IOHANNVSVERVS because they did not conform with his prejudices and the already biased article about the Irgun:   

"Bruce Hoffman, whose understanding of the Irgun is fringe and false, contradicted by the rest of the information in this article as well as the page List of Irgun attacks" Hoffman's expertise seems to be about terrorism in general and not specifically the Irgun or Israeli/Palestinian history."  IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 00:21, 21 February 2024 (UTC) 

Let’s turn to some Wikipedia articles about specific terrorist attacks:   

The list of terrorist attacks committed against Israelis is (sadly) so long that I could not look at each article, but many of them have had the word "terrorist" removed from the Lede or the rest of the article and the incident is referred to as a "suicide attack" or “suicide bombing" and the terrorists are dubbed "militants” or “assailants"    

Now let’s look at the article for the King David Hotel Bombing. Here’s how it starts:  

The British administrative headquarters for Mandatory Palestine, housed in the southern wing[1] of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, were bombed in a terrorist attack[2][3] on 22 July 1946, by the militant right-wing[4] Zionist underground organization Irgun during the Jewish insurgency.[5]   

When it comes to Jewish groups, there is no problem describing their acts as terrorist attacks in "wiki-voice."

One last example of the hypocrisy in play:   

In August, 2024, there was a discussion that successfully changed “Palestinian Suicide Terrorism” to “Palestinian Suicide Attacks.” In arguing for the change, notorious anti-Israel editor Iskandar323 said that “Terrorism" isn't actually a description of an event or act at all, but just a POV characterisation.”  Iskandar323 (talk) 15:03, 22 August 2024 (UTC). 

In his next comment, he expounds that  "the label is normally inappropriate for all but the broadest concept pieces where "terrorism" is the only conceivable name for the topic. Unless the first sentence goes "X is the carrying out of acts of terror by Y", the topic isn't terrorism, but something more specific. Here the subject is extremely specific to A) Palestinian nationalism and B) suicide bombings, as the first line explains, and so should be titled as such. The broader concept here is meanwhile Palestinian political violence. Per MOS:TERRORISM, labels such as terrorism should generally only by applied in the body, and with attribution, not liberally and loosely. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:45, 23 August 2024 (UTC) 

Sounds principled doesn’t it?  

Well here is Iskandar323 arguing in favor of categorizing the 2024 Lebanon Pager Explosions as “terrorism” because he is sure it is and because various others say so.  

We should mention it in the form of the WP and state that numerous international law experts have characterised it as an act of terrorism. That is uncontroversial. Many have, including also, separately, Geoffrey Nice on Middle East Eye. It was textbook state terrorism. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:50, 21 September 2024 (UTC) 

And here is his justification for descrbiing the King David Hotel Bombing as a terrorist attack in wiki-voice:  

[I]n this particular instances, the terroristic nature of the act is particularly well attested in reliable sources, our go-to, including tertiary ones such as the Encyclopedia of terrorism. This page also has a section that explains at length why the act was considered terroristic, alongside Irgun itself, which was condemned by all the authorities involved.  Iskandar323 (talk) 13:57, 15 September 2022 (UTC) 

Ironically, the next comment is from Nableezy who says "Lots of attacks are called terrorist attacks on WP, so you are mistaken (just for example, Afula mall bombing, but lots more)." nableezy - 14:20, 15 September 2022 (UTC).  

The words "terrorist attack" were removed from that article in March 2024.