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.'"