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| Wikipedia rebuffs a request to fix the 'Zionism' article |
In a previous blog item I described how last September, a Wikipedia administrator permanently banned efforts to alter a blatantly false anti-Zionist passage in the Zionism article.
The passage reads: "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible." As pointed out in detail by Aaron Bandler in the Jewish Journal, the passage is blatantly false:
In my blog item I wrote: "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."
As always seems to happen on Wikipedia, the situation has actually worsened. Now the entire Zionism article is shielded from meaningful changes in the same peremptory, arbitrary manner. A wholesale "rollback" of the article to a more neutral version is not allowed.
Since returning the entire article to its pre-propaganda state would entail changing that passage, the entire article is now set in stone as far as wholesale changes are concerned. That false passage is holy on Wikipedia. It is like the Gospels. Immutable.
Yesterday, an "IP" editor made a simple request: that the article be rolled back to its state prior to the post-Oct. 7 Hamas propaganda binge, what I call the "Wikipedia Flood." They suggested this version as more consistent with Wikipedia's neutrality principals.
The IP editor argued:
Recent edits may have significantly altered the tone and neutrality of the article, including removal or reframing of historically and factually supported content. I believe that version offered a more balanced representation, particularly in describing the historical background of Zionism, its relation to Jewish self-determination, and the context of antisemitism — which now appear to be diminished or excluded.
An administrator, "TarnishedPath," summarily denied the request, saying:
There is a moratorium on [a]ll discussion about editing, removing, or replacing "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible."
They cited this discussion from Februuary, which engraved in stone that false anti-Zionist passage. It's a twelve-month moratorium, which means it expires next February if it isn't extended. Which, of course, it will. The Flood won't vanish by then.
What this episode demonstrates, yet again, is that Wikipedia's anonymous "administrators" and the "arbitrators" above them have broad discretion to do pretty much whatever they want, without oversight or meaningful supervision, even when they violate the site's core principles.
One of those principles, cited during the brief discussion yesterday, is "WP:CCC," "Consensus can change." Yes, consensus can and does change—sometimes. But when a handful of editors flood an article to pepper it with anti-Israel rubbish, the phony "consensus" they create is permanent.
That's what critics of Wikipedia need to grasp. The "Wikipedia Flood" of anti-Israel editors and their allies and enablers twist and disregard site policies and "pillars" at will. Concepts like "oversight" and "accountability" are foreign to Wikipedia, which is why it is incapable of internal reform.
